Chapter XII: The War Against War 201 (3)

We find this made plain in several directions--first of all in the gaining and maintenance of sound health. Genuine achievement in many lines becomes in the last analysis largely a question of nerves, digestion, physical stamina. In the busy, hurried city life the question is, “Can this man stand up to it as long and as effectively as any other man--and then just that much longer which gives him preeminence?” The lawyer must be able to go into court day after day clear-headed, so that he will have all the law he knows at his command, patient and smooth with blundering witnesses, wise and self-controlled in the face of the nagging of the opposing counsel; he must be able to do this all day long for weeks together, looking up his authorities at night oftentimes, and not break down. The physician must do something more than ride around in an automobile and look wise; he must be able to carry upon his mind and heart the anxieties of a hundred households at once, work all day, frequently half the night, eating and sleeping as he can, and do all this without resorting to stimulants or drugs to keep himself up to the mark. The teacher bent not on imparting information or on merely keeping the wheels of a pedagogical machine turning, but upon the high task of forming, developing, enriching personality in fifty or sixty restless lives there in plain view, needs a sound physique. The minister of religion if he is to stand up before the same congregation for a score of years or more and put faith, hope, courage, heart, and resolution into them and not become fagged out and stale, must be a man who can sleep nights, digest his meals, maintain his poise, rise early, and go all day without losing his head or his health--and for all this he needs a prime body. The same is true in the life of the merchant or the mechanic, in the work of the manufacturer or the farmer.

Henry Ward Beecher used to say that there were three kinds of people in the world--the sick people who must be taken care of with sympathetic tenderness; the people who are not sick, able to be up and to take their nourishment; and the people who are positively, radiantly, and joyously well. If the young man has not been handicapped by some accident or by an unfortunate heredity, it lies easily within his power to be enrolled in this third class. He ought to hold himself resolutely unwilling to accept anything less.

It is much more than a matter of personal prudence or of self-interest. Up to the limit of his powers each man owes it to his family, to his friends, and to the world about him to furnish it one more healthy, vigorous life. The world is defrauded if by his foolishness, dissipation, or laziness it is put off with a whining, grumbling, irritable caricature of what the man might have been. He owes it to the members of his family not to burden them with unnecessary doctor’s bills, nursing, and anxiety. He owes it to them not to break down and die before his time, leaving them to struggle on alone. Good, sound health, clear up to the limit of what intelligence, conscience, and that resolution which will not take “no” for an answer may achieve, becomes a moral obligation! The man who shirks this physical duty becomes to that extent a scamp.

Such physical efficiency comes not as a piece of good luck; nor is disease to be regarded always as a misfortune or “a mysterious dispensation of providence.” The man careless about the drainage or thoughtlessly allowing decaying vegetables to lie in the cellar of his home need not prate about “providence” if fever attacks some member of his household. The man who eats hot biscuits three times a day and drinks coffee by the quart until he is as yellow as a Chinaman has no right to shake his head over “the mysterious ways of God,” when he becomes ill. The young fellow who inhales whole fog-banks of cigarette smoke until his lungs are weak and his heart action defective, who tampers with his nerves by the use of stimulants or narcotics, need not be surprised that in the hard contests of life sounder men walk on ahead, leaving him in the rear. In each case the man forgot that two and two make four, that we must settle by the books, that according to the law of returns we take out what we put in.

Physical efficiency cannot be hastily bought in the drug store at a dollar a bottle any more than women can buy good complexions there for fifty cents a box. Beauty is more than skin deep; it roots all the way down into those vital processes which give the fair woman the appearance and the reality of joyous, engaging health. And the physical efficiency which stands the strain of modern life cannot be rapidly gained by the use of drugs; it comes according to the law of definite returns. It comes only as men eat good food, enough and not too much, drink that which slakes rather than creates thirst, sleep a sufficient number of hours, some of them before midnight, breathe their full share of the outdoor air where there is plenty for everybody, and exercise themselves sanely in some wholesome industry. It all comes according to method and not by magic.

