Part 16

One good help in this, besides the firm resolve to forego all luxury, is, as already explained in a former chapter, systematic giving; another is, to reckon and calculate as little as possible, and to busy oneself as little with money as is compatible with a necessary order in one’s business and private affairs. For money has an evil charm about it like that of philosophical heresy; neither will easily let a man go again when once he has become much involved in them.

Glory is for many just as strong a fetter as mammonism--not only the excessive eagerness for the ordinary human and civic honors (exposed though they always are to the judgment of contemporaries or, in the greater instances, of posterity) but also the anxiety for respectability. As to the former, Paul, one of the most abused of men, has left us a very good statement in 1 Cor. iv. 3 ff.; and that any one loses the regard of his citizens quite without blame is really much rarer than is commonly supposed. On the other hand, God often enough makes one’s former enemies to be those who become the most satisfied with him, and the prophetic words of Isaiah come splendidly to take the place of the earlier underestimation: “And the sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet.” But one must be able to endure things if he is to adopt Christianity; those too-sensitive Christians who crave the esteem of even those they do not themselves esteem only show that the world and its praise are still far from being enough a matter of indifference to them.

The real positions of honor are, after riches, the most dangerous thing there is for faith; on this point the Gospel leaves not the least doubt. Whoever runs into this danger quite of his own free will, even perhaps with eager zeal, quite commonly perishes therein, so far as concerns his better and only worthful life. But whoever, by his calling or by his lot, is compelled to accept such positions and yet would like to become or remain a Christian, has every cause to be watchful, and to be thankful for occasional humiliations, an article in which, happily, the world seldom lets him be lacking.

For the greater number of men in the ordinary situations of life the hardest part in the prolegomena of Christianity is perhaps the conquering of one’s desire for pleasure. The humbler classes often escape this desire with still less success than do the wealthy and the aristocratic, who may have learned, through experience, to place a better estimate upon the worth or worthlessness of the pleasures of the material life. One often finds in the lower classes a much more unrestrained passion for pleasure, which, joined with the atheistic mood they purposely cultivate, sometimes degenerates into a true savagery and makes them like animals, and animals not of the noblest sort, either.

But unfortunately the upper strata of society often enough lead the way by their own bad example. They often complain of the love of pleasure and the frivolity of the serving classes; but things would go better if the servants did not perceive in their masters the same propensities that restlessly agitate them.

Pleasure set up as a rule of life, sensuousness (taken in the widest sense) established as the controlling power in the life of a man--this is the infallible death of all faith in transcendent things. These two powers, pleasure and faith, do not long exist side by side in a man, but the one or the other must leave the field. Happy he in whom it is the power of the sensual element that retreats before that of the spiritual, vigorously striving for the mastery. For every victory over the love of pleasure (what is not otherwise always the case on the so-called path of virtue) brings at once its own reward in an increased vigor of the ideal life, and often in a broad spiritual progress in the wider sense. We can truthfully say that the most of the great advances in the inner life are ushered in by some renunciation which brings its own compensation.

That to the love of pleasure all sorts of attractive names are given and that it in truth assumes now finer, now coarser, forms, should not lead us astray. It is, nevertheless, under all circumstances, that trait in us which most resembles animal nature and forthwith reveals its ignoble character in the fact that it is always united with egotism and the exploitation of others for our own selfish inclinations. The partial naïveté of the ancient world is wanting in humanity now, for their eyes have been opened to its meaning; and a universal failure to conquer the love of pleasure through higher interests would, in these days, be an unprecedented and quite impossible relapse of humanity into an earlier age.

With the pursuit of pleasure dies the inclination for riches and honor, which are partly only means in that pursuit and not ends in themselves; and instead there springs up joy in work, the best salvation from all evil, that otherwise always surrounds and tempts a man in one way or another. For when the pursuit of pleasure disappears as a rule of life, then a man must work, or the world is too dreary. On the other hand, with the pursuit of pleasure as his innermost spring of action, a man will always look upon work as only a means, and a disagreeable one, to the attainment of pleasure.

