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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..60d41aa --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #61004 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61004) diff --git a/old/61004-0.txt b/old/61004-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 99c8f6f..0000000 --- a/old/61004-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4386 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Spiritual Energies In Daily Life, by Rufus M. Jones - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Spiritual Energies In Daily Life - -Author: Rufus M. Jones - -Release Date: December 22, 2019 [EBook #61004] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron, Monicas wicked stepmother -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - -SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE - - - - - [Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS - ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. - TORONTO - - - - - SPIRITUAL ENERGIES - IN DAILY LIFE - - BY - RUFUS M. JONES, LITT.D., D.D. - Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College - - Author of _Studies in Mystical Religion_; _The Inner Life_; - _The World Within_, etc. - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1922 - - _All rights reserved_ - - COPYRIGHT, 1922, - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - - Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922 - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - -PREFACE - - -I wish to thank the editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ for his permission -to print in this volume the chapter entitled “The Mystic’s Experience of -God,” also the editors of _The Journal of Religion_ for their permission -to use the article on “Psychology and the Spiritual Life.” Some of -the shorter essays have been printed in _The_ (London) _Friend_ and -in _The Homiletic Review_. Kind permission has been granted for their -reproduction. - - - - -INTRODUCTION - -RELIGION AS ENERGY - - -Religion is an experience which no definition exhausts. One writer with -expert knowledge of anthropology tells us what it is, and we know as -we read his account that, however true it may be as far as it goes, it -yet leaves untouched much undiscovered territory. We turn next to the -trained psychologist, who leads us “down the labyrinthine ways of our -own mind” and tells us why the human race has always been seeking God -and worshiping Him. We are thankful for his Ariadne thread which guides -us within the maze, but we feel convinced that there are doors which -he has not opened—“doors to which he had no key.” The theologian, with -great assurance and without “ifs and buts,” offers us the answer to all -mysteries and the solution of all problems, but when we have gone “up -the hill all the way to the very top” with him, we find it a “homesick -peak”—_Heimwehfluh_—and we still wonder over the real meaning of religion. - -We are evidently dealing here with something like that drinking horn -which the Norse God Thor tried to drain. He failed to do it because -the horn which he assayed to empty debouched into the endless ocean, -and therefore to drain the horn meant drinking the ocean dry. To probe -religion down to the bottom means knowing “what God and man is.” Each -one of us, in his own tongue and in terms of his own field of knowledge, -gives his partial word, his tiny glimpse of insight. But the returns are -never all in. There is always more to say. “Man is incurably religious,” -that fine scholar, Auguste Sabatier, said. Yes, he is. It is often wild -and erratic religion which we find, no doubt, but the hunger and thirst -of the human soul are an indubitable fact. In different forms of speech -we can all say with St. Augustine of Hippo: “Thou hast touched me and I -am on fire for thy peace.” - -In saying that religion is energy I am only seizing one aspect of this -great experience of the human heart. It is, however, I believe, an -essential aspect. A religion that makes no difference to a person’s life, -a religion that _does_ nothing, a religion that is utterly devoid of -power, may for all practical purposes be treated as though it did not -exist. The great experts—those who know from the inside what religion -is—always make much of its dynamic power, its energizing and propulsive -power. _Power_ is a word often on the lips of Jesus; never used, it -should be said, in the sense of extrinsic authority or the right to -command and govern, but always in reference to an intrinsic and interior -moral and spiritual energy of life. The kingdom of God comes with power, -not because the Messiah is supplied with ten legions of angels and can -sweep the Roman eagles back to the frontiers of the Holy Land, but it -“comes with power” because it is a divine and life-transforming energy, -working in the moral and spiritual nature of man, as the expanding -yeast works in the flour or as the forces of life push the seed into -germination and on into the successive stages toward the maturity of the -full-grown plant and grain. - -The little fellowship of followers and witnesses who formed the nucleus -of the new-born Church felt themselves “endued with power” on the day of -Pentecost. Something new and dynamic entered the consciousness of the -feeble band and left them no longer feeble. There was an in-rushing, -up-welling sense of invasion. They passed over from a visible Leader -and Master to an invisible and inward Presence revealed to them as an -unwonted energy. Ecstatic utterance, which seems to have followed, -is not the all-important thing. The important thing is heightened -moral quality, intensified fellowship, a fused and undying loyalty, -an irresistible boldness in the face of danger and opposition, a -fortification of spirit which nothing could break. This energy which came -with their experience is what marks the event as an epoch. - -St. Paul writes as though he were an expert in dynamics. “Dynamos,” -the Greek word for power, is one of his favorite words. He seems to -have found out how to draw upon energies in the universe which nobody -else had suspected were even there. It is a fundamental feature of his -“Aegean gospel” that God is not self-contained but self-giving, that He -circulates, as does the sun, as does the sea, and comes into us as an -energy. This incoming energy he calls by many names: “The Spirit,” “holy -Spirit,” “Christ,” “the Spirit of Christ,” “Christ in you,” “God that -worketh in us.” Whatever his word or term is, he is always declaring, -and he bases his testimony on experience, that God, as Christ reveals -Him, is an active energy working with us and in us for the complete -transformation of our fundamental nature and for _a new creation_ in us. - -All this perhaps sounds too grand and lofty, too remote and far away, -to touch us with reality. We assume that it is for saints or apostles, -but not for common everyday people like ourselves. Well, that is where -we are wrong. The accounts which St. Paul gives of the energies of -religion are not for his own sake, or for persons who are _bien né_ and -naturally saintly. They are for the rank and file of humans. In fact his -Corinthian fellowship was raised by these energies out of the lowest -stratum of society. The words which he uses to describe them are probably -not over strong: “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, -nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, -nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners -shall inherit the kingdom of God. _And such were some of you_: but ye are -washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name [i.e. the -power] of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”[1] - -It is to be noticed, further, that St. Paul does not confine his list -of energies to those mighty spiritual forces which come down from above -and work upon us from the outside. Much more often our attention is -directed to energies which are potential within ourselves—even in the -most ordinary of us—energies which work as silently as molecular forces -or as “the capillary oozing of water,” but which nevertheless are as -reconstructive as the forces of springtime, following the winter’s havoc. -If the grace of God—the unlimited sacrificing love of God revealed in -Christ—is for St. Paul the supreme spiritual energy of the universe, -hardly less important is the simple human energy which meets that -centrifugal energy and makes it operate within the sphere of the moral -will. That dynamic energy, by which the man responds to God’s upward pull -and which makes all the difference, St. Paul calls faith. - -We are so accustomed to the use of the word in a spurious sense that -we are slow to apprehend the immense significance of this human energy -which lies potentially within us. Unfortunately trained young folks and -scientifically minded people are apt to shy away from the word and put -themselves on the defensive, as though they were about to be asked to -believe the impossible or the dubious or the unprovable. Faith in the -sense in which St. Paul uses it does not mean _believing_ something. -It is a moral attitude and response of will to the character of God -as He has been revealed in Christ. It is like the act which closes -the electric circuit, which act at once releases power. The dynamic -effect which follows the act is the best possible verification of the -rationality of the act. So, too, faith as a moral response is no blind -leap, no wild venture; it is an act which can be tested and verified by -moral and spiritual effects, which are as real as the heat, light, and -horse power of the dynamo. - -Faith has come to be recognized as an energy in many spheres of life. We -know what a stabilizer it is in the sphere of finance. Stocks and bonds -and banks shift their values as faith in them rises or falls. _Morale_ -is only another name for faith. Our human relationships, our social -structures, our enjoyment of one another, our satisfaction in books and -in lectures rest upon faith and when that energy fails, collapses of the -most serious sort follow. We might as well try to build a world without -cohesion as to maintain society without the energy of faith. - -We have many illustrations of the important part which faith plays in -the sphere of physical health. The corpuscles of the blood and the -molecules of the body are altered by it. The tension of the arteries and -the efficiency of the digestive tract are affected by it. Nerves are -in close sympathetic _rapport_ with faith. It is never safe to tell a -strong man that he is pale and that he looks ill. If two or three persons -in succession give him a pessimistic account of his appearance, he will -soon begin to have the condition which has been imagined. Dr. William -McDougall gives the case of a boy who was being chased by a furious -animal and under the impulse of the emergency he leaped a fence which he -could never afterwards jump, even after long athletic training. The list -of similar instances is a very long one. Every reader knows a case as -impressive as the one I have given. The varieties of “shell-shock” have -furnished volumes of illustrations of the energy of faith, its dynamic -influence upon health and life and efficiency. - -Faith in the sphere of religion works the greatest miracles of life -that are ever worked. It makes the saint out of Magdalene, the heroic -missionary and martyr out of Paul, the spiritual statesman of the ages -out of Carthaginian Augustine, the illuminated leader of men out of -Francis of Assisi, the maker of a new world epoch out of the nervously -unstable monk Luther, the creator of a new type of spiritual society out -of the untaught Leicestershire weaver, George Fox. Why do we not all -experience the miracle and find _the rest of ourselves_ through faith? -The main trouble is that we live victims of limiting inhibitions. We -hold intellectual theories which keep back or check the outflow of -the energy of faith. We have a nice system of thought which accounts -for everything and explains everything and which leaves no place for -faith. We know too much. We say to ourselves that only the ignorant and -uncultured are led by faith. And this same wise man, who is too proud to -have faith, holds all his inhibitory theories on a basis of faith! Every -one of them starts out on faith, gathers standing ground by faith, and -becomes a controlling force through faith! - -There are many other spiritual energies, some of which will be dealt with -specifically or implicitly in the later chapters of this book. Not often -in the history of the modern world certainly have spiritual energies -seemed more urgently needed than to-day. Our troubles consist largely -now of failure to lay hold of moral and spiritual forces that lie near -at hand and to utilize powers that are within our easy reach. Our stock -of faith and hope and love has run low and we realize only feebly what -mighty energies they can be. - -I hope that these short essays may help in some slight way to indicate -that the ancient realities by which men live still abide, and that -the invisible energies of the spirit are real, as they have always -been real. We have had an impressive demonstration that a civilization -built on external force and measured in terms of economic achievements -cannot stand its ground and is unable to speak to the condition of -persons endowed and equipped as we are. We are bound to build a higher -civilization, to create a greater culture, and to form a truer kingdom -of life or we must write “_Mene_” on all human undertakings. That is -our task now, and it is a serious one for which we shall need all the -energies that the universe puts at our disposal. I am told that when -the great Hellgate bridge was being built over the East River in New -York the engineers came upon an old derelict ship, lying embedded in -the river mud, just where one of the central piers of the bridge was to -go down through to its bedrock foundation. No tug boat could be found -that was able to start the derelict from its ancient bed in the ooze. -It would not move, no matter what force was applied. Finally, with a -sudden inspiration one of the workers hit upon this scheme. He took a -large flat-boat, which had been used to bring stone down the river, and -he chained it to the old sunken ship when the tide was low. Then he -waited for the great tidal energies to do their work. Slowly the rising -tide, with all the forces of the ocean behind it and the moon above it, -came up under the flat-boat, raising it inch by inch. And as it came up, -lifted by irresistible power, the derelict came up with it, until it -was entirely out of the mud that had held it. Then the boat, with its -subterranean load, was towed out to sea where the old waterlogged ship -was unchained and allowed to drop forever out of sight and reach. - -There are greater forces than those tidal energies waiting for us to use -for our tasks. They have always been there. They are there now. But they -do not _work_, they do not _operate_, until we lay hold of them and use -them for our present purposes. We must be _co-workers with God_. - - Haverford, Pennsylvania. - - Mid Winter, 1922. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AS ENERGY vii - - CHAPTER I - - THE CENTRAL PEACE - - I. PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING 1 - - II. THE SEARCH FOR A REFUGE 5 - - III. WHAT WE WANT MOST 10 - - CHAPTER II - - THE GREAT ENERGIES THAT WORK - - I. TRYING THE BETTER WAY 15 - - II. HE CAME TO HIMSELF 23 - - III. SOME NEW REASONS FOR “LOVING ENEMIES” 29 - - CHAPTER III - - THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US - - I. WHERE THE BEYOND BREAKS THROUGH 35 - - II. CONQUERING BY AN INNER FORCE 41 - - III. LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ETERNAL 46 - - CHAPTER IV - - THE WAY OF VISION - - I. DAYS OF GREATER VISIBILITY 50 - - II. THE PROPHET AND HIS TRAGEDIES 54 - - III. A LONG DISTANCE CALL 60 - - CHAPTER V - - THE WAY OF PERSONALITY - - I. ANOTHER KIND OF HERO 65 - - II. THE BETTER POSSESSION 69 - - III. THE GREATEST RIVALRIES OF LIFE 74 - - CHAPTER VI - - AGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION - - I. THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD 79 - - II. THE NURSERY OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 83 - - III. THE DEMOCRACY WE AIM AT 86 - - IV. THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY 91 - - CHAPTER VII - - THE NEAR AND THE FAR - - I. THINGS PRESENT AND THINGS TO COME 98 - - II. TWO TYPES OF MINISTRY 102 - - III. WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR 106 - - CHAPTER VIII - - THE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY - - I. THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH 111 - - II. THE NEW BORN OUT OF THE OLD 127 - - CHAPTER IX - - THE MYSTIC’S EXPERIENCE OF GOD 133 - - CHAPTER X - - PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 160 - - - - -SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE CENTRAL PEACE - - -I - -PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING - -We are all familiar with the coming of a peace into our life at the -terminus of some great strain or after we have weathered a staggering -crisis. When a long-continued pain which has racked our nerves passes -away and leaves us free, we suddenly come into a zone of peace. When we -have been watching by a bedside where a life, unspeakably precious to us, -has lain in the grip of some terrible disease and at length successfully -passes the crisis, we walk out into the fields under the altered sky -and feel a peace settle down upon us, which makes the whole world look -different. Or, again, we have been facing some threatening catastrophe -which seemed likely to break in on our life and perhaps end forever -the calm and even tenor of it, and just when the hour of danger seemed -darkest and our fear was at its height, some sudden turn of things has -brought a happy shift of events, the danger has passed, and a great peace -has come over us instead of the threatened trouble. In all these cases -the peace which succeeds pain and strain and anxiety is a thoroughly -natural, reasonable peace, a peace which comes in normal sequence and -is quite accessible to the understanding. We should be surprised and -should need an explanation if we heard of an instance of a passing pain -or a yielding strain that was not followed by a corresponding sense of -peace. One who has seen a child that was lost in a crowded city suddenly -find his mother and find safety in her dear arms has seen a good case of -this sequential peace, this peace which the understanding can grasp and -comprehend. We behold it and say, “How otherwise!” - -There is, St. Paul reminds us, another kind of peace of quite a different -order. It baffles the understanding and transcends its categories. It is -a peace which comes, not after the pain is relieved, not after the crisis -has passed, not after the danger has disappeared; but in the midst of the -pain, while the crisis is still on, and even in the imminent presence -of the danger. It is a peace that is not banished or destroyed by the -frustrations which beset our lives; rather it is in and through the -frustrations that we first come upon it and enter into it, as, to use St. -Paul’s phrase, into a garrison which guards our hearts and minds. - -Each tested soul has to meet its own peculiar frustrations. All of us who -work for “causes” or who take up any great piece of moral or spiritual -service in the world know more about defeats and disappointments than -we do about success and triumphs. We have to learn to be patient and -long-suffering. We must become accustomed to postponements and delays, -and sometimes we see the work of almost a lifetime suddenly fail of its -end. Some turn of events upsets all our noble plans and frustrates the -result, just when it appeared ready to arrive. Death falls like lightning -on a home that had always before seemed sheltered and protected, and -instantly life is profoundly altered for those who are left behind. -Nothing can make up for the loss. There is no substitute for what -is gone. The accounts will not balance; frustration in another form -confronts us. Or it may be a breakdown of physical or mental powers, -or peradventure both together, just when the emergencies of the world -called for added energy and increased range of power from us. The need -is plain, the harvest is ripe, but the worker’s hand fails and he must -contract when he would most expand. Frustration looks him straight in the -face. Well, to achieve a peace under those circumstances is to have a -peace which does not follow a normal sequence. It is not what the world -expects. It does not accord with the ways of thought and reasoning. It -passes all understanding. It brings another kind of world into operation -and reveals a play of invisible forces upon which the understanding -had not reckoned. In fact, this strange intellect-transcending peace, -in the very midst of storm and strain and trial, is one of the surest -evidences there is of God. One may in his own humble nerve-power succeed -in acquiring a stoic resignation so that he can say, - - “In the fell clutch of circumstance - I have not winced nor cried aloud. - Under the bludgeonings of chance - My head is bloody, but unbowed.” - -He may, by sheer force of will, keep down the lid upon his emotions -and go on so nearly unmoved that his fellows can hear no groan and -will wonder at the way he stands the universe. But peace in the soul -is another matter. To have the whole heart and mind garrisoned with -peace even in Nero’s dungeon, when the imperial death sentence brings -frustration to all plans and a terminus to all spiritual work, calls for -some world-transcending assistance to the human spirit. Such peace is -explained only when we discover that it is “the peace of God,” and that -it came because the soul broke through the ebbings and flowings of time -and space and allied itself with the Eternal. - - -II - -THE SEARCH FOR A REFUGE - -Few things are more impressive than the persistent search which men have -made in all ages for a refuge against the dangers and the ills that -beset life. The cave-men, the cliff-dwellers, the primitive builders of -shelters in inaccessible tree tops, are early examples of the search for -human defenses against fear. Civilization slowly perfected methods of -refuge and defense of elaborate types, which, in turn, had to compete -with ever-increasing ingenuity of attack and assault. But I am not -concerned here with these material strongholds of refuge and defense. I -am thinking rather of the human search for shelter against other weapons -than those which kill the body. We are all trying, in one way or another, -to discover how to escape from “the heavy and weary weight of all this -unintelligible world,” how to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous -fortune. We are sensitively constructed, with nerves exposed to easy -attack. We are all shelterless at some point to the storms of the world. -Even the most perfectly equipped and impervious heroes prove to be -vulnerable at some one uncovered spot. Sooner or later our protections -fail, and the pitiless enemies of our happiness get through the defenses -and reach the quick and sensitive soul within us. How to rebuild our -refuge, how to find real shelter, is our problem. What fortress is there -in which the soul is safe from fear and trouble? - -The most common expedient is one which will drug the sensitive nerves -and produce an easy relief from strain and worry. There is a magic in -alcohol and kindred distillations, which, like Aladdin’s genie, builds a -palace of joy and, for the moment, banishes the enemy of all peace. The -refuge seems complete. All fear is gone, worry is a thing of the past. -The jargon of life is over, the pitiless problem of good and evil drops -out of consciousness. The shelterless soul seems covered and housed. -Intoxication is only one of the many quick expedients. It is always -possible to retreat from the edge of strenuous battle into some one of -the many natural instincts as a way of refuge. The great instinctive -emotions are absorbing, and tend to obliterate everything else. They -occupy the entire stage of the inner drama, and push all other actors -away from the footlights of consciousness, so that here, too, the enemies -of peace and joy seem vanquished, and the refuge appears to be found. - -That multitudes accept these easy ways of defense against the ills of -life is only too obvious. The medieval barons who could build themselves -castles of safety were few in number. Visible refuges in any case are -rare and scarce, but the escape from the burdens and defeats of the -world in drink and drug and thrilling instinctive emotion is, without -much difficulty, open to every man and within easy reach for rich and -poor alike, and many there be that seize upon this method. The trouble -with it is that it is a very temporary refuge. It works, if at all, only -for a brief span. It plays havoc in the future with those who resort -to it. It rolls up new liabilities to the ills one would escape. It -involves far too great a price for the tiny respite gained. And, most -of all, it discounts or fails to reckon with the inherent greatness of -the human soul. We are fashioned for stupendous issues. Our very sense -of failure and defeat comes from a touch of the infinite in our being. -We look before and after, and sigh for that which is not, just because -we can not be contented with finite fragments of time and space. We are -meant for greater things than these trivial ones which so often get our -attention and absorb us; but the moment the soul comes to itself, its -reach goes beyond the grasp, and it feels an indescribable discontent -and longing for that for which it was made. To seek refuge, therefore, -in some narcotic joy, to still the onward yearning of the soul by -drowning consciousness, to banish the pain of pursuit by a barbaric surge -of emotions, is to strike against the noblest trait of our spiritual -structure; it means committing suicide of the soul. It cannot be a real -man’s way of relief. - -In fact, nothing short of finding the goal and object for which the soul, -the spiritual nature in us, is fitted will ever do for beings like us. -St. Augustine, in words of immortal beauty, has said that God has made -us for himself, and our hearts are restless until we rest in him. It -is not a theory of poet or theologian. It is a simple fact of life, as -veritable as the human necessity for food. There is no other shelter for -the soul, no other refuge or fortress will ever do for us but God. “We -tremble and we burn. We tremble, knowing that we are unlike him. We burn, -feeling that we are like him.” - -In hours of loss and sorrow, when the spurious props fail us, we are -more apt to find our way back to the real refuge. We are suddenly made -aware of our shelterless condition, alone, and in our own strength. Our -stoic armor and our brave defenses of pride become utterly inadequate. -We are thrown back on reality. We have then our moments of sincerity and -insight. We feel that we cannot live without resources from beyond our -own domain. We must have God. It is then, when one knows that nothing -else whatever will do, that the great discovery is made. Again and again -the psalms announce this. When the world has caved in; when the last -extremity has been reached; when the billows and water-spouts of fortune -have done their worst, you hear the calm, heroic voice of the lonely man -saying: “God is our refuge and fortress, therefore will not we fear -though the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the -midst of the sea.” That is great experience, but it is not reserved for -psalmists and rare patriarchs like Job. It is a privilege for common -mortals like us who struggle and agonize and feel the thorn in the flesh, -and the bitter tragedy of life unhealed. Whether we make the discovery -or not, God is there with us in the furnace. Only it makes all the -difference if we do find him as the one high tower where refuge is not -for the passing moment only, but is an eternal attainment. - - -III - -WHAT WE WANT MOST - -There are many things which we want—things for which we struggle hard and -toil painfully. Like the little child with his printed list for Santa -Claus, we have our list, longer or shorter, of precious things which -we hope to see brought within our reach before we are gathered to our -fathers. The difference is that the child is satisfied if he gets one -thing which is on his list. We want everything on ours. The world is -full of hurry and rush, push and scramble, each man bent on winning some -one of his many goals. But, in spite of this excessive effort to secure -the tangible goods of the earth, it is nevertheless true that deep down -in the heart most men want the peace of God. If you have an opportunity -to work your way into that secret place where a man really lives, you -will find that he knows perfectly well that he is missing something. -This feeling of unrest and disquiet gets smothered for long periods in -the mass of other aims, and some men hardly know that they have such a -thing as an immortal soul hidden away within. But, even so, it will not -remain quiet. It cries out like the lost child who misses his home. When -the hard games of life prove losing ones, when the stupidity of striving -so fiercely for such bubbles comes over him, when a hand from the dark -catches away the best earthly comfort he had, when the genuine realities -of life assert themselves over sense, he wakes up to find himself hungry -and thirsty for something which no one of his earthly pursuits has -supplied or can supply. He wants God. He wants peace. He wants to feel -his life founded on an absolute reality. He wants to have the same sort -of peace and quiet steal over him which used to come when as a child he -ran to his mother and had all the ills of life banished from thought in -the warm love of her embrace. - -But it is not only the driving, pushing man, ambitious for wealth and -position, who misses the best thing there is to get—the peace of God. -Many persons who are directly seeking it miss it. Here is a man who hopes -to find it by solving all his difficult intellectual problems. When -he can answer the hard questions which life puts to him, and read the -riddles which the ages have left unread, he thinks his soul will feel the -peace of God. Not so, because each problem opens into a dozen more. It is -a noble undertaking to help read the riddles of the universe, but let no -one expect to enter into the peace of God by such a path. Here is another -person who devotes herself to nothing but to seeking the peace of God. -Will she not find it? Not that way. It is not found when it is sought for -its own sake. He or she who is living to get the joy of divine peace, -who would “have no joy but calm,” will probably never have the peace -which passeth understanding. Like all the great blessings, it comes as a -by-product when one is seeking something else. Christ’s peace came to him -not because he sought it, but because he accepted the divine will which -led to Gethsemane and Calvary. Paul’s peace did not flow over him while -he was in Arabia seeking it, but while he was in Nero’s prison, whither -the path of his labors for helping men had led him. He who forgets -himself in loving devotion, he who turns aside from his self-seeking aims -to carry joy into any life, he who sets about doing any task for the love -of God, has found the only possible road to the permanent peace of God. - -There are no doubt a great many persons working for the good of others -and for the betterment of the world who yet do not succeed in securing -the peace of God. They are in a frequent state of nerves; they are busy -here and there, rushing about perplexed and weary, fussy and irritable. -With all their efforts to promote good causes, they do not quite attain -the poise and calm of interior peace. They are like the tumultuous -surface of the ocean with its combers and its spray, and they seldom know -the deep quiet like that of the underlying, submerged waters far below -the surface. The trouble with them is that they are carrying themselves -all the time. They do not forget themselves in their aims of service. -They are like the ill person who is so eager to get well that he keeps -watching his tongue, feeling his pulse, and getting his weight. Peace -does not come to one who is watching continually for the results of his -work, or who is wondering what people are saying about it, or who is -envious and jealous of other persons working in the same field, or who is -touchy about “honor” or recognition. Those are just the attitudes which -frustrate peace and make it stay away from one’s inner self. - -There is a higher level of work and service and ministry, which, thank -God, men like us can reach. It is attained when one swings out into a -way of life which is motived and controlled by genuine sincere love -and devotion, when consecration obliterates self-seeking, when in some -measure, like Christ, the worker can say without reservations, “Not my -will but thine be done.” - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE GREAT ENERGIES THAT WORK - - -I - -TRYING THE BETTER WAY - -A very fresh and unusual type of book has recently appeared under -the title, “_By An Unknown Disciple_.” It tells in a simple, direct, -impressive way, after the manner of the Gospels, the story of Christ’s -life and works and message. It professes to be written by one who was an -intimate disciple, and who was therefore an eye-witness of everything -told in the book. It is a vivid narrative and leaves the reader deeply -moved, because it brings him closer than most interpretations do into -actual presence of and companionship with the great Galilean. The first -chapter is a re-interpretation of the scene on the eastern shore of -Gennesaret, where Jesus casts the demons out of the maniac of Geresa. A -man on the shore of the lake told Jesus, when he landed there with his -disciples in the early morning, that it was not safe for any one to go -up the rugged hillside, because there were madmen hidden there among the -tombs: “people possessed by demons, who tear their flesh, and who can be -heard screaming day and night.” - -“How do you know they are possessed by demons?” asked Jesus. - -“What else could it be?” said the man. “There are none that can master -them. They are too fierce to be tamed.” - -“Has any man tried to tame them?” asked Jesus. - -“Yes, Rabbi, they have been bound with chains and fetters. There was one -that I saw. He plucked the fetters from him as a child might break a -chain of field flowers. Then he ran foaming into the wilderness, and no -man dare pass by that way now....” - -“Have men tried only this way to tame him?” Jesus asked. - -“What other way is there, Rabbi?” asked the man. - -“There is God’s way,” said Jesus. “Come, let us try it.” - -As Jesus spoke, “His gaze went from man to man,” the writer continues, -“and then his eyes fell upon me. It was as if a power passed from him to -me, and immediately something inside me answered, ‘Lead, and I follow.’” -The narrative proceeds to describe the encounter with the demoniac man -whose name was “Legion.” “He ran toward us, shrieking and bounding in the -air. He had two sharp stones in his hand, and as he leaped he cut his -flesh with them and the blood ran down his naked limbs. The men behind us -scattered and fled down the hillside; but Jesus stood still and waited.” -The effect of the calm, undisturbed, unfrightened presence of Jesus was -astonishing. It was as though a new force suddenly came into operation. -The jagged stones were thrown from his hands, for he recognized at once -in Jesus a friendly presence and a helper with an understanding heart. -His fear and terror left the demoniac man and he became quiet, composed -and like a normal person. Meantime some of the men who ran away in fear, -when the madman appeared, frightened a herd of swine feeding near by, and -in their uncontrolled terror they rushed wildly toward the headland of -the lake and pitched over the top into the water where they were drowned. -“Fear is a foul spirit,” said Jesus, and it seemed plain and obvious -that the ungoverned fear which played such havoc with the man had taken -possession also of the misguided swine. It was the same “demon,” fear. A -little later in the day when the companions of Jesus found him they saw -the man who had called himself “Legion” sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed -and in his right mind—a quieted and restored person. - -We now know that this disease, called “possession,” which appears so -often in the New Testament accounts, is a very common present-day -trouble. The name and description given to it in the Bible make it often -seem remote and unfamiliar to us, but it is, in fact, as prevalent in the -world to-day as it was in the first century. It is an extreme form of -hysteria, a disorganization of normal functions, often causing delusions, -loss of memory, the performance of automatic actions, and sometimes -resulting in double, or multiple, personality, a condition in which a -foreign self seems to usurp the control of the body and make it do many -strange and unwilled things. This disease is known in very many cases to -be produced by frights, fear, or terror, sometimes fears long hidden away -and more or less suppressed. - -The famous cases of Doris Fischer and Miss Beauchamp were both of this -type. They were only extreme instances of a fairly common form of -mental trouble, generally due to fears, and capable of being cured by -wise, skillful understanding and loving care, applied by one who shows -confidence and human interest and who knows how to use the powerful -influence of _suggestion_. Dr. Morton Prince, who has reported these -two cases, has achieved cures and restorations that read like miracles, -and his narratives tell of minds, “jangling, harsh, and out of tune,” -broken into dissociated selves, which have been unified, organized, -harmonized and restored to normal life. Few restorations are more -wonderful than that effected upon a Philadelphia girl under the direction -of Dr. Lightner Witmer. The girl was hopelessly incorrigible, stubborn, -sullen, suspicious, and stupid. She screamed, kicked, and bit when she -was opposed, and she utterly refused to obey anybody. So unnatural and -dehumanized was she that she was generally called “Diabolical Mary.” She -was examined by Dr. Witmer, underwent some simple surgical operations to -remove her obvious physical handicaps, and then was put under the loving, -tender care of a wise, attractive, and understanding woman. The girl -responded to the treatment at once and soon became profoundly changed, -and the process went on until the girl became a wholly transformed and -re-made person. - -The so-called shell-shock cases which have bulked so large in the story -of the wastage of men in all armies during the World War, turn out to be -cases of mental disorganization, occasioned for the most part by immense -emotional upheaval, especially through suppressed fear. The man affected -with the trouble has seemed to master his emotion. He has not winced or -shown the slightest fear in the face of danger; but the pent-up emotion, -the suppressed fear and terror, insidiously throw the entire nervous -mechanism out of gear. The successful treatment of such cases is, again, -like that for hysteria, one that brings confidence, calm, liberation -of all strain and anxiety. The poor victim needs a patient, wise, -skillful, psychologically trained physician, who has an understanding -mind, a friendly, interested, intimate way, a spirit of love, and who -can arouse expectation of recovery and can suggest thoughts of health -and the right emotional reactions. This method of cure has often been -tried with striking effect upon the so-called criminal classes. Prisoners -almost always respond constructively to the personal manifestation of -confidence, sympathy, and love. Elizabeth Fry proved this principle in an -astonishing way with the almost brutalized prisoners in Newgate. Thomas -Shillitoe’s visit to the German prisoners at Spandau, who were believed -to be beyond all human appeals, though not so well known and famous, is -no less impressive and no less convincing. - -There was perhaps never a time in the history of the world when an -application of this principle and method—God’s way—was so needed in -the social sphere of life. Whole countries have the symptoms which -appear in these nervous diseases. It is not merely an individual case -here and there; it takes on a corporate, a mass, form. The nerves are -overstrained, the emotional stress has been more than could be borne, -suppressed fears have produced disorganization. There are signs of -social “dissociation.” The remedy in such cases is not an application of -compelling force, not a resort to chains and fetters, not a screwing on -of the “lid,” not a method of starving out the victims. It is rather an -application of the principle which has always worked in individual cases -of “dissociation” or “possession” or “suppressed fear”—the principle -of sympathy, love and suggestion—what Jesus, in the book mentioned -above, calls “God’s way.” The “dissociation” of labor and employers in -the social group, with its hysterical signs of strikes and lockouts, -upheaval and threats, needs just now a very wise physician. Force, -restraint, compulsion, fastening down the “lid,” imprisonment of leaders, -drastic laws against propaganda, will not cure the disease, any more -than chains cured the poor sufferer on the shores of Gennesaret. The -situation must first of all be _understood_. The inner attitude behind -the acts and deeds must be taken into account. The social mental state -must be diagnosed. The remedy, to be a remedy, must remove the causes -which produce the dissociation. It can be accomplished only by one who -has an understanding heart, a good will, an unselfish purpose, and a -comprehending, i.e., a unifying, _suggestion_ of coöperation. - -This _way_ is no less urgent for the solution of the most acute -international situations. It has been assumed too long and too often that -these situations can be best handled by unlimited methods of restraint, -coercion, and reduction to helplessness. Some of the countries of Europe -have been plainly suffering from neurasthenia, dissociation, and the -kindred forms of emotional, fear-caused diseases. Starvation always makes -for types of hysteria. It will not do now to apply, with cold, precise -logic, the old vindictive principle that when the sinner has been made -to suffer enough to “cover” the enormity of his sin he can then be -restored to respectable society. It is not vindication of justice which -most concerns the world now; it is a return of health, a restoration of -normal functions, a reconstruction of the social body. That task calls -for the application of the deeper, truer principles of life. It calls for -a knowing heart, an understanding method, a healing plan, a sympathetic -guide who can obliterate the fear-attitude and _suggest_ confidence and -unity and trustful human relationships. Those great words, used in the -Epistle of London Yearly Meeting of Friends in 1917, need to be revived -and put to an experimental venture: “_Love knows no frontiers._” There is -no limit to its healing force, there are no conditions it does not meet, -there is no terminus to its constructive operations. - - -II - -HE CAME TO HIMSELF - -Was there ever such a short-story character sketch as this one of the -prodigal son! No realism of details, no elaboration of his sins, and -yet the immortal picture is burned forever into our imagination. The -_débâcle_ of his life is as clear and vivid as words can portray the -ruin. Yet the phrase which arrests us most as we read the compact -narrative of his undoing is not the one which tells about “riotous -living,” or the reckless squandering of his patrimony, or his hunger for -swine husks, or his unshod feet and the loss of his tunic; it is rather -the one which says that when he was at the bottom of his fortune “he came -to himself.” - -He had not been himself then, before. He was not finding himself in the -life of riotous indulgence. That did not turn out after all to be the -life for which he was meant. He missed himself more than he missed his -lost shoes and tunic. That raises a nice question which is worth an -answer: When is a person his real self? When can he properly say, “At -last I have found myself; I am what I want to be?” Robert Louis Stevenson -has given us in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a fine parable of the actual -double self in us all, a higher and a lower self under our one hat. But -I ask, which is the real me? Is it Jekyll or is it Hyde? Is it the best -that we can be or is it this worse thing which we just now are? - -Most answers to the question would be, I think, that the real self is -that ideal self of which in moments of rare visibility we sometimes -catch glimpses. - - “All I could never be, - All, men ignored in me, - This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.” - -“Dig deep enough into any man,” St. Augustine said, “and you will find -something divine.” We supposed he believed in total depravity, and -he does in theory believe in it; but when it is a matter of actual -experience, he announces this deep fact which fits perfectly with his -other great utterance: “Thou, O God, hast made us for thyself, and we are -restless (dissatisfied) until we find ourselves in thee.” - -Too long we have assumed that Adam, the failure, is the type of our -lives, that he is the normal man, that to err is human, and that one -touch, that is, blight, of nature makes all men kin. What Christ has -revealed to us is the fact that we always have higher and diviner -possibilities in us. He, the overcomer, and not Adam, is the true type, -the normal person, giving us at last the pattern of life which is life -indeed. - -Which is the real self, then? Surely this higher possible self, this one -which we discover in our best moments. The Greeks always held that sin -was “missing the mark”—that is what the Greek word for sin means—failure -to arrive at, to reach, the real end toward which life aims. Sin is -defeat. It is loss of the trail. It is undoing. The sinner has not found -himself, he has not come to himself. He has missed the real me. He cannot -say, “I am.” - -If that is a fact, and if the life of spiritual health and attainment is -the normal life, we surely ought to do more than is done to help young -people to realize it and to assist them to find themselves. We are much -more concerned to manufacture things than we are to make persons. We do -one very well and we do the other very badly. Kipling’s “The Ship that -Found Itself” is a fine account of the care bestowed upon every rivet and -screw, every valve and piston. He pictures the ship in the stress and -strain of a great storm and each part of the ship from keel to funnel -describes what it has to bear and to do in the emergency and how it has -been prepared in advance for just this crisis. Nansen was asked how he -felt when he found that the _Fram_ was caught in the awful jam of the -Arctic ice-floe. “I felt perfectly calm,” he said. “I knew she could -stand it. I had watched every stick of timber and every piece of steel -that went into her hull. The result was that I could go to sleep and -let the ice do its worst.” With even more care we build the airplane. -There must be no chance for capricious action. The propeller blades must -be made of perfect wood. There must be no defect in any piece of the -structure. The gasoline must be tested by all the methods of refinement. -The oil must be absolutely pure, free of every suspicion of grit. - -But when we turn from ships and airplanes to the provisions for training -young persons we are in a different world. The element of chance now -bulks very large. We let the youth have pretty free opportunity to begin -his malformation before we begin seriously to construct him on right -lines. We fail to note what an enormous fact “disposition” is, and we -take little pains to form it early and to form it in the best way. We -are far too apt to assume that all the fundamentals come by the road -of heredity. We overwork this theory as much as earlier theologians -overworked their dogma of original sin from poor old Adam. - -The fact is that temperament and disposition and the traits of character -which most definitely settle destiny are at least as much formed in those -early critical years of infancy as they are acquired by the strains of -heredity. Education, which is more essential to the greatness of any -country than even its manufactures, is one of the most neglected branches -of life. We take it as we find it—and lay its failures to Providence -as we do deaths from typhoid. It must not always be so. We must be as -greatly concerned to form virile character in our boys and girls and -to develop in them the capacity for moral and spiritual leadership in -this crisis as we are concerned over our coal supply or our industries. -There are ways of assisting the higher self to control and dominate the -life, ways by which the ideal person can become the real person. Why not -consider seriously how to do that? - -He that overcomes, the prophet of Patmos says, receives a white stone -with a new name written on it, which no man knoweth save he that hath -it. It is a symbolism which may mean many things. It seems at least to -mean that he who subdues his lower self, holds out in the strain of life, -and lives by the highest that he knows, will as a consequence receive a -distinct individuality, a clearly defined self, instead of being blurred -in with the great level mass—a self with a name of its own. And that self -will not be the old familiar self that everybody knows by traits of past -achievement and by the old tendencies of habit. It will be the self -which only God and the person himself in his deepest and most intimate -moments knew was possible—and here at last it is found to be the real -self. The man can say, “I am.” He has come to himself. - -We ask, at the end, whether it may not be that the world will soon come -to itself and discover the way back to some of its missed ideals. Here on -a large scale we have the story of a desperate hunger, squandered wealth, -lost shoes, lost tunics, and even more precious things gone—a world that -has missed its way and is floundering about without sufficient vision -or adequate leadership. If it could only come to itself, discover what -its true mission is and where its real sources of power and its line of -progress lie, it would still find that God and man together can rebuild -what man by his blunders has destroyed. - - -III - -SOME NEW REASONS FOR “LOVING ENEMIES” - -Nobody ever amounts to anything who lives without conflict with -obstacles. It seems to be a law of the universe that nothing really good -can be got or held by soft, easy means. - -The Persians were so impressed with this stern condition of life that -they interpreted the universe as the scene of endless warfare between -hostile powers of the invisible world. Ormuzd, the god of light, and -Ahriman, the god of darkness, were believed to be engaged in a continual -Armageddon. There could be no truce in the strife until one or the other -should win the victory by the annihilation of his opponent. This Persian -dualism has touched all systems of thought and has left its influence -upon all the religions of the world. The reasons why it has appealed so -powerfully to men of all generations are, of course, that there is so -much conflict involved in life and that no achievement of goodness is -ever made without a hard battle for it against opposing forces. But if -all this opposition and struggle is due to an “enemy,” we certainly ought -to love this “enemy,” because it turns out to be the greatest possible -blessing to us that we are forced to struggle with difficulties and to -wrestle for what we get. - -“Count it all joy,” said the Apostle James in substance, writing to his -friends of the Dispersion, “when you fall into manifold testings, or -trials, knowing that the proving of your faith worketh steadfastness, -and let steadfastness have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and -entire, lacking in nothing.” St. Paul thought once that his “thorn in the -flesh” was conferred upon him by Satan and was the malicious messenger -of an enemy; but in the slow process of experience he came to see that -the painful “thorn” exercised a real ministry in his life, that through -his suffering and hardship he got a higher meaning of God’s grace; and he -discovered that divine power was thus made perfect through his weakness, -so that he learned to love the “enemy” that buffeted him. - -The Psalmist who wrote our best loved psalm, the twenty-third, thought at -first that God was his Shepherd because he led him in green pastures and -beside still waters where there was no struggle and no enemy to fear. But -he learned at length that in the dark valleys of the shadow and on the -rough jagged hillsides God was no less a good Shepherd than on the level -plains and in the lush grass; and he found at last that even “in the -presence of enemies” he could be fed with good things and have his table -spread. The overflowing cup and the anointed head were not discovered -on the lower levels of ease and comfort; they came out of the harder -experiences when “enemies” of his peace were busy supplying obstacles -and perplexities for him to overcome. - -It is no accident that the book of Revelation puts so much stress upon -“overcoming.” The world seemed to the prophet on the volcanic island -of Patmos essentially a place of strife and conflict—an Armageddon of -opposing forces. There are no beatitudes in this book promised to any -except “overcomers.” - - “Not to one church alone, but seven - The voice prophetic spake from heaven; - And unto each the promise came, - Diversified, but still the same; - For him that overcometh are - The new name written on the stone, - The raiment white, the crown, the throne, - And I will give him the Morning Star!” - -But the conflict that ends in such results can not be called misfortune, -any more than Hercules’ labors through which the legendary hero won his -immortality can be pronounced a misfortune for him. Once more, then, the -saint who has overcome discovers, at least in retrospect, that there is -good ground for loving his “enemies”! - -The farmer, in his unceasing struggle with weeds, with parasites, with -pests visible and invisible, with blight and rot and uncongenial -weather, sometimes feels tempted to blaspheme against the hard conditions -under which he labors and to assume that an “enemy” has cursed the ground -which he tills and loaded the dice of nature against him. The best cure -for his “mood” is to visit the land of the bread-fruit tree, where nature -does everything and man does nothing but eat what is gratuitously given -him, and to see there the kind of men you get under those kindly skies. -The virile fiber of muscle, the strong manly frame, the keen active mind -that meets each new “pest” with a successful invention, the spirit of -conquest and courage that are revealed in the farmer at his best are no -accident. They are the by-product of his battle with conditions, which if -they seem to come from an “enemy,” must come from one that ought to be -loved for what he accomplishes. - -These critics of ours who harshly review the books we write, the -addresses we give, the schemes of reform for which we work so -strenuously—do they do nothing for us? On the contrary, they force -us to go deeper, to write with more care, to reconsider our hasty -generalizations, to recast our pet schemes, to revise our crude -endeavors. They may speak as “enemies,” and they may show a stern and -hostile face; but we do well to love them, for they enable us to find -our better self and our deeper powers. The hand may be the horny hand of -Esau, but the voice is the kindly voice of Jacob. - -All sorts of things “work” for us, then, as St. Paul declared. Not only -does love “work,” and faith and grace; but tribulation “works,” and -affliction, and the seemingly hostile forces which block and buffet and -hamper us. Everything that drives us deeper, that draws us closer to the -great resources of life, that puts vigor into our frame and character -into our souls, is in the last resort a blessing to us, even though it -seems on superficial examination to be the work of an “enemy,” and we -shall be wise if we learn to love the “enemies” that give us the chance -to overcome and to attain our true destiny. Perhaps the dualism of the -universe is not quite as sharp as the old Persians thought. Perhaps, too, -the love of God reaches further under than we sometimes suppose. Perhaps -in fact all things “work together for good,” and even the enemy forces -are helping to achieve the ultimate good that shall be revealed “when God -hath made the pile complete.” - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US - - -I - -WHERE THE BEYOND BREAKS THROUGH - -If we sprinkle iron filings over a sheet of paper and move a magnet -beneath the paper, the filings become active and combine and recombine -in a great variety of groupings and regroupings. A beholder who knows -nothing of the magnet underneath gazes upon the whole affair with a sense -of awe and mystery, though he feels all the time that there must be some -explanation of the action and that some hidden power behind is operating -as the cause of the groupings and regroupings of the iron particles. -Something certainly that we do not see is revealing its presence and its -power. - -Our everyday experience is full of another series of activities even -more mysterious than these movements of the iron. Whenever we open our -eyes we see objects and colors confronting us and located in spaces far -and near. What brings the object to us? What operates to produce the -contact? How does the far-away thing hit our organ of vision? This was to -the ancient philosopher a most difficult problem, a real mystery. He made -many guesses at a solution, but no guess which he could make satisfied -his judgment. Our answer is that an invisible and intangible substance -which we call ether—luminiferous ether—fills all space, even the space -occupied by visible objects, and that this ether which is capable of -amazing vibrations, billions of them a second, is set vibrating at -different velocities by different objects. These vibrations bombard the -minute rods and cones of the retina at the back of the eye and, presto, -we see now one color and now another, now one object and now another. -This ether would forever have remained unknown to us had not this -marvelous structure of the retina given it a chance to break through and -reveal itself. In many other ways, too, this ether breaks through into -revelation. It is responsible apparently for all the immensely varied -phenomena of electricity, probably, too, of cohesion and gravitation. -Here, again, the revelations remained inadequate and without clear -interpretation until we succeeded in constructing proper instruments and -devices for it to break through into active operation. The dynamo and -the other electrical mechanisms which we have invented do not make or -create electricity. They merely let it come through, showing itself now -as light, now as heat, now again as motive power. But always it was there -before, unnoted, merely potential, and yet a vast surrounding ocean of -energy there behind, ready to break into active operation when the medium -was at hand for it. - -Life is another one of those strange mysteries that cannot be explained -until we realize that something more than we see is breaking through -matter and revealing itself. The living thing is letting through some -greater power than itself, something beyond and behind, which is needed -to account for what we see moving and acting with invention and purpose. -Matter of itself is no explanation of life. The same elemental stuff is -very different until it becomes the instrument of something not itself -which organizes it, pushes it upward and onward, and reveals itself -through it. Something has at length come into view which is more than -force and mechanism. Here is intelligent purpose and forward-looking -activity and something capable of variation, novelty, and surprise. -And when living substance has reached a certain stage of organization, -something higher still begins to break through—consciousness appears, -and on its higher levels consciousness begins to reveal truth and moral -goodness. It is useless to try to explain consciousness—especially -truth-bearing