summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
-rw-r--r--.gitattributes4
-rw-r--r--LICENSE.txt11
-rw-r--r--README.md2
-rw-r--r--old/61771-0.txt2074
-rw-r--r--old/61771-0.zipbin42700 -> 0 bytes
-rw-r--r--old/61771-h.zipbin151733 -> 0 bytes
-rw-r--r--old/61771-h/61771-h.htm3307
-rw-r--r--old/61771-h/images/cover.jpgbin84055 -> 0 bytes
-rw-r--r--old/61771-h/images/i_title.jpgbin50632 -> 0 bytes
9 files changed, 17 insertions, 5381 deletions
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..954cd40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #61771 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61771)
diff --git a/old/61771-0.txt b/old/61771-0.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 77a79c5..0000000
--- a/old/61771-0.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,2074 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Double Search, by Rufus Jones
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-
-Title: The Double Search
- Studies in Atonement and Prayer
-
-Author: Rufus Jones
-
-Release Date: April 7, 2020 [EBook #61771]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOUBLE SEARCH ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron, David E. Brown, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-The Double Search
-
-Studies in Atonement and Prayer
-
-
-
-
-Other Books by the Same Author
-
-
- ELI AND SYBIL JONES: THEIR LIFE AND WORK.
- 12mo, 300 pages. (1889)
-
- PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY.
- 12mo, 206 pages. (1899)
-
- A DYNAMIC FAITH.
- 12mo, 105 pages. (1901)
-
- A BOY’S RELIGION FROM MEMORY.
- 16mo, 145 pages. (1902)
-
- GEORGE FOX; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
- 12mo, 2 vols., 584 pages. Illustrated. (1903)
-
- SOCIAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
- Studies in Human and Divine Inter-relationship.
- 12mo, 272 pages. (1904)
-
-
-
-
- THE
- DOUBLE SEARCH
-
- STUDIES IN
- ATONEMENT AND PRAYER
-
- BY
-
- RUFUS M. JONES, A.M., Litt.D.
-
- Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College
-
-
- 1906.
- PHILADELPHIA,
- THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
-
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1906
- BY THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- PAGE
-
- INTRODUCTION 9
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- THE HISTORICAL AND INWARD CHRIST 21
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- THE ATONEMENT 57
-
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- PRAYER 89
-
-
-
-
-Introduction
-
-“We are always gathered around the Divine Centre of our being; and,
-indeed, if we could withdraw from it, our being would at once be
-dissolved away, and we should cease to exist at all. But, near as it
-is to us, often we do not direct our eyes to it. When, however, we do
-so direct our gaze, we attain to the end of our desires and to the
-rest of our souls, and our song is no more a discord, but, circling
-round our Centre, we pour forth a divinely inspired chorale. And in
-the choral dance we behold the source of our life, the fountain of our
-intelligence, the primal good, _the root of the soul_.”
-
- _Plotinus, Ennead VI._
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION.
-
-
-There is a famous myth in Plato’s Symposium told to explain the origin
-of love. This myth says that primitive man was round, and had four
-hands and four feet, and one head with two faces looking opposite ways.
-He could walk on his legs if he liked, but he also could roll over and
-over with great speed if he wished to go anywhere very fast.
-
-Because of their fleetness and skill these “Round people” were
-dangerous rivals in power to Zeus himself and he adopted the plan of
-weakening them by cutting each one of them in two. In remembrance of
-the original undivided state each half, ever since unsatisfied and
-alone, seeks eagerly for the other half. Each human being is thus a
-half--a tally--and love is the longing to be united. The two halves
-are seeking to be joined again in the original whole. Such in briefest
-compass is the myth.
-
-But as the dialogue advances love is traced to a higher source. It is
-discovered to be a passion for the eternal, a passion which rises in
-the soul at the sight of an object which suggests the eternal, from
-which the soul has come into the temporal. The soul is alien here and
-its chief joy in the midst of the shows of sense is joy at the sight of
-something which reminds it of its old divine home. Thus, again, Plato
-tells us that love has its birth in the division of what was once a
-whole. We yearn for that from which we have come.
-
- “Though inland far we be
- Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
- That brought us hither.”
-
-We may ignorantly stop at some mid-way good and miss the homeward path,
-but our real search, our master passion, is for that divine Other to
-whom we belong. So at last Plato poetizes.
-
-We have discovered through other lips, what he could not tell us, that
-the search is a double search. We have learned that the Divine Other
-whom we seek is also seeking us. The myth, told at the beginning, is
-more suggestive than it seemed. It may perhaps do for a parable of the
-finite and the Infinite, the soul and its Father. May they not once
-have been in union? May not our birth in time be a drawing away into
-individuality from the Divine whole? And then may not the goal of the
-entire drama of personal life be the restoration of that union on a
-higher spiritual level? May it not be, that we are never again to fuse
-the skirts of self and merge into a union of oblivion, but rather that
-we are to rise to a love-union in which His will becomes our will--a
-union of conscious co-operation? So at any rate I believe. But this
-little book is not a book of speculation. It is not written to urge
-some fond belief.
-
-We have learned, I say, that life reveals a double search. Man’s search
-for God is as plain a fact as his search for food. He has, beyond
-question, blundered at it and frequently missed the trail, but that
-man in all lands and in all times has maintained some kind of search
-for an invisible Companion is a momentous fact.
-
-The other half of the story is, I think, still more momentous. It
-is full of pathos and tragedy, but laden with the prophecy of final
-triumph. I have tried to tell again this story, surely an old, old
-story, but always needing to be retold in the current language and
-the prevailing conceptions of the time. The main feature of this book
-is its insistence on the facts of experience. Its terms are not those
-of theology, but those of life, or if I have used theological words I
-have endeavored to re-vitalize them. I shall assume that my readers are
-familiar with the idea of the _conjunct life_ which I have expounded
-at length in a former book.[1] It is now well known that “isolated”
-personality is impossible. He who is to enjoy the rights and privileges
-of personality must be conjunct with others. He must be an organic
-member in a social group, and share himself with his fellows, while at
-the same time he receives contributions from them. This principle of
-the conjunct life reaches beyond the finite social fellowship in which
-a man forms and expresses his personality. God and man are conjunct.
-The ground for this position will not be gone over here. It has been
-sufficiently presented elsewhere.
-
-I believe, however, that no psychological discovery has ever thrown so
-much light upon the meaning of atonement and prayer as this fact of the
-conjunct life does, and I hope that many others may come to feel the
-freshness and reality of these deepest religious truths as I have felt
-them.
-
-In touching these two subjects we are touching the very pillars of
-religion. If atonement--God’s search for us--and prayer--our search for
-Him--are not real, then religion has no permanent ground of reality.
-But there can be no question that our age has witnessed a serious
-weakening of faith in both these central aspects of religion. The
-doctrine of the atonement does not grip men as it did once, and there
-are persons all about us who are perplexed about the place and efficacy
-of prayer. It is no frivolous questioning. It is not the result of
-a lazy attitude of mind. It is stern and serious. There is only one
-way to change this condition. We must make men feel again the reality
-of the atonement and the reality of prayer. That is the task which
-lies before those of us who believe. The day for dogmatic assertion
-is past. It rolls off most minds now as water rolls from oiled silk.
-The truths which march with power are the truths which are verified
-by, and buttressed with, facts. We must, then, learn how to carry the
-laboratory method into our religious teaching and ground our message in
-actual reality.
-
-This slender book is an attempt to approach these two
-subjects--atonement and prayer--in this spirit and by this method. We
-can never get the telescope or microscope turned upon the objects of
-spiritual experience and we cannot use the mathematical method which
-has worked such wonders in the physical realm. There will always be
-some who cannot _see_ the evidence. But it is worth while to show that
-these two pillars of religion do rest--not on air--but on experience
-which can be verified and tested; that they rest in fact on the
-elemental basis of life, upon which we live our common social life
-together.
-
-I trust it will help some to find the trail, and that it will convince
-some perplexed, though honest, readers that however their own quest has
-fared there is another search beside their own,--the quest of a Divine
-Companion who spares no pain or cost to bring us all into a fellowship
-with Him.
-
- _Haverford, Pennsylvania,
- New Year_ 1906.
-
-
-
-
-The Historical and the Inward Christ
-
-
- “All who since Jesus have come into union with God have come into
- union with God _through Him_. And thus it is confirmed in every way
- that, even to the end of time, all wise and intelligent men must
- bow themselves reverently before this Jesus of Nazareth; and that
- the more wise, intelligent and noble they themselves are, the more
- humbly will they recognize the exceeding nobleness of this great and
- glorious manifestation of the Divine Life.”
-
- _Fichte’s “Way Toward the Blessed Life,” p. 391._
-
- “Christ is the Eternal Humanity in the life of the Infinite.”
-
- _George A. Gordon’s “The Christ of Today,” p. 136._
-
- “The word of God is continually born anew in the hearts of holy men.”
-
- _Epistle to Diognetus, A. D. 125._
-
-
-
-
-THE HISTORICAL AND THE INWARD CHRIST.
-
-
-There was once a widespread fear that exact methods of historical
-research would deprive us of that luminous divine Figure toward whom
-the world had reverently turned its face for more than eighteen
-centuries. Some suspected that our records of His life were crowded
-with myth and legend, others believed that the singular story which
-had so profoundly touched the world’s heart was the creation of highly
-wrought enthusiastic disciples. To-day, after more than half a century
-of critical sifting and acute probing, this luminous Life is more
-firmly established as the central fact of history than ever before.
-
- “That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows
- Or decomposes but to recompose
- Becomes my universe which loves and knows.”
-
-It is not my purpose at present to retell the story, or to point out
-how much criticism has left unshaken. I want rather to show how the
-historical Christ, as a revelation of God, fits into a cosmic system of
-evolution and how He is related to the Spirit that witnesses with our
-spirits and is the inward life of the Saints of all ages and lands.
-
-I shall not use the language or the methods of theology. I shall feel
-my way along the great arteries of human experience and try to throw
-light and suggestion rather than to establish some final and complete
-dogma. To begin at once with the problem before us, how shall we think
-of Christ? Was He man? Was He God? Was He some miraculous union of two
-essentially unrelated natures? Here are the questions which have split
-the Christian world up into camps and which have busied schoolmen in
-all the centuries.
-
-The difficulty in almost all the theological discussions on the
-subject has been that they started with God and man isolated,
-separated, unrelated. No true revelation of such a God ever could be
-made through a human life, for divinity and humanity on this theory
-are conceived as two totally diverse natures. Modern psychology and
-recent studies of social life have made us familiar with a deeper
-view of human personality and have prepared for a more adequate study
-of Divine personality than was possible when the historic creeds were
-formulated. We know that God and man are _conjunct_ and that neither
-can be separated absolutely from the other. There never has been any
-doubt of man’s need of God, but we now know that God also needs us and
-that our lives are mutually organic. Every clew which leads us to God
-shows Him to us as a spiritual and social Being--in no sense solitary
-and self-sufficient. Our own self-consciousness, our own ideals, our
-passion for the unrealized, imply and involve more than an impersonal
-energy at the heart of things. There must be a spiritual matrix for
-this living, throbbing, growing social organism in which personal
-life is formed. Our own experience carries in itself the implication
-of a genuinely spiritual Person at the heart of the universe of whom
-we all partake. The spiritual history of the race has forever settled
-this elemental fact, at least for all who feel the full significance of
-life. It is not an assumption, it is not a mere belief--it is involved
-in all we feel and know and are. But a spiritual, personal Being must
-reveal Himself. An unmanifested God--unknown and unknowable--is no God
-at all. He would be abstract and unreal. The least human person who
-poured his life out into those about him--who loved and suffered for
-the sake of another--would be a higher being than an infinite God shut
-up in the closed circle of His own self life. It is a law as old as
-the morning star that one must lose himself to find himself, must give
-to get, must go forth bearing precious seed in order to come again with
-sheaves of harvest. The moment it is settled that there is a divine
-Person as the ultimate reality of the universe, it is also settled
-that He will reveal Himself, that He will put His Life into manifold
-manifestations and that He will find His joy in “working all things up
-to better,” to use Clement’s phrase.
-
-So long as the processes of evolution were confined to the plant
-and brute there could be no revelation of anything but force; or at
-most there could be only dawnings of anything higher. The forms of
-life which won in the struggle and survived were manifestations of
-power--they hardly implied anything more. The tough spine and the
-strong jaw and the sharp claw were all that mattered. Everything that
-appeared was pushed into existence by a force from behind. There was no
-sign or hint of freedom, or of life formed under the sway of a vision
-or an ideal. Things moved “for a million aeons through the vast, waste
-dawn” toward a goal, but the goal was never in sight and it played no
-part in the process.
-
-John Fiske has, somewhere, denied the truth of the proverb that “nature
-abhors leaps,” and he has given a beautiful illustration from the
-cutting of a cone. If you pass a plane parallel to the base of a cone
-you cut a circle. If you tilt the plane slightly the curve becomes an
-ellipse. The ellipse grows more eccentric as the tilting increases and
-finally without any warning your plane cuts a parabola whose sides
-curve off into infinity and never touch ends again. Some such mighty
-leap appears in the process of evolution. Up to a certain point life
-evolved by forces working _a tergo_.[2] There is a slight tilt in the
-system and a being appears capable of selecting a goal for himself and
-of acting to attain it, a being who could live in some degree for a
-world as it ought to be.[3]
-
-This is what in America we call “the great divide”--the watershed which
-determines the streams of a continent. As soon as there was a being
-who could select ideals and live for conscious ends a new kind of
-evolution began. The other side of “the divide,” evolution had been
-physical,--body, and body function had been the goal. This side “the
-divide,” it was spiritual and social, and the goal was the evolution of
-the man within man. The things which mattered now were love, sacrifice,
-service, goodwill rather than “tooth and claw.” Before, nature’s goal
-had been along the line of least resistance. Now, the line of march set
-straight against instinct and along the line of greatest resistance.
-There could be advance on this side “the divide,” only as the ideal
-became clearer and its sway more coercive.
-
-Ever since man was man he has transcended the actual and lived by
-vision, which means, I think, that finite and infinite are not sundered
-and that we always partake of more than just ourselves. Beyond the edge
-of what we are there is always dawning a farther possibility--that
-which we ought to be--the _a fronte_ compulsion.[4] This is one of
-God’s ways of revealing Himself. It is a man’s chief glory--the glory
-of the imperfect.
-
- “Growth came when, looking your last on them all
- You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day
- And cried with a start--what if we so small
- Be greater and grander the while than they?
- Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
- In both, of such lower types are we
- Precisely because of our wider nature;
- For time, theirs--ours, for eternity.
- Today’s brief passion limits their range;
- It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
- They are perfect--how else? They shall never change.
- We are faulty--why not? We have time in store.”[5]
-
-This slow unveiling of the ideal, of the goal, is, I believe, the
-divine method of making man, and it makes us feel at once how nearer
-than near God is and how all the way on and up He is in the very tissue
-and fabric of our lives--no foreign creator who moulded us out of clay
-and left us to run, or to run down, like a clock.
-
-For centuries man won his slender spiritual victories, cultivated his
-rugged virtues, sloughed off some marks of ape and tiger and formed
-habits of altruism under the influence of ideals which the highest
-personal types of the race revealed. These types of men were focus
-points, manifesting in some feeble measure the ultimate reality and
-casting out hints of the line of march. Sometimes they were conscious
-that they were organs of a larger Life which used them, sometimes they
-were girded, like Cyrus, for a divine mission, though they knew not
-Him whom they served. Thus the unbroken revelation of the infinite was
-slowly made, as the age could bear it--“God spake at sundry times and
-in divers manners.”
-
-Strangely enough the loftiest men of the pre-Christian period were
-always vaguely or dimly forecasting a diviner life than any ordinary
-type of man revealed. The human heart was always groping for an
-unveiling of God which would set the race to living on a new level.
-This longing rose among the Hebrews to a steady passion which burned
-brighter as the clouds in their national sky grew blacker. There was
-a Christ ideal centuries before Christ actually came in the flesh,
-though this ideal was always deeply tinged and colored by the age which
-gave it birth. But even so, it lighted the sky of the future and gave
-many a man heart and hope through long periods of dreary pessimism.
-When lo, a tilting of the plane, and the ellipse becomes a parabola
-with infinite stretch of curve!
-
-“In fullness of time God sent forth His Son.” How shall we think
-of Jesus that is called the Christ? Speaking first in the terms of
-evolution, _I_ think of Him as the type and goal of the race--the
-new Adam, the spiritual norm and pattern, the Son of Man who is a
-revelation of what man at his height and full stature is meant to
-be; and this is the way Paul thought of Him: “Till _we all_ come in
-the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto
-a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of
-Christ.” Eph. IV, 13. “Whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be
-conformed to the image of his Son that _He_ might be the first born
-among many brethren.” Rom. VIII, 29. “The expectation of the whole
-creation is waiting for the manifestation of sons of God.” Rom. VIII,
-19.
-
-The actual fact is that this Life has, profoundly or remotely, touched
-every personal life in Europe for a thousand years and has been the
-goal and standard for all aspiring souls. He is the pattern in the
-mount, the _a fronte_ force which has drawn the individual and the race
-steadily up to their higher destiny. On the spiritual side of “the
-great divide” the goal is in sight and the goal is an efficient factor
-in the process of the evolution of the man within man.
-
-But this pattern-aspect of the Christ life is only one aspect, and we
-must not raise it out of due balance and perspective. _Christ is God
-humanly revealed._ As soon as we realize that personality is always
-a revelation of the ultimate reality of the universe there are no
-metaphysical difficulties in the way of an actual incarnation of God.
-It is rather what one would expect. There is no other conceivable way
-in which God could be revealed to man. If He is a personal being; if
-He is love and tenderness and sympathy, and not mere force, only a
-Person can show Him. And if we are not kindred in nature, if we have
-not something in common, in a word if we are not _conjunct_, then it
-is hard to see how any revelation of Him could be made which would mean
-anything to us. But if we are _conjunct_, as our own self-consciousness
-implies, then an incarnation, a complete manifestation in Personality,
-or as Paul puts it, “in the face of Jesus Christ,” is merely the crown
-and pinnacle of the whole divine process.
-
-If we are wise we shall not bother ourselves too much over the
-metaphysical puzzles which the schoolmen have formulated. We no longer
-have the puzzle which was so urgent with them, how two natures,
-pole-wide apart, could be united in one Person, for we now know that
-divinity and humanity are not pole-wide apart. There is something human
-in God and something divine in man and they belong together.
-
-We shall not, again, be over-anxious about the question of nativity.
-Note the grandeur and the simplicity of Paul’s text about it: “God sent
-forth His Son born of a woman,” and there he stops with no attempt
-to furnish details. John is equally lofty: “The Word became flesh
-and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory.” There is no appeal to
-curiosity. There is no syllable about the _how_. Two synoptic gospels
-have given us a simple story of the nativity which has profoundly
-impressed men in all ages and which will always appeal to the deepest
-instincts in us. But the _method_ of Christ’s coming, embodied in these
-two accounts, must not be forced. The devout soul must be free, as both
-Paul and John were free, to leave the _how_ wrapped in mystery. That
-He came out of our humanity we shall always believe. That He came
-down out of the highest divinity we shall equally believe. That He was
-a babe and increased in wisdom, that He learned as He grew, that He
-was tempted and learned through temptation, are all necessary steps,
-for there is no other path to spiritual Personality and He must have
-been “made perfect through sufferings,” or He could not have been the
-Captain of salvation.
-
-Speculations and dogmas have taken men’s thoughts away from verifiable
-facts. Here was a life which settled forever that the ultimate reality
-is Love. He brought into focus, or rather He wove into the living
-tissue of a personal life, the qualities of character which belong to
-an infinitely good being and with quiet simplicity He said, “If you
-see me you see the Father.”
-
-I have spoken, perhaps, as though the revelation of the human goal,
-and the unveiling of the divine Character were two different things.
-Christ does both, but both are one. If you bring a diamond into the
-light you occasion a double revelation. There is a revelation of the
-glorious beauty of the jewel. While it lay in the dark you never
-knew its possibilities. It was easily mistaken for a piece of glass.
-Now it flashes and burns and reveals itself because it has found the
-element for which it was meant. But there is also at the same time a
-revelation of the mystery of light. You discover now new wonders and
-new glories in light itself. Most objects absorb part of its rays and
-imperfectly transmit it to the eye. Here is an object which tells you
-its real nature. Now you see it as it is. So Christ shows us at once
-man and God. In a definite historic setting and in the limitations of
-a concrete personal life, Christ has unveiled the divine nature and
-taught us to say “Father” and He has, in doing that, showed us the goal
-and type of human life. The Son of God and the Son of Man is one person.
