GOD'S SELF-EXPRESSION AND THE MIND OF TO-DAY
I
To the mind of to-day trust would be easier were it not for the terror
lest God's plans involve us in fearful things from which we shrink. We
have heard so much of the trials He sends; of the gifts of Tantalus He
keeps forever in our sight but just beyond our reach; of the blessings
He actually bestows upon us only to snatch them away when we have come
to love them most--we have heard so much of this that we are often
afraid of His will as the greatest among the evils of which we stand
in dread.
In many cases this is the root of our fear. We cannot trust without
misgiving to the love of God. What is there then that we can trust to?
We can't trust to ourselves; still less can we trust to our fellow-men.
Those whom we love and in whom we have confidence being as weak as
ourselves, if not weaker than we, establish our spirits not at all. If,
therefore, we mentally poison the well of Universal Good-intent at its
very source what have we to depend on?
I have already referred to the God of repressions and denials, and now
must speak a little more freely of this travesty on "the Father," as
expressed to us in Jesus Christ. Of all the obstacles to the rooting out
of fear the lingering belief in such a distortion of Divine Love is to
my mind the most deeply based.
I often think it a proof of the vital truth in the message of Jesus
Christ that it persists in holding the heart in spite of the ugly thing
which, from so many points of view, the Caucasian has managed to make of
it. Nowhere is the cruelty of Caucasian misinterpretation more evident
than in the meanings given to the glorious phrase, "the Will of God." I
do not exaggerate when I say that in most Caucasian minds the Will of
God is a bitter, ruthless force, to which we can only drug ourselves
into submission. It is always ready to thwart us, to stab us in the
back, or to strike us where our affections are tenderest. We hold our
blessings only on the tenure of its caprice. Our pleasures are but the
stolen moments we can snatch from its inattention.
As an example I quote some stanzas from a hymn frequently sung where
English-speaking people worship, and more or less expressive of the
whole Caucasian attitude toward "God's Will."
My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from my home on life's rough way,
Oh, teach me from my heart to say,
Thy Will be done.
Though dark my path and sad my lot,
Let me be still, and murmur not,
Or breathe the prayer divinely taught,
Thy Will be done.
What though in lonely grief I sigh
For friends beloved no longer nigh,
Submissive still would I reply,
Thy Will be done.
If thou shouldst call me to resign
What most I prize, it ne'er was mine;
I only yield thee what is thine;
Thy Will be done.
These lines, typical of a whole class of sentimental hymnology, are
important only in as far as they are widely known and express a more or
less standardised point of view. The implication they contain is that
all deprivation is brought upon us by the Will of God, and that our
wisest course is to beat ourselves down before that which we cannot
modify. Beneath the car of this Juggernaut we must flout our judgments
and crush our affections. As He knows so well where to hit us we must
stifle our moans when He does so. As He knows so well what will ring our
hearts we must be content to let Him give so that He can the more
poignantly take away. The highest exercise of our own free will is to
"be still and murmur not"--to admit that we need the chastisement--to
crouch beneath the blows which we tell ourselves are delivered in love,
even though it is hard to see where the love comes in.
II
I know nothing more tragic than those efforts on the part of
heart-broken people, coming within the experience of all of us, to make
themselves feel that this terrible "Will of God" must be right, no
matter how much it seems wrong.
A young man with a wife and family to support is struck down by a
lingering illness which makes him a burden. All his Job's comforters
tell him that God has brought the affliction upon him, and that to bow
to the "Inscrutable Will" must be his first act of piety.
A young mother is rejoicing in her baby when its little life is suddenly
snuffed out. She must school herself to say, quite irrespective of the
spirit of renunciation which inspires the words, "The Lord gave and the
Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord."
A woman is left a widow to earn a living for herself, and bring up her
children fatherless. She must assume that the Lord had some good purpose
in leaving her thus bereft and must drill herself into waiting on a
Will so impossible to comprehend.
Storms sink ships, drowning passengers and crew; lightning sets fire to
houses and strikes human beings dead; earthquakes swallow up whole
districts destroying industry and human life; tidal waves sweep inland
carrying away towns; and our legal phraseology can think of no better
explanation of such calamity than to ascribe it to "the act of God."
It is needless to multiply these instances. Our own knowledge supplies
them by the score. Our personal lives are full of them. God's Will,
God's Love, God's Mercy, become strangely ironic forces, grim beyond any
open enmity. They remind us of the "love," the "pity," the "mercy," in
which the orthodox sent the heretic to the hangman or the stake,
destroying the body to save the soul.
