C.S.
Lewis
1941
如果你今天問二十位品德高尚的人，他們認為最高的德行是什麼？十九位會回答：「無私。」但是如果你問的對象是任一位過往的偉大的基督徒，他的回答會是：「愛。」
你看這是怎麼一回事？否定詞取代了肯定詞，而這不只是關於語言學意義。 「無私」這個否定概念所暗示的，並非主要在於為他人謀取福祉，而在於我們自己放棄這些福祉，彷彿我們自身的克制而非他人的幸福才是最重要的。我認為這並非基督教所倡導的愛的美德。
新約聖經對捨己有許多論述，但並非將捨己本身視為目的。聖經教導我們要捨己，背起自己的十字架，才能跟隨基督；而幾乎所有關於我們最終將獲得什麼的描述，都包含著對盼望的訴求。
假如在大多數現代人的心中，有隱藏著這麼一個概念，認為渴望我們自己的美好，而且真希望去享受它是一件壞事，我必須說，這決不是基督徒的信仰的一部分，而是從康德Kant和斯多葛學派偷偷的塞進來的。
事實上，如果我們仔細思考福音書中毫不掩飾的獎賞承諾，以及這些獎賞的驚人規模，就會發現，我們的主似乎認為我們的慾望並非過於強烈，而是過於軟弱。
我們是三心二意的生物，沉溺於食色、野心，卻對賜予我們的無限喜樂視而不見，像個無知的小孩要繼續在貧民窟裡玩泥巴，只因他無法想像去海上渡假是怎麼一回事。我們太容易滿足了。
我們不應因不信者所說的「這獎賞的應許使基督徒的生活變成唯利是圖的事」而感到困擾。獎賞有很多種。有一種獎賞與你為之付出的努力並無直接關聯，也與你為之付出的努力所應有的慾望截然不同。
金錢並非愛的自然回報；因此，如果一個男人為了女人的錢而娶她，我們會稱他為唯利是圖之人。但婚姻才是真正相愛之人應得的回報，他渴望婚姻並非唯利是圖。
一個將軍為了昇官而把仗打好是圖利的行為；一個將軍為了勝利而戰就不是，勝利是一場戰鬥的合適獎賞，正如婚姻是戀愛的合適獎賞。合適的獎賞並不只是跟著他們所給的活動而來，而就是完成的活動行為的本身。
還有第三種情況，更為複雜。欣賞希臘詩當然是學習希臘文的一種恰當回報，而非功利的獎勵；但只有那些真正領略過希臘詩歌之美的人，才能從自身經驗中體會到這一點。剛開始學習希臘文法的學生，無法像戀人期盼婚姻或將軍期盼勝利那樣，滿懷期待地去欣賞索福克勒斯Sophocles的作品。他必須先為了分數、為了逃避懲罰、為了取悅父母，或者充其量，為了期盼未來某種他現在無法想像或渴望的美好事物而努力學習。
因此，他的處境與傭兵頗為相似；他即將獲得的報酬，實際上是一種自然而然的、應得的報酬，但他只有得到它之後才會明白。當然，這種報酬是逐漸獲得的；享受慢慢地融入到枯燥的勞動之中，沒有人能夠指出究竟是哪一天、哪一刻，享受才真正開始。但正是在他接近報酬的過程中，他才能夠真正渴望它本身；事實上，這種渴望的能力本身就是一種初步的獎賞。
基督徒與天堂的關係，很像這位學童的處境。那些在神的眼裡已經得到永生的人，無疑深知這不是賄賂，而是他們的屬世的門徒地位的完美結局；但我們這些尚未獲得永生的人，卻無法以同樣的方式理解這一點，甚至根本無法開始理解，除非我們繼續順服，並在對最終獎賞日益增長的渴望中找到順服的第一個獎賞。隨著渴望的增長，我們對這種渴望可能淪為唯利是圖的恐懼將會消散，最終被我們視為荒謬。但這對我們大多數人來說，或許並非一日之功；詩歌取代了語法，福音取代了律法，渴望轉化了順服，這過程如同潮水緩緩托起擱淺的船隻一般，循序漸進。
但是在學童和我們自己之間，有另一個重要的相似點。如果他是個富有想像力的孩子，那麼在他開始意識到希臘語文法會給他帶來更多類似的樂趣之前，他很可能就已經沉浸在適合他這個年齡的英國詩人和浪漫小說中了。他甚至可能為了偷偷閱讀雪萊Shelley和斯溫伯恩Swinburne的作品而忽略了希臘文學習。換言之，希臘文真正想要滿足的那種渴望早已存在於他心中，並且與一些在他看來與色諾芬Xenophon和希臘文動詞完全無關的事物連結在一起。