-
-Now comes our second question how shall we think of the inward, the
-spiritual, the eternal Christ? The first interpreters, notably Paul and
-John, early in their experience, came to think of Christ as a cosmic
-Being. They read the universe in the light of His revelation and soon
-used His name to name the entire manifestation of God: “In Him,” says
-Paul, “all things consist.” “All things were made by Him,” says John,
-“and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life
-and the life was the light of men.” John 1, 2, 3. It was through Him
-that they first learned that God is Spirit, it was through Him that
-their own spiritual life was heightened and that they became conscious
-of a Spirit surging into their own souls and they connected this whole
-wider manifestation of God with Him. They were right too in doing
-so. Christ’s revelation of God had produced such spiritual effects
-upon them that they could now find Him within themselves, for God’s
-spiritual presence in us is always proportioned to our capacity to have
-Him there. And then, too, they were now for the first time able to
-interpret that which they felt within themselves. If they found God,
-it was because they had found Christ.
-
-But they were right in a deeper sense. If we think of the historical
-Christ, as I have tried to set forth, as the manifestation of the
-Divine and the human in a single personal Life then wherever man
-finds God humanly revealed he properly names the revelation with the
-historic name. The historic incarnation was no final event. It was
-the supreme instance of God and man in a single life--the _type_ of
-continuous Divine-human fellowship. God’s human revelation of Himself
-is not limited to a single date. As Athanasius so boldly said: He
-became man that we might become divine. Christ is the prophesy of _a
-new humanity_--a humanity penetrated with the life and power of God
-and this continued personal manifestation of God through men is Christ
-inwardly and spiritually revealed.
-
-It is a primary truth of Christianity that God reaches man directly. No
-person is insulated. As ocean floods the inlets, as sunlight environs
-the plant, so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite spirit. There is
-this difference, however, inlet and plant are penetrated whether they
-will or not. Sea and sunshine crowd themselves in _a tergo_. Not so
-with God. He can be received only through appreciation and conscious
-appropriation. He comes only through doors that are _purposely_ opened
-for Him. A man may live as near God as the bubble is to the ocean and
-yet not find Him. He may be “closer than breathing, nearer than hands
-or feet,” and still be missed. Historical Christianity is dry and
-formal when it lacks the immediate and inward response to our Great
-Companion; but our spirits are trained to know Him, to appreciate
-Him, by the mediation of historical revelation. A person’s spiritual
-life is always dwarfed when cut apart from history. Mysticism is
-empty unless it is enriched by outward and historical revelation. The
-supreme education of the soul comes through an intimate acquaintance
-with Jesus Christ of history. One who wished to feel the power of
-beauty would go to some supreme master of color and form who could
-exhibit them on canvas and not merely lecture about them. One who
-desired to feel the power of harmony would go, not to the boy with
-his harmonica, but to the Beethovens or Mozarts of the race who have
-revealed what an instrument and a human hand can do. So he who wishes
-to realize and practice the presence of God must inform himself at the
-source and fount, must come face to face with Him who was the highest
-human revelation of God. No one of us can interpret his own longings
-or purposes until he reads them off in the light of some loftier
-type of personality. That person understands himself best who grows
-intimate in fellowship with some noble character. And any man who
-wishes to discover the meaning of the inward voice and to interpret the
-divine breathings which come to human souls needs to be informed and
-illuminated by the supreme revelation of the ages.
-
-With perfect fitness, then, we speak of the inward Presence as the
-spiritual Christ. It is the continuation of the same revelation which
-was made under the “Syrian blue.”
-
-The procession of the Holy Ghost is a continuous revelation and
-exhibition of Christ within men. Whether we use the expression Holy
-Spirit or Christ within or spiritual Christ, we mean God _operating
-upon human spirits and consciously witnessed and appreciated in them_.
-“The Lord is the Spirit,” cries Paul when, with unveiled face, he
-discovers that he is being transformed into His image from glory to
-glory. “Joined to the Lord in one Spirit,” is another testimony of the
-same sort.
-
-Unfortunately the doctrine of the Christ within--“the real
-presence”--has generally been held vaguely, and it has easily run
-into error and even fanaticism. The most common error has come from
-the prevalent view that when the Spirit--the inward Christ--comes in,
-the man goes out. It has been supposed that the finite is suppressed
-and the infinite supplants it and operates instead of it. This view
-is not only contrary to Scripture, but also contrary to psychological
-possibility. What really happens is that the human spirit through
-its awakened appreciation appropriates into its own life the divine
-Life which was always near and was always meant for it. The true
-view has been well put by August Sabatier[6]: “It is not enough to
-represent the Spirit of God as coming to the help of man’s spirit,
-supplying strength which he lacks, an associate or juxtaposed force,
-a supernatural auxiliary. Paul’s thought has no room for such a moral
-and psychological dualism, although popular language easily permits it.
-His thought is quite otherwise profound. There is no simple addition
-of divine power and human power in the Christian life. The Spirit
-of God identifies itself with the human me into which it enters and
-_whose life it becomes_. If we may so speak, it is individualized in
-the new moral personality which it creates. A sort of metamorphosis,
-a transubstantiation, if the word may be permitted, takes place in
-the human being. Having been carnal it has become spiritual. A ‘new
-man’ arises from the old man by the creative act of the spirit of God.
-Paul calls Christians [Greek: pneumatikoi], properly speaking, ‘the
-inspired.’ They are moved and guided by the Spirit of God. The spirit
-dwells in them as an immanent virtue, whose fruits are organically
-developed as those of the flesh. Supernatural gifts become natural, or
-rather, at this mystical height, the antithesis created by scholastic
-rationalism becomes meaningless and is obliterated.” That is precisely
-my view and if I had not found it here so well said I should have put
-the same idea into my own words. There are no known limits to the
-possible translation of the Spirit of God--the Eternal Christ--into
-human personality. There are all degrees and varieties of it as there
-are all degrees and varieties of physical life. One stands looking at
-a century-old oak tree and he wonders how this marvelous thing ever
-rose out of the dead earth where its roots are. As a matter of fact it
-did not. A tree is largely transformed sunlight. There is from first to
-last an earth element to be sure, but the tree is forever drawing upon
-the streams of sunlight which flood it and it builds the intangible
-light energy into leaf and blossom and fibre until there stands the
-old monarch, actually living on sunshine! But the little daisy at its
-feet, modest and delicate, is equally consolidated sunshine, though it
-pushes its face hardly six inches from the soil in which it was born.
-So one spirit differs from another spirit in glory. Some have but
-feebly drawn upon the Spiritual Light out of which strong lives are
-builded, others have raised the unveiled face to the supreme Light and
-have translated it into a life of spiritual beauty and moral fibre.
-Thus the revelation of God in the flesh goes on from age to age. The
-Christ-life propagates itself like all life-types--the last Adam proves
-to be a life-giving spirit. He is the first born among many brethren.
-The actual re-creation, the genuine identification of self with Christ
-may go on until a man may even say--“Christ lives in me;” “I bear in my
-body the marks of the Lord Jesus;” “It has pleased God to reveal His
-Son in me.”
-
- “See if, for every finger of thy hands,
- There be not found, that day the world shall end
- Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ’s word,
- That He will grow incorporate with all,
- With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,
- Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?
- Yet Christ saith, this He lived and died to do.
- Call Christ, then, the illimitable God.”
- I DO.
-
-
-
-
-The Atonement
-
-
-“Merely to repeat His words is not to continue His work; we must
-reproduce His life, passion and death. He desires to live again in
-each one of His disciples in order that He may continue to suffer, to
-bestow Himself, and to labor in and through them towards the redemption
-of humanity, until all prodigal and lost children be found and brought
-back to their Father’s house. Thus it is that, instead of being removed
-far from human history, the life and death of Christ once more take
-their place in history, setting forth the law that governs it, and, by
-ceaselessly increasing the power of redemptive sacrifice, transform and
-govern it, and direct it towards its divine end.”
-
- _Auguste Sabatier, “The Atonement,” p. 134._
-
-
-
-
-THE ATONEMENT.
-
-
-It is a bold and hazardous task to say anything on this subject and
-I must tread with bare, hushed feet, for it is a holy realm which we
-are essaying to enter. It must be understood from the first that I am
-not going to thresh over a heap of theological straw. I am not going
-into that realm of abstract metaphysics where one can always prove
-any thesis one may happen to assume at the start. I shall keep close
-to human experience. The pillars of our faith must be planted, not on
-some artificial construction of logic, but deep down in the actual
-experience of Life. There are external principles of the spiritual
-Life which are as irresistible and compelling as the laws of physics
-or the propositions of Euclid. The task of the religious teacher is to
-discover and proclaim these elemental truths, but we always find it so
-much easier to fall back on dogma and theories which have been spun out
-of men’s heads! In the Gospels and in Paul’s letters the laboratory
-method prevails--the writers ground their assertions on experienced
-facts, they tell what they have found and verified, and they always ask
-their readers to put their truths to the test of a personal experience
-like their own. Our modern method must be a return to this inward
-laboratory method.
-
-No one can carefully study the theories of the atonement which
-have prevailed at the various epochs of Christian history without
-discovering that there has been in them a very large mixture of
-paganism. They have been deeply colored by mythology and by the crude
-ideas of primitive sacrifice. They start, not with the idea of God
-which Christ has revealed, but with a capricious sovereign, angry at
-sorely tempted, sinning man, and forgiving only after a sacrifice has
-satisfied Him. They treat sin not as a fact of experience, but as the
-result of an ancestral fall, which piled up an infinite debt against
-the race. They all move in the realm of law rather than in the domain
-of personality. They are all, more or less, vitiated by abstract and
-mathematical reasoning, while sin and salvation are always affairs of
-the inward life, and are of all things personal and concrete. The first
-step to a coercive conception of the atonement is to get out of the
-realm of legal phrases into the region of personality.
-
-Sin is no abstract dogma. It is not a debt which somebody can pay
-and so wash off the slate. Sin is a fact within our lives. It is a
-condition of heart and will. There is no sin apart from a sinner.
-Wherever sin exists there is a conscious deviation from a standard--a
-sag of the nature, and it produces an effect upon the entire
-personality. The person who sins disobeys a sense of right. He falls
-below his vision of the good. He sees a path, but he does not walk in
-it. He hears a voice, but he says “no” instead of “yes.” He is aware of
-a higher self which makes its appeal, but he lets the lower have the
-reins. There is no description of sin anywhere to compare with the
-powerful narrative out of the actual life of the Apostle Paul, found in
-Romans VII: 9-25. The thing which moves us as we read it is the picture
-here drawn of our own state. A lower nature dominates us and spoils our
-life. “What I would I do not; what I would not that I do.”
-
-The most solemn fact of sin is its accumulation of consequences in the
-life of the person. Each sin tends to produce a _set_ of the nature. It
-weaves a mesh of habit. It makes toward a dominion, or as Paul calls
-it, a _law of sin_ in the man--“Wretched Man,” who sees a shining
-possible life, but stays below, chained to a body of sin. Sin, real
-sin, and not the fictitious abstraction which figures in theories, is
-a condition of personal will and action much more than a debt to be
-paid or forgiven. The problem is far deeper. The only possible remedy
-here is to get a new man, a transformation of personality. Relief
-from _penalty_ will not stead. Forgiveness is not enough. Relief
-from _penalty_, forgiveness alone, might spoil us, and make us think
-too lightly of our own sin. No, it is not a judicial relief which
-our panting, sin-defeated hearts cry out for. We want more than the
-knowledge that the past is covered and will not count on the books
-against us. We want blackness replaced by whiteness, we want weakness
-replaced by power, we want to experience a new set of our innermost
-nature which will make us more than conquerors. We seek deliverance not
-from penalty and debt--but deliverance from the life of sin into a
-life of holy will.
-
-There is still another aspect to sin which must be considered before
-we can fully appreciate the way of salvation which the Gospel reveals.
-Sin not only spoils the sinner’s life and drags him into slavery. It
-separates him from God. It opens a chasm between him and his heavenly
-Father, or to vary the figure it casts a shadow on God’s face. God
-seems far away and stern. The sense of warmth and tenderness vanishes.
-The sinner can see God only through the veil of his sins. This is a
-universal experience. The same thing happens in our relations with
-men. As soon as we have injured a person, treated him unfairly, played
-him false, a chasm opens between our life and his. We transfer our
-changed attitude to him. We dislike to meet him. We have no comfort in
-his presence. We interpret all his actions through the shadow which
-our deed has created. Our sense of wrong-doing makes us afraid of the
-person wronged.
-
-The conduct of little children offers a good illustration of this
-subjective effect of sin, because in them one catches the attitude at
-its primitive stage before reflection colors it. Some little child has
-disobeyed his father and discovers, perhaps for the first time, that
-he has “something inside which he cannot do what he wants to with,” as
-a little boy said. When he begins to think of meeting his father he
-grows uncomfortable. It is not punishment he is afraid of, he has no
-anticipation of that. He is conscious of wrong doing and it has made
-a chasm between himself and his father. He reads his father’s attitude
-now in the shadow of his deed. He has no joy or confidence in meeting
-him. Something strange has come between them.
-
-What does the little fellow do? He instinctively feels the need of some
-sacrifice. He must soften his father by giving him something. He breaks
-open his bank and brings his father his pennies, or he brings in his
-hand the most precious plaything he owns, and acts out his troubled
-inward condition. He wants the gap closed and he feels that it will
-cost something to get it closed.[7] That is human nature. That feeling
-is deep-rooted in man wherever he is found. He is conscious that sin
-separates and he feels that something costly and precious is required
-to close the chasm. Sacrifice is one of the deepest and most permanent
-facts of the budding spiritual life. Its origin is far back in history.
-The tattered papyrus, the fragment of baked clay, the pictorial
-inscription of the most primitive sort, all bear witness to this
-immemorial custom. It is as old as smiling or weeping, as hard to trace
-to a beginning as loving or hating. It is bound up with man’s sense of
-guilt, and was born when conscience was born. Dark and fantastic are
-many of the chapters of the long story of man’s efforts to square the
-account. Priests have seized upon this instinctive tendency and have
-twisted it into abnormal shapes, but they did not create it--it is
-elemental. The idea of an angry God who must be appeased and satisfied
-was born with this consciousness of guilt, it is a natural product of
-the shadow of human sin.[8] The historic theories of the atonement,
-inherited from the Roman church, were all formulated under the sway of
-this idea.
-
-The two fundamental aspects of sin, then, are (1) its inward moral
-effect upon the soul, its enslaving power over the sinner, and (2)
-its tendency to open a chasm between God and man, to make God appear
-full of wrath. How does Christ meet this human situation? What is the
-heart of the Gospel? First of all, Christ reverses the entire pagan
-attitude. He reveals God as a Father whose very inherent nature is
-love and tenderness and forgiveness. In place of a sovereign demanding
-justice, He shows an infinite Lover. We must either give up the parable
-of the Prodigal Son, or accept this view of God. But this parable fits
-the entire Gospel. John was only uttering what Jesus Christ taught by
-every act of His life and what He exhibited supremely on His cross,
-when He said “God is Love.” To surrender this truth, and to start with
-the assumption of a God who must be appeased, or reconciled or changed
-in attitude is to surrender the heart of the Gospel, and to weave the
-shining threads of our message of salvation in with the black threads
-of a pagan warp. He who came to show us the Father, has unmistakably
-showed Him full of love, not only for the saint, for the actual son;
-but also for the sinner, the potential son. Either God _is_ Love, or we
-must conclude that Christ has not revealed Him as He is.
-
-But the great difficulty is that so many fail to see what Divine Love
-and human sin involve when they come together. It has superficially
-been assumed that if God is a loving Father He will lightly overlook
-sin and cannot be hard upon the sinner. They catch at a soft view of
-sin and patch up a rose water theory of its cure. This soft view has
-appealed to those who like an easy religion, and it has often driven
-the evangelical Christian to an opposite extreme, which finds no
-support in the Gospel. To arrive at a deeper view we must go back to
-Christ and go down into the deeps of love as we know it in actual human
-life.
-
-True love is never weak and thin, and unconcerned about the character
-of the beloved. The father does not “lay aside” his love when he
-punishes his erring boy, and keeps him impressed with the reality of
-moral distinctions. It is the father’s intense love which wields
-the rod. All true corrections and chastisements flow out of love.
-Even Dante knew this, when he wrote on the door of Hell, “Love was my
-maker.” It is an ignorant and mushy love that cannot rise above kisses
-and sugar plums, and it is extremely superficial to set up a schism
-between love and justice.
-
-But that is not all. Love always involves vicarious suffering. Love
-is an organic principle. It carries with it the necessity of sharing
-life with other persons, and in a world of imperfect persons, it means
-not only sharing gains and triumphs, it means, too, sharing losses and
-defeats. No man can sin in a sin-tight compartment. Suffer for his
-own sin the sinner assuredly will. But he does not stop there. Many
-innocent persons will suffer for it, too. This is one of the tragic
-aspects of life which has baffled many a lone sufferer like Job. Those
-who are nearest and closest to the sufferer will suffer most, but his
-sin has endless possibilities of causing suffering upon persons far
-remote in time and space. That ancient figure of the ripples from the
-little pebble, which sends rings to the farthest shores of the sea,
-is not overdrawn. Not one of us can estimate the havoc of his sin, or
-forecast the trail of suffering which it will leave behind it. So long
-as life remains organic there will be vicarious suffering.
-
-But that is only one side of life. Holiness also involves a like
-suffering. There are no holiness-tight compartments. No man can be holy
-unto himself. Just as far as he has any rag of holiness he must share
-it--he must feel himself a debtor to others who lack--he must take up
-the task of making others holy. _That costs something._
-
-You cannot command or compel people into holiness, you cannot increase
-their spiritual stature one cubit by any kind of force or compulsion.
-You can do it only by sharing your life with them, by making them feel
-your goodness, by your love and sacrifice for them. When a martyr
-dies for some truth, men suddenly discover for the first time how
-much it is worth and they eagerly pursue it over all obstacles. In
-spiritual things we always make our appeal to the _cost_ of the truth
-or the principle. Think of the blood which has been shed for freedom
-of conscience! Remember what a price has been paid in blood for the
-principle of democracy! Thus we speak of all the privileges of life.
-They are ours because somebody has felt that they were worth the cost,
-because somebody has died that we might freely have them. It is the
-tragedy of human life that we must suffer through the sin of others,
-and we must suffer also if we would carry goodness or holiness into
-other lives. Every bit of goodness which ever prevails anywhere in this
-world has cost somebody something.
-
-This principle of vicarious suffering is no late arrival; it appears
-at every scale of life, heightening as we go up--becoming less blind
-and more voluntary. It was a central truth of Christ’s revelation that
-this principle does not stop with man; it goes on up to the top of the
-spiritual scale. It finds its complete and final expression in God
-Himself. God’s life and our lives are bound together, as a vine with
-branches, as a body with members. _So corporate_ are we that no one
-can give a cup of cold water to the least person in the world without
-giving it to Him! But He is perfect and we are imperfect, He is holy
-and we sin. If the wayward boy, who wastes his life, pains the heart
-of his mother whose life is wrapped up in him, can we fling our lives
-away and not make our Heavenly Father suffer? The cross is the answer.
-He has undertaken to make Sons of God out of such creatures as we are,
-to take us out of the pit and the miry clay, to put spiritual songs in
-our mouths and write His own name on our foreheads, will that cost Him
-nothing? Again, the cross is the answer.
-
-Here we discover--it is the main miracle of the Gospel--that the
-original movement to bridge the chasm comes from the Divine side.
-What man hoped to do, but could not, with his bleating lamb and timid
-dove, God Himself has done. He has reached across the chasm, taking
-on Himself the sacrifice and cost, to show the sinner that the only
-obstruction to peace and reconciliation is in the sinner himself. “This
-is love, not that we loved Him, but that He loved us,” and this is
-sacrifice, not that we give our bulls and goats to please Him, but that
-He gives Himself to draw us.
-
-Browning puts it all in a line:
-
- “Thou needs must love me who have died for thee.”
-
-This is the key to Paul’s great message which won the Roman Empire.
-It was not a new philosophy. It was the irresistible appeal to love,
-exhibited in Christ crucified. “He loved me and gave Himself for
-me;” “We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” “I am
-persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
-nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor
-depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from
-the _love of God_, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sacrificing
-love, the Divine Heart suffering over sin, God Himself taking up the
-infinite burden and cost of raising men like us into sons of God like
-Himself; this is the revelation in the face of Jesus Christ. The heart
-that can stand _that_ untouched can stand anything.
-
-The power unto salvation, the dynamic of the Gospel is in the cross,
-which exhibits in temporal setting the eternal fact, that God suffers
-over sin, that He takes upon Himself the cost of winning sons to glory
-and that His love reaches out to the most sin-scarred wanderer, who
-clutches the swine husks in his lean hands.
