Under the highest leadership

Front matter

BV

Under the hest Leadershi

John Douglas Adam

Contents

I. SEEKING GOD.

(i) What is Religion? (2) The Difficulty of Belief (3) The Difficulty of Unbelief (4) The Attitude of Doubt (5) The First Step — A Sense of Need (6) Mental Seriousness (7) Moral Seriousness

II. RECOGNIZING THE HIGHEST LIGHT UPON

CHAPTER I Seeking God

Our goal is the presence of Jesus Christ. But we cannot begin there. For there are some whose company we greatly desire, who do not yet even believe in a personal God, and they are unable at present to pursue their search for God along the definitely Christian way.

Still they are seekers, and insist upon starting with us from the spot where they stand. If you do not wish to travel with us over their bit of the road, meet us later ; in the meantime the rest of us will try to keep sympathetic step with our seeking friends. They ask for an elementary idea of the meaning of religion.

DAILY READINGS First Week, First Day: What Is Religion?

That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said,

For we are also his offspring.

Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man. — Acts 17: 27-29.

Religion is life. It is human life seeking God. It is not primarily a discussion. It is an instinct in our nature pressing beyond the visible world. This instinct for God springs from the most fundamental elements within us. It is one of the most persistent things in human history. It was not created by priests or theologians any more than flowers are created by botanists. The flower was before the botanist and religion was before the minister or the theologian. We seek God because we are what we are. As a human race we cannot help ourselves. Everything finds its progressive life and destiny through a relationship with something else, which is the counterpart of its own life. The fish thrives in the water and dies when taken out of it. And man finds himself in his relationship with the unseen. This is the message of history, it is the testimony of experience in the most vivid zone of human consciousness. We are conscious of a capacity for what is beyond the seen, and no intellectual or other difficulty can permanently silence our fundamental persistent instincts.

But belief in God has always been difficult for some people. Why?

First Week, Second Day: The Difficulty of Belief

Jehovah reigneth; let the earth rejoice; Let the multitude of isles be glad.

Clouds and darkness are round about him: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. — Psalm 97: 1, 2.

The writers of the Bible took belief in God for granted. It was the center of their thought and life and outlook. But they encountered clouds and darkness in their believing. Their faith was tried. It could not have been faith if it had not been severely tested. To sum up Browning's interpretation in "Christmas Eve and Easter Day" : Faith may be God's touchstone; God does not reward us with Heaven because we see the sun shining, nor crown a man victor because he draws his breath duly. For many minds belief in God has great difficulties in an age of triumphant science, and in a period of universal tragedy. No one who sympathetically tries to understand the modern mental struggle can make light of the many aspects of difficulty of belief in God. And yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect of modern intellectual difficulty has bee^n stated by Professor Hoffding of Copenhagen : "It is not so much the results at which science is arriving, or has arrived, which bring about the quarrel between science and religion, and condition the religious problem; but rather the whole trend of ideas, the entire habit of mind which empirical science has fostered in those who have developed under its influence." The supreme difficulty is not this or that point, but a habit of mind which remains

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when this or that point has been dealt with. Are the habits of our mind favorable to the solution of difficulty in belief t

What have been the difficulties in the way of belief in our own lives ?

First Week, Third Day: The Difficulty of Unbelief

Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

Who is this that darkeneth counsel

By words without knowledge?

Gird up now thy loins like a man;

For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the

earth?

Declare, if thou hast understanding.

Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it?

Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stone thereof. — Job 38: 1-6.

Belief has difficulties. But are not the difficulties of unbelief greater? The problem of difficulty was not solved for Tolstoi when he entered upon a period of skepticism. He realized that he went from comparative difficulty to superlative difficulty. For him unbelief not only robbed the universe of rationality, but it paralyzed his human enthusiasm. "I need only to be aware of God to live, I need only to forget Him or disbelieve in Him and I die. To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life. Live seeking God and then you will not live without God."

That which we all recognize to be of the highest worth in life loses its value without God behind all. Air. Balfour in his Gifford Lecture contends that if we would maintain the value of our highest beliefs and emotions we must find for them a "sufficient origin. "Beauty must be more than an accident. The source of morality must be moral. The source of knowledge must be rational.'' Which is more rational : to surrender to the difficulties of belief or of unbelief?

On which side do we encounter the greater difficulties?

First Week, Fourth Day: The Attitude of Doubt Now when John heard in the prison the works of the

Christ, he sent by his disciples and said unto him, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me. — Matt, n: 2-6.

With some, doubt is an attitude of intellectual adventure, with quite inadequate mental equipment for the experiment. They are like an inexperienced boy stranded on the road to the metropolis, who has slipped away from home without the ability to make his way; his pride will not let him return. He has neither a home nor a destination. There are others, unfortunately, to whom doubt is a place of refuge from an uncomfortable moral challenge. Doubt is welcomed as a relief. It is sought as an end in itself. The mind ceases to be open.

