Is There a Future?
Is There A Future?
OR
SOUL-EXERCISE FROM DARKNESS TO DAYBREAK
Introductory
Because I am by birth an Englishman, people call me a Christian. I know that I am not a Jew, nor am I a heathen; but what is a Christian?
Am I really one?
Friend! for such you are as a reader of these lines, if I am now, I was not always a Christian, but I am not going to write a biography. I wish to write down but a few of my heart-exercises, for the eyes of those who have now, or may know those who have the same, believing that God would have me write them, and to you or to any who may condescend to read them, I can only tender my thanks. Should these lines bring the same blessing to you as the exercises they describe have brought to me, we shall only rejoice together.
Chapter 1 - Darkness
While yet young, the first chapter in my life commenced with these questions:
1. Is man to enter an eternal future, either of endless joy or of endless woe?
2. Does our sojourn here on earth, in any way fashion us for this great hereafter?
3. Is the doctrine of Christ a MYTH or is it a reality?
HAPPINESS! PEACE! CONTENTMENT ON EARTH!
Such words came to me merely to mock me, so long as these questions remained unanswered!
Yes, my friend, in the deep agony of my soul, in the bright days of my life, as well as in its darker ones, I have asked myself these three questions. Put them to yourself? What answers do you give to them? If you are not prepared to answer read on.
ATHEISM places ‘no God’ at one end of the chain of life, and agnosticism places ignorant man at the other. Both declare that there is no connection between the two. I, poor shivering mortal, stood on the edge of this impassable gulf—a great gulf “fixed”—and by whom? By the wisdom of man!
ATHEISM tells me ‘There is no God’ and so answers these questions. Its folly is demonstrated in every flower that blows.
AGNOSTICISM teaches me that ‘nobody knows’ and so it also answers me; but an inner voice, that of my spirit, asks whether, if man does not know, it follows that THERE IS NO KNOWLEDGE?
I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic!
CHRISTENDOM! busily seeking to alleviate all the time-sorrows of the human race, I have turned to you with my questions, and you too have answered me. I do not forget those answers.
To No. 1 you reply: ‘No doubt but there is a future state, but NO ONE CAN KNOW WHAT IT IS’.
To No. 2 you say: ‘You must work. Do all the good you can, and when you have done it, you may then begin to hope, but no one can have any CERTAINTY!’
To No. 3 you say: ‘Our lives are not formed by the ways and methods of Christ. Times have changed since He was on earth, and such a life as His would be entirely incompatible with modern thought’.
Atheism! Agnosticism! Christendom! What comfort or what relief have I got from either of you?
I have turned to the busy worldling—to those men who are careless of all three. They tell me that my questions are the outcome of ‘an over-wrought brain’. They advise me to seek change of scene and shut out such thoughts, which I should treat as mere ‘aberrations of the mind’. Am I then sane as to everything else, and yet to be counted insane because I ask questions which must form the basis (if I am to have any) of all my earthly happiness? Do these questions come—and come again persistently (try to dismiss them as I may)—rendering uneasy my waking hours and even intruding upon my nights; and are they to remain forever buried in the recesses of my own breast? An endless HEART-MISERY—which ought not to be mentioned, and which cannot be relieved?
Can this be the end for which man—the only being on earth who has REASON, was designed?
Impossible!
I am but a solitary unit—a mere atom in that seething mass of the millions (past and present) called the human family. But by the gift of reason and conscience, this family is superior to every other on the earth. Is it, among all the families, the only one whose children shall be made ceaselessly wretched—superior as possessors of reason and conscience, inferior because in misery they seek light which is refused them as to the Future? I trow not.
Oh the weariness and distress of my days as they passed one after another. These days became weeks, and the weeks months, and the months became years. My darkness was continuous and only appeared to thicken; but a new day was about to dawn.
Chapter 2 - Daybreak
As the sun’s warm breath in spring sweeps over our ice-bound valleys, bringing them out in all their summer beauties, and as a morning slumber lulls the weary spirit after a fever-tossed night, I began this second chapter of my life thus:
That which is incapable of any solution by the natural mind can only be made known to us by REVELATION. Man questions in vain both himself and his fellow, the answer which is desired is not to be found in man.
If faiths they may be called, I had tried the faiths of atheism, agnosticism, Christendom; and lastly the world with no faith at all, and what had I got? Only bitter disappointment. By all, my questions had been answered, but the answers had brought to me no heart rest. Revelation was now about to unfold to me the mystery of the future. I was glad. I saw that the human circumstances in which I found myself could not affect a revelation, which neither needs nor heeds anything in those to whom it is made. If made, it brings all, and furnishes its recipients with the understanding of what it brings. It is the outcome of a Master-mind which has known and planned the whole of life’s story from its beginning to its end.
