Part 9

Here is an admission which must gravely affect not only our religious and philosophical relations with others, but even our practical and political life. Here is the fundamental difference between people of the same nation, or condition, or time, or even family. In other differences of opinion there may be found some common ground, but between faith and denial there is no common ground, because we are dealing with a question of the will and because the human will is free. The saying of Tertullian, that the human soul is naturally Christian, is in a literal sense quite untrue. Every man who reflects on his responsibilities recognizes that he is not naturally Christian. He is, at the most, only possibly Christian, as Tertullian perhaps meant to say. He is capable of becoming Christian through the experience of life. Atheism and Christianity are equally accessible to the nature of man.

Faith in God, then, is a form of experience, not a form of proof. If experience were as unfruitful as proof, then faith in God would be nothing more than a nervous condition, and the answer of Festus--“Paul, thou art beside thyself!”--would be the just estimate of a faith like that of Paul. Each period of history has in fact produced many a Festus, sedulously guarding his reason and conscience against all that cannot be proved. Other faith, however, than that which proceeds from experience is not expected by God from any man; while to every man, in his own experience and in the witness of history, this faith is abundantly offered. There is, therefore, in the refusal of faith a confession, not merely of intellectual error, but of moral neglect; and many a man who has surrendered his faith would be slow to confess to others how well aware he is that the fault is his own.

Here, then, is the first step toward the discovery of the meaning of life. It is an act of will, a moral venture, a listening to experience. No man can omit this initial step, and no man can teach another the lesson which lies in his own experience. The prophets of the Old Testament found an accurate expression for this act of will when they described it as a “turning,” and they went on to assure their people of the perfect inward peace and the sense of confidence which followed from this act. “Look unto me, and be ye saved,” says Isaiah; “Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live.” From that time to this, thousands of those who have thus changed the direction of their wills have entered into the same sense of peace; while no man who has thus given his will to God has ever felt himself permanently bewildered or forsaken.

Here, also, in this free act of the will, is attained that sense of liberty which in both the Old and New Testaments is described as “righteousness.” It is a sense of initiative and power, as though one were not wholly the subject of arbitrary grace, but had a certain positive companionship with God. It is what the Old Testament calls a “covenant,” involving mutual rights and obligations. No man, however, who accepts this relation is inclined to urge overmuch his own rights, knowing as he well does that his part in the covenant falls ever short and is even then made possible only through his steady confidence in God. Grace, unearned and undeserved, he still knows that he needs; yet behind this grace lies ever the initiative of personal “turning,” and the free assertion of the will as the first step toward complete redemption. To say with Paul that a man is “justified by faith,” or to emphasize as Luther does, even more strongly, the province of grace, is to run some risk of forgetting the constant demand for an initial step of one’s own.

This step once taken, both the world in which one lives and one’s own personal life get a clear and intelligible meaning. On the one hand stands the free will of God, creating and directing the world, not restricted by the so-called laws of nature, yet a God of order, whose desires are not arbitrary or lawless. On the other hand is the free will of man, with the free choice before it of obedience or refusal;--a will, therefore, which may choose the wrong though it may not thereby thwart the Divine purpose. The evil-doer, if impenitent, must suffer, but his evil is converted into good. In such a philosophy what is a wisely adjusted human life? It is a life of free obedience to the eternal and unchangeable laws of God; a life, therefore, which attains through self-discipline successive steps of spiritual power. Life on other terms brings on a progressive decline of spiritual power and with this a sense of self-condemnation. What is the happy life? It is a life of conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is to say, of God’s companionship. And wherein is the profoundest unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make one’s life fruitful or effective.

If, then, we are at times tempted to fancy that all this undemonstrable experience is unreal, or metaphysical, or purposeless, or imaginary, it is best to deal with such returning scepticism much as we deal with the selfish or mean thoughts which we are trying to outgrow. Let all these hindrances to the higher life be quietly but firmly repelled. The better world we enter is indeed entered by faith and not by sight; but this faith grows more confident and more supporting, until it is like an inward faculty of sight itself. To substitute for this a world of the outward senses is to find no meaning in life which can convey confidence and peace. It is but to embitter every noble and thoughtful nature with restless doubts from which there is no escape.

