Questions asked in hope. 39 revelation in Christ-this must, as it appears, be the tragic course of human experience both in the society and in the individual life. As we come to apprehend more clearly what we are and what GOD in Himself must be, the interval between the creature and the Creator opens out in its infinite depth. Reason fails and then feeling. But the craving for GOD remains unsatisfied and unextinguished. This craving is as much a fact of nature as any other fact; and, even when the reality seems to be farthest off, man still longs for One Who is Eternal, and One Whom he can love. We can now see some of the mysteries which life necessarily carries with it. If we have advanced so far in our education as to look calmly upon the conditions of our being we shall find that such questions as these are irresistibly borne in upon us: How do we regard 'self' in relation to its origin and to its development ? What account do we take in our estimate of humanity of the necessary dependence of man upon circumstances? How do we reconcile this dependence with the sense of responsibility? What explanation can we give of our restless striving after an unattainable ideal? of our invincible self-assertion in the face of the material forces of nature? of our confident anticipations of life beyond death? 40 Questions asked in hope. Or again what is the beginning, and support and end of the world? How can we harmonise the magnificent promises of order and unity with the existence of conflict and waste? How do we explain that sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, With what hope or aspiration do we look forward to a consummation of things wherein their original destiny shall be reconciled with their abiding condition? Or yet again: How do we adjust our idea of GOD to the conditions of our own existence and to the phenomena of the world? How do we retain it in all its intensity in spite of the agelong experience which seems to remove GOD farther from us? How, in a word, can we gain permanence for the foundation of religious faith? How can our Creed be invested with that vitality of form which shall grow with all the growth of men and mankind? Truth, if it is to affect our whole life which is one and indivisible, must be expressed for us in a Fact. Theology based upon external or internal Nature, upon observation or con The effort to answer them not vain. 41 sciousness, is unstable and inadequate to our wants. It brings no decisive interpretation to conflicting phenomena. Theology based upon isolated communications of the Divine will must be relative to special circumstances. We reach out therefore to a real and abiding union of GOD and man, as real as that which Pantheism establishes between the fragment and the whole: as personal as that which the simplest faith has believed to exist between the worshipper and the object of his adoration. And we do so with confidence because we trust that the system of the world answers to Truth, and that the desire of the race is, in its highest form as in each partial form, a promise of fulfilment. To ask such questions is to propose problems of the greatest difficulty. It requires a serious effort even to seize their scope. Some indeed may feel impatient that they should be raised for discussion. And I gladly acknowledge that the power of the Christian life is for the most part independent of speculative inquiries. Yet there is an office of the thinker and the teacher. Each age offers its characteristic riddles; and it is by man's endeavour to solve these as they come that that fuller apprehension of the Truth is reached through which nobler action becomes 42 To face difficulties a blessing. more widely possible. If then we approach the spiritual problems of our own age, not in any conceit of intellectual superiority, but as accepting a grave duty and using an opportunity of service, we may reasonably look for some new blessing. To face them, to ponder them reverently, is to feel the glory which belongs to the nature of man unfallen: to have the assurance of solving them, so far as a solution is required for the guidance and inspiration of life, is to know the gift of GOD which is brought to us by the Gospel of the Resurrection. CHAPTER II. THE DUTY AND NECESSITY OF SEEKING A FROM what has been already said it must be sufficiently clear that life is beset by mysteries and to strive to banish these mysteries from thought is to impoverish our whole existence. They form the solemn background of all experience; and the exclusion of every religious theory from our view of life will not in fact make life plain and intelligible. On the contrary the fuller apprehension of the character of the mysteries which necessarily attend our being, impels us more forcibly to seek for some solution of the practical problems which they present, for such a solution as religion claims to bring. What shall we say of the complex and disordered constitution of man, of the issues of sin, of the confident expectation with which we look forward to a life after |