Faith's Greatest Obstacle
DAILY READINGS
The speculative doubts leave many minds untouched, but one universal
human experience sooner or later faces every serious life with
questions about God's goodness. We all meet trouble, in ourselves or
others, and oftentimes the wonder why in God's world such calamities
should fall, such wretchedness should continually exist, plunges faith
into perplexity. Few folk of mature years can fail to understand Edwin
Booth when he wrote to a friend, "Life is a great big spelling book,
and on every page we turn the words grow harder to understand the
meaning of." Now, the basis of any intelligent explanation of faith's
problem must rest in a _right practical attitude toward trouble_.
To the consideration of that we turn in the daily readings.
Sixth Week, First Day
=Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you,
which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing
happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ's
sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory also ye may
rejoice with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached for the name of
Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of
God resteth upon you. For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a
thief, or an evil-doer, or as a meddler in other men's matters: but
if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him
glorify God in this name.... Wherefore let them also that suffer
according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a
faithful Creator.--I Pet. 4:12-16, 19.=
Such an attitude toward trouble as Peter here recommends is the most
wholesome and hopeful possible to man. And it is reasonable too, if
only on the ground that trouble _develops in men the essential
qualities of strong character_. Our highest admiration is always
reserved for men who master difficult crises. If the story of Joseph,
begun beside Bedouin camp fires centuries ago, can easily be
naturalized beside modern radiators; if Robinson Crusoe, translated
into every tongue is understood by all, the reason lies in the depth
of man's heart, where to make the most out of untoward situations is a
daily problem. Not every one can grasp the argument or perceive the
beauty of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," but one thing about
them every man appreciates--the blind Milton, sitting down to write
them:
"I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward."
The full understanding of Ole Bull's playing on the violin was
necessarily restricted to the musical, but no restriction bounds the
admiration of men, learned or simple, when in a Munich concert, his A
string snaps and he finishes the composition on three strings. That is
the human problem in epitome. Getting music out of life's remainders
after the break has come; winning the battle with what is left from a
defeat; going blind, like Milton, and writing sublimest poetry, or
deaf, like Beethoven, and composing superb sonatas; being reared in an
almshouse and buried from Westminster Abbey, like Henry M. Stanley;
or, like Kernahan, born without arms or legs and yet sitting at last
in the British Parliament--all such hardihood and undiscourageable
pluck reach back in a man's bosom beyond the strings that ease and
luxury can touch, and strike there an iron, reverberating chord.
Nothing in human life is so impressive as pluck, "fighting with the
scabbard after the sword is gone." And no one who deeply considers
life can fail to see that our best character comes when, as Peter
says, we "suffer as a Christian."
_O Lord our God, let our devout approach to Thee be that of the
heart, not of the lips. Let it be in obedience to Thy spiritual law,
not to any outward ritual. Thou desirest not temples nor offerings,
but the sacrifice of a lowly and grateful heart Thou will not
despise. Merciful Father, to all Thy dispensations we would submit
ourselves, not grudgingly, not merely of necessity, but because we
believe in Thy wisdom, Thy universal rule, and Thy goodness. In
bereavement and in sorrow, in death as in life, in joys and in
happiness, we would see Thy Hand. Teach us to see it; increase our
faith where we cannot see; teach us also to love justice, and to do
mercy, and to walk humbly with Thee our God. Make us at peace with
all mankind, gentle to those who offend us, faithful in all duties,
and sincere in sorrow when we fail in duty. Make us loving to one
another, patient in distress, and ever thankful to Thy Divine power,
which keeps, and guides, and blesses us every day. Lord, accept our
humble prayer, accomplish in us Thy holy will. Let Thy peace reign in
our hearts, and enable us to walk with Thee in love; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen._--Francis W. Newman, 1805.
Sixth Week, Second Day
=Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are
naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and we
toil, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being
persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the
filth of the world, the offscouring of all things, even until now.--I
Cor. 4:11-13.=
If Paul could be questioned about the experience of trouble which
these verses vividly express, would he not say that there had been
qualities of character in him and resources in his relationship with
God which he never would have known about had it not been for the test
of adversity? Trouble not only develops but also _reveals_ character;
we do not know ourselves until we have been tried out in calamity. The
simplest demand of adversity on every man is that he be "game." Henry
Newbolt is not indulging in rhetoric when he tells of a Soudan battle
where a British square made up of Clifton graduates is hard beset by a
charge of fierce enemies, and, in that crisis, makes the cry of a
Clifton football captain, "Play up, boys, play the game!" rally the
men and save the day. At school or in the Soudan the problem is the
same; the sling with which David plays in his youth is his chief
reliance when Goliath comes; a "game" spirit is essential to character
from birth to death. We turn from the story of Nelson at Aboukir,
nailing six flags to his mast so that if even five were shot away no
one would dream that he had surrendered, to find that the spirit there
exemplified is applicable to our most common day. The quality which
made Nelson an Admiral of England, in spite of his lost arm, his lost
eye, his small stature, and his feeble health is one of our elemental
needs. And to a supreme degree this quality was in great Christians
like Paul. Read his letter to the Philippians and see! Adversity
brought his spirit to light, and made it an asset of the cause. In a
real sense, trouble, however forbidding, was one of Paul's best
friends, and there was a good reason why he should "rejoice in
tribulations."
_O Father of spirits! Thou lovest whom Thou chastenest! Correct us in
our weakness as the children of men, that we may love Thee in our
strength as the sons of God. May the same mind be in us which was
also in Jesus Christ, that we may never shrink, when our hour comes,
from drinking of the cup that he drank of. Wake in us a soul to obey
Thee, not with the weariness of servile spirits, but with the
alacrity of the holy angels. Fill us with a contempt of evil
pleasures and unfaithful ease; sustain us in the strictness of a
devout life. Daily may we crucify every selfish affection, and
delight to bear one another's burdens, to uphold each other's faith
and charity, being tender-hearted and forgiving as we hope to be
forgiven. Hold us to the true humility of the soul that has not yet
attained; and may we be modest in our desire, diligent in our trust,
and content with the disposals of Thy Providence. O Lord of life and
death! Thy counsels are secret; Thy wisdom is infinite: we know not
what a day may bring forth. When our hour arrives, and the veil
between the worlds begins to be lifted before us, may we freely trust
ourselves to Thee, and say, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my
spirit." Amen._--James Martineau.
