REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

M.J. Savage

Two WEEKS ago I preached a sermon, the subject of which was "Morality

Natural, not Statutory." Judging by the conversations which I have had

and letters which I have received, it has aroused a good deal of

question and criticism in certain quarters. This must be for one of

three reasons. In the first place, the position which I took may not be

a tenable one. In the second place, it is possible that the views

expressed, being somewhat new and unfamiliar, were not found easy of

apprehension and acceptance. In the third place, it is possible that,

in endeavoring to treat so large a subject, I did not analyze and

illustrate enough to make myself perfectly clear.

At any rate, the matter seems to me of such supreme importance as to

make it worth my while this morning to continue the general subject by

a careful and earnest treatment of the great question of reward and

punishment as applied to feeling, to thought, to conduct, the whole of

human life.

Let me say here at the outset, as indicating the point towards which I

shall aim as my goal, that in the ordinary use of language, in the

popular use of language, I do not believe in either reward or

punishment: I believe only in causes and results. This, as I said, is

the point that I shall aim at. Where shall I begin?

I need to ask you to consider for a moment the state of mind of man, so

far as we can conceive it, when he first wakes up as a conscious being,

and begins to look out over the scene of nature and human life with the

endeavor to interpret facts as they appear to him. Of course, he knows

nothing whatever of what we mean by natural law: he knows nothing of

natural cause and of necessary result. So far as we can discover by our

researches, all the tribes of men about whom we have been able to

gather any information have had a belief, if not in God, at least in

gods, or in spiritual existences and powers that controlled within

certain limits the course of human events. It may have been the worship

of ancestors, it may have been the worship of some great chief of the

tribe; but these invisible beings have been able to help or hurt their

followers, their worshippers; and of course they have been thought of

as governing human life after substantially the same methods that they

used when they were living here in the body.

That is, it has been a magical or arbitrary government of the world

that has been for ages the dominant one in the human mind. People have

supposed that these invisible beings desired them to do certain things,

to refrain from doing certain other things, and they have expected them

to reward or punish them how? By giving them that which they desired,

on the one hand, or sending them something which they did not desire,

on the other. They have brought the gods their offerings, their

sacrifices, their words of praise, and have asked that they might be

successful in war, that they might bring home the game which they

sought when they went on a hunting expedition. When there have been

disease, pestilence, famine, drought, no matter what the nature of the

evil, they have been regarded as allotments of these divine powers sent

on account of something they have done or omitted to do. It never

occurred to them to interpret these as part of a natural order, because

they knew nothing about any natural order. They reasoned as well as

they were able to reason at that stage of culture in any particular age

of the world's history which they had reached. But this has been the

thought of men time out of mind concerning the method of the divine or

spiritual or unseen government of the world.

Is this way of looking at it confined to primitive man, confined to

pagan nations? Do we find something else, some other condition of mind,

when we come to study carefully the Old Testament? Let us see. Take the

first verse which I read as a part of my text. The author of this Psalm

we do not know who he may have been says, "I have been young, and now

am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed

begging their bread." As I have read this a great many times in the

past, I have wondered as to the strange experience that this man must

have had in human life, if this is a correct interpretation of that

experience. I have been young: I do not like to admit that as yet I am

old; but, whether I am or not, I have a good many times seen the

righteous forsaken, and his seed begging their bread.

It seems to me that the writer of this verse was trained in a theory of

the government of human affairs that does not at all match the facts.

He has this magical, this arbitrary theory in his mind. It was the

general conception I think, as any one will find by a careful reading

of the Old Testament or study of Jewish history, the ordinary

conception among the Hebrews, that God was to reward people for being

good by prosperity, long life, many children, herds of cattle,

distinction among his fellow-men, positions of political honor and

power; and the threat of the taking away of these is frequently uttered

against those that presume to do wrong. In other words, it seems to me

that the ordinary theory of the government of human affairs as set

forth in the Old Testament is precisely this same one that I have been

considering as the natural and necessary outcome of the ignorance and

inexperience of early man.

