“The gods sleep,” they say. “The earth can't see the sun where I am and thus the gods, too, are dark.” In this we equate whatever is most and greatest with what we see. God equals natural phenomena, one-and-same with it. This view is old as time, the earthy end of the gnostic see-saw, telling us the summum bonum is found always au naturale and whatever within responds to it is fully material, for there is nothing else. Sun worship, body worship, sex worship: all on a plate and offered up to all-in-all as what is seen and known as known. If the earth sleeps, so does god and nothing watches, for rocks don't see. We know this. The earth tells us.
Somewhere we conceive the opposite end, gnostics' claim that knowledge knows all, mind is everything and nothing is ever asleep, a natural response of its own assertion. Only mind can be and we know mind is greater than matter. There's something more than meat – a spirit really – that consumes all, transcending flesh and rocks and brains. The highest is not found in things or sense: they, instead, are second order, even bad. For thinking of them makes them subject and mind will win the day and tell us all things. Science worship, word worship, thought worship, information colossus-king, all offered up as highest good, the all-seeing eye all the time. The University tells us.
God – the living God -- asserts Himself, not in power nor mind, but in weakness and love, transcending both. He is uni-verse, three-in-one, the impossible pulling together of body and spirit in a Baby. And so it ever is. Our bodies make a baby and we marvel, pagan-like, at the miracle. God becomes a baby and our mind breaks, refuses to believe. God is Spirit and God in Christ takes the see-saw, holds it still, beckons us dismount and live. We worship in spirit and in truth. God is not the world and He does not view it askance. He loves the world, His own creation. And He is ever alive. We respond to Him in kind because we are His, and He never sleeps.
The night outside my window is real, as is the darkness in some broken soul, or in a forlorn prisoner or distraught child in war-torn countryside. Though I am at peace, I wonder about all things, and about all I imagine to know: such is the human lot. “God stepped out on space,” the poet said, “and made Him a man.” That is me – that is all of us. And in the dark, He is there. Because He never sleeps, I can.
“He watching over Israel slumbers not nor sleeps.”
Excerpt: Some hundreds of men are, in the exact and literal sense of the proverb, between the devil and the deep sea. It is their business, if they can make up their minds to it, to accept the deep sea and resist the devil. What does Miss Pankhurst suppose a "rule" could do to them in such extremities? Does she think the captain would fine every man sixpence who expressed a preference for his life? Has it occurred to her that a hundredth part of the ship's population could have thrown the captain and all the authorities into the sea?
The tragedy of the great shipwreck is too terrific for any analogies of mere fancy. But the analogy which springs to the mind between the great modern ship and our great modern society that sent it forth--this analogy is not a fancy. It is a fact; a fact perhaps too large and plain for the eyes easily to take in. Our whole civilization is indeed very like the TITANIC; alike in its power and its impotence, it security and its insecurity. Technically considered, the sufficiency of the precautions are a matter for technical inquiry. But psychologically considered, there can be no doubt that such vast elaboration and system induce a frame of mind which is inefficient rather than efficient. Quite apart from the question of whether anyone was to blame, the big outstanding fact remains: that there was no sort of sane proportion between the provision for luxury and levity, and the extent of the provision for need and desperation. The scheme did far too much for prosperity and far too little for distress--just like the modern State. Mr. Veneering, it will be remembered, in his electoral address, "instituted a new and striking comparison between the State and a ship"; the comparison, if not new, is becoming a little too striking. By the time you have made your ship as big as a commonwealth it does become very like a ship--rather like a sinking ship.
An aristocrat on board ship who travels with a garage for his motor almost feels as if he were travelling with the trees of his park. People living in open-air cafes sprinkled with liqueurs and ices get as far from the thought of any revolt of the elements as they are from that of an earthquake under the Hotel Cecil. The mental process is quite illogical, but it is quite inevitable. Of course, both sailors and passengers are intellectually aware that motors at sea are often less useful than life-boats, and that ices are no antidote to icebergs. But man is not only governed by what he thinks but by what he chooses to think about; and the sights that sink into us day by day colour our minds with every tint between insolence and terror. This is one of the worst evils in that extreme separation of social classes which marks the modern ship--and State.
But whether or no our unhappy fellow-creatures on the TITANIC suffered more than
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| Sylvia Pankhurst |
But what chiefly astonishes me in the remark is the utter absence which it reveals of the rudiments of political thought. What does Miss Pankhurst imagine a "rule" is--a sort of basilisk? Some hundreds of men are, in the exact and literal sense of the proverb, between the devil and the deep sea. It is their business, if they can make up their minds to it, to accept the deep sea and resist the devil. What does Miss Pankhurst suppose a "rule" could do to them in such extremities? Does she think the captain would fine every man sixpence who expressed a preference for his life? Has it occurred to her that a hundredth part of the ship's population could have thrown the captain and all the authorities into the sea?
But Miss Pankhurst's remark although imbecile, is informing. Now I see the abject and idolatrous way in which she uses the word "rule," I begin to understand the abject and idolatrous way in which she uses the word "vote." She cannot see that wills and not words control events. If ever she is in a fire or shipwreck with men below a certain standard of European morals, she will soon find out that the existence of a rule depends on whether people can be induced to obey it. And if she ever has a vote in the very low state of European politics, she will very soon find out that its importance depends on whether you can induce the man you vote for to obey his mandate or any of his promises. It is vain to rule if your subjects can and do disobey you. It is vain to vote if your delegates can and do disobey you.
But, indeed, a real rule can do without such exceptions as the Suffragettes; de minimis non curat lex. And if the word "rule" be used in the wider sense of an attempt to maintain a certain standard of private conduct out of respect for public opinion, we can only say that not only is this a real moral triumph, but it is, in our present condition, rather a surprising and reassuring one. It is exactly this corporate conscience that the modern State has dangerously neglected. There was probably more instinctive fraternity and sense of identical interests, I will say, not on an old skipper's vessel, but on an old pirate's, than there was between the emigrants, the aristocrats, the journalists, or the millionaires who set out to die together on the great ship. That they found in so cruel a way their brotherhood and the need of man for the respect of his neighbour, this is a dreadful fact, but certainly the reverse of a degrading one.
The case of Mr. Stead, which I feel with rather special emotions, both of sympathy and difference, is very typical of the whole tragedy. Mr. Stead was far too great and brave a man to require any concealment of his exaggerations or his more unbalanced moods; his strength was in a flaming certainty, which one only weakens by calling sincerity, and a hunger and thirst for human sympathy. His excess, we may say, with real respect, was in the direction of megalomania; a childlike belief in big empires, big newspapers, big alliances--big ships. He toiled like a Titan for that Anglo-American combination of which the ship that has gone down may well be called the emblem. And at the last all these big things broke about him, and somewhat bigger things remained: a courage that was entirely individual; a kindness that was entirely universal. His death may well become a legend.
G. K. Chesterton
