1 John 1:1-10

"I Don't Know"

You may notice how often the Apostle uses the word "know" in the opening chapters of his first Epistle General. Again and again John says, "We know," "hereby we do know that we know." He seems to have anticipated the uses to which that word might be put in after-time, and he insists upon a personal and definite knowledge of things divine or supernatural. He had no doubt of his knowledge. He did not use any lower term; he did not say, I think, I hope, I venture to imagine, I infer; but roundly and definitely he said, "I know." Let that go for what it is worth. John is a witness; the character of the witness is above suspicion; the disposition of the witness was one of Christlike, solicitous love. The man who bore this character, who companied with Christ many days, and who was the most familiar with his Lord of all the disciples, said, distinctly, repeatedly, triumphantly, "I know." There are men now who do not deny: and that is their weakness. Instead of denying they abstain from pronouncing any affirmative opinion. Their position may be stated roughly thus: We do not deny the existence of God, we do not affirm it; we simply know nothing about it, and can know nothing about it, and therefore we say nothing about it. The general argument we have endeavoured to examine before, and to pronounce upon; there are some considerations arising out of it which the humblest mind can follow, and which the largest mind will be glad to apply. What does "I don't know" amount to in the practical reasoning and the actual conduct of life? We have assigned it great scope, and invested it with great authority, in matters of a religious nature: but how do we treat our own argument when it is applied to the actual facts of life, the daily and ever-recurring duties and activities of this present state? We ought to answer that question. Let there be no evasion of it. It ought not to be difficult to show that "I don't know" amounts to nothing in all the great practical issues and activities of life. If, therefore, we can strip this little argument naked, and excoriate it, and destroy it, it will be a pitiful subterfuge if any man should magnify in religion an argument which he has grid-ironed and destroyed in practical life. Observe, the question is, What does "I don't know" amount to as a regulator of conduct? If we miss that point we miss every illustration following upon it. Fix the mind upon the definite thing to be illustrated and established, namely, that "I don't know" amounts to nothing, and we daily show it to amount to nothing in the development, the discipline, the culture, the service of life.

Take it thus: I do not know how long I may live: then, why should I trouble myself about life? I may be dead tomorrow: why should I think and write and put myself through endless processes of discipline? I may be a dead man before midnight: I know that I must die, I do not know when I shall die, I may die within a very few moments, and therefore how unprofitable it would be for me to concern myself about anything: nothing is worth doing; I may no sooner lay my hand upon my work than my hand may be paralysed, and my work may drop out of my fingers, and I may be counted among the dead. If a man were to talk so he would be regarded as practically insane. The wise man does everything in life as if he were going to live for ever. Who builds his house for a night? Who builds his dwelling-place for the summer weather? Suppose he should begin to build his house in the early spring, how would the reasoning stand if it took this form: I may be dead before winter, therefore the very frailest walls will do, and you may scatter but a few broad green leaves upon the roof; that will be shelter enough, for there are no great storms at this time of the year: I do not know anything of any other time. No builder could take any direction from a man who talked so loosely and incoherently. The man builds as if he were going to live a long time. The "I don't know" simply amounts to nothing when he is calculating magnitudes, forces, oppositions, conflicts, and possibilities. He builds out nature; he admits such portions as he would gladly welcome as guests, as the soft zephyr, the light breeze, the sunshine when not too dazzling; for the rest of nature, he has barricaded it out. Every house is a protest against nature, as well as an adaptation of some of its forces, and a modification of some of its uses: but the whole house means durability, and the builder prides himself on the durability of his house at the very moment when he is saying that he does not know how long he himself may live. We were made for durability; we do not love the flimsy and the frail; there is something in us which says, You stand for eternal masonry: build your house in the rock. What is that voice? If it were applied to theological subjects it would be called superstition; when it is applied to the common affairs of life men say, That is the sort of man broad, massive, durable; whatever he puts up bears the stamp of his own manhood; it is right square, and real in strength, and marked all over with every sign and aspect of permanence. But the man called himself an insect, a worm; he said he might die before night; why all this bluster about durability? A man cannot deny himself. Set him theorising, inventing, and speculating, and, oh, was ever such a child found in all the wilderness of time for dreaming and talking ineffable nonsense? But when he comes into the market-place, when he settles down to the fair work of life, what wonderful common-sense he applies to all his affairs! He will not remind himself of his mortality, he will not build upon incertitudes; he seeks for granite lines, and on those lines he builds.