consciousness—as a function of the brain, for it cannot be -done. That way of explanation no more explains mind than the Ptolemaic -theory explains the movements of the heavenly bodies. Once more, -something breaks through and reveals itself, as surely as light breaks -through a prism and reveals itself in the band of spectral colors. This -consciousness of ours, as I have said, is not merely awareness, not only -intelligent response; it lays hold of and apprehends, i.e., reveals, -truth and goodness. What I think, when I really think, is not just -my private “opinion,” or “guess,” or “seeming”; it turns out to have -something universal and absolute about it. My multiplication-table is -everybody’s multiplication-table. It is true for me and for beyond me. -And what is true of my mathematics is also true of other features of my -thinking. When I properly organize my experience through rightly formed -concepts, I express aspects that are real and true for everybody—I attain -to something which can be called truth. The same way in the field of -conduct: I can discover not only what is subjectively right, but I can -go farther and embody principles which are right not only for me but for -every good man. Something more than a petty, tiny, private consciousness -is expressing itself through my personality. I am the organ of something -more than myself. - -Perhaps more wonderful still is the way in which beauty breaks through. -It breaks through not only at a few highly organized points, it breaks -through almost everywhere. Even the minutest things reveal it as well -as do the sublimest things, like the stars. Whatever one sees through -the microscope, a bit of mould for example, is charged with beauty. -Everything from a dewdrop to Mount Shasta is the bearer of beauty. And -yet beauty has no function, no utility. Its value is intrinsic, not -extrinsic. It is its own excuse for being. It greases no wheels, it bakes -no puddings. It is a gift of sheer grace, a gratuitous largess. It must -imply behind things a Spirit that enjoys beauty for its own sake and -that floods the world everywhere with it. Wherever it can break through -it does break through, and our joy in it shows that we are in some sense -kindred to the giver and revealer of it. - -Something higher and greater still breaks through and reveals a -deeper Reality than any that we see and touch. Love comes through—not -everywhere like beauty, but only where rare organization has prepared an -organ for it. Some aspects of love appear very widely, are, at least, -as universal as truth and moral goodness. But love in its full glory, -love in its height of unselfishness and with its passion of self-giving -is a rare manifestation. One person—the Galilean—has been a perfect -revealing organ of it. In his life it broke through with the same perfect -naturalness as the beam of light breaks through the prism of waterdrops -and reveals the rainbow. Love that understands, sympathizes, endures, -inspires, recreates, and transforms, broke through and revealed itself so -impressively that those who see it and feel it are convinced that here at -last the real nature of God has come through to us and stands revealed. -And St. Paul, who was absolutely convinced of this, went still further. -He held, with a faith buttressed in experience, that this same Christ, -who had made this demonstration of love, became after his resurrection -an invisible presence, a life-giving Spirit who could work and act as a -resident power within receptive, responsive, human spirits, and could -transform them into a likeness to himself and continue his revelation -of love wherever he should find such organs of revelation. If that, or -something like it, is true it is a very great truth. It was this that -good old William Dell meant when he said: “The believer is the only book -in which God himself writes his New Testament.” - - -II - -CONQUERING BY AN INNER FORCE - -There are few texts that have been more dynamic in the history of -spiritual religion than the one which forms the keynote of the message of -the little book of Habakkuk: “The righteous man lives by faith” (2:4). It -became the central feature of St. Paul’s message. It was the epoch-making -discovery in Luther’s experience, and it has always been the guiding -principle of Protestant Christianity. - -The profound significance of the words is often missed because the text -is so easily turned into a phrase that is supposed just of itself to work -a kind of magic spell, and secondly because the meaning of “faith” is so -frequently misinterpreted. When we go back to the original experience out -of which the famous text was born we can get fresh light upon the heart -of its meaning. The little book begins with a searching analysis of the -conditions of the time. With an almost unparalleled boldness the prophet -challenges God to explain why the times are so badly out of joint, why -the social order is so topsy-turvy, and why injustice is allowed to run a -long course unchecked. God seems unconcerned with affairs—the moral pilot -appears not to be steering things. - -Then comes a moment of mental relief. The prophet hits upon the -conclusion, arrived at by other prophets also, that God is about to use -the Chaldeans as a divine instrument to chastise the wicked element in -the nation, to right the wrongs of the disordered world, and to execute -judgment. But as he begins to reflect he becomes more perplexed than -ever. How can God, who is good, use such a terrible instrument for moral -purposes? This people, which is assumed to be an instrument of moral -judgment in a disordered world, is itself unspeakably perverse. It is -fierce and wolfish. Its only god is might. It cares only for success. It -catches men, like fish, in its great dragnet, and “then he sacrificeth -unto his net and burneth incense unto his drag.” How can such a pitiless -and insolent people, dominated by pride and love of conquest, be used to -work out the ends of righteousness and to act for God who is too pure -even to look upon that which is evil and wrong? Here the prophet finds -himself suddenly up against the ancient problem of the moral government -of the universe and the deep mystery of evil in it. He cannot untangle -the snarled threads of his skein. No solution of the mystery lies at -hand. He decides to climb up into his “watch-tower” and wait for an -answer from God. If it does not come at once, he proposes to stay until -it does come—“if it tarry, wait for it; it will surely come.” At length -the vision comes, so clear that a man running can read it. It is just -this famous discovery of the great text that a man cannot hope to get the -world-difficulties all straightened out to suit him, he cannot in some -easy superficial way justify the ways of God in the course of history; -but, at least, he can live unswervingly and victoriously by his own -soul’s insight, the insight of faith that God can be trusted to do the -right thing for the universe which he is steering. It is beautifully -expressed in a well-known stanza of Whittier’s: - - “I know not where His islands lift - Their fronded palms in air; - I only know I cannot drift - Beyond His love and care.” - -Many things remain unexplained. The mysteries are not all dissipated. -But I see enough light to enable me to hold a steady course onward, and -I have an inner confidence in God which nothing in the outward world can -shatter. This is the message from Habakkuk’s watch-tower: There is a -faith which goes so far into the heart of things that a man can live by -it and stand all the water-spouts which break upon him. - -Josiah Royce once defined faith as an insight of the soul by which one -can stand everything that can happen to him, and that is what this text -means. You arrive at such a personal assurance of God’s character that -you can face any event and not be swept off your feet. If this is so, -it means that the most important achievement in a man’s career is the -attainment of just this inner vision, the acquisition of an interior -spiritual confidence which itself is the victory. - -William James used often to close his lecture courses at Harvard with -what he called a “Faith-ladder.” Round after round it went up from a mere -possibility of hope to an inner conviction strong enough to dominate -action. He would begin with some human faith which outstrips evidence and -he would say of it: It is at least not absurd, not self-contradictory, -and, therefore, it might be true under certain conditions, in some kind -of a world which we can conceive. It may be true even in this world and -under existing conditions. It is fit to be true; it ought to be true. The -soul in its moment of clearest insight feels that it must be true. It -shall be true, then, at least for me, for I propose to act upon it, to -live by it, to stake my existence on it. - -This watch-tower of Habakkuk is a similar faith-ladder. He sees no way -to explain why the good suffer, or to account for the catastrophes of -history, but at least he has found a faith in God which holds him like -adamant: “Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit -be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall -yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold and there shall -be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy -in the God of my salvation.... He will make me to walk upon mine high -places.” Faith like that is always contagious. The unshaken soul kindles -another soul who believes in his belief, and the torch goes from this man -on his watch-tower to St. Paul, and from him on to the great reformer, -and then to an unnamed multitude, who through their soul’s insight can -stand everything that may happen! - - -III - -LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ETERNAL - -Some time ago I received a letter from a young minister who was about to -settle for religious work in a large manufacturing town. He and I were -strangers to each other in the flesh but friends through correspondence, -and because we were kindred spirits he wrote to me to say: “I have before -me the great work of living in the eternal God and in a humanity toiling -in factories and shops. Oh, if I could only make the presence of the -Eternal real to myself and to my people!” Another minister, laboring in -a large suburb of New York City, also a stranger to me except through -correspondence, wrote to say that he was glad for every voice which -holds up before men the reality of the invisible Church and the idea of -the universal priesthood of believers. These letters coming within a -week—and they are samples of many similar ones—are signs of the times, -and show clearly that thoughtful men all about us are done with the husk -of religion and are devoting themselves to the heart of the matter. There -is a deep movement under way which touches all denominations and is -steadily preparing in our busy, hurrying, materialistic America a true -seed of the vital, spiritual religion that will later bear rich blossoms -and ripe harvest. - -I want for the moment to return to the central desire of the young -minister, in the hope that it may inspire some of us, especially some of -our young ministers who are facing their new spiritual tasks: “I have -before me the great work of living in the eternal God and in a humanity -toiling in factories and shops. Oh, if I could only make the presence of -the Eternal real to myself and to them!” - -It is perhaps a new idea to some that living in the eternal God is -“work.” We are so accustomed to the idea that all that is required of us -is a passive mind and a waiting spirit that we have never quite realized -this truth: No person can live in the eternal God unless he is ready for -the most intense activity and for the most strenuous life. Gladstone, -in his old age, surprised his readers with his impressive phrase, “the -work of worship.” The fact is, no man ever yet found his way into the -permanent enjoyment of God along paths of least resistance or by any lazy -methods. How many of us have been humiliated to discover, in the silence -or in the service, that nothing spiritual was happening within us. Our -mind, unbent and passive enough, was like a stagnant pool, or, if not -stagnant, was darting its feelers out and following in lazy fashion any -line of suggestion which pulled it. Instead of finding ourselves “living -in the eternal God” and in the high enjoyment of him, we catch ourselves -wondering what the next strike will be, or thinking about the mean and -shabby way some one spoke to us an hour ago! There is no use blaming a -mind because it wanders—everybody’s mind wanders—but the real achievement -is to make it wander in a region which ministers to our spiritual life; -and that can be done only by getting supremely interested in the things -of the Spirit. That is where the “work” lies; that is where the effort -comes in. Attention is always determined by the fundamental interest. -What we love supremely we attend to. It gets us, it holds us. One of the -colloquial phrases for being in love with a person is “paying attention -to” the person. It is a true phrase and goes straight to reality. -If we are to discover and enjoy the eternal Presence we must become -passionately earnest in spirit and glowing with love for the Highest. - -My friend brings two important things together: He proposes to undertake -the work of living in the eternal God and in toiling humanity. The two -things go together and cannot be safely separated. It is in the actual -sharing of life through love and sympathy and sacrifice, in going out of -self to feel the problems and difficulties and sufferings of others, that -we find and form a life rich in higher interests and centered on matters -of eternal value. A man who has traveled through the deeps of life with -a fellow man comes to his hour of worship with a mind focused on the -Eternal and with a spirit girded for the inward wrestling, without which -blessings of the greater sort do not come. And every time such a man -finds himself truly at home in the eternal God and fed from within, he -can go out, with the strength of ten, to the tasks of toiling humanity. -This is one of those spiritual circles which work both ways: He that -dwells in God loves, and he that loves finds God, St. John tells us. - -It is fine to see a strong man, trained in all his faculties, going to -his work with the quiet prayer: “Oh, that I may make the presence of the -Eternal real to myself and to my people.” It is a good prayer for all of -us. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE WAY OF VISION - - -I - -DAYS OF GREATER VISIBILITY - -From the porch of my little summer cottage in Maine I can see, across the -beautiful stretch of lake in the foreground, the far-distant Kennebago -Mountains in their veil of purple. But we see them only when all the -conditions of sky and air are absolutely right. Most of the time they -are wrapped in clouds or are lost in a dim haze. Our visitors admire -the lake, are charmed with the islands, the picturesque shore and the -surrounding hills, but they do not suspect the existence of this added -glory beyond the hills. We often tell them of the mountains “just over -there,” which come out into full view when the sky clears all the way -to the horizon and the wind blows fine from the northwest. They make a -casual remark about the sufficiency of what is already in sight, and go -their way in satisfied ignorance of the “beyond.” - -Next day, perhaps—Oh wonder! The morning dawns with all the conditions -favorable for our distant view. The air is altogether right for far -visibility. The clouds are swept clean from the western rim, the blue is -utterly transparent—and there are the mountains! We wish our skeptical -visitors could be with us now. We guess that they would not easily -talk of the sufficiency of the near beauty, if they could once see the -overtopping glory of these mountains now fully unveiled and revealed. -Something like that, I feel sure, is true of God and of other great -spiritual realities which are linked with his being. Most of the time -we get on with the things that are near at hand; the things we see and -handle and are sure of. The world is full of utility and we do well to -appreciate what is there waiting to be used. There is always something -satisfying about beauty, and nature is very rich and lavish with it. -Friendship and love are heavenly gifts, and when these are added to the -other good things which the world gives us, it would seem, and it does -seem, to many that we ought to be satisfied and not be homesick for the -glory which lies beyond the horizon-line of the senses. I cannot help -it; my soul will not stay satisfied with this near-at-hand supply. A -discontent sweeps over me, an uncontrollable _Heimweh_—homesickness of -soul—surges up within me and I should be compelled to call the whole -scheme miserable failure, if the near, visible skyline were the real -boundary of all that is. - -Sometimes—Oh joy! When the inward weather is just right; when selfish -impulse has been hushed; when the clouds and shadows, which sin makes, -are swept away and genuine love makes the whole inner atmosphere pure and -free from haze, then I know that I find a beyond which before was nowhere -in sight and might easily not have been suspected. I cannot decide -whether this extended range of sight is due to alterations in myself, -or whether it is due to some sudden increase of spiritual visibility in -the great reality itself. I only know the fact. Before, I was occupied -with things; now, I commune with God and am as sure of him as I am of the -mountains beyond my lake, which my skeptical visitor has not yet seen. - -There can be no adequate world here for us without at least a faith in -the reality beyond the line of what we see with our common eyes. We have -times when we cannot live by bread alone, or by our increase of stocks; -when we lose our interest in cosmic forces and need something more -than the slow justice which history weighs out on its great judgment -days. We want to feel a real heart beating somewhere through things; we -want to discover through the maze a loving will working out a purpose; -we want to know that our costly loyalties, our high endeavors, and our -sacrifices which make the quivering flesh palpitate with pain, really -matter to Someone and fill up what is behind of his great suffering for -love’s sake. We can not get on here with substitutes; we must have the -reality itself. Religion is an awful farce if it is only a play-scheme, a -cinematograph-show, which makes one believe he is seeing reality when he -is, in fact, being fooled with a picture. We must at all costs insist on -the real things. It is God we want and not another, the real Face and not -a picture. - - “We needs must love the highest when we see it; - Not Lancelot nor another.” - -He is surely there to be seen, like my mountain. Days may pass when we -only hope and long and guess. Then the weather comes right, the veil -thins away and we see! It is, however, not a rare privilege reserved for -a tiny few. It is not a grudged miracle, granted only to saints who have -killed out all self. It belongs to the very nature of the soul to see -God. It is what makes life really life. It is as normal a function as -breathing or digestion. Only one must, of all things, intend to do it! - - -II - -THE PROPHET AND HIS TRAGEDIES - -There will always be in the world a vast number of persons who take the -most comfortable form of religion which their generation affords. They -are not path-breakers; they have nothing in their nature which pushes -them into the fields of discovery—they are satisfied with the religion -which has come down to them from the past. They accept what others have -won and tested, and are thankful that they are saved the struggle and the -fire which are involved in first-hand experience and in fresh discovery. - -The prophet, on the contrary, in whatever age he comes, can never take -this easy course. He cannot rest contented with the forms of religion -which are accepted by others. He cannot enjoy the comforts of the calm -and settled faith which those around him inherit and adopt. His soul -forever hears the divine call to leave the old mountain and go forward, -to conquer new fields, to fight new battles, to restate his faith in -words that are fresh and vital, in terms of the deepest life of his time. -We used to think—many people still think—that a prophet is a foreteller -of future events, a kind of magical and miraculous person who speaks -as an oracle and who announces, without knowing how or why, far-off, -coming occurrences that are communicated to him. To think thus is to miss -the deeper truth of the prophet’s mission. He is primarily a religious -patriot, a statesman with a moral and spiritual policy for the nation. -He is a person who sees what is involved in the eternal nature of things -and therefore what the outcome of a course of life is bound to be. He -possesses an unerring eye for curves of righteousness or unrighteousness, -as the great artist has for lines of beauty and harmony, or as the great -mathematician has for the completing lines of a curve, involved in any -given arc of it. He is different from others, not in the fact that he -has ecstasies and lives in the realm of miracles, but rather that he has -a clearer conviction of God than most men have. He has found him as the -center of all reality. He reads and interprets all history in the light -of the indubitable fact of God, and he estimates life and deeds in -terms of moral and spiritual laws, which are as inflexible as the laws -of chemical atoms or of electrical forces. He looks for no capricious -results. He sees that this is a universe of moral and spiritual order. - -If he is an Amos, he will refuse to fall in line with the easy worshipers -of his age, who are satisfied with the old-time religion of “burnt -offerings” and “meat offerings” and “peace offerings of fat beasts.” His -soul will cry out for a religion which makes a new moral and spiritual -man, “makes righteousness run down as a mighty stream,” and sets the -worshiper into new social relations with his fellows. If he is an Isaiah, -he will refuse “to tramp the temple” with the mass of easy worshipers; -he will have his own vision of “the Lord high and lifted up,” with his -glory filling not only the temple but the whole earth, and he will -dedicate himself to the task of preparing a holy people and a holy city -for this God who has been revealed to him as a thrice-holy God. If he is -a Jeremiah, he will not accept the view that the traditional religion of -Jerusalem is adequate for the crisis of the times. He will insist that -true religion must be inwardly experienced; that the law of God must be -written in the heart, and that the life of a man must be the living -fruit of his faith. He will cry out against the idea that the moral -wounds and spiritual sores of the daughter of Jerusalem can be healed -with easy salves and cheap panaceas. - -The supreme example of this refusal to go along the easy line of -contemporary religion is that of One who was more than a prophet. His -people prided themselves on being the chosen people of the Lord. The -scribal leaders had succeeded in drawing up a complete and perfect -catalogue of religious performances. They supplied minute directions for -one’s religious duty in every detail, real or imaginary, of daily life, -and the world has never seen a more elaborate form of religion than this -of the Pharisees. But Christ refused to follow the path of custom; he -could not and he would not do the things which the scribes prescribed. He -broke a new path for the soul, and called men away from legalism and the -dead routine of “performances” to a life of individual faith and service, -which involves suffering and self-sacrifice, but which brings the soul -into personal relation with the living God. - -St. Paul, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a rabbinical scholar of the first -rank, a man rising stage by stage to fame along the path marked out by -the traditions of his people, came back from his eventful journey to -Damascus to take up the work of a path-breaker and to set himself like -a flint against the old-time religion in which he was born and reared. -Luther, a devout monk, an ambassador to the papal court, a professor of -scholastic theology, discovered that he could not find peace to his soul -along the path of the prevailing traditional religion, and he swung, -with all the fervor of his powerful nature, into a fresh track which -has blessed all ages since. These are some of the supreme leaders, but -every age has had its quota of minor prophets, who have heard the call to -leave the old mountain and go forward and who have fearlessly entered the -perilous and untried path of fresh vision. As we look back and see them -in the perspective of their successful mission to the race, we thank God -for their bravery and their valiant service, but we are apt to forget the -tragedies of their lives. - -Nobody can enter a fresh path, or bring a new vision of the meaning of -life, or reinterpret old truths—in short, nobody can be a prophet—without -arousing the suspicion and, sooner or later, the bitter hatred of those -who are the keepers and guardians of the existing forms and traditions, -and the path-breaker must expect to see his old friends misunderstand -him, turn against him, and reproach him. He must endure the hard -experience of being called a destroyer of the very things he is giving -his life to build. Christ is, for example, hurried to the cross as a -blasphemer, and each prophet, in his degree, has had to hear himself -charged with being the very opposite of what he really is in heart and -life. To be a prophet at all he must be a sensitive soul, and yet he must -live and work in a pitiless rain of misunderstanding and attack. Still -more tragic, perhaps, is the necessity which the prophet is under of -doing his hard tasks without living to see the triumphant results. He is, -naturally, ahead of his time—a path-breaker—and his contemporaries are -always slow to discover and to realize what he is doing. Even those who -love him and appreciate him only half see his true purpose, and thus he -feels alone and solitary, though he may be in the thick of the throng. -It is only when he is long dead and the mists have cleared away that he -is called a prophet and comes to his true place. While he lived he was -sure of only one Friend who completely understood him and approved of his -course, and that was his invisible and heavenly Friend. But in spite of -the tragedy and the pain and the hard road, the prophet, “seeing him who -is invisible,” prefers to all other paths, however easy and popular, the -path of his vision and call. - - -III - -A LONG DISTANCE CALL - -Just when life seems peculiarly crowded with items of complexity and -importance, the telephone rings a determined, significant kind of ring. -This is evidently no ordinary passing-the-time-of-day affair. I interrupt -my weighty concerns and take up the receiver with expectation. I say -“Hello!” but there is no answer, no human recognition. The wire hums and -buzzes, instruments click far away, plugs are pulled out and pushed in. -Little tiny scraps of remote, inane, unintelligible conversation between -unknown mortals furnish the only evidence I get that there is any human -purpose going forward in this strange world inside the telephone system -where I can see nothing happening. - -Suddenly a voice which is evidently hunting for me breaks in: “Is this -Mr. ——?” “Yes.” “Hold the wire, please.” I am led on with increasing -interest and confidence. Somebody somewhere miles away in this invisible -world of electrical connections is seeking for me. I forget the -multitudinous problems that were besieging me when the telephone first -rang, and I listen with suppressed breath and strained muscles. All I -get, however, is an immense confusion. There is no coherence or order to -anything that reaches me. Faint and far away in some still remoter center -than at first I hear clicks and buzzes, vague unmeaning noises, and the -dull thud of shifting plugs that connect the lines. Once more a kindly -voice breaks in on the confusion, a voice seeking after me from some -distant city: “Is this Mr. ——?” “Yes.” “Wait a minute.” - -I do wait a minute as patiently as I can. I dimly feel that we are -plunging out into yet remoter space, and that I am being connected up -with the person who all the time has been seeking me. A low hum of -the far-away wire is all I get to repay me for the long wait. I grow -impatient. I shout “Hello!” “Is anybody there?” “Do you want me?” Not a -word comes back, only endless, empty murmurs of people who have found one -another and are talking so far off that the sense is lost in the mere -broth of sounds. This dull world inside the telephone seems to be a mad -world of noise and confusion but no substance, no real correspondence. I -am on the verge of giving the whole business up and of returning to my -interrupted tasks, which at least were rational. - -Suddenly a voice breaks in, this time a voice I know and recognize. The -person who had been seeking me all the time, across these spaces and -over this network of interlaced wires, calls me by name, speaks words of -insight and intelligence, and gives me a message which moves me deeply -and raises the whole tone of my spirit. When finally I “hang up” and -return to the things in hand, I have renewed my strength and can work -with clearer head and faster pace. The pause has been like a pause in -a piece of music. It has been full of significance, and it has helped -toward a higher level. - -Something like this telephone experience happens in another and very -different sphere—a sphere where there are no wires. In the hush and -silence, when the conditions are right for it, it often seems as -though some one were trying to communicate with us, seeking for actual -correspondence with us. We turn from the din and turmoil of busy efforts -and listen for the voice. We listen intently and we hear—our own heart -beating. We feel the strain of our muscles across the chest. We push back -a little deeper and try again. We feel the tension of the skin over the -forehead and we note that we are pulling the eyeballs up and inward for -more concentrated meditation. All the muscles of the scalp are drawn -and we notice them perhaps for the first time. Strange little bits of -thought flit across the threshold of the mind. We catch glimpses of dim -ideas knocking at the windows for admission to the inner domain where -we live. Then, all of a sudden, we succeed in pushing further back. We -forget our strained muscles and are unconscious of the corporeal bulk of -ourselves. We get in past the flitting thoughts and the procession of -ideas contending for entrance. The track seems open for the Someone who -is seeking us no less certainly than we are seeking him. If we do not -hear our name called, and do not hear distinctly a message in well-known -words, we do at least feel that we have found a real Presence and have -received fresh vital energy from the creative center of life itself, so -that we come back to action, after our pause, restored, refreshed, and -“charged” with new force to live by. - -Some time ago a long distance call came to my telephone and I went -through all the stages of waiting and of confusion and finally heard the -clear voice calling me, but I could not get any answer back. I heard -perfectly across the five hundred intervening miles, but my correspondent -never got a single clear word from me. We found that something was wrong -with our transmitter. The connection was good, the line was pervious, the -seeking voice was at the other end, but I did not succeed in transmitting -what ought to have been said. Here is where most of us fail in this other -sphere—this inner wireless sphere—we are poor transmitters. We make the -connection, we receive the gift of grace, we are flooded with the incomes -of life and power and we freely take, but we do not give. We absorb and -accumulate what we can, but we transmit little of all that comes to us. -Our radius of out-giving influence is far too small. We need, on the one -hand, to listen deeper, to get further in beyond the tensions and the -noises, but on the other hand we need to be more radio-active, better -transmitters of the grace of God. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -THE WAY OF PERSONALITY - - -I - -ANOTHER KIND OF HERO - -A generation ago almost everybody read, at least once, Carlyle’s great -book on heroes. He gave us the hero as prophet, as priest, as poet, -as king, and he made us realize that these heroes have been the real -makers of human society. I should like to add a chapter on another kind -of hero, who has, perhaps, not done much to build cities and states and -church systems, but who has, almost more than anybody else, shown us the -spiritual value of endurance—I mean the hero as invalid. - -It is the hardest kind of heroism there is to achieve. Most of us know -some man—too often it is oneself—who is a very fair Christian when he is -in normal health and absorbed in interesting work, who carries a smooth -forehead and easily drops into a good-natured smile, but who becomes -“blue” and irritable and a storm center in the family weather as soon -as the bodily apparatus is thrown out of gear. Most of us have had a -taste of humiliation as we have witnessed our own defeat in the presence -of some thorn in the flesh, which stubbornly pricked us, even though we -prayed to have it removed and urged the doctor to hurry up and remove it. - -What a hero, then, must he be, who, with a weak and broken body, a -prey to pain and doomed to die daily, learns how to live in calm faith -that God is good and makes his life a center of cheer and sunshine! -The heroism of the battlefield and the man-of-war looks cheap and thin -compared with this. We could all rally to meet some glorious moment -when a trusted leader shouted to us, “Your country expects you to do -your duty!” But to drag on through days and nights, through weeks and -months, through recurring birthdays, with vital energy low, with sluggish -appetite, with none of that ground-swell of superfluous vigor which makes -healthy life so good, and still to prove that life is good and to radiate -joy and triumph—that is the very flower and perfume of heroism. If we -are making up a bead-roll of heroes, let us put at the top the names of -those quiet friends of ours who have played the man or revealed the woman -through hard periods of invalidism and have exhibited to us the fine -glory of a courageous spirit. - -One of the hardest and most difficult features to bear is the inability -to work at one’s former pace and with the old-time constructive power. -The prayer of the Psalmist that his work, the contribution of his life, -might be preserved is very touching: “Establish thou the work of our -hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” What can be -more tragic than the cry of Othello: “My occupation is gone!” So long as -the hand keeps its cunning and the mind remains clear and creative, one -can stand physical handicap and pain, but when the working power of mind -or body is threatened, then the test of faith and heroism indeed arrives. - -A man whose life meant much to me and whose intimacy was very precious -to me made me see many years ago how wonderfully this test could be -met. He was a great teacher, the head of a distinguished boys’ school. -He was experiencing the full measure of success, and his influence over -his boys was extraordinary. He realized, as his work went on, that his -hearing was becoming dull and was steadily failing. He went to New York -and consulted a famous specialist. After making a careful examination the -specialist said, with perfect frankness: “Your case is hopeless. Nothing -can be done to check the disaster. You are hard of hearing already, but -in a very short time you will have no hearing at all.” Without a quaver -the teacher said: “Don’t you think, doctor, that I shall hear Gabriel’s -trumpet when it blows!” He went back to his school, learned to read lips, -reorganized his life, accepted without a murmur his loss of a major -sense, and finished his splendid career of work in an undefeated spirit -and with a grace and joy which were envied by many persons in possession -of all their powers. - -All my readers will think of some “star player” in this hard game of -patience and endurance, and will have watched with awe and reverence the -glorious fight of some of those unrecorded heroes who won but got no -valor medal. The only person who ranks higher in the scale of heroism -than the hero as invalid is possibly the person who patiently, lovingly -nurses and cares for some invalid through years of decline and suffering. -Generally, though not always, it is a woman. Not seldom she is called -upon to consecrate her life to the task, and often she gives what is much -more precious than life itself. We build no monuments to daughters who -unmurmuringly forego the joy of married life, who refuse the suit of -love in order to be free to ease the closing years of father or mother, -grown helpless; but where is there higher consecration or finer heroism? -Men sometimes complain that the days of chivalry and heroism are past. On -the contrary, they are more truly dawning. As Christianity ripens love -grows richer and deeper, and where love appears heroism is always close -at hand. Our best heroes are mothers and wives and daughters, fathers and -husbands and sons. - - -II - -THE BETTER POSSESSION - -During one of the intense persecutions by which an early Roman emperor -harried the Christians of the first century, some unknown writer (Harnack -thinks It was a woman) wrote an extraordinary little book to hearten -those who were undergoing the trial of their faith. I mean, of course, -the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is marked by rare genius and by undoubted -inspiration. It is full of vital messages and it contains passages of -great power. Just before the most loved section of the little book—the -account of the faith-heroes—the author, in a passage open to a variety -of translations, refers to the fact that those to whom he is writing -have suffered, and have suffered joyfully, the spoiling of their -possessions, “knowing,” he says, “that you have your own selves for a -better possession”—you yourselves are a better possession than any of -those goods which you have lost for your faith. - -I wonder if the readers fully realized the truth, or if we should to-day -realize it had we suffered a similar stripping. We are very slow to take -account of that type of stock. We are very keen about our own assets, -but we often fail to prize this supreme ownership, the possession of -ourselves. There is a story, both sad and amusing, of an insane man who -was seen wildly rushing about the house, from room to room, looking in -cupboards and clothes-presses, crawling under beds, obviously searching -for something. When questioned as to what he was so frantically looking -for, he replied, “I am trying to find my self!” It is not as mad as it -seems. I am not sure but that we who are not trying to find ourselves are -after all more crazy still. - -Old Burton, who wrote _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, well said: - - “Men look to their tools; a painter will wash his pencils; a - smith will look to his hammer, anvil, and forge; a husbandman - will mend his plow-irons and grind his hatchet, if it be dull; - a musician will string and unstring his lute; only scholars - neglect that instrument, their brains and spirits I mean, which - they daily use.” - -Not scholars only, but all classes and conditions of men are guilty -of this strange insanity. If the Duke of Westminster should offer to -transfer to us his estates, we would rush with all conceivable speed to -acquire our new potential possessions. We would go as with wings of an -aeroplane to get the transaction accomplished before anything could occur -to keep us from entering into our fortune. But here we are already within -reach of a vastly better possession, of which we are strangely negligent. -If it came to a choice between himself and his outward possessions, this -duke who owns so much would not hesitate a minute which to prefer. If in -a crisis of illness he could save himself by surrender of his goods, they -would instantly go. “Give me health and a day,” Emerson said, “and I will -make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.” - -What we would do in a crisis we often fail to do when no crisis confronts -us, and it is a fact that too often we miss and even squander that -better possession, ourselves. The best way to win it and enjoy it is -to cultivate those inner experiences and endowments which make us -independent of external fortune. All Christ’s beatitudes attach to some -inherent quality of life itself. The meek, the merciful, the pure, are -“happy,” not because the external world conforms to their wishes, but -because they have resources of life within themselves and have entered -upon a way of life which continually opens out into more life and richer -life. They have found a kind of Canaan that “comes” in continuous -instalments. - -One of the simplest ways to heighten the total value of life is to form -a habit of appreciating the world we have here and now. It presents -occasional inconveniences, no doubt, but think of the amazing donations -which come to us: the tilting of the earth’s axis twenty-three and a -half degrees to the ecliptic by which contrivance we have our seasons; -the fact that the proportion of earth and water is just right to give -us a fine balance of rain and sunshine; the extraordinary way in which -the entire universe submits to our mathematics so that every movement of -matter and every vibration of ether conforms to laws which we formulate; -the accumulation and storage of fuel and motor power, with the prospect -of even greater resources of energy to be had from the unoccupied space -surrounding the earth. Then, again, it cannot be a matter of unconcern -that there is such a wealth of beauty lavished upon us everywhere, -waiting for us to enjoy it. There is here a strange fit between the outer -and the inner. The more one draws upon the beauty of the world and enjoys -it, so much the more does he increase his capacity to discover and enjoy -beauty. Coal and oil may become exhausted, but beauty is inexhaustible. -The only trouble is that we are so limited in our range of appreciation -of it. We turn to cheaper values and miss so much of this free gift of -loveliness. - -Greater still should be our resources of love and friendship. Nothing -could be stranger or more wonderful than that in a world where struggle -for existence is the law this other trait should have emerged. It is -easy to explain selfishness; love is the mystery. Love forgets itself; -it scorns double-entry bookkeeping; it gives, it bestows, it shares, it -sacrifices without asking whether anything is coming back. And it turns -out to be a fact that nothing else so enhances and increases the value of -this “better possession which is ourselves.” - -Even more wonderful, if that is possible, is the way we are formed -and contrived to have intercourse with the Eternal. With all our -material furnishings we strangely open out into the infinite and -partake of a spiritual nature. God has set eternity in our hearts. We -cannot win this better possession nor hold it permanently unless we -exercise these spiritual capacities, which expand our being and add the -richest qualities of life. “Thou hast made us for thyself,” Augustine -acknowledged in his great prayer at the opening of the _Confessions_ and -“we are restless until we find thee as our true rest.” It is as true now -as in the fourth century. Barns and houses, lands and stocks, mortgages -and bonds, do not constitute life unless one learns how to win and -possess his soul and to keep that best of all possessions—himself. - - -III - -THE GREATEST RIVALRIES OF LIFE - -“After experience had taught me that all things which are encountered in -human life are vain and futile.... I at length determined to inquire if -there was anything which was a true good.” Those are the words of a great -philosopher who says that he found himself “led by the hand up to the -highest blessedness.” - -Not everybody finds the choice of ends so easy as Spinoza did; not all of -us are carried along into sustained and unmistakable blessedness. Life -is full of rivalries which tend to divide our interest and to dissipate -our attention. We wake up, perhaps, with surprise to discover that we -are being carried, by the hand or by the hair, straight away from “the -highest blessedness.” Not seldom the sternest tragedies of human life are -occasioned by success. Failure overtaking one in his aim will often shake -him awake and make him see that he was pursuing an end in sharp rivalry -with his highest good. But success often dulls the vision for other -issues and gives one the specious confidence that he is on the right -track and “all’s well.” - -Christ has a vivid parable which touches upon the rivalries of life. It -is the story of a great feast to which many guests are invited. When -the critical moment for the dinner comes the other rivalries begin to -operate. One man, attracted by his possessions, “begs off,” to use the -graphic phrase of the original. Another, occupied with the complex -interests of business and busy with the affairs of trade, prays to be -excused. A third is immersed in the joys and responsibilities of married -life and he abruptly dispatches his “regrets.” It was not that they were -unconcerned about the sumptuous feast, but that they were carried along -by rival interests. - -The feast in this parable plainly stands for the “true good,” the -“highest blessedness” of life. It symbolizes the goal and crown of life, -the full realization of our best human possibilities, the attainment of -that for which we were made aspiring beings. The invitation is a mark -of amazing grace and the recipient of it has the clearest evidence that -the feast would satisfy him. But there are the other things with their -rival attractions! Possessions and business and domestic life pull us in -a contrary direction. We send our cards of regret and beg off from the -great feast. - -The real mistake lies in treating these things as rivals. If we only -knew it, an affirmative response to the great invitation of life would -prepare us for all the other things and would heighten the value of all -we own, of all we do, and of all we love. Salvation is not some remote -and ghostly thing that has to do with another world. It is the infusion -of new life and power into all the concerns and affairs of this present -world where we are. It means, as Christ said, receiving “a hundredfold -now in this time, houses and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and -children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal -life.” - -Nothing could be a more mistaken way than to regard human love as a -rival to the highest of all relations, the love of the soul for God. -One of the medieval saints said: “God brooks no rival”; but that phrase -shows that the saint was caught napping, and in any case did not quite -understand what love is. The way up to the highest love is not to be -found by turning away from those experiences which give us training -and preparation for the highest; but rather it is found in and through -the experience of loving some person who, however imperfectly, is a -revelation of the beauty and divineness of love. Not by some sheer leap -from the earth does the soul arrive at its height of blessedness, but by -steps and stages, by processes which bring illumination and richness of -life. The man who has married a wife will do well to say when he answers -the great invitation: “I have just married a wife and therefore I am -peculiarly glad to come to thy feast, since fellowship with thee will -make my love more real and true as that in turn will enable me to rise to -a more genuine appreciation of thy love.” - -The same is true of houses and lands, of business and trade. There is no -necessary rivalry here. Religion does not rob us of earthly interests, -it does not strip us of the good things of this world. It only corrects -our perspective and enables us to see the true scale of values. The -trivial and fragmentary things of the world no longer absorb us. We -refuse now to allow them to own us and drive us, or drag us. We see -things steadily and we see them whole. We discover through our higher -contacts and inspirations how to flood light back upon our occupations -and upon the things we own, and how to make these subordinate things -minister to the higher functions and attitudes of life. We get not some -other world, but this world here and now transmuted and raised a little -nearer to the ideal and perfect world of our hopes and dreams. We get it -back item for item increased a hundredfold, raised to a higher spiritual -level. The wise owner of property and the intelligent man of affairs will -not beg off when the great invitation comes to him. He will say: “I have -just come into possession of a piece of land, I have bought five yoke -of oxen, and therefore I want to come to thy divine feast so that I may -learn how to turn all I possess into the channels of real service and to -make these things which thou hast given me help me find the way to the -highest joy and blessedness of life.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -AGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION - - -I - -THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD - -We have all been asking, “What is the matter with the Church? Why is it -so weak and ineffective? Why does it exercise such a feeble influence -in the world to-day? Why do men care so little for its message and its -mission?” There are no doubt many answers to these questions, but one -answer concerns us here. It is this: We who compose the Church do not -sufficiently realize that God is a living God and that the Church is -intended to be the living body through which he works in the world and -through which he reveals himself. We think of him as far away in space -and remote in time, a God who created once and who worked wonders in -ancient times long past, but we do not, as we should, vividly think of -him as a living reality, as near to us as the air is to the flying bird -or the water to the swimming fish. We suppose that the Church is made -up of just people, and is a human convenience for getting things done in -the world. We do not see as we should that it is meant to be both divine -and human and that it never is properly a Church unless God lives in it, -reveals himself by means of it and works his spiritual work in the world -through it. - -This truth of the real Presence breaks through many of Christ’s great -sayings and was one of the most evident features of the experience of the -early Church. “Wherever in all the world two or three shall gather in my -name there am I in the midst of them.” “Lo, I am with you always, even -unto the end of the world.” “Wherever there is one alone,” according to -the newly found “saying” of Jesus, “I am with him. Raise the stone and -there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there am I.” - -Not once alone was the early Church invaded by a life and power from -beyond itself as at Pentecost. The consciousness which characterized this -“upper room” experience was repeated in some degree wherever a Church -of the living God came into existence, as “a tiny island in a sea of -surrounding paganism.” To belong to the Church meant to St. Paul to be -“joined to the Lord in one spirit,” while the Church itself in his great -phrase is the body of Christ and each individual a member in particular -of that body. - -What a difference it would make if we could rise to the height of St. -Paul’s expectation and be actually “builded together for an habitation -of God through the Spirit!” We try plenty of other expedients. We -popularize our message; we take up fads; we adjust as far as we can to -the tendencies of the time; but only one thing really works after all and -that is having the Church become the organ of the living God, and having -it “charged” with what Paul so often calls the power of God—“the power -that worketh in us.” - -I saw a car wheel recently that had been running many miles with the -brake clamped tight against it. It was white hot and it glowed with -heat and light until it seemed almost transparent in its extraordinary -luminosity. Those Christians in the upper room at Pentecost were baptized -with fire so that the whole personality of each of them was glowing with -heat and light, for the fire had gone all through them. They suddenly -became conscious that their divine Leader who was no longer visible -with them had become an invisible presence and a living power working -through them. It is no wonder that all Jerusalem and its multitudinous -sojourners were at once awakened to the fact that something novel had -happened. - -Our controversies which have divided us have been controversies about -things out at the periphery, not about realities at the heart and center. -We disagree about baptism, and we are at variance over problems of -organization, ministry, and ordination, but the thing that really matters -is the depth of conviction, consciousness of God, certainty of communion -and fellowship with the Spirit. These experiences unite and never divide. - -There is after all, in spite of all our gaps and chasms, only one Church. -It is the Church of the living God. We are named with many names. We bear -the sign of a particular denomination, but if we belong truly to the -Church, then we belong to the great Church of the living God. It is built -upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself -being the chief cornerstone, in whom the building, fitly framed together, -grows into an holy temple in the Lord. This is “the blessed community,” -the living, expanding fellowship of vital faith, and it has the promise -of the future, whether conferences on “faith and order” succeed or not, -because it is the Church of the living God. - - -II - -THE NURSERY OF SPIRITUAL LIFE - -We are coming more and more to realize that religion attaches to the -simple, elemental aspects of our human life. We shall not look for it in -a few rare, exalted, and so-called “sacred” aspects of life, separated -off from the rest of life and raised to a place apart. Religion to be -real and vital must be rooted in life itself and it must express itself -through the whole life. It should begin, where all effective education -must begin, in the home, which should be the nursery of spiritual life. - -The Christian home is the highest product of civilization; in fact there -is nothing that can be called civilization where the home is absent. The -savage is on his way out of savagery as soon as he can create a home and -make family life at all sacred. The real horror of the “slums” in our -great cities is that there are no homes there, but human beings crowded -indiscriminately into one room. It is the real trouble with the “poor -whites” whether in the South or in the North that they have failed to -preserve the home as a sacred center of life. - -One of the first services of the foreign missionary is to help to -establish homes among the people whom he hopes to Christianize. In short, -the home is the true unit of society. It determines what the individual -shall be; it shapes the social life; it makes the Church possible; it is -the basis of the state and nation. A society of mere individual units is -inconceivable. Men and women, each for self, and with no holy center for -family life, could never compose either a Church or a State. - -Christianity has created the home as we know it, and that is its highest -service to the world, for the kingdom of heaven would be realized if -the Christian home were universal. The mother’s knee is still the -holiest place in the world; and the home life determines more than all -influences combined what the destiny of the boy or girl shall be. The -formation of disposition and early habits of thought and manner as well -as the fundamental emotions and sentiments do more to shape and fix the -permanent character than do any other forces in the world. - -We may well rejoice in the power of the Sunday school, the Christian -ministry, the secular school, the college, the university; but all -together they do not measure up to the power of the homes which are -silently, gradually determining the future lives of those who will -compose the Sunday school, the Church, the school, and the college. - -The woman who is successful in making a true home, where peace and love -dwell, in which the children whom God gives her feel the sacredness and -holy meaning of life, where her husband renews his strength for the -struggles and activities of his life, and in which all unite to promote -the happiness and highest welfare of each other—that woman has won the -best crown there is in this life, and she has served the world in a -very high degree. The union of man and woman for the creation of a home -breathing an atmosphere of love is Christ’s best parable of the highest -possible spiritual union where the soul is the bride and he is the -Eternal Bridegroom, and they are one. - -It seems strange that these vital matters are so little emphasized or -regarded. Few things in fact are more ominous than the signs of the -disintegration of the home as a nursery of spiritual life. We can, -perhaps, weather catastrophes which may break down many of our ancient -customs and even obliterate some of the institutions which now seem -essential to civilization; but the home is a fundamental necessity for -true spiritual nurture and culture, and if it does not perform its -function the world will drift on toward unspeakable moral disasters. - - -III - -THE DEMOCRACY WE AIM AT - -Democracy was in an earlier period only a political aim; it has now -become a deep religious issue. It must be discussed not only in caucuses -and conventions, but in churches as well. For a century and a quarter -“democracy” has been a great human battle word, and battle words never -have very exact definitions. It has all the time been charged with -explosive forces, and it has produced a kind of magic spell on men’s -minds during this long transitional period. But the word democracy has, -throughout this time, remained fluid and ill-defined—sometimes expressing -the loftiest aspirations and sometimes serving the coarse demagogue in -his pursuit of selfish ends. - -The goal or aim of the early struggle after democracy was the overthrow -of human inequalities. Men were thought of in terms of individual -units, and the units were declared to be intrinsically equal. The -contention was made that they all had, or ought to have, the same rights -and privileges. This equality-note has, too, dominated the social and -economic struggles of the last seventy-five years. The focus has been -centered upon rights and privileges. Men have been thought of, all along, -as individual units, and the goal has been conceived in political and -economic terms. Democracy is still supposed, in many quarters, to be an -organization of society in which the units have equal political rights. -Much of the talk concerning democracy is still in terms of privileges. -It is a striving to secure opportunities and chances. The aim is the -attainment of a social order in which guarantee is given to every -individual that he shall have his full economic and political rights. - -I would not, in the least, belittle the importance of these claims, -or underestimate the human gains which have been made thus far in the -direction of greater equality and larger freedom. But these achievements, -however valuable, are not enough. They can only form the base from which -to start the drive for a more genuine and adequate type of democracy. At -its best this scheme of “equality” is abstract and superficial. Nobody -will ever be satisfied with an achievement of flat equality. Persons can -never be reduced to homogeneous units. There are individual differences -woven into the very fiber of human life, and no type of democracy can -ever satisfy men like us until it gets beyond this artificial scheme and -learns to deal with the problem in more adequate fashion. - -A genuinely Christian democracy such as the religious soul is after can -not be conceived in economic terms, nor can it be content with social -units of equality or sameness. We want a democracy that is vitally and -spiritually conceived, which recognizes and safeguards the irreducible -uniqueness of every member of the social whole. This means that we can -not deal with personal