Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

is allotment of the separate part within the whole which is the meaning of the individual life. There come to one pictures and sentences from the inspired pages which reveal individual life thus upon the back-ground of the infinite purpose, which show the significance of a personal existence as summed up in a single act or as having a single purpose. "Those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?" The tragedy is interpreted as but one significant incident in something vaster. There is a man born blind, whom our Lord seeing, pitied; and having anointed his eyes sent him to the pool of Siloam to wash. And it turns out that the interpretation of the fact as evidencing the sin of the man or of his parents is wide of the mark: the meaning of his life is that the works of God should be made manifest in him. The death of one great apostle is a death that shall glorify God; the career of another is the things that he must suffer for my name's sake. And the whole suffering life of the Body is but the extension of the suffering life of its Head- the filling up of that which is behind in the afflictions of Christ.

[ocr errors]

As I meditate on these things I lose my sense of my life's independence of its worth for me and gain an ever-deepening conviction of its necessity and worth in the kingdom of God. Whether it rejoice or suffer its rejoicing or suffering is not an isolated thing of merely individual interest, but it is an element in the rejoicing or suffering of the whole Body. So my rejoicing is enriched and my suffering made tolerable because neither is any more to me an accident, a thing which might as well not be as be, nor the resultant of blind forces which hold me in their inscrutable grip; but part of a great unfolding purpose, guided by infinite wisdom and infinite love. My tendency to complain of my individual lot is stilled, my instinctive struggle against pain is quieted, as my vision of the meaning of my life is broadened to see that its real meaning is its meaning in the mind of God. I surrender myself to His purpose and offer myself to His will certain that only through harmony with that will and purpose can my life be in any degree worth while.

Struggle against, revolt from, that will and purpose is sin, the sin of trying to be something apart from God, of having a meaning and purpose which are not His. Such sin leads to the eternal disquietude of an inharmonious life, a life which has missed its mark and failed of an accomplished purpose - but In His will is our peace. J. G. H. Barry.

[ocr errors]

The Law of Mystery

HERE are two kinds of impossibilities: that is a fact which, in these days of accomplishing the apparently impossible, we are often tempted to forget. Thus it is impossible for a man to jump twenty times his own height; for the thing exceeds human power as we know it. Having no evidence that any man ever did so, or ever will, we call it impossible on the reasonable ground of the regular order of nature. Nevertheless, the feat is impossible only in a certain limited sense of the word; there is nothing to prevent some man achieving the necessary muscular power, or in some now unimaginable way neutralizing the force of gravity. It is a practical impossiblity, that is all; a mere matter of experience, which, for all we can demonstrate to the contrary, other experience may yet revise. But for a man to pull himself up by the feet is impossible in quite another and more absolute sense; for that force wherewith he pulls up his feet also pulls down his shoulders. The thing is a contradiction. That is, there inheres in the terms of the proposition itself something which is a negation of success; and to propose it at all is only a sport of words, an equation that resolves itself to zero. But it is worth noticing, because the contradiction does not always so easily appear; the equation may be so vague or so complex in its terms as to deceive us into thinking it has some actual value. So people may come easily to confuse the two kinds of impossibilities; or even to differ or to be mistaken as to whether some particular impossibility is rational or only practical.

Yet the distinction remains to be observed, unless we wish to stultify ourselves; for although both are (if you like) for present purposes equally impossible, the practical impossibility is the only one which may perhaps disappear.

Now we have lately seen the end of many practical impossibilities. It was once impossible for man to fly, or to calculate the distance of a star, or to communicate in a moment with the other side of the world. But we did not need experience to tell us that these impossibilities might some day be resolved; reason would have told us that from the first, if we but had intelligence to question her. And reason tells us now, without wasting vain expectation, that any rational impossibility remains eternal. Yet we confusedly argue that because many things have of late wonderfully become known or done, therefore any thing may be done or known. It all depends upon the nature of the case. We have explored farther north than our ancestors; but our descendants will never go farther still, because we have reached the North Pole. You know many

things that Solomon did not know; but you are none the nearer to knowing how it is that you can lift your hand, for it is you who lift it.

