THE MORAL LAW
n the tablets of Moses, the First Commandment read: "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me." But when our Savior was asked, "which is the first and greatest Commandment?" He amplified and interpreted the Mosaic reading, thus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind and with all thy strength," and He went on to add the second, indicating that the two are inseparable. "The Second Commandment," He said, "is like to this, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' 'In these two Commandments is the whole law and the prophets.'" Indeed the Old Testament and the New, with all their beauty and charm and spiritual inspiration are comprised in the love of God and of one's fellow-man.
The psalms and the other sapiential books, though they go deep into the unfathomable riches of religious thought, have discovered no wisdom beyond love, human and divine. The Gospels which contain the very words that fell from the lips of Incarnate Truth have no inspiration, no revelation more illuminating than this,---that God is love, and that religion is love of God, and of man, the image of God. Vast libraries of pretentious books have been written in the attempt to expound what men call philosophy of life, but there is no philosophy of life so sublime as that which comes out of the mouths of babes who prattle, "God made me to know Him, to love Him and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next." Philosophers may isolate themselves in their studies for a life time, or they may sometimes seek solitude and again mingle with men in search of wisdom; they may scrutinize the heavens above; they may penetrate the earth beneath and the waters under the earth in the attempt to uncover the mystery of the universe, and to construct therefrom a plan for human life; they may, like the wise old pope of whom Browning speaks, "search many hearts beginning with their own," but in the end they can have nothing ,more to offer than what is contained in those half dozen words "Love of God, love of man." All philosophy from Socrates to Bergson is true or false according as it approximates to that wisdom or falls short of it. The law, the prophets, the gospels, philosophy, ethics, religion, all that man lives for, all that man lives by eventually arrive at the point where the Master of Masters, Jesus Christ, commences: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with thy whole soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength."
Now in these bewildered days, there are some---not a few,---who say sadly: "The love of one's fellow man I recognize as a duty, and perhaps a possibility. But how can I love God? And how can God command that I love Him? And how can I love Him unless I first believe in Him? If I had faith, I might proceed to love. But I have neither faith nor love for God."
Now be it remarked that those who speak thus are by no means all militant atheists or what is called "rank" infidels. They do not blaspheme God or indulge in any other melodramatic and hysterical anti-religious performances. Only once in my life have I heard a man curse God. Of course we have some ranting atheists, who go about frothing at the mouth against God. But I suspect that their ranting is a kind of, defense mechanism. They protest too much. For why should anyone vociferate madly against something that does not exist?
But with such as these I am not now concerned. I rather aim to help those who say like an acquaintance of mine, "I have nothing against religion, your religion or any other man's; but as for me, it isn't, in me. I am simply non-religious."
Now I rather fear that in our grandfathers' day, or somewhat further back, even so neutral an unbeliever would have received "short-shrift." Our ancestors felt that if a man did not believe it was because he would not, it was incredible that he could not. Unbelief was held to be in every instance criminal, the fruit of satanical pride or of carnal sin.
And it is probable that in many cases our ancestors' judgment was just. Our Savior Himself, gentle and tolerant as He was, cried out against those who were stiff-necked, hard of heart and slow to believe; and He put His finger on the sore spot when He called them "a wicked and adulterous generation." In His day there were many who complained that they could not believe His doctrine, when their real objection was not to the doctrine, but the life implied in the doctrine. In our day there are those who denounce the creed, when their real stumbling block is the Commandments. They cry out against Dogma. But it is not Dogma, it is Moral that irks them.
However, it cannot be denied that there are on the other hand a considerable number of persons of respectable, if not altogether irreproachable character, who find it impossible to believe, and who sincerely lament their unbelief. Some of them admit that without faith they are mentally miserable. They say they envy us who have the faith and that they would make any earthly sacrifice for the gift of faith. They have the will to believe but they doubt that they have the right to believe.
Such persons as these deserve kindly consideration. Their unbelief is a misfortune rather than a fault. They have fallen perhaps under the spell of eloquent speakers or brilliant writers who beguile them with "persuasive words of human wisdom." They have listened to some deceptive oracle of the drawing room or the smoking room, and they have not philosophy enough to detect his plausible fallacies. Perhaps they move in ostensibly intellectual circles where religion is always attacked and never defended, or in social circles wherein it is considered bad form to go to church, to pray, or to be in any way religious. They have succumbed, not to bold and blatant atheism, but to the polite agnosticism of the intelligentsia.
Or, in some rare cases, unbelief arises from a purely interior mental conflict. "The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh." But more agonizing still, spirit contends against spirit, mind against mind itself, on the battlefield of man's soul. The mind believes and the same mind disbelieves. And when a man's own mind battles against itself, the poor fellow hardly knows which is his real self, his better self.
Nevertheless it remains true that man is commanded to believe in God and to love Him; not invited but commanded, and not by some prophet or preacher, but by God himself. If, because of some twist of the mind or flaw in conscience, the man does not hear the voice of God clear and true in his soul, he may, I dare say, plead ignorance in, the day of Judgment. But no man can exculpate himself if, through laziness or cowardice, he abandons all effort to discover religious truth. He may insist that he has been anything but lazy. He has studied until his head is dizzy with conflicting opinions, he has been listening to every self-appointed expounder of philosophy, and has become in consequence bewildered. The wise thing to do in such a case is to retire within himself, shut the door of his heart against the noises of controversy and hear what the Lord God will speak within him.
