The Parable of Creation/Chapter4
IV.
THE ELEVATION OF LOVE AND FAITH.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Gen. I: 14-19.
In three previous discourses we have considered the subject of the first three days of creation. We have thus learned for what the Biblical narrative of that event was not designed and for what it was. Thus, it was not designed to be an account of the literal creation of the earth; it was not intended as a lesson in cosmogony or geology or any other branch of natural science. But it had, of course, a Divine purpose and meaning. This purpose was to set forth in parable or sacred allegory a series of spiritual truths.
The seven days of creation were thus found to symbolize the seven stages of progress through which man passes in the regeneration. He is born merely natural and at first develops only his natural powers and mind. But it is also designed by his Creator that he shall become spiritual and develop his spiritual powers and mind. This development, always gradual and slow, is called in Scripture the regeneration.
At first, and before regeneration begins, we are in ignorance, or, at least, in non-acknowledgment of spiritual things. A little child knows nothing as to its spiritual nature. It may learn a little with regard to it, but what it learns it does not really understand. The adult, who takes no interest in anything but his worldly affairs and pleasures, and does not see anything in a spiritual idea when it is presented to him, has not gone many steps, in this, beyond the child. His mind may have developed largely on natural lines, but certainly not on spiritual. As, however, he takes more interest in things of higher import, and comes more and more under their influence, he makes steps of progress herein. This progress in the unfolding of the higher elements of his being is his regeneration. And as the Biblical narrative of the creation sets forth under the form of parable, and in the language of sacred symbolism, the history of man's regeneration, the seven days in which the progressive events of the earth's creation are related, symbolize the seven general states of progress through which all have to pass from the merely natural to the higher spiritual.
Your minds were then directed to the truth concerning the particular ideas involved in the statements with reference to the first three days. I called your attention to the fact that the earth was, throughout the Scripture, a symbol of the mind of man. The condition in which it was previous to creation, its being without form and void, was a perfect illustration of the state of each one's mind previous to regeneration. As to religious ideas or purposes, it is without form and void. The darkness which was said to dwell, at that time, on the face of the deep, symbolized the great darkness as to spiritual things, which is the first condition of all, previous to their entrance upon the regeneration. Ignorance, as to this phase of knowledge, life and power, broods upon the face of their mental deeps.
If one is in ignorance, or in non-acknowledgment of the truth of any subject, the first step is to get light upon it, to gain information concerning it, and such information, and in such form, that he may be able to see and believe it. The first light on spiritual subjects is that whereby we acknowledge its primary principles, such as, that there is a God and that spiritual things are, in themselves, of a higher nature and of more importance than worldly things. This, as we learned, was represented in the parable by the command of God, "Let there be light," and its resulting consequence, "there was light." And this, the first day of creation, symbolizes the first stage of regeneration some light let in upon the darkness of the mind.
Having gained this much, the second step is to acquire a habit of understanding spiritual truth when it is presented to the mind; in other words, to have the spiritual understanding opened or the spiritual mind developed. This, we found to be represented by the creation of the firmament. The natural firmament or sky is the region above, through which light irradiates the realms of space and pours in upon the earth. Correspondingly the spiritual firmament of the mind is where light on spiritual themes is received and spread around, and into all the various faculties.
Having now obtained a mental power of receiving the Lord's spiritual teachings, and of comprehending them, the third step is the bringing forth of that which we have thus far gained into fruits of a good life. The prominent feature of the third day of creation was the earth bringing forth grass and the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit. These, being the first springings forth of life on earth, we found to be symbolic of the mind's first effort to bring forth into life something living and spiritual. It is vegetable life; it is not of a very high kind; still, it is life. So the covering of the field of the mind with the tender verdure of incipient spiritual resolves is represented by the Lord's clothing the earth with grass. The growth of the mind into the bringing forth of the fruits of good efforts, based upon what we have thus far spiritually understood, is figuratively delineated by the Lord causing the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit to spring up upon the earth.
And thus we gained and explained the meaning of the first three days of creation as symbolizing the first three stages of regeneration. In the beginning of earth's creation there was chaos and darkness. Then there was brought into being—on the first day, light; on the second, the firmament; on the third, vegetable life—grass, herbs, fruit. Observe the parallel. Previous to regeneration, in the case of every person, there is ignorance or denial—spiritual darkness. The first stage or progress consists in light—mental light concerning the superior value of spiritual things. The second is in the opening of the firmament of the mind, its upper realm of the spiritual understanding. The third is in the bringing forth of the first germinations of spiritual life and the first ripened fruits of higher principles.
