itself. There is a natural environment, and in it have been, real and
mighty from the beginning, the laws and forces which science has but
recently discovered. Copernicus discovered the true order of the solar
system; but the order itself has been there from the morning of time.
Newton discovered the force of gravity, but that force has been in the
natural situation since creation. Chemists have been able to make out
sixty-five or sixty-six irreducible elements; but while chemistry is
young, the elements are everlasting. Electricity is the discovery of
yesterday, and yet it has been at play in man's environment from the
foundation of the world. The continuity of life, from the lowest forms
of it up to man, has been a fact from the first; but not until
this century has the fact meant anything. Few things impress the
imagination more powerfully than the sense of the forces that have
surrounded man from his first appearance on the earth, and that
have been noted and utilized only in recent times. There stands the
immemorial force, and men have had no eyes for it till yesterday.
Thoughtful men begin to look upon the environment in a new spirit.
They begin to walk within it in amazement and hope. All the forces of
the material universe are here, and only a few things about them
have been discovered. The natural environment is rich beyond all
calculation or dream; it is exhaustless. Here in the field of man's
life is the alluring object of science. Here in the natural situation
are the everlasting and benign energies that wait to be discovered and
prest into human service. There is a human environment, and all the
fundamental truth about man has been present in it from the start.
Moses gave his nomadic brethren the ten words; but they were written
in the human heart ages before they were inscribed upon stone. The
great Hebrew prophets gave to the world the vision of one God, His
righteous government of the world, and His election of a single race
for the service of all the races; but God and His government and His
method in the education of man were real and mighty before Amos, and
Hosea, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah beheld them. Christ revealed the
Father through His own divine Sonhood; but the Fatherhood of God is an
eternal truth. Nowhere is the divineness of Christ more obvious than
in the ease and adequacy with which He, and He alone, is able to read
the meaning of the human situation. Christ as Prophet, as Seer and
Discoverer, is most amazing to the most gifted. His eye for fact
is divine. He notes the falling sparrow, and at once reaches the
universal fatherly foresight and control of God. His consuming vision
goes everywhere, turning the hidden truth of life into light and joy
in His parables. His teaching is revelation, the unveiling of the
aboriginal divine order. He makes nothing; He reveals what God made.
And when He increases life it is by showing the path to that increase
ordained of God, insight and obedience. The will of God is the final
law for heaven and earth; the vision of it and surrender to it are the
path of life. Here we touch the depth of the old faith. God the Father
creates, and the Son reveals. The order of the Spirit is eternal; the
revelation of it is in time and for sense-bound men. Here we see in
a mirror and dimly; there they behold face to face. And Christ drew
forth into light the divine significance of man's life, as God
originally made it; and that divine meaning of existence thus drawn
out is the gospel of Christ.
In the text we are carried by a true seer back of all traditions,
behind all conventions, beyond all beliefs about life to life itself
as it lies in its own freshness and fulness. We are led to look upon
human life newly made, still warm with the touch of the creative hand,
and yet containing in it that very hour all that the Lord eventually
drew out of it. If the first man had understood himself he would have
been essentially a Christian. And therefore I propose to evolve from
the original human situation, as described in the text, the outline of
what I take to be a great faith.
I. If the first man had understood himself, he would have seen in
himself the interpreter of nature. From the first command, "Let there
be light," to the final, "Let us make man in our image," there are two
things to be noted. There is continuity in the creative process, and
there is an ascension from the lower to the higher. The first duty of
our self-comprehending Adam will be to look backward. He will look
across the wide field whose farther limit lies in cloud and whose
hither border touches his feet. He will survey the creative process
that has led up to and that has come to its climax in him. And as he
thinks of himself as the product of nature, must he not conclude that
as reason is the result, reason must have preceded the process and
governed it? Humanity is the issue; therefore humanity must have
planned the issue and secured it. Back of this march of life, behind
this developing and ascending order, out in the darkness, before the
light was created, there was the Mind that accounts for man. Thus the
last becomes the first, the man that ends the creative process sees
that a human God must have preceded the process.
