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God and Ma
PHILOSOPHY OF THE HIGHER LIFE
BY
E. ELLSWORTH SHUMAKER
Ph.D. (YALE)
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Zbe 'Knicherbocker iptesa
1909
Copyright, 1909
BY
K. ELLSWORTH SHUMAiC£R
ICbe fmklteTbocbev 8>res0, View ffotrlfc
ICL,A253047
(To
THE BEAUTIFUL MEMORY OF
PHILLIPS BROOKS
IN ENDURING GRATITUDE AND LOVE
PREFACE
ALL awaking natures are interested in the Higher Life. Such life is our supreme human concern. The reality of it is an increasing fascination ; the process thereof, a growing inquiry. The present work attempts to show how we enter upon and actually live the Higher Life. It is not a metaphysic, although an ultimate view of things is implicit in it. Nor is it an apologetic, though again it is hoped that it may reveal the Rock under our feet and the Sky that arches over our heads. Rather, it is a philosophy of life on its higher planes.
So far from there being nothing new, every human life is unique, every experience has some- thing new in it. The great Revelation is not ended, and will not be. God has much more to show the wondering eyes of men. And every life that deeply lives sees a fresh vision, and joy- ously walks in a brightening light. The Spirit of truth is not merely repeating itself. In this work, the new view contained is the vision of man's Great Environment, and of man himself as veritably set into it, and forever living his Higher Life in relation thereto. Modern science
vi Preface
has discovered anew man's lower environment, and for the first time in the history of thought, seriously has set man therein and thoroughly related his life thereto. What remains is that religious philosophy should discover man's Higher Environment anew, and with equal thoroughness set him into it, and seriously implicate his nobler life therewith. In the whole progress of science, there has been no more inclusive achievement than the first. What then, in the advance of religion, may the second prove?
Out of life this book grew; to life it makes its call. Fourteen years ago the germinal idea of it sprang from the grapple with human needs. Six years ago its background was presented as a Doctor's thesis at Yale University. The book has been, I am free to say, a costly work. During Harvard days, my interest was already philosophic, looking to the deeper analysis of the religious life. During the Princeton and New York (Gen. Theol. Sem.) periods, that interest deepened. Afterward at Berlin, philosophy of religion be- came central. And later at Yale, the inquiry had crystallized into what now has grown to the present work. In the intervening pastorates, our interpretation has been held close to palpi- tating life. Every chapter and stage of the book has been vivid with experience.
The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry,
Preface vii
of which Plato speaks, was composed in his fair pages, when philosophy became beautiful with life, and poetry became deep with wisdom. The poets were right, when they shrank from the pale systems, and felt that without the warmth and colour of reality men were not dealing with life at all. And the philosophers were right, when they held aloof, and somewhat superiorly insisted that without the solid framework of truth neither things nor men were thinkable. For unless truth rises into beauty, and unless beauty springs out of truth, both alike are faulty and unreal. Truth and grace meet together in every perfect thing. We shall then seek for truth indeed as for pearls of great price, but we shall know that we hold the precious gems in our hands, when they shine with living and during beauty.
Human life has become too subjective to be satisfied without explanation. We want to know the secret of things, the "how" of the Higher Life. We have lost, perhaps forever, the naivete of our childhood. We shall win, I think, a new and higher simplicity. For subjectivity is not the end, nor explanation. A higher objectivity is the true goal. But for the present, our stage of progress seeks and needs a philosophy of life. Through it, we shall pass enriched into a new and larger faith and peace.
viii Preface
Some such approach to the great Realities, and some such philosophy of life as lies before us, I deeply believe, is the future path of the human mind.
E. E. S.
Cambridge, Mass.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
Man as Set into the Universe: or the World-All in its Many Spheres as it En- folds Man ...... I
A. The Physical Spheres That Enfold Man
CHAPTER II
The Enfolding World- All in its Many Spheres . . . . . . -13
B. The Human Spheres That Enfold Man
CHAPTER III
The Enfolding World-All in its Many Spheres ....... 43
C. The Higher Spheres That Enfold Man
CHAPTER IV
The Correspondingly Wide-Ranging Gamut OF Man's Powers ..... 74
CHAPTER V
The World- All at Work: or the Pri- ority, Parenthood, and Greater Working OF God ....... 85
X Contents
FAGB
CHAPTER VI
Why is our Consciousness of God's Work- ing so Meagre? . . . . . 130
CHAPTER VII
Man at Work, or the Responsive Receptiv- ity and Co-operative Activity of Man . 141
CHAPTER VIII What God is Working toward . . . 173
CHAPTER IX What Man is Working toward . . . 208
CHAPTER X
God's Process: or God's Movement Man- ward ....... 251
CHAPTER XI
Man's Progress: or Man's Movement God- ward ....... 295
CHAPTER XII Man's True Life in God .... 325
CHAPTER XIII Humanity and the Individual . . . 354
Contents xi
PA.GK
CHAPTER XIV
Man the Expression op God and Partaker OP THE Divine Nature .... 370
CHAPTER XV Thb Abounding Riches op the Higher Lipb 3^3
God and Man: Philosophy of the Higher Life
CHAPTER I
MAN AS SET INTO THE UNIVERSE; OR, THE WORLD ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES AS IT ENFOLDS MAN
A. The Physical Spheres That Enfold Man
OUR total Environment that enspheres us is so ever-present that we do not reahse its presence. We do not know the primal fact of things. We are unconscious of what is. If we could begin life by waking with adult conscious- ness at darkest midnight, and have that moment as the beginning of conscious experience, we should be in a condition no doubt for a revelation of the truth of things as it is. We should discover our body and that we are shut up within it. We shoiild become aware of our head and that we live in it, enclosed by it as by a nutshell. When day broke, our eyes would open to a stupendous
2 God and Man
scene. We should step forth into an encircling Universe. The earth would be under our feet; the sky wotild arch over our head; we should be ensphered. The solid earth would impress us as a mighty fact, and we should realise that we were standing upon it. But wherefore stand upon this solid mass of earth? We might try to raise one foot from it, and of course succeed. We might then attempt to raise both feet from it, and of course fail. This would be strange. The earth would seem to have hold of us. We might try to leap up from it. Up two feet we might jump, but back we should come. The earth surely would appear to have us in its grasp. All our strength might be put forth in a mightier leap. But back again we should come. In vain would all such attempts be repeated. The earth would grasp us still with resistless might. Here would be stubborn fact. This would be the beginning of the revelation of what is. The conclusion would be quite irresistible that we are held within the unbreakable grasp of earth.
We might have noticed ere this that we breathed. The wind might have blown upon us and we have become conscious of the atmosphere. It might now flash in upon us that we breathed this atmo- sphere. We might perceive that we breathed it regularly and kept on doing so. "But what is this air?" we might ask, "and why breathe it? It is a mere nothing. The earth is a solid
The Physical Envelops 3
fact, but this atmosphere is unsubstantial noth- ingness. We'll breathe it no more." Speedily however there would be a growing inducement to breathe again just this nothingness. We should discover a "powerful weakness" in not doing so; discover that this subtle, invisible, intangible something all about us is indispensable; that it is the life of our life; that when it pours itself into us, we live; and that when we breathe it not, we die. Here is another revelation of what is. Here is a new fact, different from the mighty fact of earth, but, in its way, just as stupendous and resistless. We move about and explore this new fact. We go backward; it is there. We go forward, and sidewise ; it is there, and there. We descend into a valley; it is there. We go up to a hilltop ; it is there also. Everywhere and everywhere it is present. It enfolds us. It might be suggested to us that it is like an ocean and that we are like fish; that we move about within it as fish swim about in the sea; that we continually breathe it and feed upon it as fish breathe and feed upon the water. It might ftir- ther be suggested that this atmospheric ocean belongs to the earth just as the watery ocean does; that it is in reality part of the earth just as that is. Then we should at length realise that this material sphere is not only under us but also over us, and around us — yes, and in us ; that we are in it, are ensphered by it perpetually;
4 God and Man
that we are held in its grasp, go not out from it, live and move and have oiir being in it.
The primal facts are now before us. We are ensphered by the globe of the head — a narrow world. We are ensphered by the earth with its power. We are ensphered by the air. Or, put- ting all these together, we are ensphered by the material world. Within these spheres we always live, making no excursions beyond them.
It begins to grow apparent by this time what the fact about man's place in the Universe is. He lives his life within many envelopes. Many concentric spheres, so to speak, enfold him. He lives within them. He feeds out of and upon them in many ways. They pour themselves into him perpetually. He is a part of them, of the spheres that encircle him.
But let us go on to think of other spheres.
Our thoughtful observer will not thus have grown intelligent about body, earth, and air with- out having noticed the glory of the sunlight that floods the world. His eyes before this will have followed the sunbeams up to the sun. He will have noticed that he is enveloped in light, and that earth and sky as well are filled with light flowing forth from the sun. He may close his eyes and discover how all the world is then shut out as by a curtain. In this way he may learn how light is poured into his eyes and how depend- ent sight is upon it. Without light, earth, sky,
The Physical Envelops 5
a Universe would be curtained from vision. He might feel also the warmth of the sun's rays. Someone might inform him, however, that he had not yet discovered a tithe of the meaning of this to him new phenomenon of light. He might tell him that without it earth and he alike would be swathed in eternal ice and snow; that all forms of life would pass away; and that death would hold uninterrupted reign. As though this were not wonder enough, he might tell him how distant the orb and source of all this light is; how this boundless sphere of light ever goes forth from the sun, and is and remains essentially a part of the sun. Hereupon our learner would discover that being enswathed by light was being ensphered in reality by the sun. That far-away orb was yet so near, encircled him, and after its own fashion held him in its mighty grasp. It poured light into his eyes, warmth into his body, and, with food, vitality into his very marrow-bones.
Here then is a new envelope. Man is ensphered by the sun. Within this greater sphere he lives his life, and, after a different sort, feeds out of and upon it. In manifold ways it pours itself into him and conditions all his life.
Already we are led to think that it is not alone or chiefly what man does within his spheres, but also what his spheres do within him. As we go on it will appear that man is held within many ensphering worlds, and that what they do to
6 God and Man
him and in him is much more than what he him- self does.
Though man is ensphered by the earth, he is encompassed also, as we now have seen, by the sun. Thus far considered this last is in subtle and intangible but powerfiil forms. There is more truth to learn about this last, however. The sun holds both man and world in its grasp. Our learner will be told that the earth itself holds not him with more irresistible power than the sun holds the earth and all that is thereon. The earth and all its belongings, he will be told, is flung out into space and attracted by the sun about its appointed orbit unceasingly, ever in obedience to the central sim. With perfection of power the earth is ensphered and held fast. All that takes place on the earth comes to pass within the enveloping control of the solar system. This very solid globe itself knows how to do noth- ing but haste to obey. It makes no excursions beyond its appointed path. It is ever receptive of a thousand influences. It is grasped by the sun.
Up to the present we have seen man ensphered by his body, ensphered by the earth, ensphered by the sun. He does not hold his spheres, they hold him. What he does is something. What they do to him and in him is much more. He lives his life within them. They in a broad sense may be said to live their life into him.
The Physical Envelops 7
When we picture man standing upon the earth, and the earth flying at a thousand-mile-a-minute rate through space, circHng in unbroken obedience around the sun; and then when we picture sun, earth, and man as enveloped by the Universe, we are beginning to make real to ourselves the actual truth and fact of things. As we see the sky arch over us and sweep round our world, so we see the vaster universal heavens sweep round and ensphere our solar system. We are held sphere within sphere, the less enfolded in the greater, out to the greatest. We are ensphered by the Universe.
Nor is this to be acknowledged as fact and then straightway made naught of. As though it were indeed an infinite truth, but touched not our lives — ^just as the broad heavens are it is true above all our heads, but seem to unthinking men to have little moment for us. On the con- trary, the seeming indifferent sky is quite our first concern. Within this universal sphere, we have our existence, think our thought, do our work, and develop our personality.
Vast symbol all this of the being of God. Per- haps more than symbol; perhaps expression in part of the reality. Perchance the infinite Uni- verse that enfolds us is, in some sense, the infinite God enfolding us. Perchance our thousand-fold connection therewith is in reality thousand-fold connection with God. Perhaps we, in a way,
8 God and Man
rest upon God when we stand upon the earth, are encircled by God when enveloped by the air, breathe in God when we breathe the atmosphere ■ in some sense, feed upon God when we feed upon bread, are vitalised by God when quickened by sunlight, and are held in the power of God when held in the grasp of earth, sun, and Universe. Such, one may well be persuaded, is the deepest interpretation and truth of things. Living thus within the Universe is in reality living, moving, and having one's being in God. And the ten thousand laws of the mighty system that lay hold of us and work day and night upon and in us are all powers that go forth from Him. In the vast Universe, therefore, that enspheres us, we see the infinite God ensphering us ; and in the myriad laws that work in us we see the myriad influences of God working out His will. All envelopes are divine envelopes in the last meaning of them. First and last we are held within an infinite enfolding Life ; we are ensphered by God.
We live within the body; we live within the en- circling earth ; we live within the ensphering sun | we live within the all-enfolding Universe. This is what we have seen. In the deepest meaning of it all, we live within the enfolding Life of God.
These are some of the envelopes by which man is ensphered. He lives perpetually in vital mutual commerce with all these envelopes. Really he is feeding upon them, in the broad sense, aU
The Physical Envelops 9
the time. They are the life of his life. One needs to see clearly all the envelopes ; then to see that man is really set into them all; then to see how he actually lives his life within these spheres ; — better, how the All lives its life into him, and how he co-operates with the All ; — or, once more, how the All inflows into him and how he lives by and out of the feeding Absolute.
It is now apparent that we are set vastly deeper into this system of things than we know. We have infinitely more vital and real relationships, connections, commerces with the Universe than we realise. The way we are bedded and rooted into this world and all things, in legionary vital connection with all, is wonderful yet is the sober truth . We are not like an island floating in infinite emptiness alone and dissevered, but we are like a tree rooted down into everything and branched out into ever3rthing. The earth is not more really set into million-fold connection with the Universe than are we. This is what is. This is the primal and fundamental fact of things. We seem as disconnected as an eagle floating in mid-heaven. We forget that every solar system, every star, every satellite, every mote of matter in the wide Universe sends a line of influence through the centre of the eagle's body, and a million forces focus and balance there. The eagle knows it not. It only floats in freedom. So we each seem sepa- rated and disconnected, but the truth and fact
lo God and Man
is that we are set into things, are a living part of things, in deeper and more vital relationship than V\^e shall ever comprehend. All that is breathes in us, sends its life-blood through us, vitalises us. The total system of beings and powers lives and pulses in us. We are held in truth in an infinite network of influences and laws ; as though a vast spider-web stretched across space and we were entangled in ten-million meshes. So, and more so, are we knit into this marvellous and multiform World-All.
If this is the fact and scientific truth of things ; if the life of man is a sort of infinite thing, acted upon in infinite ways and again acting in infinite ways upon the universal environment, how can the meagre field of consciousness ever know more than a fraction of what is taking place? Only the infinite Mind can know the endless involution and detail of the process. Vastly more is going on in man than he knows or can ever know. In the main he carries not himself, but is borne on the bosom of things. In the main he lives not his own life, but the World- All lives its life in him. So deep, so real, so vital, so mutual, so constant, so multiform, so mysterious is this commerce between man and his world.
Thus far we have come to this. Here are many spheres enfolding man. Here is man enfolded by all the spheres, yet a part of them. As a part, man lives his life within the spheres. All these
The Physical Envelops ii
spheres also live their life, so to speak, in man. Life is a constant renewal out of the envelopes, a perpetual feeding out of and upon the spheres. The feeding envelopes perpetually feed man. What man does is something. What the envel- opes do is much more. Man therefore, one may say, lives a fed life within feeding worlds that enfold him and of which he all the time forms a part; the deepest interpretation of all this being that man lives his life within the enfolding Life of God.
In endeavouring to get at and realise man's place in the cosmos we must not overlook the influence upon him of the succession of day and night, of the ever recurring seasons, the distance of his home from the equator, the elevation of it above sea-level, and the topography of the land wherein he lives. Man builds no houses on the Matterhorn, and makes no gardens on the summit of the Himalayas. He achieves no great civili- sations at the poles or at the equator. And the pervasive and powerful influence of the seasons and of the succession of day and night is incalcul- able. What is more subtle than climate? or than springtime? or than the influence of light? The extent to which man is held within the power of these is not to be measured by the space that here can be given to them. They form other atmospheres, so to speak, within which man lives out his life.
12 God and Man
Here let it be noted that it is not our purpose to attempt a precise statement or assessment of the influence of these various factors upon man. It is our object merely to call up the conditioning atmospheres with the multitude of facts that each readily suggests. It is not our interest critically to enumerate the facts, setting down no more no less, but rather to open our eyes to a million patent facts, and to take them into the account in working out our philosophy of life. Accordingly we simply ask, for our purpose, that the multiform influence upon man of the succession of day and night, the recurring seasons, etc., be realised. Thus we hope to see man set into his worlds and to see the complexity of those worlds, and thus we hope to produce the impression of the myriad-sided relationship of the World-All to man.
CHAPTER II
THE ENFOLDING WORLD-ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES
B. The Human Spheres That Enfold Man
WE now have seen man set into and enveloped by diverse physical worlds. We have seen him bound up with them by invisible bonds that run from the centre of his being to the centre of all and every being. We have seen perpetual action and reaction, inflow and outflow, com- parable to ceaseless inhalation and exhalation of the many world-atmospheres that enfold him. We have seen him sustaining to the All much the same relation that the eye sustains to light, the lungs to air, the fish to the ocean, or the tree to nature. We have realised how involved and complicated his life is with the World-All, and how the vast Whole ceaselessly breathes into him the breath of life ; how it is thus and not otherwise, that he lives and must ever live ; and how this is the unchangeable fact and reality of things. Finally we have thought that this most primal and fundamental fact, which is the background against which all the other facts are set, must on
13
14 God and Man
no account be disregarded. One might as well disregard the sunlight in springtime and then try to make out the secret of growth, as try to deter- mine the nature of man's higher life without set- ting him into his spheres and seeing how he lives his life out of and upon the feeding worlds.
In the main we have spoken hitherto of physical spheres. But man is ensphered by other worlds than physical. He is ensphered by life-worlds, by society-worlds, by mind-worlds, and by truth-, beauty-, ideal-, and spirit-worlds. Besides being held in the grasp of earth and atmosphere, sun- light and sun, universe and law, climate and topography, day and night, summer and winter (barring the equator), man is held in the grasp also of these Human, and of these Higher worlds.
Now, therefore, let us turn from man's physical first to man's human spheres, and see him set into the home, the community, the race, and humanity, reserving for later survey man's higher spheres. We need to discover and appreciate the magnitude of these and see the intimacy and extent of their influence upon him ; for he is held within them and conditioned by them to an unguessed degree.
From the time when as an ovum the individual parted from the ovary of his mother and as a sperm from his father's body, to the time when he was born, on to the time when he leaves the paren- tal circle to form, himself, half of a new home- sphere, and to become the generator of children,
The Human Envelops 15
sprung from his own body, he is knit into vital and manifold relationship with the home. No words can set forth the vitality of his connection with the family. He gets his being in the begin- ning from a parent. He springs out of the parent body as a bud from a tree. For months he is held within and enclosed by the mother-life. He is fed out of and upon it. Her circulation almost is his, her life, even. His life is enclosed within and is a part of a larger life. — And what if this, man's first beginning and connection with the larger life of the parent, be the symbol of his eternally true and unchanging connection with the World-All, or with God. What if it be that from the beginning, man is held within and for- ever fed out of an enfolding infinite Life. — ^And after he is born he is still, in a changed but no less real way, held within the encircling life of the parent. He is fed still from his mother's body. And this is no misfortune, but the true and happy process of the child's self-realisation. — ^Type once more it may be of the true and everlasting process of man's self-realisation. — Nor does the mother- life merely feed the child-life. In ways past finding out, ways subtle, life-giving, and forma- tive, she, along with the father, enfolds the child- life with unceasing care, affection, thought, and spiritual influence. The parent-life touches the child-life at a thousand points. Through the open instincts, through the open senses, the open
i6 God and Man
activities, the opening affections and mind, through the ever3rwhere open life of the child, the person- ality of the parent finds entrance. It may well be doubted whether any of us has ever more than begun to guess the subtlety, manifoldness, and vitality of the influences that go forth from parent to child. The whole gamut of parental being is ever at work. And the wide ranges of heart-, mind-, and soul-life, in inscrutable ways, work upon it. Influences flow into it through every open pore. The nature, the temperament, the tone, the tastes, feelings, thoughts, ideals, beliefs, aspirations, activities, experiences, and character of the parent enfold and penetrate the child with the subtlety and power of atmosphere and sunlight. A cloud of anger passing over the spirit of a mother affects the very milk her child nurses. Surely mental and spiritual influences could tell of a variety and delicacy that material influences can only approximate. Yet how delicate and subtle are even the material influences.
Such is the child as he is set into the bosom of the family. Only the infinite complexity and subtlety of the influences that work upon and in him have not been half expressed. The life of Tennyson, for example, with his rich and intri- cate personality, found scores of ways of entering and affecting the life of his son. In innumerable ways, from the first giving of being to him, to the incalculable parental influences that never ceased
The Human Envelops 17
to work, on to the thousand-fold variety of in- fluence that permeated and leavened his growing life, on to the end, his great rich personality en- folded the child-life and poured itself in upon it. The child received these influences coming through all these channels, and, after its own child-fashion, acted upon them. He knew how to get at his father through many doors besides that of know- ledge. In the beginning that door did not exist. Yet a thousand other doors stood open. He was enabled through every open pore of his na- ture to absorb the enfolding life. As a leaf with its ten thousand open mouths breathes in the encircling atmosphere, so the child breathed in the parental influence; so the parent-personality breathed the breath of thousand-fold life into the child. The child knew it not. For months he knew not at all. For years the gateway of knowledge was only a narrow gate indeed, but broad and many all the while were the other ways. So much for the enfolding life of the home. Even strong statement has done it scant justice.
Out beyond the family is the community. Man is set into that environment as well. A liv- ing being set into a life-giving society — so runs the truth of things. We must conceive facts more vitally. If we know not of a hundred beat- ing hearts of different kinds, and of as many life- bloods, all different, circulating through all things
1 8 God and Man
and especially through human life, our under- standing of Reality is as yet external and wooden. Our minds must vitalise our worlds in order to make the first beginning at discovery of what the real nature of things is. Man set into society therefore is a vital and not a mere mechanical and dead fact. He is knit into society in living connection with it. There are other connections besides joints and ligaments. The body is not the most alive thing in the world. As alive and quivering with vitality as flame is, so alive are feeling and thought and the activities of spirit. Into these atmospheres and sunlights and elec- tricities and spiritual climates and gravitations the life of man is set. Society encompasses him with many life-giving atmospheres. What has been said of the child as held in the bosom of the home is true of man as set into society. He is shot through with as many influences as beams of sunlight. The whole wide gamut of social forces plays incessantly upon him. As complex as is our mysterious humanity, as wide as is the range of human faculty, so multiform are the cur- rents of influence that flow through the being of each of us. A flower blooming in the sunlight seems attached to nothing but its stem. But a score of thousands could not number the subtle influences that have wrought upon it. It is as though it were attached to and had grown upon a thousand stems instead of one. So a life grafted
The Human Envelops 19
into society has flowing through it a hundred saps, a hundred dews fall upon it along with a myriad raindrops; and countless sunbeams of influence pierce it through. And when we discover this we simply open our eyes to what is. However disconnected a life superficially may seem, it is notwithstanding infinitely connected. In mutual give-and-take, in numberless actions and reac- tions, it lives and grows and comes to self-reali- sation. This is the profound ever-operative fact of things. A life may appear to be fastened to society as simply as a tree seems to be fastened to the earth — the single trunk seems to run down into the ground, and that is all. But dig away the surface of the soil and see a very network and tangle of roots. The tree is fastened to the earth with thousand-fold vital connection. So a life, only much more intimately and complexly, is connected with society. The atmosphere at noonday is hardly more full of rays of light than the world of society is full of powers. There are no idle sunbeams. So there are no idle social powers. They all work upon man. How subtle, deep, and varied that working is only recent study has begun at all adequately to reveal.
The more penetrating the study of nature and of life becomes, the more complex and many-sided they are seen to be. The germ cell used to be spoken of as simple. Minuter research has revealed unsuspected complexity. What was
20 God and Man
thought for ultimate analysis to be the unit of life, turns out, itself, to be a manifold. Society, in like manner, has revealed, on more searching examina- tion, an intricacy and complexity of nature that is inconceivable. Where the last and subtlest workings of human life have their seat is not yet discovered, and the fuller knowledge, as it comes, seems only to push that discovery ever farther off. Wheel within wheel, wheel within wheel, out beyond our ken runs the involution and mys- tery of human life. Into such a human environ- ment is man set.
If we think of a tree with a multitude of roots running down into the ground and with trunk and innumerable branches stretching up and spreading out into air and sunlight; and if we think of every tendril as a point of contact and of every leaf as a place of connection, and then think of the multitudinous powers of nature that are touching those tendrils and leaves constantly — the million sunbeams and air-atoms and rain- drops and food-particles that pass perpetually into the tree's life and structure — we have not even then an overdrawn conception of the re- lation of man to society. Infinitely complex and manifold is human society. This must be realised. Set into such a plexus is the equally manifold life of man. Between the two, countless actions and reactions are ever proceeding.
The trend of the argum.ent has been growing.
The Human Envelops 21
I think, more and more apparent as the discussion has proceeded. There is a very great conception, I venture to think, which must be gotten at in order to know man's place in the Universe, and to discover the true character of the higher Hfe. That conception is the thought of many enspher- ing worlds, and of man as set into the centre and focus of them all, the total system of beings and powers environing him and working momentarily upon him, while he, for his part, ceaselessly reacts upon and coworks with them. When we see the wide gamut of Reality ranged up and down, and when we see face-to-face with it man with equally wide range of being, and when we soberly realise that that total system forever works upon the total man, and that the total man likewise forever works upon the total system, then we are beginning to get some true conception of the actual fact of things.
In some measure the relation of man to the community now has been set forth in a general way. Hereafter more specific facts will crop out in the development.
Out beyond the community is the nationality and the race. These also are spheres. So evident however are these envelopes and so patent is their determinative influence that space need not here be given to their elaboration. Nevertheless they shall not on that account be thought of unessen- tial moment.
22 God and Man
Home, community, nationality, race, — out be- yond these we shall now see the wider humanity. By this greater sphere as well the individual is encircled. "Very evidently so," one might ob- serve. "It is siirely no revelation that man is set into humanity. "-—The fact here considered, nevertheless, is not meant to be quite the com- monplace that at first sight it appears. Man makes no excursions beyond his humanity. Human nature in general gives law to the human indi- vidual in particular. Man does not take on other nature than human: he does not unfold into tree- nature, nor into fish, bird, or animal nature. Nor does he unfold into angel or archangel. From this point of view he makes neither ascent nor descent. He unfolds out along the lines of his essential humanity. He never leaps its bounds. It never occurs to him to be anything else than hu- man. He is ensphered by his humanity. How countless the influences that have marked out his human bounds, how definitively humanity has wrought upon him, or with what powers of self-delimitation he himself has developed within human lines, we but feebly conceive. We may think of the tree as imparting tree-nature to the seed, and so setting its bounds. Or we may think of the seed as self-limiting in its de- velopment. In either aspect, both of which are real, numberless influences are at work. So we may think of humanity as imparting human
The Human Envelops 23
nature to the human bud, so to speak, thus de- fining its limits. Or we may think of the human bud, the individual, as self-limiting in its develop- ment. In either case, both of which are alike real, the determinative forces have been infinitely complex. So it is man is held within the envelope of his humanity. It is a great enspherement. All the meaning of it is not yet known. The many-sidedness and importance of this great fact must be more adequately reflected upon and taken into account. It will not do to say, "Of course man is ensphered by his humanity," and "Cer- tainly that is the great elemental fact, " and then, after all, make little account of that fact. It would seem to be a prevalent weakness of our human reflection that, in many cases, it makes least account of the things that are really greatest. Humanity, race, nationality, community, family; the change of seasons, the succession of day and night, topography, climate, the reign of law; the earth under our feet, the sky above our heads, the atmosphere we breathe, the vapoury clouds, the vitalising sunlight, the central sun, even the Universe itself are all taken as matters-of-course. And then elaborate consideration is given to the minor spheres that seem to touch life more inti- mately. As though the facts of first and elemental greatness were too vast for consideration, and therefore we devoted ourselves to the exploration of smaller worlds. "The boundless oceans with
24 God and Man
their mighty influences are too great; let us ex- plore the inland lakes and ponds, " we seem to be saying, "and thus let us endeavour to estimate the significance of the watery world." But not so does the significance of the great oceans get discovered.
Much of the intellectual work of our time seems to be of this character. Great things are not seen in their greatness ; small things are examined with microscopic care. The grand view is everywhere lost. Infinite, endless details — the mind is distracted with these and lost among them. It has no energy left for great emprise or vast conception. And great truth, hidden, as it always is, in great worlds, remains like them unrevealed and unknown. No ; there is no election. The Universe, the solar system, the solid earth, can not be taken as matters-of-course. Great things must be greatly considered. So, and not otherwise, will the great backgrounds of fact and truth become revealed.
Throughout all this if the impression has been deepening that the life of man is inwoven more than a thread in a fabric, the desired result is being attained. But the end is not yet. Still other spheres enfold man. He is ensphered by heredity and history, by civilisation and the evolutional process, past, present, and future, and by the Zeitgeist. The consideration of all these, it is
The Human Envelops 25
true, is but the more extended consideration of the family, community, nationality, race and humanity. Nevertheless it will be better to carry forward the examination of these in the above forms.
Doubtless present humanity influences the in- dividual, but how is it with past humanity? Have the generations that are gone influenced him by all that they have done and been? Yes; man is the child not only of the present but also of the past. Strictly, all the generations that have ever been, influence him now both by what they did and by what they were. History and heredity have present meaning.
It is not necessary for our present purpose to go to either extreme — either to overstate the importance of heredity, as seems to have been done awhile ago, or to understate it, as seems to be done by some to-day. It is not necessary to make naught of personal initiative and of environ- ment in order to make past process significant. Nor is it necessary to make the past little in order to make the present big. Individual initia- tive and the influence of environment are great. Past process is also great. Our present study, however, does not depend upon the comparative importance assessed to each. Without doubt every generation that lives is influenced by all the generations that have ever lived. That is enough. How that influence has wrought and
26 God and Man
through what diverse channels it has poured needs to be realised. A thing so involved and complex as all the past human life of the world could not affect so complex a thing as the modern human individual except through numberless channels. Influence him it certainly does. In- fluence him in many ways it certainly must.
Once more we come to what is and shall be throughout our central thought. Man is enveloped by many worlds and in living contact with them all. He is himself a complex being with wide gamut of powers. He faces his worlds with many attitudes, opennesses, receptivities, activities, com- merces. Many are the relationships in which he stands to the World-All. Ensphered and en- sphered in this manner he lives his many-sided life. This is the first and fundamental fact. In the light of this primal and great fact the higher life is alone to be seen and understood.
The individual is environed not only by the present, but also, as we have said, by all the past as well. Reflection upon the past, from this point of view, is most instructive. Man is the child of the past in more ways than ever have dawned upon his consciousness. It must be the common experience of reflective and scien- tific thought to be surprised again and again at the variety of past process as it still works on in present-day life. The revelation is bewildering and outgoes our powers of conception. One sees
The Human Envelops 27
in the past a kind of infinite thing, and with deep- ening reflection doubts its effective potency less and less.
In great broad surveys one sees how inevitable it is that the past should live on in the present, and how irrational it would be if the fact were different. If the infinite toil and moil of the long generations of struggling men could not in some way be registered in the physical organism and passed on through heredity as an accumulated treasure; if the long emotional life of the race with its untold joys and sorrows, its loves and hates, its hopes and fears, its exaltations and despairs, its passions and pains and pleasures, could be experienced for hundreds of generations, and then transmit no influence thereof to posterity ; if the thought of man, that wondrous thing in his mysterious life, with variety first and last com- parable to the endless variety of all the objects of thought, that descends to the minuti® of microscopic worlds and ascends to the magni- tudes of milky ways, needing a brain so complex that its elements outnumber all the hosts of the universal heavens, — ^if thought, I say, could course through the brain of mankind for untold centuries and after all project no trace whatever of influence into the present, we should have a world as ab- surd as mysterious. If the moral and spiritual struggle of the race, with its shame and glory, with its tragedy and pathos, could go on through-
28 God and Man
out the long history of the ascent of man; if the conscience could know no increasing enlighten- ment, the soiil no growing nobility, and character no advancing strength and solidity, which they could pass on at least as aptitudes to the new generation, wisdom itself would be turned into folly. Then all the struggle of the race, as such, woidd be vain; all its tragic emotion without significance, its thought hardly more than the iridescence of a dream., without possibility of widening, and all its spiritual endeavour mocked in its attempted progress. Racial progress, as such, there could not be. If past process had not present meaning, then would the accumulated experience of the race, more precious than the gold of all the continents, be incapable of present inheritance; then would its habits and customs, those long-travelled roads, trodden and made familiar and easy by the feet of countless genera- tions, be barred and made inaccessible to the oncoming time; then would language, the fine product of so many ages, the most exquisite instrument of human invention and the most elaborate, never have risen above the level of a "googly-goo," in the first place, or been passed on from father to son in the second place ; then could the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, without which the race would be poor indeed, which are now handed down through tradition and litera- ture, never become the assured and comparatively
The Human Envelops 29
easy heritage of the rising generation; then finally could the arts and industries, the credits and wealths, the governments and institutions, the faiths and religions — in a word, all the civilisations of man, which have cost the prolonged struggle of all humankind, never be once transmitted. Racial progress, as such, would be a thing unknown. Our boundless heritage which we rarely and never adequately appreciate, our gift from the past which is undoubtedly ninety-nine one-hundredths of our present possessions, would never have been at all. All the past beginnings of the race would have begun and ended literally with the bud and would now possess for us hardly antiquarian interest, certainly no serious concern, and each new generation would of necessity begin the game of life for itself afresh.
This is what one beholds in great broad surveys. If past process had no present value, if heredity and history had no present influence, if all that the race has been and done did not project itself into all that the race is and does to-day, we should scarcely know our transformed selves or world for very absurdity. No sort of treasure could ever accumulate, whether one thinks of gold dug out of the ground or of the priceless instincts of the race, or of the long development of Christ- ian culture and character, — ^nothing could ac- cumulate, nothing be passed on to enrich the race. Beyond the first rude beginnings nothing
30 God and Man
would be capable either of becoming or of con- tinuing.
Not only progress but indeed the race itself would be impossible. Self-perpetuation is really the projection of the past into the present. Each new generation is an epitome of all the past. If heredity and history had no meaning for us to-day, the race could not do even what the forest does. It at least perpetuates itself, and in so doing bor- rows from all its past. The grasses die, but live again ; the forests pass away, yet remain ; animals live on in their offspring; all that is, passes into what is to be and so abides still. How utterly empty and senseless the present would be, if this were not true, one does not realise without deliberate and prolonged effort. This lies on the face of things and yet is not seen. It is like all things of elemental greatness. They surround us like atmospheres. They are breathed but not thought about. I sometimes think of phi- losophy as the deliberate attempt to estimate the greatness of things which are really great — the things which are taken for granted and then forgotten, which really form the backgrounds of all that is and yet somehow sink out of common sight.
It requires no special scientific training to see in the above manner what we have now seen — the inestimable significance of the past. It all lies open in broad surveys to the larger thought.
The Human Envelops 31
In this it shows the patent signs of greatness. All vast truths that have something of the great- ness of the Universe about them have something also of the openness and omnipresence of the same. They are not hidden in themselves, but the eyes which should see them are holden, or the souls which should feel them are dead or in- capable through pettiness. The great continents are not concealed ; they lie open to any eye that has elevation and greatness enough to see them. So the greatest truths are not to be searched for in a corner; they too lie open; they await only the coming of the great soul. The vastest truths are neither hidden in themselves nor are they to be discovered at the end of some minute scientific analysis, as such. You shall never dis- cover God shut up in a retort, nor be able to see an ocean in a raindrop even under the microscope, nor discover a "milky- way" in a molecule. Nor will you see the mystery and soul and power of speech under the bark of etymological roots; nor will you see the palpitating life and passionate struggle of the animal creation in the fossil frag- ments that sow the rocks and sandpits; nor will you see in the crust of the earth and the strata of rocks the tumultuous fires, the cataclysmic storms, the multitudinous life that constituted the soul and true being of all that world-formative process; nor yet will you be able to see in the nerve-centres and blood-corpuscles and brain-
32 God and Man
cells of man the greatness of a great soul or the glory of character. Christ was not seen and yet He was not hidden. No scientific analysis coiild discover Him. No petty soul could ever behold Him. It is more difficult to catch the outlines of a great personality than to see the outlines of a continent. There are things that are not hidden and yet lie open only to lives capable of great vision. All the vastest truths and facts have this character in common. There is a limit to what minute analysis can reveal. The microscope in itself can not go beyond the little, nor can the telescope reveal the large if the soul that looks through it is small. The greatest things, I am persuaded, do not await more cunning instruments ; they await the coming of more majestic lives. They await what they have always waited for. What hinders or has ever hindered any man from taking in wide horizons but his own lack of eleva- tion. Or what hinders or has ever hindered him from seeing great truths but his own little- ness? It is not scientific acuteness, it is large philosophic vision that sees the greatest truths. Even when, by scientific effort, a truth of elemen- tal greatness and world-transforming significance is discovered, it is not the nicety of the experi- ment, or the minuteness of the analysis, it is not the scientific method, as such, that makes the great discovery; it is the great mind back of the critical process. It is the philosopher in the
The Human Envelops 33
scientist who really gets the revelation. Laws of gravitation do not flash upon little minds let them ever so nicely observe falling apples. It is given now, as it always has been given, to the great and rich lives alone to behold the things of universal greatness. Whenever a majestic personality steps forth upon the earth, majestic discovery, in the inner or outer world, follows. Whether the method be this or that; whether it be the introspective look, or critical analysis, or reflective insight, or ratiocinative process, or intuitive vision, or mystical meditation, or "cold" scientific experiment, the great revelation comes only to the great life. The vastest things, like the earth and like the sky, are the most open things. Not every eye that turns heavenward really sees that majestical frame of things. They err who think that great worlds are hid in out- of-the-way corners, or that any "smart" observer could discover them if only he had a sufficiently cunning eye-glass. Minute scientific method has its limits. Great souls alone see the visions. Open to them are the mighty facts and truths, hidden from all others they will ever remain.
Thus in broad outline the importance of heredity and history is openly seen.
To the large philosophic look the great facts lie open like continents to the eye of day. This is what is seen by the larger vision. And this, moreover, is what is confirmed b" scientific inves-
34 God and Man
ligation. Whether one takes the extreme or the moderate view of the scope of heredity, its in- fluence still remains great. Into the long story of investigation we could not here go, were we capable. Our proposed limits forbid that. But it would seem to be the common judgment of scientific men that heredity is no minor truth. The last half-century, if no other, has made this evident. The cumulative external evidence bear- ing on the theory of evolution, and the history of embryonic and foetal development through ascending stages, add their strong confirmatory testimony. In short, scientific inquiry confirms the conclusion of our philosophic survey that heredity is a fact of wide range and importance. How numberless the influences are that come out of the past we but feebly conceive. The connection of a human life with the past is like the connection of a tree with nature. Into what a past a great tree roots itself. It is rooted into all the ages of the earth's crust. Down into ten- thousand forgotten changes, down into a multi- tude of by-gone processes, down into countless epochs and transformations, that mark the periods of the soil's long and changeful history, it sends its roots. What infinity of connection the great tree has with all that past. One has only to see a great oak overturned by a hurricane, or standing on a river-bank after a flood has washed away the soil and laied bare half its roots — a very network
The Human Envelops 35
and tangle of them, — to be impressed with the thousand-fold connection of the tree with the earth. Into what a past the tree roots itself, and with what complexity of connection it touches all that past. And into what a past the tree lifts up its towering form. It lifts up its trunk and sends out its branches into an atmosphere that has passed through more changes than there are stars in the sky. And it spreads out its leaves to falling dews and rains that have fallen and risen again, that have passed from sky to earth, from earth to sea, from sea to sky, and down to earth again more times than there are leaves upon the tree. And the same leaves spread out to sun- beams that carry within their subtle being effects of past processes more numerous than the miles through which they have sped. All the change- ful history of the sun, all its cycles and transmu- tations through an indefinite past of ever-during change are recorded in those sunbeams. They touch the leaves with chemic touch and all solar history expresses itself to a degree in present influence there. Into what a past the tree lifts itself up and branches itself out. It is an alto- gether marvellous story. And how innumerable are the points of contact that the tree has with air and dew and light. If one followed the tree from trunk to lofty crest and each spreading limb and branch and leaf, and noted the many open mouths of each separate and single leaf, one would
36 God and Man
then have only a just conception of that contact. Certainly it is a marvellous past the tree lifts itself up and branches itself out into; and it is a marvellous past into which it sends down its roots. It requires the deliberate and sustained exercise of imaginative power justly to conceive that past or that connection.
But is a tree more complex than a man? Is nature into which a tree is set more manifold than humanity into which man is set? Is the past therefore into which man is rooted and branched any less infinite, and his connection therewith any less manifold than the past into which the tree is set and its connection therewith? — Of course man is set into nature as well as into humanity, and all that has been said about the tree can be said from the same point of view of him as well. But for the present we make account only of his human past. —Undoubtedly heredity and history are facts of thousand-fold present significance. The tree helps us rightly to conceive this. Un- doubtedly man's human past, in all the aspects and forces of heredity, and in all the phases and processes and influences of history, is a well-nigh infinite thing.
The family, the community, the nation, the race, humanity, heredity, and history — these are the human envelopes that we have hitherto taken note of. In addition to these man is ensphered
The Human Envelops 37
by civilisation, by the evolutionary process, and by the spirit of the age.
Every man is a child of the present world-status. He embodies the civilisation of his age. The twentieth-century man does not express thir- teenth-century civilisation. He expresses the civi- lisation of to-day. Not that in every respect and with literal minuteness he must be the child of the present status. There may be seventeenth-cen- tury elements lingering on in untimely influence within him. Or there may be twenty-first-century elements uttering themselves in first preludes. In the great main, however, every man is the child of the present status.
All that this signifies it is impossible more than to approximate. Civilisation is a word of ency- clopaedic meaning. It has as many aspects and phases as the surface of the earth. To be the child of the present world-status is to be the focus and utterance of a myriad processes and powers. No one suspects that his life is such an infinite conglomerate until he enters somewhat upon the serious business of reflection. To be the child of an American or a European civilisa- tion means more things than all the v/ise ones could tell. To repeat the story of the manipula- tion of fire alone, from the time when two sticks were rubbed together to the time when Niagara Falls was harnessed and turned into electricity and heat to light and warm homes miles distant,
38 God and Man
is to repeat — ^we know not what. It represents more experiences, more hard necessities, more adaptations, flashes of genius and invention, than one could spell out in a twelvemonth. Yet every child is born an heir to all this without effort. He drinks it in much as the Italian orange groves and the vineyards along the Rhine drink in the favouring influences of climate.
Or to tell the story of the cultivation of the soil from the time when primitive man ineffect- ually scratched it with a crooked stick, to the time when the modern farmer comfortably rides his steam-plough over his broad acres, sitting on a spring seat and guiding the machine while it easily rolls over a splendid fturow, straight as a line far as the eye can see, is to recount a tale of struggle, vicissitude, hardship, and inventive triumph which only the great book of the Past has compass enough duly to record. Yet here again a child is born into all this simply by being born into the modern world. He buys a plough and learns to manipulate it with less effort than that with which the Alaskan Indian learns to spear fish. Thus the fruits that have grown on so many successive life-trees drop so easily, compara- tively, into his lap.
Or take the story of the abode of man. Follow it from the time when the leader of the tribe with the rest had nothing better than a cave in the rocks, down through unrecorded and recorded
The Human Envelops 39
centuries, to the time when a captain of modern industry dwells alone with his family in a spacious house — a very palace for convenience and comfort. That cave and this ample abode — ^what a preg- nant contrast ! Through what a past the dweller looks when he looks through his plate-glass win- dows. What echoes of what a past sound in his ears when he hears the ring of the electric bell. How different the drip of the water in the rock- roofed cave from the patter of the rain on the copper-sheeted roof above his head. The long, long life-history of man echoes in that difference. What a past is spread out before him as he sits down at his well-filled board. His long-forgotten forbears fed on the bark of roots, he eats bread grown on the western plains and ground by the steel-roller process. Between those roots and that fine flour how many developmental processes are to be crowded. And when, by turning a button, he turns night into day, what a long evolutional process he lights up for the imagination. And when he lies down on his bed at night, which forms to every curve of his body, what a different sound from the rustle of that bed of leaves on the cave floor. Once more, we repeat, with what comparative ease the modern child enters into all this heritage.
These few illustrations must suffice merely to suggest the world of light which we mean by modern civilisation, albeit we have not even
I
40 God and Man
mentioned the distinctively intellectual and spirit- ual elements thereof. Into such a light-world every one of us is born; by such a light-world we are environed. Civilisation enfolds us round and touches us in multitudinous ways. We, for our part, cowork with it and react upon it in a multitude of ways. We thereby become partici- pators in, and utterances of, the present world- status.
Again. Man is held in the grasp not only of the present world-status, or civilisation, but also in that of a developmental process or evolution. The status is not static in the absolute sense. The present is a stage in a process and a part of a universal ongoing. So that man is held within an onmoving process as a drop of water is held within the onmoving river. Whether the general scien- tific statement of evolution shall undergo limita- tion at the hands of more thorough inquiry or not, there can be no sort of question that we and all things are involved in a process of development. The present century is not a mere mechanical repetition of the past. Something gets' done. Something new is begun, something old passes away. There is an ongoing. The age in which we live is not that of Homer, or of Pericles, or of Augustus, or of Charlemagne. And the general geologic period in which we are set is not the Carboniferous or the Glacial. There is a world-
The Human Envelops 41
process unfolding and unfolding with the passing centuries. From fire- mist to earth-crust, to Athens, to London, is an altogether wonderful progression. And all human-kind forms part of the process and is swept onward with it. It is bewildering to think of the myriad-sided relation- ship implied in all this. The last few decades have thought thereupon with unprecedented thoroughness. Scientific study and imagination have disclosed unsuspected complexity. We had thought, with all children, that it is a very simple thing to live. We are reminded that it is an endlessly complicated thing. To be a part of a universal process, to embody that process, and utter its progression in ourselves, is to involve an infinitude of touches and commerces which only a universal mind could compass. More than all that has been suggested before needs to be said and suggested anew in this connection. But with these mere hints and nothing more we must be content. Suffice it that we here see a great new sphere of movement and meaning enveloping man. He is included in a mighty world-process, embodying countless ideals and moving toward ideal goals. To be thus involved imports relationships without end.
Once more we see what we have so often seen hitherto, that man is ensphered and ensphered by many worlds, and that he has and must have multitudinous commerces therewith. This is the
42 God and Man
very make and go and fact of things. Scientific inquiry and philosophic insight here disclose but do not create what is. It is the very fact-world that here gets revealed. And this is the actual relation of man to the Universe. In the light of this relation alone the higher life is to be revealed and interpreted.
A smaller envelope within the greater enfolding spheres which we call civilisation and evolution is the Zeitgeist. Every man breathes the spirit of his time. "No history, " says Clifford, "can be philosophic which does not trace the origin and course of these [changes in the spirit of the age] : things far more important than all the kings and rulers and battles and dates which some people imagine to be history." We must leave this, however, merely suggested, not elaborated. In a modified form what has been said above may be understood here. A new sphere is thus brought into the account.-
CHAPTER III
THE ENFOLDING WORLD-ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES
C. The Higher Spheres That Enfold Man
HITHERTO we have studied in the main the physical and the human envelopes of man. But besides being held in the grasp of earth and atmosphere, sunlight and sun, universe and law, climate and topography, day and night, summer and winter; family, community, nationality, race, and humanity ; heredity, history, civilisation, evolution, and the Zeitgeist, man is held in the grasp of Truth, Beauty, and Ideals. Last and greatest, because inclusive of all the others, man is held within the Life of God.
Although in our consideration thus far the physical aspects of man's relation to the World- All have stood prominently forth, it is not thereby intended that they should appear to be the reg- nant aspects, or to constitute the major part of the Kingdom of Worlds. Even in what appeared most physical it was always the total man — feeling, intellect, will, and all — that was related to the total environment. There was always the higher spiritual element in greater or smaller
43
44 God and Man
proportion. And throughout, the physical has been used largely to suggest the subtler elements of Reality. Throughout, for our thought, the myriad contacts have been, at bottom, not ma- terial but spiritual, and the myriad powers have been only apparently, not really, what men call "physical" — ^if any one knows what "physical" means. If it should turn out ultimately to mean merely a lower form of spiritual manifesta- tion, then our infinitude of relationships and influences would at last be seen to be, in their in- most character, spiritual. Always, for us, our earths have rested, not on rock foundations, solid as they may seem, but on subtle, inscrutable, spiritual powers, stronger and more original than the rocks. And our worlds have been flung out on spirit-wings to speed them among the stars with the flight of sunbeams, and the perfection and ease. And mankind was fastened thereto, not with chains of iron, but with spiritual bands, infinitely more effective and enduring, so free was the hold and yet so firm, so exquisitely perfect. And when the environing world has seemed most crude in its touch and influence, there always has been, for finer vision, an underlying subtlety. The effective contacts of nature with the tree, for example, are not so crude as they seem. The delicate touch upon the rootlets with their sen- sitive tips; the subtle contacts with the leaves, gentle as falling dew; the chemic touch of light,
The Higher Envelops 45
more delicate than the kiss of the soft air — these are in reality the effective contacts of nature with the tree, these the points at which and the touches through which the real work and business is done.
So is it with nature's effective touches upon man. Back of seeming crudeness there is always real fineness. He is not banged and battered into shape. He grows. He unfolds from within as all living things do. He involves the inscrutable subtleties of all life-processes. He is touched with the spiritual touch of the Dawn, or of advancing springtime, or of the breath of the ocean, or of the currents of atmosphere, or of climatic con- ditions, or of vast and fertile plains, or of life- conditioning hills and lofty mountains. The air touches him with all the delicacy and efficiency of breathing. The sunlight touches him with the subtlety and spirituality of seeing. Even the food that seems to enter him in chunks can effect nothing in that crude manner. It must find capillaries more sensitive and delicate than gossa- mer threads. It must pass in through walls thinner than soap-bubbles. It must move along through a most exquisite system of canals. It must then be taken up by ten million cells, through openings infinitesimally minute, in ways inconceivably subtle. Only in this delicate fashion does that which seemed at the start so crudely effective finally come to any effect whatever.
46 God and Man
The actual formative touches of the world upon man are all of the subtle kind. Nature is never effective until she becomes fine. Do the fields feed man? It is done in the most exquisite way. Does sunlight warm him and illumine his darkness? Nothing could be subtler than the process thereof. Does the earth hold him? What coiild be more perfect than the way it is done? Do continents and oceans, latitudes and altitudes, changing seasons and successions of day and night condition him? It is all so subtly done that he wots not the process thereof. And many live and die never realising the invisible atmospheres that nevertheless have conditioned all their living.
