Discourses

Prefatory Note

This volume is published by a committee of the friends and parishioners of Mr. Hall. To their request for leave to print a selection from his sermons, heretofore refused, he at last consented a few months ago, on his departure for Europe, when retiring from the ministry.

The committee are well assured that these pages win be precious to many a reader ; for they reveal the high qualities of character, thought, and feeling, which endeared Mr. Hall to his people in an ever-increasing measure of gratitude, confidence, affection, and deep respect.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, October, 1893.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Supernatural i

II. Not to be Ministered unto 14

I. The Supernatural

" As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." — Isa. lv. 9.

I find a certain perplexity in beginning my discourse this morning. I can find no text at hand exactly suited to my theme. I wish to speak of the supernatural, but I look through the Bible in vain to find that word. Neither Old Testament nor New contains it. They seem to know nothing of the supernatural. Or shall we say that they know of nothing but the supernatural, and have no more occasion to speak of it than we at noon-day to call attention to the sunlight? In any case, the omission is a significant one, and carries us back to a time when the great problems of the present hour had no existence for the popular mind, if even for philosophic speculation, when the vast sphere of secondary causes which now presses in between the soul and its thought of God was wholly unknown, and when the discussion which I bring before you to-day of the difference between the natural and the supernatural would have seemed utterly gratuitous and irrelevant. For us, however, these two words do exist:

they play a definite part in our daily speech, and it becomes necessary for us now and then to ask ourselves what ideas we must attach to them. Natural and supernatural, — for what do these terms stand?

Nature faces us on every hand; not perfectly understood, her laws but recently and partially discovered, not yet, perhaps, what she will by and by become, — a process rather than a result, — yet so consistent a system of causes and effects, embracing in one scheme the phenomena of earth, air, and skies, that we do not hesitate to call her by name, and to live in constant recognition of her laws. Nature, to use a definition which all would accept, is the realm of discovered facts and laws.

But Nature does not seem to cover everything. On every hand she borders upon a region whose facts we have not discovered and whose laws we do not understand. Beyond the known is the sphere of the unknown. Nature seems to us at times but a petty province, bounded on all sides by vast spaces, unexplored and trackless. We touch this unknown world at every point, not in spiritual matters only by any means, but in material as well. The chemist finds it when, after any analysis, he asks himself how any one of the elements he has employed performs its results, not what it can do, but how it does it. The botanist finds it the moment he inquires what power within the acorn it is which makes it produce an oak, and not an elm or pine. The astronomer finds it when he asks wherein the force which we call gravitation resides, not what its laws are, but what in itself it is. The evolutionist finds it when he tries to span the gulf which thus far separates dead substance from living, or matter from mind.

Even apart from spiritual laws, therefore, or the hidden ways of the soul, and without the aid of moralist or theologian or philosopher, we should discover, and do hourly discover, this outlying, all-encircling sphere, which no line of ours measures, which no analysis of ours can resolve, which no known laws control, which no imagination penetrates. This we are taught to call the realm of the supernatural. Below nature (if we may so speak), it is the abode of those impalpable forces by which all things live; around nature, it constitutes that unconquered province which grows only larger with all our encroachments upon it; above nature (as its name exactly indicates), it opens that holier sphere of being to which the soul's unsatisfied instincts imperiously point, which is to us as real and abiding as life itself, and which we reverently term divine. And this thought of a higher sphere it is, let me add, this idea of a holiness, beauty, and truth as yet unreached, this faith in things unknown and infinite, which lends to life its surpassing mystery, and fills the soul, under all disheartenments, with invincible strength. Very different would our earthly existence be if, outside our daily barterings and traffickings, did not lie this region of the unknown, the region of infinite possibilities.

Natural and supernatural, — no names could perhaps be better; certainly there are none other at hand to indicate the two realms which I have endeavored to distinguish, and which you understand better than any words of mine can describe them. Yet the very attempt at definition proves at once, as you have felt all along, how poor the terms are at best, and how vague is our notion of what we are trying to express. The sharper your attempted distinctions here, the more inadequate your terms become, and the more superficial your knowledge proves itself. The more intently you gaze upon the supposed boundary line of which I have spoken, the more dim and uncertain it grows; and, if we try to fix it positively and finally, the brain fairly grows giddy before the task is begun. A sharp line of demarcation separates the ocean from the land, the mountain peak from the sky, or the moon's disk from the heavens behind it; but to determine just where Nature ends and the supernatural begins is like tracing the edge of the summer cloud or separating tint from tint in the sunset sky. Try to draw such a line, I beg you, and tell me how far you can follow it, and just where it carries you. It changes, you will find, as rapidly as the summer cloud. Where it lies to-day it has never lain before. Where would Nature's boundary line have run a century ago? Would it have included, for instance, the transmission of messages across the seas, the hourly converse of Europe and America, the spoken message from city to city?

