Towards the Great Peace Part 8

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.

We have tried to approach each subject in this course of lectures in the spirit of peace, and the greatest contributory factor in the achieving of the Great Peace is the individual himself, on whom, humanly speaking, rests the final responsibility. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Not by majestical engines and curious devices and ma.s.s-action, nor yet by an imposed human authority enforced by arms and the law, but by the Holy Spirit of G.o.d working through the individual soul and compelling the individual will. Peace is one of the promised fruits of the Holy Spirit, and like the others is manifested through human lives; therefore on us rests the preeminent responsibility of showing forth in ourselves, first of all, those things we desire for others and for society.

We have experienced the Great War, we endure its aftermath, and amidst the perils and dangers that follow both there is none greater than that which attaches to exterior war, viz., that the attention of both combatants is focussed on the faults and the weaknesses and the crimes of the opponent, with the result that both become destructive critics rather than constructive examples. Chesterton rightly says, "What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself * * * rather he identifies himself with the ideal." Seeing evil in others and flattering one's self is the ant.i.thesis of the spirit that would lead to the Great Peace, for in that spirit the field of warfare is transferred from the external to the internal, and the interior contest, which alone establishes lasting results, necessitates a recognition of our own error and the need of amendment of our own life.

If our modern devices have failed; if the things we invented with a high heart and high hope, in government, industry, society, education, philosophy have in the end brought disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, it is less because of their inherent defects than because the individual failed, and himself ceased to act as the sufficient channel for the divine power which alone energizes our weak little engines and which acts through the individual alone. There is no better demonstration of this essential part played by the personal life of man than the fact that G.o.d, for the redemption of the world, took on human form and became one Man amongst many men. There is no better demonstration of the fact that it is through the personal lives of individuals that the Great Peace is to be achieved, both directly and indirectly, than the fact that peace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, was promised to the individual man, by Christ Himself, as the legacy he left to his disciples after His Resurrection and Ascension. Since then the world has been under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the "Guide and Comforter" that was promised, even though it has blindly and from time to time rejected the guidance and therefore known not the comfort. The Old Law of "Thou shalt not" was followed by the New Law of "Thou shalt,"

and this in turn by the law of the third Person of the Trinity which does not supersede the dispensations of the Father and of the Son, but fulfills them in that it affords the spiritual power, if we will, to abide by the inhibitions and to carry out the commands.

Our search is for peace, the Great Peace, "the Peace of G.o.d which pa.s.seth all understanding," and we shall achieve this for ourselves and for the world only through ourselves as individuals, and so for the society of which we are a part, and in so far as we bring ourselves into contact with the Spirit of G.o.d. There is deep significance in the fact that the first time Christ used the salutation "Peace be unto you," was after His resurrection. It would seem that this special gift of the Holy Spirit had to be withheld from man until after the human life of G.o.d the Son had been brought to an end in accomplishment, for He says "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart I will send Him unto you. When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."

It is the spirit that quickeneth. After G.o.d had revealed the Law and given to us the great redeeming and atoning Life, He saw that we had need of a further manifestation before we should be able to keep the law and live the life. Therefore the Holy Spirit was sent to quicken us and give us power to do what we had both heard and seen. Today we accept the moral law, we recognize the perfection of Chirst's life, but we need to be reminded again that the power to be "sons of G.o.d" is present with us if we will but use it. As this power is a spirit it can only be apprehended spiritually; when our minds and hearts are set on material things, even on good material things, the "still small voice" of the spirit remains unheard: but if we listen first to that inward voice and then use the means of grace afforded us, we are enabled to lift up our hearts and minds to the Creator and then to use in His service all the material universe which is also His creation. We can not get a right philosophy by working for right philosophy, but only by living in the right relationship as individuals: then as a by-product of religion a right philosophy will come. We can not get a right industrial system by searching for a right industrial system, but if we show forth in our lives the Christian virtues, a right industrial system will come as one of the by-products of religion. So with each one of our so-called "problems." Life rightly lived has no problems. This is a hard saying for an intellectual age whose temptation is to trust in its own power rather than in the power of G.o.d, but "except ye become as little children" and walk by faith and not by sight the Kingdom of G.o.d is withheld. A soldier who suffered in the late war, and out of his suffering found peace, says, "Christ's hardest work is to teach the wise: Those who are entrusted with authority and responsibility will be the least prepared to make the venture of the Spirit, however much they may believe in it. They are sacrificing least now: they will have to sacrifice most when the Spirit comes. They have so much to unlearn: children and working men have so little. The whole of our world today is rooted and grounded in intellect. Our machinery, our inst.i.tutions, our great systems, the entire body of enterprise is governed by brains. It is this that will alter. Just behind intellect there is a vision that is purer, keener, more powerful than the vision of your eyes, than the hearing of your ears, than the touch of your hands. This world is being transformed into another which comes into being at our spiritual touch.

