Once upon a time, there lived in a country village a man with the untroubled eyes and placid smile of a little child. The villagers called him in their quaint parlance "a natural." For over forty years he lived there among them, his body tall and strong, but his intelligence never seemed to advance beyond that of the children who loved to ride upon his broad shoulders. He was a very happy man because everybody loved him, and, again, because he loved everybody and because he loved everything, too! No smallest creature that ran or crept or flew ever suffered a moment's pang because of him, and the birds of the forest would perch on his outstretched hand and pick grains from its palm. It chanced one day that he was shown a small gold coin, and the meaning of money dawned upon him in a measure. If he should take that coin to the village store, the storekeeper would give him, in return for it, anything he wanted. The coin was just about the size and color of a buttercup's petal, and always after that, to this child-man, the buttercups that gilded the roadside in summer were all coin of the realm. In their season he carefully stored up a supply of the little burnished disks, and because his wants were few and simple, and because they loved him, the villagers never failed, so long as he lived, to take the yellow petals in payment for whatever he asked.
This little story seems suggestive of the bewilderment that has settled down upon the human consciousness, making it to stumble in terror through the centuries, believing the false to be true, the needless to be inevitable, looking for help to that which is helpless, and blinded all the while to the might that is sustaining and governing the universe. Men and women would not have chosen to wear out their years in sickness, sin, and discouragement if they had known that quite other conditions were theirs, to be had for the seeking. It is the hopeless thought that all these untoward circumstances are imposed or allowed by a mighty God, who, for inscrutable purposes of His own, has bound us, helpless Ixions, to a wheel that never ceases to crush us. Before such a false belief, hope, courage, endeavor, seem palsied, and long-time sufferers often await the touch of death to transmute this poor existence into a Nirvana of coveted unconsciousness. Nevertheless, throughout the history of the race an heroic instinct has always struggled, more or less consciously, against such thraldom. Men and women have tried to settle into the apathy of resignation, but for every one who has succeeded in deceiving his own heart, hundreds have fought against the fiat which would doom the innocent and destroy the guilty in the same cataclysm. The rebellion, the revolt against such an order of things, the conviction that such things should not be possible in a world created and governed by a just and loving God, has been the propelling force which has produced in all ages men and women who have caught glimpses of a far different underlying reality, as the traveler saw the stars through the misty ghosts in Ossian's tale. In varying dimness, the seers of the world have perceived that in place of the whirling vortex in which humanity has felt itself caught and tossed in wildest confusion, lies all around the serene calmness of law, "unhasting, unresting." Naturalists have named the law, life. They have watched it sustaining, producing, perpetuating, always maintaining order in the unvarying procession of genera and species. Then, like little children who fear to climb, they have fallen back, thrown away the gold coin just within their reach, and contented themselves with its withered counterfeit, a life that ends in death, a law that culminates in anarchy. Poets have named the law, love, and have wept to see it change, grow cold, and come to an end. Thinkers have named it truth, and translated it, each in his own terms, until the world is full of warring sects, quarreling over the vestments of the Lord they crucify. Sincere men and women doubtless they were and are,— as I write, the honest face of Huxley comes before me,— but because no fame nor happiness nor success that is built upon an untruth can ever stand, nations have perished with their gods, and human theories are sinking one after another into silence. Meanwhile, God, who is the source of law, who is undying Life— changeless Love —the one Truth, reigns forever, unconscious alike of misinterpretation and misbelief.
Perhaps in no respect has mankind erred more widely than in thinking that the government of Truth may be evaded. It sometimes happens that the tenderness of a father or mother is mistaken by a foolish little child for weakness, and we "children of a larger growth" have not always caught the note of authority which underlies the loving appeal of our Father -Mother God. Listen "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings;" "Give ear, O my people, to my law "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat;" "Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live;" "I will . . . teach thee: . . . I will guide thee;" "Hear, ye that are far off, . . . and, ye that are near, acknowledge my might," "Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see:" Not the words, these, of fruitless entreaty, that may go unheeded, like the solicitations of a beggar. The invitation, the loving bidding of Truth, is, like the invitation of royalty, a command, not to be gainsaid nor disobeyed. It is not a matter of choice whether or not obedience shall be rendered. True, the day of obedience may be deferred. Men and women may please and deceive themselves for a time in the thought that it is theirs to obey or not, as they choose, but so surely as Truth forever speaks, so surely is approaching for every individual the hour when he will obey, and gladly acknowledge what Cardinal Newman calls "the everlasting face-to-face with God." The decree that creates man in God's own image and likeness is no more operative than is that other decree, spoken through the prophet Isaiah, "I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth, . . . and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear."
