the guilty. And this leads us to another point of view. Pain is not
only punitive. It is also corrective and purgatorial. And this again
is a fact of ordinary experience, quite apart from the further
consideration of why it should be so. Among primitive races the
penalties of law, by the merely mechanical process of forcibly
restraining certain actions, slowly elevate the social tone. And as
men rise in the scale of development and begin to be a law to
themselves, the same process is continued within the individual mind.
The pains and penalties of evil doing, physical and mental, tend to
correct and purify the character; and when we say that men learn
wisdom by experience, we mostly mean by experience of something
painful. Of course, the most obvious form of this correction is that
in which the suffering can be recognised by the sufferer as merited,
because due to his own misdeeds. But apart from such causal
connection, what we call unmerited suffering exercises the same
influence in an even greater measure. Its forces, not being exhausted
in the work of neutralising past evil, are able to expand and expend
themselves in a positive direction, elevating, refining, dignifying
the character to an infinite degree. The men of sorrows are the men of
influence in every walk of life. Martyrdom is the certain road to
success in any cause. Even more than knowledge, pain is power. And all
this because it develops the latent capacities of our being as no
other influence can. It requires no mystic insight to see the truth of
this. However unable we may be to account for it, it is a fact of
everyday experience, visible to ordinary common sense. And this being
so, there is nothing of necessity unjust in what we call unmerited
suffering, not even in the sad inheritance by children of the results
of parental sin. For while the sight of the miserable entail may, if
rightly used, become the parent's punishment, its imposition may be
the child's call to higher things. True, like all other useful
agencies, it often fails of its end; but such failure is of the
problem of evil, not of the problem of pain.
And, lastly, with men, as with animals, suffering is largely
prophylactic. Bodily pain sounds the alarm bell of disease in time for
its removal. Mental and moral pain arrest the issues of ignorant or
evil courses before it is too late. While the desire to remove pain
from ourselves, or better still from others, is among the strongest
incentives of the scientific discoverer, the patriot, the
philanthropist. And though it may seem a fallacy to credit pain with
the virtues which spring from the desire for its removal, common sense
rises above logic and recognises the real value of a spur without
which many of our noblest activities would cease.
Now, though all these considerations naturally lead on into theology
for their further treatment, yet it should be noticed that they are in
no sense exclusively theological. The penal, the corrective, the
preventive, and the stimulating uses of pain are all recognised in the
average man's philosophy of life. Indeed, they are too obvious to need
dwelling on at any length. But the point to be noticed is, that taken
together, they cover a very great deal of ground. For it is hardly too
much to say that in one or other of its various aspects, every human
being has need of suffering for the due development of his character.
And this is a fact which should go far to outweigh much brilliant
declamation of the pessimists. Pessimism, in fact, stereotypes and
gives a fictitious permanence to what is only one among our many moods
of thought. It harps upon the fact that we naturally shrink from pain.
It ignores the fact that we are conscious of being the better for it,
and unable to conceive progress without it. And though these
considerations afford no solution to the speculative mystery of pain,
they make in the direction of a speculative solution. They do not
explain why pain exists, but they shew us that its existence, in the
only region in which we can really test it, is eminently useful, and
therefore consistent with providential and beneficent design. Their
precise logical relation to the Theistic argument might be put as
follows: Arguments drawn from many departments of life and thought
converge in favour of Theism, but one large and important department,
that of human suffering, blocks the way. When, however, we isolate and
examine that department, we find that even within its limits the
evidence of provident purpose is prominent, if not preponderant. Its
prominence is certainly enough to neutralize the negative bearing of
the department upon the general argument. Its preponderance, which
many if not most men would admit, carries us further and makes the net
evidence of the whole department an affirmative contribution to
Theism.
