The open door

Contents

I. The Open Door .

II. The Laws of the Open Door

III. The Shut Door .

II

It is fit things be stated and considered as they are.

— Bishop Butler.

II

NE of the most potent influences of our time that has made for change is the relaxing of authority. We see it everywhere, in education, in religion, in the family, and in the state. It is evident in every region both of thought and of practical life. The breakdown of authority is the natural result of the breakdown of static conditions. Nowhere can we appeal with the old dogmatism to established traditions, and to truths delivered once for all in changeless form. The world has broken away from its moorings. The point of view suggested by our figure of the Open Door acts like an acid to disintegrate all fixed systems. If we learn to look at the world and life in terms of dynamics and no longer in terms of statics, we are done with immutability anywhere.

We frankly recognize the dangers of the very mood we are encouraging in this book. It undoubtedly means the weakening of old authority, and there are places where a blind step may mean a step into the abyss. The first lesson surely is that our steps should not be blind. It is sometimes assumed that this doctrine of the Open Door means that there are no penalties, and that all we need to do is to move gaily forward making any kind of experiment in life without risk. If we walk up confidently to any obstacle it will obligingly remove itself, and when we come to a stubborn barrier a way through opens up as by magic. We must learn that there is nothing magical in the world, that this is not a casual but a causal universe.

The problem is that human life must have some sort of authority on which it can rest and build. How to get it, if everywhere we are touching moving force and never dead mass ? If everything changes and we change with it, if reality is like a stream and we are in the stream, where can we find anything which we can call permanent ? Well, we must frankly build on experience, and if it needs faith to believe that experience itself is not illusion, we are compelled to exercise that faith. This is necessary for sane life.

The first law of the Open Door may be called the law of faith. Fundamentally it means trust in the sanity and order and purposiveness of the universe. Without this faith, we are appalled at the littleness of man before the greatness of the world's forces. Man is crushed by a sense of insignificance. We with our larger knowledge of infinite space feel even more awed than the ancient poet who looked up into the eastern sky at night and said,

When I behold Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,

The moon and the stars which Thou didst establish,

What is man that Thou art mindful of him,

And the son of man that Thou visitest him ?

Modern man feels even more acutely the contrast between the worm man and the armies of the sky. Only a sense of spiritual values, only faith in the worth of man's life, can swing back the balance from despair.

The sea is very large and our boat is very small, but the boat fits the sea. It can be made to sail. The laws and facts of the sea can be harnessed to serve the purposes of the boat. Indeed the biggest fact of the sea is the fact of the boat. The boat is at the mercy of the sea, but is also the sea's master and dominates it for human ends. The universe is unfathomable, full of mystery, cruel in its impassiveness, and human life with its history and achievements is very weak and small. It is like a speck on the vast ocean. But the biggest fact of the world is the fact of man. He alone is conscious of the contrast between the puny single species and the majesty of the whole.

Pascal describes man feeble as a reed which it does not need the universe to crush. " But he is a reed that thinks, and were the whole universe to crush him he is above that which destroys him ; for he knows that he dies and that which crushes him knows nothing." If only to keep the gains of the past, man is compelled to believe in himself. He must believe that he has a destiny, as he has a history. Man alone is conscious of his history, and can look back over the long way with pride. There seems to be meaning and purpose in that romantic story. Nowhere do we see human life in a hopeless cuL-de-sac — a blind alley without outlet. Somewhere it issues out into a larger place. Somewhere a door opens to further experience and fuller life. To deny such a future is to put a full stop to the story. Without this faith, life would be a torso, whose general appearance is uncommonly like a grotesque.

Is it all for nothing that man has striven and suffered ? Is it all for nothing that the race has endured its long agony, and thrilled to its noble joys ? Have all the triumphs of man's history, his deepening self-knowledge, his progressive control of natural forces, his social achievements in building up a rational communal life, been only nothing better than illusion ? Man will never believe that, or when he does it will be at last the race-suicide. As he looks back he thinks he sees doors opening leading ever to the light, and he believes that he will not come to a place where there is no passage. If ever he comes where there is no passage that way, he feels sure that there is a passage some other way.

