Chapter III: Introduction (2)

A mechanical universe might be perfectly good. Every atom of matter perfectly obeys the forces acting upon it, and there is no error or wickedness or fault or rebellion in lifeless nature. Evil only begins when existence takes a higher turn. There is not even destruction or death in the inorganic world—only transformation. The higher possibility called life entails the correlative evils called death and disease. The possibility of keen sensation, which permits pleasure, also involves capacity for the corresponding penalty called pain: but the pain is in ourselves, and is the result of our sensitiveness combined with imperfection.

The still higher attribute of conscious striving after holiness, which must be the prerogative of free agents capable of virtue or purposed good, and marks so enormous a rise in the scale of creation,—involves the possibility that beings so endowed may fall from their high level, and, by definitely applying themselves to harm instead of good, may abuse their high power and suffer the penalty called sin; but the evil in all cases is a warped or distorted good, and has reference to the higher beings which are now in existence.

“There shall never be one lost good! what was shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall _be_ good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”

Some further idea of the necessity for evil can be conveyed as follows:—

Contrast is an inevitable attribute of reality. Sickness is the negative and opposite of health: without sickness we should not be aware what health was. There is no sickness in inorganic nature; yet, even there, contrast is the essence of existence. Everything that _is_ must be surrounded by regions where it is not. There is no stupid infinity, or absence of boundaries, about existing things,—however infinite their totality may be,—no absence of limitation, either of perfection or of anything else. Existence involves limitation. A tree that is _here_ is excluded from being everywhere else. Goodness would have no meaning if badness were impossible or non-existent.

“No ill no good! such counter-terms, my son,
Are border-races, holding, each its own
By endless war.”

We are not machines or automata, but free and conscious and active agents, and so must contend with evil as well as rejoice in good. Conflict and difficulty are essential for our training and development: even for our existence at this grade. With their aid we have become what we are; without them we should vegetate and degenerate; whereas the will of the Universe is that we arise and walk.

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VIII

THE MEANING OF SIN

_Q. 8. What is sin?_

_A._ Sin is the deliberate and wilful act of a free
agent who sees the better and chooses the worse, and
thereby acts injuriously to himself and others. The
root sin is selfishness, whereby needless trouble and
pain are inflicted on others; when fully developed it
involves moral suicide.

* * * * *

CLAUSE VIII

The essence of sin is error against light and knowledge, and against our own higher nature. Vice is error against natural law. Crime is error against society. Sin against our own higher nature may be truly said to be against God, because it is against that purpose or destiny which by Divine arrangement is open to us, if only we will pursue and realise it.

Sin is a disease: the whole of existence is so bound together that disease in one part means pain throughout; the innocent may suffer with the guilty, and suffering may extend to the Highest. The healing influences of forgiveness, felt by the broken and the contrite heart, achieve spiritual reform though they remove no penalty. Every eddy of conduct, for good or ill, must have its definite consequence.

We have high authority for the statement that hard circumstances and disabilities, not of our own making, are mercifully taken into account; while privileges and advantages weigh heavily in the scale against us, if we prove unworthy:

“If ye were blind ye would have no sin;
but now ye say We see, therefore your sin remaineth.”

A man’s or woman’s nature may be so weakened and warped by miserable surroundings, that its strength is insufficient to cope with its environment. Pity, and a wish to help, are the feelings which such a state of things should arouse, together with an active determination to improve or remove the conditions which lead to such an untoward result. Most human failures are the result of bad social arrangements, and they constitute an indictment against human inertness and selfishness. It is a terrible responsibility to turn a human soul out of terrestrial life worse than when it entered that phase of existence. In so far as it accomplishes that, humanity is performing the function of a devil. Deterioration of others is usually achieved under the influence of some of the protean forms of social greed and selfishness.

Another reason why selfishness is spoken of as specially deadly, and even suicidal, depends upon certain regions of scientific inquiry not yet incorporated into orthodox science and therefore still to be regarded as speculative; it may be outlined as follows:—

Our present familiar methods of communicating with each other are such as speech, writing, and other conventional codes of signs more or less developed. It appears possible that a germ or nucleus of another, apparently immediate or directly psychical, method of communication may also exist; which has nothing to do with our known bodily organs, although its impressions are apprehended or interpreted by the receiver as if they were due to customary modes or forms of sensation. Whether that be so or not, it is certain that bodily neighbourhood and blood relationship confer opportunities for making friends which should be utilised to the utmost, and that friendship and affection are the most important things in life.

The intercourse with, and active assistance of, others enlarges our own nature; and hereafter, when we have lost our bodily organs, it is probable that we shall be able to communicate only with those with whom we are connected by links of sympathy and affection.

