The Conquest of Fear Part 6

Naturally enough! It is impossible for any human being to delight in a G.o.d whose first impulse in "doing us good" is so often to ravage our prosperity and affections. So long as we believe in Him fear will rule our lives. It is because the Caucasian believes in Him that he lives in fear and dies in fear. To attempt to eliminate fear and retain this concept of G.o.d is vain.

Understanding this the average Caucasian has made little or no effort to eliminate fear. He would rather live and die in fear than change this concept of G.o.d. It is dear to him. He finds it useful. To its shoulders he can s.h.i.+ft the ills of which he is unwilling himself to accept the responsibility. Where G.o.d is a puzzle life is a puzzle; and where life is a puzzle the Caucasian gets his chance for making the materialistic ideal the only one that seems practical. In a world which was to any noticeable degree freed from the spectre of fear most of our existing systems of government, religion, business, law, and national and international politics, would have to be remodelled. There would be little or no use for them. Built on fear and run by fear, fear is as essential to their existence as coal to our industries. A society that had escaped from fear would escape from their control.

In this present spring of 1921 we are having an exhibition of fear on a scale so colossal that the heart of man is dazed by it. There is not a government which is not afraid of some other government. There is not a government which is not afraid of its own people. There is not a people which is not afraid of its own government. There is not a country in which one group is not afraid of some other group. All is rivalry, enmity, suspicion, confusion, and distrust, "while men's hearts are fainting for fear, and for anxious expectation of what is coming on the world." All statesmen, all ministers, all amba.s.sadors, all politicians, all bankers, all business men, all professional men, all journalists, all farmers, all laborers, all workers in the arts, all men and women of all kinds--with the exception of one here and there who has reached the understanding of the love which casteth out fear--live and work in fear, and in mistrust of their colleagues. From the supreme councils of the Allies down to the crooks and conspirators in dives and joints everyone is afraid of being double-crossed. There is so much double-crossing everywhere that we have been obliged to invent this name for the operation. England is afraid of being double-crossed by Germany, France by England, Italy by France, the United States by Europe, and j.a.pan by the United States, while within these general limitations minor double-crossing interests seethe like bacteria in a drop of poisoned blood. The nations are infected with fear because they elect to believe in a G.o.d of fear, and the Caucasians more than others because they have chosen to see a G.o.d of fear in Him who was put before them as a G.o.d of Love.

IV

I see no way out of all this except as one of us after another reaches the _Metanoia_, the new point of view as regards G.o.d. Other ways have been sought, and have been found no more than blind alleys. Much reference is made nowadays to the disillusionment of those who hoped that the war would lead to social and spiritual renovation; but any such hope was doomed in advance, so long as the Caucasian concept of G.o.d was unchanged. When you cannot trust G.o.d you cannot trust anything; and when you cannot trust anything you get the condition of the world as it is to-day. And that you _cannot_ trust a G.o.d whose "love" will paralyse the hand by which you have to earn a living, or s.n.a.t.c.h your baby from your breast--to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture inflicted just because "He sees that it is best for you," after having led you to see otherwise--that you cannot trust a G.o.d like that must be more or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He cannot practise futilities through your experience and personality. He must be kind with a common-sense kindness, loving with a common-sense love. Whatever explanation of our sufferings and failures there may be we must not shuffle them off on G.o.d. "Let us hold G.o.d to be true," St.

Paul writes, "though every man should prove false."[11] Let us hold that G.o.d would not hurt us, however much we may wilfully hurt each other or ourselves.

[11] Epistle to the Romans.

V

I should not lay so much emphasis on this if so much emphasis were not laid on it in the other direction. G.o.d has so persistently, and for so many generations, been held up to us as a G.o.d who tries and torments and punishes that we can hardly see Him as anything else. Torture comes, in the minds of many of us, to be not only His main function but His only function. "I am all right," is the unspoken thought in many a heart, "so long as I am not overtaken by the Will of G.o.d. When that calamity falls on me my poor little human happiness will be wrecked like a skiff in a cyclone." This is not an exaggeration. It is the secret mental att.i.tude of perhaps ninety percent of those Caucasians who believe in a G.o.d of any kind. Their root-conviction is that if G.o.d would only let them alone they would get along well enough; but as a terrible avenging spirit, like the Fury or the Nemesis of the ancients, he is always tracking them down. The aversion from G.o.d so noticeable in the mind of to-day is, I venture to think, chiefly inspired by the instinct to get away from, or to hide from, the pursuit of this Avenger.