-
-But the appeal of love and sacrifice is not the whole of the truth
-which this word atonement covers. We have been seeing, in some feeble
-way, how God in Christ enters into human life, identifies Himself with
-us, and reveals the _energy of Grace_. But we cannot stop with “what
-has been done for us without us.” Sin, as has been already said, is
-an affair of personal choice--it is a condition of inward life. It is
-not an abstract entity, in a metaphysical realm. It is the attitude
-of heart and will in a living, throbbing person who cannot get free
-from the lower nature in himself. So too with Salvation. It cannot be
-a _transaction_ in some realm foreign to the individual himself. It is
-not a plan, or scheme. It is an actual deliverance, a new creation.
-It is nothing short of a redeemed inward nature. Such a change cannot
-be wrought without the man himself. It cannot come by _a tergo_
-compulsion. It must be by a positive winning of the will. A dynamic
-faith in the man must cooperate with that energy from God. Something
-comes down from above, but something must also go up from below. Paul,
-who has given the most vital interpretation of both sides of the truth
-of redemption--the objective and the subjective--that has ever been
-expressed, uses the word “faith” to name the human part of the process.
-
-Faith, in Paul’s sense of it, means an identification of ourselves
-with Christ, by which we re-live His life. As He identified Himself
-with sinning humanity, so, by the attraction of his love, we identify
-ourselves with His victorious Life. We go down into death with Him--a
-death to sin and the old self--and we rise with Him into newness of
-life, to live henceforth unto Him who loved us.
-
-There is no easy road out of a nature of sin into a holy nature. It
-is vain to try and patch up a scheme which will relieve us of our
-share of the tragedy of sin--or to put it another way, the travail
-for the birth of the sons of God. The Redeemer suffers, but He does
-not suffer in our stead--He suffers in our behalf, [[Greek: hyper]
-not [Greek: anti]]. He makes His appeal of love to us to share His
-life as He shares ours. It is Paul’s goal--a flying goal, surely--“to
-know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His
-sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” The boldest word
-which comes from his pen was: “I rejoice in my sufferings _on your
-behalf_; and fill up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ
-_in my flesh_, for His body’s sake, which is the Church.” (Col. 1, 24.)
-It is not repeating His words that saves us, it is reliving His life,
-co-dying, and co-rising with Him, and entering with a radiant joy,
-caught from His face, into the common task of redeeming a world of sin
-to a kingdom of love and holiness.
-
-In that great book of spiritual symbolism--the Book of
-Revelation--those who overcome are builded, as pillars, into the Temple
-of God, and He writes His new name upon them. The new name is Redeemer.
-Those who have come up through great tribulation and have washed their
-robes in the blood of the Lamb are builded in as a permanent part of
-the Temple, where God reveals Himself, and they share with Him in the
-great redeeming work of the ages.
-
-Whatever it has meant in the past, in the ages when the races were
-sloughing off their paganism, in the future the atonement must be
-vital and dynamic. It must be put in language which grips the heart,
-convinces the mind, and carries the will. It will name for us the
-Divine-human travail for a redeemed humanity. It will cease to signify
-a way by which God was appeased and it will come to express, as it
-did in the apostolic days, the identification of God with us in the
-person of Christ, and the identification, by the power of His love, of
-ourselves with Him. We shall pass from the terms which were inherited
-from magic and ancient sacerdotal rites and we shall use instead the
-language of our riper experience. We shall abandon illustrations
-drawn from law courts and judicial decisions and we shall rise to
-conceptions which fit the actual facts of inward, personal experience
-where higher and lower natures contend for the mastery. The drama will
-not be in some foreign realm, apart from human consciousness, it will
-rise in our thought into the supreme drama of history--the tragedy
-of the spiritual universe--the battle of holiness with sin--the blood
-and tears which tell the cost of sin and create in response a passion
-for the Divine Lover who is our Father. It will stop at no fictitious
-righteousness which is counted unto us, as though it were ours. We
-shall demand an actual redemption of the entire self which has become
-righteous, because it lives, in Christ’s power, the life which He lived.
-
-We shall learn to tell the story in such a way that the cross will
-not seem to be brought in, as an afterthought, to repair the damage
-wrought by an unforeseen catastrophe. It will stand as the consummation
-of an elemental spiritual movement and it will be organic with the
-entire process of the making of men. With charm and power, Ruskin has
-told how the black dirt that soils the city pavement is composed of
-four elements which make, when they follow the law of their nature,
-the sapphire, the opal, the diamond and the dew drop. The glory and
-splendor do not appear in the black dirt, but the possibilities are
-there. When the law of the nature of these elements has full sweep
-the glory comes out. Man was not meant for a sinner, and to live a
-dark, chaotic life. There are far other possibilities in him. He is a
-potential child of God. The full nature has broken forth in one life
-and men beheld its glory. “To as many as receive Him, to them gives
-He power to become the sons of God.”
-
-
-
-
-Prayer
-
-
- By prayer, I do not mean any bodily exercise of the outward man; but
- _the going forth of the spirit of Life towards the Fountain of Life,
- for fullness and satisfaction: The natural tendency of the poor,
- rent, derived spirit, towards the Fountain of Spirits_.
-
- _Isaac Penington._
-
-
- “I, that still pray at morning and at eve,
- Loving those roots that feed us from the past,
- And prizing more than Plato things I learned
- At that best Academe, a mother’s knee,
- Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed,
- Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt
- That perfect disenthralment which is God.”
-
- _Lowell’s “Cathedral.”_
-
- “The aim of prayer is to attain to the habit of goodness, so as no
- longer merely to have the things that are good, but rather to be
- good.”
-
- _Clement of Alexandria._
-
-
-
-
-PRAYER.
-
-
-We come now to the human search for a divine fellowship and
-companionship. Its complete history would be the whole story of
-religion. In this little book I shall speak only of certain definite
-human ways of seeking fellowship with God, namely, of prayer.
-
-Prayer is an extraordinary act. The eyes close, the face lights up,
-the body is moved with feeling, and (it may be in the presence of
-a multitude) the person praying talks in perfect confidence with
-somebody, invisible and intangible, and who articulates no single word
-of response. It is astonishing. And yet it is a human custom as old as
-marriage, as ancient as grave-making, older than any city on the globe.
-There is no human activity which so stubbornly resists being reduced
-to a bread and butter basis. Men have tried to explain the origin of
-prayer by the straits of physical hunger, but it will no more fit into
-utilitarian systems than joy over beauty will. It is an elemental and
-unique attitude of the soul and it will not be “explained” until we
-fathom the origin of the soul itself!
-
-But is not the advance of science making prayer impossible? In
-unscientific ages the universe presented no rigid order. It was easy to
-believe that the ordinary course of material processes might be altered
-or reversed. The world was conceived as full of invisible beings who
-could affect the course of events at will, while above all, there was
-a Being who might interfere with things at any moment, in any way.
-
-Our world to-day is not so conceived. Our universe is organized and
-linked. Every event is _caused_. Caprice is banished. There is no such
-thing in the physical world as an uncaused event. If we met a person
-who told us that he had seen a train of cars drawn along with no
-couplings and held together by the mutual affection of the passengers
-in the different cars we should know that he was an escaped lunatic
-and we should go on pinning our faith to couplings as before. Even the
-weather is no more capricious than the course of a planet in space.
-Every change of wind and the course of every flying cloud is determined
-by previous conditions. Complex these combinations of circumstances
-certainly are, but if the weather man could get data enough he could
-foretell the storm, the rain, the drought exactly as well as the
-astronomer can foretell the eclipse. There is no little demon, there
-is no tall, bright angel, who holds back the shower or who pushes the
-cloud before him; no being, good or bad, who will capriciously alter
-the march of molecules because it suits our fancy to ask that the chain
-of causes be interrupted. What is true of the weather is true in every
-physical realm. Our universe has no caprice in it. Every thing is
-linked, and the forked lightning never consults our preferences, nor
-do cyclones travel exclusively where bad men live. As of old the rain
-falls on just and unjust alike, on saint and sinner. The knowledge of
-this iron situation has had a desolating effect upon many minds. The
-heavens have become as brass and the earth bars of iron. To ask for the
-interruption of the march of atoms seems to the scientific thinker the
-absurdest of delusions and all fanes of prayer appear fruitless. Others
-resort to the faith that there are “gaps” in the causal system and that
-in these unorganized regions--the domains so far unexplored--there are
-realms for miracle and divine wonder. The supernatural, on this theory
-is to be found out beyond the region of the “natural,” and forcing
-itself through the “gaps.” Those of this faith are filled with dread
-as they see the so called “gaps” closing, somewhat as the pious Greek
-dreaded to see Olympus climbed.
-
-There are still others who evade the difficulty by holding that God
-has made the universe, is the Author of its “laws,” is Omnipotent and
-therefore can change them at Will, or can admit exceptions in their
-operation. This view is well illustrated in the faith of George Müller,
-who writes: “When I lose such a thing as a key, I ask the Lord to
-direct me to it, and I look for an answer; when a person with whom I
-have made an appointment does not come, according to the fixed time,
-and I begin to be inconvenienced by it, I ask the Lord to be pleased to
-hasten him to me, and I look for an answer; when I do not understand
-a passage of the word of God, I lift up my heart to the Lord that He
-would be pleased by His Holy Spirit to instruct me, and I expect to be
-taught.”
-
-This view takes us back once more into a world of caprice. It
-introduces a world in which almost anything may happen. We can no
-longer calculate upon anything with assurance. Even our _speed_, as we
-walk, is regulated by the capricious wish of our friends. But that is
-not all, it is a low, crude view of God--a Being off above the world
-who makes “laws” like a modern legislator and again changes them to
-meet a new situation, who is after all only a bigger man in the sky
-busily moving and shifting the scenes of the time-drama as requests
-reach him.
-
-None of these positions is tenable. The first is not, for prayer is a
-necessity to full life, and the other two are not, because they do not
-fairly face the facts which are forced upon those who accept scientific
-methods of search and of thought. This physical universe is a stubborn
-affair. It is not loose and adjustable, and worked, for our private
-convenience, by wires or strings at a central station. It is a world
-of order, a realm of discipline. It is our business to discover a
-possible line of march in the world _as it is_, to find how to triumph
-over obstacles and difficulty, if we meet them--not to resort to “shun
-pikes” or cries for “exception in our particular case.”
-
-The real difficulty is that our generation has been conceiving of
-prayer on too low a plane. Faith is not endangered by the advance of
-science. It is endangered by the stagnation of religious conceptions.
-If religion halts at some primitive level and science marches on to
-new conquests of course there will be difficulty. But let us not
-fetter science, let us rather _promote_ religion. We need to rise to a
-truer view of God and to a loftier idea of prayer. It is another case
-of “leveling up.” On the higher religious plane no collision between
-prayer and science will be found. There will be no sealing of the lips
-in the presence of the discovery that all is law.
-
-The prayer which science _has_ affected is the spurious kind of prayer,
-which can be reduced to a utilitarian, “bread and butter,” basis. Most
-enlightened persons now are shocked to hear “patriotic” ministers
-asking God to direct the bullets of their country’s army so as to kill
-their enemies in battle, and we all hesitate to use prayer for the
-attainment of low, selfish ends, but we need to cleanse our sight
-still farther and rise above the conception of prayer as an easy means
-to a desired end.
-
-It is a fact that there are _valid prayer effects_ and there is plenty
-of experimental evidence to prove the _energy of prayer_. It is
-literally true that “more things are wrought by prayer than this world
-dreams of.” There are no assignable bounds to the effects upon mind and
-body of the prayer of living faith. Some of those particular cases of
-George Müller’s are quite within the range of experience. The prayer
-for the lost key may well produce a heightened energy of consciousness
-which pushes open a door into a deeper stratum of memory, and the man
-rises from his knees and goes to the spot where the key was put. So
-too with the passage of Scripture. No doubt many a man has come back
-from his closet where the turmoil of life was hushed and where all
-the inward currents set toward God, many of us I say, come back with
-a new energy and with cleared vision and we can grasp what before
-eluded us, we can see farther into the spiritual meaning of any of
-God’s revelations. There is perhaps never a sweep of the soul out into
-the wider regions of the spiritual world which does not heighten the
-powers of the person who experiences it. Profound changes in physical
-condition, almost as profound as the stigmata of St. Francis, have in
-our own times followed the prayer of faith and many of us in our daily
-problems and perplexities have seen the light break through, as we
-prayed, and shine out, like a search light, on some plain path of duty
-or of service. There is unmistakable evidence of incoming energy from
-beyond the margin of what we usually call “ourselves.”
-
-We have not to do with a God who is “off there” above the sky, who
-can deal with us only through “the violation of physical law.” We
-have instead a God “in whom we live and move and are,” whose Being
-opens into ours, and ours into His, who is the very Life of our lives,
-the matrix of our personality; and there is no separation between us
-unless we make it ourselves. No man, scientist or layman, knows where
-the curve is to be drawn about the personal “self.” No man can say
-with authority that the circulation of Divine currents into the soul’s
-inward life is impossible. On the contrary, Energy does come in. In
-our highest moments we find ourselves in contact with wider spiritual
-Life than belongs to our normal _me_.
-
-But true prayer is something higher. It is immediate spiritual
-fellowship. Even if science could demonstrate that prayer could never
-effect any kind of utilitarian results, still prayer on its loftier
-side would remain untouched, and persons of spiritual reach would go
-on praying as before. If we could say nothing more we could at least
-affirm that prayer, like faith, is itself the victory. The seeking is
-the finding. The wrestling is the blessing. It is no more a means to
-something else than love is. It is an end in itself. It is its own
-excuse for being. It is a kind of first fruit of the mystical nature of
-personality. The edge of the self is always touching a circle of life
-beyond itself to which it responds. The human heart is sensitive to God
-as the retina is to light waves. The soul possesses a native yearning
-for intercourse and companionship which takes it to God as naturally
-as the home instinct of the pigeon takes it to the place of its birth.
-There is in every normal soul a spontaneous outreach, a free play of
-spirit which gives it onward yearning of unstilled desire.
-
-It is no mere subjective instinct--no blind outreach. If it met no
-response, no answer, it would soon be weeded out of the race. It would
-shrivel like the functionless organ. We could not long continue to pray
-in faith if we lost the assurance that there is a Person who cares,
-and who actually corresponds with us. Prayer has stood the test of
-experience. In fact the very desire to pray is in itself prophetic of
-a heavenly Friend. A subjective need always carries an implication of
-an objective stimulus which has provoked the need. There is no hunger,
-as Fiske has well shown, for anything not tasted, there is no search
-for anything which is not in the environment, for the environment has
-always produced the appetite. So this native need of the soul rose out
-of the divine origin of the soul, and it has steadily verified itself
-as a safe guide to reality.
-
-What is at first a vague life-activity and spontaneous outreach of
-inward energy--a feeling after companionship--remains in many persons
-vague to the end. But in others it frequently rises to a definite
-consciousness of a personal Presence and there comes back into
-the soul a compelling evidence of a real Other Self who meets all
-the Soul’s need. For such persons prayer is the way to fullness of
-life. It is as natural as breathing. It is as normal an operation as
-appreciation of beauty, or the pursuit of truth. The soul is made
-that way, and as long as men are made with mystical deeps within,
-unsatisfied with the finite and incomplete, they will pray and be
-refreshed.
-
-Vague and formless, in some degree, communion would always be, I think,
-apart from the personal manifestation of God in Jesus Christ. As soon
-as God is known as Father, as soon as we turn to Him as identical in
-being with our own humanity, as suffering with us and loving us even
-in our imperfection, this communion grows defined and becomes _actual
-social fellowship_ which is prayer at its best. Paul’s great prayers of
-fellowship rise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God
-whom we know, because He has been humanly revealed in a way that fits
-our life. We turn to Him as the completeness and reality of all we want
-to be, the other Self whom we have always sought. The vague impulse to
-reach beyond our isolated and solitary self gives place to an actual
-experience of relationship with a personal Friend and Companion and
-this experience may become, and often does become, the loftiest and
-most joyous activity of life. The soul is never at its best until it
-enjoys God, and prays out of sheer love. Nobody who has learned to
-pray in this deeper way and whose prayer is a prayer of communion and
-fellowship, wants logical argument for the existence of God. Such a
-want implies a fall from a higher to a lower level. It is like a demand
-for a proof of the beauty one feels, or an evidence of love other than
-the evidence of its experience.
-
-Prayer will always rise or fall with the quality of one’s faith, like
-the mercury in the tube which feels at once the change of pressure in
-the atmosphere. It is only out of _live faith_ that a living prayer
-springs. When a man’s praying sinks into words, words, words, it means
-that he is trying to get along with a dead conception of God. The
-circuit no longer closes. He cannot heighten his prayer by raising his
-voice. What he needs is a new revelation of the reality of God. He
-needs to have the fresh sap of living faith in God push off the dead
-leaves of an outgrown belief, so that once more prayer shall break
-forth as naturally as buds in spring.
-
-The conception of God as a lonely Sovereign, complete in Himself and
-infinitely separated from us “poor worms of the dust,” grasshoppers
-chirping our brief hour in the sun, is in the main a dead notion.
-Prayer to such a God would not be easy with our modern ideas of the
-universe. It would be as difficult to believe in its efficiency as it
-would be to believe in the miracle of transubstantiation in bread and
-wine. But that whole conception is being supplanted by a _live faith_
-in an Infinite Person who is corporate with our lives, from whom we
-have sprung, in whom we live, as far as we spiritually do live, who
-needs us as we need him, and who is sharing with us the travail and
-the tragedy as well as the glory and the joy of bringing forth sons of
-God.
-
-In such a kingdom--an organic fellowship of interrelated
-persons--prayer is as normal an activity as gravitation is in a world
-of matter. Personal spirits experience spiritual gravitation, soul
-reaches after soul, hearts draw toward each other. We are no longer
-in the net of blind fate, in the realm of impersonal force, we are in
-a love-system where the aspiration of one member heightens the entire
-group, and the need of one--even the least--draws upon the resources of
-the whole--even the Infinite. We are in actual Divine-human fellowship.
-
-The only obstacle to effectual praying, in this world of spiritual
-fellowship, would be individual selfishness. To want to get just for
-one’s own self, to ask for something which brings loss and injury to
-others, would be to sever one’s self from the source of blessings, and
-to lose not only the thing sought but to lose, as well, one’s very self.
-
-This principle is true anywhere, even in ordinary human friendship.
-It is true too, in art and in music. The artist may not force some
-personal caprice into his creation. He must make himself the organ of a
-universal reality which is beautiful not simply for this man or that,
-but for man as man. If there is, as I believe, an _inner kingdom of
-spirit_, a kingdom of love and fellowship, then it is a fact that a
-tiny being like one of us can impress and influence the Divine Heart,
-and we can make our personal contribution to the Will of the universe,
-but we can do it only by wanting what everybody can share and by
-seeking blessings which have a universal implication.
-
-So far as prayer is real fellowship, it gives as well as receives.
-The person who wants to receive God must first bring himself. If He
-misses us, we miss Him. He is Spirit, and consequently He is found only
-through true and genuine spiritual activity. In this correspondence of
-fellowship there is no more “violation of natural =law=” than there
-is in love wherever it appears. Love is itself the principle of the
-spiritual universe, as gravitation is of the physical; and as in the
-gravitate system the earth rises to meet the ball of the child, without
-_breaking any law_, so God comes to meet and to heighten the life of
-anyone who stretches up toward Him in appreciation, and there is joy
-above as well as below.
-
-All that I have said, and much more, gets vivid illustration in the
-“Lord’s prayer,” which Christians have taken as a model form, though
-they have not always penetrated its spirit. It is in every line a
-prayer of fellowship and co-operation. It is a perfect illustration
-of the social nature of prayer. The co-operation and fellowship are
-not here confined, and they never are except in the lower stages, to
-the inward communion of an individual and his God. There is no _I_ or
-_me_ or _mine_ in the whole prayer. The person who prays spiritually
-is enmeshed in a _living group_ and the reality of his vital union
-with persons like himself clarifies his vision of that deeper Reality
-to whom he prays. Divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood are born
-together. To say Father to God involves saying “brother” to one’s
-fellows, and the ground swell of either relationship naturally carries
-the other with it, for no one can largely realize the significance of
-brotherly love without going to Him in whom love is completed.
-
-“Hallowed be thy name” is often taken in a very feeble sense to
-mean “keep us from using thy name in vain,” or it is thought of as
-synonymous with the easy and meaningless platitude, “Let thy name
-be holy.” It is in reality a heart-cry for a full appreciation of
-the meaning of the Divine name, i. e., the Divine character. It is
-an uprising of the soul to an apprehension of the holiness of God
-and the fullness of His life that the soul may return to its tasks
-with a sense of infinite resources and under the sway of a vision of
-the true ideal. This Lord’s prayer begins with a word of intimate
-relationship and social union--“Our Father.” It then goes out beyond
-the familiar boundaries of experience to feel the infinite sweep of
-God’s completeness and perfectness and to become penetrated with solemn
-awe and reverence which fit such companionship,--“Our Father of the
-holy name.”
