It is with these matters that we shall be
occupied in the next chapter.
CHAPTER SIX
THE ALMIGHTY AND EVERLASTING GOD
If the transcendent element in man which endows him with the proud if
tragic sense of personality is the first message of the preacher to
a chattering and volatile world, and the second is the setting forth
of what this endowment demands and how pitiably man fails to meet it,
then the third message is of the Rock that is higher than he, even
inclusive of his all, in whose composed and comprehensive Being his
baffled and divided person may be gathered up, brought to its own
consummation of self. The rivers that pour tumultuously to their ocean
bed, the ascending fire ever falling backward but leaping upward to
the sun, are poor figures to express the depth and irresistible urge
of the passion in man for completeness, for repose, for power, for
self-perception in self-expression, for victory and the attainment
of the end. Conscious and divided spirit that he is, man turns away,
sooner or later, with utter weariness and self-disgust from the nature
which pleases him by betraying him, which maims his person that he
may enjoy his senses, and reaches out after the other-worldly, the
supernatural, the invisible and eternal Hope and Home of the Soul.
Humanism which bids men sufficiently find God within themselves, if
they think they need to find Him at all, seems not to comprehend this
passion of pride and humility, this inner perception of the futility
and the blunder of the self-contained life.
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