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Page 21
What has made the average of human life so much longer than it was
formerly? That very mysterious pestilence has turned attention toward
its causes, and thus the race has been made cleaner, purer, more fit to
endure. Why do men live in houses with scientific plumbing, fresh air,
and have well-cooked food? Because that fierce teacher, pestilence, has
taught them that any other course means weakness and death. Whom nature
loveth she chasteneth is a truth as clearly written in human history as
"Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth" is written in the Bible. The true
attitude toward the austere, for a philosophic as for a Christian mind,
is one of complacency. Every severity is intended for benefit. By wars
the enormity of war is made evident. By disease the necessity for
observation of the laws of health is emphasized. Even death, in the
order of things, at last is a blessing, for one generation must give
place to another, or the evils that Malthus feared would be quickly
reached. Moreover death, in its proper time, is only nature's way of
giving the soul its freedom. Hindrances in its path do not indicate the
presence of an enemy but of a friend who discovers the only sure way of
securing its finest development. The cultivation of the philosophic and
Christian temper, which are practically the same, would make this a
happier world. We could endure trials with more courage if we would but
remember that they are as necessary to our growth as the cutting of a
diamond is necessary to the revelation of the treasury of light which it
holds.
The heights of character are slowly reached, and, usually, only by the
ministry of the austere; but once they are reached the horizon expands,
and the soul finds in the clearer light peace if not joy.
This course of reasoning does not make the mistake of regarding sin as
less than dreadful. Every sin has hidden in its heart a blessing; but
sin as such is never a blessing. It may be necessary for Providence to
allow a spirit to sink again into animalism in order that it may be
taught its danger, and made to realize that only through struggle can
its goal be reached--but the animalism in itself is never beneficent.
When we say that the process by which a man rises may be justified, we
do not mean that all his choices are justifiable. The process of his
growth provides for his fall, if he will learn in no other way, but it
does not necessitate his fall; that is ever because of his own choice. A
spirit may choose to return to the slime from which it has emerged. That
choice is sin, but it can never be made without the protests of
conscience which will not be silenced, and it is by those protests that
a man is impelled upward again, and never by the sin in itself. No one
was ever helped by his sin, but millions, when they have sinned, have
found that the misery was greater than the joy, and this perpetual
connection of sin and suffering is the blessed fact. Sin is never
anything but hideous. The more unique the genius the more awful and
inexcusable his fall. Even out of their sins men do rise, but that is
because there sounds in the deeps of the soul a voice which becomes more
pathetic in its warning and entreaty, the more it is disregarded. Those
who desire to justify sin say that it is the cause of the rising. It may
be the occasion, but it is never the cause. The occasion includes the
time, place, environment,--but the cause is the impelling force; and sin
never impels toward virtue. Satan has not yet turned evangelist.
Because in the past the soul has risen, one need not be unduly
optimistic to presume that, in spite of opposition, it will meet no
enemies which it will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not
be able to scale. Prophecy is the art of reading history forward. The
spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can
ever permanently revert to the conditions from which it has emerged;
neither can we believe that it will fail of reaching that development of
which its every power and faculty is so distinct a prophecy.
No light has ever yet penetrated far into the mystery of human
suffering, sorrow, and sin. Why they need to be at all, has been often
asked, but no one has furnished a reply which satisfies many people.
With the old insistent and pathetic earnestness millions are still
"knocking at nature's door" and asking wherefore they were born. Hosts
of others are looking out on desolation and grief, thinking of the tears
which have fallen and the sobs which are sure to sound in the future,
and asking with eager and pleading intensity, why such things need be.
Out of the heavens above, or out of the earth beneath, no clear answer
has come.
As we wonder and study, still deeper grows the mystery. Three courses
are open to those who are sensitive to the hard, sad facts of the human
condition. One is to say that all things in their essence are just as
they seem; that sorrow, sin, death none can escape, that they are evils,
and that a world in which they exist is the worst of possible worlds,
and that there is neither God nor good anywhere. Then let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die, and the quicker the end the sweeter the
doom.
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