Day 5

Job 38:31-33, 36;, 42:1-6

COULD THE UNIVERSE HAVE HAPPENED BY CHANCE?

The situation is clearinG for the modern man.  He sees more and more that he must affirm some "Yes" about the universe, and that "Yes" may be God.  For how could this universe come by chance into a cosmic orderliness that stretches from the molecule to the outermost star, and controls everything between?  And how could this orderliness just happen to stay by chance through millions of years?  That woulD be a stark materialistic miracle--universal chaos by chance gives birth to universal order!  The one who believes that must spell his "chance" with a capital "C" and mean it by--God.  How long do you think it would take for you to throw up a font of type into the air and have it come down by chance into a poem of Browning?  I asked a printer that question and he replied, "Both you and the type would wear out first."

Someone has figured out how many chances to one it would take for the world to have happened by chance, and the figures go round the world thirty-five times.  "A preposterous figure," says Dr. Millikan the scientist.  Sir James Jeans has figured out that it would take a hundred million years for a hundred thousand monkeys, pecking at random on a hundred thousand typewriters, to happen by chance upon the plays of Shakespeare.  And then, after they had happened upon the arrangements of the letters, they wouldn't know what the letters meant!

When I pick up a book and see that there is intelligence in it--that sometimes does happen!--then I know that behind that intelligence is an intelligent mind expressing itself through the intelligence.  When I look at the universe, I find that it responds to intelligence--it can be intelligently studied.  Intelligence has gone into it--into its very structure.  Then the simple conclusion must be that behind that intelligence, which is built into the structure of things, is an intelligent mind, and since that built-in intelligence seems to be universal, I will have to spell it in capitals--a Universal Mind.

Prayer

O God--I say the word now with more confidence--I begin to see Thee; help me to act as Thou art.  Thou art beginning to come into my intelligence.  Help me to take Thee into the rest of my life.  Amen.

Day 4

Deutoronomy 32:20; Hebrews 10:38-39; Mark 4:40; 11:22

WE CANNOT LIVE BY A "NO"

We saw yesterday that if God goes, then the basis of ur moral universe is gone.  The "Lie Detector' has shown that only 3 per cent of employees in department stores were honest through character honesty; that only 5 per cent of tellers in banks were dependably hones if there were no outer measures for checking fraud.  Suppose we double the percentages of the "Lie Detector"; nevertheless, a nation that is living on this narrow margin of  moral reserves is drawing too heavily on its resources, and is nearing moral bankruptcy.  Before the war our crime bill could have paid our national debt in two years.  Our moral basis is decaying.  We must get God back.  But can we?

I think we will, for the half-gods which have taken place of God are letting us down.  If reason cannot lead us to Him, then disillusionment may drive us to Him, or sorrow may yet "toss us to His breast."  But is there any hope of reasonable faith?  Can we be believers with the consent of our whole beings, including our minds?  I think we can, for the situation is clearing for the modern man.

Modern man is beginning to see that he cannot live, as he once thought, on the denial of other people's faith.  The generation of people that lived on denials soon found themselves disillusioned even with their disillusionments.  The had "three sneers for everything and three cheers for nothing."  And they soon found they couldn't live by sneers, to live by sneers is poor fare.  If we should walk to the table each day and look over the food and then turn away in high disdain, we could get away with this disdainful attitude for awhile, but only for awhile.  In the end, hunger would bite us and drive us to to affirm something about food and to act on our affirmation.  Both physically and spiritually we are positive beings and cannot live on negation.  We cannot live by a "No"; we must live by a "Yes."  And that "Yes" must be God, or it will let us down.

The future of the world is in the hands of believers, for the non-believers cannot act.  They are suffering from "the paralysis of analysis."  They can only deny.

Prayer

O God, I come to Thee for clearer light.  The light is dawning, I see that without Thee my universe tumbles to pieces.  With Thee it makes sense; my sums come out right.  Help me find Thee, the Key. Amen.

Day 3

Genesis 31:53, 27:35-36, 32:24-30

GOD FADING OUT

How has God faded out of the mind of this age? Well, the age, like thoughtless children, believed that the toyland of material wealth was a sufficient world; then God faded out, smothered by preoccupation.  As a prosperous New Yorker and his wife came to the small town where they had grown up, he said to her complacently, "Well, that's were we came from, dear." And she replied with an unexpected answer: "Yes, and I am wondering where we got to."  She felt the emptiness amid the plenty.

Professor Summer put it this way:  "I never consciously gave up a religious belief.  It was as if I had put my beliefs into a drawer, and when I came again to look for them the drawer was empty."

The thing has happened to this generation that happened to the three generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Jacob could say, "my father's God, the God of Abraham, the Awe of Isaac." (Genesis 31:42.)  God was God to Abraham; he had ventured forth with Him, his "Friend";  He was intimate and firsthand and real.  But in the next generation God was "the God of Isaac," but the only the "Awe of Isaac."  He had faded and become secondhand.  Still Isaac stood in "Awe" of his father's God.  In the third generation, in Jacob, the result of this gradual fading of god began to be shown in the decaying morals of Jacob; moral rottenness appeared.  He stole his brother's birthright.  He was ready to take the main chance without regard to God.
 