假如我們是天生要進天堂的，那麼對我們真正歸宿的渴望早已存在於我們心中，但尚未與真正的目標相契合，甚至會顯得與目標相悖。我認為，這正是我們所發現的。毫無疑問，我用學童來類比存在一個漏洞。他本應練習希臘語，卻讀起了英語詩歌，而這些英語詩歌可能與練習引導他去讀的希臘詩歌一樣優秀。因此，他選擇讀彌爾頓Milton而不是埃斯庫羅斯Aeschylus，並非是執著於虛假的目標。但我們的情況截然不同。如果超越時空、超越限制的至善才是我們真正的歸宿，那麼我們執著於的任何其他至善都必然在某種程度上是謬誤的，充其量只能與真正能滿足我們的事物存在像徵性的聯繫。
提到這個對我們的遙遠的家園的慾望，甚至是在我們之間，我都感到有些不好意思。我好像是做了一個不合宜的舉動。我正在揭開你們每個人無法慰藉的秘密——這秘密是如此的觸痛到你們，以至於你們用「懷舊」、「浪漫主義」和「青春期」之類的名字來報復它；這個秘密甜蜜得令人心醉，以至於在親密的交談中，一旦提及它，我們便會感到尷尬，並假裝自嘲；這個秘密我們既無法隱藏也無法訴說，儘管我們渴望兩者兼得。我們無法訴說，是因為我們渴望的是一種從未在我們的經驗中真正出現過的事物。我們無法隱藏，是因為我們的經驗不斷地暗示著它，以至於我們就像戀人一樣，在提及某個名字時便會對不起自己。
我們最常用的權宜之計是稱之為美，然後裝作問題已解決。華茲華斯Wordsworth 的權宜之計是將美與他過往的某些時刻聯繫起來。但這都是欺騙。如果華茲華斯回到那些過往的時刻，他找到的並非事物本身，而只是對它的回憶；他所回憶的，最終也只是回憶本身。
我們以為美存在於書籍或音樂之中，但如果我們信賴它們，它們就會背叛我們；美並不存在於它們之中，它只是透過它們傳遞出來的，而透過它們傳遞出來的只是渴望。
這些事物──美，我們對過往的記憶──都是我們真正渴望之物的美好像徵；但如果將它們誤認為事物本身，它們就會變成啞巴偶像，令崇拜者心碎。因為它們並非事物本身；它們只不過是我們尚未尋找的花朵的芬芳，是我們尚未聆聽的旋律的迴響，是我們從未踏足的國度的消息。
你以為我在施咒嗎？或許是吧；但別忘了你聽過的童話故事。咒語既可以用來解除魔法，也可以用來施加魔法。而你我都需要找到最強大的咒語，才能將我們從籠罩我們近百年的世俗邪惡魔咒中喚醒。
我們幾乎接受的所有教育都是為了壓制這種羞澀而執著的內在聲音；我們幾乎所有的現代哲學都是為了讓我們相信，人類的福祉存在於這片土地上。然而，令人驚訝的是，這些進步主義或創造性進化論的哲學本身卻不得不承認，我們真正的目標在別處。
當他們想讓你相信地球是你的家時，注意他們是如何做到的。他們首先會試圖說服你，地球可以變成天堂，以此安撫你身處地球的流亡感。接著，他們會告訴你，這個美好的時刻還很遙遠，以此來安撫你對祖國並不在此時此地的認知。
最後，為了避免你對超越時間的渴望覺醒並破壞整個事情，他們用盡一切手段來讓你忘記，即使他們承諾的所有幸福都能降臨到地球上的人類身上，但每一代人都會因死亡而失去它，包括所有世代的最後一代，整個故事將永遠變成虛無，甚至不再是一個故事。
因此，蕭伯納先生在《莉莉絲》的最後演講中加入了所有荒謬的言論，而柏格森則評論說，生命衝動（亨利·柏格森曾經認為是導致生物進化和發展的假想力量）能夠克服所有障礙，甚至死亡——彷彿我們能夠相信這個星球上的任何社會或生物發展都會延緩太陽的衰老或逆轉熱力學第二定律。
If you
asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues,
nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the
great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened?