The world needs something personal, something from the heart. It is sick to death with the cold machinery of the intellect. But before men see this they must change their view of life, they must _be born again._ The scientists, the historians and theologians, the philosophers, have made the universe too big. It is not a big place: it is very tiny. Life is so simple, really. Our wise men have made it so difficult, so ugly. It is only children who can see the risen Christ; children, perhaps, out of whom seven devils have been cast. The world needs not critics, but teachers, and children are waiting everywhere to teach, but men, shutting the windows of their souls, try rather to mould these little ones to fit into the vacant s.p.a.ces of their own stupid world. Are not children the true artists? They won't tolerate anything but Beauty. They see Beauty everywhere, not because it is there, but because they want it there. Everything they touch turns into something far more precious than gold: every word they utter is a song of praise. You are almost in heaven every time you look into the eyes of a child." Remember, please, these are the words of a man who has faced the horrible realities of modern warfare, and so do not dismiss them as mere poetry, or with Nicodemus' question, "How can a man be born again?", but listen to a modern interpretation of the answer to that question:--("The Life Indeed.") "We must be born again even to see the spiritual kingdom, must be born of water and the spirit to enter its gates at all. So to his little audience of disciples Our Lord says it is not an affair of legislation, of discovery, of which men say, 'Lo here, lo there! but the kingdom of heaven is _within you._ Why a second birth? This is a second birth because it must needs supervene at a point where two elements can work together, the element of an appealing, vitalizing spirit from the unseen and the element of free human choice. Being of the spirit, it is the birth into freedom: it is the soul emerging from its prison into the open air of liberty and light and life." Note the element of free choice. Our first birth is outside our choice and the gifts are unconditioned; our second birth, when again we become as little children, demands our response to the Holy Spirit and our persevering cooperation with Him to make His influence effectual for ourselves and for the "communion of saints" and the corporate religion into which the Spirit also baptizes us. In a recent sermon a bishop of the Episcopal Church says, "This is the creed of the Church--the Divine Father and Forgiveness: the Divine Son and Redemption: the Divine Spirit and Abundant Life. Therefore the Church still insists upon the creation of moral rect.i.tude and spiritual character as the end and purpose of religion, aye, as the basic problem underlying all questions relating to human life--social, industrial, civic, and political. The Church still preaches the gospel of the Grace of G.o.d, the obligation and blessing of worship, the meaning and virtue of the Christian Sacraments." Also "My brethren, we shall not be content to criticize and find fault with our own age and time, but rather we shall pray for the power to see within its questionings, unrest and discontent--aye, its recklessness and apparent failures--the strivings of the Spirit of G.o.d. But each man has to voice for himself the conviction of the reality of the spiritual order and the spiritual life. Therefore, let us believe in and practice the worship of G.o.d, 'praying always' as St. Paul says, 'with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,' or as St. Jude says, 'building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.'"

Let us accept this suggestion and try to find in the unrest of our own time evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of G.o.d," waiting our perception and response. The soldier of the Great War, having faced death and imprisonment and suffering in many forms says, "compared with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow." The first evidence of good in our own day is the almost universal discontent with evils and the desire to find a better way. The humility which recognizes that so widespread a condition cannot be the fault of any one nation or group but is rather the responsibility of each one of us, is cause for hope.

Some of us believe that war can breed only war, hatred only hatred; that governments cannot make peace, but can only cause cessation of open hostilities, and that the real peace, the Great Peace, must await the action of the Spirit. This Spirit, of love and forgiveness, breeds love and forgiveness, indeed is far more potent than the spirit of hate.

