Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Dr. Leslie
Weatherhead's
- Why Do Men
Suffer?
-
- Is the Universe
Justifiable?
THE work of Professor Eddington, Sir James Jeans, and others has opened
up to us a new universe. Thanks to the wireless and the popular nature of some of the
books of the latter author, those who have had no training in physics can glimpse the
vastness of the universe in which we seem to be such tiny specks. I picked up The
Mysterious Universe, and before I had read a word my eye lighted on a photograph,
inserted as a frontispiece, of a minute piece of the sky taken with the largest telescope
in the world.
The little points of light shown on the photograph are nebulae at such a
distance from us that their light, traveling one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a
second, takes fifty million years to reach the earth. Then I learn that these nebulae are
not stars, but the stuff from which stars are made. Each contains some thousands of
millions of stars, and about two million of these nebulae can actually be photographed;
and Sir James says there are millions of others beyond the reach of any telescope.
As we look up on a lovely starlit night, the sky seems full of stars; but Sir James says
that if we could empty Waterloo Station of everything except six specks of dust, it would
still be more crowded with dust than space is with stars.
When we look at that dust beneath our feet, we little realize that in a
single grain of sand there are marvels as amazing as those above our heads. "If a
dewdrop," says Sir Oliver Lodge, "were expanded to the size of a planet, the
molecules in it would still be no bigger than footballs." Within those
molecule-footballs are atoms, which he compares with oranges, and for many years those
atoms were thought to be the smallest conceivable parts of an element. But we are now
taught that within the atom are electrons, which revolve round their nucleus several
thousand million times a second, with a speed of hundreds of miles a second. One imagines
these electrons packed tightly within the atoms, but in another of his books Sir Oliver
Lodge corrects this mistake and says that an electron has as much room to move within the
atom as a bee has to move in Saint Paul's Cathedral.
So whether we look up or down we find the new physics introducing us to a universe which
staggers the imagination. But as I have pondered over these things I have seen the shining
of a truth which to me throws light on the problem of suffering; a truth which brought my
own mind out to a place of peace.
Whether we call a thing a discovery of science or whether we call it a revelation of God
is mainly a matter of point of view. No scientist could discover anything unless God
revealed it; and progress in scientific research might equally accurately be called the
progressive revelation of God.
- If we turn back through the great discoveries of
science, we find an interesting fact: that man has never discovered anything until he has
been within sight of ability to deal with the situation made by the discovery.
I say "within the sight of," because we remember that when
Copernicus said that the sky was not an inverted basin over the earth, with stars, as it
were, stuck on the inside of it, he was ridiculed; and when Galileo said that the earth
moved round the sun and could no longer be regarded as the center of the universe, he was
made to recant.
So afraid are men of being led beyond the comfortable familiarity of the
known. But both the truths of Copernicus and of Galileo came to stay. It is an impressive
fact that man has only been allowed to discover the facts about the universe when he is
able to bear them and handle the situation which they create.
There have always been X-rays, there has always been radium, and God
must have longed for men to have the use of these beneficent discoveries; but he did not
reveal them; or, putting it the other way, man did not discover them until he was in sight
of ability to control them. Man has not always controlled them wisely. He has often
grievously misused those powers which have come into his hands. Many of us recall some of
the horrors of the Great War as evidence of this fact. Poison gas, for instance, is a
misuse of discoveries men ought to be using for social instead of antisocial purposes.
Man has power to handle vast forces for the building up of civilization
just as he has power to do the opposite. One of the great problems of the age is whether
man will handle the available power rightly. As Mr. Julian Huxley says, "The problem
of what man will do with the enormous possibilities of power which science has put into
his hands is probably the mast vital and alarming of modern times."
And Sir Oliver Lodge once expressed the wish that we might have a truce
of fifty years in scientific discovery, in order to give man a last chance to raise his
moral standard to the stature of these terrific discoveries and energies. Unless he does
this, of course, disaster will overtake this civilization. It will go down in a
catastrophe greater than our power to imagine.
