MY subject this morning is an attempted answer to the question, "Is
Life a Probation ended by Death?" It will broaden itself naturally, if
we cannot accept that theory of it, into the further question, What is
the main end and purpose of our life? I take my text from the fifth
chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the fifteenth and the
sixteenth verses. I will read them as they appear in the Old Version:
"See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
redeeming the time."
The idea of the writer is that, as we pass through the world, we should
do it with our eyes kept intelligently open, looking about us on every
hand, trying to comprehend the situation, to see what things are, and
what we ought to do to play our part in the midst of them. Not
heedlessly, not unwisely, he says, perhaps hardly the harsh word
"fools," but as wise, as persons intelligently ready to take advantage
of the situation and make the most of the condition in which one finds
himself; redeeming the time, or, as the Revised Version has it, "buying
up the opportunity "; being ready, that is, to pay whatever price is
necessary in order to make the most of the situation.
This, then, is the spirit according to our text in which we should look
over the problem of life; and this is the method by which we should
attempt to guide its practical affairs.
That which people regard as the matter of most importance, any
particular theory or plan of life which they may hold to be for them
the most desirable, this, of course, is that to which they will direct
their chief attention, on which they will lavish their thought, on
which they will pour out their care, to which they will consecrate
their energies. If now the theory or plan of life be false, if it be
inadequate, if one is looking in the wrong direction for the success
that he desires, or if he expects to achieve the great end and object
of living by means which are not real, which do not match the actual
facts of the world and of human life, then of course his effort is so
far thrown away. He wastes energies, power, time, enthusiasm on wrong
ends which might be used to the attainment of things which are real and
fine and high.
Is it not then of the utmost importance that our conception of life,
what it is for, what we ought to attempt to reach, and how we should
make this attempt, should be an accurate one? Any young man starting
out in life, if he sets up for himself a goal which is unworthy, which
does not match his faculties and powers, and if he proposes to reach it
by means which are not adequate to the attainment of his desires, do
you not see how he wrecks and wastes his life? His opportunity is gone;
and by and by he wakes up to find that the years have been dissipated,
and he has not attained any worthy or noble end.
If this be true of a young man as he looks forward to a scheme or plan
of life here during these few short years, how much more is a similar
thing true, when we are contemplating not merely the question of a
business, or professional or social failure and success, but are
looking at the grander and more inclusive theme of the beginning and
aim and outcome of life itself We have inherited from the past the idea
that this life here, under the blue sky for a few years, as we live it,
is a probation, that we are put here on trial, and that death ends it,
and that, when we have passed that line, gone over from that which is
visible here into the invisible, we are either "lost" or "saved," and
things are definitely fixed forever.
I am perfectly well aware that the most of us who are here have given
up this idea, though there may remain fragments and suggestions of it
in our minds still haunting the chambers of the brain, not yet
outgrown, not yet cleared away. But with most people in the modern
world, if they are sincere, if they are consistent, the one great
question with them is whether they are to be saved or lost in another
life. And, if this be the true theory of things, then not only ought
men to bend all their thought, their energies, devote their
enthusiasms, consecrate their time and money to it as much as they do,
but a thousand times more.
We look, perhaps, with a sort of amused curiosity, some of us, from
what we regard as our superior point of view, at a man like Mr. Moody;
and yet Mr. Moody is one man out of a million for his consistency and
consecration to the thought which underlies all the Protestant churches
of the modern world, with the exception of a few here and there. Mr.
Moody believes that this life is a probation ended by death. There are
thousands on thousand on thousands of men who say they believe it, who
still cast in all their influence with churches that are based on it,
and who yet devote their energies mainly to making money, to attaining
social success, to pleasures of one kind or another, to political
ambitions, who live as though this great fate were not overhanging the
world, who meet their neighbors for pleasure or business, believing, if
they are sincere, that this neighbor is heedlessly walking on to the
brink of a gulf, and yet never speaking to him about it, never saying a
word to imply that they really believe it; and yet this fear hangs over
them, haunts their consciousness waking or sleeping; and, if you ask
them if they believe it, they will say they suppose they do. In hours
of danger, when disease threatens them or they are looking death in the
face, they are affrighted, and try to flee to the traditional refuge as
a place of safety.