Subtler still and more multiplied are all the human influences from out the past that meet in him, and the complicated and multiplied elements of a present enfolding civilisation, and the myriad- sided contacts of an ensphering humanity, itself inscrutably complex and ever-changing, and per- petually moving toward still more multiform complexity. Subtler and more complicated than the climates and atmospheres and sunlights of earth are the affective and the intellectual and the spiritual climates and atmospheres of the World- All. Range above range, realm above realm, rise all the planes of Reality. From the lowest, crassest, so-called "material substance," up to the highest, finest, spiritual Reality, extends
The Higher Envelops 47
the wide gamut of Being. And man is set into all this wide range. His feet stand upon every plane. He touches and is in living contact with all that is. As the tree is rooted down into one element, and lifted up and branched out into another, and in contact with another (the vapory clouds), and yet another still higher (the sun- light), so man is rooted down as it were into the physical and lifted up into commerce with the spiritual. He touches all worlds, he lives upon all. He breathes all atmospheres, he sees by all sunlights, he is affected by all climates. Himself a spiritual being, he is environed by what is at bottom, we shall say, a spiritual Uni- verse. His feet are upon the solid earth, his thoughts "beyond the shining stars." He lives a wide-ranging life when he is truly himself. This is the sort of Universe it is into which man is set. Ten thousand intellectual and spiritual influences play upon him like sunbeams and pene- trate with efficacy to the inmost core of his being. Looking therefore upon a Universe that widens as one rises from the earth, and grows greater and more spiritual and more involved as one ascends the ethereal heights, and knowing that the heav- ens hold the earth and not the earth the heavens in their grasp, we are enabled to set man into his true Environment and are prepared to appreciate somewhat the thousand-fold spiritual influences of Truth upon him.
48 God and Man
For primitive man, for men engrossed in affairs, and for unrefiective men generally, the word "truth" has comparatively little conscious mean- ing. For philosophic minds, on the other hand, and for ripe and reflective men in general, truth has a world of significance. Truth meant a vastly different thing to the consciousness of Socrates or of Plato from what it meant to the conscious- ness of the goat-herds on the Attic hills. Pilate's question, What is truth? showed how shadowy and unreal all the truth- world was to him. Jesus' declaration, on the contrary, that He was the king of truth, that for this cause He was born and to this end He came into the world that He might bear witness to the truth, revealea how real, liv- ing, and significant truth was to Him. Scarcely anything is more striking and suggestive than the meaning of the world of truth to different minds. To one man it is a vague and unsubstan- tial something, or nothing, to be little, or not at all, regarded as it pleases him. To another it is more real than oceans and continents, a thing by all means to live for and to die for, sacred and supreme. Truth appears to come to some, so far as their conscious life is concerned, with much of the impotence and unpracticalness of moonlight, and even great principles seem to them as far away and feeble in their working as the scintillating stars. To others truth is like an ever-present sunlight, indispensable to the very
The Higher Envelops 49
being of mind, the illumination of all inner worlds, the life of their life ; and great principles are like shining suns enlightening worlds and holding systems in their unbreakable grasp.
To this shadowyness and impotence, on the one hand, and this reality and power, on the other, correspond two different philosophical views. The one may be termed the trivial, the other the serious, view of truth. The two views are as old as the birth of philosophy. For the Sophists, truth was no more to realities than shadows to trees. For Plato, truth was the only thing in the universe that had reality and causality in the absolute sense. And at the present day, for one type of thought truth is little more than what photographs are to the Alps mountains. The actual things ever3rwhere are the solid earths and the real beings and processes and cycles and events. The mental conceptions thereof, the Veritas about things, are mere intellectual duplicates, unsubstantial repetitions, which add nothing to and take nothing from "real things," which make the world of realities neither richer nor poorer. "There are stars and there are earths," says this type of thought, "there are trees and there are men, there are powers and there are activities, — these are the real things. Then there are humanly convenient cognitions of these, and idle comments upon them. But the stars are not multiplied by some man's sitting
50 God and Man
up o' nights to gaze through a telescope; and the Western World was there before Columbus cog- nised it, and the sequoias tossed their heads aloft before any one was there to exclaim, Majestic! and babies were facts before they could say, I am; and the earth turned round in reality before it turned round in Copernicus' head." "Thoughts, " this view continues, "are convenient cognitions of realities and idle comments upon them. "
This of course is the trivial view of truth. The term is not at all meant as a reflection, for admittedly to this view truth is a slight and trivial thing as compared with what it is to the other view.
To this other view, the serious view, as we have termed it, truth is a reality more primal and more potent than "things." The acorn develops into an oak and not into a palm ; the date develops into a palm and not into an oak. There is some- thing in the acorn that gives law and command- ment to its unfolding. That something it heeds w4th perfection of obedience. If all the acorns that have dropped from a thousand forests were planted in as many places with as many differing environments, not one of them all would be in the slightest degree tempted to depart from the law of its being and unfold into a palm. Some- thing forbids it; that something it invariably obeys. We may call that something what we
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will — ^inherent idea, thought, ideal, form, law, truth — it remains the same dominating power under whatever name, to which every atom of the oak's being is obedient.
In like manner the hen's egg develops into a chick, the alligator's egg, into an alligator. There is no departure from this. Within the substance of the particular egg inheres the law of its being, the idea of its kind. Under the posses- sion of that idea all its doings and becomings take place as though each several molecule were in- stinct with that particular kind of life and no other.
In like manner, also, the human ovum develops into a human being, whereas the ovum of a guinea-pig, though indistinguishable therefrom, as is claimed, under the most powerful microscope, invariably develops into a guinea-pig. Undoubt- edly there is a power that absolutely permeates and dominates each. Each is under the law of an inhering idea.
Ideas turn out then to be significant. Truths result in being not idle comments but potent realities that give law and commandment to things. They are not to trees what shadows are, nor to ova, human or other, what photo- graphs are. They rule their little or large worlds with a perfection of process and effect that makes kings seem but clumsy apprentices.
These are but examples. Everywhere the
52 God and Man
same regnancy of ideas is manifest. All the vegetation of the world — from the lichen that clings to the rock to the sequoia of the Calaveras grove ; from the weed to the rose ; from the grass- blade to the bending wheat-stock — ^is the expres- sion and embodiment of ideas. Every worm that crawls upon the ground, every fish that swims in the sea, every bird that flies in the air, every animal that breathes — from the sea-flower to the elephant ; from the protozoon to the chim- panzee, up to the genus humanum — ^is likewise the expression and embodiment of ideas. Yes; the universal process itself, from fire-mist to flaming sun, to tumultuous storm-rent, but cool- ing planet, to orderly world teeming with life, is but the progressive utterance and realisation of ideas.
All this for the same reason that the acorn does not turn into the palm, nor the alHgator egg into the chick, nor the human ovum into the guinea- pig. Throughout the vegetal and the animal kingdoms there is no seed, there is no egg that does not know the law of its kind. From the primordial cell up to the sessile animal where the two kingdoms appear to meet, up to man the crown of all, atoms are organised into specific and individual forms. The law of kind is absolute. All things are brought into subjection thereto. Ideas then are not shadows or idle comments. The kingdoms are theirs. As wide as are the
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realms of life, so wide at least are the realms of ideas.
But we already have seen that, beyond the organic world, earths and solar systems and milky ways and universal processes are themselves utter- ances and realisations of ideas. As far as order ex- tends and as far as process is progressing toward an understandable goal, so far certainly, in the vast and limitless reaches of space, the World- Whole is the manifestation and embodiment of ideas.
As far as progress extends, — that is manifest. But is an ordered world teeming with life the only goal of which we have any hint? Have we not heard already of moons frozen, desolate, and stationary? And shall we not hear of earths cooled off and mantled in eternal snows? And of suns burnt out like cinders and as cold as the ethereal spaces? And shall not starlight, sun- light, moonlight, all vanish as a dream and the cosmos once more return to "Old Night" as it was? And shall not ever-during midnight reign, broken only by what would appear the mockery of light, the occasional flash of a meteor as the fragment of some shattered body strikes our atmosphere with fitful gleam and goes out again in unbroken night ? Is not this the goal at which scientific thought more than hints? Is this then the so-called dominion of ideas? An evolution indeed this — toward universal death! "Eine schoene Geschichtel "
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Can one then say that ideas reign? Despite the apparently significant chapters now being written in the great book of events, if the end is what it is prophesied to be, do not ideas turn out impotent and uncrowned kings? Do they indeed hold worlds in their grasp if they come to such final defeat?
True this is a scientific prediction and it gives the believer in ideas no little perplexity. Still one may well distrust such a barren conclusion.
In the first place all would not be lost. Much order would yet remain. The moon though already burnt out is very well behaved. The cosmos on the worst showing would not be resolved back into fire-mist. All therefore would not be even apparently lost.
Moreover, it may be that nothing is really lost, A glacial period has proved before a stage in the process of world-making. Other things also besides seeds and men may die to live. ' ' Stirb und werde" may be the law of macrocosms as well as of microcosms. Besides, we know too little about those far-off events. The thought of w^hat preludings of new cosmic processes may ere then be seen, should fitly give us pause. World- processes heretofore have not slipped through either the careless or impotent fingers of God. All appears hitherto to have been grasped into a unity of progress. Indeed it is difficult often for man to say when the on-moving river has
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been eddying and when advancing. What ap- peared but eddying may be progress in disguise. No man is wise enough to say to the contrary. The Past has been an ahogether majestic story. All the acts have been taken up, apparently, into the unity of the grand cosmic drama. The Present continues to be the manifestation of victorious ideas. Shall the Future then alone eventuate in defeat? Hitherto we have been impressed with the grandeur of the movement. We are still. Shall the Future then alone lose the grasp of events and not know how to carry on the cosmic drama? Shall the universal heav- ens no longer be able to go round the happenings of worlds and hold them in a unity of ordered action? Shall not rather the predicted night of the Universe break into a grander day, and the predicted death rise into a higher life?
Futhermore, the following significant fact shall be steadily considered. The past is comparatively open to us. The present also is known. But the future is, in the main, hidden. What we really know is progress. What we are not sure of is arrested development. As far as the process until now has wrought itself out, the movement has been an onward one. The general unknown character of all the future, tiierefore, shall be permitted to discount our wisest guesses as to that far-off future.
What is more, even the known past and present
56 God and Man
are only very imperfectly known. The familiar atmosphere and sunlight have but recently re- vealed unsuspected new elements. The com- plexity and mystery of the physical world about us grow perpetually more bewildering. We sketch our explored worlds even with no masterful hand as yet. How much less can we map out the far- off cosmic status with absoluteness. Slumbering beneath our very feet may be unguessed powers of regeneration. If in the diffused fire-mist could lurk the potencies of all the cosmic drama thus far, shall the ordered Universe itself now become incapable ?
Once more : This physical system itself is only a part, not the whole. There are other universes besides the physical. There are universes of affection, of thought, of will, of truth, of beauty, of spirit. Universal Reality must be vast enough to include them all. This physical system there- fore can be, at most, but one continent on the world-map. Whatever is said about it, conse- quently, must be said with the consciousness of all the other present continents. We must not draw the boundaries of this continent alone and think we have mapped out the total World. The World- Whole must be sketched more magnificently. Hence whatever scientific thought may, wisely or unwisely, forecast as to the future physical status, it must all be set into the vaster universal Reality and interpreted in the light of the great Whole.
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Still again: Even the universal process, as sketched by the larger evolutionary thought, is plainly not the whole process. What was before the diffused fire-mist? And what shall be after the burnt-out cinder-status? Something was, and something shall be. Thus even the larger evolution gives us only a limited span between limitless extensions. Beyond fire-mist was an inconceivable past process. Beyond cinder-status shall be again an inconceivable future process. The story of evolution is therefore but one chapter, so to speak, in the midst of a great book. That chapter must be comprehended in its setting. It is unallowable, not to say futile, to attempt to understand it otherwise. The story of the single evolutionary chapter, as is plain to see, must be taken up into the much larger story of the whole book, and the conclusion of the one chapter, the cinder-status as we have termed it, must be under- stood in the light of all the chapters, and of the great book as a whole. For how can a single stage in a process be the whole process? And how can the terminal of one stage be the goal of all the stages that went before and of all that shall follow ? This magnificent cosmic processional must needs stop short in such case. From fire- mist to cinder-status is a grand stage, but it is only a part of a much larger Whole, and must be subordinated thereto in order to become, from a philosophical point of view, even intelligible.
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Consequently when scientific prediction says to us, "Look you! universal death is the end of all" ; we shall answer: "Are you sure that what you see is death? May it not be slumbering life? Has it not proved so in the past?" We shall say: "Are you certain that things then shall have even the appearance of death? Have not the potencies of spring lain dormant be- neath the snows of every winter? And shall we not look also for preludes of many a new cosmic process before that far-off day?" And when prediction shall say: "Look! these flaming suns shall be burnt-out cinders, this magnificent pro- cess shall all come to an inglorious end" ; we shall answer: "When was the veil of the future thus taken down? We hardly can say we know the past, or even the present. How then can we say so dogmatically what is to be, when as yet it is not, nor shall be for a thousand million years? And has the thing we know best no remaining mystery? Is the present physical world an open book as yet, a tale quite told ? Can we know the mystery of matter and form so well for seons unborn, whereas we know them so ill for the age that now is? " Or when scientific prediction says, "The goal of all the physical world is this"; we shall answer: "The physical is not all, nor is it the major part of the Whole. The wide gamut of Being knows of worlds upon worlds above the physical. Those realms beyond realms must be
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taken into the account. The real Universe must be conceived in an ampler fashion. No mere physiography can suffice." Or when prediction says, ' ' Evolution eventuates thus " ; we shall reply : "What is even the larger evolution but a minor part of a vastly more extensive process? And even though it eventuate thus — which is pro- blematical— the meaning of this same 'thus' can not begin to be understood except in the light of the universal process itself. Evolution is but a part of a larger Whole. "
We therefore shall claim that as all the past submergings of continents have been stages in the process of world-building, so all the future enig- matical epochs shall be taken up into the unity and triumph of the universal process. All that is, all that shall be, shall prove understandable. Thus ideas shall hold the ordered world in their dominating grasp.
So much for the ordered universe.
But is this a Universe at all ? Has it not yet to be proved a Universe ? Are there not other things than order? other regions than the realms of light? Have Chaos and Chance and Error and Unsinn no fields where they pitch unmolested their dusky tents? And are there not intimations that those fields are very broad ? that they may be even more extensive than the realms of light and order? So some have claimed. But this is to be over-wise concerning those vague and
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shadowy outskirts of Being. It is to go beyond, we venture to think, even intelligent guesses. What is near to us and what we know is an ordered world. What we are impressed with is a sublime reign of law, a majestic celestial order. Es springt in die Augen. The revelations of the microscope and of the telescope alike are of intelligible worlds. The earth beneath and the heavens above declare a glory. Science has ground for its magnificent faith in a universal reign of law. The shadowy outskirts of Reality may be this or that — ^we know not —but the wide kingdoms of Being so far as they have come within our ken have inspired us with their marvellous order. Even the comets report regularly. This is what impresses, even amazes, chemist and astronomer, physicist and biologist. And rightly we think do they project the unknown curve from the arc that is known; saying that the wider exploration extends, the more extended becomes the reign of discovered law ; the unknown accordingly must be of a piece with the known; this frame of things must be a System, a Cosmos, a Universe.
And thus we shall have it that, high over all, ideas hold sway. Even the kingdoms that are most rebellious are still theirs.
Finally, from a philosophic point of view, it is of weight to observe that the words themselves * ' chaos, " " chance, " " error, " " Unsinn, " etc. , could not be even understood except in the light
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of "order," "plan," "truth," and "reason." If these very words have to come and bow down to their opposites to get even a meaning, perhaps it is no accident. Order and plan, truth and reason, it may be, wield legitimate and inherent, not usurped or borrowed, sceptres. In the very conception of their opposites they show themselves to be law-giving. Ideas reign of right and can not be discrowned even in thought.
Well-nigh the whole inorganic world crystallises in definite ways from the crystal of rock to the crystal of snow. The whole chemic world com- bines according to definite laws. The entire world of life unfolds in definite ways toward definite forms, from the amoeba to man. Worlds and systems develop. All is held within the grasp of law and of ideas. Notwithstanding many apparently refractory facts, the theory that this whole of things is a Cosmos is the only theory that works. One cannot make a beginning even in thought with the chaos-theory. As such and in itself it can not be conceived. And when one goes forth and thinks he applies it to the facts of the great world and accordingly declares that he finds after all no order anywhere, he really declares that there is order, at least in his own mental operations, inasmuch as they are sane enough to make the declaration. But if the declaration were strictly true he could never know it, because the analysis that dissolved the band of
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the Universe would have dissolved the band of the mind as well, the band of sanity ; and an insane mind in the midst of a chaotic Universe could not know even the universal chaos. Accordingly science assumes that this is a Cosmos, postulates the unlimited reign of law, the universal validity of cause and effect, and the essential intelligibility of the whole. And under this banner she has conquered wide kingdoms.
All we conclude is held within the grasp of ideas. From the microscopic to the telescopic worlds the might of the spiritual holds dominion.
"It is true, " says one, "that an invisible power of some sort holds the molecule within and with- out, as an ravisible power holds the earth within and without, when flung forth in space, pendent on nothing, based on nothing apparent. But is it really an immaterial power that holds the earth and all celestial bodies? Without the sun, for example, where would be the spiritual grip upon the earth of which you speak? The spirit- ual grip turns out then to be a solar grip, does it not?"
Closer examination will provide an answer. How does the sun grasp the earth an3rway? with material or with immaterial hand? Let the sun be as crassly material as you will, yet its grip of the earth is not material. It reaches out no material hand over the wide millions of
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space. And the instant a mass goes beyond its own material self and wields effective influence at a distance, in the nature of things that influence can not be material. Nor has it any of the charac- teristics of the material. One can not see the law of gravitation. One can not touch it. It is not ponderable. That which gives weight to all is itself imponderable. It does not occupy space. It is not divisible. It has no inertia. It has, in short, no material characteristic. It is then really immaterial power that grasps and holds the earth. Not one material touch does the all-ruling sun lay upon the earth, not so much as the material touch of a gossamer thread. It is spiritual power that does the real grasping both of earth and sun; yes, of all earths and all suns.
Moreover it is a question whether matter as such ever grasps an5rthing. Are not the atoms of a molecule or the electrons of an atom held together in reality by immaterial powder as truly as the members of the solar system? Are not chemical affinity, cohesion, adhesion, as imma- terial as gravity? Whether in the molecule or in the milky way, therefore, the power that holds is spiritual, — always more than querying whether the atom itself or the electron is not to be con- ceived after an immaterial fashion as a centre of spiritual power.
If the trend of the above be correct, we look
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forth indeed upon a wide-ranging Universe. Above the so-called physical rises range beyond range, the vaster universe of Reality. As above and beyond the earth rises the wide and boundless expanse of space, so above and beyond all the physical rise the greater realms of universal Being. We must conceive the World- Whole after an infi- nite fashion, and the boundlessness of space, with more than symbolic fitness and suggestion, aids us in the attempt.
With somewhat of elaboration designedly the above study of the higher and vaster worlds has been made. For in them because of their great- ness our main concern centres. They are the truly great and significant worlds. Extended consideration accordingly has been, we conceive, essential to the just setting of all that shall follow. We have now won the right, we think, to say that out beyond the physical and human envel- opes of man sweep the vaster ethereal spheres of Truth, Beauty, Ideals, and Spirit.
For the present we attend only to the first. Man is ensphered by Truth. As the tree is envel- oped by atmosphere and sunlight and permeated through and through by them in myriads of forma- tive ways, so man is ensphered by truth. But only an infinite mind knows all the detail of rela- tionship and effect.'
How vast indeed is its working ! albeit meagre
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is our consciousness thereof. Let a truth be selected, for example, from the field of mathe- matics. Let it be the simple truth that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. It is impossible to estimate the extent to which this truth conditions practically all life. The fish darting for a bait acts upon it but knows it not. The spider spinning its web wots not of it but obeys it. The ant making war upon an enemy unconsciously observes it. The bee flying toward the flower or returning to the hive unwittingly heeds it. The hawk swooping down on its prey obeys it. The dog chasing a deer, or the child running for its ball, alike acts upon it unfailingly. It conditions practically all life above the lowest forms. Nowhere, notwithstanding, does it work through knowledge except in man. And even in human life, as widely extensive as its influence there is, it probably works through knowledge only as an exception, through other channels as a rule. The child acts upon it but knows it not. The lower types of men rarely have full conscious- ness of it. The higher types act upon it usually intuitively, or through habit. As with the fish, the spider, the ant, etc., so, only less so, with man; its action is, in the great main, through other channels than that of knowledge.
Let it next be a truth of science. But a short time ago comparatively, it was demonstrated that heat could be converted into power and
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utilised by applying it to water. The British Museum itself could not contain the books which should undertake to tell of all the results of that truth. Almost world-wide has been its influence upon man. Yet not one in a thousand of its workings has been known, it may be said, by the recipient of them all.
Again, only the other day, comparatively speaking, it was shown that heat or power could be turned into electricity, and electricity again converted into heat, light, or power. The influence of this scientific discovery, even in a brief period, has been incalculable. For Edison and some others there has been considerable consciousness, considerable knowledge. For the millions even of intelligent men there has been much appro- priation of results with little knowledge. One gets into a street-car, for instance, on a winter evening, sits down, and reads his paper. He is carried along by electricity, he is enabled to read by electricity, he is warmed by the same elec- tricity. How little does he adequately realise of all this? The whole thing is about as little an affair of knowledge as his breathing is. So in general; the influences of this discovered and applied truth are unlimited, but the actual con- sciousness thereof is most meagre. Nevertheless if this particular truth had not been discovered, the million-fold resiilt had not followed. Mani- festly the wide result was the outworking of the
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scientific discovery. The striking thing is the indirectness and unconsciousness of well-nigh the total outcome.
Other scientific truths on examination yield a like result. It was discovered that the carbon of coal under proper conditions will unite with the oxygen of the air. The outworkings of that discovery have been incalculable. But a hundred families might gather round as many firesides and not one give mental heed to the process that made possible their comfort. -
It was discovered that the instantaneous combustion of certain materials within confined limits would liberate an immense volume of gas under high pressure, causing an explosion. Gun- powder, and so on, have been the result. Modern civilisation has been made thereby different from what it would have been. Every child has been in- fluenced in more ways than it could learn in a term at school. In all probability, however, it did not know it had been influenced at all until it read about the fact in the books.
It was discovered that rays of light on being passed through a lens are refracted. The micro- scope and the telescope followed. The inventors themselves, were they with us, could not in a life-time trace the ever-augmenting influence of their own inventions. Indeed every great ap- plied truth has something of the working of great natural powers about it. Like the atmosphere
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and the rain, like gravitation and cohesion, they work, in the great main, unconsciously. Think of any great scientific discovery one may, of the circulation of the blood, of its aeration, of the law of gravitation, of the revolution of the earth upon its axis, or about the sun, — the vastness of the actual result and the meagre consciousness of the same are alike striking. Multitudes are barely conscious of any influence whatever, and even thoughtful men differ from them only in being a little less ignorant. Nevertheless whole sciences are largely based upon them, and our higher civilisation is very appreciably conditioned by them.
Once more, let the chosen example be the philo- sophical thinking of Plato or of Kant. The influ- ence of these two systems of thought has been unreportable. The intellectual world one lives in, the intellectual being one is, are both different because of them. Yet hosts of men never once in their lives have intelligently spoken the names of Kant and Plato. They have been consistently guiltless of ever consciously thinking Platonic or Kantian thought. To be sure they have done to a degree what they did not know they were doing. But how meagre was the extent. Most men would be utterly surprised on being made acquainted with half the scope and depth of that influence year by year. They have been as gener- ally unconscious of it as men are generally of the
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world and of themselves. Men habitually over- look the greatest things with their ever-present influence. Accordingly the general unconscious- ness that the Platonic and the Kantian and other great systems of truth are perpetually condition- ing the world in which they live, and contributing to the composite beings that they themselves are, is nothing accidental. On the contrary, it accords with the essential and habitual process of things. Great truths in general work, in the main, unconsciously. Why should men know of their working? Wherefore the prevalent feeling of multitudes which asks. What is philosophy to me? is in a sense not without cause. Con- sciously philosophy is little or nothing to them. Unconsciously it is very much. A Socrates, living his near yet far-away life, or a Spinoza in loneliness, thinking deep things and hoping to utter truths destined to shape the lives of genera- tions unborn, are always a perplexity and a source of amusement to the market-place. But the flight of years rewards their pious hope. The life of a race becomes thereafter different. Mostly unconsciously, however, this subtle leavening goes on.
Finally let the test extend to the world of ethical and religious truth. Nowhere is the working of truth so subtle, so deep, so inclusive. Whether one thinks of a Buddha, a Confucius, a Mohammed, a Moses, a Paul, a Luther or of the
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Son of Man Himself, one thinks of ethical and religious truth that has been nearly or quite as a new birth and as a new life to nations and races. But how they have been born and have lived anew they have been only less conscious of than of how they were born and have lived at all. No one, I think, who has earned the right to an opinion fails to see at once the vastness and the hiddenness of the working of such truth. Does Christendom know what the Christ-truth has done for it? As little as it knows the greatness and the mystery of either truth or life.
Throughout this entire inquiry into the way man is set into the World- All, the thought has been growing that he lives in touch with a very wide-ranging Universe. He is ensphered and ensphered. Greater worlds sweep round smaller. All worlds hold him in their grasp and effectually touch him at ten million points. He knows not a tithe of the ways in which he is formed, nor a tithe of the influences of which he is the uncon- scious child. This is the common way of working, to which there is no exception. This is the rela- tion of every man to every world. As one in thought ascends the heights of Reality, one realises that round the life of a man sweeps, besides other worlds, the ethereal universe of truth. More subtly than an atmosphere, it permeates and conditions in a multitude of ways
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all his being and living. Some of these ways he knows in part; most of them he is unconscious of. Even truth works, in the main, not through knowledge. It works as all the other great life- conditioning elements work. For all the great world-facts and processes, as they enfold and form the life of man, are at one in their working. Truth differs only to a degree, in that some of its workings are relatively more conscious.
We have attempted to set ourselves vitally into the great enfolding ethereal sphere of truth. The utmost conceptive and imaginative endeavour has been required for only an inadequate result. We need to multiply in thought the approaches of truth to life. To that end we need to put as many windows in man as there are pores in his skin. And as the universal light of truth enters all windows, the house of his life shall be filled with light indeed, but the " how" thereof will be little more conscious than the working of sunbeams. Not that there is little consciousness, but that there is much unconsciousness. We need for realisation greatly to multiply and diversify the approaches of truth to life.
It has been thought best to consider at length the way in which truth enspheres the life of man. Elaboration in this one case must serve to indicate the treatment that should be given, did space permit, to the other ethereal worlds of beauty,
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ideals, and spirit — not to speak of the all-inclusive spiritual being, God. We can do no more than suggest. The greatness, the omnipresence, and the variety of the contact of truth with life must indicate to us the greatness, the universalness, and the multiplicity of the relationship of beauty, ideals, spirit, and the all-inclusive Absolute to life.
The Universe as we conceive it is a very great system of Reality. The ethereal vastnesses are far greater than the material. As the expanded heavens stretch far beyond our earth, so the universe of spiritual power and being stretches far beyond our earth-sphere. This we take to be in no sense fancy, but in every sense literal fact. They are not seers with true vision of Reality who see only a circumscribed lower ma- terial world. The immensities are high above and far out beyond our or any island-world. The real infinities and complexities and subtleties are the ethereal spheres of truth, beauty, ideals, spirit, God. These are the main and great Universe. To conceive of the World- Whole by giving little heed to these, is to conceive of an ocean by thinking of an island, little heeding the boundless ocean itself. And into such a vast and complicated and subtle Universe as this, man is set. A thousand thousand are his rela- tionships, commerces, communions. These again are not airy nothings, but facts more real than
The Higher Envelops 73
solid earths and flaming suns. Verily man is ensphered and ensphered by many a world. He is the centre and focus of an infinity of influences. Here and there their workings flash into con- sciousness and are wrought through knowledge; but this is exceptional. In the great main their workings are unconscious. When we surround the tree's roots with an earth and its trunk with an atmosphere and a sunlight and put it in con- nection with all nature, from the food-particles of the soil to the bonfires of the sun, and see ten million air-atoms and sunbeams and water-mole- cules perpetually playing upon it, building its very being, we have then a good though inade- quate illustration of the way man is infinitely related to an infinite World-All.
For long we have been studying the way man is set into the Universe. We have seen him en- sphered by and held in the grasp of earth and atmosphere, sunlight and sun, physical universe and law, climate and topography, day and night, summer and winter; of family, community, na- tionality, race, and humanity ; of heredity, history, civilisation, evolution, and the Zeitgeist; of truth, beauty, ideals, spirit, God — greater sphere enfold- ing smaller, greater life smaller, out to the all- enfolding Absolute.
CHAPTER IV
THE CORRESPONDINGLY WIDE-RANGING GAMUT OF man's POWERS
ABOVE we saw man enveloped by many spheres, by all that is. Ten thousand cos- mic influences were playing incessantly upon him. Such was his Total Environment and such the endless variety of its influence upon him. The first result was the impression of the myriad- formed vital connection of the All with the individ- ual. The second result was the anticipation that the life of the individual himself would be found on examination to be many-sided and complex in order to be the locus of so many influences.
We now turn from the manifold Total Environ- ment to the many-sided man himself.
We have been prepared by our previous study to look for many doors and windows in the life of man. These we shall find. It shall be our task now to survey these many (human) doors and windows, receptivities and activities, parts and powers, of man's complex life.
As we have turned from sphere to sphere, from the lowest material to the highest spiritual
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spheres, and have seen them one after another enfold the life of man and work in multitudinous vital ways upon and in him, it has always been the total man that our eyes naturally were fixed upon. And the total man was always physical as well as psychical man, body as well as mind. He was more than cognitive power, more than consci- ous being; he was a physico-psychic total. And this is man as we shall view him, and as he is. To think of man merely as a knower, is to leave out the vaster part of his being. To think of him as an intellect and as a will, is still to leave out by far the greater part of his nature. Or to think of him even as a cognitive, conative, and affective being, is yet to leave out the greater part of him. His unconscious and subconscious natures are left out. These too are part of the psyche. And his physical being as well is left out of the account. We therefore remind our- selves on the threshold of our analysis that man is the total man and that with him as an integer we here deal. Hence our present field is wider than that of the psychologist. It widens into that of the biologist. It widens also into that of the physiologist, and even broadens out into the field of the physicist. For inasmuch as man is mass, all that can be said of the stone's varied connections with the cosmos can be said of him. And inasmuch as man is an organism, all that can be said of the tree's cosmic connections can
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be said of him. Inasmuch also as he is a living animal, all that can be said of the animal's vital connections with the kingdoms of life and with the World- Whole applies to him. Inasmuch finally as he is distinctively a psyche, of course all that can be said of psychic connections with the Universe applies specially to him. And once more we pause to say that this is veritable man, the actual being that we see when we look at him set into the total Environment, the locus and focus of a myriad forces.
With this governing word by way of necessary preface we hereupon turn to our analysis.
Man has many physical doors and windows, receptivities and activities. As set bodily into nature, we saw natural powers without number playing incessantly upon him. The tree was no more complicated with nature than was the body of man. It had no more stomata than he. In truth man's every pore is a door of ingress and egress. His every cell is open on all sides to perpetual inflow and outflow. Every nerve is sensory or motor. How unnumbered are the windows for the sunbeams or the openings for the air and water molecules. And every atom of his body is open to the incoming influence of all the atoms of the Universe, and goes out of itself also in reciprocal influence everywhere. In fine, his body is a receiver with myriad receptivities.
The Wide-Ranging Human Gamut 77
an actor with myriad outgoing activities. It has many doors that swing both in and out.
In all this we are attempting to see man as in a true and living picture, with the earth under his feet, the air and sunlight all about him, the sky above, and universal Being ensphering him round. We are fixing our eyes, however, upon him. We want to see all the doors and windows there are in his body, and then to see all the doors and windows there are in his mind; all the while remembering that he is set fixed into universal Being, and that all his doors and windows tell of the reciprocalness of his life with the World- Whole.
Above, we have had suggested the countless physical doors and windows. The astonishing complexity and variety of the somatic life of man has appeared.
But what has all this to do with the higher life? That is a psychic fact. But these doors and windows are physical facts. We reply that our domain is broader than psychology ; it is pro- perly Life. Man is more than a conscious being. He is all that is shut up within his integument. And we here deal with his true and total life. Hence all his physical receptivities and activi- ties are our present concern. It is therefore of present moment that gravitation all the while lays hold of every atom of his body, and that the body responds in kind. It is of present moment that
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nerves are afferent and efferent; that pores are mouths for ceaseless inhalation and exhalation, and that every cell is like a jelly-fish, taking in and giving out on all sides. It all shows that man has many doors of many kinds; that they swing both ways ; and that many are the constant incomings and outgoings. Yet this physical is part of the true and proper life of man — a fact to be realised and not forgotten.
Here let us note again what our chapter is undertaking. It is attempting to view all the doors in the total life of man, both the physical and the mental doors. — We already have taken note of the former. They were legion. We now turn to the latter.
If the body has so many connections with the All, has not the mind thereby indefinite connection also ? For the mind is joined to the body. Doubt- less. As there is probably no psychosis without a neurosis, so there may be no neurosis whatever without a corresponding psychosis. Indeed, every physical window may be an eye of the soul and all physical doors may be indirectly psychical too. It may be true, as Goethe says, that "mat- ter can never exist and act without spirit, " Certain at all events it is that through the myriad- formed connection of the body with the cosmos, the mind also is manifoldly connected therewith; for the life is one, not multiple. Because there-
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fore of its connection with the body, the mind has many doors that swing in and out. We assume that it is unnecessary further to elaborate the point.
Now it is realised that nearly all the foregoing processes are unconscious. The physical influ- ences of the cosmos work, in the great main, unconsciously. And the physiological processes go on, with few exceptions, in the same way. One has only to think of the processes of digestion and assimilation, of aeration and circulation, of catabolism and anabolism, of the million changing neuroses, of the formation and action of ' ' physical dispositions, " of the physiological side of the phenomena of habit, association, and memory, of sickness and health, and of physical fatigue and buoyancy, — phenomena most complicated in themselves, but rising into consciousness, if at all, only in their simple general result. All of these processes lie almost wholly beyond con- sciousness. Nevertheless they are a true part of life. And they are to be held steadfastly in consideration. For the life with which we here deal is more than the psychic ; it is the total life.
At this point we turn from the unconscious to the subconscious areas of man's being. The catalogue of them is very long drawn-out. One studies with surprise the many subconscious workings. To begin, how little does even the
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ripe life realise the workings of its humanity as such. A revelation indeed are the subconscious workings of race, nationality, family ; of tempera- ment, sex, age; of heredity, instincts, aptitudes; of physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual en- vironment; of pleasure and pain, appetite and passion, hope and fear, love and hate, content and discontent; of selfishness, pride, ambition, interest, curiosity, and taste; of doubt and belief; of selective attention, association, retentiveness, and habit; of the working of the principles of harmony, simplicity, and rationality; of even sensation, perception, conception, thought, and reasoning ; of mental fatigue and rest ;of propensity, speech, bearing, tact, skill, execution, and even creative action ; of the workings of education and culture; of imagination, intuition, and apprecia- tion; finally of faith, conscience, adoration, and character; not forgetting the subconscious work- ings of the countless physical and physiological processes as they project themselves into the psychical areas.
Here we are content to point out simply the many sides of man's complex nature, merely remarking for the present that these subconscious activities are withal a true part of life, and calling attention to the comparative magnitude of their areas.
We turn finally to the conscious receptivities and activities of man's life.
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A state of waking human life or of consciousness is itself a complex state. That there is awareness is manifest. That there is something more is suggested by the fact that the state of conscious- ness is not in reality a state (static) but an activity. We are here coming in sight of conation. Indeed consciousness itself in the most interior way involves conation. For what is the process of becoming conscious, but the rise, or spring, or start into awareness. It is essential activity, conation. — From another point of view, what is the rise of consciousness but the grasping to- gether of a little field as one. However slight the consciousness, it is, as far as it is consciousness, the grasping together of diversity into unity. It is a synthesis; it is an activity of conation. This is the internal and essential structure, as we take it, of every activity of consciousness. Though awareness is the prominent aspect, conation is the deeper aspect.
But are these all? Is there not another ulti- mate? Although I can not see that affection is involved in all consciousness in the same necessary way as conation, and although many of the at- tempts to show this are to me inconclusive, it is nevertheless present in actual life. It is an ever- present fact of psychic experience. Indeed from the side of fact I believe it can be shown that affection (feeling) is the earliest form of awareness. Further that essential affection (not conscious)
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even precedes all awareness. Therefore as a fact the presence of affection as an ultimate con- stituent of all psychic life is unquestioned.
At this point it will help us to look again at what we are undertaking in our chapter. We are endeavouring to view with care the varied receptivities and activities of the total life of man. Already we have noted the many uncon- scious and the many subconscious processes. We are now surveying the conscious processes of his complex life. Hitherto we have come in sight of awareness, conation, and affection. We undertake further to note the remaining conscious receptivities and activities.
As we leave the ultimate aspects there is no longer question as to fact. That sensation, as- sociation, and the rest are real psychic processes need not be said. Beyond indicating the existence of sensation and association, we are concerned merely with noting the wide extent of their area in the total field of psychic life. The Sensation- Association School of psychologists, if nothing else, have made it impossible to disregard their magnitude and importance. Endless is the va- riety of sensation, numberless are the threads of association. Besides sensation and association other conscious powers are ideation and perception.
Conation, affection, and awareness; sensation, association, ideation, perception — these are the conscious processes thus far considered.
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We next think of the manifoldness of memory and all the variety of imagination. Without the former, past experience would be annihilated for consciousness, and present experience utterly transformed. Without the latter, conscious life would be hopelessly narrowed and shut up within the shrunken and contracted self. A deeper- going psychology is all too late magnifying the just domain of imagination.
We pass on to another group of conscious pro- cesses— conception, thinking, judging, knowing, reasoning. These in their order are like five cylinders of a telescope, each succeeding larger (more complex) term including all the preceding. Obviously they are not severally independent.
We come at last to the final group of conscious powers and capacities, esthetic constrtiction and appreciation, intuition and faith, inspiration and revelation. .Esthetic functioning is discoverable in every field of knowledge. Intuition (imme- diate apprehension) and faith permeate all con- scious human life. Inspiration and revelation also pervade, as we hold, all consciousness. — In the final outcome these latter will stand forth with central prominence.
We now have surveyed the conscious psychic powers. These are what we have found : conation, affection, and awareness; sensation, association, ideation, and perception; memory and imagina- tion; conception, thinking, judgment, knowledge.
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and reasoning; aesthetic construction and ap- preciation, intuition and faith, inspiration and revelation.
Another fact should be noted with special care, because, in its essential form, it runs through the entire work. If each of the above processes be critically studied, it will be found to contain two elements: the activity of the conscious centre, and the activity of the Other. By the Other is meant that outside of the conscious centre. The activity of the Other, however, takes place in and through the conscious centre. So that every conscious process is a receptivity as well as an ac- tivity— ^though every receptivity is also an ac- tivity, as every activity is likewise a receptivity. Consequently every conscious psychic process, as indeed every psychic process, is a union of two activities. The Other acts in and through the conscious centre; the conscious centre receives the activity and reacts in turn upon it. In this, psychic action is like that of every living centre, probably of every living thing. Throughout the realm of life — if not farther — one law holds: every centre of activity is at the same time a centre of receptivity, the focus of other active powers. This fact is of cardinal importance.
Herewith we close our analysis and survey of the physical and the psychic (unconscious, sub- conscious, and conscious) receptivities and ac- tivities of man's life.
CHAPTER V
THE WORLD-ALL AT WORK I OR THE PRIORITY, PARENTHOOD, AND GREATER WORKING OF GOD
UP to this point, we have seen all that is, the infinite divine Environment ensphering and ensphering man and the whole wide-ranging gamut of powers that he is. Man does not hold the world, the world holds him. We do not envelop the heavens, the heavens ensphere us. Even Leviathan does not contain the ocean, the ocean contains him and he plays therein. The tree does not environ nature, nature environs and holds the tree. Before the tree existed, nature was; before the whale, was the ocean; before man, earth and the divine Heavens. Man does not precede his worlds, his worlds precede him.
The new-born babe is born into a home and a Universe already prepared for it. From the first, it opens its lungs to an atmosphere already awaiting it, and its eyes upon a world of waiting light. From the first, its ears are greeted by the love-notes of parents, while the voices of children and men and all the sounds of environing nature
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seek to awake its slumbering faculty. The up- holding earth is already there as another mother- bosom of support. The far-off anticipating sun has hasted with the speed of light to warm the welcoming earth, and already, with hands softer and touch gentler than mother's, holds the babe in its strong embrace. The anticipating stars looked down as did the stars on Bethlehem. And the foreknowing Heavens, from the begin- ning, arched above and encircled all with large pre-natal love. The child is born indeed into a Universe already prepared. The home is there to harbour it; humanity to help it; language to teach it; tradition to lead it; law to govern it; the school to educate it; the Church to con- secrate and niirture it; play and work there to develop it ; truth to enlighten it ; ideals to exalt and idealise it; art and beauty to symmetrise and refine it; the Son of God there to save and shepherd it; and the divine Spirit to hallow, spiritualise and fulfil it. Everything precedes it, — from the house already built to the heavens already spread out; from the parent already waiting to the great God eternally first. The child is born into a prepared Universe. If a man stepped down from a star, he would not find the earth more ready for his footstep, than the babe finds all things made ready for its coming. Our infinite total Environment is in readiness against the day of our birth.
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We little note this. It is the mark of childhood that it notes nothing deeply. And we linger too much in childhood still. We are mostly unaware and disregardful both of the fact, and of the limit- less significance of the fact. Who of us have seriously taken note of these pre-existing and awaiting worlds? We enter into possession, for the most part, as hereditary kings enter into dominion of their realms, or as birds enter upon the wide kingdom of the air. If we came into existence, unparented by a father and mother, un- brooded by a humanity, unmothered by an earth, unparented by nature, unclaimed by a cosmos, and unfathered by a God, because these — one and all — as yet were not, and if we awoke with adult consciousness to the fact, we should realise that we were more destitute indeed than Milton's fallen Archangel awaking on the burning marl; for he at least awoke in hell and still could say, "All is not lost." If we awoke to the fact — but the truth is that we should never awake to that or any other fact, neither to the non-existence of them nor to the desolate being of ourselves. Or if we awoke perchance in the remote and dateless past, the first concreted thing afloat in the primal fire-mist, in the beginning, before the date of ordered systems, before the dawn of the pleasant light, before the birth of the segregated earth, before the being of the ambient air, before even the blue sky rose and arched wide above, —
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in the beginning, when all was yet without form and void, if, afloat in the diffused fire-mist, we awoke, we should welcome forsooth even some "pillared firmament of rottenness," and should be grateful to have even "stubble" to build an earth's base upon. We should realise then our desolateness. Then we should know what it meant to forerun the ordered Universe instead of following it. We should be like a seed without a soil, like a bird without an atmosphere, a star without a course, or a king without a kingdom. "The man without a country" was passing rich compared with the creature of our supposition, the man without a Universe. We do not realise the backgrounds against which life is actually set. We little heed how we are framed into and set against the backgrounds of humanity, world, sun, Universe, God. These all were prior to us, as they are prior to the unformed child, and when we came, we were born into all this infinite prior Evironment.
We do well to consider this supremely. Here we ponder matters of absolute greatness. There are but two things in reality, Man and his Envi- ronment. The question of Background is the illimitable question. Into what is human life framed and set? Does it ground in God? Does the gamut of man's being ground in kindred being? body in Nature? heart in Heart ? mind in Mind ? spirit in Spirit ? The priority of Nature
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and of God is the illimitable fact for man. We must abandon the task of thought, and the pre- rogative of rational life, or we must realise supreme conditions in their absolute greatness. We must not take worlds and solar systems and universes as matters of course. We must realise that all depends on man having parents to bring him to the birth, and air for his lungs, and food for his hunger, and brooding care for his helplessness, and voices for his ear, and language for his tongue, and love for his heart, and authority for his will, and vast space for his eye to look out into, with objects to behold and light to see by, and a World for a stage and humanity to play with, the Universe for a school-room and every- thing for a teacher, — duty for his conscience, work for his hand, truth for his mind, and beauty for his aesthetic being, the sky and mystery for his imagination and wonder, the Kingdom of Grace for his growing character, and God for his ever worshipful soul. All depends on life's Back- grounds. If in humanity and in nature and in the infinite God we live and move and have our being, then all things become possible. Life universally parented is life indeed. Life utterly orphaned is the night of death. Gothe's "sad stranger upon a dark earth" was a fortunate wight in comparison. If the starry heavens filled Kant's soul with wonder and awe the more he gazed into that excellent glory, with what consternation
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of amazement would he have looked, if those same heavens before his very eyes had been rolled together as a scroll, and the earth from under his feet had dissolved into the ancient mist, and all things had suffered final shock, departing to "leave not a rack behind"! Life without the infinite Background is nought. It needs no more than a nest of little birds, stretching up open mouths, expecting food has come, while far away the mother-bird, helpless upon the ground, is trailing a broken wing ; no more than those hungry little birds and that never-to-return mother with the broken wing, is required to touch our natures into melting tenderness. Is there a more delight- some and perfect sight in all the world than a Ma- donna and her child ? Is there a more melancholy and moving spectacle anywhere than a living babe upon the bosom of its mother still and cold in death ? Life without its Backgrounds is nothing worth.
The priority of humanity and of nature and of God is the all-conditioning fact for man. If we are to take a true account of life at all, if we are to quit ourselves like men and not to abandon the prerogative and hilltop of human conscious- ness, we must see life as it really is. We must see man as set against all his Backgrounds, which preceded him, which already were when as yet he was not. In the beginning, we must see God and we must see Him creating the heavens and the earth and all the host of them, and elaborating
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them into form, and furnishing and garnishing them as an abode fit for sons; and finally, in His own image, creating man, — ^an ancestry already of long line, before our particular natal day. Against all these Backgrounds we are set. Into all these things we are born. And God saw^ everything that He had made, and behold it was very good. To be born into these parenting environments, the favoured child of all worlds, this it is to be well born, this it is that is good. Surely not alone in the Father's House of the future, but also in the Father's world of all the past, the Lord of Life goeth before man to prepare a place for him.
Here is what must be greatly considered. Vast primordial fact gives the primal law to life. We shall not take the first step in the true under- standing of the higher or of any life, until we see life's great Backgrounds. As well try to under- stand a navigator without his ocean or an astrono- mer without his heavens. And still there would seem to be no great thing that is less considered. The tree feeding on the sunbeams or drinking in the falling dew, or the bird calmly floating in the buoying air, or the babe peacefully sleeping on its mother's bosom, are but little more unmindful than are most men of the conditioning and indis- pensable elements of life. Who thinks of the earth upon which he walks, or of the atmosphere which he momently breathes, or of the light from above by which he sees his way? It is amazing
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how unaware we are of the very worlds in which we Hve and of the very elements that make our lives possible. If we could ascend in some great balloon and look down upon the earth and see continents and oceans and all the kingdoms of the world spread out in endless panorama, and if while we gazed in rapt wonder, the continents suddenly dropped and sank, and the wild ocean floods rushed in, a vast tide and tumult of gurg- ling waters, overwhelming all beneath the waves a league of fathoms deep ; if, suddenly, gone were the vasty seas, gone were the broad sunny lands and the little islands too, gone the proud cities and the busy lives of men, gone the old homestead and the children and the smiling play-ground and the field of life's enterprise, all forever gone, — if one looked down and saw the old home of man vanish thus, one would realise what it means to have a world to live in. But perhaps it is vain to attempt fully to realise what so immeasurably passes our comprehension. Nevertheless all this vast Fact lives and works all the time, infinitely, like God whether we realise it or not, and we are carried upon its bosom every minute parented endlessly by its vast mother-life.
The priority of nature and of humanity and of God, of all man's ensphering worlds, wherein he comes to live and move and have his being, even this have we been toiling to appreciate. To every baby born the waiting worlds would
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speak and say: Your mother and we were all here before you came, little babe ; we were waiting for you. And the full-grown man that in later years would set in order the facts of life, and see the seed spring from its soil and all things in their actuality, will consider well what the waiting worlds have to say to the babe. Its little ward- robe, with the last deft stitch already taken weeks before, and all so daintily folded and laid away in the drawer, in boundless expectation, is but a sweet symbol of forerunning Nature in all her priority and endless preparation.
Not only did this infinite Environment precede man, but more, it parented him. The branch should know, not alone its connection with the tree into which it is set, but also the close intimacy of that connection. It should know itself as a bud running back into and springing out of the parenting life of the tree. Likewise, man must know, not only his setting into the great Environ- ment, but also the closeness of his vital connection therewith. He must see his life as a bud running back into and springing out of the parenting life of the All. We shall never begin nor hope to know what our human life really is here in this world, until, deliberately and long, we look into its actual genesis. We must burst asunder the walls of our egoistic prison-house; we must fly beyond the borders of juvenile and provincial
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consciousness. With the understanding of ma- turity, we must follow life back into Nature's womb. We must see our childhood in relation to its great Correlate, Parenthood, and our crea- ture-life in relation to its universal Creator, The mighty fact that the World-All mothered us, mothers us still, and will mother us forever; the mighty fact of the parenting, eternally brooding Life of God, must be appreciated by us in its greatness, the first postulate of the human under- standing of life. Man may indeed tell the tale of his life for himself if he likes. But it will remain a minor account. Only the mother who bore him and this brooding Universe withal are adequate to relate aright the great history. Human life is parented, endlessly parented. Every life-sphere that folds it round mothers it. The unborn child held within and enfolded by the larger, richer parent-life, is in the original locus and primal condition of us all. A little life, budding from the parent stock, held within and fed out of the larger mother-life, is the first state and stage of this our earthly pilgrimage. And this, life's first condition, is essentially life's subsequent and eternal condition. The forms change. The encircling life-spheres become finer, subtler, more spiritual, but the inner reality abides eternal and changes not. A smaller life held within and enfolded by a larger, richer Life, that mothered it at the beginning, that
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mothers it still, and that will mother it evermore, — ^this, I take it, is the primal and fundamental and everlasting fact about our human life. No life-fact is comparable to this. No philosophy of life approaches this in truth and richness. Here we look upon life's last Background. And the foreground and the Background are one; they tell the same story: our smaller human life forever enfolded by and fed out of the infinite parenting Life of God, — here is the transcendent fact and philosophy of life, that makes all other accounts, in reality, barren and unsatisfying.
Our life-spheres have mothered us without end. In the beginning we were born, each of us. We did not bear ourselves. Even Caesar, who would fain play the god, could not say, "On such a day, in such a year, I, C^sar, did myself bear." The great Augustus, like every other mother's son, had to say, "On such a day I was born, and my mother bare me. " And after the little Augustus and every other little beginner of us had been mothered, according to the antique way, into being and into birth, the mothering process even then had but fairly begun. The body had been born but the mind was not yet born, and the heart was still unborn, and the spirit too was far from birth. The child is not all born even on its birthday. Mind, heart, and spirit must be mothered still to the birth. How they all must be brooded! As the little body was enveloped
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and mothered, so the Httle mind must be brooded and hovered over and parented into life. Mind must mother mind as body mothered body. What touchings and caressings of intel- ligence; what beamings of parent faces; what down-lookings into little eyes; what croonings; what baby-words of mother-speech in ceaseless variation; what perpetual down-shinings of the light of parent-mind into the little windows of dawning mind, before the first answering rays of inner light are kindled and shine out in glad- dening response! This is the way mind is mothered into being and into birth. With power subtler than the touch of sunbeams, all-brooding mind penetrated to the seats of slumbering life, and gently awakened each of us into responsive mental life. Then the mind had its birthday. And Nature, likewise, was carrying on her mothering still. For with light and sound at once she approached the gates of sense, and passing quickly the outer portals, softly knocked at the inner gates, seeking to awake the sleeper. For, though with eyes wide-open, at first we see not- and with open ears at first we hear not. Thus both the worlds of nature and of mind carry on and on the mothering process and travail still to bring mentality to birth.
