Chapter I: Sin and Sorrow

Although the Way to Happiness is ever plain and open to all, yet not all who have seen it succeed in really finding it. Like poor Pliable in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” they turn back when once they have fallen into the Slough of Despond; and it is they, and not those who have never tried it, who give the narrow path to genuine happiness the poor repute it has with so-called realists.

Such deserters are often highly gifted and, at first, earnest; and they are by no means always lacking in the courage needed to seek the truth and for its sake to give up the enticing illusions of life. But on the very threshold of that better life which alone brings peace stand two dark figures, like the guardians at the mouth of Hell in the “Paradise Lost”; and before them even the stoutest heart trembles, and they let no man by who has not first had it out with them.

What stands in the way of our happiness is a twofold terrible reality known to every one who has lived beyond the first half-unconscious age of childhood--Sin and Sorrow. To be set free from these is the true motive in all men’s strivings after happiness; no philosophy, no religion, no economics, no politics, that is not essentially directed to this end.

Of these two great antagonists, with which every man has to engage in hard conflict, the first is Sin. It begins early in life, for the most part earlier than sorrow, earlier even than the common expression of “the innocence of childhood” implies. “Ye lead us into life amain, ye let poor man all sinful grow, and then abandon him to pain;” thus Goethe accuses the “heavenly powers,” really meaning, however, an inexorable fate which, in his view, dominates human existence, and against which neither Promethean revolt avails nor the attempt (more common since his day) to deny the existence of sin altogether. In every man there lives a relentlessly real feeling that duty and sin do exist, and that sin not merely follows transgression, but is lodged within it and must pour its consequences with mathematical certainty upon the head of the guilty one, unless averted by some means or other; and that can be by no mere philosophical train of reasoning.

Try (if you would be so bold) by mere negation to declare yourself free from these realities, rooted like granite in all human existence! Notwithstanding your resolution, there is, all the same, in every action of yours, yes, in every thought, _a right way_, and if you do not pursue it, then it is a sin. Or rather do not try; it is a reef on which millions have already gone to pieces, and on which you will go to pieces, too. “Beyond all Good and Evil” is a place not to be found on earth outside the mad-house, where many men, often highly gifted, are shut up to-day; not merely by chance, for the human spirit sinks into madness whenever, in all earnestness, it seeks to disregard these truths in its own life.

I am quite well aware that this does not “explain” the feeling of duty and sin; besides, it is a matter of indifference to man’s welfare how this feeling is to be explained, whether as a superstition handed down for many generations, or as a belief wholly in accord with reason. Even if it be a superstition, the champion has not yet been found who is able to set humanity free from a nightmare which has burdened it from the beginning of time; the isolated, weak attempts to do so have for the most part fallen out very unhappily for those who undertook them. A man who, with clear, unclouded brow, openly denies duty and sin, and, though boldly believing he may do anything he pleases, has yet gone through his whole life glad-heartedly, with the certainty of his inner conviction unruffled--such a man we should first like to see, before we believe in him. And though such a man were to be found, he would stand alone and would be incomprehensible to all other men, so differently constituted.

Duty and sin become wholly intelligible only when we recognize a personal, extra-mundane God from whose will this inner law proceeds; while the so-called “immanence” of God is but another name for atheism or pantheism. To be sure, it would be idle to desire a reasoned explanation of the transcendental God; everything transcendental by its very nature escapes our comprehension, and for this reason the so-called “proofs” of the existence of God have no power to convince the human understanding. Nor do they seem as yet ever to have convinced any one who did not first want to be. In so far, therefore, atheism has a certain right to declare itself not convinced; but it is itself just as little in a position to prove that its own system is in any way reasonable, or to solve the doubts which that system generates. Therefore so long as humanity abides, the matter will perhaps stand simply at this, that one can not prove there is a God, but just as little, if God indeed exists, can one remove him out of the account of his own life by a mere denial. The decisive question of all questions for every man (but always a question) will be: whether he shall attempt such a denial and be able to attain the inward peace he expects therefrom, or whether he shall acknowledge as binding the categorical demand of the oldest divine revelation, “I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

The willing recognition of this demand (which in its second half already comprehends all morality) by a man who has come to full deliberation over himself and his life-purpose,--this it is that first brings him out of a thoroughly ineffectual revolt against a divine order he can not change by his thoughts alone, on into the possibility of a harmony with himself and the surrounding world. And besides, the whole history of humanity is nothing else than the gradual unfolding of such a free will of the nations toward the will of God. Whoever denies this, and lives up to his denial, acts against his own welfare and the end for which he was destined, as well as against the good of mankind; and this state of war against God and man, as well as against one’s own life, is very likely the cause that calls forth the feeling of sin. There is no other and better explanation for it, in my opinion.

