You can find God

Contents

Introduction i

I. Do We Want to Find God? 5

II. What Is This Life Good For? 19

Introduction

IT IS high time that those who speak of the Christian gospel drop the apologetic tone. Our Lord is either the mighty Redeemer, living in the power of an end¬ less life, or he is simply a dead hero about whom the world in the present time will be little concerned. A Christ reduced to the stature of a noble man of an¬ cient times will interest nobody. Tire battle will rage, and it will be a fierce battle, between those who deny him and those who glory in him. The others will be brushed aside.

For himself and his own part in such a book as this the writer can think of a thousand apologies. For the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ he is not prepared to offer one single by-your-leave; it is still the power of God whereby alone mankind, church, each nation and the family of nations, can be delivered.

It is high time that Christian teachers ceased to offer the Word on the ground that it will be useful through aiding mankind to meet the perils of upheavals and revolutions in human society. It is not first of all to be commended as beneficial, but as true. Some de¬ fenders of the faith appear to argue that here in Christ is a valuable framework for human society. It is as when the squire used to go to church in order to set a good example and to preserve order in the parish!

Or as when a man is honest because it is the best policy. The gospel is not a device for preserving things as they are. It does bring healing for nations, as well as for individual souls, but never for those who seek to use it and not first of all yield to its demands. When they would have made Jesus king, he withdrew himself from the midst of them. That he will still do, if we think that we shall use him.

It is high time that in our discussions of religion we be not afraid of the name of God. We have yielded too long to the defect of our religious thinking, that we are much more willing to talk of synagogics — that is, of things which concern the organization of the church — than of God. As a character in Mr. Hum¬ bert Wolfe's satire says:

“ When He ventures to intrude He doesn't seem the Bible’s voice of thunder So much as a distressing social blunder.”

The time for this cowardice, which is falsely called reverence, is past; and it is a cause for thankfulness that among the youth of today there is a growing readi¬ ness to demand from Christian teachers that they be not apologetic upon the one theme which matters. They ask of the church: “ What have you to tell us about God? That is your business! ”

It is high time that we made once more our ap¬ peal to the individual soul. “ Individualism is dead,” many maintain. “ There is no life which is not lived in community. There is no such thing as a churchless Christianity.” All these things are true. But it does not follow that there are not decisions of critical im¬ portance to be made in the individual mind and con-

Introduction 3

science. It still is of importance if somewhere a Saul of Tarsus sees a light brighter than that of noon, or if a John Wesley has his heart strangely warmed. This book is written in the belief that the reader, without tarrying for any, can himself go out in search of God; and that once more the Lord says: “ What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”

It is high time that we listened once more to the words of St. Paul: “ Wherefore he saith. Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”

It is high time that in the music of the Christian church we hear again in such words the sound of the silver trumpet. The days are over in which any other summons will be heard by the desperate children of men. But times are such that the brave will welcome the hazards and the terrors of the conflict. In the tumult Christ their Lord will draw near to them, and with him they will walk unafraid into the unknown future.

I

DO WE WANT TO FIND GOD?

WE CAN find God, but do we want to find him?

It cannot be said that all men are seeking for him, nor of any man that he is always seeking for him. At the most it can be claimed that every man at some time in this life has believed in a God who is found by those who seek him, and few men have not set out upon that search, even if they have taken only a few steps.

It is well not to take too much for granted. We have to deal with man as he is, and not set up an imaginary being, either too spiritual on the one hand or too animal on the other. We must begin where we are. “ If it is to Dublin you are going,” the Irish¬ man said to the inquirer, “ I wouldn't start from here.” If it is our purpose to look for God, we may find it hard to start from here. We might wish for some other starting point; but there is none. The first of all conditions in this as in all journeys is that, being what we are, we should deal with things as they are and set out from where we are.

Nothing is more fatal than to play tricks with the factors which make up a problem. The schoolboy who juggles the working of a sum in order to reach the answer which he has looked up, is simply wasting his time. He will either remain in ignorance, or have 5 to return to the very beginnings of his subject. We, too, if we would enter upon the search for God, must not cook up the answer. This we do if we set up for ourselves an imaginary being who has no relation to the real man, and follow his search.