Sixth Week, Third Day
If adversity, rightly used, so develops and reveals character, we may
expect to find trouble as a background to the most admirable men of
the race. We read the luminous histories of Francis Parkman and do not
perceive, behind the printed page, the original manuscript, covered
with a screen of parallel wires, along which the blind author ran his
pencil that he might write legibly. We think of James Watt as a genius
at invention, and perhaps recall that Wordsworth said of him, "I look
upon him, considering both the magnitude and the universality of his
genius, as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this country ever
produced." But Watt himself we forget--sickly of body, starving on
eight shillings a week, and saying, "Of all things in life there is
nothing more foolish than inventing." Kant's philosophy was a turning
point in human thought, but lauding Kant, how few recall his struggle
with a broken body! Said he, speaking of his incurable illness, "I
have become master of its influence in my thoughts and actions by
turning my attention away from this feeling altogether, just as if it
did not at all concern me." Wilberforce, the liberator of British
slaves, we know, and beside his grave in Westminster Abbey we recall
the superb title that he earned, "the attorney general of the
unprotected and of the friendless," but the Wilberforce who for twenty
years was compelled to use opium to keep himself alive, and had the
resolution never to increase the dose--who knows of him? One of the
chief rewards of reading biography is this introduction that it gives
to handicapped men; the knowledge it imparts of the world's great
saints and scripture makers, conquerors and reformers, who, in the
words of Thucydides, "dared beyond their strength, hazarded against
their judgment, and in extremities were of excellent hope." And when
one turns to the supreme Character, could the dark background be
eliminated and still leave Him?
=But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold
him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus,
because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that
by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man. For it
became him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things,
in bringing many sons unto glory to make the author of their
salvation perfect through sufferings.--Heb. 2:8-10.=
_O God, who art unsearchable in Thy judgments, and in Thy ways past
finding out, we bow before the mystery of Thy Being, and confess that
we know nothing, and can say nothing worthy of Thee. We cannot
understand Thy dealings with us. We have faith, not sight; when we
cannot see, we may only believe. Sometimes Thou seemest to have no
mercy upon us. Thou dost pierce us through our most tender
affections, quenching the light of our eyes in dreadful darkness.
Death tears from us all that we love, and Thou art seemingly deaf to
all our cries. Our earthly circumstances are reversed and bitter
poverty is appointed us, yet Thou takest no heed, and bringest no
comfort to the sorrow and the barrenness of our life. Still would we
trust in Thee and cling to that deepest of our instincts which tells
us that we come from Thee and return to Thee. Be with us, Father of
Mercies, in love and pity and tenderness unspeakable. Lift our souls
into Thy perfect calm, where all our wills are in harmony with Thine.
Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Sixth Week, Fourth Day
To one perplexed and disheartened by adversity, a theoretical
explanation is generally not half as valuable as concrete instances of
courage and fortitude, founded on faith. Whether we be theologians or
scientists or as ignorant of both as Caliban, there is an immediate,
personal call to arms in the brave fight of George Matheson, one of
Scotland's great preachers for all his blindness, or in Louis
Pasteur's indomitable will, making his discoveries despite the
paralytic stroke that in his forty-sixth year crippled his strength.
The qualities which we admire in them are a sort of apotheosis of the
qualities which we need in ourselves. For we all are handicapped, some
by ill-starred heredity, by unhappy environment, or by the
consequences of our own neglect and sin; some by poverty, some by
broken bodies, or by dissevered family ties--and all of us by
unfortunate dispositions. It does us good then to know that Phillips
Brooks failed as a teacher. His biographer tells us that so did his
first ambition to be an educator cling to him, that in the prime of
life, when he was the prince of preachers, he came from President
Eliot's office, pale and trembling, because he had refused a
professorship at Harvard. So Robertson, of Brighton, whose sermons
began a new epoch in British Christianity, was prevented from being a
soldier only by the feebleness of his body, and Sir Walter Scott, who
wanted to be a poet, turned to novel writing, anonymously and
tentatively trying a new role, because, as he frankly put it, "Because
Byron beat me." He is an excellent cook who knows how to make a good
dinner out of the left-overs, and hardly a more invigorating truth is
taught by history than that most of the finest banquets spread for the
delectation of the race have been prepared by men who made them out of
the leavings of disappointed hopes.
=Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a
cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so
easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising
shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For
consider him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against
himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.--Heb. 12:1-3.=
_Our Father, we thank Thee that while we are sure of Thy protecting
care, Thy causal providence, which foresees all things, we can bear
the sorrows of this world, and do its duties, and endure its manifold
and heavy cross. We thank Thee that when distress comes upon us, and
our mortal schemes vanish into thin air, we know there is something
solid which we can lay hold of, and not be frustrate in our hopes.
Yea, we thank Thee that when death breaks asunder the slender thread
of life whereon our family jewels are strung, and the precious stones
of our affection fall from our arms or neck, we know Thou takest them
and elsewhere givest them a heavenly setting, wherein they shine
before the light of Thy presence as morning stars, brightening and
brightening to more perfect glory, as they are transfigured by Thine
own almighty power._
_We thank Thee for all the truth which the stream of time has brought
to us from many a land and every age. We thank Thee for the noble
examples of human nature which Thou hast raised up, that in times of
darkness there are wise men, in times of doubt there are firm men,
and in every peril there stand up heroes of the soul to teach us
feebler men our duty, and to lead all of Thy children to trust in
Thee. Father, we thank Thee that the seed of righteousness is never
lost, but through many a deluge is carried safe, to make the
wilderness to bloom and blossom with beauty ever fragrant and ever
new, and the desert bear corn for men and sustain the souls of the
feeble when they faint. Amen._--Theodore Parker.