So far common sense carries us. But when we turn to the place of pain
in the religions of the world, two further thoughts are suggested. In
the first place, the belief in a future life, which is common to
almost all religions, at once opens endless vistas of possibility
before us. The pain which has failed to purify here, may yet purify
hereafter; the high-handed wrong-doing, which has seemed to go
unpunished here, may there meet with its righteous due. The pains
which we have thought excessive here, may there be found to have
worked out for us a far more exceeding weight of glory. And so the
particular difficulty which arises from the unequal incidence of
earthly suffering may one day find its adequate solution. No doubt
there is an element of truth in the familiar taunt that belief in a
future life has been a curse as well as a blessing to the world. In
some stages of culture, for example, the future life has been supposed
only to emphasize the inequalities of the present: the slave living on
in everlasting slavery, and the warrior in incessant war. But this has
been a partial and a passing phase of thought, which rapidly gave way
before more ethical conceptions. The ethical conceptions in their
turn, which were based on future rewards and punishments, confessedly
could not produce a very high type of morality. But they have filled
their place, and that a large one in the history of human development,
while even after ceasing to be the dominant motives, they still
witness to the ineradicable expectation of our race, that holiness and
happiness, sin and failure, shall one day coincide. More serious and
sad is the fact that distorted dreams of future punishment have often
reflected a lurid light upon the whole of life; goading zealots into
cruelty, sinners into madness, thinkers into unbelief; and have
lingered on, as savage survivals, even into Christian times, to the
hopeless obscuration, in many minds, of the creed that God is Love.
But even here we must draw distinctions. Early races express intensity
by an accumulation of material metaphors--fecundity by an hundred
breasts, omnipotence and omniscience by an hundred arms or a thousand
eyes. And so, when they saw the unrighteous man enjoy the fruits of
his unrighteousness, and die in unrebuked defiance of laws human and
divine, their sense of outraged justice could not but express itself
in terms of material horror. We have grown to be more pitiful, more
refined in our moral thinking, less dogmatic about unknown things: yet
neither our moral experience nor our Christianity has availed to
remove the dread of that unutterable 'pain of loss,' which the passing
of a soul in obdurate impenitence has ever suggested to the mind of
man. And however confidently therefore we may put aside the
distortions, and debasements, and interested exaggerations which have
darkened the thought of future punishment, we must remember that the
thought itself was no alien introduction into history; but due to the
instinctive craving of the human heart for justice; man's own
tremendous verdict on his sin[149]. But the universality, or at least
extreme generality of the belief in a continued existence, is quite
distinct from the particular pictures of it which the imagination has
variously drawn; much as the universality of conscience is distinct
from its varying content among diverse races and in different ages.
And the broad fact remains that from the dawn of history the majority
of mankind have believed in and looked with confidence to a future
life to rectify, and therefore justify, the inequalities of earthly
suffering; however much their views have varied as to what should
constitute rectification.
Secondly, there is an instinctive tendency in all religions, from the
savage upwards, to view pain, whether in the form of asceticism or
sacrifice, as inseparably connected with an acceptable service of the
gods or God. The asceticism of poor Caliban foregoing his little mess
of whelks, and that of the Hindoo whose meritorious sufferings are
expected to prevail, by intrinsic right with heaven; the hideous
holocausts of Mexico, and the paper substitutes for offerings of the
parsimonious or hypocritical Chinee are widely different things. But
they all spring from a common instinct, variously distorted, yet
persistent through all distortions, and progressively refined, till it
culminates in the Hebrew substitution of the broken heart for the
blood of bulls and of goats. It is the custom of some modern writers
to represent the higher forms of sacrifice as merely survivals of the
savage desire to propitiate the gods by food. But this is not an
adequate analysis even of the savage creed. Naturally enough the
primitive hunter, to whom food is the chief good, may think food the
worthiest offering to the gods. But it is not simply food, but his own
food, that he offers, the choicest morsel, that which it costs him
something to forego. In other words, the root of sacrifice is
self-sacrifice, however crudely it may be expressed. Of course, the
primitive hypocrite would seek to evade personal suffering as
naturally as the civilized hypocrite will give alms at another man's
expense. But sincerity must come before hypocrisy, and the sacrificial
instinct is in origin sincere. Its first account of itself may be
irrational, and its earlier manifestations often blundering and
repulsive; and if it were now only a survival, the same should be true
of its later forms, for survivals are not commonly improved in the
process of surviving. But so far from this being the case, it has been
refined by successive developments and is as integral an element of
later as of earlier religions, being in fact the symbolic statement
that a more or less painful self-surrender is the necessary condition
of all human approach to the divine. Natural religion then, in the
widest use of the term, carries us on beyond common sense, in
attributing a mysterious value to suffering here, and expecting an
explanation of its anomalies hereafter. The first belief may be called
mystical, the second hypothetical, and yet the two together have done
more to reconcile man to his burden of sorrow than all the philosophic
comments on the uses of adversity; for they have seemed to lift him,
though blindfold, into a loftier region, where he felt himself
inbreathing power from on high. And so here, as in other things,
natural religion leads on into Christianity.
