The Whence and the Whither of Man Part 14

A sound body contains many organs, all of which must be sound. And in a sound mind there is an even greater number of faculties, all of which must be kept at a high grade of efficiency. Man is a marvellously complex being, and more in danger of a narrow and one-sided development than any lower animal. And it is very easy for a certain grade or cla.s.s of society, or for a whole race, to become so specialized, by the cultivation of only one set of faculties as to altogether prevent its giving birth to a complete humanity. Along certain broad lines the Greeks and Romans attained results never since equalled. But their neglect of other, even more important, powers and attainments, especially the moral and religious, doomed them to a speedy decay. The rude northern races were on the whole better and n.o.bler, and became heirs to Greek art and letters, and to Roman law. And this is another ill.u.s.tration of the advantage or necessity of the fusion of races.

To answer the question, "Which stratum or cla.s.s in the community or world at large is heir to the future?" we must seek the one which is still to a large extent generalized. It must be maintaining, in a sound body, a steady, even if slow, advance of all the mental powers. It will not be remarkable for the high development or lack of any quality or power; it must have a fair amount of all of them well correlated. It must be well balanced, "good all around," as we say. And this cla.s.s is evidently neither the highest nor the lowest in the community, but the "common people, whom G.o.d must have loved, because he made so many of them."

They have, as a rule, fair-sized or large families. Their bodies are kept sound and vigorous by manual labor. They are compelled to think on all sorts of questions and to solve them as best they can. They have a healthy balance of mental faculties, even if they are not very learned or artistic. They are kept temperate because they cannot afford many luxuries. Their healthy life prevents an undue craving for them. They help one another and cultivate unselfishness.

The good old word, neighbor, means something to them. They have a st.u.r.dy morality, and you can always rely upon them in great moral crises. They are patriotic and public-spirited; they have not so many, or so enslaving, selfish interests. They have always been trained to self-sacrifice and the endurance of hards.h.i.+p; and heroism is natural to them. They have a strong will, cultivated by the battle of daily life. And among them religion never loses its hold.

But what of our tendencies to specialization in education and business? Are these wrong and injurious? Specialization, like great wealth, is a great danger and a fearful test of character. It tends to narrowness. If you will know everything about something, you must make a great effort to know something about, and have some interest in, everything. The great scholar is often anything but the large-minded, whole-souled man which he might have become. He has allowed himself to become absorbed in, and fettered by, his specialty until he can see and enjoy nothing outside of it. There is no selfishness like that of learning.

We can accomplish nothing unless we concentrate our efforts upon a comparatively narrow line of work. But this does not necessitate that our views should be narrow or our aims low. Teufelsdrockh may live on a narrow lane; but his thoughts, starting along the narrow lane, lead him over the whole world. The narrowness of our horizon is due to our near-sightedness.

But the only absolutely safe specialization is the highest possible development of our moral and religious powers. For their cultivation only enlarges and strengthens all the other powers of body and mind.

"But," you will object, "does religion always broaden?" Yes. That which narrows is the base alloy of superst.i.tion. But a religion which finds its goal and end in conformity to environment, character, and G.o.dlikeness can only broaden.

But there is the so-called "breadth" of the shallow mind which attempts to find room at the same time for things which are mutually exclusive. G.o.d and Baal, right and wrong, honesty and lying, selfishness and love, these are mutually exclusive. You cannot find room in your mind for both members of the pair at the same time. You must choose. And, when you have chosen, abide by your choice. A ladleful of thin dough fallen on the floor is very broad. But its breadth is due to lack of consistency. Better narrowness than such breadth.

But while individual specialization may be safe for the individual, and beneficial to the race, the race which is to inherit the future must remain unspecialized. It must not sacrifice future possibilities to present rapidity of advance. And the common people are advancing safely, slowly, but surely. Wealth and learning become of permanent prospective and real value only when they are invested in the ma.s.ses. They are the final depositaries of all wealth--material, intellectual, moral, and religious. Whatever, and only that which, becomes a part of their life becomes thereby endowed with immortality. Will we invest freely or will we wait to have that which we call our own wrested from us? If we refuse it to our own kin and nation, it will surely fall to foreigners. "G.o.d made great men to help little ones."

The city of G.o.d on earth is being slowly "builded by the hands of selfish men." But the builders are becoming continually more unselfish and righteous, and as they become better and purer its walls rise the more rapidly.

CHAPTER IX

THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE

We have studied the teachings of science concerning man and his environment, let us turn now to the teachings of the Bible. And though eight chapters have been devoted to the teachings of science, and only one to the teachings of the Bible, it is not because I underestimate the importance of the latter. It is more difficult to clearly discover just what are the teachings of Nature in science.