Moreover, what Evil really is and exactly what Christ understood by the prayer for deliverance from it will, as long as we live on earth, remain just as obscure to us as what God is. We only know, and from experience alone, that we can yield ourselves into its power, and further, that it possesses no other power over us than we ourselves grant it. This especially comes to pass through our disobedience to what is true and through the preponderance of the sensual, animal life over the spiritual. Every more finely organized man feels this forthwith through a gradually increasing physical discomfort from which nothing else than a turn-about shall free him. And likewise, the spirit of truth in a man or a book, in a whole household or people, one recognizes as something beneficent, while the spirit of falsehood he feels to be something unhealthy and poisonous, like bad air in a room, to which one can, to be sure, accustom oneself, if one desires. A man can, of course, try to dismiss all this matter from his thoughts; he has perfect freedom of will to do so. But whether it will let _him_ alone is quite another and more important question.

We neither can nor will, therefore, dispute with those who assert they have never harbored any feeling of sin; we can not look into their souls. We only reply that they would in that case find themselves in an extreme minority and really at the stage of evolution of the animals; for these also have no feeling of moral obligation and therefore no sin, but everything is permitted them that their natural impulse demands. If, on the other hand, such men possess the feeling of sin only now and then even, still it must be said it is not explicable in any other way than from the standpoint of a moral order of the world which we can not change and contrary to which we may not behave, nor even think.

We turn now to those who acknowledge all this. For them the problem is to find a way of release from a burden which is by far the most unendurable of all earthly burdens.

The first thing to say to them is this: Do not let sin get the least foothold in your life; you must and can not do otherwise. For what afterward becomes a crushing actuality is at first, for the most part, merely a fleeting thought, an arrow from one knows not whence, shot into the unoccupied soul. And if it lingers there, if it is not at once thrust forth while it is still easy, then there soon arises an evil propensity, upon which mostly follows, first the clouding of the moral consciousness, and at last the deed. After the deed comes often enough a despair that hopes for no salvation more; or what has happened is now for the first time justified before oneself with materialistic philosophy: in either case the death of the true spiritual life.

But unfortunately this counsel to “resist the beginnings” is only a very theoretical one, and they who have the bold faith of being able always to do this from a voluntary disposition toward the good, and by their own strength, will, in the course of their own life and in their observation of others, be compelled bit by bit to lessen altogether too far the demands they make of human kind. This is the especial weakness of the noble Kantian philosophy. A grievous passage through some Valley of Humiliation, or an abatement in the clear vision of his moral consciousness inevitably comes upon the man who, at first, believed he was able, with uplifted head and without any help from without, to tread the Path of Virtue without wandering from the way.

Therefore the second counsel is more important for man as he is actually constituted: Free thyself at any cost from every sin thou bearest, if thou wouldst arrive at happiness. This way passes the unerring road; just as, in Purgatory, Dante could enter the portal of salvation only by passing the grave angel guardian sitting upon the diamond threshold with naked sword. There is no other way to set your soul truly free. Goethe, it is true, has tried in the second part of “Faust” to discover a kind of natural salvation from sin; and this, in fact, has remained the path which many, still to-day, are seeking out: namely, the noble enjoyment of nature, which at least now and then can silence the accusing voices within; with art and the charm of the beautiful, wherein many perceive at once the consummation and the expiation of material man; or finally, action, a share in the work of civilization, which is to uplift the depressed heart and to delude itself with the applause of the multitude, at least for the moment. But, alongside all this, nevertheless, sin remains inexorably standing, a melancholy fact; and even the great poet was unable to set it aside in any credible way. A divine love that receives a man to its bosom even though he be not repentant, but, on the contrary, persists to the last moment in defiantly living out his life in his own way--a divine love of this sort is a mere picture of the fancy, an arbitrary poetical invention, against which even Goethe’s Promethean soul was obliged, for its own honor, to protest with the last breath of the body.

Yet even repentance does not alone release from sin, but there must be a trustful turning of the soul to God, whose mighty arm of mercy (as Manfred says in Dante’s great poem) receives all that turn to it; and it will not be prevented from doing so, even by an authoritative decree of a church.

And in this regard the greatness of the sin is no matter. What _is_ great and small in human sin anyway, weighed, not according to human notions and the penal law-books, but in the eye of a judge who knows all and metes a perfect justice?

Whoever finds within himself the courage to appeal to His mercy has already received it in all essentials, for the disfavor of God consists mainly in the “judgment of obduracy,” a judgment which lets the offender remain unbroken and defiant until his end, and prevents him from calling upon this mercy.

Our churches, to be sure, have in a measure widely strayed from this simple way of atonement and affirm a very much more positive manner of salvation from sin, either through outward works, or at least through definite dogmatic conceptions of reconciliation with God.

In the first case, we hold that all outward works of penitence, as well as all “good works,” are valueless unless they spring spontaneously from the inner turning to God. Even then they are never meritorious although helpful and pacifying. The essential thing in “repentance” (a great matter, whose import, however, we have almost lost) is not the sorrow of regret, which rather, often enough, merely “worketh death,” but on the one hand, the complete turning of the will toward a change of life, and on the other hand, the conviction that, for this purpose, we stand in need of another power than our own, a power without which the will itself often enough remains only a “good intention.”