The whole great Catholic Church teaches that nobody has the slightest
chance of being saved except by becoming a member of her great body of
believers and partaking of her sacramental means of grace.
This, I say then, is the great underlying belief of Christendom; and,
if it is true, the world ought to consecrate itself, head and brain and
soul, time, money, power, prayer, enthusiasm, everything, to delivering
men from the imminent danger. If it is not true, then it ought to be
brushed completely one side, put out of consciousness, of thought, of
fear. The world ought to be dispossessed of its haunting presence. Why?
So that we may fix our attention on the true end and aim of life, and
find out what it means to live, how we ought to live, and why and what
for, what ought to be the goal of our human endeavor.
So long, then, as this belief does lie at the foundation of all the
great churches of Christendom, so long as it is employed in all the
criticisms of us who do not any longer accept it, it seems to me that
it is worth our while to reconsider the question for a little while, so
that we may clear our minds and thoughts, and may fix our attention
definitely and earnestly on that which ought to be the goal of all our
endeavor, our enthusiasm and our hope.
Let us, then, look for just a few moments at this theory, and see what
it means and implies.
It is said that our first father was put on probation, was called upon
to decide, not for himself only, but for all his descendants, as to
what the future history of the inhabitants of this planet should be.
Two famous books were published only a few years ago by Dr. Edward
Beecher, the eldest son in that famous family. These were "The Conflict
of Ages" and "The Concord of Ages." Dr. Beecher argued that anything
like a fair probation on the part of Adam was an impossibility. This in
the face of the prevailing beliefs of the time when the books were
written. He said that, if a man were to choose on such a momentous
question as this, choose adequately, choose fairly, he must be so
circumstanced and endowed that he could comprehend the entire result of
his choice. He must be able to look down the ages imaginatively, and
see on one hand all the line of sin and misery, of death, finite and
eternal, which should issue from his choosing in one direction. He must
be able to comprehend all the good, the music, the joy, the beauty, the
glory, the infinite perfectibility, in this world and the next, which
should follow his choice in the other direction. And he said that Adam
had no such opportunity as that, and was not endowed with the ability
or the experience to make any such momentous choice; in other words,
that the fundamental basis of the whole theological scheme of the world
was unjust and unfair.
This was Dr. Beecher's contention. How did he get over the difficulty?
He believed in the pre-existence of human souls, and that in some other
life before Adam there must have been an intelligent and fair choice,
and that we here and now are only fighting out one stage of the results
of that far-off decision. But, if you will stop to think of it a
moment, you will see that this puts the difficulty only a little
further back: it does not solve it. How does this first person, if it
is so, countless millions of ages ago, happen to be endowed with
intelligence and experience and ability enough to make such a momentous
choice?
And now just consider a moment. Is it conceivable that a sane person
should intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or
tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It
means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything
horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately
and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power
in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive
of a sane person making such a choice as that?
If one of these first ancestors in the Garden of Eden, or no matter how
far back, had a right to choose for himself, I deny his right to choose
for me. What right had he to choose for you? What right had he to
determine that you should be born with a perverted and corrupt nature,
so that you would be certain to choose evil instead of good, helpless
in the hands of a fate like this?
Now you may look at this theory any way you please, place this
probationary choice at the beginning of human history on this planet,
or place it just as far back as you will, it is inconceivable, it is
unfair, it is unjust, it is insane, it is everything that is foolish
and wrong. And yet, note clearly one thing. So long as the world
believes this, so long as the one end and aim of human life, as held up
to people, is to be saved, think of the waste, think of the time, the
anxiety, the enthusiasms, the prayers, the consecrations; think of the
wealth, think of the intellectual faculties, think of the moral
devotion, this whole power of the world expended on a false issue,
turned into wrong channels!