The relation of Christianity to the problem of pain, may be best seen
by contrasting it with the empirical optimism of common sense.
Enlightened common sense, as we have seen, is fully aware of the uses
of sorrow; but it looks at the usefulness through the sorrowfulness,
as a compensation which should make the wise man content to bear his
pain. The change which Christianity has effected consists in the
reversal of this view of the subject. Once for all, it has put the
value before the painfulness in our thoughts. The Author and Finisher
of our faith, 'for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross,
despising the shame,' and 'our light affliction, which is but for a
moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding weight of glory, while we
look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are
unseen.' It bids us not wait 'till the sorrow comes with years,' but
take up our cross, from the first moment of our conscious
discipleship. And accordingly the real Christian looks at sorrow not
from without, but from within, and does not approach its speculative
difficulty till he is aware by experience of its practical power.
Consequently he cannot explain himself to the merely external critic.
He may urge in argument such general considerations as have been
touched upon above, and meet the pleas of pessimism with the
counterpleas of philosophic optimism; but if pressed for the inner
secret of his own serenity, he can only answer with the esoteric
invitation, 'Come and see.' Enter the dim sanctuary of sorrow through
the shadow of the Cross. Abide there, and as your eyes grow accustomed
to the darkness, the strange lines upon its walls which seemed at
first so meaningless, will group themselves into shapes and forms of
purposeful design.
Once for all the sinless suffering of the Cross has parted sin from
suffering with a clearness of distinction never before achieved. The
intellectual Greek had tended to confuse the two as kindred forms of
ignorance; the weary Oriental as kindred consequences of our
imprisonment in the body, 'the too too solid flesh;' the
self-righteous Jew viewed blindness, or death from a falling tower, as
evidence of exceptional sin. Everywhere in the ancient world the
outlines of the two were undefined, and their true relation of
antagonism misunderstood. But the sight of perfect sinlessness,
combined with perfect suffering, has cleared our view for ever. Sin
indeed always brings suffering in its train, but the suffering we now
see to be of the nature of its antidote; an antidote often applied
indeed with inexorable sternness, but in its intention wholly
merciful. Thus every sin has its appropriate suffering. Bodily
indulgence brings bodily disease; cruelty ends in cowardice; pride and
vanity in shame. And though the suffering of itself cannot convert the
sinner, it can and does prevent both the gratification and contagion
of the sin. Then comes the more terrible sorrow of remorse; and
remorse is potential penitence, and penitence potential purification.
But while sin thus involves suffering, suffering does not involve sin.
It is not only an antidote, but one of those antidotes which taken in
time is prophylactic. And this is not only true of the pains of
self-denial and self-sacrifice, the voluntary bearing of the cross,
but of many an involuntary sorrow also. Delicate health, Plato's
bridle of Theages, inherited pain, privation, bereavement, may all
refine the character and train the spiritual eye to that purity of
heart that shall see God. Pain in fact, in its manifold methods, is
like the angel of the Eastern story, changing its form incessantly to
cope with the shifting shapes of sin, and passing by turns into a
lion, a bird, a sword, a flood, a flame, in sleepless eagerness to
follow and find, and slay and quench and burn away the least last
lingering particle of evil. So far from being our enemy it is our
safest ally in the battle of life, and we fail through shrinking from
the stern alliance. We suffer because we sin; but we also sin because
we decline to suffer.