Quite intelligible, therefore, at least for the Christian churches and their sincere adherents, is the appeal to the help of Christ as the Saviour sent into the world by God himself, and who for that very reason may not be ignored. But the oppressed soul does not, therefore, need an extensive “Christology”; indeed, there is really no Christology that is trustworthy, but God alone knows the nature of this Saviour and the mystery of salvation through him. All that men have spoken and written about it for two centuries now has been condemned to unfruitfulness and has given real comfort to no one, although human error in these matters, if held in good faith, has probably of itself never caused any one to be lost. Only by the practical but unfailing road of experience, then, will you learn that a simple “Lord, help me,” coming from the very depths of the heart, shall open a way that, to all your philosophy, to all your submission to church, to all your severest works of penitence, had remained closed as with tenfold iron doors. This barricade is opened for you by the one great, unconditioned word of the gospel: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

Whether you are to confess to men besides, and what reparation you have to make to them, is to be determined only after you have experienced this salvation, after you have taken the Hand that lifts you out of the unstable floods of uncertainty and anxiety, and sets you upon the firm ground of faith. Before, it is quite to no purpose; rather, this is just the obstacle which keeps far the most men from any confession of repentance--which has perhaps to take place before a third person, on whom one then fears to stand, his life long, in spiritual dependence. But very possibly you will feel yourself called to go to a man for confession; for in addition to its transcendental side Christianity is, after all, a human brotherhood also. And this will be especially the case when pride is in your soul. In that event there enters, perhaps, the psychological necessity of a humbling before men also, not alone before God; and the actual expression of forgiveness, by a man called thereto by God, contains for many men a quieting influence that they can not find in a mere thought-process, real as it may be.

If, then, you know such a man, if you feel this inner summons, if you can resolve to speak to him with entire sincerity as before God himself, and if you are willing to accept his directions without reservations, then simply go quietly to him; in so doing, it is possible you are attaining to a greater advance in the inner life, and in shorter time than otherwise. But if even a single one of these presuppositions is wanting, then such a confession will profit you nothing at all. And if you should make of it a merely human transaction, out of regard to an existing ecclesiastical form, or in order thereby to show honor to another, then you dishonor what is most hallowed, and bring upon yourself, and upon him you honor, the greatest harm.

And make up your mind to escape now, while it is still time and while the summons still comes to you, no matter through whom or in what way; whether through a voice within or a voice from without, whether by chance or of set purpose, whether through sermon, or book, or newspaper, or any other instrumentality. The Book of Job asserts as a fact of experience that the summons comes to every one “twice or thrice”:

“_Lo, all these things doth God work,
Twice, yea, thrice with a man,
To bring back his soul from the pit,
That he may be enlightened with the light of the living._”

But as a rule the summons has an outward semblance no more striking than that of any other communication. Much more than upon its form and manner it depends upon this: that it touch in the innermost heart of man a string still sensitive to this tone, struck from another key than one’s ordinary life and thought.

And so, if the summons shall come to you once more, then arouse yourself, but at once, where you are and as you are, in business, on the street, in society, even in the theatre or in any other place; delay for not one minute the resolution to strike every sin out of your life. Then everything will become easier and clearer; that gloomy spirit and those false conceptions, which are simply the direct consequence of sin itself, will leave you, and a day will come at last when you also can say: “Now am I become, in God’s sight, a soul that findeth peace.”

II

If you should ask men which of these two great evils, sin and sorrow, they had rather see banished from their life, the majority, we fear, would choose to see sorrow banished. But wrongly; for not only is sin very often the basal cause of sorrow, but it is also comparatively easy to bear heavy sorrow if no feeling of guilt is bound up with it. On the contrary, even in the midst of grief one often feels a closer nearness to God that beatifies the human heart in its inmost depths; one feels, too, the truth of the saying that the spirit of man can be joyous even in distress. And so, beyond all doubt, the greatest of evils is sin; and in this fact lies, what is very often overlooked, a tremendous equalizing force in human conditions, which in this respect know no distinction between rich and poor.

On the other hand, to be sure, the relation of the two evils to each other is, not rarely, an inverted one: the first impulse to sin comes sometimes from sorrow, the tormenting anxiety how to get through life, the conviction, in troubled moments almost forcing itself upon us, that one will not be able to carry through the hard struggle for existence if one is too painfully scrupulous, if one may not use a little dishonesty, deception, and force, “just as everybody else does, and as seems unfortunately to be inevitable, you know, in human affairs.” Without this conviction many men would be upright who now think they can not be. This is really a superstition which to-day almost seems to be more prevalent than ever, and to destroy it should be one of the chief concerns of the Christianity of our time. Christianity was also much concerned therewith in the days of its beginnings, when it gave not merely the counsel but the command, “not to be anxious,” giving at the same time a very positive direction as to how the command might be carried out: “Seek ye first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

But this counsel, of course, presupposes trust in God; without this, it is of no value. An unconquerable anxiety is, therefore, in most cases evidence of a secret atheism. Among the most remarkable of the many remarkable things of this life is this: that so many of the very wisest people voluntarily submit to this punishment, their whole life through, when they could have things so much better. For God is faithful, a rock on which one may rely; this is the one thing we most surely know of him, the one thing we can most easily ourselves experience. But faithfulness is in its nature reciprocal, and our own faithfulness consists far less in any sort of acts or confessions than in the resolute shutting out of all distrust every time it would approach us in the manifold difficulties and injustices of this life.

