THE STEPS OF LIFE
BY CARL HILTY
[Illustration]
THE STEPS OF LIFE
_Further_ ESSAYS ON HAPPINESS
BY
CARL HILTY
PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERN
TRANSLATED BY MELVIN BRANDOW
MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF OUR FATHER
IN LANCASTER, PENNSYLVANIA
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY
PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1907.
_Norwood Press_
_J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co._
_Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._
INTRODUCTION
_The welcome offered to the translation of Professor Hilty’s
“Happiness” amply justifies the translation of a second series of his
essays. The same notes of tranquil reflection and keen observation,
which have drawn to the earlier volumes many readers both in Europe and
America, are here struck again. Professor Hilty is not a preacher, and
his essays are not sermons. He is a professor of Constitutional Law,
and the studies of life which these volumes represent are products of
his leisure hours, wrought out of his meditation and experience. Sin
and sorrow, culture and courage, a just judgment of others, a rational
optimism, and a simple Christian faith--these are the “Steps of Life”
up which this wise teacher mounts, and which he invites thoughtful
readers to climb. Laurence Oliphant is reported to have said that
what England in the nineteenth century most needed was “a spiritually
minded man of the world”--a man, that is to say, who could live in
the world without being subdued to that he worked in, a man who could
survey and judge his world with the sanity and insight of the spiritual
mind. Professor Hilty in a very exceptional degree meets this test.
His vocation is among the institutions of the political world. His
last professional treatise dealt with the history of the Referendum
in mediæval Switzerland. When in these Essays he approaches the
problems of other professions, such as those of theology or Biblical
criticism, it is as an amateur, who satisfies himself with conclusions
which must appear to many minds untenable. It is, however, precisely
this unprofessional character of his reflections which gives them
their importance. Here is a learned man, whose business is with other
studies, and who has known much both of public honor and of private
affliction, who refreshes and consoles himself with the observation and
interpretation of life, and surveys the shifting landscape of human
experience from the height of a responsive mind and a chastened will.
It is the testimony of a spiritually minded man of the world._
_There are signs enough at the present time that the spirit of the age
is dominated by the creed of commercialism and materialism; and there
are writers enough who deplore this movement of events and who prophesy
social disasters; but something good may be believed of a generation
which is so ready to welcome books like Professor Hilty’s. It may be
true, as has been cleverly said, that many people like to read about
the “Simple Life” who have not the least idea of practising it; but
the inclination to such literature may be more reasonably traced to a
more serious cause. It indicates a survival, beneath the boisterous
prosperity of the time, of the instincts of idealism, which still
create in great numbers of persons a profound dissatisfaction with the
commercial tests of happiness and success. Never was a generation less
contented than ours with itself,--less satiated or tranquil in spirit.
Increase of wealth has brought with it increase of restlessness;
outward prosperity has induced nervous prostration; expansion of
opportunity has created expansion of desire. The fundamental problems
of sin and sorrow have become all the more baffling and mysterious
as the superficial problems of subsistence and livelihood have been
solved. At such a time it is not surprising that thoughtful minds turn
eagerly to any teacher who speaks with confidence of the realities of
idealism, who faces experience with a serene hope, and who points out
the “Steps of Life” which lead toward the things which are unseen and
eternal. To such readers Professor Hilty has already brought courage
and faith, and they will gladly accept his further guidance._
FRANCIS G. PEABODY.
_Harvard University, December, 1906._
CONTENTS
PAGE
ESSAY I
SIN AND SORROW 1
ESSAY II
“COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE” 35
ESSAY III
ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MEN 53
ESSAY IV
WHAT IS CULTURE? 109
ESSAY V
NOBLE SOULS 141
ESSAY VI
TRANSCENDENTAL HOPE 165
ESSAY VII
THE PROLEGOMENA OF CHRISTIANITY 183
ESSAY VIII
THE STEPS OF LIFE 213
I. SIN AND SORROW
I. SIN AND SORROW
Although the Way to Happiness is ever plain and open to all, yet not
all who have seen it succeed in really finding it. Like poor Pliable
in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” they turn back when once they have fallen
into the Slough of Despond; and it is they, and not those who have
never tried it, who give the narrow path to genuine happiness the poor
repute it has with so-called realists.
Such deserters are often highly gifted and, at first, earnest; and they
are by no means always lacking in the courage needed to seek the truth
and for its sake to give up the enticing illusions of life. But on the
very threshold of that better life which alone brings peace stand two
dark figures, like the guardians at the mouth of Hell in the “Paradise
Lost”; and before them even the stoutest heart trembles, and they let
no man by who has not first had it out with them.
What stands in the way of our happiness is a twofold terrible reality
known to every one who has lived beyond the first half-unconscious
age of childhood--Sin and Sorrow. To be set free from these is the
true motive in all men’s strivings after happiness; no philosophy, no
religion, no economics, no politics, that is not essentially directed
to this end.