A person who cuts himself off from all human intercourse and lives a miserly self-centred life, will ultimately, therefore, find himself alone in the universe; and, unless taken pity on and helped in a spirit of self-sacrifice, may as well be out of existence altogether. (A book called _Cecilia de Noel_ emphasises this truth under the guise of a story.) That is why developed selfishness is spoken of as moral suicide: it is one of those evil things which truly assault and hurt the soul. It is a disintegrating and repelling agency. Love is the linking and uniting force in the spiritual universe, enabling it to cohere into a unity, in analogy with attractive forces in the material cosmos.

It has been necessary to dwell on the sin and pain and sorrow in the world, but the amount of good must be emphatically recognised too.

Our highest aspirations, and longings for something better, are a sign that better things exist. It is not given to the creature to exceed the Creator in imagination or in goodness; and the best and highest we can imagine shall be more than fulfilled by reality—in due time:—

“All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist:
Not its semblance, but itself; ...
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.”

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IX

DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE

_Q. 9. Are there beings lower in the scale of existence
than man?_

_A._ Yes, multitudes. In every part of the earth where life
is possible, there we find it developed. Life exists in
every variety of animal, in earth and air and sea, and in
every species of plant.

* * * * *

CLAUSE IX

One of the facts of nature which we must weld into our conception of the scheme of the universe, is the strenuous effort made by all live things to persist in multifarious ways,—spreading out into quite unlikely regions, in the struggle for existence, and establishing themselves wherever life is possible. The fish slowly developing into a land animal, the reptile beginning to raise itself in the air and ultimately becoming a bird, the mammal returning under stress of circumstances to the water, as a seal or whale, or betaking itself to the air in search of food, in the form of a bat,—all these are instances of a universal tendency throughout animate nature.

Sometimes this determined effort at persistence breeds forms that appear to us ugly and deleterious. For the struggle results not only in beneficent organisms, but also in parasites and pests and blights, and may be held to account for the numerous cases of the interference of one form of life with another: one form utilising another for its own growth, and sometimes destroying that other in the process. It accounts also for the ravages of disease, which for the most part is an outcome of the establishment of a foreign and alien growth in a living body of higher grade,—a growth whose vital secretions are poisonous to its temporary host. On the other hand, the theory of manuring, the purification of rivers, the treatment of sewage, the use of opsonins and of serum-injections,—all illustrate the ministration of one form of life to another; they exhibit the contribution of beneficent organisms,—that is, of forms of life which promote higher development and conduce to well-being.

Many of the microbes and bacteria and low forms of cell life are beneficent in this way; and it is our function,—as ourselves one of the forms of life,—now consciously to intervene and take control of these vital processes. By investigation and study we can gradually understand the condition and life-history of each organism, and then can take such measures as will encourage the beneficent forms whether plant or animal, and destroy or eliminate those which from the human point of view are deadly and destructive,—attacking them at their weakest and most vulnerable stage. Widely regarded or interpreted, this function covers an immense range of possible activity—from every kind of scientific agriculture and the extirpating of tropical diseases, to the reformation of slum dwellings and the encouragement of physical training and school hygiene. As part of our work in regulating this planet and utilising its possibilities to the utmost for higher purposes, the regulation of vital conditions is probably our most pressing, and also at present our most neglected, corporate duty. Stupidity and a mistaken parsimony are among the serious obstacles with which the progressive portions of humanity have to contend.

Another aspect of the universal struggle for self-manifestation and corporeal realisation, which plays so large a part in all activity and is especially marked in the domain of life, is illustrated on a higher level by that overpowering instinct or impulse towards production and self-realisation, which is characteristic of genius. It may be said that throughout nature, from the lowest to the highest, a tendency to self-realisation, and a manifestation of joy in existence, are conspicuous.

It is thought that something akin to this tendency is exhibited in a region beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as “Nature.” The process of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the Divine Thought, or _Logos_, throughout the universe, by the action of Spirit upon matter. Achievement seems as if irradiated by a certain Happiness: and thus a poet like Browning is led to speak of the Divine Being as renewing his ancient creative rapture in the processes of nature:—joying in the sunbeams basking upon sand, sharing the pleasures of the wild life in the creatures of the woods,

“Where dwells enjoyment there is He;”

and so to conjecture that

“God tastes an infinite joy
In infinite ways—one everlasting bliss
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds; in whom is life for evermore.”

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X

COSMIC INTELLIGENCE

_Q. 10. Are there any beings higher in the scale of
existence than man?_

_A._ Man is the highest of the dwellers on the planet earth,
but the earth is only one of many planets warmed by the sun,
and the sun is only one of a myriad of similar suns, which
are so far off that we barely see them, and group them
indiscriminately as “stars.” We may reasonably conjecture
that in some of the innumerable worlds circling round those
distant suns there must be beings far higher in the scale of
existence than ourselves; indeed, we have no knowledge which
enables us to assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.

* * * * *

CLAUSE X

The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental element in every religious creed. There is no scientific reason for imagining it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence—there is no reason to suppose that we dwellers on this planet know more about the universe than any other existing creature. Such an idea, strictly speaking, is absurd. Science has investigated our ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are—a development of life on this planet earth. Science has also revealed to us an innumerable host of other worlds, and has relegated the earth to its now recognised subordinate place as one of a countless multitude of worlds.

