Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Chris Pinfield and the
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Transcriber's Note:

Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Daily quotations from
published prayers, which are italicised here and in the original, have
been indented.

Bolding is indicated by =equal signs=. Daily quotations from
Scripture, which are bolded here and in the original, have also been
indented.

Small capitals have been rendered in upper case.

Inconsistencies in spelling (e.g. "Savior" and "Saviour") and in
hyphenation have been retained.

In the two chemical formulae in Chapter 4 "^" is followed by a
superscript and "_" by a subscript.

Minor changes have been made to the format of biblical references; and
corrections made to apparent punctuation errors elsewhere in the text.




The Meaning of Faith


 HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
 AUTHOR OF "THE MANHOOD OF THE MASTER," "THE MEANING OF PRAYER,"
 "THE CHALLENGE OF THE PRESENT CRISIS," ETC.

 ASSOCIATION PRESS
 NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE
 1922


 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
 THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF
 YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS

Printed in the United States of America

The Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons,
and is used by permission.


 TO
 MY MOTHER
 IN MEMORIAM


  "_'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
  A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;
  Second in order of felicity
  To walk with such a soul._"




PREFACE


A book on faith has been for years my hope and intention. And now it
comes to final form during the most terrific war men ever waged, when
faith is sorely tried and deeply needed. Direct discussion of the war
has been purposely avoided; the issues here presented are not confined
to those which the war suggests; but many streams of thought within
the book flow in channels that the war has worn. Since the conflict
had to come, I am glad for this book's sake that it was not written
until it had Europe's holocaust for a background.

Against one misunderstanding the reader should be guarded. If anyone
approaches these studies, expecting to find detailed and special views
of Christian doctrine, he will be disappointed. The perplexities of
mind and life and the affirmations of religious faith, with which
these studies deal, lie far beneath sectarian doctrinal controversy. I
have tried to make clear a foundation on which faith might build its
thoughts of Christian truth. And while I have spoken freely of God and
Christ and the Spirit, of the Cross and life eternal, I have not
intended or endeavored a complete theology. I have had in mind that
elemental matter of which Carlyle was thinking when he wrote: "The
thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain
concerning his vital relations to the mysterious Universe, and his
duty and destiny there, _that_ is in all cases the primary thing
for him, and creatively determines all the rest. _That_ is his
religion."

As in "The Meaning of Prayer," the Scripture has been used for the
basis and interpretation of the daily thought. The Bible is our
supreme record of man's experience with faith; it recounts in terms of
life faith's sources and results, its successes and failures, its
servants and its foes. And because faith is not a _tour de force_
of intellect alone, but is an act of life, prayers have been used for
the expression of aroused desire and resolution.

My indebtedness to many helpers is very great. But to my friend and
colleague, Professor George Albert Coe, my gratitude is so definitely
due for his careful reading of the manuscript, that the book should
not go out lacking an acknowledgment.

 H. E. F.
 December 15, 1917.




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Special acknowledgment is gladly made to the following: to E. P.
Dutton & Company for permission to use prayers from "A Chain of Prayer
Across the Ages" and from "The Temple," by W. E. Orchard, D.D.; to the
Rev. Samuel McComb and the publishers for permission to quote from "A
Book of Prayers," Copyright, 1912, Dodd, Mead & Company; to the
American Unitarian Association for permission to draw upon "Prayers,"
by Theodore Parker; to the Pilgrim Press and the author for permission
to use selections from "Prayers of the Social Awakening," by Dr.
Rauschenbusch; to the Missionary Education Movement for permission to
make quotations from "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E. Diffendorfer; to
Fleming H. Revell Co., for permission to make use of "A Book of Public
Prayer," by Henry Ward Beecher; and to the publishers of James
Martineau's "Prayers in the Congregation and in College," Longmans,
Green & Co.

None of the above material should be reprinted without securing
permission.




 CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                                                          PAGE

       PREFACE                                                     vii

    I. FAITH AND LIFE'S ADVENTURE                                    1

   II. FAITH A ROAD TO TRUTH                                        26

  III. FAITH IN THE PERSONAL GOD                                    51

   IV. BELIEF AND TRUST                                             77

    V. FAITH'S INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES                           103

   VI. FAITH'S GREATEST OBSTACLE                                   129

  VII. FAITH AND SCIENCE                                           158

 VIII. FAITH AND MOODS                                             184

   IX. FAITH IN THE EARNEST GOD                                    210

    X. FAITH IN CHRIST THE SAVIOR: FORGIVENESS                     237

   XI. FAITH IN CHRIST THE SAVIOR: POWER                           263

  XII. THE FELLOWSHIP OF FAITH                                     289

       SCRIPTURE PASSAGES USED IN THE DAILY READINGS               316

       SOURCES OF PRAYERS USED IN THE DAILY READINGS               317




PUBLISHERS' NOTE


The complex subject of Faith has required an extended treatment, which
has made the present volume much longer than the author's previous
works. Every item of expense connected with publishing has greatly
increased even within the past few months, and, to the regret, alike
of publisher and author, it has been found necessary to charge more
for this volume than for "The Meaning of Prayer" and "The Manhood of
the Master."




CHAPTER I

Faith and Life's Adventure


DAILY READINGS

Discussion about faith generally starts with faith's _reasonableness_;
let us begin with faith's _inevitableness_. If it were possible
somehow to live without faith, the whole subject might be treated
merely as an affair of curious interest. But if faith is an
unescapable necessity in every human life, then we must come to terms
with it, understand it, and use it as intelligently as we can. _There
are certain basic elements in man which make it impossible to live
without faith._ Let us consider these, as they are suggested in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, which, better than any other book in the
Bible, presents faith as an unavoidable human attitude.


First Week, First Day

 =Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things
 not seen.--Heb. 11:1.=

As Moffatt translates: "Now faith means we are confident of what we
hope for, convinced of what we do not see." When faith is described in
such general terms, its necessity in human life is evident. Man cannot
live without faith, because he deals not only with a past which he may
know and with a present which he can see, but with a _future in whose
possibilities he must believe_. A man can no more avoid looking ahead
when he lives his life than he can when he sails his boat, and in one
case as in the other, his direction is determined by his thought about
what lies before him, his "assurance of things hoped for." Now, this
future into which continually we press our way can never be a matter
of demonstrable knowledge. We know only when we arrive, but meanwhile
we believe; and our knowledge of what is and has been is not more
necessary to our quest than our faith concerning what is yet to come.
As Tennyson sings of faith in "The Ancient Sage":

  "She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst,
  She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
  She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
  She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
  She hears the lark within the songless egg,
  She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'!"

However much a man may plan, therefore, to live without faith, he
cannot do it. When one strips himself of all convictions about the
future he stops living altogether, and active, eager, vigorous manhood
is always proportionate to the scope and power of reasonable faith.
The great spirits of the race have had the aspiring, progressive
quality which the Scripture celebrates:

 =These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but
 having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed
 that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say
 such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of
 their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from
 which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But
 now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God
 is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared
 for them a city.--Heb. 11:13-16.=

 _Almighty God, let Thy Spirit breathe upon us to quicken in us all
 humility, all holy desire, all living faith in Thee. When we meditate
 on the Eternal, we dare not think any manner of similitude; yet Thou
 art most real to us in the worship of the heart. When in the strife
 against sin we receive grace to help us in our time of need, then art
 Thou the Eternal Rock of our salvation. When amid our perplexities
 and searchings, the way of duty is made clear, then art Thou our
 Everlasting Light. When amid the storms of life we find peace and
 rest through submission, then art Thou the assured Refuge of our
 souls. So do Thou manifest Thyself unto us, O God!_

 _Our Heavenly Father, we give Thee humble and hearty thanks for all
 the sacred traditions which have come down to us from the past--for
 the glorious memories of ancient days, concerning that Divine light
 in which men have been conscious of Thy presence and assured of Thy
 grace. But we would not content ourselves with memories. O Thou who
 art not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, manifest
 Thyself unto us in a present communion. Reveal Thyself unto us in the
 tokens of this passing time. Give us for ourselves to feel the
 authority of Thy law: give us for ourselves to realize the exceeding
 sinfulness of sin: give us for ourselves to understand the way of
 salvation through sacrifice. Teach us, by the Spirit of Christ, the
 sacredness of common duties, the holiness of the ties that bind us to
 our kind, the divinity of the still small voice within that doth ever
 urge us in the way of righteousness. So shall our hearts be renewed
 by faith; so shall we ever live in God. Amen._--John Hunter.


First Week, Second Day

 =By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place
 which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not
 knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land
 of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac
 and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for
 the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is
 God.--Heb. 11:8-10.=

 =By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son
 of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with
 the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
 accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures
 of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he
 forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as
 seeing him who is invisible.--Heb. 11:24-27.=

Man cannot live without faith because his relationship with the future
is an affair not alone of thought but also of action; _life is a
continuous adventure into the unknown_. Abraham and Moses pushing out
into experiences whose issue they could not foresee are typical of all
great lives that have adventured for God. "By faith" is the first word
necessary in every life like Luther's and Wesley's and Carey's. By
faith John Bright, when his reforms were hard bestead, said: "If we
can't win as fast as we wish, we know that our opponents can't in the
long run win at all." By faith Gladstone, when the Liberal cause was
defeated, rose undaunted in Parliament, and said, "I appeal to time!"
and by faith every one of us must undertake each plain day's work, if
we are to do it well. Robert Louis Stevenson said that life is "an
affair of cavalry," "a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully
hazarded." But so to deal with life demands faith. The more one sees
what venturesome risks he takes every day, what labor and sacrifice he
invests in hope of a worthy outcome, with what great causes he falls
in love until at his best he is willing for their sakes to hazard
fortune and happiness and life itself, the more he sees that the soul
of robust and serviceable character is faith.

 _O God, who hast encompassed us with so much that is dark and
 perplexing, and yet hast set within us light enough to walk by;
 enable us to trust what Thou hast given as sufficient for us, and
 steadfastly refuse to follow aught else; lest the light that is in us
 become as darkness and we wander from the way. May we be loyal to all
 the truth we know, and seek to discharge those duties which lay their
 commission on our conscience; so that we may come at length to
 perfect light in Thee, and find our wills in harmony with Thine._

 _Since Thou hast planted our feet in a world so full of chance and
 change that we know not what a day may bring forth, and hast
 curtained every day with night and rounded our little lives with
 sleep; grant that we may use with diligence our appointed span of
 time, working while it is called today, since the night cometh when
 no man can work; having our loins girt and our lamps alight, lest the
 cry at midnight find us sleeping and the door fast shut._

 _Since we are so feeble, faint, and foolish, leave us not to our own
 devices, not even when we pray Thee to; nor suffer us for any care to
 Thee or for any pain to us to walk our own unheeding way. Plant
 thorns about our feet, touch our hearts with fear, give us no rest
 apart from Thee, lest we lose our way and miss the happy gate.
 Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


First Week, Third Day

Man cannot live without faith because the prime requisite in life's
adventure is _courage_, and the sustenance of courage is faith.

 =And what shall I more say? for the time will fail me if I tell of
 Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the
 prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,
 obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of
 fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong,
 waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens. Women
 received their dead by a resurrection: and others were tortured, not
 accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better
 resurrection: and others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea,
 moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn
 asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went
 about in sheep-skins, in goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted,
 ill-treated (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts
 and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth. And these all,
 having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not
 the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us,
 that apart from us they should not be made perfect.--Heb. 11:32-40.=

When in comparison with men and women of such admirable spirit, one
thinks of weak personalities, that ravel out at the first strain, he
sees that the difference lies in courage. _When a man loses heart he
loses everything._ Now to keep one's heart in the midst of life's
stress and to maintain an undiscourageable front in the face of its
difficulties is not an achievement which springs from anything that a
laboratory can demonstrate or that logic can confirm. It is an
achievement of faith,

  "The virtue to exist by faith
  As soldiers live by courage."

Consider this account of Havelock, the great English general: "As he
sat at dinner with his son on the evening of the 17th, his mind
appeared for the first and last time to be affected with gloomy
forebodings, as it dwelt on the probable annihilation of his brave men
in a fruitless attempt to accomplish what was beyond their strength.
After musing long in deep thought, his strong sense of duty and his
confidence in the justice of his cause restored the buoyancy of his
spirit; and he exclaimed, 'If the worst comes to the worst, we can but
die with our swords in our hands!'" No man altogether escapes the
need for such a spirit, and, as with Havelock and the Hebrew heroes,
confidence in someone, faith in something, is that spirit's source.

 _O God, who hast sent us to school in this strange life of ours, and
 hast set us tasks which test all our courage, trust, and fidelity;
 may we not spend our days complaining at circumstance or fretting at
 discipline, but give ourselves to learn of life and to profit by
 every experience. Make us strong to endure._

 _We pray that when trials come upon us we may not shirk the issue or
 lose our faith in Thy goodness, but committing our souls unto Thee
 who knowest the way that we take, come forth as gold tried in the
 fire._

 _Grant by Thy grace that we may not be found wanting in the hour of
 crisis. When the battle is set, may we know on which side we ought to
 be, and when the day goes hard, cowards steal from the field, and
 heroes fall around the standard, may our place be found where the
 fight is fiercest. If we faint, may we not be faithless; if we fall,
 may it be while facing the foe. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


First Week, Fourth Day

Man cannot live without faith, because the adventure of life demands
not only courage to achieve but _patience to endure and wait_,
and all untroubled patience is founded on faith. When the writer to
the Hebrews speaks of those who "through faith and patience inherit
the promises" (Heb. 6:12), he joins two things that in experience no
man successfully can separate. By as much as we need patience, we need
faith.

 =But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were
 enlightened, ye endured a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being
 made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly,
 becoming partakers with them that were so used. For ye both had
 compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling
 of your possessions, knowing that ye have for yourselves a better
 possession and an abiding one. Cast not away therefore your boldness,
 which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience,
 that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.--Heb.
 10:32-36.=

The most difficult business in the world is _waiting_. There are
times in every life when action, however laborious and sacrificial,
would be an unspeakable relief; but to sit still because necessity
constrains us, endeavoring to live out the admonition of the psalmist,
"Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him," is prodigiously
difficult. _No one can do it without some kind of faith._ "In
your patience," said Jesus, "ye shall win your souls" (Luke 21:19),
but such an achievement is no affair of logic or scientific
demonstration; it is a venture of triumphant faith. The great
believers have been the unwearied waiters; faith meant to them not
controversial opinion, but sustaining power. As another has phrased
it, "Our faculties of belief were not primarily given to us to make
orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were given us to _live_ by."

 _We beseech of Thee, O Lord our God, that Thou wilt grant to every
 one of us in Thy presence, this morning, the special mercies which he
 needs--strength where weakness prevails, and patience where courage
 has failed. Grant, we pray Thee, that those who need long-suffering
 may find themselves strangely upborne and sustained. Grant that those
 who wander in doubt and darkness may feel distilling upon their soul
 the sweet influence of faith. Grant that those who are heart-weary,
 and sick from hope deferred, may find the God of all salvation.
 Confirm goodness in those that are seeking it. Restore, we pray Thee,
 those who have wandered from the path of rectitude. Give every one
 honesty. May all transgressors of Thy law return to the Shepherd and
 Bishop of their souls with confession of sin, and earnest and sincere
 repentance. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


First Week, Fifth Day

Man cannot live without faith because he exists in a universe, the
complete explanation of which is forever beyond his grasp, so that
_whatever he thinks about the total meaning of creation is
fundamentally faith_.

 =By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word
 of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which
 appear.--Heb. 11:3.=

Not only is this true, but if we think that there is _no_ God,
that also is faith; and if we hold that the basic reality is physical
atoms, that is faith; and whatever anybody believes about the origin
and destiny of life is faith. When Haeckel says that the creator is
"Cosmic Ether," and when John says that "God is love," they both are
making a leap of faith. This does not mean that faith can dispense
with reason. In these studies we shall set ourselves to marshal the
ample arguments that support man's faith in God. But when the utmost
that argument can do has been achieved, the finite mind, dealing with
the infinite reality, is forced to a sally of faith, a venture of
confidence in Goodness at the heart of the world, not opposed to
reason but surpassing reason. _Faith always sees more with her eye
than logic can reach with her hand._ And especially when men come
to the highest thought of life's meaning and believe in the Christian
God, they face the fact which the writer to the Hebrews presents:

 =And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him; for
 he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a
 rewarder of them that seek after him.--Heb. 11:6.=

Indeed, in all stout conviction about the meaning of life there is a
certain defiant note, refusing to surrender to small objections. Cried
Stevenson, "I believe in an ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I
woke in hell, should still believe it!"

 _O Thou Infinite Spirit, who needest no words for man to hold his
 converse with Thee, we would enter into Thy presence, we would
 reverence Thy power, we would worship Thy wisdom, we would adore Thy
 justice, we would be gladdened by Thy love, and blessed by our
 communion with Thee. We know that Thou needest no sacrifice at our
 hands, nor any offering at our lips; yet we live in Thy world, we
 taste Thy bounty, we breathe Thine air, and Thy power sustains us,
 Thy justice guides, Thy goodness preserves, and Thy love blesses us
 forever and ever. O Lord, we cannot fail to praise Thee, though we
 cannot praise Thee as we would. We bow our faces down before Thee
 with humble hearts, and in Thy presence would warm our spirits for a
 while, that the better we may be prepared for the duties of life, to
 endure its trials, to bear its crosses, and to triumph in its lasting
 joys...._

 _In times of darkness, when men fail before Thee, in days when men of
 high degree are a lie, and those of low degree are a vanity, teach
 us, O Lord, to be true before Thee, not a vanity, but soberness and
 manliness; and may we keep still our faith shining in the midst of
 darkness, the beacon-light to guide us over stormy seas to a home and
 haven at last. Father, give us strength for our daily duty, patience
 for our constant or unaccustomed cross, and in every time of trial
 give us the hope that sustains, the faith that wins the victory and
 obtains satisfaction and fulness of joy. Amen._--Theodore Parker.


First Week, Sixth Day

Man cannot live, lacking faith, because _without it life's richest
experiences go unappropriated_. Opportunities for friendship lie
all about us, but only by trustful self-giving can they be enjoyed;
chances to serve good causes continually beckon us, but one must have
faith to try; superior minds offer us their treasures, but to avail
oneself of instruction from another involves teachable humility. A man
without capacity to let himself go out to other men in friendly trust
or to welcome new illumination on his thought with grateful faith
would be shut out from the priceless treasures of humanity. A certain
trustful openheartedness, a willingness to venture in personal
relationship and in attempts at service is essential to a rich and
fruitful life. And what is true of man's relationship with man is true
of man's relationship with God. So Prof. William James, of Harvard,
states the case: "Just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no
advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one's
word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from
all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn--so
here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to
make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at
all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making
the gods' acquaintance." _Wherever in life great spiritual values
await man's appropriation, only faith can appropriate them._

 =Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering
 into his rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
 For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also
 they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not
 united by faith with them that heard!--Heb. 4:1, 2.=

 _O Infinite Source of life and health and joy! the very thought of
 Thee is so wonderful that in this thought we would rest and be still.
 Thou art Beauty and Grace and Truth and Power. Thou art the light of
 every heart that sees Thee, the life of every soul that loves Thee,
 the strength of every mind that seeks Thee. From our narrow and
 bounded world we would pass into Thy greater world. From our petty
 and miserable selves we would escape to Thee, to find in Thee the
 power and the freedom of a larger life.... We recognize Thee in all
 the deeper experiences of the soul. When the conscience utters its
 warning voice, when the heart is tender and we forgive those who have
 wronged us in word or deed, when we feel ourselves upborne above time
 and place, and know ourselves citizens of Thy everlasting Kingdom, we
 realize, O Lord, that these things, while they are in us, are not of
 us. They are Thine, the work of Thy Spirit brooding upon our souls._

 _Spirit of Holiness and Peace! Search all our motives; try the secret
 places of our souls; set in the light any evil that may lurk within,
 and lead us in the way everlasting. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


First Week, Seventh Day

Man cannot live without faith, because in life's adventure the central
problem is _building character_. Now, character is not a product of
logic, but of faith in ideals and of sacrificial devotion to them.
What is becomes only the starting point of a campaign for what _ought
to be_, and in the prosecution of that campaign what ought to be must
be believed in with passionate intensity. Faith of some sort,
therefore, is necessarily the dynamic of character; only limp and
ragged living is possible without faith; and the greatest characters
are girded by the most ample faith in God and goodness. The writer to
the Hebrews saw this intimate relationship between quality of faith
and quality of life, and challenged his readers to judge the
Christian faith by its consequence in character.

 =Remember them that had the rule over you, men that spake unto you
 the word of God; and considering the issue of their life, imitate
 their faith.--Heb. 13:7.=

Such are the basic elements in human experience that make faith
necessary: we deal with a future, about which we must think, with
reference to which we must act, and adventuring into which we need
courage and patience; this venture of life takes place in a world the
meaning of which can be grasped only by a leap of faith; and in this
venture the best treasures of the spirit are obtainable only through
openheartedness, and character is possible only to men of resolute
conviction. Plainly the subject to whose study we are setting
ourselves is no affair of theoretical interest alone; it affects the
deepest issues of life. No words could better summarize this vital
idea of faith which the Epistle to the Hebrews presents than Hartley
Coleridge's:

  "Think not the faith by which the just shall live
  Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven,
  Far less a feeling, fond and fugitive,
  A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given.
  It is an affirmation and an act
  That bids eternal truth be present fact."

 _How great are the mercies, O Lord our God, which Thou hast prepared
 for all that put their trust in Thee!... Thou hast comfort for those
 that are in affliction; Thou hast strength for those that are weak;
 ... Thou hast all blessings that are needed, and standest ready to be
 all things to all, and in all. And yet, with bread enough and to
 spare, with raiment abundant, and with all medicine, how many are
 there that go hungry, and naked, and sick, and destitute of all
 things! We desire, O Lord, that Thou wilt, to all Thine other
 mercies, add that gift by which we shall trust in Thee--faith that
 works by love; faith that abides with us; faith that transforms
 material things, and gives them to us in their spiritual meanings;
 faith that illumines the world by a light that never sets, that
 shines brighter than the day, and that clears the night quite out of
 our experience. This is the portion that Thou hast provided for thy
 people. We beseech of Thee, grant us this faith, that shall give us
 victory over the world and over ourselves; that shall make us valiant
 in all temptation and bring us off conquerors and more than
 conquerors through Him that loved us. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

When Donald Hankey, who died in the trenches in the Great War, said
that "True religion is betting one's life that there is a God," he not
only gave expression to his own virile Christianity, but he gave a
good description of all effective faith whatsoever. Faith is holding
reasonable convictions, in realms beyond the reach of final
demonstration, and, as well, it is thrusting out one's life upon those
convictions as though they were surely true. _Faith is vision plus
valor._

Our study may well begin by recognizing that, as it is exercised in
the religious life, such faith is the supreme use of an attitude which
we are employing in every other realm. No man can live without vision
to see as true what as yet he cannot prove, or without valor to act on
the basis of his insight. Our vocabulary in ordinary relationships,
quite as much as in religion, is full of words involving faith. I
believe, I feel sure, I am confident, I venture--such phrases express
our common attitudes in work and thought. Each day we act on
reasonable probabilities, hold convictions not yet verified, take
risks whose outcome we cannot know, and trust people whom we have
barely met. We may pride ourselves that our twentieth century's life
is being built on scientifically demonstrable knowledge, but a swift
review of any day's experience shows how indispensable is another
attitude, without which our verifiable knowledge would be an unused
instrument. In order to _live_ we must have insight and daring.
It is not alone the just who live by faith; lacking it, there is no
real life anywhere.

To be sure, we may not leap from this general necessity of faith to
the conclusion that therefore our religious beliefs are justified.
Many men use faith in business and in social life who cannot find
their way to convictions about God. But our desire to understand
faith's meaning is quickened when we see how indispensable a place it
holds, how tremendous an influence it wields, whether it be
religiously applied or not. All sorts of human enterprise bear witness
to its unescapable necessity. Haeckel, the biologist, describing
science's method, says: "Scientific faith fills the gaps in our
knowledge of natural laws with temporary hypotheses." Lincoln, the
statesman, entreating the people, cries: "Let us have faith that right
makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty."
Stevenson, the invalid, trying with fortitude to bear his trial,
writes: "Whether on the first of January or the thirty-first of
December, faith is a good word to end on." And the Master states the
substance of religion in a single phrase: "Have faith in God" (Mark
11:22). Scientific procedure, social welfare, personal quality,
religion--the applications of our subject are as wide as life. Vision
and valor are the dynamic forces in all achievement, intellectual as
well as moral, and as for man's spiritual values and satisfactions,
"It is faith in something," as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "which
makes life worth living."


II

One major reason for this necessary place of faith in our experience
is clear. _Life is an adventure and adventure always demands insight
and daring._ That "Chinese" Gordon, on his hazardous expedition into
the Soudan, should be thrown back on undiscourageable faith in
himself, in the justice of his cause, in the bravery of his men, and
in God; that he should even speak of praying his boats up the Nile,
seems to us natural; for some kind of faith is obviously necessary to
any great adventure. But men often forget that all ordinary living is
essentially adventurous and that by this fact the need of faith is
woven into the texture of every human life. It is an amazing adventure
to be born upon this wandering island in the sky and it is an
adventure to leave it when death calls. To go to school, to make
friends, to marry, to rear children, to face through life the swift
changes of circumstance that no man can certainly predict an hour
ahead, these are all adventures. Each new day is an hitherto unvisited
country, which we enter, like Abraham leaving Ur for a strange land,
"not knowing whither he went" (Heb. 11:8), and every New Year we begin
a tour of exploration into a twelvemonth where no man's foot has ever
walked before. If we all love tales of pioneers, it is because from
the time we are weaned to the time we die, life is pioneering. Of
course we cannot live by verifiable knowledge only. Imagine men,
equipped with nothing but powers of logical demonstration, starting on
such an enterprise as the title of Sebastian Cabot's joint stock
company suggests: "Merchants Adventurers of England for the discovery
of lands, territories, isles and seignories, unknown."

Indeed no knowledge of the sort that our scientific inductions can
achieve ever will take from life this adventurous element. Scientific
knowledge in these latter decades has grown incalculably; yet for all
that, every child's life is a hazardous experiment, every boy choosing
a calling takes his chances, every friendship is a risky exploration
in the province of personality, and all devotion to moral causes is
just as much a venturesome staking of life on insight and hope as it
was when Garrison attacked slavery or Livingstone landed in Africa. To
one who had acquired not only all extant but all possible knowledge,
as truly as to any man who ever lived, life would be full of hazard
still. He could not certainly know in advance the outcome of a single
important decision of his life. He could not at any moment tell in
what new, strange, challenging, or terrific situation the next hour
might find him. With all his science, he must face each day, as Paul
faced his journey to Rome, "not knowing the things that shall befall
me there" (Acts 20:22).

The reason for this is obvious. Our systematized knowledge is the
arrangement under laws of the experiences which we have already had.
It furnishes invaluable aid in guiding the experiments and
explorations which life continuously forces on us. In every
enterprise, however, we must use not only legs to stand on, but
tentacles as well with which to feel our way forward--intuitions,
insights, hopes, unverified convictions, faith. We project our life
forward as we build a cantilever bridge. Part of the structure is
solidly bolted and thoroughly articulated in a system; but ever beyond
this established portion we audaciously thrust out new beginnings in
eager expectation that from the other side something will come to meet
them. Without this no progress ever would be possible.

Every province of life illustrates this necessity of adventure. In
_science_, the established body of facts and laws is only the
civilized community of knowledge from whose frontiers new guesses and
intuitions start. Says Sir Oliver Lodge about the great Newton: "He
had an extraordinary faculty for guessing correctly, sometimes with no
apparent data--as for instance, his intuition that the mean density of
the earth was probably between five and six times that of water, while
we now know it is really about five and one half." In _personal
character_, our habits are basic, but our ideals in which, despite
ourselves, we must believe, are pioneers that push out into new
territory and call our habits after them to conquer the promised land.
In _social advance_, some Edmund Burke, statesman of the first
magnitude, basing his judgment on the established experience of the
race, can call slavery an incurable evil and say that there is not the
slightest hope that trade in slaves can be stopped; and yet within
eighty-two years the race can feel its way forward to Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation. As for _daily business_, adventurous daring
is there the very nerve of enterprise. Says a modern newspaper man:
"There are plenty of people to do the possible; you can hire them at
forty dollars a month. The prizes are for those who perform the
impossible. If a thing can be done, experience and skill can do it; if
a thing cannot be done, only faith can do it." Great in human life is
this adventurous element, and, therefore, great in human life is the
necessity of faith. To chasten and discipline, to make reasonable and
stable the faiths by which we live is a problem unsurpassed in
importance for every man.


III

One result of special interest follows from this truth. It is commonly
suspected that as mankind advances, the function of faith proportionately
shrinks. It is even supposed that the place of faith in human life has
sensibly diminished with our growing knowledge, and that Matthew
Arnold told the truth:

  "The sea of faith
  Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
  Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
  But now I only hear
  Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
  Retreating, to the breath
  Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
  And naked shingles of the world."

Accordingly by custom we call the mediæval centuries the "Age of
Faith." But even a cursory comparison between the mediæval people and
ourselves reveals that among the many differences that distinguish us
from them, none is more marked than the diversity and range of our
faiths. One considers in surprise the things which they did not
believe. That the world would ever grow much better, that social
abuses like political tyranny and slavery could be radically changed,
that man could ever master nature by his inventions until her mighty
forces were his servants, that the whole race could be reached for
Christ, that war could be abolished and human brotherhood in some fair
degree established, that common men could be trusted with responsibility
for their own government or with freedom to worship God according to
the dictates of their own consciences--none of these things did the
mediæval folk believe. One of the most distinguishing characteristics
of the so-called "Age of Faith" was its lack of faith. It lived in a
static world; it was poor in possibilities except in heaven; it
pitiably lacked those most certain signs of vital faith, the open mind
eager for new truth and the ardent, vigorous life seeking new
conquests. In comparison with such an age our generation's faiths are
rich and manifold. To call our time an "Age of Doubt" because of its
free spirit of critical inquiry, is seriously to misunderstand its
major drift. Bunyan's Pilgrim found Doubting Castle kept by Giant
Despair and his wife Diffidence and in any Doubting Castle these two
always dwell. But who, considering our generation's life as a whole,
would call it diffident or desperate? It is rather robust and
confident; its social faiths, at least, are unprecedented in their
sweep and certainty. Even the Great War is the occasion of such
organized faith in a federated and fraternal world as mankind has
never entertained before.

The truth is that with the progress of the race the adventure of life
is elevated and enlarged, and in consequence faith grows not less but
more necessary. _The faiths of a savage are meager compared with a
modern man's._ The Australian bushman never dreams of laboring for
social ideals even a few years ahead. What can he know of those superb
faiths in economic justice and international brotherhood, which even
in the face of overwhelming difficulty, master the best of modern men?
The primitive mind was not curious enough to wonder whether the sun
that rises in the morning was the same that set the night before. What
could such a mind understand of modern science's faith in the
universal regularity of law? Put a Moro head hunter beside Mr. Edison,
and see how incalculable the difference between them, not simply in
their knowledge, but in their faith as to what it is possible for
humanity to do with nature! Or put a fetish worshipper from Africa
beside Phillips Brooks and compare the faith of the one in his idol
with the faith of the other in God. Faith does not dwindle as wisdom
grows; vision and valor are not less important. _The difference
between the twentieth century man and the savage is quite as much in
the scope and quality of their faith as in the range and certainty of
their knowledge._

Faith, therefore is not a transient element in human life, to be
evicted by growing science. For whatever life may _know_, life
_is_ adventure; and as the adventure widens its horizons, the
demand for faith is correspondingly increased. If one tries to imagine
the world with all faith gone--knowledge supposedly having usurped its
place--he must conceive a world where no conscious life and effort
remain at all. Take trust in testimony away from courts of law, and
unsure experiments from the physician's practice; refuse the teacher
his confidence in growing minds and the business man his right to
ventures that involve uncertainty; abstract from civic reforms all
faith in a better future, from science all unproved postulates, from
society all mutual trust and from religion all belief in the Unseen,
and life would become an "inane sand heap." A man who tries to live
without faith will die of inertia. A society that makes the attempt
will be paralyzed within an hour. The question is not whether or no we
shall live by faith. The question is rather--By what faiths shall we
live? What range and depth and quality shall they have? How reasonable
and how assured shall they be?


IV

Among all the faiths which mankind has cherished and by which it has
been helped in life's adventure, none have been more universally and
more passionately held than those associated with religion. In the
daring experiment of living, men naturally have sought by faith
interpretation not only of life's details but of life itself--its
origin, its meaning, and its destiny. Australian bushmen, unable to
count above four on their fingers, have been heard discussing in their
huts at night whence they came, whither they go, and who the gods are
anyway. And when one turns to modern manhood in its finest exhibitions
of intelligence and character, he sees that Professor Ladd, of Yale,
speaks truly: "The call of the world of men today, which is most
insistent and most intense, if not most loud and clamorous, is the
call for a rehabilitation of religious faith."

For it does make a prodigious difference to the spirit of our
adventure in this world, whether we think that God is good or on the
other hand see the universe as Carlyle's terrific figure pictures
it--"one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its
dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb." It does make a
difference of quite incalculable magnitude whether we think that our
minds and characters are an evanescent product of finely wrought
matter which alone is real and permanent, or on the contrary with John
believe that "Now are we children of God and it is not yet made
manifest what we shall be" (I John 3:2).

How great a difference in life's adventure religious faith does make
is better set forth by concrete example than by abstract argument. On
the one side, how radiant the spirit of the venture as the New
Testament depicts it! The stern, appealing love of God behind life,
his good purpose through it, his victory ahead of it, and man a fellow
worker, called into an unfinished world to bear a hand with God in its
completion--here is a game that indeed is worth the candle. On the
other side is Bertrand Russell's candid disclosure of the consequences
of his own scepticism: "Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and
all his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good
and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its
relentless way; for Man condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow
himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to
cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his
little day--proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate
for a moment his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a
weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have
fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power."

Man's life, interpreted and motived by religious faith, is glorious,
but shorn of faith's interpretations life loses its highest meaning
and its noblest hopes. Let us make this statement's truth convincing
in detail.

_When faith in God goes, man the thinker loses his greatest
thought._ Man's mind has ranged the universe, has woven atoms and
stars into a texture of law; his conquering thoughts ride out into
every unknown province of which they hear. But among all the ideas on
which the mind of man has taken hold, incomparably the greatest is the
idea of God. In sheer weight and range no other thought of man
compares with that. Amid the crash of stars, the reign of law, the
vicissitudes of human history, and the griefs that drive their
ploughshares into human hearts, to gather up all existence into
spiritual unity and to believe in God, is the sublimest venture of the
human mind.

_When faith in God goes, man the worker loses his greatest
motive._ Man masters nature until the forces that used to scare him
now obey; in society he labors tirelessly that his children may have a
better world. Wars come, destroying the achievements of ages; yet when
war is over, man rebuilds his cities, recreates his commerce, dreams
again his human brotherhoods, and toils on. Many motives, deep and
shallow, fine and coarse, have sustained him in this tireless work,
but when one seeks the fountain of profoundest hope in mankind's toil
he finds it in religious faith. To believe that we do not stand alone,
hopelessly pitted against the dead apathy of cosmic forces which in
the end will crush us in some solar wreck and bring our work to
naught; to believe that we are fellow-laborers with God, our human
purposes comprehended in a Purpose, God behind us, within us, ahead of
us--this incomparably has been the master-faith in man's greatest work.

_When faith in God goes, man the sinner loses his strongest help._ For
man is a sinner. He tears his spiritual heritage to shreds in
licentiousness and drink. He wallows in vice, wins by cruelty,
violates love, is treacherous to trust. His sins clothe the world in
lamentation. Yet in him is a protest that he cannot stifle. He is the
only creature whom we know whose nature is divided against itself. He
hates his sin even while he commits it. He repents, tries again,
falls, rises, stumbles on--and in all his best hours cries out for
saviorhood. No message short of religion has ever met man's need in
this estate. That God himself is pledged to the victory of
righteousness in men and in the world, that he cares, forgives, enters
into man's struggle with transforming power, and crowns the long
endeavor with triumphant character--such faith alone has been great
enough to meet the needs of man the sinner.

_When faith in God goes, man the sufferer loses his securest
refuge._ One who has walked with families through long illnesses
where desperate prayers rise like a fountain day and night, who has
seen strong men break down in health or lose the fortune of a
lifetime, who has stood at children's graves and heard mothers cry,
"How empty are my arms!" does not need long explication of life's
tragic suffering. The staggering blows shatter the hopes of good and
bad alike. Whether one's house be built on rock or sand, on both, as
Jesus said, the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow.
In this experience of crushing trouble nothing but religious faith has
been able to save men from despair or from stoical endurance of their
fate. To face the loom of life and hopefully to lay oneself upon it,
as though the dark threads were as necessary in the pattern as the
light ones are, we must believe that there is a purpose running
through the stern, forbidding process. What men have needed most of
all in suffering, is not to know the explanation, but _to know that
there is an explanation_. And religious faith alone gives confidence
that human tragedy is not the meaningless sport of physical forces,
making our life what Voltaire called it, "a bad joke," but is rather a
school of discipline, the explanation of whose mysteries is in the
heart of God. No one who has lived deeply can ever call such faith a
"matter of words and names." To multitudes it is a matter of life and
death.

_When faith in God goes, man the lover loses his fairest vision._ When
we say our worst about mankind, this redeeming truth remains, that
each of us has some one for whose sake he willingly would die. The
very love lyrics of the race are proof of this human quality, from
homely folk songs like "John Anderson, My Jo, John" to great poetry
like Mrs. Browning's sonnets. We call them secular, but they are
ineffably sacred. And when one seeks the faith that has made these
loves of men radiant with an illumination which man alone cannot
create, he finds it in religion. Love is not a transient fragrance
from matter finely organized--so men have dared believe; love is of
kin with the Eternal, has there its source and ground and destiny;
love is the very substance of reality. "God is love, and he that
abideth in love, abideth in God, and God abideth in him" (I John
4:16). Man the lover is bereft of his finest insight and love's inner
glory has departed, when that faith has gone.

_When faith in God goes, man the mortal loses his only hope._
Man's nature, like a lighthouse, combines two elements. At the
foundation of the beacon all is stone; as one lifts his eyes, all is
stone still; but at the top is something new and wonderful. It is the
thing for which the rock was piled. Its laws are not the laws of stone
nor are its ways the same. For while the stolid rock stands fast, this
miracle of light with speed incredible hurls itself out across the
sea. Two worlds are here, the one cold and stationary, the other full
of the marvel and mystery of fire. So man has in him a miracle which
he cannot explain; he "feels that he is greater than he knows"; and he
never has been able to believe that the mystery of spirit was given
him in vain, had no reality from which it came, and no future beyond
death. The finest thing ever said of Columbus is a remark of his own
countryman, "The instinct of an unknown continent burned in him." That
is the secret of Columbus' greatness. All the arguments by which he
attempted to convince the doubters were but afterthoughts of this; all
the labors by which he endeavored to make good his hopes were but its
consequence. And if we ask of man why so universally he has believed
in life to come, the answer leaps not superficially from the mind, but
out of the basic intuitions of man's life. We know that something is
now ours which ought not to die; the instinct of an unknown continent
burns in us. But all the hopes, the motives, the horizons that
immortality has given man must go, if faith in God departs. In a
godless world man dies forever.

One, therefore, who is facing loss of faith may not regard it as a
light affair. To be sure, some denials of religion, even a Christian
must respect. Huxley, for example, at the death of his little boy,
wanting to believe in immortality as only a father can whose son lies
dead, yet, for all that, disbelieving, wrote to Charles Kingsley, "I
have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and
name and fame were all to be lost to me one after another as the
penalty, still I will not lie." One respects _that_. When George John
Romanes turned his back for a while on the Christian faith, he wrote
out of his agnosticism, "When at times I think, as think at times I
must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that
creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now
I find it--at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the
sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible." One respects _that_.
But some discard religion from their life's adventure with no such
serious understanding of the import of their denial. They are pert
disbelievers. They toss faith facilely aside in a light mood. Such
frivolous sceptics indict their own intelligence. Whoever discards
religious faith should appoint a day of mourning for his soul, and put
on sackcloth and ashes. He must take from his life the greatest
thought that man the thinker ever had, the finest faith that man the
worker ever leaned upon, the surest help that man the sinner ever
found, the strongest reliance that man the sufferer ever trusted in,
the loftiest vision that man the lover ever saw, and the only hope
that man the mortal ever had. So he must deny his faith in God. Before
one thus leaves himself bereft of the faith that makes life's
adventure most worth while he well may do what Carlyle, under the
figure of Teufelsdröckh, says that he did in his time of doubt: "In
the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and
earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and with audible
prayers cried vehemently for Light."


V

If minimizing the importance of religious faith is unintelligent, so
is avoiding some sort of decision about religious faith impossible.
Most of those into whose hands these studies fall will grant readily
faith's incalculable importance. Some, however, will be not helped but
plunged into deeper trouble by their consent. For they feel themselves
unable to decide about a matter which they acknowledge to be the most
important in the world. Asked whether they believe in God, they would
reply with one of Victor Hugo's characters, "Yes--No--Sometimes." They
grant that to be steadily assured of God would be an invaluable boon,
but for themselves, how can they balance the opposing arguments and
find their way to confidence? All our studies are intended for the
help of such, but at the beginning one urgent truth may well be
plainly put. However undecided they may appear, men cannot altogether
avoid decision on the main matters of religion. Life will not let
them. For while the mind may hold itself suspended between
alternatives, the adventure of life goes on, and men inevitably tend
to live either as though the Christian God were real or as though he
were not.

Some questions allow a complete postponement of decision. As to which
of several theories about the Northern Lights may be true, a man can
hold his judgment in entire suspense. Life does not require from him
any action that depends on what he thinks of the Aurora Borealis; and
whether a man think one thing or another, no conceivable change would
be the consequence in anything he said or did. But there is another
kind of question, where, however much the mind may waver between
opinions and may resolve on indecision, life itself compels decision.
A man cannot really be agnostic and neutral on a question like the
moral law of sexual purity, for, by an irrevocable necessity, he has
to act one way or another. He may stop thinking, but he cannot stop
living. With tremendous urgency the adventure of life insistently goes
on, and it never pauses for any man to make up his mind on any
question. Therefore while a man may theoretically suspend his judgment
as to the requirements of the moral law, his life will be a loud,
convincing advertisement to all who know him that he has vitally
decided. _A man can avoid making up his mind, but he cannot avoid
making up his life._

Quite as truly, though, it may be, not quite as obviously, religious
questions belong to this second class. Not all questions that are
called religious belong there. With fatal pettiness religious men have
reduced the great faiths to technicalities and some beliefs called
religious a man may hold or not, with utter indifference to anything
he is or does. But on the basic attitudes of religion such as we have
just rehearsed, a man cannot be completely neutral, no matter how he
tries. Bernard Shaw's remark, "What a man believes may be ascertained
not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually
acts," should be taken to heart by any one trying to remain
religiously neutral. For one cannot by any possibility avoid
"assumptions on which he habitually acts." He tends to undertake
social service either as confident cooperation with God's purpose or
as an endeavor to make one corner of an unpurposed world as decent as
possible. He tends to follow his ideals, either as the voice of God
calling him upward, or as the work of natural selection, adjusting him
to a temporary environment. He tends to face suffering either
hopefully as a school of moral discipline, in a world presided over by
a Father, or grimly as a hardship in which there is no meaning. He
tends to face death either as the supreme adventure, full of boundless
hope, or as a final exit that leads nowhere. He may never consciously
formulate his ideas on any of these matters, he may maintain an
intellectual agnosticism, genuine and complete, but his living subtly
involves the confession of some faith. "A man's action," said Emerson,
"is only the picture-book of his creed." And the more thoughtful he
is, the more he will be aware of that unescapable tendency to confess
in his living an inward faith about life.

One practical result of this urgent truth is too frequently seen to be
doubtful. _Those who in religion do not decide, thereby decide
against religion._ Religious faith is a positive achievement, and
he who does not deliberately choose it, loses it. A man who, rowing
down Niagara River, debates within himself whether or not he will stop
at Buffalo, and who cannot decide, thereby has decided. His
irresolution has not for a moment interfered with the steady flow of
the river, and if he but debate long enough concerning his stop at
Buffalo, he will awake to discover that he has finally decided not to
stop there. As much beyond the control of man's volition is the steady
flow of life. It pauses for no man's indecision, and if one is
irresolute about any positive, aspiring faith in any realm, his
indecisiveness is decision of a most final sort.

This, then, is the summary of the matter. Life is a great adventure in
which faith is indispensable; in this adventure faith in God presents
the issues of transcendent import; and on these issues life itself
continuously compels decision. Our obligation is obvious--since
willy-nilly the decision must be made--to make it consciously, to
reach it by reason, not by chance, by thinking, not by drifting. If a
man is to be irreligious, let him at least know why, and not slip into
this estate, as most irreligious men do, by careless living and
frivolous thought. If a man is to be religious, let him have reason
for his choice; let his faith be founded not on credulity and chance,
but on real experience and reasonable thought. So his faith shall be
good not only for domestic consumption, but for export too--clear in
his own mind and convincing to his friends. The forms of thought shift
with the centuries and old situations cannot be repeated in detail,
but one crisis in its essential meaning is perennial: "Elijah came
near unto all the people, and said, How long go ye limping between the
two sides? if Jehovah be God follow him; but if Baal then follow him"
(I Kings 18:21).




CHAPTER II

Faith a Road to Truth


DAILY READINGS

Many minds are prevented from even a fair consideration of religious
faith by prejudices which spring, not from reasoned argument, but from
practical experience. They are biased before argument has begun; they
_feel_ that faith means credulity, and that religious faith in
particular is a surrender of reason. Before we positively present
faith as an indispensable means of dealing with reality in any realm,
let us, in the daily readings, consider some of the practical
experiences and attitudes that thus prejudice men against religion.


Second Week, First Day

Many men are biased in advance by the _unwise treatment to which in
their childhood they were subjected_. Paul pictures the home life of
Timothy as ideal:

 =I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers in a pure conscience,
 how unceasing is my remembrance of thee in my supplications, night
 and day longing to see thee, remembering thy tears, that I may be
 filled with joy; having been reminded of the unfeigned faith that is
 in thee; which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother
 Eunice; and, I am persuaded, in thee also.--II Tim. 1:3-5.=

"Unfeigned faith" is often thus a family heritage, handed down by
vital contagion. But in many homes religion is not thus beautifully
presented to the children; it is a hard and rigorous affair of dogma
and restraint. "Oh, why," said a young professional man, whom
Professor Coe quotes, "why did my parents try to equip me with a
doctrinal system in childhood? I supposed that the whole system must
be believed on pain of losing my religion altogether. And so, when I
began to doubt some points, I felt obliged to throw all overboard. I
have found my way back to positive religion, but by what a long and
bitter struggle!" If, however, one has been so unfortunate as to be
hardened in youth by unwise training, is it reasonable on that account
forever to shut himself out from the most glorious experience of man?
This complaint about mistreatment in youth is often an excuse, not a
reason for irreligion. Says Phillips Brooks: "I have grown familiar to
weariness with the self-excuse of men who say, 'Oh, if I had not had
the terrors of the law so preached to me when I was a boy, if I had
not been so confronted with the woes of hell and the awfulness of the
judgment day, I should have been religious long ago.' My friends, I
think I never hear a meaner or a falser speech than that. Men may
believe it when they say it--I suppose they do--but it is not true. It
is unmanly, I think. It is throwing on their teaching and their
teachers, or their fathers and their mothers, the fault which belongs
to their own neglect, because they have never taken up the earnest
fight with sin and sought through every obstacle for truth and God. It
has the essential vice of dogmatism about it, for it claims that a
different _view_ of God would have done for them that which no view of
God can do, that which must be done, _under any system, any teaching_,
by humility and penitence and struggle and self-sacrifice. Without
these no teaching saves the soul. With these, under any teaching, the
soul must find its Father."

 _O Thou, who didst lay the foundations of the earth amid the singing
 of the morning stars and the joyful shouts of the sons of God, lift
 up our little life into Thy gladness. Out of Thee, as out of an
 overflowing fountain of Love, wells forth eternally a stream of
 blessing upon every creature Thou hast made. If we have thought that
 Thou didst call into being this universe in order to win praise and
 honor for Thyself, rebuke the vain fancies of our foolish minds and
 show us that Thy glory is the joy of giving. We can give Thee nothing
 of our own. All that we have is Thine. Oh, then, help us to glorify
 Thee by striving to be like Thee. Make us just and pure and good as
 Thou art. May we be partakers of the Divine Nature, so that all that
 is truly human in us may be deepened, purified, and strengthened.
 And so may we be witnesses for Thee, lights of the world, reflecting
 Thy light._

 _Help us to make religion a thing so beautiful that all men may be
 won to surrender to its power. Let us manifest in our lives its
 sweetness and excellency, its free and ennobling spirit. Forbid that
 we should go up and down the world with melancholy looks and dejected
 visage, lest we should repel men from entering Thy Kingdom. Rather,
 may we walk in the freedom and joy of faith, and with Thy new song in
 our mouths, so that men looking on us may learn to trust and to love
 Thee. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Second Week, Second Day

Many men are prejudiced against religion during their youthful
_period of revolt against authority_. Listen to an ancient father
talking with his sons:

 =Hear, my sons, the instruction of a father,
 And attend to know understanding:
 For I give you good doctrine;
 Forsake ye not my law.
 For I was a son unto my father,
 Tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother.
 And he taught me, and said unto me:
 Let thy heart retain my words;
 Keep my commandments, and live;
 Get wisdom, get understanding;
 Forget not, neither decline from the words of my mouth;
 Forsake her not, and she will preserve thee;
 Love her, and she will keep thee.
 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom;
 Yea, with all thy getting get understanding.
 Exalt her, and she will promote thee;
 She will bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her.
 She will give to thy head a chaplet of grace;
 A crown of beauty will she deliver to thee.=

 =--Prov. 4:1-9.=

No father can read this urgent, anxious plea without understanding the
reason for its solicitude. Every boy comes to the time when he breaks
away from parental authority and begins to take his life into his own
hands. It is one of youth's great crises, and the spirit of it is
sometimes harsh and rebellious. So Carlyle describes his own
experience: "Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle
when he moults is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly
dash-off the old one upon rocks." For religious faith this period of
life is always critical. Stevenson in his revolt, when he called
respectability "the deadliest gag and wet-blanket that can be laid on
man," also became, as he said, "a youthful atheist." How many have
traveled that road and stopped in the negation! Stevenson did not
stop, and years afterward wrote of his progress: "Because I have
reached Paris, I am not ashamed of having passed through Newhaven and
Dieppe." Surely if anyone has been "a youthful atheist," it was an
experience to be "passed through."

 _O God, we turn to Thee in the faith that Thou dost understand and
 art very merciful. Some of us are not sure concerning Thee; not sure
 what Thou art; not sure that Thou art at all. Yet there is something
 at work behind our minds, in times of stillness we hear it, like a
 distant song; there is something in the sky at evening-time;
 something in the face of man. We feel that round our incompleteness
 flows Thy greatness, round our restlessness Thy rest. Yet this is not
 enough._

 _We want a heart to speak to, a heart that understands; a friend to
 whom we can turn, a breast on which we may lean. O that we could find
 Thee! Yet could we ever think these things unless Thou hadst inspired
 us, could we ever want these things unless Thou Thyself wert very
 near?_

 _Some of us know full well; but we are sore afraid. We dare not yield
 ourselves to Thee, for we fear what that might mean. Our foolish
 freedom, our feeble pleasures, our fatal self-indulgence suffice to
 hold us back from Thee, though Thou art our very life, and we so sick
 and needing Thee. Our freedom has proved false, our pleasures have
 long since lost their zest, our sins, oh how we hate them!_

 _Come and deliver us, for we have lost all hope in ourselves.
 Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Second Week, Third Day

Some men--often the precocious, clever ones--are biased against
religion because _in youth they accepted an immature philosophy of
life and have never changed it_. The crust forms too soon on some
minds, and if it forms during the period of youthful revolt, they are
definitely prejudiced against religious truth. The difference between
such folk and the great believers is not that the believers had no
doubts, but that they did not fix their final thought of life until
more mature experience had come. They fulfilled the admonition of a
wise father to keep up a tireless search for truth:

 =My son, if thou wilt receive my words,
 And lay up my commandments with thee;
 So as to incline thine ear unto wisdom,
 And apply thy heart to understanding;
 Yea, if thou cry after discernment,
 And lift up thy voice for understanding;
 If thou seek her as silver,
 And search for her as for hid treasures:
 Then shalt thou understand the fear of Jehovah,
 And find the knowledge of God.=

 =--Prov. 2:1-5.=

Mrs. Charles Kingsley, for example, says of her husband that at twenty
"He was full of religious doubts; and his face, with its unsatisfied,
hungering, and at times defiant look, bore witness to the state of his
mind." At twenty-one Kingsley himself wrote: "You believe that you
have a sustaining Hand to guide you along that path, an Invisible
Protection and an unerring Guide. I, alas! have no stay for my weary
steps, but that same abused and stupefied reason which has stumbled
and wandered, and betrayed me a thousand times ere now, and is every
moment ready to faint and to give up the unequal struggle." If
Kingsley had framed his final philosophy then, what a loss to the
world of an inspiring life transfigured by Christian faith! He cried
after discernment, lifted up his voice for understanding, and he found
the knowledge of God. Many a man ought to revise in the light of
mature experience and thought a hasty irreligious guess at life's
meaning which he made in youth.

 _O Father, we turn to Thee because we are sore vexed with our own
 thoughts. Our minds plague us with questionings we cannot answer; we
 are driven to voyage on strange seas of thought alone. Dost Thou
 disturb our minds with endless questioning, yet keep the answers
 hidden in Thy heart, so that away from Thee we should always be
 perplexed, and by thoughts derived from Thee be ever drawn to Thee?
 Surely, our God, it must be so._

 _But still more bitter and humbling, O Father, is our experience of
 failure, so frequent, tragic, and unpardonable. We have struggled on
 in vain, resolves are broken ere they pass our lips; we can see no
 hope of better things, we can never forgive ourselves; and after all
 our prayers our need remains and our sense of coming short but
 deepens. Yet, at least we know that we have failed, and how, if
 something higher than ourselves were not at work within?_

 _Our desperate desires have driven us at last to Thee, conscious now,
 after all vain effort, that it is Thyself alone can satisfy, and now
 at peace to know that Thou it is who art desired, because Thou it is
 who dost desire within us. Beyond our need reveal Thyself, its cause
 and cure; in all desire teach us to discern Thy drawing near.
 Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Second Week, Fourth Day

Men are often prejudiced against religion because _the churches
which they happened to attend in youth urged on them an irrational
faith_. Some men never recover from the idea that all religion
everywhere must always be the same kind of religion against which in
youth their good sense rose in revolt; they are in perpetual rebellion
against religion as it was when they broke with it a generation ago.
But if one thing more than another grows, expands, becomes in the
intelligent and pure increasingly pure and intelligent, it is religion.

Consider an early Hebrew idea of God:

 =And it came to pass on the way at the lodging-place, that Jehovah
 met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut
 off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet; and she said,
 Surely a bridegroom of blood art thou to me. So he let him alone.
 Then she said, A bridegroom of blood art thou, because of the
 circumcision.--Exodus 4:24-26.=

Over against so abhorrent a picture of a deity who would have
committed murder, had not a mother swiftly circumcised her son,
consider a later thought of God:

 =How think ye? if any man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be
 gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and go unto the
 mountains, and seek that which goeth astray? And if so be that he
 find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth over it more than over
 the ninety and nine which have not gone astray. Even so it is not the
 will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones
 should perish.--Matt. 18:12-14.=

So religion grows with man's capacity to receive higher, finer
revelations of the divine. And in no age of the world has so great a
change passed over the intellectual framework of faith as in the
generation just gone. To live in protest against forms of belief a
generation old is fighting men of straw; the vanguard of religious
thought and life has pushed ahead many a mile beyond the point of such
attack. Men who threw away the living water of the Gospel because they
disliked the water-buckets in which their boyhood churches presented
it, are living spiritually thirsty lives when there is no reasonable
need of their doing so. There is many an unbeliever with a "God-shaped
blank" in his heart, who could be a confident and joyful believer if
he only knew what religion means to men of faith today.

 _O God, who hast formed all hearts to love Thee, made all ways to
 lead to Thy face, created all desire to be unsatisfied save in Thee;
 with great compassion look upon us gathered here. Our presence is our
 prayer, our need the only plea we dare to claim, Thy purposes the one
 assurance we possess._

 _Some of us are very confused; we do not know why we were ever born,
 for what end we should live, which way we should take. But we are
 willing to be guided. Take our trembling hands in Thine, and lead us
 on._

 _Some of us are sore within. We long for love and friendship, but we
 care for no one and we feel that no one cares for us. We are
 misunderstood, we are lonely, we have been disappointed, we have lost
 our faith in man and our faith in life. Wilt Thou not let us love
 Thee who first loved us?_

 _Some of us are vexed with passions that affright us; to yield to
 them would mean disaster, to restrain them is beyond our power, and
 nothing earth contains exhausts their vehemence or satisfies their
 fierce desire._

 _And so because there is no answer, no end or satisfaction in
 ourselves; and because we are what we are, and yet long to be so
 different; we believe Thou art, and that Thou dost understand us. By
 faith we feel after Thee, through love we find the way, in hope we
 bring ourselves to Thee. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Second Week, Fifth Day

Many minds are prejudiced against religion because, having gone so far
as to feel the credulity of religious belief, they have never gone
further and _seen the credulity of religious unbelief_. Irreligion
implies a creed just as surely as religion does; and many a man's
return to faith has begun when his faculties of doubt, which hitherto
had been used only against belief in God, became active against belief
in no-God. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, with his characteristic vividness
and exaggeration, narrates such an experience: "I never read a line of
Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was
Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to
orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of
doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine
and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine
horribly. The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any
use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got as far
as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at
all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures
the dreadful thought broke across my mind, 'Almost thou persuadest me
to be a Christian.' I was in a desperate way." Lest Mr. Chesterton's
whimsicality may hide the seriousness of such an experience, we may
add that Robert Louis Stevenson's first break with his "youthful
atheism" came when, under the influence of Professor Fleeming Jenkin,
he too began to have his "first wild doubts of doubt." He began
thinking, as he says, that "certainly the church was not right, but
certainly not the anti-church either." Many a man has played unfairly
with his doubts; he has used them against religion, but not against
irreligion. When he is thorough with his doubts he may join the many
who understand what the apostle meant when he wrote to Timothy:

 =O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee, turning away
 from the profane babblings and oppositions of the knowledge which is
 falsely so called; which some professing have erred concerning the
 faith.=

 =Grace be with you.--1 Tim. 6:20, 21.=

 _O God, too near to be found, too simple to be conceived, too good to
 be believed; help us to trust, not in our knowledge of Thee, but in
 Thy knowledge of us; to be certain of Thee, not because we feel our
 thoughts of Thee are true, but because we know how far Thou dost
 transcend them. May we not be anxious to discern Thy will, but
 content only with desire to do it; may we not strain our minds to
 understand Thy nature, but yield ourselves and live our lives only to
 express Thee._

 _Shew us how foolish it is to doubt Thee, since Thou Thyself dost set
 the questions which disturb us; reveal our unbelief to be faith
 fretting at its outworn form. Be gracious when we are tempted to
 cease from moral strife: reveal what it is that struggles in us.
 Before we tire of mental search enable us to see that it was not
 ourselves but Thy call which stirred our souls._

 _Turn us back from our voyages of thought to that which sent us
 forth. Teach us to trust not to cleverness or learning, but to that
 inward faith which can never be denied. Lead us out of confusion to
 simplicity. Call us back from wandering without to find Thee at home
 within. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Second Week, Sixth Day

Many men are biased in favor of their habitual doubt because they do
not see that _positive faith is the only normal estate of man_.
We live not by the things of which we are uncertain, but by the things
which we verily believe. Columbus doubted many of the old views in
geography, but these negations did not make him great; his greatness
sprang from the positive beliefs which he confidently held and on
which he launched his splendid adventure. Goethe is right when he
makes Mephistopheles, his devil, say, "I am the spirit of negation,"
for negation, save as it paves the way for positive conviction, always
bedevils life. The psalmist reveals the ideal experience for every
doubter.

First, _uncertainty_:

 =But as for me, my feet were almost gone;
 My steps had well nigh slipped.
 For I was envious at the arrogant,
 When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.=

 =--Psalm 73:2, 3.=

Then _vision_:

 =When I thought how I might know this,
 It was too painful for me;
 Until I went into the sanctuary of God,
 And considered their latter end.=

 =--Psalm 73:16, 17.=

Then, _positive assurance_:

 =Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel,
 And afterward receive me to glory.
 Whom have I in heaven but thee?
 And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee.
 My flesh and my heart faileth;
 But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.=

 =--Psalm 73:24-26.=

Doubt, therefore, does have real value in life; it clears away rubbish
and stimulates search for truth; but it has no value unless it is
finally swallowed up in positive assurance. So Tennyson pictures the
experience of his friend, Arthur Hallam:

              "One indeed I knew
    In many a subtle question versed,
    Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first,
  But ever strove to make it true:

  Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
    At last he beat his music out.
    There lives more faith in honest doubt,
  Believe me, than in half the creeds.

  He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
    He would not make his judgment blind,
    He faced the spectres of the mind
  And laid them: thus he came at length

  To find a stronger faith his own."

 _O Most Merciful, whose love to us is mighty, long-suffering, and
 infinitely tender; lead us beyond all idols and imaginations of our
 minds to contact with Thee the real and abiding; past all barriers of
 fear and beyond all paralysis of failure to that furnace of flaming
 purity where falsehood, sin, and cowardice are all consumed away. It
 may be that we know not what we ask; yet we dare not ask for less._

 _Our aspirations are hindered because we do not know ourselves. We
 have tried to slake our burning thirst at broken cisterns, to comfort
 the crying of our spirits with baubles and trinkets, to assuage the
 pain of our deep unrest by drugging an accusing conscience, believing
 a lie, and veiling the naked flame that burns within. But now we know
 Thou makest us never to be content with aught save Thyself, in earth,
 or heaven, or hell._

 _Sometimes we have sought Thee in agony and tears, scanned the clouds
 and watched the ways of men, considered the stars and studied the
 moral law; and returned from all our search no surer and no nearer.
 Yet now we know that the impulse to seek Thee came from Thyself
 alone, and what we sought for was the image Thou hadst first planted
 in our hearts._

 _We may not yet hold Thee fast or feel Thee near, but we know Thou
 holdest us. All is well. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Second Week, Seventh Day

Men are often prejudiced against religion or any serious consideration
of it, because they _never have felt any vital need of God_. To study
wireless telegraphy in the safe seclusion of a college laboratory is
one thing; to hear the wireless apparatus on a floundering ship send
out its call for help across a stormy sea is quite a different matter.
Many folk have never thought of faith in God save with a mild,
intellectual curiosity; they do not know those deep experiences of
serious souls with sin and sorrow and anxiety, with burden for
great causes and desire for triumphant righteousness in men and
nations--experiences that throw men back on God as their only
sufficient refuge and hope. _Men never really find God until they need
him_; and some men never feel the need of him until life plunges them
into a shattering experience. Even in scientific research new
discoveries are made because men _want_ them, and Mayer, lighting on a
theory that proved to be of great value, says, "Engaged during a sea
voyage almost exclusively with the study of physiology, I discovered
the new theory, for the sufficient reason that I _vividly felt the
need of it_." How much more must the vital discovery of God depend on
life's conscious demand for him! And how certainly a shallow,
frivolous nature, unstirred by the deep concerns of life, is biased
against any serious interest in religious faith! Great believers have
first of all _thirsted_ for God.

 =Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that
 hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk
 without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that
 which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?
 hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let
 your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto
 me; hear, and your soul shall live: and I will make an everlasting
 covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.... Seek ye Jehovah
 while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near: let the
 wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let
 him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our
 God, for he will abundantly pardon.--Isa. 55:1-3, 6, 7.=

 _Grant unto us, we pray Thee, the lost hunger and thirst after
 righteousness--the longing for God. Grant unto us that drawing power
 by which everything that is in us shall call out for Thee. Become
 necessary unto us. With the morning and evening light, at noon and at
 midnight, may we feel the need of Thy companionship.... Though Thou
 dost not speak as man speaks, yet Thou canst call out to us; and the
 soul shall know Thy presence, and shall understand by its own self
 what Thou meanest. Grant unto us this witness of the Spirit, this
 communion of the soul with Thee--and not only once or twice: may we
 abide in the light._

 _Thou hast come unto Thine own; and even as of old, Thine own know
 Thee not, and believe Thee not. How many are there that have learned
 Thy name upon their mother's knee, but have forgotten it! How many
 are there that grew up into the happiness of a childhood in which
 piety presided, but have gone away, and have not come back again to
 their first love and to their early faith! How many are there
 marching on now in the Sahara of indifference and in the wilderness
 of unbelief!... Lord, look upon them; have merciful thoughts toward
 them, and issue those gracious influences of power by which what is
 best in them shall lift itself up and bear witness against that which
 is worst. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

We are to deal in this chapter with one of the most common experiences
of doubt and are to attempt the statement of a truth useful in meeting
it. Many minds are undone at the first symptoms of religious
uncertainty, because they suppose that their doubt is philosophical,
and they feel a paralyzing inability to deal with philosophy at all.
As men have been known to take to their beds at hearing the scientific
names of illnesses which hitherto they had patiently endured, so minds
are sometimes overwhelmed by an unsettlement of faith that takes the
name of philosophic doubt. It is well, then, early in our study, to
note the homely, familiar experience, which in most cases underlies
and helps to explain the problem of theological unrest.

We all began, as children, with an unlimited ability to believe what
we were told. We were credulous long before we became critical. God
and Santa Claus, fairy stories and life after death--in what
beautiful, unquestioning confusion we received them all! Our thinking
was altogether imitative, as our talking was. From the existence of
Kamchatka to the opinion that it was wrong to lie, we had no
independent knowledge of our own. Reliance on authority was our only
road to truth. One prescription was adequate for every need of
information: ask our parents and be told.

This situation was the occasion of our first unsettlement of faith: we
discovered the fallibility of our parents. They failed to tell us what
we asked, or we found to be untrue what they had said, or they
themselves confessed how much they did not know. To some this was a
shock, the memory of which has never been forgotten. Edmund Gosse, the
literary critic, tells us that up to his sixth year he thought that
his father knew everything. Then came the fateful crisis when his
father wrongly reported an incident which Edmund himself had
witnessed. "Nothing could possibly have been more trifling to my
parents," he writes, "but to me it meant an epoch. Here was the
appalling discovery never suspected before that my father was not as
God and did not know everything. The shock was not caused by any
suspicion that he was not telling the truth, as it appeared to him,
but by the awful proof that he was not, as I had supposed,
omniscient." By most of us, however, the transfer of our faith from
our parents' authority to some other basis of belief was easily
accomplished. We found ourselves resting back on the priest or the
church or the creed or the Bible. Still our convictions were not
independently our own; we had never fought for them or thought them
through; they were founded on the say-so of authority. What we wished
to know we asked another, and what was told us we implicitly believed.

The time inevitably comes, however, to a normally developing mind,
when such an attitude of unquestioning credulity becomes impossible.
The curious "Why?" of the growing child, that began in early years to
besiege all statements of fact, now ranges out to call in question the
propositions of religious faith. For long-accepted truths, from the
rotundity of the earth to the existence of God, the enlarging
intellect wants reasons rather than dogmas. So normal is this period
of interrogation that it is regularly slated on the timetables of
psychological development. Starbuck fixes the average age of the doubt
period at about eighteen years for boys and about fifteen for girls.

