Letters to unknown friends

Preface

For a number of years I have been carrying on a somewhat extensive pastoral correspondence and, in connection with my preaching, somewhat extensive pastoral conferences. For the last twelve years most of my preaching has been at colleges, and in connection with this college preaching I have held conferences with students, sometimes in groups, sometimes individually. In these conferences they have brought me their perplexities. The questions which they have presented have been sometimes theological, sometimes ethical, sometimes spiritual, but they have almost always been vital; that is, they have been questions touching the conduct of life, inspired by the desire to know how to live, not questions touching merely opinion, inspired by curiosity to know what I think. The letters which I have received from all over the country vi PREFACE

have been of a similar type, and it has been a very enjoyable, and a not insignificant part of my life, to carry on this correspondence with Unknown Friends who have often, I think, written to me with the greater freedom because they were unknown to me, and thus they were not really disclosing any secrets of their experiences. These letters and conferences have been of invaluable service to me in enabling me to understand and to deal with the vital experiences.

They have been serviceable to me for another reason: They have often compelled me to question my own traditional beliefs and to find a reason which I could give to another for a hope which had not been founded on reason, but on an inherited habit of mind. That I have clearer and more definite conceptions of both theological and spirit al problems, yes, and of ethical problems also, is largely due to the service which these correspondents have rendered by compelling me to investigate the questions which they have addressed to me.

It finally occurred to me that the questions

PREFACE vii

which these correspondents were asking were questions which a great many others were asking, though they knew not where to go for an answer, and that the letters which I was sending to these correspondents might, if somewhat elaborated, render service to other inquirers. So about a year ago I began in the Outiook a series of "Letters to Unknown Friends." Through the doorway thus opened many unknown friends entered, seeking counsel, and when it was proposed to me to put into book form some of these letters, in the hope that they might reach a still wider circle of readers, I gladly accepted the suggestion. Many but not all of the letters contained in this volume have been published in the Outlook. All of them have been written in reply to real inquiries addressed to me either by letter or in person. The many responses from read .S of these letters in the Outlook have been at once the best confirmation of my hope that they might be serviceable, and the best reward for the work involved. And this little book goes out with the sincere hope on my part that it may find its way

VI 11

PREFACE to other inquirers and render this service to other Unknown Friends.

Lyman Abbott.

Cornivall on Hudson, N. Y.

January 1, 1913.

Contents

VICTORY

PREFACE

NATURE AND THE GOSPEL

II

Yes! I certainly do believe in a personal God; a God who has plans and purposes and affections, a God who cares for his children, a God to whom I can speak and who understands me, a God who speaks to me and whom I can somewhat understand, a God to whose inspiring fellowship I owe all that I am or hope to be; in a word, a God who is "Our Father. "

And yet I do not wish to define this faith, even by so simple a word as personal. Because faith transcends definition, and the simplest definition is liable to be misunderstood. I once had a conversation with a young man on this subject which ran something as follows:

Inquirer. Do you believe in a personal God? 16

Myself. What do you mean by a personal God?

Inquirer. I mean a great big man, sitting up in the centre of the universe, ruling things.

Myself. No! I do not believe in that kind of a personal God.

Inquirer. Oh! then you are a pantheist.

We sometimes seem to me to be like a shipload of passengers who find themselves on a great steamer in the middle of the ocean, and who do not know where they came from, or what port they are bound to, or what is the object of the voyage, or who is the commander in charge. It seems very clear to me that life is not a mere game of chance, that nature is not chaos nor society anarchy, that there is a meaning to 'life and a purpose in it, that I am living in a world of law and not of fortuitous happenings, and that this world of law is under the ultimate control of a Lawgiver. And I find, on inquiry of my fellowpassengers, that practically all or nearly all the men and women for whose intellectual and moral character I have respect are of this opinion.

I ask the students of nature, and Herbert Spencer, whose philosophy of life is all founded on an unemotional and unimaginative study of nature, replies: "There remains the one absolute certainty that man is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed."

