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JUL 29 1909 *;

BR 121 .H2A 1909

Hall, Charles Cuthbert, 1852

-1908.
Christ and the eastern soul

Christ and the Eastern Soul

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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CHRIST AND THE
EASTERN SOUL

THE WITNESS OF THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS
TO JESUS CHRIST

OF P!]j

A I* JUL 29 li

CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D.D., LL.D. ^^^S/C/^l SE^

Late President of the Union Theological Seminary^
Neiv York

THE BARROWS LECTURES
1906-1907

CHICAGO
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN, i ADELPHI TERRACE

1909

Entered at Stationers" Hall

Published- April 190Q

Composed and Printed By

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A.

THOUGHTFUL INDIANS OF ALL FAITHS

THESE LECTURES

ARE DEDICATED RESPECTFULLY

A CITIZEN OF THE WEST

WHO BELIEVES IN THE UNITY OF THE

HUMAN RACE

AND WHO LOOKS

WITH REVERENCE ON THE INDIA OF THE PAST

WITH AFFECTION ON THE INDIA OF THE PRESENT

AND WITH ARDENT EXPECTATION

THE INDIA OF THE FUTURE

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Barrows Lectureship Foundation - - - ix
Preface ---_.___- xiii

By the President of the University of Chicago

Introductory Note ------- xvii

By the Bishop of the Philippine Islands

Syllabus --------- xxv

LECTURE I ^

Elements of Sublimity in the Oriental Conscious-
ness --------- I

LECTURE II

The Mystical Element in the Christian Religion - 32

LECTURE III
The Witness of God in the Soul - - - _ 63

LECTURE IV

The Witness of the Soul to God - - - - 97

LECTURE V
The Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the Christlan

Religion -- 133

LECTURE VI

The Ministry of the Oriental Consciousness in a

World-wide Kingdom of Christ - - - - 171

THE BARROWS LECTURESHIP FOUNDATION

The Barrows Lectureship was estabhshed in 1894
by Mrs. Caroline E. Haskell. The first course of lec-
tures was delivered during the winter of 1896-189 7 by
Dr. John Henry Barrows, in whose honor the lectureship
was named. Dr. Barrows gave one or more lectures in
each of the following cities : Calcutta, Lucknow, Cawn-
pore, Delhi, Lahore, Amritsar, Agra, Jeypore, Ajmere,
Indore, Ahmednagar, Poona, Bangalore, Vellore, Mad-
ras, Madura, Palamcotta, Tinnevelly, and Colombo.
This course of lectures has been published under the
title, "Christianity, the World Religion." The second
course of Barrows Lectures was delivered in Calcutta,
and elsewhere in India, by Dr. A. M. Fairbairn, Prin-
cipal of Mansfield College, Oxford, during the winter
of 1 898-1 899. This course of lectures has not been
published. The third course was. delivered in India,
Ceylon, and Japan, by Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall,
during the winter of 1 902-1 903, and has been published
under the title, "Christian Belief Interpreted by Chris-
tian Experience."

The letter of Mrs. Haskell to President Harper, in
which she proposes to establish this lectureship in the
University of Chicago, is as follows:

Chicago, October 12, 18Q4
President William R. Harper:

My dear Sir: I take pleasure in offering to the University of
Chicago the sum of twenty thousand dollars for the founding of a

X THE BARROWS LECTURESHIP FOUNDATION

second Lectureship on the Relations of Christianity and the Other
Religions. These lectures, six or more in number, are to be given in
Calcutta (India), and, if deemed best, in Bombay, Madras, or some
other of the chief cities of Hindustan, where large numbers of the
educated Hindus are familiar with the English language. The
wish, so earnestly expressed by Mr. P. C. Mozoomdar, that a lecture-
ship, like that which I had the privilege of founding last summer,
might be provided for India, has led me to consider the desirability
of establishing in some great collegiate center, like Calcutta, a course
of lectures to be given, either annually or, as may seem better, bien-
nially, by leading Christian scholars of Europe, Asia, and America,
in which, in a friendly, temperate, and conciliatory way, and in the
fraternal spirit which pervaded the Parliament of Religions, the
great questions of the truths of Christianity, its harmonies with the
truths of other religions, its rightftd claims and the best methods of
setting them forth, should be presented to the scholarly and thoughtful
people of India.

It is my purpose to identify this work, which, I believe, will be a
work of enlightenment and fraternity, with the University Extension
Department of the University of Chicago, and it is my desire that
the management of this Lectureship shoidd lie with yourself, as
President of all the Departments of the University; with Rev. John
Henry Barrows, D.D., the Professorial Lecturer on Comparative
Religion; with Professor George S. Goods peed, the Associate Pro-
fessor of Comparative Religion; and with those who shall be your
and their successors in these positions. It is my request that this
Lectureship shall bear the name of John Henry Barrows, who has
identified himself with the work of promoting friendly relations
between Christian America and the people of India. The committee
having the management of these lectures shall also have the authority
to determine whether any of the courses shall be given in Asiatic or
other cities outside of India.

In reading the proceedings of the Parliament of Religions, I
have been struck with the many points of harmony between the
different faiths, and by the possibility of so presenting Christianity
to others as to win their favorable interest in its truths. If the

THE BARROWS LECTURESHIP FOUNDATION xi

committee shall decide to utilize this Lectureship still further in
calling forth the views of scholarly representatives of non-Christian
'^aiths, I authorize and shall approve such a decision. Only good

will grow out of such a comparison of views

// is my wish that, accepting the offer I now make, the committee
of the University will correspond with the leaders of religious
thought in India, and secure from them stich helpful suggestions as
they may readily give. I cherish the expectation that the Barrows
Lectures will prove, in the years that shall come, a new golden bond
between the East and West. In the belief that this foundation will be
blessed by our heavenly Father to the extension of the benign influence
of our great University, to the promotion of the highest interests of
humanity, and to the enlargement of the Kingdom of Truth and
Love on earth, I remain, with much regard.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline E. Haskell

In conformity with this letter of gift, the following
principles and regulations governing the Barrows Lec-
tureship have been established :

1. A Committee, consisting of the President of the University
of Chicago and the Professor of Comparative ReHgion, is entrusted
with the management of the Lectureship.

2. Nominations to the Lectureship are made by the Committee
and confirmed by the Board of Trustees of the University.

3. The Lecturer holds office for two years, during which period
he is expected to deliver the series of lectures in a place or places
agreed upon between himself and the Committee.

4. During his term of office, or in the year following its expira-
tion, the Lecturer is expected to pubHsh his lectures, at the Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, in the series known as "The Barrows
Lectures," and to deposit two copies of the same with the Librarian
of the University of Chicago, one of which is to be placed in the

xii THE BARROWS LECTURESHIP FOUNDATION

General Library of the University, the other in the Departmental
Library of Comparative Religion.

5. The Committee is empowered to add to these regulations
any others which shall be in harmony with the terms or spirit of
the Letter of Gift.

PREFACE

Mrs. Haskell's idea in founding the Barrows Lec-
tures in India was a noble one. With broad catholicity
of spirit she recognised the essential truth which is
common to all forms of religious thought, and realised
that men are prone to quarrel about diversities rather
than to rejoice in the elements of unity. With this view
it seemed to her that the essential Christian doctrines
might well be presented to the acute Eastern mind in so
unpolemic and yet cogent a form as to win appreciation
of their beauty and power far more than is possible from
the customary preaching of the gospel. The Indian is
not a heathen, but is a man of deep religious life and
profound philosophy. He is worthy to be approached
by a similar mind.

The first course in India was given by the Rev. John
Henry Barrows, D.D., in the winter of 1896-97, on the
subject, " Christianity, the World Religion." The Rev.
Dr. A. M. Fairbairn, principal of Mansfield College,
Oxford, gave the second course in the v;inter of 1898-
99. The title was "Religion and the Philosophy of
Religion."

On June 29, 1899, the Board of Trustees of the
University of Chicago appointed the Rev. Dr. Charles
Cuthbert Hall as Barrows Lecturer. The intention at
that time was for his visit to India to be made in the
autumn of 1901. It was postponed for a year, how-
ever, and accordingly in the winter of 1902-3 the third

XIV BARROWS LECTURES

course was delivered, "Christian Belief Interpreted by
Christian Experience." So deep an impression was
made by these lectures that it was obviously wise for
Dr. Hall to make a second visit to the East and to give
the fourth course on the Barrows Foundation. On
July 19, 1904, he was reappointed to the Barrows
Lectureship, and this course, "Christ and the Eastern
Soul," was given in the cities of India in the winter of
1906-7. The cities in which the series was delivered
in full were Lahore, Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras,
Bombay, and Bangalore. Individual lectures of the
course were given in Simla, Lucknow, Benares, Dhar-
mar, Ahmednagar, Hyderabad, and Ernakulam. Some
were given in Ceylon and Manila, and a few in Japan.
In the closing days of the Autumn Quarter, December
10-15, 1907? the lectures were repeated at the Univer-
sity, in accordance with the plan of the donor, and Dr.
Hall closed his services to the University of Chicago
with the Convocation sermon on Sunday, December 15,
1907. In 1908 he passed away from this life.

This is the bald record of facts connected with the
final great work of one of the most gifted of our religious
leaders. His was a rare soul. One who was associated
with him in college life and knew in those early years
his sterling character and his rich promise finds it not
easy to pause here. But his own words will speak of
him more eloquently than any that others can find.

It should be stated that owing to the condition of his
health Dr. Hall was unable in person to complete the
preparation of the manuscript for the press, and that at
his request this work was performed by Mr. Robert

PREFACE x\-

Russell Wicks, who accompanied him on his second
journey, and by his son, Basil Douglas Hall. For the
above reasons the notes doubtless are not so complete
as the author would have wished. The employment of
English orthographical forms, it may be added, is
accordance with Dr. Hall's wishes.

Harry Pratt Judson

The University of Chicago
November, 1908

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

"Like a bridge over a mountain torrent he joined
two precipices, and the stream of controversy passed
beneath him" — such is the epitaph I would inscribe over
the Hfe of Charles Cuthbert Hall. The accumulated
knowledge of an earnest student, the profundity of a
refined character, and the noble piety of a Christian
mystic equipped him to play the part, which he fulfilled
so well, of ambassador, interpreter, friend from the
Western to the Eastern world. The God-designed one-
ness of the human race was to him no idle theory or
doubtful speculation; it was a guiding principle for
practical activity through a lifetime. With the courage
of deathless conviction, he chose the widest chasm that
breaks the unity of mankind and divides the world into
two sharply contrasted sections of East and West, upon
which to spend the constructive force of his manhood
at its zenith, laying down his life for his espoused cause
as willingly and as truly as a Livingstone or a Patteson.

It was the balance of the man added to his passion
that made him singular and won him our love. In his
missionary zeal to contribute to the Orient the greatest
blessing held in trust for the world by the West, the
gospel of Jesus Christ, he did not underestimate the
treasures that lie hidden in the Oriental Consciousness,
for lack of a share in which we of the West, with all our
vaunted wealth, are but poor. "The world, blinded by
material objects and hardened by self-centred motives,

xviii BARROWS LECTURES

needs a fresh interpretation of Christ from some human
source where faith in the Invisible is still the great Real-
ity, and interest in the ultimate problems of the soul,
stUl an unspent river of delight." For this needed in-
terpretation he looked to the contemplative, mystical
countries of the Far East, and especially to India,
mother of great religions.

Four years ago Dr. Hall, in anticipation of his second
visit to the Orient, with characteristic generosity tem-
pered by humility, asked permission to render us some
service when he came to the Philippines. His advent
thither was like the inflowing of a cool breeze from the
sea on a sultry day. He was fresh from his last experi-
ence as Barrows Lecturer when, in February of 1907,
he delivered, in the Cathedral of St. Mary and St. John
in the city of Manila, a series of lectures which were a
golden echo of those just concluded in India. A man
of his depth of character and Christian experience could
have but one theme, the theme of every mature follower
of the Saviour from St. Paul to Gregory the Great and
from Gregory the Great to Mackay and Judson and
Hannington — Christ for mankind and mankind for
Christ.

In our many conversations during his visit, he dis-
coursed with enthusiasm on the intelligent and appre-
ciative hearing given him in India by the cultured
natives. He vehemently protested against the theory
that the evangelisation of the educated Indian, because
of his intellectual pride, was hopeless, and that Chris-
tianity's sole opportunity lay among the low-caste poor
and the pariahs. Justly he maintained that "the finite

INTRODUCTORY NOTE xix

mind " was " the most glorious of all God's productions ;"
and the reverent attention meted out to his sympathetic
but uncompromising presentation of Christian truth
among scholarly devotees of leading Eastern cults dur-
ing both his visits to the Orient demonstrated anew
that all knowledge is an avenue for the triumphal entry
of the Word of God into the human soul.

Dr. Hall was no stranger to the sacred lore of the East.
Without unduly accentuating its merits or detracting
from its glories, he aimed to put it into normal relation
to the Truth as revealed in Jesus Christ. He knew,
and his poetic soul valued, "the magnificent Vedic
hymns;" he was conversant with the profound philos-
ophy of the Upanishads; he was quick to discover
Logos teaching in the Maha Bharata. Christianity, the
fulfilling religion, was the burden of his song. "The
truth that is in your several faiths cannot be shaken by
your assimilation of the faith of Christ. Truth never
casts out truth, it casts out only error and whatsoever
else has served its purpose fully and is ready to depart."
Every lesser truth which the gospel touches is thereby
not destroyed but transfigured and given new life and
power — a fact to which the modern missionary must
respond by studying the religions which surround him,
until his consciousness is as fully saturated by their
merits as the consciousness of the early Christians was
saturated by the truths of the Old Testament. If we
find in Oriental scriptures much that is repellant and
ethically incomplete, it is no more than we find in the
polygamies, the deceits, the cruelties of our own Old
Testament. The Old Testament, without the interpre-

XX BARROWS LECTURES

tive and refining influence of the New, would be a poor
guide to life. The relation which the New Testament
bears to the Old is representative of what it is capable
of being to the scriptures of the Orient. The road to
Christianity for the adherents of great pre-Christian
religions is not through the laborious route of Old Testa-
ment thought, but through their own beliefs straight
into the gospel. I once suggested to an eminent scien-
tist and mystic that it might be well for Christian hands
to bind up representative Oriental scriptures with the
New Testament. He replied that the association of the
Jewish scriptures with the Christian writings had not
been a converting factor among the Jews. That is true.
But it has had the effect of giving to the world the real
wealth of the Old Testament; and the wealth of the
Oriental religious mind will come to us only when its
product is studied appreciatively in the light of the gospel.
We need this wealth and we shall only half know the
meaning and the power of the Incarnation, let alone
equip ourselves for the evangelisation of the Orient,
until we have made it our very own, as we desire the
Oriental to make our Scriptures his very own.

Those of us who have made a close study of Eastern
life agree with Dr. Hall's contention that it is both im-
pertinent and harmful to impose upon the Oriental
world the exact reproduction of our Western mstitutions,
either in government or religion. An ardent patriot
himself, he reverenced the glimmerings of patriotism in
men of other races, and deprecated any slight offered to
natives by foreign officials. As to the Western embodi-
ment of Christianity he says :

INTRODUCTORY NOTE xxi

But we must learn to distinguish between the essential
and the incidental in Christian institutionalism, afford-
ing Oriental Christianity free scope to shape itself.
This we have not yet succeeded in doing. There must
be a season of patience in our labours for Christ in the
Orient, during which the Christian missionary will have
to be content to teach and work exactly as his Master
taught and worked, without regard for exact results,
manifest conversions, dignified organisations, and grati-
fying statistics. Then in God's good time the Oriental
church will rear its walls suitably to its environment.
Like the West it is bound to have its heresies and schisms.
Though their racial coherence makes the Orientals less
prone to divisions than ourselves, we have educated
them to look for a broken Christendom from the first.
The evils we can perhaps undo in a measure, mitigating
in their case the fury, the bitterness, the hatred of our
own history, if we hush our sectarian cries and work
constructively and lovingly for the advancement of the
Kingdom of God, whether here or yonder, after the
example of His faithful servant, Charles Cuthbert Hall,
who, having finished his course, now rests from his
labours.

BARROWS LECTURES

The hour is one in which the ends of the earth are
rapidly being drawn together. Races and nations are
overflowing their bounds. Exclusion acts, which by
the right of might we of the West erect against the
Orient, are effective only for a moment and will go
down as the corn under the sickle before the world is
much older. And it is we, who are barring our gates to
the Oriental, that are responsible for the coming flood —
we who invaded his territory to exploit him, to infect him
with our vices, to make him the instrument of our com-
mercialism and the toy of our pleasure. He has as true
a right to talk about the "white" as we the "yellow"
peril. The West has laid ruthless hands upon his
traditions, has discounted his religions, has usurped the
right to administer the affairs of the yellow "brother"
and the brown, has dictated to him the course he must
pursue, has compelled him to accept our mode of educa-
tion. If we now complain that he is aspiring to democ-
racy, that he expects treatment according to the Golden
Rule, that he demands place among the nations of the
world with freedom to travel and work where he will,
it is we who have implanted in his heart aspiration for
national life, equal treatment, and independent status ;
it is we who have afforded him access to our inventions
and pressed upon him what we are pleased to call
civilisation.

The upshot of it all is that the East is going to over-
flow its banks with the force of a resistless tide, "florid
with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with pas-
sion," and our children's children will testify to the
truth of the prophecy as they commend or condemn us.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE xxiii

their forbears, according as we have builded well or
badly in preparation.

The day of this happening, though it cannot be
averted, is not necessarily to be lamented. It is part
of the process of working out the destiny of the race
as a family of one common humanity. We of to-day
are charged with the responsibility of making ready for
it. It will be a calamity only so far as we refuse to face
the certain fact and to seize our present opportunity.
The situation is this: East and West are pressing one
upon the other with the proximity of neighbours hav-
ing adjacent estates. Already Oriental diseases have in-
fected our citizens, and Canada and the United States
suddenly awake to the fact that they, as well as China,
have an opium problem of imported origin. This is
sufficient warning. Unless the best moral and spiritual
ideals of the West prevail over, renew, and fulfil the
ideals of the East, the decadent ideas of the East are
going to sweep through the West with devastating might.
Eastern cults claim to-day among their votaries thou-
sands of high-bred Occidentals.

Mere self -protection demands prompt and aggressive
action on our part, just as the cleaning-up of an infected
city is a defence for the healthy as well as a remedy for the
sick. But we must bestir ourselves from a much nobler
motive. We have reached a stage where the honour of
Jesus Christ is imperilled as perhaps never before.
Unless Christianity rises from its lethargic, self-satisfied
dreams and fulfils its common duty of going with force
and a united front to its task of world-wide evangelisa-
tion, according to the distinct command of its Founder,

xxiv BARROWS LECTURES

it is going to become more and more effete, until when
the unconverted ideals of the Orient at last envelope the
Christian Church, she will all but disappear.

On the other hand, if Christians reinforce the little
group of missionaries now at work in far-off fields with
the flower of their manhood and womanhood until it
is swollen into an army, we can look forward, not only
without dismay but with eagerness, to the day when
the life of East and West will blend in disciplined and
understanding fellowship under the leadership of Him
who alone can unify and harmonise our strangely
diversified and richly endowed humanity. Touched by
Christianity the ideals and religions of the Orient are
a contribution to the Kingdom of God; unconverted
and unfulfilled they are a menace to the very life of
Christianity.

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving ?
What do I know of Hfe ? What of myself ?
I know not even my own work past or present,
Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,
Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,
Mocking, perplexing me.

The end I know not, it is all in Thee,

Or small or great I know not — haply what broad fields, what lands,
Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know.
Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,
Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turned to reaping-

tools.
Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and

blossom there.

Charles H. Brent
Bishop of the Philippine Islands

SYLLABUS

LECTURE I

ELEMENTS OF SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Satisfaction and joy of the lecturer in returning to India.
Reference to his former course of Barrows Lectures, in which he
attempted to separate the essence of the Christian rehgion from
accretions occurring in the West; and to present it for considera-
tion upon its merits as intrinsically applicable to human conscious-
ness. Reflection upon his former experience in India suggests
correspondences between the Christian religion and the Oriental
Consciousness. Opportunity afforded by the second appointment
of the lecturer to express in India the results of this reflection.
Psychological relation of Indian personality to the most lofty
elements of the Christian religion.
I. Indication of three lines of procedure, to be followed in the
present course of lectures.

First: To analyse the Oriental Consciousness from the
point of view of an outside observer in sympathy with his
subject. Attempts to analyse Oriental Consciousness have
been made by those not in full sympathy therewith. The
effort of the lecturer undertaken reverently, with a view to
exhibiting the presence of sublime elements.
Secondly: To unfold certain metaphysical aspects of the
Christian religion which are characteristic of it. These
aspects frequently hidden by forms and institutions, which,
while useful, must be discriminated from the underlying
things of the Spirit.

Thirdly: To exhibit the significance for the world of this cor-
respondence between the sublime elements of Oriental Con-
sciousness and the profoundly mystical aspects of the Chris-
tian religion.

xxvi BARROWS LECTURES

2. The subject approached in no spirit of flattery. Analysis
of the word "flattery" and repudiation of its spirit by the
lecturer. Neither is he depreciating the qualities of Western
civilisation, of which some account is given. Qualifications of
remote racial inheritance combined with sincere love for India.

3. Study of the common nature of mankind attractive to the true
citizen of the world. The unity of the human world an
exhilarating thought. Temperamental and psychic variations
worked out on a world-scale.

The fact of race consciousness a fundamental fact of great
value. Discussion of individual consciousness and race con-
sciousness. Deep desire of the lecturer to comprehend the
point of view controlling Oriental mentality. Observations
on the distinctive type of self-realisation that overspreads like
an atmosphere the vast populations of the East.

4. In the effort to discern the elements of this type of self-realisa-
tion, marks of sublimity are discovered. Discussion of the
meaning of "sublimity." Expression of the hope that Occi-
dental self-consciousness may be analysed by a friendly ob-
server from the East.

5. Enumeration of four elements of Sublimity in the Oriental
Consciousness : The Contemplative Life ; The Presence of the
Unseen; Aspiration toward Ultimate Being; Reverence for
the Sanctions of the Past.

6. The Contemplative Life considered as the life ruled by
thought; that esteems thought above action. Reflections on
the importance and dignity of the mind. Influence of heredi-
tary reflective tendency upon the modern Indian mind.

7. The Presence of the Unseen; discussion of visibility and
invisibility, and of the relation of reality to the invisible.
Maya. Significance of interest in the invisible. Expression
of hope that the East may not withdraw from her interest
in the Unseen, by reason of Western materialism.

8. Aspiration toward Ultimate Being constantly present in the
soul of the East. Survival of this aspiration beneath poly-
theism and dissenting philosophies.

SYLLABUS xxvii

Reverence for the Sanctions of the Past. Western civilisation
passing under the control of the future. Shifting of the centre
of significance in thought. Contrast between East and West.
Eastern mind sublimely tenacious of its inheritances. Watch-
word of the East, Faith.

LECTURE II

THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

"ReHgious life is only possible when one gets to the centre
of hfe, which is God Himself." Relation of mysticism to
simphcity. A humble and quiet mind before God.
Universality of the phenomenon of mysticism: evidence herein
of the essential unity of the race. Comparison of various
definitions of mysticism ; Inge; Pfleiderer; Seth; Augustine.
Eternal freshness and charm of the greatest mystical concep-
tions.

Consideration of objections brought against mysticism. Two
classes of objections: those directed against the general
assumption that direct contact of the human spirit with the
Divine Spirit is possible; those directed against particular
forms of mysticism characteristic of the Oriental Conscious-
ness, namely. Aspiration toward Ultimate Being. Objections
of Nordau and Hermann considered. Recognition of the
value of these objections as tending to put us on our guard
against the decline of the ethical element in mysticism. Dis-
cussion of Oriental mysticism from point of view of objectors:
deliberate aversion of the mind from external interests ; seclu-
sion of the soul tending to possible impoverishing of experi-
ence. Approach to the Metaphysical Absolute by negation
tending to empty the soul of qualities which might be retained
with profit. Concentration of the mind on a salvation attain-
able through esoteric knowledge tending to unfavourable
reactions in the sphere of practical morals. Wise counsel of
Professor Deussen against hasty judgment of Eastern systems
of thought by Europeans.

xxviii BARROWS LECTURES

4. Mystical Element in the Christian Religion to be presented
from the points of view that Christianity is an Eastern rehgion
and the Bible a Sacred Book of the East. Oriental char-
acteristics of the Christian Scriptures. Mystical Element in
Christian Religion compared to a river flowing continuously
through its history.

5. Mysticism finds expression in Christianity in two spheres
of consciousness: objective and subjective. Intense per-
ception of the universe as an outward expression of the
vitality of God. Reference to the nature-mysticism of Words-
worth and Kingsley. Resemblance of Kingsley's mysticism
to some phases of Oriental thought; e.g., discrimination of
the soul from the mind; animistic suggestions. But the
Christian mystic regards the pervading spiritual presence as
that of a Divine friend. The objective sense of God but the
vestibule of the Mystical Element in the Christian Rehgion.
The temple is within.

6. Experience of God's presence fulfilled and verified in the
sanctuary of the inner consciousness. Inadequacy of reli-
gious symbols. Reality is within, in the mysterious depths
of the Eternal Wisdom. Freedom of inner experience from
ceremonialism and dogmatism. This inner experience of
Christian mysticism has come to the West from the East.
Suggestion of influence upon Biblical religion of early Aryan
thought, through Persian channels. Oriental character of
BibHcal religion.

7. Apprehension of Christian rehgion by Eastern minds com-
plicated by the overshadowing prominence of Western ecclesi-
astical institutions. Possibility of leaving these out of con-
sideration and resting on the fundamental claim of all true
mysticism that the seat of authority is within the soul itself;
not in some outward tribunal. Truth within ourselves. To
this conception the Christian religion lends itself.

8. Consideration of the ground of certitude in matters of religion.
Higher Christian thinking not incompatible with correspond-
ing plane of Indian thinking. Indian students of rehgion

SYLLABUS XXIX

often repelled from the Christian religion by encountering
only the commonplace philosophy of untutored minds. Such
minds frequently, through inexperience, unable to escape
giving misleading representations of Christian thought:
dualistic and anthropomorphic. Such conceptions not repre-
sentative of the higher philosophy of the Christian religion.
Probability that philosophical Hinduism suffers from cor-
responding misrepresentations. Attempt of the lecturer is
to present in outline the higher Indian view of the universe.
Maya, Emancipation. Soul-union with God.
9. In certain important particulars the higher forms of Indian
and Christian philosophy of the universe not incompatible.
This especially evident along lines of true mysticism: right
of immediacy in the approach to God; criterion of truth
found to exist in the nature of consciousness. Discernment
of a Common Ground of Being beneath the multiplicity of
individual existences. Hereby is the possibility of relation
between individual existences. Pluralism gives place to
monism. Lotze. Upton. Foundation of Christian mysticism
is laid in the very nature of things.

10. Mysticism, or immediate access to God, the centre of the
Christian religion. Yet the enlightened Christian does not
repudiate the organised life of the Church. He admits the
practical values of organisation. He takes his place as a unit
in the institutional life of Christianity, submitting volun-
tarily to rules and ordinances for the general good. The true
Christian, while a mystic, is not a recluse, shut up within
himself for his soul's salvation. He takes a great interest in
the world, especially in the lives of men.

Interest in other hves promoted by the philosophical recogni-
tion of the Common Ground of life. Christian mysticism
works outward into social service and self-fulfilment through
sacrifice,

11, The secret walk with God, "7 have experienced God."
Union of the Divine and human in a single, undivided
life.

XXX BARROWS LECTURES

LECTURE III

THE WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL

1 . Deep impression made upon the mind when it reflects on the
multiplicity of human Hves. First eflfect confusing. This con-
fusion removed on perceiving the action and reaction of think-
ing beings. The thinking world a wonderful phenomenon.
All conditions of human life dependent on a common principle
of rationahty. Commercial contracts; domestic relation-
ships; intellectual fellowship rising above race distinctions.
Civilisation.

2. The higher Christian thinking seeks a rational solution of the
mystery of a thinking world. Individual lives cannot be
regarded as absolutely separate existences, each one being a
self-subsistent whole. No adequate explanation of human
relations from such a theory. The only adequate explanation
found in an ultimate monism.

3. Beneath all finite life is one Infinite Ground of Being; the
Substance, or Life, that stands under all finite life. In all
existences the Infinite Being exists; thereby men communicate
intelligibly with one another and with God. In this explana-
tion of the phenomenon of a thinking world we find a basis for
our subject: the Witness of God in the Soul.

4. This conception not foreign to Indian conception of Being.
Consideration of resemblance between this conception and
the doctrine of a self-subsisting Brahma in higher Indian
thinking. Remark on Deism.