The little heart must be brooded too; for the affections are not yet born. A thousand smiles must hover over that little life. A thousand times
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mother-eyes must look love into baby-eyes. Love-notes must vibrate in its ears from morn till night. Its life must be warmed through and through at its mother's heart. The whole parental life of love must surround it perpetually like an atmosphere and bathe it like a sunlight. Then the first answering smile, at length, will ripple up from the depths and play in sweet response upon the face. Infantile affections are being awakened; but long brooding will be needed yet before those opening buds of promise will be un- folded into the fair flowers of perfected affections. And the spirit must be mothered also. It is first the natural then the spiritual. In the begin- ning the soul is hid away deep in the inner recesses of possibility, as the roses are hid away in the heart of the little rosebush. The moral and spiritual nature is not yet born. The home must fold the little life about with reverence and wor- ship as with an atmosphere. Its little being must dv/ell within mystery and awe and heaven-reach- ing imagination as in a spiritual climate. The words and solemn notes of prayer must echo long in the inner chamber. The sacred music of the higher life must reverberate through its being. Divine seeds of truth must fall upon the inner soil. Parental souls radiant with divine life must ray their light into the inner room. The sacred fires upon the altar of the soul must com- municate their flame to the unkindled spirit.
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In a word, the entire religious life of the home must brood the potential soul and quicken it into conscious life and power. This is the way a soul is born.
We were not all here on the day of our arrival. Life is not a finished thing. It is a continuous creation. A child on the day it is born is a little animated bod}^, with splendid possibility and program of something more. Some parts of the body even are as yet but the outline sketch of what they are to be. The brain particularly is little more than the program of its future self. Fathers and mothers must be parents to more than their children's bodies. They must be in- tellectual, they must be affectional, they must be spiritual fathers and mothers to their children. As they parented the child's body into the physi- cal world, they must parent the child's heart into the finer world of affection, and its mind into the subtler world of intellection, and its soul into the higher world of spirit. This is no fancy. This is no theory. It is fact as literal as physical birth itself. We are the poor dupes and slaves of our senses. Because we do not hold the scales to weigh the baby, we do not realise the moment- ous and sacred fact of the birth and mothering of Mind, Heart, and Spirit.
To appreciate how this our human life is paren- ted, we ought somehow to see ourselves over again from the beginning as in moving pictures of
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growing life. If one by one ten thousand pictures passed before our eyes revealing the marvellous stages of our growth, and if the ever-present mother formed the background of -each, every- where brooding and ministering, as truly as when, a babe in arms, we nursed in sweet content, and if as we looked at each scene, we thought, "that art thou," we should realise how infinitely this our human life is parented. To every devoted, thoughtful mother it all must come home in flashes of revelation. The truth about one's own life and its connection with the great world of fostering life must shine out clear as the morning.
But we do not look long enough at that revela- tion; we do not see deeply enough into that morning of life. For the last revelation is like the first. And the noon of life is like the morning; and the evening is not different. What is begun in the dawn is continued in the day. Life was mothered before and after birth. It is mothered still. It will be forever. As every new life-ring on the possibly five-thousand-year-old sequoia, most venerable of earth's living forms, is parented now, as ever, by prior life and mothering nature, so every new ring of growth that is added to our hiiman life-tree is likewise parented. Each fresh flower that blooms on the rosebush is mothered ; every new grace that flowers on the most ven- erable life, as truly.
Science on her own account, with new emphasis,
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records the same history. She reports no lite- form that has not been parented by prior life and the mothering environment. Is there a chick ; there has been a hen. Is there a tadpole ; there has been a frog. Is there an acorn ; there has been an oak. Is there a grassblade ; there has been another. Is there a cell; there has been a parent cell. Wherever there is a web-foot, there has been water. Wherever there is a wing, there has been air. The atmosphere called forth the breathing lung ; the lung did not give rise to the atmosphere. The light called forth the seeing eye; the eye did not bring forth the shining light. Take the light away, the eye in time becomes a vestige. This is the story of the sea; this is the story of the land ; the report of the rocks ; the tale of the whispering air. A parenting life, a mothering environment everywhere, from top to bottom, from bottom to top, throughout all the kingdoms of ascending life.
The new miracle of the springtime and the pageant of the summer repeat each marvellous year the ancient chronicle of Life, What could be more suggestive for our thought than the coming of the spring? and the' manner of its coming? The multitudinous forms of vegetal life did not first awake and shout to the laggard sun to arouse him to his shining. On the contrary, the unwearied sun from day to day higher climbed in the patient heavens, while below all the laggard
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life of earth slumbered still in the cold and frozen lap of winter. The spring did not bring the vernal sun; the vernal sun brought the spring. Month after month that patient traveller journeyed toward this northland, carrying the new miracle of spring within his fiery being. Assaulting sun- beams had to be rolled in endless billows against this resisting continent. Bars and barriers of ice and snow had first to be broken down and melted into congenial confederates. The cold bosom of the earth had to be warmed into hos- pitality. The chill and torpid heart of things had to be thawed out and set throbbing with new life. And when after long months of travail, at length the myriad germs and buds and forms of sleeping life had been warmed and awaked, then behold the miracle of the springtime! a miracle as fresh and marvellous and momentous as was the first glorious bridal of heaven and earth. This is the way the multitudinous life of every spring and summer is mothered into being and into growth. — Is it not all a majestic symbol of God? The all-brooding, warming, life-giving Heavens: the torpid, reluctant, yield- ing, awaking, developing earth. The all-giving Parent: the all-receiving child. It is the story of our human life.
The brooding life of Christ makes this story uniquely vivid and concrete. Like a new morn- ing He rose upon His disciples' lives and poured
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a world of light around them. The sunlight of His truth shone round about them like a heavenly- radiance. This "Light of the world" was a new day of God for man. He was rolled into its dawn, and this new day of God's truth was all glorious about him. He dwelt in the "light of life." This is the way Christ thought of Himself in relation to man. This is the way God, the Father, thought of Him. From the time when, at the beginning, the "glory of the Lord shone round about" the startled shepherds, to the time when at the end on the Cross, the sun's light was with- drawn and darkness, like a funeral pall, was thrown over the earth, on to when a "light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shone round about" the persecuting Saul, to the final picture of the Heavenly City, where the "lamp thereof is the Lamb," Christ is revealed as the Light of God to the lives of men. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light ' ' ; thus wrote the forward-looking Prophet. * ' Until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts"; thus wrote the backward-looking Apos- tle, who was " with Him in the holy mount, " and an "eyewitness of His majesty, " when "His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as the light. "
This light of divine truth shone and shone from His radiant personality into the dull lives about Him. Truth poured from His lips into
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their hearing ears. It streamed from His eyes into their opening eyes. It beamed from His countenance into their kindling faces. It uttered itself in His mighty deeds to their wondering minds. It spoke from the repose and majesty and simplicity of His bearing to their intuitive being. It glowed from the inner glory of His character into their deepest nature. His mind brooded theirs and mothered them into an intel- lectual new-birth. His large life hovered over them like a sky and enfolded them like a sun-lit atmosphere. Within His large radiance they dwelt as in a temple filled with God's glory. This is the way He nourished and cherished them like a parent. And this is the way, at last, spring and exuberant summer succeeded to the torpid winter of their intellectual life.
The account of the mind is the essential story as well of the awaking heart and of the nascent soul. Jesus folded the great world of His influence around the disciples ' lives, until their total natures began to stir and awake into newness of life. He kept them by His side day after day, week after week, month after month, into the years, Sabbaths and weekdays, day and night. They ate at the same board with Him, and slept with Him in the same house. They drank at the same wells, visited the same cities, journeyed across the same fields and along the same roads, and sailed in the same boat on blue Galilee. He
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drew them closer and closer to Himself, into the inmost circles, where friend meeteth with friend. He flowed round their lives with the tides of His love as the ocean flows round an island. His sympathy breathed upon them as gently as the soft breath from the warm southland. He won them to lean back upon His divine bosom, and lay their lives, childlike, against His great life. He gave His sacred face to their lips to touch. He broke the loaves beside the sea and revealed Himself as the bread of Heaven that had come down from God to give life unto the world. They ate of that heavenly bread and began to live in the strength of the eternal years. He called all that thirsted unto the fountain of His life. They drank, and the water became in them a living spring, welling up from the deeps of God's exhaustless Being, springing and overflowing forever with pure water of life. He revealed to them His own ideals, the "heavenly vision." He carried them up to the hilltops and let them look out over the vast purposes of God. He led them forth into the exceeding broad and happy fields of redeemed activity. He chastened them like a father. He looked into their eyes, back into their souls, with His calm holy eyes, and their beings were stirred to the bottom with deep repentance. And He played the flame of His glowing soul against the candles of their spirits to cause them to burn with holy fire, like a "candle of the Lord. "
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The numberless contacts of the infinitely varied and subtle relationships of His great life to theirs are good to ponder. They open our crass and stupid eyes to the finer kingdoms of Reality. They enable us to become deliberately aware of other rains and falling dews, of other atmospheres and sunlights, of other gravitations and affinities. We verily realise that there are other motions indeed than those of masses, other waves than ocean billows, other winds than atmospheric, and other vibrations than ether. We awake to appreciate the vast reaches and ranges of spiritual Reality. We see those high regions, and we begin to know their subtle environments, their spiritual climates, their divine electricities, their heavenly laws, their still small voices. And when we behold the Son of God coming to earth, bringing with Him that infinite Kingdom of Heaven, and when we consider His boundless Personality, ranging from humanity to Divinity, and when we see Him throwing all those untold infiuences about the lives of His disciples, then we realise how wonderfully they were parented and brooded and unfolded to higher form.
His influence penetrated like leaven through the dough of their lives. His word fell like a mustard seed into the ground of their heart. His Spirit, like the vital breath of God, entered, they knew not how, into the spirit and background
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of their being, and changed the primal sources and springs of all their living. Lo! life was different. A new soul had passed into everything. They had the mind of Christ. A new radiance fell across all the fields of life. The horizons lifted. Great visions swept out into far vistas. It was good to look. Their feelings had deepened ; their affections grown diviner and fuller; their interests, loftier; their ambitions, greater and holier. And humankind had changed. They were seen through a white transfiguring light; they were the fair children of God. And a new face was upon the fields of earth. They were the rich garment of a present God. And the heavens were new. They were the new home. A before unseen glory shone through their majes- tic frame. And God too was different. He was revealed in the nearness and warmth of His Fatherhood; in the inner beauty and sweetness and love of His Being. All things were changed. A new glory had passed over the face of every- thing. For the first time they were seen in their essential truth.
Thus did Christ enfold the lives of His disciples. Thus did He throw His large life, too great to limit theirs, about them. He took them up indeed into its large rooms. They abode in Him. They were at home as in the Father's house. They became as "little children" over against Him, They became "fools that they might become
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wise, " Healing virtue went out from Him into their frames. They confessed their sins that He might baptise them with the Holy Spirit. They brought their sick souls and minds to Him and He breathed into them holiness and health. They became aware of their emptiness and He filled them with His abounding life. They yielded to Him, and He took their wills up into His great will and fulfilled them, their lives up into His all-enriching, all-fulfilling life. They lived; yet not they, but Christ lived in them. He be- came the heart of their heart and the mind of their mind and the spirit of their spirit. They lived and moved and had their being in Him. He was the vine, they were the branches. He poured His life-saps into them. They drew all their growth and foliage and bloom and fruit from Him. In a sense as real and profound as life, they abode in Him, while He was with them. And after His physical form had been taken away, in every essential and great sense, they abode in Him still. "Abide in me, and I in you." "Lo, I am with you alway. " "If a man love me he will keep my word ; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. "
And so it was the Lord Christ, the Prince of Life, became the new Promised Land in which His disciples dwelt, the new Temple of God wherein they abode, and from which they went
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no more out forever. And so it was He folded His limitless Life in myriad ways about them and parented and brooded and unfolded their lives into sons and daughters of God.
In all this it is clear that Christ's work is the great factor. And here we arrive at the third large aspect of our chapter — the greater working of God. The priority of God, or of the divine World-All, grew for us into the vast background against which human life is set. The parent- hood of God, or of the divine World- All, revealed the true, intimate, and infinitely rich relationship of the All to the individual. And now the greater working of God, or of the divine World- All, should be realised.
No one can see what we have seen within the circles of Christ's influence, without feeling the surpassing greatness of His working. What those disciples did for themselves was, indeed, something. But what He did for them was vastly more. It may have seemed to Peter when he went out and wept bitterly, that the struggle was all a painful, desperate, personal one. It may have seemed that he had to work out his salvation alone in tragedy and tears. Nevertheless, back of all, he must have felt that the great Protagonist was not absent from the conflict. And all along, however evident the personal side of life's struggle, back of ever3^thing
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he must have realised the greater working of Christ. Subtle instincts and deep intuitions must have told him of that omnipresent Power. It is suggestive of the range and mystery of life that we may be quite absorbed, apparently, in the individual and personal struggle, while at the same time, underlying all, is the subtle con- sciousness of other Presences and Powers. As we look on and see Jesus at work upon Peter, it seems to us more like the supreme Artist bring- ing forth the statue out of the marble, than like Peter alone hewing and shaping himself into form. Even when he went forth and wept, it was the look of Jesus into his soul that sent him forth, and that was the power of that deep repent- ance. And, at the beginning, if Jesus saw for Peter rock character underneath, in the hidden depths of possibility, it was yet He, more than all else, who would have to upheave that granitic substrate and lift it up into Alpine strength and solidity. The man he was to be rose like a rock out of the fickle sea of impulse, but Jesus was the power of his rising. When he left all and followed Jesus, he was in the grasp of a new power stronger than the gravitations of earth. He walked the waves only as long as his eyes were fastened on Jesus. It was the outstretched hand, that lifted his sinking form into safety again. Life's peril- ous sea could not be trodden by Peter's merely human feet. When he gazed into the Holy
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of Holies of Jesus' life and saw the glory of Divinity there, it was Jesus Himself who opened the eyes of his soul, as the rising sun opens the lilies. The power that exalted was the power also that abased him. "Get thee behind me, Satan," was the rigour of divine rebuke. When he fell at Jesus' feet it was the humbling power of holiness. When he climbed the Mount of Transfiguration and beheld the vision that never died out of his soul, Jesus was both the vision and the after-power of his life's long transfigura- tion. Thus Jesus wrought in truth, like unto a Creator upon a new creation. The burden of the work was his.
If we could only see Jesus truly, as the painters have tried to see Him, His great spiritual person- ality the centre of every picture and group, clothed in calm majesty, radiant with the inner glory of the soul, pouring light about Him and into the disciples' faces, creating a new atmosphere of grace around them, enfolding their lives with His love as with the warmth of spring, speaking words of eternal life that penetrated to the seats of being, quickening their dead affections, awak- ing the mysterious depths of their natures, shed- ding His spirit, like holy fire, through all the fram.e of being, driving the clouds from their minds and revealing the clear skies of divine truth, deepening the springs and sources of the heart until they opened down into the exhaust-
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less Life of God, taking their little wills and setting them into the great fulfilling divine Will, develop- ing and purifying their souls until they could see God and consciously live within His enfolding Life, exalting and refining their powers into appreciation of the glory of God and the beauty of holiness; and withal enlarging and enriching their total lives until they seemed to abound in all riches and to open out everywhere into infinite worths, — ^if indeed we could see Christ thus in the midst of His disciples, we should marvel at the magnitude of His working.
He was the great worker in and through the whole magnificent process. Of this we become the more profoundly conscious the more clearly we see His great spiritual personality, and realise the height and depth of His influence upon those disciples. And of this Jesus also was aware. He knew that their regeneration and sanctification and transfiguration depended primarily upon Himself. This He assumed and manifested every- where and throughout. This He implied in the significant symbol of the Vine and the Branches. And this He calmly declared to the Father, in one of the most solemn hours of His life, when in His great prayer. He said: While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given me; and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition. He knew perfectly that all their real work was begun,
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continued, and ended in Him ; that He was back of all as the vine is back of the branches ; and that without Him they could do nothing. Jesus was the great worker.
What is true of Jesus is true of the Divine in general. My Father, said Jesus, worketh hitherto. God Himself is the infinite worker. In due time it shall appear that what man does is much. But here and always it must be realised that what God does is much more. It is of no less than transcendent importance that the greater working of God should be realised.
Whither shall I go from Thy spirit ?
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there :
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall Thy hand lead me,
And Thy right hand shall hold me.
Does the great God dwell and work in the life of man as He works in all the fields of space? There the Lord is God indeed. We behold Him there the cause of every cause, the law of every law; the source of the phenomena of heaven, the power of the processes of earth; the original of milky ways and all their shining frame, the ground of the birth of worlds and all their evolutional advance ; the origin of cosmic order, the seat of
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universal beauty,' the fountain of all life — ^the Creator, the everlasting God, the Almighty, without whom "not a sparrow falleth to the ground."
But does He work in the life of man as well? From Him we came, deriving being. He created us in His own image and breathed into us the breath of life. We are life of the Father-Life, heart of the divine Heart, mind of the infinite Mind, and spirit of the eternal Spirit. He fur- nished us with our marvellous heritage, making us heirs of all the ages; and He set us into this infinite total Environment. In Him we live and move and have our being. He pours His life into us every moment. He throbs in every heart-beat and breathes in every breath. He weaves every life-tissue and builds up every cell. He acts in every instinct and pours Himself through every passion ; He moves in every impulse and utters Himself in every intuition. Through all the ranges of the body He reigns supreme, and throughout all the realm of sub-conscious mind. But does He dwell in consciousness and the Higher Life also ? He is in the root and stem and branch and bud of life. Is He in the flower too?
Multitudes may not realise that God is in Consciousness as truly as He is in nature, and in their own bodies, and in their sub-conscious life. Spiritual realities do not wave banners
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and shout. The divine Presence may be all the more real and rich the farther it is removed from "observation. " God was not in the ' ' earthquake. " The field of consciousness after all may be the peculiar field for the "still small voice. " Because multitudes fail to realise the presence of God does not determine that He is absent. "Surely God is in this place, and I knew it not." All things of surpassing greatness work with little observation. How does environment work? How does the sky itself work? How does all nature work? How does heredity? How does civi- lisation? Or how does the infinite Yesterday work on in To-day? With little comprehension indeed. Silently the vital air feeds all the fiames of life. Holy light transfigures earths and the lives of men, they know not how. Celestial beauty works in human sotils subtly like an ether. Divine truth brings heaven to earth and works like a hidden leaven. All the vastest energies act noiselessly like the Dawn. While we slept in the night, we sped among the stars, carried on the bosom of a fast-gliding world; and ere we awaked, we were rolled into a sea of light. The Universe itself acts upon us in majestic silence. And God too ever worketh and must work with the infinite subtleness of Spirit.
God is in His heavens; God is in His earth; He is in the bodies of men, and in their sub- conscious lives. Is He in consciousness more?
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He is in the darkness. Is He in the day yet more ? "Through night to light" do we come into the fuller presence of God ?
The fields of nature can never be His very home. His life divine can dwell richly only in the high temple of a kindred spirit. All lower things are too poor in kind to be surcharged with His high life. He is present indeed in the vibrant atom, but His home is in the trembling hearts of men. He dwells in the wave of ether it is true, but more richly in a wave of love. He is in a flash of lightning, but more in a flash of thought. He is in the falling dew, but more in an ascending prayer. He is in the propulsion of a meteor, but more in the will of man. He is in the orbits of stars, but more in the shining paths of saints. He dwells in the beauty of sunsets, but more richly in a beautiful life. He is in the singing of birds, but far more in the song of the soiil. God is ever3^where in the ascent of nature, but more truly in the aspirations and ascent of humanity. He lives indeed in all that is, but His true home is in the hearts of men. Not in flaming stars, nor rock-ribbed earth; not in the glory of sunsets, nor the stately march of seasons ; not in the spangled heavens, nor the happenings of worlds, nor in all the pageantries of earth and sky, is the proper abode of God. He dwells in the higher glories of character; in the pure heart and the holy will; in godlike thought and
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divine affection; in the kindred temple of the Hving soul. Lower forms of Reality can contain Him but meagrely. They are too poor in quality to hold the fulness of His life. God is Spirit; and Spirit can dwell richly only in spirit; Mind only in mind.
But why is it then that He is more readily manifest in nature than in humanity? Why is He more evidently present in the orbit of a star than in the will of a man? The lower the order of Reality, the more transparent the veil. The higher the order, the less transparent the veil. He is more simply, readily evident in the blowing of the wind than in the inspiration of a soul; in the uplifting of a continent than in the uplifting of a character ; in the rising of the sun than in the dawn of a new civilisation. Because the higher forms of Reality are more complex and involved, His working there is subtler, deeper, more hidden. For the same reason the activity of man is more evident in the building of a cathedral than in the composition of a symphony ; and in the composi- tion of a symphony than in the renaissance of a life. The mother's activity is more manifest in the new gown she has made for her daughter than in the new life she has been labouring to develop. Our parents are always more simply evident in the houses they build for us and the dinners they prepare, than in the beings they impart and the ctdtiires they give. Likewise
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God is more readily manifest in nature than in humanity ; for nature is lower, simpler ; humanity is higher, more complex. Nevertheless, nowhere is humanity so deep in its activity and so illimitable in its scope as in parenthood ; and nowhere is Di- vinity so rich in its working as in the creation and new-creation of sons and daughters of God.
Take the richest and noblest life that ever it has been one's joy to contemplate and think how it is charged and surcharged with the life of God. Look at its large and fair proportions and see how God has been the sovereign worker in and through the whole resplendent result. He is all its light and splendour as the sun is the radiant glory of the jewel. Could we behold what God has wrought within that shining life, the story would be worth the telling. In the beginning He conceived its rich design and from His own life sent it forth a created being. He imparted to it those limitless possibilities and shut up within its hidden chambers those mys- terious powers. He brooded with His quickening life all the stages of its growth. He was the light of its dawning consciousness, the affection within its awaking feeling. He was the revealer within its budding knowledge, the wilier within its forming will. He was the thinker within the thought, the doer within the deed. He was the spring of its holy motive, the source of its nobler appreciation, the secret of its nameless longing,
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the power of its boundless aspiration. He was both the vision of its soul and the light of all its seeing, — God, the orderer of its harmony, the grace of its graces, the Spirit of its spirit, the great Background of all its being and doing. He was the "author and finisher" of its glory. "Of Him and through Him and unto Him," were all the things that constituted its light and splendour.
It is with a rich life as it is with a growing plant. God is the great worker in and through a beautiful character, as nature is the great worker in and through a plant or a flower. First the blade then the ear then the full corn in the ear, marks the stages of the growing corn, and doubt- less each several stock has had its own struggle for existence. Doubtless every fibre and every cell has wrought incessantly to the golden end. The plant for its part was all activity. But if the waving corn could know the larger truth; if the roots could know of the broad earth under- neath, and the stem could know of the elemental air around, and of the vapoury clouds above, and of the far-off oceans that feed them, and of the boundless light and heat of the sun, — if it could know that the nourishing earth fed its every rootlet, and the vital air breathed life in through its every pore, and the dew and the rain watered all its thirst, and the light of the sun shot it through and through with its golden beams until
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the yellow corn was changed into the very gold of the sun,- — if the waving corn knew what all nature through every stage of its growth had done, it would know that the divine Universe, and not itself, was the great worker. One has only to drop a seed into the ground and to think, that the instant it touches the earth, back of that little seed is the round world and the mighty sun and the wide heavens and all the infinite network of cosmic influences, — one has only to contemplate that vast background and feel how it works in and through the little seed day and night, from the first sprouting of the germ to the final ripen- ing of the harvest, in order to realise forever the incomparable activity of nature. The harvest was the result. But heaven and earth certainly, and not the tiny seed, were the great agency. By this time surely it must be clearly evident that what we here have seen, the relation of nature to a growing plant, is something more than a weak symbol of God's relation to a grow- ing life. The plant against its infinite background is more than typical of human life against the infinite God. For the plant, set into nature, lives and grows and has its being in God as truly as we; and human life, set into God, lives and moves and has its being in nature as truly as the plant. A beautiful soul is of a higher order, and soars up into the life of God as the plant can not. But it is forever fixed and set into that
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infinite Life, as a star is set into the heavens or as a plant is set into the earth.
Man works out his own salvation, it is true, with fear and trembling; but back of all, as we thus have seen, it is God that worketh in him both to will and to work, of His good pleasiire. Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. Of Him are all things, and unto Him is the glory. God is the great worker.
Scarcely anything is more important than to realise that the living God is working in human life, and that, if any of us ever come to nobility and richness of character, it will be God, and not we, who will be the supreme agency therein.
Now of this momentous fact men are more or less aware. Because this is what all men vaguely feel. This is what religious lives always vividly have realised. This is what the deepest religious spirits most profoundly have felt; what the pro- foundest religions always have seen and pro- claimed; and what Christ Himself, with His perfect wisdom, has confirmed and sealed.
This is what all men at least vaguely have felt. They are not totally unconscious of the great Background. However absorbed they may be in their private selves, they are not wholly oblivi- ous of the Universe. They are at least vaguely aware of that universal Frame and of its eternal
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presence in their lives. Man cannot live in a Universe and be altogether dead to the infinite fact. The part must subtly feel the presence of the conditioning Whole. Men ever3rwhere like- wise vaguely feel the presence of God.
Not a few moreover have become so aware of life's great Environment that the thought of it has come to be even oppressive. They have grown so conscious of its vastness and of its all- conditioning influence, that there seems little room left for personal agency of any kind. To such a degree are they aware of other presences and powers, that they fear lest the nucleus of Self may dissolve into common nature. At any rate it is very evident that men feel the presence of something besides, and vastly greater than, themselves.
We do not live long in this mysterious sphere before we get the conviction that life is more than it seems. We become convinced that there are more things in our little world than at first we dreamed of. There are intimations of currents beneath. Consciousness feels the presence of the sub-conscious. The crest of the wave feels the push of the sea. The surfaces ever3rwhere become conscious of the deeps. Life indeed is like a bubbling spring at the foot of a mountain. At first it is aware of itself only as it wells up and overflows. There is where it comes to the sur- face and to the light. But at length it must feel
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the pressure of the streams below, and know its connection with the watery chambers in the mountain's heart, and with the snow and the rain that fall upon its summit, and with the moving clouds above, and with all the ocean sources far away. Life truly is not what at first it seems. Its inland springs are connected with such distant seas, its surfaces with such profound deeps.
This is the normal life of every day. This is the life of the tranquil sea and of the gentle breeze and of the smiling sunlight. In hours like these life may glide so smoothly on that the fair ship may little heed the elements. It may be little conscious of anything besides its own gallant self. But lo ! let the elements change. Let a dark frown settle on all the face of things. Let a hurricane burst suddenly upon the waters. Let the tempestuous waves rise and break in fury, and the winds rage and strike with unpitying wrath, and the storm beat and howl with terrify- ing and awful power, and the blackness of night encircle everything like a funeral pall, — ^let the proud ship be caught and whirled and torn in such titanic forces, and it will feel as never before the presence and grasp upon itself of the most common environing elements. A ship in a storm becomes conscious of everything. It creaks and trembles under the rude knocking of their presence. It is even so with human life. It is in the storm and crisis that we are made painfully aware of the
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everlasting forces that hold us. It is when we are buffeted by the winds of fortune, or tossed upon the seas of trial, or smitten by the storms of adversity, or enshrouded by the night of des- pair, that we plainly realise how we are held in the inexorable hand of power. Nevertheless it was the ocean from the beginning that buoyed up the ship throughout. And it was the wind all the while that swelled in its full sails. And it was the abiding heavens that gave it the guiding stars to the end. It is not otherwise with human life. For although in the storm and crisis things are more acute, nevertheless, from beginning to end we are held in the constant pressure of life's atmospheres, and upborne ceaselessly by the faithful continents of earth, and surrounded ever by the unchanging heavens that sleep not.
There are few times in life's brief span when we are made more aware of the grasp of nature and of God than when overtaken by sudden sickness. And there are few things in life more full of pathos and suggestion than the sight of a grown man lying in weakness on a bed of pain. But yesterday he awoke with the dawn and re- joiced as a strong man to run his course. To-day he has not strength to raise his head. And it all seems to him as though he were held in the unbreakable grasp of alien forces; as though he were caught irresistibly "in this common net of death and woe and life, which binds to both."
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But in reality he is no more in the hand of nature and of God in sickness than in health.
With each new morning we vaguely feel as though life were given to us anew out of the hand of God. We take up once more this ' ' pleasing anx- ious being," and it seems as though it were given to us afresh out of the fulness of that divine Life which slumbereth not neither is weary. And every night as we lie down to sleep, it seems like laying our tired head against the bosom of God and yielding back this costly conscious life into the keeping of the eternal Parent. We let go our very body, and give up our intimate self, and surrender our little life to that great divine Life, and sweetly sleep. When we awake we seem to be with God, and when we sleep we fall asleep in Him, But again, in reality, we are no more with Him at the waking dawn and at the close of our conscious day, than we are with Him through all life's active and eager hours.
And in that greater morning, at the dawn of our adult life, we had a like though larger experience. Then we felt that life itself was a gift. We knew that we did not make ourselves, but that the great gift came to us from above. We awoke to self-consciousness and discovered that we had "ourselves on our hands." When life's candle was lit, lo! the candle itself was already there, set into its golden socket. In that first great morning of life, the larger truth was all so simple
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and clear: we were so close to the Creator, so newly come from Him, that His divine Father- hood and our human childhood and life itself as the gift of God, were truths as clear and fresh as that first morning. It was as though a little island had been lifted up out of the mighty sea, and when morning broke, it discovered itself, and lo! it was already there, set and framed in the infinite sea.
And at the end, in life's great close, men feel more vividly still how near the human is to the Divine. They are face-to-face with the great Beyond. They feel that they are passing into the presence of God. They have not the power to stay, nor yet the power, like a sovereign, to go. A thousand forces, not themselves, close round them here in victory. Other forces from out the great Beyond are sweeping them irresisti- bly on. They leave this bourn of time, and are carried by other tides out upon the ocean of eternity. They are taken. They are with God. In such great hours all men feel how much God has to do with human life. At the two horizons, plainly, of life's morning and of life's evening, the Heavens bend down and touch the earth. But again the sky that we touched so plainly in life's morning and once more so plainly touched in life's evening, arched above us through all our earthly pilgrimage, and was the supreme deter- mining factor throughout: as the Heavens, not
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the earth, are always the chief factor in every product here below.
Thus we all at least vaguely feel the presence of God. We feel Him as we feel the Universe. We feel the subtle tides of His life in our calm and uneventful hours; but in the great storms and crises we feel the mighty and awful pressures of His presence. We feel Him again and again at the waking dawn and at the close of our con- scious day. And we feel Him in life's great beginning, and in its great and solemn close. God is the great Background.
Moreover what all men feel vaguely is precisely what religious lives come to feel vividly, and what the deepest religious souls have always most profoundly realised. That God is the great worker in and through our human life is no dead truth to men and women who are really religious. It has dawned upon their consciousness as one of the mightiest facts in our human history. They see that their higher life is His spiritual creation. They feel Him everywhere. They feel His presence underneath working up and through all. They feel Him at the centre. They know that He is the prime mover in every action. They feel Him in the fountain and in the stream. They have passed from self-consciousness to a great God-consciousness. The clouds and dark- ness that shut them into their little world of self have lifted. They have discovered the divine
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Heavens. They have seen them go round the earth. They have seen them take up the Httle earth into their own vast celestial system and movement, and penetrate every atom and activity of its being with their infinite influence. And they have seen the heavens as the supreme agency in every process and product of earth. Thus likewise they have seen God enfold their human life as the author and finisher of all its virtue. And thus deeply religious lives come to feel the presence of God everywhere. They, the pure in heart, see God. They experience Him as the background of their own life and that of humanity ; as the background of nature and the kingdom of truth ; as the ground of beauty and all ideals. Ever3rwhere they dwell in the presence of the living God. One has only to think of Paul, or Origen, or Augustine, or Calvin, or Edwards, or Phillips Brooks. To them verily God be- came evermore the "All in all. "
The deepest religions, as we should expect, have always seen and proclaimed this great truth. Buddhism is perpetually in danger of remerging the individual completely, Mohammedanism will hear nothing but its own cry, "Allah is great!" "Allah is great!" and naught of human free will. Judaism looks up to its sublime Jehovah in whose hand our breath is and whose are all our ways. And Christianity, in deeper wise, will see man as living and moving and having his being in God.
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More than all, this is what Christ Himself has confirmed and sealed. He saw perfectly that God is the great worker everjrwhere. He saw Him in the birds of the heaven and in the lilies of the field ; in the sun which He makes to shine on the evil and the good, and in the rain which He sends upon the just and the unjust; in the stature of man to which man could not add one cubit, and in the hairs of his head, not one of which he could make white or black ; in the human talents with which God entrusted man, and in the higher life that ever must come to him as a new birth from above. Everywhere He saw the superior working of God: in life's Baptism and in life's Pentecost ; in life's nourishing Communion, and in its growing Transfiguration.
Now all this indeed is what we should expect if God is really God and man is man. In the nature of things God must be the supreme worker everywhere. He must be verily God in the life of man as He is in the shining stars and the grow- ing plants. In truth, in the higher life of man He is more fully and perfectly God than anywhere else. He can not be so richly and completely such on any lower plane. And though He must work through the spirit and will of man in producing the excellency of character, never- theless it is there that He is pre-eminently present, as the sun is more richly present in the flower than in the stock. In the temple of
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man's higher life is where God is present in His glory.
This finally is what men rejoice in when the gracious and sublime fact has become even meas- urably revealed. It is the joy of all living to know that God is in our life. We rejoice in it as we rejoice in the sky and as the bud rejoices in the springtime. To have a great element of Life, that is more congenial to us than a mother, that parented us at the beginning, that parents us still, that carries us up from one degree of glory to another, that is the impulse of our flight and the wings by which we rise, — ^that surely is a cause for fundamental and enduring joy. Those who thus deeply come to themselves, and so come unto the Father, have found the secret place where joy abides.
CHAPTER VI
WHY IS OUR CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD'S WORKING SO MEAGRE?
IF the great truth about each of our Hves is that of the priority and parenthood and greater working of God, why are we not more conscious of the fact? Why is God's working not more evident? Why does He hide Himself to such a degree?
This is one of life's great questions, — just and necessary, and of intimate concern to us all. For men in general have but a meagre God- consciousness. Only the richly religious lives have the rich consciousness of God. This ques- tion is so insistent, and the great human experience that urges it, so widespread, that already, in chapter five, we were obliged to give certain suggestions of the answer.
Why is not every man more aware of the fact, we ask, if God has so much to do with his life ?
The truth is we are so absorbed in self and self- activity that we little heed the not-self. In this self-conscious stage, we have discovered the self and are supremely interested in it. We have
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discovered our varied active powers and are supremely engaged in their exercise. The other powers that work in and through us are not to the fore. We are absorbed in the everywhere pre- dominant self. This is the stage in which the consciousness of God is most meagre. We see youth almost universally in this stage, and nearly all men, who have not developed the deeper life, we see lingering in this stage still. Multitudes of such persons are about us on every side. They are all self-consciousness, all activity. They are busied in a thousand things; they are swallowed up in the whirlpool of self. Of course such men are little conscious of God as they are little con- scious of anything outside, even the Universe. It is a most wonderful fact that men by the million can become so absorbed in self and self- activity that they are ail-but oblivious even of the Universe. Such men would seem to be in- deed no more oblivious of God than they are of the Cosmos. The almightiness of a fact and the vastness of its actual influence would seem to be no guaranty whatever of its place and prominence in human consciousness. It is as though the volcano became so absorbed in its own eruptions that it quite forgot the liquid fires and the sub- terranean forces beneath. Here is a part of the reason why God is not more manifest in the consciousness of the multitude.
Let us deliberately look at the greatness of this
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thing that is before our eyes. On the one hand, we have the mighty fact of the omnipresent God creating and preserving human Hfe everywhere and bearing the great relation to all its growth that the vernal sun bears to the spring. On the other hand, we have the consciousness of most men well-nigh oblivious of the mighty fact. Why is this? We are here attempting a serious answer to this assuredly great and grave question.
But the answer must go deeper. It is, in large measure, because of the nature, particular devel- opment, and limitation of this our human type of consciousness.
It is of the nature of human consciousness that it should be more aware of the human than of the divine side of life. For life is a double thing, made up of a particular and of a universal element, just as a grass-blade is a double thing, made up of the special nature of the grass and of the common nature of the Universe. Accord- ingly we are more conscious of the near than of the far side of life, of the particular than of the universal element. It is the siirfaces of life's sea that are lit up by consciousness. The deeps lie hidden in the darkness underneath. Never- theless the deeps are always there, and it is the depths that bear the surfaces, not the surfaces the depths. Still it is the surfaces that, in the first instance, we are most aware of. It is the hither side, the individual, the particular, the distinctive,
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the self-hood side, of which, in the egoistic stage, men are mainly conscious. It is in the nature, therefore, of our human type of consciousness that we should be more aware of the human than of the divine side of life. This is specially true in the period in which we are developing toward the fuller self-consciousness, gathering into in- dividuality, rounding to a separate self.
And this brings us to another truth. It is because also of the particular development of our htmian consciousness that we are not more aware of life's background. At first we are not con- scious of anything, not even of ourselves. Then we pass into a very simple objective consciousness. Then we develop gradually into a pronounced subjective consciousness. And finally, if life completes itself, we unfold into a higher objective consciousness again. Not that we pass from stage to stage as we pass from country to country, leaving each land behind us at the boundary line. Rather we pass from stage to stage of our growing consciousness as we pass from childhood to youth and from youth to manhood. The child and the youth are taken up into the man. For about the true manhood there is something essentially childlike, and the true old age is always "young with the eternal youth." Ac- cordingly in childhood we have a very simple and instinctive consciousness of the not-self and of God, with a vague consciousness of self. In
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youth, a growingly clear and pronounced con- sciousness of self, with a lingering instinctive consciousness of God, but with preludings toward a higher consciousness. And in adult life, if that fuller stage is really attained, we have a higher intellectual and spiritual consciousness of God, with a subordinated consciousness of self.
Another fact, involved in the above, is the permanent limitation of the conscious field. Incalculably more things are represented in life than are presented to consciousness. We range also from the zero of infancy up to the highest, fiillest consciousness of maturity, and from the unconsciousness of sleep up to the amplest con- sciousness of our richest waking hours. Very evidently our human consciousness is limited — not that of the commonplace man merely, but that of Plato and Shakespeare as well. The richest moments of the highest consciousness of human-kind are yet severely limited. All worlds are represented within the circle of life. But little thereof is reported. This is true even of lower worlds. It is doubly true of the higher, subtler, greater worlds. The heavens, indeed, may be mirrored in a mountain lake as it lies still in the moonlight. But the lake itself may be conscious of little more than its own shimmering surface, and only the eye that looks down into it is aware of the heavens that are mirrored in its depths. The permanent and severe limitation of
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the illuminated surfaces of life as compared with its mysterious and unfathomed deeps is and re- mains a fact of large magnitude in accounting for the poverty of our consciousness of God. Not that life may not go on, if it will, and fulfil itself in a rich knowledge of God ; but even so a tithe will not be known of the God that is dwelling and working within.
What has now been said about consciousness has a legitimate range and implication which must not be limited by the necessary brevity of our treatment. Most fundamental and determi- native aspects of life have been indicated. The nature, and the particular development, and the permanent limitation of this our human type of consciousness account for much indeed of the poverty of our consciousness of God.
Another deep and far-reaching fact about life is the law that it is first the natural then the spiritual. When life begins, as our human lives do, with the physical and unfolds and unfolds toward the spiritual, it is inevitable that God should be thus hidden in the earlier stages. We have only to contemplate with adequate insight our pre- and post-natal history, to follow the course of life through the various stages of its progression, in order to understand that the fuller spiritual ex- periences must await the fulness of time. We do not expect the flower to burst from the root. We understand that the course of development
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is first the grosser root and last the finer flower.
Herewith we arrive at the law, that, back of all, it is the spiritual and only the spiritual that is able to realise the presence and activity of God. Only to the degree that human life is spiritually developed, only to the degree that it is made like God, can it ever either become aware of, or appreciate, the working of God who is Spirit. Spiritual realities are spiritually discerned. Bles- sed are the pure in heart, for they, and they only, shall see God. We see only what we have eyes to see. The world may be radiant with light, but the unawakened eye sees it not. Earth and sky may be all glorious with beauty, but the slumbering aesthetic nature perceives it not. The lines of truth may have gone out through all the earth and her words to the end of the world, but the unquickened mind little heeds them. Even so God may pervade everything that the eye looks out upon and the very being of the onlooker too, but the unawakened soul is little conscious of His presence. We see only what we have eyes to see.
Already we have crossed more than the threshold of our next truth, that it is only the richly de- veloped spiritual life that can realise richly the presence of God. Therefore the reason why most men have such a meagre consciousness of God is because their spiritual natures are so little
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developed. On the other hand, the reason why some lives see God everywhere, see everything in God, and God as the great Background of all, is that their spiritual natures have been superla- tively and beautifully unfolded.
That this must be so is involved in the concept itself of the religious life, as we look upon its nature. For one of the deepest possible views is that which sees it as the development of the God-consciousness along with the self-conscious- ness, and the proper harmonising of both in the unity of the higher life. That in such a higher life God is consciously realised, is involved in the nature of the life. That the atmosphere as well as the oil is present in the flame, is already im- plied in the nature of the flame. And whenever human life bursts into a divine flame, God is always present as the chief element in the flame. This being the essential nature of the religious life, we no more expect to find it without the indwelling God, than we expect to find flowers without sunlight or ripened intelligences without truth.
There are other reasons why God is not more manifest, to be found in the character and nature of God. God does not send the fuller light of noon-day to the life that has turned away from the dawn. The universal law of reverent use is applicable pre-eminently on the high plane of the Spirit. To him that hath shall be given, and
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from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. He gives not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither casts He His pearls before the swine.
Moreover God always proportions His great revelations to the capacity of His children — milk for babes, strong meat for men ; the intimate inner circles for the growing spiritual friendships.
Nor, as President King has pointed out, does God obtrude Himself. He seeks, not to make machines, but to develop persons. He does not thrust Himself into the centre and displace the personal self. He so acts as in every way to develop that self. And although He is the su- preme agency in this as in all things. His activity here is such as, not to annihilate, but to brood and augment personality. Just as the wise human parent is careful not to intrude into the inner circle of the child's personal will, but seeks to foster its centrality and bring it into more pronounced activity and final dominion. Even so God acts, always with most delicate regard for the free personality of His children. Otherwise He would interfere with, instead of promoting, their development.
Finally and more fundamentally still, God could not develop our human life into true spir- ituality unless He Himself wrought as spirit. In the last analysis spirit can be developed only through the pure working of Spirit. God could
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not work as physical phenomenon, or as cosmic law, or as animal life, or as rational truth, or as natural beauty, and develop man as spirit. He could not work as earthquake or as whirlwind or as fire. He must work spiritually after the manner of the still small voice. He must work with the immediacy and subtlety and reality of Spirit. He must work as inspiration. Only so could He create and new-create a soul. Only so could He awake and perfect the higher life of man. Herein is to be found the ultimate reason why God, as Spirit, is not more manifest in the lower ranges of human life. He can reveal Him- self as Spirit only in the higher life of man. And only as He is realised as Spirit, is He truly and richly known. But He can not be thus known except by the developed soul.
The reason, as we view it, now has been set forth, why God is not more clearly evident in the consciousness of most men. Subjectively, it is because they are so absorbed in self and self- activity ; it is because of the nature, the particular development, and the limitation of this our human type of consciousness; because, in the course of life, it is first the natural then the spiritual; because Spirit is apprehended only through spirituality; and because men's spiritual natures are so undeveloped — which, by the very concept of the religious life, precludes the reali-
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sation of God. Objectively, it is because God does not send the fuller light to those who are untrue to the light they have; it is because He proportions His revelation to the capacity of His children ; because He does not obtrude and hamper their free self-realisation; and above all because He must work as Spirit in order to develop spirit in man.
CHAPTER VII
MAN AT WORK, OR THE RESPONSIVE RECEPTIVITY AND CO-OPERATIVE ACTIVITY OF MAN
HITHERTO we have been made aware of the great Environment, the realms of ReaHty rising range beyond range, range beyond range, from the lowest physical up to the highest spir- itual. We have realised that the true vastnesses and immensities are the infinite ethereal and spiritual domains. We have seen that vast divine Environment, those infinite circles and systems and spheres, enfold and enfold the life of man endlessly. Then we have witnessed them at work. We have seen the heavens of truth, beauty, ideals, and Spirit acting upon the life of man. We have seen the great divine Environ- ment in its unfailing priority forever anteceding and parenting all his life. And we have realised that the Heavens are always the supreme agency in every process and product here below. Thereby we have become conscious of the infinite Environ- ment, and of the Priority, Parenthood, and greater Working of God.
When thus we behold Heaven and Earth con-
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federate and co-operant, saying, "Let us make man," and see them moving together in creative activity upon him, and God working in and through all, creating man in His own image, in an unbroken continuity of process, then we want to turn and look at man who is the focus and centre thereof, and see and know what response he is permitted to make thereto, what part and lot he himself has therein. Herewith we arrive at the Responsive Receptivity and Co-operative Activity of Man.
First of all it is given man to accept or reject the great circles and spheres of higher power.
He may accept or reject the higher life of the Home. Whatever treasures of affection, what- ever riches of thought, whatever purity and sweetness of spirit there may be, they are forever pressing themselves upon young life for accept- ance. And youth may either accept or reject them. This is the power that is given to every life sooner or later in growing degree. We did not choose our parents, we say, we were not consulted. And that is true — but true only along the lower ranges of life. If those who were fathers and mothers to our bodies and to the inferior ranges of our psychic beings, ever became an3^hing more, if ever they became in the true and large sense intellectual and spiritual fathers and mothers to us, it was not without our con- sent. Their principles, their ideals, their fineness of
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spirit, the graces and amenities of their character, all the superior wealth of their lives, could be given to us largely only through our own consent and co-operation. They could become parents to us in the nobler and fuller sense, parents to our higher life, only through our free choice. So it comes to pass that we choose our parents in the highest sense. Lower parenthoods we do not choose. Higher parenthoods we do. It is a remarkable fact that even our own fathers and mothers could not father and mother us in the highest way without our free consent. And many a man accordingly owes his larger mental and spiritual parentage, not to those whose name he bears, but to some other rich and noble life outside the home altogether. Thus, like the prodigal, we all may accept or reject the higher life of the Home.
In the same way we may welcome or refuse the higher life of Humanity. All the noblest life of the world and the redeemed life of the Church and the higher civilisations of mankind are perpetually pressing upon us for acceptance. The prophets and seers of the higher are forever seeking us out and calling to us while we sleep. The apostles and missionaries of the Kingdom of Heaven sail over all seas and land upon every shore, cr3dng: Behold we stand at your door and knock. And the civilisation of the West presses and beats upon the sleeping East, vexing and
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troubling her sleep and her dreams, until a new India, a new Japan, a new Egypt, a new China, awakes into higher life. So it is, all the higher life of the world, like a new morning, is beating at our windows. But we may keep the shutters closed and the curtains drawn if we will. In the deepest sense no new day shall ever dawn upon our inner life without our consent. In ways pro- founder than we commonly note, and with pre- rogative almost divine, we either say or refuse to say: For this our inner world, let there be light.
It is given us also to receive or reject the life of God itself. That great life, it is true, is always seeking us and drawing near to us like light from heaven; is always bending over us like a sky and sending down its blessed rains and dews; is surrounding us day and night and ever pressing upon us like an atmosphere. It reveals itself in the countless phases of truth, and comes to us in all the forms of beauty, and manifests itself in the perfect loveliness of ideals. And it comes yet closer in the mighty and mysterious incarna- tion of Christ the Son, and closer still in the subtle and divine inspirations of the Holy Spirit. That great Life indeed is always pressing upon us. Nevertheless it is in our power, if we like, to reject His divine truth, and deaden our souls to the celestial beauty, and to resist the charm of the lovely ideals, and to refuse His divine and
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only Son, and to grieve His Holy Spirit withal. We may accept or reject God.
The stupendous fact is that all the varied and combined kingdoms of higher life are besetting us behind and before and pressing in upon us perpetually. And we may accept or reject them. Nothing is more certain than the mighty and infinite Environment into which we are set. Nothing is more sure than that that great En- vironment is not dead but alive, not inert but active. It is the prevalent dulness of our ordinary consciousness that we are so nearly oblivious to the mighty fact, or that we so lightly regard it. For scientific and philosophic and spiritual in- sight, on the contrary, the marvellous fact is becoming more and more impressively real year by year. How fine and subtle and varied, as well as vast, those higher realms of Reality are is becoming likewise realised. Our scientists at length are telling us what our philosophers told us long ago and what our spiritual men knew from of old. They are telling us of the wonderful subtlety and complexity and variety of the ethereal realms of Reality. For all deepest insight and experience those realms are most real — ^those higher atmospheres and sunlights and ethers and electricities; those spiritual laws and harmonies ; those eternal truths and heavenly ideals; those divine beauties and glories; those spiritual natures and societies, and that infinite
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spiritual life of God, penetrating everything like an ether, and surrounding all like the heavens. How marvellous the fact is! How kingdom interpenetrates kingdom, element pervades ele- ment ! The finer atmosphere pervades our coarser body; the still finer heat and light pervade both; and the subtler ether permeates them all. In- visible electricities and motions and energies vibrate and beat through everything. Law and order reign. Truth grounds and conditions all. Harmony and beauty and ideals suffuse the whole. Life animates ever3rthing. Sensation quivers throughout. Reason rules ; will energises ; love is interfused; mind pervades and dominates everywhere. And Spirit, over and around and in and through all, infinite Spirit.
All these inscrutable circles and spheres and systems of power are pressing upon our lives and permeating them ceaselessly. And God is pour- ing His life in varied ways through them all, and coming to us always and offering us Himself. We do not go up into heaven to bring Him down ; He comes to us and presses upon us like the atmosphere; He comes and would penetrate us like the sunlight; He comes to enter us like Spirit. The pressures of His presence are upon us ever3Awhere.
And it is ours to accept or reject. We may open or close ourselves as we like. This is the part and prerogative of man. Our atmosphere
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is not indifferent and aloof ; it seeks to rush in and give life. But we may keep it out if we will. Our sunbeams are not idle; they would pierce into the seats and centres. But we may close our eyes to them if we choose. And we move about here in more than one divine atmosphere; we live our lives in more than one world of light. The world of truth is not dead. The realms of beauty are not inert. The firmament of ideals is not passive. They are as active as air, as eager as light. Civilisation is not dormant. Higher natures and societies are not inoperant. The Kingdom of Heaven is not in pause. Nor is Christ dead, nor the Holy Spirit in suspense, nor the living God asleep. And we live our lives in the centre and focus of all these active and eager spheres of Power. We may open our- selves to them, or we may close ourselves to them as we will. This is the sovereign part and pre- rogative of our human nature. Yea ; every ocean of influence is washing our shores; every wind of God is blowing upon our lives; every star in His sky is piercing our night. The living God through the living Spirit, the living Christ, the living ideals, the living beauty, the living truth, the living Church, through the whole living Heavens and earth and all that is therein, is always coming to us and knocking at all our doors. We for our part may open, if we will, and no one can shut. We may shut and no one can open. We may
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receive or reject God. Here is the prerogative of man.
The newer science fortunately has obliged us to turn our eyes toward the Environment. So doing it has been true to Reality, and has rendered humanity measureless and abiding ser- vice. But Reality is vaster than earth. The great Environment is more than physical nature. There is a heart, mind, and spirit environment. There is a truth, beauty, and ideal environment. There is the infinite environment of Deity. So then there is a spiritual Heavens as w^ell as a physical earth. And the Heavens are greater than the earth. But together they make up the great Environment into which the life of man is set. We look at the primal fact of things when we turn thither, and up into the infinite greatnesses when we gaze into the sky and at the life of God. How vast the totality is; how wonderful; how bewildering! Yet it is only when in this way we sweep up from earth into the heaven of heavens that we gain the true vision at all. And it is the total Reality, the World-All in its integrity, and not a part thereof, that is the true world of man. That is his great Environment.