life in terms of external behavior. We can not -think of society as an aggregation of units possessing individual rights -and privileges. We shall no longer be satisfied to regard persons as -beings possessing utilitarian value or made for economic uses. We shall -forever transcend the instrumental idea. We shall begin rather with -the inalienable fact of spiritual worth as the central feature of the -personal life. This would mean that every person, however humble or -limited in scope or range, has divine possibilities to be realized; is -not a “thing” to be used and exploited, but a spiritual creation to be -expanded until its true nature is revealed. The democracy I want will -treat every human person as a unique, sacred, and indispensable member -of a spiritual whole, a whole which remains imperfect if even one of -its “little ones” is missing; and its fundamental axiom will be the -liberation and realization of the inner life which is potential in every -member of the human race. - -On the economic and equality level we never reach the true conception -of personal life. Men are thought of as units having desires, needs, -and wants to be satisfied. We are, on this basis, aiming to achieve a -condition in which the desires, wants, and needs are well met, in which -each individual contributes his share of supplies to the common stock of -economic values, and receives in turn his equitable amount. I am dealing, -on the other hand, with a way of life which begins and ends, not with a -material value-concept at all, but rather with a central faith in the -intrinsic worth and infinite spiritual possibilities of every person in -the social organism—a democracy of spiritual agents. - -It is true, no doubt, as Shylock said, that we all have “eyes, hands, -organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,” are “subject to -diseases,” and “warmed and cooled by summer and winter.” “If you prick -us we bleed, if you tickle us we laugh, if you poison us we die,” and so -on. We do surely have wants and needs. We must consider values. We must -have food and clothes and houses. We must have some fair share of the -earth and its privileges. But that is only the basement and foundation -of real living, and we want a democracy that is supremely concerned with -the development of personality and with the spiritual organization of -society. We shall not make our estimates of persons on a basis of their -uses, or on the ground of their behavior as animal beings; we shall -live and work, if we are Christ’s disciples, in the faith that man is -essentially a spiritual being, in a world which is essentially spiritual, -and that we are committed to the task of awakening a like faith in others -and of helping realize an organic solidarity of persons who practice -this faith. Our rule of life would be something like the following: to -act everywhere and always as though we knew that we are members of a -spiritual community, each one possessed of infinite worth, of irreducible -uniqueness, and indispensable to the spiritual unity of the whole—a -community that is being continually enlarged by the faith and action of -those who now compose it, and so in some measure being formed by our -human effort to achieve a divine ideal. - -The most important service we can render our fellow men is to awaken -in them a real faith in their own spiritual nature and in their own -potential energies, and to set them to the task of building the ideal -democracy in which personality is treated as sacred and held safe from -violation, infringement, or exploitation, and, more than that, in which -we altogether respect the worth and the divine hopes inherent in our -being as men. - - -IV - -THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY - -There are few questions more difficult to answer than the question, What -is Christianity? Every attempt to answer it reveals the peculiar focus of -interest in the mind of the writer, but it leaves the main question still -asking for a new answer. - -“Always it asketh, asketh,” and each answer, to say the least, is -inadequate. Harnack, Loisy, and Tolstoy have given three characteristic -answers to the great question. Their books are touched with genius and -will long continue to be read, but, like the other books, they, too, -reveal the writers rather than solve the central problem. - -One of the greatest difficulties about the whole matter is the difficulty -of deciding where to look for the essential traits of Christianity. -Are they to be found in the teaching of Jesus? Are they revealed in -the message of St. Paul? Are they embodied in the Messianic hope? Are -they exhibited in the primitive apostolic Church? Are they set forth -in the great creeds of orthodoxy? Are they expressed in the imperial -authoritative Church? Are they to be discovered in the Protestantism -of the modern world? This catalogue of preliminary questions shows how -complicated the subject really is. To start in on any one of these lines -would be of necessity to arrive at a partial and one-sided answer. - -Nowhere can we find pure and unalloyed Christianity; always we have -it mixed and combined with something else, more or less foreign to -it. The creeds contain a larger element of Greek philosophy than of -the pure original gospel. The Messianic hope is far more Jewish than -it is “Christian.” The imperial authoritative Church is Christianity -interpreted through the Roman genius for organization and merged -and fused with the age-long faiths and customs of pagan peoples. -Protestantism is an amazingly complex blend of ideas and ideals and -everywhere interwoven with the long processes of history. Even this did -not drop from the sky ready-made! Nor did St. Paul’s message flash in -upon him with the Damascus vision, as a pure heaven-presented truth. It -proves to be a very difficult task to find one’s way back to the pure, -unalloyed teaching of Jesus, and, strangely enough, the moment one -endeavors to constitute this by itself “Christianity,” and undertakes to -turn it into a set of commands and to make it a “new law,” he ends with a -dry legalism and not a vital, universal Christianity. - -What, then, is Christianity? In answering this question we can not -confine ourselves to the teaching and the work of Jesus. Important as it -is to go “back to Jesus” that is not enough. We can not fully comprehend -the meaning of Christianity until we take into account the fact that -the invisible, resurrected Christ is the continuation through the ages -of the same revelation begun in the life and teaching of Jesus. Galilee -and Judea mark only one stage of the gospel, which is, in its fullness, -an eternal gospel. The Christian revelation which came to light first -in one Life—its master interpretation and incarnation—has since been -going forward in a continuous and unbroken manifestation of Christ -through many lives and through many groups and through the spiritual -achievements of all those who have lived by him. Christianity is, thus, -the revelation of God through personal life—God humanly revealed. St. -Paul and the writer of the Fourth Gospel were the first to reach this -profound insight into its fuller meaning, though it is plainly suggested -in some of the sayings of Jesus and in the pentecostal experiences of the -first Christians. It is the very heart of the Pauline and the Johannine -Christianity. Important as is the backward look to Jesus in both these -writers, the central emphasis is unmistakably upon the inward experience -of the invisible, spiritual Christ. This is the expectation in the Fourth -Gospel: Greater things than these shall ye do when the Spirit comes upon -you. This is the mystery, the secret of the gospel, St. Paul says, Christ -in you. - -If this is the right clew, Christianity is not a new law, nor an -institution, nor a creed, nor a body of doctrine, nor a millennial -hope. It is a type of life, it is a way of living. The most essential -thing about it is the fact of the incursion of God into human life, -the revelation of the eternal in the midst of time, the new discovery -which it brought of God’s nature and character. We nowhere else come so -close to the essential truth of Christianity as we do in the life and -experience of Jesus. The life at every point floods over and transcends -the teaching. He is the most complete and adequate exhibition of what I -have called the incursion of God into human life, but even so he is the -beginning, not the end, of the revelation of God through humanity—the -Christ-revelation of God—and this Christ-revelation of God _is_ God, so -far as he is at all adequately known. - -Some persons talk as though God were a kind of composite Being, got by -adding up the God of the natural order, the God of the Old Testament, -and the God as Father about whom Jesus taught. He is, according to this -scheme, in some way a compound aggregate of infinite power, irresistible -justice, and eternal love. Sometimes one “attribute” is predominant, -and sometimes another, while in some mysterious way all the dissonant -attributes get “reconciled.” This is surely boggy ground to build upon. - -Christianity is essentially, I should say, a unique revelation of God. -Here for the first time the race discovers that God identifies himself -with humanity, is in the stream of it, is suffering with us, is in -moral conflict with sin and evil, is conquering through the travail -and tragedy of finite persons, and is eternally, in mind and heart and -will, a God of triumphing Love. No texts adequately “prove” this mighty -truth. We cannot tie it down to “sayings,” though there are “sayings” -which declare it. The life of Jesus, the supreme decisions through which -he expresses his purpose, the spirit which dominates him and guides his -decisive actions, make the truth plain that God meant _that_ to him and -that his way of life revealed that kind of God. - -Through all the fusions and confusions of history and through all the -vagaries of man’s tortuous course since the Church began to be built, -Christ as eternal Spirit has gone on revealing this truth about God and -demonstrating the victorious power of this way of life. The making of -a kingdom of God in the world, the spread of the brother-spirit, the -expansion of the love-method, the increase of coöperation, sympathy, -and service, the continued incursion of the divine into the life of the -human, these are the things now and always which indicate the vitality -and progress of Christianity, and the uninterrupted revelation of God. - -Always, in every period of history, the essential truth of Christianity -must be revealed and expressed in and through a medium not altogether -adapted to it. It is always living and working in a world more or less -alien to it. It has at any stage only partially realized its ideal, and -only achieved in a fragmentary way the goal toward which it is moving. -It means endless conquest and ever fresh winning of unwon victories. It -must be for us all a vision and a venture, it must be a thing of faith -and forecast. At the same time it is, in a very real sense, experience -and achievement. God _has_ entered into humanity. Love has revealed its -redeeming power. Grace is as much a reality as mountains are. The kingdom -of God though not all in sight yet is, I believe, as sure as gravitation. -The invisible, eternal Christ, living in the soul of man, revealing -his will in moral and spiritual victories in personal lives, is, I am -convinced, as genuine a fact as electricity is. But we shall see _all_ -that Christianity means only when the living totality of the revelation -of God through humanity is complete. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE NEAR AND THE FAR - - -I - -THINGS PRESENT AND THINGS TO COME - -Anaxagoras said twenty-five hundred years ago that men are always -cutting the world in two with a hatchet. William James, in one of his -living phrases, says with the same import that everybody dichotomizes -the cosmos. It is so. We all incline to bisect life into alternative -possibilities. We split realities into opposing halves. We show a kind -of fascination for an “either-or” selection. We are prone to use the -principle of parsimony, and to be content with one side of a dilemma. -History presents a multitude of dualistic pairs from which one was -supposed to make his individual selection. There was the choice between -this world and the next world; the here and the yonder; the flesh and the -spirit; faith and reason; the sacred and the secular; the outward and -the inward, and many more similar alternatives. This “either-or” method -always leaves its trail of leanness behind. It makes life thin and narrow -where it might be rich and broad, for in almost every case it is just as -possible to have a whole as to have a half, to take both as to select an -alternative. St. Paul found his Corinthians bisecting their spiritual -lives and narrowing their interests to one or two possibilities. One of -them would choose Paul as his representative of the truth and then see no -value in the interpretation which Apollos had to give. Another attached -himself to Apollos and missed all the rich contributions of Paul. Some of -the “saints” of the Church selected Cephas as the only oracle, and they -lost all the breadth which would have come to them had they been able -to make a synthesis of the opposing aspects. St. Paul called them from -their divided half to a completed whole. He told them that instead of -“either-or” they could have both. “All things are yours; whether Paul or -Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present or -things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” -This is the method of synthesis. This is the substitution of wholes for -halves, the proffer of both for an “either-or” alternative. - -That last pair of alternatives is an interesting one, and many persons -make their bisecting choice of life there. One well-known type of person -focuses on the near, the here and now, the things present. Those who -belong to this class propose to make hay while the sun shines. They glory -in being practical. They have what doctors call myopia. They see only the -near. Their lenses will not adjust for the remote. They believe in quick -returns and bank upon practical results. Those of the other type have -presbyopia, or far-sightedness. They are dedicated to the far-away, the -remote, the yonder. They are pursuing rainbows and distant ideals. They -are so eager for the millennium that they forget the problem of their -street and of the present day. Browning has given us a picture of both -these types: - - “That low man seeks a little thing to do, - Sees it and does it: - This high man, with a great thing to pursue, - Dies ere he knows it. - - That low man goes on adding one to one, - His hundred’s soon hit: - This high man, aiming at a million, - Misses an unit.” - -Browning’s sympathies are plainly with the “high man” who misses the -unit, but it is one more case of unnecessary dichotomy. What we want is -the discovery of a way to unite into one synthesis things present and -things to come. We need to learn how to seize this narrow isthmus of a -present and to enrich it with the momentous significance of past and -future. Henry Bergson has been telling us that all rich moments of life -are rich just because they roll up and accumulate the meaning of the past -and because they are crowded with anticipations of the future. They are -fused with memory and expectation, and one of these two factors is as -important as the other. If either dies away the present becomes a useless -half, like the divided parts of the child which Solomon proposed to -bisect for the two contending mothers. - -We are at one of those momentous ridges of time at the present moment. -Some are so busy with the near and immediately practical that they cannot -see the far vision of the world that is to be built. Others are so -impressed with past issues that have become paramount, with the glorious -memories of the blessed Monroe Doctrine, for instance, that they have no -expectant eyes for the creation of an interrelated and unified world. -Another group is so concerned with the social millennium that they -discount the lessons of the past, the message of history, the wisdom of -experience, and fly to the useless task of constructing abstract human -paradises and dreams of a world-kingdom which could exist only in a realm -where men had ceased to be men. - -What we want is a synthesis of things present and things to come, a union -of the practical, tested experience of life and the inspired vision of -the prophet who sees unfolding the possibilities of human life raised to -its fuller glory in Christ, the incarnation of the way of love, which -always has worked, is working now, and always will work. - - -II - -TWO TYPES OF MINISTRY - -Most people like to be told what they already think. They enjoy hearing -their own opinions and ideas promulgated, and no amens are so hearty as -the ones which greet the reannouncement of views we have already held. - -The natural result is that speakers are apt to give their hearers what -they want. They take the line of least resistance and say what will -arouse the enthusiasm of the people before them, and they get their quick -reward. They are popular at once. There is a high tide of emotion as they -proceed to tell what everybody present already thinks, and they soon find -themselves in great demand. - -The main trouble with such an easy ministry is that it isn’t worth doing. -It accomplishes next to nothing. It merely arouses a pleasurable emotion -and leaves lives where they were before. And yet not quite where they -were either, for the constant repetition of things we already believe -dulls the mind and deadens the will and weakens rather than strengthens -the power of life. It is an easy ministry both for speakers and hearers, -but it is ominous for them both. - -The prophet has a very different task. He cannot give people what they -want. He is under an unescapable compulsion to give them what his soul -believes to be true. He cannot take lines of least resistance; he must -work straight up against the current. He cannot work for quick effects; -he must slowly educate his people and compel them to see what they have -not seen before. The amens are very slow to come to his words, and he -cannot look for emotional thrills. He must risk all that is dear to -himself, except the truth, as he sets himself to his task, and he is -bound to tread lonely wine-presses before he can see of the travail of -his soul and be satisfied. - -Every age has these two types of ministry. They are both ancient and -familiar. There are always persons who are satisfied to give what is -wanted, who are glad to cater to popular taste, who like the quick -returns. But there are, too, always a few souls to be found who volunteer -for the harder task. They forego the amens and patiently teach men to see -farther than they have seen before. Their first question is not, What do -people want me to say? but, What is God’s truth which to-day ought to be -heard through me? and knowing that, they speak. They do not move their -hearers as the other type does; they do not reach so many, and they miss -the popular rewards—but they are compassed about by a great cloud of -witnesses as they fight their battles for the truth, and they have their -joy. - -But this is not quite all there is to say. It is not possible to teach -the new effectively without linking it up with the old. The wholly new is -generally not true. New, fresh truth emerges out of ancient experience; -it does not drop like a shooting star from the distant skies. The great -prophets in all ages have lived close to the people. They have not had -their “ear to the ground,” to use a political phrase, but they have -understood the human heart. They have lived in the great currents of -life. They have heard the going in the mulberry trees, and have felt the -breaking forth of the dawning light just because of their double union -with men and God. - -All sound pedagogy recognizes this principle. The good teacher knits -the new material which he wishes learned on to the old and familiar. He -takes his student forward by gradual stages, not by leaps and bounds, and -he binds the known and unknown together by rational synthesis, not by -some strange, foreign, magical glue. The more we wish to belong to the -prophet-class and to raise our hearers to new and greater levels of truth -and insight, the more we shall strive to understand the truth that has -already been revealed, to saturate ourselves with it, to fuse and kindle -our lives with those immense realities by which men in past ages have -lived and conquered. So, and only so, can we go forward and take others -forward with us to new experiences and to new discoveries of the light -that never was on sea or land. - - -III - -“WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR” - -Every time the Christmas anniversary returns, the heart renews its -youthful joy in the thrilling stories of the nativity. We cannot be too -thankful for the inspiration and poetry and imagination which touch and -glorify every aspect of our religious faith. Some dull and leaden-minded -pedants appear to think that the “real” Christ is the person we get when -we take, for the construction of our figure, only those facts about him -which can be rationalistically, historically, and critically verified. We -are thus reduced to a few religious ideas, a little group of “sayings,” -a tiny body of events, which explain none of the immense results that -followed. The real Christ, on the contrary, is this rich, wonderful, -mysterious, baffling person whose life was vastly greater even than his -deeds or his words, who aroused the wonder and imagination of all who -came in contact with him, who touched everything with emotion, and fused -religion forever with poetry and feeling. He, in a very true sense, - - “ ... touches all things common, - Till they rise to touch the spheres.” - -Not only over the manger, but over the entire story of his life, hovers -the glory of the star. It is a life that will not stay down on the dull -earth of mere fact; it always rises into the region of idealism and -beauty. It always transcends the things of sight and touch. We have a -religion which cannot be confined in a system of doctrine or a code of -ethics; it partakes too intimately of life for that. It is, like its -Founder, a full rounded reality, rich in inspiration and emotion and -wonder, as well as in intellectual ideas and truth. When the star wanes -and imagination falls away, and we hold in our thin hands only the husks -of a dead system, the power of religion is over. - -The same thing is true of the cross. Its power lies in the fullness and -richness of the reality. We do not want to reduce it, but to raise it -to its full meaning and glory as a way of complete life. The direction -of present-day Christianity is certainly not away from Calvary, but -quite the opposite. The men who are in these days trying to deliver our -religion from formalism and tradition find not less meaning in the cross -than a former generation did, but vastly more. The atonement remains at -the center, as it has always done, in vital Christianity. All attempts to -reduce Christianity to a dry and bloodless system of philosophy, with -the appeal of the heart left out, fail now as they have always failed. -It is a Savior that men, tangled in their sins and their sorrows, still -want—not merely a great thinker or a great teacher. - -The Church has, no doubt, far too much neglected the idea of the kingdom -of God as Christ expounded it in sermon and parable, and hosts of -prominent Christians do not at all understand what this great, central -teaching of the Master meant then and means now. His transforming -revelation of the nature of God has, too, been missed by multitudes, who -still hold Jewish rather than Christian conceptions of God. But patient -study of the gospel is slowly forcing these ideas into the thought of -men everywhere, and books abound now which make his teaching clear and -luminous. - -What is needed above everything else now is that we shall not lose any -of our vision of Christ as Savior, and that we shall live our lives -in his presence. It is through the cross that we touch closest to the -Savior-heart, and it is here that we feel our lives most powerfully moved -by the certainty of his divine nature. Arguments may fail, but one who -looks steadily at this voluntary Sufferer, giving himself for us, will -cry out, with one of old, “My Lord and my God.” - -Nothing short of that will do, I believe, if Christianity is to remain -a saving religion. Good men have died in all ages; great teachers have -again and again gone to their deaths in behalf of their truth or out -of love for their disciples. It touches us as we read of their bravery -and their loyalty, but we do not and we cannot build a world-saving -religion upon them. Christ is different! We feel that in him the veil is -lifted and we are face to face with God. When we hear with our hearts -the words, “In the world ye shall have tribulation; but fear not, for I -have overcome the world,” we feel that we are hearing the triumph of God -in the midst of suffering—we are hearing of an eternal triumph. Christ -can not be for us less than God manifested here in a world of time and -space and finiteness, doing in time what God does in eternity—suffering -over sin, entering vicariously into the tragedy of evil, and triumphing -while he treads the winepress. No one has fathomed the awfulness of sin, -until, in some sense, he feels that his sin makes God suffer, that it -crucifies him afresh. If Christ is God revealed in time—made visible and -vocal to men—then, through the cross, we shall discover that we are not -to think of God henceforth as Sovereign—not a Being yonder, enjoying his -royal splendor. We must think of him all the time in terms of Christ. He -is an eternal Lover of our hearts. We pierce him with our sins; we wound -him with our wickedness. He suffers, as mothers who love suffer, and he -enters vicariously into all the tragic deeps of our lives, striving to -bring us home to him. Jan Ruysbroeck says: - - “You must love the Love which loves you everlastingly, and if - you hold fast by his love, he remakes you by his Spirit, and - then joy is yours. The Spirit of God breathes into you, and you - breathe it out in rest and joy and love. This is eternal life, - just as in our mortal life we breathe out the air that is in us - and breathe in fresh air.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -THE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY - - -I - -THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH - -The Greeks had their story of Tithonus, a deeply significant myth of a -man who could not die, but who grew ever older and more decrepit until -the tragedy became unendurable and he envied those “happy men that have -the power to die.” Methuselah’s biography is brief and compact, but it -is full of pathos: “He lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he -died.” There was nothing more to add. Somebody has invented a radium -motor which strikes a little bell every second and is warranted to go -on doing that for thirty thousand years. The Methuselah monotony and -tedium seem much like that thin _seriatim_ row of items. It just goes on -with no novelty and no cumulation, and finally the one relieving novelty -is introduced—“he died.” What a happy fact it was! The wandering Jew -stands out in imaginative fiction as one of the saddest of all men—a -being who endlessly goes on. The angel of death seems a gentle, gracious -messenger when one thinks of the prospect of unending life, going on -in a one-dimensional series, with no new values and no fresh powers of -expansion. To many persons the idea of heaven is simply an expanded -Methuselah biography. - -Biologists have completely reversed the theory that death is an enemy. -It has long ago taken its place in the system of teleology, among “the -things that are for us.” Death has, beyond question, and has had, “a -natural utility.” It has played an important _rôle_ in raising life from -the low unicellular type to the rich complex forms of higher organisms, -from “the amœba that never dies of old age” to the new dynasty of beings -that have greater range and scope, but which nevertheless do die. Edwin -Arnold in his striking essay on _Death_ says: “The lowest living thing, -the Protamœba, has obviously never died! It is a formless film of -protoplasm, which multiplies by simple division; and the specimen under -any microscope derives, and must derive, in unbroken existence from the -amœba which moved and fed forty æons ago. The slime of our nearest puddle -lived before the Alps were made!” Methuselah was a mere child in a -perambulator compared to an amœba. - -In cases where the continued process of cell-division produced a lowered -and weakened type of amœba a rudimentary form of union of cells took -place, which resulted in raising the entire level of life and eventually -carried the biological order up to wholly new possibilities. So that -the threatened approach of death was met with an increase of life. “It -is more probable that death is a consequence of life,” says the famous -biologist, Edward Cope, “rather than that the living is a product of the -non-living.”[2] - -But in any case the testimony of biology can give us little help. Even if -death has had a function in the process of evolution, as seems likely, -that in no way eases the situation when the staggering blow falls into -our precious circle and removes from it an intimate personal life that -was indispensable to us. It is poor, cold comfort to be told that death -has assisted through the long æons in the slow process of heightening -the entire scale of life, if there is nothing more to say regarding the -future of this dear one whose frail bark has now gone to wreck. We must -somehow rise above the level of brute facts and discover some spiritual -significance which death has revealed, before we can arrive at any source -of comfort. We are all agreed with Shakespeare’s Claudio that “’tis too -horrible” to think of death as a sheer terminus: - - “ ... to die and go we know not where; - To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; - This sensible warm motion to become - A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit - To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside - In thrilling regions of rock-ribbed ice; - To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, - And blown with restless violence round about - The pendent world.” - -Death has undoubtedly brought to consciousness, as has perhaps no other -experience, the deeper meaning and significance of personal life. This -and not its biological function is what concerns us now. It has been -said that “freedom,” so far as it is achieved, “is the main achievement -of man in the past.”[3] I should be inclined rather to hold that man’s -main achievement on the planet so far has been to discover that personal -life reveals within itself an absolute value and possesses unmistakable -capacity to transcend the finite and temporal, an experience which -makes freedom possible. I believe death has ministered more than any -other single fact that confronts us in bringing those truths to clear -consciousness. We cannot, of course, dissociate death and separate it -from pain, suffering, struggle and danger, which are essentially bound up -with it. If the world were to be freed completely from death it would at -once _ipso facto_ be freed from the danger of it and by the same altered -condition struggle would to a large degree be eliminated, and likewise -those other great tests of life—pain and suffering, which culminate in -death. These things are all “perilous incidents” of finiteness, but of -a finiteness which transcends itself and is allied to something beyond -itself. To eliminate these things would be to miss the discovery of this -strange finite-infinite nature of ours which makes life such a venture -and so full of mystery and wonder. If we had been only naturalistic -beings, curious bits of the earth’s crust merely capable of recording the -empirical facts as they occurred, death would have taken an unimportant -place as one more event in a successive series of phenomena. Built as we -are, however, with a beyond within ourselves, the fact of mutability and -mortality has occasioned a transformation of our entire estimate of life -and has led us by the hand to a Pisgah view which we should never have -got if there had been no invasion of death into our world. - -“It is a venerable commonplace,” as Professor Schiller of Oxford has -said, “that among the melancholy prerogatives which distinguish man -from the other animals and bestow a deeper significance on human life -is the fact that man alone is aware of the doom that terminates his -earthly existence, and on this account lives a more spiritual life, in -the ineffable consciousness of the ‘sword of Damocles’ which overshadows -him and weights his lightest action with gigantic import. Nay, more; -stimulated by the ineluctable necessity of facing death, and of living so -as to face it with fortitude, man has not abandoned himself to nerveless -inaction, to pusillanimous despair; he has conceived the thought, he -has cherished the hope, he has embraced the belief, of a life beyond -the grave, and opened his soul to the religions which baulk the king of -terrors of his victims and defraud him of his victory. Thus, the fear -of death has been redeemed, and ennobled by the consoling belief in -immortality, a belief from which none are base enough to withhold their -moral homage, even though the debility of mortal knowledge may debar a -few from a full acceptance of its promise.”[4] - -The early animistic views of survival, which were the first forecasts of -a life beyond, were due not so much to the consciousness of the moral -grandeur of life as to _actual experiences_ which gave to primitive -man a confident assurance of some form of life after the death of the -body. Dreams had an important part in leading man to this naïve and yet -momentous discovery. In a world which had no established criterion of -“reality,” the experiences of vivid dreams were taken to be as real as -any other experiences, and in these dreams the dreamer often found his -dead ancestors and friends and tribesmen once more present with him, -active in the chase or the fight and as real as ever they were in life. -Trance, hallucination, telepathy, mediumship, possession, are not new -phenomena; they are very primitive and ancient. These things are as old -as smiling and weeping. These psychic experiences had their part to -play also in giving the early races their belief that the dead person -still existed though in an altered and attenuated form as an _animus_ or -“spirit” or “shade.” This empirical view of survival, built on actual -experiences, was more or less incapable of advance. No further knowledge -could be acquired and the constructions fashioned by imagination, in -reference to “the scenery and circumstance” of the departed soul, could -satisfy only an uncritical mind. These constructions were, too, often -crude and bizarre, and tended, in the hands of priests, to hamper man’s -moral development rather than to further it. But in any case man had made -the momentous guess that death did not utterly end him or his career. -Poor and thin as this dimly conceived future world of primitive man’s -hope may have been, the psychological effect of the hope was by no means -negligible. Professor Shaler of Harvard was probably speaking truly when -he wrote: - -“If we should seek some one mark, which in the intellectual advance from -the brutes to man, might denote the passage to the human side, we might -well find it in the moment when it dawned upon the nascent man that death -was a mystery which he had in his turn to meet. From the time when man -began to face death to the present stage of his development there has -been a continuous struggle between the motives of personal fear on the -one hand, and valor on the other. That of fear has been constantly aided -by the work of the imagination. For one fact of danger there have been -scores of fancied risks to come from the unseen world. Against this great -host of imaginary ills, which tended utterly to bear men down, they had -but one helper—their spirit of valiant self-sacrifice for the good of -their family, their clan, their state, their race, or, in the climax, for -the Infinite above.”[5] - -It marked a still greater intellectual advance when primitive man came to -the immense conclusion not only that death was a mystery which he in turn -must meet, but that he was a being that would survive death. - -It is, however, in another field that we must look for the most important -spiritual results from the contemplation of death, that is in what we -may call the field of spiritual values. I have already contended that -man’s greatest discovery was his discovery of the absolute value of moral -personality. Of course, it came fairly late in the development of the -race and by no means has everybody made it yet! But at any rate there -came a time somewhere in the process of history when man did discover a -beyond within himself, a greater inclusive self present within his own -fragmentary, finite spirit, revealed as a passion for perfection not yet -attained or experienced, a prophesying consciousness of eternity within -his often baffled and defeated temporal life. No one has expressed the -fact of this inner beyond within us better than old Sir Thomas Browne -did in the seventeenth century: “We are men and we know not how; there -is something in us that can be without us and will be after us, though -it is strange that it hath no history of what it was before us, nor can -tell how it entered in us.... There is surely a piece of Divinity in us, -something that was before the elements and owes not homage unto the Sun.” - -The sublimity and grandeur revealed in nature, the majesty of mountains, -the might of seas, the mystery of the ocean, the glory of the sun and -stars, the awe inspired by the thunderstorm, awakened man’s own spirit -and made him dimly conscious of a kindred grandeur in his own answering -soul. The greatest step of all was taken when man awoke to the meaning -and value of love. In some dim sense love preceded the emergence of man. -The evolution of a mother and of a father, as Drummond showed, began far -back in forms of life below man. But the type of love which transcends -instinct, which is raised above sex-assertion, and is transmuted into an -unselfish appreciation of the beauty and worth of personal character—that -type of love is one of the most wonderful flowers that has yet blossomed -on our Igdrasil tree of life and it was late and slow to come, like -flowers on the century-plant. - -When death broke in and separated those who loved in this great fashion -the whole problem of death at once became an urgent one. In fact death -received _attention_ in proportion as the higher values of life began to -be realized. Walt Whitman’s fiery outburst reveals clearly his estimate -of the worth of personality. “If rats and maggots end us, then alarum! -for we are betrayed”—he might have said “if microbes end us.” Emerson’s -poignant outcry of soul is found in his greatest poem—“Threnody”: - - “There’s not a sparrow or a wren, - There’s not a blade of autumn grain, - Which the four seasons do not tend - And tides of life and increase lend; - And every chick of every bird, - And weed and rock-moss is preferred. - O ostrich-like forgetfulness! - O loss of larger in the less! - Was there no star that could be sent, - No watcher in the firmament, - No angel from the countless host - That loiters round the crystal coast, - Could stoop to heal that only child, - Nature’s sweet marvel undefiled, - And keep the blossom of the earth, - Which all her harvests were not worth?” - -No such high revolt of spirit was occasioned so long as death was a mere -biological event, terminating one life to give room for another. This -cry of soul means the discovery of the infinite preciousness of personal -life. The mind now turns in on itself and takes a new account of its -stock, and as a result man began to solve the problem of death in an -enlarged way. He was no longer satisfied with a form of survival based -upon his experiences in dreams, trance and hallucination; he came to feel -that he must have a destiny which fitted his spiritual worth as a man. He -finds within himself intimation of powers and possibilities beyond those -required for the struggle of life here. He feels by that same insight -which carries him out beyond the seen to a rational faith in the unseen -that is necessary to complete it, that this little arc of earthly life -with its revelations of spiritual value and its transcendent prophecies -of more must find fulfillment somewhere in a form of life that rounds it -out full circle. - -The argument does not build on a passion of desire, as some doubters have -said. We do not assume immortality just because we want it. It rests upon -the moral consistency of the universe, upon the trustworthy character -of the eternal nature of things. The moral values which are revealed in -fully developed personality are certainly as _real_, as much a fact of -the universe, as are the tides or the orbits of planets. If we can count -upon the continuity of these occurrences and upon our predictions of -them, just as surely can we count on the consistency of the universe in -reference to spiritual values. If there is conservation of matter there -is at least as good ground for affirming conservation of moral values. -If biological life can pass over the slender bridge of a microscopic -germ-plasm and can carry with itself over that feeble bridge the traces -of habit and feature, the curve of nose and the emotional tone of some -far-off dead ancestor, and all the heredity gains of the past, may we not -count upon the permanence of that in us which allies us to that infinite -Spirit who is even now the invisible environment of all we see and touch? - -It is not a matter of reward or of “wages” that concerns us. It is not -“happy isles” or care-free “Edens” that we seek, not “golden streets” -and endless comfort to make up for the stress and toil of the lean years -here below. We want to find the whole of ourselves, we ask the privilege -of seeing this fragmentary being of ours unfold into the full expression -of its gifts and powers. The new period may be even more strenuous and -hazardous than this one has been—still we want the venture. We ask for -the culminating acts that will complete the drama, so far only fairly -begun. It must be not a mere serial, or straight line, existence; it -must be the opening out and expansion of the possibilities which we feel -within ourselves—new dimensions, please God. - -I am not wrong, I am sure, in claiming that this postulate, this rational -faith in the conservation of values, is an asset which death has revealed -to the race. The shock of death has always made love appear a greater -thing than we knew before the baffling crisis came upon us. It has, too, -by the same shock of contrast, awakened man to the full comprehension -of the moral sublimity of the good life. Kant maintained that the sense -of the sublime is due to the fact that when we are confronted with the -supreme powers of nature we then become aware of something unfathomable -in ourselves, and feel that we are superior to the might of the storm, -or the mountain or the cataract. Nowhere is this truer than when man—man -in his full, rich powers—is confronted by death. Instead of cringing in -fear, he rises to an unaccustomed height of greatness and is utterly -superior to death and aware of some quality of being in himself which -death cannot touch. It is just then in that moment of seeming disaster -and dissolution that a brave, good man is most triumphant and ready to -burn all bridges behind him in his great adventure. Mrs. Browning, all -her life an invalid, says about this so-called gigantic enemy: “I cannot -look on the earthside of death. When I look deathwards I look over death -and upwards.” Her husband, who was “ever a fighter,” has this way of -announcing the triumph: - - “And then as, ’mid the dark, a gleam - Of yet another morning breaks, - And like the hand which ends a dream, - Death, with the might of his sunbeam, - Touches the flesh and the soul awakes.”[6] - -Here is the testimony of a French soldier who writes at a moment when -death is close beside him: “I had often known the joy of seeing a spring -come like this, but never before had I been given the power of living in -every instant. So it is that one wins, without the help of any science, a -vague but indisputable intuition of the Absolute.... These are hours of -such beauty that he who embraces them knows not what death means.” - -Having come upon the higher values of personal life which death has -forced upon us we can never again, as men, be satisfied with such -facts of survival as may come to light through dreams, hallucinations, -telepathy and mediums, or in fact through any empirical experiences. Even -if the evidence were vastly greater than it is for some form of animistic -survival, it would fall far short of our moral and spiritual demands. We -already have some intimations in us of “the power of an endless life,” -and we seek for a chance to bring it full into play, for the “heavenly -period” to “perfect the earthen,” for an ampler life that will reveal -what we have all the time _meant_ life to be. - -Winifred Kirkland in _The New Death_ well says: “The New Death, _i.e._, -the new view of death, is the perception of our mortal end as the mere -portal of an eternal progression and the immediate result is the -consecration of all living.... It is a new illumination, a New Death, -when dying can be the greatest inspiration of our everyday energy, the -strongest impulse toward daily joy.” - - -II - -THE NEW BORN OUT OF THE OLD - -Walking across the fields in the spring I found the empty shell of a -bird’s egg. The tiny bird that once was in it was lying still and happy -under its mother’s wings, or was chirping its new-born song from the limb -of a nearby tree, or was trying its new-found wings on the buoyant air. -The empty shell was utterly worthless, a mere plaything for the wind. -The miracle of life that had stirred within it and had used it for its -shelter had gone on and left it deserted. There is a fine proverb which -says, “God empties the nest by hatching out the eggs,” and the world -is full of this gentle, silent, divine method of abolishing the old by -setting free to higher ends all that was true and living in it. - - “To-day I saw the dragon-fly - Come from the wells where he did lie. - An inner impulse rent the veil - Of his old husk: from head to tail - Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. - He dried his wings: like gauze they grew; - Through crofts and pastures wet with dew - A living flash of light he flew.” - -In the water below, the “old husk” lay empty and useless, while the -bright-colored living thing found its freedom in the invisible air. I -never go to a funeral without thinking of this miracle of transformation -which brings the bird out of the egg, the flower out of the seed, the -dragon-fly out of its water-larva. In his own mysterious way God has -emptied the nest by the hatching method, and all that was excellent, -lovable, and permanent in the one we loved has found itself in the realm -for which it was fitted. The body is only the empty shell, the shattered -seed, the old husk, which the silent forces of nature will slowly turn -back again into its original elements, to use over again for its myriad -processes of building: - - “And from his ashes may be made - The violet of his native land.” - -Those who treasure up the outworn dust and ashes, who make their thoughts -center about the empty shell, are failing to read aright the deeper -fact, which life everywhere is trying to utter, that that which belongs -in the higher sphere cannot be pent up in the lower. - -This divine hatching method may be seen, too, in the progress of truth, -as it unfolds from stage to stage. Nothing is more common than to see a -person holding on to a shell in which truth has dwelt, without realizing -that the precious thing he wants has gone on and reëmbodied itself in -new and living ways which he fails to follow and comprehend. While he is -saying in melancholy tones, “They have taken away my Lord and I know not -where they have laid him,” the living Lord is saying, “Have I been so -long time with thee and yet dost thou not know me?” - -Truth can no more keep a fixed and permanent form than life can. It lives -only by hatching out into higher and ever more adequate expressions of -itself, and the old forms in which it lived, the old words through which -it uttered itself, become empty and hollow because the warm breath of God -has raised the inner life, the spiritual reality, to a higher form of -expression. - -The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews was very much impressed with -this crumbling of old forms and expressions to give place to the new. -God spoke, he says, to our fathers in sundered portions and in a variety -of manners, but he is speaking to us now by his Son. The things that can -be shaken, he writes, are being removed that the things which cannot be -shaken may remain. Luther must have felt this shaking process in his day; -and when he saw the old forms of religion crumbling, he wrote that great -hymn of the Reformation, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” He had found -something that could not be shaken. He could stand his ground and face -the seen and unseen world in faith, because he knew that the hatching was -going on, and the new was being born in higher, truer, and more adequate -forms as the old was vanishing. - -Let us hope that this ancient divine method may still operate in this -momentous hour of human history. Never, perhaps, since the fall of Rome, -has there been such a world-shaking process affecting every country and -all peoples. Immense changes are under way. Nothing will ever be quite -the same again. The old is vanishing before our eyes and the new is -being born. So much was wrong and outworn, and unjust and inhuman, that -the changes must go very far, and they will necessarily involve some -breakage. But even now, in this most dynamic period of modern history, -that which is to mark permanent progress will come forth, not by a -smashing process, but by the hatching of the eggs, by the emergence of -the underlying forces of life and the realization of those human hopes -and aspirations that have long been held in and suppressed. - -There is always the gravest danger from blind rage and sullen wrath. The -passionate resentment for the suffering of immemorial wrongs, when once -it breaks through the dams of restraint, is an almost irresistible force; -but sooner or later the sound, serious sense of the intelligent human -race comes into play and brings the world back to order and system. The -real gains in these crises are made not by the smashings and the blind -iconoclastic blows, but by the wise, clear-sighted fulfillment of the -slowly formed ideals which have been the inspiration of many lives before -the crisis came. May it be so now! It must not be, it cannot be, that -these millions of men shall have unavailingly faced death and mutilation. -It was not wreckage and chaos they sought in their brave adventure with -death. They went out to build a new world and to destroy, only that a new -re-creation might begin. This is the time of incubation and birth, for -ripening into reality those mighty hopes that make us men. - -It means at once that we must deepen down our lives into the life of God, -that we must suppress our petty individual passions and feel the sweep of -God’s purposes for the new age. In a multitude of ways the world moves -on, and as it moves the Spirit of God ends old forms and methods and -brings fresh and living ways to light. May we have eyes to see what is of -his divine hatching and what is empty shell! - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -THE MYSTIC’S EXPERIENCE OF GOD - - -I - -The revival of mysticism which has been one of the noteworthy features -in the Christianity of our time has presented us with a number of -interesting and important questions. We want to know, first of all, what -mysticism really is. Secondly, we want to know whether it is a normal or -abnormal experience. And omitting many other questions which must wait -their turn, we want to know whether mystical experiences actually enlarge -our sphere of knowledge, i.e., whether they are trustworthy sources of -authentic information and authoritative truth concerning realities which -lie beyond the range of human senses. - -The answer to the first question appears to be as difficult to accomplish -as the return of Ulysses was. The secret is kept in book after book. -One can marshall a formidable array of definitions, but they oppose and -challenge one another, like the men sprung from the dragon’s teeth. -For the purposes of the present consideration we can eliminate what is -usually included under psychical phenomena, that is, the phenomena of -dreams, visions and trances, hysteria and dissociation and esoteric -and occult phenomena. Thirty years ago Professor Royce said: “In the -Father’s house are many mansions, and their furniture is extremely -manifold. Astral bodies and palmistry, trances and mental healing, -communications from the dead and ‘phantasms of the living’—such things -are for some people to-day the sole quite unmistakable evidences of the -supremacy of the spiritual world.” These phenomena are worthy of careful -painstaking study and attention, for they will eventually throw much -light upon the deep and complex nature of human personality, are in fact -already throwing much light upon it. But they furnish us slender data -for understanding what is properly meant by mystical experience and its -religious and spiritual bearing. - -We can, too, leave on one side the metaphysical doctrines which fill a -large amount of space in the books of the great mystics. These doctrines -had a long historical development and they would have taken essentially -the same form if the exponents of them had not been mystics. Mystical -experience is confined to no one form of philosophy, though some ways of -thinking no doubt favor and other ways retard the experience, as they -also often do in the case of religious _faith_ in general. Mystical -experience, furthermore, must not be confused with what technical expert -writers call “the mystic way.” There are as many mystical “ways” as there -are gates to the New Jerusalem: “On the east three gates, on the north -three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates.” One -might as well try to describe _the way_ of making love, or _the way_ of -appreciating the grand canyon as to describe _the way_ to the discovery -of God, as though there were only one way. - -I am not interested in mysticism as an _ism_. It turns out in most -accounts to be a dry and abstract thing, hardly more like the warm and -intimate experience than the color of a map is like the country for which -it stands. “Canada is very pink,” seems quite an inadequate description -of the noble country north of our border. It is mystical experience and -not mysticism that is worthy of our study. We are concerned with the -experience itself, not with second-hand formulations of it. “The mystic,” -says Professor Royce, “is a thorough-going empiricist;” “God ceases to -be an object and becomes an experience,” says Professor Pringle-Pattison. -If it is an experience we want to find out what happens to the mystic -himself inside where he lives. According to those who have been there -the experience which we call mystical is charged with the conviction of -real, direct contact and commerce with God. It is the almost universal -testimony of those who are mystics that they find God through their -experience. John Tauler says that in his best moments of “devout prayer -and the uplifting of the mind to God,” he experiences “the pure presence -of God in his own soul,” but he adds that all he can tell others about -the experience is “as poor and unlike it as the point of a needle is -to the heavens above us.” “I have met with my God; I have met with -my Savior. I have felt the healings drop upon my soul from under His -wings,” says Isaac Penington in the joy of his first mystical experience. -Without needlessly multiplying such testimonies for data, we can say -with considerable assurance that mystical experience is consciousness of -direct and immediate relationship with some transcendent reality which in -the moment of experience is believed to be God. “This is He, this is He,” -exclaims Isaac Penington, “there is no other: This is He whom I have -waited for and sought after from my childhood.” Angela of Foligno says -that she experienced God, and saw that the whole world was full of God. - - -II - -There are many different degrees of intensity, concentration and -conviction in the experiences of different individual mystics, and also -in the various experiences of the same individual from time to time. -There has been a tendency in most studies of mysticism to regard the -state of ecstasy as _par excellence_ mystical experience. That is, -however, a grave mistake. The calmer, more meditative, less emotional, -less ecstatic experiences of God are not less convincing and possess -greater constructive value for life and character than do ecstatic -experiences which presuppose a peculiar psychical frame and disposition. -The seasoned Quaker in the corporate hush and stillness of a silent -meeting is far removed from ecstasy, but he is not the less convinced -that he is meeting with God. For the _essentia_ of mysticism we do not -need to insist upon a certain “sacred” mystic way nor upon ecstasy, -nor upon any peculiar type of rare psychic upheavals. We do need to -insist, however, upon a consciousness of commerce with God amounting to -conviction of his presence. - - “Where one heard noise - And one saw flame, - I only knew He named my name.” - -Jacob Boehme calls the experience which came to him, “breaking through -the gate,” into “a new birth or resurrection from the dead,” so that, he -says, “I knew God.” “I am certain,” says Eckhart, “as certain as that I -live, that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I -am to myself.” One of these experiences—the first one—was an ecstasy, -and the other, so far as we can tell, was not. It was the flooding in of -a moment of God-consciousness in the act of preaching a sermon to the -common people of Cologne. The experience of Penington, again, was not -an ecstasy; it was the vital surge of fresh life on the first occasion -of hearing George Fox preach after a long period of waiting silence. A -simple normal case of a mild type is given in a little book of recent -date, reprinted from the _Atlantic Monthly_: “After a long time of -jangling conflict and inner misery, I one day, _quite quietly and with -no conscious effort_, stopped doing the dis-ingenuous thing [I had been -doing]. Then the marvel happened. It was as if a great rubber band which -had been stretched almost to the breaking point were suddenly released -and snapped back to its normal condition. Heaven and earth were changed -for me. Everything was glorious because of its relation to some great -central life—nothing seemed to matter but that life.” Brother Lawrence, -a barefooted lay-brother of the seventeenth century, according to the -testimony of the brotherhood, attained “an unbroken and undisturbed sense -of the Presence of God.” He was not an ecstatic; he was a quiet, faithful -man who did his ordinary daily tasks with what seemed to his friends -“an unclouded vision, an illuminated love and an uninterrupted joy.” -Simple and humble though he was, he nevertheless acquired, through his -experience of God, “an extraordinary spaciousness of mind.” - -The more normal, expansive mystical experiences come apparently when the -personal self is at its best. Its powers and capacities are raised to an -unusual unity and fused together. The whole being, with its accumulated -submerged life, _finds itself_. The process of preparing for any high -achievement is a severe and laborious one, but nothing seems easier in -the moment of success than is the accomplishment for which the life -has been prepared. There comes to be formed within the person what -Aristotle called “a dexterity of soul,” so that the person does with ease -what he has become skilled to do. Clement of Alexandria called a fully -organized and spiritualized person “a harmonized man,” that