|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 42
Thus man must live by an other-than-natural law if he is to preserve
the family, which is the social unit of civilization. Its very
existence depends upon modifying and transforming natural hunger by a
diviner instinct, by making voluntary repressions, willing sacrifices
of the lower to the higher, the subordinating of the law of self and
might to the law of sacrifice and love--this is what preserves family
life. Animals indeed rear and cherish their young and for the mating
season remain true to one another, but no animality _per se_ ever yet
built a home. There must be a more-than-natural law in the state. Our
national life and honor rest upon the stability of the democracy and
we can only maintain that by walking a very straight and narrow path.
For the peace of freedom as distinguished from precarious license is
a more-than-natural attainment, born of self-repression and social
discipline, the voluntary relinquishment of lesser rights for higher
rights, of personal privileges for the sake of the common good.
Government by the broad and easy path, following the lines of least
resistance, like the natural order, saying might is right, means
either tyranny or anarchy. _Circumspice_! One of the glories of
western civilization is its hospitals. They stand for the supernatural
doctrine of the survival of the unfit, the conviction of the community
that, to take the easy path of casting out the aged and infirm,
the sick and the suffering, would mean incalculable degeneration
of national character, and that the difficult and costly path of
protection and ministering service is both necessary and right. And
why is the reformatory replacing the prison? Because we have learned
that the obvious, natural way of dealing with the criminal certainly
destroys him and threatens to destroy us; and that the hard, difficult
path of reeducating and reforming a vicious life is the one which the
state for her own safety must follow.
Genuine preaching, then, first of all, calls men to repentance, bids
them turn away from their natural selves, and, to find that other and
realer self, enter the straight and narrow gate. The call is not an
arbitrary command, born of a negative and repressive spirit. It is a
profound exhortation based upon a fundamental law of human progress,
having behind it the inviolable sanction of the truth. Such preaching
would have the authentic note. It is self-verifying. It stirs to
answer that quality--both moral and imaginative--in the spirit of man
which craves the pain and difficulty and satisfaction of separation
from the natural order. It appeals to a timeless worth in man which
transcends any values of mere intelligence which vary with the ages,
or any material prosperity which perishes with the using, or any
volitional activity that dies in its own expenditure. Much of the
philosophy of Socrates was long ago outmoded, but Socrates himself, as
depicted in the Phaedo, confronting death with the cup of hemlock in
his hand, saying with a smile, "There is no evil which can happen to
a good man living or dead," has a more-than-natural, an enduring and
transcendent quality. Whenever we preach to the element in mankind
which produces such attitudes toward life and bid it assert itself,
then we are doing religious preaching, and then we speak with power.
Jesus lived within the inexorable circle of the ideas of His time;
He staked much on the coming of the new kingdom which did not appear
either when or as He had first expected it. He had to adjust, as do we
all, His life to His experience, His destiny to His fate. But when He
was hanging on His cross, forgotten of men and apparently deserted by
His God, something in Him that had nothing to do with nature or the
brute rose to a final expression and by its more-than-natural reality,
sealed and authenticated His life. Looking down upon His torturers,
understanding them far better than they understood themselves, He
cried, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That
cry has no place in nature; it has no application and no meaning
outside the human heart and that which is above, not beneath, the
human heart, from which it is derived. There, then, again was the
supernatural law; there was the more-than-nature in man which makes
nature into human nature; and there is the thing to whose discovery,
cultivation, expression, real preaching is addressed. Every time a man
truly preaches he so portrays what men ought to be, must be, and can
be if they will, that they know there is something here
"that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven!
A seed of sunshine that doth leaven
Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars,
And glorify our clay
With light from fountains elder than the Day."[32]
[Footnote 32: J.R. Lowell, _Commemoration Ode_, stanza IV, ll. 30-35.]
Such preaching is a perpetual refutation of and rebuke to the
naturalism and imperialism of our present society. It is the call
to the absolute in man, to a clear issue with evil. It would not cry
peace, peace, when there is no peace. It would be living and active,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of
both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of
the heart.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|