The newspapers on the morning after the presidential election of nineteen hundred brought us an interesting picture. One of the candidates for vice-president that year had been traveling for weeks together, speaking ten or fifteen times a day to great audiences eager to drain him of his last drop of vitality. He had been meeting influential citizens by the hundreds, shaking hands with them until his right arm might have felt like the handle of some outworn town pump. He had been doing all this under the constant strain of tremendous excitement and personal interest. A man who had wasted his strength in vicious indulgences would have lasted about as long in such a situation as an old lady would last in a football game. This man went through it without breaking down, without losing his head or making foolish, damaging statements. And when the reporters went to call on him the night of the election they found him in evening dress, rejoicing in the companionship of his family, from whom he had been separated for those weeks, calmly awaiting the returns. Theodore Roosevelt--whether we agree with all his policies or not, we admire a vigorous, intelligent, public-spirited American citizen wherever found! He entered college a delicate lad. He gained and maintained that splendid efficiency by remembering that two and two make four. He was willing to pay the full price for virility by his steady attention to the law of returns.

The same rule holds in the mental field. There are men who fall into the way of relying upon what they are pleased to call “genius.” A bad case of “genius” in a young man is almost as fatal to his highest success as smallpox. There are a few men in each generation exceptionally endowed, just as there are a few four-leaf clovers in every field, but the work of the world is done mainly by men of average build.

And even men of undeniable genius attribute their success mainly to persistent effort. Agassiz used to say, “I seem to have formed the habit of observing more closely than many of my associates.” Darwin, whose work was epoch making, made that famous trip for observation on H. M. S. _Beagle_ in 1837. In 1844 he ventured to show a few of his notes to some intimate friends. In 1859, twenty-two years after he had collected the first data for the theory finally announced, he published “The Origin of Species,” and the world of science, of philosophy, of religion, underwent a radical change as a result of his thorough work.

Ask ninety-nine men out of a hundred how they succeeded and the answer will come back--“Hard work.” Inspiration is all very well, but for the mass of us perspiration is a surer pathway to achievement. Wellington, Newton, Lord Clive, Napoleon, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster were all regarded as dull boys--in each case advancement came by persistent effort. The capacity was there, but it was brought out not by magic nor by some sudden burst of inspiration, but by hard work.

Knowledge is power, where the knowledge is not a mere mass of information. The mere accumulation of facts has little worth, for all this lies ready to our hand in the encyclopedia whenever it is needed. The knowledge which brings power lies in the ability to read and to know what it is all about and how it bears on other things we have read; in the ability to think and when one thinks to produce something with the look and taste of his own mind upon it; in the ability to see three things, sharply distinguishing them, and then to see them in their relations, and then to see another group of three and another, organizing the whole nine into some sort of system. The knowledge which is power means insight, grasp, discrimination, productiveness. It is not the sole property of genius, but rather the natural return for a long life of consistent, intellectual effort.

Each man owes it to society to make his utmost effort to furnish it one more such well-equipped member. This purpose includes much more than the desire for that individual success and preeminence which might prompt the effort--it indicates a wish to be capable and serviceable to those larger interests which lag for lack of competent service.

When Booker Washington addresses the students gathered at Tuskegee, it is after this fashion. “You have not come here to receive training in order that you may go back and compete more successfully with your untrained associates, in earning higher wages to feather your own nests quickly and warmly. You have not come here to become intelligent and cultivated that you may go back and proudly establish better homes and higher types of family life than the untutored negroes maintain. You are here that being trained you may feel more heavily and capably responsible for the welfare of your race in the several communities where you are to live and work.” If this is the splendid ideal in the green tree of a black man’s school, what shall we expect in the dry tree of the white man’s school! The high office of all mental drill should be to send men out “more heavily and capably responsible” for the general good, and this high quality of competency comes only by strict attention to the law of returns.

The same method holds in moral values although many people feel that here we enter a region of hocus-pocus, a realm of magic and sleight of hand where two and two may possibly, upon occasion, make five or even fifty. There is an impression in some quarters that a young fellow may sow an abundant crop of wild oats, that he may wallow in the mire of vicious indulgence, that he may for years disregard his spiritual interests with flat indifference, and then by some sudden spasm of moral feeling begin anew, as fine and as sound a man as if he had never been in the far country with the harlots and the swine.

The standard books on ethics give us no hint that such is the fact. The Bible says nothing in support of such a notion. There is not a land the sun shines on where two and two do not make four in morals as well as in mathematics. There are no short cuts to spiritual soundness. The Almighty is a careful bookkeeper and the teaching of reason, experience, and conscience is to the effect that here, as everywhere, we must accept those reactions which come inevitably by this great law of returns.

There was a missionary to the Indians who, in seeking to induce habits of Sabbath observance, told them that if they planted their corn on Sunday it would not grow. In that spirit of human perversity which we all understand and share, they immediately went out and planted an acre of corn on Sunday! They hoed it and tended it always on Sunday. And because they took especial pains with it, when autumn came it yielded more corn than any other acre on the reservation. Then the Indians laughed at the good missionary and would not go to church.