At whatever time and in whatever special form this period of doubt
arises, the characteristic quality of its outcome is easily described.
In the end the fully awakened mind is ill content to accept any
authoritative statements that he dare not question or deny. He resents
having a quotation from any source waved like a revolver in his face
with the demand that he throw up his intellectual hands. No more in
religion than in politics does he incline to stand before infallibility,
like the French peasants before Louis XI, saying, "Sire, what are our
opinions?" He claims his right to question everything, to make every
truth advance and give the countersign of reasonableness, to weigh all
propositions in the scales of his own thinking, and if he is to love
the Lord his God at all, to do it, not with all his credulity, but, as
Jesus said, with all his mind.

Biography reveals how many of the great believers have passed through
this youthful period of rebellion against accepted tradition and have
suffered serious religious unsettlement in the process. Robert
Browning tells us that as a boy he was "passionately religious." When
his period of questioning and revolt arrived, however, it carried him
so far that he was publicly rebuked in church for intentional
misbehavior, and in his sixteenth year, under the influence of
Shelley's "Queen Mab," he declared himself an atheist. But in his
"Pauline," written when he was twenty-one, the direction in which his
quest was leading him was plain:

    "I have always had one lode-star; now
  As I look back, I see that I have halted
  Or hastened as I looked towards that star--
  A need, a trust, a yearning after God."

And when he grew to his maturity, had left his early credulousness
with the revolt that followed it far behind and had used his
independent thinking to productive purpose, from what a height of
splendid faith did he look back upon that youthful period of storm and
stress which he called "the passionate, impatient struggles of a boy
toward truth and love"!

Henry Ward Beecher's intellectual revolution was postponed until he
had entered the theological seminary. "I was then twenty years old,"
he writes, "and there came a great revulsion in me from all this
inchoate, unregulated, undirected experience. My mind took one
tremendous spring over into scepticism, and I said: 'I have been a
fool long enough--I will not stir one step further than I can see my
way, and I will not stand a moment where I cannot see the truth. I
will have something that is sure and steadfast.' Having taken that
ground, I was in that state of mind for the larger part of two years."
A wholesome restraint upon the wild perversions, the anarchic denials,
the abysmal despairs of this period of life is the clear recognition
that in some form it is one of the commonest experiences of man.


II

The treatment accorded to a youth who is passing through this
difficult adjustment often determines, in a fine or lamentable way,
his subsequent attitude towards religion. _Negative repression of real
questions is of all methods the most fatal, whether it be practiced on
the youth by others or by the youth upon himself._ "I have not been in
church for twenty years," said a college graduate. "Why?" was the
inquiry. "Because in college I learned from geology through how many
ages this earth was slowly being built. Troubled by the conflict
between this new knowledge and my early training, I went to my
minister. He said that the Bible told us the earth was made in six
days and that I must accept that on faith. That's why." Thousands of
men are religious wrecks today because, when the issue was raised in
their thinking between their desire for a reason and their traditional
beliefs, they were told that to ask a reason is sin. George Eliot's
experience unhappily is not unique. Just when in girlhood her mind was
waking to independent thought, a book now long unread, Hennell's
"Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity," convinced her
immature judgment that her early credulity had been blind. No one was
at hand to state the faith in a reasonable way or to meet, not by
denying but by using her right to think, the attacks of Hennell, which
now are forgotten in their futility. She never came through her
youthful unsettlement. Years after, F. W. H. Myers wrote: "I remember
how at Cambridge I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden of
Trinity, on an evening of rainy May, and she, stirred somewhat beyond
her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used
so often as the inspiring trumpet calls of men--the words God,
Immortality, Duty--pronounced with terrible earnestness, how
inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable was the second, and how
peremptory and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner accents
affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensing law. I
listened and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned toward
me like a Sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though she withdrew from my
grasp one by one the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third
scroll only, awful with inevitable fate."

In this period of readjustment, whether one is the youth in the midst
of the struggle or the solicitous friend endeavoring to help, one most
needs a clear perception of the ideal outcome of such intellectual
unrest. Let us attempt a picture of that ideal. The youth who long has
taken on his parents' say-so the most important convictions that the
soul can hold, or who, with no care to think or question for himself,
has looked to Book or Church for all that he believed about God, now
feels within him that intellectual awakening that cannot be quieted by
mere authority. He long has taken his truth preserved by others'
hands; now he desires to pick it for himself, fresh from the living
tree of knowledge. His declaration of independence from subjection to
his parents or his Church is not at first irreverent desire to
disbelieve; it is rather desire to enter into the Samaritans'
experience when they said to the woman who first had told them about
Jesus: "Now we believe, not because of _thy_ speaking; for we have
_heard for ourselves_, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the
world" (John 4:41). The youth turns from second-hand rehearsal of the
truth to seek a first-hand, original acquaintance with it. As he began
in utter financial dependence on his father, then made a bit of
spending money of his own, and at last moved out to make his living,
ashamed to be a pensioner and parasite when he should be carrying
himself, so from his old, intellectual dependence the youth passes to
a fine responsibility for his own thinking and belief. He knows that
such transitions, whether financial or intellectual, generally mean
stress and perplexity, but if he is to be a man the youth must
venture.

In this transition beliefs will certainly be modified. Not only do
forms of religious thinking shift and change with the passing
generations, but individuals differ in their powers to see and
understand. Religious faith, like water, takes shape from the
receptacles into whose unique nooks and crannies it is poured. If the
truth which the youth possesses is to be indeed his own, it will
surely differ from the truth which once he learned, by as much as his
mind and his experience differ from his father's. Even in the New
Testament one can easily distinguish James' thought from Paul's and
John's from Peter's. But change of form need not mean loss of value.
To pass by fine gradations from unquestioning credulity to thoughtful
faith is not impossible. Thus a boy learns to swim with his father's
hands beneath him and passes so gradually from reliance upon another
to independent power to swim alone that he cannot tell when first the
old support was quietly withdrawn.

Thus ideally pictured, this transition is nothing to be feared; it is
one of life's steps to spiritual power. This period of questioning and
venture we have called the passage from credulity to independence, but
its significance is deeper than those words imply. _It is the passage
from hearsay to reality._ Of all inward intimate experiences, religion
reaches deepest and is least transferable. It is as incommunicable as
friendship. A father may commend a comrade to his son and lay bare his
own deep friendship with the man, but if the son himself does not see
the value there nor for himself in loyalty and love make self
surrender, the father can do nothing more. Friendship cannot be
carried on by proxy. One can as easily breathe for another as in
another's place be loyal to a friend or trust in God.

When, therefore, the youth moves out from mere dependence on his
father, his Bible, or his Church to see and know God in his own right,
he is fulfilling the end of all religion. _For this his father
taught him, for this the Book was written and the Church was
founded._ As George Macdonald put it, "Each generation must do its
own seeking and finding. The father's having found is only the warrant
for the children's search." Said Goethe: "What you have inherited from
your fathers you must earn for yourself before you can call it yours."
This individual experience makes religion real, and the "awkward age"
of the spirit when the old security of credulous belief has gone and
the new assurance of personal conviction has not yet fully come, is a
small price to pay for the sense of reality that enters into religion
when a man for himself knows God. Such is the ideal transition from
credulity to independence, from hearsay to reality.


III

One fallacy which disastrously affects many endeavors after this ideal
transition is the prejudice that, since faith has hitherto in the
youth's experience meant credulous acceptance of another's say-so,
faith always must mean that. Faith and credulity appear to him
identical. In "Alice through the Looking Glass" the Queen asserts that
she is a hundred and one years, five months, and one day old. "I can't
believe that," said Alice. "Can't you?" said the Queen. "Try again,
draw a long breath and shut your eyes." So blind, irrational, and
wilful does faith seem to many! So far from being an essential part
of all real knowledge, therefore, faith seems to stand in direct
contrast with knowledge, and this impression is deepened by our common
phraseology. Tennyson, for example, sings:

  "We have but faith: we cannot know;
    For knowledge is of things we see."

Before there can be any profitable discussion of religious belief,
therefore, we need to see that faith is one of the chief ways in which
continually we deal with reality; it is a road to truth, without which
some truth never can be reached at all. The reason for its
inevitableness in life is not our lack of knowledge, but rather that
faith is as indispensable as logical demonstration in any real knowing
of the world. Behind all other words to be said about our subject lies
this fundamental matter: _faith is not a substitute for truth, but a
pathway to truth; there are realities which without it never can be
known_.

For one thing, no one can know _persons_ without faith. The world
of people, without whom if a man could live, he would be, as Aristotle
said, either a brute or a god, is closed in its inner meaning to a
faithless mind. Entrance into another life with insight and
understanding is always a venture of trust. We cry vainly like Cassim
before the magic cave, "Open, Barley," if we try to penetrate the
secrets of a human personality without sympathy, loyalty, faith. These
alone cry "Open, Sesame."

Surely this knowledge of persons, impossible without faith, is as
important as any which we possess. While the physical universe
furnishes the general background of our existence, the immediate world
in which we really live is personal, made up of people whom we fear or
love, by whom we are cheered, admonished, hurt, and comforted. "The
world is so waste and empty," cried Goethe, "when we figure but towns
and hills and rivers in it, but to know that someone is living on it
with us, even in silence--this makes our earthly ball a peopled
garden." A solitary Robinson Crusoe would give up any other knowledge,
if in return he could know even a benighted savage like Friday. But
even a savage cannot be known by logical demonstration. Crusoe could
so have learned some things, but when he wanted to know Friday, he
came by way of adventures in confidence, personal trust and
self-commitment, growing reliance and appreciative insight, assured
loyalty and faith. He _knew_ whom he had _believed_.

Moreover, such knowledge of persons is as solid as it is important.
That two plus two make four cannot be gainsaid, and doubtless no other
kinds of information can be quite so absolute as mathematical
theorems. But when one thinks of a comrade, long loved and trusted
until he is known through and through, for practical purposes one can
think of nothing more stable than his knowledge of his friend. The
plain fact is that we _do_ know people, know them well, and that
this knowledge never has been or can be a matter of logical
demonstration. By taking Arthur Hallam to pieces and analyzing him,
the inductive mind might work out all the laws that are involved in
Arthur Hallam's constitution; but that mind with all its knowledge
would not know Arthur Hallam. Tennyson's "In Memoriam," however, makes
clear that knowledge of a friend is not interdicted because scientific
demonstration cannot supply it. Tennyson knew Hallam well, and this
knowledge, far more solid and significant than most other information
he possessed, was not achieved by grinding laws out of facts; it came,
as all such knowledge comes, by faith.

As one considers what this understanding of the personal world, seen
with the open eyes of trust and loyalty, means to us, how assured it
is, how it enriches and deepens life, he perceives that here at least
faith is something far more than a stop-gap for ignorance, a dream, a
fantasy. It is positively a pathway to truth.

There is another realm where faith is our only way of dealing with
reality; by it alone can we know _the possibilities of individuals and
of society_. We are well assured now in the United States that the
nation can be economically prosperous without slavery. But sixty years
ago plenty of people were assured of the contrary, were convinced that
if the abolitionists succeeded we could not economically endure. How
did we come by this significant knowledge that the immoral system was
dispensable? Not by logical demonstration. The economists of most of
our universities logically demonstrated that slavery was essential.
_Faith was the pathway to the truth._ Faith that a new order minus
slavery was possible gained adherents, grew in certainty with access
of new believers, fed its followers on hopes unrealized but
passionately believed in, until _faith became experiment, and
experiment became experience, and experience brought forth
knowledge_. The nation trusted and tried. This is the only way to
truth in the realm of moral possibilities. If the world were finished,
its _i's_ all dotted and its _t's_ all crossed, we might exist on that
sort of descriptive science that finds the facts and plots their laws.
But the world is in the making; what is _actual_ is not quite so
important to us as what is _possible_; we live, as Wordsworth sings,
in

  "Hope that can never die,
  Effort and expectation and desire,
  And something evermore about to be."

To endeavor to satisfy man, therefore, with descriptions of the actual
is preposterous. The innermost meaning of personal and social life
lies in the contrast between what we are and what we may become.
Beyond the achieved present and the demonstrable future, stands the
ideal, whose possibility we can never know as a truth without faith
enough to try.

When, therefore, one hears disparagement of faith as a poor makeshift
for knowledge, he may be pardoned a sharp rejoinder. When has man ever
found solid knowledge in this most important realm of human
possibilities, without faith as the pioneer? We do not know first and
then supply by belief what knowledge lacks. _We believe first, as
Columbus did, and then find new continents because what faith first
suggested a great venture has confirmed._ When Stephenson proposed to
run a steam car forty miles an hour, a host of wise-acres proved the
feat impossible on the ground that no one could move through the air
so rapidly and still survive. If now we know that one easily survives
a speed of over a hundred miles an hour in an aeroplane, it is because
a faith that _saw_ and _dared_ introduced us to the information. We
know now that democracy is not a futile dream, nor the conquest of the
air by wireless and of the land by electricity a madman's frenzy; we
know truths of highest import and certainty from the usefulness of
radium to the wisdom of religious liberty, and all this knowledge
existed as belief in possibility before it became truth in fact. Faith
was "assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen"
(Hebrews 11:1). Faith is no makeshift. Its power is nowhere felt more
effectively than in the achievement of knowledge.


IV

So far is faith, then, from being blind credulity, that it alone
deserves to be called the Great Discoverer. Everywhere faith goes
before as a pioneer and the more prosaic faculties of the mind come
after to civilize the newly opened territory. In the evolution of the
senses touch developed first. All the knowledge that any creature had,
concerned the tangible. But in time other senses came. Dimly and
uncertainly creatures discerned by hearing and seeing the existence of
distant objects. They became aware of presences which as yet they
could not touch; they were furnished with clues, in following which
they found as real what at first had been intangible. Such a relation
faith bears to knowledge. Faith, said Clement of Alexandria, is the
"ear of the soul." Said Ruskin, faith is "veracity of insight." By it
we hear what as yet we cannot touch and see what the arms of our logic
are not long enough to reach.

All the elemental, primary facts of life are faith's discoveries; we
have no other means of finding them. By faith we discover our
_selves_. We do not hold back from living until we can prove that
we exist. We never can strictly prove that we exist. The very self
that we are trying to demonstrate would have to be used in the
demonstration. We have no other way of getting at ourselves except to
take ourselves for granted--accepting

  "This main miracle that you are you,
  With power on your own act and on the world."

As Mr. Chesterton remarked, "You cannot call up any wilder vision than
a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves." By faith
all men go out to live as though their selves were real.

By faith we accept the existence of the _outer world_. We do not
restrain ourselves from acting as though the physical world were
really there, until we can prove it. We never can strictly prove it;
perhaps it is not there at all. When through a microscope an Indian
was shown germs in the Ganges' water, to convince him of the peril of
its use, he broke the instrument with his cane, as though when the
microscope was gone, the facts had vanished too. In his philosophy all
that we see is illusion. Perhaps this is true--the world a phantasm
and our minds fooling us. But none of us believes it. And we do not
believe it because we live by faith--the elemental faith on which all
common sense and science rest and without which man's thought and work
would halt--that our senses and our minds tell us the truth. "It is
idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. _Reason
itself is a matter of faith._ It is an act of faith to assert that
one's thoughts have any relation to reality at all."

By faith we even discover the _universe_. We cannot think of the
world as a multiverse; we always think of it as having unity, and we
do so whether as scientists we talk about the uniformity of nature, or
as Christians we speak of one Creator. Not only, however, can no one
demonstrate that this is a universe; _it positively does not look as
though it were_. Opposing powers snarl at each other and clash in a
disorder that gives to the casual observer not the slightest
intimation that any unity is there. Thunder storms and little babies,
volcanoes and Easter lilies, immeasurable nebulæ in the heavens and
people getting married on the earth--what indescribable contrasts and
confusions! Still we insist on thinking unity into this seeming
anomaly, and out of it we wrest scientific doctrines about the
uniformity of law. As Professor James, of Harvard, put it, "The
principle of uniformity in nature has to be _sought_ under and in
spite of the most rebellious appearances; and our conviction of its
truth is far more like religious faith than like assent to a
demonstration."

One might suppose that beliefs so assumed and so incapable of adequate
demonstration would make the knowledge based upon them insecure. _But
the fact is that all our surest knowledge is thus based on assumptions
that we cannot prove._ "As for the strong conviction," Huxley says,
"that the cosmic order is rational, and the faith that throughout all
duration, unbroken order has reigned in the universe, I not only
accept it, but I am disposed to think it the most important of all
truths." Faith then, in Huxley's thought, is not a makeshift when
knowledge fails. Rather by faith we continually are getting at the
most important realities with which we deal. As Prof. Ladd, of Yale,
impatiently exclaims: "The rankest agnostic is shot through and
through with all the same fundamental intellectual beliefs, all the
same unescapable rational faiths, about the reality of the self and
about the validity of its knowledge. You cannot save science and
destroy all faith. You cannot sit on the limb of the tree while you
tear it up by the roots."


V

If faith is thus the pioneer that leads us to knowledge of persons and
of moral possibilities; if by faith we discover our selves, the outer
world's existence and its unity, why should we be surprised that faith
is our road to God? Superficial deniers of religion not infrequently
seek the discredit of a Christian's trust by saying that God is only a
matter of faith. To which the Christian confidently may answer: Of
course God is a matter of faith. Faith is always the Great Discoverer.

A man finds God as he finds an earthly friend. He does not go apart in
academic solitude to consider the logical rationality of friendship,
until, intellectually convinced, he coolly arms himself with a Q. E.
D. and goes out to hunt a comrade. Friendship is never an adventure of
logic; it is an adventure of life. It is arrived at by what Emerson
called the "untaught sallies of the spirit." We fall in love, it may
be with precipitant emotion; our instincts and our wills are first
engaged; the whole personality rises up in hunger to claim the
affection that it needs and without which life seems unsupportable;
faith, hope, and love engage in a glorious venture, where logic plays
a minor part. But to make friendship rational, to give it poise, to
trace its origins and laws, to clarify, chasten, and direct--this is
the necessary work of thought. Faith discovers and reveals; reason
furnishes criticism, confirmation, and discipline.

So men find God. They are hungry for him not in intellect alone, but
with all their powers. They feel with Tolstoi: "I remembered that I
only _lived_ at those times when I believed in God." They need him to
put sense and worth and hope into life. As with the reality of
persons, the validity of knowledge, the unity of the world, so in
religion the whole man rises up to claim the truth without which life
is barren, meaningless. His best convictions at the first are all of
them insights of the spirit, affirmations of the _man_. But behind,
around and through them all play clarifying thoughts, and reasons come
to discipline and to confirm. But the reasons by themselves could not
have found God. Faith is the Great Discoverer.

  "Oh! world, thou choosest not the better part,
  It is not wisdom to be only wise,
  And on the inward vision close the eyes;
  But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
  Columbus found a world and had no chart
  Save one that Faith deciphered in the skies;
  To trust the soul's invincible surmise
  Was all his science and his only art.
  Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
  That lights the pathway but one step ahead
  Across the void of mystery and dread.
  Bid then the tender light of Faith to shine
  By which alone the mortal heart is led
  Into the thinking of the thought Divine."[1]

[1] Professor Santayana, of Harvard.




CHAPTER III

Faith in the Personal God


DAILY READINGS

We are to consider this week the Christian faith that God is personal.
Before, however, we deal with the arguments which may confirm our
confidence in such a faith, or even with the explanations that may
clarify our conception of its meaning, let us, in the daily readings,
consider _some of the familiar attitudes in every normal human life,
that require God's personality for their fulfilment_. Men have
believed in a personal God because their own nature demanded it.


Third Week, First Day

Men have believed in a personal God because of a _deep desire to think
of creation as friendly_. F. W. Myers, when asked what question he
would put to the Sphinx, if he were given only one chance, replied
that he would ask, "Is the universe friendly?" Some have tried to
think of creation as an enemy which we must fight, as though in
Greenland we strove to make verdure grow, although the soil and
climate were antagonistic. Some have tried to think creation neutral,
an impersonal system of laws and forces, which we must impose our will
upon as best we can, although in the end the system is sure to outlast
all our efforts and to bring our gains to naught. But at the heart of
man is an irresistible desire to think creation a friend, with whose
good purposes our wills can be aligned, and whose power can carry our
efforts to victorious ends. Says Gilbert Murray, of Oxford University,
"As I see philosophy after philosophy falling into this unproven
belief in the Friend behind phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot,
except for a moment and by an effort, refrain from making the same
assumption, it seems to me that perhaps here too we are under the
spell of a very old ineradicable instinct." _But friends are always
persons, and if creation is friendly then God is in some sense
personal._ This faith is the radiant center of the Gospel.

 =But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and
 having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy
 Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use
 not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they
 shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto
 them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye
 ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in
 heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as
 in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive
 us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not
 into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if ye forgive
 men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive
 you.--Matt. 6:6-14.=

 _O Lord, we would rest in Thee, for in Thee alone is true rest to be
 found. We would forget our disappointed hopes, our fruitless efforts,
 our trivial aims, and lean on Thee, our Comfort and our Strength.
 When the order of this world bears cruelly upon us; when Nature seems
 to us an awful machine, grinding out life and death, without a reason
 or a purpose; when our hopes perish in the grave where we lay to rest
 our loved dead: O what can we do but turn to Thee, whose law
 underlieth all, and whose love, we trust, is the end of all? Thou
 fillest all things with Thy presence, and dost press close to our
 souls. Still every passion, rebuke every doubt, strengthen every
 element of good within us, that nothing may hinder the outflow of Thy
 life and power. In Thee, let the weak be full of might, and let the
 strong renew their strength. In Thee, let the tempted find succor,
 the sorrowing consolation, and the lonely and the neglected their
 Supreme Friend, their faithful Companion._

 _O Lord, we are weary of our old, barren selves. Separate us from our
 spiritual past, and quicken within us the seeds of a new future.
 Transform us by the breath of Thy regenerating power, that life may
 seem supremely beautiful and duty our highest privilege, and the only
 real evil a guilty conscience. Let us be no longer sad, or downcast,
 or miserable, or despairing, vexed by remorse, or depressed by our
 failures. Take from us the old self. Give us a new self, beautiful,
 vigorous, and joyous. Let old things pass away and let all things
 become new. Kindle within us a flame of heavenly devotion, so that to
 us work for Thee shall become a happiness, and rest in Thee shall
 become an energy, unchecked by fears within and foes without. Give us
 love, and then we shall have more than all we need, for Thou art
 Love, Thyself the Giver and the Gift. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Third Week, Second Day

 =Bless Jehovah, O my soul;
 And all that is within me, bless his holy name.
 Bless Jehovah, O my soul,
 And forget not all his benefits:
 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities;
 Who healeth all thy diseases;
 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction;
 Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;
 Who satisfieth thy desire with good things,
 So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle.=

 =--Psalm 103:1-5.=

Such an attitude of thankfulness as this psalm represents is native to
man's heart. When he is glad he feels grateful: he has an irrepressible
impulse to thank somebody. As between a boastful Nebuchadnezzar--"This
great Babylon which I have built ... by the might of my power and for
the glory of my majesty" (Dan. 4:30)--and the Master, grateful for the
dawning success of his cause--"I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven
and earth" (Matt. 11:25)--we can have no doubt which is the nobler
attitude. Man at his best always looks upon his blessings as gifts,
his powers as entrustments, his service as a debt which he owes, and
his success as an occasion of gratitude rather than pride. _But we
cannot be really thankful to impersonal power._ Little children blame
chairs for their falls and thank apple trees for their apples, but
maturity outgrows the folly of accusing or blessing impersonal things.
Thankfulness, in any worthy interpretation of the term, can never be
felt except toward friendly persons who _intended the blessing_ for
which we are glad. A thoughtful man, therefore, cannot be grateful to
a godless world-machine, even though it has treated him well, for the
world-machine never purposed to treat him well and his happiness is a
lucky accident, with no good will to thank for it. Haeckel says that
there is no God--only "mobile, cosmic ether." Imagine a congregation
of people, under Haeckel's leadership, rising to pray, "O Mobile
Cosmic Ether, blessed be thy name!" It is absurd. _Unless God is
personal, the deepest meanings of gratitude in human hearts for life
and its benedictions have no proper place in the universe._

 _O God above all, yet in all; holy beyond all imagination, yet friend
 of sinners; who inhabitest the realms of unfading light, yet leadest
 us through the shadows of mortal life; how solemn and uplifting it is
 even to think upon Thee! Like sight of sea to wearied eyes, like a
 walled-in garden to the troubled mind, like home to wanderer, like a
 strong tower to a soul pursued; so to us is the sound of Thy name._

 _But greater still to feel Thee in our heart; like a river glorious,
 cleansing, healing, bringing life; like a song victorious, comforting
 our sadness, banishing our care; like a voice calling us to battle,
 urging us beyond ourselves._

 _But greater far to know Thee as our Father, as dear as Thou art
 near; and ourselves begotten of Thy love, made in Thy image, cared
 for through all our days, never beyond Thy sight, never out of Thy
 thought._

 _To think of Thee is rest; to know Thee is eternal life; to see Thee
 is the end of all desire; to serve Thee is perfect freedom and
 everlasting joy. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Third Week, Third Day

 =Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness:
 According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my
   transgressions.
 Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,
 And cleanse me from my sin.
 For I know my transgressions;
 And my sin is ever before me.
 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
 And done that which is evil in thy sight.=

 =--Psalm 51:1-4.=

Penitence is one of the profoundest impulses in man's heart. And man
at his deepest always feels about his sin as the Psalmist did: he has
wronged not only this individual or that, but he has sinned against
the whole structure of life, against whatever Power and Purpose may be
behind life, and his penitence is not complete until he cries to the
Highest, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned." While men,
therefore, have always asked each other for forgiveness, they have as
well asked God for it. _But such an attitude is utterly irrational if
God is not personal._ Persons alone care what we do, have purposes
that our sins thwart, have love that our evil grieves, have compassion
to forgive the penitent; and to confess sin to a world-machine--careless,
purposeless, loveless, and without compassion--is folly. Yesterday we
saw how impossible it was really to feel grateful to a materialist's
god; today imagine congregations of people addressing to the Cosmic
Ether any such penitent confessions as Christians by multitudes
continually address to their Father: "We have erred and strayed from
Thy ways like lost sheep." _Plainly in a world where creative power is
impersonal the deepest meanings of penitence have no place._ Read over
the prayer that follows, considering the futility of addressing such a
penitent aspiration to anything impersonal; and then really pray it to
the God whom Christ revealed:

 _We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favor, folk of many
 families and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof,
 weak men and women subsisting under the covert of thy patience. Be
 patient still; suffer us yet awhile longer--with our broken purposes
 of good, with our idle endeavors against evil, suffer us awhile
 longer to endure and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us
 our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken,
 brace us to play the man under affliction. Be with our friends, be
 with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; if any awake, temper to
 them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns, return to
 us, our sun and comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with
 morning hearts--eager to labor--eager to be happy, if happiness shall
 be our portion--and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure
 it._

 _We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the words of him to whom this
 day is sacred, close our oblation. Amen._--Robert Louis Stevenson.[2]


Third Week, Fourth Day

 =Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
 that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit.--Rom.
 15:13.=

 =For in hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for
 who hopeth for that which he seeth? But if we hope for that which we
 see not, then do we with patience wait for it.--Rom. 8:24, 25.=

Hope is no fringe on the garment of human life; it is part of the
solid texture of our experience; without it men may exist, but they
cannot live. Now some minds live by hope about tomorrow, or at the
most, the day after tomorrow, and do not take long looks ahead. But as
men grow mature in thoughtfulness, such small horizons no longer can
content their minds; they seek a basis for hope about the far issue of
man's struggle and aspiration. They cannot bear to think that creation
lacks a "far-off divine event"; they cannot tolerate a universe that
in the end turns out to be

  "An eddy of purposeless dust,
  Effort unmeaning and vain."

_But it is obvious that if God is not in control of creation, with
personal purpose of good will, directing its course, there is no solid
basis for hope._ If the universe is in the hands of physical
forces, then a long look ahead reveals a world collapsing about a cold
sun, and humanity annihilated in the wreck. Some such finale is the
inevitable end of a godless world. As another pictures it, mankind,
like a polar bear on an ice floe that is drifting into warmer zones,
will watch in growling impotence the steady dwindling of his home,
until he sinks in the abyss. All optimistic philosophies of life have
been founded on faith in a personal God, who purposes good to his
children, and without such faith no hope, with large horizons, is
reasonable. Paul is fair to the facts when he says, "Having no hope
and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). When one asks why men have
believed in a personal God, this clearly is part of the answer: only a
personal God can be "the God of hope."

 _O God of heaven above and earth beneath! Thou art the constant hope
 of every age--the reliance of them that seek Thee with
 thoughtfulness and love. We own Thee as the guardian of our
 pilgrimage; and when our steps are weary we turn to Thee, the mystic
 companion of our way, whose mercy will uphold us lest we fall. Thou
 layest on us the burden of labor throughout our days; but in this
 sacred hour Thou dost lift off our load, and make us partakers of Thy
 rest. Thou ever faithful God, our guide by cloud and fire! without
 this blest repose our life were but a desert path; here we abide by
 the refreshing spring, and pitch our tents with joy around Thy holy
 hill. Yet when we seek to draw nigh to Thee, Thou art still above us,
 like the heavens. O Thou that remainest in the height, and coverest
 Thyself with the cloud thereof! behold, we stand around the mountain
 where Thou art; and if Thou wilt commune with us, the thunder from
 Thy voice of love shall not make us afraid. Call up a spirit from our
 midst to serve Thy will; and take away the veil from all our hearts,
 that with the eye of purity we may look on the bright and holy
 countenance of life. And when we go hence to resume our way, may it
 be with nobler spirits, with more faithful courage, and more generous
 will. For life and death we trust ourselves to Thee as disciples of
 Jesus Christ. Amen._--James Martineau.


Third Week, Fifth Day

 =Jehovah is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup:
 Thou maintainest my lot.
 The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places;
 Yea, I have a goodly heritage.
 I will bless Jehovah, who hath given me counsel;
 Yea, my heart instructeth me in the night seasons.
 I have set Jehovah always before me:
 Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth:
 My flesh also shall dwell in safety.
 For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol;
 Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption.
 Thou wilt show me the path of life:
 In thy presence is fulness of joy;
 In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.=

 =--Psalm 16:5-11.=

Many things in human life bring joy. From the sense of a healthy body
and the exhilaration of a sunshiny day to the deep satisfactions of
home and friends--there are numberless sources of happiness. But man
has always been athirst to find joy in thinking about the total
meaning of life. Lacking that, the details of life lose radiance, for,
in spite of himself, man

              "Hath among least things
  An undersense of greatest; sees the parts
  As parts, but with a feeling of the whole."

If when he thinks about God, he can, like this psalmist, rejoice in
the love behind life, the good purpose through it, the glorious future
ahead of it, then all his other blessings are illumined. Not only are
there happy things _in life_, but _life itself_ is fundamentally
blessed. But if when he raises his thought to the Eternal, he has no
joyful thoughts about it, sees no love or purpose there, then a pall
falls on even his ordinary happiness. Alas for that man who does not
like to think about life's origin and destiny and meaning, because he
has no joyful faith about God! Some men have what Epictetus called
"paralysis of the soul" every time they think of creation, for to them
it is a huge physical machine crashing on without reason or good will.
But some men have such a joyful faith in the divine that their
gladness about the whole of life redeems their sorrow about its
details. So Samuel Rutherford in prison said, "Jesus Christ came into
my room last night and every stone flashed like a ruby." For the
thought of God in terms of friendly personality is the most joyful
idea of him that man has ever had. Man's thirst for joy is one of the
sources of his faith in a personal God. He has wanted what Paul called
"joy and peace in believing" (Rom. 15:13).

 _We rejoice, O Lord our God, not in ourselves nor in the firm earth
 on which we tread, nor in the household, nor in the church, nor in
 all the procession of things where mankind moves with power and
 glory. We rejoice in the Lord. We rejoice in Thy strength. A strange
 joy it is. Day by day we find ourselves breaking out into gladness
 through the ministration of the senses, and by the play of inward
 thought; but Thou art never beheld by us.... Thou never speakest to
 us, nor do we feel Thy hand, nor do we discern Thy face of love and
 glory and power. We break away from all other experiences, and look
 up into the emptiness, as it seems to us, which yet is full of life;
 into that which seems cold and void, but wherein moves eternal power;
 into the voiceless and inscrutable realm where Thou dwellest, God
 over all, blessed forever.... O Lord our God, how near Thou art to
 us! and we do not know it. How near is the other life! and we do not
 feel it. It clothes us as with a garment. It feeds us. It shines down
 upon us. It rejoices over us.... Thither, out of narrow and
 anguishful ways, out of sorrows, out of regrets, out of bereavements,
 we look; and already we are rested before we reach it._

 _Grant unto us, today, we beseech Thee, this beatific vision.
 Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


Third Week, Sixth Day

 =For when one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are
 ye not men? What then is Apollos? and what is Paul? Ministers through
 whom ye believed; and each as the Lord gave to him. I planted,
 Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he
 that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth
 the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: but
 each shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we
 are God's fellow-workers: ye are God's husbandry, God's building.--I
 Cor. 3:4-9.=

One of the profoundest motives that can grip man's heart is the
conviction that he is a fellow-worker with the Divine. To feel that
there is a great Cause, on behalf of which God himself is concerned,
and in the furtherance of which we can be God's instruments and
confederates, is the most exhilarating outlook on life conceivable.
Even people who deny God try to get this motive for themselves. One
such man hopes for the success of his favorite causes in "the tendency
of the universe"; another talks about "the nature of things taking
sides." _But nothing save personality has moral tendencies, and only
persons take sides in moral issues._ If the guidance of the world is
personal, then, and then only, can we rejoice with confidence in a
great Ally, who has moral purposes and who has committed to us part of
his work. This was the Master's motive when he said, "My Father
worketh even until now, and I work" (John 5:17). But one clearly sees
that such an inspiring consciousness of cooperation with the Eternal
depended on the certainty with which the Master called the Eternal by
a personal name--Father. When men like Livingstone have gone out in
sacrificial adventure for the saving of men they have not banked on
the "tendency of the universe," nor trusted in any abstract "nature of
things taking sides"; they have been servants of a personal God, under
orders from him, and they have counted on personal guidance in the
service of a cause whose issue was safe in God's hands.

 _O God, we pray Thee for those who come after us, for our children,
 and the children of our friends, and for all the young lives that are
 marching up from the gates of birth, pure and eager, with the morning
 sunshine on their faces. We remember with a pang that these will live
 in the world we are making for them. We are wasting the resources of
 the earth in our headlong greed, and they will suffer want. We are
 building sunless houses and joyless cities for our profit, and they
 must dwell therein. We are making the burden heavy and the pace of
 work pitiless, and they will fall wan and sobbing by the wayside. We
 are poisoning the air of our land by our lies and our uncleanness,
 and they will breathe it._

 _O God, Thou knowest how we have cried out in agony when the sins of
 our fathers have been visited upon us, and how we have struggled
 vainly against the inexorable fate that coursed in our blood or bound
 us in a prison-house of life. Save us from maiming the innocent ones
 who come after us by the added cruelty of our sins. Help us to break
 the ancient force of evil by a holy and steadfast will and to endow
 our children with purer blood and nobler thoughts. Grant us grace to
 leave the earth fairer than we found it; to build upon it cities of
 God in which the cry of needless pain shall cease; and to put the
 yoke of Christ upon our business life that it may serve and not
 destroy. Lift the veil of the future and show us the generation to
 come as it will be if blighted by our guilt, that our lust may be
 cooled and we may walk in the fear of the Eternal. Grant us a vision
 of the far-off years as they may be if redeemed by the sons of God,
 that we may take heart and do battle for Thy children and ours.
 Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.


Third Week, Seventh Day

 =I will extol thee, my God, O King;
 And I will bless thy name for ever and ever.
 Every day will I bless thee;
 And I will praise thy name for ever and ever.
 Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised;
 And his greatness is unsearchable.
 One generation shall laud thy works to another,
 And shall declare thy mighty acts.
 Of the glorious majesty of thine honor,
 And of thy wondrous works, will I meditate.
 And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts;
 And I will declare thy greatness.
 They shall utter the memory of thy great goodness,
 And shall sing of thy righteousness.
 Jehovah is gracious, and merciful;
 Slow to anger, and of great lovingkindness.
 Jehovah is good to all;
 And his tender mercies are over all his works.
 All thy works shall give thanks unto thee, O Jehovah;
 And thy saints shall bless thee.=

 =--Psalm 145:1-10.=

Adoration springs from the deeps of man's spirit. We never can be
content with looking down on things beneath us, nor with looking out
on things that find our level. We always must look up to things above
us. As a mediæval saint said, "_The soul can never rest in things
that are beneath itself._" Worship, therefore, is an undeniable
impulse in man's heart. Poets worship Beauty; scientists worship
Truth; every man of honor worships Right. That is, the good, true, and
beautiful stand above us calling out our adoration, and all the best
in us springs from our worshipful response to their appeal. But this
impulse to adore is never fulfilled until we gather up all life into
spiritual unity and bow down in awe and joy before God. That is
adoration glorified, worship crowned and consummated. And the only God
whom man can adore with awe and joy is personal. No impersonal thing
is worshipful; however great a _thing_ may be it still lies beneath
our soul. No abstract Idea is worshipful; we still are greater than
any _idea_ that we can hold. Only God, thought of in personal terms
but known to be greater than any terms which human life can use, is
adorable. _Men have believed in Him because worship is man's holiest
impulse._

Such are the experiences of man, with which faith in a personal God is
inseparably interwoven. Our demand for a friendly creation, our
deepest impulses to thanksgiving, penitence, hope, joy, cooperation
with the Eternal, and adoration of the highest--all require
personality in God. As Professor William James said, "The universe is
no longer a mere _It_ to us, but a _Thou_ if we are religious."

 _O Lord our God, Thy greatness is unsearchable, and the glory of Thy
 presence has overwhelmed us. Thou art hidden in excess of light; and
 if we were to behold Thee in the great sphere in which Thou art
 living, none of us would dare to draw near to Thee. Our
 imperfections, our transgressions, our secret thoughts, our wild
 impulses, that at times come surging in upon us, are such that we
 should be ashamed to stand before the All-searching Eye. Our lives
 are before Thee, open as a book, and Thou readest every word and
 every letter thereof. Blessed be Thy name, Thou hast taught us to
 come to Thee through the Lord Jesus Christ as through a friend, and
 thou hast taught us to draw near to Thee in person through the
 familiar way of Fatherhood; from our childhood we have said, Our
 Father, and in this way we are not afraid; in this way we come
 familiarly and boldly: not irreverently, but with the familiarity
 which love gives. Thou hast poured the light of Thy love upon the
 path which we tread, and Thou hast taught us to come rejoicing before
 Thee.... Open Thy hand and Thy heart, and say to every one of us,
 Peace be unto you! Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

We have been using freely the most momentous word in human speech as
though we clearly understood its meaning. We have been speaking of God
as though the import of the term were plain. But most of us, asked to
state precisely what we mean by "God," would welcome such a refuge
from our confusion as Joubert sought. "It is not hard to know God,"
said he, "provided one will not force oneself to define him." Many
people who stoutly claim to believe in God live in perpetual
vacillation as to what they mean by him. Writes one: "God to my mind
is an impersonal being, but whether for convenience or through sheer
impotence I pray to him as a personal being.... I know I talk on both
sides of the fence, but that is just where I am."

At times, indeed, some question whether there is any need to think or
say what "God" may signify. They call him by vague names--the All, the
Infinite. In moods of exalted feeling, impatient of definition, they
wish to be left alone with their experience of the Eternal; they
resent the intrusion of theology, as a poet, lost in wonder at a
landscape, might resent the coming of surveyors with their clanking
chains. So Walt Whitman wanted to see the stars rather than hear the
astronomer, and after listening to the learned lecture, with its
charts and diagrams, he says,

  "I became tired and sick,
  Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
  In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time
  Looked up in perfect silence at the stars."

But, for all that, we well may be thankful for astronomers. At times
the "mystical, moist night air" is absent; we do not wish to "look up
in perfect silence at the stars"; and, even though we know in advance
that they are bound to be inadequate, we do want as clear and worthy
ideas as possible about the universe. Moreover, when such ideas are
ours, looking up in perfect silence at the stars is more impressive
than it ever was before. No more can men content themselves with a
vague consciousness of God. Spirits like Wordsworth have raptures of
which they sing,

  "In such access of mind, in such high hour
  Of visitation from the living God,
  Thought was not--in enjoyment it expired."

In communion with nature, in love for family, in fellowship with God,
such hours may come, but nature, family, and God must also be the
objects of understanding thought. Days of vital need, if not of mental
doubt, inevitably come when it is impossible any longer to use a term
like "God" without knowing what we mean.

The special urgency of this is felt by most of us because as children
we were taught to picture the Divine in terms of personality. The God
of the Bible is personal. Little that persons do, save sinning, is
omitted from the catalogue of God's activities as he is pictured for
us in the Scripture. He knows, loves, purposes, warns, rebukes,
allures, rewards, and punishes, as only persons can. And all our
relationships with him are clearly personal. When we pray we say "Our
Father"; when we seek our duty we ask, "What wilt thou have me to do?"
God is _He_ and _Thou_, not _It_, and friendship is the ideal relation
of all souls with him.

Moreover, in our maturity we are not likely to be interested in a God
who is not personal. Whoever curiously asks why he believes in God,
will find not simply _reasons_ but _causes_ for his faith,
and will perceive that the causes of faith lie back of the reasons for
it. Vital need always precedes the arguments by which we justify its
satisfaction. A man eats one thing and shuns another on principles of
dietetics that can be defended before his intelligence; but behind all
such sophisticated reasons stands the vital cause of eating--hunger.
So back of intellectual arguments for belief in God lies the initial
cause of faith: _men are hungry_. Men believe in God because they
hunger for a world that is not chance and chaos, but that is guided by
a Purpose. They believe in God, because in their struggles after
righteousness they hunger for a Divine Ally in whom righteousness has
its origin, its ground and destiny. They believe in God because they
hunger for confidence that Someone cares about our race in its
conflicts and defeats and because in their individual experience they
want a friend. Without such faith man feels himself to be, in Goethe's
phrase, "a troubled wanderer upon a darkened earth." Plainly this
elemental human hunger for purpose, righteousness, and friendship
calls for something akin to personality in God. _Only persons have
purpose, character, and friendliness._ The vital motives which lead
men to seek God's comfort, forgiveness, guidance, and cooperation
plainly imply his personality. Things do not forgive us, love us, nor
purpose good concerning us, nor can any thing be imagined so subtle
and so powerful as to satisfy the needs on account of which men come
to God. If God is not personal, he can feel no concern for human life
and a God of no concern is of no consequence.

The philosophers of India, with a well-reasoned pantheistic system and
centuries to make their philosophy effective, have failed to quell
this deathless thirst for a God who counts. Every wayside shrine of
Hinduism incarnates the old faith in gods conceived as friends, not
things; and Buddha, who taught impersonal deity, is now himself adored
as the Personal Lord of Love and Blessedness. Wherever one finds vital
religion one finds that God is no dry impersonal abstraction, but
man's friend. Boscamen, speaking of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and
of the Chaldean Tablets, says: "Six thousand years ago in Egypt and
Chaldea--it is not dread, but the grateful love of a child to his
father, of friend to friend, that meets us in the oldest books of the
world." And when one turns from the oldest to the newest books this
inner demand of man's religious life has not ceased; it has been
refined and confirmed. "The All would not be the All unless it
contained a Personality," said Victor Hugo. "That Personality is God."

Biography is lavish in illustrations of this need in man's religious
life. The biographer of Theodore Parker, the freelance preacher of
Boston, remarks: "In his _theology_ God was neither personal nor
impersonal, but a reality transcending these distinctions. In his
_devotions_ God was as personal as his own father or mother, and he
prayed to him as such, daringly indifferent to the anthropomorphisms
of his unfettered speech." When one passes from speculation to
religion, he always comes into a realm where only a personal God will
do. On this point even confessed unbelievers furnish confirmation. One
who calls himself an agnostic writes: "At times in the silence of the
night and in rare lonely moments, I experience a sort of communion of
myself with Something Great that is not myself. Then the Universal
Scheme of things has on me the effect of a sympathetic Person, and my
communion therewith takes on a quality of fearless worship. These
moments happen, and they are to me the supreme fact in my religious
life." Always for the purposes of vital religion, God must have on us
the "effect of a sympathetic Person."


II

When one, however, subjects this need of his religious life to
searching thought, what difficulty he encounters! Multitudes, if they
were candid, would confess what a college senior wrote: "When I am
just thinking about God in a speculative or philosophical way, I
generally think of him as impersonal, but for practical purposes I
think of him as personal." Many folks feel thus distraught; at the
heart of their religious life is the paralyzing doubt, that in a
universe like this to think of God as personal is absurd. If a train
moving a mile a minute should leave the earth, it must travel
40,000,000 years before it would reach the nearest star. The Creator
of such a world is not readily reduced to the similitude of human
life. Once men lived on a flat earth, small in compass and cosily
tucked beneath the sky's coverlet, but now the world's vastness
beggars imagination. As an astronomer remarked, coming from a session
with his telescope, "This does away with a six-foot god; you cannot
shake hands with the Creator of _this_." Men used to suppose that
Arcturus was a single star, but now new telescopes reveal Arcturus as
a galaxy of stars, thousands in number, with interstellar spaces so
immense that thought breaks down in spanning them and imagination even
cannot make the leap. Is the God of such a universe to be conceived in
terms of a magnified man?

So to picture deity seems at first sight a survival of mere
childishness. Professor John Fiske, of Harvard, has told us that when
he was a boy God always conjured up in his imagination the figure of a
venerable bookkeeper, with white flowing beard, standing behind a high
desk and writing down the bad deeds of John Fiske. How many of us can
recall such early crude and childish thoughts of God! A mother asked
her young daughter what she was drawing. "A picture of God," was the
answer. "But no one knows what God looks like," the mother said. "They
will," came the rejoinder, "when I get through." We all began with
some such primitive idea of deity. Indeed, these early conceptions
long persist in many minds, as the following statements, written by
college students, indicate: "I think of God as real, actual skin and
blood and bones, something we shall see with our eyes some day, no
matter what lives we lead on earth." "It may be a remnant of youth,
but anyhow, every time I think of God there appears a vague image of a
man, with all members of the body, just enormously large." "I have
always pictured him according to a description in _Paradise Lost_ as
seated upon a throne, while around are angels playing on harps and
singing hymns." "I think of God as having bodily form and being much
larger than the average man. He has a radiant countenance beaming
with love and compassion. He is erect and upright, fearless and
brave."[3]

No one of us may be contemptuous of such crude ideas; we all possessed
them once. Indeed the loss of them, with their picture of deity, clear
in feature and distinct in outline, has been to some a shock from
which faith has not recovered. When increasing knowledge discredited
our immature theology, and our world immeasurably widened, the very
human God of our first imaginations was lost among the stars. We
learned that this is a universe where the light that falls upon our
eyes tonight left the far heavens when Abraham was shepherding on
Syrian hills. The Christian Gospel of the personal Father which once
was good news became a serious problem. We still may cling to the old
meanings of our religious faith; still we may pray in hours of need as
though our childhood's God were really there; but at times we suspect
that we are clinging to the beauty of an early memory while
reluctantly we lose conviction of its truth. Many modern men and women
can understand the plight of the famous Dr. Jowett of Oxford, who, so
runs the tradition, inserted "used to" in a muffled voice, when he
recited the creed: "I _used to_ believe in God the Father Almighty."

With such misgivings, whether as habitual disturbers of our faith or
as occasional moods of unbelief that come and go, most of us must be
familiar. What Charles Darwin is reported to have said about himself,
many if they spoke frankly would say too: "Sometimes I feel a warm
sense of a personal God, and then"--with a shake of his head--"it goes
away."


III

Whatever may be our theology, the fact is plain that the denial of a
personal God solves no problem. For if we may not think of God in
terms of personality, the query still remains, which was there
before--_in what terms shall we conceive of the Eternal_? In a
discussion on the nature of the sky, one boy, denying the idea of a
solid canopy, exclaimed, "There ain't any sky." Said the other, seeing
how little this negation solved the problem, "Well, what _is_ it that
ain't?" Some such inquiry one must put to his doubts about God's
personality. Though we may deny a personal God, nevertheless in the
place where he once stood, creator and sustainer of all existence, is
Something that we do think of somehow. We may have but little of
Carlyle's sublime imagination; may not easily transport ourselves to
stand with him on the far northern cliff, "behind him all Europe and
Africa fast asleep, except the watchmen, and before him the silent
Immensity and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our sun is but the
porch-lamp." Yet who of us, regarding the illimitable universe, on the
far outskirts of which our little earth is whirling, so minute that
through the strongest telescope from the nearest star its conflagration
would be quite invisible, has escaped the sense of a Universal Power?
And the human mind cannot so keep itself at home in little tasks and
pleasures as to evade the question: How shall we think of the Power
that made the universe? In what terms? By what analogies? Hours of
revelation come in every serious life when no desire compares in
urgency with the desire to know the character of the Eternal. It does
make a prodigious difference what hands hold the leash of the
universe.

This second fact is also clear, that if we are to think of the Eternal
at all, we must think in terms of something drawn from our experience.
When we sing of Paradise we speak of golden streets and gates of
pearl, and Thoreau remarks that, arriving in heaven, he expects to
find pine trees there. Such words we do not take literally, but such
words we cannot utterly avoid, for if we are to speak at all of the
unknown glory, we must use pictures from the known. So we think of God
in human symbols. We cannot catch him in an abstract definition as
though a boy with a butterfly net should capture the sun at noon. Our
minds are not fitted for such enterprise. Of necessity we take
something homely, familiar, close at hand, and lifting it up as far as
we can reach, say _God is most like that_. No one who thinks at
all of the Eternal escapes this necessity.

By this method the _materialist_ reaches his philosophy. Haeckel
laughs to scorn the opening clause of the "Apostles' Creed." "I
believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth"--for
such faith no words are contemptuous enough. This denial does not mean
however that Haeckel has no faith; he deliberately offers a creedal
substitute which runs in part: I believe in a "chemical substance of a
viscous character, having albuminous matter and water as its chief
constituents." In such terms does Haeckel think of the Eternal. A
professor of medicine has remarked that such a theory reduces all
reality to "phosphorus and glue." When some Psalmist cries, "Bless the
Lord, O my soul," nothing substantial is speaking or is being spoken
to save phosphorus and glue! When an Italian patriot cries, "The time
for dying comes to all, but the time for dishonoring oneself ought
never to come," nothing is real and causal save phosphorus and glue!
And every gracious and redeeming deed in history from the love of
mothers to the cross of Christ has been a complicated working out of
phosphorus and glue! In whatever labored phrases he may state his
case, the materialist's method there is obvious; he has taken physical
energy, of whose presence in his own body he is first assured, and
whose reality he has then read out into the world, and this homely and
familiar experience he has lifted up as far as he can reach to say,
the Eternal is most like that.

So far as method is concerned, the _theist_ of necessity travels
the same road; only he insists on a nobler symbol than physical energy
in terms of which to think of God. He takes _mind_. He says in
effect: There may be wide stretches of the universe where our
intellects meet no answer and find no meaning. But in much of the
universe we do see meaning; and how can intelligence find sense where
intelligence has not put sense? A few scratches on a cliff's face in
Assyria, after centuries of neglect, rendered up their meaning to the
mind of Rawlinson. They were themselves the work of intelligence, and
intelligence could read them. So, the theist continues, the universe
is in part at least intelligible. Our minds fit into it and are
answered by it. We can trace its laws and predict its movements. Man
first worked out the nature of the ellipse in theoretical geometry,
and then telescopes later showed the gigantic ellipses of planetary
orbits in the heavens. Can it be that this intelligible world,
readable by mind, is itself essentially mindless? As easily believe
that the notes of Wagner's operas were accidentally blown together by
a whirlwind and yet are playable by man! Therefore the theist believes
the universe to be rational; he takes mind as he has known it in
himself, and lifting it as high as he can reach, cries, God is most
like that.

So far as the general method of approach is concerned, the Christian
travels the same road to his idea of God. Only he cannot believe that
the best he knows is too good or too great to be a symbol in terms of
which to think of the Eternal. Therefore he will not take a byproduct
of experience such as physical energy, nor a section of personality
such as mind; he takes the full orb of personality, _self-conscious
being that knows and purposes and loves_, and he affirms that God is
most like this. Such in its simplest form is the Christian assertion
of God's personality.

In one of his noblest passages Martineau has put into classic form
this necessity, which we have been discussing, of thinking about God
in terms of human experience: "God, being infinite, can never be fully
comprehended by our minds; whatever thought of him be there, his real
nature must still transcend: there will yet be deep after deep beyond,
within that light ineffable; and what we see, compared with what we do
not see, will be as the raindrop to the firmament. Our conception of
him can never _correspond with the reality_, so as to be without
omission, disproportion, or aberration; but can only _represent the
reality_, and _stand for God_ within our souls, till nobler
thoughts arise and reveal themselves as his interpreters. And this is
precisely what we mean by a symbolical idea. The devotee who
prostrates himself before a black stone,--the Egyptian who in his
prayers was haunted by the ideal form of the graceful ibis or the
monstrous sphinx--the Theist who bends beneath the starry porch that
midnight opens to the temple of the universe--the Christian who sees
in heaven a spirit akin to that which divinely lived in Galilee, and
with glorious pity died on Calvary--all alike assume a representation
of him whose immeasurable nature they can neither compass nor escape.
And the only question is, whether the conception they portray upon the
wall of their ideal temple is an abominable idol, or a true and
sanctifying mediatorial thought."


IV

In their endeavor thus to think of God in terms of personality, some
are perplexed because in their imagination a person is inseparable
from flesh. "I think of God as a personal being," writes a college
student. "A personal being would have a form that you could see or
touch." But this would be true only if the grossest materialism were
accepted, and the spiritual life declared to be the product of brain
as digestive fluids are of salivary glands. On any other basis,
personality is not indissolubly bound to body nor by it necessarily
delimited. A man cannot hear without his ear, but he is not his ear;
he cannot hear without the auditory nerve, but he is not the auditory
nerve; he cannot hear without the temporal lobe of the brain, but he
is not the brain nor any portion of it. These may be the instruments
which he uses; he is free when they are well, hampered when they are
broken, and at last he is separable from them all. John Quincy Adams
at the age of eighty met a friend upon a Boston street. "Good
morning," said the friend, "and how is John Quincy Adams today?"
"Thank you," was the ex-president's reply, "John Quincy Adams himself
is well, quite well, I thank you. But the house in which he lives at
present is becoming dilapidated. It is tottering upon its foundation.
Time and the seasons have nearly destroyed it. Its roof is pretty well
worn out. Its walls are much shattered and it trembles with every
wind. The old tenement is becoming almost uninhabitable and I think
John Quincy Adams will have to move out of it soon. But he himself is
quite well, quite well." Such a conception of man as _being_ a
permanent personality and _having_ a temporary body is essential to
any worthy meaning when we use personal terms about God.

With such an elevated thought, however, of what personality does mean,
it soon is evident that no other reality with which we deal is so
worthy to be the symbol of an Eternal Spirit. Is one perplexed that
God, who is invisible, should be pictured in the similitude of human
persons? But _we_ are invisible. The outward husks and fleshly
garment of our friends we indeed have seen, but upon the friend
himself--consciousness, love, purpose, ideal, and character--no eye
has looked. No mirror ever has been strong enough to show us to
ourselves. In every homely conversation this ineffable miracle is
wrought: out of the unseen where I dwell, I signal by word and gesture
to you back in the unseen where you dwell. We are inhabitants now of
the intangible and unseen world; we are as invisible as God.

Indeed, personality is essentially the most unlimited reality with
which we deal; in comparison a solar system is a little thing.
Consider _memory_, by which we can retrace our youthful days, build
our shanties once again at brooksides, replay our games, and
recapitulate the struggles and the joys of the first days at school.
Nothing in all the universe can remember except persons. Were we not
so familiar with this element in human greatness, we would more often
pause to exclaim, as did Augustine, fifteen centuries ago, "Great is
the power of memory. Amazement overcomes me when I think of it. And
yet men go abroad to gaze upon the mountains, the broad rivers, the
wide ocean, the courses of the stars, and pass themselves, the
crowning wonder, by!" Consider _imagination_, by which, sitting still
in body we can project ourselves around the world, can walk down
Princes Street in Edinburgh, or stand in mingled awe and condemnation
before the tomb of Napoleon in Paris, or rise uncovered before the
majesty of the Matterhorn. Nothing in all the universe can do that
except persons. Were full power to act wherever we can _think_ added
to our gifts, we should come so near to incipient omnipresence as to
be in dread of our responsibility. Consider _love_, by which we live
not so much where our bodies are as where our friends and family may
be. Love expands the individual until his real life is independent of
geography. Says one lover to another:

                  "The widest land
  Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
  With pulses that beat double."

Many a mother in America has _lived_ in the trenches of France;
many a man has found that what might happen to him where his body was
could not be compared with what might happen to him where his
friendships were; and as we grow in love and loyalty we find ourselves
scattered all over creation. How far such an expansion of life may go
our Lord revealed when he said, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of
these, my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me." (Matt.
25:40.) Nothing in heaven above or on the earth beneath can so extend
itself in love save persons.

Finally, consider _creative power_ by which human beings project
themselves into the future, and, with masterful ideals in mind, lay
hold on circumstance and bend it to their will. As if he shared
creative power with the Eternal, an engineer summons nature's forces
to his bidding and lays his will upon them, until where nothing was a
structure stands that mankind may use for centuries. Nothing in all
the universe can so create except persons. In that essentially
creative act where deathless ideas and harmonies are given being by
poets and musicians, so that something out of nothing is brought to
pass by personality, man faces a mystery as abysmal as God's making of
the world. "Paradise Lost" is wonderful; but not half as wonderful as
the creative personality itself who years before projected it. "An
inward prompting," Milton says, "which now grew daily upon me, that by
labor and intense study, joined with the strong propensity of nature,
I might perhaps leave something so written to after times as they
should not willingly let it die." Nothing can so create save
personality.

Personality is not so limited that we should be ashamed to think of
God in terms of it. Rather, of all realities with which we deal,
personality alone, invisible, reaching back in memory, reaching out in
imagination, expanding itself in love, and laying hold upon the future
with creative power, is a worthy symbol of the Eternal Spirit.

Even when the meaning of personality has been so enlarged and
elevated, we should not leave our statement of belief in God as though
our experience of personality were a mould into which our thought of
him is poured and so delimited. We are not presumptuous Lilliputians,
running out with verbal stakes and threads, to pin down the tall,
majestic Gulliver of the Eternal and dance in theological exultation
round our capture. We know better than that. We understand how
insufficient is every human name for God. We know that when we have
said our best--"How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past
tracing out!" (Rom. 11:33).

Nothing more has marred the Christian message and discredited the
Christian faith than the unwise presumption that has forced its
definitions into the secrets of the Infinite. "It is enough to say,"
exclaims Leslie Stephen, "that they defined the nature of God Almighty
with an accuracy from which modest naturalists would shrink in
describing the genesis of a black beetle." The antidote to such vain
pride of theology is found in the wholesome modesty of the Bible.
There man enquires, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou
find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven; what
canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know?" (Job 11:7).
There God replies: "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts"
(Isa. 55:9). Scripture bears abundant testimony to the symbolic nature
of our human terms for God. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so
Jehovah pitieth them that fear him" (Psalm 103:13). "As one whom his
mother comforteth, so will I comfort you" (Isa. 66:13). "I will
betroth thee unto me" (Hos. 2:20). "Return, ... saith Jehovah, for I
am a husband unto you" (Jer. 3:14). "The Lord spake unto Moses ... as
a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex. 33:11). Father, Mother,
Bridegroom, Husband, Friend--these are symbols of God. Men,
endeavoring to frame some worthy thought of the Eternal, lift up their
best in phrases such as these, and in them enshrine their noblest
concepts of the divine. They have no better, truer thing to say of
God, no wiser way in which to say it. But when they think of the
Eternal as he must be, and of their human words, infinitesimal in
comparison, they know that all their best names for God are like small
measures of water dipped from an immeasurable sea. For all that, so
much of God as they can grasp and understand is the most important
truth that mankind knows. Let even a tea-cup of water be taken to a
laboratory and it will tell the truth about the sea; _that one tea-cup
will reveal the quality of the whole ocean_. Yet it will not reveal
all the truth about the ocean. When one considers the reach of the sea
over the rim of the world; thinks of the depths that no eye can
pierce, the distances that no mind can imagine; remembers the currents
that sweep through the sea, the tides that rise there, and the storms
that beat it to its nether wells, he dare not try to put _these_ into
a tea-cup. So God sweeps out beyond the reach of human symbols. At
once so true and so inadequate are all our words for him.

So we might speak to one who incredulously looks upon our faith, but
for one who whole-heartedly approaches God as Christianity suggests,
no negative and cautionary word is adequate. The Christian method of
conceiving God brings the most exhilarating thought of him that man
has ever had. It says in brief: Take your _best_ and think of God as
most truly symbolized in that. As to what our best is, not even the
agnostics doubt. The physical universe belittles us on one side only;
it makes a pigmy of the body. In our spirits we still tower above the
physical; we are greater than the world we know. Our supreme good, the
divinest reality with which we deal, is personality. Then lift that
up, says Christianity; it is your best, and you dare not think of God
in terms of less; you have Christ's example in arguing from the human
best to the divine: "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts
unto your children, _how much more_ ... your Father." (Matt. 7:11.)

The Christian faith asserts that when a man thus thinks of God in
terms of the best he knows he is on the road toward truth. How many
billion spiritual miles he may have to travel to the end, no man can
tell. Only he will never need to stop, retrace his steps, and start
upon a lower path than personality, a road that lies beneath
righteousness and love. The road leads on and up beyond our
imagination, but it is the same road and not another. _God is
personality plus, or else he alone is completely personal and we are
but in embryo._

If God so is personal, then all the deep meanings of religious life
and faith that the saints, our spiritual sires, have known are open to
us modern men and women. Forms of thought indeed have changed, but if
God is thus our Father and our Friend, the essentials of Christian
experience are waiting for us all. Life then is not purposeless; all
creation is bound into spiritual unity by personal Will; and in
sacrificial labor we are serving one who is able to guard that which
we "have committed unto him against that day" (II Tim. 1:12). Old
hymns of confidence in time of trial, we too can sing:

  "Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary,
    And the heart faint beneath His chastening rod;
  Though steep and hard our pathway, worn and weary,
    Still will we trust in God."

And we can pray, not indeed with clamorous beggary as though the grace
of God were a wayside stall where every greedy hand can pluck what
passing whim may wish, but we can commune with God as the real saints
have always prayed with humility and gratitude and confident desire
for good. Most of all, that priceless privilege is open to us which is
the center and sun of Christian thought and life. For if among all
realities in our experience, we have dared take the best, personality,
as a symbol in terms of which to think of God, how should we not,
among all personalities, take the best we know as the highroad of
approach to him. Therefore our real symbol of God shall be no man
among us, frail and sinful, but our Lord himself "fairest among ten
thousand"--"the one altogether beautiful." We shall think of God in
terms of him. We shall see "the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 4:6.)

[2] Copyright, 1914, Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by permission.

[3] From a questionnaire, "Belief in God and Immortality," by Prof.
James H. Leuba.




CHAPTER IV

Belief and Trust


DAILY READINGS

We have tried to explain our faith in the personal God, and to see the
transfiguring influence of that faith on life. But is belief in God
always such a blessing as we have pictured? Rather faith, like every
other experience of man, has its caricatures and burlesques. Many men
are prevented from appreciation of faith in God, with its inestimable
blessings, because they have so continually seen faith's perversions.
The fact is that belief in God may be an utterly negligible matter in
a man's experience or may even become a positively pernicious
influence. Let us, in the daily readings, consider some of the
_familiar travesties on faith_.


Fourth Week, First Day

 =Praise ye Jehovah.
 Praise Jehovah, O my soul.
 While I live will I praise Jehovah:
 I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being,
 Put not your trust in princes,
 Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth;
 In that very day his thoughts perish.
 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help,
 Whose hope is in Jehovah his God.=

 =--Psalm 146:1-5.=

No one can mistake the note of reality in this psalmist's experience
of God. But every one of us knows people who, if asked whether they
believed in God, would readily assent, yet to whom faith makes no such
difference in life as this psalm expresses. Their faith is nothing but
an opinion about God, lightly held, a formal consent that what church
or family tradition says must be correct. They have what Luther used
to call "the charcoal burner's faith." A man of that occupation, when
asked what he believed, said, "What Holy Church believes"; but,
questioned further, he could not tell what it was that Holy Church did
believe. So formal, vitally unpossessed, and practically unreal is
much of our religious opinion that passes for faith. Dean Swift was a
churchman of high rank, and yet his biographer is compelled to say of
him: "He clung to the doctrines of his church, not because he could
give abstract reasons for his belief, but simply because the church
happened to be his." Vital religious faith is a very different thing
from such dry conventionality. A man may assent to the contents of a
college catalogue and yet never have experience of college life; he
may agree that a menu is dietetically correct and yet never grow
strong from the food; and he may believe in every creed in Christendom
and not know what faith in God really means. Opinions about God are a
roadway to God, but the end of the journey is a personal fellowship
that transfigures life; and to seize opinions as though they were the
object of faith is, to use Tagore's figure, "like a man who tries to
reach his destination by firmly clutching the dust of the road."

 _O Thou great Father of us all, we rejoice that at last we know Thee.
 All our soul within us is glad because we need no longer cringe
 before Thee as slaves of holy fear, seeking to appease Thine anger by
 sacrifice and self-inflicted pain, but may come like little children,
 trustful and happy, to the God of love. Thou art the only true
 Father, and all the tender beauty of our human loves is the reflected
 radiance of Thy loving kindness, like the moonlight from the
 sunlight, and testifies to the eternal passion that kindled it._

 _Grant us growth of spiritual vision, that with the passing years we
 may enter into the fulness of this our faith. Since Thou art our
 Father, may we not hide our sins from Thee, but overcome them by the
 stern comfort of Thy presence. By this knowledge uphold us in our
 sorrows and make us patient even amid the unsolved mysteries of the
 years. Reveal to us the larger goodness and love that speak through
 the unbending laws of Thy world. Through this faith make us the
 willing equals of all Thy other children._

 _As Thou art ever pouring out Thy life in sacrificial father-love,
 may we accept the eternal law of the cross and give ourselves to
 Thee and to all men. We praise Thee for Jesus Christ, whose life has
 revealed to us this faith and law, and we rejoice that he has become
 the first-born among many brethren. Grant that in us, too, the faith
 in Thy fatherhood may shine through all our life with such persuasive
 beauty that some who still creep in the dusk of fear may stand erect
 as free sons of God, and that others who now through unbelief are
 living as orphans in an empty world may stretch out their hands to
 the great Father of their spirits and find Thee near. Amen._--Walter
 Rauschenbusch.


Fourth Week, Second Day

Faith is travestied in many lives not so much by the substitution of
opinion for experience, as by making religion consist in certain
devout practices, such as church-going. Ceremonialism, instead of
being an aid in making God real, takes the place of fellowship with
God. How scathing were the attacks of the prophets on this distortion
of religion!

