The Prodigal Returns Part 4

We learn then that Grace awaits every creature that attunes himself to the Will of Christ: it awaits good and bad, saint and sinner, it transforms the sinner into the saint, and but for its deliberate withdrawals we might suppose its action to be automatic, we might suppose it a fixed power like the sun, shining upon worthy and unworthy alike in degree. But Grace is far more subtle and mysterious than this. Grace is the most sublime, the most exquisite secret of all the mysteries which exist between the Soul and her Maker.

I find that He works upon my soul by two opposite ways: He draws her up to contact and sublime content; He sets her down to solitude and hides Himself: He is there, and will not speak.

And she suffers horribly: and why not? Where is the injustice of this pain?

Countless ages ago--who can count them?--the soul, born in a palace, has deliberately willed and chosen to become the Wanderer, the Street Walker; therefore fold up self-pity and lay it aside, because it does not live in the same house with Truth.

Cast off self-consciousness and pride, because they are ridiculous, and a man can only be great or n.o.ble in just so far as he has abandoned them.

What is it that often makes it so much harder for the soul to refind G.o.d when she is enclosed in the male body? Perhaps the greater strength of the natural l.u.s.ts of the male: perhaps the pride of "Being"--as lord of creation; or the pride of Intelligence which says, I rely easily upon myself, I need no religion of hymn tunes, I leave hymn tunes to women, for the ardour and capacity of my manhood rush to far different aims.

But can any sane man think that the Essential Being who has created the universe, with all its infinite wonders, and this earth with its beauty and its wonderful flesh, and so much more that is not flesh but the still more wonderful spirit--can any sane man really think that this Essential Being is stuck fast at hymn tunes (which are Man's own invention!) and knows not how to satisfy the needs and longings of that which He has Himself created!

Ardent and greatly mistaken Sinner, know and remember that to Find G.o.d is to Live Tremendously.

O beloved Man with thy strangely vain and small pursuits and pleasures--thy pipe, thy wine, thy women, thy "busy" city life, thine immense sagacity which once in twenty times outwits a fool or knave--thy vaunted living is a bubble in a hand-basin!

Find G.o.d and Live!

PART IV

I

It would seem that lazily, reposefully, comfortably, easily, we can make no entry into the kingdom of heaven, but must enter by contest, by great endeavour. The occasions of these contests will be according to the everyday circ.u.mstances of each individual; the stress or distress of everyday life; for this is Christ's Process--to take the everyday woes and happenings of life in the flesh and use them for spiritual ends. What does the Saviour Himself tell us of the means of entry into the Kingdom? He uses two parables--that of the loaves of bread, and that of the Widow, and both speak of persistent importunity. If we would find G.o.d, we must besiege Him.

Of entry to Christ's Process first it is necessary that we try in everything to please Him: subjecting our plans, desires, thoughts, intentions, to His secret approval, asking ourselves, Will this please Him best, or that?

Then the soul commences to truly know, and to respond to, Christ.

But she is not satisfied: she requires more. Woes may a.s.sail the whole creature: Christ offers no alleviation. He leads her straight into the woes: will she follow, will she hold back? The point to remember here is this, that whether we follow Christ or no we shall have woes: if we forsake Him, we are not rid of woes; if we follow Him, we are not rid of woes--not yet, but later we become eased, and even rid, by means of Consolations, for G.o.d is able by His Consolations to entirely overbalance the woe and make it happy peace, though the cause of the woe remains. Remember this in the days of visitation, and follow Christ, no matter where He leads.

Christ leads _through_ the woe, because it is the shortest way. The unguided soul wanders _beside_ the woe, hating and fearing it, unable to rid herself of it, gaining nothing by it, suffering in vain, and no Companion comes to ease the burden with His company.