5. While the Christian basis here stated is not incompatible with
Indian thought, it is to be distinguished from pantheism.
Tendency of pantheistic thought ultimately obscures indi-
viduality, causing it to appear illusory. Moral responsibility
thereby obscured; for conduct thus made the outcome of ante-
cedent conditions, each determined by one preceding. Re-
mark on recognition of practical distinction between God and
man in Hinduism. Discussion of the Christian view of per-
sonahty. Glorious function of the mind. Illustration from

SYLLABUS XXXI

the qualities of memory. Nature of moral freedom. Desire
of the lecturer to refrain from controversy. His assurance
that whatsoever is of the essence of truth must forever abide.
Christian view of personality: the mind, stimulated by its
self-determining capacity, consecrates its powers to the
highest use; the soul, garlanded with freedom and illumined
with the Spirit of God, confronts moral responsibility and
chooses righteousness.

A basis thus laid, upon which the Witness of God in the Soul
becomes a reasonable and authoritative conception. The will
not the automatic instrument of determinism. It is self-
determining; consummating action by decision, so taking on
moral responsibility.

The higher Christian thinking is conscious of a Divine Witness
in man, for which temperament and pious tradition do not
account. This Witness also a Presence. This Witness simi-
larly manifested in innumerable souls. Conclusion reached
that this Presence bearing witness in human souls is identical
with the Common Ground and Substance of Being. This
conclusion strengthened by considering the nature of man's
mental power; which is of the highest order; self-conscious,
possessing memory and aspiration, continuous, consecutive,
universal. These powers of rational existence viewed as
projections of the Infinite Consciousness.
The formulas of negation considered as tending to limit one's
joy in meditating upon the fulness of the Divine Essence.
Nevertheless the sublimity of these formulas is admitted and
the belief is expressed that they may without distortion be
devoted to the service of a higher Oriental Christianity.
The higher Christian thinking acknowledges that in the quest
for God we must pass beyond attributes, qualities, and all
notes of personality. Although we discover the attributes of
God, yet beyond them remains His unsearchableness. This
thought demanded alike by reason and experience. The
whole essence of God cannot be expressed in terms of attribute
and quaHty. Corroboration of this view in Holy Scripture.

xxxii BARROWS LECTURES

Analogy to the unsearchableness of God found in the "Buried
Life" of man. The sub-conscious life. Pure Being not
incompatible with rational and moral personality of the
Divine; even as subliminal consciousness in man not incom-
patible with reason, conscience, and will. The unfathomable
yet personal God may bear witness through the sub-conscious
life of man, in the region of human reason, conscience, and
feeling. Intimation of three modes of this witness: the still,
small Voice; the Sure Word of Prophecy; the Christ of God.

10. The still, small Voice: its witness universal; beneath all forms
of religion; eternal distinction of right and wrong. The
Voice of God Who cannot be silenced. Conscience. The
diseases of conscience; the health of conscience. Conscience
without significance unless considered in relation to God,
Conscience the ear of the soul, by means of which the still,
small Voice is heard. The imperative of an ideal righteous-
ness. The Christian conception of the ministry of the Holy
Spirit.

11. The Sure Word of Prophecy. God speaks to the inward life
through truth outwardly declared. Revelation through the
power of the Spirit of Truth. Inspiration in the sub-con-
scious life resulting in the utterance of Truth. The Sure
Word of Prophecy vindicates its reality by producing in the
soul the effect of God. Observations on the nature of Truth.
Discrimination of Truth from antiquity, usage, and declara-
tive authority. The Witness of God in the Soul confirming
the Sure Word of Prophecy.

12. The Christ of God. This mode of the Divine witness to be
treated fully in succeeding lectures. At this point two pre-
liminary statements are made :

c) It is inadequate to consider the Christian religion in any

light that excludes the Divinity of Christ.
b) The sublime elements of the Oriental Consciousness lend

themselves to the most profound interpretation of the

Divinity of Christ.

SYLLABUS xxxiii

LECTURE IV

THE WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD

1. Brief review of the three modes of Divine witness. The
Oriental Consciousness qualified to discharge for the world
a service of which it stands in need. Present need of the
world a Christianity deepened and spiritualised through
recovery of elements germane to the Oriental Consciousness.
Whatever great need arises in the world implies God's sum-
mons to those who have the means to meet that need.

2. The Witness of the Soul to God a proposition acceptable to
those holding a monistic philosophy. For the soul lives in
God even as God lives in the soul. Remark on Professor
James's definition of religion. Ethical consciousness of the
Infinite necessary to the creation of a religion. Remark on
various theories of the origin of religion. Conclusion that
religion springs from man's oneness of nature with the Infinite
Ground and Source of Being.

3. Upon such a theory the message of religion should prove an
incentive to noble living and a noble estimation of life. Mor-
bid self-depreciation, and its injurious results. Relation of
true penitence to a high estimate of self. Irrepressible nature
of ethical desire. Inadequacy of material conditions as a
ground of contentment. Value of materialism acknowledged,
but its limitations pointed out. Voluntary renunciation as
seen in India. Contrasted with discontent found among some
having great possessions.

4. Our religious instincts suggest the possibiHty of participation
in the Divine purpose as well as in the Divine Life. This
suggestion accounted for by the necessary unity of conscious-
ness. The zeal of the soul must be to co-operate with that
Eternal Will of Goodness to which it is inseparably conjoined.

5. Discussion of the moral significance of atheism. A tragic
witness to God found in the effort of the atheist to suppress
the instinct and tendency of the soul. Doubt considered as a
Witness of the Soul to God. Doubt sometimes the result of an

xxxiv BARROWS LECTURES

overwhelming apprehension of God. "I could not see for the
glory of that Light."

6. The Aspiration toward Ultimate Being considered as a positive
Witness of the Soul to God. Great significance of this. Its
place in Oriental Consciousness. The East qualified for
important Christian service by reason of this characteristic.

7. With the growth of Christianity, the Oriental Aspiration
toward Ultimate Being has been supplemented in important
ways. Discrimination between contradictory and supple-
mentary expressions of religious instinct. Analysis of the fact
of contradictory expressions of rehgious instinct. Examples
found in divergent Christian beliefs on matters of secondary
importance. This not incompatible with agreement on
fundamental questions. Contradictory expressions found to
exist between the several great religions of the world. This
fact not incompatible with the development of supplementary
expressions of religious thought in later religions enriching
and completing the content of earlier religions.

8. The Aspiration toward Ultimate Being the most fundamental
form of soul-longing. Pantheism involves primarily the sub-
jugation of the visible for the sake of the invisible. Message
of pantheism to modern life. Spinoza. Von Hartmann.
Yet pantheism as a corrective of materialism only partially
effective. It requires to be supplemented, particularly along
lines relating to man's ethical consciousness. Remark on
Professor Deussen's view of the relation of the Veda and the
Bible.

9. How does Christianity in its highest realm of thinking sup-
plement a pantheistic philosophy? The message of pan-
theism distinctively a message to the intellectual consciousness
of man. The message of Christianity distinctively a message
to his moral consciousness. Pantheism deals with the facts
and sanctions of the Pure Reason ; Christianity with the facts
and sanctions of the Practical Reason. The moral conscious-
ness as actual as the intellectual consciousness. If the last be
acknowledged, the first must also be acknowledged. The

SYLLABUS XXXV

two are co-ordinated in man. To deny moral consciousness
would require the denial of intellectual consciousness; equiva-
lent to the denial of the Absolute.

10. The nature of moral consciousness; primarily existent in the
sub-conscious life. The sense of the value of good. The
authority of good for ourselves. "I ought." Power to
discern between higher and lower afifections. To what
source must we attribute moral consciousness? Evidently
that source must be identical with the source of intellectual
consciousness. The Ultimate Intelligence and the Heart of
God. The Witness of the Soul to the moral character of God.

11. Relation of pantheism and Christianity in the world's advance
to an adequate knowledge of God. Mission of pantheism to
assert the Being of God: that He is. Mission of Christianity
to assert the Character of God : what He is.

12. But is it admissible to say what God is ? Is not the Infinite
unknowable ? Comparison of Western and Eastern tend-
encies under the common impulse of reverence. The West
defines; the East refrains from defining. The adjustment is
obtained by co-ordinating these tendencies. Thus pantheism
and Christianity become co-operative.

13. Comparison of ethical ideals viewed in relation to culture.
Love, the highest ethical ideal; the highest fact in conscious-
ness. The Best. Conclusion that Love is the most central
fact in the moral consciousness of Ultimate Being. **God is
Love." This love we cannot conceive in its essence within the
Moral Consciousness of God. It is from our point of view
unknowable. But God can come to us and confirm our hopes
through self-manifestation in the form of an Incarnate Life.
Has God so come to us ? Has there at any time issued from
the Inconceivable Absolute an Interpreter of the secrets
of Divine Intelligence ?

xxxvi BARROWS LECTURES

LECTURE V

THE DISTINCTIVE MORAL GRANDEUR OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

1 . Great religions, like great men, have strongly marked distinc-
tions. A religion of joy. A religion of beauty. A religion
of contemplation. The Christian religion possesses these
qualities, but is, also, distinctively a religion of character.
This its unifying principle; to contemplate God on the moral
side of Being, in terms of the Ethical Ideal. "The new ele-
ment which Christianity has introduced into the thought of
the world."

2. The term "Religion of Character" as applied to Christianity
not intended to depreciate the ethical values in other religions.
Ethics and culture. Joy, beauty, contemplation take on new
meanings in a rehgion of character. Hereby it may be said
to introduce a new element into the thought of the world.

3. Wherein consists the distinctive moral grandeur of the Chris-
tian religion? The importance of a distinction judged by
what lies back of it. The moral distinction of Christianity
does not rest on institutions, civilisation, tradition, or ecclesi-
astical authority. It rests upon the personaUty of the Incar-
nate Life. The appearance of Jesus Christ in the world
understood by few of His Disciples. His rejection by Judaism
and by the world. His Death and Resurrection. Evidence
of His transforming power accumulates with time. The
moral authority of the religion of Christ determined from
history and from experience. These sources open to all.

4. He who would apprehend the distinctive grandeur of the
Christian religion must consider the Nature of Man, the
Nature of God, and the need of a rehgion of character in the
world. He must then consider the Hfe purpose of Jesus
Christ; the power of Jesus Christ in the Christian Conscious-
ness; the Divinity of Jesus Christ as the Revelation of the
Heart of God.

5. Discussion of the growth of personal religious experience
advancing from tradition and ceremonial observance to the

SYLLABUS xxxvii

inner sanctuary of soul-consciousness. The deep secret of
the Christian religion cannot be taught externally. The
basis of ethical reality. The things of the Spirit must be
spiritually discerned.

6. Steps that should be taken by one seeking in the Christian
religion. The starting-point is one's self. Fascination of
the study of self. Wonderful influence of actions and words
proceeding from human selves. Greatest mystery of selfhood,
the will and the ethical elements in volition. Von Hartmann
"on the laboratory of volition." The self not one but many.
Correspondences of human personality. This shown to
proceed from the Immanent Life beneath all individual selves.

7. From this we advance to a conception of the Nature of God
in its relation to man. Picton on monism. God not an
isolated Being, but a Source. We are His offspring and in
Him we live. But the secret of the Christian religion cannot
be found in abstract meditation on the nature of Being.
Christianity advances from the point of Divine Immanence,
toward practical moral conclusions. Man's invincible con-
viction of freedom. Absolute ideahsm describes this con-
viction as illusory. This explanation fraught with ethical
difficulty and peril. The Christian religion organised around
the central fact of an ego which is a real other to God ; a moral
person, responsible for its choices and its acts.

8. The distinctive moral grandeur of the Christian religion and
its practical value for the world found in the fact that it exists
for the purpose of dealing with the two ethical realities, moral
evil and moral good. This is its reason for being. It is a
religion of character. Nevertheless it is fully acknowledged
that pantheism, with its profound conception of the nature of
Being, is a preparation of the highest value for the distinctive
ethical message of the Christian religion. Reference to the
temperamental tendency of the West to externalise God.
Relative limitation of mysticism in the West.

9. The religion of character in its relation to mysticism. Recog-
nition of the mystery of being deepens the sense of sin and the

xxxviii BARROWS LECTURES

reality of penitence. It also qualifies to discriminate motives
and to discern higher affections. It finds in holy love the
highest ideal of moral consciousness, and in the fact of Jesus
Christ the answer to the soul's longing for confirmation of its
instinctive perception of the best.

10. The fact of Christ a threefold fact. The first element in it is
the life purpose of Jesus Christ as shown historically in His
visible Ministry. This must be supplemented by considering
His continuous power in the Christian Consciousness and His
Divinity as the Revelation of the Heart of God. These
aspects act and react on one another. The significance of
Christ not immediately discerned. It required meditation,
reflection, comparison after His departure. The growth, in
the second century, under Eastern influence, of a profound
recognition of the Nature of Jesus Christ as the Brightness
of the Everlasting Light, the Word that was in the beginning
with God.

11. After two thousand years of testing, the Christian religion
stands confirmed in the historical element and in the mystical
element. Appeal to the Oriental Consciousness to assimilate
this religion and interpret it to the world.

LECTURE VI

THE MINISTRY OF THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD-
WIDE KINGDOM OF CHRIST

I . The lecturer has not concealed his purpose in the delivery of
these lectures. He views with concern tendencies developing
in the West toward the spirit of aggression, externalism, and
the love of pleasure. He regards the triumph of such tenden-
cies as a calamity which would involve the world and react
with particular severity upon the East. He believes that the
only correction of these tendencies must be a reinterpretation
of the Christian religion, especially of those truths and values
that lie chiefly in the mystical realm. These truths and

SYLLABUS xxxix

values inhere in the divinity of Jesus Christ as the Eternal
Answer coming forth from unknowable depths of the Infinite
to confirm the soul's highest moral ideal, to disclose the holy-
love which is the central principle in the Heart of God, to
interpret that love by sacrifice.

2. The lecturer believes that the sublime qualities of the Oriental
Consciousness are distinctively those required to accomplish
this reinterpretation of Christianity. He therefore appeals to
the East to confer an inestimable good upon the world by
becoming the champion of a higher Christian thinking,
conceived in terms of Oriental mentality but universally appli-
cable as a corrective of overdeveloped materialism. That he
may be thoroughly understood in his appeal, he speaks in this
concluding lecture of three things: the deeper mysteries of
Jesus Christ; the qualities in modern civilisation that blind
men to those mysteries; the qualities in Oriental Conscious-
ness that are divinely empowered to interpret them.

3. A pantheistic inheritance qualifies for the apprehension of the
deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ. Inadequacy of regarding
Christ merely as a distinguished Teacher. If He be but
that, He should not be accorded greater honour than is given
to other Gurus. The dominating civilisations of the world
tend to relinquish the mystical conception of the Nature of
Christ in favour of an external and formal appreciation of His
words. This tendency can best be resisted by the aid of those
who approach the fact of Christ from the point of view of a
pantheistic inheritance.

4. Such an approach to the deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ
should begin in the historical fact: the hfe purpose of Jesus
Christ. Christ's historical appearance in the world within
a measurable distance from the present age. Critical investi-
gation has completely established the historical reality of
Jesus Christ and the authenticity of words and deeds attrib-
uted to Him. The influence of the personality of Christ
upon His disciples. The miracles and the teachings of Christ,
The Divinity of Christ appears, in history, chiefly in the pur-

xl BARROWS LECTURES

pose governing His Life. Christ formed one plan and exe-
cuted it: to give happiness to the v^^orld by establishing a
world-wide Kingdom of Righteousness. He Himself the
Head of this Kingdom. This claim of supremacy not incom-
patible with His meek and lowly Spirit. Christ and ' ' Enthusi-
asm for Humanity." He proceeded to carry into effect this
life purpose not by force but by sacrifice. The glorious sig-
nificance of the Death of Jesus Christ.

5. The power of Christ in the Christian Consciousness. Dis-
cussion of the nature of consciousness. Jesus Christ seeks to
accomplish His life purpose within the self-knowing soul of
each individual man. In the soul Christ becomes known,
not historically and externally, but through an esoteric experi-
ence as the Ground of a morally transformed and illumined
consciousness. The apprehension of Christ Mystical an
advance beyond the apprehension of Christ Historical. Yet
the Christ Mystical, immediately discerned in the circle of
consciousness, is the continuous, present, subjective manifes-
tation of the same Christ Historical, and not another. The
mysteries of Jesus Christ not nature-marvels taking the form
of external signs. They are mysteries of the Spirit, inwardly
apprehended in terms of ethical self-realisation. He comes
to animate and control our moral powers. He comes to regu-
late our natural tendencies by furnishing us with new motives.
He comes to interpret to us the depths of our own being,
the suggestions of our sub-conscious life.

6. The Divinity of Jesus Christ as the Revelation of the Heart of
God. The Oriental Consciousness has its inheritance in this
mystical truth, and its power to restore that truth to pristine
grandeur, in the eyes of the whole world. Influence of the
Person of Christ on the Oriental thought of the second century.
He was recognised as the Logos; the Revelation of the Heart
of God. This Revelation supremely accomplished by Christ
through His Cross and Passion. Meditation on the loneli-
ness of Christ's sacrifice. Its unique significance in the midst
of the whole field of terrestrial|suffering.

SYLLABUS xli

Concluding address: Remarks on the qualities now develop-
ing in Western civilisation through the passion for progress and
the triumph of utilitarianism. Full acknowledgment of the
value of qualities active in Western civilisation. Perils attend-
ant on those qualities. Final appeal for co-operation from the
cultured circles of the East to accomplish a reinterpretation of
Christianity consonant with the splendid mysticism in which
lay its original power.

LECTURE ONE

ELEMENTS OF SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL

CONSCIOUSNESS

Four years have passed since the happy moment
when, for the first time, I saw India and looked into the
intellectual countenances of her people. That moment
was a point of consummation in my life. It fulfilled the
dream of childhood, the hope of youth, the prayer of
riper years. I know not why it has pleased God, from
the beginning of my days, to knit my heart to India. So
it has been, and so it is. Four years ago I landed here
a stranger to find myself among brethren. The scenes
that passed before my eyes were unfamiliar; the voice
that welcomed me to a brotherhood of the spirit was
the old, sweet voice of love. The Orient was a new
world, yet in the companionship of the Oriental Con-
sciousness I felt at home. Your attitude, no less than
your spirit, made my way throughout India a path of
privilege. Courtesy, patient hearing, the generosity of
tolerance were your God-speed to me everywhere. Of
obstruction and opposition at your hands, I had no
knowledge. You permitted me to speak, without re-
serve, not only of more general religious conceptions,
such as are our common treasure, but of distinctive
forms and relations which those conceptions have taken
on through the power of Christ and a Christian philoso-
phy and ethics. By the measure of my love for that
Christian philosophy and ethics and for that Christ

BARROWS LECTURES

Who is their Source is the measure of my affection and
admiration for brethren of other faiths who could not
only tolerate but encourage my freedom of speech.
The subjects of which I treated at that time, when first
discharging the duty of Barrows Lecturer to India from
the University of Chicago in the United States of Amer-
ica, were those that lie near the heart of the Christian
religion : The Idea of God ; The Person of Christ as the
Supreme Manifestation of God; Sin and the Sacrifice
of Christ; Holiness; Immortality. To theologies and
ecclesiastical institutions of the West, claims and con-
tentions of rival sects in Europe and America, I gave
no consideration in my lectures. I regarded these
things as incidental developments and local adaptations
occurring in the political and temperamental evolution
of Western civilisation ; not attractive to, nor authorita-
tive for, the East. My interest lay in separating the
essence of the Christian religion from those accretions
and accessories occurring in the West, and presenting
it for consideration upon its merits as something intrin-
sically applicable to our human consciousness as such.
I spoke with this conviction and from this point of view :
that man as man, be he Oriental or Occidental, is bound
to find in the essence of the Christian religion that which
concerns him as a man, appeals to him, seeks to win him
and to control him, through reason, conscience, and
affection.

The generous attention with which my lectures were
heard in Indian circles of culture awakened in me irre-
pressible reflections, that passed beyond the plane of
personal concerns. Gratitude and love toward cour-

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 3

teous and tolerant brethren gave place to profounder
feelings. As I grew to apprehend the qualities of the
Oriental Consciousness I saw their potential value for
the higher interpretation of the Christian religion. It
became clear to me that in the soul of the East are
powers and gifts which stand in a significant relation
to the higher truths of Christianity; correspondences
which cannot be accidental, between the most sublime
aspects of the religion of Christ and the most sublime
qualities of the Eastern soul. Many times during the
former visit among you I found myself exclaiming,
How marvellously is the East qualified to be the inter-
preter of Christian mysteries; and how marvellously
does the profound essence of Christian belief lend itself
to the modes of Oriental Consciousness! Is there not
here evidence of Divine intention, long unrealised ?
While the West heretofore has regarded Christianity as
its own, an indigenous growth that might with difficulty
be introduced to the East as an exotic, can it be that
the Oriental Consciousness is, in fact, the natural soil
of this Divine plant, and that, at last, after many cen-
turies, from the fruitful ground of the Eastern soul, this
seed of God is to spring to the perfect type and bear
fruit a hundred fold ?

Filled with these reflections, I returned to my native
land at the close of my former term of lectures, and gave
myself over to meditation. Renewal of association with
current forms and types of Western Christianity did not
dispel the impression received by contact with the East.
It acquired definiteness. It organised about itself vari-
ous scattered and subsidiary impressions. It became a

BARROWS LECTURES

deliberate conviction. It produced in my soul a deep
desire to return to the East, to re-enter the companion-
ship of the most thoughtful minds, and, in their presence,
to consider thoroughly what, if it be true, is a significant
truth. At that juncture there came to me, unanticipated
and unsought, a second appointment from the Univer-
sity of Chicago as Barrows Lecturer to India and the
Far East. It seemed a Divine opportunity. It opened
a way to present in ordered form, to your tolerant and
discriminating minds, the results of my experiences and
reflections. Therefore I am here; not, I trust, as a
stranger, but rather as a friend returning to his friends,
with whom he has taken sweet counsel before, and on
whose broad and catholic friendship he now depends. I
do not consider that our hereditary divergences of racial
and religious tradition offer an impediment to fellow-
ship in these hours of earnest thinking. You are Indian.
So, in spirit and in interest, am I. With your history
and your traditions I am familiar. With your literature
and your philosophy I have some slight acquaintance.
With your aspirations for national unity, for social
betterment of communities, for spread of general and
technical education, for equalising of opportunity, and
for advancement of popular virtue and happiness, I am,
as an American, in full accord. Best of all, with many
members of Indian society I can now claim the honour
of personal friendship. It seems therefore a natural
thing to lay before you the outcome of reflections
av/akened by a study of Indian personality, in its psycho-
logical relation to profound and lofty elements of the
Christian religion ; in other words : The Witness of the

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Oriental Consciousness to Jesus Christ. To accomplish
this with any degree of satisfaction will involve three
successive lines of procedure, to be followed in the six
lectures of the course.

First : Analysis of the Oriental Consciousness, from
the point of view of an outside observer in sympathy
with his subject, will be required as part of my argument.
The attempt to analyse the Oriental Consciousness often
has been made in and by the West; yet not always, it
may be, by one whose soul was in accord with his sub-
ject. Some have spoken in theory, which is, commonly,
to speak in ignorance and in error; to shoot at long
range through fog, and take chances of hitting the mark.
Some have spoken in knowledge, yet in knowledge
vitiated by prejudices of race, or limited through official
restriction, or chilled by coldness of scientific classifica-
tion ; seeing, yet not seeing, because what one saw was
misinterpreted, not through ignorance but through lack
of love, that great interpreter of all mysteries of the
soul. May there not be room for one to speak of the
Oriental Consciousness from whom prejudices of race,
restrictions of office, coldness of science, are absent,
and who, in their place, offers these qualifications
only : some measure of personal contact with Orientals,
instinctive honour toward man as man, and love for
Eastern hearts and Eastern minds that deepens with
experience ?

I am prepared to be told that my attempt to analyse
the Oriental Consciousness may be regarded as an act
of audacity. It cannot be esteemed an act of unfriend-
liness by those who know with what reverence and

BARROWS LECTURES

appreciation it is undertaken ; nor will it be resented by
such as hear me to the end.

Secondly: I shall endeavour to unfold certain meta-
physical aspects of the Christian religion which are
most characteristic of it, and which, too often, are hidden
from Eastern eyes by forms and institutions of Christian
churches. In the course of twenty centuries outward
forms and institutions have arisen as vehicles of truth,
customs of worship, or methods of convenience. It is
necessary that they should have arisen ; but, to an extent
quite unappreciated by most Europeans, these external-
ities may relatively conceal, from Oriental observers,
those deep things of God, those abysses of the Spirit,
which are the real glories of Christian belief, and the
chief treasures of enlightened Christian Consciousness.
The mystical elements in the religion of Christ; the
witness of God in the soul; the witness of the soul to
God ; the controlling moral convictions that issue from
these sources constitute the essence of the religion. I
shall try to show that all serious attempts to understand
Christianity and, much more, to come under its power,
must take the form of approaches to these elements of
its imperishable and universal essence. It is here, and
only here, that we can be said to enter the spiritual
temple of this Faith. Ecclesiastical systems, forms of
worship, official distinctions are occasional, variable,
partial, often transitory modes of expression ; inadequate
yet necessary attempts to give utterance to that which
in its completeness transcends utterance. They who
have seen most clearly into the depths of the Christian
religion know how little of its profounder content can be

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 7

expressed in forms of language and ceremonial acts.
He who has known Christ, not after the flesh but in the
Spirit, has, with St. Paul, ''heard unspeakable words,
which it is not lawful for a man to utter. "^

Thirdly : If I shall succeed in the attempts described
above, on the one hand, to analyse the Oriental Con-
sciousness so far as to draw attention to some of its sub-
lime elements; on the other hand, to analyse those
metaphysical aspects of the Christian religion which
contain its hidden life and power, I shall then have the
honour of pointing out, to such as may have patience to
hear me to the end, not only the fact of correspondence
between the finer qualities of the Eastern soul and the
most spiritual subjects of Christian belief, but also the
significance of that fact for the world. The religion of
Christ, by virtue of its inherent cosmopolitanism and
vitality, appears to be spreading from heart to heart
and land to land, carried not so much by man's direct
intention and effort as by the force of invisible influences.
Its approaches appear to be received with less suspicion
and with more cordiality in Eastern circles of culture.
In view of the larger hearing that is being granted to
Christianity in these latter times, one asks. What then is
the significance for the world, of the remarkable corre-
spondence that exists between the best in the Eastern
Consciousness and the best in the Christian religion
itself? What would be the ministry of the Oriental
Consciousness in a world-wide Kingdom of Christ ?

My brethren (if I may have the honour to address
you in that term of blended affection and respect), I

' II Cor. 12:4.

BARROWS LECTURES

have set before you in outline the purpose that brings me
the second time to India. The prospectus of my argu-
ment is in your possession. You know my heart. I
have kept nothing back. Because you are what you
are, possessors, through a proud and ancient ancestry,
of that most rich treasure, the Oriental Consciousness,
I bring to you a treasure, rich, profound, sacred, worthy
of your ancestry, worthy of yourselves. I ask you to
examine it in relation to yourselves, looking upon it
as an instrument through which you, gentlemen of the
East, may discharge an incalculable service for the
whole world.