Would Nature have acknowledged as her own the necromancer who soothes your agonizing pain at a touch and blots whole hours out of your existence, or would she have left him to the company of wizards and enchanters? Or, go two or three centuries farther back, what would she have done with the astronomer who anticipated the hour and moment of the sun's eclipse and boldly foretold the appearance of a new planet, the eye which read in the buried rock the age of the universe, the hand which stereotyped for you, in an instant, the living features of your friend, or the letter of many thousand words carried beneath the bird's wing into the beleaguered city? We know on which side of the line stood the gods of Troy, lending their clumsy aid of monstrous serpent or wooden horse to the encompassed Trojans; where would have stood the workers of these vaster miracles for the besieged Parisians of to-day? Or, go still further back, if you will, century by century, it is ever the same. Nature dwindles as you go. Faster and faster its boundary recedes and its circle lessens, till, as you look, Nature vanishes wholly from your sight and the supernatural is everywhere. Yes, there was a time, indeed, in Greece and Rome, in Egypt and Judaea, when Nature was unknown, and when powers of another sphere, intervening everywhere, caused the grass to grow and the rain to fall, the sun to rise and the disease to abate, the lightning to flash in anger and the bow to span the heavens with its arch of peace, caused the waters to gush from the solid rock, and the waves of the mighty sea to recede before the steps of the retreating host.

Or try, if you choose, to trace Nature's line as it runs to-day, and tell me how far you can follow it or through exactly what regions it carries you. Does it separate visible things from invisible? Where, then, will you place the force which bursts the seed or stirs the sap with the returning warmth of spring? It is not visible, is it therefore supernatural? Does it separate purely human acts from divine, — in other words, acts which we can explain from those which we cannot? But from what spaces, pray, do I call these thoughts to me, wise or foolish as they may be, or by what power send the brain's message to the hand as I write? Does it separate will from law, spontaneous from involuntary action? Where, then, shall we assign our passions or our habits, affection or memory or remorse? Does it separate matter from mind or body from spirit? Why, then, does the blood bound in your veins as you see an unjust or cruel deed, or why does the brain give way under the intensity of thought? Some theologians of the day would fain class all these mental processes as supernatural, from sheer necessity of drawing the traditional line somewhere. Shall we rule them all out of Nature's territory, and retain within it only what is paltry and common?

No: the task, as it seems to me, is hopeless. This is a line which cannot be drawn, try as long and hard as you will. Following no divisions which human thought can trace, running never between, but always through, separating nowhere, but penetrating everywhere, cutting asunder what seems one flesh and blood, and bringing together what seems world-wide apart, it eludes and mocks me, until in very despair I give up the pursuit forever.

But why give it up entirely, you ask, simply because you cannot trace it throughout? Certain moments in the world's history there have assuredly been when its presence could be distinctly seen, certain events, about eighteen hundred years ago, which will give us all the knowledge of the supernatural we can ask. Why not turn to them, and find your definitions there?

True, we find there a very sacred story, which no one has succeeded yet in wholly interpreting. The birth of a new religion, the entrance into the world of an ideally holy life, — what could be called supernatural, if not this? No one anticipated or predicted the birth of Christianity, nor has any historian ever yet revealed to us the exact causes which produced it. What was there, indeed, in the Jewish or pagan life of the early Roman Empire, its formalities, its frivolity, its sensualism, what in its art, its religion, or its philosophy, which could of itself have produced a Jesus of Nazareth? Ah! but the moment you ask this question you must ask many another. What was there in the atmosphere of the fourteenth century or fifteenth, what was there in the morals or the religion of the Medicis or the Borgias, what was there in that profoundly unspiritual age, among frivolous and dissolute courts, when Christianity, at its lowest ebb, was turning back to Paganism for the inspiration it had lost, which could have produced the choicest fruits of religious art which the world has ever seen? What was there in the land of Queen Elizabeth, in the times of a Leicester or a Bacon, what in the literature of England or of the world down to the sixteenth century, to have produced a Shakspere? Inexplicable, indeed! but who can explain these things? Who has ever foretold the coming of genius, or, when it had once arrived, has shown whence or how it came? I do not mean that the cases are the same. It is not the question whether the one matches the other, or whether the artist or poet is as great a wonder as the apostle or the saint. The only question is whether the one can be traced any more easily than the other to its natural source, whether genius can be shown any more readily than sainthood to be the normal flowering of humanity. And if it cannot, where is the line which separates the natural from the supernatural ?