There is a penalty for planting and hoeing corn on Sunday, but it does not show in the corn--it shows in the men. The corn may grow to its full size, but the men will not grow to their full size, nor yield the full return appropriate to the cultivation of human values. The missionary was sound in his main purpose, but faulty in his method, because in the moral world as elsewhere, we find the reign of law and not the operation of magic. The neglect of the higher values for which the Sabbath stands will not at once affect the cornfield, but it will show in the spiritual deficiencies of the men who have no place in the week for the cultivation of reverence, aspiration, and the sense of fellowship with the Unseen.

There is no shuffling nor chance in the moral world. Impulses lead to choices; choices readily become habits; habits harden speedily into character, and character determines destiny. Two and two make four all the way up, all the way down, and all the way in.

In a New York hotel the chambermaid one morning discovered the dead body of a young man and at his side, scrawled on a piece of paper, she found this last will and testament: “I leave to society a bad example. I leave to my father and mother all the sorrow they can bear in their old age. I leave to my brothers and sisters the memory of a misspent life. I leave to my wife a broken heart and to my children the name of a drunkard and a suicide. I leave to God a lost soul which has defied and insulted his loving mercy.”

He wrote it all out, signed it, and then shot himself. His appetites had gotten away with him, his habits were no longer under his control. He began as many an enthusiastic, generous young fellow begins by simply having a succession of “good times” and they grew on him until the habits he had developed were no longer his--he was theirs. He forgot that two and two make four, and the gruesome legacy he was compelled to leave issued as inevitably from his course of life as the sum total at the foot of a column of figures.

The sound health which serves as the physical basis of enlarging and enduring efficiency; the trained intelligence which knows what to do next and finds itself competent for the task; the type of character which is reliable and profitable for the life that now is and for that which is to come, all come to us as splendid reactions from that stable, definite, methodical order, seen and unseen, which enfolds us ever. What you receive as the natural rebound from your mode of life will be like in quality and proportionate in amount to that which you express in effort, for the law of returns, like the law of gravitation, is always on duty.

VIII

THE HIGHEST FORM OF REWARD

The Scriptures show their good sense by frankly facing and accepting the hope of reward as a legitimate source of motive. There are fine people who almost go into spasms over the idea of working for a reward. “Do right,” they say, “because it is right, not because you will gain something by it.” “Live nobly, because it is the highest duty there is, with no thought of what may come to you in consequence.” “Do your work well for the sheer joy of it, not because you will be paid well for good work.” All this is very pretty and does credit to the lovely dispositions of those who utter these sentiments, but it is just a little too good for this common earth.

It was just a little too good for the men who wrote the Bible. Jesus himself did not hesitate to say, “Do this, and great shall be your reward in heaven.” He said, “If any man shall give a cup of cold water in my name,” that is to say, in the right spirit, “he shall in no wise lose his reward.” He built squarely upon the foundation laid by that singer of old, “The statutes of the Lord are right; the commandments of the Lord are pure; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.” The hope of reward according to the Scriptures is a legitimate source of motive.

But what form should the reward take? What is the highest form of reward? One finds all manner of answers to this question strung along in an ascending series. We find those who always think of reward in terms of material success. “It pays to be good,” these men say--to be good, at any rate, up to a certain point. “Honesty is the best policy”--in the long run as a method of business procedure it can show more dividends than dishonesty can. “The way of the transgressor is hard,” now in one way, now in another, but always hard at the end. Transgression does not pay when the returns are all in. The main theme of the book of Deuteronomy is that obedience to Jehovah will bring blessings wrought out in terms of material prosperity. “If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, blessed shalt thou be in basket and in store; blessed shalt thou be in the city and in the field; blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out and when thou comest in.” Reckoned up in terms of visible success, righteousness would be the best asset a nation could possess.

We have here a great truth; it is not the whole truth, but it is a fragment of truth not to be despised. The young man in New York, whose main interest is material success, setting out to achieve his ambition by dishonesty is trying to make the Hudson River turn round and flow back to Albany. It cannot be done. He will get wet and muddy and be drowned, perhaps, for his pains and, when he is all through with his experiment, the Hudson will be flowing right along just the same.

In like manner, the big, strong, moral order which enfolds us whether we like it or not, whether we think about it or believe in it or not, the big, strong, moral order cannot be defied nor ignored. Here and there some young fellow thinks he has found a way of turning it round in what he supposes to be his own interest. He, too, simply gets wet and muddy, and drowned, perhaps, in his foolish efforts while the great, eternal verities of right and wrong are still there as they were before he pitted his puny strength against them. The fact stands that righteousness exalts a nation or an individual as nothing else can.