This truth is one of the greater insights of the time. The continuity
of life, from the lowest forms to the highest, has received during the
last fifty years an unparalleled recognition. So, too, with the fact
of the steady ascent of life. Not indeed in a literal and yet in a
true way, the modern scientific conception is a wonderful parallel to
the sublime hymn with which the Bible opens. In the beginning was the
fire-mist. In that fire-mist began the process of development. It
became worlds, systems innumerable, a stellar universe, and within
this whole a solar order, an earth beating forward in preparation for
the advent of life. Life when it came flowed into countless forms.
From the shapeless mass it pushed on upward into successively higher
and finer structures, ever aspiring toward man. Ages preceded the
advent of man. There were upon the part of life ages of preparation,
ages of climbing. Before life rose the mountain of the Lord; it
must be scaled and its summit reached before man could put in
an appearance. But the hour for which the whole cosmos had been
travailing in pain could not be indefinitely delayed. In the fulness
of time, as the tree bursts into bloom, as the tide rolls to the
flood, as the light breaks in through the gates of morning, nature
came to her supreme expression in man. Man is not here on his own
strength. He is not in the bosom of things unaccounted for. He is the
child of nature; her last act, her highest product, the best that is
in her power to bring forth, the son in whose wondrous being her own
motherhood is to undergo total transformation.
That is the modern scientific conception; look for a moment at its
greatness. Man as final issue of nature must turn round and look
backward. He must look down the long line of life to the far-off first
beginning. He must pass beyond the earliest forms in which the vital
movement began to the mysterious, formless, eternal power behind all.
And it is here that nature is lifted into a new character by her human
product. In that eternal power there must be a reason to account
for man's reason, conscience to account for his conscience, love to
account for his love, spirit to explain his spirit. Nature as mother
must become spirit to account for the soul of her son. The flower
shows what was in the seed, the oak is the revelation of what was in
the heart of the acorn; and man as the last and best outcome of nature
is the authoritative expression of the power that is behind nature.
Thus the mind that is the final product of nature discovers the mind
that is the source of nature. Man seeking the origin of his being
finds it on the farther side of nature in One like unto a son of man.
He learns later to distinguish between the reality and the image,
between God and godlike man. And then a wireless telegraphy is
established between them across the vast untraveled distances of
nature. The life near to God can not send the tokens of His inmost
character upward to man; the brute life near to man can not carry
downward to God man's thoughts and hopes. The animal life that
stretches in an expanse so wide between the Creator and His best work
can not connect the human and the divine. But when the spirit to which
nature comes in man has once seen the Spirit in which nature must
begin, then the wireless telegraphy comes into play. The heart, that
is the last product of life, sends out its mysterious currents, its
aspirations, its gladness, its grief, and its hope; and these repeat
themselves in the great heart of God. And forth from the Spirit behind
nature issue the messages of recognition, of sympathy, of intimated
ideals and endless incentive, that register themselves in the soul of
man. Nature is a solid, sympathetic, and now and then glorified, and
yet dumb, highway between God and man. Her beauty belongs to the
Spirit that she does not know, and it speaks to the Spirit that is
older than her child. She is a mute, unconscious sacrament between the
infinite reason and the finite, a path for the lightning that plays
backward and forward between the soul of man and the soul of God.
The great primal fact in the human environment is that man is the
interpreter of nature. In this character of interpreter of nature he
receives his first message from God, and makes his first response.
II. The second fact in the human situation is that religion is the
interpreter of man. As man looks backward he beholds beyond nature
a face like his own, only diviner; and ever afterward the noblest
aspiration of his soul is to win the smile of that face and to escape
its frown. Our self-comprehending Adam would confess that he knew
himself only when he noted within him the lover of the infinite. And
here history leads the way. You look into "The Book of the Dead," and
you see what high and serious things religion meant for the early
Egyptian. The pyramids are monuments to religion. The art of the
ancient races was chiefly homage to the divine. The Athenian Parthenon
would never have been but for faith in the goddess that shielded the
city. Greek art, the greatest art in the world, is primarily a tribute
to faith. Those marvelous statues were likenesses of the gods; those
incomparable temples were dwelling-places for the gods. Religion is
in the warp and woof of the world's love and sorrow, its art and
literature, its patriotism and history. The life of man is the
cathedral window, and religion is the colored figure that stands in
it. The two are inseparable. You can not abolish the figure without
breaking the window; you can not banish religion without destroying
humanity. Try to explain Homer's world without Olympus; account for
Mohammedanism and make no reference to faith; write the history of
the Middle Ages and take no note of the "Divine Comedy"; sum up
the meaning of Persian and Indian civilization and pay no heed to
religion; show what Hebraism is and leave unnoticed its consciousness
of God, and you will create a parallel to the philosopher who should
endeavor to trace the significance of human life apart from man's
passion for the infinite.