It is a far cry from this appalling vision of "the Father" to the
psalmist's "Delight thou in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires
of thine heart." How could anyone delight in the Caucasian God, as the
majority of Caucasians conceive of Him? As a matter of fact, how many
Caucasians themselves, however devout, however orthodox, attempt to
delight, or pretend to delight, in the God to whom on occasions they bow
down? Delight is a strong word, and a lovely one; but used of the
Caucasian and his Deity it is not without its elements of humour.
III
Naturally enough! It is impossible for any human being to delight in a
God whose first impulse in "doing us good" is so often to ravage our
prosperity and affections. So long as we believe in Him fear will rule
our lives. It is because the Caucasian believes in Him that he lives in
fear and dies in fear. To attempt to eliminate fear and retain this
concept of God is vain.
Understanding this the average Caucasian has made little or no effort to
eliminate fear. He would rather live and die in fear than change this
concept of God. It is dear to him. He finds it useful. To its shoulders
he can shift the ills of which he is unwilling himself to accept the
responsibility. Where God is a puzzle life is a puzzle; and where life
is a puzzle the Caucasian gets his chance for making the materialistic
ideal the only one that seems practical. In a world which was to any
noticeable degree freed from the spectre of fear most of our existing
systems of government, religion, business, law, and national and
international politics, would have to be remodelled. There would be
little or no use for them. Built on fear and run by fear, fear is as
essential to their existence as coal to our industries. A society that
had escaped from fear would escape from their control.
In this present spring of 1921 we are having an exhibition of fear on a
scale so colossal that the heart of man is dazed by it. There is not a
government which is not afraid of some other government. There is not a
government which is not afraid of its own people. There is not a people
which is not afraid of its own government. There is not a country in
which one group is not afraid of some other group. All is rivalry,
enmity, suspicion, confusion, and distrust, "while men's hearts are
fainting for fear, and for anxious expectation of what is coming on the
world." All statesmen, all ministers, all ambassadors, all politicians,
all bankers, all business men, all professional men, all journalists,
all farmers, all laborers, all workers in the arts, all men and women of
all kinds--with the exception of one here and there who has reached the
understanding of the love which casteth out fear--live and work in fear,
and in mistrust of their colleagues. From the supreme councils of the
Allies down to the crooks and conspirators in dives and joints everyone
is afraid of being double-crossed. There is so much double-crossing
everywhere that we have been obliged to invent this name for the
operation. England is afraid of being double-crossed by Germany, France
by England, Italy by France, the United States by Europe, and Japan by
the United States, while within these general limitations minor
double-crossing interests seethe like bacteria in a drop of poisoned
blood. The nations are infected with fear because they elect to believe
in a God of fear, and the Caucasians more than others because they have
chosen to see a God of fear in Him who was put before them as a God
of Love.
IV
I see no way out of all this except as one of us after another reaches
the _Metanoia_, the new point of view as regards God. Other ways have
been sought, and have been found no more than blind alleys. Much
reference is made nowadays to the disillusionment of those who hoped
that the war would lead to social and spiritual renovation; but any such
hope was doomed in advance, so long as the Caucasian concept of God was
unchanged. When you cannot trust God you cannot trust anything; and when
you cannot trust anything you get the condition of the world as it is
to-day. And that you _cannot_ trust a God whose "love" will paralyse the
hand by which you have to earn a living, or snatch your baby from your
breast--to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture
inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having
led you to see otherwise--that you cannot trust a God like that must be
more or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He
cannot practise futilities through your experience and personality. He
must be kind with a common-sense kindness, loving with a common-sense
love. Whatever explanation of our sufferings and failures there may be
we must not shuffle them off on God. "Let us hold God to be true," St.
Paul writes, "though every man should prove false."[11] Let us hold that
God would not hurt us, however much we may wilfully hurt each other or
ourselves.
[11] Epistle to the Romans.