For it is we who must seek. We — not the seekers of other days with the facts as they dealt with them; not those spiritual athletes whose records we can study in biographies; not the mystics, who must have God; not Enoch, who walked with him, nor Moses, who spoke with him as a man speaks to his friend. Our case is not theirs; and the question is whether we, not such as they, can find God. We, as we are today, not as we were in other years; not as we might have been today if we had lived differently. We, with our past written and never to be unwritten. We, with our master interests already determined, with grooves in our thinking, now both deep and wide; with our char¬ acters shaped so that our friends make allowance for us and say harshly or tolerantly, “ We must not forget that he is timid, or selfish, or quick-tempered, or selfindulgent/' Do we, being such as we are, want to find God?

When Jesus called Simon to follow him, he did not call a man about whom nothing distinctive could be said. It was not man, but this man whom he called. He saw in Simon an individual unit, waiting for that call. In Simon lived the memory of his race. He was what he was because patriarchs had fought with the angel of God for God's blessing, and seers had passed into the thick darkness where God was; a thousand lives lived on in him. Simon was not one of a crowd, indistinguishable from the rest. He was now to make a new beginning, but he did not cast off his character and disposition. He was that Simon who had been an impulsive boy, and a man rash and easily moved, and he would still be the same. So we see him at Caesarea Philippi saying at one moment, “ Thou art the Christ,” and at the next, when his Master spoke of the cross, becoming the spokesman of the Tempter, “ Be this far from thee.” Simon was himself as he had been and he was now also a dis¬ tinctive being who held the key to many lives. Be¬ tween the past ages and the hidden future there was this being. Jesus sought him. He had to start from where he was, being the man that he was. So he left his nets and followed him.

The mystic will not be interested in a book with the title. You Can Find God . Of course he can find God. But the spiritual man, mystic or not, does not claim any special table for himself. He does not set himself above the others. He does not claim a place at the right hand of the King. Why should he? He knows that in the sight of the eternal Lord men are not far removed from one another. From that height the low foothills and the snow-clad mountaintops are not so distant from each other as they look to us. The spiritual man does not give himself airs. He seeks no private entrance to the temple. What he has found anyone may find. What has he that he did not first receive?

But it is not with such a man, disciplined already by long years of hardship on pilgrimage, that this book has to do. He may think of himself as on our level, but we cannot think of ourselves as on his. Nor can we take shelter behind him and play at being like him, using his words and borrowing his visions. We must not live on borrowed capital. “ Ye hypocrites, ye actors,” Jesus said, and he spoke not to Pharisees alone. We may miss God through pretending that we have found him.

It is with us, as we are in our present condition, that this book has to do.

The Christian faith is not meant for the mystic and the spiritual only. There is not, and there can never be, an inner area reserved for the few, while the many must be left to content themselves with an outer realm. It is perhaps a pity that when we meet a Christian we will call him a mystic. No church is worthy of the name which has nothing to give to the unspiritual. The Lord of the church was known as the friend of publicans and sinners, and the church is not above its Lord. Men have left certain churches because they found everything in their worship and their com¬ munity life arranged on the supposition that everyone who took part was spiritual. Their language was in the key of an unearthly devotion. Hymns told of aspirations which only the saints in their hours of vision could feel. The language, long after the re¬ vival is over, is kept in the key set in seasons of revival. How could those who do not share such raptures be anything but interlopers, like strangers who find them¬ selves by some error in a select house party? The church is no church which provides only for a house party of saints.

It is no defense of such a church to appeal to the New Testament; unreal language is often used of the early churches which are described in its pages. But however high their standards it is plain that they made provision for the unspiritual man who had yet to make the first steps in the Way, and they were long-suffer¬ ing with him. In what church, except in the mission field, could we meet today saints as imperfect, and indeed as unspiritual, as some of those with whom St. Paul worshiped in Corinth? The early church was a school for saints, but a school with many departments and with provision for backward scholars.