There are various kinds of doubt, and a variety of motives which prompt doubt. The passage of Scripture quoted above illustrates the highest kind of motive. The doubter in this instance hated to . doubt, but for the moment he felt driven to it. It was caused by a misunderstanding, but the motive was right. He did not glory in his doubt. He was distressed by it. He longed to believe. His attitude was honest, earnest, inquiring. Browning says : "If you desire faith, then you've faith enough." At any rate, doubt that strives to get beyond doubting is on the open road to knowledge.

Is my doubt a courageous attempt to reach the highest truth?

First Week, Fifth Day: The First Step— A Sense of Need

But when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight : I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. — Luke 15: 17-20.

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The way to God is through some sense of need. We all have the need, because it is part of our nature. The difference between some men and others is not that their fundamental needs are so different; it is rather that some know what their needs are and others do not. Some know, and some do not know, what is the matter with them. Some know that they cannot get what they need in the depths of their being except from God. Others are trying consciously or unconsciously to get the satisfaction they crave everywhere else than in God. And it takes a long time for very many to find out just what it is for which their nature is craving, and just where to go in order to get it. The supreme fundamental questions for us all are (i) What are our deepest needs? and (2) Where are these needs to be satisfied? It is a long story of disillusionment before most of us definitely face these two questions.

But until something forces us to realize that "our souls are restless till they find their rest" in God, our interest in religion is likely to be a superficial affair. Is there not something in our lives which is creating a deepened sense of need, a new responsibility, a difficult decision, a sense of shortcoming, the guileless request of a child for light?

First Week, Sixth Day: Mental Seriousness

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, trying him: Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment, — Matt. 22: 35-38.

"With all my mind." Mental seriousness is a condition of reality in religion. The quest for God demands the same mental attention as other pursuits command. And when there is a real sense of fundamental need for God, that sense of need will focus the mental interest, and deepen it. George J. Romanes, the brilliant scientist, illustrates this attitude of mental seriousness in his search for God. When he accepted evolution as a scientific dogma, he thought he must abandon his religious faith, and he withdrew his youthful book on prayer. But the question of a personal God was not closed for him. He maintained his attitude of deep seriousness, and discovered that he had made false conclusions in the realm of religion from physical scientific premises. v He came back to belief in God with a complete mental seriousness and candor, having realized that he had been altogether too dogmatic outside his scientific sphere. The story of his intellectual struggle is revealed in the book, "Thoughts on Religion," edited by Bishop Gore.

Do I know the meaning of mental seriousness as a principle in living? Am I willing to see this matter of doubt through in the spirit of seriousness?

First Week, Seventh Day: Moral Seriousness

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, He is gone in to lodge with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, To-day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost. — Luke 19: 5-10.

We mean here by moral seriousness the constant willingness to follow light at any price — to be ready, if need be, to decide and act immediately. Jacob was morally serious when he went forward to meet Esau. Great literature reveals supreme moments in which men create a crisis through heroically breaking away from accumulations of unreality in their lives. A man may crowd the moral reality of years into an hour of decision. In that courageous hour the fog is dispelled from the mental outlook, and new enthusiasms stir the soul. Many have become conscious of God through immediate obedience to light without coquetting with consequences.

Let us remember there is a mental seriousness which is not always associated with moral seriousness. They ought to go together. Because such is not invariably the case, it is disappointing in life sometimes to find mental ability associated with moral cowardice, the result being that the mental vision is narrowed. For what we see depends a great deal

SEEKING GOD [I-c]

on our own readiness to put everything we have into the game of life.

Where moral seriousness exists the mind is not only serious — it is reverent, and teachable. And reverence gives distinction and penetration to the intellect. Let us therefore seek God with our whole personality, and in this attitude we shall see farthest.

Can we do this?

Let us try to follow the road along which a thoughtful person of the twentieth century sometimes travels to a belief in God. And let us bear in mind, while it may not be the way by which we have come, it is not an imaginary path. While the facts may not all have come out of one experience, they are still facts from life.

First of all then, this person for some time previously had been shedding his former belief. It may be that his mind had been overloaded in earlier years with a lot of things which he accepted implicitly as all equally necessary to a real faith. As a student of the thought of his time, he had been quietly dropping one after another of those ideas ; and he was tempted to think that since so much was unnecessary, or absolutely false, therefore everything must go. That is the way in a panic, whether it is in the realm of ideas or in finance. So his reading, the movement of his mind, his mental environment, tended to urge him to sell out practically all his religious beliefs and to sell very cheaply. Many people do this ; they feel uncertain, then proceed to let everything go. * However, this man called a halt. He found he could not go on long without some grip upon the universe of which he was a part.

