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diff --git a/old/61078-0.txt b/old/61078-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index dd996a5..0000000 --- a/old/61078-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3777 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inner Life, by Rufus M. Jones - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Inner Life - -Author: Rufus M. Jones - -Release Date: January 2, 2020 [EBook #61078] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INNER LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by WebRover, QuakerHeron and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - -THE INNER LIFE - - [Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS - ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. - TORONTO - - - - - THE INNER LIFE - - BY - RUFUS M. JONES, A.M., LITT.D. - PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HAVERFORD COLLEGE - - AUTHOR OF “STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION” - “SPIRITUAL REFORMERS,” ETC. - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1917 - - _All rights reserved_ - - COPYRIGHT, 1916, - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916. - Reprinted January, 1917. - - Norwood Press - J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. - Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. - - - - -INTRODUCTION - - -There is no inner life that is not also an outer life. To withdraw from -the stress and strain of practical action and from the complication of -problems into the quiet cell of the inner life in order to build its -domain undisturbed is the sure way to lose the inner life. The finest -of all the mystical writers of the fourteenth century—the author of -_Theologia Germanica_—knew this as fully as we of this psychologically -trained generation know it. He intensely desired a rich inner life, but -he saw that to be beautiful within he must live a radiant and effective -life in the world of men and events. “I would fain be,” he says, “to the -eternal God what a man’s hand is to a man”—_i.e._ he seeks, with all the -eagerness of his glowing nature, to be an efficient instrument of God in -the world. In the _practice_ of the presence of God, the presence itself -becomes more sure and indubitable. Religion does not consist of inward -thrills and private enjoyment of God; it does not terminate in beatific -vision. It is rather the joyous business of carrying the Life of God into -the lives of men—of being to the eternal God what a man’s hand is to a -man. - -There is no one exclusive “way” either to the supreme realities or to -the loftiest experiences of life. The “way” which we individuals select -and proclaim as the only highway of the soul back to its true home turns -out to be a revelation of our own private selves fully as much as it is -a revelation of a _via sacra_ to the one goal of all human striving. -Life is a very rich and complex affair and it forever floods over and -inundates any feature which we pick out as essential or as pivotal to -its consummation. God so completely overarches all that is and He is so -genuinely the fulfillment of all which appears incomplete and potential -that we cannot conceivably insist that there shall be only one way of -approach from the multiplicity of the life which we know to the infinite -Being whom we seek. - -Most persons are strangely prone to use the “principle of parsimony.” -They appear to have a kind of fascination for the dilemma of _either-or_ -alternatives. “Faith” or “works” is one of these great historic -alternatives. But this cleavage is too artificial for full-rounded -reality. Each of these “halves” cries for its other, and there cannot be -any great salvation until we rise from the poverty of either half to the -richness of the united whole which includes both “ways.” - -So, too, we have had the alternative of “outer” or “inner” way forced -upon us. We are told that the only efficacious way is the way of the -cross, treated as an outer historical transaction; and we have, again, -been told that there is no way except the inner way of direct experience -and inner revelation. There are those who say, with one of George -Chapman’s characters: - - “I’ll build all inward—not a light shall ope - The common out-way. - I’ll therefore live in dark; and all my light - Like ancient temples, let in at my top.” - -Over against the mystic who glories in the infinite depths of his own -soul, the evangelical, with excessive humility, allows not even a spark -of native grandeur to the soul and denies that the inner way leads to -anything but will-o’-the-wisps. This is a very inept and unnecessary -halving of what should be a whole. It spoils religious life, somewhat as -the execution of Solomon’s proposal would have spoiled for both mothers -the living child that was to be divided. Twenty-five hundred years ago -Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that there is “a way up and a way down and -both are one.” So, too, there is an outer way and an inner way and both -are one. It takes both diverse aspects to express the rich and complete -reality, which we mar and mangle when we dichotomize it and glorify our -amputated half. There is a fine saying of a medieval mystic: “He who can -see the inward in the outward is more spiritual than he who can only see -the inward, in the inward.” - -This little book on the “Inner Life” does not assume to deal with the -whole of the religious life. It recognizes that the outer in the long -run is just as essential as the inner. This one inner aspect is selected -for emphasis, without any intention of slighting the importance of the -other side of the shining shield. Men to-day are so overwhelmingly -occupied with objective tasks; they are so busy with the field of outer -action, that it is a peculiarly opportune time to speak of the interior -world where the issues of life are settled and the tissues of destiny -are woven. There will certainly be some readers who will be glad to turn -from accounts of trenches lost or won to spend a little time with the -less noisy but no less mysterious battle line inside the soul, and from -problems of foreign diplomacy to the drama of the inner life. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - INTRODUCTION v - - CHAPTER I. THE INNER WAY 1 - - Sec. 1. The Momentous Choice 1 - - Sec. 2. Making a Life 9 - - Sec. 3. The Spirit of the Beatitudes 14 - - Sec. 4. The Way of Contagion 23 - - Sec. 5. The Second Mile 30 - - CHAPTER II. THE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL 39 - - Sec. 1. Bags that Wax not Old 39 - - Sec. 2. Otherism 46 - - Sec. 3. Scavengers and the Kingdom 50 - - Sec. 4. “The Beyond is Within” 56 - - Sec. 5. The Attitude toward the Unseen 61 - - CHAPTER III. SOME PROPHETS OF THE INNER WAY 70 - - Sec. 1. The Psalmist’s Way 70 - - Sec. 2. The New and Living Way 77 - - Sec. 3. An Apostle of the Inner Way 82 - - Sec. 4. The Ephesian Gospel 90 - - CHAPTER IV. THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE 97 - - Sec. 1. Waiting on God 97 - - Sec. 2. In the Spirit 105 - - Sec. 3. The Power of Prayer 111 - - Sec. 4. The Mystery of Goodness 116 - - Sec. 5. “As One having Authority” 123 - - Sec. 6. Seeing Him Who is Invisible 133 - - CHAPTER V. A FUNDAMENTAL SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK 138 - - CHAPTER VI. WHAT DOES RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE TELL US ABOUT GOD 164 - - - - -THE INNER LIFE - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE INNER WAY - - -I - -THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE - -Every scrap of writing that sheds any light on the life of Jesus, and -every incident that gives the least detail about His movements or -His teaching are precious to us. One can hardly conceive the joy and -enthusiasm that would burst forth in all lands, if new fragments of -papyrus or of parchment could be unearthed that would add in any measure -to our knowledge of the way this Galilean life was lived “beneath the -Syrian blue.” But it may now probably be taken for granted that the -material will never be forthcoming—and it surely is not now in hand—for -an adequate biography of Him. The lives of Jesus that have been written -in modern times have a certain value, as suggestive revelations of what -the writers thought He ought to have been or ought to have done, but -biographies, in the true sense of the word, they are not. The Evangelists -performed for us an inestimable service, but they did not furnish us the -sort of data necessary for a detailed biography, expressed in clock-time -language. - -Our “sources” are much more adequate when we turn our attention from -external events to the inner way which His life reveals, though they -still allow for free play of imagination and for much fluidity of -subjective interpretation. It is possible, however, I believe, to look -through the genuine words that are preserved and to see, with clairvoyant -insight, the inner kingdom of the soul in that Person whose interior life -was the richest of all those who have walked our earth. There are curious -little playthings to be bought in Rome. If one looks through a pin-hole -peep somewhere in one of these tiny toys, one sees to his surprise the -whole mighty structure of St. Peter’s Cathedral, standing out as large -as it looks in reality. Perhaps we can find some pin-hole peeps in the -gospels that in a similar way will let us see the marvelous inner world, -the extraordinary spiritual life, of this Person whose outer biography so -baffles us. - -Our first single glimpse of His interior life must be got without the -help of any actual word of His. It is given to us in the gospel accounts -of His discovery of His mission. How long the consciousness of mission -had been gestating we cannot tell. What books He read, if any, are never -named. What ripening influence the days of toil in the carpenter shop may -have had, is unnoted. What dawned upon Him as He meditated in silence is -not reported. What formative ideas may have come from the little groups -of “the quiet ones in the land” can only be guessed at. We are merely -told that He increased in wisdom as He advanced in stature, which is -the only conceivable way that personality can be attained. Suddenly the -moment of clear insight came and He _saw_ what He was in the world for. - -It was usual for the great prophets of His people to discover their -mission in some such moment of clarified inward sight. Isaiah saw the -Lord with His train filling the temple, felt his lips cleansed, and heard -the call “who will go?” Ezekiel saw the indescribable living creature -with the hands of a man under the wings of the Spirit and heard himself -called to his feet for his commission. So here, there was a sudden -invading consciousness from beyond. The world with its solid hills -appears only the fragment, which it is, and the World of wider Reality -floods in and reveals itself. The sky seems rent apart, the Spirit, as -though once more brooding over a world in the making, covers Him from -above, and gives inward birth to a conviction of uniqueness of Life and -uniqueness of mission. He feels Himself in union with His Father.[1] - -This experience of the invading Life, awakening a consciousness of -unique personal mission, brought with it, as an unavoidable sequence, -the stress and strain of a very real temptation. The inner world of -self-consciousness has strange watershed “divides” that shape the -currents of the life as the mountain ridges of the outer world do the -rivers. No new nativity, no fresh awakening, can come to a soul without -forcing the momentous issue of its further meaning, or without raising -the urgent question, how shall the new insight, the fresh light, the -increased power be wrought into life? The deepest issues turn, not -upon the choice of “things,” but upon the choice of the kind of self -that is to be, and the most decisive dramas are those that are enacted -in the inner world before the footlights of our private theater. The -temptation is described by the Evangelists in such conventional language -and in such popular and pictorial imagery that its immense inner -reality is often missed by the reader. This oriental, pictorial way of -presenting the drama of the soul catches the western mind in the toils of -literalism. The picture is taken for the reality. What we have here in -the temptation, when we go into the heart of the matter, is the momentous -choice of the kind of Person that is to emerge. It is the immemorial -battle between the higher and the lower self within. It was the line of -least resistance to accept popular expectation, to go forth to realize -the dream of the age. A person conscious of divine anointing, fired with -passionate loyalty to the nation’s hopes, gifted with extraordinary power -of moving men to new issues would feel at once that he had only to put -himself forth as the expected Messiah in order to carry the enthusiastic -people with him. Let him but come with the spectacular powers of the -Messiah that was eagerly looked for, the power to turn stones to bread, -to leap from the pinnacle of the temple without injury, to break the -Roman yoke and make Jerusalem once again the city of God’s chosen -people—and success was sure to follow. God’s ancient covenant was an -absolute pledge to the faithful that He would in His own time make bare -His arm and deliver His people. As soon as the anointed one appeared all -the forces of the unseen world would be at his command and his triumph -would be assured. - -The appeal of a career like that is no fictitious “temptation.” It is of -a piece with what besets us all. It is out of the very stuff of nature. -At some such crossroad we have all stood—with the issue of our inner -destiny in unstable equilibrium. - -Over against it, another “way” is set, another kind of life is dimly -outlined, another type of anointed one is seen to be possible, another -kingdom, totally different from the one of popular expectation, is -descried. This kingdom of His spiritual vision cannot come by miracle -or by power; it can come only through complete adjustment of will to the -will of the Father-God. This anointed one of His higher aspiration will -be no temporal ruler, no political king, no spectacular wonder-worker. -He will rule only by the conquering power of love and goodness. He -will venture everything on sheer faith in the Father’s love and on the -appeal of uncalculating goodness of heart and will. This new kind of -life that draws Him from the line of least resistance is a life of utter -simplicity, which discounts what the world calls “goods,” which draws -upon an unseen environment for its resources and which expands inwardly, -rather than outwardly, after the manner of the green bay tree. The new -“way” that opens to His sight, and that beckons Him from all other ways -of glory, is a way of suffering and sacrifice, a way of the cross. It -offers itself not because self-giving is a better way than an easy, happy -path, but because it is the _only way_ by which love in a world like -ours can reach its goal; it is the only way by which the kingdom of God -can be formed in the lives of men like us. - -He came forth from those momentous days of inner struggle with the issue -settled, and with the first step taken in the way of the Kingdom. - - -II - -MAKING A LIFE - -Our present-day age has a kind of passion for the study of developing -_processes_. We do not feel quite at home with any subject until we can -work our way back to its origin or origins and then follow it in its -unfoldings, explaining the higher and more complex stages in terms of the -lower and more simple ones. - -That method, however, cannot be successfully used to unlock the secret -of the gospels. We do not find beginnings here; we cannot follow genetic -processes; we are unable to discriminate higher and lower stages of -insight. We must launch out at the very start in mid-sea. Whatever words -of Christ one begins with indicate that He has already arrived at an -absolute insight—I mean, that He has found a way of living that is no -longer relatively good, but intrinsically and absolutely good. - -It is an inveterate habit with men like us to estimate everything in -terms of relative results. We are pragmatists by the very push of our -immemorial instincts. Our first question, consciously or unconsciously, -is apt to be, what effects will come, if I act so, or so? Will this -course work well? Will it further some issue or some interest? And this -deep-lying pragmatic tendency—this aim at results—appears woven into the -very fiber even of much of the religion of the world. - -Sometimes the results sought are near, sometimes they are remote; -sometimes they are sought for this world, sometimes they are sought -for the next world; sometimes the pragmatic aim at results is crudely -and coarsely selfish, sometimes it is refined, or altogether veiled, -but religion has no doubt often enough been an impressive kind of -double-entry bookkeeping, the piling up of credits or of merits which -some day will bring the sure result that is sought. - -Just that entire pragmatic attitude Christ has left forever behind. His -inner way, His interior insight, passes on to a new level of life, to a -totally different type of religious aspiration and to another method of -valuation. For Him the beyond is always within. The only good thing is -a life that is intrinsically good; the only blessedness worth talking -about is a kind of blessedness which attaches by a law of inner necessity -to the character of the life itself. It makes no difference what world -one may eventually be in—if only it is still a world of spiritual -issues—goodness, holiness, likeness to God, will still constitute -blessedness as they do in this world. - -When once this insight is reached, it affects all the pursuits and all -the valuations of the soul. All “other things” at once become secondary, -and “entering into life,” “seeking life,” “finding life,” becomes the -primary thing. “Making a life” overtops in importance even “making a -living”—the life is more than meat, more than raiment, more than gaining -the whole world. It is better to enter into life halt and maimed—with -right hand cut off and eye plucked out—than bend all one’s energies -to preserve the body whole and yet to miss _life_. The way to life is -strait, the entering gate is narrow. One cannot _enter_ without facing -the stern necessity of focusing the vision on the central purpose, -without getting “a single eye,” without letting go _many things_ for the -sake of _one thing_. - -Sacrifice, surrender, negation, are inherently involved in any great -onward-marching life. They go with any choice that can be made of a rich -and intense life. It is impossible to find without losing, to get without -giving, to live without dying. But sacrifice, surrender, negation, are -never for their own sake; they are never ends in themselves. They are -involved in life itself. - -One great spiritual law comes to light and becomes operative, as soon as -the interior insight is won, as soon as the inner way is found: The law -that _the soul can have what it wants_. This law of the interior life, -of the inner way, Christ affirms again and again in varying phrase. The -inner attitude, the settled trend of desire, the persistent swing of the -will, are the very things that make life. The person who cherishes hate -in his soul forms a disposition of hatred and must live in the atmosphere -which that spirit forms. The person who longs for deeds that are wrong, -and allows desire to play with free scope is inwardly as though he did -the deed. He is what he wants to be. And so, too, on the other hand, -the rightly fashioned will is its own reward and has its own peculiar -blessedness. The person who hungers and thirsts for goodness will get -what he wants. He who seeks, with undivided aspiration, will always -find. He who knocks with persistent desire for the gates of life to open -will see them swing apart for him to go through to his goal. He who asks, -with the ground swell of his whole inner being, for the things which -minister to life and feed its deepest roots, will get what he asks for. -The very pity of the Pharisee’s way of life is that he has his reward—he -gets what he is seeking. The glory of the other way is the glory of the -imperfect—the glory of living toward the flying goal of likeness to the -Father in heaven. - - -III - -THE SPIRIT OF THE BEATITUDES - -In putting the emphasis for the moment on the inner way of religion, we -must be very careful not to encourage the heresy of treating religion -as a withdrawal from the world, or as a retreat from the press and -strain of the practical issues and problems of the social order. That -is the road to spiritual disaster, not to spiritual power. Christ gives -no encouragement to the view that the spiritual ideal—the Kingdom of -God—can ever be achieved apart from the conquest of the whole of life or -without the victory that overcomes the world. Religion can no more be cut -apart from the intellectual currents, or from the moral undertakings, -or from the social tasks of an age, than any other form of life can be -isolated from its native environment. To desert this world, which presses -close around us, for the sake of some remote world of our dreams, is to -neglect our one chance to get a real religion. - -But at the same time the only possible way to realize a kingdom of God -in this world, or in any other world, is to begin by getting an inner -spirit, the spirit of the Kingdom, formed within the lives of the few -or many who are to be the “seed” of it. The “Beatitudes” furnish one of -these extraordinary pin-hole peeps, of which I spoke in a former section, -through which this whole inner world can be seen. Here, in a few lines, -loaded with insight, the seed-spirit of the Kingdom comes full into -sight. We are given no new code, no new set of rules, no legal system at -all. It is the proclamation of a new spirit, a new way of living, a new -type of person. To have a world of persons of this type, to have this -spirit prevail, would mean the actual presence of the Kingdom of God, -because this spirit would produce not only a new inner world, but a new -outer world as well. - -The first thing to note about the _blessedness_ proclaimed in the -beatitudes is that it is not a prize held out or promised as a final -reward for a certain kind of conduct; it attaches by the inherent nature -of things to a type of life, as light attaches to a luminous body, as -motion attaches to a spinning top, as gravitation attaches to every -particle of matter. To be this type of person is to be living the happy, -blessed life, whatever the outward conditions may be. And the next thing -to note is that this type of life carries in itself a principle of -advance. One reason why it is a blessed type of life is that it cannot -be arrested, it cannot be static. The beatitude lies not in attainment, -not in the arrival at a goal, but in the _way_, in the spirit, in the -search, in the march. - -I suspect that the nature of “the happy life” of the beatitudes can -be adequately grasped only when it is seen in contrast to that of the -Pharisee who is obviously in the background as a foil to bring out the -portrait of the new type. The pity of the Pharisee’s aim was that it -could be reached—he gets his reward. He has a definite limit in view—the -keeping of a fixed law. Beyond this there are no worlds to conquer. Once -the near finite goal is touched there is nothing to pursue. The immediate -effect of this achievement is conceit and self-satisfaction. The trail of -calculation and barter lies over all his righteousness. There is in his -mind an equation between goodness and prosperity, between righteousness -and success: “If thou hast made the most High thy habitation there shall -no evil befall thee; neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” -The person who has loss or trouble or suffering must have been an overt -or a secret sinner, as the question about the blind man indicates. - -The goodness portrayed in the “beatitudes” is different from this by -the width of the sky. Christ does not call the _righteous person_ -the happy man. He does not pronounce the attainment of righteousness -blessed, because a “righteousness” that gets attained is always external -and conventional; it is a kind that has definable, quantitative -limits—“how many times must I forgive my brother?” “Who is my neighbor?” -The beatitude attaches rather to hunger and thirst for goodness. The -aspiration, and not the attainment, is