Pictures of Sweden: Ch. 18 - Faith and Knowledge

Ch. 18 - Faith and Knowledge

Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
_immortality_. And yet you may say, "I was more peaceful, I was safer
when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith." This
prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
tears away from me a support--my confidence in prayer; that which is,
as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.

I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
human arrogance: it is, as one should say, "I will be as wise as God."
"That you shall be!" said the serpent to our first parents when it
would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
the whole creation of the world--in the great and in the small, where
the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
eternity to eternity?

You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
loving-kindness--that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
understanding and heart are one--you tremble when you know that he has
elected you to immortality.

I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
which breaks it.

Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
the name of knowledge--_immortality_. Hear it! the beautiful also
bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.

When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
by itself--that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
soul and the creation around us--in all our senses there is such a
divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
figures.

In the Bible we find the expression: "God in spirit and in
truth,"--and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
the firmamental space--as far as the eye sees, as far as science
ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.

But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest
expression; "created in God's image," man, who is able to comprehend
and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony
then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as
creatures we have equally "no right to demand;" yet how differently
God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so
mean! At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to
how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles! We are placed
_there_, introduced _there_--how many may not say justly: "It were
better for me that I had never been born!"

Human life, consequently--the highest here on the earth--does not come
under the laws of harmonious beauty: it is inconceivable, it is an
injustice, and thus cannot take place.

The defect of harmony in life lies in this:--that we only see a small
part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth: there must be a
life to come--an immortality.

That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created
in beauty and harmony.

If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of
God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in
nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of
mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole
actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:
mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator: he would
then only have raised His _glory_, not shown His greatest _love_.
Loving-kindness is not self-love.

We are immortal! In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God,
fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good. Our
earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our
soul's eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond _that,_ the same
laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here. The prescience of eternal
omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion
thereof in ourselves. We know perfectly what development must take
place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and
for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of
maturity, when the storms must prevail, and when it is the rainy
season. Thus must God, in an infinitely greater degree, have the same
knowledge of the whole created globes of His universe, as of our earth
and the human race here. He must know when that development, that
flowering in the human race ordained by Himself, shall come to pass;
when the powers of intellect, of full development, are to reign; and
under these characters, come to a maturity of development, men will
become mighty, driving wheels--every one be the eternal God's likeness
indeed.

History shows us these things: joint enters into joint, in the world
of spirits, as well as in the materially created world; the eye of
wisdom--the all-seeing eye--encompasses the whole! And should we then
not be able, in our heart's distress, to pray to this Father with
confidence--to pray as the Saviour prayed: "If it be possible, let
this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

These last words we do not forget! and our prayer will be granted, if
it be for our good; or if it be not, then let us, as the child here,
that in its trouble comes to its earthly Father, and does not get its
wish fulfilled, but is refreshed by mild words, and the affectionate
language of reason, so that the eye weeps, which thereby mitigates
sorrow, and the child's pain is soothed. This, will prayer also grant
us: the eye will be filled with tears, but the heart will be full of
consolation! And who has penetrated so deeply into the ways of the
soul, that he dare deny that prayer is the wings that bear thee to
that sphere of inspiration whence God will extend to thee the
olive-branch of help and grace?

By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory
of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the
high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this
short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith.
Knowledge is like a chemical test that pronounces the gold pure!

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