Sixth Week, Fifth Day
One distinguishing mark of the men who have won their victories with
the remnants of their defeat is that they refuse to describe their
unideal conditions in negative terms. If they cannot live in southern
California where they would choose to live, but must abide in New
England instead, they do not describe New England in terms of its
deficiencies--no orange groves, no acres of calla lilies, no palm
trees. There are compensations even in New England, if one will
carefully take account of stock and see what positively is there! Or
if a man would choose to live in Boston and must live in Labrador, the
case of Grenfell suggests that a positive attitude toward his
necessity will discover worth, and material for splendid triumphs even
on that inhospitable coast. The mark of the handicapped men who have
made the race's history glorious has always been their patriotism for
the country where they had to live. They do not stop long to pity
themselves, or to envy another's opportunity, or to blame circumstances
for their defeat, or to dream of what might have been, or to bewail
their disappointed hopes. If the soil of their condition will not grow
one crop, they discover what it will grow. They have insight, as did
Moses, to see holy ground where an ordinary man would have seen only
sand and sagebrush and sheep.
=Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the
priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness,
and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb. And the angel of Jehovah
appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and
he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was
not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this
great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when Jehovah saw that he
turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the
bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said,
Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the
place whereon thou standest is holy ground.--Exodus 3:1-5.=
_Father of life, and God of the living, Fountain of our being and
Light of all our day; we thank Thee for that knowledge of Thyself
which lights our life with eternal splendor, for that giving of
Thyself which has made us partakers of Thy divine nature. We bless
Thee for everything around us which ministers Thee to our minds; for
the greatness and glory of nature, for the history of our race, and
the lives of noble men; for the thoughts of Thee expressed in human
words, in the art of painters and musicians, in the work of builders
and craftsmen. We bless Thee for the constant memories of what we are
that rise within ourselves; for the pressure of duty, the hush of
solemn thoughts, for moments of insight when the veil on the face of
all things falls away, for hours of high resolve when life is
quickened within, for seasons of communion when, earth and sense
forgotten, heaven holds our silent spirits raptured and aflame._
_We have learned to praise Thee for the darker days when we had to
walk by faith, for weary hours that strengthened patience and
endeavor, for moments of gloom and times of depression which taught
us to trust, not to changing tides of feeling, but to Thee who
changest not. And now since Christ has won His throne by His cross of
shame, risen from His tomb to reign forever in the hearts of men, we
know that nothing can ever separate us from Thee; that in all
conflicts we may be more than conquerors; that all dark and hostile
things shall be transformed and work for good to those who know the
secret of Thy love._
_Glory be to Thee, O Lord. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
Sixth Week, Sixth Day
When folk have seen into human life deeply enough so that they
perceive how adversity can be used to high issues, faith in God
becomes not so much a speculative problem as a practical need. They
want to deal with trouble nobly. They see that faith in God gives the
outlook on life which makes the hopeful facing of adverse situations
reasonable and which supplies power to make it possible. The result is
that the _great sufferers have been the great believers_. The idea
that fortunate circumstances make vital faith in God probable is
utterly unsupported by history. Hardly an outstanding champion of
faith who has left an indelible impress on man's spiritual life can
anywhere be found, who has not won his faith and confirmed it in the
face of trouble. What is true of individuals is true of generations.
The days of Israel's triumphant faith did not come in Solomon's reign,
when wealth was plentiful and national ambitions ran high. The great
prophets and the great psalms stand out against the dark background of
the Exile and its consequences.
=Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Jehovah; awake, as in the
days of old, the generations of ancient times. Is it not thou that
didst cut Rahab in pieces, that didst pierce the monster? Is it not
thou that driedst up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that
madest the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And
the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come with singing unto
Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall
obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.=
=I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou art
afraid of man that shall die, and of the son of man that shall be
made as grass; and hast forgotten Jehovah thy Maker, that stretched
forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and fearest
continually all the day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he
maketh ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor? The
captive exile shall speedily be loosed; and he shall not die and go
down into the pit, neither shall his bread fail. For I am Jehovah thy
God, who stirreth up the sea, so that the waves thereof roar: Jehovah
of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and have
covered thee in the shadow of my hand, that I may plant the heavens,
and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my
people.--Isa. 51:9-16.=
That is a voice out of the Exile. Such great believers, whose faith
shone brightest when the night was darkest, have not pretended to know
the explanation of suffering in God's world. But they have had insight
to see a little and trust for the rest. Stevenson has expressed their
faith: "If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon a least
part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny
some broken evidences of a plan, and some signals of an overruling
goodness; shall I then be so mad as to complain that all cannot be
deciphered? Shall I not rather wonder, with infinite and grateful
surprise, that in so vast a scheme I seem to have been able to read,
however little, and that little was encouraging to faith?"
_We thank Thee, O God, that Thou dost ride upon the cloud, and govern
the storm. All that to us is dark is light to Thee. The night shineth
as the day. All that which seems to us irregular and ungoverned, is
held in Thine hand, even as the steed by the rein. From age to age
Thou dost control the long procession of events, discerning the end
from the beginning; and all the wild mixture, all the confusion, all
the sorrow and the suffering, is discerned of Thee. As is the palette
to the color, as is violence to development in strength, as is the
crushing of the grape to the wine, so in Thy sight all things are
beneficent that to us are most confusing and seemingly conflicting
and threatening. Sorrow and pain and disaster are woven in the loom
of God; and in the end we, too, shall be permitted to discern the
fair pattern, and understand how that which brought tears here shall
bring righteousness there._
_O, how good it is to trust Thee, and to believe that Thou art wise,
and that Thou art full of compassion, as Thou carriest on Thy great
work of love and benevolence, sympathizing with all that suffer on
the way, and gathering them at last with an exceeding great
salvation! We trust Thee, not because we understand Thee, but because
in many things Thou hast taught us where we should have been afraid
to trust. We have crossed many a gulf and many a roaring stream upon
the bridge of faith, and have exulted to find ourselves safe landed,
and have learned to trust Thee, as a child a parent, as a passenger
the master of a ship, not because we know, but because Thou knowest.
Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.