is, adjusted, -organized and ready to be a transmissive organ for the revelation of -God. Brother Lawrence, who was thus “harmonized,” finely says, “The most -excellent method which I found of going to God was that of _doing my -common business_, purely for the love of God.” An earlier mystic of the -fourteenth century stated the same principle in these words: “It is my -aim to be to the Eternal God what a man’s hand is to a man.” - -There are many human experiences which carry a man up to levels where -he has not usually been before and where he finds himself possessed of -insight and energies he had hardly suspected were his until that moment. -One leaps to his full height when the right inner spring is reached. We -are quite familiar with the way in which instinctive tendencies in us -and emotions both egoistic and social, become organized under a group -of ideas and ideals into a single system which we call a sentiment, -such as love, or patriotism, or devotion to truth. It forms slowly and -one hardly realizes that it has formed until some occasion unexpectedly -brings it into full operation, and we find ourselves able with perfect -ease to overcome the most powerful inhibitory and opposing instincts -and habits, which, until then, had usually controlled us. We are -familiar, too, with the way in which a well-trained and disciplined mind, -confronted by a concrete situation, will sometimes—alas not always—in a -sudden flash of imaginative insight, discover a universal law revealed -there and then in the single phenomenon, as Sir Isaac Newton did and -as, in a no less striking way, Sir William Rowan Hamilton did in his -discovery of Quaternions. Literary and artistic geniuses supply us with -many instances in which, in a sudden flash, the crude material at hand is -shot through with vision, and the complicated plot of a drama, the full -significance of a character, or the complete glory of a statue stands -revealed, as though, to use R. L. Stevenson’s illustration, a genie -had brought it on a golden tray as a gift from another world. Abraham -Lincoln, striking off in a few intense minutes his Gettysburg address, as -beautiful in style and perfect in form as anything in human literature, -is as good an illustration as we need of the way in which a highly -organized person, by a kindling flash, has at his hand all the moral and -spiritual gains of a life time. - -There is a famous account of the flash of inspiration given by Philo, -which can hardly be improved. It is as follows: “I am not ashamed to -recount my own experience. At times, when I have proposed to enter upon -my wonted task of writing on philosophical doctrines, with an exact -knowledge of the materials which were to be put together, I have had -to leave off without any work accomplished, finding my mind barren and -fruitless, and upbraiding it for its self-complacency, while startled at -the might of the Existent One, in whose power it lies to open and close -the wombs of the soul. But at other times, when I had come empty, all of -a sudden I have been filled with thoughts, showered down and sown upon -me unseen from above, so that by Divine possession I have fallen into -a rapture and become ignorant of everything, the place, those present, -myself, what was spoken or written. For I have received a stream of -interpretation, a fruition of light, the most clear-cut sharpness of -vision, the most vividly distinct view of the matter before me, such as -might be received through the eyes from the most luminous presentation.” - -The most important mystical experiences are something like that. They -occur usually not at the beginning of the religious life but rather in -the ripe and developed stage of it. They are the fruit of long-maturing -processes. Clement’s “the harmonized man” is always a person who has -brought his soul into parallelism with divine currents, has habitually -practiced his religious insights and has finally formed a unified -central self, subtly sensitive, acutely responsive to the Beyond within -him. In such experiences which may come suddenly or may come as a more -gradual process, the whole self operates and masses all the cumulations -of a lifetime. They are no more emotional than they are rational and -volitional. We have a total personality, awake, active, and “aware of his -life’s flow.” Instead of seeing in a flash a law of gravitation, or the -plot and character of Hamlet, or the uncarven form of Moses the Law-giver -in a block of marble, one sees at such times the moral demonstrations -of a lifetime and vividly feels the implications that are essentially -involved in a spiritual life. In the high moment God is seen to be as -sure as the soul is. - - “I stood at Naples once, a night so dark - I could have scarce conjectured there was earth - Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: - But the night’s black was burst through by a blaze— - Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, - Through her whole length of mountain visible: - There lay the city thick and plain with spires, - And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. - So may the truth be flashed out by one blow.” - -To some the truth of God never comes closer than a logical conclusion. He -is held to be as a living item in a creed. To the mystic he becomes real -in the same sense that experienced beauty is real, or the feel of spring -is real, or that summer sunlight is real—he has been found, he has been -met, he is present. - -Before discussing the crucial question whether these experiences are -evidential and are worthy of consideration as an addition to the world’s -stock of truth and knowledge I must say a few words about the normality -or abnormality of them. Nothing of any value can be said on this point -of mystical experience in the _abstract_. One must first catch his -concrete case. Some instances are normal and some are undoubtedly -abnormal. Trance, ecstasy and rapture are unusual experiences and in -that sense not normal occurrences. They usually indicate, furthermore, a -pathological condition of personality and are thus abnormal in the more -technical sense. There is, however, something more to be said on this -point. It seems pretty well established that some persons—and they have -often been creative leaders and religious geniuses—have succeeded in -organizing their lives, in finding their trail, in charging their whole -personality with power, in attaining a moral dynamic and in tapping vast -reservoirs of energy by means of states which, if occurring in other -persons, would no doubt be called pathological. The real test here is -a pragmatic one. It seems hardly sound to call a state abnormal if it -has raised the experiencer, as a mystic experience often does, into a -hundred horse-power man and through his influence has turned multitudes -of other men and women into more joyous, hopeful and efficient persons. -This question of abnormality and reality is thus not one to be settled -off-hand by a superficial diagnosis. - -An experience which brings spaciousness of mind, new interior dimensions, -ability to stand the universe—and the people in it—and capacity to -work at human tasks with patience, endurance and wisdom may quite -intelligently be called normal, though to an external beholder it -may look like what he usually calls a trance of hysteria, a state of -dissociation, or hypnosis by auto-suggestion. It should be added, -however, as I have already said, that mystical experience is not -confined to these extremer types. They may or may not be pathological. -The calmer and more restrained stages of mysticism are more important and -significant and are no more marked with the stigma of hysteria than is -love-making, enjoyment of music, devotion to altruistic causes, risking -one’s life for country, or any lofty experience of _value_. - - -III - -We come at length to the central question of our consideration: Do -mystical experiences settle anything? Are they purely subjective and -one-sided, or do they prove to have objective reference and so to be -two-sided? Do they take the experiencer across the chasm that separates -“self” from “Other”? Mystical experience undoubtedly feels as though it -had objective reference. It comes to the individual with indubitable -authority. He is certain that he has found some thing other than himself. -He has an unescapable conviction that he is in contact and commerce with -reality beyond the margins of his personal self. “A tremendous muchness -is suddenly revealed,” as William James once put it. - -We do not get very far when we undertake to reduce knowledge to an -affair of sense-experience. “They reckon ill who leave me out,” can be -said by the organized, personal, creative mind as truly as by Brahma. -There are many forms of human experience in which the data of the -senses are so vastly transcended that they fail to furnish any real -explanation of what occurs in consciousness. This is true of all our -experiences of _value_, which apparently spring out of synthetic or -synoptic activities of the mind, i.e., activities in which the mind is -unified and creative. The vibrations of ether which bombard the rods and -cones of the retina may be the occasion for the appreciation of beauty -in sky or sea or flower, but they are surely not the _cause_ of it. The -concrete event which confronts me is very likely the occasion for the -august pronouncement of moral issues which my conscience makes, but it -can not be said that the concrete event in any proper sense _causes_ this -consciousness of moral obligation. The famous answer of Leibnitz to the -crude sense-philosophy of his time is still cogent. To the phrase: “There -is nothing in the mind that has not come through the senses,” Leibnitz -added, “except the mind itself.” That means that the creative activity -of the mind is always an important factor in experience and one that can -not be ignored in any of the processes of knowledge. Unfortunately we -have done very little yet in the direction of comprehending the interior -depth of the personal mind or of estimating adequately the part which -mind itself in its creative capacity plays in all knowledge functions. It -will only be when we have succeeded in getting beyond what Plato called -the bird-cage theory of knowledge to a sound theory of knowledge and -to a solid basis for spiritual values that we shall be able to discuss -intelligently the “findings” of the mystic. - -The world at the present moment is pitiably “short” in its stock of -sound theories of knowledge. The prevailing psychologies do not explain -knowledge at all. The behaviorists do not try to explain it any more -than the astronomer or the physicist does. The psychologist who reduces -mind to an aggregation of describable “mind-states” has started out on -a course which makes an explanation forever impossible, since knowledge -can be explained only through unity and integral wholeness, never through -an aggregation of parts, as though it were a mental “shower of shot.” If -we expect to talk about _knowledge_ and seriously propose to use that -great word _truth_, we must at least begin with the assumption of an -intelligent, creative, organizing center of self-consciousness which can -transcend itself and can _know_ what is beyond and other than itself. In -short, the talk about a “chasm” between subject and object—knower and -thing known—is as absurd as it would be to talk of a chasm between the -convex and the concave sides of a curve. Knowledge is always knowledge -of an object and mystical experience has all the essential marks of -objective reference, as certainly as other forms of experience have. - -Professor J. M. Baldwin very well says that there is a form of -contemplation in which, as in æsthetic experience, the strands of -the mind’s diverging dualisms are “_merged and fused_.” He adds: “In -this experience of a fusion which is not a mixture but which issues -in a meaning of its own sort and kind, an experience whose essential -character is just this unity of comprehension, consciousness attains its -completest, its most direct, and its final apprehension of what Reality -is and means.” It really comes round to the question whether the mind of -a self-conscious person has any way of approach, except by way of the -senses, to any kind of reality. There is no _a priori_ answer to that -question. It can only be settled by experience. It is, therefore, pure -dogmatism to say, as Professor Dunlap in his recent attack on mysticism -does, that all conscious processes are based on sense-stimulation and -all thought as well as perception depends on reaction to sense-stimulus. -It is no doubt true that behavior psychology must resort to some such -formula, but that only means that such psychology is always dealing -with greatly transformed and reduced beings, when it attempts to deal -with persons like us who, in the richness of our concrete lives, are -never reduced to “behavior-beings.” We have interior dimensions and that -is the end on’t! Some persons—and they are by no means feeble-minded -individuals—are as certain that they have commerce with a world within -as they are that they have experiences of a world outside in space. -Thomas Aquinas, who neither in method nor in doctrine leaned toward -mysticism, though he was most certainly “a harmonized man,” and who in -theory postponed the vision of God to a realm beyond death, nevertheless -had an experience two years before he died which made him put his pen -and inkhorn on the shelf and never write another word of his _Summa -Theologiae_. When he was reminded of the incomplete state of his great -work and was urged to go on with it, he only replied, “I have seen that -which makes all that I have written look small to me.” - -It may be just possible that there is a universe of spiritual reality -upon which our finite spirits open inward as inlets open into the sea. - - “Like the tides on the crescent sea-beach - When the moon is new and thin - Into our hearts high yearnings - Come welling and surging in; - Come from that mystic ocean - Whose rim no foot has trod. - Some call it longing - But others call it God.” - -Such a view is perfectly sane and tenable; it conflicts with no proved -and demonstrated facts either in the nature of the universe or of -mind. It seems anyway to the mystic that there is such a world, that -he has found it as surely as Columbus found San Salvador, and that his -experience is a truth-telling experience. - - -IV - -But granting that it is truth-telling and has objective reference, is the -mystic justified in claiming that he has found and knows God? One does -not need to be a very wide and extensive student of mystical experience -to discover what a meager stock of knowledge the genuine mystic reports. -William James’ remarkable experience in the Adirondack woods very well -illustrates the type. It had, he says, “an intense significance of some -sort, if one could only _tell_ the significance.... In point of fact, I -can’t find a single word for all that significance and don’t know what it -was significant of, so that it remains a mere boulder of impression.”[7] -At a later date James refers to that “extraordinary vivacity of man’s -psychological commerce with something Ideal that _feels as if_ it were -also actual.”[8] The greatest of all the fourteenth century mystics, -Meister Eckhart, could not put his _impression_ into words or ideas. What -he found was a “wilderness of the Godhead where no one is at home,” i.e., -an Object with no particular differentiated, concrete characteristics. -It was not an accident that so many of the mystics hit upon the _via -negativa_, the way of negation, or that they called their discovery “the -divine Dark.” - - “Whatever your mind comes at - I tell you flat - God is not that.” - -Mystical experience does not supply concrete information. It does not -bring new finite facts, new items that can be used in a description of -“the scenery and circumstance” of the realm beyond our sense horizons. -It is the awareness of a Presence, the consciousness of a Beyond, the -discovery, as James puts it, that “we are continuous with a More of the -same quality, which is operative in us and in touch with us.” - -The most striking effect of such experience is not new fact-knowledge, -not new items of empirical information, but new moral energy, heightened -conviction, increased caloric quality, enlarged spiritual vision, an -unusual radiant power of life. In short, the whole personality, in the -case of the constructive mystics, appears to be raised to a new level of -life and to have gained from somewhere many calories of life-feeding, -spiritual substance. We are quite familiar with the way in which -adrenalin suddenly flushes into the physical system and adds a new and -incalculable power to brain and muscle. Under its stimulus a man can -carry out a piano when the house is on fire. May not, perhaps, some -energy from some Source with which our spirits are allied flush our inner -being with forces and powers by which we can be fortified to stand the -universe and more than stand it! “We are more than conquerors through -Him that loved us,” is the way one of the world’s greatest mystics felt. - -Mystical experience—and we must remember as Santayana has said, that -“experience is like a shrapnel shell and bursts into a thousand -meanings”—does at least one thing. It makes God sure to the person who -has had the experience. It raises faith and conviction to the nth power. -“The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shined into my -heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,” is St. -Paul’s testimony. “I knew God by revelation,” declares George Fox. “I was -as one who hath the key and doth open.” “The man who has attained this -felicity,” Plotinus says, “meets some turn of fortune that he would not -have chosen, but there is not the slightest lessening of his happiness -for that” (En. I: iv. 7). But this experience, with its overwhelming -conviction and its dynamic effect, can not be put into the common coin of -speech. Frederic Myers has well expressed the difficulty: - - “Oh could I tell ye surely would believe it! - Oh could I only say what I have seen! - How should I tell or how can ye receive it, - How, till He bringeth you where I have been?” - -There is no concrete “information” which can be shared with others. - -When Columbus found San Salvador he was able to describe it to those who -did not sail with him in the Santa Maria, but when the mystic finds God -he can not give us any “knowledge” in plain words of everyday speech. He -can only refer to his boulder, or his Gibraltar, of _impression_ That -situation is what we should expect. We can not, either, describe any of -our great emotions. We can not impart what flushes into our consciousness -in moments of lofty intuition. We have a submerged life within us which -is certainly no less real than our hand or foot. It influences all that -we do or say, but we do not find it easy to utter it. In the presence of -the sublime we have nothing to say—or if we do say anything it is a great -mistake! Language is forged to deal with experiences which are common -to many persons, i.e., to experiences which refer to objects in space. -We have no vocabulary for the subtle, elusive flashes of vision which -are unique, individual and unsharable, as for instance is our personal -sense of “the tender grace of a day that is dead.” We are forced in all -these matters to resort to symbolic suggestion and to artistic devices. -Coventry Patmore said with much insight: - - “In divinity and love - What’s best worth saying can’t be said.” - -I believe that mystical experiences do in the long run expand our -knowledge of God and do succeed in verifying themselves. Mysticism is a -sort of spiritual protoplasm that underlies, as a basic substance, much -that is best in religion, in ethics and in life itself. It has generally -been the mystic, the prophet, the seer that has spotted out new ways -forward in the jungle of our world, or lifted our race to new spiritual -levels. Their experiences have in some way equipped them for unusual -tasks, have given supplies of energy to them which their neighbors did -not have, and have apparently brought them into vital correspondence with -dimensions and regions of reality that others miss. The proof that they -have found God, or at least a domain of spiritual reality, does not lie -in some new stock of knowledge, not in some gnostic secret, which they -bring back; it is to be seen rather in the moral and spiritual fruits -which test out and verify the experience. - -Consciousness of beauty or of truth or of goodness baffles analysis -as much as consciousness of God does. These values have no objective -standing ground in current psychology. They are not things in the world -of space. They submit to no adequate casual explanation. They have their -ground of being in some other kind of world than that of the mechanical -order, a world composed of quantitative masses of matter in motion. These -experiences of value, which are as real for consciousness as stone walls -are, make very clear the fact that there are depths and capacities in -the nature of the normal human mind which we do not usually recognize -and of which we have scant and imperfect accounts in our text-books. -Our minds taken in their full range, in other words, have some sort of -contact and relationship with an eternal nature of things far deeper than -atoms and molecules. Only very slowly and gradually has the race learned -through finite symbols and temporal forms to interpret beauty and truth -and goodness which in their essence are as ineffable and indescribable -as the mystic’s experience of God is. Plato often speaks as though he -had high moments of experience when he rose to the naked vision of -beauty—beauty “alone, separate and eternal,” as he says, and his myths -are very likely told, as J. A. Stewart believes, to assist others to -experience this same vision—a beauty which “does not grow nor perish, -is without increase or diminution and endures for everlasting.” But as -a matter of fact, however exalted heavenly and enduring beauty may be -in its essence we know _what it is_ only as it appears in fair forms of -objects, of body, of soul, of actions; in harmonious blending of sounds -or colors; in well-ordered or happily-combined groupings of many aspects -in one unity which is as it ought to be. Truth and moral goodness always -transcend our attainments and we sometimes feel that the very end and -goal of life is the pursuit of that truth or that goodness which eye -hath not seen nor ear heard. But whatever truth we do attain or whatever -goodness we do achieve is always concrete. Truth is just this one more -added fact that resists all attempts to doubt it. Goodness is just this -simple everyday deed that reveals a heroic spirit and a brave venture of -faith in the midst of difficulties. So, too, the mystic knowledge of God -is not some esoteric communication, supplied through trance or ecstasy; -it is an intuitive personal touch with God, felt to be the essentially -real, the bursting forth of an intense love for him which heightens all -the capacities and activities of life, followed by the slow laboratory -results which verify it. “All I could never be” now is. It seems possible -to stand the universe—even to do something toward the transformation -of it. The bans are read for that most difficult of all marriages, the -marriage of the possible with the actual, the ideal with the real. And -if the experience does not prove that the soul has found God, it at -least does this: it makes the soul feel that proofs of God are wholly -unnecessary. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE - - -I - -Twenty years ago in _A Dynamic Faith_, after reviewing the new questions -which the great sciences had raised for religion, I said: “There are -still harder problems than any of these. Psychology has opened a series -of questions which make the boldest tremble for his faith in an endless -life or in any spiritual reality.” The twenty years that have intervened -have made my point much more clear. It is now pretty generally recognized -that the deepest issues of the faith are to be settled in this field. -The problem of the real nature of the human soul is at the present -moment probably the most important religious question before us, for -upon the answer to it all our vital spiritual interests depend. If man -has no unique interior domain, if he is only a tiny bit of that vast -system of naturalism in which every curve of process and development is -rigidly determined by antecedent causes, then “spiritual” is only a -high-sounding word with a metaphorical significance, but with no basis -of reality in the nature of things. There is certainly no “place” in the -external world of space where we can expect to find spiritual realities. -They are not to be found by going “somewhere.” Olympus has been climbed, -and it was as naturalistic as any other mountain peak. Eden is only a -defined area of Mesopotamia, and that blessed word can work no miracles -for us now. The dome of the sky is only an optical illusion. It is no -supersensuous realm on which we can build our hopes. The beyond as a -spiritual reality is within, or it is nowhere. Psychology, however, has -not been very encouraging in promises of hope. It has gone the way of the -other sciences and has taken an ever increasing slant toward naturalism. -The result is that most so-called “psychologies of religion” reduce -religion either to a naturalistic or to a subjective basis, which means -in either case that religion as a way to some objective spiritual reality -has eluded us and has disappeared as a constructive power. Many a modern -psychologist can say with Browning’s Cleon: - - “And I have written three books on the soul, - Proving absurd all written hitherto, - And putting us to ignorance again.” - -Two of the main tendencies in what is usually called scientific -psychology are (1) the “behaviorist” tendency and (2) the tendency to -reduce the inner life to a series of “mind states.” Let us consider -behaviorism first. This turns psychology into “a purely objective -experimental branch of natural science.”[9] It aims at “the prediction -and control of behavior.” “Introspection forms no essential part of -its method.” One is not concerned with “interpretation in terms of -consciousness,” one is interested only in reactions, responses—in short, -in _behavior_ in the presence of stimuli which produce movements. The -body is a complicated organ and “mind” is merely a convenient term to -express its “activities.”[10] The behaviorist “recognizes no dividing -line between man and brute.” Psychology becomes “the science of -behavior,”[11] the study of “the activity of man or animal as it can be -observed from the outside, either with or without attempting to determine -the mental states by inference from these acts.” Emotions become reduced -forthwith to “the bodily resonance” set up in the muscular and visceral -systems by instinctive movements in the presence of objects, these -curious movements being due entirely to the inheritance of physiological -structure adapted at least in the early stages to aid survival. There is -no way by which behaviorist psychology can give any standing to religion -or to any type of spiritual values. “Æsthetics is the study of the -useless,” as William James baldly states the case. Conscience disappears -or becomes another name for the inheritance or acquisition of certain -types of social behavior. Everything which we call ethics or morality -changes into well-defined and rigidly determined behavior. There is -nothing more “spiritual” about it than there is in the fall of a raindrop -or in the luminous trail of a meteor, or in any form of what has happily -been called “cosmic weather.” - -This reduction of personality to a center of activity is a reaction from -the dualistic sundering of mind and body inherited from Descartes. The -theory of psycho-physical parallelism is utterly bankrupt. Idealism, -which is an attempt to get round the _impasse_ of dualism by treating -mind as the only reality, is abhorrent to scientists and unpopular -with young philosophers, especially in America. Some other solution -is therefore urgent. The easiest one at hand, though it is obviously -temporary and superficial, is to cut across the mind loop, ignore its -unique, originative, creative capacity and its interior depth, to deal -only with body plus body’s activities, and to call that “psychology.” - -The “mind-state” psychology takes us little farther on. It also is a -form of naturalism. “Mind-state” psychology makes more of introspection -than behaviorist psychology does, and it works more than the latter -does in terms of consciousness, which for the behaviorist can be almost -ignored or questioned as an existing reality. According to this view, -mind or consciousness is composed of a vast number of “elemental units,” -and the business of psychology is to analyze and describe these units -or states and to discover the laws of their arrangement or succession. -Mind, on this theory, is an aggregate or sum total of “states.” Professor -James, who gives great place to “mind states,” will, however, not admit -that they are permanent and repeatable “units,” passing and returning -unaltered. In his usual vivid way he says that “a permanently existing -‘idea’ [i.e., mental unit] which makes its appearance before the -footlights of consciousness at periodical intervals is as mythological -an entity as the Jack of Spades.”[12] And yet he continues to deal with -mind as a vast series of more or less describable states. Some states are -“substantive,” such as our “perceptions,” our “memories,” or our definite -“images,” when the mind perches and rests upon some clear and describable -thought, and on the other hand there are “transitive states” which are -vague, hard to catch or hold or express, and which reveal the mind in -flight, in passage, on the way from one substantive state to another. - -When we ask the “mind-state” psychologist to tell us about the soul or to -supply us with a working substitute for it, he relegates it to the scrap -heap where lie the collected rubbish and the antiquated mental furniture -of the medieval centuries. We have no need of it. It is only a _word_ -anyhow. It has always been an expensive luxury and a continual bother. We -are better off with it gone. When we look about for a “self as knower,” -or for a guardian of our identity, we find all that we need in these same -“passing states of consciousness.” They not only know things and facts, -but they also know themselves, and successively inherit and adapt all the -preceding “states” have gained and acquired. The state of the present -moment owns the thoughts and experiences which preceded it, for “what -possesses the possessor possesses the possessed.” “In our waking hours,” -Professor James says, “though each pulse of consciousness dies away and -is replaced by another, yet that other, among the things it knows, knows -its own predecessor and finding it ‘warm,’ greets it saying, ‘Thou art -_mine_ and part of the same self with me.’” It seems, then, this famous -writer concludes, that “states of consciousness are all that psychology -needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the soul to -exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle -of unity is superfluous.”[13] We are certainly hard up if we must depend -on proofs which theology can give us! - -We are thus once more reduced to a condition of sheer naturalism. Our -stream of consciousness is only a rapid succession of passing states, -each “state” causally attached to a molecular process in the brain. -“Every _psychosis_ is the result of a _neurosis_.” There is no soul, -there is no creative spiritual pilot of the stream, there is no freedom, -there are no moral values, there is nothing but passing “cosmic weather,” -sometimes peeps of sunshine, sometimes moonshine, sometimes drizzle or -blizzard, and sometimes cyclone or waterspout! To meet the appalling -thinness of this “cinema” of mind states, we are given the comfort of -believing that there is an under-threshold world within, possibly more -real and surely more important than this little rivulet of states which -make up our conscious life. There is a “fringe” to consciousness more -wonderful than that which adorned the robe of the high priest. This -“fringe” defies description and baffles all analysis. It is a halo or -penumbra which surrounds every “state” and holds all the states vitally -together, so that “states” turn out to be unsundered in some deeper -mysterious currents of being. Others would call this same underlying, -mysterious part of us the subliminal “self,” i.e., under-threshold -“self.” It is a kind of semi-spiritual matrix where the states of -consciousness are formed and gestated. It is the source to which we -may trace everything that can not be explained by the avenues of the -senses. Demons and divinities knock at its doors and visitants from -superterrestrial shores peep in at its windows. It is often treated, -especially of course by Frederic Myers, as a deeper “self,” more or less -discontinuous with our conscious upper self, the self of mind states. -All work of genius is due to “subliminal uprushes,” “an emergence into -the current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other -ideas which he has not consciously originated, but which have shaped -themselves beyond his will in profounder regions of his being.” As is -well known, Professor James resorts to these “subliminal uprushes” for -his explanation of all the deeper religious experiences and he has done -much to give credit to these “profounder regions of our being” and to -make the subliminal theory popular. He does not, however, as Myers does, -treat it as another “self,” an intermediary between earth and heaven, a -messenger and a mediator of all those higher and diviner aspects of life -which transcend the sphere of sense and of the empirical world. - - -II - -No theory certainly is sound which begins by cutting the subconscious -and the conscious life apart into two more or less dissociated selves. -There is every indication and evidence of continuity and correlation -between what is above and what is below the threshold which in any case -is as relative and artificial a line as is the horizon. The so-called -“uprushes” of the genius are finely correlated with his normal experience -into which they “uprush.” The “uprushes” which convey truth to Socrates -beautifully fit, first, the character of the man and, secondly, the -demands of the temporal environment. Dante’s “uprushes” correspond to -the psychological climate of the medieval world, and Shakespeare’s -“uprushes” are well suited to the later period of the Renaissance. All -subliminal communications are congruent and consonant with the experience -of the person who receives them. The visions of apocalyptic seers are -all couched in the imagery of the apocalyptic schools, and so, too, the -reports of mediums are all in terms of spiritualistic beliefs. We shall -never find the solution of our religious problems by dividing the inner -life of man into two unrelated selves, by whatever name we call them, -for any religion that is to be real must go all the way through us, must -unify all our powers, and must furnish a spring and power by which we -live here and now in the sphere of our consciousness, our character, and -our will. - -It proves to be just as impossible to cut consciousness up into the -fragmentary bits or units called mind states, or to sunder it into -a so-called “self as knower” and “self as known.” Consciousness is -never a shower of shot—a series of discontinuous units. It is the most -completely integral unity known to us anywhere in the universe. There -are no “parts” to it; it is without breaks or gaps. It is one undivided -whole. The only unit we can properly talk about is our unique persisting -personal self in conscious relation to an environment. We can, of course, -treat consciousness in the abstract as an aggregate of states and we can -formulate a scientific account of this constructed entity as we can of -any other abstracted section of reality. But this abstracted entity is -forever totally different from the warm and intimate inner life within -us, as we actually live it and feel its flow. Any state or process which -we may talk about is only an artificial fragment of a larger, deeper -reality which gives the “fragment” its peculiar being and makes it what -it is. Underneath all that appears and happens in the conscious flow is -the personal self for whom the appearances occur. Any psychologist who -explicitly leaves this out of his account always implicitly smuggles it -in again. - -The most striking fact of experience is _knowing that we know_. The -same consciousness which knows any given object in the same pulse of -consciousness knows itself as knowing it. Self-consciousness is present -in all consciousness of objects. The thinker that thinks is involved in -and is bound up with all knowledge, even of the simplest sort. Every -idea, every feeling, and every act of will is what it is because it -is in living unity with our entire personal self. If any such “state” -got dissociated, slipped away and undertook to do business on its own -hook, it would be as unknown to us as our guardian angel is. The mind -that knows can never be separated from the world that is known. One can -think in abstraction of a mind apart by itself and of a world equally -isolated—but no such mind and no such world actually exist. To be a -real mind, a real self, is to be in active commerce with a real world -given in experience. One thinks his object in the same unified pulse -of consciousness in which he thinks himself and vice versa. There is -no self-consciousness without object-consciousness, and there is no -object-consciousness without self-consciousness. Outer and inner, knower -and known, are not two but forever one. The “soul,” therefore, is not -something hidden away in behind or above and beyond our ideas and -feelings and will activities. It is the active living unity of personal -consciousness—the one psychic integer and unit for a true psychology. It -binds all the items of experience into one indivisible unity, one organic -whole through which our personal type of life is made possible. At every -moment of waking, intelligent life we look out upon each fact, each -event, each experience from a wider self which organizes the new fact in -with its former experiences, weaves it into the web of its memories and -emotions and purposes, makes the new fact a part of itself, and yet at -the same time knows itself as transcending and outliving the momentary -fact. - -When we study the personal self deeply enough, not as cut up into -artificial units, but as the living, undivided whole, which is implied in -all coherent experience, we find at once a basis for those ideal values -that are rightly called spiritual and for “those mighty hopes that make -us men.” The first step toward a genuine basis of spiritual life is to -be found in the restoration of the personal self to its true place as -the ultimate fact, or datum, of self-conscious experience. As soon as -we come back to this central reality, our unified, unique, self-active -personality, we find ourselves in possession of material enough; as -Browning would say, - - “For fifty hopes and fears - As old and new at once as nature’s self, - To rap and knock and enter in our soul, - Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, - Round the ancient idol, on his base again,— - The grand Perhaps!” - -What we find at once, even without a resort to a subliminal self, or to -“uprushes,” is that our normal, personal self-consciousness is a unique, -living, self-active, creative center of energies, dealing not only with -space and time and tangible things, but dealing as well with realities -which are space- and time-transcending. “The things that are not” prove -to be immense factors in our lives and constantly “bring to naught the -things that are.” The greatest events of history have not been due to -physical forces; they have been due to plans and ideals which were real -only in the viewless minds of men. What _was not yet_ brought about what -was to be. Alexander the Great with his physical forces, sweeping across -the ancient world like a cataclysm of nature, was certainly no more truly -a world-builder than was Jesus, who had no armies, who used no tangible -forces, but merely put into operation those “things that were not,” i.e., -his ideas of what ought to be and his conviction that love is stronger -than Roman legions. The simplest and humblest of us, like the Psalmist, -find the Meshech where we sojourn too straitened and narrow for us. We -have all cried, “Woe is me that I sojourn in Meshech!” The reason that -we discover the limits and bounds of our poor Meshech is that we are all -the time going beyond the hampering Meshech that tries to contain and -imprison us. - -The thing which spoils all our finite camping places is our unstilled -consciousness that we are made for something more than we have yet -realized or attained. Our ideals are an unmistakable intimation of our -time-transcending nature. We can no more stop with _that which is_ than -Niagara can stop at the fringe of the fall. All consciousness of the -higher rational type is continually carried forward toward the larger -whole that would complete and fulfill its present experience. We are -aware of the limit only because we are already beyond it. The present is -a pledge of more; the little arc which we have gives us a ground of faith -in the full circle which we seek. A study of man’s life which does not -deal with this inherent idealizing tendency is like _Hamlet_ with Hamlet -left out. Martineau declared: - - “Amid all the sickly talk about ‘ideals’ which has become the - commonplace of our age, it is well to remember that so long - as they are dreams of future possibility and not faiths in - present realities, so long as they are a mere self-painting - of the yearning spirit and not its personal surrender to - immediate communion with an infinite Perfection, they have no - more solidity or steadiness than floating air-bubbles, gay in - the sunshine and broken by the passing wind.... The very gate - of entrance to religion, the moment of its new birth, is the - discovery that your ideal is the everlasting Real, no transient - brush of a fancied angel wing, but the abiding presence and - persuasion of the Soul of souls.”[14] - -In the same vein Pringle-Pattison, one of the wisest of our living -teachers, has said: - - “Consciousness of imperfection, the capacity for progress, - and the pursuit of perfection, are alike possible to man only - through the universal life of thought and goodness in which - he shares and which, at once an indwelling presence and an - unattainable ideal, draws him ‘on and always on.’”[15] - -It is here in these experiences of ours which spring out of our real -nature, but which always carry us beyond _what is_ and which make it -impossible for us to live in a world composed of “things,” no matter -how golden they are, that we have the source of our spiritual values. -When we talk about values we may use the word in two senses. In the -ordinary sense we mean something extrinsic, utilitarian. We mean that -we possess something which can be exchanged for something else. It is -precious because we can sell it or swap it or use it to keep life going. -In the other sense we see value in reference to something which _ought -to be_, whether it now is or not. It is _fit_ to be, it would justify -its being in relation to the whole reality. When we speak of ethical or -spiritual values we are thinking of something that will minister to the -highest good of persons or of a society of persons. Value in this loftier -meaning always has to do with ideals. A being without any conscious -end or goal, i.e., without an ideal, would have no sense of worth, no -spiritual values. It does not appear on the level of instinct. It arises -as an appreciation of what ought to be realized in order to complete and -fulfill any life which is to be called good. Obviously a person with -rich and complex interests will have many scales of value, but lower and -lesser ones will fall into place under wider and higher ones, so that one -forms a kind of hierarchical system of values with some overtopping end -of supreme worth dominating the will. - -It becomes one of the deepest questions in the world what connection -there is between man’s spiritual values or ideals and the eternal nature -of things in the universe. Are these ideals of ours, these values which -seem to raise us from the naturalistic to the spiritual level, just -our subjective creations, or are they expressions of a coöperating and -rational power beyond us and yet in us, giving us intimations of what -is true and best in a world more real than that of matter and motion? -These ideal values, such as our appreciation of beauty, our confidence -in truth, our dedication to moral causes, our love for worthy persons, -our loyalty to the Kingdom of God, are not born of selfish preference -or individual desire. They are not capricious like dreams and visions. -They attach to something deeper than our personal wishes, in fact our -faith in them and our devotion to them often cause us to take lines of -action straight against our personal wishes and our individual desires. -They stand the test of stress and strain, they weather the storms of time -which submerge most things, they survive all shock and mutations and only -increase in worth with the wastage of secondary goods. They rest on no -mere temporary impulse or sporadic whim. They have their roots deep in -the life of the race. They have lasted better than Andes or Ararat, and -they are based upon common, universal aspects of rational life. They are -at least as sure and prophetic as are laws of triangles and relations of -space. If we can count on the permanence of the multiplication table and -on the continuity of nature, no less can we count on the conservation of -values and the continued significance of life. - -They seem thus to belong to the system of the universe and to have the -guardianship of some invisible Pilot of the cosmic ship. The streams -of moral power and the spiritual energies that have their rise in good -persons are as much to be respected facts of the universe as are the -rivers that carry ships of commerce. Moral goodness is a factor in the -constitution of the world, and the eternal nature of the universe backs -it as surely as it backs the laws of hydrogen. It does not back every -ideal, for some ideals are unfit and do not minister to a coherent and -rationally ordered scheme of life. Those ideals only have the august -sanction and right of way which are born out of the age-long spiritual -travail of the race and which tend to organize men for better team -efforts, i.e., which promote the social community life, the organism of -the Spirit. Through these spiritual forces, revealed in normal ethical -persons, we are, I believe, nearer to the life of God and closer to -the revealing centers of the universe than we are when we turn to the -subliminal selves of hysterics. The normal interior life of man is -boundless and bottomless. It is not a physical reality, to be measured by -foot rules or yardsticks. It is a reality of a wholly different order. -It is essentially spiritual, i.e., of spirit. In its organized and -differentiated life this personal self of ours is often weak and erratic. -We feel the _urge_ which belongs to the very nature of _spirit_, but we -blunder in our direction, we bungle our aims and purposes, we fail to -discover what it is that we really want. But we are never insulated from -the wider spiritual environment which constitutes the true inner world -from which we have come and to which we belong. There are many ways of -correspondence with this environment. No way, however, is more vital, -more life-giving than this way of dedication to the advancement of the -moral ideals of the world. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] 1 Cor. VI. 9-11. - -[2] _Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_, p. 483. - -[3] Bosanquet, _Value and Destiny of the Individual_, p. 320. - -[4] F. C. S. Schiller, _Humanism_, pp. 228-9. - -[5] Shaler, _The Individual_, p. 194. - -[6] “The Flight of the Duchess.” - -[7] _Letters of William James_, Vol. II. p. 76. - -[8] _Ibid._, Vol. II. p. 269. - -[9] Watson, _Behavior_, p. 1. - -[10] See Ralph Barton Perry’s article “A Behavioristic View of Purpose” -in the _Journal of Philosophy_, February 17, 1921. - -[11] Pillsbury, _Fundamentals of Psychology_, p. 4. - -[12] _Psychology_ (Briefer Course), p. 197. - -[13] _Ibid._, p. 203. - -[14] Martineau, _A Study of Religion_ (2d ed.), I, 12. - -[15] _The Philosophical Radicals_, pp. 97-98. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Spiritual Energies In Daily Life, by Rufus M. 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Jones - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Spiritual Energies In Daily Life - -Author: Rufus M. Jones - -Release Date: December 22, 2019 [EBook #61004] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron, Monicas wicked stepmother -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> -<img src="images/macmillan.jpg" width="200" height="75" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> -<span class="smaller">NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> -ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</span></p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">MACMILLAN & CO., Limited</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> -MELBOURNE</span></p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">TORONTO</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">SPIRITUAL ENERGIES<br /> -IN DAILY LIFE</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -<span class="smcap">RUFUS M. JONES, Litt.D., D.D.</span><br /> -<span class="smaller">Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College<br /> -Author of <cite>Studies in Mystical Religion</cite>; <cite>The Inner Life</cite>;<br /> -<cite>The World Within</cite>, etc.</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="gothic">New York</span><br /> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> -1922</p> - -<p class="center smaller"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922,<br /> -By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span></p> - -<p class="center smaller">Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922</p> - -<p class="titlepage smaller">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PREFACE</h2> - -<p>I wish to thank the editor of <cite>The Atlantic -Monthly</cite> for his permission to print in this volume -the chapter entitled “The Mystic’s Experience -of God,” also the editors of <cite>The Journal of Religion</cite> -for their permission to use the article on -“Psychology and the Spiritual Life.” Some of -the shorter essays have been printed in <cite>The -<span class="upright">(London)</span> Friend</cite> and in <cite>The Homiletic Review</cite>. -Kind permission has been granted for their reproduction.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION<br /> -<span class="smaller">RELIGION AS ENERGY</span></h2> - -<p>Religion is an experience which no definition -exhausts. One writer with expert knowledge of -anthropology tells us what it is, and we know as -we read his account that, however true it may be -as far as it goes, it yet leaves untouched much -undiscovered territory. We turn next to the -trained psychologist, who leads us “down the -labyrinthine ways of our own mind” and tells us -why the human race has always been seeking God -and worshiping Him. We are thankful for his -Ariadne thread which guides us within the maze, -but we feel convinced that there are doors which -he has not opened—“doors to which he had no -key.” The theologian, with great assurance and -without “ifs and buts,” offers us the answer to all -mysteries and the solution of all problems, but -when we have gone “up the hill all the way to -the very top” with him, we find it a “homesick -peak”—<i lang="de">Heimwehfluh</i>—and we still wonder -over the real meaning of religion.</p> - -<p>We are evidently dealing here with something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span> -like that drinking horn which the Norse God Thor -tried to drain. He failed to do it because the -horn which he assayed to empty debouched into -the endless ocean, and therefore to drain the horn -meant drinking the ocean dry. To probe religion -down to the bottom means knowing “what God -and man is.” Each one of us, in his own tongue -and in terms of his own field of knowledge, gives -his partial word, his tiny glimpse of insight. But -the returns are never all in. There is always -more to say. “Man is incurably religious,” that -fine scholar, Auguste Sabatier, said. Yes, he is. -It is often wild and erratic religion which we find, -no doubt, but the hunger and thirst of the human -soul are an indubitable fact. In different forms -of speech we can all say with St. Augustine of -Hippo: “Thou hast touched me and I am on -fire for thy peace.”</p> - -<p>In saying that religion is energy I am only -seizing one aspect of this great experience of the -human heart. It is, however, I believe, an essential -aspect. A religion that makes no difference -to a person’s life, a religion that <em>does</em> nothing, a -religion that is utterly devoid of power, may for -all practical purposes be treated as though it did -not exist. The great experts—those who know -from the inside what religion is—always make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span> -much of its dynamic power, its energizing and propulsive -power. <em>Power</em> is a word often on the lips -of Jesus; never used, it should be said, in the sense -of extrinsic authority or the right to command -and govern, but always in reference to an intrinsic -and interior moral and spiritual energy of life. -The kingdom of God comes with power, not because -the Messiah is supplied with ten legions -of angels and can sweep the Roman eagles back -to the frontiers of the Holy Land, but it “comes -with power” because it is a divine and life-transforming -energy, working in the moral and spiritual -nature of man, as the expanding yeast works -in the flour or as the forces of life push the seed -into germination and on into the successive stages -toward the maturity of the full-grown plant and -grain.</p> - -<p>The little fellowship of followers and witnesses -who formed the nucleus of the new-born Church -felt themselves “endued with power” on the day -of Pentecost. Something new and dynamic entered -the consciousness of the feeble band and -left them no longer feeble. There was an in-rushing, -up-welling sense of invasion. They -passed over from a visible Leader and Master to -an invisible and inward Presence revealed to -them as an unwonted energy. Ecstatic utterance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> -which seems to have followed, is not the all-important -thing. The important thing is heightened -moral quality, intensified fellowship, a fused -and undying loyalty, an irresistible boldness in -the face of danger and opposition, a fortification -of spirit which nothing could break. This energy -which came with their experience is what marks -the event as an epoch.</p> - -<p>St. Paul writes as though he were an expert in -dynamics. “Dynamos,” the Greek word for -power, is one of his favorite words. He seems to -have found out how to draw upon energies in the -universe which nobody else had suspected were -even there. It is a fundamental feature of his -“Aegean gospel” that God is not self-contained but -self-giving, that He circulates, as does the sun, as -does the sea, and comes into us as an energy. This -incoming energy he calls by many names: “The -Spirit,” “holy Spirit,” “Christ,” “the Spirit of -Christ,” “Christ in you,” “God that worketh in -us.” Whatever his word or term is, he is always -declaring, and he bases his testimony on experience, -that God, as Christ reveals Him, is an active -energy working with us and in us for the complete -transformation of our fundamental nature and -for <em>a new creation</em> in us.</p> - -<p>All this perhaps sounds too grand and lofty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span> -too remote and far away, to touch us with reality. -We assume that it is for saints or apostles, but -not for common everyday people like ourselves. -Well, that is where we are wrong. The accounts -which St. Paul gives of the energies of religion -are not for his own sake, or for persons who are -<i lang="fr">bien né</i> and naturally saintly. They are for the -rank and file of humans. In fact his Corinthian -fellowship was raised by these energies out of -the lowest stratum of society. The words which -he uses to describe them are probably not over -strong: “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, -nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor -abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, -nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners -shall inherit the kingdom of God. <em>And -such were some of you</em>: but ye are washed, but -ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name -[i.e. the power] of the Lord Jesus and by the -Spirit of our God.”<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>It is to be noticed, further, that St. Paul does -not confine his list of energies to those mighty -spiritual forces which come down from above -and work upon us from the outside. Much more -often our attention is directed to energies which -are potential within ourselves—even in the most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span> -ordinary of us—energies which work as silently -as molecular forces or as “the capillary oozing -of water,” but which nevertheless are as reconstructive -as the forces of springtime, following -the winter’s havoc. If the grace of God—the -unlimited sacrificing love of God revealed in -Christ—is for St. Paul the supreme spiritual -energy of the universe, hardly less important is -the simple human energy which meets that centrifugal -energy and makes it operate within the -sphere of the moral will. That dynamic energy, -by which the man responds to God’s upward pull -and which makes all the difference, St. Paul calls -faith.</p> - -<p>We are so accustomed to the use of the word -in a spurious sense that we are slow to apprehend -the immense significance of this human energy -which lies potentially within us. Unfortunately -trained young folks and scientifically minded people -are apt to shy away from the word and put -themselves on the defensive, as though they were -about to be asked to believe the impossible or the -dubious or the unprovable. Faith in the sense -in which St. Paul uses it does not mean <em>believing</em> -something. It is a moral attitude and response -of will to the character of God as He has been -revealed in Christ. It is like the act which closes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span> -the electric circuit, which act at once releases -power. The dynamic effect which follows the -act is the best possible verification of the rationality -of the act. So, too, faith as a moral response -is no blind leap, no wild venture; it is an -act which can be tested and verified by moral and -spiritual effects, which are as real as the heat, -light, and horse power of the dynamo.</p> - -<p>Faith has come to be recognized as an energy -in many spheres of life. We know what a stabilizer -it is in the sphere of finance. Stocks and -bonds and banks shift their values as faith in -them rises or falls. <em>Morale</em> is only another name -for faith. Our human relationships, our social -structures, our enjoyment of one another, our satisfaction -in books and in lectures rest upon faith -and when that energy fails, collapses of the most -serious sort follow. We might as well try to -build a world without cohesion as to maintain -society without the energy of faith.</p> - -<p>We have many illustrations of the important -part which faith plays in the sphere of physical -health. The corpuscles of the blood and the -molecules of the body are altered by it. The -tension of the arteries and the efficiency of the -digestive tract are affected by it. Nerves are in -close sympathetic <i lang="fr">rapport</i> with faith. It is never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span> -safe to tell a strong man that he is pale and that -he looks ill. If two or three persons in succession -give him a pessimistic account of his appearance, -he will soon begin to have the condition -which has been imagined. Dr. William McDougall -gives the case of a boy who was being chased -by a furious animal and under the impulse of the -emergency he leaped a fence which he could never -afterwards jump, even after long athletic training. -The list of similar instances is a very long -one. Every reader knows a case as impressive -as the one I have given. The varieties of “shell-shock” -have furnished volumes of illustrations -of the energy of faith, its dynamic influence upon -health and life and efficiency.