In the second place, he had become keenly aware of deeper needs in his life. He was possessed by a depressing solitude of spirit. A certain sense of aimlessness haunted his efforts — a tragic consciousness of dissatisfaction — a poignant feeling of personal unworthiness, and of inability to help others in their nobler longings. All these gave him not only a new mental seriousness, but a new impatience with an attitude of mere doubting. The needs of his life must get him some-

[I-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP

where beyond doubting. He found that the road to belief in God had very real difficulties, but also that unbelief as an alternative was far worse. And there the battle was fought for a time, back and forth like the ebb and flow of a tide.

Third, he gradually discovered that the deepened sense of need in his life had powerfully affected his mental outlook. That outlook became greatly changed from the time in which he merely played with the intellectual aspect of religious problems. He found that the mere intellectualist was only half a man, because the man who was living merely in the domain of thought, and not also of life, could not see truth accurately or proportionately. His moral needs had automatically affected his mental processes. He realized that his mental outlook was like looking through a telescope — it had several lenses, and it had various possible focuses — and that these conditions were determined by elements in personality deeper than thought; that what one's eyes saw was according to the quality and condition, the number and focus of the lenses of the telescope through which one mentally looked.

As the sense of the deepest needs of his life grew, the focus of his intellectual perceptions had changed, and changed very greatly, and changed very quietly. The change in mental outlook was not wrought by discussion, but by a change of focus in the elements of his being. So that he fell on this important discovery — that the condition of his entire personality profoundly and unconsciously affected his mental vision, and that in order to get the highest knowledge on the highest realities in the universe he must live as well as think. He must live heroically as well as think heroically. He must be reverent as well as daring. In this temper he realized that his former mere intellectuality was itself lacking in reasonableness because it faced a problem for which it had not the ability. He had tried to study the constellations with only one lens in his telescope.

II

But now, seeking anew for God with the earnest purpose of his whole personality, he found in the world outside of' himself, first of all, that sane men and women testified to knowing God, and to knowing Him in the most vivid zone of their consciousness. And, like Descartes, they could not

SEEKING GOD [I-c]

get away from trusting the reliability of their consciousness. He saw that history was human experience crystallized, and that human experience testified to the sense of God being ;a supreme human fact. He realized also that history is related to human experience as physical science is related to the facts of the world, and that therefore the message of history must be listened to in this matter. And when a scientific mind like the late William James gathered the testimony of God-conscious men and women into his book on "Varieties of Religious Experience,' , he felt that he was face to face with facts as real as those which a physical scientist gathered from nature.

Second, as his own moral sense of need grezv more vivid, he became profoundly azvare of the presence of a moral obligation within hint. He was conscious of being in the grasp of an obligation to be, and to do, and not to do, which drew him out beyond himself, beyond society, to a Presence. And that was not only his own experience. As a student of life and literature he found that great literature depicted men who were deeply conscious of moral obligations as reaching out into the unseen for solace, help, forgiveness. Those who have been the true prophets in literature have invariably interpreted the human sense of moral obligation as the movement of the human spirit towards its moral creator. They have depicted the intuitive human search for God as personality seeking personality, as moral need crying out for the source of its satisfaction and renewal.

"It is from the intense consciousness of our own real existence as persons that the conception of reality takes its rise in our minds. It is through that consciousness alone that we can raise ourselves to the faintest image of the supreme reality of God," says Mansel in his third Bampton Lecture.

Further, this seeker for God also saw that "the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." He not only found his own moral nature leading him out to the moral creator of it, but he saw that his own power of reasoning could understand the mind which is expressed in the laws of the physical world, and that consequently the rationality in himself and in nature must have a common origin behind nature. The mind that can see mind in the phenomena of nature demands mind as the first cause of both. Like Kepler sweeping the heavens

[I-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP

with his telescope, he could say of God, "I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee." It was idle to say that evolution explained all, for evolution is only a method of doing things. Evolution is only a secondary cause, but a second cause is not an answer to the instinctive human quest for a First Cause. And it does not matter how far in time you spread out secondary causes, the mind goes back of them all for a primary cause that is sufficient for such rational effects. When the rationality that is in man is able to read the rationality that is in nature, as one reads a book, it points to a rationality behind both. And when that is taken in conjunction with the moral nature, and instinct, and experience of man, the ultimate reality behind all phenomena becomes interpretable as God.