Thus far we have proceeded, in our previous lectures, in the elucidation of this parable of the creation. We come now to the fourth day. This symbolizes the fourth stage of regeneration.
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness."
These great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, are, of course, the sun and moon. But there is a curious feature of this portion of the narrative to which the opponents of the Bible have not neglected to call attention. It is that the sun was not created until the fourth day. Now the sun is the well-known source of all our light. The moon only shines with the borrowed light of the sun. It is the sun which divides the day from the night—light from darkness. Its presence constitutes light and day; its absence is darkness and night. Yet the first act of the first day of creation was the fiat of God, "Let there be light," and the very first result of creative energy consisted in the fact that "there was light." Now, here is the paradox. The sun is the only source of natural light; the sun was not created until the fourth day; and yet there was light on the first day. The opponents of Bible-inspiration, therefore, put to us several very pertinent questions. If the sun was not created until the fourth day, how could there have been light on the first day? If light was created on the first day which divided the day from the night, the light from the darkness, what necessity was there for the creation of a new source of light on the fourth day for the purpose of effecting the very thing which had already been done on the first day? Or if two natural sources of light were at that time created, how is it and when was it, that the one originally made was blotted out from the face of the heavens or destroyed?
This question, from a strictly literal point of view, has never been answered. It cannot be. The nearest approach to an answer that has ever been given is, that it is one of those mysteries of religion which must be received by faith even though it be contrary to reason.
The believer in the truth that this is a spiritual parable avoids this confusion. When he understands its meaning, he sees at a glance the figurative reasons for its taking that form. Knowing that it was given for the sake of its spiritual meaning only, he views the expressions as fully harmonious with that purpose. He may go even further and admit the force of a natural figurative meaning underlying the other which will harmonize these statements with the facts of known science. But the basic truth is that its primary form, force and meaning is spiritual.
And now let us see what the natural figures are that are here used, and what they spiritually mean.
On this fourth day there are lights set up in the firmament of heaven. They are placed there to give light upon the earth; and to divide the day from the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. When we remember that the firmament of heaven typifies the spiritual mind, that is to say, the faculty of discerning spiritual things, the significance of these newly created objects becomes manifest. According to the laws of Divine symbolism, the sun is the symbol of love; the moon of faith, and the stars of knowledge. But as these are of little value except as they are directed to the Lord and derived from Him, the sun is frequently used to denote the Lord as the object of our love, the moon to denote the Lord as the object of our faith, and the stars to signify our knowledge concerning the Lord and his goodness and truths. Therefore we may say that the sun typifies the Lord as to love, and the moon the Lord as to faith; or we may say that the sun signifies love of the Lord, and the moon faith in the Lord. The meaning is the same. Love, in this its Divine sense, is always from the Lord and is the Lord in us. Faith is always given us by the Lord, and, in another sense, is the Lord, in us. So whether we say, love, or love to the Lord, or the Lord as our love, it is, in its radical sense, about the same. Or whether we say, faith, or faith in the Lord, or the Lord as our faith, it is, virtually, the same.
The sun signifies the Lord because that solar orb rules in the realm of nature in a manner corresponding to that in which the Lord rules in the realm of spirit. It might be said that the sun of nature is the Lord's vice-gerent in the physical planetary spheres. As the sun gives heat and light to the world of nature, the Lord gives spiritual warmth which is love, and spiritual light which is understanding to the world of the mind. As the sun causes the earth to be covered with verdure, germinates the seed, swells the bud, develops the leaf and flower and fruit, and gives life, growth and renewal to all things, so the Lord causes the mind to become clothed with the verdure of spiritual life, brings forth with his gentle influences the blossoms and fruits of the spirit, fills with life its affections and thoughts, and gives strength and growth to its varied faculties. And could we but peer into the domain of the higher spheres of the world beyond, we would see the Lord as the beneficent sun or life-giver of its entire spiritual realms.
But the sun typifies the Lord as love, because it is the sun, in respect to its warmth, which makes the earth so full of life and beauty, as it is the Lord, in respect to his affectionate warmth of love, who renders living, glowing, real, all that fills the world of the mind. Our hearts warm toward what we love; they are cold toward what we love not. Love is the warmth of the spiritual nature. It is the Lord's gift of love which warms us toward Himself, toward religion, toward spiritual study, toward the higher life and work, just as it is the sun's heat which warms, revives and renovates the earth.