But what do you mean, you may here ask. If even that sacred story, holiest and most beautiful to us in all the past, has nothing in it which distinguishes it definitely from other events of the world's history, then all difference disappears between natural and supernatural, does it not, and they become one and the same? Is that what you would say?

Exactly. You anticipate my thought, and have reached already my conclusion. I say that the distinction between natural and supernatural is purely artificial and fictitious. I say that the terms create a difference which cannot be proved to exist, and introduce a confusion into the universe which is wholly needless. I hold that, whether it be true or not that such a difference exists, no such distinction has ever been found; and, until it is found, it is wholly superfluous to assume its existence. I say that, as I look around me, I see Nature everywhere and I see God everywhere. Nay, I find everything full of Nature and everything full of God; and, until I am compelled by evidence that is insurmountable, I see no reason to parcel off any scraps of Nature's boundless territory and declare that there God is not. I hold that these two terms were invented not to denote any actual knowledge, but solely to cover our ignorance; and that, when we say, Up to this point Nature goes, and beyond lies the supernatural, we mean only, Up to this point we have discovered God's laws, and beyond it we have not. Here is the known, there is the unknown. If we must keep these words at all, Nature herself is supernatural, and the supernatural is another name for Nature. Nature is full of miracles to overflowing, yet are all these miracles her own. "Enter," said the old philosopher, "for here, too, are gods! "

And I say, furthermore, that this doctrine which I am urging is one of the plainest doctrines of

Christianity herself, and that the whole of Christendom in its nobler moods avows this faith, only that, the moment it has confessed it, it proceeds forthwith, as though startled at its temerity, to modify and disown it. I say that there is not a Christian church to-day which has not in the most explicit terms acknowledged all that is here claimed; acknowledged that "there is one God, who is above all and through all and in all " ; and that, when it proceeds further and declares God present in certain souls and by implication absent from others, peculiarly present in certain times and places and by implication less present in others, or when it speaks of "the miracles" of eighteen hundred years ago, as if there were no miracles beside, it is false to its own higher thought and repudiates its own ideal.

"Natural and supernatural," indeed! You cannot make this distinction without banishing God from some part of his universe and pronouncing something undivine. "Miracles of the past," indeed ! but what shall we say of these miracles of the present? Men choose to ignore them, I am aware; to make little of them, that they may make much of something else. I am content to make much of these. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet: the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Uncover thy head. Wouldst thou behold a miracle? Here it is. Look at this tiny being which has just found its way into the world. Whence came it, and where slumbers now the mind

THE SUPERNATURAL II

which by and by is to shine through these vacant eyes and kindle its whole being into intelligence and life? Look at that motionless form. Where now is the soul that a moment ago was there? Is it gone? And, if so, when and whither? But a few hours ago you were yourself wrapped in unconsciousness : what roused you from your oblivion or brought back your lost intelligence? Birth, death, sleep, — not the whole universe nor the whole past, not Judaea nor Galilee, ever witnessed a miracle greater than these. But surely they differ, you say : these come every day, the others only once in the centuries. They differ? Yes, no doubt; as the comet differs from the planet, as the aurora differs from the moonlight, as the meteor flashing across the September sky differs from gentle Sirius shining serenely through the winter night. Why strive to put God as far as possible away ? Why so eager to prove that he is less near you or less mighty now than he was many centuries ago? Is life so very holy that you can afford to explain away the tokens of a diviner Presence?

Natural or supernatural. Use whichever name you choose. It matters little, for words are but words. It is the same universe viewed from the one side or the other, the same shield seen from behind or from before. But do not fancy that the two names mean different things. Do not persuade yourself that the boundary which divides these two provinces is real. It is imaginary, and it changes with every hour. Look backward, as we have seen, and the bounds of Nature shrivel from age to age, till Nature vanishes wholly from your sight, and the supernatural takes its place. Look forward, and the supernatural recedes, while Nature widens. Nature widens from day to day, invading constantly the realm of the supernatural, and winning province after province from its grasp. What yesterday was unexplored to-day is freely visited, what yesterday was a mystery to-day is understood, what yesterday was impossible to-day we quietly achieve. Swiftly and uninterruptedly the boundary of the natural advances, the boundary of the supernatural retreats.

