The reason of suffering and kindred themes

Contents

I The Price of Progress . . . .

II The Splendor of Self-Sacrifice

III The Universal Cross . . .

I

The ways of God are full of surprises ; and nowhere more so than in the methods and processes arranged for our moral training and growth.

Naturally we love pleasure and shrink from pain. At the threshold of life we picture the future as a pathway tufted with verdure, gemmed with flowers, and stretching on through summer fields. When experience begins to show us that it is really a highway paved with dust and stones and hedged in by thorns, we are filled with confusion, and are loath to accept the fact. We try to disprove it. We struggle vainly to change it. Many a wayfarer goes on hoping to the last that the next step will bring the wished-for change, and drops into the great unseen still unawakened to the deepest reality of the life he has lived. Yet this lesson is plainly written on the face of all things about us.

We lift up our eyes to the " golden lamps '* of the sky, and admire their perfect order, their stately march, their radiant beauty.

But how have they reached this state of comparative perfection? God might, we must suppose, have set them in it at the outset by the fiat of His omnipotence, just as easily as He created the substance out of which they were made. But how did He do it ? Take the telescope of science and look back across the abyss of the cosmic ages, and lo, those orbs are gone, and the whole universe is one vast, terrific vortex of burning Stardust ! Out of this fiery womb the worlds were born, and that amid throes of convulsion such as awe the thought and overwhelm the imagination.

Between that primal birth hour and the present lie inconceivable cycles of aeons each one marked by the most violent transformations. What has happened we know in part by what geology teaches us concerning the planet on which our lot has been cast. It has been moulded by no tender handling. The forces employed have been the most violent in nature. Sometimes it has melted in seas of fire. Again it has lain frozen for ages in continents of ice. Now oceans have rolled over it in successive tides; or driven off from its hissing surface in atmospheres of steam have descended again in plunging torrents. Anon, electric forces have split open and upheaved its crumbling crust, and mountain dashed against mountain has ground to powder its flintiest rocks.

All this (we are told) was necessary before its substance could be properly compounded and its soil prepared for its intended use. No iron heated at the forge and hammered on the anvil was ever more forcibly wrought than was this earth of ours at God's forge and anvil in the geologic ages.

We gaze upon it now in its advanced stage, and dreams of beauty lift the soul. When, however, we look back and examine the process and see it staggering forward to its present condition through mounting cycles of mighty catastrophes, swept by storms, torn by floods, smitten by lightnings, scarred by explosions, rent by upheavals, rasped by floating mountains of ice, frozen for ages in the embrace of glaciers, or melted in burning floods of outbursting fires, we begin to see the meaning of Paul's pregnant assertion that ** the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now," and we seem to hear the voice of nature proclaiming that suffering is the price of progress.

We are led to the same impression also when we study the facts of natural life. It is a wonderful emanation from the bosom of God, this life of ours, and from its earliest appearance on our planet it exhibits a regular ascent from the feeblest beginnings up through multiplied forms more and more highly wrought until the culmination is reached in the physical man.

How, then, has this advance been made? What a spectacle does the living world present !

In the first place every life begins in a scene of agony. Then come the pangs of hunger and kindred wants driving the whole animal nature to intense and unremitting exertions. Then comes the strife with nature; cold and heat, storm and flood and deadly exhalations, sweeping off vast multitudes at every stage of growth, till the number that remains seems as but the handful of survivors from a foundered vessel. Then comes the conflict between the different orders ; the strong crowding out the weak, and the fierce devouring the inoffensive, till between the deadly attack and the desperate defence, the whole earth is turned into a camp of enemies, where, so far as the lower orders are concerned, the rule, to which there are few exceptions, is death by violence and slaughter !

This is the ordeal through which life for countless years has been toiling upward. This is that " struggle for existence " which scientists have recently held up as the sole sufficient explanation of the present condition

The Price op Progress

of life on the globe. Birth-pangs, hungerpangs, poison-pangs, death-pangs: these are the inexorable conditions of its existence and progress. Here it is evident that suffering is the price of progress.

Let us take a third view and look at the progress of society.

