Is it playing fast and loose with the mind? Am I turning in upon myself and playing the mere harlequin in the arena of mental gymnastics?
No! there is sane meaning to this double method--it is this: _as much may be said along one line of reasoning as the other_. Each is a _non-sequitur_ to the other. Each negatives the other and leaves us with reason"s torch inverted--the light out, the darkness deeper than ever; and standing on the threshold of the grave we are forced to cry out in the sharp agony of a continual self-smiting perplexity:
"To be or not to be--_that is the question_."
Question it is--always a question--always coming back from the side of every dead body--always coming back from the clod-filled grave-- coming down from age to age, coming back a question no man, not the wisest mere man who ever lived, could answer, or any living wise man can answer to-day.
If Jesus Christ were not G.o.d it cannot be answered; for if Jesus Christ were not G.o.d, he did not rise from the dead and by divine power carry himself out of the region of death forever.
If Jesus Christ were not G.o.d, you may go and sit by the tomb of your dead and weep bitter (because hopeless) tears.
If Jesus Christ were not G.o.d, then he was not a redeemer and saviour. All the beautiful things that have been taught about him as such are false. All the hopes of heaven, the beauty of the celestial city, the tree of life, the river of crystal, the company of the saints, the arch-angelic song, the meeting and the knowing of those who long ago have left us--none of these things are so.
If he were not G.o.d, then it is not true that he sits upon the throne, high and lifted up, listening to the plaints of the weakest heart that shall trust him, and hearing the sound of every falling tear.
If Jesus Christ be not G.o.d, then the whole system of Christianity built upon his person and work falls to the ground, is broken into fragments, and like wind-swept dust can never be gathered.
If Jesus Christ be not G.o.d, the New Testament record of him is untrue. The New Testament impeached in its prime particular becomes a worthless book--a book full of exhortations to holiness and truth, in the name of him who is proven to be (if he ever lived at all) a blasphemer, a deceiver of men and the concrete of human wickedness.
If the New Testament is not true, neither is the Old; for the Old Testament finds its meaning and value only in the Christ of the New Testament. Take Jesus Christ out of the Old Testament (which you must do if you set aside the New; for he alone fulfils the types, the symbols and the prophecies of the Old Testament; he alone makes its testimony and history intelligible; he alone gives unity, harmony and authoritative meaning to its exhortations)--take Christ out of the Old Testament and you take away its one and only key.
And mark you--when _Christ goes out of the Bible as G.o.d--G.o.d goes out of the Bible_. The deity which has preserved it, the power which has made it living and unchangeable in the midst of change and death, will have been dethroned.
Without Christ as G.o.d you are without any sane and satisfying knowledge of G.o.d.
Where will you turn to find G.o.d and know him to your comfort? You might as well look into the bottomless pit as into your own heart.
No more satisfactory will it be to look into the heart of others. We are all built on the same plan.
The difference is only in degree or extension.
The basilar fact is, G.o.d cannot be found in any natural man.
You cannot find or know him to your heart"s content in nature.
What kind of a G.o.d does nature reveal to you?
I will answer for you--a G.o.d who puts you in this world and does not tell you whence you come, whether from the all mud or the Almighty, from an angel or a devil, from jelly or genius, from the heights of heaven or the depths of h.e.l.l. A G.o.d who puts you here and fills you with questions he alone can answer and--refuses so to do. A G.o.d who calls you into the world and gives you eyes to see everything but yourself. A G.o.d who hides you from yourself, so that you do not know whether you are a function or a soul; whether you are matter or spirit; whether you are a personality or a cellular part of a general whole--called man. A G.o.d who gave you mind with seemingly infinite possibilities in thought, and gave you a body that is finite and temporary in construction. A G.o.d who gives you an intellect which grasps after eternity, and is always saying on the summit of any endeavor achieved, "What next?" and yet is limited to a few inconsequent years. A G.o.d who sets you face to face with the imminency of death, and never allows you to know at what moment you must go, and gives you no hint of the beyond--or whether there is a beyond.
In France they do not tell the man who is to be guillotined till a few moments before the fatal hour. He is sleeping on his couch. He is dreaming of pleasant fields, of running streams, of boyhood"s days, of to-morrows that shall be better--a heavy hand is laid on his shoulder--he starts up in bed--the gray light of early morning is filtering in through the barred window of his cell--stern-faced men are standing before him--they say, "Your hour is come; follow us."
It is terrific.