"Then God is vanishing from his universe," men complain. Ah, no! they know not what they say. God is revealing himself more and more. For his commonest, acts, as we see them, are fuller of miracles than were the special providences of the past. Not the supernatural is less, but Nature is greater than we thought. The earth to-day is more wonderful than were the heavens once, the laws of to-day more marvellous than the miracles of yesterday. The skies which Moses adored and whose stars Abraham counted were a baby's toy compared with those which the telescope will sweep to-night, and whose remotest systems the astronomer's curious eye is searching this very hour. Nature is greater than we have thought. To measure her is to measure the whole thought of God. Unknown and unmeasured as yet are the powers which Nature carries in her bosom, and the generations still to come are to witness her endless triumphs. The future belongs to her.

"To Nature nothing is impossible," is the word of one of the foremost living disciples of science, upon whose head therefore rest most of those reproaches which science seems called upon in every age to meet. No truer word has been spoken in our generation. "To Nature nothing is impossible." God's established laws are sufficient for all his works, and adequate to all his purposes. The system of the universe is complete in itself, and needs no addition to its machinery and no reenforcement of its powers. Nature asks us, if we would honor God, not to find out something holier than herself, but to find out that she is holy. It is Nature that is holy. It is Nature that is divine. It is Nature, if you choose, that is supernatural. The natural and the supernatural are one.

II. Not To Be Ministered Unto

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." — Matt. xx. 28.

Yes, every word, every act, was a ministry, as the story of that life is here told us. Every tone of his voice seems to have lightened some sorrowing heart or freed some imprisoned soul from its fetters. His very presence carried benediction with it. His life was a continued ministry. And it was such by its own necessity. Not as though he chose it should be so, as though he debated with himself whether he would serve his fellow-men or not, go forth to meet persecution and contumely or lead a quiet and peaceful life, speak the truth that was in him or withhold it; but simply because there was that in him which must needs find expression, because feelings so deep and tender must assert themselves, because sympathies so broad and generous cannot confine themselves within the heart, because the great power of blessing or capacity of action is its own incentive to beneficence or action. Such, I say, is the divine necessity laid upon every great soul. It comes into the world to minister. It has powers within it which force it to action. It is too loving to be waited upon. It is too conscious of strength to ask for strength. It sees too plainly what it may contribute to the world, to make itself a burden on the world.

It would be pleasant and instructive enough to trace the illustration of this truth simply in the life here before us; but let us turn first for a moment to find its meaning elsewhere, to see how far in other lives the same truth holds good. All life, it is true, is a mutual giving and receiving; and the highest can be helped, in a certain sense, by the lowest. If all ministered, there would be none to be ministered to. Yet is it not true that we all come into the world, not simply to be ministered to, but to minister? not to borrow strength only, but in turn to give it? not primarily that the world may contribute to our being, but to contribute something ourselves to the world? As a matter of simple self-respect, we must take this view of life. For what can be more degrading than the constant sense of obligation? What belittles the soul more than to be perpetually reminded of its dependence? For the sake of our own self-respect, we must feel that we are not living wholly on the world's charity, but are contributing somehow to its wealth.

This, I think, would be the first feeling of every right-minded man. Yet it is singular how easily this natural instinct of honorable pride can be lulled into silence. Before we know it we are receiving, not giving, favors; are beggars, indeed, from door to door, basket on arm and piteous entreaty on the face, beseeching place or patronage, a good word or a flattering testimonial, or are supplicants at least for the cold crumbs from the tables of others' enjoyment to eke out the pleasures of a languid and irresolute life. Let charity come to us as charity, and we scornfully reject it. Let friends or relatives offer openly to support us, toss us their outworn garments, or send us the cold remnants of their feasts, and none so proud as we. Yet it seems to me I see all around me recipients of favors just as beggarly, dependants on a charity quite as degrading, who yet betray no compunction, and on whose cheek is no blush. There is great power in names. A little alms may make a beggar, great alms a king.

Here is one, for instance, living in great wealth. Laborers toil to house him luxuriously and clothe and feed him sumptuously, servants are waiting hourly upon his bidding, the world in a thousand ways attends upon his pleasure. There is no harm in this, if he has earned it all, if it comes to him as the equivalent of toil or of merit. But (in such a case as I have in mind) I do not find that it has. I can see no labor of which this wealth is the remuneration. I can see no mercantile skill or sagacity of which this is the just reward. I only hear of certain advantages, scorned by others, which he has not hesitated to use, of certain opportunities, unnoticed by the eye of integrity, which

NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO \*J

his crafty soul has seen. I only hear of fortunes suddenly lost when his was won, and of poverty growing poorer when he became rich. Well-earned wealth adds to others' wealth, but he has built up his estate upon others' ruin. And yet, unprofitable servant as he is, "reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not strewed," emptying calmly others' treasures into his own coffers, and feeling in the pockets of the poor for every unused pittance he can find, he shows no shame as you meet him, and seems quite unconscious that he is living at the world's expense.

