Love in its simplest and most common forms is often strangely wise. Many a mother learns from the light of her baby's eyes more than all wisdom of books can teach. When the little, unconscious thing is taken from her arms, there is given to her sometimes a feeling, "My baby is mine forever;" a feeling in whose presence we stand in reverent, tender awe. It is not every experience of bereavement which brings with it this uplift of comfort. But to the noble love of a noble object there comes the sense of something in the beloved that outlasts death. To the noble love, for most of our affection has a selfish strain in it; the clinging to another for what of present enjoyment he yields to us brings small illumination or assurance. But as self loses itself in another's life, there comes to us the deep instinct of something over which death has no power. Above all, when we unselfishly love one in whom dwells moral nobility,—when it is a great and vital and holy nature to which we join ourselves,—there comes to us a profound and pregnant sense of its immortality. It is when death's stroke has fallen that that sense rises into full, triumphant bloom.
No wonder the disciples felt that their Master lived! Theirs was the experience that in substance repeats itself whenever from among those who love it a noble soul goes home. It was because Jesus was supremely noble, and they had loved him with consummate affection, that their experience was so intense and vivid. Its true significance lay in this, that it was not supernatural but natural. It is standing the pyramid on its apex to deduce all human goodness from the goodness of Jesus, and to argue a universal immortality solely from his rising. Let us place the pyramid four-square in the universal truth of human nature. Let us ground our religion upon the moral fidelity, the human love, the spiritual aspiration, and the sober regard for fact, in which all loyal souls can agree. Then at its summit we shall get that character of which Jesus is the type, a character in which self-sacrifice and joy divinely blend, and which in its passage from earth imparts the irresistible assurance of a higher life beyond.
This morning the sun rose upon earth and trees encased in blazing jewelry of ice. Fast, fast the beauty melted and was gone,—and in its place, behold the brown earth touched with living green and teeming with promise; the trees' strong limbs tipped with swelling buds; and over all the tender, brooding sky of spring. Even so, the pageant of the miracle-story dissolves, to give place to the natural consciousness of eternal beauty and eternal life.
A group of Americans meet in a foreign city, and they talk fondly of home, and to each of them home has its special meaning. One says: "I remember the green hill-pastures and the great elms and the white farmhouses; I know just how the autumn woods are looking, and the stocked corn, and the pumpkins ripening in the sun; and I am homesick for a sight of it all." Another says: "It is the nation that I think of. To me America seems the home of the poor man, the common man. She is working out great and difficult questions in government and society, and I have strong faith that the outcome of it all is going to be a great good to the world. I long to take part once more in that national life; and over here among strangers I want at least to Le no discredit to the dear old country, and if possible to pick up some bit of knowledge or experience that I can add to the common stock when I get home." A third man says: "Yes, that's all true; but I don't often think of it in so big a way as that. I want to see my old neighbors. And in these foreign Sundays I get hungry for the old church I've been to ever since I was a boy, and the prayers, and the old tunes." Another, perhaps, is silent; but to his heart all the while are present the faces of his wife and children.
As they end their talk and go out together, up the harbor comes a gallant ship, and at her peak float the stars and stripes; and at the sight through each heart runs a common thrill of love and devotion. One man's thought of home is the broader, and another's is the tenderer; but America is home to them all.
So into each loyal soul there shines a ray from the divine Sun and Soul of the universe. Each, according to his individual capacity, receives of the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.
To some minds the beauty of nature brings a deep and inspiring sense of divinity. As one who has this sensibility looks on the hills and woods flushing in the tender radiance of autumn, there comes to him perhaps no articulate and conscious thought. He may not name the name of God, or think it. But the soul is uplifted. There flows in upon it some high serenity, some mysterious sense of ineffable good. If from such a scene one returns to life's activities in braver, truer, and gentler mood, there has been to him a divine revelation.
Some men are of a metaphysical turn of mind, and not only their thoughts but all their emotional experience, all that directs their purpose and animates their feeling, is cast in the mould of highly abstract ideas. They express themselves in phrases which to most people seem cold or meaningless,—an empty substitute for the warmth of religious life. But to the thinker himself these phrases stand for profound realities. It may be that words which have to other ears the dryness of a mathematical formula are to him the expression of moral purpose and sacred trust. Such an one may say: "I do not recognize a personal God, I do not know that I shall have any personal immortality; but I believe in the moral order of the universe and seek to conform to it. I fearlessly trust my destiny here and hereafter." Perhaps on most of his hearers the words fall coldly; but if they see that the speaker's life bears fruit of goodness and heroism and service, they may be sure that, though in a language strange to them, God has spoken to his soul.
There are a great many people, and some of the very best of people, who never get any vivid or distinct apprehension of realities above the sphere of their personal activity. Often they conform to the usages and the language of a religious faith in which they have been educated, and, very likely, feel some self-reproach that they know so little of the spiritual experiences which others speak of. There are men, too, who frankly say, "I don't know much about God; I can't get hold of what folks call religion; but I try to do my work honestly, and I want to help other people just as much as I can." Some of the most genuine religion in the world exists in people who are almost unconscious that they have any religion. The simple desire to do right, and the constant readiness to "lend a hand,"—that is the revelation which such souls receive.
Another very large class—a class which once included most of the distinctively religious world—crave and find the warmth of a personal relation with Christ as the only satisfying thing. It is one of the great and wonderful facts of human history, this personal devotion of unnumbered souls throughout the ages to Jesus. In its intensest form it is affection to a living personality. Any attempt to explain it as an appreciation of beneficent influences of which Jesus was the historical originator, or as the reproduction of a temper and purpose resembling that which was in Jesus, fails to satisfy those in whom love to Christ is the ruling sentiment. It is a person, and a living person, that they love. One may decline to accept the theories which are wont to accompany the sentiment; one may not believe that Jesus was God, nor that personal love for him can be required as an essential part of religion; and, at the same time, one may believe that when a noble soul passes from earth, it rises into yet nobler existence, and may be truly apprehended and profoundly loved by those who are here. Certainly we see this: that to many men and women the strongest and holiest sentiment of life is affection for a personal embodiment of goodness and love, who once walked in Galilee and Jerusalem, existing now in the invisible realm, sympathizing with all human aspiration, pitiful to all human weakness and sorrow, inspiring to all effort and hope and trust. That sentiment is surely a blessed revelation to those in whom it exists,—the warm and living symbol of an eternal reality.