VI

And in a measure this impulse to flight can be understood. I can understand that common-sense men should be cold toward the Caucasian G.o.d, and that they should even renounce and denounce him. I will go so far as to say that I can more easily understand the atheist than I can many of my own friends who pathetically try to love and adore their capricious un-Christlike Deity. To my certain knowledge many of them are doing it against their own natural and better instincts, because they dare not forsake the tradition in which they have been dyed. "I try to love G.o.d and I can't," has been said to me many a time by conscientious people who felt that the fault must lie in themselves. There was no fault in themselves. If their G.o.d could have been loved they would have loved him.

VII

I come here to a point of no small importance to the conquest of fear, the courage to release oneself from the tether of tradition. Few people have it, in the sense of rejecting old theories because of having worked out to new spiritual knowledge. When it comes to the eternal verities many of us are cowardly; nearly all of us are timid. The immense majority of us prefer a G.o.d at second or third hand. We will accept what somebody else has learned, rather than incur the trouble or the responsibility of learning anything for ourselves. We take our knowledge of G.o.d as we take our doses of medicine, from a prescription which one man has written down, and another has "put up," and still another administers. By the time this traditional, handed-on knowledge of G.o.d has reached ourselves it is diluted by all kinds of outside opinions and personalities. It is not strange that when we have swallowed the dose it does little to effect a cure. I do not deny that a second or third hand knowledge of G.o.d may do something. I only deny that it can do much. To support my denial I need only point to what the world has become in a second and third hand Christendom. The ill.u.s.tration is enough.

It should be plain, I think, that no one will ever be released from fear by clinging to the teachings which have inspired fear. We are fearless in proportion as we grow independent enough to know for ourselves. I cannot but stress this point to some extent, for the reason that I myself suffered so long from inability to let the traditional go. It seemed to me to have a sanct.i.ty just because it was traditional. The fact that other people had accepted certain ideas had weight in making me feel that I should accept them too. To go off on a line of my own seemed dangerous. I might make mistakes. I might go far wrong. Safety was spelled by hanging with the crowd.

It was the chance remark of an old acquaintance which dislodged me from this position. In the lobby of a hotel we had met by chance, after not having seen each other for a good many years. The conversation, having touched on one theme and another, drifted to subjects akin to that which I am now discussing. I ventured to disclose some of my own "seeking G.o.d, if perhaps I could grope for Him and find Him."[12]

[12] Acts of the Apostles.

My friend straightened himself and squared his shoulders. "I stand exactly where I did thirty years ago."

There was a pride in the statement with regard to which my first feeling was a pang of envy. A rapid calculation told me that thirty years ago he had been about twenty; and the superiority of a man who at twenty had attained to so much spiritual insight that he had not needed to learn anything more in the interim was evident. I was two or three days turning this incident over in my mind before the exclamation came to me, "How terrible!" To have lived through the thirty years of the richest experience the ordinary man ever knows and still have remained on precisely the same spot as to spiritual things struck me then as a woeful confession.

I beg to say here that I am not talking of external and official religious connections. I am trying to avoid the subject of external and official religion altogether. I am speaking not of religion but of G.o.d.

To my mind the two have no more than the relation of the words of a song and the music of its setting. You may use them together or you may consider them apart. I am considering them apart, and confining myself wholly to the words of the song. What is known as church-affiliation, the music of the setting, I am not concerned with. My only topic is the way in which the meaning of the words gets over to the average inner man, and the effect upon him mentally.

I revert, therefore, to the statement that to make the kind of spiritual progress which will overcome fear it will be often necessary to let go the thing we have outlived. Often the thing we have outlived will be something dear to us, because there was once a time when it served our turn. But our turn to-day may need something different from the turn of yesterday, and the refusal to follow new light simply because it is new leads in the end to mental paralysis. I was once asked to sign a pet.i.tion to the mayor of a city praying that, on the ground of its novelty, electric lighting might be excluded from the street in which I lived. Exactly this same reluctance often keeps us from making changes of another sort, even when we feel that the light which hitherto was enough for us has been outgrown and outcla.s.sed.

The danger of the lone quest leading a man astray can be easily exaggerated. It is not as if G.o.d were difficult to find. "The soul cannot move, wake, or open the eyes, without perceiving G.o.d." "For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down unto us that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart."[13] No motion toward the Universal can miss the Universal. I cannot escape from the Ever-Present; the Ever-Present cannot escape from me. Intellectually I may make mistakes in deduction, but spiritually I cannot but find G.o.d. The little I learn of G.o.d for myself is to me worth more than all the second and third hand knowledge I can gather from the saints.

[13] The Book of Deuteronomy.

VIII

It is the more necessary to dwell on this for the reason that whatever _Metanoia_, or new orientation, is to be brought about must be on the part of individuals. There is no hope for large numbers acting together, or for any kind of group-impulse. Group-impulse among Caucasians is nearly always frightened, conservative, reactionary, or derisive of the forward step. There is hardly an exception to this in the whole history of Caucasian ideas.