That there has been advance toward a perfect standard, although such a standard has not yet been reached, is a visible fact. But what has this progress cost? Count up the battlefields. Number the slain on arenas of blood where right has contended with wrong. Make out the roll of ** the noble army of martyrs." Enumerate the lives which earth's most noble souls have laid down as a holocaust upon the altars of freedom, truth and justice. Measure the tears that have fallen from the eyes of the wronged and oppressed, whose silent protest has stirred the undercurrents of society far more powerfully than any eloquence of tongue or pen. Estimate, if you can, the force of the heartthrobs that have gone up to God in groans and sighs and vocal prayers, opening secret reservoirs of power before which hoary tyrannies have gone down in earthquakes of revolution and blood. All these shall be only the titles, as it were, of those successive Iliads of woe which make up the history of human progress. The forces that urge it onward are such as can act only through strain, conflict, anguish.

Israel, as a nation, was specially trained and set forward in the race. By what special means? Egyptian bondage; scourgings in the desert ; the rigors of the law ; persecution by heathen foes; captivities in Assyria and Babylon !

France in modem times has risen up regenerated, but at the mention of her name there rises before us the reign of terror ; Paris drenched in the gore of her noblest sons; a guiltless monarch led away to the scaffold; and war's wild thunders rolling for twenty bloody years over prostrate Europe. Here in impressive form we see proof that suffering is the price of progress.

It is also quite to our purpose to note that the human intellect reaches its full power and efficiency by no easy path. It does so only under stimuli that put the faculties to many an agonizing strain.

It is no secret that they who delve deep in the mines of knowledge must bum the midnight oil. Just as little is it a secret that every really great achievement in this field comes as the culmination of a series of efforts that have absorbed if not exhausted the lifeenergies. Every new problem solved is the trophy of sore intellectual strife. Every fresh truth wrenched from the unknown is won by powers strained up to no ordinary tension. The labors of Hercules are but shadows to the toils by which mind achieves its successes.

We reap the fruit, and forget the cost. Those who have made epochs by the toil of their brain have generally been sacrifices upon the altar of their purpose. The science that instructs us, the art that delights us, the poems that move us, do so because into them have been poured the living energies of ardent souls. The best works in these fields have been by men who were consumed by the fire of their zeal, and who coined their life-blood drop by drop. Columbus toiled twenty years to realize his thought, and he died brokenhearted. Milton studied and wrote himself blind. Newton wrecked his mighty intellect at forty-five. Cowper's best poems were written between paroxysms of mental anguish that seemed like insanity. The pages of Mrs. Browning's poems were almost literally drenched with her tears. What nobler souls than these have appeared on our planet ?

Surely, however it may be with mediocrity, with the highest range of intellectual achievement the law is inexorable: Suffering is the price of progress.

It ought not to surprise us then that we find the same law in force, in the matter of moral growth, even in the case of the stainless Jesus. Mere sinlessness is not perfection. Adam was sinless in Paradise, but not perfect, else had he never sinned. The various elements of moral perfection were present indeed, but only as germs. Growth was necessary ; some means of discipline or training had to be applied.

Innocence is not holiness in the full sense. Innocence is temptable and may be subverted. Holiness is above the reach of allurement and established in invincible strength. Innocence is the germ, holiness the fruit. The former must grow into the latter. Innocence is the starting point, holiness the goal ; but between the two lie the risk and trial of the race.

Christ in his earthly career was always innocent, but temptable, and '' tempted in all points like as we are." Christ after his resurrection wore a victor's crown; and that crown was something far more glorious than gems and stars, even moral perfection — ^holiness in its full stature and immutable strength, the radiant bloom of a perfected moral and spiritual manhood. That he reached this supreme exaltation by a corresponding depth of trial was simply the necessity that is upon us all.

The Price op Progress

The moral faculties, like all the others, must grow by exercise; and the moment we name them, it becomes evident that their very nature is such that they can find vigorous exercise only under conditions of trial. What elements of a high moral character shall we instance?

Is fidelity that cannot be shaken the comer-stone thereof? What can exercise it but some strong adverse influence? Fidelity that has never cost anything is at best in the crude state. It is certainly unproved and possibly non-existent.

Is moral courage an important element? Where can it find an opportunity but amid the perils and the shock of actual conflict?

Is fortitude, patience, a fundamental quality ? The word itself points it out as one active chiefly in enduring, in bearing; which again is precisely the root meaning of the word *' suffering."

Is love, in its broadest sense, the crown and glory of all? Who does not know that love grows by self-sacrifice, feeds upon it, demands it as the only adequate expression, and flames up in its most exuberant joy when its (voluntary) suffering for its object is most severe?

Verily, as well might we expect framed buildings without the tearing of saws and planes, polished statues without the sound of chisel and hammer, bright, glowing metals without the fury of the furnace fire, as to expect high moral qualities without the discipline of pain. It belongs to the very nature of the process by which they are unfolded.