singled out for blessing. In the -popular estimate, happiness consists in getting desires satisfied. For -Christ the real concern is to get new and greater desires—desires for -infinite things. The reach must always exceed the grasp. The heart must -forever be throbbing for an attainment that lies beyond any present -consummation. It is the “glory of going on,” the joy of discovering unwon -territory beyond the margin of each, spiritual conquest. - -Poverty of spirit—another beatitude-trait—is bound up with hunger for -goodness as the convex side of a curve is bound up with the concave -side. They are different aspects of the same attitude. The poor in -spirit are by no means poor-spirited. They are persons who see so much -to be, so much to do, such limitless reaches to life and goodness that -they are profoundly conscious of their insufficiency and incompleteness. -Self-satisfaction and pride of spiritual achievement are washed clean -out of their nature. They are open-hearted, open-windowed to all truth, -possessed of an abiding disposition to receive, impressed with a sense -of inner need and of childlike dependence. Just that attitude is its own -sure reward. By an unescapable spiritual gravitation the best things in -the universe belong to open-hearted, open-windowed souls. Again, in the -beatitude on the mourner, He reverses the Pharisaic and popular judgment. -Losses and crosses, pains and burdens, heartaches and bereavements, -empty chairs and darkened windows, are the antipodes of our desires and -last of all things to be expected in the list of beatitudes. They were -then, and still often are, counted as visitations of divine disapproval. -Christ rejects the superficial way of measuring the success of a life -by the smoothness of its road or by its freedom from trial, and He will -not allow the false view to stand; namely, that success is the reward -of piety, and trouble the return for lack of righteousness. There is -no way to depth of life, to richness of spirit, by shun-pikes that go -around hard experiences. The very discovery of the nearness of God, of -the sustaining power of His love, of the sufficiency of His grace, has -come to men in all ages through pain, and suffering and loss. We always -go for comfort to those who have passed through deeps of life and we may -well trust Christ when He tells us that it is not the lotus-eater but the -sufferer who is in the way of blessing and is forming the spirit of the -Kingdom. - -Meekness and mercy and peace-making are high among the qualities that -characterize the inner spirit of the kingdom. Patience, endurance, -steadfastness, confidence in the eternal nature of things, determination -to win by the slow method that is right rather than by the quick and -strenuous method that is wrong are other ways of naming meekness. -Mercy is tenderness of heart, ability to put oneself in another’s -place, confidence in the power of love and gentleness, the practice of -forgiveness and the joyous bestowal of sympathy. Peace-making is the -divine business of drawing men together into unity of spirit and purpose, -teaching them to live the love-way, and forming in the very warp and -woof of human society the spirit of altruism and loyalty to the higher -interests of the group. These traits belong to the inmost nature of -God and of course those who have them are blessed, and it is equally -clear that the Kingdom is theirs. There is furthermore, in this happy -way of life, a condition of heart to which the vision of God inherently -attaches. He is no longer argued about and speculated upon. He is seen -and felt. He becomes as sure as the sky above us or our own pulse beat -within us. We spoil our vision with selfishness, we cloud it with -prejudices, we blur it with impure aims. We cast our own shadow across -our field of view and make a dark eclipse. It is not better spectacles -we need. It is a pure, clean, sincere, loving, forgiving, passionately -devoted heart. God who is love can be _seen_, can be found, only by a -heart that intensely loves and that hates everything that hinders love. - - -IV - -THE WAY OF CONTAGION - -We have seen that religion cannot be sundered from the intellectual -currents, or from the moral undertakings, or from the social tasks of the -world. It cannot be _merely_ inward. It can preserve its inward power -only as it lives in actual correspondence with its whole environment and -becomes also outward. But the primary thing for Christ, we saw, was the -attainment of an inner spirit, the seed-spirit of the Kingdom, the spirit -of the beatitudes—the attainment of a type of life to which blessedness -inherently attaches. - -The question at once arises, how shall this inner spirit be spread and -propagated? How is religion of the inner type to grow and expand? There -are two characteristic ways of propagating religious ideas, of carrying -spiritual discoveries into the life of the world. One way is the way of -_organization_; the other way is the way of _contagion_. The way of -organization, which is as old as human history, is too familiar to need -any description. Our age has almost unlimited faith in it. If we wish to -carry a live idea into action, we _organize_. We select officials. We -make “motions.” We pass resolutions. We appoint committees or boards or -commissions. We hold endless conferences. We issue propaganda material. -We have street processions. We use placards and billboards. We found -institutions, and devise machinery. We have collisions between “pros” -and “antis” and stir up enthusiasm and passion for our “cause.” The -Christian Church is probably the most impressive instance of organization -in the entire history of man’s undertakings. It has become, in its -historical development, almost infinitely complex, with organizations -within organizations and suborganizations within suborganizations. It has -employed every known expedient, even the sword, for the advancement of -its “cause,” it has created a perfect maze of institutions and it has -originated a vast variety of educational methods for carrying forward its -truth. - -But great as has been the historical emphasis on organization, it -nevertheless occupies a very slender place in the consciousness of -Christ. There is no clear indication that He appointed any officials, -or organized any society, or founded any institution. There are two -“sayings” in Matthew which use the word “Church,” but they almost -certainly bear the mark and coloring of a later time, when the Church -had already come into existence and had formed its practices and its -traditions. And even though the great “saying” at Cæsarea Philippi -were accepted as the actual words of Jesus, it is still quite possible -to see in it the announcement of a spiritual fellowship, spreading by -inspiration and contagion, rather than the founding of an official -institution. It is, no doubt, fortunate on the whole that the Church -was organized, and that the great _idea_ found a visible body through -which to express itself, though nobody can fail to see that the Church, -while meaning to propagate the gospel, has always profoundly modified and -transformed it, and that it has brought into play a great many tendencies -foreign to the original gospel. - -Christ’s way of propagating the truth—the way that inherently fits -the inner life and spirit of the gospel of the Kingdom—was the way of -personal _contagion_. Instead of founding an institution, or organizing -an official society, or forming a system, or creating external machinery, -He counted almost wholly upon the spontaneous and dynamic influence of -life upon life, of personality upon personality. He would produce a -new world, a new social order, through the contagious and transmissive -character of personal goodness. He practically ignored, or positively -rejected, the method of _restraint_, and trusted absolutely to the -conquering power of loyalty and consecration. It was His faith that, -if you get into the world anywhere a _seed_ of the Kingdom, a nucleus -of persons who exhibit the blessed life, who are dedicated to expanding -goodness, who rely implicitly on love and sympathy, who try in meek -patience the slow method that is right, who still feel the clasping -hands of love even when they go through pain and trial and loss, this -seed-spirit will spread, this nucleus will enlarge and create a society. -If the new spirit of passionate love, and of uncalculating goodness gets -formed in one person, by a silent alchemy a group of persons will soon -become permeated and charged with the same spirit, new conditions will be -formed, and in time children will be born into a new social environment -and will suck in new ideals with their mother’s milk. - -Persons of the blessed life, Christ says, are the saving _salt_ of the -earth. They carry their wholesome savor into everything they touch. They -do not try to save themselves. They are ready like salt to dissolve and -disappear, but, the more they give themselves away, the more antiseptic -and preservative they become to the society in which they live. They keep -the old world from spoiling and corrupting not by attack and restraint, -not by excision and amputation, but by pouring the preservative savor -of their lives of goodness into all the channels of the world. This -preservative and saving influence on society depends, however, entirely -on the continuance of the inner quality of life and it will be certain to -cease if ever the salt lose its savor, _i.e._ if the _soul_ of religion -wanes or dies away and only the outer form of it remains. - -But such lives are more than antiseptic and preservative; they are -kindling and illuminative. They become “candles of the Lord.” Candles -emit their light and kindle other candles by burning themselves up and -transmitting their flame. When a life is set on fire, and is radiant with -self-consuming love, it will invariably set other lives on fire. Such a -person may teach many valuable ideas, he may organize many movements, -he may attack many evil customs, but the best thing he will ever do will -be to fuse and kindle other souls with the fire of his passion. His own -burning, shining life is always his supreme service. - - “The greatest legacy the hero leaves his race - Is—to have been a hero.” - -Such a person will be eager to decrease that his kindling power may -increase. He will not care to save himself, or to reap a reward for his -service. He may not even know that he is shining, like the early saint -who “wist not that his face did shine.” But for all that, men will see -the way by his light and will catch the glory of living because he -exhibits it. He can no more be hid than can a hill-top city, or the -headlight of a locomotive, or the newly risen sun. - -That is Christ’s way of spreading the life of the Kingdom, that is His -method of propagating the inner spirit, and of producing a society of -blessed people. - - -V - -THE SECOND MILE - -It may seem to some incongruous to be writing about an inner way of life -in these days when _action_ is felt by so many to be the only reality and -when in every direction outside there is dire human need to be met. - - “Leave, then, your wonted prattle, - The oaten reed forbear; - For I hear a sound of battle, - And trumpets rend the air.” - -But more than ever is it necessary for us to center down to eternal -principles of life and action, to attain and maintain the right inner -spirit, and to _see_ what in its faith and essence Christianity really -means. Precisely now when the Sermon on the Mount seems least to be the -program of action and the map of life, is it a suitable time for us to -endeavor to discover what Christ’s way means, by looking through the -literal phrases in clairvoyant fashion to the spirit treasured and -embalmed within the wonderful words? - -There is one phrase which seems to me to be, in a rare and peculiar -degree, the key to the entire gospel—I mean the invitation to go “the -second mile”: “If any man compel you to go a mile, go two miles.” It is -always dangerous, I know, to fly away from the literal significance of -words and to indulge in far-fetched “spiritual” interpretations. But it -is even more dangerous, perhaps, to read words of oriental imagery and -paradox as though they were the plain prose speech of the occidental -mind, and to be taken only at their face value. - -There will probably always be Tolstoys—great or small—who will make the -difficult, and never very successful, experiment of taking this and the -other “commands” of the Sermon on the Mount in a literal and legalistic -sense, but to do so is almost certainly to be “slow of heart,” and -to miss Christ’s meaning. Whatever else may be true or false in our -interpretations of the teachings of Christ, it may always be taken for -certain that He did not inaugurate a religion of the legalistic type, -consisting of commands and exact directions, to be literally followed -and obeyed as a way to secure merit and reward. To go “the second mile,” -then, is an attitude and character of spirit rather than a mere rule and -formula for the legs. - -Christ always shows a very slender appreciation of any act of religion or -of ethics which does not reach beyond the stage of _compulsion_. What is -done because it _must_ be done; because the law requires it, or because -society expects it, or because convention prescribes it, or because the -doer of it is afraid of consequences if he omits it, may, of course, be -rightly done and meritoriously done, but an act on that level is not yet -quite in the region where for Christ the highest moral and religious -acts have their spring. The typical Pharisee was an appalling instance -of the inadequacy of “the first-mile” kind of religion and ethics. He -plodded his hard mile, and “did all the things required” of him. In the -region of commands, or “touching the law” he was “blameless.” But there -was no spontaneity in his religion, no free initiative, no enthusiastic -passion, no joyous abandon, no gratuitous and uncalculating acts. He did -things enough, but he did them because he _had_ to do them, not because -some mighty love possessed him and flooded him and inspired him to go not -only the expected mile, but to go on without any calculation out beyond -milestones altogether. Just here appears the new inner way of Christ’s -religion. The legalist, like the rich young man, “does all the things -that are commanded in the law,” but still painfully “lacks” something. -To get into Christ’s way, to “follow” in any real sense, he must cut his -cables and swing out from the moorings where he is _tied_. He must catch -such a passion of love that giving either of his money or of himself, -shall no longer be for him an imposed duty but rather a joy of spirit. - -The parable of the “great surprise” is another illustration, a glorious -illustration, of the spirit of the “second mile.” The “blessed ones” in -the picture (which is an unveiling of actual everyday life in its eternal -meaning rather than a portraiture of the day of judgment) find themselves -at home with God, drawn into His presence, crowned with His approval, and -sealed with His fellowship. They are surprised. They had not been adding -up their merits or calculating their chances of winning heaven. They are -beautifully artless and naïve: “When saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee?” -They have been doing deeds of love, saying kind words, relieving human -need, banishing human loneliness, making life easier and more joyous, -because they had caught a spirit of love and tenderness, and, therefore, -“could not do otherwise,” and now they suddenly discover that those whom -they helped and rescued and served were bound up in one inseparable life -with God himself, so that what was done to them was done to Him, and they -find that _their_ spontaneous and uncalculating love was one in essence -and substance with the love of God and that they are eternally at home -with Him. - -The tender, immortal stories of the woman who broke her alabaster vase of -precious nard and “filled all the house with the odor,” and of the woman -(perhaps the same one) who had been a sinner and who from her passion of -love for her great forgiveness wet Christ’s feet with her tears, even -before she could open her cruse of ointment, are the finest possible -illustrations of the spirit of “the second mile.” They picture, in -subtly suggestive imagery, the immense contrast between the spontaneous, -uncalculating act of one who “loves much” and does with grace what love -prompts; and acts, on the other hand, like that of Simon the pharisaic -host, who offers Jesus a purely conventional and grudging hospitality, -or like that of the disciples who sit indeed at the table with Jesus but -come to it absorbed with the burning question, “who among us is to be -first and greatest,” not only at the table but “in the Kingdom!” - -What grace and unexpected love come into action in the simple deed of the -“Samaritan” who, from nobility of nature, does what official Priest and -Levite leave undone! The hated foreigner, spit at and stoned as he walked -the roads of Judea, under no obligation to be kind or serviceable, is the -real “neighbor,” the bearer of balm and healing, the dispenser of love -and sympathy. He may have no ordination to the priesthood, but he finely -exhibits the attitude of grace which belongs in the religion of “the -second mile.” - -But we do not reach the full significance of “the second mile” until we -see that it is something more than the highest level of human grace. -What shines through the gospels everywhere, like a new-risen sun, is -the revelation that _this_—this grace of the second mile—is the supreme -trait and character-nature of God as well. How surprising and unexpected -is that extraordinary unveiling of the divine nature in the story of -the prodigal boy! It is wonderful enough that one who has wasted his -substance and squandered his own very life should still be able in his -squalor and misery to come to himself and want to go home; but the fact -which radiates this sublime story like a glory is the uncalculating, -ungrudging, unlimited love of the Father, which remains unchanged by the -boy’s blunder, which has never failed in the period of his absence, and -which bursts out in the cry of joy: “This my son was dead and is alive -again, he was lost and is found.” - -It is, and always has been, the very center of our Christian faith that -the real nature and character of God come full into view in Christ, -that God is in mind and heart and will revealed in the Person whom we -call Christ. “The grace,” then, “of the Lord Jesus Christ,” of which -we are reminded in that great word of apostolic benediction, is a true -manifestation of the deepest nature and character of God Himself. The -Cross is not an artificial scheme. The Cross is the eternal grace, the -spontaneous, uncalculating love of God made visible and vocal in our -temporal world. It is the apotheosis of the spirit of the second mile. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL - - -I - -BAGS THAT WAX NOT OLD - -The ancient world found it very difficult to keep money even after it was -got. There were almost constant wars involving the dire stripping of the -unprotected country districts, and the siege and devastation of cities. -In those times almost everything was fragile. It was never easy to -discover any form of wealth that was surely abiding. Even if the besom of -an invading army did not sweep away the labor of years, still there were -other enemies to be feared. Tyrants were, always on the watch for ways of -relieving wealthy men of their treasures. There were robber bands lying -in wait for the traveler, and neighborhood thieves found it a small -matter to break into private houses and to steal hidden money. It was no -uncommon thing for men to dig in the ground and hide the talent which -they had saved, or to bury the pearl of great price, or other precious -jewel, in a field. If one invested his wealth in garments, then another -enemy was to be feared. The moth is as old as clothes, and he got in even -where the thief failed to break through. - -The problem of getting an indestructible money-bag was, thus, a problem -of first importance. A journey to Jericho might any day reduce a man -to primitive conditions, or a passing army might make him a beggar, or -the visit of a thief might strip him of all his living, or the silent -work of a brood of moths might ruin the savings of years. There were no -perdurable purses, no nonbreakable banks, no irreducible forms of wealth. - -Christ evidently recognized that there was a value in money. He did -not apparently demand from his follower the absolute renunciation of -ownership. He expounded no new theory of economics. But he was profoundly -impressed by the moral havoc and the social calamities caused by the -excessive ambition for, and pursuit of, wealth. He saw how the mad rush -for money and the overvaluation of it killed out the noblest fundamental -traits of the soul, and, more than all else, he felt the tragedy of human -lives being focused with intensity of strain and fixed with burning -passion on the pursuit of such pitiably fragile treasures—money-bags of -all sorts waxing old and becoming incapable of holding the hoard that -absorbed the whole life. - -Christ, then, proposes a new kind of purse, an indestructible and -immutable treasure-bag—“make for yourselves bags that wax not old.” Such -purses are not on the market, they cannot be purchased, they must be -woven by each person for himself, and they must be woven, if at all, out -of the stuff of _life_ itself. We here pass over, as so often in Christ’s -teaching, from extrinsic wealth to intrinsic, from the wealth which men -merely possess to the kind of wealth which they can themselves _be_. We -once more find ourselves brought to an inner way of living, where the -issue is no longer how to accumulate goods, but rather how to become -good. The problem is the problem of what men live by. We are called to -loosen our grip on perishable treasures only that we may tighten our -hold on heavenly, _i.e._ spiritual, treasure. We are shown the folly of -spending a life building barns for expanding earthly possessions, while -we are taking no pains to make ourselves rich in God. - -What is it, then, that men live by? What will prove to be imperishable -wealth, whether we are in this world, or in any other world of real moral -issues? It is obviously not money, for men often live nobly after the -money-bag has waxed old and after the bank has failed, and it is our most -elemental faith that life blossoms out into its consummate richness after -all earthly affairs come to a complete close, and after every penny -of visible wealth has been left forever behind. Money is plainly not -intrinsic treasure; love is, goodness is, joy is. A beloved disciple, in -a moment of inspiration, announced the profound truth that love is “of -God.” Men wrongly divide love into two types, “human love” and “divine -love,” but in reality there is only _love_. Wherever love has become -the nature of the soul, and it has become “natural” now to forget self -for others, to seek to give rather than to get, to share rather than to -possess, to be impoverished in order that some loved one may abound, -there a divine and Godlike spirit has been formed. And we now come upon -a new kind of wealth, a kind that accumulates with use, because it is -a law that the more the spirit of love is exercised, the more the soul -spends itself in love, so much the more love it has, the richer it grows, -the diviner its nature becomes. But at the same time, it is a fact that -love is never complete, never reaches its full scope and measure until -our love takes on an eternal aspect—until we love God in Himself or love -Him in our loved ones. One reason why love is exalted by death is that we -no longer love our immortal loved one in any narrow and selfish way; we -love now for pure love’s sake, and the truest of all treasures which can -be laid up in imperishable bags is this stock of unalloyed love for that -which is most lovely—for God and for souls that are given to us to bring -some of His nature closer to our human hearts. - -Goodness is, of course, notoriously hard to define. It is never an -abstract quality that can be described by logical concepts. It is a -way of living, a way of acting, a way of working out relationships. It -is, like love, a cumulative thing. To be good inherently means to be -becoming better, to be on the way to an unattained goal of action, or -of character. It is the glory of going on to be