But this fragment of truth is only a fragment. A man who is righteous to a certain extent because it pays is not a high type. The one who is honest because honesty is the best policy is not very honest--put him in a situation where honesty involves personal sacrifice and one could not bank on his honesty. The man who is intent upon furnishing the world so much uprightness in exchange for a certain amount of advancement which he hopes to gain can scarcely be said to be in the moral field at all. He is merely doing a little business with the Lord,--so much character for so much success. It may all be as purely a commercial transaction, when analyzed down to its roots, as the buying of a suit of clothes. His gifts to benevolence when scrutinized are seen to be only shrewd “investments.” Increased material prosperity is a form of reward, but it is not the highest form, and it does not furnish a praiseworthy source of motive.

We find those who look for their reward in the appreciation of others. We all like to have the esteem of our fellows and we ought to like it. That queer stick who is always flinging out sneers about popularity, who insists that he does not care a straw what people think about him, cares more than any of us. He has an idea that by this strange course he will be talked about more and be regarded more highly for his oddity than he would be if he shaped up his life in a more rational way.

Reputation is not character; it may be only the uncertain shadow cast by character, but it can be, for all that, a pleasant and a healing shadow. One of the wisest of men said, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” A good name is simply what people say about a man. The appreciation and the esteem which right living wins is a legitimate form of reward.

But this also is liable to be distorted. Jesus saw certain people making this form of reward the object of supreme desire. He warned his disciples against that course. “Take heed that you do not your alms before men to be seen of them. When thou doest thine alms sound not a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” These men rendered their generous service with showy ostentation, blowing their horns as they went. They did it that they might have glory of men and they had glory of men--they got the dividends they desired.

“And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites: they love to pray standing on the street corners that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” They prayed on the street corners that they might be seen of men and they were seen of men--they got what they prayed for.

The desire for esteem is not a satisfactory source of motive. The boy who cannot do his duty unless he is praised and petted for it afterward is a poor specimen--he is likely to become a vain, self-conscious little prig. The man who cannot perform unless he is in the lime-light, hearing the plaudits of the many, is made of poor stuff--he is lath and plaster, where there should be sound material. All such speedily lose the finer qualities out of whatever measure of righteousness they seem to possess. When a man goes straight along about his business, intent upon doing his own piece of work well and succeeds in such a way that the gratitude, esteem, and appreciation of his fellows come, he scarcely knows how, he finds this a beautiful and enduring source of satisfaction. But here as everywhere the law of indirection operates--he that saves his popularity by aiming for it loses it; he that loses all thought of it by investing his life in useful service finds it.

There are men who think of the highest form of reward as standing in the approval of one’s own conscience and in the sense of having the favor of God. The throne of judgment where I must stand and give account is not away yonder among the clouds--it is in here where I am. It is within my own heart where God is--where my God is. It is here that I meet him now and must meet and face him ever.

And no quantity of outward success, no full, warm tide of popular esteem will supply the lack of moral self-respect within. If any man knows that his heart is not right before God, that his purposes are not true, that his aspirations are low, then no amount of material success or popular applause will give him tranquillity of spirit. And, conversely, where there is honesty of purpose, where a man may look himself in the face with unsparing candor and know that he is entitled to respect, this fact of itself brings a peace which passeth all understanding. This inner sense of worth and peace is from on high and it becomes a fine form of reward.

There are ugly distortions of it. The Pharisee who went into the temple to pray felt very comfortable in his own mind. We saw it in his strut as he walked down the aisle. We noticed it in the way he stood, when he prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers.” He named the lowest, meanest men he could think of. It would not be hard to outrun such men morally, but such a race as it was the Pharisee had won it. “I thank thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this publican.” It was fortunate that the publican chanced to be there; it added a cubit of self-complacency to the Pharisee to have the publican present. “I fast twice in the week; I give a tenth of all that I possess,” the Pharisee continued. He had been doing right for the sake of the self-satisfaction which would result--and he had his reward. I do not know of a man in history who seemed to have more of it. He was comfortable to “the thirty-third and last degree” in that feeling of self-approval which clothed him as with a garment.