Still, the very sharpness of the severance between sin and suffering
on the Cross forces upon us the further question--Why should the
sinless suffer? The vicarious suffering of Christ is said to conflict
with our sense of justice. And it does so, as misrepresented in much
popular theology. But rightly viewed, it is the climax and complete
expression of the process to which we owe the entire evolution of our
race. The pleasures of each generation evaporate in air; it is their
pains that increase the spiritual momentum of the world. We enter into
life through the travail of another. We live upon the death of the
animals beneath us. The necessities, the comforts, the luxuries of our
existence are provided by the labour and sorrow of countless
fellow-men. Our freedom, our laws, our literature, our spiritual
sustenance have been won for us at the cost of broken hearts, and
wearied brains, and noble lives laid down. And this is only the human
analogue of that transference of energy by which all life and movement
is for ever carried on. The sun is so much the cooler by the heat it
daily gives to earth; the plant and tree the weaker by the force that
has matured their fruit; the animal generations exhausted in
continuing their kind. And how should their Creator draw all men unto
Him, but through the instrumentality of His own great law of
sacrifice? If we shrink from our share in the conditions of the solemn
legacy, it is easy to persuade ourselves that the system of things is
wrong. But if we accept it, and resolve that we too in our turn will
spend and be spent for others, we find beneath all the superficial
suffering the deep truth of the benediction, 'It is more blessed to
give than to receive.' And in the experience of that benediction we
see further still into the mysterious significance of sorrow.
Further; but not yet to the end. For the human heart desires more than
merely to work for others. It desires to be one with those for whom it
works. Love is the highest form of that unity; but even short of
actual love, we instinctively crave communion and sympathy with our
kind. And it is no morbid view of life to say that sorrow brings about
this union in a way that joy does not. There is something, under our
present conditions, in the very expansiveness of joy which
dissociates, while sorrow seems to weld us, like hammer strokes on
steel. It is the nationality whose members have together struggled for
existence, the soldiers who have faced the shock of battle side by
side, the persecuted party, the husband and wife who have known common
suffering that are most intimately, indissolubly one. Nor is this
union merely negative like the bond which fellow-prisoners feel, and
yet would eagerly escape from if they could. It is due to a distinct
sense that the common crisis has aroused all that is highest and
noblest and most spiritual, and therefore most sympathetic in the
soul.
But again, it is only in the light from the Cross, that we can see why
pain should possess this power. For in that light we understand how
pain unites us to each other, because, as even natural religion dimly
felt, it unites us to God, and therefore through Him to those who in
Him live and move and have their being. It unites us to God because it
purifies us, because it detaches us from earth, because it quickens
our sense of dependence, because it opens our spiritual vision, and
above all because He too, as man, has suffered. But the mystics who
have seen furthest into heavenly things have felt that it unites us to
God in still more vital wise, as being, at least in its form of
sacrifice, the very beating of the heart of love. And so they have
raised the question,--Has it not an antitype far in the illimitable
depths of the unseen? For we are told that God is Love; and love, as
we know it, must be shewn in sacrifice; though the sacrifice grows
painless in proportion as the love is pure. And when we recall how in
the days of our Lord's ministry on earth, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
bore their witness each to other, but no one of the Holy Persons ever
to Himself, we are led on to wonder whether 'in the light that no man
can approach unto,' where the Three are One, some higher analogue of
what we call sacrifice does not for ever flame; whose radiant
reflection on the universe only becomes shadow when it falls on a
world of sin. But however these high things may be, the simplest
Christian feels and knows that, in his present state, the unitive way,
the way to union with both God and man, is the 'via dolorosa,' the way
of the cross:--a serious and solemn belief, which is very far from
leading to complacency, in presence of the awful spectacle of animal
and human pain; but still is based on sufficient experience to justify
the hope that all its mystery will be one day solved. More than this
we do not expect, for the intellect, in our Christian view, is as much
on its probation and as liable to error as the will; and inordinate
curiosity not less misleading than inordinate desire.
