The Warriors - Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
THE WARRIORS
BY ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY PH.D.
AUTHOR OF
WHAT IS WORTH WHILE?
CULTURE AND REFORM
THE VICTORY OF OUR FAITH
PREFACE
This work was begun nearly five years ago. Since then, the whole face of
American history has changed. We have had the Spanish-American War, and
the opening-up of our new possessions. In this period of time Gladstone,
Li Hung Chang, and Queen Victoria have died; there has also occurred the
assassination of the Empress of Austria and of President McKinley. There
has been the Chinese persecution, the destruction of Galveston by storm
and of Martinique by volcanic action. Wireless telegraphy has been
discovered, and the source of the spread of certain fevers. In this time
have been carried on gigantic engineering undertakings,--the
Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Trans-Balkan Railroad, the rebuilding of
New York. We have also looked upon the consolidation of vast forces of
steel, iron, sugar, shipping, and other trusts. We have witnessed an
extraordinary growth of universities, libraries, and higher
schools,--the widespread increase of commerce, the prosperity of
business, the rise in the price of food, and the great coal-strike of
1902. Perhaps never before in the world's history have there been
crowded into five years such dramatic occurrences on the world-stage,
nor such large opportunities for the individual man or woman.
It is interesting for me to notice that since the first outlines of the
book were written, many things then set down as prophecy have now been
fulfilled. It was my purpose, in projecting the essays at what seemed
to me to be the dawn of a great religious era, to help the onward
movement by a few earnest words. History itself has swept the world far
beyond one's dreams, and in completing them, I only ask that they may
stand a further witness to the overwhelming majesty and influence of the
Christian faith.
ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY
_Philadelphia, November_ 1_st_, 1902
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. CHORDS OF AWAKENING:
THE HIGHER CONQUEST
II. PRELUDE:
THE CALL OF JESUS
III. PROCESSIONAL:
THE CHURCH OF GOD
IV. THE WORLD-MARCH:
OF KINGS
OF PRELATES AND EVANGELISTS
OF SAGES
OF TRADERS
OF WORKERS
I. CHORDS OF AWAKENING: THE HIGHER CONQUEST
[CUTLER]
_The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain:
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain;
Who patient bears his cross below,
He follows in His train!
They met the tyrant's brandished steel,
The lions gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train!_
REGINALD HEBER
The universe is not awry. Fate and man are not altogether at odds. Yet
there is a perpetual combat going on between man and nature, and between
the power of character and the tyranny of circumstance, death, and sin.
The great soul is tossed into the midst of the strife, the longing, and
the aspirations of the world. He rises Victor who is triumphant in some
great experience of the race.
The first energy is combative: the Warrior is the primitive hero. There
are natures to whom mere combat is a joy. Strife is the atmosphere in
which they find their finest physical and spiritual development. In the
early times, there must have been those who stood apart from their
tribesmen in contests of pure athletic skill,--in running, jumping,
leaping, wrestling, in laying on thew and thigh with arm, hand, and
curled fist in sheer delight of action, and of the display of strength.
As foes arose, these athletes of the tribe or clan would be the first to
rush forth to slay the wild beast, to brave the sea and storm, or to
wreak vengeance on assailing tribes. Their valor was their insignia.
Their prowess ranked them. Their exultation was in their freedom
and strength.
Such men did not ask a life of ease. Like Tortulf the Forester, they
learned "how to strike the foe, to sleep on the bare ground, to bear
hunger and toil, summer's heat and winter's frost,--how to fear nothing
but ill-fame." They courted danger, and asked only to stand as Victors
at the last.
Hence we read of old-world warriors,--of Gog and Magog and the Kings of
Bashan; of the sons of Anak; of Hercules, with his lion-skin and club;
of Beowulf, who, dragging the sea-monster from her lair, plunged beneath
the drift of sea-foam and the flame of dragon-breath, and met the clutch
of dragon-teeth. We read of Turpin, Oliver, and Roland,--the
sweepers-off of twenty heads at a single blow; of Arthur, who slew
Ritho, whose mantle was furred with the beards of kings; of Theodoric
and Charlemagne, and of Richard of the Lion-heart.