And now may I ask you to turn with me to the special
subject of this lecture, which is : "Elements of Sublimity
in the Oriental Consciousness" ? I ought to say that I
approach this subject in no spirit of flattery. If any
have attributed such a spirit to me, I desire to make
ingenuous and comprehensive disavowal of it. Among
men of culture and sincerity, approach in the spirit of
flattery arouses, first resentment, then suspicion. The
word "flattery, " of obscure and uncertain origin, glides,
with the flexibility of a reptile, through the paths of
English literature, giving off now one shade of meaning,
now another, yet always with connotations that awaken
distrust. In its most ancient form it stands for the
sinister instinct of certain animals that make caressing
motions just before they strike their victim, as when
Chaucer, in the "Merchant's Tale," says: "Lyk to
the scorpion, that flaterest with thin heed, whan thou
will stynge."' Now it means the attempt, by insidious
• 815.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS g

speech, to please or win the favour of another; now it de-
notes the compliment spoken with the lip of insincerity ;
now the effort to feed and gratify morbid self-esteem;
now the unethical art of inspiring with hope on insuffi-
cient grounds, as Shakspeare puts it, "Hope doth flatter
thee in thoughts unlikely;'" and now it stands for a
frequent offence against morality, the misleading effort
to represent another too favourably, exaggerating his
good points, concealing his errors. Against all these
methods of playing fast and loose with truth, my sense of
righteousness revolts : I echo the vigour of Shakspeare's
protest, when he says, in Richard the Second, "He does
me double wrong that wounds me with the flatteries of
his tongue;"^ and of Cowper's, when, in the "Table
Tal k, " he cries : ' ' The lie that flatters I abhor the most. ' ' •^
But it is not flattery to make mention of good in the
presence of those in whom it is supposed to exist, and to
direct their attention to traits within themselves and
their race that qualify for exceptional service. Posses-
sion of power is ground of responsibility. To have our
attention directed to powers within us that qualify for
service is not to submit to the ignominy of flattery, but
to be admonished concerning privilege and duty. In
the greatest of his prose writings, his "Plea to the Lords
and Commons of England for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing," Milton says:

It is not in God's esteem the diminution of His glory, when
honourable things are spoken of good men. Nevertheless there
are three principal things, without which all praising is but court-

1 Venus and Adonis, 989. 3 Compare Murray, English Dic-

2 III, 2. tionary in loc.

lO BARROWS LECTURES

ship and flattery. First, when that only is praised which is
solidly worth praise ; next, when greatest likelihoods are brought
that such things are truly and really in those persons to whom
they are ascribed; the other, when he who praises, by showing
that such his actual persuasion is of whom he writes, can demon-
strate that he flatters not.^

In speaking honourably of the Oriental Conscious-
ness I shall approve myself, under each one of Milton's
three canons, to be innocent of the crime of flattery. I
shall speak but of that which is in itself excellent and
''solidly worth praise." I shall show that, in so far as
I am competent to discern the elements of the Oriental
Consciousness, these excellences are there; and, by the
force of my appeal to these noblest elements in Indian
life, for their employment on the side of Christianity,
not in India's interest alone, but unto the advancement
of the world, I shall amply demonstrate that I flatter not.^

Not less earnest than my disavowal of intention to
commit the offence of flattering the East must be my
answer to the suggestion, should it occur to any, that
I am by inference depreciating Western thought and
sensibility through dwelling upon the Elements of Sub-
limity in the Oriental Consciousness. It would be in-
deed a most untrustworthy inference that words spoken
honourably of one must react to the discredit of another.
If there be sublimity in the soul of the East, there is also
sublimity, after its own kind, in the soul of the West.
The ardour of my love and reverence for India is not
obtained through any surrender of loyalty to the heritage
of ideas and traits vouchsafed to me by my father's

» Cf. Areopagitica (ed. Cassell, London, 1904), p. 19.
2 C}. ibid.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS ii

fathers. The patronymic "Western" carries with it for
me immortal privilege and honour. As, with years and
research, I grow to comprehend the forces that have
made the West and are now slowly transforming its
civilisation, "the audacious speculation, the bold ex-
planatory studies, the sound methods of criticism, the
free range of the intellect over every field of knowledge," '
I rejoice to have the humblest share in this inheritance
and pray to be worthy of it. Nor does it appear to me a
disqualification for the service which I seek to render in
India, that I have this Western patronymic and that I
feel this love for the sources whence my being sprang.
For by virtue thereof I acquire, through no merit of my
own, the power, which, in the nature of the case, no
Oriental can as fully possess — to stand apart from East-
ern life and thinking, and, while loving it truly, to esti-
mate it judicially. We are so constituted as often to be
incapacitated for an impartial and interpretive judg-
ment of our immediate conditions by the fact that we
are immersed in those conditions and that our personal-
ity merges as an integral part of them. Mr. R. H.
Hutton in his Essay on M. Renan's Lije of Jesus, when
speaking of the tender and beautiful dedication of the
book by the author to his dearly loved sister, says:
"These are lines which no man could trace without a
deep conviction that his thoughts had been double-sifted
through both a clear intellect and a clear spirit."' So
one may say of the attempt to estimate the most subtle

I C/. Benj. Kidd, Principles oj = Cj. Theological Essays (3d ed.,

Western Civilisation (ed. London, revised; London, li
1902) p. 2.

12 BARROWS LECTURES

and profound elements in a specific form of race con-
sciousness, for example, the Oriental Consciousness:
no man can trace these elements unless his thought has
been double-sifted through both a remote racial inherit-
ance and a medium of love that has removed all prejudice
and left only the desire to see the truth and to see it at
its best.

To the true citizen of the world, and lover of his kind,
no occupation is more delightful than study of the com-
mon nature of mankind. Himself exempt from an
alienating spirit of separation and animated by human-
istic aims, as his researches extend themselves to wider
fields, his heart glows with delight on perceiving the
vast unities of feeling and experience that bind together
all the families of earth. Professor Tylor of Oxford
says, in his work on Primitive Culture: "Surveyed in a
broad view, the character and habit of mankind at once
display that similarity and consistency of phenomena
which led the Italian proverb-maker to declare : 'All the
world is one country.' " ' It is not too much to say that
there are souls that experience a passionate joy in re-
flecting upon the oneness of the human race. There is a
type of patriotism broader than love of one's nation. It
is world-patriotism. It is marked by God like catholi-
city of affection toward the race; it says with the Italian
proverb-maker: "All the world is one country;" and
with St. Paul: "God hath made of one all nations of
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth;" and with
Jesus Christ: "I would give my life for the life of the
world." To what extent the East contains and ap-

I C/. 4th ed., revised; London, 1903, Vol. I, p. 6.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 13

proves this spirit of world-patriotism, this love of the
world as one world, of humanity as one race, I have no
certain knowledge. But that in the West are those for
whom this world-love has dissolved the ordinary barriers
and created a sense of universal kinship is true. I forget
not that there are many in that Western world who in
spirit and word and deed deny and oppose this senti-
ment. Some repudiate it with scorn, uttering opinions
for which those who have a larger view of life may well
rebuke them with honourable resentment. Recently
an Englishman, whose name I may perhaps without
impropriety withhold, has, in the introduction to a book
on Eastern subjects, volunteered the following state-
ments: "An American can never like anyone not of his
own colour; he will never mix on a footing of equality
with any other." These are idle, foolish, graceless
words; the more regrettable because their author is a
person of experience and distinction. So far as they are
uncorrected by the spirit and life of those whom they
misrepresent, they add to the long sad story of that past,
which, as some of us dare to believe, is giving place to a
broader and more worthy future.

The unity of the human world is, to those who are
animated by the larger patriotism, an exhilarating
thought. This unity is accomplished through diversity,
not through uniformity. It presents to us the phenome-
non of temperamental and psychic variation worked out
upon a world-scale. We see the parable and prophecy
of this variation in children of the same parents, within
the small enclosure of a single family. Here are two
brothers that were cradled, nurtured, educated together.

14 BARROWS LECTURES

Sharing everything from infancy, growing up amidst the
same scenes, beneath the same discipline, behold the
irrepressible distinctions that appear in them from the
beginning and deepen with time. One of these brothers
is full of immediacy; eager, practical, self-reliant, self-
assertive, born for mastery of visible forces. The other
is calm, passive, indifferent to opportunity, living in the
unseen, judging thought to be above action. Such, be-
neath one roof, may be the unlikeness of two lives, com-
mon fruit of one parentage. Yet together conceived of
as forming a larger unity, they represent the totality of
sources that produced them. So, in the greater family
of man, are differences not more real in fact but more
strongly developed by circumstances. The house
brothers have lived within the same entourage; garbed
alike, toned by one climate, speaking one mother tongue,
subdued to conventional similitude by the autocracy of
social custom. The race brothers have lived apart, as
far as East from West. Separation and its subtle reac-
tion, segregation, insidious differentia of zone and
climate, divergent traditions, inertia of unrelated cus-
toms have accentuated their visible distinctions. To the
uninstructed eye these race brothers seem to have been
driven immeasurably apart; whereas, in fact, that is to
say in spirit, they are not less allied than two brothers
of opposite temperaments housed beneath one roof.
For the race brothers, though physically and intellectu-
ally remote and dissimilar, are bound in the one great
bundle of humanity's life, and collectively they represent
the sum of influences that have made humanity and
that are essential to the completeness of humanity.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 15

Beneath what I am now saying lies a fundamental
fact of singular interest. It is the fact of race conscious-
ness. Individual consciousness is immediate knowl-
edge that one has of one's present thoughts, feelings, and
purposes: it is knowledge, through testimony within
oneself, of impressions, thoughts, feelings that make up
conscious existence. Possibly it is this fact of individual
consciousness more than any other fact that imparts a
certain mysterious dignity to every human life. As we
look upon one another, we remember that, behind all
outward phenomena of speech or conduct, dwells in
each, as in a curtained shrine, the self-knowing soul,
holding counsel with itself, taking knowledge of itself
inwardly as an entity separable from the whole outlying
universe. But this function of individual consciousness
is not wholly esoteric and impenetrable. In a sense it
must disclose itself through reactions upon outward
personality. The saying of the proverb-maker in the
Old Testament : " As he thinketh in his heart, so is he," '
proclaims one of the most formidable laws of our being.
As we know ourselves in the actuality of inward life, so,
as by an irresistible force of self-projection, we make
involuntary self -revelations of our consciousness, where-
by others who study us closely may know us as we are.

The nature that is essentially untrue, that gives wit-
ness within itself to fraud or corruptness, or dark pas-
sions of sinister ambition, will, in the course of time,
depict that inward insincerity in wavering eye, lines of
untruth, or shadow of animalism upon the tell-tale coun-
tenance. The soul that gives witness unto itself in the

I Prov. 23 : 7.

i6 BARROWS LECTURES

inner shrine of consciousness to noble and ingenuous
motive, to reverence for truth, to afhhation with God, to
honourable love for man, will bear this witness out-
wardly, in eyes that give forth the radiance of inward
light, in the calm brow exempt from shame, in the charm
of righteousness, which is the white garment for the
white soul. Once, in early days of the Christian Society,
certain Apostles were discharging their ministry with
such winsome strength and gentleness that spectators
were astonished, knowing them to be unlearned and
ignorant men ; and it is touchingly affirmed by the nar-
rator: "They took knowledge of them that they had
been with Jesus.'" It is an example of the involuntary
self -revelations of consciousness. The thought of Christ
was filling the souls of these men; in the shrine of
consciousness they knew themselves to be governed by
His example, allied to His cause ; and what filled them
inwardly controlled them outwardly.

But, in our study of human life, we have grown to
see that there is race consciousness, as well as individual
consciousness. That faculty which we attribute to
the individual, namely, recognition within itself of the
actuality of impressions, thoughts, and feelings that
make up conscious being, we may attribute as a collect-
ive faculty to an aggregate of men, and speak of national
consciousness, race consciousness, or, as in the present
instance. Oriental Consciousness as distinguished from
Occidental Consciousness. That there should be certain
characteristic methods of thought, objects of interest,
points of view controlling Oriental mentality, interest-

' Acts 4:13.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 17

ing the Oriental soul, and thereby distinguishing it,
in a measure, from the type of mentality and of soul-
interest common throughout the West, is the fact that
has appealed to me supremely, that challenges my
closest attention, that brings me a second time to India
in the attempt to understand its import.

The author of the book. Primitive Culture, says:
''That a whole nation should have a special dress,
special tools and weapons, special laws of marriage
and property, special moral and religious doctrines
is a remarkable fact, which we notice so little because
we have lived all our lives in the midst of it."' Pro-
fessor Tylor further says, and the remark is one full of
suggestion for my present purpose:

The quality of mankind, which tends most to make the system-
atic study of civilisation possible, is that remarkable tacit con-
sensus or agreement which so far induces whole populations to
unite in the use of the same language, to follow the same religion
and customary law, to settle down to the same general level of art
and knowledge. It is this state of things which makes it so far
possible to ignore exceptional facts, and to describe nations by a
sort of general average. There is found to be such regularity in
the composition of societies of men, that we can drop individual
differences out of sight and thus can generalise on the arts and
opinions of whole nations, just as, when looking down upon an
army from a hill, we forget the individual soldier, whom, in fact,
we can scarce distinguish in the mass, while we see each regiment
as an organised body, spreading or concentrating, moving in
advance or in retreat.^

It is well to be assured by so high an authority that
the principle of generalisation as applied to nations is

^ Cj. op. cif., Vol. I, p. 12. ' Cf. ibid., pp. 10, 11.

BARROWS LECTURES

scientifically valid. For my interest in these lectures
is founded on a generalisation far wider than any sug-
gested by the learned author whom I have just quoted.
My present interest lies not in the fact that a whole
nation should have special dress, or special tools and
weapons, or special laws of marriage and property;
not even in the fact that a whole nation should have
special moral and religious doctrines. Striking as are
these examples of similarity and consistency in social
phenomena, they are but suggestions of a greater fact,
the proportions of which are as majestic as its signifi-
cance for the world is profound. It is the fact of a
distinctive type of human self-realisation which I have
called the Oriental Consciousness.

The East is the home of many nations differing one
from another in language, in modes of dress, in forms
of tools and weapons, in laws of marriage and property,
in moral and religious doctrines. Like the West,
whether more or less conspicuously, the East bears the
revolutionary marks of time, its upheavals, its cleavages,
its reconstructions. Yet the East has a spirit that is
all its own, a spirit that broods over its multitudinous
life like the soft atmosphere of gentle love not unmingled
with sorrow. In that far-off land where my home is,
amidst the beauteous valleys and mountain ranges
of Northern America, there occurs late in the autumn
of each year a phenomenon that we cherish as one of
the loveliest appearances of nature. The summer has
long since passed away; the harvests are all garnered,
the autumn is far spent, the frosts have turned the
forests to colour masses of crimson and russet and gold.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 19

the first premonitory blasts of winter have sounded
through the groves, heralds of ice and snow; when
suddenly, for a few brief days, there comes a great calm
in heaven and on earth, a celestial armistice. The wind
is hushed; the severity of frost is withdrawn; the sun
breathes into the atmosphere fragrance and warmth;
hill and vale, forest and river are wrapped together in
one mantle of dreamlike stillness. Rugged outlines of
nature are softened ; the din of cities is forgotten ; zest
of action gives place to thought ; calm and holy sadness
reigns amid the beauty. For a few days this unwonted
silence and peace of nature continue, then the loud
challenge of the winter sounds and life resumes its con-
flict, its struggles, its constructive toil. In our country
we are wont to call that hush of nature " Indian summer."
Thus does one of our own writers describe that enchant-
ing yet pathetic season: "The warm, late days of
Indian summer came in, dreamy and calm and still,
with just frost enough to crisp the ground of a morning
but with warm traces of benign and sunny hours at
noon."' The name Indian summer has poetic refer-
ence to the aborigines of America. It is interesting
here to remember that those aborigines were errone-
ously called "Indians" by the Spanish navigators of the
fifteenth century, who, in reaching America, supposed
that they had touched the shore of India. I know of
nothing in nature that more nobly typifies the spirit
of the Oriental Consciousness than that phenomenon
of the Western year which, as if by prophetic instinct,
we have called Indian summer. That brief period of

I Mrs. H. B. Stowe, Oldtown, p. 337.

20 BARROWS LECTURES

repose in nature, of dreamlike calm, of antithesis to the
stern, cold, eager Western winter, of pathos that is not
like grief but rather like thought which lies too deep
for tears, suggests the mental atmosphere which, not
for a few brief days, but eternally, spreads over the
expanse of Eastern life. The East has known with
more intimacy, if it be possible, than the West those
peace destroyers — war, upheaval of dynasties, acute
forms of social distress. The East has been called more
often than the West to submit to injustice, to endure
the sickness of hope deferred, to bow the shoulder to
burdens unrighteously imposed. Yet whatever con-
tentions and upheavals on the surface of society, what-
ever blasts of plague or famine, desolating homes and
hearths, whatever injustice or oppression ; in the upper
atmosphere of the Oriental Consciousness there abides
the calm, the sadness, and the sunlight of an Indian
summer of the soul. Who can interpret it? Who
has the right to attempt to interpret it ? Above all,
what right have I, a son of the West, to essay that sacred
task ? I have no right, unless it be that love and rev-
erence give right.

As I draw near to discern the elements of the Orien-
tal Consciousness, I find among them those that pro-
duce on me impressions of sublimity. Not without
reflection do I use that term "sublimity." It is one
of the noblest of words. Like the word "flattery" of
which I spoke earlier in this lecture, its origin in our
English tongue is unknown. The ignoble word "flat-
tery," like a harmful reptile, glides into the language
from an undiscovered nest. The august word "sub-

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 21

limity," like one of your own Himalayan mountain
peaks, rises on the field of English speech into the upper
air of truth ; its summit crowned with light, its base lost
in the haze of distance. It signifies that which strikes
the mind with a sense of grandeur or power. The
invariable condition of the emotion of sublimity is vast-
ness, power or intensity in the objects, material or moral,
that produce it. I believe that in the Occidental Con-
sciousness as well as in the Oriental Consciousness
there are elements of sublimity. It is not my province
to deal with the former in these lectures, but the time
will come, I trust, when some mind, stronger and more
skilled than my own, shall undertake in India an unpre-
judiced analysis of qualities in the consciousness of the
West, which, v/hen rightly understood, when seen in
their ultimate relations to the soul, when studied in
the spirit of love, may be declared, in the high court of
India's most critical opinion, not unworthy to be called
sublime.

From that most ancient and most complex psycho-
logical mystery, which I have called the Oriental
Consciousness, I select four elements, each of which
produces upon my Western powers of apprehension
the impression of sublimity. They are these : The Con-
templative Life; The Presence of the Unseen; Aspira-
tion toward Ultimate Being; The Sanctions of the Past.
If I venture to speak of these, it is not with the false
assurance of him who fancies that he has mastered the
inner meanings for the East of those things whereof he
speaks, but with reserve and modesty mingled with
reverence and admiration.

22 BARROWS LECTURES

The Contemplative Life is the life that is ruled by
thought ; that esteems thought to be the treasure whose
price is above rubies, the honourable portion for which
wealth and worldly power may not be taken in exchange.
In the creation of God the mind is the most beautiful
thing that He has made. "He hath made," says an
ancient writer, "everything beautiful in his time."^
This is true. Each object in nature, from the most
minute to the most mighty, so long as it retains its nor-
mal place, function, and form, retains inherent grace
and symmetry which is God's sign-manual of beauty
stamped upon every one of His innumerable works.
Each flower, each living creature, each cloud that sails
in the sky, each star that shines in the firmament is
clothed in the beauty of perfect workmanship, perfect
serviceableness for its appointed end of being. But
the beauty of the mind is unique; there is nothing in
the universe like it, save only the Eternal Mind, of
which it is the offspring and reflection. Star, cloud,
living creature, flower are passive, limited, fixed; un-
reasoning items in the immense totality of nature. The
mind is active, free, capable of wandering at its pleasure
through the whole universe and far up into the awful
heights of Deity. The mind is gifted with originating
powers; it creates, and its creations, like your own
Vedas, may become immortal. The human hand is an
extraordinary adjunct of man's being. To what mul-
titudinous functions it lends itself, along the various
avenues of action ! To what precision of movement it
may attain ! Now it grasps the weapon of destruction

^ Eccles. 3:11.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 23

or defence; now it wields the implement of household
industry or the tool of agriculture; now it shapes the
delicate instrument of science; now it lifts the brush
of the painter, the chisel of the sculptor; now it wakes
the voice of the harp or the harmonies of the organ;
now, taking the pen of the writer, it records history,
transcribes poetry, or signs away the destinies of nations.
Yet what is the hand, with all its splendid functions,
but the servant of the mind! Let the mind fail and
the hand is impotent. The mind need not be subdued
by infelicities of earthly destiny. So long as conscious-
ness and the true balance of reason endure, prosperity,
adversity, wealth, poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice,
oppression may be kept in the outer courts of our being,
nor ever permitted to control that sanctuary far within
where thought has set its altar and prepared its incense.
"Stone walls do not a prison make; nor iron bars a
cage." Ignoring the limitation of the external, the
mind, like an untamed eagle, spreads its pinions and
is off "where the wicked cease from troubling and the
weary are at rest."

The Contemplative Life is the life that puts thought
above action, the invisible above the visible, as the
major interest of existence: that pays homage first to
the mind and the things of the mind ; afterward to the
body and the things of the body. The life of action is
not incompatible with the life of contemplation, but
subordinate to it. And especially is the life of material-
istic action subordinate: the struggle of competitive
acquisition, lust after riches, pride of display, arrogance
of possession, scheming ingenuity to override the inter-

24 BARROWS LECTURES

ests or the efforts of another, so as to accumulate wealth.
From this the Contemplative Life turns wearily aside,
asking only to be left at leisure to think its way onward
to the goal of God. May I say that I seem to have
found in the East the natural home of the Contemplative
Life? Its value, its appropriateness for man, its en-
nobling harmony with man's nature and destiny, its
abiding satisfactions as against feverish struggle for
things and short-lived enjoyment of them, many in the
West have known. And many more in these latter
days, jaded with the quest of the visible, are seeking
the path of contemplation. But behind you and your
seers lies the long Indian summer of the soul, thousands
of years of the Contemplative Life. It has given you
certain elements of personality, and certain qualifica-
tions for world-efficiency which misguided imitation
of our Western ways could only imperil. You have
been Orientals since the dawn of the world. Continue
to be Orientals for ever, till the world's last twilight
closes in the final darkness. Cling to the Contempla-
tive Life : your glorious heritage, your peculiar strength.
It has given you elements of personality of which the
West stands in need and shall one day come seeking
at your hand. It has given you repose, gentleness,
patience, gravity, noble indifference alike to material
possession and material privation, eternal remembrance
of things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, which
God hath prepared for them that love Him.

The Presence of the Unseen seems to me, as I study
Indian personality, to be another element in Oriental
Consciousness that is worthy to be called sublime.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 25

Visibility and invisibility are states or conditions that
have played an enormous part in the history of human
thought and human action. There have been the
physically blind, blind from their mother's womb, to
whom the whole span of earthly being was a problem
of invisibility, unrelieved by one ray of light, or one
outline of form. There have been the mentally blind,
in whom the spiritual eye was sealed, and for whom
the whole of existence was to touch, to taste, to handle
palpable objects of a visible world. There have been
the enlightened, to whom the visible was but the porch
and entrance way to the Temple of Invisible Reality.
Innumerable companies of these enlightened have felt
that the one unquestionable Reality is invisible; and,
holding this faith in their several ways, some as Hindus,
some as Christians, have aspired to that end of which
St. Paul has spoken: "We look not at the things which
are seen but at the things which are not seen; for the
things which are seen are temporal, but the things
which are not seen are eternal."' There is an ancient
Christian Creed, framed in Asia Minor in the fourth
century, the opening words of which are these: "I
believe in One God, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and
of all things, visible and invisible." This Creed of
Nicaea, framed in what Europeans speak of as the
Nearer East, and affected by influences partly Eastern,
partly Western, gives us, as it were, a digest of the
religious consciousness of the world on this subject.
God is regarded as the Maker of all things, "visible
and invisible." You are well aware that the general

'11 Cor. 4:18.

26 BARROWS LECTURES

tendency of Western thinking is to recognise with more
or less absoluteness the reality of the phenomenal uni-
verse with the countless distinctions of finite souls and
finite objects; a recognition which, I regret to say, in
popular religious thinking of the West has become at
times a form of dualism. You are equally aware that
the immemorial thought of India emphasises the reality
of the Invisible Absolute, while to some extent admitting
the distinction of the individual soul and its phenomenal
environment, but regarding it under the terms "Maya"
or "Avidya." A very able Hindu writer in the Hindu-
stan Review says: ''This distinction is indeed recog-
nised in Higher Hinduism, but in this system it is
spoken of as a mystery and receives the much misunder-
stood name of 'Maya' or 'Avidya, ' terms which Western
scholars readily but wrongly render into 'illusion.'
Really, 'Maya' and 'Avidya' are names of a mystery
which our philosophers clearly admit is inscrutable."
Without going into this very interesting subject, which
I have the greatest desire to investigate further under
competent Eastern guides, my purpose in referring to
it at all is to point out that the age-long tendency of
Indian thinking to clothe itself in forms of monism
has overspread the East with an impressive sense of
the presence of the Unseen. It is not strange that the
East has been historically the birth-place of every one
of the great religions of the world, and the natural
fountain and origin of the world's religious experience.
That this religious experience has undergone stages
of development with which I personally could not be
satisfied, as, for example, in some of the forms and

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 27

phenomena of animism, which, as a matter of fact,
seem to me to have been greatly influenced from non-
Aryan sources, is not a matter germane to my present
purpose. I wish to testify that, as I come into the East
once more, I am more than ever conscious of the fact
that here the presence of the Unseen is realised. That
fact is inherently sublime. It bears witness to the inde-
structible seed of divinity within the finite soul. It is
the refusal of man to be put off with the husk of physi-
cal existence, because the eternal wheat of immortality
is his portion. May the day never come when the East,
inebriated with the wine of modern culture, and dazzled
by the appliances of modern civilisation, shall move from
her high seat of vision, forget her prophets of the invis-
ible, barter her great inheritance in the Unseen, and bow
down before perishable idols of present-day materialism,
unconsecrated gods of a passing hour !

In the Oriental Consciousness there lives another
element of true sublimity, of which I may not speak
save in words measured and restrained by reverence.
Aspiration toward Ultimate Being is the eternal hunger
and hope in the soul of the East. The East may erect
temples and offer sacrifices to particular deities; it
may enlarge its pantheon with deified saints and heroes ;
it may build up and sustain the complex theologies and
rituals which are to-day popular forms of worship for
the multitude. But the sublimity of the Oriental Con-
sciousness is found in its tremendous outreach of desire
beyond these provisional forms and personages, yes,
beyond all that eye can discern or mind conceive, toward
an ultimate and inscrutable Reality of Being — an ocean

28 BARROWS LECTURES

of fathomless life in which, and in which alone, vexations
of the finite spirit are quenched in unutterable satis-
faction, lost in unimaginable blessedness. Words fail
me to depict the sublimity of these conceptions of the
final solution of our existence, or to measure the depth
and dignity of a race consciousness in which, through
a thousand generations, the mystical sense of potential
oneness with Ultimate Being could survive divisive
tendencies of polytheism and powerful antagonisms
of dissenting philosophies. I am not attempting to
pass any value-judgment upon the actual influence upon
life and character of this Aspiration toward Ultimate
Being. I am not considering the bearing upon it of
wide ranges of Indian theological divergence touching
the personality or the impersonality of God; I am not
contrasting it with the Buddhistic thought-system of the
Farther East, wherein negation of existence supplies to
consciousness a goal of passionless sublimity. My
observations turn not on the content or tendency of
any of these conceptions ; but on their inherent grandeur
and unworldliness, on their dignity as protests against
materialism, on their sweep and range like searchlights
in the sky above the pastures and palaces of earth, up-
ward and outward into unsurveyed fields of higher
knowledge. A great English poet, gazing on King's
College Chapel, Cambridge, wrote: "They dreamt not
of a perishable home who thus could build!" So may
one exclaim who considers the scale of grandeur on
which are built these conceptions of Ultimate Being
and these aspirations, whether for consummation or
for extinction, that have given wings of high desire to

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 29

the Oriental Consciousness. Souls that can erect such
fabrics of hope, and lift heavenward such towers of
spiritual longing have proved themselves sublime!

I close this lecture with a reference to one other
element of sublimity in the Oriental Consciousness, of
which I hope to speak at greater length in the last lecture
of the course. I refer to Eastern Reverence for the
Sanctions of the Past. In the year 1902, when I was
first in India, a suggestive English writer, Mr. Benja-
min Kidd, produced a book under the title. Principles
0} Western Civilisation. Its purpose is to show that,
with the close of the nineteenth century, there has come
in Europe and America "a great change in the opinions
and modes of thinking of society." This change is the
precursor of a period of social and political reconstruc-
tion. It has lifted Western society as a whole to "an
entirely different plane." It consists in the fact that
all social thinking, in every department, ethics, poli-
tics, philosophy, economics, religion, is passing from
under control of the past and is coming under control
of the future.

It is [Mr. Kidd affirms] the meaning, not of the relation of the
present to the past, but of the relation of the present to the future,
to which all other meanings are subordinate and which controls all
the ultimate tendencies of the process of progress in which the
West is living. The theory of social progress in the West hitherto
has been the struggle of an ascendant present against a hindering
past, in short, a theory of movement toward a fixed social and
political condition in which the present shall be completely
emancipated from the past in conditions in which the gratification
of the desires, and the furtherance of the interests, of the com-
ponent individuals shall have been made as complete as possible.

30 BARROWS LECTURES

But now it is "the shadow of the infinite future which
rests on the process of progress. It is to the future and
not to the past that the theory of development has now
become primarily related." What is taking place in
the West is "a shifting of the centre of significance in
thought." As to the immensity of the changes involved
by reason of this shifting, Mr. Kidd does not, perhaps,
overstate the matter in using these strong words :

Systems of theory that have nourished the intellectual life of
the [Western] world for centuries have become in our time in large
part obsolete. They may retain for a space the outward appear-
ance of authority. But the foundations upon which they rested
have been bodily undermined. It is only a question of time till the
ruin which has overtaken them will have become a commonplace of
Western knowledge.'

In the la^t lecture of this course I shall speak further
of this change occurring in the West, the nature of which
I regard Mr. Kidd to have divined with much sagacity.
I shall try to explain to you both its peril and its promise.
When I shall have done so, my friends, you will under-
stand why it is that I speak with emotion of that element
of sublimity in Oriental Consciousness which I have
called Eastern Reverence for the Sanctions of the Past.
I do not discuss at the present moment whether in all
respects your past, great as it has been, should be per-
mitted to control your present as much as your reverence
allows it to do. I do not raise the question here of how
far "the shadow of the future," as Mr. Kidd calls it,
may be invoked to fall upon you even as already it has
fallen upon us. But one thing I affirm with confidence

I C/. op. cit. (ed. London, 1902), pp. 1-12, 194-238.

