The Forward Look

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3: 13-14.

Throughout all the centuries of the past the great majority of the people have had the backward look. They have ever talked longingly of “the good old days”, and have sung songs of a “Golden Age” that existed at least in the land of their dreams. Only the few comparatively have had the forward look, and this because the golden age in which they believed was yet future; but these few have ever been the ones “of whom the world was not worthy”, who, by their faith and their hope have helped lift the world, and so to bring a little nearer the golden age to be.

THE CONTROLLING LAW

There is a natural law which in most cases controls in this matter of the forward, or the backward look; and where it does not control, it is, as we shall see, because a higher law intervenes.

In childhood and youth we all have the forward look, and the reason is because the larger life of which we dream is still before us. Memory is nothing, hope and expectation, everything. How we envy those of maturer years, and wish the days and months might fly and bring us to this land of fuller realization. Even the present we see in the rosy hue of the dawning future.

And the days and months that in our eagerness seem to linger, at last have gone, and we find ourselves men, and women, at the very top of life’s rounded arc, its cares, its responsibilities, and its joys ours. Many of the dreams of our youth have not been realized, and we are coming to see that perhaps they will not be realized. Our minds come to be quite equally divided between memory of the past, and hope for the future. Often the cares and worries of this mature life seem to outweigh the joys, and we look longingly backward to our carefree childhood. In the stress and the strain of life’s conflict, we may be excused if sometimes in weariness we pray the prayer:

“Backward, turn backward, O, Time in your flight.

Make me a child again just for tonight.

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Rock me to sleep again just as of yore.”

But Time, relentless Time, turns not backward, heeding not our prayers. The current flows steadily onward. And as old age approaches, men live more and more in the past, and less and less in the future. The forward look of youth gives place to the backward look of old age. Memory is everything now. Hope and expectation approach the vanishing point.

In childhood and youth we long to be thought older than we are. In middle age we hide our years, and are complimented when thought younger than we are. But now in old age we boast of our years. The conversation is of other days, historical, biographical, and especially autobiographical. The perishing memories of later years seem to uncover and freshen up those farther back till the man who can not remember where he ate dinner yesterday can tell you all the details of experiences in his earlier years. This is a scientific fact. There is preserved a record of a man born in France, living there until he was seven years of age, and learning the French language with other boys of his age. Then he removed to Germany, living there till thirty years of age, using only the German language, and forgetting entirely the French. Then he came to the United States, married, raised a family, and lived to be over eighty years of age. For the last forty years only the American language was spoken, and German and French both were forgotten. Nevertheless, in his last lingering sickness he gradually and unconsciously began to speak to his nurse in German until that language was almost entirely substituted for the English; then, just before his death, he was heard to say his prayers in French.

THE EXCEPTION TO THE LAW

Thus it would seem that by a strange psychological law old people are almost compelled to take the backward look. This fact makes all the more wonderful the exception, which is that some old people, with all the eager enthusiasm of childhood and youth retain the forward look to the very last.

Paul was one of these exceptions to the law. From the language of the Scripture quoted one would suppose the author to be a young man in all the eager enthusiasm of youth. “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

And yet, Paul, when he wrote these words was not only an old man, but he was a prisoner at Rome, soon to appear before the infamous Nero, in whose clemency there was no hope. Not only was he an old man, and a prisoner hopeless of mercy, or even of justice here, but he was an old man whose whole earthly history up to date was such as to lead us to expect him to be a disappointed and embittered old man,—a pessimist with an exaggerated case of the backward look.

PAUL’S HISTORY

From all we know of Paul’s early life it must have been a happy one. He had the great advantage for the time of having been born a free Roman citizen. There must have been some wealth in the family, for Paul was given the best of educations, and was graduated at the school of Gamaliel, “a lawyer held in repute by all the people”. His very name “Saul”, meant “sought after”, “asked after”. Every one expected much of this popular young man. He expected much of himself. In the pursuit of his ambitions, to make him still more popular with the leaders of his people he was going to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. But Christ Jesus met him on that Damascus road, and said unto him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Saul recognized his Master’s voice, and knew it for the same voice that in the silence of his soul had all along been seeking to make itself heard, condemning his persecuting course.

