Baptist. John is little known. Of him there remain only a few traits
of physiognomy and a few snatches of discourse. But these snatches are
full of character, these traits possess a sculptural relief; just as
with broken trunks of columns, with fragments of stones, all that is
left of temples that were once the marvels of ancient art, they enable
us to conceive of the grandeur of the whole edifice to which they
once belonged. John was at once strong and humble, energetic and
self-detached. Never has an individuality so well-tempered been less
personal. Identifying himself completely with his rôle as precursor,
he found perfect happiness in effacing himself in the glory of Christ,
just as the dawn disappears in the splendors of the morning.
History is full of precursors who impede and withstand those whom they
had first announced. When the time comes to retire and to give way
to those for whom they have prepared the way, they do not have the
courage to sacrifice themselves. They go on forever, and often become
the worst enemies of the cause they have defended. John knew nothing
of these failings which are the perpetual scandal in the development
of the kingdom of God. Not only did he say, speaking of Jesus: "He
must increase, but I must decrease," but he made all his acts conform
to these words.
"This my joy is therefore fulfilled," he said, as he dwelt upon the
first advances of the gospel, and he exprest thus a sweetness of
sacrifice forever unknown to personal souls that remain vulgar in
spite of their genius.
Finally, John described himself metaphorically in that inimitable
prophetic speech which explains in full the idea that he formed for
himself of his ministry. Under the sway of a morbid curiosity, the
crowd, more perplexed by the appearance of the worker than attentive
to the work, prest him with questions. Who then art thou, mysterious
preacher? Art thou one of the old prophets of Israel, escaped from his
rocky tomb? Or art thou perchance He whom we await? No, answered John,
I am neither one of the prophets nor the Messiah himself, I am no one:
I am a voice!
I am a voice! This is not a formula that sums up the vocation of the
prophets solely, or of all those who, in the pulpit or in the tribune,
by the pen or by the public discourse, exert an influence upon their
contemporaries. These words are addrest to every one. They define for
every man, the humble yet great duty of truth that he is called to
fulfil in his sphere and according to the measure of his ability. At
the epoch in which we live, such a device is so applicable to the time
being, so pressing, so needful for us to hear, that it is wise to
engrave it in the very foreground of our consciousness.
To become a voice we must begin by keeping still. We must listen.
The whole world is a tongue of which the spirit is the meaning. God
engraved its fiery capitals in the immensity of the heavens, and
traced its delicate smaller letters on the flower, on the grass, on
the human soul, as rich, as incommensurable as the abysses of space.
Whosoever you are, brother, before letting yourself utter one word,
lend your ear to that voice that seeks you, I might almost add, that
implores you. Listen!--Listen to the confused murmur that arises from
the human depths, and that, comprising in it all tears, all torments,
as well as all joys, becomes the sigh of creation.
Listen in your heart to remorse, the sad and poignant echo that sin,
traversing life, leaves everywhere upon its passage. Shut your ear
to no sound, however unobtrusive, however sad, it may be. There are
voices that issue from the tombs, others that call to you from out the
abyss of past ages; repel them not, listen! One and all, they have
something to say to you.
But do not be content with listening to man. Pierce nature, and,
in visible creation as in the invisible sanctuary of souls, watch
attentively for the revelation of Him whose eternal thought every
living thing, humble or sublime, translates after its own fashion. He
speaks to you in the dark nights and in the bright light of dawn, in
the infinite radiance of the worlds beyond all reckoning, and in the
humble stalk that awaits, in the valley bottom, its ray of light and
its drop of dew. Listen!--If there is anguish in the voice of poor
humanity, there are in great nature profound words of soothing, of
hope. Look at the flower in the fields, listen to the birds in the
skies! After the distrest voices that perturb you, you shall know the
voices that relieve and console. There shall befall you that which
befell the nun whose memory is preserved for us in the old legends.