SUBLIMITY IN THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 31

and with admiration which I do not seek to disguise:
the sublimity of that element in the Eastern mind which
tenaciously, proudly, reverently esteems its great inherit-
ances, treasures its ancestral classics, keeps faith with
its forefathers, sits unwearied, after three thousand
years, at the living springs of its primeval hopes. If
the watchword of the West is Progress, the watchword
of the East is Faith!

Forgive me. Gentlemen, if in any wise I have pre-
sumed upon the right of friendship in speaking thus
ingenuously and unguardedly of Elements of Sublimity
in the Oriental Consciousness. If I have committed
a fault in so doing, the assurance of a generous motive
may, perchance, be accepted as an atonement. I have
seen many beautiful things in India, wrought by art
or conferred by Nature; but nothing so beautiful as
these traits of consciousness: the Contemplative Life,
the Presence of the Unseen, Aspiration for Ultimate
Being, Reverence for the Sanctions of the Past. You
have a rich inheritance of blessing, and, permit me to
add, a solemn weight of responsibility. In our Holy
Scriptures we find a pregnant saying of Christ. I am
moved to quote it as I close: ''Unto whomsoever much
is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom
men have committed much, of him they will ask the
more."'

I Luke 12:48,

LECTURE TWO

THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN
RELIGION

With deep interest and hopefulness I approach the
subject of the evening, which is, "The Mystical Ele-
ment in the Christian Religion." My interest in this
subject is the result both of investigation and of experi-
ence. My hopefulness in presenting it to this thought-
ful assembly is grounded in the abundant evidence
furnished by the history of religion in India that the
mystical element ever has been and now is esteemed by
you as precious, even as indispensable. I am not aware
of any more direct and satisfactory statement of the truth
that lies at the heart of my subject than is contained
in words spoken some months since by a distinguished
citizen of Bombay, Hon. Mr. Justice Chandavarkar :
"Religious life is only possible when one gets to the
centre of life, which is God Himself." A whole
volume might amplify, but could not more clearly con-
vey, the fundamental fact in mysticism. I find the
words quoted in one of your very able liberal papers,
The Indian Social Reformer, as part of an address de-
livered before a Prayer Union of the Theistic Church.
In the course of his address the honourable and learned
Justice is reported to have said, with regard to the sim-
plicity of true religion:

The sun rises every morning without torn torn or noise, and
goes its regular rounds with patience and quietness. The flowers,

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION ^^

the blossoms, the seasons, all come in their proper time without
advertisement. There is quiet simplicity about nature, which
is not marred by even so much as a show of hurry, disorder or
bustle. So also the man of simple life goes about his work in the
most uncomplaining way. He is faithful to his Maker. God
works in the simplest manner, and the man who leads a simple life
imitates God in this respect. Simplicity is not ostentatious, nor
is there any gorgeousness about it. It is neither showy nor dis-
orderly, but truthful and faithful to the original. In order there-
fore that our lives may become simple, it is necessary for us to
discipline them. Religious life is only possible when one gets to
the centre of life, which is God Himself.

I trust that the author of these true and beautiful
words will not object to have me make them the gate-
way by which I enter the subject to be discussed in
your hearing to-night: ''The Mystical Element in the
Christian Religion." For it is only by means of this
discipline of simplicity, this effort to proceed beyond the
formal and the external, and to attain the blessed estate
of a humble and quiet mind before God, that anyone,
by the pathway of the Christian religion, can come to
that inner, mystical experience of the Divine, which the
honourable Justice has happily described, as "getting
to the centre of life, which is God Himself."

One may say that no single phenomenon of the
religious consciousness has been so universally shared
by the scattered members of the human family as the
phenomenon of mysticism. It is one of the most con-
vincing evidences of the essential unity of the human
race that, in all ages and in all lands, we find the same,
characteristic movement of the religious consciousness —
the effort "to get to the centre of life, which is God Him-

34 BARROWS LECTURES

self." There is recorded a splendid utterance of Christ
in which He depicts a general, final gathering from all
quarters of the earth of those who shall be found worthy
to sit down in the Kingdom of God. ''I say unto
you, that many shall come from the East and West
and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
in the Kingdom of heaven."' One seeks for some
common experience of the religious consciousness in
that conglomerate assembly whereby it could be uni-
fied. One finds it in their common mystical desire,
originating, as has been said, "in that which is the raw
material of all religion, and perhaps of all philosophy
and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of the
beyond, which is part of our nature as human beings."''
Out of that dim, rudimentary consciousness of the
beyond has grown first the groping yearning, then
the deliberate desire, then the studious effort, at length
the glorious achievement: "to get to the centre of life,
which is God Himself." Apparently every conceivable
attempt has been made to define the nature and import
of this action of consciousness in which (how beautiful
is the thought!) we taste the joys and sorrows of the
same experience, be we Occidentals or Orientals. An
English scholar thus defines it — and the definition is
one that must, I think, appeal to many of my learned
hearers: "Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to
realise the presence of the Living God in the soul and in
nature ; or, more generally, as the attempt to realise, in
thought and feeling, the immanence of the temporal in

I Matt. 8: II.

* Cf. Inge, Christian Mysticism (ed. London, 1899), p. 5.

M YSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRIS TIAN RELIGION 3 5

the eternal and of the eternal in the temporal,'" that is
to say, the attempt to realise our abiding in the Living
God, and the abiding of the Living God in us.
A German scholar thus speaks :

Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the unity of the self
with God. It is nothing therefore but the fundamental feeling of
religion, the religious Hfe at its very heart and centre. But what
makes the mystical a special tendency inside religion is the
endeavour to fix the immediateness of the life in God as such,
and find a permanent abode in the abstract inwardness of the life
of pious feeling.^

Here is the testimony of a Scotch scholar:

Mysticism is a phase of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling,
that appears in connection with the endeavour of the human mind
to grasp the Divine essence, or the ultimate reality of things, and to
enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the highest. God
ceases to be an object, and becomes an experience. ^

And here is the corroborating voice of a great scholar of
Northern Africa centuries ago :

Oh ! God, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our souls are
restless till they rest in Thee.^

Thus, approaching by many paths, the world's
seekers after the higher things are drawn to a common
centre and find a common basis of thought and feel-
ing, standing upon which in the spirit of love they be-
come intelligible to one another and each is able to
comprehend and, if it may so be, to appropriate the
contribution that the other is prepared to make, whether

I C/. Inge, op. cit., p. 5. 3 Seth, in loc.

' Cf. PiXEiDERER, in loc. 4 Cj. AuGUSTiNE, in loc.

36 BARROWS LECTURES

to theory or to experience. I shall find no opponent in
India when I affirm that the noblest effort man is capable
of making and the most exalted experience man is capa-
ble of assimilating are, alike, connected with the funda-
mental fact of mysticism. And to this I attribute the
eternal freshness and charm of the great mystical con-
ceptions: the abiding of our souls in the Living God,
and the abiding of the Living God in us. These ideas
possess immortal newness, immortal power of delight.
They return to our spirits like the celestial calm of even-
ing after a day of toil and struggle. In the fierce en-
counters of noon-day, in the strife of tongues, in the
chafing of life's burden upon the shoulders, our heart
was heavy. But now the day of labour is ended; the
dust of traffic falls away, and with it the galling mem-
ory of trouble. "With hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience and bodies washed with pure water," we
rest in the shadow of evening as in the secret place of the
Most High. Calmness, coolness, the soft light of stars
speak to us day by day, year by year, the message of
refreshment that never grows old. So comes back to
us for ever, as we proceed along life's pathway, bearing
the burden and heat of the day, the ineffable refresh-
ment of our life in God and His Life in us. Dimly and
partially we may have discerned it, our eyes being holden
through fear or sin or ignorance ; timidly and doubtingly
we may have tasted it, our hand dreading to lift so fair a
chalice to the lip; yet we have seen enough to know
that this is the True Light which lighteth every man
that Cometh into the world; we have tasted enough to
know that this is the Living Water, of which, if a man

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 37

drink, he shall never thirst. Beautifully did another
Scotchman say:

It is the peculiar gift of these mystical thoughts that they lie
at the basis of all systems of theology, and appeal with a strange
certainty to men and women who humbly seek to follow the Mas-
ter along many a path. The systems are born, grow old and
perish; but the mystical theology is immortal and omnipresent.
"You may to-day," says Maurice Maeterlinck, "pass through
the infirmaries of the human soul, where truths once young and
beautiful come to die, and you will not find a single mystical
thought there. For the truths of mysticism do not grow old
and die."'

It is my privilege to speak to-night, and in my next
two lectures, of some of these ever-young and inherently
immortal truths of mysticism, as they are found and
expressed in the Christian religion. As I essay to do so,
I remember that while the mystical attitude, which is
the aspiration of the soul for immediate access to God,
has been more universally shared by the scattered mem-
bers of the human family than any other phenomenon
of the religious consciousness, it has not failed to en-
counter its opponents and its foes, who have raised
against it formidable objections. It is germane to my
present purpose to note two classes of objections that
have been raised against the mystical attitude: those
directed in general against the primary assumption that
direct contact of the human spirit with the Divine
Spirit is possible, in the form of experiences that pro-

I CJ. T. M. Lindsay, Introduc- Johann Tauler (Glasgow, Bryce
tion to Golden Thoughts from the & Son, n. d.).
Book 0} Spiritual Poverty, by Dr.

38 BARROWS LECTURES

duce higher knowledge than is attainable through the
senses ; and secondly, those objections that are directed
in particular against that form of mysticism which
is most characteristic of the Oriental Consciousness:
namely, Aspiration toward Ultimate Being. A few
words concerning each of these classes of objections
cannot fail to help us to better mutual understanding
of the subject before us this evening: the Mystical Ele-
ment in the Christian Religion.

A general objection against the primary assumption
involved in the mystical attitude has been made by many
modem scholars, and continues to be made in high
quarters of Western intellectualism. That primary as-
sumption is that the human spirit has both the right and
the power to come into immediate relations with God,
wherein knowledge is attained, joy is experienced,
strength is born. This knowledge, joy, and strength
are of a degree and of a kind that come not through
ordinary operations of the senses, which go out as our
agents into the phenomenal world, gather their impres-
sions there and report them back for classification and
application by the rational faculty. In other words,
the first principle, the Magna Charta of mysticism, is
that you and I, being in our spirits the offspring of God,
may attain communion with Him that is not mediated
by Churches, institutions, ceremonies, and priests, but
is direct and absolute ; we abiding in Him, He abiding
in us. Here, on the threshold of mysticism, strong ob-
jectors armed with strong objections are planting them-
selves. Examples should be given on the nature of
these objections in view of the responsible sources

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 39

whence they proceed.' In his book on Degeneration
Professor Nordau appears to identify all mysticism with
more or less acute disorders of the brain. He says:

The word mysticism describes a state of mind in which the
subject imagines that he perceives or divines unknown and inexpli-
cable relations among phenomena, discerns in things hints at
mysteries, and regards them as s)Tnbols by which a dark power
seeks to unveil, or at least seeks to indicate, all sorts of marvels. It
is always connected with strong emotional excitement. Unre-
stricted play of association, the result of an exhausted or degenerate
brain, gives rise to mysticism. Since the mystic cannot express
his cloudy thoughts in ordinary language, he loves mutually
exclusive expressions. Mysticism blurs outlines, and makes the
, transparent opaque.^

I need hardly point out how wide of the mark are
these words, as a characterisation of true mysticism.
What they describe is brain lesion, cerebral fever, patho-
logical ecstasy. They have nothing in common with
the thought of one of the greatest of the Christian mys-
tics, St. Paul, who was also one of the most sane and
efficient labourers for his fellow-men : " I live ; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who
loved me, and gave Himself for me."^ They have
nothing in common with the mysticism of Christ, as
He says: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall

I I am under obligation here and Mysticism;" and for his "List of

elsewhere to Rev. William Ralph Definitions of "Mysticism" and

Inge, M.A., formerly Fellow and "Mystical Theology" in Appendix A

Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford, of that work.

2 Op. cit.

now Vicar of All Saints, Ennis-

more Gardens, London, for valuable

suggestions contained in his Bamp- 3 Gal. 2:20.

ton Lectures (1899) on "Christian

40 BARROWS LECTURES

see God."' Another objector of distinction is Professor
Hermann, whose words are of more force, in the prem-
ises, than those of Professor Nordau inasmuch as
they approach nearer to an apprehension of the true
mysticism, while involving a no less strenuous denial
of its validity.

The essence of mysticism [says Hermann] lies in this: when
the injQuence of God upon the soul is sought and found solely in an
inward experience of the individual; when certain excitements of
the emotions are taken, with no further question, as evidence that
the soul is possessed by God; when at the same time nothing
external to the soul is consciously and clearly perceived and firmly
grasped; when no thoughts that elevate the spiritual life are
aroused by the positive contents of an idea that rules the soul —
then that is the piety of mysticism. Mysticism is not that which is
common to all religion, but a particular species, namely a piety
which feels that which is historical in the positive religion to be
burdensome, and so rejects it.

It would seem impossible to make a more thorough-
going misinterpretation of the inherent qualities of a
force which, above all others, has determined the course
of religious history and generated the apostles of every
great faith. Objectors like these and many others that
I might cite appear to be governed by a private concep-
tion of the nature of the human soul and of its normal
modes of consciousness. The equivalent of religion,
for them, appears to be a phenomenon independent of
God (I shall not call it atheistical), which ignores the
soul's relationship to God, and sweeps away as unwhole-
some, if not irrational, those activities, aspirations, and
states of experience which arise out of and are the essen-

' Matt. 5 : 8.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT TN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 41

tial concomitants of that relationship. Nothing is left,
so far as one can see, for those who persistently disown
man's perpetual and unconquerable conviction that he
can, in spirit, be directly connected with the Eternal
Consciousness and Will, but what has been accurately
described by Pfleiderer as an "irreligious moralism."
It is well for us to remember that there are these object-
ors to that which seems to us, my brethren, our most
sacred and inalienable possession, the right of access to
God, and of God's access to us, without intermediary.
The great service rendered to us by these objectors is
to put us on our guard in the exercise of our precious
right; that there be no shadow cast upon the purity
and rationality of our mysticism ; that there be nothing
in it to justify these criticisms; nothing unseemly,
nothing pathological or of the nature of madness;
nothing inconsistent with personal morality, and the
higher grade of social efficiency.

In addition to this general objection lodged against
the whole phenomenon of mysticism I wish also to take
account of that, which in particular, is directed against
the form of mysticism most characteristic of the Oriental
Consciousness: namely. Aspiration toward Ultimate
Being. This I have described in my last lecture as
''the eternal hunger and hope in the soul of the East,"
and I have referred to it as one of the elements of sub-
limity in the Oriental Consciousness. Remembering
these allusions, you will not mistake the spirit in which
I speak of this matter. If I may adopt the language
of one of your own countrymen, whom I know well
personally and who has written extensively in the field

42 BARROWS LECTURES

of philosophical Hinduism, the nature of this aspiration
is ''to see the formless Being of the Deity, in the regions
of pure consciousness beyond the veil of thought."^
Advancing to this, one passes beyond; coming out, as
it were, on the farther side of knowledge in regions
where all distinctions vanish, where the bondage of
ignorance at length is broken, and the soul, which is
distinct from mind, body, and all else, realises that
emancipation as the reward of intellectual labour. In
this aspiration I have found, as I shall explain more
fully in a later lecture, one of the secrets of sublimity
in Eastern Consciousness; yet at the same time I can
understand and feel the force of objections brought
against this manner of thinking by minds so powerful
and so incapable of animosity that none here would wish
to discredit their value-judgments. These objections
are of various kinds: some object to the trend of this
mystical Aspiration toward Ultimate Being, because it
involves deliberate aversion of the mind from, and shut-
ting of the eyes against, external things, persons, and
movements, through which, it is claimed, God has
spoken quite as impressively as through His subjective
disclosures in the individual consciousness. The soul
thus becomes shut in upon itself: deprived, through
deliberate self-seclusion, of innumerable influences
that would tend to chasten, enrich, and illuminate it.
Through this privation it is made to diminish, as it
were, in volume and opulence of experience, to miss the
deeper secret of its own personality, which lies in its
profound interrelation with other personalities, and

> Sri Parananda (nom-de-plume).

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 43

SO actually to lose, instead of gain, the goal; to reach
which, namely, full knowledge of God, it has given up
all else. I am well aware of the answer you would
naturally make to this objection, nevertheless it is one
that has occurred to a great number of strong minds in
sympathy with mysticism; and the more precious we
esteem any truth to be, the more wise are we to weigh
all that can be said against it, as well as in its favour.

Another objection brought against Eastern Aspira-
tion toward Ultimate Being is that the logic of negation,
which is the process of approach, under this system of
thinking, to the metaphysical Absolute, or God, not only
empties God but empties the soul of those qualities
which our best natural instincts teach us to admire, to
love, and to retain. This objection, which certainly is
one not unworthy of notice, is stated concisely and with
force by a member of the University of Oxford :

Let me try [says the writer] to state the argument and its con-
sequences in a clear form. Since God is the Infinite, and the
Infinite is the antithesis of the finite, every attribute which may be
affirmed of a finite being may be safely denied of God. Hence
God can only be described by negatives; He can only be discovered
by stripping off all the qualities and attributes which veil Him; He
can only be reached by divesting ourselves of all the distinctions of
personality, and sinking or rising into our uncreated nothingness;
and He can only be imitated by aiming at an abstract spirituality,
the passionless "apathy" of an universal which is nothing in par-
ticular.^

In my next two lectures I shall have occasion to refer
repeatedly to this subject, which has so enormously
influenced Eastern religious consciousness, and to show

I C}. Inge, op. cit., p. iii.

44 BARROWS LECTURES

wherein lies its essential sublimity, although the existing
form and implications of this yearning for knowledge of
Ultimate Being are open to the objections that I have
cited.

Of one other objection I must speak in order to do
justice to this part of my subject. It is objected that
concentration of the mind upon salvation to be accom-
plished through higher esoteric knowledge reacts un-
favourably upon the moral sense of the individual,
makes him indifferent to the actuality of right and
wrong, causes an ethical colour-blindness to steal upon
him, thereby striking a double blow at his usefulness
and also at his happiness. To what extent, if any, this
objection is well founded I am not now intending to
discuss. Certainly I am not prepared to affirm, hastily,
that the judgment is well founded. Professor Deussen
of Keil, in his recent work' on The Philosophy of the
Upanishads, a work which, Indians will agree, seems
to be conceived in the spirit of a chivalrous seeker after
truth, has taught all Europeans who are teachable, not
to pronounce hasty judgments on systems of thought,
the real significance of which, both intellectually and
ethically, is only just beginning, if indeed it be already
begun, to be understood by the mind of the West. Yet
obviously, this objection, lodged as it is on the ground
of ethics, is one, the validity of which ought not to go
unchallenged by men of integrity and honour. And if
it were, even in the least degree, valid, the willing alter-
ation of whatsoever in the system of philosophy was

I English translation by Rev. A. S. Geden, M.A. (Edinburgh, T. and
T. Clark, 1906).

M YSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 45

found to militate against ethics would, I am sure, be
merely the disclosure of one more of the elements of
sublimity that enrich Indian Consciousness. It would
be worthy of the heroism which Christ commends when
He bids us to detach ourselves even from our most
cherished possessions if they be found to impinge on
the domain of righteousness. "If thy right hand," He
says, "causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it
from thee.'" It is unnecessary for me to dwell longer
upon these objections, brought from various sources,
against mysticism in general, and the Oriental mysticism
of higher knowledge in particular. They serve to show
us the responsibilities that attach to every great posses-
sion ; they admonish us to hold that possession in such
singleness of mind and purpose before God that it shall
never be, to us, or any other, "a stone of stumbling and
rock of offence."

And now, with increased happiness, because of the
privilege of establishing closer correspondence with
your minds through these communings upon the gen-
eral aspects of that which to every one of us is so
dear, namely, the belief that we can know God directly
and abide in Him and He in us, I present before you
some aspects of the Mystical Element in the Christian
Religion. I do so from the point of view that Christian-
ity is an Eastern religion and the Bible a Sacred Book
of the East. The other day I was conversing at Oxford
with a Sinhalese friend of mine who said: "1 read the
Bible with ever fresh appreciation that it is a truly

' Matt. 5 : 30.

46 BARROWS LECTURES

Oriental book. In it breathe the calm, the depth, the
simplicity of the East. Orientals can surely under-
stand the Bible, for it is a book that has issued out of
their own life." I was much struck with this remark of
my friend, especially because since visiting the East
four years ago, and coming, in sweet affection, near to
the mode of thinking and feeling that governs Eastern
minds and hearts, I have read my Bible with new intel-
ligence and fresh delight. I place it now in its natural
atmosphere. Its birth-place is near the palm trees and
the wells. To me it is now and evermore an Oriental
book. Furthermore, as I consider how this Eastern
book and its Faith have dominated the life of the West
and fertilised its highest ideals, I marvel yet more at the
sublimity of the Oriental Consciousness, and the manner
in which this Bible, the God-inspired fruit and outcome
of the Oriental Consciousness, has given evidence, by
its power over and assimilation with the West, of the
essential unity of the human race.

To trace the history of Christian mysticism, even in
its elementary outlines, would be a work far exceeding
in volume the time at my disposal. I could show, if
there were time, that the mystical element obtains
perpetually in Christian thought. Its objectors arise,
utter their protests or their admonitions, and pass away.
The Mystical Element in the Christian Religion, "a
tide too full for sound or foam," rolls onward in majes-
tic stillness. The banks amid which the river rolls
change their aspect from time to time. Now they are
high and rugged with the severities of asceticism; now
dim and silent as with embowering forests, where Ori-

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 47

ental contemplation finds its way to the feet of Christ ;
now broad, open and sunny, where mysticism identifies
itself with the service of humanity, and after the pattern
of Christ, the Divine Mystic, goes about doing good.
But the river is the same; its voluminous current, know-
ing no ebb or shallow for two thousand years, is the
outflow of the strong desire of innumerable souls, of all
nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues, " to get
to the centre of life, which is God Himself," manifested
in the Eternal Christ.

It may be said, with truth, that Christian mysticism
has found expression in two spheres of consciousness,
objective and subjective. In the objective sphere of
consciousness the Mystical Element in the Christian
Religion has felt God present in His world, has come
to Him in His works; has touched, if one may say so,
the hem of His garment, in an intense perception of the
universe as an outward expression of the infinite vitality
of God. Those of you who know the poetry of Words-
worth will recall in his works examples of feeling, pene-
trated with the sense of immediate communion with
Deity, awakening by holy hours of silence amidst moun-
tains and lakes, and under the spell of the evening star.
I know no more passionate, perhaps no more lofty,
expression of Christian mysticism on the objective side
than the utterance of Charles Kingsley:

The Great Mysticism is the belief which is becoming every day
stronger with me, that all symmetrical natural objects are types
of some spiritual truth or existence. When I walk the fields I am
oppressed now and then with an innate feeling, that everything I
see has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling

48 BARROWS LECTURES

of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp amounts to
indescribable awe sometimes. Everything seems to be full of
God's reflex, if we could but see it. Oh ! how I have prayed to
have the mystery unfolded, at least hereafter ! To see, if but for
a moment, the whole harmony of the great system ! To hear once
the music which the whole universe makes as it performs His bid-
ding ! Oh ! that heaven ! The thought of the first glance of crea-
tion from thence, when we know even as we are known ! And He,
the glorious, the beautiful, the incarnate Ideal shall be justified in
all His doings, and in all and through all and over all ! Have you
not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to your mental vision
except at a few hallowed moments? that in every-day life the
mind, looking at itself, sees only the brute intellect, grinding and
working; not the Divine particle, which is life and immortaUty
and on which the Spirit of God most probably works, as being
most cognate to Deity ? ^

This is true Christian mysticism on the objective
side. It is also singularly allied to some states of the
Oriental Consciousness, especially where he discrimi-
nates between the soul and the mind. Had some of his
expressions concerning personality behind nature been
given by an Oriental, one might connect them with the
cult of animism that sees in rock and tree and bird and
flower the haunt of spirits and deities, amidst whom
the traveller moves warily. So Kingsley cries : ''When
I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an
innate feeling, that everything I see has a meaning, if I
could but understand it. Everything seems to be full
of God's reflex, if we could but see it." The outward
resemblance of these states of consciousness exists;
that of the animistic believer, that of the Christian

I C/. his Letters and Memories of his life (ed. Kegan Paul, Trench and
Co., London, 1884), p. 28.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 49

nature-mystic. Yet profound is their dijEference. The
Christian walks through Nature with awe but without
uncertainty. He dreads not the haunting presence of
strange and incalculable spirits, against whose enmity
or craft he must protect himself. The Spirit Whose
presence he feels about him is his Friend, "Whose
Nature and Whose Name is Love." With Kingsley he
cries: '*It is He, the glorious, the beautiful, the Incar-
nate Ideal, Who shall be justified in all His doings, and
in all and through all and over all." With St. Paul he
looks untroubled on the mystery of Nature and of life,
saying: ''I know Him Whom I have believed, and I am
persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have
committed unto Him."'

This objective sense of God is but the vestibule of
the Mystical Element in the Christian Religion. The
temple is within. Unseen of men is the secret place of
the Most High, the shadow of the Almighty, in which the
Christian mystic attains the homing of the soul. In the
true mysticism of Christian experience the sense o
God's presence and of contact with Him in the visible
world has its fulfilment and verification in the sanctuary
of the inner consciousness, in the sublimity and the
peace of esoteric and immediate knowledge of God.
If we remain only in the outer, the objective sense of the
Divine, whether realised in Nature or in religious sym-
bols, if we pass not within the veil of silence, to attain
hidden communion, our life being hid with Christ in
God, we do not yet know the greater and the more vital
things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.

* II Tim. 1:12.

50 BARROWS LECTURES

The outward world has its own ministry for our religious
consciousness. That ministry may be great in its sug-
gestiveness. Outward institutions, ceremonies, min-
isters of religion are to be esteemed highly for their
venerable associations and for their educational values;
but these are partial, and immeasurably the lesser part
of the Christian religion. In the hour when they are
made ultimate, they become vain. The world for us,
as for you, is but a symbol, a fleeting although wondrous
spectacle ; a dream that vanishes. Reality is within, in
the depth of the Eternal Wisdom. Whispered in the
ear of every one who essays to satisfy his soul with the
outward (whether that outward be the doctrine and
ritual of a church or the music and colour of Nature)
should be those prophetic words of Coleridge in the
"Ode to Dejection":

It were a vain endeavour

Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the West;
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within !

Let US now enter within this temple of experience
where one finds, in truth, the Mystical Element in the
Christian Religion. How calm is this temple of inner
experience ! How free from punctilios of ceremonialism,
controversial clamour of dogmatism, the pride of life!
With Jacob the patriarch, we say, as we leave the mad
rush of the world and meet the first impression of this
inward serenity: "This is none other but the house of
God, and this is the gate of Heaven.'" Over this portal

^ Gen. 28:17.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 51

might be written: ''The peace of God, which passeth
all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your
thoughts in Christ Jesus.'" My brethren, I am asking
you to enter no alien structure of the Western imagina-
tion, with which perchance you have nothing in com-
mon, and beneath whose roof that only may be found
which is unintelligible to the Oriental Consciousness.
This is a faith and an experience which reached matur-
ity, when Northern Europe was a wilderness, and Amer-
ica a continent unknown. The channels through which
came the sources of this faith and of this experience
lead Eastward not Westward. God alone knows how
far Eastward the original sources of this faith may be
traced as we follow them through their Semitic ante-
cedents. Into Assyria, into Persia, into Babylonia they
surely run. The question is, Do these springs blend
in one common original with those from which came
the Vedas and all that followed from the Vedas and
determined the religious development of India and the
Farther East? I have in my possession, through the
kindness of an Indian friend, a book written many years
ago by an Indian, dealing with this very subject: the
many points of contact between the Semitic elements
out of which Christia;nity arose and the Vedic elements
out of which evolved the essential features of Indian life.
He made an argument of strength to show the influence
of Biblical upon Aryan thought. If location is to deter-
mine relative rights of ownership, then that of which I
speak to-night belongs to you more nearly and more
naturally, than to me; and the fact that I enter into it,

' Phil. 4:7.

52 BARROWS LECTURES

and assimilate it, and find this sacred religion of the
East, the religion of Christ, the very life of my life, proves
only that the world is one family in all its greatest in-
heritances.

I foresee that in the remainder of this lecture time
shall be found to go but a little way into this temple of
inner experience. Nevertheless I shall not hasten: for
every step reveals new beauties, and our study of the
Mystical Element in the Christian Religion shall extend
over the next two lectures in which we consider the
Witness of God in the Soul and the Witness of the Soul
to God.