As time went on, now and then some deeper, more spiritual thinker

begins to question this method of reasoning, begins to wonder whether

it is quite adequate; and we have a magnificent poetical expression of

this kind of critical thought in the Book of Job. This Book of Job is

any way and every way worthy of your careful attention. It is the

nearest to a dramatic production of anything in the Bible. James

Anthony Froude said once in regard to it that, if it were translated

merely as a poem and published by itself, it would take rank as a

literary work among the few great masterpieces of the world.

But the thing that engages our attention this morning is not its power

as a dramatic production, but its criticism of God's government of the

world. It has been assumed, as I have said, and we are not through with

that assumption, that, if a man suffered, if he was ill, if his wife or

children were taken away from him, if his property was destroyed,

somehow he had offended God, and that this was a punishment for the

course of wrong-doing in which he had been engaged. But the author of

the Book of Job conceives that this does not quite match the facts; so

he gives us this magnificent character that he declares upright,

spotless, free from wrong of any kind, who yet is suffering. He has

lost his property, it has been swept away, his children have been put

to death, almost everything that he cared for he has lost, and he from

head to feet is sick of a loathsome disease; and he sits in the midst

of his deprivation and sorrow. His friends gather around him; and with

this old assumption in their minds some of them begin to taunt him.

They say, Now, Job, why not confess, why not own up as to what you have

been doing? Of course, you have been doing something wrong, or all this

would not have happened. This is the tone that one of his critics

takes. This is the kind of comfort that he receives in the midst of his

sorrow. But Job protests earnestly and indignantly that it is not true.

He says he is innocent, there are no secret wrongs in his life; and he

wishes that he might find some way by which he could come into the

presence of the great Ruler of the universe, and openly plead his

cause. But his friends do not believe him.

Now the writer of the book lets us into the explanation he has thought

out for this: God for a special reason is testing Job, to see whether

he will be true to him in spite of the fact that he does not get the

ordinary blessings that the people were accustomed to look for as the

rewards of their conduct. But the writer is not consistent with the

wonderful position that he makes Job assume; for, after the trial is

all over, he falls in with the popular theory, and shows us Job, not

with the old children who could not be brought back, but with a lot of

new ones, with herds and cattle again in plenty, with honor among his

fellow-citizens, with all that heart could wish in the way of worldly

prosperity and peace.

So I say the writer is not quite consistent, for he falls back at the

end on the old theory, and he lets us gain a glimpse behind the scenes,

just enough to see that there are cases, special cases, where the

popular theory does not hold; but he still seems to assume that, in a

general way, we are to accept it as correct, and as explaining the

facts of human life.

The Jews acted on this theory in their political history. Their

prophets, their great teachers, asserted over and over again that, if

they were true to their God, if they were faithful in their obedience

to the law, if they lived out all these highest and finest ideals of

ceremonial as well as heart righteousness, that they would be mighty as

a nation, that their enemies would be put under their feet, that they

would have political success and power; and yet their increasing

insistence on this ceremonial and interior righteousness of thought and

life was found to be no adequate defence against the Roman legions.

Political success did not come to them. In spite of all their

obedience, they were swept out of existence as a nation.

Now do we find any difference in teaching in the New Testament? We do;

and we do not. The teaching of the New Testament is not consistent in

this matter. If Jesus be correctly reported, his own teaching is not

quite consistent on this subject. Let me give you one or two

illustrations, that you may see what I mean. John tells us that a

certain man, who had been born blind, was brought to Jesus to be cured;

and the people stood about, and said to Jesus, "Who is it, this man

himself or his parents, that sinned, so that he was born blind?" You

see it does not occur to them that there is any natural cause for a

man's being blind, apart from some sin on the part of somebody. Who is

it, then, his father or mother, or he himself, that has sinned, that is

the cause of it? Jesus says, "Neither this man nor his parents have

sinned," and you think at first that you are going to get an adequate

explanation; but he straightway adds that the man was blind in order

that the works of God might be manifest in him; which we cannot accept

to-day as quite an adequate explanation.

Then take the case of the man who was lying at the pool of Bethesda,

and was reported as cured. Jesus meets him, after a good deal of

question and criticism on the part of the Jews, and says, "Now you have

been healed, see to it that you sin no more, lest a worse thing come to

you," seeming to imply again that sin might be punished by lameness, by

affliction of this kind or that.