If there is thus an environing Heavens as well as an environing earth, an environing Deity as well as an environing nature, how different at once the mighty fact of environment becomes! Man's environment? Yes; but what is it? Mat-
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ter? Certainly; but Spirit more. Humanity? Yes; but Divinity yet more. The true environ- ment must be the total Environment. Man may be provincial in his thought, but in his life he is not provincial; his body connects with the cosmos, his mind is implicated with the infinite Universe. God says to man: Lift up your eyes unto the heavens of Divinity and behold your great Environment.
And we are beginning to learn that the great Environment is not an infinite passivity. It broods all life as the wing of the bird broods the egg in the nest, or as the heavens in May brood all the up-springing life of earth. The Kingdoms of Heaven besiege and beset the life of man. The great Environment is in truth an infinite parenthood, — from the parenthood of the family up to the parenthood of God, from the mothering of Nature up to the mothering of the Infinite Love. All is parental. God is forth-going. He bows the heavens and comes down.
How majestic the truth is! How sublime and satisfying the movements of God toward man are ! His divine mornings break upon our world. The laws of God come down upon earth's Sinais. The Son of God from the excellent glory descends to men. The Spirit of fire is poured out from heaven upon all the upturned faces. God Him- self ever comes. Lo! He is with us alway.
His part, we know, is the great part from ever-
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lasting. He comes and floods all the heavens with light. Nevertheless the earth for its part must roll into the dawn for itself. Man must turn and face the morning and enter into every new day of God for himself. His part is less, but still is great. It is his to accept or reject the great circles and spheres and systems of higher power.
It is not his to step forth and speak the world into being, and set in motion its waves and tides of influence. It is not his to lift up the skies and charge the heavens with power and set going their infinite processes. It is not his to awake the morning and the springtime with a shout and command their coming. It is not his to create the mighty worlds of truth and beauty and ideals and fill them with their subtle and vivifying life and activity. Nor is it his to speak the divine Logos into existence and bid Him be about the universal business of the Father. Nor, to cause the quickening Spirit of life to be, and to brood the face of the deep and the lives of men. Nor yet is it his to authorise the infinite and eternal Background of all and to start it on its course of never-ceasing creation.
But it is his in every higher way to accept or reject any or all of these. He may accept or reject in the higher sense even the earth on which he stands. For the earth has something more to do than furnish a foundation; it has a high
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ministry to the mind. He may accept or reject in the higher sense the starry heavens above. For they have something more to do than grasp him with physical power; they have to suggest that his own life should . have a sky, and take part in the creation thereof. Likewise he may accept or reject human-kind; not in the lower sense, to be sure, but in every higher sense. There is not a world that he may not choose or refuse. In lower and cruder ways the world of truth may impart itself without consulting us; but not in higher ways. In all nobler and ampler forms man may close himself to that fine world if he choose. Universal beauty can work upon us in low degree without our leave. But that subtle world can do none of its diviner work in us against our will. Christ acts upon us in His inferior ministries whether or no. But in His high salvations we must freely choose and accept. Even to Him we may open or shut. We can not go anywhere away from the divine Spirit, and His elementary functioning He will fulfil without permission. But His true celestial work He never will do against the barrier of our will. And though God Himself is and remains in all the bases of our life and is our Father in the lower sense, yet He is neither God nor Father in the higher sense and will never be unless we choose Him with the everlasting yea and amen of our total being. So it comes to pass that not
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one of all otir worlds can do its diviner work without our co-operant assent. They all may work in the inferior and coarser ways, but not in the superior and finer. Earth, sky, humanity, truth, beauty, ideals, Christ, God Himself may do no glorious thing, may build no cathedral character, apart from human choice. Such is the Father's will.
Man in truth may withhold or grant to his worlds all their high permissions. He may choose or refuse to say: "O Earth, thou art permitted now to feed as thou desirest my higher nature and not alone my lower. 0 Sky, now art thou permitted to hold me as thou seekest to do, with thy celestial gravitations, and create a sky within. O Human- kind, now mayest thou fulfil thy work and im- part the bloom and glory of thy life to mine. O Truth, now mayest thou flood my heavens with thy divine light. O Beauty, now mayest thou refine and transfigure my whole being forever. O ideal World, now thou mayest reveal thy heavenly vision to my willing soul. Son of the Father, now mayest Thou come unto Thine own and unfold the image of God within. Now, O divine Spirit, mayest Thou awake and glorify my life without end. And now. Father in heaven, mayest Thou unhindered build the temple of character, and make me at last a son indeed." Man may verily veto or permit the higher minis- tries of every sphere. The lower ministries are
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beyond his power. The higher he solemnly elects.
It is very impressive and magnificent to think of man thus. It is solemnising too. In lower ways he is the child of all worlds, willingly or unwillingly. In higher ways he becomes the child of none, apart from his own choice. There is splendour of prerogative indeed. There is royal lot enough. What truly is man, that thus Thou art mindful of him? For Thou hast created him verily but little lower than God. Thou hast crowned him with glory and honour.
We come then to this : that though apparently we are thrust into the world without our consent, and though apparently earth and sky and all the spheres of our great Environment are thrust upon us without our leave, it is so only in lower ways. It is not so in higher. The truth is that in higher ways nothing is thrust upon us. We choose all and every world, else they remain forever without their high product.
Moreover the crowning fact is added that, in the higher sense, we choose life itself. Quite the opposite of this, at first sight, would seem to be the fact. Life, if nothing else, would seem to be thrust upon us, not elected. But this is true as before only on the lower ranges. It is true only of the bulb and root of life. It is not true of the higher stem and glorious flower and divine fruitage. All rich and full and excellent life for-
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ever must be our own solemn and persistent choice.
It therefore and finally appears that it is our high prerogative to accept or reject both the great Environment in all its nobler agencies and life itself in all its nobler ranges.
How all this accords with the great simple positive messages of the Bible and the living pulpit is plain to see. The question of acceptance or rejection instinctively has been felt to be the fundamental and critical question of life. There- fore the divine voices from the beginning have cried: "Accept the Christ"; "Come home unto the Father"; "Receive the Holy Spirit"; "Open your heart to the truth"; "Become receptive to the divine beauty and glory"; "Adopt the Christian ideals forever. " And the lowliest herald of such great things has been wise indeed with a deeper wisdom than he knew.
This is true for incommensurable reasons. Because to accept or reject is to connect or dis- connect with the great circles and spheres and systems of higher power; and to connect or disconnect, is to let those worlds of power pour into and have free course in human life. Here is the mysterious greatness of acceptance or rejection.
A little child takes an acorn in its hand and lays it upon the ground and covers it over with
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a handful of brown soil. The instant the seed touches the earth it makes connection with all nature, new and different connection. It con- nects with the whole world and with the living atmosphere and with the rain-clouds above; it connects with the sunbeams and the mighty sun; it connects with the total Universe. Back of that little seed at once are the earth and the solar system and the infinite cosmos. All the energies of heaven and earth forthwith lay hold upon it and pour their influences into it. The very moment therefore that the little seed touches the ground it makes connection with all worlds and opens itself to the mighty influences of them all. That is a marvellous touch. Those are stupen- dous and amazing results awaiting thereon. As though the sun stood still in the heavens and all nature were in pause, waiting for that touch, before they would go on with the grand pro- cessional of creation.
The seed is man. Its touch is his acceptance. Its connection with nature is his connection with the infinite God. Thereby he connects in a new and higher way with the Divine, and opens him- self to the infinite spiritual energies, and permits them to enter into and have free course in his higher life. Here is the mysterious greatness of acceptance or rejection.
When an artist embraces with his whole being the world of beauty, he lets into his life, by that
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beautiful alliance, immeasurable influences. When an earnest soul opens itself seriously to the world of truth, it lets in boundless power. When a poet flings wide open the doors of his nature to the true, the beautiful, and the good, he lets in celestial fascinations and diminions. When a persecuting Saul beholds the heavenly Christ and opens his soul to Him, he lets in the Lord of all authority, and henceforth his life is held as with the hand of Heaven. And whenever seekers after the Divine an3rwhere open wide their believing hearts, they welcome and let in the almighty and eternal God.
Man stands as it were within the dynamic room of creation. He presses the buttons of the uni- versal batteries. He connects with the infinite and celestial energies. Thereby he lets them into his life and gives them free course, unto the glorifying of his humanity and to the glory of God. To accept the Divine is to connect with the Divine.
We now have arrived at a point where we may sketch to the best advantage the relation of our human life to the Divine. We have given the great higher Environment and its creative ac- tivity and never-ceasing stimulation. We have then the life of man accepting or rejecting this; so connecting or disconnecting from it all ; thereby letting the higher powers into his life through
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a great receptivity. But all receptivity is also activity; and all activity in response to a stimu- lating environment must be co-operative. Hence we have the great receptivity and co-operating activity of man. Moreover the activity must grow with all his growth into a great co-operating activity. But co-operative activity itself is, on the other side, receptivity. Hence both the re- ceptivity and the activity of man imply the great Environment and its continuous stimulation. Therefore they are both responsive. Consequently we have, at the beginning and throughout, the great divine Environment and its activity of creation and its never-ceasing stimulation. And in response thereto, we have the great receptivity and the ever-growing co-operative activity of man.
Now we have made the transition from re- ceptivity to activity, for all receptivity is at bottom activity. We have made the transition also from activity to co-operating action, for all activity in response to a stimulating environment is co-operative. With this we come in sight of the third aspect of the part man plays in the world. Already we have seen that he accepts or rejects the higher; that thereby he connects or disconnects with the higher; thus letting the divine influences freely into his life. Now we see that he also co-works with the Divine in the upbuilding of his own higher being. When he
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accepts God and when he connects with God and when he lets the divine powers into his Hfe to change and to spiritualise and to develop, he is not like the bay that passively receives the ocean tides, nor like the windmill that motionless waits for the winds of heaven. He is active and co- operant through all. He actively accepts, he actively connects with, he actively co-works with the great God throughout.
Life in all its forms is active and co-operant. There is no non-active life. Life and activity are inseparable. The humblest cell is and remains a wonderful centre of activity and co-operation. The great Environment can not be so overwhelm- ing in its greatness as to reduce the tiniest living thing into insignificance and bare receptivity. A speck of protoplasm can maintain itself in its true nature and activity as over against the stimulating worlds. Wherever in general there is a living thing there is activity and co-working. Up and down through all the kingdoms of life there can be no mere mechanism or dead me- chanical response. Nature in all its greatness does not suppress the individuality of a grass- blade. On the contrary, it begets and promotes it. And the grass-blade set into universal nature is not only receptive throughout its every pore but also active and co-operant in every cell of its being. Even the himible grass-blade does its part, and co-works with the Universe.
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Much more does man do his part. He does his great part on every plane. He co-works with God ever3^where. The peasant co-works with God when he turns the furrow and scatters the seed. The woodman co-works with God when he fells the tree and frames the house. The miner co- works with God when he digs out the ore and smelts it in the flame. The mariner co-works with God when he makes the seas his pathway and guides his craft by the stars. The engineer co- works with God when he lays down the rails of commerce across the face of a continent. The inventor co-works with God when he dallies and conjures with the sunbeams and yokes the winds and harnesses the vapours and tames the lightnings and speaks through the atmosphere above or through the ocean depths below. The artist co-works with God when he makes the marble live under his touch or the canvas mirror the beauty and soul of humanity. The composer co-works with God when he fills the temple of man's spirit with sweet sounds and makes life itself a symphony. The poet co-works with God when he sings of truth and life and goodness and glory and of the Author of them all. And the devout soul co-works with God when it repents and prays and wrestles and yields and loses itself and then finds itself again on a nobler plane, become the servant and apostle of the Highest forever. Man co-works with God on every plane.
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He co-works with God more intimately and richly on the higher planes than on the lower. In the fields of agriculture it is true he may plough and hoe; but he remains outside of the growing corn. He does not enter like raindrops into the sap. In the marts of commerce he may buy and sell ; but he lays remote and foreign hands on all he touches. In the centres of manufacture he may combine and form; but he is always other than the thing he makes. He is outside, like the potter with the clay. In the world of invention he may render matter plastic to the touch of ideas; but the invention continues too much one thing, the inventor another. In the sphere of architecture he may build the cathedral, and in a way may build himself into the temple he rears ; but he is not yet himself the thing he makes. In the kingdom of science we note a difference: there he may come upon the great cosmic law; but it is difficult to say whether he discovers it in the world without or uncovers it in the world within, or rather in both. In the realm of real art he is freer. There he does not copy, he creates. He hews himself out of the marble. He paints himself upon the canvas. In deeper and more intimate ways he co-works with beauty, and with God. In the world of music he is even freer. He pours forth the symphony from his soul. The glorious creation and his own more glorious powers unite in one. In the high domain
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of poetry he co-works more intimately still. He sings the great poem out of his own deep life and is himself the poem that he sings. But nowhere is he so free as. in the superior dominion of life and character. There he co-works with God most deeply and intimately of all. There he becomes the truth that he obeys, the love that he longs for, the spirit that he welcomes, and the life that he receives. He works together with God in the inner room of being, as spirit working with Spirit. On the superior planes of life man co-works with God most intimately, most richly.
It is indispensable that man should do his part. It is thus that God has created and constituted the inner nature of things. It is not that God alone shall work in man both to will and to work of His good pleasure; but that man also shall work out his own salvation with fear and trembling. The stimulating Environment with its ten thousand stimulations shall never un- fold and complete one living organism, if it work alone through all eternity. The living thing must do its part. It must co-w^ork in its own production. The lifeless product may be manufactured from without. The living thing must live and grow from within. It must act and co-work in its own upbuilding. The very structure and make, the essential nature and concept of life involves this. Life must act, must
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organise, must co-work in its own creation. Of the two concepts, receptivity and activity, it is activity that is necessary and indispensable to the nature and being and inner idea of a living thing. Therefore it is not alone the stimula- tion of the Evironment, but also the response of the organism. It is not alone action from with- out, but also action and reaction from within. Every living thing must act and co-work in creating the being that it becomes. Much more must man act and co-work in his own upbuilding. The dews of heaven fall in vain upon the barren rocks. In vain does spring speak to the dead and unresponsive tree, though its roots are still in the ground and its branches still stretch out into the atmosphere. In vain does the mother- bird bring food to the little fledgling lying sick and dying in the nest. In vain does light itself fall upon the heavy and sleeping eyes. In vain do the sounds of words strike upon deaf and unregarding ears. In vain do the long rows of wise books in the great library surround the heed- less and unresponding page and look down upon him to no purpose from their classic shelves. In vain do the famous galleries, with their immor- tal canvases painted in heaven, look down year after year upon many an ancient care-taker. In vain does the glory of the day and the solemn majesty of the night roll over the silent city of the dead. All these call in vain where there is
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no response. The voices of earth and sea and sky, all the influences of human-kind and of heaven together could not produce one curve of beauty or one line of grace upon the face of human char- acter without human response and co-working.
After a fashion we all know this ; we know that we must do our part, that we must put forth effort. We know that we must look in order to see, listen in order to hear, attend in order to feel. We know that the books of men and the book of nature and the Book of God are not read merely by being opened. We know well that the mind must go forth and mingle with and penetrate them in order to read their great pages. We know that we must act and go forth and meet the worlds of beauty. We must enter into the quiet beauty of the meadows, enter into the glory and solitude of the mountains, into the wild grandeur of the ocean storm, into the sacred splendour of the setting suns. Deeper insight has made it clear that we must act and go forth and co-operate in order to present any outside object to consciousness, must go forth in a spontaneous activity of creation in order to present any exter- nal world whatever, or to have such a world for consciousness at all. Indeed consciousness itself is an activity, an up-springing, and no world without or object within shall ever be felt or known without our personal activity and co- working. Thus it is experientially seen and
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critically shown that the law of activity and co- working is everywhere operant on the lower planes. But it is not sharply realised by every- body that the same law is equally operant on all the higher planes. Those however who have experienced and known, those who dwell in the highlands, realise that the law of co-operation is just as imperiously necessary there as it is on any of the lowlands of human life. There more- over is where the law is most pronounced. There is where man's agency is most free. As we climb up the ascending terraces of human life, human activity, as we have learned, becomes constantly freer, richer, and more prominent. Those who really exercise faith, know that faith in the divine and invisible is a great and forth-going activity of life. Those who really love know that love to- ward God is a most rich and elevated and com- prehensive activity. Those who really pray know that profound prayer is a large and wondrous outpouring of the whole stream of life toward God. Those who really surrender know that total self- surrender to God is the greatest, most inclusive, most difficult, most triumphant of human acts and achievements. Those who really appreciate know that true appreciation of the divine and the ideal is magisterial and sublime activity of the human spirit. Those who seek really to know God and to be like Him, to change light into life, divine ideals into living character, know
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that here is humanity's hilltop of abiding and glorious struggle. All in truth who really live know that life itself is a grand perpetual deed. They realise that it is a soldier business, a quitting of themselves like men, a warring of a good war- fare on to the end. So certain is it that men must stir up the gift of God that is in them and fight the good fight and be workers together with God.
Moreover it is no external co-operation. It is intimate and internal. We co-work with God in building up our own higher being. We are not completed when we come to the years of accountability and to the day of life's consecration. We are only successfully begun. We are only the foundation of what we are to be. On that foundation is yet to be built the true temple of character, the temple of the higher life. And we co-work with God in utter faithfulness in all such temple-building. It is as though the mountain wrought in its own uplifting, or as though the star wrought in the creation of its own shining being. It seems passing wonderful that we are our own co-creators. Yet in this we are not unique. All life from the amoeba up to man co-works in its own creation after its own degree. This is the note and character of life. We can not conceive of life at all or of any living thing as not participating in its own upbuilding. The little coral animal may make its calcareous deposit
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upon the rising island, and the island in this way may be formed by additions from without, until at last it lifts itself in "soft and gentle loveliness" like a crown above the sea. But the little anthozoon itself was not so built. It w^as of a different order and grew from within and took part in its own upbuilding.
The same is pre-eminently true of man. He is the summit and crown of life. He pre-eminently co-works in his own creation. Consider for example the venerable countenance of Gladstone in its rich and marvellous personality. And consider the part he himself had in that mag- nificent achievement. His face remains before one's eyes. How wonderful it is! How large the light of his intellect ; how strong and majestic his will; how fine and magnanimous his feeling; how elevated and grand his soul; what calm consciousness of power; what triumph of the profounder self ; what massive solidity of character ; what subtle suggestions of infinite connections and belongings! Compare the greatness and splendour of that result with the first infantile beginnings, and compute the part he had in that grand attainment. It is as though the little redwood seed had grown into the giant sequoia, or as though the lowly foundation had risen and climbed into a glorious cathedral. So different is the tiny beginning from the majestic culmina- tion. But not one white stone of character
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wotild have been laid upon another; not one tier of greatness would have risen; not one suggestion of mass; not one line of magnificence; not one pinnacle of glory would have come into being, without him. He co-worked in his own creation and the result was a "spiritual splendour"; but without him no cathedral character would have risen at all.
It is illuminating to contemplate this. It is deeply instructive and quickening. The develop- ment is so great. The beginning is so humble; the end so magnificent ; and man's part so re- gal and pronounced. Behold what man hath wrought! — Behold what God hath wrought ! Un- der God man decrees or vetoes his own higher being. And under God he co-works in its con- tinuous and sublime creation.
It is apparent from the foregoing how absolutely we look upon a human life at birth as only begun. It is apparent that we regard life as capable of a marvellous and continuous creation. And it is precisely this magnificent development and expan- sion that alone represents our proper and essential humanity. We are not properly human at birth; we are born to become human. Human nature is not flesh and bones, but developed mind and spirit. Not the little infant, Saul, but the full-grown man, Paul, properly represents our humanity. It is the rich and complex per- sonality that alone realises and reveals our
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essential human kind. Not the little seedling but the grown tree, that has come to full bloom and gone on until at last it is heavy-laden with the fruit of life's mellow autumn, properly typifies our human kind. But no nature-type can begin to do justice to our complex and wonderfiil unfolding. The utmost conceptive and imagi- native endeavour can not justly picture the elab- oration and range of the full human spirit. What a piece of work indeed is man! "how noble in faculty! how infinite in reason! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God!" Yet all this majestic dignity and marvel- lous richness and range would be impossible with- out human endeavour and co-working. Under God man decrees his own higher being. And under Him he co-labours in its progressive creation.
And under God we determine oiir own higher participation in the divine Nature. God on His part hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us by His own glory and virtue ; whereby He hath granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises ; that through these we may become partakers of the divine Nature. Yea, and for this very cause, we, on our part, must add all diligence; and in our faith supply virtue; and in our virtue knowledge; and in our knowledge temperance; and in our temperance
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patience ; and in our patience godliness ; and in our godliness love of the brethren; and in our love of the brethren love universal. For if these things are ours and abound, they make us to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, Wherefore we, for our part, are to give the more diligence to make our calling and election sure; for thus shall be richly supplied unto us the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. So it is, under God, we determine our own higher participation in the divine Nature. With God are the primary decrees always. With Him are the absolute creations. And His are the primal determinations as well. But with man are the secondary decrees. And with him are the co- operant creations. And his also are the secondary determinations. This is the part and high pre- rogative of the individual man in relation to himself.
In relation to God, man decrees or vetoes, in a secondary way, the divine purpose for his higher human life. "This is the will of my Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son, and be- lieveth on Him, should have eternal life." "Ye will not come to me that ye may have life, " And in relation to God, man promotes or thwarts the divine purpose and activity of continuous creation on the plane of the higher human life. "As many as received Him, to them gave He
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the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." "He could there do no mighty work," because of their unbelief. And in relation to God, man elects or refuses to become the expression and manifestation of God — ^the expression and manifestation in a higher way of the nature and character and life of God. "I am the vine, ye are the branches." "That ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light." Thus in relation to God man decrees or vetoes His purpose, promotes or thwarts His creative activity, and becomes or refuses to become the manifestation of Him in the world.
In relation to other human beings man, under God, decrees or vetoes their very existence. And when they are born he decrees or vetoes, in a more limited way, their higher life and co-works in its development. Thus in relation to other lives man chooses or refuses to become the channel and medium of the purposive and creative life of God. One of the most amazing things that it is given each generation to do is to stand between the creative life of God and the new generation to be. This to every thoughtful mind must seem a growing wonder.
In every great direction the part and prerogative of man are surpassing. In relation to himself
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he co-creates his own higher Hfe. In relation to God he co-decrees and co-labours in the progres- sive creation. In relation to other human beings he stands between the creative life of God and all the generations unborn.
The part and prerogative of man are surpassing indeed. His responsive receptivity and co-opera- tive activity are great to a kingly degree. In all higher ways it is his to accept or reject the Divine, to connect or disconnect with the Divine, and to co-work therewith in all God's creative activity humanity- ward. No Kingdom of Heaven, no higher kingdom, is brought in without his co- operation. This is the way God has set man into His on-going plan and process. Truly the Father has created His children in His own image and crowned them with regal dignity. "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If He called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture can not be broken ."
We have attributed now to man a large and surpassing prerogative and function. We have assigned to him superlative worth. We have crowned him, as God crowned him, with glory and honour.
Finally let it be said that nothing but a large and worthy view would seem to be possible. It must be large enough to balance our great human duties and responsibilities. The Christian religion is forever weighing the soul of man over against
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worlds ; forever attaching unspeakable importance to human choices ; forever attributing momentous and endless consequences to human deeds; for- ever declaring a high and eternal destiny as gravely conditioned upon our earth-life here below. Hu- man life must be of infinite pith and moment to match such boundless consequence. Great con- ception must company with great conception.
We therefore attribute to man under God a supreme receptivity, a supreme activity, and a supreme responsibility. He works out his own salvation with fear and trembling; and it is all a great and grave and glorious business. And God works in him all the while both to will and to work; and this only adds to life's greatness and significance.
Herewith is sketched what appears to us the true conception of the responsive receptivity and co-operative activity of man — of the part man plays here in the world.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT GOD IS WORKING TOWARD
THUS far we have set man into his actual Universe and have seen God enfold his life with many spheres. We have looked upon the corresponding variety of human powers. We have beheld God at work as the Great Worker. We have inquired why man is not more conscious of the divine working. And we have witnessed man too at work in response to God. Now we would see what God is working toward, what He is seeking to produce.
He is seeking to create a complete man. Through all the kingdoms of Reality that fold us round, He is seeking to create a centre of life of high complex order, to produce a complete human being. God said : Let us make man.
Nature is seeking to produce the full-grown man. The kingdom of life is struggling up to- ward its culmination in man. Civilisation is seeking to crown the world with man. Christianity is labouring to produce the perfect man. If God is not seeking to create the complete human life, then He is out of harmony with His universe.
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No ; nature and life and civilisation and Christian- ity are expressions of God. What they are pro- ducing He is creating. In and through the World- Whole, in and through each several sphere of Reality He is seeking to develop the perfect man.
God is seeking to do on the higher human plane what He has done on the lower planes of life, vegetal and animal, only He is seeking a result of far superior type: He is seeking to produce a centre of life, but a centre of high complex order. He is seeking to produce a universally and per- petually receptive centre of life; a being whose receptivity is so perfect that he shall become medium and agency of Divinity. He is seeking to produce a universally and perpetually active centre of life; a being with activity so high that he shall become parent of humanity and co- creator with Deity. He is seeking to produce a centre of high complex life, with nature so varied and comprehensive that it shall be a wide- ranging human personality; of so high an order that it shall be an expression and child of God. Thus He is seeking to make the complete mian.
It is good to know that what God is doing on the plane of humanity is to a degree parallel with what He has been doing on the vegetal and animal planes. For here as there He seeks to produce a centre of life, only the result that He seeks is of far superior type. From bottom
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to top of the vegetal realm, from the single cell up to the regal oak of the forest or to the sensitive plant, God has made each separate thing a dis- tinct centre of life. Likewise throughout the animal kingdom, from the protozoon up to the anthropoid ape. He has created each organic form an individual centre of life. Order above order, range above range. He has lifted up the forms of life into a grand scale of organic being. At the top He would create a centre of life of transcendent order. As therefore we look down and up the long ascent, one sees man set by God into the developing history, a part of the age- long evolution of life.
It is good to see man thus. It is good to see him set into the vegetal-animal kingdom of life, when we see also that he is king of the kingdom. It is good to see him a part of the long ascending series, when we see him the culminating and final term thereof. It is good to see him connected with all the lower forms of life, when we also see him in his mysterious being rise and soar above them. We shall understand both him and them better, understand the life-process better, and understand God's goal for man and his continu- ously creative activity upon him better.
God is seeking to create a universally and perpetually receptive centre of life, a being wide- open to all worlds.
He has suggested after what fashion He would
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have man open to Nature by the way He has made him open and receptive in his body. His physical being is open to all the foods of earth, his lungs open to the atmosphere, his eyes to light, his ears to sound, his mouth to tastes, and his nostrils to odors. His skin is made sensitive to heat, his muscles to pressures, his nerves to stimuli. He is influenced by waves of ether from far-off stars, and affected by electricities that flash through the infinite spaces, and held fast by the cords that bind the Universe into one. In fine he is blown upon by all the winds of heaven and caught in all the currents of earth. God has made man in his body as open and receptive to nature as a sponge is to water.
Similarly He would have him wide-open in all higher ways. He would have him open and receptive to the mighty fact and solid reality of nature; open to the immensity, the irresistible power, and the ^Eonian persistence of nature; open to the variety in unity and the unity in variety; open to the change in the midst of con- tinuity and the continuity in the midst of change; open to the ceaseless ongoing, the mighty fact of growth, and the perpetual new-creations therein; open to the struggle, tragedy, a,nd death ; open to the springtimes of victory and life; open to her law and order and symmetry and beauty and perfec- tion ; open to her rigour and domination ; to her gentleness, parenthood, and servantship as well;
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open to her honesty, obedience, faithfulness, and patience ; open to her freshness and health and san- ity and peace ; open to her joy and seriousness and solemnity; open to nature's solitude and society, to her silence and speech; open to her order and ranges of Reality, to her fundamental fineness of being and process, to her depth and mystery, to her basic divinity, to her immanence, transcend- ence, and inclusiveness, and to her subtle and inexhaustible symbolism. God would have man open and receptive to nature in all her aspects and on all her planes. It would be a pleasure to expand each theme of the above into a para- graph did our limits permit. The wide-openness of the full-grown man to nature is a rich and inspir- ing thing to contemplate. Any system of philo- sophy or science or religion that does not make much of this must prove hopelessly inadequate. Man's eldest parent and Bible must remain his living mother and nurse and teacher and com- panion to the end.
In the same way God seeks to create a centre of life open and receptive to Humanity. He would make a great and complete man, sensitive to the tender yet fathomless appeal and mission of the little child, sensitive to the morning freshness and heavenly fires and divine prophecy of youth, open to the enterprise and achievement and mastery and character of maturity, and receptive to the sweetness and mellowness and richness and
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glory of age. The complete man is open to the small and the great, the commonplace and the unique, the naive and the cultured. The great and complete man that God would make, is open to humanity with all its hopes and fears, its doubts and beliefs, its defeats and victories, sorrows and joys. For the man indeed that God intends, the teachers do not teach in vain and the statesmen plan in vain, and in vain the inventors contrive. Neither in vain for him do the scientists discover and the philosophers think and the artists create and the musicians compose and the poets write and the preachers preach and the prophets prophesy. He is as open in his affections as he is in his instincts^ as open in his mind as in his heart, and as open- souled as open-minded. He is ever alive and receptive to the incomparably greater riches of the universal heart, receptive to the greater treasures of the racial mind, and open to the more priceless treasures of humanity's soul. The great and complete man is open and receptive in all the ranges of his being to the greater humanity on all its ranges.
Likewise He would develop a centre of life, a human personality, open to universal Law and Order. Physical law, mental law, ethical law, spiritual law — to all these realms He would have man open; not merely as the unconscious subject of them in his body and in his subliminal life,
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but also as their conscious knower and wide-open recipient. There has come to the modern mind a new and greater consciousness of natural law, greater than the world has ever known. What does it mean but that a grander and more insistent consciousness of moral and spiritual law shall come? There never has been and can never be a magnificent life without a magnificent conscious- ness of law. Other backgrounds there must be we know, but this too is absolutely indispensable. A great consciousness of a majestic moral order and of the majesty of spiritual law is and will ever be indispensable to majestic strength and growth. Nothing could be finer in its sphere than the splendid vision of cosmic law that has been coming to human- kind. What is needed is a sublime and more constant vision of the highei law of God. Kant's great consciousness of the majesty of the moral law needs indeed to become universalised. And what are the starry heavens themselves and their majestic calm order for, but to tell of the sublimer order and symphony of a greater Background? To this most of all wo-uld God have man open and receptive. And through His divine order ever3rwhere He would have him behold the everlasting Divinity, as men behold the sun through the glory of the light. Again God would develop a being wide-open to the world of Truth. He would make a man noble enough to love truth for its own pure sake.
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wise enough to know that truth is the mind's proper and essential food, sure that any admixture of error is like a fcetid thing attainting the pure atmosphere, great enough to know great truths from small and to keep great things in the central places of life, and high enough and clear enough to distinguish higher truth from lower and to keep the sky forever above the earth, — not being mentally confused and bewildered like a sand- storm in a desert, when earth and sky seem com- mingled and all becomes the dust of earth. A being, in a word, God would create who knows how to go up and down on the heavenly ladder of truth and feels most at home on the upper rounds, as open to all truth as the diamond to light, and craving ever more and greater truth as he advances toward the stature of the full- grown man, knowing certainly that the greater the tree the more it drinks in of heaven's atmo- sphere and sunlight. This is the man that God delights to develop, one who rejoices in the truth and watches for it as they that watch for the morning. Such a man, open in his total nature to all truth from the lowest to the highest, will be indeed reverently open to the God of truth. A great aspect that is not emphasised enough I wish particularly to magnify. God would produce a personality open on all sides to Beauty. How God must love beauty! He has made earth and sea and sky beautiful. The grasses, the
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flowers, and the trees ; the valleys, the mountains, the hills, and the plains; the brooks, the rivers, and the sweet lakes; the islands, the oceans, and the waves; the clouds, the atmosphere, the light, the stars — almost everything in heaven and earth He has made beautiful. The animals and the insects and the birds are beautiful; the little child is beautiful ; the maiden in her bloom is more beautiful; the mother with her babe is yet more beautiful ; and the aged mother in Israel, with God in her ripened so\A and His sweet grace in her countenance, is more beautiful still. And what is all this beauty for? That man should close his eyes and deaden his soul to it? Has it not a ministry? Is it not prophetic? Does it not tell of the possible flowering and beauty of human character, and subtly minister to that high result?
But this is only the beginning of beauty. There is also the beauty of law and order pervading nature everywhere like some fine intelligence; and there is the higher beauty of the world of manifold truth, finer and purer; and the yet higher spiritual beauty of holiness, the costly glories of character; and raised above them like the stars in the sky the perfect beauty of the divine ideals in which the true, the beautiful, and the good have united in one supernal radiance. And high over all there is the transcendent beauty and glory of God, fount and source of all other beauty,
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the divine beauty and glory of perfect holiness and love. And what woiild God have? What wotild He produce? He would produce a hu- man being on w^hom he should not waste a uni- verse of beauty. The sphere of nature, the realm of cosmic law and order, the world of truth, the kingdom of character, the heaven of ideals,' — ^to the beauty of all these He would have man perfectly open. That lute of three thousand strings, the human ear, that "most pure spirit of sense," the eye, the fathomless heart of man, the magisterial mind, the mysteri- ous soul, — He would have them as open to beauty everywhere as the welcoming eye is to light. Especially and pre-eminently would He have him alive and not dead to that supreme Beauty and Glory that is back of all.
God would develop a being, moreover, wide- open to the heaven of divine Ideals. How early and how naturally a life opens to ideals. It is impossible for the awaking of the sentiments or the awaking of the intellect or the awaking of the soul to take place, without awaking to the world of ideals. And in all healthy lives this takes place early. Morning does not come at noon. It is with a normal life as it is with an apple-tree. The perfect fruit grows and ripens through many and many a day, but the apple blossoms that are the promise of the fruit, open wide their bosoms to heaven early in nature's springtime.
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And the ideals are as numerous as the stars in the sky. There is an ideal for every activity of man. The Indian chief would be a perfect chieftain and the warrior a perfect warrior; the yachtsman would be a perfect sailor and the tennis-player play the faultless game; the farmer would carry on the ideal farm and the carpenter would build the perfect house ; the teacher would have the ideal school and the lawyer make the perfect plea and the artist paint the perfect pic- ture and the poet write the great and perfect poem. From the noble labourer who digs his honest ditch, up to Dante who writes his Divine Comedy; from the little boy who says, Look, see me play ball, up to Edwin Booth who plays the involved and baffling Hamlet; from the bashful youth who strives to possess his two hands and feet and not be painfully awkward, to the courtly Sir Philip Sidney; or from our fierce Teutonic ancestors who buried the adulterer alive, up to the saint on the mountain top wrestling for divine experience and the perfect life, each and every endeavour of man takes place under the power of an ideal. All aspiration looks up and follows the gleam. And it is a notable thing that it always aims at the perfect. The hunter aims at the perfect shot, the wrestler at the perfect skill, the singer at the perfect expression, the sculptor at the perfect statue. No true effort consciously aims at the imperfect. The Indian
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who built his canoe was aiming at the perfect canoe as triily as Paul was aiming at the perfect man. It is not strange consequently that Jesus said: Ye therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. The ideal pervades all life everywhere and all true activity is forever aiming at the perfect. Jesus would have man do on the highest plane consciously and continu- ously and richly, what he is doing on all lower planes, generally half consciously and intermit- tently and poorly. On the spiritual plane He would have him open to the absolute Ideal.
Further, it is characteristic of ideals that they appeal to all that is in us. They appeal to the intellect no less than to the feelings, and to the will no less than to the intellect. An ideal is a thing at once to be known, to be appreciated, and to be striven for. And what is just as im- portant, they appeal to all sides of us equally and harmoniously. It is a sign indeed of the supremacy of ideals that they thus appeal to \)ur total nature and to all sides alike. If we Were right in saying that the ideal unites within its radiant being the true, the beautiful, and the good, then the foregoing is what we should expect. And herewith is implied the superior character and rank of ideals. We naturally think of the supernal stars when we think of the higher ideals. And rightly; for ideals constitute the supernal heavens of reality, next to the transcendent
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divine Reality itself. And God would have man open eagerly and perfectly to this heaven of ideals. He would produce a symmetrical life, open alike in its clear intellect, its appreciative heart, and its devoted spirit. And through the shining ideals He would have man forever see streaming light and life from the great divine Source.
Thus God would produce a harmonious and complete man, open wide to the heaven of ideals to which he so early and naturally turns, which in itself is as rich and varied as the variety of his human activities, which appeals at once to every essential side of his nature, and which itself is a most pure and supernal realm of Reality through which the divine Light forever streams.
Finally God would create a being open wide to Himself, spirit to infinite Spirit. It is a com- mon experience that in the midst of the solemn grandeur of the mountains, or gazing out over the mysterious vastness of the ocean, or looking up into the glory of the midnight sky, we want to pray. Those who open themselves deeply to nature feel this deeply. What does it mean? It means that we want to open our deepest being to the deepest Reality, want to open our human spirit to the infinite Spirit, to come into immediate communion with God. The same thing is true of all our deepest relations to humanity. Who that opened himself profoundly to the utterance
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of Phillips Brooks's deep nature did not want to go and pray? The same is true when we open ourselves deeply to the world of law and order, or to the world of truth, or to the world of beauty, or to the world of ideals. In the deepest com- munion with God's worlds everywhere we are moved to pray. Even undeveloped men feel the deep stir to a degree. In those sacred mo- ments when we are really face-to-face with God's worlds we want to come face-to-face with God. When we have come into spiritual relationship to His universe, we want to come into spiritual relationship to Him. And we are not satisfied until we thus spiritually touch. We want im- mediate commerce. We want direct communion. Just as we are not satisfied until we come into first-hand relationship with nature. No report about nature will answer. No picture will suffice. We must see with our own eyes and feel direct original contact. Immediate commerce with hu- man life, original relationship with the world of truth or the world of beauty, unmediated communion with any world, is the only thing that will satisfy. Man must go direct to the great sources. His spirit must drink immediately from all the great fountains. Even so he must know God with immediacy of experience and drink for himself direct at the everlasting Foun- tainhead. There is profound suggestion here — if in the soul's deepest experiences with nature
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and humanity and the divine order and the worlds of truth and beauty and ideals, we want to pray. Certain it is that centre feels for Centre, spirit would open to Spirit.
This is the highest and truest stage of human development. When man as spirit opens to God as Spirit there is nothing higher. We can not conceive anything beyond. He is standing on the mountain summit where heaven and earth meet. In such spiritual immediacy the child directly knows and communes with the Father,
Now this is what the deepest religions and the greatest prophets from of old have pointed to- ward. And this is what our profoundest being ever has craved. Man has dreamed of a spiritual mountain-top where the human and the Divine came together. And this dream of direct com- munion he would never let die. It is the dream of dreams. But precisely this it is that is open to the deepest skepticism, both theoretical and practical. Man doubts. It is difficult to believe in the greatest things. It is so hard really to have faith in the highest visions. Let me believe, we say, in nature and humanity and the moral order and truth and beauty and ideals and in indirect communion, but do not bid me believe in direct communion and spiritual immediacy. It is the cry of weakness, but a most natural weakness. The highest and greatest things are always the most exposed to doubt. The mists
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gather most readily about the loftiest mountain summits, not about the ordinary hilltops. The most difficult thing in the world is really to believe in the supreme vision. Nevertheless this is what must be steadfastly affirmed. The pos- sibility of an open and clear sky between the soul and God must be proclaimed to the ends of the earth. Granted that it is difficult really to worship in spirit and truth, to open spirit to Spirit. But when was it ever promised that the supreme thing should be easy? This moreover is what Christ in His great personality exempli- fied, and what He proclaimed for humanity. This also is what Christianity richly attained unto in the Upper Room. And this finally is what God Himself is ever striving to lead mankind up to through all its communions with nature and the divine order and the worlds of truth, beauty, and ideals. God would create a being open wide to Himself, spirit to infinite Spirit.
So God would have man open to all spheres of Reality. If we could set man in thought into all worlds as we see him set into nature, open and receptive to the higher as to the lower, we should see then the first half of what God intends. For He would have a life first of all universally open and receptive. He would have it as receptive to all nature as the lungs to atmosphere, as open to humanity as the babe to its mother, as sensitive to moral law as to physical, as open to truth as
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the eye to light, as receptive to beauty as the heart to love, as hospitable to ideals as the night to stars, and as open and receptive to God as the world to springtime. See a tree open in its roots to the lower earth, in its leaves to the higher atmosphere, and in its whole being to heaven's rains and sunlights : so God would have man wide open to Heaven and earth. The first half then of what God intends is that man shall become universally and perpetually open and receptive.
And this receptivity shall be of so rich and complete a character that man shall become an ever more and more perfect medium and agency of Divinity. God would pour His life not only into but also through humanity. He would have "free course" in our human life. But of this great side of the truth we shall hear more later.
The second half of what God intends is that man shall become a universally and perpetually active centre of life. He shall react toward the Universe. Receptivity is to the end of activity. Man shall respond to all worlds. What has been said as to his rich receptivities in every direction must be duplicated in thought about his activities in all directions. Suffice it that the complete man must be multitudinous in his activities. He must co-work with all nature, work together with humanity, obey universal law, be the apostle of all truth, a worshipper of beauty everywhere,
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an unwearying pursuer of the ideal, and the co-worker with God on every plane.
It is best to think of higher worlds after God's own lower analogue. When the farmer scatters the seed, he co-works with vast and limitless nature. Likewise, when man co-works with higher worlds, he is co-operant as truly with infinite systems of Reality. When you set man into any world, it is as though you set a star against the infinite background of the sky. The humblest child with its little feet stands upon the whole world, and so doing, stands upon the Universe. After this fashion are we to think of man in all his great receptivities and co-operant activities.
This now is what we have come to. God would develop a centre of life, on the one side universally and perpetually receptive, on the other side universally and perpetually active. He would have all worlds pour their life into man, • — ^boundless nature, mothering humanity, cosmic and higher law, universal truth, the realms of beauty, the heaven of ideals, the infinite divine Life itself. And man, for his part. He would have equally rich in his responsive and co-operant activities. In this way justice would be done both to the individual and to the Environment. The vast Environment would have its great story told. And the individual would realise himself by thus being the focus and centre of a myriad receptivities and countervailing activities. Na-
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ture woiild be but the lower ranges of the infinite ascending heights of Reality. All realms from the lowest to the highest of the infinite Environment would report themselves in man. And man for his part would actively receive their reports, and in turn send back a unique account of himself in ten thousand intenser activities of response. Most of all would God have the higher worlds mirrored in man's life, and man thereunto pre- eminently responsive — as a tree is specially responsive to the mothering heavens in spring, and so answers back with the glory of its blossoms. Thus God would have man a citizen of all worlds, but because he is man, most naturally at home in the higher.
It is good to endeavour to see both the simplicity and the vast reach of what we have considered. Man, on the one side, is receptive; on the other side, active. We may draw, with science, the line of the sunbeam to the mirror, and see it thrown back again in the line of reflection. So we may draw ten thousand lines of influence from the physical environment to the life of man and then see him send back his myriad lines of response. In this way all that is true in the new evolutionary teaching, with its strong emphasis on environ- ment, may be freely and gladly recognised. But we must also draw ten-thousand lines of influence from the affectional, the intellectual, and the spiritual environment of humanity to the indi-
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vidual ; and draw myriads of other lines from the vast moral order of the Universe to the life of man ; with unnumbered other lines from the worlds of truth to the circle of his life ; and lines from all the realms of beauty to the human soul; not leaving out the starry sky of ideals that is ever over him and sending down its countless rays of influence, nor forgetting the infinite beams of the God who is Light. And we must see a great and complete man sending back myriad lines of response. Then have we seen the Environ- ment indeed and not merely the lower margins of it. Then have we beheld the great Environment at work. And then only have we proclaimed a doctrine of environment that is adequate. Then also have we seen man in the lofty trunk and tree-top of his being, and not merely in his lower roots. Then have we seen him alive indeed in all the higher ranges of his powers. And then have we set forth a doctrine of freedom that alone is large and fit. See the total Environment, from nature to infinite Spirit, pouring its streams into man, and see a great and complete man send- ing back his fit and majestic response, and then, but not before, have we come to whole views of life. From the lowest reaction of the body to physical stimuli, up to the highest response of the soul to God, is truly a vast range.
Plainly here is a picture that does justice to all that is true in physiology, or in the new evolution-
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ary teaching with its doctrine of environment, or in the new biology or the new psychology. It does justice besides to that great diremption of the Universe into the "ego" and the "non-ego," and to the whole sensory and the whole motor side of man. It finds, moreover, in the sensory- motor system the principle, taken broadly, of all possible human life. For what could connect a life with a lower environment that is forever acting upon it but a sensory system? And what again could connect a life that is forever reacting thereupon but a motor system? We have there- fore in the afferent and the efferent nerves, joined together in the ganglionic centres, the suggestive principle of all human life. All living is a perpetual intaldng and a perpetual outgiving. It may well be that in the higher ranges the tele- graphic wires indeed may be dispensed with, and the wireless messages come through the trackless air. But come they must, and the messages and inspirations must be responded to, or life is not life.
A centre of life, on the one side universally and perpetually receptive, on the other side universally and perpetually active, open in recep- tivity to all worlds, co-operant in activity with all worlds, — ^this then is what God is seeking to produce.
Receptivity and activity, but both of superior order. Everything indeed is the medium of 13
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God. He pours Himself into and through all things. But human-kind He would have as His supreme medium and agency here below. Into man He would pour not only His power but also His truth and wisdom and love and spirit and life. He would have humanity the manifestation point of the divine life and character as the arc- light is the manifestation point of the electricity of the world. Here is receptivity certainly of transcendent order. To be a medium and agency of the divine life and character and activity; to be brooded and inspired by God; to be shone through and spoken through and loved through and wrought through; and to be flowed through by all the streams of natiire that rise in the Foun- tainhead of the infinite Life, is wide-ranging receptivity indeed. But this is man. This is God's idea of man. To have a life universally and perpetually open, with a receptivity so per- fect that it becomes a surpassing medium and agency of Divinity, this is to fulfil God's thought of man. A closed and impervious human life is a monstrosity.
Similarly God would have man's activity of a supreme kind. He would produce a centre of life whose activity was of so high a type and so perfect a character that it could become parent- hood of humanity. In the natural order of life the child becomes parent. The receiver gives. The produced reproduces. The mothered and
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fathered in tiirn fathers or mothers. Rich recep- tivity passes into rich activity; for there is no activity so great and complete as perfect parent- hood. In this most common but most wonderful fact is laid down, I venture to say, the plan and true progression of all human life. Parenthood, not merely physical parenthood, but moral parent- hood and intellectual parenthood and spiritual parenthood as well and chiefly: parenthood, not merely of our private family, but moral and intel- lectual and spiritual parenthood of humanity also and mainly, — ^this is the parenthood that we mean. This is the true idea of parenthood. To be a father or mother in Israel, to be a parent of humanity, to come to the unbounded mother heart, the unlimited father spirit, to be a universal parent, — ^this is what parenthood means. And to develop from full rich childhood to rich complete parenthood of this character is to pass through the divinely intended human progression. Here is activity in its completed stage. Action that stops short of this is an arrested development. Parenthood of humanity — how shall we find terms large enough to match the truth of the idea. Ever3rwhere to father and mother our human- kind ; to be an affectional, an intellectual, and a spiritual parent of every life that comes within our touch, this is the most complex and complete activity that takes place on the earth. To be a parent of the higher life of the world, — there
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is nothing so expansive, nothing so aboundingly active, nothing so unselfish, so overflowing, so creative, so magnificent as this anywhere. In this man shows likest God.
And what is it to pass through this great pro- gression? It is to spring like a bud from the par- ent stock. It is to be mothered into being and into birth. It is to be nourished and cherished and brooded into adulthood. It is then to send off buds from our own being. It is to parent body. It is to mother heart and bring affections to the birth. It is to parent nascent mind and mother it into being and into flower. It is to parent formative spirit and awake it into life and unfold it into splendoiir. And it is to do this on the higher planes for our human kind in general. To develop from perfect receptivity thus into perfect activity; to pass from being endlessly parented into such parenthood without limit, is to unfold through the great human stages of growth.
From childhood to parenthood of humanity, this is the true evolution of man. What takes place in the cottager's home, if he be worthy, sketches already the plan of the ages. And what takes place on the lowest plane typifies what takes place on the highest. Even physical par- enthood symbolises the highest spiritual. Jesus saw His perfect spiritual parenting of the souls of men typified even in the hen that gathered
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her brood under her wings. It is suggestive beyond measure to see the plan of the highest sketched in the lowest. It links the Kingdom of Heaven with the cradle of the home and even with the nest of the bird. The most ideal life that ever has graced the circles of men was but a rich fulfilment of what was already outlined in the humblest life. The deep insight of Socrates did not fail to see that his own parenting of the intellectual and moral and spiritual lives of men was like unto the work of the midwife. It is the divine intention that all the larger, richer, ma- turer life of the world shall forever give itself to the littler, poorer, cruder life. Humanity shall forever parent humanity.
Perfect receptivity and perfect activity ; on the one side perfect and perpetual childhood toward God, on the other side perfect and perpetual parenthood toward humanity; this is the com- plete receptivity and the crowning activity for man that God intends. Hereby man shall forever keep his childhood, receptivity, and humility. Hereby also he shall surely attain unto manhood, full activity, and growing worth. It is a sublime unfolding to become a child of God. It is an immense and glorious evolution to become a rich parent of humanity.
In attaining unto such activity and parent- hood man becomes, under God, a creator. He is co-creator of his human-kind and of his own
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higher being. To be in any sense a creator is great. To be in this way a co-creator, under God, is consummate.
A universally and perpetually receptive centre of life, with receptivity so perfect that it shall become medium and agency of Divinity; a uni- versally and perpetually active centre of life, with activity so complete that it shall become parenthood of humanity and co-creatorship with Deity, — this, as we have seen, is what God is seeking to produce.
And the centre of life that He intends shall be of so rich and complex a character that it shall be a wide-ranging htiman personality, of so high an order that it shall be a child of God, and so a complete man. What is meant by a wide-ranging personality is, of course, a life wide open to all Reality, from nature up to God, developed in all its ranges, from body up to spirit.
A high complex centre of life, a parent of human- ity, a child of God and so a complete man, — this, in fine, is what God would make.
To that end He seeks to develop a self that He may develop a socius; an adult that He may develop a parent; a particular that He may de- velop a universal; an individual that He may develop a person.
Hitherto we have described in general outline
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and in large terms what God would produce. We have sketched man first in relation to the whole kingdom of life ; next in his relation to the World-All as a receiver and to the same as an actor ; then in his relation to God on the one side and to humanity on the other; and finally we glanced at his own central being. Now, however, we must give sharp and specific heed to the order of progression, to the evolution of personality. God does not make a person with one stamp of a die. There is a great double process. He produces a self, an adult, a particular, an individ- ual, first, that He may develop a socius, a parent, a universal, a personality, at last. It is of the utmost importance to know and mark the process. He would produce first a separate centre of life, an individual consciousness, an awareness of selfhood, a potentiality of Will. He would then have such an adult life give itself absolutely to the All, pouring itself forth in new being a,nd life, reproducing and parenting human-kind in the most comprehensive and ceaseless manner, and thereby itself developing into full personality. It is needless to say that the two stages are not, in all respects, as temporally and essentially distinct as is here roundly stated. That said, at once let us re-emphasise and appreciate the two stages. Out from the All, God would gradu- ally separate a little life and unfold it into relative independence and develop it into distinctive
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selfhood. And then again in a higher form He wotdd re- unite that same Hf e to the All in a spiritual union through the perfect consecration of its own free individuality. It is as though the sun flung off from its own fiery being a planet and imparted to it the essential elements and powers that would transform it into an ordered world; and then as though that same world, when it came to itself, bound itself back again through the co-operation of its own power with that of the sun, found its appointed orbit and in glad obedience forever kept it, opened the wide bosom of its continents to the mysterious and mighty call of the sunbeams, and answered back thereto with the miracle of a thousand springtimes as it went singing on its way.