This symbol of the sun as representing the Lord, and especially the Lord as our love, is as old as human religion. It was the origin of sun-worship. For as the sun was first used as a symbol only of the Deity, and as such temples were adorned with its semblance and dedicated to its name, through the decadence of religion the symbol became, in human thought, the reality; and the sun, in its origin, the type of God, became to idolatrous nations the great God himself.
That the moon symbolizes the Lord as our faith may be illustrated by these considerations: The moon shines by reflected light, while the sun is light and heat in itself. The faith of the mind is true and bright only as it is reflected from love—only as it is a response to the deep love of the heart. The moon's light is borrowed from the sun. Sunlight, therefore, is the great natural power of life and growth which broods upon the face of the earth. Moonlight has very little to do with covering the land with corn, with filling the gardens with flowers, or with loading the trees with fruit. The moon without the sun would have neither light nor life. Faith without love is cold and dead. It can neither warm the heart, enlighten the mind, nor give salvation to the man. But faith that is kindled at the shrine of the heart's best love, faith which borrows its light from love, faith which reflects the sunny glow of the heart's true love on every pathway of life—that is at once the sign and seal of a soul that is saved.
Thus while the Lord lights up our life with love, when love is triumphant in the world of the heart, it is faith which lights the path when all is dark. When we are happy, when we are loving, when we are in states of elevated spiritual feeling, when it is day time for the soul, we feel, and see, and recognize the Lord as lighting with his love our world of life. I speak, of course, of those who do recognize God's providence as permeating all our ways. But when all is dark and hope is waning, and evils overflow our heart-land, and even outward life seems all unhinged—when it is night time on the soul, then the faith we have that God is true, the faith we hold in his mercy and love as things that never die, the faith we still maintain that the night will pass away and the day will come—that faith sustains us in adversity, in trial, in temptation, in doubt, yea raises us even from the depths of despair. Thus it is, that with him who has so far progressed on the upward way of regeneration, it is the sun, or love of God, which rules in the soul by day, but the moon, or faith in God, which rules therein by night.
That the stars symbolize knowledges of the Lord and of what is true and good may be illustrated by these considerations: In the absence of any correct understanding of things, a knowledge of its rules and principles light our way to some extent. As I have elsewhere remarked, knowledge is one thing, understanding what we know another, and a loving life of what we understand another still. We may have a knowledge of the customs of polite society. They are mere outward show, but, nevertheless, they smooth our path in the world. But if we understand the ethics of true kindliness and gentleness, we can take up the rules of outward etiquette, and make them beneficent methods of smoothing the rugged paths of others' lives. If, however, we love from our hearts to live and walk through life for the sake of strewing sunshine and flowers and deeds of use o'er all the paths which others tread, then the inward ethics of true heavenly etiquette intuitively come forth in every moment of our lives. So in matters which concern our spiritual walk, where neither love nor faith shine on our wandering way to guide our devious steps, the stars of the mere knowledge of what is true and good may afford some glimmering light to help us on. Thus, as in the absence of sun and moon, night may still have its stars, comparatively dim though their light may be, so, though our love may, for the time, be cold, and our faith may halt, the bare knowledge of what is true and good will serve a purpose in our lives, until our faith and love assert themselves once more.
When we read the Scripture by these symbols, so far as they therein occur, it confirms the truth of their symbolism, as well as throws light upon its otherwise darkened pages. It is said for example in the Psalm: "Praise ye the Lord, sun and moon; praise him all ye stars of light." : Can any one believe that this is designed as a literal command to sun, moon and stars to enter upon intelligent praises of the Lord? Nay; the sun, moon and stars to whom appeal is thus made are set up in the firmament of the mind of man. It is a command to all mankind to let their love, their faith, their knowledges of God and good, go forth in the silent praise which the warmth, and light, and clear shining of a genuine spiritual life forever render to the Lord. When, amid the higher and holier states of life, the heart arises to the Lord with loving thanks, whether silent or expressed, when, amid its darker states of trial and temptation, in unbroken faith, it hopes and trusts in Him, when, in the momentary lull of either or of both, its knowledges of the true and good, of God and heaven, still assist in the dispersion of the gross darkness of merely natural life, then do the sun, moon and stars of the mind praise the Lord. Then is the command of the sacred psalm fulfilled.