But what a narrow, self-centered life it produces where this becomes the chief form of reward for which a man strives! “I will speak this kind word and do this generous deed and stand firm in the path of duty, because of the warm feelings of self-approval which will steal upon my heart,” such a man cries. It is better to have the approval of one’s conscience than not to have it; it is better to strive for inner peace and satisfaction than to have one’s eye constantly on material success or popular applause. But where this becomes the object of supreme interest it is a disappointing and a narrowing form of reward.

What shall we say, then, is the highest form, if neither material success nor popular esteem nor the approval of one’s own conscience is worthy to stand in that holy place? I find the highest form of reward named by the Master in the parable of the Good Samaritan, “This do and thou shalt live.” The reward for right living, for loving God and loving one’s neighbor after the manner indicated in the parable, lies in the increased power we gain to live. This do and thou shalt live--live more abundantly, more effectively, more serviceably. The reward of right life is a larger life.

The man in the parable who had been faithful and diligent with the one pound entrusted to him received this reward: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things! Have thou authority over ten cities.” The reward for good conduct was enlarged capacity and enlarged opportunity for more good conduct. The man’s powers were increased by what he had been doing and his chance for the exercise of them was greater; now, in place of the single pound to be used in trading, he had authority over ten cities. In this sense of increased capacity to meet the increasing obligations of life lies the highest form of reward.

In one of his little books, Henry van Dyke speaks of three ideals of education. The man with “the decorative ideal” thinks it is a fine thing to go through college. It gives one an air of distinction. It enables him to belong to the University Club in the city where he lives. It enables him to refer to “my class,” and to the “good old days” at Harvard or Yale, at Cornell or Princeton, at Stanford or California. He may even be prompted to become a “dig” in the hope that a Phi Beta Kappa key will unlock doors closed to other men. And because he is a university man he feels that he possesses a rare and cultivated taste in poetry and in philosophy, in music and in art. He thinks of his education as a highly decorative appendage to his personal life.

The second man has no use for all this; he has “the marketable ideal” of education. He is one of those “no-nonsense-about-me” fellows. In selecting his courses he has a thoroughly practical eye to the main chance. He is very contemptuous in his attitude toward the study of dead languages or of metaphysics. “What good would all that do me, when I got out into the world?” he says. He thinks of himself as a tool to be ground and sharpened so that in the world of business it will cut where other tools fail. He is intent upon gaining an education not for the purpose of living but for the purpose of making a living, which is a very different thing.

The true ideal of education is “the creative ideal.” The work of the school is not to enable the shoemaker to stick to his last and make more money out of it than uneducated men are making out of their lasts. “Education is to lift the shoemaker above his last, and to carry the merchant beyond his store, the lawyer beyond his brief, the minister beyond his sermon.” The supreme reward for being educated lies in the enlarged capacity one gains for life. The reward for physical exercise, for mental drill, for hard study, for the steady effort to do one’s duty, is to be found in that increased power to live. This do and thou shalt live a larger, freer, finer life. This do and thou shalt be alive at more points, on higher levels, and in more efficient and serviceable ways.

We cannot possibly stop short of that. If a man thinks of his education as only making him more marketable, he has his mind fixed upon material success as the highest form of reward. If he thinks of it mainly as a thing that will win the admiration of his less cultured associates, he is still in the clutches of that decorative idea. If he thinks of it mainly as having value in giving him the consciousness of intelligence and culture, he is still on an unsatisfactory level of thought and purpose.

“Come on up to the head of the stairs,” the great educational processes of the world call to us! “Come on up where you can see and breathe and grow.” This do and thou shalt live; this alone indicates the great end in view. Enlarged capacity for real life is the goal of all serious endeavor. We may or may not gain material success; we may or may not secure a large measure of popular applause; we will beyond a peradventure have a deep, sweet feeling of peace within as we face that way, but the main result will be that, by doing all these things well, we shall gain increased power and capacity for living the life. Here we reach that which is ultimate. “This do and thou shalt live” is the final word on the subject of reward.

The highest return for doing anything lies in the power one gains to do it better and to do more of it. The reward for reading is not in the information gained or in the ideas acquired so much as in the mental stimulus which comes, enabling one to read more books and better ones and in time to produce ideas of his own. The artist goes out into the world to see the beauty of it in tree and flower, in landscape and mountain, in the quiet lake, and in the restless sea. His reward comes in increased power to see more beauty there than other people see and to transfer what he sees to canvas. “I never saw anything like that in nature,” a woman once said to Turner as she looked at one of his pictures. “Very likely,” replied the artist; “how much would you give, madam, if you could?” Turn your face any way you choose and the great statement of the Master about reward holds true,--this do and thou shalt live.

