GOD THE INVISIBLE KING H. G. WELLS 1 I Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God, and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honour, but all these fall into place, and life falls into place, only with God. Only with God, who fights through men against Blind Force and Might and Non-Existence; Who fights with men against the confusion and evil within us and without, and against death in every form; Who loves us as a great captain loves his men, and stands ready to use us in his immortal adventure against waste, disorder, cruelty and vice; Who is the end, who is the meaning, who is the only King. II The moment may come while we are alone in the darkness under the stars, or while we walk by ourselves or in a crowd. It may come upon the sinking ship or in the tumult of the battle. There is no saying when it may not come. For it comes as the dawn comes, through whatever clouds and mists. It comes as the day comes to the ships that put to sea. 1 Reprinted by permission of H. G. Wells' publishers, the Macmillan Co., from "Mr. Britling Sees it Through" and "God the Invisible King." But after it comes, our lives are changed. Before the coming of the true King, the inevitable King, the King who is present when just men foregather, this bloodstained rubbish of an ancient world shrivels like paper thrust into a flame. Thereafter one goes about like one who was lonely and has found a lover, like one who was perplexed and has found a solution. One is assured that there is a Power that fights with us against the confusion and evil of the world. There comes into the heart an enduring happiness and courage. III God faces the blackness of the Unknown, the confusions and cruelties of Life, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle to a great conquest. He brings mankind not rest but a sword. We who have found him and given ourselves joyfully to him, must needs be equally ready to give our energies to the task we share with him, to bring about the establishment of his real and visible Kingdom throughout the world. Transformation into a citizen of God's kingdom follows on from the moment when God and the believer meet and clasp one another. The kingdom of God on earth is not a dream, or uncertain project; it is the thing before us, the close and inevitable destiny of mankind. In a few score years, the faith of the true God will be spreading about the world. In but a few centuries, the whole world will be openly, confessedly, preparing for the kingdom. In but a few centuries, God will have led us out of the dark forest of these present wars and confusions, into the open brotherhood of his rule. IV We are working out a new way of living for mankind, a new rule, a new conscience. It is no small job for all of us. There must be lifetimes of building up and lifetimes of pulling down and trying again Hopes and disappointments, and much need of philosophy. Let us therefore pledge ourselves to service. Let us make ourselves watchers and guardians of the order of the world. Let us set ourselves, with all our minds and all our hearts, to the perfecting and working out of the salvation of mankind. All our lives hereafter go to serve it. Brothers! Behold! The stars are lit forever! The land and sky are like a symphony of great music, or the nobility of a stupendous mind laid bare. Through all the black wide night of stars our souls shall touch the sky in God's own quietude of things, and gain brief freedom from this clutch of life's encompassings. It is God up there in his many moods. The spirit goes forth a little, enters the harmony of things, and drinks the magic of the world; (And is) happy and quiet, like the stars and the birds. Surely the spirit of the world is in the birds and the clouds. And in the flowers and trees that are never restless. If the mountains cannot teach us, and the wide night skies above them, sparkling with other worlds, then nothing will. For on mountains and beneath such skies man feels at his greatest, flies forth in fancy and dreams of nobility. II All things in the universe, which have an individual shape, are fit expressions of the separate moods of a great underlying Mood or Principle. 66 1 Reprinted by permission of John Galsworthy's publishers, Charles "A Sheaf," Scribner's Sons, from "The Patrician," Moods, Songs and Doggerels," "Freelands," "The Inn of Tranquillity," and "A Bit o' Love." And the old words good and evil seem more than ever quaint. (For) in a savage, slinking shadow I know that I behold a manifestation of divinity no less than in the smile of the sky, each minute growing more starry. What secret, marvellous, all-pervading Principle can harmonize these things? No more are life and death apart! It still is night and yet is day! O magic dream of God revealed; O utter mystery unsealed! III Slowly has passed the daily miracle. It is night. But Felicity has not withdrawn; she has but changed her robe. Everything is sleeping, save only a single star and the pansies. This serenity of night! What could seem less likely ever more to move and change again to day? And yet it is not so; the nightly miracle has passed; For the starling has begun its job, and the sun is fretting those dark busy wings with gold. Full day has come again! But the face of it is a little strange; it is not like yesterday. Queer to think no day is like to a day that is past, And no night like a night that is coming. Why then fear death, which is but night? Why care if next day have different face and spirit? |