Of these two great antagonists, with which every man has to engage in
hard conflict, the first is Sin. It begins early in life, for the most
part earlier than sorrow, earlier even than the common expression of
“the innocence of childhood” implies. “Ye lead us into life amain,
ye let poor man all sinful grow, and then abandon him to pain;” thus
Goethe accuses the “heavenly powers,” really meaning, however, an
inexorable fate which, in his view, dominates human existence, and
against which neither Promethean revolt avails nor the attempt (more
common since his day) to deny the existence of sin altogether. In every
man there lives a relentlessly real feeling that duty and sin do exist,
and that sin not merely follows transgression, but is lodged within it
and must pour its consequences with mathematical certainty upon the
head of the guilty one, unless averted by some means or other; and that
can be by no mere philosophical train of reasoning.
Try (if you would be so bold) by mere negation to declare yourself free
from these realities, rooted like granite in all human existence!
Notwithstanding your resolution, there is, all the same, in every
action of yours, yes, in every thought, _a right way_, and if you do
not pursue it, then it is a sin. Or rather do not try; it is a reef on
which millions have already gone to pieces, and on which you will go
to pieces, too. “Beyond all Good and Evil” is a place not to be found
on earth outside the mad-house, where many men, often highly gifted,
are shut up to-day; not merely by chance, for the human spirit sinks
into madness whenever, in all earnestness, it seeks to disregard these
truths in its own life.
I am quite well aware that this does not “explain” the feeling of duty
and sin; besides, it is a matter of indifference to man’s welfare how
this feeling is to be explained, whether as a superstition handed down
for many generations, or as a belief wholly in accord with reason. Even
if it be a superstition, the champion has not yet been found who is
able to set humanity free from a nightmare which has burdened it from
the beginning of time; the isolated, weak attempts to do so have for
the most part fallen out very unhappily for those who undertook them. A
man who, with clear, unclouded brow, openly denies duty and sin, and,
though boldly believing he may do anything he pleases, has yet gone
through his whole life glad-heartedly, with the certainty of his inner
conviction unruffled--such a man we should first like to see, before we
believe in him. And though such a man were to be found, he would stand
alone and would be incomprehensible to all other men, so differently
constituted.
Duty and sin become wholly intelligible only when we recognize a
personal, extra-mundane God from whose will this inner law proceeds;
while the so-called “immanence” of God is but another name for atheism
or pantheism. To be sure, it would be idle to desire a reasoned
explanation of the transcendental God; everything transcendental by
its very nature escapes our comprehension, and for this reason the
so-called “proofs” of the existence of God have no power to convince
the human understanding. Nor do they seem as yet ever to have convinced
any one who did not first want to be. In so far, therefore, atheism
has a certain right to declare itself not convinced; but it is itself
just as little in a position to prove that its own system is in any
way reasonable, or to solve the doubts which that system generates.
Therefore so long as humanity abides, the matter will perhaps stand
simply at this, that one can not prove there is a God, but just as
little, if God indeed exists, can one remove him out of the account of
his own life by a mere denial. The decisive question of all questions
for every man (but always a question) will be: whether he shall attempt
such a denial and be able to attain the inward peace he expects
therefrom, or whether he shall acknowledge as binding the categorical
demand of the oldest divine revelation, “I am the Lord thy God, and
thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
The willing recognition of this demand (which in its second half
already comprehends all morality) by a man who has come to full
deliberation over himself and his life-purpose,--this it is that first
brings him out of a thoroughly ineffectual revolt against a divine
order he can not change by his thoughts alone, on into the possibility
of a harmony with himself and the surrounding world. And besides, the
whole history of humanity is nothing else than the gradual unfolding of
such a free will of the nations toward the will of God. Whoever denies
this, and lives up to his denial, acts against his own welfare and the
end for which he was destined, as well as against the good of mankind;
and this state of war against God and man, as well as against one’s own
life, is very likely the cause that calls forth the feeling of sin.
There is no other and better explanation for it, in my opinion.
Moreover, what Evil really is and exactly what Christ understood by
the prayer for deliverance from it will, as long as we live on earth,
remain just as obscure to us as what God is. We only know, and from
experience alone, that we can yield ourselves into its power, and
further, that it possesses no other power over us than we ourselves
grant it. This especially comes to pass through our disobedience to
what is true and through the preponderance of the sensual, animal
life over the spiritual. Every more finely organized man feels this
forthwith through a gradually increasing physical discomfort from
which nothing else than a turn-about shall free him. And likewise, the
spirit of truth in a man or a book, in a whole household or people, one
recognizes as something beneficent, while the spirit of falsehood he
feels to be something unhealthy and poisonous, like bad air in a room,
to which one can, to be sure, accustom oneself, if one desires. A man
can, of course, try to dismiss all this matter from his thoughts; he
has perfect freedom of will to do so. But whether it will let _him_
alone is quite another and more important question.
