With God in the World Part 2

-- 2. _The majesty of conflict with temptation._--One is often depressed by the seemingly inglorious character of our temptations. They are so mean, petty and commonplace. If they had in them something to rouse in the heart that love of romance, that is a saving element in human nature, one could fight better. Now temptation has this very element.

But spiritual eyes are needed to discern the glory of the commonplace, the romance of the inglorious. G.o.d has been trying with divine patience to convince men of this from the very beginning. The story of the first temptation of the first human beings, in its poetic dress points to the romance of life's struggle. Jacob's wrestling bout with the mysterious being by the river's brink, is a view of the underside of any struggle against temptation, as G.o.d sees it, when the tempted one fights to win.

Above all in the narrative of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, is the majesty of conflict with evil made plain. It is a record which exceeds in dramatic splendour the story of "Faust," or the realism of "Pilgrim's Progress." And in it we arrive at the paradoxical truth that the temptations of Jesus were just as commonplace as ours, and that ours are just as glorious as His,--His, of course, having a completeness which none others could have, for the most complete temptation is the temptation of the most complete.

Looking beneath the surface of the story, we find ourselves face to face with the well-known temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Wrapped in contemplation upon what His Divine sons.h.i.+p involved, He was driven into solitude, and tempted, as He worked out His life's plan, to subst.i.tute evil independence for good dependence, then to flee to the opposite extreme and subst.i.tute evil dependence for good independence, and finally to disregard the means in His zeal for a righteous end.

These temptations are as common as humanity and as uninspiring as night.

Could one have stood by when Jesus was struggling with them, doubtless nothing more would have been seen than is visible to-day when some man in loneliness, with his eyes lifted toward the hills, wins the mastery over himself and his unseen tempters. Yes, the Master's temptations were just as commonplace as ours. Why, then, this fine dressing up of the commonplace? Because, when in after days Jesus told His companions of His conflict and victory, He saw with the illumination of retrospect what at the moment of the struggle He could not see, the glory of it all. The story is not a fiction of the imagination. It is a true picture of what occurred, a revelation of the splendour that lies at the foundation of every spiritual contest, a record of literal truth not perceived at the time, but clear to the vision after all was over.

"After all was over"--the mean and commonplace incidents of to-day, form the raw material out of which is woven the romance of to-morrow. The ugliest facts make the choicest romance after they have been tempered in the crucible of time. Ask a soldier how much romance there was when the fight was hot. The sublime in battle is visible only from the vantage ground of victory. Often when the life of some humble and afflicted child of G.o.d comes to a close, we see what was hidden from our eyes during his days on earth--the heroism of his career. At first we esteem him "stricken, smitten of G.o.d, and afflicted." Afterward we admire the grandeur and largeness of the life that once seemed so narrow and lame.

Before death the character of the affliction claims our attention; afterward the character of the afflicted; now the ugly fact and then the glory; "first that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual." Consequently there are two methods of recording human history--bare fact, concrete, grim, commonplace; its romance, abstract, majestic and just as real. We need both kinds of description--Gethsemane with its agony and gouts of blood, and the wilderness with its dramatic imagery. Neither one is more real than the other. If the wilderness had its grim side, Gethsemane had its romantic side. The ideal is realized, when the real is idealized.

Grant the truth of this--and who will gainsay it?--and it follows that while the temptations of Jesus were as commonplace as ours, ours are as glorious as His. S. Paul saw it all quite plainly, when in radiant language he rolled out to his Ephesian friends that superb call to battle. "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of G.o.d, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the princ.i.p.alities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." There is nothing in the whole of Scripture that makes life seem more splendid and glowing, and yet the occasion is one of extreme peril and hards.h.i.+p--the moment of temptation. It is not so that the scientific character of our age, with its darting electricity and whirring wheels, forbids romance to lift its head. Glory of the highest type will live as long as dauntless human souls aspire to G.o.d, let the world be as matter of fact or as evil as it chooses. The only thing that can dim glory is the domination of sin in man.

-- 3. So much for the splendid opportunity which temptation affords. How to meet it is what the story of the life of the Son of Man makes manifest.

