Part 15

This investigation—pursued in many ways—is best of all pursued in keeping some hour apart, each day, for absolute reunion and communion with the Holy Spirit. To lift up the heart to God in deepest aspiration and prayer is to come into an increasing knowledge of one's own spiritual self, and into increasing harmony with the divine world in whose atmosphere, alone, we live and breathe and have our being. In love and sympathy lie the daily solution of all the problems of the spiritual life.

These are the divine attributes, and they are as indispensable to life to-day as they were when Christ walked in Galilee. Compassion and love are the handmaids of hope and faith and joy. The heart to sympathize, the love to aid, lead on to the radiant atmosphere of happiness.

There is a deep and impressive significance in the lesson of the music-drama of "Parsifal." "Only those of pure heart can be strong." And that "the Knights in the play were saved by Parsifal who was willing to encounter anything." This alone is the diviner quality of love,—to be willing to "encounter anything;"—to meet pain, disaster, defeat, if so it be the appointed way to serve. There is a consecration in pain that purifies and refines and exalts all effort. It may be the very divine sign and seal of approval when the way leads to personal sacrifice rather than to personal joy.

"The Magi," it is said, "have but to follow their Star in peace.... The Divine action marvellously adjusts all things. The order of God sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work, and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses."

One may tread,—not the "whole round of creation," as Browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful"; that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. One may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may, for a time, lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. Can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? Can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come into his experience with their almost hopeless sense of desolation? And yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of Happiness. The difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. The storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. Truly may this analogy be held in life. It is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the Divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the Divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to know, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." For it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, to believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. Learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as though inner revelation, is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress.

One of the great discourses of Phillips Brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "Let me not think," said Bishop Brooks, "that I get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him and who scorns me when I know that I deserve his sympathy. Ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. The good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, does not make you happy,—he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. And so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. With what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself—the heart of himself, which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. For the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever."

In the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to God; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of God are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the Divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of God.

For this alone is happiness. It may not be ease nor pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. And to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial or desolation of spirit. It is the threshold of joy. It is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain during his progress on earth as well as in heaven. In fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave, until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without these. No one is fitted for joy until he can live well without joy. It is the law and the prophets.

THE NECTAR OF THE HOUR.

I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour.

—EMERSON.

If we knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will we could find in it all the heart could desire. Nor what indeed is more reasonable, more perfect, more divine, than the will of God? Can its infinite value be increased by the paltry difference of time, place, or circumstance? The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures; it contains more than one is capable of receiving. Faith is the measure of these blessings; in proportion to your faith will you receive. By love also are they measured; the more your heart loves the more it desires, and the more it desires the more it receives. The will of God is constantly before you as an unfathomable sea, which the heart cannot exhaust; only in proportion as the heart is expanded by faith, confidence, and love can it receive of its fulness.... The divine will is an abyss of which the present moment is the entrance; plunge fearlessly therein and you will find it more boundless than your desires.—THE REV. J. P. DE CAUSSADE, in "Holy Abandonment."

"The moment we desire God and His will, that moment we enjoy them, and our enjoyment corresponds to the order of our desires."

What though the bough beneath thee break? Remember, thou hast wings.

—VICTOR HUGO.

To enter into the will of God is an initiation of such power and beauty that language falters in any effort to interpret this supreme experience. It can be indicated only in the words of the poet:—

"I share the good with every flower, I drink the nectar of the hour."

That wonderful test of seeing every event of life from the point of view of the will of God simply transforms and revolutionizes the entire scale of human experience. It simplifies all perplexities, it offers the solution for all problems. It illuminates the small and the apparently insignificant occurrences which, nevertheless, contrive to play so large and often so determining a part in our days, as well as places in high relief the great questions that beset one in his varied round.

The little book from which the extract on the preceding page is taken—a Catholic book of devotion—is one of the most illuminating in all spiritual literature. It offers to one instruction and guidance in that life which alone is progress, peace, and joy,—and one who comes to use it daily will place it almost next to the Bible in its practical and almost miraculous helpfulness. Catholic or Protestant,—what matters it so that one who listens may hear the word? It is in no wise necessary to embrace Catholicism in order to concede that some of the most vital literature of the spiritual life is written by the priests and thinkers of that communion; and it is good to take help wherever one can find it,—regardless of sect or creed.