Because of this very strength and potency its evidences are not so immediately apparent, but they are deeper-rooted. Perhaps in this material sphere we human beings must see, and to a certain extent experience, hate, before we can really know love, and consciously and freely choose it. When that choice is made, when we, knowing all that hate and evil and malice can accomplish, yet deliberately choose to love our enemies, we have slain the Adversary and made hate and evil powerless. Of course we have not power of ourselves to do this but only through the grace of G.o.d. When we try G.o.d's way, not waiting for the other person to reform or to be generous or to speak gently or to forgive, then and only then do we deserve the name of Christians; then and only then are we walking in love; then and only then are we really praying effectually "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." We have tried the way of the world, the way of reprisals, the way of distrust, and, thank G.o.d, we are none of us satisfied with the results. Perhaps now we may be ready to try the way of G.o.d by making the great adventure of faith, each one in his own person; faith in himself and faith in the future. The way of the world has bred fear that has issue in hate, and hate that has issue in fear; but the better way, that of faith, breeds trust that has issue in fellowship, and fellowship that has issue in trust. There is no problem of labour, of politics, of society that is insoluble if once it is approached in the spirit of faith and fellowship and trust, but none of these is susceptible of solution where the controlling motives are hate, distrust and fear. The modern policy of centralization and segregation has resulted in dealing with men as groups and not as individuals. When, for example, iron-bound cults (they are no less than this) meet as "capital" and as "labour,"

both merge the individuality of their members in a thing which has no real or necessary existence but is an artificial creation of thought operating under the dominion of ephemeral, almost accidental conditions.

As a member of an "interest" or a cult, where humanity and personality are, so to speak, "in commission," a man does not hesitate to do those things he would never think of doing for himself, knowing them to be selfish, cruel, unjust and uncharitable. A case in point--if we need one, which is hardly probable since they are of daily occurrence--is the pending contest between the mine operators and mine workers in Great Britain, where both parties, with Government thrown in, are guilty of maintaining theories and perpetrating acts for which an individual would be, even now, excoriated and outlawed. The Irish imbroglio is another instance of the same kind.

In a personal letter from a consulting engineer who has had unusual opportunities, by reason of his official position, to come closely in contact with the conditions governing industry and finance both in America and Europe since the war, I find this illuminating statement of a matured judgment. "As a practical matter, and facing the issue, I would preach the practice of de-centralization in government and business which will in time develop the individual and accomplish the desired end. * * * Decentralization should be carried to such an extent that the units of business would be of such size that the head could again have a personal relation with each individual a.s.sociated with him.

* * * With the personal relation again established, unionism as at present practiced would again be unnecessary, and the unions would become once more guilds for the development and advancement of the individual." It is this nullification of the human element, of the person as such, the introduction of the gross aggregate with its artificial corporate quality, and the attempt to establish a correspondence between these unnatural things, the whole being intensified by the emotions of fear, distrust and hate, which produces the contemporary insistence on "rights" and the rank injustice, cruelty and disorder that follow the blind contest. To quote again from the soldier who achieved illumination through the recent war, "My friends, there is no protection of rights in heaven. When we speak of rights we are blinded by the light of this world of rule and order and intellectual conceits. It is not justice we need, it is mercy."

