time evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of God," waiting our
perception and response. The soldier of the Great War, having faced
death and imprisonment and suffering in many forms says, "compared with
the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow." The first evidence
of good in our own day is the almost universal discontent with evils and
the desire to find a better way. The humility which recognizes that so
widespread a condition cannot be the fault of any one nation or group
but is rather the responsibility of each one of us, is cause for hope.
Some of us believe that war can breed only war, hatred only hatred; that
governments cannot make peace, but can only cause cessation of open
hostilities, and that the real peace, the Great Peace, must await the
action of the Spirit. This Spirit, of love and forgiveness, breeds love
and forgiveness, indeed is far more potent than the spirit of hate.
Because of this very strength and potency its evidences are not so
immediately apparent, but they are deeper-rooted. Perhaps in this
material sphere we human beings must see, and to a certain extent
experience, hate, before we can really know love, and consciously and
freely choose it. When that choice is made, when we, knowing all that
hate and evil and malice can accomplish, yet deliberately choose to love
our enemies, we have slain the Adversary and made hate and evil
powerless. Of course we have not power of ourselves to do this but only
through the grace of God. When we try God's way, not waiting for the
other person to reform or to be generous or to speak gently or to
forgive, then and only then do we deserve the name of Christians; then
and only then are we walking in love; then and only then are we really
praying effectually "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it
is in Heaven." We have tried the way of the world, the way of reprisals,
the way of distrust, and, thank God, we are none of us satisfied with
the results. Perhaps now we may be ready to try the way of God by making
the great adventure of faith, each one in his own person; faith in
himself and faith in the future. The way of the world has bred fear that
has issue in hate, and hate that has issue in fear; but the better way,
that of faith, breeds trust that has issue in fellowship, and fellowship
that has issue in trust. There is no problem of labour, of politics, of
society that is insoluble if once it is approached in the spirit of
faith and fellowship and trust, but none of these is susceptible of
solution where the controlling motives are hate, distrust and fear. The
modern policy of centralization and segregation has resulted in dealing
with men as groups and not as individuals. When, for example, iron-bound
cults (they are no less than this) meet as "capital" and as "labour,"
both merge the individuality of their members in a thing which has no
real or necessary existence but is an artificial creation of thought
operating under the dominion of ephemeral, almost accidental conditions.
As a member of an "interest" or a cult, where humanity and personality
are, so to speak, "in commission," a man does not hesitate to do those
things he would never think of doing for himself, knowing them to be
selfish, cruel, unjust and uncharitable. A case in point--if we need
one, which is hardly probable since they are of daily occurrence--is the
pending contest between the mine operators and mine workers in Great
Britain, where both parties, with Government thrown in, are guilty of
maintaining theories and perpetrating acts for which an individual would
be, even now, excoriated and outlawed. The Irish imbroglio is another
instance of the same kind.
In a personal letter from a consulting engineer who has had unusual
opportunities, by reason of his official position, to come closely in
contact with the conditions governing industry and finance both in
America and Europe since the war, I find this illuminating statement of
a matured judgment. "As a practical matter, and facing the issue, I
would preach the practice of de-centralization in government and
business which will in time develop the individual and accomplish the
desired end. * * * Decentralization should be carried to such an extent
that the units of business would be of such size that the head could
again have a personal relation with each individual associated with him.
* * * With the personal relation again established, unionism as at
present practiced would again be unnecessary, and the unions would
become once more guilds for the development and advancement of the
individual." It is this nullification of the human element, of the
person as such, the introduction of the gross aggregate with its
artificial corporate quality, and the attempt to establish a
correspondence between these unnatural things, the whole being
intensified by the emotions of fear, distrust and hate, which produces
the contemporary insistence on "rights" and the rank injustice, cruelty
and disorder that follow the blind contest. To quote again from the
soldier who achieved illumination through the recent war, "My friends,
there is no protection of rights in heaven. When we speak of rights we
are blinded by the light of this world of rule and order and
intellectual conceits. It is not justice we need, it is mercy."