 =Hear the word of Jehovah, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law
 of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. What unto me is the multitude of
 your sacrifices? saith Jehovah: I have had enough of the
 burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not
 in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come
 to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample
 my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination
 unto me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies--I cannot
 away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your
 appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am
 weary of bearing them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will
 hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not
 hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put
 away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
 learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the
 fatherless, plead for the widow.--Isa. 1:10-17.=

Many young people, watching conventional observances in religious
worship and perceiving no real life active there, come to the
conclusion that religious faith is a decent and negligible formality.
So William Scott Palmer, tracing his progress from agnosticism to
Christianity, describes the religion of his boyhood: "Religion as a
personal matter, religion as a life, did not exist for me or for my
family. The border-land of my native village went to church at eleven
o'clock on fine Sundays, and I went in and with it. There were unlucky
Sundays when the Litany was said, and the service prolonged by its
unmeaning length; the lucky Sundays were wet ones that cleared up
later.... I did not know that there was any vital meaning in
religion." And even Sir Wilfred Grenfell, whose work in Labrador is
one of this generation's outstanding triumphs of Christian faith, says
of his young manhood: "The ordinary exponents of the Christian faith
had never succeeded in interesting me in any way, or even in making me
believe that they were more than professionally concerned themselves.
Religion appeared to be a profession, exceedingly conventional, and
most unattractive in my estimation--the very last I should have
thought of selecting." No travesty on faith is more deadly in its
effects than this substitution of conventional observance for life.

 _O Jesus, we thy ministers bow before Thee to confess the common sins
 of our calling. Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that we love
 Thee and that our hearts' desire is to serve Thee in faithfulness;
 and yet, like Peter, we have so often failed Thee in the hour of Thy
 need. If ever we have loved our own leadership and power when we
 sought to lead our people to Thee, we pray Thee to forgive. If we
 have been engrossed in narrow duties and little questions, when the
 vast needs of humanity called aloud for prophetic vision and
 apostolic sympathy, we pray Thee to forgive. If in our loyalty to the
 Church of the past we have distrusted Thy living voice and have
 suffered Thee to pass from our door unheard, we pray Thee to forgive.
 If ever we have been more concerned for the strong and the rich than
 for the shepherdless throngs of the people for whom Thy soul grieved,
 we pray Thee to forgive._

 _O Master, amidst our failures we cast ourselves upon Thee in
 humility and contrition. We need new light and a new message. We need
 the ancient spirit of prophecy and the leaping fire and joy of a new
 conviction, and Thou alone canst give it. Inspire the ministry of Thy
 Church with dauntless courage to face the vast needs of the future.
 Free us from all entanglements that have hushed our voice and bound
 our action. Grant us grace to look upon the veiled sins of the rich
 and the coarse vices of the poor through Thine eyes. Give us Thine
 inflexible sternness against sin, and Thine inexhaustible compassion
 for the frailty and tragedy of those who do the sin. Make us faithful
 shepherds of Thy flock, true seers of God, and true followers of
 Jesus. Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.


Fourth Week, Third Day

 =And he spake also this parable unto certain who trusted in
 themselves that they were righteous, and set all others at nought:
 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the
 other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself,
 God, I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners,
 unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the
 week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, standing
 afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but
 smote his breast, saying, God, be thou merciful to me a sinner. I say
 unto you, This man went down to his house justified rather than the
 other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he
 that humbleth himself shall be exalted.--Luke 18:9-14.=

The men against whom the Master directed this parable were bigots.
Self-opinionated, self-conceited, dogmatic, and contemptuous--they
wore all the attributes of bigotry. _And bigotry is a very familiar
perversion of faith._ Vital fellowship with God ought to make men
gracious, magnanimous, generous; it ought to make life with God seem
so incomparably important that when anyone has that, his opinions
about God will be tolerantly regarded, however mistaken they may
appear to be. Dr. Pritchett, when President of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, passed through a classroom where a young
instructor was conducting a chemical experiment. "The reaction
itself," says Dr. Pritchett, "was going on in a retort on the table,
while on a blackboard was written the conventional formula, which in
the science of chemistry is used to describe the reaction. It so
happened that the instructor had made a mistake in writing the
formula; instead of CO^2 he had written CO_3. But this made not the
slightest difference in the reaction which was going on in the flask."
So, a man may live his life with an admirably Christian spirit,
although he describes it with a mistaken formula. His error is
theoretical, not vital. But a bigot is so sure that he alone knows the
true formula, that a man without that formula is altogether wrong, and
that he must either set him right or condemn him utterly, that he
grows bitter, hard, unlovely. His opinions may be right, but his
spirit is wrong. The faith that should make his life radiant is
perverted to make it narrow, harsh, contemptuous. He renders hateful
the very faith he seeks to commend and ruins the reputation of the God
whom he is zealous to exalt. So the Pharisee of the parable missed all
the beauty of the Publican's life because he thought the Publican's
formula was wrong. No one can estimate the irreparable damage which
zealous bigots have done to true faith.

 _O Thou who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, canst Thou
 bear to look on us conscious of our great transgression? Yet hide not
 Thy face from us, for in Thy light alone shall we see light._

 _Forgive us for the sins which crowd into the mind as we realise Thy
 presence; our ungovernable tempers, our shuffling insincerities, the
 craven fear of our hearts, the pettiness of our spirits, the foul
 lusts and fatal leanings of our souls. Not for pardon only, but for
 cleansing, Lord, we pray._

 _Forgive us, we beseech Thee, our unconscious sins; things which must
 be awful to Thy sight, of which we yet know nothing. Forgive by
 giving us in fuller measure the awakening of Thy presence, that we
 may know ourselves, and lose all love of sin in the knowledge of what
 Thou art._

 _Forgive us for the things for which we can never forgive ourselves;
 those sad turned pages of our life which some chance wind of memory
 blows back again with shame; for the moment of cruel passion, the
 hour beyond recall, the word that went forth to poison and defame,
 the carelessness that lost our opportunity, the unheeded fading of
 bright ideals._

 _Forgive us for the things that others can never forgive; the idle
 tale, the cruel wrong, the uncharitable condemnation, the unfair
 judgment, the careless criticism, the irresponsible conduct._

 _Forgive us for the sins of our holy things; that we have turned the
 sacred page without a sigh, read the confessions of holy men and
 women and never joined therein, lived in Thy light and never prayed
 to be forgiven or rendered Thee thanksgiving; professed to believe in
 Thee and love Thee, yet dared to injure and hate._

 _Naught save being born again, nothing but a miracle of grace, can
 ever be to us forgiveness. Cleanse our hearts, renew our minds, and
 take not Thy Holy Spirit from us. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Fourth Week, Fourth Day

Of all perversions of faith none is more fatal than the substitution
of opinions about God for integrity of character and usefulness of
life. With what scathing vehemence does James, as Dr. Moffatt renders
him, attack this travesty on faith.

 ="My brothers, what is the use of anyone declaring he has faith, if
 he has no deeds to show? Can his faith save him? Suppose some brother
 or sister is ill-clad and short of daily food; if any of you says to
 them, 'Depart in peace! Get warm, get food,' without supplying their
 bodily needs, what use is that? So faith, unless it has deeds, is
 dead in itself. Someone will object, 'And you claim to have faith!'
 Yes, and I claim to have deeds as well; you show me your faith
 without any deeds, and I will show you by my deeds what faith is! You
 believe in one God? Well and good. So do the devils, and they
 shudder. But will you understand, you senseless fellow, that faith
 without deeds is dead? When our father Abraham offered his son Isaac
 on the altar, was he not justified by what he did?"--James 2:14-21.=

An American business man not long dead, who hated any word from the
pulpit about social righteousness, used to complain: "Preachers are
talking so everlastingly about this earth. I've done my best to get
them to stick to the Gospel, and not allow 'worldliness' to get into
the teachings of the Church; but the good old preachers have gone to
glory." Yet this pious zealot helped wreck the finances of a great
railroad system, and with part of the proceeds built a theological
seminary. _There was no vital, intelligent connection between his
faith in God and his ideals of character and service._ One verse
should be made to flame in Christian pulpits: "If any provideth not
for his own, and specially his own household, he hath denied the faith
and is worse than an unbeliever" (I Tim. 5:8). Domestic fidelity is
here only typical of all basic moral obligations. What this verse says
in principle is clear: theoretical unbelief is not the worst sin in
God's sight; any man who fails in the fundamental duties of rectitude
and service has thereby denied the faith and is worse than an atheist.

 _O thou holy One and just! if alone the pure in heart can see thee,
 truly we must stand afar off, and not so much as lift up our eyes
 unto heaven. Were it not that thou hast help and pity for the
 contrite spirit, we could only cry, "Depart from us, we are sinful
 men, O Lord!" For idle words, for proud thoughts and unloving deeds;
 for wasted moments and reluctant duties, and too eager rest; for the
 wandering desire, the vain fancy, the scornful doubt, the untrustful
 care; for impatient murmurs, and unruly passions, and the hardness of
 a worldly heart; thou, Lord, canst call us unto judgment, and we have
 naught to answer thee. But, O thou Judge of men, thou art witness
 that we do not love our guilty ways; make our conscience true and
 tender that we may duly hate them, and refuse them any peace as
 enemies to thee. Stir up within us a great and effectual repentance
 that we may redeem the time which we have lost, and in the hours that
 remain may do the work of many days. Thou knowest all our secret
 snares; drive from us every root of bitterness: with thy severity
 pluck out, O Lord, the thorns of sin from our entangled souls, and
 bind them as a crown of contrition around our bleeding brows; and
 having made our peace with thee may we henceforth watch and pray that
 we enter not again into temptation, but bear our cross with patience
 to the close. Amen._--James Martineau.


Fourth Week, Fifth Day

Some of the most lamentable perversions of religious faith arise from
inadequate ideas of God. Consider, for example, the way Manasseh
thought that the Divine ought to be worshiped.

 =For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had
 destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made an Asherah, as
 did Ahab king of Israel, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and
 served them. And he built altars in the house of Jehovah, whereof
 Jehovah said, In Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars
 for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Jehovah.
 And he made his son to pass through the fire, and practised augury,
 and used enchantments, and dealt with them that had familiar spirits,
 and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of Jehovah, to
 provoke him to anger.--II Kings 21:3-6.=

Then compare the thought of the Master on the same subject.

 =But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
 worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek
 to be his worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him
 must worship in spirit and truth.--John 4:23, 24.=

There is no reason to suppose that Manasseh was insincere; he is one
of an innumerable company in whom the religious motive has been
harnessed to warped and ignorant ideas of God. Religious faith, like
any other tremendous power, is terrific in evil consequences when it
goes wrong. Men, under its subtle and prevailing influence, have waged
bloody wars, worshiped with licentious rituals, carried on pitiless
persecutions, and in bigotry, cruelty, and deceit have grown worse
than they would have been with no religion whatsoever. And men, in its
inspiring light, have launched missionary movements, founded great
philanthropies, built schools, hospitals, orphanages, and in
sacrifice, courageous service, and hope of human brotherhood have made
man's history glorious. Religion needs intelligence to save it from
becoming a ruinous curse; like all power of the first magnitude it is
a disaster if ignorantly used. Since religious faith will always be a
major human motive, under what obligations are we to save it from
perversion and to keep it clean and right!

 _Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we are most unworthy to be called
 Thy children; for when light and darkness have been set before us, we
 have often chosen darkness rather than light. Conscious that within
 us are the elements of a nobler and a meaner life, we have yet given
 way to the meaner appetites, and have not obeyed the inspiration Thou
 hast kindled within us. We entreat Thee now of Thy grace to call us
 back from the ways of temptation and sin into that higher life which
 Thou dost breathe upon us, and which is manifested in Jesus Christ
 our Lord. Give us the self-knowledge, the humility, the repentance,
 the aspiration which draw us to the Cross of Christ, that worshiping
 there in lowliness, we may see the weakness of falsehood and the
 strength of truth, the exceeding sinfulness of selfishness, and the
 beauty of love and sacrifice._

 _O Thou whose secret is with them that fear Thee, inspire us with
 that loyalty of soul, that willingness to do Thy will to which all
 things are clear. Darkness, we know, cometh upon the proud and
 disobedient; confusion is ever attendant upon self-will; while to the
 humble, the earnest, and the pure-minded, the way of duty and
 spiritual health is made clear. O Spirit of the Eternal, subdue
 within us all pride, all vainglory, all self-seeking, and bring every
 thought and every desire into obedience to the law of Christ our
 Lord._

 _Almighty Father, to Thee would we consecrate these earthly days from
 infancy to age. Thee would we remember in childhood and youth. Thee
 would we serve in all the relations and activities of middle age.
 Thee would we teach our children to love and serve. Be Thou our stay
 and hope when health and strength shall fail. And when we are
 summoned hence, do Thou, O Life of our life, illumine the mystery of
 the invisible world with Thy presence and love. We ask these
 blessings in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen._--John Hunter.


Fourth Week, Sixth Day

The perversions of religious faith, working pitiable instead of
benevolent consequences, are often seen on mission fields. Consider
Paul's address in Athens:

 =And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said,=

 =Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very
 religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your
 worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN
 GOD. What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto
 you. The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being
 Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
 neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything,
 seeing he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and
 he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the
 earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of
 their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel
 after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for
 in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your
 own poets have said,=

 =For we are also his offspring.=

 =--Acts 17:22-28.=

Paul did not need to plead for religion with the Athenians; they were
already "very religious." Only religion was not doing for them what it
ought; it was a power used "in ignorance"; and Paul, valuing all that
was good there, quoting their own poets with appreciation,
nevertheless longed to take their strong religious motives and so
clarify and direct them that faith might mean unqualified benediction.
Is not this always the right missionary method? The people of India
are intensely religious; no tribe in Africa lacks its gods; and
everywhere the faith-motive is immensely powerful. But often it makes
mothers drown their babies in sacred rivers, it consecrates caste
systems as holy things, it centers man's adoration around unworthy
objects, its powers, gone wrong, are a curse and not a blessing. If in
Jesus Christ religious faith has come to us, through no merit of our
own, as an unspeakable benediction, ought we not, humbly, without
dogmatism or intolerance, and yet with passionate earnestness, to
share our best with all the world? Religious faith may either depress
or lift a people's life; it is forever doing one or the other in every
nation under heaven; and _there is no hope for the world until this
master-motive is lifting everywhere_.

 _Almighty God, our Father in heaven, who hast so greatly loved the
 world that Thou hast given Thine only-begotten Son, the Redeemer,
 communicate Thy love to the hearts of all believers, and revive Thy
 Church to preach the Gospel to every creature._

 _O Thou who rulest by Thy providence over land and sea, defend and
 guide and bless the messengers of Christ; in danger be their shield,
 in darkness be their hope; enrich their word and work with wisdom,
 joy, and power, and let them gather souls for Thee in far fields
 white unto the harvest._

 _O Thou who by Thy Holy Spirit workest wonders in secret, open the
 eyes that dimly look for light to see the day-star in Christ; open
 the minds that seek the unknown God to know their Heavenly Father in
 Christ; open the hearts that hunger for righteousness to find eternal
 peace in Christ. Deliver the poor prisoners of ignorance and captives
 of idolatry, break down the bars of error, and dispel the shadows of
 the ancient night; lift up the gates, and let the King of glory and
 the Prince of Peace come in._

 _Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom! Strengthen Thy
 servants to pray and labor and wait for its appearing; forgive our
 little faith and the weakness of our endeavor; hasten the day when
 all nations shall be at peace in Thee, and every land and every heart
 throughout the world shall bless the name of the Lord Jesus, to the
 glory of God the Father. Amen._--Henry van Dyke.


Fourth Week, Seventh Day

The sad perversions of religious faith are not a matter for foreign
missions only. At home, too, we find people who seem to be rather
worse than better because they are religious. Just as power in any
other form may be abused, so may religious faith. Some in the name of
religion become censorious and intolerant, some superstitious, some
slaves to morbid fears; and ignorance, self-conceit, pride, and
worldly ambition when driven and enforced by a religious motive are
infinitely worse than they would have been without it. Toward this
fact two attitudes are possible. One is to throw over religion on
account of its abuses; which is as reasonable as to deny all the
blessings of electricity because in ignorant hands it is a dangerous
power. The other is to take religious faith more seriously than ever,
to see how great a force for weal or woe it always is in human life,
and to strive in ourselves and in others for a high, intelligent, and
worthy understanding and use of it. For religion can mean what Amiel
said of it: "There is but one thing needful--to possess God. Religion
is not a method: it is a life--a higher and supernatural life,
mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with
God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which
acts, a happiness which overflows." From our study of the perversions
and travesties of faith, we turn therefore in the weekly comment to
consider faith's vital meanings. So Paul, writing to the Galatians,
rejoices in religion as a gloriously transforming power in life.

 =But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of
 the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
 against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that
 ye may not do the things that ye would. But if ye are led by the
 Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are
 manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions,
 divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like;
 of which I forewarn you even as I did forewarn you, that they who
 practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the
 fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness,
 goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is
 no law. And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh
 with the passions and the lusts thereof.--Gal. 5:16-23.=

 _Thou, O God, hast exalted us so that no longer we walk with prone
 head among the animals that perish. Thou hast ordained us as Thine
 own children, and hast planted within us that spiritual life which
 ever seeks, as the flame, to rise upward and mingle with Thee. Every
 exaltation, every pure sentiment, all urgency of true affection, and
 all yearning after things higher and nobler, are testimonies of the
 divinity that is in us. These are the threads by which Thou art
 drawing us away from sense, away from the earth, away from things
 coarse and unspiritual, and toward the ineffable. We rejoice that we
 have in us the witness of the Spirit, the indwelling of God. For,
 although we are temples defiled, though we are unworthy of such a
 Guest, and though we perpetually grieve Thee, and drive Thee from us,
 so that Thou canst not do the mighty work that Thou wouldst within
 us, yet we rejoice to believe that Thou dost linger near us. Even
 upon the outside, Thou standest knocking at the door until Thy locks
 are wet with the night dews, and dost persuade us with the
 everlasting importunity of love, and draw us upward, whether with or
 without our own knowledge. Thou art evermore striving to imbue us
 with Thyself, and to give us that divine nature which shall triumph
 over time and sense and matter; and we pray that we may have an
 enlightened understanding of this Thy work in us and upon us, and
 work together with Thee. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

One might be tempted by the last chapter to suppose that, if he could
accept the proposition that God is personal, he would be well upon his
way toward Christianity. But in theory at least Plato accepted this
proposition four hundred years before Christ, when he said: "God is
never in any way unrighteous--He is perfect righteousness; and he of
us who is most righteous is most like Him." He, too, used personality
as a symbol of God. When, however, one compares Plato with Jesus, how
incalculably greater is the religious meaning of our Lord! There is
something more in the Master's experience and thought than the belief
that God is personal. Evidently our quest must be followed further
than the last chapter carried us.

In Scripture two kinds of faith in the personal God are clearly
indicated. On the one side stand verses such as this: "Thou believest
that God is one; thou doest well; the demons also believe and shudder"
(James 2:19). On the other, one finds through both the Testaments
witness and appeal for a kind of faith that plainly differs from the
first: "O my God, in thee have I trusted" (Psalm 25:2). It is not
difficult to guess the terms in which many would describe this
difference. In the first, so the familiar explanation runs, we are
dealing with the _mind's_ faith in God; the man's intellect
assents to the belief that God is and that He is one. In the second we
are dealing with the _heart's_ faith in God; the whole man is
here involved in an adoring trust that finds in reliance upon God
life's stimulus and joy.

This distinction between the faith of the intellect and of the heart
is valid, but it does not go to the pith of the truth. When a
professor in the class-room, discussing conflicting theories of life's
origin, concludes that theism is the reasonable interpretation of the
universe, the listener understands that the lecturer believes in God's
existence. But if the professor could be followed home and overheard
in a private prayer, like Fénelon's: "Lord, I know not what I ought to
ask of Thee; Thou only knowest what I need; Thou lovest me better than
I know how to love myself. O Father! give to Thy child that which he
himself knows not how to ask," something incalculably more than the
classroom talk disclosed would be revealed about the meaning of the
teacher's faith. And as the classroom lecture and the private prayer
stand so contrasted, the gist of the difference is plain. In the one,
faith was directed toward a _theory_; in the other faith laid hold
upon a _Person_. That the intellect was more involved in the first and
the emotions in the second is incidental to the main matter, that _two
differing objects were in view_. Toward these two objects we
continually are exercising faith--_ideas and people, propositions and
persons_.

Now faith in a proposition we conveniently may call belief; and faith
in a person, trust. We believe that gravitation and the conservation
of energy universally apply, that democracy will prove better than
absolutism, and that prison systems can be radically reformed; these
and innumerable other propositions that cannot be demonstrated we
confidently believe. But in quite another way we daily are exercising
faith; _we have faith in our friends_. How profound a change
comes over the quality and value of faith when it thus finds its
objective in a person! Our beliefs in propositions are of basic import
and without them we could not well exist, but it is by trust in
persons that we live indeed. Belief in monogamy, for all its
importance, is a cold abstraction, and few could be found to die for
it. Men do not lay down their lives for abstract theories, any more
than they would suffer martyrdom, as Chesterton remarked, for the
Meridian of Greenwich. But when monogamy is translated from theory
into personal experience, when belief in the idea becomes trust in a
life-long comrade of whom one may sing:

                  "What I do
  And what I dream include thee, as the wine
  Must taste of its own grapes,"

faith has taken a form for which men do live and die in glad
surrender. Although the same word, faith, be applied to both, trust in
persons reaches deeper than belief in propositions and supplies a
warmth and power that belief cannot attain.

In religion these two aspects of faith continually are found and both
are indispensable. Trust in a person, for example, presupposes belief
in his existence and fidelity. "He that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him"
(Heb. 11:6). Trust cannot exist without belief, but when one seeks the
inner glory of the religious life that has overflowed in prayer and
hymn, supplied motive for service and power for character, he finds it
not in belief, but in the vital relationships involved in trusting a
Person. Men often have discussed their particular beliefs with cool
deliberation, have stated them in formal creeds, have changed them
with access of new knowledge and experience. But _trust_, the
inner reliance of the soul on God and glad self-surrender to his will,
has persisted through many changes, clothing itself with beliefs like
garments and casting them aside when old. Trust has made rituals and
churches and unmade them when they were ineffectual, it has been the
life behind the theory, the experience behind the explanation; and its
proper voice has been not creed and controversy, but psalm and song
and sacrifice. Men have felt in describing this inward friendship that
their best words were but the "vocal gestures of the dumb," able to
indicate but unable to express their thoughts. _For while belief is
theology, trust is religion._


II

This central position of trust in the Christian life is evident when
one considers that in its presence or absence lies the chief point of
difference between a religious and an irreligious man. The peculiarity
of religion is not that it has beliefs; everybody has them. As we have
seen, Huxley, who called himself an agnostic, said that he thoroughly
believed the universe to be rational, than which only a few greater
ventures of faith can be imagined. A man may not want to have beliefs.
He may say that knowledge is wool, warm to clothe oneself withal, that
belief is cotton, and that he will not mingle them. But for all that
he still does have beliefs and he cannot help it.

When, therefore, a Christian and an atheist converse they can match
belief with belief. "I believe," says one, "in God the Father"; and "I
believe," says the other, "in the eternal physical universe, without
spiritual origin or moral purpose." Says the Christian, "I believe in
the immortality of persons," and the atheist replies, "I believe that
the spirit dies with the body as sound ceases when the bell's swinging
iron grows still." Says the Christian, "I believe in the ultimate
triumph of righteousness"; and the atheist replies, "I believe that
all man's aspiration after good is but the endless sailing of a ship
that never shall arrive." So the two may play battledore and
shuttlecock, but if, so having paired beliefs, they part with no more
said, they have missed the real point of their difference. The
irreligious man can match the Christian's belief with his own, but one
thing he cannot match--the Christian's trust. _He has nothing that
remotely corresponds with that._

The Christian always has this case to plead with an unbelieving man:
Do not suppose that the difference between us is exhausted in a
conflict of contrasting propositions. Great indeed is the divergence
there! But the issue of all such difference lies in another realm.
When you face life's abysmal mysteries that your eyes can no more
pierce than mine, you have no one to trust. When misfortunes fall that
send men to their graves, as Sydney Smith said, with souls scarred
like a soldier's body, you have no one to trust. When you face the
last mystery of all and whether going say farewell to those who stay,
or staying bid farewell to those who go, you have no one to trust. You
can match my belief with your belief, but for one thing you have no
counterpart. "Jehovah is my shepherd, I shall not want" (Psalm 23:1).
You cannot match that! "My heart hath trusted in him, and I am helped"
(Psalm 28:7). You cannot match that! "Shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25); "We have our hope set on the living
God" (I Tim. 4:10); "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke
23:46). That trust you cannot match!


III

In the light of this distinction between belief and trust some
mistaken types of faith can be easily described. There, for example,
is the _faith of formal creedalism_. We cannot have trust without
some belief, but we may unhappily have belief without any trust. Now a
man who believes the doctrines that underly the Christian life but who
does not vitally trust the Person whom those doctrines present, has
missed the heart out of faith's meaning. He is like one who cherishes
a letter of introduction to a great personality, but has never used
it; he has the formal credentials, but not the transforming
experience. It follows that we cannot estimate a man merely by knowing
his beliefs. I believe in all the Christian truths, says one; and the
curious question rises, how did these beliefs of his come into his
possession? They may have been handed to him by his forbears like a
set of family jewels, a static and external heritage, which now he
keeps in some ecclesiastical safe-deposit vault and on state days, at
Christmas or at Easter, goes to see. Still he may claim that they are
his beliefs; he may even quarrel about their genuineness, not because
he ever uses them but because they are his. He may repeat the creed
with the same unquestioning assent that he gives to the conventional
cut of his clothes. His beliefs are not the natural utterance and
explanation of his inner life with God and man, but are put on as they
were handed to him, like the fashions of his coats. So easy is it to
be formally orthodox!

Over against such conventional believers one thinks of other folk whom
he has known. They have no such stereotyped, clear-cut beliefs. They
are very puzzled about life. It seems to them abysmally mysterious.
And when they speak they talk with a modesty the formal creedalist has
never felt: My beliefs are most uncertain. Confused by many voices
shouting conflicting opinions about truths which I once accepted
without thinking, I cannot easily define my thoughts. But I do trust
God. That assent of the mind which I cannot give to propositions, I
can give to him. Life is full of mystery, but I do not really think
that the mystery is darkness at its heart. My faith has yet its
standing ground in this, that the world's activities are not like the
convulsions of an epileptic, unconscious and purposeless. There is a
Mind behind the universe, and a good purpose in it.

  "Yet in the maddening maze of things,
  And tossed by storm and flood,
  To one fixed trust my spirit clings;
  I know that God is good."

Say as one may that such an attitude is far from adequate, yet as
compared with the merely formal acceptance of inherited opinions how
incomparably superior its religious value is!

The people of placid, stiff beliefs are not the successors of the real
saints. When one reads George Matheson's books of devotion, for
example, or sings his hymn "O Love, that wilt not let me go," or
learns of his great work in his church in Edinburgh, one might suppose
that he never had a doubt. Yet listen to his own confession: "At one
time with a great thrill of horror, I found myself an absolute
atheist. After being ordained at Innellan, I believed nothing; neither
God nor immortality. I tendered my resignation to the Presbytery, but
to their honor they would not accept it, even though an Highland
Presbytery. They said I was a young man and would change. I have
changed." One need only read such books of his as "Can the Old Faith
Live with the New?" to see through what a searching discipline of
strenuous thought he passed in the regaining of his faith. But if one
would know what held his religious life secure while he was working
out his beliefs from confusion to clarity, one must turn to Matheson's
poem:

  "Couldst thou love _Me_
  When creeds are breaking--
  Old landmarks shaking
  With wind and sea?
  Couldst thou refrain the earth from quaking
  And rest thy heart on _Me_?"

Many a man has been held fast by his trust in God while in perplexity
he thought out his beliefs about God.

Indeed, within the Scripture, whatever word is used to describe the
attitude of faith, this vital personal alliance with God is everywhere
intended. For convenience we have called faith in propositions belief,
but that does not mean that when the Scriptures use "believe" they are
urging the acceptance of propositions. Not often in the Bible are we
invited merely to agree with an opinion; we are everywhere called to
trust a Person. "Trust in the Lord" in the Old Testament, "Believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ" in the New, are neither of them the
proclamation of a theory, but the exaltation of a personality.
Wherever in Scripture doctrines are insisted on--the unity of God,
the deathlessness of the spirit, the divinity of Christ--they are
never doctrines for their own sakes; _they are either commendatory
truths about a Friend, that we may not fail to trust him, or they are
ideas about life that have come to men because they did trust him_.
_Trust in a Person is either the source or the goal of every Christian
doctrine._ The Gospel at its center is not a series of propositions,
but a concrete, personal relationship opened between the soul and the
Divine, out of which new powers, joys, possibilities flow gloriously
into human life. When out of this experience of divine fellowship
Paul, for example, speaks of faith he means by it the alliance that
binds him to his friend. He fairly sings of the peace that comes from
such believing (Rom. 15:13), of the love that is its motive power and
chief expression (Gal. 5:6), and of "the sacrifice and service" which
are its issue (Phil. 2:17). He enthusiastically commends to everyone
this divine alliance through which moral defeat is changed to victory
in the "righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3:9); and his
prose slips over into poetry when he describes his new transfigured
life as "access by faith into that grace wherein we stand" (Rom. 5:2).
Plainly he is not talking here about a set of propositions; he is
rejoicing in a transforming personal relationship. Some faith is
nothing but an inherited set of opinions and it gives a cold light
like an incandescent bulb; some faith, like sunshine, is brighter for
seeing than any incandescence can ever be, but warm too, so that under
its persuasive touch new worlds of life spring into being. The faith
of the New Testament and of the real saints is not the cold brilliance
of a creed in whose presence one can freeze even while he sees; it is
the warm, life-giving sunshine of a trust in God that makes all
gracious things grow, and puts peace and joy, hope and love into life.
Belief in propositions is there, but the crown and glory of it are
trust in a Person.


IV

In the light of this distinction between belief and trust, the
inadequacy of another type of faith can easily be understood. Many
would protest that they have not accepted their beliefs as an external
heritage from the past, but rather have thought them through, and hold
them now as _reasonable theories to explain the facts of the spiritual
life_. They would say that as a geologist observes the rocks and
constructs an hypothesis to account for their origin and nature, so
the mind, observing man's contacts with invisible powers, constructs
religious beliefs as explanations of experience. They would insist
that their theology is not merely traditional, but in large degree is
independently appropriated and original. They hold it as an hypothesis
to make intelligible man's experiences of the spiritual world.

There is significant truth in this view of faith. Man's ideals, his
loves, hopes, aspirations, his unescapable sense of moral obligation,
his consciousness of Someone other than himself, are facts, as solidly
present in experience as stars and mountains. To explain these facts
by theology is as rational as to explain the stars by astronomy. Every
believer in religious truth should welcome this confirming word from
Dr. Pritchett, written when he was President of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology: "Science is grounded in faith just as is
religion, and scientific truth, like religious truth, consists of
hypotheses, never wholly verified, that fit the facts more or less
closely."

But when one turns from such a statement to inquire what faith has
actually meant to religious men, he does not find that their
experience could easily be defined as belief in an hypothesis. The
prophets, standing their ground through national disaster,
undiscourageable in their conviction of God's good purpose for His
people, would have been surprised to hear their faith so described.
When the Sons of Thunder were swept out into a new life by the
influence of Jesus, or the seer of Patmos was ravished with visions of
eternal victory, or Paul was made conqueror in a fight for character
that had been his despair, they would hardly have spoken of their
experiences as belief in an hypothesis. Real religion has always meant
something more vital than holding a theory about life. When Robert
Louis Stevenson says of his transformation of character, "I came about
like a well-handled ship. There stood at the wheel that unknown
steersman whom we call God"; when Tolstoi cries: "To know God and to
live are one and the same thing"; when Professor William James, of
Harvard, writes of his consciousness of God, "It is most indefinite to
be sure and rather faint, and yet I know that if it should cease,
there would be a great hush, a great void in my life"; one sees what
conversion of character, what increase of life's value, what
spiritual reenforcement religion has meant even to such unconventional
believers. When they speak of it, they are evidently thinking of a
vital power and not a theory.

The most obscure Christian to whom religion has become a necessity in
living, knows how far short the plummet of hypothetical belief comes
from reaching bottom. In sin, burdened by a sense of guilt that he
could not shake off and unable to forgive himself, he has cried to be
forgiven, and the Gospel that has been his hope was no injunction to
hold hard by his hypothesis! In sorrow, when the blows have fallen
that either hallow or embitter life, he has sought for necessary
fortitude, and the Gospel which established him certainly was not,
Cast thy care on thine hypothesis! And when, more than conqueror, he
faces death, his confidence and hope will rest on no such prayer as
this, O Hypothesis, guide me! The word of religion is of another sort,
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for _Thou_ art with me." Not belief in propositions, but
trust in a Person has been the heart of the Gospel, and to make any
hypothesis, however true, do duty as religion is to give the soul a
stone when it asks for bread.

The futility of seeking contentment in faith as an hypothesis alone is
especially manifest in our time. This is an age of swiftly changing
ideas in every realm. As in science, so in religion, today one theory
holds the field to be displaced tomorrow by another. A man in
theology, as much as in politics or psychology, goes to bed supposing
he has settled his opinions, and wakes up to find a new array of
evidence that disturbs his confidence. When, therefore, religious
faith has meant no more to its possessor than theory, there is no
security or rest. Each day the winds of opinion shift and veer, and
minds at the beginning obstinate in their beliefs, at last, dismayed
by the reiterated uncertainties of thought, give up their faith.

Where, then, have the men of faith found the immovable center of their
confidence? Paul revealed the secret. On the side of his particular
opinions he frankly confessed his limited and uncertain knowledge.
"Now we know in fragments," he wrote, "now we see through a glass
darkly." "How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past tracing
out!" But on the side of his trust he is adamant: "I know _him_ whom
I have believed." The certainty of his life was his relationship with
a person, and his beliefs were the best he yet had thought in the
explication and establishment of that trust.

The great believers of the Church continually have exhibited this dual
aspect of their faith. Even St. Augustine, facing the profound
mysteries involved in his trinitarian belief, complains that human
speech is pitiably futile in trying to explain what "Three persons"
means, and that if he uses the familiar phrase, he does so not because
he likes it, but because he may not be silent and knows no better
thing to say. But when Augustine prays to the God whose nature is so
unfathomable that no man can see it fully or express it adequately, he
reveals no such uncertain thought: "Grant me, even me, my dearest
Lord, to know Thee and love Thee and rejoice in Thee.... Let the love
of Thee grow every day more and more here, that it may be perfect
hereafter; that my joy may be great in itself and full in Thee. I
know, O God, that thou art a God of truth; O make good Thy gracious
promises to me!" So children do not fully understand an earthly father
and often hold conceptions grotesquely insufficient to do justice to
his life and work. But they may have for him well-founded trust. Even
in the years of infancy an ennobling personal relationship begins,
despite the inadequacy of their beliefs, and that trust yearly deepens
while mental concepts shift and change with access of new knowledge.
_The abiding core of a child's life with his father is not belief
but trust._

Such has always been the secret of faith's stability in men who have
entered into personal fellowship with God. Even of the first disciples
it has been said--"They would have had difficulty sometimes to tell
you _what_ they believed, but they could always have told you in
_whom_ they believed."


V

The truth of which we have been speaking has pertinent bearing on the
main object of our studies. We shall be considering the difficulties
which Christians have with their beliefs, and the arguments which may
clarify and establish our minds' confidence in God. But many problems
in the realm of intellectual belief cannot be solved by any arguments
which the mind devises. The trouble often lies not in our theories
about the religious life, but in our religious life itself. _The
deeper difficulty is not that our thinking is unreasonable, but that
our experience is unreal._

To a man who never had seen the stars or felt the wonder of their
distances, astronomy would be a lifeless topic and his endeavors to
think about it a blundering and futile operation. Our theories about
anything depend for their interest and worth upon the vividness with
which we experience the thing itself and care to understand its
meaning. This is true about matters like the stars; how much more true
about the intimate affairs of man's own life! Democracy vs. autocracy
is a crucial problem. But plenty of men are so careless about human
weal, think so little of their country and the world as objects of
solicitude and devotion, that to discuss in their presence democratic
and autocratic theories of state is a waste of time. The trouble is
not with their minds; they may be very clever and acute. The trouble
is with their lives. They need to experience patriotism as a vital
motive; they need to care immensely what happens to mankind. Only then
will the problems of government grow vivid, and the need of a solution
become so critical that thinking will be urgent and productive. We
never think well about anything for which we do not care.

Plenty of people today discuss theology as an academic pastime. It is
a speculative game at which they play, as they do at golf, for its fun
and lure. They do not really care about God; they feel no crucial need
of him. Of little use is all their ingenuity in argument, clever and
astute though it may be. Blind men might so discuss the color scheme
of an Italian landscape and deaf men debate the harmonies of Handel's
oratorios. What is lacking is experience. For our theories are only
the explanations of experience, and an emptier game cannot be played
than debating explanations of experiences which we have not had.

Everyone in difficulty with his faith should give due weight to this
important truth. Our intellectual troubles are not all caused by the
bankruptcy of our spiritual lives, but many of them are. Men live with
drained and unreplenished spirits, from which communion with God and
service of high causes have been crowded out. God grows unreal. The
self-evidencing experiences that maintain vital confidence in the
spiritual life grow dim and unimperative. Men pass years without
habitually thinking as though God really were, without making any
great decisions as though God's will were King, without engaging in
any sacrificial work that makes the thought of God a need and a
delight, without the companionship of great ideas or the sustenance of
prayer. Then, when experience is denuded of any sense of God's
reality, some intellectual doubt is suggested by books or friends, or
fearful trouble shatters happiness. What recourse is there in such a
case? The arguments of faith have no experience to get their grip
upon; they can appeal to no solid and sustained fact of living.
Religious confidence goes to pieces and men tell their friends that
modern philosophy has been too much for faith. But the underlying
difficulty was not philosophical; it was vital. The insolvency of
"belief" was due to the bankruptcy of "trust." Personal fellowship
with God failed first; the theory about him lapsed afterward.

Throughout our endeavor to deal with intellectual perplexity, this
fundamental truth should not be forgotten. _The peril of religion is
that vital experience shall be resolved into a formula of explanation,
and that men, grasping the formula, shall suppose themselves thereby
to possess the experience._ If one inquires what air is, the answer
will probably be a formula stating that oxygen and nitrogen mixed in
proportions of twenty-one to seventy-nine make air. But air in
experience is not a formula. Air is the elixir we breathe and live
thereby. Air is the magician who takes the words that our lips frame
and bears them from friend to friend in daily converse. Air is the
messenger who carries music to our ears and fragrance to our nostrils;
it is the whisperer among the trees in June, and in March the wild
dancer who shakes the bare branches for his castanets. Air is the
giant who piles the surf against the rocky shore, and the nurse who
fans the faces of the sick. One cannot put that into a formula. No
more can God be put into a theology, however true. They who define him
best may understand him least. God is the Unseen Friend, the Spiritual
Presence, who calls us in ideals, warns us in remorse, renews us with
his pardon, and comforts us with power. God is the Spirit of
Righteousness in human life, whose victories we see in every moral
gain, and allied with whom we have solid hopes of moral victory. God
is the One who holds indeed the far stars in his hand, and yet in
fellowship with whom each humblest son of man may find strength to do
and to endure with constancy and fortitude and deathless hope. And
when one lives close to him, so that the inner doors swing easily on
quiet hinges to let him in, he is the One who illumines life with a
radiance that human wills alone cannot attain. That is God--"Blessed
is the man that taketh refuge in him" (Psalm 34:8).




CHAPTER V

Faith's Intellectual Difficulties


DAILY READINGS

Most people will readily grant that such a sense of personal
fellowship with God as the last week's study presented is obviously
desirable. Every one who has experienced such filial life with God
will bear witness to its incomparable blessing. Said Tennyson, "I
should be sorely afraid to live my life without God's presence, but to
feel he is by my side just now as much as you are, that is the very
joy of my heart." But many who would admit the desirability of the
experience are troubled about the reasonableness of the beliefs that
underly it. They want intellectual assurance about their faith. Let us
in the daily readings present certain considerations which a mind so
perplexed should take into account.


Fifth Week, First Day

We should let no one deny our right to bring religious belief to the
test of reasonableness. Glanvill was right when in the seventeenth
century he said, "There is not anything I know which hath done more
mischief to Religion than the disparaging of Reason." In the New
Testament Paul says:

 =Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.--I Thess. 5:21.=

Peter says:

 =Yea, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in
 your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge.--II Pet. 1:5.=

This might be paraphrased to read, Faith should be _worked out_ into
character and _thought through_ into knowledge. As for Jesus:

 =One of the scribes came, and heard them questioning together, and
 knowing that he had answered them well, asked him, What commandment
 is the first of all? Jesus answered, The first is, Hear, O Israel;
 The Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy
 God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,
 and with all thy strength.--Mark 12:28-30.=

In many a life which has neglected these admonitions Lowell's words
have proved true: "Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from
thought." In our resolute endeavor to think through the mystery of
life, however, and to find a reasonable basis for faith, we need to
remember that _the very desire to know is an indication of the
reality which we seek_. The dim intuition that the world with all
its diverse powers was in some sense a unity, preceded by ages the
statement of nature's uniformity which modern science knows; and man's
tireless desire to reach a reasonable statement of the unity was an
intimation in advance that unity was there. So men do not believe in
God because they have proved him; they rather strive endlessly to
prove him because they cannot help being sure that he must be there.
This in itself is an intimation about reality which no thoughtful man
will lightly set aside. Tennyson rightly describes the reason for
man's quest after proof about God:

  "If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
    I heard a voice 'believe no more'
    And heard an ever-breaking shore
  That tumbled in the Godless deep;

  A warmth within the breast would melt
    The freezing reason's colder part,
    And like a man in wrath the heart
  Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"

 _Eternal Father, Quest of ages, long sought, oft doubted or forsook;
 can it be that Thou art known to us, the Law within our minds, the
 Life of every breath we draw, the Love that yearneth in our hearts?
 Art Thou the Spirit who oft hast striven with us, and whom we greatly
 feared, lest yielding to His strong embrace we should become more
 than we dared to be?_

 _An impulse toward forgiveness has sometimes stirred within us, we
 have felt moved to show mercy, the sacrificial life has touched our
 aspiration; but we were unprepared to pay the price. Was this
 Thyself, and have we turned from Thee? Something like this we must
 have done, so barren, joyless and so dead has life become. Canst Thou
 not visit us again?_

 _We hush our thoughts to silence, we school our spirits in sincerity,
 and here we wait. O may we not feel once more the light upon our
 straining eyes, the tides of life rise again within our waiting
 hearts?_

 _We never looked to meet Thee in the stress of thought, the toil of
 life, or in the call of duty; we only knew that somehow life had lost
 for us all meaning, dignity, and beauty. How then shall we turn back
 again and see with eyes that fear has filmed? How can we be born
 again, now grown so old in fatal habit?_

 _If we could see this life of ours lived out in Thee, its common days
 exalted, its circumstances made a throne, its bitterness,
 disappointment, and failure all redeemed, then our hearts might stir
 again, and these trembling hands lay hold on life for evermore.
 Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Fifth Week, Second Day

Not only is man's tireless quest for assurance about God an intimation
that God must be here to be sought after; but _the spiritual nature of
man which insists on the quest is itself a revelation that God
actually is here_. Some men say that our spiritual life is the result
of evolution, and they suppose that by this magic word they have
explained it. But what comes out of a process of growth was somehow
latent in the Original Beginning from which the growth started.
Palm-trees do not grow from acorns; only oaks evolve from acorns and
for the sufficient reason that oaks are somehow _involved in acorns_
to start with. So a universe with spiritual life in it naturally
presupposes an Original with spiritual life in It. Whatever evolves
must first of all have been involved. The very fact that the seeker
after God has a spiritual life, which is restless and unsatisfied
without faith in the Eternal Spirit, is one of the clearest
indications that, whatever else may be said about the source of life,
it must be spiritual. The Nile for ages was a mystery; it flowed
through Egypt--a blessed necessity to the land, enriching the soil,
and sustaining the people--but nobody knew its source. Long before
Victoria Nyanza was discovered, however, thinkers were sure that a
great lake must be the explanation of the stream; and when at last
they found the sources of the Nile, the lake was even greater than
anyone had dreamed. So is man's spirit a revelation of a spiritual
origin even before that origin is clearly known. As the Bible puts it:

 =Now he that wrought us for this very thing is God, who gave unto us
 the earnest of the Spirit.--II Cor. 5:5.=

 _O God! mysterious and Infinite, Thou art the first and Thou the
 last: as our weeks pass away and our age rises or declines, we still
 return to Thee who ever art the same. We seek Thee as the sole
 abiding light amid the shadows of perishable things. O Thou most
 ancient God! to whom the heavens are but of yesterday, and the life
 of worlds but as the shooting star, there is no number of Thy days
 and mercies; and what can we do, O Lord, but throw ourselves on Thee
 who failest not, and from whom our pathway is not hid? With solemn
 and open heart we would meet Thee here. Cover not Thyself with a
 cloud, most High, but may our prayer pass through._

 _O Thou our constant Witness and our awful Judge! When we remember
 our thoughtless lives, our low desires, our impatient temper, our
 ungoverned wills, we know that Thou hast left us without excuse. For
 Thou hast not made us blind, O Lord, as the creatures that have no
 sin; nor hast Thou spared the light of holy guidance. Thy still small
 voice of warning whispers through our deepest conscience; and Thine
 open Word hath dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and called us
 to the feet of Christ to choose the better part. We are not our own,
 and are ashamed to have lived unto ourselves. Thou hast formed us for
 Thy service, and we must hide our face that we have shrunk from the
 glorious hardships of our task, and slumbered on our holy watch. Our
 daily work has not been wrought as in Thy sight; and we have not made
 the outgoings of the morning and the evening to praise Thee. The
 trials of our patience we have received as earthly pains of nature,
 not as the heavenly discipline of faith; and the fulness of Thy
 bounties has come to us as dead comfort, not as the quickening touch
 of Thy everlasting love. O our true and only God! we have lived in a
 bondage of the world that bringeth no content; and the passions we
 serve are as strange idols that cannot deliver. Awake, awake, O Arm
 of the Lord! and burst our bonds in sunder; and help the spirit that
 struggles within us to turn unto Thee with a pure heart, and serve
 Thee in newness of spirit. Amen._--James Martineau.


Fifth Week, Third Day

Many stumble at the very beginning of their quest for God, because
they are sure that finite mind can never know the Infinite. The Bible
itself asserts that God is in one sense unknowable.

 =Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out.--Job 37:23.=

 =Man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning
 even to the end.--Eccl. 3:11.=

 =O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of
 God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing
 out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his
 counsellor?--Rom. 11:33, 34.=

But in the same sense in which God is unknowable, all the most
important realities with which we deal are also beyond our
comprehension. We do not know what electricity is, what matter is,
what life is. Ether is utterly beyond the reach of our definitions,
and an English scientist calls it "unknown, impalpable, the necessary
condition of scientific thought." As for the constituent elements of
the material world, we are told that atoms are so infinitesimally
minute as to be indivisible, and yet that an "electron ranges about in
the atom as a mouse might in a cathedral." The plain fact is that in
any realm, human knowledge soon runs off into an unknown region where
it deals with invisible realities, which it cannot define, but on
which life is based. While therefore we do not know what electricity,
ether, electrons, and life itself are, we do know them well _in
their relationship with our needs_. So we may know God. Deep beyond
deep in him will be past our fathoming, but what God means in his
relationships with our lives we may know gloriously.

 _O Thou who transcendest all thought of Thee as the heavens are
 higher than the earth; we acknowledge that we cannot search Thee out
 to perfection, but we thank Thee that Thou, the Invisible, comest to
 us in the things that are seen; that Thy exceeding glory is shadowed
 in the flower that blooms for a day, in the light that fades; that
 Thine infinite love has been incarnate in lowly human life; and that
 Thy presence surrounds all our ignorance, Thy holiness our sin, Thy
 peace our unrest._

 _Give us that lowly heart which is the only temple that can contain
 the infinite. Save us from the presumption that prides itself on a
 knowledge which is not ours, and from the hypocrisy and carelessness
 which professes an ignorance which Thy manifestation has made for
 ever impossible. Save us from calling ourselves by a name that Thou
 alone canst wear, and from despising the image of Thyself Thou hast
 formed us to bear, and grant that knowledge of Thee revealed in Jesus
 Christ which is our eternal life. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Fifth Week, Fourth Day

The assurance of God may come in part from looking outward at his
creation. This universe seems superficially to be material, but really
it is _saturated with the presence of mind_. So a city's streets,
buildings, bridges, subways, and railroads might appear to careless
thought grossly material; but the fact is that in their origin they
all are _mental_. They are not simply iron and steel and stone; they
are thought, plan, purpose materialized and made visible. The basic
fact about them is that mind shaped them and permeates every use to
which they are put. The most important and decisive force in their
origination was not anything that can be seen, but the invisible
thought that dreamed them and moulded them. So when one looks at
creation he finds something more than matter; he finds order, law,
uniformity; his mind is at home in tracing regularities, discovering
laws, and perceiving purposes. Creation is not grossly material; it is
saturated with the evidence of mind. Lord Kelvin, the chemist, walking
in the country with Liebig, his fellow-scientist, asked his companion
if he believed that the grass and flowers grew by mere chemical
forces; and Liebig answered, "No, no more than I could believe that
the books of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical
forces."

 =Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created these, that
 bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by name; by
 the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not
 one is lacking.=

 =Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from
 Jehovah, and the justice due to me is passed away from my God? Hast
 thou not known? hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah,
 the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary;
 there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the
 faint; and to him that hath no might he increaseth strength. Even the
 youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly
 fall: but they that wait for Jehovah shall renew their strength; they
 shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be
 weary; they shall walk, and not faint.--Isa. 40:26-31.=

 _O Thou Infinite Perfection, who art the soul of all things that are
 ... we thank Thee for the world of matter whereon we live, wherewith
 our hands are occupied, and whereby our bodies are builded up and
 filled with food and furnished with all things needful to enjoy. We
 thank Thee for the calmness of Night, which folds Thy children in her
 arms, and rockest them into peaceful sleep, and when we wake we thank
 Thee that we are still with Thee. We bless Thee for the heavens over
 our head, arched with loveliness, and starred with beauty, speaking
 in the poetry of nature the psalm of life which the spheres chant
 before Thee to every listening soul._

 _We thank Thee for this greater and nobler world of spirit wherein we
 live, whereof we are, whereby we are strengthened, upheld, and
 blessed. We thank Thee for the wondrous powers which Thou hast given
 to man, that Thou hast created him for so great an estate, that thou
 hast enriched him with such noble faculties of mind and conscience
 and heart and soul, capable of such continual increase of growth and
 income of inspiration from Thyself. We thank Thee for the wise mind,
 for the just conscience, for the loving heart, and the soul which
 knows Thee as Thou art, and enters into communion with Thy spirit,
 rejoicing in its blessing from day to day. Amen._--Theodore Parker.


Fifth Week, Fifth Day

The vital assurance of faith always comes, not so much from observing
the outer world, as from appreciating the meaning of man's inner life.
Man knows that he is something more than a physical machine. Theorists
may say that our minds are only a series of molecular changes in the
brain; but man turns to ask: _Who is it that is watching these
molecular changes? The very fact that we can discuss them, is proof
that we are something more than they are and of another order._
Leslie Stephen was an agnostic, but at the thought of man as merely a
physical machine he grew impatient. "I knock down a man and an image,"
he said, "and both fall down because both are material. But when the
man gets up and knocks me down, the result is not explicable by any
merely mechanical action." Man denies his own inward consciousness of
self when he refuses to acknowledge the mental and spiritual part of
him as the thing he really is. Man may have a body, but he surely is a
soul. And when man lets this highest part of him speak its own
characteristic word, he always hears a message like this: I am spirit;
to grow into great character is the one worthy end of my existence;
but how came I to be spirit with spiritual purpose unless my Creator
is of like quality? and how can I believe that my existence and my
purpose are not a cruel joke unless I am begotten by a Spiritual Life
that will sustain my strength and crown my effort? To believe that
man's soul is a foundling, laid on the doorstep of a merely physical
universe, crying in vain for any father who begot him or any mother
who conceived him, is to make our highest life a liar. Therefore man
at his best has always believed in God.

 =For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of
 God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but
 ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The
 Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children
 of God.--Rom. 8:14-16.=

 _O Thou whom no name can tell, whom all our thoughts cannot fully
 comprehend, we rejoice in all Thy goodness.... We thank Thee for our
 body, this handful of dust so curiously and wonderfully framed
 together. We bless Thee for this sparkle of Thy fire that we call our
 soul, which enchants the dust into thoughtful human life, and blesses
 us with so rich a gift. We thank Thee for the varied powers Thou hast
 given us here on earth. We bless Thee for the far-reaching mind,
 which puts all things underneath our feet, rides on the winds and the
 waters, and tames the lightning into useful service.... We thank Thee
 for this conscience, whereby face to face we commune with Thine
 everlasting justice. We thank Thee for the strength of will which can
 overpower the weakness of mortal flesh, face danger and endure
 hardship, and in all things acquit us like men...._

 _We thank Thee for this religious sense, whereby we know Thee, and,
 amid a world of things that perish, lay fast hold on Thyself, who
 alone art steadfast, without beginning of days or end of years,
 forever and forever still the same. We thank Thee that amid all the
 darkness of time, amid joys that deceive us and pleasures that cheat,
 amid the transgressions we commit, we can still lift up our hands to
 Thee, and draw near Thee with our heart, and Thou blessest us still
 with more than a father's or a mother's never-ending love.
 Amen._--Theodore Parker.


Fifth Week, Sixth Day

One ground of assurance concerning faith is the way a sincere
fellowship with God affects life. In a delicious passage of his
autobiography, Benjamin Franklin says, "I was scarce fifteen, when,
after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in
the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.
Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the
substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that
they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by
them; for the arguments of the Deists which were quoted to be refuted,
appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short I soon
became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others,
particularly Collins and Ralph; but, each of them having afterwards
wrong'd me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting
Keith's conduct towards me (who was another free thinker), and my own
towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I
began to suspect that this doctrine, tho' it might be true, was not
very useful." Many men, not yet able to see clearly the issue of
conflicting arguments, are practically convinced in favor of faith by
the relative effects on life of faith and unbelief. When one carries
this thought out until he imagines a world where no one any more
believes in God, he feels even more emphatically the negative results
of unbelief. As Sir James Stephen said, "We cannot judge of the
effects of Atheism from the conduct of persons who have been educated
as believers in God, and in the midst of a nation which believes in
God. If we should ever see a generation of men to whom the word God
has no meaning at all, we should get a light on the subject which
might be lurid enough." A practical working conviction is often gained
in religion, as in every other realm, not by argument, but by acting
on a principle until it verifies itself by its results, or, as in
Benjamin Franklin's case, by trying a negation until one is driven
from it by its consequences.

 =Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but
 inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do
 men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good
 tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth
 evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a
 corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not
 forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by
 their fruits ye shall know them.--Matt. 7:15-20.=

 _O God, who remainest the same though all else fades, who changest
 not with our changing moods, who leavest us not when we leave Thee;
 we thank Thee that when we lose faith in Thee, soon or late we come
 to faith in something that leads us back again with firmer trust and
 more sincerity. Even if we wander into the far country we take
 ourselves with us; ourselves who are set towards Thee as rivers to
 the sea. If we turn to foolishness, our hearts grow faint and weary,
 our path is set with thorns, the night overtakes us, and we find we
 have strayed from light and life._

 _Grant to us clearer vision of the light which knows no shade of
 turning, that we stray not in folly away; incline our hearts to love
 the truth alone, so that we miss Thee not at last; give us to realise
 of what spirit we are, so that we cleave ever to Thee, who alone can
 give us rest and joy. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Fifth Week, Seventh Day

When all is said and done in the matter of intellectual assurance,
many are confused by the seeming lack of finality in the result. After
all these ages of debate, they say, see all the innumerable opinions
of jarring sects about religious truth! Evidently there is no
satisfying conclusion obtainable at all! But look at the innumerable
schools of medicine--shall one on their account decide that health is
a fruitless study? Consider the infinite variety of taste in
food--shall we say that therefore hunger and its satisfaction is a
futile question to discuss? Rather, the very variety of the answers in
man's quest reveals the importance of the quest itself. Of course
proof of God lacks the finality of a scientific demonstration, and
this is true _because it moves in a realm so much more important than
anything that science touches_. Exactness and finality are possible
only in the least important realms. One can measure and analyze and
describe to a minute nicety a table which a carpenter has made, but
when one turns to the carpenter himself and endeavors to analyze his
motives, weigh his thoughts, estimate his quality, and prove his
purposes, one drops minute nicety at once. The carpenter is not to be
put into a column of figures and added with mathematical precision as
his table is. The farther up one moves in the scale the less precise
and undeniable do his conclusions become. So science is exact just
because it deals with measurable things; but religion, by as much as
its realm is more important, can less easily pack its conclusions into
neat parcels finally tied up and sealed. A man who will not believe
anything which is not precisely demonstrable must eliminate from his
life everything except what yardsticks can measure and scales can
weigh. Let no man ever give up the fight for faith because he does not
seem at once to be reaching an answer which he can neatly formulate.
Let him remember Tolstoi, writing on his birthday: "I am twenty-four,
and I have not done a thing yet. But I feel that not in vain have I
been struggling for nearly eight years against doubt and temptation.
For what am I destined? This only the future will disclose."

 =Hear, O Jehovah, when I cry with my voice:
 Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.
 When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee,
 Thy face, Jehovah, will I seek.
 Hide not thy face from me;
 Put not thy servant away in anger:
 Thou hast been my help;
 Cast me not off, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.
 When my father and my mother forsake me,
 Then Jehovah will take me up.
 Teach me thy way, O Jehovah;
 And lead me in a plain path,
 Because of mine enemies.
 Deliver me not over unto the will of mine adversaries:
 For false witnesses are risen up against me,
 And such as breathe out cruelty.
 I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of Jehovah
 In the land of the living.
 Wait for Jehovah:
 Be strong, and let thy heart take courage;
 Yea, wait thou for Jehovah.=

 =--Psalm 27:7-14.=

 _Deliver us, our Father, from all those mists which do arise from the
 low places where we dwell, which rise up and hide the sun, and the
 stars even, and Thee. Deliver us from the narrowness and the poverty
 of our conceptions. Deliver us from the despotism of our senses. And
 grant unto us this morning, the effusion of Thy Spirit, which shall
 bring us into the realm of spiritual things, so that we may, by the
 use of all that which is divine in us, rise into the sphere of Thy
 thought, into the realm where Thou dwellest, and whither have trooped
 from the ages the spirits of just men now made perfect. Grant, we
 pray Thee, that we may not look with time-eyes upon eternal things,
 measuring and dwarfing with our imperfectness the fitness and beauty
 of things heavenly. So teach us to come into Thy presence and to rise
 by sympathy into Thy way of thinking and feeling, that so much as we
 can discern of the invisible may come to us aright. Amen._--Henry
 Ward Beecher.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

While it is true that in many cases the apparent unreasonableness of
Christian faith springs from the underlying unreality of Christian
life, this is not always a sufficient diagnosis of doubt. Horace G.
Hutchinson, the English golfer, who spent much of his life in
agnosticism and has now come over into Christian faith, thus
interprets the spirit of his long unbelief: "All the while I had the
keenest consciousness of the comfort that one would gain could he but
believe in the truth of the Christian promises. Surely that must
always be the agnostic's mood.... It is not that they wilfully reject
the appeal to the heart; their will is eager to respond to it. But man
has his gift of reason; it cannot be that he is not intended to use
it. Least of all can it be part of the great design that he should
suspend its use in regard to the most important subject to which his
thought can be directed."

Such sincere intellectual difficulties with faith must be met with
intellectual arguments and not with moral accusations. Plenty of folk
of elevated character and admirable lives grant, sometimes
impatiently, that the Christian faith is beautiful--but is it
_so_? Is not its solacing power a deceptive sleight of hand, by
which our pleasing fancies and desires are made to look like truth? So
a mirage is beautiful to weary travelers, but their temporary comfort
rests on fallacy. McTaggart summed up one of the most wide-spread and
masterful desires of this generation when he said, "What people want
is a religion they can believe to be true."

As one sets himself to meet faith's intellectual difficulties, the
attitude in which he is to approach the problem is all-important.
Samuel M. Crothers tells us that a young man once left with him a
manuscript for criticism, and remarked in passing, "It is only a
little bit of my work, and it will not take you long to look it over.
In fact it is only the first chapter in which I explain the Universe."
When one outgrows this cocksure presumption of youth and gains a
graver and more seasoned mind, he leaves behind the attempt to pierce
to creation's last secret. He sees that we can no more neatly and
finally demonstrate God than we can demonstrate any of life's
important faiths.

Moreover proof of God, as a theorem in philosophy, is not a deep human
need. Men often have supposed that they had such demonstration, but
human experience was little affected by the fact. The exhaustless
source of mankind's desire for assurance about God is not theoretical
curiosity but vital need, and until a man feels the need, sees how
urgently man's highest life reaches out toward God, he never will make
much of any arguments. Browning's bishop asks his friend:

  "Like you this Christianity or not?
  It may be false, but will you wish it true?
  Has it your vote to be so if it can?"

Until a man gives an affirmative answer to that inquiry, until he
possesses a life that itself suggests God and wants him, he is not
likely to arrive anywhere by argument alone.

This is not the case with Christianity only. We cannot prove with
theoretical finality that monogamy is the form of family life to which
the universe is best adapted. But mankind, trying many experiments
with family life, has found in the monogamous family values unique and
indispensable. It is because men feel the value of such a love-bond,
that they begin to argue for it. And their argument, when one sees
deeply into it, is framed after this fashion: We know the _worth_
of this family-life of faithful lovers. We want monogamy and we
propose to have it. We do not pretend that our faith in monogamy, as
the form of marriage best fitted to this universe, is capable of exact
demonstration; but we do see arguments of great weight in favor of it
and we do not see any convincing arguments against it. We are
persuaded that our faith has reasonable right of way; and we propose
to go on believing in monogamy and practicing it and combating its
enemies, until we prove our case in the only way such cases ever can
be finally proved, by the issue of the matter in the end.

So men come into the sort of personal and social life that Jesus
represents. Apart from any theories, they value the life itself--its
ideals of character, friendship, service, trust. If honesty allows,
they propose to live that life. When a man has gone far enough in
Christian experience, so that he comes up to his intellectual
difficulties by such a road, he is likely to profit by a consideration
of the reasons in favor of faith. He is in the attitude of saying: I
have found great living in Christ. No argument for the Christian
experience can be quite so convincing as the Christian experience
itself. I am bound to have that life if I honestly can, and I will
search to see whether there is any insuperable intellectual difficulty
in the way of it.


II

One of the initial perplexities of faith concerns the sort of
intellectual assurance which we have a right to expect. In a
laboratory of physics, the investigator gathers facts, makes
inductions as to their laws, and then verifies his findings. He uses a
simplicity of procedure and gains a finality of result that makes all
other knowledge seem relatively insecure. To be sure, the scientist
may seek long for his truth and make many ineffectual guesses that
prove false, but, in the end, he reaches a conclusion so demonstrable
that every man of wit enough to investigate the subject must agree
that it is so. How the Christian wishes for such certainty concerning
God!

Before, however, any one surrenders confidence in God, because
confessedly the affirmations of religious faith cannot be established
by such methods as a physicist employs, there is ample reason for
delay. We are certain that heat expands and cold contracts, and we can
prove the fact and state its laws. But are we not also sure that it is
wrong to lie and right to tell the truth? This conviction about
truthfulness at least equals in theoretical certainty and in practical
right to determine conduct, our confidence in heat's expanding power.
This conviction about truthfulness does actually sway life more than
does any single scientific truth that one can name. Let us then set
ourselves to prove our moral confidence by such methods as the
physical laboratory can supply--with yard sticks, and Troy weight
scales, and test tubes, and meters! At once it is evident that if we
are to hold only such truth as is amenable to the demonstration of a
laboratory, we must bid farewell to every _moral conviction_ that
hitherto has influenced our lives. God, banished because the physicist
cannot prove him, will have good company in exile!

Moreover, all our _esthetic convictions_ will have to share that
banishment. We know that some things are beautiful. The consensus of
the race's judgment has not so much agreed to accept the new astronomy
as it has agreed to think sunrise glorious and snow-capped mountains
wonderful. Take from our lives our judgments on beauty, so that we may
call no music marvelous, no poetry inspiring, no scenery sublime, and
some of the most intimate and assured convictions we possess will have
to go. A man who has seen the Matterhorn at dawn, when the first shaft
of light reaches its rocky pinnacle and streams down in glory over the
glaciers that cape its shoulders, will not disbelieve the splendor of
the scene, though all the world beside unanimously should cry that it
is not beautiful. But prove it by the methods of a laboratory? When
the geologist has analyzed all the mountain's rocks, the chemist all
its minerals; when the astronomer has traced the earth's orbit that
brings on the dawn, and the physicist has counted and tabulated the
rays of light that make the colors, our conviction of the scene's
beauty will be as little explained or proved as is our confidence in
God. It becomes clear that some convictions which we both do and must
hold are not amenable to the sort of proof which a scientific
laboratory furnishes.

Moreover, if we will have no truth beyond the reach of a physicist's
demonstration, all our _convictions in the realm of personal
relationship_ will have to go. We _know_ that friendship-love is the
crown of every human fellowship. Father and son, mother and daughter,
brother and sister, wife and husband--these relationships are in
themselves bare branches wanting the foliage and fruit of friendship.
Of no truth is man at his best more sure than he is that "Life is just
our chance o' the price of learning love." But no laboratory ever can
deal with such a truth, much less establish it. For this is the
neglected insight, for the want of which our religious confidence is
needlessly unstable: _Every realm of reality has its own appropriate
kind of proof, and a method of proof available in one realm is seldom,
if ever, usable in another._ That truthfulness is right is in a way
provable, but methods proper to the moral realm must be allowed; that
the Matterhorn is sublime is in a sense provable, but by methods which
the esthetic realm permits; that love is the crown of life can be
soundly established, but one must employ a method appropriate to
personal relationships. If, obsessed by the procedure of a laboratory
as the solitary path to knowledge, one will have no convictions which
cannot meet its tests, then in good logic there must be a great
emigration from his soul. All his convictions about morals and
beauty, all his convictions about personal friendships and about God
must leave together. He will have a depopulated spirit. No man could
live on such terms for a single hour. The most essential and valuable
equipment of our souls is in convictions which the demonstrations of a
physicist can as little reach as an inch worm, clambering up the
Himalayas, can measure the distance to the sun.


III

A man to whom the Christian life has come to be preeminently valuable,
and who is asking whether it is intellectually justifiable, is set
free, by such considerations as we just have noted, to seek assurance
where religious assurance may properly be found. For one thing, he may
find help by _trying out the creed of no-God_. Many a man is a
wavering believer, makes little excursions into doubt and returns
hesitant and unhappy, because he never has dared to see his doubts
through to their logical conclusion and to face the world with God
eliminated.

One may sense the general atmosphere of the world, under the no-God
hypothesis, by saying, _In all this universe there is no mind
essentially greater than mine._ The import of such a statement
grows weightier the more one ponders it. All human minds are
infinitesimal in knowledge; endless realities must lie beyond our
reach; "our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea." Yet human
knowledge is all that anywhere exists, if the no-God hypothesis is
true. There is no knower who knows more, and the infinite reality
beyond our grasp is not known by any mind at all. No one ever thought
it or will think it through eternity. Then, let a man add, _In all
this universe there is no goodness essentially greater than mine._
Human goodness is pitiably partial; it is but prophecy of what
goodness ought to mean; "Man is a dwarf of himself," as Emerson said.
But human goodness is all that anywhere exists, if the no-God
hypothesis is true. There never will be any better goodness anywhere,
and when the earth comes to its end in a solar catastrophe, there will
be no goodness left at all. Certainly the hypothesis of no-God raises
more questions than it easily can quell.