In other words, a man should pray. Let no one say that he cannot pray. It is as natural to pray as to breathe. William James, who knew something of psychology in its true sense, the science of the soul, said: "I read many reasons why we should pray and many reasons why we should not pray. But few seem to remember that we pray because we are made that way." The impulse to pray is human. To smother that impulse is to be inhuman. Not that prayer is a purely natural act. It is supernatural. No man can say "The Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Spirit." Divine grace is indispensable to prayer, but grace is not denied to any man who follows his nobler natural impulses and does what in him lies.
I remember hearing the president of a state university, speaking to an assembly of thousands of undergraduates, declare boldly, "To be irreligious is to be degenerate." That's a strong word, but if it be degeneracy in a human being to have lost a human function, I think the president was right. It is human to be religious. It is non-human to be irreligious. When a man admits that he is non-religious he certainly pays himself no compliment. My friend said he was simply non-religious. But he ;would. not say, "I am simply non-intellectual," or "I am simply non-social," for intellectuality and at least a certain degree of sociability are necessary human attributes. Not to have them is to be somewhat less than, human. But religion is also a primary, essential, indispensable attribute of man. Leave a man alone, don't smother his soul with multitudinous and perhaps fallacious opinions, le t him consult his own human nature rather than books, and he will be religious. "Know thyself," said Socrates, "this is all wisdom." And St. Augustine prays, "Lord that I may know myself; that I may know Thee." He who knows himself will know God. He that knows God will love God.
Furthermore, if a man is all at sea because he has read this and that and heard thus and so, for and against religion, it seems obvious to me that he should have recourse to a Teacher, not some philosopher making "Guesses at the Riddle of Existence," but a Teacher with Divine Authority. Jesus Christ was such a teacher. Men with distracted souls and perplexed minds came to Him because as they said, "He speaks not like the Scribes and Pharisees, but as one having authority!" The doctors of the law were accustomed to tell the people "Thus sayeth Hillel," or on the other side of the argument "Thus sayeth Shammai." True prophets said "Thus sayeth the Lord!" But Jesus, calmly and with absolute assurance said "I say unto you!" He spoke as God! "The Father speaketh and I speak! He that heareth me, heareth the Father."
And today there is a Teacher upon the earth, a Church that says of herself, "As the Living Father hath sent Christ, Christ hath sent me. He that heareth me, heareth Christ."
One thing is certain, if there be no infallible authority here on earth entitled to use the majestic formula, "Thus sayeth the Lord," then we must all grope around in the dark as best we may, and even if we stumble upon truth we shall not know it. Like Pontius Pilate, we may be looking truth in the eye; we may have truth at our finger tips, and yet say "what is truth?" We are all blind, and our teachers are but blind leaders of the blind, unless there be some one who can speak with authority and not as the self-confessed agnostics, who in the last resort can only say, "I know not." Unless there be certainty, faith is impossible, and love is impossible, religion is impossible.
But if a man has tried all the variegated and kaleidoscopic philosophies, and has only been bewildered by them, why shall he not, if he really seeks faith and love and religion, deliberately and deeply investigate the only Church confident enough of her Divine Mission to claim infallibility. No earnest seeker has done all in his power until he has done that.
However, the inquiring mind must not expect or demand an overmastering demonstration of the truth of religion. The mind is not bludgeoned into belief, beaten and bruised until it cries "Credo!" The will also remains free. It must not be coerced. Christ said "Go out into the highways and byways and compel them to come in." But he did not mean go out, over-power them and drag them in unconscious. The arguments for religion are not so absolute that only an imbecile or an idiot could resist them. They do not compel assent. The assent of faith remains a free act. Religion is to a degree natural, but it is not an irresistible, impulse. It is supernatural, but not the result of a divine compulsion.
If a man is to believe, he must bring the will into play as well as the intellect. As some one has wisely said of St. Augustine: "He reached his decision by throwing his heart (that is, his will) into the scales."
Now this, I am aware, is held a capital sin in the eyes of unbelievers. They scorn what William James calls "the will to believe." Throwing the heart into the scale is to them the same as loading the dice. They seem to think that a man should come to belief, if at all, by the mind and the mind alone. All the rest of him---feelings, instincts, emotions, even the free will---must stand aside, watch the intellect struggling for faith, but remain coldly, rigidly neutral.
There are two objections to that program. First, it cannot be done. Second, if it could be done it would be inhuman. A man is not a machine, not even a thinking machine. Man is something more than mind. Man is heart and mind and soul, to say nothing of flesh and blood. In a true man, heart and mind and soul interact upon one another, assist one another, cooperate with one another. And so it is when one makes an act of faith. "To believe," says our greatest theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, "is an act of the understanding adhering to divine truth by command of the will, which is moved by the Grace of God." (2.2 qu. ii, art. 9.)
Now in spite of divine grace, it always remains possible for man to withhold his will, or to refuse the command of God. In that case he sins against faith---against religion, against the First Commandment, against God Himself. And so irreligion or un-belief is a sin.
Let me add one very important consideration. The intellect and the will, to make a moral act, must work together, not at odds with each other. If the mind does not see its way, the will must not drive it. To believe, or pretend to believe, when the mind sees no reason to believe is hypocritical and immoral.
There is a stanza in Tennyson's In Memoriam:
"Let knowledge grow from more to more
But more of reverence in us dwell
That heart and mind according well
May make one music as before
But vaster."
I take that to be good poetry. I know it to be good theology. Faith, love, religion is the result of "heart and mind according well," under the direction of Divine Grace. The first Commandment therefore resolves itself into this: Be yourself. Be your best self. Be human---completely human. Be the full measure of a man. You are not completely man unless you are religious, with all your heart, and all your soul, with your whole mind and with your whole strength.