What God does in the human world He does, in a way, in all the biological realms. He makes even the cell develop to a certain point before He has it give part of its being back to the world of life, producing a new cell by fission. The grasses and trees do not flower and bring forth seed on the first morning of their existence. Reproduction is the crowning stage in all animal forms. And the higher we ascend in the scale of life, the more prolonged is the period of child- hood and the more delayed and marked is the evolution of parenthood.
As we have seen, God would develop a self that He may develop a socius, an adult that He
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may develop a parent, a particular that He may develop a universal, an individual that He may develop a person; thereby producing the complete man. It will be noted that through all this runs the idea, first, of the progressive separation of a human life from the parenting World- All, and the development of it into a relatively independent and free spiritual being; then throughout runs the idea of the progressive re-uniting of this free life to the All in a higher spiritual alliance. And only in the second great stage of the making of a man is personality realised. These stages of development we look upon as absolutely essen- tial and fundamental. The child must be born, and must be parented into adulthood. The adult must then unite himself in marriage with his kind, reproduce his own humanity, and parent lesser lives without end. And this before he can repeat in his own life the wide and noble parenthood that gave him being, or at all measure up to the true idea of a human life. What is here sketched in principle, muist of course be lifted up in idea to all the higher planes and there realised in a splendid spiritual personality. Man's everlasting childhood toward God must be achieved, and his ceaseless and comprehensive parenthood to- ward all littler lives must be richly realised. It need hardly be said that the true idea of parent- hood comprehends far more aflectional and intel- lectual and spiritual parenthood than bodily,
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far more the universal parental spirit than the particular physical motherhood and fatherhood. Although even physical parenthood is in no way to be belittled but in every way ideally to be glorified. And it is glorified when it is fulfilled as God intends in the other higher and nobler parenthoods that follow.
Here then is the man that God would make, and here are the stages of the continuous creation whereby He would produce him. In a word, God, the ensphering Universal, would produce a particular which in turn shall become, in its de- gree, an ensphering producing universal; thereby becoming both a child of God and a complete man.
But why is it necessary to go through the two stages? Why is it necessary to develop the self first? Without the individual self there can be no high complex centre of life, no socius, no parent, no human personality. In a being that starts from the zero of unconsciousness, and develops into a conscious life, and then into a richly active part of a Universe, co-acting with a Universe all the time, there must be, in the interior nature and necessary evolution of such a being, the development first of all of an individual self. One has only to follow with faithful insight the course of such a being to see that, in the very fact and idea of a human life, there must be such a development. You must get your world before it can respond with harvests. You must light
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your fire before it can drive your engine. We must come to conscious selfhood, before we can function as conscious selves. The soldiers must be there before they can give themselves in heroic life or death for their country. You must get your scholars before they can devote themselves in humility and singleness to science, like an Agassiz. We must have men and women before we can have fathers and mothers even in the narrow sense, not to speak of such parenthood as we have had in mind. Differentiation into adulthood, individuality first, personality second. For personality is achieved only when the individ- ual self devotes that self to God and man, thereby coming into higher union with the All and thereby attaining unto a kind of universal life. This we shall see must be dwelt upon extensively later.
Here is the everlasting strength and justifica- tion of all individualistic doctrine. And here also is its incompleteness. For the human being must be differentiated into a distinct ego, into an individual consciousness, into a centre of life and will,' — it must come to selfhood, or it is noth- ing. The more of an individual indeed, the more of a possible personality. They are per- fectly right who contend for individualism as for something inestimable. The might and tenac- ity of selfishness itself has a certain deep justifica- tion. If the choice were between individualism and something less and lower, there could not
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be a moment's hesitation. Rightly viewed, indi- vidualism may be said to be even a splendid achievement. It marks a vast advance over that childhood of the race in which human lives were not sufficiently developed to become sharply defined. There was then a nebulous mass, but there were no stars. The choice however is not between individualism and something less and lower, but between individualism and something more and vastly higher. The positive content that individualists contend so sturdily for is indeed a priceless treasure. It is the first grand stage in the making of men. It is as indispensable to a Pauline character as a foundation to a cathe- dral. Without the pronounced ego, there is no splendid personality possible. Here is why God must develop a self, a particular, an individual, first. The tree must be, before it can bloom and be glorified.
It is clear that we must have the differentiated self. But why must we have more? Why is not the individual self sufficient? Here is where the battle royal comes. Many in a manner seem to say that that is sufficient. And untold multi- tudes act as though it were sufficient. But we must have more. Given the individual ego, we have, it is true, a great start ; but in reality the making of a person is only splendidly begun. God must consecrate the individual self before He can make the high complex centre of life
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richly receptive and richly active. He must consecrate the individual self before He can develop the true socius or parent or universal or human personality. He must perfectly con- secrate the individual before He can make a child of God, and so a complete man. The concept of a high complex centre of life is that of a being who consciously, freely, and joyously opens himself to all worlds in receptivity, and who, with the same conscious freedom and joy, opens himself toward all worlds in activity. And such a being can be produced only through perfect consecration. Neither receptivity of this lofty kind, nor activity of this character, can be produced in any other way. Only the perfectly consecrated life can become the perfect medium and agency of God. The life that does not give can not receive. The river of God must have an outlet. Equally manifest is it that a true socius or parent or universal can be produced in no other way. In the structure and nature of the idea, that is implied. An undevoted friend- ship or parenthood is a contradiction in terms. And the universal or personal life is precisely the high achievement or development itself, that results from noble consecration.
Thus if we view God as seeking to produce a high representative of Himself in the world, a child of God, a complete man, we see at once that He can do so in no other way. First He must
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create an individual self, and then He must inspire that free individual joyously to devote himself in noble consecration. And if we pass from in- sight to history, we see again that this is the way God actually does make men. It is the story of all the noble life of the world. It is the process of evolving human personality. But we must go into this fundamental process much farther as we progress.
In conclusion let us answer again the question of this chapter as to what God is seeking to produce, in the words that we set upon its first page. God is seeking to do on the higher human plane what He has done on the lower planes of life, vegetal and animal, only He is seeking a result of far superior type : He is seeking to produce a centre of life, but a centre of high complex order. He is seeking to produce a universally and perpetually receptive centre of life; a being whose receptivity is so perfect that he shall become medium and agency of Divinity. He is seeking to produce a universally and perpetually active centre of life; a being with activity so high that he shall become parent of humanity and co-creator with Deity. He is seeking to produce a centre of high complex life, with nature so varied and com- prehensive that it shall be a wide-ranging human personality; of so high an order that it shall be an expression and child of God. Thus He is seeking to make the complete man. Or, in a
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word, God, the ensphering Universal, would produce a particular which, in turn, shall become, in its degree, an ensphering producing universal ; thereby becoming both a fiill-grown child of God and a complete man.
CHAPTER IX
WHAT MAN IS WORKING TOWARD
IN the preceding chapter we saw in broad surveys what God is working toward. In the present chapter we must see what man is working toward. There we looked at things from the divine side. Here we shall look at things from the human side. We have the same great facts before us of necessity in both cases, for God and man are working toward the same end. Only now we must look indeed more penetratingly into those broad outlines.
What is the true quest of man ? When he comes to himself, what does he work toward? He seeks to develop from self-consciousness into con- sciousness of the All; from self-relationship into relationship to the All ; and from self-service into service of the All. That is, he seeks to develop from a particular into a universal, to attain unto the higher, larger life.
Here, for example, is a normal young life of twenty, standing forth in fine physical proportions. He has come to a rich consciousness of himself. He is aware of himself as a will. He is conscious
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of power. The self is vivid and intimate and endlessly interesting. The ego is in the bright centre of the conscious field. He is supremely conscious of himself. Beyond, are all humanity and the great world and the vast frame of things and the infinite God. But he is less conscious of them. They are present in his instincts and feelings. They are over him and around, it is true, and in him all the time. They are indeed implicated in all his being. But they are not in the focus of interest. He is at that stage when he is supremely aware of the self. With such a young life of promise standing out before us, what shall we say that he is intended in his nature to progress toward? What is the true goal of his development, his true evolution? The true course and goal of his life is progress from self- consciousness to God-consciousness, with all that that implies. He has waked up; he has found himself; he has himself on his hands. His pro- blem now is how to get rid of himself. How shall he lose himself, get rid of his self-conscious- ness, pass beyond it to something higher?
He must turn and deliberately face the great World- All of which he is a part. He must shift the centre of his interest. He must realise the great divine Environment. The World-All, as we have said, has been present in his consciousness to a degree all the time. Without it, without a certain awareness of the not-self, he never could
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have come to such high self-consciousness at all. But now he must pass beyond this to a higher objective consciousness. And it is through his high self-consciousness that he is able to do this, that he is able to advance to a higher objective consciousness that shall become permanent. In childhood, he had a naive objective consciousness, while the subjective was most vague. In youth, he developed a high subjective consciousness, with the objective less prominent. In manhood, he shall advance to the higher objective conscious- ness that shall be permanent, while the subjective shall not indeed disappear, but shall be subli- mated rather and fulfilled, and life shall come to a higher unity. In fine, he must turn and deliberately face the great World- All, as we have said. He must know life's great Backgrounds. He must become adequately aware of the vast divine Environment. In a word, he must know God, And knowing God with a great God- consciousness, he must relate himself richly and freely to God and to all His worlds: thus shift- ing his interest, and becoming God-centred, and entering into a new and higher union with God, into a rich and free spiritual life.
The supreme question for such a young life, as for every normal human life, as he stands face- to-face with God and all His worlds, is: What will he do with himself? Will he devote himself? Will he ally himself with all worlds? Will he
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use himself for God and man? That supreme question includes all others. The answer to it is in principle the answer to all. For this cause was he brought into the world. For this cause was he brought face-to-face with himself. Indeed he was brought face-to-face with himself to the great end that he might be brought face-to- face with God. He was revealed to himself in order that he might become alive to God. A great consciousness of the divine Environment, a great God-consciousness, a great new life with God — ^this is the meaning of his human life. Here worlds of significance may be locked up in a single word. In these high concerns it is not possible for language to utter the boundless truth. For a human being to change his centre, for him to pass from self-consciousness to God- consciousness, and from self-service to self- consecration, is like passing from his egoistic prison-house out into the great and spacious world of life. It is like an eagle, leaving the nest where he got his being and came to himself, and soaring out upon the wide kingdom of the air. It is to turn one's human telescope toward the heavens, to develop from a Ptolymaist into a Copernican, to discover the infinite Universe to which one really belongs. Then he will no longer merely revolve, like a little planet, upon his own private axis, but will discover his true orbit about the central life of God, fling himself
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eagerly out upon it, and determine forever to fulfil himself in light and law and love. No longer then, in the light of this new heavenly- vision, will he seek to make the infinite Universe revolve about himself, but instead will rejoice to know that he has an appointed place therein, will count it his glory to find it, and to enter for- ever upon that shining path of obedience and service.
This is the grand shifting of centres that should take place in every life. This is the great God- consciousness to which every self-consciousness is intended to lead. If every man was once a Ptolymaist, every man should come to be speedily and for all time a Copernican. And the change will prove no less vast in the kingdom of life than it proved in the kingdom of thought. All the true greatnesses were then for the first time discovered, and all true astronomic science of heaven and earth dates therefrom. So will it ever be in a human life. Then alone shall he discover the true magnitude of the spiritual Heavens and his own infinite belongings thereto. And then only shall he truly know both himself and God.
How shall we set forth the magnitude of such a transformation. Its meaning sweeps out to- ward the immensities and the eternities. In it man says his everlasting "Yea" to God and his everlasting "No" to self. It is his great new
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birth into infinite higher worlds. For this the angels above look down expectant. For this the seasons of God wait. Hereunto have all things come. To this end has God made man. And to this end has He brought him into the world, a crown of glory to the whole creation.
Here is man, fresh from the hand of God, magnificent in promise, with prerogative and possibilities almost divine. How fearfully and wonderfully he is made! God has created him in His own image. He has "rounded him to a separate self." He has given him an eye that looks out into the limitless spaces of light, a mind whose "thoughts wander through eternity," an imagination that soars toward the infinite Ideal, a heart that is forever restless until it rests in God. This is man in the promise and programme of his being, in the glorious morning of youth. What will his fulfilment be? What will it be to realise himself in God? What will the transformation from selfishness into spirituality be like? Jesus called it a new birth of the Spirit. And it would seem that no name for it ever has been given among men so expressive and so fit. As though in Jesus' thought all life shaped and grew toward that spiritual natal day. As though all creation waited for the revealing of this son of God. Or as though, when his slumbering nature was touched from above, and the awaking of the soul took place, and life became alive to God, as
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though man had a new and higher birth and opened his eyes upon another and infinite spiritual king- dom of ReaHty. And what could be more expres- sive of the truth ? Then for the first time he really entered upon life. Then for the first time God be- came very God to him. Then for the first time he really discovered the infinite divine Environ- ment to which he belonged. Before, he was like Plato's cave-dweller, living in his narrow house, , receiving only fragmentary beams from a mysteri- ous Universe of light. Now, he has come forth into the great world, and his eyes are greeted by the boundless spaces of light, and he stands amazed, but at home, under an infinite Sky.
Although we have seen all this in the rich colour of beauty, it is Reality that we have been looking at. The sun is no less a real sun because it is glorious. The earth does not have to be wrapped in drabs and greys in order to be real. The real world rather is not seen until it is trans- figured in light. And the real heavens are shut out by Veiling mists, unless their glory is seen. We do not see the diamond at all until we see it burning in splendoiir. Both the diamond and its beauty are hidden, in perfect darkness or when covered by thick dust. And the great- est and highest things especially are not truly seen unless they are seen in their majesty.
Therefore we do well to strive to behold the sublime magnitude of the transformation in man
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and his life-world, when his soul really sees the heavenly vision. And we ought to expect some- thing as great and magnificent and amazing, certainly, in God's transcendent spiritual King- dom as He is showing to the wondering eyes of His children every day in His starry skies. In- deed eternity is set only in the soul of things, and infinity is properly a word of Spirit, while perfection has its being only in God. The supreme things are found nowhere but in the spiritual realm.
Progress then of the true and normal life is from self-consciousness, self-relationship, and self- service into consciousness, relationship, and service of God; from a partictilar into a universal; from an ensphered particular into an ensphering pro- ducing universal, — that is, from childhood into parenthood; from narrow, meagre, temporal life into broad, rich, eternal life, — ^that is, from indi- vidualism into personality; and from a child of the animal kingdom into a child of the spiritual Kingdom, — that is, into a child of God, so into a complete man.
It will be realised that the soul and meaning of all this is an unfolding from individualism into personality. But why is it so necessary to ad- vance beyond individualism? Why must there be self-sacrifice? Why must the self be tran- scended ? Now we are to close with individualism in earnest.
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First and most fundamental, each human life is a part of the World- All and forever will remain such. It is part of a family, of humanity, earth, solar system, Universe. It was born of parents, so never was independent. It sprang as a bud out of humanity, hence always was a part thereof. It was gathered together out of terrestrial elements and every time it opens its mouth for food or air, shows that it is still a part of the earth. It was quickened by the heat of the sun, as the egg is brooded by the mother hen, and every time it opens its eyes to the light, it proves that it is still a part of the sun, which is both the light of its vision and the power by which it opens its eyes. And whenever it looks up and sees the sky arch over it, it is reminded that it is part of the Universe. This is the first and most fundamental fact of our human existence, the basis and condition of all true philosophising about life. We are a part of the great World- All, inextricably implicated therewith, woven like a thread into the infinite fabric. This absolute conditioning fact is, to be sure, implied in all our living and instinctively taken for granted all the time, but it is rarely considered deeply. Few stop to take it in. Few have pondered it deliberately. Yet beyond question it is the foundation of all that ever will be abidingly established touching the philosophy of our human life and its potentialities.
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If a part, then connected and bound. If part of a family, then bound by all the laws of family. If part of humanity, then connected and bound by the natural laws of our common humanity. If part of earth and solar system and Universe, then bound by all terrestrial and solar and cosmic law. If part of higher worlds, if part of an affec- tional, an intellectual, and a spiritual realm; if heart of the universal Heart, mind of the in- finite Mind, and spirit of the eternal Spirit, then endlessly connected and bound. In what number- less ways and with what various enfolding spheres each life is connected, we endeavoured elaborately to set forth in the beginning of our task. We strove to realise the vast total Environment into which a human life is set. And we laboured to appreciate how complexly and subtly every life is bound up with that manifold Totality. Its connection is bewildering in its extent. It is the centre of legionary influence.
If a part of a mighty Whole, the focus of powers innumerable, then it must act accordingly; it must live in harmony with the great Whole. It must obey and serve. It must accord with Heaven and earth. It must live in true alliance with all the spheres that enfold it. It must be the expression of universal law, the utterance and agency of God. It must obey physical law, or it dies. It must obey the laws of the mind, or it goes mad. It must obey moral and spiritual
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law, or it becomes imbecile or worse. It must obey the laws of action, or atrophy falls on all the powers. And higher laws must be obeyed as absolutely as lower. Nothing is so exacting as Heaven. The laws of spirit can no more be disregarded than the laws of light. Truth can no more be trifled with than the law of gravity. Love itself is law, and there is even a "law of liberty." And the Kingdom of Heaven can never come unless a Will is done.
No sphere of Reality can be set at nought. We can not flout nature or humanity or truth or beauty or ideals or Spirit. As well might the earth flout the sun or a star the heavens. As well might the lungs flout the atmosphere or the eye flout light. No fact- world can be ignored. Every realm of Reality with which we are con- nected must be seriously taken into account. We can no more disregard the sun than disregard the earth, and no more disregard the Universe than the sun. We are part of every sphere, therefore we can ignore none.
It would seem as though science had taught this lesson once for all, but she has not. It would seem as though, with her majestic emphasis upon law and her revelation that every mote of matter is intimately connected with the most distant nooks of the universe and with the most ancient processes of the past, as though she had adequately impressed the mind of man with the
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truth that no fact-world can be ignored. Yet mul- titudes live in the main as though that were not true, and not a few deliberately. Specially with higher Worlds do they seem to think they can play fast-and-loose. Men that would not trifle with gravitation, trifle with the majesty of truth. Men that would not play with fire, lightly dally with lust. Women that would purchase beauty of complexion at any price, are quite indifferent to the supreme beauty of holiness. People that send for a physician the instant their bodies fall sick, will not hearken and open even to a Saviour who stands knocking at the door of their sick souls. Yes; many who would not disregard an east wind, practically act as though they could ignore the whole spiritual Universe and as though it mattered little whether they took even the infinite God into account at all. Neverthe- less, no fact-world can be ignored. Is Truth a mighty fact? Is Beauty a boundless fact? Is the Ideal a supreme fact? Is Spirit a tran- scendent fact? Is God the awful and infinite Reality of realities? Then they can not be unre- garded without loss incalculable. It not only will be, it is now ill for those who virtually ignore. It is not and never can be well. Eternal disre- gard, if such there be, of supreme and infinite Realities means, and must ever mean, endless loss. We can not close our eyes without shutting out a universe of light. Nor can we shut Heaven
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out of oior lives without shutting our lives out of Heaven.
Now all pure selfishness, all consistent individ- ualism, when analysed to its bottom, is seen to do precisely what we have been thinking of. It attempts to set at naught the great kingdoms and their august demands. Individualism, when consistent, is strictly self-centred. It is occu- pied with its own ego. It ignores ever37thing outside of its own circle. When it ceases to do this, it ceases to be strictly individualistic. Nay ; it does more. It not only sets all others at naught, but also seeks to subordinate humanity and all things beside to its own aggrandisement. It would turn heaven and earth, man and God, into its servant and slave. It never can succeed. The mills of the Universe will grind it to powder first. This is why the self must be sacrificed, the individualistic ego overcome, the particular raised up into the universal. This is the only true thing to do with the self. It must not act as though it were not a part. It must not attempt to unhook its innumerable fastenings. It must not try to set at naught the Universe. And it must not undertake to subordinate the universe and God to its own ego. Rather it must live, as a part ever must, in the mutuality and har- mony of law.
The withering interrogation to put to all selfish- ness is this: Are you a part? If so, then you
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are endlessly connected; if so, then endlessly bound in the mutuality of law and service.
If selfishness stopped once and listened to its own heart-beat, or noted intelligently its breath of life, or sent one thoughtful memory back to its mother, or pondered for one moment the two hemispheres of sex, or once looked down with seeing eyes at the earth, or up with unblinded vision into the sky, never more could it be so insufferably stupid. Or if but once it stopped and asked itself, "Whence this truth that now turns my inner darkness into light ? " or, " Whence this beauty that fascinates and feeds?" or, * ' Whence this ideal that beckons and prophesies ? ' ' or, "Whence this inspiration that thrills and elevates?" — ^if it stopped to ask even one of these questions truly, it would realise that the end of selfishness is the beginning of the life of wisdom. The basic and fatal fault with selfishness is that it is false. It is partial, and when erected into a course of life, simply untrue to fact. It ignores the mighty Whole of which it is part. And when observed closely it is discovered to be self-con- tradictory as well. It says by its attitude: "I am, and beside me there is no other of worth. " And at the same time it seeks to subordinate all other persons and things to its own private ends. In the same act, it both denies and affirms. It says: "You are naught to me"; and at the same time, "You are somewhat for my private
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gain. " Therein also it shows that its objective relationship is perverted. It can not be totally unregardful of the not-self, yet it regards it only as means. Thereby once more it becomes false.
It will be realised that we have used selfishness and individualism as practically synonymous terms — ^and with substantial justice. For individualism is emphasis on what is particular, distinctive, unique, individualistic, private, partial. And selfishness is simply that emphasis erected into the sole course and law of life. Individualism, without its greater complement, and its great corrective, altruism, is unavoidably selfishness. And individualism, thus enlarged and fulfilled, is no longer pure individualism. Individualism as a stage of development is absolutely indispen- sable. As a finality it is arrested development, and becomes, in a cosmos of mutualities and reciprocities, a monstrosity.
It is with pure and consistent individualism as it would be with a player in some great orches- tra who, in the midst of the symphony, wilfully struck out for himself, utterly disregardful of all the other players and parts; nay more, who de- liberately strove to subordinate the whole orches- tra and theme and leader to his own private pipe or harp. Or it is with individualism as it would be with a soldier of a great army, who, in the day of battle, disloyally broke from the ranks and set up a little conflict on his own
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account, totally ignoring the great army and plan of campaign; yes, who even attempted to sub- ordinate the whole army and plan and com- mandery to his own private whim. Or it is with individualism as it would be with a planet that arbitrarily broke away from some mighty solar system and struck out on its own independ- ent track through the uncharted spaces, utterly scornful of its true orbit and of all cosmic restraint ; yes, that even proposed to set itself up as a new centre, to stop the heavens in their course, and to constrain the Milky- Way and all things besides to circle like a troop of satellites around its own little ball. The only result would be that in the news of the Universe next morning it would be chronicled that "last night another fool-comet went out in flame and sowed itself as star-dust athwart the heavens."
Let us resume the argument in this warfare. Every human being is a part of a mighty whole. Therefore he is endlessly connected. Conse- quently he is immeasurably obligated to a life of mutuality and reciprocity. Hence he may not ignore any fact-world. Much less may he try to subordinate the great World- All to his own ego. But it is precisely this that individualism tries to do. Therefore it becomes selfishness, and, like all selfishness, in its double attitude self- contradictory and finally abnormal.
Our life is not only a part but also a minor
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and dependent part. It is not necessary surely that we should enlarge here, important as these two truths are. If human life could tie Orion to its belt or had the MUky-Way as the tail of its kite; if it held some major place among magni- tudes, it might essay some egoistic role. Or if we were not dependent upon Heaven for life and breath and growth and all things, again we might attempt some proud and self-centred programme. But as well might a whale forsake the ocean, with the proud purpose of independence and dominion. We are minor and dependent with all that those terms import. True we are most significant minors and glorious even in our de- pendence. At the same time, no individualistic, no arbitrary and egoistic life is becoming to such as we are. Therefore once more the self must die to live.
Moreover, in relation to God, we are created beings and lower in dignity than Deity. If we were simply the creatures of our own parents and of nothing more ultimate, we should still feel the bonds of creaturehood. We should not ignore the life that begat or that which bore. Or if we were the creations of the earth or of the sun or of the molar masses in general, and nothing more, we should still feel the bonds of our crea- tureship. For that which knows at all must know truth and fact. Much more if we are the creations of God shall we feel the deep ties of creature-
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hood. Human-kind has never been able to look up toward God and deeply realise the divine Creatorship without responding in those filial acts that the race has beautifully named piety. We feel our creaturehood and we know its impli- cates. When the horizon is limited so that the vision is mostly that of humanity, the response naturally is piety toward parents and ancestor- worship. When the horizon is still limited so that the vision is mainly that of physical spheres, the response of our creatureship is for the most part the worship of nature. But when the ho- rizon has broadened so that the vision becomes that of the divine Creator, the response of the creature rises into filial piety toward God the Father. The creature acknowledges the Creator in every article of his creaturehood. The Universe is broad, but there is no room in it for selfishness. There is room only for devotion and co-opera- tion. There is no place whatever for individual- istic selfishness in either a life or a cosmos that God alone has created and made. And this is what every true and healthy mind instinctively feels. And this is what all selfishness virtually acknowledges in that it instinctively hides itself from the light.
And when we add to creaturehood the fact that, in the order and rank of Reality, our place is not that of Deity, we gain a new weapon against egoism. We are created at least a "'little lower
IS
226 God and Man
than God." Rather we are oppressed by the sense of disparateness than by the sense of likeness. The immemorial struggle of saints and prophets has been to bring God near. Now what is the only true attitude of the lower in the presence of the higher, of the human in the presence of the Divine? It is reverence, worship, adoration, service. Whenever and wherever excellence is revealed to consciousness, or holiness is disclosed to human eyes, or God shows His glory to man, there is only one normal and true attitude. The soul that does not bow in the presence of the Higher and begin the sacred quest and devote itself in high service and joy, is an impossible soul. If Moses does not take the sandals off his feet in the presence of the Burning Bush, he is not worthy of that or of any other high vision. Face- to-face with God, there is but one attitude. All high things must be hallowed. The inalienable right of law, the natural authority of truth, the divine sovereignty of beauty, the inherent impera- tive of the ideal, the eternal dominion of the Divine, this must be felt and owned by every normal and worthy life. If there is any life that remains unmoved in the presence of excel- lence or glory or Divinity, there is nothing to say to it. It is sealed with the mark of death. For what else is there for a soul that owns any kinship with nobility to do in the presence of the true, the beautiful, and the good, but to
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claim them for its eternal sphere and home, and become their consecrated disciple and apostle forever? "The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him." "Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of Thy majesty." "Not -unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory for ever and ever!" What other meet and right attitude for a soul is there but to be bowed and solemnised into worship? But how absolutely all egoism or selfish individualism is shut out of true wor- ship! "God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth, for such doth the Father seek to be His worshippers. " Into the unity and purity of Spirit, worship must rise. Out of separateness into oneness, out of the par- ticular into the universal, true worship must mount. But this means the overcoming of self, the consecration and exaltation of individualism into unity of spirit with God. Therefore again the self must die to live.
Up to this point we have realised that our human life is a part, therefore must live in har- mony with the Whole; that it is a minor part, hence must heed the law of the major ; that it is a dependent part, consequently must not forget the hand that feeds it ; that it is a created part, so must remember its creaturehood ; and that it is lower than God and accordingly must own and claim its true life of reverence and service. From
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every side individualism and particularism as a law of life is excluded. There is not room for it in the Universe. The self must die to live, or it lives only to die.
This when we look at the relation of life to the All, But when we turn our eyes and look at the life itself, a whole new series of considerations come into view. Every human life as such is a particular and a universal, a less and a greater, a lower and a higher, an actual and an ideal, a temporal and an eternal, in one and the same circle of being.
Life is a particular and a universal. Every leaf, for instance, is a particular and a universal, made up of the special nature of the leaf and the general nature of the World- All. Every plant or fruit, every insect or animal, is a double thing, made up of the special nature of the plant, frmt, insect, or animal, and the general nature of the All. In like manner every human life is a particu- lar and a universal, made up of the unique indi- viduality of the particular life and the general natiire of all the spheres. It coiild not be other- wise, if all the spheres have contributed to the production of each living thing and are represented in its structure and being. Every life is in a sense a miniature; the macrocosm reports itself in the microcosm. Therefore every life is a uni- versal. No two lives, moreover, are alike. Hence
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each is a particular. Even though two human beings had absolutely like constitution, they would not be alike. Every consciousness is in its nature distinctive and unique. No human con- sciousness, accordingly, as long as it remains conscious, can ever lose its individuality. For consciousness as such is this particular conscious- ness ; it is not this and that. And no life can lose its universality any more than its individuality, for it is and continues the representative and to a degree the locus of the All. Now when such an organism functions, it must function according to the being that it is. It must act out its double nature. It must live both as a particular and as a universal. In all its receptivities and activi- ties it must act perpetually as this individual ego, and at the same time it must be the medium and agency of the universal spheres. Nothing human may be foreign to it, nothing cosmic, nothing Divine. It must function in responsive receptivity and co-operative activity with all worlds. Yet life must be a unity. There must be one central principle. There can not be two sovereign centres. Either the particular must be held within the dominion of the universal, or the universal must be subordinated to the particular. Which now shall it be? If the particular is not subordinated to the universal, then the law of all possible organic life is violated. If the particular is not subordinated, the idea
230 God and Man
of a common humanity is unattainable. If the particular is not subordinated, there can be no such thing as a true cosmic system, nor can the idea of a Universe itself be carried through ; for a Universe is the realisation of unity in and through manifold variety. Indeed the idea even of a sole and sovereign Divinity becomes then un- thinkable. But if, on the other hand, the universal is subordinated to the particular, pandemonium itself is let loose. Therefore the particular must find its true place in subordination. Then all high things become possible' — organic life, a common humanity, cosmic law, a unitary system, the idea of monotheism itself.
For these reasons the particular must be subordinated to the universal. But when it is realised that the universal is no merely external thing, but is a part of the life itself, the reason for subordination becomes at once more plain and its appeal more intimate and personal. If the universal is also within us and is the deeper and more constitutive element of our being, then of course the particular must be subordinated. As long as the universal is felt to be an external thing only, and our life as the particular merely that is to be sacrificed to it, the appeal is dista nt and cold. Sacrifice of the self to an outside law or principle or power or Deity always has seemed unnatural and painfully hard. And it has seemed like total loss. But when all this is changed;
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when the outer law becomes the inner law of our being, and the principle and power become the deeper side of our life, and the transcendent Deity becomes also the immanent God, then self-sacrifice too becomes a different thing. It becomes dying to live, sacrifice of the super- ficial to the deeper self, subordination of the particular to the universal side of our being. Then however difficult self-sacrifice may still remain, it is of course the thing that must be. Because we must realise our deeper self.
And when we consider that the universal within us represents pre-eminently the life of God in the soul of man, a deeper cogency is added. But why conclude that the universal is the locus of God's presence? and why pre-eminently so? Earth and sky and humanity are represented in the universal side of man's being. Truth and beauty and ideals are represented there. Is God alone absent ? It would be nearer the truth to say that He alone is present. For what are all other presences but manifestations of Him? It comes to this: Is God verily God? Does He really carry on the divine business of Godhead? Is He a living God indeed to our thought ? The moment we make serious work with the idea of God and carry the concept through, we see that He must be represented and present in every life, or He is in no sense the living God. And He must be pre-eminently present in the deeper
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universal side of man's life. He is not absent from the particiilar. But it is precisely the par- ticular, the individual, that He has constituted our distinctive humanity. Thereof we may say with most truth: This is I and not God. But the distinction, though profound, is not absolute. In the universal however He must be pre-emi- nently present, for therein man is one with all Reality. If this is true, if the universal thus represents the life of God in the soul of man, then the particular must know its place. It must discover its true life and fulfil itself in per- fect devotion. Life has become sacred. Divin- ity is interior to the soul. Consecration is the only thing fitting. The particular self must be sacrificed.
After the foregoing it seems natural to say that every life is also a less and a greater, a lower and a higher. This is true in general, but specially true of human life. That which the leaf has in common with the tree is greater than that which differentiates it. Consequently it lives in subordination and harmony. And that which the tree has in common with nature is greater than that which differentiates it. Therefore it lives in harmonious subordination. That again which the animal has in common with the World- All is greater than that which differen- tiates it. Hence it lives in fitting harmony. The same is true of man. That which each of
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us has in common with the All is greater than that which differentiates each. Therefore he should live in subordination and harmony. The less should serve the greater.
No one can look long into the depths of life without seeing that there are greater things than appear on its surface. The mysterious greatness of life becomes more and more im- pressive to deepening insight. The territories back of the frontiers, the depths of human tragedy and suffering, the heights of triumph and joy, the dim and darkening regions beyond the horizon, tell of life's unmeasured great- ness. Now and then we turn a sharp corner and catch glimpses of vast areas that generally lie hidden. At times elemental fires burst up through from abysmal depths beneath, or strange lights shoot up above the horizon in life's distant sky, or again we hear the waves from the mighty ocean break upon our shores, or feel its silent tides flow into our bays "too full for sound." Life indeed is a great continent of mystery, embosomed in vast mysterious oceans, and en- shrouded by an infinite mysterious sky. Once in a while a great poet and seer arises to tell of life's depths and greatness and to sing of the mystery of man. Then the imagination of a people is kindled and all men feel anew the great mysterious background. In truth, human life must have a certain infinite quality about it.
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Otherwise it is difficult to see how it could arrive at the thought of the infinite, or hold the idea of the perfect, or feel after the infinite God, or be capable of eternal life and of endless devel- opment. Such vast conception, such boundless yearning, such unconfined destiny do not comport with an absolutely limited being. That which only infinite Divinity can satisfy must itself have a certain infinite quality about it. Now this infinite quality, this larger background, this major side of life, is not the individualistic element. It is the stake that humanity has in us. It is the common ground of nature. It is the common field of truth and beauty and ideals. It is the universal life of God. The individual, the differ- entiating element, never constituted the greater side of any life. The differentiae are never the major element of an3rthing. It is with life as it is with a true picture, the foreground is never greater than the background. The individual then is the minor. As minor, it must devote itself. The less must give itself to the greater. The foreground must set itself against the back- ground and find its true place and life there. The finite must consecrate itself to the infinite in life. Once more the individual self must die to live.
Our many-sided life as we have noted is also a lower and a higher. If that be true of course the lower must serve the higher. Wherever the
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lower touches the higher, in any orderly system, or living organism, or rational field, or spiritual kingdom, the lower always must serve. The body must obey the mind. The lower ranges of the mind must obey the higher moral and spiritual ranges. The nobler always must give the law. And if it be true that the highest within us re- presents the presence of God in the soul, then our spiritual nature is clothed with superior sovereignty indeed. But however stupendous this fact, nothing less can be true. God above all must be present.
We do not sufficiently take in and deeply in- terpret the momentous fact that all worlds are represented in our life. Sun, moon, and stars are represented. The mighty cosmic system has set up its kingdom within. The realms of truth have their seat there. All beauty is mir- rored in our life. And the supernal ideals have their special place there. Is the omnipresent God alone absent ? We do not make serious work with our idea of God. Scientifically, nothing is more sure than that earth and sky and all the subtler kingdoms are represented in life. How then is this fact to be interpreted? Is God there, or not? Are the bodies of things present and is the Soul of them absent? Are the spheres only spheres? Is He who pervades and informs all, absent from the forms? Are not they all forms of His presence? Shall all worlds, shall
/
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the Universe, be present in man's life and God alone be absent? On the contrary are not man and worlds, rather, taken up and held within that infinite Life, in whom all things consist? This is the only interpretation for one who makes serious work with the idea of God. All others play with the idea. They have no living God in their thoughts. All laws, all powers, all forms finally are His presence. All voices are His voices in the end. If it be a most certain fact that all spheres are represented in man, much more is God represented, or God is not God.
It is a most irradiating and wholesome thing for us, in this manner, to take account of our- selves. What is this mysterious universal side of our life anyway? Is it only so much earth- crust, and solidified sunlight and systematised law, etc. ? Or is it the presence of the Divine in reality? the presence of the absolute Universal back of all, "of whom, through whom, and unto whom, are all things, and we unto Him. " We are, it is true, earth of earth, vapour of vapour, atmosphere of atmosphere, light of light, ether of ether, law of law, truth of truth, beauty of beauty, ideal of ideal, and life of life; but back of all and through all, we are spirit of infinite Spirit. We are children of God. Therefore the background of life is divine. God is present in our humanity. He has not shut Himself out of His own temple. The higher side of life then
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is the "Holy of Holies"; the lower, the "holy place " that exists for and finds its meaning in the higher. Accordingly the lower must give itself — ^and be glorified. So again we must die to live.
Study of the other aspects of life will empha- sise the same result, for we are an actual and an ideal, a temporal and an eternal, in one and the same life. Our actual life is evident. We are clearly aware of it. It is all too apt to seem our real life. Our ideal life is hidden. We believe in it. But it is apt to seem vague. Nevertheless the actual is not the deepest, it is not our truest life. It is not the truest life of anyone, not even of the most complete saint. For him, every to-morrow has a deeper, richer thing to show. But if the life be, not the choice soul, but the common unconsecrated life of the individualistic stage, the actual is far from the true. If we are not living in the depths, in the profound universal side of our being, life is far indeed from the true. The true life is always the deepest, most perfect thing of which our being is capable. It is never wholly attained. The actual therefore is a perpetual falling short, even in the consecrated life that has related the surface to the depths. The actual therefore must receive the law, not give it. The true law-giver is the ideal, the universal, the prophetic.
Take what stage of development you will.
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Take the selfish, egoistic stage of the unconse- crated life, or the devoted stage of the consecrated life, the law of subordination holds. The actual Paul must be subordinated to the ideal Paul, just as certainly as the actual Saul. The Prodigal, returned and at home, must sacrifice the actual to the ideal, just as truly as the Prodigal in the far country. The most perfect to-day must be sacrificed to the more perfect to-morrow. If the law holds on the higher plane, it certainly holds on the lower. Certainly the selfish egoistic life must be subordinated. Always the actual must be sacrificed to the ideal. And if the ideal is not only something outside and above but also some- thing inside and deep within us, if in reality it is our profoundest, truest self, then sacrifice of the actual to the ideal becomes an intimate and insistent afTair. Nothing could be more vital and personal. Then too self-sacrifice loses, in the deepest sense, its repellent character. The pain still remains, but it becomes the pangs of the higher birth. And when we consider that our to-day at its best is no more than the sketch of the pictiire that is to be, when we remind our- selves that our noblest attainment is but a very far-off approach to our own ideal and to the finished picture as it hangs in the gallery of God's mind, we realise anew that the actual must be sacrificedto the ideal. Only so can the costly glories of the higher life come. Once more we must die to live.
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Finally life is both a temporal and an eternal. If this meant simply that life is divided into two epochs, the temporal life that we are living here and the eternal life that we enter upon beyond, it still would remain true that the temporal must be subordinated to the eternal. The moment must give way to the cycle. When however we come to a juster, richer conception of the eternal, when we conceive of it, not merely as an adden- dum to the present without reference or relation to the here-and-now, but rather as the deeper, truer side of our present life, the reason for self-sacrifice becomes greatly enriched. The eter- nal is brought out of the far-off other world down into the circle of the present. It becomes the serious concern, not only of the future life, but also of the life that now is. For it is seen to be the significant, unfathomable side of the present, the ocean underneath the waves that are borne upon its surface. But when a yet truer view of the eternal is attained, when it is seen to come closer home still, seen not merely as the deeper side, related to life as depth to surface, but even as the pervasive animating soul and significant content of every present moment, self-sacrifice becomes almost an axiom of normal living. Manifestly the temporal must be subordinated to the eternal if the "now" deeply understood is seen to be such a significant thing, if it is both a temporal and an eternal in
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one. If that be true, no man may say: "As for my part, I choose the present moment, and reck not the eternal life. ' ' For what is the pre- sent moment that he chooses ? It is a temporal- eternal in one. So that if he knows what he is choosing, if he really chooses the present moment, the true present, he chooses the eternal life in the present. Just as the wave, if it deeply chose itself, would choose the ocean too. For eternity is in the present moment and the present moment is a wave on the ocean of eternity. Whosoever therefore triily chooses the present and lives therein, lives also the life eternal here and now. The temporal still must be subordi- nated, the law of sacrifice still holds. But how different it is, how changed! Now eternity is set in the heart of man, and all the present has become rich with its unfathomable meaning.
It has resulted that each time we have studied a new aspect of life, our thought has followed a similar path. The superficial each time has deepened into the profound. Life, we said, is a particular and a universal, a less and a greater, a lower and a higher, an actual and an ideal, a temporal and an eternal, in one and the same circle of being. But as we have drawn nearer and come to a more intimate and interior view, we have seen the universal become the constitutive element of the particular; the greater, the back- ground of the less; the higher, the life and law
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of the lower; the ideal, the deeper being and spirit of the actual; and the eternal, the infinite meaning and soul of the temporal. Accordingly we have seen, in a nearer and more vital way, why the particular, the less, the lower, the actual, the temporal, must be subordinated; why the egoistic self must be sacrificed. But we have seen also the law of self-sacrifice become an immeasurably deeper and different thing. It has not lost the character and pain of sacrifice, but it has become a law of life. We die to live.
If now to all this we could add, that the only way really to save these individualistic elements of life is to consecrate them, the only way to eternalise them is to sacrifice them, a fitting and happy climax would be given. And this is the certain and impressive fact. As the only way to save a seed is to plant it, and the only way to save strength is to use it, and the only way to save love is to give it away, and the only way to save our youth is to devote it and pass the finer soul of it on into manhood, so the only way to save the self is to consecrate it. If the partic- ular, or less, or lower, or actual, or temporal, side of our life undertakes to set up for itself and be somewhat on its own account and tries to live for itself, it is overtaken at last with self-defeat and ends in utter loss. As a wasted youth, a hardened heart, a narrowed soul, a shrunken and isolated individuality, that all men shun, 16
2 42 God and Man
and at the last a sorrowftil and embittered old age forever bear witness. On the contrary, no devoted, usefiil life is ever lost. The patriot whose grave we strew with flowers, the philan- thropist whose memory we perpetuate with our monument, the martyr for a great cause whose blood becomes the seed of reform, dies with shining face, and all men sing his worth and are thankful. The way to eternalise the self is to sacrifice it. "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. "
Another series of considerations meets us as soon as we view life not as static but as active — which is the only final and real way of viewing it. Because we are centres of life, receptive and active, and developing beings, unfinished in creation, and ideally children of God.
We are centres of life, receptive and active. Now no selfish life can be richly receptive. Sel- fishness in its nature is unopenness. It can not sympathise; it can not love; it can not forget and lose itself. So it can not open itself wide to any world. It can not be richly receptive to nature, or truth, or beauty, or ideals, to human- ity or to God. Men instinctively turn aw^ay and will not give themselves to the selfish life. Nature can not give itself to the unappreciative soul. Truth and beauty and ideals can give themselves
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abundantly only to the life that loves. And God can not pour Himself into the selfish heart. The essential incapacity of selfishness to receive is a startling and sobering fact. And it is espe- cially true touching all the finer worlds. The more spiritual and precious the realm of Reality is, the more incapable is the selfish life of com- muning with and sharing it. Yet it is commonly taken for granted by blind selfishness that at any rate it can receive without limit. Few things, however, are farther from the truth. Its heart is dead, its soul is closed.
Nor can any selfish life be richly active. It is ungenerous in its nature. Its doors do not swing easily open. It lacks motive. The deep impulse of the forth-pouring life is wanting. It is narrow also in its interests. The broad fields of kindness, the realms of love, the many valleys of sympathy, the wide areas of helpfulness, the worlds of sacri- fice, it is shut out from. It seeks them not. It has no desire to pour itself out, and has nothing to pour. Its activity toward all the great king- doms of light and sweetness and grace and nobility is paral3^sed. It is like a many-mouthed fountain frozen at its heart. It is appalling how meagre the activity of a hard and selfish heart can become. It is shut out from every great and generous world, and lives a withering life in an ever- narrowing shell. And even though it attempted to pour itself forth, neither God nor man would
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receive it. Men will not hear its words nor wel- come its deeds. They will accept counsel only from sympathetic lips and be saved only by self-sacrificing love. And God will not hear its prayers. The Pharisee must ever stand and pray "thus with himself.'' And what have the great worlds of truth and beauty and ideals to do with a petty and self-centred life? Their nature is broad and general as the sky and finer than light. They resist the non-kindred and coarse approaches of egoism. And though egoism had the fulness of the ocean it could not pour itself forth. It lacks the objective attitude. Only the life that is deeply interested in the great higher worlds and that can forget itself and give itself with perfect abandon, can pour itself out in full rich action. But this is the antithesis of the selfish life. In the nature of things, therefore, all rich receptivity and rich activity are impos- sible to the selfish soul.
If this be true, a curse rests upon selfishness on both the great sides of life ; for every living being, every centre of life, has two great sides, recep- tivity and activity. Incapacity to receive and incapacity to give must mean ever-deepening poverty. The "mighty famine" inevitably must arise in every land whither selfishness takes its unblest way. Involved in all this, of course, is the fact that this double incapacity means the inhibition of growth. For the life that does
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not richly receive and richly give can not de- velop. But this is so evident that, important as it is, with a passing word it may be left to the imagination.
Moreover man, in his wonderful being and unlimited possibilities of development, is the most unfinished of all the works of God. The creative Hands are still upon him. He is in the initial stage. But selfishness in its very nature hinders God's continuously creative action. It is as though a marvellous statue, when little more than outlined, resisted, and took itself out from under the creative hands of the sculptor.
The natural culmination of this group of thoughts is that man is ideally a child of God. But plainly that high goal must be forever for- bidden and denied the persistently selfish life.
Thus the blight and curse of selfishness falls everywhere on life. All rich receptivity is made impossible; all rich activity; and hence all rich development. The continuous creative work of God is hindered; and so the attainment of life's great goal in perfect childhood to God, inhib- ited forever. Of all the follies and sins of man, selfishness is the most comprehensive and consummate.
After this extended and critical analysis, in which we have seen from many points of view why the egoistic self must be overcome, let us
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turn to the idea of the human life as such. The concept itself of a full human life will be found, I think, upon examination to imply transcended egoism. No one means by a human being a merely individualistic self. No one means a life that has not worthily used its strength, nor devoted its affections, nor consecrated its thought and its spirit. A self-centred creature that never matched his strength against the world's work, or devoted his affections to the great objects, or measured his mind against the universe, or exercised his soul toward the Divine, is not what we mean by man. Had Brutus been such, Shakespeare never would have put upon the lips of Antony the words :
" His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world 'This was a man!' "
The full concept of a human being always means, for ouf thought, a life that richly has come to itself, then poured itself out toward all worlds in rich activity and devoted service. One who has gifts but never has used them worthily, has failed, we say, to "make a man of himself." The representative man is the devoted man. If this be true, then instinctively we have gathered together in our concept itself of a human life the same developments that our searching analy- sis brought to light. And instinctively, in thought ,
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a selfish being is as unsatisfactory as he is prac- tically in life.
Last of all, if appeal is made to consciousness and experience, down deep in our being we know well that the egoistic self must be sacrificed, that we must die to live. If we have any doubt about the matter, our friends have not. Nothing is more absurdly patent to them. Every man instantly ' can place the key in his neighbour's hand.
Herewith we complete our examination into many of the deep unchanging reasons why the self must be sacrificed, why we must develop from self -consciousness, self-relationship, and self- service, into consciousness, relationship^ and ser- vice of God, from an individual self into a univer- sal self. The reasons have gone as deep as the foundations and laws of life and growth. They have had about them something of the magni- tude of the great spheres with which life is bound up. We have realised that we are parts of the All, and forever will remain such; that we are minor, dependent, and created parts; and that we are lower in dignity than Divinity. Conse- quently the particular, egoistic self must be subordinated. Otherwise we disregard the total truth and fact of things and the inherent qual- ity and sovereignty of the Divine. And we set ourselves against the Universe and the Universe
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against us. This we realised when we studied the relation of a life to the All, and noted the essential attitude of selfishness. But when we turned and looked at human life itself, and saw that it is always a double thing, a particular and an individual, a less and a greater, a lower and a higher, an actual and an ideal, a temporal and an eternal, in one and the same circle of being, the conclusion was confirmed. Whoever stays long enough with the terms to comprehend them, feels that the first series must be subordi- nated to the second. When again we studied life in its real nature, and viewed it as a living process, not as a static whole to be analysed, but as a living being forever changing and developing, we saw how antithetic selfishness is to the very processes of life and growth. Because to live is to receive ; to live is to act ; to live is to renew life and grow. To live is to be perpetually and progressively created, and to unfold without end toward the higher childhood to God. But the selfish life can neither richly receive, nor give, nor grow. And it thwarts God's creative activity upon it, and arrests its own ascent. It shuts itself out from all the great worlds and lives a perpetually narrowing life. Of all the fatuities and sins of our human kind, selfishness is the deepest, most inclusive, most persistent, most egregious. The battle against it is life's great conflict; self-conquest is life's great triumph;
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and the attainment of the higher humility Hfe's last glory. We must indeed die to live, but then we live indeed.
If now we have won our conclusion, if we have dug down to the Rock of the deeper self, we may raise again the question of our chapter: What is man in the world for? What is he working toward? What is he seeking to become? And again we may answer that he is seeking to pro- gress from self-consciousness, relationship, and service into consciousness, relationship, and ser- vice of God ; from a particular into a universal ; from an ensphered particular, or child, into an ensphering, producing universal, or parent; from narrow, meagre, temporal life, or individuality, into broad, rich, eternal life, or personality; and from a child of the animal Idngdom into a child of the spiritual kingdom, — ^that is into a child of God, and so into a complete man. He is seeking to attain the higher life. His deep quest, even through all his bewildered struggle, is for the truer, larger self. He dies to live the larger life.
A natural question here arises, and with its answer we may close the chapter. If thus loss is gain, if losing is finding, why does it still seem like sacrifice? and why is it still so diffi- cult ? Because it is sacrifice, genuine sacrifice ; of the individual self to the All, of the particular to the universal, of the intimate little to the
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remote large, of the vivid to the vague self, of the warm and living present to the seeming- cold and distant future, and of the primordial lower to the subsequent higher. It never will appear, in the first instance, anything but sacri- fice. The higher birth will always be in pain. It will represent to the end the costly glories of the Higher Life.
CHAPTER X god's process: or god's movement manward
LET us run back over the road by which we have come. We saw the vast World-All as it enfolds the life of man with its many spheres. We saw the wide-ranging and corresponding gamut of our human powers. We saw the World- All at work, or the priority and parent- hood and greater working of God. We strove to see why man is not more conscious of the divine working. We saw man at work. We inquired what God is working toward. And we saw what man is working toward, or what he is seeking to become.
We now wish to see how God proceeds, how He comes to humanity, the way He develops the complete man.
God develops man by a great process of Self- revelation, by a vast and perpetual coming to man.
The forth-going of God, the coming of God
to man, is the first and fundamental condition of
air hope and progress. It is most essential to
realise this. And it is profoundly and abidingly
251
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helpM. God must come to man in creative activity, creating his higher Hfe as He created his lower. Man could not create the one; he can not create the other. And he is an unfinished creation. As God went forth and created man's body and lower life and laid in the depths of his being a germinal nature capable of higher things, so He must continue to go forth and create man's higher life. Whatever man himself may do to achieve, he can do nothing at bottom to create. What he does is indeed great, but what God does is primal. He is as helpless in his higher being without the prior and parenting God as he is in his lower without the anteced- ent Universe. The vernal sun must precede the flowers of every spring. How absolutely our higher nature waits upon God, as Spring waits upon the sun, we do not begin to appreciate. Next to the fact that God and man exist, is the supreme condition of the priority of God. Things must begin at the primal Source. Unless God acts, unless He goes forth toward man, nothing is possible. Nature flows from Him. Life streams from Him. He is the absolute pre-condition. Unless He moves manward in continuous crea- tive activity there is no possible efflorescence for man.