A French priest, preaching in an impassioned and sublime abandon of enthusiasm; caught up in a rapture of the heavenly life, poured out these wonderful words to audiences that thronged the dim shades of Saint Sulpice, in Paris. His theme was the consecration of life to the divine will. He called upon all humanity to recognize that this divine will is revealed,—not exclusively in the cloister or the silence, but in the common trend of daily life. "The field is the world." "All things," said this priest, "may further the soul's union with God; all things perfect it, save sin, and that which is contrary to duty;" and he added: "When God thus gives Himself to a soul, all that is ordinary becomes extraordinary; therefore it is that nothing appears of the great work which is going on in the soul; the way itself is so marvellous that it needs not the embellishment of marvels which belong not to it. It is a miracle, a revelation, a continuous enjoyment of God, interrupted only by little faults; but in itself it is characterized by the absence of anything remarkable, while it renders marvellous all ordinary and sensible things."

The entire discourse was a fervent and illuminating illustration of how God's will reveals itself through the most common things. "O Divine Action," Pere De Caussade exclaims, "I will cease to prescribe to Thee hours or methods; Thou shalt be ever welcome. O Divine Action, Thou seemest to have revealed to me Thy immensity. I will walk henceforth in Thy infinity. No longer will I seek Thee within the narrow limits of a book, or the life of a saint, or a sublime thought. No longer will I seek Thy action alone in spiritual intercourse. For since the divine life labors incessantly and by means of all things for our advancement, I would draw my life from this boundless reservoir. The will of God imparts to its every instrument an original and incomparable action. We do not sufficiently regard things in the supernatural light which the divine action gives them. We must always receive and worthily meet the divine action with an open heart, full confidence and generosity: for to those who thus receive it, it can work no ill. The divine action killeth while it quickeneth; the more we feel death, the firmer our faith that it will give life."

These words invest the truth of the constant revelation of God's will through ordinary events, with a burning intensity and vividness that can hardly fail to leave a permanent impress upon the reader.

There is probably no thoughtful observer of the phenomena of life with whom spiritual aspiration is ever present, who is not often honestly puzzled as to what extent the ordinary tide of events that attend him must be accepted as the will of God, and to what degree he should modify these by his own power of will in selection and grouping. He is engaged, for instance, in important work. To what extent should he yield to the "devastator of the day"? To what extent should he allow his general onward course of pursuits and interests to be deflected or changed by the unforeseen events that attend his pathway?

It may be accepted as a fundamental truth that good sense, good judgment, discretion, poise, are not unworthy to be ranked among the Christian virtues. Jesus was eminently sane. He was no fanatic. He gave both by precept and example the ideal of a rational and reasonable life. The individual has no right to rush off and kill himself because his dearest hope is denied or his most cherished purpose defeated. Nor has he any more right to commit what may be called intellectual suicide, by relinquishing his aspirations and endeavors, merely because things go wrong, or because he thinks they are wrong. The conditions of life are not necessarily wrong because contrary to what one might desire. Perhaps it is the desire itself which was wrong, and the conditions which are right; and which are the expression of God's will and are thus to be joyfully accepted. The test of all circumstances and influence lies in unchanging fidelity, in unswerving allegiance to the divine ideal of life. The "devastator of a day" need not be welcomed to make unlimited waste of time and energy that have their due channels, but the interruption may be met with patience and sweetness, as well as with firmness of purpose in declining to be turned aside from the duty in hand. The adverse circumstances of life,—loss of money, of friends, disaster in one way or another, that may come without visible relation to any error on one's own part,—shall not such adverse conditions teach a divine lesson of patience and incite new springs of energy to overcome trial, and to gain by it a higher spiritual vantage-ground on which to live? Cannot even denial and defeat be held as developing qualities that might otherwise lie latent? May they not teach the divinest lesson of all,—the one most invaluable to human life,—absolute trust in God?