Consider a spherical region bounded by the distance of the farthermost stars visible in the strongest telescope, or say with a radius corresponding to a parallax of one-thousandth of a second of arc, so that the time taken by light to travel right across it is 6000 years:—Lord Kelvin, treating of such a portion of Universe, says:

“There may also be a large amount of matter in many stars outside the sphere of 3×10^{16} kilometres radius, but however much matter there may be outside it, it seems to be made highly probable, by §§ 11-21, that the total quantity of matter within it is greater than 100 million times, and less than 2000 million times, the sun’s mass” (_Philosophical Magazine_, August 1901).

It does not follow that all this matter is distributed in masses like our sun with its attendant planets; but, on the average, that is as likely an arrangement as another, and it corresponds with what we know.

So, given, on this hypothesis, the existence of some thousand million solar systems or families of worlds, within our ken, and knowing what we do about the exuberant impulse towards vital development wherever it is possible, we must conclude that those worlds contain life; and if so, it is against all reasonable probability that the only world of which we happen to know the details contains the creature highest in the entire scale. It would be just as reasonable to imagine, what we happen to know is false, that our particular sun is the largest, and our particular planet the brightest of all, as it is to conjecture that this world is the highest and best, or the only one in existence.

The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind has resented this negative conclusion, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the earth was no mere planet among a crowd of others, but was the centre of the universe; and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it. A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still—not now as regards the planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume—some of us—to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than our own. We are accustomed to be careful as to what we assert; we are liable to be unscrupulous as to what we deny. It is possible to find people who, knowing nothing or next to nothing of the Universe, are prepared to limit existence to that of which they have had experience, and to measure the cosmos in terms of their own understanding. Their confidence in themselves, their shut minds and self-satisfied hearts, are things to marvel at. The fact is that no glimmer of a conception of the real magnitude and complexity of existence can ever have illuminated their cosmic view.

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XI

IMMANENCE

_Q. 11. What caused and what maintains existence?_

_A._ Of our own knowledge we are unable to realise the
meaning of origination or of maintenance; all that we
ourselves can accomplish in the physical world is to move
things into desired positions, and leave them to act on each
other. Nevertheless our effective movements are all inspired
by thought, and so we conceive that there must be some
Intelligence immanent in all the processes of nature, for
they are not random or purposeless, but organised and
beautiful.

* * * * *

CLAUSE XI

ORIGIN

We cannot conceive the origin of any fundamental existence. We can describe the beginning of any particular object in its present shape, but its substance always existed in some other shape previously; and nothing really either springs into being or ceases to exist. A cloud or dew becomes visible, and then evaporates, seeming to spring into being and then vanish away; but as water vapour it had a past history and will have a future, both apparently without limit. In our own case, and in the case of any live thing, the history is unknown to us; but ultimate origin or absolute beginning, save of individual collocations, is unthinkable.

The truth that science teaches, on the one hand, is that everything is a perpetual flux,

πάντα ῥεὶ ϰαὶ οὐδὲν μένει,

that nothing is permanent and fixed and unchangeable:

“The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.”

On the other hand, we learn that, in its ultimate essence and reality, everything is persistent and eternal; that it is the form alone that changes, while the substance endures. No end and no beginning—a continual Eternal Now—this is the scientific interpretation of I AM.

There are those who think that in the last resort the ultimate reality will be found to be of the nature of Spirit, Consciousness, and Mind. It may be so—it probably is so—but that is a teaching of Philosophy, not at present of Science.

The teaching of religion may be summarised thus:

“All that exists, exists only by the communication of God’s infinite being. All that has intelligence, has it only by derivation from His sovereign reason; and all that acts, acts only from the impulse of His supreme activity. It is He who does all in all; it is He who, at each instant of our life, is the beating of our heart, the movement of our limbs, the light of our eyes, the intelligence of our spirit, the soul of our soul.”—_Fénelon._

MAINTENANCE

So also with regard to maintenance.

The multifarious processes around us—the succession of the seasons, the flow of sap in trees, the circulation of our own blood, the digestion of our food—all these things are beyond our power, and are not contrived or managed by our conscious agency—not even the occurrences in our own bodies. But by means of such unconscious processes our muscular and nervous systems are supplied with nutriment, and we thus become master of a certain amount of energy.

The energy of our muscles, or of some of them, is within our control, and we can thereby direct other physical energies into desired channels; but we cannot in the slightest degree alter the amount of that energy. We utilise terrestrial energy, by directing and controlling its transformations and transferences, within the limits of our knowledge; but we do it always by moving material objects, and in no other way. For instance, we cannot directly or consciously generate an electric current, or magnetism, or light, or life; for all these things we depend upon partially explored properties of matter, which we can arrange in a certain way so as to achieve a desired end.