Carry it up to the moral level. The reward for doing your duty lies in the increased power you gain to keep on doing it and to do it better. The reward for loving lies in the increased power to love and to love more worthily. The reward for meeting and mastering some hard situation in life, temptation, disappointment, struggle, sorrow, lies in the added strength you gain to master still harder situations which may arise. In your spiritual pilgrimage you go “from strength to strength,” from one form of strength to another and a higher form, from one measure of strength to another and a fuller measure, until at last you reach the fulness of the stature of Christ.

You may recall that great promise made in the last book of the Bible! “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee”--what? What form will the ultimate reward take? “I will give thee a crown,” not of gold with diamonds in it larger than the Kohinoor, not the crown of material success. “I will give thee a crown,” not of laurel such as the Greeks placed upon the brow of the victors in the games, the crown of popular applause. “I will give thee a crown,” not of personal satisfaction such as men of honest purpose may be entitled to wear. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown _of life_!” The ultimate reward for living right lies in the increased power and the increased opportunity which will be ours to live on and to live more abundantly.

IX

THE USE OF THE INCOMPLETE

“We know in part.” This is not the statement of some indifferent agnostic, who, because religious questions are difficult, insists that he does not know anything about them. It is not the statement of a defiant infidel, who, because he does not understand everything about religion, declares that neither he nor any one knows anything about it. It is not the statement of one of those hesitating individuals who are always trying to steer a safe course somewhere between yes and no, between the right of it and the wrong of it; who are never quite sure whether there is or is not a God, but think that the truth lies, perhaps, about halfway between the two claims.

This man Paul was not an agnostic, nor an infidel, nor a hesitator. He knew certain things, he was sure of them. He was ready to say so right out loud, and to stand up and be cut in two for them if need be. “I know whom I have believed,” he cries; there was no uncertainty in his mind on that point. “I know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”--and it had changed him from a narrow, bigoted, persecuting Pharisee into one who wrote the best hymn on love to be found in print and who embodied the spirit of it in his daily conduct. “I know that all things work together for good to them that love God”--and in Paul’s case “all things” included a great deal of hardship and persecution, of disappointment and sorrow, but he never wavered in his confidence that some wise purpose was being furthered by it all. These and many other things he knew. “In part we know,” was the way he would have placed his emphasis and the actual content of his knowledge was large indeed.

He makes this statement as an honest, modest, reasonable man face to face with spiritual realities too great for perfect comprehension or final statement. His knowledge of them was large, but they were still larger. He must have known when he wrote those words that he was a man of no mean attainments. He wrote a third of the New Testament with his own hand. He did more to shape Christian thought than any one save Christ himself. He had been “caught up into the third heaven,” whatever that may mean. He was the most effective missionary of the new faith the world has ever seen. He was a man of marvelous reach and grasp, but face to face with these great spiritual realities, God and redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, he frankly confesses that the returns are not all in; the last words have not been said and cannot be said; the full appreciation of these high values has not been reached. We know in part.

We are glad to find these words on the lips of the world’s greatest apostle. They are reassuring to those of us who are troubled by the limitations of our own religious knowledge. They match the mood of this modern time of questioning and unrest which is so much in evidence on the college campus and in university circles. They suggest that finality is much more difficult than some of the earlier generations in their simplicity supposed. One does not find those familiar words, “Finis” or “The End,” printed on the last page of a book so commonly as in other days. Even where the author has said his say in several volumes, each one as bulky as a volume of the “Britannica,” he knows that there is more to be said. He leaves the way open without trying to block it by writing, “The End.”

We are conscious that we have not reached the terminus on any of the great trunk lines of religious inquiry. We are scattered along at various way stations, thankful for the part we know, grateful for progress made, but confessing with Paul that we have not attained, that we are not made perfect either in theory or in practise. But whatever headway we have made we are determined in the spirit of Paul to use the part we know and press forward toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God. This is the dominant mood of the serious but cautious, inquiring element in modern life. We are, therefore, grateful for the word of this modest, reasonable man, who with all his store of spiritual experience said quietly, “We know in part.”

We might carry these words in many directions and find them helpful. Some of us have been greatly disturbed as to the doctrine of Providence. We have been told on high authority that God reigns and that “He doeth all things well.” When times are good we really believe it. We see that the way of the transgressor is hard, as it ought to be, and that on the whole the way of righteousness is the way of peace and honor. We have a comfortable persuasion that all things taken in their completeness and final outcome are working together for good to those whose purposes are right.

