in kilometers. We cannot describe its attractions in any kind of
Baedeker. We cannot lay out a detailed program of God’s dealings with
the good and the bad people of earth in all the unending years. Nor is
there any obligation whatsoever upon us to undertake the construction
of such a program.
We know in part and the part we know is something like this: I feel a
profound confidence that I shall live on after death. The grounds of
my hope are many. The mass of unreason and injustice I would have left
upon my hands unexplained and unexplainable if I were to undertake
to deny the truth of immortality is one. The all but universal and
persistent desire of men for future life is another. Somehow the
integrity of the universe is such that it does not develop in men
normal, wide-spread, and persistent desires unless there is somewhere
to be found a corresponding satisfaction for such desires standing over
against them. The fact that the clear visions and the bright hopes of
the best poets and prophets the world has known have been on the side
of immortality means much. The seers have sung and the prophets have
uttered their high anticipations by the power of an endless life. The
words of the supreme figure in history, Jesus Christ, as to the truth
of immortality mean still more. He saw clearly, spoke wisely, lived
divinely, and I cannot believe that here he reared his expectations on
a fundamental mistake.
It ought to be remembered that for those who affirm and for those who
deny the truth of immortality, it is alike a matter of moral faith
because no convincing demonstration has been made out either for or
against. The men who deny immortality are not opposing knowledge to
faith; they are only meeting a positive faith with a negative one. But
inasmuch as reason and experience, the best in literature and the One
who has taken the moral government of the world upon his shoulders as
none other ever did, stand so strongly upon the side of the positive
faith, I feel confident of an unbroken life.
As to the final judgment, I know that righteousness and love which
are useful and beautiful here will be useful and beautiful always
and everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more
their glory will be revealed. I know that sin and selfishness are
mean and hateful here, and they will be mean and hateful everywhere;
the clearer the light in which they stand the more their hatefulness
will be manifest. What shall be their final fate I do not undertake
to say. We know in part, but the clear prospects of the life to come,
where righteousness and love shall have their freer chance to be and
to do, where sin and selfishness shall meet with more awful rebuke,
are sufficient to stimulate right action and to give warning to those
who would identify their destinies with evil. As to the rest, in the
incompleteness of our knowledge, we may safely leave it to the wisdom
and the justice of God.
I might carry this idea in other directions, but let me turn at once to
the other phase of the topic. In part we know, and the part we know
is naturally the part we use. We wish that we knew more. We hope to
know more some time. In the meantime we recognize that the way to make
progress along that line is to use the part we already know.
In almost any direction, unless it be pure mathematics or formal logic,
our knowledge, even in the sophomore year, stops a long way this
side of complete understanding. No man knows the length and breadth,
the height and depth of his wife’s love for him, if she is a good
woman. Some part of it he knows, but the love she might show in some
emergency, nursing him through a long illness, sharing with him some
painful experience, bearing with him some heavy burden--that fuller
love he does not know and cannot know until the time comes for its
manifestation. But the part he knows about his wife’s love for him is
the part he uses and the very thought of how beautiful it is and of the
unrevealed capacity it may contain for willing and joyous sacrifice
on his behalf, makes him feel that he ought to be a better man to be
deserving of it. Thus he moves along in that part of the strength and
beauty of a woman’s love which he knows, allowing the fuller knowledge
of it to come as it may. And this is precisely the attitude of the
reasonably religious man--those realities with which he deals, God and
redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, are
confessedly too great for final statement, but he knows something about
them and the part he knows is the part he uses.
Next door to my home I have two little neighbors, boys of three and
five. They are close friends of mine and they have taught me much.
Their father is a physician, a busy, useful, Christian man. The boys
understand their father’s life “in part.” They know that he is a doctor
and that he goes to see sick people and make them well. But as to the
methods he employs and the remedies he uses they know nothing at all.
They know in a dim sort of way that he makes the money which pays the
bills and keeps them in a home full of comfort and beauty. But as to
his financial standing, his investments, and his prospects, they know
nothing. They know that along with the hearty good-will which he feels
for everybody, he loves their mother and them supremely; but how he
came to love that particular woman rather than some other one, and how
they were born of that love, or how far that love might go in defending
and providing for them, they do not concern themselves for one moment.
They know their father’s love in part.
But the part they know is the part they use. They live in their
father’s house; they sit at his table; they greet him with a shout when
he comes in from his practise. They obey him and trust him and think he
is the best man in the world. They climb up into his lap and talk to
him, not about his practise, but about their own small affairs, their
tops, their marbles, their little wagon--as he wants them to do. He
meets them always on their own ground and deals with them in the terms
and interests of their own lives. Thus my two little friends live and
grow, knowing their father’s life in part.
