The Solution of Problems the Duty and the Destiny of Man.

By ALEXANDER CRUMMELL. “FINALLY, brethren, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”—Phil. 4: 8.

Here, in these words of St. Paul, we have set before us a body of grand ethical problems as objects of thought and solution. They are not, however, novel conceptions, for in all ages, men of all conditions, have thought and spoken of just such themes. They are indeed as old as humanity. They are a part of the common stock of man's moral furniture. They are convictions which have haunted the soul in every condition of life, and in all periods of human history. What is right, and what is corrupt? What is just, and what is unjust? What is honest, and what is fraudulent? These are questions, these are ideas, that have their equivalents in all the tongues of men. They are questions that have agitated human society from the days of Adam, and hence they are universal in their 0002 2nature, in their moral significance and in their authority.

The only peculiarity of these special Apostolic utterances is that they are given under Divine illumination, and with a simplicity such as none of the ages of old could possibly approach. But, in themselves, they are to be regarded as unvarying functions of humanity. There is no special proprietorship in them by scholar, scientist or philosopher. They are the obligation of man, as man; and in the progress of society, the individualism of man in the domain of thought is demonstrating that moral responsibility which presses on every soul the duty of facing moral problems and of recognizing the task of weighing them.

The clause in the next, “if there be any virtue and if there be any praise,” may have a seeming limitation; but after all it implies no exclusiveness. It is only the statement of a grand qualification for lofty duty. The duty, however, is universal. For the grand moral entitles with their obligations, rest ever upon the human soul, irrespective of the conditions of life. Men are called by nature to think upon and of things that are true and honest, just and pure, lovely and of good report.

The solution of problems is without doubt the special function of men, and this is the topic of consideration this evening.

First of all, comes the query whether my proposition will stand the test of experience. I say that the life of man is obligated to the solution of moral problems. Can any one here name the exceptions? Do we not all feel the pressure of this obligation? Does it not start with the earliest dawn of our consciousness? Does 0003 3it not abide to the very sunset of our existence?

Start, if you will, with infancy. It is the so-called period of unthought and irresponsibility, but what is the testimony it gives us? Here is a little babe, a few days breather of the common air; but notice the movements of its eyes, the close grasp of its tiny fingers, its earnest peering into the light, its wondrous listening to sound or tune. What does it all denote? Why, it has already begun instinctively and unconsciously, the endeavor to solve some of the mysteries of the world it has entered.

Ere long childhood is reached; and mark the curiosity of its spirit, mastered by the sense of wonder-searching into everything, prying into hidden secrets, multiplying unceasingly its teasing and perplexing questions!

Simultaneously with these developments, we begin to see the little rills of moral consciousness, the germinal roots of rectitude and, perchance, the sense of shame. These serve as the alphabet of that large moral sense, which though precept and example, develope into noble character; and which, based upon these elementary facts as a foundation of the soul's spiritual training, expands in the family, into love and truthfulness; and in the church, blossoms into reverence and sacred worship.

Pass from infancy into youth. See the rush of puzzling and disputatious ideas which crowd upon and distract the youthful mind, and which make this period of life so perilous. We see the assaults of temptation upon it. But what is temptation but the wrestling of nature with inward convictions; and the endeavor, either to ward off moral danger, or to yield to the evil. But the convictions are resident in the tender minds of young, and they are called upon to solve the mysteries 0004 4of life. And this discovers the earthly recognition of both the nature and the force of temptation. It shows, too, the pressure of the questions of duty, of moral obligation, springing up in their tender souls, and the wrestling and antagonisms of conscience in relation to the trials and seductions which evil presses upon them.

We see with our own eyes the balance and the poise of thought and judgment. We recognize the mastery of intelligent will. We find the easy apprehension of the appeal to reason. Above all, we know of a certainty the force and authority of conscience in their tender spirits as a native factor and legitimate function of their being; as the aid, assistant and stimulant in solving difficult problems that call for their decision. Childhood and youth, then, find no exemption from the exactions of mystery in this human moral life of ours. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy; Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing boy.”