V
I should not lay so much emphasis on this if so much emphasis were not
laid on it in the other direction. God has so persistently, and for so
many generations, been held up to us as a God who tries and torments and
punishes that we can hardly see Him as anything else. Torture comes, in
the minds of many of us, to be not only His main function but His only
function. "I am all right," is the unspoken thought in many a heart, "so
long as I am not overtaken by the Will of God. When that calamity falls
on me my poor little human happiness will be wrecked like a skiff in a
cyclone." This is not an exaggeration. It is the secret mental attitude
of perhaps ninety percent of those Caucasians who believe in a God of
any kind. Their root-conviction is that if God would only let them alone
they would get along well enough; but as a terrible avenging spirit,
like the Fury or the Nemesis of the ancients, he is always tracking them
down. The aversion from God so noticeable in the mind of to-day is, I
venture to think, chiefly inspired by the instinct to get away from, or
to hide from, the pursuit of this Avenger.
VI
And in a measure this impulse to flight can be understood. I can
understand that common-sense men should be cold toward the Caucasian
God, and that they should even renounce and denounce him. I will go so
far as to say that I can more easily understand the atheist than I can
many of my own friends who pathetically try to love and adore their
capricious un-Christlike Deity. To my certain knowledge many of them are
doing it against their own natural and better instincts, because they
dare not forsake the tradition in which they have been dyed. "I try to
love God and I can't," has been said to me many a time by conscientious
people who felt that the fault must lie in themselves. There was no
fault in themselves. If their God could have been loved they would have
loved him.
VII
I come here to a point of no small importance to the conquest of fear,
the courage to release oneself from the tether of tradition. Few people
have it, in the sense of rejecting old theories because of having worked
out to new spiritual knowledge. When it comes to the eternal verities
many of us are cowardly; nearly all of us are timid. The immense
majority of us prefer a God at second or third hand. We will accept what
somebody else has learned, rather than incur the trouble or the
responsibility of learning anything for ourselves. We take our knowledge
of God as we take our doses of medicine, from a prescription which one
man has written down, and another has "put up," and still another
administers. By the time this traditional, handed-on knowledge of God
has reached ourselves it is diluted by all kinds of outside opinions and
personalities. It is not strange that when we have swallowed the dose it
does little to effect a cure. I do not deny that a second or third hand
knowledge of God may do something. I only deny that it can do much. To
support my denial I need only point to what the world has become in a
second and third hand Christendom. The illustration is enough.
It should be plain, I think, that no one will ever be released from fear
by clinging to the teachings which have inspired fear. We are fearless
in proportion as we grow independent enough to know for ourselves. I
cannot but stress this point to some extent, for the reason that I
myself suffered so long from inability to let the traditional go. It
seemed to me to have a sanctity just because it was traditional. The
fact that other people had accepted certain ideas had weight in making
me feel that I should accept them too. To go off on a line of my own
seemed dangerous. I might make mistakes. I might go far wrong. Safety
was spelled by hanging with the crowd.
It was the chance remark of an old acquaintance which dislodged me from
this position. In the lobby of a hotel we had met by chance, after not
having seen each other for a good many years. The conversation, having
touched on one theme and another, drifted to subjects akin to that which
I am now discussing. I ventured to disclose some of my own "seeking God,
if perhaps I could grope for Him and find Him."[12]
[12] Acts of the Apostles.
My friend straightened himself and squared his shoulders. "I stand
exactly where I did thirty years ago."
There was a pride in the statement with regard to which my first feeling
was a pang of envy. A rapid calculation told me that thirty years ago he
had been about twenty; and the superiority of a man who at twenty had
attained to so much spiritual insight that he had not needed to learn
anything more in the interim was evident. I was two or three days
turning this incident over in my mind before the exclamation came to me,
"How terrible!" To have lived through the thirty years of the richest
experience the ordinary man ever knows and still have remained on
precisely the same spot as to spiritual things struck me then as a
woeful confession.
I beg to say here that I am not talking of external and official
religious connections. I am trying to avoid the subject of external and
official religion altogether. I am speaking not of religion but of God.
To my mind the two have no more than the relation of the words of a song
and the music of its setting. You may use them together or you may
consider them apart. I am considering them apart, and confining myself
wholly to the words of the song. What is known as church-affiliation,
the music of the setting, I am not concerned with. My only topic is the
way in which the meaning of the words gets over to the average inner
man, and the effect upon him mentally.
I revert, therefore, to the statement that to make the kind of spiritual
progress which will overcome fear it will be often necessary to let go
the thing we have outlived. Often the thing we have outlived will be
something dear to us, because there was once a time when it served our
turn. But our turn to-day may need something different from the turn of
yesterday, and the refusal to follow new light simply because it is new
leads in the end to mental paralysis. I was once asked to sign a
petition to the mayor of a city praying that, on the ground of its
novelty, electric lighting might be excluded from the street in which I
lived. Exactly this same reluctance often keeps us from making changes
of another sort, even when we feel that the light which hitherto was
enough for us has been outgrown and outclassed.
