The Conquest of Fear Part 5

It was, therefore, out of the range of possibility that under Him there could be opposition or contradiction between one of His agents and another. It would be inconsistent with His being that one man's advantage should be brought about at another man's cost. Where that was apparently the case it was due to both sides taking the authority into their own hands, and neither sufficiently recognising Him. If His trusted subordinates in being given a free hand played Him false, they naturally played each other false, and played false to themselves first of all. Where one was afraid of another and strove to outwit him there was treachery against the supreme command.

Again there was nothing new in this; but to me it was a new point of view with regard to those with whom and for whom I worked. For the first time I saw their true relation to me, as mine to them, and something of the principle of brotherhood. Up to this time brotherhood had been a charming, sentimental word to me, and not much more. Children of one Father, yes; but discordant children, with no restraint that I could see on their natural cut-throat enmities.

But here was a truth which made all other men my necessary helpmates, and me the necessary helpmate of all other men. I couldn't do without them; they couldn't do without me. Hostility between us was as out of place as between men pulling together on the rope which is to save all their lives. If peril could bring about unity G.o.d could bring it about even more effectively. G.o.d was the great positive, the solvent in which irritation and unfriendliness must necessarily melt away.

VIII

The third point, involving my obvious first step, was to put suspicion out of my own mind. I was to see myself as G.o.d's Self-Expression working with others who were also His Self-Expression to the same extent as I.

It was in the fact of our uniting together to produce His Self-Expression that I was to look for my security. No one could effectively work against me while I was consciously trying to work with G.o.d. Moreover, it was probable that no one was working against me, or had any intention of working against me, but that my own point of view being wrong I had put the harmonious action of my life out of order.

Suspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were many that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.

This does not mean that in our effort to reproduce harmonious action we should shut our eyes to what is evidently wrong, or blandly ignore what is plainly being done to our disadvantage. Of course not! One uses all the common-sense methods of getting justice for oneself and protecting one's own interests. But it does mean that when I can no longer protect my own interests, when my affairs depend upon others far more than on myself--a condition in which we all occasionally find ourselves--I am not to _fret myself_, not to churn my spirit into nameless fears. I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am a.s.sociated are not free agents.

G.o.d is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all. I as well as they, they as well as I, are partakers of His Sons.h.i.+p; and the Son--His Expression--is always "in the Father's bosom," [9] in His love and care.

[9] St. John

IX

Having grasped this idea the new orientation was not difficult. There was in it too much solace to allow of its being difficult. If I state the results it is once more not because I consider them important to anyone but myself, but only because they became the starting-point of a new advance in the conquest of fear.

Within forty-eight hours, with no action on my part except the _Metanoia_, the change in my point of view, all misunderstandings had been cleared away. The other side had taken the entire initiative, I making no advance whatever toward them. A telegram expressing their hearty good will was followed by an interview, after which I was at work again. I have not only worked easily ever since but with such fecundity that one plan is always formed before I have its predecessor off my hands. This says nothing of the quality of my work, which, humble as it may be, is simply the best I know how to do. I refer only to its abundance. I have found that in "working together with G.o.d," I am less involved in conflicts of wills than I was before, and that the words of Amos are literally fulfilled to me, "that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed." I say it without knocking on wood, and with no fear lest my "good luck" will be withdrawn, that from that time to this I have had plenty of work which I have accomplished happily, and have never lacked a market for my modest wares.

X

From all of which I have drawn one main inference--the imperative urgency of Trust.

I had hitherto thought of trust as a gritting of the teeth and a stiffening of the nerves to believe and endure, no matter what compulsion one put upon oneself. Gradually, in the light of the experience sketched above, I came to see it as simply the knowledge that the supreme command rules everything to everyone's advantage. The more we can rest mentally, keep ourselves at peace, _be still and know that it is G.o.d_,[10] the single and sole Director, the more our interests will be safe. This, I take it, is the kind of trust for which the great pioneers of truth plead so persistently in both the Old and New Testaments.

[10] The Book of Psalms.

Trust, then, is not a force we wrest from ourselves against reason, against the grain. To be trust at all it must be loving and spontaneous.

It cannot be loving and spontaneous unless there is a natural impulse behind it. And there can be no natural impulse behind it unless we have something in our own experience which corroborates the mere hearsay testimony that there is a Power worth trusting to. Job's "Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him," could only have been wrung from a heart which had proved the Divine Good Will a thousand times and knew what it was doing. Some experience of our own we _must_ have. It is an absolute necessity. Desperate hope in another man's G.o.d may do something for us, but it cannot do much. A small thing which I have proved for myself is a better foundation for trust than a Bible learnt parrot-like by rote and not put to the practical test. Once I have found out for myself that to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him is the surest way to security and peace I have the more willing confidence in doing it.