</p> - -<p>Faith in the sphere of religion works the greatest -miracles of life that are ever worked. It -makes the saint out of Magdalene, the heroic missionary -and martyr out of Paul, the spiritual -statesman of the ages out of Carthaginian -Augustine, the illuminated leader of men out of -Francis of Assisi, the maker of a new world epoch -out of the nervously unstable monk Luther, the -creator of a new type of spiritual society out of -the untaught Leicestershire weaver, George Fox. -Why do we not all experience the miracle and -find <em>the rest of ourselves</em> through faith? The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span> -main trouble is that we live victims of limiting -inhibitions. We hold intellectual theories which -keep back or check the outflow of the energy of -faith. We have a nice system of thought which -accounts for everything and explains everything -and which leaves no place for faith. We know -too much. We say to ourselves that only the -ignorant and uncultured are led by faith. And -this same wise man, who is too proud to have -faith, holds all his inhibitory theories on a basis -of faith! Every one of them starts out on faith, -gathers standing ground by faith, and becomes a -controlling force through faith!</p> - -<p>There are many other spiritual energies, some -of which will be dealt with specifically or implicitly -in the later chapters of this book. Not often -in the history of the modern world certainly have -spiritual energies seemed more urgently needed -than to-day. Our troubles consist largely now -of failure to lay hold of moral and spiritual forces -that lie near at hand and to utilize powers that -are within our easy reach. Our stock of faith -and hope and love has run low and we realize -only feebly what mighty energies they can be.</p> - -<p>I hope that these short essays may help in some -slight way to indicate that the ancient realities -by which men live still abide, and that the invisible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span> -energies of the spirit are real, as they have -always been real. We have had an impressive -demonstration that a civilization built on external -force and measured in terms of economic achievements -cannot stand its ground and is unable -to speak to the condition of persons endowed and -equipped as we are. We are bound to build a -higher civilization, to create a greater culture, and -to form a truer kingdom of life or we must write -“<i>Mene</i>” on all human undertakings. That is -our task now, and it is a serious one for which -we shall need all the energies that the universe -puts at our disposal. I am told that when the -great Hellgate bridge was being built over the -East River in New York the engineers came upon -an old derelict ship, lying embedded in the river -mud, just where one of the central piers of the -bridge was to go down through to its bedrock -foundation. No tug boat could be found that -was able to start the derelict from its ancient bed -in the ooze. It would not move, no matter what -force was applied. Finally, with a sudden inspiration -one of the workers hit upon this scheme. -He took a large flat-boat, which had been used to -bring stone down the river, and he chained it to -the old sunken ship when the tide was low. Then -he waited for the great tidal energies to do their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span> -work. Slowly the rising tide, with all the forces -of the ocean behind it and the moon above it, -came up under the flat-boat, raising it inch by -inch. And as it came up, lifted by irresistible -power, the derelict came up with it, until it was -entirely out of the mud that had held it. Then -the boat, with its subterranean load, was towed -out to sea where the old waterlogged ship was -unchained and allowed to drop forever out of -sight and reach.</p> - -<p>There are greater forces than those tidal energies -waiting for us to use for our tasks. They -have always been there. They are there now. -But they do not <em>work</em>, they do not <em>operate</em>, until -we lay hold of them and use them for our present -purposes. We must be <em>co-workers with God</em>.</p> - -<p class="noindent">Haverford, Pennsylvania.</p> - -<p class="noindent">Mid Winter, 1922.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr"></td> - <td><span class="smcap">Introduction: Religion as Energy</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">vii</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I<br />THE CENTRAL PEACE</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Peace That Passes Understanding</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I_I">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Search for a Refuge</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I_II">5</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">What We Want Most</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I_III">10</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II<br />THE GREAT ENERGIES THAT WORK</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Trying the Better Way</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#II_I">15</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">He Came to Himself</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#II_II">23</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Some New Reasons for “Loving Enemies”</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#II_III">29</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III<br />THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Where the Beyond Breaks Through</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#III_I">35</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Conquering by an Inner Force</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#III_II">41</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Living in the Presence of the Eternal</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#III_III">46</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV<br />THE WAY OF VISION</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Days of Greater Visibility</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IV_I">50</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Prophet and His Tragedies</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IV_II">54</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">A Long Distance Call</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#IV_III">60</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span>CHAPTER V<br />THE WAY OF PERSONALITY</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Another Kind of Hero</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#V_I">65</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Better Possession</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#V_II">69</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Greatest Rivalries of Life</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#V_III">74</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI<br />AGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Church of the Living God</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI_I">79</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Nursery of Spiritual Life</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI_II">83</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Democracy We Aim At</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI_III">86</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">IV.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Essential Truth of Christianity</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VI_IV">91</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII<br />THE NEAR AND THE FAR</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Things Present and Things to Come</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VII_I">98</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Two Types of Ministry</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VII_II">102</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">III.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">We Have Seen His Star</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VII_III">106</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII<br />THE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">I.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Religious Significance of Death</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VIII_I">111</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdr">II.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The New Born out of the Old</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#VIII_II">127</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX<br />THE MYSTIC’S EXPERIENCE OF GOD</td> - <td class="tdpg top-pad"><a href="#IX_I">133</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER X<br />PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE</td> - <td class="tdpg top-pad"><a href="#X_I">160</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1>SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN -DAILY LIFE</h1> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE CENTRAL PEACE</span></h2> - -<h3 id="I_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING</span></h3> - -<p>We are all familiar with the coming of a peace -into our life at the terminus of some great strain -or after we have weathered a staggering crisis. -When a long-continued pain which has racked our -nerves passes away and leaves us free, we suddenly -come into a zone of peace. When we have -been watching by a bedside where a life, unspeakably -precious to us, has lain in the grip of some -terrible disease and at length successfully passes -the crisis, we walk out into the fields under the -altered sky and feel a peace settle down upon us, -which makes the whole world look different. Or, -again, we have been facing some threatening -catastrophe which seemed likely to break in on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> -our life and perhaps end forever the calm and -even tenor of it, and just when the hour of danger -seemed darkest and our fear was at its height, -some sudden turn of things has brought a happy -shift of events, the danger has passed, and a great -peace has come over us instead of the threatened -trouble. In all these cases the peace which succeeds -pain and strain and anxiety is a thoroughly -natural, reasonable peace, a peace which comes -in normal sequence and is quite accessible to the -understanding. We should be surprised and -should need an explanation if we heard of an instance -of a passing pain or a yielding strain that -was not followed by a corresponding sense of -peace. One who has seen a child that was lost -in a crowded city suddenly find his mother and -find safety in her dear arms has seen a good case -of this sequential peace, this peace which the -understanding can grasp and comprehend. We -behold it and say, “How otherwise!”</p> - -<p>There is, St. Paul reminds us, another kind of -peace of quite a different order. It baffles the -understanding and transcends its categories. It -is a peace which comes, not after the pain is relieved, -not after the crisis has passed, not after -the danger has disappeared; but in the midst of -the pain, while the crisis is still on, and even in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> -the imminent presence of the danger. It is a -peace that is not banished or destroyed by the -frustrations which beset our lives; rather it is in -and through the frustrations that we first come -upon it and enter into it, as, to use St. Paul’s -phrase, into a garrison which guards our hearts -and minds.</p> - -<p>Each tested soul has to meet its own peculiar -frustrations. All of us who work for “causes” -or who take up any great piece of moral or spiritual -service in the world know more about defeats -and disappointments than we do about -success and triumphs. We have to learn to be -patient and long-suffering. We must become -accustomed to postponements and delays, and -sometimes we see the work of almost a lifetime -suddenly fail of its end. Some turn of events -upsets all our noble plans and frustrates the result, -just when it appeared ready to arrive. -Death falls like lightning on a home that had -always before seemed sheltered and protected, -and instantly life is profoundly altered for those -who are left behind. Nothing can make up for -the loss. There is no substitute for what is gone. -The accounts will not balance; frustration in another -form confronts us. Or it may be a breakdown -of physical or mental powers, or peradventure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -both together, just when the emergencies -of the world called for added energy and increased -range of power from us. The need is -plain, the harvest is ripe, but the worker’s hand -fails and he must contract when he would most -expand. Frustration looks him straight in the -face. Well, to achieve a peace under those -circumstances is to have a peace which does not -follow a normal sequence. It is not what the -world expects. It does not accord with the ways -of thought and reasoning. It passes all understanding. -It brings another kind of world into -operation and reveals a play of invisible forces -upon which the understanding had not reckoned. -In fact, this strange intellect-transcending peace, -in the very midst of storm and strain and trial, is -one of the surest evidences there is of God. One -may in his own humble nerve-power succeed in -acquiring a stoic resignation so that he can say,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“In the fell clutch of circumstance</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I have not winced nor cried aloud.</div> -<div class="verse">Under the bludgeonings of chance</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My head is bloody, but unbowed.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He may, by sheer force of will, keep down the -lid upon his emotions and go on so nearly unmoved -that his fellows can hear no groan and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -will wonder at the way he stands the universe. -But peace in the soul is another matter. To have -the whole heart and mind garrisoned with peace -even in Nero’s dungeon, when the imperial death -sentence brings frustration to all plans and a -terminus to all spiritual work, calls for some -world-transcending assistance to the human spirit. -Such peace is explained only when we discover -that it is “the peace of God,” and that it came -because the soul broke through the ebbings and -flowings of time and space and allied itself with -the Eternal.</p> - -<h3 id="I_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE SEARCH FOR A REFUGE</span></h3> - -<p>Few things are more impressive than the persistent -search which men have made in all ages -for a refuge against the dangers and the ills that -beset life. The cave-men, the cliff-dwellers, the -primitive builders of shelters in inaccessible tree -tops, are early examples of the search for human -defenses against fear. Civilization slowly perfected -methods of refuge and defense of elaborate -types, which, in turn, had to compete with -ever-increasing ingenuity of attack and assault.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -But I am not concerned here with these material -strongholds of refuge and defense. I am thinking -rather of the human search for shelter against -other weapons than those which kill the body. -We are all trying, in one way or another, to discover -how to escape from “the heavy and weary -weight of all this unintelligible world,” how to -bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. -We are sensitively constructed, with nerves exposed -to easy attack. We are all shelterless at -some point to the storms of the world. Even -the most perfectly equipped and impervious -heroes prove to be vulnerable at some one uncovered -spot. Sooner or later our protections -fail, and the pitiless enemies of our happiness get -through the defenses and reach the quick and -sensitive soul within us. How to rebuild our -refuge, how to find real shelter, is our problem. -What fortress is there in which the soul is safe -from fear and trouble?</p> - -<p>The most common expedient is one which will -drug the sensitive nerves and produce an easy -relief from strain and worry. There is a magic -in alcohol and kindred distillations, which, like -Aladdin’s genie, builds a palace of joy and, for -the moment, banishes the enemy of all peace. -The refuge seems complete. All fear is gone,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -worry is a thing of the past. The jargon of life -is over, the pitiless problem of good and evil -drops out of consciousness. The shelterless soul -seems covered and housed. Intoxication is only -one of the many quick expedients. It is always -possible to retreat from the edge of strenuous -battle into some one of the many natural instincts -as a way of refuge. The great instinctive emotions -are absorbing, and tend to obliterate everything -else. They occupy the entire stage of the -inner drama, and push all other actors away from -the footlights of consciousness, so that here, too, -the enemies of peace and joy seem vanquished, -and the refuge appears to be found.</p> - -<p>That multitudes accept these easy ways of defense -against the ills of life is only too obvious. -The medieval barons who could build themselves -castles of safety were few in number. Visible -refuges in any case are rare and scarce, but the -escape from the burdens and defeats of the world -in drink and drug and thrilling instinctive emotion -is, without much difficulty, open to every man -and within easy reach for rich and poor alike, and -many there be that seize upon this method. The -trouble with it is that it is a very temporary -refuge. It works, if at all, only for a brief span. -It plays havoc in the future with those who resort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -to it. It rolls up new liabilities to the ills one -would escape. It involves far too great a price -for the tiny respite gained. And, most of all, it -discounts or fails to reckon with the inherent -greatness of the human soul. We are fashioned -for stupendous issues. Our very sense of failure -and defeat comes from a touch of the infinite in -our being. We look before and after, and sigh -for that which is not, just because we can not be -contented with finite fragments of time and space. -We are meant for greater things than these -trivial ones which so often get our attention and -absorb us; but the moment the soul comes to itself, -its reach goes beyond the grasp, and it feels -an indescribable discontent and longing for that -for which it was made. To seek refuge, therefore, -in some narcotic joy, to still the onward -yearning of the soul by drowning consciousness, -to banish the pain of pursuit by a barbaric surge -of emotions, is to strike against the noblest trait -of our spiritual structure; it means committing -suicide of the soul. It cannot be a real man’s -way of relief.</p> - -<p>In fact, nothing short of finding the goal and -object for which the soul, the spiritual nature in -us, is fitted will ever do for beings like us. St. -Augustine, in words of immortal beauty, has said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -that God has made us for himself, and our hearts -are restless until we rest in him. It is not a theory -of poet or theologian. It is a simple fact of -life, as veritable as the human necessity for food. -There is no other shelter for the soul, no other -refuge or fortress will ever do for us but God. -“We tremble and we burn. We tremble, knowing -that we are unlike him. We burn, feeling -that we are like him.”</p> - -<p>In hours of loss and sorrow, when the spurious -props fail us, we are more apt to find our way -back to the real refuge. We are suddenly made -aware of our shelterless condition, alone, and in -our own strength. Our stoic armor and our -brave defenses of pride become utterly inadequate. -We are thrown back on reality. We -have then our moments of sincerity and insight. -We feel that we cannot live without resources -from beyond our own domain. We must have -God. It is then, when one knows that nothing -else whatever will do, that the great discovery is -made. Again and again the psalms announce -this. When the world has caved in; when the -last extremity has been reached; when the billows -and water-spouts of fortune have done their -worst, you hear the calm, heroic voice of the -lonely man saying: “God is our refuge and fortress,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -therefore will not we fear though the earth -be removed, though the mountains be carried -into the midst of the sea.” That is great experience, -but it is not reserved for psalmists and -rare patriarchs like Job. It is a privilege for -common mortals like us who struggle and agonize -and feel the thorn in the flesh, and the bitter -tragedy of life unhealed. Whether we make the -discovery or not, God is there with us in the furnace. -Only it makes all the difference if we do -find him as the one high tower where refuge is -not for the passing moment only, but is an eternal -attainment.</p> - -<h3 id="I_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">WHAT WE WANT MOST</span></h3> - -<p>There are many things which we want—things -for which we struggle hard and toil painfully. -Like the little child with his printed list -for Santa Claus, we have our list, longer or -shorter, of precious things which we hope to see -brought within our reach before we are gathered -to our fathers. The difference is that the child -is satisfied if he gets one thing which is on his list. -We want everything on ours. The world is full<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -of hurry and rush, push and scramble, each man -bent on winning some one of his many goals. -But, in spite of this excessive effort to secure the -tangible goods of the earth, it is nevertheless true -that deep down in the heart most men want the -peace of God. If you have an opportunity to -work your way into that secret place where a -man really lives, you will find that he knows perfectly -well that he is missing something. This -feeling of unrest and disquiet gets smothered for -long periods in the mass of other aims, and some -men hardly know that they have such a thing as -an immortal soul hidden away within. But, even -so, it will not remain quiet. It cries out like the -lost child who misses his home. When the hard -games of life prove losing ones, when the stupidity -of striving so fiercely for such bubbles comes -over him, when a hand from the dark catches -away the best earthly comfort he had, when the -genuine realities of life assert themselves over -sense, he wakes up to find himself hungry and -thirsty for something which no one of his earthly -pursuits has supplied or can supply. He wants -God. He wants peace. He wants to feel his -life founded on an absolute reality. He wants -to have the same sort of peace and quiet steal -over him which used to come when as a child he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> -ran to his mother and had all the ills of life banished -from thought in the warm love of her embrace.</p> - -<p>But it is not only the driving, pushing man, ambitious -for wealth and position, who misses the -best thing there is to get—the peace of God. -Many persons who are directly seeking it miss it. -Here is a man who hopes to find it by solving all -his difficult intellectual problems. When he can -answer the hard questions which life puts to him, -and read the riddles which the ages have left -unread, he thinks his soul will feel the peace of -God. Not so, because each problem opens into -a dozen more. It is a noble undertaking to help -read the riddles of the universe, but let no one -expect to enter into the peace of God by such a -path. Here is another person who devotes herself -to nothing but to seeking the peace of God. -Will she not find it? Not that way. It is not -found when it is sought for its own sake. He -or she who is living to get the joy of divine peace, -who would “have no joy but calm,” will probably -never have the peace which passeth understanding. -Like all the great blessings, it comes as a -by-product when one is seeking something else. -Christ’s peace came to him not because he sought -it, but because he accepted the divine will which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -led to Gethsemane and Calvary. Paul’s peace -did not flow over him while he was in Arabia -seeking it, but while he was in Nero’s prison, -whither the path of his labors for helping men -had led him. He who forgets himself in loving -devotion, he who turns aside from his self-seeking -aims to carry joy into any life, he who sets -about doing any task for the love of God, has -found the only possible road to the permanent -peace of God.</p> - -<p>There are no doubt a great many persons -working for the good of others and for the betterment -of the world who yet do not succeed in -securing the peace of God. They are in a frequent -state of nerves; they are busy here and -there, rushing about perplexed and weary, fussy -and irritable. With all their efforts to promote -good causes, they do not quite attain the poise -and calm of interior peace. They are like the -tumultuous surface of the ocean with its combers -and its spray, and they seldom know the deep -quiet like that of the underlying, submerged -waters far below the surface. The trouble with -them is that they are carrying themselves all the -time. They do not forget themselves in their -aims of service. They are like the ill person -who is so eager to get well that he keeps watching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> -his tongue, feeling his pulse, and getting his -weight. Peace does not come to one who is -watching continually for the results of his work, -or who is wondering what people are saying -about it, or who is envious and jealous of other -persons working in the same field, or who is -touchy about “honor” or recognition. Those -are just the attitudes which frustrate peace and -make it stay away from one’s inner self.</p> - -<p>There is a higher level of work and service -and ministry, which, thank God, men like us can -reach. It is attained when one swings out into -a way of life which is motived and controlled by -genuine sincere love and devotion, when consecration -obliterates self-seeking, when in some -measure, like Christ, the worker can say without -reservations, “Not my will but thine be done.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE GREAT ENERGIES THAT WORK</span></h2> - -<h3 id="II_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">TRYING THE BETTER WAY</span></h3> - -<p>A very fresh and unusual type of book has recently -appeared under the title, “<cite>By An Unknown -Disciple</cite>.” It tells in a simple, direct, -impressive way, after the manner of the Gospels, -the story of Christ’s life and works and message. -It professes to be written by one who was an -intimate disciple, and who was therefore an eye-witness -of everything told in the book. It is a -vivid narrative and leaves the reader deeply -moved, because it brings him closer than most -interpretations do into actual presence of and -companionship with the great Galilean. The -first chapter is a re-interpretation of the scene on -the eastern shore of Gennesaret, where Jesus -casts the demons out of the maniac of Geresa. -A man on the shore of the lake told Jesus, when -he landed there with his disciples in the early -morning, that it was not safe for any one to go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -up the rugged hillside, because there were madmen -hidden there among the tombs: “people possessed -by demons, who tear their flesh, and who -can be heard screaming day and night.”</p> - -<p>“How do you know they are possessed by -demons?” asked Jesus.</p> - -<p>“What else could it be?” said the man. -“There are none that can master them. They -are too fierce to be tamed.”</p> - -<p>“Has any man tried to tame them?” asked -Jesus.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Rabbi, they have been bound with chains -and fetters. There was one that I saw. He -plucked the fetters from him as a child might -break a chain of field flowers. Then he ran -foaming into the wilderness, and no man dare -pass by that way now....”</p> - -<p>“Have men tried only this way to tame him?” -Jesus asked.</p> - -<p>“What other way is there, Rabbi?” asked the -man.</p> - -<p>“There is God’s way,” said Jesus. “Come, -let us try it.”</p> - -<p>As Jesus spoke, “His gaze went from man to -man,” the writer continues, “and then his eyes -fell upon me. It was as if a power passed from -him to me, and immediately something inside me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> -answered, ‘Lead, and I follow.’” The narrative -proceeds to describe the encounter with the -demoniac man whose name was “Legion.” -“He ran toward us, shrieking and bounding in the -air. He had two sharp stones in his hand, and -as he leaped he cut his flesh with them and the -blood ran down his naked limbs. The men behind -us scattered and fled down the hillside; but -Jesus stood still and waited.” The effect of the -calm, undisturbed, unfrightened presence of Jesus -was astonishing. It was as though a new force -suddenly came into operation. The jagged -stones were thrown from his hands, for he recognized -at once in Jesus a friendly presence and a -helper with an understanding heart. His fear -and terror left the demoniac man and he became -quiet, composed and like a normal person. -Meantime some of the men who ran away in fear, -when the madman appeared, frightened a herd of -swine feeding near by, and in their uncontrolled -terror they rushed wildly toward the headland -of the lake and pitched over the top into the -water where they were drowned. “Fear is a -foul spirit,” said Jesus, and it seemed plain and -obvious that the ungoverned fear which played -such havoc with the man had taken possession -also of the misguided swine. It was the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -“demon,” fear. A little later in the day when -the companions of Jesus found him they saw the -man who had called himself “Legion” sitting at -Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind—a -quieted and restored person.</p> - -<p>We now know that this disease, called “possession,” -which appears so often in the New Testament -accounts, is a very common present-day -trouble. The name and description given to it -in the Bible make it often seem remote and unfamiliar -to us, but it is, in fact, as prevalent in -the world to-day as it was in the first century. -It is an extreme form of hysteria, a disorganization -of normal functions, often causing delusions, -loss of memory, the performance of automatic -actions, and sometimes resulting in double, or -multiple, personality, a condition in which a foreign -self seems to usurp the control of the body -and make it do many strange and unwilled things. -This disease is known in very many cases to be -produced by frights, fear, or terror, sometimes -fears long hidden away and more or less suppressed.</p> - -<p>The famous cases of Doris Fischer and Miss -Beauchamp were both of this type. They were -only extreme instances of a fairly common form -of mental trouble, generally due to fears, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> -capable of being cured by wise, skillful understanding -and loving care, applied by one who -shows confidence and human interest and who -knows how to use the powerful influence of <em>suggestion</em>. -Dr. Morton Prince, who has reported -these two cases, has achieved cures and restorations -that read like miracles, and his narratives -tell of minds, “jangling, harsh, and out of tune,” -broken into dissociated selves, which have been -unified, organized, harmonized and restored to -normal life. Few restorations are more wonderful -than that effected upon a Philadelphia girl -under the direction of Dr. Lightner Witmer. -The girl was hopelessly incorrigible, stubborn, -sullen, suspicious, and stupid. She screamed, -kicked, and bit when she was opposed, and she -utterly refused to obey anybody. So unnatural -and dehumanized was she that she was generally -called “Diabolical Mary.” She was examined -by Dr. Witmer, underwent some simple surgical -operations to remove her obvious physical handicaps, -and then was put under the loving, tender -care of a wise, attractive, and understanding -woman. The girl responded to the treatment at -once and soon became profoundly changed, and -the process went on until the girl became a wholly -transformed and re-made person.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p> - -<p>The so-called shell-shock cases which have -bulked so large in the story of the wastage of -men in all armies during the World War, turn -out to be cases of mental disorganization, occasioned -for the most part by immense emotional -upheaval, especially through suppressed fear. -The man affected with the trouble has seemed to -master his emotion. He has not winced or -shown the slightest fear in the face of danger; -but the pent-up emotion, the suppressed fear and -terror, insidiously throw the entire nervous -mechanism out of gear. The successful treatment -of such cases is, again, like that for hysteria, one -that brings confidence, calm, liberation of all -strain and anxiety. The poor victim needs a patient, -wise, skillful, psychologically trained physician, -who has an understanding mind, a friendly, -interested, intimate way, a spirit of love, and who -can arouse expectation of recovery and can suggest -thoughts of health and the right emotional -reactions. This method of cure has often been -tried with striking effect upon the so-called criminal -classes. Prisoners almost always respond -constructively to the personal manifestation of -confidence, sympathy, and love. Elizabeth Fry -proved this principle in an astonishing way with -the almost brutalized prisoners in Newgate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -Thomas Shillitoe’s visit to the German prisoners -at Spandau, who were believed to be beyond all -human appeals, though not so well known and -famous, is no less impressive and no less convincing.</p> - -<p>There was perhaps never a time in the history -of the world when an application of this principle -and method—God’s way—was so needed -in the social sphere of life. Whole countries have -the symptoms which appear in these nervous diseases. -It is not merely an individual case here -and there; it takes on a corporate, a mass, form. -The nerves are overstrained, the emotional stress -has been more than could be borne, suppressed -fears have produced disorganization. There are -signs of social “dissociation.” The remedy in -such cases is not an application of compelling -force, not a resort to chains and fetters, not a -screwing on of the “lid,” not a method of starving -out the victims. It is rather an application of -the principle which has always worked in individual -cases of “dissociation” or “possession” -or “suppressed fear”—the principle of sympathy, -love and suggestion—what Jesus, in the -book mentioned above, calls “God’s way.” The -“dissociation” of labor and employers in the social -group, with its hysterical signs of strikes and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -lockouts, upheaval and threats, needs just now a -very wise physician. Force, restraint, compulsion, -fastening down the “lid,” imprisonment of -leaders, drastic laws against propaganda, will not -cure the disease, any more than chains cured the -poor sufferer on the shores of Gennesaret. The -situation must first of all be <em>understood</em>. The -inner attitude behind the acts and deeds must be -taken into account. The social mental state must -be diagnosed. The remedy, to be a remedy, must -remove the causes which produce the dissociation. -It can be accomplished only by one who has an -understanding heart, a good will, an unselfish purpose, -and a comprehending, i.e., a unifying, <em>suggestion</em> -of coöperation.</p> - -<p>This <em>way</em> is no less urgent for the solution of -the most acute international situations. It has -been assumed too long and too often that these -situations can be best handled by unlimited methods -of restraint, coercion, and reduction to helplessness. -Some of the countries of Europe have -been plainly suffering from neurasthenia, dissociation, -and the kindred forms of emotional, fear-caused -diseases. Starvation always makes for -types of hysteria. It will not do now to apply, -with cold, precise logic, the old vindictive principle -that when the sinner has been made to suffer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -enough to “cover” the enormity of his sin he -can then be restored to respectable society. It -is not vindication of justice which most concerns -the world now; it is a return of health, a restoration -of normal functions, a reconstruction of the -social body. That task calls for the application -of the deeper, truer principles of life. It calls -for a knowing heart, an understanding method, a -healing plan, a sympathetic guide who can obliterate -the fear-attitude and <em>suggest</em> confidence and -unity and trustful human relationships. Those -great words, used in the Epistle of London Yearly -Meeting of Friends in 1917, need to be revived -and put to an experimental venture: “<em>Love knows -no frontiers.</em>” There is no limit to its healing -force, there are no conditions it does not meet, -there is no terminus to its constructive operations.</p> - -<h3 id="II_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">HE CAME TO HIMSELF</span></h3> - -<p>Was there ever such a short-story character -sketch as this one of the prodigal son! No realism -of details, no elaboration of his sins, and yet -the immortal picture is burned forever into our -imagination. The <i lang="fr">débâcle</i> of his life is as clear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -and vivid as words can portray the ruin. Yet -the phrase which arrests us most as we read the -compact narrative of his undoing is not the one -which tells about “riotous living,” or the reckless -squandering of his patrimony, or his hunger -for swine husks, or his unshod feet and the loss -of his tunic; it is rather the one which says that -when he was at the bottom of his fortune “he -came to himself.”</p> - -<p>He had not been himself then, before. He was -not finding himself in the life of riotous indulgence. -That did not turn out after all to be the -life for which he was meant. He missed himself -more than he missed his lost shoes and tunic. -That raises a nice question which is worth an -answer: When is a person his real self? When -can he properly say, “At last I have found myself; -I am what I want to be?” Robert Louis -Stevenson has given us in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. -Hyde a fine parable of the actual double self in -us all, a higher and a lower self under our one -hat. But I ask, which is the real me? Is it -Jekyll or is it Hyde? Is it the best that we -can be or is it this worse thing which we just -now are?</p> - -<p>Most answers to the question would be, I -think, that the real self is that ideal self of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -in moments of rare visibility we sometimes catch -glimpses.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“All I could never be,</div> -<div class="verse">All, men ignored in me,</div> -<div class="verse">This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Dig deep enough into any man,” St. Augustine -said, “and you will find something divine.” -We supposed he believed in total depravity, and -he does in theory believe in it; but when it is a -matter of actual experience, he announces this -deep fact which fits perfectly with his other great -utterance: “Thou, O God, hast made us for thyself, -and we are restless (dissatisfied) until we -find ourselves in thee.”</p> - -<p>Too long we have assumed that Adam, the failure, -is the type of our lives, that he is the normal -man, that to err is human, and that one touch, that -is, blight, of nature makes all men kin. What -Christ has revealed to us is the fact that we -always have higher and diviner possibilities in us. -He, the overcomer, and not Adam, is the true -type, the normal person, giving us at last the -pattern of life which is life indeed.</p> - -<p>Which is the real self, then? Surely this higher -possible self, this one which we discover in our -best moments. The Greeks always held that sin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -was “missing the mark”—that is what the -Greek word for sin means—failure to arrive at, -to reach, the real end toward which life aims. -Sin is defeat. It is loss of the trail. It is undoing. -The sinner has not found himself, he has -not come to himself. He has missed the real -me. He cannot say, “I am.”</p> - -<p>If that is a fact, and if the life of spiritual -health and attainment is the normal life, we -surely ought to do more than is done to help -young people to realize it and to assist them to -find themselves. We are much more concerned -to manufacture things than we are to make persons. -We do one very well and we do the other -very badly. Kipling’s “The Ship that Found -Itself” is a fine account of the care bestowed -upon every rivet and screw, every valve and -piston. He pictures the ship in the stress and -strain of a great storm and each part of the ship -from keel to funnel describes what it has to bear -and to do in the emergency and how it has been -prepared in advance for just this crisis. Nansen -was asked how he felt when he found that the -<i>Fram</i> was caught in the awful jam of the Arctic -ice-floe. “I felt perfectly calm,” he said. “I -knew she could stand it. I had watched every -stick of timber and every piece of steel that went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -into her hull. The result was that I could go to -sleep and let the ice do its worst.” With even -more care we build the airplane. There must be -no chance for capricious action. The propeller -blades must be made of perfect wood. There -must be no defect in any piece of the structure. -The gasoline must be tested by all the methods of -refinement. The oil must be absolutely pure, free -of every suspicion of grit.</p> - -<p>But when we turn from ships and airplanes to -the provisions for training young persons we are -in a different world. The element of chance now -bulks very large. We let the youth have pretty -free opportunity to begin his malformation before -we begin seriously to construct him on right -lines. We fail to note what an enormous fact -“disposition” is, and we take little pains to form -it early and to form it in the best way. We are -far too apt to assume that all the fundamentals -come by the road of heredity. We overwork this -theory as much as earlier theologians overworked -their dogma of original sin from poor old Adam.</p> - -<p>The fact is that temperament and disposition -and the traits of character which most definitely -settle destiny are at least as much formed in -those early critical years of infancy as they are -acquired by the strains of heredity. Education,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> -which is more essential to the greatness of any -country than even its manufactures, is one of the -most neglected branches of life. We take it as -we find it—and lay its failures to Providence -as we do deaths from typhoid. It must not always -be so. We must be as greatly concerned to -form virile character in our boys and girls and -to develop in them the capacity for moral and -spiritual leadership in this crisis as we are concerned -over our coal supply or our industries. -There are ways of assisting the higher self to -control and dominate the life, ways by which -the ideal person can become the real person. -Why not consider seriously how to do that?</p> - -<p>He that overcomes, the prophet of Patmos -says, receives a white stone with a new name -written on it, which no man knoweth save he that -hath it. It is a symbolism which may mean many -things. It seems at least to mean that he who -subdues his lower self, holds out in the strain of -life, and lives by the highest that he knows, will -as a consequence receive a distinct individuality, -a clearly defined self, instead of being blurred in -with the great level mass—a self with a name -of its own. And that self will not be the old -familiar self that everybody knows by traits of -past achievement and by the old tendencies of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -habit. It will be the self which only God and -the person himself in his deepest and most intimate -moments knew was possible—and here at -last it is found to be the real self. The man -can say, “I am.” He has come to himself.</p> - -<p>We ask, at the end, whether it may not be -that the world will soon come to itself and discover -the way back to some of its missed ideals. -Here on a large scale we have the story of a desperate -hunger, squandered wealth, lost shoes, lost -tunics, and even more precious things gone—a -world that has missed its way and is floundering -about without sufficient vision or adequate leadership. -If it could only come to itself, discover -what its true mission is and where its real sources -of power and its line of progress lie, it would -still find that God and man together can rebuild -what man by his blunders has destroyed.</p> - -<h3 id="II_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">SOME NEW REASONS FOR “LOVING ENEMIES”</span></h3> - -<p>Nobody ever amounts to anything who lives -without conflict with obstacles. It seems to be a -law of the universe that nothing really good can -be got or held by soft, easy means.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> - -<p>The Persians were so impressed with this stern -condition of life that they interpreted the universe -as the scene of endless warfare between hostile -powers of the invisible world. Ormuzd, the -god of light, and Ahriman, the god of darkness, -were believed to be engaged in a continual Armageddon. -There could be no truce in the strife -until one or the other should win the victory by -the annihilation of his opponent. This Persian -dualism has touched all systems of thought and -has left its influence upon all the religions of the -world. The reasons why it has appealed so powerfully -to men of all generations are, of course, -that there is so much conflict involved in life and -that no achievement of goodness is ever made -without a hard battle for it against opposing -forces. But if all this opposition and struggle -is due to an “enemy,” we certainly ought to love -this “enemy,” because it turns out to be the greatest -possible blessing to us that we are forced to -struggle with difficulties and to wrestle for what -we get.</p> - -<p>“Count it all joy,” said the Apostle James in -substance, writing to his friends of the Dispersion, -“when you fall into manifold testings, or -trials, knowing that the proving of your faith -worketh steadfastness, and let steadfastness have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, -lacking in nothing.” St. Paul thought once -that his “thorn in the flesh” was conferred upon -him by Satan and was the malicious messenger of -an enemy; but in the slow process of experience -he came to see that the painful “thorn” exercised -a real ministry in his life, that through his -suffering and hardship he got a higher meaning -of God’s grace; and he discovered that divine -power was thus made perfect through his weakness, -so that he learned to love the “enemy” -that buffeted him.</p> - -<p>The Psalmist who wrote our best loved psalm, -the twenty-third, thought at first that God was -his Shepherd because he led him in green pastures -and beside still waters where there was no -struggle and no enemy to fear. But he learned -at length that in the dark valleys of the shadow -and on the rough jagged hillsides God was no -less a good Shepherd than on the level plains and -in the lush grass; and he found at last that even -“in the presence of enemies” he could be fed -with good things and have his table spread. The -overflowing cup and the anointed head were not -discovered on the lower levels of ease and comfort; -they came out of the harder experiences -when “enemies” of his peace were busy supplying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -obstacles and perplexities for him to overcome.</p> - -<p>It is no accident that the book of Revelation -puts so much stress upon “overcoming.” The -world seemed to the prophet on the volcanic -island of Patmos essentially a place of strife and -conflict—an Armageddon of opposing forces. -There are no beatitudes in this book promised to -any except “overcomers.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Not to one church alone, but seven</div> -<div class="verse">The voice prophetic spake from heaven;</div> -<div class="verse">And unto each the promise came,</div> -<div class="verse">Diversified, but still the same;</div> -<div class="verse">For him that overcometh are</div> -<div class="verse">The new name written on the stone,</div> -<div class="verse">The raiment white, the crown, the throne,</div> -<div class="verse">And I will give him the Morning Star!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But the conflict that ends in such results can -not be called misfortune, any more than Hercules’ -labors through which the legendary hero won his -immortality can be pronounced a misfortune for -him. Once more, then, the saint who has overcome -discovers, at least in retrospect, that there -is good ground for loving his “enemies”!</p> - -<p>The farmer, in his unceasing struggle with -weeds, with parasites, with pests visible and invisible,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -with blight and rot and uncongenial -weather, sometimes feels tempted to blaspheme -against the hard conditions under which he labors -and to assume that an “enemy” has cursed the -ground which he tills and loaded the dice of nature -against him. The best cure for his “mood” -is to visit the land of the bread-fruit tree, where -nature does everything and man does nothing but -eat what is gratuitously given him, and to see -there the kind of men you get under those kindly -skies. The virile fiber of muscle, the strong -manly frame, the keen active mind that meets -each new “pest” with a successful invention, the -spirit of conquest and courage that are revealed -in the farmer at his best are no accident. They -are the by-product of his battle with conditions, -which if they seem to come from an “enemy,” -must come from one that ought to be loved for -what he accomplishes.</p> - -<p>These critics of ours who harshly review the -books we write, the addresses we give, the -schemes of reform for which we work so strenuously—do -they do nothing for us? On the contrary, -they force us to go deeper, to write with -more care, to reconsider our hasty generalizations, -to recast our pet schemes, to revise our -crude endeavors. They may speak as “enemies,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -and they may show a stern and hostile face; but -we do well to love them, for they enable us to -find our better self and our deeper powers. The -hand may be the horny hand of Esau, but the -voice is the kindly voice of Jacob.</p> - -<p>All sorts of things “work” for us, then, as -St. Paul declared. Not only does love “work,” -and faith and grace; but tribulation “works,” -and affliction, and the seemingly hostile forces -which block and buffet and hamper us. Everything -that drives us deeper, that draws us closer -to the great resources of life, that puts vigor into -our frame and character into our souls, is in the -last resort a blessing to us, even though it seems -on superficial examination to be the work of an -“enemy,” and we shall be wise if we learn to -love the “enemies” that give us the chance to -overcome and to attain our true destiny. Perhaps -the dualism of the universe is not quite as sharp -as the old Persians thought. Perhaps, too, the -love of God reaches further under than we sometimes -suppose. Perhaps in fact all things “work -together for good,” and even the enemy forces -are helping to achieve the ultimate good that shall -be revealed “when God hath made the pile complete.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US</span></h2> - -<h3 id="III_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">WHERE THE BEYOND BREAKS THROUGH</span></h3> - -<p>If we sprinkle iron filings over a sheet of paper -and move a magnet beneath the paper, the filings -become active and combine and recombine in a -great variety of groupings and regroupings. A -beholder who knows nothing of the magnet underneath -gazes upon the whole affair with a sense -of awe and mystery, though he feels all the time -that there must be some explanation of the action -and that some hidden power behind is operating -as the cause of the groupings and regroupings -of the iron particles. Something certainly -that we do not see is revealing its presence and its -power.</p> - -<p>Our everyday experience is full of another -series of activities even more mysterious than -these movements of the iron. Whenever we open -our eyes we see objects and colors confronting -us and located in spaces far and near. What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -brings the object to us? What operates to produce -the contact? How does the far-away thing -hit our organ of vision? This was to the ancient -philosopher a most difficult problem, a real mystery. -He made many guesses at a solution, but -no guess which he could make satisfied his judgment. -Our answer is that an invisible and intangible -substance which we call ether—luminiferous -ether—fills all space, even the space occupied -by visible objects, and that this ether which -is capable of amazing vibrations, billions of them -a second, is set vibrating at different velocities by -different objects. These vibrations bombard the -minute rods and cones of the retina at the back -of the eye and, presto, we see now one color and -now another, now one object and now another. -This ether would forever have remained unknown -to us had not this marvelous structure of the retina -given it a chance to break through and reveal -itself. In many other ways, too, this ether breaks -through into revelation. It is responsible apparently -for all the immensely varied phenomena -of electricity, probably, too, of cohesion and -gravitation. Here, again, the revelations remained -inadequate and without clear interpretation -until we succeeded in constructing proper instruments -and devices for it to break through into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -active operation. The dynamo and the other -electrical mechanisms which we have invented do -not make or create electricity. They merely let it -come through, showing itself now as light, now as -heat, now again as motive power. But always -it was there before, unnoted, merely potential, -and yet a vast surrounding ocean of energy there -behind, ready to break into active operation when -the medium was at hand for it.</p> - -<p>Life is another one of those strange mysteries -that cannot be explained until we realize that -something more than we see is breaking through -matter and revealing itself. The living thing is -letting through some greater power than itself, -something beyond and behind, which is needed to -account for what we see moving and acting with -invention and purpose. Matter of itself is no explanation -of life. The same elemental stuff is -very different until it becomes the instrument of -something not itself which organizes it, pushes -it upward and onward, and reveals itself through -it. Something has at length come into view which -is more than force and mechanism. Here is intelligent -purpose and forward-looking activity -and something capable of variation, novelty, and -surprise. And when living substance has reached -a certain stage of organization, something higher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -still begins to break through—consciousness appears, -and on its higher levels consciousness begins -to reveal truth and moral goodness. It is -useless to try to explain consciousness—especially -truth-bearing consciousness—as a function -of the brain, for it cannot be done. That way of -explanation no more explains mind than the Ptolemaic -theory explains the movements of the heavenly -bodies. Once more, something breaks -through and reveals itself, as surely as light breaks -through a prism and reveals itself in the band -of spectral colors. This consciousness of ours, -as I have said, is not merely awareness, not only -intelligent response; it lays hold of and apprehends, -i.e., reveals, truth and goodness. What -I think, when I really think, is not just my private -“opinion,” or “guess,” or “seeming”; it -turns out to have something universal and absolute -about it. My multiplication-table is everybody’s -multiplication-table. It is true for me and -for beyond me. And what is true of my mathematics -is also true of other features of my thinking. -When I properly organize my experience -through rightly formed concepts, I express aspects -that are real and true for everybody—I -attain to something which can be called truth. -The same way in the field of conduct: I can discover<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -not only what is subjectively right, but I -can go farther and embody principles which are -right not only for me but for every good man. -Something more than a petty, tiny, private consciousness -is expressing itself through my personality. -I am the organ of something more than -myself.</p> - -<p>Perhaps more wonderful still is the way in -which beauty breaks through. It breaks through -not only at a few highly organized points, it -breaks through almost everywhere. Even the -minutest things reveal it as well as do the sublimest -things, like the stars. Whatever one sees -through the microscope, a bit of mould for example, -is charged with beauty. Everything from a -dewdrop to Mount Shasta is the bearer of beauty. -And yet beauty has no function, no utility. Its -value is intrinsic, not extrinsic. It is its own excuse -for being. It greases no wheels, it bakes no -puddings. It is a gift of sheer grace, a gratuitous -largess. It must imply behind things a Spirit that -enjoys beauty for its own sake and that floods -the world everywhere with it. Wherever it can -break through it does break through, and our joy -in it shows that we are in some sense kindred to -the giver and revealer of it.</p> - -<p>Something higher and greater still breaks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> -through and reveals a deeper Reality than any -that we see and touch. Love comes through—not -everywhere like beauty, but only where rare -organization has prepared an organ for it. Some -aspects of love appear very widely, are, at least, -as universal as truth and moral goodness. But -love in its full glory, love in its height of unselfishness -and with its passion of self-giving is a rare -manifestation. One person—the Galilean—has -been a perfect revealing organ of it. In his -life it broke through with the same perfect naturalness -as the beam of light breaks through the -prism of waterdrops and reveals the rainbow. -Love that understands, sympathizes, endures, inspires, -recreates, and transforms, broke through -and revealed itself so impressively that those who -see it and feel it are convinced that here at last -the real nature of God has come through to us -and stands revealed. And St. Paul, who was absolutely -convinced of this, went still further. He -held, with a faith buttressed in experience, that -this same Christ, who had made this demonstration -of love, became after his resurrection an invisible -presence, a life-giving Spirit who could -work and act as a resident power within receptive, -responsive, human spirits, and could transform -them into a likeness to himself and continue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> -his revelation of love wherever he should find -such organs of revelation. If that, or something -like it, is true it is a very great truth. It was this -that good old William Dell meant when he said: -“The believer is the only book in which God himself -writes his New Testament.”