A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than
philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it
the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without
them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important
point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament
has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in
itself. We are told to deny ourselves
and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every
description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to
desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own
good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit
that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian
faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering
nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord
finds our desires, not too strong, but
too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and
sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who
wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant
by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
We must not
be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the
Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is
the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it, and is quite
foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural
reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for
the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and
he is not mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a
peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being
the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The
proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are
given, but are the activity itself in consummation. There is also a third case,
which is more complicated. An enjoyment of Greek poetry is certainly a proper,
and not a mercenary, reward for learning Greek; but only those who have reached
the stage of enjoying Greek poetry can tell from their own experience that this
is so. The schoolboy beginning Greek grammar cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment
of Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage or a general to victory. He has to begin by working for marks, or to
escape punishment, or to please his parents, or, at best, in the hope of a
future good which he cannot at present imagines or desire. His position,
therefore, bears a certain resemblance to that of the mercenary; the reward he
is going to get will, in actual fact, be a natural or proper reward, but he
will not know that till he has got it. Of course, he gets it gradually; enjoyment
creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an hour
when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just in so far as he approaches
the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring
it is itself a preliminary reward.
The Christian,
in relation to heaven, is in much the same position as this schoolboy. Those who have attained everlasting life in the
vision of God doubtless know very well that it is no mere bribe, but the very
consummation of their earthly discipleship; but we who have not yet attained it
cannot know this in the same way, and cannot even begin to know it at all except
by continuing to obey and finding the first reward of our obedience in our
increasing power to desire the ultimate reward. Just in proportion as the
desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and
finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of
us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing
transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.
But there
is one other important similarity between the schoolboy and ourselves. If he is
an imaginative boy he will, quite probably, be reveling in the English poets and romancers suitable to his age
some time before he begins to suspect that Greek grammar is going to lead him
to more and more enjoyments of this same sort. He may even be neglecting his
Greek to read Shelley and Swinburne in secret. In other words, the desire which
Greek is really going to gratify already exists in him and is attached to
objects which seem to him quite unconnected with Xenophon and the verbs in µ..
Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already
in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival
of that object. And this, I think, is just what we find. No doubt there is one point
in which my analogy of the schoolboy breaks down. The English poetry which he
reads when he ought to be doing Greek exercises may be just as good as the
Greek poetry to which the exercises are leading him, so that in fixing on Milton
instead of journeying on to Aeschylus his desire is not embracing a false
object. But our case is very different. If a transtemporal, transfinite good is
our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some
degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will
truly satisfy.
提到這個對我們的遙遠的家園的慾望，甚至是在我們之間，我都感到有些不好意思。我好像是做了一個不合宜的舉動。我正在揭開你們每個人無法慰藉的秘密——這秘密是如此的觸痛到你們，所以你們報復性的稱之為
In speaking
of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even
now, I feel a certain
shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the
inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you
take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and
Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very
intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and
affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though
we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it
is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.
We cannot hide it because our experience is
constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention
of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it
beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was
to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat.