To be sure, complete confidence in the possibility of a release from sorrows through trust in God comes to be a certainty only through experience; but there is, in the Bible and in countless later writings and in many human lives, such a mass of assurances and experiences of trustworthy men, and on the other hand, there are, before our eyes, so many obvious examples of the impossibility of any other release from sorrow, that we may fittingly ask: Why is there so great an aversion to making this experience? Why, when men are tormented with sorrow, often to the point of despair, why do they not at least make trial of this, instead of seeking death? The reason, perhaps, is mostly this: they do not want to be dependent on God; they had much rather put dependence on pitiless men. Indeed, the assurances of the Bible may be appropriated in their literal, full meaning only by the man who has sought no alien help beside, nor any human help at all before he has first sought God’s. But how many are there to-day who do that? So long as the sun of fortune shines for them, they believe in their “lucky star” with a kind of ludicrous or sacrilegious fatalism, and therewith a secret fear often takes them unawares; for “happiness of this kind needs many supports, while the happiness of those at one with the will of God has need of but one.” But when once they have misfortune and no human aid to ward it off, they go all to pieces and fall into the manifold “nervous affections” of our time, into sleeplessness and ceaseless unrest, and these bring them to the numberless sanitariums, for the most part vainly; for “the sorrow of the world worketh death,” and against that no nerve specialist nor hydropathy avails.

It is certain that there is a way of release from continuous sorrow; it must be just as certain that single and even frequent sorrows belong to the necessary events of our life. There can be no human life without sorrows; but to live with sorrows, yes, with many sorrows, yet free from sorrow’s burden, that is the art of life toward which we are being trained. It is, therefore, an everyday experience that men who have too few sorrows buy themselves some; for riches, which in the view of most men are meant to release one from anxiety, are not fitted to do that; they are “deceitfulness,” as Christ himself calls them, and his warnings against them, which we are wont to take so lightly, are surely not there for merely “decorative effect.”

We must have sorrows, and for three substantial reasons: in the first place, in order not to become arrogant and frivolous; sorrows are the weight in the clock, to regulate its proper movement; misfortune is really in most cases the only means of salvation for those who are not on the right way. In the second place, to enable us to have fellow-feeling with others; people who are too well nourished and free from customary sorrows easily become egotists, who at last not merely have compassion for pale faces no longer, but regard them as a kind of offence, a disturbing element in their ease; they may go so far as to feel downright hatred for them. And finally, because sorrows alone effectively teach us to trust in God and seek his aid; for the granting of prayer and the consequent release from sorrow is the only convincing proof of God, and likewise the test of the truth of Christianity to which Christ himself challenges us. Therefore the evil days are good; without them, most men would never come at all to the soberer thoughts.

Furthermore, the deliverances from sorrow, the triumphal days when a man beholds a mountain-load rolled away, belong to undoubtedly the purest moments of happiness in life, moments that God must grant to his own, if he is truly merciful to them. Spurgeon, therefore, rightly says, in one of his finest sermons, that if we truly trust God, he is, in the beginning, better than our fears, then better than our hopes, and finally better than our wishes. For his people, sorrow always lasts only so long as it still has a task to fulfil on their behalf.

If one wished to put the truth a little paradoxically, then one might, with frank directness, say to many a man who is forever complaining of all sorts of little things, to whom much in the world is not right, neither weather, nor politics, nor social relations, “You have too few cares; make yourself some, care for others who have too many; then you will no longer have any of that sickly, discontented disposition, or at least will no longer give so much heed to what now makes you unhappy.” People in particular who have a spiritual calling should never wish themselves freedom from sorrow, for then they can never effectively speak with others who have sorrows; nay, in most cases they can not really understand them.

And so we repeat: incessant sorrow there must not be; from such there is a way of escape; if you will not use it, then bear your sorrow as a punishment therefor. But of occasional troubles you must accept a generous share with good grace and overcome them through the power of your spirit and will.

And now we come to the various human remedies for sorrow.

The best is Patience and Courage. “Whoever,” says Bishop Sailer, “is able to submit to God in every hour of darkness will soon see the morning light again arise; for his submission is the cock-crow that heralds and greets the coming day.” And indeed it is a fact remarkably true to experience, how often all difficulty vanishes as soon as we have taken a stand in regard to it, as soon as we have actually shouldered it. Our very best possessions we really possess only when we were once in our life compelled to give them up. Besides, it is easy to notice, from our own experience, that even our judgment of things that befall us is often wrong at first. Again and again we discover that what was apparently unpropitious and injurious has later revealed itself as advantageous, and that, on the other hand, so-called lucky events have turned out to be of uncommonly little use, if not actually harmful. And so, one is very sensible if he can suspend his judgment in times of anxiety; and still more help can many a time be gained from the thought that all trouble is always borne merely from moment to moment, and that the next moment will bring a change, or at least new strength. Very often trouble lasts, in its full force, no longer than three days; those one may easily undertake to endure. The real burden of unhappiness consists in the notion that it is going to last an unlimited while; this is merely a delusion of the fancy.

But there are still some minor remedies besides, or at least palliatives, and it is well worth the pains for one to review them quietly and get a clear conception of them; for what is said in the second part of “Faust” is only too true, that if sorrow but breathes upon us, she makes us blind.