We neither can nor will, therefore, dispute with those who assert they
have never harbored any feeling of sin; we can not look into their
souls. We only reply that they would in that case find themselves in an
extreme minority and really at the stage of evolution of the animals;
for these also have no feeling of moral obligation and therefore no
sin, but everything is permitted them that their natural impulse
demands. If, on the other hand, such men possess the feeling of sin
only now and then even, still it must be said it is not explicable in
any other way than from the standpoint of a moral order of the world
which we can not change and contrary to which we may not behave, nor
even think.
We turn now to those who acknowledge all this. For them the problem
is to find a way of release from a burden which is by far the most
unendurable of all earthly burdens.
The first thing to say to them is this: Do not let sin get the least
foothold in your life; you must and can not do otherwise. For what
afterward becomes a crushing actuality is at first, for the most part,
merely a fleeting thought, an arrow from one knows not whence, shot
into the unoccupied soul. And if it lingers there, if it is not at
once thrust forth while it is still easy, then there soon arises an
evil propensity, upon which mostly follows, first the clouding of the
moral consciousness, and at last the deed. After the deed comes often
enough a despair that hopes for no salvation more; or what has happened
is now for the first time justified before oneself with materialistic
philosophy: in either case the death of the true spiritual life.
But unfortunately this counsel to “resist the beginnings” is only a
very theoretical one, and they who have the bold faith of being able
always to do this from a voluntary disposition toward the good, and by
their own strength, will, in the course of their own life and in their
observation of others, be compelled bit by bit to lessen altogether too
far the demands they make of human kind. This is the especial weakness
of the noble Kantian philosophy. A grievous passage through some Valley
of Humiliation, or an abatement in the clear vision of his moral
consciousness inevitably comes upon the man who, at first, believed
he was able, with uplifted head and without any help from without, to
tread the Path of Virtue without wandering from the way.
Therefore the second counsel is more important for man as he is
actually constituted: Free thyself at any cost from every sin thou
bearest, if thou wouldst arrive at happiness. This way passes the
unerring road; just as, in Purgatory, Dante could enter the portal of
salvation only by passing the grave angel guardian sitting upon the
diamond threshold with naked sword. There is no other way to set your
soul truly free. Goethe, it is true, has tried in the second part of
“Faust” to discover a kind of natural salvation from sin; and this,
in fact, has remained the path which many, still to-day, are seeking
out: namely, the noble enjoyment of nature, which at least now and
then can silence the accusing voices within; with art and the charm
of the beautiful, wherein many perceive at once the consummation and
the expiation of material man; or finally, action, a share in the work
of civilization, which is to uplift the depressed heart and to delude
itself with the applause of the multitude, at least for the moment.
But, alongside all this, nevertheless, sin remains inexorably standing,
a melancholy fact; and even the great poet was unable to set it aside
in any credible way. A divine love that receives a man to its bosom
even though he be not repentant, but, on the contrary, persists to the
last moment in defiantly living out his life in his own way--a divine
love of this sort is a mere picture of the fancy, an arbitrary poetical
invention, against which even Goethe’s Promethean soul was obliged, for
its own honor, to protest with the last breath of the body.
Yet even repentance does not alone release from sin, but there must be
a trustful turning of the soul to God, whose mighty arm of mercy (as
Manfred says in Dante’s great poem) receives all that turn to it; and
it will not be prevented from doing so, even by an authoritative decree
of a church.
And in this regard the greatness of the sin is no matter. What _is_
great and small in human sin anyway, weighed, not according to human
notions and the penal law-books, but in the eye of a judge who knows
all and metes a perfect justice?
Whoever finds within himself the courage to appeal to His mercy has
already received it in all essentials, for the disfavor of God
consists mainly in the “judgment of obduracy,” a judgment which lets
the offender remain unbroken and defiant until his end, and prevents
him from calling upon this mercy.
Our churches, to be sure, have in a measure widely strayed from this
simple way of atonement and affirm a very much more positive manner of
salvation from sin, either through outward works, or at least through
definite dogmatic conceptions of reconciliation with God.
In the first case, we hold that all outward works of penitence, as well
as all “good works,” are valueless unless they spring spontaneously
from the inner turning to God. Even then they are never meritorious
although helpful and pacifying. The essential thing in “repentance” (a
great matter, whose import, however, we have almost lost) is not the
sorrow of regret, which rather, often enough, merely “worketh death,”
but on the one hand, the complete turning of the will toward a change
of life, and on the other hand, the conviction that, for this purpose,
we stand in need of another power than our own, a power without which
the will itself often enough remains only a “good intention.”