</p> - -<h3 id="III_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">CONQUERING BY AN INNER FORCE</span></h3> - -<p>There are few texts that have been more dynamic -in the history of spiritual religion than the -one which forms the keynote of the message of -the little book of Habakkuk: “The righteous -man lives by faith” (2:4). It became the central -feature of St. Paul’s message. It was the -epoch-making discovery in Luther’s experience, -and it has always been the guiding principle of -Protestant Christianity.</p> - -<p>The profound significance of the words is often -missed because the text is so easily turned into a -phrase that is supposed just of itself to work a -kind of magic spell, and secondly because the -meaning of “faith” is so frequently misinterpreted. -When we go back to the original experience -out of which the famous text was born we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -can get fresh light upon the heart of its meaning. -The little book begins with a searching analysis -of the conditions of the time. With an almost -unparalleled boldness the prophet challenges God -to explain why the times are so badly out of joint, -why the social order is so topsy-turvy, and why -injustice is allowed to run a long course unchecked. -God seems unconcerned with affairs—the -moral pilot appears not to be steering things.</p> - -<p>Then comes a moment of mental relief. The -prophet hits upon the conclusion, arrived at by -other prophets also, that God is about to use the -Chaldeans as a divine instrument to chastise the -wicked element in the nation, to right the wrongs -of the disordered world, and to execute judgment. -But as he begins to reflect he becomes more perplexed -than ever. How can God, who is good, use -such a terrible instrument for moral purposes? -This people, which is assumed to be an instrument -of moral judgment in a disordered world, -is itself unspeakably perverse. It is fierce and -wolfish. Its only god is might. It cares only for -success. It catches men, like fish, in its great -dragnet, and “then he sacrificeth unto his net and -burneth incense unto his drag.” How can such a -pitiless and insolent people, dominated by pride -and love of conquest, be used to work out the ends<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -of righteousness and to act for God who is too -pure even to look upon that which is evil and -wrong? Here the prophet finds himself suddenly -up against the ancient problem of the moral government -of the universe and the deep mystery of -evil in it. He cannot untangle the snarled -threads of his skein. No solution of the mystery -lies at hand. He decides to climb up into his -“watch-tower” and wait for an answer from -God. If it does not come at once, he proposes -to stay until it does come—“if it tarry, wait for -it; it will surely come.” At length the vision -comes, so clear that a man running can read it. -It is just this famous discovery of the great text -that a man cannot hope to get the world-difficulties -all straightened out to suit him, he cannot -in some easy superficial way justify the ways of -God in the course of history; but, at least, he can -live unswervingly and victoriously by his own -soul’s insight, the insight of faith that God can -be trusted to do the right thing for the universe -which he is steering. It is beautifully expressed in -a well-known stanza of Whittier’s:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I know not where His islands lift</div> -<div class="verse">Their fronded palms in air;</div> -<div class="verse">I only know I cannot drift</div> -<div class="verse">Beyond His love and care.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> - -<p>Many things remain unexplained. The mysteries -are not all dissipated. But I see enough -light to enable me to hold a steady course onward, -and I have an inner confidence in God -which nothing in the outward world can shatter. -This is the message from Habakkuk’s watch-tower: -There is a faith which goes so far into -the heart of things that a man can live by it and -stand all the water-spouts which break upon him.</p> - -<p>Josiah Royce once defined faith as an insight -of the soul by which one can stand everything that -can happen to him, and that is what this text -means. You arrive at such a personal assurance -of God’s character that you can face any event -and not be swept off your feet. If this is so, it -means that the most important achievement in a -man’s career is the attainment of just this inner -vision, the acquisition of an interior spiritual confidence -which itself is the victory.</p> - -<p>William James used often to close his lecture -courses at Harvard with what he called a “Faith-ladder.” -Round after round it went up from a -mere possibility of hope to an inner conviction -strong enough to dominate action. He would begin -with some human faith which outstrips evidence -and he would say of it: It is at least not -absurd, not self-contradictory, and, therefore, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -might be true under certain conditions, in some -kind of a world which we can conceive. It may -be true even in this world and under existing conditions. -It is fit to be true; it ought to be true. -The soul in its moment of clearest insight feels -that it must be true. It shall be true, then, at -least for me, for I propose to act upon it, to live -by it, to stake my existence on it.</p> - -<p>This watch-tower of Habakkuk is a similar -faith-ladder. He sees no way to explain why the -good suffer, or to account for the catastrophes of -history, but at least he has found a faith in God -which holds him like adamant: “Although the -fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in -the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the -fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut -off from the fold and there shall be no herd in the -stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in -the God of my salvation.... He will make me -to walk upon mine high places.” Faith like that is -always contagious. The unshaken soul kindles another -soul who believes in his belief, and the torch -goes from this man on his watch-tower to St. -Paul, and from him on to the great reformer, and -then to an unnamed multitude, who through their -soul’s insight can stand everything that may -happen!</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> - -<h3 id="III_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ETERNAL</span></h3> - -<p>Some time ago I received a letter from a young -minister who was about to settle for religious -work in a large manufacturing town. He and I -were strangers to each other in the flesh but -friends through correspondence, and because we -were kindred spirits he wrote to me to say: “I -have before me the great work of living in the -eternal God and in a humanity toiling in factories -and shops. Oh, if I could only make the presence -of the Eternal real to myself and to my -people!” Another minister, laboring in a large -suburb of New York City, also a stranger to me -except through correspondence, wrote to say that -he was glad for every voice which holds up before -men the reality of the invisible Church and the -idea of the universal priesthood of believers. -These letters coming within a week—and they -are samples of many similar ones—are signs -of the times, and show clearly that thoughtful -men all about us are done with the husk of religion -and are devoting themselves to the heart of -the matter. There is a deep movement under -way which touches all denominations and is steadily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -preparing in our busy, hurrying, materialistic -America a true seed of the vital, spiritual religion -that will later bear rich blossoms and ripe harvest.</p> - -<p>I want for the moment to return to the central -desire of the young minister, in the hope that it -may inspire some of us, especially some of our -young ministers who are facing their new spiritual -tasks: “I have before me the great work of living -in the eternal God and in a humanity toiling -in factories and shops. Oh, if I could only make -the presence of the Eternal real to myself and to -them!”</p> - -<p>It is perhaps a new idea to some that living -in the eternal God is “work.” We are so accustomed -to the idea that all that is required of us -is a passive mind and a waiting spirit that we -have never quite realized this truth: No person -can live in the eternal God unless he is ready for -the most intense activity and for the most strenuous -life. Gladstone, in his old age, surprised his -readers with his impressive phrase, “the work of -worship.” The fact is, no man ever yet found -his way into the permanent enjoyment of God -along paths of least resistance or by any lazy -methods. How many of us have been humiliated -to discover, in the silence or in the service, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -nothing spiritual was happening within us. Our -mind, unbent and passive enough, was like a stagnant -pool, or, if not stagnant, was darting its feelers -out and following in lazy fashion any line of -suggestion which pulled it. Instead of finding ourselves -“living in the eternal God” and in the high -enjoyment of him, we catch ourselves wondering -what the next strike will be, or thinking about the -mean and shabby way some one spoke to us an -hour ago! There is no use blaming a mind because -it wanders—everybody’s mind wanders—but -the real achievement is to make it wander in -a region which ministers to our spiritual life; and -that can be done only by getting supremely interested -in the things of the Spirit. That is where -the “work” lies; that is where the effort comes -in. Attention is always determined by the fundamental -interest. What we love supremely we attend -to. It gets us, it holds us. One of the colloquial -phrases for being in love with a person is -“paying attention to” the person. It is a true -phrase and goes straight to reality. If we are to -discover and enjoy the eternal Presence we must -become passionately earnest in spirit and glowing -with love for the Highest.</p> - -<p>My friend brings two important things together: -He proposes to undertake the work of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -living in the eternal God and in toiling humanity. -The two things go together and cannot be safely -separated. It is in the actual sharing of life -through love and sympathy and sacrifice, in going -out of self to feel the problems and difficulties and -sufferings of others, that we find and form a life -rich in higher interests and centered on matters of -eternal value. A man who has traveled through -the deeps of life with a fellow man comes to his -hour of worship with a mind focused on the Eternal -and with a spirit girded for the inward -wrestling, without which blessings of the greater -sort do not come. And every time such a man -finds himself truly at home in the eternal God -and fed from within, he can go out, with the -strength of ten, to the tasks of toiling humanity. -This is one of those spiritual circles which work -both ways: He that dwells in God loves, and -he that loves finds God, St. John tells us.</p> - -<p>It is fine to see a strong man, trained in all his -faculties, going to his work with the quiet prayer: -“Oh, that I may make the presence of the Eternal -real to myself and to my people.” It is a good -prayer for all of us.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE WAY OF VISION</span></h2> - -<h3 id="IV_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">DAYS OF GREATER VISIBILITY</span></h3> - -<p>From the porch of my little summer cottage in -Maine I can see, across the beautiful stretch of -lake in the foreground, the far-distant Kennebago -Mountains in their veil of purple. But we see -them only when all the conditions of sky and air -are absolutely right. Most of the time they are -wrapped in clouds or are lost in a dim haze. Our -visitors admire the lake, are charmed with the -islands, the picturesque shore and the surrounding -hills, but they do not suspect the existence of -this added glory beyond the hills. We often tell -them of the mountains “just over there,” which -come out into full view when the sky clears all -the way to the horizon and the wind blows fine -from the northwest. They make a casual remark -about the sufficiency of what is already in -sight, and go their way in satisfied ignorance of -the “beyond.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> - -<p>Next day, perhaps—Oh wonder! The -morning dawns with all the conditions favorable -for our distant view. The air is altogether right -for far visibility. The clouds are swept clean -from the western rim, the blue is utterly transparent—and -there are the mountains! We wish -our skeptical visitors could be with us now. We -guess that they would not easily talk of the sufficiency -of the near beauty, if they could once see -the overtopping glory of these mountains now -fully unveiled and revealed. Something like that, -I feel sure, is true of God and of other great -spiritual realities which are linked with his being. -Most of the time we get on with the things that -are near at hand; the things we see and handle -and are sure of. The world is full of utility and -we do well to appreciate what is there waiting to -be used. There is always something satisfying -about beauty, and nature is very rich and lavish -with it. Friendship and love are heavenly gifts, -and when these are added to the other good things -which the world gives us, it would seem, and it -does seem, to many that we ought to be satisfied -and not be homesick for the glory which lies beyond -the horizon-line of the senses. I cannot help -it; my soul will not stay satisfied with this near-at-hand -supply. A discontent sweeps over me, an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -uncontrollable <i lang="de">Heimweh</i>—homesickness of -soul—surges up within me and I should be compelled -to call the whole scheme miserable failure, if the -near, visible skyline were the real boundary of all -that is.</p> - -<p>Sometimes—Oh joy! When the inward -weather is just right; when selfish impulse has been -hushed; when the clouds and shadows, which sin -makes, are swept away and genuine love makes -the whole inner atmosphere pure and free from -haze, then I know that I find a beyond which before -was nowhere in sight and might easily not -have been suspected. I cannot decide whether -this extended range of sight is due to alterations -in myself, or whether it is due to some sudden -increase of spiritual visibility in the great reality -itself. I only know the fact. Before, I was occupied -with things; now, I commune with God and -am as sure of him as I am of the mountains beyond -my lake, which my skeptical visitor has not -yet seen.</p> - -<p>There can be no adequate world here for us -without at least a faith in the reality beyond the -line of what we see with our common eyes. We -have times when we cannot live by bread alone, -or by our increase of stocks; when we lose our -interest in cosmic forces and need something more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> -than the slow justice which history weighs out on -its great judgment days. We want to feel a real -heart beating somewhere through things; we want -to discover through the maze a loving will working -out a purpose; we want to know that our -costly loyalties, our high endeavors, and our sacrifices -which make the quivering flesh palpitate with -pain, really matter to Someone and fill up what is -behind of his great suffering for love’s sake. We -can not get on here with substitutes; we must have -the reality itself. Religion is an awful farce if -it is only a play-scheme, a cinematograph-show, -which makes one believe he is seeing reality when -he is, in fact, being fooled with a picture. We -must at all costs insist on the real things. It is -God we want and not another, the real Face and -not a picture.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“We needs must love the highest when we see it;</div> -<div class="verse">Not Lancelot nor another.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He is surely there to be seen, like my mountain. -Days may pass when we only hope and long and -guess. Then the weather comes right, the veil -thins away and we see! It is, however, not a rare -privilege reserved for a tiny few. It is not a -grudged miracle, granted only to saints who have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -killed out all self. It belongs to the very nature -of the soul to see God. It is what makes life -really life. It is as normal a function as breathing -or digestion. Only one must, of all things, -intend to do it!</p> - -<h3 id="IV_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE PROPHET AND HIS TRAGEDIES</span></h3> - -<p>There will always be in the world a vast number -of persons who take the most comfortable -form of religion which their generation affords. -They are not path-breakers; they have nothing in -their nature which pushes them into the fields of -discovery—they are satisfied with the religion -which has come down to them from the past. -They accept what others have won and tested, -and are thankful that they are saved the struggle -and the fire which are involved in first-hand experience -and in fresh discovery.</p> - -<p>The prophet, on the contrary, in whatever age -he comes, can never take this easy course. He -cannot rest contented with the forms of religion -which are accepted by others. He cannot enjoy -the comforts of the calm and settled faith which -those around him inherit and adopt. His soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -forever hears the divine call to leave the old -mountain and go forward, to conquer new fields, -to fight new battles, to restate his faith in words -that are fresh and vital, in terms of the deepest -life of his time. We used to think—many people -still think—that a prophet is a foreteller of future -events, a kind of magical and miraculous person -who speaks as an oracle and who announces, -without knowing how or why, far-off, coming occurrences -that are communicated to him. To -think thus is to miss the deeper truth of the -prophet’s mission. He is primarily a religious -patriot, a statesman with a moral and spiritual -policy for the nation. He is a person who sees -what is involved in the eternal nature of things -and therefore what the outcome of a course of -life is bound to be. He possesses an unerring eye -for curves of righteousness or unrighteousness, as -the great artist has for lines of beauty and harmony, -or as the great mathematician has for the -completing lines of a curve, involved in any given -arc of it. He is different from others, not in the -fact that he has ecstasies and lives in the realm -of miracles, but rather that he has a clearer conviction -of God than most men have. He has -found him as the center of all reality. He reads -and interprets all history in the light of the indubitable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -fact of God, and he estimates life and -deeds in terms of moral and spiritual laws, which -are as inflexible as the laws of chemical atoms or -of electrical forces. He looks for no capricious -results. He sees that this is a universe of moral -and spiritual order.</p> - -<p>If he is an Amos, he will refuse to fall in line -with the easy worshipers of his age, who are -satisfied with the old-time religion of “burnt offerings” -and “meat offerings” and “peace offerings -of fat beasts.” His soul will cry out for -a religion which makes a new moral and spiritual -man, “makes righteousness run down as a mighty -stream,” and sets the worshiper into new social -relations with his fellows. If he is an Isaiah, he -will refuse “to tramp the temple” with the mass -of easy worshipers; he will have his own vision -of “the Lord high and lifted up,” with his glory -filling not only the temple but the whole earth, -and he will dedicate himself to the task of preparing -a holy people and a holy city for this God who -has been revealed to him as a thrice-holy God. -If he is a Jeremiah, he will not accept the view -that the traditional religion of Jerusalem is adequate -for the crisis of the times. He will insist -that true religion must be inwardly experienced; -that the law of God must be written in the heart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -and that the life of a man must be the living fruit -of his faith. He will cry out against the idea -that the moral wounds and spiritual sores of the -daughter of Jerusalem can be healed with easy -salves and cheap panaceas.</p> - -<p>The supreme example of this refusal to go -along the easy line of contemporary religion is -that of One who was more than a prophet. His -people prided themselves on being the chosen -people of the Lord. The scribal leaders had succeeded -in drawing up a complete and perfect catalogue -of religious performances. They supplied -minute directions for one’s religious duty in every -detail, real or imaginary, of daily life, and the -world has never seen a more elaborate form of -religion than this of the Pharisees. But Christ -refused to follow the path of custom; he could -not and he would not do the things which the -scribes prescribed. He broke a new path for the -soul, and called men away from legalism and the -dead routine of “performances” to a life of individual -faith and service, which involves suffering -and self-sacrifice, but which brings the soul -into personal relation with the living God.</p> - -<p>St. Paul, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a rabbinical -scholar of the first rank, a man rising stage -by stage to fame along the path marked out by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -traditions of his people, came back from his eventful -journey to Damascus to take up the work of a -path-breaker and to set himself like a flint against -the old-time religion in which he was born and -reared. Luther, a devout monk, an ambassador -to the papal court, a professor of scholastic theology, -discovered that he could not find peace -to his soul along the path of the prevailing traditional -religion, and he swung, with all the fervor -of his powerful nature, into a fresh track -which has blessed all ages since. These are some -of the supreme leaders, but every age has had its -quota of minor prophets, who have heard the call -to leave the old mountain and go forward and -who have fearlessly entered the perilous and untried -path of fresh vision. As we look back and -see them in the perspective of their successful mission -to the race, we thank God for their bravery -and their valiant service, but we are apt to forget -the tragedies of their lives.</p> - -<p>Nobody can enter a fresh path, or bring a new -vision of the meaning of life, or reinterpret old -truths—in short, nobody can be a prophet—without -arousing the suspicion and, sooner or -later, the bitter hatred of those who are the keepers -and guardians of the existing forms and traditions, -and the path-breaker must expect to see his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -old friends misunderstand him, turn against him, -and reproach him. He must endure the hard experience -of being called a destroyer of the very -things he is giving his life to build. Christ is, for -example, hurried to the cross as a blasphemer, -and each prophet, in his degree, has had to hear -himself charged with being the very opposite of -what he really is in heart and life. To be a -prophet at all he must be a sensitive soul, and yet -he must live and work in a pitiless rain of misunderstanding -and attack. Still more tragic, perhaps, -is the necessity which the prophet is under -of doing his hard tasks without living to see the -triumphant results. He is, naturally, ahead of his -time—a path-breaker—and his contemporaries -are always slow to discover and to realize what -he is doing. Even those who love him and appreciate -him only half see his true purpose, and thus -he feels alone and solitary, though he may be in -the thick of the throng. It is only when he is -long dead and the mists have cleared away that he -is called a prophet and comes to his true place. -While he lived he was sure of only one Friend -who completely understood him and approved of -his course, and that was his invisible and heavenly -Friend. But in spite of the tragedy and the pain -and the hard road, the prophet, “seeing him who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -is invisible,” prefers to all other paths, however -easy and popular, the path of his vision and call.</p> - -<h3 id="IV_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">A LONG DISTANCE CALL</span></h3> - -<p>Just when life seems peculiarly crowded with -items of complexity and importance, the telephone -rings a determined, significant kind of ring. This -is evidently no ordinary passing-the-time-of-day -affair. I interrupt my weighty concerns and take -up the receiver with expectation. I say “Hello!” -but there is no answer, no human recognition. -The wire hums and buzzes, instruments click far -away, plugs are pulled out and pushed in. Little -tiny scraps of remote, inane, unintelligible conversation -between unknown mortals furnish the only -evidence I get that there is any human purpose -going forward in this strange world inside the -telephone system where I can see nothing happening.</p> - -<p>Suddenly a voice which is evidently hunting for -me breaks in: “Is this Mr. ——?” “Yes.” -“Hold the wire, please.” I am led on with increasing -interest and confidence. Somebody somewhere -miles away in this invisible world of electrical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -connections is seeking for me. I forget the -multitudinous problems that were besieging me -when the telephone first rang, and I listen with -suppressed breath and strained muscles. All I -get, however, is an immense confusion. There is -no coherence or order to anything that reaches -me. Faint and far away in some still remoter -center than at first I hear clicks and buzzes, vague -unmeaning noises, and the dull thud of shifting -plugs that connect the lines. Once more a kindly -voice breaks in on the confusion, a voice seeking -after me from some distant city: “Is this Mr. -——?” “Yes.” “Wait a minute.”</p> - -<p>I do wait a minute as patiently as I can. I -dimly feel that we are plunging out into yet remoter -space, and that I am being connected up -with the person who all the time has been seeking -me. A low hum of the far-away wire is all I -get to repay me for the long wait. I grow impatient. -I shout “Hello!” “Is anybody there?” -“Do you want me?” Not a word comes back, -only endless, empty murmurs of people who have -found one another and are talking so far off that -the sense is lost in the mere broth of sounds. -This dull world inside the telephone seems to be -a mad world of noise and confusion but no substance, -no real correspondence. I am on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -verge of giving the whole business up and of returning -to my interrupted tasks, which at least -were rational.</p> - -<p>Suddenly a voice breaks in, this time a voice I -know and recognize. The person who had been -seeking me all the time, across these spaces and -over this network of interlaced wires, calls me by -name, speaks words of insight and intelligence, -and gives me a message which moves me deeply -and raises the whole tone of my spirit. When -finally I “hang up” and return to the things in -hand, I have renewed my strength and can work -with clearer head and faster pace. The pause has -been like a pause in a piece of music. It has been -full of significance, and it has helped toward a -higher level.</p> - -<p>Something like this telephone experience happens -in another and very different sphere—a -sphere where there are no wires. In the hush and -silence, when the conditions are right for it, it -often seems as though some one were trying to -communicate with us, seeking for actual correspondence -with us. We turn from the din and -turmoil of busy efforts and listen for the voice. -We listen intently and we hear—our own heart -beating. We feel the strain of our muscles across -the chest. We push back a little deeper and try<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> -again. We feel the tension of the skin over the -forehead and we note that we are pulling the -eyeballs up and inward for more concentrated -meditation. All the muscles of the scalp are -drawn and we notice them perhaps for the first -time. Strange little bits of thought flit across the -threshold of the mind. We catch glimpses of -dim ideas knocking at the windows for admission -to the inner domain where we live. Then, all -of a sudden, we succeed in pushing further back. -We forget our strained muscles and are unconscious -of the corporeal bulk of ourselves. We -get in past the flitting thoughts and the procession -of ideas contending for entrance. The track -seems open for the Someone who is seeking us -no less certainly than we are seeking him. If we -do not hear our name called, and do not hear -distinctly a message in well-known words, we do -at least feel that we have found a real Presence -and have received fresh vital energy from the -creative center of life itself, so that we come back -to action, after our pause, restored, refreshed, -and “charged” with new force to live by.</p> - -<p>Some time ago a long distance call came to my -telephone and I went through all the stages of -waiting and of confusion and finally heard the -clear voice calling me, but I could not get any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -answer back. I heard perfectly across the five -hundred intervening miles, but my correspondent -never got a single clear word from me. We -found that something was wrong with our transmitter. -The connection was good, the line was -pervious, the seeking voice was at the other end, -but I did not succeed in transmitting what ought -to have been said. Here is where most of us fail -in this other sphere—this inner wireless sphere—we -are poor transmitters. We make the connection, -we receive the gift of grace, we are -flooded with the incomes of life and power and -we freely take, but we do not give. We absorb -and accumulate what we can, but we transmit -little of all that comes to us. Our radius of out-giving -influence is far too small. We need, on -the one hand, to listen deeper, to get further in -beyond the tensions and the noises, but on the -other hand we need to be more radio-active, better -transmitters of the grace of God.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE WAY OF PERSONALITY</span></h2> - -<h3 id="V_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">ANOTHER KIND OF HERO</span></h3> - -<p>A generation ago almost everybody read, at -least once, Carlyle’s great book on heroes. He -gave us the hero as prophet, as priest, as poet, as -king, and he made us realize that these heroes -have been the real makers of human society. I -should like to add a chapter on another kind of -hero, who has, perhaps, not done much to build -cities and states and church systems, but who has, -almost more than anybody else, shown us the -spiritual value of endurance—I mean the hero as -invalid.</p> - -<p>It is the hardest kind of heroism there is to -achieve. Most of us know some man—too often -it is oneself—who is a very fair Christian when -he is in normal health and absorbed in interesting -work, who carries a smooth forehead and easily -drops into a good-natured smile, but who becomes -“blue” and irritable and a storm center in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -family weather as soon as the bodily apparatus -is thrown out of gear. Most of us have had a -taste of humiliation as we have witnessed our -own defeat in the presence of some thorn in the -flesh, which stubbornly pricked us, even though -we prayed to have it removed and urged the doctor -to hurry up and remove it.</p> - -<p>What a hero, then, must he be, who, with a -weak and broken body, a prey to pain and doomed -to die daily, learns how to live in calm faith that -God is good and makes his life a center of cheer -and sunshine! The heroism of the battlefield and -the man-of-war looks cheap and thin compared -with this. We could all rally to meet some glorious -moment when a trusted leader shouted to us, -“Your country expects you to do your duty!” -But to drag on through days and nights, through -weeks and months, through recurring birthdays, -with vital energy low, with sluggish appetite, with -none of that ground-swell of superfluous vigor -which makes healthy life so good, and still to -prove that life is good and to radiate joy and -triumph—that is the very flower and perfume of -heroism. If we are making up a bead-roll of -heroes, let us put at the top the names of those -quiet friends of ours who have played the man -or revealed the woman through hard periods of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> -invalidism and have exhibited to us the fine glory -of a courageous spirit.</p> - -<p>One of the hardest and most difficult features -to bear is the inability to work at one’s former -pace and with the old-time constructive power. -The prayer of the Psalmist that his work, the contribution -of his life, might be preserved is very -touching: “Establish thou the work of our hands -upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish -thou it.” What can be more tragic than the cry -of Othello: “My occupation is gone!” So long -as the hand keeps its cunning and the mind remains -clear and creative, one can stand physical -handicap and pain, but when the working power -of mind or body is threatened, then the test of -faith and heroism indeed arrives.</p> - -<p>A man whose life meant much to me and whose -intimacy was very precious to me made me see -many years ago how wonderfully this test could -be met. He was a great teacher, the head of a -distinguished boys’ school. He was experiencing -the full measure of success, and his influence over -his boys was extraordinary. He realized, as his -work went on, that his hearing was becoming dull -and was steadily failing. He went to New York -and consulted a famous specialist. After making -a careful examination the specialist said, with perfect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -frankness: “Your case is hopeless. Nothing -can be done to check the disaster. You are hard -of hearing already, but in a very short time you -will have no hearing at all.” Without a quaver -the teacher said: “Don’t you think, doctor, that -I shall hear Gabriel’s trumpet when it blows!” -He went back to his school, learned to read lips, -reorganized his life, accepted without a murmur -his loss of a major sense, and finished his splendid -career of work in an undefeated spirit and with a -grace and joy which were envied by many persons -in possession of all their powers.</p> - -<p>All my readers will think of some “star -player” in this hard game of patience and endurance, -and will have watched with awe and reverence -the glorious fight of some of those unrecorded -heroes who won but got no valor medal. -The only person who ranks higher in the scale -of heroism than the hero as invalid is possibly the -person who patiently, lovingly nurses and cares -for some invalid through years of decline and suffering. -Generally, though not always, it is a -woman. Not seldom she is called upon to consecrate -her life to the task, and often she gives -what is much more precious than life itself. We -build no monuments to daughters who unmurmuringly -forego the joy of married life, who refuse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -the suit of love in order to be free to ease -the closing years of father or mother, grown helpless; -but where is there higher consecration or -finer heroism? Men sometimes complain that the -days of chivalry and heroism are past. On the -contrary, they are more truly dawning. As Christianity -ripens love grows richer and deeper, and -where love appears heroism is always close at -hand. Our best heroes are mothers and wives -and daughters, fathers and husbands and sons.</p> - -<h3 id="V_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE BETTER POSSESSION</span></h3> - -<p>During one of the intense persecutions by which -an early Roman emperor harried the Christians -of the first century, some unknown writer (Harnack -thinks It was a woman) wrote an extraordinary -little book to hearten those who were undergoing -the trial of their faith. I mean, of course, -the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is marked by rare -genius and by undoubted inspiration. It is full of -vital messages and it contains passages of great -power. Just before the most loved section of the -little book—the account of the faith-heroes—the -author, in a passage open to a variety of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> -translations, refers to the fact that those to whom -he is writing have suffered, and have suffered -joyfully, the spoiling of their possessions, “knowing,” -he says, “that you have your own selves for -a better possession”—you yourselves are a better -possession than any of those goods which you -have lost for your faith.</p> - -<p>I wonder if the readers fully realized the truth, -or if we should to-day realize it had we suffered -a similar stripping. We are very slow to take -account of that type of stock. We are very keen -about our own assets, but we often fail to prize -this supreme ownership, the possession of ourselves. -There is a story, both sad and amusing, -of an insane man who was seen wildly rushing -about the house, from room to room, looking in -cupboards and clothes-presses, crawling under -beds, obviously searching for something. When -questioned as to what he was so frantically looking -for, he replied, “I am trying to find my -self!” It is not as mad as it seems. I am not -sure but that we who are not trying to find ourselves -are after all more crazy still.</p> - -<p>Old Burton, who wrote <cite>The Anatomy of Melancholy</cite>, -well said:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Men look to their tools; a painter will wash his -pencils; a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -forge; a husbandman will mend his plow-irons and grind -his hatchet, if it be dull; a musician will string and unstring -his lute; only scholars neglect that instrument, -their brains and spirits I mean, which they daily use.”</p></div> - -<p>Not scholars only, but all classes and conditions -of men are guilty of this strange insanity. If the -Duke of Westminster should offer to transfer to -us his estates, we would rush with all conceivable -speed to acquire our new potential possessions. -We would go as with wings of an aeroplane to get -the transaction accomplished before anything -could occur to keep us from entering into our -fortune. But here we are already within reach -of a vastly better possession, of which we are -strangely negligent. If it came to a choice between -himself and his outward possessions, this -duke who owns so much would not hesitate a minute -which to prefer. If in a crisis of illness he -could save himself by surrender of his goods, they -would instantly go. “Give me health and a day,” -Emerson said, “and I will make the pomp of -emperors ridiculous.”</p> - -<p>What we would do in a crisis we often fail to -do when no crisis confronts us, and it is a fact -that too often we miss and even squander that -better possession, ourselves. The best way to win -it and enjoy it is to cultivate those inner experiences<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -and endowments which make us independent -of external fortune. All Christ’s beatitudes attach -to some inherent quality of life itself. The -meek, the merciful, the pure, are “happy,” not -because the external world conforms to their -wishes, but because they have resources of life -within themselves and have entered upon a way -of life which continually opens out into more life -and richer life. They have found a kind of -Canaan that “comes” in continuous instalments.</p> - -<p>One of the simplest ways to heighten the total -value of life is to form a habit of appreciating -the world we have here and now. It presents -occasional inconveniences, no doubt, but think of -the amazing donations which come to us: the tilting -of the earth’s axis twenty-three and a half degrees -to the ecliptic by which contrivance we have -our seasons; the fact that the proportion of earth -and water is just right to give us a fine balance of -rain and sunshine; the extraordinary way in which -the entire universe submits to our mathematics -so that every movement of matter and every vibration -of ether conforms to laws which we formulate; -the accumulation and storage of fuel and -motor power, with the prospect of even greater -resources of energy to be had from the unoccupied -space surrounding the earth. Then, again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -it cannot be a matter of unconcern that there is -such a wealth of beauty lavished upon us everywhere, -waiting for us to enjoy it. There is here -a strange fit between the outer and the inner. -The more one draws upon the beauty of the world -and enjoys it, so much the more does he increase -his capacity to discover and enjoy beauty. Coal -and oil may become exhausted, but beauty is inexhaustible. -The only trouble is that we are so -limited in our range of appreciation of it. We -turn to cheaper values and miss so much of this -free gift of loveliness.</p> - -<p>Greater still should be our resources of love -and friendship. Nothing could be stranger or -more wonderful than that in a world where struggle -for existence is the law this other trait should -have emerged. It is easy to explain selfishness; -love is the mystery. Love forgets itself; it scorns -double-entry bookkeeping; it gives, it bestows, it -shares, it sacrifices without asking whether anything -is coming back. And it turns out to be a -fact that nothing else so enhances and increases -the value of this “better possession which is ourselves.”</p> - -<p>Even more wonderful, if that is possible, is the -way we are formed and contrived to have intercourse -with the Eternal. With all our material<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -furnishings we strangely open out into the -infinite and partake of a spiritual nature. God -has set eternity in our hearts. We cannot win this -better possession nor hold it permanently unless -we exercise these spiritual capacities, which expand -our being and add the richest qualities of -life. “Thou hast made us for thyself,” Augustine -acknowledged in his great prayer at the opening -of the <cite>Confessions</cite> and “we are restless until -we find thee as our true rest.” It is as true now -as in the fourth century. Barns and houses, lands -and stocks, mortgages and bonds, do not constitute -life unless one learns how to win and possess -his soul and to keep that best of all possessions—himself.</p> - -<h3 id="V_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE GREATEST RIVALRIES OF LIFE</span></h3> - -<p>“After experience had taught me that all -things which are encountered in human life are -vain and futile.... I at length determined to -inquire if there was anything which was a true -good.” Those are the words of a great philosopher -who says that he found himself “led by the -hand up to the highest blessedness.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p> - -<p>Not everybody finds the choice of ends so easy -as Spinoza did; not all of us are carried along -into sustained and unmistakable blessedness. Life -is full of rivalries which tend to divide our interest -and to dissipate our attention. We wake -up, perhaps, with surprise to discover that we are -being carried, by the hand or by the hair, straight -away from “the highest blessedness.” Not seldom -the sternest tragedies of human life are occasioned -by success. Failure overtaking one in -his aim will often shake him awake and make him -see that he was pursuing an end in sharp rivalry -with his highest good. But success often dulls the -vision for other issues and gives one the specious -confidence that he is on the right track and “all’s -well.”</p> - -<p>Christ has a vivid parable which touches upon -the rivalries of life. It is the story of a great -feast to which many guests are invited. When -the critical moment for the dinner comes the other -rivalries begin to operate. One man, attracted -by his possessions, “begs off,” to use the graphic -phrase of the original. Another, occupied with -the complex interests of business and busy with -the affairs of trade, prays to be excused. A third -is immersed in the joys and responsibilities of -married life and he abruptly dispatches his “regrets.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -It was not that they were unconcerned -about the sumptuous feast, but that they were -carried along by rival interests.</p> - -<p>The feast in this parable plainly stands for the -“true good,” the “highest blessedness” of life. -It symbolizes the goal and crown of life, the full -realization of our best human possibilities, the -attainment of that for which we were made aspiring -beings. The invitation is a mark of amazing -grace and the recipient of it has the clearest -evidence that the feast would satisfy him. But -there are the other things with their rival attractions! -Possessions and business and domestic -life pull us in a contrary direction. We send our -cards of regret and beg off from the great feast.</p> - -<p>The real mistake lies in treating these things as -rivals. If we only knew it, an affirmative response -to the great invitation of life would prepare us -for all the other things and would heighten the -value of all we own, of all we do, and of all we -love. Salvation is not some remote and ghostly -thing that has to do with another world. It is -the infusion of new life and power into all the -concerns and affairs of this present world where -we are. It means, as Christ said, receiving “a -hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, -and sisters, and mothers, and children, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> -lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come -eternal life.”</p> - -<p>Nothing could be a more mistaken way than -to regard human love as a rival to the highest of -all relations, the love of the soul for God. One -of the medieval saints said: “God brooks no -rival”; but that phrase shows that the saint was -caught napping, and in any case did not quite understand -what love is. The way up to the highest -love is not to be found by turning away from -those experiences which give us training and -preparation for the highest; but rather it is found -in and through the experience of loving some person -who, however imperfectly, is a revelation of -the beauty and divineness of love. Not by some -sheer leap from the earth does the soul arrive at -its height of blessedness, but by steps and stages, -by processes which bring illumination and richness -of life. The man who has married a wife will do -well to say when he answers the great invitation: -“I have just married a wife and therefore I am -peculiarly glad to come to thy feast, since fellowship -with thee will make my love more real and -true as that in turn will enable me to rise to a -more genuine appreciation of thy love.”</p> - -<p>The same is true of houses and lands, of business -and trade. There is no necessary rivalry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -here. Religion does not rob us of earthly interests, -it does not strip us of the good things of this -world. It only corrects our perspective and enables -us to see the true scale of values. The trivial -and fragmentary things of the world no longer -absorb us. We refuse now to allow them to own -us and drive us, or drag us. We see things steadily -and we see them whole. We discover through -our higher contacts and inspirations how to flood -light back upon our occupations and upon the -things we own, and how to make these subordinate -things minister to the higher functions and -attitudes of life. We get not some other world, -but this world here and now transmuted and -raised a little nearer to the ideal and perfect -world of our hopes and dreams. We get it back -item for item increased a hundredfold, raised to -a higher spiritual level. The wise owner of property -and the intelligent man of affairs will not beg -off when the great invitation comes to him. He -will say: “I have just come into possession of a -piece of land, I have bought five yoke of oxen, -and therefore I want to come to thy divine feast -so that I may learn how to turn all I possess into -the channels of real service and to make these -things which thou hast given me help me find the -way to the highest joy and blessedness of life.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br /> -<span class="smaller">AGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION</span></h2> - -<h3 id="VI_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD</span></h3> - -<p>We have all been asking, “What is the matter -with the Church? Why is it so weak and ineffective? -Why does it exercise such a feeble influence -in the world to-day? Why do men care -so little for its message and its mission?” There -are no doubt many answers to these questions, but -one answer concerns us here. It is this: We who -compose the Church do not sufficiently realize -that God is a living God and that the Church is -intended to be the living body through which he -works in the world and through which he reveals -himself. We think of him as far away in space -and remote in time, a God who created once and -who worked wonders in ancient times long past, -but we do not, as we should, vividly think of him -as a living reality, as near to us as the air is to -the flying bird or the water to the swimming fish.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> -We suppose that the Church is made up of just -people, and is a human convenience for getting -things done in the world. We do not see as we -should that it is meant to be both divine and human -and that it never is properly a Church unless -God lives in it, reveals himself by means of it and -works his spiritual work in the world through it.</p> - -<p>This truth of the real Presence breaks through -many of Christ’s great sayings and was one of -the most evident features of the experience of the -early Church. “Wherever in all the world two or -three shall gather in my name there am I in the -midst of them.” “Lo, I am with you always, even -unto the end of the world.” “Wherever there is -one alone,” according to the newly found “saying” -of Jesus, “I am with him. Raise the stone -and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and -there am I.”</p> - -<p>Not once alone was the early Church invaded -by a life and power from beyond itself as at -Pentecost. The consciousness which characterized -this “upper room” experience was repeated -in some degree wherever a Church of the living -God came into existence, as “a tiny island in a sea -of surrounding paganism.” To belong to the -Church meant to St. Paul to be “joined to the -Lord in one spirit,” while the Church itself in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -great phrase is the body of Christ and each individual -a member in particular of that body.</p> - -<p>What a difference it would make if we could -rise to the height of St. Paul’s expectation and -be actually “builded together for an habitation -of God through the Spirit!” We try plenty of -other expedients. We popularize our message; -we take up fads; we adjust as far as we can to -the tendencies of the time; but only one thing -really works after all and that is having the -Church become the organ of the living God, and -having it “charged” with what Paul so often -calls the power of God—“the power that -worketh in us.”</p> - -<p>I saw a car wheel recently that had been running -many miles with the brake clamped tight -against it. It was white hot and it glowed with -heat and light until it seemed almost transparent -in its extraordinary luminosity. Those Christians -in the upper room at Pentecost were baptized -with fire so that the whole personality of each of -them was glowing with heat and light, for the fire -had gone all through them. They suddenly became -conscious that their divine Leader who was -no longer visible with them had become an invisible -presence and a living power working -through them. It is no wonder that all Jerusalem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> -and its multitudinous sojourners were at once -awakened to the fact that something novel had -happened.</p> - -<p>Our controversies which have divided us have -been controversies about things out at the periphery, -not about realities at the heart and center. -We disagree about baptism, and we are at variance -over problems of organization, ministry, and -ordination, but the thing that really matters is -the depth of conviction, consciousness of God, -certainty of communion and fellowship with the -Spirit. These experiences unite and never divide.</p> - -<p>There is after all, in spite of all our gaps and -chasms, only one Church. It is the Church of -the living God. We are named with many names. -We bear the sign of a particular denomination, -but if we belong truly to the Church, then we -belong to the great Church of the living God. -It is built upon the foundation of the apostles -and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief -cornerstone, in whom the building, fitly framed together, -grows into an holy temple in the Lord. -This is “the blessed community,” the living, expanding -fellowship of vital faith, and it has the -promise of the future, whether conferences on -“faith and order” succeed or not, because it is -the Church of the living God.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> - -<h3 id="VI_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE NURSERY OF SPIRITUAL LIFE</span></h3> - -<p>We are coming more and more to realize that -religion attaches to the simple, elemental aspects -of our human life. We shall not look for it in a -few rare, exalted, and so-called “sacred” aspects -of life, separated off from the rest of life -and raised to a place apart. Religion to be real -and vital must be rooted in life itself and it must -express itself through the whole life. It should -begin, where all effective education must begin, in -the home, which should be the nursery of spiritual -life.</p> - -<p>The Christian home is the highest product of -civilization; in fact there is nothing that can be -called civilization where the home is absent. The -savage is on his way out of savagery as soon as -he can create a home and make family life at all -sacred. The real horror of the “slums” in our -great cities is that there are no homes there, but -human beings crowded indiscriminately into one -room. It is the real trouble with the “poor -whites” whether in the South or in the North that -they have failed to preserve the home as a sacred -center of life.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p> - -<p>One of the first services of the foreign missionary -is to help to establish homes among the -people whom he hopes to Christianize. In short, -the home is the true unit of society. It determines -what the individual shall be; it shapes the -social life; it makes the Church possible; it is -the basis of the state and nation. A society of -mere individual units is inconceivable. Men and -women, each for self, and with no holy center for -family life, could never compose either a Church -or a State.</p> - -<p>Christianity has created the home as we know -it, and that is its highest service to the world, for -the kingdom of heaven would be realized if the -Christian home were universal. The mother’s -knee is still the holiest place in the world; and -the home life determines more than all influences -combined what the destiny of the boy or girl -shall be. The formation of disposition and early -habits of thought and manner as well as the fundamental -emotions and sentiments do more to -shape and fix the permanent character than do -any other forces in the world.</p> - -<p>We may well rejoice in the power of the Sunday -school, the Christian ministry, the secular -school, the college, the university; but all together -they do not measure up to the power of the homes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -which are silently, gradually determining the future -lives of those who will compose the Sunday -school, the Church, the school, and the college.</p> - -<p>The woman who is successful in making a true -home, where peace and love dwell, in which the -children whom God gives her feel the sacredness -and holy meaning of life, where her husband renews -his strength for the struggles and activities -of his life, and in which all unite to promote the -happiness and highest welfare of each other—that -woman has won the best crown there is in -this life, and she has served the world in a very -high degree. The union of man and woman for -the creation of a home breathing an atmosphere -of love is Christ’s best parable of the highest possible -spiritual union where the soul is the bride -and he is the Eternal Bridegroom, and they are -one.</p> - -<p>It seems strange that these vital matters are so -little emphasized or regarded. Few things in fact -are more ominous than the signs of the disintegration -of the home as a nursery of spiritual life. -We can, perhaps, weather catastrophes which may -break down many of our ancient customs and even -obliterate some of the institutions which now -seem essential to civilization; but the home is a -fundamental necessity for true spiritual nurture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> -and culture, and if it does not perform its function -the world will drift on toward unspeakable -moral disasters.</p> - -<h3 id="VI_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE DEMOCRACY WE AIM AT</span></h3> - -<p>Democracy was in an earlier period only a -political aim; it has now become a deep religious -issue. It must be discussed not only in caucuses -and conventions, but in churches as well. For a -century and a quarter “democracy” has been a -great human battle word, and battle words never -have very exact definitions. It has all the time -been charged with explosive forces, and it has -produced a kind of magic spell on men’s minds -during this long transitional period. But the -word democracy has, throughout this time, remained -fluid and ill-defined—sometimes expressing -the loftiest aspirations and sometimes serving -the coarse demagogue in his pursuit of selfish -ends.</p> - -<p>The goal or aim of the early struggle after -democracy was the overthrow of human inequalities. -Men were thought of in terms of individual -units, and the units were declared to be intrinsically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> -equal. The contention was made that they -all had, or ought to have, the same rights and -privileges. This equality-note has, too, dominated -the social and economic struggles of the last -seventy-five years. The focus has been centered -upon rights and privileges. Men have been -thought of, all along, as individual units, and the -goal has been conceived in political and economic -terms. Democracy is still supposed, in many -quarters, to be an organization of society in which -the units have equal political rights. Much of the -talk concerning democracy is still in terms of -privileges. It is a striving to secure opportunities -and chances. The aim is the attainment of a -social order in which guarantee is given to every -individual that he shall have his full economic -and political rights.</p> - -<p>I would not, in the least, belittle the importance -of these claims, or underestimate the human gains -which have been made thus far in the direction of -greater equality and larger freedom. But these -achievements, however valuable, are not enough. -They can only form the base from which to start -the drive for a more genuine and adequate type -of democracy. At its best this scheme of -“equality” is abstract and superficial. Nobody -will ever be satisfied with an achievement of flat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -equality. Persons can never be reduced to homogeneous -units. There are individual differences -woven into the very fiber of human life, and no -type of democracy can ever satisfy men like us -until it gets beyond this artificial scheme and -learns to deal with the problem in more adequate -fashion.