(_a_) It is noticeable that neither by precept nor example are we encouraged to pray for the removal of temptation. Once, it is true, Jesus expressed it as His desire that a cup of pain might pa.s.s from Him, but He conditioned His prayer--"not My will, but Thine, be done." G.o.d did not remove the cup, but what was better still He gave Him strength to drink it. A prayer of S. Paul's was treated in like manner. The thorn in the flesh was not withdrawn, but it was transformed into a means of imparting spiritual vigour--"My grace is sufficient for thee."

It is said of Pascal, whose last years were full of agony, that his malady became a new quality of his genius and helped to perfect it.

Christian character as well as great genius "has the power of elevating, trans.m.u.ting, serving itself by the accidental conditions about it, however unpromising."[11]

This being so, even Gethsemane is an encouragement to the man who is sore tried, to pray for power to transcend his trial rather than that it may be swept out of his life by the hand of G.o.d.

_'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, More life and fuller that I want,_

and not exemption from trial.

The lingering on in life of a temptation, which, if not born of past sin, at any rate has been intensified by self-indulgence, affords us our only chance of expressing penitence to G.o.d for failure in loyalty to Him in this respect or that. How can the man, in whom the fires of pa.s.sion are dead, express before G.o.d his sorrow for sins against purity in days that are gone? It is easy to conceive of such a person entreating G.o.d to give him back his temptation, that, by a reversal of former decisions, he may prove the reality of his penitence. So far as we can see, the one chance a man has of regaining a lost virtue, is through the very temptation by means of which he was robbed of it. Excessive resistance wins back, slowly but surely, what was lost by excessive indulgence.

What is needed is not freedom _from_ but freedom _in_ temptation. This latter is possible for every Christian.

(_b_) Freedom in the life of temptation is achieved by meeting every enticement to sin with an upward rise toward virtue. It is quite inadequate to beat off temptation. We must spoil the strong man and possess ourselves of his goods. One sad feature of life is that we always undershoot the mark, and for the most part perfection in purpose results in nothing better than mediocrity in achievement. It is the sure fate of the man that is contented to view temptation merely as an invitation to h.e.l.l which must be declined, that he will yield at least occasionally to the sin to which he is tempted. Only he who flings himself upward when the pull comes to drag him down, can hope to break the force of temptation. Temptation may be an invitation to h.e.l.l, but much more is it an opportunity to reach heaven. At the moment of temptation sin and righteousness are both very near the Christian; but of the two the latter is the nearer.

Walk in the spirit and you put yourself in such a position as to be unable to fulfil the l.u.s.ts of the flesh. Meet the negation of sin with the affirmation of righteousness. When Satan challenges you to wrestle with him, turn about and wrestle with G.o.d for a blessing.

(_c_) There is no reason to be afraid of temptation, that is to say if it is not a temptation into which we have entered unnecessarily, but one that is consequent upon the fulfilment of duty. G.o.d does not allow us to be tempted beyond our powers. But this is not all. Our fearlessness should show itself in our att.i.tude. We must meet our temptations face to the foe. The temptations of Jesus never struck Him from behind but always smote Him in the face. There is only one kind of temptation which we are advised to run from, and that is the temptation to fleshly l.u.s.t.

Evasion is for the most part a sign of defeat, not of victory. The man who would gain freedom in temptation must be

_One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward._

With this thought we leave the subject of temptation, that strange mystery which proves man and makes him less unworthy of friends.h.i.+p with G.o.d, which is at once an opportunity and a snare, glorious and commonplace.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] _Walter Pater._

Chapter VI

_Knitting Broken Friends.h.i.+p_

But the best of us do not always rise to the opportunity which temptation presents. A gust comes for which we are not prepared, and we are swept off our feet. And the earliest penalty of sin visits the transgressor simultaneously with its committal--that depressing sense of loneliness and separation from G.o.d that has been the bitter experience of every one, and that is so graphically represented in the story of the first act of disobedience. Every one who does wrong, by the deed of wrong itself, hides himself from G.o.d just as Adam and Eve did. Sin is acting apart from G.o.d, a withdrawing of our allegiance from Him, an ignoring of His voice, a snapping of the bonds of friends.h.i.+p.

