Let us go forth, one and all, with our constellation of ideals over our heads. Let them rain down their sweet influences upon us, sweeter than the influences of the Pleiades. Let us look backward in veneration, remembering how vast and majestic the past is; but let our pilgrimage be onward; let our goal be the city of God. IX THE MILITANT IDEALIST "And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me." SOMEHOW there has come into our time a new sense of the value of man. He has become a new object of concern, a chief field of study, a larger inspiration to hope. As we consider man different aspects of his greatness appeal to us. Now it is the elevation of his soul rising as it does from the levels of the animal order; again, it is his distinction in knowledge, in art, in achievement; still again, it is his proud position as the consummate expression of the life on this planet, -his strength, his courage, his defiance; once more, it is his loneliness as he stands against the far-distant, dumb eternal background; and last and highest of all, it is the aspect of his nature brought before us in the text, his appeal to the Infinite, his power over God. It is as when we see for the first time the towering obelisk of the great Matterhorn. At one moment we think of the sheer and splendid height to which the old earth is thus lifted; at another, we see the distinction in form and shape of the everlasting rock; at still another, we note the disdain, the defiance, the terrible strength; in yet another mood, we mark the loneliness of the solemn shaft as it rises into the unconcerned and receding sky; and again, we catch sight of the supreme marvel, the power of the mountain over the vast world above it. It brings down upon itself mist, cloud, storm; it renews its torn robe of white out of the sublimities of heaven; it fixes upon its summit the intensest light and heat of the great sun. By night and by day, in calm and in storm, it is in command of the infinite world above it. This is its greatest distinction; and it is this feature that reminds us of man's supreme characteristic, his power over the eternal, his prevailing might with God. How exquisite is the familiar story in which the words of the text stand. Jacob was on his way to meet the brother whom he had wronged. He disposed of his family for their safety as best he could. He had found richness and sweetness in life since he fled from his outraged brother; and this wealth of love and happiness was under the menace of death; he was sinful, defenseless, undone. "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God and with men and hast prevailed." Let us advance by easy steps into the heart of the great intimation of God here enshrined. 1. Here we have one of the earliest intimations of the essential humanness of God. He was a man with whom Jacob wrestled, a man whose nature was mysterious, transcendent. He could not gain from the great wrestler his name. There was something about him hidden and incomprehensible. There was in his nature a divine secret. There was between the two wrestlers an infinite contrast, yet question and answer played freely between them; each understood the other; each was essentially akin to the other; each had a firm and determined hold upon the other. The contrast between them was in range of being; the identity between them was in the nature of their being. Both were thinkers, both were lovers, both were doers, servants of ideal ends; and as they faced each other, soul answered to soul, the finite to the Infinite. This is the first step into the meaning of the story. We trace here the working of the faith that man is made in the image of God, that he is made a little lower than God. This faith is here as it were inverted. God appears in the image of man. God is essentially human, carrying this humanness in an infinite range of being. The instinct of all high faith is here at work, Man must construe the Infinite Mystery in some way and by some principle. Shall it be through nature, with the worshipers of the sun? Shall it be through the ranges of animal life, like the Assyrian and Egyptian? Shall we depart from our own nature in seeking access to the nature of the Eternal? Shall we seek for the last and best character of the universe in its lower creations or in its higher? Shall we return to man the thinker, the lover, the doer, the servant of ideal ends, the citizen in time of an ideal world, and through his nature seek the nature of God? How shall we best think of the Infinite Mystery that holds us in its strong embrace? Here is the solid earth on which we stand; here is the encasing air that we breathe; here are the winds that smite us from the unsunned spaces; here is the fierce light of day, the splendor of the stellar universe by night, the majesty of darkness; here is this infinite whole, benign and terrible, holding us in its iron and dumb grasp. How shall we think of it? Resolve the cosmic pageant into mind, smite it with the wand of the |