Listening to the forest voices she had gone, following them always, as
far as the thick solitudes where nothing any longer comes to trouble
the collected soul. There, in the shade of a tree where she had seated
herself, she heard a song till then unknown to her ears. It was the
song of the mystic bird. This song said, in marvelous modulations, all
that man thinks and feels, all that he suffers, all that he seeks, all
that falls short of fulfilment for him. It summed up in harmonies the
destinies of living beings and the immense pity that is at the root
of things. Softly, on light, strong wings, it lifted the soul to the
heights where it looks upon reality. And the nun, her hands clasped,
listened, listened without end, forgetting earth, sky, time,
forgetting herself. She listened for centuries without ever growing
tired, finding in the song that charmed her a sweetness forever new.
Dear and truthful image of what the soul experiences when, mute,
as respectful as a child and as ready of belief, it listens in the
universal silence to the voices that translate for it the things that
are eternal!
All those who have become voices have traveled this way. At Patmos or
in the desert, on Horeb or on Sinai, they have trembled with fright or
started with joy. But everything has its time. There comes a day when
all voices, soft or terrible, that man has heard, grow still, to let
henceforth only one be heard, which cries to him: "Go! go now and be
a witness of the things you have heard! Go! I send you forth as lambs
among wolves! Go! I send you toward men whose brow is harsh, whose
heart is wicked, but fear nothing, I shall embolden your face, I shall
give you a heart of brass and a forehead of diamond."
When that moment has come, one must, in order to remain faithful to
his mission, remember that after all he is only a voice. Truth
does not belong to us, it is we who belong to truth! Wo to him who
possesses it and treats it as something that belongs to himself. Happy
is he who is possest by it! No preference, no kinship, no sympathy
counts here. Alas! it is not thus that men understand it. It is for
this reason that they degrade truth and that it becomes without power
in their hands. Instead of winging its way heavenward in vigorous
flight, it crawls along the earth, like an eagle whose wings have been
broken. Nothing is sadder than to see how those who ought to lend
their voice to truth, turn it to their own uses and play with it. The
voice, human speech, that sacred organ, whose whole worth lies in
sincerity, has in all ages been the victim of odious profanations. But
in this age it is more than ever attainted. The evil from which it
suffers is defilement.
At certain epochs a word was as good as a man. It was an act total,
supreme, guaranteed by the whole of life. There was no need to sign,
to stamp, to legalize. Speech was held between friends and enemies
alike, more sacred than any sanctuary, and man maintained it, with the
obscure but just sentiment that it is at the base of society, and that
if words lose their value, there is no longer any society possible.
Later the written word was considered sacred. And coming nearer to
our own day, we have been able to see the masses, guided ever by
that quite legitimate sentiment of the holiness of speech, regard
everything printed as gospel truth. Those times are no more. We have
lied too much, by the living word, the pen, and the press. We have
said and printed too much that is light, false, wittingly disfigured.
Armed with an instrumentality that multiplies thought and spreads it
broadcast to the four corners of the earth with a rapidity unknown
to our fathers, we have made use of it, for the most part, to extend
slander more widely and to cause a greater amount of doubtful
intelligence to swarm upon the earth. So well have we spun speech out
in all our mouths, so thoroughly have we deprived it of its proper
nature and caused it to become sophisticated, that it is no longer of
the least value. The confidence of the masses in authority, which is
one of the slowest and most difficult conquests of humanity, we have
lost like a thing of no worth. They no longer say to any one who now
lifts up his voice: Who are you? But: What end have you in view? What
party do you serve? By what interest are you led? By whom have you
been bought? That there may be a sacred truth, loved, respected,
adored; a truth that is worth more than life, to which one may give
himself wholly and with happiness--this idea diverts the cynics
and makes those whom the cruel experiences of life have rendered
distrustful, shake their heads. If ever an epoch has needed to
rehabilitate human speech, it is our own. What good are we if it is
good for nothing, since it is at the root of all our institutions?
Who will give it back its potency?--They who will know how to resign
themselves to being but a voice!