That one may, nevertheless, find an artless enjoyment in the beauty of nature, in the serene succession of the days and the years, in one’s family and in true friendship, in uplifting art and science, in the life and welfare of his nation, even in the inoffensive animal and plant worlds, and, above all, in all the great and good activities that are going on in the whole realm of humanity--all this is to be taken entirely for granted. Indeed, a keen sensitiveness to such things is a sure mark of an unspoiled temperament, and especially of years of youth purely spent, a youth that has not, by poisonous pleasures, prematurely deadened its feeling for the true and harmless joys of life.

Furthermore, an excessive repression of the life of the body is certainly not advantageous for spiritual progress--still less is it a divine command, but it is rather, whenever it appears, merely a human device with no decisive value. On this point a thoughtful commentator of the oldest biblical records says, very truly, that men always have a tendency to heighten the commands of God, which are themselves properly meted and adapted to men’s capabilities; and that, in the Old Testament narrative of the first trial of obedience, God did not say that Adam and Eve should not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but only that they should not eat of its fruit; it was Eve herself who added the further prohibition, “neither shall ye touch it,” and by so doing placed the Tempter in the desired position of making an alleged divine command manifestly untrue on its face, because the mere touch of the tree did not cause death. (Genesis ii. 17, and iii. 3, 4.)

Thus it is, indeed, with many exaggerated and unnecessary commands which parents lay upon their children or churches upon their adherents, the non-fulfilment of which they then with equal facility overlook.

An exact and literal obedience to all the real divine commands, which are all practicable, and a thorough scorn and disregard for all the “commandments of men”--this is the only way by which our Christian confessions could now bring themselves new life.

Even the inclination to undergo suffering and renunciation is somewhat dangerous, and the more so because it is often joined with a secret desire for praise, in which case one devil is but supplanted by another, perhaps still more powerful. A man should not throw away his life, not even by a lingering neglect of his powers; only, he should not overvalue his body’s well-being nor put it too much in the foreground.

Christ himself is in this respect an inimitable example of a simple moderation which, at times, allowed itself to enjoy an almost luxurious homage, as in the case of the box of precious ointment, which evidently made Judas, the apostle of literal asceticism, to lose faith in him. Even the most advanced Christian should live quite like a natural man, not like a hermit or a pillar-saint, and should seek the worth and purpose of life neither in pleasure nor in suffering and renunciation, but only in the carrying out of the will and commission of God. A wise saying of Blumhardt’s, often quoted, declares that one must be twice converted, once from the natural to the spiritual life, and then back again from the spiritual to the natural so far as is justified; but that this is, perhaps, accomplished in some cases at a single stroke, without a preliminary exaggeration of the spiritual nature. Many linger too long in this double mutation, and during this period afford no very agreeable spectacle.

Finally, one’s own power can never set the upward-striving man free from all those enemies of his real happiness which keep him, in a very genuine sense, from entering into true Christianity. The “old Adam” is still to-day, as at the time when the expression was first used, “too strong for the young Melanchthon,” and all good resolutions give as good as no help, so long as the man will not lay hold on the aid sent us by God himself to that end. But even he can not help unless the man completely surrenders his will. This is the man’s share in the work of his liberation from the fetters of the natural, selfish life; everything else is done to him.

Dante, in particular, explains this very clearly in the twenty-first canto of the Purgatorio, where the joyous trembling of the mountain of purification, when a soul finally rises into its higher region, is portrayed in the following verses:

“It trembles when any spirit feels itself So purified that it may rise, or move For rising; and such loud acclaim ensues. Purification by the will alone Is proved, that, free to change society, Seizes the soul rejoicing in her will. Desire of bliss is present from the first; But strong propension hinders, to that wish By the just ordinance of heaven opposed-- Propension now as eager to fulfil The allotted torment as erewhile to sin. And I, who in this punishment had lain Five hundred years and more, but now have felt Free wish for happier clime.”

Every one acquainted with his inner life will confirm that for a long time at first a partial will toward the good fought in him with inclinations of which he very well knew that they would bring him just suffering. So long as the soul is, nevertheless, unable to conquer this desire, it will remain in essentially its former state. But if it holds on to the impulse to freedom notwithstanding, by God’s grace there will come a memorable day on which it will at last feel in itself the fully determined will to move forward, and then forthwith it is free, and afterward does not understand how it could have delayed so long.

