Invisible Help 1/28/45
Scripture: II Kings 6: 8-23
Text: II Kings 6: 17b; “... and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”
We noticed that last night’s Wisconsin Rapids Tribune had this quotation from Bacon at the head of the editorial column:
“They that deny a God, destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.” [Bacon]
That quotation was preceded by another, from the prophet Micah: “And we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.” [Micah 4: 5]
It seems to be a matter of choice - for now! Man can stoop to the level of the brute - living by force of his physical strength and appetites. We have seen that he can exterminate those of his fellows whom be happens to dislike, as one might smash cockroaches or kill wild coyotes. He can debauch and debase himself, if he so desires. Or man can measure and manage his living in the light of the greatest good - that is God. He can set the same high value on all personality as God has done. He can exalt the spirit and do his part to bless the world.
Always there are those who argue that, “human nature being what it is” [and it is invariably none-too-good to one with that viewpoint] we just have to expect that the strongest dog will eat all the other dogs, that the race is always to the swift and brawny, and the way to survive is either to get on the majority bandwagon or to find quiet and inconspicuous ways to get around the mob without exciting its notice.
One trouble with this assumption that one must “tag along” with the majority is that we do not always know what a majority is! We may think it is so many heads or noses. We may think it is the loudest noise, or the most popularly expressed opinion. We may forget that the sheer strength of truth has more than a little to do with majorities.
The struggle for moral values, by those who believe in the supremacy of right, is as old as mankind is. The thing that sets man off from the beasts is his awareness of right and wrong, and of his responsibility for the right. The heroes of the human race are those individual men and women who by their choices of right have given assurance that man does not stand in his own weakness, but that there are spiritual resources at his call, when he is right.
One of the early heroes of this moral struggle was the prophet Elisha, whose fascinating story is preserved in the second book of Kings. Like others, who have chosen to stand for righteousness, he found that formidable opposition was not long in appearing. Elisha’s particular antagonist was the king of Syria. That king - like so many men of great power - had plans for conquest that would give him more territory, more wealth, more subjects to do his bidding - in short more personal power. His plans called for careful strategy. At one time, he planned an encampment where those key people whom he wanted most to take would usually be passing by. Somehow Elisha heard of it and gave quiet warning that it would be well to avoid that road, for the king of Syria was planning to camp beside it. When no one came by to be captured, the king of Syria “smelled a rat.” It was not the first time that the good Elisha had discerned his move and foiled his plan. So he decided to concentrate on Elisha - the trouble-maker who seemed to know what the Syrian king even thought and planned in his bedroom. Spies easily found out where Elisha was staying and brought the information to the Syrian king. The king immediately sent a very strong detachment to surround the town where the prophet was staying. The move was made in the night.
So, when the prophet’s servant looked out in the morning, he could see immediately that they were besieged, with all escape cut off. Naturally frightened, the servant exclaimed to the prophet: “Alas, my master, how shall we do?” To the despairing servant, the prophet replied: “Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.” And he prayed earnestly that the young man’s eyes might be opened; and they were opened, and he saw that “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”
Fanciful? Certainly! But remember that the oriental of the Near East used fanciful language freely to describe truth - and succeeded far better than we whose scientific minds understand calories better than we understand crystal. How better should the writer describe the great power that stands by the side of right?
The loneliness of the moral pioneer is proverbial. Evil has a way of conjuring up horses and
chariots and spears and swords and armor and guns and numbers until it appears
strong and impregnable! And those who
see this apparent strength look at the lone prophet and deem his cause hopeless
- (and maybe he is “cracked” anyway).
In Delft, Holland, there lived an apothecary (we would say “druggist”) who began to grind lenses. Evening after evening, after he had closed his shop, he hurried to his workshop where, beneath his lenses he looked long and carefully at many substances. Beneath the lens, he examined a bit of tarter from his own teeth, a little fish, a drop of rainwater, the eye of a louse. And there beneath his lenses, he saw what none other had ever seen before - the invisible world of the microbes.
He [Anthony Leeuwenhoek] was the only man in the world at that time who believed that there were any such tiny forms of life. After careful studies, he wrote to the British Royal Society for the Advancement of Science and told them of his discoveries.
The learned men of Britain regarded it as a fairy tale. They laughed at him, they scorned such ignorance. They soberly chided him for lack of integrity. The whole scientific world was on one side and an unknown grinder of lenses on the other. It happened, however, that the apothecary of Delft was on the side of truth and the mountains were full of horses and chariots of fire round about him!
Truth has resources which error cannot duplicate! It can sometimes afford to wait, while error must be impatient.
When one man stood to say that the earth is round like a ball, rather that round like a cookie, and then proceeded to prove it, he was fitting another piece snugly and surely into the puzzle of the universe. And all the opposition of hosts, backed by the assumptions of years, could not dislodge that puzzle-piece, because it proved to be right. The deciding factor was not what “everybody has always known,” but what one man’s mighty leap of insight had discovered.
Does the same thesis hold good in our search for the true and right in the social development of mankind? In the evolution of morals, are there invisible chariots of fire around the prophets? How did it seem When William Lloyd Garrison, the great anti-slavery exponent, began to publish his “Liberator” in Boston?
“I will not equivocate, and I will be heard.” Well, Boston knew what to do with agitators. They broke into his little print shop and destroyed his presses. Invective was hurled at him from forum and pulpit. The “respectable people” of the Puritan city were against him.