perfect like our Father -in heaven. To be rich in goodness of character, therefore, is to be on -the way to become ever richer, however long the journey lasts, however -far the spiral winds, for goodness, like love, is of God, and steadily -assimilates our imperfect human nature to the perfect divine nature. - -Joy is, perhaps, not often thought of as one of the things men live -by, as the soul’s eternal wealth. Life is so full of sorrow and pain -that joy seems like a fleeting, vanishing asset. But that is because -joy is confused with pleasure. True joy is not a thing of moods, not a -capricious emotion, tied to fluctuating experiences. It is a state and -condition of the soul. It survives through pain and sorrow and, like a -subterranean spring, waters the whole life. It is intimately allied and -bound up with love and goodness, and so is deeply rooted in the life -of God. Joy is the most perfect and complete mark and sign of immortal -wealth, because it indicates that the soul is living by love and by -goodness, and is very rich in God. - - -II - -OTHERISM - -(_Matt. VII. 1-12_) - -Altruism is an honored word. Otherism is only recently coined and has not -yet become widely current in good speech. We need, however, a word that -has more inward depth than altruism usually carries, and perhaps otherism -will eventually take that vacant place. - -Not merely in these days of war, but in all our human relations all the -time we greatly need to get the interior vision which enables us to -understand from within those with whom we live and work. Nobody sees life -correctly until he has corrected his own views by a true appreciation of -the views of others. From the outside it is impossible to estimate any -life fairly. We have long ago learned that we can get no true account of -any historical character unless we have a historian who can put himself -in the place of the person he is describing. He must have imagination -and be able to see clearly the conditions and forces, the influences and -the atmosphere in which the man lived. The problems which he had to deal -with, the conceptions which governed men’s thoughts when he lived—all -these must be understood, before we can get any estimate of the man -himself. The same sort of imagination is necessary to judge the person -who lives next door. We dare not pronounce upon him until we know all -that he has to face. If we could once feel his quivering spirit and could -see his inward struggles, we could not set up our private tribunal and -pass our cold individual judgment upon him. The real remedy for this hard -critical spirit which breaks society up into independent units is the -spirit of love, the spirit of otherism. - -The moment we put ourselves in the place of others, and pronounce no -judgment upon persons until we have seen all the circumstances of their -life, a new state of things at once appears. Genuine sympathy, clear -interior insight into the personality of others, immediately creates a -new world. The trouble too often is that we see all the defects in others -and forget our own. We want to take the mote out of another person’s eye -while all the time there is a whole fence rail in our own. Christ’s rule -is to make oneself perfect before one goes to correcting others. “Let him -who is without sin cast the first stone.” - -There is another situation also which would be remedied if we learned -to put ourselves in the other person’s place—if we had the spirit of -otherism. Christ sums it up in the proverb about _casting pearls before -swine_, _i.e._ giving what is a misfit. Many of our well-meant charities -are of this sort. We blunder in our efforts to help poor needy people, -because we do not get their point of view. We do not live our way into -their lives. There is no fit between our gift and their need. They get a -stone for bread. - -The same thing happens in much of our public speaking. Many persons have -the barbarous habit of never imagining the listeners’ point of view. They -go on speaking as unconscious of the condition confronting them as the -hose pipe is when the water is turned on. The remedy again is otherism. -It is impossible to help anybody with a message until you can in some -measure _share_ his life. - - “The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, - In whatso we share with another’s need.” - -This teaching is all summed up in the golden rule, “All things that ye -would that men should do unto you do ye also unto them.” It is clear at -once that to do this one must cultivate both his spirit of love and his -power of imagination. It is never enough to want to help a person. We -must put ourself in his place and be able to do what really _will help -him_. It would appear, therefore, that the most difficult and at the same -time the most heavenly attainment in the world is sympathy—the spirit of -otherism. - - -III - -SCAVENGERS AND THE KINGDOM - -We no longer expect a world of perfect conditions to appear by sudden -intervention. We have explained so many things by the discovery of -antecedent developmental processes that we have leaped to the working -faith that all things come that way. We do, no doubt, find unbridged gaps -in the enormous series of events that have culminated in our present -world, and we must admit that nature seems sometimes to desert her usual -placid way of process for what looks like a steeplechase of sudden -“jumps,” but we feel pretty sure that even these “jumps” have been slowly -prepared for and are themselves part of the process-method. - -Then, too, we find it very difficult to conceive how a spiritual -kingdom—a world which is built and held together by the inner gravitation -of love—could come by a fiat, or a stroke, or a jet. The qualities which -form and characterize the kingdom of God are all qualities that are -born and cultivated within by personal choices, by the formation of -rightly-fashioned wills, by the growth of love and sympathy in the heart, -by the creation of pure and elevated desires. Those traits must be won -and achieved. They cannot be shot into souls from without. If, therefore, -we are to expect the crowning age that shall usher in a world in which -wrath and hate no longer destroy, from which injustice is banished and -the central law of which is love like that of Christ’s, then we must look -for this age, it seems to me, to come by slow increments and gains of -advancing personal and social goodness, and by divine and human processes -already at work in some degree in the lives of men. - -Christ often seems to teach this view. There is a strand in his sayings -that certainly implies a kingdom coming by a long process of slow -spiritual gains. There is first the seed, then the blade, then the -ear and finally the full corn in the ear. The mustard seed, though -so minute and tiny, is a type of the kingdom because it contains the -potentiality of a vast growth and expansion. The yeast is likewise a -figure of ever-growing, permeating, penetrating living force which in -time leavens the whole mass. The kingdom is frequently described as an -inner life, a victorious spirit. It “comes” when God’s will is done in a -person as it is done in heaven, and, therefore, it is not a spectacle to -be “observed,” like the passing of Cæsar’s legions, or the installation -of a new ruler. But, on the other hand, there are plainly many sayings -which point toward the expectation of a mighty sudden _event_. We seem, -again and again, to be hearing not of process, but of apocalypse, not -of slow development, but of a mysterious leap. There can be no question -that most devout Jews of the first century expected the world’s relief -expedition to come by miracle, and it is evident that there was an -intense hope in the minds of men that, in one way or another, God -would intervene and put things right. Many think that Christ shared -that hope and expectation. It is of course possible that in sharing, as -He did, the actual life of man, He partook of the hopes and travails -and expectations of His times. But, I think, we need to go very slowly -and cautiously in this direction. To interpret Christ’s message mainly -in terms of apocalypse and sudden interventions is surely to miss its -naturalness, its spiritual vision, and its inward depth. We can well -admit that nobody then had quite our modern conception of process or our -present day dislike of breaks, interruptions, and interventions. There -was no difficulty in thinking of a new age or dispensation miraculously -inaugurated. Only it looks as though Christ had discovered an ethical and -spiritual way which made it unnecessary to count on miracle. There was -much refuse to be consumed, much corruption to be removed, before the new -condition of life could be in full play, but He seems to have seen that -the consuming fire and the cleansing work were an essential and inherent -part of the _process_ that was bringing the kingdom. - -When he was asked _where_ men were to look for the kingdom, His answer -was that they were to find a figure and parable of it in the normal -process of nature’s scavengers. The carcass lies decaying in the sun, -corrupting the air and tainting everything in its region. There can -be no wholesome conditions of life in that spot until the corruption -is removed. But nature has provided a way of cleansing the air. The -scavenger comes and removes the refuse and corruption and turns it -by a strange alchemy into living matter. Life feeds on the decaying -refuse, raises it back into life, and cleanses the world by making -even corruption minister to its own life processes. We could not live -an hour in our world if it were not alive with a myriad variety of -scavenging methods that burn up effete matter, transmute noxious forms -into wholesome stuff, cleanse away the poisons, and transmute, not by -an apocalypse, but by a process, death into life and corruption into -sweetness. May not the vulture, like the tiny sparrow who cannot fall -without divine regard, be a sign, a figure, a parable? When we look for -the kingdom, in the light of this sign, we shall not search the clouds -of heaven, we shall not consult “the number of the beast”—we shall look -for it wherever we see life conquering death, wherever the white tents -of love are pitched against the black tents of hate, wherever the living -forces of goodness are battering down the strongholds of evil, wherever -the sinner is being changed to a saint, wherever ancient survivals of -instinct and custom are yielding to the sway of growing vision and -insight and ideal. It is “slow and late” to come, this kingdom! So was -life slow to come, while all that was to be - - “Whirl’d for a million æons thro’ the vast - Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light.” - -So was man slow to come, while fantastic creatures were “tearing each -other in the slime.” So was a spirit-governed Person slow to come, while -men lived in lust and war and hate. But in God’s world at length the -things that ought to come do come, and we may faintly guess by what we -see that the kingdom, too, is coming. There is something like it now in -some lives. - - -IV - -“THE BEYOND IS WITHIN” - -Among the parables of Christ there is a very impressive one on the shut -door. It is a story of ten country maidens who were invited to a wedding. -They were to meet the bridegroom coming from a distance, as soon as his -arrival should be announced, and with their lighted lamps they were to -guide him and his attendants through the darkness to the home of the -bride, where the banquet and the festal dance were to be held. - -For many days these simple maidens had been living in the thrilling -expectation of the great event in which they were to take a leading part. - -They had been busy with their preparations, drilling their rhythmic -steps, and talking eagerly of the approaching night. But five of them -foolishly neglected the critically important part of the preparation—they -took no oil to supply their lamps and at the dramatic moment they found -themselves compelled to withdraw from the joyous throng and to go in -search of the necessary equipment. When at length they arrived with their -oil, the illuminated procession was over and the door of the festal house -was shut. - -The simple maidens soon discovered that there was a stern finality to -this shut door. Their blunder had irrevocable consequences. They may have -had other interesting opportunities as life went on, but they forever -missed this joyous procession and this wedding feast. “Too late, too -late. Ye cannot enter now.” - -Christ turns this common, trivial neighborhood incident into a parable -of the Kingdom of God. Those who believe that He was looking, as so many -in His time were looking, for a sudden shift of dispensations and for a -Kingdom to be ushered in by a stupendous apocalyptic event, find in this -irrevocably shut door of the parable a figure of the doom of those who -failed to prepare for the sudden coming of this crisis, decisive of the -destiny of men. - -But there is another, and, I think, a truer, way of interpreting this -shut door. There is a stern finality to all opportunities that have been -missed and to all high occasions that have been blundered and bungled. -All decisions of the will, all choices of life have, in their very -nature, apocalyptic finality. They suddenly reveal and unveil character -and they are loaded with destiny which can be changed only by a change -of character. Other opportunities may offer themselves and new chances -may indeed come, but when any choice has been made or any opportunity has -been missed that chance has gone by and that door is shut. - -The football player who has had a chance in the great game of the year -to make a goal, and instead of doing it fumbled the ball and lost the -opportunity to score, may just possibly have another chance sometime, but -no apologies and no explanations can ever change the apocalyptic finality -of that fumble. - -Something like that is involved in all the spiritual issues of life, and -our deeds and attitudes are all the time irrevocably opening or shutting -doors, which prove to be doors to the Kingdom of God. Christ may possibly -at times have looked for some sudden revelation of destiny, but surely -for the most part He looked for the momentous issues of the Kingdom -_within the soul itself_ rather than in a spectacular event in the outer -world. This principle throws light on all Christ’s sayings about the -future. The coming destiny is not in the stars, it is not in the sentence -of a Great Assize, it is not in the sudden shift of “dispensations”; it -is in the character and inner nature, as they have been formed within -each soul. The thing to be concerned about is not so much a day of -judgment or an apocalyptic moment, as the trend of the will, the attitude -of the spirit, the formation of inner disposition and character. We -are always facing issues of an eternal aspect, and every day is a day -of judgment, revealing the line of march and the issues of destiny. -Conversion crises are fortunately possible, when suddenly a new level -of life may be reached and a fresh start may be made, and in this inner -world of personality, there are always new possibilities occurring, but, -as at oriental marriage feasts, neglected opportunities are irreversibly -neglected, shut doors are irrevocably shut, and blunders that affect -the issues of the soul have an apocalyptic finality about them. New -dispensations may await us; the Kingdom may come in ways we never dreamed -of; the beyond may be more momentous than we have ever expected, but -always and everywhere “the within” determines “the beyond,” and character -is destiny. - - -V - -THE ATTITUDE TOWARD THE UNSEEN - -“Nowhere as yet has history spoken in favor of the ideal of a morality -without religion. New active forces of will, so far as we can observe, -have always arisen in conjunction with ideas about the unseen.” So -wrote the great German historian and philosopher, Wilhelm Dilthey. The -greatest experts in the field both of ethics and of religion agree with -this view. Henry Sidgwick and Leslie Stephen are experts in the field -of ethics who cannot be suspected of holding a brief for religion, and -yet Sidgwick says: “Ethics is an imperfect science alone. It must run up -into religion to complete itself;” and Leslie Stephen says: “Morality -and religion stand or fall together.” Spinoza, who was denounced during -his lifetime as an atheist and a destroyer of the faith, nevertheless -makes love of God the whole basis of genuine ethics, insisting that there -is no morality conceivable without love of God. St. Augustine’s famous -testimony may suffice as a religious expert’s view. He says, “Love God -and then you may do what you please,” meaning, of course, that you cannot -then approve a wrong course of action or of life. - -Nowhere, certainly, are religion and ethics so wonderfully fused into -one indissoluble whole as in the experience and teaching of Christ. This -appears not only in His supreme rule for religion and for good conduct: -“Thou shalt love God with all thy powers and thy neighbor as thyself,” -but still more does it appear in the inner steps and processes which -underlie and prepare the way for the decisions and acts of Christ’s -own life. Here, unmistakably, _all the active forces of will arose in -conjunction with ideas about the unseen_. - -It is the modern custom to talk much about the ethics of Jesus and to see -in the Sermon on the Mount an ideal of human personality and a program -for an ideal social order. But a careful reader cannot fail to feel in -Christ’s teaching the complete fusion of His ideal for the individual -and for society with His consciousness of the world of unseen realities. -The new person and the new society are possible in His thought, only -through unbroken _correspondence_ with the world of higher forces and -of perfect conditions. The only way to be perfect is to be on the way -toward likeness to the heavenly Father, the only moral dynamic that will -work is a love, like that of God’s love, which expels all selfishness -and all tendency to stop at partial and inadequate goods. If any kingdom -of heavenly conditions is ever to be expected on earth, if ever we may -hope for a day to dawn when the divine will is to be exhibited among men -and they are to live the love-way of goodness, it is because God is our -Father and we have the possibilities of His nature. - -The ethical ideals of the Kingdom are inherently attached to the prayer -experience of Jesus. The kind of human world which His faith builds for -men is forever linked to the kind of God to whom He prays. Cut the link -and both worlds fall away. We cannot shuffle the cold, hard, loveless -atoms of our social world into lovely forms of coöperative relationship. -The atoms must be changed. In some way we must learn how to lift men into -the faith which Christ had, that God is the Father who is seeking to draw -us all into correspondence with His unseen world of Life and Love. “After -this manner pray ye. Our heavenly Father of the holy name, thy Kingdom -come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The two faiths make -one faith—the faith in a Father-God who cares, and the faith in the -realization of an ideal society based on coöperative love. - -“And as He was praying, the fashion of His countenance was altered and -His raiment became white and dazzling.” This is a simple, synoptic -account of an experience attaching to a supreme crisis of personal -decision in the life of Jesus. His so-called ethics, as I have been -insisting, is indivisibly bound up with His attitude toward the -unseen, with His experience of a realm where what ought to be, really -is. So, too, it is because He has found His inward relation with God -that He makes His great decision to go forward toward Jerusalem, to -meet the onset of opposition, to see His work frustrated by the rulers -of the nation, to suffer and to die at the hands of His enemies. The -Transfiguration has been treated as a myth and again as a misplaced -resurrection story. But it is certainly best to treat it as a genuine -psychological narrative which fits reality and life at every point. As -the clouds darken and the danger threatens and the successful issue of -His mission seems impossible, Jesus falls back upon God, brings His -spirit into absolute parallelism with the heavenly will and accepts -whatever may be involved in the pursuit of the course to which He is -committed. When He pushes back into the inner experience of relation -with His Father and the circuit of connection closes and living faith -floods through Him and fixes His decision unalterably to go forward, His -face and form are transfigured and illuminated through the experience of -union. This prayer of illumination reported in the gospels, is not an -isolated instance, a solitary experience. The altered face, the changed -body, the glorified figure, the radiation of light, have marked many a -subordinate saint, and may well have characterized the Master as He found -the true attitude of soul toward the unseen and formed His momentous -decision to be faithful unto death in His manifestation of love. - -In Gethsemane, as the awful moment came nearer, once more we catch a -glimpse of His attitude to the unseen. In place of illuminated form and -shining garments, we hear now of a face covered with the sweat and blood -of agony. Just in front are the shouting rabble, the cross and the nails, -the defeat of lifelong hopes and the defection of the inner fellowship, -but the triumphant spirit within Him unites with the infinite will that -is steering the world and piloting all lives, and calmly acquiesces with -it. But to this suffering soul, battling in the dark night of agony, -the infinite will is no abstract Power, no blind fate, to be dumbly -yielded to. The great word which breaks out from these quivering lips -is the dear word for “Father” that the little child’s lips have learned -to say: “Abba.” The will above is His will now and He goes forward to -the pain and death in the strength of communion and fellowship with -His Abba-Father. There may have been a single moment of desolation in -the agony of the next day when the cry escaped, “My God, why hast thou -forsaken me?” but immediately the inner spirit recovers its connection -and its confidence and the crucifixion ends, as it should, with the words -of triumphant faith, “Father, into thy hands I intrust my spirit.” - -The most important fact of this Life, which has ever since poured Alpine -streams of power into the life of the world, is its attitude toward the -unseen. We miss the heart of things when we reduce the gospel to ethics -or when we transform it into dry theology. Through all the story and -behind all the teaching is the mighty inner fact of an intimate personal -_experience_ of God as Father. To live is to be about the “Father’s -business.” In great moments of intercourse there comes to Him a flooding -consciousness of sonship, joyous both to Father and Son: “In Him I am -well pleased,” and in times of strain and tragedy the onward course is -possible because the inner bond holds fast and the Abba-experience abides. - -It is not strange that a synoptic writer reports the saying: “No man -knoweth the Father but the Son.” The passage as it stands reported in -Matthew may be colored by later theology, but there is a nucleus of -absolute truth hidden in the saying. There is no other way to know God -but this way of inner love-experience. Only a son can know a Father. Only -one who has trodden the wine-press in anguish and pain, and through -it all has felt the enfolding love of an Abba-father really _knows_. -Mysticism has its pitfalls and its limitations, but this much is sound -and true, that the way to know God is to have inner heart’s experience of -Him, like the experience of the Son. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -SOME PROPHETS OF THE INNER WAY - - -I - -THE PSALMIST’S WAY - -Emerson’s friend, Margaret Fuller, coined the phrase, “standing the -universe.” “I can stand the universe,” was her brave statement. But long -before Concord was discovered or “the transcendental school” was dreamed -of a school of Hebrew saints had learned how to stand the universe. - -Canaan, with all its milk and honey, was never a land arranged by -preëstablished harmony as a paradise for the idealist. It enjoyed no -special millennium privileges. Whatever rainbow dreams may have filled -the mind of optimistic prophets were always quickly put to flight by the -iron facts of the rigid world which ringed them round. The Philistines -were pitiless neighbors. Like Gawain, they were spiritually too blind -even to have desires to _see_. Coats of mail, gigantic spear heads, -iron chariots, and Goliath champions were their arguments. How could a -nation like Israel be free to work out its spiritual career with these -crude materialistic Philistines always hanging on its borders and always -threatening its national existence? When the Philistines were temporarily -quiet there were Moabites, or Edomites, or Syrians ready to take a turn -at hampering the ideals of Israel. And worse still was ahead. From the -time of the battle of Karkar (854 B.C.) on, the armies of Assyria had to -be reckoned with. Here was another pitiless foe; efficient, militant, -inventive, with a culture and religion suited to its genius, but as -ruthless as a wolf toward everything in its path. It smashed whatever -it struck and in the course of events Jerusalem was ground in its -irresistible mill. - -When a “return” was granted under the Persians, and the national and -religious life was restored in Jerusalem, new difficulties swarmed. -During the long period of “restoration” the half-breed peoples in -Palestine with their low ideals threatened to defeat the hopes of -the returned exiles and made their feeble beginnings as difficult as -possible. Then, again, the new nation was hardly firm in its re-found -life when it had to meet the forces of Hellenism which rose out of -the expansion policies of Alexander. A culture incompatible with the -ideals and passions of the Hebrews broke in and surrounded them. It was -a different enemy to any they had yet met but no less irreconcilable. -Under the Hellenized kings of Antioch all the hopes and ideals of this -long-suffering race were put in jeopardy, and the very existence of the -chosen nation was in desperate peril in the period of the Maccabean -struggle. - -But through all these centuries of warfare with alien peoples, and during -all these hard periods of strain and anguish, there existed a school of -saints who were learning how to stand the universe and who were teaching -the world a way of victory even in the midst of outward defeat. Their -“way” was the fortification of the soul, the construction of the interior -life; and the literature which they produced has proved to be one of -the most precious treasures of the race. The gold dust words of these -saints are scattered through most of the early books of Israel, for in -all periods the poets of this race were mainly busy with this central -problem of life, the problem of standing the universe. But it is in the -collection which we call the _Psalms_ that we find the supreme literature -of this inner way of fortification and victory. - -“Thou restorest my soul,” is the joyous testimony of one of these saints, -and this testimony of the best loved member of this school of saints is -the key to the Psalmist’s way of triumph in general. In the confusion -of events and the irrationality of things—_die Ohnmacht der Natur_—he -felt his way back, like a little child in the dark feeling for his -mother, until he found God as the rock on which his feet could stand. -The processes of reconstruction are never traced out. The logic of this -way back to the fortification of the soul through the discovery of God -is not given in detail. The moments when we shift the levels of life are -never quite describable. But somehow when the way outside goes on into -the valley of the shadow of death, and the table is set in the face of -enemies, the soul falls back upon God and is _restored_. - -“I could not understand,” another Psalmist declares. Everything was -baffling. The wicked seemed to prosper and the righteous to suffer. The -world appeared out of joint and the whole web of life hopelessly tangled; -“but,” he adds with no further explanation, “I came into the sanctuary of -God and then I saw.” It is like the final solution in the great inner -drama of Job. _God answers_ and Job’s problem is solved: “I had heard -of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee.” In the -great phrase of the book, “_God_ turned the captivity of Job.” - -These men who gave us our Psalms had learned how to bear adversity and -affliction without being overwhelmed or defeated. “All thy waves and thy -billows have gone over me,” one of them cries. He has lost his land and -has only the _memory_ of Jordan and Hermon and Mizar. His adversaries -are a constant “sword in his bones.” They jeer at him and ask, “Where -now is thy God?” but his trust holds steadily on: “The Lord will command -His loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be -with me!” Even when the water-spouts of trouble break over him, when “the -waters roar and are troubled,” when the “nations rage and kingdoms are -moved,” when “desolations are abroad in the earth,” God abides for him “a -very present help in time of trouble,” “a refuge and strength” for his -soul. Dismay and trembling may be abroad; pain may come as on a woman in -travail, yet this deep soul can calmly say, “God is our God forever; He -will be our guide even unto death.” - -This element of _trust_ and _confidence_ has never anywhere had grander -utterance. The Psalmist has got beyond reliance on “horses and chariots,” -beyond trust in “riches,” “princes,” in “the bow or the sword,” or -in “man, whose breath is in his nostrils.” He rests his case on God -alone, and builds on naked faith in His goodness and care: “_Thou_ hast -delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from -falling.” Puzzled he often is with the prosperity of the wicked, who -“flourish like green bay-trees”; perplexed he sometimes is with God’s -delay in coming to the help of the poor and needy and oppressed; but -his faith holds on and he does not “slide.” It gives us almost a sense -of awe as we see a valiant soul, hard pressed, hemmed around, deep in -affliction and sorrow, “standing the world” and saying in clear voice: -“Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; His loving-kindness -endureth forever!” - -We understand when we read such words why this collection of Psalms -has held its place in the religious life of the world. It contains the -living, throbbing _experience_ of great souls, who cared absolutely for -one thing—to find God and to enjoy Him, and who, having found their one -precious jewel, could do without all else, and by this inner experience -could stand the world. - - -II - -THE NEW AND LIVING WAY - -The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that Christ has -introduced into the world “a new and living way” to God. The concrete -problems confronting this writer to a Jewish circle of the first century -were very different from our own problems to-day, but he so succeeded in -seizing an eternal aspect of the issue that his word about the new and -living way is as vital now as it was then. - -His “new and living way,” as the tenth chapter shows, is the way of -personal consecration as a substitute for the old way of sacrifice. The -manner of his exposition may seem to us now a little artificial, but -there can be no question of the religious significance of the conclusion. -Following his usual line of interpretation, he begins by treating the -great national system of sacrifices as a “shadow,” _i.e._ a parable, or -a figure, or a symbol, of a true and higher reality. Then he goes on -boldly to declare that “sacrifices” have become empty performances—it is -impossible, he says, that the blood of bulls and goats works any real -change in the nature or the attitude of the soul. Next he buttresses his -radical conclusion with a citation of Scripture to the effect that God -has never taken pleasure in burnt offerings and ritual sacrifices, and -on this Scripture text from the Psalms he rises to his new insight, -that Christ has come not to do the sacrificial work of a priest, not to -satisfy God by a sacrifice, but to reveal the personal power of a life of -consecration: “Then said I, lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” This way -of dedication to the divine will, this complete consecration of self out -of love for the will of God, the writer calls “the new and living way.” - -Two very important conclusions are inherently bound up with this -transition from a religion of sacrifices to a religion of dedication. -First, if carries a wholly new conception of God and secondly, it -involves a complete reinterpretation of human ministry. If God does not -take any pleasure in sacrifice, then the whole idea that He is a Being -to be appeased by gifts, by offerings, by incense, by blood, or by -self-inflicted suffering of any sort, falls to the ground. These things -are not shadows or symbols; they are blunders and mistakes. The God for -whom they are intended needs and asks for no such form of approach. -That has always been the contention of the supreme prophets of the race, -and Christ in His unveiling of God has made the fact sun-clear that God -is not rightly conceived when He is thought of as needing any kind of -sacrifice or any inducement to make Him forgiving or loving. Love is His -nature. The new and living way leads first of all to this new revelation -of God. - -But no less certainly it leads to a new type of minister. The priest was -conceived as an expert in ways of _satisfying_ God and of _appeasing_ -Him. He was supposed to know what God required and how to perform the -things required. He was indispensable, because only an expert, duly -ordained, could do the work that was necessary for bringing God and man -into relation with each other. Under “the new and living way,” however, -the priest has lost his occupation and the minister becomes an expert -in ways of expanding human life and in bringing men to a dedication of -themselves to the will of God and to the spiritual tasks of the world. In -accordance with this new insight, everything that concerns religion must -in some way attach to life. It must promote, or advance life, increase -life, add to its height and depth, or, in some manner, make life richer -and more joyous. The minister of the new and living way may be called, as -he no doubt will be called, to make many sacrifices of things that are -precious, and surrenders of things as dear as life itself, but there will -be no inherent magic in these sacrifices. They will not be efficacious -as a satisfaction to God. They will be only means toward some larger -end of life, as was the case with Christ’s surrenders and sacrifices. -The ascetic temper will be left forever behind. Whatever is cut off, or -plucked out, will be removed only for the sake of increasing the quality -of life and the dynamic of it. The final test is always to be sought in -the expansion of capacity, in the increase of talents, in the formation -of personality, in dedication to the task of widening the area of life. - -The true minister will, like the great apostle, present his body, his -entire being, in living dedication. He will be satisfied with nothing -short of a holy and acceptable service—acceptable, because Christlike—he -will endeavor to make all his service “reasonable service”; that is, -intelligent service, and he will strive earnestly not to become _set_ -into the mold of the world or into any deadening groove of habit, but to -be _transformed_ by a steady increase of life and a renewing of spiritual -insight, so that he can prove what is the perfect will of God and so that -he can minister to the growing life of the world. - - -III - -AN APOSTLE OF THE INNER WAY - -It is always a foolish blunder to take half when it is just as easy to -have a whole, but the tendency to dichotomize all realities into halves -and to assume that we are shut up to an _either-or_ selection, is an -ancient tendency and one that very often keeps us from winning the full -richness of the life that is possible for us. Human history is strewn -with dualistic formulations which have sorted men into _either-or_ -groups. Now it is “spirit” and “flesh” that are sharply antagonistic and -men are called upon to settle which of these two halves of man’s life is -to have their loyalty. Again, it is “this world” and “the next world”—the -here and the yonder—that bid for our heart’s suffrage. “The Church” and -“the world”; “faith” and “reason”; “the sacred” and “the secular” are -other twin pairs that call for a sharp decision of allegiance. So, too, -it has been customary to cut apart the outer life and the inner life and, -with a stern _either-or_, to put them into rivalry with one another. -One camp insists that religion is to be sought in deeds and effects; -the other camp asserts that religion is an inward condition of life—_to -be_ is more important than _to do_. But this method of cutting is like -that which the unnatural mother asked Solomon to perform upon the living -child. It sunders what was alive and throbbing into two dead fragments, -neither of which is a real half of the united living whole. In place of -all the _either-or_ formulations that force a choice between the halves -of great spiritual realities I should put the living and undivided whole. -Instead of selecting _either-or_, I prefer to take _both_. There is no -line that splits the outer life and the inner life into two compartments. -Nobody can _do_ without _being_ and nobody can _be_ without _doing_. -Personality is the most complete unity in the universe and it binds -forever into an indissoluble and integral whole the outer and the inner, -the spirit and the deed. - -But at the same time it is interesting to see what a supremely great and -many-sided soul like St. Paul has to say of the inwardness and interior -depth of religion. That he was a man of action is plain enough to be -seen and nobody can easily miss his clarion call to arm _cap-a-pie_ for -the positive, moral battles of life. He was ethical in the noblest sense -of the word, but there was an inner core of religious experience in him -which is as unique and wonderful as is his athletic ethical purpose or -his imperial spirit of moral conquest. - -There was for him no kind of “doing” which could ever be a substitute for -the spiritual health of the soul. Nobody has ever lived who has been more -deeply concerned than was St. Paul over the primary problem of life: How -can my soul be saved? To be “saved” for him, however, does not mean to be -rescued from dire torment or from the consequences which follow sin and -dog the sinner. No transaction in another world can accomplish salvation -for him; no mere change from debit to credit side in the heavenly ledgers -can make him a saved man. To be saved for St. Paul is to become a new -kind of person, with a new inner nature, a new dimension of life, a new -joy and triumph of soul. There is a certain inner _feeling_ here which -systematic theology can no more convey than a botanical description of -a flower can convey what the poet feels in the presence of the flower -itself. There is no lack of books and articles which spread before us -St. Paul’s doctrines and which tell us his theory—his _gnosis_—of the -plan of salvation. The trouble with all these external accounts is that -they clank like hollow armor. They are like sounding brass and clanging -cymbals. We miss the _real thing_ that matters—the inner throbbing heart -of the living experience. - -What he is always trying to tell us is that a new “nature” has been -formed within him, a new spirit has come to birth in his inmost self. -Once he was weak, now he is strong. Once he was permanently defeated, -now he is “led in a continual triumph.” Once he was at the mercy of the -forces of blind instinct and habit which dragged him whither he would -not, now he feels free from the dominion of sin and its inherent peril to -the soul. Once, with all his pride of pharisaism, he was an alien to the -commonwealth of God, now he is a fellow citizen with all the inward sense -of loyalty that makes citizenship real. - -He traces the immense transformation to his personal discovery of a -mighty forgiving love, where he had least expected to find it, in the -heart of God—“We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us;” -“The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me -and gave Himself for me.” _Faith_, wherever St. Paul uses it to express -the central human fact of the religious life, is a word of tremendous -inward depth. It is bathed and saturated with personal experience, and it -proves to be a constructive life-principle of the first importance. Faith -_works_; it is something by which one lives: “The life I now live, I live -by faith.” - -But the full measure—the length and breadth, depth and height—of his new -inner world does not come full into view until one sees how through faith -and love this man has come into conscious relation with the Spirit of God -inwardly revealed to him, and operative as a resident presence in his own -spirit. No forensic account of salvation can reach this central feature -of real salvation, which now appears as new inward life and power. St. -Paul takes religion out of the sphere of logic into the primary region -of life. There are ways of living upon the Life of God as direct and -verifiable as is the correspondence between the plant and its natural -environment. To _live_, in the full spiritual meaning of this word as St. -Paul uses it, is to be immersed in the living currents of the circulating -Life of God, and to be fed from within by those sources of creative Life -which feed the evolving world: “Beholding as in a mirror the glory of -the Lord, we are transformed into the same image by the Spirit of the -Lord;” “He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying -Abba;” “The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of -God.” With the progress of his experience and the maturing of his thought -upon it, there came to St. Paul an extraordinary insight. He came to -identify Christ with the Spirit: “The Lord is the Spirit.” He no longer -thought of Him as merely the historical person of Galilee, but rather -as the eternal revelation of God, first in a definite form as Jesus -the Christ, and then, after the resurrection, as Christ the invisible -Spirit, working within men, recreating and renewing their spiritual -lives. The influence of Christ for salvation was, thus, with him far -more than a moral influence. It was of the nature of a real energism—a -spiritual power coöperating with the human will and remaking men by the -formation of a new Christ-natured self within him. The process has no -known or conceivable limits. Its goal is the formation of a man “after -Christ”: “Till Christ be formed in you.” “That you may grow up into Him -in all things who is the Head;” “Till we all come to the measure of the -stature of the fulness of Christ.” The “fruit” of the Spirit, matured -in the inward realm of man’s central being and expressed in common acts -of daily life, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, -faithfulness, meekness, self-control—a nature in all things like that -which was revealed in glory and fulness in the face of Jesus Christ. - - -IV - -THE EPHESIAN GOSPEL - -In his fresh, impressive book, _The Ephesian Gospel_, Dr. Percy -Gardner says that in the early period of Christianity no city, save -only Jerusalem, was more influential for the development of Christian -thought than was the city of Ephesus. It was here in Ephesus, scholars -are convinced, some time about the end of the first century, that the -life and message of Jesus received its most sublime and wonderful -interpretation, and it was through this Ephesian interpretation that the -gathered mysticism of Greece and the other ancient religions of the world -was indissolubly fused with the great ethical teachings of the Galilean. - -It will never be known, with absolute certainty, who was the profound -genius that made this Ephesian interpretation, but it will always -continue to be called the gospel “according to John.” There will never be -any doubt, in the minds of those who read appreciatively, that, either -inwardly or outwardly, the writer of it had “lain on Christ’s bosom”; -that he had “received of His fulness,” and that he had “seen with his -eyes, and heard with his ears and handled with his hands the Word of -Life.” He was, we can almost certainly say, one of St. Paul’s men. He -has fully grasped the central ideas of the apostle who first planted the -truth in Ephesus, and he carries out in powerful fashion the Pauline -discovery that Christ has become an invisible, eternal presence in the -world. At the same time he possesses, either at first or second hand, a -large amount of narrative material for the expansion of the simple gospel -story as it had come from the three synoptic writers. But from first to -last everything in this gospel is told for a definite purpose and every -incident is loaded with a spiritual, interpretative content and meaning. -He does not undervalue history or the details of the Life lived in Judea -and Galilee, but he is concerned at every point to raise men’s thoughts -to the eternal meaning of Christ’s coming, to cultivate inward fellowship -with Him, and to reveal the last great _beatitude_, that those who have -not seen with outward eyes, but nevertheless have _believed_, are the -truly blessed ones. - -The earliest of our gospel documents—the document now called Q—centers -upon the “message,” and gives us a collection of simple but bottomlessly -profound sayings of Jesus. Another document—the gospel of Mark—hardly -less primitive and no less wonderful, focuses upon the person of Jesus -and His doings. Here we have in very narrow compass the earliest story -of this Life, inexhaustible in its depth of love and grace, which has -ever since woven itself into the very tissue of human life and thought. -But now this final document, which we have been calling “the Ephesian -Gospel,” makes a unique contribution and carries us up to a new level -of life. It announces that Jesus who gave the message, the Jesus who -lived this extraordinary personal life and did the deeds of love and -sacrifice, has become an ever-living, environing, permeative Spirit, -continuing His revelation, reliving His life, extending His sway in men -of faith. He is no longer of one date and one locality, but is present to -open, responsive human hearts everywhere as the atmosphere is present to -breathing lungs, or the sea to swimming fish, or the sunlight to growing -plants. We can no more lose this Christ of experience than we can lose -the sky. - -Christianity is in this interpretation vastly more than an historical -religion, bound up forever with the incidents of its temporal origin. -It is as much a present fact and a present power as electricity is. It -is rooted in an inexhaustible source of Life. It is as dynamic as the -central springs of the universe, and it is perpetually supplied from -within by invisible fountains of living energy. But this triumphant and -eternal principle of the spiritual life is, “according to John,” no -vague, abstract principle of logic, but instead a warm, tender, intimate, -concrete personification of Life, Light, and Love who has definitely -incarnated the Truth and revealed the nature of God and the possible -glory of man. - -The great Ephesian makes no division between history and experience. The -Christ of his faith and of his account is alike the Christ of history and -of experience. He looks backward, and he looks inward, and the Christ of -his story is the seamless and invisible product of this double process. -This is wholly in the manner of the great apostle who declared “if we -have known Christ after the flesh we know Him so now no more,” and yet -neither the Ephesian disciple nor the apostolic master discounted the -importance of the facts of the Christ after the flesh. The transcendent -truth for them both is the truth that the Church still has its Christ, -who is leading it into all the truth and progressively revealing Himself -with the expanding ages. - -Every Christian mystic for nineteen hundred years has felt the influence -of this great Ephesian prophet, and his message has become a part of -the necessary air we breathe. His gospel and his brief epistle, loaded -with its message of love, are, as Deissmann has well said, the greatest -monument of the appreciation of the mystical teaching of St. Paul that -has ever been reared in the world. The man who performed this immense -literary task for us of the after ages now - - “Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God,” - -but his _word_ is still quick and powerful and he has helped us more -than any other writer has done to interpret our own experience, and more -than any other prophet this Ephesian has inspired our faith in the real -presence and has given us the assurance, inwardly verified, that we are -not comfortless and alone, in a world of pain and loss and death, but are -bound as living twigs in one sap-giving Vine of Life, participants of the -vitalizing, refreshing, joy-bringing bread and water of Life, and with -open access to the infinite healing and comfort and fortification of the -Eternal Christ. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE - - -I - -WAITING ON GOD - -As worship, taken in its highest sense and widest scope, is man’s -loftiest undertaking, we cannot too often return to the perennial -questions: What is worship? Why do we worship? How do we best perform -this supreme human function? Worship is too great an experience to -be defined in any sharp or rigid or exclusive fashion. The history -of religion through the ages reveals the fact that there have been -multitudinous ways of worshiping God, all of them yielding real returns -of life and joy and power to large groups of men. At its best and truest, -however, worship seems to me to be _direct, vital, joyous, personal -experience and practice of the presence of God_. - -The very fact that such a mighty experience as this is possible means -that there is some inner meeting place between the soul and God; in other -words, that the divine and human, God and man, are not wholly sundered. -In an earlier time God was conceived as remote and transcendent. He -dwelt in the citadel of the sky, was worshiped with ascending incense -and communicated His will to beings beneath through celestial messengers -or by mysterious oracles. We have now more ground than ever before -for conceiving God as transcendent; that is, as above and beyond any -revelation of Himself, and as more than any finite experience can -apprehend. But at the same time, our experience and our ever-growing -knowledge of the outer and inner universe confirm our faith that God is -also immanent, a real presence, a spiritual reality, immediately to be -felt and known, a vital, life-giving environment of the soul. He is a -Being who can pour His life and energy into human souls, even as the sun -can flood the world with light and resident forces, or as the sea can -send its refreshing tides into all the bays and inlets of the coast, or -as the atmosphere can pour its life-giving supplies into the fountains -of the blood in the meeting place of the lungs; or, better still, as the -mother fuses her spirit into the spirit of her responsive child, and lays -her mind on him until he believes in her belief. - -It will be impossible for some of us ever to lose our faith in, our -certainty of, this vital presence which overarches our inner lives as -surely as the sky does our outer lives. The more we know of the great -unveiling of God in Christ, the more we see that He is a Being who can -be thus revealed in a personal life that is parallel in will with Him -and perfectly responsive in heart and mind to the spiritual presence. We -can use as our own the inscription on the wall of the ancient temple in -Egypt. On one of the walls a priest of the old religion had written for -his divinity: “I am He who was and is and ever shall be, and my veil hath -no man lifted.” On the opposite wall, some one who had found his way into -the later, richer faith, wrote this inscription: “Veil after veil have we -lifted and ever the Face is more wonderful!” - -It must be held, I think, as Emerson so well puts it, that there is “no -bar or wall in the soul” separating God and man. We lie open on one side -of our nature to God, who is the Oversoul of our souls, the Overmind of -our minds, the Overperson of our personal selves. There are deeps in our -consciousness which no private plumb line of our own can sound; there are -heights in our moral conscience which no ladder of our human intelligence -can scale; there are spiritual hungers, longings, yearnings, passions, -which find no explanation in terms of our physical inheritance or of our -outside world. We touch upon the coasts of a deeper universe, not yet -explored or mapped, but no less real and certain than this one in which -our mortal senses are at home. We cannot explain our normal selves or -account for the best things we know—or even for our condemnation of our -poorer, lower self—without an appeal to and acknowledgment of a divine -Guest and Companion who is the real presence of our central being. How -shall we best come into conscious fellowship with God and turn this -environing presence into a positive source of inner power, and of energy -for the practical tasks and duties of daily life? - -It is never easy to tell in plain words what prepares the soul for -intercourse with God; what it is that produces the consciousness of -divine tides, the joyous certainty that our central life is being flooded -and bathed by celestial currents. No person ever quite understands how -his tongue utters its loftiest words, how his pen writes its noblest -phrases, how his clearest insights came to him, how his most heroic -deeds got done, or how the finest strands of his character were woven. -Here is a mystery which we never quite uncover—a background which we -never wholly explore lies along the fringes of the most illumined part of -our lives. This mystery surrounds all the supreme acts of religion. They -cannot be _reduced_ to a cold and naked rational analysis. The intellect -possesses no master key which unlocks all the secrets of the soul. - -We can say, however, that purity of heart is one of the most essential -preconditions for this high-tide experience of worship. That means, of -course, much more than absence of moral impurity, freedom from soilure -and stain of willful sins. It means, besides, a cleansing away of -prejudice and harsh judgment. It means sincerity of soul, a believing, -trusting, loving spirit. It means intensity of desire for God, singleness -of purpose, integrity of heart. The flabby nature, the duplex will, the -judging spirit, will hardly succeed in worshiping God in any great or -transforming way. - -Silence is, again, a very important condition for the great inner action -which we call worship. So long as we are content to speak our own -_patois_, to live in the din of our narrow, private affairs, and to tune -our minds to stock broker’s tickers, we shall not arrive at the lofty -goal of the soul’s quest. We shall hear the noises of our outer universe -and nothing more. When we learn how to center down into the stillness and -quiet, to listen with our souls for the whisperings of Life and Truth, -to bring all our inner powers into parallelism with the set of divine -currents, we shall hear tidings from the inner world at the heart and -center of which is God. - -But by far the most influential condition for effective worship is -group-silence—the waiting, seeking, expectant attitude permeating and -penetrating a gathered company of persons. We hardly know in what the -group-influence consists, or why the presence of others heightens the -sensitive, responsive quality in each soul, but there can be no doubt -of the fact. There is some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the -living silence of a congregation which makes every earnest seeker more -quick to feel the presence of God, more acute of inner ear, more tender -of heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them -would be in isolation. Somehow we are able to “lend our minds out,” as -Browning puts it, or at least to contribute toward the formation of an -atmosphere that favors communion and coöperation with God. - -If this is so, if each assists all and all in turn assist each, our -responsibilities in meetings for worship are very real and very great and -we must try to realize that there is a form of ministry which is dynamic -even when the lips are sealed. - - -II - -IN THE SPIRIT - -There has surely been no lack of discussion on the Trinity during the -centuries of Christian history! But in all the welter and turmoil of -words there has been surprisingly little said about the Spirit. The -nature of the Father and the Son has always been the central theme, and -whatever is said of the Spirit is vague and brief. The Creeds are very -precise in their accounts of God the Father and of Christ the Son, but of -the Spirit, they merely say without explanation or expansion: “I believe -in the Holy Spirit.” - -The mystics and the heretics have generally had more to say of the -Spirit. They have almost always claimed for themselves direct and inward -guidance; they have insisted that God is near at hand, a presence to -be felt, and they have endeavored to bring in a “dispensation” of the -religion of the Spirit. But they, too, have contented themselves with -vague and hazy accounts of the nature and operation of the Spirit. It -has largely remained a subject of mystery, a kind of “fringe” with no -definite idea corresponding to the word. - -One reason for this haze and vagueness is due to the fact that the -Spirit has generally been supposed to act suddenly, miraculously, and -“as He lists,” so that no law or principle or method of His operation -can be discovered. He has been conceived as working upon or through the -individual in such a way that the individual is merely an “instrument,” -receiving and transmitting what comes entirely from “beyond” himself. -Consequently to be “in the Spirit” has meant to be “out of oneself,” -_i.e._ to be a channel for something that has had no origin in, and no -assistance from, our own personal consciousness. As Philo, the famous -Alexandrian teacher of the first century, states this view: “Ideas in an -invisible manner are suddenly showered upon me and implanted in me by an -inspiration from on high.” - -There is no doubt that in some cases in all ages men and women have had -experiences like that of Philo’s. But they are by no means universal; -they are extremely rare and unusual. God does sometimes “give to His -beloved in sleep” and He does apparently sometimes open the windows of -the soul by sudden inrushes of light and power. It is, however, a grave -mistake to limit the sphere and operation of the divine Spirit to these -sudden, unusual, miraculous incursions. It is precisely that mistake—made -by so many spiritual persons—that has kept Christians in general from -realizing the immense importance of the work of the Spirit in everyday -religious life. The mistake is, of course, due to our persistent tendency -to separate the divine from the human as two independent “realities,” and -to treat the divine as something “away,” “above,” and “beyond.” - -St. Paul, in spite of all his rabbinical training and the dualisms -of his age, is still the supreme exponent of the genuine, as opposed -to the false, idea of the Spirit. Whether the sermon on the Areopagus -as given in Acts is an exact report of an actual speech, or not, the -words, “in Him we live and move and are,” express very well St. Paul’s -mature conception of the all-pervasive immanence of God, though they -by no means indicate the extraordinary richness and boldness of his -thought. He identifies Christ and the Spirit—“the Lord is the Spirit.”[2] -The resurrected and glorified Christ, he holds, relives, reincarnates -Himself, in Christian believers. He becomes the spirit and life of their -lives. He makes through them a new body for Himself, a new kind of -revelation of Himself. They themselves are “letters of Jesus Christ,” -written by the Spirit. He is no longer limited to one locality of the -world or to one epoch of time. He is “present” wherever two or three -believers meet in loyalty to Him. He is revealed wherever any of His -faithful followers are working in love and devotion to extend the sway of -His Kingdom. The Church, which for St. Paul means always the fellowship -of believers, living in and through the Spirit, is “a growing habitation -of God.” - -The “sign” of the Spirit’s presence is, however, no sudden miraculous -bestowal like an unknown tongue or an extraordinary gift of healing. It -is just a normal thing like the manifestation of love. It is proved by -the increase of fellowship, the growth of group-spirit, the spread of -community-loyalty. When love has come, the Spirit is there, and when -love comes, those who are in its spirit suffer long and are kind; they -envy not; they are not provoked; they do not exalt mistakes; they bear -all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. Love -constructs, because it is the inherent evidence of the Spirit, living, -working, operating in the persons who love. Through them the incarnation -of God is continued in the world, the Spirit of Christ finds its organ -of expression and life, and the Kingdom of God comes on earth as it -is in heaven. This “body,” this Church, this community-group of loyal -believers, is “the completion of Him who through all and in all is being -fulfilled.”[3] - -If this Pauline idea of the Spirit is the true idea—and I believe it -is—then we are to look for the divine presence, the divine guidance, -the divine inspiration, not so much in sudden extraordinary inrushes -and miraculous bestowals, as in the processes which transform our -stubborn nature, which make us loyal and loving, which bind us into -fellowship with others, which form in us community-spirit and sympathetic -coöperation, and which make us efficient organs of the Christ-life and of -the growing Kingdom of God. - - -III - -THE POWER OF PRAYER - -It seems to me very clear that there is a native, elemental homing -instinct in our souls which turns us to God as naturally as the flower -turns to the sun. Apparently everybody in intense moments of human need -reaches out for some great source of life and help beyond himself. That -is one reason why we can pray and do pray, however conditions alter. -It is further clear that persons who pray in living faith, in some way -unlock reservoirs of energy and release great sources of power within -their interior depths. There is an experimental energy in prayer as -certainly as there is a force of gravitation or of electricity. In a -recent investigation of the value of prayer, nearly seventy per cent of -the persons questioned declared that they felt the presence of a higher -power while in the act of praying. As one of these personal testimonies -puts it: prayer makes it possible to carry heavy burdens with serenity; -it produces an atmosphere of spirit which triumphs over difficulties. - -It certainly is true that a door opens into a larger life and a new -dimension when the soul flings itself out in real prayer, and incomes of -power are experienced which heighten all capacities and which enable the -recipient to withstand temptation, endure trial, and conquer obstacles. -But prayer has always meant vastly more than that to the saints of past -ages. It was assuredly to them a homing instinct and it was the occasion -of refreshed and quickened life, but, more than that, it meant to them -a time of intimate personal intercourse and fellowship with a divine -Companion. It was two-sided, and not a solitary and one-sided heightening -of energy and of functions. Nor was that all. To the great host of -spiritual and triumphant souls who are behind us prayer was an _effective -and operative power_. It accomplished results and wrought effects beyond -the range of the inner life of the person who was praying. It was a way -of setting vast spiritual currents into circulation which worked mightily -through the world and upon the lives of men. It was believed to be an -operation of grace by which the fervent human will could influence the -course of divine action in the secret channels of the universe. - -Is this two-sided and objective view of prayer, as real intercourse and -as effective power, still tenable? Can men who accept the conclusions of -science still pray in living faith and with real expectation of results? -I see no ground against an affirmative answer. Science has furnished -no evidence which compels us to give up believing in the reality of -a personal conscious self which has a certain area of power over its -own acts and its own destiny, and which is capable of intercourse, -fellowship, friendship, and love with other personal selves. Science has -discovered no method of describing this spiritual reality, which we -call a self, nor can it explain what its ultimate nature is, or how it -creatively acts and reacts in love and fellowship toward other beings -like itself. This lies beyond the sphere and purview of science. - -Science, again, has furnished no evidence whatever against the reality of -a great spiritual universe, at the heart and center of which is a living, -loving Person who is capable of intercourse and fellowship and friendship -and love with finite spirits like us. That is also a field into which -science has no _entrée_; it is a matter which none of her conclusions -touch. Her business is to tell how natural phenomena act and what their -unvarying laws are. She has nothing to say and can have nothing to say -about the reality of a divine Person in a sphere within or above or -beyond the phenomenal realm, _i.e._ the realm where things appear in the -describable terms of space and time and causality. - -Real and convincing intimations have broken into our world that there -actually is a spiritual universe and a divine Person at the heart and -center of it who is in living and personal correspondence with us. This -is the most solid substance, the very warp and woof, of Christ’s entire -revelation. The universe is not a mere play of forces, nor limited to -things we see and touch and measure. Above, beyond, within, or rather in -a way transcending all words of space, there is a Father-God who is Love -and Life and Light and Spirit, and who is as open of access to us as the -lungs to the air. Nothing in our world of space disproves the truth of -Christ’s report. Our hearts tell us that it might be true, that it ought -to be true, that it is true. And if it is true, prayer, in all the senses -in which I have used it, may still be real and still be operative. - -There is no doubt a region where events occur under the play of -describable forces, where consequent follows antecedents and where -law and causality appear rigid and unvarying. In that narrow, limited -realm of space particles we shall perhaps not expect interruptions or -interferences. We shall rather learn how to adjust to what is there, and -to respect it as the highest will of the deepest nature and wisdom of -things. But in the realm of personal relationships, in all that touches -the hidden springs of life, in the stress and strain of human strivings, -in the interconnections of man with man, and group with group, in the -vital matters by which we live or die, in the weaving of personal and -national issues and destinies, we may well throw ourselves unperplexed on -God, and believe implicitly that what we pray for affects the heart of -God and influences the course and current of this Deeper Life that makes -the world. - - -IV - -THE MYSTERY OF GOODNESS - -We generally use the word “mystery” to indicate the dark, baffling, -and forbidding aspects of our life-experience. The things which spoil -our peace and mar our harmonies and break our unions are for us -characteristically _mysteries_. Pain, suffering, and death are the most -ancient of mysteries, which philosophers and poets have always been -striving to solve and unravel. Evil in all its complicated forms and sin -in all its hideous varieties constitute another group of these dark and -forbidding mysteries, about which the race has forever speculated. The -problem of evil has been the prolific source both of mythological stories -and of systems of philosophy. - -Every war that has swept the world, from that of Chedorlaomer to that -of Europe to-day, has driven this mystery of evil into the foreground -of consciousness, wherever the dark trail of ruin and devastation and -myriad woe has lain, or lies, across the lives and hearts of men. Now, -as always, burning homes, ruined business, masses of slain, maimed -bodies, the welter of animal instincts, the suffering of women and -little children, and the hates enflamed between races form the greatest -summation of baffling evils that man has known. - -But it is an interesting fact that the mysteries referred to by the -greatest prophets of the soul are not of this dark and baffling type. -They are mysteries of light rather than mysteries of darkness. Christ -speaks of “the mystery of the Kingdom of God.” Saint Paul finds the -central mystery to be an incarnational revelation of a suffering, loving -God, who re-lives His life in us, and the author of the Epistle to -Timothy announces “the great mystery of _godliness_.”[4] Love is put -above all mysteries; the gospel of grace is more “unsearchable” than -any suffering of this present time, and the real mystery is to be found -rather in resurrection than in death: “Behold I show you a mystery. We -shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed and the dead shall be -raised.” - -Science has confirmed this emphasis of the spiritual prophets. We come -back from the greatest books of the present time with the same conclusion -as this of the New Testament that the prime mysteries of the world are -mysteries of goodness and not of evil; of light and not of darkness. -We can pretty easily understand how there should be “evil” in a world -that has evolved under the two great biological conditions: (1) Every -being that survives wins out because he is more physically fit than his -neighbors in the struggle for existence, and (2) there is a tendency for -all inherited traits to persist in offspring. In order to have “nature” -at all, there must be a heavy tinge of redness in tooth and claw. The -primitive passions must be strong in order to insure any beings that can -survive. And if there is to be inheritance of parental traits, then the -tendencies of bygone ages are bound to persist on, even into a world of -more highly evolved beings, and there will be inherited “relics” of -fears, of appetites, of impulses, of instincts, and of desires, as there -are inherited “relics” in the physical structure, and men will continue -to do things which would better suit the animal level. And, finally, if -the world is to be made by evolving processes, there will of necessity -be an overlapping of “high” and “low.” The world cannot _go on_ without -carrying its past along with the advancing line, so that in the light of -the new and better that comes, the old and out-passed seems “evil” and -“bad.” - -We can see plainly enough where the drive of selfishness came from, -where the passionate fears and angers and hates that mar our world -got into the system. What is not so clear and plain is how we came to -be possessed of a driving hunger for _goodness_, how we ever got a -bent for self-sacrifice, how we derived our disposition for love, how -we discovered that it is more blessed to give than to receive. The -mystery after all _is_ the mystery of goodness. The gradual growth of -a Kingdom of God, in which men live by love and brotherhood, in which -they give without expecting returns, in which they decrease that others -may increase, and in which their joy is fulfilled in the _spreading_ of -joy—that is, after all, the mystery. - -The coming, into this checkerboard world, of One who practiced love in -all the varying issues of life, - - “Who nailed all flesh to the cross - Till self died out in the love of his kind,” - -and who Himself believed, and taught others to believe, that His Life was -a genuine revelation of God and the spiritual realm of reality—there is a -mystery. - -That this Life which was in Him is an actual incursion from a higher, -inexhaustible world of Spirit, that we all may partake of it, draw upon -it, live in it, and have it live in us, so that in some sense it becomes -true that _Christ lives in us_ and we are raised from the dead—that is -the mystery. - -This word “mystery” or “mysteries” did not, however, stand in the thought -of the early Christians for something mysterious and inscrutable. It -stood rather for some unspeakably precious reality which could be known -only by initiation and to the initiate. The “mysteries” of Mithra were -forever hidden to those on the outside; to those who formed the inner -circle the secret of the real presence of the god was as open and clear -as the sunlight under the sky. So, too, with the “mysteries” of the -gospel. They could not be conveyed by word of wisdom or by proof of -logic. Then, and always, the love of Christ “passes knowledge,” “the -peace of God” overtops