So it seems to me that we do not get, even in the New Testament,

entirely free from this old conception. Indeed, there are the verses

which I read as a part of our lesson from the fifth chapter of Matthew,

one of which for a clear or more spiritual insight I have quoted as a

part of my text, "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after

righteousness, for they shall be filled" with what? Filled with

righteousness; not filled with health, external prosperity, many

children, friends, political position, honor. Blessed are the pure in

heart, for they shall what? See God. "Blessed are the merciful, for

they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are they that are persecuted for

righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

You see these beatitudes strike down to the eternal principle of

natural, necessary causation and result, just as does the last verse

which I have quoted from Galatians, "Be not deceived; God is not

mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," not

something else, that. Here is a clear and explicit annunciation of the

eternal, universal law of cause and effect, of the idea that those

things which happen are not arbitrary infliction, but natural and

necessary result.

Let us, then, consider this matter for a little as we look over the

face of human life as it is manifested to us at the present time. I

suppose hardly a week passes that, either by letter or in conversation,

I do not come face to face with this same old problem, showing that

only partially and here and there have men and women even to-day come

to comprehend the real method after which this universe of ours is

governed. For example, let me give you a few illustrations.

I have a friend in Boston, one of the noblest men I ever knew, sweet,

gentle, true: he came to me one day, and said: "Mr. Savage, I have

tried all my life to be an honest man. I do not own an ill-gotten

dollar. I have tried to be kind and helpful to people in need, in

trouble; and yet," and then it began to dawn on him that he was not on

a very logical track, for he smiled, "and yet I have not got on very

well in the world; I have not made a great deal of money; I have not

been specially prosperous in business." And the implication was that

here, next door or in another street, was a man who had a good many

ill-gotten dollars, and who had not been generous or kindly or humane

or tender, but who had prospered and become rich, as he had not. And he

raised this as a serious objection against the justice of the

government of the world.

I have had mothers; I presume a thousand times, say to me: "I have

tried to take the best possible care of my child. I loved my child, I

watched over it night and day, I have money enough to give it a good

education, I could train it into fitness for life; and yet my child is

taken away." Here is somebody else who has not the means to educate her

child, perhaps whose character and intelligence are a good deal below

the average level. Her child is spared, spared for what? Spared for a

career for which it will be entirely unfitted; and the question is, Why

does God do such things, why is the universe governed in this fashion?

And I have had persons say to me: "I have been ill all my life, I have

suffered no end of pain and trouble: I wonder why? What have I done

that I must be burdened and afflicted after this fashion?" So these

questions are coming up perpetually, showing that underlying the

ordinary surface of our common daily life is still this theory that God

arbitrarily governs the world, and rewards people for being good with

health and with money and with children and with all sorts of

prosperity. There is no end of talk in regard to judgments, as they are

called. I remember when I was living in the West I take this as an

illustration as good as any a neighboring small city was badly

devastated by fire. All the ministers around me in my city began to

preach about it as a judgment of God for the supposed wickedness of

this city. One peculiar thing about this particular judgment, which I

noticed as reported in the papers, was that the last thing which the

fire burned was a church; and it left standing next door, and

untouched, a liquor saloon. It seemed to me a very peculiar kind of

divine judgment, if that is what it really was.

And so, as you look into these cases of supposed divine judgments,

which people are so ready to see in regard to their neighbors, you will

find that it has some serious defect of this sort almost always that

makes you question whether a wise man would be guilty of that method of

conducting his affairs.

This, perhaps, is enough by way of setting forth the popular method of

looking at these problems. I want to ask you now to go with me for a

little while, as I attempt to analyze some of these cases, and get at

the real principle involved as to what it is that is really going on.

Now take this case of the mother whose child is taken away from her, as

she says. Let us see if we can find out what is really being done. It

is possible, of course, that the child has inherited, it may be from a

grandfather or great-grandfather, from somewhere along the line, a

tendency to a particular kind of disease. It may be that, without

anybody's being to blame for it or anybody's knowing it, the child was

exposed to some contagious disease on the street or at school. It may

be that the mother, through a little otherwise pardonable vanity,

wishing to display the beauty of the child rather than to dress it in

the healthiest manner, has been the means of exposing it to cold. It

may be any one of a dozen things has caused the death of this child.