But however strange and embarrassing a spectacle the plain man may think himself to be in some churches, he need have no fear that he is strange or unwanted in the presence of the Lord of the church. Christ's word is still, “ Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out this is the open invitation which is in the very character of the gospel. It is not to the spiritual genius, but to every man, that the good news is brought, and the Lord Christ still hides many things from the wise and prudent and reveals them to babes. There are strange warnings that those are last here which shall be first.

We need not pretend to be other than we are. We may even discover as we proceed on the journey that the spiritual man is not one who is enriched by a sixth sense, but that he is very much like ourselves in his gifts. He is not in a class by himself. What he has become we may become. In any case, without wait¬ ing for exalted moods and without hiding our real character, we can begin the search for the living God.

It is not a God undefined for whom we have to seek, but this God; it is not anyone in general who is called to the search, but you.

io

Where we are: that is our starting point. Simon and Andrew started from their fishing nets, Levi from his customs table. It may be said that they left their old ways not because they were seeking, but because they had found their Lord. “ We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke/' they said. But their obedience to the call was also the beginning of a life of adventure in which they were hammered and forged into instruments for the divine purpose. They, being such as they were, rose up and followed their Lord. The one condition they were ready to meet: They did want to seek; they did desire above all things to find God. They were at the beginning of a new life, pilgrims and seekers always.

Do we want to find God? From among those who make no claims to “ being religious," as they put it, and are frankly unspiritual, there are many answers to this question.

One man says: “ I have never given it much thought. I leave such matters to others. If I go to church, I go in the hope that I may find some help in doing my duty and in living a better life, but I do not think of seeking for God — that is above me; such words only suggest memories of the Scriptures or the language of hymns or sermons. I cannot honestly use them."

Another answers: “ On the contrary, I do my best now to escape from all such thoughts. I remember a long time ago hearing preachers who stirred me for a short time; but that passed, and I have no desire to be moved again as I was then. Moody nearly had me once. But I got away and thought twice over the matter. Besides, it is on the cards that there may be nothing in religion at all. We shall die, and we may

Do We Want to Find God?

never know that we are dead.” How much of such talk is bravado we cannot say; but no one need go far to hear it.

Still another man says that his hour of interest in religion came with the uprising of love within him in the days of youth.

“ Love wakes men once a lifetime each;

They lift their heavy lids and look.

And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,

They read with joy, then shut the book.” *

Love, he will explain, cast a glorious image on the screen of the universe; and this he took to be God.

Another has become entirely absorbed by the prac¬ tical interests of his life. Slowly his outlook has been changed. His morning paper is always opened to the financial news first of all. Markets, amusements, sport — these are his real interests. He does not give him¬ self much time to think of religion. It sounds too much like something in the air. One world at a time, and this world, after all, is not a bad place. If there should prove to be a spiritual world he will come to know it in good time, and the God who rules it will not be too hard upon him; God will forgive — “ that is his business.”

Another makes a working arrangement: so long as he can keep the thought of God confined to the inner area of the individual life, he will gladly acknowledge him. But he must be allowed to say for himself what manner of God he is prepared to accept. He must be left free, for example, to say to any prophet, or apostle, or minister of the church that he cannot accept his

* Coventry Patmore.

teaching if he preaches a God who takes sides in prac¬ tical matters of the business or social order. Religion, yes; but religion which accepts the present order of things; religion within the framework of things as they are.

But we cannot so “ halve the gospel of God's grace we cannot make terms with God. The present order may be well suited to our tastes; but what right have we to assume that the Lord of the world makes special provision for us? Why should an order be preserved because it suits us? We cannot so limit God. If we want to find a God whose ways are designed to suit our needs, we shall look in vain.