processes of thought. Love, Grace, Goodness, -Godliness, Christlikeness breaking forth in men like us, remains a -“mystery”—a thing not “explainable” in terms of empirical causation -and not capable of being “known” except to those who see and taste and -touch, because they have been “initiated into this Life.” We shall -no doubt still puzzle over the dark enigmas of pain and death, of war -and its train of woe, but we shall do well to remember that there is -a greater mystery than any of these—the mystery of the suffering, yet -ever-conquering love of God which no one _knows_ except he who is -immersed in it. - - -V - -“AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY” - -The word “authority” has shifted its meaning many times. We do not mean -now by it what churchmen of former times meant when they used it. Even as -late as the beginning of the twentieth century a great French scholar, -Auguste Sabatier, wrote an influential book in which he contrasted -“Religions of Authority” with “Religions of the Spirit.” By religions of -authority he meant types of religion which rest on a dogmatic basis and -on the super-ordinary power of ecclesiastical officials to _guarantee_ -the truth. However authoritative a religion of that type may once -have been, it is so no longer, at least with those who have caught the -intellectual spirit of our age. - -“Authority” is found now for most of us where the common people who -listened to Jesus found it—in the convincing and verifying power of -the message itself. We should not now think for a moment of taking our -views on astronomy or geology or physiology—about the circulation of the -blood, for instance—on the “authority” of a priest, assuming that his -ordination supplied him with oracular knowledge on these subjects. We -want to know rather what the facts in any one of these fields compel us -to conclude, and we go for assistance to persons who have trained and -disciplined their powers of observation and who can make us see what -they see. Our “authority” in the last resort to-day is the _evidence_ of -observable facts and legitimate _inference_ from these facts. A religion -of authority, then, for our generation rests, not on the infallible -guarantee of any ordained man, or of any miraculously equipped church, -but on the spiritual nature of human life itself and on the verifiable -relations of the soul with the unseen realities of the universe. - -I need hardly say—it is so plain that the runner can see it—that the -so-called Sermon on the Mount is one of the best illustrations available -of this type of authoritative religion. Whatever is declared as truth in -that discourse is true, not because a messenger from heaven brought it, -not because a supernatural authority guaranteed it, but _because it is -inherently so_, and if any statement here obviously conflicted with the -facts of life and stood confuted by the testimony of the soul itself, -it would in the end, in the long run as we say, have to go. The whole -message, from the beatitude upon the poor-in-spirit to the judgment test -of life in action, as revealed in the figure of the two houses, is a -message which can be verified and tried out as searchingly as can the -law of gravitation or the theory of luminiferous ether. All the results -that are here announced are results which attach to the essential nature -of the soul, and the conditions of blessedness are as much bound up with -the nature of things as are the conditions of physical health for a man, -or the conditions of literary success for an author. - -Any one who has read William James’ chapter on “Habit” knows how it -feels to be reading something which verifies itself and which convicts -the judgment of the reader in almost every sentence. As one comes toward -the end of the chapter he finds these words: “Every smallest stroke of -virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van -Winkle excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, ‘I won’t -count this time!’ Well! he may not count it, and a kind heaven may not -count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among the nerve -cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing -it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.” These words -have the irresistible drive of observable facts behind them. We have come -upon _something which is so because it is so_. It can no more be juggled -with or dodged than can the fact of the precession of the equinoxes. The -calm authority of that chapter might well be the envy of every preacher -of the gospel and of every writer of articles on religion. If either the -preacher or the religious writer expects to speak to the condition of -his age, then he must acquire this authoritative way of dealing with the -issues of life, for the other kind of “authority” has had its day. - -It is interesting to discover that Tertullian and St. Augustine—two -men who, almost beyond all others, helped to forge this waning type of -“authority”—came very near risking the whole case of religion in their -day on the primary authority of first-hand experience and the testimony -of the soul itself. “I call in,” Tertullian wrote, “a new testimony; yea, -one that is better known than all literature, more discussed than all -doctrine, more public than all publications, greater than the whole man—I -mean all which is man’s. Stand forth, O soul, ... and give thy witness -... I want thy experience. I demand of thee the things thou bringest with -thee into man, the things thou knowest either from thyself or from thy -Author.... Whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit or a -sleep or a sickness and attains something of its natural soundness, it -speaks of God.” - -Nobody has ever shown more skill and subtlety in examining the actual -processes of the inner life than has Augustine, nor has any one more -powerfully revealed the native hunger of the soul for God, or the -coöperative working of divine grace in the inner region where all the -issues of life are settled. Take this vivid passage, picturing the -hesitating will, zig-zagging between the upward pull and the tug of the -old self just before the last great act of decision which led to his -conversion. - -“Thus was I sick and suffering in mind, upbraiding myself more bitterly -than ever before, twisting and turning in my chains in the hope that they -would soon snap, for they had almost worn too thin to hold me. Yet they -did still hold me. But Thou wast instant with me in the inner man, with -merciful severity, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame, lest I should -cease from struggling.... I kept saying within my heart, ‘Let it be now, -now!’—and with the word I was on the point of going on to the resolve. I -had almost done it, but I had not done it; and yet I did not slip back -to where I was at first, but held my footing at a short remove and drew -breath. And again I tried; I came a little nearer, and again a little -nearer, and now—now—I was in act to grasp and hold it; but still I did -not reach it, nor grasp it, nor hold it, ... for the worse that I knew -so well had more power over me than the better that I knew not, and the -absolute point of time at which I was to change filled me with greater -dread the more nearly I approached it.” - -That is straight out of life. The thing which really matters there is -not some fine-spun dogma or the power of some mitered priest, but the -answer of the soul, the obedience of the will in the presence of what is -unmistakably divine. “The whole work of this life,” he once said, “is -to heal the eye of the heart by which we see God.” Both these men made -great contributions to the imperial, authoritative church and they were -foremost architects of the immense system of dogma under which men lived -for long centuries, but the religion by which they themselves lived was -born in their own experience, and back of all their secondary authority -was this primary authority of the soul’s own testimony. - -What our generation needs above everything, if I read its problems -rightly, is a clearer interpretation of the spiritual capacities and the -unseen compulsions of the ordinary human soul; that is to say, a more -authoritative and so more compelling psychological account of the actual -and potential nature of our own human self, with its amazing depths and -its infinite relationships. We have had fifteen hundred years under the -dogma of original sin and total depravity; now let us have a period of -actually facing our own souls as they reveal themselves, not to the -theologian, but to the expert in souls. We shall find them mysterious -and bad enough no doubt, but we shall also find that they are strangely -linked up with that unseen and yet absolutely real Heart of all things -whom we call God. And our generation also needs a more authoritative -account of Jesus Christ—more authoritative because more truly and more -historically drawn. We have had centuries of the Christ of dogma and -even to-day the Church is split and sundered by its attempt to maintain -dogmatic constructions about His Person. Was He monophysite? Was he -diphysite? Those dead questions have divided the world in former ages -and still rally oriental sects. Our problem is different. We want to -see how He lived. We want to discover what He said. We want to feel the -power of His attractive personality. We want to find out what His own -experience was and what bearing it has on life to-day. We need to have -Him reinterpreted to us in terms of life, so that once again He becomes -for us as real and as dynamic as He was for Paul in Corinth or for John -in Ephesus. The moment anybody succeeds in doing _that_, He proves to be -as much alive as ever, and religion becomes as authoritative as ever. -Theology is not extinct, but it is becoming wholly transformed and the -theology of the coming time will be a knowledge of God builded not on -abstract logic, but on a penetrating psychology of man’s inner nature -and a no less penetrating interpretation of history and biography, -especially at the points where the revelation of God has most evidently -shone forth and broken in upon us. - - -VI - -SEEING HIM WHO IS INVISIBLE - -The power “to see the invisible” is as essential in science, in -philosophy, in art, and in common life as it is in religion. The world -with which science deals is not made out of “things that do appear.” -Every step in the advance of science has been made by the discovery of -invisible things which explain the crude visible things of our uncritical -experience. We seldom see any of the things the scientists talk -about—atoms and molecules and cells, laws and causes and energies. These -things have been found first, not with the eyes of sense, but with the -vision of the mind. - -Newton found the support that holds the earth to the sun and the moon to -the earth, but there was no visible cable, no mighty grooves in which -the poles of the earth’s axis spin. There was nothing to see, and yet his -mind discovered an invisible link that fastens every particle of matter -in the universe to every other particle, however remote. One fact after -another has forced the scientist to-day to draw upon an invisible world -of ether for his explanations of a vast number of the things that appear. -Gravitation, electrical phenomena, light and color vision, and, perhaps, -the very origin of matter, are due, his mind sees, to the presence of -this extraordinary world within, or behind, the world we see. - -One of the greatest advances that has ever been made in the progress -of medicine was made through the discovery of invisible microbes as -the cause of contagious and infectious diseases. The ancients had also -believed the cause of many diseases to be the presence of invisible -agents, which they called “demons,” but they could hit upon no way of -_finding_ the “demons” or of banishing them. The scientific physician -“sees” the invisible microbe and he “sees” what will put this enemy _hors -de combat_. - -The study of philosophy is chiefly the cultivation of the power to see -the invisible. Pythagoras is said to have required a period of a year of -silence as an initiation into the business of philosophy—because there -was nothing to talk about until the beginner had learned how to see the -invisible! The great realities to which the philosopher is dedicated -are not things to be found, even with microscopes or telescopes. Nobody -is qualified to enter the philosophical race at all—even for the -hundred-yard dash—unless in the temporal he can see the eternal, and in -the visible the invisible, and in the material the spiritual. There can -be no artistic creation until some one comes who has “the faculty divine” -to see - - “The gleam, - The light that never was, on sea or land.” - -Such artistic creations must not be unreal. On the contrary, they must -be more real than the scenes we photograph or the factual events we -describe. They must present to us something that is in all respects _as -it ought to be_. The artist, the poet, the musician succeed in making -some object, or some character, or some series of events or sounds raise -us above our usual restraints of space and time and imperfection and for -a moment give us a glimpse of something eternal. - -But we see the invisible in our common daily life much more than we -realize. The simple cobbler of shoes stitches and pegs at his little -shoe, and makes it as honestly as he can, for some child whom he has -never seen and perhaps never will see. The merchant expands his business -because he forecasts the expanding need for his articles in China, -Africa, or South America. The statesman at every move is dealing as much -with the country of his inner vision as with the country his eyes see. -So, too, is the parent as he plans for the discipline and education -of his child. No one can be a good person—however simple, or however -great—without leaving the things that are behind, _i.e._ the things that -are actual, and going on to realize what is not yet apprehended, what -exists only in forecast and vision. Religion, then, is not alone in -demanding the supreme faculty of seeing the invisible. We live on all -life-levels by faith, by assent to realities which are not there for -our eyes. Religion only demands of us that we _see_ the whole Reality -which this visible fragment of nature implies, that we _see_ the larger -spirit which our own human spirits call for, that we _see_ the eternal -significance revealed in the life of Christ and in the conquests of His -spirit through the ages. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -A FUNDAMENTAL SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK - - -The most important constructive work just now laid upon us is the serious -task of helping to restore faith in the actual reality of God and in the -fundamental spiritual nature of our world. There is no substitute for -the transforming power and inward depth which an irresistible first-hand -conviction of God gives a man. Carlyle, in his usual vivid fashion, says -that one man with faith in God is “stronger, not than ten men that have -it not, or than ten thousand, but than _all_ men that have it not!” A man -can face anything when he knows absolutely that at bottom the universe -is not force nor mechanism but intelligent and loving purpose, and that -through the seeming confusion and welter there is a loving, throbbing, -personal Heart answering back to us. The cultivation of this experience -is the greatest prophetic mission laid upon the spiritual leaders of -any age. Isaiah is at his fullest stature when in a fearful crisis he -calls his nation from a military _alliance_ with Egypt, whose people, he -says, are “men and not God and whose horses are flesh and not spirit,” -to a _reliance_ on God and on eternal resources: “In returning and rest -shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” -George Fox is most clearly a prophet when he reports his own experience -of God: “I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but that an -infinite ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean of darkness. In -_that_ I saw the infinite love of God.” - -If we are to assist in the creation of a higher civilization than that -against which the hand on the wall is writing “mene,” we must speak -of God in the present tense, we must live by truths and convictions -that are grounded in our own experience, and we must endeavor to find a -spiritual basis underlying all the processes of the world. Men have been -living for a generation—or at least trying to live—on a naturalistic -interpretation of the universe which chokes and stifles the higher -spiritual life of man. We must help those who have been caught in this -drift of materialism to find their way back to the spiritual meaning of -the world. - -We get a vivid impression of the stern and iron character of this -materialistic universe from the writings of Bertrand Russell. Here are -two extracts: - - “Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the - end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes - and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of - accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no - intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual - life beyond the grave; all the labours of the ages, all the - devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of - human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of - the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement - must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in - ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so - nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope - to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only - on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s - habitation henceforth be safely built.”[5] - - “Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race - the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and - evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its - relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, - to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it - remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty - thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward - terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that - his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, - to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his - outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that - tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to - sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that - his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of - unconscious power.”[6] - -Much of the present confusion has been due to a false interpretation of -the doctrine of evolution. It has been assumed—not indeed by scientists -of the first rank, but by a host of influential interpreters—that the -basis of evolution, the law which runs the cosmic train, is competitive -struggle for existence, that is to say the natural selection of the -fittest to survive, and the fittest on this count are of course the -physically fittest, the most efficient. This principle, used first to -explain biological development, has been taken up and expanded and used -to explain all ethical and social progress. Any nation that has won -out and prevailed has done so, on this theory, because it made itself -stronger than those nations with which it competed. This theory has -contributed immensely toward bringing on the catastrophe in Europe. It -is a breeder of racial rivalries, it is loaded with emotional stress, it -cultivates fear, one of the main causes of war, and it runs on all fours -with materialism. - -But it does not fit the facts of life and it is as much a mental -construction and as untrue to the complete nature of things as were the -popular pre-evolution theories. Here, as everywhere else, the truth is -the only adequate remedy, and the truth would set men free. Biologists -of the most eminent rank have all along been insisting that life has not -evolved through the operation of one single factor; for example, the -law of competing struggle. Everywhere in the process, from lowest to -highest, there has been present the operation of another force as primary -as the egoistic factor, namely the operation of mutual aid, coöperation, -struggle for the life of others, mother-traits and father-traits, -sacrifice of self for the group, a love-factor implicit at the bottom but -gloriously conscious and consecrated at the top. Nature has always been -forerunning and crying in the wilderness that the way of _love_ will work. - -It is impossible to account for a continuously progressive evolution on -any mechanical basis. As soon as life appeared there came into play some -degree of spontaneity, something unpredictable; something which is not -mechanism. The future in any life-series is never an equation with the -past. What has been, does not quite determine what will be. Life carries -in itself a creative tendency—a tendency to exhibit surprises, novelties, -variations, mutations, unpredictable leaps. We can name this tendency, -this upward-changing drive, “vital impulse,” but however we name it, we -cannot explain it. The variation which raises the entire level of life is -as mysterious as a virgin birth, or a resurrection from the dead. There -is no help in the word “fortuitous,” or “accidental,” there is no answer -when the appeal is made either to heredity or to physical environment. -There is in favorable mutations a revelation of some kind of intelligent -push, a power of life working toward an end. The end or goal of the -process seems to be an operative factor _in_ the process. Evolution seems -to be due to a mighty living, conscious, spiritual driving force, that -is pouring itself forth in ever-heightening ways of manifestation and -that differentiates itself into myriad varieties of form and activity, -each one with its own peculiar potency of advance. Consciousness, in -Henri Bergson’s illuminating interpretation of evolution, is the original -creative cosmic force. It is before matter, and its onward destiny is -not bound up with matter. Wherever it appears there is vital impulse, -upward-pointing mutations, free action, and potency. But no life is -isolated or cut apart. Each particular manifestation of life is one of -the rills into which the immense river of consciousness divides, and this -irresistible river with its onward leaps seems able to beat down every -resistance and clear away the most formidable obstacles—perhaps even -death itself. - -But it is not merely in the evolutionary process that we need to -reinterpret the spiritual factor; it is urgently called for in our -dealing with the whole of nature. We must learn how to interpret the -fundamental spiritual implications involved in the nature of beauty, of -moral goodness, of verifiable knowledge, and of personality itself. - -In an impressive way Arthur Balfour in his _Theism and Humanism_ has -pointed out that it is impossible to find any adequate rational basis -for our experience of beauty, or for our pursuit of moral ends of -goodness, or for our confidence in the validity of knowledge or truth, -unless we assume the reality of an underlying spiritual universe as -the root and ground both of nature without us and of mind within us. -“Æsthetic values,” Balfour says, “are in part dependent upon a spiritual -conception of the world in which we live.”[7] “Ethics,” again he says, -“must have its roots in the divine; and in the divine it must find its -consummation”[8] and, finally, he says that if rational values are to -remain undimmed and unimpaired, God must be treated as real—“He is -Himself the condition of scientific knowledge.”[9]—“We must hold that -reason and the works of reason have their source in God: that from Him -they draw their inspiration, and that if they repudiate their origin, by -this very act they proclaim their own insufficiency.”