But this is the case of every human being.
No one can tell when the summons may come--or where.
A man was sitting in his room at close of day. It had been (so he said) the best day of his life. He had said to his wife that he never loved her more than he did then (and they had been married many years), never did he feel more content that they had chosen to walk together through life than then. He was full of plans for himself and for her (saying with great earnestness that their last days should be their best days). She answered back that she was glad with a great gladness that it was so. She turned away for a moment to glance in another direction, still speaking to him. When she looked back he was gone--gone while the love words and the hope words were still on his lips--the finger of death had touched his heart--a voice had whispered in his ear, "Come." There was only a lifeless bit of clay where a moment before had been a body pulsing with life, with love, with hope.
It is terrific--doomed--and not knowing how soon the bolt will strike. What sort of a G.o.d is this who laces your body with a network of laws, the breaking of the slightest of which--all unknown to you--may send you forth upon a path of diseased and tortured existence--in which the body from whence you cannot escape shall be to you as a chamber of horrors--a place of the thumbscrew, the rack and the f.a.got. What kind of a G.o.d is that who allows the aged to linger out in a miserable prolongation of wretched days, a burden to themselves, a burden to others, and takes away the widow"s only son --her only support? Who is the G.o.d who creates one man with all the equipment for life, and another man with all the lack of it? What kind of a G.o.d is this who looks down out of the heaven of day and the heavens of night, and sees all the sorrow, the anguish, the pain, the unspeakable tragedies, and sends no wing of angel to cleave the pitiless sky, no voice out of the silence to console, no hand to help?
What man is there of you, if he had the power, would not banish sickness, sorrow, pain and death?
What man is there of you who, if he could, would not make every human being well and happy?
What then? What is the conclusion of the matter concerning you?
Simple enough--you have _the heart to do it, but not the power_.
What is the conclusion concerning this G.o.d of nature? _He has the power--but does not manifest the heart_.
What will you say of this G.o.d of nature in such a scheme?
What can you say but that your heart is better than the heart of the G.o.d which nature reveals?
Can you hear, understand and love a G.o.d like that?
Can you climb through nature up to nature"s G.o.d and say, "I have found him, I know him?"
You can climb up, but where will you find him?
You will find him wrapped in the black thundercloud or girded with the robe of the lightnings: You will find him the G.o.d who splits the earth in twain with the earthquake"s riving blow, loosens the bands of the sea, sends tidal waves in surges of destruction, pours out the lava streams from the volcano"s cone, as kings pour wine from an earthen cup, spilling the wine and breaking the cup; the G.o.d who turns an earthly paradise (like Messina) into a fire-smitten desert, and a city of the living into a cemetery of the unburied dead.
When your heart aches, will such a G.o.d care for you? Will his thunders console you? When your soul is dark, will his lightnings illumine it? When you yearn for love, will his inexorable law supply it?
Ah, sirs, without Christ you are without a G.o.d whom you can love, whom you can trust, to whom you can go, and in whose strength you can lie down and--at last--be folded in peace.
If Jesus Christ is not G.o.d, if the only G.o.d to whom you can go is the G.o.d of nature, then you might as well fall down in the sand at the base of the far Egyptian sphinx, open your eyes for a moment to the blue sky that spreads away to the horizon before its staring face, its cold, chiselled, inscrutable smile, and the next moment shut your eyes against the pelting dust the idle winds blow thither.
Ah! Nature is a sand-dune--and the G.o.d of nature is a Sphynx.
Do you care to kneel and worship there?
If Jesus Christ be not G.o.d the disaster is not alone to him, but to you--to me.
If he were not G.o.d, then we are in a world where the very day is no better or brighter than a starless midnight.
If Jesus Christ were a good man, a supremely good man and a supremely intellectual man, then he was and is (as he claimed) Almighty G.o.d.
The New Testament says he was a supremely good, and a supremely intellectual man.
For two thousand years the most brilliant men in the world have corroborated this record by freely testifying that Jesus Christ was a supremely good and a supremely intellectual man; all this being so, I change the conditional form of the proposition to the indicative and declarative and now say:
Since Jesus Christ was a supremely good and a supremely intellectual man, he was, therefore (as he claimed), Almighty G.o.d.
He could not be a supremely good and a supremely intellectual man and claim to be G.o.d unless he were G.o.d.
Since he claimed to be G.o.d, therefore, he was G.o.d.
Yes; he was G.o.d.