MANY who are distressed over the manifold evils of our time (but do not themselves have to suffer any too keenly under them) comfort themselves and others in the end with a verse from one of the hymns of Paul Gerhardt:
“The upper hand God holdeth, and maketh all things well.”
I do not know whether the poet put so strong a stress upon the words “all things” as we are wont to do, but thus much I certainly do know, that Christianity shows scant favor to an optimism of this sort; all things will not be well in the end in spite of human folly and baseness; but, until the consummation of all things human, good and evil, justice and injustice, will continue to exist side by side as Jesus, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, has clearly said once for all.
No, the idealism of Christianity is something quite other than a shallow optimism; it is much rather a strong faith that everything genuinely good, however slight compared to the tremendous power and might of the forces arrayed against it, never can be crushed by them, but ever maintains itself victorious against its foes. That is the comfort to be given its followers, a comfort that will take from them the fear of losing poise in the midst of the merciless actualities of daily experience; and that is the real meaning of many a Bible word too often explained in the sense of striving after earthly power and splendor; and that, too, is the meaning of some of the finest and most familiar hymns from the fighting days of the Reformation, such as that hymn of Luther, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never-failing.”
On the other hand, the power of what Christianity calls “the world” is very great, and all the elements that make up that power, from the lofty pretension of some distinguished atheistic philosophy all the way down to the basest instinct of the most brutal selfishness, form an extremely close alliance. And the human heart, now overdaring, now overtimid, is so uncertain that even into the life of those who work most effectively for the good, come hours when they despair, not of their task only, but even of their whole manner of thinking, a despair that once and again God must dispel with a “Be not afraid, but speak.”
If we look upon life from God’s standpoint, instead of our own as we had rather do, we see it is not a matter of purely and simply making his people happy. No, first of all they are to be made fearless, for all right living is a life of battling, not of unruffled peace; but of battling without fear, of warring in a good cause and under sure guidance with that heroism which is the highest of all human qualities and the best of all earthly joys.
This is that never-ending conflict between good and evil which every single human being must fight out in his own life, although the final issue is reached only at the end of all things and in a manner to us unknown. “On the advance post of a man’s individual experience the question is the same as in the great battle of the hosts, namely this: whether a faith that is anchored in God is not the highest of moral forces, able to overcome the ever-present power of evil, especially the fundamental sin of self-seeking; for if the victory is gained at the advance post, it may be gained all along the line.” Perhaps this is truer than we know, or ever experience on earth. That there is no higher power in the world than comes from association with God, every single human life must by trial discover. But for that very reason such association must be sought of one’s own free will, and of one’s own free will always cling to; and that makes the problem of life.
In order to gain, in this warfare, a spirit of joy quite different from the moroseness and half-despair of many Christians, the means closest at hand is this: to try to battle, not according to our own ideas, but, as in military service, punctiliously as commanded. Such means, however, is external; there is an inner basis for the right spirit of joy, without which that joy can not be enduring, and that inner basis is the abiding of God in the heart. When all opposition to God disappears, then appears the real joy of living and the great consolation he gives on earth. This peace with God, which in time may even grow, as it were, into an enduring and genuine friendship, the human soul must experience, else it shall not know what inward happiness is. And outward happiness is only the easy sequence of the inward; God gladly does nothing but good to men as soon as he finds it possible.
Here, also, lies the real cause of the philosophical atheism that makes up the religion of many excellent people, who suppose they can not think otherwise, though they would gladly like to. A man’s simple logic will tell him that it is not consistent to say one believes in God, and yet not allow God to dwell in him and rule him absolutely; and it is a noble trait of many doubters that they do not dare to serve God with mere phrases, but they see that if once he should be taken up into the account of life, he would be a “consuming fire” for much that exists in their lives, for much that they would be obliged to give up, but do not want to give up. Faith is a matter, not of the reason, but of the human will; and the difficulty lies in just this resolution to serve God, with all its consequences—a resolution the man himself must make, for no divine mercy can wholly take its place.