All a brave man needs is this simple faith that he is not in a hopeless cul-de-sac, that he will not die like a rat in a hole. Even if he die, his death will count for something, as he thinks his life counted for something. Let him see that spot of blue where invites the open door, and he can withstand in the evil day and having done all can still stand. All he asks for is the wages of going on. Sometimes faith is only another name for courage, in which man takes life in his hand as he makes the great venture.

The first law of the Open Door then is the law of faith. We believe that the door is open, and that it is open for us. We can win through, if we will. We can trust the world, and life, and self, and the future. The religious man means all this when he says we can trust God. The universe may be a riddle as it has often been called, but the riddle of the universe is at least not a farce. We must trust the world, in order to live. We must believe that the world has meaning and purpose at its core, in order to live a man's life. This fundamental faith carries with it faith in the future. We may not know — we do not know — anything but that a clear road invites our feet. We do not need to know any more than that. Indeed, it is part of the attraction of life that it should come to us as an adventure.

The world has been lifted forward by the goodly succession of adventurers, who went forth not knowing whither they went. Columbus putting a theory to the test finds a new world. The astronomer, working out a hypothesis, sees a new planet swim into his ken. Men of science extend the bounds of knowledge in a spirit of adventure. Teachers are content if at last they find students, into whose hands they can put the torch to carry it on and it may be to light other flames. The task of education, and its glory, is not merely to transmit knowledge and build up an intellectual system of discipline, but to inspire, and to kindle a flame which will illumine the path for all the world. We look far through time to get the distant interest of all true investment. All education worth the name has a spiritual source, and a spiritual end. It lives by vision, and works through insight and outlook, lifting the eyes to wider horizons.

" The door is open," said the ancient stoic.

He meant that there was a way of escape from intolerable fate. His unconquerable soul had always a last refuge. When things got to the worst, when he could stand no more, when the burden grew too heavy and life had become insufferable, the door was open. He meant in a plain word, Suicide. There was a way out from under the burden, a way down and out. It is the refuge of despair, a pagan solution of the problem of life. The fact that so often men and women of our day find easy recourse to the same way of escape is proof that there are still pagan elements in our modern society. Set over against that despairing word the same word interpreted by faith, " The door is open." It becomes a word of hope and courage and comfort and power. Instead of a way down and out, there is a way up and out

This is the message of religion, if the implications of faith are frankly accepted. It should issue in peace and hope and joy. Too often religion is treated as narrow and cramping, something that will dwarf our powers, and imprison us, and cut off our rightful joy. It is looked on as if it would hamper life, and narrow it down into a small corner. Whereas, it is the biggest and widest thing that can come into a man's life, ennobling every faculty and glorifying every power. It should lead a man out into a large place, till he feels he is standing in the Supreme Will, so that with a pure heart he can serve his generation e'er he too fall on sleep.

Take as illustration the obvious open door before this generation of social and industrial reconstruction. It is natural that there should be some timidity before a great change, even when we recognize that the change is inevitable. Some allow their fears to swallow up their courage, till the only forward look they have is one of dread. Others of the privileged classes harden their hearts in selfish possession, determined to resist to the last all that seems to disturb their comfort. There is a new order to be born out of the new stirrings of life, and in what temper should it be met ? Surely in that of faith, which not only believes that the change will result in better conditions, but also which believes that because it believes in man. It sees that the civilization which does not afford its members the opportunity to become their best selves is a failure. It believes that as of old God is calling His sons out of Egypt, and that the way to the Promised Land will open, though it be through the sea and the desert.

For our comfort in facing the change, it should be remembered that the world has never known anything but change. We have been born into our present order, and we forget how recent it is. We think of it as somehow permanent and with the sacredness of the established about it. As a matter of fact it is only of yesterday, and is merely one of the ceaseless experiments of man in society. Even if our present condition were satisfactory to more of us than it is, we could safely argue from history that it could not last indefinitely. When added to that, we have a condition seething with righteous discontent, full of stupid absurdities as well as of cruel wrongs, we know that the time for change is ripe. Indeed the change is already going on. Everywhere democracy is beginning to sweep the world, and the dispossessed classes are entering into political power. "Willingly or unwillingly we are moving to an open door that will bring us to a change of scene. In high faith and in the courage of faith we look hopefully and longingly to the better day, trusting in the destiny of man and in the purpose of God.

