It very often happens to us that to reach any notable result, either
in life or in insight, is even thereby to introduce ourselves to a new
problem. In the present state of the undertaking of these lectures
such is our experience. The religious insight whose source is the
loyal spirit was our topic in the foregoing lecture. If my own view is
correct, this source is by far the most important that we have yet
considered. It unites the spirit and the meaning of all the foregoing
sources. Rightly interpreted, it points the way to a true salvation.
Yet the very last words of our sketch of the fruits of loyalty were of
necessity grave words. Intending to show through what spirit man
escapes from total failure, we were brought face to face with the
tragedies which still beset the higher life. "Adversity"--poor
Griselda faced it in the tale. We left the loyal spirit appearing to
us--as it does appear in its strongest representatives, able, somehow,
in the power that is due to its insight, to triumph over fortune. But
side by side with this suggestion {214} of the nature of that which
overcomes the world stood the inevitable reminder of the word: "In
this world ye shall have tribulation."
How is tribulation related to religious insight? That is our present
problem. It has been forced upon our attention by the study of the
place and the meaning of loyalty. Some understanding of this problem
is necessary to any further comprehension of the lessons of all the
foregoing sources of insight, and is of peculiar significance for any
definition of the office of religion.
To nearly all of us, at some time in our lives, and to many of us at
all times, the tragic aspect of human life seems to be a profound
hindrance to religious insight of any stable sort. I must here first
bring more fully to your minds why this is so--why the existence of
tragedy in human existence appears to many moods, and to many people,
destructive of faith in any religious truth and a barrier against
rational assurance regarding the ultimate triumph of anything good.
Then I want to devote the rest of this lecture to showing how sorrow,
how the whole burden of human tribulation, has been, and reasonably
may be, not merely a barrier in the way of insight, but also a source
of religious insight. And this is the explanation of the title of the
present lecture.
{215}
I
We approach our problem fully mindful of the limitations to which the
purpose of these lectures confines us. The problem of evil has many
metaphysical, theological, moral, and common-sense aspects upon which
I can say nothing whatever in the present context. Human sorrow
appears in our pathway in these lectures as a topic for us to
consider, first, because whatever source of religious insight we have
thus far consulted has shown us man struggling with some sort of ill,
and, secondly, because there are aspects of this very struggle which
will provide us with a new source of religious insight, and which will
thus tend to throw new light upon the meaning of all the other
sources. A thorough-going study of the problem of evil would require
of us a complete philosophy not only of religion but of reality. But
we are limiting ourselves, in these discussions, to a survey of
certain sources.
The reasons why the existence and the prominence of evil in human life
seem to all of us at some times, and to many of us at all times, a
hindrance to the acceptance of any religious solution of the problems
of life are familiar. I need then only to remind you what they are.
Without going into any subtleties regarding the definition of evil, it
is obvious that our first characteristic reaction when we meet with
what we take {216} to be an evil is an effort to get rid of it, to
shun its presence, or to remove it from existence. Pain, cold, burning
heat, disease, starvation, death, our enemies, our dangers, these are
facts that, precisely so far as we find them evil, we face with the
determination to annul altogether their evil aspect.
A characteristic result of this tendency appears in the fact that man,
who of all animals is most clearly aware of the presence of evil in
his world, is for that very reason not only an ingenious deviser of
new inventions for getting good things and for supplying his needs,
but is also the most destructive of animals. He wars with his natural
surroundings, and still more with his fellow-men, in ways that show
how the instinctive aversions upon which his estimates of evil are
founded are reinforced by the habits which he forms in his contests
with ill fortune. Man the destroyer of evil thus appears, in much of
his life, as a destroyer who is also largely moved by a love of
destruction for its own sake. This love plays a great part in the
formation of even very high levels of our social and moral
consciousness. The heroes of song and story, and often of history as
well, are fascinating partly, or chiefly, because they could kill and
did so. We love victory over ill. Killing seems to involve such a
victory. So we love killing, at least in the hero tales. The result is
often a certain inconsistency. The gods offered Achilles the choice
between a short life full of the glorious slaying of enemies and a
long life of {217} harmless obscurity. He chose the short life; and
therefore he is to be remembered forever. For even when he would not
fight, his "destructive wrath sent the souls of many valiant heroes to
Hades, and left themselves a prey to the dogs and birds of the air."
And when he returned to battle, what became of Hector? The song of the
Nibelungs opens by assuring us that the old stories tell of many
wonders, and of heroes worthy of praise _(von Helden lobebaeren)_,
and of great labours _(von grosser Arebeit)_. These "great labours"
consisted mainly in the slaying of other men. And this slaying was
obviously "worthy of praise"; for it gave us a model for all our own
struggle with evil. As for the heroes of history, of course, we love
to dwell upon their constructive labours. But, after all, what sort of
comparison is there in what the plain man, apart from a higher
enlightenment, usually calls glory, between Washington and Napoleon?
No doubt there will always be admirers of Napoleon who will think of
him as a misunderstood reformer labouring for the building up of an
ideal Europe. But even such admirers will join with the plain man in
dwelling, with especial fascination, upon the Napoleon of Austerlitz.
And they will not forget even Borodino. No doubt the lovers of
Washington find him glorious. But where, in his career, belongs the
glory of having put an end to the Holy Roman Empire, or of having
destroyed the polity of the Europe of the old maps?
{218}
Man the destroyer thus glories in his prowess, and adores the heroes
who were the ministers of death. And since, of course, his warfare is
always directed against something that he takes to be an evil, the
principle which directs his glorious conflicts seems to be one easy of
general statement, inconsistent as some of the reasonings founded upon
it seem to be. This principle is: "All evil ought to be destroyed.
There ought to be none. It should be swept out of existence."
Of course, when the principle of the warfare with evil is thus
abstractly stated, it does not tell us what we are to regard as an
evil. It leaves the wise estimate of good and evil to be learned
through a closer study of the facts of life. No doubt, then, Achilles,
and the other heroes of song and story, may have become as glorious as
they are by reason of our excessive love of destruction due to some
imperfect estimate of the true values of life. And therefore the mere
statement of the principle leaves open a very wide range for
difference of opinion and for inconsistency of view as to what it is
that ought to be destroyed. The natural estimate of the plain man,
when he loves the heroes of old, seems to imply that one of the chief
ills that man ought to destroy usually takes the form of some other
man. And this way of estimating men in terms of their success in
killing other men has its obvious inconsistencies. But, after all, as
one may insist, much is gained when we have made up our minds as to
what {219} ought to be done with evil, whether evil is incorporated in
our enemies, in our pains, or in our sins. We may leave to advancing
civilisation, or perhaps to some triumph of religion, the correction
of our excessive fondness for the destruction of human life. What is
essentially important is that it is part of man's mission to destroy
evil. And about this general teaching the saints and the warriors, so
it seems, may well agree.
Religion, it may be said, can have nothing to urge against this
fundamental axiom. So far all appears clear. Evil ought to be driven
out of the world. Common-sense says this. Every struggle with climate
or with disease or with our foes is carried on in this spirit. The
search for salvation is itself--so one may insist--simply another
instance of this destructive conflict with impending ills. All that is
most elemental in our hatreds thus agrees with whatever is loftiest in
our souls, in facing evils with our "everlasting No." All the
differences of moral opinion are mere differences as to what to
destroy. Man is always the destroyer of ill.