If we honestly endeavour to bring about something more nearly approaching the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, we should do well to achieve a little more of the quality of child-like trust which knows that through the pet.i.tion to father or mother, or to a guardian angel, or directly to G.o.d, the result will surely follow. We long pa.s.sionately to see a good, _our_ good as we see it, accepted here and now, but whatever we offer, no mater how righteous or how salutary, is but a small part of the great good, a limited and partial showing forth of only one element, while the final and comprehensive good is the result of many contributions, and in the end is not ours, but G.o.d's, and by His overruling providence it may look very unlike what we had predetermined and antic.i.p.ated. Moreover, the condition even of our own small good becoming effective, is _faith,_ and neither sight nor action. There is a faith that can move mountains, and it is faith in fellowship, in the underlying, indestructible good in man, above all in the desire and the intent of G.o.d to deal mercifully with us and beyond the dictates of justice and the claims of our own deserts. When we know and accept this power of faith, placing it above the efficiency of our own feeble works, then indeed we may become the patient, hopeful, joyful and faithful Christians we were intended to be, and therefore the creators of the spirit of peace. Nothing permanent can be achieved except in cooperation with G.o.d; any work of man alone (or of the devil) has in it the seed of decay and must perish, This knowledge relieves us of the gloomy responsibility of destroying or trying to destroy every evil thing we see or think we see. If it is really evil it is already dying unless nourished by evil within ourselves. Here is a Buddhist legend which has a lesson for each of us--"The watcher in the shrine of Buddha rushed in to the Holy Fathers one morning with tidings of a horrible demon who had usurped the throne of our Lord Buddha. The Fathers ran to the throne room, each one more infuriated than the other, and declaimed against the insolence of the demon, who grew huger and more hideous at every angry word that hurtled through the air. At last arrived the oldest and most saintly of the monks and threw himself on his knees before the demon and said, "We thank thee, O Master, for teaching us how much anger and wrath and jealousy was still hidden in our hearts." At every word he said, the demon grew smaller and smaller and at last vanished. He was am Anger-Eating Demon, and anger-rousing words and even thoughts of ill-feeling nourished him.

The belief that in comparison with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow may also be expressed in the statement that G.o.d is Lord of Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fict.i.tious spirit of light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action; snap-judgment at short range; compromise with the spirit of the time in the interest of "good business," "practical considerations" or "sound policy"; worship of the doctrine of "get results," acceptance of the horrible principle: that it is every man's business to "sell" something to another, from a patent medicine or "gilt edged" bonds to a new philosophy or an old religion; the estimating of values by size, number, cost. It is common parlance among Christian people to speak of what a man "is worth" meaning how much money he has. We speak of a man's "making a living" meaning only how much money he makes, when by making only money he would be killing his living. Do we not speak of the call of a missionary from an unshepherded flock to a large city parish as a call to "a wider sphere of usefulness"? When you or I conceive of any piece of work as "important" is it not because it involves either great numbers or great sums of money? Then we hear much today of the need for leaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lack exist, in part, because we have forgot that the Christian's first duty is to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can G.o.d (not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader? These are small matters, you may say, but "straws show which way the wind blows,"

and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters.

Every life is made up largely of small things, "the little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which some one has called "the n.o.blest portion of a good man's life."

With this brief glance at some of the possible manifestations of the spirit of evil which we believe to be temporary and therefore of secondary importance only, let us consider some of the requisites of the Christian life as exemplified in the life of Christ, especially those of which we need to be reminded today. We have already spoken of that child-likeness which takes the faith simply and applies it to the common things of daily life--Christ's life of ministry, of good works (which was, in proportion to the time given to preparation for activity and preaching, of very short duration), full of injunctions to those who were with him to "tell no man"; therefore the good works which are done "in His likeness" must not be done in public. If we are "seen of men,"

verily we have our reward. Christ's life ended in apparent failure, in ignominious death on the cross. The world worships today's success and immediate publicity, the Christian, to be worthy of his Lord, must accept apparent failure and must offer his best work in secret: "And my Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." A touching poem of Francis Thompson's pictures the marveling of a soul on his rewards in Paradise which, in his humility, he thinks undeserved. The man asks of G.o.d:

_O when did I give Thee drink erewhile, Or when embrace Thine unseen feet?

What gifts Thee give for my Lord Christ's smile, Who am a guest here most unmeet?_

and is answered

_When thou kissedest thy wife and children sweet (Their eyes are fair in my sight as thine) I felt the embraces on My feet.

(Lovely their locks in thy sight and Mine.)_

A necessary reminder of the fact that for each of us, charity, which is love, begins at home, and that we love and serve G.o.d best in His holy human relationships--if we love not our brother whom we have seen how can we love G.o.d whom we have not seen?