Gaining this, the soul really gains all that it was sent on earth to learn through all the varied phenomena of joy and sorrow, of triumph and failure. There is a common expression of one's "embracing religion and turning away from the world." It is a contradiction of terms. The world is the place in which any real religion is tested and proved, and it is there that the soul must recognize and receive the Divine Action.

In the marvellous sermons of Pere Lacordaire are found suggestions that might well serve as a daily manual on this sublime and vital truth of the relation between the will of God and the daily experience. These sermons are among the world's treasures of help toward a higher spirituality. The argument of Pere De Caussade—one equally entitled to consideration—is that God reveals himself to us now, in ordinary events, as mysteriously and as adorably and with as much reality as in the great events of history or in the Holy Scriptures. "When the will of God reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess her," says Pere De Caussade, "if the soul freely gives herself in return, she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficulties; she then tastes by experience the happiness of that coming of the Lord, and her enjoyment is in proportion to the degree in which she has learned to practice that self-abandonment which must bring her at all moments face to face with this ever adorable will."

The entire philosophy of this is that the events of life are the language in which God speaks to us. The thought is as simple as it is impressive, and it is yet so great as to be fairly epoch-making in its complete realization. And it is more than an open question whether, even to a large majority of the most prayerful and ardent of Christian believers, there is not still a new aspect of life revealed in this simple acceptance of the common details of the day, the events of the hour, as the divine language which is to be read and followed.

Because there is a more or less widespread conviction that events, circumstances, conditions are things to be battled with, in case they are not agreeable, and that there is a signal virtue in overcoming them. Nor is this conviction without value, too, and a large measure of truth, for aspiration and achievement must always be among the vital forces in creating the immediate future; and we must create the future as well as accept the present.

"Thou speakest, Lord, to all mankind by general events. Thou speakest to each one in particular by the events of his every moment."

Pere De Caussade proceeds to say:—

"But instead of respecting the mystery of Thy words and hearing Thy voice in all the occurrences of life, they only see therein chance, the acts, the caprice of men; they find fault with everything; they would add to, diminish, reform. They revere the word of the Lord, but have they no respect for words which are not conveyed by means of ink and paper, but by what they have to do and suffer from moment to moment,—do these words merit nothing?"

This handwriting on the wall in the guise of the daily events is a message to be read by faith alone. Just here is the parting of the ways.

One fares forth in a certain direction, intent on a given accomplishment, and unforeseen circumstances arise that hinder, annoy, delay, or prevent the fulfilment of the intention. From one point of view, one would say that interruptions and disasters were things to be overcome as speedily as possible, and that the virtue lay in pressing on. But the theory of life so wonderfully set forth by this great preacher teaches, instead, that these very obstacles, delays and embarrassments are a signal and an important thing in and of themselves; that they are nothing less than the divine voice; the appointed means through which the voice of God speaks to us; that each moment, each hour, is just as valuable during delay and enforced pause as it could be for the most strenuous action, because,—the only important thing we have to do in this life is to bring our own will into harmony with the will of God; to learn to recognize His leading and to love this leading.

Nor does this interpretation of the divine purposes of life lead the least in the world to inertia and dull passivity. On the contrary, it is, in essence, the theory to do all one can, ceaselessly and constantly; but, having done this, then await the results in a believing trust which is peace and love of harmony. The larger part of the events and circumstances that have to do with our lives are not under our personal control. No man liveth to himself. Regarding this large part of our lives that are not under our personal control, there is a perpetual tendency to fret, to worry, to impatience, to irritation, or to despondency, and the consequent loss of that cheerfulness and radiant exhilaration in which one should live if he live aright. Could one, then, regard all this part of his life which he cannot change, nor hasten, nor delay, nor alter in the slightest degree, one way or the other,—could he but recognize all this as the divine language and meet it,—not only with resignation but with that joyful acceptance of perfect faith which absolutely realizes the oneness of the will between himself and God,—then would not life gain, at once, immeasurably in peace and happiness?