The lesson is written in a language foreign to most of us, and one requiring careful study; and yet once deciphered it is clear.

Science attains the laws of Nature by the study of animal and human history. But this record is a history of continually closer conformity to environment on the part of all advancing forms. The animal kingdom is the clay which is turned, as Job says, to the seal of environment, and it makes little difference whether we study the seal or the impression; we shall read the same sentence. Environment has stamped its laws on the very structure of man's body and mind.

And the old biblical writers read these laws, guided by G.o.d's Spirit, in their own hearts, and in those of their neighbors, and in their national history, as the record of G.o.d's working, and gave us concrete examples of the results of obedience and disobedience.

Hence the teaching of the Bible is always clear and unmistakable.

The Bible treats of three subjects--Nature, Man, and G.o.d--and the relations of each of these to the others. I have tried to present to you in the first chapter the biblical conception of Nature and its relation to G.o.d. In its relation to man it is his manifestation to us, and, in its widest sense, the sum of the means and modes through which he develops, aids, and educates us. And in this conception I find science to be strictly in accord with scripture.

Now what is the scriptural idea of man? Man interests us especially in three aspects. He is a corporeal being; he is an intellectual being; he is a moral being, with feelings, will, and personality.

Man's body. Plato considered the body as a source of evil and a hindrance to all higher life. And Plato was by no means alone in this. The Bible takes a very different view. Neglect of the body is always rebuked. The only place, so far as I can find, where the body is called vile is where it is compared with the glorious body into which it is to be transformed. "Your bodies," writes Paul to the Corinthians, "are members of Christ," "temples of the Holy Ghost."

But the Bible teaches that the body is to be the servant, not the ruler, of the spirit. "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection," continues Paul. Here again science is strictly in accord with scripture.

Man is an intellectual being. I need not quote the praises of knowledge in the Old Testament. They must be fresh in your mind. But the practical Peter writes, "giving all diligence add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge." And Paul prays that the love of the Ephesians may "abound more and more in knowledge and in all judgment." But the important knowledge is the knowledge of G.o.d, and of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master. And similarly science emphasizes that the chief end of all knowledge is that we should know the environment to which we are to conform. Knowledge is useful to strengthen and clarify the mind, that it may see and conform to truth and G.o.d: and if it fails to become a means to conformity, it has failed of the chief, and practically the only, end for which it was intended. We are to come "in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of G.o.d, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." But knowledge which only puffs up and distracts the mind from the great aims and ends which it should serve is rebuked with equal emphasis by the Bible and by science.

I would not claim that we have set too high a value upon knowledge, perhaps we cannot; but there is something far higher on which we are inclined to set far too low a value. This is righteousness and love; and true wisdom is knowledge permeated, vivified, and transfigured by devotion to these higher ends. And in this highest realm of the mind feeling and will rule conjointly. Love is a feeling which always will and must find its way to activity through the will, and it is an activity of the will roused by the very deepest feeling, inspired by a worthy object. If you try to divorce them, both die.

Hence Paul can say, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." And John goes, if possible, even farther and says, "Every one that loveth is born of G.o.d, and knoweth G.o.d. He that loveth not, knoweth not G.o.d; for G.o.d is love." And this sort of love bears and believes and hopes and endures, and never fails. And for this reason the Bible lays such tremendous emphasis on the heart, not as the centre of emotion alone, but as the seat of will as well. And science points to the same end, though she sees it afar off.

And what of G.o.d? G.o.d is a Spirit, Creator, Author, and Finisher of all things, and filling all. But while omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, these are not the characteristics emphasized in the Bible. He is righteous. "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" is the grand question of the father of the faithful. And when Moses prays G.o.d to show him his glory, G.o.d answers, "I will make all my goodness pa.s.s before thee." He is the "refuge of Israel," the "everlasting arms" underneath them, pitying them "as a father pitieth his children." And in the New Testament we are bidden to pray to our Father, who _is_ love, and whose temple is the heart of whosoever will receive him. Truly a very personal being.

Now the Bible rises here indefinitely above anything that mere natural science can describe. But can the ultimate "Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness" and unselfishness, of whose presence in environment science a.s.sures us, be ever better described than by these words concerning the "Father of our spirits?"

And an infinitely wise, good, and loving being will have fixed modes of working; for "with him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Thus only can man trust and know him. The old Stoic philosopher tells us "everything has two handles, and can be carried by one of them, but not by the other." So with G.o.d's laws.

Many seem to look upon them as a hindrance and limitation to him in carrying out his righteous and loving will toward man. But they are really the modes or means of his working, which he uses with such regularity and consistency that we can always rely upon them and him. The pure river of the water of life proceedeth from the throne of G.o.d and of the Lamb.