Indeed the Christian, long accused by unbelieving friends of gross
credulity because he holds his creed, may well leave his defense and
"go over the top" in an offensive charge. If it is a question of
holding creeds, unbelief is a creed as certainly as belief is; it
says, I believe that there is no God or that God cannot be known. If
it is a question of credulity, the Christian suspects that of all the
different kinds of credulousness which the world has seen, nothing
ever has surpassed the capacity of modern sceptics to accept
impossible beliefs. He who says, I believe that there is no God, nor
anything which that name might reasonably connote, is saying, I
believe that the fundamental reality everywhere is physical. Long ages
ago atoms, electrons, "mobile cosmic ethers" began their mysterious
organization, whose present issue is planetary orbits, rocks, organic
life, and, highest point of all, the brain of man. Man's mind is but
the moving shadow cast by the activity of brain. Man's character is
the subtle fragrance of his nerves. Everywhere, if the no-God
hypothesis be true, spirit is a _result_, physical energy the _cause_.

Some startling corollaries follow such a view. _No man can be blamed
for anything._ Molecular action in the brain is responsible alike
for saints and sinners, and we are as powerless to change our quality
of character or action as a planet is to change its course. Judas and
Jesus, Festus and Paul, the Belgian lads and the Prussian officers who
mutilated them, the raper and the raped--why blame the one or praise
the other when all characters alike are ground from a physical
machine, whose action is predetermined by the push of universal energy
behind? One man even says that to condemn an immoral deed is like
Xerxes whipping the Hellespont--punishment visited on physical
necessity which is not to blame.

The second corollary is not less startling: _every man thinks as he
does because of molecular action in the brain_. A Christian believes
in God because his molecules maneuver so, and his opponent is an
atheist because his molecules maneuver otherwise, and all convictions
of truth, however well debated and reasoned out, are fundamentally the
work of atoms, not of mind. What we call intellect as little causes
anything as steam from a kettle causes the boiling out of which it
comes. Some brains boil Socialism, some do not; some brains boil
Episcopalianism and some Christian Science. A determinist and a
believer in freewill differ as do oaks and elm trees, for physical
reasons only, and folk are Catholic in southern Europe--so we are
informed--because their skulls are narrow, and in northern Europe
Protestants because their skulls are broad. Truth is a nickname for a
neurosis. The standing marvel is that on some matters like the
multiplication table our brains boil so unanimously.

A third corollary still remains: _we have no creative power of mind
and will_. All that is and is to be was wound up in primeval
matter, and now in our thoughts and actions is ticking like a clock.
"All of our philosophy," says Huxley, "all our poetry, all our
science, and all our art--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael--are
potential in the fires of the sun." That is to say, Plato had nothing
to do with _creating_ his philosophy, nor Shakespeare with
writing plays--they were empty megaphones and the real voice is the
physical machine from which all things come. Professor Bowne of Boston
University, after the publication of his "Metaphysics," received from
a physicist a protest against his emphasis on the reality of mind. The
professor of physics insisted that the only fundamental reality was
physical and that mind is always a result of brain's activity and
never a cause of anything. To this Professor Bowne replied that
according to the writer's own theory, as he understood it, the letter
of protest was the result of certain physical forces issuing in
nervous excitations that made scratches on paper, and that the
writer's mind had nothing effectual to do with its composition. This,
said Professor Bowne, might be a plausible explanation of the letter,
but he was unwilling to apply it to the universe. What wonder that the
physicist acknowledged to a friend that the retort nettled him, for he
did not see just how to answer it?


IV

One's discontent with this reduction of our lives to physical
causation is increased when he studies the _mental process by which
men reach it_. It is as if a man should perceive in the works of
Shakespeare insight and beauty, pathos and laughter, despair and hope,
and should set himself to explain all these as the function of the
type. How plausibly he could do it! If one takes Shakespeare's
sentences full of spiritual meaning he can readily resolve them into
twenty-six constituent letters of the alphabet, and these into certain
hooks and dashes, and these into arithmetical points diffused in
space. Starting with such abstract points, let one suppose that some
fortunate day they arranged themselves into hooks and dashes, and
these into letters of the alphabet, and these by fortuitous concourse
came together into sentences. Reading them we think we see deep
spiritual meaning, but they are all the work of type; the fundamental
reality is arithmetical points diffused in space. Such is the process
by which a man reduces the mental and moral life of man back to its
physical basis; then breaks up the physical basis into atoms; then,
starting with these abstractions, builds up again the whole world
which he just has analyzed, and thinks he has explained the infinitely
significant spiritual life of man. Not for a long time will we accept
such a method of explaining the works of Shakespeare! Nor can man
contentedly be made to follow so inconsequential a process of thought
as that by which the mind and character of Jesus are reduced to a
maneuver of molecules.

The attractiveness of this explanation of the universe as a huge
physical machine is easily understood. It presents a simple picture,
readily grasped. It packs the whole explanation of the world into a
neat parcel, portable by any mind. In the days of monarchy the
government of the universe was pictured in terms of an absolute
sovereign; in feudal times the divine economy was pictured as a
gigantic feudalism; we always use a dominant factor in the life of man
to help us picture the eternal. So in the age whose builder and maker
is machinery we easily portray the universe as a huge machine. The
process is simple and natural, but to suppose that it is adequate is
preposterous. Lord Kelvin, the chemist, knew thoroughly the
mechanistic idea of the world. He felt the fascination of it, for he
said at Johns Hopkins University, "I never satisfy myself until I make
a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model I can
understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way
through, I cannot understand." But Lord Kelvin knew better than to
suppose that this figure comprehended all of reality. "The atheistic
idea," said he, "is so nonsensical, that I do not know how to put it
into words."

The rejection of the no-God hypothesis does not necessarily imply that
a man becomes fully Christian in his thought of deity. There are
way-stations between no-God and Jesus' Father. _But it does mean that
to him reality must be fundamentally spiritual, not physical._ What
other hypothesis possibly can fit the facts? For consider the view of
a growing universe which we see from the outlook that modern science
furnishes. Out of a primeval chaos where physical forces snarled at
each other in unrelieved antagonism, where no man had yet arisen to
love truth and serve righteousness, something has brought us to a
time, when for all our evil, there are mothers and music and the
laughter of children at play, men who love honor and for service' sake
lay down their lives, and homes in every obscure street where
fortitude and sacrifice are splendidly exhibited. Out of a chaos,
where a contemporary observer, could there have been one, would have
seen no slightest promise of spirit, something has brought us to the
Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount, to great character and
growing achievements in social righteousness, to lofty thoughts of the
Divine and hopes of life eternal. _Something has been at work here
besides matter. No explanation of all this will do, without God._


V

Another source of confirmation for the man who, valuing Christian
experience, seeks assurance that it is intellectually justifiable, is
to be found in the effect of Christian faith on life itself. The
nautical tables can be proved by an astronomer in his observatory; but
if they are given to a sailor and he beats about the seas with them in
safety, finding that they make adventurous voyages practicable, that
also would be important witness to their truth. So the Christian ideas
of life have not been kept by studious recluses to ponder over and
weave philosophies about; they have been down in the market place, men
have been practically trying them for generations, and _they make
great living_.

The ultimate ground of practical assurance about anything is that we
have tried it and that it works. A man may have experience that other
persons exist, may draw the inference that friendly relations with
them are not impossible, but only when he launches out and verifies
his thought in an adventure will he really be convinced of
friendship's glory. In no other way has final assurance about God come
home to man. They who have lived as though God _were_ have been
convinced that he _is_; they who have willed to do his will have
known.

That religious faith does justify itself in life is a fact to which
mankind's experience amply testifies. Men have come to God, not as
chemists to bread curious to analyze it; they have come as hungry men,
needing to eat if they would live. And they have found life glorified
by faith in him. The difference between religion and irreligion here
is plain. _How seldom one finds enthusiastic unbelievers!_ When all
that is fine spirited and resolute in agnostic literature is duly
weighed and credited, the pessimistic undertone is always heard.
Leslie Stephen thus summarizes life--"There is a deep sadness in the
world. Turn and twist the thought as you may there is no escape.
Optimism would be soothing if it were possible; in fact, it is
impossible, and therefore a constant mockery." No gospel burns in the
unbeliever's mind, urgent for utterance; he has no inspiring outlooks
to offer, no glad tidings to declare. The more intelligent he is the
more plainly he sees this. With Clifford he laments that "the spring
sun shines out of an empty heaven to light up a soulless earth" and
feels "with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead"; with
Romanes he frankly states, "So far as the ruination of individual
happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively conception than
myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work." An unbeliever
whose admirable life raised the question as to the philosophy by which
he guided it, gave this summary of his creed, "I am making the best of
a bad mess." Unbelievers do not spontaneously utter in song the glory
of a creed like this, and when they do write poetry, it is of a sort
that music will not fit--

  "The world rolls round forever like a mill,
  It grinds out death and life and good and ill,
  It has no purpose, heart, or mind or will."

When from poetry one turns to philosophy, he can see good reasons why
hymnals and unbelief should be uncongenial. There is little to make
life worth while in a creed which holds as Haeckel does that morality
in man, like the tail of a monkey or the shell of a tortoise, is
purely a physiological effect, and that man himself is "an affair of
chance; the froth and fume at the wave-top of a sterile ocean of
matter." Shall the practical unserviceableness of such an idea for the
purpose of life, awaken no suspicion as to its truth?

Upon the other hand, suppose that by some strange chance the
principles of Jesus should over night take possession of mankind. Even
as it is, when one starts his thought with the Stone Age, the progress
of mankind has obviously been immense. From universal cannibalism
after a battle, to massacre without cannibalism marked one great
advance; from massacre of all prisoners taken in war to enslavement of
them marked another; and when slavery ceased being a philanthropic
improvement, as it was at first, and became a sin and shame, humanity
took another long step forward. With all our present barbarity, a far
look backwards shows a clear ascent. As for the influence of Jesus,
Lecky, the historian, tells us that "The simple record of three short
years of Christ's active life has done more to regenerate and soften
mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the
exhortations of moralists." What if this process were brought to its
fulfilment between sunset and dawn, and the new day came with every
one sure of God's fatherhood and life eternal, of the law of love and
the supremacy of character and with everyone living as though these
were true? Whatever intellectual perplexities of belief a man may
have, he knows that such a world would be divinely great. No war, no
evil lust, no covetous selfishness, no drunkenness! Mankind, relieved
of ancient burdens which have ruined character and crushed endeavor,
confident of faiths that give life infinite horizons and deathless
hopes, in cooperative international fraternity would be making the
earth a decent home for God to rear his children in. One finds it hard
to believe that ideas which, incarnate in life, would so redeem the
world are false.

As to the effect of the Christian affirmations on individual
character, we do not need to picture an imagined future. A Character
has been here who has lived them out. A jury of philosophers might
analyze the wood-work and the metals of an organ, and guess from form
and material what it is, but we still should need for our assurance a
musician. When he sweeps the keys in harmony we _know_ that it is an
organ. So when the philosophers have debated the pros and cons of
argument concerning faith, Jesus _plays_ the Gospel. His life is the
Christian affirmations done into character. When religious faith, at
its best, is incarnate in a Man, this is the consequence. And
multitudes of folk, living out the implications of the faith, have
found the likeness of the Master growing in them. Weighty confirmation
of the Gospel's _truth_ arrives when its meaning is translated into
life; the world will not soon reject the New Testament in this
edition--bound in a Man.

To one in perplexity about belief, this proper question therefore
rises: What do we think about the Christlike character? Is it not life
at its sublimest elevation? But to acknowledge that and yet to deny
the central faiths by which such life is lived is to say that those
ideas which, incarnate, make living great are false, and those ideas
which leave life meager of motive and bereft of hope are true. No one
lives on such a basis in any other realm. We always mistrust the
validity of any idea which works poorly or not at all. And so far from
being a practical makeshift, this "negative pragmatism" is a true
principle of knowledge. Says Professor Hocking, of Harvard, "If a
theory has no consequences, or bad ones; if it makes no difference to
men, or else undesirable differences; if it lowers the capacity of men
to meet the stress of existence, or diminishes the worth to them of
what existence they have; such a theory is somehow false, and we have
no peace until it is remedied." The last word against irreligion is
that it makes life unlivable; the last word for faith is that it makes
life glorious.


VI

One who is facing intellectual difficulties in the way of faith may
well consider that the very Christian life for whose possession he is
seeking justification is itself an argument of the first importance.
This life grew up in the universe; it is one expression of the
universe; and it is hard to think that it does not reveal a nature
kindred to itself in the source from which it came.

Mankind has always experienced a relationship with the Unseen which
has seemed like communion of soul with Soul. When a psychologist like
Professor James, of Harvard, reduces to its most general terms this
religious Fact which has been practically universal in the race, he
puts it thus: "Man becomes conscious that this higher part (his
spiritual life) is coterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same
quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which
he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of
and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the
wreck." No experience of man is more common in occurrence, more
tremendous in result than this. From the mystics whose vivid sense of
God canceled their consciousness that anything else was real, to plain
folk who in the strength of the divine alliance have lived ordinary
lives with extraordinary spirit, mankind as a whole has known that the
best in man is in contact with a MORE.

One does not need to be of a mystical temperament, given to raptures,
to know what this means. Let him consider his own experience of love
and duty, how he is bound by them to his ideals and woven into a
community of personal life not only with his friends but with all
humanity, until this spiritual life of his becomes the most august and
commanding power he knows. When in our bodies we so discern a physical
nature, whose laws and necessities we did not create, and whose power
binds us into a community of need and labor with our fellows, our
conclusion is confident. This experience is the basis of our assurance
that a _physical universe is really here_. When, likewise in our
inner selves we find a spiritual life, which man did not create, in
obedience to which alone is safety, and peace, and power, what shall
we conclude? That there is a _spiritual universe_ as plainly
evidenced in man's soul as the physical universe is in the body! And
when we note the attributes of this Spiritual Order, how it demands
righteousness, rebukes sin, welcomes obedience and holds out ideals of
endless possibility, it is plain that we are talking about something
close of kin to God. As in summer we beat out through some familiar
bay, naming the headlands as we sail, until if we go far enough, we
cannot prevent our eyes from looking out across the unbounded sea, so
if a man moves out through his own familiar spiritual life far enough,
he comes to the Spiritual Order which is God. Man has not drifted into
his religion by accident or fallen on it merely as superstition; he
has moved out from his inner life to affirm a Spiritual Order as
inevitably as he has moved out from his bodily experiences to affirm a
physical universe.

When from this general experience we turn to the specific experiences
of religion, which prayer and worship represent, the testimony of the
race is confident. Men have not all these ages been lifting up their
souls to an unreality from which no response has come. The artesian
well of transforming influence in human souls has not flowed from
Nowhere. Some, indeed, hearing confidence in God founded on the
individual experiences of man, derisively cry "Nonsense!" But if one
were to prove that the Sistine Madonna is beautiful, he would have to
offer his experience in evidence. "I went to Dresden," he might say,
"up into the room where the Madonna hangs ... and it _is_ beautiful. I
saw it." Met with derision by a doubter, as though his experience were
no proof at all, how shall he proceed? "I am not the only one," he
might continue, "who has perceived its beauty. All these centuries the
folk best qualified to judge have gone up into that room and have come
down again, sure that Raphael's work is beautiful." Is anyone in a
position to deride that? So through all ages men and women, from
lowest savages to the race's spiritual kings and queens, have gone up
to the Divine, and, at their best, from experiences of prayer,
worship, forgiven sins, transfigured lives, have come down sure that
Reality is there. _One may not call nonsense the most universal and
influential experience of the human race!_

The force of this fact is more clearly seen when one considers that
man has grown up in this universe, gradually developing his powers and
functions as responses to his environment. If he has eyes, so the
biologists assure us, it is because the light waves played upon the
skin and eyes came out in answer; if he has ears it is because the air
waves were there first and ears came out to hear. Man never yet,
according to the evolutionist, has developed any power save as a
reality called it into being. There would be no fins if there were no
water, no wings if there were no air, no legs if there were no land.
Always the developing organism has been trying to "catch up with its
environment." Yet some would tell us that man's noblest power of all
has developed in a vacuum. They would say that his capacity to deal
with a Spiritual World, to believe in God, and in prayer to experience
fellowship with him, has all grown up with no Reality to call it into
being. If so, it stands alone in man's experience, the only function
of his life that grew without an originating Fact to call it forth. It
does not seem reasonable to think that. The evidence of man's
experience is overwhelmingly in favor of a Reality to which his spirit
has been trying to answer. Said Max Müller, "To the philosopher the
existence of God may seem to rest on a syllogism; in the eyes of the
historian it rests on the whole evolution of human thought."




CHAPTER VI

Faith's Greatest Obstacle


DAILY READINGS

The speculative doubts leave many minds untouched, but one universal
human experience sooner or later faces every serious life with
questions about God's goodness. We all meet trouble, in ourselves or
others, and oftentimes the wonder why in God's world such calamities
should fall, such wretchedness should continually exist, plunges faith
into perplexity. Few folk of mature years can fail to understand Edwin
Booth when he wrote to a friend, "Life is a great big spelling book,
and on every page we turn the words grow harder to understand the
meaning of." Now, the basis of any intelligent explanation of faith's
problem must rest in a _right practical attitude toward trouble_.
To the consideration of that we turn in the daily readings.


Sixth Week, First Day

 =Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you,
 which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing
 happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ's
 sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory also ye may
 rejoice with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached for the name of
 Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of
 God resteth upon you. For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a
 thief, or an evil-doer, or as a meddler in other men's matters: but
 if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him
 glorify God in this name.... Wherefore let them also that suffer
 according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a
 faithful Creator.--I Pet. 4:12-16, 19.=

Such an attitude toward trouble as Peter here recommends is the most
wholesome and hopeful possible to man. And it is reasonable too, if
only on the ground that trouble _develops in men the essential
qualities of strong character_. Our highest admiration is always
reserved for men who master difficult crises. If the story of Joseph,
begun beside Bedouin camp fires centuries ago, can easily be
naturalized beside modern radiators; if Robinson Crusoe, translated
into every tongue is understood by all, the reason lies in the depth
of man's heart, where to make the most out of untoward situations is a
daily problem. Not every one can grasp the argument or perceive the
beauty of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," but one thing about
them every man appreciates--the blind Milton, sitting down to write
them:

                  "I argue not
  Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
  Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
  Right onward."

The full understanding of Ole Bull's playing on the violin was
necessarily restricted to the musical, but no restriction bounds the
admiration of men, learned or simple, when in a Munich concert, his A
string snaps and he finishes the composition on three strings. That is
the human problem in epitome. Getting music out of life's remainders
after the break has come; winning the battle with what is left from a
defeat; going blind, like Milton, and writing sublimest poetry, or
deaf, like Beethoven, and composing superb sonatas; being reared in an
almshouse and buried from Westminster Abbey, like Henry M. Stanley;
or, like Kernahan, born without arms or legs and yet sitting at last
in the British Parliament--all such hardihood and undiscourageable
pluck reach back in a man's bosom beyond the strings that ease and
luxury can touch, and strike there an iron, reverberating chord.
Nothing in human life is so impressive as pluck, "fighting with the
scabbard after the sword is gone." And no one who deeply considers
life can fail to see that our best character comes when, as Peter
says, we "suffer as a Christian."

 _O Lord our God, let our devout approach to Thee be that of the
 heart, not of the lips. Let it be in obedience to Thy spiritual law,
 not to any outward ritual. Thou desirest not temples nor offerings,
 but the sacrifice of a lowly and grateful heart Thou will not
 despise. Merciful Father, to all Thy dispensations we would submit
 ourselves, not grudgingly, not merely of necessity, but because we
 believe in Thy wisdom, Thy universal rule, and Thy goodness. In
 bereavement and in sorrow, in death as in life, in joys and in
 happiness, we would see Thy Hand. Teach us to see it; increase our
 faith where we cannot see; teach us also to love justice, and to do
 mercy, and to walk humbly with Thee our God. Make us at peace with
 all mankind, gentle to those who offend us, faithful in all duties,
 and sincere in sorrow when we fail in duty. Make us loving to one
 another, patient in distress, and ever thankful to Thy Divine power,
 which keeps, and guides, and blesses us every day. Lord, accept our
 humble prayer, accomplish in us Thy holy will. Let Thy peace reign in
 our hearts, and enable us to walk with Thee in love; through Jesus
 Christ our Lord. Amen._--Francis W. Newman, 1805.


Sixth Week, Second Day

 =Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are
 naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and we
 toil, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being
 persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the
 filth of the world, the offscouring of all things, even until now.--I
 Cor. 4:11-13.=

If Paul could be questioned about the experience of trouble which
these verses vividly express, would he not say that there had been
qualities of character in him and resources in his relationship with
God which he never would have known about had it not been for the test
of adversity? Trouble not only develops but also _reveals_ character;
we do not know ourselves until we have been tried out in calamity. The
simplest demand of adversity on every man is that he be "game." Henry
Newbolt is not indulging in rhetoric when he tells of a Soudan battle
where a British square made up of Clifton graduates is hard beset by a
charge of fierce enemies, and, in that crisis, makes the cry of a
Clifton football captain, "Play up, boys, play the game!" rally the
men and save the day. At school or in the Soudan the problem is the
same; the sling with which David plays in his youth is his chief
reliance when Goliath comes; a "game" spirit is essential to character
from birth to death. We turn from the story of Nelson at Aboukir,
nailing six flags to his mast so that if even five were shot away no
one would dream that he had surrendered, to find that the spirit there
exemplified is applicable to our most common day. The quality which
made Nelson an Admiral of England, in spite of his lost arm, his lost
eye, his small stature, and his feeble health is one of our elemental
needs. And to a supreme degree this quality was in great Christians
like Paul. Read his letter to the Philippians and see! Adversity
brought his spirit to light, and made it an asset of the cause. In a
real sense, trouble, however forbidding, was one of Paul's best
friends, and there was a good reason why he should "rejoice in
tribulations."

 _O Father of spirits! Thou lovest whom Thou chastenest! Correct us in
 our weakness as the children of men, that we may love Thee in our
 strength as the sons of God. May the same mind be in us which was
 also in Jesus Christ, that we may never shrink, when our hour comes,
 from drinking of the cup that he drank of. Wake in us a soul to obey
 Thee, not with the weariness of servile spirits, but with the
 alacrity of the holy angels. Fill us with a contempt of evil
 pleasures and unfaithful ease; sustain us in the strictness of a
 devout life. Daily may we crucify every selfish affection, and
 delight to bear one another's burdens, to uphold each other's faith
 and charity, being tender-hearted and forgiving as we hope to be
 forgiven. Hold us to the true humility of the soul that has not yet
 attained; and may we be modest in our desire, diligent in our trust,
 and content with the disposals of Thy Providence. O Lord of life and
 death! Thy counsels are secret; Thy wisdom is infinite: we know not
 what a day may bring forth. When our hour arrives, and the veil
 between the worlds begins to be lifted before us, may we freely trust
 ourselves to Thee, and say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my
 spirit." Amen._--James Martineau.


Sixth Week, Third Day

If adversity, rightly used, so develops and reveals character, we may
expect to find trouble as a background to the most admirable men of
the race. We read the luminous histories of Francis Parkman and do not
perceive, behind the printed page, the original manuscript, covered
with a screen of parallel wires, along which the blind author ran his
pencil that he might write legibly. We think of James Watt as a genius
at invention, and perhaps recall that Wordsworth said of him, "I look
upon him, considering both the magnitude and the universality of his
genius, as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this country ever
produced." But Watt himself we forget--sickly of body, starving on
eight shillings a week, and saying, "Of all things in life there is
nothing more foolish than inventing." Kant's philosophy was a turning
point in human thought, but lauding Kant, how few recall his struggle
with a broken body! Said he, speaking of his incurable illness, "I
have become master of its influence in my thoughts and actions by
turning my attention away from this feeling altogether, just as if it
did not at all concern me." Wilberforce, the liberator of British
slaves, we know, and beside his grave in Westminster Abbey we recall
the superb title that he earned, "the attorney general of the
unprotected and of the friendless," but the Wilberforce who for twenty
years was compelled to use opium to keep himself alive, and had the
resolution never to increase the dose--who knows of him? One of the
chief rewards of reading biography is this introduction that it gives
to handicapped men; the knowledge it imparts of the world's great
saints and scripture makers, conquerors and reformers, who, in the
words of Thucydides, "dared beyond their strength, hazarded against
their judgment, and in extremities were of excellent hope." And when
one turns to the supreme Character, could the dark background be
eliminated and still leave Him?

 =But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold
 him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus,
 because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that
 by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man. For it
 became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things,
 in bringing many sons unto glory to make the author of their
 salvation perfect through sufferings.--Heb. 2:8-10.=

 _O God, who art unsearchable in Thy judgments, and in Thy ways past
 finding out, we bow before the mystery of Thy Being, and confess that
 we know nothing, and can say nothing worthy of Thee. We cannot
 understand Thy dealings with us. We have faith, not sight; when we
 cannot see, we may only believe. Sometimes Thou seemest to have no
 mercy upon us. Thou dost pierce us through our most tender
 affections, quenching the light of our eyes in dreadful darkness.
 Death tears from us all that we love, and Thou art seemingly deaf to
 all our cries. Our earthly circumstances are reversed and bitter
 poverty is appointed us, yet Thou takest no heed, and bringest no
 comfort to the sorrow and the barrenness of our life. Still would we
 trust in Thee and cling to that deepest of our instincts which tells
 us that we come from Thee and return to Thee. Be with us, Father of
 Mercies, in love and pity and tenderness unspeakable. Lift our souls
 into Thy perfect calm, where all our wills are in harmony with Thine.
 Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Sixth Week, Fourth Day

To one perplexed and disheartened by adversity, a theoretical
explanation is generally not half as valuable as concrete instances of
courage and fortitude, founded on faith. Whether we be theologians or
scientists or as ignorant of both as Caliban, there is an immediate,
personal call to arms in the brave fight of George Matheson, one of
Scotland's great preachers for all his blindness, or in Louis
Pasteur's indomitable will, making his discoveries despite the
paralytic stroke that in his forty-sixth year crippled his strength.
The qualities which we admire in them are a sort of apotheosis of the
qualities which we need in ourselves. For we all are handicapped, some
by ill-starred heredity, by unhappy environment, or by the
consequences of our own neglect and sin; some by poverty, some by
broken bodies, or by dissevered family ties--and all of us by
unfortunate dispositions. It does us good then to know that Phillips
Brooks failed as a teacher. His biographer tells us that so did his
first ambition to be an educator cling to him, that in the prime of
life, when he was the prince of preachers, he came from President
Eliot's office, pale and trembling, because he had refused a
professorship at Harvard. So Robertson, of Brighton, whose sermons
began a new epoch in British Christianity, was prevented from being a
soldier only by the feebleness of his body, and Sir Walter Scott, who
wanted to be a poet, turned to novel writing, anonymously and
tentatively trying a new role, because, as he frankly put it, "Because
Byron beat me." He is an excellent cook who knows how to make a good
dinner out of the left-overs, and hardly a more invigorating truth is
taught by history than that most of the finest banquets spread for the
delectation of the race have been prepared by men who made them out of
the leavings of disappointed hopes.

 =Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a
 cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so
 easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
 before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith,
 who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising
 shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For
 consider him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against
 himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.--Heb. 12:1-3.=

 _Our Father, we thank Thee that while we are sure of Thy protecting
 care, Thy causal providence, which foresees all things, we can bear
 the sorrows of this world, and do its duties, and endure its manifold
 and heavy cross. We thank Thee that when distress comes upon us, and
 our mortal schemes vanish into thin air, we know there is something
 solid which we can lay hold of, and not be frustrate in our hopes.
 Yea, we thank Thee that when death breaks asunder the slender thread
 of life whereon our family jewels are strung, and the precious stones
 of our affection fall from our arms or neck, we know Thou takest them
 and elsewhere givest them a heavenly setting, wherein they shine
 before the light of Thy presence as morning stars, brightening and
 brightening to more perfect glory, as they are transfigured by Thine
 own almighty power._

 _We thank Thee for all the truth which the stream of time has brought
 to us from many a land and every age. We thank Thee for the noble
 examples of human nature which Thou hast raised up, that in times of
 darkness there are wise men, in times of doubt there are firm men,
 and in every peril there stand up heroes of the soul to teach us
 feebler men our duty, and to lead all of Thy children to trust in
 Thee. Father, we thank Thee that the seed of righteousness is never
 lost, but through many a deluge is carried safe, to make the
 wilderness to bloom and blossom with beauty ever fragrant and ever
 new, and the desert bear corn for men and sustain the souls of the
 feeble when they faint. Amen._--Theodore Parker.


Sixth Week, Fifth Day

One distinguishing mark of the men who have won their victories with
the remnants of their defeat is that they refuse to describe their
unideal conditions in negative terms. If they cannot live in southern
California where they would choose to live, but must abide in New
England instead, they do not describe New England in terms of its
deficiencies--no orange groves, no acres of calla lilies, no palm
trees. There are compensations even in New England, if one will
carefully take account of stock and see what positively is there! Or
if a man would choose to live in Boston and must live in Labrador, the
case of Grenfell suggests that a positive attitude toward his
necessity will discover worth, and material for splendid triumphs even
on that inhospitable coast. The mark of the handicapped men who have
made the race's history glorious has always been their patriotism for
the country where they had to live. They do not stop long to pity
themselves, or to envy another's opportunity, or to blame circumstances
for their defeat, or to dream of what might have been, or to bewail
their disappointed hopes. If the soil of their condition will not grow
one crop, they discover what it will grow. They have insight, as did
Moses, to see holy ground where an ordinary man would have seen only
sand and sagebrush and sheep.

 =Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the
 priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness,
 and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb. And the angel of Jehovah
 appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and
 he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was
 not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this
 great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when Jehovah saw that he
 turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the
 bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said,
 Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the
 place whereon thou standest is holy ground.--Exodus 3:1-5.=

 _Father of life, and God of the living, Fountain of our being and
 Light of all our day; we thank Thee for that knowledge of Thyself
 which lights our life with eternal splendor, for that giving of
 Thyself which has made us partakers of Thy divine nature. We bless
 Thee for everything around us which ministers Thee to our minds; for
 the greatness and glory of nature, for the history of our race, and
 the lives of noble men; for the thoughts of Thee expressed in human
 words, in the art of painters and musicians, in the work of builders
 and craftsmen. We bless Thee for the constant memories of what we are
 that rise within ourselves; for the pressure of duty, the hush of
 solemn thoughts, for moments of insight when the veil on the face of
 all things falls away, for hours of high resolve when life is
 quickened within, for seasons of communion when, earth and sense
 forgotten, heaven holds our silent spirits raptured and aflame._

 _We have learned to praise Thee for the darker days when we had to
 walk by faith, for weary hours that strengthened patience and
 endeavor, for moments of gloom and times of depression which taught
 us to trust, not to changing tides of feeling, but to Thee who
 changest not. And now since Christ has won His throne by His cross of
 shame, risen from His tomb to reign forever in the hearts of men, we
 know that nothing can ever separate us from Thee; that in all
 conflicts we may be more than conquerors; that all dark and hostile
 things shall be transformed and work for good to those who know the
 secret of Thy love._

 _Glory be to Thee, O Lord. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Sixth Week, Sixth Day

When folk have seen into human life deeply enough so that they
perceive how adversity can be used to high issues, faith in God
becomes not so much a speculative problem as a practical need. They
want to deal with trouble nobly. They see that faith in God gives the
outlook on life which makes the hopeful facing of adverse situations
reasonable and which supplies power to make it possible. The result is
that the _great sufferers have been the great believers_. The idea
that fortunate circumstances make vital faith in God probable is
utterly unsupported by history. Hardly an outstanding champion of
faith who has left an indelible impress on man's spiritual life can
anywhere be found, who has not won his faith and confirmed it in the
face of trouble. What is true of individuals is true of generations.
The days of Israel's triumphant faith did not come in Solomon's reign,
when wealth was plentiful and national ambitions ran high. The great
prophets and the great psalms stand out against the dark background of
the Exile and its consequences.

 =Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Jehovah; awake, as in the
 days of old, the generations of ancient times. Is it not thou that
 didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the monster? Is it not
 thou that driedst up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that
 madest the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And
 the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come with singing unto
 Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall
 obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.=

 =I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou art
 afraid of man that shall die, and of the son of man that shall be
 made as grass; and hast forgotten Jehovah thy Maker, that stretched
 forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and fearest
 continually all the day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he
 maketh ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor? The
 captive exile shall speedily be loosed; and he shall not die and go
 down into the pit, neither shall his bread fail. For I am Jehovah thy
 God, who stirreth up the sea, so that the waves thereof roar: Jehovah
 of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and have
 covered thee in the shadow of my hand, that I may plant the heavens,
 and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my
 people.--Isa. 51:9-16.=

That is a voice out of the Exile. Such great believers, whose faith
shone brightest when the night was darkest, have not pretended to know
the explanation of suffering in God's world. But they have had insight
to see a little and trust for the rest. Stevenson has expressed their
faith: "If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon a least
part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny
some broken evidences of a plan, and some signals of an overruling
goodness; shall I then be so mad as to complain that all cannot be
deciphered? Shall I not rather wonder, with infinite and grateful
surprise, that in so vast a scheme I seem to have been able to read,
however little, and that little was encouraging to faith?"

 _We thank Thee, O God, that Thou dost ride upon the cloud, and govern
 the storm. All that to us is dark is light to Thee. The night shineth
 as the day. All that which seems to us irregular and ungoverned, is
 held in Thine hand, even as the steed by the rein. From age to age
 Thou dost control the long procession of events, discerning the end
 from the beginning; and all the wild mixture, all the confusion, all
 the sorrow and the suffering, is discerned of Thee. As is the palette
 to the color, as is violence to development in strength, as is the
 crushing of the grape to the wine, so in Thy sight all things are
 beneficent that to us are most confusing and seemingly conflicting
 and threatening. Sorrow and pain and disaster are woven in the loom
 of God; and in the end we, too, shall be permitted to discern the
 fair pattern, and understand how that which brought tears here shall
 bring righteousness there._

 _O, how good it is to trust Thee, and to believe that Thou art wise,
 and that Thou art full of compassion, as Thou carriest on Thy great
 work of love and benevolence, sympathizing with all that suffer on
 the way, and gathering them at last with an exceeding great
 salvation! We trust Thee, not because we understand Thee, but because
 in many things Thou hast taught us where we should have been afraid
 to trust. We have crossed many a gulf and many a roaring stream upon
 the bridge of faith, and have exulted to find ourselves safe landed,
 and have learned to trust Thee, as a child a parent, as a passenger
 the master of a ship, not because we know, but because Thou knowest.
 Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.


Sixth Week, Seventh Day

 =Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth
 them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the
 rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds
 blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded
 upon the rock. And every one that heareth these words of mine, and
 doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his
 house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and
 the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was
 the fall thereof.--Matt. 7:24-27.=

An important fact is here asserted by the Master, which is commonly
obscured in the commentaries. He says that no matter whether a man's
life be built on sand or on rock, he yet will experience the blasts of
adversity; on both houses alike "the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew." The Master repeatedly affirmed that trouble
comes without necessary reference to character, that while we may
always argue that sin causes suffering, we never can confidently argue
that suffering comes from sin (Luke 13:4; John 9:1-3). Folks
needlessly and unscripturally harass their souls when they suppose
that some special trouble must have befallen them because of some
special sin. The book of Job was written to disprove that, and as for
the Master, he distinctly says that the man of faith with his house on
a rock faces the same storm that wrecks the faithless man. _The
difference is not in the adversity, but in the adversity's effect._
No more important question faces any soul than this: seeing that
trouble is an unevadable portion of every life, good or bad, what am I
to do with it? Says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Did you ever happen to see
that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint? The
smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her
delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its
fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and
will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date
upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great
silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or a moment--as
sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it."
The only flaw in that simile is that the coin cannot decide what
impression shall be made. But we can. Rebellion, despair, bitterness,
or triumphant faith--we can say which impression adversity shall leave
upon us.

 _O God of our life, whom we dimly apprehend and never can comprehend,
 to whom nevertheless we justly ascribe all goodness as well as all
 greatness; as a father teaches his children, so teach us, Lord, truer
 thoughts of Thee. Teach us to aspire, so far as man may lawfully
 aspire, to a knowledge of Thee. Thou art not only a God to be honored
 in times of rest and ease, Thou art also the Refuge of the
 distressed, the Comforter of the afflicted, the Healer of the
 contrite, and the Support of the unstable. As we sympathize with
 those who are sore smitten by calamity, wounded by sudden accident,
 wrecked in the midst of security, so must we believe that Thy mighty
 all-embracing heart sympathizes. Pitier of the orphan, God of the
 widow, cause us to share Thy pity and become Thy messengers of
 tenderness in our small measure. Be Thou the Stay of all in life and
 death. Teach all to know and trust Thee, give us a portion here and
 everywhere with Thy saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 Amen._--Francis W. Newman, 1805.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

Few who have sincerely tried to believe in God's goodness and who have
lived long enough to face the harrowing facts of human wretchedness
will doubt what obstacle most hampers faith. The major difficulty
which perplexes many Christians, when they try to reconcile God's love
with their experience, is not belief's irrationality but life's
injustice. According to the Psalmist, "The fool hath said in his
heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1). But the fool is not the only
one who has said that. He said it, jeering; he announced it in
derision; he did not want God, and contemptuous denial was a joy. It
was the temper of his negation that made him a fool. But many hearts,
in tones far different from his, have said, "There is no God." Parents
cry it brokenheartedly beside the graves of children; the diseased cry
it, suffering from keener agony than they can bear; fathers cry it
when their battle against poverty has failed and their children plead
in vain for bread; and men who care about their kind say it as they
watch the anguish with which war, drunkenness, lust, disease, and
poverty afflict the race. No man of moral insight will call such folk
fools. The wretchedness and squalor, the misery and sin which rest
upon so much of humankind are a notorious difficulty in the way of
faith.

In dealing with this problem two short cuts are often tried, and by
them some minds endeavor to evade the issue which faith ought to meet.
Some _minimize the suffering_ which creation cost and which man
and animals are now enduring. We must grant that when we read the
experience of animals in terms of man's own life, we always exaggerate
their pain. Animals never suffer as we do; their misery is not
compounded by our mental agonies of regret and fear; and even their
physical wretchedness is as much lower in intensity as their nerves
are less exquisitely tuned. Darwin, who surely did not underestimate
the struggle for existence, said in a letter, "According to my
judgment, happiness decidedly prevails. All sentient beings have been
formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness." We must grant
also that man's practical attitude toward life gives the lie to
pessimism. Only the suicides are the logical pessimists, and all the
rest of men, most with good heart and multitudes with jubilant
enthusiasm, do actually cling to life. Indeed, all normal men
discover, that, within limits, their very hardships are a condition of
their happiness and do not so much abate their love of life is they
add zest and tang. We must grant further that suffering should be
measured not by quantity, but by intensity. One sensitive man enduring
bereavement, poverty, or disease represents _all_ the suffering
that ever has been or ever can be felt. To speak of limitless
suffering, therefore, is false. There is no more wretchedness anywhere
nor in all the world together, than each one can know in his own
person.

When all this, however, has been granted, the facts of the world's
misery are staggering. Modern science has given terrific sweep and
harrowing detail to Paul's assertion, "The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now" (Rom. 8:22). Let one whose
insight into misery's meanings is quickened by even a little
imagination, try to sum up the agony of drunkards' homes, of bereaved
families, of hospitals, insane asylums, jails, and prisons, of war
with its unmentionable horrors--its blinded, deafened, maddened,
raped--and no small palliatives can solve his problem. Rather he
understands the picture which James Russell Lowell said he saw years
ago in Belgium: an angel holding back the Creator and saying, "If
about to make such a world, stay thine hand."

Another short cut by which some endeavor to simplify the problem and
content their thought is _to lift responsibility for life's
wretchedness from God's shoulders and to put it upon man's_. Were
man's sin no factor in the world, some say, life's miseries would
cease; all the anguish of our earthly lot stands not to God's
responsibility but to man's shame. But the sufferings of God's
creatures did not begin with man's arrival, and the pain of creation
before man sinned is a longer story than earth's misery since. Let
Romanes picture the scene: "Some hundred of millions of years ago,
some millions of millions of animals must be supposed to have become
sentient. Since that time till the present, there must have been
millions and millions of generations of millions and millions of
individuals. And throughout all this period of incalculable duration,
this inconceivable host of sentient organizations have been in a state
of unceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain. Looking to the outcome, we
find that more than one-half of the species which have survived the
ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient
forms of life, feasting on higher and sentient forms, we find teeth
and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers molded for
torture--everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing
blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence
that dimly close in deaths of cruel torture." Is man responsible for
that? For cold that freezes God's living creatures, for lightning that
kills them, for volcanoes that burn them, for typhoons that crush
them--is man responsible? By no such easy evasion may we escape the
problem which faith must meet. "In sober truth," as John Stuart Mill
exclaimed, "nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned
for doing to one another, are Nature's everyday performances." Who can
avoid seeing the patent contrast between the Father of Jesus and the
Creator of such a world? "The power that launches earthquakes and arms
cuttlefish," said one perplexed believer, "has but a meager
relationship to the power that blesses infants and forgives enemies."


II

Could we hold this problem at arm's length, discussing it in
speculative moods when we grow curious about the makeup of the
universe, our case would be more simple. But of all life's problems,
this most certainly--sometimes creeping, sometimes crashing--invades
our private lives. Every man has a date with adversity which he must
keep and which adversity does not forget. One notes the evidence of
this in every normally maturing life. As children we wanted happiness
and were impatient, lacking it. Our cups of pleasure easily brimmed
and overflowed. A Christmas tree or a birthday party--and our hearts
were like sun-parlors on cloudless days with all the windows open to
the light! But the time comes to all when happiness like this is not
our problem; we recognize that it is gone; our Edens are behind us
with flaming angels at the gate. We have had friends and lost them and
something has gone from our hearts that does not return; we have won
successes which we do not estimate as highly in possession as we did
in dreams, and it may be have lost what little we achieved; we have
sinned, and though forgiven, the scars are still upon us; we have been
weathered by the rains and floods and winds. Happiness in the old
fashion we no longer seek. We want peace, the power to possess our
souls in patience and to do our work. We want joy, which is a profound
and spiritually begotten grace as happiness is not. This maturity
which so has faced the tragic aspects of our human life is not less
desirable than childhood; it may be richer, fuller, steadier. We may
think of it as Wordsworth did about the English landscape--that not
for all the sunny skies of Italy would he give up the mists that
spiritualize the English hills. But when trouble comes, life faces a
new set of problems that childhood little knew. We have joined the
human procession that moves out into the inevitable need of comfort
and fortitude.

The decisive crisis in many lives concerns the attitude which this
experience evokes. Some are led by it more deeply into the meanings of
religion. The Bible grows in their apprehension with the enlarging of
their life; new passages become radiant as, in a great landscape,
hills and valleys lately unillumined catch the rays of the rising sun.
At first the human friendliness of Jesus is most real, and the Bible's
stories of adventure for God's cause; then knightly calls to character
and service become luminous; but soon or late another kind of passage
grows meaningful: "Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, our
Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through
grace, comfort your hearts and establish them" (II Thess. 2:16).
Others, so far from being led by adversity into the deeper meanings
of faith, renounce faith altogether, and fling themselves into open
rebellion against life and any God who may be responsible for its
tragedy. They may not dare to say what James Thomson did, but they
think it--

  "Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
    I think myself; yet I would rather be
    My miserable self than He, than He
  Who formed such creatures to his own disgrace.

  The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
    From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
    Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred,
  Malignant and implacable! I vow

  That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
    For all the temples to Thy glory built,
    Would I assume the ignominious guilt
  Of having made such men in such a world!"

Many, however, are not by adversity made more sure of God, nor are
they driven into rebellion against him. They are perplexed. It had
been so much easier, in the sheltered and innocent idealism of their
youth, to believe in God than it is now. As children they looked on
life as they might have listened to Mozart's music, ravished with
unqualified delight; but now they know that Mozart died in abject
poverty, that the coffin which his wife could not buy was donated by
charity, that as the hearse went to the grave the driver loudly damned
the dead because no drink money had been given him, and that to this
day no one knows where Mozart's body lies. Maturity has to deal with
so much more tragic facts than youth can ever know. With all the
philosophy that man's wit can supply, the wisest find themselves
saying what Emerson did, two years after his son's death: "I have had
no experience, no progress to put me into better intelligence with my
calamity than when it was new." And in this inevitable wrestling with
adversity, the cry of men is not simply for more courage. They might
easily steady their hearts to endure and overcome, were only one
question's answer clear--is there any _sense_ in life's suffering? The
one unsupportable thought is that all life's pain and hardship is
meaningless and futile, that it has no worthy origin, serves no high
purpose, that in misery we are the sport of forces that have no
consciousness of what they do, no meaning in it and no care. Such folk
want to believe in God, but--can they?


III

Two preliminary facts about Christianity's relationship with our
problem may help to clarify our thought. The doubt sometimes obtrudes
itself on minds perplexed about life's tragedies that the Christian's
faith in a God of love is an idealistic dream. Such faiths as the
Fatherhood of God have come to men, they think, in happy hours when
calamity was absent or forgotten; they are the fruition of man's
fortunate days. And born thus of a view of life from which the
miseries of men had been shut out, this happy, ideal faith comes back
to painful realities with a shock which it cannot sustain. But is
Christian faith thus the child of man's happy days? Rather the very
symbol of Christianity is the Cross. Our faith took its rise in one of
history's most appalling tragedies, and the Gospel of a loving God, so
far from being an ideal dream, conceived apart from life's forbidding
facts, has all these centuries been intertwined with the public
brutality of a crucifixion. Every emphasis of the Christian's faith
has the mark of the Cross upon it. Jesus had said in words that God
was love, but it was at Calvary that the words took fire: "God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" (John 3:16). Jesus
had preached the divine forgiveness, but on Golgotha the message grew
imperative: "God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). Jesus had put into
parables the individual care of the Father for every child, but it was
the Cross that drove the great faith home: Christ tasted "death for
every man" (Heb. 2:9). Nothing in Christian faith has escaped the
formative influence of the Tragedy. The last thing to be said about
the Gospel is that it is a beautiful child-like dream which has not
faced the facts of suffering. In the New Testament are all the
miseries on which those who deny God's love count for support. We are
at home there with suffering men: "they were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went
about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted,
ill-treated (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts
and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth" (Heb. 11:37, 38).
The men with whom Christianity began were not strangers to such
trouble, so that some modern need remind their innocent and dreaming
faith that life is filled with mysterious adversity. _Christianity was
suckled on adversity; it was cradled in pain. At the heart of its Book
and its Gospel is a Good Man crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross,
with a spear wound in his side._

Nor have the great affirmations of faith in God's fatherhood ever been
associated with men of ease in fortunate circumstance. The voice that
cried "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" spoke in agonizing
pain. And through history one finds those words best spoken with a
cross for a background. Thomas á Becket said them, martyred in his own
cathedral; John Huss said them, going to the stake at Constance;
George Wishart said them, roasted at the foot of the sea-tower of St.
Andrews. Christian faith is not a dream that came in hours when human
trouble had been forgotten; it has furnished from the beginning an
interpretation of human trouble and an attitude in meeting it that has
made men "more than conquerors."

The second preliminary fact is this: _Christianity has never pretended
to supply a theoretical explanation of why suffering had to be_. This
seeming lack has excellent reason, for such an explanation, if it be
complete, is essentially beyond the reach of any finite mind. The most
comprehensive question ever asked, some philosopher has said, was put
by a child. "Why was there ever anything at all?" No finite mind can
answer that. And next in comprehensiveness, and in penetration to the
very pith of creation's meaning, is this query, "Why, if something had
to be, was it made as it is?" One must be God himself fully to answer
that, or to comprehend the answer, could it be written down. To expect
therefore, from Christianity or from any other source a theoretical
explanation that will plumb the depths of the mystery of suffering is
to cry for the essentially impossible. So Carlyle says with typical
vividness: "To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and
accident of its little native creek may have become familiar; but does
the minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the
Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the
condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time
(_un_-miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a
minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable
All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of
Providence through Aeons of Aeons."

So little is this inability of ours to know all that we wish about the
world a cause for regret, that it ought to be an occasion of positive
rejoicing. If _we_ could understand the universe through and
through, how small and meager the universe would have to be! The fact
is that we cannot understand anything through and through. If one is
disheartened because he cannot pierce to the heart of Providence and
know all its secrets, let him try his hand upon a pebble and see how
much better he will fare. What is a pebble? If one define it roughly
as granite he must ask what granite is; if that be defined in terms of
chemical properties, he must ask what they are; if they be defined as
ultimate forms of matter, he must inquire what matter is; and then he
will be told that matter is a "mode of motion," or will be assured by
a more candid scientist, like Professor Tait, that "we do not know and
are probably incapable of discovering what matter _is_." No one
ever solves the innermost problems of a stone, but what can be done
with stones our engineering feats are evidence.

If, therefore, we recognize at the beginning that the question why
suffering had to be is an ultimate problem, essentially insoluble by
finite minds, we need not be dismayed. Two opposing mysteries are in the
world--goodness and evil. If we _deny_ God, then _goodness_ is a
mystery, for no one has ever yet suggested how spiritual life could
rise out of an unspiritual source, how souls could come from dust. If
we _affirm_ God, then _evil_ is a mystery, for why, we ask, should
love create a world with so much pain and sin? Our task is not to
solve insoluble problems; it is to balance these alternatives--no God
and the mystery of man's spiritual life, against God and the mystery
of evil. Such a comparison is not altogether beyond our powers, nor
are weighty considerations lacking to affect our choice.


IV

For one thing, we may well inquire, when we complain of this world's
misery, what sort of world we are seeking in its place. Are we asking
for a perfectly happy world? But happiness, at its deepest and its
best, is not the portion of a cushioned life which never struggled,
overpassed obstacles, bore hardship, or adventured in sacrifice for
costly aims. A heart of joy is never found in luxuriously coddled
lives, but in men and women who achieve and dare, who have tried their
powers against antagonisms, who have met even sickness and bereavement
and have tempered their souls in fire. Joy is begotten not chiefly
from the impression of happy circumstance, but from the expression of
overcoming power. Were we set upon making a happy world, therefore, we
could not leave struggle out nor make adversity impossible. The
unhappiest world conceivable by man would be a world with nothing hard
to do, no conflicts to wage for ends worth while; a world where
courage was not needed and sacrifice was a superfluity. Beside such an
inane lotos-land of tranquil ease this present world with all its
suffering is a paradise. Men in fact find joy where in philosophy we
might not look for it. Said MacMillan, after a terrific twelve-month
with Peary on the Arctic continent: "This has been the greatest year
of my life."

The impossibility of imagining a worth-while world from which
adversity had all been banished is even more evident when one grows
ill-content to think of happiness as the goal of life. That we should
be merely happy is not an adequate end of the creative purpose for us,
or of our purpose for ourselves. In our best hours we acknowledge this
in the way we handle trouble. _However much in doubt a man may be
about the theory of suffering, he knows infallibly how suffering
practically should be met._ To be rebellious, cursing fate and
hating life; to pity oneself, nursing one's hurts in morbid
self-commiseration--the ignobility of such dealing with calamity we
indubitably know. Even where we fall feebly short of the ideal, we
have no question what the ideal is. When in biography or among our
friends we see folk face crushing trouble, not embittered by it, made
cynical, or thrust into despair, but hallowed, sweetened, illumined,
and empowered, we are aware that noble characters do not alone _bear_
trouble; they _use_ it. As men at first faced electricity in dread,
conceiving toward it no attitude beyond building lightning-rods to
ward away its stroke, but now with greater understanding harness it to
do their will, so men, as they grow wise and strong, deal with their
suffering. They make it the minister of character; they set it to
build in them what nothing save adversity can ever build--patience,
courage, sympathy, and power. They even choose it in vicarious
sacrifice for the good of others, and by it save the world from evils
that nothing save some one's suffering could cure. They act as though
_character_, not happiness, were the end of life. And when they are at
their best they do this not with stoic intrepidity, as though
trouble's usefulness were but their fancy, but joyfully, as though a
good purpose in the world included trouble, even though not intending
it. So Robert Louis Stevenson, facing death, writes to a friend about
an old woman whose ventriloquism had frightened the natives of
Vailima, "All the old women in the world might talk with their mouths
shut and not frighten you or me, but there are plenty of other things
that frighten us badly. And if we only knew about them, perhaps we
should find them no more worthy to be feared than an old woman talking
with her mouth shut. And the names of some of these things are Death
and Pain and Sorrow."

Whatever, then, may be our theoretical difficulty about suffering,
this truth is clear: when we are at our best we practically deal with
suffering as though moral quality were the goal of life. We _use_
adversity, as though discipline were its purpose and good its end. It
is worth noting that the only theory which fully fits this noblest
attitude toward trouble is Christianity. Men may think God a devil, as
James Thomson sang, and yet may be practically brave and cheerful, but
their theory does not fit their life. Men may believe in no God and no
purpose in the world, and yet may face adversity with courage and
hope, but their spirit belies their philosophy. When men are at their
best in hardship _they act as though the Christian faith in God were
true, as though moral quality were the purpose of creation_.

If now, we really want a world in which character is the end and
aim--and no other world is worth God's making--we obviously may not
demand the abolition of adversity. If one imagines a life from its
beginning lapped in ease and utterly ignorant what words like
hardship, sorrow, and calamity imply, he must imagine a life lacking
every virtue that makes human nature admirable. Character grows on
struggle; without the overcoming of obstacles great quality in
character is unthinkable. Whoever has handled well any calamitous
event possesses resources, insights, wise attitudes, qualities of
sympathy and power that by no other road could have come to him. For
all our complaints against life's misery, therefore, and for all our
inability to understand it in detail, who would not hesitate,
foreseeing the consequence, to take adversity away from men? He who
banishes hardship banishes hardihood; and out of the same door with
Calamity walk Courage, Fortitude, Triumphant Faith, and Sacrificial
Love. If we abolish the cross in the world, we make impossible the
Christ in man. It becomes more clear the more one ponders it, that
while this is often a hard world in which to be happy, to men of
insight and faith it may be a great world in which to build character.


V

Before too confidently, however, we accept this conclusion, there is
one objection to be heard. So far is the world from being absolved
from cruelty, on the plea of moral purpose, one may say, that _its
injustice is the very crux of its offense_. See how negligent of
justice the process of creation is! Its volcanoes and typhoons slay
good and bad alike, its plagues are utterly indifferent to character;
and in the human world which it embosoms some drunken Caesar sits upon
the throne while Christ hangs on the cross. Who for a single day can
watch the gross inequities of life, where good men so often suffer and
bad men go free, and still think that the world has moral purpose in
it? The Bible itself is burdened with complaint against the seeming
senselessness and injustice of God. Moses cries: "Lord, wherefore hast
thou dealt ill with this people? Neither hast thou delivered thy
people at all" (Exodus 5:22, 23); Elijah laments, "O Jehovah, my God,
hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow, with whom I sojourn, by
slaying her son?" (I Kings 17:20); Habakkuk complains, "Wherefore
lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy peace,
when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more righteous than he?"
(Hab. 1:13); and Job protests, "Although thou knowest that I am not
wicked, ... yet thou dost destroy me" (Job 10:7, 8). Man's loss of
faith springs often from this utter disparity between desert and
fortune. The time comes to almost every man when he looks on,
indignant, desperate, at some gross horror uninterrupted, some
innocent victim entreated cruelly. He understands Carlyle's impatient
cry, "God sits in heaven and does nothing!"

Natural as is this attitude, and unjust as many of life's tragic
troubles are, we should at least see this: _man must not demand that
goodness straightway receive its pay and wrong its punishment_. He
may not ask that every virtuous deed be at once rewarded by
proportionate happiness and every sin be immediately punished by
proportionate pain. That, some might suppose, would put justice into
life. But whatever it might put into life, such an arrangement
obviously would take out _character_. The men whose moral quality
we most highly honor were not paid for their goodness on Saturday
night and did not expect to be. They chose their course _for
righteousness' sake alone_, although they knew what crowns of
thorns, what scornful crowds about their cross might end the journey.
They did not drive close bargains with their fate, demanding insurance
against trouble as the price of goodness. They chose the honorable
deed for honor's sake; they chose it the more scrupulously, the more
pleasure was offered for dishonor; their tone in the face of
threatened suffering was like Milne's, Scotland's last martyr: "I will
not recant the truth, for I am corn and no chaff; and I will not be
blown away with the wind nor burst with the flail, but I will abide
both."

Every man is instinctively aware and by his admiration makes it known,
that the kind of character which chooses right, willing to suffer for
it, is man's noblest quality. The words in which such character has
found utterance are man's spiritual battle cries. Esther, going before
the King, saying, "If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4:16); the three
Hebrews, facing the fiery furnace saying, "Our God whom we serve is
able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver
us out of thy hand, O king. But if _not_, be it known unto thee, O
king, that we will not serve thy gods" (Dan. 3:17, 18); Peter and the
apostles, facing the angry Council, saying, "We must obey God rather
than men" (Acts 5:29); Anaxarchus, the martyr, crying, "Beat on at the
case of Anaxarchus; Anaxarchus himself you cannot touch"; Luther,
defying the Emperor, "Here stand I; I can do no other"--most words of
men are easily dispensable, but no words like these can man afford to
spare. They are his best. _And this sort of goodness has been
possible, because God had not made the world as our complaints
sometimes would have it._ For such character, a system where goodness
costs is absolutely necessary. A world where goodness was paid cash in
pleasant circumstance would have no such character to show. Right and
wrong for their own sakes would be impossible; only prudence and
imprudence for happiness' sake could there exist. Out of the same door
with the seeming injustice of life goes the possibility of man's
noblest quality--his goodness "in scorn of consequence." Many special
calamities no one on earth can hope to understand. But when one has
granted that fitness to grow character is the only worthy test of
creation, it evidently is not so simple as at first it seemed to
improve the fundamental structure of the world.


VI

Indeed, when one in imagination assumes the task of omnipotence and
endeavors to construct a universe that shall be fitted for the growth
of character, he cannot long hesitate concerning certain elements
which must be there. _A system of regular law_ would have to be the
basis of that world, for only in a law-abiding universe could
obedience be taught. If the stars and planets behaved "like swarms of
flies" and nothing could be relied upon to act twice in the same way,
character and intelligence alike would be impossible. In this new
world, remolded, "nearer to our heart's desire," _progress_ also would
be a necessity. A stagnant world cannot grow character. There must be
real work to do, aims to achieve; there must be imperfections to
overpass and wrongs to right. Only in a system where the present
situation is a point of departure and a better situation is a
possibility, where ideal and hope, courage and sacrifice are
indispensable can character grow. In this improved world of our
dreams, _free-will_ in some measure must be granted man. If character
is to be real, man must not in his choice between right and wrong be
as Spinoza pictured him, a stone hurled through the air, which thinks
that it is flying; he must have some control of conduct, some genuine,
though limited, power of choice. And in this universe which we are
planning for character's sake, individuals could not stand separate
and unrelated; _they must be woven into a community_. Love which is
the crown of character, lacking this, would be impossible. What
happens to one must happen to all; good and ill alike must be
contagious in a society where we are "members one of another."

No one of these four elements could be omitted from a world whose test
was its adaptability for character. Men with genuine power of choice,
fused into a fellowship of social life, living in a law-abiding and
progressive world--on no other terms imaginable to man could character
be possible. _Yet these four things contain all the sources of our
misery._ Physical law--what tragic issues its stern, unbending
course brings with terrific incidence on man! Progress--how obviously
it implies conditions imperfect, wrong, through which we have to
struggle toward the best! Free-will--what a nightmare of horror man's
misuse of it has caused since sin began! Social fellowship--how surely
the innocent must suffer with the guilty, how impossible for any man
to bear the consequence of his own sin alone! We may not see why these
general conditions should involve the particular calamities which we
bewail, but even our finite minds can see thus far into the mystery of
suffering: _all our trouble springs from four basic factors in the
universe, without any one of which, great character would be
impossible_.

While, therefore, if one _deny_ God, the mystery of goodness lacks
both sense and solution; one may _affirm_ God and find the mystery of
evil, mysterious still but suffused with light. God is working out a
spiritual purpose here by means without which no spiritual purpose is
conceivable. Fundamentally creation is good. We misuse it, we fail to
understand its meaning and to appropriate its discipline, and
impatient because the eternal purpose is not timed by our small
clocks, we have to confess with Theodore Parker, "The trouble seems to
be that God is not in a hurry and I am." In hours of insight, however,
we perceive how little our complaints will stand the test of
dispassionate thought. Our miseries are not God's inflictions on us as
individuals, so that we may judge his character and his thought of us
by this special favor or by that particular calamity. The most
careless thinker feels the poor philosophy of Lord Londonderry's
petulant entry in his journal: "Here I learned that Almighty God, for
reasons best known to himself, had been pleased to burn down my house
in the county of Durham." One must escape such narrow egoism if he is
to understand the purposes of God; one must rise to look on a
creation, with character at all costs for its aim, and countless æons
for its settling. In the making of this world God has _limited
himself_; he cannot lightly do what he will. He has limited himself in
creating a law-abiding system where his children must learn obedience
without special exemptions; in ordaining a progressive system where
what _is_ is the frontier from which men seek what _ought to be_; in
giving men the power to choose right, with its inevitable corollary,
the power to choose wrong; in weaving men into a communal fellowship
where none can escape the contagious life of all. What Martineau said
of the first of these is true in spirit of them all: "The universality
of law is God's eternal act of self limitation or abstinence from the
movements of free affection, for the sake of a constancy that shall
never falter or deceive."

When once a man has risen to the vision of so splendid a purpose in so
great a world, he rejoices in the outlook. Granted that now he sees in
a mirror darkly, that many a cruel event in human life perplexes
still--he has seen enough to give solid standing to his faith. What if
an insect, someone has suggested, were born just after a thunderstorm
began and died just before it stopped--how dark would be its picture
of creation! But we who span a longer period of time, are not so
obsessed by thunderstorms, although we may not like them. They have
their place and serve their purpose; we see them in a broader
perspective than an insect knows and on sultry days we even crave
their coming. A broken doll is to a child a cruel tragedy, but to the
father watching the child's struggle to accept the accident, to make
the best of it and to come off conqueror, the event is not utterly
undesirable. He is not glad at the child's suffering, but with his
horizons he sees in it factors which she does not see. So God's
horizons infinitely overpass our narrow outlooks. There is something
more than whimsy in the theologian's saying, which President King
reports, that an insect crawling up a column of the Parthenon, with
difficulty and pain negotiating passage about a pore in the stone, is
as well qualified to judge of the architecture of the Parthenon, as we
of the infinitude of God's plans. Seeing as much as we have seen of
sense and purpose in the structure of creation, we have seen all that
our finite minds with small horizons could have hoped. We have gained
ample justification for the attitude toward suffering which Dolly
Winthrop in Silas Marner has immortalized: "Eh, there's trouble i'
this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on.
And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner--to do the
right thing as far as we know and to trusten. For if us, as knows so
little, can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a
good and a rights bigger nor what we can know--I feel it i' my own
inside as it must be so."


VII

We may not truthfully leave our subject in such a case that faith's
concern with human misery will seem to lie merely in giving adversity
an explanation. Faith is concerned not alone to _explain_ misery
but to _heal_ it. For while it is impossible without hardship to
develop character, there are woeful calamities on earth that do not
help man's moral quality; they crush and mutilate it; they are
barbarous intruders on the plan of God and they have no business in
his world. Some ills are such that no theory can reconcile them with
the love of God and no man ought to desire such reconciliation; in the
love of God they ought to be abolished. Slavery must be a possibility
in a world where man is free; but God's goodness was not chiefly
vindicated by such a theory of explanation. It was chiefly vindicated
by slavery's abolishment. The liquor traffic and war, needless poverty
in a world so rich, avoidable diseases that science can overcome--how
long a list of woes there is that faith should not so much explain as
banish! When some ills like drunkenness and war and economic injustice
are thrust against our faith, and men ask that the goodness of God be
reconciled with these, faith's first answer should be not speculation
but action. Such woes, so far from being capable of reconciliation
with God's goodness, are irreconcilable with a decent world. God does
not want to be reconciled with them; he hates them "with a perfect
hatred." We may not make ourselves patient with them by any theory of
their necessity. They are not necessary; they are perversions of man's
life; and _the best defense of faith is their annihilation_.

Indeed, a man who, rebellious in complaint, has clamorously asked an
explanation of life's ills as the price of faith in God, may well in
shame consider God's real saints. When things were at their worst,
when wrong was conqueror and evils that seemed blatantly to deny the
love of God were in the saddle, these spiritual soldiers went out to
fight. The winds of ill that blow out our flickering faith made their
religion blaze--a pillar of fire in the night. The more evil they
faced, the more religion they produced to answer it. They were the
real believers, who "through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, obtained promises." In comparison with such, it is
obviously paltry business to drive a bargain with God that if all goes
well we will believe in him, but if things look dark, then faith must
go.

Many a man, therefore, who is no philosopher can be a great defender
of the faith. He may not weave arguments to prove that such a world as
this in its fundamental structure is fitted to a moral purpose. But he
can join the battle to banish from the world those ills that have no
business here and that God hates. He can help produce that final
defense of the Christian faith--a world where it is easier to believe
in God.




CHAPTER VII

Faith and Science


DAILY READINGS

The intellectual difficulties which trouble many folk involve the
relations of faith with science, but often they do not so much concern
the abstract theories of science as they do the particular attitudes
of scientists. We are continually faced with quotations from
scientific specialists, in which religion is denied or doubted or
treated contemptuously, and even while the merits of the case may be
beyond the ordinary man's power of argument, he nevertheless is shaken
by the general opinion that what ministers say in the pulpit on Sunday
is denied by what scientists say all the rest of the week. In the
daily readings, therefore, we shall deal with the scientists
themselves, as a problem which faith must meet.


Seventh Week, First Day

No one can hope to deal fairly with the scientists, in their
relationship with faith, unless he begins with a warm appreciation of
the splendid integrity and self-denial which the scientific search for
truth has revealed.

 =Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
 Or loose the bands of Orion?
 Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season?
 Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train?
 Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens?
 Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth?
 Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds,
 That abundance of waters may cover thee?
 Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go,
 And say unto thee, Here we are?
 Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts?
 Or who hath given understanding to the mind?
 Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
 Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,
 When the dust runneth into a mass,
 And the clods cleave fast together?=

 =--Job 38:31-38.=

Such is man's ancient wonder before the physical universe; and in the
endeavor to discover the truth about it science has developed saints
and martyrs whose selfless and sacrificial spirit is unsurpassed even
in the annals of the Church. Men have spent lives of obscure and
unrewarded toil to get at a few new facts; they have suffered
persecution, and, even after torture, have reaffirmed the truth of
their discoveries, as did Galileo, when he insisted, "The earth does
move." They have surrendered place and wealth, friends and life itself
in their passion for the sheer truth, and when human service was at
stake have inoculated themselves with deadly diseases that they might
be the means of discovering the cure, or have sacrificed everything
that men hold most dear to destroy an ancient, popular, and hurtful
fallacy. The phrase "pride of science" is often used in depreciation
of the scientists. There is some excuse for the phrase, but in
general, when one finds pride, dogmatism, intolerance, they are the
work of ignorance and not of science. The scientific spirit has been
characteristically humble. Says Huxley: "Science seems to me to teach
in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied
in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God.
Sit down before the fact as a little child, be prepared to give up
every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever end
nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.... I have only begun to
learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to
do this." The Christian, above all others, is bound to approach the
study of the controversy between science and theology with a high
estimate of the integrity and disinterested unselfishness of the
scientists.