The progress of our spiritual advance would feel to be that because we become more and more aware of the failure of earthly consolations and amus.e.m.e.nts, and more and more aware of the suffering, the sin, and the evil that there is about us, so more and more our desires go out towards the good, and more and more we turn to Christ. Then Christ may deliberately make Himself non-sufficient for the soul, and if He so does she must reach out after the G.o.dhead; then by means of more woes the soul and the creature clamour more and more after the G.o.dhead and will not be satisfied with less than the G.o.dhead, and, continuing to clamour, are brought by Christ to the new birth, the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Immediately the soul and creature become rid of Woe; and, living a life altogether apart from the world, in a marvellous crystal joy they taste of the G.o.dhead and of Eternal Pleasures.

This for a short time only: we have entered the Kingdom, but are still the smallest of spiritual children: tenderly, wonderfully G.o.d cares for us, but we must grow, we must learn heavenly manners. So Jesus Christ calls us again, and where does He lead us? Straight back into the world, the daily life from which we thought we had escaped! Here truly is a Woe, a Woe worse than any Woe we ever had before. Now we enter the Course of spiritual temptations, woes, and endurances, and in the midst of the pots and pans of daily life Christ teaches us heavenly manners.

II

Since Contemplation is so necessary for Union with G.o.d and for the soul's _enjoyment_ of G.o.d--is it a capacity common to all persons?

Yes, though, like all other capacities, in varying degrees; but few will give themselves up to the difficulties of developing the capacity; and it is easy to know why, for our "natural" state is that we work for that which brings the easiest, most immediate, and most substantially visible reward.

Those who could most easily develop their powers of contemplation are those to whom Beauty speaks, or those who are delicately sensitive to some ideal, nameless, elusive, that draws and then retreats, but in retreating still draws. The poet, the artist, the dreamer _that harnesses his mind_--all can contemplate.

The Thinker, _thinking straight through,_ the proficient business man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the scientist, the inventor--all these men are contemplatives who do not drive to G.o.d, but to the world or to ambition. Taking G.o.d as their goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though first they must give up ("sacrifice") all that is unsavoury in thought and in living: yet such is the vast, the boundless Attraction of G.o.d that having once (if only for a few moments) retouched this lost Attraction of His, we afterwards are possessed with no other desire so powerful as the desire to retouch Him again, and "sacrifice"

becomes no sacrifice.

Truly, having once known G.o.d, we find life without Him to be meaningless and as unbeautiful as a broken stem without its flower: pitiful, naked, and helpless as the body of a b.u.t.terfly without the wings.

III

At this time I read Bergson's _Creative Evolution_--a masterpiece of thinking by a man who, like most others, is seeking for G.o.d. But I am unable to read the book through because of the pain it causes.

The pain is partly the same pain which I knew (and which I re-enter again in sympathy with the writer) when I tried in my youth to climb to G.o.d by the intelligence and will of my mind; but there is also a new pain, wide as an ocean, the pain of Compa.s.sion--for it is so long this way to G.o.d that Bergson pursues, so long, so long; and the particular way of this book is to me not like climbing, but descending: it resembles the frenzied action of a man searching for lilies downwards, digging with painful persistence in the dark earth amongst roots. How much more joyous to find the lily where she blooms, above in the light! There is another way of the Intelligence: a way of climbing to icy heights, bare, unwarmed by any ray of love, but less painful than this descent amongst dark roots. Cold, hard Intelligence, once to slip upon thy frozen way is to be broken on thy pitiless bosom! O G.o.d, in thy tender pity incline our hearts to seek Thee by the way of Love! For the road of Love comes easily to knowledge, but the road of knowledge comes not easily to Love.

And we know that love is above learning and wisdom. Did not Solomon choose wisdom? and we think him so wise to have made this choice, but he had been far wiser to have chosen holy love. For wisdom lost herself and him in the arms of unworthy love: so we see the highest degree of the Wisdom of Man held in bondage to, and undone by, even the lowest degree of love.

Dig deeply, and what do we find is at bottom our great, our persistent need? What is it that instinctively we look for and desire?

Happiness, and the Ever-new.

In and out of every day persistently, desperately, endlessly we seek.