-
-This is the prelude. The true melody of prayer, if I may say so, begins
-with the positive facing of the task of life:--“Thy kingdom come, Thy
-will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Here again we have the
-loftiest Fellowship. The person who prays this way is linked with God
-in one mighty spiritual whole. The last vestige of atomic selfishness
-is washed out. There are those who say these words of prayer with
-folded hands and closed eyes, and then expect the desired kingdom
-to come by miracle; they suppose that if the request is made often
-enough a millennium age will drop out of the skies. Ah, no! If God is
-Spirit and man is meant to be spiritual, such a millennium is a sheer
-impossibility. This prayer involves the most strenuous life that ever
-was lived. To pray seriously for the coming of the kingdom of heaven
-means to contribute to its coming. It _has_ come in any life which is
-completely under the sway of the holy Will and which is consecrated to
-the task of making that holy Will prevail in society. It is no “far
-off Divine event.” It is always coming.
-
- “For an ye heard a music, like enow
- They are building still, seeing the city is built
- To music, therefore never built at all
- And therefore built forever.”
-
-In a plain word, it is the total task of humanity through the ages. It
-is the embodiment in a temporal order of the eternal purpose. It is the
-weaving in concrete figure and color of the Divine pattern. It is the
-slow and somewhat painful work of making an actual Divine society out
-of this rather stubborn and unpromising potential material. But it is
-our main business, and this prayer is the girding of the loins for the
-sublime task of helping God make His world.
-
- “Man as yet is being made, and e’er the crowning age of ages,
- Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape?
- All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower and fade,
- Prophet eyes may catch a glory, slowly gaining on the shade,
- Till the people all are one and all their voices blend in a choric
- Hallelujah to the Maker, ‘It is finished; man is made.’”
-
-Fellow laborers with God in truth we are. Prayer ends in labor and
-labor ends in prayer. But it is not a cry for miracle. It is an inward
-effort at co-operation.
-
-There is a beautiful mingling of the great and the little, the cosmic
-and the personal. The universal sweep of Divine ends does not
-swallow up, or miss, the needs of the concrete individual. While the
-spiritual universe is building, men must have daily bread and they must
-constantly face the actual present with its routine and monotony. Here
-again prayer is no miraculous method of turning stones into bread.
-It is no easy substitute for toil. It is the joyous insight that in
-the avenues of daily toil, God and man are co-operating and that in
-very truth the bread for the day is as much God given as it is won
-by the sweat of brow. The recently discovered “saying of Jesus” best
-interprets this prayer. “Wherever any man raises a stone or splits
-wood, there am I.” He consecrates honest toil.
-
-Next we come to the profound word which shows how completely our lives
-are bound together in organic union, above and below: “Forgive us as
-we forgive.” What a solemn thing to say. Dare we pray it! And yet few
-words have ever so truly revealed the nature of prayer. It is, one
-sees, no easy, lazy way to blessings. Once more, it is co-operation.
-Forgiveness is not a gift which can fall upon us from the skies, in
-return for a capricious request. The blessing depends on us as much as
-it does on God. A cold, hard, unforgiving heart can no more be forgiven
-than a lazy, slipshod student can have knowledge given to him. Like all
-spiritual things, forgiveness can come only when there is a person who
-appreciates its worth and meaning. The deep cry for forgiveness must
-rise out of a forgiving spirit. It is always more than a transaction,
-an event. It is an inward condition of the personal life, and the soul
-that feels what it means to love and forgive is so bound into the whole
-divine order that love and forgiveness come in as naturally as light
-goes through the open casement, or the tide into an inlet.
-
-The next word is surely to be thought of as a human cry: “Take us not
-into testing.” It is the natural shrinking of the tender, sensitive
-soul, and it is the right attitude. Most of us know by hard experience
-that trial, proving, testing, yes, even actual temptation, have a
-marvelous ministry. No saint is made in the level plain, where the
-waters are still and the pastures green.
-
- “Never on custom’s oilëd grooves
- The world to a higher level moves,
- But grates and grinds with friction hard
- On granite boulder and flinty shard.
- The heart must bleed before it feels,
- The pool be troubled before it heals.”
-
-All this we know. We know that the stem battle makes the veteran. But
-this prayer is the childlike cry, the shrinking fear, which are always
-safer than the bold dash, the impetuous plunge. It is the utterance of
-an instinctive wish to keep where safety lies, and, humanly speaking,
-it is right, though, in a world whose highest fruit is character,
-we may expect that bitter cups and hard baptisms will be a part of
-our experience. Like all that has gone before, it is an effort at
-co-operation. It is a sincere aspiration for green pastures and still
-waters joined with a readiness to be fed at the table in presence of
-the enemy, if need be, readiness for the perilous edge of conflict, for
-“high strife and glorious hazard.”
-
-Last of all there rises the cry for deliverance from the power of
-evil. Once more we realize that this is not an occasion for magical
-interference, no call for a fiery dart out of the sky to pierce a black
-demon who is pushing us into sin. The drama is an inward one and the
-enemy, called of many names, is a part of our own self. Each soul has
-its own struggle with the immemorial tug of brute inheritance--the sag
-of lower nature.
-
- “When the fight begins within himself,
- A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head,
- Satan looks up between his feet--both tug--
- He’s left, himself, i’ the middle: The soul wakes
- And grows.”
-
-But here supremely appears our principle of co-operation. Prayer for
-deliverance from evil cannot end on the lips. There is no conquest of
-the flesh, no killing out of ape and tiger, until we ourselves catch at
-God’s skirts and rise to live for the Spirit and by the Spirit. There
-is no deliverance till the soul says, “I will be free” and God and man
-tug on the same side. Wherever any citadel of evil is battered God and
-man are there together. God finds a human organ and man draws on the
-inexhaustible resources of God.
-
-Prayer, whether it be the lisp of a little child, or the wrestling
-of some great soul in desperate contest with the coils of habit or
-the evil customs of his generation is a testimony to a divine-human
-fellowship. In hours of crisis the soul feels for its Companion, by
-a natural gravitation, as the brook feels for the ocean. In times of
-joy and strength, it reaches out to its source of Life, as the plant
-does to the sun. And when it has learned the language of spiritual
-communion and knows its Father, praying refreshes it as the greeting
-of a friend refreshes one in a foreign land. We ought not to expect
-that prayer, of the true and lofty sort, could be attained by easy
-steps. It involves appreciation of God and co-operation with Him. One
-comes not to it in a day. Even human friendship is a great attainment.
-It calls for sacrifice of private wishes and for adjustment to the
-purposes of another life. One cannot be an artist or a musician without
-patient labor to make oneself an organ of the reality which he fain
-would express. He must bring himself by slow stages to a height of
-appreciation. Prayer is the highest human function. It is the utterance
-of an infinite friendship, the expression of our appreciation of that
-complete and perfect Person whom our soul has found. “Lord, teach us
-how to pray.”
-
-
-
-
-_The United States a Christian Nation._
-
-BY
-
-HON. DAVID J. BREWER,
-
-_Associate Justice of the Supreme Court United States_.
-
-_Haverford College Library Lectures, 1905._
-
-
-In this book the Distinguished Christian Jurist has discussed three
-important topics:
-
- _First._ “THE UNITED STATES A CHRISTIAN NATION,” in which he shows
- why our Republic should be so classified, basing his argument upon
- the Decisions of the Supreme Court, Colonial Charters, Constitution
- of the United States, and National and State Legislation.
-
- _Second._ “OUR DUTY AS CITIZENS.” A strong plea for Business Honesty
- and Integrity, for Liberty and the Rights of Man, for Education, for
- Peace and Temperance.
-
- _Third._ “THE PROMISE AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE.” An earnest
- and eloquent exhortation to the young men of America to temper their
- devotion to country with fidelity to the teachings of the Gospel.
-
-_Issued October 1, 1905._
-
-12mo. 100 pp. Price, postpaid, $1.00.
-
-
-THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
-
-PHILADELPHIA, PA.
-
-
-
-
-SOCIAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
-
-Studies In Human and Divine Inter-Relationship
-
-BY
-
-RUFUS M. JONES, A.M., LITT. D.
-
-_Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College, Pa._
-
-This is a fresh interpretation of the deepest problems of life.
-It discusses the most interesting phases of recent psychological
-investigation into spiritual subjects.
-
-“Professor Jones offers here a series of studies on the nature and
-meaning of Personality. He is at home in modern psychology and tells
-it effectively for his purpose in freedom from technicalities.”--_The
-Outlook._
-
-“The author has written the twelve chapters of this book dealing
-with such subjects as The Meaning of Personality, The Realization of
-Persons, The Sub-Conscious Life, The Inner Light, etc., etc., with an
-aim to show through Psychology, as Drummond showed through Biology,
-that life can be unified from top to bottom.”--_Christian Work and the
-Evangelist._
-
-“The author bears a unique equipment for the task, having studied
-Philosophy at Harvard under Royce and Palmer, and acquired the art of
-presenting it to untrained thinkers in his capacity of Professor of
-Philosophy at Haverford College.”--_British Friend._
-
-_12mo. 272 pages. Extra Vellum Cloth, Gilt Top, Uncut Edges. Price
-$1.25 Net (Postage 10 Cents)._
-
-THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
-
-PHILADELPHIA, PA.
-
-
-
-
-_A History_
-
-OF
-
-_The Society of Friends in America_
-
-BY
-
-ALLEN C. THOMAS, A.M.
-
-HAVERFORD COLLEGE
-
-AND
-
-RICHARD H. THOMAS, M.D.
-
-BALTIMORE, MD.
-
-
-NEW AND REVISED EDITION, 1905
-
-Brought down to date and including valuable statistics and information
-in regard to the Society of Friends in America.
-
- “A work on ‘The History of the Society of Friends in America,’
- which is likely for many days to be a standard text-book on the
- subject.”--_The London Friend._
-
- “We have read it with interest. It gives evidence of much research
- and of a disposition to observe the impartiality of faithful
- historians.”--_The Friend_, Philadelphia.
-
-
-12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00 Net
-
-(Postage, 15 Cents)
-
-
-THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
-
-PHILADELPHIA, PA.
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-
-[1] “Social Law in the Spiritual World,” Philadelphia, 1904.
-
-[2] The term _a tergo_ causation means that what happens is produced
-entirely by the push or the pull of forces. There is an exact
-equation--the antecedent _determines_ the consequent.
-
-[3] It is not true, of course, that there is an absolute “break” in the
-upward processes of life. Even in the lower forms of life there are
-hints of higher possibilities. There is an elemental struggle for the
-life of others which has in it the potentiality of love and sacrifice.
-But there is no “sign” on the lower levels--before self-consciousness
-dawned--of any capacity for an ideal, or of _any power to develop by
-the forecast and vision of the goal_.
-
-[4] The term _a fronte_ compulsion means the compelling power of an
-ideal which influences by an attraction from in front.
-
-[5] Browning’s “Old Pictures in Florence.”
-
-[6] Sabatier, “Religions of Authority,” p. 307.
-
-[7] I am aware that this feature of child life will seem to some of my
-readers to be overdrawn. Some Mothers say that no such tendency was
-observed in their own children. That is quite likely. All children do
-not express their subtle and complex emotions in the same way. I do not
-mean to imply that every child _expresses_ a need of sacrifice when he
-does wrong. But careful observers of children have frequently noted the
-facts which I have emphasized in the text, and I have often met them in
-my own experience with children.
-
-[8] It has been shown by Robertson Smith and others that the Hebrews
-thought of sacrifice not as a gift to appease Jehovah but as a sharing
-of a common meal with him. Such a lofty view of sacrifice is surely
-not primitive. When sacrifice had come to be thought of, as of a
-common meal, it had already been purified and transformed by centuries
-of development and the heightening presupposes a series of unnamed
-prophets before the list of great revealers whose names we know.
-In the earliest stages religion is only very slightly ethical. The
-moralization of religion is one of the most tremendous facts of human
-history.
-
-
-
-
-TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
-
-
- Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
-
- Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
-
- Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Double Search, by Rufus Jones
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOUBLE SEARCH ***
-
-***** This file should be named 61771-0.txt or 61771-0.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
- http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/7/7/61771/
-
-Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron, David E. Brown, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
-http://gutenberg.org/license).
-
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
- the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
- you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
- owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
- has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
- Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
- must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
- prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
- returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
- sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
- address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
- the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
- you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
- does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License. You must require such a user to return or
- destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
- and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
- Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
- money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
- electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
- of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
- distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
-
-
-Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
-http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
-809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
-business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
-information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
-page at http://pglaf.org
-
-For additional contact information:
- Dr. Gregory B. Newby
- Chief Executive and Director
- gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit http://pglaf.org
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
- http://www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/61771-0.zip b/old/61771-0.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 60d53c6..0000000
--- a/old/61771-0.zip
+++ /dev/null
Binary files differ
diff --git a/old/61771-h.zip b/old/61771-h.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 11ce5af..0000000
--- a/old/61771-h.zip
+++ /dev/null
Binary files differ
diff --git a/old/61771-h/61771-h.htm b/old/61771-h/61771-h.htm
deleted file mode 100644
index 35afc41..0000000
--- a/old/61771-h/61771-h.htm
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,3307 +0,0 @@
-<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
- "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
- <head>
- <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
- <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
- <title>
- The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Double Search, by Rufus M. Jones.
- </title>
-<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
- <style type="text/css">
-
-body {
- margin-left: 10%;
- margin-right: 10%;
-}
-
- h1,h2 {
- text-align: center;
- clear: both;
-}
-
-p {
- margin-top: .51em;
- text-align: justify;
- margin-bottom: .49em;
-}
-
-div.chapter {page-break-before: always;}
-h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;}
-
-div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; page-break-after: always;}
-div.titlepage p {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 2em;}
-
-hr {
- width: 33%;
- margin-top: 2em;
- margin-bottom: 2em;
- margin-left: 33.5%;
- margin-right: 33.5%;
- clear: both;
-}
-
-hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;}
-hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;}
-
-.ph1 {text-align: center; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;}
-
-table {
- margin-left: auto;
- margin-right: auto;
-}
-
- .tdr {text-align: right;}
- .tdc {text-align: center;}
-
-.pagenum {
- position: absolute;
- left: 92%;
- font-size: smaller;
- text-align: right;
-}
-
-
-
-
-.center {text-align: center;}
-
-.right {text-align: right;}
-
-.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;}
-
-.u {text-decoration: underline;}
-
-
-.xxlarge {font-size: 175%;}
-.xlarge {font-size: 150%;}
-.large {font-size: 125%;}
-
-p.drop-cap {
- text-indent: -0.2em;
-}
-
-p.drop-cap:first-letter
-{
- float: left;
- margin: 0.15em 0.1em 0em 0em;
- font-size: 250%;
- line-height:0.55em;
- text-indent: 0em;
-}
-@media handheld
-{
- p.drop-cap {
- text-indent: 0em;
- }
- p.drop-cap:first-letter
- {
- float: none;
- margin: 0;
- font-size: 100%;
- }
-}
-
-
-.figcenter {
- margin: auto;
- text-align: center;
-}
-
-.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
-
-.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
-
-.fnanchor {
- vertical-align: super;
- font-size: .8em;
- text-decoration:
- none;
-}
-
-.poetry-container {text-align: center;}
-.poetry {display: inline-block; text-align: left;}
-.poetry .verse {text-indent: -2.5em; padding-left: 3em;}
-.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;}
-.poetry .indent {text-indent: 1.5em;}
-.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: 2.5em;}
-.poetry .versecenter {text-align: center;}
-
-.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
- color: black;
- font-size:smaller;
- padding:0.5em;
- margin-bottom:5em;
- font-family:sans-serif, serif; }
- </style>
- </head>
-<body>
-
-
-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Double Search, by Rufus Jones
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-
-Title: The Double Search
- Studies in Atonement and Prayer
-
-Author: Rufus Jones
-
-Release Date: April 7, 2020 [EBook #61771]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOUBLE SEARCH ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron, David E. Brown, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-<h1>The Double Search<br />
-
-<small>Studies in Atonement and Prayer</small></h1>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">Other Books by the Same Author</h2></div>
-
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Eli and Sybil Jones: Their Life and Work.</span></div>
-<div class="versecenter">12mo, 300 pages. (1889)</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Practical Christianity.</span></div>
-<div class="versecenter">12mo, 206 pages. (1899)</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">A Dynamic Faith.</span></div>
-<div class="versecenter">12mo, 105 pages. (1901)</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">A Boy&#8217;s Religion from Memory.</span></div>
-<div class="versecenter">16mo, 145 pages. (1902)</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">George Fox; An Autobiography.</span></div>
-<div class="versecenter">12mo, 2 vols., 584 pages. Illustrated. (1903)</div>
-</div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse"><span class="smcap">Social Law in the Spiritual World.</span></div>
-<div class="versecenter">Studies in Human and Divine<br /> Inter-relationship.</div>
-<div class="versecenter">12mo, 272 pages. (1904)</div>
-</div></div></div>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-
-
-<p><span class="xlarge">THE</span><br />
-
-<span class="xxlarge">DOUBLE SEARCH</span><br />
-
-<span class="large">STUDIES IN</span><br />
-
-<span class="xlarge">ATONEMENT AND PRAYER</span></p>
-
-<p>BY<br />
-
-<span class="large">RUFUS M. JONES, A.M., Litt.D.</span><br />
-
-Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College</p>
-<br />
-<p>1906.<br />
-PHILADELPHIA,<br />
-<span class="large">THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-
-<p class="center">
-<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1906<br />
-<span class="smcap">By</span> THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2></div>
-
-
-
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table">
-
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="tdr"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_9"> 9</a></td></tr>
-
-
-<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Historical and Inward Christ</span> </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21"> 21</a></td></tr>
-
-
-<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Atonement</span> </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_57"> 57</a></td></tr>
-
-
-<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td><span class="smcap">Prayer</span> </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89"> 89</a></td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">Introduction</h2></div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<blockquote>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>&#8220;We are always gathered around the Divine
-Centre of our being; and, indeed, if we could
-withdraw from it, our being would at once be
-dissolved away, and we should cease to exist
-at all. But, near as it is to us, often we do
-not direct our eyes to it. When, however, we
-do so direct our gaze, we attain to the end of
-our desires and to the rest of our souls, and
-our song is no more a discord, but, circling
-round our Centre, we pour forth a divinely inspired
-chorale. And in the choral dance we behold
-the source of our life, the fountain of our
-intelligence, the primal good, <i>the root of the
-soul</i>.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Plotinus, Ennead VI.</i></p></blockquote>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">INTRODUCTION.</h2></div>
-
-
-<p class="drop-cap">THERE is a famous myth in Plato&#8217;s
-Symposium told to explain the
-origin of love. This myth says that
-primitive man was round, and had four
-hands and four feet, and one head with
-two faces looking opposite ways. He
-could walk on his legs if he liked, but he
-also could roll over and over with great
-speed if he wished to go anywhere very
-fast.</p>
-
-<p>Because of their fleetness and skill
-these &#8220;Round people&#8221; were dangerous
-rivals in power to Zeus himself and he
-adopted the plan of weakening them by
-cutting each one of them in two. In remembrance
-of the original undivided<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
-state each half, ever since unsatisfied and
-alone, seeks eagerly for the other half.
-Each human being is thus a half&mdash;a
-tally&mdash;and love is the longing to be
-united. The two halves are seeking to
-be joined again in the original whole.
-Such in briefest compass is the myth.</p>
-
-<p>But as the dialogue advances love is
-traced to a higher source. It is discovered
-to be a passion for the eternal, a
-passion which rises in the soul at the
-sight of an object which suggests the
-eternal, from which the soul has come
-into the temporal. The soul is alien
-here and its chief joy in the midst of
-the shows of sense is joy at the sight of
-something which reminds it of its old
-divine home. Thus, again, Plato tells
-us that love has its birth in the division<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
-of what was once a whole. We yearn
-for that from which we have come.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="indent2">&#8220;Though inland far we be</div>
-<div class="verse">Our souls have sight of that immortal sea</div>
-<div class="indent2">That brought us hither.&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>We may ignorantly stop at some mid-way
-good and miss the homeward path,
-but our real search, our master passion,
-is for that divine Other to whom we
-belong. So at last Plato poetizes.</p>
-
-<p>We have discovered through other
-lips, what he could not tell us, that the
-search is a double search. We have
-learned that the Divine Other whom we
-seek is also seeking us. The myth, told
-at the beginning, is more suggestive than
-it seemed. It may perhaps do for a
-parable of the finite and the Infinite, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
-soul and its Father. May they not once
-have been in union? May not our birth
-in time be a drawing away into individuality
-from the Divine whole? And
-then may not the goal of the entire
-drama of personal life be the restoration
-of that union on a higher spiritual level?
-May it not be, that we are never again
-to fuse the skirts of self and merge into
-a union of oblivion, but rather that we
-are to rise to a love-union in which His
-will becomes our will&mdash;a union of conscious
-co-operation? So at any rate I believe.