The first and most efficacious of these remedies is Work, not merely for its immediate results, but because it busies the mind and keeps it from useless brooding over things that perhaps never come at all; for a great part of sorrow consists of unfounded fear. Work gives courage, and it gives momentary forgetfulness in a legitimate way, as unwarranted and pernicious “distractions” and drink do not. It is the only true, permissible, and beneficent Lethe-draught of the modern world.

The second means, which can, of course, be used only by those to whom God is a living Personality and not merely an idea, is Prayer--indeed, to pray to God first of all before one speaks with men. Spurgeon says, perhaps truly, that herein lies hidden also the secret of success with men--that is, the art of speaking rightly with men, through whom God then sends help in a practical way. But we do not wish to write a treatise here on prayer. Suffice it to say that, in prayer, faith is necessary on the one hand, and on the other, that the man should turn to God with his whole will, with all his spiritual power concentrated upon a single point. The result, in any case, is power; and, besides the experience of more frequent aid, there follows the conclusion, entirely logical, that if God bestows on man the greatest of life’s blessings, he will not refuse him those minor ones also, which serve only for the preservation of life. There would really be no sense in bringing a man so far on his way as to begin to lead an upright life, and then to let him die of hunger. The expression, so often heard, that there are no longer any miracles in these days, is most certainly untrue. No one can bind a living God to “natural laws.”

Without doubt, however, it often happens that one must wait for the prayer’s fulfilment, must at times, indeed, stand knocking for a long while; or the prayer may never be fulfilled at all. But then, in the first case, perhaps even this waiting is the right answer to the prayer (as, to be sure, one mostly discovers only later); and in the other case, you perhaps receive something better than you yourself had chosen.

A third means, chiefly availing in financial anxieties, is Contentment, pleasure in simple things. From this, the men of our day have wandered far; and, for many, an ever-heightening enjoyment passes for the only true purpose of life, and a certain measure of luxury is regarded as a requirement and a symbol of culture. It will be necessary for men to return once more to simplicity in their mode of living and to a voluntary renunciation of the philosophy of pleasure, if they are to banish sorrow, and often still worse from their life. Praying for pleasure nothing avails; it is not for the needs of luxury that God is to be had, but for daily bread.

In close relation to contentment stand two other great remedies against sorrow. The first is a wise Frugality. This goes hand in hand, indeed, only with honest acquisition; what is unjustly acquired is seldom wisely saved, and, according to a true proverb, rarely descends to the third heir. In such cases, therefore, frugality is of no use. Frugality can also, in other cases, be actually harmful. Excessive calculation, and anxiety extending to the smallest minutiæ of expenditure, leads to needless care, and almost as many people come to spiritual ruin through this as through heedless improvidence. And so, the blessing (or curse) that rests on the actions of men has a manifest relation to the observance of the moral commandments. If it were not so, it would be truly enigmatical how so many thousands of honest men get through life without property or sure income. They themselves would be least of all in a position to explain it.

There is one more remedy against financial anxiety, and that, strange to say, is systematic Giving. This the ancient prophets of Israel already knew; in our day it has lately assumed prominence again, especially through George Müller and Spurgeon. Whether the amount to be laid aside for this purpose should be the tenth part of one’s income would seem a matter of complete indifference; but a definite part it must be; and it should never be allowed to remain a matter of mere intentions, which the natural avarice of men will always find ways of evading. In this way a man oftentimes acquires his first inclination toward caring for his poor fellow-men, while otherwise they appear to him only too often as troublesome claimants for something that rightly belongs to himself alone or that he has need of for himself and for his own. But when a man possesses such a fund, no longer belonging to himself, then he looks around more freely to see where he may put the money to good use; then at times he even anticipates the appeal of the tongue when he sees the mute appeal of the eye. This single habit, universally adopted, would help solve the social question more than all the talking and scribbling with which the world now resounds, for the most part vainly.

A stoical remedy we will finally name, because, when all the others have first been tried, in most cases it is no longer necessary. It consists in picturing to ourselves the worst that could happen. And, in fact, this does afford a certain consolation, at least for him who is able to make use of it; others, on the contrary, can be led by this path, and without any need for it, to despair.

Nevertheless, all this does not always bring immediate help. The Spirit of Sorrow often falls upon one like an armed man (especially in sleepless nights), and leaves him no time for instant resistance. In that case, the first step is to discover the cause. If it is sin, it must be at once set right. If there is no definite cause present, or if it is of a physical nature, then withstand it by physical remedies, such as sleep, fresh air, exercise, or by work; never by mere “distractions,” for afterward the trouble returns with doubled power. Often a good quotation will strengthen, such as: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget; yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”

If the cause of sorrow is some trouble actually present, and not one feared in the future, then perhaps the following thought will help: We must bear what God lays upon us; and we must, with all our power of will, hold fast the conviction that nothing can possibly happen without his permission and that all is measured in accord with our strength, whose actual resources we often do not know ourselves. These two thoughts, then, are provisionally our support; whoever gives up this support is like a man who clings to a rope over an abyss and lets go the rope. There is no call to be overstoical; we may give vent to our sorrow, only not at all to ourselves and but sparingly to others; and we should then take some action in accordance with our reason, though not in accordance with that alone,--nor always at once, while it is still troubled with excitement. With these presuppositions, one can endure much.