A multitude of complex processes are constantly occurring in our bodies without any intervention of consciousness; and though we may make a study of the functions of the several organs, and gradually learn something about them, it is a study as of something outside ourselves; the due performance of bodily function is independent of our volition. We can interfere with and damage our organs, and with skill we can so arrange damaged parts that the self-healing process shall have time and opportunity to act; we can also introduce beneficent agencies and stimulating drugs; but our power of direct action is practically limited to muscular and mental activity.

_Digression on Rudimentary Physiology_

It is well for children to have some conception of the complex processes constantly occurring in their own organisms.

The fact that the heart is a continuously acting pump, urging the blood along arteries to the tissues,—to places where it picks up nutriment, to places where the crudely enriched blood is oxidised, to places where the elaborated material is deposited so as to replenish waste and effect growth—all this should be known; and the partial analogy with the sap of trees, rising in the trunk to be elaborated in the leaves by means of sunshine and air, and then descending ready to be deposited as liquid wood, can be pointed out.

The function of the lungs, wherein the blood dispersed throughout a spongy texture is exposed in immense surface to the air, without loss or leakage other than what properly transpires through the membranes, and the consequent advantage of deep breathing and of fresh clean air,—all this has a practical as well as a theoretical interest.

The lungs are more under voluntary control than the heart, but the way exercise increases the circulation, and generally blows the fires of the body, is also of practical interest.

Some idea of the processes of digestion can be given, especially the function of the stomach and the intestines; the liver may be too difficult, but the salivary glands are fairly simple, and so are the kidneys and the skin. The way the muscles act as an efficient mechanical engine, depending on the consumption of fuel and the conservation of energy, can be superficially explained, with some idea of the stimulating nervous system and controlling brain cells. The sensory nerves and specialised nerve-endings demand specific treatment.

These and other physiological details may seem out of place, but they are strictly appropriate; for the essence of Immanence is that nothing is common or unclean, until abused: and the nobler the faculty, the fouler is the degradation caused by its abuse. A sense of the responsibility involved in the possession or lease of all this intricate mass of mechanism, intrusted to our care, and the wish to keep it in good order—without giving unnecessary trouble to others to set it right, and without blaspheming the Maker by applying it to bad and ignoble ends—will arise almost imperceptibly, when the body is even begun to be understood. Many faults originate in ignorance and want of thought.

MIND AND MATTER

Among the material objects we move are the parts of our own bodies; indeed, it is through muscular intervention or agency that we act on bodies in general. We know of no other method. Even when we _speak_ we are only moving certain face and throat and chest muscles, so as to generate condensations and rarefactions in the air; which, travelling by dynamical properties, excite corresponding vibrations or movements in the ear drum of our auditor;—vibrations not in themselves intelligible, but demanding interpretation from the recipient. So also it is with the traces of ink left on paper by our muscular action when we write. Only to a perceptive eye, and informed and kindred mind, have they any meaning.

It is probable that even when we think, some special atomic motion goes on in the brain cells, though this is an example of _unconscious_ movement, of which there are many examples in bodily function; but directly we begin to attend to mental processes we leave the physical region as understood by us, and enter a more deeply mysterious psychical region. Unknown as this is for purposes of analysis, from the point of view of experience it is more immediately familiar than any other; since it is through the activity of mind that every other kind of existence is necessarily inferred. Thought is our mechanism or instrument of knowledge—through it we know everything—but thought is not what we directly know. Primarily we think of _things_, not of thought itself. So also sight is our instrument of seeing—through light we see—but it is not light that we perceive, rather it is the objects which send it in certain patterns to our eyes.

Whereas we can act on the external world only through our muscles; in ourselves we are aware of things belonging to a totally different category, with which muscle and movement and energy appear to have nothing to do,—such things as thought, purpose, desire, humour, affection, consciousness, will. These mental faculties seem intimately associated with, and are displayed by, our bodily mechanism; but in themselves they belong to a different order of being,—an order which employs and dominates the material, while immersed or immanent in it. Every purposed movement is preceded and inspired by thought.

Such reasoned control, by indwelling mind, may be undetectable and inconceivable to a low order of intelligence, being totally masked by the material garment; and the purpose underlying our activity may have to be inferred, by such intelligence, with as great difficulty as we feel in detecting indwelling Purpose amid the spontaneous operations of Nature.

Nevertheless, whenever our movements are not controlled by thought and intelligent purpose, but are left to chance and random impulses, like the actions of a man whose reason has been unseated, nothing but error and confusion results;—quite a different state of things from anything we observe in the orderly and beautiful procedure of nature.

It is sometimes said that the operations of nature are spontaneous; and that is exactly what they are. That is the meaning of immanence. “Spontaneous,” used in this sense, does not mean random and purposeless and undetermined: it means actuated and controlled from within, by something indwelling and all pervading and not absent anywhere. The intelligence which guides things is not something external to the scheme, clumsily interfering with it by muscular action, as we are constrained to do when we interfere at all; but is something within and inseparable from it, as human thought is within and inseparable from the action of our brains.

