Life Problems

In the second of these verses the writer enunciates the first great problem of every human life, and it is a problem which encompasses all others. The old philosophers and teachers summed up their philosophy and teaching in that one phrase, “Man, know thyself.” And if man can but know himself, there will be no problem that he has not solved. When man truly knows himself, and has unravelled the mysteries of his own existence, and fathomed all the deeps of his own being, then, surely, he will also have discovered God, the Creator and Sustainer.

By that knowledge of himself, he will have learned also the problem of his brother-man, and so have entered into the realization of the great brotherhood

9 of humanity. By thai knowledge of himself, and of the possibilities of his nature, he will have come to understand that strange, almost meaningless expression, so often upon our lips, and so little understood, “Eternity.” When man knows himself, then he will have discovered also the secrets of nature, and will be at home amid all their varied and varying avenues. Tennyson sang truly —

“Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the cranny;

Hold you here in my hand.
Little flower, root and all —

And if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.”

And therefore it is that I repeat: The first problem that faces the thinking mind is the problem of Self. Who am I? What am I? Whence came I? Whither go I? What mean these strange conflicting elements within my nature? How is it that one day I love, and within an hour I hate.?* What is the meaning of all these strange contradictory experiences as I take my way through life?

Our present consideration is confined within very narrow limits. We shall endeavor to answer the psalmist’s question, “What is man?” in the light of the New Testament revelation. “What is man?” — not, What is man, blighted, dwarfed, broken, sin-stained, as we know him? That will be a subject for future consideration; but what is man in himself — what is the Divine ideal? When, far away in the past, God said, in that Eternal Counsel of His own being, “Let us make man,” what had He in His thought and on His heart? “What is man? “In order that we may understand the problem as it presents itself to-day, it is absolutely necessary that we get further back in the question, and ask the original intention and meaning of the creation of man. I cannot understand fallen man, sinful and heartbroken, save as I have the vision of man unfallen, without sin, whole in heart and affection toward God. “What is man? “For the sake of the youngest reader, let me take the simplest illustration. Were I a stranger to this land, and were I suddenly brought here from some of the dark places of the earth, did I know nothing of civilization, naught of all the progress of this rapidly fading century, and were I placed first of all in connection with our great railway system on some point where an hour before there had been a fearful wreck, would it be fair to say to me as I gazed upon the wreck of the locomotive and train scattered in confusion, ‘’That is a train”? Every child will see how absurd it would be. That is the wreckage, the result of the accident, and it is the very splendor of the construction that has made that wreckage so profound and appalling. If I want to know what a train is, I must find out before the accident. “What is man?” It is not fair to point to man as you see him to-day, with the blemish and blight of sin upon him; with the dimness of sin in his eye, and the weariness of sin in his physical frame; with his mental vigor enfeebled, and spiritual power benumbed.

“What is man?” That is the question; and in order to answer it, 1 must get behind the present condition of affairs, and come to understand what man is in himself, so far as the thought and intention of God are concerned. We shall therefore, in the first place, consider the problem as stated; and secondly, we shall direct our attention to a close inspection of that problem; and thirdly and lastly, we shall endeavor to apply that problem to personal consciousness.

First of all, will you notice the psalmist’s statement of the problem, because it is full of interest. He approaches his question from certain points of observation, and it is only as we understand these points that we shall gather the full force and meaning of his question.

You notice what his first observation is. “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained: What is man?” The second observation, “Thou art mindful of man, Thou visitest him.” “What is man?” Take these two points of vision for a moment and look at them closely. “When I consider Thy heavens” — and I suppose the psalmist had a right to say that. I suppose he had considered God’s heavens. I do not deem that very many of us would have any right to make use of those words as our own. There may be here one, and there another, who have considered the heavens. We have all, in some of those old moments of simplicity — childhood’s moments — gone outside the door and gazed some night at the star-bespangled heavens. And we have in those days — some of you have almost forgotten them — felt the thrill, the awe, and the impressiveness of the silent eloquence of the night. “When 1 consider Thy heavens” in their countless numbers, in their perfect order, in their absolute freedom — so far as man has ever been able to detect — from conflicting interests, in the infinite music of the spheres that stretch beyond my ken; “When I consider Thy heavens,” not only in their essential wonder, but “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained: what is man?”

And the answer comes clearly to every heart as the question is proposed. Man is small, frail, vanishing; and we answer the psalmist’s question in his own language, from another of his psalms, “Surely man at his best estate is altogether vanity.”

Man comes and goes, a bubble on the stream, on which for a few passing moments the lights and shadows play; and then he is “forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” The stars upon which we look to-day are the self-same orbs of light upon which our savage forefathers gazed. But men have come and gone in quick succession, until it seems as if the cold stars upon the plain of heaven have laughed at man in his going and coming. I stand at the foot of the mountain which lifts its head beyond the cloud, and catches on its summit the first gleam of the king of day in his rising, and I say, “What am I?” That mountain has been there through the passing of the ages, and I am here and shall be gone before the sun melts the snow upon its summit. “What is man?”

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