CHAPTER IV

G.o.d'S SELF-EXPRESSION AND THE MIND OF TO-DAY

I

To the mind of to-day trust would be easier were it not for the terror lest G.o.d's plans involve us in fearful things from which we shrink. We have heard so much of the trials He sends; of the gifts of Tantalus He keeps forever in our sight but just beyond our reach; of the blessings He actually bestows upon us only to s.n.a.t.c.h them away when we have come to love them most--we have heard so much of this that we are often afraid of His will as the greatest among the evils of which we stand in dread.

In many cases this is the root of our fear. We cannot trust without misgiving to the love of G.o.d. What is there then that we can trust to?

We can't trust to ourselves; still less can we trust to our fellow-men.

Those whom we love and in whom we have confidence being as weak as ourselves, if not weaker than we, establish our spirits not at all. If, therefore, we mentally poison the well of Universal Good-intent at its very source what have we to depend on?

I have already referred to the G.o.d of repressions and denials, and now must speak a little more freely of this travesty on "the Father," as expressed to us in Jesus Christ. Of all the obstacles to the rooting out of fear the lingering belief in such a distortion of Divine Love is to my mind the most deeply based.

I often think it a proof of the vital truth in the message of Jesus Christ that it persists in holding the heart in spite of the ugly thing which, from so many points of view, the Caucasian has managed to make of it. Nowhere is the cruelty of Caucasian misinterpretation more evident than in the meanings given to the glorious phrase, "the Will of G.o.d." I do not exaggerate when I say that in most Caucasian minds the Will of G.o.d is a bitter, ruthless force, to which we can only drug ourselves into submission. It is always ready to thwart us, to stab us in the back, or to strike us where our affections are tenderest. We hold our blessings only on the tenure of its caprice. Our pleasures are but the stolen moments we can s.n.a.t.c.h from its inattention.

As an example I quote some stanzas from a hymn frequently sung where English-speaking people wors.h.i.+p, and more or less expressive of the whole Caucasian att.i.tude toward "G.o.d's Will."

My G.o.d, my Father, while I stray Far from my home on life's rough way, Oh, teach me from my heart to say, Thy Will be done.

Though dark my path and sad my lot, Let me be still, and murmur not, Or breathe the prayer divinely taught, Thy Will be done.

What though in lonely grief I sigh For friends beloved no longer nigh, Submissive still would I reply, Thy Will be done.

If thou shouldst call me to resign What most I prize, it ne'er was mine; I only yield thee what is thine; Thy Will be done.

These lines, typical of a whole cla.s.s of sentimental hymnology, are important only in as far as they are widely known and express a more or less standardised point of view. The implication they contain is that all deprivation is brought upon us by the Will of G.o.d, and that our wisest course is to beat ourselves down before that which we cannot modify. Beneath the car of this Juggernaut we must flout our judgments and crush our affections. As He knows so well where to hit us we must stifle our moans when He does so. As He knows so well what will ring our hearts we must be content to let Him give so that He can the more poignantly take away. The highest exercise of our own free will is to "be still and murmur not"--to admit that we need the chastis.e.m.e.nt--to crouch beneath the blows which we tell ourselves are delivered in love, even though it is hard to see where the love comes in.

II

I know nothing more tragic than those efforts on the part of heart-broken people, coming within the experience of all of us, to make themselves feel that this terrible "Will of G.o.d" must be right, no matter how much it seems wrong.

A young man with a wife and family to support is struck down by a lingering illness which makes him a burden. All his Job's comforters tell him that G.o.d has brought the affliction upon him, and that to bow to the "Inscrutable Will" must be his first act of piety.

A young mother is rejoicing in her baby when its little life is suddenly snuffed out. She must school herself to say, quite irrespective of the spirit of renunciation which inspires the words, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord."

A woman is left a widow to earn a living for herself, and bring up her children fatherless. She must a.s.sume that the Lord had some good purpose in leaving her thus bereft and must drill herself into waiting on a Will so impossible to comprehend.

Storms sink s.h.i.+ps, drowning pa.s.sengers and crew; lightning sets fire to houses and strikes human beings dead; earthquakes swallow up whole districts destroying industry and human life; tidal waves sweep inland carrying away towns; and our legal phraseology can think of no better explanation of such calamity than to ascribe it to "the act of G.o.d."

It is needless to multiply these instances. Our own knowledge supplies them by the score. Our personal lives are full of them. G.o.d's Will, G.o.d's Love, G.o.d's Mercy, become strangely ironic forces, grim beyond any open enmity. They remind us of the "love," the "pity," the "mercy," in which the orthodox sent the heretic to the hangman or the stake, destroying the body to save the soul.

It is a far cry from this appalling vision of "the Father" to the psalmist's "Delight thou in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." How could anyone delight in the Caucasian G.o.d, as the majority of Caucasians conceive of Him? As a matter of fact, how many Caucasians themselves, however devout, however orthodox, attempt to delight, or pretend to delight, in the G.o.d to whom on occasions they bow down? Delight is a strong word, and a lovely one; but used of the Caucasian and his Deity it is not without its elements of humour.

III