Next to the ethical misrepresentation of the Christian
religion by the perverse and contradictory lives of its
nominal adherents, I know of nothing more likely to
repel Orientals from the sympathetic study of this
Eastern faith than the overshadowing prominence of
ecclesiastical institutions. That these institutions are
inseparable from the Occidental practise of Christianity,
history appears to show. That they have their excel-
lent uses, in their own sphere, it would be but question-
able wisdom to deny. But that they may be left out
of consideration without impairing the vital essence of
the religion itself is the impressive fact with which we
are at this moment concerned ; and, I may add, it is the
fact which makes its appeal to us when we enter the
temple of inner experience where we are now treading.
The fundamental claim of all the mystics of all the ages
is that the seat of authority in religious knowledge lies
within the soul itself, not in some external court or
tribunal. It is more than interesting — it is wonderful

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 53

— that with this persistent claim of mysticism the pro-
foundest philosophical movement of the modern world
is in agreement. "It has been settled for all time that
the criterion of truth is to be found in the nature of
consciousness itself — not somewhere else.'"^

Although it be that many mystics, led far afield by
seductive glimmerings of false lights, have fallen into
confusion and a snare, yet is the sanctuary of ultimate
truth within, in the depth where God and the soul meet
in knowledge. The words of Browning must have
occurred to you as I have been speaking:

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all
Where truth abides in fulness: and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear conception — which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it and makes all error: and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.^

To this conception, familiar and dear to Oriental
Consciousness, the Christian religion lends itself in ways
so vital and so extensive that this may be called the true
starting-point from which to investigate the mystical
element in this Faith. The words of Christ: "The
Kingdom of God is within you,"^ announce to us a fact

' Cf. RxJFUS M. Jones, M.A., ^ Paracelsus, Book I.

LiTT.D., Social Law in the Spiritual -i t u
World (The John C. Winston Co., " ^ 17 -^i-

Philadelphia, n. d.).

54 BARROWS LECTURES

which is not more harmonious with our own intuitive
value-judgment on the meaning and worth of self-con-
scious life than it is characteristic of the glorious system
of religious thinking which bears His Name, and for the
investigation and interpretation of which I am enthusias-
tically endeavouring to enlist the elements of the Ori-
ental Consciousness, represented in yourselves. I ask
you now to look, with me, into the basis on which, in
true Christian mysticism, rests this idea that the seat of
authority in religious matters is within the soul itself.
To use the words of another: "The soul itself possesses
a ground of certitude in spiritual matters, and sees what
is essential to its life with the same directness that the
mathematician sees his axioms.'" I take up this sub-
ject with the greatest delight, because it permits me to
show you that the higher Christian philosophy is not
incompatible with those presuppositions concerning the
universe that are absolutely fundamental in Indian
thinking, and, in my belief, will so remain for ever.
Indian minds of the greatest penetration and nobility
have been repelled from Christianity because of its sup-
posedly impossible philosophy. I venture to say that
many have been so repelled, from the intellectual stand-
point, while admiring the ethical beauty of Christ and
of Christian ideals. They were repelled because they
had encountered only what I may call the popular phi-
losophy of untutored minds, which has strongly marked
dualistic features. They beheld God represented as
an anthropomorphic God, resembling a deified man, "a
magnified image of man reflected back upon space by

I Jones, op. cit., p. 171.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 55

the mirror of self -consciousness."' I wonder not that
Ludwig Feuerbach, the German atheist,^ attacked that
conception of the Divine; comparing it to the illusion
observed by pilgrims to the Brocken in Switzerland, who
often see during an autumn sunrise shadows of their
own figures enormously dilated, confronting them from
a great distance, bowing as they bow, kneeling as they
kneel, mocking them in all their gestures, and finally
disappearing as the sun rises higher in the sky. In like
manner this popular philosophy has represented the
phenomental world as absolutely and independently
real ; real, so to say, in its own right, apart from cogni-
tion; as real as the soul, as real as God, Such methods
of dealing with fundamental questions could not fail to
repel the intellectual elements of Eastern society, how-
ever much those same elements might be attracted
ethically. It is therefore important as well as agreeable
to remind my learned hearers that such conceptions are
not representative of the higher philosophy of the East-
ern religion which bears the name of Christ. Probably
they misrepresent the higher Christian thinking of our
time as egregiously as do some of the fantastic tales
that float by hearsay through the Western world mis-
represent the high conclusions of philosophical Hin-
duism. If I do not fail, in my ignorance, to represent
correctly the essence of those high conclusions, it is this :
the search for Brahma is the highest task of the soul,
in order to emancipation from Maya. Maya is, so far

^ Cj. R. H. HuTTON, Theological don, 1854), reviewed by Hutton, op.

Essays (ed. London, 1888), p. 25. cit., under title The Atheistic Ex-

* Cj. The Essence oj Christianity, planation oj Religion.
trans, by Marian Evans (ed. Lon-

56 BARROWS LECTURES

as one may define mystery, the multitude of illusory
things clinging around the supreme and only reality
through the multiplying power of Brahma: Maya is
not an independent principle. Emancipation is knowl-
edge, the knowledge of Brahma : it is not a new begin-
ning "but only the perception of that which has existed
from eternity but has hitherto been concealed from us.'"
Emancipation is soul-union with God realised as eter-
nally existing. I hope that I do not materially distort any
of these conceptions. It is necessary for me to refer to
the fact that the aspiration for emancipation from finite
life is not a conception entertained in the earliest Indian
thought. To the splendid poets of the Rig Veda, as to
the Prophets and Apostles of the Bible, life, finite life,
was glorious and good; a thing to be desired. "They
were filled with the warm desire for life and wish for
themselves and their posterity a life of a hundred
years."* But I take the present dominant Indian phi-
losophy and compare it thus with the higher Christian
philosophy to show that, while there are differences in
point of view and in conclusions, the systems, as such,
are not incompatible, and the Christian system offers no
serious difficulty to the most purely trained Indian mind.
Thus does the higher Christian thinking lay a basis
in reason for the claim of mysticism that the soul has this
right of immediacy toward God, to abide in God and
God in it, and that the criterion of truth is found in the
nature of consciousness and not in some exterior tri-

'C/. Deussen, o/>.c»^, pp. 344, 345, -Rig Veda, 7:89, quoted by

and Professor Satthianadhan, Deussen, op. cit., p. 340.
Lectures on Indian Philosophical
Systems as Related to Christianity.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 57

bunal. It looks out into the phenomenal world and
sees the infinite throng of objects and persons. At first
they seem a bewildering crowd of unrelated entities,
each isolated from the other. At length it appears that
beneath this multiplicity of elements there must exist a
common ground of Being whereby they are able to
enter into relations with one another, and in some man-
ner, according to their several kinds and degrees, as
animate or inanimate, rational or non-rational, into
relation with that common ground of Being with which
their own existence is joined. So Hermann Lotze in
his Metaphysic says: "There cannot be a multiplicity
of independent things, but all elements, if reciprocal
action is to be possible between them, must be regarded
as parts of a single real Being. The pluralism with
which our view of the world began has to give place to
a Monism."^ I may also quote Professor Upton of
Manchester College, in his Hibbert Lectures for 1893,
who says:

Every finite atom or finite soul still remains, as regards a part
of its nature, in indivisible union with its self-subsistent Ground
and Source. This common relation to the Self-subsistent One
affords the true explanation of the metaphysical unity of the cos-
mos. Thus the most recent science and philosophy appear to
assert at once a real pluralism or individualism in the world of
infinite beings, but at the same time a deeper Monism. The
Eternal, Who differentiates His Own Self-subsistent energy into
the infinite variety of finite existence is still immanent and living
in every one of these dependent modes of being, and it is because
all finite beings are only partially individual, and still remain in
a vital union with their Common Ground (which is God), that

' Cj. op. cit., p. 69.

58 BARROWS LECTURES

beings such as man, who have attained self-consciousness, are able
to enter into intellectual, moral and spiritual relations both with
other rational finite minds and also with the Eternal Being with
Whom their own existence is in some measure indivisibly con-
joined. It follows from this fact that there is a certain self-revela-
tion of the Eternal and Infinite One to the finite soul, and therefore
an indestructible basis for religious ideas and religious beliefs as
distinguished from what is called scientific knowledge.^

Such is the basis, in our higher Christian thinking,
upon which we rest the joyful affirmation of true mysti-
cism that each soul has both the right and the power " to
get to the centre of life, which is God Himself." Such
is the strong foundation, laid in the depths of our being,
laid in the nature of things, on which rises the structure
of Christian mysticism, a house not made with hands,
the true temple of God on earth.

In bringing you to this point, at which I must pre-
pare to close this lecture (leaving the expansion of our
beautiful subject for the lectures on "The Witness of
God in the Soul" and "The Witness of the Soul to
God"), I feel that I am bringing you to the centre of
the Christian religion as verified through experience.
Here is where the Christian lives ; his life being hid with
Christ in God. He does not live here as an anarchist,
repudiating the organised life of the Christian Church,
refusing to acknowledge what can be accomplished
through religious institutions, an ordained ministry, the
Bible, and the Sacraments. On the contrary he under-
stands the functions of these things to be for better
ordering of the aggregate religious consciousness, for

» Cf. C. B. Upton, B.A., B.Sc, The Bases 0} Religious Belie} (ed. London,
1894), pp. 12-16.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 59

education of individuals and communities in the things
of the Spirit, for the fostering of all social and public
aspects of the Christian religion, and for the better
information of the world at large that this religion exists
in vigour, and is daily extending its benign sphere of
influence. And so he goes out often from the silent
temple of mysticism and takes his place as a unit in the
institutional life of Christianity and submits to rules
and ordinances not as a matter of compulsion but as a
matter of liberty — because he feels that thereby he may
both receive and give a larger good. The common
worship of Christians ministers to life and aids the
general cause of light and love in ways that are beyond
the scope of private meditation, though in no sense more
sacred. Nor does the Christian dwell in the secret life
of mysticism as a recluse, shut up to himself and within
himself for his soul's salvation. On the contrary he takes
the greatest interest in the world, in the ways of man,
especially in the lives of men, their joys, their sorrows,
their evil and their good, their condition and their des-
tiny. You will instantly discover why this large, liberal
interest in others is consonant with Christian mysticism
when you recall what I have pointed out regarding the
philosophical basis of Christian mysticism. It rests on
the truth that finite beings are not entirely independent,
wholly unrelated entities, but only partially individual
because remaining by necessity in vital union with the
Common Ground of all life, which is the self-subsistent
Life of the Eternal One. Through this union with the
Common Ground (unrealised and unknown though it
may be by all save the enlightened few) comes the power

6o BARROWS LECTURES

to any of us, Oriental or Occidental, to enter into intel-
lectual, moral, and spiritual relations with other rational
finite beings, as well as into relations with God. They
who attain this mystical (and at the same time scientific)
view of humanity see God in others just as they see Him
in themselves. They believe in that great doctrine of
mysticism which the Quakers of England and America
announce as their profoundest discovery "that every
human life partakes of God.'" So, by the logic of
reason, as well as by the logic of love. Christian mysti-
cism works outward into respect and honour and solici-
tude for men as men, beings knit together with ourselves
throusrh vital currents that meet in the Common Ground

of life in \Vhom "we live and move and have our being."
It works outward into service, swept onward by the
Divine within itself, in effort to liberate the imprisoned,
unrecognised Divinity in others. It works outward into
self-fulfilment through sacrifice, receiving from God, as
partakers of the Divine Nature, the spirit of sacrifice,
which is the Spirit of Christ Jesus.

Behind all these outgoings, whether into voluntary
submission to religious institutions or into voluntary
service of human individuals, is that secret walk with
God, that meat to eat which the world knoweth not of.
It is there the Christian lives, emancipated through
knowledge of the self-subsistent Life with which his
own is indivisibly conjoined. It is not a dual life, the
soul and God living side by side within the human
personality: finite ^/«5 Infinite. It is oneness of being;
it is monism which continues no more a philosophical

I C/. Jones, op. cit., p. 165.

MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 6i

speculation but becomes a blessed experience. In-
numerable Christian mystics have said: "I have experi-
enced God." The finite and the Infinite are known in
the same consciousness. It is not that a foreign Divine
substance is now added to an undivine human life. It
is neither human nor divine. "It is," to use the words
of one who has spoken out of this knowledge, "the
actual inner self formed by the union of a Divine and
human element in a single, undivided life."'

In an Eastern land, upon the verge of that desert
across which for four thousand years have passed the
camel trains that bore the treasures of India toward the
Syrian coast, a group of Orientals lingered pensively
about a table whence all food had been removed save
bread and wine. The night advanced, yet spellbound
they hung upon the words of One Who, worn with sor-
row, yet radiant with love, opened His heart before
them, declaring the secrets of the soul's consciousness
of God. He had come from the Father to be the mani-
festation of the Eternal, under the form of time. He had
revealed Him through deed and word, through the voice
of conduct and the silent witness of character. He was
now on the threshold of a revelation yet more profound
— the revelation through death, the death of the Cross.
Majestic sweetness sat upon His brow. Power emanated
from His being. Peace, like an atmosphere, surrounded
Him. And this witness he bore of Himself as the Re-
vealer of God ; of God as the mystical Life of the soul :

He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father : I came forth from
the Father and am come into the world. I am in the Father and

I C}., on this paragraph, Jones, op. cit., p. 176.

62 BARROWS LECTURES

the Father in Me. Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch can-
not bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye,
except ye abide in Me. Peace I leave with you. My Peace I give
unto you.^

Through Him Who spake these words on the same night
in which He was betrayed ; at Whose Infancy sages of
the East bowed in worship; the meaning of Whose
Cross sages of the East first taught the West, may I be
enabled to lead you a little way amidst the inner experi-
ence of the enlightened Christian Consciousness !

» Cf. Gospel of John, passim.

LECTURE THREE

THE WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL

In my last lecture I attempted to set before you the
basis in reason of the Mystical Element in the Christian
Religion. I am, this evening, to speak of " The Witness
of God in the Soul." The nature and import of that
witness become reasonable to us, and authoritative for
us, only as we obtain a rational view of the basis on
which it rests. I beg leave, therefore, to speak further
on that subject. A deep impression of diversity and
number is made upon the mind when it begins to reflect
upon the enormous multiplicity of human lives: to
think, for example, of the people in one of your great
cities, of the population of India, of the population of
the world. The first effect of such reflections is to
benumb the mind. We cannot, in thought, follow to
its conclusions the problem of a world made up of such
thronging clouds and avalanches of separate and distinct
beings, each one going its own way through time and
space, all circling around and around one another with
the meaningless, buzzing energy of an infinite swarm
of flies. The places of those that fall are taken by as
many more that seem to rise from the ground or descend
from the upper air. The buzzing of the swarm goes
through years, generations, centuries, millenniums. It
is too bewildering, too grotesque, too awful ! As we look
more intently at this multiplicity of human lives, and
at the continuous reinforcement of generations, we are

64 BARROWS LECTURES

led to correct our first impression that these myriads
of humanity are like a swarm of flies. We perceive that
that impression misrepresents the truth. For in all
these innumerable beings, we find common rational
powers, varying in scope and measure, the same in kind.
We find self-consciousness, memory, judgment, inten-
tion, desire, will. We find, in a word, the common
equipment of thought. By reason of their possession
of this common equipment the movement of these
numberless beings is not the aimless circling around
one another of a swarm of flies. It is the action and
reaction, in all spheres of consciousness, lower or higher,
of thinking lives, in relation with one another for rational
ends. Instantly on perceiving this, our impression of
human existence is reversed. No longer are we be-
numbed by the buzzing of the swarm; we are stimu-
lated by the mystery of a thinking world ! It is the most
wonderful phenomenon of Nature. To the eye of dis-
cernment, each separate object in nature, each isolated
fact appears worthy of our attention and rewards our
study. The ancient Biblical Book of Job reminds us
of the suggestiveness of detached facts and processes in
nature :

Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God :

Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds ?

Hast thou spread out the sky as a molten looking-glass ?

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea ?

Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth ?

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow ?

Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks ?

Or wings and feathers unto the ostrich ?

Hast thou given the horse strength ?

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 65

Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom ?

Doth the eagle mount up at thy command ?*

Your own Vedic hymns abound in similar suggestions;
so do the earliest hymns of Egypt and Persia. Intelligent
study of facts in the physical world opens to the mind
vistas of strength and beauty, teaches reverence, saves
from morbid self -concentration, quickens the pulse with
wholesome joy of existence. But nothing that our
researches disclose to us among the detached phenomena
of the bodily and the visible rises to the level of grandeur
on which stands the fact of a thinking world, a world of
innumerable persons who are not isolated atoms but
related existences, related through the possession of com-
mon powers of consciousness. Consider how humanity
is bound together through the interaction of the powers
of consciousness. All the rudimentary conditions of
life depend on this interaction of a common principle
of rationality. The procedures of the commercial
world, both in local demand and supply, and in all the
larger movements of finance and industrial develop-
ment, are possible only because men can meet intel-
ligibly through the action of thought. All domestic
relationships that rise above the level of physical im-
pulse and attain the dignity of self-determining affec-
tions, choices, and companionships are what they are
because heart answers to heart, mind to mind, and the
interchanges of reason and will. This interaction of
the powers of consciousness ignores race distinctions
and goes on wherever life meets life. Behold how we
are met together at this moment in intellectual fellow-

I Job, chaps. 37, 38, 39.

66 BARROWS LECTURES

ship. Our ancestries lie on opposite sides of the world ;
our minds mingle and flow together in one channel of
rational consciousness. Consider also that more subtle
correspondence of minds out of which grow national
ideals, movements of liberty, of art, of letters; that
perpetual, and, as it would appear, semi-in voluntary-
integration of intellectual forces which transcends indi-
vidual intercourse and is called civilisation. Mr. John
Addington Symonds, speaking of the Revival of Learn-
ing in Europe, says :

Some of the chief productions of humanity seem to require the
co-operation of whole peoples, working sympathetically to a com-
mon end. The most splendid triumphs of modern architecture
in the French and English Gothic were achieved by the half uncon-
scious striving of the national genius through several centuries.
The names of the builders of the cathedrals are unknown; the
cathedrals themselves bear less the stamp of individual thought
than of popular instinct; their fame belongs to the race that made
them, to the spirit of the times that gave them birth.'

Stimulated by this splendid mystery of a thinking
world, and perceiving that we ourselves are a part of it,
and that a solution of the mystery would be a solution of
the major problem of our own existence, the higher
Christian thinking ever has pressed for a rational
answer. Through the patient thought of centuries,
guided, as I believe, amidst many eddies of variant
opinion by the self -revealing Spirit of God, that answer,
like a river moving toward the sea and broadening as
it moves, has gained the power and depth of certitude.
It has become evident to the Christian Consciousness

' The Renaissance in Italy, volume on "Revival of Learning" (2d ed.,
London, 1882).

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 67

that the multitude of individual lives cannot be regarded
as absolutely separate existences, each one a self-sub-
sisting whole, detached from all other finite existences
and in the same manner detached from God. Such a
theory of the world offers no adequate explanation of
those relations, intellectual, moral, spiritual, that unite
society and produce civilisation; and such a theory of
God, as distinct, transcendent, objective, is contradict-
ory to the fact of man's religious consciousness, which
we are constantly finding out to be a more universal,
more homogeneous fact than once was imagined.
Christian thought moves in the direction of a conclusion
which, if thought be described as a river, may without ex-
aggeration be called an ocean of majestic finality. Lotze's
words (which I quoted in my last lecture) give us our
first glimpse of that broad ocean of Being: "There can-
not be a multiplicity of independent things, but all ele-
ments, if reciprocal action is to be possible, must be
regarded as parts of a single real Being. The pluralism
with which our view of the world began has to give place
to a Monism." As our joyous and worshipping gaze
looks out upon this ocean of Ultimate Being, what
message does it give back to us touching this wonderful
phenomenon of nature — a thinking world ? What has
it to tell us of this common life of thought into which all
rational beings enter as into an atmosphere which they
breathe in common, as the single unitary element of all
their individual personalities, this life of self-conscious-
ness, memory, judgment, intention, desire, will ? What
has it to tell us of these relationships which we form
with one another, of the paths of intellectual and spirit-

68 BARROWS LECTURES

ual communion in which Oriental and Occidental may-
walk together, the deeps of consciousness in one calling
unto the deeps of consciousness in the other ? It tells
us this: That beneath all finite life, as the ocean is
beneath all ships that sail upon it, as the air is beneath
all birds that fly through it, is one Infinite Ground of
Being, the substance, the life that stands under all finite
life, in Whom, and of Whom, and by Whom, and unto
Whom are all things. But here my metaphors of the
ocean and the air break down. The ocean supports
yet produces not the ships that sail on it ; the air carries
yet generates not the birds that fly through it. But
this Infinite Ground of Being, which is beneath all life,
is the Source of all life; this Great World-Master
projects our finite spirits out of Himself.^ Every life
that is, comes out from Him and exists in Him: "In
Him we live and move and have our being," said the
Christian Apostle.^ Another of the early Christian
documents thus puts it: ''He hath given us aU things
that pertain to life that (we) might be partakers of the
Divine Nature."^ In every one of these lives His being
exists, and because of this common element in them-
selves men can communicate intelligibly with one
another and with God.

The Eternal One Who differentiates His Own Self-subsisting
energy into the infinite variety of finite existences is still immanent
and living in every one of these dependent modes of being, and it is
because all finite beings are only partially individual, and still
remain in vital (though often unconscious) union with their Com-
mon Ground (which is God), that beings such as man, who have

I C/. Upton, Bases of Religious 2 C/. Acts 17:28.

Bdiej, p. 303. 3 C}. II Peter i : 3, 4.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 69

attained self-consciousness, are able to enter into intellectual,
moral and spiritual relations both with other rational finite minds
and also with the Eternal Being, with Whom their own existence is
in some measure indivisibly conjoined.

It follows that there is a certain self-revelation of the Eternal
and Infinite One to the finite soul, and therefore an indestructible
basis for religious ideas and religious beliefs, as distinguished from
what is called scientific knowledge.^

If we accept this answer of the higher Christian
Consciousness to the most fundamental problem of
man's existence, the problem of a thinking world, we
find a basis for the thought that is more particularly
before us: the Witness of God in the Soul. I take com-
fort in reflecting that the answer which I have given is
one that an Indian intellect might, without self-stulti-
fication, assimilate and adopt. In its fundamental
proposition that the Eternal One differentiates His own
self-subsisting energy into the infinite variety of finite
existences, it is not far removed from the fundamental
proposition of the highest Indian thinking, that the self-
subsisting Brahma, the Absolute, by His multiplying
power, projects the infinite variety of finite existences
and distinctions described by the mystic word Maya.
The common term by which Indian and Christian
philosophy are here brought measurably together is
their agreement in the rejection of a deistic view of the
world : that is, a view which sets off God from the world,
as an outside force, approaching men simply by external
influences, and which considers the world to have in-
trinsic independence and separateness. It is perhaps
safe to say that deism is not likely to find philosophical

I Upton, op. cit., p. 16.

70 BARROWS LECTURES

reinstatement, either in East or West. The maturest
thought of each age will more probably set it aside as
inadequate.

It has been well said, and I am sure that many of my
learned hearers would find themselves in agreement:

The characteristic defect of Deism is that, on the human side,
it treats all men as isolated individuals, forgetful of the immanent
Divine Nature which interrelates them, and, in a measure, unifies
them; and that, on the Divine side, it separates man from God,
and makes the relation between them a purely external one.'

While there is reason to hope that the Christian basis
that I have laid down is not incompatible with the pri-
mary philosophical requirement of thoughtful Indians,
I wish clearly to point out that the distinctions between
it and pantheism, as ordinarily conceived, are great.
They are great in both directions, manward and God-
ward. Manward the tendency of pantheistic thought
is to take the conception with which I am in accord,
that God projects our finite spirits out of His own sub-
stance, and to carry it to conclusions which practically
efface the intellectual and moral significance of indi-
viduality. Pantheism tends to make man identical with
God. When so conceived, the intellectual significance
of man's individuality is effaced. It is effaced by virtue
of the fact that finite individuality has no longer any
reality, as such. It is an illusory m.anifestation of
the Infinite. The finite mind, which to me appears
as the most glorious of all God's productions, remains
no longer possessed of real initiative, power of discern-
ment, capacity to move and mould the minds of others

I Upton, op. cit., p. 237.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 71

by utterances of truth and light. Its movements, how-
ever sincere, devout, able, instructive, or stimulating,
are phantasmal movements of a phantasmal conscious-
ness, cancelled rather than confirmed by reality. To-
gether with the effacement of the intellectual signifi-
cance of individuality comes the effacement of true
moral responsibility. It must so follow, in the
nature of the case, for conduct becomes, under such
conditions, not the fruit of deliberation and choice,
carrying with it responsibility, but the necessary out-
come of antecedent conditions, each determined by the
one preceding, in an immeasurable series of predeces-
sions hidden ultimately in the depths of the unknowable.
There is practically no ethical distinction, no responsi-
bility remaining to the individual in a consistent, thor-
ough-going theory of pantheism. I do not for a moment
assume any such effacement of moral distinctions to have
taken place in any man to whom I now speak, for there is
in all of us an inherent sense of right and wrong which no
philosophy can utterly abolish or destroy; there is an
inward witness to good against evil that abides in the
constitution of our being and saves us, for nobler things,
from the logical effects of theory. There is genuine
comfort in reading in the Hindustan Review a brilliant
article on the subject by a Vedantist which concludes
with the words : "A practical distinction between God
and man is recognised equally in Hinduism and Chris-
tianity. Our philosophers represent it as a mystery."
I am sure that it is largely the recognition of this prac-
tical distinction that is developing throughout India
to-day so many strong, beautiful traits of character in

72 BARROWS LECTURES

individuals and so earnest an initiative in many quarters
on the side of all that makes for social advancement and
well-being. From the earliest dawn of Biblical thought,
in the religion of the Hebrews, which was the lineal ante-
cedent of Christianity and which had its predecessors
among faiths reaching back into the depths of Asiatic
life, there was full acceptance of the original projection
of man out of the Substance of God, of the Absolute
Being as the Source and Ground of all finite being. But
the expression of that thought moved upon lines con-
stantly growing more distinct until in the New Testa-
ment they blazed like lines of fire, protecting inviolate
man's intellectual individuality, and his moral responsi-
bility. The purpose of the Eternal Infinite in projecting
these finite existences out of His own substance was,
according to Christian thinking, not to surround Him-
self with a throng of illusory appearances. His only rela-
tion with whom must be the perpetual cancellation of
illusion. It was that humanity, imaged after Himself
in all the powers of consciousness, might be "a real
'other' to Himself,'" so that God and humanity might
enter into responsive and reciprocal relations. Into
that real "other" He entered, being immanent in every
human life, that all humanity might not only have
power of mutual interchange and of correspondence
with Him, but, above this, that man might be com-
petent, in sharing God's nature, to know the ideal right-
eousness, and so knowing, to exercise the functions and
to assume the responsibility of a moral being. Such is
the Christian's view of personality — a view with which,

' C/. Upton, op. cit., p. 303.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 73

judging from fine intellectual and moral qualities that
I have observed in Indian life, I must conclude that
many whom I now address are in full accord. I am
constrained to describe it as a noble conception of per-
sonality. It gives to man his kinship in the Divine Life,
yet takes from him none of the rights and immunities
of individual being. It makes him a partaker of the
Divine Nature, yet leaves him the actual possessor of
himself. In particular it places upon his brow the
high caste mark of intellectuality and sets upon his
neck the garland of moral freedom. I love the Chris-
tian view of manhood because it sets the mark of reality
upon the functions of the mind. What a princely
endowment we have — this heritage of mentality con-
ferred upon us through the immanence of the Divine
Nature! The mind is a torch, kindled at the Eternal
Flame of self-subsistent consciousness. The rays from
that torch are the manifold powers of our rational self :
imagination, analysis, deliberation, judgment, choice,
volition, memory. How superb and shining the endow-
ment! What incentive to education, self-discipline,
reflection, dedication of thought in the service of
humanity ! I recall the words of Augustine concerning
memory; one finds them in his Confessions. One
might apply them to each of the God-derived powers
of the mind:

I come [he says] to the spacious fields and palaces of memory,
wherein are treasured unnumbered images of things of sense and
our thoughts about them. There, in the vast court of memory, are
present to me heaven, earth, sea, and all that I can think upon, all
that I have forgotten therein. There too I meet myself and what-

74 BARROWS LECTURES

ever I have felt and done, my experiences, my beliefs, my hopes
and plans for the years to come. Great is this power of memory,
exceeding great, O God; who has ever fathomed its abyss? And
yet this power is mine, a part of my very nature, nor can I compre-
hend all that I myself really am. Great is this power of memory,
a wondrous thing, O my God, in all its depth and manifest immen-
sity, and this thing is my mind, and this mind is myself.^

I love the Christian view of manhood still more be-
cause it sets upon the shoulders the garland of moral
freedom. Do I say the garland of moral freedom?
Rather should I say the yoke, if that freedom be used
abnormally, if liberty be prostituted into license. Then
freedom, ceasing to be freedom, becomes slavery: the
will, trampling the pearls of righteousness under foot,
turns again to rend its helpless keeper. But, in the
normal Christian manhood, moral freedom is its gar-
land of honour. In my fifth lecture, on the Distinctive
Moral Grandeur of the Christian Religion, I shall have
occasion to go more fully into this subject. At this
point I advert to it in order to point out the distinction
between a Christian philosophy and a pantheistic phi-
losophy of the individual, in the matter of moral respon-
sibility. In the latter, as I have already said, the com-
plete identification of the individual with the Absolute
bereaves him of responsibility. What he does, be it
good or evil, is not good nor evil in reality, but a result
of successive conditions emerging ultimately out of
the multiplying power of Brahma; and, as it is the goal
of the soul to attain, in knowledge of the Absolute,
its emancipation from phenomenal conditions, it must,

' C/. Confessions.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 75

as it advances toward that emancipation, withdraw
itself from moral distinctions, as from work and all
other obstacles in the path of the great consumma-
tion. Nothing could be further from my thought at
this moment than controversy. I am innocent of all
purpose and desire to that end. Nor do I judge myself
competent or worthy to analyse, save in the most
elementary manner, these profound matters of faith,
concerning which I could not speak at all, save with
becoming reverence. It would be impossible for me to
speak to Indians in an unfriendly or an ungenerous spirit,
for my heart is with you in undying affection. I have a
settled faith that whatever is true and essential to the
fulness of truth must for ever abide under whatever
name or religion it has come into being, and whatever
is not essential to the truth will, in the end, when it has
done its work, be permitted to withdraw and pass away.
It is not for me to determine and judge, I leave all
these issues in the hands of Eternal Truth Who is also
Eternal Love. My sole solicitude is to present things
that seem to me to bear upon the essence of truth. If
my presentation contains ought of that essence, it shall
abide. If not, my words shall pass away and be as
though they had not been. My present purpose is
simple. As a devoted lover of the Christian religion, I
seek to show wherein the Christian view, starting from
its exalted premise of the projection of finite existences
from the Substance of the Infinite Life and the im-
manence of God in man, reaches the conclusion that
that projection and immanence do not efface finite
personality, but rather cause it to be, by its community

76 BARROWS LECTURES

of essence with God, self -realising, capable of compre-
hending His character and moral purpose. Also it is
capable, because of its participation in the Divine
Nature, of exercising the initiative of the will, taking
cognizance of objects and desires, weighing motives,
reaching decisions. If this be a true account of man's
individuality, if he be so God-like a being that he can
be an arbiter of good and evil in his own right, then you
will agree with me that moral freedom is his garland of
honour. What can be more magnificent than the two-
fold conception now before us: the mind, stimulated
by its self-determining capacity, consecrating its power
to the highest use; the soul, garlanded with freedom
and illumined with the Spirit of God, confronting moral
responsibility and choosing righteousness as its portion !
That which we have now considered, touching the
Christian view of personality, lays a basis in the nature
of man upon which the Witness of God in the Soul
becomes a conception in the highest degree reasonable
and authoritative. The soul owes its existence to, and
attains its self -consciousness in, God. Out of His Sub-
stance, as the Ground and Source of Being, it is projected ;
through His immanence it is a partaker of the Divine
Nature, with power to conceive ideas of infinity, eternity,
intellectual and moral perfection. Its projection from
the self-subsistent Ground of Being is a projection into
rational individuality, and moral liberty, in order that it
may be a real "other" to God and hold reciprocal rela-
tions with Him. The mind is real, having the powers of
real initiative, of continuous observance and judgment of
phenomena. The will is not the automatic instrument

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 77

of determinism, an executive power that merely carries
out predetermined results of successive states of char-
acter. It is self -determining; taking all the data that
enter into any possible human action, those supplied by
impulse and desire, those furnished by reason, judgment,
memory, or motive, and, in the light of all, consummat-
ing action by decision and so taking on moral responsi-
bility, for better or for worse. If man is such a being,
so intimately allied to God yet so truly in possession of
individual powers of reason and will, then the witness of
God in his soul is an august probability, a complete
interpretation of many facts of consciousness not other-
wise to be explained.