In that oft-repeated prophecy of our Lord concerning his second coming, it is said, "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven." Shall we then entertain so foolish an idea, as that the natural sunlight shall be obliterated; that the natural moon shall lose her power to shine; that the myraid of stars which stud the sky, many of them inconceivably larger than the earth on which we live, shall fall on this one small globe? The meaning is simply this: that in the days when our Lord should make his second coming, the sun would be darkened, in the sense that genuine love to the Lord would cease to radiate from the hearts of men; that the moon would not give her light, in the sense that true faith in Him would cease to shine within the souls of men; and that the stars would fall from heaven, in the sense that men's knowledges of spiritual things would fall from their high and heavenly hold upon the human mind, and become earthly, material and debased.
So the fourth day of creation, as the parable relates, was the setting up of the sun, moon and stars, to rule over the day and over the night. And the fourth stage of regeneration is when love to the Lord, faith in the Lord, and knowledges of the Lord's truths, are set up in the spiritual or internal mind to rule the whole realm of heart and mind, affection and thought.
Let us understand this fully. Shall we ask what love is? It is easy to feel what it is, but it is difficult to bring it within the scope of definition. Attachment, preference, liking, fondness, affection, are expressions of somewhat the same meaning, but they do not present the idea of vigor, warmth, depth or intensity which seems to attach to the term love. The word, in all its fullness of meaning, is absolutely without an equivalent in the language. It is positively incapable of definition. Yet if we have love toward others, we know how our hearts warm to them, how we long for their presence, how we are willing to drop all selfish considerations for their sakes, what sacrifices we are ready to make to render them happy, how willing we are to do and dare, to work, to surrender, to live for them. Love is gentle, kind, disinterested, diligent, constant, and these in all things, to the person loved. This, of course, is its highest type; but all not thoroughly brutalized have experienced it in some degree. One of the most tender types of this love is that of a mother to her child. One of the broadest is that of love of country, in whose behalf thousands have no hesitation in laying down their lives.
Let us now apply this to the Lord. Let us think of Him as the embodiment of all that is lovely and wise, of all that is true and good. In any such sense as we approach our earthly friends, we cannot see Him, we cannot hear Him, we cannot touch Him; nor can we have that kind of sense of personal devotion to Him which we have toward those who meet us on our own plane of life. But we can think of God as our glorified Christ; we can hold Him before our mental vision as an infinitely lovely Divine man; we can send our hearts forth to Him as the one good and true, from whom all that is good and true comes down.
And that is just the point. He stands as our highest conception of infinite goodness and truth—of infinite love and wisdom. He has given us his commands of perfect life. In these commands He has embodied in words the ideal to which He would have us attain an ideal which is reflected from his own person and life. Now when we fall in love with that perfect ideal as personally represented in Him, and as expressed in the instructions He has given us in his Word, we have fallen in love with Him. We cannot separate our ideal from his person, because in Him alone that perfect life is perfectly revealed. If we drop his personality from thought in this connection, our ideal of perfection loses its glory or sinks into something less than perfect. It is only as we remember his description of a perfect life as embodied in his instructions, and apply them to Him, Jesus, our incarnate God, and observe in Him a complete realization of a completely sinless life, that we can fall in love with the absolutely true and good as He would have us do. No mere man can reflect to us that infinitely harmonious perfection which Jesus can.
We know God, we realize God, we think of God, we love God, only as He is revealed to us in Christ. Essential divinity, as it is in its own infinite being, the finite idea cannot grasp. We can grasp it only as it is brought down to our vision. We see God, therefore, ever, in thought, as Jesus glorified. With what is invisible, incomprehensible, unthinkable, we have, and can have, nothing, consciously, to do. The essential divinity is more beyond us than your soul, which I can neither feel nor see, is beyond my ken. I know you only through your body, your speech, your outward life. You can know essential Divinity only as the soul of Christ—something entirely beyond and above your grasp. But in Christ, and through his life and speech and works, in that Humanity which was made Divine and now fills heaven and earth and all things, God becomes something which we can know of, think of, live for, love!