2. In due time, however, we all pass beyond the enclosures of family and school, into a great outer world of society and business. It is a passage, as we all know, into a perilous arena, crowded with phalanxes of facts and theories, of demands and obligations, replete, at every step, with endless destinies. It is a world of love and service, of trade and barter, of trust and responsibility, of duty and obligation, of enterprise and adventure. Here, too, we find the world- wide interests of farming and trades, of mining and manufactures, of commerce and banking of professionalism in all its divers phases, of armies and navies, of government and service, of sundry ministries, domestic, social, religious.

But pause here a moment, and think of all the burning 0005 5questions and the exhaustive problems that, for centuries, have been underlying these relations; pressing unceasingly for judgment and settlement: questions in which were involved the comfort, the success, the progress, nay, even the life of countless millions of human beings!

Here are a few of them: Is the laborer to be a free-man, exercising his own will, and using his own powers? Or, is he to be a slave, both will and powers at the command of others? If a hireling, what is to be the measure of his wage? So stint, indeed, as to forbid thought of the higher nature? So stint as to impose that serfage in condition which forbids the hope of manhood? Or, on the other hand, such just and liberal remuneration as gives opportunity of release from grinding drudgery, and lifts up the ambitions of humblest humanity to enlargement, to enlightenment, to culture, and eventually to grand civilization?

How often have not just such questions turned into sterility vast areas of farming lands! How often distracted immense business concerns! How often disturbed and fractured great manufacturies! How often convulsed States and revolutionized great commonwealths! Nay, you, yourselves, have seen the crowds of frenzied and insensate men, antagonizing capital, resisting authority, ready, on the instant, to sling abroad, flame and incendiarism. Thus was it in the Agrarian tumults of Rome; thus again in the convulsive movements of Grecian Helots. Thus, too, the frequent uprisings in Europe in the Middle Ages. So, not seldom, the struggles of the peasantry of France in the last century. All this, be it noticed, has not been local in its sphere. It has been in all lands, and in in all times, on 0006 6the stage of human history.

What have been the fundamental causes of these disturbances? You tell me, perchance, that they were generally the outcome of friction in matters of sustenance and housing; that they were simply the unrest concerning the gross material condition of the masses.

Nothing can be more shallow than such a judgment. The material aspect is only the surface aspect. It is only blind eyesight which can resolve those convulsions of humanity into mere symptoms of animal unrest. For the difficulties in their essence lie far deeper than any mere outward seeming. Nothing can be falser than the view which divorces these events from ethical ideas. For see how, everywhere, moral principles are intermingled with every feature of the subject. There has rarely, if ever, been a strike, a labor riot, an industrial disturbance, an Agrarian outbreak, in all the history of man, but what has had underlying, some absorbing moral problem which agitated the souls of men. Always ideas of justice, or equity, or right, have risen up as prominent factors in them.

I am not speaking of the wisdom or the unwisdom of such movements, I only point to the prodigious fact i.e. that questions of right and justice more or less underlie the commonest concerns of life. Man never passes beyond the boundary lines of dull content into the arena of strife or agitation, unless some deep moral conviction first circles his brain and fires his blood, or tinges his imagination.

3. But now, higher than the range of industrial life, come the interests which pertain to the civil life, in which we all participate. What need have I to pause, even here, to show that numberless questions have, in all 0007 7times, moved and stirred human society? What has been the history of man but one long, unceasing, never-ending conflict concerning the theories and prerogatives of government? What has moved and convulsed the masses of men more than the great ideas pertaining to the rights of man? What greater antagonisms have stirred society in all the ages than the politics of peoples and nations?

Think of the struggles for the riddance from undue authority! Think of the revolt, in all periods, from irresponsible and soul-crushing domination! Think of the strifes for equal laws and legal protection! Think of the long-lasting endeavors, in all lands, for the simplest participation in the government sustained by their own taxations in peaceful times, and by the gift of their blood in times of war! Think of the conflict of the ages for civil rights, for suffrage, education, and even manhood!