Again, the individual Christian life must, like its Great Original, suffer for others. When we suffer as a result of our own wrongdoing we are but meeting our just reward; but if patiently and humbly and voluntarily we bear pain, even unto death, for others, we are transcending justice, the pagan law, and exemplifying mercy, the Christian virtue. No sensitive soul in this generation, conscious of the sacrifice of the millions of young lives who "stormed Heaven" in their willingness to die that others might live, can doubt this. The essence of love is sacrifice; voluntary, nay eager sacrifice. Before our Blessed Lord died He was mocked and ridiculed, He suffered physical hardship, falling under the weight of the cross, and He was lifted up, crucified, to suffer the ignominious death of a felon. He was made a spectacle for the jests and laughter of the mult.i.tude. In our own time and amongst ourselves, except for periods of war, there is little necessity for physical suffering for our faith, but the need to endure ridicule is as great as ever, perhaps even greater because of the absence of physical suffering. Since we are trying to apply these things in small and simple ways to the individual life let us each one consider how much moral courage it takes to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered at under the guise of "jokes." Let us exercise charity by not quoting instances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship, which are both gifts of G.o.d, and see that we do not confuse pagan pleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognition of the absurd in ourselves and in others. It is Mr. Chesterton again who points out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like which he calls the "sad virtues" were superseded, when the great Christian revelation came, by the "gay and exuberant virtues," the virtues of grace, faith, hope and charity; and who says, "the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be. Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible or it is no virtue at all." If you say this is a paradox I reply: it must be so, since it requires faith to accept a paradox. The realm of reason is the one in which we walk by sight, and of this fact our age in its pride of intellect has need to be reminded. If Christ be not the Son of G.o.d, and His revelation of the "faith once delivered" be not the divine and final guide, fulfilling, completing and at the same time reversing every other ethic, religion and moral code, then these things be indeed foolishness, for there is no explaining them on the ground of logic or philosophy. But if, by the gift of grace, we have faith, we remember "I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight."

Again, and if as persons we are to grow in relationship to a personal G.o.d, we must both speak and listen to our Father; in other words we must use the great dynamic of prayer. "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." We are told that one of the requisites of the really good talker is to be a good listener; the apparently good talker is in reality a monologuist. In our prayer-life today do we recognize sufficiently the need for _listening_ to G.o.d? We are perhaps ready enough to ask for blessings and mercies, but that is only a part of the full life of prayer which must include also thanksgiving, lifting of the heart and mind, and quiet listening or interior prayer. There was an age in the world when this interior prayer was so much more joyful and natural a thing than the world of matter that it had to be taught "to labour is to pray." Today, when we accept the necessity of labour, and even worship activity for its own sake, do we not need to be reminded that to pray is to labour? If you doubt this, try to make that concentrated form of prayer known as meditation, out of which springs a resolve and determination to do better; try to do this faithfully for fifteen minutes a day and it may prove the hardest work you have ever undertaken. A great servant of G.o.d has said, "I believe no soul can be lost which faithfully practices meditation for fifteen minutes a day."

Nor must we forget that in this work of prayer we are companioned by the Holy Spirit, the Peace-maker, Who maketh intercession for us "with groanings which can not be uttered" and "Who leads us ever gently but surely into that closer communion with G.o.d whose result is life more abundant." After prayer it is easier to realize that "to be spiritually minded is life and peace"; it is easier to obey the injunction "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of G.o.d whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice, and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as G.o.d, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." And for those that seek after peace it must be _all_ wrath, _all_ anger and _all_ evil speaking which are put away: This leaves no room for what the world calls "just wrath"

"righteous anger," or speaking evil of evil doers. Let us call to mind the incident in the early life of St. John, afterwards the great disciple of love, when he wanted to call down wrath on the wicked inhabitants of a city and was rebuked by Our Lord who said, "Ye know not in what spirit ye speak." After love had supplanted wrath, and the good spirit had taken the place of the evil in St. John's heart, he was sent to convert the people he would have destroyed. Yes, it is the spirit that matters, the wrath that is wrong and that must be put away before we can love G.o.d or our neighbour as ourself, for the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

When we understand that the object of life and of education is the creation of a spirit and not the doing of things, we are freed from the tyranny of results in this world as a final test and come to realize that judgment belongs only to G.o.d Who as a Spirit judges the effort.