 _O God, we thank Thee for the world in which Thou hast placed us, for
 the universe whose vastness is revealed in the blue depths of the
 sky, whose immensities are lit by shining stars beyond the strength
 of mind to follow. We thank Thee for every sacrament of beauty; for
 the sweetness of flowers, the solemnity of the stars, the sound of
 streams and swelling seas; for far-stretching lands and mighty
 mountains which rest and satisfy the soul, the purity of dawn which
 calls to holy dedication, the peace of evening which speaks of
 everlasting rest. May we not fear to make this world for a little
 while our home, since it is Thy creation and we ourselves are part of
 it. Help us humbly to learn its laws and trust its mighty powers._

 _We thank Thee for the world within, deeper than we dare to look,
 higher than we care to climb; for the great kingdom of the mind and
 the silent spaces of the soul. Help us not to be afraid of ourselves,
 since we were made in Thy image, loved by Thee before the worlds
 began, and fashioned for Thy eternal habitation. May we be brave
 enough to bear the truth, strong enough to live in the light, glad to
 yield ourselves to Thee._

 _We thank Thee for that world brighter and better than all, opened
 for us in the broken heart of the Saviour; for the universe of love
 and purity in Him, for the golden sunshine of His smile, the tender
 grace of His forgiveness, the red renewing rain and crimson flood of
 His great sacrifice. May we not shrink from its searching and
 surpassing glory, nor, when this world fades away, fear to commit
 ourselves to that world which shall be our everlasting home.
 Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Seventh Week, Second Day

The Christian's appreciation of scientists should not stop short of
profound gratitude for their service to religion. If one reads Burns's
"Tam o' Shanter," with its "ghaists," "warlocks and witches," and
"auld Nick," and remembers that these demonic powers were veritable
facts of terror once, he will see in what a world of superstitious
fear mankind has lived. Bells were first put into church steeples, not
to call folk to worship, but to scare the devils out of thunder-clouds,
and the old cathedral bells of Europe are inscribed with declarations
of that purpose. The ancients hardly believed in God so vividly as
they believed in malicious demons everywhere. Now the Gospel removed
the _fear_ of these from the first Christians; it made men aware of a
conquering alliance with God, so that believers no longer shared the
popular dread of unknown demons. But so long as thunderstorms,
pestilences, droughts, and every sort of evil were supposed to be the
work of devils, even the Gospel could not dispel the general dread.
Only new knowledge could do that. While Christianity therefore at its
best has removed the _fear_ of evil spirits, science has removed the
_fact_ of them as an oppressive weight on life. Today we not only do
not dread them, but we do not think of them at all, and we have
science to thank for our freedom. By its clear facing of facts and
tracing of laws, science has lifted from man's soul an intolerable
burden of misbeliefs and has cleansed religion of an oppressive mass
of credulity. _True religion never had a deadlier foe than
superstition and superstition has no deadlier foe than science._
Little children, brought up in our homes to trust the love of the
Father, with no dark background of malignant devils to harass and
frighten them, owe their liberty to the Gospel of Jesus indeed, but as
well to the illumination of science that has banished the ancient
dreads.

 =These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But
 the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my
 name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance
 all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
 unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your
 heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.--John 14:25-27.=

 _To God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, we pour forth most
 humble and hearty supplications, that He, remembering the calamities
 of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life in which we spend our
 days, would please to open to us new consolations out of the fountain
 of His goodness for the alleviating of our miseries. We humbly and
 earnestly ask that human things may not prejudice such as are Divine,
 so that from the opening of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a
 greater natural light, nothing of incredulity ... may arise in our
 minds towards Divine mysteries; but rather, O Lord, that our minds
 being thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy, and yet subject to
 the Divine will, there may be given unto faith the things that are
 faith's, that so we may continually attain to a deeper knowledge and
 love of Thee, Who art the Fountain of Light, and dwellest in the
 Light which no man can approach unto; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 Amen._--Francis Bacon, 1561.


Seventh Week, Third Day

If one approach the scientists, as we have suggested, with
appreciation of their devoted spirit and of their beneficent service,
he is likely to be fair and Christian in his judgment. For one thing,
he will readily understand why some of them are not religious men. The
laws of psychology are not suspended when religion is concerned; there
as elsewhere persistent attention is the price of a vivid sense of
reality. When, therefore, a man habitually thinks intensely of nothing
but biological tissue, or chemical reactions, or the diseases of a
special organ, the results are not difficult to forecast. Darwin's
famous confession that in his exacting concentration on biology he
utterly lost his power to appreciate music or poetry is a case in
point. Said Darwin, "My mind seems to have become a kind of machine
for grinding general laws out of a large collection of facts." It is
needless to say that such a mind is not likely to be more vividly
aware of God than it is to feel music's beauty or poetry's truth. The
plain fact is that if any man should persistently restrict himself to
a physical science, should never hear a symphony or an oratorio,
should shut out from his experience any dealing with music or
enjoyment of it, he would in the end lose all musical capacity, and
would become a man whose appreciation of music was nil and whose
opinion on music was worthless. _Just such an atrophy of life is
characteristic of intense specialists._ When one understands this
he becomes capable of intelligent sympathy with scientists, even when
he does not at all agree with their religious opinions. Jude gives us
a remarkable injunction, plainly applicable here. "On some have mercy
who are in doubt."

 =But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith,
 praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God,
 looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And
 on some have mercy, who are in doubt; and some save, snatching them
 out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear; hating even the
 garment spotted by the flesh.=

 =Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set
 you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding
 joy, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be
 glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time, and now, and for
 evermore. Amen.--Jude 20-25.=

 _O God, who so fillest all things that they only thinly veil Thy
 presence; we adore Thee in the beauty of the world, in the goodness
 of human hearts and in Thy thought within the mind. We praise Thee
 for the channels through which Thy grace can come to us; sickness and
 health, joy and pain, freedom and necessity, sunshine and rain, life
 and death._

 _We thank Thee for all the gentle and healing ministries of life; the
 gladness of the morning, the freedom of the wind, the music of the
 rain, the joy of the sunshine, and the deep calm of the night; for
 trees, and flowers, the clouds, and skies; for the tender ministries
 of human love, the unselfishness of parents, the love that binds man
 and woman, the confidence of little children; for the patience of
 teachers and the encouragement of friends._

 _We bless Thee for the stirring ministry of the past, for the story
 of noble deeds, the memory of holy men, the printed book, the
 painter's art, the poet's craft; most of all for the ministry of the
 Son of Man, who taught us the eternal beauty of earthly things, who
 by His life set us free from fear, and by His death won us from our
 sins to Thee; for His cradle, His cross, and His crown._

 _May His Spirit live within us, conquer all the selfishness of man,
 and take away the sin of the world. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Seventh Week, Fourth Day

The tendency of scientific specialization to shut out the appreciation
of life's other values has one notable result: the opinions of
scientific specialists in the physical realm on matters of religion
are generally not of major importance. There is a popular fallacy that
an expert in one realm must be listened to with reverence on all
subjects. But the fact is that a great physicist is not by his
scientific eminence thereby qualified to talk wisely on politics or
literature or religion; rather, so far as _a priori_ considerations
are concerned, he is thereby disqualified. Mr. Edison cannot say
anything on electricity that is insignificant; but when he gave an
interview on immortality he revealed to everyone who knew the history
of thought on that subject and the issues involved in it, that on
matters outside his specialty he could say things very insignificant.
The more one personally knows great specialists, the more he sees how
human they are, how interest in one thing shuts out interest in
others, how the subject on which the mind centers grows real and all
else unreal, how very valuable their judgment is on their specialties,
and how much less valuable even than ordinary men's is their judgment
on anything beside. This truth does not concern religion only; it
concerns any subject which calls into play appreciative faculties that
their science does not use. For a man, therefore, to surrender
religious faith because a specialist in another realm disowns it is
absurd. If one wishes, outside of those whose vital interest in
religion makes them specialists there, to get confirmation from
another class of men, let him look not to physicists but to judges.
They are accustomed to weigh evidence covering the general field of
human life; and among the great judicial minds of this generation, as
of all others, one finds an overwhelming preponderance of religious
men.

 =But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit
 searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men
 knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in
 him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.
 But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is
 from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us
 of God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom
 teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things
 with spiritual words. Now the natural man receiveth not the things of
 the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot
 know them, because they are spiritually judged.--I Cor. 2:10-14.=

 _O Eternal and glorious Lord God, since Thy glory and honor is the
 great end of all Thy works, we desire that it may be the beginning
 and end of all our prayers and services. Let Thy great Name be
 glorious, and glorified, and sanctified throughout the world. Let the
 knowledge of Thee fill all the earth as the waters cover the sea. Let
 that be done in the world that may most advance Thy glory. Let all
 Thy works praise Thee. Let Thy wisdom, power, justice, goodness,
 mercy, and truth be evident unto all mankind, that they may observe,
 acknowledge, and admire it, and magnify the Name of Thee, the Eternal
 God. In all the dispensation of Thy Providence, enable us to see
 Thee, and to sanctify Thy Name in our hearts with thankfulness, in
 our lips with thanksgiving, in our lives with dutifulness and
 obedience. Enable us to live to the honor of that great Name of Thine
 by which we are called, and that, as we profess ourselves to be Thy
 children, so we may study and sincerely endeavor to be like Thee in
 all goodness and righteousness, that we may thereby bring glory to
 Thee our Father which art in heaven; that we and all mankind may have
 high and honorable thoughts concerning Thee, in some measure suitable
 to Thy glory, majesty, goodness, wisdom, bounty, and purity, and may
 in all our words and actions manifest these inward thoughts touching
 Thee with suitable and becoming words and actions; through Jesus
 Christ our Lord. Amen._--Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale, 1609.


Seventh Week, Fifth Day

So far in our thought we have tacitly consented to the popular
supposition, that the scientists are at odds with religion. Many of
them unquestionably are. But in view of the obsessing nature of
scientific specialties, the wonder is not that some scientists are
non-religious; the wonder is that so many are profoundly men of faith
in God. The idea that scientists as a whole are irreligious is untrue.
Lists of testimonials from eminent specialists in favor of religion
are not particularly useful, for, as we have said, the judgment of
specialists outside their chosen realm is, at the most, no more
valuable than that of ordinary men. But if anyone tries to rest his
case against religion on the adverse opinions of great scientists, he
easily can be driven from his position. Sir William Crookes, one of
the world's greatest chemists, writes: "I cannot imagine the
possibility of anyone with ordinary intelligence entertaining the
least doubt as to the existence of a God--a Law-Giver and a
Life-Giver." Lord Kelvin, called the "Napoleon of Science," said that
he could think of nothing so absurd as atheism; Sir Oliver Lodge,
perhaps the greatest living physicist and certainly an earnest
believer, writes, "The tendency of science, whatever it is, is not in
an irreligious direction at the present time"; Sir George Stokes, the
great physicist (died 1903), affirmed his belief that disbelievers
among men of science "form a very small minority"; and Sir James
Geikie, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Edinburgh University,
impatiently writes, "It is simply an impertinence to say that 'the
leading scientists are irreligious or anti-Christian.' Such a
statement could only be made by some scatter-brained chatterbox or
zealous fanatic." The fact is that, in spite of the tendency of high
specialization to crowd out religious interest and insight, our great
scientists have never thrown the mass of their influence against
religion, and today, in the opinion of one of their chief leaders, are
growing to be increasingly men of religious spirit. Whatever argument
is to be based on the testimony of the scientists is rather for
religion than against it.

 =For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
 which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all the saints,
 cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my
 prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
 may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
 of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
 what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his
 inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his
 power to us-ward who believe.--Eph. 1:15-19.=

 _O Lord, who by Thy holy Apostle hast taught us to do all things in
 the Name of the Lord Jesus and to Thy glory; give Thy blessing, we
 pray Thee, to this our work, that we may do it in faith, and
 heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. All our powers of body
 and mind are Thine, and we would fain devote them to Thy service.
 Sanctify them and the work in which we are engaged; let us not be
 slothful, but fervent in spirit, and do Thou, O Lord, so bless our
 efforts that they may bring forth in us the fruit of true wisdom.
 Strengthen the faculties of our minds, and dispose us to exert them
 for Thy glory and for the furtherance of Thy Kingdom. Save us from
 all pride and vanity and reliance upon our own power or wisdom. Teach
 us to seek after truth, and enable us to gain it; while we know
 earthly things, may we know Thee, and be known by Thee through and
 in Thy Son Jesus Christ, that we may be Thine in body and spirit, in
 all our work and undertakings; through Jesus Christ. Amen._--Thomas
 Arnold, 1795.


Seventh Week, Sixth Day

Far more important than the opinions of individual scientists for
religion or against it, is the fact that scientists are coming
increasingly to recognize the limitations of their field. The field of
science _is_ limited; its domain is the system of facts and their
laws, which make the immediate environment of man's life; but with the
Origin of all life, with the character of the Power that sustains us
and with the Destiny that lies ahead of us science does not, cannot
deal. The most superficial observance shows how little any great soul
lives within the confines of science's discoveries. Carlyle, after his
great bereavement, writes to his friend Erskine:

"'Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be
done'--what else can we say? The other night in my sleepless tossings
about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that
brief and grand Prayer, came strangely to my mind, with an altogether
new emphasis; as if written and shining for me in mild pure splendor,
on the black bosom of the Night there; when I, as it were, read them
word by word--with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a
sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for
perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that
prayer--nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of man's soul
it is; the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor
human nature." But supposing that the facts of science were all of
reality and the laws of science all of truth, what sort of prayer
could Carlyle have offered? Another has suggested the form which the
Lord's Prayer would take in a world that lacked religious faith: "Our
brethren who are upon the earth, hallowed be our name; our Kingdom
come; our will be done on earth; for there is no heaven. We must get
us this day our daily bread; we know we cannot be forgiven, for Law
knows no forgiveness; we fear not temptation, for we deliver ourselves
from evil; for ours is the Kingdom and ours is the power, and there is
no glory and no forever. Amen." In such a barren prayer _the whole of
man's life is not represented_.

 =Let no man deceive himself. If any man thinketh that he is wise
 among you in this world, let him become a fool, that he may become
 wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is
 written, He that taketh the wise in their craftiness: and again, The
 Lord knoweth the reasonings of the wise, that they are vain.
 Wherefore let no one glory in men. For all things are yours; whether
 Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or
 things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are
 Christ's; and Christ is God's.--I Cor. 3:18-23.=

 _O Thou Infinite Spirit, who occupiest all space, who guidest all
 motion, thyself unchanged, and art the life of all that lives, we
 flee unto thee, in whom we also live and move and have our being, and
 would reverence Thee with what is highest and holiest in our soul. We
 know that Thou art not to be worshiped as though Thou needest aught,
 or askedst the psalm of praise from our lips, or our heart's poor
 prayer. O Lord, the ground under our feet, and the seas which whelm
 it round, the air which holds them both, and the heavens sparkling
 with many a fire--these are a whisper of the psalm of praise which
 creation sends forth to Thee, and we know that Thou askest no homage
 of bended knee, nor heart bowed down, nor heart uplifted unto Thee.
 But in our feebleness and our darkness, dependent on Thee for all
 things, we lift up our eyes unto Thee; as a little child to the
 father and mother who guide him by their hands, so do our eyes look
 up to Thy countenance, O Thou who art our Father and our Mother too,
 and bless Thee for all Thy gifts. We look to the infinity of Thy
 perfection with awe-touched heart, and we adore the sublimity which
 we cannot comprehend. We bow down before Thee, and would renew our
 sense of gratitude and quicken still more our certainty of trust,
 till we feel Thee a presence close to our heart, and are so strong in
 the heavenly confidence that nothing earthly can disturb us or make
 us fear. Amen._--Theodore Parker.


Seventh Week, Seventh Day

The difficulty which many Christians feel concerning science centers
around their loyalty to the Bible. They still are under the
domination of the thought that the Christian idea of the Bible is the
same as the Mohammedan idea of the Koran or the Mormon idea of Joseph
Smith's sacred plates. The Koran was all written in heaven, word for
word, say orthodox Mohammedans, before ever it came to earth. As for
the Mormon Bible, God buried the plates on which he wrote, said Smith,
and then disclosed their hiding place, and his prophet translated them
verbatim, so that the Mormon book is literally inerrant. But this is
not the Christian idea of the Bible. Inspiration is never represented
in Scripture as verbal dictation where human powers and limitations
are suspended, so that like a phonographic plate the result is a
mechanical reproduction of the words of God. Rather God spoke to men
through their experience as they were able to understand him, and as a
result the great Christian Book, like a true Christian man, represents
alike the inbreathing of the Divine and the limitation of the human.
So the Epistle to the Hebrews clearly states that God did what he
could in revealing partially to partial men what they could
understand:

 =God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by
 divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days
 spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,
 through whom also he made the worlds.--Heb. 1:1, 2.=

Of all limitations that are entirely obvious in the ancient
Hebrew-Christian world, the current view of the physical universe is
the most unescapable. To suppose that God never can reveal to men
anything about the world, transcending what the ancient Hebrews could
understand, is to deny the principle which Jesus applied even to the
more important realm of spiritual truth: "I have yet many things to
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now" (John 16:12).

 _O Thou who hast visited us with the Dayspring from on high, who hast
 made light to shine in the darkness, we praise Thy holy name and
 proclaim Thy wonderful goodness._

 _We bless Thee for the dawning of the light in far-off ages as soon
 as human eyes could bear its rays. We remember those who bore aloft
 the torch of truth when all was false and full of shame; those
 far-sighted souls who from the mountain tops of vision heralded the
 coming day; those who labored in the darkened valleys to lift men's
 eyes to the hills._

 _We thank Thee that in the fulness of the times Thou didst gather Thy
 light into life, so that even simple folk could see; for Jesus the
 Star of the morning and the Light of the world._

 _We commemorate His holy nativity, His lowly toil, His lonely way;
 the gracious words of His lips, the deep compassion of His heart, His
 friendship for the fallen, His love for the outcast; the crown of
 thorns, the cruel cross, the open shame. And we rejoice to know as He
 was here on earth, so Thou art eternally. Thou dost not abhor our
 flesh, nor shrink from our earthly toil. Thou rememberest our
 frailty, bearest with our sin, and tastest even our bitter cup of
 death._

 _And now we rejoice for the light that shines about our daily path
 from the cradle to the grave, and for the light that illumines its
 circuit beyond these spheres from our conception in Thy mind to the
 day when we wake in Thy image; for the breathing of Thy spirit into
 ours till we see Thee face to face: in God, from God; to God at last.
 Hallelujah. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

The innermost questions which some minds raise about religion cannot
be answered without candid discussion of the obvious contrasts between
faith and science. The conflict between science and theology is one of
the saddest stories ever written. It is a record of mutual
misunderstanding, of bitterness, bigotry, and persecution, and to this
day one is likely to find the devotees of religion suspicious of
science and scientists impatient with the Church.

If we are to understand the reason for this controversy between
science and theology, we must take a far look back into man's history.
Stephen Leacock remarks that whenever a professor discusses anything,
he has to retreat at least 2,000 years to get a running start. Our
retreat must be farther than that; it carries us to the earliest stage
in which we are able to describe the thoughts of men. _At the
beginning men attributed to superhuman spirits all activities in the
world which they themselves did not perform._ If the wind blew, a
spirit did it; if the sun rose, a spirit moved it; if a storm came, a
spirit drove it. Natural law was non-existent to the primitive man;
every movement in nature was the direct result of somebody's active
will. From the mysterious whispering of a wind-swept field to the
crashing thunder, what man did not cause the gods did.

If, therefore, a primitive man were asked the cause of rain, he had
but one answer: a god made it rain. That was his _scientific_
answer, for no other explanation of rain could he conceive. That was
his _religious_ answer, for he worshiped the spirit on whom he
must depend for showers. This significant fact, therefore, stands
clear: _To primitive man a religious answer and a scientific answer
were identical._ Sunrise was explained, not by planetary movements
which were unknown, but by the direct activity of a god, and the Dawn
then was worshipped in the same terms in which it was explained. The
historic reason for the confusion between science and religion at once
grows evident. _At the beginning they were fused and braided into
one; the story of their relationship is the record of their gradual
and difficult disentangling._

Wherever peace has come between science and religion, one finds a
realm where the boundaries between the two are acknowledged and
respected. Ask _now_ the question, What makes it rain? There is a
scientific answer in terms of natural laws concerning atmospheric
pressure and condensation. There is also a religious answer, since
behind all laws and through them runs the will of God. These two
replies are distinct, they move in different realms, and are held
together without inconsistency. As Sabatier put it, "Since God is the
final cause of all things, he is not the scientific explanation of any
one thing." In how many realms where once confusion reigned between
the believers in the gods and the seekers after natural laws, is peace
now established! Rain and sunrise, the tides and the eclipses, the
coming of the seasons and the growing of the crops--for all such
events we have our scientific explanations, and at the same time
through them all the man of religion feels the creative power of God.
Peace reigns in these realms because here _no longer do we force
religious answers on scientific questions or scientific answers on
religious questions_. Evidently the old Deuteronomic law is the
solution of the conflict between science and religion: "Cursed be he
that removeth his neighbor's landmark" (Deut. 27:17).


II

Left thus in the negative, however, this might seem to mean that we
are to divide our minds into air-tight compartments, and allow no
influences from one to penetrate another. But science and religion do
tremendously affect each other, and no honest dealing ever can
endeavor to prevent their mutual reaction. Our position is not thus
negative; it affirms a positive and most important truth. Life has
many aspects; science, art, religion, approach it from different
angles, with different interests and purposes; and while they do
_influence_ each other, they are not _identical_ and each has solid
standing in its own right. When science has grown domineering, as
though her approach to reality were the only one and her conclusions
all of truth, the poets have had as much distaste for her as have the
theologians. Shelley, who called himself an atheist, had no interest
in religion's conflict with the extreme claims of science; yet listen
to his aroused and flaming language as he pleads the case for poetry
against her: "Poetry is something divine.... It is the perfect and
consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and
color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, and
the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and
corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship--what were
the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our
consolations on this side of the grave--and what were our aspirations
beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those
eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not
even soar?" This involves no denial of science's absolute right to her
own field--the "texture of the elements which compose" the rose, and
the "secrets of anatomy." But it is a justified assertion that this
field of science is not all of reality, and that what the "owl-winged
faculty of calculation" can reach is not all of truth.

What is a sunset? Science sets forth the answer in tables where the
light waves that compose the colors are counted and the planetary
movements that bring on the dusk are all explained. Poetry answers in
a way how different!

  "I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun, supine,
  Lay rocking on the ocean like a god,
  And threw his weary arms far up the sky,
  And with vermilion-tinted fingers,
  Toyed with the long tresses of the evening star."[4]

Is one of these answers more true than the other? Rather it is absurd
to compare their truth; they are not contradictory; they approach the
same fact with diverse interests, and seek in it different aspects of
reality. Each has its rights in its own field. And so far is it from
being true that science has a clear case in favor of its own superior
importance, that Höffding, the philosopher, remarks, "It well may be
that poetry gives more perfect expression to the highest Reality than
any scientific concept can ever do."

Any great fact is too manifold in its meanings to be exhausted by a
single method of approach. If one would know the Bible thoroughly, he
must understand the rules of grammar. Were one to make grammar his
exclusive specialty, the Bible to him, so far as he held strictly to
his science, would be nouns and verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and
prepositions, and the law-abiding relationships between them. This
mere grammarian would know by such a method one aspect of the Bible,
but how little of the Book would that aspect be! No rules of grammar
can interpret the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians or explain
the story of the Cross. The facts and laws of the Book's language a
grammarian could know, but the beauty and the soul of it, the
innermost transforming truth of it, would be unperceived.

So life is too rich and various to be exhausted by any one approach.
Science seeks facts and arranges them in systems of cause and effect.
Poetry sees these bare facts adorned with beauty, she suffuses them
with her preferences and her appreciations. Religion sees the whole
gathered up into spiritual unity, filled with moral purpose and good
will, and in this faith finds peace and power. There need be no
conflict between these various approaches; they are complementary, not
antagonistic; and no man sees all the truth by any one of them alone.
So a chemist might come to a spring to analyze it; a painter to
rejoice in its beauties and reproduce them on his canvas; and a man
athirst might come to drink and live. Shall they quarrel because they
do not all come alike? Let them rather see how partial is the
experience of each without the others!


III

In the mutual trespassing which has caused our problem, religion has
had her guilty share, and the reason is not difficult to find. God did
not have to give a modern scientific education to his ancient Hebrew
saints before he could begin to reveal to them something of his will
and character. And they, writing their experience and thought of him,
could not avoid--as no generation's writers can avoid--indicating the
view of the physical world which they and their contemporaries held.
It is easy, therefore, from scores of Scripture passages to
reconstruct the early Hebrew world. Their earth was flat and was
founded on an underlying sea. (Psalm 136:6; Psalm 24:1, 2; Gen. 7:11);
it was stationary (Psalm 93:1; Psalm 104:5); the heavens, like an
upturned bowl, "strong as a molten mirror" (Job 37:18; Gen. 1:6-8;
Isa. 40:22; Psalm 104:2), rested on the earth beneath (Amos 9:6; Job
26:11); the sun, moon, and stars moved within this firmament, of
special purpose to illumine man (Gen. 1:14-19); there was a sea above
the sky, "the waters which were above the firmament" (Gen. 1:7; Psalm
148:4), and through the "windows of heaven" the rain came down (Gen.
7:11; Psalm 78:23); beneath the earth was mysterious Sheol where dwelt
the shadowy dead (Isa. 14:9-11); and all this had been made in six
days, a short and measurable time before (Gen. 1). This was the world
of the Hebrews.

Because when the Hebrews wrote the Bible their thoughts of God, their
deep experience of him, were interwoven with their early science,
Christians, through the centuries, have thought that faith in God
stood or fell with early Hebrew science and that the Hebrew view of
the physical universe must last forever. In the seventeenth century,
Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,
said: "Heaven and earth, center and circumference, were created all
together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water.... This work
took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B. C.,
at nine o'clock in the morning." Of what tragedy has this identification
of science with religion been the cause!

When _astronomy_ began to revolutionize man's idea of the solar
universe, when for the first time in man's imagination the flat earth
grew round and the stable earth began moving through space
seventy-five times faster than a cannon-ball, Pope Paul V solemnly
rendered a decree, that "the doctrine of the double motion of the
earth about its axis and about the sun is false and entirely contrary
to Holy Scripture." When _geology_ began to show from the rocks'
unimpeachable testimony the long leisureliness of God, laying the
foundations of the world, a Christian leader declared geology "not a
subject of lawful inquiry," "a dark art," "dangerous and disreputable,"
"a forbidden province," "an awful evasion of the testimony of
revelation." This tragic record of theology's vain conflict with
science is the most pitiable part of the Church's story. How needless
it was! For now when we face our universe of magnificent distances and
regal laws has religion really suffered? Has a flat and stationary
earth proved essential to Christianity, as Protestants and Catholics
alike declared? Rather the Psalmist could not guess the sweep of our
meaning when now we say, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the
firmament showeth his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1).

In the last generation the idea of _evolution_ was the occasion of a
struggle like that which attended the introduction of the new
astronomy. How was the world made? asked the ancient Hebrew, and he
answered, By the word of God at a stroke. That was his scientific
answer, and his religious answer too. When, therefore, the evolving
universe was disclosed by modern science, when men read in fossil and
in living biological structure the undeniable evidence of a long
history of gradually changing forms of life, until the world was seen
_not made like a box but growing like a tree_, many men of religion
thought the faith destroyed. They identified the Christian Gospel with
early Hebrew science! Today, however, when the general idea of
evolution is taken for granted as gravitation is, how false this
identification obviously appears! Says Professor Bowne, "An Eastern
king was seated in a garden, and one of his counselors was speaking
of the wonderful works of God. 'Show me a sign,' said the king, 'and I
will believe.' 'Here are four acorns,' said the counselor; 'will your
Majesty plant them in the ground, and then stoop down and look into
this clear pool of water?' The king did so. 'Now,' said the other,
'Look up.' The king looked up and saw four oak trees where he had
planted the acorns. 'Wonderful!' he exclaimed; 'this is indeed the
work of God.' 'How long were you looking into the water?' asked the
counselor. 'Only a second,' said the king. 'Eighty years have passed
as a second,' said the other. The king looked at his garments; they
were threadbare. He looked at his reflection in the water; he had
become an old man. 'There is no miracle here, then,' he said angrily.
'Yes,' said the other; 'it is God's work whether he do it in one
second or in eighty years.'"

Such an attitude as this is now a commonplace with Christian folk. A
vast and growing universe through which sweep the purposes of God is
by far the most magnificent outlook for faith that man has ever had.
The Gospel and Hebrew science are _not_ identical; the Gospel is
not indissolubly bound to any science ancient or modern; for science
and religion have separable domains.

  "A fire-mist and a planet,
    A crystal and a cell,
  A jelly-fish and a saurian,
    And caves where cave men dwell.
  Then a sense of Love and Duty
    And a face turned from the clod,
  Some call it Evolution
    And others--call it God."

The same story of needless antagonism is now being written about
religion and _natural law_. When science began plotting nature's laws,
the control of the world seemed to be snatched from the hands of deity
and given over to a system of impersonal rules. God, whose action had
been defined in terms of miracle, was forced from one realm after
another by the discovery of laws, until at last even comets were found
to be not whimsical but as regular in their law-abiding courses as the
planets, and God seemed to be escorted to the edge of the universe and
bowed out. When Newton first formulated the law of gravitation, the
artillery of many an earnest pulpit was let loose against him. One
said that Newton took "from God that direct action on his works so
constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material
mechanism" and that he "substituted gravitation for Providence." But
now, when science has so plainly won her case, in her own proper
field; when we know to our glory and profit so many laws by which the
world is governed, and use our knowledge as the most splendid engine
of personal purpose and freedom which man ever had, we see how great
our gain has been. _Nor is it more a practical than a religious gain._
God once was thought of chiefly in terms of miraculous action; he came
into his world now and again, like the _deus-ex-machina_ of a Greek
tragedy, to solve a critical dilemma in the plot. Now all the laws we
know and many more are his regular ways of action, and through them
all continuously his purpose is being wrought. As Henry Drummond
exclaimed, "If God appears periodically, he disappears periodically.
If he comes upon the scene at special crises, he is absent from the
scene in the intervals. Whether is all-God or occasional God the
nobler theory?"

Nothing, therefore, can be more pathetic than the self-styled
"defenders of the faith" who withstand the purpose of reverent
students to give scientific answers to scientific questions. Such men
are not really defending the faith. They are doing exactly what Father
Inchofer did when he said, "The opinion that the earth moves is of all
heresies the most abominable"; what Mr. Gosse did when he maintained,
in explanation of geology's discoveries, that God by the use of
stratified rock and fossils deliberately gave the earth the
_appearance_ of development through long ages, while really he made it
in six days; what Mr. Southall did when, in the face of established
anthropology, he claimed that the "Egyptians had no Stone age and were
born civilized"; what the Dean of Chichester did when he preached that
"those who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first
parents according to its obvious literal intention, and are for
substituting the modern dream of evolution in its place, cause the
entire scheme of man's salvation to collapse." These were not
defending the faith; they were making it ridiculous in the eyes of
intelligent men and were embroiling religion in controversies where
she did not belong and where, out of her proper realm, she was
foredoomed to defeat. _For scientific problems are not a matter for
faith; they are a matter for investigation._ No one can settle by
faith the movements of the planets, the method of the earth's
formation, the age of mankind, the explanation of comets. These lie in
science's realm, not in religion's, and religious faith demeans
herself when she tries to settle them. Let science be the grammarian
of the world to observe its parts of speech and their relations!
Religion deals with the soul of the world, its deepest source, its
spiritual meaning, its divine purpose.


IV

Science, however, has not always been content with the grammarian's
task. When we have frankly confessed religion's sins in trespassing on
scientific territory, we must note that _science has her guilty
share in the needless conflict_. Today one suspects that the
Church's vain endeavor by ecclesiastical authority to force religious
solutions on scientific problems is almost over. But the attempt of
many scientists to claim the whole field of reality as theirs and to
force their solutions on every sort of problem is not yet finished.
This, too, is a vain endeavor. To suppose that the process of
scientific observation and inference can exhaust the truth of life is
like supposing that there is no more meaning in Westminster Abbey than
is expressed in Baedeker.

Scientists, for example, sometimes claim domains which are not theirs
by _spelling abstract nouns with capitals, by positing Law or
Evolution as the makers and builders of the world_. But law never
did anything; law is only man's statement of the way, according to his
observation, in which things are done. To explain the universe as the
creation of Law is on a par with explaining homes as the creation of
Matrimony. Abstract nouns do not create anything and the capitalizing
of a process never can explain it. So, too, Evolution does nothing to
the world; it is the way in which whoever makes the world is making
it. As well explain the difference between an acorn and an oak by
saying that Growth did it, as to explain the progress of creation from
stardust to civilization by changing e to E. Science may describe the
process as evolutionary, but its source, its moving power, and its
destiny are utterly beyond her ken.

For another thing, scientists often invade realms which are not
theirs, _by stretching the working theories of some special science to
the proportions of a complete philosophy of life_. A generation ago,
when geology and biology were in their "green and salad days," the
enthusiasm inspired by the splendid results of their hypotheses went
to strange lengths. One professor of geology seriously explained the
pyramids of Egypt to be the remains of volcanic eruption which had
forced its way upwards by slow and stately motion. The hieroglyphs
were crystalline formations and the shaft of the great pyramid was the
airhole of a volcano. Scientists are human like all men; their
specialties loom large; the ideas that work in their limited areas
seem omnipotent. So a student of the influence of sunlight on life
thinks reactions to the sun explain everything. "Heliotropism," he
says, "doubtless wrote Hamlet." A specialist on the influence of
geography on human nature interprets everything as the reaction of man
to seas, mountains, plains, and deserts, and Lombroso even thinks the
revolutionary temperament especially native to men who live on
limestone formations! Specialists in economic history are sure that
man is little more than an animated nucleus of hunger and that all
life is explicable as a search for food. And psychologists, charmed by
the neatness of description which causal connections introduce into
our inner life, leap to the conclusion, which lies outside their
realm, that personality is an illusion, freedom a myth and our mental
life the rattling of a causal chain forged and set in motion when the
universe began. _All this is not science; it is making hypotheses from
a limited field of facts masquerade as a total philosophy of life._

The underlying reason why science, when she regards her province as
covering everything, inevitably clashes with the interests of
religion, is that _she starts her view of the world from the
sub-human side_. The typical sciences are physics, chemistry,
astronomy, geology, biology, and the view of the universe which they
present is the basis on which all other sciences proceed. But this
foundation is sub-human; the master ideas involved in it are all
obtained with the life of man left out of account. Such an approach
presents a world-machine, immense and regular, and when, later,
psychology and sociology arise, how easy it is to call the human life
which they study a by-product of the sub-human world, an exudation
arising from the activities of matter.

Religion, on the contrary, _starts with human life_. Fall down in
awe, Science cries, before this vast sub-human world! And the
religious man answers: What world is this I am to bow before? Is it
not the universe which my mind knows and whose laws my intellect has
grasped? This universe, so far as it exists at all for me, is
apprehended by my vision, penetrated by my thought, encompassed by my
interpretations. _What is really great and wonderful here, is not
the world which I understand, but the mind that understands it--not
the sub-human but the human._ Man himself is the supreme Fact, and
all the world that man could bow before, man's mind must first of all
contain. The master truth is not that my mind exists within a physical
universe, but that the physical universe is encompassed by my mind.
Therefore, when I interpret life, I will start with man, and not with
what lies below him.

Romanes, the English scientist, illustrates in his experience the
difference which these two approaches make. When, returning from
agnosticism to Christianity, he explained his lapse, he said, "I did
not sufficiently appreciate the immense importance of _human_
nature, as distinguished from physical nature, in any inquiry touching
theism.... Human nature is the most important part of nature as a
whole whereby to investigate the theory of theism. This I ought to
have anticipated on merely _a priori_ grounds, had I not been too
much immersed in merely physical research." Of how many now does this
same explanation hold! They segregate man from the rest of the
universe, and endeavor an interpretation of the unhuman remainder.
They forget that man is part and parcel of the universe, bone of its
bone, as imperative an expression of its substantial nature as are
rocks and stars, and that _any philosophy which interprets the world
minus man has not interpreted the world_.

Here is the difference between a Haeckel and a Phillips Brooks. All
the dominant ideas of the one are drawn from existence minus man; all
the controlling convictions of the other are drawn from the heights
and depths of man's own life. The first approach inevitably leads to
irreligion, for Spirit cannot reveal itself except in spirit and until
one has found God in man he will not find him in nature. The second as
certainly leads to religion, for, as Augustine said, "If you dig deep
enough in every man you find divinity." Over against the testimony of
the sub-human that there is a mechanistic aspect to the world, stands
the unalterable testimony of the human that there is as well an ideal,
purposive, and spiritual aspect to the world. Surely the latter brings
us nearer to the heart of truth. _We never understand anything except
in terms of its highest expression and man is the summit of nature._

Could religion find a voice, therefore, she would wish to speak not in
terms of apology but of challenge, when science, assuming all of
reality for its field, grows arrogant. Describe the aspect of the
world that belongs to you, she would say. I have learned my lesson;
your field is yours, and no interference at my hands shall trouble you
again. But remember the limitations of your domain--to observe and
describe phenomena and to plot their laws. That is an immense task and
inexpressibly useful. But when you have completed it, the total result
will be as unlike the real world as a medical manikin with his wire
nerves and painted muscles is unlike a real man. The manikin is
sufficiently correct; everything is truly pictured there--_except
life_. So things are as science sees them, but things are more than
science sees. Plot then the mechanistic aspect of the world, but do
not suppose that you have caught all of truth in that wide-meshed net!
When you have said your last word on facts observed and laws induced,
man rises up to ask imperious questions with which you cannot deal, to
present urgent problems for which no solution ever has been found save
Augustine's, "I seek for God in order that my soul may _live_."


V

Our thought so ended, however, would leave science and religion
jealously guarding their boundaries, not cooperating as allies. _Such
suspicious recognition of each other's realms does not exhaust the
possibilities._ When once the separate functions each by the other
have been granted, we are free to turn our thought to the inestimable
service which each is rendering. Consider the usefulness of science to
the ideal causes of which religion is the chief! Science has given us
the _new universe_, not more marvelous in its vastness than in its
unity. For the spectroscope has shown that everywhere through
immeasurable space the same chemical properties and laws obtain; the
telescope has revealed with what mathematical precision the orbits in
the heavens are traced and how unwaveringly here or among the stars
gravitation maintains its hold. Man never had so immense and various
and yet so single and unified a world before. Polytheism once was
possible, but science has banished it forever. Whatever may be the
source of the universe, it is _one_ Source, and whoever the creator,
he is more glorious in man's imagination than he could ever have been
before. Science also has put at the disposal of the ideal causes _such
instruments as by themselves they would never have possessed_. We are
hoping for a new world-brotherhood, and we pray for it in Christian
churches as the Father's will. But the instruments by which the
inter-racial fellowship must be maintained and without which it would
be unthinkable are science's gift. Railroads, steamships, telegraphs,
telephones, wireless--these are the shuttles by which the ideal faiths
in man's fraternity may be woven into fact. When Christian physicians
heal the sick or stamp out plagues that for ages have been man's curse
and his despair, when social maladjustments are corrected by Christian
philanthropy, and saner, happier ways of living are made possible;
when comforts that once were luxuries are brought within the reach of
all, and man's life is relieved of crushing handicaps; when old
superstitions that had filled man's life with dread for ages are
driven like fogs before science's illumination, and religious faith is
freed of their incumbrance; when great causes of relief have at their
disposal the unimaginable wealth which our modern economic system has
created--can anyone do sufficient justice to man's debt to science?
And once more science has done religion an inestimable service in
establishing as a point of honor the ambition _to see straight and to
report exactly_. The tireless patience, the inexorable honesty, the
sacrificial heroism of scientists, pursuing truth, is a gift of
incalculable magnitude. Huxley is typical of science at its best when
he writes in his journal his ideal--"To smite all humbugs however big;
to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from
petty personal controversies and of toleration for everything but
lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine
or not, so long as it is done." Countless obscurantisms and bigotries,
shams and sophistries have been driven from the churches by this
scientific spirit and more are yet to go. Science has shown
intellectual dishonesty to be a sin of the first rank. Christianity
never can be thankful enough for science; on our knees we should be
grateful for her as one of God's most indispensable gifts. Nor should
the fact that many a scientist whose contributions we rejoice in was
not certain about God defer our gratitude. Cyrus, the Persian, is not
the only one to whom the Eternal has said, "I will gird thee, though
thou hast not known me" (Isa. 45:5).

When, however, science has done her necessary work, she needs her
great ally, religion. Without the insight and hope which faith alone
can bring, we learn a little about the world, our minds enclosed in
boundaries beyond which is dark, unfathomable mystery. We rejoice in
nature's beauty and in friendship, suffer much with broken bodies and
more with broken family ties, until we die as we were born--the spawn
of mindless, soulless powers that never purposed us and never cared.
And the whole universe is purposeless, engaged with blind hands, that
have no mind behind them, on tasks that mean nothing and are never
done. Science and religion should not be antagonists; they are
mutually indispensable allies in the understanding and mastery of life.

[4] J. G. Holland.




CHAPTER VIII

Faith and Moods


DAILY READINGS

The relationship of faith to feeling, rather than faith's relationship
to mind, is with many people the more vital interest. The emotional
results of faith are rightfully of intense concern to everyone, for
our feelings put the sense of value into life. To see a sunset without
being stirred by its beauty is to miss seeing the sunset; to have
friends without feeling love for them is not to have friends; and to
possess life without feeling it to be gloriously worth while is to
miss living. Now, in this regard, the attitude of faith stands sharply
opposed to its direct contrary--the attitude of fear. Faith and fear
are the two emotional climates, in one or the other of which everyone
tends habitually to live. To the comparison of these we set ourselves
in the daily readings.


Eighth Week, First Day

 =Give ear to my prayer, O God;
 And hide not thyself from my supplication.
 Attend unto me, and answer me:
 I am restless in my complaint, and moan,
 Because of the voice of the enemy,
 Because of the oppression of the wicked;
 For they cast iniquity upon me,
 And in anger they persecute me.
 My heart is sore pained within me:
 And the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
 Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,
 And horror hath overwhelmed me.
 And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
 Then would I fly away, and be at rest.
 Lo, then would I wander far off,
 I would lodge in the wilderness.=

 =--Psalm 55:1-7.=

How many people are slaves to the mood from which this psalmist
suffered! "Fearfulness and trembling" are their habitual attitude
toward life. They fear to die and just as much they fear to live;
before every vexatious problem, before every opposing obstacle, even
before the common tasks and responsibilities of daily living, they
stand in dread; and every piece of work is done by them at least three
times--in previous worry, in anxious performance, and in regretful
retrospect. Such fear _imprisons_ the soul. No two men really
live in the same world; for while the outward geography may be
identical, the real environment of each soul is created by our moods,
tempers, and habits of thought. Fear builds a prison about the man,
and bars him in with dreads, anxieties, and timid doubts. And the man
will live forever in that prison unless faith sets him free. _Faith
is the great liberator._ The psalmist who found himself a prisoner
of "fearfulness and trembling" obtained his liberty and became a "soul
in peace" (v. 18); and the secret of his freedom he revealed in the
closing words of his psalm--"But I will trust in Thee." Faith of some
sort is the only power that ever sets men free from the bondage of
their timidities and dreads. If a man is the slave of fearfulness,
there is no substance in his claim to be a man of faith; a man who has
vital faith is not habitually fearful. And as Emerson said, "He has
not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear."

 _O God, we remember with sadness our want of faith in Thee. What
 might have been a garden we have turned into a desert by our sin and
 wilfulness. This beautiful life which Thou hast given us we have
 wasted in futile worries and vain regrets and empty fears. Instead of
 opening our eyes to the joy of life, the joy that shines in the leaf,
 the flower, the face of an innocent child, and rejoicing in it as in
 a sacrament, we have sunk back into the complainings of our narrow
 and blinded souls. O deliver us from the bondage of unchastened
 desires and unwholesome thoughts. Help us to conquer hopeless
 brooding and faithless reflection, and the impatience of irritable
 weakness. To this end, increase our faith, O Lord. Fill us with a
 completer trust in Thee, and the desire for a more whole-hearted
 surrender to Thy will. Then every sorrow will become a joy. Then
 shall we say to the mountains that lie heavy on our souls, "Remove
 and be cast hence" and they shall remove, and nothing shall be
 impossible unto us. Then shall we renew our strength, and mount up
 with wings as eagles; we shall run and not be weary; we shall walk
 and not faint. We offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ our
 Lord. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Eighth Week, Second Day

Not only is it true that fear imprisons while faith liberates; fear
_paralyzes_ and faith _empowers_. The only attitude in which
a man has command of his faculties and is at his best, is the attitude
of faith; while fear bewilders the mind and paralyzes the will. The
physical effects of fear are deadly; it positively inhibits any useful
thinking; and in the spiritual life its results are utterly
demoralizing. Fear is the panic of a soul. Consider such an estate as
the author of Deuteronomy presents:

 =And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be
 no rest for the sole of thy foot: but Jehovah will give thee there a
 trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul; and thy
 life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and
 day, and shalt have no assurance of thy life. In the morning thou
 shalt say, Would it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would it
 were morning! for the fear of thy heart which thou shalt fear, and
 for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.--Deut. 28:65-67.=

Such a situation oppresses every vital power, and the conquest of such
a situation must always be inward before it can be outward; _the man
must pass from fear to faith_. Let even a little faith arise in
him, and power begins to return. Men fear that they cannot overcome
evil habits, that they cannot successfully meet difficult situations,
that they cannot hold out in the Christian life, and that great causes
cannot be fought through to victory--and the weakness which appalls
them is the creation of their own misgiving.

              "Our doubts are traitors,
  And make us lose the good we oft might win,
  By fearing to attempt."

But faith is tonic; the results which follow a change of heart from
fear to faith are miraculous; spiritual dwarfs grow to giants and
achieve successes that before would have been unbelievable. No verse
in Scripture has behind it a greater mass of verifiable experience
than: "This is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our
faith" (I John 5:4).

 _Gracious Father, Thou hast invited us, unworthy as we are, to pray
 for all sorts and conditions of men.... We pray for all who are in
 bondage to fear, unable to face the tasks of life or bear the thought
 of death with peace and dignity. Free them from the tyranny of these
 dark dreads. Let the inspiration of a great faith or hope seize their
 souls, and lift them above their fruitless worry and idle torments,
 into a region of joy and peace and blessedness. We pray for the
 victims of evil habits, the slaves of alcohol or morphine, or any
 other pretended redeemer of the soul from weariness and pain. Great
 is the power of these degrading temptations; but greater still is the
 saving energy of Thy Spirit. So let Thy Spirit enter the hearts of
 these unhappy children of Thine, that their will may be made strong
 to resist, and that the burning heat of high thoughts may consume the
 grosser desires of the flesh. We pray for souls bound beneath
 self-imposed burdens, vexed by miseries of their own making; for the
 children of melancholy, who have lost their way and grope without a
 light; for those who do their work with no enthusiasm, and, when
 night falls, can find no sleep though they search for it as for
 hidden treasure. Let Thy light pierce through their gloom and shine
 upon their path...._

 _Unite us to Jesus Christ, Thy perfect Son, in the bonds of a living
 trust, so that sustained by His example, and sanctified by His
 Spirit, we may grow more and more into the image of His likeness.
 These, and all other blessings, we ask in His name and for His sake.
 Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Eighth Week, Third Day

There are many situations in life which naturally throw the pall of
dread over man's soul. Life is seldom easy, it is often overwhelmingly
difficult, and if a man has worry in his temperament, circumstances
supply plenty of occasions on which to exercise it. The difference
between men lies here: those in whom the fear-attitude is master hold
the oppressive trouble so close to the eye that it hides everything
else; those whom the faith-attitude dominates hold trouble off and see
it in wide perspectives. A copper cent can hide the sun if we hold it
close enough to the eye, and a transient difficulty can shut out from
a fearful soul all life's large blessings and all the horizons of
divine good will. Fear _disheartens_ men by concentrating their
attention on the unhappy aspects of life; _but faith is the great
encourager_. Whittier lived in a generation full of turmoil and
trouble, and his own life is a story of prolonged struggle against
illness, disappointments, and poverty. But, listen:

  "Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight
  Through present wrong, the eternal right;
  And, step by step, since time began
  I see the steady gain of man."

That is the attitude of faith; it does not deny the evil, but it sees
around it, refuses to be obsessed or scared by it, and takes heart
from a large view when a small view would be appalling. And history
always confirms the large view. Fear may be right for the moment, but
in the long run it is a liar; only faith tells the truth.

 =Be merciful unto me, O God; for man would swallow me up:
 All the day long he fighting oppresseth me.
 Mine enemies would swallow me up all the day long;
 For they are many that fight proudly against me.
 What time I am afraid,
 I will put my trust in thee.=

 =--Psalm 56:1-3.=

 _Almighty and ever-living God, we draw near unto Thee, believing that
 Thou art, and that Thou wilt reward all those who diligently seek
 Thee. We are weak, mortal men, immersed in this world's affairs,
 buffeted by its sorrows, flung to and fro by its conflicts of right
 and wrong. We cry for some abiding stay, for some sure and steadfast
 anchorage. Reveal Thyself to us as the eternal God, as the
 unfathomable Love that encompasses every spirit Thou hast made, and
 bears it on, through the light and the darkness alike, to the goal of
 Thine own perfection. And yet, when Thou speakest to us, we are
 covered with confusion, for now we remember all the sadness and evil
 disorder of our lives. Thou hast visited our hearts with ideals fair
 and beautiful, but alas! we have grown weary in aspiration, and have
 declined into the sordid aims of our baser selves. Thou hast given us
 the love of parent and of friend, that we might thereby learn
 something of Thine own love; yet too often have we despised Thy gift
 and shut our hearts to all the wonder and the glory. We make
 confession before Thee of our sin and folly and ignorance. Again and
 again we have vowed ourselves to Thy service; again and again our
 languid wills have failed to do Thy Will. We have been seduced by the
 sweet poison of sin, and even against light and knowledge we have
 done that which Thou dost abhor, and which in our secret hearts we
 loathe. And now we almost fear to repent, lest Thou shouldst call us
 into judgment for a repentance that must needs be repented of. O
 mighty Saviour of men! be patient with us a little longer. Take us
 back to Thyself. Without Thee, we are undone; with Thee, we will take
 fresh heart of hope, and bind ourselves with a more effectual vow,
 and laying aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset
 us, we will follow Thee whithersoever Thou leadest. Amen._--Samuel
 McComb.


Eighth Week, Fourth Day

Fear depresses vitality and is a fruitful cause of nervous disorders,
with all their disastrous reactions on man's health. Modern
investigation has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that while illness
comes often by way of the body, it comes also by way of the mind; our
moods and tempers have a physical echo, and of all fatal mental states
none is so ruinous as fear. It is not strange, therefore, that some
people never are well. As Dr. McComb puts it, "Many play at
living--they do not really live. They fear the responsibilities, the
struggles, the adventures, not without risk, which life offers them.
They fear illness. They fear poverty. They fear unhappiness. They fear
danger. They fear the passion of sacrifice. They fear even the
exaltation of a pure and noble love, until the settlements in money
and social prestige have been duly certified. They fear to take a
plunge into life's depths. They fear this world, and they fear still
more the world beyond the grave." In such a mood no man can possibly
be well. Faith, therefore, which drives out fear, has always been a
minister of health. The Master's healings, which to the rationalism of
a previous generation seemed incredible, in the light of the present
knowledge seem inevitable. He had faith and he demanded faith, and
wherever the faith-attitude can be set in motion against the
fear-attitude and all its morbid brood, the consequences will be
physical as well as moral. An outgrown custom of the early Church does
not now seem so strange as it did a generation ago:

 =Is any among you suffering? let him pray. Is any cheerful? let him
 sing praise. Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of
 the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the
 name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is
 sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins,
 it shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another,
 and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of
 a righteous man availeth much in its working.--James 5:13-16.=

 _Eternal God, who art above all change and darkness, whose will begat
 us, and whose all present love doth enfold and continually redeem us,
 Holy Guest who indwellest, and dost comfort us; we have gathered to
 worship Thee, and in communion with Thee to find ourselves raised to
 the light of our life, and the Heaven of our desires._

 _Pour upon our consciousness the sense of Thy wonderful nearness to
 us. Reveal to our weakness and distress the power and the grace that
 are more than sufficient for us. May we see what we are, Thy
 Spirit-born children linked by nature, love, and choice to Thy mighty
 being; and may the vision make all fears to fade, and a Divine
 strength to pulse within._

 _Enable us to carry out from this place the peace and strength that
 here we gain, to take into our homes a kinder spirit, a new
 thoughtfulness; that we may brighten sadness, heal the sick, and make
 happiness to abound. May we take into our daily tasks and life of
 labor, a sense of righteousness that shall be as salt to every evil
 and corrupting influence._

 _Because we have walked here awhile with Thee, may we be able to walk
 more patiently with man. Send us forth with love to the fallen, hope
 for the despairing, strength to impart to the weak and wayward; and
 carry on through us the work Thou didst commence in Thy Son our
 Brother Man and Saviour God. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Eighth Week, Fifth Day

Fear makes impossible any satisfying joy in life. A man of faith may
be deeply joyful even in disastrous circumstances, but a man of fear
would be unhappy in heaven. Stevenson sings in "the saddest and the
bravest song he ever wrote":

  "God, if this were faith?...
  To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
  And be mauled to the earth and arise,
  And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen
    with the eyes:
  With half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
  That somehow the right is the right,
  And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
  Lord, if that were enough?"

Sad this song may be, but at the heart of it is yet a fierce joy
because faith is there. But put a man of fear in luxury and remove
from him every visible cause of disquiet and he will still be
miserable. The more a man considers these two determinant moods in
life, the more he sees that somehow the faith-attitude must be his, if
life is to be worth living. Without it life dries up into a Sahara;
with it, he comes into a company of the world's glad spirits, who one
way or another have felt what the Psalmist sings:

 =Jehovah is my light and my salvation;
 Whom shall I fear?
 Jehovah is the strength of my life;
 Of whom shall I be afraid?
 When evil-doers came upon me to eat up my flesh,
 Even mine adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell.
 Though a host should encamp against me,
 My heart shall not fear:
 Though war should rise against me,
 Even then will I be confident.
 One thing have I asked of Jehovah, that will I seek after:
 That I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life,
 To behold the beauty of Jehovah,
 And to inquire in his temple.
 For in the day of trouble he will keep me secretly in his pavilion:
 In the covert of his tabernacle will he hide me;
 He will lift me up upon a rock.
 And now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me;
 And I will offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy;
 I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto Jehovah.=

 =--Psalm 27:1-6.=

 _Gracious Father! We confess the painful riddle of our being, that,
 while claiming kinship with Thee, we feel far from Thee. O, what
 means this strange bewilderment, this never-ending war between our
 worse and better thoughts? We are Thine by right, yet we have not
 given ourselves wholly to Thy care. Our hearts know no rest, save in
 Thee, yet they have sought it in this world's vainglory, which
 passeth away. We seek to quench our thirst at the cisterns of this
 earth, but they are broken cisterns, that can hold no water. Lead us
 to Thy well of life that springeth up eternally. Give us to drink of
 that spiritual water, of which, if any man drink, he shall never
 thirst again. We lament our want and poverty before Thee. Open Thou
 our eyes to behold the unsearchable riches of Thy grace, and increase
 our faith that we may make them ours. Unite us to Thee in the bonds
 of will and love and purpose. Out of Thy fulness, which is in Christ,
 give to each one of us according to his need. Make us wise with His
 Wisdom; pure with His purity; strong with His strength; that we may
 rise into the power and glory of the life that is life indeed. Hear
 our hearts' weak and wandering cries, and when Thou hearest, forgive
 and bless, for His sake. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Eighth Week, Sixth Day

 =No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
 love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other.
 Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Be not
 anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink;
 nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more
 than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the
 heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
 barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more
 value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit
 unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning
 raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
 not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in
 all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.=

 =But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is,
 and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe
 you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying, What
 shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
 clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your
 heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But
 seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these
 things shall be added unto you.--Matt. 6:24-33.=

The meaning of this passage hinges on the first "therefore." You
cannot serve God and selfish gain at the same time, says Jesus; you
should choose decisively to serve God; and _therefore_ you must not be
anxious about yourself. For _anxious fear so concentrates a man's
thought on himself that he can serve no one else_. That this is the
meaning of this familiar passage is clear also from its conclusion.
The real reason for conquering anxious fear is that a man may give
himself wholeheartedly to the service of the Kingdom. That fear does
spoil usefulness is obvious; a man cannot be fearful for himself and
considerate of his fellows. As Stevenson puts it in "Aes Triplex,"
"The man who has least fear for his own carcass has most time to
consider others. That eminent chemist who took his walks abroad in tin
shoes and subsisted wholly upon tepid milk had all his work cut out
for him in considerate dealings with his own digestion. So soon as
prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it
finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts." The shame
of our fearful living is that it circles about self, is narrowed down
to mean solicitudes about our own comfort, and is utterly incapable of
serving God or seeking first his Kingdom. Only faith puts folk at
leisure from their small anxieties so that they can be servants of a
worthy cause. Jesus, therefore, in this passage is not giving us the
impossible injunction not to think about tomorrow; he is stating a
truth of experience, that anxious fear for oneself which so draws in
the thought that God's great causes are forgotten is a deadly peril in
man's life. By faith thrust out the mean and timid solicitudes, is his
injunction, that life may be free to put first things first.

 _We come to Thee, our Father, that we may more deeply enter into Thy
 joy. Thou turnest darkness into day, and mourning into praise. Thou
 art our Fortress in temptation, our Shield in remorse, our Covert in
 calamity, our Star of Hope in every sorrow. O Lord, we would know Thy
 peace, deep, abiding, inexhaustible. When we seek Thy peace, our
 weariness is gone, the sense of our imperfection ceases to discourage
 us, and our tired souls forget their pain. When, strengthened and
 refreshed by Thy goodness, we return to the task of life, send us
 forth as servants of Jesus Christ in the service and redemption of
 the world. Send us to the hearts without love, to men and women
 burdened with heavy cares, to the miserable, the sad, the
 broken-hearted. Send us to the children whose heritage has been a
 curse, to the poor who doubt Thy Providence, to the sick who crave
 for healing and cannot find it, to the fallen for whom no man cares.
 May we be ministers of Thy mercy, messengers of Thy helpful pity, to
 all who need Thee. By our sympathy, our prayers, our kindness, our
 gifts, may we make a way for the inflow of Thy love into needy and
 loveless lives. And so may we have that love which alone is the
 fulfilling of Thy law. Hasten the time when all men shall love Thee
 and one another in Thee, when all the barriers that divide us shall
 be broken down, and every heart shall be filled with joy and every
 tongue with melody. These gracious gifts we ask, in Jesus' name.
 Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Eighth Week, Seventh Day

Fear does not reveal its disastrous consequences to the full until it
colors one's thoughts about the source and destiny of life. Folk work
joyfully at a picture-puzzle so long as they believe that the puzzle
can be put together, that it was meant, completed, to compose a
picture, and that their labor is an effort made in reasonable hope.
But if they begin to fear that they are being fooled, that the puzzle
is a hoax and never can be pieced together anywhere by anyone, how
swiftly that suspicion will benumb their work! So joyful living
depends on man's conviction that this life is not a hapless accident,
that a good purpose binds it all together, and that our labor for
righteousness is not expended on a futile task without a worthy
outcome. But fear blights all such hope; it whispers what one
pessimist said aloud: "Life is not a tragedy but a farcical melodrama,
which is the worst kind of play." That fear benumbs worthy living,
kills hope, makes cynical disgust with life a reasonable attitude, and
with its frost withers all man's finest aspirations. _Only faith in
God can save men from such fear._ Fear or faith--there is no dilemma
so full of consequence. Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear
paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear
sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable--and,
most of all, fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith
rejoices in its God.

 =Oh give thanks unto Jehovah; for he is good;
 For his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
 Let Israel now say,
 That his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
 Let the house of Aaron now say,
 That his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
 Let them now that fear Jehovah say,
 That his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
 Out of my distress I called upon Jehovah:
 Jehovah answered me and set me in a large place.
 Jehovah is on my side; I will not fear:
 What can man do unto me?=

 =--Psalm 118:1-6.=

 _O God, we invoke Thy blessing upon all who need Thee, and who are
 groping after Thee, if haply they may find Thee. Be gracious to those
 who bear the sins of others, who are vexed by the wrongdoing and
 selfishness of those near and dear to them, and reveal to them the
 glory of their fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. Brood in
 tenderness over the hearts of the anxious, the miserable, the victims
 of phantasmal fear and morbid imaginings. Redeem from slavery the
 men and women who have yielded to degrading habits. Put Thy Spirit
 within them, that they may rise up in shame and sorrow and make
 confession to Thee, "So brutish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast
 before Thee." And then let them have the glad assurance that Thou art
 with them, the secret of all good, the promise and potency of better
 things. Console with Thy large consolation those who mourn for their
 loved dead, who count the empty places and long for the sound of a
 voice that is still. Inspire them with the firm conviction that the
 dead are safe in Thy keeping, nay, that they are not dead, but live
 unto Thee. Give to all sorrowing ones a garland for ashes, the oil of
 joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of
 heaviness. Remember for good all who are perplexed with the mysteries
 of existence, and who grieve because the world is so sad and
 unintelligible. Teach them that Thy hand is on the helm of affairs,
 that Thou dost guide Thine own world, and canst change every dark
 cloud into bright sunshine. In this faith let them rest, and by this
 faith let them live. These blessings we ask in the name of our Lord
 and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

Many people do not find their most perplexing difficulty either in the
realm of trust or of belief, but in a problem which includes both.
They are confused because neither their experience of God nor their
intellectual conviction of the reasonableness of faith is dependable
and steady. Faith comes and goes in them with fluctuating moods that
bring an appalling sense of insecurity. Their religious life is not
stable and consistent; it runs through variant degrees of confidence
and doubt, and its whimsical ups and downs continually baffle them. To
classify some folk as men of faith and some as men of doubt does not,
in the light of this experience, quite tally with the facts. There are
moods of faith and moods of doubt in all of us and rarely does either
kind secure unanimous consent. Were we to decide for irreligion, a
minority protest would be vigorously urged in the interests of faith,
and when most assuredly we choose religion, the prayer, "Lord, I
believe, help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24) is still appropriate. We
often seem to be exchanging, as Browning's bishop says:

  "A life of doubt diversified by faith,
  For one of faith diversified by doubt."

Some hope arises when we observe that this experience which so
perplexes us is fully acknowledged in the Bible. The popular
supposition is that when one opens the Scripture he finds himself in a
world of constant and triumphant faith. No low moods and doubts can
here obscure the trust of men; here God is always real, saints sing in
prison or dying see their Lord enthroned in heaven. When one, however,
really knows the Bible, it obviously is no serene record of untroubled
faith. It is turbulent with moods and doubt.

Here, to be sure, is the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, on
Immortality, but here too is another cry, burdened with all the doubt
man ever felt about eternal life, "That which befalleth the sons of
men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth,
so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no
preeminence above the beasts" (Eccl. 3:19). The Scripture has many
exultant passages on divine faithfulness, but Jeremiah's bitter prayer
is not excluded: "Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable,
which refuseth to be healed? Wilt thou indeed be unto me as a
deceitful brook, as waters that fail?" (Jer. 15:18). The confident
texts on prayer are often quoted, but there are cries of another sort:
Job's complaint, "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and
backward, but I cannot perceive him" (Job 23:8); Habakkuk's
bitterness, "O Jehovah, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear?
I cry unto thee of violence and thou wilt not save" (Hab. 1:2). The
Bible is no book of tranquil faith. From the time when Gideon, in a
mood like that of multitudes today, cried, "Oh, my Lord, if Jehovah is
with us, why then is all this befallen us?" (Judges 6:13) to the
complaint of the slain saints in the Apocalypse, "How long, O Master,
the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood" (Rev.
6:10), the Bible is acquainted with doubt. It knows the searching,
perplexing, terrifying questions that in all ages vex men's souls. If
the Psalmist, in an exultant mood, sang, "Jehovah is my shepherd," he
also cried, "Jehovah, why casteth thou off my soul? Why hidest thou
thy face from me?" (Psalm 88:14).

No aspect of the Scripture could bring it more warmly into touch with
man's experience than this confession of fluctuating moods. At least
in this the Bible is our book. Great heights are there, that we know
something of. Psalmists sing in adoration, prophets are sure of God
and of his coming victory; apostles pledge in sacrifice the certainty
of their belief, and the Master on Transfiguration Mountain prays
until his countenance is radiant. And depths are there, that modern
men know well. Saints cry out against unanswered prayer and cannot
understand how such an evil, wretched world is ruled by a good God; in
their bitter griefs they complain that God has cast them off, and
utterly forgotten and, dismayed, doubt even that a man's death differs
from a dog's. This is our book. For the faith of many of us, however
we insist that we are Christians, is not tranquil, steady, and serene.
It is moody, occasional, spasmodic, with hours of great assurance, and
other hours when confidence sags and trust is insecure.


II

Faith so generally is discussed as though it were a creed, accepted
once for all and thereafter statically held, that the influence of our
moods on faith is not often reckoned with. But the moods of faith are
the very pith and marrow of our actual experience. When a Christian
congregation recite together their creedal affirmation, "I believe in
God," it _sounds_ as though they all maintained a solid, constant
faith. But when in imagination, one breaks up the congregation and
interprets from his knowledge of men's lives what the faith of the
individuals actually means, he sees that they believe in God not
evenly and constantly, but more or less, sometimes very much,
sometimes not confidently at all. Our faith in God is not a static
matter such as the recitation of a creed suggests. Some things we do
believe in steadily. That two plus two make four, that the summed
angles of a triangle make two right angles--of such things we are
unwaveringly sure. No moods can shake our confidence; no griefs
confuse us, no moral failures quench our certainty. Though the heavens
fall, two and two make four! But our faith in God belongs in another
realm. It is a vital experience. It involves the whole man, with his
chameleon moods, his glowing insights, his exalted hours, and his
dejected days when life flows sluggishly and no great thing seems
real.

This experience of variable moods in faith does not belong especially
to feeble folk, whose ups and downs in their life with God would
illustrate their whole irresolute and flimsy living. The great
believers sometimes know best this tidal rise and fall of confidence.
Elijah one day, with absolute belief in God, defied the hosts of Baal
and the next, in desolate reaction, wanted to die. Luther put it with
his rugged candor, "Sometimes I believe and sometimes I doubt." John
Knox, at liberty to preach, "dings the pulpit into blads" in his
confident utterance; but the same Knox recalled that, in the galleys,
his soul knew "anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceived
against God, calling all his promises in doubt." The Master himself
was not a stranger to this experience. He believed in God with
unwavering assurance, as one believes in the shining of the sun. But
the fact that the sun perpetually shines did not imply that every day
was a sunshiny day for him. The clouds came pouring up out of his dark
horizons and hid the sun. "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I
say?" (John 12:27). And once the fog drove in, so dense and dark that
one would think there never had been any sun at all. "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46).

This experience of fluctuating moods is too familiar to be denied, too
influential to be neglected. There can be no use in hiding it from
candid thought behind the recitation of a creedal formula. There may
be great use in searching out its meaning. For there are ways in which
this common experience, at first vexatious and disquieting, may supply
solid ground for Christian confidence.


III

In dealing with these variant moods of faith we are not left without
an instrument. We have _the sense of value_. We discern not only the
_existence_ of things, but their _worth_ as well. When, therefore, a
man has recognized his moods as facts, he has not said all that he can
say about them. Upon no objects of experience can the sense of value
be used with so much certainty as upon our moods. _We know our best
hours when they come._ The lapidary, with unerring skill, learns to
distinguish a real diamond from a false, but his knowledge is external
and contingent, compared with the inward and authoritative certainty
with which we know our best hours from our worst. Our great moods
carry with them the authentic marks of their superiority.