-But this little book is not a book
-of speculation. It is not written to urge
-some fond belief.</p>
-
-<p>We have learned, I say, that life reveals
-a double search. Man&#8217;s search for
-God is as plain a fact as his search for
-food. He has, beyond question, blundered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
-at it and frequently missed the
-trail, but that man in all lands and in all
-times has maintained some kind of
-search for an invisible Companion is a
-momentous fact.</p>
-
-<p>The other half of the story is, I think,
-still more momentous. It is full of
-pathos and tragedy, but laden with the
-prophecy of final triumph. I have tried
-to tell again this story, surely an old, old
-story, but always needing to be retold
-in the current language and the prevailing
-conceptions of the time. The main
-feature of this book is its insistence on
-the facts of experience. Its terms are
-not those of theology, but those of life,
-or if I have used theological words I
-have endeavored to re-vitalize them. I
-shall assume that my readers are familiar
-with the idea of the <i>conjunct life</i> which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
-I have expounded at length in a former
-book.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It is now well known that &#8220;isolated&#8221;
-personality is impossible. He
-who is to enjoy the rights and privileges
-of personality must be conjunct with others.
-He must be an organic member in
-a social group, and share himself with
-his fellows, while at the same time he
-receives contributions from them. This
-principle of the conjunct life reaches beyond
-the finite social fellowship in which
-a man forms and expresses his personality.
-God and man are conjunct. The
-ground for this position will not be gone
-over here. It has been sufficiently presented
-elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>I believe, however, that no psychological
-discovery has ever thrown so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
-much light upon the meaning of atonement
-and prayer as this fact of the conjunct
-life does, and I hope that many
-others may come to feel the freshness
-and reality of these deepest religious
-truths as I have felt them.</p>
-
-<p>In touching these two subjects we are
-touching the very pillars of religion. If
-atonement&mdash;God&#8217;s search for us&mdash;and
-prayer&mdash;our search for Him&mdash;are
-not real, then religion has no permanent
-ground of reality. But there
-can be no question that our age has witnessed
-a serious weakening of faith in
-both these central aspects of religion.
-The doctrine of the atonement does not
-grip men as it did once, and there are
-persons all about us who are perplexed
-about the place and efficacy of prayer.
-It is no frivolous questioning. It is not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
-the result of a lazy attitude of mind. It
-is stern and serious. There is only one
-way to change this condition. We must
-make men feel again the reality of the
-atonement and the reality of prayer.
-That is the task which lies before those
-of us who believe. The day for dogmatic
-assertion is past. It rolls off most
-minds now as water rolls from oiled silk.
-The truths which march with power are
-the truths which are verified by, and buttressed
-with, facts. We must, then,
-learn how to carry the laboratory method
-into our religious teaching and ground
-our message in actual reality.</p>
-
-<p>This slender book is an attempt to approach
-these two subjects&mdash;atonement
-and prayer&mdash;in this spirit and by this
-method. We can never get the telescope
-or microscope turned upon the objects<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
-of spiritual experience and we cannot
-use the mathematical method which
-has worked such wonders in the physical
-realm. There will always be some
-who cannot <i>see</i> the evidence. But it is
-worth while to show that these two pillars
-of religion do rest&mdash;not on air&mdash;but
-on experience which can be verified
-and tested; that they rest in fact on the
-elemental basis of life, upon which we
-live our common social life together.</p>
-
-<p>I trust it will help some to find the
-trail, and that it will convince some perplexed,
-though honest, readers that however
-their own quest has fared there is
-another search beside their own,&mdash;the
-quest of a Divine Companion who spares
-no pain or cost to bring us all into a fellowship
-with Him.</p>
-
-<p>
-<i>Haverford, Pennsylvania,<br />
-&nbsp; &nbsp; New Year</i> 1906.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">The Historical and the
-Inward Christ</h2></div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>&#8220;All who since Jesus have come into union
-with God have come into union with God <i>through
-Him</i>. And thus it is confirmed in every way
-that, even to the end of time, all wise and intelligent
-men must bow themselves reverently before
-this Jesus of Nazareth; and that the more wise,
-intelligent and noble they themselves are, the
-more humbly will they recognize the exceeding
-nobleness of this great and glorious manifestation
-of the Divine Life.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Fichte&#8217;s &#8220;Way Toward the Blessed Life,&#8221; p. 391.</i></p>
-
-<p>&#8220;Christ is the Eternal Humanity in the life
-of the Infinite.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>George A. Gordon&#8217;s &#8220;The Christ of Today,&#8221; p. 136.</i></p>
-
-<p>&#8220;The word of God is continually born anew in
-the hearts of holy men.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Epistle to Diognetus, A. D. 125.</i></p></blockquote>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">THE HISTORICAL AND THE
-INWARD CHRIST.</h2></div>
-
-
-<p class="drop-cap">THERE was once a widespread fear
-that exact methods of historical
-research would deprive us of that luminous
-divine Figure toward whom the
-world had reverently turned its face for
-more than eighteen centuries. Some
-suspected that our records of His life
-were crowded with myth and legend,
-others believed that the singular story
-which had so profoundly touched the
-world&#8217;s heart was the creation of highly
-wrought enthusiastic disciples. To-day,
-after more than half a century of
-critical sifting and acute probing, this
-luminous Life is more firmly established<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
-as the central fact of history than ever
-before.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows</div>
-<div class="verse">Or decomposes but to recompose</div>
-<div class="verse">Becomes my universe which loves and knows.&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>It is not my purpose at present to retell
-the story, or to point out how much
-criticism has left unshaken. I want
-rather to show how the historical Christ,
-as a revelation of God, fits into a cosmic
-system of evolution and how He is related
-to the Spirit that witnesses with
-our spirits and is the inward life of the
-Saints of all ages and lands.</p>
-
-<p>I shall not use the language or the
-methods of theology. I shall feel my
-way along the great arteries of human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
-experience and try to throw light and
-suggestion rather than to establish some
-final and complete dogma. To begin
-at once with the problem before
-us, how shall we think of Christ? Was
-He man? Was He God? Was He
-some miraculous union of two essentially
-unrelated natures? Here are the questions
-which have split the Christian
-world up into camps and which have
-busied schoolmen in all the centuries.</p>
-
-<p>The difficulty in almost all the theological
-discussions on the subject has
-been that they started with God and
-man isolated, separated, unrelated. No
-true revelation of such a God ever could
-be made through a human life, for divinity
-and humanity on this theory are
-conceived as two totally diverse natures.
-Modern psychology and recent studies<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
-of social life have made us familiar with
-a deeper view of human personality and
-have prepared for a more adequate
-study of Divine personality than was
-possible when the historic creeds were
-formulated. We know that God and
-man are <i>conjunct</i> and that neither can
-be separated absolutely from the other.
-There never has been any doubt of man&#8217;s
-need of God, but we now know that God
-also needs us and that our lives are mutually
-organic. Every clew which leads
-us to God shows Him to us as a spiritual
-and social Being&mdash;in no sense solitary
-and self-sufficient. Our own self-consciousness,
-our own ideals, our passion for
-the unrealized, imply and involve more
-than an impersonal energy at the heart of
-things. There must be a spiritual matrix
-for this living, throbbing, growing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
-social organism in which personal life
-is formed. Our own experience carries
-in itself the implication of a genuinely
-spiritual Person at the heart of the universe
-of whom we all partake. The
-spiritual history of the race has forever
-settled this elemental fact, at least for
-all who feel the full significance of life.
-It is not an assumption, it is not a mere
-belief&mdash;it is involved in all we feel and
-know and are. But a spiritual, personal
-Being must reveal Himself. An unmanifested
-God&mdash;unknown and unknowable&mdash;is
-no God at all. He would be abstract
-and unreal. The least human
-person who poured his life out into those
-about him&mdash;who loved and suffered for
-the sake of another&mdash;would be a higher
-being than an infinite God shut up in the
-closed circle of His own self life. It is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
-a law as old as the morning star that
-one must lose himself to find himself,
-must give to get, must go forth bearing
-precious seed in order to come again
-with sheaves of harvest. The moment
-it is settled that there is a divine Person
-as the ultimate reality of the universe,
-it is also settled that He will reveal Himself,
-that He will put His Life into
-manifold manifestations and that He
-will find His joy in &#8220;working all things
-up to better,&#8221; to use Clement&#8217;s phrase.</p>
-
-<p>So long as the processes of evolution
-were confined to the plant and brute there
-could be no revelation of anything but
-force; or at most there could be only
-dawnings of anything higher. The
-forms of life which won in the struggle
-and survived were manifestations of
-power&mdash;they hardly implied anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
-more. The tough spine and the strong
-jaw and the sharp claw were all that mattered.
-Everything that appeared was
-pushed into existence by a force from behind.
-There was no sign or hint of
-freedom, or of life formed under the
-sway of a vision or an ideal. Things
-moved &#8220;for a million aeons through the
-vast, waste dawn&#8221; toward a goal, but
-the goal was never in sight and it played
-no part in the process.</p>
-
-<p>John Fiske has, somewhere, denied the
-truth of the proverb that &#8220;nature abhors
-leaps,&#8221; and he has given a beautiful
-illustration from the cutting of a cone.
-If you pass a plane parallel to the base
-of a cone you cut a circle. If you tilt
-the plane slightly the curve becomes an
-ellipse. The ellipse grows more eccentric
-as the tilting increases and finally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
-without any warning your plane cuts a
-parabola whose sides curve off into infinity
-and never touch ends again. Some
-such mighty leap appears in the process
-of evolution. Up to a certain point life
-evolved by forces working <i>a tergo</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
-There is a slight tilt in the system and a
-being appears capable of selecting a goal
-for himself and of acting to attain it, a
-being who could live in some degree for
-a world as it ought to be.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
-
-<p>This is what in America we call &#8220;the
-great divide&#8221;&mdash;the watershed which
-determines the streams of a continent.
-As soon as there was a being who could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
-select ideals and live for conscious ends
-a new kind of evolution began. The
-other side of &#8220;the divide,&#8221; evolution
-had been physical,&mdash;body, and body
-function had been the goal. This side
-&#8220;the divide,&#8221; it was spiritual and social,
-and the goal was the evolution of the
-man within man. The things which
-mattered now were love, sacrifice, service,
-goodwill rather than &#8220;tooth and
-claw.&#8221; Before, nature&#8217;s goal had been
-along the line of least resistance. Now,
-the line of march set straight against instinct
-and along the line of greatest resistance.
-There could be advance on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
-this side &#8220;the divide,&#8221; only as the ideal
-became clearer and its sway more coercive.</p>
-
-<p>Ever since man was man he has transcended
-the actual and lived by vision,
-which means, I think, that finite and infinite
-are not sundered and that we always
-partake of more than just ourselves.
-Beyond the edge of what we are there is
-always dawning a farther possibility&mdash;that
-which we ought to be&mdash;the <i>a fronte</i>
-compulsion.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> This is one of God&#8217;s ways
-of revealing Himself. It is a man&#8217;s
-chief glory&mdash;the glory of the imperfect.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;Growth came when, looking your last on them all</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
-<div class="verse">You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day</div>
-<div class="verse">And cried with a start&mdash;what if we so small</div>
-<div class="verse">Be greater and grander the while than they?</div>
-<div class="verse">Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?</div>
-<div class="verse">In both, of such lower types are we</div>
-<div class="verse">Precisely because of our wider nature;</div>
-<div class="verse">For time, theirs&mdash;ours, for eternity.</div>
-<div class="verse">Today&#8217;s brief passion limits their range;</div>
-<div class="verse">It seethes with the morrow for us and more.</div>
-<div class="verse">They are perfect&mdash;how else? They shall never change.</div>
-<div class="verse">We are faulty&mdash;why not? We have time in store.&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></div>
-</div></div>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>This slow unveiling of the ideal, of the
-goal, is, I believe, the divine method of
-making man, and it makes us feel at once
-how nearer than near God is and how all
-the way on and up He is in the very
-tissue and fabric of our lives&mdash;no foreign
-creator who moulded us out of clay
-and left us to run, or to run down, like
-a clock.</p>
-
-<p>For centuries man won his slender
-spiritual victories, cultivated his rugged
-virtues, sloughed off some marks of ape
-and tiger and formed habits of altruism
-under the influence of ideals which the
-highest personal types of the race revealed.
-These types of men were focus
-points, manifesting in some feeble measure
-the ultimate reality and casting out
-hints of the line of march. Sometimes
-they were conscious that they were organs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
-of a larger Life which used them,
-sometimes they were girded, like Cyrus,
-for a divine mission, though they knew
-not Him whom they served. Thus the
-unbroken revelation of the infinite was
-slowly made, as the age could bear it&mdash;&#8220;God
-spake at sundry times and in divers
-manners.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>Strangely enough the loftiest men of
-the pre-Christian period were always
-vaguely or dimly forecasting a diviner
-life than any ordinary type of man revealed.
-The human heart was always
-groping for an unveiling of God which
-would set the race to living on a new
-level. This longing rose among the Hebrews
-to a steady passion which burned
-brighter as the clouds in their national
-sky grew blacker. There was a Christ
-ideal centuries before Christ actually<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
-came in the flesh, though this ideal was
-always deeply tinged and colored by the
-age which gave it birth. But even so,
-it lighted the sky of the future and gave
-many a man heart and hope through long
-periods of dreary pessimism. When lo,
-a tilting of the plane, and the ellipse becomes
-a parabola with infinite stretch of
-curve!</p>
-
-<p>&#8220;In fullness of time God sent forth
-His Son.&#8221; How shall we think of Jesus
-that is called the Christ? Speaking first
-in the terms of evolution, <i>I</i> think of Him
-as the type and goal of the race&mdash;the
-new Adam, the spiritual norm and pattern,
-the Son of Man who is a revelation
-of what man at his height and full stature
-is meant to be; and this is the way
-Paul thought of Him: &#8220;Till <i>we all</i>
-come in the unity of the faith, and of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
-knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
-perfect man, unto the measure of the
-stature of the fullness of Christ.&#8221; Eph.
-<small>IV</small>, 13. &#8220;Whom he did foreknow, he
-did predestinate to be conformed to the
-image of his Son that <i>He</i> might be the
-first born among many brethren.&#8221; Rom.
-<small>VIII</small>, 29. &#8220;The expectation of the
-whole creation is waiting for the manifestation
-of sons of God.&#8221; Rom. <small>VIII</small>,
-19.</p>
-
-<p>The actual fact is that this Life has,
-profoundly or remotely, touched every
-personal life in Europe for a thousand
-years and has been the goal and standard
-for all aspiring souls. He is the pattern
-in the mount, the <i>a fronte</i> force which
-has drawn the individual and the race
-steadily up to their higher destiny. On
-the spiritual side of &#8220;the great divide&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
-the goal is in sight and the goal is an
-efficient factor in the process of the evolution
-of the man within man.</p>
-
-<p>But this pattern-aspect of the Christ
-life is only one aspect, and we must not
-raise it out of due balance and perspective.
-<i>Christ is God humanly revealed.</i>
-As soon as we realize that personality is
-always a revelation of the ultimate reality
-of the universe there are no metaphysical
-difficulties in the way of an actual
-incarnation of God. It is rather what
-one would expect. There is no other
-conceivable way in which God could be
-revealed to man. If He is a personal
-being; if He is love and tenderness and
-sympathy, and not mere force, only a
-Person can show Him. And if we are
-not kindred in nature, if we have not
-something in common, in a word if we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
-are not <i>conjunct</i>, then it is hard to see
-how any revelation of Him could be
-made which would mean anything to us.
-But if we are <i>conjunct</i>, as our own self-consciousness
-implies, then an incarnation,
-a complete manifestation in Personality,
-or as Paul puts it, &#8220;in the face
-of Jesus Christ,&#8221; is merely the crown
-and pinnacle of the whole divine process.</p>
-
-<p>If we are wise we shall not bother ourselves
-too much over the metaphysical
-puzzles which the schoolmen have formulated.
-We no longer have the puzzle
-which was so urgent with them, how
-two natures, pole-wide apart, could be
-united in one Person, for we now know
-that divinity and humanity are not pole-wide
-apart. There is something human
-in God and something divine in man and
-they belong together.</p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>We shall not, again, be over-anxious
-about the question of nativity. Note the
-grandeur and the simplicity of Paul&#8217;s text
-about it: &#8220;God sent forth His Son
-born of a woman,&#8221; and there he stops
-with no attempt to furnish details. John
-is equally lofty: &#8220;The Word became
-flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld
-His glory.&#8221; There is no appeal to curiosity.
-There is no syllable about the
-<i>how</i>. Two synoptic gospels have given
-us a simple story of the nativity which
-has profoundly impressed men in all ages
-and which will always appeal to the deepest
-instincts in us. But the <i>method</i> of
-Christ&#8217;s coming, embodied in these two
-accounts, must not be forced. The devout
-soul must be free, as both Paul and
-John were free, to leave the <i>how</i>
-wrapped in mystery. That He came out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
-of our humanity we shall always believe.
-That He came down out of the highest
-divinity we shall equally believe. That
-He was a babe and increased in wisdom,
-that He learned as He grew, that He
-was tempted and learned through temptation,
-are all necessary steps, for there
-is no other path to spiritual Personality
-and He must have been &#8220;made perfect
-through sufferings,&#8221; or He could not
-have been the Captain of salvation.</p>
-
-<p>Speculations and dogmas have taken
-men&#8217;s thoughts away from verifiable
-facts. Here was a life which settled
-forever that the ultimate reality is Love.
-He brought into focus, or rather He
-wove into the living tissue of a personal
-life, the qualities of character which belong
-to an infinitely good being and with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
-quiet simplicity He said, &#8220;If you see
-me you see the Father.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>I have spoken, perhaps, as though the
-revelation of the human goal, and the
-unveiling of the divine Character were
-two different things. Christ does both,
-but both are one. If you bring a diamond
-into the light you occasion a double
-revelation. There is a revelation of
-the glorious beauty of the jewel. While
-it lay in the dark you never knew its
-possibilities. It was easily mistaken for
-a piece of glass. Now it flashes and
-burns and reveals itself because it has
-found the element for which it was
-meant. But there is also at the same
-time a revelation of the mystery of light.
-You discover now new wonders and new
-glories in light itself. Most objects absorb
-part of its rays and imperfectly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
-transmit it to the eye. Here is an object
-which tells you its real nature. Now
-you see it as it is. So Christ shows us
-at once man and God. In a definite historic
-setting and in the limitations of a
-concrete personal life, Christ has unveiled
-the divine nature and taught us to say
-&#8220;Father&#8221; and He has, in doing that,
-showed us the goal and type of human
-life. The Son of God and the Son of
-Man is one person.</p>
-
-<p>Now comes our second question how
-shall we think of the inward, the spiritual,
-the eternal Christ? The first interpreters,
-notably Paul and John, early in
-their experience, came to think of Christ
-as a cosmic Being. They read the universe
-in the light of His revelation and
-soon used His name to name the entire
-manifestation of God: &#8220;In Him,&#8221; says<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
-Paul, &#8220;all things consist.&#8221; &#8220;All things
-were made by Him,&#8221; says John, &#8220;and
-without Him was not anything made that
-was made. In Him was life and the life
-was the light of men.&#8221; John 1, 2, 3.
-It was through Him that they first
-learned that God is Spirit, it was through
-Him that their own spiritual life was
-heightened and that they became conscious
-of a Spirit surging into their own
-souls and they connected this whole wider
-manifestation of God with Him. They
-were right too in doing so. Christ&#8217;s revelation
-of God had produced such spiritual
-effects upon them that they could
-now find Him within themselves, for
-God&#8217;s spiritual presence in us is always
-proportioned to our capacity to have Him
-there. And then, too, they were now
-for the first time able to interpret that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
-which they felt within themselves. If
-they found God, it was because they had
-found Christ.</p>
-
-<p>But they were right in a deeper sense.
-If we think of the historical Christ, as I
-have tried to set forth, as the manifestation
-of the Divine and the human in a
-single personal Life then wherever man
-finds God humanly revealed he properly
-names the revelation with the historic
-name. The historic incarnation was no
-final event. It was the supreme instance
-of God and man in a single life&mdash;the
-<i>type</i> of continuous Divine-human fellowship.
-God&#8217;s human revelation of Himself
-is not limited to a single date. As
-Athanasius so boldly said: He became
-man that we might become divine.
-Christ is the prophesy of <i>a new humanity</i>&mdash;a
-humanity penetrated with the life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
-and power of God and this continued
-personal manifestation of God through
-men is Christ inwardly and spiritually
-revealed.</p>
-
-<p>It is a primary truth of Christianity
-that God reaches man directly. No person
-is insulated. As ocean floods the
-inlets, as sunlight environs the plant,
-so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite
-spirit. There is this difference, however,
-inlet and plant are penetrated
-whether they will or not. Sea and sunshine
-crowd themselves in <i>a tergo</i>. Not
-so with God. He can be received only
-through appreciation and conscious appropriation.
