The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

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FIGHTING THE STARS

In an ancient song we find this striking statement, “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” This is poetry. It must be dealt with according to the rules which govern poetical expression. The plain prose facts underlying the statement were these: The northern tribes of Israel were being oppressed by the warlike Canaanites of that region. Israelites living on the outskirts were frequently slaughtered until certain villages had been entirely destroyed. The oppression became so bitter that it was not safe for an Israelite to travel the ordinary roads. “In the days of Shamgar the highways were unoccupied, and the people walked through by-paths.” They were in constant fear for their lives and the situation at length became unendurable.

Then there came an armed revolt of the Israelites against their oppressors. Ten thousand men under the leadership of Deborah and Barak went out to give battle in the plain of Esdraelon. The commander of the opposing army was Sisera. He had been uniformly victorious over the Israelites chiefly by his use of chariots and war-horses, riding his enemies down before they could accomplish anything with their slings and arrows. And into the famous battle referred to in the song the author says, “Sisera brought nine hundred chariots of iron” to fight against the army of Israel.

But just as the battle opened there came a fierce storm converting the black loam of that fertile field into a morass. The heavy war-horses and huge chariots were unable to charge. The song pictures them as floundering, helpless, in the deep mud. The cold rain turned gradually into sleet and the sleet driven by a fierce wind directly into the faces of the advancing Canaanites made their use of sling and spear comparatively ineffective. On the other hand, the Israelites, with the storm at their backs and with their courage heightened by the feeling that all the circumstances of the situation were in their favor, fought splendidly and successfully. They slaughtered the helpless men who were trying in vain to use the heavy chariots; they put to flight the foot soldiers who could not properly defend themselves with the storm beating in their faces, and thus they won a notable victory over the army of Sisera.

When the Israelites came to add up the forces which entered into the result, they were not so short-sighted as to fancy that their own right arms had gotten them the victory. They saw that certain other forces which they had not created, which they did not in any wise control, had entered decisively into the determination of the issue. “The Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots,” they said. “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” The wind and the rain, the hail and the sleet, coming down out of the skies by no act of theirs, had lined up with them as effective allies; and as their eyes ran over the complete muster roll, the forces from above combining with their own determined valor, they knew that Sisera was foredoomed to defeat because he had been fighting against the stars.

The stars in their courses fought against Sisera—this is poetry! It is a bold literary statement of a splendid moral truth. In the long run the forces of earth and sky are alike hostile to the low type of life which Sisera represents. Cruelty, oppression, inhumanity, are doomed to defeat. Individuals or nations cultivating those qualities are fighting the stars, and the stars will be too much for them. As it was with Sisera, so it is now and ever shall be, world without end! Those evils are sometimes victorious in a skirmish; now and then they win a battle, but the war goes always against them. When the end comes and the articles of capitulation are signed, they are to be found with Sisera, biting the dust. Forces, human and divine, seen and unseen, are perpetually at war with wrong-doing and the combination of all these mighty energies makes the outcome inevitable. The man who, in any wise, undertakes to live a wrong life is undertaking to fight the stars.

The presence of universal moral forces is here symbolized. All about us are familiar forces which we did not originate, which we do not control—the light and the heat of the sun, the power of gravitation, the movements of the winds, and the pulsating tides. We cannot control them; we can only adjust ourselves to their movements and wisely cooperate with them for certain ends. Even while I am speaking this huge mass under our feet is whirling us swiftly onward, covering the whole twenty-five thousand miles in a single twenty-four hours. Scientific men thus far have nothing to offer as to how it gained its initial velocity; we find it moving and it carries us with it whether we will or no.

This is a symbol! There are other forces, unseen but mighty, moving the race up out of darkness into great and ever greater light. With all its groping and stumbling the race has never been allowed to lose its way altogether. Yesterday it thought as a child and understood as a child; today it puts away childish things and knows in part; tomorrow it will know still “in part,” but a larger part. And it is the sublime conviction of serious men that it is on its way to know even as it is known. This movement is as resistless as the motion of the planets.

The race is also making headway in righteousness. Certain forms of evil which once stood out naked and unashamed have been driven into rat-holes. Presently these holes will be stopped up from the top and those forms of evil will be seen no more. The power of conscience grows and its dominion widens. Matthew Arnold, speaking as a poet, said, “There is a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness.” Herbert Spencer, speaking as a philosopher, said, “There is an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed,” and in his judgment it was, on the whole, friendly to righteousness. The Psalmist, speaking as a religious man, said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, and in keeping of them there is great reward.” It does not matter what words are used; it all amounts to the same thing. The very stars are symbols to us, as they were to this writer of old, of forces unseen, august, cosmic, which are insistently set upon righteousness. Sisera and all the horde of wrong-doers are compelled to look that fact in the face.

The antagonism of these universal forces spells defeat for those who are willing to do wrong. Sometimes the letters which spell out defeat are formally arranged in order; at other times the letters must be selected from a mass of confusing details, but they are there, and they spell the same word, “defeat.” The stars never tarry long in bringing in their verdict upon the coarser sins of the flesh, murder and adultery, stealing and lying, drunkenness and gluttony. But the operation of this law reaches all the way down to those subtler sins of pride and envy, meanness and selfishness, moral indifference and spiritual neglect—all these in their final outcome make for misery and discontent as surely as two and two make four. No man ever outwitted or vanquished the stars, no man ever will. The sun rises when it is due, no matter how he chooses to set his individual clock, no matter what lies he may tell in his particular almanac. No man ever outwitted the moral order of the universe which is august and irresistible in its ongoings. He may have sought out many devices, but at last he is compelled to settle by the books. He must reap what he has sown, no matter how terrible the harvest may be.