The danger of the lone quest leading a man astray can be easily
exaggerated. It is not as if God were difficult to find. "The soul
cannot move, wake, or open the eyes, without perceiving God." "For this
commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee,
neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who
shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down unto us that we may hear
it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say, Who
shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us that we may hear it
and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy
heart."[13] No motion toward the Universal can miss the Universal. I
cannot escape from the Ever-Present; the Ever-Present cannot escape from
me. Intellectually I may make mistakes in deduction, but spiritually I
cannot but find God. The little I learn of God for myself is to me
worth more than all the second and third hand knowledge I can gather
from the saints.
[13] The Book of Deuteronomy.
VIII
It is the more necessary to dwell on this for the reason that whatever
_Metanoia_, or new orientation, is to be brought about must be on the
part of individuals. There is no hope for large numbers acting together,
or for any kind of group-impulse. Group-impulse among Caucasians is
nearly always frightened, conservative, reactionary, or derisive of the
forward step. There is hardly an exception to this in the whole history
of Caucasian ideas.
Otherwise it would be a pleasant dream to imagine what might now be
happening on the great international stage. Let us suppose that the
leaders of the so-called Christian countries were all convinced of the
three main lines of God's direction I have already tried to sketch. Let
us think of such men as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Sforza, President
Harding, and the heads of government in Belgium, Russia, Germany, and
all other countries affected by the present war of moves and
counter-moves--let us think of them as agreed on the principles:
1. That each knows himself and his country as an agent in the hand of
God, directed surely toward a good end;
2. That each knows each of his colleagues and his country as equally an
agent in the hand of God, directed surely toward a similar good end;
3. That each knows that between God's agents there can be neither
conflicting interests nor clash of wills, and that suspicion and
counter-suspicion must be out of place, since under God's direction no
double-crossing is possible.
The picture is almost comic in its incongruity with what actually is.
The mere thought of these protagonists of the century working in harmony
to one great purpose, without distrust of each other's motives, and with
no necessity for anyone's dodging political foul play, summons the smile
of irony. Mutual trust was never so much a suggestion to laugh down.
The mere hint that it might be possible would make one a target for the
wit of the experienced.
In what we call the practical world of to-day there is no appeal from
the God of Fear but _to_ the God of Fear. The great mass of Caucasians
will not have it otherwise. And it requires no prophetic vision to
foresee the results of the efforts to bring about international harmony
while all are obeying the decrees of the Goddess of Discord. Nearly
three years after the signing of the armistice the world is in a more
hopeless situation than it was when at war. Up to the present each new
move only makes matters worse. There are those who believe that our
phase of civilisation is staggering into the abyss and that nothing, as
far as can now be descried, will save it from the deluge.
IX
Possibly! Fear tends always to produce the thing it is afraid of. I
mention this dark outlook only for the reason that even if the
cataclysm were to come the individual can escape from it.
Cataclysms are not new in the history of our race. The rise and fall of
civilisations may be called mankind's lessons in "how not to do it." Of
these lessons there are no such records as those which we find in the
Old Testament; and in these records it is unfailingly pointed out that
whatever the calamity which overtakes the world at large the individual
has, if he chooses, a way of safety. The innocent are not overwhelmed
with the guilty, except when the innocent deliberately shut their eyes
to the opening toward the _Soteria_--the Safe Return. But that,
unhappily, the innocent do so shut their eyes is one of the commonest
facts in life.
Back in that twilight of history of which the later tale could be told
only by some symbol, some legendary hieroglyph, there was already an
"Ark" by which the faithful few could be saved from the "Flood." The
symbol became permanent. The Ark of the Covenant--the sign of a great
spiritual understanding--remained as a token to man that in God he had
a sure refuge. It was laid up in his Holy of Holies, a mystic,
consecrated pledge, till the ruthless Caucasian came and rifled it.
But no rifling could deprive mankind of its significance. That endures.
To bring it home to the desolate and oppressed was a large part of the
mission of psalmists and prophets. The Ark of the Covenant--of the Great
Understanding--meant as much to those who sought God in the ancient
world as the Cross does to Christendom. It meant that whatever the
collapse, national or general, through siege or sack or famine, those
who would escape could escape by the simple process of mentally taking
refuge in God. The Ark of God would bear them safely when all material
help failed.