And do you not see that in every case it has nothing whatever to do

with the mother's moral goodness or spiritual cultivation? It is absurd

to think that the mother, in this case, is being punished for something

that she is entirely unconscious of having been guilty of. Do you not

see that there is no logical connection between an inherited disease,

between exposure, between taking cold, between any of these natural

causes and the goodness of the mother? Is it not absurd to talk about

their having anything whatever to do with each other?

I remember hearing a famous revivalist preach some years ago; and in

this particular sermon he represented God as using all means to try to

turn such a man from his path of evil, as he regarded it, into the way

of right and truth and salvation; and he said: First, perhaps, God

takes his property away from him; and that does not change him. And by

and by he takes his wife; and that does not change him. And then he

takes one of his children; and, as he expressed it, he lays these

coffins across his pathway in order to warn him of his sinful

condition, and turn him into the right way.

Think of a God who kills other people on account of my wrong!

I had a friend in Boston once, a lady, a school-teacher, who in all

seriousness told me, when her sister died, that she was afraid God had

taken her sister away because she had not been sufficiently faithful in

attending church services during Lent. Think of it! Not only the lack

of logic in linking things like these together, but the practical

impiety of attributing to God such feelings and action in regard to his

dealings with his children!

Let us take the case of a man who, not being highly elevated in

character, becomes rich. Let us see if we can get at the principles

involved here. Perhaps you can call to mind one or another case that

you may be thinking of while I speak. Of course I shall mention no

names. Here is a man who possesses remarkable natural business ability,

power to read the commerce, the business of his times. He deals with

these in a practical way. He complies with the conditions of

accumulating wealth. No matter for the present whether he does wrong in

doing it or not, that is, whether he is unjust or hard or cruel; but he

complies with the conditions for the obtaining of money in this

particular department of life. Now do you not see that, no matter what

his moral character may be in other directions, whether he is kind to

his wife, whether he is loving towards his children, whether he is

generous in a charitable way, whether he is politically stanch or

corrupt, do you not see that these questions are entirely irrelevant,

have nothing whatever to do with the question of success in the money

field? He sows according to the laws of the product which he wishes to

raise, and the product appears.

Or take the case of a farmer: Here is a certain tract of land adapted

to a particular crop. He sows wisely in this field. He cultivates it:

the rain and the sun do their part; and in the fall he has a

magnificent result. Now has that anything whatever to do with the

question whether the man was a good man or not, as to whether he went

to prayer-meeting or not, as to whether he read his Bible or not, as

to whether he was profane or not, as to whether he was a good neighbor

or not? Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap, and reap it where

he sows it. Is it not perfectly plain? So in any department of human

life, I care not what, trace it out, and you will find that precisely

the same principle is involved, and that you get results, not arbitrary

bestowal's of reward or punishment.

Now I must come having, I hope, made this sufficiently clear, though

after this fragmentary fashion to deal a little more with some of the

ethical sides of this question. I have had no end of persons tell me,

first and last, that it seemed to them that the universe could not be a

moral universe, that it was not governed fairly, that reward and

punishment were not meted out evenly to people; and they based their

criticism on statements of fact similar to those with which I have been

dealing.

Now let us look into the matter a little deeply; and let us see if we

can find any hint of light and guidance. I have had a person within a

week say to me, "I do not feel at all sure that it means much that

people get the moral results of their moral action in a particular

department of life. If a person becomes a little bit callous and hard,

wisely selfish and prudent, and so prospers in the affairs of this

life, I am not sure that he is not as well off as anybody, perhaps a

little better off, perhaps a little better off than a person who is

sensitive, and worries because he does not reach his ideals; and it is

possible that he serves the world after all quite as well." This is a

kind of criticism, I say, that has been made to me in the last week.

Let us look at it for just a minute. People do not seem able as yet to

understand that a man is really "punished," in the popular sense of

that word, unless they can see him publicly whipped. It does not seem

to them to mean anything because a man deteriorates, because the

highest and finest qualities in him atrophy and threaten to die out. I

used an illustration in my sermon two weeks ago to which I shall have

to recur again, to see if I can make it mean more than it did then. It

is the story of Ulysses who fell into the hands of the famous

sorceress, and whose companions were turned into swine. Now would you

be willing to be turned into a pig, merely because, being a pig, you

would not know anything about it, and would not suffer? Would you be

willing to be reduced to the life of an oyster, merely because, being

an oyster, you would be haunted by no restless ideals, and, so far as

you had any sense at all, would probably be very comfortable indeed? Is

there no "punishment" in this deprivation of the highest and finest

things that we can conceive of?