** Goodness," it has been boldly said, *' seems to be under the doom of suffering " ; and as to its full growth and perfection this certainly is undeniable. It is even a necessity that reaches up to the Godhead. How does God *' commend " (express, or exercise in the highest form) His love toward us? It is a trite remark to say that it is by the giving up of His own son in an ordeal of terrific suffering. Not quite so trite, perhaps, is the yet obvious reflection that only in this way could His love find its highest exhibition and exercise. Divine goodness: divine suffering: these twain are linked in history only because they were already united by an inner and eternal necessity.

This is indeed a mystery; but it is a gracious one, standing as the related and antidotal counterpart of that other gloomiest of all mysteries, the existence of evil. Let us not vainly seek to solve these mysteries ; but let us not, on the other hand, fail to learn the lesson which they teach. Mother-love is the holiest thing on earth, and the brightest type of love divine. It is no accident that its first throb begins in a supreme agony, but the herald of a law high-reaching as the throne of God, and broad in its application as the universe of being.

Experience is an eloquent witness here. Wherever in history high moral attainments have been reached, they have always been seen emerging from an ordeal of pain.

Is it of faith that we seek a high type? Then must we think of Abraham — ^and of that lonely mountain summit where a father, with unutterable anguish, gives up a son to anticipated death ! Abraham's faith became great by a great agony.

Is it of meekness that we enquire? Its example is Moses, whose soul for forty years was vexed by the sin and ingratitude of his people, and once on the mount of intercession, bowed in an anguish that courted death; Moses' meekness, humility, self-forgetfulness (for such is the force of the Hebrew word) became great by the greatness of his trial.

Do we think of fortitude? Daniel on his knees by the open window, expecting as a consequence to be torn by the hungry lions, is the example we want. His steadfastness became great by the severity of its test.

Is it zeal of which we seek an eminent t5^e? Who possessed it in larger measure than the mighty prophet who, when all others were found wanting, was *' very jealous " for the Lord God of Hosts? Yet the great Elijah, at the culmination of his career, lay down under a juniper tree and prayed to die ! The flame of his zeal burned high only because it was fanned by the strong winds of adversity.

Is patience the subject of our investigations? We have heard of it in Job; and we have also heard of the means by which it was matured. The loss of property, wife, children, health, reputation, all but a bare existence, was a crushing reality not poetry to the suffering patriarch. His world-renowned patience was the outcome of his unparalleled trials.

Is love, unselfish and holy, the thing for which we search? It breathes in the Psalmist's impassioned strain: '' If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.'* But he was speaking in the name of the captives who hung their harps upon the willows, and sat down by the streams of conquering Babylon and '' wept when they remembered Zion." Their love was tested and purified in the fires of a great affliction,

Is it a trial to the young eaglets when the mother bird tears in pieces their nest on the brow of the mountain cliff and leaves them only the alternative of flying with their unused wings or being dashed in pieces on the rocks below? Doubtless it is, but otherwise their wings unused would fail of strength and they would never fly at all. And God has instructed us that " as the eagle stirreth up her nest," so he finds it necessary to dislodge his children from their resting places of ease, and put them under the stress of trial and suffering, to rouse them to begin a heavenward flight. ** For whom the Lord lovethHe chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."

" Every son ": not even the divine Son could escape this law. For though he was a son in an ineffable sense, yet '' learned he obedience by the things that he suffered." ** For it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory (in purifying and lifting them up, and fitting them for an eternal heaven) to make the captain of their salvation (how much more themselves) perfect through sufferings."

" Shrink not from suffering; each blow From which thy smitten spirit bleeds Is but a messenger to show The renovation which it needs.

" The earthly sculptor smites the rock; Loud the relentless hammer rings: And from that rude unshapen block At length imprisoned beauty springs.

** Thou art that rude unshapen stone, And waitest till the arm of strife Shall make its crucifixion known, And smite and carve thee into life.

"The heavenly sculptor works on thee; Be patient; soon his arm of might Shall from thy prison's darkness free And change thee to a form of light."

II

What is the life principle which is inculcated upon us in the passage where the apostle says, '' Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus "? (Phil. 2:5.) The context answers; and it may be paraphrased thus: '' Who being in the form (or condition) of God, thought not his equality with God a thing to be selfishly clung to (as a robber clings to his prey) but divested himself of it, and took the form (or condition) of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; being determined not to have heaven itself save as he should make it possible for his brethren of our race to share it with him. And being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself yet further, and for our sakes, became obedient unto death, even the agonizing and shameful death of the cross. Wherefore God, designing to show the supreme glory of this sublime act of self-sacrifice, has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name ; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven, and beings in earth, and beings under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Plainly self-sacrifice is the principle here enjoined, and the glory to which it leads is presented as the motive for its adoption on our part.