Moreover the revelation would be consistent with all that I see around me today, and with all that I find working in me. I did not understand the present. It would not only deal with the future but necessarily with the past and present. Do you ask, Was I disappointed in it? Ten thousand times, had I breath, I would answer, ‘No! It did not then, and it never has since, disappointed me, but has met every question’. As I have said, One had planned and controlled all the past. He was planning and controlling all the present, and He would continue to plan and control all the future, and thus the whole story was soon spread out before me. It was ‘the REVELATION OF GOD’ in His ways with man, as contained in the Bible, John 1: 18; 17: 3!
All the varied contrarieties which I see working in this world—the conflict between evil and good, between light and darkness—demanded such a revelation. Human affairs as they exist today cast a slander and suspicion on the very existence of a Supreme Being. And although every human creed, except, perhaps, Confucianism, professes to rest on a ‘revelation’ (and here I was early confronted with a difficulty) yet this was fully answered by the consideration that no one of these so-called faiths has explained all the contrariety of human affairs, and what is of still greater moment; they have never explained what I see around me and what I find working in myself. They leave entirely out of their calculation the need of meeting and answering righteously every question as to the past, the present, and the future. This revelation of God, as to His ways with man, fully meets every one of these, but it does another and an all-important work which to me stamps it as divine. It does not excuse man but exposes him. And this must follow. What God is, is fully revealed, and what man is, is fully exposed, but all this is that he may be with God on a righteous basis, and on one which nothing can gainsay.
Hence man’s ignorance of himself and of his fellows was fully explained to me. Ignorance of God is ignorance of man. Both depend on the revelation of God and vanish when that is known. Ignorant of God I had remained in absolute darkness as to myself! God, who was only partially revealed in past ages, is now fully revealed in Christ.
But I had to face a serious question here. I had inquired for light of those who professed Christianity, and I had obtained no help from them. Had Christendom then failed to profit as it should, after having in its hand for nearly 1800 years the revelation of God? I could come to no other conclusion, since I had been told that His (Christ’s) walks and ways were too antiquated for modern times! And no one could know, from Christendom, anything positive as to the future.
Was their Christ in perfect happiness, as man with the knowledge of God, both as to the present and as to the future, when He was on earth? Did He come so to reveal God to me that I might be similarly happy? The Christ, of whom in the Bible I now read, did. Were His life and walk totally unsuited to mine now, in the enlightened days (as I was told) of this nineteenth century? I saw that Christendom life seriously differed from His; but should mine? Could I trust Christendom?
I wanted positive ground for my feet, and I could not get it from such a teacher as this. Taking my Bible, I found myself like a sailor stepping out upon a rock, from a storm-tossed and sinking vessel. That vessel (Rom 9: 21-22) is the uncertain doctrines of Christendom, and the mystical labyrinth of ‘agnosticism’ and ‘atheism’. Positive blessing was the ‘REVELATION OF GOD’,—a revelation which I found between the covers of the Bible—itself in every way to me, exactly where I was. This I accepted fully, and I rejected on the other hand all that I found not in this revelation, whether sanctioned by so-called ‘Christendom’ or not. Do not blame me if you are not in my position, and you will not if you are. No doubt I fail and shall fail as others have, but at least I am assured of this, that this ground on which I stand is DIVINE. I may fail on it, but I am assured that it will never fail me.
Now my friend, you who have so kindly followed me in all this relation of the distresses and anxieties of a human soul, a being like yourself, I must thank you. I have reached the end of that which I proposed to write. For myself I am profoundly happy, 1 John 2: 6, 8. I know the past, God’s love for me was shown in the cross; I know the present, for I am indwelt by the Spirit of God, who in me is a spring of “living water” (John 4: 10), and seeks for me that I walk “as he walked”; I know the future, for I am to be with Christ, and like Christ in glory, 1 Thess 4: 17; 1 John 3: 2. To you, groaning perhaps, as I was once—Oh that I could now unfold the existence of truth, which would cause you to have but the faint wish to enter into these things as your own. You groan, but I rejoice in the revelation of God, and, if you cannot now, you may, if you receive it, rejoice with me. The revelation of God was for my, and is for your, blessing. Have you profited by it? If so, you are what I understand by the word, “a Christian”, (1 Pet 4: 16), which word merely means ‘one who follows Christ’, and you have received instead of the anxieties and doubts of worthy men (and even of professing Christians) that which is eternally stable and divine. Hence it is of such that the apostle says “Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen”, Jude.
But to any reader who has not yet answered the three questions which I proposed to myself in my darkness, I would say, ‘Keep them before you in the light shed upon them by the REVELATION OF GOD, and may God help you as He desires to do, and as He then will, into what you desire—real soul-rest’.
From Words of Encouragement—vol 1, 1895