To put story upon story on a new building without deepening foundations
may look like development. In reality it is bringing catastrophe nearer and nearer.
- No one can view the increase in our knowledge of
resources and vast energies without some anxiety as to whether the spiritual development
is proceeding sufficiently.
"It is better," someone has truly said, "to arrive at the
station in a horse and trap than to arrive in the ditch in a Rolls Royce." There must
be adequate control of the forces operating, or it might even be better not to have
discovered the forces.
But my point here is that nothing has burst upon man which he was incapable of
controlling. If this had not been true, one of two disasters would have happened. Firstly,
man might have lost his reason, since the shock of the discovered forces would have been
too much for the brain. We can see this clearly if we imagine that we could call back our
great-great-grandfather and put him down at midnight in Piccadilly Circus, London, or
Times Square, New York. His mind would not be tuned in to such a fast-moving world, so
full of distraction. He would almost lose his sanity.
The second alternative could be compared with the position of a child on
board a locomotive going at eighty miles an hour. There would be tremendous forces
operating and insufficient power to control them. Instead of either alternative,
revelation, or, if you like, discovery, is held back until the situation which is opened
up can be handled.
Now, all this is true of the psychical sphere, which is just as much
part of the universe as is the physical. It is made a universe by the one Mind controlling
all. We often feel that we get very near the edge of what the human mind can bear.
- The wall between the universe that we can bear and the
universe we could not bear is very thin, but it is there.
I want to suggest a picture which lights up what I mean. Imagine a camp
in the deserts of Mesopotamia. Imagine it to be completely surrounded by very efficient
sentries. Nothing can get in from outside, nothing can get out from within the camp,
unless the sentries allow it. Of course, it is possible to creep up behind the sentries
and, at dusk, to see the ghostly forms of Arab raiders out there in the gloom. But one can
go back to one's tent and sleep in perfect security because the sentries are so efficient.
Nothing can break in from outside unless it passes the sentries; and though, in the course
of time, the sentries advance into the desert, bringing more and more of it into the camp,
it never gets too big to be efficiently worked.
- The universe we know and can bear is the camp. But it is
a guarded universe.
God has put sentries round it. Nothing can come in unless it passes
them. Nor can anything get out. The sentries never fail in their duty. The universe
extends as discovery after discovery takes place. The sentries advance into the desert.
But always they maintain their formation. Always completely they encircle the camp. And
they do not go so quickly as to cause alarm. The camp is always manageable.
At the same time just beyond the sentries is the universe we could not bear. If you have
heard a master violinist, you will know what I mean. He can sometimes take you through all
the lovely sounds we know, and then, on and upward till his violin is sobbing and yearning
and agonizing like the voice of humanity crying out in the wilderness of the infinite with
no language but a cry. We feel we can bear no more. We nearly cry out to him to stop. But
he stops. Why? Because he cannot go further. He has come to the edge of the universe we
can bear, and a sentry's arm is across his path.
- Take the normal man's belief in regard to ghosts. He may
pretend he does not believe in them at all. But he does. If he says he doesn't, I would
like to get him into my study at eleven o'clock at night and tell him three stories; then
make him go and stand in a churchyard while it struck twelve! I am quite serious in this
suggestion.
I think I am as hard to convince as most people. I want evidence. I want
the exclusion of all alternative hypotheses. I know that the history of psychical research
has some queer chapters in it.
- But it seems to me irrational to refuse the evidence of
trained scientific observers like Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barren, Mr. Drayton
Thomas, Mr. J. Arthur Hill, and others, and to pretend that the findings of the Society
for Psychical Research are, what a friend of mine once called, "a lot of bunkum about
spooks."
I am myself convinced that there is a psychic universe just beyond the
one we know. It is the universe we could not bear in its plenitude, but it is there.
Some of my friends who have themselves made explorations into the phenomena of
spiritualism give me the same impression. I stayed once with an eminent judge, a K.C., who
had himself witnessed what are called poltergeist phenomena. Things would fly about the
room, books jump out of the bookcase, vases drop off the mantel-piece.