“Except we become as little children” in the house of our Father, whose
total life exceeds our present comprehension, whose plans and purposes
for us are too high for complete understanding, whose outlook for us
is vaster every way than our own outlook--“except we become as little
children we shall in no wise enter his kingdom.” But if we take the
part we know and use it, acting on it and living by it, we will be
treading the way which leads to a fuller and more blessed experience
of the Father’s wisdom and love as surely as my two small friends are
doing as they grow up toward their manhood in their father’s house.
In how many ways Jesus made plain this duty of utilizing the near and
the familiar when we would learn the remote! He seemed to realize that
religion would be crusted over with misconceptions so that ordinary
people would find it hard to get at; that some men would write big dull
books about it, which no one would want to read; that other men in
talking about it would use words which would not go into a suit-case
without being folded twice, thus confusing the people. For that reason,
perhaps, he made his own teaching simpler than that of any one whose
words stand recorded in Holy Writ.
He stood once at midnight among the trees talking with a thoughtful man
as to certain aspects of the religious life. “How can these things
be?” the man asked. “How can a man be born when he is old?” Just then
the wind rustled the leaves at his side and Jesus remarked: “The wind
bloweth where it listeth. You hear the sound thereof, but you cannot
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” We cannot tell why the wind
blows one day from the north and we have cold, another day from the
south and we have heat, another day from the east and we have rain. We
cannot explain satisfactorily many of the mysteries connected with the
wind. But a man who is a fisherman can put up his sail and fill it with
this wind which is such a mystery. He can sail out through the Golden
Gate and come back in the evening with a boatload of fish for the needs
of his family and for other hungry men. The wind that fills his sail he
knows, but the origin, the ultimate destiny, and all the relationships
it sustains to the other forces in the universe he does not know. The
part he knows, however, is the part he uses by relating it to his own
life. And this is the act of a man of sense in matters spiritual as
well. He knows the life of the Infinite Spirit in part, but he uses the
part he knows by relating it helpfully to his own life.
When we start in after that fashion it is a straight course. The boy
begins his study of mathematics by learning to count ten--one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He moves straight
along by that path until, with these same ten figures, he is computing
the courses the planets take and measuring the distances of the fixed
stars. He begins his study of literature by learning his letters, a, b,
c, etc. By and by, using these same familiar letters, he is making his
way through the intricacies of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”; he is walking
with Emerson and Hegel across the fields of philosophy. He begins his
study of music by learning the elementary sounds, do, re, mi, fa,
sol, la, si, do. Presently, with these same tones, he is singing in a
great chorus which renders “The Messiah” or playing his instrument in
some orchestra which is producing the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. In
every situation in life progress is made not by being appalled over
the amount we do not know, or by vainly wishing we knew more, but by
taking the part we know, relating it to our lives, and making it the
instrument of gaining that fuller knowledge.
God is greater than any wise and good father but not different. Carry
the love of a wise and good father up to the _nth_ degree and you
have the love of God for his people. The life of the spirit is nobler
than the life of the flesh, but it stands closely related; it is a
life which hungers after righteousness, thirsts for the living God,
and grows strong by exercising itself in useful service. Heaven is
finer and purer than earth, but not unlike. It was for the Jew a “New
Jerusalem,” and it is for every man a “new --” whatever may be the
name of the city where he dwells. It is the ordinary life ennobled and
glorified by the infusion of a finer spirit. The glorious fulfilment
comes through the richer combinations and the fuller development of the
simpler parts we know already.
I wish I could persuade the college man who has never entered into an
open, joyous, Christian life to just begin. There are many things which
he does not understand nor, perhaps, believe. We will put them aside
for the moment, not ignoring them, but postponing their consideration.
Let him take the part he knows, the moral imperative of living the
best life one sees, and no finer life than that of the Christian can
be named; the necessity for some competent guide, and none better
than Jesus of Nazareth has thus far appeared; the clearly ascertained
benefits to be gained by trust and obedience; the helpful reactions
which come through prayer and the reading of the Bible; the manifest
advantage of cherishing the hope of a future life and of facing
squarely upon the fact that what we sow we reap. All this he knows! Let
the part he knows be the part he uses. If he will only act upon it,
building it into his own life and following where it leads, he will be
on his way toward the place where he will know even as he is known.
X
FIGHTING THE STARS
In an ancient song we find this striking statement, “The stars in their
courses fought against Sisera.” This is poetry. It must be dealt with
according to the rules which govern poetical expression. The plain
prose facts underlying the statement were these: The northern tribes of
Israel were being oppressed by the warlike Canaanites of that region.
Israelites living on the outskirts were frequently slaughtered until
certain villages had been entirely destroyed. The oppression became so
bitter that it was not safe for an Israelite to travel the ordinary
roads. “In the days of Shamgar the highways were unoccupied, and the
people walked through by-paths.” They were in constant fear for their
lives and the situation at length became unendurable.
