With God in the World: A Series of PapersBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
With God in the World: A Series of Papers
Brent, Charles Henry
Christianity
Even on the natural side man finds attraction and inspiration in
problems, puzzles and difficulties.[39] No sooner is one problem solved
or one difficulty surmounted than another is eagerly sought for and
grappled with. The spice of life lies in its antagonisms.[40] It is not
the prospect of some reward of wealth or honour that carries men to the
crown of their task; it is the joy of the doing, a joy that is felt even
in those preliminary experimentations which only pave the way to the
real undertaking. Men--we are not thinking of butterflies--cannot exist
without difficulty. To be shorn of it means death, because inspiration
is bound up with it, and inspiration is the breath of God, without the
constant influx of which man ceases to be a living soul. Responsibility
is the sacrament of inspiration. The miracles of Christ, whatever else
they did, suggested new responsibility to the race, opened up a new
field of daring and enlarged the scope of human operations. They
encouraged men to attempt the impossible; and without question the
hidden but no less effective cause of all scientific development has
been and is Christian aspiration, roused to its highest pitch by the
marvels performed by the Man Christ Jesus. Christian faith has educated
us to a belief that the first promise of order lies in the discovery of
chaos, and that every problem carries in its own pocket a key formed to
fit the hand of man. Thus interest in the sorrows and perplexities of
the multitudes rises from a nerveless compassion that of yore worked
laboriously with its "law-stiffened fingers," to a wide-reaching
ministration of power; the secrets of nature become invitations to
knowledge; and effort that was once merely instinctive and random
becomes rational and triumphant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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