Of course this does not mean that we are freed from the moral law, that certain evil things in ourselves and in others are not always the results of an evil spirit, but rather that in addition to avoiding and shunning those things which are obviously evil, we must with equal care avoid doing even good things in a bad spirit. The commandments still stand, the moral law is abated not one jot, but in Christianity and in Christianity alone are we given power to fulfill the law and to add the new commandment, the summing up of them all, of love to G.o.d and man. No human soul comes into the world without some desire to be good, because each human soul is a child of G.o.d. To each one, not blinded by pride (and surely it should be easy in these days to be humble) comes, sooner or later, the realization of his own inability of himself to do what he would, the need for a power outside himself, the power which is available and of which we have heard "I am come that ye might have life and more abundantly." Let us examine how the apostles set about living this abundant life. In Dr. Genung's "The Life Indeed" we read, "One and all they made it a matter of the spirit that is the man, but the spirit they recognized was not an abstraction, or a theory, but a present Person and helper who was witnessing with their spirits. St. John makes the matter equally definite: 'The Son of G.o.d,' he says, 'was manifest that he might destroy the works of the Devil,' and St. Paul, mindful of the inner subtleties of the conflict, warns his readers that Satan has changed his tactics and has transformed himself into an angel of light.

I am not sure that we have gained greatly by letting our notions of spiritual life grow dim and abstract. Perhaps for this very reason the rebellious, negative, designing spirit that is so p.r.o.ne to invade the hearts of us all is the more free to gain a foot-hold and go about controlling the tone of our life. There is real advantage in bringing the large issues of life to a point where not only our mind but, as it were, our senses, can lay hold on them. It is the impulse of simple-minded men like those early disciples, and if we continue straight-seeing we do not outgrow it. What makes these views of life so deep is not that they are less simple than those of others, but that they are more simple. To St. John the reality that has come to win the world is not the promise of salvation, or prophecy of an eventual life eternal, but just life without modification or limitation, life absolute, full-orbed, pulsating through worlds seen and unseen alike. 'I am the Life,' he makes Christ say, not, 'I am working to secure it.' St.

John it is who preserves to us that conception of eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of the Son of Man. No philosopher in the world, we may roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually is thus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughly incorporated with our blood and breath. He it is who identifies the most inner values of life with the simplest acts and experiences, reducing it to terms of eating bread and drinking water, and walking in daylight, and bearing fruit like the branches of a vine and following like sheep the voice of a shepherd, and entering a door and finding pasture."

Let us cease trying materialistic and intellectual means for supplying the power to live the spiritual life and let us each one establish the needful relationship with the true source of power. May our time not be likened to the Oriental traveler, who, appreciating the convenience and force of electricity as seen in a room he occupied, fitted his palace, on his return, with a set of elaborate fixtures and was surprised to find no illumination therefrom! We are torches who can not shine in themselves, but who, when connected with the great central Source of Power, the Blessed Trinity in its three glorious manifestations, can show forth the light of the world. Christians should be torch bearers, and the true torch bearer lights not his own path so much as the path of those who come after him. And this brings us to the fundamental reason for personal responsibility. Our motive in seeking personal righteousness it not, as might hastily be thought, because of a selfish desire to save our own souls, or to withdraw either here or hereafter from other souls, but for "their sakes" to sanctify ourselves; for the lives we live today create the spiritual atmosphere of tomorrow.

From Spain come the following suggestive thoughts in regard to the value of the person. "The individual is the real purpose of the universe. We may seek the hero of our thought in no philosopher who lived in flesh and blood, but in a being of fiction and of action, more real than all the philosophers. He is Don Quixote. One cannot say of Don Quixote that he was strictly idealistic. He did not fight for ideas: he was of the spirit and he fought for the spirit. Quixotism is a madness descended from the madness of the cross; therefore it is despised by reason; Don Quixote will not resign himself to either the world or its truth, to science or logic, to art or aesthetics, to morals or ethics. And what did he leave behind him? one may ask. I reply that he left himself, and that a man, a man living and immortal, is worth all theories and all philosophies. Other countries have left us inst.i.tutions and books: Spain has left soul. St. Theresa is worth all inst.i.tutions whatever, or any 'Critique of Pure Reason.'"