Such was religion as it disclosed itself to the early Hebrews. Soon, indeed, that religion was overgrown by the formalism which converted its practical teaching into mere prohibitions or mere mechanism; but behind these abuses of later history lay the primitive simplicity of spiritual liberty and life. Such also was the historical beginning of the Christian religion. The mission of Christ, like that of each genuine reformer, was to recall men to their original consciousness of God; and it is perhaps the greatest tragedy of history, while at the same time the best proof of the free will of man, that the Hebrew people, to whom Christ announced that he was expressly sent, could not, as a whole, bring themselves to obey his call. They were held in bondage by their accumulated formalism, as many a man has been ever since. They could not rise to the thought of a worship which was in spirit and in truth. Had they, with their extraordinary gifts, been able to hear Christ’s message, they would have become the dominant nation of the world.

And what is to be said of those Gentile peoples who listened more willingly to the message of Christ, those “wild olive trees,” as St. Paul calls them, which were grafted on the “broken branches”? They also have had the same history. They also, in their own way, have become enslaved by the same formalism; and they also must regain their liberty through the return of individual souls to a personal experience of the method of Christ.

Here is the evidence of the indestructible truth and the extraordinary vitality of the Christian religion. To subdue its opponents was but a slight achievement; for every positive truth must in the end prevail. Its real conflict has been with the forces of accumulated opinion, of superfluous learning, of sickly fancies among its friends, and with the intellectual slavery to which these influences have led. Through these obstructions the light and power of genuine Christianity have broken like sunshine through a mist; and with such Christianity have appeared in history the political liberty on which the permanence of civilization rests, the philosophical truth which solves the problems of human life, and the present comfort for the human heart, beyond the power of misfortune to disturb.

We reach, then, a philosophy of life which is not speculative or fanciful, but rests on the facts of history. This is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Better is it for one if he finds this “way” without too many companions or professional guides, for many a religious teaching, designed to show the way, has repelled young lives from following it. As one follows the way, he gains, first of all, courage, so that he dares to go on in his search. He goes still further, and the way opens into the assurance that life, with all its mystery, is not lived in vain. He pushes on, and the way issues into health, not only of the soul but even of the body; for bodily health is more dependent on spiritual condition than spiritual condition on bodily health; and modern medicine can never restore and assure health to the body if it limit its problem to physical relief alone. Nor is even this the end of the “way” of Christ. It leads not only to personal health, but to social health as well; not by continually inciting the masses to some social programme, but by strengthening the individuals of which the masses are made. Here alone is positive social redemption; while the hopes that turn to other ways of social reform are for the most part deceptive dreams.

Finally, the way is sure to lead every life which follows it, and is willing to pay the price for the possession of truth, into the region of spiritual peace. No other way of life permits this comprehensive sense of peace and assurance. Apart from it we have but the unremitting and bitter struggle for existence, the enforcement of national self-seeking, the temporary victory of the strong, the hell of the weak and the poor; yet, at the same time, no peace even for the strong, who have their little day of power, but live in daily fear that this power will fail and leave them at the mercy of the wolves, their neighbors. Meantime, on every page of the world’s history, and in the experience of daily life, God writes the opposite teaching, that out of the midst of evil issues at last the mastery of the good; and that, in modern as in ancient time, the meek both inherit and control the earth. History is not a record of despotic control like that of a Roman Cæsar, effective and intelligent, but necessarily involving a progressive degeneration of his subjects; it is a story of progressive amelioration in moral standards and achievements; and this fact of moral progress is the most convincing proof of the being of God.

Thus it happens that to one who loves liberty and who reads history, the logic of thought leads to faith in God. Without such faith it is difficult to believe in human progress through freedom, or to view the movement of the modern world with hope. Without such faith the popular agitations of the time are disquieting and alarming, and the only refuge of the spirit is in submission to some human authority either of Church or of State. Without such faith it would be increasingly impossible to maintain a democratic republic like Switzerland in the midst of the autocratic monarchies of Europe. With profound truthfulness the Swiss Parliament at Aarau opened its session with these simple words: “Our help is in the Lord our God, who hath made heaven and earth.” And, finally, without political liberty there would be but a brief survival of religious liberty itself, and it too would be supplanted by a condition of servitude. A State-Church is a self-contradictory expression. State and Church alike need self-government for self-development. A free Church and a free State are not only most representative of Christianity, but are beyond doubt the forms of Christian citizenship which are to survive. Not compulsion, nor any form of authority, will in the end dominate the world, but freedom, in all its forms and its effects. The end of social evolution is to be the free obedience of men and nations to the moral order of the world.

