The Motive of Religion
“Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Doth Job serve God for nought?” — Job i. 9.
This question has all of Satan’s disposition in it. For Satan in the Bible is the slanderer. The essence of his wickedness seems always there to lie in his suspiciousness and his refusal to allow anybody any goodness. It is the spirit of simple comprehensive hatred. He hates God and he hates man. He grudges them to one another. He will not let God have satisfaction in man nor man have satisfaction in God if he can help it. He hates goodness and he hates the human soul. He would banish goodness from the earth and he would starve the human soul if he could.
We can recognize the true Satanic character of such a disposition. It is genuine, essential wickedness. It is distinctly different from the hot impetuosity of evil into which a soul is carried by some overwhelming provocation or by some apparent personal advantage. It is a hatred of goodness because it is good, and of man because he is man. We shudder at it; we say how terrible it is. And yet the echoes of it are all around us. Happy is the man who has not felt the echo of it within him. The preference of evil rather than good. The choice of the worse construction of a man’s life and action rather than the better. The dislike of thinking good where it is possible to think evil. These are the Satan tempers wherever they appear. And who has not seen them in the faces of men and women walking on our streets as well as in the subtle and malignant face which looks out from the great poem on the day when “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came also among them.”
But Satan is very clever as well as very wicked, and so, while we denounce his slandering, each special slander may well seem worthy of our study. I am most foolish if I do not listen while my worst enemy abuses me to see if out of his abuse I may not catch some intimation of where my weakness lies and what my faults are. This is the blessing which may come to us from the men who abuse us. They may set us to thinking about ourselves. So we may listen while Satan slanders Job. The great arch-slanderer insists that Job’s religion is selfishness. “Doth Job serve God for naught? “If Job in Uz had heard what Satan said” before the Lord,” we can imagine that questions might have been started in his pious mind. “Was there then selfishness in his devoutness? “As he looked up and saw the vast abundance of his wealth, and knew in his soul that God had given him it all, must he not have asked himself, “Is it for this, then, that
I serve God?” and may he not have almost rejoiced in the malignancy of Satan since it induced God to put to proof that which the pious soul was almost ready to suspect itself.
Then comes the wonderfully rich and subtle poem. The heart of Job is searched and opened and learns to know itself. Its motives are dissected and exposed. The man learns to know himself in all his weaknesses. He learns also to know himself in his essential loyalty and love to God. And at last the poem closes with the picture of a restored prosperity in which there could be no suspicion, and Job dies in the last verse, “old and full of days,” sure that he served God for something more than flocks and herds, and offering the pattern of unselfish righteousness to all the ages.
The subject which the question of the slanderer suggests, then, is, “The Motive of Religion.” For us, too, there comes the same question. We listen, and the Bible teems with promises. We look, and all experience holds up the prizes of life and says, “These shall belong to him who serves the Lord.” Health, happiness, and good repute, nay, even, in the long run, prosperity and wealth are promised to, are given to, the man who lives uprightly and keeps his garments clean and his hands busy. The wicked man is threatened with disgrace and ruin. The idle apprentice sees himself in imagination behind iron bars. With many exceptions and suspensions, the rule is true that all things work together for God’s children. It would be evident beforehand that, this being the case, the souls of earnest Christians should
THE MOTIVE OF RELlGl’O’N. 39
come to questions with themselves and wonder what it was that really bound them to their faith. The more devout and earnest is the soul the more it often must be troubled. The question is not one that stays outside and is asked only by the captious Satan in the street. It finds its way within. Nay, very often it starts up within and feeds itself on the soul’s best dispositions and desires. It haunts our struggles and enfeebles them. Surely it must be good for us to face such a question and give it its answer. This is what I shall try to do as I speak to you about the motive of religion.
And the first thing we say is this: that while Job’s whole soul may revolt at the notion of his serving God for gain, he cannot escape from his perplexity by denying the fact, or by insisting that he shall get no gain out of serving God. The fact is that, in the long run and in the large view, prosperity and the service of God are bound together. That is the idea of life. That is what our sense of justice demands. And no man must deny that fact as it applies itself to his own life. It is not by burning his barns and killing his cattle that Job will get rid of his difficulties and answer the question of his motive in serving God.