In some partially similar way we conceive that the multifarious processes in nature, with neither the origin nor maintenance of which have we had anything to do, must be guided and controlled by some Thought and Purpose, immanent in everything, but revealed only to those with sufficiently awakened perceptions. Many are blind to the meaning—to the fact even that there is a meaning—in nature; just as an animal is usually blind to a picture, and always to a poem; but to the higher members of our race the Intelligence and Purpose, underlying the whole mystery of existence, elaborating the details of evolution—and ultimately tending to elucidate the frequent discords, the strange humours, and puzzling contradictions of life—are keenly felt. To them the lavish beauty of wild Nature—of landscape, of sunset, of mountain, and of sea—are revelations of an indwelling Presence, rejoicing in its own majestic order.

πάντα πλήρη θεῶν.

“Earth’s crammed with Heaven
And every common bush afire with God.”

The idea that the world as we know it arose by chance and fortuitous concourse of atoms is one that no science really sustains, though such an idea is the superficial outcome of an incipient recognition of the uniformity of nature—a sequel to the perception that there is no capricious or spasmodic interference with the course of events, and no changes of purpose observable therein, such as we are accustomed to in works of human ingenuity and skill. We are accustomed to associate “will” with the degenerate form of it called caprice, and to consider that “purpose” must be accompanied by changes of purpose; so that a steady, uniform, persistent course of action is puzzling to us, and wears the superficial aspect of mechanism. An omnipresent, uniform, immanent Purpose, running through the whole of existence without break of continuity or change of aim, is beyond our experience; and, like every other uniformity, is difficult to detect or realise. As an instance of this difficulty, I need only cite the long-delayed discovery of an all-embracing medium-like the terrestrial atmosphere. An intelligent deep-sea creature would find it most difficult to become aware of the existence of water. Similarly humanity has existed all along in a pervading and interpenetrating ether, of which to this day men have for the most part no cognisance; although it is probably the fundamental substratum of the whole material world, underlying every kind of activity, and constituting the very atoms of which their own bodies are composed.

Looking at the truths of geometry, the laws of nature, and the beauty and organisation of the visible world, it is as impossible rationally to suppose that they arose by chance, or by mere contentious jostling, as it is to suppose that a work of literature or a piece of music was composed in that way.

The process of evolution appears to us self-sustained and self-guided, because the guidance is uniform and constant.

In nature, heredity and survival will explain the persistence of a favourable variation when once originated, but the origin of variations is still mysterious, and the full meaning of heredity is not yet unravelled.

The struggle for existence has been one of the means whereby animal life has been developed and perfected; but now that it has become conscious and purposeful, in humanity, the apparently blind struggle is suspended at the higher level, and the weak and suffering are attended to and helped—not exterminated. There must always be disciplinary effort: but it can be effort for something better than bare subsistence; it can conduce to evolution of character, and development of soul. Mere struggle and survival is an inferior instrument of progress, and it can be superseded wherever it has done its necessary preliminary work. The Divine purpose is fulfilled in many ways; and far more can be expected of self-conscious evolution than of the long slow process which has rendered it possible.

The kind of selection actually or best known to us is that which has been directed by human beings; and inasmuch as the highest human beings are themselves conscious of help and guidance, it is to be assumed that such help and guidance has been in constant activity all along, operating on, or rather in, the refractory materials, so as slowly to develop in them the power of manifesting not only life and beauty, but also consciousness, spiritual perception, and free will.

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XII

SOUL AND SPIRIT

_Q. 12. What is to be said of man’s higher faculties?_

_A._ The faculties and achievements of the highest among
mankind—in Art, in Science, in Philosophy, and in
Religion—are not explicable as an outcome of a struggle for
existence. Something more than mere life is possessed by
us—something represented by the words “mind” and “soul” and
“spirit.” On one side we are members of the animal kingdom;
on another we are associates in a loftier type of existence,
and are linked with the Divine.

* * * * *

CLAUSE XII

The highest of those who have walked the earth reveal to us what we, too, may some day be: they link us with the Divine, and teach us that, however pathetically defaced by our infirmities and distorted by our imperfections, we may yet reflect the image of God.

[_Part of the following explanation is based upon a study of certain facts not yet fully incorporated into orthodox science, nor fully recognised by philosophy: it must therefore be regarded as speculation._]

This idea, which permeates literature—that man has a spiritual as well as a material origin—emphasises from another point of view the doctrine of the Fall. For the utilisation of a material body, of animal ancestry, exposes the individual to much trial and temptation, and makes him aware of a contest between the flesh and the spirit, or between a lower and a higher self, which constitutes the element of truth in the otherwise mistaken doctrine of “original,” or inherited, or imputed sin. Vicarious sin is a legal fiction: so is vicarious punishment; vicarious suffering is a reality. The mother of a ne’er-do-well knows it: it is undergone by the children of vicious parents; the highest souls have felt it on behalf of the race of man; but it is not artificial or imputed suffering, it is genuine and real; and experience shows that it can have a redeeming virtue.