From the beginning of the world, people have said that some things were supernatural. It may be so, or not. But why should we expect any light upon that question from our wonderfully increased knowledge and control of nature? Though you read this page ever so carefully, you will none the more have read what is upon its other side. By holding it up to the light, you may discern a vague palimpsest of shadows, illegible suggestions of picture or print. And you might have done that just as well without reading. It is true that many miracles of yesterday are playthings of to-day. Old stories told of magic boats moved without sails by a mysterious force within; we give such a boat to children for a toy. But that only means that we have found certain natural causes whose effects our forefathers would have called magical. It means that some natural things were once thought supernatural; not that no supernatural things remain. It is as if you have been

told that there are black beans in a box in a dark room; but all those which you bring out into the light and examine turn out to be white ones. That does not prove that you were misinformed. It does not even remotely suggest or indicate such a thing. To make that inference, you would have to know how many beans there were altogether. Now, if this number were very great, it might be practically impossible to test the truth of the assertion that some were black; but if the total number were infinite, then to do so would be rationally impossible.

And there is in many of those matters which we term mental or spiritual a curious inherent uncertainty, a quality in the very question which puts it forever outside of any certain answer. Dreams are reported subsequently to have come true. But if they had not come true, they might not have been remembered. How shall we verify the tale of what another person has dreamed, or by what test shall we distinguish in advance which of our dreams will come true? It is said that men have prophesied. But a fulfilled prophecy may always have a coincidence; one unfulfilled may not have been a prophecy. Telepathy is said to require concentration of mind upon the message to be transferred. If this be so, we can never be certain of telepathy; for to test the existence of such a faculty is to concentrate attention not upon the message but upon the test. Angels and ghosts, they say, appear only to those who believe in them. Very well; then the believer can have no criterion and the unbeliever no evidence. So in general with what are now usually called psychic phenomena in lieu of the older and clearer term. And so with many another problem of mental or social action whose subject is the very humanity which inquires. We see not our own eyes, nor know that soul in us which does the knowing. In the mirror, you say? But that is to see only an image: suppose the mirror is incorrect, or your own sight distorted. We cannot study in the same way the habits of ants and the habits of men; for that we need ants and men at once. We can look back upon past evolution; but we cannot

with intent evolve the future, since in that case it would not evolve. We breed horses as we choose, by science. But the horses themselves cannot do so; no more, and for precisely the same reason, can we scientifically breed men. It is no question of intelligence, but of applying that intelligence by a superior mind to an inferior animal; and therein lie both the fallacy and the insolence of the silly babble about eugenics. Applying experimental conditions to these matters simply begs the whole question according to the whim of the investigator; for the question is of what takes place in the absence of experimental conditions. It is rationally impossible to solve such problems.

There is no better type of these indemonstrable mysteries than the old question of immortality. People believe that they have assurance thereof from another world; but they must die in order to find out if such another world exists. And the one possible test or definition of death is its finality. So far as intellectual surety may extend, whoso recovers life cannot be proven to have died. Nevertheless, men say this thing has been. And so the miracle remains, eternally beyond proof or disproof, for us to envisage as we will: almost as if there were a law or purpose in all Mystery, to remind vain understanding of its limitations, and to force upon every one in this or that the choice between sheer faith and sheer unfaith.

Brian Hooker.

E

Stopping the Leaks

OVERY once in a while an editorial appears in one of the Church papers dealing with the question of “leaks". Every year our bishops lay their hands upon many thousands of people young and old in confirmation; every year some thousands pass through the door of death into the Church Expectant. The difference between the number of those confirmed and those who have died, ought, ideally, to represent the net increase in our communicant list; but that it actually

« AnteriorContinuar »