Unfinished Rainbows, and Other Essays

by George Wood Anderson

Truth incarnate in human life is almighty, but truth in the abstract is as helpless as is the dust of the Egyptian highways, which witnessed the world’s mightiest pageants, but which are unable to tell the story of mighty armies, royal cavalcades, and kingly processions that once tramped upon them. Truth has always existed. However conceited a religious leader may be, no one ever dared to presume himself the creator of a truth. Long before the world had settled upon its foundations, and the constellations of stars, like chandeliers, swayed and swung their pendants of light, all truth beat and throbbed within the heart of the Almighty. Throughout the beauty of verdant slope, crested wave, and starlit sky, these words of encouragement have ever rung: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The truths of civilization have been in existence since creation, yet in every century heathenism has flourished. The truth about human freedom has always been, yet Rameses sat upon a throne and drove the Hebrews to their task, beating their backs with knotted thongs and murdering their children; the barons lived in palatial palaces fed in luxury, while serfs toiled for harvests which they could never gather, and starving, dared not plead for a morsel of the food their toil provided; the Sultan of Turkey reveled in orgies, flagrant and disgusting, while humble Armenians were torn asunder, their bleeding bodies fed to swine, their wives and children tortured beyond belief, while no civilized nation dared lift its hand in protest. Truth, in itself, is not omnipotent. To be of value, truth must be entered into and possessed.

Every truth has a door. To ignorance the door is barred and bolted. To thoughtlessness, the door remains unseen. Only to the eye trained with prayer, faith in God, and love for man, is given the vision of these bright portals, and the possession of the key by which he can unlock the door and enter into and enjoy the truth, which the world has long known by heart, but which had never enveloped, sheltered, and controlled their lives. If he has the courage to use the key and open the door and enter in, he shall not only feel the saving power of God, but he shall leave an open way through which all men may pass to greater power. If he refuses to unlock the door, and, like the learned ones of whom Christ spoke, carries away the key, entering not in themselves and hindering those who would enter, he becomes an exile, without home through time and eternity.

That we may more clearly comprehend this truth let us consider a chapter of American history. Hayne had finished his classic and convincing speech. With gracious charm he had proclaimed the doctrine of union without liberty, a nation of free people, half slave. The rapt attention and tribute of silent applause from the audience told how critical the situation had become. Opposed to him was Daniel Webster, America’s favorite child of genius, whose face was as classic as a Greek god’s, and whose commanding bearing won battles like a general. He was a scholar of the strong New England type, searching for the key to unlock the truth that the nation needed, and make it of easy access to the people. He saw that there could be no union without universal freedom. Hour after hour he proclaimed the truth, making the mightiest speech the nation had ever heard, swaying his audience back to the realm of clear thinking. Finally, with one sentence, “Union and liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable,” he revealed to an awakened nation that he had found the key that would unlock the door of truth that the hour needed. But in his hour of triumph, dazzled by the possibility of becoming President, he refused to use the key. To gain the solid South he uttered his fateful speech for compromise. The North held its breath in expectancy while New England sobbed like one bereft of his favorite child. He who had the key refused to enter in himself and hindered those who would have entered.

But New England had another son of genius who, on the eventful night that Webster, with trembling fingers, tried, and failed, to pick up the key that he had thrown away, left Faneuil Hall with blazing, burning thoughts. He too had found the way, but was unknown and untried. Again he was in Faneuil Hall sitting beside James Russell Lowell, listening to the mad mouthings of men, who, for the money involved, were endeavoring to rechristen Wrong and call it Right. He had waited weary weeks, but now he was unable to keep back his flaming indignation. Rising, he began to speak. On the very platform where Webster had fallen he began to plead the right of human liberty. New England was thrilled with hope. Here at last was a man who not only saw the truth but was determined to enter into it. With the confidence of a prophet he used the key, unlocked the door and showed a nation the way it ought to go.

Truth must become incarnate in man and man must be incarnate in truth. Every Christian man will testify to this. In childhood you committed scripture which had little meaning to your childish mind. It was not until in the after years when sorrow came, and grief blinded the eye, and pain wounded the heart, that the clear, sweet voice of memory began to repeat these verses, and what had been meaningless in childhood became great, wholesome, sheltering, protecting truths, in which you found all the consolations of God.

It is a wonderful hour when the soul enters into and takes possession of God’s great truth, becomes the master of all its stored up power, and begins to use it in the service of love. It is a wonderful experience and need never be delayed, for the door is easy to find. Years ago earth was blessed by the coming of One who worked hard at the carpenter trade, and in the school of toil and prayer, found the way that scholars had overlooked. Standing before kings and earthly potentates he said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” His spirit is the way for men to live, the door through which they pass into all truth, the life of fullest spiritual development. Christ is the open way to every truth. Through him men attain the proper point of view, and, learning to obey the Father as did he, begin to live the life triumphant.

VIII.
Weaving Sunbeams

Nature is always busy weaving sunbeams, and not one of them, like a knotted thread, is cast from her loom. The waves cast their crystal spray upon the sands to waste away, but not so with the sun as he lavishly casts his beams broadcast o’er the earth. Not one of them goes upon a fruitless errand, and not one of them fails to reach its intended goal. It is not that the sun is wise in directing its energy, but because the earth is ready to utilize, with untiring fidelity, the gift of sunlight.

How abundantly the sunbeams come! The arched sky is an upturned basket, out of which God is pouring his wealth of sunlight upon a thirsty, needy planet. These rays of light fall everywhere, because they are needed everywhere. Upon arctic snow and desert sand and undiscovered ocean waves they fall as readily as upon the forests of Brittany or the vineyards of France. They place their gleaming coronets upon the crystal brows of the Alps. They dance and flash their jewels, as they hold carnival in the Northern Lights. Even after the sun is set they peer at us through the parted clouds and leap at us from their hiding places in the moon. They fall in the most inaccessible places, yet none of them are ever wasted. As the parched earth drinks raindrops, so the old world absorbs sunbeams. Swifter and more powerful than the leaping waters of a cataract are they poured upon the earth—a Niagara, world-wide and sun-high, with never-ceasing floods of light that bathe each portion of the globe. They are not piled in heaps; they do not swish and whirl, cutting a gorge through solid rock, or form a whirlpool to menace humanity, but the earth absorbs them all, however rapidly they come, and places them in her mysterious loom. Here, in the depths, beyond our sight, the sunbeams are woven into invisible cords that hold the needles of all the compasses to the north that no traveler need be lost in the forest, and no ship perish in the sea. Here, in the depths, the sunbeams are woven into mighty cables of electric power that man picks up with the fingers of the dynamo and compels to lift his burdens, pull his trains, propel his ships, and serve him in a thousand ways. Here, in the depths, is woven that mysterious power that carries the wireless message through the rocks of the mountains and the channels of the sea, and wraps the earth in a diaphanous garb that makes the wireless telephone a possibility.