Bear in remembrance that all these prerogatives came to different peoples, not fortuitiously, not as a matter of chance-happening; but as the fruit of thought, as the outcome of discussion, as the result which springs from the study, the digestion, and the conflict of ideas; not seldom, at the price of a lavish outflow of patriot blood: and thus, not exclusively by scholars and philosophers, but by the common people, in the exercise of common sense, and through the stress of those deep convictions which quicken those aspirations for freedom which have brought about the progress of civilization.

It was the statement of Mr. Coleridge that, at the time of the first French Revolution, he was hastening from Paris to Dover to escape the dangers of the time by 0008 8flight to England. As he passed from hamlet to village, and from village to town and city, he found the men of France, the men of the humblest conditions, discussing most abstruse questions of civil rights and civil government. The like fact presents itself at the present day. Every great State in Europe is, at the present moment, a tumultuous and passionate “Debating Club;“ and down to the very dregs of society, the peoples thereofare formulating the abstrusest theories, and the most abstract ideas of the social condition of man, of the relations and duties of civil government to the people. Life, then, in its natural state, in its material condition, in its political aspects, is full of enigmas.

4. Pass now to the purely intellectual range of our being: and here we find no divergence from the reign of mystery. It is, without doubt, the realm of beauty, of power, of majesty, and of glory; in its divers manifestations, in its grand products, in the presence and the personnel of its grand masters and their mighty tread. But there is no escape here from those profound questionings which task the powers of men, and which challenge the conclusions of the human intellect. For the intricate problems of the intellectual life come with stream-like force; nay, not seldom, with the rush of a cataract, upon the consciousness of man. In this category are the questions of, What is mind? What is the nature of mind? What is its basis? Is it a product of our physical nature, or, of a finer and more subtle essence?

Then come all the other subtle questions of ideas and the origin of ideas,—the grand battle field in all the philosophies of men. Out of this comes the magnificent domain of human knowledge. On its ample pages the widest divsentiments, of facts and theories, of ideas and 0009 9sentiments, of prejudices and partialities, group themselves.

What a wonderful world is knowledge, with its multitudinous facts and products! What a marvelous and intricate world which even the infant mind is called to travel from the moment of birth to the rapines and maturity of old age! I put aside the range of the scholar and the plane of the scientist or the philosopher. I speak simply of the knowledge of man in the ordinary walks of life. And how vast is the volume of acquaintance which presses upon the mind, and demands insight and investigation,—the knowledge of man, of human life, of human mind, of the springs of human action, of human motives and desires, the knowledge of human passions, of natural, social and political life.

And now, ponder for a moment the multitudinous queries, the doubts the painful attempts at insight, the ventures into judgment and inference, the grasp of opinion, and, at last, the settling into mental quiet, which every mind passes through in its advance from the alphabet of thought to the firm decisions of practical life and duty. And this is the experience and life of boy-hood, of youth, if manhood, of the humblest of our kind. It is the constant occurrence and presentation of problems, and the equally constant demand for the solution of them. Even the unthinking masses of men cannot escape this trend of the human soul. This is the unconscious but inevitable process in their life as well as of the thoughtful classes of men. It is, indeed, the destiny of life. The process is the universal one for all minds, from the peasant to the prince.

Joined to this are the added toils and tasks, the strains and tugs, which always accompany the pursuit of letters, 0010 10or the adventures of the ardent mind into the fields of science or philosophy. For there is at no time a royal road to learning. The acquisition of letters always demands the pains which are inevitable and unavoidable.

For Art and Culture are no more released from the enigmas of being than is Law or Divinity, than Politics or Philosophy. They all, in their respective developments, are the reach of the soul, not simply for delight, but really and truly for truth. Poetry, for instance,—what is it save the lofty, but ofttimes agonized, strain of the heart of man to pierce the mystery of being, and to solve the inscrutable problems of existence? What is the burden of the book of Job? What less the tragedies of Aeschylus, pagan though they be? What the anguish and wail of Hamlet and Othello, but baffled endeavors after the solution of the mysterious providence of our human condition, which, at every stage, stimulates inquiry, and demands interpretation?