Is this a dead question? Is there no reason for us to consider it here
in this latter part of the nineteenth century? Why, nine-tenths of
Christendom to-day is spending its time in trying to propitiate a God
who is not angry and trying to "save" souls that are not "lost."
Expending its energies along mistaken channels towards issues that are
entirely imaginary! Think, for example, if during the last two thousand
years all the time and the money, all the intelligence, all the
consecration, could have been spent on those things that would have
really helped men to find out the meaning of life, and to illustrate
that meaning in earnest living; suppose the money that has been spent
on the cathedrals, on the monasteries, spent in supporting hordes and
hordes of priests, spent in all the endeavor to save men in a future
life, if all this had been used in educating men and training them into
a comprehension of what kind of beings they really are, what kind of a
world this is in which they have found themselves, spent in training
them into mastery of themselves, spent in teaching them how to
understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and
develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been
developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the
disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how
much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the
animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed off, put underneath our
feet!
Is it not, then, a vital question, so long as so many thousands, so
many millions of people are still consecrating their time, their money,
their energy, in the attempt to do that which does not need to be done?
Let us turn, now, and for a little while face another theory of human
life; try to find out, or to suggest, what we are here on this planet
for, what may be accomplished, how much of grand and true may be
wrought out as the result of our attempt.
The philosopher Kant has somewhere said that there are three things
needed to the success of a human life, "something to do, some one to
love, something to hope for." The old Catechism says that the chief end
of man is "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I indorse the words
of Kant; I agree most heartily and thoroughly with the Catechism.
Philip James Bailey, the author of that once famous poem "Festus," has
said,
"Life's but a means unto an end; that end, Beginning, mean, and end to
all things, God."
This also I indorse. I believe that life is something inner, something
deeper than that which we ordinarily think of as constituting the
matters of chief concern regarding it. Let me quote two or three lines
again from Bailey's "Festus," familiar to you because so fine.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not
in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. "He most lives Who thinks most,
feels the noblest, acts the best."
What is human life, then? What is it for? The object of life is living.
But what does living mean? Most people cannot answer that question,
because they have never more than half lived, and consequently have
never appreciated its depth and significance. As I have had occasion
over and over and over again, to say to business men, and I like to say
it on every opportunity, it seems to me, as I look over the face of
society, that most people live only in some little fragmentary way,
some corner of their being.
Most men spend their lives in the attempt to accumulate the means to
live, and forget to begin to live at all. Sometimes, as you are riding
through the country on a winter evening, you come to a silent farm-
house, and you see one window lighted; and, if you should go and knock
at the door, you would probably find out that the light is shining from
the kitchen, where the family is gathered in the evening, perhaps as a
matter of economy to save fire, perhaps to save trouble. And, if you
examine the lives of these people, you would find that they live
chiefly in the kitchen. They may have a sitting-room where they spend a
few leisure hours; perhaps they have the beginning of a library; but
they do not spend much time in that. They have little opportunity for
the life of the parlor, representing the expansive, social human life
which comes into contact with other lives. And so you will find that
this, which is a figure, represents that which is true of most of us.
We have only begun to live; and we live in the lower ranges of our
nature, or perhaps we have touched life on a higher level in some
tentative sort of way. But the most of us are only partly alive, have
only developed a little of what is possible in us, have only come in
contact with some fragments of this wonderful universe that is all
around us on every hand.
What, then, is the meaning of life? What shall we try to do? What are
we here for? I do not attempt to go into the profound explanation of
mysteries too deep for me to answer, as to what must have been in the
mind of God when he planned and created this universe of which we are a
part. My task is a humbler one. Let us see if I can help you comprehend
a little part of it. Take an illustration.