There are also Victors in the great Quests of the world,--the Argonauts,
Helena in search of the Holy Rood, the Knights of the Holy Grail, the
Pilgrim Fathers. There are the Victors in the intellectual wrestlings of
the world,--the thinkers, poets, sages; the Victors in great sorrows,
who conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which
arise from heroic human grief,--Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia,
Perseus, Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his
penitential psalm. And there are the Victors in the yet deeper strivings
of the soul--in its inner battles and spiritual conquests--Milton's
Adam, Paracelsus, Dante, the soul in _The Palace of Art_, Abt Vogler,
Isaiah, Teufelsdroeckh, Paul. To read of such men and women is to be
thrilled by the Titanic possibilities of the soul of man!
The world has come into other and greater battle-days. This is an era of
great spiritual conflicts, and of great triumphs. To-day faith calls the
soul of man to arms. It is a clarion to awake, to put on strength, and
to go forth to Holy War. If there were no fighting work in the Christian
life, much of the intense energy and interest of the race would be
unaroused. There are apathetic natures who do not want to undertake the
difficult,--sluggish souls who would rather not stir from their present
position. And there are cowards who run to cover. But there is
in all strong natures the primitive combative instinct,--the
let-us-see-which-is-the-stronger, which delights in contests, which is
undismayed by opposition, and which grows firmer through the warfare
of the soul.
It is this phase of the Christian life which is most needed to-day,--the
warrior-spirit, the all-conquering soul. In entering the Christian life,
one must put out of his heart the expectation that it is to be an easy
life, or one removed from toil and danger. It is preeminently the
adventurous life of the world,--that in which the most happens, as well
as that in which the spiritual possibilities are the greatest. It is a
life full of splendor, of excitement, of trial, of tests of courage and
endurance, and is meant to appeal to those who are the very bravest
and the best.
There are two forms of conquest to which the soul of man is called--the
inner and the outer. The inner is the conquest of the evil within his
own nature; the outer is the struggle against the evil forces of the
world--the constructive task of building up, under warring conditions,
the spiritual kingdom of God.
The real world is far more subtle than we as yet understand. When we
dive down into the deep, sky and air and houses disappear. We enter a
new world--the under-world of water, and things that glide and swim; of
sea-grasses and currents; of flowing waves that lap about the body with
a cool chill; of palpitating color, that, at great depths, becomes a
sort of darkness; of sea-beds of shell and sand, and bits of scattered
wreckage; of ooze and tangled sea-plants, dusky shapes, and
fan-like fins.
Or if we look upward we reach an over-world, where moons and suns are
circling in the heights. What draws them together? What keeps a subtle
distance between them, which they never cross? How do they, age after
age, run a predestined course? We drop a stone. What binds it earthward?
Under our feet run magnetic currents that flow from pole to pole. In the
clouds above, there are electric vibrations which cannot be described
in exact terms.
Thus also, in spiritual experiences, there are currents which we cannot
measure or describe. The psychic world is the final world, though its
towers and pinnacles no eye hath seen. If we try to shut out for an hour
the outer world, and descend into the soul-world of the life of man, we
find ourselves in a new environment, and with an outlook over new forms
and powers. We find ourselves in a world of images and attractions, of
impulses and desires, of instincts and attainments. It is not only a
world of separate and individual souls, but each soul is as a thousand;
for within each man there is an inner host contending for mastery, and
everywhere is the uproar of battle and of spiritual strife.
What is the Self that abides in each man? Is it not the consciousness of
existence, together with a consciousness of the power of choice? Our
individuality lies in the fact that we can decide, choose, and rule
among the various contestant impulses of our souls. Herein is the
possibility of victory and also the possibility of defeat.