I ask the students of human life, and Hegel, speaking for Philosophy, replies: "God governs the world; the actual working of his government — the carrying out of his plan — is the History of the World."

I ask the men who are probing for the secret of all life's phenomena, and Ernst Haeckel, speaking for Biology, replies: "The more developed man of the present day is capable of, and justified in, conceiving that infinitely nobler and sublimer idea of God which alone is compatible with the monistic conception of the universe, and which recognizes God's spirit and power in all phenomena without exception."

I ask the moral reformers, the men who are trying to improve the condi lions of their fellowpassengers in this voyage of life, and Mazzini replies: "God exists. We ought not, do not want to prove it; to attempt that would seem blasphemy; to deny it, madness." And again: "Call it God, or what you like, there is life which we have not created, but which is given. "

I ask the literary critics who study the lives of men in the record of their thoughts and feelings, and Matthew Arnold replies: "There is a Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness. "

I ask the poets and Alfred Tennyson replies:

"The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains — Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He? though He be not that which He seems."

I agree with Spencer that the Eternal Energy is ever present in all our lives; with Hegel that He governs the world; with Haeckel that His spirit and power are in all phenomena; with Mazzini that His life is given to the world; with Matthew Arnold that it is a life which makes for righteousness; and with Alfred Tennyson that we may trust the Vision, though He be infinitely more and better than any Vision we have of him.

These men the Church calls agnostics. They are agnostics, not because they disbelieve in God, but because they disbelieve in the ecclesiastical definitions of God.

In the story of Israel it is said that when God met Moses at the burning bush, and gave him his commission to become the emancipator of Israel, Moses wanted a definition of the One who commissioned him. "When I come unto the children of Israel,'' he said, "and say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?" But God refused to give a definition. The Voice replied simply, "I am that I am. Say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you."

I have no objection to the definitions which theology lias afforded of God. But I accept none of them. Just because they are definitions they are too definite. No interpretation of God is true that is not aglow with imagination and warm with feeling. God is not a hypothesis to be explained, but an experience to be declared. I go, therefore, to the poets, not to the theologians, to speak for me. The Westminster definition of God as "a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible," etc., etc., does not appeal to me. The hymn of Walter C. Smith does appeal to me. For it is a transcript of one phase, but only one phase, of my experience of the divine fellowship:

"Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might; Thy justice like mountains high soaring above Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life Thou givest — to both great and small; In all life Thou livest, the true life of all; We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree, And wither and perish: but naught changeth Thee.

To-day and to-morrow with Thee still are now; Nor trouble, nor sorrow, nor care, Lord, hast Thou; Nor passion doth fever, nor age can decay: The same God forever that was yesterday.''

I believe not only that God exists, but that he is the inspirer of a life which we do not create, but which is given. I believe that our invisible Commander, the unknown I am, is ever sending to his children a message from himself, by the voices of the poets and prophets, by the vision of the artists and the musicians, by the heroic deeds of noble men and the pure lives of devout women, by the great achievements of the great leaders, by the humble lives of self-denying fathers and mothers, by the innocence of the little children, and most of all by the Voice that speaks to us and the Vision that is given to us in the hours of our silent communion with him.

This is my answer to your question, "Do you believe in a personal God?" Does it seem to you vague? It is vague. All spiritual experience is vague. For all spiritual experience transcends defining.

Ill

NATURE AND THE GOSPEL

I thank you for calling my attention to the article of John Burroughs in the Century Magazine on the "Gospel of Nature." In the main I heartily agree with it, and wish that I had learned in my youth to observe and to enjoy nature as John Burroughs does.

Nature may be regarded as a vast machine which we are to study in order that we may use it for the enhancement of our comfort. So Mr. Edison regards it.

Or as a laboratory, in which we may learn truths of life and acquire self-development. So Mr. Darwin regarded it.

Or as a museum filled with curiosities and beauties, in which we may gain aesthetic enjoyment and that life to which beauty ministers.

U LETTERS TO UNKNOWN FRIENDS

So John Burroughs regards it. But nature has no gospel.