And though there may be an alternative theory in regard to the vases for
we too have had some exciting maids in our time-there was no doubt why the learned judge
gave up spiritualism.
- Late one night he assured me, with real fear in his eyes
and voice, that he gave up the whole thing because he felt he was on the threshold of a
universe which he could not bear to know.
The better type of spiritualists have got right up to the walls of the
universe we know. They have tapped on them, and something or someone seems to tap from the
other side. No doubt there is another universe on the other side, but there is a wall
between them, because as yet we could not bear any more, and spiritualistic progress is
slow because our minds are tuned in to this known universe and find it hard to react
normally to another.
I quote, with permission, two letters from the London Times of
April, 1931, showing the power of animals to sense a universe beyond our own.
- To the Editor of the Times.
- Sir:
The following experience may be of interest to your readers on account of the exactness
with which the point in space which held the dog's interest was defined.
Some years ago I possessed a bob-tailed sheep-dog, and was returning with him from a walk
by way of a path which led from the road to the bottom of the garden. On one side of this
path was a thin laurel hedge through which it was easy to see the lane beyond. On the
other side was an iron railing, separating the path from a field. It was evening, but
still broad daylight.
-
- On entering the path the dog stopped and pointed. I went on, thinking he
had seen some cat, but as be did not follow, I turned and called him. His eyes were fixed
upon a certain point on the path in front of him, and, as I called, they moved
hesitatingly from this point to me and back again. Presently he came on, with obvious
reluctance, squeezing himself against the railings at this particular point, as if there
were scarcely room for him to pass.
-
- All the time his gaze was fixed on the empty space which he was passing,
and, once clear of it, he bolted up to me. Then he turned, looking fixedly back at the
same spot again. I walked back and called him from the other end of the path, whereupon he
repeated his tactics, squeezing himself against the railings at exactly the same spot
again, and never taking his eyes off the invisible something which he evidently saw in the
path.
When, after seven repetitions of this, the dog turned for the last time to gaze, I saw his
head and eyes moving slowly to the right. He was obviously watching whatever it was,
moving away across the field. After this he passed the place as usual.
The interest of this case lies in the fact that the direction of the dog's gaze from both
sides, combined with the spot at which he squeezed himself against the railings, marked
down the position of what he saw to an inch. To me it was Just empty space.
Your obedient servant,
To the Editor of the Times. - Sir:
Some years ago I took a valuable bull-terrier bitch, which was shortly due to have
puppies, to Jehangir's tomb, which is situated some short distance from Lahore. On the way
there a member of the party observed that my bitch had a look of apprehension or
foreboding which was foreign to her. I was forced to agree with the truth of this
statement, but attributed her appearance to her approaching maternity and thought nothing
more about it. I should add that at this time she was taking herself very seriously and
was disinclined for any but the most leisured and sedate exercise.
On our arrival at the tomb she was not allowed inside but when we paid our visit the
custodian of the tomb suggested that she should accompany us up to the large flat roof of
the tomb, from which a view of the countryside could be obtained. He added, however, that
the tomb was haunted by the spirit of the dead ruler--a Mohammedan.
-
- No sooner had we ascended the broad steps to the roof than my bitch,
although quite accustomed to being on roofs of a like character, ran quickly to the
nearest parapet, which was some two feet in height, and literally hurled herself over it.
She was killed instantly. I cannot but feel convinced that some guardian spirit of the
dead made itself apparent to cause this panic and consequent self-destruction.
But my tale continues. Within three months another bull-terrier bitch--in the same
condition as mine--belonging to Colonel X, I.M.S., did exactly the same thing, and hurled
herself to destruction from the opposite side of the tomb. I had no idea Colonel X was
going to visit the tomb and only heard of his tragedy on the following day.
I am, Sir, Yours faithfully,
After a summarized form of this argument had appeared in print a correspondent contributed
the following:
In one of our circuits we lived in a semi-detached house and we kept two dogs, a collie
setter and a pug. A widowed lady lived alone next door. She was very house proud and
particularly fond of pictures. She used to buy them at the sale rooms at Blackpool and was
heard to say that when she died she would certainly come back sometimes to look at them.