If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have
found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us
if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what
came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are
good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing
itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their
worshippers. For they are not the thing
itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a
tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you
think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy
tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And
you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the
evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a
hundred years. Almost our whole education has
been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised
to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. And yet it is
a remarkable thing that such philosophies of Progress or Creative Evolution themselves bear
reluctant witness to the truth that our real goal is elsewhere. When they want
to convince you that earth is your home, notice how they set about it. They
begin by trying to persuade you that earth can be made into heaven, thus giving
a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is. Next, they tell you that this
fortunate event is still a good way off in the future, thus giving a sop to
your knowledge that the fatherland is not here and now. Finally, lest your
longing for the transtemporal should awake and spoil the whole affair, they use
any rhetoric that comes to hand to keep out of your mind the recollection that
even if all the happiness they promised could come to man on earth, yet still
each generation would lose it by death, including the last generation of all,
and the whole story would be nothing, not even a story, for ever and ever.
Hence all the nonsense that Mr. Shaw puts into the final speech of Lilith, and
Bergson’s remark that the élan vital (a hypothetical force once thought by
Henri Bergson to cause the evolution and development of organisms) is capable
of surmounting all obstacles, perhaps even death—as if we could believe that
any social or biological development on this planet will delay the senility衰老of the sun or reverse the second law of thermodynamics.
Do what
they will, then, we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will
satisfy. But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction
to it? “Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.” But I think it may
be urged that this misses the point. A man’s physical hunger does not prove
that that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic . But surely a man’s hunger does prove
that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where
eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I
did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication
that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not
win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred
in a sexless world.
有這個渴望，還在徬徨不定它的對象，而且大半還無法在實際所在的方向看到那對象
Here, then,
is the desire, still wandering and uncertain of its object and still largely unable
to see that object in the direction where it really lies. Our sacred books give
us some account of the object. It is, of course, a symbolical account. Heaven
is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions
must be of things within our experience. The scriptural picture of heaven is therefore just as
symbolical as the picture which our desire, unaided, invents for itself; heaven
is not really full of jewelry any more than it is really the beauty of Nature,
or a fine piece of music. The difference is that the scriptural imagery has
authority. It comes to us from writers who were closer to God than we, and it
has stood the test of Christian experience down the centuries. The natural
appeal of this authoritative imagery is to me, at first, very small. At first
sight it chills, rather than awakes, my desire. And that is just what I ought
to expect. If Christianity could tell me no
more of the far-off land than my own
temperament led me to surmise already,
then Christianity would be no higher than myself. If it has more to give me, I must expect
it to be less immediately attractive than “my own stuff.” Sophocles at first seems
dull and cold to the boy who has only reached Shelley. If our religion is something
objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which
seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.
The
promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promised,
firstly, that we shall be with Christ; secondly, that we shall be like Him; thirdly,
with an enormous wealth of imagery, that we shall have “glory”; fourthly, that we
shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained; and, finally, that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe—ruling cities, judging
angels, being pillars of God’s temple. The
first question I ask about these promises is: “Why any of them except the
first?” Can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ? For
it must be true, as an old writer says,
that he who has God and everything else
has no more than he who has God only. I think the answer turns again on the
nature of symbols. For though it may escape our notice at first glance, yet it
is true that any conception of being with Christ which most of us can now form
will be not very much less symbolical than the other promises; for it will smuggle in ideas of proximity in space and loving
conversation as we now understand
conversation, and it will probably concentrate on the humanity of Christ to the exclusion of His deity. And, in fact, we find that those Christians who
attend solely to this first promise always do fill it up with very earthly imagery
indeed—in fact, with hymeneal or erotic imagery. I am not for a moment condemning
such imagery. I heartily wish I could enter into it more deeply than I do, and
pray that I yet shall. But my point is that this also is only a symbol, like
the reality in some respects, but unlike it in others, and therefore needs
correction from the different symbols in the other promises. The variation of
the promises does not mean that anything other than God will be our ultimate
bliss; but because God is more than a Person, and lest we should imagine the
joy of His presence too exclusively in
terms of our present poor experience of
personal love, with all its narrowness and
strain and monotony, a dozen changing
images, correcting and relieving each
other, are supplied.