It is remarkable to see how really the Bible has two classes of utterances. On the one hand it has such promises as those which I have just been quoting, which offer blessings to obedience and assure men that if they serve God they shall prosper. On the other hand there are such words as those of Jesus in which he frankly told his disciples that in the world they should “have tribulation” in proportion as they belonged to him. It is very interesting to put these two sorts of utterances together and ask what will be the total impression which is the resultant in the mind of him who believes them both. No doubt he will decide that what they mean is the certainty that righteousness will come to happiness in the end, but will have to pass through much of suffering upon the way. And, if he be wise, the practical rule by which the man will try to live will be the forgetfulness of consequences altogether, the ceasing to think whether happiness or unhappiness is coming, and the pursuit of righteousness for its own sake, the being upright, brave and true, simply because uprightness, bravery, and truth are the only worthy conditions of a human soul. Great is the condition of a man who thus lets rewards take care of themselves, come if they will or fail to come, but goes on his way true to the truth simply because it is true, strongly loyal to the right for its pure righteousness.
I say. this first to show that the whole question of the benefit of goodness is not a fundamental question. There is a power of goodness to hold men quite behind its benefit. He who is good in the highest way is as unwilling to talk about the benefit of goodness as about the benefit of friendship.
But, having said this, it is necessary that we should go on and see that as a fact goodness has its benefits and to recognize how helpful the right use of them may be in the development and training of a soul. We need not fear to use them. Jesus uses them freely. All that we need is to understand how they may be rightly used; how a man may rejoice in all the blessings which come to him from serving God, and yet not have to own to himself that he serves God for hire.
The answer to the question, the solution of the difficulty, seems to me to lie in the way in which the whole thought of reward is capable of elevation and enlargement and the way in which, as it becomes elevated and enlarged, it sloughs off and casts aside the evils and dangers which belonged to it in its lower forms and becomes purer and purer and more and more capable of good, and good alone.
Where does such elevation and enlargement begin? Take first the idea of reward in its most palpable and simple form. Take it in its Old Testament form, wherein it promises the direct material recompense here and now of all the good things that men do. It has its beauty, but its beauty is of the most crude and primitive sort. It thinks of the outer and the inner world as if they were in perfect correspondence and answered immediately to each other. The field stands watching the faithful man, and when he does another faithful thing it praises him with a new wheat sheaf or a new olive tree. The faithful man sees in the multiplication of his cattle or the enlargement of his palace the direct and necessary testimony of his faithfulness. There is something very attractive because there is something very true in that idea. It makes the earth a unit. In the world in which it should be true without disturbance there must come to be a noble sense of harmony and peace. Even half-true as it is here, the gHmpses which we catch of its half-truth are full of fascination. But we can see also what its dangers are. We can see why it is good that here, while man is what man is now, it should be only half, and not altogether true. So immediate, so infallible, so correspondent then, would come the echo of blessing on the deed of duty, that echo and deed might well become confused in the soul of the duty-doer, and it might easily appear as if not the doing of the duty but the getting of the blessing were the final and important thing. The man himself, expecting the reward to fill immediately the hands out of which the tools had dropped might well hear his own heart saying to him, “Ah, you are well paid for what you do. Do you serve God for nought?”
2. We pass on to another motive, when we think of the Christian as looking for blessing not in this life but in the life beyond the grave. “I shall be happy in Heaven,” says the servant of Christ; “I can wait. The glory and the bliss that are to be revealed are well worth waiting for. I can suffer for these few years, sure of the freedom from suffering which I am to have forever and ever.” What multitudes of souls have fed upon this certainty. What multitudes are feeding on it now and gathering great strength and patience.
And we can see at once that this expectation of celestial reward has left behind much of the danger of the anticipation of reward to be received on earth. In the first place it never can be so distinct and definite. It cannot take clear concrete shapes to the ambitious desires, like houses and lands and bags of money, and the visible, audible tokens of men’s esteem. Being of necessity less sharp and distinct before the imagination, the prizes of the celestial life may well appear more spiritual and the terms of their attainment may seem less arbitrary, more essential. Thus they may be the means of higher and purer inspiration.