Such answers reveal clearly how mistaken it is to sup¬ pose that men are either seeking for God or are miser¬ able without him. No one verdict can be given. On the one side we have the words of St. Augustine that man is never at rest till he finds rest in God; on the other, the evidence everywhere that it is possible to pass through years of life without troubling about God at all. On the one hand there are those who find the peace which the world cannot give; on the other, those who find the peace which the world can and does give.

There are two kinds of conversion. There have been some, indeed, who have been converted not to God, but from him. One such man expressed regret in his old age that he had spent so many years without knowing the delights of a godless life. Can such a verdict be possible? We must remember that in this present life we have not enough evidence to make a verdict on life certain and unanswerable. We must not credit a man with the right to pronounce finally upon his own policy. It may prove true — we believe that it will —that the man who has lived godless without any distress of mind has missed the purpose of this life: he will know this afterward, but for the present he does not know.

Finding God, or trying to find him, is not a matter of what is called happiness. In the story of his life the Danish poet j0rgensen tells of a conversation between a freethinker and a French Catholic, a well known Parisian advocate.

“ You are fortunate in being a believer,” the freethinker said.

“ You are quite mistaken, sir. One is not at all fortunate when one is a believer. It is the great¬ est misfortune that can happen to you, to become a Christian. . . . You are fortunate, who do not believe in anything! You order your life as you please and at the same time keep your good con¬ science, and very possibly you will get into heaven at last, as it is presumably through no fault of yours that you are a freethinker and a heathen. We others have received the gift of faith and the responsibility it entails, and it often weighs so heavily upon us that we nearly faint under it, as under the burden of a cross.” *

A paradox is presented here which a French thinker would love. It is not the whole truth; but if by “ fortunate ” we mean what the ordinary man means by that word, it is true that the man without faith

is often more fortunate than are those who enter the kingdom of heaven. Much harm is done by those who always speak as if the unbelievers or skeptics were miserable. They used to delight in making legends to prove it. It is certainly not true to the facts of human society that mankind may be divided into the fortunate who believe and the miserable who do not believe. It is enough to say that no man must estimate the value of his life until all the evidence is before him. He may be happy enough now, but is that enough to know? In one of his sudden flashes of insight St. Augustine, telling of his early life, cried out, “ But was it life, O my God? ”

How are we to account for the atheist? By that term is meant not the serious thinker who has con¬ vinced himself that there is no God, but the man who has based his practical life on the thesis: “ There is no God/' The atheist practices the absence of God. If he seeks anything at all it is to escape from the last traces of faith in God. He is not by any means un¬ familiar in our society. The atheist of the school of Ingersoll or Bradlaugh seldom raises his voice in these days; the atheist who is in flight from God is a com¬ mon figure.

The very name, “ God," has linked to it certain vague thoughts. It does not suggest anything which the atheist would care to know better. It speaks of a discipline which he resents. If he were to find the God of whom he thinks hazily, he might be called to make changes and even revolutions in his way of living. So he becomes a pilgrim — a pilgrim hurrying away from God.

Or he may be simply lazy or lacking in enterprise.

He goes the way of least resistance. That is not hard to understand. Most men are tempted to settle down in life. A few climb the heights, but most are happy enough to look at them on the screen or on the map. We are proud that we belong to the race which pro¬ duced Columbus. But the world waited a long time for him. There was one Columbus, and the others were content to leave the voyaging to him.

“ What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy,

Judged that the earth like an orange was round?

None of them ever said. Come along, follow me,

Sail to the west and the east will be found/'

It was not by processes of contemplation that America was discovered. The thinking had to be proved in action. There is always the temptation in religion to take the easy ways and to use the heroic speech without paying the price.

We may refuse to seek because we are not disposed to run the hazards or pay the price. The search for God is not to be undertaken as though it were a matter of book learning or speculation. A survey of the facts with which we have to do does not justify any simplification.

It is important in answering the question, “ What is man really like? ” and therefore, “ What am I? ” to remember the twofold character of human life. We have no right to forget that St. Francis and David Livingstone were men, and in a human life won their place among those of whom the world was not worthy, and of whom it is said that God is not ashamed to be called their God. On the other hand, there is the great multitude of those, also in our human company,

V who do not aspire to or set out upon any such ad¬ ventures. We may be among them. We must not forget that we have fallen below our full stature. We may rise with Christ, but we may also escape from him. We are of the same family as St. Paul and Nero, as St. Francis and Borgia.