[10] - -Personality carries in all its larger aspects inevitable implications -of a spiritual universe. In the first place, it is forever utterly -impossible to find a materialistic or naturalistic _origin_ for -personality. Whenever we deal with “matter” or with “nature,” -consciousness is always presupposed, and the “matter” we talk about, -or the “nature” we talk about, is “matter” or “nature” as existing for -consciousness or as conceived by consciousness. It is impossible to get -any world at all without a uniting, connecting principle of consciousness -which binds fact to fact, item to item, event to event, into a whole -which is known to us through the action of our organizing consciousness. -Since it is through consciousness that a connected universe of experience -is possible it seems absurd to suppose that consciousness is a product -of matter or of any natural, mechanical process. Every effort to find a -genesis of knowledge in any other source than spirit, derived in turn -from self-existing Spirit, has always failed and from the logical nature -of the case must fail. There is no answer to the question, how did we -begin to be persons? which does not refer the genesis to an eternal -spiritual Principle in the universe, transcending space and time, life -and death, matter and motion, cause and effect—a Principle which itself -is the condition of temporal beginnings and temporal changes or ends. - -Normal human experience is, too, heavily loaded with further inevitable -implications of an environing spiritual world. The consciousness of -finiteness with which we are haunted presupposes something infinite -already in consciousness, just as our knowledge of “spaces” presupposes -_space_, of which definite spaces are determinate parts. That we are -oppressed with our own littleness, that we revolt from our meannesses, -that we “look before and after, and sigh for what is not,” that we are -never satisfied with any achievement, that each attainment inaugurates a -new drive, that we feel “the glory of the imperfect,” means that in some -way we partake of an infinite revealed in us by an inherent necessity of -self-consciousness. We are made for something which does not yet appear, -we are inalienably kin to the perfect that always draws and attracts us. -We are forever seeking God because, in some sense, however fragmentary, -we have found Him. - - “Here sits he shaping wings to fly; - His heart forbodes a mystery: - He names the name Eternity. - - “That type of Perfect in his mind - In Nature can he nowhere find. - He sows himself on every wind. - - “He seems to hear a heavenly Friend, - And through thick veils to apprehend - A labor working to an end.”[11] - -The most august thing in us is that creative center of our being, that -autonomous citadel of personality, where we form for ourselves ideals of -beauty, of truth, and of goodness by which we live. This power to extend -life in ideal fashion is the elemental moral fact of personal life. These -ideals which shape our life are manifestly things which cannot be “found” -anywhere in our world of sense experience. They are not on land or sea. -We live, and, when the call for it comes, we joyously _die_ for things -which our eyes have never seen in this world of molecular currents, for -things which are not here in the world of space, but which are not on -that account any less _real_. We create, by some higher drive of spirit, -visions of _a world that ought to be_ and these visions make us forever -dissatisfied with _the world that is_, and it is through these visions -that we reshape and reconstruct the world which is being made. The -elemental spiritual core in us which we call conscience can have come -from nowhere but from a deeper spiritual universe with which we have -relations. It cannot be traced to any physical origin. It cannot be -reduced to any biological function. It cannot be explained in utilitarian -terms. It is an august and authoritative loyalty of soul to a Good that -transcends all goods and which will not allow us to substitute prudence -for intrinsic goodness. This inner imperative overarches our moral life, -and it rationally presupposes a spiritual universe with which we are -allied. - -There is, too, an immense interior depth to our human personality. Only -the surface of our inner self is lighted up and is brought into clear -focal consciousness. There are, however, dim depths underlying every -moment of consciousness and these subterranean deeps are all the time -shaping or determining the ideas, emotions, and decisions which surge up -into the illuminated apex of consciousness. This submerged life is in -part, no doubt, the slow deposit of previous experiences, the gathered -wisdom of the social group in which we are imbedded, the residual savings -from unuttered hopes and wishes, aspirations and intentions, - - “All I could never be, - All, men ignored in me.” - -But at times our interior deep seems to be more than a deposit of the -past. Incursions from beyond our own margin seem to occur. Inrushes from -a wider spiritual world seem to take place. Vitalizing, energizing, -constructive forces come from somewhere into men, as though another -universe impinged upon our finite spirits. We cannot _prove_ by these -somewhat rare and unusual mystical openings that there is an actual -spiritual environment surrounding our souls, but there are certainly -experiences which are best explained on that hypothesis, and there is no -good reason for drawing any impervious boundary around the margins of -the spiritual self within us. - -All attempts to reduce man’s inner spiritual life to the play of -molecular forces have fallen through. Correlation between mind and -brain cortex there certainly is and spirit, as we know it, expresses -itself under, or in relation to, certain physical conditions. But it is -impossible to establish a complete parallelism between mind-functions and -brain-functions. The psychical, that is to say spirit, seems immensely to -outrun its organ and to use brain as a musician uses an instrument. - -The psychological studies of Henri Bergson in France and of Dr. William -McDougall at Oxford make a very strong argument for the view that the -higher forms of consciousness cannot be explained in terms of brain -action and that there is no well-defined physical correlate to the -highest and most central psychical processes. I shall follow in the main -the positions of my old teacher, Dr. McDougall, as worked out in his -_Body and Mind_. - -One of the most important differences between human and animal -consciousness comes to light in the appearance of “meaning” which is -a differentiating characteristic of _personal_ consciousness. We pass -“a great divide” when we pass from bare sensory experience, common to -all higher animals, to _consciousness of “meaning,”_ which is a trait -common only to persons. We all know what it is to hear words which -make a clear impression and which yet arouse no “meaning.” We often -gaze at objects and yet, like Macbeth, have “no speculation in our -eyes”—we apprehend no significant “meaning” in the thing upon which we -are looking. We sometimes catch ourselves in the very act of passing -from mere sense or bare image to the higher level of “meaning.” While -we gaze or while we listen we suddenly feel the “meaning” flood in and -transform the whole content of consciousness. All the higher ranges of -experience depend on this unique feature which is something over and -above the mere sensory stage. The words, “the quality of mercy is not -strain’d” remain just word-sounds until in a flash one sees that mercy -is “not something that comes out grudgingly in drops,” and then the mind -rises to “a consciousness of meaning.”[12] In this higher experience, -“meaning” stands vividly in the focus of consciousness and, in a case, -for instance, of grasping a long sentence, or of appreciating a piece -of music, consciousness of “meaning” is an integral unitary whole. -Now there is no corresponding unitary whole in the brain which could -stand as the physical correlate to this consciousness of “meaning.” The -simple sensational experiences correspond in some way to parallel brain -processes but these elemental experiences are merely cues which evoke -higher forms of psychical “meaning,” that have no physical or mechanical -correlate in the brain. - -This is still more strikingly the case in the higher forms of memory. -The lower and more mechanical forms of memory may be treated as a -habit-sequence, linked up with permanent brain paths. But memory proper -depends, as does “meaning,” upon a single act of mental apprehension. As -McDougall well says: “the whole process and effect, the apprehension and -the retention and the remembering, are absolutely unique and distinct -from all other apprehensions and retentions and rememberings.”[13] The -higher kind of memory involves “meaning” and, the moment “meaning” floods -in, vast and complicated wholes of experience tend to become a permanent -possession, while only with multitudinous repetitions can we fix and keep -processes that are meaningless and without psychical significance. But -here once more this higher unitary consciousness of a remembered whole of -experience has no assignable physical correlate in the brain-processes. -Certain sensory cues evoke or recall a synthetic whole of consciousness -which has no parallel in the material world. - -Still more obviously in the higher æsthetic sentiments and volitional -processes is there a spiritual activity which transcends the mechanical -and physical order. Æsthetic joy depends upon a spiritual power to -combine many elements of experience to form an object of a higher order -than any object given to sense. It is particularly true of the highest -æsthetic joy, for example, enjoyment of poetic creations where the -ideal and intellectual element vastly overtops the sensuous, and where -the words and imagery really carry the reader on into another world -than the one of sight and sound. Here in a very high degree we attain a -unified whole of consciousness that has no physical correlate among the -brain-processes. It is further apparent that the higher forms of pleasure -somehow exert an effective influence upon the physical system itself as -though some new and heightening energy poured back from consciousness -into the cerebral processes and drained down through the system. William -James has given a very successful account of the way in which pleasure -and pain as spiritual energies reinforce or damp the physical activities, -so that the personal soul seems to take a unique part from within in -determining the physical process. Here are his words: - - “Tremendous as the part is which pleasure and pain play in our - psychic life, we must confess that absolutely nothing is known - of their cerebral conditions. It is hard to imagine them as - having special centres; it is harder still to invent peculiar - forms of process in each and every centre, to which these - feelings may be due. And let one try as one will to represent - the cerebral activity in exclusively mechanical terms, I, for - one, find it quite impossible to enumerate what seem to be the - facts and yet to make no mention of the psychic side which - they possess. However it be with other drainage currents and - discharges, the drainage currents and discharges of the brain - are not purely physical facts. They are _psycho-physical_ - facts, and the spiritual quality of them seems a codeterminant - of their mechanical effectiveness. If the mechanical activities - in a cell, as they increase, give pleasure, they seem to - increase all the more rapidly for that fact; if they give - displeasure, the displeasure seems to damp the activities. The - psychic side of the phenomenon thus seems somewhat like the - applause or hissing at a spectacle, to be an encouraging or - adverse _comment_ on what the machinery brings forth.”[14] - -The unifying effect and the dynamic quality of a persistent resolution -of will is another case in point which seems to show that the psychical -reality in us vastly overtops the mechanism through which it works. A -fixed purpose, a moral ideal, a determined intention, work far-reaching -results and in some way organize and reinforce the entire nervous -mechanism. The whole phenomenon of _attention_ which has a primary -importance for decisions of will and immense bearing on the problem of -freedom of will is something which cannot be worked out in brain-terms. -There seems to be some unifying central psychical core within us that -raises us out of the level of mechanism and makes us autonomous creative -beings. Once more I quote William James, whom many of us of this -generation revere both as teacher and friend: - - “It often takes effort to keep the mind upon an object. We - feel that we can make more or less of effort as we choose. If - this feeling be not deceptive, if our effort be a spiritual - force, and an indeterminate one, then of course it contributes - coequally with the cerebral conditions to the result. Though it - _introduce_ no new idea, it will deepen and prolong the stay in - consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more - quickly away. The delay thus gained might not be more than a - second in duration—but that second may be _critical_; for in - the constant rising and falling of considerations in the mind, - where two associated systems of them are nearly in equilibrium - it is often a matter of but a second more or less of attention - at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy - the field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be - excluded itself by the other. When developed, it may make us - act; and that act may seal our doom. The whole drama of the - voluntary life hinges on the amount of attention, slightly - more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas receive. But - the whole feeling of reality, the whole sting and excitement - of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it things - are _really being decided_ from one moment to another, and - that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was - forged innumerable ages ago. This appearance, which makes - life and history tingle with such a tragic zest, _may_ not be - an illusion. Effort may be an original force and not a mere - effect, and it may be indeterminate in amount.”[15] - -There are thus a number of modes of consciousness, and I have mentioned -only a few of them, which have no traceable counterpart in the physical -sphere, and which presuppose a spiritual reality at the center of -our personal life, and this spiritual reality, as we have seen, can -trace its origin only to a self-existing, self-explanatory, environing -consciousness, sufficiently personal to be the source of our developing -personality. If this view is correct and sound, there is no scientific -argument against the continuation of life after death. If personality is -fundamentally a spiritual affair and the body is only a medium and organ -here in space and time of a psychical reality, there are good grounds and -solid hopes of permanent conservation. - -But after all the supreme evidence that the universe is fundamentally -spiritual is found in the revelation of personal life where it has -appeared at its highest and best in history, that is in Jesus Christ. In -Him we have a master manifestation of that creative upward tendency of -life, a surprising mutation, which in a unique way brought into history -an unpredictable inrush of life’s higher forces. The central fact which -concerns us here is that He is the revealing organ of a new and higher -order of life. We cannot appropriate the gospel by reducing it to a -doctrine, nor by crystallizing it into an institution, nor by postponing -its prophesies of moral achievement to some remote world beyond the -stars. We can appropriate it only when we realize that this Christ is -a revelation here in time and mutability of the eternal nature and -character of that conscious personal Spirit that environs all life and -that steers the entire system of things, and that He has come to bring us -all into an abundant life like His own. Here in Him the love-principle -which was heralded all through the long, slow process has come into full -sight and into full operation as the way of life. He shows us the meaning -and possibility of genuine spiritual life. He makes us sure that His kind -of life is divine, and that in His face we are seeing the heart and mind -and will of God. Here at least is one place in our mysterious world where -love breaks through—the love that will not let go, the love that suffers -long and is kind. He makes the eternal Father’s love visible and vocal -in a life near enough to our own to move us with its appeal and enough -beyond us to be forever our spiritual goal. We have here revealed a -divine-human life which we can even now in some measure live and in which -we can find our peace and joy, and through which we can so enter into -relation with God that life becomes a radiant thing, as it was with Him, -and death becomes, as with Him, a way of going to the Father. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -WHAT DOES RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE TELL US ABOUT GOD - - - “A noiseless, patient spider, - I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; - Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, - It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; - Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them. - - “And you, O my Soul, where you stand, - Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, - Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to - connect them; - Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; - Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my soul.” - - —WALT WHITMAN. - -There are many forms of experience which in the primary, unanalyzed, -unreflective stage appear to bring us into immediate contact with -self-transcending reality. We seem to be nearer the heart of things, -more imbedded in life and in reality itself when consciousness is fused -and unified in an undifferentiated whole of experience than in the -later stage of reflection and description. This later stage necessarily -involves reduction because it involves abstraction. We cannot bring any -object or any experience to exact description without stripping it of its -life and its mystery and without reducing it to the abstract qualities -which are unvarying and repeatable. - -There can be no doubt that our experiences of beauty, for instance, have -a physical and describable aspect. The sunset which thrills us is for -descriptive purposes an aggregation of minute water-drops which set ether -waves vibrating at different velocities, and, as a result, we receive -certain nerve shocks that are pleasurable. These nerve shocks modify -brain cells and affect arterial and visceral vibrations, all of which -might conceivably be accurately described. But no complete account of -these minute cloud particles, or of these ether vibrations; no catalogue -of these nerve shocks, cell changes, or arterial throbs can catch or -present to us what we get in the naïve and palpitating experience of -beauty itself. Something there in the field of perception has suddenly -fused our consciousness into an undifferentiated whole in which sensuous -elements, intellectual and ideal elements, emotional and conative -elements are indissolubly merged into a vital _system_ which baffles all -analysis. Something got through perception puts all the powers of the -inner self into play and into harmony, overcomes all dualisms of self and -other, annuls all contradictions that may later be discovered, lifts the -mind to the apprehension of objects of a higher order than that of sense, -and liberates and vitalizes the soul with a consciousness of possession -and joy and freedom. - -The flower of the botanist is an aggregation of ovary, calyx, petals, -pistil, and pollen—a thing which can be exactly analyzed and described. -The poet’s flower, on the other hand, is never a flower which could be -pressed in a book or dried in an herbarium. It is a tiny finite object -which suddenly opens a glimpse into a world which mere sense-eyes -never see. It gives “thoughts that do lie too deep for tears.” It is -something so bound in with the whole of things that if one understood it -altogether, he would know “what God and man is.” - -These experiences, even if they do not _prove_ that there is a world of -a higher order than that of mechanism and causal systems, at least bring -the recipient moments of relief when he no longer cares for proof and -they enable him to feel that he has authentic tidings of a world which is -as it ought to be. - -Our world of “inner experience” can in a similar way be dealt with -by either one of these two characteristically different methods of -approach. We can say, if we wish to do so, as Professor Leuba does in -his _Psychology of Religion_, that “inner experience belongs entirely -to psychology,” “the conscious life belongs entirely to science,”[16] -“we must deal with inner experience according to the best scientific -methods;”[17] or we can seize by an interior integral insight the -rich concrete _meaning_ and significance of the unanalyzed whole of -consciousness, as it lives and moves in us. - -Psychology, like all sciences, proceeds by analysis and limitation. -It breaks up the integral whole of inner experience. It strips away -all mystery, all that is private and unique, and it selects for exact -description the permanent and repeatable aspects, and ends with a -consciousness which consists of “mind-states,” or describable “contents.” -Everything that will not reduce to this scientific “form” is ousted -from the lists as negligible. All independent variables, all aspects of -“meaning,” all will-attitudes, the unique feature of personal ideals, -the integral consciousness of self-identity, the inherent tendency to -transcend the “given”—all these features are either ignored or explained -in terms of substitutes. Psychology confines itself, and must confine -itself, to an empirical and describable order of facts. It could no more -discover a transcendent world-order than could geology or astronomy. Its -field is phenomena and the “man” it reports upon is “a naturalistic man,” -as completely describable as the sunset cloud or the botanist’s flower. - -What I insist upon, however, is that this “described, naturalistic -man” is not a real existing, living, acting man possessed of interior -experience. He is a constructed man. No addition of described -“mind-states,” no summation of “mind-contents” would ever give -consciousness in its inner living wholeness. The reality whose presence -makes all the difference may be named “fringe,” or “connecting -principle,” or “synthetic unity” or anything you please—“but oh! the -difference to me!” The “psychic elements” of the psychologist are never -really _parts_. Every psychical state is in reality what it is because -it belongs to a person, is flooded with unique life, and is imbedded -in a peculiar whole of personality. Forever psychology by its method -of analysis misses, and must miss, the central core of the reality. -It can analyze, reduce, and describe the abstract, universal, and -repeatable aspects, but it cannot catch the thing itself any more than a -cinematograph can. - -Here in the inner life, if anywhere, we are justified in seizing and -valuing the unified and undifferentiated whole of experience in its -central meaning. If this primary experience of integral wholeness and -unity of self be treated as an illusion, to what other pillar and -ground of truth can we fasten? The object of beauty always reveals to -us something which must be comprehended as a totality greater than the -sum of its parts. The thing of beauty takes us beyond the range of the -method of description. So, too, in the case of our richest, most intense, -and unified moments of inner consciousness, we cannot get an adequate -account by the method of analysis. We must supplement science by the -best testimony we can get of the worth and meaning and implications of -interior insight. We must get, where possible, appreciative accounts of -the undifferentiated and unreduced experience and then we can raise the -question as to what is rationally involved in such personal experiences. - -As mystical experience supplies us with moments of the highest integral -unity, the richest wholes of consciousness, I shall deal mainly with -that type, and I shall endeavor to see whether it gives any proof of -a trans-subjective reality. There can be no doubt that this type of -experience brings the recipient spiritual holidays from strain and -stress, that it gives life an optimistic tone, and leaves behind a fresh -supply of energy to live by, but can it carry us any farther? Does it -supply us with a ladder or a bridge by which we can get “yonder”? - -Josiah Royce in _The World and the Individual_ says that the mystic “gets -his reality not by thinking, but by consulting the data of experience. He -is trying very skillfully to be a pure empiricist.” “Indeed,” he adds, “I -should maintain that the mystics are the only thoroughgoing empiricists -in the history of philosophy.”