The second law of the Open Door may be called the law of fitness. The faith with which we face the future must be disciplined and rational, must know whereof it speaks. The temper of faith and hope is better in any case than that of indifference or despair, but if it be a sloppy trust that things are going to turn out all right, it will only lead to the morass ? Faith needs to be informed by fact, and inspired by knowledge. It needs to be corrected and tested by experience, even when it looks for new experience. A vague Micawber-like confidence that somehow fortune will look after things is doomed to failure. That is to treat the world as a gamble, and if we do we will discover that we play against loaded dice. The universe is not so constructed that if a man opens his mouth to the sky, larks already roasted will obligingly fall into it. That would make it a foolish world for man, and an impossible one for larks. We can never make anything of the open door, until we dismiss resolutely our childish dreams of chance happenings.

There are many so-called chance discoveries, but on investigation we usually find that they were made by those who had put themselves in the way. Thousands of others had met the same chance, but never saw it, or if they did were by previous bent unable to do anything with it. The Inch goes to the good player, as every golfer knows. When a man is fit, everything comes his way. An opportunity goes a-begging for years, till the man who can use it comes along. The discovery was always possible, when the conditions of it were met. We tell tales of Galileo being led to his experiments about falling bodies by the fact that the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa was handy for such experiments, but the Leaning Tower could have suggested it to any one else. In the life of Galileo it is related how one day in the Cathedral he noticed a bronze lamp suspended by a long cord swinging slowly before the altar. During the singing he noticed that though naturally the lamp slackened its vibration, it always beat in the same time, and from that he was led to begin his researches on the motion of the pendulum. But everybody in Pisa and elsewhere had seen a lamp swing. Or the story is told of Newton in his garden at Woolsthorpe seeing an apple fall to the ground and having suggested to him his researches on the force of gravity. But millions of apples had fallen, and some had even bumped the heads of men, with little enough suggestion. The time was fit, when the man was fit.

This does not mean that it is always personal fitness that leads to the open door. What we may call social fitness is an even more important factor. Without this a single discovery, even if made, would signify little and could not be conserved. It is possible for a man to be before his age, born out of due time, though there are countless more cases of men who are behind their age. What usually happens is that the world had arrived at the stage where a reach forward was possible and even inevitable. All men who have achieved anything are the first to recognize that they built on the labours of others. Previous work had so advanced the subject that contemporary thought and experiment found the further step easy. This is the explanation of the fact that often a discovery is made independently by different people almost simultaneously, like Darwin and Wallace with the evolution hypothesis. A certain thing is in the air as we say, and men everywhere are working on it, feeling towards it, and when one takes the right step, behold there is an open door. Flying machines have been " in the air " for a much longer time than any machine has been. The story of any achievement is one of much obscure romance, and there are names on the roll of honour of which the public is ignorant. Sometimes the man, to whom comes the fame or the fortune, has done the minor part of the work.

Especially true is this of the great movements which have profoundly affected mankind. Lord Acton was preparing nearly all his life to write the History of Liberty and died without having done it. One hardly wonders that he should have been appalled at the task; for it would have meant writing practically the history of man. What open doors generation after generation have been passed through in the enfranchisement of man's mind and life. Sometimes we speak as if liberty were an American, or an English, or an Anglo-Saxon achievement. When some crisis in that history comes, and a new triumph is recorded, it is seen to be the work of no one man. In every world movement there is the same almost impersonal note. ISTo single man was responsible for the Renaissance, and no single man produced the Reformation. The modern democratic movement is impressive, because it calls no man father, and needs no sponsor. It too comes because the time is ripe, and the time has been ripened through new compunctions of conscience, and new stirrings of desire, and new movements of life.