Otherwise it would be a pleasant dream to imagine what might now be happening on the great international stage. Let us suppose that the leaders of the so-called Christian countries were all convinced of the three main lines of G.o.d's direction I have already tried to sketch. Let us think of such men as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Sforza, President Harding, and the heads of government in Belgium, Russia, Germany, and all other countries affected by the present war of moves and counter-moves--let us think of them as agreed on the principles:

1. That each knows himself and his country as an agent in the hand of G.o.d, directed surely toward a good end;

2. That each knows each of his colleagues and his country as equally an agent in the hand of G.o.d, directed surely toward a similar good end;

3. That each knows that between G.o.d's agents there can be neither conflicting interests nor clash of wills, and that suspicion and counter-suspicion must be out of place, since under G.o.d's direction no double-crossing is possible.

The picture is almost comic in its incongruity with what actually is.

The mere thought of these protagonists of the century working in harmony to one great purpose, without distrust of each other's motives, and with no necessity for anyone's dodging political foul play, summons the smile of irony. Mutual trust was never so much a suggestion to laugh down.

The mere hint that it might be possible would make one a target for the wit of the experienced.

In what we call the practical world of to-day there is no appeal from the G.o.d of Fear but _to_ the G.o.d of Fear. The great ma.s.s of Caucasians will not have it otherwise. And it requires no prophetic vision to foresee the results of the efforts to bring about international harmony while all are obeying the decrees of the G.o.ddess of Discord. Nearly three years after the signing of the armistice the world is in a more hopeless situation than it was when at war. Up to the present each new move only makes matters worse. There are those who believe that our phase of civilisation is staggering into the abyss and that nothing, as far as can now be descried, will save it from the deluge.

IX

Possibly! Fear tends always to produce the thing it is afraid of. I mention this dark outlook only for the reason that even if the cataclysm were to come the individual can escape from it.

Cataclysms are not new in the history of our race. The rise and fall of civilisations may be called mankind's lessons in "how not to do it." Of these lessons there are no such records as those which we find in the Old Testament; and in these records it is unfailingly pointed out that whatever the calamity which overtakes the world at large the individual has, if he chooses, a way of safety. The innocent are not overwhelmed with the guilty, except when the innocent deliberately shut their eyes to the opening toward the _Soteria_--the Safe Return. But that, unhappily, the innocent do so shut their eyes is one of the commonest facts in life.

Back in that twilight of history of which the later tale could be told only by some symbol, some legendary hieroglyph, there was already an "Ark" by which the faithful few could be saved from the "Flood." The symbol became permanent. The Ark of the Covenant--the sign of a great spiritual understanding--remained as a token to man that in G.o.d he had a sure refuge. It was laid up in his Holy of Holies, a mystic, consecrated pledge, till the ruthless Caucasian came and rifled it.

But no rifling could deprive mankind of its significance. That endures.

To bring it home to the desolate and oppressed was a large part of the mission of psalmists and prophets. The Ark of the Covenant--of the Great Understanding--meant as much to those who sought G.o.d in the ancient world as the Cross does to Christendom. It meant that whatever the collapse, national or general, through siege or sack or famine, those who would escape could escape by the simple process of mentally taking refuge in G.o.d. The Ark of G.o.d would bear them safely when all material help failed.

Among the themes which run through the Old Testament this is of paramount importance. It is impossible to do more than refer to the many times the spiritually minded were implored to seek this protection. It was needful to implore them since they found the a.s.surance so difficult to believe. No matter how often it was proved to them they still doubted it. Saved by this method once they would reject it when it came to danger the second time. Saved the second time they rejected it the third. "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee," is the declaration of Jeremiah, who perhaps more than any other was a prophet of disaster. Similar statements are scattered through the Old Testament by the score, by the hundred. It was a point on which leaders, seers, and teachers insisted with a pa.s.sionate insistence. They knew. They had tested the truth for themselves. Disaster was a common feature in their history. During the three thousand years and more which their experiences cover these Israelites had seen more than one invasion sweep across their land, more than one civilisation come and go. All that Belgium knew in the Great War they knew time and time again. Between Egypt and a.s.syria, the France and Germany of that special epoch, theirs was a kind of buffer state over which every new anguish rolled. "Let it roll," was the cry of their prophets. "The Lord will fight for you. Stand still and see what he will do. His arm is not shortened neither his strength diminished. It is of the Lord to save whether by many or by few. Trust in the Lord and be doing good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Oh, how great is thy goodness which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men. I said in my haste, I am cut off!

Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried unto thee. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord."[14]

[14] Various Old Testament Sources.