</p> - -<p>A genuinely Christian democracy such as the -religious soul is after can not be conceived in economic -terms, nor can it be content with social -units of equality or sameness. We want a democracy -that is vitally and spiritually conceived, -which recognizes and safeguards the irreducible -uniqueness of every member of the social whole. -This means that we can not deal with personal -life in terms of external behavior. We can not -think of society as an aggregation of units possessing -individual rights and privileges. We shall -no longer be satisfied to regard persons as beings -possessing utilitarian value or made for economic -uses. We shall forever transcend the instrumental -idea. We shall begin rather with the inalienable -fact of spiritual worth as the central -feature of the personal life. This would mean -that every person, however humble or limited in -scope or range, has divine possibilities to be realized; -is not a “thing” to be used and exploited,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> -but a spiritual creation to be expanded until its -true nature is revealed. The democracy I want -will treat every human person as a unique, sacred, -and indispensable member of a spiritual whole, a -whole which remains imperfect if even one of its -“little ones” is missing; and its fundamental -axiom will be the liberation and realization of the -inner life which is potential in every member of -the human race.</p> - -<p>On the economic and equality level we never -reach the true conception of personal life. Men -are thought of as units having desires, needs, and -wants to be satisfied. We are, on this basis, aiming -to achieve a condition in which the desires, -wants, and needs are well met, in which each individual -contributes his share of supplies to the -common stock of economic values, and receives in -turn his equitable amount. I am dealing, on the -other hand, with a way of life which begins and -ends, not with a material value-concept at all, but -rather with a central faith in the intrinsic worth -and infinite spiritual possibilities of every person -in the social organism—a democracy of spiritual -agents.</p> - -<p>It is true, no doubt, as Shylock said, that we -all have “eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, -affections, passions,” are “subject to diseases,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -and “warmed and cooled by summer and winter.” -“If you prick us we bleed, if you tickle us we -laugh, if you poison us we die,” and so on. We -do surely have wants and needs. We must consider -values. We must have food and clothes -and houses. We must have some fair share of -the earth and its privileges. But that is only the -basement and foundation of real living, and we -want a democracy that is supremely concerned -with the development of personality and with the -spiritual organization of society. We shall not -make our estimates of persons on a basis of their -uses, or on the ground of their behavior as animal -beings; we shall live and work, if we are Christ’s -disciples, in the faith that man is essentially a -spiritual being, in a world which is essentially -spiritual, and that we are committed to the task -of awakening a like faith in others and of helping -realize an organic solidarity of persons who practice -this faith. Our rule of life would be something -like the following: to act everywhere and -always as though we knew that we are members -of a spiritual community, each one possessed of -infinite worth, of irreducible uniqueness, and indispensable -to the spiritual unity of the whole—a -community that is being continually enlarged by -the faith and action of those who now compose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> -it, and so in some measure being formed by our -human effort to achieve a divine ideal.</p> - -<p>The most important service we can render our -fellow men is to awaken in them a real faith in -their own spiritual nature and in their own potential -energies, and to set them to the task of -building the ideal democracy in which personality -is treated as sacred and held safe from violation, -infringement, or exploitation, and, more than -that, in which we altogether respect the worth and -the divine hopes inherent in our being as men.</p> - -<h3 id="VI_IV">IV<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY</span></h3> - -<p>There are few questions more difficult to answer -than the question, What is Christianity? -Every attempt to answer it reveals the peculiar -focus of interest in the mind of the writer, but it -leaves the main question still asking for a new -answer.</p> - -<p>“Always it asketh, asketh,” and each answer, -to say the least, is inadequate. Harnack, Loisy, -and Tolstoy have given three characteristic answers -to the great question. Their books are -touched with genius and will long continue to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -read, but, like the other books, they, too, reveal -the writers rather than solve the central problem.</p> - -<p>One of the greatest difficulties about the whole -matter is the difficulty of deciding where to look -for the essential traits of Christianity. Are they -to be found in the teaching of Jesus? Are they -revealed in the message of St. Paul? Are they -embodied in the Messianic hope? Are they exhibited -in the primitive apostolic Church? Are -they set forth in the great creeds of orthodoxy? -Are they expressed in the imperial authoritative -Church? Are they to be discovered in the Protestantism -of the modern world? This catalogue -of preliminary questions shows how complicated -the subject really is. To start in on any one of -these lines would be of necessity to arrive at a -partial and one-sided answer.</p> - -<p>Nowhere can we find pure and unalloyed Christianity; -always we have it mixed and combined -with something else, more or less foreign to it. -The creeds contain a larger element of Greek -philosophy than of the pure original gospel. The -Messianic hope is far more Jewish than it is -“Christian.” The imperial authoritative Church -is Christianity interpreted through the Roman -genius for organization and merged and fused -with the age-long faiths and customs of pagan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -peoples. Protestantism is an amazingly complex -blend of ideas and ideals and everywhere interwoven -with the long processes of history. Even -this did not drop from the sky ready-made! Nor -did St. Paul’s message flash in upon him with the -Damascus vision, as a pure heaven-presented -truth. It proves to be a very difficult task to find -one’s way back to the pure, unalloyed teaching of -Jesus, and, strangely enough, the moment one endeavors -to constitute this by itself “Christianity,” -and undertakes to turn it into a set of commands -and to make it a “new law,” he ends with a dry -legalism and not a vital, universal Christianity.</p> - -<p>What, then, is Christianity? In answering this -question we can not confine ourselves to the teaching -and the work of Jesus. Important as it is to -go “back to Jesus” that is not enough. We can -not fully comprehend the meaning of Christianity -until we take into account the fact that the invisible, -resurrected Christ is the continuation -through the ages of the same revelation begun in -the life and teaching of Jesus. Galilee and Judea -mark only one stage of the gospel, which is, in its -fullness, an eternal gospel. The Christian revelation -which came to light first in one Life—its -master interpretation and incarnation—has since -been going forward in a continuous and unbroken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -manifestation of Christ through many lives and -through many groups and through the spiritual -achievements of all those who have lived by him. -Christianity is, thus, the revelation of God -through personal life—God humanly revealed. -St. Paul and the writer of the Fourth Gospel were -the first to reach this profound insight into its fuller -meaning, though it is plainly suggested in some -of the sayings of Jesus and in the pentecostal experiences -of the first Christians. It is the very -heart of the Pauline and the Johannine Christianity. -Important as is the backward look to Jesus -in both these writers, the central emphasis is unmistakably -upon the inward experience of the invisible, -spiritual Christ. This is the expectation -in the Fourth Gospel: Greater things than these -shall ye do when the Spirit comes upon you. This -is the mystery, the secret of the gospel, St. Paul -says, Christ in you.</p> - -<p>If this is the right clew, Christianity is not a -new law, nor an institution, nor a creed, nor a -body of doctrine, nor a millennial hope. It is a -type of life, it is a way of living. The most -essential thing about it is the fact of the incursion -of God into human life, the revelation of the -eternal in the midst of time, the new discovery -which it brought of God’s nature and character.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> -We nowhere else come so close to the essential -truth of Christianity as we do in the life and -experience of Jesus. The life at every point -floods over and transcends the teaching. He is -the most complete and adequate exhibition of -what I have called the incursion of God into human -life, but even so he is the beginning, not the -end, of the revelation of God through humanity—the -Christ-revelation of God—and this -Christ-revelation of God <em>is</em> God, so far as he is -at all adequately known.</p> - -<p>Some persons talk as though God were a kind -of composite Being, got by adding up the God of -the natural order, the God of the Old Testament, -and the God as Father about whom Jesus taught. -He is, according to this scheme, in some way a -compound aggregate of infinite power, irresistible -justice, and eternal love. Sometimes one -“attribute” is predominant, and sometimes another, -while in some mysterious way all the dissonant -attributes get “reconciled.” This is -surely boggy ground to build upon.</p> - -<p>Christianity is essentially, I should say, a -unique revelation of God. Here for the first -time the race discovers that God identifies himself -with humanity, is in the stream of it, is suffering -with us, is in moral conflict with sin and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -evil, is conquering through the travail and tragedy -of finite persons, and is eternally, in mind and -heart and will, a God of triumphing Love. No -texts adequately “prove” this mighty truth. -We cannot tie it down to “sayings,” though there -are “sayings” which declare it. The life of -Jesus, the supreme decisions through which he -expresses his purpose, the spirit which dominates -him and guides his decisive actions, make the -truth plain that God meant <em>that</em> to him and that -his way of life revealed that kind of God.</p> - -<p>Through all the fusions and confusions of history -and through all the vagaries of man’s tortuous -course since the Church began to be built, -Christ as eternal Spirit has gone on revealing this -truth about God and demonstrating the victorious -power of this way of life. The making of a -kingdom of God in the world, the spread of the -brother-spirit, the expansion of the love-method, -the increase of coöperation, sympathy, and service, -the continued incursion of the divine into the -life of the human, these are the things now and -always which indicate the vitality and progress of -Christianity, and the uninterrupted revelation of -God.</p> - -<p>Always, in every period of history, the essential -truth of Christianity must be revealed and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -expressed in and through a medium not altogether -adapted to it. It is always living and working -in a world more or less alien to it. It has at any -stage only partially realized its ideal, and only -achieved in a fragmentary way the goal toward -which it is moving. It means endless conquest -and ever fresh winning of unwon victories. It -must be for us all a vision and a venture, it must -be a thing of faith and forecast. At the same -time it is, in a very real sense, experience and -achievement. God <em>has</em> entered into humanity. -Love has revealed its redeeming power. Grace -is as much a reality as mountains are. The -kingdom of God though not all in sight yet is, I -believe, as sure as gravitation. The invisible, -eternal Christ, living in the soul of man, revealing -his will in moral and spiritual victories in -personal lives, is, I am convinced, as genuine a -fact as electricity is. But we shall see <em>all</em> that -Christianity means only when the living totality -of the revelation of God through humanity is -complete.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE NEAR AND THE FAR</span></h2> - -<h3 id="VII_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">THINGS PRESENT AND THINGS TO COME</span></h3> - -<p>Anaxagoras said twenty-five hundred years -ago that men are always cutting the world in two -with a hatchet. William James, in one of his -living phrases, says with the same import that -everybody dichotomizes the cosmos. It is so. -We all incline to bisect life into alternative possibilities. -We split realities into opposing -halves. We show a kind of fascination for an -“either-or” selection. We are prone to use the -principle of parsimony, and to be content with -one side of a dilemma. History presents a multitude -of dualistic pairs from which one was supposed -to make his individual selection. There -was the choice between this world and the next -world; the here and the yonder; the flesh and -the spirit; faith and reason; the sacred and the -secular; the outward and the inward, and many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -more similar alternatives. This “either-or” -method always leaves its trail of leanness behind. -It makes life thin and narrow where it might be -rich and broad, for in almost every case it is just -as possible to have a whole as to have a half, to -take both as to select an alternative. St. Paul -found his Corinthians bisecting their spiritual -lives and narrowing their interests to one or two -possibilities. One of them would choose Paul -as his representative of the truth and then see no -value in the interpretation which Apollos had to -give. Another attached himself to Apollos and -missed all the rich contributions of Paul. Some -of the “saints” of the Church selected Cephas -as the only oracle, and they lost all the breadth -which would have come to them had they been -able to make a synthesis of the opposing aspects. -St. Paul called them from their divided half to a -completed whole. He told them that instead of -“either-or” they could have both. “All things -are yours; whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, -or the world, or life, or death, or things present -or things to come, all are yours; and ye are -Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” This is the -method of synthesis. This is the substitution of -wholes for halves, the proffer of both for an -“either-or” alternative.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> - -<p>That last pair of alternatives is an interesting -one, and many persons make their bisecting choice -of life there. One well-known type of person -focuses on the near, the here and now, the things -present. Those who belong to this class propose -to make hay while the sun shines. They -glory in being practical. They have what doctors -call myopia. They see only the near. Their -lenses will not adjust for the remote. They believe -in quick returns and bank upon practical -results. Those of the other type have presbyopia, -or far-sightedness. They are dedicated to -the far-away, the remote, the yonder. They are -pursuing rainbows and distant ideals. They are -so eager for the millennium that they forget the -problem of their street and of the present day. -Browning has given us a picture of both these -types:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“That low man seeks a little thing to do,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sees it and does it:</div> -<div class="verse">This high man, with a great thing to pursue,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Dies ere he knows it.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">That low man goes on adding one to one,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">His hundred’s soon hit:</div> -<div class="verse">This high man, aiming at a million,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Misses an unit.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p> - -<p>Browning’s sympathies are plainly with the -“high man” who misses the unit, but it is one -more case of unnecessary dichotomy. What we -want is the discovery of a way to unite into one -synthesis things present and things to come. We -need to learn how to seize this narrow isthmus -of a present and to enrich it with the momentous -significance of past and future. Henry Bergson -has been telling us that all rich moments of life -are rich just because they roll up and accumulate -the meaning of the past and because they are -crowded with anticipations of the future. They -are fused with memory and expectation, and one -of these two factors is as important as the other. -If either dies away the present becomes a useless -half, like the divided parts of the child which -Solomon proposed to bisect for the two contending -mothers.</p> - -<p>We are at one of those momentous ridges of -time at the present moment. Some are so busy -with the near and immediately practical that they -cannot see the far vision of the world that is to -be built. Others are so impressed with past -issues that have become paramount, with the -glorious memories of the blessed Monroe Doctrine, -for instance, that they have no expectant -eyes for the creation of an interrelated and unified<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -world. Another group is so concerned with -the social millennium that they discount the lessons -of the past, the message of history, the wisdom -of experience, and fly to the useless task of -constructing abstract human paradises and -dreams of a world-kingdom which could exist -only in a realm where men had ceased to be men.</p> - -<p>What we want is a synthesis of things present -and things to come, a union of the practical, -tested experience of life and the inspired vision -of the prophet who sees unfolding the possibilities -of human life raised to its fuller glory in -Christ, the incarnation of the way of love, which -always has worked, is working now, and always -will work.</p> - -<h3 id="VII_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">TWO TYPES OF MINISTRY</span></h3> - -<p>Most people like to be told what they already -think. They enjoy hearing their own opinions -and ideas promulgated, and no amens are so -hearty as the ones which greet the reannouncement -of views we have already held.</p> - -<p>The natural result is that speakers are apt to -give their hearers what they want. They take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -the line of least resistance and say what will -arouse the enthusiasm of the people before them, -and they get their quick reward. They are popular -at once. There is a high tide of emotion -as they proceed to tell what everybody present -already thinks, and they soon find themselves in -great demand.</p> - -<p>The main trouble with such an easy ministry -is that it isn’t worth doing. It accomplishes next -to nothing. It merely arouses a pleasurable emotion -and leaves lives where they were before. -And yet not quite where they were either, for the -constant repetition of things we already believe -dulls the mind and deadens the will and weakens -rather than strengthens the power of life. It is -an easy ministry both for speakers and hearers, -but it is ominous for them both.</p> - -<p>The prophet has a very different task. He -cannot give people what they want. He is under -an unescapable compulsion to give them what his -soul believes to be true. He cannot take lines -of least resistance; he must work straight up -against the current. He cannot work for quick -effects; he must slowly educate his people and -compel them to see what they have not seen before. -The amens are very slow to come to his -words, and he cannot look for emotional thrills.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -He must risk all that is dear to himself, except -the truth, as he sets himself to his task, and he -is bound to tread lonely wine-presses before he -can see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.</p> - -<p>Every age has these two types of ministry. -They are both ancient and familiar. There are -always persons who are satisfied to give what is -wanted, who are glad to cater to popular taste, -who like the quick returns. But there are, too, -always a few souls to be found who volunteer for -the harder task. They forego the amens and -patiently teach men to see farther than they have -seen before. Their first question is not, What -do people want me to say? but, What is God’s -truth which to-day ought to be heard through -me? and knowing that, they speak. They do -not move their hearers as the other type does; -they do not reach so many, and they miss the -popular rewards—but they are compassed -about by a great cloud of witnesses as they fight -their battles for the truth, and they have their -joy.</p> - -<p>But this is not quite all there is to say. It is -not possible to teach the new effectively without -linking it up with the old. The wholly new is generally -not true. New, fresh truth emerges out -of ancient experience; it does not drop like a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> -shooting star from the distant skies. The great -prophets in all ages have lived close to the people. -They have not had their “ear to the -ground,” to use a political phrase, but they have -understood the human heart. They have lived -in the great currents of life. They have heard -the going in the mulberry trees, and have felt -the breaking forth of the dawning light just because -of their double union with men and God.</p> - -<p>All sound pedagogy recognizes this principle. -The good teacher knits the new material which -he wishes learned on to the old and familiar. -He takes his student forward by gradual stages, -not by leaps and bounds, and he binds the known -and unknown together by rational synthesis, not -by some strange, foreign, magical glue. The -more we wish to belong to the prophet-class and -to raise our hearers to new and greater levels of -truth and insight, the more we shall strive to -understand the truth that has already been revealed, -to saturate ourselves with it, to fuse and -kindle our lives with those immense realities by -which men in past ages have lived and conquered. -So, and only so, can we go forward and take -others forward with us to new experiences and -to new discoveries of the light that never was on -sea or land.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p> - -<h3 id="VII_III">III<br /> -<span class="smaller">“WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR”</span></h3> - -<p>Every time the Christmas anniversary returns, -the heart renews its youthful joy in the thrilling -stories of the nativity. We cannot be too thankful -for the inspiration and poetry and imagination -which touch and glorify every aspect of our religious -faith. Some dull and leaden-minded -pedants appear to think that the “real” Christ -is the person we get when we take, for the construction -of our figure, only those facts about -him which can be rationalistically, historically, -and critically verified. We are thus reduced to -a few religious ideas, a little group of “sayings,” -a tiny body of events, which explain none of the -immense results that followed. The real Christ, -on the contrary, is this rich, wonderful, mysterious, -baffling person whose life was vastly greater -even than his deeds or his words, who aroused -the wonder and imagination of all who came in -contact with him, who touched everything with -emotion, and fused religion forever with poetry -and feeling. He, in a very true sense,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“ ... touches all things common,</div> -<div class="verse">Till they rise to touch the spheres.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> - -<p>Not only over the manger, but over the entire -story of his life, hovers the glory of the star. -It is a life that will not stay down on the dull -earth of mere fact; it always rises into the region -of idealism and beauty. It always transcends the -things of sight and touch. We have a religion -which cannot be confined in a system of doctrine -or a code of ethics; it partakes too intimately of -life for that. It is, like its Founder, a full -rounded reality, rich in inspiration and emotion -and wonder, as well as in intellectual ideas and -truth. When the star wanes and imagination -falls away, and we hold in our thin hands only -the husks of a dead system, the power of religion -is over.</p> - -<p>The same thing is true of the cross. Its power -lies in the fullness and richness of the reality. We -do not want to reduce it, but to raise it to its full -meaning and glory as a way of complete life. -The direction of present-day Christianity is certainly -not away from Calvary, but quite the opposite. -The men who are in these days trying -to deliver our religion from formalism and tradition -find not less meaning in the cross than a -former generation did, but vastly more. The -atonement remains at the center, as it has always -done, in vital Christianity. All attempts to reduce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -Christianity to a dry and bloodless system -of philosophy, with the appeal of the heart left -out, fail now as they have always failed. It is -a Savior that men, tangled in their sins and their -sorrows, still want—not merely a great thinker -or a great teacher.</p> - -<p>The Church has, no doubt, far too much -neglected the idea of the kingdom of God as -Christ expounded it in sermon and parable, and -hosts of prominent Christians do not at all understand -what this great, central teaching of the -Master meant then and means now. His transforming -revelation of the nature of God has, too, -been missed by multitudes, who still hold Jewish -rather than Christian conceptions of God. But -patient study of the gospel is slowly forcing these -ideas into the thought of men everywhere, and -books abound now which make his teaching clear -and luminous.</p> - -<p>What is needed above everything else now is -that we shall not lose any of our vision of Christ -as Savior, and that we shall live our lives in his -presence. It is through the cross that we touch -closest to the Savior-heart, and it is here that we -feel our lives most powerfully moved by the certainty -of his divine nature. Arguments may fail, -but one who looks steadily at this voluntary Sufferer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -giving himself for us, will cry out, with -one of old, “My Lord and my God.”</p> - -<p>Nothing short of that will do, I believe, if -Christianity is to remain a saving religion. Good -men have died in all ages; great teachers have -again and again gone to their deaths in behalf -of their truth or out of love for their disciples. -It touches us as we read of their bravery and -their loyalty, but we do not and we cannot build -a world-saving religion upon them. Christ is -different! We feel that in him the veil is lifted -and we are face to face with God. When we -hear with our hearts the words, “In the world -ye shall have tribulation; but fear not, for I have -overcome the world,” we feel that we are hearing -the triumph of God in the midst of suffering—we -are hearing of an eternal triumph. Christ -can not be for us less than God manifested here -in a world of time and space and finiteness, doing -in time what God does in eternity—suffering -over sin, entering vicariously into the tragedy of -evil, and triumphing while he treads the winepress. -No one has fathomed the awfulness of -sin, until, in some sense, he feels that his sin -makes God suffer, that it crucifies him afresh. -If Christ is God revealed in time—made visible -and vocal to men—then, through the cross, we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -shall discover that we are not to think of God -henceforth as Sovereign—not a Being yonder, -enjoying his royal splendor. We must think of -him all the time in terms of Christ. He is an -eternal Lover of our hearts. We pierce him -with our sins; we wound him with our wickedness. -He suffers, as mothers who love suffer, -and he enters vicariously into all the tragic deeps -of our lives, striving to bring us home to him. -Jan Ruysbroeck says:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“You must love the Love which loves you everlastingly, -and if you hold fast by his love, he remakes you by his -Spirit, and then joy is yours. The Spirit of God breathes -into you, and you breathe it out in rest and joy and love. -This is eternal life, just as in our mortal life we breathe -out the air that is in us and breathe in fresh air.”</p></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY</span></h2> - -<h3 id="VIII_I">I<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH</span></h3> - -<p>The Greeks had their story of Tithonus, a -deeply significant myth of a man who could not -die, but who grew ever older and more decrepit -until the tragedy became unendurable and he -envied those “happy men that have the power -to die.” Methuselah’s biography is brief and -compact, but it is full of pathos: “He lived nine -hundred and sixty-nine years and he died.” -There was nothing more to add. Somebody has -invented a radium motor which strikes a little -bell every second and is warranted to go on doing -that for thirty thousand years. The Methuselah -monotony and tedium seem much like that thin -<i lang="la">seriatim</i> row of items. It just goes on with no -novelty and no cumulation, and finally the one -relieving novelty is introduced—“he died.” -What a happy fact it was! The wandering Jew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> -stands out in imaginative fiction as one of the -saddest of all men—a being who endlessly goes -on. The angel of death seems a gentle, gracious -messenger when one thinks of the prospect of unending -life, going on in a one-dimensional series, -with no new values and no fresh powers of expansion. -To many persons the idea of heaven -is simply an expanded Methuselah biography.</p> - -<p>Biologists have completely reversed the theory -that death is an enemy. It has long ago taken -its place in the system of teleology, among “the -things that are for us.” Death has, beyond -question, and has had, “a natural utility.” It -has played an important <i lang="fr">rôle</i> in raising life from -the low unicellular type to the rich complex forms -of higher organisms, from “the amœba that -never dies of old age” to the new dynasty of beings -that have greater range and scope, but which -nevertheless do die. Edwin Arnold in his striking -essay on <cite>Death</cite> says: “The lowest living -thing, the Protamœba, has obviously never died! -It is a formless film of protoplasm, which multiplies -by simple division; and the specimen under -any microscope derives, and must derive, in -unbroken existence from the amœba which moved -and fed forty æons ago. The slime of our nearest -puddle lived before the Alps were made!”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -Methuselah was a mere child in a perambulator -compared to an amœba.</p> - -<p>In cases where the continued process of cell-division -produced a lowered and weakened type -of amœba a rudimentary form of union of cells -took place, which resulted in raising the entire -level of life and eventually carried the biological -order up to wholly new possibilities. So that -the threatened approach of death was met with an -increase of life. “It is more probable that death -is a consequence of life,” says the famous biologist, -Edward Cope, “rather than that the living -is a product of the non-living.”<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> - -<p>But in any case the testimony of biology can -give us little help. Even if death has had a -function in the process of evolution, as seems -likely, that in no way eases the situation when the -staggering blow falls into our precious circle and -removes from it an intimate personal life that -was indispensable to us. It is poor, cold comfort -to be told that death has assisted through the -long æons in the slow process of heightening the -entire scale of life, if there is nothing more to say -regarding the future of this dear one whose frail -bark has now gone to wreck. We must somehow -rise above the level of brute facts and discover<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -some spiritual significance which death has revealed, -before we can arrive at any source of -comfort. We are all agreed with Shakespeare’s -Claudio that “’tis too horrible” to think of death -as a sheer terminus:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“ ... to die and go we know not where;</div> -<div class="verse">To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;</div> -<div class="verse">This sensible warm motion to become</div> -<div class="verse">A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit</div> -<div class="verse">To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside</div> -<div class="verse">In thrilling regions of rock-ribbed ice;</div> -<div class="verse">To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,</div> -<div class="verse">And blown with restless violence round about</div> -<div class="verse">The pendent world.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Death has undoubtedly brought to consciousness, -as has perhaps no other experience, the -deeper meaning and significance of personal life. -This and not its biological function is what concerns -us now. It has been said that “freedom,” -so far as it is achieved, “is the main achievement -of man in the past.”<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> I should be inclined rather -to hold that man’s main achievement on the -planet so far has been to discover that personal -life reveals within itself an absolute value and -possesses unmistakable capacity to transcend the -finite and temporal, an experience which makes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -freedom possible. I believe death has ministered -more than any other single fact that confronts us -in bringing those truths to clear consciousness. -We cannot, of course, dissociate death and separate -it from pain, suffering, struggle and danger, -which are essentially bound up with it. If the -world were to be freed completely from death it -would at once <i lang="la">ipso facto</i> be freed from the danger -of it and by the same altered condition struggle -would to a large degree be eliminated, and -likewise those other great tests of life—pain -and suffering, which culminate in death. These -things are all “perilous incidents” of finiteness, -but of a finiteness which transcends itself and is -allied to something beyond itself. To eliminate -these things would be to miss the discovery of -this strange finite-infinite nature of ours which -makes life such a venture and so full of mystery -and wonder. If we had been only naturalistic -beings, curious bits of the earth’s crust merely -capable of recording the empirical facts as they -occurred, death would have taken an unimportant -place as one more event in a successive series -of phenomena. Built as we are, however, with -a beyond within ourselves, the fact of mutability -and mortality has occasioned a transformation of -our entire estimate of life and has led us by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -hand to a Pisgah view which we should never have -got if there had been no invasion of death into -our world.</p> - -<p>“It is a venerable commonplace,” as Professor -Schiller of Oxford has said, “that among the -melancholy prerogatives which distinguish man -from the other animals and bestow a deeper significance -on human life is the fact that man alone -is aware of the doom that terminates his earthly -existence, and on this account lives a more spiritual -life, in the ineffable consciousness of the -‘sword of Damocles’ which overshadows him -and weights his lightest action with gigantic import. -Nay, more; stimulated by the ineluctable -necessity of facing death, and of living so as to -face it with fortitude, man has not abandoned -himself to nerveless inaction, to pusillanimous -despair; he has conceived the thought, he has -cherished the hope, he has embraced the belief, -of a life beyond the grave, and opened his soul to -the religions which baulk the king of terrors of -his victims and defraud him of his victory. Thus, -the fear of death has been redeemed, and ennobled -by the consoling belief in immortality, a -belief from which none are base enough to withhold -their moral homage, even though the debility<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -of mortal knowledge may debar a few from -a full acceptance of its promise.”<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> - -<p>The early animistic views of survival, which -were the first forecasts of a life beyond, were due -not so much to the consciousness of the moral -grandeur of life as to <em>actual experiences</em> which -gave to primitive man a confident assurance of -some form of life after the death of the body. -Dreams had an important part in leading man to -this naïve and yet momentous discovery. In a -world which had no established criterion of -“reality,” the experiences of vivid dreams were -taken to be as real as any other experiences, and -in these dreams the dreamer often found his dead -ancestors and friends and tribesmen once more -present with him, active in the chase or the fight -and as real as ever they were in life. Trance, -hallucination, telepathy, mediumship, possession, -are not new phenomena; they are very primitive -and ancient. These things are as old as smiling -and weeping. These psychic experiences had -their part to play also in giving the early races -their belief that the dead person still existed -though in an altered and attenuated form as an -<i lang="la">animus</i> or “spirit” or “shade.” This empirical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -view of survival, built on actual experiences, was -more or less incapable of advance. No further -knowledge could be acquired and the constructions -fashioned by imagination, in reference to -“the scenery and circumstance” of the departed -soul, could satisfy only an uncritical mind. These -constructions were, too, often crude and bizarre, -and tended, in the hands of priests, to hamper -man’s moral development rather than to further -it. But in any case man had made the momentous -guess that death did not utterly end him or -his career. Poor and thin as this dimly conceived -future world of primitive man’s hope may -have been, the psychological effect of the hope -was by no means negligible. Professor Shaler -of Harvard was probably speaking truly when -he wrote:</p> - -<p>“If we should seek some one mark, which in -the intellectual advance from the brutes to man, -might denote the passage to the human side, we -might well find it in the moment when it dawned -upon the nascent man that death was a mystery -which he had in his turn to meet. From the -time when man began to face death to the present -stage of his development there has been a -continuous struggle between the motives of personal -fear on the one hand, and valor on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -other. That of fear has been constantly aided by -the work of the imagination. For one fact of -danger there have been scores of fancied risks to -come from the unseen world. Against this great -host of imaginary ills, which tended utterly to -bear men down, they had but one helper—their -spirit of valiant self-sacrifice for the good of their -family, their clan, their state, their race, or, in -the climax, for the Infinite above.”<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> - -<p>It marked a still greater intellectual advance -when primitive man came to the immense conclusion -not only that death was a mystery which -he in turn must meet, but that he was a being -that would survive death.</p> - -<p>It is, however, in another field that we must -look for the most important spiritual results from -the contemplation of death, that is in what we -may call the field of spiritual values. I have -already contended that man’s greatest discovery -was his discovery of the absolute value of moral -personality. Of course, it came fairly late in the -development of the race and by no means has -everybody made it yet! But at any rate there -came a time somewhere in the process of history -when man did discover a beyond within himself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> -a greater inclusive self present within his own -fragmentary, finite spirit, revealed as a passion -for perfection not yet attained or experienced, a -prophesying consciousness of eternity within his -often baffled and defeated temporal life. No one -has expressed the fact of this inner beyond within -us better than old Sir Thomas Browne did in the -seventeenth century: “We are men and we know -not how; there is something in us that can be -without us and will be after us, though it is -strange that it hath no history of what it was -before us, nor can tell how it entered in us.... -There is surely a piece of Divinity in us, something -that was before the elements and owes not -homage unto the Sun.”</p> - -<p>The sublimity and grandeur revealed in nature, -the majesty of mountains, the might of seas, the -mystery of the ocean, the glory of the sun and -stars, the awe inspired by the thunderstorm, -awakened man’s own spirit and made him dimly -conscious of a kindred grandeur in his own answering -soul. The greatest step of all was taken -when man awoke to the meaning and value of -love. In some dim sense love preceded the -emergence of man. The evolution of a mother -and of a father, as Drummond showed, began -far back in forms of life below man. But the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -type of love which transcends instinct, which is -raised above sex-assertion, and is transmuted into -an unselfish appreciation of the beauty and worth -of personal character—that type of love is one -of the most wonderful flowers that has yet blossomed -on our Igdrasil tree of life and it was late -and slow to come, like flowers on the century-plant.</p> - -<p>When death broke in and separated those who -loved in this great fashion the whole problem of -death at once became an urgent one. In fact -death received <em>attention</em> in proportion as the -higher values of life began to be realized. Walt -Whitman’s fiery outburst reveals clearly his estimate -of the worth of personality. “If rats and -maggots end us, then alarum! for we are betrayed”—he -might have said “if microbes end -us.” Emerson’s poignant outcry of soul is found -in his greatest poem—“Threnody”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“There’s not a sparrow or a wren,</div> -<div class="verse">There’s not a blade of autumn grain,</div> -<div class="verse">Which the four seasons do not tend</div> -<div class="verse">And tides of life and increase lend;</div> -<div class="verse">And every chick of every bird,</div> -<div class="verse">And weed and rock-moss is preferred.</div> -<div class="verse">O ostrich-like forgetfulness!</div> -<div class="verse">O loss of larger in the less!</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Was there no star that could be sent,</div> -<div class="verse">No watcher in the firmament,</div> -<div class="verse">No angel from the countless host</div> -<div class="verse">That loiters round the crystal coast,</div> -<div class="verse">Could stoop to heal that only child,</div> -<div class="verse">Nature’s sweet marvel undefiled,</div> -<div class="verse">And keep the blossom of the earth,</div> -<div class="verse">Which all her harvests were not worth?”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>No such high revolt of spirit was occasioned so -long as death was a mere biological event, terminating -one life to give room for another. This -cry of soul means the discovery of the infinite -preciousness of personal life. The mind now -turns in on itself and takes a new account of its -stock, and as a result man began to solve the -problem of death in an enlarged way. He was -no longer satisfied with a form of survival based -upon his experiences in dreams, trance and hallucination; -he came to feel that he must have a -destiny which fitted his spiritual worth as a man. -He finds within himself intimation of powers and -possibilities beyond those required for the struggle -of life here. He feels by that same insight -which carries him out beyond the seen to a rational -faith in the unseen that is necessary to complete -it, that this little arc of earthly life with its -revelations of spiritual value and its transcendent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> -prophecies of more must find fulfillment somewhere -in a form of life that rounds it out full -circle.</p> - -<p>The argument does not build on a passion of -desire, as some doubters have said. We do not -assume immortality just because we want it. It -rests upon the moral consistency of the universe, -upon the trustworthy character of the eternal -nature of things. The moral values which are -revealed in fully developed personality are certainly -as <em>real</em>, as much a fact of the universe, as -are the tides or the orbits of planets. If we can -count upon the continuity of these occurrences -and upon our predictions of them, just as surely -can we count on the consistency of the universe -in reference to spiritual values. If there is conservation -of matter there is at least as good -ground for affirming conservation of moral values. -If biological life can pass over the -slender bridge of a microscopic germ-plasm and -can carry with itself over that feeble bridge the -traces of habit and feature, the curve of nose and -the emotional tone of some far-off dead ancestor, -and all the heredity gains of the past, may we not -count upon the permanence of that in us which -allies us to that infinite Spirit who is even now -the invisible environment of all we see and touch?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> - -<p>It is not a matter of reward or of “wages” -that concerns us. It is not “happy isles” or -care-free “Edens” that we seek, not “golden -streets” and endless comfort to make up for the -stress and toil of the lean years here below. We -want to find the whole of ourselves, we ask the -privilege of seeing this fragmentary being of ours -unfold into the full expression of its gifts and -powers. The new period may be even more -strenuous and hazardous than this one has been—still -we want the venture. We ask for the culminating -acts that will complete the drama, so -far only fairly begun. It must be not a mere -serial, or straight line, existence; it must be the -opening out and expansion of the possibilities -which we feel within ourselves—new dimensions, -please God.</p> - -<p>I am not wrong, I am sure, in claiming that -this postulate, this rational faith in the conservation -of values, is an asset which death has revealed -to the race. The shock of death has -always made love appear a greater thing than we -knew before the baffling crisis came upon us. It -has, too, by the same shock of contrast, awakened -man to the full comprehension of the moral sublimity -of the good life. Kant maintained that the -sense of the sublime is due to the fact that when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> -we are confronted with the supreme powers of -nature we then become aware of something unfathomable -in ourselves, and feel that we are -superior to the might of the storm, or the mountain -or the cataract. Nowhere is this truer than -when man—man in his full, rich powers—is -confronted by death. Instead of cringing in fear, -he rises to an unaccustomed height of greatness -and is utterly superior to death and aware of -some quality of being in himself which death cannot -touch. It is just then in that moment of seeming -disaster and dissolution that a brave, good man -is most triumphant and ready to burn all bridges -behind him in his great adventure. Mrs. Browning, -all her life an invalid, says about this so-called -gigantic enemy: “I cannot look on the -earthside of death. When I look deathwards I -look over death and upwards.” Her husband, -who was “ever a fighter,” has this way of announcing -the triumph:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And then as, ’mid the dark, a gleam</div> -<div class="verse">Of yet another morning breaks,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And like the hand which ends a dream,</div> -<div class="verse">Death, with the might of his sunbeam,</div> -<div class="verse">Touches the flesh and the soul awakes.”<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> - -<p>Here is the testimony of a French soldier who -writes at a moment when death is close beside him: -“I had often known the joy of seeing a spring -come like this, but never before had I been given -the power of living in every instant. So it is that -one wins, without the help of any science, a vague -but indisputable intuition of the Absolute.... -These are hours of such beauty that he who embraces -them knows not what death means.”</p> - -<p>Having come upon the higher values of personal -life which death has forced upon us we can -never again, as men, be satisfied with such facts -of survival as may come to light through dreams, -hallucinations, telepathy and mediums, or in fact -through any empirical experiences. Even if the -evidence were vastly greater than it is for some -form of animistic survival, it would fall far short -of our moral and spiritual demands. We already -have some intimations in us of “the power of an -endless life,” and we seek for a chance to bring it -full into play, for the “heavenly period” to -“perfect the earthen,” for an ampler life that will -reveal what we have all the time <em>meant</em> life to be.</p> - -<p>Winifred Kirkland in <cite>The New Death</cite> well -says: “The New Death, <i>i.e.</i>, the new view of -death, is the perception of our mortal end as the -mere portal of an eternal progression and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -immediate result is the consecration of all living.... -It is a new illumination, a New Death, -when dying can be the greatest inspiration of our -everyday energy, the strongest impulse toward -daily joy.”</p> - -<h3 id="VIII_II">II<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE NEW BORN OUT OF THE OLD</span></h3> - -<p>Walking across the fields in the spring I found -the empty shell of a bird’s egg. The tiny bird -that once was in it was lying still and happy under -its mother’s wings, or was chirping its new-born -song from the limb of a nearby tree, or was trying -its new-found wings on the buoyant air. The -empty shell was utterly worthless, a mere plaything -for the wind. The miracle of life that had -stirred within it and had used it for its shelter -had gone on and left it deserted. There is a fine -proverb which says, “God empties the nest by -hatching out the eggs,” and the world is full of -this gentle, silent, divine method of abolishing -the old by setting free to higher ends all that was -true and living in it.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“To-day I saw the dragon-fly</div> -<div class="verse">Come from the wells where he did lie.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -<div class="verse">An inner impulse rent the veil</div> -<div class="verse">Of his old husk: from head to tail</div> -<div class="verse">Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.</div> -<div class="verse">He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;</div> -<div class="verse">Through crofts and pastures wet with dew</div> -<div class="verse">A living flash of light he flew.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In the water below, the “old husk” lay empty -and useless, while the bright-colored living thing -found its freedom in the invisible air. I never -go to a funeral without thinking of this miracle -of transformation which brings the bird out of -the egg, the flower out of the seed, the dragon-fly -out of its water-larva. In his own mysterious -way God has emptied the nest by the hatching -method, and all that was excellent, lovable, and -permanent in the one we loved has found itself -in the realm for which it was fitted. The body -is only the empty shell, the shattered seed, the -old husk, which the silent forces of nature will -slowly turn back again into its original elements, -to use over again for its myriad processes of -building:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And from his ashes may be made</div> -<div class="verse">The violet of his native land.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Those who treasure up the outworn dust and -ashes, who make their thoughts center about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -empty shell, are failing to read aright the deeper -fact, which life everywhere is trying to utter, that -that which belongs in the higher sphere cannot -be pent up in the lower.</p> - -<p>This divine hatching method may be seen, too, -in the progress of truth, as it unfolds from stage -to stage. Nothing is more common than to see -a person holding on to a shell in which truth has -dwelt, without realizing that the precious thing -he wants has gone on and reëmbodied itself in -new and living ways which he fails to follow and -comprehend. While he is saying in melancholy -tones, “They have taken away my Lord and I -know not where they have laid him,” the living -Lord is saying, “Have I been so long time with -thee and yet dost thou not know me?”</p> - -<p>Truth can no more keep a fixed and permanent -form than life can. It lives only by hatching -out into higher and ever more adequate expressions -of itself, and the old forms in which it -lived, the old words through which it uttered -itself, become empty and hollow because the warm -breath of God has raised the inner life, the spiritual -reality, to a higher form of expression.</p> - -<p>The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews was -very much impressed with this crumbling of old -forms and expressions to give place to the new.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -God spoke, he says, to our fathers in sundered -portions and in a variety of manners, but he is -speaking to us now by his Son. The things that -can be shaken, he writes, are being removed that -the things which cannot be shaken may remain. -Luther must have felt this shaking process in his -day; and when he saw the old forms of religion -crumbling, he wrote that great hymn of the -Reformation, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” -He had found something that could not be shaken. -He could stand his ground and face the seen and -unseen world in faith, because he knew that the -hatching was going on, and the new was being -born in higher, truer, and more adequate forms -as the old was vanishing.</p> - -<p>Let us hope that this ancient divine method -may still operate in this momentous hour of human -history. Never, perhaps, since the fall of -Rome, has there been such a world-shaking process -affecting every country and all peoples. Immense -changes are under way. Nothing will ever -be quite the same again. The old is vanishing -before our eyes and the new is being born. -So much was wrong and outworn, and unjust and -inhuman, that the changes must go very far, and -they will necessarily involve some breakage. But -even now, in this most dynamic period of modern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> -history, that which is to mark permanent progress -will come forth, not by a smashing process, -but by the hatching of the eggs, by the emergence -of the underlying forces of life and the realization -of those human hopes and aspirations that have -long been held in and suppressed.</p> - -<p>There is always the gravest danger from blind -rage and sullen wrath. The passionate resentment -for the suffering of immemorial wrongs, -when once it breaks through the dams of restraint, -is an almost irresistible force; but sooner -or later the sound, serious sense of the intelligent -human race comes into play and brings the world -back to order and system. The real gains in -these crises are made not by the smashings and -the blind iconoclastic blows, but by the wise, clear-sighted -fulfillment of the slowly formed ideals -which have been the inspiration of many lives -before the crisis came. May it be so now! It -must not be, it cannot be, that these millions of -men shall have unavailingly faced death and -mutilation. It was not wreckage and chaos they -sought in their brave adventure with death. They -went out to build a new world and to destroy, only -that a new re-creation might begin. This is the -time of incubation and birth, for ripening into -reality those mighty hopes that make us men.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p> - -<p>It means at once that we must deepen down -our lives into the life of God, that we must suppress -our petty individual passions and feel the -sweep of God’s purposes for the new age. In a -multitude of ways the world moves on, and as it -moves the Spirit of God ends old forms and -methods and brings fresh and living ways to light. -May we have eyes to see what is of his divine -hatching and what is empty shell!</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE MYSTIC’S EXPERIENCE OF GOD</span></h2> - -<h3 id="IX_I">I</h3> - -<p>The revival of mysticism which has been one -of the noteworthy features in the Christianity of -our time has presented us with a number of interesting -and important questions. We want to -know, first of all, what mysticism really is. Secondly, -we want to know whether it is a normal -or abnormal experience. And omitting many -other questions which must wait their turn, we -want to know whether mystical experiences -actually enlarge our sphere of knowledge, i.e., -whether they are trustworthy sources of authentic -information and authoritative truth concerning -realities which lie beyond the range of human -senses.</p> - -<p>The answer to the first question appears to be -as difficult to accomplish as the return of Ulysses -was. The secret is kept in book after book. -One can marshall a formidable array of definitions, -but they oppose and challenge one another,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -like the men sprung from the dragon’s teeth. For -the purposes of the present consideration we can -eliminate what is usually included under psychical -phenomena, that is, the phenomena of dreams, -visions and trances, hysteria and dissociation and -esoteric and occult phenomena. Thirty years -ago Professor Royce said: “In the Father’s -house are many mansions, and their furniture is -extremely manifold. Astral bodies and palmistry, -trances and mental healing, communications from -the dead and ‘phantasms of the living’—such -things are for some people to-day the sole quite -unmistakable evidences of the supremacy of the -spiritual world.” These phenomena are worthy -of careful painstaking study and attention, for -they will eventually throw much light upon the -deep and complex nature of human personality, -are in fact already throwing much light upon it. -But they furnish us slender data for understanding -what is properly meant by mystical experience -and its religious and spiritual bearing.</p> - -<p>We can, too, leave on one side the metaphysical -doctrines which fill a large amount of space -in the books of the great mystics. These doctrines -had a long historical development and they -would have taken essentially the same form if the -exponents of them had not been mystics. Mystical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -experience is confined to no one form of -philosophy, though some ways of thinking no -doubt favor and other ways retard the experience, -as they also often do in the case of religious -<em>faith</em> in general. Mystical experience, furthermore, -must not be confused with what technical expert -writers call “the mystic way.” There are as -many mystical “ways” as there are gates to the -New Jerusalem: “On the east three gates, on -the north three gates, on the south three gates, -and on the west three gates.” One might as well -try to describe <em>the way</em> of making love, or <em>the way</em> -of appreciating the grand canyon as to describe -<em>the way</em> to the discovery of God, as though there -were only one way.