Experience readily confirms this truth. We all have, for example,
_cynical and sordid moods_. At such times, only the appetites of
physical life seem much to matter; only the things that minister to
common comfort greatly count. When Sydney Smith, the English cleric,
writes, "I feel an ungovernable interest in my horses, my pigs, and my
plants. But I am forced and always was forced to task myself up to an
interest in any higher objects," most of us can understand his mood.
We grow obtuse at times to all that in our better moods had thrilled
us most. Nature suffers in our eyes; great books seem dull; causes
that once we served with zest lose interest, and personal relationships
grow pale and tame, From such mere dullness we easily drift down to
cynicism. Music once had stirred the depths, but now our spirits tally
with the scoffer's jest, "What are you crying about with your Wagner
and your Brahms? It is only horsehair scraping on catgut." Man's most
holy things may lose their grandeur and become a butt of ridicule.
When the mood of Aristophanes is on, we too may hoist serious Socrates
among the clouds, and set him talking moonshine while the cynical look
on and laugh. The spirit that "sits in the seat of the scornful" is an
ancient malady.

But every man is thoroughly aware that these are not his best moods.
From such depleted attitudes we come to worthier hours; _real
life_ arrives again. Nature and art become imperatively beautiful;
moral causes seem worth sacrifice, and before man's highest life,
revealed in character, ideal, and faith, we stand in reverence. These
are our great hours, when spiritual values take the throne, when all
else dons livery to serve them, and we find it easy to believe in God.

Again, we have _crushed and rebellious moods_. We may have been
Christians for many years; yet when disaster, long delayed, at last
descends, and our dreams are wrecked, we _do_ rebel. Complaint rises
hot within us. Joseph Parker, preacher at the City Temple, London, at
the age of sixty-eight could write that he had never had a doubt.
Neither the goodness of God nor the divinity of Christ, nor anything
essential to his Christian faith had he ever questioned. But within a
year an experience had fallen of which he wrote: "In that dark hour I
became almost an atheist. For God had set his foot upon my prayers and
treated my petitions with contempt. If I had seen a dog in such agony
as mine, I would have pitied and helped the dumb beast; yet God spat
upon me and cast me out as an offense--out into the waste wilderness
and the night black and starless." No new philosophy had so shaken the
faith of this long unquestioning believer. But his wife had died and
he was in a heartbroken mood that all his arguments, so often used on
others, could not penetrate. He believed in God as one believes in the
sun when he has lived six months in the polar night and has not seen
it.

These heartbroken moods, however, are not our best. Out of rebellious
grief we lift our eyes in time to see how other men have borne their
sorrows off and built them into character. We see great lives shine
out from suffering, like Rembrandt's radiant faces from dark
backgrounds. We see that all the virtues which we most admire--constancy,
patience, fortitude--are impossible without stern settings, and that
in time of trouble they find their aptest opportunity, their noblest
chance. We rise into a new mood, grow resolute not to be crushed, but,
as though there were moral purpose in man's trials, to be hallowed,
deepened, purified. The meaning of Samuel Rutherford's old saying
dawns upon us, "When I am in the cellar of affliction, I reach out my
hand for the king's wine." And folk, seeing us, it may be, take heart
and are assured that God is real, since he can make a man bear off his
trial like that and grow the finer for it. These are our great hours
too, when the rains descend, and the winds blow, and the floods come,
and beat upon our house, and it is founded on a rock!

Once more, we have hours of _discouragement about the world_. The more
we have cared for moral causes and invested life in their advancement,
the more we are desolate when they seem to fail. Some rising tide in
which we trusted turns to ebb again, injustice wins its victories, the
people listen to demagogues and not to statesmen, social causes
essential to human weal are balked, wars come and undo the hopes of
centuries. Who does not sometimes fall into the Slough of Despond?
Cavour, disheartened about Italy, went to his room to kill himself.
John Knox, dismayed about Scotland, in a pathetic prayer entitled,
"John Knox with deliberate mind to his God," wrote, "Now, Lord put an
end to my misery." We generally think of Luther in that intrepid hour
when he faced Charles V at Worms; but he had times as well when he was
sick with disappointment. "Old, decrepit, lazy, worn out, cold, and
now one-eyed," so runs a letter, "I write, my Jacob, I who hoped there
might at length be granted to me, already dead, a well-earned rest."
During the Great War, this mood of discouragement has grown familiar.
Many can understand what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when he wrote,
of the Franco-Prussian war, "In that year, cannon were roaring for
days together on French battlefields, and I would sit in my isle (I
call it mine after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the
pain of men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching.... It was
something so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the heather on the
top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony."

But these dismayed hours are not our best. As Bunyan put it, even
Giant Despair has fainting fits on sunshiny days. In moods of clearer
insight we perceive out of how many Egypts, through how many
round-about wilderness journeys, God has led his people to how many
Promised Lands. The Exodus was not a failure, although the Hebrews,
disheartened, thought it was and even Moses had his dubious hours; the
mission of Israel did not come to an ignoble end in the Exile,
although multitudes gave up their faith because of it and only
prophets dared believe the hopeful truth. The crucifixion did not mean
the Gospel's end, as the disciples thought, nor did Paul, imprisoned,
lose his ministry. _Nothing in history is more assured than this,
that only men of faith have known the truth._ And in hours of
vision when this fact shines clear we rise to be our better selves
again. What a clear ascent the race has made when wide horizons are
taken into view! What endless possibilities must lie ahead! What ample
reasons we possess to thrust despair aside, and to go out to play our
part in the forward movement of the plan of God!

  "Dreamer of dreams? we take the taunt with gladness,
    Knowing that God beyond the years you see,
  Has wrought the dreams that count with you for madness
    Into the texture of the world to be."

These are our better hours.


IV

Such sordid, cynical, crushed, rebellious, and discouraged moods we
suffer, but we have hours of insight, too, when we are at our best.
And as we face this ebb and flow of confidence, which at the first
vexatiously perplexed our faith, an arresting truth is clear. The
creed of irreligion, to which men are tempted to resign their minds,
is simply the _intellectual formulation of what is implied in our
less noble hours_. Take what man's cynical, sordid, crushed,
rebellious, and discouraged moods imply, and set it in a formal
statement of life's meaning, and the result is the creed of
irreligion. But take man's best hours, when the highest seems the
realest, when even sorrows cannot crush his soul, and when the world
is still the battlefield of God for men, and formulate what these
hours imply, and the result is the central affirmations of religious
faith. Even Renan is sure that "man is most religious in his best
moments." Of this high interpretation our variant moods are
susceptible, that _we know our best hours when they come, and the
faith implied in them is essential Christianity_. As Browning sings
it:

              "Faith is my waking life:
  One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
  We know, but waking's the main point with us."

This fact which we so have come upon is a powerful consideration in
favor of religion's truth. _Are we to trust for our guidance the
testimony of our worse or better hours?_ We have low moods; so, too,
we have cellars in our houses. But we do not _live_ there; we live
upstairs! It is not unnatural to have irreligious moods. There may be
hours when the eternal Energy from which this universe has come seems
to be playing solitaire for fun. It shuffles the stars and planets to
see what may chance from their combinations, and careless of the
consequence, from everlasting to everlasting it shuffles and plays,
and shuffles and plays again. But these are not our best hours. We may
have moods when the universe seems to us, as Carlyle's figure pictures
it, "as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a
devouring monster, wherein, I, palpitating, lay waiting to be
devoured," but we are inwardly ashamed of times like that. Man comes
to this brutal universe of irreligion by way of his ignoble moods.
When he lifts up his soul in his great hours of love, of insight, and
of devotion, life never looks to him as irreligion pictures it; it
never has so looked to him and it never will!

In his best hours man always suspects that the Eternal must be akin to
what is best in us, that our ideals are born from above, have there
their source and destiny, that the Eternal Purpose reigns and yet
shall justify the struggle of the ages, and that in anyone who is the
best we know, we see most clearly what the Eternal is and means. That
goodness is deeper than evil, that spirit is more than flesh, that
life is lord of death, that love is the source of all--such
convictions come naturally to us when we are at our best. When one
examines such affirmations, he perceives that Christianity in its
essential faiths is the expression of our finest hours. This is the
source whence Christianity has come; it is man's best become
articulate. Some used to say that Christian faith had been foisted on
mankind by priests. Christian faith has no more artificially been
foisted upon human life than the full blown rose is foisted on the
bud. Christianity springs up out of man's best life; it is the
utterance of his transcendent moods; _it is man believing in the
validity of his own noblest days_.

Christianity, therefore, at its heart can never fail. Its theologies
may come and go, its institutions rise and fall, its rituals have
their dawn, their zenith, and their decline, but one persistent force
goes on and will go on. _The Gospel is saying to man what man at his
best is saying to himself._ Christ has a tremendous ally in human
life--our noblest hours. They are all upon his side. What _he_
says, _they_ rise to cry "Amen" to. When we are most truly
ourselves we are nearest to him. Antagonistic philosophies, therefore,
may spring up to assail the Gospel's influence, and seem to triumph,
and fall at last and be forgotten. Still Christ will go on speaking.
Nothing can tear him from his spiritual influence over men. _In
every generation he has man's noblest hours for his ally._


V

In the fact to which our study of man's variant moods has brought us
we have not only a confirming consideration in favor of religion's
truth, but an _explanation of some people's unbelief_. They live
habitually in their low moods; they inhabit spiritual cellars. We are
accustomed to say that some friend would be saved from his ignoble
attitudes by a vital religious faith; but it is also true that his
persistent clinging to ignoble attitudes may be the factor that makes
religious faith impossible. According to Dickens's "Tale of Two
Cities" a prisoner in the Bastille, who had lived in a cell and
cobbled shoes for many years, became so enamored of the narrow walls,
the darkness, the task's monotony, that, when liberated, he built a
cell at the center of his English home, and on days when the skies
were clear and birds were singing, the tap of his cobbler's hammer in
the dark could still be heard. So men, by an habitual residence in
imprisoning moods, render themselves incapable of loving the wide
horizons, the great faiths and hopes of religion. They do not merely
make excursions of transient emotion into morose hours and, like men
that find that the road is running into malarial swamps, turn swiftly
to the hills. They dwell in their moroseness; they _choose_ it, and
often obstinately resist deliverance.

The common moods that thus incapacitate the soul for faith are easily
seen in any man's experience. There are _sullen_ tempers when we are
churlish and want so to be. There are _stupid_ tempers, when our soul
is too negligent to care, too dull to ask for what only aspiring minds
can crave or find. There are _bored_ moods when we feel about all life
what Malachi's people felt about worship, "Behold, what a weariness is
it!" (Mal. 1:13); _rebellious_ moods when, like Jonah, deprived of a
comfort he desired, we cry, "I do well to be angry, even unto death"
(Jonah 4:9); _suspicious_ moods, when we mistrust everyone, and even
of some righteous Job hear Satan's insinuating sneer, "Does Job fear
God for nought?" (Job 1:9). No man is altogether strange to
_frivolous_ hours, when those thoughts are lost which must be handled
seriously if at all, and _wilful_ hours, when some private desire
assumes the center of the stage and angrily resents another voice than
his. To say that one who habitually harbors such moods cannot know God
is only a portion of the truth; such a man cannot know anything worth
knowing. He can know neither fine friends nor great books; he cannot
appreciate beautiful music or sublime scenery; he is lost to the
deepest loves of family and to every noble enthusiasm for human help.
Athwart the knowledge of these most gracious and necessary things
stand our obtuse, ignoble moods. The sullen, stupid, bored,
rebellious, suspicious, frivolous, or wilful tempers, made into a
spiritual residence, are the most deadly prison of the soul. Of course
one who dwells there has no confidence in God. Lord Shaftesbury, the
English philanthropist, made too sweeping a statement about this, but
one can see the basis for his judgment: "Nothing beside ill-humor,
either natural or forced, can bring a man to think seriously that the
world is governed by any devilish or malicious power. I very much
question whether anything beside ill-humor can be the cause of
atheism." At least one may be sure that where ill-humor habitually
reigns, vital faith in God is made impossible.

After full acknowledgment, therefore, of the momentous intellectual
problems of belief, we must add that there is a _moral qualification
for faith in God_. So great a matter is not achieved by any sort of
person, with any kind of habitual moods and tempers. There are views
which cellar windows do not afford; one must have balconies to see
them. When Jesus said that the pure in heart are blessed because they
see God, he was not thinking merely, perhaps not chiefly, of sexual
impurity as hindering vision. He was pleading for a heart cleansed of
all such perverse, morose, and wayward moods as shut the blinds on the
soul's windows. He knew that men could not easily escape the sense of
God's reality if they kept their vision clear. On elevated days we
naturally think of Spirit as real, and see ourselves as expressions of
spiritual purpose, our lives as servants of a spiritual cause. When
one habitually dwells in these finer moods, he cannot tolerate a world
where his Best is a transient accident. _He must have God, for faith
in God is the supreme assertion of the reality and eternity of man's
Best._ Any man who habitually lives in his finest moods will not
easily escape the penetrating sense of God's reality.


VI

The certainty with which we tend to be most deeply religious in our
best hours is clear when we consider that a man does practically
believe in the things which he counts of highest worth. Lotze, the
philosopher, even says that "Faith _is_ the feeling that is
appreciative of value." It is conceivable that one might be so
constituted that without any sense of value he could study facts, as
a deaf man might observe a symphony. The sound-waves such a man could
mechanically measure; he could analyze the motions of the players and
note the reactions of the crowd, but he would hear no music. He would
not suffuse the whole performance with his musical appreciations; he
would neither like it nor condemn. Man might be so constituted as to
face facts without feeling, but he is not. Facts never stand in our
experience thus barren and unappreciated--mere neutral _things_ that
mean nothing and have no value. The botanist in us may analyze the
flowers, but the poet in us estimates them. The penologist in us may
take the Bertillon measurements of a boy, but the father in us best
can tell how much, in spite of all his sin, that boy is worth. This
power to estimate life's _values_ is the fountain from which spring
our music, painting, and literature, our ideals and loves and
purposes, our morals and religion. Without it no man can live in the
real world at all.

If we would know, therefore, in what, at our highest altitudes, we
tend to believe, we should ask _what it is that we value most, when
we rise toward our best_. In our lowest hours what sordid,
mercenary, beastly things men may prize each heart knows well. But
ever as we approach our best the things that are worth most to us
become elevated and refined. Our better moods open our eyes to a world
where character is of more worth than all the rest beside, and through
which moral purpose runs, to be served with sacrifice. We become aware
of spiritual values in behalf of which at need physical existence must
be willingly laid down; and words like honor, love, fidelity, and
service in our hours of insight have halos over them that poorer moods
cannot discern. Man at his best, that is to say, _believes in_ an
invisible world of spiritual values, and he furnishes the final proof
of his faith's reality by sacrificing to it all lesser things. The
good, the true, the beautiful command him in his finer hours, and at
their beck and call he lays down wealth and ease and earthly hopes to
be their servant. Men really _do believe_ in the things for which
they sacrifice and die.

In no more searching way can a man's faith be described than _in terms
of the objects which thus he values most_. Wherever men find some
consuming aim that is for them so supreme in worth that they sacrifice
all else to win it, we speak of their attitude as a religion. The
"religion of science" describes the absolute devotion of investigators
to scientific research as the highest good; the "religion of art"
describes the consuming passion with which some value beauty. When we
say of one that "money is his God" we mean that he estimates it as
life's highest treasure, and when with Paul we speak of others, "whose
god is the belly" (Phil. 3:19), we mean men whose sensual life is to
them the thing worth most. _What men believe in, therefore, is most
deeply seen not by any opinions which they profess, but by the things
they prize._ Faith, as Ruskin said, is "that by which men act while
they live; not that which they talk of when they die." Many a man uses
pious affirmations of Christian faith, but it is easy to observe from
his life that what he really believes in is money. Where a man's
treasure is, as Jesus said, his heart is, and there his faith is, too.

Is there any doubt, then, what we most believe in when we are at our
best? While in our lower altitudes it may be easy to believe that the
physical is the ultimately real, in our upper altitudes we so value
the spiritual world, that we tend with undeniable conviction to feel
sure that it must be causal and eternal. Materialism is man's
"night-view" of his life; but the "day-view" is religion. Tyndall the
scientist was regarded by the Christians of his generation as the
enemy of almost everything that they held dear. Let him, then, be
witness for the truth which we have stated. "I have noticed," he said,
speaking of materialism, "during years of self-observation, that it is
not in hours of clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends itself
to my mind."

The challenge, therefore, presented to every one of us by Christian
faith is ultimately this: _Shall I believe the testimony of my better
hours or of my worse?_ Many who deny the central affirmations of the
Gospel put the object of their denial far away from them as though it
were an external thing; they say that they deny the creed or the Bible
or the doctrine about God. Such a description of a man's rejection of
religious faith is utterly inadequate--the real object of his denial
is inward. One may, indeed, discredit forms of doctrine and either be
unsure about or altogether disbelieve many things that Christians
hold, but when one makes a clean sweep of religion and banishes the
central faiths of Christianity _he is denying the testimony of his own
finest days_. From such rejection of faith one need not appeal to
creed nor Bible, nor to anything that anybody ever said. Let the
challenge strike inward to the man's own heart. From his denial of
religious faith we may appeal to the hours that he has known and yet
will know again, when the road rose under his feet and from a height
he looked on wide horizons and knew that he was at his best. To those
hours of clear insight, of keen thought, of love and great devotion,
when he knew that the spiritual is the real and the eternal, we may
appeal. They were his best. He _knows_ that they were his best. And as
long as humanity lives upon the earth this conviction must underlie
great living--that _we will not deny the validity of our own best
hours_.




CHAPTER IX

Faith in the Earnest God


DAILY READINGS

Throughout our studies we have been thinking of the effect of faith on
the one who exercises it. As an introduction to this week's thought on
the earnestness of God, let us approach the effect of faith from
another angle. Faith has enormous influence on the one in whom it is
reposed; not only the believer but the one in whom he believes is
affected by his faith.


Ninth Week, First Day

 =I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church
 that is at Cenchreæ: that ye receive her in the Lord, worthily of the
 saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever matter she may have need
 of you: for she herself also hath been a helper of many, and of mine
 own self.=

 =Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, who for
 my life laid down their own necks; unto whom not only I give thanks,
 but also all the churches of the Gentiles: and salute the church that
 is in their house. Salute Epænetus my beloved, who is the
 first-fruits of Asia unto Christ. Salute Mary, who bestowed much
 labor on you. Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my
 fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also have
 been in Christ before me. Salute Ampliatus my beloved in the
 Lord.--Rom. 16:1-8.=

This series of personal commendations is only the beginning of the
last chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. All the way through one
hears the individual names of Paul's friends and fellow-laborers, with
his discriminating and hearty praise of each. It is clear that he has
faith in these men and women; he believes in them and relies on them.
Consider the effect on them that Paul's confidence in their Christian
fidelity would naturally have. There is no motive much more stirring
than the consciousness that somebody believes in us, is trusting and
counting on us. Whatever is fine and noble in human life responds to
that appeal. Soldiers who feel that their country is relying upon
their fidelity, children who are conscious that their parents believe
in them, friends who are heartened by the assurance that some folk
completely trust them--how much of the best in all of us has come
because we have been the objects of somebody's faith! A Connecticut
volunteer in the American Revolution has written that George
Washington once paused for a moment in front of his company and said
simply, "I am counting on you men from Connecticut." And the recruit
clasped his musket in his arms and wept with the devotion which
Washington's confidence evoked. Would not the sixteenth chapter of
Romans have a similar effect on those who read it?

 _O Thou loving and tender Father in heaven, we confess before Thee,
 in sorrow, how hard and unsympathetic are our hearts; how often we
 have sinned against our neighbors by want of compassion and
 tenderness; how often we have felt no true pity for their trials and
 sorrows, and have neglected to comfort, help, and visit them. O
 Father, forgive this our sin, and lay it not to our charge. Give us
 grace ever to alleviate the crosses and difficulties of those around
 us, and never to add to them; teach us to be consolers in sorrow, to
 take thought for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan; let our
 charity show itself not in words only, but in deed and truth. Teach
 us to judge as Thou dost, with forbearance, with much pity and
 indulgence; and help us to avoid all unloving judgment of others; for
 the sake of Jesus Christ Thy Son, who loved us and gave Himself for
 us. Amen._--Johann Arndt, 1555.


Ninth Week, Second Day

 =And it came to pass in these days, that he went out into the
 mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God. And
 when it was day, he called his disciples; and he chose from them
 twelve, whom also he named apostles: Simon, whom he also named
 Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip and
 Bartholomew, and Matthew and Thomas, and James the son of Alphæus,
 and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and
 Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.--Luke 6:12-16.=

The power that comes to men when someone believes in them must have
come to these disciples whom Jesus trusted with his work. We often
note the power that was theirs through their faith in Christ; consider
today the inspiration that came from Christ's faith in them. He picked
them out, commissioned them, relied on them, and believed in their
ability with God's help to carry his work to a successful issue. All
that is most distinctive and memorable in their character came from
their response to that divine trust. How they must have encouraged
themselves in times of failure and disheartenment by saying: He
believes in us; even though we are ignorant and sinful, he believes in
us; he has trusted his work to us, and for all our inability he has
faith that we can carry it to triumph! Their faith in themselves and
what they could do with God's help must have been almost altogether a
reflex of his faith in them. Our contention, therefore, that faith is
the dynamic of life has now a new confirmation: _the faith that
lifts and motives life is not simply our faith in the Divine, but the
faith of the Divine in us_. One of the most glorious results of
believing in God is that a man can press on to the further confidence
that God believes in us. If he did not, he would never have made us.
The very fact that we are here means that he does believe in us, in
our possibilities of growth, in our capacities of service, in what he
can do in and for and through us before he is done. Man's faith in God
and God's faith in man together make an unequalled motive for great
living. Yet there is always a sad appendix to every list of trusted
men, with somebody's blighted name: "Judas Iscariot, who became a
traitor."

 _Loving Father, our hearts are moved to gratitude and trust when we
 look up to Thee. We rejoice that through our fleeting days there runs
 Thy gracious purpose. We praise Thee that we are not the creatures of
 chance, nor the victims of iron fate, but that out from Thee we have
 come and into Thy bosom we shall return. We would not, even if we
 could, escape Thee. Thou alone art good, and to escape from Thee is
 to fall into infinite evil. Thy hand is upon us moving us on to some
 far-off spiritual event, where the meaning and the mystery of life
 shall be made plain and Thy glory shall be revealed. Look in pity
 upon our ignorance and childishness. Forgive us our small
 understanding of Thy purpose of good concerning us. Be not angry with
 us, but draw us from the things of this world which cannot satisfy
 our foolish hearts. Fill us with Thyself, that we may no longer be a
 burden to ourselves. So glorify the face of goodness that evil shall
 have no more dominion over us. Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Ninth Week, Third Day

The fact that God has faith in us is not alone a source of comfort; it
presents a stirring challenge. It means that he is in earnest about
achieving his great purposes in human life and that he is counting
upon us to help. He has set his heart on aims, about which he cares,
and to whose achievement he is calling us; he is confident that with
him we can work out, if we will, loftier character and a better world.
Let us consider some of the purposes which God is counting on us, in
fellowship with him, to achieve. The prophet Micah, in a brief but
perfect drama, gives one clue. First the Lord summons his people to a
trial, with the eternal mountains for judges:

 =Hear ye now what Jehovah saith: Arise, contend thou before the
 mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear, O ye mountains,
 Jehovah's controversy, and ye enduring foundations of the earth; for
 Jehovah hath a controversy with his people, and he will contend with
 Israel.--Micah 6:1, 2.=

Then, the Lord presents his case:

 =O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied
 thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of
 Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of bondage; and I sent
 before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what
 Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered
 him; remember from Shittim unto Gilgal, that ye may know the
 righteous acts of Jehovah.--Micah 6:3-5.=

Then the people put in their hesitant, questioning plea.

 =Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the
 high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a
 year old? will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten
 thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my
 transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?--Micah
 6:6, 7.=

Then the mountains pronounce judgment:

 =He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah
 require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk
 humbly with thy God?--Micah 6:8.=

God, then, is in earnest about _just_, _kind_, _and humble
character_. He believes in it as a possibility; he sees the making
of it now in human hearts; he is pledged to further and establish it
with all his power; and he is counting on us for loyal cooperation
with all our powers of choice. Vital faith means a transforming
partnership with a God who is in earnest about character.

 _O Thou who art the Father of that Son which hast awakened us and yet
 urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and exhorteth us that we
 become Thine, to Thee, Lord, we pray, who art the supreme Truth, for
 all truth that is, is from Thee. Thee we implore, O Lord, who art the
 highest Wisdom, through Thee are wise, all those that are so. Thou
 art the supreme Joy, and from Thee all have become happy that are so.
 Thou art the highest Good and from Thee all beauty springs. Thou art
 the intellectual Light, and from Thee man derives his understanding.
 To Thee, O God, we call and speak. Hear us, O Lord, for Thou art our
 God and our Lord, our Father and our Creator, our Ruler and our Hope,
 our Wealth and our Honor, our Home, our Country, our Salvation, and
 our Life; hear, hear us, O Lord. Few of Thy servants comprehend Thee,
 but at least we love Thee--yea, love Thee above all other things. We
 seek Thee, we follow Thee, we are ready to serve Thee; under Thy
 power we desire to abide, for Thou art the Sovereign of all. We pray
 Thee to command us as Thou wilt; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our
 Lord. Amen._--King Alfred, 849.


Ninth Week, Fourth Day

God also is in earnest about _social righteousness_.

 =I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your
 solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt-offerings and
 meal-offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the
 peace-offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise
 of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let
 justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty
 stream.--Amos 5:21-24.=

Anyone who cares about character must care about social conditions,
for every unfair economic situation, every social evil left to run its
course means ruin to character. And the God of the Bible, because he
cares supremely for personal life at its best, is zealously in earnest
about social justice; his prophets blazed with indignation at all
inequity, and his Son made the coming Kingdom, when God's will would
be done on earth, the center of his message. To fellowship with this
earnest purpose of God we all are summoned; God believes in the
glorious possibilities of life on earth; he is counting on us to put
away the sins that hold the Kingdom back and to fight the abuses that
crush character in men. To believe in God, therefore--the God who is
fighting his way with his children up through ignorance, brutality,
and selfishness to "new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness"--is no weakly comfortable blessing. It means joining a
moral war; it means devotion, sacrifice; its spirit is the Cross and
its motive an undiscourageable faith. And our underlying assurance
that this war for a better world can be won is not simply our belief
that it can be done, but _our faith that God is, and that he
believes that it can be done_. When we pray we say, "Thy Kingdom
come," and we are full of hope about the long, sacrificial struggle,
for the purpose behind and through it all is first of all God's. Our
earnestness is but an echo of his.

 _O Thou Eternal One, we adore Thee who in all ages hast been the
 great companion and teacher of mankind; for Thou hast lifted our race
 from the depths, and hast made us to share in Thy conscious
 intelligence and Thy will that makes for righteousness and love.
 Thou alone art our Redeemer, for Thy lifting arms were about us and
 Thy persistent voice was in our hearts as we slowly climbed up from
 savage darkness and cruelty. Thou knowest how often we have resisted
 Thee and loved the easy ways of sin rather than the toilsome gain of
 self-control and the divine irritation of Thy truth...._

 _We pray Thee for those who amid all the knowledge of our day are
 still without knowledge; for those who hear not the sighs of the
 children that toil, nor the sobs of such as are wounded because
 others have made haste to be rich; for those who have never felt the
 hot tears of the mothers of the poor that struggle vainly against
 poverty and vice. Arouse them, we beseech Thee, from their selfish
 comfort and grant them the grace of social repentance. Smite us all
 with the conviction that for us ignorance is sin, and that we are
 indeed our brother's keeper if our own hand has helped to lay him
 low. Though increase of knowledge bring increase of sorrow, may we
 turn without flinching to the light and offer ourselves as
 instruments of Thy spirit in bringing order and beauty out of
 disorder and darkness. Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.


Ninth Week, Fifth Day

The thought which we have been pursuing leads us to a truth of major
importance: if God is thus in earnest, believing in man's possibilities
and laboring for them, then he cannot be known by anyone who does not
share his purpose and his labor. _Action is a road to knowledge and
some things never can be known without it._ If one would know the
business world, he must be an active business man; no amount of
abstract study and speculation can take the place of vital
participation in business struggle. The way to understand any movement
or enterprise is to go into it, share its enthusiasms and hopes, labor
sacrificially for its success, bear its defeats as though they were
our own, and rejoice in its achievements as though nothing so much
mattered to our happiness. Such knowledge is thorough and vital; when
one who so has learned what war is, or the missionary enterprise, or
the fight against the liquor traffic, stands up to speak, a merely
theoretical student of these movements sounds unreal and tame. If
therefore God is earnest Purpose, with aims in which he calls us to
share, no one can thoroughly know him merely by _thinking_; he must
know him by _acting_.

 =But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may
 be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.--John 3:21.=

 =Jesus therefore answered them, and said, My teaching is not mine,
 but his that sent me. If any man willeth to do his will, he shall
 know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from
 myself.--John 7:16, 17.=

Many people endeavor to reach a satisfactory knowledge of God by
clarifying their thought and working out a rational philosophy. But,
by such intellectual means alone, they could not gain satisfactory
knowledge of so familiar a thing as home life. To know home life one
elemental act is essential: get into a home and share its problems,
its satisfactions, and its hopes. So the most adequate philosophy by
itself can bring no satisfactory knowledge of God; only by working
with God, sharing his purposes for the world, sacrificially laboring
for the aims he has at heart can men know him.

 _Eternal God, who hast formed us, and designed us for companionship
 with Thee; who hast called us to walk with Thee and be not afraid;
 forgive us, we pray Thee, if craven fear, unworthy thought, or hidden
 sin has prompted us to hide from Thee. Remove the suspicion which
 regards Thy service as an intrusion on our time and an interference
 with our daily task. Shew to us the life that serves Thee in the
 quiet discharge of each day's duty, that ennobles all our toil by
 doing it as unto Thee. We ask for no far-off vision which shall set
 us dreaming while opportunities around slip by; for no enchantment
 which shall make our hands to slack and our spirits to sleep, but for
 the vision of Thyself in common things for every day; that we may
 find a Divine calling in the claims of life, and see a heavenly
 reward in work well done. We ask Thee not to lift us out of life, but
 to prove Thy power within it; not for tasks more suited to our
 strength, but for strength more suited to our tasks. Give to us the
 vision that moves, the strength that endures, the grace of Jesus
 Christ, who wore our flesh like a monarch's robe and walked our
 earthly life like a conqueror in triumph. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Ninth Week, Sixth Day

Because action with God is essential to any satisfying knowledge of
him, action is one of the great resolvers of doubt. Many minds,
endeavoring to think through the mystifying problems of God's
providence, find themselves in a clueless labyrinth. The more they
think the more entangled and confused their minds become. Their
thoughts strike a fatal circle, like wanderers lost in the woods, and
return upon their course, baffled and disheartened. To such perplexed
minds the best advice often is: Cease your futile thinking and go to
work. Let action take the place of speculation. Break the fatal round
of circular thought that never will arrive, and go out to act on the
basis of what little you do believe. Your mind like a dammed stream is
growing stagnant; set it running to some useful purpose, if only to
turn mill-wheels, and trust that activity will bring it cleansing in
due time. Horace Bushnell, the great preacher, while a skeptical tutor
at Yale, was disturbed because so many students were unsettled by his
disbelief. In the midst of a revival he said that like a great snag he
caught and stopped the newly launched boats as fast as they came down.
Unable to think his way out of his intellectual perplexity, he faced
one night this arresting question: "What is the use of my trying to
get further knowledge, so long as I do not cheerfully yield to what I
already know?" And kneeling he prayed after this fashion: "O God, I
believe there is an eternal difference between right and wrong, and I
hereby give myself up to do the right and to refrain from the wrong. I
believe that Thou dost exist, and if Thou canst hear my cry and wilt
reveal Thyself to me, I pledge myself to do Thy will, and I make this
pledge fully, freely, and forever." What wonder that in time the light
broke and that Bushnell became a great prophet of the faith!

Even Paul, finishing his laborious discussion of God's providence
toward Israel, acknowledges his baffled thought:

 =O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of
 God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing
 out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his
 counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be
 recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto
 him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.--Rom.
 11:33-36=.

And then, as if he turned from philosophy to action with gratitude, he
begins the twelfth chapter:

 =I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
 your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is
 your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world:
 but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove
 what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.--Rom. 12:1, 2.=

 _O God, we thank Thee for the sweet refreshment of sleep and for the
 glory and vigor of the new day. As we set our faces once more toward
 our daily work, we pray Thee for the strength sufficient for our
 tasks. May Christ's spirit of duty and service ennoble all we do.
 Uphold us by the consciousness that our work is useful work and a
 blessing to all. If there has been anything in our work harmful to
 others and dishonorable to ourselves, reveal it to our inner eye with
 such clearness that we shall hate it and put it away, though it be at
 a loss to ourselves. When we work with others, help us to regard
 them, not as servants to our will, but as brothers equal to us in
 human dignity, and equally worthy of their full reward. May there be
 nothing in this day's work of which we shall be ashamed when the sun
 has set, nor in the eventide of our life when our task is done and we
 go to our long home to meet Thy face. Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.


Ninth Week, Seventh Day

 =Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye
 blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
 foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I
 was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me
 in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in
 prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him,
 saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or athirst, and
 gave thee drink? And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in?
 or naked, and clothed thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison,
 and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them,
 Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my
 brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.--Matt. 25:34-40.=

The earnestness of God is not about any diffuse generality; it is
about persons. His purposes concern them, and he believes in them and
in their capacities for fellowship with him, for growing character and
for glorious destiny. If, therefore, one wishes the sense of God's
reality which comes from active co-partnership, let him serve persons,
believe in them, and be in earnest about them. A woman, troubled by
invincible doubts, was given by a wise minister the Gospel of John and
a calling-list of needy families, and was told to use them both. She
came through into a luminous faith, and which helped her more, her
reading or her service, she could never tell. When the Master said
that the good we did to the least of his brethren, we did to him, he
indicated a road to vital knowledge of him; he said in effect that we
can always find him in the lives of people to whom we give love and
help. Many will never find him at all unless they find him there. The
great believers have been the great servants; and the reason for this
is not simply that faith produced service, but also that _service
produced faith_. The life of Sir Wilfred Grenfell, for example,
makes convincingly plain that his faith sent him to Labrador for
service, and that then he drew out of service a compound interest on
his original investment of faith.

 _O God, the Father of the forsaken, the Help of the weak, the
 Supplier of the needy, who hast diffused and proportioned Thy gifts
 to body and soul, in such sort that all may acknowledge and perform
 the joyous duty of mutual service; Who teachest us that love towards
 the race of men is the bond of perfectness, and the imitation of Thy
 blessed Self; open our eyes and touch our hearts, that we may see and
 do, both for this world and for that which is to come, the things
 which belong to our peace. Strengthen us in the work we have
 undertaken; give us counsel and wisdom, perseverance, faith, and
 zeal, and in Thine own good time, and according to Thy pleasure,
 prosper the issue. Pour into us a spirit of humility; let nothing be
 done but in devout obedience to Thy will, thankfulness for Thine
 unspeakable mercies, and love to Thine adorable Son Christ Jesus....
 Amen._--Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

Throughout our studies we have been asserting that faith in God
involves confidence that creation has a purpose. But we shall not see
the breadth and depth of the affirmation, or its significant meaning
for our lives, unless more carefully we face a question, which, as
keenly as any other, pierces to the marrow of religion: _Is God in
earnest?_

That the God of the Bible is in earnest is plain. If we open the Book
at the Exodus, we hear him saying, "I have surely seen the affliction
of my people, ... and have heard their cry, ... and I am come down to
deliver them" (Exodus 3:7, 8). If we turn to the prophets, we find
Hosea, interpreting the beating of God's heart: "How am I to give thee
up, O Ephraim? How am I to let thee go, O Israel? How am I to give
thee up? My heart is turned upon me, my compassions begin to boil"[5]
(Hos. 11:8). Everywhere in the Old Testament, God is in earnest: about
personal character--"What doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah
6:8); about social righteousness--"Let justice roll down as waters,
and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24); about the salvation
of the world--"It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my
servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved
of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that
thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isa. 49:6).
When from the Old Testament one turns to the New, he faces an
assertion of God's earnestness that cannot be surpassed: "God so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten Son." God in the New
Testament is as much in earnest as that, and all the major
affirmations of the Book cluster about the magnetism of this central
faith. God is even like a shepherd with a hundred sheep, who having
lost one, leaves the ninety and nine and goes after that which is
lost, until he finds it (Luke 15:4). From the earliest Hebrew seer
dimly perceiving him, to the last apostle of the New Covenant, the God
of the Bible is tremendously in earnest.

How profoundly the acceptance of this faith deepens the meaning and
value of life is evident. For a moment some might think that the major
question is not whether _God_ is in earnest but whether _we_
are; but when a man considers the hidden fountains from which the
streams of his human earnestness must flow, he sees how necessary is
at least the hope that at the heart of it creation is in earnest too.
Von Hartmann, the pessimist, makes one of his characters say, "The
activities of the busy world are only the shudderings of a fever." How
shall a man be seriously in earnest about great causes in a world like
that? The men whose devoted lives have made history great have seen in
creation's busyness more than aimless shuddering. Moses was in
earnest, but behind his consecration was his vision of the Eternal,
saying to Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" The Master was in earnest, but
with a motive that took into its account the purposefulness of God,
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17).

Indeed, no satisfying meaning, no real unity are conceivable in a
purposeless universe. The plain fact is that _within_ the universe
nobody explains anything without the statement of its purpose. A chair
is something to sit down on; a watch is something to tell time by; a
lamp is something to give illumination in the dark--and lacking this
purposive description, the story of the precedent history of none of
these things, from their original materials to their present shape,
would in the least tell what they really are. One who knows all else
about a telephone, practically knows nothing, unless he is aware of
what it is _for_. Nor is the necessity of such explanation lessened
when scientists endeavor descriptions in their special realms. Huxley,
narrating the growth of a salamander's egg, writes, "Let a moderate
supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter
undergoes changes so rapid, and yet so steady and so purposelike in
their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by
a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible
trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller
portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too
large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism.
And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be
occupied by the spinal column and moulded the contour of the body;
pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning
flank and limb into the due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a
way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost
involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to
vision than an achromatic, would show the hidden artist, with his plan
before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work."
The obvious fact is that salamanders' eggs act as though they were
seriously intent on making salamanders; and lion's cells as though
they were tremendously in earnest about making lions. As Herbert
Spencer said of a begonia leaf, "We have therefore no alternative but
to say, that the living particles composing one of these fragments,
have an innate tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of the
organism to which they belong." _But if this is so, purpose is
essential in the description of every living thing._ All about us is a
world of life with something strikingly like purposeful action rampant
everywhere, so that in describing an elm tree it will not do to say
only that forces from behind pushed it into being; one must say, too,
that from our first observation of its cells they acted as though they
were intent on making nothing else but elm. They went about their
business as though they had a purpose. The tree's cause is not alone
the forces from behind; it is as well the aim that in the cells'
action lay ahead.

Men can describe nothing in heaven above or on the earth beneath
without the use of purposive terminology. How shall they try otherwise
to describe the universe? _A world in which the minutest particles
and cells all act as though they were eagerly intent on achieving
aims, can only with difficulty be thought of as an aimless whole._
Man's conviction is insistent and imperious that creation, so
surcharged with purposes, must have Purpose. The greatest scientists
themselves are often our best witnesses here. Charles Darwin and
Alfred Russel Wallace are the twin discoverers of evolution. Said the
former: "If we consider the whole universe the mind refuses to look at
it as the outcome of chance." Said the latter: the world is "a
manifestation of creative power, directive mind, and ultimate purpose."

What such men have coldly said, the men of devout religion have set
on fire with passionate faith. They have been sure that this world is
not

                                  "A tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing."

In every cause that makes for man's salvation they have seen the
manifest unveiling of divine intent. _God is in earnest_--this
conviction has possessed them utterly, and to live and die for those
things on behalf of which the Eternal is tremendously concerned has
been the aim, the motive, and the glory of their lives.


II

One need only watch with casual observance the multitudes who say that
they believe in God, to see how few of them believe in this God who is
in earnest. When they confess their faith in deity they have something
else in mind beside the God of the Bible, compassionately purposeful
about his world and calling men to be his fellow-workers. Let us
therefore consider some of the fallacies that enable men to believe in
a God who is _not_ in earnest.

For one thing, some _put God far away_. Missionaries in Africa's
interior find tribes worshiping stocks, stones, demons, ghosts, but
this does not mean that no idea of a great original god is theirs.
Often they are not strangers to that thought, but, as an old
Africander woman said, "He never concerned himself with me; why should
I concern myself with him?" To such folk a great god exists, but he
does not care; he dwells apart, an indifferent deity, who has left
this world in the hands of lesser gods that really count. The task of
the missionary, therefore, is not to prove the existence of a
creator--"No rain, no mushrooms," said an African chief; "no God, no
world"--but it is to persuade men that the God who seems so far away
is near at hand, that he really cares, and over each soul and all his
world is sacrificially in earnest.

Such missionary work is not yet needless among Christian people. Said
a Copenhagen preacher in a funeral discourse, "God cannot help us in
our great sorrow, because he is so infinitely far away; we must
therefore look to Jesus." One feels this Siberian exile of God from
all vital meaning for our humanity, when he is called the "Absolute,"
the "Great First Cause," the "Energy from which all things proceed."
Like the man, examined by the Civil Service, who, asked the distance
from sun to earth, answered, "I do not know how far the sun is from
the earth; but it is far enough so that it will not interfere with the
proper performance of my duties at the Customs Office," so men with
phrases like "the Great First Cause" put God an immeasurable distance
off. No man has dealings with a "Great First Cause," no "Great First
Cause" ever had vital, personal, constraining meanings for a man.
Rather across infinite distance and time unthinkable, we vaguely
picture a dim Figure, who gave this toboggan of a universe its primal
shove and has not thought seriously of it since. So a wanderer down
the street might put a child upon her sled and giving her a start
down-hill, go on his way. She may have a pleasant slide, but he will
not know; she may fall off, but he will not care; there may be a
tragic accident, but that will not be his concern--he has gone away
off down the street. Multitudes of nominal believers have a god like
that.

In comparison with such, one thinks of men like Livingstone. His God
was compassionately concerned for Africa, spoke about black folk as
Hosea heard him speak concerning Israel, "How can I give thee up? How
can I let thee go?" until the fire of the divine earnestness lit a
corresponding ardor in Livingstone's heart and he went out to be God's
man in the dark continent. Such men have smitten the listless world as
winds fill flapping sails, crying "Move!" And the God of such has been
tremendously in earnest.


III

Some gain a God lacking serious purpose, not by putting him afar off,
but by endeavoring to bring him so near that they _diffuse him
everywhere_. Writers tell us that God is in every rustling leaf and in
every wave that breaks upon the beach; we are assured that God is in
every gorgeous flower and in every flaming sunset. And the poetry of
this is so alluring that we cannot bear to have God specially
anywhere, because we are so anxious to keep him everywhere. Preachers
delight to illustrate their thought of God with figures drawn from
nature's invisible energies--

  "Who has seen the wind?
    Neither I nor you:
  But when the leaves hang trembling
    The wind is passing through.

  Who has seen the wind?
    Neither you nor I:
  But when the trees bow down their heads
    The wind is passing by."

By such comparisons are we taught to see that God invisibly is
everywhere.

For all the valuable truth that such speech contains, its practical
issue, in many minds today, is to strip God of the last shred of
personality, and with that loss to end the possibility of his being in
earnest about anything. He has become refined Vapor thinly diffused
through space. Folk say they love to meditate on him, and well they
may! For such a god asks nothing of anybody except meditation; he has
no purposes that call for earnestness in them. When little children
are ruined in a city's tenements, when the liquor traffic brutalizes
men, when economic inequity makes many poor that a few may be made
rich, when war clothes the world with unutterable sorrow, such a god
does not care. He is not in earnest about anything. For the only thing
in the universe that can be consciously in earnest is personality, and
when one depersonalizes God, the remainder is a deity who has no love,
no care, no purpose. Thousands do obeisance to such a gaseous idol.

From this fallacy spring such familiar confessions of faith as this,
"God is not a person; he is spirit." If by this negation one intends
to say that God is not a limited individual, that is obviously true;
but _the contrast between personality and spirit is impossible_. One
may as well speak of dry water as of impersonal spirit. Rays of radium
are unimaginably minute and swift, but they are not spirit. Nothing in
the impersonal realm can be conceived so subtle and refined that it is
spirit. Spirit begins only where love and intelligence and purpose
are, and these all are activities of personality. No one can _really_
believe what Jesus said, "God is a Spirit," without being ready to
pray as Jesus prayed, "Our Father."

Between an impersonal, diffused, and gaseous god, and the God of the
Bible, how great the difference! God's pervading omnipresence is
indeed affirmed in Scripture. There, as much as in any modern thought,
the heavens declare his glory, the flowers of the field are
illustrations of his care, and the influences of his spirit are like
the breeze across the hills. To the ancient Hebrew, heaven and sheol
were the highest and the lowest, but of each the Psalmist says to God,
"Thou art there," and as for the uttermost parts of the sea, "even
there shall thy hand lead me" (Psalm 139:7-10). Cries Jeremiah from
the Old Testament, "Am I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God
afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not
see him? saith Jehovah. Do not I fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. 23:23,
24). And Paul answers from the New Testament, "Not far from every one
of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:27,
28). But the God of the Bible who so pervades and sustains all
existence never degenerates into a Vapor. When Egyptian taskmasters
crack their whips over Hebrew slaves, he cares. When exiles try in
vain to sing the songs of Zion in a strange land, he cares. When evil
men build Jerusalem with blood, and rapacious men pant after the dust
on the head of the poor, he cares. He is prodigiously in earnest, and
those who best represent him, from the great prophets to the
sacrificial Son, are like him in this, that they are mastered by
consuming purpose. The God of the Bible is sadly needed by his people.
For lack of him religion grows often listless and churches become
social clubs.


IV

By another road men travel to believe in a God who is not in earnest:
_they think of him as an historic being_. It was said of Carlyle,
shrewdly if unjustly, that his God lived until the death of Oliver
Cromwell. Whatever may be the truth about Carlyle, it is easy to find
folk whose God to all intents and purposes is dead. Long since he
closed his work, spoke his last word, and settled down to inactivity
and silence. He made the world, created man, thundered from Sinai,
established David's kingdom, brought back the exiles, inspired the
prophets and sent his Son. He _once_ was earnest; the record of his
ancient acts is long and glorious, and men find comfort in reading
what he used to do. They would not explicitly confess it, but in fact
they habitually think of God in the past tense. They cannot conceive
the universe as happening by chance, and they posit God as making it;
they cannot believe that the transcendent characters of olden times
were uninspired, so God becomes the explanation of their power. When
such believers wish to assure themselves of God they go to the stern
of humanity's ship and watch the wake far to the rear; but they never
stand on the ship's bridge, and feel it sway and turn at the touch of
a present Captain in control. They have not risen to the meaning of
the Bible's reiterated phrase, "_the living God_."

Höffding tells us that in a Danish Protestant church, well on into the
nineteenth century, worshipers maintained the custom of bowing, when
they passed a certain spot upon the wall. The reason, which no one
knew, was discovered when removal of the whitewash revealed a Roman
Catholic Madonna. Folk had bowed for three centuries before the place
where the Madonna _used to be_. So some folk worship deity; he is
not a present reality but a tradition; their faith is directed not
toward the living God himself, but toward what some one else has
written about a God who used to be alive. They do not feel now God's
plans afoot, his purposes as certainly in progress now as ever in
man's history. They stand rather like unconverted Gideon, facing
backwards and lamenting, "Where are all his wondrous works which our
fathers told us of?" (Judges 6:13).

Not by what we say, but by our practical attitudes we most reveal how
little we believe in an earnest, living God whose voice calls _us_,
whose plans need _us_, as much as ever Moses or David or Paul was
summoned and required. If we say that we do believe in this living God
we are belied by our discouragements, deserving as we often do the
rebuke which Luther's wife administered to the Reformer. "From what
you have said," she remarked, standing before him clothed in deep,
mourning black, "and from the way you feel and act I supposed that God
was dead." If we say that we believe in a living, earnest God, we are
belied by our reluctance to expect and welcome new revelations of
God's truth and enlarging visions of his plan. Willing to believe what
the astronomers say, that light from a new star reaches the earth
each year, we act as though God's spiritual universe were smaller than
his physical, and do not eagerly await the new light perpetually
breaking from his heavens. But most of all the little influence which
our faith in God has upon our practical service is a scathing
indictment of its vitality and power. No one who really believes in an
earnest, living God can have an undedicated life. He may not think of
the Divine in the past tense chiefly; the present and the future even
more belong to God; and through each generation runs the earnest
purpose of the Eternal, who has never said his last word on any
subject, nor put the final hammer blow on any task. A faith like this,
deeply received and apprehended, is a masterful experience. It changes
the inner quality of life; it makes the place whereon we stand holy
ground; it urgently impresses us into the service of those causes that
we plainly see have in them the purpose of God. No outlook upon life
compares with this in grandeur; no motive for life is at once so
weighty and so fine.


V

One of the subtlest fallacies by which we miss believing in an earnest
God is not describable as an opinion. Men fall into it, who neither
reduce God to a Great First Cause, nor diffuse him into a vapor, nor
regard him as an historic being. _They rather allow their superstitious
sentiments to take the place of worthy faith._ Plenty of people who
warmly would insist on their religion, reveal in their practical
attitudes how utterly bereft of serious moral purpose their God is.
They think their fortune will be better if they do not sit thirteen at
a table or occupy room thirteen at a hotel; on occasion they throw
salt or look at the moon over their right shoulders and rap on wood to
assure their safety or their luck; and to be quite certain of divine
favor they hang fetishes, like rabbits' feet, about their necks. Their
attitude toward such surviving pagan superstitions is like
Fontenelli's toward ghosts. "I do not believe in them," he said, "but
I am afraid of them." That this is a law-abiding universe with moral
purpose in it, such folk obviously do not believe. Their God is not in
earnest. He spends his time watching for dinner parties of thirteen or
listening for folk who forget to rap on wood when they boast that
they have not been ill all winter. The utter poverty to which great
words may be reduced by meager minds is evident when such folk say
that they believe in God.

Even when these grosser forms of superstition are not present, others
hardly more respectable may take their place. God is pictured as a
King, surrounded with court ritual, in the complete and proper
observance of which he takes delight, and any rupture in whose
regularity awakes his anger. To go to church, to say our prayers, to
read our Bibles, to be circumspect on Sunday, to help pay the
preacher's salary and to contribute to the missionary cause--such
things as these comprise the court ritual of God. These Christian acts
are not presented as gracious privileges, opportunities, like fresh
air and sunshine and friendship, to make life rich and serviceable;
they are presented as works of merit, by which we gain standing in
God's favor and assure ourselves of his benignity. For with those who
so conform to his ordinances and respect his taboos, he is represented
as well-pleased, and he blesses them with special favors. But any
infraction of these rituals is sure to bring terrific punishment. God
watches those who do not sing his praises or who fail in praying, and
he marks them for his vengeance! Dr. Jowett tells us that in the
Sunday school room of the English chapel where as a child he
worshiped, a picture hung that to his fascinated and frightened
imagination represented the character of God: a huge eye filled the
center of the heavens, and from it rays of vision fell on every sort
of minute happening and small misdeed on earth. As such a monstrous
Detective, jealous of his rights and perquisites, God is how often
pictured to the children! So H. G. Wells indignantly interprets his
experience: "I, who write, was so set against God, thus rendered. He
and his Hell were the nightmare of my childhood; I hated him while I
still believed in him, and who could help but hate? I thought of him
as a fantastic monster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening,
perpetually waiting to condemn and to strike me dead; his flames as
ready as a grill-room fire. He was over me and about my feebleness and
silliness and forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child
drowning in mid-Atlantic. When I was still only a child of thirteen,
by the grace of the true God in me, I flung this lie out of my mind,
and for many years, until I came to see that God himself had done
this thing for me, the name of God meant nothing to me but the hideous
sear in my heart where a fearful demon had been."

This "bogey God" is in earnest about nothing except the observance of
his little rituals; he is unworthy of a good man's worship, he has no
purpose that can capture the consent and inspire the loyalty of
serious folk. How many so-called unbelievers are in revolt against
this perversion of the idea of God, taught them in childhood! The
deity whom they refuse to credit is not the Father, with "the eternal
purpose which he purposed in Christ" (Eph. 3:11); often they have not
heard of him. Their denial is directed against another sort of God. "I
wish I could recall clearly," writes one, "the conception of God which
I gained as a boy in Sunday school. He was as old as grandfather, I
know, but not so kind. We were told to fear him." Surely the real God
must sympathize with those who hate his caricature. A vindictive
Bogey, querulous about the mint, anise, and cummin of his ritual, in
earnest about nothing save to reward obsequious servants and to have
his vengeance out on the careless and disobedient, is poles asunder
from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with his majestic
purpose for the world's salvation.


VI

Of all the sentiments, however, by which a worthy faith is made
impossible, none is so common, in these recent years, _as the
ascription to God of a weak and flaccid affectionateness_. God's love
is interpreted by love's meaning in hours when we are gentle with our
children or tender with our friends. The soft and cosy aspects of
love, its comforts, its pities, its affections, are made central in
our thought of God. We are taught, as children, that he loves us as
our mothers do; and as from them we look for coddling when we cry for
it, so are our expectations about God. Our religion becomes a selfish
seeking for divine protection from life's ills, a recipe for ease, an
expectant trust, that as we believe in God he in return will nurse us,
unharmed and happy, through our lives. No one intimately acquainted
with the religious life of men and women can be unaware of this
widespread, ingrained belief in a soft, affectionate, grandmotherly
God. What wonder that life brings fearful disillusionment! What
wonder that in a world where all that is valuable has been

  "Battered with the shocks of doom
  To shape and use,"

the God of coddling love seems utterly impossible!

The lack in this fallacious faith is central; there is no place in it
for the movement of God's moral purpose. _To ascribe love to God
without making it a quality of his unalterable purpose, which must
sweep on through costs in suffering however great, is to misread the
Gospel._ Many kinds of love are known in our experience, from a
nursing mother with her babe to a military leader with his men. In
Donald Hankey's picture of "the Beloved Captain" we see affection and
tenderness, as beautiful as they are strong: "It was a wonderful
thing, that smile of his. It was something worth living for, and worth
working for.... It seemed to make one look at things from a different
point of view, a finer point of view, his point of view. There was
nothing feeble or weak about it.... It meant something. It meant that
we were his men and that he was proud of us.... When we failed him,
when he was disappointed in us, he did not smile. He did not rage or
curse. He just looked disappointed, and that made us feel far more
savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done....
The fact was that he had won his way into our affections. We loved
him. And there isn't anything stronger than love, when all's said and
done."

Yet, this Captain, loving and beloved, will lead his men in desperate
charges, where death falls in showers, but where the purpose which
their hearts have chosen forces them to go. The love of God must be
like that; it surely is if Jesus' love is its embodiment. His
affection for his followers, his solicitude and tenderness have been
in Christian eyes, how beautiful! They shine in words like John's
seventeenth chapter where love finds transcendent utterance. Yet this
same Master said: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves" (Matt. 10:16); "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you,
and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for
my sake" (Matt. 5:11); "Then shall they deliver you up unto
tribulation, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all the
nations for my name's sake" (Matt. 24:9); "They shall put you out of
the synagogues; yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall
think that he offereth service unto God" (John 16:2); "If any man
cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,
he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). The love of Jesus was no
coddling affection; it had for its center a moral purpose that balked
at no sacrifice. He took crucifixion for himself, and to his beloved
he cried, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross, and follow me" (Matt. 16:24). Such love is God's;
and _preachers who advertise his Fatherhood as a gentle nurse that
shelters us from suffering have sapped the Gospel of its moral power_.
God's love is austere as well as bountiful; he is, as Emerson said,
the "terrific benefactor."

Indeed, faith in a God of coddling love may be one of the most
pernicious influences in human life. Our trust, so misinterpreted,
becomes a cushion on which to lie, a sedative by which to sleep. When
ills afflict the world that men could cure, such misbelievers merely
trust in God; when tasks await man's strength, they quietly retreat
upon their faith that God is good and will solve all, until religion
becomes a by-word and a hissing on the lips of earnest men. Such
misbelievers have not dimly seen the Scripture's meaning, where faith
is not a pillow but a shield, from behind which plays a sword (Eph.
6:16) and where men do not sleep by faith, but "fight the good fight
of faith" instead (I Tim. 6:12). Or if such misbelievers do rouse
themselves to lay hold on their Divinity, it is to demand God's love
for them and not to offer their lives to God. As Sydney Smith
exclaimed about some people's patriotism, "God save the King! in these
times too often means, God save my pension and my place, God give my
sisters an allowance out of the Privy Purse, let me live upon the
fruits of other men's industry and fatten upon the plunder of the
public."

Faith in God never is elevated and ennobling until we overpass "_God
for our lives!_" to cry "_Our lives for God!_" Then at the luminous
center of our faith shines the divine purpose, costly but wonderful,
that binds the ages together in spiritual unity. To that we dedicate
our lives; in that we exceedingly rejoice. No longer do we test God's
goodness by our happiness or our ill-fortune; we are _his_ through
fair weather and through foul. No longer do we merely hold beliefs, we
are held by them, captured now and not simply consoled by faith. Only
so are we learning discipleship to Christ and are beginning really to
believe in the Christian God.


VII

From all these common fallacies of thought and sentiment one turns to
the New Testament to find the God of the Gospel. The very crux of the
Good Tidings is that God is so much in earnest that he is the eternal
Sufferer. The ancient Greeks had a god of perfect bliss; he floated on
from age to age in undisturbed tranquillity; no cry of man ever
reached his empyrean calm; his life was an endless stream of liquid
happiness. How different this Greek deity is from ours may be
perceived if one tries to say of him those things which the Scripture
habitually says of God. "In all their affliction he was afflicted"
(Isa. 63:9); "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should
not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget, yet
will not I forget thee" (Isa. 49:15); "God, being rich in mercy, for
his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead through
our trespasses" (Eph 2:4, 5); "God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten Son" (John 3:16). None of these things that Christians
say about their God can be said of a deity who dwells in tranquil
bliss.

Indeed let one stand over against a war-torn, unhappy world and try to
think that God does not suffer in man's agony, and he will see how
useless and incredible such a God would be. God looks on Belgium and
he does not care; he looks on Armenia desolate and Poland devastated,
and he does not care; he sits in heaven and sees his children wounded
and alone in No-man's land, watches the deaths, the heart-breaks, the
poverty of war, its ruined childhood and its shattered families, and
he does not care--how impossible it is to believe in such a God! A God
who does not care does not count.

Christians, therefore, have the God who really meets the needs of men.
He cares indeed, and, with all the modesty that words of human
emotion must put on when they are applied to him, he suffers in the
suffering of men and is crucified in his children's agonies. God
limited himself in making such a world as this; in it he cannot
lightly do what he will; he has a struggle on his heart; he makes his
way upward against obstacles that man's imagination cannot measure.
There is a cross forever at the heart of God. He climbs his
everlasting Calvary toward the triumph that must come, and he is
tremendously in earnest.

One important consequence follows such faith as this. Confidence in
such an earnest, sacrificial God makes inevitable the Christian faith
in immortality. Our solar system is no permanent theater for God's
eternal purposes; it is doomed to dissolution as certainly as any
human body is doomed to die. In the Lick observatory one reads this
notice under a picture of the sun: "The blue stars are considered to
be in early life, the yellow stars in middle life, the red stars in
old age.... From the quality of its spectrum the sun is classified as
a star in middle age." Those, therefore, who, denying their own
immortality, comfort themselves with prophesying endless progress for
the race upon the earth, have no basis for their hopes. "We must
therefore renounce those brilliant fancies," says Faye the scientist,
"by which we try to deceive ourselves in order to endow man with
unlimited posterity, and to regard the universe as the immense theater
on which is to be developed a spontaneous progress without end. On the
contrary, life must disappear, and the grandest material works of the
human race will have to be effaced by degrees under the action of a
few physical forces which will survive man for a time. Nothing will
remain--'Even the ruins will perish.'"

If one believes, therefore, in the God who is in earnest, he cannot
content himself with such a universe--lacking any permanent element,
any abiding reality in which the moral gains of man's long struggle
are conserved. God's purpose cannot be so narrow in horizon that it is
satisfied with a few million years of painful experiment, costly
beyond imagination, yet with no issue to crown its sacrifice. In such
a universe as Faye pictures, lacking immortality, generation after
generation of men suffer, aspire, labor, and die, and this shall be
the history of all creation, until at last Shakespeare's prophecy
shall be fulfilled,

  "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
  Leave not a rack behind."

If such is to be the story of creation, there is no purpose in it and
the Christian faith in an earnest God is vain.

Only one truth is adequate to crown our confidence in a purposeful
universe and to make it reasonable: _personality must persist_.
We believe in immortality, not because we meanly want rewards ahead,
but because in no other way can life, viewed as a whole, find sense
and reason. If personality persists, this transient theater of action
and discipline may serve its purpose in God's time, and disappear. He
is in earnest, but not for rocks and suns and stars, he is in earnest
about persons--the sheep of his pasture are men. They are not mortal;
they carry over into the eternal world the spiritual gains of earth;
and all life's struggle--its vicarious sacrifice, its fearful
punishments, its labor for better circumstance and worthier life--is
justified in its everlasting influence on personality. When we say
that God cares, we mean no vague, diffusive attitude toward a system
that lasts for limited millenniums and then comes to an uneventful end
in a cold sun and a ruined earth. We mean that he cares for
personality which is his child, that he suffers in the travail of his
children's character, and that this divine solicitude has everlasting
issues when the heavens "wax old like a garment." Still Paul's
statement stands, one of the most worthy summaries of God's
earnestness that ever has been written: "The creation waits with eager
longing for the sons of God to be revealed" (Rom. 8:19).[6]

[5] George Adam Smith's Translation.

[6] Moffatt's Translation.




CHAPTER X

Faith in Christ the Savior: Forgiveness


DAILY READINGS

During the next two weeks we are to consider some of the distinctive
meanings which faith in Christ has had for his disciples. They have
found in that faith unspeakable blessing and have uttered their
gratitude in radiant language. But, just because of this, many folk
find themselves in difficulty. Their expectations concerning the
Christian life have been lifted very high, and in their experience of
it they have been disappointed. Their problem is not theoretical
doubt, but practical disillusionment. Their difficulty lies in their
experience that the Christian life, while it may be theoretically
true, is not practically what it is advertised to be. At this common
problem let us look in the daily readings.


Tenth Week, First Day

Many expect in the Christian experience an emotional life of joy and
quietude which they have not found. They are led to expect this by
many passages of Scripture about "peace in believing," by many hymns
of exultation where a mood of unqualified spiritual triumph finds
voice, and by testimonies of men who speak of living years without any
depressed hours or flagging spirits. Such a wonderful life of elevated
emotion many crave for themselves; they came into the Christian
fellowship expecting it; and they neither have it, nor are likely to
achieve it. Now the beauty of a clear, high emotional life no one can
doubt, _but we must not demand it as a condition of our keeping
faith_. We ought not to seek God simply for the sake of sensational
experiences, no matter how desirable they may be. In all the ages
before Christ, the outstanding example of deep personal religion,
expressing itself in over forty years of splendidly courageous
prophetic ministry, is Jeremiah, and his temperament was never marked
by quietude and joy. His emotional life was profoundly affected by his
faith: _courage was substituted for fear_. But if he had demanded the
mood of the 103rd psalm as a price for continued faith, he would have
lost his faith. He was not temperamentally constructed like the
psalmist--and he was a far greater personality. We must not be too
much concerned about our spiritual sensations. Consider the Master's
parable about the two sons: one had amiable feelings, but his will was
wrong, the other lacked satisfactory emotions, but he did the work.

 =But what think ye? A man had two sons; and he came to the first, and
 said, Son, go work to-day in the vineyard. And he answered and said,
 I will not: but afterward he repented himself, and went. And he came
 to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go,
 sir: and went not. Which of the two did the will of his father? They
 say, The first.--Matt. 21:28-31.=

 _Ah, Lord, unto whom all hearts are open; Thou canst govern the
 vessel of our souls far better than we can. Arise, O Lord, and
 command the stormy wind and the troubled sea of our hearts to be
 still, and at peace in Thee, that we may look up to Thee undisturbed,
 and abide in union with Thee, our Lord. Let us not be carried hither
 and thither by wandering thoughts, but, forgetting all else, let us
 see and hear Thee. Renew our spirits; kindle in us Thy light, that it
 may shine within us, and our hearts may burn in love and adoration
 towards Thee. Let Thy Holy Spirit dwell in us continually, and make
 us Thy temples and sanctuary, and fill us with Divine love and light
 and life, with devout and heavenly thoughts, with comfort and
 strength, with joy and peace. Amen._--Johann Arndt, 1555.


Tenth Week, Second Day

Many came into the Christian life because they needed conquering power
in their struggle against sin. They were told that absolute victory
could be theirs through Christ, and they set their hearts on that in
ardent hope and expectation. But they are disappointed. That they have
been helped they would not deny, but they find that the battle with
besetting sin is a running fight; it has not been concluded by a final
and resounding victory. This seems to them a denial of what Christian
preachers and Christian hymns have promised, and perhaps it is. Hymns
and preachers are not infallible. Christian experience, however, is
plainly aligned against their disappointment. Some men under the power
of Christ are immediately transformed so that an old sin becomes
thenceforth utterly distasteful; even the desire for it is banished
altogether. But a great preacher, only recently deceased, no less
really under the power of Christ, had all his life to fight a taste
for drink which once had mastered him. His battle never ceased. His
victory consisted not in the elimination of his appetite, but in
abiding power to keep up the struggle, to refuse subjugation to it,
and at last gloriously to fall on sleep, admired and loved by his
people who had seen in him steadfast, unconquerable will, sustained by
faith. To have done with a sinful appetite in one conclusive victory
is glorious; but we must not demand it as a price of keeping faith.
Perhaps our victory must come through the kind of patient persistence
which James the Apostle evidently knew.

 =Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold
 temptations; knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.
 And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and
 entire, lacking in nothing.=

 =But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to
 all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let
 him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the
 surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man
 think that he shall receive anything of the Lord; a double-minded
 man, unstable in all his ways.--James 1:2-8.=

 _O Lord God Almighty, who givest power to the faint, and increasest
 strength to them that have no might; without Thee we can do nothing,
 but by Thy gracious assistance we are enabled for the performance of
 every duty laid upon us. Lord of power and love, we come, trusting in
 Thine almighty strength, and Thine infinite goodness, to ask from
 Thee what is wanting in ourselves; even that grace which shall help
 us such to be, and such to do, as Thou wouldst have us. O our God,
 let Thy grace be sufficient for us, and ever present with us, that
 we may do all things as we ought. We will trust in Thee, in whom is
 everlasting strength. Be Thou our Helper, to carry us on beyond our
 own strength, and to make all that we think, and speak, and do,
 acceptable in Thy sight; through Jesus Christ. Amen._--Benjamin
 Jenks, 1646.