Here then is the key to manhood. He is a being over whom the unseen
wields an endless fascination. There is in him a thirst that nothing
can quench save the living God. His chief attribute is an attribute
of wo, an incapacity for content within the limits of the visible
and temporal. His differentiation from the brute is at this point
absolute. Between man and the lower orders of life there is a line of
likeness; there is also from the beginning a line of unlikeness. In
physical structure man is both similar and dissimilar to the animal.
As bread-winner and economist he is kindred and he is in contrast to
the creatures below him. In the home, in society, and in the state
in which both home and society are set and protected, the line of
likeness grows less and less distinct, while the line of unlikeness
becomes bolder and plainer. It is impossible to deny observation to
the dog and impossible to grant to it science. The instinct for beauty
belongs to the bird, but art in the full sense of the word, as the
self-conscious expression of beautiful ideas, is no part of its life.
One can not decline to note method in the existence of the brute,
and one is compelled to withold from it philosophy. In these higher
activities the line of likeness between man and the animal is of the
faintest description; while the line of contrast becomes more and more
pronounced and significant. When we come to the summit of man the
likeness vanishes utterly. Among the lower life of the world there is
no _Magnificat_, there is no _Nunc Dimittis_; the beginning and the
end do not link themselves to the Eternal. The brute has no religion,
no temple, no priest, no Bible, no sacrament of love between itself
and the invisible. The tower of this church tells at once, and from
afar, that it is a church. Near at hand, much besides the tower tells
the same story. There is the cruciform foundation; there is the
structure of its walls. There is the outside with distinct note; there
is the inside with its joyous beauty. Look at the church closely and
you need no tower to proclaim what it is. And yet the tower is its
most conspicuous witness: at a distance it is the sole witness.
Religion is similarly the eminent token that man belongs to a divine
order. The basis of his being in sacrifice should repeat the same
tale. Civilization as a struggle after social righteousness should
announce the same fact. Man's thoughts and feelings, and their
manifold and marvelous expression in art, in institutions, and in
systems of opinion, utter the same testimony. And yet the tower of his
being, high soaring and far seen, is his feeling for the invisible.
You do not know man until you behold him worshiping.
III. The third fact in our human situation is that Christianity is the
interpretation of religion. You see the devout old Jew, Simeon, who
met Jesus as His mother brought Him for the first time into the
temple; and there you behold the old faith interpreted by the new. All
that was best in the Hebrew religion is conserved and carried higher
in the Christian religion. Everywhere the devoutest Jews were
conscious of wants which the national faith did not meet. They waited
for the consolation of Israel, and when Christ came he supplied
satisfactions which Hebraism could not supply. Christianity commended
itself to the disciples of Christ because it seemed to be their own
faith at its best. They were carried over into it by the logic
of their previous belief and their deep human need. Paul sought
righteousness as a Jew; when he became a Christian, righteousness
was still his great quest. And Christianity commended itself to him
because the national ideal of righteousness was set before him in
a sublimer form, and because a new inspiration came to him in his
pursuit of it. The old immemorial goal of human endeavor was exalted,
and the everlasting incentives were filled with the freshness of a
divine life. Thus the religious Jew, when Christ came, was like a
convalescent patient. The process of recovery was going on, but in
a way that was discouragingly slow. The longing was for the higher
altitudes of the spirit, for the pure and bracing atmosphere of some
exalted leader, for an environment richer in healing ministry and in
restoring power. That longing Christ met. He carried His believing
countrymen on to the heights. He surrounded them with the freshness of
His own spirit. He put over them a new sky. He took them into a new
environment, rich with His truth and grace, tender with infinite
sympathy, stored with the forces that work for spiritual vigor, filled
with the love of His Father. Ask Peter or James or John or Paul, ask
any believing Jew and he will tell you that Christianity is simply the
consummation of his faith as a Jew.
