Greatest
Thing in the
World
Effects
Require
Causes
By:
Henry Drummond
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 isto 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
practiced it as we would praxes
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 everyday 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 roundabout
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
bloodhounds 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”.
Christian
books
|