An immensely wealthy man suddenly dies, leaving his estates to a little
boy seven or eight years of age. He has wide stretches of land, hill
and valley, river, woods, all that is beautiful as making up a
landscape. The house represents the accumulated resources of the
experiences and the intelligence of a lifetime. There are not only
beautiful drawing-rooms, telling of taste, but there is a library in
which is all that the world has been able to accumulate of learning, of
literature in every department. Here is another room containing
instruments of music and the works of the great composers. There is an
art gallery, containing some of the finest masterpieces in the way of
painting and sculpture; and then there is a room devoted to scientific
experiments,-- chemistry, the microscope, the telescope. Here are means
and opportunity for finding out what the world has so far developed.
Now has this young boy come into possession of these things? He has
inherited them, he is his father's heir. We say they belong to him; but
do they belong to him? In what sense and to what extent do they belong
to him? They belong to him just in so far and just as fast as he
develops himself into capacity of comprehension and enjoyment, no
faster, no farther. As he enters upon his inheritance then he is put
under tutors. Some man comes to teach him the languages which he does
not comprehend; and by and by that part of the library which is
composed of books written in other speech than his own begins to belong
to him. It belongs to the tutor a good deal more than it does to the
child, until the child has learned the lessons of the tutor. And so
another teacher comes to instruct him in art; and the masterpieces of
art belong to the person of taste, of culture, with appreciation, to
the teacher again, to any one who knows and who feels, instead of to
the boy, who merely has possession of the title-deeds.
Do you see the suggestion of the picture? Man wakes up here on this
planet what sort of a being? Not at first "a little lower than God," as
the old Psalmist says of him, but only a little higher than the
animals, ignorant of himself, ignorant of his surroundings, weak,
undeveloped in every faculty and power. He begins, we say, to live; and
what does that mean? He begins to explore this wonderful world, which
is his heritage; and do you not see that along with this exploration
there goes of necessity a process of self- development? I would pit
against that statement of Kant's a phrase something like this. The
object of life is threefold: it is to become all possible, it is to
serve all possible, it is to enjoy all possible. But I cannot outline
completely either one of these suggestions; for they blend, they
intermingle, as you will see in a moment. They are like different notes
in a piece of music that are so blended together that they constitute
one tune, while separate they are only fragments, or discords.
The first thing, then, if a man wishes really to live, is that he
should develop himself, unfold the faculties and powers which lie
dormant in him. He is a child of God. He is capable of comprehending
within his limit that which is divine. He is capable of being touched,
played on, by all the phases and forces of the universe surrounding
him. He is an instrument of ten thousand strings; and marvellous may be
the music of his life.
First, he should be as complete an animal as possible. Then he should
develop himself as a being capable of thinking, of knowing. How many
men are there that take possession of the intellectual realm that lies
around them on every hand? Just think. Let me hint suggestions,
illustrations, in one or two directions. A man goes out for a walk in
the park, or, better yet, into the country. The park is too artificial,
perhaps, to carry just the meaning that I have in mind. Let it be a
walk in the country, then. How much do the grasses and the flowers have
to say to him?
I have a friend in Washington, a famous botanist, a botanist not only
of all things that live and grow to-day, but who has pushed his
researches back and down into the prehistoric ages so as to understand
and explain the records, the prints, the leaves and twigs, the forms of
every kind that are on the rocks and left to tell the story of a life
that has passed away many thousands on thousands of years ago. How much
of all this marvellous realm, or even a suggestion of it, is revealed
to the ordinary man as he walks through the field?