Or take it thus: I do not know how long my child my live: why should I send him to school? why should I educate the child when death may snap the scholar in two at a very early period of his culture? why should I show the child the world at all? Poor little creature, he may be dead tomorrow; I do not know how long he may live; children do die suddenly, and die in thousands, and the lot of others may be the lot of my child: why should I not take this view, whilst other men take another view, and order my policy accordingly? That would be the talk of a murderer; he would not imbrue his fingers in blood, but he would smother the mind and soul of his child. Here is a man who says, "I don't know how long this little child may live, he may die tomorrow"; and yet he sends him to school to learn reading, writing, ciphering, various languages, somewhat of history and philosophy; why, he is training the child as if he were going to be a Methuselah in point of age. Certainly, and he cannot get out of it; there is a pressure upon him. No healthy man could talk in the other strain. When we are in health we plan for duration, for possibility. We do not know that education will be of any use to the child, but it may be. That is called good reasoning in ordinary life, but when a man arises and says in the Church, "There may be a God, there may be an eternal state," he is a fanatic! We should have the "may be" in our reasoning; we should have the subjunctive mood in our verb To be. Why do you lame the verb? why do you eviscerate the mood that alone has in it scope enough for the imagination of the soul? Is it our place to dismember living verbs and to change the conjugation of a tongue we did not create? Observe how a man cannot help recognising possible immortality in commerce, in building, in education, in discipline. If a man roused to the highest point and sensitiveness of consciousness knew that he was the prisoner of a day, and that in the night he would find a grave out of which there is no resurrection, he would go mad. It is this secret spiritual pressure, call it if you will supernatural, and action upon the imagination and the consciousness, that gives life all its dignity and all its peace.

Or take it thus: I do not know how long I may retain my reason; as a matter of fact men have lost their mental powers; even mental giants have become mental imbeciles: I can reason a little to-day, but my mind may be clouded tomorrow; I do not know how long I may have full possession of my faculties: what is the use therefore of my subjecting those faculties to discipline, to nurture, to culture? why stimulate the mind to higher activity? why embolden the mind with nobler ambitions? I cannot tell into what daze and bewilderment I may be thrown tomorrow? No man can talk like that. When I say no man, I mean no healthy, sane man. The world would stagger and fall down and never recover itself, if its leaders could talk in that poor tone. What is this spirit in us which says, Do your best: stand erect: lay your hand upon your brow and feel if there is not already on it a diadem? It is on this instinct or impulse or passion that the true religion builds itself; and out of these enthusiasms and convictions, often wordless because of their very grandeur, comes the religious inspiration of life.

Or take it thus: I do not know how long the nation may be unassailed; no hostile army may come against it for five centuries: why fortify, why build ships, why maintain defensive forces? Why have any interest in the country's protection at all? Why not leave the whole problem to be solved by nature? History shows us one man blinded by hail, another great army overwhelmed by waves and billows and vexing winds: why not leave the whole matter? Patriotism will not allow that reasoning. Patriotism has its "may be." Sometimes that "may be" may be exaggerated, may be urged and driven to false uses, but within all that is sophistical and fallacious there is that element of truth, namely, that a man will put a fortification around his hearthstone not a visible one, but an invisible and impalpable defence. Every man will bolt his door; every one will in some way insure and protect himself. And what is true in individual life is true in national life. There is a patriotic genius that says, "Maybe perhaps it is just possible." When a man arises to talk this very same language in religion, saying, "There may be a providence, there may be a state eternal, there may be a day of judgment, there may be a burning hell for wickedness," he is an enthusiast, a passionist, a fanatic.

It may be said that, in applying these illustrations to the religious arguments, it is impossible that any man can know that there is a God. Who says so? He ought to be a bold man who speaks for every other man: now where is he? He ought to be as wise as he is bold. For a man, who will not allow the Christian Church to assert the existence of God, to arise and say, "It is impossible that the human mind can know the infinite or the supernatural or the divine," is guilty of great presumption! To know that it is impossible to know is just as much a revelation as to know that it is possible to know. Only a revelation can meet the case in either instance. We are not to have an omniscience of agnosticism if the paradox may be allowed, for it is a paradox which amounts to an argument we are not to have an omniscience of agnosticism and only an ignorance of faith. How fine the figure, how sweeping the action, what a stroke from the shoulder is that which sweeps away the possibility of knowing that God created, redeemed, and preserves us!

