testing, judging, and choosing.
We humans are apt to pass over this truth very often and with great unconcern. That is why we are so vociferous and forcible, especially in our complaints and indictments, as well as in our boastings and assertions. We overlook the fact that what we say must not be taken so seriously, no matter how serious it may be to us. What we say is not so important, but rather what is being said to us. That is why we are generally so disunited in our weighings, why we mutually contradict ourselves by valuing what we say and thus contradict ourselves and involve ourselves in strife. If we only realized that we are all being judged, then we must and would judge with the greatest reserve and eventually cease judging altogether. That is why there is so much error in our judging and discriminating. Our opinions can be true only when they proceed out of what God thinks about us. But if we build our houses so that the peak of the roof becomes the foundation, we shall surely experience their downfall. Again and again a vigorous, deliberate thoughtfulness is necessary, and perhaps very bitter experiences, to bring us to the consciousness, whereby we will be quiet and perceive that before we weigh, we are weighed, that before we let our little lights shine, we are first in the presence of a great light.
The Lord weigheth the spirits, it says. We humans weigh by the gross, as we say. What is life? It is the journey of man through his allotted time; his infancy and aging; those pieces of good fortune and those of ill fortune which befall him; his appearance which gradually takes on sharper lines until upon the deathbed these lines finally, intuitively indicate what his character actually was; the pleasant or unpleasant impressions which he arouses; his words, whereby we habitually read his thoughts; his achievements from which we think we learn what he is or is not capable of doing; the influence which radiates out from him; his success which he possesses or does not possess. As we look upon all this we judge a human life, and perhaps ourselves, as a fortunate or unfortunate, a good or bad, a worthy or unworthy person. On the basis of these things we respect or neglect, love or hate. What is life? The trek of mankind through the ages; the history of differing epochs or cycles of culture; the variations among mankind; how they labor, feed, clothe and educate themselves; how they separate themselves in war and peace; mankind’s great men; their ingenuity and discoveries; the battles won and lost; their monarchies and democracies; their art and science; the untold possibilities of their faith; and finally their gods and idols.
Viewing all this we speak of world history, of progress and evolution, of the glorious past, tragic present and darker future. But the Lord weigheth the spirits. Is this then life? Or what is life in all this? Do we not err when we weigh in gross? The Lord weighs the true weight, the content. This content is secreted in all sorts of crevices, but what are the crevices without a content? The crevices are not weighed along. The spirits are the essential things weighed. The spirits, the spirits of men are life which surges, moves, creates in all that is called life, whether good or evil. The spirits are the fruits of which it is said—by them shall ye know them, the fruits which are gathered in the eternal granaries of God, as well as the weeds which shall be consumed with eternal fire. The spirits dwell beneath all sorts of countenances, and the countenance does not always correspond to the spirit which dwells beneath. The spirits speak in various languages and not always does the great spirit speak out of the great deed, nor the small spirit out of the insignificant.
All the evil that folks plan does not proceed out of the evil spirit, nor does all good come out of the good spirit. The spirits dwell in the highest as well as in the lowest strata of mankind and where they dwell no one knows. The spirit is the man himself as God alone knows him. He is the man as he is penetrated through and weighed of God, as he stands naked before God, for or against God, honest or dishonest, true or untrue, chosen or rejected. The spirit of man is in the scale of God. The novelty of this fact is: Our sins cannot corrupt us, our righteousness cannot save us, it is the spirit that comes to judgment. The spirit of man that comes to judgment is the tap-root of man in eternity, the spirit is as an open window facing Jerusalem, the spirit is as the question full of answers: how can I gain a merciful God? The spirit is as suffering pregnant with a hopeful hearing: Thy Kingdom come! What is the significance of anything and everything else, what is the significance of progress and decadence of the world’s history in the face of this one thing? How do you stand towards this one thing? There life itself becomes a burning question, there is the difference between life and death, there is the finger which writes upon the wall: numbered, weighed—and perhaps—found too light. And it is the Lord who weighs the spirits. God is the Spirit of all spirits and thus their judge. God’s word is the living, powerful, sharp, double-cutting sword. God is the truth of our lives, of all life. We cannot be respectful enough, we cannot retreat back far enough, we cannot stand distant enough so as to even faintly conceive what it means that God weighs the spirits.
It is possible that whenever we utter the word “God” we think of something high, great and beautiful, as a goal or ideal which we have set for ourselves. But fundamentally that would be a weighing of ourselves by ourselves; we ourselves would be our own judges and emancipate or condemn ourselves. But God dwells in a light which no man can approach. Even the highest which we think about Him when measured by His true self is still an illusion. He himself is God. He alone knows us. He alone accepts us or rejects us. He alone, He only. Wherever man stands before God he faces a “Halt!” which he cannot escape, a “Halt!” that can be compared only with death. Whatever belongs to our natural lives is not yet really of God. And what has come to us from God is no longer of us. When in life we are laid upon the scales of God, we are confronted by a death-line, a boundary line of judgment, and whatever is on this side of the line must pass away.
But the extremity-line at which we stand and face God is also a beginning; the “Halt!” which is directed at us is also a command to march, “Forward!” The death-line of our existence is also a line of life’s beginning, the line of grace. That sharp incision which separates us from God is also the boundary by which we partake of His invisible, everlasting being. Just that quest after God cannot tear us away, it cannot cease, it cannot be discharged, for the quest is the answer. This is the new thing about this truth: we stand in the light of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, weighed of God, dying His death with Him and living His life with Him. We never come forth from God and yet we are never forsaken of God. We cannot get along with Him and yet we cannot leave off continually questing after Him anew. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God—and yet this corruption must put on incorruption and this mortality must put on immortality. We are created beings, but we are created by God. We are dust and ashes in his sight, but we are never without hope of salvation and glory. Wanderers between two worlds, travelling from here to yonder, nearing always the yonder from the here. For the Lord, in whose hands we are, is the Lord of life, because he is the Lord of death.
And now: The ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. Here we are in the midst of what we already understand all too well. Here is where all of us live, in the circle of our duties and obligations, the cares and the joys of our life, whether significant or insignificant. Here we live and weigh, each with his own particular character, with his own particular fortune, with his own particular light, or, it may be, with his own darkness which is given him. Here is where we live and compare ourselves unconsciously with others who are either better or worse off than we, or who are faring better or worse than we. Here is where the whole of mankind lives, in the peculiar twilight of the present moment, in which no one knows whether the day will dawn or whether it will now become a darker night; here the nations, parties, classes live with their particular necessities and particular truths, here also dwell the multitudinous individuals who go their lonely ways with their thoughts and aspirations, with that which they would love to promote and proclaim. And every man’s ways are clean in his own eyes. And each one thinks that he is justified in walking his own way and convinced that he must walk in precisely that way in which he is walking, nursing his inner complaints or his joys in his workaday conduct, his love or his hate.
We can quarrel with one another about what we regard in our own eyes. One could say to another: You do not mean well, or, you have no intention of meaning well. It is not right for you to weep and to laugh then and there, to speak and behave thus and thus. Look and take notice how I regard things in my own sight. Behold, how clean my way is. One can also lose his zeal to quarrel about what others regard as good and clean. But what