It is quite possible that at times even this does not seem rightly to avail. In that case, these are the periods of life when the genuine steel of character is to be formed, that otherwise may not be brought to pass. Then at least make the attempt simply to hold out for a short time longer,--for a month, a week, three days, or even only for a single day. Not rarely at the end of such a term you are stronger than at its beginning, and frequently experience shows it to be the case that from the very moment one is preparing himself for the apparently inevitable, and no longer seeks or expects any human aid, at that very moment relief is already coming. The suffering has then just fulfilled its purpose.

In conclusion, only one thing more: we know very well how people, in the hours of their heaviest struggles with sorrow, can lose faith in every ground of consolation and look upon such grounds as unsatisfying, or as the empty talk of people who have themselves suffered nothing like. That may be true, or again it may not. But, in case you think it is, nevertheless try to bear, for the glory of God, what you will and can no longer endure for your own sake or for the sake of those near to you. “When you are driven almost to despair,” says Spurgeon, “and are tempted to lay violent hands upon yourself or to do some other rash and evil deed, do nothing of the kind, but trust yourself to your God; that will bring him more glory than seraphim and cherubim can give. To believe the promise of God, when you are ill, or sad, or near to death--that it is to glorify God.” This “giving God the glory,” or “praising the Lord,” or “hallowing his name,” is one of the many expressions of the Bible which have now quite vanished from our real comprehension and have become an empty phrase. To render glory to God on earth and still to live for him though one would otherwise be glad to dispense with life, that is the highest of all life’s resignations; and he to whom this duty is finally intrusted is not to make complaint, but to be ashamed if it come to one unwilling to accept it. But if it has come to a man who has something of the heroic in his nature, then by its means he will, for the first time, develop the possibilities that lay dormant within him; and the feeling of a larger and surer nearness to God will then, in the bitterest hours of his life, so lift him above himself that these very hours will seem to his after-memory as the most beautiful--as those, indeed, to which he owes all his real happiness in life.

Sin and sorrow cling close together in human life; therefore they are also displayed here before the reader as an associated hindrance on the way to happiness.

The first step, as a rule, must be to banish sin from life; only then may one seriously think of getting rid of sorrow. For the only true freedom from sorrow lies not in a man’s natural disposition, nor is it the product of happy outward surroundings of any sort; true freedom from sorrow is found in that higher happiness, painfully won, to which Job was led, after his earlier happiness, dependent upon fortuitous things, had been done away. To this happiness, henceforth secure, we all without exception should attain and can attain, just as soon as we have fought through the gates at which the guardians Sin and Sorrow stand.

II. “COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE”

II. “COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE”

Many who are distressed over the manifold evils of our time (but do not themselves have to suffer any too keenly under them) comfort themselves and others in the end with a verse from one of the hymns of Paul Gerhardt:

“_The upper hand God holdeth, and maketh all things well._”

I do not know whether the poet put so strong a stress upon the words “all things” as we are wont to do, but thus much I certainly do know, that Christianity shows scant favor to an optimism of this sort; all things will not be well in the end in spite of human folly and baseness; but, until the consummation of all things human, good and evil, justice and injustice, will continue to exist side by side as Jesus, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, has clearly said once for all.

No, the idealism of Christianity is something quite other than a shallow optimism; it is much rather a strong faith that everything genuinely good, however slight compared to the tremendous power and might of the forces arrayed against it, never can be crushed by them, but ever maintains itself victorious against its foes. That is the comfort to be given its followers, a comfort that will take from them the fear of losing poise in the midst of the merciless actualities of daily experience; and that is the real meaning of many a Bible word too often explained in the sense of striving after earthly power and splendor; and that, too, is the meaning of some of the finest and most familiar hymns from the fighting days of the Reformation, such as that hymn of Luther, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never-failing.”

On the other hand, the power of what Christianity calls “the world” is very great, and all the elements that make up that power, from the lofty pretension of some distinguished atheistic philosophy all the way down to the basest instinct of the most brutal selfishness, form an extremely close alliance. And the human heart, now overdaring, now overtimid, is so uncertain that even into the life of those who work most effectively for the good, come hours when they despair, not of their task only, but even of their whole manner of thinking, a despair that once and again God must dispel with a “Be not afraid, but speak.”

If we look upon life from God’s standpoint, instead of our own as we had rather do, we see it is not a matter of purely and simply making his people happy. No, first of all they are to be made fearless, for all right living is a life of battling, not of unruffled peace; but of battling without fear, of warring in a good cause and under sure guidance with that heroism which is the highest of all human qualities and the best of all earthly joys.

This is that never-ending conflict between good and evil which every single human being must fight out in his own life, although the final issue is reached only at the end of all things and in a manner to us unknown. “On the advance post of a man’s individual experience the question is the same as in the great battle of the hosts, namely this: whether a faith that is anchored in God is not the highest of moral forces, able to overcome the ever-present power of evil, especially the fundamental sin of self-seeking; for if the victory is gained at the advance post, it may be gained all along the line.” Perhaps this is truer than we know, or ever experience on earth. That there is no higher power in the world than comes from association with God, every single human life must by trial discover. But for that very reason such association must be sought of one’s own free will, and of one’s own free will always cling to; and that makes the problem of life.