Permit me to bring home to you, by means of a very modest example,
what man may gain in force by being but a voice. Look at that clock.
When the hour has come, it marks it. Whether it be the hour of birth
or of death, the hour of joy or of sorrow, the hour of longed-for
meetings, or of heart-breaking farewells, the clock strikes that hour.
It is only a mechanism, but it is scrupulously exact, it measures that
time which descends to us drop by drop from the bosom of eternity, and
when the hammer falls on the brazen bell, the entire universe confirms
what it announces. The suns and the worlds mark at this very moment,
in the immortal light, the same point of time that is indicated below
on earth, some starless night, by the humblest village clock. We must
imitate the clock. In full consciousness, through absolute submission,
man should make himself the humble instrument of truth, and go through
supreme servitude to supreme power. When he does not do this, he is
only an imperfect timepiece. But when, bound by his word, chained to
the truth that he serves, he has become its slave, and when, without
hate, without preference, without human fear, without other desire
than that of being faithful, he proclaims what is just, true, right,
good, the rocks are less firm on their base than this man: for he is a
voice!
A voice is, if you like, a slight thing. Stilled as soon as it
awakened, it is heard only by a few and for a little while. It is said
that singers are greatly to be pitied, since posterity can not hear
them. Nothing of them remains. And yet how many marvelous forces
underlie this apparent fragility! The thunder has its roar, the breeze
has its tenderness, but their power is transitory; they are sounds and
not voices. A voice is a living sound, it is the vibrant echo of a
soul. It is doubtless that most fragile thing, a breath, but joined to
that which is most durable, spirit. And it is for this reason that, if
the instant when it is born sees it die, centuries of centuries can
not destroy its effect. The truth which is in it confers immortality
upon it, and when this voice escapes from a human breast, he who
speaks, sings or weeps, feels indeed that eternity has concluded an
alliance with him. Peeling his fragile testimony confirmed by all that
endures and can not die, he says with Christ: "Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but my words shall not pass away!"
The holy labors entrusted to the voice can never be counted. Because
of the very fact that it lives and that it contains a soul, it is
the great awakener, the incomparable evoker. When, obscure still and
unknown, a thought distracts us and slumbers at the bottom of our
being, a voice is all that is needed to make it emerge into the light.
With maternal tenderness, the voice borrows all the energies of
incubation, to infuse with warmth, to fortify, the nascent germs of
spiritual life. In it lives and breaks forth what, in the evolving
soul, tends feebly and furtively toward the flowering. In short, the
voice, speech, the tongue, condenses in a single focus incalculable
quantities of rays.
Only think of the efforts that human thought must have made to reach
that clearness that enables it to become speech. Every word that you
utter without giving it a thought is a monument toward which centuries
and multitudes of minds have wrought. A world is contained in it. Poor
words! one man decks himself out in them, another wraps himself up in
them, but how few know of the warmth of life and love that has put
them into the world that they may be forever the witnesses of the past
for posterity! No matter, for when they have been made sufficiently to
resound like an inanimate cymbal, there comes an hour when they revive
under the breath of a true and living being, and they depart to spread
life. Then they fulfil their rôle as educators. To educate is to
explain a being to itself. And this is the benign service that
the voice performs. It tells us what we think better than we can
ourselves. It unbinds the chains of the captive soul and permits it to
take its flight. Happy the child, happy the young man who meets with
a voice to decipher him to himself! This is what Christ did in those
blest hours when He reunited the children of His people, as a bird
reunites its brood under its wings!