Looking inward, we find that Self began when man began. We inherit our
dispositions from Adam, as well as from our parents and a long ancestral
line. When the first men and women were created, forces were set in
action which have resulted in this Me that to-day thinks and wills and
loves. Heredity includes savagery and culture, health and disease,
empire and serfdom, hope and despair. Each man can say: "In me rise
impulses that ran riot in the veins of Anak, that belonged to Libyan
slaves and to the Ptolemaic line. I am Aryan and Semite, Roman and
Teuton: alike I have known the galley and the palm-set court of kings.
Under a thousand shifting generations, there was rising the combination
that I to-day am. In me culminates, for my life's day, human history
until now."
Individuality is thus a unique selection and arrangement of what has
been, touched with something--a degree of life--that has not been
before. To rise above heredity is to rise above the downward drag of all
the years. It is not escaping the special sin of one ancestor, but the
sin of all ancestors. _This is the first problem that is set before each
man: to rise above his race--to be the culmination of virtue until now_.
_The second problem is not greater, but different. It is to mould
environment to spiritual uses_. The conditions of this struggle and the
opportunities of this conquest are the content of this book. It is meant
to deal with the more heroic aspects of the Christian life.
What is environment? Is it the material horizon that bounds us? If so,
where does it end? Our first environment is a crib, a room, our mother's
eyes. Sensations of hunger, heat, and motion beat upon the baby-brain;
there is a vague murmur of sound in the baby-ears. Yet it is this babe
who, in after days, has all the universe for his soul's demesne! His
environment stretches out to towns and rivers, shore and sea. Looking
upward into space, he can view a star whose distance is a thousand times
ten thousand miles. Beyond the path of his feet or of his sight, there
is the path of thought, which leads him into new countries, new climes,
new years! His meditations are upon ages gone; his work competes with
that of the dead. In his reveries and imaginings, he can transport
himself anywhither, and can commune with any friend or god. Hence to be
master of one's environment is really to have the universe within
one's grasp.
We are too much afraid of customs and traditions. We are put into our
times, not that the times may mould us, but that we may mould the times!
Ways? Customs? They exist to be changed! The _tempora_ and the _mores_
should be plastic to our touch. The times are never level with our best.
Our souls are higher than the _Zeitgeist_. Why should we cringe before
an inferior essence or command? But society seals our lips: we walk
about with frozen tongues.
Each asks himself at some time: How shall I become one of the Victors of
the race? Is it in me? Mankind is weighted by every previous sin. Where
am I free? How am I free? Can I do as I choose? Or are there bourns of
conduct beyond which I can never go? Am I foreordained to sin? Do the
stars in their courses lay limitations on free will?
There are in man two forces working: a human longing after God, and, in
response, God inly working in the soul. The Victor is he who, in his own
life, unites these two things: a great longing after the god-like, which
makes him yearn for virtue,--and the divine power within him, through
which and by which he is triumphant over time and death and sin.
Whatever our trials, sorrows, or temptations, joy and courage are ever
meant to be in the ascendant; life, however it may break in storms upon
us, is not meant to beat down our souls. Unless we are triumphant, we
are not wholly useful or well trained. Will and heart together work
for victory.
As there flashes and thrills through all nature a subtle electric
vibration which is the supreme form of physical energy, so there runs
through the history of mankind a current of spiritual inspiration and
power. To possess this magnetism of soul, this heroism of life, this
flame-like flower of character, is to be Victor in the great combats of
the race. It is the spirit of courage, energy, and love. Nothing is too
hard for it, nothing too distasteful, nothing too insignificant. Through
all the course of duty it spurs one to do one's best. Its essence is to
overcome. This is the indwelling Holy Spirit, wherein is freedom, power,
and rest. To its final triumph all things are accessory. To joy, all
powers converge.
II. PRELUDE: THE CALL OF JESUS
[VOX DILECTI]
_I heard the voice of Jesus say
Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting-place,
And He has made me glad._
_I heard the voice of Jesus say
Behold I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down and drink, and live.
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him._
_I heard the voice of Jesus say
I am this dark world's light;
Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise,
And all thy day be bright.