-He comes only through
-doors that are <i>purposely</i> opened for
-Him. A man may live as near God
-as the bubble is to the ocean and yet not
-find Him. He may be &#8220;closer than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
-breathing, nearer than hands or feet,&#8221;
-and still be missed. Historical Christianity
-is dry and formal when it lacks
-the immediate and inward response to
-our Great Companion; but our spirits are
-trained to know Him, to appreciate Him,
-by the mediation of historical revelation.
-A person&#8217;s spiritual life is always
-dwarfed when cut apart from history.
-Mysticism is empty unless it is enriched
-by outward and historical revelation.
-The supreme education of the soul comes
-through an intimate acquaintance with
-Jesus Christ of history. One who
-wished to feel the power of beauty would
-go to some supreme master of color and
-form who could exhibit them on canvas
-and not merely lecture about them. One
-who desired to feel the power of harmony
-would go, not to the boy with his harmonica,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
-but to the Beethovens or Mozarts
-of the race who have revealed what
-an instrument and a human hand can do.
-So he who wishes to realize and practice
-the presence of God must inform himself
-at the source and fount, must come face
-to face with Him who was the highest
-human revelation of God. No one of
-us can interpret his own longings or purposes
-until he reads them off in the light
-of some loftier type of personality. That
-person understands himself best who
-grows intimate in fellowship with some
-noble character. And any man who
-wishes to discover the meaning of the inward
-voice and to interpret the divine
-breathings which come to human souls
-needs to be informed and illuminated by
-the supreme revelation of the ages.</p>
-
-<p>With perfect fitness, then, we speak of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
-the inward Presence as the spiritual
-Christ. It is the continuation of the
-same revelation which was made under
-the &#8220;Syrian blue.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>The procession of the Holy Ghost is
-a continuous revelation and exhibition of
-Christ within men. Whether we use the
-expression Holy Spirit or Christ within
-or spiritual Christ, we mean God <i>operating
-upon human spirits and consciously
-witnessed and appreciated in them</i>.
-&#8220;The Lord is the Spirit,&#8221; cries Paul
-when, with unveiled face, he discovers
-that he is being transformed into His
-image from glory to glory. &#8220;Joined to
-the Lord in one Spirit,&#8221; is another testimony
-of the same sort.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately the doctrine of the
-Christ within&mdash;&#8220;the real presence&#8221;&mdash;has
-generally been held vaguely, and it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
-has easily run into error and even fanaticism.
-The most common error has
-come from the prevalent view that when
-the Spirit&mdash;the inward Christ&mdash;comes
-in, the man goes out. It has been supposed
-that the finite is suppressed and
-the infinite supplants it and operates instead
-of it. This view is not only contrary
-to Scripture, but also contrary to
-psychological possibility. What really
-happens is that the human spirit through
-its awakened appreciation appropriates
-into its own life the divine Life which
-was always near and was always meant
-for it. The true view has been well put
-by August Sabatier<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>: &#8220;It is not enough
-to represent the Spirit of God as coming
-to the help of man&#8217;s spirit, supplying
-strength which he lacks, an associate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
-or juxtaposed force, a supernatural auxiliary.
-Paul&#8217;s thought has no room
-for such a moral and psychological
-dualism, although popular language easily
-permits it. His thought is quite
-otherwise profound. There is no simple
-addition of divine power and human
-power in the Christian life. The Spirit
-of God identifies itself with the human
-me into which it enters and <i>whose life it
-becomes</i>. If we may so speak, it is individualized
-in the new moral personality
-which it creates. A sort of metamorphosis,
-a transubstantiation, if the
-word may be permitted, takes place in
-the human being. Having been carnal
-it has become spiritual. A &#8216;new man&#8217;
-arises from the old man by the creative
-act of the spirit of God. Paul calls
-Christians <a href=" " title="pneumatikoi" style="background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#000000;text-decoration:none">&#960;&#957;&#949;&#965;&#956;&#945;&#964;&#953;&#954;&#972;&#953;</a>, properly speaking,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
-&#8216;the inspired.&#8217; They are moved
-and guided by the Spirit of God. The
-spirit dwells in them as an immanent virtue,
-whose fruits are organically developed
-as those of the flesh. Supernatural
-gifts become natural, or rather, at this
-mystical height, the antithesis created by
-scholastic rationalism becomes meaningless
-and is obliterated.&#8221; That is precisely
-my view and if I had not found
-it here so well said I should have put
-the same idea into my own words.
-There are no known limits to the possible
-translation of the Spirit of God&mdash;the
-Eternal Christ&mdash;into human personality.
-There are all degrees and
-varieties of it as there are all degrees
-and varieties of physical life. One
-stands looking at a century-old oak tree
-and he wonders how this marvelous thing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
-ever rose out of the dead earth where
-its roots are. As a matter of fact it did
-not. A tree is largely transformed sunlight.
-There is from first to last an
-earth element to be sure, but the tree is
-forever drawing upon the streams of sunlight
-which flood it and it builds the intangible
-light energy into leaf and blossom
-and fibre until there stands the old
-monarch, actually living on sunshine!
-But the little daisy at its feet, modest
-and delicate, is equally consolidated sunshine,
-though it pushes its face hardly
-six inches from the soil in which it was
-born. So one spirit differs from another
-spirit in glory. Some have but feebly
-drawn upon the Spiritual Light out of
-which strong lives are builded, others
-have raised the unveiled face to the supreme
-Light and have translated it into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
-a life of spiritual beauty and moral fibre.
-Thus the revelation of God in the flesh
-goes on from age to age. The Christ-life
-propagates itself like all life-types&mdash;the
-last Adam proves to be a life-giving
-spirit. He is the first born among many
-brethren. The actual re-creation, the
-genuine identification of self with Christ
-may go on until a man may even say&mdash;&#8220;Christ
-lives in me;&#8221; &#8220;I bear in my
-body the marks of the Lord Jesus;&#8221; &#8220;It
-has pleased God to reveal His Son in
-me.&#8221;</p>
-
-
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;See if, for every finger of thy hands,</div>
-<div class="verse">There be not found, that day the world shall end</div>
-<div class="verse">Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ&#8217;s word,</div>
-<div class="verse">That He will grow incorporate with all,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
-<div class="verse">With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,</div>
-<div class="verse">Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?</div>
-<div class="verse">Yet Christ saith, this He lived and died to do.</div>
-<div class="verse">Call Christ, then, the illimitable God.&#8221;</div>
-<div class="verse">I <small>DO</small>.</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">The Atonement</h2></div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<blockquote>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>&#8220;Merely to repeat His words is not to continue
-His work; we must reproduce His life,
-passion and death. He desires to live again in
-each one of His disciples in order that He may
-continue to suffer, to bestow Himself, and to
-labor in and through them towards the redemption
-of humanity, until all prodigal and lost
-children be found and brought back to their
-Father&#8217;s house. Thus it is that, instead of being
-removed far from human history, the life and
-death of Christ once more take their place in
-history, setting forth the law that governs it,
-and, by ceaselessly increasing the power of redemptive
-sacrifice, transform and govern it, and
-direct it towards its divine end.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Auguste Sabatier</i>, &#8220;<i>The Atonement</i>,&#8221; <i>p. 134.</i></p>
-</blockquote>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">THE ATONEMENT.</h2></div>
-
-
-<p class="drop-cap">IT is a bold and hazardous task to say
-anything on this subject and I must
-tread with bare, hushed feet, for it is a
-holy realm which we are essaying to enter.
-It must be understood from the
-first that I am not going to thresh over
-a heap of theological straw. I am not
-going into that realm of abstract metaphysics
-where one can always prove any
-thesis one may happen to assume at the
-start. I shall keep close to human experience.
-The pillars of our faith must
-be planted, not on some artificial construction
-of logic, but deep down in the
-actual experience of Life. There are
-external principles of the spiritual Life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
-which are as irresistible and compelling
-as the laws of physics or the propositions
-of Euclid. The task of the religious
-teacher is to discover and proclaim these
-elemental truths, but we always find it so
-much easier to fall back on dogma and
-theories which have been spun out of
-men&#8217;s heads! In the Gospels and in
-Paul&#8217;s letters the laboratory method prevails&mdash;the
-writers ground their assertions
-on experienced facts, they tell what
-they have found and verified, and they
-always ask their readers to put their
-truths to the test of a personal experience
-like their own. Our modern method
-must be a return to this inward laboratory
-method.</p>
-
-<p>No one can carefully study the theories
-of the atonement which have prevailed
-at the various epochs of Christian history<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
-without discovering that there has been
-in them a very large mixture of paganism.
-They have been deeply colored by
-mythology and by the crude ideas of
-primitive sacrifice. They start, not with
-the idea of God which Christ has revealed,
-but with a capricious sovereign,
-angry at sorely tempted, sinning man,
-and forgiving only after a sacrifice has
-satisfied Him. They treat sin not as a
-fact of experience, but as the result of
-an ancestral fall, which piled up an infinite
-debt against the race. They all
-move in the realm of law rather than in
-the domain of personality. They are
-all, more or less, vitiated by abstract and
-mathematical reasoning, while sin and
-salvation are always affairs of the inward
-life, and are of all things personal
-and concrete. The first step to a coercive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
-conception of the atonement is to get
-out of the realm of legal phrases into
-the region of personality.</p>
-
-<p>Sin is no abstract dogma. It is not a
-debt which somebody can pay and so
-wash off the slate. Sin is a fact within
-our lives. It is a condition of heart and
-will. There is no sin apart from a sinner.
-Wherever sin exists there is a conscious
-deviation from a standard&mdash;a sag
-of the nature, and it produces an effect
-upon the entire personality. The person
-who sins disobeys a sense of right.
-He falls below his vision of the good.
-He sees a path, but he does not walk in
-it. He hears a voice, but he says &#8220;no&#8221;
-instead of &#8220;yes.&#8221; He is aware of a
-higher self which makes its appeal, but
-he lets the lower have the reins. There
-is no description of sin anywhere to compare<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
-with the powerful narrative out of
-the actual life of the Apostle Paul, found
-in Romans <small>VII</small>: 9-25. The thing which
-moves us as we read it is the picture here
-drawn of our own state. A lower nature
-dominates us and spoils our life.
-&#8220;What I would I do not; what I would
-not that I do.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>The most solemn fact of sin is its accumulation
-of consequences in the life of
-the person. Each sin tends to produce
-a <i>set</i> of the nature. It weaves a mesh
-of habit. It makes toward a dominion,
-or as Paul calls it, a <i>law of sin</i> in the
-man&mdash;&#8220;Wretched Man,&#8221; who sees a
-shining possible life, but stays below,
-chained to a body of sin. Sin, real sin,
-and not the fictitious abstraction which
-figures in theories, is a condition of personal
-will and action much more than a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
-debt to be paid or forgiven. The problem
-is far deeper. The only possible
-remedy here is to get a new man, a
-transformation of personality. Relief
-from <i>penalty</i> will not stead. Forgiveness
-is not enough. Relief from <i>penalty</i>,
-forgiveness alone, might spoil us,
-and make us think too lightly of our own
-sin. No, it is not a judicial relief which
-our panting, sin-defeated hearts cry out
-for. We want more than the knowledge
-that the past is covered and will
-not count on the books against us. We
-want blackness replaced by whiteness, we
-want weakness replaced by power, we
-want to experience a new set of our innermost
-nature which will make us more
-than conquerors. We seek deliverance
-not from penalty and debt&mdash;but deliverance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
-from the life of sin into a life of
-holy will.</p>
-
-<p>There is still another aspect to sin
-which must be considered before we can
-fully appreciate the way of salvation
-which the Gospel reveals. Sin not only
-spoils the sinner&#8217;s life and drags him
-into slavery. It separates him from God.
-It opens a chasm between him and his
-heavenly Father, or to vary the figure
-it casts a shadow on God&#8217;s face. God
-seems far away and stern. The sense
-of warmth and tenderness vanishes.
-The sinner can see God only through
-the veil of his sins. This is a universal
-experience. The same thing happens in
-our relations with men. As soon as we
-have injured a person, treated him unfairly,
-played him false, a chasm opens
-between our life and his. We transfer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
-our changed attitude to him. We dislike
-to meet him. We have no comfort in
-his presence. We interpret all his actions
-through the shadow which our deed
-has created. Our sense of wrong-doing
-makes us afraid of the person wronged.</p>
-
-<p>The conduct of little children offers
-a good illustration of this subjective effect
-of sin, because in them one catches
-the attitude at its primitive stage before
-reflection colors it. Some little child
-has disobeyed his father and discovers,
-perhaps for the first time, that he has
-&#8220;something inside which he cannot do
-what he wants to with,&#8221; as a little boy
-said. When he begins to think of meeting
-his father he grows uncomfortable.
-It is not punishment he is afraid of, he
-has no anticipation of that. He is conscious
-of wrong doing and it has made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
-a chasm between himself and his father.
-He reads his father&#8217;s attitude now in the
-shadow of his deed. He has no joy or
-confidence in meeting him. Something
-strange has come between them.</p>
-
-<p>What does the little fellow do? He
-instinctively feels the need of some sacrifice.
-He must soften his father by
-giving him something. He breaks open
-his bank and brings his father his pennies,
-or he brings in his hand the most
-precious plaything he owns, and acts out
-his troubled inward condition. He
-wants the gap closed and he feels that it
-will cost something to get it closed.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
-
-That is human nature. That feeling is
-deep-rooted in man wherever he is found.
-He is conscious that sin separates and
-he feels that something costly and precious
-is required to close the chasm. Sacrifice
-is one of the deepest and most permanent
-facts of the budding spiritual
-life. Its origin is far back in history.
-The tattered papyrus, the fragment of
-baked clay, the pictorial inscription of
-the most primitive sort, all bear witness
-to this immemorial custom. It is as old
-as smiling or weeping, as hard to trace
-to a beginning as loving or hating. It
-is bound up with man&#8217;s sense of guilt,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
-and was born when conscience was born.
-Dark and fantastic are many of the chapters
-of the long story of man&#8217;s efforts
-to square the account. Priests have
-seized upon this instinctive tendency and
-have twisted it into abnormal shapes, but
-they did not create it&mdash;it is elemental.
-The idea of an angry God who must be
-appeased and satisfied was born with
-this consciousness of guilt, it is a natural
-product of the shadow of human sin.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
-The historic theories of the atonement,
-inherited from the Roman church, were
-all formulated under the sway of this
-idea.</p>
-
-<p>The two fundamental aspects of sin,
-then, are (1) its inward moral effect
-upon the soul, its enslaving power over
-the sinner, and (2) its tendency to open
-a chasm between God and man, to make
-God appear full of wrath. How does
-Christ meet this human situation? What
-is the heart of the Gospel? First of all,
-Christ reverses the entire pagan attitude.
-He reveals God as a Father whose very
-inherent nature is love and tenderness and
-forgiveness. In place of a sovereign demanding
-justice, He shows an infinite
-Lover. We must either give up the parable
-of the Prodigal Son, or accept this
-view of God. But this parable fits the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
-entire Gospel. John was only uttering
-what Jesus Christ taught by every act
-of His life and what He exhibited supremely
-on His cross, when He said
-&#8220;God is Love.&#8221; To surrender this
-truth, and to start with the assumption
-of a God who must be appeased, or reconciled
-or changed in attitude is to surrender
-the heart of the Gospel, and to
-weave the shining threads of our message
-of salvation in with the black
-threads of a pagan warp. He who came
-to show us the Father, has unmistakably
-showed Him full of love, not only for
-the saint, for the actual son; but also
-for the sinner, the potential son. Either
-God <i>is</i> Love, or we must conclude that
-Christ has not revealed Him as He is.</p>
-
-<p>But the great difficulty is that so many
-fail to see what Divine Love and human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
-sin involve when they come together. It
-has superficially been assumed that if
-God is a loving Father He will lightly
-overlook sin and cannot be hard upon
-the sinner. They catch at a soft view of
-sin and patch up a rose water theory of
-its cure. This soft view has appealed to
-those who like an easy religion, and it
-has often driven the evangelical Christian
-to an opposite extreme, which finds
-no support in the Gospel. To arrive at
-a deeper view we must go back to Christ
-and go down into the deeps of love as
-we know it in actual human life.</p>
-
-<p>True love is never weak and thin, and
-unconcerned about the character of the
-beloved. The father does not &#8220;lay
-aside&#8221; his love when he punishes his
-erring boy, and keeps him impressed with
-the reality of moral distinctions. It is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
-the father&#8217;s intense love which wields the
-rod. All true corrections and chastisements
-flow out of love. Even Dante
-knew this, when he wrote on the door
-of Hell, &#8220;Love was my maker.&#8221; It is
-an ignorant and mushy love that cannot
-rise above kisses and sugar plums, and
-it is extremely superficial to set up a
-schism between love and justice.</p>
-
-<p>But that is not all. Love always involves
-vicarious suffering. Love is an
-organic principle. It carries with it the
-necessity of sharing life with other persons,
-and in a world of imperfect persons,
-it means not only sharing gains and
-triumphs, it means, too, sharing losses
-and defeats. No man can sin in a sin-tight
-compartment. Suffer for his own
-sin the sinner assuredly will. But he
-does not stop there. Many innocent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
-persons will suffer for it, too. This is
-one of the tragic aspects of life which has
-baffled many a lone sufferer like Job.
-Those who are nearest and closest to the
-sufferer will suffer most, but his sin has
-endless possibilities of causing suffering
-upon persons far remote in time and
-space. That ancient figure of the ripples
-from the little pebble, which sends
-rings to the farthest shores of the sea,
-is not overdrawn. Not one of us can
-estimate the havoc of his sin, or forecast
-the trail of suffering which it will leave
-behind it. So long as life remains organic
-there will be vicarious suffering.</p>
-
-<p>But that is only one side of life. Holiness
-also involves a like suffering.
-There are no holiness-tight compartments.
-No man can be holy unto himself.
-Just as far as he has any rag of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
-holiness he must share it&mdash;he must feel
-himself a debtor to others who lack&mdash;he
-must take up the task of making others
-holy. <i>That costs something.</i></p>
-
-<p>You cannot command or compel people
-into holiness, you cannot increase their
-spiritual stature one cubit by any kind
-of force or compulsion. You can do it
-only by sharing your life with them, by
-making them feel your goodness, by your
-love and sacrifice for them. When a
-martyr dies for some truth, men suddenly
-discover for the first time how much
-it is worth and they eagerly pursue it over
-all obstacles. In spiritual things we
-always make our appeal to the <i>cost</i> of
-the truth or the principle. Think of the
-blood which has been shed for freedom
-of conscience! Remember what a price
-has been paid in blood for the principle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
-of democracy! Thus we speak of all
-the privileges of life. They are ours
-because somebody has felt that they were
-worth the cost, because somebody has
-died that we might freely have them.
-It is the tragedy of human life that we
-must suffer through the sin of others,
-and we must suffer also if we would
-carry goodness or holiness into other
-lives. Every bit of goodness which ever
-prevails anywhere in this world has cost
-somebody something.</p>
-
-<p>This principle of vicarious suffering is
-no late arrival; it appears at every scale
-of life, heightening as we go up&mdash;becoming
-less blind and more voluntary.
-It was a central truth of Christ&#8217;s revelation
-that this principle does not stop with
-man; it goes on up to the top of the
-spiritual scale. It finds its complete and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
-final expression in God Himself. God&#8217;s
-life and our lives are bound together, as
-a vine with branches, as a body with
-members. <i>So corporate</i> are we that no
-one can give a cup of cold water to the
-least person in the world without giving
-it to Him! But He is perfect and we
-are imperfect, He is holy and we sin.
-If the wayward boy, who wastes his life,
-pains the heart of his mother whose life
-is wrapped up in him, can we fling our
-lives away and not make our Heavenly
-Father suffer? The cross is the answer.
-He has undertaken to make Sons of God
-out of such creatures as we are, to take
-us out of the pit and the miry clay, to
-put spiritual songs in our mouths and
-write His own name on our foreheads,
-will that cost Him nothing? Again, the
-cross is the answer.</p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>Here we discover&mdash;it is the main
-miracle of the Gospel&mdash;that the original
-movement to bridge the chasm comes
-from the Divine side. What man hoped
-to do, but could not, with his bleating
-lamb and timid dove, God Himself has
-done. He has reached across the chasm,
-taking on Himself the sacrifice and cost,
-to show the sinner that the only obstruction
-to peace and reconciliation is in the
-sinner himself. &#8220;This is love, not that
-we loved Him, but that He loved us,&#8221;
-and this is sacrifice, not that we give our
-bulls and goats to please Him, but that
-He gives Himself to draw us.</p>
-
-<p>Browning puts it all in a line:</p>
-
-<p class="center">&#8220;Thou needs must love me who have died for thee.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>This is the key to Paul&#8217;s great message<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
-which won the Roman Empire. It was
-not a new philosophy. It was the irresistible
-appeal to love, exhibited in Christ
-crucified. &#8220;He loved me and gave
-Himself for me;&#8221; &#8220;We are more than
-conquerors through Him that loved us.&#8221;
-&#8220;I am persuaded that neither death, nor
-life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
-powers, nor things present, nor things to
-come, nor height, nor depth, nor any
-other created thing, shall be able to separate
-us from the <i>love of God</i>, which is
-in Christ Jesus our Lord.&#8221; Sacrificing
-love, the Divine Heart suffering over sin,
-God Himself taking up the infinite burden
-and cost of raising men like us into
-sons of God like Himself; this is the
-revelation in the face of Jesus Christ.
