EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES
NOTHING that happens in the world happens by
chance. God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles,
and never at random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law.
Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. The Christian
experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting this, expect Rest, Joy, Peace,
Faith, to drop into their souls from the air like snow or rain. But in point of
fact they do not do so; and if they did they would no less have their origin in
previous activities and be controlled by natural laws. Rain and snow do drop
from the air, but not without a long previous history. They are the mature
effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, too,
have each a previous history Storms and winds and calms are not accidents, but
are brought about by antecedent circumstances. Rest and Peace are but calms in
man's inward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable.
Realize it thoroughly: it is a methodical not an
accidental world. If a housewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a
sound receipt, carefully applied. She cannot mix the assigned ingredients and
fire them for the appropriate time without producing the result. It is not she
who has made the cake; it is nature. She brings related things together; sets
causes at work; these causes bring about the result. She is not a creator, but
an intermediary. She does not expect random causes to produce specific
effects--random ingredients would only produce random cakes. So it is in the
making of Christian experiences. Certain lines are followed; certain effects
are the result. These effects cannot but be the result. But the result can
never take place without the previous cause. To expect results without
antecedents is to expect cakes without ingredients. That impossibility is
precisely the almost universal expectation.
Now what I mainly wish to do is to help
you to firmly grasp this simple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual
world. And instead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian
experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in some little
detail. The one I shall select is Rest. And I think any one who follows the
application in this single instance will be able to apply it for himself to all
the others.
Take such a sentence as this: African explorers
are subject to fevers which cause restlessness and delirium. Note the
expression, "cause restlessness." Restlessness has a cause. Clearly,
then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to
deal with the cause. If that were not removed, a doctor might prescribe a
hundred things, and all might be taken in turn, without producing the
least effect. Things are so arranged in the original planning of the world that
certain effects must follow certain causes, and certain causes must be
abolished before certain effects can be removed. Certain parts of Africa are
inseparably linked with the physical experience called fever; this fever is in
turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called restlessness and
delirium. To abolish the mental experience the radical method would be to
abolish the physical experience, and the way of abolishing the physical
experience would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go there. Now this holds
good for all other forms of Restlessness. Every other form and kind of
Restlessness in the world has a definite cause, and the particular kind of
Restlessness can only be removed by removing the allotted cause.
All this is also true of Rest. Restlessness has a
cause: Must not Rest have a cause? Necessarily. If it were a chance
world we would not expect this; but, being a methodical world, it cannot be
otherwise. Rest, physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest
has a cause, as certainly as restlessness. Now causes are discriminating. There
is one kind of cause for every particular effect, and no other; and if one
particular effect is desired, the corresponding cause must be set in motion. It
is no use proposing finely devised schemes, or going through general pious
exercises in the hope that somehow Rest will come. The Christian life is not
casual but causal. All nature is a standing protest against the absurdity of
expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any effects, without the employment
of appropriate causes. The Great Teacher dealt what ought to have been the
final blow to this infinite irrelevancy by a single question, "Do men gather
grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"
Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His
followers fully? Why did He not tell us, for example, how such a thing as Rest
might be obtained? The answer is, that He did. But plainly, explicitly,
in so many words? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many words. He assigned Rest
to its cause, in words with which each of us has been familiar from our
earliest childhood.
He begins, you remember--for you at once know the
passage I refer to--almost as if Rest could be had without any cause: "Come
unto Me" He says, "and I will give you Rest."
Rest, apparently, was a favour to be bestowed;
men had but to come to Him; He would give it to every applicant. But the next
sentence takes that all back. The qualification, indeed, is added
instantaneously. For what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to
an impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can Rest be given? One
could no more give away Rest than he could give away Laughter. We speak of
"causing" laughter, which we can do; but we cannot give it away. When we speak
of giving pain, we know perfectly well we cannot give pain away. And when we
aim at giving pleasure, all that we do is to arrange a set of circumstances in
such a way as that these shall cause pleasure. Of course there is a sense, and
a very wonderful sense, in which a Great Personality breathes upon all who come
within its influence an abiding peace and trust. Men can be to other men as the
shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. Much more Christ; much more Christ as
Perfect Man; much more still as Saviour of the world. But it is not this of
which I speak. When Christ said He would give men Rest, He meant simply that He
would put them in the way of it. By no act of conveyance would, or could, He
make over His own Rest to them. He could give them His receipt for it. That was
all. But He would not make it for them; for one thing, it was not in His plan
to make it for them; for another thing, men were not so planned that it could
be made for them; and for yet another thing, it was a thousand times better
that they should make it for themselves.