Yes, this is I think the lesson we have to learn, now at this turning point in history with the epoch of intellect crumbling about our ears, and the great World's Fair of multiplied, ingenious mechanisms we have called "modern civilization" at a point of practical bankruptcy. It is the spirit that counts, the soul of "man living and immortal," and only through our own living, and the spiritual force that we can command, and through ourselves apply, shall we be able to compa.s.s that social regeneration that is the only alternative to social degeneration and catastrophe. The man who does not live his belief is powerless to redeem or to create, though he were a Solon, a Charlemagne, a Napoleon or a Washington; the man who lives his belief, even if he is a mill-hand in Fall River, is contributing something of energizing force to the task of re-creation. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

Fantastic and paradoxical as it may seem to link together Don Quixote and St. Theresa, I am not sure that we could do better than to accept them as models. The loud laughter of an age of intellectual ribaldry and self-conceit dies away and the gaunt figure of the last of the Crusaders still stands before us heroic in his childlike refusal of compromise, his burning compa.s.sion, his deafness to ridicule. In a sense we must all be ready to accept the jeering and the scorn that were poured out on the Knight of La Mancha, if like him we are to fight, even foolishly, for the things that are worth fighting for--either that they may be destroyed, or restored. And with St. Theresa we must be willing to endure obloquy, suspicion, malice, if like her we live in faith, subjecting our will to the divine will, and then sparing nothing of ourselves in the labour of saving the world for G.o.d in the twentieth century as St. Theresa laboured to save it in the sixteenth century.

The call today is for personal service through the right living that follows the discovery of a right relationship to G.o.d. Not a campaign but a crusade; and the figures of St. Louis and St. Francis and St. Theresa, together with all the Knights and Crusaders of Christendom, rise up before us to point the way. We would find the Great Peace, the world would find the Great Peace also, but

_The way is all so very plain That we may lose the way._

We have been told: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, for your Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things." If we go forth on this new and knightly quest--quest indeed in these latter days, for the Holy Grail, lost long since and hidden away from men--we may, by the grace of G.o.d, achieve. Then, "suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye," and before we are aware, for "the Kingdom of G.o.d cometh not with watching,"

we and even the world, shall find that we have compa.s.sed the Great Peace, and if we do not live to see it, yet in our "certain hope" we shall know that it will come, if not in our time, yet in G.o.d's good time; if not in our way, yet in His more perfect way.

In these lectures I have from time to time, and perhaps beyond your patience, criticised and condemned many of those concrete inst.i.tutions which form the working mechanism of life, even suggesting possible subst.i.tutes. In ending I would say as in beginning; this is not because salvation may be found through any device, however perfect, but because this itself, by reason of its excellence on the one hand or its depravity on the other, is, under the law of life, contributory to the operation of the divine spirit (which is the sole effective energy) or a deterrent. I have tried at long last to gather up this diffuse argument for the supremacy of spiritual force as it works through the individual, and to place it before you in this concluding lecture. Perhaps I can best emphasize my point thus.

The evil of the inst.i.tutions which now hold back the progress that must be made towards social recovery and the Great Peace, is far less the quality of wrongness in themselves and the ill influence they put in operation, than it is the revelation they make of personal character. It is not so much that newspapers are what they are as that there should be men who are pleased and content to make them this, in apparently honest ignorance of what they are doing, and that there should be others in sufficient number to make them profitable business propositions by giving them their appreciation and support. It is not so much that government should be what it is as that character should have so far degenerated in the working majority of citizens that these qualities should show themselves as a fixed condition, and that there should be no body of men of numerical distinction, who regard the situation with sentiments much more active than those of indifference and amused toleration. It is not so much that the industrial situation should be what it is, as that there should be on both sides moral wrong, and that this condition could not have come about, nor could it still be maintained, except through character degeneration in the individual. It is not so much that many forms of religion are what they are, as it is that they should progressively have become this through their exponents and adherents, and that there should be so many who are still willing to defend them in this case.

Every ill thing reveals through its very quality the defects of the individual man, and as upon him must rest the responsibilities for the fault, so on him must be placed the responsibility for the recovery. The failures we have recorded, the false G.o.ds we have raised up in idolatry, even the Great War itself, are revelations of failure in personal and individual character. We may recognize this, but recognition is not enough. We may found societies and committees and write books and deliver lectures, but corporate action is not enough, nor intellectual a.s.sent. There is but one way that is right, sufficient and effective, and that is the right living of each individual, which is the incarnation and operation of faith by the grace of G.o.d.

It is my desire to close this course of lectures not with my own words but with those of one of the great personalities revealed by the war.