Yet it would not be right to wait inactive till the will is thus fully determined. Christianity, like many another thing, is learned only through trial, not through study. On the contrary, idly talking about it is most foreign to its spirit, and so-called learned explanations easily make it but darker and more dubious; that is a “science” which, like every other, one may leave entirely in the hands of those who are called thereto, and which very often contributes nothing of moment to their spiritual advancement. Christianity is surely completely understood only through that spirit which the Gospel calls the Holy Spirit. What that is, we do not know; we can only know that it is a very real phenomenon which becomes manifest in its effects upon our life, and which can gradually make us more and more indifferent toward everything that the world considers as the greatest possessions and the most indispensable pleasures. To this freedom we are called, and it has been made possible through Christianity--what before might well seem very doubtful. But we are not done when we have found Christianity “interesting”--often because of its extravagances rather than because of its real sobriety in the conception of man and his natural powers; we must above all things make a beginning, and then progress therein comes quite of itself.

Therefore, O soul, thou who, from the mazy gardens of the common life of the world that no longer wholly satisfy, hast arrived at happiness by this simplest and best of all roads, but nevertheless still standest, somewhat trembling, before the actual entry into the forecourts of Christianity itself (perhaps because thou seest there a company that does not fully awaken thy confidence), take thy resolution notwithstanding, and dare! It will not be long before thou seest at least enough to have made thy daring seem worth while. It is but rarely that any one turns back again from this road, and never yet, for thousands of years, has any one who has travelled it quite to the end, lifted up complaints of a wasted life, or even of an existence too hard to be borne.

But how many there are to-day who complain, on the other roads to happiness!

No one who is willing to confess the truth can deny that in every human soul, even in one already resolutely set toward faith in transcendental things, serious doubts can now and then arise as to the reality of all its conceptions and hopes. They who most vehemently condemn such temporary doubts in others are not the ones who are the best confirmed in the faith, for by such zeal they are often only seeking forcibly to suppress their own doubts. But in such moments, thus much remains sure, that there is no certainty anywhere to be found as to the great questions of the present and future life, better than that which Christianity affords, and that there is no adequate satisfaction to be found in trying to content oneself with only the results of “natural science,” many of which are still very uncertain; while one simply banishes from his thoughts all further questions, as to the interrelation of all things in a higher sense, and as to the moral laws of the universe,--questions on which the life and welfare of humanity most of all depend. That will never succeed for long; after every such period of a bare realism which limits itself to a smaller aim, in all men not wholly superficial, not wholly submerged in the world of sense, there arises with irresistible power the impulse to investigate anew whether and how far the high pretension of Christianity to be the real, the unique truth, and the only truth that brings happiness, is a just pretension.

This impulse you also will more or less experience; otherwise you would not have taken in your hand this book, which had its origin in that same impulse. In no case thrust the impulse back from the threshold; for it springs from the better part of your nature.

Accept, rather, one more bit of counsel: First consider more closely the “prolegomena” of Christianity--those preliminary truths which it considers to be self-evident; its dogmas take account of only afterward, when you have already been able to resolve to live up to these preliminary truths with all the power you have. The reverse way is, to be sure, the more usual one, and it is the one to which we are wont to be directed in our schools and churches. But if this more usual course is taken, now and then there lies “a lion in the way” which does not appear upon the path proposed in this chapter.

The power of resolve, of course, you will always be obliged to have, for only “he who overcometh shall inherit all things;” for the irresolute, as well as for those completely without faith, even in the most favorable case only the decay of their personal life stands in near and certain prospect.

VIII. THE STEPS OF LIFE

VIII. THE STEPS OF LIFE

It is an old and obvious fancy, that of dividing the inner life into a series of steps, or of describing it in the allegorical form of a pilgrimage with its various stages and halts and hindrances of one sort or another. Yet I do not know of any such description that suits the needs of our own day, especially the needs of people of culture; indeed, it is, and has ever been, a fault of most sermons that while they depict life’s attainable ideal with more or less exactness, they are noways able to give as plain an account of the way thither. Yet this is just the service (and the directions should be quite specific, too) which the church, it would seem, is called upon to perform for the present generation. What is known by the somewhat distasteful name of “the cure of souls,” so far as it exists at all, has become too professional (not to say too commercial) a matter with the churches: in the things of the spirit there is nothing if not freedom and individuality; yet it is just here that a kind of rigid technical nomenclature has been devised, with expressions that once may have been justified, but are now meaningless to many men and at some future time will have to be replaced, perhaps, by others.