CHAPTER VII
The Bible and Sorrow
One who is jealous for the reputation of the Bible as a complete Book of life must sometimes feel that undue emphasis has been placed upon its messages for the sorrowing. If the jealousy does not entertain just this feeling, it has the resembling fear—that the biblical message for sorrow has been emphasized until it has hidden the message for gladness. As a necessary prelude to a discussion of the Bible’s relation to the sorrow of the world, we shall treat its meaning for the world’s gladness. We are willing to use the word “pleasure” in this connection, though pleasure is classed as representing a mood less deep than the mood of joy. Some of us can recall the surprise we experienced in reading Lubbock’s The Pleasures of Life. One chapter dealt with “The Pleasure of Duty.” This title caused us no wonder. But the next chapter astonished us with the heading, “The Duty of Pleasure.” We quickly found ourselves asking whether there was such a duty. Is it an obligation laid on men and women to seek for a proportion of pleasure? Are the light joys of life to be classed with our duties? Lubbock answered these questions in the affirmative. What reply does the Bible give?
Certainly we can say in the beginning that, if we take a review of its pages, the Bible does not impress us as being a mournful book. This is significant when we note the fact that its pages were all written by mature and serious persons. Even more, the pages were written with reference to some of the most serious and sacred elements and events in life. Vast solemnities evoked many sections of the Bible. We should expect that the seriousness of the authors and the critical importance of the events would touch the Book and would dominate its spirit. It is even so. Our worthier thought would not have it otherwise. If the Bible had been simply the inspiration and guide for the world’s playgrounds, it would have lost the most of its soul.
For a volume whose materials were jokes and whose primary purpose was laughter might have a legitimate mission, but it would have difficulty in being rated as redemptive literature. The real humorist is doubtless one of God’s agents in lifting the troubles of mankind; but Providence sees to it that humorists are not so plentiful as to destroy our sense of proportion. Each generation is granted a small group of men who set the world aglee and become the distributors of smiles and laughter. The appreciation of humor, also, is placed in the nature of each normal person; but the continual demand for humor becomes a plague. Men know instinctively that for the greatest things it will not suffice. There is a story to the effect that one of the most renowned Americans was not allowed to write the Declaration of Independence because it was feared that he might work a joke into the historic document. True or false, the story stands for a fact—that humor is a secondary form of service and that the big crises insist that humor shall stay in its own realm.
None the less the Bible is not a stranger to the play element. As we march through its life we see smiles and hear laughter. Children are there in their careless gladness. Young men and maidens are there in their innocent pleasures. Games are there with their delight of striving. Parties are there with their gayety and music. We pass through pages of darkness only to emerge into pages of sunshine. We sit down at Marah and find the brackish and bitter waters and hear the murmuring of the Israelites. But the next day we come to Elim, with its twelve pure and gushing wells and its threescore and ten palm trees. This transition is what we would anticipate in a Book of real life, and it is what fits the Bible to be the guide of total life. A joyless book could not control a joyful world; neither could a sorrowless book control a sorrowful world. The Bible must have a message for both types of experience.
There is a theological reason for this twofold message. We have been told by our religious teachers that Christ, being tempted, can succor those that are tempted. The Man of Sorrows can save the people of sorrows. The High Priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering. He learned obedience through the things he suffered. The world is made acquainted with the sorrowing Saviour of the sorrowing world. Still we have been slow to apply our theology to the other side of life. The forged letter of Publius Lentulus stated that Jesus had often been seen to weep, but never to smile! The mischief of such a misconception is apparent. It provides for a mutilated theology. It gives the world a fractional Christ. It leaves the hour of gladness without its Exemplar. It gives comfort for a funeral, but no companionship for a feast. In the average life the realm of joy is larger than the realm of sorrow. Few people would declare that with them sadness had exceeded gladness. The world needs to-day the Saviour of the joyful, even as it needs the Saviour of the sorrowful. Joy that refuses to be curbed needs saving power just as does sorrow that refuses to be comforted. We need not enter into any needless comparison and try to state which has the more need. It is sufficient to affirm that a complete Bible must take account of pleasures and joys, if these are to be counted among the divinely appointed experiences of life.
We do not long study the Bible without becoming aware of its law of proportion. It gives the word in season, and it gives the word in measure. Hence its aim is to cultivate proportion in human lives. Its ideal is the ideal of a holy God, that is, of One with a perfect balance of the infinite nature. Its ideal for man must, therefore, be that man shall gain for himself that balance in the human realm that God has in his divine realm. For this reason the Bible is a curber of excesses, a restorer of proportions. It gives here its largest lesson for pleasure. Recognizing its legitimacy, it recognizes its limits as well. As an example from both Testaments we may give a statement of conduct that receives rebuke from Moses and from Paul. It is recorded in Exodus that, after their riotings with the golden calf, the Israelites proceeded to engage in riotings of pleasure. The ancient account puts it, “The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” Saint Paul quotes it in First Corinthians in precisely its original form. In the early account the rebuke of the Lord awaits the people. In the later account the apostle makes the conduct the natural accompaniment of idolatry, as if indeed the worship of an image would issue into the idolatry of the table and the playground. Now eating and drinking are not only good; they are necessary. Play is not only good; it is necessary. The Bible declares that food and water are the gifts of God, and it makes them symbols of God’s deeper benevolence. Nor does the Bible ever condemn play. On the contrary, it represents the streets of the Holy City as filled with playing children. The trouble, then, must have been in the lack of proportion as well as in the lack of a good motive. The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play. This is to say that the two constant movements of life were monopolized by appetite and sport. The Israelites ate to play, and they played to eat. Two things intended to be legitimate portions of life became its illegitimate entirety. Designed to be preludes, eating and drinking and playing became the whole program. Life consisted in the satisfaction of two ranges of desire. The demand of Moses and Paul was not that eating and drinking and playing should be abolished, but that they should be pushed back into their just proportions as worthy departments of living. The glutton of food and the glutton of play are both condemned by the Bible.