The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

I might carry this idea in other directions, but let me turn at once to the other phase of the topic. In part we know, and the part we know is naturally the part we use. We wish that we knew more. We hope to know more some time. In the meantime we recognize that the way to make progress along that line is to use the part we already know.

In almost any direction, unless it be pure mathematics or formal logic, our knowledge, even in the sophomore year, stops a long way this side of complete understanding. No man knows the length and breadth, the height and depth of his wife’s love for him, if she is a good woman. Some part of it he knows, but the love she might show in some emergency, nursing him through a long illness, sharing with him some painful experience, bearing with him some heavy burden—that fuller love he does not know and cannot know until the time comes for its manifestation. But the part he knows about his wife’s love for him is the part he uses and the very thought of how beautiful it is and of the unrevealed capacity it may contain for willing and joyous sacrifice on his behalf, makes him feel that he ought to be a better man to be deserving of it. Thus he moves along in that part of the strength and beauty of a woman’s love which he knows, allowing the fuller knowledge of it to come as it may. And this is precisely the attitude of the reasonably religious man—those realities with which he deals, God and redemption, prayer and duty, immortality and the final judgment, are confessedly too great for final statement, but he knows something about them and the part he knows is the part he uses.

Next door to my home I have two little neighbors, boys of three and five. They are close friends of mine and they have taught me much. Their father is a physician, a busy, useful, Christian man. The boys understand their father’s life “in part.” They know that he is a doctor and that he goes to see sick people and make them well. But as to the methods he employs and the remedies he uses they know nothing at all. They know in a dim sort of way that he makes the money which pays the bills and keeps them in a home full of comfort and beauty. But as to his financial standing, his investments, and his prospects, they know nothing. They know that along with the hearty good-will which he feels for everybody, he loves their mother and them supremely; but how he came to love that particular woman rather than some other one, and how they were born of that love, or how far that love might go in defending and providing for them, they do not concern themselves for one moment. They know their father’s love in part.

But the part they know is the part they use. They live in their father’s house; they sit at his table; they greet him with a shout when he comes in from his practise. They obey him and trust him and think he is the best man in the world. They climb up into his lap and talk to him, not about his practise, but about their own small affairs, their tops, their marbles, their little wagon—as he wants them to do. He meets them always on their own ground and deals with them in the terms and interests of their own lives. Thus my two little friends live and grow, knowing their father’s life in part.

“Except we become as little children” in the house of our Father, whose total life exceeds our present comprehension, whose plans and purposes for us are too high for complete understanding, whose outlook for us is vaster every way than our own outlook—“except we become as little children we shall in no wise enter his kingdom.” But if we take the part we know and use it, acting on it and living by it, we will be treading the way which leads to a fuller and more blessed experience of the Father’s wisdom and love as surely as my two small friends are doing as they grow up toward their manhood in their father’s house.

In how many ways Jesus made plain this duty of utilizing the near and the familiar when we would learn the remote! He seemed to realize that religion would be crusted over with misconceptions so that ordinary people would find it hard to get at; that some men would write big dull books about it, which no one would want to read; that other men in talking about it would use words which would not go into a suit-case without being folded twice, thus confusing the people. For that reason, perhaps, he made his own teaching simpler than that of any one whose words stand recorded in Holy Writ.

He stood once at midnight among the trees talking with a thoughtful man as to certain aspects of the religious life. “How can these things be?” the man asked. “How can a man be born when he is old?” Just then the wind rustled the leaves at his side and Jesus remarked: “The wind bloweth where it listeth. You hear the sound thereof, but you cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” We cannot tell why the wind blows one day from the north and we have cold, another day from the south and we have heat, another day from the east and we have rain. We cannot explain satisfactorily many of the mysteries connected with the wind. But a man who is a fisherman can put up his sail and fill it with this wind which is such a mystery. He can sail out through the Golden Gate and come back in the evening with a boatload of fish for the needs of his family and for other hungry men. The wind that fills his sail he knows, but the origin, the ultimate destiny, and all the relationships it sustains to the other forces in the universe he does not know. The part he knows, however, is the part he uses by relating it to his own life. And this is the act of a man of sense in matters spiritual as well. He knows the life of the Infinite Spirit in part, but he uses the part he knows by relating it helpfully to his own life.

When we start in after that fashion it is a straight course. The boy begins his study of mathematics by learning to count ten—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He moves straight along by that path until, with these same ten figures, he is computing the courses the planets take and measuring the distances of the fixed stars. He begins his study of literature by learning his letters, a, b, c, etc. By and by, using these same familiar letters, he is making his way through the intricacies of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”; he is walking with Emerson and Hegel across the fields of philosophy. He begins his study of music by learning the elementary sounds, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. Presently, with these same tones, he is singing in a great chorus which renders “The Messiah” or playing his instrument in some orchestra which is producing the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. In every situation in life progress is made not by being appalled over the amount we do not know, or by vainly wishing we knew more, but by taking the part we know, relating it to our lives, and making it the instrument of gaining that fuller knowledge.

God is greater than any wise and good father but not different. Carry the love of a wise and good father up to the nth degree and you have the love of God for his people. The life of the spirit is nobler than the life of the flesh, but it stands closely related; it is a life which hungers after righteousness, thirsts for the living God, and grows strong by exercising itself in useful service. Heaven is finer and purer than earth, but not unlike. It was for the Jew a “New Jerusalem,” and it is for every man a “new —” whatever may be the name of the city where he dwells. It is the ordinary life ennobled and glorified by the infusion of a finer spirit. The glorious fulfilment comes through the richer combinations and the fuller development of the simpler parts we know already.

I wish I could persuade the college man who has never entered into an open, joyous, Christian life to just begin. There are many things which he does not understand nor, perhaps, believe. We will put them aside for the moment, not ignoring them, but postponing their consideration. Let him take the part he knows, the moral imperative of living the best life one sees, and no finer life than that of the Christian can be named; the necessity for some competent guide, and none better than Jesus of Nazareth has thus far appeared; the clearly ascertained benefits to be gained by trust and obedience; the helpful reactions which come through prayer and the reading of the Bible; the manifest advantage of cherishing the hope of a future life and of facing squarely upon the fact that what we sow we reap. All this he knows! Let the part he knows be the part he uses. If he will only act upon it, building it into his own life and following where it leads, he will be on his way toward the place where he will know even as he is known.