Quite intelligible, therefore, at least for the Christian churches
and their sincere adherents, is the appeal to the help of Christ as
the Saviour sent into the world by God himself, and who for that very
reason may not be ignored. But the oppressed soul does not, therefore,
need an extensive “Christology”; indeed, there is really no Christology
that is trustworthy, but God alone knows the nature of this Saviour
and the mystery of salvation through him. All that men have spoken
and written about it for two centuries now has been condemned to
unfruitfulness and has given real comfort to no one, although human
error in these matters, if held in good faith, has probably of itself
never caused any one to be lost. Only by the practical but unfailing
road of experience, then, will you learn that a simple “Lord, help me,”
coming from the very depths of the heart, shall open a way that, to all
your philosophy, to all your submission to church, to all your severest
works of penitence, had remained closed as with tenfold iron doors.
This barricade is opened for you by the one great, unconditioned word
of the gospel: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
Whether you are to confess to men besides, and what reparation you have
to make to them, is to be determined only after you have experienced
this salvation, after you have taken the Hand that lifts you out of the
unstable floods of uncertainty and anxiety, and sets you upon the firm
ground of faith. Before, it is quite to no purpose; rather, this is
just the obstacle which keeps far the most men from any confession of
repentance--which has perhaps to take place before a third person, on
whom one then fears to stand, his life long, in spiritual dependence.
But very possibly you will feel yourself called to go to a man for
confession; for in addition to its transcendental side Christianity is,
after all, a human brotherhood also. And this will be especially the
case when pride is in your soul. In that event there enters, perhaps,
the psychological necessity of a humbling before men also, not alone
before God; and the actual expression of forgiveness, by a man called
thereto by God, contains for many men a quieting influence that they
can not find in a mere thought-process, real as it may be.
If, then, you know such a man, if you feel this inner summons, if
you can resolve to speak to him with entire sincerity as before God
himself, and if you are willing to accept his directions without
reservations, then simply go quietly to him; in so doing, it is
possible you are attaining to a greater advance in the inner life,
and in shorter time than otherwise. But if even a single one of
these presuppositions is wanting, then such a confession will profit
you nothing at all. And if you should make of it a merely human
transaction, out of regard to an existing ecclesiastical form, or in
order thereby to show honor to another, then you dishonor what is most
hallowed, and bring upon yourself, and upon him you honor, the greatest
harm.
And make up your mind to escape now, while it is still time and while
the summons still comes to you, no matter through whom or in what
way; whether through a voice within or a voice from without, whether
by chance or of set purpose, whether through sermon, or book, or
newspaper, or any other instrumentality. The Book of Job asserts as
a fact of experience that the summons comes to every one “twice or
thrice”:
“_Lo, all these things doth God work,
Twice, yea, thrice with a man,
To bring back his soul from the pit,
That he may be enlightened with the light of the living._”
But as a rule the summons has an outward semblance no more striking
than that of any other communication. Much more than upon its form and
manner it depends upon this: that it touch in the innermost heart of
man a string still sensitive to this tone, struck from another key than
one’s ordinary life and thought.
And so, if the summons shall come to you once more, then arouse
yourself, but at once, where you are and as you are, in business, on
the street, in society, even in the theatre or in any other place;
delay for not one minute the resolution to strike every sin out of
your life. Then everything will become easier and clearer; that gloomy
spirit and those false conceptions, which are simply the direct
consequence of sin itself, will leave you, and a day will come at last
when you also can say: “Now am I become, in God’s sight, a soul that
findeth peace.”
II
If you should ask men which of these two great evils, sin and sorrow,
they had rather see banished from their life, the majority, we fear,
would choose to see sorrow banished. But wrongly; for not only is sin
very often the basal cause of sorrow, but it is also comparatively
easy to bear heavy sorrow if no feeling of guilt is bound up with it.
On the contrary, even in the midst of grief one often feels a closer
nearness to God that beatifies the human heart in its inmost depths;
one feels, too, the truth of the saying that the spirit of man can be
joyous even in distress. And so, beyond all doubt, the greatest of
evils is sin; and in this fact lies, what is very often overlooked, a
tremendous equalizing force in human conditions, which in this respect
know no distinction between rich and poor.
On the other hand, to be sure, the relation of the two evils to each
other is, not rarely, an inverted one: the first impulse to sin comes
sometimes from sorrow, the tormenting anxiety how to get through life,
the conviction, in troubled moments almost forcing itself upon us, that
one will not be able to carry through the hard struggle for existence
if one is too painfully scrupulous, if one may not use a little
dishonesty, deception, and force, “just as everybody else does, and
as seems unfortunately to be inevitable, you know, in human affairs.”
Without this conviction many men would be upright who now think they
can not be. This is really a superstition which to-day almost seems
to be more prevalent than ever, and to destroy it should be one of the
chief concerns of the Christianity of our time. Christianity was also
much concerned therewith in the days of its beginnings, when it gave
not merely the counsel but the command, “not to be anxious,” giving at
the same time a very positive direction as to how the command might be
carried out: “Seek ye first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all
these things shall be added unto you.”