Then there came an armed revolt of the Israelites against their
oppressors. Ten thousand men under the leadership of Deborah and Barak
went out to give battle in the plain of Esdraelon. The commander of the
opposing army was Sisera. He had been uniformly victorious over the
Israelites chiefly by his use of chariots and war-horses, riding his
enemies down before they could accomplish anything with their slings
and arrows. And into the famous battle referred to in the song the
author says, “Sisera brought nine hundred chariots of iron” to fight
against the army of Israel.
But just as the battle opened there came a fierce storm converting the
black loam of that fertile field into a morass. The heavy war-horses
and huge chariots were unable to charge. The song pictures them as
floundering, helpless, in the deep mud. The cold rain turned gradually
into sleet and the sleet driven by a fierce wind directly into the
faces of the advancing Canaanites made their use of sling and spear
comparatively ineffective. On the other hand, the Israelites, with the
storm at their backs and with their courage heightened by the feeling
that all the circumstances of the situation were in their favor,
fought splendidly and successfully. They slaughtered the helpless men
who were trying in vain to use the heavy chariots; they put to flight
the foot soldiers who could not properly defend themselves with the
storm beating in their faces, and thus they won a notable victory over
the army of Sisera.
When the Israelites came to add up the forces which entered into the
result, they were not so short-sighted as to fancy that their own right
arms had gotten them the victory. They saw that certain other forces
which they had not created, which they did not in any wise control,
had entered decisively into the determination of the issue. “The Lord
discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots,” they said. “The stars in
their courses fought against Sisera.” The wind and the rain, the hail
and the sleet, coming down out of the skies by no act of theirs, had
lined up with them as effective allies; and as their eyes ran over
the complete muster roll, the forces from above combining with their
own determined valor, they knew that Sisera was foredoomed to defeat
because he had been fighting against the stars.
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera--this is poetry! It
is a bold literary statement of a splendid moral truth. In the long
run the forces of earth and sky are alike hostile to the low type of
life which Sisera represents. Cruelty, oppression, inhumanity, are
doomed to defeat. Individuals or nations cultivating those qualities
are fighting the stars, and the stars will be too much for them. As it
was with Sisera, so it is now and ever shall be, world without end!
Those evils are sometimes victorious in a skirmish; now and then they
win a battle, but the war goes always against them. When the end comes
and the articles of capitulation are signed, they are to be found with
Sisera, biting the dust. Forces, human and divine, seen and unseen, are
perpetually at war with wrong-doing and the combination of all these
mighty energies makes the outcome inevitable. The man who, in any wise,
undertakes to live a wrong life is undertaking to fight the stars.
The presence of universal moral forces is here symbolized. All about
us are familiar forces which we did not originate, which we do not
control--the light and the heat of the sun, the power of gravitation,
the movements of the winds, and the pulsating tides. We cannot control
them; we can only adjust ourselves to their movements and wisely
cooperate with them for certain ends. Even while I am speaking this
huge mass under our feet is whirling us swiftly onward, covering
the whole twenty-five thousand miles in a single twenty-four hours.
Scientific men thus far have nothing to offer as to how it gained its
initial velocity; we find it moving and it carries us with it whether
we will or no.
This is a symbol! There are other forces, unseen but mighty, moving the
race up out of darkness into great and ever greater light. With all
its groping and stumbling the race has never been allowed to lose its
way altogether. Yesterday it thought as a child and understood as a
child; today it puts away childish things and knows in part; tomorrow
it will know still “in part,” but a larger part. And it is the sublime
conviction of serious men that it is on its way to know even as it is
known. This movement is as resistless as the motion of the planets.
The race is also making headway in righteousness. Certain forms of
evil which once stood out naked and unashamed have been driven into
rat-holes. Presently these holes will be stopped up from the top and
those forms of evil will be seen no more. The power of conscience grows
and its dominion widens. Matthew Arnold, speaking as a poet, said,
“There is a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.” Herbert
Spencer, speaking as a philosopher, said, “There is an infinite and
eternal energy from which all things proceed,” and in his judgment it
was, on the whole, friendly to righteousness. The Psalmist, speaking
as a religious man, said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.”
It does not matter what words are used; it all amounts to the same
thing. The very stars are symbols to us, as they were to this writer of
old, of forces unseen, august, cosmic, which are insistently set upon
righteousness. Sisera and all the horde of wrong-doers are compelled to
look that fact in the face.