Nor is Science, self-confident and dogmatic in her assumptions, less subject to trial, more independent in her tread than Art or Philosophy or Poetry. She attempts everywhere a microscopic insight into the facts of material nature, but find bars and hindrances on every side; is astounded at times at prodigious mysteries; is not seldom repelled by the strangest phenomena.

5. But there is a higher plane of existence than this of earth, and it bring constantly to man's apprehension those lofty conceptions which reach beyond time, and which realize to him the supernatural world. He has a capability, first of all, of seeing things unapproachable by sense. He can see Truth, Justice, Equity, Spiritual Excellence. He has a soul-vision which can take in 0011 11those supernal realities. He has a spirit-power which prompts the endeavor to gauge those immeasurable ideas which are parallel with the being of Deity; and which run “Along the line of limitless desires.”

In fine, we are creatures made to look into the two worlds which bound our existence. We are creatures of sense, and so we come to see the visible world around us. But we are also, and in a higher sense, spiritual beings, and so we look perforce into the invisible world. Our lower nature forces us to look at the things which are seen. Our higher nature impels us to look upon the things which are unseen. This latter world is the boundless plane of mystery. Herein crowd upon us all the great problems of being, both for time and eternity. The world bristles with the great problems of existence and of destiny: What is man? Whence does he come? For what has being been given him? What is the relation of the human to the Divine? Whither are we going? Does this life reach over to another? To what ends does it thus reach? What is the connecting link of the visible with the invisible?

Some one perchance may ask, “Are not these mere idle, fruitless speculations?” No! There is nothing artificial in this tendency in man. It is entirely constitutional, and it asserts itself notwithstanding all the gross, material drifts of our erring nature; so that while indeed, man shows, at times, the basest inclinations, the gleams of the celestial world are constantly glinting through the darkness of his baser life. For, joined on to the moral powers of his nature, there is this strong spiritual propulsion which forces him to the bounds of the eternal. Hence it is that intense desires spring up in the soul after the things that are true and honest, 0012 12just and pure, lovely and of good report. Hence the cravings after truth. Hence, not seldom, the hunger and thirst after righteousness. Hence the spring of the spirit after excellence. Hence the struggle of the soul to take to itself wings to flee away to higher regions; to expatiate in the grand golden world of light and glory. Hence the yearning of the choice and lofty spirits to look God, if possible, in the face; to see His purity,His excellence and His beauty; to feast upon the exceeding fullness and the “unsearchable” riches of the Deity; to know, if it were possible, Him, the ineffable and all-glorious, and the very essence of His transcendent being. Out of this inquiring nature of man come all those prodigious questions concerning the God-head, concerning the economy of God, concerning the destiny of man, concerning the Divine justice and retribution, concerning the “last things"—questions which have stimulated the minds of the great, anxious, aspiring thinkers in Pagan religions; but on which they got no certain light; for on such questions, unassisted reason is weighted and frustrated with the heaviest incapacity:—which have tasked and strained and agitated the Christian Church and its grandest Christian thinkers for centuries; and which have every been the puzzle of sanctified spirits:—The majesty and eternity of God; the marvel of His righteous and unchangeable government; the mystery of His triune nature; the everlasting begetting of the Son of God; the marvelousness of the Divine decrees; the adjustment of the Divine sovereignty with human free-will; the grand scheme of Redemption by the love of God; the presence and the power of the Holy Ghost; and the gift of His inspiration to men, to the scriptures, to the Church. All these, 0013 13with their kindred and related topics, are the transcendent themes which constantly address themselves to the mind of man, and ask their meaning, their teachings, and their intents.

