A Parable for the Young
He that Cometh to God must believe that He is. — Heb. xi. 6.
My subject is the existence of God; and as it is rather a hard one,, I propose to make it as easy as possible by giving what I Iiave to say upon it in the form of a parable. I shall hold a conversation with a boy of about fifteen years of age whose name, for the sake of convenience,, shall be Richard. We used to have many a long and bearty talk upon subjects that boys do not generally care to go into, but Ricbard was so sprightly a boy that we did not feel at all gloomy or sad, even when we talked about the most serious questions. Richard liked to begin at the beginning of things, and he was not easily put off with answers. He asked me to tell him what I wished him to believe, and then he would tell me in return whether he could believe it or not. I was glad ta have such a good listener so I went to work in real earnest.
I told Richard that I wanted him to believe in God, — to believe that there is a life higher than any life we have yet seen — a life out of which all other life comes, and upon which all other life depends. I told him that I myself believed this with all my heart, and that if I did not do so everything would seem to me to be dark and very sad.
Richard wanted to know how I could make that out.
I told him that I made it out in this way: — Things coming from nothing, and going back to nothing, seemed to me to be a most absurd notion; there the things are, at all events, — there is the sun, the sky, the sea, the dry land, — how did they come to be there? Did they put themselves there? If they did, they must have some life and sense, because they did not throw themselves into a heap, but set themselves at proper distances from one another, and the sun knew exactly how much light and heat the world could bear without being dazzled and burned. Now all this seemed to me to be absurd.
As I was going on in this way, Richard saw a most beautiful machine upon my table, made for the purpose of doing sums in arithmetic; in shape it was something like a musical box; it could multiply, add.
subtract and divide figures in a very wonderful way.
Who made it? said Richard.
^’Nobody,’’ I immediately replied.
When Richard had laughed at the idea of a machine making itself, I said — ‘Now tell me whether it is more difficult for you to believe that this machine made itself, or that a man made it? Or I will go still farther: whether it is more difficult for you to believe that this machine made itself or to believe that it dro]pped out of the clouds just as you see it upon my table?”
This was a puzzler for Richard.
“I dont see how it could drop out of the clouds,^^ said he, but I am quite sure it never did and it never could make itself.^^
That was very fair. Now it is very much the same with the sun. If you ask me how God made it, I cannot explain how he did it; but if you tell me that the sun made itself I laugh at you. No candle ever made itself; no lucifer-match ever made itself, and therefore I cannot believe that the sun made itself.
“Now, Richard,^’ said I,” here is an offer for you, an offer of a great deal of money: there is a town in Ireland which made itself; it has a large market-place, seven beautiful churches, in every one of which there is a clock which regularly winds itself up every
Saturday morning, a large post-office, five banks, and a hundred and fifty shops; nobody built the town; nobody saw it being built; it built itself every inch without any hand of man laying one stone upon another, — now go to school to-morrow morning, tell this story to the boys, and for every boy that believes it I will give you a sovereign at night!
“I don’t believe it my self,’’ said Richard, “and no other boy in his senses will believe it.”
^’ But some of the boys might believe the piece about the seven clocks?”
“Say it again, if you please.”
“There are seven beautiful churches in the town, and in every one of them there is a clock which regularly winds itself up every Saturday morning, — if you can get them to believe that, I shall give you a sovereign a-piece for all the boys you can persuade.”
Richard said he did not want to make a fool of himself amongst the boys, but,” he added, “who made God?”
That was the point! I knew that Richard was a sharp frank boy who would ask any question that first came into his mind, and here was a proof of it.
“That,’’ said I, “is the very point where what is called faith comes in: so far, whilst we have been talking about things making themselves, reason has come in, and put the notion out of our heads; but now something higher than reason comes in, and that something is faith. We cannot understand God making himself; for my own part I dont pretend to do anything of the sort; I believe that God is, and be lieving that all the rest is simple and beautiful. It does a man good to believe in what he cannot see and in what he cannot explain, provided, of course, that it is something great and wise and good. Now this is just what the idea of God is, — it is great, it is wise, it is good, and the more we think of it the more pure and beautiful we become.”
‘’ But suppose we just take things as they are and dont care about how they were made or who made them?’’
