The Challenge of God
filHERE are many nowadays to whom the story of Bethlehem stands or no transforming fact, no ever-present reality—it is to them " as the words of a very lovely song," and it is nothing more. They have probably not thought out the subject for themselves, but their minds are influenced by things they have heard and read, and it does not strike them that though many of the arguments brought forward arc impressive and not to be overlooked, they leave untouched—they cannot touch—an army of facts which stand proven for all the world to see.
If the Infinite God never lay cradled in a human Mother's arms, with manger for cot and stable for home, if no wondering shepherds were summoned by the Angel Host and no Wise Men were led by a star to worship in that humble spot, then who will explain to us how that strange story stamped itself on the consciousness of the world ? What magic did it possess that ever since that night long ago a countless procession, from all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues, has followed in the footsteps of shepherd and sage to wonder and to worship at their side ? And the present no less than the past brings its witness, for on this Christmas, as on all those other shining Christmas days stretching right across the ages, in every quarter of our little cloud-girt earth will kneel a multitude innumerable in adoring love before the Infinite Mystery. To cars attuned the voices of the great host of living and of dead, in triumphant acclaim, are as the sound of many waters drowning in their thunder the baffled questionings of the groping human mind. " So make me to possess this Mystery that I may not desire to understand," said Coventry Patmore, and if we made his prayer our own, perchance we should more easily find the path to light.
We do not understand, we cannot so long as we only have a finite brain to bring to bear on Infinite Verity—but we believe ; and for such a belief who would not stake all that he has and all that he is ? The only faith that counts is the faith that we wrest for ourselves at first hand. To read about God, to learn what other men have to teach, are things necessary to us all, but they do not take us far ; to know God nothing will avail but personal relation, actual experience. Do we know our friends in any other wise ? We must carve our way for ourselves through the muffling world of sense, and it takes long courage and perseverance if we would arrive ; but there is no hopeless reaching out into a vague unknown for one who believes that God Himself has cut His way through to man, that He has pierced through the material wall which divides us from Him, to touch us with human hands and look upon us with human eyes.
The best we can ever have to give to our fellow-man is the certainty of our own souls, a conviction by which we live an for which we would die, and to win for ourselves this certainty it is well worth hazarding all that we have. The instinct of gambling is a curiously strong one in human nature, and here, if anywhere, surely, we are justified in turning it to account. Against what Christ lived and died for to give to humanity, what the Saints have striven and fought for, the life of love and self-giving, are there any so-called realities and hard facts which the world can offer that count in the balance ?
Many adventurous spirits have given up all that they held dear to set forth on perilous quest to some earthly El Dorado and have sailed uncharted seas for the sake of a dream. And if such as they deemed the cost that they had to pay not too high, what of him who pays but the same price for an infinitely greater prize ? And think you that when his seeking soul returns from its adventure he will care aught when men tell him that there is no such place as the Kingdom of his desire ? What power can they have over us, those feeble human voices, when once our ears have heard another Voice, when we have seen with the eyes of our soul what tongue can never describe, but what the heart will hold for ever ?
Year by year Christmas returns with its eternal challenge. The Everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, took upon Himself human flesh and lived and suffered and died. He emptied Himself of His glory and was among us as One that serveth, He showed us what His idea of love is, His conception of self-giving. It was the challenge of the Son of God—His challenge to the sons of men. " All that He has He gives, all that we are He asks." Single-handed during the short span of His mortal life He wrestled with the monsters of disease and sin, bringing life and light wherever He went, consuming in the fire of His wrath all meanness and hypocrisy, sweeping aside the human traditions under which men lay enslaved, setting up new standards of per- fection.
Those who heard Him caught for a moment with startled eyes a glimpse of the splendour of God, but the heights to which He beckoned them could be reached only by-paths steep andlard, for a man must be prepared to renounce self and give all that he has if he would take his share in the redemption of the world. One by one His followers forsook Him, and He died at the hands of His enemies, a failure because mankind would not respond to His call. But He rose again, and to-day there is hardly a corner on the globe where His name is not known, and though He has not conquered yet, He will conquer. Men cry : " Christianity is a failure, give us something new." They have cried so, ever and again, for 2,000 years, but Christianity renews itself as surely as the earth renews itself in spring, and like the living Christ Himself bursts from. its man-made tombs.
It is man who has failed. He has not responded to the challenge of God.
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