What the voice does in detail, it continues to accomplish on the
larger scale. At certain moments societies seem a prey to a sort of
chaos. A number of contrary forces clash and perturb them, as they
perturb and rend individual souls. Men seek, feeling their way, a road
that seems to elude them. A crowd of spirits, by the very fact of
their contemporaneity, feel themselves distracted and agitated all
in the same way. Confusedly and provoked by the same sufferings they
elaborate the same ideal and formulate the same desires. But they all
wander along twilit paths on the side of the night where the light
seems to be breaking through, without, however, being able to
pierce the darkness. These are the preliminary agonies of the great
historical epochs. Then let a being more powerful, more vital, an
elect soul that has passed through this phase and conquered these
shadows, become incarnate in a voice! That is enough. The personal
word which expresses the soul of that epoch and responds to its
needs, is found. It sounds through the world like a new _fiat lux_!
Everywhere, in those who listen to it and feel secret affinities with
it in themselves, it constitutes a magnificent revelation of light and
life. All these hearts vibrate in unison with one; and, gathering up
all these scattered notes into a single harmony, he who expresses the
sentiments of all, renders an account of the wonderful power of which
he is the instrument. No, it is no longer a man that speaks: what
sounds upon his lips, is the whole soul of a people, is a whole epoch,
is a new world.
A voice is also that inimitable sigh, that pure sob which tells
of grief because it issues from a suffering heart. It is pity and
compassion, it is the angel of God arriving among us on the caressing
breath, a messenger of mercy, and pouring into the tortured depths of
our poor heart its healing dew. It is Jesus saying to Mary, and, in
her, to all those whom grief afflicts: "Why weepest thou?" It is David
singing: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" It is Isaiah crying:
"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people; speak ye comfortably to
Jerusalem!"
A voice is, on the solitary path where our will strays, the faithful
shepherd calling his sheep; it is every sign, even tho it be made
by the hand of a child, which in the days of forgetfulness and
unrestraint, suddenly wakes us and warns us that our feet skirt the
abysses.
Then, after the work of education, of creation, of pity, comes the
work of severity, of punishment, of destruction. The voice has been
compared to a sword. Like it, it flames and punishes. A voice is
Nathan rising up before the criminal king and calling down upon his
head the avenging lightning of this word: "Thou art the man!" The
sword attacks, destroys, but it defends, also, and this is its fairest
work. Never is the voice more touching than when it is lifted in favor
of the weak, and, when, suddenly, in the midst of the iniquities
of brute force that it denounces, marks with its stigma, it causes
justice to shine forth and the truth to be felt, in the holy
soul-traversing thrill, that God Himself is there and that His hour
has come!
A voice has its echo. When this echo is sympathetic, it is endowed
with the sweetest recompense and obliterates the memory of many
sorrows. But this echo is often hostile. It arises from wrath and is
increased by hatred. Then it is resistance, riot, that rumbles. It is
the passions and the scourged vices that twist and bellow like deer
under the lash of the trainer. How many times, O, faithful voices,
souls of peace and truth, has the spirit that animates you driven you
to these fearful encounters--you who have heard in the silence of your
hearts the holy verities and who know their worth, you are obliged to
go bearing them in the face of menace, of mockery, of trembling rage
where they seem to us like Daniel in the lion's den! A terrible
ordeal! but one before which the testifying voices have never
recoiled. Luther, who knew the emotions of the great battles of the
spirit where one man is alone in the face of a thousand, where tinder
the growing clamors and the cries of death ... a voice struggles like
a torch in a tempest, has given to the servants of truth a counsel
that is the alpha and omega of their austere mission. When they have
said all, done all, essayed all, put all their being and all their
love into the proclamation of what they have to announce, then, he
says, "let them be ready to be hooted at and spat upon!" And not only
should they be ready but they should accept this lot with happiness.
Christ says to them: "Happy are they that are outraged and persecuted
for the sake of justice!"
Alas, the rudest proof for him who speaks the truth is not to arouse
indignation. That, at least, is a result, and however sad it may be,
it bears witness to him who has spoken. Certain protests, despite
their fury, are a sort of involuntary homage. The supreme trial for
a voice is indifference. When John called himself a voice in the
wilderness, he alluded to that external solitude where his voice was
raised. But this solitude, on certain days was full of life and the
gospel cites for our benefit certain facts which prove that the words
with which it resounded were not lost in the empty spaces. They moved
and struck home from the humblest regions of society to the exalted
spheres, to the royal throne itself. John garnered love and hate,
blessing and curse, the desirable fruits of all energetic action.