The higher Christian thinking, in laying down a basis
on which the conception of a Divine witness in the soul
is made reasonable and authoritative, finds it necessary
to look God ward as well as man ward. It is conscious
of a witness in man for which superficial facts of temper-
ament and pious traditions will not account, a witness
which is also a presence, compassing man's path and
his lying down, and acquainted with all his ways. It
perceives that in innumerable souls a witness is given
similar in kind, working to the same moral and spiritual
ends. On these evidences the higher Christian thinking
arrives at the conclusion that that Infinite Ground and
Source of Being, in which, as an undying principle, is
the explanation of the unity of human consciousness,
whereby individual minds are brought into relation
with each other, must also be the Source from which
this witness in the soul comes.

Furthermore, it considers the nature of man's mental

78 BARROWS LECTURES

power. It finds this to be not the mere promptings of
instinct, after the manner of beasts that "nourish a
blind life within the brain." It is power of the highest
order; of subtle quality. It is self-conscious, reflective
power; able to turn inward and explore the depths of
reason and feeling; able to turn outward, search, dis-
cover, compare all objects of knowledge, all processes
of law. It is the power of memory, able to traverse the
past and summon it into the present; the power of
aspiration, able to soar upward into the ideal, to con-
ceive abstractions of time and space, to climb illimitable
heights of beauty and fathom depths of wisdom. It is
the power of ethical judgment, discerning good and
evil, conceiving moral perfection; capable of rejoicing
in holiness, of experiencing remorse, the tragic converse
of moral peace. It is self -identical power; continuous,
not transitory; consecutive, not intermittent ; universal,
not sporadic. Beholding humanity equipped with com-
mon mental life enriched by these distinctions, and
attributing its possession of this equipment to the In-
finite Ground and Principle of Being, underlying all
rational consciousness, the higher Christian thinking
arrives at the certain conclusion that these measurable
powers of rational existence which belong to man are
projections of an immeasurable Consciousness, an
Infinite Reason and Eternal Mind; a Divine Nature
that is the Sum of all Perfections, Source of all Wisdom,
Ideal of all Beauty, Seat of all Justice, Shrine of all
Holiness, Heart of all Love ; the Father of Lights, with
Whom is no variableness, neither shadow that is cast by
turning; from Whom cometh every good and perfect gift.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 79

I am well aware that many a noble Indian mind will
follow me approvingly in these words, and will share
with me the joy of attempting to delineate in terms the
beauty of God. But large sections of the highest Ori-
ental thinking are debarred from entering into the rest,
satisfaction, and ultimateness with which the Christian
meditates upon God's perfections, by reason of pressure
brought to bear through the philosophy of negation,
which is fundamental in pure pantheism. Many an
Oriental, gifted by God with powers of spiritual discern-
ment greatly superior to my own, is unable to share my
joy in the contemplation of God, although qualified both
to discern and to enjoy far more than I, because of
metaphysical obligation binding him to seek the ulti-
mate of thought, not in qualities, however beautiful, not
in attributes, however glorious, but in the absence of
qualities and attributes, in pure undifferentiated Being.
I need not rehearse to Oriental ears the formulas of
negation, nor dwell upon their absorbing influence upon
Eastern metaphysic, idealism, character. I have al-
ready referred to this, in my first lecture, as one of the
Elements of Sublimity in Oriental Consciousness, and
I intend to revert to it in my last lecture as one of those
qualities which may without dishonour or distortion be
devoted to the service of a higher Oriental Christianity.

But at this point I wish to make evident that the
higher Christian thinking is far from indifferent to the
implication contained in that august conception of pure
Being which for a thousand generations has haunted the
Oriental Consciousness, like the travelling echo of a
word spoken in an eternal past. What is the implica-

8o BARROWS LECTURES

tion contained in that conception ? Is it not this ? As
we pursue the quest for God, which, be the cause what
it may, is the last insatiate instinct of the soul, we pass
beyond all attributes, qualities, notes of personality.
We come, like explorers who have climbed the sunny
heights of the coast range, to the margin of an un-
fathomed, uncharted sea, whereon no keel has ever
moved, whereon impenetrable mist for ever hangs,
whereon we have no means nor power to launch. We
gaze out upon that silent sea : we call — no sound returns
but faint, far-off breathings of our own wandering voice.
Is it not thus one may describe the vision, from the sum-
mit of the highest attributes, which are the coast ranges
of the Absolute, the vision of the uncharted, mist-hung
ocean of Pure Being? This thought of the unsearch-
ableness of God, a thought demanded alike by reason
and experience, has never been absent from a true
philosophy of that religion which, coming from springs
far up in the recesses of Asiatic life, flowed down into
the broad river of the Faith of Christ. No soul, ad-
vanced beyond the rudiments of religious externalism
into even the less esoteric regions of Christian thinking,
has dared to suppose otherwise than that, if, like ex-
plorers, it were possible for us to climb to the heights of
the attributes of God's personality, we should but gaze
forth upon the cloud that shrouds from all eyes, that
veils from all thought, the unknowable Being of the
Absolute. To suppose that the whole Essence of God
can be described in terms of attribute and quality, that
the whole Essence of God can be conceived in man's
mind, to suppose (be the word spoken with reverence !)

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 8i

that it lies either in the will or power of the Infinite to
reveal all that wherein Infinity consists even to those
finite spirits most sensitive and obedient to His imma-
nent nature, would, for an enlightened Christian, mean
to be under the veil of intellectual ignorance or the curse
of intellectual pride. That which the philosophy of the
Indo-Aryan consciousness has called pure Being finds
its equivalent in Semitic and Christian Consciousness
in the inconceivability and unsearchableness of the
Essence of Deity. Tho whole background of Biblical
thought is an unspeakable sense of man's impotency to
conceive the depths of the Godhead that lie behind those
measurable revelations which come within the scope of
finite consciousness. From the Old Testament comes
to us that word which is like a grave rebuke to all who
have dared to assume the utter knowableness of God:
" Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst
thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is
as high as heaven ; what canst thou do ? deeper than
hell ; what canst thou know ? The measure thereof is
longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.'"
From the New Testament come those yet more solemn
voices that tell us not only of the mist-hung ocean of
Unknowable Being, but of One, emerging from that
mist as an Only-Begotten from a Father, bringing us as
much of the higher knowledge as our spirits can con-
tain: "No man hath seen God at any time; the Only-
Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He
hath declared Him.'"' "King of kings and Lord of
lords, dwelling in light unapproachable; Whom no

I Job 11:7, 8, 9. 2 John 1:18.

82 BARROWS LECTURES

man hath seen nor can see; to Whom be honour and
power eternal!'" Is not an analogy to the instinctive
religious sense of God's unsearchable Being beginning
to dawn upon us of this modern age, in our clearer sense
of the unsearchable element in ourselves ? Researches
of the science of psychology have contributed toward
unifying all higher religious thinking in ways which, I
venture to believe, shall yet be more generally appre-
ciated and applied than at present. I do not mean to
say that psychology has made, or can make, clear the
mystery of the Divine Essence. I do not mean to imply
that psychology has lifted, or ever may lift, the veil of
mist that hangs above that silent ocean of Being stretch-
ing beyond the coast-line of its knowable qualities and
attributes. I mean to say that psychology has drawn
our attention to facts connected with our own life which
make real to us the solemn truth that we do not know
even ourselves. We see but dimly down into regions
of consciousness that lie below thought or, to state it in
the opposite relation, that rise above thought. To this
resfion of man's esoteric selfhood modern science has
given the name subliminal, or sub-conscious self: the
self that lives in us below the threshold of our organised
and related consciousness, where, in all life's common
affairs, we are to ourself both subject and object, that
is, both the one thinking and the one thought about.
Thus, for example, it is possible for me, as subject, to
think about my own thoughts as object; to analyse and
ponder them; to determine whether they are good or
bad thoughts that I should retain or put away. But

I I Tim. 6:15, 16.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 83

below that level of organised consciousness there are
the unfathomable depths of the "buried life." In that
sub-conscious life we are only subject — not subject and
object; do not consciously think as in our upper and
ordinary life. We only know that we have that mar-
vellous depth in our soul; subjectively we know that
there we are, perhaps more really and ultimately than
anywhere else, our true self, our very self. But what
we are, and to what depths in the buried life of God our
depths have access, we have no power to put into words.
Sometimes, when floating on a pellucid stream, one
will look far down and, for an instant, see dimly waving
in some lower current, unfelt upon the surface, the long
tresses of submarine grasses, the bowing plumes of
ferns. So, in rare moments of spiritual insight, when
the eye of introspection is purged of mote and beam,
and the calm soul is pellucid and crystalline in the peace
of God, we seem to see, waving and beckoning far below
the soundings of reason, suggestions of an Infinite Life
in which we live and move and have our being. Swiftly
those suggestions vanish unanalysed, untraced, uncom-
prehended, and, looking down again, we see only the
darkness of undifferentiated life. Is there no analogy
here to help us to lift up our eyes and look upon the
deep things of God ? Upon the surface are evidences
of all that God is, in holy character, holy purpose, holy
love. And so much as we are able to grasp He gra-
ciously permits us to receive and, that we may receive
more than our unaided effort could discern. He pro-
jects upon us, out of the depth in Christ, Who is, to use
the noble imagery of the Gospel, as a Son emerging

84 BARROWS LECTURES

from the bosom of the Father, a far profounder self-
revelation. But as in our own selves, familiar as we
are with all our ordinary states of consciousness, there
are abysses of pure being, underlying the discriminating
power of thought, extending down into the unknown,
must there not be, in the Infinite Ground and Source of
all existence, by Whom all things consist, depths un-
plumbed by any line of human wisdom, undreamed of
by any finite imagination ? Yet that abyss in God
which has been called Pure Being, the Absolute, is no
more incompatible with the rational and moral Person-
ality of the Absolute, than is the lesser abyss of the
subliminal consciousness in ourselves incompatible with
our possession of reason, conscience, will, affection,
and every note of personality. How then does this
unfathomable yet personal God bear witness in the
soul ? Most naturally, and in accord with the relation
of being between the soul and Himself.

Permit me now, as an exponent of the higher Chris-
tian thinking, to speak of three modes peculiar to the
mystical or inner life, through which the Divine witness
in the soul is realised. I attach to these modes the
ancient names endeared to the Christian Consciousness
by two thousand years of experience: the still, small
Voice or Divine witness through Conscience; the Sure
Word of Prophecy or Divine witness through Truth;
the Christ of God or Divine witness through Personal
Incarnation. I may remind you that in the preced-
ing lecture, on the Mystical Element in the Christian
Religion, I drew attention to the fact that Christian
mysticism has found expression in the two spheres of

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 85

consciousness, objective and subjective. In the objective
sphere it has felt God present in His world, found Him
in His works, touched the hem of His garment through
perceiving the universe to be an outward expression of
God's infinite vitality. This objective sense of God is
but the vestibule of the mystical element. The temple
is within. Unseen by mortal is the sacred place of the
Most High, the shadow of the Almighty, in which the
Christian mystic attains the homing of the soul. There
are moments in the life of every soul when the outward
suggestions of God in nature convey no sufficing mes-
sage to the innermost spirit. They seem inadequate.
Their objectivity seems resounding emptiness. God
seems not to be in them. It is because the subliminal
depths within the soul demand more intimate com-
munion with their Source and Ground. In one of the
Old Testament historical books' it is related that the
prophet Elijah, overwhelmed with responsibility and
solicitude, fainted- inwardly beneath his burden and
flung himself upon the ground in despair. In vain were
given him assurances of God's presence in the world
about him : they seemed but emptiness ; one voice alone
could recall the absent courage and redeem the van-
quished faith : the Witness of God in the Soul. Let me
read to you this glorious record of the supremacy of our
inner life.

Elijah came unto a cave and lodged there; and, behold, the
word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him, What doest
thou here, Elijah ? And he said, I have been very jealous for the
Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy

' C/. I Kings, chap. 19.

86 BARROWS LECTURES

covenant, thrown down Thine altars, slain Thy prophets with the
sword; and I, even I, only am left; and they seek my life, to take
it away. And He said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount be-
fore the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and
strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks
before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind : and after the
wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire:
and after the fire a still, small voice. And it was so, when Elijah
heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and
stood in the entering in of the cave.

That face, hidden in the mantle, is the symbol of man's
involuntary reverence for the authority of the still, small
Voice. WTien he hears it, he knows whence it comes.
He covers his face and listens. ''Speak, Lord, for Thy
servant heareth." The witness of the still, small Voice
is universal. Beneath every philosophy and form of
religion ; beneath tradition and race ; mediated through
every language into the one vernacular of the soul, it
makes itself heard, uttering the eternal distinction of
right and wrong, declaring the potential claim of right-
eousness, conveying the potential sense of sin. It is the
voice of a God Who cannot be silenced; WHio has not
left Himself without a witness in any soul that He has
made; unto Whom all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from Whom no secrets are hid. We speak of con-
science sometimes in terms which appear to imply that
it is but a faculty of the soul, as sight or hearing are
faculties of the body. When we consider the diseases
of conscience, which may be as acute and as loathsome
as diseases of the flesh; when we remember the health
of conscience, which is an estate as full of joy, buoyancy,

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 87

and strength as physical health, we perceive that con-
science is a sensitive and powerful faculty that works
in realms where physical faculties are incapable of
working. The diseases of conscience are more terrible
than leprosy. It may become deaf to the Divine wit-
ness ; blind to the distinctions of right and wrong ; cor-
rupt and abominable in its perverted relation to desire;
deceitful and cruel in its sanctionings of conduct;
paralysed through deliberate misuse; seared as with a
hot iron. Health of conscience is more beautiful than
bodily perfection. It is the virility of the soul: alert,
well balanced, clear eyed, rejoicing not in iniquity but
rejoicing in the truth; sane in judgment, ruling desire
with the hand of right reason ; courageous in goodness ;
happy in the felicity of correspondence with the eternal
right. Yet conscience is without significance unless
considered in relation to God ; even as the eye is without
significance unless considered in relation to light; the
ear in relation to sound. Conscience, as a faculty, is the
ear of the soul, by means of which the still, small Voice
may be heard. Conscience, as a fundamental element
of rational being, is, as an English poet has declared,
"God's most intimate Presence in the soul,"' His per-
sonal voice speaking to the inner ear of our self-con-
sciousness. In this consists the peculiar sacredness of
conscience, and the special wrong of its intentional mis-
use. It is a faculty lying in awful proximity to those
subliminal depths within us, of which we can give little
account, yet in which we are confident the ultimate clue to
our individuality is found and the ultimate participation

J Cf. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Bk. IV.

88 BARROWS LECTURES

of our nature in the Divine Nature occurs. Many times,
in the experience of those whose senses are trained by use
to discern good and evil, the still, small Voice sounds in
the soul's ear in tones of mystery. Intimations of duty
assert themselves, so subtle that we cannot put them
into words, while of their Divine authority we have no
doubt ; warnings against courses of conduct that to our
prejudiced minds seem expedient, yet upon which the
unformulated verdict of conscience sets its prohibition.
There is but one adequate explanation of these phe-
nomena. They are the Witness of God in the Soul. We
become most aware of their authority when we set our-
selves to violate their instructions. We become aware
of the objectivity of nature when we oppose ourselves to
it in volitions that ignore its reality. We attempt to
press our way through the wall of rock; it flings us back,
bruised and bleeding. We essay to walk on the sea as
on a floor of porphyry; it parts and engulfs us. We
proudly try to scale the topmost pinnacle of Kinchin-
janga; the heart collapses in syncope, under atmos-
pheric conditions that were not made for man. So
when the will attempts to ignore or to oppose the still,
small Voice speaking through a healthy conscience,
commanding a certain act of right, forbidding a certain
act of wrong, it discovers that behind that Voice, so
gentle and still, there is an ideal righteousness asserting
itself in majesty, against which we may beat ourselves
into insensibility, but over which we cannot prevail.
Right will not become wrong at our solicitation, nor will
light change itself to darkness, for a cloak to our sin.
In the higher Christian thinking, the still, small Voice

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 89

fulfils a ministry infinitely more broad than is included in
His elemental and universal ofiice, through conscience,
of incitement to right conduct and admonition against
evil doing. Under the beautiful titles, Holy Spirit and
Comforter, are intimated possible ministrations of com-
panionship, suggestion, counsel, education, guidance,
illumination, empowerment, support, comfort, all of
which are modes, verified in the experience of two
thousand years, in which the witness of God is fulfilled
in souls that lend themselves trustfully to His influence.
Through the sub-conscious depths of our being, where
our life and the Infinite Life become one. His influence
finds entrance to all the avenues of consciousness. His
very Spirit, life-making, reasonable, holy, witnesses
with our spirits that we are the children of God. From
this source come our holy desires, appreciation of good-
ness, recurrent advances in spiritual knowledge, vigor-
ous control of unruly instincts and passions, moral
courage, calmness in suffering, self-restraint in sorrow.
These, in their several relations to character, produce
growth, symmetry, strength, sweetness of individu-
ality. Nor is there any term of limit beyond which this
beneficent action of God within the soul must be
discontinued. Because of our belief in the origin of
the soul, as projected from the Infinite Source and
Ground of Being, we believe in its immortality and
in the immortality of the ministrations of the Holy
Spirit. To those who respond to the inward witness
of sonship by walking as sons of God, there opens a
vista of eternal progress: an inheritance incorruptible,
and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved

go BARROWS LECTURES

in heaven for (them) who are kept by the power of
God."^

I must now proceed to speak of a second mode
through which the Divine witness in the soul is realised :
the Sure Word of Prophecy or Divine witness through
Truth. God speaks to the inward life of man through
truth outwardly declared. From the earliest ages He
has made special approaches to individuals, causing the
tide of knowledge to flow through their sub-conscious
life with such power that they, looking down as into the
depths of a stream, saw truth and the relations of truth,
not visible in the ordinary states of consciousness. This
is revelation through the power of the Spirit of Truth.
They who have received it have given utterance to the
truth and to its relations, as they saw it in the depths
of the sub-conscious life. Many others, without doubt,
have claimed to have received revelations, and have
uttered them as such. The credential, whereby the
authenticity of revelation is distinguished from the claim
of error, is not outward and formal, but mystical and
inward, the verification of truth in the souls to whom it
is proclaimed. It is the Sure Word of Prophecy, the
self-verifying of truth, vindicating itself in the soul as
the witness of God, by producing in the soul the effect of
God. An early Christian writer thus speaks : "We have
the word of prophecy made more sure ; whereunto ye do
well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark
place, unto the day dawn and the day star arise in your
hearts. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man :
but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy

I Cj. I Peter 1:4, 5.

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 91

Spirit."' It is inspiring to reflect upon truth; what it
is and what it does. When the soul of a true man under-
stands what the nature of truth is in itself, he bows
down before it in reverence, he loves it with a mighty
love. For truth is beautiful, noble, gloriously fash-
ioned, in whatsoever realm it be found. I wonder not
that artists have represented truth under the similitude
of the most beautiful objects to be found in nature, or
that the noblest thought of the ages has exerted its
highest powers worthily to describe it, or that the uni-
versities have chosen the word itself (a calm and stately
word !) for their motto, lifting it up before the eyes of
scholars that it might print its message on their minds.
It may be a long time before one comes to an apprehen-
sion of what truth is, in its own right; before one
separates and sets off from the self-sufhcient thing itself
the various lesser ideas that custom or the craft of man
have offered as its equivalents. One may suppose that
age is an equivalent of truth, that that which has out-
lived generations and gathered unto itself the reverend
aspects of antiquity must, of necessity, be true. Age is
venerable, and he is to be pitied who under any circum-
stances speaks lightly of it. Yet age, great continuity in
time, may or may not coincide with truth. It con-
tains no inherent guarantee of truth. Truth may indeed
be ancient as the everlasting hills, but its final criterion
and evidence must be sought in a depth where time
counts for little. One may suppose that usage is an
equivalent of truth ; that wide acceptance of ideas there-
by assures their validity. Usage is a sacred thing: I

I C/. II Peter 1:19-21.

92 BARROWS LECTURES

honour whatever thought or belief has received the
suffrage of great numbers of my fellow-men. I cannot
turn in disrespect from anything, the use of which is
holy to another. But usage can be no certain equiva-
lent of truth. Truth must in the end bring usage, but
usage need not in the end bring truth. I reverence
usage, yet not in it do I find the final guarantee of truth.
One may suppose that declarative authority is an equiva-
lent of truth; that the assertions of men clothed with
power, or the declarations of books issued by authority,
can establish truth. But one has only to reflect on the
contradictory nature of such utterances to feel the need
of some method of verifying truth, less provisional and
precarious than declaratory authority. A happy day,
bright with the prospect of peace, dawns in his life who
learns to hold in abeyance the witnesses of antiquity,
usage, and authority, as ideas separable from truth ; to
demand not, nor rely upon as final, supplementary and
external evidences, but to turn to truth itself, as it
stands before us in perfect beauty, simplicity, sincerity,
and ask it that it shall verify itself ! Truth is very simple.
It is merely the thing that is, as distinguished from the
thing that is supposed to be, and is not. That simpli-
city gives truth its beauty, authority, power. How can
truth verify itself ? By showing that it is the thing it
is supposed to be. For generations it was held as
truth that the earth is a plane not a sphere. Antiquity,
usage, authority were all on that side. At length truth
came to its own merely by showing that the earth is a
sphere not a plane. How can we know that anything
spoken in a Scripture is truth ? By the Witness of

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 93

God in the Soul that what is spoken is the thing that is.
For example: a Scripture says, "The Word of God is
living, and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both
joints and marrow and quick to discern the thoughts
and intents of the heart."' In Christian experience
this is found to be the truth. When God is suffered to
bear His witness in the soul, through a conscience that
is morally in health. He reveals us to ourselves. He
lays bare our motives to the inner eye; cuts, as with a
surgeon's knife, through all subterfuge and pretence;
convicts us of sin ; humbles us and makes us ashamed
of sin ; brings forth in us the desire for a new life. This
is the simple truth, verified by the deepest facts in the
realm of life to which this truth refers. Antiquity,
usage, or authority might declare against this, but the
Witness of God in the Soul confirms the sure word of
prophecy. Again, a Scripture says concerning prayer:
"In everything by prayer and supplication with thanks-
giving let your request be made known unto God, and
the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall
keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. "^
How do I know that this is true ? Not from antiquity
usage, nor authority; although from each of these
sources comes a powerful corroboration. But I know
it for truth by the witness of God in my soul confirming
the sure word of prophecy. Confused with doubt, beset
by temptation, oppressed with grief, "weary of earth
and laden with my sin," I approach in perfect confidence
of spirit the Divine Ground and Source of my existence.

I Heb. 4:12. 2 Phil. 4:6, 7.

94 BARROWS LECTURES

As a troubled child confiding in a trusted Father, I pour
my personal confidences into the ear of that Invisible
Being with Whom I am mysteriously connected ; and
from the depths of my sub-conscious life wells up into
consciousness a calmness of spirit, a restored equilib-
rium, a deliverance from oppression, a peace of God of
which one may only affirm : "it passeth understanding."
I have now spoken of two of the modes through which
the Divine witness in the soul may be realised : the still,
small Voice; the Sure Word of Prophecy. There is a
third and greater mode of this mystical witness: it is
called the Christ of God, or Divine witness through
Personal Incarnation. In closing this lecture I shall
make only a preliminary statement concerning Christ;
reserving the treatment of the theme for the succeeding
lecture. The preliminary statement, with which I close,
has reference to two matters upon which I must permit
myself to speak in a few sentences with an earnestness
of conviction born of my passionate love for my subject
and admiration for the Oriental Consciousness. The
two matters are these: the Divinity of Christ and the
need of Oriental co-operation in the larger interpreta-
tion of that Divinity to the world. It is in my judg-
ment inadequate to consider the Christian religion in
any light that excludes the Divinity of Christ. I am
well aware of excellent ethical systems that have been
developed in the spirit of Christianity with the Divinity
of Christ excluded. I am equally aware of theological
systems, advocated from the Christian side, that placed
in prominence the Divinity of Christ, yet were in their
spirit narrow, partisan, and prejudicial. I speak with

WITNESS OF GOD IN THE SOUL 95

respect of every attempt to incorporate in modern life
the principles associated with the Christian name ; each
contributes something that strengthens the forces of
light in their conflict against darkness. Yet it remains
true that he who undertakes to interpret Christianity
in the sense in which it was understood by the authors
of the New Testament, in the sense in which it became
the delight and passion of the Eastern and Western
Fathers, in the sense in which it took and held possession
of the West, in the sense in which it controls to-day
the most religiously effective thinking of the Christian
world, both Eastern and Western, must not only take
note of the Divinity of Christ, but must exalt that
Divinity to the highest plane of thought; until it shall
stand not for the apotheosis of humanity, not for the
deification of a man, but for the projection of the Divine
Word out of unfathomable depths of Godhead, into the
region of human consciousness, to speak, in the life of
a Man, unto the lives of all men. One of the noblest of
the New Testament documents begins with language
that may well sum up my present thought :

God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the proph-
ets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of
these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed heir
of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds, Who being
the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance,
and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He
had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the
Majesty on high.^

As I repeat in your hearing this account of the nature
of Christ on its mystical side, and then, as I look into

' C/. Heb. 1 : 1-3.