The double nature of man,—the inherited animal tendencies, and the inspired spiritual aspirations, if they can both be fully admitted, reconcile many difficulties. Our body is an individual collocation of cells, which began to form and grow together at a certain date, and will presently be dispersed; but the constructing and dominating reality, called our “soul,” did not then begin to exist; nor will it cease with bodily decay. Interaction with the material world then began, and will then cease, but we ourselves in essence are persistent and immortal. Even our personality and individuality may be persistent, if our character be sufficiently developed to possess a reality of its own. In our present state, truly, the memory of our past is imperfect or non-existent; but when we waken and shake off the tenement of matter, our memory and consciousness may enlarge too, as we rejoin the larger self of which only a part is now manifested in mortal flesh.

The ancient doctrine of a previous state of existence, of which we are now entranced into forgetfulness, is inculcated in the familiar lines—

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home,”

the idea being that the forgetfulness is not complete, especially during infancy; nor need it be complete in moments of inspiration. Myers’ doctrine of the subliminal self is an expanded and modified form of this idea, and is to a large extent apparently justified by a certain range of psychological inquiry: though Myers lays stress, not on memory of a past, but on a present occasional intercommunication between the part and the whole.

The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence exhibits one variety of the idea of pre-existence, though in a necessarily inaccurate and somewhat fanciful form—as though infants were a stage higher in the scale than grown men. Such an idea would involve the old mistaken postulate of initial perfection, which was made long ago concerning the race: whereas the truth was innocency, not perfection. But the idea that nothing less than the whole of a personality must be incarnated—even in the body of an infant—leads to innumerable difficulties;—it does not even escape unanswerable questions about trivialities such as the moment of arrival; and it is responsible for much biological scepticism concerning the existence of any soul at all. Whereas, on the strength of the experience that all processes in nature are really gradual, the idea of gradual incarnation—increasing as the brain and body grow, but never attaining any approach to completeness even in the greatest of men—sets one above innumerable petty difficulties, and to me seems an opening in the direction of the truth. On this view, the portion of larger self incarnated in an infant or a feeble-minded person is but small: in normal cases, more appears as the body is fitted to receive it. In some cases much appears, thus constituting a great man; while in others, again, a link of occasional communication is left open between the part and the whole—producing what we call “genius.” Second childishness is the gradual abandonment of the material vehicle, as it gets worn out or damaged. But, during the episode of this life, man is never a complete self, his roots are in another order of being, he is moving about in worlds not realised, he is as if walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself in vain.

It may be objected that our present existence is very far from being a dream or trance-like condition, that we are very wide awake to the “realities” of the world, and very keen about “things of importance”; that an analogy drawn from the memories of hypnotic patients and multiple personalities, and other pathological cases, is sure to be misleading. It may be so, the idea is admittedly of the nature of speculation; but the greatest of poets lends his countenance to the notion that phenomena and appearances are not ultimate realities, that our present life is not unlike the state of a sleep-walker—that we slept to enter it, and must sleep again before we wake—

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

As to the question whether we ever again live on earth, it appears unlikely on this view that a given developed individual will appear again in unmodified form. If my present self is a fraction of a larger self, some other fraction of that larger self may readily be thought of as appearing,—to gain practical experience in the world of matter, and to return with developed character to the whole whence it sprang. And this operation may be repeated frequently; but these hypothetical fractional appearances can hardly be spoken of as reincarnations. We must not dogmatise, however, on the subject, and the case of the multitudes at present thwarted and returned at infancy may demand separate treatment. It may be that the abortive attempts at development on the part of individuals are like the waves lapping up the sides of a boulder and being successively flung back; while the general advance of the race is typified by the steady rising of the tide.

_Soul and Body_

The philosophic doctrine of the “self” on this view is a difficult one, and involves much study. As here stated, the form is sure to be crude and imperfect. Philosophy resents any sharp distinction between soul and body, between indwelling self and material vehicle. It prefers to treat the self as a whole, an individual unit; though it may admit the actual agglomeration of material particles to be transient and temporary. The word “self” can be used in a narrower or in a broader sense. It may signify the actual continuity of personality and memory whereof we are conscious; or it may signify a larger and vaguer underlying reality, of which the conscious self is but a fraction. The narrower sense is wide enough to include the whole man, both soul and body, as we know him; but the phrase “subliminal self” covers ideas extending hypothetically beyond that.

The idea of Redemption or Regeneration, in its highest and most Christian form, is applicable to both soul and body. The life of Christ shows us that the whole man can be regenerated as he stands; that we have not to wait for a future state, that the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst and may be assimilated by us here and now.

The term “salvation” should not be limited to the soul, but should apply to the whole man. What kind of transfiguration may be possible, _or may have been possible_, in the case of a perfectly emancipated and glorified body, we do not yet know.