And because we seek amongst the near-to-hand, the visible, the small, we seek in vain: we discover there is nothing in this world which can wholly and permanently satisfy either of these desires.

G.o.d Himself is Happiness. G.o.d Himself is the Ever-new.

In Divine Love there is no monotony: the soul finds that each encounter with G.o.d is ever new, the Ever-new tremulous with the beauty of rapture: new and wonderful as the first dawn.

IV

Not only is G.o.d a Mystery of Holiness, of Truth, of Love and Beauty: He is also Generosity, a mystery of Eternal Giving, and His giving is and must for ever be, the supreme necessity of the Universe: for without He gave how should we receive life, truth, beauty, love, or Himself?

And it cannot be too deeply impressed upon the soul that would come to His Presence that because of His law of like to like she must conform to this law in order to come to His Presence. By thinking it over we shall see that it is more difficult for us to be perfect holiness, perfect truth, perfect love, perfect beauty, than it is for us to be perfectly generous: it is easier for us to give G.o.d all that we have, to empty heart, mind and soul, and worldly goods at His feet, than it is to reach to any other perfection; for generosity appears to be more universal, more within our capacities, more "natural" to us than any other virtue--do we not see it continually used, exercised, spent, thrown away on the merest trifles? Let us take, for instance, the tennis player: to win the game he must give every ounce of himself to it--mind, eye, heart, and body,--sweating there in the glare of the sun to win the game. Would he give himself so, would he sweat so, in order to find G.o.d, or to please G.o.d? Oh no!

Yet in the hour of death and afterwards, will he be helped by this victory of flying b.a.l.l.s? If by chance we could lift a corner of the veil, we might catch a glimpse of the face of Folly, mockingly, cunningly peering at us, as all too easily she persuades us to give of our royal coins of generosity to wantons, to phantom enterprises, to b.a.l.l.s filled with air, to dust and vanity.

Generosity is our easiest means of coming to G.o.d, because it is also the way of love: if the tennis player did not love the game, he would not give himself so to it. But we cry, "I have nothing whatever to give to G.o.d; it is to G.o.d I turn in order that He may give everything to me." Quite so: there is too much of that. We have obedience to give: obedience is a great gift to G.o.d, or, more truthfully speaking, in His magnanimity He accepts it as such; we have also love to give, and again we may cry, "But my love is puny, shifting; it is nothing at all, a mere trifle." That is true of "natural" love, of the love that we commence of our own human nature to love Him with; but it is not true of the love which we receive of the Holy Ghost when He baptizes us.

When we offer this Peculiar Love, offer it as only it can be offered--for love's sake,--immediately we are in the Presence of G.o.d, secretly, marvellously united to Him; we are in the Consolations of G.o.d, and we have no need to ask for anything whatever; indeed, we find ourselves unable to ask, because we are filled to the brim, overflowing, inexpressibly satisfied, utterly blessed.

But supposing that we do not _give_ to G.o.d, but, earnestly seeking Him, we merely ask some favour, and sit and wait for Him to give?

Then probably we shall not be sensible of receiving anything from Him whatever; we shall feel at an immense distance from Him; then we shall become uneasy, depressed, fancy ourselves neglected, imagine we have lost Him--and so we have till we gloriously recover Him by means of giving.

And if at times in the stress of this giving, when He makes no response, we feel it is too much, we can give no more, we are too discouraged to continue, let us remember the strain and stress and endeavour that we and all our friends give to trifles, and quietly use our common sense to judge whether in the winning of a game of ball, or in the pleasing and finding of G.o.d, we shall be the more blessed.

For G.o.d is to be found: He waits.

The truth about our endeavours is that we have one pre-eminent, pressing need above all other needs, which is to Find G.o.d. When we have accomplished this we discover without any further teaching that we no longer care to pa.s.s our time with air-b.a.l.l.s, because they appear so paltry, so inadequate. We are grown up and are no longer puerile in our desires: at the same time we are not without desires, but, on the contrary, we glow with a new, more ardent, and larger set of desires.

V