In order to gain, in this warfare, a spirit of joy quite different from the moroseness and half-despair of many Christians, the means closest at hand is this: to try to battle, not according to our own ideas, but, as in military service, punctiliously as commanded. Such means, however, is external; there is an inner basis for the right spirit of joy, without which that joy can not be enduring, and that inner basis is the abiding of God in the heart. When all opposition to God disappears, then appears the real joy of living and the great consolation he gives on earth. This peace with God, which in time may even grow, as it were, into an enduring and genuine friendship, the human soul must experience, else it shall not know what inward happiness is. And outward happiness is only the easy sequence of the inward; God gladly does nothing but good to men as soon as he finds it possible.

Here, also, lies the real cause of the philosophical atheism that makes up the religion of many excellent people, who suppose they can not think otherwise, though they would gladly like to. A man’s simple logic will tell him that it is not consistent to say one believes in God, and yet not allow God to dwell in him and rule him absolutely; and it is a noble trait of many doubters that they do not dare to serve God with mere phrases, but they see that if once he should be taken up into the account of life, he would be a “consuming fire” for much that exists in their lives, for much that they would be obliged to give up, but do not want to give up. Faith is a matter, not of the reason, but of the human will; and the difficulty lies in just this resolution to serve God, with all its consequences--a resolution the man himself must make, for no divine mercy can wholly take its place.

The principal things a man must surrender, if God is to be able to dwell in him, are pleasure, riches, glory, and reliance upon men. On the other hand, when this renunciation has once been made, more and more there disappear within him, of themselves, fear, anger, unrest, and the tormenting feeling of weakness, all of them the sure inheritance and distinguishing mark of the godless. This is the road, and they who think they can squeeze around this sharp corner with a few philosophical considerations, or with an occasional cry of “Lord, Lord,” will likely be the most deceived at last.

Fear is perhaps the most distressing, the most unworthy, yet the most unavoidable of all human feelings; for life is a battle, and the fear that naturally arises in the presence of battle no man can banish; he can but subdue it by uplifting his point of view. Whether this can be done through the ancient Stoic or the modern Kantian philosophy, we will leave to one side; I have no intention of making any one dissatisfied with these paths. But I do wish to say that there is a surer and shorter path, requiring less education and strength of character, and open, not merely to an aristocracy of philosophical culture, but to every one. If this had not been so, if Christianity had not lifted the poor and the humble up out of the dust, a “gentry morality” would long ago have come into exclusive mastery in the world, as it was in a fair way of doing at the time Christianity was born.

In our day there are two common conceptions of Christianity, both of them overpassing the mark: one of them makes of it a sentimental lamblike bliss that finds its pleasurable sensations solely “in Christ”; the other considers it a fearful vale of tears, an unending succession of trials and sorrows. But Christianity is not so; its path is really much easier than any other; for it not only demands, it also creates, brave people--brave people who, free from complaining, free from overmuch seeking of even rightful pleasures, free from any cowardly flight from the world, in the very midst of the world hold up unshaken the banner of righteousness and never despair of its victory.

This is the spirit that we most need to-day; and this is the sure mark of a genuine Christian. If we will, we can be wholly without fear, not only before the forces of nature, which all stand in God’s higher power, but also before the cares of daily life, and before men, who may do nothing hostile without God’s permission. Firmly to trust in God in all he does or allows, even if one is ill, or troubled, or almost in despair of any good outcome of a matter, that it is to serve God; and in comparison with this, all your other church “services” possess a distinctly subordinate worth. And so Luther, too, himself endowed with this bravery in high degree, says thus: “The reason knows no means of making the heart contented and trustful, in those times of need when all the good things the world can give shall fail. But when Christ comes, the outward adversities, indeed, he lets remain, but the personality he strengthens; he makes the weak heart unterrified, and the trembling heart he makes bold; and he turns the restless conscience into one that is peaceful and still. And, therefore, such a man is comforted, courageous, and joyous in those very matters in which all the world else stands terrified; that is, in death, in terror for sin, and in all the times of need when the world can no longer help with its good things and its consolations. Then there will be a real and lasting peace, ever enduring and invincible so long as the heart shall hold to Christ.”

Then add to this that God is faithful and lets no one be tried beyond his strength; yes, even before the greatest of physical and moral dangers he often holds his hands over our eyes, so that we see them only when past.

To be sure, all this is inconceivable to those who have not themselves experienced in evil days that even in misfortune’s blackest hour a calm, bright, yes, even blithe spirit can yet abide deep within the heart inclined to God; and men of such experience, therefore, often endure incredible things, and then, at the slightest gleam of the sun, quickly again lift themselves up anew, bodily and spiritually strengthened from within; while other men are submerged in the waters.