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my star, my sun;
And in that light of life I'll walk,
Till travelling days are done._
HORATIUS BONAR
It is a world of voices in which we live. We are daily visited by
appeals which are ministering to our growth and progress, or which are
tending to our spiritual downfall. There are the voices of nature, in
sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the
voices of playfellows and companions,--voices long stilled, it may be,
in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of
sorrow, of aspiration, and of joy.
But among all these many voices, there is one which is most inspiring
and supreme. When the _Vorspiel_ to _Parsifal_ breaks upon the ear it is
as if all other music were inadequate and incomplete--as if a voice
called from the confines of eternity, in the infinite spaces where no
time is, and rolled onward to the far-off ages when time shall be no
more. Even so, high and clear above the voices of the world, deeper and
tenderer than any other word or tone, comes the voice of Jesus to the
soul of man.
Look, if you will, upon the World of Souls, many-tiered and vast,
stretching from day's end to day's end,--a world of hunger and of anger,
of toiling and of striving, of clamor and of triumph,--a dim, upheaving
mass, which from century to century wakes, and breathes, and sleeps
again! Years roll on, tides flow, but there is no cessation of the march
of years, and no whisper of a natural change. Is it not a strange thing
that one voice, and only one, should have really won the hearing of the
race? What is this voice of Jesus, so enduring, matchless, and supreme?
What does it promise, for the help or hope of man?
There are some who say that Jesus has held the attention and allegiance
of the race by an appeal to the religious instinct; that all men
naturally seek God, and long to know Him. But if we try to define the
religious instinct, we shall find it a hard task. What might be called a
religious instinct leads to human sacrifice upon the Aztec altar;
directs the Hindu to cast the new-born child in the stream, the friend
to sacrifice his best friend to a pagan deity.
There are others who say that Christ appeals to the gentler instincts of
man,--to his unselfishness, his meekness and compassion. Yet some of the
most admirable Christians have been ambitious and aggressive. Others
say, He appeals to our need of help. But self-reliance is a Christian
trait. Others say, He appeals to our sense of sin--our need of pardon.
But many a Christian goes through life like a happy child, scarcely
conscious at any time of deep guilt, and never overwhelmed by intense
conviction or despair.
The truth seems to be that Christ appeals to our whole selves. He calls
us by an attraction which is unique. In the universe there exists a
force which we must recognize--though we do not yet in the least
understand it--which is gradually drawing the race Christward. The law
of spiritual gravitation is, that by all the changing impulses of our
nature we are drawn upward unto Him. Spohr's lovely anthem voices this
cry of the soul:
"_As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase,
So longs my soul, O God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace.
"For Thee, my God, the living God,
My thirsty soul doth pine;
Oh! when shall I behold Thy face,
Thou Majesty divine_?"
1. Jesus calls us by the mystery of life. There are hours of silence and
meditation when the great thought _I am_ beats in upon the soul. But
what am I? Whence came I? A heap of atoms in some strange human
semblance--is that all? And so many other heaps of atoms have already
been, and passed away! Blown hither and thither--where? The universe
reels with change. Star-dust and earth-dust are alike in ceaseless
whirl. Little it profits to build the spire, the sea-wall, the dome, the
bridge, the myriad-roofed town. A new era shall dawn upon them, and they
shall fall away.
Not only that, but each man who lives to-day has less possible material
dominion than he had who preceded him. Only so many square feet of
earth, and now there are more to walk upon them! The ground we tread was
once trodden by the feet of those long dead. I am taking up their room,
and in due time I must myself depart, that there may be footway for
those who are to come after me. Only the under-sod is really mine--the
little earth-barrow to which I go.
There is no question more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one:
What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that
yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in
height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling
clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter and frolic; to-day I am
grave, and brush away tears. As a babe, was I still I? What is Myself?
When did I come to Myself? How far can I extend Myself? My feet are
here, but in a moment my spirit can flee to Xanadu and Zanzibar. There
is no spot in the universe where I may not go. Where, then, are the
limits of Myself?
