St. Paul, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a rabbinical scholar of the first rank, a man rising stage by stage to fame along the path marked out by the traditions of his people, came back from his eventful journey to Damascus to take up the work of a path-breaker and to set himself like a flint against the old-time religion in which he was born and reared. Luther, a devout monk, an ambassador to the papal court, a professor of scholastic theology, discovered that he could not find peace to his soul along the path of the prevailing traditional religion, and he swung, with all the fervor of his powerful nature, into a fresh track which has blessed all ages since. These are some of the supreme leaders, but every age has had its quota of minor prophets, who have heard the call to leave the old mountain and go forward and who have fearlessly entered the perilous and untried path of fresh vision. As we look back and see them in the perspective of their successful mission to the race, we thank God for their bravery and their valiant service, but we are apt to forget the tragedies of their lives.
Nobody can enter a fresh path, or bring a new vision of the meaning of life, or reinterpret old truths—in short, nobody can be a prophet—without arousing the suspicion and, sooner or later, the bitter hatred of those who are the keepers and guardians of the existing forms and traditions, and the path-breaker must expect to see his old friends misunderstand him, turn against him, and reproach him. He must endure the hard experience of being called a destroyer of the very things he is giving his life to build. Christ is, for example, hurried to the cross as a blasphemer, and each prophet, in his degree, has had to hear himself charged with being the very opposite of what he really is in heart and life. To be a prophet at all he must be a sensitive soul, and yet he must live and work in a pitiless rain of misunderstanding and attack. Still more tragic, perhaps, is the necessity which the prophet is under of doing his hard tasks without living to see the triumphant results. He is, naturally, ahead of his time—a path-breaker—and his contemporaries are always slow to discover and to realize what he is doing. Even those who love him and appreciate him only half see his true purpose, and thus he feels alone and solitary, though he may be in the thick of the throng. It is only when he is long dead and the mists have cleared away that he is called a prophet and comes to his true place. While he lived he was sure of only one Friend who completely understood him and approved of his course, and that was his invisible and heavenly Friend. But in spite of the tragedy and the pain and the hard road, the prophet, “seeing him who is invisible,” prefers to all other paths, however easy and popular, the path of his vision and call.
III
A LONG DISTANCE CALL
Just when life seems peculiarly crowded with items of complexity and importance, the telephone rings a determined, significant kind of ring. This is evidently no ordinary passing-the-time-of-day affair. I interrupt my weighty concerns and take up the receiver with expectation. I say “Hello!” but there is no answer, no human recognition. The wire hums and buzzes, instruments click far away, plugs are pulled out and pushed in. Little tiny scraps of remote, inane, unintelligible conversation between unknown mortals furnish the only evidence I get that there is any human purpose going forward in this strange world inside the telephone system where I can see nothing happening.
Suddenly a voice which is evidently hunting for me breaks in: “Is this Mr. ——?” “Yes.” “Hold the wire, please.” I am led on with increasing interest and confidence. Somebody somewhere miles away in this invisible world of electrical connections is seeking for me. I forget the multitudinous problems that were besieging me when the telephone first rang, and I listen with suppressed breath and strained muscles. All I get, however, is an immense confusion. There is no coherence or order to anything that reaches me. Faint and far away in some still remoter center than at first I hear clicks and buzzes, vague unmeaning noises, and the dull thud of shifting plugs that connect the lines. Once more a kindly voice breaks in on the confusion, a voice seeking after me from some distant city: “Is this Mr. ——?” “Yes.” “Wait a minute.”
I do wait a minute as patiently as I can. I dimly feel that we are plunging out into yet remoter space, and that I am being connected up with the person who all the time has been seeking me. A low hum of the far-away wire is all I get to repay me for the long wait. I grow impatient. I shout “Hello!” “Is anybody there?” “Do you want me?” Not a word comes back, only endless, empty murmurs of people who have found one another and are talking so far off that the sense is lost in the mere broth of sounds. This dull world inside the telephone seems to be a mad world of noise and confusion but no substance, no real correspondence. I am on the verge of giving the whole business up and of returning to my interrupted tasks, which at least were rational.
Suddenly a voice breaks in, this time a voice I know and recognize. The person who had been seeking me all the time, across these spaces and over this network of interlaced wires, calls me by name, speaks words of insight and intelligence, and gives me a message which moves me deeply and raises the whole tone of my spirit. When finally I “hang up” and return to the things in hand, I have renewed my strength and can work with clearer head and faster pace. The pause has been like a pause in a piece of music. It has been full of significance, and it has helped toward a higher level.
Something like this telephone experience happens in another and very different sphere—a sphere where there are no wires. In the hush and silence, when the conditions are right for it, it often seems as though some one were trying to communicate with us, seeking for actual correspondence with us. We turn from the din and turmoil of busy efforts and listen for the voice. We listen intently and we hear—our own heart beating. We feel the strain of our muscles across the chest. We push back a little deeper and try again. We feel the tension of the skin over the forehead and we note that we are pulling the eyeballs up and inward for more concentrated meditation. All the muscles of the scalp are drawn and we notice them perhaps for the first time. Strange little bits of thought flit across the threshold of the mind. We catch glimpses of dim ideas knocking at the windows for admission to the inner domain where we live. Then, all of a sudden, we succeed in pushing further back. We forget our strained muscles and are unconscious of the corporeal bulk of ourselves. We get in past the flitting thoughts and the procession of ideas contending for entrance. The track seems open for the Someone who is seeking us no less certainly than we are seeking him. If we do not hear our name called, and do not hear distinctly a message in well-known words, we do at least feel that we have found a real Presence and have received fresh vital energy from the creative center of life itself, so that we come back to action, after our pause, restored, refreshed, and “charged” with new force to live by.
Some time ago a long distance call came to my telephone and I went through all the stages of waiting and of confusion and finally heard the clear voice calling me, but I could not get any answer back. I heard perfectly across the five hundred intervening miles, but my correspondent never got a single clear word from me. We found that something was wrong with our transmitter. The connection was good, the line was pervious, the seeking voice was at the other end, but I did not succeed in transmitting what ought to have been said. Here is where most of us fail in this other sphere—this inner wireless sphere—we are poor transmitters. We make the connection, we receive the gift of grace, we are flooded with the incomes of life and power and we freely take, but we do not give. We absorb and accumulate what we can, but we transmit little of all that comes to us. Our radius of out-giving influence is far too small. We need, on the one hand, to listen deeper, to get further in beyond the tensions and the noises, but on the other hand we need to be more radio-active, better transmitters of the grace of God.