Look in the direction of geology a moment. Here is a river course; here
is the shape of a hill top; do they say anything to the ordinary man
who walks with his head down, and occupied with some problem of Wall
Street, perhaps? Here are marvels of creative power. God shaped the
slope of that hill as really as though he smoothed it down with his
hand. And he who understands the methods of world building, of
landscape-sculpture, may stand in wonder and awe and reverence before
the forces that have been at work for millions of years, and are at
work the same to-day. How many men have even a conception of the
wonders of the microscopic world? To how many men do the star have
anything to say at night? A man looks at a bowlder, unlike any other
rock there is to be found anywhere in the neighborhood, and perhaps he
does not even ask a question about it; while a man who has made a
careful study of these things sees spring up before him in his
imagination that long ice age before man lived on the planet, when this
bowlder was swept from some far-off place by the glacial power,
deposited where it is, scraped on its surface by the passing of the
ice, as if God himself had left his sign-manual here, his autograph,
that he, in after- ages who might make himself capable of reading,
might understand.
These merely as fragmentary, brief hints of what it is to live in the
intellectual realm.
Go up to that realm where the intellect is blended with the emotions,
the glamour of pictures, poetry, sculpture, music, beauty of color and
form and sound. What a world this is, infinite resources of an infinite
universe, appealing to, and, if a man responds, calling out the
faculties and powers of his own nature that are capable of dealing with
these things, so that a man may feel that he is thinking over the
thoughts of God, tracing his footsteps, listening to the marvellous
music of his words! This is one of the results of self-development, if
a man is unfolding, developing himself, becoming as much as possible.
Now let us turn sharply to one of these other phases which I spoke of,
of doing what we can to help the world. And now note, this universe is
so cunningly contrived that a man cannot possibly be successful as a
selfish man. It is one of the most conclusive proofs, it seems to me,
not only of the divine goodness, but of the moral meaning and scope of
the world. Selfishness is not wicked only, it is the most outrageous
folly on the face of the earth. If a man develop himself, if he
develops that which is finest in him, that which is best and sweetest
and truest, he develops not only his power to think, but his capacity
to love, his capacity to enjoy, and to bestow enjoyment; and he cannot
possibly succeed in the long run, and in the best ways, on selfish
lines.
People used to have a notion that he who grasped and retained
everything he could get hold of was the fortunate, the successful man.
People had an idea in politics, for example, that that nation was
happiest which humbled other nations; and, if it was superior to all
the rest, by as much as they were poor and devastated, this nation was
fortunate. We know now that a nation finds its prosperity in that of
other nations, in its ability to exchange, to trade, to carry on all
the grand avocations of life with them. If a man writes a book, he
wants the world intelligent enough to understand and appreciate it. If
a man paints a picture, he wants artistic ability on the part of the
public, so that they will appreciate and buy his pictures. If a man
carves a statue, he wants the people to appreciate glory of form enough
to see how great and true his work is, and reward him for his endeavor.
In other words, no man would write a book, and go off with it alone by
himself. No man would paint a picture, and hide it. No man would carve
a statue, and conceal it from his fellows.
We have learned, and are learning constantly in every direction, that
our happiness is involved in the happiness of other people. The world
is haunted to-day and I thank God that it is with the thought of the
unhappiness, the misery, of men. What does it mean? It means that men
have developed so on their sympathetic side that they cannot be happy
themselves while the world is unhappy. So you see that this self-
development, which I placed as the chief thing at the outset in the
meaning of life, carries with it the necessity on the part of those who
are developed, of doing everything they can to develop and lift up
everybody else; so that making the most of yourself means making the
most of everybody else.
And now, if I turn for a moment to that other point, merely to
distinguish it by itself, although I have been dealing with it all the
while, the end and aim of life once more is to be happy. I am perfectly
well aware that the old Puritan theology has taught otherwise, so far
as this life is concerned. I was brought up with the feeling that, if I
wanted to do anything, the chances were it was wrong, that it was a
good deal more likely to be in the way of virtue if it was something
that was disagreeable to me. And yet, curiously enough, this old
Puritan theology invented and held up before men, as a lure to lead
them to virtue, the most tremendous bribe that ever entered into the
imaginations of men, eternal felicity on the one hand, and eternal woe
on the other. So that it conceded the very thing that it seemed to
deny, that men naturally and necessarily sought happiness, and could
not possibly do otherwise.