The same things have happened with us: Our forefathers had a firsthand experience of God through the Evangelical Revival.  Teh next generation clung to the Church for their father's sake, but God was only the "Awe," the afterglow of a fading faith.  The third generation is reaping the result of a fading faith which is producing decaying morals and a decaying civilization.  Our loss of God is working out in moral decay.  We are going to pieces morally, for we have gone to pieces religiously.  We have lost God and have thus lost the basis of morals.  Jacob met God on Jabbok's banks in his midnight wrestle and emerged a new man.  Unless we, like Jaco, find a moral renewal in finding God, we are done for.

Prayer

O God, I know that with the loss of Thee some chord has dropped out or my symphony.  Life has lost its music; but now I see further.  I see that I have no basis for action, no moral world that can make sense without Thee, I must find Thee again, as Jacob did. Amen

Day 2

Job 10:20-22; 23:1-3; I Corinthian 15:16-19

IS THERE A COSMIC PRESENCE?

     We began yesterday wiht the question whether a cosmic Presence is in the universe, and we ended by saying that Something ougth to be there.  If there isn't Anything there, then we have no framework of reference, no star to steer our little boat by, and so we are tossed from wave to wave of inane and meaningless existence, with no star, and hence no harbor.  We are beginning to see the result of losing God; if we lose God, then we lose the meaning out of life, the bottom drops out of it.  For is there is no God to give worth and meaning and goal to life, then we are only animated bubbles that rise to the cosmic surface, glisten in the sunlight for a brief space, and then burst, leaving a nasty wet sport on the surface of things.  And it is all over.  Or to the change the figure, "Life is a fretful child that must be played with until it falls asleep."  If there is no God, we go through "loud days that have no meaning and no end," a weary round of  nothingness.
     We now know that, if we lose our Sky, we shall soon lose our earth.  An artist said of his nature paintings, "I can get the picture right if I get my sky right."  If you can get hold of God, or God get hold of you, then the Sky is right and everything falls into its place, the whole thing meaningful.
     Someone has said, "Man has never been the same since God died.  He has taken it very hard."  He has.  For life has become hard, since the Sky has turned to brass.  "I sometimes wish that God were back," said a wistful soul.
     A modern man of insight reported a dream:  "I thought," said this friend, " that I saw you standing on a hilltop, and we, a great host of us, were crowding around eagerly waiting for what you might say.  We could see your lips framing the word, but no sound came....We tried to help you by calling out the word your lips were shaping; but we were also dumb!  And that word was...."  Was it God?

Prayer

O God, if there be a God, I still have to say that, help me to get this matter clear.  For my Sky is overcast.  In the words of the Brittany sailors: "Our boats are so small and Thy seas are so great."  I need a star to steer by.  Let the clouds open and let me see, really see. Amen.

Day 1

Genesis 1:1-3; John 1:1-5; Matthew 28:20

WE BEGIN THE QUEST

     Life can never be abundant unless it has abundant resources.  It is obvious that no organism can expend more in energy than it takes in from without.  Just was does “the without” consist of, physical nature and human society only?  Or is there a third dimension in addition to “the within” and “the around”, is there an “Above?  Many have decided that there is no “Above, at least, there is none they can contact; so they have short-circuited life to “the within” and “the around.”  But, to their dismay, they find that “the within” and “the around,” instead of offering resources to abundant living, offer resistances to it, “the within” is clashing, and “the without” is contradictory. The resources are in reverse, pulling the other way.

     Someone has said, “If we haven’t that within us which is above us, we will soon yield to that which is around us.”  We become circumstance-conditioned and circumstance-fed, and grow weak and anemic on the fare.  And if we turn within for our resources, we find the well is dry.  Professor Hocking, speaking as a philosopher, says: “Man come up to a certain point and then finds he hasn’t resources in himself to complete himself, so he remains incomplete and frustrated.”  There ensues what an able and earnest man said he had “a sense of cosmic loneliness.”  “I am not sure,” he continued, “whether my doings have anything cosmic back of them, whether I am working with anything significant, or just working meaninglessly alone with no one to back my work or care.”

     “A sense of cosmic loneliness” that is the frigid thought that lays its cold hand on our hopes and endeavors.  Can it be lifted and the sense of a warm, living, cosmic Presence, who is with us and for us, takes its place?  If so, then that would hit the spot, the central spot.  For if the central spot is empty and meaningless, then all life turns empty and meaningless with it.  But if that central spot is full and meaningful, then all life turns meaningful with it.

Prayer

O warm, living, cosmic Presence, if there be such a Presence in this inscrutable universe, help me as I begin this quest for You and Your resources.  I will need Your help even to inspire me to begin the quest, for I am not sure at all that You are there. I am only sure of this, that Something beyond myself should be there. So I begin. Help me. Amen