The Meaning of Faith Part 20

The earnestness of G.o.d is not about any diffuse generality; it is about persons. His purposes concern them, and he believes in them and in their capacities for fellowship with him, for growing character and for glorious destiny. If, therefore, one wishes the sense of G.o.d's reality which comes from active co-partnership, let him serve persons, believe in them, and be in earnest about them. A woman, troubled by invincible doubts, was given by a wise minister the Gospel of John and a calling-list of needy families, and was told to use them both. She came through into a luminous faith, and which helped her more, her reading or her service, she could never tell. When the Master said that the good we did to the least of his brethren, we did to him, he indicated a road to vital knowledge of him; he said in effect that we can always find him in the lives of people to whom we give love and help. Many will never find him at all unless they find him there. The great believers have been the great servants; and the reason for this is not simply that faith produced service, but also that _service produced faith_. The life of Sir Wilfred Grenfell, for example, makes convincingly plain that his faith sent him to Labrador for service, and that then he drew out of service a compound interest on his original investment of faith.

_O G.o.d, the Father of the forsaken, the Help of the weak, the Supplier of the needy, who hast diffused and proportioned Thy gifts to body and soul, in such sort that all may acknowledge and perform the joyous duty of mutual service; Who teachest us that love towards the race of men is the bond of perfectness, and the imitation of Thy blessed Self; open our eyes and touch our hearts, that we may see and do, both for this world and for that which is to come, the things which belong to our peace. Strengthen us in the work we have undertaken; give us counsel and wisdom, perseverance, faith, and zeal, and in Thine own good time, and according to Thy pleasure, prosper the issue. Pour into us a spirit of humility; let nothing be done but in devout obedience to Thy will, thankfulness for Thine unspeakable mercies, and love to Thine adorable Son Christ Jesus....

Amen._--Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801.

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

I

Throughout our studies we have been a.s.serting that faith in G.o.d involves confidence that creation has a purpose. But we shall not see the breadth and depth of the affirmation, or its significant meaning for our lives, unless more carefully we face a question, which, as keenly as any other, pierces to the marrow of religion: _Is G.o.d in earnest?_

That the G.o.d of the Bible is in earnest is plain. If we open the Book at the Exodus, we hear him saying, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people, ... and have heard their cry, ... and I am come down to deliver them" (Exodus 3:7, 8). If we turn to the prophets, we find Hosea, interpreting the beating of G.o.d's heart: "How am I to give thee up, O Ephraim? How am I to let thee go, O Israel? How am I to give thee up? My heart is turned upon me, my compa.s.sions begin to boil"[5]

(Hos. 11:8). Everywhere in the Old Testament, G.o.d is in earnest: about personal character--"What doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?" (Micah 6:8); about social righteousness--"Let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24); about the salvation of the world--"It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isa. 49:6).

When from the Old Testament one turns to the New, he faces an a.s.sertion of G.o.d's earnestness that cannot be surpa.s.sed: "G.o.d so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." G.o.d in the New Testament is as much in earnest as that, and all the major affirmations of the Book cl.u.s.ter about the magnetism of this central faith. G.o.d is even like a shepherd with a hundred sheep, who having lost one, leaves the ninety and nine and goes after that which is lost, until he finds it (Luke 15:4). From the earliest Hebrew seer dimly perceiving him, to the last apostle of the New Covenant, the G.o.d of the Bible is tremendously in earnest.

How profoundly the acceptance of this faith deepens the meaning and value of life is evident. For a moment some might think that the major question is not whether _G.o.d_ is in earnest but whether _we_ are; but when a man considers the hidden fountains from which the streams of his human earnestness must flow, he sees how necessary is at least the hope that at the heart of it creation is in earnest too.

Von Hartmann, the pessimist, makes one of his characters say, "The activities of the busy world are only the shudderings of a fever." How shall a man be seriously in earnest about great causes in a world like that? The men whose devoted lives have made history great have seen in creation's busyness more than aimless shuddering. Moses was in earnest, but behind his consecration was his vision of the Eternal, saying to Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" The Master was in earnest, but with a motive that took into its account the purposefulness of G.o.d, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17).

Indeed, no satisfying meaning, no real unity are conceivable in a purposeless universe. The plain fact is that _within_ the universe n.o.body explains anything without the statement of its purpose. A chair is something to sit down on; a watch is something to tell time by; a lamp is something to give illumination in the dark--and lacking this purposive description, the story of the precedent history of none of these things, from their original materials to their present shape, would in the least tell what they really are. One who knows all else about a telephone, practically knows nothing, unless he is aware of what it is _for_. Nor is the necessity of such explanation lessened when scientists endeavor descriptions in their special realms. Huxley, narrating the growth of a salamander's egg, writes, "Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, and yet so steady and so purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the ma.s.s is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism.

