THE SOLE SATISFACTION
Through the ages men have waited for voices to speak from out the great unknown. Answering to this universal longing for larger light, to this search for truth, there has been the conviction that, where our own scanty knowledge ended, there something akin to revelation would give us light. We have been listening for voices that would speak with an authority transcending that given to our fellows.
Cold reason may mock at revelation, but the soul struggling in darkness, baffled by its problems, lost in the night, still looks up and hopes. For what awaits us but despair if the mysteries of the universe are forever sealed, our questions forever unanswered, and no higher appeal to be known than that to our own selfish interests? It is not strange that men have heeded those who, though often mistaken or but impostors, have cried, "Thus saith the Lord!"
It would be strange if in a world of spirits there might be no communication of spirit. If the fairest thought of our era is that which was given us when man was taught to think of the omnipotent as father, it would be strange if there should be no way by which such a father might speak to his children. Such a world would contradict all our best instincts. Such a world would mean that man was better than his maker.
The divine voice speaks, but we too often listen in the wrong direction. It falls not from the skies; it comes not in strange, unusual ways of visions and portents. But it is ever speaking through the things of daily life; it is ever revealing truth and beauty to the inner ear, for it comes not from without but springs up within; heard by the heart rather than by the ear.
The best things have not dropped down; they have grown up. Life is not from without, but from within. God speaks not in thunders, but in the hopes and the longings of hearts. Even the voice we hear in the sighings of the wind or the message we read in the rays of setting sun must be in us before it means aught to us.
The ten commandments owe their force not to any writing on stone but to their writing on our hearts; to them the soul of man answers affirmatively. The only moral code we can follow is that which speaks with the authority of a conscience convicted. That does not mean that man is his own God, nor that he knows no law higher than himself; it does mean that by the laws of spiritual development the law is being written on every heart.
Every real revelation is a divine revelation, since all truth is divine. Once we thought the scientist the enemy of religion; now we know that whenever science lays bare one of the facts of the universe we do but look on what the finger of the Infinite has written. When religion fights truth simply because truth speaks an unfamiliar tongue or fails to respect her traditions, she is fighting against God Himself.
Our need is not some strange, awe-inspiring voice that shall break the silence of the midnight sky; our need is an ear trained to hear, a spirit to understand and reverence the sublime voices that are ever speaking in our world, the voices of the beauty of nature, the joy of living, the stories of every-day divine heroism, the forces that are making a new world to-day as truly as ever one was made long ago.
The life of our day has not less of the divine than the life of long ago; but the message is harder to read; it is for an educated race; it is spiritual rather than merely material; it is from within; it is found in every good impulse, in every outgoing sympathy, in the kindling of eye as friend greets friend, in the good that men are doing, in the toleration that is becoming wider, the love stronger between man and man.
God speaks to men now as He spoke to Moses or to David, though the manner may have changed. But the poor in spirit, those with whom pride of the past has not served to make them unwilling to learn, these hear the voice; the pure in heart see Him; the seekers after truth find Him, and to all He comes in the thrilling moment or in the quiet hour when the voice of the heart makes itself heard.