THE DOCTRINE OF NECESSITY

I begin with weeping. Behold, I have walked among the nations, and I have heard a voice in Ramah that hath not ceased. It is Rachel, weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are not. The leaders sit upon their high seats, and they call it choice; but the children perish in the streets, and that is necessity. For necessity is the older thing. Choice came after; necessity was at the beginning, when the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters and the dry land was commanded to appear.

Consider this matter. My people are not destroyed for lack of choices. They are destroyed for lack of knowledge. They are gone into captivity, the prophet saith, because they have no knowledge; and by the mouth of the wise, a city is delivered. The famine of this hour is not a famine of bread, neither a thirst for water, but a famine of necessity rightly seen. Men have feasted upon their preferences until the soul is fat and the spirit is lean. They have asked, What would I like? when the only question that saveth is, What must be done?

I have seen the rulers gather, and I have grieved. They debate what is desirable. They poll the appetites of the multitude. They ask the crowd what it craveth, and they call the answer leadership. But Verily, this is not leadership; it is an echo. He that leadeth by the desire of the people leadeth nothing, for desire wandereth and the wind turneth. He that leadeth by necessity leadeth as the prophets led, as the apostles led, as the Lord Himself led; for upon the Lord also there was a must, and He named it openly: I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.

Lo, here is the doctrine I am sent to declare. There is a compulsion that is holy. There is a constraint that is not bondage but glory. The Greek tongue calleth it anankē, and the apostle did not blush to wear it: necessity is laid upon me, he said, yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel. He did not say, It pleaseth me to preach. He did not say, I have weighed the options. He said, I must; and the must was upon him as the fire was upon Jeremiah, shut up in his bones, so that he was weary of forbearing and could not stay.

This is the difference between the hireling and the shepherd. The hireling cometh by salary; the shepherd cometh by necessity. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling and careth not for the sheep; but the shepherd standeth, because he must, and the wolf findeth him there. Behold, the world is full of hirelings who counted the cost and found it too dear. It is starved of shepherds who never counted at all, because to them there was no other path, for necessity had closed every door save one.

Hear me, ye that would lead in the day of trouble. The hour cometh, and now is, when the comfortable shall be confounded, for they have built upon choice, and choice is sand. But blessed is the leader upon whom necessity is laid, for he hath built upon the rock of the must, and when the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon that house, it shall not fall, for it was never his house; it was given him by necessity, and necessity defendeth her own.

Therefore I take up the pen, not because I have leisure, but because I have none; not because the subject is pleasant, but because it is needful; not because I chose it, but because it chose me, as the sea chooseth the river. Necessity is laid upon me. Let the seal be set upon the threshold of this book in the three tongues of the cross, that they who enter may know they enter holy ground.