When this unhappy experience occurs what are we to do to have the breach between ourselves and G.o.d filled up and fellows.h.i.+p with Him re-established? It would seem natural to answer that as soon as we perceive that we have fallen we should pick ourselves up and go on our way without further thought about the dead past. It is out of our reach; it cannot be recalled, and to dwell upon it is disastrous.

A man who has exercised a wide influence over English thought declared sin to be "not a monster to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid of. All thinking about it, beyond what is indispensable for the firm effort to get rid of it, is waste of energy and waste of time. We then enter that element of morbid and subjective brooding in which so many have perished. This sense of sin, however, it is also possible to have not strongly enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it."[12]

Probably of the two dangers mentioned by Matthew Arnold, the latter is the greater in these days in which an "amiable opposition" to sin as merely a pardonable flaw in human nature is so widely taught.

Whatever risk there may be in looking sin squarely in the face, and however difficult we find it to strike the mean between morbid brooding and a total disregard for the past, there never yet was a man who achieved the royal dignity of Christian character without a painful and thoroughgoing grappling with his former self. Men may strive to forget the past by weaving about themselves a web of absorbing interests. But a day of reckoning must come, as it came to Adam and Eve in "the cool of the day," as it came to Jacob as he wrestled for better things that night by the plunging stream, as it came to S. Peter when he went out and sowed the seed of a chastened character in scalding tears.

Were relief from the haunting memory of badness the only thing to be considered, a calm, fearless scrutinizing of sins committed is the one cure. The way to forget sin is to remember it before G.o.d--yes, even to the deliberate raking over the ashes of the days that are gone lest some fault should escape observation. A sense of sinfulness is the earliest indication of awakening holiness. It seems as though the common idea concerning the repentance of the Publican in the story of the Publican and Pharisee, as told by the Master, were short of the truth. Surely there is no ground for thinking that Christ commends the penitence of the Publican, who expressed his sorrow by saying "G.o.d be merciful to me, a sinner," as being ideal. Far from it. Poor and weak and young as was this appeal, it was infinitely more valuable in the sight of G.o.d and efficacious than the finely phrased self-laudation of the Pharisee.

Penitence rises from a sense of sinfulness to a recognition of sins.

It is not hard to perceive why this must be. The past strikes its roots into the present, and until in some true sense the past has been undone it is bound to poison the motives and deeds of to-day. Of course when a thing is done it is done. No amount of effort can undo it in the sense of obliterating it from history. But it is not only possible but necessary that _in intention_ it should be undone and that so far as can be its evil consequences checked. With the aid of the imagination and the will the life that has been lived apart from G.o.d may be lived over again with Him. This in His sight is to undo it, for the motive is the deed, and intention is the most powerful of realities.

But this is not all. It is a law of life governing all fellows.h.i.+p that transparent frankness is the only atmosphere in which friends.h.i.+p can exist. A wrong committed ought to be followed by full admission of the deed. And it is further noticeable that this admission is not dependent upon whether or not the person wronged is conscious of the wrong.

Prudence demands, though not nearly so widely as is commonly supposed, that under certain conditions a sin against society should not be publicly confessed or even made known to the person chiefly concerned.

But where this happens the penitent should feel silence as a weighty penance, and long for a day when he can throw open his life so that he will be seen to be just what he is. We are only what we are in the sight of G.o.d. It is a grief to many a holy man that because of his secret sins he is better thought of than he deserves; and he will hail the day when all that is hidden will be uncovered and made known, so that with the last veil torn from his character he will be able to join unreservedly in free and humble fellows.h.i.+p with all men.

No Christian man has any more warrant for trying to "dissemble or cloak"

his sins before his fellow-men than he has for trying to do the same thing before G.o.d. To rejoice when we see others attributing to us qualities which we do not possess, or to congratulate ourselves when we escape detection--or at least when we think we do, for as often as not men see our faults when we think they do not--upon the committal of some sin, is to deepen that line of deceit that furrows most characters.