Then and there Saul, the popular hero, the one “sought after”, “asked after”, became “Paul” the “little”, the “humble”. He let the old life go, with all of its hopes and ambitions. He gave himself fully to the cause of the persecuted and crucified Christ. And what did he get as his earthly reward?

EXPERIENCES IN THE NEW LIFE

Listen. “Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and in thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that . . . . come upon me daily, the care of all the churches.” Paul loved his own people, and although sent as a missionary to the Gentiles, everywhere he went he worked also most lovingly for the Jews. And everywhere his own people disowned him, maligned, misrepresented and persecuted him, dogged his steps, driving him from one city to another, compelling him to leave secretly and in the night in order to save his life. And now at last they seem triumphant over him. They have checked his missionary crusade. They have him in prison awaiting his sentence and his doom. He can no longer go preaching the beloved gospel where he will. It would seem from every human standpoint of reasoning that they have crippled his usefulness and broken his heart. Who could blame him now if he yielded utterly to discouragement concerning the future, and forsaking the forward look, should look lovingly and longingly on the happy days of his childhood.

THE SECRET OF YOUTHFUL OLD AGE

And yet it is just here that the unconquerable Paul gives us this wonderful statement expressive of his still youthful mind, and his forward look. He refers to those early joys and successes in which he once might have boasted, but to disown them, and to declare that he counts them as nothing, and as less than nothing in comparison to what he has yet before him, that he might win Christ, and come to know the fellowship of his suffering, and the power of his resurrection, that he might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. For this he forgets all that is behind,—the joys and the sorrows, and retaining the forward look, with renewed eagerness, and even more than boyish enthusiasm, he “reaches forth”, and “presses toward the prize”, which he still sees on the glowing horizon of the future.

What is the secret of this amazing youthfulness, courage and hopefulness, and of this still forward look, of the old man, Paul? What is the higher spiritual law, that in such cases transcends the law of the backward look of old age?

In order to look forward we must have something to look forward to; and in order to retain the youthful enthusiasm with the forward look, we must really feel that our larger life, and our most glorious work is yet before us.

THE MISSION OF JESUS

What did God send his Son into the world for? “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That this is not merely a promise for the future but for the here and now, the last verse of this chapter tells us. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”

Again: “And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

“Verily, verily I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life.”

ETERNAL LIFE HERE AND NOW

This truth which remains an ill understood theory to most of us, had become a reality, a realized fact to Paul as it should be to us. Christ came to give us eternal life here and now. The Christian does not belong to time merely, but to eternity. Why should we separate in our thinking between this life, and the so-called future life more than between today and tomorrow. Paul did not, and God does not. Paul said, “Our citizenship is in heaven.” What an eternal, unfailing splendor comes to life here when we really grasp this thought! We get glimpses out of life’s windows, and see it stretching away into the infinite distances. There is no work too great to begin here. We have eternity for a work day. There is no study we should hesitate to start now. This is but the preparatory school to life’s great university. We have eternity for our school day.

Everlasting life here and now! How shall we even begin to express it, with this poor temporal, human language of ours! It is not so much the mere endlessness of it, but the quality of it, that makes it eternal. The sinful life of the mere worldling is chaotic, discordant, and has in it the elements of its own inevitable destruction. But Christ creates us anew, from darkness to light, from discord to concord, from chaos to cosmos, from death to life in ever higher forms and manifestations, and from fruitless anxious toil, to peace and Sabbath rest in God. We are by this at-one-ment, made at one with our best selves, at one with Christ, and at one with the Father. Life having now no destructive elements, but only those that “can not be shaken”, but pertain to the eternal kingdom, and so can pass over, is even now the “everlasting life”.