Reverence is a feeling of respect and admiration which an inferior feels toward a superior. Nature is not superior to man; it is inferior to man. Nature is material, man is spiritual; nature is mechanical, man is intellectual; nature is blindly subject to invisible forces, man is self-governing; nature has no moral qualities and is not morally accountable, man is a free moral agent, capable of right and wrong, and subject to reward and penalty, to approval and to condemnation. We condemn Nero who rekindled the conflagration in Rome, but not Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum in lava; we applaud the Dutch for bringing in the sea to drive out the Spaniards, but not the sea for coming in answer to their invitation.

We may think of nature as a machine which the Great Machinist has wound up and set a-going. So Paley thought of it; but we reverence the Machinist, not the machine.

Or we may think of nature as a body animated

NATURE AND THE GOSPEL 25

by the Great Spirit present in all its varied activities. So Bergson thinks of it; but we reverence the Spirit, not the body which it inhabits.

Whichever way we look at nature, we do not reverence her.

John Stuart Mill has graphically described the unmoral character of nature:

Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.

Whether John Burroughs or Thompson Seton correctly interprets the animals, it is certainly true that nature is neither moral nor immoral; it is unmoral. There is no gospel in nature.

Nature is not a manifestation of God. "The firmament showeth his handiwork"; but God is more than his handiwork. Man is the manifestation of God. We do not look through nature to nature's God, but through humanity to humanity's God. In man are the Father's lineaments.

We can see them even in sinful, ruined man, as we can see the beauty of Greek art in the ruined temple and the broken statue.

To man, thinking that nature is God, and worshipping an unmoral God, and trying to win his favours by gifts and sacrifices, comes the Gospel. And this is its message:

Nature is not God; nature is not the image of God; man is the image of God. W r ould you know God? Look into your own heart; God dwells within you. Your sense of justice administering law, your spirit of compassion administering mercy, your loving self-sacrifice inspiring you fathers and mothers to give your fives for your children — these are the interpreters of God. God is spirit; you are spirit; you are God's offspring; you and he are kin.

And that you may know him better, he has come into your world and lived a human life with you; and he still comes into your world and lives with you. In humanity you are to look for his unveiling; something of him in every just and generous spirit; all of lii iii that you can compre-

NATURE AND THE GOSPEL 27

hend in the life and character of his Son, the man Christ Jesus.

Jesus Christ was poor; reverence is not for riches. Jesus Christ had only a peasant's education; reverence is not for scholarship. Jesus Christ was without political authority; reverence is not for power. Jesus Christ taught as never man taught and loved as never man loved; reverence is for truth and love. This is the Gospel. It is not in nature; it is in human nature.

Edison will not find a gospel in the machine, nor Darwin in the book, nor John Burroughs in the museum. But we may all find it in our fellow-men: in the justice of the statesman, in the ministry of the doctor, in the patience of the teacher, in the compassion of the philanthropist, in the self-sacrifice of the father and mother; and most of all in the life and character of him "who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven."

You may not believe this Gospel; but it is at least well that you understand it. I do not wonder that men do not believe it. That the

Eternal, the Lord and Giver of life, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, should have come into one human life, filling it full of himself, that he may come into all our lives filling us all with himself, sometimes seems to me news too good to be true, too stupendous to be believed. But this is the Gospel. It is belief in this Gospel which makes me an optimist, and I find it easier to believe that man has discovered this God than to believe that man has invented him.

IV Are There Three Gods?

No; I do not believe that there are three Gods. There is only one God. And they who imagine, as some seem to do, that the doctrine that there are three persons in one God means, or is thought to mean, that there are three distinct divine individualities or personalities, totally misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity. I do not propose to try to tell you in this letter what is the doctrine of the Trinity. I propose only to try to tell you how I think of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

A friend of mine who knows much more about

church theology than I do tells me that I am

not an Orthodox Trinitarian, but a Modalistic

Monarchian. I am quite indifferent to the labels

which are given to me, and I make no attempt to

label myself.