If we honestly endeavour to bring about something more nearly
approaching the Kingdom of God on earth, we should do well to achieve a
little more of the quality of child-like trust which knows that through
the petition to father or mother, or to a guardian angel, or directly to
God, the result will surely follow. We long passionately to see a good,
_our_ good as we see it, accepted here and now, but whatever we offer,
no mater how righteous or how salutary, is but a small part of the great
good, a limited and partial showing forth of only one element, while the
final and comprehensive good is the result of many contributions, and in
the end is not ours, but God's, and by His overruling providence it may
look very unlike what we had predetermined and anticipated. Moreover,
the condition even of our own small good becoming effective, is _faith,_
and neither sight nor action. There is a faith that can move mountains,
and it is faith in fellowship, in the underlying, indestructible good in
man, above all in the desire and the intent of God to deal mercifully
with us and beyond the dictates of justice and the claims of our own
deserts. When we know and accept this power of faith, placing it above
the efficiency of our own feeble works, then indeed we may become the
patient, hopeful, joyful and faithful Christians we were intended to be,
and therefore the creators of the spirit of peace. Nothing permanent can
be achieved except in coöperation with God; any work of man alone (or of
the devil) has in it the seed of decay and must perish, This knowledge
relieves us of the gloomy responsibility of destroying or trying to
destroy every evil thing we see or think we see. If it is really evil it
is already dying unless nourished by evil within ourselves. Here is a
Buddhist legend which has a lesson for each of us--"The watcher in the
shrine of Buddha rushed in to the Holy Fathers one morning with tidings
of a horrible demon who had usurped the throne of our Lord Buddha. The
Fathers ran to the throne room, each one more infuriated than the other,
and declaimed against the insolence of the demon, who grew huger and
more hideous at every angry word that hurtled through the air. At last
arrived the oldest and most saintly of the monks and threw himself on
his knees before the demon and said, "We thank thee, O Master, for
teaching us how much anger and wrath and jealousy was still hidden in
our hearts." At every word he said, the demon grew smaller and smaller
and at last vanished. He was am Anger-Eating Demon, and anger-rousing
words and even thoughts of ill-feeling nourished him.
The belief that in comparison with the depth of good in the world the
evil is shallow may also be expressed in the statement that God is Lord
of Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil
spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear
as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by
self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so
common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the
illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of
light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action;
snap-judgment at short range; compromise with the spirit of the time in
the interest of "good business," "practical considerations" or "sound
policy"; worship of the doctrine of "get results," acceptance of the
horrible principle: that it is every man's business to "sell" something
to another, from a patent medicine or "gilt edged" bonds to a new
philosophy or an old religion; the estimating of values by size, number,
cost. It is common parlance among Christian people to speak of what a
man "is worth" meaning how much money he has. We speak of a man's
"making a living" meaning only how much money he makes, when by making
only money he would be killing his living. Do we not speak of the call
of a missionary from an unshepherded flock to a large city parish as a
call to "a wider sphere of usefulness"? When you or I conceive of any
piece of work as "important" is it not because it involves either great
numbers or great sums of money? Then we hear much today of the need for
leaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lack
exist, in part, because we have forgot that the Christian's first duty
is to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can God
(not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader? These are
small matters, you may say, but "straws show which way the wind blows,"
and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters.
Every life is made up largely of small things, "the little, nameless
unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which some one has called
"the noblest portion of a good man's life."
With this brief glance at some of the possible manifestations of the
spirit of evil which we believe to be temporary and therefore of
secondary importance only, let us consider some of the requisites of the
Christian life as exemplified in the life of Christ, especially those of
which we need to be reminded today. We have already spoken of that
child-likeness which takes the faith simply and applies it to the common
things of daily life--Christ's life of ministry, of good works (which
was, in proportion to the time given to preparation for activity and
preaching, of very short duration), full of injunctions to those who
were with him to "tell no man"; therefore the good works which are done
"in His likeness" must not be done in public. If we are "seen of men,"
verily we have our reward. Christ's life ended in apparent failure, in
ignominious death on the cross. The world worships today's success and
immediate publicity, the Christian, to be worthy of his Lord, must
accept apparent failure and must offer his best work in secret: "And my
Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." A touching poem
of Francis Thompson's pictures the marveling of a soul on his rewards in
Paradise which, in his humility, he thinks undeserved. The man asks of
God:
_O when did I give Thee drink erewhile,
Or when embrace Thine unseen feet?