And then, again, there is the fact that they are far away and must be waited for. The goodness must be here and now. The crown of the goodness is not till by and by. Self-sacrifice to-day. But the recompense of self-sacrifice only when the grave is past and eternity begun. Evidently that sort of expectation has a power of spiritual education. It demands patience and hope. It compels the sacrifice of the seen and present for the unseen and future. It calls for faith, the trust in a promise where assurance must rest upon the perceived character of the promiser. There must be self-control and that communion with God which the child has with the father whom he perfectly trusts, but who withholds from him for a time the gifts which he will certainly bestow on him some day. These are great things for the soul to have. The discipline which gives these things to the soul is very rich and bountiful. It cannot be stigmatized as mercenary; and yet still it is a service for a personal reward. Still even of the expectant saint who stands in the midst of present sorrows and surrenders with his glowing face lifted and his eager eye fixed on the celestial joys, — even of him the question may be asked.
emptied of all its bitterness and jealousy, perhaps, but intrinsically the same question still, “Does he serve God for nought?” Who would not sacrifice much, yea everything, in these few years of time to be rewarded with a whole eternity of joy!
3. It is a great step forward which we take when we pass on to the next motive and come to character as the essential reward and true ambition of a noble life. For then we pass beyond all of what commonly are meant by consequences, and our thought is fixed upon intrinsic qualities as the true result and recompense of struggle after righteousness. “If I do these brave things I shall be brave.” “If I resist this temptation to impurity I shall be pure.” Bravery and purity as real possessions of the soul; as real, nay, far more real than houses and oxen and bags of gold — these make the new ambition. What has become, then, of the old question? Is it not clear that while it has not disappeared, has not ceased to be asked, it has been marvellously purified and refined? The asking of it now does not strike shame but sends the glow of joyous gratitude into the soul of the saint conscious of the lofty benefaction which he has received. “Do you serve God for nought?” “Do you not serve God for nought?” someone asks almost scornfully of the doer of righteousness, whose righteous life has brought poverty, and sickness, and friendlessness. “For nought?” comes back the answer, “surely not! For everything! He pays me in the richest coin and most abundantly. I cannot take into my hands and hold out for you to count, the prizes which He gives me. I cannot even show you pledges and promises written in a book signed with His name, assuring me that they shall be mine upon some far-off day, but they are mine here and now. I am a better man — that is my reward for being good.” Do you not see how question and answer are transfigured. Mounting up together into the heavenly world of character, they have shaken the dust and mist of the low earth off of their wings. Now let the soul number its gains and count its treasures. They are so fine that they refine the hands which count them. They cannot beget pride, for their whole soul and essence is humility. Still there is selfishness, self-love, but it is a love of such a deep self that it is a love also both of all goodness and of all who are seeking to be good. It tends to sympathy and not to rivalry. How far away it has come from the first craving for reward which sought for the recompense of a holy life in benefits which the ledger could count and the pocket could contain.
One great and striking fact about this gradual elevation of the reward of goodness is that the higher it becomes the easier it is to think of it as universal. The highest and most spiritual blessings are like fire. They lend themselves and multiply their flame from point to point without robbery or grudge. One does not have them less because his brother has them. He rather has them more. But the lower blessings are limited in quantity. They are not like fire, but like gold. The more one has the less there is for others. This always has appeared. Whenever the proper rewards of a religious life have seemed to be houses and lands and cattle, there has always been, hovering about, the notion of a chosen people, a favorite selection of humanity to whom belonged the privilege of being holy and appropriating the rewards of holiness. Whenever character has seemed to be intrinsically, in itself, the recompense of righteousness, the clouds have rolled away and men have seen the vision of a whole human race doing the will of God and finding the fulfilment of its life in that obedience. It is a great token of the truth of any idea, that it claims universality, that men who look at it see at once that, if it were accepted as true, it would not be satisfied with offering its solution to some one small corner of the human problem, but would demand the privilege of offering its key to the whole. And this witness of itself, this motive of religion, which consists in the essential value of character, abundantly bears.