There is no social quality quite so splendid as transparency. It is said by one[13] well qualified to speak of Mr. Gladstone that "the man in him leapt forward to express itself with transparent simplicity. If he were subtle he showed at once why he wanted to be subtle. And in spite of everything that could be said about his intellectual subtlety, it remains that to the very last the dominant note of his character was simplicity--the simplicity of a child; with the child's nave self-disclosure, the child's immediate response to a situation, without cloak or disguise."

Now it is just this simple, childlike transparency that the Christian must cultivate in every respect. When it so happens to a man that he may not tell his wrong-doing to the person immediately wronged, then let him go to some spiritual friend, or to his pastor, who stands as the representative of Christian society, as well as the amba.s.sador of Christ, and share with him his grief.

The exception referred to above--where an open confession would result in social injury--does not at all alter the fact that perfect frankness alone makes fellows.h.i.+p possible. More often than not when one friend tells another of some piece of petty meanness by which friends.h.i.+p has been marred, the injured party already knows all about it. The confession is not made to give information, but to open up the soul that has sinned so that the process of healthy social life may be free to work again. It is not wholly explicable, but it is a law which governs human intercourse.

Precisely in the same way this law works in the life of fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d. He knows more about our sins than we can tell Him. But by telling them over, their occasion, their guilt, before Him, the soul is new-born into His love, and the warmth of His compa.s.sion melts the emotions. This is a first requisite in genuine personal religion--frankness before G.o.d; and frankness among men is second only to it.

In requiring perfect openness of life from men G.o.d asks only what He gives. He is Light. There is no knowledge of His Person which man is capable of grasping which He does not offer. He tears open His bosom and reveals the most sacred depths of His being. He asks man to do likewise that fellows.h.i.+p may follow.

So far we have considered what man should do when, whether for a moment or for years, he has walked apart from G.o.d. He must review the past and _in intention_ live it over again with G.o.d, turning his back upon everything that is amiss. But this alone is incomplete. The heart must receive some sort of a.s.surance that the work of penitence is acceptable in G.o.d's sight. There is no thirst of the soul so consuming as the desire for pardon. A sense of its bestowal is the starting point of all goodness. It comes bringing with it, if not the freshness of innocence, yet a glow of inspiration that nerves feeble hands for hard tasks, a fire of hope that lights anew the old high ideal so that it stands before the eye in clear relief, beckoning us to make it our own. To be able to look into G.o.d's face and know with the knowledge of faith that there is nothing between the soul and Him is to experience the fullest peace the soul can know.

Whatever else pardon may be, it is above all things admission into full fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d. It is not a release from certain penalties which the natural course of sin entails, though it brings with it power and wisdom to endure and to use penalties so that they become means by which lost virtues are restored and the whole character reinvigorated. The sense of fellows.h.i.+p comes out with singular force when for the first time the pardoned soul leaps out from under a weight of sin. The joy of prayer, the fearless approach to G.o.d, the contemplation of His personal love--all this testifies to what pardon is. The absolution of the dying robber on Calvary was not merely an admission into Christ's privileges, but a call to His fellows.h.i.+p and a speedy call at that--"_To-day_ shalt thou be _with Me_ in Paradise."

The first awakening of the soul to a sense of pardon makes this very vivid. But somehow as time goes on and repeated falls on the upward climb discourage the soul, the difficulty of grasping G.o.d's pardon seems to increase. Confession is made and sorrow is felt, but G.o.d's face seems hidden behind a cloud. Then is it comforting to remember that all clouds are earthborn. The trouble is that we reflect our own impatience and discouragement up into the life of G.o.d. Because we chafe under our almost imperceptible progress we imagine G.o.d does the same. His first absolutions were full and generous, but how can these later ones be so?

Surely they must be grudgingly bestowed. So we argue, and the latest forgiving message of G.o.d, a message as strong and full as the first, falls upon listless ears. The absolution that comes to the penitent after the seventy-times-seven repet.i.tions of a sin is all that the first one was. Absolution is never less than absolution. It always admits to fellows.h.i.+p so complete that it could not be closer.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] _Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism._

[13] _H. Scott Holland._