There are three ways, and only three, in which any person can manifest himself to other persons : by his works, by the story of his life, and by his personal companionship. I ask a musical acquaintance of mine, "Do you know Elgar?" "Oh, yes," he says; "very well. I rank him as the first of living English composers." "Tell me about him," I say. "Is he a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?" "Oh, I know nothing about that," he answers; "I know him only as a musician." "Have you ever seen him?" "Never." He knows Sir Edward Elgar by his musical compositions.

Stirred by my inquiry, he goes to a musical library, takes down from the shelves a cyclopaedia or a book of biography, and learns about the life of Sir Edward Elgar — that he is a Roman Catholic; that he began his career as an organist in a Roman Catholic church; that he later became conductor of an instrumental society; that his later work has been that of a composer. Now he has a new acquaintance with Elgar, an acquaintance which throws light also on Elgar 's music.

ARE THERE THREE GODS? 31

Later he goes abroad. He gets a letter of introduction, presents it, is received at Elgar's house as his guest. The two are congenial, and he becomes Elgar's intimate friend. Now he has obtained a third and still better acquaintance.

But neither of these methods of acquaintance alone is sufficient. If the maid in Elgar's house knows nothing and cares nothing for music, she does not know Elgar. If the writer of Elgar's biography has never seen him, he does not know Elgar. If the performer of his works has neither read the story of his life nor made his acquaintance, he does not know Elgar. To a real acquaintance with Elgar a knowledge of his music, acquaintance with his life, and personal companionship are essential.

I believe there is one God, the Father of all the living; that he is not an unknown and an unknowable God; that he has taken these three methods to make us, his children, acquainted with him.

We can see the evidence of his wisdom and his power in the works of nature. We can know with Herbert Spencer that we are ever in the presence of the Infinite and the Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. We can trace his influence . in the progress of history. We can see that history is an evolution from an unknown starting point to an unknown consummation, and that in this progress there is a steady development toward the higher intellectual and moral life of humanity; that, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "there is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." The Father makes himself known to us through his works.

He also makes himself known to us through the Incarnation; that is, through his dwelling in a human life. When I say that I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, I mean what John meant when he said, "The Word became flesh"; that is, God, who was always a speaking God, manifesting himself to men through his works, entered into the man Christ Jesus, and in him manifests what Henry van Dyke has well called "the human life of God. " I mean what Paul meant when he said, "God was manifest in the flesh"; that is, Jesus Christ was the supremest manifestation of God

ARE THERE THREE GODS? 33

possible in a single human life. I mean that he showed forth in that life the Spirit Eternal, so that we may know that what Jesus Christ was in his human relationships in that brief life the Father is in his relationship to all his children in all time.

He also makes himself known most intimately by the companionship of his Spirit with our spirits.

Jesus Christ declares of himself, "I am the door." We do not simply look at the door; we push it open and go in. Jesus Christ is the one through whom we come into fellowship with the Father, into a companionship with God analogous to that which Jesus had with God. He becomes to us the Great Companion. He is our Friend, to whom we can go with our joys and sorrows, our temptations and our sins, our struggles, our victories, and our defeats, sure of his friendship and his aid, whatever our past experience or our present need may be.

I do not say that this is all that the Trinity means. I do not think it is an adequate definition of the Trinity as it is interpreted by the theological books, but it is what the Trinity means to me. It is a Trinity in experience. It is acquaintance with God through his works, through his human life, and through his personal companionship. It is the faith that he is in the budding trees and the blossoming flowers this June morning as truly as he was in that day when he said, " Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind;" the faith that he is in American history, guiding it to its predetermined end, as truly as he ever was in the history of Israel; the faith that he was and is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself by making himself known to the world and imparting his life to the world; the faith that he dwells with and in his children, "never so far as even to be near"; the faith that we may offer Paul's prayer with the assured hope of an answer, "That ye may be filled with all the fulness of God"; the faith that Christ's prayer for his followers will be fulfilled and is being fulfilled: "That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be in us."

