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Page 25
How has this epoch in the ascent of the soul been treated in literature?
I refer with frequency to the literary treatment of spiritual subjects
because poets, dramatists, and writers of fiction, more than any other
class of authors, have studied the soul in its depths, in its
inspirations, and in the process by which it rises and presses toward
its goal.
The illustrations of this subject in the Scriptures are almost idyllic
in their simplicity and beauty. There is more than flippancy in the
remark that Adam's fall was a fall upward. The statement is literally
true. The fall was no fiction, but a condition of enlightenment and
growth. The exit from Eden was the beginning of the long, hard climb
toward the City of God.
The very moment when Isaiah saw Uzziah, the king, stricken with leprosy,
he saw the Lord.
The classical delineation of a soul attaining the higher knowledge is
that of the prodigal son, who, when he came to himself, saw clearly that
his father was waiting to welcome him.
The "Idylls of the King" are a kind of "Pilgrim's Progress." In various
ways they trace, and with matchless music rehearse, the growth of souls
and their victories over spiritual enemies. One of the most pathetic
stories ever told is that of the beautiful Queen Guinevere, who by shame
and agony learned that "we needs must love the highest when we see it;"
and who never appreciated the great love in which she was enfolded
until Arthur, "moving ghost-like to his doom," had gone to fight his
last great battle in the west.
The world owes George MacDonald gratitude it will never repay;--such
spiritual souls are never paid in the coin of this world. In "Robert
Falconer," he taught his time with a lucidity and sweetness that none
but Tennyson and Browning have equaled, and that not even they have
surpassed, that a "loving worm within its clod were lovelier than a
loveless God upon his Throne," and in "Thomas Wingfold" he has traced
with epic fidelity the growth of a soul from moral insensibility to
manly strength and vision. The description of the process by which
Wingfold is brought to see that he, a teacher in the church, is a fraud
and a hypocrite, and by which he is then lifted up and made worthy of
his vocation as a minister of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God is
a wonderful piece of spiritual delineation.
With Guinevere the external humiliation was an essential stage in her
soul's development; but with Wingfold there was no public
disgrace,--only the not less poignant shame of a man who, looking into
his own heart, finds nothing but selfishness and duplicity. His
condition was a matter between himself, his friend, and his God; but
none the less the humiliation was the means by which his soul's eyes
were opened and his heart fired with a passion for reality.
One result of the soul's re-awakening is the realization that it has
relations to God and that they are at once the nearest, the most vital,
and the most enduring of all its relations. Before, it had felt the call
of duty and had recognized that it had affinities with truth and right;
but now it has come into the consciousness of sonship. God is not
distant and unrelated, but near and personally helpful. In a very real
sense He is Father. He is interested in the welfare of His children; and
His will has now become the law of their lives. The first awakening is
to the consciousness of a moral order and of freedom; the second
awakening is to the consciousness of God and of a near and vital
relation with Him. The path of progress is still full of obstacles;
there are still attractions for the senses in animalism and
solicitations from something malign outside; but never again will the
soul be without the realization that it is in the hands of a
compassionate, as well as a just, God. I am inclined to think that the
elder Calvinists were right in their contention that when the soul has
once come to this saving knowledge of God it can never again "fall from
grace," or from the consciousness of its relation to the One mighty to
save. This does not mean that there may not be repeated and awful moral
lapses. The soul's realization of God does not imply that it has become
perfected. It has taken a long step in its ascent; it is now conscious
of its destiny, and of the power which is working in its behalf; but far
away stretch the spiritual heights and, before they can be reached, many
a cliff must be scaled and many a glacier passed; and few reach those
altitudes without many a savage fall, and without frequent hours of
weariness, doubt, and despair. The sufferings and the chastisements of
those who have come to this altitude often increase as the vision
becomes clearer.
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