So we raise our hearts to this Divine Man. We see his life exemplified in the world; we hear the ringing precepts He uttered for our guidance of old and on earth; we love the good He lived, the truth He taught, the life He exemplified; thus, we love Him. So He himself has defined this love in the only way in which it can be defined, and He has said, "He that hath my commandments and doeth them, He it is that loveth me;"—" If ye love me, keep my commandments." And if we really love the life He offers for our acceptance, we will keep his commandments. If we do not, it is because we love ourselves, or the world's goods and pleasures better. But when we love them, or to the degree that we love them, what will we not do for the love of the true and the good, which is the love of God, which we would not do for a friend? Will not our hearts warm toward it? Will we not long for its presence within us? Will we not drop all selfish considerations for its sake? Will we not do all things, dare all things, surrender all things, to live for that, and that alone. While love for a friend will make us gentle, self-abnegating, watchful, diligent, on behalf of the person so loved; will not the love of the good and the true, for their own sakes and as exemplified by God on earth, make us all this and more, in all things, and toward all men? But whether we say the love of good, or the love of God, or the love of Christ, is it not all the same?
Now when this love begins to affect the soul, the greater light, of which our text speaks, is set up in the heaven, or spiritual region of the mind, to light our steps along all the pathways of life.
And what is faith? It is an internal belief in, or a certain conviction of the existence of, such a God, such a life, and such a love. A perfect faith has always understood, and, to a certain extent, realized that in which it believes. It cannot, therefore, be shaken. It believes in the goodness of God, in his mercy, his love and his providence, and, therefore, it sustains him who holds it amid the darkest episodes of life. Whether misfortunes come, whether temptations assail, whether doubts press in, in all these dark and troublous night-times of the soul, that unshaken belief in God as the only good, and in good as the only life, sustains our steps. Faith alone, faith which has not borrowed its light from love, cannot do this. But a faith that is the reflection of genuine love once ours, cannot by any possibility fail us.
So, when this belief in God which is born of love has power to sustain us amid our night-times of life, the lesser light, the moon of faith, begins to shine upon us with its silvery radiance. Set up within the spiritual region of the mind, it sheds light upon our darkness, illumines our farthest pathways, saves us from snares and pitfalls, and carries us safely on to another state of newly awakened day.
Then those beautiful knowledges of eternal things, in their vast variety, thoughts of God the Lord, conceptions of a true life, ideas of mercy, love and truth, far off glimmerings of a heaven beyond—all these shine down, help our faith to illuminate our mental world, maintain our light when faith itself is dim, but silently disappear to conscious view, when love irradiates the mind with so large a light and warmth, as to point the way to all things without manifest intellectual aid. Radiant stars on the mind's clear sky are they, whose lights reveal celestial mansions in the world to come. Knowledge may be ours and yet have no illuminating power. To learn eternal truths is one thing. They only become stars along our hastening way when they are kindled into fires in the firmament of the spiritual mind.
Knowledge is not faith; nor is faith, love. But without knowledge there can be no faith, and without both no love. Knowledge, faith and love are a trine of principles which in their blended lights dispel the last vestige of darkness from the mind.
So we have groped our way along, all in the providence of God, to our fourth state of regeneration. It is a slow process. We came out of darkness into light, but what did we realize of eternal things? We passed into a capacity for grasping spiritual thoughts, but what warmth or clearness was there to our new found views? We brought forth some fruits of a better outward life, but what was there in our works of genuine love? Or how clear a faith had we in the higher life of good, or the grander ways of God? But now this love and faith are enkindled within the spiritual mind, and even our knowledge of eternal things are lit with living fire.
And so these lights enkindled thus serve to divide between the day and night—between the light of the true and good and the darkness of the false and evil. Error can no more deceive us; evil can no more palm itself off for good, nor selfishness for virtue. These clear-shining luminaries, love, the greater light for the day, faith the lesser light for the night, have dispelled all misconceptions. And they serve for signs of our elevation and progress; they mark the seasons of our changing heart-conditions, and tell of the days and years—the ever-advancing states of truth and love. And they are set in the firmament of heaven—in the spiritual mind, to give light upon the earth, or illuminate its every lower place with spiritual radiance.
Then the previous state, when true love and genuine faith were not as yet possessed, is, as compared with the present state of love and faith, as evening shadow to morning light. And God sees that it is good. And the evening and the morning—this new advance from comparative obscurity into clearer light, are the fourth day the fourth progressive state into which all who press on in the regenerate life will come.
Is life a mystery? Are its paths all darkness and unrest? Not to those who have made even the beginnings of a life of love and faith. Is there any light for the soul? Is there a way out of the shadows which obscure our wanderings? Yes; love throws a radiance over life which dispels all clouds; faith lights up its skies amid its gloomiest nights; true knowledge reveals bright homes in everlasting worlds beyond the one in which we linger now. And in that knowledge, faith and love the Lord lives and reigns supreme. Gain these and you have left the lower levels of a false life behind, and all things beckon you onward in your advancing way.