What gifts Thee give for my Lord Christ's smile,
Who am a guest here most unmeet?_
and is answered
_When thou kissedest thy wife and children sweet
(Their eyes are fair in my sight as thine)
I felt the embraces on My feet.
(Lovely their locks in thy sight and Mine.)_
A necessary reminder of the fact that for each of us, charity, which is
love, begins at home, and that we love and serve God best in His holy
human relationships--if we love not our brother whom we have seen how
can we love God whom we have not seen?
Again, the individual Christian life must, like its Great Original,
suffer for others. When we suffer as a result of our own wrongdoing we
are but meeting our just reward; but if patiently and humbly and
voluntarily we bear pain, even unto death, for others, we are
transcending justice, the pagan law, and exemplifying mercy, the
Christian virtue. No sensitive soul in this generation, conscious of the
sacrifice of the millions of young lives who "stormed Heaven" in their
willingness to die that others might live, can doubt this. The essence
of love is sacrifice; voluntary, nay eager sacrifice. Before our Blessed
Lord died He was mocked and ridiculed, He suffered physical hardship,
falling under the weight of the cross, and He was lifted up, crucified,
to suffer the ignominious death of a felon. He was made a spectacle for
the jests and laughter of the multitude. In our own time and amongst
ourselves, except for periods of war, there is little necessity for
physical suffering for our faith, but the need to endure ridicule is as
great as ever, perhaps even greater because of the absence of physical
suffering. Since we are trying to apply these things in small and simple
ways to the individual life let us each one consider how much moral
courage it takes to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered at
under the guise of "jokes." Let us exercise charity by not quoting
instances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship,
which are both gifts of God, and see that we do not confuse pagan
pleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognition
of the absurd in ourselves and in others. It is Mr. Chesterton again who
points out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like which
he calls the "sad virtues" were superseded, when the great Christian
revelation came, by the "gay and exuberant virtues," the virtues of
grace, faith, hope and charity; and who says, "the pagan virtues are the
reasonable virtues, and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity
are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be. Charity means
pardoning what is unpardonable or it is no virtue at all. Hope means
hoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all. And faith
means believing the incredible or it is no virtue at all." If you say
this is a paradox I reply: it must be so, since it requires faith to
accept a paradox. The realm of reason is the one in which we walk by
sight, and of this fact our age in its pride of intellect has need to be
reminded. If Christ be not the Son of God, and His revelation of the
"faith once delivered" be not the divine and final guide, fulfilling,
completing and at the same time reversing every other ethic, religion
and moral code, then these things be indeed foolishness, for there is no
explaining them on the ground of logic or philosophy. But if, by the
gift of grace, we have faith, we remember "I thank Thee, Father, that
Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed
them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight."
Again, and if as persons we are to grow in relationship to a personal
God, we must both speak and listen to our Father; in other words we must
use the great dynamic of prayer. "More things are wrought by prayer than
this world dreams of." We are told that one of the requisites of the
really good talker is to be a good listener; the apparently good talker
is in reality a monologuist. In our prayer-life today do we recognize
sufficiently the need for _listening_ to God? We are perhaps ready
enough to ask for blessings and mercies, but that is only a part of the
full life of prayer which must include also thanksgiving, lifting of the
heart and mind, and quiet listening or interior prayer. There was an age
in the world when this interior prayer was so much more joyful and
natural a thing than the world of matter that it had to be taught "to
labour is to pray." Today, when we accept the necessity of labour, and
even worship activity for its own sake, do we not need to be reminded
that to pray is to labour? If you doubt this, try to make that
concentrated form of prayer known as meditation, out of which springs a
resolve and determination to do better; try to do this faithfully for
fifteen minutes a day and it may prove the hardest work you have ever
undertaken. A great servant of God has said, "I believe no soul can be
lost which faithfully practices meditation for fifteen minutes a day."