Among the themes which run through the Old Testament this is of
paramount importance. It is impossible to do more than refer to the many
times the spiritually minded were implored to seek this protection. It
was needful to implore them since they found the assurance so difficult
to believe. No matter how often it was proved to them they still
doubted it. Saved by this method once they would reject it when it came
to danger the second time. Saved the second time they rejected it the
third. "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on
thee, because he trusteth in thee," is the declaration of Jeremiah, who
perhaps more than any other was a prophet of disaster. Similar
statements are scattered through the Old Testament by the score, by the
hundred. It was a point on which leaders, seers, and teachers insisted
with a passionate insistence. They knew. They had tested the truth for
themselves. Disaster was a common feature in their history. During the
three thousand years and more which their experiences cover these
Israelites had seen more than one invasion sweep across their land, more
than one civilisation come and go. All that Belgium knew in the Great
War they knew time and time again. Between Egypt and Assyria, the France
and Germany of that special epoch, theirs was a kind of buffer state
over which every new anguish rolled. "Let it roll," was the cry of
their prophets. "The Lord will fight for you. Stand still and see what
he will do. His arm is not shortened neither his strength diminished. It
is of the Lord to save whether by many or by few. Trust in the Lord and
be doing good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be
fed. Oh, how great is thy goodness which thou hast wrought for them that
trust in thee before the sons of men. I said in my haste, I am cut off!
Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried
unto thee. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye
that hope in the Lord."[14]
[14] Various Old Testament Sources.
X
In many ways this is the burden of the more ancient Scriptures--the
protection which surrounds those who know that protection is God. It was
a gospel that had to be preached with tears and beseechings from one
generation to another. No generation accepted it. The belief in
material power was always too dense. It is still too dense. In the Ark
of the Great Understanding the Caucasian has practically never seen more
than a symbol that has gone out of date. Lost materially in the Tiber
mud it was, for him, lost forever. But not so. Its significance remains
as vital to mankind as when, veiled and venerated, it stood between
the cherubim.
The time may be close at hand when we shall need this assurance as we
need nothing else. However optimistic we try to keep ourselves, no
thinking man or woman can be free, at this crisis in world-history, from
deep foreboding. For the memory to go back ten years is, even for us in
the New World, like returning to a Golden Age; while for the Old World
mere recollection must be poignant.
The possibility that all countries in both hemispheres may find
themselves in some such agony as that of the Russia of to-day is not too
extravagant to be entertained. This is not saying that they are likely
so to find themselves; it means only that in the world as it is the
safest is not very safe. My point is that whether catastrophe
overwhelms us or not, he who chooses not to fear can be free from fear.
There is a refuge for him, a defence, a safeguard which no material
attack can break down. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most
High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the
Lord, He is my refuge--my fortress--my God. In Him will I trust."[15]
There is this Ark for me, this Ark of the Great Understanding, and I can
retire into it. I can also have this further assurance: "Because thou
hast made the Lord which is my refuge--even the Most High--thy
habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague
come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee to
keep thee in all thy ways."[16]
[15] The Book of Psalms.
[16] The Book of Psalms.
XI
This is the eternal agreement, but an agreement of which we find it
difficult to accept the terms. To the material alone we are in the habit
of ascribing power. Though we repeat a thousand times in the course of
a year, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory," we do not
believe it. To few of us is it more than a sonorous phrase.
I remember the impression of this which one received at the great
thanksgiving for peace in St. Paul's Cathedral in London some twenty
years ago. The Boer War had ended in an English victory, and while the
thanksgiving was not precisely for this, it did express the relief of an
anxious nation that peace was again restored. It was what is generally
known as a most impressive service. All that a great spectacle can offer
to God it offered. King, queen, princes, princesses, ambassadors,
ministers, clergy, admirals, generals, and a vast assembly of citizens
filled the choir and nave with colour and life, while the music was of
that passionless beauty of which the English cathedral choirs guard
the secret.
But the detail I remember best was the way in which the repetition of
the Lord's Prayer rolled from the lips of the assembly like the sound
of the surging of the sea. It was the emotional effect of a strongly
emotional moment. One felt tense. It was hard to restrain tears. As far
as crowd-sympathy has any spiritual value it was there. The Caucasian
God was taken out of His pigeon-hole and publicly recognised.
Then He was put back.