[148] Butler, _Analogy_.
[149] Cf. pp. 514-16.
IV.
_PREPARATION IN HISTORY FOR CHRIST._
EDWARD S. TALBOT.
The paradox of Divine mystery implied in the words 'The Word was made
flesh,' is not exhausted by a right understanding of the Person of
Christ. It extends to the relations between Christ and History. On the
one hand, the Incarnation of the Son of God appears as supreme,
solitary, unique, transcending all analogies of experience, all
limitations of nationality or generation, determined before the world
was, beyond the power of any antecedents to produce, the entry of a
new thing into the world. It appears, in short, as a miracle. But, on
the other hand, it appears as an historical event, occurring at a
particular date, appealing to the feelings and fulfilling the hopes of
the time, a climax and a new point of departure in the historical
order. It does this, necessarily, because this is involved in the act
of taking flesh, of entering simply, literally, naturally into the
conditions of human life. Such a thing occurs, and must occur, in the
natural order. To say this is not to dictate what a Divine revelation
must be, but only to shew what Christianity asserts of itself. In this
way it was good in God's sight that His revelation should come.
It follows from this, in the first place, that there must be two ways,
both valid and necessary, of approaching in thought and study Christ
manifest in the flesh. We may treat the fact of His appearing with
little or no reference to historical relations, for its own inherent
unchanging truth and meaning. We may also treat it as clothed in
historical event, to be understood in its relations with what went
before and followed after and stood around. The two methods supplement
one another. It may be true that the simple personal claim which the
solitary figure of Jesus Christ makes upon us, by its unalterable
moral dignity and beauty, its typical humanity, its unearthly
authority, is the strongest that can be made: none the less may that
claim be confirmed and reinforced if we see the same figure as it were
upon an historical throne; if it should become clear that what went
before (and what followed after) does, in any way, pay homage to Him;
if the _manner_ of His appearing in place and time be calculated to
heighten the impression which the _fact_ of it makes.
And in the second place, it follows that to start in any historical
treatment of the subject of this paper from the central twofold
assertion as to Christ, made by S. John in the phrase 'The Word was
made flesh,' is to obtain at once the right clue to the lines which it
should follow.
(1) To do so is not to beg the question or to fetter the enquiry, but
only to define what kind of evidence, if any, the study of Christ's
relation to foregoing history can yield. We see that it must be such
as works in us the conviction that He both does, and does not, occur
'naturally' at the time and place when He appeared; that history leads
up to Him and prepares His way, and yet that no force of natural
antecedents can account for Him or for His work. It is true that
evidence for either side of this two-sided impression may have
sufficient weight to determine faith especially with individual minds.
The contrast between Christ and all else in history, arresting the
attention and suggesting the thought of special Divine presence, may
of itself be a spring of faith: or, upon the other hand, a clear
discernment of His natural supremacy in history may lead a man on to
higher truth. But the true evidence, as corresponding to the true and
full claim, will be that which suggests the conclusion with
simultaneous and equal force from either side.
(2) If the aim is not evidence but instruction, and we desire simply
to understand better what is true of our Lord's relation to history,
it will still advantage us greatly to start from the same point. We
shall be able to recognise freely and without fear of contradiction or
confusion, on the one side, the way in which the lines of history, of
human experience, aspiration, achievement, character, need, lead up to
Christ and issue in Him: and on the other, the unearthly and peculiar
greatness of Him Who spake as never man spake, Who taught as one that
had authority and not as the Scribes, Who was not convinced by any of
sin: Whose daily intimacy with a disciple issued in that disciple's
confession, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.' Such a
method, starting from the Christian claim, and trying to trace out all
that it involves, need not be only for the believer, any more than the
quest for evidence or witness is for those only who do not believe.
The Christian tests the foundations, and welcomes every corroboration,
of his faith: while, in dwelling on the character of the work and of
its relations to all else, the non-believer may come to find the
conviction grow upon him that it was indeed 'wrought of God.'