But this counsel, of course, presupposes trust in God; without this, it
is of no value. An unconquerable anxiety is, therefore, in most cases
evidence of a secret atheism. Among the most remarkable of the many
remarkable things of this life is this: that so many of the very wisest
people voluntarily submit to this punishment, their whole life through,
when they could have things so much better. For God is faithful, a
rock on which one may rely; this is the one thing we most surely know
of him, the one thing we can most easily ourselves experience. But
faithfulness is in its nature reciprocal, and our own faithfulness
consists far less in any sort of acts or confessions than in the
resolute shutting out of all distrust every time it would approach us
in the manifold difficulties and injustices of this life.
To be sure, complete confidence in the possibility of a release from
sorrows through trust in God comes to be a certainty only through
experience; but there is, in the Bible and in countless later writings
and in many human lives, such a mass of assurances and experiences of
trustworthy men, and on the other hand, there are, before our eyes, so
many obvious examples of the impossibility of any other release from
sorrow, that we may fittingly ask: Why is there so great an aversion to
making this experience? Why, when men are tormented with sorrow, often
to the point of despair, why do they not at least make trial of this,
instead of seeking death? The reason, perhaps, is mostly this: they do
not want to be dependent on God; they had much rather put dependence on
pitiless men. Indeed, the assurances of the Bible may be appropriated
in their literal, full meaning only by the man who has sought no alien
help beside, nor any human help at all before he has first sought
God’s. But how many are there to-day who do that? So long as the sun
of fortune shines for them, they believe in their “lucky star” with
a kind of ludicrous or sacrilegious fatalism, and therewith a secret
fear often takes them unawares; for “happiness of this kind needs many
supports, while the happiness of those at one with the will of God
has need of but one.” But when once they have misfortune and no human
aid to ward it off, they go all to pieces and fall into the manifold
“nervous affections” of our time, into sleeplessness and ceaseless
unrest, and these bring them to the numberless sanitariums, for the
most part vainly; for “the sorrow of the world worketh death,” and
against that no nerve specialist nor hydropathy avails.
It is certain that there is a way of release from continuous sorrow; it
must be just as certain that single and even frequent sorrows belong to
the necessary events of our life. There can be no human life without
sorrows; but to live with sorrows, yes, with many sorrows, yet free
from sorrow’s burden, that is the art of life toward which we are being
trained. It is, therefore, an everyday experience that men who have
too few sorrows buy themselves some; for riches, which in the view of
most men are meant to release one from anxiety, are not fitted to do
that; they are “deceitfulness,” as Christ himself calls them, and his
warnings against them, which we are wont to take so lightly, are surely
not there for merely “decorative effect.”
We must have sorrows, and for three substantial reasons: in the first
place, in order not to become arrogant and frivolous; sorrows are
the weight in the clock, to regulate its proper movement; misfortune
is really in most cases the only means of salvation for those who
are not on the right way. In the second place, to enable us to have
fellow-feeling with others; people who are too well nourished and free
from customary sorrows easily become egotists, who at last not merely
have compassion for pale faces no longer, but regard them as a kind
of offence, a disturbing element in their ease; they may go so far as
to feel downright hatred for them. And finally, because sorrows alone
effectively teach us to trust in God and seek his aid; for the granting
of prayer and the consequent release from sorrow is the only convincing
proof of God, and likewise the test of the truth of Christianity to
which Christ himself challenges us. Therefore the evil days are good;
without them, most men would never come at all to the soberer thoughts.
Furthermore, the deliverances from sorrow, the triumphal days when a
man beholds a mountain-load rolled away, belong to undoubtedly the
purest moments of happiness in life, moments that God must grant to
his own, if he is truly merciful to them. Spurgeon, therefore, rightly
says, in one of his finest sermons, that if we truly trust God, he is,
in the beginning, better than our fears, then better than our hopes,
and finally better than our wishes. For his people, sorrow always lasts
only so long as it still has a task to fulfil on their behalf.
If one wished to put the truth a little paradoxically, then one might,
with frank directness, say to many a man who is forever complaining of
all sorts of little things, to whom much in the world is not right,
neither weather, nor politics, nor social relations, “You have too few
cares; make yourself some, care for others who have too many; then you
will no longer have any of that sickly, discontented disposition, or at
least will no longer give so much heed to what now makes you unhappy.”
People in particular who have a spiritual calling should never wish
themselves freedom from sorrow, for then they can never effectively
speak with others who have sorrows; nay, in most cases they can not
really understand them.
And so we repeat: incessant sorrow there must not be; from such there
is a way of escape; if you will not use it, then bear your sorrow as
a punishment therefor. But of occasional troubles you must accept a
generous share with good grace and overcome them through the power of
your spirit and will.