“Then we ^ake them just as dogs take them,’’ said I.
“But ive can get more good out of them,” Richard replied.
“A cannibal gets no more good out of them,” I answered, “and if we do, it is because we are indebted to men who have believed in God, and who have taught us, and saved us from becoming worse than wild beasts. It is not fair to look at things as they now are, and to say we need not care who made them. Things never would have been as good as they are, but for the men who believed in God and loved Him, and worked for the good of His creatures.”
“But suppose we do believe that God made all things, what then?”
^’ A good deal. We cannot believe this and stop there. Once admit that God lives, and you must go farther. God cannot live without ruling; He cannot have made us without caring something for us; if He cares for us. He seeks our love in return ] if we do not love Him, we must grieve Him; if we do not obey Him, we sin against Him; and if we sin against Him, how can we rub out the sin and make ourselves as if we had never done any wrong? So you see, if we believe that God made all things, a very great deal comes out of it.^^
“But why should God care anything about what we do?^^
‘^’^Why, Richard, even a watchmaker cares how his watches go; a gardener cares how his plants thrive: and you know well enough how anxious your father is that you should be good and happy; if God thought it worth while to make us, it is not surprising that He should care about what we do.^^
E/ichard said that he was quite willing to believe that God lives, that God made everything, and that everything belongs to God, but he thought people might be left to enjoy themselves just as they pleased, without troubling much about religion.
“But what do you mean by the word believe,’ when you say that you are quite willing to believe that God lives? ‘’
A FA li ABLE FOR THE YOUNG. 303
Richard tliouglit that I had asked a useless question, for everybody must know the meaning of the word believe.^^
‘”’^But that is exactly what they do not know, Richard, so I want you to tell me/^
Richard gave it up. He said he knew what he meant, but could not explain it. He hinted, however, that believing was believing, and that the thing was simple enough without being explained. To draw him out a little, and to show him that” the thing,^^ as he called it, was not quite so simple as he imagined, I talked to him in this way: —
“A man may say he believes, but if he does not carry out what he believes, it can never do him any good. A man may believe that a certain kind of medicine will cure his headache, but if he does not take the medicine his headache will not be cured, and he cannot expect people to pity him if he knew the cure, and yet would not take it. A man may believe that the train is going to London or to Edinburgh, but if he does not get into it, his belief will not take him to either of these cities. You may believe that if you work hard, you will win a prize at the next examination, but unless you do work hard your mere belief will do nothing for you.^^
Richard saw that, and said, Perhaps the best thing, then, is not to believe anything about it, and then if you dont believe you cannot be expected to doanything/^
^’ Tou may not be expected to do anything/^ said I, ‘^ but some things do not depend upon our believing them or not believing them. You may believe that fire will not burn but if you put your hand into the fire your belief will not save you. You may do as you please about believing whether the tide is coming in or not, but if you dont get out of the way, you will be drowned. You may please yourself whether you believe in seed-time or not -but if you let that time pass without sowing seed in the fields you will never have a crop of anything but weeds. So a man may not believe that God lives but that will not save him when God comes to reckon with men, and give every one of them the proper reward of his actions.^’
“Then what is believing? said Richard. Believing is Kving-by/^ I replied. ‘’^ What a man really and truly believes, he will live by. A man may saxj he believes something, but it may be something not worth believing, or it may be of no consequence whether he believes it or not. You may tell me that a man died in China last week, and I may believe you, but the event is absolutely of no importance to either of us: you may tell me that a ship is going to New York to-morrow and I may believe what you say.
but if I do not wish to go to New York, I shall very likely think no more about the matter. But if I tell you that the foundations of your house are giving way if you believe me you will see about them at once and you will have no rest in the house until they are made secure. All wise men live as nearly as they can according to what they believe: they first thhik, then they act: they consider they go over things carefully in their mindSj and when they think they see the right way, they walk in it with pleasure and hope. Wise people do not go about without a plan: they first believe and then they carry out what they believe. Now suppose I believe that God sees me, that God cares for me, that God loves me; that belief will have a happy efiect upon my whole life. If I really and truly, with all my mind and heart, believe that, I shall have much joy and peace. I can then say — God knows my heart. He knows just what I need. He watches me all the day long. He will help me when I cannot help myself. He knows exactly what I can do, and He does not expect me to work beyond my strength; I will please Him; I will pray to Him; I will love Him for all His care and goodness. You can see that in this way a man’’s faith sways his whole life; if his faith is good, his life is good; if his faith is bad, his life is bad.^^
I have said that Richard was very frank in his way of speakings and he gave me a second proof of it at this point.