Certainly it is a lofty principle, and one belonging exclusively to the Christian system ; and, in fact, standing forth as the peculiar and distinctive feature of that system. The world knows nothing of it, and has no maxims which enjoin it. It rather enjoins exactly the opposite principle, for it believes in selfseeking, and advises every man to look out first of all for himself. It is far from advising the outpouring of self in vicarious service.

Sages and philosophers of the past have failed to rise to the level of this principle. They have never brought it forward as the true rule of life. Socrates taught virtue as he understood it ; but not a word in his sayings leads us to think that he ever conceived of such a high form of it as this. Plato and Aristotle do no better; nor do Cicero, Seneca and the Stoics. What they call virtue is well enough in its way, but it moves in a sphere far below the principle of the cross, which has been missed even by founders of

The Splendor of Self-vSacrifice

religions. Confucius is rightly praised because he advised that no one should do to his neighbor what he would not wish his neighbor to do to him. Yet how immeasurably does this mere negative precept fall below the sublime principle that brought Christ out of heaven to die for the world ! If Confucius fails, it will be waste of time to mention any other pagan, for it will hardly be claimed that any other excelled him as an ethical teacher.

What must seem still more surprising is the fact that even Judaism falls short of this great law. Search the Old Testament through and through and never shall you find it expressly enjoined. Implied it may be, and certainly is in type and symbol. Here and there in the lives of the patriarchs it shines out for an instant in the form of impulse in some great act of self-forgetful service; but never do they show any consciousness of an obligation to make this principle the avowed and sovereign rule of their whole life and action.

Jesus Christ, the son of the Highest, rose to a level far above patriarch, psalmist and prophet, as well as above all the world's sages, when he sublimely resolved to make his whole life a sacrifice, and to teach his disciples to walk in his steps. Self-sacrifice is the Christian principle. It is that which distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, even from Judaism itself. As an avowed law of life it was wholly unknown till the Son of God revealed, exemplified and glorified it together by the humiliation of the cross.

That it is the source of all true glory furnishes the motive for its adoption.

Very different is the world's opinion. It looks for glory as the prize of selfish endeavor ; and deems that man exalted, who by cunning, force or fraud, can " get the better " of his fellows, and force them to pay him tribute of service or admiration. ** Seek your own interest; push your own fortune; grasp the wreath of fame ; clutch the scepter of power " ; such is its dictate. Ages ago the inspired writer observed this fact and wrote: *' Men will praise thee when thou doest good to thyself " — ^and it is true the whole world over.

The worldly spirit is essentially a selfseeking spirit. It deems itself exalted when it has grasped a little more of private emolument than falls to the common lot. It thinks itself glorified when it has compelled men to lay sacrifices upon the altar of its selfish desires. That there is any exaltation in reversing the order and abjuring those desires for the weal of men ; in laying oneself upon the altar of unselfish toil for the good of others — in a word that there is any glory in self-sacrifice — ^the worldly mind does not understand and is slow to believe.

Yet nothing is plainer. It is a truth written on the face of everything about us. God has so ordered it that in every department of His universe the path to true glory should lie through the giving up of self in some form of sacrifice.

If we turn our eyes on the material world, little as we might think it, we find this truth foreshadowed in no doubtful manner. Even here in the realm of matter, nothing is glorious that does not first pour itself out in some form of sacrifice and self -relinquishment.

The sun would have no glory if it did not shine ; and it would not shine if it did not bum. All its use and splendor spring directly from a self -consuming, self -de voting process. The beams that glorify it are the fires that consume it. Every ray that crosses the void is an expenditure of its substance. It gives forth light and heat only by giving itself forth in a fiery dissolution. It wraps itself in flames as in sacrificial fires, and a whole company of worlds rejoice in the light, and admire the glory of the burning holocaust. It holds its high place as center of a system, monarch of a kingdom, fountain of life to uncounted myriads, solely by giving itself up in a typical self-sacrifice.

