In Quest of Light (I)

Righteous art Thou, O LORD, when I plead with Thee: yet let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments.

JEREMIAH

Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased?

But now He hath made me weary: Thou hast made desolate all my company.

The Book of Job

In Quest of Light ’ f I ^HEY feared as they entered Luke ix. into the cloud.’ So felt the 34

A three great Apostles under the radiant canopy which spread itself over and around their transfigured Lord and them. It was natural; they were moved all through by those ( powers of the world Heb. vi. 5 to come,’ before which the human spirit, always more in proportion to its depth and insight, stands awed. The fear found relief out of the bosom of the mystery. From the cloud came a voice, divine in origin, human in accent: ‘This is my beloved Son; hear Him.’

Dark clouds as well as bright, fogs of the abyss as well as blinding splendours of the throne, have to be entered by our hearts. We are within such shadows now, and we fear. But for us also there can come relief. Through these black folds, as through the * uncreated light ’ of the Transfiguration, can come a voice, divine and human, a voice to tell us at least this, that the cloud is not everything, that things greater than the cloud are eternally real, that light is larger than night, that God, the Father of our Lord, is transcendent over the anti-god, the Evil One.

I am about to place before my reader some thoughts in that direction, and to follow them on with others, bringing us, I hope, nearer and nearer to the central certainties of faith and hope. Perhaps even in this first study of helps in face of mystery we shall find the true light breaking in on the great shadow, and even piercing through it, enough to strengthen us to wait for the perfect day in peace, and to set ourselves, in spite of all our grief, to love and serve. I do not think we shall see the full sunshine over any mystery till the eternal day begins. The twilight will not quite pass here. But we may discern even here that the twilight is of the dawn, not the evening. We may know where the sun will come glittering up in due time. So, for what remains of our| mortal worktime, we shall set our seat not in the dark corner of the chamber but at the open window, looking to the East.

So I approach some counter-thoughts to our sad contemplation, attempted in the last chapter, of the dark riddle of evil.

But first one preliminary word, to meet the heart of a very possible reader. I shall try here to treat this grave subject in the way of ’ guesses at truth,’ suggestions drawn rather from what may be than from certainties. And very likely I may express even these less clearly and less convincingly than another expositor might do. If my friend seems to find this chapter and the next rather perplexing than illuminating, then I beg him to consider them unread, and to forgive the writer, and to go on to the following pages. There, if anywhere in the book, I shall handle certainties and point straight to the light. The present chapters will matter less than what follows in our search for a deep and abiding * comfort and good hope.’

And now let the reader who may care to follow me here remember that I am not writing for students and philosophers, but for hearts acquainted with grief. To them I pray God that I may bring some genuine help, even in these first guesses and suggestions, making it a little easier to let drop that sad weight of mental bewilderment which can form so grievous an addition to the load of heart’s sorrow.

What, then, is one chief mental alleviation, as it seems to me, in pondering the mystery of evil in the universe of created being?

Let us first think, very simply, of some chief evidences for the good origin of the world. The Greeks called the universe the cosmos, that is, the order. The word expressed the deep impression left on man by the visible course of ‘Nature,’ the march of sun and stars, the round of seasons, the steady sequence of the same effects on the same conditions, and again the infinite delicacy of even the smallest things in Nature (so wonderfully opened up in modern times by the microscope), and, generally, the tendency of natural growths, as trees and plants, towards beauty not deformity. It expressed the fact, which our latest knowledge always makes surer, that ’ creation ’ does not run wild, without limits and a plan. It is not a chaos, 6 without form and void ‘; it is a cosmos, an order, all through its heights and depths. And it suggests, on the whole, that good rather than evil lies at the root, at the fountain. Things are evidently, to a vast degree, adjusted aright to one another, not arranged to spoil one another. As I said just above, there is a tendency to beauty in them as a whole, and that is good, not evil. An ancient observer of Christian life, one Aristides, writing about the year 130, speaks of the noble and admirable lives of the disciples of the Lord, as he watched them. And he says that their purity and kindness seems to result in their experiencing a wonderful delight in Nature; ’ thus there flows out to them,’ he says, c the beauty that is in the world.’ Such ’ beauty ’ he assumes there is, inherent in the world, a glorious characteristic of the cosmos, and such as to be responsive to the moral beauty of a good soul. Was he not right? Is not such ’ optimism ’ true to our deepest insight? Alike the starry march of the silent skies and the tender grace of the flower in the hedgerow suggest not only order but a beautiful and liberal kindness lying hid behind it.

And then, what of the observer, Man, and what of that cosmos which exists in his own being? Is there no ’ optimistic ’ witness present here when we think of certain facts within ourselves? Is it nothing that we find within us faculties perfectly adjusted for use and life in this world around us, a favourable order here also? Then, deep within all our powers, lies the deepest and greatest thing of all, conscience, moral instinct and insight. That mysterious presence is such that we cannot for a moment, if we are in health of mind and heart, praise what it condemns and feel blame and shame for what it praises. Is not this an ’ optimistic ’ witness, a signal that our source of being is good, not evil, righteous, not wicked? For it is unnatural to think that our soul, conscious, active, capable of unselfish love, has flowed uphill from a cause morally below it. It joins with the wonderful order of Nature, and says, in a noble harmony of testimony, that outward beauty, endless delicate correspondence, and also will, love, sense of right, all lift their hands and point towards an Origin which is at least all we can mean by personal and good. They join to declare the fact and the glory of God.

Then comes in Revelation. It takes all these hints and leadings, and transfigures them into life indeed. Revelation comes to us — I will not say in Christianity, but in Christ, who is Christianity in person. And

He says, with the accent of infinite certainty, that God is all-holy, and all-kind.

So I have tried to outline the * optimistic ’ aspect of being. But now, and perhaps with all the heavier sense of pain, we face the dreadful anomaly, the discord, the contradiction, of the evil that is in this world, the cruelty found amidst the kindness, the deformity breaking in upon the beauty. Think of the terrors of Nature, the convulsive forces of the earthquake or the cyclone. Ponder the ravages of disease; ’ dire is the tossing, deep the groans.’ The cruel animal lurks amidst the glorious forest of the tropics. And not only in the war-stricken countryside or in the camps of savages, but in rustic cottages and elegant mansions, is to be found the treacherous, tyrannic, lustful, pitiless man.

Alas for the mystery, which is so terribly a fact. Why is it all, and whence does it all come? We are right, as we saw before, to make all possible reductions of the dark fact. Great students of Nature remind us, for example, that the sufferings of animals, real as no doubt they are, are not like those of men, with man’s developed consciousness. In many forms of life, insects and fishes, for instance, they are probably very slight, and even the highest animals cannot be believed to feel quite as we do. The same is true, in measure, of the lowest types of mankind. And, to look quite another way, we are surely all aware of a merciful ’ law ’ by which we remember past pleasure more vividly than past pain. But when we have said all we can, is it not a tremendous fact on the wrong side, a ’ pessimistic ’ fact, this presence of disaster and disorder, of pangs and of fears, this chaos in the cosmos?

Yes, it is even so. I need not retrace old ground about it, and write our second chapter over again. Rather my purpose now is to suggest some thoughts about it which may help to bring back the * optimism ’ of patience, faith, and hope.