This planet is surely not going to fail. Its destinies have been more and more entrusted to us. For millions of years it laboured, and now it has produced a human race—a late-comer to the planet, only recently arrived, only partly civilised as yet. But already it has produced Plato and Newton and Shakespeare; yes, and it has been the dwelling-place of Christ. Surely it is going to succeed, and in good time to be the theatre of such a magnificent development of human energy and power and joy as to compensate, and more than compensate, for all the pain and suffering, all the blood and tears, which have gone to prepare the way.
The struggle is a real one. The effort is not confined to humanity alone: according to the Christian conception God has shared in it. "God so loved the world that He gave"—we know the text. The earth's case was not hopeless; the world was bad, but it could be redeemed; and the redemption was worth the painful effort which then was undergone, and which the disciples of the Cross have since in their measure shared. Aye, that is the Christian conception; not of a God apart from His creatures, looking on, taking no personal interest in their behaviour, sitting aloof only to judge them; but One who anxiously takes measures for their betterment, takes trouble, takes pains—a pregnant phrase, takes pains,—One who suffers when they go wrong, One who feels painfully the miseries and wrongdoings and sins and cruelties of the creatures whom He has endowed with free will; One who actively enters into the storm and the conflict; One who actually took flesh and dwelt among us, to save us from the slough into which we might have fallen, to show us what the beauty and dignity of man might be.
Well, it is a great idea, a great and simple idea, so simple as to be incredible to some minds. It has been hidden from many of the wise and prudent; it has been revealed to babes.
To sum up: Let us not be discouraged by simplicity. Real things are simple. Human conceptions are not altogether misleading. Our view of the Universe is a partial one but is not an untrue one. Our knowledge of the conditions of existence is not altogether false—only inadequate. The Christian idea of God is a genuine representation of reality.
Nor let us imagine that existence hereafter, removed from these atoms of matter which now both confuse and manifest it, will be something so wholly remote and different as to be unimaginable; but let us learn by the testimony of experience—either our own or that of others—that those who have been, still are; that they care for us and help us; that they, too, are progressing and learning and working and hoping; that there are grades of existence, stretching upward and upward to all eternity; and that God Himself, through His agents and messengers, is continually striving and working and planning, so as to bring this creation of His through its preparatory labour and pain, and lead it on to an existence higher and better than anything we have ever known.
Footnotes
[41] Hibbert Journal, July 1911.