But just when we have gotten our doctrine of Providence all snug we witness something like this: Yonder a young Christian mother dies. She was an ideal daughter, a devoted wife, and the beautiful mother of children who loved her and needed her more than they did anything else on earth. But with a whole community of people, perhaps, praying for her recovery she dies, while just around the corner a group of scamps, who are making the world worse, rather than better, live on, fat and hearty. And then somehow our doctrine of Providence, our belief as to the reign of a wise and good God, receives a hard shock.

But we know in part. We know the usefulness of that life here; we do not know to what further and, perhaps, higher service it has been called there. We see what has been interrupted here; we do not see what has been taken up further on. We do not know the ultimate effect of this stern sorrow upon that household, the result of this necessity for the regirding of all their powers as they walk now in the shadow of a great bereavement. We do not even know God’s ultimate purpose for those scamps who live on; the returns are not all in for them either. We know in part, and what we know, taking human life broadly, is so reassuring that we are willing to trust God and walk on by faith.

Ships in Norway, entering the great fiords, sometimes sail so close to the cliffs that one can stand on deck and almost lay his hand upon the face of the rock. When one captain was asked about it, he said, “That which is in sight indicates what is out of sight. The slant above the water-line indicates the slant below and we are perfectly safe.” The general slant of God’s dealings with us, taking the facts we know in the total impression they make as to his wisdom and justice, is such that we are prepared to trust him below the water-line. Therefore when I cannot in some difficult situation make out his ultimate purpose with the naked eye, I fall back upon my confidence in his moral character.

As to this faith in the divine integrity no serious, observant man should remain in doubt. It is a faith which rests upon a wide induction of fact, vaster by far than my own experience of his dealings with me. It is like repeating an axiom to say that the creature does not rise above the Creator. If men at any time, anywhere are good, there must be goodness in the Creator of those men, goodness in the force or forces lying back of them, call those forces by what name we may. And if the stream of human goodness has been widening, deepening, flowing more strongly as the ages have come and gone, it points back to character and purpose in the One who created the stream itself. That goodness in man argues goodness in God, while badness in man does not argue badness in God is plain, in that sane men everywhere regard goodness as normal, while badness is abnormal.

And look at the swelling tide of human goodness down through the ages! Look at Livingstone laying down his life to carry light into the dark continent! Look at Cromwell fearing God and none else, neither king nor pope, neither nobles nor bishops, and giving his life that he might win constitutional and religious freedom for the English-speaking race! Look at Lincoln counting not his life dear if he might serve the cause of the Union and the interests of his brothers in bonds! Look at the vast array of human goodness massing itself in saints and seers, in heroes and martyrs, in teachers and mothers, going forth not to be ministered unto, but to minister, giving their lives for the betterment of the world! Look at it all and then ask yourself if you can believe for one moment that all this goodness originated itself, persisted, and increased in opposition to the will of the Creator or in the face of his moral indifference or without creative goodness in him! The claim would be monstrous! This wide induction of fact begets a profound faith in the moral character of God and when we cannot see we trust, because as to the final meaning of many strange experiences we know in part.

Take the matter of prayer and the way it enters into the formation of character and the shaping of events. We know that prayer registers a definite and wholesome influence on many a life. Those who loudly assert that virtue and vice are as purely physical products as sugar and vitriol, that all right action and wrong action can be accounted for on material grounds, have not made out their case, they have not begun to make it out. There is something unseen, mysterious, but real and powerful, which impels certain people to love the unlovely, to make sacrifices for the thoughtless and ungrateful, to stand firm in the path of duty when it is anything but the line of least resistance. The love of right, the sense of obligation, the habit of adherence to principle, all these are as real as granite. But the forces which make them strong are spiritual, and these forces receive constant reenforcement from the habit of prayer.

This part we know. We have seen the hearts of men turned from anger to love, from unholy to holy purpose, from weakness to strong resolve by prayer. We have seen home life made sweeter because once at least in every twenty-four hours the members of the household came together and knelt before God, confessing their faults, asking his guidance and allowing that which was true and right within them to grow by its communion with him who is altogether true and right. Any sensible man would feel that his life, his property, his family were all safer in a community where men prayed, than in one where they only used the name of God profanely. This part we know about prayer.