Mrs. B, had a tragic end. -
- She went to Blackpool, purchased a very large fine picture and brought it
home with her. The picture was packed in a luggage cart and nothing would do but Mrs. B.
must follow on foot. She had a weak heart and when hurrying up the hill so as to be in
time to see the picture unpacked, she collapsed in the road, was taken to a house near, and died before the doctor arrived. Of course there was an
inquest, and after the funeral a sale of the effects, and the house was closed and looked
very desolate.
One evening Mr. C. and I were sitting over the fire on his return from a long tramp to a
country appointment, when we heard the sound of water running in the next house. My
husband said, "I must go and see what is wrong." We had the key, the maids had
gone to bed, it was after eleven o'clock, so I said I would go too. We took the dogs with
us and a lighted candle.
-
- We found the stop tap and turned off the water and were ready to leave
the house when we noticed something very peculiar about the dogs, they were so uneasy. The
kitchen door opened into a long hall with the front door at the other end. The dogs went
into the hall and then suddenly stopped and gazed in front of them.
-
- Then the pug, which did not know Mrs. B., turned tail and rushed back to
us trembling in every limb. But Carlo, the large dog (he had been very fond of Mrs. B.,
and was often in her house), put his head on one side and slowly wagged his tail, but did
not advance any further. Of course we saw no one, but it seemed as though the dogs did. It
was very uncanny and I was glad to go back home. The dogs seemed scared and were glad to
get out of the house.
It is not hard to believe that Balam's ass saw someone in her path after incidents like
these.
Jesus was sure of the universe just beyond our own. "Thinkest thou," he said to
Peter in an hour of great need, "that I cannot beseech my Father and he shall even
now send me more than twelve legions of angels?" -
- Dr. Rendel Harris, one of the foremost living scholars of the New
Testament, tells us, in his book As Pants The Hart, that it is clear that for a
moment Jesus was looking into a world which he knew even better than this one. Here were
twelve men with him, eleven of them runaways, and one a traitor.
- Suppose each man were replaced by a whole legion of
angels. How the kings of the earth would hide themselves in caves and in holes of the
rocks before the glory of the Lord!
But it was only for a moment. "Put up thy sword!" It might
have been the word to those waiting hosts, eager to burst through, as well as to Peter.
But Jesus ordered the sentries to halt those legions and turn them back. With them he
could drive out all his enemies--at the cost of their sanity. And Jesus loved his enemies.
Caiaphas and Pilate might have been made to bow to him--and be lunatics for life. No, the
legions must be turned back. Nothing which would make a situation man cannot handle must
pass the sentries.
Peter, at the transfiguration, got as close to the walls of the universe as we can bear.
He looked beyond them and saw Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. In his words, "Let
us make three booths," we see certain symptoms of a mind distressed by the uncanny:
"Let me do something with my hands." "For he wist not what to say, for they
became sore afraid."
Nor perhaps is it accidental that the evangelist records that at the
climax of their horror "there came a cloud overshadowing them," blotting out
from them the universe they could not bear. It was with the utmost relief that, when Peter
lifted up his face at the words of Jesus, "Arise, be not afraid," he saw no one
but Jesus only.
When we turn to the spiritual universe, the same glorious fact holds. Nothing will be allowed
to come to us save that with which we have power to deal, however strange or uncanny or
terrifying it may seem. We have tried to distinguish in our minds between what God allows
and what he intends.
- He allows sin. He does not intend sin. He allows it
because the risk it involves is worth the prize of a voluntarily chosen morality.
As Doctor Temple said at Oxford recently, "the capacity for sin and
for communion with God are the same capacity." He allows calamity. He does not deal
it out to us. But it would not be allowed at all, unless we had power to handle the
situation which arises from it.
Therefore -- and it is a triumphant "therefore" -- the measure of the so-called
calamity is the measure of God's trust in us to use our resources, and less than the
measure of gain that may be won from the calamity. The calamity would not be allowed to
break through unless this were true.
