THE WISDOM OF THE WORD
What I have tried to prove is this: The Word of God is a prophecy of us in all of our manifestations and it records the laws of life and conduct from which no man can escape. Whether he is a good one or a bad one, he will find his portrait drawn there and a complete prophecy of what his fate will be. It never fails; it always comes true, for the atheist, agnostic, or spiritualistic sorcerer no less than for the saint.
Just look yourself up in that Book, and if you know how, you will find yourself predicted and recorded in it down to the very nose of your nature. Set down a list of your virtues and look up the rewards promised in return for these virtues, and you will know for certain what your dividends in living will be if you hold onto your assets. Make a list of your vices and weaknesses. Then, if you have the courage, look up the consequences which follow them as recorded in this Book and you will know long before judgment day what will happen to you even in this present world. ‘He that liveth by the sword shall perish by the sword.’
Even if one does not feel the keen edge of the blade in his breast, he is cut down one way or the other, and knows it whether any one else suspects it or not. He may be a rich man and a philanthropist, and he may get a great send-off, with a splendid funeral and a mausoleum set over his grave; but if his fortune was built upon widows’ mites and the bread taken from the poor, if he swindled and cheated, if he practiced usury, he went down to his dust a very poor man and knows it. Because the Word is written in him and only copied in the Bible.
The Baptists are not so far wrong about their notions of predestination and election, though far be it from me to travel my days encompassed about by their doctrines. That would be too nerve-racking to the mortal mind. Give me a creed with more elbow room in it for my transient transgressions and more encouragement for believing I have a chance to save my own soul by growing my own virtues according to the Word, which I could not have if I got the notion that I was damned or elected from the foundation of the world.
The place where the makers of these sterner creeds miss their cue, in my opinion, is when they fail to realize that the Scriptures are a sort of key to which we may refer and find the answer to the equation we are. They contain the history of all dead men and the prophecies of all living men and men to come. The smallest little squinched-up fraction of a saint can look in that Book and find out exactly what he is equal to and even how to become the whole unit of one. But we turn the trick. We do make ourselves according to the mind we use in the business. I do not know any more terrifyingly liberal provision made by Providence in our behalf. I have often wondered why the preachers do not say more about it, for it is far more convincing than the damnation gospel with which they used to set us afire.
I had no such wisdom of the Word as this, however, in the days of which I am now writing. I was a sort of Protestant Catholic, if you know what I mean. I accepted Lundy’s interpretations of the Gospels as a devout Catholic gets his from the priest. And I was not very much worried about not being able to live up to his ideals in the Christian life. Who has ever kept pace with the piety of a good priest? I did not feel obliged to do so. I existed in a state of mental obedience to certain religious convictions which were not my own. This was bad for me mentally and morally. I had considerable natural ability, but I remember distinctly being afraid to cut loose and think thoughts kin to my kind of mind lest I should sin against my husband’s faith. The virtues that one gets under such conditions do not really belong to her, but to the church or priest who imposes them. You are trained to them as a leopard is trained to jump through fiery hoops in a circus without singeing his tail. Without suspecting such a thing, I was that artificial in my Christian life during this period, a pathetically accomplished trick saint.
I have sometimes wondered if the stampede of human souls from the tyranny of creeds accounts for the strange mental and moral disorders of our times, and that presently, being as we are, forever immortal and close kin to God, we shall discover righteousness for ourselves and choose goodness as the great vocation of man, as it surely is. One thing is certain--in every age when the people have not been permitted to study the Scriptures, but have been obliged to accept a church’s interpretation of the Word, there followed a period of animal simplicity of mind in the masses, ignorance, loss of ambition, initiative, and all the poverty, follies, and meanness of mind which issue from such conditions.
Without every kind of liberty, men must perish, and they do. The only knowledge that really counts in character is the knowledge we get for ourselves tested by experience. This is the reason why some very cultured people remain so ignorant and ineffective. The only law that ever will actually control men is the will to obey their own conscience. Therefore the primary object of every preacher and teacher should be to set up the ideal of courage and an honest mind. Such people are safe citizens in this world and the next one. But they are not safe under doctrines, creeds, and laws arbitrarily imposed, whether they get them from the Bible or the Bolsheviks.
Consider the condition of our own country now. The democratic form of government is the best form for patriots. We were patriots when we signed the Declaration of Independence. Now we are not in principle or conduct. We are getting a commercialized conscience and covering the snare of it with philanthropy. So it turns out that the Constitution we made back there in the days when we were plain Christian patriots does not control the mind or illustrate the character of this nation now.
A monarchal form of government would be no better. Mankind seems to be outgrowing kings, not by growing better but less good. We are turning our back upon conscience and the Ten Commandments. No system of laws will govern such a people. I do not know what the political economists think of this situation, but as an old woman who looks at it through the passages of many Scriptures, I see the shadows of terrible events lengthening across the world. It is coming, that fearful punishment men inflict upon men for their sins. It is coming because it is not in us to endure too long our own unrighteousness. This is the law of moral economy written in us which we cannot escape.
The big knot in this whole problem is human nature. But once in so often we do untie it and straighten things out, not so much by the grace of God, but by the perverted righteousness of ferocity. Then we react and turn out once more to be the children of God--not lost after all, only chastened.
The secret of all things is as far from us as the East is from the West and as His ways are from our ways. Therefore, the higher standard we reach in pure romance the nearer we are to truth. I prefer Milton’s poetry, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, my choice of the Psalms, and a few of the elder hymns to anything Mr. H. G. Wells can think or write about the beginnings of life or the history of Christianity. It is interesting copy and contains much entrancing information, but Mr. Wells has too much sense and too little faith in the right direction to be the medium of the Lord’s divine illusion, which clothes us like a garment and is the only protection we have against the destructive rationalism of the mortal mind.
We have daily examples now of an educational system which encourages license in thinking along these lines. Two youths who graduated with distinction from two leading universities developed such unscrupulous intellects that they planned a monstrous crime. They had an ambition to commit a ‘perfect crime,’ as formerly Christian education inspired men to achieve honor. They executed a murder and proceeded with their plans for blackmail, ransom, and the scientific torture of their victims. They were not originally perverts. Now they must be regarded as criminally insane. They are the products of the rational system in education and of the ever-increasing intellectual slums produced by the license of this system.
I think Mr. William Jennings Bryan has the wrong bull by the horns when he assails the theory of evolution. It is not a theory, but a fact distinctly recorded in Genesis and proved by the whole history of creation down to the present time. But he might become a benefactor of youth if he would exercise the same energy in getting an interstate alienist commission appointed to test the moral sanity of many learned professors in our schools and universities. The findings of such a commission would go far toward revealing the sources of the wave of criminal insanity that is showing its crest in every court in this country. Too many learned doctors without any faith in the law which God is, are teaching young people how to think. They become criminals mentally whether they ever commit a crime or not.