It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it? Congratulations. I wish I knew the exact day. I think more and more that a birthday is a subject not—as poor Job thought—for anathemas, but for congratulations. To be a reasonable human being—with capacity for seeing something of God's purposes for the race—with power to forward them—with opportunities for love and sacrifice and prayer—oh! I am so glad that I was not a mere animal. And to be born at the end of the nineteenth century—I prefer that period even to Apostolic times. We can know more of God's purposes, enter more deeply into His mind and even His heart, than primitive Christians.
I have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 'The Education of the World' in 'Essays and Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and read it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. I love that old man with his tenderness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I thank God for him. There is something about utter goodness which makes me worship, and fills me with the challenge, 'Go and do thou likewise.' Goodness is as infectious as any disease.
I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of God's life. I suppose that is the reason why He can enter into our lives—see them from the inside.
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest,
Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice which made Him give us selves—wills—of our own. Then He makes them His own by more self-sacrifice. We are made in His image—made to go out of self, and find our self by losing it. Other men at first seem to limit our freedom, but later we find that the apparent limitations are only just scope for realising our true self. Each time we go out of self, and enter into another 'ego,' we return the richer for our sacrifice. We take up other lives into our own, and are richer than a millionaire.
I think that when the other 'ego' is most unlike our own—when at first sight the man is repulsive, and (worse still) uninteresting to us—when the sacrifice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, share his ambitions, fears, longings, and mental outlook, then is the time when we are peculiarly rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, more human, more divine than before.
'By feeblest agents doth our God fulfil His righteous will' is the thought suggested by some of our brother-clergy. God does not choose the agents we should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond to His choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else …'), and if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and transcend the barriers between us, we are not only enriching our own life, but we are doing our best to show a combined front against the almost overwhelming forces of evil.
Even the Apostles must have found it hard to work together. We know they did. Look at Peter and Paul. Yet the spirit of unity was stronger than all that opposed Him, and the One Body was in some measure realised. What was difficult in the childhood of the Body is still more difficult in its manhood. And Englishmen, with their strong sense of individuality, find it a terrible lesson to learn.
But pray. You enter then into another man's 'ego.' You see him in God. You see him as an end in himself. Remember Kant's maxim—a wonderful maxim from one who would not, I suppose, be technically called a Christian—'Treat humanity, whether in thyself or in another, always as an end, not simply as a means.' Put aside a certain amount of time, and pray for one man. If your thoughts wander, do not be disturbed, do not try to find when they began or how they began to wander; do not despair, go back to the subject in hand. And God will have mercy. Your influence, your life, your all, depends on prayer.
We must faint sometimes. But let your saddest times, your deepest struggles be known to God. Gain there the strength and quietness which you need for life. But don't let men see the agony—let them see the peace which comes from wrestling alone with God—wrestling for them.