And now we come to the various human remedies for sorrow.
The best is Patience and Courage. “Whoever,” says Bishop Sailer, “is
able to submit to God in every hour of darkness will soon see the
morning light again arise; for his submission is the cock-crow that
heralds and greets the coming day.” And indeed it is a fact remarkably
true to experience, how often all difficulty vanishes as soon as
we have taken a stand in regard to it, as soon as we have actually
shouldered it. Our very best possessions we really possess only when we
were once in our life compelled to give them up. Besides, it is easy
to notice, from our own experience, that even our judgment of things
that befall us is often wrong at first. Again and again we discover
that what was apparently unpropitious and injurious has later revealed
itself as advantageous, and that, on the other hand, so-called lucky
events have turned out to be of uncommonly little use, if not actually
harmful. And so, one is very sensible if he can suspend his judgment
in times of anxiety; and still more help can many a time be gained
from the thought that all trouble is always borne merely from moment
to moment, and that the next moment will bring a change, or at least
new strength. Very often trouble lasts, in its full force, no longer
than three days; those one may easily undertake to endure. The real
burden of unhappiness consists in the notion that it is going to last
an unlimited while; this is merely a delusion of the fancy.
But there are still some minor remedies besides, or at least
palliatives, and it is well worth the pains for one to review them
quietly and get a clear conception of them; for what is said in the
second part of “Faust” is only too true, that if sorrow but breathes
upon us, she makes us blind.
The first and most efficacious of these remedies is Work, not merely
for its immediate results, but because it busies the mind and keeps
it from useless brooding over things that perhaps never come at all;
for a great part of sorrow consists of unfounded fear. Work gives
courage, and it gives momentary forgetfulness in a legitimate way, as
unwarranted and pernicious “distractions” and drink do not. It is the
only true, permissible, and beneficent Lethe-draught of the modern
world.
The second means, which can, of course, be used only by those to whom
God is a living Personality and not merely an idea, is Prayer--indeed,
to pray to God first of all before one speaks with men. Spurgeon says,
perhaps truly, that herein lies hidden also the secret of success
with men--that is, the art of speaking rightly with men, through whom
God then sends help in a practical way. But we do not wish to write a
treatise here on prayer. Suffice it to say that, in prayer, faith is
necessary on the one hand, and on the other, that the man should turn
to God with his whole will, with all his spiritual power concentrated
upon a single point. The result, in any case, is power; and, besides
the experience of more frequent aid, there follows the conclusion,
entirely logical, that if God bestows on man the greatest of life’s
blessings, he will not refuse him those minor ones also, which serve
only for the preservation of life. There would really be no sense in
bringing a man so far on his way as to begin to lead an upright life,
and then to let him die of hunger. The expression, so often heard,
that there are no longer any miracles in these days, is most certainly
untrue. No one can bind a living God to “natural laws.”
Without doubt, however, it often happens that one must wait for the
prayer’s fulfilment, must at times, indeed, stand knocking for a long
while; or the prayer may never be fulfilled at all. But then, in the
first case, perhaps even this waiting is the right answer to the prayer
(as, to be sure, one mostly discovers only later); and in the other
case, you perhaps receive something better than you yourself had chosen.
A third means, chiefly availing in financial anxieties, is Contentment,
pleasure in simple things. From this, the men of our day have wandered
far; and, for many, an ever-heightening enjoyment passes for the only
true purpose of life, and a certain measure of luxury is regarded as
a requirement and a symbol of culture. It will be necessary for men
to return once more to simplicity in their mode of living and to a
voluntary renunciation of the philosophy of pleasure, if they are to
banish sorrow, and often still worse from their life. Praying for
pleasure nothing avails; it is not for the needs of luxury that God is
to be had, but for daily bread.
In close relation to contentment stand two other great remedies against
sorrow. The first is a wise Frugality. This goes hand in hand, indeed,
only with honest acquisition; what is unjustly acquired is seldom
wisely saved, and, according to a true proverb, rarely descends to the
third heir. In such cases, therefore, frugality is of no use. Frugality
can also, in other cases, be actually harmful. Excessive calculation,
and anxiety extending to the smallest minutiæ of expenditure, leads
to needless care, and almost as many people come to spiritual ruin
through this as through heedless improvidence. And so, the blessing (or
curse) that rests on the actions of men has a manifest relation to the
observance of the moral commandments. If it were not so, it would be
truly enigmatical how so many thousands of honest men get through life
without property or sure income. They themselves would be least of all
in a position to explain it.