96 BARROWS LECTURES

your faces and recall the sublime elements of the Ori-
ental Consciousness, the Contemplative Life, the Pres-
ence of the Unseen, Aspiration toward Ultimate Being,
Reverence for the Sanctions of the Past, I feel intuitively
the correspondence of these thoughts with your power
of assimilation and interpretation. And, in the name
of the world, I come to you, sons of the Eastern sages,
and ask you to take Christianity, to assimilate its
essence in your own religious consciousness, and lift it,
higher than ever it was lifted before, in the thoughts of
men. Tremendous is the need of the world that some
power, great enough in intellectual capacity, fervent and
sensitive enough in feeling, confident enough of the
reality of the Unseen, eager enough to find emancipa-
tion in the knowledge of God, shall be raised up in the
earth to take the Christian religion with the joy of dis-
covery, to pour into the interpretation of it the pent-up
enthusiasm of waiting generations, to bring to light
the imperishable freshness of its essence, to deliver it
from the perilous weight of ponderous forms, to restore
unto it the high spirituality of the first Christian age.

Where shall a power be found, endowed with capacity
for a work at once so august and so urgent, if it be not
found in the Oriental Consciousness ! Europe launched
her crusades Eastward to snatch the tomb of Christ
from the hands of Orientals. May the day come when
a Christian East shall launch her crusades Westward,
not to seize a tomb, but to proclaim a resurrection, and
to plant the banner of Christ's Cross on higher ground !

LECTURE FOUR

THE WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD

I ended the preceding lecture by summing up results
reached at that point. It appeared that after laying
down, in terms of the higher Christian thinking, a ra-
tional basis on which to establish the conception of a
Witness of God in the Soul, I had proceeded to state
three modes, peculiar to the inner or mystical life, in
which that witness is known by human consciousness:
the still, small Voice, the Sure Word of Prophecy, the
Christ of God. Of the first and second modes I spoke
with some fulness. The still, small Voice is God's
most intimate and universal witness in man, speaking,
in the inner ear of conscience, commandments of right-
eousness; and, as the Holy Spirit or Comforter, accom-
plishing, for each responsive soul, ministrations of
companionship, suggestion, counsel, education, guid-
ance, illumination, empowerment, support, comfort.
The Sure Word of Prophecy is the manifestation of Truth
in the souls of those to whom it is communicated. It
is Truth's verification of itself in rational consciousness;
the demonstration to the innermost self of Truth's
beauty, simplicity, sincerity. It may be corroborated
or denied by antiquity, usage, authority; the manifesta-
tion of Truth in the soul is final, the correspondence of
the thing spoken with the thing that is. Of the third
mode of Divine witness, namely, the Christ of God, I but
prepared the way to speak in this lecture. I confined

98 BARROWS LECTURES

myself to two preliminary matters ; which were spoken
of, in closing, with an earnestness of conviction prompted
by my love for the subject and my admiration for the
Oriental Consciousness. These matters had reference
to the Divinity of Christ and the need of Oriental co-op-
eration in the larger interpretation of that Divinity to
the world. I expressed the conviction that it is inade-
quate to consider the Christian religion in any light
that excludes the Divinity of Christ; that if anyone
shall undertake to interpret Christianity in the sense
in which it was understood by the authors of the New
Testament and by the Fathers of the second century
and in the sense in which, to-day, it controls the most
religiously effective thinking of the Christian world,
he must not only take note of the Divinity of Christ,
but exalt that Divinity to the highest plane of thought.
I stated my belief, which is confirmed by each additional
day spent in conference with Eastern minds, that the
Oriental Consciousness, by virtue of its sublime elements
on the mystical side, is qualified to discharge for the
world a service of which it stands in need. The world
needs the impulse of minds approaching the Christian
religion untrammelled by the ponderous mass of Western
forms; endowed with ardour and passion, with insight
and intellectual capacity, with vast assurance of the
unseen, with insatiable thirst for knowledge of God.
The world needs, specifically, the impulse of such
minds, to reaffirm as a controlling force in the Christian
religion that which was its pristine glory, the mystical
apprehension of the Christ of God.

The Oriental Consciousness generates such minds:

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 99

the wealth of your soul-quality produces them. You
have what the world needs, what the world waits for.
Can you wonder then, my friends, if I, a lover of the
world, come to you and summon you, in Christ's Name !
Should I apologise for speaking thus, to men of other
faiths? I cannot, without the crime of insincerity.
The truth that is in your several faiths cannot be shaken
by your assimilation of the faith of Christ. Truth
never casts out truth, it casts out only error and what-
soever else has served its purpose fully and is ready to
depart. It has ever been that when God needs men
He calls them, making it possible for them to follow His
bidding without dishonour to any truth. Christ called
Jews to be Christian Apostles. They obeyed and
carried with them in Christianity, for its enriching, all
that was true and eternal in Judaism, leaving behind
only that which had served its end and fulfilled its
course. Twenty centuries have passed. Many world
conditions have changed. New conditions bring new
needs. To-day the greatest religious need of the world
is for a Christianity deepened and spiritualised through
the recovery of elements germane to the Oriental Con-
sciousness, and best interpreted thereby. This world
is God's world, and whatsoever great need arises in the
world implies God's summons to those who have the
means to meet that need. Famine in India summons
the wealth of America. Perilous overgrowth of the
external in religion summons whatsoever race conscious-
ness is most rich in powers of spiritual discernment, most
eager for the unseen treasures. To this conviction my
soul is committed. I have come across the world to

lOO BARROWS LECTURES

express it. It is a conviction born of God, expressed
on His behalf. The depth of my conviction I may best
convey to you in the words of an American poet :

All my emprises have been filled with Thee,

My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,

Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee,

Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results with Thee;

O, I am sure they really come from Thee,

The urge, the ardour, the unconquerable will,

The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,

A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep ;

These sped me on.^

In order that your minds may be prepared for what
I have to say concerning Christ, I must ask you to
enter upon some consideration of the special subject
of this lecture, namely: ''the Witness of the Soul to
God." For those who accept in any form a monistic
philosophy there is little difficulty in believing that the
soul of man gives, out of itself, consciously or sub-con-
sciously, witness to God. God makes Himself felt and
heard in the soul by His immanent presence. He is
the Ground and Source of finite existence as the sun
is the ground and source of light. When (if I may use
the common terms of speech) the sun rises, our atmos-
phere is filled with light, and every object lying in the
open atmosphere is bathed in light. That there should
be a witness of God in the soul appears to be necessary,
in the nature of things. He is the active principle of
life in us, and we feel His activity both in our bodies,
through all the phenomena of vitality, and in our souls,

' Whitman, "Prayer of Columbus."

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD lOi

through modes appropriate to spiritual consciousness.
It appears to be no less necessary, in the nature of things,
that the soul shall give witness to God. For the soul
lives in God even as God lives in the soul; its life in
God is the most elemental and essential fact connected
with its existence. As our bodily organs give appro-
priate witness to the elements with which they are sever-
ally related, the lungs expanding with the inrush of air,
the heart pulsating with the inrush of blood, the pupil
of the eye contracting with the inrush of light, so the
soul gives witness in many forms of consciousness, and
in sensations too profound for conscious organisation,
to that Infinite with which its life is inseparably con-
joined. Those many forms and sensations of soul-action
can all be grouped under one word : perhaps the noblest
word in the whole vocabulary of the finite individual:
religion. Professor William James of Harvard Univer-
sity, in the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion before
the University of Edinburgh, has given a broad and
helpful, though essentially incomplete, definition of
religion: ''Religion shall mean for us the feelings, acts,
and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so
far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation
to whatever they may consider the divine."' In this
form of soul-action we must include under the term
religion, interpreting that term broadly and incompletely,
not only the witness of consciousness to the concrete
deities of polytheism, or to the transcendent deity of
Islam, or to the immanent personal presence of Christian

I The Varieties oj Religions Experience (ed. Longmans, London, 1902),
P-3I-

I02 BARROWS LECTURES

monism, or to the impersonal absolute of Higher Hin-
duism, but also the atheistic idealism of the Higher
Buddhism and all unformulated conceptions of the
spiritual structure of the universe, which bear witness
on the negative side to idealistic tendency. Whatever
reverential feeling is coupled with the sense of infinity,
be it that which seems abstractedly godlike or that
which is adored as deity, partakes of the nature of reli-
gion. ' I do not regard the definition just quoted as a
complete definition of religion inasmuch as it contains
no explicit reference to ethical consciousness of the
Infinite, and this, as I hope to show later in my lecture,
is not only the crowning element in the most fully devel-
oped forms of religion, but must be found to exist in
principle, even though imperfect in quality and perhaps
distorted in mode of expression, in any system of think-
ing, before we can with entire justice describe that sys-
tem as a religion. Out of this soul-action in relation
to God, realised inwardly by individuals, have grown
all systems of belief and of churchmanship. With the
outward forms of these systems we are not at present
concerned. For the moment let us dwell on the impor-
tance and value of the inward facts involved. An ade-
quate sense of the significance of religion as a mark of
man's nobility is often lost beneath inadequate expla-
nations offered as final by those who have investigated
this phenomenon from a naturalistic point of view. I
use the term in no disparaging sense. I need not go
over the ground, which must be familiar to many of you,
especially as I had the privilege to traverse it somewhat

I Cj. James, op. cit., pp. 31-34.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 103

in my former series of Barrows Lectures in India, by
means of a lecture on "The Nature of Religion." Some
have traced the origin of the religious instinct to fear
in the presence of alarming powers of nature; others
to ancestor worship and progressive deification of the
dead; others to animistic instinct born of dreams and
dread of the unknown, stimulating the imagination to
depict surrounding objects as inhabited by spirits; others,
as von Hartmann, to pessimism caused by the misery
of the world. In the evolution of the human species
these influences have operated to deepen religious feeling ;
but, as I consider the beneficent and glorifying effects
upon men of that religion with which I am most familiar,
and upon which I may therefore with least impropriety
set an estimate, I venture to be sure that no such source
by itself could have produced that religion. It has
transformed the character of many persons, so that
they may be described as born anew, has controlled
disordered communities and furnished them with fresh
ideals. It has permeated arts and developed litera-
tures. It has interpreted and applied the love of God.
These things I say from knowledge, as a Christian. I
hope that those experienced in other faiths can present
similar testimony. Christ, in an aphorism almost pro-
verbial, said: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or
figs of thistles? A good tree cannot bring forth evU
fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.'"
I cannot believe that such a religion as the Christian
religion, with its good fruit, can spring from any source
such as these that I have named. Whatever truth

I Matt. 7:16, 18.

I04 BARROWS LECTURES

there is in man's religious experience springs from that
which is noblest in himself; his oneness of nature with
the Infinite Ground and Source of Being. The thorns
and thistles of religion spring from other roots.

Upon such a theory of the final source of religion,
its message to us, as the deepest fact of experience,
should be a grand message. It should enable us to
understand and appreciate ourselves. To have some
conception of what we are on our finer side is an incen-
tive to noble living. To think meanly of ourselves as
worms of the dust is an incentive either to hyprocrisy
or to despair. The attempt to promote such self -depre-
ciation as a frame of mind appropriate to religion was
one of the futile efforts of deistic thinking, now, happily,
becoming obsolete. God was represented as a King,
dwelling sumptuously in His palace of power; man,
a beggar crouching at the gate. Religion was under-
stood to signify abasement, self-loathing, consuming
sense of belittlement. In proportion as the dualistic
abyss between God and man could be conceived in
terms of width and depth, religious feeling was satis-
fied. It was the logical conclusion of such thoughts
to invest God with the garment of wrath, the lurid light
of anger on His countenance, the purpose of destruction
in His heart ; to portray man as the debased and helpless
object of that anger, seeking by gifts and sacrifices to
elude an unhappy fate. I shall show you that, in the
higher Christian thinking, there is not only a place for
humiliation and self-loathing, but that the practise of
penitence is engendered by man's highest estimate of
his own value. Pharisaic self-righteousness is an evU

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 105

fruit of deism; the worm lifting up its head in prepos-
terous vanity. Christian humiliation, the sacrifice of a
contrite spirit, is born of the sense of greatness used
unworthily. The message of the religious instinct to
our own personal consciousness is, then, the grandest
of messages. It draws attention to the irrepressible
nature of ethical desire. The flesh cannot satisfy: the
gratification of physical impulse has no adequacy in
itself to content the soul. Injured and outraged, as
one foully dealt with, the soul recoils with a cry of indig-
nation from the moment of indulgence and bends with
more severe intention toward the goal of righteousness.
Ethical desire is the only immortal form of desire known
to the soul. To objects of sense that attracted us in
youth we may grow cold; of intellectual striving that
once appealed to ambition we may grow weary; even
the face of nature that once seemed beautiful may be
changed for us by grief, but the goodness of good re-
mains, a thing to be wished for eternally. Do we ask,
why this invincible persistence of ethical desire ? There
is one sufficient answer : In ourselves we share the nature
of the Utterly Good. To this I shall refer more fully
later.

The message of the religious instinct to our personal
consciousness draws attention also to the inadequacy
of material conditions as a ground of contentment.
Each age, as it comes, developes an element of thought
in opposition to a spiritual view of the universe. This
element takes up its ground on the materialistic side
and undertakes to account for the phenomena of being
within the bounds of matter. I feel the great debt of

io6 BARROWS LECTURES

religion to materialistic and naturalistic thought. It
supplies an indispensable quality in balanced reasoning.
It administers sharp and salutary rebuke to mysticism
of the apathetic type that tends to part with ethical
distinctions in self-abandonment to infatuated sub-
jectivity. Materialists, impatient of the subjective,
scorning its alleged criteria, knowing no substance but
matter, crowding all thought-action against the stone
wall of the physical test, render to the religious con-
sciousness, over-inclined to dreams, the rude kindness
of the physician who strikes a patient to save him from
relapse into stupor. But, as our knowledge of personal-
ity advances, pure materialism, as an explanation of
life, is found to represent so small a part of the world's
profound conviction and to account for so small a pro-
portion of life's profound experience, that, when it
declares itself able to account for all, it must be regarded
as an eccentricity, if not as an obsession. For we have
seen, and nowhere is the sight more witnessed than in
India, those whom poverty or voluntary renunciation
of goods leaves in a material estate of privation, yet
over whom the spirit of discontent has no power. Rich
in possessions of the soul, indifferent to material for-
tune, they count all things but loss for the excellency
of higher knowledge vouchsafed in the realm of the
spirit. With such, poverty is wealth. Disburdened
of material accretions, they are at leisure to enjoy and
use the opulence of the soul. Also we have seen sur-
feit of possessions with hungerings of the soul : a being
to whom wealth is multiplied, with scarcity of peace
as by an ironical decree of fate; a sated body mocking

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 107

the starvation of spirit ; hands grasping more than they
can hold; heart fainting for the Bread of God. The
Witness of the Soul to God has no more pathetic demon-
stration than in those whose importunate prayer for
peace goes up amidst scenes of splendour that are the
envy of common minds. Once more: the message of
the religious instinct to our personal consciousness
draws attention to our intuitive sense of participation
in the Divine purpose as well as in the Divine life.
Mr. Allanson Picton, in his essay on "The Essential
Nature of Religion," defined religion in well-chosen
words as "being in its essential nature an endeavour
after a practical expression of man's conscious relation
to the Infinite.'" Why this endeavour after practical
expression of the conscious relation to God ? Why
is man not content with knowledge of the relation and
its scientific analysis? Why must he go beyond this
and demand practical participation in the purpose of
that life of which he is a part, entering, as a Biblical
Psalmist has nobly put it, into "the secret of the Lord" ?
The answer is found in the necessary unity of conscious-
ness. If in my most intimate friendships I discover
my psychic unity with those I love, it is necessary for
me to give practical expression to that sense of unity
by entering into their purposes, sharing their feelings,
and, so far as possible, merging my life in theirs. Much
more must the unifying impulse possess me when I
realise a relationship that is not objective but subjective :
an Infinite Life in me, which is also my life, even as
Christ said of His disciples, "I in them and they in Me."

' C/. The Mystery of Matter (ed. Macmillan, London, 1873), p. 216.

io8 BARROWS LECTURES

It is not enough that I shall know the fact of unity with
the Infinite, of which my religious instinct informs me.
Knowing it, nevermore can I be as if I knew it not.
Henceforth that knowledge is in me, ''the master light
of all my seeing." And the zeal of the soul must be
to enter into practical co-operation with that Eternal
Will of Goodness to which it is inseparably conjoined.
So Picton says:

Religion is not the intellectual formulation of that conscious-
ness (of relation to the Infinite), for this is properly the work
of philosophy. But religion aims rather at expression in the
language of the heart. And if I use the epithet "practical," it is not
because I would confine the idea of religion to deeds of devotion
or acts of worship, though these are necessarily included; but
because the term seems best to embrace both such manifestations
of religion, and also that inward energy which in contemplation
yearns after the supreme good.^

Such is the importance and value of religion in itself.
By means of it we come into our greatest inheritances:
the irrepressible fervour of ethical desire, the demand
for satisfaction in regions transcending material con-
ditions, the sense of right to participate in the Divine
purpose as well as in the Divine life. In the light of
results obtained by this analysis of the message of the
religious instinct to our personal consciousness, the
various modes in which the soul bears witness to God
take on absorbing interest. Not the least interesting
thoughts in this connection are furnished by atheism
and the various forms of denial of the Divine. Atheism
is an occasional attitude assumed by human minds
toward the proposition of an Infinite. The atheist

I C}. Picton, op. cit., p. 217.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 109

has to deal with the same range of phenomena appear-
ing in the human consciousness; these messages of
the rehgious instinct speak to him as they speak to the
behever. He knows the irrepressible nature of the
ethical sense, for many, professing atheism, have lived
the life of morality. He knows the impulse of the soul
to spread its wings and soar above material conditions.
His problem is to account for these things while elimi-
nating the Infinite. This he must do by forcibly cur-
tailing the range of his own being ; by cutting the wings
of his soul. "He must learn to reduce," as Hutton
says in his essay on "The Moral Significance of Athe-
ism," "the influence of the higher intellectual and
moral faculties, as compared with that of the senses,
social impulses, and those energies which tell most
directly upon the world."' And this he must do "by
eradicating from the imagination that haunting image
of the Divine character which most stimulates these
faculties into action." The soul bears no more tragic
witness to God than in its ruthless dealings with itself
in the effort to extirpate consciousness of the Divine.
As the corpse transfixed in the rigour of death bears
witness, by unmoving eyeball and unrelaxing hand,
to life expelled in the last crisis of mortality; so the
atheist, by the enforced suppression of higher instincts
and the violent excision of sacred tendencies, bears
to God the terrible witness of negation.

The phenomena of doubt, in all stages of question-
ing, incertitude, anguish, or agnosticism, are part,
scarcely a less tragic part, of the soul's witness to God.

^ C}. Theological Essays (ed. Macmillan, London, 1888), p. 9.

no BARROWS LECTURES

Too often a narrow identification of religion with as-
sured belief has led to misinterpretation of the meaning
of doubt, and to condemnation of those who experience
it. Man himself, by the audacious definiteness of
his assertions concerning God, has created doubt in
the soul of his brother man. The attempt to establish
by authority, for the many, that which can only be
discerned by the solitary soul in its inner consciousness
and according to its own modes of apprehension, has
introduced confusion for some and promoted discourage-
ment and indifferentism for others. There is also an
interpretation of doubt nobler than this. In a striking
narrative of the Bible, Saul of Tarsus, afterward known
as Paul, is proceeding upon an errand of extreme hos-
tility to Christ and those in sympathy with Him. Breath-
ing out threatenings and slaughter from a soul animated
by hatred and contempt toward Christ, suddenly he
is overwhelmed at noon-day by a light brighter than
the sun, beneath which he falls to the earth. He hears
a voice that he recognises as the voice of Christ calling
him to account for his action and demanding withdrawal
of opposition and obedience of service. He rises to
obey, but all is dark. He knows not whither to turn.
He stretches out his hands for guidance. His own
statement is this: "I could not see for the glory of that
light."' The words may be taken as a figure of the
noble form of doubt. There are moments in which
those who most resolutely have opposed the Christ of
God suddenly are overwhelmed by an apprehension
of His glory. They fall before Him, neither affirming

I Acts 22:11.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD iii

nor denying. Doubt in its tremendous form lays hold
of them, not because there is so little of God but be-
cause there is so much of God forced in upon their
sight. They cannot see for the glory of that light. Such
doubt is the soul's witness to God, not against Him.
There is a hand stretched out for such, to lead them
into knowledge.

If atheism and doubt, although on the negative side,
give evidence of the soul's witness to God, the positive
witness is yet more impressive. To one of its most
ancient forms I have repeatedly made allusion in these
lectures: the Aspiration toward Ultimate Being, which
may be called the conditioning fact in the Oriental
religious consciousness, the influence of which operates
in every Eastern religion. The significance of this as a
Witness of the Soul to God extends beyond the possi-
bility of overstatement. It is the very diadem of the
spirit set upon the calm, contemplative brow of the
East. It is the most regal claim to a Divine birthright
ever made by humanity. It is proffered not in noisy
and shallow words, but in the silent and unalterable
assumption of the soul. It may be described not as
an article of faith but as a state of consciousness. It
is not an attribute of the East; it is the East itself —
its very spiritual substance ! When I spoke earlier in
this lecture of my summons to the East on behalf of
the world to become the interpreter of Christ, I had no
thought of calling the East away from this great birth-
right to undertake that interpretation, but of bidding
it, through and because of this birthright, to accept
and discharge that duty. For by reason of that Aspira-

112 BARROWS LECTURES

tion toward Ultimate Being, that assurance that the
reality in you is one with the Infinite Reality, that
refusal to accept the transitory world as final and the
perishable forms of matter as ultimate, you are qualified
above all your human brethren to assimilate in your
own consciousness and to reaffirm in the world that
mystery which was hid from ages and generations, but
is now made manifest to such as are of an enlightened
spirit, the mystery of the Christ of God — that God was
in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. The
witness of the Eastern soul to God is so profound,
organic, involuntary, that it appears, like a command-
ment written upon the heart, to designate the East and
set it apart for a service of the world commensurate
in value and depth.

As man's religious instinct has found expression in
channels that, originating in the East, have merged in
Christianity, his soul has borne witness to God, in ways
that have had the effect not of contradicting but of
supplementing that silent and unalterable aspiration
of the Farther East toward Ultimate Being. To that
aspiration I have paid heartfelt tribute. May I call
attention to the importance of discriminating between
contradictory and supplementary expressions of reli-
gious instinct? The history of religion gives many
instances of contradictory expressions of religious
instinct. Probably every religion furnishes such in-
stances within itself in the evolution of its own institu-
tions and practises. Contradictory expressions of
of this kind certainly are to be found in Christianity,
ancient and modern, to the great bewilderment of non-

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 113

Christian observers, who probably do not realise that
a closer study of their own religions might disclose
similar contradictions. We have, for example, in the
company of Christian believers those who advocate
confession of sin to priests, appointed to receive such
confidences and to pronounce absolution. We have,
on the other hand, those who consider such proceedings
quite invalid, and recommend that confession of sin
be made directly and only to God. We have those who
consider that religion should be in the care of the State,
which should regulate its observances, conserve its
doctrines, and secure its endowments. We have, on
the other hand, those who affirm that the State, as such,
should have no authority in the matter of religion, save
to secure equal rights and privileges for all religious
bodies; and that choice of observances, framing of
doctrines, and modes of temporal maintenance should
be in the hands of the people, without let or hindrance.
We have those who declare that Baptism, the solemn
rite which is a sign of entrance within the Christian
Church, may be administered duly to persons of adult
age alone, and only by the act of immersing the whole
body in water. We have, on the other hand, those
who consider that infant children of believing parents
are entitled to recognition within the fold of the Church,
and that the sacred rite of Baptism may be administered
duly by sprinkling upon the head a few drops of pure
water. I take much interest in calling attention to
these contradictory expressions of religious instinct
found in the practise of the Christian religion. Such
contradictions excite the curiosity and awaken the dis-

114 BARROWS LECTURES

trust of thoughtful observers from without. The true
Christian attitude toward these difficulties is an acknowl-
edgment of their existence and a careful estimate of
their relative significance, as compared with the larger
unities of the same religion. It will then appear that
these contradictory expressions on certain points of
faith or practise have come to exist among bodies which
are in agreement upon fundamental questions. I have
no doubt that in Hinduism and other religions of India,
corresponding instances of contradiction appear, and
would be acknowledged with equal frankness.

Contradictory expressions of religious instinct are
found to exist on a large scale between the several great
religions of the world, and occasionally to involve ques-
tions of high magnitude. The suffering heart of hu-
manity has been torn by them. I need not give illus-
trations of this point. The field of the world has been
ploughed as with ploughshares of fire by religious pas-
sions voicing in opposite ways the same grand endeavour
of man to give practical expression to his conscious
relation to the Infinite. As I study the history of reli-
gion on this troubled earth of ours, I grow toward the
conviction that the contradictory expressions of religious
instinct are not the ultimate and vital things that should
attract our attention. Many do not involve questions
of the first magnitude; and some, in the Christian reli-
gion certainly, have received more attention than they
merited and have been the cause of more sadness and
heart-burning than the issues they involved were worthy
to produce. Where the contradiction between religions
stands on ground of primary importance, the deadlock

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 115

offers no avenue of escape for the religious conscious-
ness of man into broader and more blessed union with
his brethren in the one great fellowship of the Truth.
The old battles rage on and on. The old fields of con-
flict are ploughed backward and forward with plough-
shares of fire. Where is the gain to the world ? I
repeat: As we study the religious problem of the world,
the contradictory expressions of religious instinct are
not the ultimate and vital things that should attract
our attention. The things that we should study are
the supplementary expressions of religious instinct,
for in them lies promise for the world and victory for
Truth. I said, a moment since, and I draw your
attention now to the expression, for my heart is bound
up in its meaning: As man's religious instinct has found
expression in channels that, originating in the East,
have merged in Christianity, his soul has borne witness
to God in ways that have had the effect, not of contra-
dicting, but of supplementing the aspiration of the
Farther East toward Ultimate Being. That aspiration,
whether or not it be the most ancient form in which
the soul has borne witness to God, is the fundamental
form and the form that has given expression to the soul-
longing of the greatest number of human lives. In
principle it says: Man, so far as he is real, is identical
with God. Be it then the goal of life to break through
bonds of ignorance and be emancipated in knowledge
of the one reality. Let us count all things but loss;
yes, all things but dreams, for the excellency of that
knowledge. In principle that is pantheism. It in-
volves primarily subjugation of the visible for the sake

Ii6 BARROWS LECTURES

of the invisible, contempt of the seen for the sake of the
unseen. I do not hesitate to tell you that many thinkers
of the West, appalled by ominous signs in Western
civilisation, that betoken the worship of applied force,
money force, brain force, force of physical elements in
combination, have felt that in pantheism lies the only
hope of postponing the world's practical alienation
from the life of God. It has seemed to them that reli-
gion is losing its power, except in form ; that pantheism
alone can bring back inner consciousness of unseen
interests. So thought Spinoza, and said it with a grace
never excelled in either hemisphere. So thought von
Hartmann, and said it thirty years ago, in unequivocal
words :

It becomes a question of vital importance to Religiousness and
to the ideals of humanity, how Pantheism is to be brought into
the consciousness of the nations who represent modern civilisation;
for, if Pantheism does not penetrate there or arrives late, the
inevitable consequence will be that irreligious materialistic Natural-
ism must occupy the empty place. ^

I cannot agree with such a solution of this pressing
world-problem, the growing indifference to the unseen
in the interest of the seen ; the problem which is at the
bottom of every political and social condition in the
world to-day. I cannot feel that the importation of
Eastern pantheism in its present state would save the
day, in seats of empire that control the world. Experi-
ments made in this direction confirm my opinion.
Pantheism, applied as a correction of materialistic

1 Cf. The Religion oj the Future don, W. Stewart and Co., 1886), p.
(transl. by Ernest Dare; ed. Lon- no.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 117

world-power, in men or nations, acts, up to a certain
point, in the desired direction. At that point it becomes
inoperative, spiritless, apathetic, not because its con-
ception of finite being as identical with Universal Being
is not Truth, for it is Truth's foundation stone, but
because that conception requires to be supplemented
by further conceptions successively disclosed to the
religious sense of man, particularly along the lines of
his ethical consciousness. These disclosures of which
I speak have occurred in the course of that stream of
thought and empirical knowledge which, gathering
volume from many tributaries, Aryan, Semitic, Greek,
like a mountain torrent taking up into its bounding
current streams from a thousand hills, becomes at length
the shining river of Christianity. I rejoice to remind
you that I am now to speak of matters which do not
contradict, but richly supplement, the noblest and most
ancient philosophical conceptions of the East. Pro-
fessor Deussen, in his Philosophy of the Upanishads,
uses words that, by repetition, I gladly make my own.
After pointing out that the Veda and the Bible agree
in recognising man's need of release from the depraved
self of experience and the complete transformation of
the natural man as a whole, he says :

Why then do we need a release from this existence ? Because
it is the realm of sin, is the reply of the Bible. The Veda answers,
Because it is the realm of ignorance. The former sees depravity
in the volitional, the latter in the intellectual side of human nature.
The Bible demands a change of the will, the Veda a change of the
understanding. On which side does the truth lie ? If man were
pure will or pure intelligence, we should have to decide for one
or the other alternative. But since he is a being who both wills

Ii8 BARROWS LECTURES

and knows, the great change upon which the Bible and the Veda
alike make salvation depend must be realised in both departments
of his hfe. Such a change is, in the first place, according to the
Biblical view, the softening of a heart hardened by natural self-
love, and the inclining of it to deeds of righteousness, affection and
self-denial. It is, however, in the second place and side by side
with this, the breaking forth upon us of the light of the great
intellectual truth which the Upanishads taught before Kant, that
there is in truth one Being alone, eternal, exalted above space and
time, multiplicity and change, self-revealing in all the forms of
nature, and by me who myself also am one and undivided, dis-
covered and reahsed within as my very Self.''

