refusal to be packed in a convenient formula, is so glaring a defect that some regard its claim upon them as an impertinence. What do you know about the Infinite, you dreaming philosopher? What do you know about God, you adoring mystic? The answer must be, Not very much, indeed, not enough to boast of. Then let us hear no more about it. Give your mind to near and concrete things. I have a fine specimen of butterfly through which I have stuck a pin, which I would like to show you. Have you seen a microbe under the glass? How is wheat quoted this morning? This drought will cut down the corn crop forty per cent. Against this temper of mind not much can be said. One does not like to become the champion of the vague, nor shout his views in the market-place or across a chasm to those who, if they hear, will answer in half ridicule. So all one can do is to go away in silence, and maintain to himself that the little he knows, or thinks he knows, about the spiritual life is more precious to him than all the knowledge he may possess concerning the material world which lies around his feet. Better to know a little about the whole earth than to know all about a grain of sand. One flashing moment of intimation that life is immortal is worth more to a soul than threescore years spent in learning all that may be known about dollars. Not much is known of that star called Sirius; yet, when we recall that it is one hundred and twenty-three billions of miles away, and still across that immensity can fling its friendly rays down into our eyes, we bow in humility and wonder. We do not know much about God, but the little we do know compels us to bow in adoration. Our knowledge is not great in quantity, but its quality makes it very impressive. It may be further written that the value of art and literature and religion consists in their power to awaken this sentiment in the soul. Art must suggest the ideal. Through the eye it must appeal to the mind. In each picture there must be something more than exactness of detail. Ruskin thinks it must have a place through which the mind can escape into the infinite. The road on the canvas halts, but it must leave suggestions that it leads much farther. The river carries the mind far away from the canvas, down and still down among scenes that are not painted, until it reaches its destiny in the great, solemn sea. The horizon which limits the eye must be not like a stone-wall, but vast, vague, waving, as if blown by the wind that sweeps amid the worlds, not hindering, but inviting the mind to pass into the boundless. The same is true of sculpture; the statue must lead the mind to what it signifies. It is true of poetry; its mission is not to instruct, but to inspire. Of music, also, it is not the exact reproduction of tones that avails; it must interpret meanings to the soul which otherwise could have forever remained unrevealed. Thus the arts are all more than ministers to sense. Their true mission is to lead life upward, and point out the open gate to those realms lying eastward of the sunrise. One of the mistakes of some who are friendly to religion is to neglect this evident law. They build doctrinal and verbal barriers around, and leave no escape for the soul. The man with the measuring-rod has been very active. Everything must be defined. Religion was all found in one ancient book. The church doctrine was made the boundary of thought. God was analyzed and defined. He was called Infinite: then he was measured. An infallible book was assumed then the attempt was made to explain it, forgetting that the infallible needs neither explanation nor defence. The infallible is self-evident. It is this error that in these days is slowly being outgrown. Many are trying to move away from the narrow confines of theology out into the open and free ranges of a universal religion. That sentiment is seen to be independent of books and churches. Not one of the sects, the oldest or the newest, nor all of them combined, can contain it. It is not orthodox nor heterodox: it is human. It was present with our Aryan fathers when they worshipped the glorious Dawn. It was not absent from the banks of the Nile. It left signs of its marvellous presence on the hills and plains of Attica. It camped for a time amid the solemn forests of Northern Europe. It flamed up in a wonderful brightness in Judea. It is as long as human experience, and broad as the parallels over which the great human army has made its amazing march. When the ocean can all be painted on one canvas, religion can all be held in one sect. Is its office to make theologies, build churches, defend or destroy the authenticity of Hebrew or Christian parchments, umpire a game between scholars while they knock back and forth the day of manuscripts, their divineness rising and falling as, in turn, each player has a temporary advantage? Oh, no: these are only small incidents attached to it. Useful, too, perhaps, but not essential. We must not forget that radical criticism has no more to do with religion than has conservative dogmatism. Its place is above them both. Its office is to inspire the soul to holy living, to enthrone duty for the present life, and throw wide open the gate of expectation for the future. It would seem as if it would be wise for conservative and radical alike, for a time, to lay down the measuring-rod with which they are trying to take the dimensions of the theological and historic structure, and move upward into the larger realm of thought, of love, of aspiration, the realm of the soul and its God. Returning to the main thought, let us confess that our existence cannot all be measured by sense and the understanding. Yet let us be just to these powers. By them we come in close contact with a concrete and material world. Neither shall any libel be uttered against it. O beautiful world! Thou givest us flowers in the spring, harvests in the summer; and in autumn thy forests unfurl their banners of crimson and gold. Every day thou givest us a sunrise and a sunset. Here we found our friends; here, long ago, our blessed mothers sang us to sleep. Here we live our few or many years of toil; and, at last, upon thy bosom we will rest. Instead of blaming thee, gladly, if we could, would we chant a hymn in thy praise. And yet what we see and touch and love on this earth, often we are admonished, is not the Reality, but its symbol. Luminous moments dawn upon us all. "Give me a great thought to go into eternity with," the dying Herder said. But a great thought causes the horizon to retreat when we are not dying, and reveals that already we are in eternity. There are times when all barriers disappear, and the soul is free to move, like Beatrice, unhindered, from star to star. Sometimes this freedom comes when life is on that neutral ground that lies between waking and sleeping. At other times it is when listening to music that one becomes conscious of having passed from the sensuous to the spiritual. After the instruments have ceased disturbing the material air, the sweet harmonies go on, refined and purified, still sounding in the soul. Again, it may be when we are apart and meditating over the deeper meaning of existence, perplexed, but not cast down, that we are suddenly apprised of a Presence not our own. Then our darkness becomes light, our perplexities vanish, and our few tumultuous years of earth sink in the great, calm ocean of time. Then we feel that our destiny is in the keeping of One whose power is measureless, whose goodness is as great, and whose splendor fills the mysterious world. Blessed are they to whom science and art and religion and all natural beauty and all sad and joyous experience are gates through which the soul freely passes into larger and fairer worlds than earth, - where the symbol is changed for real being, and where each mortal form is made resplendent by its indwelling, immortal life! |