Life! even the life we see all around us in plants and animals, as well as in men, has never been adequately defined. It eludes definition. The best definitions reach only to the higher manifestations of life, perhaps, and not to the life itself. Perhaps the most helpful of definitions for our purpose is that given by Herbert Spencer. He said, “Life is correspondence with environment.”

AN ILLUSTRATION

In order to present to you most forcibly the meaning of this definition of life, I am going to try to present to you a picture, which I ask you to seek to visualize.

Here is a stream of water flowing by us. You may hear the rippling music of its song. By it, bathing its base in the water, is a rock. On this rock sits a man, and by the rock there grows a tree. High up in the branches of the tree a bird is singing its song.

Now this rock has absolutely no correspondence with its environment. The waters sing to it, the winds whisper to it, the leaves above rustle to it, all in vain. Summer or winter, day or night, cold or heat are all the same to it. It responds to none of these things. The rock we say, is dead. It has no life.

When we contemplate the tree we immediately see a difference. The roots of the tree correspond with the soil to hold the tree erect. The ten thousand little rootlets of the tree are so many microscopic living sponges, corresponding with the moisture in the earth, to absorb it and send it up through the tree trunk to the leaves. The leaves of the tree are in correspondence with the air, receiving from it, through their millions of stomates, or breathing pores, what the tree needs from the air, combining it with the elements brought up from the earth, and forming the cellulose to supply the growth of the tree. In fact the tree is a bundle of correspondences with its environment, and we say the tree is alive, and its continued life and existence depends upon all these correspondences.

When we think of the bird we see at once that it has a more numerous, and a more complex correspondence with its environment than has the tree. The lungs of the bird correspond with the air for breath, the vocal chords correspond with the air for making music, the wings of the bird correspond with the air for flight. The feathers, eyes, ears, stomach, legs, toes, and beak of the bird are all of them the basis for a wondrously complex correspondence with the environment. We see at once that the bird is not only alive, but that it has a higher, a more complex life than the tree.

Now we come to the contemplation of this man; and at first, if you will, you may think of this man as an unlearned man, and as not a Christian. And yet, even thus, we see at once how almost infinitely more complex and multitudinous are his correspondences than are those of the bird.

Not to speak of his physical correspondences, which are very numerous, we think at once of his mental correspondences in the flashes of wit and repartee, and of his heart correspondences in his emotional reactions of love, hate, hope, fear, joy, sorrow, disappointment, and countless other reactions to his environment. In fact we see at once that the man is almost infinitely more alive, gifted with a higher life than that of the tree or the bird.

But is this man all alive? wholly alive? alive to all that is possible for him?

The answer is “No”, for he is an unlearned man. We send him to school, and ultimately to college to broaden and deepen and enrich his life. Every science, and every language he masters opens up to him a whole new realm of correspondences. This is why education in itself, apart from all utilitarian motives, is so grandly worth while. It multiplies our correspondence with our surroundings, increases our points of contact, and so enlarges, and enriches our life. When we know a thing it becomes a part of us, one of the very elements of identity, and therefore an enlargement, and enrichment of personality.

TEMPORARY ENVIRONMENT

But what is the trouble with all this so far? The answer is that the environment of which we have spoken is a temporal environment only. “Passing away” is written on all the things we see, touch, taste, and handle about us. Every flower that makes glad the summer fields, is first a bud, then a flower, then for a little while in full blooming beauty we admire it, and linger lovingly over it, and then it fades and falls, and is gone. Every leaf that flaunts its banner in the summer air is first a bud, then a half grown leaf, then in full grown beauty it lasts its little day, is touched with the hectic dying beauty of the autumn frost, and then is gone to come no more. Even the trees, those monarchs of the forest that grow great and strong for a hundred years, have still their time to decay and to fall. Who of us at some time, on some autumn day, amid the falling leaves, and withering flowers, has not seated himself on the fallen decaying remains of some forest giant of other days, and mused on the passing of all things material and temporal? Even the mountains had their time when they were thrust up from the sea level, and now they slowly crumble back, and are washed down to their base. “Even the earth waxeth old as doth a garment, and as a vesture thou shall change it, and it shall be changed.”