Suppose a man had enough money to furnish an ideal nursery for his children. He would not
make it like a padded room in an asylum. He would, if he had children like mine, guard the
fire and bar the window. He would not allow safety-razor blades to be left on the floor.
Otherwise a situation might arise with which he could not deal. It would, however, be
possible for a child to get a pretty bad bump in the nursery, but the father knows that he
and his child can handle the situation together and that good can come out of it --
courage and understanding of the nature of things.
The universe is God's nursery and we are children in it. And it is guarded. We can get a
very bad bump in it. We can lose our money, our health, our loved ones. In this universe a
sinless Man can die on a cross. But nothing can happen physically or psychically or
spiritually unless we are in sight of power to handle it and bring good from it.
So whenever we look at a calamity -- cancer, for instance -- we must
say, "The measure of this calamity must be the measure of my faith, since it is less
than the measure of God's purpose." To be resentful at calamity is to show the same
disbelief which tortured heretics and burned witches at the stake: to be unrealistic to
such an extent that a situation can arise which we dare not contemplate with quiet faith.
Though a very hard saying, it is a lack of faith to be unable to bear the thought of
anything which God allows.
Bishop Selwyn changed the pigsty into which the Maoris cast him into a place where he
could worship God, until they said in amazement, "It is impossible to degrade a man
like this." John Nelson changed into a paradise the dungeon under a slaughterhouse
into which he was cast. He wrote, "It stank worse than a hogsty by reason of the
blood and filth that flowed into it from above." Then he adds these words, "My
soul was so filled with the love of God that it was a paradise to me." Bunyan changed
Bedford jail into a Palace Beautiful. Michael Fairless changed a sick-room of pain into a
window through which the world might see the fair face of nature and the glory of God.
It was this amazing alchemy that puzzled Pliny, when, in the famous letter to Trajan, the
story of the brave Christian prisoner standing arraigned before the furious Roman
magistrate was told. "I will banish thee," said the magistrate. "Thou canst
not," was the reply, "the whole world is my Father's house." "I will
slay thee," said the magistrate. "Thou canst not," was the reply, "for
my life is hid with Christ in God." "I will take away thy treasures."
"Thou canst not," he answered, "for my treasure is in heaven." "I
will drive thee away from man and thou shah have no friend left." "Thou canst
not," said the Christian, "for I have a Friend from whom thou canst not separate
me."
There is nothing more such a soul can fear. He has reached the final
harbor where the mind can rest and the soul is safe. When the soul gets there, nothing can
touch it any more.
It may be the same for us. Take hold of the difficult situation with both hands and let
God show his way in that situation; follow that and you will win through. Jesus will show
us how to turn blood-stained wood into finest gold, thorns into crowns, and a cross into a
throne.
- This is a guarded universe. Nothing can overtake us which
we are not able to bear. If sometimes we are overwhelmed by the thought of this vast
universe of which we seem to be such unimportant specks, we must think of ourselves as
princes, overwhelmed by the vastness, splendor, and intricacies of the palace and its
life.
But the palace is our Father's home and our Father's guards are around
it. And nothing can touch us without our Father's knowledge. Always we may hold fast to
our Father's hand. If we could but realize this truth, it would take fear from both life
and death, for death is only the passage into another room in the Father's house...
So we may feel at home in our Father's world and know that the universe
is so guarded that nothing can break through which has any inherent power to smash us or
destroy the purpose of our lives.
- There is a limit set to suffering, and he will not ask
from us more than we are able to bear. The measure of our suffering is the measure he
himself has sanctioned and allowed.
The dread angels of suffering can pass the sentries, for God gave them
the countersign which brings them through. Their credentials are in order. We must
"suffer them to be so now." God suffers at their hands himself.
- But our reaction--ah, that is another matter! It can be
resentment, bitterness, and despair.
But by his help and grace it can be spiritual power, making the world
his more than ever, and giving to us a treasure which no mind can reckon and which no hand
can take away.
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