“Some people who believe in God are not very nice people/^ said he.
‘’^That may be true enoughy’ said, ^’^and easy enough to explain. You must not blame their belief in God for their not being nice for they would not be even as nice as they are if they did not believe in Him. Perhaps they have a wrong notion of God: they do not live much in the sunshine of His love: they think of Him as great and righteous and mighty, but not as loving and tender and fatherly. Everything depends upon ones way of looking at God, and when we look in the right way the sight of His love makes us something like Himself.^^
Richard said he had sometimes puzzled himself a good deal about these things, but he really could not understand them. I smiled at the idea of a boy not quite fifteen understanding such things. Yet are we not all about the same age when we set ourselves against the days of the Eternal? There seems to be a great gap between fifteen and seventy, and so there is when we think of one life only, and one small world. But what is seventy as compared with a thousand, a thousand as compared with a million, a million as compared with eternity? What is our life here but a spasm, and what- our habitation but a handful of sand!
The inland child who has seen only a river though the broadest of English streams, knows nothing of the great sad sea that lies a few miles beyond. What has the oldest man seen but a sunrise and a sunset, a cradle and a grave, a spring flower and an autumn sheaf! What are his grey hairs but the snows of one brief winter, and what are the furrows of his brow but the graves of his strength! We speak of understanding as if we could lay a compass upon that which is infinite, and of rejecting mysteries as if we could find our way in the dark. Is it not decent to wait, to hold ones self in check awhile, and to believe that there may be something more in the universe than we have yet found out? Can we see round the corners of things? Does not a man believe some things at fifty which seemed incredible at thirty, and at seventy does he not speak of fifty as immature and incomplete? Truly our self- corrections may well humble us, for what page is there in all the record of our life that is not marked by many an erasure, and by interlineations which tell of improvement and progress?
Believe in God if you would have solidity, pureness, and comfort of life. But God! The idea dazzles the vision and confounds the mind! What, then, is wanted? Mediation. Where is mediation to be found? In Jesus Christ. “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ o Jesus,” “He that hath seen me liatli seen the Father,” Thus we are driven to the right quarter. We cannot bear the primary light. By-and-by we may be old enough and strong enough to look upon it and live but now we must see the glory as it is subdued by a human medium. We see Jesus!
Suppose that we could never get farther than the mere conception of the possihility of such a life as is denoted by the term God, that conception must ever stand at the head of our thinking, determining the quality of our manhood and the range of our hope. It is the sum of all other ideas. To work up to it must tax our best ambition, and attemper all the aspirations which move the soul. Nor is it a conception which stands apart from all intellectual lines, throwing a haughty scorn upon all the dull and blind thinking of man. It is the last point in the intellectual ascent, — the point without which there would be a firmament without a star, an immensity without a heaven! It is something, then, in my estimation, to get a man to admit that the innermost secret of the whole spiritual world, including judgment, conscience, sympathy, imagination — may be God. Admitting that, he cannot be flippant: he must have at least intervals of soberness nearly akin to reverence, and of wonder hardly distinguishable from worship. Again and again the idea will flash upon him amid the gloom of life and give him unexpected hope in the unmapped and wild deserts which lie around the inevitable grave. A human life without this divine idea is sunless, and all its growths are starved and dwarfed. Were this divine idea mere jpoetry, it would refine and elevate life beyond all other ideas. It would speak to the heart when other voices could not reach it. It would help poverty to overcome the temptations which are born of hunger and want. It would kindle a lamp in the darkest hours of waiting, of disappointment, of fear. And when the last hour came — the last l)lack, cold, grim hour — it would at least roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and smooth the road into the eternal darkness.
But, believe in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: the living God: the God of the Cross: the God of Calvary: the sin-pardoning and the prayer-hearing God: then life is flooded with the light of immortal hope, and there remains nothing between us and heaven but — the pain — the bliss of dying! ^’