Sixth Week, Seventh Day
=Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth
them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the
rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded
upon the rock. And every one that heareth these words of mine, and
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his
house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and
the winds blew, and smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was
the fall thereof.--Matt. 7:24-27.=
An important fact is here asserted by the Master, which is commonly
obscured in the commentaries. He says that no matter whether a man's
life be built on sand or on rock, he yet will experience the blasts of
adversity; on both houses alike "the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew." The Master repeatedly affirmed that trouble
comes without necessary reference to character, that while we may
always argue that sin causes suffering, we never can confidently argue
that suffering comes from sin (Luke 13:4; John 9:1-3). Folks
needlessly and unscripturally harass their souls when they suppose
that some special trouble must have befallen them because of some
special sin. The book of Job was written to disprove that, and as for
the Master, he distinctly says that the man of faith with his house on
a rock faces the same storm that wrecks the faithless man. _The
difference is not in the adversity, but in the adversity's effect._
No more important question faces any soul than this: seeing that
trouble is an unevadable portion of every life, good or bad, what am I
to do with it? Says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Did you ever happen to see
that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint? The
smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her
delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its
fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and
will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date
upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great
silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or a moment--as
sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it."
The only flaw in that simile is that the coin cannot decide what
impression shall be made. But we can. Rebellion, despair, bitterness,
or triumphant faith--we can say which impression adversity shall leave
upon us.
_O God of our life, whom we dimly apprehend and never can comprehend,
to whom nevertheless we justly ascribe all goodness as well as all
greatness; as a father teaches his children, so teach us, Lord, truer
thoughts of Thee. Teach us to aspire, so far as man may lawfully
aspire, to a knowledge of Thee. Thou art not only a God to be honored
in times of rest and ease, Thou art also the Refuge of the
distressed, the Comforter of the afflicted, the Healer of the
contrite, and the Support of the unstable. As we sympathize with
those who are sore smitten by calamity, wounded by sudden accident,
wrecked in the midst of security, so must we believe that Thy mighty
all-embracing heart sympathizes. Pitier of the orphan, God of the
widow, cause us to share Thy pity and become Thy messengers of
tenderness in our small measure. Be Thou the Stay of all in life and
death. Teach all to know and trust Thee, give us a portion here and
everywhere with Thy saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen._--Francis W. Newman, 1805.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I
Few who have sincerely tried to believe in God's goodness and who have
lived long enough to face the harrowing facts of human wretchedness
will doubt what obstacle most hampers faith. The major difficulty
which perplexes many Christians, when they try to reconcile God's love
with their experience, is not belief's irrationality but life's
injustice. According to the Psalmist, "The fool hath said in his
heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1). But the fool is not the only
one who has said that. He said it, jeering; he announced it in
derision; he did not want God, and contemptuous denial was a joy. It
was the temper of his negation that made him a fool. But many hearts,
in tones far different from his, have said, "There is no God." Parents
cry it brokenheartedly beside the graves of children; the diseased cry
it, suffering from keener agony than they can bear; fathers cry it
when their battle against poverty has failed and their children plead
in vain for bread; and men who care about their kind say it as they
watch the anguish with which war, drunkenness, lust, disease, and
poverty afflict the race. No man of moral insight will call such folk
fools. The wretchedness and squalor, the misery and sin which rest
upon so much of humankind are a notorious difficulty in the way of
faith.
In dealing with this problem two short cuts are often tried, and by
them some minds endeavor to evade the issue which faith ought to meet.
Some _minimize the suffering_ which creation cost and which man
and animals are now enduring. We must grant that when we read the
experience of animals in terms of man's own life, we always exaggerate
their pain. Animals never suffer as we do; their misery is not
compounded by our mental agonies of regret and fear; and even their
physical wretchedness is as much lower in intensity as their nerves
are less exquisitely tuned. Darwin, who surely did not underestimate
the struggle for existence, said in a letter, "According to my
judgment, happiness decidedly prevails. All sentient beings have been
formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness." We must grant
also that man's practical attitude toward life gives the lie to
pessimism. Only the suicides are the logical pessimists, and all the
rest of men, most with good heart and multitudes with jubilant
enthusiasm, do actually cling to life. Indeed, all normal men
discover, that, within limits, their very hardships are a condition of
their happiness and do not so much abate their love of life is they
add zest and tang. We must grant further that suffering should be
measured not by quantity, but by intensity. One sensitive man enduring
bereavement, poverty, or disease represents _all_ the suffering
that ever has been or ever can be felt. To speak of limitless
suffering, therefore, is false. There is no more wretchedness anywhere
nor in all the world together, than each one can know in his own
person.
When all this, however, has been granted, the facts of the world's
misery are staggering. Modern science has given terrific sweep and
harrowing detail to Paul's assertion, "The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now" (Rom. 8:22). Let one whose
insight into misery's meanings is quickened by even a little
imagination, try to sum up the agony of drunkards' homes, of bereaved
families, of hospitals, insane asylums, jails, and prisons, of war
with its unmentionable horrors--its blinded, deafened, maddened,
raped--and no small palliatives can solve his problem. Rather he
understands the picture which James Russell Lowell said he saw years
ago in Belgium: an angel holding back the Creator and saying, "If
about to make such a world, stay thine hand."
Another short cut by which some endeavor to simplify the problem and
content their thought is _to lift responsibility for life's
wretchedness from God's shoulders and to put it upon man's_. Were
man's sin no factor in the world, some say, life's miseries would
cease; all the anguish of our earthly lot stands not to God's
responsibility but to man's shame. But the sufferings of God's
creatures did not begin with man's arrival, and the pain of creation
before man sinned is a longer story than earth's misery since. Let
Romanes picture the scene: "Some hundred of millions of years ago,
some millions of millions of animals must be supposed to have become
sentient. Since that time till the present, there must have been
millions and millions of generations of millions and millions of
individuals. And throughout all this period of incalculable duration,
this inconceivable host of sentient organizations have been in a state
of unceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain. Looking to the outcome, we
find that more than one-half of the species which have survived the
ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient
forms of life, feasting on higher and sentient forms, we find teeth
and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers molded for
torture--everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing
blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence
that dimly close in deaths of cruel torture." Is man responsible for
that? For cold that freezes God's living creatures, for lightning that
kills them, for volcanoes that burn them, for typhoons that crush
them--is man responsible? By no such easy evasion may we escape the
problem which faith must meet. "In sober truth," as John Stuart Mill
exclaimed, "nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned
for doing to one another, are Nature's everyday performances." Who can
avoid seeing the patent contrast between the Father of Jesus and the
Creator of such a world? "The power that launches earthquakes and arms
cuttlefish," said one perplexed believer, "has but a meager
relationship to the power that blesses infants and forgives enemies."