It seems to me that a person who has deteriorated, who has become

selfish, who has become mean, who has lost all taste for high and fine

and sweet things, and is unconscious of them, is having meted out to

him the worst conceivable retribution. If a man is mean and knows it,

if a man is selfish and is conscious of it, if a man is unjust and is

stung by the reflection, there is a little hope for him, there is life

there, there is moral vitality, there is a chance for him to

recuperate, to climb up into something higher and finer; but, if he has

not only become degraded and mean, but has become contented in that

condition, it seems to me that he is worse off than almost anybody else

of whom we can dream.

Let us see for a moment on what conditions a man who has deteriorated

is well off. There are three big "ifs" in the way, in my thought of it.

If a man really is a spiritual being, if he is a child of God, if there

are in him possibilities of unfolding of all that is sweet and divine,

then he is not well off when he is not developing these, and is content

not to develop them. Browning says, in his introduction to "Sordello,"

"The culture of a soul, little else is of any value."

If we are souls, and if the culture of a soul is of chiefest

importance, then cursed beyond all words is the man who has

deteriorated and become degraded and is content to have it so. Blessed

beyond all words is the soul that is haunted by discontent, haunted by

unattained and unattainable ideals, who is restless because of that

which he feels he might be and yet is not, he who is touched by the

far-off issues of divinity, and cannot rest until he has grown into

the stature of the Divine!

And then, once more, if it be true that it is worth our while to help

our fellow-men in the higher side of their nature, to help them be men

and women, to help them realize that they are children of God, and to

grow into the realization of it, if, I say, this be worth while, then

lamentable beyond all power of expression is the condition of that man

who does not feel it and does not care for it, and does not consecrate

himself to its attainment. Look over the long line of those who have

served mankind. Who are they? From Abraham down, the prophets of

Israel; Jesus, Paul, Savonarola, Huss, Wyclif, Luther, Channing,

Parker, who have these men been but the ones who were ready at any

price to do something to lift up and lead on the progress of mankind?

These are the ones who have felt the meaning of those sublime words of

Jesus: "He that loseth his life shall save it." If there is any meaning

in that splendid passage from George Eliot, that is so trite because it

is so fine,

"Oh may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in score

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,

And with their mild persistence urge man's search

To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,

Breathing as beauteous order that control

With growing sway the growing life of man.

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow.

May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

And in diffusion ever more intense.

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world."

If, I say, there is any meaning in that magnificent song, then indeed

it is worth while to be miserable, if need be, worth while to suffer,

worth while to sacrifice for the sake of planting seed in the spiritual

fields, and looking for its spiritual results, and not finding fault

with the universe because we do not get results of spiritual goodness

in material realms.

There is one other "if." If it be true, as I believe it is, that this

life goes right on, and that we carry into the to-morrow of another

life the precise and accurate results that we have wrought out in the

to-day of this; if it be true that, when we get over there, it will be

spiritual facts and spiritual things with which we shall deal, then the

man who has cultivated his spiritual nature and has reaped spiritual

results has no right to find fault with the universe because it has not

paid him with material good.

Let us remember, then, that we get what we sow. God has not promised to

pay you in greenbacks for being good; God has not promised to give you

physical health because you are gentle and tender; God has not promised

to give you long life because you are generous; God has not promised to

give you positions of social or political honor because you are kind to

your neighbors, faithful to your wife, true to your children. Can you

not see that whatsoever a man sowest, that shall he reap; and that he

will reap in the field where he sows, and not in some other; and that

God is dealing fairly, justly, tenderly, truly, with you in giving you

the results at which you aim, and not the results at which you do not

aim?

So, if you really care to be a man, if you care to be a woman, honest,

noble, tender, true, then be these, and be grateful that you reap the

reward where you sowed, and do not find fault with God or the universe

because he does not pay you for things that you have not done, because

he does not make a crop grow in some field that you have not

cultivated, because it is eternally true that God is not mocked, and

that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.