First, however, I wish to say this. If there is any thought or word in what I have said that seems to you true, then I ask you to use it not as a matter for discussion but as an impulse toward personal action. If there is anything that is of the nature of explicit error, then I pray that the Spirit of Truth may make deaf your ears that you hear not, and blot out of your memory the record of what I have said. If there is anything that is not consonant with the Christian religion, as this has been revealed to the world and as it is guarded and interpreted by the Church to which these powers were committed, then I retract and disavow it explicitly and _ex animo._

There are two great spiritual figures that have been revealed to us through the Great War: Cardinal Mercier, the great confessor, who held aloft the standard of spiritual glory through the war itself, and Bishop Nicholai of Serbia who has testified to eternal truth and righteousness in the wilderness the war has brought to pa.s.s. It is with his inspired words that I will make an ending of the things I have been impelled to say.

"Christ is merciful, but at last He comes as the Judge. * * * He comes now not to preside in the churches only but to be in your homes, in your shops, to be everywhere with you. He wants to be first; He has become last in Europe, * * * Civilization pa.s.ses like the winds, but the soul remains. Christianization is the only good and constructive civilization. Americanization without Christianization means Bolshevism.

Europe is suffering today for her sins. Christ has forgiven seventy times seven, and now it seems that He is the Judge, turning away, rejected, leaving Europe and going through the gate of Serbia to Asia.

Pray for us. * * * Send us not your gold and silver for food so much as send us converted men. Convert your politicians, your members of the press, your journalists, to preach Christ.

"Christ is choosing the perfect stones, the marble of all the churches, to complete His mystical body in Heaven. He thinks only of one Church, made from those true to Him of all the churches here. Civilizations are moving pictures, made by man. Without G.o.d they perish. The soul, the spirit, lives. The war is not against externals; the war is against ourselves."

APPENDIX A

From the point attained in the lecture on "A Working Philosophy," a point I believe to be clearly indicated by Christian philosophy and sharply differentiated from that of paganism or modernism, I would adventure further and even into a field of pure theory where I can adduce no support or justification from any other source. Speculation along this line may be dangerous, even unjustifiable; certainly it introduces the peril of an attempt to intellectualize what cannot be apprehended by the intellectual faculty, an effort which has been the obsession of modernism and has resulted in spiritual catastrophe. On the other hand we are confronted by a definite and plausible system worked out by those who were without fear of these consequences, and while this already is losing something of its common acceptance, it is still operative, indeed is the only working system and consistent theory of the majority of thinking men outside the limits of Catholicism. I think it wrong both in its a.s.sumptions and its inferences, and it certainly played a deplorable part in the building up of the latest phase of modern civilization, while its persistence is, I am persuaded, a barrier to recovery or advance. This theory, which has gradually been deduced from the wonderful investigations, tabulations and inferences of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer and others of the great group of British intellectuals and scientists of the nineteenth century, is known under the general t.i.tle of Evolution.

The following suggestions are offered with extreme diffidence, and only as uncertain and indeterminate approximations. In some respects they seem not inconsistent with the most recent scientific research which already is casting so much doubt on many of the a.s.sumed factors behind evolution and on the accepted methods of its operation. The true solution, if it is found, will result from the cooperation of scientists, philosophers and theologians, illuminated by the fire of the Divine Wisdom--Hagia Sophia--for in such a problem as this, almost the final secret of the Cosmos, no single human agency acting alone can hope to achieve the final revelation, while all acting together could hardly escape falling into "the falsehoods of their own imaginings" if they relied solely on their unaided efforts in the intellectual sphere.

a.s.suming then that life is an enduring process of the redemption of matter through the interpenetration of spirit, what is a possible method of action? To explain what I mean I must use a diagrammatic figure, but I admit this must be not only inadequate but misleading, for instead of the two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with time added as a vital element, and, I dare say, a "fourth dimension" as well.

Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a s.p.a.ce divided into four strata. The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, the region of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of the universe, the unconditioned Absolute, in the terms of Christian theology, Almighty G.o.d. The second is the plane of matter, an area of potential, but in itself inert and indeterminate. The third is the s.p.a.ce of what we call life in all its forms, the area in which the transformation and redemption take place. The fourth is the ultimate unknowable, that is to say, that which follows on after life and receives the finished product of redemption.