I take this service merely as an instance of what happens in all the
so-called Christian capitals in moments of national stress. Outwardly it
happens less in the United States than it does elsewhere, for the reason
that this country has no one representative spiritual expression; but it
does happen here in diffused and general effect. As a Christian nation
we ascribe in common with other Christian nations the kingdom, the
power, and the glory to God--on occasions. We do it with the pious
gesture and the sonorous phrase. Then we forget it. The habit of
material trust is too strong for us. Kings, queens, presidents, princes,
prime ministers, congresses, parliaments, and all other representatives
of material strength, may repeat for formal use the conventional clause;
but there is always what we flippantly know as a "joker" in the
lip-recitation. "Kingdom, power, and glory," we can hear ourselves
saying in a heart-aside, "lie in money, guns, commerce, and police. God
is not sufficiently a force in the affairs of this world for us to give
Him more than the consideration of an act of courtesy."
Practically that is all we ever get from group-impulse--an act of
courtesy. I repeat and repeat again that whatever is done toward the
conquest of fear must be done by the individual. _I_ must do what I can
to conquer fear in myself, regardless of the attitude or opinions of men
in general.
To men in general the appeal to spiritual force to bring to naught
material force is little short of fanatical. It has never been otherwise
as yet; it will probably not be otherwise for long generations to come.
Meanwhile it is much for the individual to know that he can act on his
own initiative, and that when it comes to making God his refuge he can
go into that refuge alone. He needs no nation, or government, or
society, or companions before him or behind him. He needs neither leader
nor guide nor friend. In the fortress of God he is free to enter merely
as himself, and there know that he is safe amid a world in agony.
XII
This is not theory; it is not doctrine; it is not opinion. It is what
the great pioneers of truth have first deduced from what they understood
to be the essential beneficence of God, and then proved by actual
demonstration. Anyone else can demonstrate it who chooses to make the
experiment. My own weakness is such that I have made the experiment but
partially; but partial experiment convinces me beyond all further
questioning that the witness of the great pioneers is true.
XIII
Nor is this conviction to be classed as idealism, or ecclesiasticism, or
mysticism, or anything else to which we can put a tag. It is not
sectarian; it is not peculiarly Christian. It is the general possession
of mankind. True, it is easier for the Christian than for any other to
enter on this heritage, since his spiritual descent is more directly
from the pioneers of truth who first discovered God to be His children's
safety; but the Universal is the Universal, the property of all.
Discovery gives no one an exclusive hold on it. Anyone with a
consciousness of Almighty, Ever-Present Intelligence must have some
degree of access to it, though his access may not be to the fullest or
the easiest. It is not possible that the Universal Father should be the
special property of the Christian or of anyone else. The Christian view
of the Father is undoubtedly the truest; but every view is true in
proportion to its grasp of truth. No one will deny that the Buddhist,
the Mahometan, the Confucianist, have their grasp of truth. Even the
primitive idolater has some faint gleam of it, distorted though it may
have become. Very well, then; the faintest gleam of such knowledge will
not go without its recompense.
XIV
Exclusiveness is too much our Caucasian habit of mind. It is linked with
our instinct for ownership. Because through Jesus Christ we have a
clearer view of a greater segment of the Universal, if I may so express
myself, than the Buddhist can have through Buddha or the Mahometan
through Mahomet, our tendency is to think that we know the whole of the
Universal, and have it to give away. Any other view of the Universal is
to us so false as to merit not merely condemnation but extirpation.
Extirpation has been the watchword with which Caucasian Christianity has
gone about the world. We have taken toward other views of truth no such
sympathetic stand as St. Paul to that which he found in Greece, and
which is worth recalling:
"Men of Athens, I perceive that you are in every respect remarkably
religious. For as I passed along and observed the things you worship, I
found also an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. The
Being, therefore, whom you, without knowing it, revere, Him I now
proclaim to you. God who made the universe and everything in it--He
being Lord of heaven and earth--does not dwell in sanctuaries built by
men. Nor is He administered to by human hands as though He needed
anything--but He Himself gives to all men life and breath and all
things. He caused to spring from one forefather people of every race,
for them to live on the whole surface of the earth, and marked for them
an appointed span of life, and the boundaries of their homes; that they
might seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him. Yes,
though He is not far from any one of us. For it is in closest union with
Him that we live and move and have our being; as in fact some of the
poets in repute among yourselves have said, 'For we are also His
offspring.'"[17]
[17] Acts of the Apostles.
To the conquest of fear this splendid universalism is another
essential. God being "not far from any one of us" cannot be far from me.