In a still larger sense these terms apply to the whole race of man; and for the salvation of mankind individual loss and suffering have been gladly expended. Not the individual alone, but the race also, can be adjured to realise some worthy object for all its striving, to open its eyes to more glorious possibilities than it has yet perceived, to

“... climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou
Look higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,
And past the range of Night and Shadow—see
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day
Strike on the Mount of Vision!”

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XIII

GRACE

_Q. 13. Is man helped in his struggle upward?_

_A._ There is a Power in the Universe vastly beyond our
comprehension; and we trust and believe that it is a Good
and Loving Power, able and willing to help us and all
creatures, and to guide us wisely, without detriment to our
incipient freedom. This Loving-kindness continually
surrounds us; in it we live and have our real being; it is
the mainspring of joy and love and beauty, and we call it
the Grace of God. It sustains and enriches all worlds, and
may take a multiplicity of forms, but it was specially
manifested to dwellers on this planet in the life of Jesus
Christ, through whose spirit and living influence the race
of man may hope to rise to heights at present inaccessible.

* * * * *

CLAUSE XIII

The guidance exercised by the Divine Spirit, by which we are completely surrounded, is not of the nature of compulsion; it is only a leading and helping influence, which we are able to resist if we choose.

The problem of manufacturing free creatures with a will of their own, to be led, not forced, into right action, is a problem of a different nature from any of those that have ever appealed to human power and knowledge. What we are accustomed to make is mechanism, of various kinds; and the essential difficulty of the higher problem is so obscure to us that some impatient and unimaginative persons cry out against its slowness, and wonder that everything is not compulsorily made perfect at once. But we can see that the kind of perfection thus easily attainable would be of an utterly inferior kind.

It is to be supposed that incarnation, or a connexion between consciousness and material mechanism, is auxiliary to the difficult process of evolution of free beings, thus indicated; and it is probable that matter is thus an instrument of lofty spiritual purpose. Some religious systems have failed to perceive this, and have depreciated matter and flesh as intrinsically evil.

One important feature of Christianity is that it recognises as good the connexion between spirit and matter, and emphasises the importance of both, when properly regarded. It is not mystical and spiritual alone, nor is it material alone; but it tends to unify these two extremes, and to place in due position both soul and body: the material being utilised to make manifest the spiritual, and being dominated by it.

The whole idea of the Incarnation, as well as some of the miracles and the sacraments, are expressive of this wide and comprehensive character of the Christian religion.

It recognises the wonder and beauty of the animal body, destined to be the scene of extraordinary spiritual triumphs in the long course of time; and it teaches

“That none but Gods could build this house of ours,
So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond
All work of man, yet, like all work of man,
A beauty with defect—till That which knows,
And is not known, but felt thro’ what we feel
Within ourselves is highest, shall descend
On this half-deed, and shape it at the last
According to the Highest in the Highest.”

Christianity is a planetary and human religion: being the revelation of those aspects of Godhead which are most intelligible and helpful to us in our present stage of development. But it is more than a revelation, it is a manifestation of some of the attributes of Godhead in the form of humanity.

The statement that Christ and God are one, is not really a statement concerning Christ, but a statement concerning what we understand by God. It is useless, and in the literal sense preposterous, to explain the known in terms of the unknown: the converse is the right method. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Every son of man is potentially also a son of God, but the union was deepest and completest in the Galilean.

The ideas of incarnation and revelation are not confined to the domain of religion; they are common to music and letters and science: in all we recognise “a flash of the will that can,”

“All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All through my soul that praised, as the wish flowed visibly forth.”

The spirit of Beethoven is incarnate in his music; and he that hath heard the Fifth Symphony hath heard Beethoven.

The Incarnation of the Divine Spirit in man is the central feature of Terrestrial History. It is through man, and the highest man, that the revelation of what is meant by Godhead must necessarily come. The world—even the common everyday world—has accepted this, and is able to perceive its appropriateness and truth; and the traditional song of the angels, at the epoch of the Birth—

“Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, goodwill among men,”

is still heard in the land. Whenever there is war at Christmas-time it is universally felt to be incongruous. Goodwill among men is conspicuous in cessation of private feuds, in overladen postbags, in family reunions and Christmas hampers and all manner of homely frivolities.

The Incarnation doctrine is the glorification of human effort, and the sanctification of childhood and simplicity of life; but it is a pity to reduce it to a dogma. It is well to leave something to intuitive apprehension, and to let the life and death of Christ gradually teach their own eloquent lesson without premature dogmatic assistance.

From that event we date our history, and the strongest believer in immanent Godhead can admit that the life of Jesus was an explicit and clear-voiced message of love to this planet from the Father of all. Naturally our conception of Godhead is still only indistinct and partial, but, so far as we are as yet able to grasp it, we must reach it through recognition of the extent and intricacy of the Cosmos, and more particularly through the highest type and loftiest spiritual development of man himself.