The way God forever flows forth in continuous creative process is not duly contemplated. For if He perpetually proceeds, if He is the fountain-
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head of all the universal streams, and if without Him nothing comes into being or maintains existence for an instant, then that He should go forth toward the higher life of man, would seem indeed most natural and not strange; and that without such procession no higher life would be possible, would seem indeed impressively cer- tain. He must come to man as a parent to a child. Unless He were forever coming all man's aspiration and toil would be vain. He could no more attain unto a developed mind than unto a developed body.
How all things wait upon God and how per- fectly and absolutely He is their pre-condition, how He is the originating activity of all being and becoming, of all earth's birth and growth, we little regard because of the very magnitude and depth of the truth. If God moves, then all things are possible. If God is God indeed, if He undertakes for man, then "exceeding great and precious promises" are in no way absurd. Here is the first postulate of the Kingdom of Heaven. Here is the secret of life. Here also is the key of failure. Humanity's great failure is not on the surface but in the depths. It is failure to believe in a living God. The true vision of God lingers and the divine Fatherhood is emptied of content, therefore the human childhood is feeble and poor. "If God is for us, who is against us?" But if He be not a living God, if He be
2 54 God and Man
not the infinite quickening Background of whom and through whom- are all things, if He be not as active as fire, as vivifying as light, as creative as spirit, then unrelieved despair falls like a shadow athwart the fields of life. From such night and despair we turn quickly away.
If, on the contrary, as is true, God is the "infi- nite and eternal Energy from whom all things proceed," if He is the everlasting God, the Al- mighty, the "Creator of the ends of the earth, who fainteth not, neither is weary," if He is the universal enfolding Life in whom we all "live and move and have our being," then "all things are possible to him that believeth."
And if He is God indeed. He must be so after His own magnitudes. He must act after an infinite sort. He must move in ways majestical. Our expectancy, therefore, should be great. We should anticipate something worthy of God. We should look for a divine Self-revelation, a movement of God toward man, paralleling in the realm of Spirit His vast Self-expression in nature. That is, we should be prepared for a revelation of the divine Background, His infinite and eternal Divinity; we should be prepared for the coming of God to man in the sufficiency of a divine Incar- nation; we should be prepared for a perfect communication of Himself in the final and un- changing procession of the Spirit, For some such surpassing fulness of His coming, we should
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wait expectant, if God is God indeed in the realms of Spirit as He is in the fields of space.
The Divine then must go forth creating and to create, or God is not God. If the story of the higher life told of the priority of the human, then of course man would have become God. True Godhood must create. God must come, therefore, in perpetual creative process to the unfinished life of man.
Not only so, but He must provide as well a higher spiritual Environment for man's higher life. As God has uttered Himself, as He has externalised Himself, as He has gone forth in a vast physical environment corresponding to man's body, so we should expect Him to go forth in a vast spiritual Environment corresponding to man's soul. God does not create things within the inner circle of divine Spirit. They would not be things. They would be pure Spirit as He is. Creation is through externalisation. God creates and develops things through a vast divine procession, through a vast externalisation, through an infinite Environment, lower and higher. With- out an environment, no living, growing thing. Without a great affectional, mental, spiritual Environment, no developing, maturing, human spirit. The indispensable, the absolute necessity of a great higher Environment, forever mothering the higher life of man, must profoundly impress all modem minds. Some such conception, some
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such reality, as the Kingdom of Heaven is the first postiilate of all truly human life. Conse- quently, according to God's own forth-going creative process, and according to the deep needs of the unfinished human spirit. He must provide a great higher Environment for man.
And He must go forth delivering man from the overwhelming dominion of the lower environ- ment. The lower gravitations are too puissant. Nothing but new celestial gravitations, mightier than they, proceeding perpetually from a great higher Environment, could equal the task. How man ever could sever himself from the clay and "work out the beast" without a positive King- dom of Heaven, in which almighty God was forever coming to his higher nature, is past comprehension.
God must go forth too and precede with kindred life the kind of life He would develop. If He would develop the human heart, He must sur- round it with a world of affection. If He would develop the human mind. He must surround it with a world of thought. If He would develop the spirit of man, He must brood it with a world of spirit. Throughout the wide biological realms everywhere life mothers life. It is not different in the finer kingdom of the soul. In the ultimate view God Himself is man's great Environment. The brooding life of God forever enfolds his human life. Love begetting love. Mind quickening
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mind, and Spirit brooding spirit. Everywhere He precedes with kindred Hfe the kind of hfe He would develop. "We love because He first loved us."
Finally God must go forth and own and legiti- mate our boundless human aspiration. For what would all man's struggle boot if the heavens were brass and the stars in their courses fought against his ideals? He must know that the background of Reality is kindred and kind. He must know that his aspiration fits into the divine Life as the lily fits into the sunlight. He must know that his deep prayer, his high resolve, his immemorial struggle for the right, his unwearying quest of the "beauty of holiness," is heaven-suggested and heaven-sent. Back of all he must know that "every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, " and that he lives his high life by the inspiration of almighty God. Otherwise virtue is the most homeless thing in all a hostile Universe.
God accordingly must come to man, forever creating our higher life as He creates our lower, forever providing a higher Environment as He provides a lower, effectually delivering man from the overwhelming dominion of the lower, every- where preceding with kindred life the kind of life He would develop, and owning and legiti- mating our boundless human aspiration.
May we now hope that this foreword has been
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adequate? May we conclude that a just sense of the inherent and absolute necessity of the perpetual coming of God to man has been gained ? a realisation of the primal fact that unless He were forever coming, no aspiration ever would spring, or prayer rise, or grace grow? If so, we now may ask. How has God come? and how does He thereby develop man?
He has come first of all in the way in which humanity needs Him. We need before all else to feel that everything has its source in God and proceeds from Him, to know that the background of the Universe is divine. Accordingly, God has revealed Himself as the God of nature and of humanity, as the ground of all being and be- coming. He has revealed Himself as the seat of all law, the spring of all truth, the fountain of all beauty, the source of all ideals. He has made Himself known as the Love back of love, the Thought back of thought, the Will back of will, and the Spirit back of spirit. He has manifested Himself as the infinite and eternal Ground of universal existence, by whom stars shine and kings rule, by whom planets move and nations rise, by whom the most ancient heavens are and are strong and the seasons come and go and the race renews its youth and life advances in a divine progression and all things move toward cosmic beauty. In a word. He has revealed Himself as the illimitable Sea and Source of all being and
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process, into whose infinite Life all worlds are set as the stars are set into the sky. This is God's primal Self-revelation.
If it is necessary, first of all, to realise the infinite divine Background, to feel Divinity everywhere' — Divinit}^ in nature and Divinity in life, Divinity in law and Divinity in truth, Divinity in beauty and Divinity in ideals, — and if, before all else, God has revealed Himself as the divine ground of all being and process, we need next to realise that He has come yet closer in an ineffable divine Incarnation.
Though we see God as the Divinity that hedges everything, still the vision is vague. Though we see Him pervading all and enfolding all like an ether, yet His presence is like some fine essence diffused. We can not grat,p Him. We can not hold Him. It is like grasping the atmosphere or holding communion with the sky. If He would gather Himself up like some mighty sun, if He would manifest Himself in some glorious incar- nation, as concrete and definite as the star of Bethlehem, then we could see Him and know Him. This is what God has done. Out of vagueness into definiteness, out of the universal into the particular, He has come. The divine electricity has gathered itself up in a manifesta- tion point of light. And this is what humanity needs. It is true we need a divine background as universal as nature, but we need also a divine
26o God and Man
foreground as definite as a human parent. We need a great ideal, fathomless Personality set alongside our human life, who shall be to us through all the years what our parents have been, but vastly more. Until then our great higher Environment is incomplete. So God must come near. He must come into our humanity in the fulness of incarnate Divinity. He must come as Son of God and son of man. When we can see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and when, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we can be changed into the same image from glory unto glory, then we are no longer "infants crying in the night," no longer "infants crying for the light. " God has come near then indeed, and the "Day Star" may arise in our hearts. "Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord," And he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father. This is God's richer coming to man, His richer self-revelation, the humanising of God, His perfect incarnation. God has come as incarnate Divinity.
If we could feel the divine Background every- where, then apprehend the incarnate Divinity, the nearer approach of the Divine to the human, and then finally receive the divine Spirit of it all, the circle would be complete and our human need would be filled to the full. For indeed nothing
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is richly received until its spirit is received. Hence we must receive the spirit of art, we must receive the spirit of beauty, we must receive the spirit of truth, or the deep being and soul of them, is not won. For this unchanging reason every deep thing seeks at last to impart its spirit. A great poem, a great philosophy, a great picture, a great symphony, a great life, every form and realm of Reality, seeks to open its heart and pour forth its spirit. It is so with religion. It is so with God. He would reveal His very self. He would pour forth His essential life He would come at last as divine Spirit to spirit. This is the fullest coming of God to man. For when Spirit to spirit speaks, the perfect has come. At last divine Spirit — for every deepest reason. Spirit is final. It is the highest possible concept. We can not think of an3rthing beyond. It is the ultimate and absolute for our thought. God is Spirit. We are spirit in possibility, tending toward spirit in actuality, tending toward the realisation of ourselves in spiritual personality. Spirit is the richest of our human terms. Spirit is back of all, the creative essence, the inclusive principle of ever3rthing. To live in a rich con- sciousness of God as Spirit, to live by perpetual divine inspiration, to unfold and unfold toward a fine and great spiritual personality, is a most magnificent growth and goal. Is an3/thing richer than life in the secret and soul of things? Is
262 God and Man
anything more exalted than elevation into the spiritual unity and atmosphere of things? Is anything more glorious than to be a spirit? It is the free supernal life of the sons of God. How free it is ! how strong ! how pure ! One pene- trates through the outer folds of things and enters the inner soul. One dwells where life is fluid and free, where spirit is creative, consti- tuting forms. One is taken into the secret of life, where thought rises and love begins and will springs, where inspiration enters, and the genius of man and the Spirit of God come to- gether in the freedom and power of new creation. This is life. Here is what the poet is seeking when he pierces through the bodies of things and lives in their essence and soul. Here is what the artist is seeking when he penetrates through the forms and dwells in the deep secret and spirit of art. Here is what the philosopher is seeking when he looks back of and beyond all appearance and abides in the heart and soul of Reality. And here is what all deep lives are seeking in every kingdom of thought and action. Here too is what the awakened soul is seeking. It asks, for all life and for life as a whole, what in other ways we ask for a part of life. It demands that all life shall be lived in the Spirit. It strives to realise its true self as spirit and to dwell per- petually in the atmosphere and divine environ- ment of Spirit. It seeks in fine a great, free,
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holy, and creative life in perfect and joyous alliance with God. May we not then say that, for reasons as deep as the divine Life and the deeps of the soul, God finally and consummately reveals Himself to man in the procession of the Spirit ?
But if the dispensation of the Spirit is thus final and consummate, why the Incarnation? Without the Incarnation there could be no rich communication or rich reception of the Spirit. Nature can impart something of her spirit even in winter. But when she has uttered herself in the multitudinous forms and processes of spring and summer, she can impart her spirit in thousand-fold ampler way. A great life can communicate something of its spirit even through a photograph. But when like Luther it lives in community of life with a people, and reveals itself in great words and utters itself in greater deeds, it can communicate its spirit to that people with thousand-fold augmentation. Even so God can impart His spirit to a degree through the silent words of stars and worlds. But the Pente- cost of His spirit will not come until He has revealed Himself in the rm.searchable riches of His incarnate Son.
We may find this great truth everywhere. Charles Darwin can impart his new spirit to the world of science only through a long and faithful life of persistent and patient expression. Na-
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poleon must utter himself in appalling battles, in astounding designs, and in bewildering achieve- ments, before he can imbue a nation with his spirit and array a continent in arms. Dante must become the "voice often silent centuries" and incarnate himself in the most serious of world-poems before he can pour forth his spirit into many generations. Beethoven must em- body his spirit in immortal symphonies before he can pour it into the soul of the world. Michael Angelo must reveal his inner life in great pictures, and utter it in many marbles, before he can give his spirit to the world of art. Every true mother strives to impart her spirit to her growing boy. But how? She seeks by love, by deed, by word, by living her life, by self-revelation through incarnation, to pervade with her deeper spirit his unfolding life. A great university would imbue the troops of youth who press yearly through her gates. They have caught already something of her spirit before they came. They receive something more through the first look and touch and breath. But the depth and fulness thereof can not yet be given. She must speak first with many voices and shine through many men; she must reveal her ideals in expand- ing vision and tell anew the tradition of her generations; she must repeat indeed her long history and relive her life before the mind and imagination of this her new generation of children.
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before she can give to them the secret and deep spirit of her Hfe. It is not different in other realms. The New World can impart its new spirit to the immigrant only slowly and through most varied and prolonged self-manifestation. And on a larger scale the Occident can give its progressive spirit to the Orient only by first showing forth its world-masteries, its boundless wealths, its amazing sciences and great literatures, and its impressive and convincing achievements. In short, neither nature nor art, neither a nation nor an individual, neither a civilisation nor an institution can richly pour forth its spirit except through a rich self -manifest ion. Spirit every- where waits upon expression. It is so in religion. It is so with the Holy Spirit. And even when the supreme Incarnation has come, Christ stands face-to-face with His first disciples, unable as yet to pour forth the depths of His spirit. He first must reveal and reveal Himself in words and deeds; He must show forth and in a way repeat His Incarnation before their heart and understanding and imagination, ere He can permeate and fill them with His Spirit divine. At the last Pentecost ; but first the Incarnation. God reveals Himself in light and Life before He reveals Himself in Spirit.
We now have contemplated the Self-revelation of God, the coming of God to man in three-fold
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form: divine Background, incarnate Divinity, divine Spirit. It is illuminating to note that, in a somewhat similar way, essentially, a great human personality reveals itself. Take Bis- marck for instance. No one can draw near to modern Germany without feeling his great life. He pervades the nation like a subtle presence. Vaguely at least we feel him everywhere. So much we gather at once from the atmosphere we breathe. But let the national history be read and the unique biography be studied; let his masterful personality and his changing times pass before our thoughtful imagination, and how different the impression. Now the vague becomes vivid and full. The dominating personality stands out clear and strong. The mind is impressed a thousand-fold with its reality and power. Now also the presence and might of his re-moulding spirit are felt and profoundly realised.
In like manner essentially a great civilisation reveals itself. Look at the Greek civilisation. Western Europe in the Middle Ages felt its in- fluence at least vaguely everywhere. It was hidden in the roots of its life. It was present in the phrases of its speech. It was in the forms of its thought. It was in the ideals of its imagi- nation. It was in the instinctive movement of its spirit toward freedom. Dimly at any rate its pervasive presence was felt through the cen- turies. But when the sublime creations of its
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literature were made known; when the perfect forms of its art were re-discovered; when the transcendent constructions of its philosophy were realised; when the greatness and finish of its personalities were appreciated; and when the freedom and originality and abundance of its total life were consciously perceived, what a change followed! It was like a new birth. It was the Renaissance of the nations. Then too the rich spirit of its literature and the graceful spirit of its art and the deep spirit of its philosophy and the free spirit of its life could be poured forth and received in unwonted measure.
This three-fold self-revelation is no chance and vagrant happening. Rather it is in the deep and essential nature of life. At the present time it may be seen on a stupendous scale in the Awakening of China. That great quiescent Em- pire vaguely has felt the presence of the Western World. It has been troubled by its irresistible power. Though it only dimly apprehended it, it dreaded it. But when a vast revelation of the civilisations of half a World shall have taken place, and when China, like Japan, shall have drunk deeply of the new spirit of the Occident, what a change will follow. There will be an awakening unparalleled likely in the annals of nations, a renaissance of the oldest, most populous, and most unchanging of human societies, the coming of a New China.
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How similar all this is to the revelation of God. First He is felt as a vague Presence pervading everything ; and though dimly apprehended, often He is dreaded. Then a vast Self -revelation takes place. The peoples that sit in darkness see a great Light. The Light of the world dawns. The Incarnation comes. And then the passing of the external form of the Incarnation, and the pouring out of the deep life and Spirit of it, the coming of the Spirit of truth, the final and com- plete coming of God to man.
Can any of these revelations be dispensed with? Would the Self-manifestation of God be complete if either of them were lacking? The necessary answer has been more than suggested. To leave out the first would be like leaving out the Ground of the world. The most indispensable of all revelations is that of the divine Background of the Universe, the primal and all-inclusive fact that in God we live and move and have our being, as Paul standing, not in the streets of Jerusalem, but in the Areopagus of Athens, declared. To leave out the second would be like leaving the sun out of our heavens and walk- ing by the dim light of the stars. To leave out the third would be to leave out the deepest secret and soul and dynamic of life. Could the Renais- sance take place without the rising of the sun of
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Greek civilisation? And could the spirit thereof be imparted without that illumination? Can the awakening of China take place without the revelation of our modem civilisation? And can the new spirit be given without that revelation?
The indispensability of the first is manifest. The incompleteness of life and of the great Envi- ronment, without the divine Background, needs not further emphasis.
It is good however to see more comprehensively and penetratingly how deeply essential is the second. God can fully reveal Himself only through Incarnation. Expression is through ex- ternalisation. Revelation is through creation. In the nature of things the highest Self-revelation must be through the highest form of creation. So God can more perfectly reveal Himself only through Incarnation. This history richly con- firms. The Incarnation of Christ has revealed the divine in and back of everything as nothing else has ever revealed it. The divine Background has become incomparably more real.
Moreover the Divine can not adequately come to the human except through Incarnation. Lower forms of Reality are too poor to express the wealth of the divine life. But in His incarnate Son God can come to man in inexhaustible richness.
Through the Incarnation also the Divine comes out of the vague into the definite, out of
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the universal into the particular; it gathers itself up in a manifestation point of light. It defines itself to the human mind.
Through the Incarnation too God draws inti- mately near. He becomes Immanuel. He is no longer far away. His immanence becomes a living reality to human consciousness.
Through the Incarnation besides God shows us the Divine and the human brought together, the ideal realised, the perfect life attained.
Through the Incarnation, furthermore, God sets alongside of each developing life a great inexhaustible personality.
Finally , through the Incarnation God can reveal Himself in the supreme way as Spirit and impart Himself richly as Spirit. In and through all this God provides a great higher Environment — a thing as necessary to the higher life of man as the lower environment is to his body. As the rising of the sun brings the infinite universe into vitalising touch with the earth and into efficacy, providing a boundless environment of light and warmth, wherein and whereby a great kingdom of life alone is made possible upon the earth, so the Incarnation brings the infinite God into effective touch with man, creating an illimitable higher Environment of light and life, wherein man's higher life is naturally at home and whereby it is endlessly unfolded toward perfection.
The Incarnation makes the divine Background
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revelation incomparably more rich and real. It makes also the divine Spirit revelation in its fulness possible. And in itself it is a revelation and a magnitude, comparable to the other two magnitudes, a greatness worthy of the great God. Is it possible that such a magnitude can be super- fluous? Can such a Foreground to the great World-Picture be dispensed with?
Or are we right in conceiving the Incarnation as such a magnitude? God has made the divine Background revelation an illimitable magnitude. He has made the divine Spirit revelation such a magnitude. Are we not to expect that He will make the Incarnation also a like magnitude? It is the infinite God who is revealing Himself in each case. Will not each revelation therefore be after the greatness of God and so have the infinite quality about it?
Moreover every sphere that surrounds our human life has the same boundless character, the same infinite quality. Nature has it; law has it ; truth has it ; beauty has it ; the ideal has it. What would life do without vast nature and illimitable law and infinite truth and inexhaustible beauty and the unlimited ideal? Though God has made each Reality -sphere touch our humanity with the definiteness of the hand of gravity or the touch of the sunbeam, yet He has made each sphere open out beyond us with the vastness of
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the sky. He has combined the two, definite touch and ilHmitable magnitude, in every great sphere. If this is the character that God has given to all these Reality -spheres that enfold us, what character may we expect Him to give to the highest life-spheres? Shall they alone lack the illimitable quality ? or shall any one of them ? Shall man's body even move about in greater worlds than man's spirit? Shall the lowest environment be given a greatness that is denied the highest? No; rather all alike shall be given the boundless character. As all these great spheres of Reality have the illimitable quality — nature, law, truth, beauty, ideals — so the supreme Life-spheres, the ineffable Self-revelations of God — divine Background, incarnate Divinity, and divine Spirit — shall have it likewise. If God has set man into boundless worlds everywhere else, will He set him into diminutive spheres in religion? The human mind can not abide a cabined world. It cannot endure a narrowed and limited truth, nor an exhaustible beauty, nor a finite ideal. Much less can it endure a limited supreme Environment. What were a bounded divine Background? or a limited Christ? or a finite Spirit? It were a narrow world unworthy of the infinite God, unadorable to man, and withal fruitless. As every other great Reality -sphere has the illimitable qualit}^ so it would appear has the Incarnation. Otherwise it could not satisfy
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our human mind in its demand for the Infinite, nor meet our human Hfe-need.
And, in the last analysis, what is it that gives to all these great spheres their boundless character ? It is God. It is His illimitable life pouring per- petually through them. Consequently it is not strange that they should have a kind of infinite quality about them. This is pre-eminently true of the highest realms. Through them God pours His infinite life most abundantly. Through them He would create an infinite divine Environment for man's higher life. Through them He Himself would become man's infinite Environment. But He can not pour His boundless life through them, and through them become man's infinite Environ- ment, without imparting to them an illimitable character. Therefore the incarnate Divinity also must be a revelation and a magnitude, comparable to the other magnitudes, the divine Background and the divine Spirit. Is it possible that such a magnitude can be either theoretically or prac- tically superfluous? Who that deeply knows the greatness of the revelation in Christ could dispense with it without a sense of infinite loss? The "Light of the World," the luminous Fore- ground of the divine World-Picture would be gone.
Can God's final Self -revelation be dispensed with? His infinite coming in the fulness of the Spirit? It is enough to know that no deep thing
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is fully revealed until it reveals itself as spirit, and that no illuminated life can rest content until it enters into the heart and secret and soul of Reality. Unless God comes as divine Spirit, God in His fulness has not come, Man in every Sacred City of life, and in every Upper Room of Art or Truth or Beauty or Religion, waits with upturned face for the Spirit's Pentecost.
If it is impossible on the one hand for the mind to dispense with either divine revelation without infinite loss, is it possible on the other hand for it to add anything thereto, even in thought? Can we conceive of anything additional that will make the revelation more complete? One finds it instructive and valuable to make the attempt. One finds first that nothing could be more funda- mental or needful than the divine Background; second, that nothing could be more ideal-real than the divine Incarnation; third, that nothing could be higher and more perfect than divine Spirit. Together, they make up the complete revelation of the Divine to the human. It is impossible we think for the mind to add thereto, as it were, a fourth dimension.
This is the threefold Self-revelation of God, omitting either form of which, the mind feels a sense of grave incompleteness and unspeakable loss, and to the totality of which it is unable to add a fourth, even in thought, making it more complete.
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Is it possible now to indicate with any degree of definiteness wherein these three forms differ from one another and wherein they are alike? Let us try.
The divine Background is the primal Self- revelation of God. It is a revelation through externalisation, through creation, in nature and humanity — or in the cosmos. It is the revelation of God as Source, as Creator, as Father — not of course in the fulness of fatherhood. It is the revelation of God as the universal, or as the unitary principle of Reality. And it is the revela- tion of God as Spirit — vaguely and meagrely, it is true, still really as Spirit.
The divine Incarnation also is a Self-revelation of God through creation. It is indeed the cul- mination of revelation through creation, or the perfect Incarnation. God externalises Himself in every form of nature and of humanity. But here is the culminating form of creation, God's supreme externalisation. So here is the richest revelation possible through a created form. The incarnate Divinity is the revelation of God as light, truth, reason, life. It is the revelation of God as a particular in the supreme form, and as the principle of individuation. It is the revela- tion of God as perfect union of the universal and the particular, as the ideal realised, the perfect life attained. Finally, it is the richer revelation of God as Spirit, — not Spirit in its final and
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complete fulness, and still no longer the vague and general divine Background.
The divine Spirit is the Self-revelation of God through nature, humanity, and the Incarnation, — through the totality of creation, or through the total externalisation of God. It is the perfect Spirit of God pouring through His perfect crea- tion— not a revelation through a new creation. It is the higher Universal. There is a lower unity of the Spirit, and there is a higher unity of the Spirit. The lower unity has not been enriched by the Incarnation. The higher unity includes the Incarnation, includes the particular, and rises above it into a higher inclusive unity. The higher Universal includes the particular and transcends it. The divine Spirit is the final and complete Self-revelation of God. It is complete because it includes the preceding moments, divine Back- ground, and incarnate Divinity. It is the revela- tion of God as God, as Absolute Spirit.
We have here what we may call the Spiral of the Spirit. From the earth it rises circling through a sea of light, mounting up and losing itself in the mysterious radiance of the Heavens, completing itself in one majestic perfect circuit. From the divine Ground of the first revelation, up through the sea of light of the Incarnation, to the high Heavens of the life of God, the complete revela- tion of the divine as Spirit, it ascends. The Spiral of the Spirit is Spirit in the beginning,
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middle, and end. The divine Ground is Spirit, though opaque. The Incarnation is Spirit, re- vealed in a transparent atmosphere of light. The divine Spirit is Spirit revealed in the fulness of its nature, God in His glory. The Spiral of the Spirit includes all the forms of the manifestation. Though the highest form transcends the others, it includes them; as maturity, though it tran- scends childhood and youth, yet includes them. The Spiral of the Spirit, as it ascends, passes round in its course into opposition to itself at its beginning, and then rising higher it returns upon itself again when the circuit is complete at the summit. The Incarnation is the side in opposition, when the Spiral of the Spirit stands over against itself, facing its own beginning and its close. It is Spirit in its completest objecti- fication. Spirit in its most perfect externalisation, where perfect Personality stands over against perfect Personality. But the Incarnation is in- cluded therein and the circuit is one Spiral of the Spirit throughout.
Our figure is not perfect, to be sure, and must not be pressed unduly. Still within limits it may represent the threefold Self -manifestation of God. The second stage is not reached without the first, nor the third without the first and second. And the second, when it comes, rises above and in- cludes the first; and the third rises above and includes the first and second. Here again our
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figure is faithful to the Reality. The Incarna- tion does not come until after the divine Back- ground revelation, nor the divine Spirit till after the Incarnation. And the Incarnation, when it comes, rises above and includes the primal revela- tion, revealing and enriching its meaning; and the divine Spirit rises above and includes them both, revealing and enlarging the meaning of each. For the divine Fatherhood means vastly more since Christ has come, and both it and the Incarnation mean more since the Spirit was given.
And although these three modes of Self -mani- festation were historical and epochal in their appearance, none of them ever really has passed away. The outward form of the Incarnation has passed, the reality abides. Essentially they all abide. They co-exist, and together they make up now the threefold and perfect Self-revelation of God to man. The divine Background abides and is the constant field against which the incar- nate Divinity is set, giving to it fathomless mean- ing. The Incarnation abides and makes the divine Background for us ever more and more luminous, large, and deep. And the divine Background and the Incarnation together are still the revelations through which the Spirit is poured forth, while the outpouring Spirit in turn for ever makes both the divine Background and the Incarnation shine with deeper truth.
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This is the way God reveals Himself and comes to man.
Looking at it now from the human side, what shall we say? It is a revelation and a coming in accordance with our nature. It accords with us as instinctive, as intellectual, and as spiritual beings. Of course here there can be no abso- lute delimitations. The lines can not be drawn with nicety. For our instinctive nature suffuses the intellect and the spirit ; and these in turn are implicated with our instinctive being.
Naturally the divine Background revelation appeals first of all to our instincts and feelings, our faiths and intuitions. It is the elementary revelation of the spiritual unity of the World-All. It comes to us accordingly with its appeal to the primal unity of our nature. This does not mean, to be sure, that it makes no approach whatever to the intellect and the spirit. Its primary appeal however is not to them. It must be remembered that the intellect may be even largely developed, yet be unaccustomed to sustained thought God- ward. It does not follow, therefore, that because the intellect of a nation or of an individual is well developed, necessarily it must be correspondingly occupied with things divine. It is deplorably true that even yet, when the higher revelations long since have come, the intellect is little used upon the high- est things, and few people love God with the mind.
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The Incarnation is the great revelation and coming of the Divine to the intellect of man. It is an appeal to the heart and spirit too, but pre- eminently it is God's coming to the mind. It is the Divine gathering itself up in a manifestation- point, the Divine coming near. But this is lan- guage importing appeal to the intellect. The Incarnation is the coming of the Universal and Divine into the particular. The Divine particu- larises itself in stars and worlds, in trees and flowers, in all the forms of nature. Now wher- ever there is particularisation there is a resting- point for the mind. The mind does not easily think about a diffused fire-mist. It does think easily about concreted worlds. Differentiation is thought's opportunity. Objects appeal to sub- jects. Therefore when the Divine humanises itself and comes to man in personal form, it is pre-eminently an approach to his conscious intellect.
The Incarnation also is the union of the true Universal with the perfect particular. The per- fect particular is human personality at its summit. The true Universal is Divinity itself and not a semblance thereof. The perfect Incarnation is the perfect union of the two. In such a life one will see the pronounced and perfect individual, but it will be the mirror in which one will see also the perfect Universal, the Divine. As in the perfect picture, one will see the true and
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definite whole with characteristic individuality, but will see also the shining universal. Or as in the perfect poem, one will see the definite unity and individuality, but will see as well the universal truth and beauty. Every perfect thing is the perfect union of the particular and the universal; and one sees therein the glory of the universal shining through the particular. But the seeing is with open eyes. It is a live con- sciousness that sees. So when one sees in the Incarnate Christ, as in a mirror, the glory of God, it is the awakened mind that sees.
The Incarnation, moreover, is the coming of God in the supreme sense, as truth to the human mind. It is also His coming as a supreme Life. Truth alone, even the highest, can not satisfy the whole mind. A life can. When God comes as a Consciousness to a consciousness, then the mind is filled and satisfied. Here again we have notably the language of cognition. The Incar- nation furthermore is the coming of God to man as realised ideal. But only an exalted conscious- ness can behold and appreciate the ideal. Here once more we have the Incarnation as pre-emi- nently an appeal to the mind.
Finally, the Incarnation is the supreme exter- nalisation, the supreme objectification of God. All things are externalisations of God — the heavens above, the earth beneath, and man upon the earth. All creation is externalisation,
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objectification. Christ is the supreme objecti- fication. He is perfect PersonaUty set over against perfect PersonaUty. Therefore He is the supreme approach of God to consciousness. Objects are for consciousness. All objectifica- tion as such is an appeal to consciousness as such. The very form of consciousness is subject-object. Consequently the supreme objectification of the Divine in the perfect personality of Christ is God's supreme appeal to our consciousness as conscious- ness. The Incarnation, we conclude, is the char- acteristic appeal of God to the mind, the supreme revelation of the Divine to the intellect.
But is not the revelation hard to comprehend? Is not the great answer of God to the mind diffi- cult to understand? No; and Yes. No, for the Christ-story and the Christ-life appeal even re- markably to children and childlike peoples. Yes, for it transcends and outgoes the fascinated and wondering minds of the wisest and greatest. But in this it is like all of God's great answers in nature, and like all of man's great answers in science, in poetry, in philosophy. And it is like the answer in all great personalities. They are near yet far. Like the ocean, they break at our feet. Like the ocean, they sweep out beyond our ken. Christ too is near yet far. The heavens are all about us, yet they are so high above us. This must ever be and remain the character of all the highest reve- lations, of all the supreme answers of God to man.
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The Incarnation, we have said, is God's great movement toward man as an intellectual being. See how this corresponds with Jesus' view of Himself. No one knoweth who the Father is save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. I am the truth. I am the way. I am the life. (And the life was the light of men.) I am the light of the world; he that foUoweth me shall not walk in the darkness but shall have the light of life. To this end have I been bom, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
It corresponds likewise with the view others had of Him. And the Logos (Word) became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth. There was the true light, even the light which light eth every man, coming into the world. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. That they might know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. Seeing it is God that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Even as truth is in Jesus.
The divine Background revelation is in the
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main the coming of the Divine to the instinctive being of man, to his feeHngs, faiths, and intui- tions. But the Incarnation is above all else the coming of God to the mind. The Light of the world is God's response to the human intellect. This is very beautifully gathered up into a symbol in the "glory of the Lord" that shone round about the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem, and in the ' ' light from heaven above the bright- ness of the sun" that shone round about Paul and those that journeyed with him.
If this be true the religion of the Incarnation is the religion of light. Wherever this religion goes truth can not be rationally slighted or human intelligence lightly regarded. Wherever the in- tellect is neglected in the interest of the feelings, there inevitably religion must tend to lose the characteristic light of the Incarnation, and to decline toward the instinctive religion of the first stage. Feeling itself can not remain high and pure when truth is obscured. And wherever the intellect is slighted in the interest of the spirit, there again the spiritual life will lose its necessary light and decline toward the spiritual status of the primal stage. The Holy Spirit that was poured out after the Incarnation was the " Spirit of truth," who took of the things of Christ and showed them unto the disciples, and so led them on and on into all truth.
The final coming of God to man as divine Spirit
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is also a coming in accordance with our nature. It is a coming of Spirit to spirit. Nothing more than simple statement here is needed.
Thus the three modes of the Self -manifestation of God are all in fitting accord with our human nature.
They accord also with the stages of our human development, instinctive, intellectual, and spirit- ual, and with our threefold capacity to receive. Here again enlargement may be left to the thoughtful imagination.
This is the way God comes. Let us see how all other realms and orders of Reality come. Take nature for example. She reveals herself, her presence and being, in the first instance, through a thousand pressures, contacts, com- merces, mainly through instinct, sense, feeling. By-and-by she reveals herself more and more in her diversity and individuality, in her varied beauty, in her underlying law and order, and in her implicit truth. Thus she makes her great appeal to the mind. But in and through all the foregoing, she leads more and more deeply and surely into the spirit of diversity and form, iato the spirit of beauty, into the spirit of law and harmony, and into the spirit of truth. She makes her deep ultimate appeal to the spirit — "Wie spricht ein Geist zum andern Geist."
Take humanity. Take any parent. A mother
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reveals herself, her presence and being, to her child, first through instinct and sense, feeling, intuition, and faith. Intellect as such is little to the fore; spirit less. By degrees, to the child's and youth's awakening mind, she reveals, through countless extemalisations in word and deed, her individuality, her thought and will, her senti- ments and faiths, her ideals and character, — in a word, reveals the variety in unity of her com- plex personality. But in and through all these the real mother is seeking more and more richly to impart the deep spirit of her truth, the spirit of her ideals, the spirit of her faith, — ^the secret of her life. This is the course and consummation of every complete and full parenthood. But this is typical. Every life that enters into full and complete relationship with humanity reveals it- self in the same way. Think of a Plato, a Paul, an Augustine, a Dante, a Luther.
The wide realm of law and order, the kingdoms of truth, the worlds of beauty, the starry sky of ideals, reveal themselves in essentially the same way. First they reveal their being and presence vaguely through the feelings. Then they rise with their light and truth like a growing day upon the mind. And then, when the proceeding is perfect and complete, through all the fore- going manifestation they pour forth their subtle creative spirit into man's soul.
It is so that an art or a craft or a calling or
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any life-work reveals itself. First, the vague fact; next, the luminous reality; last, when the process is true and successful, the deep spirit.
The worlds of science and art and music and poetry and philosophy come to us in the same way. They are all about us from our earliest years. They affect us through our feelings in ways that we only dimly realise. Later they define themselves in lines of light and truth to our awakened and fascinated minds. Thereby, at length, the deeper, richer spirit of science and art and music and poetry and philosophy imparts itself to our awakening souls.
A language reveals itself to every unfolding life in the same way. Thus essentially every religion reveals itself. And thus even Christ reveals Himself, as we before have seen. First He is dimly felt; then He is consciously known; then and thereby, if the rich process truly com- pletes itself. His deep spirit is spiritually received. But He must first externalise Himself in count- less words and deeds; He must reveal Himself anew before our heart and mind and imagination ; He must, as it were, incarnate Himself again before our awakened consciousness, ere His deep spirit can be either richly given or received.
Thus essentially all the realms and orders of Reality come. They must externalise themselves in new springs and summers, in new creations of art, in new dramas of life, in new triumphs
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of invention and skill, in new embodiments of the ideal, before they can awaken and satisfy man's mind, and before they can impart their subtle and creative spirit to his soul.
And so God comes. And it is not strange that thus He comes. All creation is a kind of incar- nation. And Christ is the supreme and perfect form thereof.
Historically this is the way God has come also to mankind at large, vaguely and generally. Nothing is more universal in the religious life of the race than the dim sense of the Divine as the ground of all existence. And in all creation humanity everywhere have seen more or less definite embodiments of the Divine. They have seen it in sun and stars; they have seen it in mountains and hills; in trees and fountains; in rivers and the mysterious oceans ; in the storm- cloud and the lightning. They have seen it in birds and animals and insects. They have seen it in their prophets and seers; in their kings and heroes; in their tribal ancestors and demigods. Every idol that ever has been set up, every an- cestor that has been worshipped, every human being that ever has been listened to as the voice of God, bears witness to the fact that humanity has thought that the Divine embodied itself and came near. And truly what is all creation, as we have said, but the externalisation, the mani-
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festation of God? Does He not clothe Himself with light as with a vesture? And is not nature the "living garment" of God? And wherever there have been deep souls in all the world, have they not yearned for something yet deeper? Have they not craved and vaguely prayed for the divine Spirit of it all? And have they not received according to their measure? Have the Socrateses and Platos, the Senecas and Epicte- tuses, the Buddhas and Mohammeds prayed in vain? "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is ac- ceptable to Him."
It need not be said that this is the way his- torically God has revealed Himself to Christendom vividly and perfectly. The Old Testament is before us. The Four Gospels are open. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles and the long and incomparable history of the Christian Church are known. The divine Background is there revealed:
Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place In all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting. Thou art God.
The Incarnation is there revealed: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we
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beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father) , full of grace and truth. Behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.
And the divine Spirit is there poured forth: Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. And when the day of Pente- cost was now come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. — The divine Background — the primal re- velation through creation in nature and humanity ; the incarnate Divinity — ^the ideal-real Self -mani- festation of Deity; the divine Spirit — ^the final and perfect coming of God to man. God is Spirit.
Moreover, this is the way God manifests Him- self still. Wherever a human being is born, God reveals Himself still as the divine Background against which all our lives are set, as they are set against the bosom of the mothering earth. And wherever life becomes full-grown, and religion goes forward to its unspeakably richer develop- ments, there God still comes to man in His Son, and Christ is formed within the hope of glory, and life knows and rejoices in its unending
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Pentecost. To multitudes this is perpetually profoundly true.
What is more, I venture to think that this is the way God always will come to man, as long as human nature is human, and as long as Spirit speaks to and develops spirit through a created universe. And broadly speaking, this is the way all the realms and orders of Reality will come to us and dawn upon us as long as consciousness tabernacles as it does.
Furthermore it is a remarkable thing, yet to a deeper view most natural, that this is the way humanity has prophesied God would come. Witness the whole history of the Jewish people. Witness all the reported theophanies to mankind, and the background of expectation, against which they are to be set. And in addition, as soon as we entered deeply into the nature of things, this is the way we ourselves should expect God to come. For how else could He come, if He is Spirit, and we are spirit, and all nature between, revealing yet concealing?
This threefold Self -revelation, these three modes of manifestation — we have seen them everywhere. They are in the coming of God to man. They are in the revelations of nature. They are in the revelations of humanity. They are indeed in the revelation of a man to himself. It is, so to say, first the natural, then the intellectual.
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then the spiritual. If we may thus describe it, it is first the cruder earth and atmosphere, then the fiaer, higher sunHght, and then the subtle final ether. The ascending Spiral of the Spirit is in all realms. It is in nature, it is in life; it is in the Macrocosm, it is in the microcosm; it is in the general coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the way all the kingdoms of Reality come to man, for it is the way that accords with his nature. It is in a word the human way.
What now shall we say to this ? Are all things being accommodated to man's nature, simply? Does Nature come to man, and God come to man, and all Reality come to man in the way they do, simply because man is what he is? Is all creation a Spiral of the Spirit, and is the Self-manifestation of God a Spiral of the Spirit because man's developing life is that? Rather, are not the microcosm and the Macrocosm and the entire Self -revelation of God what they are because God is what He is? That there is a correspondent something in the deep nature of God, which is the reason why He utters Himself in this threefold manner through all the realms of Reality, must seem to me always the pro- founder and truer view. Man and nature and the Kingdom of Heaven are what they are because God is what He is. All things flow forth from and manifest His nature.
The divine Background revelation, the incar-
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nate Divinity manifestation, the divine Spirit procession, — ^these, together and synchronously, make up the great Environment of man's higher life — the Universe of the Soul.
Does this seem to be a formative and growing Universe, and one that is recent, coming into manifestation in the annals of time? What, we ask, could be more fitting to the living God, and what could accord better with His continuously creative Life? What also could be more har- monious with an ever-developing cosmos? and what more accordant with and grateful to an ever becoming and developing humanity? This is the growing Universe of the soul, the great higher Environment of the spirit, which is as necessary to man's higher life as earths and skies, atmospheres and sunlights, are to his lower.
Finally in this great spiritual Environment, to make at last the appeal to results, all things have seemed possible to men. Here the heart has come to its true expression and the mind has come to flower and the soul has opened into beauty. In this Kingdom of Heaven, the Johns and the Pauls and the Magdalens and the Marys have been produced. By their fruits ye shall know them. Indeed this great higher Environ- ment has proved as exquisitely and perfectly adapted to man's higher life, as the lower atmos- phere to his lungs, or as light to his eyes. For,
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verily, it is the Life of God that thus has come near, and thus effectually has become the great Environment of man's soul.
This is God's threefold Self -revelation, God's movement manward, His process of developing a full and complete man.
CHAPTER XI man's progress: or man's movement godward
OUR first or naive stage of religious develop- ment is the stage of instinct and feeling, intuition and faith. It is the hereditary stage. It is the stage of our childhood. It is the stage that has not yet differentiated itself, that still lives in community of life with humanity and God. It is the nature-stage of religion, in which the Divine is vaguely mingled with all the forms and processes of nature, and with aU the springs and streams of life.
Not that our naive stage of religious development has no intellectual elements pervading it and no spiritual elements implicit in it. It has. But the characteristic fact is, not intellect or spirit, but feeling. Just as the characteristic note of child- hood is, not intellect or spirit, but instinct and feeling, intuition and faith, although intellect and spirit are involved in it from the beginning, even as youth and maturity are locked up in childhood's opening bud.
Naturally the naive stage of our religious development corresponds with the divine Back-
295
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ground revelation. We vaguely feel God every- where. We feel His presence in the vastness and power and reality of the Universe. We dimly feel Him in all the forms and processes of nature. We feel Him in all the life and experience of humanity. He comes to us through the invisible channels of instinct; He wells up in our hearts; He shines in through our intuitions; He reveals Himself in childhood's marvellous faiths. We see Him in the colours and imagery of imagination; our early thoughts turn readily toward Him; He rises upon us with our conscious dawn.
This is the stage of the first impressions of the Divine, the first feelings, the first thoughts of God. In this stage we are one with nature and humanity and Divinity. We are like the young acorn on the mother tree. The growing acorn is one with the parent tree, with the earth be- neath, with the sky above, and with the atmos- phere around. It has not yet broken with its early environment. It holds its original con- nection with nature. The vitality of the earth pours into it through the parent roots. The atmosphere and rain and sunbeams penetrate it through the leaves of the parent tree. Earth and sky and atmosphere are in all its being, but they come into it through unbroken and original parent channels. It is still one with nature like any child. True the time must come when it must break with the mother tree for very self-
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hood's sake. It must break with its original nature connections. It must fall and touch the earth for itself. It must send down its own roots into the great world. It must make new connections with the sources and draw vitality therefrom for itself. It must lift itself up with its own stem and spread out branches and put forth many leaves for itself, thus again making new connection with the vast sources, with atmos- phere and rain and quickening sun. And unless these new connections with heaven and earth are made, there is no "to-morrow" for it. All this is true, and these things must come to pass. But that time is not yet. For the present it is simply a young acorn on the mother tree, living at one with all nature like any child.
This naive stage of our religious development is very important. It is difficult to overstate its significance. Like childhood, it contains within itself all future growth. It is the fundamental revelation of God in human life. All that God has taught man through vast nature is essen- tially represented there. All that man has learned of God through untold generations and expe- riences is in a manner there contained. It is the background of all possible religious life and achievement. To this primal revelation Paul, speaking to the Epicurean and Stoic philoso- phers, appealed. To this John G. Paton appealed, in the South Sea Islanders. To this Jesus
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appealed, talking to the cultured Nicodemus, or to the peasants of Galilee. Without this elemen- tary revelation indeed no higher voices could be heard or heeded. Except man first read nature's Bible, he will read no other. Except God first be present in the heart of man, even Jesus will speak in vain. Except we first are children, we never shall be men.
Childhood is indispensable, but no growing life remains in perpetual childhood. Normal life develops from the first religious stage into the second. We pass out of the stage of feeling into the stage of knowledge; out of the vague into the definite; out of dim general consciousness into clear specific consciousness ; out of the undifferen- tiated into the differentiated ; out of the universal into the particular; out of community into in- dividuality; out of union into polarity; again, out of polarity into higher union; and in general out of instinctive experience into highly conscious, voluntary, and profound experience.
This is the evolution of the normal religious life from the first stage of feeling to the second stage of knowledge. It is a complex growth. It is many things in one. Looked at in one way, it is a development out of the vague into the definite, out of dim and general consciousness into clear and specific consciousness. Looked at in another way, it is development out of the
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undifferentiated into the differentiated, from the universal into the particular, from community of life into individuality. Looked at in still another way, it is development out of union into polarity; again out of polarity into a higher union, and from vague, instinctive experi- ence into highly conscious, voluntary, and pro- found experience.
Here we have the natural growth of every healthy religious life. It is our advance from childhood to adulthood; progress from the dawn to the full day of consciousness ; development out of community of life into sharp individuality and polarity. Thus it is a bringing of the definite self face-to-face with its clear vision and task; then a willing devotion to the heavenly vision; and then a new and higher union with God; so of course a profounder and richer religious experience.
The boy that was led by his father's hand now stands forth a man. He looks out over the world. He sees life's far vision. He is conscious of him- self and of power. He solemnly dedicates his life. No longer is he a child, living in community of life. He has separated and rounded into self- hood. No longer are all things mingled in the undifferentiated unity of feeling. Everything has become clear and pronounced in the growing light of consciousness and knowledge. The individual stands forth in his polarity, facing the world.
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Conscious of himself and of God, he consecrates his life.
Whatever else forms part of our progress from the first stage into the second, the characteristic quality of it is development into more and more clear consciousness and knowledge. Other things naturally attend. But the characteristic note of life is consciousness, as the characteristic note of the day is light; and the mark of adulthood is high developed consciousness. Without con- sciousness, we sleep. Without high conscious- ness, we are impotent. And the man-like will and deed can follow only the man-like conscious- ness and knowledge. God first turns on the light in the inner world as He first turns on the light in the outer. Thereafter, the high resolve, and many other things may follow. We may rise to our life-work then, as we rise to our daily task when day has come.
Now this second or knowledge stage of our religious development corresponds to the Incar- nation. We said above that Christ is the great approach of the Divine to the awakened con- sciousness of man. We now say that this know- ledge stage of our development is the human correspondent thereto.
Let us plunge into the midst of things and see whether this is really true, for we here have a cardinal statement.
Let Jesus then stand face -to -face with the
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rich young man of the Gospels. That young man represents awakened consciousness, vivid knowledge, pronounced individuality, and sharp polarity of life, as he stands facing the Son of man. Christ looking upon him says : ' ' Behold me ; know me; choose me; follow me for ever." It is an appeal to all his awakened being. It is not an appeal to the mere surface of the intellect. It is to the whole mind, the whole will, the whole soul. The Divine now is no longer vague, it is perfectly definite. It is no longer general, it is absolutely specific and particular. Jesus' indi- viduality is as sharp and pronoimced as his own. When this clear divine Personality makes its great demand, when it speaks the words of the great imperative, saying, "Follow me; I am the way, and the truth, and the life; follow me," it is a moment of supreme and comprehensive conscious- ness; it is an appeal to the total awakened life. It is a definite coming of the God of light to the awakened and responsible mind of man. And when the rich young man turned his face away from Jesus and went away sorrowful, he knew that God was making a demand upon him that was perfectly definite. He understood that it meant his whole nature, from top to bottom. He knew that the religious life ultimately is no mere vague and general affair, but something as clear sind definite as the giving of his own individual .soul in absolute and loving devotion for ever
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to the personality of Jesus as Lord. Had he stood the test, had he said his everlasting " Yea" to God, it would have meant an awakened intel- lect, an awakened heart, an awakened soul, an awakened will, consecrated for ever. It would have meant a new and higher alliance with the Divine. It would have meant a transcendence of his narrow individuality. In a word, the losing of his life and the finding of a larger life.
Here, if ever, is a transaction in the clear and open day. Things are no longer in the sub- conscious realm of instinct, and no longer in the twilight dawn of feeling. On the one hand the Divine has become as definite as the face of Jesus. On the other hand the human has become as individual as that rich young man whom Jesus loved. All heaven has approached and appealed to life in the light of that divine face. All our awakened consciousness is responding there, either in acceptance or rejection. It is as though the world of beauty and art gathered itself up in a glorious picture and unveiled itself before the awakened soul of some young artist; then as though that young artist felt through all his being the divine appeal, and understood that the call was to his total nature, and knew that it was for life. The Incarnation is the coming of God in truth and light to the awakened con- sciousness of man. The knowledge stage of reli- gious growth is our human response thereto.
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Jesus, face-to-face with the rich young man or in the centre of His disciple group, is asking for conscious discipleship.
Let us look at this with searching scrutiny. Here we deal with a stage of religious develop- ment of surpassing importance. The Incarnation is the appeal of the definite Divine to the definite human. The second stage of our religious devel- opment is the response of the definite human to the definite Divine. Jesus is the Divine become definite. The rich young man or the young John or the yoimg Saul is the human developed into definite individuality. Nothing could be more specific than the Divine has become in the indi- viduality of Jesus. Nothing could be more specific than the human, as it stands there in defined selfhood, a distinct centre of life, sharp and clear in its individuality. The Divine indeed is as defined as the face of Jesus. The human is as sharp and clear as the striking individuality of the young Saul. On the one hand the Divine speaks in the definiteness of human words, acts in the definiteness of human deeds, and reveals itself in the unique definiteness of individuality. On the other hand the human stands with awak- ened consciousness, distinct selfhood, and defined individuality, aware of itself as a centre of high life, will, and power. Jesus and Saul, the definite Divine appealing to the definite human. And when the Divine thus comes to the human, making
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its great clear claim upon life, and when the human thus responds to the Divine, offering up its conscious selfhood, then we have the perfect call of God and the fitting response of man.
This perfect appeal of the definite Divine to the definite human, and this fitting response of the human to the Divine is the making of the religious life. It is the attainment of the second stage of progress. It is the achievement of indi- viduality in religion. The marked individuality of Saul, face-to-face with the definite personality of Jesus, consciously offers up the man he is in total and irreversible devotion. It is the making of him. Saul becomes Paul. That clear self- hood, that pronoimced individuality, with awak- ened consciousness, power, and freedom, beholds the Christ, and consecrates himself irreversibly for ever. It is the man's response to God. It is the great response of htmian individuality to the definite Divinity that spoke in Jesus. It is the attainment of individuality, the coming to one's majority in the life religious. It is the making of Paul, or Luther, or Phillips Brooks.
Unless the Divine thus appeals to the human, and unless the human thus responds to the Di- vine,— unless human individuality in the full tide of its selfhood consciously devotes itself, there is no possible growth; there can be no possible advance from the first religious stage to the second.