In the particular case of Garrison, the supporting evidence is fairly easily seen. Not one lone servant, but great numbers of people came to see the invisible help - the chariots of fire - that had surrounded the determined editor. And as he aged, his resources all spent in the struggle, grateful citizens of Boston made up, and presented to Garrison, a purse of over $30,000 in appreciation for his services. It is not often that a prophet’s truth is so recognized and honored. For the prophet is quite as often to be stoned or crucified.
When someone urged Abraham Lincoln to pray that God might be on his side during the awful civil war between our states, Lincoln is reported to have said that he was not nearly so concerned whether God was on his side, as he was to know whether he was on God’s side. Entirely too much of our praying is an attempt to persuade God to vote with our majorities, and all too little is an attempt to place ourselves on God’s side, to discover His purpose, find his truth, and be wholly committed to do his will.
In our conflicts, do we pray, “Lord, give us victory?” How would it be to pray, “Lord, thine be the victory and the glory and the honor forever.” Do we moan “Lord, I can’t stand it; can’t you change it so I won’t have to bear what I’m going through?” How would it be to pray, “Lord, reveal to me thine unfailing patience and power. Let me see, if only for an instant, the chariots of fire. My strength is not enough - be thou my strength.”
Do we long for God to destroy the works and the workers of the devil? Or do we say, “Here is my life; I will spend it for what is right, and all the chariots of evil shall not stop me from serving thee?”
We profess to be interested in getting a better world. That is the one great good that we long for and pray for in the mist of war’s holocaust. War is not going to bring it. The better world does not necessarily depend upon a military victory. The better world depends entirely upon what happens in the hearts of thousands - hundreds of thousands - millions of people - or perhaps in a consecrated few.
We don’t often hear now what we heard said three years ago - that the church had better get busy at fighting this war because its very life depends on victory for the allies. That was never true! The church’s greatest strength has been shown in the souls of people who loved Christ and who never gave him up even when the going was hardest.
Can you imagine a more discouraging situation than that which faced the little group of Christians about 100 AD in Rome with all the power of a tyrannous and unchallenged government against it and determined to crush it? Persecution and slaughter had thinned its ranks. It had been driven from the streets to those cellars known as catacombs. Its fellowship was largely humble folk without “pull” or “influence” of any sort.
Believing, ever so fervently, that they were custodians of the truth, what could they do? Should they be “practical,” “realistic,” “expedient?” Where would God find witnesses for his struggling movement?
The power of Rome’s empire was set to crush the church. The emperor, the armies and the majority of citizens were all stacked against it on one side. On the other side were a few, “not many wise, not many mighty,” far from prepossessing, a weak company - “but behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”
Jesus said “I am the Way” - not a way, but the way. There is no other. All else leads to confusion and despair.
Do we really believe that our might will bring peace and righteousness to the countries of the Pacific and to ourselves? Unless we struggle with penitence in our souls, that belief is a snare and a delusion. Did I say penitence? Yes I did. We have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. We have served the devil.
An able newspaper correspondent, Clark Lee, writing in a book entitled “They call it Pacific,” writes of his heavy heart before Pearl Harbor. Not only had our nation thrown up a selfish tariff barrier that brought in cutthroat international competition. Not only had we wrecked a World Economic Conference by our withdrawal, and a World Court by our refusal to participate; not only had we slapped every face other than white by our Oriental exclusion Act; but individual citizens had for decades brought shame upon us by their arrogance.
Clark Lee saw the arrogance of the white man in Shanghai. In the face of smoldering Oriental resentment, white men riding in rickshas would still beat with canes the coolies who pulled them. Honkong displayed public signs over hotels and bars “Orientals not admitted.” And outside white residence districts the sign, “Chinese and dogs keep out.”
Late one night, Clark Lee went into a hotel bar in the American-held Philippines. The hour came when the law said no more liquor could be sold. An American woman who tried to order more liquor was told by a Filipino constable “You cannot have any more.” She railed at him, swore at him, and struck him in the face. With tremendous self control, the Filipino kept his hands at his side and took no action.
Clark Lee said he was filled with shame for his own beloved nation, and all he could think of to do was to go to the Filipino and take his hand and congratulate him on his self-control.
What Kipling call “the white man’s burden” in the orient became a burden of hatred aroused by our own arrogance and unjustifiable pride.
Ours? You have never kicked a Chinese. I have never slapped a Filipino. My wife and I have had oriental people in our home and at our table, and counted them as friends. Ah yes, but does any family escape the shame of the black sheep whose infamy scars the family reputation? If one of two or a hundred act hatefully, are not the rest eyed with question?
Every victory in arms brings with it the temptation to greater arrogance. There are no chariots of fire or battleships of fire on that side. The invisible help is where anyone of any race or nation stands for the dignity of every life in the sight of God and men. We can be there - or (heaven pity us!) with the crowd. Hell and misery can come out of our actions and attitudes if our solutions of the problems of peace leave out of account what Christ would have us do. And God can bring good out of our conflicts if they be waged in a spirit that is free from hatred and revenge, and in a spirit of deep penitence. When we have done evil, no matter what the supports we may arrange, no matter how much we are willing to defend it, we shall fail by that very evil.
The whole import of Jesus’ life is to the end that, when we are right, when we have found God’s will, when we have uttered the truth, the consequences may be left to the future and to God.
Though an host should be encamped against the faithful and he cry out “How now shall we do?” there is help invisible. They that be for the right are more than they that be against.
And fierce though the fiends may fight
And long though the angels hide,
I know that Truth and Right
Have the universe on their side.
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Dates and places delivered:
Wisconsin Rapids, January 28, 1945
Wisconsin Rapids, September 26, 1954