II
Could we hold this problem at arm's length, discussing it in
speculative moods when we grow curious about the makeup of the
universe, our case would be more simple. But of all life's problems,
this most certainly--sometimes creeping, sometimes crashing--invades
our private lives. Every man has a date with adversity which he must
keep and which adversity does not forget. One notes the evidence of
this in every normally maturing life. As children we wanted happiness
and were impatient, lacking it. Our cups of pleasure easily brimmed
and overflowed. A Christmas tree or a birthday party--and our hearts
were like sun-parlors on cloudless days with all the windows open to
the light! But the time comes to all when happiness like this is not
our problem; we recognize that it is gone; our Edens are behind us
with flaming angels at the gate. We have had friends and lost them and
something has gone from our hearts that does not return; we have won
successes which we do not estimate as highly in possession as we did
in dreams, and it may be have lost what little we achieved; we have
sinned, and though forgiven, the scars are still upon us; we have been
weathered by the rains and floods and winds. Happiness in the old
fashion we no longer seek. We want peace, the power to possess our
souls in patience and to do our work. We want joy, which is a profound
and spiritually begotten grace as happiness is not. This maturity
which so has faced the tragic aspects of our human life is not less
desirable than childhood; it may be richer, fuller, steadier. We may
think of it as Wordsworth did about the English landscape--that not
for all the sunny skies of Italy would he give up the mists that
spiritualize the English hills. But when trouble comes, life faces a
new set of problems that childhood little knew. We have joined the
human procession that moves out into the inevitable need of comfort
and fortitude.
The decisive crisis in many lives concerns the attitude which this
experience evokes. Some are led by it more deeply into the meanings of
religion. The Bible grows in their apprehension with the enlarging of
their life; new passages become radiant as, in a great landscape,
hills and valleys lately unillumined catch the rays of the rising sun.
At first the human friendliness of Jesus is most real, and the Bible's
stories of adventure for God's cause; then knightly calls to character
and service become luminous; but soon or late another kind of passage
grows meaningful: "Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, our
Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through
grace, comfort your hearts and establish them" (II Thess. 2:16).
Others, so far from being led by adversity into the deeper meanings
of faith, renounce faith altogether, and fling themselves into open
rebellion against life and any God who may be responsible for its
tragedy. They may not dare to say what James Thomson did, but they
think it--
"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to his own disgrace.
The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred,
Malignant and implacable! I vow
That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world!"
Many, however, are not by adversity made more sure of God, nor are
they driven into rebellion against him. They are perplexed. It had
been so much easier, in the sheltered and innocent idealism of their
youth, to believe in God than it is now. As children they looked on
life as they might have listened to Mozart's music, ravished with
unqualified delight; but now they know that Mozart died in abject
poverty, that the coffin which his wife could not buy was donated by
charity, that as the hearse went to the grave the driver loudly damned
the dead because no drink money had been given him, and that to this
day no one knows where Mozart's body lies. Maturity has to deal with
so much more tragic facts than youth can ever know. With all the
philosophy that man's wit can supply, the wisest find themselves
saying what Emerson did, two years after his son's death: "I have had
no experience, no progress to put me into better intelligence with my
calamity than when it was new." And in this inevitable wrestling with
adversity, the cry of men is not simply for more courage. They might
easily steady their hearts to endure and overcome, were only one
question's answer clear--is there any _sense_ in life's suffering? The
one unsupportable thought is that all life's pain and hardship is
meaningless and futile, that it has no worthy origin, serves no high
purpose, that in misery we are the sport of forces that have no
consciousness of what they do, no meaning in it and no care. Such folk
want to believe in God, but--can they?
III
Two preliminary facts about Christianity's relationship with our
problem may help to clarify our thought. The doubt sometimes obtrudes
itself on minds perplexed about life's tragedies that the Christian's
faith in a God of love is an idealistic dream. Such faiths as the
Fatherhood of God have come to men, they think, in happy hours when
calamity was absent or forgotten; they are the fruition of man's
fortunate days. And born thus of a view of life from which the
miseries of men had been shut out, this happy, ideal faith comes back
to painful realities with a shock which it cannot sustain. But is
Christian faith thus the child of man's happy days? Rather the very
symbol of Christianity is the Cross. Our faith took its rise in one of
history's most appalling tragedies, and the Gospel of a loving God, so
far from being an ideal dream, conceived apart from life's forbidding
facts, has all these centuries been intertwined with the public
brutality of a crucifixion. Every emphasis of the Christian's faith
has the mark of the Cross upon it. Jesus had said in words that God
was love, but it was at Calvary that the words took fire: "God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" (John 3:16). Jesus
had preached the divine forgiveness, but on Golgotha the message grew
imperative: "God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). Jesus had put into
parables the individual care of the Father for every child, but it was
the Cross that drove the great faith home: Christ tasted "death for
every man" (Heb. 2:9). Nothing in Christian faith has escaped the
formative influence of the Tragedy. The last thing to be said about
the Gospel is that it is a beautiful child-like dream which has not
faced the facts of suffering. In the New Testament are all the
miseries on which those who deny God's love count for support. We are
at home there with suffering men: "they were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went
about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted,
ill-treated (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts
and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth" (Heb. 11:37, 38).
The men with whom Christianity began were not strangers to such
trouble, so that some modern need remind their innocent and dreaming
faith that life is filled with mysterious adversity. _Christianity was
suckled on adversity; it was cradled in pain. At the heart of its Book
and its Gospel is a Good Man crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross,
with a spear wound in his side._
Nor have the great affirmations of faith in God's fatherhood ever been
associated with men of ease in fortunate circumstance. The voice that
cried "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" spoke in agonizing
pain. And through history one finds those words best spoken with a
cross for a background. Thomas á Becket said them, martyred in his own
cathedral; John Huss said them, going to the stake at Constance;
George Wishart said them, roasted at the foot of the sea-tower of St.
Andrews. Christian faith is not a dream that came in hours when human
trouble had been forgotten; it has furnished from the beginning an
interpretation of human trouble and an attitude in meeting it that has
made men "more than conquerors."
