In the old Pagan days, at least in many lands, the priestly act of bridge-building had its darker side. Here and there a curious tradition still survives to show that once the making of a bridge was accompanied by the sacrifice of a life. The victim was offered to propitiate the jealous powers which otherwise might wreak their vengeance upon a larger number, destroying the bridge and the passengers upon it by some sudden storm or earthquake.
We have ceased to think the gloomy thoughts which made men build their bridges thus in the ancient ages. But still, if the bridge of life is to be well and truly laid, there must be sacrifice at its foundations. The thought of the architect, the beauty of the curving arch, all may crumble and fall in the time of stress when the floods are out and the river rushes in boisterous strength against the piers, if the bridge-builder has not done his priestly duty. It is good that man's life should be well ordered, clean and happy, useful to others and harmonious in itself, but deep down in it, if the life is to stand the strain of evil days and to do its full service, there must surely be the strength of willing sacrifice. The ideal of such Christian sacrifice is no sullen, grudging surrender [p.115] of desire, no mutilation of man's true nature, but the glad gift of life to life, which mingles vicarious sorrow with vicarious joy. And as this spirit spreads with the growth of that Kingdom of God which Christ proclaimed to men, the human race will realize more and more fully all that is meant by the priesthood of humanity.
[p.116]
CHAPTER VIII: THE ANSWER OF FAITH
CENTURIES ago, in a far-off Eastern land, a philosopher poet set to verse the sad music of his heart's doubts and longings, and the cry that rings again and again through his poems finds an echo in men's hearts to-day. The mystery of life and death over which Omar Khayam pondered has never ceased to attract the thoughts of men. Returning spring brings the old hopes back to our lives, sometimes with the same sadder echoes that troubled Moschus and Horace, and still thinkers and poets bow before the terror and the majesty of death which they are powerless to explain.
What use then is it to trouble ourselves with a problem which is as old as the life of man and which the greater intellects have failed to solve? Think about it we must, again and again, unless we deliberately stifle our thoughts when they turn to the things which matter most to us. And since we are social beings, born dependent on each other and made to help one another, it is natural that we should wish to share our thoughts. [p.117]
Whence? and whither? and why? is a triad of questions over which men have broken their hearts; in a sense they must always remain un answered, or at least incompletely answered; and yet as long as men have made them, one response at least has brought with it peace.
The problem of life and death was stated long ages before Omar's day by another Eastern thinker, and with a poignancy greater at times than his. Nowhere in Hebrew literature do we get a deeper sense of the gloomy mystery of life than in the book of Ecclesiastes, where again and again the writer makes lament over triumphant injustice, and the end that comes alike to good and bad. There passes before his eyes the melancholy pageant of the children of men, journeying along through the ages to the common goal of endless oblivion. "All things come alike to all," he cries; "there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil that is done under the sun, that there is one event unto all; yea, also, the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead." And so too, he goes on to speak of death as annihilation which puts the noblest of dead creatures below the basest of the living. Probably most men have known some [p.118] dark hour at least in which the tragedy of life comes home to them, and they have wondered whether after all the old thinker was not right. We take up as our own the refrain of Omar:
I came like water, and like wind I go,
Into this Universe and why not knowing,