But no door opens through a magic word, or because people idly wish it. This law of fitness has to be emphasized to-day, because so many have a bland creed that everything is going to be all right anyway. We hear men loudly proclaiming that they believe in progress, and that the world has ever been growing better and must ever grow better. One may have cause to believe such a statement in the general without subscribing to every application of it. All change has not been progress, and there can be degeneracy as well as advance. A general proposition may be true and have many exceptions in detail. A flowing tide can have many recessions and times when it looks like ebb instead of flow. It has been said by way of confidence in the ultimate future of America that the man who "goes bear on America goes broke." It is a graphic way of describing a general trust in the country's destiny, but sometimes the phrase has been used merely to boom a rise in the Stock Exchange. One can believe in the business future of a country, and yet know that the most favoured land can have times of depression.

The soft creed of inevitable progress is an offense to all who desire to know and accept facts. The worst of it is that such a temper delays true progress, if it does not destroy the very chance of progress. If we take to thinking of liberty as something that is bound to come as if it were ground out automatically, we endanger liberty itself, forgetting that its price is eternal vigilance. That is the price of anything worth having — the price of knowledge, of material and intellectual and moral advance. It is the law of the Open Door. Instead of inevitable progress in human affairs, our actual experience is the opposite. There is a constant tendency to settle and sink. If we leave a garden alone, we soon learn what happens to the choicest flowers. If we leave any institution or condition of social life alone, we soon find it in the quagmire. The degradation of the best is always the worst kind of corruption. If we leave ourselves alone, we slide back to lower levels of thought and of practice. It may be a commonplace to say that there is no standing still for life, but it is none the less true. The life that does not move forward goes backward. It is not enough to have a pious faith in progress. To the faith must be added patience and knowledge, the qualities that save the faith from shame.

Man has indeed learned to fly — or is learning — but he never learned, and never would have learned by throwing himself off a pinnacle, even of the temple. The only way man could ever learn to fly was to understand the problem, and master the laws, and manipulate the forces at his disposal. Many things come to him in his long search to fathom the laws that govern the phenomena of nature and to understand the reason of things. The world is truly as big as man is big enough to inhabit and he has not yet taken possession of one tithe of his inheritance, but more important than believing in the bigness of his task is it to become big enough to undertake it. It is more important, simply because the one is the condition of the other. We take an immense step in every region of endeavour when we accept simply and humbly the fact that we have to do with a causal and never with a casual universe.

Thus, we dare not let go our hold on experience. Experience really means the results of experiment, the acquired and tested facts.

Fortunately we are not confined to our own single experience, but have the vast body of human experience on which to fall back for guidance and correction. Not as on something sacred and immovable, a fetish to clog our souls and our feet, but simply as we do in every branch of natural science. In science there has grown up a body of experiments, which we are glad to accept, but which if need be we hold the right to test again and to extend, and from which we may draw different conclusions should new facts warrant it. So in the practice of life there has grown up a body of experiments, which has valid authority for us. There are some assured gains, facts that may be accepted, and principles that are certain. It is sometimes a little amusing, and oftener more pathetic, to hear men loudly proclaiming as a panacea something that the world has already tried out. Instead of marriage as we have it, they suggest a relationship which seems a rare and novel improvement, and appear amazed at their daring and original thinking. All who know anything of history know that it is only a reversion to type. The world has gone through that very stage, and nature in her ruthless way of eliminating the unfit has declared that there is no passage that way.

In the individual life also the law of fitness applies. Previous attainment conditions further progress. The future is what the past makes possible. Hope is indeed a good companion, but rather a poor guide. Idle hope, with no backing of experience and no reserve of knowledge, will only once more illustrate the parable of the blind leading the blind. Mere wishing will never find any open doors, or if it does will not know what to make of them. If it were only a choice between hope and fear, there would be no hesitation as to which were better ; since it is better even to be duped by hope than to be betrayed by fear. But we are not confined to these alternatives. Hope may be informed and inspired by experience, leading ever to new triumphs.