The earth, in like manner, would have no beauty did it hold fast to all its elements, as the miser holds his gold. Were such a shadowed selfishness the law of its existence no form of life would have place upon it, and it would be covered only with the bare and blackened crust of volcanic rock, a desert world. Something of itself it must give up or be content with deformity. But it does this, and is changed. To the nimble forces of life it yields up its elements, and its ugliness is transformed. The vegetable kingdom is wrought out of its surrendered substance, and the desert blossoms, the mountains are crowned, and the whole earth is robed in beauty.

On every side of us we find the same law in force. The plant must give itself forth in bud and leaf, that it may be clothed in verdure and bloom. The pastures must yield up their herbage that they may be crowned with flocks. The tree must yield its seed that the birds may carol in its branches. Throughout the realm of material things, organic and inorganic, living or without life, there is no exaltation but through self-sacrifice; no object is glorious but through some form of self -relinquishment. Nature with a thousand tongues is hourly repeating in our ears that the path of self-sacnfice is the path of true glory.

If we turn from nature to the higher field of human experience, we shall find the same truth amply illustrated. Such are the laws which God has established in society that all real glory, all true and lasting fame among men, is the purchase of sacrifice and self -relinquishment. Spite of the disturbances of evil, and the false opinion of this world's votaries, it is still true in the long run that no one can be truly exalted in the esteem of men save by some form of self-sacrifice, voluntary or involuntary.

No doubt this assertion may at first sound rash. It might seem at the first thought as if the Caesars and Bonapartes, the Homers and Virgils, the Platos and Aristotles, the conquerors, bards, and sages of the world, who strove for immortality, could hardly come under this law. It would almost seem, at first view, as if some of them, at least, did succeed in extorting from men a tribute of praise for which no price had been paid, and made their way to the throne of earthly glory by mere selfish endeavor. A deeper view, however, will correct the mistake, and show us that whatever real and lasting fame men have finally accorded them has its root in some form of sacrifice, real if not voluntary. For if we enquire for the ground on which a good fame rests, in no instance will it be found to rest on what a man did for himself merely, but in every instance on what he did, or was thought to have done for his fellowmen.

Was he a conqueror? He founded an empire, saved a nation, freed a people, redressed old wrong, or led a race to a higher level of order and well-being. Under the providence of God, whether He meant it or not, His energy,His life,Himself, was expended, devoted, poured out, for the weal of His fellows, and on this fact, and not at all on what He did for Himself, rests the verdict of fame.

Was he a sage, an artist, a poet? How very plain it is that in opening to the human mind new realms of truth, or in presenting to it higher ideals of beauty and excellence, in the marble, on the canvas, in the forms of speech, which should arouse, discipline, refine the souls of men, and wake them to a higher life through all coming time — how plain it is that in giving themselves to such works as these they did, in fact, though they meant it not, give themselves to the race. For whom was the life-long strife, the sacrifice of ease, of health, of pleasure, the mighty toil, the agony of effort by which they wrought so well? Who reaped the benefit? Not themselves, but the world. They toiled for others. Heart and brain, body and spirit, all their powers, were given, poured forth without stint, and to others accrued the benefit. Even though their purpose was selfish, and they would gladly have grasped the crown without bearing the cross, they could not do it. A higher law was in force. A mightier power than their own will controlled their destiny, and all the lasting fame which men have finally accorded them was the purchase of sacrifice and self -relinquishment.

The argument has also a higher scope. It is an addition to its force to observe that men eventually accord the highest honor to those whose self-relinquishment is not only real but intentional. This is self-sacrifice in the truest form ; where the will prompts the act; where the spirit of self-sacrifice sways the heart, while the reality covers the life. It is a notable testimony to the truth before us that this form of self-devotion, so far above the worldly mind, does nevertheless command the admiration of the world. The fame of Washington is brighter today than that of Bonaparte, simply because he had more of the self -devoting spirit. The glory of the three hundred who fell at Thermopylae eclipses that of the horde that slew them only for the same reason.

Selfish as the world is, it still bows to the principle that makes unselfishness the path of honor. The law is God's and too strong to be set aside. Sin, blinding men's perceptions, may hinder and retard its working but cannot subvert it. Eventually it will triumph, and lift the self-devoted of spirit to the place of honor. The spectacle of a great soul giving itself to the world in acts of blessing, not blindly but willingly, is a spectacle men cannot resist. They bow before it instinctively It wins their hearts in spite of themselves. There is a brightness in it that cannot be hid, a glory that nothing can dim. The whole course of history, read aright, confirms the testimony of natural analogy, that there is no true exaltation but through self-abnegation, no glory but through self-sacrifice.