And yet, we must repeat, the secret of true progress is not to be found in an achievement of philosophy, or a process of thought; but in a historical process, a living experience. To each man’s will is offered the choice of this way which leads to personal recognition of the truth and personal experience of happiness. To each nation the same choice is presented. No philosophy or religion has real significance which does not lead this way. No man can rightly call it mere misfortune, or confess his unbelief with sentimental regret, when he misses the way and forfeits his peace of mind. His pessimism is not, as he fondly thinks, a mark of distinction; it is, on the contrary, as a rule, an evidence of moral defect or weakness, and should stir in him a positive moral scorn.

What is it, then, which makes one unable to find the way of Jesus? It is, for the most part, either unwillingness to make a serious effort to find it, or disinclination to accept the consequences of the choice. To take up with some philosophical novelty, involving no demand upon the will; to surrender oneself to the pleasures of life; to attach oneself, with superficial and unreflecting devotion, to some form of Church or sect;--how much easier is any one of these refuges of the mind than serious meditation on the great problems of life and the growth of a personal conviction! And yet, how unmistakable have been the joy, and the strength to live and to die, and the peace of mind and sense of right adjustment to the Universe, which those have found who have followed with patience the way I have described! In the testimony of such souls there is complete accord. Consciously or unconsciously, every heart desires the satisfactions which this way of life can give, and without these satisfactions of the spirit no other possessions or pleasures can insure spiritual peace.

What infinite pains are taken by people in the modern world for the sake of their health of body or the welfare of their souls! For health of body they go barefoot in the daytime or sleep in wet sheets at night; for the good of their souls they go on pilgrimages and into retreats, or submit themselves to other forms of spiritual exercise. They go even farther in their pious credulity. There is not a hardship or a folly, or a risk of body or soul, or any form of martyrdom, which is not accepted by thousands in the hope that it will save their souls. And all the time the simple way to the meaning of life lies straight before their feet,--a way, however, let us last of all remember, which it is not enough to know, but which is given us to follow. This is the truth which a scholar of the time of Luther teaches, though he himself had not fully attained the truth. Not, he writes, by knowing the way but by going it, is the meaning of life to be found. He put into the mouth of Christ his lesson:

“Why art thou then so faint of heart, O man of little faith? Have I not strength to do My part As God’s word promiseth?

Why wilt thou not return to Me Whose pity will receive? Why seek not Him whose grace can free And every fault forgive?

Why was it hard the way to find, Which straight before thee ran? Why dost thou wander as though blind? ’Tis thine own choice, O man!”

NOTES

NOTE 1

“Friedrich Max von Klinger,” says Professor Hilty, “was born in 1752, at Frankfort. His family were poor, and after he had with difficulty pursued his studies at the University of Giessen, he became at first a play-writer for a travelling company. He then served during the Bavarian War of Succession in a corps of volunteers. Later he became reader and travelling companion to the Czarevitch Paul of Russia, afterwards the Emperor. He was made Director of the corps of cadets of the nobility, as well as of the Emperor’s pages, and of the girls’ school for the nobility. Under Alexander I. he was also made Curator of the University of Dorpat. In all these relations of life, which were as difficult as can be imagined, in his contact with actors, crown-princes, Czars, noble pages and women of the court, diplomats and professors--who, taken together, are certainly not of the classes most easy to deal with--and living at a court thoroughly degraded and beset by self-seekers of the lowest kind as was the court of Catherine II., von Klinger preserved his candid character and moral courage and gained the high respect of his contemporaries. In Goethe’s Wahrheit und Dichtung, he mentions von Klinger as follows: ‘This maintenance of a sterling character is the more creditable when it occurs in the midst of worldly and business life and when a way of conduct which might appear to many curt and abrupt, being judiciously followed, accomplishes its ends. Such was his character. Without subservience (which, indeed, has never been a quality of the natives of Frankfort) he attained to the most important positions, was able to maintain himself there and to continue his services with the highest approval and gratitude of his noble patrons. Through all this, he never forgot either his old friends or the paths which he had come.’ In the later years of his life, Goethe renewed the study of von Klinger’s writings, ‘which recalled to me his unwearied activity and his remarkable character.’”

NOTE 2

Dante, Purgatorio, xxvii, 126, 131.

NOTE 3

Jakob Böhme, from a supplement to his works (Historische Uebersicht).

NOTE 4

Dante, Purgatorio, xxvii, 115.

NOTE 5