And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into the due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic, would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work."

The obvious fact is that salamanders' eggs act as though they were seriously intent on making salamanders; and lion's cells as though they were tremendously in earnest about making lions. As Herbert Spencer said of a begonia leaf, "We have therefore no alternative but to say, that the living particles composing one of these fragments, have an innate tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of the organism to which they belong." _But if this is so, purpose is essential in the description of every living thing._ All about us is a world of life with something strikingly like purposeful action rampant everywhere, so that in describing an elm tree it will not do to say only that forces from behind pushed it into being; one must say, too, that from our first observation of its cells they acted as though they were intent on making nothing else but elm. They went about their business as though they had a purpose. The tree's cause is not alone the forces from behind; it is as well the aim that in the cells'

action lay ahead.

Men can describe nothing in heaven above or on the earth beneath without the use of purposive terminology. How shall they try otherwise to describe the universe? _A world in which the minutest particles and cells all act as though they were eagerly intent on achieving aims, can only with difficulty be thought of as an aimless whole._ Man's conviction is insistent and imperious that creation, so surcharged with purposes, must have Purpose. The greatest scientists themselves are often our best witnesses here. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace are the twin discoverers of evolution. Said the former: "If we consider the whole universe the mind refuses to look at it as the outcome of chance." Said the latter: the world is "a manifestation of creative power, directive mind, and ultimate purpose."

What such men have coldly said, the men of devout religion have set on fire with pa.s.sionate faith. They have been sure that this world is not

"A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

In every cause that makes for man's salvation they have seen the manifest unveiling of divine intent. _G.o.d is in earnest_--this conviction has possessed them utterly, and to live and die for those things on behalf of which the Eternal is tremendously concerned has been the aim, the motive, and the glory of their lives.

II

One need only watch with casual observance the mult.i.tudes who say that they believe in G.o.d, to see how few of them believe in this G.o.d who is in earnest. When they confess their faith in deity they have something else in mind beside the G.o.d of the Bible, compa.s.sionately purposeful about his world and calling men to be his fellow-workers. Let us therefore consider some of the fallacies that enable men to believe in a G.o.d who is _not_ in earnest.

For one thing, some _put G.o.d far away_. Missionaries in Africa's interior find tribes worshiping stocks, stones, demons, ghosts, but this does not mean that no idea of a great original G.o.d is theirs.

Often they are not strangers to that thought, but, as an old Africander woman said, "He never concerned himself with me; why should I concern myself with him?" To such folk a great G.o.d exists, but he does not care; he dwells apart, an indifferent deity, who has left this world in the hands of lesser G.o.ds that really count. The task of the missionary, therefore, is not to prove the existence of a creator--"No rain, no mushrooms," said an African chief; "no G.o.d, no world"--but it is to persuade men that the G.o.d who seems so far away is near at hand, that he really cares, and over each soul and all his world is sacrificially in earnest.

Such missionary work is not yet needless among Christian people. Said a Copenhagen preacher in a funeral discourse, "G.o.d cannot help us in our great sorrow, because he is so infinitely far away; we must therefore look to Jesus." One feels this Siberian exile of G.o.d from all vital meaning for our humanity, when he is called the "Absolute,"

the "Great First Cause," the "Energy from which all things proceed."

Like the man, examined by the Civil Service, who, asked the distance from sun to earth, answered, "I do not know how far the sun is from the earth; but it is far enough so that it will not interfere with the proper performance of my duties at the Customs Office," so men with phrases like "the Great First Cause" put G.o.d an immeasurable distance off. No man has dealings with a "Great First Cause," no "Great First Cause" ever had vital, personal, constraining meanings for a man.

Rather across infinite distance and time unthinkable, we vaguely picture a dim Figure, who gave this toboggan of a universe its primal shove and has not thought seriously of it since. So a wanderer down the street might put a child upon her sled and giving her a start down-hill, go on his way. She may have a pleasant slide, but he will not know; she may fall off, but he will not care; there may be a tragic accident, but that will not be his concern--he has gone away off down the street. Mult.i.tudes of nominal believers have a G.o.d like that.

In comparison with such, one thinks of men like Livingstone. His G.o.d was compa.s.sionately concerned for Africa, spoke about black folk as Hosea heard him speak concerning Israel, "How can I give thee up? How can I let thee go?" until the fire of the divine earnestness lit a corresponding ardor in Livingstone's heart and he went out to be G.o.d's man in the dark continent. Such men have smitten the listless world as winds fill flapping sails, crying "Move!" And the G.o.d of such has been tremendously in earnest.