-The heart that can stand <i>that</i> untouched
-can stand anything.</p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>The power unto salvation, the dynamic
-of the Gospel is in the cross, which exhibits
-in temporal setting the eternal fact,
-that God suffers over sin, that He takes
-upon Himself the cost of winning sons
-to glory and that His love reaches out to
-the most sin-scarred wanderer, who
-clutches the swine husks in his lean
-hands.</p>
-
-<p>But the appeal of love and sacrifice is
-not the whole of the truth which this
-word atonement covers. We have been
-seeing, in some feeble way, how God in
-Christ enters into human life, identifies
-Himself with us, and reveals the <i>energy
-of Grace</i>. But we cannot stop with
-&#8220;what has been done for us without us.&#8221;
-Sin, as has been already said, is an affair
-of personal choice&mdash;it is a condition of
-inward life. It is not an abstract entity,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
-in a metaphysical realm. It is the attitude
-of heart and will in a living, throbbing
-person who cannot get free from the
-lower nature in himself. So too with
-Salvation. It cannot be a <i>transaction</i> in
-some realm foreign to the individual himself.
-It is not a plan, or scheme. It is
-an actual deliverance, a new creation.
-It is nothing short of a redeemed inward
-nature. Such a change cannot be
-wrought without the man himself. It
-cannot come by <i>a tergo</i> compulsion. It
-must be by a positive winning of the will.
-A dynamic faith in the man must cooperate
-with that energy from God. Something
-comes down from above, but something
-must also go up from below. Paul,
-who has given the most vital interpretation
-of both sides of the truth of redemption&mdash;the
-objective and the subjective&mdash;that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
-has ever been expressed,
-uses the word &#8220;faith&#8221; to name the human
-part of the process.</p>
-
-<p>Faith, in Paul&#8217;s sense of it, means an
-identification of ourselves with Christ, by
-which we re-live His life. As He identified
-Himself with sinning humanity, so,
-by the attraction of his love, we identify
-ourselves with His victorious Life. We
-go down into death with Him&mdash;a death
-to sin and the old self&mdash;and we rise
-with Him into newness of life, to live
-henceforth unto Him who loved us.</p>
-
-<p>There is no easy road out of a nature
-of sin into a holy nature. It is vain to
-try and patch up a scheme which will
-relieve us of our share of the tragedy of
-sin&mdash;or to put it another way, the travail
-for the birth of the sons of God.
-The Redeemer suffers, but He does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
-suffer in our stead&mdash;He suffers in our
-behalf, [<a href=" " title="hyper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#000000;text-decoration:none">&#8017;&#960;&#941;&#961;</a> not <a href=" " title="anti" style="background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#000000;text-decoration:none">&#940;&#957;&#964;&#953;</a>]. He makes His
-appeal of love to us to share His life
-as He shares ours. It is Paul&#8217;s goal&mdash;a
-flying goal, surely&mdash;&#8220;to know Him
-and the power of His resurrection, and
-the fellowship of His sufferings, being
-made conformable unto His death.&#8221;
-The boldest word which comes from his
-pen was: &#8220;I rejoice in my sufferings <i>on
-your behalf</i>; and fill up that which is
-lacking of the afflictions of Christ <i>in my
-flesh</i>, for His body&#8217;s sake, which is the
-Church.&#8221; (Col. 1, 24.) It is not repeating
-His words that saves us, it is reliving
-His life, co-dying, and co-rising
-with Him, and entering with a radiant
-joy, caught from His face, into the common
-task of redeeming a world of sin to
-a kingdom of love and holiness.</p>
-
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>In that great book of spiritual symbolism&mdash;the
-Book of Revelation&mdash;those
-who overcome are builded, as pillars, into
-the Temple of God, and He writes His
-new name upon them. The new name
-is Redeemer. Those who have come up
-through great tribulation and have
-washed their robes in the blood of the
-Lamb are builded in as a permanent part
-of the Temple, where God reveals Himself,
-and they share with Him in the
-great redeeming work of the ages.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever it has meant in the past, in
-the ages when the races were sloughing
-off their paganism, in the future the
-atonement must be vital and dynamic.
-It must be put in language which grips
-the heart, convinces the mind, and carries
-the will. It will name for us the
-Divine-human travail for a redeemed humanity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
-It will cease to signify a way
-by which God was appeased and it will
-come to express, as it did in the apostolic
-days, the identification of God with us in
-the person of Christ, and the identification,
-by the power of His love, of ourselves
-with Him. We shall pass from
-the terms which were inherited from
-magic and ancient sacerdotal rites and
-we shall use instead the language of our
-riper experience. We shall abandon
-illustrations drawn from law courts and
-judicial decisions and we shall rise to
-conceptions which fit the actual facts of
-inward, personal experience where higher
-and lower natures contend for the mastery.
-The drama will not be in some
-foreign realm, apart from human consciousness,
-it will rise in our thought into
-the supreme drama of history&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
-tragedy of the spiritual universe&mdash;the
-battle of holiness with sin&mdash;the blood
-and tears which tell the cost of sin and
-create in response a passion for the Divine
-Lover who is our Father. It will
-stop at no fictitious righteousness which
-is counted unto us, as though it were
-ours. We shall demand an actual redemption
-of the entire self which has become
-righteous, because it lives, in
-Christ&#8217;s power, the life which He lived.</p>
-
-<p>We shall learn to tell the story in such
-a way that the cross will not seem to be
-brought in, as an afterthought, to repair
-the damage wrought by an unforeseen
-catastrophe. It will stand as the consummation
-of an elemental spiritual movement
-and it will be organic with the entire
-process of the making of men.
-With charm and power, Ruskin has told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
-how the black dirt that soils the city
-pavement is composed of four elements
-which make, when they follow the law of
-their nature, the sapphire, the opal, the
-diamond and the dew drop. The glory
-and splendor do not appear in the black
-dirt, but the possibilities are there.
-When the law of the nature of these elements
-has full sweep the glory comes
-out. Man was not meant for a sinner,
-and to live a dark, chaotic life. There
-are far other possibilities in him. He is
-a potential child of God. The full nature
-has broken forth in one life and
-men beheld its glory. &#8220;To as many as
-receive Him, to them gives He power to
-become the sons of God.&#8221;</p>
-
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">Prayer</h2></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>By prayer, I do not mean any bodily exercise
-of the outward man; but <i>the going forth of the
-spirit of Life towards the Fountain of Life, for
-fullness and satisfaction: The natural tendency
-of the poor, rent, derived spirit, towards the
-Fountain of Spirits</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Isaac Penington.</i></p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;I, that still pray at morning and at eve,</div>
-<div class="verse">Loving those roots that feed us from the past,</div>
-<div class="verse">And prizing more than Plato things I learned</div>
-<div class="verse">At that best Academe, a mother&#8217;s knee,</div>
-<div class="verse">Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed,</div>
-<div class="verse">Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt</div>
-<div class="verse">That perfect disenthralment which is God.&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Lowell&#8217;s &#8220;Cathedral.&#8221;</i></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&#8220;The aim of prayer is to attain to the habit
-of goodness, so as no longer merely to have the
-things that are good, but rather to be good.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p class="right"><i>Clement of Alexandria.</i></p></blockquote>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
-<h2 class="nobreak">PRAYER.</h2></div>
-
-
-<p class="drop-cap">WE come now to the human search
-for a divine fellowship and
-companionship. Its complete history
-would be the whole story of religion.
-In this little book I shall speak only of
-certain definite human ways of seeking
-fellowship with God, namely, of prayer.</p>
-
-<p>Prayer is an extraordinary act. The
-eyes close, the face lights up, the body
-is moved with feeling, and (it may be in
-the presence of a multitude) the person
-praying talks in perfect confidence with
-somebody, invisible and intangible, and
-who articulates no single word of response.
-It is astonishing. And yet it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
-a human custom as old as marriage, as
-ancient as grave-making, older than any
-city on the globe. There is no human
-activity which so stubbornly resists being
-reduced to a bread and butter basis.
-Men have tried to explain the origin of
-prayer by the straits of physical hunger,
-but it will no more fit into utilitarian systems
-than joy over beauty will. It is an
-elemental and unique attitude of the soul
-and it will not be &#8220;explained&#8221; until we
-fathom the origin of the soul itself!</p>
-
-<p>But is not the advance of science making
-prayer impossible? In unscientific
-ages the universe presented no rigid order.
-It was easy to believe that the
-ordinary course of material processes
-might be altered or reversed. The
-world was conceived as full of invisible
-beings who could affect the course of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
-events at will, while above all, there was
-a Being who might interfere with things
-at any moment, in any way.</p>
-
-<p>Our world to-day is not so conceived.
-Our universe is organized and linked.
-Every event is <i>caused</i>. Caprice is banished.
-There is no such thing in the
-physical world as an uncaused event. If
-we met a person who told us that he had
-seen a train of cars drawn along with no
-couplings and held together by the mutual
-affection of the passengers in the
-different cars we should know that he was
-an escaped lunatic and we should go on
-pinning our faith to couplings as before.
-Even the weather is no more capricious
-than the course of a planet in space.
-Every change of wind and the course of
-every flying cloud is determined by previous
-conditions. Complex these combinations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
-of circumstances certainly are,
-but if the weather man could get data
-enough he could foretell the storm, the
-rain, the drought exactly as well as the
-astronomer can foretell the eclipse.
-There is no little demon, there is no tall,
-bright angel, who holds back the shower
-or who pushes the cloud before him; no
-being, good or bad, who will capriciously
-alter the march of molecules because it
-suits our fancy to ask that the chain of
-causes be interrupted. What is true of
-the weather is true in every physical
-realm. Our universe has no caprice in
-it. Every thing is linked, and the
-forked lightning never consults our preferences,
-nor do cyclones travel exclusively
-where bad men live. As of old the
-rain falls on just and unjust alike, on
-saint and sinner. The knowledge of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
-iron situation has had a desolating effect
-upon many minds. The heavens have
-become as brass and the earth bars of
-iron. To ask for the interruption of the
-march of atoms seems to the scientific
-thinker the absurdest of delusions and
-all fanes of prayer appear fruitless.
-Others resort to the faith that there are
-&#8220;gaps&#8221; in the causal system and that in
-these unorganized regions&mdash;the domains
-so far unexplored&mdash;there are
-realms for miracle and divine wonder.
-The supernatural, on this theory is to be
-found out beyond the region of the
-&#8220;natural,&#8221; and forcing itself through
-the &#8220;gaps.&#8221; Those of this faith are
-filled with dread as they see the so called
-&#8220;gaps&#8221; closing, somewhat as the pious
-Greek dreaded to see Olympus climbed.</p>
-
-<p>There are still others who evade the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
-difficulty by holding that God has made
-the universe, is the Author of its &#8220;laws,&#8221;
-is Omnipotent and therefore can change
-them at Will, or can admit exceptions in
-their operation. This view is well illustrated
-in the faith of George Mller,
-who writes: &#8220;When I lose such a thing
-as a key, I ask the Lord to direct me to
-it, and I look for an answer; when a person
-with whom I have made an appointment
-does not come, according to the
-fixed time, and I begin to be inconvenienced
-by it, I ask the Lord to be pleased
-to hasten him to me, and I look for an
-answer; when I do not understand a passage
-of the word of God, I lift up my
-heart to the Lord that He would be
-pleased by His Holy Spirit to instruct
-me, and I expect to be taught.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>This view takes us back once more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
-into a world of caprice. It introduces
-a world in which almost anything may
-happen. We can no longer calculate
-upon anything with assurance. Even
-our <i>speed</i>, as we walk, is regulated by
-the capricious wish of our friends. But
-that is not all, it is a low, crude view
-of God&mdash;a Being off above the world
-who makes &#8220;laws&#8221; like a modern legislator
-and again changes them to meet a
-new situation, who is after all only a bigger
-man in the sky busily moving and
-shifting the scenes of the time-drama as
-requests reach him.</p>
-
-<p>None of these positions is tenable.
-The first is not, for prayer is a necessity
-to full life, and the other two are not,
-because they do not fairly face the facts
-which are forced upon those who accept
-scientific methods of search and of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
-thought. This physical universe is a
-stubborn affair. It is not loose and adjustable,
-and worked, for our private
-convenience, by wires or strings at a central
-station. It is a world of order, a
-realm of discipline. It is our business
-to discover a possible line of march in
-the world <i>as it is</i>, to find how to triumph
-over obstacles and difficulty, if we meet
-them&mdash;not to resort to &#8220;shun pikes&#8221;
-or cries for &#8220;exception in our particular
-case.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>The real difficulty is that our generation
-has been conceiving of prayer on
-too low a plane. Faith is not endangered
-by the advance of science. It is
-endangered by the stagnation of religious
-conceptions. If religion halts at
-some primitive level and science marches
-on to new conquests of course there will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
-be difficulty. But let us not fetter science,
-let us rather <i>promote</i> religion.
-We need to rise to a truer view of God
-and to a loftier idea of prayer. It is
-another case of &#8220;leveling up.&#8221; On the
-higher religious plane no collision between
-prayer and science will be found.
-There will be no sealing of the lips in
-the presence of the discovery that all is
-law.</p>
-
-<p>The prayer which science <i>has</i> affected
-is the spurious kind of prayer, which can
-be reduced to a utilitarian, &#8220;bread and
-butter,&#8221; basis. Most enlightened persons
-now are shocked to hear &#8220;patriotic&#8221;
-ministers asking God to direct the
-bullets of their country&#8217;s army so as to
-kill their enemies in battle, and we all
-hesitate to use prayer for the attainment
-of low, selfish ends, but we need to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
-cleanse our sight still farther and rise
-above the conception of prayer as an easy
-means to a desired end.</p>
-
-<p>It is a fact that there are <i>valid prayer
-effects</i> and there is plenty of experimental
-evidence to prove the <i>energy of prayer</i>.
-It is literally true that &#8220;more things are
-wrought by prayer than this world
-dreams of.&#8221; There are no assignable
-bounds to the effects upon mind and
-body of the prayer of living faith.
-Some of those particular cases of George
-Mller&#8217;s are quite within the range of
-experience. The prayer for the lost key
-may well produce a heightened energy of
-consciousness which pushes open a door
-into a deeper stratum of memory, and
-the man rises from his knees and goes
-to the spot where the key was put. So
-too with the passage of Scripture. No<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
-doubt many a man has come back from
-his closet where the turmoil of life was
-hushed and where all the inward currents
-set toward God, many of us I say, come
-back with a new energy and with cleared
-vision and we can grasp what before
-eluded us, we can see farther into the
-spiritual meaning of any of God&#8217;s revelations.
-There is perhaps never a sweep
-of the soul out into the wider regions of
-the spiritual world which does not
-heighten the powers of the person who
-experiences it. Profound changes in
-physical condition, almost as profound
-as the stigmata of St. Francis, have in
-our own times followed the prayer of
-faith and many of us in our daily problems
-and perplexities have seen the light
-break through, as we prayed, and shine
-out, like a search light, on some plain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
-path of duty or of service. There is unmistakable
-evidence of incoming energy
-from beyond the margin of what we usually
-call &#8220;ourselves.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>We have not to do with a God who is
-&#8220;off there&#8221; above the sky, who can deal
-with us only through &#8220;the violation of
-physical law.&#8221; We have instead a God
-&#8220;in whom we live and move and are,&#8221;
-whose Being opens into ours, and ours
-into His, who is the very Life of our
-lives, the matrix of our personality; and
-there is no separation between us unless
-we make it ourselves. No man, scientist
-or layman, knows where the curve is
-to be drawn about the personal &#8220;self.&#8221;
-No man can say with authority that the
-circulation of Divine currents into the
-soul&#8217;s inward life is impossible. On
-the contrary, Energy does come in. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
-our highest moments we find ourselves in
-contact with wider spiritual Life than
-belongs to our normal <i>me</i>.</p>
-
-<p>But true prayer is something higher.
-It is immediate spiritual fellowship.
-Even if science could demonstrate that
-prayer could never effect any kind of
-utilitarian results, still prayer on its loftier
-side would remain untouched, and
-persons of spiritual reach would go on
-praying as before. If we could say
-nothing more we could at least affirm
-that prayer, like faith, is itself the victory.
-The seeking is the finding. The
-wrestling is the blessing. It is no more
-a means to something else than love is.
-It is an end in itself. It is its own excuse
-for being. It is a kind of first fruit
-of the mystical nature of personality.
-The edge of the self is always touching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
-a circle of life beyond itself to which it
-responds. The human heart is sensitive
-to God as the retina is to light waves.
-The soul possesses a native yearning for
-intercourse and companionship which
-takes it to God as naturally as the home
-instinct of the pigeon takes it to the place
-of its birth. There is in every normal
-soul a spontaneous outreach, a free play
-of spirit which gives it onward yearning
-of unstilled desire.</p>
-
-<p>It is no mere subjective instinct&mdash;no
-blind outreach. If it met no response,
-no answer, it would soon be weeded out
-of the race. It would shrivel like the
-functionless organ. We could not long
-continue to pray in faith if we lost the
-assurance that there is a Person who
-cares, and who actually corresponds with
-us. Prayer has stood the test of experience.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
-In fact the very desire to pray
-is in itself prophetic of a heavenly
-Friend. A subjective need always carries
-an implication of an objective stimulus
-which has provoked the need. There
-is no hunger, as Fiske has well shown,
-for anything not tasted, there is no search
-for anything which is not in the environment,
-for the environment has always
-produced the appetite. So this native
-need of the soul rose out of the divine
-origin of the soul, and it has steadily
-verified itself as a safe guide to reality.</p>
-
-<p>What is at first a vague life-activity
-and spontaneous outreach of inward
-energy&mdash;a feeling after companionship&mdash;remains
-in many persons vague
-to the end. But in others it frequently
-rises to a definite consciousness of a personal
-Presence and there comes back into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
-the soul a compelling evidence of a real
-Other Self who meets all the Soul&#8217;s need.
-For such persons prayer is the way to
-fullness of life. It is as natural as
-breathing. It is as normal an operation
-as appreciation of beauty, or the pursuit
-of truth. The soul is made that way,
-and as long as men are made with mystical
-deeps within, unsatisfied with the
-finite and incomplete, they will pray and
-be refreshed.</p>
-
-<p>Vague and formless, in some degree,
-communion would always be, I think,
-apart from the personal manifestation of
-God in Jesus Christ. As soon as God
-is known as Father, as soon as we turn
-to Him as identical in being with our
-own humanity, as suffering with us and
-loving us even in our imperfection, this
-communion grows defined and becomes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
-<i>actual social fellowship</i> which is prayer
-at its best. Paul&#8217;s great prayers of fellowship
-rise to the God and Father of
-our Lord Jesus Christ, the God whom
-we know, because He has been humanly
-revealed in a way that fits our life. We
-turn to Him as the completeness and reality
-of all we want to be, the other Self
-whom we have always sought. The
-vague impulse to reach beyond our isolated
-and solitary self gives place to an
-actual experience of relationship with a
-personal Friend and Companion and this
-experience may become, and often does
-become, the loftiest and most joyous activity
-of life. The soul is never at its
-best until it enjoys God, and prays out
-of sheer love. Nobody who has learned
-to pray in this deeper way and whose
-prayer is a prayer of communion and fellowship,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
-wants logical argument for the
-existence of God. Such a want implies
-a fall from a higher to a lower level.
-It is like a demand for a proof of the
-beauty one feels, or an evidence of love
-other than the evidence of its experience.</p>
-
-<p>Prayer will always rise or fall with
-the quality of one&#8217;s faith, like the mercury
-in the tube which feels at once the
-change of pressure in the atmosphere.