That this is the meaning becomes obvious from the
wording of the second sentence: "Learn of Me and ye shall find Rest."
Rest, that is to say, is not a thing that can be given, but a thing to be
acquired. It comes not by an act, but by a process. It is not to be
found in a happy hour, as one finds a treasure; but slowly, as one finds
knowledge. It could indeed be no more found in a moment than could knowledge. A
soil has to be prepared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow in one climate
and not in another; at one altitude and not at another. Like all growths
it will have an orderly development and mature by slow degrees.
The nature of this slow process Christ clearly
defines when He says we are to achieve Rest by learning. "Learn of Me,"
He says, "and ye shall find rest to your souls." Now consider the extraordinary
originality of this utterance. How novel the connection between these two
words, "Learn" and "Rest"? How few of us have ever associated them--ever
thought that Rest was a thing to be learned; ever laid ourselves out for it as
we would to learn a language; ever practised it as we would practise the
violin. Does it not show how entirely new Christ's teaching still is to the
world, that so old and threadbare an aphorism should still be so little
applied? The last thing most of us would have thought of would have been to
associate Rest with Work.
What must one work at? What is that which
if duly learned will find the soul of man in Rest? Christ answers without the
least hesitation. He specifies two things-- Meekness and Lowliness. "Learn of
Me," He says, "for I am meek and lowly in heart." Now these two
things are not chosen at random. To these accomplishments, in a special way,
Rest is attached. Learn these, in short, and you have already found Rest. These
as they stand are direct causes of Rest; will produce it at once; cannot but
produce it at once. And if you think for a single moment, you will see how this
is necessarily so, for causes are never arbitrary, and the connection between
antecedent and consequent here and everywhere lies deep in the nature of
things.
What is the connection, then? I answer by a
further question. What are the chief causes of Unrest? If you know
yourself, you will answer Pride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back upon
the past years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly
come from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial
disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials
come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the petty
friction of our every-day life with one another, the jar of business or of
work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of our ambition, the
crossing of our will, the taking down of our conceit, which make inward peace
impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed hopes, unsatisfied
selfishness--these are the old, vulgar, universal sources of man's unrest.
Now it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the
two chief objects for attainment the exact opposites of these. To Meekness and
Lowliness these things simply do not exist. They cure unrest by making it
impossible. These remedies do not trifle with surface symptoms; they strike at
once at removing causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centered life can be
removed at once by learning Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He who learns them
is for ever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmed life. Christianity
is a fine inoculation, a transfusion of healthy blood into an anaemic or
poisoned soul. No fever can attack a perfectly sound body; no fever of unrest
can disturb a soul which has breathed the air or learned the ways of Christ.
Men sigh for the wings of a dove that they may fly away and be at Rest. But
flying away will not help us. "The Kingdom of God is within you." We
aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water rests only
when it gets to the lowest place. So do men. Hence, be lowly. The man who has
no opinion of himself at all can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge
him. Hence, be meek. He who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes
to him. It is self-evident that these things are so. The lowly man and the meek
man are really above all other men, above all other things. They dominate the
world because they do not care for it. The miser does not possess gold, gold
possesses him. But the meek possess it "The meek" said Christ, "inherit the
earth." They do not buy it; they do not conquer it; but they inherit
it.
There are people who go about the world looking
out for slights, and they are necessarily miserable, for they find them at
every turn--especially the imaginary ones. One has the same pity for such men
as for the very poor. They are the morally illiterate. They have had no real
education, for they have never learned how to live. Few men know how to live.
We grow up at random, carrying into mature life the merely animal methods and
motives which we had as little children. And it does not occur to us that all
this must be changed; that much of it must be reversed; that life is the finest
of the Fine Arts; that it has to be learned with lifelong patience, and that
the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it triumphantly.
Yet this is what Christianity is for--to Teach
men the Art of Life And its whole curriculum lies in one word--"Learn of Me."
Unlike most education, this is almost purely personal, it is not to be had from
books or lectures or creeds or doctrines. It is a study from the life. Christ
never said much in mere words about the Christian graces. He lived them, He was
them. Yet we do not merely copy Him. We learn His art by living with Him, like
the old apprentices with their masters.