The second preliminary fact is this: _Christianity has never pretended
to supply a theoretical explanation of why suffering had to be_. This
seeming lack has excellent reason, for such an explanation, if it be
complete, is essentially beyond the reach of any finite mind. The most
comprehensive question ever asked, some philosopher has said, was put
by a child. "Why was there ever anything at all?" No finite mind can
answer that. And next in comprehensiveness, and in penetration to the
very pith of creation's meaning, is this query, "Why, if something had
to be, was it made as it is?" One must be God himself fully to answer
that, or to comprehend the answer, could it be written down. To expect
therefore, from Christianity or from any other source a theoretical
explanation that will plumb the depths of the mystery of suffering is
to cry for the essentially impossible. So Carlyle says with typical
vividness: "To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and
accident of its little native creek may have become familiar; but does
the minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the
Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the
condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time
(_un_-miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a
minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable
All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of
Providence through Aeons of Aeons."
So little is this inability of ours to know all that we wish about the
world a cause for regret, that it ought to be an occasion of positive
rejoicing. If _we_ could understand the universe through and
through, how small and meager the universe would have to be! The fact
is that we cannot understand anything through and through. If one is
disheartened because he cannot pierce to the heart of Providence and
know all its secrets, let him try his hand upon a pebble and see how
much better he will fare. What is a pebble? If one define it roughly
as granite he must ask what granite is; if that be defined in terms of
chemical properties, he must ask what they are; if they be defined as
ultimate forms of matter, he must inquire what matter is; and then he
will be told that matter is a "mode of motion," or will be assured by
a more candid scientist, like Professor Tait, that "we do not know and
are probably incapable of discovering what matter _is_." No one
ever solves the innermost problems of a stone, but what can be done
with stones our engineering feats are evidence.
If, therefore, we recognize at the beginning that the question why
suffering had to be is an ultimate problem, essentially insoluble by
finite minds, we need not be dismayed. Two opposing mysteries are in the
world--goodness and evil. If we _deny_ God, then _goodness_ is a
mystery, for no one has ever yet suggested how spiritual life could
rise out of an unspiritual source, how souls could come from dust. If
we _affirm_ God, then _evil_ is a mystery, for why, we ask, should
love create a world with so much pain and sin? Our task is not to
solve insoluble problems; it is to balance these alternatives--no God
and the mystery of man's spiritual life, against God and the mystery
of evil. Such a comparison is not altogether beyond our powers, nor
are weighty considerations lacking to affect our choice.
IV
For one thing, we may well inquire, when we complain of this world's
misery, what sort of world we are seeking in its place. Are we asking
for a perfectly happy world? But happiness, at its deepest and its
best, is not the portion of a cushioned life which never struggled,
overpassed obstacles, bore hardship, or adventured in sacrifice for
costly aims. A heart of joy is never found in luxuriously coddled
lives, but in men and women who achieve and dare, who have tried their
powers against antagonisms, who have met even sickness and bereavement
and have tempered their souls in fire. Joy is begotten not chiefly
from the impression of happy circumstance, but from the expression of
overcoming power. Were we set upon making a happy world, therefore, we
could not leave struggle out nor make adversity impossible. The
unhappiest world conceivable by man would be a world with nothing hard
to do, no conflicts to wage for ends worth while; a world where
courage was not needed and sacrifice was a superfluity. Beside such an
inane lotos-land of tranquil ease this present world with all its
suffering is a paradise. Men in fact find joy where in philosophy we
might not look for it. Said MacMillan, after a terrific twelve-month
with Peary on the Arctic continent: "This has been the greatest year
of my life."
The impossibility of imagining a worth-while world from which
adversity had all been banished is even more evident when one grows
ill-content to think of happiness as the goal of life. That we should
be merely happy is not an adequate end of the creative purpose for us,
or of our purpose for ourselves. In our best hours we acknowledge this
in the way we handle trouble. _However much in doubt a man may be
about the theory of suffering, he knows infallibly how suffering
practically should be met._ To be rebellious, cursing fate and
hating life; to pity oneself, nursing one's hurts in morbid
self-commiseration--the ignobility of such dealing with calamity we
indubitably know. Even where we fall feebly short of the ideal, we
have no question what the ideal is. When in biography or among our
friends we see folk face crushing trouble, not embittered by it, made
cynical, or thrust into despair, but hallowed, sweetened, illumined,
and empowered, we are aware that noble characters do not alone _bear_
trouble; they _use_ it. As men at first faced electricity in dread,
conceiving toward it no attitude beyond building lightning-rods to
ward away its stroke, but now with greater understanding harness it to
do their will, so men, as they grow wise and strong, deal with their
suffering. They make it the minister of character; they set it to
build in them what nothing save adversity can ever build--patience,
courage, sympathy, and power. They even choose it in vicarious
sacrifice for the good of others, and by it save the world from evils
that nothing save some one's suffering could cure. They act as though
_character_, not happiness, were the end of life. And when they are at
their best they do this not with stoic intrepidity, as though
trouble's usefulness were but their fancy, but joyfully, as though a
good purpose in the world included trouble, even though not intending
it. So Robert Louis Stevenson, facing death, writes to a friend about
an old woman whose ventriloquism had frightened the natives of
Vailima, "All the old women in the world might talk with their mouths
shut and not frighten you or me, but there are plenty of other things
that frighten us badly. And if we only knew about them, perhaps we
should find them no more worthy to be feared than an old woman talking
with her mouth shut. And the names of some of these things are Death
and Pain and Sorrow."
Whatever, then, may be our theoretical difficulty about suffering,
this truth is clear: when we are at our best we practically deal with
suffering as though moral quality were the goal of life. We _use_
adversity, as though discipline were its purpose and good its end. It
is worth noting that the only theory which fully fits this noblest
attitude toward trouble is Christianity. Men may think God a devil, as
James Thomson sang, and yet may be practically brave and cheerful, but
their theory does not fit their life. Men may believe in no God and no
purpose in the world, and yet may face adversity with courage and
hope, but their spirit belies their philosophy. When men are at their
best in hardship _they act as though the Christian faith in God were
true, as though moral quality were the purpose of creation_.