Personality is never for a single moment fixed: it is as changing and
evanescent as a cloud. We are whirlwind spirits, swept through time and
space, bearing within our souls hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, which are
never twice the same. Every aspect of the universe leaves new
impressions on us, and our wills, in their world-sweep, daily desire
different things.
Incompleteness lies on life--restlessness is in the heart. True love has
no final habitation on earth; there is no abiding-place for our deepest
affection, our most tender yearning. It is curious how deeply one may
love, and yet feel that there is something more. In all our journeys,
skyward and sunward, we never reach the End of All.
Over against this vague and changing self, there stands out the figure
of the changeless Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. In
Him we find the environment of all our lives, and the sum of all
our dreams.
2. Jesus calls us by our earth-born cares. In Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,
there is a voice which sings: "O rest in the Lord!" This angel's message
is the voice of Jesus to the human race.
The voice of Jesus calls us to awake to toil. We sometimes forget this,
and imagine that if we follow Jesus, we shall never have anything to do.
Christ does not still the machinery of the world, nor shut the mine, nor
take away the sowing and the reaping. The call of Jesus is not a call to
rest from work, but to rest in work. The rest we receive is that of
sympathy, of inspiration, of efficiency. Christ really increases the
toil-capacity of man. Man can do more work, harder work, and always
better work, because of the faith that is in him. What makes the
confusion and fatigue of life is, that men are everywhere scrambling
for themselves, and trying to manage their own undertakings, instead of
falling into harmony with God, and through Him, with all that is. What
wears the soul out is not the work of life itself--it is its drudgery,
its monotony, its blind vagueness, its apparent purposelessness. We do
not wish to scatter our lives and spend our years in nothingness.
Christ comes into the world and says: Over-fatigue is abnormal. There
is not enough work in the universe to tire every one all out. There is
just enough for each one to do happily, and to do well. I am come as the
great industrial organizer. My mission is not to take away toil, but to
redistribute it. My industrial plan is the largest of history--it is
also the most simple. I look down over the world, as a master upon his
men. My work is not to found an earthly kingdom, as some have thought;
it is not primarily to set up industrial establishments, or syndicates,
or ways of transport and trade. My work is to build up in the universe a
spiritual kingdom of energy, power, and progress. To this kingdom all
material things are accessory. In My hand are all abilities, as well as
all knowledge. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without My notice. Not
a lily blooms without My delight. Not a brick is laid, not a stone is
set, not an axe is swung, except beneath My eye. I provide for My own.
To each man I assign his work, his task. If he takes upon him only what
I give him to do, he will never be under-paid, or over-tired.
Hence the first step towards an industrial millennium is to arise and do
what Jesus bids. Heaven is heaven because no one is unruly there, or
idle, or lazy, or vicious, or morose. Each soul is at true and happy
work. Each energy is absorbed; each hour is alive with interest, and
there are no oppressive thoughts or ways.
If each heart and soul responded to the call of Jesus, there would be a
new heaven and a new earth--a Utopia such as More never dreamed of, nor
Plato, nor Bellamy, nor Campanella in his _City of the Sun_. Each hand
would be at its own work; each eye would be upon its own task; each foot
would be in the right path. All the fear, the weariness, the squalor,
and the unrest of life would be done away. The life of each man would be
a life of contentment, and of economic advance.
3. Jesus calls us by the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of
the body--it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory
beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is
forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds
itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the
merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says
Pythagoras, "for sleep in them is akin to death."
Sin lifts bars against success: the root of failure lies in irreligion.
Pride, conceit, disobedience, malice, evil-speaking, covetousness,
idolatry, vice, oppression, injustice, and lack of truth and honor fight
more strongly against one's career than any other foe. No sin is without
its lash; no experience of evil but has its rebound. To expect a higher
moral insight in middle age because of a larger experience of sin in
youth, is as reasonable as to look for sanity of judgment in middle age
because in youth a man had fits!
Looking at ourselves in a mirror, do we not sometimes think how we would
fashion ourselves if we could create a new self, in the image of some
ideal which is before us? Would we not make ourselves wholly beautiful
if we could make ourselves?