Or here, again, is one whose wealth, by toil or by inheritance, is his own, and his by right. And yet his by what right? We will not dispute now the existing laws for the acquisition or distribution of property, which are, on the whole, as just to one as to another. Let us only ask whether property in the things of this world, in a universe which we did not create and do not own, does not always carry with it a corresponding obligation, — an obligation at least to the society whose institutions and laws have alone given property any abiding existence. The universe is for man. He who by superior skill or foresight or industry has secured a portion for himself, however large, cannot justly be dislodged; but he who fences off that portion for his own personal and selfish gratification exclusively, making no contribution to the comfort or happiness or well-being of society, and recognizing no claims from society or humanity, is abusing his privilege, not using it. His life can never be noble or just who is content to receive everything and give nothing; to be always helped by the world, never to help; to accept position and wealth from society, yet recognize no debt to society. Or here is still another and more pitiable case. Here is one in a position of large emolument or official dignity, — one who always holds such position, and who passes from post to post, from calling to calling, from office to office, at will. Some of the best gifts of state or nation stand invariably at his command.

Yet I can see no service rendered of which this is the due compensation. I can discover no mental capacity, no moral qualities, no genius, no experience, no industry, of which this is the fair reward. Indeed, he does not claim this. He gets his position for the asking, and is content. It comes to him through favor, through partisan or friendly influence, through intrigue, through kindly regard for his necessities. It comes to him, as you notice, not for his desert, but for his want of desert ; not to reward his manhood, but to reward his lack of manhood. It comes to him not because he was willing to work, but because he was willing to beg, not because he was able to live upon his talents, but because he was willing to live on charity. The world knows no such mendicancy as this, no such sycophancy of soul as that of the professional supplicant for place or honor, no such dogging of others' footsteps, no such echoing of others' sentiments, no such obsequious joy in others' smiles. The whole soul becomes intent upon perfecting its own shame, upon making itself absolutely dependent upon the favors of the world, upon making its mendicancy complete. Such instances, I say, we can see on every hand. Yet I look in vain from one to the other for any flush of wounded pride, of nettled vanity, of offended dignity. I feel sure that they must see, as the world sees, how the greatness of their position only makes the more conspicuous their own littleness. I think, as I meet these men, that I must guard my words and check my glance, must tread daintily, of course, over such dangerous ground, and clothe my speech in delicate and euphemistic phrase. But no: the precaution is needless. I find no wincing at any touch, no shrinking from the plainest speech. This beggary is perfect in its art. Hat in hand, asking alms at every gate, it has learned to know no blush, and to be proof against mortification or reproach.

So easy is it for us to become beggars without knowing it. So easy is it for names to blind us. So hard is it to understand that the only perfect independence is to give as well as to receive, to give up to one's full capacity of giving, and so keep the balance of obligation, if possible, on the other side.

But it is not pride alone that bids us minister rather than be ministered to; it is our own personal good as well. Neither mind nor heart matures, however fine its training or abundant its resources, if it simply appropriates to itself, giving nothing out. Its strength and power come as it begins to react upon the world. Self-culture, however noble an aim, is never the noblest. Good for our earlier years, it must be replaced in later life by some great purpose beyond, — the love of truth for its own sake, the desire for power, or the pure longing to serve humanity. Between the life spent in such intellectual pursuits as will simply gratify the tastes, stimulate the mind, or kill time, and the life spent in some actual service to society, is all the distance detween the dilettante and the man. The advantage of great qualities of mind or heart lies not half so much in what they directly bring to us as in the larger strength and capacity which we gain through their exercise. The more keenly we learn to realize others' wants and desires, as though they were our own, the wider the sympathies by which we act, the further away from ourselves our affections are turned, so much the larger and more vigorous does the soul become. The morbid nature, as you sometimes encounter it, at home only with its own griefs, or dwelling solely in its own past, or in love with its own fastidiousness, or finding nothing beautiful save in its own tastes and nothing great or good save in its own ideals, or pursuing any thoughts which circle round and round the little centre of self, becomes the sure abode of weakness and discontent. Its egotism can end only in insufferable weariness and intellectual death.