If I am lying ill waiting anxiously for the physician I can think of this great city as a ma.s.s of blocks of houses separating him from me. But the houses have been arranged in blocks so as to leave free streets, along which he can travel the more quickly. And G.o.d's laws are not blocks, but thoroughfares, planned that the angels of his mercy may fly swiftly to our aid. We are p.r.o.ne to forget that these laws are expressly made for your and my benefit, as well as that of all beings, that we may be righteous and unselfish. And this is one ground of the apostle's faith that "all things work together for good to them that love G.o.d." And in the Apocalypse the earth helps the woman. It must be so.

But what if you or I try to block the thoroughfare? What would happen to us if we tried to stop bare-handed the current of a huge dynamo, or to hold back the torrent of Niagara? Nothing but death can result. And what if I stem myself against the "river of the water of life, proceeding from the throne of G.o.d," and try to turn it aside or hold it back from men peris.h.i.+ng of thirst? And that is just what sin is, even if done carelessly or thoughtlessly; for men have no right to be careless and thoughtless about some things.

"The wages of sin is death;" physical death for breaking physical law, and spiritual death for breaking spiritual law. How can it be otherwise? The wages are fairly earned. The hardest doctrine for a scientific man to believe is that there can be any forgiveness of such sin as the heedless, ungrateful breaking of such wise and beneficent laws of a loving Father. And yet my earthly father has had to forgive me a host of times during my boyhood. Perhaps I can hope the same from G.o.d; I take his word for it.

But if you or I think that it is safe to trifle with G.o.d's laws, we are terribly mistaken. The Lord proclaimed himself to Moses as "The Lord, the Lord G.o.d, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." But someone will say, This is terrible.

It is terrible; but the question is, Does the Bible speak the truth about nature? Is nature a "fairy G.o.dmother," or does she bring men up with sternness and inflict suffering upon the innocent children, if necessary, lest they copy after their sinful parents? Do the children of the defaulter and drunkard and debauchee suffer because of the sins of their father, or do they not? If the blessings won by parental virtue go down to the thousandth generation, must not the evil consequences of sin go down to the third or fourth?

That we are not under the law, but under grace, does not mean, as some seem to think, that it is safe to sin. Otherwise the forgiveness of G.o.d becomes the lowest form of indulgence slanderously attributed to the Church of Rome. We gain freedom from law as well as penalty only by obedience. The artist can safely forget the laws and rules of his art only when by long obedience and practice he obeys them unconsciously. We seem to be threatened with a belief that G.o.d will never punish sin in one who has professed Christianity. This view cheapens sin and makes pardon worthless, it takes the iron out of the blood, and the backbone out of all our religion and ethics. It ruins Christians and disgraces Christianity.

We sometimes seem to think that our nation or church or denomination is so important to the carrying on of G.o.d's work that he cannot afford to let any evil befall us, whatever we may do or be.

"Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert all equity.

They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." That was plain preaching, and the people did not like it. They would not like it any better to-day; it would come too near the truth.

But others seem to think that G.o.d is too kind, not to say good-natured, to allow his children to suffer for their sins. This is part of a creed, unconsciously very widely held to-day, that comfort, not character, is the chief end of life. Now if G.o.d is too kind to allow his children to suffer some of the natural consequences of sin, he is not a really kind and loving father, he is spoiling his children. Salvation is soundness, sanity, health; just as holiness is wholeness, escape from the disease, and not merely from the consequences of sin. A physician, unless a quack, never promises relief from a deep-seated disease without any pain or discomfort. And if the disease is the result of indulgence, he warns us that relapse into indulgence will bring a worse recurrence of the pain. Perhaps, after all, Socrates was not so far from right when he maintained that if a man had sinned the best and only thing for him is to suffer for it. "G.o.d the Lord will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly." And our Lord says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pa.s.s, one jot or one t.i.ttle shall in no wise pa.s.s from the law till all be fulfilled. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." If we would be great in the kingdom of heaven we must do and teach the commandments. One of the best lessons that the clergy can learn from science is that law and penalty are not things of the past. They are eternal facts; and if so, ought sometimes to be at least mentioned from the pulpit as well as remembered in the pew.

But if G.o.d is a person striving to communicate with man, and if man is a person intended to conform to environment by becoming like G.o.d, what is more probable from the scientific stand-point than that G.o.d should seek and find some means of making himself clearly known to man in some personal way? I do not see how any scientific man who believes in a personal G.o.d can avoid asking this question. And is there any more natural solution of the question than that given in the Bible? "G.o.d was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."

"G.o.d, who spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son." Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us." Jesus saith unto him, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works."

"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

Something more is needed than light. We need more light and knowledge of our duty; we need vastly more the will-power to do it.