The antagonism of these universal forces spells defeat for those who
are willing to do wrong. Sometimes the letters which spell out defeat
are formally arranged in order; at other times the letters must be
selected from a mass of confusing details, but they are there, and
they spell the same word, “defeat.” The stars never tarry long in
bringing in their verdict upon the coarser sins of the flesh, murder
and adultery, stealing and lying, drunkenness and gluttony. But the
operation of this law reaches all the way down to those subtler sins
of pride and envy, meanness and selfishness, moral indifference and
spiritual neglect--all these in their final outcome make for misery and
discontent as surely as two and two make four. No man ever outwitted
or vanquished the stars, no man ever will. The sun rises when it is
due, no matter how he chooses to set his individual clock, no matter
what lies he may tell in his particular almanac. No man ever outwitted
the moral order of the universe which is august and irresistible in
its ongoings. He may have sought out many devices, but at last he is
compelled to settle by the books. He must reap what he has sown, no
matter how terrible the harvest may be.
Go through any modern city with your eyes open and you will find this
statement about Sisera written out in a plain hand. You will find
people, some of them well-dressed, some in rags, with their hearts
draped in wretchedness and despair. Poor deluded mortals, they have
been butting their brains out against the moral corner-stones of the
universe in the vain hope that possibly the way of the transgressor
might not be hard for them. Some by intemperance and some by
licentiousness, some by sly dishonesty and some by cold-hearted
selfishness--the roads to ruin are various, and men travel them all!
Here they come at last, bruised, battered, and broken! They have been
fighting the stars with the usual result. If here and there one keeps
his head up and his face like polished brass, thinking he may escape
the same ugly fate, you have only to wait for a time to see him with
his face broken and his heart crushed like the rest.
Here are two young men at college, one of them living a true life,
maintaining good habits, keeping himself hard at work, cultivating the
right sort of friends! The other young fellow keeps his lungs drenched
with cigarette smoke, his brain drugged with alcohol; he seeks out
the shady places in the life of the city and cultivates the refuse;
he loafs when he ought to be at work. You can tell at a glance which
one will be sitting in the directors’ meeting or in some similar place
of responsibility twenty years from now, and which one will be out
somewhere on a high stool or tramping the streets periodically in
search of a job, wondering why his luck has been against him. There is
no luck about it. He enlisted in the great army of fools who, under
the leadership of Sisera, are undertaking to fight the stars. Certain
habits, certain courses of action, certain aspirations bring honor,
joy, advancement; certain other courses of action bring just the
reverse. It is all as sure as the movement of the planets; it comes
according to law equally unyielding.
The ultimate well-being of any life is secured through cooperation with
those forces symbolized by the stars. I was on the Mediterranean once
on my way from Italy to Egypt when off the coast of Crete our ship
ran into a terrible storm. We were beaten and tossed, for the wind
was contrary. An accident made it necessary to lay to for several
hours while the waves dashed over the highest decks. In the absence of
either sun or stars, exact reckoning was lost, but toward midnight of
the second day the storm broke and presently the stars shone out, here
and there, in the irregular patches of the sky. Then the first officer
appeared on deck with his instruments and soon he knew exactly where we
were on the face of the troubled waters. All uncertainty was over; we
were sailing by the stars and the next day we were casting anchor off
the coast of Egypt. The motion of the ship and the tossing of the waves
were uncertain, but the movement of the stars was sure.
Our safety in the whole cruise of life depends upon the adjustment of
our movements to those universal forces which enfold us. My watch,
carried though it is in my individual pocket, keeps step with the stars
so that I could show you where each hand will be tomorrow morning when
the sun comes up over the horizon. And our purposes, our affections,
and our wills are to be similarly adjusted so that they shall keep step
with God’s infinite will and purpose for us. Those universal forces of
love and grace, of forgiveness and redemption, of guidance and comfort,
to which in all ages men have learned to look, they are all ours if we
will only use them. And when we learn to use them aright they bring
peace, and strength, and joy.
There was the sense of an adequate horizon, then, in the words of this
ancient poet as he stood that night on the field of battle looking up
at the stars. The wind and the rain, the hail and the sleet had all
aided the Israelites in winning the victory. The very skies seemed to
be interested in that moral struggle there on the plain of Esdraelon.
And he was correct--the stars helped; they always help; they fight
perpetually in their own appointed way on the side of right.
You may trust the forces which they symbolize! You may work out your
own highest well-being in joyous confidence, for God is working within
you toward the same great end! You need have no doubt about it, for
the evidence is plain. Heroes and martyrs lay down their lives for
a principle. The mother cares for the sick child, counting not her
pleasure, her comfort, or even her own life dear if she may save the
child. The poor dog attached to his master goes to the spot where
he saw them lay the body and whines for the sound of a voice that
is still. Has the Creator of such moral integrity in the heroes and
martyrs kept none of it for himself? Has he out of the ages gone
produced such devotion in the heart of the mother with no devotion
in his own heart toward his helpless child? Has he instilled such
faithful affection in the very dogs that perish, but failed to share in
that love himself? Serious men cannot bring themselves to believe in
anything so absurd. These forces which produce attachment to the right,
devotion to the helpless, faithful affection, are universal forces.