The gospel moves along the same line of self-verification with
reference to all the great religions. The Persian believes in eternal
light, and he hates the contending darkness. Christianity says that
God is light, and that in Him is no darkness at all; that Jesus is the
Light of the world, and that whosoever followeth Him shall not walk
in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Greek was full of
humanity, and he could not help making his gods and goddesses simply
larger and more beautiful men and women. What is the soul of that
amazingly beautiful and seemingly fantastic mythology of the Greeks?
Why do they worship Apollo and Aphrodite, Hermes and Athene? Because
they can think of nothing higher than ideal humanity. And Christ
comes, the ideal man. The beauty of the Lord is upon Him. His thoughts
and feelings and purpose and character are the most perfect things in
the world. He identifies Himself with man, and He identifies Himself
with God. He is the Son of man, and as such He is the Son of God. And
thus a human. God, a human universe, a human religion is offered to
the Greek, and in place of the wonderful mythology the clear, warm,
divine fact. The Mohammedan believes in will; and the gospel puts
before him that ultimate irresistible Will as a Will to all good,
eternally burdened with love, and nothing but love, for man. The Hindu
is smitten with an endless craving after rest, and he thinks the path
to peace lies in the diminution and final extinction of being. Christ
goes to the Hindu and says: "Come unto me all ye that are weary and
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto
your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
He sets before the Hindu an infinite social peace; he calls into play
the moral will that for ages has been allowed to slumber. The goal
is high social harmony; the path to it is the intelligent will in
faithful, inspired, victorious obedience. The need of the Hindu is
not less but more and better existence. The way out of his despair is
through fulness of life. His misery is but the dumb prayer for eternal
life, that is, for existence supreme in its character and in its
volume.
Thus Christianity is everywhere the interpreter of religion.
Everywhere it carries the world's faith to its best. It is the
consummation both of the human need and the divine answer. And to-day,
in our own world, it goes on the same high errand. The intuitions of
righteousness, the sympathies with goodness, the wish for the more
abundant life, the ideals and the struggles, the hope and the fear,
without which man would not be man, find their interpreter in
Christianity. It is the soul carried to the utmost depth of its need
and the loftiest height of its desire, and then made conscious that
below its profoundest weakness and above its highest dream is the
infinite Love that is educating its life. It is the best wisdom of
history speaking to the highest interests of man. As mothers brought
their children to Jesus that He might reveal the inmost meaning of
childhood, open its treasure to the hearts that loved it, and by His
consecrating touch assure it of perpetual increase; so are the nations
bringing their religions to Him, and the noble among men their
uncomprehended longing and hope. He walks among us still as the
Revealer, the Conserver, and the Consummator of life.
IV. Lastly, Christianity finds it own interpretation in God. We have
seen man looking backward and finding the origin of his soul in the
Soul that is behind nature. We have seen his religion telling him
that he can not live by bread alone, that he can rest only under
the shelter of the unseen, that he is infinitely more akin to the
invisible than to the visible, that he has a spirit and must therefore
hunger for the fellowship of the eternal Spirit. We see Christianity
lifting this religious capacity to its highest, and bringing in the
divine appeal in its sublimest form. We behold the earth transfigured
in this Christian dream, the ladder set that reaches from the dreamer
to heaven, and upon it, going up and coming down, the great prayers of
the soul and the tender responses of the Most High. To what shall we
refer this sublime, transfiguring dream? Is it the delusion of the
sleeper, or the whisper of God? Is the ladder set up from the earth,
or is it let down from above? Did man shape it out of his abysmal
desire, or did God make and establish it out of His love. What can
we say of that which is the highest wisdom, the widest sympathy, the
divinest love, and the mightiest power in human history? What can
we do with that which is the true life of man? Can the trees of the
field, as they clap their hands and sing in the freshening breeze, do
other than refer it to heaven? And man, as he sees the light of Christ
upon the Spirit behind nature, beholds in the gospel that which
interprets his highest dreams, feels in Christianity the power to
understand and to become his own best self--can he do other than say
that his Christian faith is the gift of God? The star in the brook
refers you for the explanation of its being to the star in the sky;
and the glory of the gospel living in the depths of man's soul has no
other origin than the love of God.