He who gives to all men life and breath and all things will not possibly
deny me the things I require most urgently. Our whole civilisation may
go to pieces; the job by which I earn a living may cease to be a job;
the money I have invested may become of no more value than Russian
bonds; the children whom I hoped I had provided for may have to face
life empty-handed; all my accustomed landmarks may be removed, and my
social moorings swept away; nevertheless, the Universal cannot fail me.
"Although the figtree shall not blossom nor fruit be in the vines;
though the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields yield no meat;
though the flocks be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the
stalls; yet I will rejoice in God, I will joy in the God of my
salvation." It is safe to say that this confidence on the part of
Habakkuk was not due to mere grim forcing of the will. It was the fruit
of experience, of knowledge, of demonstration. In spite of the dangers
national and personal he saw threatening, his certainty of God must
have been spontaneous.
Anyone, in any country, in any epoch, and of any creed or no creed, who
has shared this experience shares also this assurance. To the Christian
it comes easiest; but that it does not come easy even to the Christian
is a matter of common observation. It can only come easily when some
demonstration has been made for oneself, after which there is no more
disputing it.
XV
Nor is it a question of morals or morality.
I must venture here on delicate ground and say what I should hesitate to
say were the contrary not so strongly underscored. I mean that God, from
what we understand to be His nature, could not accord us His protection
by weighing the good and the evil in our conduct, and giving or
withholding help according to our worthiness. The Universal is too great
to be measured and doled in that way. Nothing but our own pinchbeck
ideas could ascribe to Him this pettiness. As it is the kind of sliding
scale we ourselves adopt, we limit the Divine Generosity by our own
limitations.
Not so was the understanding of Jesus Christ. That we should be kind to
the so-called evil as we are to the so-called good was a point on which
He dwelt in the Sermon on the Mount. To discriminate between them when
it comes to the possibility of conferring benefits is in His opinion
small. "You have heard that it was said, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor,
and hate thine enemy.' But I command you all, Love your enemies, and
pray for your persecutors; that so you may become true sons of your
Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the wicked as well as
on the good, and sends rain upon those who do right and those who do
wrong."[18]
[18] St. Matthew.
In other words, we are not to feel ourselves turned out of our
"habitation" in God by a sense of our moral lapses. Moral lapses are to
be regretted, of course; but they do not vitiate our status as the Sons
of God. It is possible that no one believes they do; but much of the
loose statement current among those who lay emphasis on morals would
give that impression. There is a whole vernacular in vogue in which
souls are "lost" or "saved" according to the degree to which they
conform or do not conform to other people's views as to what they ought
to do. Much of our pietism is to the effect that God is at the bestowal
not merely of a sect, but of some section of a sect, and cannot be found
through any other source.
XVI
This brings me to the distinction between morals and righteousness,
which is one for the mind of to-day to keep as clearly as possible
before it. I have said that the refuge in God is not a question of
morals; but it is one of righteousness. Between righteousness and morals
the difference is important.
Morals stand for a code of observances; righteousness for a direction of
the life.
Morals represent just what the word implies, the customs of an age, a
country, or a phase in civilisation. They have no absolute standard. The
morals of one century are not those of another. The morals of one race
are not those of another even in the same century. In many respects the
morals of the Oriental differ radically from those of the Occidental,
age-long usage being behind each. It is as hard to convince either that
his are the inferior as it would be to make him think so of his
mother-tongue. I once asked a cultivated Chinaman, a graduate of one of
the great American universities and a Christian of the third generation,
in what main respect he thought China superior to the United States. "In
morals," he replied, promptly; but even as a Christian educated in
America his theory of morals was different from ours.
Among ourselves in the United States the essence of morals is by no
means a subject of unanimous agreement. You might say that a standard of
morals is entirely a matter of opinion. There are millions of people who
think it immoral to play cards, to go to the theatre, to dance, or to
drink wine. There are millions of other people who hold all these acts
to be consistent with the highest moral conduct.
Moreover, wherever the emphasis is thrown on morals as distinct from
righteousness there is a tendency to put the weight on two or three
points in which nations or individuals excel, and to ignore the rest.
For example, not to go outside ourselves, the American people may be
fairly said to exemplify two of the great virtues: On the whole they
are, first, sober; secondly, continent. As a result we accentuate morals
in these respects, but not in any others.
