Part 8 (1/2)
Think again for a moment about the effects on society as a whole of the intemperate use of strong drink. They are incarnated in horrors, look where we will. The injuries which simply swarm out of our licensed temptations to drunkenness are not exceptional and irregular; they are, as one of the most eminent of our publicists has said, ”uniform as the movements of the planets, and as deadly as the sirocco of the desert or the malaria of the marshes.” There is not a profession round which drink has not thrown the spell of its sorcery; scarcely a household that has not been despoiled by its leprous pollution. And who is responsible for it? Does any one doubt that if the Christian Churches looked at this accursed traffic through the eyes of G.o.d, and attacked it with faith in His omnipotence, that we could not break its back within the next ten years?
Long as we are content merely to run the eyes of our intelligence over the episodes of this great battle of wrong against right; to mark down its critical moments, and to a.n.a.lyse its issues while careful above all things not to implicate ourselves in the agonies of its crises, then let us not challenge the faithfulness of G.o.d for wrongs and sorrows brought into the world, and kept here by our selfishness. Those of us who have part or lot in this selfishness--and most of us have--let us, at any rate, play the game, and accept our own responsibility.
I do not wonder at the severity there is in the human world; for hard as it falls in places, it is yet the sign-manual of its uplifting and hope. We sometimes talk bitterly about the crucifixions in our life; but believe it when I say, that a world without them would be a dark and terrible vision. If we could do evil with impunity, if its punishment were a mere peradventure, it would mean that evil was the heart of the world. We may be profoundly thankful that wrong and suffering are cause and effect which nothing can break. Were it not so, it would mean that under skies dark and pitiless, a brutal scramble to survive would be the law, as in the animal world it is said to be the instinct. I know that many come into the world and leave it, never having had the chance to be all they might have been in more gracious circ.u.mstances. But I can trust them with Him who is too wise to err, and too good to be unjust.
This, then, is as far as I have got with the general merits of the subject before us. To say there are experiences in the lives of individuals, and even of communities, which we cannot explain, is no proof that the universe is immoral. I submit to you, that the good in our lot infinitely outweighs the ill for which we are not directly responsible; and that the consequences of the ill for which we are directly responsible are intended to chastise it out of existence.
May I counsel you to think about what has been said? Remember there are some things G.o.d cannot do for us, and yet leave us men. He cannot make a better world without the consent of our individual obedience and the co-operation of our will. I should, I trust, be the last man to ask people to be content, or even patient, with things as they are in the life that now is, on the a.s.sumption merely that they are to be better in the life that is to be. I do not say that heaven is here or nowhere; but I do believe that it ought to be here, in its degree, as truly as anywhere else. If we can think of contempt as part of the Being of G.o.d, surely this must be His feeling for much of the wrong and suffering that finds a place in the human world. It is so gratuitous, so insensate, so unnecessary. Is it not a terrible reflection upon some of us, that after the Cross has been silently teaching the world these well-nigh two thousand years, it can yet be said with some show of reason, that the two forces that keep society, as we know it, together, are the ignorance and the patience of the poor? Why should they be so long ignorant? Why should they be so chronically patient?
The sorrow of G.o.d must be, not only that they suffer, but that they are so patient under it as to make it scarcely distinguishable from content. And why are they so patient? This is the question G.o.d is asking through every thoughtful and humane man of us; and one day--man with G.o.d speed its coming--we shall be numerous enough, and in earnest enough, to establish some real harmony, some true correspondence, between the inner dignity and the outward lot of the individual, and, through him, of the community. In the meantime, then, instead of asking, how can G.o.d be G.o.d and permit wrong to be in the world? let us face the truth, however it may smite us, the truth that wrong is in the world for this reason--that we permit it.
Growing out of what has been advanced, suffer me to press the subject a little further, under one or two statements. I purpose to do little more than indicate them, and to ask for them your good consideration.
G.o.d is faithful: therefore good must be possible. I was talking some time ago with a very intelligent man, who has a well-known name in the world of letters, and he said to me: ”I admit that we have made something that answers to progress in material things, but I deny that we have made any advance in moral attainment. A few rise above the average level, for the rest it is the old story of cycles of abortive effort with no lasting good to the race. We may theorize and idealize as we like,” he went on to say, ”but Bebel is right when he tells us that 'every man is the product of his times and the instrument of his circ.u.mstances.'”
It was talk that exactly expresses much of the ”time-spirit” of our modern day. It is a doctrine with no G.o.d in it, and no invisible world. It a.s.sumes that man has no vision and no volition; that he is a mere billiard-ball in the game of existence, which goes whithersoever the cue of blind fate sends it. That one man rises, and another falls, is neither the virtue of one nor the vice of the other, but the necessity of both. We follow the better if we have the accident of certain gifts, or we take hold of the worse, if we have not. In either case we are no more responsible for our direction than we are responsible for the fact that we have to take a direction at all.
I shall not build up words in trying to answer this position. I can conceive of no man who has some conscience left, however he may seek a refuge from himself in this doctrine of moral irresponsibility, who, at the soul of him, does not know it to be a lie. We commonly use the terms evil and sin as interchangeable; and in doing so we are apt to fall into confusion. Evil is, as it were, embedded in our nature; and for that we are not accountable. Sin, as I have said before, is in yielding to the evil, and that is our responsibility. St. Paul speaks of the evil he found in his nature, and while he admits its malignant power, he does not represent himself as powerless to contend against it. He accepts no responsibility for the fact that evil is there; but he does accept responsibility for what he does with it, or what it does with him.
”Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall.”
I know with any man the power of evil in my heart; and while it may come, as it were, in spite of myself, I can determine the question as to whether it shall stay. It is the vilest heresy of our day to preach and believe that circ.u.mstances can absolve us from our duty; or that they can prevent us from following the right. The battle is hard, at times very hard, but what battle is not hard that is worth winning?
Put religion out of the question, and do we find that the prizes of the world offer us easier terms?
It is the greatness of the Christian religion, that it not only tells us what it were good to do, but it offers to us the power to do it.
The great teachers of the world have said to their disciples: ”Accept our ideas”; Christ says: ”Accept Me.” ”He makes everything centre in His Own Personality.” And the men who have helped to make what so far in our human world is grand and glorious, have shown us that Christ's word is a real word, meaning a real thing.
One who has the right to testify has told us that, when we do the will of G.o.d as if it were our own will, we realize that G.o.d is doing our will as His own. There is a great truth in this. We so often fail because ours is a broken obedience. We expect G.o.d to do His part, while we keep back part of the price of our own, and what response we have is the sense of being mocked in ourselves. We have to find out that we cannot serve two masters. However we fall short in practice, the intention must be all for G.o.d, or it will be none. But let us be genuine co-workers with Him in this great work of personal character-building; and we find that we have a power not ourselves, and infinitely greater than ourselves. Our achievements are not so much a question of gift, as of dynamic. They are not in the machinery, but in the driving power.