If now, we really want a world in which character is the end and
aim--and no other world is worth God's making--we obviously may not
demand the abolition of adversity. If one imagines a life from its
beginning lapped in ease and utterly ignorant what words like
hardship, sorrow, and calamity imply, he must imagine a life lacking
every virtue that makes human nature admirable. Character grows on
struggle; without the overcoming of obstacles great quality in
character is unthinkable. Whoever has handled well any calamitous
event possesses resources, insights, wise attitudes, qualities of
sympathy and power that by no other road could have come to him. For
all our complaints against life's misery, therefore, and for all our
inability to understand it in detail, who would not hesitate,
foreseeing the consequence, to take adversity away from men? He who
banishes hardship banishes hardihood; and out of the same door with
Calamity walk Courage, Fortitude, Triumphant Faith, and Sacrificial
Love. If we abolish the cross in the world, we make impossible the
Christ in man. It becomes more clear the more one ponders it, that
while this is often a hard world in which to be happy, to men of
insight and faith it may be a great world in which to build character.
V
Before too confidently, however, we accept this conclusion, there is
one objection to be heard. So far is the world from being absolved
from cruelty, on the plea of moral purpose, one may say, that _its
injustice is the very crux of its offense_. See how negligent of
justice the process of creation is! Its volcanoes and typhoons slay
good and bad alike, its plagues are utterly indifferent to character;
and in the human world which it embosoms some drunken Caesar sits upon
the throne while Christ hangs on the cross. Who for a single day can
watch the gross inequities of life, where good men so often suffer and
bad men go free, and still think that the world has moral purpose in
it? The Bible itself is burdened with complaint against the seeming
senselessness and injustice of God. Moses cries: "Lord, wherefore hast
thou dealt ill with this people? Neither hast thou delivered thy
people at all" (Exodus 5:22, 23); Elijah laments, "O Jehovah, my God,
hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow, with whom I sojourn, by
slaying her son?" (I Kings 17:20); Habakkuk complains, "Wherefore
lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy peace,
when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more righteous than he?"
(Hab. 1:13); and Job protests, "Although thou knowest that I am not
wicked, ... yet thou dost destroy me" (Job 10:7, 8). Man's loss of
faith springs often from this utter disparity between desert and
fortune. The time comes to almost every man when he looks on,
indignant, desperate, at some gross horror uninterrupted, some
innocent victim entreated cruelly. He understands Carlyle's impatient
cry, "God sits in heaven and does nothing!"
Natural as is this attitude, and unjust as many of life's tragic
troubles are, we should at least see this: _man must not demand that
goodness straightway receive its pay and wrong its punishment_. He
may not ask that every virtuous deed be at once rewarded by
proportionate happiness and every sin be immediately punished by
proportionate pain. That, some might suppose, would put justice into
life. But whatever it might put into life, such an arrangement
obviously would take out _character_. The men whose moral quality
we most highly honor were not paid for their goodness on Saturday
night and did not expect to be. They chose their course _for
righteousness' sake alone_, although they knew what crowns of
thorns, what scornful crowds about their cross might end the journey.
They did not drive close bargains with their fate, demanding insurance
against trouble as the price of goodness. They chose the honorable
deed for honor's sake; they chose it the more scrupulously, the more
pleasure was offered for dishonor; their tone in the face of
threatened suffering was like Milne's, Scotland's last martyr: "I will
not recant the truth, for I am corn and no chaff; and I will not be
blown away with the wind nor burst with the flail, but I will abide
both."
Every man is instinctively aware and by his admiration makes it known,
that the kind of character which chooses right, willing to suffer for
it, is man's noblest quality. The words in which such character has
found utterance are man's spiritual battle cries. Esther, going before
the King, saying, "If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4:16); the three
Hebrews, facing the fiery furnace saying, "Our God whom we serve is
able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver
us out of thy hand, O king. But if _not_, be it known unto thee, O
king, that we will not serve thy gods" (Dan. 3:17, 18); Peter and the
apostles, facing the angry Council, saying, "We must obey God rather
than men" (Acts 5:29); Anaxarchus, the martyr, crying, "Beat on at the
case of Anaxarchus; Anaxarchus himself you cannot touch"; Luther,
defying the Emperor, "Here stand I; I can do no other"--most words of
men are easily dispensable, but no words like these can man afford to
spare. They are his best. _And this sort of goodness has been
possible, because God had not made the world as our complaints
sometimes would have it._ For such character, a system where goodness
costs is absolutely necessary. A world where goodness was paid cash in
pleasant circumstance would have no such character to show. Right and
wrong for their own sakes would be impossible; only prudence and
imprudence for happiness' sake could there exist. Out of the same door
with the seeming injustice of life goes the possibility of man's
noblest quality--his goodness "in scorn of consequence." Many special
calamities no one on earth can hope to understand. But when one has
granted that fitness to grow character is the only worthy test of
creation, it evidently is not so simple as at first it seemed to
improve the fundamental structure of the world.
VI
Indeed, when one in imagination assumes the task of omnipotence and
endeavors to construct a universe that shall be fitted for the growth
of character, he cannot long hesitate concerning certain elements
which must be there. _A system of regular law_ would have to be the
basis of that world, for only in a law-abiding universe could
obedience be taught. If the stars and planets behaved "like swarms of
flies" and nothing could be relied upon to act twice in the same way,
character and intelligence alike would be impossible. In this new
world, remolded, "nearer to our heart's desire," _progress_ also would
be a necessity. A stagnant world cannot grow character. There must be
real work to do, aims to achieve; there must be imperfections to
overpass and wrongs to right. Only in a system where the present
situation is a point of departure and a better situation is a
possibility, where ideal and hope, courage and sacrifice are
indispensable can character grow. In this improved world of our
dreams, _free-will_ in some measure must be granted man. If character
is to be real, man must not in his choice between right and wrong be
as Spinoza pictured him, a stone hurled through the air, which thinks
that it is flying; he must have some control of conduct, some genuine,
though limited, power of choice. And in this universe which we are
planning for character's sake, individuals could not stand separate
and unrelated; _they must be woven into a community_. Love which is
the crown of character, lacking this, would be impossible. What
happens to one must happen to all; good and ill alike must be
contagious in a society where we are "members one of another."