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It is with the reUgious life as it is with the poet's Hfe. Out of the universal truth, the uni- versal beauty, the universal goodness, definite pictures of the true, the beautiful, and the good rise in the field of vision and reveal themselves to the soul of the young poet. There too the perfect picture of the ideal poem rises and mani- fests itself in lines of light and shade, in delicate harmonies of colour, and in inner unity of thought and plan. It is the call of the ideal world. The young poet, with the deep fire kindling within, with nature as sensitive to all influences as the harp to the breath of the winds, and with soul awaking to truth and beauty and excellence everywhere, beholds the vision. He looks long in awe and exaltation. He feels through all his being the charm and call of the eternal ideal. Solemnly he dedicates his life, and becomes a priest of Beauty for ever. It is the definite summons of the ideal world. It is the definite response of the awakened being of the poet.
Let it now be the young artist, or the young composer, or the young actor, or the young scholar. The story is the same. It is the appeal of the defiaite vision to the definite and awak- ened individualit}^ It is the same with the physician, or the mechanic, the citizen, the pa- triot, or the lover. The life-work gathers itself up into a clear call. The life and spirit of the nation gather into a specific demand for the ideal
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patriot and citizen. The realm of human love and parenthood gathers into a call for the true lover and parent. In all the fields of life it is the appeal of the specific to the specific.
Naturally it is so with religion. In the Incar- nation we see it ia its perfect form. God reveals Himself in the clear personality of Jesus. The summons is to the awakened consciousness, the full-blown individuality of man.
Everywhere it is the definite alone that can appeal to and develop the definite. It is the definite sun, not the undifferentiated nebula, that brings spring and specific growth to the life of man. It is the definite earth, the definite seas and continents, the definite trees and flowers, animals and human beings, that awake and de- velop the specific thought, love, deed, life, in us. Infinite sameness never could brood and call forth the particular anywhere.
God accordingly externalises and reveals Him- self in infinite variety of forms, in serial and ascending ranks and orders, from the lowest differ- entiated minerals up to the highest differentiated men, who show forth the perfect differentiation of human individuality. Everywhere it is the particular calling to the particular, the higher ranges to the higher powers, from the solid earth up to the ethereal sunbeam, from the mew of a kitten to the articulate human voice, from the breast at which the babe nurses to the brooding
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spirit of the mother life. This is the way God develops eye, ear, hand, heart, intellect, soul, of man. In the endless varieties of nature, in the supreme individualisations of mankind, He ap- pears. He speaks with myriad voices to our many-sided human life, but always it is the definite calling to the definite. At last on the hilltop of creation, in these our fields of space and time, Jesus stands, the crown and summit of the definite, the perfect manifestation of the particular. It is the supreme externalisation of God. It is the unique approach and appeal of the definite Divine to the definite human. What God has done partially and imperfectly in stars and earths, in flowers and human beings, and in special seers and prophets, He has done per- fectly in His Son.
And when, over against the figure of this "strong Son of God," human life stands forth in the early strength of manhood, in the defi- niteness of selfhood, in the uniqueness of individ- uality, and in the fulness of consciousness, and dedicates itself to discipleship and apostleship for ever, it is the perfect response of the human to the Divine. The young John at the Jordan, the young Paul on the way to Damascus, the young Augustine in Milan, face-to-face with the Christ and the great clear call of God, solemnly dedicate themselves. With one supreme con- secration that includes a thousand others, and
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in an exaltation of consciousness that involves the whole awakened life, they devote themselves to God, as the young Darwin devotes himself to science, or the young Washington to his country. It is the response of the definite human to the definite Divine, of our humanity when it has come to man's estate, to Divinity as it has come to us in Christ. It is the second stage of our movement Godward, the second stage of our religious development.
There remains the fiaal stage of our religious progress. We all know what a spiritual face is and a spiritual life, but they are not easily put into words. When, however, that which is deepest in us has permeated and leavened all life and come to the surface; when that which is purest and most divine has come to the throne and wields dominion and holds all the lower life in a perfect harmony of control ; when the individu- alistic ego has been overcome and transcended and taken up into the higher and larger Universal; when the sharp polarity of life has been raised and finely resolved iato a new and perfect unity; when acute self-consciousness has been elevated into clear and abiding God-consciousness; when we have made indeed the great revolution of conscious experience and passed thereby into the deep mystery and soul of things; and when the Divine finally comes to the human in its pure
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and essential Divinity and Spirit freely flows to spirit; then at length we have reached the third and ultimate stage of our religious development. It is the spiritualising and glorifying of life. It is life coming to its potential best. It is more than the first stage of feeling, though it includes it. It is more than the second stage of awak- ened and devoted consciousness, though it in- cludes that also. It is the whole life elevated into the beauty of holiness. A spiritual face is the most beautiful thing ever looked upon. A spiritual life is the crowning excellence of the world.
It is obvious that this spiritual stage of our development corresponds to the divine Self- revelation as Spirit.
Spirit, as here we know it, is no longer a diffused and attenuated something; it is no longer im- palpable and fugitive, no longer vague and elusive, dimly suggesting its subtle presence everywhere, but adequately revealing its rich reality nowhere. On the contrary, it is a full and opulent life, the Reality of realities, the Holy Spirit of the final divine revelation.
The divine Background revelation, as we have observed, moved from the vague toward the definite. The incarnate Divinity also developed from the vague into the definite. And the divine Spirit likewise has evolved from the vague into the definite. The Jewish people, on the highlands
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of the Old Testament, knew more of the di- vine Background than others. The disciples of Jesus knew far more of the Incarnation than the Jews had been taught or had divined. And the hundred and twenty in the Upper Room knew manifold more of the Holy Spirit than ever they had learned before. Even Spirit moved toward the rich definiteness of Pentecost.
Over against all this the same process obtains in our human world. The naive stage of our religious development has unfolded from the vague toward the definite. The stage of awakened con- sciousness likewise has developed from the vague into the specific. And the human spirit as well has developed out of the dim and vague into the clear and definite. The ripened spiritual life is the full rich human personality. It includes the preceding stages of feeling and awakened con- sciousness and transcends them. They are mo- ments in its rich and complete life. The spiritual is the full and complete man.
We have then our human life in the full richness of spiritual personality, over against and corre- sponding to the divine Life disclosed in its fulness as Spirit.
It is a most interesting fact, far-reaching in implicates and suggestion, that in the field of human progress and in the realm of divine revela- tion, all development is from the undifferentiated
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toward the differentiated. We follow thus the universal law of progress, from the development of a plant or animal to the growth of a world, or the making of a solar system, or the evolution of a cosmos. The tree that does not halt but grows from seedling into grand and waving form, bearing blossoms and fruit; the animal that does not stop but develops into the full and complex life of matured form and function; a formless earth that does not stay in its progress but steadily moves toward those differentiated seas and con- tinents which constitute a habitable world; a nebulous solar mass unfolding into the grand variety in unity of a superb stellar system; an undifferentiated waste of matter that, without rest, evolves toward that infinite and harmonious variety in unity which makes a cosmos — this is what constitutes a developed and real tree, or animal, or world, or solar system, or Universe. Likewise the religious life which, unarrested in its development, unfolds and unfolds toward the rich variety in unity of the full-grown man, is the true and complete and the only true and complete human life. Likewise also the divine Self-revelation which, not stopping short with the vague and indefinite primal stage, steadily moves forward, disclosing its own uniquely perfect va- riety in unity, is the developed and complete, and the only developed and complete, divine revelation and theology.
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In the above, glimpses at least of a very wide generalisation have been seen. The foregoing three stages in their essential nature and in their main outlines appear indeed in all progress. Wherever human life develops in a normal and true way in relation to any realm of reality, it ripens through the same essential stages. It matters not here what realm we look toward, nor what kindred side of human life we study, in its responsive growth. But, inasmuch as music and art always have been felt to be closely related to religion, let us see how life develops there.
The young musician subtly feels through all his being the harmony of existence. The chords of his nature readily vibrate in unison with all the spheres. Instinctively, like a harp in the winds, he murmurs music to himself. It is the nascent period, the stage of all beginnings. It is the young Haydn, already feeling the imder- lying music of the world, and quivering with the preludes of song.
But no one certainly who lingers in this in- stinctive stage of feeling ever can be a musician. The real musician must awake first through all the ranges of his life; he must unfold the hidden and complex involutions of his being; he must circle through life's great revolution of conscious experience; he must penetrate also with under- standing mind far into the nature of music; and with awakened and exalted consciousness, he
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must survey her glorious world and comprehend her subtle meaning and message. Life here as elsewhere must come to its full and conscious day, and the radiant world must reveal its variety and change in the midst of abiding unity.
But again no one who tarries here can be a true musician. The real musician must penetrate deep into the soul of music. Through her varied forms and ranges, through her self -manifestations, through the elaborations of her life, through her many themes, through all her meanings and mes- sages, he must enter into her inmost spirit, he must dwell in the hidden soul and mystery of music. Not until he has passed into the deep spirit of harmony and the spirit has passed into him, awaking his profoundest life, giving him, not merely the comprehensions and experiences of the awakened consciousness, but also and supremely the spiritual appreciations and ex- periences of the awakened and developed soul, does he become the true and real musician.
What has been said of music is no less true of art. He is not yet an artist in whom the passion for beauty is only beginning to kindle like the latent fires of youth. Nor is he yet an artist whose eesthetic consciousness, and little more, has awakened and unfolded, even though he be exquisitely sensitive and discriminating. He only is an artist who through all this has
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passed into the deep spirit of art and thereby has developed his own artistic soul.
The same is true of the scientist, or poet, or philosopher. It is first the naive, instinctive stage of feeling, then the stage of awakened and devoted consciousness, and then the developed spiritual stage.
The same is true of all departments of life. It is true of the farmer or the lawyer, of the artificer or the statesman. It is true of citizen- ships and patriotisms. It is true of all friend- ships, loves, parenthoods, and philanthropies. It is true of education and culture, and of every developed civilisation. In a word, wherever hu- man life stands face -to -face with any realm of reality, and ia response thereto grows and unfolds toward normal maturity, it passes through the same essential stages. Indeed they are the natu- ral and true stages of all human growth. They are life's childhood, life's youth, and life's full maturity.
In truth, I am convinced that it would be found impossible for a human being to make the pas- sage from infancy to life's three-score-and-ten without at least dimly outlining all of the stages, even the last. And this, notwithstanding that the individual in question might be the antipode of all developed and true spirituality. So deeply human are the stages of our religious development, so essentially normal is our Higher Life.
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It comes to this: the stages of our religious growth are the three human stages raised to their highest possibiHty; the spirituaHsation of Hfe is really the humanisation of life; and the true humanisation of life is the spirituaHsation of it.
In this development of a life, this achievement of the three stages of human growth, this evolving and making of a full and complete man, there is a great essential process that cannot be too clearly brought to the light of day. It is the early union, the later polarity, and the final higher union of a life with every realm of Reality in relation to which it consciously develops.
Let us look at life as it develops in relation to law. The little child at its mother's breast is one with humanity, one with nature, one with God. It is in accord with universal law. As yet it has no selfhood to separate it into the polarity of conscious life. In process of time, however, it has rounded into selfhood, it has come to stand over against its world in the sharpness of individuality, with the pronounced polarity of awakened and developed consciousness and will. It has attained the explicit subject-object stage, indispensable to unfolding consciousness. Now law is as sharp and clear on the one side as will is on the other — law everywhere in the depths and in the heights. And now this cosmic and di- vine law speaks from its many Sinais, everywhere
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saying to conscious will, "Thou shalt." While conscious will, for its part, realises that it is face-to-face with Authority, and with life's in- finite alternatives. It is the normal and neces- sary polarity of conscious will and law that here we see.
But this is not the end. This is not intended to be the final stage. It is meant that every man reverently should go up into life's Sinai and there, alone with God, solemnly and joyously should receive the divine law for himself, and, pressing it close to his obedient heart, like Moses, should return again to the fields of toil and duty with shining face. Then man enters into the final higher union with all cosmic and divine law, which is, as well, the deep law of his own being. Then law is taken into the heart of man, and law and will become one, and divine law becomes divine life.
The naive instinctive stage of feeling; the stage of the awakened and devoted consciousness; the developed spiritual stage: early union, later po- larity, final higher union. But it is to be marked that this final higher union is a vastly different thing from that initial lower union. This is conscious, voluntary, comprehensive, rich. This is attained only by circling through the great revolution of conscious experience, which alone evolves and makes human individuality.
But again right in the midst of this progres-
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sion there is a crisis, a natural and necessary crisis, momentous to life. Unless the conscious ego, unless the pronounced individuality, unless the sharply developed will subordinates itself to universal law, unless selfishness changes into serv- ice, there can be no third stage, there can be no final higher union.
Essentially the same evolution and the same crisis are seen everywhere. They are seen in the relation of the individual to humanity. The little boy in his father's home; the prodigal turn- ing his back upon that home and going away into the far country ; the repentant son returning and meeting his father and in humility saying, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight," then receiving the kiss of welcome and reconciliation: early union, later separation, final higher union. And the crisis, "when he came to himself"; "I am not worthy"; "I will arise and go to my father."
In no other way can any individual enter into full, rich relationship with humanity. This is the way essentially every true neighbour or friend or brother or philanthropist has been produced. This is the way the human individual normally develops into the human socius, passes into the final higher union with humanity, unfolds into the perfect stage of love.
Early union,- later polarity, final higher union, with the momentous formative crisis in the midst,
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is the story of every developing life as it unfolds in relation to any realm of Reality. It would be easy to show that it is the story of the making of every true artist or composer or poet or scien- tist or philosopher; of the making of every true physician or jurist; every true citizen or states- man ; every true mechanic or captain of industry ; soldier or commander; patriot or leader. The man who does not victoriously rise above self, in supreme devotion to beauty or harmony or ideals or nature or truth or law or work or right or country or humanity, can not be the true or developed man anywhere. The true and great man is the great true servant. And he alone truly serves who deeply loves. This is the per- fect final union, won through battle, costly but glorious.
It is not strange nor accidental that this crisis must be. It is as normal and necessary as the life-process itself. It is involved in the nature of consciousness. It is inherent in the developed subject-object form of human awareness. It is inseparable from selfhood, indispensable to high individuality. Our individualistic ego can not be overcome without a crisis. Self-consciousness can not pass into God-consciousness, selfishness can not rise into service, without it. No rich complex centre of life anywhere can stand out in pro- nounced polarity facing the World-All, then transcend itself, resolving its individualistic
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polarity into a higher unity, without self-sacrifice. Selfishness is not overcome without a crisis; it is not changed into generosity without a battle. Indeed the crisis is the transition itself from self -consciousness and self-seeking into God-con- sciousness and service of the All.
If early union, later polarity, and final higher richer union is the story of the making of the full-grown artist or poet or artisan or philan- thropist, or what we will, because it is the story of the making of the full-grown human being, and if no artist can give himself with perfect abandon to beauty as long as he is selfish; and no scientist can devote himself with single eye to truth while he is selfish; and no patriot can lose himself in high devotion to country if he is still selfish ; and if, in the very nature of selfish- ness, it can not be overcome without the crisis of battle, sharp and signal as well as prolonged and progressively victorious, much more is all this true on the high religious plane.
The child is at one with God as it is one with the home and with nature. The grown youth stands out in the polarity of individuality, in the separateness of selfhood, with developed human will over against revealed divine Will. The full- grown life has come to the higher, richer union with the Divine. Its individualistic polarity has been resolved into a higher unity, through the marriage of the human will with the will of God.
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The true and complete man has climbed the mountain of his own ego and stands at length with victorious feet on its summit, while the mountain of self is underneath and overcome. Standing in splendid triumph there, now he can look away from self and unhindered see the great world and the vast sky, and now heaven and earth for him can come together in a new and higher union. But the hard climbing had to come first, and first the victorious feet had to stand on the summit of a vanquished self.
Early union, later polarity, and final higher union, we repeat, with the crisis and the conquest that make the last and greatest possible — this is what we see in making the full-grown religious life as in making the full-grown aesthetic, or civic, or social life, or human life in general. Only here the stages are more developed and marked, the crisis is more momentous and pronounced. Here the highest evolution of life takes place, so the clearest differentiation ; here as well the total be- ing is involved, and so we have the supreme crisis.
And this crisis, this transition, this dying to live, this losing self and finding God, this emerg- ing out of the littler into the larger life, is itself the deep process of conversion, is the great and profound change that Jesus named the new birth. And obedience to this law of the larger, higher life is righteousness. And disobedience to this higher divine law is sin.
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The above then is what we see when we view a life as it develops in relation to its environment, in response to its higher divine Universe.
But life may be studied in another way. It may be viewed as it grows and develops in itself. Then we have the three stages; human childhood, human individuality, human personality.
Already we have made the first so clear that we leave it with the bare mention, not forgetting, however, that it is the indispensable background of everything. Already too the second stage has become so familiar that we merely point to it as the prominent figure and focal centre of life's picture. It is the young Sir Galahad, in the splendour of young manhood, consciously kneeling for the dedication of life. Without this strong and pronounced individuality, once for all we say, there could be no strong, rich religious or Eesthetic or industrial or social or human life.
The third stage, human personality, we must dwell upon. When the young poet solemnly dedicates himself to the service of the true, the beautiful, and the good, and gives back in great poems what they gave to him in great vision and inspiration, then he becomes a poet. When the young soldier gathers up his energies and talents and reverently lays them upon the altar of his country, rendering back in patriotic and heroic service the gifts that he has received, then
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he becomes a soldier. And when the human individual, in the kingliness of individuality, stands face-to-face with God and His Universe, and, reverently gathering up his total powers and life, solemnly and joyously dedicates them to God and man, rendering back in high and endur- ing service the talents with which he had been entrusted, then he becomes a human being, then he fills out the full idea of a man; he then, and only then, attains to human personality.
Man must make the great return. He must take his life and all his gifts and lay them back into the hand of God. Voluntarily he must set himself into all his worlds; into nature and into humanity and into the higher worlds of law, truth, beauty, ideals. Spirit. Failing this he fails of proper humanity. How true this is and how growingly clear. Man stands forth on the hilltop of the world, looking up into God's sky. There he is in the magnificence of his powers. Heaven and earth have bestowed the largess of their gifts upon him. God and humanity have endued him with faculties almost divine. He is a treasury of talents. But now he must make the great return. He must give back magnifi- cently. He must set himself freely into all worlds. He must render back his splendid gifts in splendid works. Failing this he fails of essential humanity. That which makes the mirror is the reflection; that which makes the man is the return.
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Here we have before us the fundamental func- tions of the biological world, receptivity and activity. We have the Universe pouring its mul- titude of gifts into life, and we have life giving back to the Universe those gifts in the multi- plicities of action. But it is the latter, it is action, that makes life more than animal, that makes it definitively human. When man takes his multitudinous gifts, and, in the superior human way, pours them out in high service toward the great Sources, then he becomes man, but not till then.
Incisive and austere as this law is, I believe it to be psychologically and philosophically true. When all the gifts of God have been concentred in the life of man and placed at the bidding of his most sovereign will, they simply spell, " Oppor- tunity." But when he freely takes them and relates them to the All, and in noble service re- flects them back again, then he becomes the mirror of God, and so a man. It is essentially this relating of life to the All, this placing of the human imprimatur of great return upon life's action, that constitutes human living and human life. The fruit tree is not a fruit tree, until it blossoms and bears fruit, giving back to nature and humankind what they have entrusted to it. The ship is not a ship, until it gives itself to the ocean, rendering back to trade and humanity the gifts that they have given to it. The engine is
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not an engine, until it has set itself upon the track and rolled out across a continent, rendering back in units of work performed the coal that was put into its furnace and the skill that was put into its wheels. So man is not man, until he makes the great return.
And this is what we have described as achieving personality. Hence the personalisation of life is really the humanisation of life; and the true humanisation of life is the personalisation of it. But we saw above that the spiritualisation of life also is the humanisation of it. Therefore the personalisation and the spiritualisation of life are the true humanisation of it. So it follows finally that the achieving of spiritual personality is the coming to a full-grown human life, to a true and complete man.
The naive instinctive stage of feeling; the stage of awakened and devoted consciousness; the final spiritual stage: early union; later separation or polarity; final higher union, with the supreme crisis of self -conquest in the midst: childhood, individuality, personality, — this as we have seen is the story of our human progress, these are the stages of our movement God ward.
CHAPTER XII
man's true life in god
WE have climbed the mountain summit where heaven and earth come together. We have seen the Divine and the human meet in a new and higher union. There is then a supernal alliance and a higher life for man. This is at once the sublime and the inexhaustible fact of our human existence.
There is a higher union with God. Man may give himself unreservedly with glorious abandon; he can pour out his thought toward God; he can pour forth his love, that wells out of the depths of his life like a sweet spring; he can devote his will; he can work in unison with God; he can become one in spirit with Him; he can appre- ciate the divineness of the Divine ; through purity of heart, he can see God and can feel His living presence. In truth, he can open his life wide to God and receive the ' ' mind that was in Christ ' ' ; God may pour His thought into him; His word may have free course in his life; His will may be done; His love may be shed abroad within; the Holy Spirit in fulness may come. And when
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this rich life has become a reality; when man's prayer is unhindered and his commimion is full and free and childhood to God has become the jewel of his existence and God's fatherhood has become an abounding fact and the Spirit bears witness with his spirit that he is a child of God; when in the depths of his life he feels at one with the Divine and feels at home, then he has achieved indeed the higher union.
There is nothing so ample and glorious in existence as this higher union with the Divine, nothing that finds our life in such deep ways, nothing so truly and profoundly homelike and natural. It is as though the orange tree were carried back to its home in the sunny Southland, or as though a continent were rolled into the warmth and luxuriance of spring, or as though a lark left the lowly earth and finding its wings soared into the sea of blue thrilling with song, or as though a life went up into its appointed Mount of Transfiguration. And there is nothing so real, so convincingly and satisfyingly real; for there is nothing that so fills all the heights and horizons of being, imparting the sense of bound- less reality. Thoughts of God may become as natural as the river of truth that courses through the mind. Love toward God may prove as native as affection to the human heart. Prayer may become as natural as breathing, high service as native as will and action. The divine Life may
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flow through us as naturally as blood through our veins and the inspirations of God come like heaven's quickening light. As the sailor may make his home on the wide seas, and the astronomer his home ia the starry skies, and the artist in the world of beauty, and the phi- losopher in the universe of truth, so the child of God may make his home in his Heavenly Father's house. All worlds are his worlds to live in di- vinely. Nature and humanity, law and truth, beauty and ideals, and universal Spirit are his intended abode. He can live like a child of the Highest at home in the Highest, and thus come to discover the Divine everywhere and dwell in it.
This is the life Jesus lived. This is the life He taught His disciples to live. And this is the meaning of the great fact of the promised Spirit. Life was to be indwelt. It was to realise itself as spirit, and live without end an inspired life in the infinite Environment of perfecting Spirit. "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth." " I am the vine, ye are the branches. Abide in me, and I in you." " If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." Thus though a man's feet press the solid earth his true citizenship may be in heaven. This is the life
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that is hid with Christ in God, and the Hfe that is "Hfe indeed."
The statement that man can enter into new and higher union with the Divine strikes us as strange at first. But consider the apple tree in winter. It is then connected with nature it is true. Its roots have hold of the earth. Its trunk is in touch with the sunbeams. They pierce it through and through and keep it alive. Other- wise it would freeze to its centre. Yet how dif- ferent is its connection later. When it comes to put forth leaves it makes new and higher union with atmosphere and sunlight and falling rain. And when at length it bursts into bloom and spreads out delicate petals with texture finer than silk, again it makes new and higher connections with light and air and dew. Its more exquisite organs form subtler unions. And not only these, but the roots themselves enter into new and richer commerce with the earth. Contrast, there- fore, the apple tree in December with the same tree in May. Its connections have become ines- timably more numerous, ampler, and finer. If a tree then can enter into new and higher commerce with heaven and earth, can not our human nature with its vastly wider ranging gamut of powers enter into new and higher union with God and His worlds? It can. Human nature too only waits for its spring, for its renaissance and flower- ing. But every spring and summer is from above,
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though earth and man respond in living robes of glory.
And it is this great response and return, it is this larger and higher activity, this new and higher union with the Divine, this communal life with God, this realised childhood to the divine Father- hood, that alone rises to the plane and dignity of properly human life. In so far as a being merely vegetates, functioning only as the plants, it is not properly human. Or in so far as it merely functions as the animals function, it is not prop- erly human. Only when a being rises to those planes of action whose order and rank are essen- tially human, does it attain to real humanity. Mere receptivity and inferior activity never could constitute that high complex centre of life with its superior activity that we have in mind when we speak of a human being. It is only when a life takes itself and, ia this high way, actively relates itself to the All, only when it sets itself freely into all worlds, by thought and feeling and will and action, and by kinship of spirit, that it functions in the essentially human way. Just as it is only when a prince comes of age and enters upon his kingdom and verily takes up the real business of reigning, bringing himself and his realm into world commerce and world politics, that he is truly a king.
And, once a life has made the great response and return and given itself, and freely set itself
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into the All, then also it unfolds its hidden poten- tialities into new and higher activities, as the tree evolves its latent leaves and blossoms. So it results that a life, by consecration and high activity, not only enters into new and higher union with the All, as an acorn by planting itself enters into new and higher connection with nature, but also that it puts forth new and finer powers of action, which in turn form new and subtler connections. Here is the kind of fimctioning that makes a being human. When a life thus takes itself and sets itself into nature and human- ity, into law and into truth, into beauty and into ideals and into the life of God, it comes to truly human activity and development. It is this great responsive activity, this great return, that lifts life to the human order.
It is not what talents are given to us that makes us truly human, but what use we make of our gifts when we become aware of them. Our distinctively human side does not come to the fore until responses, until activities, as over against receptivities, begin. Our receptivities represent in the main what is done to us, our activities represent what we ourselves do. It is in our activities that we claim our birthright and enter upon kingship.
But there is small action and there is great action; there is petty action and there is sublime action. Great and sublime action is that which
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has the universal quaHty about it. So long as a life acts as a private individual for itself, it is an individual. Only when it acts as a universal for the Whole does it become a universal. It becomes a universal when it takes its private individuality and devotes it in high service, just as the private soldier becomes a national patriot when he gives himself for his country. Truly human action is that which has the universal quality about it, that which is harmonic with the Universe, just as the true action of a plant or a star is that which is concordant with the All. For we must not forget that every life is both a particular and a universal, and that its deepest nature is found in the universal. But as long as it acts only as a particular, it remains a particular. When, however, it acts also as a universal, it becomes a universal, realising itself as such. The complete life realises itself both as a particular and as a universal; it becomes aware of itself first as a particular, and then by devoting its particular individual ego, it realises itself also as a universal. The particular is not destroyed, it is sublimated and fulfilled; it is taken up and held as a moment in the heart of the universal. A life therefore comes to truly human action only when it acts in the larger way, when through its individuality it realises itself as a universal.
Acting and realising itself as a universal, of course the individual becomes harmonious with
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the Universe. That is its true life. Anything that ignores or sets at naught the cosmos, or any part thereof; anything that disregards the "not- self," or flouts any realm of Reality, is not liv- ing its true life. It is not its true self; for it itself is a part of the All. The Universe is re- flected in it, is represented in its being, is indeed the deep constitutive element of its nature. Hence it must set itself into the All, and must live in the richest relationship with all worlds that its nature makes possible. Otherwise it is out of harmony with itself and with its Universe.
Moreover it must so live that God may pour His life freety not only into but also through it; just as a plant or animal must so live that nature may pour her life freely both into and through it. No animal, no plant, no living thing can become a mere pocket. It must be a channel and medium or it dies. Nature must have free course in every living thing. Only as heaven and earth pour themselves freely and fully into and through animals and plants do they come to perfect form and function, and so to their true life. Likewise only as God has free course in a human being, richly expressing Himself in and pouring His life through it, does it come to normal growth and action, and so to its true life.
Properly human life therefore is found in ac- tivity rather than in passivity, in activity along the higher ranges, in acting as a universal rather
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than as a particular, in action that is in harmony with the total Environment, and in such activity as may be the free and rich expression of the Divine.
And this it is to be human. We would indeed maintain without qualification that, only when a life lights its lamp and burns and shines does it become truly a lamp, properly a human life. We would maintain that only when a life acts in superior ways, functioning toward the higher ranges of Reality, being really alive in its higher nature and not merely in its lower root, does it become properly a human being. We would main- tain that, only when a life acts as a universal and not merely as a particular, only when it acts for the Whole, like Jesus, and not merely for the private self, like Napoleon, does it truly achieve humanit}^ We would maintain that, only when a life equilibrates itself with the All, acting in the widest harmony with the Universe of which its nature is capable, not negating any world nor functioning discordantly, does it live as a really human being. We would maintain, finally, that only when a lifQ becomes a free expression and servant of the cosmos and of Deity, only when it becomes a free channel and agency of the Divine, into and through which God freely may pour His life and work, does it attain unto essential humanity or arrive at what it means to be human.
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And in the midst of this the supreme crisis we would recall, that is, the conquest and tran- scendence of the egoistic, the individualistic self. Man is not man until he rounds the human curve and makes the great return. When he gathers up in himself all the gifts of God and reflects them back, as a lake in the starlight reflects back the heavens from its bosom, then he becomes truly an actor and citizen in the Universe, and so properly a man.
This larger universal life is what we deliber- ately have called the personal life. The smaller particular we have called the individual life. And only as we live, in principle, as a universal human brother, in spirit as a universal parent, in mind and action as a true cosmopolitan, and in our whole life as a genuine child of God, do we really live the personal life and achieve human personality.
If we could follow the path and course of life in its making and see the human bud spring from the human life-tree and develop toward separate selfhood, until it arrived at distinct and independent individuality, we should see that, like the detached acorn, it then only had arrived at the stage of true and independent life. The oak tree then merely was made possible. Not until the independent acorn gives itself back to nature, making new and higher connection with
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the earth and the Universe, does the true and possible oak tree become a reality. In like man- ner not until the free and independent individu- ality enters upon the role of action and gives itself back to the World-All, setting itself in manhood's way into humanity and into nature, into the universe of law and truth and beauty and ideals, and into the life of God, — not until then does the true human being become a reality. The scientist must set himself into the world of law, the artist must set himself into the world of beauty, the philosopher must set himself into the world of truth, the worker must set himself into the world of work, the friend and brother and lover and parent must set himself into the world of humanity, or there can be no scientist or artist or philosopher or worker or socius or parent. Even so the individual must set himself into all his worlds or no high complex centre of life can be developed; there can be no man. As we have said, man is not man until he rounds the human curve and makes the great return. And this great process is the development from human individuality into human personality.
We now have seen that this new and higher un- ion with God and His worlds, this action as a uni- versal and not as a particular, is the properly human life. Naivete is not the properly human life. Indi- vidualism is not the properly human life. Man is not man until he is his larger self, until he is a person.
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It is a deep and natural witness to the truth of the above that no man can Hve at all without in some way living the larger life. Every one must live as a universal, although it be in a per- verted and limited way. Nobody can do any- thing without co-operating with the All. Does a man breathe, he breathes the world's atmos- phere. Does he see, he beholds the natural objects with nature's light. Does he eat, he feeds on the fruits of earth. We can not lift a foot from the ground without co-working with the universal energies and laws. We can not hate or love, think or become conscious, even of ourselves, without an objective world and an objective brain loaned by nature. If a man works, he must have a field. If he moves, he must have space. If he even exists, he must have place. In short, we can not live without co-working. The most selfish man that walks the earth draws his selfish breath, lays his selfish plans, and lives his selfish life, all with the being and strength that God and nature lend. Herein is the baseness of his life. In outer fact he must live, if he live at all, as a universal. In inner spirit, he may live also as a private ego and individualist. He must use his worlds, though he abuses them. It is a striking thing that even the egoist must call the Universe into his thought and act, in order to live even selfishly. Therefore even the selfish life shows forth the type of the
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true, as counterfeits show forth the image of the true coin. What every one does in a way, in order to live at all, though he does it perversely and limitedly, is what the true man should do grandly and aboundingly. The true and normal man should live perpetually as a universal, in higher union with God and His worlds, and therein should find his native home and glory; for that is man's true and appointed life.
When we turn our thoughts from the sub- jective toward the objective side, we realise more and more that the Divine is the true Environ- ment and Home of man. Already the great concept of environment is familiar through science and through the xinfolding of our pres- ent thought. Already, too, the absolute neces- sity of a kindred environment is established. And we have arrived as well at the culminating idea of a divine Environment.
Like every other environment the divine En- vironment is both transcendent and immanent. As nature indwells the opening flower, working in its secret springs and being, and at the same time is outside of and beyond, outgoing and tran- scending it, so the divine Environment works in a human life, in all its springs and streams, and at the same time is external to it, vastly out- going and transcending it. What were a sun that did not work in the inmost heart of trees
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and flowers, while at the same time, imconfined to their Httle being, he held high state in the transcendent sky. And what were a sky that was not the prime mover in all the most intimate happenings of earth, while at the same time remaining yon majestical and boundless sky. So what were a divine Environment, a Kingdom of Heaven, or a God, that did not move in all the hidden motions of man, in his inmost pur- poses and plans, while at the same time, uncon- fined to that little state, filling the farthest realms with their presence and rising like a sky supernal and transcendent over all. Men feel that God must be in the very cryptic springs and sources of human life and in its every stream, or He is not very God. Again men feel that God must not be confined to man's little kingdom, nor exhausted in one or in all His worlds, but must be greater than all the lower realms of Reality, outgoing and transcending them all like another and more supernal sky. For behold the heaven of heavens can not contain Him — how much less the little house of man's soul. Both the imma- nent and the transcendent God, both the imma- nent and the transcendent Kingdom of Heaven, or divine Environment, is what the whole need of man calls for. And this is what is provided; just as this is what every kind of environment severally provides for each kindred object that lives in it. An earth, a sky, a nature that were
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not in the root, stem, and fruit of the tree would be without function or sense. Likewise an earth, sky, nature that were there and nowhere else, and exhausted therein, would be wanting in the first character and condition of an environment; for an environment as such is both immanent and transcendent to the thing that it environs and vivifies . The divine Environment therefore being, like all other environments, both immanent and transcendent to the life of man, affords the fitting world, home, and nursery of his growing life.
Being both transcendent and immanent, a divine Environment enables life to be both healthily objective and at the same time whole- somely subjective. If the Divine were merely immanent, religious life would be merely sub- jective. If the Divine were only transcendent, naturally religious life would be only objective. But if the great divine Environment, the true sphere of man's higher life, is in reality both immanent and transcendent, then, correspond- ingly, our religious life can be both subjective and objective. Of course the suppositions of mere immanence and mere transcendence have been made only for the purpose of our thought, not that they are inherently possible. Because the Divine that were merely immanent would become one and identical with the life that it indwelt, and would not be God over all, so not God at all. And the Divine that were merely
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transcendent would lack all connection with our human life and so would not be God for us in any sense. True Divinity and divine Environ- ment must be as certainly immanent as it is surely transcendent; then, as we have said, our religious life can be both wholesomely subjective and healthily objective.
The world of beauty is without and within; but the external is far the greater. The universe of truth is both without and within; but again the external is vastly the greater. This leads to the true proportion between the objective and the subjective. No true lover of beauty and no true child of truth is either disproportionately objective or one-sidedly subjective. But a true subjectivity is held at the centre of a prevailing objectivity. Lil<:ewise the Divinity that is out- side of and beyond us is vastly greater than the divine revelation within; and so naturally life's regard is mainly objective, while the subjective is held as the inner circle in a larger prevailing objectivity. This is what we have called a healthy objectivity and a wholesome subjectivity. Few things are more important than the right mixture here. Undue objectivity or abnormal subjectiv- ity is as unwholesome as it is unsymmetrical and disorganising. And nothing can mix these two indispensable elements so naturally in the right and intended proportions as a great environment. Man set into nature, in tune with her processes
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and laws, will be in the main objective. But the subjective will not be suppressed; rather it will be fulfilled, by being held at the centre of the enfolding objective life. A human being set into the great environment of his humankind, living in true mutuality and reciprocity of life, will be naturally and mainly objective. The sub- jective will be held at the centre of a prevailing objectivity. Just as naturally a human life, set into a great divine Environment, in right rela- tion therewith, will be mainly objective. The subjective will not be denied, but, as before, will be held at the centre of a larger prevailing objec- tivity. The lungs that felt themselves more than the atmosphere they breathed; the eye that saw itself more than the light; the astronomer who regarded himself more than his heavens, would be anomalous and perverse enough. So the mind that thought more of itself than of truth, or the man who thought more of himself than of human- ity, or the life that regarded itself more than God and all His higher worlds besides, would be an unnatural and perverted product. It is end- lessly suggestive that nothing strikes its true balance until it touches its true element. The wild eagle on the wing can forget himself in his free and glorious flight. The caged bird must remember himself still in his restless discontent. In the same way a human being can lose himself in adoration and in the glory of great service.
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when he becomes a citizen of his true sphere, his higher divine Environment. There the objective does not superficiaHse itself, until it loses the depth and richness of subjectivity. And there the subjective does not pervert and internalise itself until it cuts itself off and loses the normality and largeness of the objective world and life. Rather, there a wholesome subjectivity is held as the inner circle of a larger, healthy objectiv- ity and the two are united in a true and rich life.
A Kingdom of Heaven, or divine Environment, is the true sphere, home, and nursery of man's growing life. It is so because, as we have seen, it is both transcendent and immanent, and there- fore enables life to be both healthily objective and wholesomely subjective. And it is so because it furnishes the necessary element and condition of great and endlessly progressive growth.
A kindred spiritual Environment is as neces- sary for our higher nature as a physical environ- ment for our lower. Human affection can spring and grow only in a sunny world of affection. Mind can unfold only in a world of mind. Spirit can flower only in a world of Spirit. An Environ- ment first to brood life, and then to furnish the field of life's campaign. A spiritual will without a spiritual World is as hopeless as a hand without a task or a wing without an atmosphere.
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All this in a way is as evident as light. Never- theless it is feebly realised with deliberate and intelligent consciousness. That the soul must have an atmosphere; that the ethical will must have a moral order; that the awakened mind must have a divine truth- world; that love must have the light and warmth of love is, in its higher way, a fact no less real and mighty than the fact that the foot must have an earth under it and the head a sky over it. The indispensable and abso- lute necessity of a realm of Reality, corresponding to a Kingdom of Heaven, as the pre-condition of all higher life and growth, should become a spiritual axiom to the human mind. A brother without a brotherhood; a child without a family or Fatherhood; a disciple without a Master; a spirit without an Inspirer; a member without a society of kindred souls or a Church; in fine, a human life without a great enfolding divine Life in which consciously, here and now, it might live and move and have its being, would be like a star without a sky. A kindred Environment as congenial to the soul as nature in springtime to the grasses and flowers — ^this is what must be.
Such an Environment would be imperfect if in its culmination and final nature it were not verily Divine. It must be a Kingdom of Heaven in very truth. It must be as high as aspiration or thought ; at the same time it must come as close as life. It must be to it all that the parent is
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to the infant, but more. It must touch it with all the intimacy of motherhood, but must rise above it with all the higher degrees of maturity like something supernal. It must be to it what ideals are, but more. It must touch Hfe with the closeness of ideals, but must soar above it to ideal and astral heights. It must be indeed like the heavens, in us and all around us, and at the same time transcendently above us. If there were a possibility in a flower that was not appealed to by its great nature-environment, that environ- ment would be imperfect. Similarly, if there were a potentiality in the depths of a human life that was not appealed to by our higher Environment, that Environment would be inadequate. Is there the possibility of divine life at the centre and core of our being, then there must be divine life in our Environment, or it is imfit. Is there Divinity in our human thought and quest, then again there must be Divinity in our Environment. And if it is the very God that we think of and seek, then the very God, and not a semblance thereof, must be in our Environment, or it is not adequate — to say nothing about how that possibility ever could have got lodged in flower or life unless it had pre-existed in its environment; inasmuch as flowers and lives are to their environment what buds are to the mother-tree. But if our Environ- ment is really adequate to our total nature, thought, and life, in both its actuality and its
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possibility; if it is truly Divine, touching us with the intimacy of an atmosphere, and at the same time mounting above us with the transcendence of the heavens, then indeed we have the natural element and condition of all great and endless growth. Then the kindred and congenial King- dom of Heaven, then God Himself in reality, has become the soul's great Environment, and end- less progress is the natural evolution. Given a divine Environment to human life and you have given sunny Italy to the orange, or the Garden of Paradise to the rose. Then truly the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, the fitting sphere, home, and nursery of man's ever-growing life.
Such a divine Environment, and nothing less, is what God has provided in His Self-revelation as divine Background, incarnate Divinity, and divine Spirit. How shall we make this real? When we ponder how the cosmos itself furnishes the great nature-environment for the lower life of man; when we contemplate how the universe of Reality forms the background against which all life is set; when we see how the universal ground then, as it were, gathers itself up for us in a particular sun; and when we consider how the impalpable ether permeates all, according to the new view, as the subtle life and essence of ever3d:hing, we have a concept and a vision that are striking in their reality and their intellectual appeal. I know of nothing so naturally helpful.
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The lower environment suggests the higher, and furnishes the transition in thought. Nature leads to God as it should. A divine Background then that, like the Universe, forms the field against which life is set ; an incarnate Divinity that gathers the universal Divine up into the particular Ufe of Christ, and comes near in approach and efficiency, like the sun ; and a divine Spirit that, like an ether, permeates everything and constitutes the invis- ible soul and quickening life of all — ^this is the higher divine Environment that God has provided for man's higher life.
Unless God, in some perfectly effective way, becomes the Environment of man's life, that Envi- ronment is inadequate. Because in the first place nothing but the Divine can create and mother man's being; and in the second place, nothing but the Divine can appeal to his deepest Hfe and furnish the proper object for his thought and worship. Not only man's higher Environment must be essentially divine, but also his lower environment, the cosmos itself, must be finally revealed to him in essentially divine aspects; otherwise his total Environment is imperfect and inadequate to his total nature and need. Accordingly God Himself has become man's element and home. He has become the sphere of his life, the enfolding Fatherhood in which he lives and moves and has his being. He has become the incarnate Christ, the great human
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and divine Personality, as definite and near as a mother to a child, more transcendent and inex- haustible than an ideal. He has become the Holy Spirit to man, indwelling and inspiring, greatening and glorifying, without end. This is man's perfect higher Environment, first creating, second meeting man's nature and need in its length and breadth and height and depth. As a concept, we even have ventured to say that it is absolute in its completeness, challenging our human mind to add a new dimension or take away an old. As a reality, it has proved the perfect coming of the Divine to the human, as sufficient and satisfying to man's higher being as nature to his lower.
A divine Environment for the ever-growing life of man ; a Kingdom of Heaven for the child- ren of the King; God Himself become, in a perfectly sufficing way, the very sphere and element of the human heart, intellect, spirit, and will — ^here is the higher world of Reality that God has provided for the higher life, through His Self-revelation as Fatherhood-Divine-Back- ground, Incarnate Divinity, and Divine Spirit. Such is the incomparable Kingdom and Home that Christianity reveals and forever proclaims, an Environment worthy indeed to be called a Kingdom of Heaven-at-hand. And such the awakened and awakening souls of untold mul- titudes have found it as they have opened
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themselves wide to its power and been changed more and more into the image and glory of God.
If now in addition this higher world of Reality, this revelation of Divinity as such, this Kingdom of Heaven, could change somehow the cosmos also into a kind of divine Environment, could transfigure it for man and reveal it in divine aspects, thus making the total Environment in some sense divine, the story of fulfilment would be complete. If in some way all nature could be thus viewed as well as humanity and law, truth, beauty, and ideals, then the entire En- vironment would become for man divine, and hence kindred and propitious. Most happily this is what comes to pass. The citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, the life spiritualised in the divine Environment, the soul cleansed into purity so that it can see God, begins to see the Divine everywhere, — God in nature and in hu- manity, in law and in truth, in beauty and in ideals; God in all things and all things in God. To such a life, as to Jesus, the heavens become the throne of God and the earth itself the foot- stool of His feet; every city becomes a sacred City of the great King, and even the body of man His sacred handiwork, to whose stature man can not add one cubit, and of whose head he can not make one hair white or black. Thus to such an awakened and illumined soul the
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cosmos itself becomes a vast divine Environ- ment; all worlds become God's worlds; and God Himself becomes God over all, and in all, and through all. A higher Environment and a spirit- ualised life, turning all Reality into an infinite divine Environment, the fitting sphere, home, and nursery of man's ever-growing life — it is a consummation indeed fulfilling quite the total nature and need of man.
Hitherto we have considered our higher union with God, and the Divine as the true Environ- ment of our life. Naturally in this Kingdom of Heaven thus at hand and this citizenship therein, God is forever working in man and man forever co- working with God in the supreme way. For God is working in man as Spirit, and man is co-working with God under inspiration.
In the Holy Spirit God's working is consum- mate and complete. The primal but unending revelation through nature and humanity, law and truth, beauty and ideals, becomes indefinitely ampler in the light and life of the Spirit. The cosmos itself is born anew for man in his own new birth and awakening. Human life is seen transfigured in the light of God. Law becomes a vaster and diviner concept. Truth becomes more illimitable and august. Beauty becomes wider- ranging and more sacred. Ideals become fuller and more heavenly.
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When God works as Spirit, the greatest possible elevation of life takes place. All the ranges of our human nature are lifted up into the exaltation. Even the body becomes a temple. Thus our humanity is spiritualised and glorified, "changed from glory into glory." This is the supreme work- ing of God upon life. And thus God transfigures His Universe for us, as the earth is glorified by the dawn. This is God's supreme working upon His worlds, transfiguriag them all into a divine Environment for man. When God works as Spirit, the divine Background too becomes farther unveiled to the spiritualised sight. So it becomes richer. And the objective Christ is revealed in heavenly vision that does not pass. And the sub- jective Christ is revealed within, being formed in us more and more. So the Incarnation also is richer. While at the same time God pours forth His life as pure Spirit, unmixed with matter, unmingled with our humanity, not clothed with the vestments of creation, but coming as pure Spirit to spirit.
Not that God could come as pure Spirit to spirit if there had been no cosmos and no Incar- nation. God, as we have seen, had to externalise Himself first in nature and in Christ, as first He had to externalise Himself in humanity, creating and evolving man spiritward through the early stages of naivete and individualism, before He could internalise Himself and come to our human life as pure Spirit to spirit.
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Here, therefore, is the complete and supreme working of God. Divine Spirit has enriched itself with the preceding moments and transcends them. God at length reveals Himself and works as God, coming as pure Spirit. God is Spirit.
Correspondingly here is found as well the supreme form of human activity. When man co-works with God under inspiration he comes to his coronation. It is illuminating to reflect how this idea is embedded in human thought. If a poem comes like a divine inspiration, or a great symphony is heard in the soul as though the music of Heaven were echoed there, or a lovely picture is caught in transport of vision, or a great prophet preaches as one inspired, it is enough. Humanity is at the summit of its activity. There is no loftier exercise of our human powers, nothing higher that man can do. This is recognised everywhere, from the invention that comes like a flash from above, to the writing of a Bible for the race. But nowhere is this so supremely and naturally true as in religion. When man seeks not only to invent or write or compose or paint or speak as one inspired, but also to live as one inspired, his human powers have claimed indeed their noblest exaltation and exercise. It is the activity of our total nature Godward on the supreme spiritual plane. Nothing that we ever do is so inclusive and so elevated. Perfect prayer is the supreme exercise of the
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human mind. The effort to open ourselves as spirit to God as Spirit is the crowning effort of life. It is the fullest and most exalted con- sciousness that we ever know. Life's Upper Room is its highest room, and life's Pentecost is its supreme experience. To pray so as to re- ceive divine inspiration, to work under heavenly impulsion, and to live as one inspired, — in a word to co-work with God in the Kingdom of Heaven under the inspiration of the Spirit, is to live in the fulness and the glory of life. It is to live as Jesus lived. This is life's hilltop, where Heaven and earth come together, where God's working is consummated, where man's activity is supreme.
God ever working in man as Spirit; man ever CO- working with God under inspiration: the su- preme form of both divine and human activity — here is the summit that we have reached.
What now shall we say? Is this the destruc- tion of human individuality? Rather is it not its conservation and fulfilment? When is man so individual as when he is supremely active? And when is he so supremely active as when he is living an inspired life? Man's individual quality is no more negated when shone through by God's light, than is a stained-glass window. Rather his unique individuality is then brought out and glorified. When he endeavours to behold Christ in the richness and beauty of His character
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and struggles to appreciate Him; when he seeks so to live that God may reveal His Son in him and Christ may be formed within more and more perfectly; when he strives to open his life wide to God, as spirit to Holy Spirit, and to abide in God and God in him, — is he ever more completely himself? Is not his activity then as exalted and rich as it is excellent and arduous? Is he ever so free as on that hilltop? Does the earth ever lie so completely at his feet? And is he ever so master of himself and his world? The Son has made him free then and he is free indeed. His individuality is not destroyed, it is conserved and fulfilled. ' ' I came not to destroy but to fulfil. ' ' Individuality is fulfilled in personality.
Herewith we have seen that the higher union with God is the true life of man ; that the Divine is man's true Environment and Home; and that God ever working in man as Spirit, and man ever co-working with God under inspiration, is man's supreme activity, and therefore the fulfilment, not the negation, of his human individuality. Thus we see: — Man's True Life in God.
CHAPTER XIII
HUMANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
IN all the foregoing we have been considering the relation of God to man and of man to God. We have not studied in any thoroughgoing fashion the relation of humanity to the individual, or of the individual to humanity. It is clear, however, that any philosophy of 3ife that does not include the latter and show its inner connection with the former is incomplete and unsatisfying. The enspherement of the individual by hu- manity; the prior and major working thereof; and the effort of the same to produce a full and complete man, has been either set forth or sug- gested in a manner that makes enlargement here unnecessary. Ensphering humanity, in a way, is a part of the ensphering life of God, that we dwelt upon so extensively at the beginning and that has formed the background of all our later chapters. Humanity is one of the many spheres that enfold our human life. The prior and major working thereof is a part of the priority, parent- hood, and greater working of God, that we also have dwelt upon. And the effort of the same to produce a full-grown human life is implied in the
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like purpose of God; for it is a part of that great purpose, and the procedure therein a part of His great process. How humanity therefore broods our life and is the prior and major worker in the effort to produce a full and complete human being, here must be left to our thought and imagination to revive and picture.
In response to this ensphering, producing humanity, the individual for his part, if his growth be true, develops from receptivity into activity, from egoism into altruism, from child- hood into parenthood, and from discipleship into apostleship, or into the larger parenthood.
That a human life must develop from receptivity into activity would seem so palpable indeed as to render the statement needless. But that a life must develop as well from egoism into altruism would seem at first far from palpable. Still the latter is equally true. For there can be no rich activity that is not extra-regarding and altru- istic ; and there can be no rich receptivity without rich activity. And of course without both these there can be no rich growth and self-realisation. All this has been abundantly shown in a preceding section. As there must be worlds from which to receive, so there must be worlds toward which to act. And the life that does not forget itself as it pours itself out toward nature or humanity or law or truth or beauty or ideals or God, is a life that does not deeply or richly act. Wide
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open in rich receptivity on the one side, wide open in rich activity on the other side, toward all worlds — ^this is the law of all rich life and growth.
If we contemplate more particularly the relation of humanity to the individual and of the indi- vidual to humanity, as in the present chapter we seek to do, we shall realise that nowhere is the general law more strikingly operant. For a life that does not evolve from a true childhood into a true parenthood, that is not in the first place endlessly fathered and mothered and so abundantly receptive, and that does not in the second place come in turn endlessly to parent other lives and so come to the most abounding and deepest activity of which life is capable, is itself an arrested development, a non-normal life. It need not here be said that any parenthood that is not unselfish and altruistic is not worthy of that high name; here we are regarding true and normal life. Let us also remind ourselves anew that the parenthood we contemplate is broader than the physical; it is as wide as the gamut of our human nature. Wherever body parents body, or affection parents affection, or mind mothers mind, or spirit broods spirit, there is the parenthood we mean. For the complete parenthood includes all of these. Although it is perfectly true that the higher parenthoods can exist and often do exist without the lower.