Since that time and before, more than one voice has been able,
applying them to itself, to give to those prophetic words, "voices in
the wilderness," another very melancholy significance. The supreme
image of despair is a voice that is lost in the silence, as is lost,
in the bosom of dead solitudes, the call that no one hears, for succor
that will never come.
After having spoken of the different voices, of their power, of their
effects, let us bestow a compassionate remembrance upon the lost
voices, on those who were or who are still, in the most lamentable
sense of that word, voices in the wilderness.--To be a man, a soul, to
have felt the lighting of a holy flame within oneself; to love truth
and justice; to feel the pain of contact with a life ruled over by
falsehood and violence; at the heart of this poignant contrast between
a divine ideal and a heart-rending reality, to receive from his
conscience, from God himself, the command to speak; to put his life
into this work, to renounce everything to be only a voice ... and
after all this to see himself forsaken, neglected, despised! To wear
oneself out slowly in a strife obscure and without issue; to perish
without having aroused either sympathy or opposition, to disappear
into oblivion before disappearing in the tomb ... ah! all the furies,
all the bloody reprisals, the dungeons, the gibbets, the massacres,
all the martyrdoms by which human wickedness strove to stifle the
voice of the just, are less horrible than this extermination by
apathy.
And yet, not to press things to this cruel extremity, but remembering
the parable of the sower, where so many seeds are lost for the few
that take root and flourish, ought we not be willing to be, in the
greatest number of cases, voices in the wilderness, only too happy if
our thankless labors are recompensed elsewhere by an encouraging echo?
Have we not here, on the contrary, the image of human life? we are
always aspiring toward an ideal more elevated than that which we
realize. We are always precursors, and it becomes us to accept humbly
what that destiny holds both of pain and of beauty.
Besides, do we know whether voices that seem to be lost, are so in
reality? Are the stones that are hidden in the foundations of a
beautiful edifice, and thanks to which the whole fabric is supported,
lost because no one sees them? In the same way it must be that many
voices are forgotten apparently, until such time as, added together
and finding in each other mutual support, they end by emerging into
the full light of day.
To wait and to work; to do his duty, and leave the rest to God; to
journey through life, gathering truth into his heart, and then into
the family, the Church, the city; to be its faithful voice; this is
the best use a man can make of his mortal days. And should it be your
lot to be voices in the wilderness; among your children deaf to your
cries; among your compatriots insensible to your warnings, console
yourselves. Greater than you have suffered the same fate. Unite
yourself in spirit to their company and be happy to suffer with them.
At least as you come to understand more and more from day to day that
truth can not perish, and that it is potent even on feeble lips; you
will establish in your hearts faith in the world that endures, and you
will be less astonished and less disconcerted when you see the face of
this world pass away. You will live by the sacred fire cherished in
your souls. Let your furrow close, your hope will not perish! Like
Moses on Nebo, you will enter into the silence, having filled your
dying eyes with the spectacle of the promised land!
GORDON
MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
George Angier Gordon, Congregational divine, was born in Scotland,
1853. He was educated at Harvard, and has been minister of Old South
Church, Boston, Massachusetts, since 1884. His pulpit style is
conspicuous for its directness and forcefulness, and he is considered
in a high sense the successor of Philip Brooks. He was lecturer in the
Lowell Institute Course, 1900; Lyman Beecher Lecturer, Yale, 1901;
university preacher to Harvard, 1886-1890; to Yale, 1888-1901; Harvard
overseer. He is the author of "The Witness to Immortality" (1897),
and many other works.
GORDON
Born in 1853
MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD[1]
[Footnote 1: Printed here by kind permission of Dr. Gordon.]
_And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he
him_.--Genesis i., 27.