-It is only out of <i>live faith</i> that a living
-prayer springs. When a man&#8217;s praying
-sinks into words, words, words, it means
-that he is trying to get along with a dead
-conception of God. The circuit no
-longer closes. He cannot heighten his
-prayer by raising his voice. What he
-needs is a new revelation of the reality
-of God. He needs to have the fresh
-sap of living faith in God push off the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
-dead leaves of an outgrown belief, so
-that once more prayer shall break forth
-as naturally as buds in spring.</p>
-
-<p>The conception of God as a lonely
-Sovereign, complete in Himself and infinitely
-separated from us &#8220;poor worms
-of the dust,&#8221; grasshoppers chirping our
-brief hour in the sun, is in the main a
-dead notion. Prayer to such a God
-would not be easy with our modern ideas
-of the universe. It would be as difficult
-to believe in its efficiency as it would be
-to believe in the miracle of transubstantiation
-in bread and wine. But that
-whole conception is being supplanted by
-a <i>live faith</i> in an Infinite Person who is
-corporate with our lives, from whom we
-have sprung, in whom we live, as far as
-we spiritually do live, who needs us as
-we need him, and who is sharing with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
-us the travail and the tragedy as well as
-the glory and the joy of bringing forth
-sons of God.</p>
-
-<p>In such a kingdom&mdash;an organic fellowship
-of interrelated persons&mdash;prayer
-is as normal an activity as gravitation
-is in a world of matter. Personal spirits
-experience spiritual gravitation, soul
-reaches after soul, hearts draw toward
-each other. We are no longer in the net
-of blind fate, in the realm of impersonal
-force, we are in a love-system where the
-aspiration of one member heightens the
-entire group, and the need of one&mdash;even
-the least&mdash;draws upon the resources of
-the whole&mdash;even the Infinite. We are
-in actual Divine-human fellowship.</p>
-
-<p>The only obstacle to effectual praying,
-in this world of spiritual fellowship,
-would be individual selfishness. To<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
-want to get just for one&#8217;s own self, to
-ask for something which brings loss and
-injury to others, would be to sever one&#8217;s
-self from the source of blessings, and to
-lose not only the thing sought but to
-lose, as well, one&#8217;s very self.</p>
-
-<p>This principle is true anywhere, even
-in ordinary human friendship. It is
-true too, in art and in music. The artist
-may not force some personal caprice into
-his creation. He must make himself
-the organ of a universal reality which
-is beautiful not simply for this man or
-that, but for man as man. If there is,
-as I believe, an <i>inner kingdom of spirit</i>,
-a kingdom of love and fellowship, then
-it is a fact that a tiny being like one of
-us can impress and influence the Divine
-Heart, and we can make our personal
-contribution to the Will of the universe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
-but we can do it only by wanting what
-everybody can share and by seeking
-blessings which have a universal implication.</p>
-
-<p>So far as prayer is real fellowship, it
-gives as well as receives. The person
-who wants to receive God must first
-bring himself. If He misses us, we miss
-Him. He is Spirit, and consequently
-He is found only through true and genuine
-spiritual activity. In this correspondence
-of fellowship there is no more
-&#8220;violation of natural <b>law</b>&#8221; than there
-is in love wherever it appears. Love is
-itself the principle of the spiritual universe,
-as gravitation is of the physical;
-and as in the gravitate system the earth
-rises to meet the ball of the child, without
-<i>breaking any law</i>, so God comes to
-meet and to heighten the life of anyone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
-who stretches up toward Him in appreciation,
-and there is joy above as well as
-below.</p>
-
-<p>All that I have said, and much more,
-gets vivid illustration in the &#8220;Lord&#8217;s
-prayer,&#8221; which Christians have taken as
-a model form, though they have not always
-penetrated its spirit. It is in every
-line a prayer of fellowship and co-operation.
-It is a perfect illustration of the
-social nature of prayer. The co-operation
-and fellowship are not here confined,
-and they never are except in the
-lower stages, to the inward communion
-of an individual and his God. There
-is no <i>I</i> or <i>me</i> or <i>mine</i> in the whole
-prayer. The person who prays spiritually
-is enmeshed in a <i>living group</i> and
-the reality of his vital union with persons
-like himself clarifies his vision of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
-that deeper Reality to whom he prays.
-Divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood
-are born together. To say Father
-to God involves saying &#8220;brother&#8221; to
-one&#8217;s fellows, and the ground swell of
-either relationship naturally carries the
-other with it, for no one can largely
-realize the significance of brotherly love
-without going to Him in whom love is
-completed.</p>
-
-<p>&#8220;Hallowed be thy name&#8221; is often
-taken in a very feeble sense to mean
-&#8220;keep us from using thy name in vain,&#8221;
-or it is thought of as synonymous with
-the easy and meaningless platitude,
-&#8220;Let thy name be holy.&#8221; It is in reality
-a heart-cry for a full appreciation of the
-meaning of the Divine name, i. e., the
-Divine character. It is an uprising of
-the soul to an apprehension of the holiness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
-of God and the fullness of His life
-that the soul may return to its tasks with
-a sense of infinite resources and under
-the sway of a vision of the true ideal.
-This Lord&#8217;s prayer begins with a word
-of intimate relationship and social union&mdash;&#8220;Our
-Father.&#8221; It then goes out beyond
-the familiar boundaries of experience
-to feel the infinite sweep of God&#8217;s
-completeness and perfectness and to become
-penetrated with solemn awe and
-reverence which fit such companionship,&mdash;&#8220;Our
-Father of the holy name.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>This is the prelude. The true melody
-of prayer, if I may say so, begins with
-the positive facing of the task of life:&mdash;&#8220;Thy
-kingdom come, Thy will be done
-on earth as it is in heaven.&#8221; Here again
-we have the loftiest Fellowship. The
-person who prays this way is linked with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
-God in one mighty spiritual whole. The
-last vestige of atomic selfishness is
-washed out. There are those who say
-these words of prayer with folded hands
-and closed eyes, and then expect the desired
-kingdom to come by miracle; they
-suppose that if the request is made often
-enough a millennium age will drop out
-of the skies. Ah, no! If God is Spirit
-and man is meant to be spiritual, such a
-millennium is a sheer impossibility.
-This prayer involves the most strenuous
-life that ever was lived. To pray seriously
-for the coming of the kingdom of
-heaven means to contribute to its coming.
-It <i>has</i> come in any life which is
-completely under the sway of the holy
-Will and which is consecrated to the task
-of making that holy Will prevail in society.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
-It is no &#8220;far off Divine event.&#8221;
-It is always coming.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;For an ye heard a music, like enow</div>
-<div class="verse">They are building still, seeing the city is built</div>
-<div class="verse">To music, therefore never built at all</div>
-<div class="verse">And therefore built forever.&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>In a plain word, it is the total task of
-humanity through the ages. It is the
-embodiment in a temporal order of the
-eternal purpose. It is the weaving in
-concrete figure and color of the Divine
-pattern. It is the slow and somewhat
-painful work of making an actual Divine
-society out of this rather stubborn and
-unpromising potential material. But it
-is our main business, and this prayer is
-the girding of the loins for the sublime
-task of helping God make His world.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;Man as yet is being made, and e&#8217;er the crowning age of ages,</div>
-<div class="verse">Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape?</div>
-<div class="verse">All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower and fade,</div>
-<div class="verse">Prophet eyes may catch a glory, slowly gaining on the shade,</div>
-<div class="verse">Till the people all are one and all their voices blend in a choric</div>
-<div class="verse">Hallelujah to the Maker, &#8216;It is finished; man is made.&#8217;&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>Fellow laborers with God in truth we
-are. Prayer ends in labor and labor
-ends in prayer. But it is not a cry for
-miracle. It is an inward effort at co-operation.</p>
-
-<p>There is a beautiful mingling of the
-great and the little, the cosmic and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
-personal. The universal sweep of Divine
-ends does not swallow up, or miss,
-the needs of the concrete individual.
-While the spiritual universe is building,
-men must have daily bread and they
-must constantly face the actual present
-with its routine and monotony. Here
-again prayer is no miraculous method of
-turning stones into bread. It is no easy
-substitute for toil. It is the joyous insight
-that in the avenues of daily toil,
-God and man are co-operating and that
-in very truth the bread for the day is
-as much God given as it is won by
-the sweat of brow. The recently discovered
-&#8220;saying of Jesus&#8221; best interprets
-this prayer. &#8220;Wherever any man
-raises a stone or splits wood, there am
-I.&#8221; He consecrates honest toil.</p>
-
-<p>Next we come to the profound word<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
-which shows how completely our lives
-are bound together in organic union,
-above and below: &#8220;Forgive us as we
-forgive.&#8221; What a solemn thing to say.
-Dare we pray it! And yet few words
-have ever so truly revealed the nature
-of prayer. It is, one sees, no easy, lazy
-way to blessings. Once more, it is co-operation.
-Forgiveness is not a gift
-which can fall upon us from the skies,
-in return for a capricious request. The
-blessing depends on us as much as it
-does on God. A cold, hard, unforgiving
-heart can no more be forgiven than a
-lazy, slipshod student can have knowledge
-given to him. Like all spiritual
-things, forgiveness can come only when
-there is a person who appreciates its
-worth and meaning. The deep cry for
-forgiveness must rise out of a forgiving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
-spirit. It is always more than a transaction,
-an event. It is an inward condition
-of the personal life, and the soul
-that feels what it means to love and forgive
-is so bound into the whole divine
-order that love and forgiveness come in
-as naturally as light goes through the
-open casement, or the tide into an inlet.</p>
-
-<p>The next word is surely to be thought
-of as a human cry: &#8220;Take us not into
-testing.&#8221; It is the natural shrinking of
-the tender, sensitive soul, and it is the
-right attitude. Most of us know by
-hard experience that trial, proving, testing,
-yes, even actual temptation, have a
-marvelous ministry. No saint is made
-in the level plain, where the waters are
-still and the pastures green.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;Never on custom&#8217;s oild grooves</div>
-<div class="verse">The world to a higher level moves,</div>
-<div class="verse">But grates and grinds with friction hard</div>
-<div class="verse">On granite boulder and flinty shard.</div>
-<div class="verse">The heart must bleed before it feels,</div>
-<div class="verse">The pool be troubled before it heals.&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>All this we know. We know that the
-stem battle makes the veteran. But this
-prayer is the childlike cry, the shrinking
-fear, which are always safer than the
-bold dash, the impetuous plunge. It is
-the utterance of an instinctive wish to
-keep where safety lies, and, humanly
-speaking, it is right, though, in a world
-whose highest fruit is character, we may
-expect that bitter cups and hard baptisms
-will be a part of our experience.
-Like all that has gone before, it is an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
-effort at co-operation. It is a sincere aspiration
-for green pastures and still
-waters joined with a readiness to be fed
-at the table in presence of the enemy, if
-need be, readiness for the perilous edge
-of conflict, for &#8220;high strife and glorious
-hazard.&#8221;</p>
-
-<p>Last of all there rises the cry for deliverance
-from the power of evil. Once
-more we realize that this is not an occasion
-for magical interference, no call
-for a fiery dart out of the sky to pierce
-a black demon who is pushing us into
-sin. The drama is an inward one and
-the enemy, called of many names, is a
-part of our own self. Each soul has
-its own struggle with the immemorial
-tug of brute inheritance&mdash;the sag of
-lower nature.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="verse">&#8220;When the fight begins within himself,</div>
-<div class="indent">A man&#8217;s worth something. God stoops o&#8217;er his head,</div>
-<div class="verse">Satan looks up between his feet&mdash;both tug&mdash;</div>
-<div class="verse">He&#8217;s left, himself, i&#8217; the middle: The soul wakes</div>
-<div class="indent">And grows.&#8221;</div>
-</div></div>
-
-<p>But here supremely appears our principle
-of co-operation. Prayer for deliverance
-from evil cannot end on the lips.
-There is no conquest of the flesh, no
-killing out of ape and tiger, until we ourselves
-catch at God&#8217;s skirts and rise to
-live for the Spirit and by the Spirit.
-There is no deliverance till the soul says,
-&#8220;I will be free&#8221; and God and man tug
-on the same side. Wherever any citadel
-of evil is battered God and man are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
-there together. God finds a human organ
-and man draws on the inexhaustible
-resources of God.</p>
-
-<p>Prayer, whether it be the lisp of a
-little child, or the wrestling of some
-great soul in desperate contest with the
-coils of habit or the evil customs of his
-generation is a testimony to a divine-human
-fellowship. In hours of crisis
-the soul feels for its Companion, by a
-natural gravitation, as the brook feels
-for the ocean. In times of joy and
-strength, it reaches out to its source of
-Life, as the plant does to the sun. And
-when it has learned the language of
-spiritual communion and knows its
-Father, praying refreshes it as the greeting
-of a friend refreshes one in a foreign
-land. We ought not to expect that
-prayer, of the true and lofty sort, could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
-be attained by easy steps. It involves
-appreciation of God and co-operation
-with Him. One comes not to it in a
-day. Even human friendship is a great
-attainment. It calls for sacrifice of private
-wishes and for adjustment to the
-purposes of another life. One cannot be
-an artist or a musician without patient
-labor to make oneself an organ of the
-reality which he fain would express. He
-must bring himself by slow stages to a
-height of appreciation. Prayer is the
-highest human function. It is the utterance
-of an infinite friendship, the expression
-of our appreciation of that complete
-and perfect Person whom our soul has
-found. &#8220;Lord, teach us how to pray.&#8221;</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<p class="ph1"><span class="xlarge"><i>The United States a Christian Nation.</i></span></p>
-
-<p class="center">BY<br />
-
-<span class="large">HON. DAVID J. BREWER,</span><br />
-
-<i>Associate Justice of the Supreme Court United States</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><i>Haverford College Library Lectures, 1905.</i></p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p>In this book the Distinguished Christian Jurist has
-discussed three important topics:</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-
-<p><i>First.</i> &#8220;THE UNITED STATES A
-CHRISTIAN NATION,&#8221; in which he shows
-why our Republic should be so classified, basing
-his argument upon the Decisions of the Supreme
-Court, Colonial Charters, Constitution of the
-United States, and National and State Legislation.</p>
-
-<p><i>Second.</i> &#8220;OUR DUTY AS CITIZENS.&#8221;
-A strong plea for Business Honesty and Integrity,
-for Liberty and the Rights of Man, for Education,
-for Peace and Temperance.</p>
-
-<p><i>Third.</i> &#8220;THE PROMISE AND POSSIBILITIES
-OF THE FUTURE.&#8221; An earnest
-and eloquent exhortation to the young men of
-America to temper their devotion to country with
-fidelity to the teachings of the Gospel.</p></blockquote></blockquote>
-
-<p class="center"><i>Issued October 1, 1905.</i></p>
-
-<p class="center">12mo. 100 pp. Price, postpaid, $1.00.</p>
-
-
-<p class="center"><span class="large">THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.</span><br />
-
-PHILADELPHIA, PA.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<p class="ph1"><span class="large"><span class="u">SOCIAL LAW IN THE</span></span><br />
-<span class="xlarge"><span class="u">SPIRITUAL WORLD</span></span></p>
-
-<p class="ph1">Studies In Human and Divine Inter-Relationship</p>
-
-<p class="center">BY<br />
-
-
-<span class="large"><span class="smcap">Rufus M. Jones, A.M., Litt. D.</span></span><br />
-
-<i>Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College, Pa.</i></p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>This is a fresh interpretation of the deepest
-problems of life. It discusses the most
-interesting phases of recent psychological investigation
-into spiritual subjects.</p>
-
-<p>&#8220;Professor Jones offers here a series of studies
-on the nature and meaning of Personality.
-He is at home in modern psychology and tells
-it effectively for his purpose in freedom from
-technicalities.&#8221;&mdash;<i>The Outlook.</i></p>
-
-<p>&#8220;The author has written the twelve chapters
-of this book dealing with such subjects as The
-Meaning of Personality, The Realization of
-Persons, The Sub-Conscious Life, The Inner
-Light, etc., etc., with an aim to show through
-Psychology, as Drummond showed through
-Biology, that life can be unified from top to
-bottom.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Christian Work and the Evangelist.</i></p>
-
-<p>&#8220;The author bears a unique equipment for
-the task, having studied Philosophy at Harvard
-under Royce and Palmer, and acquired the art
-of presenting it to untrained thinkers in his
-capacity of Professor of Philosophy at Haverford
-College.&#8221;&mdash;<i>British Friend.</i></p></blockquote>
-
-<p class="center"><i>12mo. 272 pages. Extra Vellum Cloth,<br />
-Gilt Top, Uncut Edges. Price $1.25<br />
-Net (Postage 10 Cents).</i></p>
-
-<p class="center"><span class="large">THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY</span><br />
-
-PHILADELPHIA, PA.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-<p class="ph1"><span class="xlarge"><i>A History</i></span><br />
-
-<small>OF</small><br />
-
-<span class="xlarge"><i>The Society of Friends<br />
-in America</i></span></p>
-
-<p class="center">BY<br />
-
-<span class="large">ALLEN C. THOMAS, A.M.</span><br />
-
-HAVERFORD COLLEGE<br />
-
-AND<br />
-
-<span class="large">RICHARD H. THOMAS, M.D.</span><br />
-
-BALTIMORE, MD.</p>
-
-
-<p class="center">NEW AND REVISED EDITION, 1905</p>
-
-<blockquote>
-<p>Brought down to date and including valuable
-statistics and information in regard to
-the Society of Friends in America.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&#8220;A work on &#8216;The History of the Society
-of Friends in America,&#8217; which is likely for
-many days to be a standard text-book on the
-subject.&#8221;&mdash;<i>The London Friend.</i></p>
-
-<p>&#8220;We have read it with interest. It gives
-evidence of much research and of a disposition
-to observe the impartiality of faithful
-historians.&#8221;&mdash;<i>The Friend</i>, Philadelphia.</p></blockquote>
-
-
-<p class="center">12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00 Net<br />
-
-(Postage, 15 Cents)</p>
-
-
-<p class="center"><span class="large">THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.</span><br />
-
-PHILADELPHIA, PA.</p>
-
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2 class="nobreak">
-FOOTNOTES:</h2></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> &#8220;Social Law in the Spiritual World,&#8221; Philadelphia,
-1904.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The term <i>a tergo</i> causation means that what
-happens is produced entirely by the push or the
-pull of forces. There is an exact equation&mdash;the
-antecedent <i>determines</i> the consequent.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> It is not true, of course, that there is an absolute
-&#8220;break&#8221; in the upward processes of life.
-Even in the lower forms of life there are hints of
-higher possibilities. There is an elemental struggle
-for the life of others which has in it the
-potentiality of love and sacrifice. But there is no
-&#8220;sign&#8221; on the lower levels&mdash;before self-consciousness
-dawned&mdash;of any capacity for an ideal,
-or of <i>any power to develop by the forecast and
-vision of the goal</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The term <i>a fronte</i> compulsion means the compelling
-power of an ideal which influences by an
-attraction from in front.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Browning&#8217;s &#8220;Old Pictures in Florence.&#8221;</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Sabatier, &#8220;Religions of Authority,&#8221; p. 307.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> I am aware that this feature of child life
-will seem to some of my readers to be overdrawn.
-Some Mothers say that no such tendency was
-observed in their own children. That is quite
-likely. All children do not express their subtle
-and complex emotions in the same way. I do
-not mean to imply that every child <i>expresses</i> a
-need of sacrifice when he does wrong. But careful
-observers of children have frequently noted
-the facts which I have emphasized in the text,
-and I have often met them in my own experience
-with children.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> It has been shown by Robertson Smith and
-others that the Hebrews thought of sacrifice not
-as a gift to appease Jehovah but as a sharing of
-a common meal with him. Such a lofty view of
-sacrifice is surely not primitive. When sacrifice
-had come to be thought of, as of a common meal,
-it had already been purified and transformed by
-centuries of development and the heightening
-presupposes a series of unnamed prophets before
-the list of great revealers whose names we know.
-In the earliest stages religion is only very slightly
-ethical. The moralization of religion is one of
-the most tremendous facts of human history.</p></div>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<div class="transnote">
-
-<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER&#8217;S NOTES:</p>
-
-
-<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
-
-<p>Hover over the Greek text to see its transliteration.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Double Search, by Rufus Jones
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOUBLE SEARCH ***
-
-***** This file should be named 61771-h.htm or 61771-h.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
- http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/7/7/61771/
-
-Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron, David E. Brown, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
-http://gutenberg.org/license).
-
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
- the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
- you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
- owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
- has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
- Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
- must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
- prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
- returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
- sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
- address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
- the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
- you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
- does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
- License. You must require such a user to return or
- destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
- and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
- Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
- money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
- electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
- of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
- distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
-
-
-Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
-http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
-809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
-business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
-information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
-page at http://pglaf.org
-
-For additional contact information:
- Dr. Gregory B. Newby
- Chief Executive and Director
- gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit http://pglaf.org
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
- http://www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-
-
-</pre>
-
-</body>
-</html>
-
-
-
diff --git a/old/61771-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/61771-h/images/cover.jpg
deleted file mode 100644
index c40a5ce..0000000
--- a/old/61771-h/images/cover.jpg
+++ /dev/null
Binary files differ
diff --git a/old/61771-h/images/i_title.jpg b/old/61771-h/images/i_title.jpg
deleted file mode 100644
index 17446b8..0000000
--- a/old/61771-h/images/i_title.jpg
+++ /dev/null
Binary files differ