III

Some gain a G.o.d lacking serious purpose, not by putting him afar off, but by endeavoring to bring him so near that they _diffuse him everywhere_. Writers tell us that G.o.d is in every rustling leaf and in every wave that breaks upon the beach; we are a.s.sured that G.o.d is in every gorgeous flower and in every flaming sunset. And the poetry of this is so alluring that we cannot bear to have G.o.d specially anywhere, because we are so anxious to keep him everywhere. Preachers delight to ill.u.s.trate their thought of G.o.d with figures drawn from nature's invisible energies--

"Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling The wind is pa.s.sing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads The wind is pa.s.sing by."

By such comparisons are we taught to see that G.o.d invisibly is everywhere.

For all the valuable truth that such speech contains, its practical issue, in many minds today, is to strip G.o.d of the last shred of personality, and with that loss to end the possibility of his being in earnest about anything. He has become refined Vapor thinly diffused through s.p.a.ce. Folk say they love to meditate on him, and well they may! For such a G.o.d asks nothing of anybody except meditation; he has no purposes that call for earnestness in them. When little children are ruined in a city's tenements, when the liquor traffic brutalizes men, when economic inequity makes many poor that a few may be made rich, when war clothes the world with unutterable sorrow, such a G.o.d does not care. He is not in earnest about anything. For the only thing in the universe that can be consciously in earnest is personality, and when one depersonalizes G.o.d, the remainder is a deity who has no love, no care, no purpose. Thousands do obeisance to such a gaseous idol.

From this fallacy spring such familiar confessions of faith as this, "G.o.d is not a person; he is spirit." If by this negation one intends to say that G.o.d is not a limited individual, that is obviously true; but _the contrast between personality and spirit is impossible_. One may as well speak of dry water as of impersonal spirit. Rays of radium are unimaginably minute and swift, but they are not spirit. Nothing in the impersonal realm can be conceived so subtle and refined that it is spirit. Spirit begins only where love and intelligence and purpose are, and these all are activities of personality. No one can _really_ believe what Jesus said, "G.o.d is a Spirit," without being ready to pray as Jesus prayed, "Our Father."

Between an impersonal, diffused, and gaseous G.o.d, and the G.o.d of the Bible, how great the difference! G.o.d's pervading omnipresence is indeed affirmed in Scripture. There, as much as in any modern thought, the heavens declare his glory, the flowers of the field are ill.u.s.trations of his care, and the influences of his spirit are like the breeze across the hills. To the ancient Hebrew, heaven and sheol were the highest and the lowest, but of each the Psalmist says to G.o.d, "Thou art there," and as for the uttermost parts of the sea, "even there shall thy hand lead me" (Psalm 139:7-10). Cries Jeremiah from the Old Testament, "Am I a G.o.d at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a G.o.d afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? saith Jehovah. Do not I fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. 23:23, 24). And Paul answers from the New Testament, "Not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:27, 28). But the G.o.d of the Bible who so pervades and sustains all existence never degenerates into a Vapor. When Egyptian taskmasters crack their whips over Hebrew slaves, he cares. When exiles try in vain to sing the songs of Zion in a strange land, he cares. When evil men build Jerusalem with blood, and rapacious men pant after the dust on the head of the poor, he cares. He is prodigiously in earnest, and those who best represent him, from the great prophets to the sacrificial Son, are like him in this, that they are mastered by consuming purpose. The G.o.d of the Bible is sadly needed by his people.

For lack of him religion grows often listless and churches become social clubs.

IV

By another road men travel to believe in a G.o.d who is not in earnest: _they think of him as an historic being_. It was said of Carlyle, shrewdly if unjustly, that his G.o.d lived until the death of Oliver Cromwell. Whatever may be the truth about Carlyle, it is easy to find folk whose G.o.d to all intents and purposes is dead. Long since he closed his work, spoke his last word, and settled down to inactivity and silence. He made the world, created man, thundered from Sinai, established David's kingdom, brought back the exiles, inspired the prophets and sent his Son. He _once_ was earnest; the record of his ancient acts is long and glorious, and men find comfort in reading what he used to do. They would not explicitly confess it, but in fact they habitually think of G.o.d in the past tense. They cannot conceive the universe as happening by chance, and they posit G.o.d as making it; they cannot believe that the transcendent characters of olden times were uninspired, so G.o.d becomes the explanation of their power. When such believers wish to a.s.sure themselves of G.o.d they go to the stern of humanity's ship and watch the wake far to the rear; but they never stand on the ship's bridge, and feel it sway and turn at the touch of a present Captain in control. They have not risen to the meaning of the Bible's reiterated phrase, "_the living G.o.d_."