All dogmatism is not confined to the Church. I do not see why a man should be a very great philosopher who sets up "I don't know," and why he should be a great fool who declares that it is possible that things did not make themselves. Let us be fair on both sides. Let me repeat, only a revelation can authorise any man to declare that it is impossible to know whether there is a living Spirit in the universe or not. Let us take witnesses on both sides. The witness of Jesus Christ is not to be ignored, and he came to reveal the Father. The witness of the apostles is not to be dismissed with a sneer, because they suffered for their faith, and they triumphed in their sufferings. But let us take it, on the admission of the men themselves, who say there may be, but they do not know it, and cannot know it: if there is such a "may be," it is enough to build faith upon. That "may be" should be the parent of reverence, devotion, expectation, and hope. That "may be" opens the door of a universe. In life we do provide for contingencies; saith a man, "It may be stormy," therefore he makes provision accordingly. Saith the merchantman, "It is possible this adventure may miscarry, therefore ," and then he provides for security and defence. But when a man arises and says, "It may be that time is not all, that the grave is not the end of things, we do not live like dogs, and there is no reason why we should die like dogs," he is supposed to be a religious lunatic. In all life we provide for the long view; in all life we provide for our higher self, in some form or other; it may not be the highest self, but it is for some self dreamed in dreams, that is to be healthy and happy, joyous all day, abounding in riches, and having the power to evoke and appreciate music. It is for this the miser grabs and hoards his gold, he is building a heaven in his canvas bags; it is for this a man undertakes long journeys and dangerous voyages, and enters into many speculations more or less hazardous in their nature, that he may lay up against a rainy day, and provide for old age, and strengthen his roof in view of possible winters. What! all this built upon a "may be"? and you will not allow souls to build anything upon the larger "may be" of God, eternity, heaven, and hell? I do not recognise the consistency of your reasoning.

Applying these illustrations to the Christian religion, they increase in force, because the Christian religion is not selfish. A man is not insuring himself against hell when he accepts Jesus Christ. No man can be in the crowd of Christ's disciples without having a great, heavy cross upon his shoulder what Jesus Christ calls his own cross (see the Revised Version): "Except a man carry his own cross." No man knows how hard and heavy is the cross of any other man. It is not an object or a symbol, it is a great crushing weight, it is as fire in the bones, it is a daily martyrdom. A man who submits to that kind of process in support only of a religious "may be," shows at all events that he has faith in that contingency. The Christian religion is not sentimental, it is disciplinary, it is moral; it calls upon a man to be noble, pure, generous, beneficent; it will not allow him to live his own life, or to seek his own pleasure, or even to indulge in some emulous hope concerning his own salvation: it will have every man work out his own salvation, go about doing good, following in the footsteps of Christ. It is a tremendous religion, is the religion of Christ. It gives no ease, except after process; it starts a process the end of which is rest, but the way itself is thorny fiery, vexatious, and all-testing enough.

Then the Christian religion, right or wrong, is complete in its proposals. It omits nothing. It begins with us in infancy, it takes us up in its arms and blesses us, and sets us down to work; it goes with us all through life, blessing our bread, making our bed in our affliction, directing us in all the concerns and necessities of life; it comes to us when no one else will come near us; when terrible diseases befall us, the only one who will come to us, next to our own blood, is the Son of God. Christianity has a balm for every wound, a gentle touch that can be laid upon the sorest place in the heart. Christianity is so far complete that it goes with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and tells us when we are in the darkest place, that presently we shall be in heaven. And in heaven it does not promise us a velvet cushion on which we may sit for evermore; it says, There his servants shall serve him; there liberation shall be but a higher qualification for duty. It is a bold religion. It is complete in its philosophy, it is as strong at one point as another in all its elaborate argument. If it is wrong, it is all wrong: but if it is right, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? We can only bear personal testimony about this knowledge. We must deny that knowledge is limited to the intellectual faculties. We must deny that all knowledge can be found in books of mathematics, or be set forth in geometric forms, or told in logical propositions. There is a knowledge of the feeling; there is a knowledge of the heart; there is a knowledge that comes by instinct; there is a poetical, ideal, sympathetic knowledge; a higher faculty outreaching the hand, that seizes heaven by that faculty. We know that we do know. We lay hold upon God.