The most essential element in Christianity is its conception of a human God; of a God, in the first place, not apart from the Universe, not outside it and distinct from it, but immanent in it; yet not immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate in it and revealed in the Incarnation. The nature of God is displayed in part by everything, to those who have eyes to see, but is displayed most clearly and fully by the highest type of existence, the highest experience to which the process of evolution has so far opened our senses.

“’Tis the sublime of man,
Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves
Part and proportion of one wondrous whole.”

The Humanity of God, the Divinity of man, is the essence of the Christian revelation. It was truly a manifestation of Immanuel.

The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside the universe, above its struggles and advances, looking on and taking no part in the process, _solely_ exalted, beneficent, self-determined, and complete. It is also that of a God who loves, who yearns, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself, who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to conditions as the soul of it all.

This is the truth which has been reverberating down the ages ever since; it has been the hidden inspiration of saint, apostle, prophet, martyr, and, in however dim and vague a form, has given hope and consolation to the unlettered and poverty-stricken millions:—A God that could understand, that could suffer, that could sympathise, that had felt the extremity of human anguish, the agony of bereavement, had submitted even to the brutal hopeless torture of the innocent, and had become acquainted with the pangs of death—this has been the chief consolation of the Christian religion. This is the extraordinary conception of Godhead to which we have thus far risen. “This is My beloved Son.”

“Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.” The Christian God is revealed as the incarnate Spirit of humanity; or rather the incarnate spirit of humanity is recognised as a real intrinsic part of God. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

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XIV

INSPIRATION

_Q. 14. How may we become informed concerning things too
high for our own knowledge?_

_A._ We should strive to learn from the great teachers, the
prophets and poets and saints of the human race, and should
seek to know and to interpret their inspired writings.

* * * * *

CLAUSE XIV

People at a low stage of development are liable to think that they can arrive at truth by their unaided judgment and insight, and that they need not concern themselves with the thoughts and experiences of the past. Unconscious of any inspiration themselves, they decline to believe in the possibility of such a thing, and regard it as a fanciful notion of unpractical and dreamy people.

Great men, on the other hand, are the fingerposts and lodestars of humanity; it is with their aid that we steer our course, if we are wise, and the records of their thought and inspiration are of the utmost value to us.

This is the meaning of literature in general, and of that mass of ancient religious literature in particular, on which hundreds of scholars have bestowed their best energies: now translated, bound together, and handed down to us as the Canon of Scripture, of which some portions are the most inspired writings yet achieved by humanity. It is impossible for us to ignore the concurrent mass of human testimony therein recorded, the substantial and general truth of which has been vouched for by the prophets and poets and seers of all time. Accordingly, if we are to form worthy beliefs regarding the highest conceptions in the Universe, we must avail ourselves of all this testimony; discriminating and estimating its relative value in the light of our own judgment and experience, studying such works and criticism as are accessible to us, asking for the guidance of the Divine Spirit, and seeking with modest and careful patience to apprehend something in the direction of the truth.

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XV

A CREED

_Q. 15. What, then, do you reverently believe can be
deduced from a study of the records and traditions of the
past in the light of the present?_

_A._ I believe in one Infinite and Eternal Being, a guiding
and loving Father, in whom all things consist.

I believe that the Divine Nature is specially revealed to
man through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lived and taught and
suffered in Palestine 1900 years ago, and has since been
worshipped by the Christian Church as the immortal Son of
God, the Saviour of the world.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is ever ready to help us
along the Way towards Goodness and Truth; that prayer is a
means of communion between man and God; and that it is our
privilege through faithful service to enter into the Life
Eternal, the Communion of Saints, and the Peace of God.

* * * * *

CLAUSE XV

NOTES ON THE CREED

The three paragraphs correspond to the three aspects or Personifications of Deity which have most impressed mankind,— The Creating and Sustaining. The Sympathising and Suffering. The Regenerating and Sanctifying. The first of the three clauses tries to indicate briefly the cosmic, as well as the more humanly intelligible, attributes of Deity; and to suggest an idea of creation appropriate to the doctrine of Divine Immanence, as opposed to the anthropomorphic notion of manufacture. The idea of evolution by guiding and controlling Purpose is suggested, as well as the vital conception of Fatherly Love.

* * * * *

In the second paragraph, Time and Place are explicitly mentioned in order to emphasise the historical and human aspect of the Christian manifestation of Godhead. This aspect is essential and easy to appreciate, though its idealisation and full interpretation are difficult. The step, from the bare historic facts to the idealisation of the Fourth Gospel, has been the work of the Church, in the best sense of that word, aided by the doctrines of the Logos and of Immanence, elaborated by Philosophy. It all hangs together, when properly grasped, and constitutes a luminous conception; but the light thus shed upon the nature of Deity must not blind our eyes to the simple human facts from which it originally emanated. The clear and undoubted fact is that the founder of the Christian religion lived on this earth a blameless life, taught and helped the poor who heard him gladly, gathered to himself a body of disciples with whom he left a message to mankind, and was put to death as a criminal blasphemer, at the instigation of mistaken priests in the defence of their own Order and privileges.