Tenth Week, Third Day

 =Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want.
 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
 He leadeth me beside still waters.
 He restoreth my soul:
 He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
 I will fear no evil; for thou art with me;
 Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.=

 =--Psalm 23:1-4.=

What expectations are awakened by such a passage! Many have come into
the Christian life because in experience they have found that "it is
not in man that walketh to direct his steps." They wanted a Guide in
the mysterious pilgrimage of life, and in the words of hymns like, "He
leadeth me, O blessed thought!" they saw the promise of a God-conducted
experience. But they are disappointed. They have the same old puzzles
to face about what they ought to do; they have no divine illumination
that clears up in advance their uncertainty as to the wisdom of their
choices; they are not vividly aware of any guidance from above to save
them from the perplexities which their companions face about conduct
and career. Of course part of their difficulty is due to false
expectation. Not even Paul or John was given mechanical guidance,
infallible and unmistakable; they never had a syllabus of all possible
emergencies with clear directions as to what should be done in every
case; they were guided through their normal faculties made sensitive
to divine suggestion, and doubtless they never could clearly
distinguish between their thought and their inspirations. Divine
guidance, did not save them from puzzling perplexities and unsure
decisions. But it did give them certainty that they were in God's
hands; that he had hold of the reins behind their human grasp; that
when they did wisely and prayerfully the best they knew, he would use
it somehow to his service. And so far as the vivid consciousness of
being guided is concerned, that probably came _in retrospect_; when
they saw how the road came out, they agreed that God's hand must have
been in the journey. Such an experience it is reasonable to expect and
possible to have.

 _O God our Lord, the stay of all them that put their trust in Thee,
 wherever Thou leadest we would go, for Thy ways are perfect wisdom
 and love. Even when we walk through the dark valley, Thy light can
 shine into our hearts and guide us safely through the night of
 sorrow. Be Thou our Friend, and we need ask no more in heaven or
 earth, for Thou art the Comfort of all who trust in Thee, the Help
 and Defence of all who hope in Thee. O Lord, we would be Thine; let
 us never fall away from Thee. We would accept all things without
 murmuring from Thy hand, for whatever Thou dost is right. Blend our
 wills with Thine, and then we need fear no evil nor death itself, for
 all things must work together for our good. Lord, keep us in Thy love
 and truth, comfort us with Thy light, and guide us by Thy Holy
 Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen._--S. Weiss, 1738.


Tenth Week, Fourth Day

Many folk grow up into the Christian life, and so interpret the love
of God that they expect from him affectionate mothering; they look to
him to keep them from trouble. In childhood, sheltered from life's
tragic incidents, this expectation was more or less realized; but now
in maturity they are disappointed. God has not saved them from
trouble; he has not dealt with them in maternal tenderness. Rather
Job's complaint to God is on their lips:

 =I cry unto thee, and thou dost not answer me:
 I stand up, and thou gazest at me.
 Thou art turned to be cruel to me;
 With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me....=

 =Did not I weep for him that was in trouble?
 Was not my soul grieved for the needy?
 When I looked for good, then evil came;
 And when I waited for light, there came darkness.
 My heart is troubled, and resteth not;
 Days of affliction are come upon me.=

 =--Job 30:20, 21; 25-27.=

One such disappointed spirit says that in youth, even if she hurt her
finger, she was told to pray to God and he would take away the bruise;
but now life does not seem to be directed by that kind of a God at
all. It isn't! A pregnant source of lost faith is to be found in this
unscriptural presentation of God's love. In Scripture God's love for
his people and their tragic suffering are put side by side, and the
Cross where the well-beloved Son is crucified is typical of the whole
Book's assertion that God does not keep his children from trouble.
Sometimes he leads them into it; and always he lets the operation of
his essential laws sweep on, so that disease and accident and death
are no respecters of character. When Ananias was sent with God's
message to the newly converted Paul, that greeting into the Christian
life concerned "how many things he must suffer" (Acts 9:16). Whatever
else our faith must take into account, this is an unescapable fact: we
are seeking the impossible when we ask that our lives be arranged on
the basis that we shall not face trouble. Faith means a conquering
confidence that good will, a purpose of eternal love, runs through the
whole process. It says, not apart from suffering, but in the face of
it:

              "I'm apt to think the man
  That could surround the sum of things, and spy
  The heart of God and secrets of his empire,
  Would speak but love--with him the bright result
  Would change the hue of intermediate scenes,
  And make one thing of all Theology."

 _Almighty God to whom all things belong, whose is light and darkness,
 whose is good and evil, Master of all things, Lord of all; who hast
 so ordered it, that life from the beginning shall be a struggle
 throughout the course, and even to the end; so guide and order that
 struggle within us, that at last what is good in us may conquer, and
 all evil be overcome, that all things may be brought into harmony,
 and God may be all in all. So do Thou guide and govern us, that
 every day whatsoever betide us, some gain to better things, some
 more blessed joy in higher things may be ours, that so we, though but
 weaklings, may yet, God-guided, go from strength to strength, until
 at last, delivered from that burden of the flesh, through which comes
 so much struggling, we may enter into the land of harmony and of
 eternal peace. Hear us, of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 Amen._--George Dawson, 1877.


Tenth Week, Fifth Day

 =Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge
 of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the
 stature of the fulness of Christ: that we may be no longer children,
 tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by
 the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; but
 speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is
 the head, even Christ.--Eph. 4:13-15.=

Many came into the Christian life familiar with such an idea of
growth. They expected the new life to be an enlarging experience, with
new vistas, deepening satisfactions, increasing certitude. If at the
beginning the Christian way did not content them, they blamed their
immaturity for the unsatisfactory experience; they appealed to the
days ahead for fuller light. But they are disappointed. They have not
grown. The most they can claim is that they are stationary; the
haunting suspicion cannot altogether be avoided that their faith is
dwindling and their fervor burning down. This difficulty is not
strange--with many folk it is inevitable; for they have never grasped
the fact that the Christian life, like all life whatsoever, is
law-abiding, and that to expect effects without cause is vain. That a
Christian experience has begun with promise does not mean that it will
magically continue; that the spirit will naturally drift into an
enlarging life. An emotional conversion, like a flaming meteor, may
plunge into a man's heart, and soon cool off, leaving a dead, encysted
stone. But to have a real life in God, that begins like a small but
vital acorn and grows like an aspiring oak, one must obey the laws
that make such increasing experience possible. To keep fellowship with
God unimpeded by sin, uninterrupted by neglect; to think habitually as
though God were, instead of casually believing that he is; to
practice love continually until love grows real; and to arrange life's
program conscientiously as though the doing of God's will were life's
first business--such things alone make spiritual growth a possibility.

 _We desire to confess, O Lord, that we have not lived according to
 our promises, nor according to the thoughts and intents of our
 hearts. We have felt the gravitation of things that drew us downward
 from things high and holy. We have followed right things how feebly!
 Weak are we to resist the attraction of evils that lurk about the way
 of goodness; and we are conscious that we walk in a vain show. We
 behold and approve Thy law, but find it hard to obey; and our
 obedience is of the outside, and not of the soul and of the spirit,
 with heartiness and full of certainty. We rejoice that Thou art a
 Teacher patient with Thy scholars, and that Thou art a Father patient
 with Thy children. Thou art a God of long-suffering goodness, and of
 tender mercies, and therefore we are not consumed._

 _And now we beseech of Thee, O Thou unwearied One, that Thou wilt
 inspire us with a heavenly virtue. Lift before us the picture of what
 we should be and what we should do, and maintain it in the light,
 that we may not rub it out in forgetfulness; that we may be able to
 keep before ourselves our high calling in Christ Jesus. And may we
 press forward, not as they that have attained or apprehended; may we
 press toward the mark, for the prize of our high calling in Christ
 Jesus, with new alacrity, with growing confidence, and with more and
 more blessedness of joy and peace in the soul. Amen._--Henry Ward
 Beecher.


Tenth Week, Sixth Day

The Christian experience which disappoints its possessor by lack of
growth is common, because so many leave the idea of growth vague and
undefined. They expect in general to grow, but in what direction, to
what describable results, they never stop to think. If we ran our
other business as thoughtlessly, with as little determinate planning
and discipline, as we manage our Christian living, any progress would
be impossible. What wonder that as Christians we often resemble the
child who fell from bed at night, and explained the accident by
saying, "I must have gone to sleep too near the place where I got in"!

Growth is always in definite directions, and folk will do well at
times, without morbid self-examination, to forecast their desired
courses. Becoming Christians from motives of fear, as many do, we
should press on to a fellowship with God in which fear vanishes in
divine friendship and cooperation. Choosing the Christian life for
self-centered reasons, because it can do great things for us, we
should press on to glory in it as a Cause on which the welfare of the
race depends and for which we willingly make sacrifice. Beginning with
narrow ideas of service to our friends and neighborhood, we should
press on to genuine interest in the world-field, in international
fraternity, and in Christ's victory over all mankind. Such definite
lines of progress we well may set before us. And a life that does
grow, so that each new stage of maturing experience finds deeper
levels and greater heights, is never disappointing; it is life become
endlessly interesting and worth while.

 =Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I
 press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was
 laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to
 have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are
 behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I
 press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in
 Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus
 minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall
 God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have attained, by that same
 rule let us walk.--Phil. 3:12-16.=

 _Our Father, we pray Thee that we may use the blessings Thou hast
 given us, and never once abuse them. We would keep our bodies
 enchanted still with handsome life, wisely would we cultivate the
 intellect which Thou hast throned therein, and we would so live with
 conscience active and will so strong that we shall fix our eye on the
 right, and, amid all the distress and trouble, the good report and
 the evil, of our mortal life, steer straightway there, and bate no
 jot of human heart or hope. We pray Thee that we may cultivate still
 more these kindly hearts of ours, and faithfully perform our duty to
 friend and acquaintance, to lover and beloved, to wife and child, to
 neighbor and nation, and to all mankind. May we feel our brotherhood
 to the whole human race, remembering that nought human is strange to
 our flesh but is kindred to our soul. Our Father, we pray that we may
 grow continually in true piety, bringing down everything which would
 unduly exalt itself, and lifting up what is lowly within us, till,
 though our outward man perish, yet our inward man shall be renewed
 day by day, and within us all shall be fair and beautiful to Thee,
 and without us our daily lives useful, our whole consciousness
 blameless in Thy sight. Amen._--Theodore Parker.


Tenth Week, Seventh Day

While some, for reasons such as we have suggested, have made at least
a partial failure of the Christian life, and are tempted to feel that
their experience is an argument against it, we may turn with
confidence to the multitude who have found life with Christ an
ineffable blessing.

 =There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ
 Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free
 from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do, in
 that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the
 likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
 that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
 after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the
 flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the
 Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death;
 but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.--Rom. 8:1-6.=

Innumerable disciples of Jesus can subscribe to this Pauline
testimony, and the center of their gratitude, as of his, is the
victory over sin which faith in Christ has given them. The farther
they go with him the more wonderful becomes the meaning of his Gospel.
What Thomas Fuller, in the seventeenth century, wrote about the Bible,
they feel about their whole relationship with Christ: "Lord, this
morning I read a chapter in the Bible, and therein observed a
memorable passage, whereof I never took notice before. Why now, and no
sooner, did I see it? Formerly my eyes were as open, and the letters
as legible. Is there not a thin veil laid over Thy Word, which is
more rarified by reading, and at last wholly worn away? I see the oil
of Thy Word will never leave increasing whilst any bring an empty
barrel." As for the consciousness of filial alliance with the God and
Father of Jesus, that has been a deepening benediction. How many can
take over the dual inscription on an ancient Egyptian temple, as an
expression of their own experience! A priest had written, in the name
of the Deity, "I am He who was and is and ever shall be, and my veil
hath no man lifted." But near at hand, some man of growing life and
deepening faith has added: "Veil after veil have we lifted, and ever
the Face is more wonderful."

 _Eternal and Gracious Father, whose presence comforteth like sunshine
 after rain; we thank Thee for Thyself and for all Thy revelation to
 us. Our hearts are burdened with thanksgiving at the thought of all
 Thy mercies; for all the blessings of this mortal life, for health,
 for reason, for learning, and for love; but far beyond all thought
 and thankfulness, for Thy great redemption. It was no painless
 travail that brought us to the birth, it has been no common patience
 that has borne with us all this while; long-suffering love, and the
 breaking of the eternal heart alone could reconcile us to the life to
 which Thou hast ordained us. We have seen the Son of Man sharing our
 sickness and shrinking not from our shame, we have beheld the Lamb of
 God bearing the sins of the world, we have mourned at the mysterious
 passion and stood astonished at the cross of Jesus Christ; and behind
 all we have had the vision of an altar-throne and one thereon slain
 from the foundation of the world; heard a voice calling us that was
 full of tears; seen beyond the veil that was rent, the agony of God._

 _O for a thousand tongues to sing the love that has redeemed us. O
 for a thousand lives that we might yield them all to Thee. Amen._--W.
 E. Orchard.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

Hitherto in our studies we have thought of God as the object of our
faith. From the beginning, to be sure, we have been using the Master
as the Way. The God who is in earnest about immortal personalities is
supremely revealed in Jesus Christ. But through Christ's mediation we
have been trying to pierce to the Eternal character and purpose; we
have been taking Jesus at his word, "He that believeth on me,
believeth not on me but on him that sent me" (John 12:44).

The meaning of faith for the Christian, however, cannot be left as
though Christ were an instrument which God used for his revealing and
then thrust aside, a symbol in terms of whom we may poetically picture
God. Christ has been for his people more than a transparent pane,
itself almost forgettable, through which the divine light shone. His
personality has been central and dominant, and when his disciples have
most vividly expressed the meaning of their faith they have said that
they believed in him. The first Christians whose experience is
enshrined in the New Testament did not deal with faith in God alone.
They adored Jesus; they were illimitably thankful to him; they
rejoiced to call themselves his bondservants and to suffer for him;
they claimed him as a brother, but they acknowledged him their Lord as
well; and they bowed before him with inexpressible devotion. "They all
set him in the same incomparable place. They all acknowledged to him
the same immeasurable debt."

One need not read far in the New Testament to see why these first
disciples so adored their Lord. He was their Savior. They called him
by many other names--Messiah, _Logos_, Son of Man, and Son of God--in
their endeavor to do justice to his work and character, but one name
shines among all the rest and swings them about it like planets round
a sun. He is the Savior. From the annunciation to Joseph, "Thou shalt
call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from
their sins" (Matt. 1:21), to the New Song of the Apocalypse (Rev.
5:5-13), the New Testament is written around the central theme of
saviorhood. These first disciples were vividly aware of an abysmal
need, which had been met in Christ, a great peril from which through
him they had escaped; and throughout the New Testament one never loses
the accent of astonished gratitude, from folk who were once slaves and
now are free, who from victims have been turned to victors. When
Wilberforce's long campaign for the freeing of British slaves was at
its climax, the population of Jamaica lined the shore for days
awaiting the ship that should bring news of Parliament's decision. And
when from a boat's prow the messenger cried "Freedom," the island
rang with the thanksgiving of the liberated. Such rejoicing one hears
in the New Testament. The disciples speak of the freedom wherewith
Christ has set them free (Gal. 5:1); they say that they were dead and
now are made alive (Rom. 6:11-13); once overwhelmed by sin, they now
cry, "More than conquerors" (Rom. 8:37). Nor have they any doubt who
is the agent or what is the agency of their salvation: Christ is the
Savior and faith the means. "This is the victory that hath overcome
the world," they cry, "even our faith" (I John 5:4).

If we are to understand this attitude of the first disciples toward
Christ the Savior, _we must appreciate as they did the peril from
which he rescued them_. One cannot understand the meaning of any
character who, like Moses, delivered a people from their bondage,
unless he deeply feels the importance of the problem to whose solution
the man contributed. Moses shines out against the background of a
nation's trouble like a star against the midnight sky. When the
blackness of the night is gone, the star has vanished, too. The race's
deliverers never can retain their brightness in our gratitude unless
we keep alive in our remembrance the evil against which they fought.
If we would know Moses, we must know Pharaoh; if we would know
Wellington, we must know Napoleon. If we are to value truly the great
educators, we must estimate aright the blight that ignorance lays on
human life. John Howard will be nothing to us, if we do not know the
ancient prison system in comparison with which even our modern jails
are paradise; and Florence Nightingale will be an empty name, if we
cannot imagine the terrors of war without a nurse. Always we must see
the stars against the night.

Nor is there any other way in which a Christian can keep alive a vital
understanding of his Lord. Many modern Christians seem to have lost
vision of the problem that Jesus came to solve, of the human peril to
whose conquest he made the supreme contribution. They think that the
Church has adored Jesus because of a metaphysical theory about him,
but all theories concerning Christ have arisen from a previous
devotion to him. Or they think that Jesus is adored because he was so
uniquely beautiful in character. But while without this his people
never would have called him Lord, not on this account chiefly have
they looked on him with inexpressible devotion. No one can understand
the Christian attitude toward Jesus except in terms of the bondage
from which he came to rescue us. There is a human cry that makes his
advent meaningful; it is like the night behind the star of Bethlehem.
Long ago a Psalmist heard that cry and every age and land and soul has
echoed it, "My sins are mightier than I" (Psalm 65:3).[7]


II

The peril of sin as the innermost problem of human life is in these
days obscure to many minds. For one thing, sin has been so
continuously preached about, that it seems to some an ecclesiastical
question, fit for discussion, it may be, in a church on Sunday, but
otherwise not often emerging in ordinary thought. But sin is no
specialty of preaching. If a man, forgetting churches and sermons,
seriously ponders human life as he knows it actually to be, if he
gathers up in his imagination the deepest heartaches of the race, its
worst diseases, its most hopeless miseries, its ruined childhood, its
dissevered families, its fallen states, its devastated continents, he
soon will see that the major cause of all this can be spelled with
three letters--sin. To make vivid this peril as the very crux of
humanity's problem on the earth, one needs at times to leave behind
the customary thoughts and phrases of religion and to seek testimony
from sources that the Church frequently forgets. When governments try
to build social states where equity and happiness shall reign, their
prison systems, their criminal codes, their courts of law loudly
advertise that their problem lies in sin. When jurists plan leagues of
nations and sign covenants to make the world a more fraternal place,
only to find greed, hate, and cruelty demolishing their well-laid
schemes, their failure uncovers the crucial problem of man's sin. When
philanthropists try to lift from man's bent back the burdens that
oppress him, it becomes plain how infinitely their task would be
lightened, if it were not for sin. As for literature--where the seers,
regardless of religious prejudice, have tried to see into the human
heart and truly to report their insights--its witness is overwhelming
as to what man's problem is. No great book of creative literature was
ever written without sin at the center. Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello,
Faust, Les Misérables, Romola, The Scarlet Letter--let the list be
extended in any direction and to any length! Always the insight of the
creative seers reports one inner peril of the race. Sin is no bogey
erected by the theologians, no ghost imagined by minds grown morbid
with the fear of God. Sin to every seeing eye is the one most real and
practical problem of mankind.

For another reason this crucial problem is dimly seen by many minds:
we do not often use the word about ourselves. The hardest thing that
any man can ever say is "I have sinned." We make mistakes, we have
foibles of character and conduct, we even fall into error--but we do
not often sin. By such devices we avoid the painful consciousness of
our inward malady and even the name of our disease is banished from
decorous speech. But sin does not go into exile with its name. Sin has
many aliases and can swiftly shift its guise to gain a welcome into
any company.

Sin in the slums is gross and terrible. It staggers down the streets,
blasphemes with oaths that can be heard, wallows in vice unmentionable
by modest lips. Then some day prosperity may visit it. It moves to a
finer residence, seeks the suburbs, or finds domicile on a college
campus. It changes all its clothes. No longer is it indecent and
obscene. Its speech is mild, its civility is irreproachable. It gathers
a company of friends who minister to pleasure and respectability,
and the cry of the world's need dies unheard at its peaceful door. It
presses its face continually through the pickets of social allowance,
like a bad boy who wishes to trespass on forbidden ground but fears
the consequence. Its goodness is superficial seeming; at heart it is
as bad as it dares to be. It has completely changed its garments, but
it is the same sin--indulgent, selfish, and unclean. Sin, as anyone
can easily observe, takes a very high polish.

Neither by calling sin an ecclesiastical concern nor by covering its
presence in ourselves with pleasant euphemisms can we hide its deadly
bane in human life. The truth and import of this negative statement
become clear and convincing when its positive counterpart is faced.
The world needs _goodness_. The one thing in which mankind is poor and
for the lack of which great causes lag and noble hopes go unfulfilled
is character. With each access of that humanity leaps forward; with
the sag of that all else is failure. And the one name for every loss
and lack and ruin of character is sin. That is our enemy. Upon the
defeat of that all our dearest hopes depend, and in its victory every
dream of good that the race has cherished comes to an end.


III

The urgency of this truth is manifest when we note the consequence of
sin in our own lives. No statement from antiquity has accumulated more
confirming evidence in the course of the centuries than the Psalmist's
cry, "My sins are mightier than I." Let us consider its truth in the
light of our experience.

Our sins are stronger than we are _in their power to fasten on us a
sense of guilt that we cannot shake off_. Sinful pleasures lure us
only in _anticipation_, dancing before us like Salome before her
uncle, quite irresistible in fascination. Happiness seems altogether
to depend upon an evil deed. But on the day that deed, long held in
alluring expectation, is actually done--how swift and terrible the
alteration in its aspect! It passes from anticipation, through
committal, into memory, and it never will be beautiful again. We lock
it in remembrance, as in the bloody room of Bluebeard's palace, where
the dead things hung; at the thought of it we shrink and yet to it our
reminiscence continually is drawn. Something happens in us as
automatic as the dropping of a loosened apple from a tree; all the
laws of the moral universe conspire to further it and we have no power
to prevent: sin becomes guilt. When on a lonely ocean the floating
bell-buoys toll, no human hands cause them to ring; the waste of an
unpeopled ocean surrounds them everyway. The sea by its own
restlessness is ringing its own bells. So tolls remorse in a man's
heart and no man can stop it.

Our sins are stronger than we are _in their power to become habitual_.
If one who steps from an upper window had only the single act to
consider, his problem would be simple. He could step or not as he
chose. But when one steps from an upper window he finds himself
dealing with a power over which his will has no control. Master of his
single act, he is not master of the _gravitation_ that succeeds it.
Many a youth blithely plays with sin, supposing that separate
deeds--which he may do or refrain from as he will--make up the
problem. Soon or late he finds that he is dealing with moral laws,
built into the structure of the universe as gravitation is--laws
which he did not create and whose operation he cannot control. By them
with terrific certainty thoughts grow to deeds, deeds to habits,
habits to character, character to destiny.

At the beginning sin always comes disguised as liberty. Its lure is
the seductive freedom which it promises from the trammels of
conscience and the authority of law. But every man who ever yet
accepted sin's offer of a free, unfettered life, discovered the cheat.
Free to do the evil thing, to indulge the baser moods--so men begin,
but they end _not free to stop_, bound as slaves to the thing
that they were free to do. They have been at liberty to play with a
cuttle-fish, and now that the first long arm with its suckers grasps
them, and the second arm is waving near, they are not at liberty to
get away.

Our sins are mightier than we are _in their power to make us tempt our
fellows_. When we picture our sinfulness, even to ourselves, we
naturally represent our lives assailed by the allurements of evil and
passively surrendering. We are the tempted; we pity ourselves because
the outward pressure was too strong for the inward braces. We forget
that in sin we are not simply the passive subjects of temptation; sin
always makes us active tempters of our fellows. No drug fiend ever is
content until he wins a comrade in his vice; a thief would have his
friends steal, too; a gossip is not satisfied until other lips are
tearing reputations into shreds; and vindictiveness is happiest when
other hearts as well are lighted with lurid tempers. Sin always is
contagious as disease is; the tempted becomes tempter on the instant
that he falls. Peter weak, lures Jesus to his weakness, and the Master
recognizes the active quality of his disciple's sin; "Get thee behind
me, Satan!" (Matt. 16:23). Sin satanizes men and sends them out to
seduce their fellows. When, therefore, a sensitive man repents of his
evil, he abhors himself--not mildly as a victim, but profoundly as a
victimizer. He repents of the way he has played Satan to others,
sometimes deliberately, sometimes by the unconscious influence of an
unworthy spirit. He remembers the times when his words have poisoned
the atmosphere which others breathed, when his tempers have conjured
up evil spirits in other hearts, when his attitude has made wrongdoing
easy for his friends and family, and well-doing hard. And his
desperate helplessness in the face of sin is made most evident when he
recalls the irrecoverable injury which lives have suffered and are
suffering, hurt, perhaps ruined, by his evil.

_Our sins are mightier than we are in their power to bring their
natural consequences upon other lives._ The landlord, of whom
President Hyde has told, who without disinfection rented to a new
family an apartment where a perilous disease had been, is typical of
every evil-doer. When the only child of the incoming family fell sick
of the disease and died, and the landlord was faced with his guilt, he
pleaded his unwillingness to spend the money which the disinfection
would have cost. He denied his Lord for ten dollars. Let the law
punish him as it can, the crux of his moral problem lies in the fact
that however much he may be sorry now, he never can bear all the
consequences of his sin. Somewhere there is a childless home bearing
part of the result of his iniquity. One who had done a deed like that
might well crave death and oblivion. But everyone who ever sinned is
in that estate. No man ever succeeded in building around his evil a
wall high and thick enough to contain all evil's consequences. They
always flow over and seep through; they fall in cruel disaster on
those who love us best. One never estimates his sin aright until he
sees that no man ever bears all the results of his own evil. Always
our sins nail somebody else to a cross; they even "crucify ... the Son
of God afresh" (Heb. 6:6).

Such is the meaning of the peril against whose background the New
Testament believers saw the luminous figure of the Savior. Sin brings
men into the debt of a great guilt which they cannot pay and into the
bondage of tyrannous habits which they cannot break; it makes men
tempting satans to their fellows, and it hurls its results like
vitriol across the faces of their family and friends. And when one
looks on the lamentable evils of the world at large, its sad
inequities, its furious wars, he sees no need to deal delicately with
sin or to speak of it in apologetic tones. Sin is, as the New
Testament saw it, the central problem of mankind. If anyone has ever
come with the supreme contribution to its conquest, the face of the
world may well be turned toward him today. In the Christian's faith,
such a Savior has come. For if the visitor from Mars who so often has
been imagined coming to earth, should come again, and amazed at the
churches built, the anthems sung, the service wrought in Jesus' name,
should curiously inquire what this character had done to awaken such
response, we should have to answer: Jesus of Nazareth made no direct
contribution to science or art or government or law--with none of
these important realms did he concern himself. Only one thing he did:
_he made the indispensable contribution to man's fight for great
character against sin_. And because that is man's crucial problem, all
science, art, government, and law are under an unpayable indebtedness
to him. Because that is man's innermost need, his birthday has become
the hinge of history, until one cannot write a letter to his friend
without dating his familiar act from the advent of him who came to
save us in our struggle for godliness against evil.


IV

Faith in Christ has a double relationship with the problem of man's
sin; it concerns _the basis on which we are to be judged and the
strength by which we are to conquer_. Christ has brought to men a
gospel of forgiveness and power. With regard to the first--and with
the first alone this chapter is concerned--the opinion of many modern
men is swift and summary: folk are to be judged by what they do; the
output of a man, as of a machine, is the test of him. Until this
popular method of judgment is convicted of inadequacy, there is no
hope of understanding what Christians have meant by being "saved
through faith" (Eph. 2:8). We must see that men are worth more than
they _do_.

A man's deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment, because
_motives for the same act may be low or high_. No one can be
unaware of the Master's meaning when he speaks of those who do their
alms before men to be seen of them (Matt. 6:1ff), or of Paul's when he
says, "If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor ... but have not
love" (I Cor. 13:3). Some men habitually shine to good advantage by
such means; they have the facile gift of putting their best foot
forward. Like a store at Christmas time, its finest goods in the
window and inferior stock for sale upon the counters, they are
infinitely skilful in gaining more credit than their worth deserves.
One who has dealt with such folk becomes aware that to estimate an
isolated deed is superficial; one must know the motive. A cup of cold
water or a widow's penny may awake the Master's spirited approval, and
millions rung into the temple treasury by showy Pharisees meet only
scorn.

Deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment because, while we
are more than body, _our bodies are the instruments of all that
visibly we do_. Many a man in spirit is like a swift mill race,
eager for service, but the flesh, a battered mill wheel, ill sustains
the spirit's vehemence; it breaks before the shock. One must shut the
gates and patch up the wheel, before the spirit, impatient for
utterance, may have its way again; and some mill-wheels never can be
mended. Says one of Robert Louis Stevenson's biographers: "When a
temporary illness lays him on his back, he writes in bed one of his
most careful and thoughtful papers, the discourse on 'The Technical
Elements in Style.' When ophthalmia confines him to a darkened room,
he writes by the diminished light. When after hemorrhage, his right
hand has to be held in a sling, he writes some of his 'Child's Garden'
with his left hand. When the hemorrhage has been so bad that he dare
not speak, he dictates a novel in the deaf and dumb alphabet." When
one has lived with handicapped folk, discerning behind the small
amount of work the infinite willingness for more, and in the work done
a quality that makes quantity seem negligible, he perceives that deeds
are no sufficient measure of spiritual value. Only an eye that pierces
behind the unwrought work to the _man_, willing while the flesh
was weak, can ever estimate how much some spirits are worth.

Deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment because _men face
unequal opportunities_. Some start with one talent, some with ten.
The cherished son of a Christian family ought to live a decent life;
how favorable his chance! But if a vagrant wharf-rat by some
mysterious vision of decency and determination of character makes a
man of himself, how much more his credit! The worth of goodness cannot
be estimated without knowledge of the struggle which it cost. When one
considers the smug, conventional respectability of some, possessing
every favorable help to goodness, and the rough but genuine integrity
of others who have fought a great fight against crippling handicaps to
character, he sees why, in any righteous judgment, the last will be
first, as Jesus said, and the first last. Only God, with power to
understand what heredity and circumstance some men have faced, what
enticements they have met, what a fight they have really waged even
when they may have seemed to fail, can tell how much they are worth.

  "What's done we partly may compute,
  But know not what's resisted."

Judgment based on deeds alone can never truly estimate a man, because
in every important decision of our lives an _"unpublished self"
finds no expression in our outward act_. Duty is not always clear;
at times it seems a labyrinth without a clue. Perplexed, we balance in
long deliberation the opposing reasons for this act or that, until,
forced to choose, we obtain only a majority vote for the decision. Yet
that uncertain majority alone is published in our deed; man's eyes
never see the unexpressed protestant minority behind. And when the
choice proves wrong, and friends are grieved and enemies condemn and
what we did is hateful to ourselves, only one who knows how much we
wanted to do right, and who accounts not only the published but the
unpublished self can truly estimate our worth. Peter, who denied his
Lord, it may be because he wanted the privilege of being near him at
the trial, is not the only one who has appealed from the outward
aspect of his deed to the inner intention of his heart: "Lord, thou
knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee" (John 21:17).

Moreover, even when we choose aright, _no deed can ever gather into
utterance all that is best and deepest in us_. A mother's love is
as much greater than any word she speaks or act she does, as the
sunshine is greater than the focused point where in a burning glass we
gather a ray of it. We are infinitely more than words can utter or
deeds express. No adequate judgment, therefore, can rest on deeds
alone. A machine may be estimated by its output, but a man is too
subtle and profound, his motives and purposes too inexpressible, his
temptations and inward struggles too intimate and unrevealed, his
possibilities too great to be roughly estimated by his acts alone.

      "Not on the vulgar mass
      Called 'work' must sentence pass,
  Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
      O'er which, from level stand,
      The low world laid its hand,
  Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

      But all, the world's coarse thumb
      And finger failed to plumb,
  So passed in making up the main account;
      All instincts immature,
      All purposes unsure,
  That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

      Thoughts hardly to be packed
      Into a narrow act,
  Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
      All I could never be,
      All, men ignored in me,
  This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."


V

If, however, we are to understand the Christian's meaning when he
speaks of being saved by faith (Rom. 3:28; 5:1; Gal. 3:24), we need to
see not only that men are worth more than they _do_, but as well that
they are worth more than they _are_. Some things always start large
and grow small; some things always start small and grow large; but a
man may do either, and his value is determined not so much by the
position he is in, as it is by the direction in which he is moving.
Even of stocks upon the market in their rise and fall this truth is
clear. The figure at which a stock is quoted is important, but the
meaning of that figure cannot be understood unless one knows whether
it was reached on the way up or the way down. How much more is any
static judgment of a man impossible! One starts at the summit, with
endowments and opportunities that elevate him far above his fellows,
and frittering away his chance, drifts down. Another, beginning at the
bottom, by dint of resolute endeavor climbs upward, achieving
character in the face of odds before which ordinary men succumb.
Somewhere these two men will pass, and, statically judged, will be of
equal worth. But one is drifting down; one climbing up. The innermost
secret of their spiritual value lies in that hidden fact. _When,
therefore, one would judge a man, he must pierce behind the deeds that
he can see, behind the present quality that he can estimate, back to
the thing the man has set his heart upon, to the direction of his
life, to the ideal which masters him--that is, to his faith._ There
lies the potential future of the man, his ultimate worth, the seed of
his coming fruit. If one has eyes to see what that faith is, he knows
the man and what the man is bound to be.

When, therefore, men set their hearts on Christ, lay hold on him by
faith as life's Master and its goal, that faith opens the door to
God's forgiveness. In Augustine's luminous phrase, "The Christian
already has in Christ what he hopes for in himself." He is Christ's
brother in the filial life with God, young, immature, undeveloped--but
the issue of that life is the measure of the stature of Christ's
fulness. God does not demand the end when only the beginning is
possible, does not scorn the dawn because it is not noon. He welcomes
the first movement of man's spirit toward him, not for the fruit which
yet is unmatured, but for the seed which still is in the germ; he
takes the will for the deed, because the will is earnest; he sees the
journey's end in Christlike character, when at the road's beginning
the pilgrim takes the first step by faith. There is no fiction here;
God ought to forgive and welcome such a man. All good parents act so
toward their children. This divine grace corresponds with truth, for a
man is _worth_ the central, dominant faith, that determines
life's direction and decides its goal. And the Gospel that God so
deals with man, announced in the words of Jesus, illustrated in his
life, sealed in his death, has been a boon to the race that puts all
men under an immeasurable debt to Christ.


VI

This method of judgment which all good men use with their friends and
families has been often disbelieved, in its Christian formulations,
because it has been misrepresented and misunderstood. But human life,
far outside religious boundaries, continually illustrates the wisdom
and righteousness of so judging men by faith. Roswell McIntyre
deserted during the Civil War; he was caught, court-martialled, and
condemned to death. He stood with no defense for his deed, no just
complaint against the penalty, and with nothing to plead save shame
for his act, and faith that, with another chance, he could play the
man. On that, the last recourse of the condemned, President Lincoln
pardoned him.

 "EXECUTIVE MANSION,
 Oct. 4, 1864.

 Upon condition that Roswell McIntyre of Co. E, 6th Reg't of New York
 Cavalry, returns to his Regiment and faithfully serves out his term,
 making up for lost time, or until otherwise discharged, he is fully
 pardoned for any supposed desertion heretofore committed, and this
 paper is his pass to go to his regiment.

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN."

Was such clemency an occasion for lax character? The answer is written
across the face of Mr. Lincoln's letter in the archives: "Taken from
the body of R. McIntyre at the Battle of Five Forks, Va., 1865." Five
Forks was the last cavalry action of the war; McIntyre went through to
the finish.

Any one who knows the experience of being forgiven understands the
motives that so remake a pardoned deserter. The relief from the old
crushing condemnation, the joy of being trusted again beyond desert,
the gratitude that makes men rather die than be untrue a second time,
the unpayable indebtedness from which ambition springs, "whether at
home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto him" (II Cor. 5:9)--this is
the moral consequence of being pardoned. Goodness so begotten reaches
deep and high, has in it conscious joy and hope, feels vividly the
value of its moral victories, possesses great motives for sacrificial
service in the world. The Apocalypse is right. There is a song in
heaven that angels cannot sing. Only men like McIntyre will know how
to sing it.

The vital and transforming faith that saves is always better presented
in a story than in an argument, and in the Scripture the best
description of it is Jesus' parable of the Prodigal. As the Master
drew that portrait of life in the far country, all the watching
Pharisees thought that such a boy was lost. The Prodigal himself must
have guessed that his case was hopeless. His friends, his character,
his reputation, his will were gone, and in the inner court-room of his
soul with maddening iteration he heard sentence passed, Guilty. Only
one hope remained. If he was unspoiled enough by the far country's
pitiless brutality to think that at home they might bear no grudge,
might find forgiveness possible, might offer him another chance as a
hired servant, if he could think that perhaps his father even _wanted_
him to come home, then there was hope. With such slender faith the boy
turned back from the far country. He had the same lack of character,
the same weakened will, the same evil habits. Only one difference had
as yet been wrought. Before, he had been facing toward swine, now he
was facing toward home. The _direction_ of his life was changed by
faith. And when the father saw him, homeward bound, "_while he was yet
afar off,_" forgiveness welcomed him. No pardon could unload from the
lad's life all the fearful consequences of his sin. As long as he
lived, the scars on health, repute, and usefulness were there. But
forgiveness could take the sin away _as a barrier to personal
friendship with the father_; the old relationships of mutual
confidence, helpfulness, and love could be restored; the glorious
chance could be bestowed of fighting through the battle for character,
not hopelessly in the far country, but victoriously at home.

One of the chief glories of the Gospel is that it has so reclaimed the
waste of humanity, made sons of Prodigals and patriots of McIntyres.
Its Pauls were persecutors, its Augustines the slaves of lust, and its
rank and file men and women to whom Christ's message has meant
forgiveness, reinstatement, a new chance, and boundless hope.
Scientific business conserves its waste and makes invaluable
by-products from what once was slag; but Christ has been the conserver
of mankind. The lost and sick have been returned to sanity and
wholesomeness and service; humanity has been enriched beyond
computation, with Bunyans and Goughs and Jerry McAuleys. Tolstoi's
simple confession in "My Religion" is typical of multitudes: "Five
years ago I came to believe in Christ's teaching, and my life suddenly
became changed: I ceased desiring what I had wished before, and began
to desire what I had not wished before. What formerly had seemed good
to me appeared bad, and what had seemed bad appeared good.... The
direction of my life, my desires became different: what was good and
bad changed places." Tolstoi had indulged, as he acknowledges, in
every form of unmentionable vice practiced in Russia; and yet
forgiven, reinstated, transformed, he was carried to his burial by
innumerable Russian peasants with banners flying. Where Christ's
influence has vitally come, the loss and wreck and flotsam of the
moral world have been so reclaimed to character and power.

At the beginning of the Christian era, a few desolate sand lagoons lay
off the Paduan coast of Italy. There the wild fowl made their nests;
the lonely skiffs of fishermen threaded the reedy channels; the storms
washed the shifting and uncertain sands. And possibly to this day the
lagoons would have been thus barren and deserted, had not the Huns
swept down on Italy. The Huns made the building of Venice necessary.
They did not intend so fair a consequence of their terrific
onslaughts. Their thoughts were on death and pillage. But because they
came, the Italians fled to the lagoons, built there, behind the
barricade of restless waters, their gleaming city, developed there the
commerce that combed the world, built the Doge's palace as the abode
of justice, and raised St. Mark's in praise of God. Venice was the
city of Salvation; it rose resplendent because the Huns had come. So
Christ turns the ruin of sin to victory, and builds in human life
character, recovered and triumphant. If his Gospel can have its way, a
spiritual Venice will arise to make the onslaught of the moral Huns an
evil with a glorious issue. What wonder that inexpressible devotion
has been felt for him by all his people?

[7] "Iniquities prevail against me."




CHAPTER XI

Faith in Christ the Savior: Power


DAILY READINGS

As we saw in the last week's study, Christian faith has always
centered around the person of Jesus himself. This week let us consider
some testimonies from the New Testament as to the meaning and effect
of this definitely Christian faith.


Eleventh Week, First Day

It must be clear to any observing mind that the world does not suffer
from lack of faith. There is faith in plenty; everybody is exercising
it on some object. In the Bible we read of folk who "trust in vanity"
(Isa. 59:4), who "trust in lying words" (Jer. 7:4), or "in the
abundance of riches" (Psalm 52:7); and the Master exclaims over the
difficulty which those who "trust in riches" have when they try to
enter the Kingdom of God (Mark 10:24). Faith, then, is a necessary
faculty of the soul: the power by which we commit ourselves to any
object that wins our devotion and commands our allegiance. No man
avoids its use, and men differ only in the objects toward which their
faith is directed. Of all the tragedies caused by the misuse of human
powers, none is more frequent and disastrous than the ruin that
follows the misuse of faith. With this necessary and powerful faculty
in our possession, capable of use on things high or low, to what
determination can a man more reasonably set himself than this?--_since
I must and do use faith on something, I will choose the highest_. It
is with such a rational and worthy choice that the Christian turns to
Jesus. He is the best we know; we will direct our faith toward him.
This does not mean that in the end our faith does not rest on God; it
does, for Jesus is the Way, the Door, as he said, and faith in him
moves up through him to the One who sent him. As Paul put it, "Such
confidence have we through Christ to God-ward" (II Cor. 3:4). But
faith in Jesus is the most vivid, true, and compelling way we have of
committing ourselves to the highest and best we know. In the light of
this truth, we can understand why John calls such faith the supreme
"work" which God demands of us.

 =Work not for the food which perisheth, but for the food which
 abideth unto eternal life, which the Son of man shall give unto you:
 for him the Father, even God, hath sealed. They said therefore unto
 him, What must we do, that we may work the works of God? Jesus
 answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe
 on him whom he hath sent.--John 6:27-29.=

 _Gracious Father! Thou hast revealed Thyself gloriously in Jesus
 Christ, the Son of Thy love. In Him we have found Thee, or rather,
 are found of Thee. By His life, by His words and deeds, by His trials
 and sufferings, we are cleansed from sin and rise into holiness. For
 in Him Thou hast made disclosure of Thine inmost being and art
 drawing us into fellowship with Thy life. As we stand beneath His
 Cross, or pass with Him into the Garden of His Agony, it is Thy heart
 that we see unveiled, it is the passion of Thy love yearning over the
 sinful, the wandering, seeking that it may save them. No man hath
 seen Thee at any time, but out from the unknown has come the Son of
 Man to declare Thee. And now we know Thy name. When we call Thee
 Father, the mysteries of existence are not so terrible, our burdens
 weigh less heavily upon us, our sorrows are touched with joy. Thy Son
 has brought the comfort that we need, the comfort of knowing that in
 all our afflictions Thou art afflicted, that in Thy grief our lesser
 griefs are all contained. Let the light which shines in His face,
 shine into our hearts, to give us the knowledge of Thy glory, to
 scatter the darkness of fear, of wrong, of remorse, of foreboding,
 and to constrain our lives to finer issues of peace and power and
 spiritual service. And this prayer we offer in Christ's name.
 Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Eleventh Week, Second Day

The New Testament clearly reveals the experience that _forgiveness_
comes in answer to such self-committing faith in Christ as we spoke of
yesterday.

 =And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at
 meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that even
 forgiveth sins? And he said unto the woman, Thy faith hath saved
 thee; go in peace.--Luke 7:48-50.=

In popular thought forgiveness is often shallowly conceived. It is
thought to be an easy agreement to forget offense, a good-natured
waving aside of injuries committed as though the evil done were of no
consequence. But forgiveness is really a most profound and searching
experience; and it takes two persons, each sacrificially desirous of
achieving it, before it can be perfected. In the pardoner, the passion
for saviorhood must submerge all disgust at the sin in love for the
sinner; and in the pardoned, desire for a new life must create
sacrificial willingness to hate and forsake the evil and humbly accept
a new chance. It follows, therefore, that no one can forgive another,
no matter how willing he may be to do so, unless the recipient fulfils
the conditions that make pardon possible. Forgiveness is a mutual
operation; no forgetting or good will on the part of one person is
forgiveness at all; and the attitude in the forgiven man that makes
the reception of pardon possible is negatively penitence and
positively faith. Any experience of human forgiveness reveals that the
offender must detest his sin and turn from it in trust and
self-commitment to claim the mercy and choose the ideals of the one
whom he has wronged. That God in Christ is willing to forgive is the
Christian Gospel; and if we go unforgiven it is for lack of faith.
That is the hand which grasps the proffered pardon.

 _Almighty God, whose salvation is ever nigh to them that seek Thee,
 we think of our little lives, of their wayward ways, and we remember
 Thee and are troubled. Our days pass from us and we are heated with
 strifes, and troubled and restless, with mean temptations and
 fugitive desires. We spend our years in much carelessness, and too
 seldom do we think of the greatness of our trust and the wonder and
 mystery of our being. We are vexed with vain dreams and trivial
 desires. We live our days immersed in petty passions. We strain after
 poor uncertainties. We pursue the shadows of this passing life and
 continually are we visited by our own self-contempt and bitterness.
 We have known the better and have chosen the worse. We have felt the
 glory and power of a higher life and yet have surrendered to ignoble
 temptations and to satisfactions that end with the hour._

 _Almighty Father, of Thy goodness do Thou save our lives, so smitten
 with passion, from the failure and misery that else must come to us.
 Be with us in our hours of self-communion, and inspire us with good
 purpose and service to Thee. Be with us when heart and flesh faint,
 and there seems no help or safety near us. Be with us when we are
 carried into the dry and lonely places, seeking a rest that is not in
 them. Sustain us, we beseech Thee, under the burden of our many
 errors and failures. From the confused aims and purposes of our lives
 may there be brought forth, by the aid of Thy Spirit, and the
 teaching and discipline of life, lives constant and assured in
 service and obedience to Thee. Amen._--John Hunter.


Eleventh Week, Third Day

It is clear in the New Testament that all the _free movements of
divine help_ depend on the presence of man's faith. Words like these
are continually on the lips of Jesus: "Be of good cheer; thy faith
hath made thee whole" (Matt. 9:22); "According to your faith be it
done unto you" (Matt. 9:29); "Great is thy faith: be it done unto thee
even as thou wilt" (Matt. 15:28). Human life as a whole confirms the
truth which such words suggest: _Man's faith is always the limit of
his blessing; he never obtains more than he believes in._ Men live in
a world of unappropriated truth and unused power; and the blessings of
truth and power can be reached only by ventures of faith. Even
electricity withholds its service from a man who, like Abdul Hamid,
has not faith enough to try. In personal relationships this fact
becomes even more clear. Whatever gifts of good will may be waiting in
the heart of any man, we are shut out from them forever, unless we
have the grace of faith in the man and open-hearted self-commitment to
him. As the Christian Gospel sees man's case, the central tragedy lies
here: that God in Christ is willing to do so much more in and for and
through us than we have faith enough to let him do. Our unbelief is
not a matter of theoretical concern alone; it practically disables
God, it handicaps his operation in the world, it is an "evil heart of
unbelief, in falling away from the living God" (Heb. 3:12). The
divine will is forced to wait upon the lagging faith of man. How often
the Master exclaimed, "O ye of little faith!" (Matt. 6:30; 8:26). And
the reason for his lament was eminently practical.

 =And coming into his own country he taught them in their synagogue,
 insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man
 this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son?
 is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph,
 and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?
 Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in
 him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save
 in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty
 works there because of their unbelief.--Matt. 13:54-58.=

 _Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we desire to come to Thee in all
 humility and sincerity. We are sinful; pardon Thou us. We are
 ignorant; enlighten Thou our darkness. We are weak; inspire us with
 strength. In these times of doubt, uncertainty, and trial, may we
 ever feel conscious of Thine everlasting light. Soul of our soul!
 Inmost Light of truth! Manifest Thyself unto us amid all shadows.
 Guide us in faith, hope, and love, until the perfect day shall dawn,
 and we shall know as we are known._

 _Almighty God, teach us, we pray Thee, by blessed experience, to
 apprehend what was meant of old when Jesus Christ was called the
 power of God unto salvation, for we stand in need of salvation from
 sin, from doubt, from weakness, from craven fear; we cannot save
 ourselves; we are creatures of a day, short-sighted, and too often
 driven about by every wind of passion and opinion. We need to be
 stayed upon a higher strength. We need to lay hold of Thee. Manifest
 Thyself unto us, our Father, as the Saviour of our souls, and deliver
 us from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the
 children of God. Amen._--John Hunter.


Eleventh Week, Fourth Day

Not only is man's power to appropriate the divine blessing dependent
on faith; in the experience of the New Testament man's power of
achievement has the same source.

 =Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we
 cast it out? And he saith unto them, Because of your little faith:
 for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
 seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place;
 and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.--Matt.
 17:19, 20.=

Mountains are symbols of difficulty, and the Master's affirmation here
that faith alone can remove them is clearly confirmed in human
experience. It may seem at times as though faith, compared with the
obstacles, were like a minute mustard seed before the ranges of
Lebanon, but faith can overcome even that disproportion in size. Great
leaders always must have such confidence. Listen to Mazzini: "The
people lack faith ... the faith that arouses the multitudes, faith in
their own destiny, in their own mission, and in the mission of the
epoch; the faith that combats and prays; the faith that enlightens and
bids men advance fearlessly in the ways of God and humanity, with the
sword of the people in their hand, the religion of the people in their
heart, and the future of the people in their soul." In any great
movement for human good, the ultimate and deciding question always is:
How many people can be found who have faith enough to believe in the
cause and its triumph? When enough folk have faith, any campaign for
human welfare can be won. Without faith men "collapse into a yielding
mass of plaintiveness and fear"; with faith they move mountains. And
when men have faith in Christ as God's Revealor--faith, not formal and
abstract, but real and vital--they begin to feel about the word
"impossible" as Mirabeau did, "Never mention to me again that
blockhead of a word!"

 _O God, our Father, our souls are made sick by the sight of hunger
 and want and nakedness; of little children bearing on their bent
 backs the burden of the world's work; of motherhood drawn under the
 grinding wheels of modern industry; and of overburdened manhood, with
 empty hands, stumbling and falling._

 _Help us to understand that it is not Thy purpose to do away with
 life's struggle, but that Thou desirest us to make the conditions of
 that struggle just and its results fair._

 _Enable us to know that we may bring this to pass only through love
 and sympathy and understanding; only as we realize that all are alike
 Thy children--the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the
 fortunate and the unfortunate. And so, our Father, give us an
 ever-truer sense of human sisterhood; that with patience and
 steadfastness we may do our part in ending the injustice that is in
 the land, so that all may rejoice in the fruits of their toil and be
 glad in Thy sunshine._

 _Keep us in hope and courage even amid the vastness of the
 undertaking and the slowness of the progress, and sustain us with the
 knowledge that our times are in Thy hand. Amen._--Helen Ring Robinson.


Eleventh Week, Fifth Day

Faith in Christ has always been consummated, in the experience to
which the New Testament introduces us, in an inward transformation of
life.

 =I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live,
 but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh
 I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me,
 and gave himself up for me.--Gal. 2:20.=

Such conversion of life is the normal result of a vital fellowship
whose bond is faith. For one thing, a man at once begins to care a
great deal more about his own quality when he believes in Christ and
in Christ's love. "What a King stoops to pick up from the mire cannot
be a brass farthing, but must be a pearl of great price." To be loved
by anyone is to enter into a new estimate of one's possible value; to
be loved by God in Christ is to come into an experience where our
possible value makes us alike ashamed of what we are and jubilant over
what we may become. We begin saying with Irenæus, "Jesus Christ became
what we are that he might make us what he is." And then, faith,
ripening into fellowship, opening the life sensitively to the
influence of the friend, issues in a character infused by the friend's
character. He lives in us. Such transformation of life does not happen
in a moment; it requires more than instantaneous exposure to take the
Lord's picture on a human heart; but time-exposure will do it, and
"Christ in us" be alike our hope of glory and our secret of influence.

 _O Father Eternal, we thank Thee for the new and living way into Thy
 presence made for us in Christ; the way of trust, sincerity, and
 sacrifice. Beneath His cross we would take our stand, in communion
 with His Spirit would we pray, in fellowship with the whole Church of
 Christ we would seek to know Thy mind and will._

 _We desire to know all the fulness of Christ, to appropriate His
 unsearchable riches, to feed on His humanity whereby Thou hast become
 to us the bread of our inmost souls and the wine of life, to become
 partakers of Thy nature, share Thy glory, and become one with Thee
 through Him._

 _Give unto us fellowship with His sufferings and insight into the
 mystery of His cross, so that we may be indeed crucified with Him, be
 raised to newness of life, and be hidden with Christ in Thee._

 _We desire to make thankful offering of ourselves as members of the
 body of Christ; in union with all the members may we obey our unseen
 Head, so that the Body may be undivided, and Thy love, and healing
 power, and very Self may be incarnate on the earth in one Holy
 Universal Church. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


Eleventh Week, Sixth Day

With faith in Christ so seen as the secret of divine forgiveness and
assistance, of achieving power and inward transformation, there can be
little surprise at the solicitude which the New Testament shows
concerning the disciples' faith. We find this urgent interest in Paul:

 =Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be
 left behind at Athens alone; and sent Timothy, our brother and God's
 minister in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort
 you concerning your faith; ... night and day praying exceedingly that
 we may see your face, and may perfect that which is lacking in your
 faith.--I Thess. 3:1, 2, 10.=

 =We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, even as
 it is meet, for that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the love of
 each one of you all toward one another aboundeth.--II Thess. 1:3.=

And one of the most appealing revelations of Jesus' habit in prayer
concerns his supplication for Peter's faith.

 =Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift
 you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail
 not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy
 brethren.--Luke 22:31, 32.=

In all such passages one feels at once that faith is used as Paul uses
it in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians--a comrade and ally
of hope and love. It is not a matter of dogma and does not move in the
realm of opinion, although ideas of the first magnitude may be
involved in it. It is primarily a bond of divine fellowship, which at
once keeps the life receptive to all that God would do for the man and
moves the man to do all that he should for God. If that fails, even
Peter would fall in ruins, and the expression is none too strong, when
in I Timothy the failure of such vital faith is described as a
"shipwreck" (I Tim. 1:19). But when by faith the consciousness of God
has grown clear, and alliance with him is so real that we stop arguing
about it and begin counting on it in daily living, the increment of
power and confidence and stability which a man may win is quite
incalculable.

 _O Thou plenteous Source of every good and perfect gift, shed abroad
 the cheering light of Thy seven-fold grace over our hearts. Yea,
 Spirit of love and gentleness, we most humbly implore Thy assistance.
 Thou knowest our faults, our failings, our necessities, the dulness
 of our understanding, the waywardness of our affections, the
 perverseness of our will. When, therefore, we neglect to practice
 what we know, visit us, we beseech Thee, with Thy grace, enlighten
 our minds, rectify our desires, correct our wanderings, and pardon
 our omissions, so that by Thy guidance we may be preserved from
 making shipwreck of faith, and keep a good conscience, and may at
 length be landed safe in the haven of eternal rest; through Jesus
 Christ our Lord. Amen._--Anselm, 1033.


Eleventh Week, Seventh Day

Some who gladly acknowledge the surprising results which faith can
work in life, do not see any great importance in the object to which
faith attaches itself. They say that faith is merely a psychological
attitude, and that faith in one thing does as well as faith in
another. Folk are healed, they point out, by all kinds of faith,
whether directed toward fetishes, or saints' relics, or metaphysical
theories, or God himself. It is the faith, they say, and not the
object, which does the work. There is a modicum of truth in this.
Faith, by its very power to organize man's faculties and give them
definite set and drive, is itself a master force, and if a man has no
interest beyond the achievement of some immediate end, like conquering
nervous qualms or getting strength for a special task, he may achieve
that end by believing in almost anything, provided he believes hard
enough. _But to believe in some things may debauch the intelligence
and lower the moral standards, even while it achieves a practical
end._ To win power for a business task by believing in a palm-reader's
predictions is entirely possible, but it is a poor bargain; a man
sells out his intelligence for cash. The object in which a man
believes does make an immense difference in the effect of his faith on
his _mind_ and _character_. An African savage may gain courage for an
ordeal by believing in his fetish--but how immeasurable is the abyss
between the meaning of that faith for the whole of life and the
meaning of a Christian's faith in God! We have no business, for the
sake of immediate gain, to allow our faith to rest in anything lower
than the highest.

 =Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
 according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the
 resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance
 incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in
 heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith
 unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye
 greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have
 been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith,
 being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by
 fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation
 of Jesus Christ: whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye
 see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable
 and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the
 salvation of your souls.--I Peter 1:3-9.=

 _Gracious Father of our spirits, in the stillness of this worship may
 we grow more sure of Thee, who art often closest to us when we feel
 Thou hast forsaken us. The toil and thought of daily life leave us
 little time to think of Thee; but may the silence of this holy place
 make us aware that though we may forget Thee, Thou dost never forget
 us. Perhaps we have grown careless in contact with common things,
 duty has lost its high solemnities, the altar fires have gone
 untended, Thy light within our minds has been distrusted or ignored.
 As we withdraw awhile from all without, may we find Thee anew within,
 until thought grows reverent again, all work is hallowed, and faith
 reconsecrates all common things as sacraments of love._

 _If pride of thought and careless speculation have made us doubtful
 of Thee, recover for us the simplicity that understands Thou art
 never surer than when we doubt Thee, that through all failures of
 faith Thou becomest clearer, and so makest the light that once we
 walked by seem but darkness. Help us then to rest our faith on the
 knowledge of our imperfection, our consciousness of ignorance, our
 sense of sin, and see in them shadows cast by the light of Thy
 drawing near._

 _If Thy purposes have crossed our own and Thy will has broken ours,
 enable us to trust the wisdom of Thy perfect love and find Thy will
 to be our peace._

 _So lead us back to meet Thee where we may have missed Thee.
 Amen._--W. E. Orchard.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

The forgiveness which the Gospel offers--reinstating a man in the
personal relationships against which he sinned, and giving him another
chance--opens opportunity, but by itself it does not furnish power.
The saviorhood of Christ, however, so far from failing at this crucial
point, makes here its chief claim to preeminence. However one may
explain it, the normal quality of a genuine Christian life is moral
energy. The Gospel not alone to Paul, but to all generations of
Christ's disciples, had been "God's saving power for everyone who has
faith" (Rom. 1:16).[8]

Faith always supplies moral dynamic. Emerson's challenge, "They can
conquer who believe they can," is easily verified in daily life. In
practical business, in social reform, in personal character, no more
common or fatal barrier to success exists than disbelief in
possibilities. While some who think they can when they cannot, prove
the rule by its exception, we are sure in advance that one who
believes he cannot, has lost his battle before it has begun. Granted a
task worth doing, sufficient strength for its accomplishment, and
motives in plenty to make success desirable, and one insinuating enemy
can spoil the enterprise. Let the subtle fear that the task is
impossible obsess the thought, paralyze the nerve, and no hope is
left. Like chlorine gas, such fear defeats us before we have begun to
fight and fills our trenches with asphyxiated powers.

Anyone who is to be a savior to mankind, therefore, must be able to
make men say, "I can." That Christ has had that influence on men is
the commonplace of Christian biography from the beginning until now.
"In him who strengthens me I am able for anything" (Phil. 4:13)[9] is
a word of Paul's which the best Christian experience confirms. It does
not mean that men can do what they will, overriding all obstacles to
chosen goals; it means that they are aware of resources in reserve, of
power around them and in them, so that they are not afraid of anything
which they may face. If a duty ought to be done, they are confident
that they can do it; if a trouble must be borne, they are assured that
they can bear it.

This buoyant faith is more than a grace of temperament. In Paul's
case, for example, it was not due to rugged health, for that he
lacked; it was not the easy optimism of some happiness cult, for he
was a persecuted man, bearing in his body "the marks of the Lord
Jesus"; and such a note of assured resource as we just have quoted did
not come from the hopefulness of fortunate circumstance, but from a
prison where he wore a chain. Paul himself is certain that his sense
of power springs from discipleship to Jesus. And when one turns to the
gospels, he sees that whenever the Master had opportunity to exert to
the full his influence on men, some such result as here appears in
Paul is evident. A contagious personality always enlarges the sense of
possibilities and powers in other men. A man, leaving Trinity Church,
where he had heard Phillips Brooks, exclaimed, "He always makes me
feel so strong." It was said that one could not stand for a moment
with Edmund Burke under an archway, to let a shower pass by, without
emerging a greater man. Each one of us knows folk who so impress him.
We go into their presence, weak, self-pitiful; when we come out, the
horizons are broader, the possibilities have enlarged, there is more
in us than we had suspected, we are convinced that we _can_.

To a degree that escapes our estimation Jesus exerted that influence
on men. Napoleon said that he made his generals out of mud. Out of
what, then, did the Master make his apostles? At the beginning, Peter,
for example, is protesting, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord," and Jesus is bending over him, saying: Come after me, and I
will make you a fisher of men; if you will, you can. After months of
influence, Peter, still shamed and weak, is pleading his love against
his deed, and Jesus is saying: Feed my sheep; feed my lambs; if you
will, you can. In Jesus' relationship with his disciple, a great
personality stands over a lesser one, by life and word insistently
saying, _You can_, until power is vitally transmitted, and in the
vacillating, vehement Simon there emerges rock-like, stable Peter.

Throughout the Christian centuries nothing has been more typical than
this of the Master's influence on men. He has come to innumerable
sodden lives, held slaves to tyrannous sin, saying in the hopelessness
of bondage, "I cannot," and he has touched them with his contagious
confidence, until they rose into freedom, saying, "By the help of God,
I can!" He has come into social situations, where ancient evils, long
entrenched and seemingly invincible, withstood the assault of
reformation, and he has put inexhaustible resource into his people,
until they said with an old reformer, "Impossible? If that is all that
is the matter, let us go ahead!" He has come to his Church, reluctant
to undertake a world-wide mission, staggered by the task's magnitude,
and he has made men pray with _life_ and not alone with lip, "Thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Wherever
the influence of Christ vitally has come, the horizons of possibility
have widened and the sense of power grown inexhaustible.

_Such influence is of the very essence of saviorhood and the attitude
that appropriates it is saving faith._ When John B. Gough, desperately
enmeshed in habit, faces the Christian Gospel of release one easily
may trace his changing response. Dubious at first, he wants to
believe it but he does not dare. He wishes it were true, but the whole
logic of his situation, his long habit, his spoiled reputation, his
weakened will, argue against the possibility. As Augustine said about
his lust, "The worse that I knew so well had more power over me than
the better that I knew not." Still, a note of authority in the Gospel,
as though spoken by one whose power to perform is equal to the thing
he promises, arrests Gough's mind, captures his imagination, awakens
his spirit's deep desire, until at last the Master's call, "You can,"
is answered by the human cry, "I will," and the man moves out into new
possibilities, new powers, and increasing liberty. That _is_
salvation. It is no formal status decreed by legal enactment, as
though a judge technically acquitted a prisoner. It is new life,
inward liberation from old habits, apprehensions, anxieties, and
fears. It lifts horizons, consumes impossibilities, and at the center
of life sets the stirring conviction that what ought to be done can be
done.

Christians who are accustomed lightly to assert that they are saved
need specially to take this truth to heart. Some speak as though
salvation were a technicality and they sing about it,

  "'Tis done, the great transaction's done."

To many such, were candor courteous, one would wish to say: Saved?
Saved from what? You are habitually anxious. Your life is continually
vexed with little fears and apprehensions. When trouble comes, you are
sure that you cannot stand it; when tasks present themselves, you are
certain that you cannot perform them. You have pet self-indulgences,
from major sins to little meannesses; you know that they are wrong;
but when suggestion comes that you surrender them, you are sure that
you have not the strength. When causes, plainly Christian, on whose
successful issue man's weal depends, appeal to you for help, you
weaken every enterprise by your disheartenment. Saved from _what_? Not
from fear, timidity, selfishness, and stagnation! And if you say,
Saved from Hell--what is Hell but the final subjugation of the soul to
such sins as you now are cherishing? The words of Jesus are promises
of saviorhood from real and present evils: "Be not _anxious_" (Matt.
6:34); "Go, _sin_ no more" (John 8:11); "_Fear_ not, little flock"
(Luke 12:32). When one, by faith, turns his face homeward from such
destroyers of life, he begins to be saved; but only as he lives by
faith in fellowship with the Divine and so achieves progressive
victory, does he keep on being saved. _The heart of salvation is
victorious power._


II

Not all men feel the need of the power which comes from discipleship
to Christ. They live content without such increment of strength as
Christians find in faith. Their power is equal to their tasks because
their tasks are levelled to their power. One cannot understand,
therefore, what the Saviorhood of Christ has meant to men, unless he
sees how Christ has created the need of the very power he furnishes.
He has done this, in part, _by awakening the desire for an ascending
life_. Men do not naturally want to believe in possibilities too
great and taxing; it always is easier to leave undisturbed the
_status quo_. Even changing one's residence is difficult. Though
one may move to a better house, yet to decide to move, to break old
relationships, to tear up and refit the furnishings, and to adjust
oneself to new associations mean stress and strain. So men come to be
at home with habits; they are comfortably accustomed to timidity and
self-indulgence. Release into a new life does not lure as privilege;
it repels as hardship. Some sins, indeed, are followed by remorse, but
others, grown habitual, bring a sense of well-being and content. We
like ourselves; we do not want a better life; we are unwilling to pay
its cost. Our sins are no bed of nettles, but a lotus land of decent
ease. Were we candidly to speak to them, we should say, O Sin, you are
a comfortable friend! When most we want forbidden fruit you suggest
excuses. You side happily with our inclinations and save us from the
struggle that high duty costs and the sacrifice of striving for the
best. Among the blessings of our lives, we count you not the least, O
decent, comfortable, self-indulgent Sin!

Idlers thus drift listlessly and refuse a voyage with a purpose and a
goal; youths living by low standards, look on Christlike character as
beyond their interest and possibility; undedicated men find excuse for
holding back devotion to great causes in the world--we shelter
ourselves from aspiration and enterprise behind our faithlessness.
Into such a situation Christ repeatedly has come, bringing a vision of
what life ought to be, too imperative to be neglected, too
challenging to be denied. Men have been shaken out of their content;
the true color of their lives has been revealed against his white
background, the meanness of their plans against the wide ranges of his
purpose. From seeing him they have gone back to be content in their
old habits, but in vain. Can one who has seen a home be happy in a
hovel? Ranke, the historian, says, "More guiltless and more powerful,
more exalted and more holy, has naught ever been on earth than his
conduct, his life, and his death. The human race knows nothing that
could be brought even afar off into comparison with it." So he has
been the disturber of man's ignoble self-content, and to say that we
believe in him means that, no longer able to endure the thing we are,
we go on pilgrimage toward the thing he is. Faith means that we decide
to _move_. This first essential work of saviorhood Christ has wrought,
and when men start to follow him, they feel the need of power.

For another thing, Christ has created a thirst for the power he
furnishes by _revealing the quality of character in the possession
of which salvation ultimately consists_. At the beginning of the
ethical development whether of the individual or of the race, goodness
is defined in terms of prohibitions. There are many things which men
ought _not_ to do; they walk embarrassed in the presence of their
duty like courtiers before an exacting prince. How negative and
repelling such goodness is! As another exclaims: "They do not break
the Sabbath themselves, but no one who has to spend it with them likes
to see the dreadful day come round. They do not swear themselves, but
they make all who know them want to. They are just as good as trying
not to be bad can make them."

Discerning spirits, therefore, turn to goodness positively conceived.
"Thou shalt not" becomes "Thou shalt"; duty consists of rules to be
kept, precepts to be observed, principles to be applied, and we go out
to do good deeds to men. But whoever seriously tries to do deeds
really good, faces a need of moral elevation, as much beyond the
outward act of good as that surpasses the observance of prohibitions.
_Good deeds are not a matter of will alone, but of spiritual quality._
Let the wind blow to fan the faces of the sick, but if it discover
that it is laden with disease, what shall it do? To blow this way or
that may be within volition's power, but not to _cleanse_ oneself. The
task of character reaches inward, beyond the things we do or refrain
from doing to the man we are. Goodness is something more than girding
up the loins, blowing upon the hands, and setting to the work of being
dutiful. It springs from the spirit's depths; it is tinctured with the
spirit's quality; and deeds are never really better than the soul
whose utterances they are. From "Thou shalt not do" to "Thou shalt do"
and from "Thou shalt do" to "Thou shalt be," man's flying goal of
goodness moves. And this ideal in Christ has been incarnate, visible,
imperative. He _was_ right in the inner quality and flavor of his
life; and to be like him involves a pure and powerful personality.
Whoever sets that task ahead knows that he cannot strut proudly into
it. Like Alice entering Wonderland he must grow very small before he
can grow large. The Christ who has power to give has revealed the need
of it.