Thinking soberly is a first condition of our search. Soberly does not mean despairingly. This book would not be written if there were not in the very heart of man a capacity for this search. The question whether or not we can find God would not have been asked.

There are first of all two judgments to be rejected. Man is not to be treated either as a being who can hold his own before God with head lifted high and face unashamed, or as a being who is without any way by which God can approach him, without any language in which God can speak to him. Man can be neither presumptuous nor despairing. In him little¬ ness and greatness meet. He is not to be considered either a seeker always after God or one who cannot seek for him at all. It is wiser to keep to the bold paradoxes of Holy Scripture and say at once that man is little and great, a sinful creature who may become one of the sons of God; he is lost, and yet may be found.

It may be against despair that we have to fight most resolutely. We may doubt human capacity for this endeavor. We may doubt man.

There is a legend of Moses told in Hebrew lore. Moses had asked of the Lord of the World why he could not cross the border and enter into the Promised Land.

Then God said: "Thou hast doubted me: I forgive thee. Thou hast doubted thyself: I for¬ give thee. But thou hast doubted Israel, thou hast doubted mankind, wherefore thou shalt not enter into this land of my promise. Israel is laden with defilements; but whence comest thou if it be not from Israel? . . . Men are cowardly, per¬ verse, envious, lustful, lying, thieving, murder¬ ous and blaspheming: but what art thou, if not a man? What thou hast comprehended, me, wherefore should not the others one day com¬ prehend it also? ” *

Wherefore! Wherefore, if others like ourselves have journeyed and have seen and marveled, should not we also? True, we are conscious of all that makes it hard; but so were they. They attained; that is no rea¬ son for presumption, but it is a reason why we should not despair.

From within our mysterious nature come voices which vary in clearness and power. Some are only like echoes with a dying cadence. But there is one call to which we cannot always close our ears. Sometimes it brings to us a start of surprise, but something within us answers to it. “ Before thou didst belong to this world of time, thou wert mine. I have graven thee upon mine hands, thou art mine/'

If there were no such voice that we could hear and answer, how would the appeal of Book or Church, of Word or Sacrament come home to us? It is our confidence and our hope that we can hear. There is an inner land beneath the surface of life, like the con-

* Edmond Fleg, Life of Moses. English translation (Victor Gollancz), p. 213.

tinents below the sea . . . “ the dark-grey level plains of ooze, where the shell-burr’d cables creep/' It is because there is such a hidden life that the call to set out in search of God can be made with confidence. Whatever life may seem to be on the surface, it is not with that we have to do. However much, on the evidence of his outward life, man may despair of him¬ self and of Israel, there is still the world within him with which he must reckon. He may keep the door of his life barred, but he will not escape from the sound of the knocking upon the door.

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II What Is This Life Good For ?

WE MAY or we may not seek for God, but we shall have to seek for something, or cease to be human.

When the call of God comes to men it is not the first call or the only call that reaches them. In this respect it is in keeping with their character. They are not homekeepers now for the first time called to leave their firesides, not knowing which way they are going. Religion is not against the grain of human life.

It is not open to anyone to say, “ I am no seeker; why, then, should I seek God? ” He may say, “ I am seeking other things and I am not prepared to turn my energies to this search/' He may not say, “ I am go¬ ing to stay at home; why, then, invite me to seek for God? ” He can only say, “ I have chosen some other road; I am not free to take this."

It may be argued that this human life has no pur¬ pose at all, that the race is one without a starting point and without a goal, without penalties and without re¬ wards. There have always been those who are con¬ demned to such skepticism, but man has always found it difficult to rest content with such a verdict. If it is an idiot's story, why does the idiot know this? When the idiot knows he is an idiot, is he any longer an idiot?