Nor must we forget that in this work of prayer we are companioned by the
Holy Spirit, the Peace-maker, Who maketh intercession for us "with
groanings which can not be uttered" and "Who leads us ever gently but
surely into that closer communion with God whose result is life more
abundant." After prayer it is easier to realize that "to be spiritually
minded is life and peace"; it is easier to obey the injunction "And
grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of
redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and
evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice, and be ye kind one
to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for
Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." And for those that seek after peace
it must be _all_ wrath, _all_ anger and _all_ evil speaking which are
put away: This leaves no room for what the world calls "just wrath"
"righteous anger," or speaking evil of evil doers. Let us call to mind
the incident in the early life of St. John, afterwards the great
disciple of love, when he wanted to call down wrath on the wicked
inhabitants of a city and was rebuked by Our Lord who said, "Ye know not
in what spirit ye speak." After love had supplanted wrath, and the good
spirit had taken the place of the evil in St. John's heart, he was sent
to convert the people he would have destroyed. Yes, it is the spirit
that matters, the wrath that is wrong and that must be put away before
we can love God or our neighbour as ourself, for the fruit of the Spirit
is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance.
When we understand that the object of life and of education is the
creation of a spirit and not the doing of things, we are freed from the
tyranny of results in this world as a final test and come to realize
that judgment belongs only to God Who as a Spirit judges the effort.
Of course this does not mean that we are freed from the moral law, that
certain evil things in ourselves and in others are not always the
results of an evil spirit, but rather that in addition to avoiding and
shunning those things which are obviously evil, we must with equal care
avoid doing even good things in a bad spirit. The commandments still
stand, the moral law is abated not one jot, but in Christianity and in
Christianity alone are we given power to fulfill the law and to add the
new commandment, the summing up of them all, of love to God and man. No
human soul comes into the world without some desire to be good, because
each human soul is a child of God. To each one, not blinded by pride
(and surely it should be easy in these days to be humble) comes, sooner
or later, the realization of his own inability of himself to do what he
would, the need for a power outside himself, the power which is
available and of which we have heard "I am come that ye might have life
and more abundantly." Let us examine how the apostles set about living
this abundant life. In Dr. Genung's "The Life Indeed" we read, "One and
all they made it a matter of the spirit that is the man, but the spirit
they recognized was not an abstraction, or a theory, but a present
Person and helper who was witnessing with their spirits. St. John makes
the matter equally definite: 'The Son of God,' he says, 'was manifest
that he might destroy the works of the Devil,' and St. Paul, mindful of
the inner subtleties of the conflict, warns his readers that Satan has
changed his tactics and has transformed himself into an angel of light.
I am not sure that we have gained greatly by letting our notions of
spiritual life grow dim and abstract. Perhaps for this very reason the
rebellious, negative, designing spirit that is so prone to invade the
hearts of us all is the more free to gain a foot-hold and go about
controlling the tone of our life. There is real advantage in bringing
the large issues of life to a point where not only our mind but, as it
were, our senses, can lay hold on them. It is the impulse of
simple-minded men like those early disciples, and if we continue
straight-seeing we do not outgrow it. What makes these views of life so
deep is not that they are less simple than those of others, but that
they are more simple. To St. John the reality that has come to win the
world is not the promise of salvation, or prophecy of an eventual life
eternal, but just life without modification or limitation, life
absolute, full-orbed, pulsating through worlds seen and unseen alike. 'I
am the Life,' he makes Christ say, not, 'I am working to secure it.' St.