Not only by the intensifying of the ideal, but by its extension, has
Christ created thirst for divine help. In youth the problem of
character concerns personal habits. Our untamed strength must be
broken to the harness, and the snaffle bit be used upon our wayward
powers. We justly fear our sins and in their triumph we see the wreck
of individual prospects and the ruin of our families' hopes. Our
concern centers about ourselves, and its crux is self-mastery. But
when in maturity, somewhat "at leisure from ourselves" in settled
habits, we no longer fear our own ruin nor think it probable, goodness
extends its meaning. To play our part in man's advancement, to live,
work, sacrifice, and if need be die for causes on which our children's
hopes depend, becomes our ideal. As boys in spring-time when the ice
is melting see from a hill-top the swirling flood that overflows the
plain, and know that somewhere underneath the unfamiliar and
tumultuous rapids the main channel runs, from which the floods have
broken, to which in time they must return, so in a generation when
man's life has broken its banks in fury we still believe that the main
course of the divine purpose is not forever lost. To believe that, and
in the strength of it to toil for the ends God seeks, becomes to
awakened spirits the essential soul of goodness.

When such meanings enter into his ideal, a man runs straight upon the
need of God. For we may make our contribution to the cause of man's
good upon the earth and our children may make theirs, but if this
world is a spiritual Sahara, never meant for character and social
weal, and against the dead set of the desert's power we are building
oases here with our unaided fingers, then the issue of our work stands
in no doubt. The Sahara will pile its burning sands about us and hurl
its blistering winds across us, and we and our works together come to
naught. By as much, then, as a man really cares about democracy and
liberty and social equity, about human brotherhood and Christian
civilization, by so much he needs God, who gathers up the scattered
contributions of his children and builds them into victory. A man
alone may keep the decalogue, but alone he cannot save the world. Who
dreams of that wants power. And Christ has made men dream of that,
believe in that with passionate certainty, until "Thy Kingdom come" is
the daily prayer of multitudes. To no human strength can such prayer
be offered; we are not adequate to an eternal, universal task. Again
Christ has brought us to the need of power, and his people call him
Savior, because the need which he creates he also satisfies.

In one of the tidal rivers near New York, the building of a bridge was
interrupted by a derelict sunk in the river's bottom. Divers put
chains about the obstacle and all day long the engineer directed the
maneuvering of tugs as they puffed and pulled in vain endeavor to
dislodge the hulk. Then a young student, fresh from the technical
school, asked for the privilege of trying, and from the vexed,
impatient chief obtained his wish. "What will _you_ do it with?"
the engineer enquired. "The flat-boats in which we brought the granite
from Vermont," the young man answered. So when the tide was out, the
flat boats were fastened to the derelict. The Atlantic began to come
in; its mighty shoulders underneath the boats lifted--lifted until the
derelict had to come. The youth had harnessed infinite energy to his
task. To the consciousness of such resource in the spiritual world
Christ has introduced his people. They have meant not formula but
fact, not technicality but experience, when they have called him
Savior.


III

This consciousness of power has come in part from Christ's revelation
of God the Father. Whoever has sinned against his friend or unkindly
wronged a child knows what sin does to personal relationships. How
swift a change comes over a son's thought of his father when the son
has sinned! The wrong may have been done secretly so that his sire
does not know, and the boy alone on earth is conscious of it. But for
all that the filial relationship has lost its glory. Before the sin,
the son was happy with his father near; they were companions,
confidants, and to the boy fatherhood was very beautiful. Now, he is
most unhappy with his father near; the father's eyes like a
detective's pierce him through, the face like a judge's waits sternly
to condemn. He is looking at his father through the dark glasses of
his sin, and they distort his vision. When one considers the gods whom
men have worshiped, approaching them by bloody altar-stairs, offering
their first-born to assuage wrath or win from apathy to favor, he
sees, extended to a racial scale, our boyhood's tragedy. _Mankind has
been looking at the Father through its ignorance and sin and it has
seen him beclouded and awry._ Christ changed all that. By what he
taught, by what he was, by what he suffered he has said to man, so
that man increasingly has believed it--You are wrong about God. He
does not stand aloof--careless or vindictive; he is not as he looks to
you through the twisted lenses of your evil. He loves you. He _cares_
beyond your power to understand, and all my compassion but reveals in
time what is eternally in him. He is pledged to the victory of
goodness in you and in the world, and you have not used all your power
until you have used his, for that, too, is yours.

From that day the fight against sin has been a new thing, and men have
gone into it with battle-cries they never used before--"_God_ was
in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (II Cor. 5:19);
"_God_ commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8); "If _God_ is for us,
who is against us?" (Rom. 8:31).

This access of power has come in part from Christ's revelation of
_man_. When a jewel is taken from darkness into sunlight, there is a
two-fold revealing. The sunlight is disclosed in new glory, for it
never seemed so beautiful before as it appears breaking in splendor
through the jewel's heart. And there is a revelation of the jewel.
Dull and unillumined in the dark, it is lustrous when the sun
enlightens it. So Christ brought us an unveiling of the Father; the
Divine never had seemed so wonderful as when it poured in glory
through his purity and love. And he brought as well a new revelation
of man. Our human nature, bedimmed by sin and lusterless, he in his
own person took up into the light, and lifting it where all mankind
could see he cried--This _is_ human nature--man as God intended him to
be--no slave of fate and dupe of sin, but a free man and a victor. And
from that day the war on sin has had new spirit in it, and battle
cries that presage triumph have grown familiar on the fighters' lips:
"Now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we
shall be" (I John 3:2); "Till we all attain unto the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13);
"His precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may
become partakers of the divine nature" (II Pet. 1:4).


IV

Christ's double revelation of God and man, however, has had its vital
impact of power on life in what Christians have always called _the
experience of the Spirit_. When the New Testament speaks its
characteristic word about the Spirit, it means the conscious presence
of the living God in the hearts of men, and that is the very essence
of religion. The first Christians did not know God in one way only;
they knew him in three ways. So one man might know Beethoven the
composer and be an authority upon his works; another might know
Beethoven the performer and delight in his playing; and another might
know Beethoven the man and rejoice in his friendship--but no one could
know the whole of Beethoven until he knew him all three ways. The New
Testament Christians came thus to God. He was the Father, Creator of
all; he was the Character, revealed in Jesus; but as well he was the
Spiritual Presence in their lives, their sustenance and power. "The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Spirit" (II Cor. 13:14)--such was their experience of the
Divine. It was not dogma; it was _life_. God was Creator, Character,
and Comforter.

Christian experience is in continual danger of drifting from this
vital center. In our age especially, we are prone to find God at the
end of an argument and to leave him there. We have been compelled by
militant agnosticism to put our apologetic armies on the defensive.
Finding it impossible to hold the respect of men's intelligence
without reasonable arguments in the faith's behalf, we have had to
draw such inferences from the nature of the material universe, from
the necessities of human thought, the demands of human conscience, and
the progress of moral evolution in history, that materialism should be
made, what indeed it is, a discredited affair. But God so arrived at,
by way of reason, is an external matter. He is an hypothesis to
explain the universe. "He sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers before him." Granted the
incalculable value in such faith, putting unity into history and
purpose into life--it is not religion and it never can be. _Religion
begins when the God outwardly argued is inwardly experienced._
Religion begins when we cease using the tricky and unstable aeroplane
of speculation to seek Him among the clouds, and retreat into the
fertile places of our own spirits where the living water rises, as
Jesus said. God outside of us is a theory; God inside of us becomes a
fact. God outside of us is an hypothesis; God inside of us is an
experience. God the Father is the possibility of salvation; God the
Spirit is actuality of life, joy, peace, and saving power. God the
transcendent may do for philosophy, but he is not enough for religion.

Without this completion of the Gospel, Christ's saviorhood does not
reach inward to our need. For lacking it, we stand before the Master
with the same admiration that a man who is no painter feels when he
sees a Raphael. He knows the work is sublime, but he is not proposing
to reproduce it. He is conquered by its beauty, but he knows no
possibility of its imitation. If, however, there were a spirit of
Raphael that could lay hold upon a man's life and transform him to the
master's skill and power, then his admiration would become inwardly
effective. _It takes the spirit of Raphael to do Raphael's work._ If
this gospel of an indwelling dynamic is not coupled with our
admiration for Jesus, we are like a student practicing the fingering
of the Hallelujah Chorus on an organ from which the power has been
shut off. With what accuracy his fingers travel the keys, who can
tell? Once Handel's soul, on fire with the passion of harmony, burned
itself into that composition. He wrote it upon his knees. But with
whatever agility the student's fingers follow the notes, no Hallelujah
Chorus comes from his organ to praise God and move men. So the record
of this matchless character handed to us in the gospels, like notes of
music meant to be played again, is but our despair, if we must attempt
its reproduction on a powerless organ. Our admiration for it is
external and ineffectual. We fall thereby into a static religion of
creed; we have no dynamic religion of progress and hope. This then is
the glorious message, where the Christian Gospel reaches its climax,
and which alone puts fullest meaning into Jesus' perfect life: _the
Spirit of God in Jesus made his quality; that same Spirit is
underground in our lives, striving to well up in characters like his,
until we live, yet not we, but Christ lives in us_.

Any spring day may serve to illustrate this faith. Where does the
restlessness in nature have its source? Every tree, in discontent,
hastens to make buds into leaves, and every blade of grass is
tremulous with impatient life. No tree, however, is a sufficient
explanation of its own haste and dissatisfaction; no flower has in
itself the secrets of its eager growth. The spirit of life is abroad,
and crowding itself everywhere on old, dead forms, is making them
bloom again. Explain then, the moral restlessness of our hearts in
other wise! We do ill, and are distraught with remorse until we repent
and make reparation. We attain money or talents, and are chased day
and night by the urgent call to their spiritual dedication. We conform
ourselves to decency and still hear a call for goodness beyond all
earthly need. We succeed as the world calls it, and we know that it is
failure; we fail as the world sees it, and our hearts sing for joy
because we know that we have succeeded. Everywhere we are confronted
with a pulsing life that longs to get itself expressed in us. We
cannot get away from God. He is not far, he is here. This Spirit, for
whom there is no better name than the Spirit of Jesus, is our
continual companion. We are locked in an enforced fellowship with him.
There is no friend with whom we deal more directly and continually
than with him. Every time we open an inspiring book and devoutly study
it, this Spirit is pleading for entrance. Every time we pray he stands
at the door and knocks. Every time some child in need, or some great
cause demanding sacrifice, lays claim on us, this Spirit is crying to
be let in. Men's hunger for food, their love for family and friends,
are not more direct, concrete, immediate experiences than our dealings
with this Spirit of the Lord. He is not only God the Father; he is
God the Spirit, striving to dwell in us and work through us.

Into a vital use of this relationship with the Divine, Christ opened
the way and multitudes have followed. He has taught men to find that
same resourcefulness in the spiritual world which science finds in the
physical. Every successful invention of a man like Edison involves a
twofold faith: that there is inexhaustible power in the universe and
that, with persistent patience and cooperation, there is no telling
what marvels yet may come from the employment of it. Faith is
science's flying column. It runs out into engineering, agriculture,
medicine, and refuses to limit the possibilities. Science is a
tremendous believer; it lives by faith that almost anything may yet be
done. Such a relationship Paul sustained with the Spirit. He was
confident of resources there, "exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think" (Eph. 3:20). He was a spiritual Edison, a believer in
the divine reality and power and their availability by faith in human
life.

Only such a Gospel is adequate to man's deepest need. Sin, whether its
forms be decent or obscene, cripples men's wills with the appalling
certainty that they are slaves. As a hypnotist draws imaginary circles
around his victims, across which they cannot step, so Sin, that
Svengali of the soul, whether in personal or social life, paralyzes
its dupes with disbelief in possibilities. To innumerable folk,
emprisoned by their fears and sins, Christ has been the Savior. He has
awakened that faith which, as he said, is the greatest mountain-mover
known to men. They have been "strengthened with power through his
Spirit in the inward man" (Eph. 3:16).


V

When one considers, as we have in these two chapters, what Christ has
meant in the experience of his people, little wonder can remain that
they have called him by such high names as have aroused man's
incredulity. For this Gospel of power has never been separable from
him, as though he were its historic fountain and could easily be
forgotten by those who far down-stream enjoyed the water. His
personality itself has been the inspiration of his people. At Marston
Moor, when the Puritans and Cavaliers were aligned for battle and all
was in readiness for conflict to begin, Oliver Cromwell came riding
across the plain. And the chronicler says that at the sight of him the
Puritans sent up a great victorious shout, as though their battle
already had been won. Some such effect our Lord has had on his
disciples. To explain that effect one would have to speak not so much
of his teaching as of himself--his character and purpose; nor so much
of them as of the Cross where all he taught and was came to a point of
flame that has set the world on fire. Christ was the

                  "nerve o'er which do creep
  The else unfelt oppressions of the earth."

He suffered with man and for man, he uniquely embodied in his own
experience the universal law that the consequences of sin fall in part
on the one who loves the sinner and tries to save him; and in that
sacrifice his work for man was consummated, and his influence over man
confirmed. When his people have bowed before him in unutterable
devotion they have been thinking not only of what he has done for
them, but of what it cost him to do it.

Why, therefore, should we wonder that his disciples at their best have
called Jesus divine? His first followers began with no abstract ideas
of deity; they began with "the man, Christ Jesus" (I Tim. 2:5). They
had no idea at the first that he was more. His bodily and mental life
had obeyed the laws of normal human development, advancing "in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God and men" (Luke 2:52). He hungered
after his temptation, thirsted on the Cross, slept from weariness
while the boat tossed in a storm, and exhausted, sat beside the well.
Like other men he had elevated hours of great rejoicing; times when
compassion moved him to tears, as when he saw a multitude unshepherded
or, swinging round the brow of Olivet, beheld Jerusalem; and hours of
hot indignation, too, as when he found his Father's house a den of
thieves or spoke out his heart against the Pharisees. He asked
questions, and was astonished, now at the people's lack of faith,
again at the centurion's excess of it. His fellowship with God was
nourished by secret prayer, his power replenished by retreat to quiet
places for communion, and all his life was lived, his temptations
faced, his troubles borne, and his work done in a spirit of humble,
filial dependence on his Father.

Thus real and human, a sharer in their limitations, their sorrows, and
their moral trials, the first disciples saw the Master. But ever as
they lived with him, whether in physical presence or in spiritual
fellowship, he wrought in them a Savior's work. He became to them
manhood indeed, but manhood plus. He grew in their apprehension, as
though a boy had thought an ocean's inlet were a lake enclosed, and
now discovers that it is the sea itself, and all its tides the pulse
of the great deep. How should they name this greatness in their Lord?
They were not utterly without a clue, for he himself had introduced
them to the life divine. They had learned through him to say about
themselves that they were temples in which God dwelt (II Cor. 6:16),
that God abode in them (I John 4:12), that he stood ever waiting to
come in (Rev. 3:20), and that the possession of the divine nature was
the Gospel's promise (II Pet. 1:4). By what other element in their
experience could they interpret the greatness of their Lord? It might
be inadequate, but it was the best they had. They rose to understand
the divine life in him from the experience of the divine life in
themselves. "God was in Christ," they said. They never dreamed of
claiming equality with him. Like pools beside the sea, they understood
the ocean's quality from their own. There are not two kinds of
sea-water; nor, with one God, can there be two kinds of divine life.
But so understanding the sea, shall the pool claim equality with it?
Rather, the sea has deeps, tides, currents, and relationships with the
world's life that no pool can ever know. So Christ was at once their
brother and their Lord. He was real, because they interpreted his life
divine from the foregleams of God's presence in themselves. He was
adorable, because he was an ocean to their landlocked pools, and they
waited for his tides.

Only by some such road as these first disciples trod can men come to a
vital understanding of the Lord. Nothing but _experience_ can give us
a living estimate of anything; without that theory is vain. Let a man
live with the Master's manhood until it grows luminous and through it
he sees the character of God; let a man avail himself of the Master's
saviorhood until forgiven and empowered he finds the "life that is
life indeed"; let a man grow in the experience of God's presence until
he knows not only the God without but the God within; and then if he
rises to estimate his Lord, he will not hesitate to see in Jesus the
incarnate presence of the living God. After that, theology may help or
hinder him, according as it is wise and vital or cold and formal; but
with theology or not, he knows the heart of the New Testament's
attitude toward Jesus. He understands why the first Christians summed
up their faith as "believing in the Lord Jesus Christ."

[8] Moffatt's translation.

[9] Moffatt's translation.




CHAPTER XII

The Fellowship of Faith


DAILY READINGS

Our thought turns, in our closing week of study, from believers taken
one by one, to believers gathered in fellowship. This community of
faith has wider boundaries than the organized churches; in a real
sense it includes all servants of man's ideal aims; yet in the Church
we naturally seek the chief meanings of fellowship for faith. Why men
do not go to church, is often asked. But why men do go, so that in
spite of countless failures in the churches, attendance on public
worship and loyalty to organized religion are among mankind's most
usual habits, is an inquiry far more important. To that inquiry let us
in the daily readings turn our thought.


Twelfth Week, First Day

 =But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut
 the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves,
 neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter.=

 =Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea
 and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him
 twofold more a son of hell than yourselves....=

 =Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint
 and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of
 the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have
 done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that
 strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!--Matt. 23:13-15; 23, 24.=

Jesus' indictment of the Jewish Church is terrific, and yet no one who
knows the story of the Christian churches can doubt that they often
have deserved the same condemnation. They have at times committed all
the sins that can be laid at any institution's door; they have been
selfish, formal, worldly, cruel. A wonder-story from the Arctic says
that once the candle-flames froze and the explorers broke them off and
wore them for watch charms; the flames of the great fire congealed and
were wound like golden ornaments around men's necks. So repeatedly the
burning words of Scripture, the blazing affirmations of old creeds, on
fire at first with the passion of souls possessed by God, have been
frozen in the churches' Arctic climate, and handed to men like
talismans and amulets, with no saving warmth or light. Creeds,
rituals, organizations--how often these frozen forms of life have
taken the place of inward spiritual power! Dr. Washington Gladden
would not be alone in saying: "While therefore I had as large an
experience of church-going in my boyhood as most boys can recall, I
cannot lay my hand on my heart and say that the church-going helped me
to solve my religious problems. In fact, it made those problems more
and more tangled and troublesome." And yet the Church goes on.
Voltaire prophesied its collapse in fifty years, and in fifty years
the house where he made the prophecy was a depot for the circulation
of the Scriptures. The Church's persistence, continual adaptation to
new conditions, and apparently endless power of revival must have some
deep reason. It may be because prayer like this which follows has
never utterly died out in the sanctuary.

 _O Thou that dwellest not in temples made with hands! We ever stand
 within the courts of Thy glorious presence, only we open now the
 gates of our poor praise. Thou hast enriched this day of rest, O
 Lord, with Thy choicest gifts of peace; and lo! Thou unforgetting
 God, its record is before Thee, for ages past, moistened with
 penitential tears, and illumined with glad hopes, and hallowed by the
 innumerable prayers of faithful and saintly men. In this our day may
 the churches of Thy Holy One seek Thee still in spirit and truth; may
 we also enter in and find our rest, being of one heart and mind, and
 serving Thee with a wakeful and humble joy. Teach us now how we may
 converse with Thee, for we cannot order our speech by reason of
 darkness. We are naked and without disguise before Thee; oh! hide not
 Thyself from us behind our ignorance and sin. May we at least in
 this Thine hour shake off the sluggish clouds of sense and self that
 cling around our souls; and strenuously open our whole nature to the
 breath of Thy free spirit, and the healthful sunshine of Thy grace.
 Let the divine image of the Son of God visit us with power; driving
 out, with the chastisement of penitence, all obtruding passions that
 profane the temple of our hearts, and turn into a place of traffic
 that native house of prayer. O God of glory, God of grace! let not
 the things which are spiritually discerned be foolishness unto us
 through the blindness of our conscience: Thou knowest the thoughts of
 our wisdom that they are vain; take them from us, and bid them vanish
 away, lost in that wisdom from above which is revealed only to the
 pure in heart. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thee be
 every thought of praise! Amen._--James Martineau.


Twelfth Week, Second Day

Some men doubtless go to church from traditional habit only, but such
a motive obviously is not adequate to explain why the recurrent tides
of humanity, even after an ebb in interest, sweep back to the Church
again. In the eighteenth century, for example, Butler reports the
common opinion that all that remained for Christianity was decent
obsequies. But in a few years the Wesleys began a movement that
changed the spiritual complexion of the English-speaking world, and
swept multitudes into Christian fellowship. One reason for this
repeated fact is clear. Mankind cannot and will not consent to live
without faith in God, and faith in God in its genesis and its
sustenance is largely a matter of contagion. We are not so much taught
it; we catch it. It is vitally imparted in the family circle, and
wherever kindred and believing spirits gather. No man is so
independent as to escape the vital fact that his noblest emotions,
attitudes, ideals, and faiths are socially engendered and socially
sustained; he never would have had them in a solitary life and a
solitary life would soon spoil those which he has now. A man may
believe in his country and love her; but let him join in a patriotic
movement or even attend a high-spirited patriotic meeting, and he will
believe in her and love her more ardently. Man's religious life is not
lawless; it is regulated by the same necessities of fellowship. The
Church has made many mistakes, but on her altar the fire has never
utterly gone out, and in her fellowship the faith of multitudes has
been kindled.

 =Let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for
 he is faithful that promised: and let us consider one another to
 provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking our own assembling
 together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so
 much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.--Heb. 10:23-25.=

 _Great is Thy name, O God, and greatly to be praised. In Thee all our
 discordant notes rise into perfect harmony. It is good for us to
 think of the wonder of Thy being. Thou art silent, yet most strong;
 unchangeable, yet ever changing; ever working, yet ever at rest,
 supporting, nourishing, maturing all things. O Thou Eternal Spirit,
 who hast set our noisy years in the heart of Thy eternity, lift us
 above the power and evils of the passing time, that under the shadow
 of Thy wings we may take courage and be glad. So great art Thou,
 beyond our utmost imagining, that we could not speak to Thee didst
 Thou not first draw near to us and say, "Seek ye my face." Unto Thee
 our hearts would make reply, "Thy face, Lord, will we seek."... We
 thank Thee for our birth into a Christian community, for the Church
 and the Sacraments of Thy grace, for the healing day of rest, when we
 enter with Thy people into Thy House and there make holy-day; for the
 refreshment of soul, the joys of communion, the spiritual discipline,
 the inspiration of prayer and hymn and sermon.... We praise Thee for
 the myriad influences of good, conscious and unconscious, that have
 been about us, deeply penetrating our inner life, shaping and fitting
 us for Thy Kingdom. Thou hast indeed forgiven all our iniquities, and
 healed all our diseases, and redeemed our life from destruction, and
 crowned us with loving-kindness. Therefore would we call upon our
 souls, and all that is within us, to bless Thy holy Name.
 Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Twelfth Week, Third Day

 =For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom
 for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to
 another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this:
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour
 one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.--Gal.
 5:13-15.=

One fundamental reason for the endless revival of the Church is that
faith never is satisfied until it issues in work. It insists on our
being "servants one to another." We have spoken of God's merciful
acceptance of a man when out of sin he turns his life by faith toward
Christ; but to interpret this as meaning the adequacy of faith without
effective service is to misread Scripture and to demoralize life.
Faith that does not lead to service is no real faith at all. But
whenever men endeavor to express in work any faith which they may hold
they must come together. Service involves cooperation. A hermit may
have faith, but his faith does not concern any ideal hopes on earth;
it has no outlooks save upon his own soul's condition in the world to
come; it is a narrow, selfish, inoperative thing. As soon as men are
grasped by some moving faith about what ought to be done for God's
service and man's welfare here and now, a hermit's solitude or any
sort of unaffiliated life becomes impossible. They must combine in a
fellowship of faith and of labor to seek common ends. They begin to
say with Edward Rowland Sill, "For my part I long to 'fall in' with
somebody. This picket duty is monotonous. I hanker after a shoulder on
this side and the other." And to fall in with others to serve
Christian ends means some kind of church. Let us pray today for a
church more fit to express this passion to serve.

 _God, we pray for Thy Church, which is set today amid the
 perplexities of a changing order, and face to face with a great new
 task. We remember with love the nurture she gave to our spiritual
 life in its infancy, the tasks she set for our growing strength, the
 influence of the devoted hearts she gathers, the steadfast power for
 good she has exerted. When we compare her with all other human
 institutions, we rejoice, for there is none like her. But when we
 judge her by the mind of her Master, we bow in pity and contrition.
 Oh, baptize her afresh in the life-giving spirit of Jesus! Grant her
 a new birth, though it be with the travail of repentance and
 humiliation. Bestow upon her a more imperious responsiveness to duty,
 a swifter compassion with suffering, and an utter loyalty to the
 will of God. Put upon her lips the ancient Gospel of her Lord. Help
 her to proclaim boldly the coming of the Kingdom of God and the doom
 of all that resist it. Fill her with the prophet's scorn of tyranny,
 and with a Christ-like tenderness for the heavy-laden and
 down-trodden. Give her faith to espouse the cause of the people, and
 in their hands that grope after freedom and light to recognize the
 bleeding hands of the Christ. Bid her cease from seeking her own
 life, lest she lose it. Make her valiant to give up her life to
 humanity, that like her crucified Lord she may mount by the path of
 the cross to a higher glory. Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.


Twelfth Week, Fourth Day

 =For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be put
 to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the
 same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him:
 for, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and
 how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and how shall
 they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they
 be sent? even as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them
 that bring glad tidings of good things!--Rom. 10:11-15.=

The necessity of affiliation for effective faith is clear when one
considers the missionary enterprise. One of the noblest qualities in
human life is our natural desire to share our blessings. Every normal
child is happier when some other child is joining in the play; every
lover of music is gladdened by sharing with a friend enjoyment of a
favorite symphony; save in singularly churlish folk the love of having
others partake our joys is spontaneous and hearty. To those whom
Christian faith, has blessed with hope and power, the undeniable
impulse comes to share these finest benedictions with all other men.
The missionary enterprise does not rest upon a text; it wells up from
one of the worthiest impulses in man's life. One may be fairly sure,
that save as some perverted theology inhibits a spirit of love, a
man's missionary interest will be proportionate to the reality and
value of his own experience. If he himself has something well worth
sharing, he will want to share it. But the missionary enterprise is
more than any individual can compass; it demands organization,
cooperation, and massed resources; it cannot be prosecuted without a
church. The further our thought proceeds the more clear it becomes
that the question is not, shall we have churches? but rather, since
churches are inevitable, of what sort shall they be?

 _O Thou who hast made all nations of men to seek Thee and to find
 Thee; bless, we beseech Thee, Thy sons and daughters who have gone
 forth, into distant lands, bearing in their hands Thy Word of Life.
 We rejoice that, touched with the enthusiasm of Christ, so many have
 consecrated their lives to proclaiming the message of Thy love to
 those other sheep of Thine who are not of our fold, that they may be
 united with us and that there may be one flock and one Shepherd. Help
 Thy ministering servants to recognize the fragments of truth and
 goodness that are ever found where men are sincere and to claim these
 glimpses of Thyself as the prophecies of a fuller revelation. When
 discouraged by the hardness of their task, and the meager fruit of
 all their labor, give them faith to see the far-off whitening
 harvest. Inspire them with Thy gracious promise that though the sower
 may go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, he will come again with
 joy, bringing his sheaves with him. Comfort them in their exile and
 loneliness with a sense of Thy companionship and with the prayers and
 sympathy of their brethren at home. Through them let Thy Word have
 free course and be glorified. And so let Thy Kingdom come, and Thy
 Will be done on earth as in Heaven, for Jesus Christ's sake.
 Amen._--Samuel McComb.


Twelfth Week, Fifth Day

 =After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven,
 Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in
 heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us
 our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not
 into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if ye forgive
 men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But
 if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father
 forgive your trespasses.--Matt. 6:9-15.=

The central ideal of Christian effort is set for us in the first
petition of the Master's prayer. But a Kingdom on earth, with God's
will done here in heavenly fashion, is a social idea. It means not
only right personal quality; it means right family life, and economic,
political, and international relationships Christianized. No amount of
fine individual character, necessary as it is, will of itself rectify
the social maladjustments and inequities. Were everyone as good as
possible, we still should need organized action. All parts of an
engine may be correct, and yet they may be wrongly fitted together. As
it is, social relations obviously demand concerted action; we must
join together to combat immoral industrial conditions, to throttle the
liquor traffic, to make human fraternity a fact and not a dream. The
opposition to all such reforms is organized, and no haphazard attack
will succeed. Now, many organizations may arise to serve special ends
and may do excellent service to the cause, but what has proved true in
the conflict with the liquor traffic, is true also of enterprises for
industrial justice and international cooperation--_only when the
churches see the moral issue and put their power in, is there any hope
of victory_. A Christian whose faith involves the Kingdom sees
plainly that he cannot go on without the Church.

 _O Lord, we praise Thy holy name, for Thou hast made bare Thine arm
 in the sight of all nations and done wonders. But still we cry to
 Thee in the weary struggle of our people against the power of drink.
 Remember, Lord, the strong men who were led astray and blighted in
 the flower of their youth. Remember the aged who have brought their
 gray hairs to a dishonored grave. Remember the homes that have been
 made desolate of joy, the wifely love that has been outraged in its
 sanctuary, the little children who have learned to despise where once
 they loved. Remember, O Thou great avenger of sin, and make this
 nation to remember._

 _May those who now entrap the feet of the weak and make their living
 by the degradation of men, thrust away their shameful gains and stand
 clear. But if their conscience is silenced by profit, do Thou grant
 Thy people the indomitable strength of faith to make an end of it.
 May all the great churches of our land shake off those who seek the
 shelter of religion for that which damns, and stand with level front
 against their common foe. May all who still soothe their souls with
 half-truths, saying "Peace, peace," where there can be no peace,
 learn to see through Thy stem eyes and come to the help of Jehovah
 against the mighty. Help us to cast down the men in high places who
 use the people's powers to beat back the people's hands from the
 wrong they fain would crush._

 _O God, bring nigh the day when all our men shall face their daily
 task with minds undrugged and with tempered passions; when the
 unseemly mirth of drink shall seem a shame to all who hear and see;
 when the trade that debauches men shall be loathed like the trade
 that debauches women; and when all this black remnant of savagery
 shall haunt the memory of a new generation but as an evil dream of
 the night. For this accept our vows, O Lord, and grant Thine aid.
 Amen._--Walter Rauschenbusch.


Twelfth Week, Sixth Day

 =Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on
 me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou,
 Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that
 the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which
 thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even
 as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected
 into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and
 lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me.--John 17:20-23.=

To the Christian the Church is a problem, just because she is a
necessity. He caught his faith from the contagion of her fellowship
and he sees that if he is to serve effectively the ideals of Christ
and the coming of the Kingdom he must work through some church. But
because the Church is necessary, he is not thereby made content with
her. She is at once helping and hindering the spread of the faith; she
is the source of immeasurable good and yet she is not "one, that the
world may believe." A traveler across the American plains in
springtime sees fences, tiresomely prominent, staring at him from the
landscape; but in summer when he returns the fences are invisible. The
wheat and corn are growing, the earth is bearing fruit, and while the
old divisions may be there, they all are hidden. One suspects that if
Christians everywhere set themselves with hearty zeal to bear the
fruit of service for the common weal, if they gave themselves to
achieve the aims of Christ for men with ardor and thoroughness, the
sectarian divisions would grow unimperative and disappear. We may not
be able to think the disagreements through, but we may be able to work
them out; even where we cannot recite a common creed, we can share a
common purpose. The War, where Jewish rabbis have held crucifixes
before the eyes of dying soldiers, and where Catholic priests have met
death, as one did at Gallipoli, following a Wesleyan chaplain--"my
Protestant comrade"--into danger, has revealed how deeply underneath
our sharp divisions our spiritual loyalties seek unity when crisis
comes. For all the unity that can come without compromise to
conscience, surely the Christian people are bound to pray and work.

 _O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the
 Prince of Peace; give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great
 dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and
 prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and
 concord; that as there is but one body and one Spirit, and one hope
 of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
 of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in
 one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with
 one mind and one mouth glorify Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 Amen._--"The Book of Common Prayer."


Twelfth Week, Seventh Day

 =For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is
 come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I
 have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of
 righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me
 at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved
 his appearing.--II Tim. 4:6-8.=

The fellowship of faith is not bounded by the earth. Paul's
expectation took into its account a communion that far overreached
the confines of temporal experience. The New Testament believers not
only held but vividly apprehended that the "whole family" to which
they belonged in Christian communion was "in heaven and on earth."
Their outlook Wordsworth has expressed in modern words:

                          "There is
  One great society alone on earth:
  The noble Living and the noble Dead."

To that society of the world's prophets and martyrs, seers and
servants, it may well be a man's ambition to belong. And that ideal is
not impossible to anyone, for the mark and seal of their fellowship is
that they have "kept the faith." When others despaired, lost heart,
and deserted causes on which man's welfare hung, they kept the faith.
When mysteries perplexed their minds and discouragement, to human
vision, was more rational than hope, they turned from sight to insight
and they kept the faith. When new knowledge, half-understood,
disturbed old forms of thought and multitudes were confused in
uncertainty and disbelief, they kept the faith. And they often came to
their end, like Paul, having "suffered the loss of all things"--yet
not all, for they had kept the faith.

  "For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
  Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
  Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest,
            Alleluia!

  O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
  Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
  And win with them the victor's crown of gold,
            Alleluia!

  O blest communion, fellowship Divine!
  We feebly struggle; they in glory shine;
  Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
              Alleluia!"

 _O God, Thou only Refuge of Thy children! who remainest true though
 all else should fail, and livest though all things die; cover us now
 when we fly to Thee. Thy shelter was around our fathers. Thy voice
 called them away, and bids us seek Thee here till we depart to be
 with them. In Thy memory are the lives of all men from of old. Before
 Thy sight are the secret hearts of all the living. We stand in awe of
 Thy justice which, since the ages began, hath never changed: and we
 cling to Thy mercy that passeth not away._

 _Almighty Father, Thou art a God afar off as well as nigh at hand.
 Thou who in times past didst pity the prayers of our forerunners, and
 especially of that suffering servant of Thine whom Thou hast made our
 Leader unto Thee! be pleased to strengthen us now, O Lord, to bear
 our lighter cross and surrender ourselves for duty and for trial unto
 Thee. Show us something of the blessed peace with which they now look
 back on their days of strong crying and tears, and teach us that it
 is far better to die in Thy service than to live for our own. Rebuke
 within us all immoderate desires, all unquiet temper, all
 presumptuous expectations, all ignoble self-indulgence, and feeling
 on us the embrace of Thy Fatherly hand, may we meekly and with
 courage go into the darkest ways of our pilgrimage, anxious not to
 change Thy perfect will, but only to do and bear it worthily. May we
 spend all our days in Thy presence, and meet our death in the
 strength of Thy grace, and pass thence into the nearer light of Thy
 knowledge and love. Amen._--John Hunter.


COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

So far in our studies we have been dealing with the individual
believer in his search for a reasonable faith. But we must face at
last what from the beginning has been true, that there is no such
thing as an individual believer. _All faiths are social._ However
little we may be aware of each other's influence, however intangible
the social forces which shape the convictions by which we live, no man
builds or keeps his faiths alone. We may pride ourselves on our
independent thought, but the fact remains as Prof. William James has
stated it: "Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the
greatest matters this is most the case."

The realm of religious conviction is not the only place where we hold
with a strong sense of personal possession what has been given us by
others, and often forget to acknowledge our indebtedness. We believe
in democracy and popular education, not because by some gift of
individual genius we are wiser than our unbelieving sires, but
because, in the advance of the race, that faith has been wrought out
by many minds, and, with minute addition of our own thought, we share
the general conviction. As a man considers how rich and varied are the
faiths he holds, how few of them he ever has thought through or ever
can, and how helpless he would be, if he were set from the beginning
to create any one of them, he gains new insight into Paul's words,
"What hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive
it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" (I Cor.
4:7).

Indeed, this same truth holds in every relationship. Nothing is more
impossible than a "self-made man." In no realm can that common phrase
be intelligently applied to anyone. If in business one has risen from
poverty to wealth, he has used railroads that he did not invent and
telephones that he does not even understand; he has built his business
on a credit system for which he did not labor and whose moral basis
has been laid in the ethical struggles of unnumbered generations. For
the clothes he wears, the food he eats, the education he receives, he
is debtor to a social life that taps the ends of the earth and that
has cost blood not his and money which he never can repay. If granting
this, a man still say, "My power and the might of my hand hath gotten
me this wealth" (Deut. 8:17), he may well consider whence his power
has come. His distant ancestors stalked through primeval forests,
their brows sloped back, their hairy hides barren of clothes, and in
their hands stone hatchets, by the aid of which they sought their
food. What has this Twentieth Century boaster done to change the
habits of the Stone Age to the civilization on which his wealth is
based or to elevate man's intellect to the grasp and foresight of the
modern business world? All the power by which he wins his way is
clearly a social gift, and any contribution which he may add is
infinitesimal compared with his receipts.

By this truth all declarations of individual independence need to be
chastened and controlled and all boasting cancelled utterly. Normal
minds have their times of self-assertion in religion, when they grow
impatient of believing anything simply because they have been told. As
a college Junior put it: "I must clear the universe of God, and then
start in at the beginning to see what I can find." But to assert a
reasonable independence ought not to mean that one cut himself off
from the support of history, the accumulated experience of the race,
the insight of the seers, and in unassisted isolation walk, like
Kipling's cat, "by his wild lone." No man can do that anywhere and
still succeed. Imagine a man, in politics, dubious of his old
affiliations and disturbed by the conflicting opinions of his day. If,
so perplexed, he should throw over all that ever had been thought or
done in civic life, and in an unaided individual adventure attempt out
of his own mind to constitute a state, in what utter confusion would
he land! No mind can begin work as though it were the first mind that
ever acted, or were the only mind in action now. All effective
thinking is social; contributions from innumerable heads pour in to
make a wise man's knowledge. And to suppose that any man can climb the
steep ascent of heaven all alone and lay his hands comprehensively on
the Eternal is preposterous. No one ever apprehended a science so,
much less God! Even Jesus fed his soul on the prophets of his race.


II

Indeed, Jesus' attitude toward the fellowship of faith is most
revealing, seen against the background of his nation's history. In the
beginning, there was in Israel no such thing as individual religion.
In the earliest strata of the Bible's revelation, we find no
indication of a faith that brought God and each of his people into
intimate relationships. Jehovah was the God of the nation as a whole
and not of the people one by one. When he spoke, he spoke to the
community through a leader; "Speak thou with us and we will hear," the
people cried to Moses, "but let not God speak with us lest we die"
(Exodus 20:19). It was at the time of the Exile, when the nation fell
in ruins, and the hearts of faithful Jews were thrown back one by one
on God that individual trust, peace, joy, and confidence found
utterance. It was Jeremiah (Chap. 31) and Ezekiel (Chap. 18) who saw
men individually responsible to God, and who opened the way for loyal
Jews to be his people even when the nation was no more. And what they
began Jesus completed. He lifted up the individual and made each man
the object of the Father's care. "It is not the will of your Father
... that _one_ of these little ones should perish" (Matt 18:14). "What
man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost _one_ of them ..."
(Luke 15:4). "The very hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matt.
10:30). As for religion's inner meaning, it became in Jesus' Gospel
not a national ritual but a private faith: "But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door,
pray to thy Father who is in secret" (Matt. 6:6).

While Jesus, however, so emphasized the inward, individual aspects of
religion, he did not leave it there, as though persons could ever be
like jugs in the rain, separate receptacles that share neither their
emptiness nor their abundance. He bound his disciples into a
fellowship. He joined their channels until, like interflowing streams,
one contributed to all and the spirit of all was expressed in each. He
braided them into friendship with himself and with each other, so
close that the community did what no isolated believer ever could have
done--it survived the shock of the crucifixion, the agony of sustained
persecution, the frailties of its members, and the discouragements of
its campaign. On that _group_ the Master counted for his work: "The
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). And when
the New Testament Church emerged, the fellowship which Christ himself
had breathed into it was clear and strong. Men who became Christians,
in the New Testament, came into a new relationship with God indeed,
but into a new human fraternity as well. They were "builded together
for a habitation of God through the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22), and even when
death came that fellowship was not destroyed. They were still "the
whole family in heaven and on earth" (Eph. 3:15). John Wesley was
right: "The Bible knows nothing of a solitary religion." In the Old
Testament religion was predominantly national; in the New Testament,
individuals rejoicing in the "Beloved Community" could not describe
their life without the reiteration of "one another." They were to
"pray one for another" and "confess sins one to another" (James 5:16);
they were to "love one another" (I Pet 1:22), "exhort one another"
(Heb. 3:13), "comfort one another" (I Thess. 4:18); they were to "bear
one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2) and in communal worship "admonish
one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Col. 3:16).

So when they thought of their faith, they never held it in solitary
confidence; they were "strong to apprehend _with all the saints_
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the
love of Christ which passeth knowledge" (Eph. 3:18).


III

When a modern believer endeavors to interpret this spirit in the New
Testament in terms of his own wants, he sees at once that he needs
fellowship for the _enriching_ of his faith. Cooperation for
achievement is a modern commonplace, but when Paul prayed, as we have
quoted him, that the Ephesians might be "strong to _apprehend_
with all the saints," he was stating the more uncommon proposition
that men must cooperate for knowledge. He saw the divine love in its
length, breadth, depth, and height on one side, and on the other a
solitary man endeavoring to understand it. Impossible! said Paul; the
divine love in its fulness cannot be known in solitude, it must be
apprehended in fellowship.

At first nothing seems more strictly individual than knowledge. To
know is an intimate, personal affair; it cannot be carried on by
proxy. But even casual thought at once makes clear that in solitude we
cannot know even the physical universe. No man can go apart and
through the narrow aperture of his own mind see the full round of
truth. For astronomers study the stars, geologists the rocks, chemists
know their special field and physicists know theirs; each scientist
understands in part, and if one is to know the breadth and length and
height and depth of the physical world he must be strong to apprehend
with all the scientists.

In religion this necessity of cooperation in knowing God may not at
first seem evident. In the secret session behind closed doors, as
Jesus said, one finds his clearest thought of God, and in the
individual heart the divine illumination comes. So some insist; and
the answer does not deny, but surpasses the truth in the insistence.
_Is yours the only heart where God is to be found? Does the sea of his
grace exhaust itself in what it can reveal in your bay?_ Rather, in
how many different ways men come to God, how various their
experiences of him, and how much each needs the rest for breadth and
catholicity of view!

One man comes to God by way of intellectual perplexity and he knows
chiefly faith's illumination of life's puzzling problems; another
comes through the experience of sin and he responds to such a phrase
as "God our Saviour" (I Tim. 1:1); another comes to God through
trouble and has found in faith "eternal comfort and good hope through
grace" (II Thess. 2:16); and another by way of a happy life has found
in God the object of devoted gratitude. One, a mystic, finds God in
solitary prayer; another, a worker, knows him chiefly as the Divine
Ally. Some are very young and have a child's religion; some are at the
summit of their years and have a strong man's achieving faith; and
some are old and are familiar with the face of death and the thought
of the eternal. How multiform is man's experience of God! Some
compositions cannot be interpreted by a solo. Let the first violinist
play with what skill he can, he alone is not adequate to the endeavor.
There must be an orchestra; the oboes and viols, the drums and
trumpets, the violins and cellos must all be there. So faith in God is
too rich and manifold to be interpreted by individuals alone; a
fellowship is necessary. Even Paul, in one of his most gloriously
mixed-up and yet revealing sentences, prays for fellowship that his
faith may be enriched: "I long to see you, that I may impart unto you
some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; that is, that I
with you may be comforted in you, each of us by the other's faith,
both yours and mine" (Rom. 1:11, 12).

Poverty of faith, therefore, is not due only to individual lapses of
character and perplexities of mind; _it is due to neglect of Christian
fellowship_. One who with difficulty has clung to his slender
experience of God, goes up to the church on Sunday. Even though it be
a humble place of prayer, if the worship is genuine, the hymns, the
prayers, the Scriptures gather up the testimony of centuries to the
reality of God. Here David speaks again and Isaiah answers; here Paul
reaffirms his faith and John is confident that God is love. Here the
saints before Christ cry, "Jehovah is my rock, and my fortress, and my
deliverer" (Psalm 18:2), and the sixteenth century answers, "A mighty
fortress is our God"; and the nineteenth century replies, "How firm a
foundation, ye saints of the Lord!" We go up to the church finding it
hard to sing, "_My_ Jesus, _I_ love thee, _I_ know thou art _mine_";
we go down with a _Te Deum_ in our hearts:

  "The glorious company of the apostles praise thee;
  The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee;
  The noble army of martyrs praise thee;
  The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee."

In the rich and varied faiths of the Church we find a far more
fruitful relationship with God than by ourselves we ever could have
gained. Without such an enriching experience men can only with
difficulty keep faith alive. Twigs that snap out of the camp-fire lose
their flame and fall, charred sticks; but put them back and they will
burn again, for fire springs from fellowship. Amiel, after an evening
of solitude with a favorite book on philosophy, wrote what is many a
Christian's prayer: "Still I miss something--common worship, a
positive religion, shared with other people. Ah! when will the church
to which I belong in heart rise into being? I cannot, like Scherer,
content myself with being in the right all alone. I must have a less
solitary Christianity."


IV

Men need fellowship, not only for the enrichment of their faith, but
for its _stability_. No man can successfully believe anything all
alone. Let an opinion in any realm be denied, despised, neglected by
common consent of men, and not easily do we hold an unshaken
conviction of its truth. But let it be agreed with, supported and
endorsed by many, especially by men of insight, and with each
additional testimony to its truth our faith grows confident. A
fundamental experience of man is that his faiths are socially
confirmed.

Authority of some sort, therefore, never is outgrown in any province
of knowledge, and strugglers after faith have solid right to the
sustenance which it can give. For one thing the authority of the
_expert_ is acknowledged everywhere. When a great astronomer speaks
about the stars, most of us put our hands upon our mouths and humble
ourselves to listen. If in science, expert knowledge has this
authority--not artificial, infallible, and externally enforced, but
vital, serviceable, and real--how much more in realms where insight
and spiritual quality are indispensable! Such authority comes in the
spirit of Paul: "Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are
helpers of your joy" (II Cor. 1:24).

An amateur stands before a picture like Turner's "The Building of
Carthage" and either does not notice the details, or noticing sees no
special meaning there. But when Ruskin, Turner's seer, begins to
speak--how wonderful the children in the foreground sailing toy boats
in a pool, prophecy of Carthage's future greatness on the sea!--one by
one the details take fire and glow with meaning as our eyes are
opened. Such is the service of a real authority. It does not, as
Weigel says, put out a person's eye and then try to persuade him to
see with some one else's. It rather cures our blindness and enables us
to see what by ourselves we were incapable of seeing. Christ
supremely, when allowed to be himself, has helped men thus. He has not
oppressed the mind with burdensome authority, denying us our right to
think. He has come appealing to our little insight with his own clear
vision, "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" (Luke
12:57). Things which we see dimly he has clarified; things which we
did not see at all, he has made manifest. He has been what he called
himself, the Light, and his people have said of him what the man in
John's ninth chapter said, "He opened mine eyes" (John 9:30). A
struggler after faith may well count among his assets the insight of
the seers and of the Seer. As another states it: "Our weak faith may
at times be permitted to look through the eyes of some strong soul,
and may thereby gain a sense of the certainty of spiritual things
which before we had not."

Beside the authority of the seers, there is _the authority of racial
experience_, to which indeed no mind ought slavishly to subject
itself, but from which all minds ought to gain insight and confidence.
Tradition has done us much disservice. Oppressions that might long
before have been outgrown have been counted holy because they were
hoary. There must be something to commend an opinion or a custom
beside its age, and all progress depends upon recognizing that

  "Time makes ancient good uncouth."

But if out of the past have come evils to be overthrown, out of the
past also have come the best possessions of the race. "Traditional"
has grown to be an adjective of ill repute; it signifies in common
parlance the inheritance of oppressive ideals and institutions that
hold the "dead hand" over hopes of progress. But our best music also,
our poetry, and our art are traditional; the discoveries of our
scientists on the long road from alchemy to chemistry, from magic to
physics are traditional; all that each new generation begins with,
fitted out like the well-favored child of a provident father, is
traditional. No one can describe the utter barrenness of life, if we
could not build on the accumulations of our sires, using the result of
their toil as the basis of our work, their hardly won wisdom as our
guide. To discount anything because it is traditional is to discount
everything, except that comparatively minute addition which each new
generation makes to the slowly accumulating wisdom and wealth of the
race. As Mr. Chesterton has put it: "Tradition may be defined as the
extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most
obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the
dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy
of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object
to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects
to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells
us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom;
tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is
our father."

Now racial experience is dubious at many points and at very few does
it approach finality. But on one matter it speaks with a unanimity
that is nothing short of absolute. _Man cannot live without
religion_--like the earth beneath the mountain peaks this universal
experience of the race underlies the special insights of the seers.
When during the mid-Victorian discomfiture of faith at the first
disclosures of the new science, Tennyson's "In Memoriam" appeared,
Prof. Sidgwick wrote of it, "What 'In Memoriam' did for us, for me at
least in this struggle, was to impress on us the ineffable and
irradicable conviction that _humanity_ will not and cannot acquiesce
in a godless world." That conviction is confirmed by the whole
experience of the race. To be sure religion, like love, exists in all
degrees. From degraded lust to the relationship of Robert Browning and
Elizabeth Barrett, love is infinite in variety; it takes its quality
from the character of those whom it affects; yet through all its
changes it is itself so built into the structure of mankind, that
though there be loveless individuals, life as a whole is unimaginable
without it. So religion runs the gamut of human quality. In a Hindu
idolater it performs disgusting rites to placate an angry god, and in
Rabindranath Tagore it cries: "If thou speakest not I will fill my
heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like
the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The
morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour
down in golden streams, breaking through the sky." In Torquemada it is
cruel; in Father Damien it becomes a passion for saviorhood. Religion
helped Sennacherib to his campaigns and Isaiah to his prophecies; it
preached the Sermon on the Mount and it dragged Jesus before Pilate.
Can the same spring send forth sweet water and bitter? But religion
does it, for religion is life motived by visions of God; it is
tremendous in strength, but with man's unequal power to understand the
Divine, it is ambiguous in quality. Like electricity, it is
magnificent in blessing or terrible in curse. Yet through all its
degrees man's relationship with the Invisible is so essentially a part
of his humanity that lacking it he has never yet been discovered, and
without it he cannot be conceived. It was this impressive witness of
racial experience that made John Fiske, of Harvard, say, "Of all the
implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to man, I
believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the
Everlasting Reality of Religion."

This testimony of the spiritual seers and this cumulative experience
of the race have a right to play a weighty part in any consideration
of religious faith. Even a rebellious youth might pause before he
scoffs at a mature and thoughtful mind, letting his Church, his
Scripture, and his Christ speak impressively to him about the reality
of God. What we all do in every other realm, when we are wise, this
mind is doing in religion. His individual grasp on truth he sets in
the perspective of history. He does not feel himself upon a lonely
quest when he seeks God; rather he feels behind him and around him the
race of which he is a part and which never yet has ceased to believe
in the Divine, and he sees his own insights illumined by those supreme
spirits who have talked with God "as a man talketh with his friend."
He knows as well as any youth that authority has been stereotyped in
theories of artificial infallibility, to which no mature mind for a
moment can weakly surrender its right to think, but he refuses to give
up a real authority because some have held a false one. The authority
of the dictionary is one thing--literal and external. But the
authority of a good mother moves on a different plane. It is not
artificial and oppressive. It is vital and inspiring. She has lived
longer, experienced more than her children; she is wiser, better, more
discerning than they. A man who has had experience of great motherhood
comes to feel that if his mother thinks something very strongly and
very persistently, he would better consider that thing well, for the
chances are overwhelming that there is truth in it. How much more
shall he feel so about the age-long experience of the saints with God!
In this respect at least there still is truth in Cyprian's words, "He
that hath God for his Father, hath the Church for his Mother."


V

Faith needs fellowship not alone for enrichment and stability, but for
_expression_. For faith, as from the beginning we have maintained, is
not an effortless acceptance of ideas or personal relationships; it is
an active appropriation of convictions that drive life, and Christian
faith especially has always involved a campaign whose object is the
saving of the world. Such an expression of religious life involves
cooperation; men cannot effectively support the "work of faith" (I
Thess. 1:3) apart from fellowship.

The necessity for this cooperative expression of religion is clear
when we consider the _one in whom we believe_. How anyone can expect
in solitude to believe in Christ is a mystery. For Christ, with
overflowing love to those who shared his filial fellowship with God,
said, "No longer do I call you servants ... I have called you friends"
(John 15:15); his care encompassed folk who never heard of him and
whom he never saw, "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold:
them also I must bring ... and they shall become one flock, one
shepherd" (John 10:16); and beyond his generation's life his love
reached out to followers yet unborn, "Them also that believe on me
through their word" (John 17:20). Whatever other quality a movement
sprung from such a source may possess, it must be social. Moreover,
Jesus' faith was active; the meaning of it he himself disclosed, "All
things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23). In such a
spirit, both by himself and through his followers, he sought the lost,
healed the sick, preached the Gospel, and expectantly proclaimed an
earth transformed to heaven. Such a character cannot be known in
contemplation under the trees in June or through the pages of an
interesting book. If Garibaldi, leading his men to the liberation of
Italy, had found a devotee who said, I believe in you; I love to read
your deeds, and often in my solitary, meditative hours I am cheered by
the thought of you--one can easily imagine the swift and penetrating
answer! That you believe in me is false; no one believes in me who
does not share my purpose; the army is afoot, great business is ahead,
the cause is calling, he who believes follows. Such a spirit was
Christ's. The hermits, whether of old time in their cells, or of
modern time with their unaffiliated lives, are wrong. _The final test
of faith in Christ is fellowship in work._

The Church itself has been to blame for much undedicated faith.
Correctness of opinion has been substituted, as a test, for fidelity
of life. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,"
has been interpreted to mean: accept a theory about Christ's person
and all is well. But one need only go back in imagination to the time
when first that formula was used to see how vital was its import. To
believe in Christ then meant to accept a despised religion, to break
ties that men value more than life, to face the certainty of contempt
and the risk of violence. To believe in Christ then meant coming out
from old relationships and going to a sect where one was pilloried
with derision, that one might work for the things which Christ
represents. No one did that as a theory; it required a tremendous
thrust of the will, a decision that reached to the roots of life. All
this was involved in believing on Christ, and our decent holding of a
theory about him, in a time when all lips praise him, is a poor
substitute for such vital faith. John tells us that once a multitude
of Jews professed belief in Jesus, but the Master, hearing their
affirmations, saw the superficial meaning there. "Many believed on his
name," says John--"but Jesus did not trust himself unto them" (John
2:23, 24). How many believe in Christ in such a way that he cannot
believe in them! They forget that while the test of a man is his
faith, the test of faith is faithfulness. An apostolic injunction
needs modern enforcement, "that they who have believed God may be
careful to maintain good works" (Titus 3:8).

The necessity for a cooperative expression of religion is evident
again in the _truth which we believe_. Take in its simplest form
the Gospel which Christianity presents, that God is in earnest about
personality, and what urgency is there for associated work! For
personality is being ruined in this world. False ideas of life,
idolatry whether to fetishes in Africa or to money here, irreligion in
all its manifold and blighting forms, are destroying personality from
within, and from without sweatshops, tenements, war, the liquor
traffic, industrial inequity, are engaged in the same task of ruin.
The common contrast between individual and social Christianity is
superficial. The one thing for which the Christian cares is personal
life, and in its culture and salvation he sees the aim of God and
Godlike men. Whatever, therefore, affects _that_ is his concern,
and what is there that does not affect it? What men believe about
life's meaning and its destiny strikes to the core of personal life,
and the houses in which men live, the conditions under which they
work, the wages that they are paid, and the environments which
surround their plastic childhood--these, too, mould for good or ill
the fortunes of personality.

The Christian, therefore, who intelligently holds the faith that he
professes cannot be negligent either of evangelism, education, and
missionary enterprise upon the one side, or of social reformation on
the other. These are two ends of the tunnel by which the Gospel seeks
to open out a way for personality to find its freedom. A man who says
that he believes in Jesus Christ, and yet is complacent about child
labor and commercialized vice, poor housing conditions and unjust
wages, the trade in liquor and the butchery of men in war, stands in
peril of hearing the twenty-third chapter of Matthew's gospel brought
up to date for his especial benefit by the same lips that spoke it
first. The indignation of the Master falls on priests and Levites who,
speeding to the temple service, "pass by on the other side" the
victims of social injury.

Isolated Christians, however, cannot further this campaign for
personality redeemed from inward ills and outward handicaps. _Evil is
organized, and goodness must be, too._ As wisely would a single
patriot shoulder a rifle and set out for France as would an
unaffiliated Christian set his solitary strength against the massed
evil of the world. Men increase effectiveness by a large per cent
through fellowship, as ancient Hebrews saw: "Five of you shall chase a
hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand" (Lev. 26:8).


VI

Many secondary fellowships offer to a Christian opportunity for
associated service; no cooperative endeavor to make this a better
world for God to rear his children in should lack Christian sympathy
and support. But the primary fellowship of Christians is the Church.
Some indeed would have no church; they would have man's spiritual life
a disembodied wraith, without "a local habitation and a name." But no
other one of all man's finer interests has survived without organized
expression. Justice is a great ideal; any endeavor to incarnate it in
human institutions sullies its purity. One who dwelt only on the lofty
nature of justice, who thought of it uncontaminated and ideal, might
protest against its embodiment in the tawdry ritual and demeaning
squabbles of a law court. Between the poetry of justice and the
recriminations of lawyers, the perjury of witnesses, the fumbling
uncertainty of evidence, the miscarriages of equity, how bitterly a
scornful mind could point the contrast! But a reverent mind, sorry as
it may be at the misrepresentation of the ideal in the human
institution, is ill content with scorn. He who with insight reads the
history of jurisprudence, perceives how the courts of law, with all
their faults, have conserved the gains in social equity, have
propagated the ideal for which they stand, have made progress
sometimes slowly, sometimes with a rush like soldiers storming a
redoubt, and in times of stress have been a bulwark against the
invasion of the people's rights. The poetry of justice would have been
an idle dream without equity's laborious embodiment in codes and
courts.

Some minds dwell with joy upon the spiritual Church. Its names are
written on no earthly roster, but in the Book of Life; its worship is
offered in no earthly temple, but in the trysting places where soul
meets Over-soul in trustful fellowship; its baptism is not with water
but with spirit, its eucharist not with bread but with the shared
life of the Lord. Or, ranging out to think of the Church as an ideal
human brotherhood men dream as Manson did in "The Servant in the
House":

 "If you have eyes, you will presently see the church itself--a
 looming mystery of many shapes and shadows, leaping sheer from floor
 to dome. The work of no ordinary builder!... The pillars of it go up
 like the brawny trunks of heroes: the sweet human flesh of men and
 women is moulded about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable: the faces
 of little children laugh out from every corner-stone: the terrible
 spans and arches of it are the joined hands of comrades; and up in
 the heights and spaces there are inscribed the numberless musings of
 all the dreamers of the world. It is yet building--building and built
 upon. Sometimes the work goes forward in deep darkness: sometimes in
 blinding light: now beneath the burden of unutterable anguish: now to
 the tune of a great laughter and heroic shoutings like the cry of
 thunder. Sometimes, in the silence of the night-time, one may hear
 the tiny hammerings of the comrades at work up in the dome--the
 comrades that have climbed ahead."

All such ideals, like pillars of fire and cloud, lead the march toward
a promised land. They are to the actual Church what the poetry of
justice is to the actual courts. But in one case as in the other, such
ideals are dreams if, with labor and struggle, through many mistakes,
against the disheartenment of man's frailty and sin, we do not work
out an institution that shall embody and express man's spiritual life.
Even now a discerning spirit whose own faith has been nourished at the
altar regards the Church with boundless gratitude. She has indeed been
to the Gospel what courts are to justice, indispensable and yet
burdensome, an institution that the ideal cannot live without and yet
often cannot easily live with. No one feels her faults so acutely as
one who devotedly values the Gospel and longs for its adequate
expression on the earth. Yet the Church conserves the race's spiritual
gains, fits out our youth with the treasure of man's accumulated
faith, is a power house of endless moral energy for good causes in the
world, exalts the ideal aims of life amid the crushing pressure of
material pursuits, holds out a gospel of hope to men whom all others
have forsaken, and to the ends of the earth proclaims the good pews of
God and the Kingdom. No other fellowship offers to men of faith so
great an opportunity to make distinctive contribution to the race's
spiritual life. In the presence of the Church's service and the
Church's need an unaffiliated believer in Jesus Christ is an anomaly.
For enrichment, stability, and expression, faith must have fellowship.

 _"Oh magnify Jehovah with me, and let us exalt His name
 together"_ (Psalm 34:3).




SCRIPTURE PASSAGES USED IN THE DAILY READINGS


 EXODUS 3:1-5 (VI-5);
   4:24-26 (II-4).

 DEUTERONOMY 28:65-67 (VIII-2).

 II KINGS 21:3-6 (IV-5).

 JOB 30:20, 21, 25-27 (X-4);
   37:23 (V-3);
   38:31-38 (VII-1).

 PSALMS 16:5-11 (III-5);
   23:1-4 (X-3);
   27:1-6 (VIII-5);
   27:7-14 (V-7);
   51:1-4 (III-3);
   55:1-7 (VIII-1);
   56:1-3 (VIII-3);
   73:2, 3, 16, 17, 24-26 (II-6);
   103:1-5 (III-2);
   118:1-6 (VIII-7);
   145:1-10 (III-7);
   146:1-5 (IV-1).

 PROVERBS 2:1-5 (II-3);
   4:1-9 (II-2).

 ECCLESIASTES 3:11 (V-3).

 ISAIAH 1:10-17 (IV-2);
   40:26-31 (V-4);
   51:9-16 (VI-6);
   55:1-3 (II-7).

 AMOS 5:21-24 (IX-4).

 MICAH 6:1-8 (IX-3).

 MATTHEW 6:6-14 (III-1);
   6:9-15 (XII-5);
   6:24-33 (VI-6);
   7:15-20 (V-6);
   7:24-27 (VI-7);
   13:54-58 (XI-3);
   17:19-20 (XI-4);
   18:12-14 (II-4);
   21:28-31 (X-1);
   23:13-15, 23, 24 (XII-1);
   25:34-40 (IX-7).

 MARK 12:28-30 (V-1).

 LUKE 6:12-16 (IX-2);
   7:48-50 (XI-2);
   18:9-14 (IV-3);
   22:31, 32 (XI-6).

 JOHN 3:21 (IX-5);
   4:23, 24 (IV-5);
   6:16, 17 (IX-5);
   6:27-29 (XI-1);
   7:16, 17 (IX-5);
   14:25-27 (VII-2);
   17:20-23 (XII-6).

 ACTS 17:22-28 (IV-6).

 ROMANS 8:1-6 (X-7);
   8:14-16 (V-5);
   8:24, 25 (III-4);
   10:11-15 (XII-4);
   11:33, 34 (V-3);
   11:33-12:2 (IX-6);
   15:13 (III-4);
   16:1-8 (IX-1).

 I CORINTHIANS 2:10-14 (VII-4);
   3:4-9 (III-6);
   3:18-23 (VII-6);
   4:11-13 (VI-2).

 II CORINTHIANS 5:5 (V-2).

 GALATIANS 2:20 (XI-5);
   5:13-15 (XII-3);
   5:16-23 (IV-7).

 EPHESIANS 1:15-19 (VII-5);
   4:13-15 (X-5).

 PHILIPPIANS 3:12-16 (X-6).

 I THESSALONIANS 3:1, 2, 10 (XI-6);
   5:21 (V-1).

 II THESSALONIANS 1:3 (XI-6).

 I TIMOTHY 6:20, 21 (II-5).

 II TIMOTHY 1:3-5 (II-1);
   4:6-8 (XII-7).

 HEBREWS 1:1, 2 (VII-7);
   2:8-10 (VI-3);
   4:1, 2, (I-6);
   10:23-25 (XII-2);
   10:32-36 (I-4);
   11:1 (I-1);
   11:3, 6 (I-5);
   11:8-10 (I-2);
   11:13-16 (I-1);
   11:24-27 (I-2);
   11:32-40 (I-3);
   12:1-3 (VI-4);
   13:7 (I-7).

 JAMES 1:2-8 (X-2);
   2:14-21 (IV-4);
   5:13-16 (VIII-4).

 I PETER 1:3-9 (XI-7);
   4:12-16, 19 (VI-1).

 II PETER 1:5 (V-1).

 JUDE 20-25 (VII-3).




SOURCES OF PRAYERS USED IN THE DAILY READINGS


 ALFRED, KING--IX-3, "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by S. F. Fox.

 ANSELM, ST.--XI-6. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by S. F. Fox.

 ARNDT, JOHANN--IX-1; X-1. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 ARNOLD, THOMAS--VII-5. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 BACON, FRANCIS--VII-2. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 BEECHER, HENRY WARD--I-4; I-7; II-7; III-5; III-7; IV-7; V-7; VI-6;
   X-5. "A Book of Public Prayer."

 BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER--XII-6.

 DAWSON, GEORGE--X-4. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 HALE, SIR MATTHEW--VII-4. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 HUNTER, JOHN--I-1; IV-5; XI-2; XI-3; XII-7. "Devotional Services for
   Public Worship."

 JENKS, BENJAMIN--X-2. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 MCCOMB, SAMUEL--I-6; II-1; III-1; VI-3; VIII-1; VIII-2; VIII-3;
   VIII-5; VIII-6; VIII-7; IX-2; XI-1; XII-2; XII-4. "A Book of
   Prayers for Public and Personal Use."

 MARTINEAU, JAMES--III-4; IV-4; V-2; VI-2; XII-1. "Prayers in the
   Congregation and in College."

 NEWMAN, FRANCIS W.--VI-1; VI-7. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages,"
   by S. F. Fox.

 ORCHARD, W. E.--I-2; I-3; II-2; II-3; II-4; II-5; II-6; III-2; IV-3;
   IV-6; V-1; V-3; V-6; VI-5; VII-1; VII-3; VII-7; VIII-4; IX-5; X-7;
   XI-5; XI-7. "The Temple."

 PARKER, THEODORE--I-5; V-4; V-5; VI-4; VII-6; X-6. "Prayers."

 RAUSCHENBUSCH, WALTER--III-6; IV-1; IV-2; IX-4; IX-6; XII-3; XII-5.
   "Prayers of the Social Awakening."

 ROBINSON, HELEN RING--XI-4. "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E.
   Diffendorfer.

 SHAFTESBURY, EARL OF--IX-7. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by
   S. F. Fox.

 STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS--III-3. "Prayers Written at Vailima."

 VAN DYKE, HENRY--IV-6. "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E. Diffendorfer.

 WEISS, S.--X-3. "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages," by S. F. Fox.






End of Project Gutenberg's The Meaning of Faith, by Harry Emerson Fosdick