4. Have we yet reached the end? Is there a higher motive still? I think there is. A motive, or perhaps we ought to say a range of motives, which yet more completely casts aside and leaves behind the taint of mercenariness while it still presents a true prize to the uplifted eye of the struggler with his sins and the seeker for goodness. This range of motives is inspired by two ideas. One of these ideas is the honor which man by his holiness may render to God. The other is the help which man by his holiness may render to his fellow-man. You go to your Christian friend, your fellow-student, your fellow-merchant, your fellow-man. You say to him, “You are serving God.” And he replies, “Yes, certainly I am, and I am always trying to serve Him more and more “; and then you ask Satan’s question, “Is it for nothing that you serve Him? Do you serve God for nought?” And he repHes again, “O, no. He pays me bountifully.” And then you say, “Tell me what does He give you.” And the answer comes, “He gives me the privilege of honoring Him and helping my fellow-men.” What then? It may be that these rewards seem to be no reward to you. It may be that you look into his face as if you looked upon an idiot, and wondered what distortion of the mind could let him care for things like these. But none the less you see that he did care for them. They make for him a great enthusiasm. They are his “exceeding great reward.” And if you let yourself go on and ask, not of him but of yourself, “Will that sort of reward lead to mercenariness?” the only answer must be, “No!” For behold here the last touch of selfishness has passed away. The man is not even asking whether he is becoming a better man. He is not thinking of Heaven. He is certainly not counting his bank stocks and his barns. He is intensely aware of God the absolutely glorious and man the actually needy. He is full of the healthy sense that glory ought to be manifested and need, ought, to be relieved. He believes that if he serves God both of these ends will in some way, in some degree, be brought about, and so he bends him to his work and knows, whether he can trace it in its detail or not, that God is more honored and man less miserable because of the life he lives.
Those who have never felt it cannot know how this great motive takes possession of a man. Think how it had possession of the Lord. “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work.” And at the last, “I have glorified Thee.” “These whom thou gavest me I have kept.” Think of the purpose of his coming which the angels sang, “Glory to God,” etc. What shall we say of Jesus? “Did he serve God for nought?” Truly it was not comfort or wealth which repaid him. The foxes and the birds seemed, by that test, more the favorites of God than he. And though he looked forward with joy to the time when his weary work should be over and he should go to his Father’s House, it was not as recompense that that eternal joy offered itself to him. And we do not know how far he dwelt consciously on his own growth and the fulfilment of his perfect nature. But this is beyond all doubt or question — that day by day he found the impulse and the reward of his work in the glory of his Father and the salvation of mankind. Was ever man held by his motive as Jesus was by His? It led Him directly to His cross, but He never hesitated or drew back. It was enough. Let us never call that a small, or a vague, or an impossible motive, which has made the pattern life of humanity — the life of the Son of Man!
These, then, are the advancing motives. These are the higher and higher, the purer and purer benefits which come to him who gives himself to God to be His servant. Do you not see now what I meant when I said that each higher and purer motive casr off and left behind something of the quality of possible evil which had belonged to those below it? The loftiness insures the safety. It is not, of course, that the lower motive passes away. It is only put in its true place. The man who mounts so high that his controlling desire is to serve his fellow-men still thanks God that his most external life is filled with mercy, and that the world beyond the grave is bright with promises and that his soul is ripening under divine culture. All these are with him as desires and as gratitudes, but, dominating them all and giving each its true proportion, is this great dedication. And in its power the other motives keep their place and lose their danger.
Is there not here a glimpse, such as one delights to get, into the great future? The search for earthly happiness, the sense that happiness and goodness naturally and appropriately go together is never going to be eradicated from the life and soul of man. The craving for celestial bliss will always make one of the deepest passions of the heart which believes in eternity at all. The ambition for character must forever be the mainspring of much of the noblest of human action. But the first will be kept from running wild into a mere hunt for luxury, and the second from filling life with unreality and other worldHness, and the third from corrupting into morbid self-consciousness, only as they all are surrounded and commanded by the great unselfish wish to glorify God and to serve fellow-man. There is the only atmosphere in which the pursuit of wealth and the desire of heaven and the craving for culture are kept healthy, sound, and true. There is the secret of a holy energy in the heart of which all a man’s best activity finds place and stimulus. There is a reward of serving God which casts the taunt of Satan back into his face, or rather (shall we not say?) which seizes it and carries it as a very flag of inspiration and of triumph.
“Dost thou serve God for nought?” O, no! His wages are unspeakable. Day by day (so the obedient soul replies), day by day I find in serving Him the privilege of ministering to His glory and of helping these children of His who are my brethren. Day by day the sufficiency of that reward grows manifest. It is enough. It is so m.uch that all besides is either included in it or is made unnecessary. Without it, all other wages would be woefully unsatisfactory. To be rich, to go to heaven, even to be good, what would they be if I could not glorify God and help my fellow-men. No! I do not “serve God for nought.” His reward not merely satisfies but overwhelms me with its richness.
With such attraction let us tempt our souls and the souls of our brethren. O taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. Who will not come to such a service? Who will not give his heart and life to such a God?