But as to the ultimate effect of it, the final philosophy of it, the precise way in which the finite spirit becomes a colaborer with the Infinite Spirit in shaping events, I freely confess that there is a great deal which I do not understand. I know in part, but the part I know is so full of blessed and beautiful results that I want my prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom, for the doing of his will on earth, for the gift of bread for the daily need, for forgiveness, and final deliverance from evil--I want that prayer to go up, winging its way to the throne backed by all the faith and hope and love I can put into it. And I am not troubled by the fact that I cannot explain all the grounds of my confidence, for, like Paul, I know in part.

Take the matter of the future life! There is much here we would like to know. What are our loved ones who have gone on doing now? Are they witnesses of the blunders and the failures we make here? Just how is right rewarded and wrong punished when the two are so intricately interwoven? No man is so white a sheep but that there are patches of goat about him here and there. No man is so bad but that there is some good in him if we observingly distil it out. And what of the final outcome--can good people be happily content if the sinful souls they loved are in conscious pain or even if they have been remorselessly wiped off the slate of existence? Is it too much to hope that God’s persuasions to righteousness being infinite may prove irresistible and so at last successful in every case? So men and women who have loved and lost those who passed out of this world without a sign of genuine repentance or of saving faith have queried ever. A child can ask more questions here in five minutes than all the philosophers and theologians on earth can answer in as many years.

We know in part! We cannot measure off the streets of the new Jerusalem in kilometers. We cannot describe its attractions in any kind of Baedeker. We cannot lay out a detailed program of God’s dealings with the good and the bad people of earth in all the unending years. Nor is there any obligation whatsoever upon us to undertake the construction of such a program.

We know in part and the part we know is something like this: I feel a profound confidence that I shall live on after death. The grounds of my hope are many. The mass of unreason and injustice I would have left upon my hands unexplained and unexplainable if I were to undertake to deny the truth of immortality is one. The all but universal and persistent desire of men for future life is another. Somehow the integrity of the universe is such that it does not develop in men normal, wide-spread, and persistent desires unless there is somewhere to be found a corresponding satisfaction for such desires standing over against them. The fact that the clear visions and the bright hopes of the best poets and prophets the world has known have been on the side of immortality means much. The seers have sung and the prophets have uttered their high anticipations by the power of an endless life. The words of the supreme figure in history, Jesus Christ, as to the truth of immortality mean still more. He saw clearly, spoke wisely, lived divinely, and I cannot believe that here he reared his expectations on a fundamental mistake.

It ought to be remembered that for those who affirm and for those who deny the truth of immortality, it is alike a matter of moral faith because no convincing demonstration has been made out either for or against. The men who deny immortality are not opposing knowledge to faith; they are only meeting a positive faith with a negative one. But inasmuch as reason and experience, the best in literature and the One who has taken the moral government of the world upon his shoulders as none other ever did, stand so strongly upon the side of the positive faith, I feel confident of an unbroken life.

As to the final judgment, I know that righteousness and love which are useful and beautiful here will be useful and beautiful always and everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more their glory will be revealed. I know that sin and selfishness are mean and hateful here, and they will be mean and hateful everywhere; the clearer the light in which they stand the more their hatefulness will be manifest. What shall be their final fate I do not undertake to say. We know in part, but the clear prospects of the life to come, where righteousness and love shall have their freer chance to be and to do, where sin and selfishness shall meet with more awful rebuke, are sufficient to stimulate right action and to give warning to those who would identify their destinies with evil. As to the rest, in the incompleteness of our knowledge, we may safely leave it to the wisdom and the justice of God.

I might carry this idea in other directions, but let me turn at once to the other phase of the topic. In part we know, and the part we know is naturally the part we use. We wish that we knew more. We hope to know more some time. In the meantime we recognize that the way to make progress along that line is to use the part we already know.

In almost any direction, unless it be pure mathematics or formal logic, our knowledge, even in the sophomore year, stops a long way this side of complete understanding. No man knows the length and breadth, the height and depth of his wife’s love for him, if she is a good woman. Some part of it he knows, but the love she might show in some emergency, nursing him through a long illness, sharing with him some painful experience, bearing with him some heavy burden--that fuller love he does not know and cannot know until the time comes for its manifestation. But the part he knows about his wife’s love for him is the part he uses and the very thought of how beautiful it is and of the unrevealed capacity it may contain for willing and joyous sacrifice on his behalf, makes him feel that he ought to be a better man to be deserving of it. Thus he moves along in that part of the strength and beauty of a woman’s love which he knows, allowing the fuller knowledge of it to come as it may. And this is precisely the attitude of the reasonably religious man--those realities with which he deals, God and redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, are confessedly too great for final statement, but he knows something about them and the part he knows is the part he uses.