There is one more remedy against financial anxiety, and that, strange
to say, is systematic Giving. This the ancient prophets of Israel
already knew; in our day it has lately assumed prominence again,
especially through George Müller and Spurgeon. Whether the amount to be
laid aside for this purpose should be the tenth part of one’s income
would seem a matter of complete indifference; but a definite part it
must be; and it should never be allowed to remain a matter of mere
intentions, which the natural avarice of men will always find ways of
evading. In this way a man oftentimes acquires his first inclination
toward caring for his poor fellow-men, while otherwise they appear to
him only too often as troublesome claimants for something that rightly
belongs to himself alone or that he has need of for himself and for
his own. But when a man possesses such a fund, no longer belonging to
himself, then he looks around more freely to see where he may put the
money to good use; then at times he even anticipates the appeal of the
tongue when he sees the mute appeal of the eye. This single habit,
universally adopted, would help solve the social question more than all
the talking and scribbling with which the world now resounds, for the
most part vainly.
A stoical remedy we will finally name, because, when all the others
have first been tried, in most cases it is no longer necessary. It
consists in picturing to ourselves the worst that could happen. And,
in fact, this does afford a certain consolation, at least for him who
is able to make use of it; others, on the contrary, can be led by this
path, and without any need for it, to despair.
Nevertheless, all this does not always bring immediate help. The
Spirit of Sorrow often falls upon one like an armed man (especially
in sleepless nights), and leaves him no time for instant resistance.
In that case, the first step is to discover the cause. If it is sin,
it must be at once set right. If there is no definite cause present,
or if it is of a physical nature, then withstand it by physical
remedies, such as sleep, fresh air, exercise, or by work; never by mere
“distractions,” for afterward the trouble returns with doubled power.
Often a good quotation will strengthen, such as: “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 I not forget thee. Behold, I
have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”
If the cause of sorrow is some trouble actually present, and not one
feared in the future, then perhaps the following thought will help: We
must bear what God lays upon us; and we must, with all our power of
will, hold fast the conviction that nothing can possibly happen without
his permission and that all is measured in accord with our strength,
whose actual resources we often do not know ourselves. These two
thoughts, then, are provisionally our support; whoever gives up this
support is like a man who clings to a rope over an abyss and lets go
the rope. There is no call to be overstoical; we may give vent to our
sorrow, only not at all to ourselves and but sparingly to others; and
we should then take some action in accordance with our reason, though
not in accordance with that alone,--nor always at once, while it is
still troubled with excitement. With these presuppositions, one can
endure much.
It is quite possible that at times even this does not seem rightly to
avail. In that case, these are the periods of life when the genuine
steel of character is to be formed, that otherwise may not be brought
to pass. Then at least make the attempt simply to hold out for a short
time longer,--for a month, a week, three days, or even only for a
single day. Not rarely at the end of such a term you are stronger than
at its beginning, and frequently experience shows it to be the case
that from the very moment one is preparing himself for the apparently
inevitable, and no longer seeks or expects any human aid, at that very
moment relief is already coming. The suffering has then just fulfilled
its purpose.
In conclusion, only one thing more: we know very well how people, in
the hours of their heaviest struggles with sorrow, can lose faith in
every ground of consolation and look upon such grounds as unsatisfying,
or as the empty talk of people who have themselves suffered nothing
like. That may be true, or again it may not. But, in case you think
it is, nevertheless try to bear, for the glory of God, what you will
and can no longer endure for your own sake or for the sake of those
near to you. “When you are driven almost to despair,” says Spurgeon,
“and are tempted to lay violent hands upon yourself or to do some
other rash and evil deed, do nothing of the kind, but trust yourself
to your God; that will bring him more glory than seraphim and cherubim
can give. To believe the promise of God, when you are ill, or sad, or
near to death--that it is to glorify God.” This “giving God the glory,”
or “praising the Lord,” or “hallowing his name,” is one of the many
expressions of the Bible which have now quite vanished from our real
comprehension and have become an empty phrase. To render glory to God
on earth and still to live for him though one would otherwise be glad
to dispense with life, that is the highest of all life’s resignations;
and he to whom this duty is finally intrusted is not to make complaint,
but to be ashamed if it come to one unwilling to accept it. But if it
has come to a man who has something of the heroic in his nature, then
by its means he will, for the first time, develop the possibilities
that lay dormant within him; and the feeling of a larger and surer
nearness to God will then, in the bitterest hours of his life, so lift
him above himself that these very hours will seem to his after-memory
as the most beautiful--as those, indeed, to which he owes all his real
happiness in life.
Sin and sorrow cling close together in human life; therefore they are
also displayed here before the reader as an associated hindrance on the
way to happiness.
The first step, as a rule, must be to banish sin from life; only then
may one seriously think of getting rid of sorrow. For the only true
freedom from sorrow lies not in a man’s natural disposition, nor is it
the product of happy outward surroundings of any sort; true freedom
from sorrow is found in that higher happiness, painfully won, to which
Job was led, after his earlier happiness, dependent upon fortuitous
things, had been done away. To this happiness, henceforth secure, we
all without exception should attain and can attain, just as soon as we
have fought through the gates at which the guardians Sin and Sorrow
stand.