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And this brings us naturally to that general development from discipleship into apostleship of which we have spoken, the larger parenthood which must characterise every true and complete life. The amplitudes of meaning that are here indicated must be left to the reader. Suffice it that a man or a woman who does not in disciple- ship forever reverently listen and learn, sitting at the feet of God and in communion with all His worlds, and who does not also forever become an apostle and parent to humanity in all the high things of the heart and mind and spirit, can never grow or become a true and representative life. That is, an individual who does not develop from an ensphered particular, or child, into an ensphering, producing universal, or parent, re- mains to the end an arrested, dwarfed, and lim- ited thing.
Consider the goal reached: the life that will not live for others is doomed to blight and atro- phy, or worse. The law of self-realisation is the law of self-sacrifice and social service. Egoism is death; altruism is life.
Here is what we have desiderated; here is the rational basis of self-sacrifice. H the life that will not give itself to others can neither profoundly act nor receive and so can not develop, but must remain in perpetual childhood, selfishness verily becomes death, while self-sacrifice becomes the law of life. This on the one side is the tragic.
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on the other side the glorious law. It is not merely that others need the help that we can give for the perfecting of their lives, but also that, unless we give that help richly, unless we pour forth our life abundantly, unless we act with our total nature toward their total nature, all life stagnates within us, all the intakes of life are clogged, and we do not go forth to that vaster development from individuality into personality. Here is the gravamen and criticalness of action. Unless we open out toward humanity, unless we bloom, we can never develop the seeds and soul of character within, or bring out and realise the possible beauty of our being, or send forth a sweet fragrance to the world. A heart that does not pity, that does not sympathise and love; a mind that does not consider, that does not pene- trate and search out and plan for and teach other minds ; a soul that does not yearn after and brood and quicken other souls, is a heart, a mind, a spirit that is without a great and fitting occupation. Such a life can never grow. It is like a landscape in winter, or like an orange tree that has met a killing frost and all the saps of life are frozen in its arteries and buds. The life that will not become humane can not continue to be human. He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life shall find it.
Parenthood indeed is essential and blessed, not only to childhood but also to manhood and
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womanhood. Universal parenthood is absolutely indispensable to self-realisation. Self-sacrifice in truth is implicated in the very constitution and law and process of our being and becoming; and that vaster development from individuality into personality, that alone makes life truly human, is perpetually inhibited to the selfish soul. The selfish life must forever remain a torso. Here, then, is the rational basis of self-sacrifice. We die to live. The universal parent and apostle to humanity becomes the true and complete hu- man being.
It is in no wise strange that this should be. It is according to a deep universal law. No environment does, the Universe itself does not, pour its living energies into us as though we were a mere reservoir and receptacle. Not into but into and through is the formula. Life is not a pocket or sink, it is a medium, channel, agency. All the realms of Reality pour themselves into and through us as the oceans pour themselves into and through the rivers of the world. Life is not like the Dead Sea that swallows up the sweet Jordan, but like Galilee with its perpetual inflow and outflow. One of the most instructive and sobering things for human contemplation is the way all realms give and take back again their own. Do they lend us strength to-day, they claim it back to-morrow. The energy we take in as food
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we give out as work. Even our solid bones melt, thaw, and flow away while new bones flow into their place. And at the last this congeries of elements, this body, we return to the earth as it was. Nothing stays. Thought comes and goes. Feelings pass like waves. Consciousness itself is a stream. It is not ours to have and to hold. We can not reverse this unalterable law. Shylock may bathe his hands in yellow ducats up to his elbows, but soon his bony fingers must let the last piece fall. We give back all that we get. It is ours to use or abuse, not to keep. We may put the universal energies to splendid use as they flow through us, or we may desecrate them by abuse. We may even greatly enlarge life's inlets, especially the higher, but we can not stop the river in its flow. Nature flows into and through us; humanity flows into and through us; the life of God flows into and through us. Thus not into, but into and through, is the universal law.
A human life then is a medium and agency. It is a true medium and agency when it lets all worlds flow through it freely. It lets all worlds flow through it freely when it itself develops richly from receptivity into activity, from egoism into altruism, from childhood into parenthood, and from discipleship into apostleship, or univer- sal parenthood; or in general when it develops from a particular into a universal, or from indi- viduality into personality. But this, on the other
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side, is self-sacrifice; it is dying. Yes; but it is dying to live. Here, consequentl3% is the rational basis of the universal law of self-sacrifice. Not into, but into and through, is the universal law, the law both of self-sacrifice and of life. To be a rich medium and agency is to become a rich life.
Apply this now to the relation of the individual life to humanity. It is a medium and agency as before. It is so truly when it lets humanity flow through it freely. It does this richly when it itself becomes perfectly unselfish; that is, when it develops from receptivity into activity, from egoism into altruism, from childhood into parent- hood, and from discipleship into apostleship, or universal parenthood. But once more this is self-sacrifice; it is dying. True; but it is dying to live. Consequently here again we have the rational basis of self-sacrifice. The individual life becomes a rich medium and agency of hu- manity and thereby realises itself and becomes a rich life.
It is a labour to appreciate the magnitude of the fact we now are looking out upon. We see life as it is, set into the All, the perpetual centre and focus of countless streams of energy that flow into it from every realm of Reality. We also see it as the perpetual fountain-head of count- less streams of influence that flow from it in every
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direction toward all worlds. If life itself were thought of as a great heart, and the venous sys- tem as numberless channels forever bringing the streams into it, and the arterial system as innu- merable conduits constantly leading the streams away, then its ceaseless diastole and systole would represent its perpetual intake and output. And the representation would be essentially true to reality. For life is no more severed from the great systems of the Universe than the heart from the venous and arterial systems of the body. And as one sees a heart truly only when one sees it in its vital setting, a beating centre, connecting complex systems on the one side and on the other, ceaselessly intaking and as ceaselessly out- pouring, so one sees a human being truly only when one sees him set into the organic Universe, a throbbing centre of high complex life, con- necting vast systems on the one side and on the other, perpetually receiving from all worlds and perpetually outgiving toward all. This is life, veritable life. Anything else is like a human heart in a jar of alcohol, or a manikin in a glass case. And any view of life that does not see it thus as the living centre and focus of all worlds is utterly superficial and false. Therefore we must see heaven and earth and all the realms between, universal law, truth, beauty, and ideals, humanity and God forever pouring their energy and life into and through man; and man for his
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part, not as an impossible reservoir without out- let, but as a wonderful channel, medium, and agency of it all.
What a different view of life this is from the individualistic! And how different the impli- cates that go with it! If the individual life is, like a circle, complete in itself, of course there is no rational basis of self-sacrifice. But if life is not a circle, as self-complete and detached as though it existed in an infinite void, but on the contrary is a living channel, medium, and agency, into and through which all worlds stream and act, then at once a rational basis of self-sacrifice is in sight. The individual then must be a fit medium and agency through which all realms may have free course. But no selfish life can be such. For selfishness in its essential nature refuses to give itself. It is like a gigantic spider sitting at the focus of its web. It would draw all things into itself; it would give nothing out. Only the unselfish life can have true commerce, with natural inflow and outflow. But this is self-sacrifice. How inevitably then we reach the result that only the sacrificial life can be a true medium and agency, receiving richly from every world and pouring out richly toward all. And how rational becomes the law of self-sacrifice. It is in reality fit adjustment to the Universe. It is recognition of the great fact-worlds. It is acknowledgment of connection. It is acceptance
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of the law of finite life, namely, that all the realms of Reality pour their energies, not merely into, but into and through every living thing. And it is acceptance at the same time of its own deeper being; for it itself is, not only a private individual, but also a public universal; it is a part of the Universe. So sacrifice is only of the individual- istic self, and self-sacrifice becomes self-realisation. For when a life lets all worlds flow through it freely, richly and unselfishly co-operating there- with, it realises its true self, as the diamond realises itself when it lets ten thousand sunbeams pour through its being. To be perfectly trans- parent; to let the sunbeams come into it; to shatter them into their elemental glory; and to flash them out again — ^this is the splendour of the diamond, this is the making of the jewel. Any opacity on its part, any selfish absorption of the rays, any refusal to be a transparent me- dium, sullies its own beauty. Most normal and rational accordingly is self-sacrifice, or spiritual purity and transparency of soul. Because life is a medium and agency, therefore self-sacrifice is the only true attitude.
It is noteworthy that our true relation to humanity is not different from our right relation toward all other worlds. Our attitude toward nature, toward law, truth, beauty, and ideals, as well as toward God, is not essentially different. Face-to-face with these, reverent receptivity and
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unselfish activity are the only appropriate atti- tude. Here, as ia the human sphere, selfishness is self -defeat, while humility is iaheritance. They can pour themselves abundantly only through an open and generous soul. So the law of self-sacrifice is a universal law, applying to the individual, not only in his relation to humanity, but also in his relation to every realm of Reality, and for the same reason; for life is set into the All, everywhere as a medium and agency.
Have we put unmeasured emphasis upon this last? We have done so deliberately; for to be a true medium and agency is about the chief end of man. To be such in relation to human- kind, to be such in relation to the cosmos, and to be such in relation to God is to find one's true place and fulfil one's function in the World-All.
What is it then to be a true medium and agency of humanity? It is first to be a true child of humanity; it is second to be a true parent of humanity. When we are children humanity enspheres our life; it is an ensphering, producing universal. When we become parents, we en- sphere other lives ; we in turn become ensphering, producing universals. Our development thus is from an ensphered particular into an ensphering, producing universal. Not, of course, that hu- manity ever ceases to be to each of us, in subtle ways, what it was at the first. It is plain, too,
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that parenthood, as here used, is more than physical, having all the scope of affectional, intellectual, and spiritual parenthood. To be such a universal parent means to become a co- creator with humanity on every plane of life. Medium and agency, universal parent or enspher- ing universal, and co-creator, — ^this is what every developed life in relation to humanity becomes.
Is such language unfamiliar? It, or some such terms, with the great ideas for which they stand, speedily must become familiar. No longer may we view a human life as a self-complete and de- tached thing. There is no such monstrosity in the world. Rather we must see life as it is, see it in its connections, see it set into humanity as its medium and agency, and every normal and growing life as a universal parent and co-creator of its human-kind.
What now shall we say to this? how estimate it? Certainly no one could ask a greater ofQce. No human relationship could be deeper, richer, and more intimate. At once the loftiest char- acters of history rise in our thought. We witness the spiritual fathers and Madonnas of the race. To be a true medium and agency, a gracious parent, a co-creator of our kind is to attain, to be numbered among the great and good.
So here is the true and intended relationship of man to humanity, in which egoism passes into concrete altruism, selfishness changes into par-
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ental love, and self-sacrifice is seen to be the only normal and rational thing in the world and to be crowned at last with self-realisation.
Again it is noteworthy that the same concept that indicates the right relation of the individual to society, indicates essentially the true relation of a life to the cosmos and to God. To be a perfect medium and agency of the cosmos, to develop from an ensphered particular into an ensphering, producing universal, and to become a co-creator therein is to find one's place and function. The like is true of man's supreme rela- tionship. For to be a fitting medium and agency of the Divine, to develop into universal parent- hood under God, and to become a co-creator with Him is indeed to find one's true place and life. One law therefore holds throughout. The same note of harmony is struck in the great circle of Divinity that is struck in the smaller circles. Our supreme relationship furnishes the key to our subordinate relationships, and vice versa. The life that has found its place in God has found its true place also in the cosmos and in humanity, for the ways are one.
At this stage we have sought to lift up into centrality a great normative fact that in former chapters we only casually have touched. This great fact is that life is a focus and centre between vast systems, that it is a part of the All, set into Reality as a medium and agency of every world.
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and as a co-creator therein. Heretofore we have studied on the one side all worlds in relation to man, on the other side man in relation to the World- All, We have seen the universal lines converge and focus in him; we have seen all the lines of influence radiate from him. We have studied him, that is, on the one side and on the other, but we have not thoughtfully viewed him as the centre and focus of both these great pro- cesses at once: we have not finally set him as an actual life into his actual worlds. This is what our present chapter has sought to do. Herein is its essential advance. Man's true relation to humanity, as well as his true relation to every world, flows naturally therefrom.
We must see life then set into the World-All as we see a star set into the cosmos. All realms of Reality stream toward that star; all lines of influence radiate from it. Better, all worlds pour their influences into and through it. It is their perfect channel and medium. So with life; it is the medium and agency of all the spheres.
Does this seem imaginative ? It is the veritable transcript of fact. We imagine a vain thing, rather, when we abstract, and treat the individual as an independent entity, as though he were some self-complete circle. The truth is, we are so near ourselves that we can not see ourselves, just as we are so near the earth that we can not see it. If we saw the earth afar off, hanging like the
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moon in the sky, then we should see that all the while it is set into the universal system and is the channel and medium of every realm. So with us 5 all the while we are set into the universal Whole, the medium and agency of every sphere, however provincial and short-sighted our ordinary view may be.
With this true setting of life, the true law of life and the right relation thereof to humanity, nature, and all higher worlds, together with the deep, rational basis of self-sacrifice toward every realm, are naturally and logically given.
Thus man is a medium and agency. His great business is to be a true medium and agency. He can be such only by being perfectly open and unselfish. Thereby he becomes, under God, a co-creator ; toward humanity, a universal parent ; and in himself, a true and complete man.
CHAPTER XIV
MAN THE EXPRESSION OF GOD AND PARTAKER OF THE DIVINE NATURE
STAGE by stage, from the beginning, we have studied life in relation to its great Environ- ment. First we have looked at the divine side, then at the human, back and forth, up to the present. Now it will be good to connect the different stages in parallel series and see each in its connection.
Man finds himself, at the beginning, set into the World-All and endowed with a marvellous gamut of possibilities. He starts in harmony and union with his environment, the lower union of childhood's instinctive plane. He grows and separates into the polarity of an individual will. He advances then into the higher union with God and His worlds, developing from individu- ality into personality. Thereby he rises into rich co-operation with and co-creatorship under God. Thus at length he becomes a true medium and agency of the Divine, more and more an expres- sion of God, and at last a partaker of the divine nature. So he develops into a child of God and
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into a full-grown man. Here is the normal course of our human progress as we advance from child- hood to ripe manhood. This is the view from the human side.
On the divine side, God creates us and enfolds us with His universal spheres. He is and remains the prior and major worker in all our human life. He works to unfold us into full and complete personality. He does this by a vast threefold Self -revelation through all media, till Spirit to spirit speaks. In this rich and trinal way He ever works in us, progressively creating. Thus He develops and raises us into higher union and co-operation with Himself and into co-creator- ship. Thereby we are made a true medium and agency of His life, a rich expression of God, and a partaker of the divine Nature. So He develops us at last into a child of God and a complete man. This is the view from the divine side.
So much for each series in its connection. The terms that we have not yet considered are: Life as an expression of God, and finally a partaker of the divine Nature.
If it is a different and higher view of life to see it as we have done, as the channel and agency of God and His worlds, and if this is the deep and decisive corrective of all insulating individualism, it is also a loftier and truer view to contemplate it as the expression of the Divine; and the correctives of this view are no less positive and wholesome.
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Human life the expression of God. But does not God express Himself in and through all His worlds? and is not our realisation of this simply the apprehending of the true function and God- hood of Deity? In what distinctive way then does He express Himself through man ? He utters Himself in rich and superlative degree.
It is very wonderful to think of our human life as the expression of the Divine, to think of the very God as dwelling in us, and to realise that He utters Himself through us in far higher and richer ways than through mineral crystal, or vegetal life, or animal form. It is a supreme and transporting view. For into us He sheds His love, into us He pours His thought, unto us He imparts His Spirit, and through us executes His higher will. It is wondrous to think of God's uttering Himself through us at all ; it is surpassing to think of His expressing Himself in this tran- scendent way. A marvellous organ of God is the consciousness of man. When it is lifted up to its highest forms it is a sublime expression. Nothing in truth so glorifies our human nature to our thought as the fact that God is pouring His creative power and life through it. If that unfathomable, full, and perfect Being is pouring His high life through all the gateways of our nature and especially through its nobler gates, then is our nature glorious indeed, and then is our higher Hfe unsearchable. No man thinks of
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himself worthily or of his privilege nobly who does not think of his life thus as the possible image and rich expression of God. And when he realises that God is speaking through him in a thousand ways, that He is streaming through all the channels of his being, and working in him both to will and to work according to His good pleasure, he realises that it is half divine to live. So elevated and rich is the higher life. The im- manent God is the glory of man as thesimlight is the glory of the jewel.
Nor have men been blind to this. In all times wherever a man has realised that God verily was speaking to him and that he was the voice of God to men, he has been raised into uncommon exaltation. And wherever humanity have been convinced that some chosen man was the mes- senger of the Most High to them, they have looked upon him with wonder and awe. To feel that one is a herald of the Divine, to know that one has a message from above, and to be sure that God is speaking in the soul and impelling it to become a voice is, men know, an incomparable consciousness. It is that that has made the great prophets of the race; it is that that has written the supreme pages of history. It reaches up to the highest altitudes of our human expe- rience. It is of a piece with the consciousness of Jesus, who was aware that His Heavenly Father forever was speaking through Him. We
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need very great elevation in order to see and appreciate this. There is no higher view of life than that which sees it as some great jewel through which the light of God may gloriously stream.
The other side of this radiant and supreme privilege is that man may show forth God to the world, the human may be the mirror of the Divine. On the one side we may hold, as we have seen, our purified being up to God and know that that transcendent Light and Life are forever pouring into us. On the other side we may hold our reflecting nature up to the world and humbly know that, even in marvellous degree, we may show forth God to men. But again we ask: Does not every crystal, does not every flower, every bird, every star show forth God? And again we answer: They do; but man, in his higher life, may show forth God in superlative ways.
Two men were coming from Trinity Church where they had listened to Phillips Brooks, when one was heard to say to the other: "There is something divine about that man." He had shown forth God to them. At once we feel that that is the limit. Higher function than that there is not nor can be on earth or in heaven. To manifest His character in the world, to utter His word in His spirit, to show forth the will and work of God, so to exhibit His life and grace that men seeing us may think of Him and feel
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that we are revealing the heart of God, is an office and privilege little less than divine. How far it is from all sordid self -display, how excel- lent, how perfect. The life of man the mirror of God — 'tis an office fit for an angel. To be such a mirror truly, to reflect more and more perfectly the glory of God would make "brutes men and men divine."
Most naturally this leads us to our next view: man a partaker of the divine Nature. From life as an expression of God, to life as a partaker of the divine Nature, thought rightly and easily passes. For how we could reflect as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and not be changed into the same image from glory unto glory would more than puzzle the mind. And with this our human life attaias. For the supreme function of man is to show forth God in the world, and the supreme goal of life is to become a partaker of the divine Nature. This is more than evident in the nature of things. Because God is the limiting term upward, and the most overweening ambition of man has known not how to attempt anything higher than self -deification. To share in God's world, work, thought, will, love, life, and nature! how could one write another ascend- ing series comparable to that? It is the soul's stairway to Heaven. And other sancta scala of Reality there is not and can be none. Unto this
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God, through all media, through all His vast and augmenting Self-manifestation, seeks to bring us. And unto this the Son of God is the Saviour and perfect Way. " And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." " He hath granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature." "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God: and such we are."
What we have been leading up to we now have reached: life as a fulfilled child of God and a complete man. When is this realised? Already we have seen in part; now we may see in full.
Here we need to recall the great gamut of Reality. We need to see the World-All rising from the lowest physical up to the highest spirit- ual, from nature up to life, law, truth, beauty, ideals, and God. And over against that great gamut, we need to see man unfolding Godward, developing from body with its physical life, up to mind with its subconscious instinct, and its lower subliminal ranges of feeling, intellect, will, intuition, and faith; on up to conscious mind with its higher ranges of life, affectional, intellectual, and volitional, esthetic, moral, and spiritual. When man thus stands over against the World- All, the minor gamut over against the major.
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corresponding to it range for range, then in one great aspect thereof, human Hfe has been fulfi-hed. It must unfold through the whole gamut, from the physical up to the spiritual, or it is not com- plete. The scale of Reality must reproduce itself in miniature in man. He must match himself over against the World-All, he must be a micro- cosm in the Macrocosm, or he is not a full-grown man. Otherwise he would be like a bare and leafless tree, with no rich correspondence and connection with the atmosphere of earth or the sunlight of heaven; and little enough like a per- fect tree, green with leaves and glorious with blossoms, in luxuriantly rich correspondence and union with earth and sky.
Not only must the whole gamut of life be there, matching the World-All, but also life must be spiritualised. When a life becomes spiritual, it is not merely that it develops a new and topmost plane, adding thereby the final range to life, but as well that that supreme spiritual plane pervades with its fine influence all the lower ranges and imbues even the body. The whole life thus is spiritualised. The higher organises and informs the lower. Just as a truly intellectual life not only possesses that high range, but also per- meates with its subtle power all the lower ranges ; or just as a really loving life imbues the whole nature with the grace of love. Here is another great aspect of the fulfilled life.
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We now may venture a complete answer to our question as to when a life realises itself. When man has unfolded all the possible ranges of his nature, and the World- All has reproduced itself in miniature in him; when he has become spiritualised throughout, and the World- All has become divinised for him; when the human has become a rich medium and agency of the Divine, a superior expression of God, and a partaker of the divine Nature, and God has developed His own image in him, has reproduced Himself in him in rich degree, then is man a fulfilled child of God, and so a complete man.
Three great essentials are here present on the human side. First, human life has developed from its budding infancy and lifted itself up through all the ranges of growth until it stands in the full stature of manhood, crowned with spirituality. Second, the crowning spiritual na- ture has wrought down through all the lower ranges like a divine leaven, spiritualising all and giving the total life elevation. Third, the devel- oped personality thus has become a noble medium and agency of the Divine, a rich expression of God, and a partaker of the divine Nature.
And three great essentials are present on the divine side. The World-All has reproduced itself in man; the Divine has revealed itself to him as Spirit and so the Universe has become spiritual- ised; and God has reproduced His image in him.
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Here it is especially noteworthy as a thing of first importance, that the World-All repro- duces itself in miniature in man. Because this makes the human product as profoundly and essentially natural on a higher plane as the pro- duction of a rose on the lower. For what could be more fundamentally natural than that a parent should reproduce itself essentially in a child? If there is a physical kingdom why should we not be physical ? If there is a vegetal-animal realm of life, why should it not reappear in us ? If there are realms of law, truth, beauty, and ideals, why should they not be represented in our wide- ranging nature? And if there are higher and vaster realms of mental and spiritual Reality, why should they not reproduce themselves in the mind and spirit of man? Nothing in the world would appear more essentially normal and natural than this. The only fundamentally unnatural and abnormal thing in all our life is sin and arrested development. The acorn that never becomes an oak, the blasted life that never un- folds its hidden potencies, is the one certain abnormality.
Like unto the first in importance is the second : the World- All has become divinised or spiritual- ised for man. Under the inspiration of God the developed spirit of man comes to behold the Divine everywhere. He sees God in nature and God in life, God in law and God in truth, God
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in beauty and in ideals, and pre-eminently in His unique and only-begotten Son. In differing degrees the light of God shines through all His worlds into the truly awakened human soul.
The culminating fact of course is the third: God has reproduced His own image in man. The developed life indeed has come to be affection of the infinite Affection, intellect of the divine Intellect, and will of the eternal Will — in a word, spirit of the absolute Spirit, a partaker of the divine Nature.
This is what it means to be a fulfilled child of God; this it is to be human, to be a full-grown man.
Particular attention now may be called to the essential harmony of this outcome with the funda- mental position of our book. Supreme emphasis has been put upon the vast and total Environ- ment. The priority and parenthood of God have been made pre-eminent. And with this our pres- ent result accords. For the World- All has repro- duced itself in miniature in man; so man has unfolded through his wide-ranging gamut: God has revealed Himself as Spirit, spiritualising the Universe for man; so man has realised himself as spirit, attaining to spirituality: and God has developed His own image in man; and so he has become an expression and partaker of the divine Nature.
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Again looking over the entire development we see that, through all this vast, incommensurable process, the Universe and man alike have become spiritualised ; progressively God has revealed Him- self as Spirit, and man has realised himself as spirit. So that at length Spirit to spirit speaks, and spirit with Spirit dwells. And this more- over forever to go forward, that Spirit, God, may become AU-in-AU.
Here is the divine goal toward which all crea- tion moves. Man's significance is not thereby negated but fulfilled. He becomes a spiritual personality within the all-enfolding life of God. Man glorifies God, and God glorifies Himself in m.an, as the child glorifies the father and the father glorifies himself in the perfect child. Not "eternal form," but eternal personality, "shall still divide the eternal soul from all beside."
When this shall be, when God shall be All-in- AU, we shall have entered into the soul of things : the bodies shall have passed: the spirit and the eternal reality shall abide. Physical being, child- hood, youth, on the subjective side; nature, divine background revelation, and incarnate Divinity, on the objective side shall have passed away, it is true, in their temporal actuality, but shall abide in their eternal and essential reality. Life shall forever be different because it tabernacled in this intimate and dear frame. Childhood shall
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forever live at the heart of manhood. And ma- turity shall be "yoiing with the eternal youth." The essential soul of all temporal forms shall have passed into the eternal Spirit, and so abide. Even past forms therefore shall not have proved in the end merely empty and meaningless, but shall have revealed within a deeper significance that endures.
CHAPTER XV
THE ABOUNDING RICHES OF THE HIGHER LIFE
OUR task in the main is done. The body and articulation of truth have been at length set forth. It is now our privilege to estimate the splendid outcome. If our evalua- tion shall justify the magnificent claims of the higher life, the result will be happy indeed. We turn then from realm to realm, to value and judge that life in relation to the different fields of Reality.
And first the higher life with Nature. Nature is different to Jesus than to Judas. The ennobled life, as we should expect, looks out upon a changed cosmos. All nature to such a soul becomes a vast revelation of God. Her immensities tell of His infinitude as nothing else could; her irresistible might impressively reveals His omnipotence; her endless variety and system, His fathomless wis- dom; her majesty, His divine glory. Ever3rthing is pstinct with His presence. The face of nature is indeed a wondrous mirror, her framework an endless symbolism, her fields the leaves of the eldest Bible of the race, her myriad voices His
383
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various speech, and all her processes a vast, divine processional, the ongoings of God. To the pure and clarified being of a Wordsworth, nature is not dead and mechanical, but quick with life and purpose; her inmost essence is not crass and material, but fine and spiritual; her opacity becomes at least translucent ; her mystery is changed from the dark and depressing mystery of Fate into the fascinating mystery of light; and her meaning is incommensurably enriched. To such a life ever5rthing is changed. The might and immensity of nature are no longer crushing, but rather uplifting and enlarging. Instead of his producer, she becomes his mother, his com- pendious teacher, his life-long friend. Her wide house now becomes his kindred and congenial home; her high vault, his spiritual temple; and her endless variety and change, his living and never-failing inspiration. In a word, nature is spiritualised and glorified to the noble soul. The higher life with nature is like a continual morning of privilege. So rich and real and inexhaustible it is daily to unnumbered thousands.
Let us think of the higher life next in relation to Law. Few are the ideas that have had a larger part in shaping the nobler life of the race. This regnant concept is peculiarly the treasure of advanced civilisation. It is priceless and in- dispensable. And as humankind has climbed to higher planes, it has caught sight of finer and
Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 385
finer ranges of law. And from those elevations, too, all the lower forms of law have been seen in a different light. They have been seen as lowly ministrant to some excellent end. Many are the aspects in which law is beheld. The higher life feels the reign of law as the actuality of the boundless World- All outside of us, assert- ing its august rights and layiag its majestic claim upon life. It goes farther. It apprehends law as the reality of God, ensphering us, the almighty Hand, holding us everywhere. Deeper still, it apprehends law as the Will of God. And it presses yet farther back, and realises it as a revelation of the character and life of God. From law as a meaniagless sequence of events, on to law as the presence and self-revelation of God, is a wide and happy flight. The higher life sees law also as the principle of order and as the soul of harmony. It perceives it as an essential mo- ment of all rational life. It detects it as the counterpart of our rational self in the cosmos. It recognises it as the other half of freedom, and as the strong ally and partner of the higher union which constitutes the higher life. And finally it experiences it as the means of its own self-organisation, self-conquest, and self-realisa- tion. Consequently it realises law as life, and so law as love.
With such attributes, little wonder that law has been a mighty factor in human consciousness.
as
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We can account now for both the awe and the love of law, that the profoundest souls have felt from of old. For from the inside they have realised the gracious blessedness of law as well as its majestic strength. "Lord, how love I Thy law." "The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul." "That ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God." "Not my will, but Thine, be done." " I worship Thee, sweet Will of God."
And to the end of time there never will be a rich life that is not built on the strong frame- work of law, nor a wise, deep life that does not see that that which is so strong is also sweet and gracious. And so law is love and love is law, and the men and women of the higher life discover that the Will of God is a law of liberty.
The view grows yet richer when we turn to other realms. We contemplate now the relation of the higher life to Truth. Those who live on life's hilltops see orders of truth that are hidden from other eyes; not only broader horizons, but also higher kinds. These are the richer realms of truth. And those who see and live in accord with these higher realms, live in harmony with all truth. Just as those who live unto the spirit, live also in harmony with the body; but those who live unto the flesh are out of harmony with everything.
Above all the higher life discovers the soul
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of truth and enters into it. For it, truth has a soul, an essential reality; it is not simply empty appearance, the mere form in which things mani- fest themselves to the mind. Truth is the thought of God, the bright disclosure of His nature. It is sacred and inviolate. It is living and abiding. Something of the life and reality and eternity of God is in it. It is, in its way, divine. This is what we mean by the soul of truth. God is in it in a higher degree than He could be in the lower orders of Reality. And hence the miysterious depth and vitality of truth; hence its majesty and authority; hence its spirituality and glory. For if the inexhaustible God is in truth, some- thing of His eternal life and abundance must be in it also. This is what the higher life dis- covers and enters into. It discovers its own soul, and therefore discovers the soul of truth, and of all things besides. It is spirit that awakes to Spirit. The vast kingdoms of truth open up to it in their real worth and wealth. It enters into them, and into their riches. So the higher life knows, appreciates, lives, and at length becomes the truth ; and in turn her vast and rich domains become the mind's natural and great home.
How real this is to countless souls; how real to all the happy children of truth; and how real it was to Jesus, the King of truth, Himself the way, the truth, and the life. " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
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Let us now go on and look at the higher life in relation to Beauty. Every sensitive nature has felt the natural kinship of the religious life thereto. For what is the spiritualisation of life, but the elevation and refinement of our whole being? And what could make life kindred to beauty, if that did not? It seems in a way tau- tologous. For when not only the higher powers are nobly active, but also the lower powers are lifted up into their finest exercise, what should we expect but natural kinship and conjunction with the beautiful ?
And the higher life sees the higher forms. One of the most important things in the relation of our life to beauty is a broad consciousness of its wide-ranging orders; for there are realms above realms. But this is denied to the coarse and rude soul. The exquisiteness of sensuous beauty is one thing; the perfection of character- beauty is another. But all character-beauty, all spiritual excellence, all divine glories are veiled worlds to the life that roots only in the earth. The higher visions are given only to the higher life. And not only this, but also the finer forms and subtler qualities of all the lower orders of beauty, as well, are hidden from the crass and unrefined nature.
Thus the higher life claims all beauty for its empire. It alone has eyes to see and ears to hear. It alone enters into the soul's great birth-
Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 389
right. And although the beauty of holiness and the glory of the Divine are the peculiar world of the higher life, yet it delights greatly in every province of beauty. Whether it be the delicacy of the flower or the charm of the human coun- tenance, whether the sublimity of the mountains or the grandeur of the wide and rolling sea, whether the loveliness of a morning in June or the starry beauty of the wintry sky, the pure heart sees and loves it all. All order, all har- mony, all cosmic beauty, the grace of motion and the mould of form, all the exquisiteness of colour and the subtlety of relation, the fine soul owns and exults in. It rejoices in the sublime products of musical genius, in the immortal ideal- isations of the artist, in the grand creations of poetic imagination, in all the beautiful works of man. But it knows and loves best the pure, spiritual beauties; for they are highest. The beauty of Christ-like sympathy and unselfishness, the beauty of gentleness, the beauty of moral strength, the excellence of purity and love, the grace and glory of beautiful character, — it knows well that these are the divinest things that the sun looks down upon.
And everywhere in beauty the spiritualised life sees the reflection of God. The skirts of His glory sweep through the Universe. Beauty, for the higher life, is no mere subjective titillation, without further meaning. Rather it feels a divine
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soul in beauty as it sees a soul in truth. For here indeed is the secret of its mysterious charm, the deep cause of its inspiration, the source of its endless variety and wealth. How beautiful God must be, how glorious, how perfect ! Heaven and earth are filled with His glory. And into all this riches of beauty the higher life enters far, and by it is transfigured more and more into a beautiful soul.
He who dwells with truth and beauty dwells hard by the ideal world. It is time then to view the higher life in relation to Ideals. It is notable how early these typal unions of truth and beauty, called ideals, appeal to us. They challenge the opening mind. They do not wait until the higher life is developed. As soon as our broad human consciousness awakes, they make their appeal. It is the definite call of spiritual truth and beauty to our humanity. Archetypal and personal, they lay their practical claim upon life and summon it to its high quest. Their worth is recognised; their strange fascination is heeded ; their authority is acknowledged. They form a continuous and common field uniting civilisation and the Kingdom of Heaven. Morality begins in the field of ideals. Religion never soars above them.
Yet how much deeper they become to the profoundly religious life, how much more power- ful their sway. Higher worlds of truth, beauty, and spirit gather themselves up like stars in the
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spiritual sky and appear in heavenly vision that never dies out of the devout soul. They become the voice and call of God. They are the shin- ing goals of life. They are the pictures in the gallery of God's mind toward which life is ever progressing. Hence their superlative worth. They are not mere mental constructs, useful but factitious, and without final reality. God is in them; they are His eternal thoughts; the perfect ends toward which He is unfolding His wonderful children. Could anything, therefore, be richer than ideals; anything truer and more beautiful; . more vital and ultimately valid?
This is what the religious life sees. Its whole affirmation is that things are deep, soulful, won- drous, at last divine. It rejects with quiet and noble wrath the opposite view, that things are superficial, mechanical, and soulless, in the end without meaning or worth, and undivine. Its great insight and affirmation, of values, ideals, and Divinity everywhere, it proclaims as the great evangel, and itself lives and has its glad being in the deep and hidden soul of Reality. The spirit that denies depth, worth, and God is the unreligious spirit everywhere. The spirit that affirms truth, soul, and Divinity, and lives in them, is the religious spirit. Let every man take his choice.
Here then is the reality and riches of ideals; and here is the insight and abundance of the
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higher life, as it enters deep into their charmed kingdom.
Next in order we must see and evaluate the relation of the higher life to Humanity. Now the very idea of a higher life with humanity involves that we shall enter into a new spiritual relation; soul shall be in commerce with soul. And all other relationships also shall be carried up and elevated; they shall be touched into nobility. Every social, civic, and industrial rela- tion, every human tie, shall partake of the redemp- tion. This in itself makes the higher life rich. But when in addition we look upon others, not in their actuality merely, but in their ideal and possibility as well; and when we go farther and see in a human being the hidden image and child of God, as we inevitably do when our own child- hood to Him has become a rich reality, then indeed we have unlocked one of life's deep treas- ure stores.
The higher life in truth gathers up our human relationships and perfects them into a divine brotherhood under one common Fatherhood, and at length also into a rich spiritual parent- hood, of every larger life to the smaller, — as we have seen above in extenso. Because, in its essential nature, the higher life is a forthgoing, an outflowing, of life toward life; and when that is perfected, it means spiritual parenthood. But consider how such an outgo involves an ever-
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developing capacity on our part of continual self- replenishment out of the fulness of God.
A true sense of the radical significance of the higher life is brought home to us as soon as we reflect that humanity is the most congenial ma- terial for us to work upon, the most natural field of our exercise here below. It thus furnishes the opportunity for our maximal activity and the very condition of our true growth. No man ever has developed, and no man ever will, except in noble and numberless relationships with his kind. And the sooner all our stupid selfishness awakes to this beautiful but inexorable fact, the happier for our human welfare.
The higher life with humanity becomes, there- fore, self-realisation and self -enrichment. True, we can not enter into the greater wealth of human- kind unless we give ourselves to it and for it. But the door that opens and lets us out, also opens and lets humanity in. The tides of the ocean return to the little bay that empties into it. So that the higher life in the end is enlarged and enriched out of all the fulness of the race.
We shall see greater things than these. We now draw near the Christ. In this rich and magnificent survey, we must view the higher life in relation to Him,
One is distinctly conscious of passing into a higher realm, as soon as one turns from other spheres to contemplate the Christ. His
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" unsearchable riches" is of a higher and purer or- der; He speaks words of eternal life; He does the things that none other did ; His consciousness is of God and of things on their Godward side; His nature past finding out. He comes with the light of other worlds in His face. He is as near to us as the earth, yet farther above us than the sky. He is like us, still so different. So simple, yet so profound; so gentle, but so strong; so human, yet so divine. As particular and indi- vidualistic as a Jewish countenance, more gen- eral and universal than the race. All beauty, all truth, all goodness seem to gather themselves up in Him in a manifestation point of life: the perfect picture of humanity, the express image of Divinity. How rich and inexhaustible His personality is; how free from limitation in all its limits; so great that it does not hamper and hem us; so perfect that the universal streams through it unhindered; framing its particularity into a divine lens through which we may look out into the infinite Reality; and fitting our human life with the perfection of an ideal. So real indeed that we feel at home in Him here and now; so ideal that we may abide in Him forever.
Such is the Christ; and such the purest souls have found Him. They have sat at His feet and learned; they have stood by His Cross and repented; they have gone up into the Upper Room and waited; they have prayed open the
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closed doors of their lives and He has entered. What the soul has longed for it now has — a definite Presence, the Divine within. It is satis- fied. Eternal life is now begun in the fields of time.
But to whom is this a rich reality? to whom is the living Christ a great and unfathomable life-experience? To those only who live the higher life; to those who open wide the door. For all others the wealth and glory are hidden. The Day Star remains below their horizon. It does not rise in their hearts. Though He makes "many rich," they remain poor.
We approach at last the mountain-top of life. All our journey has been an expectant ascent; for the culminating glory of the summit is before us, the view of the higher life in relation to God.
But here we may inquire whether, throughout, we have not been viewing the relation of the higher life to God, Has not all our seeking and survey been a quest of Him ? Is there any realm that we have entered where we have not dis- covered God underneath? And is not the true meaning of the higher life precisely this, funda- mentally, the vision and appropriation of the Divine everywhere? Wherein then does the higher life with God differ? In nature, law, truth, beauty, ideals, and humanity we behold God as in a mirror, more or less darkly. In Christ, we see Him in His supreme objective
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manifestation. In the Holy Spirit, we know Him as He is. The higher Hfe with God, in its perfect form, is the spiritual experience of, and life with, God as Spirit, It is true that through the higher life we behold God in all the fields of Reality, and nowhere is the vision insignificant. In Christ indeed the vision is perfect — so far as God can become objective, so far as the divine picture can be framed in the human frame. But in the Holy Spirit we know God absolutely, as Spirit.
Let it never be lost from sight that into this final stage, into this perfect knowledge of the Father, Jesus Himself sought to lead men. He knew that this is the ultimate. He knew that life is not perfect until it realises itself as spirit. And He knew also that God is not finally known, until known spiritually as Spirit. "It is expedi- ent for you that I go away."
And what is highest is also richest. It is a marvellous scene, that in the Upper Room where the hundred and twenty are gathered together. Their faces are upturned; their eyes are closed; their souls are expectant with a great expecta- tion; their hearts are of one accord; they con- tinue steadfastly in prayer. Nothing but the soul and God are there. Nature is shut out ; law as such is out of mind; formal truth is in the background; the fields of beauty are disregarded; the shining ideals are not consciously to the fore; and the incarnate Christ has taken Himself away.
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The soul and God alone are there. No Moses, no great prophet, stands forth to lead them. No Bible is unrolled before them to be steadily pondered. No gorgeous temple lifts its walls around them, as though the glories of art needs must mediate between the soul and God. In the simple Upper Room they pray. The God who has come to them through nature and hu- manity, through law and truth, through beauty and ideals, and through the Incarnation, must also come to them directly. He who has come mediately, must also come immediately. For the God of nature and humanity, law and truth, beauty and ideals, and the God of the Incarna- tion is not the final God of the soul. The final God of the soul must be the God of the Holy Spirit. God must come as Spirit to spirit or the highest has not come. Now, for souls that have been coming to God through all media, to gather together in that Upper Room and seek to come to Him also immediately, and, with unmatched expectation, to wait before Him there day after day with uplifted face, is a spiritual emprise unparalleled in history. No human scene is comparable to it. For the spirit of man thus to wait for the Spirit of God is the ultimate. It is indeed the supreme exercise of the supreme function of the human soul. It is prayer at its highest. And if ever there should be anything that matched it, it would have to be, in the
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nature of the case, essentially the same scene repeated. Life's Upper Room therefore is the supreme picture, and life's Pentecost is the supreme experience of the human soul.
All that this means words of course can not utter. Experience alone can comprehend. But never before did the disciples feel such complete- ness and wealth of realisation. Such sober cer- tainty of waking inspiration they never knew till then. At no time when Jesus was at their side did He work such fulness and perfection of result. They found it so, even as He had said, that it was expedient for them that He should go away.
And the Upper Room in Jerusalem is the Upper Room in London or in New York, in palace or in cottage, in the first century or the twentieth. And life's Pentecost, in its very nature, is and will remain life's consummation and glory. For no man is great and complete until he becomes a spirit, living in mutuality of life with God as Spirit.
Does this mean that all the media by which a soul has come to itself and God become at length meaningless and futile? No. They are still the stairway by which life climbs to its Upper Room, and, in their spiritual essence, they are still the atmosphere through which the soul looks out toward the Divine. But they bring life also into final immediacy.
We have now surveyed the higher life in relation
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to nature and law, truth and beauty, ideals and humanity, Christ and God; and we have found it incomparably rich. Let us turn finally and glance at the higher life in relation to itself.
In all the foregoing, as we have entered into the different realms and found them so abundant, we also have been digging down into the deeper mines of our own being. Not that these two great processes are indeed separable; for the richly objective and the richly subjective go together, in equal balance, in every wholesome life. But it is certainly true that they who seek God, find also their own souls in the profoundest and richest of all subjective lives. Deep calls unto deep. What a marvellous awaking can take place! The heart can awake to its hidden, half- divine possibilities; the intellect can become con- scious of its wide and sublime ranges; the soul know its mysterious and solemn depths: circle within circle, room beyond room ; while unguessed chambers open wide their doors and sacred cur- tains are rent from top to bottom and holy and most holy places are freely entered. O the mys- tery of man, the inner world and its wealth, how great it is! Little wonder that Socrates must say to every soul. Know thyself. He that loses his life findeth it indeed.
Now the truth of all this untold thousands have proved. One needs not know half the treas- ure of Paul's or of Phillips Brooks' deep life to
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realise how affluent and boundless the profoundly religious spirit in time becomes. Such a life possesses both self and God. All worlds are its worlds and the treasures thereof.
It appears thus that the higher life is the gateway into all the rich kingdoms of God. And that is the truth. Into what fxclds of privilege did not Milton, or Tennyson, or Emerson, or Phillips Brooks enter. Let us speak particularly of Phillips Brooks. How rich he was. Nature opened to him her great Paradise; law revealed her stern but gentle glory; truth took him into her universal empire; beauty made him at home in her many worlds ; while the starry sky of ideals was ever above his happy life. How truly rich he was. To him the treasure-house of humanity opened wide its doors. To him the personality of Christ, with its "unsearchable riches" and charm, was an ever great ening power and delight. And to him God was the infinite sea of the soul's voyage and rapture. But into all these realms of privilege, the higher life was the golden gateway.
So it is always. We never possess our worlds until we enter into them through the gates of Life. Like symphonies to the deaf, and like sun- set glories to the blind, are all the kingdoms of heaven to Caliban. The grovelling soul inevitably shuts itself out from every Paradise of God.
Through the higher life we first really possess
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our worlds. Moreover, thereby we gain and hold them with a possession greater than actual appro- priation. Rarely does one contemplate a truth more important and more fascinating than this. For here is the secret of the illimitable quality, characteristic of all supreme experiences.
Possession greater than actual appropriation. As one sits on a lofty cliff and gazes out over the vast ocean, rolling in tumultuous splendour, and as one thinks of its immensity and glory, of its depth and fulness, of its eternity and power, and of its ageless mystery, one is rapt and lost in a great experience. We become one with the sea. The spirit of the sea, the meanings of the sea, the vastness of the sea, are ours. We own them in the exaltation of a supreme experience. As the ocean rises up and meets the sky, and as the sky bends down and claim.s the ocean, so we become one with the sea. It is a perfect hour. But what constitutes the completeness and perfection of that experience? What gives it the illimitable quality, without which no expe- rience is perfect? It is the mystery, but the reality, of higher, vaster possession — ^possession beyond actual appropriation.
The same is true everywhere. It is indeed a subtle, intangible reality, this with which we here deal, but one of the most momentous of all our human experience.
Take a perfect morning in spring. The green
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fields, the waving trees, the fresh foliage, the distant hills, the calm river, the soft breeze, the flowers, the birds, the golden sunlight, and over all the deep blue sky. Who has not known a transporting hour in such a scene. The fulness of it, the freshness, the rapture, the inspiration: as though all the elevated feelings and thoughts of the soul combined with all the loveliness of earth and sky in the exquisiteness and glow of a perfect experience. But again what constitutes the consummation and ineffableness of such an hour ? It is the sense of imity with all the beauty of nature and the vitality of earth, with all the processes of the Universe and the renewing life of God. It is the sense that all things are ours. It is possession beyond appropriation, possession through elevation.
Sink ourselves in whatever great experience we may, fathom it, interpret it, reveal the mystery of its ineffable satisfaction; in it we always shall find the same illimitable quality, a certain subtle possession far greater than actual appropriation. It is what lies outside the little circle, it is the limitless beyond; that is what gives the unspeak- able character to every great and perfect expe- rience. Whether we stand by Niagara Falls or look down upon the world from the summit of the Alps ; whether we are in the luxuriance of the Southland or in the barren ice-fields of the North; whether we sit on the border of a wooded lake
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in summer or look into the starry sky in winter, the experience is the same. It is the inimitable beyond. It is the sense of oneness with the All, the feeling of boundless possession. When we stand on the earth, we stand on the whole world. When we stand on the world, we stand on the Universe. We possess the globe and the spacious firmament. We are all universals. This is what makes life unconfined; this is what gives expe- rience the infinite quality. The patriot in his pride of country or the lover in his ecstasy of love; the artist painting his divine vision or the scientist making his wonderful discovery ; the poet creating his immortal epic or the prophet writing his inspired Book — all know the perfect hour, the illimitable experience, the boundless possession.
I am solicitous that this supreme fact that lies always, like the greater world, beyond our limited horizon shall be lifted up out of dim into clear consciousness. We greatly need it; we must do our work in the knowledge of it; life requires its inexhaustible inspiration. Therefore its abiding reality can not be too clearly known.
Into whatever field indeed we look we may see this universal fact. When Agassiz glows with noble passion for nature, and kindles a thousand others; when Kant stands in awe and wonder before the starry heavens above and the moral law within ; when Webster holds the United States Senate for hours as in a spell through the power
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and majesty of truth; when Murillo is transported in the presence of the vision of pure beauty; or when Plato dwells like an immortal in the world of ideas and ideals, we see the same great expe- rience proceeding from the same great cause. Life has come to its own, it is at one with Reality. At home in its great kingdom, it claims the Universe, as the star claims the sky.
Or does some Francis of Assisi or some George Miiller, in noble service, lose and find himself in the rich field of humanity ; or some Paul behold life's Christ in heavenly vision; or some Spinoza gaze into philosophy's divine mirror until he becomes a "God-intoxicated" man? It is all the same: again the soul knows the perfect hour, the illimitable experience, the boundless posses- sion. And whatever the great experience may be, — some lowly mother in her great motherhood, some youth in the new-birth of the mind, some soul writing its penitential psalm, some fisherman on the Mount of Transfiguration, some life alone in its Gethsemane, some martyr victoriously dying for a great cause, — whatever the great experience, whether in the deep shadows or in the joyous light, the secret of it is the same. It is the sense of the infinite. We look out into a limitless cosmos; we contemplate a Universe of law ; we abide in infinite realms of truth; we live in boundless worlds of beauty ; we seek unlimited ideals ;■ — the unbounded realm of personality, the unfathomable Christ,
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the God who is All-in- All, — these are the mighty Backgrounds of our great experiences. Conscious of them, or oblivious to them, the mighty Backgrounds are there. And these are what give vastness and transcendence to expe- rience. We possess them all. We are citizens of all worlds, — nature, law, truth, beauty, ideals, humanity, Christ, God, — we live and move and have our being in them all. And our supreme and perfect experiences are our periods of super- eminent consciousness of them and commerce with them. Possessing thus our worlds with a possession indefinitely greater than actual appro- priation, we live, in truth, as universals in our Universe.
And from the beginning, now, and evermore, this is what the living God intends for His living sons and daughters. He who lives not thus is, in the saddest sense, without God and without true possession of any world — "a melancholy stranger on a dark earth." But he who thus lives is alive indeed. "This my son was dead and is alive again."
But all this subtle, abundant possession is through the golden gateway of the higher life, ownership through elevation, through kindred character.
One thing more is needed to make life supremely rich — possession of the past and future as well as of the present. Three things, higher possession
4o6 God and Man
of all our great worlds, possession inimitably greater than actual appropriation, and possession of the past and future as well as of the present, eternal possession, — these three are the factors of all supremely rich life. We are made rich by memory and hope as well as by vivid present experience. We must live both as universals and as eternals. Now it is evident that the higher life, being spiritual, brings us, not only into the true and illimitable, but also into the eternal, possession of our worlds. When the spiritual life is there, "eternity is set in the heart of man." There is such a thing as subtle present experience of the past and future. Rather there is in truth no punctual, momentary, present experience. So the higher life does indeed far more completely what all life does meagrely, — it transcends the "temporal present" and rises into the eternal present. It lives the eternal life here and now. And this is not theoretic, but real; and not occa- sional, but constant. In some measure all lives experience it; in superlative measure many lives come to know it. This is the way Jesus lived; and into this He led His disciples. This is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
It would be easy to point out the great con- tribution of this necessary and familiar constituent to all rich life. No life is rich without a past.
Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 407
The magic of memory keeps up its wonders. The treasures that are gone are still ours. Yes, in a deep way, we possess our past, and both the racial and cosmic past. They are the sub- liminal sea of the surface waves of our present conscious experience.
And no life is rich without a future. The workings of hope more than equal even the marvels of memory. The treasures that are to be are already ours: the creative future, the new and larger things, the truer vision of concealed excellence, the constant growth, the great ex- pansion, the spirit ualisation of life, the rise from glory unto glory, the perfect friendships, the knowledge and love of God, the joy forever. All potentialities are already ours. We are now what we are to be — not of course in full realisation. The acorn is the oak — ^the acorn is not the oak. What would life be truly without a future? The little bird in the nest dreams of the wings that are to be and of the wide world. The boy dreams of the man. Without a future we could not take one present step : we step into the future. This new dimension alone makes life complete. Like a ship without a voyage, or like a clock with- out time, is life without the future. Spring carries summer already in its being. The babe has the image of God already within. The saint carries Heaven in his heart. We possess the future as we possess the sky. Though we live on the earth,
4o8 God and Man
we live in the heavens; we speed among the stars; we Hve in the total Universe. Even so we pos- sess the future. Paul's citizenship was in Heaven even while his feet "pressed the solid earth."
This adds the last dimension to life. How rich then the Higher Life is. The present is ours; the past is ours; the future is ours; we live the eternal life here and now; we enter into the higher possession of all our worlds ; we claim them with a possession greater than actual appropri- ation; we move forward toward the complete realisation; we unfold toward perfect spirit. Behold the abounding riches of the Higher Life!
All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.
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