Hoffding tells us that in a Danish Protestant church, well on into the nineteenth century, worshipers maintained the custom of bowing, when they pa.s.sed a certain spot upon the wall. The reason, which no one knew, was discovered when removal of the whitewash revealed a Roman Catholic Madonna. Folk had bowed for three centuries before the place where the Madonna _used to be_. So some folk worship deity; he is not a present reality but a tradition; their faith is directed not toward the living G.o.d himself, but toward what some one else has written about a G.o.d who used to be alive. They do not feel now G.o.d's plans afoot, his purposes as certainly in progress now as ever in man's history. They stand rather like unconverted Gideon, facing backwards and lamenting, "Where are all his wondrous works which our fathers told us of?" (Judges 6:13).

Not by what we say, but by our practical att.i.tudes we most reveal how little we believe in an earnest, living G.o.d whose voice calls _us_, whose plans need _us_, as much as ever Moses or David or Paul was summoned and required. If we say that we do believe in this living G.o.d we are belied by our discouragements, deserving as we often do the rebuke which Luther's wife administered to the Reformer. "From what you have said," she remarked, standing before him clothed in deep, mourning black, "and from the way you feel and act I supposed that G.o.d was dead." If we say that we believe in a living, earnest G.o.d, we are belied by our reluctance to expect and welcome new revelations of G.o.d's truth and enlarging visions of his plan. Willing to believe what the astronomers say, that light from a new star reaches the earth each year, we act as though G.o.d's spiritual universe were smaller than his physical, and do not eagerly await the new light perpetually breaking from his heavens. But most of all the little influence which our faith in G.o.d has upon our practical service is a scathing indictment of its vitality and power. No one who really believes in an earnest, living G.o.d can have an undedicated life. He may not think of the Divine in the past tense chiefly; the present and the future even more belong to G.o.d; and through each generation runs the earnest purpose of the Eternal, who has never said his last word on any subject, nor put the final hammer blow on any task. A faith like this, deeply received and apprehended, is a masterful experience. It changes the inner quality of life; it makes the place whereon we stand holy ground; it urgently impresses us into the service of those causes that we plainly see have in them the purpose of G.o.d. No outlook upon life compares with this in grandeur; no motive for life is at once so weighty and so fine.

V

One of the subtlest fallacies by which we miss believing in an earnest G.o.d is not describable as an opinion. Men fall into it, who neither reduce G.o.d to a Great First Cause, nor diffuse him into a vapor, nor regard him as an historic being. _They rather allow their superst.i.tious sentiments to take the place of worthy faith._ Plenty of people who warmly would insist on their religion, reveal in their practical att.i.tudes how utterly bereft of serious moral purpose their G.o.d is.

They think their fortune will be better if they do not sit thirteen at a table or occupy room thirteen at a hotel; on occasion they throw salt or look at the moon over their right shoulders and rap on wood to a.s.sure their safety or their luck; and to be quite certain of divine favor they hang fetishes, like rabbits' feet, about their necks. Their att.i.tude toward such surviving pagan superst.i.tions is like Fontenelli's toward ghosts. "I do not believe in them," he said, "but I am afraid of them." That this is a law-abiding universe with moral purpose in it, such folk obviously do not believe. Their G.o.d is not in earnest. He spends his time watching for dinner parties of thirteen or listening for folk who forget to rap on wood when they boast that they have not been ill all winter. The utter poverty to which great words may be reduced by meager minds is evident when such folk say that they believe in G.o.d.

Even when these grosser forms of superst.i.tion are not present, others hardly more respectable may take their place. G.o.d is pictured as a King, surrounded with court ritual, in the complete and proper observance of which he takes delight, and any rupture in whose regularity awakes his anger. To go to church, to say our prayers, to read our Bibles, to be circ.u.mspect on Sunday, to help pay the preacher's salary and to contribute to the missionary cause--such things as these comprise the court ritual of G.o.d. These Christian acts are not presented as gracious privileges, opportunities, like fresh air and sunshine and friendship, to make life rich and serviceable; they are presented as works of merit, by which we gain standing in G.o.d's favor and a.s.sure ourselves of his benignity. For with those who so conform to his ordinances and respect his taboos, he is represented as well-pleased, and he blesses them with special favors. But any infraction of these rituals is sure to bring terrific punishment. G.o.d watches those who do not sing his praises or who fail in praying, and he marks them for his vengeance! Dr. Jowett tells us that in the Sunday school room of the English chapel where as a child he worshiped, a picture hung that to his fascinated and frightened imagination represented the character of G.o.d: a huge eye filled the center of the heavens, and from it rays of vision fell on every sort of minute happening and small misdeed on earth. As such a monstrous Detective, jealous of his rights and perquisites, G.o.d is how often pictured to the children! So H. G. Wells indignantly interprets his experience: "I, who write, was so set against G.o.d, thus rendered. He and his h.e.l.l were the nightmare of my childhood; I hated him while I still believed in him, and who could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic monster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening, perpetually waiting to condemn and to strike me dead; his flames as ready as a grill-room fire. He was over me and about my feebleness and silliness and forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child drowning in mid-Atlantic. When I was still only a child of thirteen, by the grace of the true G.o.d in me, I flung this lie out of my mind, and for many years, until I came to see that G.o.d himself had done this thing for me, the name of G.o.d meant nothing to me but the hideous sear in my heart where a fearful demon had been."