II. “COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE”
II. “COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE”
Many who are distressed over the manifold evils of our time (but do not
themselves have to suffer any too keenly under them) comfort themselves
and others in the end with a verse from one of the hymns of Paul
Gerhardt:
“_The upper hand God holdeth, and maketh all things well._”
I do not know whether the poet put so strong a stress upon the words
“all things” as we are wont to do, but thus much I certainly do know,
that Christianity shows scant favor to an optimism of this sort;
all things will not be well in the end in spite of human folly and
baseness; but, until the consummation of all things human, good and
evil, justice and injustice, will continue to exist side by side as
Jesus, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, has clearly said once
for all.
No, the idealism of Christianity is something quite other than a
shallow optimism; it is much rather a strong faith that everything
genuinely good, however slight compared to the tremendous power and
might of the forces arrayed against it, never can be crushed by them,
but ever maintains itself victorious against its foes. That is the
comfort to be given its followers, a comfort that will take from them
the fear of losing poise in the midst of the merciless actualities of
daily experience; and that is the real meaning of many a Bible word
too often explained in the sense of striving after earthly power and
splendor; and that, too, is the meaning of some of the finest and most
familiar hymns from the fighting days of the Reformation, such as that
hymn of Luther, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never-failing.”
On the other hand, the power of what Christianity calls “the world”
is very great, and all the elements that make up that power, from the
lofty pretension of some distinguished atheistic philosophy all the
way down to the basest instinct of the most brutal selfishness, form
an extremely close alliance. And the human heart, now overdaring, now
overtimid, is so uncertain that even into the life of those who work
most effectively for the good, come hours when they despair, not of
their task only, but even of their whole manner of thinking, a despair
that once and again God must dispel with a “Be not afraid, but speak.”
If we look upon life from God’s standpoint, instead of our own as we
had rather do, we see it is not a matter of purely and simply making
his people happy. No, first of all they are to be made fearless, for
all right living is a life of battling, not of unruffled peace; but
of battling without fear, of warring in a good cause and under sure
guidance with that heroism which is the highest of all human qualities
and the best of all earthly joys.
This is that never-ending conflict between good and evil which every
single human being must fight out in his own life, although the final
issue is reached only at the end of all things and in a manner to us
unknown. “On the advance post of a man’s individual experience the
question is the same as in the great battle of the hosts, namely this:
whether a faith that is anchored in God is not the highest of moral
forces, able to overcome the ever-present power of evil, especially
the fundamental sin of self-seeking; for if the victory is gained at
the advance post, it may be gained all along the line.” Perhaps this
is truer than we know, or ever experience on earth. That there is no
higher power in the world than comes from association with God, every
single human life must by trial discover. But for that very reason
such association must be sought of one’s own free will, and of one’s
own free will always cling to; and that makes the problem of life.
In order to gain, in this warfare, a spirit of joy quite different
from the moroseness and half-despair of many Christians, the means
closest at hand is this: to try to battle, not according to our own
ideas, but, as in military service, punctiliously as commanded. Such
means, however, is external; there is an inner basis for the right
spirit of joy, without which that joy can not be enduring, and that
inner basis is the abiding of God in the heart. When all opposition
to God disappears, then appears the real joy of living and the great
consolation he gives on earth. This peace with God, which in time
may even grow, as it were, into an enduring and genuine friendship,
the human soul must experience, else it shall not know what inward
happiness is. And outward happiness is only the easy sequence of the
inward; God gladly does nothing but good to men as soon as he finds it
possible.
Here, also, lies the real cause of the philosophical atheism that makes
up the religion of many excellent people, who suppose they can not
think otherwise, though they would gladly like to. A man’s simple logic
will tell him that it is not consistent to say one believes in God, and
yet not allow God to dwell in him and rule him absolutely; and it is a
noble trait of many doubters that they do not dare to serve God with
mere phrases, but they see that if once he should be taken up into the
account of life, he would be a “consuming fire” for much that exists in
their lives, for much that they would be obliged to give up, but do not
want to give up. Faith is a matter, not of the reason, but of the human
will; and the difficulty lies in just this resolution to serve God,
with all its consequences--a resolution the man himself must make, for
no divine mercy can wholly take its place.
The principal things a man must surrender, if God is to be able to
dwell in him, are pleasure, riches, glory, and reliance upon men.
On the other hand, when this renunciation has once been made, more
and more there disappear within him, of themselves, fear, anger,
unrest, and the tormenting feeling of weakness, all of them the sure
inheritance and distinguishing mark of the godless. This is the road,
and they who think they can squeeze around this sharp corner with a
few philosophical considerations, or with an occasional cry of “Lord,
Lord,” will likely be the most deceived at last.