Now we understand it all? Christ's invitation to
the weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a new
principle upon His own principle. "Watch My way of doing things," He says.
"Follow Me. Take life as I take it. Be meek and lowly and you will find
Rest."
I do not say, remember, that the Christian life
to every man, or to any man, can be a bed of roses. No educational
process can be this. And perhaps if some men knew how much was involved
in the simple "learn" of Christ, they would not enter His school with so
irresponsible a heart. For there is not only much to learn, but much to
unlearn. Many men never go to this school at all till their disposition is
already half ruined and character has taken on its fatal set. To learn
arithmetic is difficult at fifty--much more to learn Christianity. To learn
simply what it is to be meek and lowly, in the case of one who has had no
lessons in that in childhood, may cost him half of what he values most on
earth. Do we realize, for instance, that the way of teaching humility is
generally by humiliation? There is probably no other school for it. When
a man enters himself as a pupil in such a school it means a very great thing.
There is much Rest there, but there is also much Work.
I should be wrong, even though my theme is the
brighter side, to ignore the cross and minimise the cost. Only it gives to the
cross a more definite meaning, and a rarer value, to connect it thus directly
and causally with the growth of the inner life. Our platitudes on the
"benefits of affliction" are usually about as vague as our theories of
Christian Experience. "Somehow," we believe affliction does us good. But it is
not a question of "Somehow." The result is definite, calculable, necessary. It
is under the strictest law of cause and effect. The first effect of losing
one's fortune, for instance, is humiliation; and the effect of humiliation, as
we have just seen, is to make one humble; and the effect of being humble is to
produce Rest. It is a round-about way, apparently, of producing Rest; but
Nature generally works by circular processes; and it is not certain that there
is any other way of becoming humble, or of finding Rest. If a man could make
himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, but we do not find that
this happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence death, death
to the lower self, is the nearest gate, and the quickest road to life.
Yet this is only half the truth. Christ's life
outwardly was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived: Tempest and
tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the
worn body was laid in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The
great calm was always there. At any moment you might have gone to Him and found
Rest. And even when the blood-hounds were dogging Him in the streets of
Jerusalem, He turned to His disciples and offered them, as a last legacy, "My
peace." Nothing ever for a moment broke the serenity of Christ's life on
earth. Misfortune could not reach him; He had no fortune. Food, raiment,
money-fountain-heads of half the world's weariness-- He simply did not care
for; they played no part in his life; He "took no thought" for them. It was
impossible to affect Him by lowering His reputation; He had already made
Himself of no reputation. He was dumb before insult. When He was reviled He
reviled not again. In fact, there was nothing that the world could do to Him
that could ruffle the surface of His spirit.
Such living, as mere living, is altogether
unique. It is only when we see what it was in Him that we can know what the
word Rest means. It lies not in emotions, nor in the absence of emotions. It is
not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church. It is not something that
the preacher has in his voice. It is not in nature, nor in poetry, nor in
music--though in all these there is soothing. It is the mind at leisure from
itself. It is the perfect poise of the soul; the absolute adjustment of the
inward man to the stress of all outward things; the preparedness against every
emergency; the stability of assured convictions; the eternal calm of an
invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in God. It is the mood of
the man who says, with Browning, "God's in His Heaven, all's well with the
world."
Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate
his conception of rest. The first chose for his scene a still, lone lake among
the far-off mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall,
with a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam; at the fork of a branch,
almost wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was
only Stagnation; the last was Rest. For in Rest there are always
two elements --tranquillity and energy; silence and turbulence; creation and
destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ.
It is quite plain from all this that
whatever else He claimed to be or to do, He at least knew how to live. All this
is the perfection of living, of living in the mere sense of passing through the
world in the best way. Hence His anxiety to communicate His idea of life to
others. He came, He said, to give men life, true life, a more abundant life
than they were living; "the life," as the fine phrase in the Revised Version
has it, "that is life indeed." This is what He himself possessed, and it was
this which He offers to all mankind. And hence His direct appeal for all to
come to Him who had not made much of life, who were weary and heavy-laden.
These He would teach His secret. They, also, should know "the life that
is life indeed".
This document (last modifiedJune 24, 1998) from Believerscafe.com
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