</p> - -<p>I am not interested in mysticism as an <em>ism</em>. -It turns out in most accounts to be a dry and abstract -thing, hardly more like the warm and intimate -experience than the color of a map is like -the country for which it stands. “Canada is very -pink,” seems quite an inadequate description of -the noble country north of our border. It is -mystical experience and not mysticism that is -worthy of our study. We are concerned with the -experience itself, not with second-hand formulations -of it. “The mystic,” says Professor -Royce, “is a thorough-going empiricist;” “God<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -ceases to be an object and becomes an experience,” -says Professor Pringle-Pattison. If it is an experience -we want to find out what happens to the -mystic himself inside where he lives. According -to those who have been there the experience which -we call mystical is charged with the conviction of -real, direct contact and commerce with God. It -is the almost universal testimony of those who -are mystics that they find God through their experience. -John Tauler says that in his best moments -of “devout prayer and the uplifting of -the mind to God,” he experiences “the pure presence -of God in his own soul,” but he adds that all -he can tell others about the experience is “as poor -and unlike it as the point of a needle is to the -heavens above us.” “I have met with my God; -I have met with my Savior. I have felt the -healings drop upon my soul from under His -wings,” says Isaac Penington in the joy of his -first mystical experience. Without needlessly -multiplying such testimonies for data, we can say -with considerable assurance that mystical experience -is consciousness of direct and immediate relationship -with some transcendent reality which -in the moment of experience is believed to be God. -“This is He, this is He,” exclaims Isaac Penington, -“there is no other: This is He whom I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -waited for and sought after from my childhood.” -Angela of Foligno says that she experienced God, -and saw that the whole world was full of God.</p> - -<h3 id="IX_II">II</h3> - -<p>There are many different degrees of intensity, -concentration and conviction in the experiences of -different individual mystics, and also in the various -experiences of the same individual from time -to time. There has been a tendency in most -studies of mysticism to regard the state of ecstasy -as <i lang="fr">par excellence</i> mystical experience. That is, -however, a grave mistake. The calmer, more -meditative, less emotional, less ecstatic experiences -of God are not less convincing and possess -greater constructive value for life and character -than do ecstatic experiences which presuppose a -peculiar psychical frame and disposition. The -seasoned Quaker in the corporate hush and stillness -of a silent meeting is far removed from ecstasy, -but he is not the less convinced that he is -meeting with God. For the <i lang="la">essentia</i> of mysticism -we do not need to insist upon a certain “sacred” -mystic way nor upon ecstasy, nor upon any -peculiar type of rare psychic upheavals. We do -need to insist, however, upon a consciousness of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -commerce with God amounting to conviction of -his presence.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Where one heard noise</div> -<div class="verse">And one saw flame,</div> -<div class="verse">I only knew He named my name.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Jacob Boehme calls the experience which came -to him, “breaking through the gate,” into “a -new birth or resurrection from the dead,” so that, -he says, “I knew God.” “I am certain,” says -Eckhart, “as certain as that I live, that nothing -is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me -than I am to myself.” One of these experiences—the -first one—was an ecstasy, and the other, -so far as we can tell, was not. It was the flooding -in of a moment of God-consciousness in the -act of preaching a sermon to the common people -of Cologne. The experience of Penington, -again, was not an ecstasy; it was the vital surge -of fresh life on the first occasion of hearing -George Fox preach after a long period of waiting -silence. A simple normal case of a mild type is -given in a little book of recent date, reprinted -from the <cite>Atlantic Monthly</cite>: “After a long time -of jangling conflict and inner misery, I one day, -<em>quite quietly and with no conscious effort</em>, -stopped doing the dis-ingenuous thing [I had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> -doing]. Then the marvel happened. It was as -if a great rubber band which had been stretched -almost to the breaking point were suddenly released -and snapped back to its normal condition. -Heaven and earth were changed for me. Everything -was glorious because of its relation to some -great central life—nothing seemed to matter but -that life.” Brother Lawrence, a barefooted lay-brother -of the seventeenth century, according to -the testimony of the brotherhood, attained “an -unbroken and undisturbed sense of the Presence -of God.” He was not an ecstatic; he was a quiet, -faithful man who did his ordinary daily tasks -with what seemed to his friends “an unclouded -vision, an illuminated love and an uninterrupted -joy.” Simple and humble though he was, he -nevertheless acquired, through his experience of -God, “an extraordinary spaciousness of mind.”</p> - -<p>The more normal, expansive mystical experiences -come apparently when the personal self is -at its best. Its powers and capacities are raised -to an unusual unity and fused together. The -whole being, with its accumulated submerged life, -<em>finds itself</em>. The process of preparing for any -high achievement is a severe and laborious one, -but nothing seems easier in the moment of success -than is the accomplishment for which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -life has been prepared. There comes to be -formed within the person what Aristotle called -“a dexterity of soul,” so that the person does -with ease what he has become skilled to do. -Clement of Alexandria called a fully organized -and spiritualized person “a harmonized man,” -that is, adjusted, organized and ready to be a -transmissive organ for the revelation of God. -Brother Lawrence, who was thus “harmonized,” -finely says, “The most excellent method which I -found of going to God was that of <em>doing my common -business</em>, purely for the love of God.” An -earlier mystic of the fourteenth century stated the -same principle in these words: “It is my aim to -be to the Eternal God what a man’s hand is to -a man.”</p> - -<p>There are many human experiences which carry -a man up to levels where he has not usually been -before and where he finds himself possessed of -insight and energies he had hardly suspected were -his until that moment. One leaps to his full -height when the right inner spring is reached. We -are quite familiar with the way in which instinctive -tendencies in us and emotions both egoistic -and social, become organized under a group of -ideas and ideals into a single system which we -call a sentiment, such as love, or patriotism, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -devotion to truth. It forms slowly and one hardly -realizes that it has formed until some occasion -unexpectedly brings it into full operation, and -we find ourselves able with perfect ease to overcome -the most powerful inhibitory and opposing -instincts and habits, which, until then, had usually -controlled us. We are familiar, too, with the -way in which a well-trained and disciplined mind, -confronted by a concrete situation, will sometimes—alas -not always—in a sudden flash of imaginative -insight, discover a universal law revealed -there and then in the single phenomenon, as Sir -Isaac Newton did and as, in a no less striking way, -Sir William Rowan Hamilton did in his discovery -of Quaternions. Literary and artistic geniuses -supply us with many instances in which, in a sudden -flash, the crude material at hand is shot -through with vision, and the complicated plot of -a drama, the full significance of a character, or -the complete glory of a statue stands revealed, as -though, to use R. L. Stevenson’s illustration, a -genie had brought it on a golden tray as a gift -from another world. Abraham Lincoln, striking -off in a few intense minutes his Gettysburg address, -as beautiful in style and perfect in form -as anything in human literature, is as good an illustration -as we need of the way in which a highly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> -organized person, by a kindling flash, has at his -hand all the moral and spiritual gains of a life -time.</p> - -<p>There is a famous account of the flash of inspiration -given by Philo, which can hardly be improved. -It is as follows: “I am not ashamed to -recount my own experience. At times, when I -have proposed to enter upon my wonted task of -writing on philosophical doctrines, with an exact -knowledge of the materials which were to be put -together, I have had to leave off without any work -accomplished, finding my mind barren and fruitless, -and upbraiding it for its self-complacency, -while startled at the might of the Existent One, -in whose power it lies to open and close the wombs -of the soul. But at other times, when I had come -empty, all of a sudden I have been filled with -thoughts, showered down and sown upon me unseen -from above, so that by Divine possession I -have fallen into a rapture and become ignorant -of everything, the place, those present, myself, -what was spoken or written. For I have received -a stream of interpretation, a fruition of light, the -most clear-cut sharpness of vision, the most -vividly distinct view of the matter before me, -such as might be received through the eyes from -the most luminous presentation.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p> - -<p>The most important mystical experiences are -something like that. They occur usually not at -the beginning of the religious life but rather in -the ripe and developed stage of it. They are the -fruit of long-maturing processes. Clement’s “the -harmonized man” is always a person who has -brought his soul into parallelism with divine currents, -has habitually practiced his religious insights -and has finally formed a unified central -self, subtly sensitive, acutely responsive to the -Beyond within him. In such experiences which -may come suddenly or may come as a more gradual -process, the whole self operates and masses -all the cumulations of a lifetime. They are no -more emotional than they are rational and volitional. -We have a total personality, awake, active, -and “aware of his life’s flow.” Instead of -seeing in a flash a law of gravitation, or the plot -and character of Hamlet, or the uncarven form of -Moses the Law-giver in a block of marble, one -sees at such times the moral demonstrations of a -lifetime and vividly feels the implications that are -essentially involved in a spiritual life. In the high -moment God is seen to be as sure as the soul is.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“I stood at Naples once, a night so dark</div> -<div class="verse">I could have scarce conjectured there was earth</div> -<div class="verse">Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all:</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> -<div class="verse">But the night’s black was burst through by a blaze—</div> -<div class="verse">Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,</div> -<div class="verse">Through her whole length of mountain visible:</div> -<div class="verse">There lay the city thick and plain with spires,</div> -<div class="verse">And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.</div> -<div class="verse">So may the truth be flashed out by one blow.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>To some the truth of God never comes closer -than a logical conclusion. He is held to be as a -living item in a creed. To the mystic he becomes -real in the same sense that experienced beauty is -real, or the feel of spring is real, or that summer -sunlight is real—he has been found, he has -been met, he is present.</p> - -<p>Before discussing the crucial question whether -these experiences are evidential and are worthy of -consideration as an addition to the world’s stock -of truth and knowledge I must say a few words -about the normality or abnormality of them. -Nothing of any value can be said on this point -of mystical experience in the <em>abstract</em>. One must -first catch his concrete case. Some instances are -normal and some are undoubtedly abnormal. -Trance, ecstasy and rapture are unusual experiences -and in that sense not normal occurrences. -They usually indicate, furthermore, a pathological -condition of personality and are thus abnormal -in the more technical sense. There is, however,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -something more to be said on this point. It seems -pretty well established that some persons—and -they have often been creative leaders and religious -geniuses—have succeeded in organizing their -lives, in finding their trail, in charging their whole -personality with power, in attaining a moral dynamic -and in tapping vast reservoirs of energy by -means of states which, if occurring in other persons, -would no doubt be called pathological. The -real test here is a pragmatic one. It seems hardly -sound to call a state abnormal if it has raised the -experiencer, as a mystic experience often does, into -a hundred horse-power man and through his influence -has turned multitudes of other men and -women into more joyous, hopeful and efficient persons. -This question of abnormality and reality is -thus not one to be settled off-hand by a superficial -diagnosis.</p> - -<p>An experience which brings spaciousness of -mind, new interior dimensions, ability to stand the -universe—and the people in it—and capacity -to work at human tasks with patience, endurance -and wisdom may quite intelligently be called normal, -though to an external beholder it may look -like what he usually calls a trance of hysteria, a -state of dissociation, or hypnosis by auto-suggestion. -It should be added, however, as I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -already said, that mystical experience is not confined -to these extremer types. They may or may -not be pathological. The calmer and more restrained -stages of mysticism are more important -and significant and are no more marked with the -stigma of hysteria than is love-making, enjoyment -of music, devotion to altruistic causes, risking -one’s life for country, or any lofty experience of -<em>value</em>.</p> - -<h3 id="IX_III">III</h3> - -<p>We come at length to the central question of -our consideration: Do mystical experiences settle -anything? Are they purely subjective and one-sided, -or do they prove to have objective reference -and so to be two-sided? Do they take the -experiencer across the chasm that separates -“self” from “Other”? Mystical experience undoubtedly -feels as though it had objective reference. -It comes to the individual with indubitable -authority. He is certain that he has found some -thing other than himself. He has an unescapable -conviction that he is in contact and commerce with -reality beyond the margins of his personal self. -“A tremendous muchness is suddenly revealed,” -as William James once put it.</p> - -<p>We do not get very far when we undertake to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -reduce knowledge to an affair of sense-experience. -“They reckon ill who leave me out,” can be said -by the organized, personal, creative mind as truly -as by Brahma. There are many forms of human -experience in which the data of the senses are so -vastly transcended that they fail to furnish any -real explanation of what occurs in consciousness. -This is true of all our experiences of <em>value</em>, which -apparently spring out of synthetic or synoptic activities -of the mind, i.e., activities in which the -mind is unified and creative. The vibrations of -ether which bombard the rods and cones of the -retina may be the occasion for the appreciation of -beauty in sky or sea or flower, but they are surely -not the <em>cause</em> of it. The concrete event which -confronts me is very likely the occasion for the -august pronouncement of moral issues which my -conscience makes, but it can not be said that the -concrete event in any proper sense <em>causes</em> this -consciousness of moral obligation. The famous -answer of Leibnitz to the crude sense-philosophy -of his time is still cogent. To the phrase: “There -is nothing in the mind that has not come through -the senses,” Leibnitz added, “except the mind itself.” -That means that the creative activity of -the mind is always an important factor in experience -and one that can not be ignored in any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> -of the processes of knowledge. Unfortunately we -have done very little yet in the direction of comprehending -the interior depth of the personal -mind or of estimating adequately the part which -mind itself in its creative capacity plays in all -knowledge functions. It will only be when we -have succeeded in getting beyond what Plato -called the bird-cage theory of knowledge to a -sound theory of knowledge and to a solid basis -for spiritual values that we shall be able to discuss -intelligently the “findings” of the mystic.</p> - -<p>The world at the present moment is pitiably -“short” in its stock of sound theories of knowledge. -The prevailing psychologies do not explain -knowledge at all. The behaviorists do not -try to explain it any more than the astronomer or -the physicist does. The psychologist who reduces -mind to an aggregation of describable “mind-states” -has started out on a course which makes -an explanation forever impossible, since knowledge -can be explained only through unity and integral -wholeness, never through an aggregation -of parts, as though it were a mental “shower of -shot.” If we expect to talk about <em>knowledge</em> and -seriously propose to use that great word <em>truth</em>, -we must at least begin with the assumption of -an intelligent, creative, organizing center of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -self-consciousness which can transcend itself and can -<em>know</em> what is beyond and other than itself. In -short, the talk about a “chasm” between subject -and object—knower and thing known—is as -absurd as it would be to talk of a chasm between -the convex and the concave sides of a curve. -Knowledge is always knowledge of an object and -mystical experience has all the essential marks of -objective reference, as certainly as other forms -of experience have.</p> - -<p>Professor J. M. Baldwin very well says that -there is a form of contemplation in which, as in -æsthetic experience, the strands of the mind’s diverging -dualisms are “<em>merged and fused</em>.” He -adds: “In this experience of a fusion which is -not a mixture but which issues in a meaning of its -own sort and kind, an experience whose essential -character is just this unity of comprehension, consciousness -attains its completest, its most direct, -and its final apprehension of what Reality is and -means.” It really comes round to the question -whether the mind of a self-conscious person has -any way of approach, except by way of the senses, -to any kind of reality. There is no <i lang="la">a priori</i> answer -to that question. It can only be settled by -experience. It is, therefore, pure dogmatism to -say, as Professor Dunlap in his recent attack on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -mysticism does, that all conscious processes are -based on sense-stimulation and all thought as well -as perception depends on reaction to sense-stimulus. -It is no doubt true that behavior psychology -must resort to some such formula, but that only -means that such psychology is always dealing with -greatly transformed and reduced beings, when it -attempts to deal with persons like us who, in the -richness of our concrete lives, are never reduced -to “behavior-beings.” We have interior dimensions -and that is the end on’t! Some persons—and -they are by no means feeble-minded individuals—are -as certain that they have commerce -with a world within as they are that they have -experiences of a world outside in space. Thomas -Aquinas, who neither in method nor in doctrine -leaned toward mysticism, though he was most certainly -“a harmonized man,” and who in theory -postponed the vision of God to a realm beyond -death, nevertheless had an experience two years -before he died which made him put his pen and -inkhorn on the shelf and never write another word -of his <cite>Summa Theologiae</cite>. When he was reminded -of the incomplete state of his great work -and was urged to go on with it, he only replied, -“I have seen that which makes all that I have -written look small to me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p> - -<p>It may be just possible that there is a universe -of spiritual reality upon which our finite spirits -open inward as inlets open into the sea.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Like the tides on the crescent sea-beach</div> -<div class="verse">When the moon is new and thin</div> -<div class="verse">Into our hearts high yearnings</div> -<div class="verse">Come welling and surging in;</div> -<div class="verse">Come from that mystic ocean</div> -<div class="verse">Whose rim no foot has trod.</div> -<div class="verse">Some call it longing</div> -<div class="verse">But others call it God.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Such a view is perfectly sane and tenable; it conflicts -with no proved and demonstrated facts -either in the nature of the universe or of mind. -It seems anyway to the mystic that there is such -a world, that he has found it as surely as Columbus -found San Salvador, and that his experience -is a truth-telling experience.</p> - -<h3 id="IX_IV">IV</h3> - -<p>But granting that it is truth-telling and has objective -reference, is the mystic justified in claiming -that he has found and knows God? One does not -need to be a very wide and extensive student of -mystical experience to discover what a meager<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -stock of knowledge the genuine mystic reports. -William James’ remarkable experience in the -Adirondack woods very well illustrates the type. -It had, he says, “an intense significance of some -sort, if one could only <em>tell</em> the significance.... -In point of fact, I can’t find a single word for all -that significance and don’t know what it was significant -of, so that it remains a mere boulder of -impression.”<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> At a later date James refers to -that “extraordinary vivacity of man’s psychological -commerce with something Ideal that <em>feels as if</em> -it were also actual.”<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> The greatest of all the -fourteenth century mystics, Meister Eckhart, -could not put his <em>impression</em> into words or ideas. -What he found was a “wilderness of the Godhead -where no one is at home,” i.e., an Object -with no particular differentiated, concrete characteristics. -It was not an accident that so many -of the mystics hit upon the <i lang="la">via negativa</i>, the way -of negation, or that they called their discovery -“the divine Dark.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Whatever your mind comes at</div> -<div class="verse">I tell you flat</div> -<div class="verse">God is not that.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mystical experience does not supply concrete information. -It does not bring new finite facts, new -items that can be used in a description of “the -scenery and circumstance” of the realm beyond -our sense horizons. It is the awareness of a -Presence, the consciousness of a Beyond, the discovery, -as James puts it, that “we are continuous -with a More of the same quality, which is -operative in us and in touch with us.”</p> - -<p>The most striking effect of such experience is -not new fact-knowledge, not new items of empirical -information, but new moral energy, heightened -conviction, increased caloric quality, enlarged -spiritual vision, an unusual radiant power of life. -In short, the whole personality, in the case of the -constructive mystics, appears to be raised to a -new level of life and to have gained from somewhere -many calories of life-feeding, spiritual substance. -We are quite familiar with the way in -which adrenalin suddenly flushes into the physical -system and adds a new and incalculable power to -brain and muscle. Under its stimulus a man can -carry out a piano when the house is on fire. May -not, perhaps, some energy from some Source with -which our spirits are allied flush our inner being -with forces and powers by which we can be fortified -to stand the universe and more than stand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> -it! “We are more than conquerors through Him -that loved us,” is the way one of the world’s -greatest mystics felt.</p> - -<p>Mystical experience—and we must remember -as Santayana has said, that “experience is like a -shrapnel shell and bursts into a thousand meanings”—does -at least one thing. It makes God -sure to the person who has had the experience. -It raises faith and conviction to the nth power. -“The God who said, ‘Let light shine out of -darkness,’ has shined into my heart to give the -light of the knowledge of the glory of God,” is -St. Paul’s testimony. “I knew God by revelation,” -declares George Fox. “I was as one who hath -the key and doth open.” “The man who has attained -this felicity,” Plotinus says, “meets some -turn of fortune that he would not have chosen, but -there is not the slightest lessening of his happiness -for that” (En. I: iv. 7). But this experience, -with its overwhelming conviction and its dynamic -effect, can not be put into the common coin of -speech. Frederic Myers has well expressed the -difficulty:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Oh could I tell ye surely would believe it!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Oh could I only say what I have seen!</div> -<div class="verse">How should I tell or how can ye receive it,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How, till He bringeth you where I have been?”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p> - -<p>There is no concrete “information” which can -be shared with others.</p> - -<p>When Columbus found San Salvador he was -able to describe it to those who did not sail with -him in the Santa Maria, but when the mystic finds -God he can not give us any “knowledge” in plain -words of everyday speech. He can only refer -to his boulder, or his Gibraltar, of <em>impression</em> -That situation is what we should expect. We can -not, either, describe any of our great emotions. -We can not impart what flushes into our consciousness -in moments of lofty intuition. We -have a submerged life within us which is certainly -no less real than our hand or foot. It influences -all that we do or say, but we do not find it easy -to utter it. In the presence of the sublime we -have nothing to say—or if we do say anything -it is a great mistake! Language is forged to deal -with experiences which are common to many persons, -i.e., to experiences which refer to objects -in space. We have no vocabulary for the subtle, -elusive flashes of vision which are unique, individual -and unsharable, as for instance is our personal -sense of “the tender grace of a day that -is dead.” We are forced in all these matters to -resort to symbolic suggestion and to artistic devices. -Coventry Patmore said with much insight:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“In divinity and love</div> -<div class="verse">What’s best worth saying can’t be said.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>I believe that mystical experiences do in the -long run expand our knowledge of God and do -succeed in verifying themselves. Mysticism is a -sort of spiritual protoplasm that underlies, as a -basic substance, much that is best in religion, in -ethics and in life itself. It has generally been the -mystic, the prophet, the seer that has spotted out -new ways forward in the jungle of our world, or -lifted our race to new spiritual levels. Their experiences -have in some way equipped them for -unusual tasks, have given supplies of energy to -them which their neighbors did not have, and -have apparently brought them into vital correspondence -with dimensions and regions of reality -that others miss. The proof that they have found -God, or at least a domain of spiritual reality, -does not lie in some new stock of knowledge, not -in some gnostic secret, which they bring back; it -is to be seen rather in the moral and spiritual -fruits which test out and verify the experience.</p> - -<p>Consciousness of beauty or of truth or of goodness -baffles analysis as much as consciousness of -God does. These values have no objective standing -ground in current psychology. They are not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> -things in the world of space. They submit to no -adequate casual explanation. They have their -ground of being in some other kind of world than -that of the mechanical order, a world composed of -quantitative masses of matter in motion. These -experiences of value, which are as real for consciousness -as stone walls are, make very clear the -fact that there are depths and capacities in the nature -of the normal human mind which we do not -usually recognize and of which we have scant -and imperfect accounts in our text-books. Our -minds taken in their full range, in other words, -have some sort of contact and relationship with -an eternal nature of things far deeper than atoms -and molecules. Only very slowly and gradually -has the race learned through finite symbols and -temporal forms to interpret beauty and truth and -goodness which in their essence are as ineffable -and indescribable as the mystic’s experience of -God is. Plato often speaks as though he had -high moments of experience when he rose to the -naked vision of beauty—beauty “alone, separate -and eternal,” as he says, and his myths are -very likely told, as J. A. Stewart believes, to assist -others to experience this same vision—a -beauty which “does not grow nor perish, is without -increase or diminution and endures for everlasting.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> -But as a matter of fact, however exalted -heavenly and enduring beauty may be in its essence -we know <em>what it is</em> only as it appears in -fair forms of objects, of body, of soul, of actions; -in harmonious blending of sounds or colors; -in well-ordered or happily-combined groupings of -many aspects in one unity which is as it ought to -be. Truth and moral goodness always transcend -our attainments and we sometimes feel that the -very end and goal of life is the pursuit of that -truth or that goodness which eye hath not seen -nor ear heard. But whatever truth we do attain -or whatever goodness we do achieve is always -concrete. Truth is just this one more added fact -that resists all attempts to doubt it. Goodness -is just this simple everyday deed that reveals a -heroic spirit and a brave venture of faith in the -midst of difficulties. So, too, the mystic knowledge -of God is not some esoteric communication, -supplied through trance or ecstasy; it is an intuitive -personal touch with God, felt to be the essentially -real, the bursting forth of an intense love -for him which heightens all the capacities and -activities of life, followed by the slow laboratory -results which verify it. “All I could never be” -now is. It seems possible to stand the universe—even -to do something toward the transformation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> -of it. The bans are read for that most difficult -of all marriages, the marriage of the possible with -the actual, the ideal with the real. And if the -experience does not prove that the soul has found -God, it at least does this: it makes the soul feel -that proofs of God are wholly unnecessary.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X<br /> -<span class="smaller">PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE</span></h2> - -<h3 id="X_I">I</h3> - -<p>Twenty years ago in <cite>A Dynamic Faith</cite>, after -reviewing the new questions which the great -sciences had raised for religion, I said: “There -are still harder problems than any of these. Psychology -has opened a series of questions which -make the boldest tremble for his faith in an endless -life or in any spiritual reality.” The twenty -years that have intervened have made my point -much more clear. It is now pretty generally recognized -that the deepest issues of the faith are -to be settled in this field. The problem of the -real nature of the human soul is at the present -moment probably the most important religious -question before us, for upon the answer to it all -our vital spiritual interests depend. If man has -no unique interior domain, if he is only a tiny bit -of that vast system of naturalism in which every -curve of process and development is rigidly determined -by antecedent causes, then “spiritual”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> -is only a high-sounding word with a metaphorical -significance, but with no basis of reality in the -nature of things. There is certainly no “place” -in the external world of space where we can expect -to find spiritual realities. They are not to be -found by going “somewhere.” Olympus has been -climbed, and it was as naturalistic as any other -mountain peak. Eden is only a defined area of -Mesopotamia, and that blessed word can work no -miracles for us now. The dome of the sky is -only an optical illusion. It is no supersensuous -realm on which we can build our hopes. The beyond -as a spiritual reality is within, or it is nowhere. -Psychology, however, has not been very -encouraging in promises of hope. It has gone -the way of the other sciences and has taken an -ever increasing slant toward naturalism. The result -is that most so-called “psychologies of religion” -reduce religion either to a naturalistic -or to a subjective basis, which means in either case -that religion as a way to some objective spiritual -reality has eluded us and has disappeared as a -constructive power. Many a modern psychologist -can say with Browning’s Cleon:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And I have written three books on the soul,</div> -<div class="verse">Proving absurd all written hitherto,</div> -<div class="verse">And putting us to ignorance again.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p> - -<p>Two of the main tendencies in what is usually -called scientific psychology are (1) the “behaviorist” -tendency and (2) the tendency to reduce -the inner life to a series of “mind states.” Let -us consider behaviorism first. This turns psychology -into “a purely objective experimental -branch of natural science.”<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> It aims at “the -prediction and control of behavior.” “Introspection -forms no essential part of its method.” One -is not concerned with “interpretation in terms of -consciousness,” one is interested only in reactions, -responses—in short, in <em>behavior</em> in the presence -of stimuli which produce movements. The body -is a complicated organ and “mind” is merely a -convenient term to express its “activities.”<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The -behaviorist “recognizes no dividing line between -man and brute.” Psychology becomes “the -science of behavior,”<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> the study of “the activity -of man or animal as it can be observed from the -outside, either with or without attempting to determine -the mental states by inference from these -acts.” Emotions become reduced forthwith to -“the bodily resonance” set up in the muscular -and visceral systems by instinctive movements in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -the presence of objects, these curious movements -being due entirely to the inheritance of physiological -structure adapted at least in the early -stages to aid survival. There is no way by which -behaviorist psychology can give any standing to -religion or to any type of spiritual values. “Æsthetics -is the study of the useless,” as William -James baldly states the case. Conscience disappears -or becomes another name for the inheritance -or acquisition of certain types of social behavior. -Everything which we call ethics or morality -changes into well-defined and rigidly determined -behavior. There is nothing more “spiritual” -about it than there is in the fall of a raindrop -or in the luminous trail of a meteor, or in any form -of what has happily been called “cosmic weather.”</p> - -<p>This reduction of personality to a center of activity -is a reaction from the dualistic sundering -of mind and body inherited from Descartes. The -theory of psycho-physical parallelism is utterly -bankrupt. Idealism, which is an attempt to get -round the <i lang="fr">impasse</i> of dualism by treating mind as -the only reality, is abhorrent to scientists and unpopular -with young philosophers, especially in -America. Some other solution is therefore urgent. -The easiest one at hand, though it is obviously -temporary and superficial, is to cut across<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -the mind loop, ignore its unique, originative, creative -capacity and its interior depth, to deal only -with body plus body’s activities, and to call that -“psychology.”</p> - -<p>The “mind-state” psychology takes us little -farther on. It also is a form of naturalism. -“Mind-state” psychology makes more of introspection -than behaviorist psychology does, and it -works more than the latter does in terms of consciousness, -which for the behaviorist can be almost -ignored or questioned as an existing reality. According -to this view, mind or consciousness is -composed of a vast number of “elemental units,” -and the business of psychology is to analyze and -describe these units or states and to discover the -laws of their arrangement or succession. Mind, -on this theory, is an aggregate or sum total of -“states.” Professor James, who gives great -place to “mind states,” will, however, not admit -that they are permanent and repeatable “units,” -passing and returning unaltered. In his usual -vivid way he says that “a permanently existing -‘idea’ [i.e., mental unit] which makes its appearance -before the footlights of consciousness at -periodical intervals is as mythological an entity -as the Jack of Spades.”<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> And yet he continues<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -to deal with mind as a vast series of more or less -describable states. Some states are “substantive,” -such as our “perceptions,” our “memories,” -or our definite “images,” when the mind -perches and rests upon some clear and describable -thought, and on the other hand there are “transitive -states” which are vague, hard to catch or -hold or express, and which reveal the mind in -flight, in passage, on the way from one substantive -state to another.</p> - -<p>When we ask the “mind-state” psychologist -to tell us about the soul or to supply us with a -working substitute for it, he relegates it to the -scrap heap where lie the collected rubbish and the -antiquated mental furniture of the medieval centuries. -We have no need of it. It is only a <em>word</em> -anyhow. It has always been an expensive luxury -and a continual bother. We are better off with -it gone. When we look about for a “self as -knower,” or for a guardian of our identity, we -find all that we need in these same “passing states -of consciousness.” They not only know things -and facts, but they also know themselves, and successively -inherit and adapt all the preceding -“states” have gained and acquired. The state -of the present moment owns the thoughts and experiences -which preceded it, for “what possesses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -the possessor possesses the possessed.” “In our -waking hours,” Professor James says, “though -each pulse of consciousness dies away and is replaced -by another, yet that other, among the -things it knows, knows its own predecessor and -finding it ‘warm,’ greets it saying, ‘Thou art -<em>mine</em> and part of the same self with me.’” It -seems, then, this famous writer concludes, that -“states of consciousness are all that psychology -needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology -may prove the soul to exist; but for psychology -the hypothesis of such a substantial principle -of unity is superfluous.”<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> We are certainly -hard up if we must depend on proofs which theology -can give us!</p> - -<p>We are thus once more reduced to a condition -of sheer naturalism. Our stream of consciousness -is only a rapid succession of passing states, -each “state” causally attached to a molecular -process in the brain. “Every <em>psychosis</em> is the -result of a <em>neurosis</em>.” There is no soul, there is -no creative spiritual pilot of the stream, there is -no freedom, there are no moral values, there is -nothing but passing “cosmic weather,” sometimes -peeps of sunshine, sometimes moonshine, sometimes -drizzle or blizzard, and sometimes cyclone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> -or waterspout! To meet the appalling thinness -of this “cinema” of mind states, we are given -the comfort of believing that there is an under-threshold -world within, possibly more real and -surely more important than this little rivulet of -states which make up our conscious life. There -is a “fringe” to consciousness more wonderful -than that which adorned the robe of the high -priest. This “fringe” defies description and baffles -all analysis. It is a halo or penumbra which -surrounds every “state” and holds all the states -vitally together, so that “states” turn out to be -unsundered in some deeper mysterious currents of -being. Others would call this same underlying, -mysterious part of us the subliminal “self,” i.e., -under-threshold “self.” It is a kind of semi-spiritual -matrix where the states of consciousness -are formed and gestated. It is the source to -which we may trace everything that can not be -explained by the avenues of the senses. Demons -and divinities knock at its doors and visitants -from superterrestrial shores peep in at its windows. -It is often treated, especially of course -by Frederic Myers, as a deeper “self,” more or -less discontinuous with our conscious upper self, -the self of mind states. All work of genius is -due to “subliminal uprushes,” “an emergence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -into the current of ideas which the man is consciously -manipulating of other ideas which he has -not consciously originated, but which have shaped -themselves beyond his will in profounder regions -of his being.” As is well known, Professor James -resorts to these “subliminal uprushes” for his -explanation of all the deeper religious experiences -and he has done much to give credit to these -“profounder regions of our being” and to make -the subliminal theory popular. He does not, however, -as Myers does, treat it as another “self,” -an intermediary between earth and heaven, a messenger -and a mediator of all those higher and diviner -aspects of life which transcend the sphere -of sense and of the empirical world.</p> - -<h3 id="X_II">II</h3> - -<p>No theory certainly is sound which begins by -cutting the subconscious and the conscious life -apart into two more or less dissociated selves. -There is every indication and evidence of continuity -and correlation between what is above and -what is below the threshold which in any case is -as relative and artificial a line as is the horizon. -The so-called “uprushes” of the genius are finely -correlated with his normal experience into which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -they “uprush.” The “uprushes” which convey -truth to Socrates beautifully fit, first, the character -of the man and, secondly, the demands of -the temporal environment. Dante’s “uprushes” -correspond to the psychological climate of the -medieval world, and Shakespeare’s “uprushes” -are well suited to the later period of the Renaissance. -All subliminal communications are congruent -and consonant with the experience of the -person who receives them. The visions of apocalyptic -seers are all couched in the imagery of the -apocalyptic schools, and so, too, the reports of -mediums are all in terms of spiritualistic beliefs. -We shall never find the solution of our religious -problems by dividing the inner life of man into -two unrelated selves, by whatever name we call -them, for any religion that is to be real must go -all the way through us, must unify all our powers, -and must furnish a spring and power by which -we live here and now in the sphere of our consciousness, -our character, and our will.</p> - -<p>It proves to be just as impossible to cut consciousness -up into the fragmentary bits or units -called mind states, or to sunder it into a so-called -“self as knower” and “self as known.” Consciousness -is never a shower of shot—a series -of discontinuous units. It is the most completely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -integral unity known to us anywhere in the universe. -There are no “parts” to it; it is without -breaks or gaps. It is one undivided whole. -The only unit we can properly talk about is our -unique persisting personal self in conscious relation -to an environment. We can, of course, treat -consciousness in the abstract as an aggregate of -states and we can formulate a scientific account -of this constructed entity as we can of any other -abstracted section of reality. But this abstracted -entity is forever totally different from the warm -and intimate inner life within us, as we actually -live it and feel its flow. Any state or process -which we may talk about is only an artificial fragment -of a larger, deeper reality which gives the -“fragment” its peculiar being and makes it what -it is. Underneath all that appears and happens -in the conscious flow is the personal self for whom -the appearances occur. Any psychologist who explicitly -leaves this out of his account always implicitly -smuggles it in again.</p> - -<p>The most striking fact of experience is <em>knowing -that we know</em>. The same consciousness which -knows any given object in the same pulse of consciousness -knows itself as knowing it. Self-consciousness -is present in all consciousness of objects. -The thinker that thinks is involved in and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> -is bound up with all knowledge, even of the simplest -sort. Every idea, every feeling, and every -act of will is what it is because it is in living -unity with our entire personal self. If any such -“state” got dissociated, slipped away and undertook -to do business on its own hook, it would be -as unknown to us as our guardian angel is. The -mind that knows can never be separated from -the world that is known. One can think in abstraction -of a mind apart by itself and of a world -equally isolated—but no such mind and no such -world actually exist. To be a real mind, a real -self, is to be in active commerce with a real world -given in experience. One thinks his object in -the same unified pulse of consciousness in which -he thinks himself and vice versa. There is no -self-consciousness without object-consciousness, -and there is no object-consciousness without self-consciousness. -Outer and inner, knower and -known, are not two but forever one. The “soul,” -therefore, is not something hidden away in behind -or above and beyond our ideas and feelings and -will activities. It is the active living unity of personal -consciousness—the one psychic integer -and unit for a true psychology. It binds all the -items of experience into one indivisible unity, one -organic whole through which our personal type<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -of life is made possible. At every moment of -waking, intelligent life we look out upon each -fact, each event, each experience from a wider -self which organizes the new fact in with its former -experiences, weaves it into the web of its -memories and emotions and purposes, makes the -new fact a part of itself, and yet at the same time -knows itself as transcending and outliving the -momentary fact.</p> - -<p>When we study the personal self deeply -enough, not as cut up into artificial units, but as -the living, undivided whole, which is implied in -all coherent experience, we find at once a basis -for those ideal values that are rightly called spiritual -and for “those mighty hopes that make us -men.” The first step toward a genuine basis -of spiritual life is to be found in the restoration -of the personal self to its true place as the ultimate -fact, or datum, of self-conscious experience. -As soon as we come back to this central reality, -our unified, unique, self-active personality, we find -ourselves in possession of material enough; as -Browning would say,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent3">“For fifty hopes and fears</div> -<div class="verse">As old and new at once as nature’s self,</div> -<div class="verse">To rap and knock and enter in our soul,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,</div> -<div class="verse">Round the ancient idol, on his base again,—</div> -<div class="verse">The grand Perhaps!”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>What we find at once, even without a resort to -a subliminal self, or to “uprushes,” is that our -normal, personal self-consciousness is a unique, -living, self-active, creative center of energies, -dealing not only with space and time and tangible -things, but dealing as well with realities which are -space- and time-transcending. “The things -that are not” prove to be immense factors -in our lives and constantly “bring to naught the -things that are.” The greatest events of -history have not been due to physical forces; -they have been due to plans and ideals which were -real only in the viewless minds of men. What -<em>was not yet</em> brought about what was to be. Alexander -the Great with his physical forces, sweeping -across the ancient world like a cataclysm of nature, -was certainly no more truly a world-builder -than was Jesus, who had no armies, who used no -tangible forces, but merely put into operation -those “things that were not,” i.e., his ideas of -what ought to be and his conviction that love is -stronger than Roman legions. The simplest and -humblest of us, like the Psalmist, find the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -Meshech where we sojourn too straitened and -narrow for us. We have all cried, “Woe is me -that I sojourn in Meshech!” The reason that -we discover the limits and bounds of our poor -Meshech is that we are all the time going beyond -the hampering Meshech that tries to contain and -imprison us.</p> - -<p>The thing which spoils all our finite camping -places is our unstilled consciousness that we are -made for something more than we have yet realized -or attained. Our ideals are an unmistakable -intimation of our time-transcending nature. We -can no more stop with <em>that which is</em> than Niagara -can stop at the fringe of the fall. All consciousness -of the higher rational type is continually carried -forward toward the larger whole that would -complete and fulfill its present experience. We -are aware of the limit only because we are already -beyond it. The present is a pledge of more; the -little arc which we have gives us a ground of faith -in the full circle which we seek. A study of man’s -life which does not deal with this inherent idealizing -tendency is like <cite>Hamlet</cite> with Hamlet left out. -Martineau declared:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Amid all the sickly talk about ‘ideals’ which has -become the commonplace of our age, it is well to remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> -that so long as they are dreams of future possibility -and not faiths in present realities, so long as they are a -mere self-painting of the yearning spirit and not its personal -surrender to immediate communion with an infinite -Perfection, they have no more solidity or steadiness -than floating air-bubbles, gay in the sunshine and broken -by the passing wind.... The very gate of entrance -to religion, the moment of its new birth, is the discovery -that your ideal is the everlasting Real, no transient brush -of a fancied angel wing, but the abiding presence and -persuasion of the Soul of souls.”<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p></div> - -<p>In the same vein Pringle-Pattison, one of the -wisest of our living teachers, has said:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Consciousness of imperfection, the capacity for progress, -and the pursuit of perfection, are alike possible to -man only through the universal life of thought and goodness -in which he shares and which, at once an indwelling -presence and an unattainable ideal, draws him ‘on -and always on.’”<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p></div> - -<p>It is here in these experiences of ours which -spring out of our real nature, but which always -carry us beyond <em>what is</em> and which make it impossible -for us to live in a world composed of -“things,” no matter how golden they are, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -we have the source of our spiritual values. When -we talk about values we may use the word in two -senses. In the ordinary sense we mean something -extrinsic, utilitarian. We mean that we -possess something which can be exchanged for -something else. It is precious because we can sell -it or swap it or use it to keep life going. In the -other sense we see value in reference to something -which <em>ought to be</em>, whether it now is or not. -It is <em>fit</em> to be, it would justify its being in relation -to the whole reality. When we speak of ethical -or spiritual values we are thinking of something -that will minister to the highest good of persons -or of a society of persons. Value in this loftier -meaning always has to do with ideals. A being -without any conscious end or goal, i.e., without -an ideal, would have no sense of worth, no spiritual -values. It does not appear on the level of -instinct. It arises as an appreciation of what -ought to be realized in order to complete and -fulfill any life which is to be called good. Obviously -a person with rich and complex interests -will have many scales of value, but lower and -lesser ones will fall into place under wider and -higher ones, so that one forms a kind of hierarchical -system of values with some overtopping end of -supreme worth dominating the will.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p> - -<p>It becomes one of the deepest questions in the -world what connection there is between man’s -spiritual values or ideals and the eternal nature of -things in the universe. Are these ideals of ours, -these values which seem to raise us from the naturalistic -to the spiritual level, just our subjective -creations, or are they expressions of a coöperating -and rational power beyond us and yet in us, -giving us intimations of what is true and best in -a world more real than that of matter and motion? -These ideal values, such as our appreciation -of beauty, our confidence in truth, our dedication -to moral causes, our love for worthy persons, -our loyalty to the Kingdom of God, are not -born of selfish preference or individual desire. -They are not capricious like dreams and visions. -They attach to something deeper than our personal -wishes, in fact our faith in them and our -devotion to them often cause us to take lines of -action straight against our personal wishes and -our individual desires. They stand the test of -stress and strain, they weather the storms of time -which submerge most things, they survive all -shock and mutations and only increase in worth -with the wastage of secondary goods. They rest -on no mere temporary impulse or sporadic whim. -They have their roots deep in the life of the race.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -They have lasted better than Andes or Ararat, -and they are based upon common, universal aspects -of rational life. They are at least as sure -and prophetic as are laws of triangles and relations -of space. If we can count on the permanence -of the multiplication table and on the continuity -of nature, no less can we count on the -conservation of values and the continued significance -of life.</p> - -<p>They seem thus to belong to the system of the -universe and to have the guardianship of some -invisible Pilot of the cosmic ship. The streams -of moral power and the spiritual energies that -have their rise in good persons are as much to -be respected facts of the universe as are the rivers -that carry ships of commerce. Moral goodness is -a factor in the constitution of the world, and the -eternal nature of the universe backs it as surely -as it backs the laws of hydrogen. It does not -back every ideal, for some ideals are unfit and do -not minister to a coherent and rationally ordered -scheme of life. Those ideals only have the august -sanction and right of way which are born out of -the age-long spiritual travail of the race and which -tend to organize men for better team efforts, i.e., -which promote the social community life, the organism -of the Spirit. Through these spiritual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -forces, revealed in normal ethical persons, we are, -I believe, nearer to the life of God and closer to -the revealing centers of the universe than we are -when we turn to the subliminal selves of hysterics. -The normal interior life of man is boundless and -bottomless. It is not a physical reality, to be measured -by foot rules or yardsticks. It is a reality -of a wholly different order. It is essentially spiritual, -i.e., of spirit. In its organized and differentiated -life this personal self of ours is often -weak and erratic. We feel the <em>urge</em> which belongs -to the very nature of <em>spirit</em>, but we blunder -in our direction, we bungle our aims and purposes, -we fail to discover what it is that we really want. -But we are never insulated from the wider spiritual -environment which constitutes the true inner -world from which we have come and to which we -belong. There are many ways of correspondence -with this environment. No way, however, is more -vital, more life-giving than this way of dedication -to the advancement of the moral ideals of the -world.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 1 Cor. VI. 9-11.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <cite>Primary Factors of Organic Evolution</cite>, p. 483.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Bosanquet, <cite>Value and Destiny of the Individual</cite>, p. 320.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> F. C. S. Schiller, <cite>Humanism</cite>, pp. 228-9.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Shaler, <cite>The Individual</cite>, p. 194.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> “The Flight of the Duchess.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <cite>Letters of William James</cite>, Vol. II. p. 76.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <cite>Ibid.</cite>, Vol. II. p. 269.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Watson, <cite>Behavior</cite>, p. 1.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> See Ralph Barton Perry’s article “A Behavioristic View -of Purpose” in the <cite>Journal of Philosophy</cite>, February 17, 1921.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Pillsbury, <cite>Fundamentals of Psychology</cite>, p. 4.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <cite>Psychology</cite> (Briefer Course), p. 197.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <cite>Ibid.</cite>, p. 203.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Martineau, <cite>A Study of Religion</cite> (2d ed.), I, 12.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <cite>The Philosophical Radicals</cite>, pp. 97-98.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Spiritual Energies In Daily Life, by Rufus M. 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