THE GAME OF LIFE

The other day one of our neighbours' children came in to spend the afternoon. He was beginning to learn the game of chess and asked me if I played. Yes; would he like to have a game? Very much. How did he want me to play? Should I play as well as I could and beat him, if possible, or should I play an easy game, and let him beat me? He reflected a moment and then replied: "Please play as well as ever you can. I want to learn the game."

After he had gone I recalled a notable passage in one of Mr. Huxley's essays which, in the light of my afternoon's experience, seemed to me to throw a little light upon your question. The passage reads as follows:

3G LETTERS TO UNKNOWN FRIENDS

Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse

Perhaps my youthful friend's reply to my question may throw some light on yours: Why, if God is good, is life so hard? Why, to use Mr. Huxley's figure, does the unknown Player never overlook a mistake or make the smallest allowance for ignorance?

Why? Perhaps because he wants us to learn the game. Perhaps his object in our lives is to teach us how to live.

I have no solution of the problem of evil; the

THE GAME OF LIFE 37

why and wherefore of it. A much more important question seems to me to be this: How shall I meet the evil that comes into my world and get good out of it for myself and for others?

Doctor Cadman, of Brooklyn, has said, "I do not wish to live in a fool-proof universe. " I agree with Doctor Cadman. I would much rather live in a universe in which out of my blunders I can learn wisdom, and out of my sins I can acquire virtue. I do not see how I can do this if there is no hardness in my life. Therefore I welcome the hardness. My prayer to my Father is: Be just and patient with me, but do not overlook my mistakes or my sins or even my ignorances. I want to learn the game. Help me to learn it by putting on me the consequences of my own misdoing. This is the prayer of the Psalmist: "See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." The way everlasting is not all flowers.

Peter thus describes the process of characterbuilding:

Add to your faith virtue, that is valour.

And to valour knowledge.

And to knowledge self-control.

And to self-control patience.

And to patience godliness.

And to godliness brotherly kindness.

And to brotherly kindness love.

How to do this is the problem of life. We can not add valour without dangers to be confronted; nor knowledge without problems to be solved; nor self-control without passions to be controlled; nor patience without burdens to be borne; nor godliness without a struggle to see him who is invisible; nor brotherly kindness without self-denying service; nor the deepest, truest love without loving where there is no payment for our love, even in gratitude.

If we are eager to acquire these qualities, we shall be willing to pay the price in discipline. We shall welcome danger if it will develop valour; problems if they will develop knowledge; passions if they will develop self-control; burdens if they will develop patience; the struggles of faith if they will develop godliness; self-denying service if it

THE GAME OF LIFE 39

will develop brotherly kindness; and even ingratitude and enmity if they will make our love, like the love of the Father, spontaneous and irrepressible.

I repeat, I am not attempting to explain life. Much of it is enigmatical to me. The dangers sometimes seem too great for the endangered to meet; the problems too great for the reason to wrestle with; the burdens too great for the shoulders on which they are laid. As to my companions in life's voyage, I have the faith that I see only a fragment of their lives and of my own, and, as I know not what opportunities of development life may have for them in the future, I take refuge from my perplexity in a frank acknowledgment to myself of my ignorance. I have not to solve the problem and am content to leave it unsolved. But for myself, I can resolve so to meet the dangers which confront me as to increase my courage; so to wrestle with my problems as to increase my intellectual powers; so to bear the burdens which are laid upon me as to develop my patience; so to give my service to my fellow-men as to grow in brotherly kindness; so to meet wrongdoing with compassion as to make my love free and spontaneous; in short, so to live that by my life I may do something to give help to the neighbour at my side and to borrow help from him, that we may both live bravely, wisely, patiently, lovingly.

You and I do not need to understand the whole mystery of life in order so to play our game with the hidden Player on the other side that we may learn to play our part well here and prepare ourselves to play our part well hereafter, whatever it may be. So I can join with Adelaide Procter:

I thank Thee more that all my joy

Is touched with pain; That shadows fall on brightest hours.