It can not be denied, however, that we learn a right courage only by degrees and in days of sorrow; and it is generally only through such days that we attain to the right conception of life and grow into a larger mould. So true is this that perhaps no human being of any real worth has ever yet gone through life without many sorrows, sorrows that the Scriptures often and quite rightly compare to a refining fire that can be made thoroughly hot only when there is much precious metal present; but then it brings all the gold within a man to light. He who is not willing to suffer renounces the greatest gifts of God, and rests satisfied with smaller things, needlessly: for even in the greatest trouble he has no need to fear; so long as he does fear, there is still within him something wrong that must out.

With fear, anger also disappears; and anger in most cases is only fear in disguise. The angry are not courageous, they are afraid; you may nearly always count upon that with entire certainty. For example, the restless zealots and agitators who think their mission is to save Christianity from its death-bed through the might of their zeal and hate--such “wrathful saints” are but a kindred variety with those timid, sweetish people who are forever accommodating themselves to things, particularly to things that are grand and aristocratic; for the demeanor of both these classes springs from the one same source, their fear.

But what most distresses men, often even those who are well advanced on the road of the Christian life, is the feeling of a constantly recurring weakness such as we know from the epistles of the bravest of all the apostles, and such as each one of us indeed knows from his own experience; with this almost universal singularity, that such spells of weakness are often wont to come on when quite unlooked for, and sometimes just after the best days of the inner life; and then they can bow down the soul to a genuine despair.

As to this, the first thing to say, for the comfort of those thus bowed down, is that whatever is strong and powerful in the world always bears within it I know not what of rough and undivine. This we may ourselves observe in the case of men of exuberant force; involuntarily, we never have, concerning them, the feeling that they especially please God. Christianity, we may be sure, is in no way planned upon the model of such giants and demi-gods.

Besides, it is not hard to perceive the educative purpose in this feeling of weakness. Pride and its sister vanity can be torn out, root and branch, only after a long-unbroken succession of hard buffetings has issued in a deep and lasting humility. Through this purgatory, from end to end, the proud and the vain must pass at some time in their lives, if anything is to be made of them. For “though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly; but the proud he knoweth afar off;” to the proud he assuredly never comes nigh. If, then, this sense of weakness is concerned with spiritual growth itself, there is surely no reason that we should be disheartened. Rather, it is a consolation, in such inner doubts over the weakness of our faith, that when the Galatians had slipped back into an unspiritual and petty conception of religion, the Apostle Paul could, nevertheless, assure them, “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” So long as one’s faith has not entirely ceased, this time of weakness is only a transient phase, and often bears more fruit than more resplendent days do. And finally, the weakness may actually become a source of strength; the feeling of one’s own power, flattering as it may be to one’s pride, is rather a hindrance than a furtherance in the path of true inner progress, and the most courageous men are not they who have the greatest confidence in themselves, but they who have sure recourse to a power that far transcends all powers.

When once this inward courage finds place in a well-tried man, then an unassailable peace and joy, as the Scriptures promise, enter into the soul till now often tossed by the waves of anguish and at times indeed entirely bereft of hope. But henceforth it “shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.”

A good life, quite purged of dross, is surely the highest of all things attainable; yet, to those who are “comforted,” it is just this that springs from an existence full, indeed, of ever-changing joys and sorrows, but where no joy estranges one from God and no sorrow any longer breeds impatience, for both joy and sorrow are received from the same hand, as are the sunshine and the rain; and thankfully, for both are inseparable elements in life. And their lives henceforth bear blessing to others.

But, as far as compatible with the true well-being of a man guided by God, his outward happiness also is far higher, and stands upon a surer basis than is possible in any other conception of life. Yes, for such a man all things again and again work together for good, even when he has suffered seeming failure.

Such are the asseverations of the Bible; and are we to think that they were meant only for the human beings of an age long vanished? Or may we also apply them to our own use still to-day? Surely we may, if the God of that day is still the God of this; and that is but a matter of test.

And we may hope it will, more commonly than hitherto, be put to the test again, when all other attempts to regain a calm contentment and a cheerful, healthy spirit of labor have suffered wreck, and when a nervous humanity longs for real tranquillity again, and craves some better bulwark against the increasing weariness of existence than a merely materialistic conception of life affords. Then will religion--and without any external compelling Authority, which can never again in any manner be reëstablished--then will religion regain anew its place in the life of the nations; whereas, now, it has often become nothing but a pleasant play upon the feelings of leisurely or (in a worldly sense) happy people, while to such as really need it to deliver them in distress and sorrow, it is, through prejudice, closed.

Many of these latter, however, and perhaps at no very distant day, will come to these old water-springs, now all but choked with rubbish; though such an idea is far enough from their thoughts as yet. But, wheresoever they may have tried, nowhere else can they still their thirst for a tranquil philosophy of life. For what the old chronicler said of Israel is true to-day: “The days will arise when there shall be no true God, no law, and no priest to show the way; and in those times there shall be no peace to him that goes out, nor to him that comes in; for there will be great vexations upon all the inhabitants of the earth; nation will break nation, and city city, and God will vex them with all adversity.”

But as for you, you who find yourself upon the sure path of salvation and peace, “be comforted, be strong, let not your hands be slack: for your work shall be rewarded.”

III. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MEN