For instance, the current expression, "an immoral man," is almost
certain to apply only under the two headings cited above, and probably
only under one. All other morals and immoralities go by the board. We
should not class a dishonest man as an immoral man, nor an untruthful
man, nor a profane, or spiteful, or ungenial, or bad-tempered, man. Our
notion of morals hardly ever rises above the average custom of the
community in which we happen to live. Except in the rarest instances we
never pause to reflect as to whether the customs of that community are
or are not well founded. The consequence is that our cities, villages,
countrysides, and social groupings are filled with men and women moral
enough as far as the custom of the country goes, but quite noticeably
unrighteous.
It is also a fact that where you find one or two virtues singled out for
observance and the rest obscured there you find, too, throngs of
outwardly "moral" people with corroded hearts. Villages, churches, and
all the quieter communities are notorious for this, the peculiarity
having formed for a hundred and fifty years the stock-in-trade of
novelists. Sobriety and continence being more or less in evidence the
assumption is that all the requirements have been fulfilled. The
community is "moral" notwithstanding the back-bitings, heart-burnings,
slanders, cheatings, envies, hatreds, and bitternesses that may permeate
it through and through. As I write, the cramped, venomous, unlovely life
of the American small town is the favourite theme of our authors and
readers of fiction. Since a number of the works now on the market have
met with national approval one must assume that the pictures they paint
are accurate. The conditions are appalling, but, according to the custom
of the country, they are "moral." The shadow of insobriety and
incontinence doesn't touch the characters who move across these pages,
and yet the level of the life is pictured as debased, and habits
as hideous.
XVII
With morals in this accepted American sense righteousness has little to
do. The two are different in origin. Morals imply the compulsion of men,
and are never more binding than the customs of men render them. They are
thus imposed from without, while righteousness springs from within. The
essence of righteousness lies in the turning of the individual
toward God.
I think it safe to say that righteousness is expressed more accurately
in attitude than in conduct. It is expressed in conduct, of course; but
conduct may fail while the attitude can remain constant. It is worthy of
remark that some of the great examples of righteousness cited in the
Bible were conspicuously sinners. That is to say, they were men of
strong human impulses against which they were not always sufficiently on
guard, but who turned towards God in spite of everything. In the long
line spanning the centuries between Noah and Abraham and Peter and
Paul--from the almost prehistoric out into the light of day--not one is
put before us except in his weakness as well as in his strength. Some of
them commit gross sins; but apparently even gross sins do not debar them
from their privileges in God's love. This principle was expressed in the
words of Samuel: "Fear not: ye have done all this wickedness; yet turn
not aside from following the Lord.... For the Lord will not forsake his
people for his great name's sake." That the Universal who has all the
blessings of creation to bestow should deprive me of anything just
because in my folly or weakness I have committed sins is not consistent
with "his great name's sake." It would not be causing His sun to rise on
the wicked as well as on the good nor sending rain on those who do right
and those who do wrong. I am too small for His immensity to crush with
its punishments, but not too small to be the object of His entire love.
XVIII
I hope it is plain that I say this not to make little of doing wrong but
to put the love and fulness of God in the dominating place. I must make
it clear to myself that He does not shut me out of His heart because I
am guilty of sins. I may shut myself out of His heart, unless I direct
my mind rightly; but He is always there, unchanged, unchangeable, the
ever-loving, ever-welcoming Father. Whatever I have done I can return to
Him with the knowledge that He will take me back. Far from sure of
myself, I can always be sure of Him.
There are those who would warn me against saying this through fear lest
it should be interpreted as, "Don't be afraid to sin so long as you keep
mentally close to God." I prefer to run that risk. The dread figure of
"an angry God" has been so worked to terrorise men that large numbers of
us have been terrorised. But experience shows us every day that being
terrorised never produces the results at which it aims. It does not win
us; it drives us away.
Much of the alienation from God in the mind of to-day is due to
rebellion on the part of our sense of justice. We are sinners, of
course; but not such sinners as to merit the revenge which an outraged
deity is described as planning against us. That the All-loving and
All-mighty should smite us in our dearest aims or our sweetest
affections just because we have not conformed to the lop-sided morality
of men is revolting to our instincts. We are repulsed by the God of Fear
when we are drawn, comforted, strengthened, and changed by Him who is
never anything toward us but "the Father."
I have no hesitation, therefore, in throwing the emphasis in what I
have to say on the fact that He is "a place to hide me in"--the Ark of
the Great Understanding--always open to my approach--into which,
whatever I have done, I can go boldly.