In Bunyan's classic allegory, perhaps the most attractive character is Hopeful, who made the way bright for his companion as well as for himself. There is also Mr. Fearing, one of the most troublesome pilgrims that Great-heart the guide ever had to do with. Great-heart's description of the poor chicken-hearted man is a masterpiece. He had lain roaring at the Slough of Despond for about a month, until one sunshiny morning he ventured and so got over, but when he was over he would scarce believe it. He had a Slough of Despond in his mind. At the entrance gate to the way and then at the Interpreter's door he behaved himself in the same fashion, shaking and shrinking, though he had the root of the matter in him ; for with all his trembling he would never turn tail and go back. " "When he was come to the entrance of the Valley of the Shadow of Death I thought I should have lost my man," says his guide. But Mr. Fearing did w r in through after a rather dismal journey, making mournful music for himself and others, only able to play on one string. In Bunyan's incomparable gallery of portraits there is another called Ignorance, a very brisk lad from the Country of Conceit. He seemed to find everything easy, and walked along comfortably with his mind full of good motions. When the other pilgrims asked for the grounds of his easy assurance and tried to inform hiin, he replied, " That is your faith but not mine, yet mine I doubt not is as good as yours, though I have not in my head so many whimsies as you." With all his sprightly assurance, poor Ignorance, who would not learn of any one, came to a bad end. When he came to the Door, it was closed to him.

The law of fitness means that to him that hath shall be given — a paradox which is true along the whole line of life. There is a correspondence between past achievement and future opportunity, between what a man has done and what he will get to do. There is even correspondence between what he has attempted and what he will be given to try, between the spirit of his past endeavour and the new occasions that will come his way. The man who has been faithful over a few things becomes the ruler over larger things. Whatever be the endowment of the talents, whether ten or five or one, if careful use of them is made, as a result larger opportunities are afforded, and the promise of a fuller life is held out. There comes a new accession of power, a new occasion for practice, a new enlightenment into opportunity, a new entrance into the spacious places of life.

This is the natural principle of promotion that we use in all our social affairs. If a man makes good in any line of business, he is not rewarded by being laid on the shelf, but by getting some bigger task to perform. Education is graded to lead on from achievement to achievement. The principle runs not only through the business and the intellectual life, but also through the moral life. Spiritual promotion goes far more surely on this natural principle than even promotion in business does ; for only to him that hath can it be given. This principle is in the nature of things ; it is the way the world is built. We may trust the moral world, the whole life of man, on that basis. It is the law of the Open Door. The soul that has sincerely tried to be faithful can look for other chances to be faithful. If we have walked according to our light, we will get fuller light. If we have entered into past opportunities, we may expect new ones. The moral world will not go back on us. The future will contain nothing that is inconsistent with the past. None can prevent us from entering into our inheritance, and we may go in boldly to take possession. The door is open.

Ill

Ah, the past, the pearl-gift thrown * To hogs ; time's opportunity we made So light of, only recognized when flown.

— Robert Browning.

g» <* TO

III

HERE is a slushy optimism, which lays hold of the hopeful point of view we are also recommending, but which pays no heed to any facts that seem to contradict it. From the last chapter, which states the laws of true hope, it will be seen that at least we do not seek to live in that Fools' Paradise. It is a poor ostrich trick to hide the head in the sand, thinking that if we refuse to see the impending evil it will cease to be. Yet it is a common trick. In the scholastic cant of our time many seem to think that the word " psychological " explains everything. As if things must be in reality as they are in our minds, and as if the universe accommodated itself to our view of it ! It is of course only the exaggeration of a fact. We do have power over our lives, and we live in a world which is largely our own creation. A bright and cheerf ul spirit will find much to feed cheer on. A gloomy and fearful nature, which expects trouble, will get a good deal of what it expects. But important as all this is for the happy conduct of life, it does not alter the fact that we are in a certain universal order, which does not budge for all our wishing. It will budge all right, when we know how to make it. Gravitation will not cease to work, merely because we would like to fly. The only way to fly is to use gravitation, by playing off against it some other forces we have learned.