No one of these four elements could be omitted from a world whose test
was its adaptability for character. Men with genuine power of choice,
fused into a fellowship of social life, living in a law-abiding and
progressive world--on no other terms imaginable to man could character
be possible. _Yet these four things contain all the sources of our
misery._ Physical law--what tragic issues its stern, unbending
course brings with terrific incidence on man! Progress--how obviously
it implies conditions imperfect, wrong, through which we have to
struggle toward the best! Free-will--what a nightmare of horror man's
misuse of it has caused since sin began! Social fellowship--how surely
the innocent must suffer with the guilty, how impossible for any man
to bear the consequence of his own sin alone! We may not see why these
general conditions should involve the particular calamities which we
bewail, but even our finite minds can see thus far into the mystery of
suffering: _all our trouble springs from four basic factors in the
universe, without any one of which, great character would be
impossible_.
While, therefore, if one _deny_ God, the mystery of goodness lacks
both sense and solution; one may _affirm_ God and find the mystery of
evil, mysterious still but suffused with light. God is working out a
spiritual purpose here by means without which no spiritual purpose is
conceivable. Fundamentally creation is good. We misuse it, we fail to
understand its meaning and to appropriate its discipline, and
impatient because the eternal purpose is not timed by our small
clocks, we have to confess with Theodore Parker, "The trouble seems to
be that God is not in a hurry and I am." In hours of insight, however,
we perceive how little our complaints will stand the test of
dispassionate thought. Our miseries are not God's inflictions on us as
individuals, so that we may judge his character and his thought of us
by this special favor or by that particular calamity. The most
careless thinker feels the poor philosophy of Lord Londonderry's
petulant entry in his journal: "Here I learned that Almighty God, for
reasons best known to himself, had been pleased to burn down my house
in the county of Durham." One must escape such narrow egoism if he is
to understand the purposes of God; one must rise to look on a
creation, with character at all costs for its aim, and countless æons
for its settling. In the making of this world God has _limited
himself_; he cannot lightly do what he will. He has limited himself in
creating a law-abiding system where his children must learn obedience
without special exemptions; in ordaining a progressive system where
what _is_ is the frontier from which men seek what _ought to be_; in
giving men the power to choose right, with its inevitable corollary,
the power to choose wrong; in weaving men into a communal fellowship
where none can escape the contagious life of all. What Martineau said
of the first of these is true in spirit of them all: "The universality
of law is God's eternal act of self limitation or abstinence from the
movements of free affection, for the sake of a constancy that shall
never falter or deceive."
When once a man has risen to the vision of so splendid a purpose in so
great a world, he rejoices in the outlook. Granted that now he sees in
a mirror darkly, that many a cruel event in human life perplexes
still--he has seen enough to give solid standing to his faith. What if
an insect, someone has suggested, were born just after a thunderstorm
began and died just before it stopped--how dark would be its picture
of creation! But we who span a longer period of time, are not so
obsessed by thunderstorms, although we may not like them. They have
their place and serve their purpose; we see them in a broader
perspective than an insect knows and on sultry days we even crave
their coming. A broken doll is to a child a cruel tragedy, but to the
father watching the child's struggle to accept the accident, to make
the best of it and to come off conqueror, the event is not utterly
undesirable. He is not glad at the child's suffering, but with his
horizons he sees in it factors which she does not see. So God's
horizons infinitely overpass our narrow outlooks. There is something
more than whimsy in the theologian's saying, which President King
reports, that an insect crawling up a column of the Parthenon, with
difficulty and pain negotiating passage about a pore in the stone, is
as well qualified to judge of the architecture of the Parthenon, as we
of the infinitude of God's plans. Seeing as much as we have seen of
sense and purpose in the structure of creation, we have seen all that
our finite minds with small horizons could have hoped. We have gained
ample justification for the attitude toward suffering which Dolly
Winthrop in Silas Marner has immortalized: "Eh, there's trouble i'
this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on.
And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner--to do the
right thing as far as we know and to trusten. For if us, as knows so
little, can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a
good and a rights bigger nor what we can know--I feel it i' my own
inside as it must be so."
VII
We may not truthfully leave our subject in such a case that faith's
concern with human misery will seem to lie merely in giving adversity
an explanation. Faith is concerned not alone to _explain_ misery
but to _heal_ it. For while it is impossible without hardship to
develop character, there are woeful calamities on earth that do not
help man's moral quality; they crush and mutilate it; they are
barbarous intruders on the plan of God and they have no business in
his world. Some ills are such that no theory can reconcile them with
the love of God and no man ought to desire such reconciliation; in the
love of God they ought to be abolished. Slavery must be a possibility
in a world where man is free; but God's goodness was not chiefly
vindicated by such a theory of explanation. It was chiefly vindicated
by slavery's abolishment. The liquor traffic and war, needless poverty
in a world so rich, avoidable diseases that science can overcome--how
long a list of woes there is that faith should not so much explain as
banish! When some ills like drunkenness and war and economic injustice
are thrust against our faith, and men ask that the goodness of God be
reconciled with these, faith's first answer should be not speculation
but action. Such woes, so far from being capable of reconciliation
with God's goodness, are irreconcilable with a decent world. God does
not want to be reconciled with them; he hates them "with a perfect
hatred." We may not make ourselves patient with them by any theory of
their necessity. They are not necessary; they are perversions of man's
life; and _the best defense of faith is their annihilation_.
Indeed, a man who, rebellious in complaint, has clamorously asked an
explanation of life's ills as the price of faith in God, may well in
shame consider God's real saints. When things were at their worst,
when wrong was conqueror and evils that seemed blatantly to deny the
love of God were in the saddle, these spiritual soldiers went out to
fight. The winds of ill that blow out our flickering faith made their
religion blaze--a pillar of fire in the night. The more evil they
faced, the more religion they produced to answer it. They were the
real believers, who "through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, obtained promises." In comparison with such, it is
obviously paltry business to drive a bargain with God that if all goes
well we will believe in him, but if things look dark, then faith must
go.
Many a man, therefore, who is no philosopher can be a great defender
of the faith. He may not weave arguments to prove that such a world as
this in its fundamental structure is fitted to a moral purpose. But he
can join the battle to banish from the world those ills that have no
business here and that God hates. He can help produce that final
defense of the Christian faith--a world where it is easier to believe
in God.