TEMPORARY CORRESPONDENCE

And if the environment be thus temporal and passing away, what shall be said of our power to correspond with it? It is even more fleeting. The eye that today flashes appreciation to a thousand beauties of nature and of art, tomorrow may be dim. The ear that thrills to a thousand harmonies today, tomorrow may be dull and unresponsive forever more.

This you see, therefore, is but a temporary correspondence, with a temporary environment, and so is but a temporary, and not an eternal life.

And God made man on the plan of eternity, and put in him a touch of the infinite, which with all his striving he can not quite get into the finite. Give a horse or a dog food and warmth, and friends, and he is quite content. Not so with a man. Supply his every physical need, and the mental hunger will still assert itself. Give him all his life for a school day, and still he can never find complete contentment there. The mountain of knowledge, though having its base on earth, hath its summit in heaven only. Satisfy the physical, and satisfy the mental as far as you can here, and the spiritual nature is higher yet, and still remains unsatisfied. God made us thus, and put these necessities in us to lead us ever upward to himself.

ETERNAL LIFE

Is there then, possible for man even here, a higher correspondence with a higher and eternal environment?

“Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth or the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.”

Above the mineral kingdom, and the vegetable kingdom, and the animal kingdom, there is still the spiritual kingdom; and God is waiting even now to translate us, mind and heart, and soul, into this “kingdom of his dear Son”. And God, in “dealing to all men the measure of faith” has given us all the power of correspondence with this eternal and unchanging environment. He has given us our five senses, and what these are to the physical realm, this, all of it, faith is to the spiritual realm. By faith we see “him who is invisible”. By faith “we feel after him and find him, though he be not far from any one of us”. By faith “we taste and see that God is good”. And by faith we hear his still small voice speaking to us in the silence of our own souls. “Thine ear shall hear a voice behind thee saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.”

The things that are only seen physically are temporal, but the things that are unseen, or seen by faith, are eternal. God “inhabiteth eternity”, and is “from everlasting to everlasting”. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” The whole spiritual realm, the glories of which transcend our dreaming here, is unchanging and eternal.

Without faith a man is undeveloped, atrophied, and blind and deaf spiritually. By faith we come into correspondence with this eternal unchanging environment. In other words, “By faith we know”, and “This is eternal life that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”

As more and more by faith, we live, and dwell in this unchanging, eternal spiritual realm, until God, and Christ, and all the eternal joys and possibilities become more and more realities to us, the unworthy and evil correspondences of earth begin to drop off; and so we become “dead to sin, and alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord”.

THE HIGHER LAW

And now we can begin to see clearly that spiritual law, which transcends the law of the backward look of old age, and makes it possible for us to retain the forward look, even unto death. For it was our Father’s loving intention that as we advance in years, and the physical and temporal joys and possibilities are more and more behind us, this spiritual correspondence with the eternal environment should increase, and become more and more our real life, while comparatively even many of the innocent correspondences of earth should seem of less importance, or drop off entirely, so that the real life, the real hopes and joys, the real things for which we live shall still be before us beckoning us on. And this does not mean that this sort of old age will lose its sympathy with childhood and youth, or with manhood in the conflicts and struggles of life. No one else ever came so lovingly and sympathetically near to childhood, youth, and manhood as did Christ Jesus, and no one ever lived so fully in the consciousness of the eternal and the spiritual realm. We all have seen some old people who seemed to live on the very borders of the eternal world, and yet whose hearts were in sympathetic tune with all humanity from childhood to old age. The more the eternal life with its infinite and soul-satisfying joys becomes a present reality to us, the more our hearts go out in loving, longing sympathy for those who yet know it not, but who are still seeking to satisfy an infinite thirst with only the finite waters of earth. (See John 4: 13-14.)

And if we enter more and more by faith into this correspondence with the infinite and the eternal, learning to live the eternal life here and now, God in his own good time will give us spiritual and eternal bodies to live it in forever more.