[18] “Finite as we are,” Royce says -elsewhere in the same book, “lost though we may seem to be in the woods -or in the wide air’s wilderness, in the world of time and chance, we have -still, like the strayed animals or like the migrating birds, our homing -instinct.”[19] - -Now the mystics in all ages have insisted that, whether the process -be named “instinct,” or “intuition,” or “inner sense,” or “uprushes,” -the spirit of man is capable of immediate experience of God. There is -something in man, “a soul-center” or “an apex of soul,” which directly -apprehends God. It is an immense claim, but those who have the experience -are as sure that they have found a wider world of life as is the person -who thrills with the appreciation of beauty. - -Cases of the experience are so well known to us all to-day that I shall -quote only a very few accounts. It looks to me as though some of this -direct and immediate experience underlay the entire fabric of St. Paul’s -transforming and dynamic religious life. “It pleased God to reveal His -Son in me.” “It is no longer I that live but Christ liveth in me.” “God -sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying _Abba_, Father.” -“God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our -hearts.” The entire autobiographical story, wherever it comes into light, -lets us see a man who is able to face immense tasks and to die daily -because he feels in some real way that his life has become “a habitation -of God through the Spirit” and that he is being “filled to all fullness -with God.” St. Augustine in the same way makes the reader of the -_Confessions_ feel that the most wonderful thing about this strange -African who was for a thousand years to be the Atlas, on whose shoulders -the Church rested, was his experience of God. He is speaking out of -experience when he says, “My God is the Life of my life.” “Thou, O God, -hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in -Thee.” “I tremble and I burn; I tremble feeling that I am unlike Him; I -burn feeling that I am like Him.” “I heard God as the heart heareth.” “We -climbed in inner thought and speech, and in wonder of Thy works, until we -reached our own minds and passed beyond them and touched That which is -not made but is now as it ever shall be, or rather in It is neither ‘hath -been’ nor ‘shall be’ but only ‘is’—just for an instant touched It and in -one trembling glance arrived at That which is.” - -Jacob Boehme’s testimony is very familiar, but it is such a good -interior account that I must repeat it. - - “While I was in affliction and trouble, I elevated my spirit, - and earnestly raised it up unto God, as with a great stress - and onset, lifting up my whole heart and mind and will and - resolution to wrestle with the love and mercy of God and not - to give over unless He blessed me—then the Spirit did break - through. When in my resolved zeal I made such an assault, - storm, and onset upon God, as if I had more reserves of virtue - and power ready, with a resolution to hazard my life upon it, - suddenly my spirit did break through the Gate, not without the - assistance of the Holy Spirit, and I reached to the innermost - Birth of the Deity, and there I was embraced with love as a - bridegroom embraces his bride. My triumphing can be compared to - nothing but the experience in which life is generated in the - midst of death or like the resurrection from the dead. In this - Light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in all created - things, even in herbs and grass, I knew God—who He is, how He - is, and what His will is.”[20] - -Very impressive are the less well-known words of Isaac Penington: “This -is He, this is He: There is no other. This is He whom I have waited for -and sought after from my childhood. I have met with my God; I have met -with my Savior. I have felt the healings drop into my soul from under His -wings.”[21] - -Edward Carpenter has given many accounts of the transforming experience -when he felt himself united in a living junction with the infinite -“including Self.” “The prince of love,” he says, “touched the walls of -my hut with his finger from within, and passing through like a great -fire delivered me with unspeakable deliverance.”[22] It brought him, -as he himself says, “an absolute freedom from mortality accompanied -by an indescribable calm and joy.”[23] A nameless writer in the -“Atlantic Monthly” for May, 1916, has given a remarkable description -of an experience which is called “Twenty Minutes of Reality.” “I only -remember,” the writer says, “finding myself in the very midst of those -wonderful moments, beholding life for the first time in all its -young intoxication of loveliness in its unspeakable joy, beauty, and -importance. I cannot say what the mysterious change was—I saw no new -thing, but I saw all the usual things in a miraculous new light—in -what I believe is their true light.... Once out of all the gray days -of my life I have looked into the heart of reality; I have witnessed -the truth; I have seen life as it really is—ravishingly, ecstatically, -madly beautiful, and filled to overflowing with a wild joy and a value -unspeakable.” - -Finally, I shall give a modern Russian writer’s appreciative report of a -typical mystical experience: - - “There are seconds when you suddenly feel the presence of - the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It’s something not - earthly—I don’t mean in the sense that it’s heavenly—but in - that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. - He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear - and unmistakable; it’s as though you apprehend all nature and - suddenly say, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ God, when He created the - world, said at the end of each day of creation, ‘Yes, it’s - right, it’s good.’ It ... it’s not being deeply moved, but - simply joy. You don’t forgive anything because there is no - more need of forgiveness. It’s not that you love—oh, there’s - something in it higher than love—what’s most awful is that - it’s terribly clear and such joy. In those five seconds I - live through a lifetime, and I’d give my whole life for them, - because they are worth it.”[24] - -It should always be noted that the number of persons who are subject to -mystical experiences—that is to say, persons who feel themselves brought -into contact with an environing Presence and supplied with new energy to -live by—is much larger than we usually suppose. We know only the mystics -who were dowered with a literary gift and who could tell in impressive -language what had come to them, but of the multitude of those who have -felt and seen and who yet were unable to tell in words about their -experience, of these we are ignorant. An undeveloped and uncultivated -form of mystical consciousness is present, I think, in most religious -souls, and whenever it is unusually awake and vivid the whole inner and -outer life is intensified by such experiences, even though there may -be little that can be put into explicit account in language. There are -multitudes of men and women now living, often in out-of-the-way places, -in remote hamlets or on isolated farms, who are the salt of the earth -and the light of the world in their communities, because they have had -vital experiences that revealed to them realities which their neighbors -missed and that supplied them with energy to live by which the mere -“church-goers” failed to find. - -I am more and more convinced, as I pursue my studies on the meaning and -value of mysticism, with the conviction that religion, _i.e._ religion -when it is real, alive, vital, and transforming, is essentially and at -bottom a mystical act, a direct response to an inner world of spiritual -reality, an implicit relationship between the finite and infinite, -between the part and the whole. The French philosopher, Émile Boutroux, -has finely called this junction of finite and infinite in us, by which -these mystical experiences are made possible, “the Beyond that is -within”—“the Beyond,” as he says, “with which man comes in touch on the -inner side of his nature.” - -Whenever we go back to the fundamental mystical experience, to the soul’s -first-hand testimony, we come upon a conviction that the human spirit -transcends itself and is environed by a spiritual world with which it -holds commerce and vital relationship. The constructive mystics, not -only of the Christian communions but also those of other religions, have -explored higher levels of life than those on which men usually live, and -they have given impressive demonstration through the heightened dynamic -quality of their lives and service that they have been drawing upon and -utilizing reservoirs of vital energy. They have revealed a peculiar -aptitude for correspondence with the Beyond that is within, and they -have exhibited a genius for living by their inner conviction of God, “of -practicing God,” as Jeremy Taylor called it. - -But are we justified in making such large affirmations? Is there anything -in the nature of mystical experience that warrants us in taking the -leap from inner vision to existential reality? Can we legitimately get -from a finite, subjective feeling to an objective and infinite God? -The answer is of course obvious. There is no way to get a bridge from -finite to infinite, from subject to object, from _idea_ to that which -the idea _means_, from human to divine, from mere man to God, if they -are isolated, sundered, disparate entities to start with. No mere -finite experience of a mere finite thing can be anything but finite, -and no juggling can get out of the experience what is not in it. If we -mean by “empirical” that which is “given” as explicit sense-content of -consciousness, then the only empirical argument that could be would be -the statement that we experience what we experience. We should not get -beyond the consciousness of interjection—“lo!” “voila!” - -In this sense of the term, of course nobody ever did or ever could -“experience God.” We are shut up entirely to a stream of inner states, -a seriatim consciousness, “a shower of shot,” which can give us no -_knowledge_ at all, either, in Berkeley’s words, of “the choir of heaven” -or of “the furniture of earth” or of “the mighty frame of the world,” or -in fact, of any permanent self within us. - -Used in the narrow Humian sense there are no “empirical arguments” for -the existence of God, but the misery of it is there are no arguments -for anything else either! We must therefore widen out the meaning of -the term “empirical” and include in it not only the actual “content” of -experience, but all that is involved and implicated _in_ experience. -We cannot talk about any kind of reality until we interpret experience -through its rational implications. Nobody ever perceives “a black -beetle” and knows it as “a black beetle” without transcending “pure -empiricism,” _i.e._ without using categories which are not a product of -experience. All experience which has any knowledge-import, or value, -possesses within itself self-transcendence, that is to say, it apprehends -or takes by storm some sort of external or objective reality. Nobody -is ever disturbed by the fallacy of subjectivism until he has become -debauched by metaphysics. The fallacy of subjectivism is always the -product of the abstract intellect, _i.e._ the intellect which divides -experience, and takes an abstract part for a whole. - -It is further true that all knowledge-experience possesses within itself -finite-transcendence, _i.e._ it contains in itself a principle of -infinity and could become absolutely rationalized only in an infinite -whole of reality with which the experience is in organic unity. I agree -fully with Professor Hocking that “it is doubtful whether there are -any finite ideas at all.” The consciousness of the finite has working -in it the reality of the whole. The finite can never be considered as -self-existent; it can never be real. There is forever present in the -very heart and nature of consciousness a trope, a nisus, a straining -of the fragment to link itself up with the self-complete whole, and -every flash of knowledge and every pursuit of the good reveals that -_trend_. Something of the _other_ is always in the _me_—and however -finite I may be I am always beyond myself, and am conjunct with “the -pulse beat of the whole system.” Either we must give up talking of -knowledge or we must affirm that knowledge involves a self-complete and -self-explanatory reality with which our consciousness has connection. -We cannot think finite and contingent things, or aim at goodness -however fragmentary, without rational appeal to something infinite and -necessary. Human experience cannot be rationally conceived except as a -fragment of a vastly more inclusive experience, always implied within -the finite spirit, unifying and binding together into one whole all that -is absolutely real and true. Whether we are dealing with the so-called -mystical experience or any other kind of experience we are bound to -postulate, or take for granted, whatever is rationally implicated in the -very nature of the experience on our hands. - -No type of consciousness carries the implication of self-transcendence, -or finite-transcendence, more coercively than does genuine mystical -experience. The central aspect of it is the fusion of the self into a -larger undifferentiated whole. It is thus much more the type of æsthetic -experience than it is the type of knowledge-experience. In both types—the -æsthetic and the mystical—consciousness is fused into union with its -object, that is to say, the usual dualistic character of consciousness -is transcended, though of course not wholly obliterated. A new level -of consciousness is gained in which the division of self and other is -minimal. But it is by no means, in either case, an empty or a negative -state. The impression which so many mystics have given of negation or -passivity springs, as Von Hügel declares, from an unusually large amount -of actualized energy, an energy which is now penetrating and finding -expression by every pore and fiber of the soul. The whole moral and -spiritual creature expands and rests, yes: but this very rest is produced -by action “unperceived because so fleet,” “so near, so all fulfilling; -or rather by a tissue of single acts, mental, emotional, volitional, -so finely interwoven, so exceptionally stimulative and expressive of -the soul’s deepest aspirations, that these acts are not perceived as -single acts, indeed that their very collective presence is apt to remain -unnoticed by the soul itself.”[25] Wordsworth’s account passes almost -unconsciously from appreciation of beauty into joyous apprehension of God -and it is a wonderful self-revelation of fused consciousness which is -positively affirmative. - - “Sensation, soul and form - All melted into him; they swallowed up - His animal being; in them did he live, - And by them did he live; they were his life. - In such access of mind, in such high hours - Of visitation from the living God, - Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. - No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request; - Rapt into still communion that transcends - The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, - His mind was a thanksgiving to the power - That made him; it was blessedness and love.” - -Tennyson has given many accounts both in prose and poetry of similar -affirmation experiences, sometimes initiated from within and sometimes -from without. This account from the _Memoirs_ is a good specimen: “I -have frequently had a kind of waking trance—this for the lack of a -better word—quite up from my boyhood, when I have been all alone. This -has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till -all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of -individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away -into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, -the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words—where death was almost -laughable impossibility—the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming -no extinction, but the only true life.” - -Like the æsthetic experience, again, the mystical experience brings an -extraordinary integration, or unifying, of the self, a flooding of the -entire being with joy and an expansion which, as in the case of the -highest æsthetic experiences, takes the soul out into a world which -“never was on sea or land,” and which, nevertheless, for the moment seems -the only world. - -Balfour has finely pointed out in his _Theism and Humanism_, that this -expansion and joy and infinite aspect which are inherent in the æsthetic -values cannot be rationally explained except on the supposition that -these values are in part dependent upon a spiritual conception of the -world—the experience must have a pedigree adequate to account for its -greatness. We cannot begin with an experience which gives an absolutely -new dimension of life and a new world of joy, and then end in our -explanation with a phenomenal play of cosmic atoms—“full of sound and -fury, signifying nothing.” - -The same thing is true with our mystical experience. We cannot, of -course, say offhand that here we experience God as one experiences -an object of sense, or that we have at last found an infallible and -indubitable evidence of the infinite God. My only contention is that -here is a form of experience which implies one of two things. Either -there is far greater depth and complexity to the inmost nature of -personal self-consciousness than we usually take into account, that -is, we ourselves are bottomless and inwardly exhaustless in range -and scope; _or_ the fragmentary thing we call our self is continuous -inwardly with a wider spiritual world with which we have some sort of -contact-relationship and from which vitalizing energy comes in to us. It -is too soon to decide between these two alternatives. We are only at the -very beginning of the study of the submerged life within ourselves, and -we must know vastly more about it than we now know before we can draw the -boundaries of the soul or declare with certainty what comes from its own -deeps and what comes from beyond its farthest margins. The studies of -Bergson and still more emphatically the studies of Dr. William McDougall -in _Body and Mind_ show very conclusively that the consciousness of -_meaning_, the higher forms of memory, the richer and more subtle -emotional experiences and the more significant facts of attention, -conation, and will cannot be explained in terms of cerebral activities or -by any kind of mechanical causation.[26] - -To arrive at any explanation of the most central activities of personal -consciousness we must assume that consciousness is a reality existing in -its own sphere and vastly transcending the physical mechanism which it -uses. If this is a fact—and McDougall’s argument is the work of one of -the most careful and scientifically trained of modern psychologists—then -there is no reason why what we call the “soul” might not on occasions -receive incomes of life and spiritual energy from the infinite source -of consciousness. I can only say that the mystic in his highest moments -feels himself to be and believes himself to be in vital fellowship with -Another than himself—and what is more, some power to live by does come -in from somewhere. Mystical experiences in a large number of instances -not only permanently integrate the self but also bring an added and -heightened moral and spiritual quality and a greatly increased dynamic -effect. - -We are still in the stage of mystery in dealing with the causes of -variations and mutations in the biological order. Something surprising -and novel, something that was not there before, something incalculable -and unpredictable suddenly appears and a little living creature arrives -equipped with a trait which no ancestor had and by means of which he can -endure better, can see farther or run faster, can survive longer, and is, -in fact, on a higher life-level. We do not know how the little midget -did it. But some _élan vital_ may have burst in from an invisible and -intangible environment, more real even than the environment we see. The -universe, as Professor Shaler once said, seems to be “a realm of unending -and infinitely varied originations.” So, too, these flushes of splendor -which break through the “Soul’s east window of divine surprise” may -come from a perfectly real spiritual environment without which a finite -spirit could not be at all or live at all. I do not know. Our fragmentary -experiences cannot enable us to furnish irrefragible proof. It only looks -_as though_ God were within reach and _as though_ at moments we were at -home with Him. - -Gilbert Murray’s cautious conclusion in his fine essay on _Stoicism_ is a -good word with which to close this chapter. - -“We seem to find,” he says, “not only in all religions, but in -practically all philosophies, some belief that man is not quite alone -in the universe, but is met in his endeavours towards the good by -some external help or sympathy.... It is important to realize that -the so-called belief is not really an intellectual judgment so much -as a craving of the whole nature [in us].... It is only of very late -years that psychologists have begun to realize the enormous dominion -of those forces in man of which he is normally unconscious. We cannot -escape as easily as these brave men [the Stoics] dreamed from the grip -of the blind powers beneath the threshold. Indeed, as I see philosophy -after philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the Friend behind -phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a moment and by -an effort, refrain from making the same assumption, it seems to me that -perhaps here, too, we are under the spell of a very old ineradicable -instinct. We are gregarious animals; our ancestors have been such for -countless ages. We cannot help looking out on the world as gregarious -animals do; we see it in terms of humanity and of fellowship. Students of -animals under domestication have shown us how the habits of a gregarious -creature, taken away from his kind, are shaped in a thousand details by -reference to the lost pack which is no longer there—the pack which a dog -tries to smell his way back to all the time he is out walking, the pack -he calls to for help when danger threatens. It is a strange and touching -thing, this eternal hunger of the gregarious animal for the herd of -friends who are not there. And it may be, it may very possibly be, that, -in the matter of this Friend behind phenomena, our own yearning and our -own almost ineradicable instinctive conviction, since they are certainly -not founded on either reason or observation, are in origin the groping of -a lonely-souled gregarious animal to find its herd or its herd-leader in -the great spaces between the stars. - -“At any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of.” - - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] Mark I. 10-11. - -[2] II Corinthians III. 17. - -[3] Ephesians I. 23. - -[4] It is true, no doubt, that the word “mystery” in the New Testament is -generally used with a technical meaning. I shall refer later to the true -significance of the word, but for the moment it is not overstraining it -to use it as I have done in the text. - -[5] Bertrand Russell’s _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 60, 61. - -[6] _Ibid._, p. 70. - -[7] Arthur Balfour’s _Theism and Humanism_, p. 87. - -[8] _Ibid._, p. 134. - -[9] _Ibid._, p. 273. - -[10] _Ibid._, p. 274. - -[11] Tennyson’s _Two Voices_. - -[12] Titchener’s _Beginner’s Psychology_, p. 19. - -[13] Dr. William McDougall’s _Body and Mind_, p. 335. - -[14] William James’ _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 583. - -[15] James’ _Psychology_ (Briefer Course), p. 237. - -[16] Leuba’s _Psychology of Religion_, p. 212. - -[17] _Ibid._, p. 277. - -[18] _The World and the Individual_, Vol. I, p. 81. - -[19] _Ibid._, p. 181. - -[20] _The Aurora_, Chap. XIX, pp. 10-13. - -[21] Isaac Penington, _Works_, Vol. I, p. xxxvii. - -[22] _Towards Democracy_, p. 190. - -[23] _Ibid._, p. 513. - -[24] Dostoievsky’s _The Possessed_. - -[25] _The Mystical Element_, Vol. II, p. 132. - -[26] This point has been discussed in the previous chapter. - - Printed in the United States of America. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inner Life, by Rufus M. 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