And so we learn to live, to think, to serve others. We are beginning to
learn also that this desire for happiness is natural, is necessary, is
right. If a man is not happy, you may be sure there is something wrong.
If there is pain in the body, it means disease, difficulty,
obstruction, something out of the way. It means that God's laws are not
perfectly kept. If there is pain up in the mental realm, pain in the
moral realm, pain in the spiritual realm, it means always something
wrong. Man ought to be happy. He ought to seek happiness as the great
end and outcome of human life.
And we are learning, as the natural and necessary result of our
experiences in knowing and in serving, that just in so far as we know
the laws of God, just in so far as we obey the laws of God, just in so
far as we help others to know and obey, just in so far there comes into
our lives the blessedness of the blessed God.
The end of life, then, the object of life here on earth, is to develop
ourselves to the utmost. It is to learn to know, take possession of our
inheritance, this earth, control all its forces for the service of
civilization. It is to rejoice in all this self-development, in all
this help, in all this knowledge, in all this power. It is to feel
ourselves thrilling with the consciousness that we are sons of God, and
are co-operating with him in bringing about the grand result of the
ages, the perfection of man.
And then what? Death? This is only one stage of our career. We are here
at school; we learn our lessons or we do not; we attain the ends we
seek after or we only partly attain them or do not attain them at all;
and then we go on. Does that mean that it ends there? I do not believe
it. I believe that it simply means that we go out into a larger
opportunity, from the planet to the system, to the galaxy, to the
universe, wider knowledge answering to more magnificent resources in
the infinite universe. We, with undeveloped powers that may increase
and advance forever, and a universe so complete, so exhaustless, that
it may match and lure and lead and rejoice us forever; we being trained
as God's children in God's likeness and helping others to attain the
same magnificent ends, this I believe to be the significance, the
meaning, the purpose, of life.
Are there any here this morning who think or fear that the taking away
of the old idea concerning the results of Lying may remove moral
motive, may undermine character, nay make people less careful to do
right? It seems to me hat, if people understand the significance of
this universe, and their relation to it, they will find that all the
carelessness of motive, the ease of salvation, as they call it, is with
the old idea. Our theory is a more strenuous and insistent one. Children
are learning as they become wiser that evil is not only evil, but it is
folly. A man wishes life, health, happiness, prosperity, all good. He
learns, as he goes on, that the universe is in favor of the keeping of
its own laws; and that, f he flings himself against the forces of the
universe, he is only broken for his pains. If you wish to be healthful,
sappy, strong, wish to attain any desirable thing, it is to be bound
not in defiance of the laws of the universe, but in loving and tender
obedience.
And, then, if you only remember that in this universe and coder the
universal law of cause and effect you are building to-morrow out of
to-day, and next week and next year, and all he future, that every
thought, every word, every action, is cemented together as a part of
this structure that you build, hat you can make your own future for
good or ill, and that you cannot build it successfully except in
accordance with he eternal laws of things, then you find that here are
the most insistent and tremendous motives it is possible for the human
mind to conceive.
This life of ours, if we lead it nobly and truly, then, we shall find
to be a growth into the likeness of the Divine, a growth into an
increasing opportunity to share the work of our Father in building and
helping men, and that, as the result of this, joy, infinite joy, is to
fill our hearts until we share the very blessedness of our Father.
God made our lives to be a song Sweet as the music of the spheres, That
still their harmonies prolong For him who rightly hears. The heavens
and the earth do play Upon us, if we be in tune: Winter shouts hoarse
his roundelay, And tender sweet pipes June. But oftentimes the songs
are pain, And discord mars our harmonies: Our strings are snapped by
selfish strain, And harsh hands break our keys. But God meant music;
and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing
roundelay, December answering June. God ever at his keyboard plays,
Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: "He that hath ears," and who
obeys, May hear the mystic song.