I know how I ought to live; I do not live thus. What I need is not a teacher, but power to become a son of G.o.d. "I delight in the law of G.o.d after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?"

This is the terrible question. How is it to be answered? Let us remember our ill.u.s.tration of the change wrought in that panic-stricken army before Winchester by the appearance of Sheridan.

What these men needed was not information. No plan of battle reported as sure of success by trustworthy and competent witnesses, and forwarded from the greatest leader could have stayed that rout.

What they needed was Sheridan and the magnetic power of his personality. This is the strange power of all great leaders of men, whether orators, statesmen, or generals. It is intellect acting on and through intellect, but it is also vastly more; it is will acting on will. The leader does not merely instruct others, he inspires them, puts himself into them, and makes them heroes like himself.

Now something like this, but vastly grander and deeper, seems to me to have been the work of our Lord. Read John's gospel and see how it is interpenetrated with the idea of the new life to be gained by contact with our Lord, and how this forms the foundation of his hope and claim to give men this new life by drawing them to himself. And Peter says that it was impossible for the Prince of Life to be holden of death, for he was the centre and source from which not only new thoughts and purposes, but new will and life was to stream out into the souls of men. This power of our Lord may have been miraculous and supernatural in degree; I feel a.s.sured that it was not unnatural in kind and mode of action.

And here, young men, pardon a personal word about your preaching.

You will need to preach many sermons of warning against, and denunciation of, sin; many of instruction in duty. The Bible is a store-house of instruction and men need it, and you must make it clear to them. All this is good and necessary, but it is not enough.

Learn from the experience of the greatest preacher, perhaps, who ever lived.

Paul, the greatest philosopher of ancient times, came to Athens. You can well imagine how he had waited and longed for the opportunity to speak in this home of philosophy and intellectual life. Now he was to speak, not to uncultured barbarians, but to men who could understand and appreciate his best thoughts. He preached in Athens the grandest sermon, as far as argument is concerned, ever uttered.

I doubt if ever a sermon of Paul's accomplished less. He could not even rouse a healthy opposition. The idea of a new G.o.d, Jesus, and a new G.o.ddess, the Resurrection, rather tickled the Athenian fancy. He left them, and, in deep dejection, went down to Corinth. There he determined to know only "Christ and him crucified," and thus preaching in material, vicious Corinth he founded a church.

Some of you will go through the same experience. You will preach to cultured and intelligent audiences, and they will listen courteously and eagerly as long as you tell them something new, and do not ask them to do anything. The only possible way of reaching Athenian intellect or Corinthian materialism and vice is by preaching Christ, "the power of G.o.d and the wisdom of G.o.d." And you will reach more Corinthians than Athenians.

You may preach sermons full of the grandest philosophy and theology, and of the highest, most exact, science; you may chain men by your logic, thrill them by your rhetoric, and move them to tears by your eloquence, and they will go home as dead and cold as they came. What they need is power, life. But preach "Christ and him crucified"--not merely dead two thousand years ago--but risen and alive for evermore, and with us to the end of the world, the grandest, most heroic, divinest helper who ever stood by a man, one all-powerful to help and who never forsakes, and every one of your hearers who is not dead to truth will catch the life, and go home alive and not alone.

So long as we preach a dead Christ we shall have a dead church, as hopeless as the apostles were before the resurrection. "But now is Christ risen from the dead," "alive for evermore." See how Paul and Peter and John, and doubtless all the others, talked with him and he with them, after he was taken from them, and you have found the secret of their power, and of that of all the great Christian heroes and martyrs who could truly say, Lord Jesus, we understand each other. Better yet, prove by experience that it is possible for every one of us.

And our Lord and Master is the connecting link between G.o.d and man, through whom G.o.d's own Holy Spirit is poured like a mighty flood into the hearts and lives of men, transfiguring them and filling them with the divine power. This is the biblical idea of Christianity; man, through Christ, flooded and permeated and interpenetrated with the Holy Spirit of G.o.d. And thus Paul is dead and yet alive, but fully possessed and dominated by the spirit of Christ. Alive as never before, and yet his every thought, word, and deed is really that of his great leader. Can you talk of self-denial to such a Christian? He had forgotten that such a man as Saul of Tarsus or Paul ever existed; he lives only in his Master's work, and is transfigured by it. This, and nothing less, is Christianity, and this is the very highest and grandest heroism. Paul conquers Europe single-handed, alone he stands before Caesar's tribunal, and yet he is never alone; and from the gloom of the Mammertine dungeon he sends back a shout of triumph. And Peter walks steadily, cheerfully, and unflinchingly, in the footsteps of his Master to share his cross.

Let us, before leaving this topic, notice carefully just what religion, and especially Christianity, is not.