Paul knew this when he wrote, as the grand conclusion of the chapter from which the Scripture introducing our study is taken, “For our conversation, our manner of life, our citizenship, (various translations) is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew this body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working he is able even to subject all things unto himself.” To say “our conversation”, “our citizenship”, “our manner of life” is in heaven, is only another way of saying “our real correspondence is over there with the eternal and spiritual environment, and so we are living here and now” the eternal life.

Again Paul says, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. . . . . Now he that hath wrought us for this selfsame thing is God, who also hath given us the earnest of the spirit.” That is, God made us not merely for this transient and earthly body, but he made us chiefly for the heavenly, and eternal body, and in giving us his eternal spirit he gives us the pledge or earnest of this fact.

ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE

Now if any one still doubts that this law of the eternal and spiritual correspondence,—this living the eternal life here and now, is the secret of Paul’s forward look, we need only to refer again to his own words. In this chapter of our study he refers to the experiences of his early life but to contrast them as nothing compared to the eternal and spiritual correspondences of the “high calling of God in Christ Jesus” to the attainment of which he now devotes his life.

Again I hear him saying: “Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our body; For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. For our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

Of these unseen and eternal glories Paul tells us: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him; but God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit, for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the Sons of God.” “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that hath loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And Paul kept this sublime assurance, this burning enthusiasm, and this forward look of old age to the very last; for I hear him saying: “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” And he says, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Savior Jesus Christ.”

OTHER HEROES OF THE FAITH

Not only was this correspondence by faith with the spiritual environment,—this eternal life lived here and now, the secret of Paul’s forward look; it was the same with all the heroes of faith.

“By faith Abraham when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and went out not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah received strength to conceive a child when she was past age. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars in the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.”

These all died in faith not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from which they came out, they might have had opportunity of returning. (That is, they might have taken the backward look, but they deliberately refused to do so.) But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: “Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city.”

“And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthæ, of David also, and of Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of the fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in the fight, and put to flight the armies of the aliens. . . . Of whom the world was not worthy. These all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” . . . . “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,—witnesses to the power of the forward look of faith,—let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”

JOB

Job, through all of his trials, kept the forward look, and he tells us how and why. “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin and even this body is destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me.” Or as one translation puts it, “Though I die with longing for that day, and it come not.”

DAVID

David, shepherd boy, victorious soldier, musician to the king, poet writing psalms to inspire and direct the devotion of all coming ages, king of Israel, carrying that kingdom to the utmost height of its glory, making it a type of the future kingdom of Christ, unsatisfied still, holding still the forward look, I hear him saying, “I shall be satisfied when I wake in thy likeness.”

ISAIAH

Isaiah, looking forward, foretold the day when “violence shall no more be heard in the earth, wasting nor destruction within thy borders, for they shall call thy walls salvation, and thy gates praise. Thy people also, shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hand, that I may be glorified.”

And, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

JEREMIAH

Jeremiah, sometimes called the gloomy prophet, still kept the forward look, and foretold the time when “they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

DANIEL

Amid the wickedness and the destruction of Babylon, Daniel, in captivity, longing for home, praying three times a day with his face toward Jerusalem, kept still the forward look, and foretold that “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most high, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”

The Bible pictures to us many, and varied characters, some of them very imperfect, but it never tells us of a Man of God who was a grumbler, a pessimist, or who persistently held the backward look.

Elijah and the other prophets who denounced sin, and gave warning of its inevitable consequences, all believed in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness.

Peter preached at Jerusalem, saying, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord, And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things of which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”

More than any human being, O yes, a million times more than any human being, God has been lied about, misunderstood, and misrepresented; and he is patiently waiting through the centuries, for love to conquer hate, and truth to conquer falsehood, so that he can be understood and vindicated. And when God is understood and vindicated, his eternal kingdom of love will then have been set up in the hearts of all his creatures.

If God waits and is patient, can not we also wait with him, and be patient, and so keep the forward look?

Not to believe in the ultimate triumph of truth and love, and righteousness, is not to believe in God, and “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”