John it is who preserves to us that conception of eating the Flesh and
drinking the Blood of the Son of Man. No philosopher in the world, we
may roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually is
thus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughly
incorporated with our blood and breath. He it is who identifies the most
inner values of life with the simplest acts and experiences, reducing it
to terms of eating bread and drinking water, and walking in daylight,
and bearing fruit like the branches of a vine and following like sheep
the voice of a shepherd, and entering a door and finding pasture."
Let us cease trying materialistic and intellectual means for supplying
the power to live the spiritual life and let us each one establish the
needful relationship with the true source of power. May our time not be
likened to the Oriental traveler, who, appreciating the convenience and
force of electricity as seen in a room he occupied, fitted his palace,
on his return, with a set of elaborate fixtures and was surprised to
find no illumination therefrom! We are torches who can not shine in
themselves, but who, when connected with the great central Source of
Power, the Blessed Trinity in its three glorious manifestations, can
show forth the light of the world. Christians should be torch bearers,
and the true torch bearer lights not his own path so much as the path of
those who come after him. And this brings us to the fundamental reason
for personal responsibility. Our motive in seeking personal
righteousness it not, as might hastily be thought, because of a selfish
desire to save our own souls, or to withdraw either here or hereafter
from other souls, but for "their sakes" to sanctify ourselves; for the
lives we live today create the spiritual atmosphere of tomorrow.
From Spain come the following suggestive thoughts in regard to the value
of the person. "The individual is the real purpose of the universe. We
may seek the hero of our thought in no philosopher who lived in flesh
and blood, but in a being of fiction and of action, more real than all
the philosophers. He is Don Quixote. One cannot say of Don Quixote that
he was strictly idealistic. He did not fight for ideas: he was of the
spirit and he fought for the spirit. Quixotism is a madness descended
from the madness of the cross; therefore it is despised by reason; Don
Quixote will not resign himself to either the world or its truth, to
science or logic, to art or aesthetics, to morals or ethics. And what
did he leave behind him? one may ask. I reply that he left himself, and
that a man, a man living and immortal, is worth all theories and all
philosophies. Other countries have left us institutions and books: Spain
has left soul. St. Theresa is worth all institutions whatever, or any
'Critique of Pure Reason.'"
Yes, this is I think the lesson we have to learn, now at this turning
point in history with the epoch of intellect crumbling about our ears,
and the great World's Fair of multiplied, ingenious mechanisms we have
called "modern civilization" at a point of practical bankruptcy. It is
the spirit that counts, the soul of "man living and immortal," and only
through our own living, and the spiritual force that we can command, and
through ourselves apply, shall we be able to compass that social
regeneration that is the only alternative to social degeneration and
catastrophe. The man who does not live his belief is powerless to redeem
or to create, though he were a Solon, a Charlemagne, a Napoleon or a
Washington; the man who lives his belief, even if he is a mill-hand in
Fall River, is contributing something of energizing force to the task of
re-creation. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the
Lord of Hosts."
Fantastic and paradoxical as it may seem to link together Don Quixote
and St. Theresa, I am not sure that we could do better than to accept
them as models. The loud laughter of an age of intellectual ribaldry and
self-conceit dies away and the gaunt figure of the last of the Crusaders
still stands before us heroic in his childlike refusal of compromise,
his burning compassion, his deafness to ridicule. In a sense we must all
be ready to accept the jeering and the scorn that were poured out on the
Knight of La Mancha, if like him we are to fight, even foolishly, for
the things that are worth fighting for--either that they may be
destroyed, or restored. And with St. Theresa we must be willing to
endure obloquy, suspicion, malice, if like her we live in faith,
subjecting our will to the divine will, and then sparing nothing of
ourselves in the labour of saving the world for God in the twentieth
century as St. Theresa laboured to save it in the sixteenth century.
The call today is for personal service through the right living that
follows the discovery of a right relationship to God. Not a campaign but
a crusade; and the figures of St. Louis and St. Francis and St. Theresa,
together with all the Knights and Crusaders of Christendom, rise up
before us to point the way. We would find the Great Peace, the world
would find the Great Peace also, but
_The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way._