At last there came to our inquiring friend a personal sureness of God — not, indeed, a knowledge of God as he is, but a certain awareness of God which is, and ever has been, possible for those who seek after him. In the nature of the case, he could not know much concerning him, through the venture of the finite seeking to comprehend the infinite. But he was sure that there is a God. He was conscious of a moral presence, and that is much. It is the difference between light and darkness. It is the difference between hope and despair. That is much, but it is not enough. Just as in this world 'the sun proclaims the time of day, yet in order to live in the world as we find it, in order to meet its demands and engagements,, we are dependent upon instruments which bring down the time with exactness to meet our needs, so while it is a glorious fact to know that there is a God, we are dependent upon God's revelation of himself in order to get the knowledge and help of God into our finite lives and to get our bearings in our human and divine relations. That is just what many lack. They believe in God. They are in a real sense sure of God, but the message of the Infinite has not yet been translated to the needs of their hearts. The man who has come to believe in God has much. But he has not all that he needs. He has not a sufficient message for his own life or for other lives. He may have ideals, and try hard to live up to them. He has a sense of God, and a reverent readiness to do His will as far as he sees it. But he has a feeling that there is still much more divine light, and warmth, and power that should be his. This is where.

SEEKING GOD [I-c]

very many people stand religiously. They believe in God and are trying to be true to him. They struggle on bravely with great questions unanswered, deep needs unsatisfied, and large opportunities unused. They are genuine men and women and have a sense of God. But their knowledge is not clear, full, rich ; it does not reach and answer the fundamental cravings of the human heart. It is like the beginnings of the recognition of electricity, or of wireless communication. It is vague, uncertain. There is something there, men say. But it has not yet been definitely brought into the service of humanity. Benjamin Franklin with his kite recognizing the fact of electricity is one thing; the lighting, heating, and driving of factories by electricity is another thing. So there is an elemental knowledge of God and that knowledge which springs from taking advantage of the highest revelation of him.

CHAPTER II Recognizing the Highest Light upon God

Second Week, First Day : The Insufficiency of the Independent Search for God

Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be justified? Should thy boastings make men hold their peace? And when thou mockest, shall no man make thee

ashamed?

For thou sayest, My doctrine is pure, And I am clean in thine eyes.

But O that God would speak, And open his lips against thee,

And that he would show thee the secrets of wisdom! For he is manifold in understanding.

Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine

iniquity deserveth.

Canst thou by searching find out God?

Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? —

Suppose an electrical inventor were to assume to ignore I all that has taken place in electrical invention, he could not go far in his work for the practical benefit of the world. Suppose an architect were to ignore all the great architectural movements, he could not be of the highest service. The man who refused to use roads because they were old, and inglorious battles had been fought upon them, insisting upon making his own roads, would not have sufficient reason for his originality. And in religion men must take account of the fact that God has been revealing himself, and such revelation is in answer to human need. The history of religion cannot

THE HIGHEST LIGHT [II-2]

be ignored, especially the highest expressions of it, where it definitely professes to meet the fundamental needs of human nature. A man therefore takes his own guesses far more seriously in this respect than he dare in literature or invention or science, if he ignores the historical story of religion, and ventures to evolve his own. I suspect this is the position which Mr. H. G. Wells has taken in his brilliant and candid book, "God the Invisible King." But I also suspect that if Mr. Wells had not unconsciously borrowed from the' Christian consciousness of his time, it would not have been so easy for him to clothe his cc Finite God ,} with the qualities with which he endows hint. Even while he may repudiate the religious findings of the world about him, he cannot psychologically get away from making them part of the framework for his new venture. Can we dispense with the recognition of progress in any field, and especially in that one which deals with the highest equipment of character?

Second Week, Second Day: God Revealed Himself

Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse. — Rom. 1 : 19, 20.

"Two things there are," said Kant, "that fill me with awe — the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me."' Since the First Cause of the universe is a rational and moral personality, then he must express his life according to the content of his being. Every living thing expresses itself. Life means self-expression. And in manifesting himself he must necessarily ever completely transcend all the expressions of himself. Principal Cairo insisted that pantheism deified the finite world, for it locked God into his world ; while deism locked God out of his world, and, as Professor Seth observed, has thereby made God finite, "a more or less ornamental appendage in the scheme of things." That God is above his world is proclaimed by the highest historical religious sense, while his presence in the world is inevitable from the very fact of his transcendence. His universe is the expression of him. There is a progressive movement in the tII-3] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP

self-revelation of God. He has revealed himself in nature and in human nature. And we cannot get the niessage from God for man except as we put the emphasis upon the message that comes through man.

'-'No longer half akin to brute,

For all we thought and loved and did, And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed Of what in them is flower and fruit;

Whereof the man, that with me trod

This planet was a noble type,

Appearing ere the times were ripe, That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God which ever lives and loves,

One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves."

— Tennyson : "In Memoriam."

Second Week, Third Day: God Revealed Himself According to Human Capacity

Now there was a certain man in Caesarea, Cornelius by name, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always. He saw in a vision openly, as it were about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in unto him, and saying to him, Cornelius. And he, fastening his eyes upon him, and being affrighted, said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are gone up for a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa, and fetch one Simon, who is surnamed Peter: he lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea side. — Acts 10: 1-6.