This "bogey G.o.d" is in earnest about nothing except the observance of his little rituals; he is unworthy of a good man's worship, he has no purpose that can capture the consent and inspire the loyalty of serious folk. How many so-called unbelievers are in revolt against this perversion of the idea of G.o.d, taught them in childhood! The deity whom they refuse to credit is not the Father, with "the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ" (Eph. 3:11); often they have not heard of him. Their denial is directed against another sort of G.o.d. "I wish I could recall clearly," writes one, "the conception of G.o.d which I gained as a boy in Sunday school. He was as old as grandfather, I know, but not so kind. We were told to fear him." Surely the real G.o.d must sympathize with those who hate his caricature. A vindictive Bogey, querulous about the mint, anise, and c.u.mmin of his ritual, in earnest about nothing save to reward obsequious servants and to have his vengeance out on the careless and disobedient, is poles asunder from the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with his majestic purpose for the world's salvation.

VI

Of all the sentiments, however, by which a worthy faith is made impossible, none is so common, in these recent years, _as the ascription to G.o.d of a weak and flaccid affectionateness_. G.o.d's love is interpreted by love's meaning in hours when we are gentle with our children or tender with our friends. The soft and cosy aspects of love, its comforts, its pities, its affections, are made central in our thought of G.o.d. We are taught, as children, that he loves us as our mothers do; and as from them we look for coddling when we cry for it, so are our expectations about G.o.d. Our religion becomes a selfish seeking for divine protection from life's ills, a recipe for ease, an expectant trust, that as we believe in G.o.d he in return will nurse us, unharmed and happy, through our lives. No one intimately acquainted with the religious life of men and women can be unaware of this widespread, ingrained belief in a soft, affectionate, grandmotherly G.o.d. What wonder that life brings fearful disillusionment! What wonder that in a world where all that is valuable has been

"Battered with the shocks of doom To shape and use,"

the G.o.d of coddling love seems utterly impossible!

The lack in this fallacious faith is central; there is no place in it for the movement of G.o.d's moral purpose. _To ascribe love to G.o.d without making it a quality of his unalterable purpose, which must sweep on through costs in suffering however great, is to misread the Gospel._ Many kinds of love are known in our experience, from a nursing mother with her babe to a military leader with his men. In Donald Hankey's picture of "the Beloved Captain" we see affection and tenderness, as beautiful as they are strong: "It was a wonderful thing, that smile of his. It was something worth living for, and worth working for.... It seemed to make one look at things from a different point of view, a finer point of view, his point of view. There was nothing feeble or weak about it.... It meant something. It meant that we were his men and that he was proud of us.... When we failed him, when he was disappointed in us, he did not smile. He did not rage or curse. He just looked disappointed, and that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done....

The fact was that he had won his way into our affections. We loved him. And there isn't anything stronger than love, when all's said and done."

Yet, this Captain, loving and beloved, will lead his men in desperate charges, where death falls in showers, but where the purpose which their hearts have chosen forces them to go. The love of G.o.d must be like that; it surely is if Jesus' love is its embodiment. His affection for his followers, his solicitude and tenderness have been in Christian eyes, how beautiful! They shine in words like John's seventeenth chapter where love finds transcendent utterance. Yet this same Master said: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves" (Matt. 10:16); "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake" (Matt. 5:11); "Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all the nations for my name's sake" (Matt. 24:9); "They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto G.o.d" (John 16:2); "If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). The love of Jesus was no coddling affection; it had for its center a moral purpose that balked at no sacrifice. He took crucifixion for himself, and to his beloved he cried, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matt. 16:24). Such love is G.o.d's; and _preachers who advertise his Fatherhood as a gentle nurse that shelters us from suffering have sapped the Gospel of its moral power_.