I turn next
to the idea of glory. There is no getting away from the fact that this idea is very
prominent in the New Testament and in early Christian writings. Salvation is constantly
associated with palms, crowns, white robes, thrones, and splendor like the sun
and stars. All this makes no immediate appeal to me at all, and in that respect
I fancy I am a typical modern. Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one
seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it
means luminosity. As for the first, since to be
famous means to be better known than
other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and
therefore of hell rather than heaven. As
for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb?
When I
began to look into this matter I was stocked to find such different Christians
as Milton, Johnson and Thomas Aquinas taking heavenly glory quite frankly in
the sense of fame or good report. But not fame conferred by our fellow creatures—fame
with God, approval or (I might say) “appreciation’ by God. And then, when I had thought it over, I saw
that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the
divine accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” With that, a good
deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a house of cards. I
suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing
is so obvious in a child—not in a conceited child, but in a good child—as its
great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a child, either,
but even in a dog or a horse. Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had,
all these years. prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest,
the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the specific pleasure
of the inferior: the pleasure a beast
before men, a child before its father, a
pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting
how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or
how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from
those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of
self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment—a very, very short
moment—before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those
whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. And that is enough to raise our
thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly
beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to
please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the
miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex for ever will also drown her
pride deeper than Prospero’s book.
Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the
work may be satisfied with itself; “it is not for her to bandy compliments with
her Sovereign.” I can imagine someone saying that he dislikes my idea of heaven
as a place where we are patted on the back. But proud misunderstanding is
behind that dislike. In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of
the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with
the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never
be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental
thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us
is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think
of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks
of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected.
The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the
work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually
survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in
the divine happiness...to be loved by
God, not merely pitied, but delighted in
as an artist delights in his work or a
father in a son—it seems impossible, a
weight or burden of glory which our
thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it
is. And now notice what is happening. If
I had rejected the authoritative and scriptural image of glory and stuck obstinately
to the vague desire which was, at the outset, my only pointer to heaven, I could
have seen no connection at all between that desire and the Christian promise. But now, having
followed up what seemed puzzling and repellent in the sacred books, I find, to
my great surprise, looking back, that the connection is perfectly clear. Glory, as
Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire
and indeed to reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed. By
ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what
I really wanted. When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual
longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually
notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the
landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described
by Keats as “the journey homeward to habitual self.” You know what I mean. For a
few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to
find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled,
but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us.
We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can:
“Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call
beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of
us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking
of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the
messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that
message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for
us but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment.
We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we
pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing
to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns
between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from
this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes
highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God,
acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of
things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at
last.
Perhaps it
seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being “noticed” by God. But
this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul
And this
brings me to the other sense of glory—glory as brightness, splendor, luminosity.
We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning Star. I think I begin
to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already:
you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough.
What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the
books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies
know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even
that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into
words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into
ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled
air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though
we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty
grace, and power of which Nature is the
image. That is why the poets tell us
such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a
human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound”
will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously,
if we believe that God will one day give
us the Morning Star and cause us to put
on the splendor of the sun, then we
may surmise that both the ancient myths
and the modern poetry, so false as
history, may be very near the truth as
prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the
door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us
fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves
of the New Testament are rustling with
the rumor that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect
in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience,
then they will put on its glory, or
rather that greater glory of which
Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am
putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is
mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away,
each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but
it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through
Nature, beyond her, into that splendor which she fitfully reflects.
And in
there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life. At present, if we
are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God; but the mind, and
still more the body, receives life from
Him at a thousand removes—through our
ancestors, through our food, through the
elements. The faint, far-off results of
those energies which God’s creative
rapture implanted in matter when He made
the worlds are what we now call physical
pleasures; and even thus filtered, they
are too much for our present management.
What would it be to taste at the fountain-head that stream of which even these
lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet
that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the
fountain of joy. As St. Augustine
No comments:
Post a Comment