I have been endeavoring to set before you the fact that the life of man is crowded with abstruse and critical questions; is beset with multitudinous moral problems, which press upon our being, and perplex and tax our intellects. I have striven to show that this is the heritage of such a being as man; and that it is not a calamity. He is a spiritual being; and in the domain of the spirit at his very birth, he enters a school in which he is called to the solution, more or less, of the deep questions which are the warp and woof of this mysterious economy of God in which we live, and of which we are a part.

Here they are: Problems of nature around us, problems of being; problems of living and of nurture; problems of duty and obligation; problem of culture and of training; problems of trade and business; problems of social life, of society and associations; problems of civilization, of politics and government; problems of equity and justice; problems of morals, religion and worship; problems in sociology; problems in philosophy and science; problems reaching up to the very being; the nature of the Deity.

Partial solutions of many of these questions have been reached during the ages. By thinking and searching, not a few of the riddles of being have been unraveled, answered, and perplexities removed. But multitudinous other facts and mysteries in the realm of thought remain, still inviting the keen prying of the inquiring mind. Their number is as the stars in the 0014 14heavens, as multitudinous as the sands upon the seashore. Hence the exhortation of the Apostle-"Think on these things.”

Conclusion. The subject we have been considering is a protest against that moral indolence which is the constant temptation of life. In the dislike of spiritual anxieties, in the craving desire for delight and satisfaction, men ofttimes suffer themselves to be seduced into mental stupefaction, or animal surfeit, or deadly doubt, or stupefying agnosticism; so that, if possible, they may escape all mental responsibility and live at ease.

But all in vain. We are beset on every side with the presence and the pressure of the highest themes. The ideas which reach over to eternity are the staple of life. We may be blind to them; but there they are in stately, imposing columns; in all the pathways of existence. Even the very atoms of our moral nature are filled with vital instincts, and forbid man “To rust in dull obstruction and to rot!”

Observe: 1st. That the riddles of life rise up before the intellect and demand solution, and will not recede until some answers is given to them. It seems the mandate of nature, “You must.” It is, without doubt, the voice of God—“You shall.” The grappling with indeterminate questions is one of the inevitabilities of our life. Man must test, struggle with, attempt to settle them, or else he will lose all mental vitality. The only mode of escape for him is insanity, or suicide, or death. Struggle is one of the prime conditions of existence.

2. These problems rise to a higher quality of our being than that of the intellect. They address themselves with peremptory force to our spiritual nature. They 0015 15have a strong ethical character. Their most forceful attribute is, that in their final terms and tendencies, they are spiritual and reach even to eternity.

Things of time and sense may be easily passed over. All temporal things, indeed, are transient and evanescent. But when we come to abstract truth, when we approach the spheres of equity and right, we enter a region as abiding as is the awful and endless Being from whence these verities proceed. The Apostle terms them the things that are “true and honest, just and pure, lovely and of good report.” They are those everlasting queries which rise above sense and conventionality, and which bring us into the immediate presence of a divine existence: “Truths which wake To perish never: Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, Nor man, nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy Can utterly abolish or destroy.”

With such a spiritual nature given us of God, man cannot escape the subtle questionings of his spiritual life. These questionings are sure to come, and, in some from, to stay; and, my brethren, they will go over with us, in large volume, into eternity. You must not think of relief from them. Here they are! They spring up in all our pathway. They enter every sphere. They penetrate every condition. They permeate every relation. They tax every brain. They dominate every conscience.

This fashion of our life, it is true, fills us with perplexities, and breeds constant anxieties; but these are the heritage of all God's spiritual creatures, above and be low; for both angels and men are created for the unending, the everlasting ventures and anxieties of their spirits in the deep things of God.

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But remember that this is the dignity and the glory of man. His spirit is never to entertain the idea of finality. There are not only elements of the finite, but also elements of the infinite, in the make-up of our spiritual constitution. For the soul lives on after all temporal decline and all human decay. And the soul has wants that are unbounded; the soul has thirstings that are quenchless; the soul has aspirations that are infinite; the soul has yearnings and upward reachings that are eternal.-END-