Then Deussen concludes with words that express far
more clearly and strongly than mine what this entire
course of lectures is designed to express:

The New Testament and the Upanishads, these two noblest
products of the religious consciousness of mankind, are found
when we sound their deeper meaning to be nowhere in irreconcil-
able contradiction, but in a manner the most attractive serve to
elucidate and complete one another.

I may, then, without fear of being thought to take
up a hostile attitude to the fundamental philosophy
of the East, proceed to show how Christianity in its
highest realm of thinking goes on to supplement that
philosophy. The message of pantheism is distinctively
a message to the intellectual consciousness of man,
telling him what he is in his Being, and how he stands
related to the Universal Ground of Being, the Absolute.
The message of Christianity is distinctively a message
to the moral consciousness of man, telling him what
he must do, what he must become in character, because

' op. cit., pp. 48, 49.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 119

of his relation to Absolute Being, which is pointed out
by pantheism. If I may adopt for momentary illus-
tration the well-known titles of Kant's two critiques,
the Critique 0} Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical
Reason, I should say pantheism deals with the facts
and sanctions of man's Pure Reason ; Christianity deals
with the facts and sanctions of man's Practical Reason.
Approaching man's nature with a view to interpreting
it to him, that he may enter into salvation from a de-
praved empirical self, Christianity reminds man that
his moral consciousness is just as much an actual part
of himself as his intellectual consciousness, and that if
he acknowledges the last he must also acknowledge the
first. The two are co-ordinated in himself. I do not
suppose that any of my learned' hearers would even
wish to deny the reality of our moral consciousness. To
do so would make it necessary to deny the reality of
intellectual consciousness, which stands on precisely
the same ground of validity; and to deny intellectual
consciousness would be to deny the Absolute, for the
Absolute in us is the essence of intellectual conscious-
ness. It is the self -existent Life of the All in us that
renders us capable of philosophical thought which is
pantheism. To deny pantheism is to deny the All.

Christianity, taking this fact of moral consciousness,
first draws our attention to its nature, then tells us its
meaning. The nature of moral consciousness is a sub-
ject that leads us into a field of thought where we are
at a loss to determine whether the objects that meet
our gaze are more wonderful, more beautiful, or more
terrible. We find in our consciousness a capacity of

I20 BARROWS LECTURES

moral distinction, the power to discern good and evil,
intuitive, existing prior to all instruction. It is a capa-
city that may indeed be greatly modified by education,
that may be developed from a rudimentary stage to a
high and delicate state of ethical discernment; but the
power is in us prior to its development, as an original
underived fact of consciousness. It emerges into the
region of organised consciousness, where we analyse
and think things through to their conclusions. It is,
I believe, primarily existent in the sub-conscious life,
at a depth beneath analysis, as a subjective state of
ethical discernment. We feel the good when we cannot
account for its presence; we feel the evil, as a chill
breath exhaled upon us from without. Joined with
this power to discriminate good from evU, there exists
also, as an underived fact in our consciousness, the
intuitive sense of the absolute value of good. We know
what we mean when we say "a good man." We know
that we are making a declaration of relative value;
and that if we could say "a perfectly good man" we
should be making a declaration of absolute value, the
contrast and opposite of "a perfectly bad man." This
sense of the value of good is in us by nature. More
than this: We are conscious of the authority of good
for ourselves. By an underived power of consciousness
we feel that the good embodies an unconditional demand
of reason; the good has a right to command us; the
good, by an authority within itself, compels us to say,
"/ ought. ^' In the moment when we say "I ought ^^
we enter the region of moral responsibility and find
ourselves to possess a variety of powers that affect our

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD I2i

lives and determine our conduct. We find that we have
power to discern between higher and lower affections,
between higher and lower motives, and that while we
may, in experience, obey the lower affection or yield
to the lower motive, we acknowledge in reason the
supremacy of the higher, and are conscious that we
have empirically rejected the claim of good. The effect
upon ourselves of this rejection of the higher in
favour of the lower is to bring discord into consciousness,
a sense of not having done the thing that had the right
to command us, a sense of falsity to our ideal. Yet even
this discord in consciousness may not prevent us from
repeating the act of disloyalty to good, because of the
further fact of consciousness that we have a power of
free choice between conflicting alternatives of conduct,
a power to choose darkness rather than light, to permit
the lower affection to usurp the place of the higher, the
unethical passion to trample upon the ethical ideal.
Such is the nature of moral consciousness; we know
not whether to call it more wonderful, more beautiful,
or more terrible. What is the meaning of this fact?
To what source must we attribute its existence ? It is
not the result of any school of culture, or of any special
creed. It is not the idiosyncrasy of any nation. It
is universal: a birthright of humanity. In untutored
races the sense of right and wrong, the power of the
moral imperative, the concurrence or antagonism of the
will, the discernment of an ideal are present, but in
rudimentary forms. Under the influence of true pro-
gressive culture the scale and plane of ethical culture
are indefinitely raised ; artificial and spurious elements

122 BARROWS LECTURES

are cast out; ideals grow in the lustre of purity; the will
becomes amenable to reason and its choices are invested
with ever higher rationality. Evidently there can be
but one source of ethical consciousness; and that
identical with the source of intellecual consciousness.
In the Common Ground and Source of all phenomena,
in that Universal Intelligence to which we trace the
springs of thought and the secret of knowledge, we shall
also find the fountains of ethical consciousness and the
ultimate heart of God. The involuntary perception
of good and evil by man, his sense of the moral imper-
ative, his conviction of the value of good are the witness
of the soul to the moral character of God in Whom it
lives.

Advancing thus by a process of thought not contra-
dictory to the results of higher Eastern philosophy, the
Christian religion adds to those results supplementary
truths of the richest import to the individual and the
world. The relation of pantheism and Christianity
as supplementary to one another in the world's advance
to an adequate knowledge of God is suggested by the
two members of an early Christian Scripture: "He
that cometh to God must believe that He is and that
He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.'"
It may be said that the mission of pantheism is to assert
the being of God — to make men believe that He is : the
Life of all that lives, the unifying Consciousness in all
souls; and that the mission of Christianity is to assert
the moral character of God, to make men feel that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him — to

I Heb. 1 1 : 6.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 123

teach men the relation of their own moral consciousness
to the moral consciousness of God, the relation of their
wills to the will of God, the nature and extent of their
responsibility in the presence of God. In other words,
pantheism makes clear that God is — Christianity gives
moral effect to that knowledge by making equally clear
what God is. It does so, as the most mature and pro-
found Christian thinking abundantly shows, not by
setting up an imaginary being whom it calls God exte-
rior to man, and arbitrarily decking that being with
such attributes as fancy or ecclesiastical authority may
choose. That has been done, but without satisfaction
to reason; inasmuch as in such a being, arbitrarily
defined by man, there is nothing in the nature of Ulti-
mate Being. Such a God is simply a magnified man,
who must himself be accounted for by causes lying back
of himself. The higher Christian thinking advances
toward an apprehension of God's moral consciousness
by the venerable path hallowed by sages of the East,
the path of introspection. It finds the Moral Character
of God through the deeps of consciousness in man. As
the ocean is beneath all ships, the air beneath all birds,
so is the Infinite Ground of Being beneath all life, the
Source of all life, the Great World-Master, projecting
our finite spirits out of Himself. We are but what He
is. A Christian Scripture says: "As He is, so are we
in this world.'" So man most deeply approaches the
knowledge of God through the witnessings of his own
consciousness. The Pure Reason in man, the power
of philosophical thought, is, in us, the immanence of the

1 1 John 4:17.

124 BARROWS LECTURES

Infinite Life as intellectual force, the partial movement
in the finite of that Infinite Consciousness to which
all hearts are open, all desires known, and from which
no secrets are hid. The Practical Reason in man, the
power of moral judgment, the sense of the absoluteness
and authority of good, the power to discern ideals and
classify motives, is, likewise, in us, the immanence of
the Infinite Life as moral force, the partial movement
in the finite of that Infinite Moral Consciousness which
is the perfection of good, the essence of right, the seat
and habitation of all the beauties of holiness. The
testimonies are absolutely co-ordinate: the testimony
of Pure Reason pointing to God's Being— that He is;
the testimony of Practical Reason, pointing to God's
Character — what He is.

I shall be told that what I am now saying is inadmis-
sible because the expression "What God is" is, by impli-
cation, an assignment of qualities to the Infinite, and
the Infinite cannot be qualified. I should like to speak
to that point for a moment. There is no more interest-
ing example of opposite intellectual tendencies than
that which is furnished by the history of Western and
Eastern thought respectively in the matter of assigning
qualities to the Infinite. The Western mind, actuated
by reverence, feels under obligation to describe God
both in nature and character, on the ground that not to
worship the qualities of God, by specifying them, is
to show lack of appreciation. Urged by this good
motive, the West constantly falls, or is on the verge
of falling, into excess of affirmation touching the nature
of the Infinite and into the fallacy of representing the

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 125

Infinite as perfectly knowable by man. The Eastern
mind, actuated by the same motive of reverence, feels
under obligation to deny the possibility of making any
affirmation touching the Infinite. Urged by this motive
the East constantly falls into the excess of making the
most perilous of all affirmations, namely, the affirma-
tion of positive negation that the Infinite is altogether
unknowable. It is interesting to note the reasons lead-
ing respectively to these opposite views of the Infinite.
The West, with its characteristic sense of personality,
seeks to make God personal in the sense in which man
is personal, in order to show that God and man are one
in the bond of the Divine Love. The East, with its
characteristic sense of Ultimate Being, seeks to exclude
all real personality from God as well as from man, in
order to show that man and God are one according
to the philosophical conception of Ultimate Being.
So long as pantheism and Christianity are placed in
opposition, as mutually exclusive types of thought, it
cannot but appear that in these two views of God we are
confronted by an irreconcilable contradiction. But
let us permit ourselves to recognise in pantheism a
fundamental principle to which Christianity, coming
in the fulness of time, contributes supplementary,
enriching elements, essential to the complete develop-
ment of religion. Then the two views of God which,
taken separately, develope contradictory results, are
found, when brought into relation, to produce one har-
monious result, of the greatest richness and power.
The excesses on either side drop away, and the two
norms of thought perfectly supplement each other.

126 BARROWS LECTURES

The pantheistic norm establishes and conserves the
unsearchableness of the Divine Essence, which is a
shoreless, soundless ocean of Being. The Christian
norm, breaking from crude deistic notions of an external
God, finds in the immanence of the Absolute within
man himself, as the Ground of consciousness, moral
distinctions and qualities in an ascending scale of ideal-
istic suggestion. Of these no explanation can be given
except that they are manifestations in the sphere of the
finite of an Infinite Moral Consciousness, which is
externally present in that ocean of Ultimate Being, in
a sense transcending human power to know or to ima-
gine. We may speak of " God's Will," " God's Mind,"
"God's Thought," but those terms are mere terms of
necessity, which, in our finitude, we use to indicate that
of which we can form no other than a figurative con-
ception. We cannot know, we cannot imagine what
will, mind, thought are in the shoreless, soundless ocean
of Ultimate Being. We cannot know, we cannot ima-
gine what character and ethical purpose are in the In-
finite Moral Consciousness. So speaks the Bible: "For
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than
your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'"
Man knows only, by the moral imperative in his own
soul, and by the ethical ideals which rise higher as he him-
self ascends in true culture, that these witnessings within
himself of the Universal Mind are projected out of the
inconceivable depths of Infinite Moral Consciousness.

I Isa. 55 : 8, 9.

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 127

As we compare and measure these ethical ideals,
from the view-point of our highest culture, eliminating
those that are temporary, accidental, local, or, in any
sense the fruit of ignorance, retaining those that are
universal and enduring, we find one that rises above
all others, gathering into itself the permanent elements
of others but ascending higher. We call it love. I
do not mean sentimental, erotic affection, which is a
thing so different and so readily amalgamated with
evil that one would gladly give it another and less
exalted name in English, even as it has another name
in Greek. Love, as the highest ideal of moral conscious-
ness, is unmingled with, uncontaminated by, erotic
affection.^ It lives in an atmosphere free from egoistic
passion. Its beauty is the beauty of holiness; its pas-
sion is the passion of self-renunciation ; its sphere is not
selective and preferential individualism, setting up one
above all others; its sphere is the universal life of man.
When, from the plane of highest culture, we look within
ourselves, if we find this love we know it as our best.
We bow to it as that having the supreme right to com-
mand us. Obedience to this love means abolition of
selfishness, dethroning of pride, discarding of unethical
ambitions. Obedience to this love means patience
toward the weak, compassion toward the erring, sym-
pathy for the ignorant, tenderness for the sorrowing.
Obedience to this love means participation in the uni-
versal life, reverence for all men, faith in humanity.

' In making these observations I of Oxford in his Bampton Lectures

am not unmindful of a contrary on the Christian Platonists of Alex-

opinion regarding the two Greek andria. Cf. Introduction, pp. 9, 10

words expressed by Professor Bigg (ed. Oxford, 1886).

128 BARROWS LECTURES

What then is the message of this highest fact in our
moral consciousness, this ideal that witnesses within,
above all other ideals as the best we know ? The Chris-
tian religion teaches us to interpret this fact. As this
love is the most commanding fact among all the facts
of our moral consciousness, which, in their totality,
constitute the immanence of the Spirit of the Absolute
in ourselves; as this love suggests and inspires the
highest ethical ideals that we have power to entertain,
and perpetually convinces us that it has the greatest
absolute value among all things that we have power to
know, we therefore conclude that it is a suggestion of
the most central fact in the Moral Consciousness of
Ultimate Being. I say a suggestion. It is that only.
We, of ourselves, cannot conceive what love is in the
Moral Consciousness of God, even as we, of ourselves,
cannot conceive what thought is in the Intellectual
Consciousness of God. Yet, guided by the witness
of the soul in us, that is, guided by that within us which
is projected out of the Infinite Moral Consciousness,
we say, knowing well what we mean, up to the limit of
our intelligence, ''God is Love."

I have just said that we, of ourselves, have no power
to conceive what love is in the Moral Consciousness
of God. That must be true. I will agree with any
pantheist as to the inconceivability of the Divine Con-
sciousness by the human mind. "God only knows the
love of God," said a great English hymn-writer. But
that fact does not operate to defeat a purpose of the
Infinite to enter the sphere of our moral consciousness
in order to disclose His nature and His purpose out-

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 129

wardly, even as the Infinite is ever in the sphere of our
consciousness, disclosing Himself inwardly in our power
of reason and conscience. We may not go to Him,
but He can come to us, and add to the inward aspira-
tions and hopes of our moral consciousness an outward
confirmation of those aspirations and hopes, given in
the way that we can understand most easily, that is to
say, in an Incarnate Life.

The line of thought which we have pursued this
evening started in the fundamental ground of pantheism.
It has led us into a region of thought not contradictory
but supplementary to that fundamental ground. We
have advanced from the Being of the Infinite to the
Character of the Infinite, making our way thereto along
the sacred path of introspection, looking into the depths
of our own moral consciousness, reading in those depths
suggestions of the Nature and Essence of God. We
are brought now to a question of fact. Has God given
any outward confirmation of those beliefs and hopes
concerning Himself which man, through the ethical
witnessings of his own soul, ventures to entertain ? As
we cannot know what God's Moral Essence is, save
as we infer it through the moral imperative in ourselves,
because of the inconceivability of the Absolute, has
there at any time issued from that inconceivable Abso-
lute, as a Son coming forth from the bosom of a Father,
as a Word uttered in the language of humanity, as an
Interpreter of the secrets of ^the Divine Intelligence,
an outward revelation of that which is affirmed by our
inward sense? The Christian religion is the answer
to this question: the double answer of history and

130 BARROWS LECTURES

experience. Its answer of history is the fact, the pur-
pose, and the work of Christ in the past. Its answer
of experience is the place and the power of Christ in
the moral consciousness of the present. The consid-
eration of this double answer will occupy my next lec-
ture on the Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the Christian
Religion. In beginning the present lecture I expressed
the conviction that it is inadequate to consider the
Christian religion in any light that excludes the Divinity
of Christ. This conviction I repeat in closing, as I turn
once more to you, my Eastern brethren, and reflect
upon your power to interpret that mystical Divinity
of the Living Word, as it may be given you to assimilate
its meaning in your own consciousness. How strong,
how clear, how sufficing, seem the probability and
reasonableness of Christ's essential Divinity when we
think of the requirements of our own moral conscious-
ness and when we think of holy love as the central
Essence of the Infinite. We have in ourselves, as the
outcome and projection of the immanent Spirit of God,
this power of ethical discernment. We know good and
evil. We know the authority of good. We hear the
unconditional demand of the moral imperative. We
recognise the supremacy of higher affections over lower
affections. We can grasp high ideals. Ah! who shall
show us the highest ? Who shall speak with authority
to our variable consciousness, and summon it to per-
manent rational commitment to the best ? We cannot
obtain this great boon from one another, for each is
like the other. There is none among the sons of men
that can speak with universal authority in his own

WITNESS OF THE SOUL TO GOD 131

name. Who shall give us this boon of the best, if it
be not that Infinite Good of Whose nature we partake ?
Must there not come from that Infinite a Revealing
Presence to Whom we can go confidently and Who
shall say to us absolutely, "I am the Way, the Truth,
and the Life" ? But there is in our moral consciousness
a bitter need, as well as a great potency. We have a
will that sets at naught the soul's ideal; that scruples
not to pay homage to the temptations of sense and
to contest the moral imperative. Who shall deliver
us from the schism and anarchy that are within us?
Who shall lift us out of moral obliquity and blindness ?
Who shall purge our corrupt affections? Who shall
rescue us from the curse of untruth in our spirit ? Who
shall convict us of sin ? Who shall create in us a
clean heart and renew a right spirit within us ? Can
we do this for each other? We try — as priests, as
teachers, as brothers — but it is external. We cannot
reach the inward source of trouble. He only can be
our Helper, our Saviour, Who comes not in the power
of an earthly commandment, but in the power of an
endless life, out of the depths of God. If that ideal of
love, which in ourselves we discern, be a suggestion
of the very Essence of God, love that is patient toward
the weak, compassionate toward the erring, sym-
pathetic toward the ignorant, tender toward the sor-
rowful ; love that enters into the Universal Life, rever-
ences all men, has faith in humanity, if that be a
suggestion of the central Essence of the inconceivable
Godhead, then, though we cannot know that love in
its shoreless, soundless depths, we may be sure that it

132 BARROWS LECTURES

has not failed us, but has spoken, in a Word that we
can understand.

So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too —

So, through the thunder comes a human Voice

Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!

Face, my hands fashioned, see it in Myself!

Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of Mine,

But Love I gave thee, with Myself to love.

And thou must love Me, Who have died for thee!'"'

I BROw^fING, " An Epistle."

LECTURE FIVE

THE DISTINCTIVE MORAL GRANDEUR OF THE
CHRISTIAN RELIGION

Great religions, like great men, have strongly marked
distinctions, whereby each is set apart from others. An
eminent modern student of Greek civilisation finds
that the religion of Greece in the fifth century before
Christ was a religion of joy. ''It was a happy religion,"
he says, "not dealing much with supernatural terrors,
but identifying feasts and their pleasures with the wor-
ship of deities. Exuberant joy, even including disso-
lute pleasures, was included in the religious celebrations
of these people. The joys of Greek religion were many
and intense, its sadness and solemnity were long kept
in the background."' Joy, then, was the distinction of
Greek religion. If one were to ask for a distinction
whereby the Christian religion is set apart from others,
it might be said in reply that it is a religion of character.
Many other attributes attach themselves to this religion.
It is also a religion of joy, although of joy conceived,
related, and experienced otherwise than in Greek
religion. Of the Christian, as of the Greek, it may be
said, '' its joys are many and intense." It is a religion of
beauty. The faculty of aesthetic judgment is highly
developed in the Christian religion. It is sensitive to
the beautiful: the beautiful in God; in the projections

' Cf. J. p. Mahaffy, D.D., tion (ed. London, Macmillan, 1897),
D.C.L., A Survey 0} Greek Civilisa- p. 105.

133

134 BARROWS LECTURES

of God's Being that make the world of Nature; in
man, the most wonderful of those projections; in man's
relationships and attainments, domestic love, literature,
art, science; in the world of ideals, justice, mercy, truth,
worship. The beauty of these is appreciated in the
Christian religion; "its joys, many and intense," spring
largely from this source. It is also a religion of con-
templation; having knowledge as its goal. Its ritual
elements are least important. It is essentially a religion
of the spirit; its altar is in the soul; its incense is
thought ; its final law, obedience to the heavenly vision ;
its goal of life, knowledge of the Godhead manifested
in Christ. "This," said the Lord, "is Life Eternal,
that they might know Thee the only true God, and
Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent."' It is, finally, a
religion of action. The Infinite Godhead is the Foun-
tain of energy, producing innumerable forms and modes
of life, beneath all of which It is the Ground Sub-
stance. The Christian religion is full of energy proceed-
ing from this Source, finding vent in action. "My
Father worketh hitherto," said the Lord, " and I work." ^
Contemplation prepares for, and issues in, action. By
contemplation the heavenly vision is discerned; by
action it is obeyed, through the doing of God's will on
earth as it is done in heaven.

Joy, beauty, contemplation, action are impressive
attributes, yet of no one of them may it be said that it is
the distinction of the Christian religion, setting it apart
from others. Beneath these several attributes is one
unifying principle which is that distinction and by

I John 17:3. 3 John 5:17.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 135

virtue of which joy, beauty, contemplation, action take
on new and high significance. The Christian religion
is a religion of character. By this is meant that its
special function is to contemplate God on the moral
side of being in terms of the ethical ideal ; and to inter-
pret life in terms of righteousness and duty.

There is found in Christianity, as I have explained,
much that is in other religions. With joy I have pointed
out that toward some important postulates of pantheistic
thought, the attitude of the Christian religion is not con-
tradictory; it is supplementary. But I wish to make
myself clearly understood as defining the sense in which
the Christian religion supplements man's earlier reli-
gious experience. There is an external sense, as when
we add one number to another, or set one object by the
side of another. There is an internal sense, as when we
introduce a principle which works as a transforming
element, recombining pre-existing material of conscious-
ness and giving thereto new meaning and value. In the
latter sense Christianity supplements pantheism; not
by external addition of dogmas and precepts, but by
introduction of a principle involving contemplation of
God and interpretation of life, that gives new meaning
to each and joins both in unity, not of passive existence
alone, but of active purpose. If I may use an illustra-
tion proposed by another: ''The new element which
Christianity has introduced into the thought of the
world transforms, elevates, works a fundamental change
in all the previous materials of religious knowledge. It
takes up these materials into itself, but it takes them up
as the plant takes up air and earth and moisture and

136 BARROWS LECTURES

light, or as the living body takes up the matter which
constitutes its food — not transferring them wholesale,
but by its inward organic chemistry, subduing, disinte-
grating, reconstructing all that it receives into similitude
with its own nature."' The purpose of my lecture is
to consider this new element which Christianity has
introduced into the thought of the world. I am to
speak of "The Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the
Christian Religion" — the religion of character. By
using this expression I am far from intending to imply
that the ethical element is not present in other religions.
My purpose is to show that in Christianity (considered
in its pure essence) the ethical is brought into such
fundamental relation with the metaphysic of the religion,
and is placed in such primacy of influence as the central
principle around which the entire Christian Conscious-
ness is organised, that it does in fact amount to a new
element introduced into the thought of the world. We
look for the ethical, and find it in all religions. Its
presence is necessary because moral consciousness is a
fact of human life. Wherever man is, there is the poten-
tial sense of right and wrong, welling up into his life
from that Infinite Moral Consciousness out of which he
springs. Both the grade and degree of ethical expres-
sion found in any religion or individual depend on the
extent to which culture of the ethical sense has taken
place. Where this culture is most deficient, the moral
quality in religion is rudimentary and of little impor-
tance. Where culture of the ethical sense is most mature,

' C/. Principal Caird, The (ed. Glasgow, James Maclehose &
Fundamental Ideas 0} Christianity Son, 1899), Vol. I, pp. 21, 22.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 137

the value of the moral element in religion rises to high
power. If the culture of the ethical sense were com-
plete, the moral element in religion would be supreme;
religion would become the interpretation of righteous-
ness. The distinction of the Christian religion is that
it puts the ethical first ; it makes it a condition as well as
a result of the higher knowledge of God. "The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the
knowledge of the Holy One is understanding,"' "Fol-
low peace with all men and holiness, without which no
man shall see the Lord."^ "Why call ye me Lord,
Lord, and do not the things which I say?"^ "Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."'^ In con-
sequence of this primacy of the ethical, the Christian
religion takes up into itself, invests with new meaning,
adapts to new ends, the several attributes which appear
as the distinctions of other religions. Joy, in a religion
where the ethical is less prized than the emotional, might
mean the effect of self-indulgent pleasures, or even, as
was the case in old Greek religion, the egoistic excite-
ment of dissolute pursuits. In a religion of character
where the ethical takes rank above all other interests,
joy means pure and exquisite elevation of the soul pro-
duced by conformity to an ideal of righteousness. It is
not a lesser but a greater interpretation of joy. Joy
sought through self-indulgence and at the cost of right
rends the unity of consciousness and, after the force of
excitement is spent, gives place to affliction, discontent,
disgust. Joy produced by self -fulfilment in righteous-

' Prov. 9: 10. 3 Luke 6:46.

2 Heb. 12:14. 4 Matt. 5:8.

138 BARROWS LECTURES

ness, by obedience to a heavenly vision, by choice of
light as against darkness, by unification of life in God,
is a tree whose fruitage of delight is perpetual, a well
whose sweet water cannot fail. In God's presence there
is fulness of joy, at His right hand there are pleasures for
evermore.' Beauty, in a religion where the sensuous is
prized above the ethical, might mean devotion to the
external; worship of form, deification of physical in-
stinct. In a religion of character the soul's interest lies
within the veil of the unseen, amidst correspondences of
thought and purpose with eternal facts of God's moral
consciousness. Ideals of beauty appear before it,
possessing a charm that exterior forms may suggest but
cannot supply. The heaven of righteousness opens to
the soul's eye, disclosing the fascination of wisdom.
The fashion of the sensuous passes; the beauty of good-
ness, founded in reality, remains the same yesterday, and
to-day, and for ever. Contemplation, in a religion where
the metaphysic of Being is the all-absorbing object, be-
comes an intellectual end in itself. By the esoteric
doctrine of an incorruptible soul, distinct from mind
and will, the seed of the Absolute in the finite, without
thought, purpose, active sin, or holiness, there is attain-
ment of concentration but loss of development. The
witness to the Infinite in the moral consciousness is
disregarded; the expansion of personality on the side
of efficiency is sacrificed; the forceful play of qualities
trained for life's work in the school of prayer and experi-
ence is resigned in favour of a metaphysical destiny.
In a religion of character contemplation is not rejected

^C/. Ps. 16:11.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 139

but carried up to a higher power. Without guilty pre-
sumption it undertakes to gaze upon the wholeness of
the Infinite; not, indeed, with any hope of complete dis-
covery, but because of inward compulsion. It cannot
otherwise think of God than as the Source of man's
whole life, moral as well as intellectual ; therefore Him-
self the Ideal of Character as well as the Fount of Being.
Contemplation becomes not a metaphysical end, at-
tained by isolation from moral distinctions, but an
ethical means making for godlikeness. The contempla-
tive life, discerning, through Christ's interpretation of
the same, the modes of an ideal righteousness, reflects
as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and, ultimately, is
changed into the same image. Action, in a religion
where ritual performance has become a more pressing
imperative than moral attainment, always tends to
externalise God; to make Him a being like ourselves
standing apart from us and receiving our acts of homage.
The history of religion shows that the tendency of igno-
rance is to adopt religions whose distinction is action,
the doing of ritual deeds, the performance of a round of
ceremonialism prescribed by authority. Possibly von
Hartmann is right when he describes this as "a mechan-
ical religious cultus which is the easiest and the most
empty of ideas.'" It may be this under certain circum-
stances; a pathetic resort of ignorance and supersti-
tion, because its complete externalism can be followed
easily by such as have not learned to think. Yet it must
be said also that not alone to ignorance and superstition
does there appear attraction in a religion that sets

I C/. Religion of the Future, p. 99.

I40 BARROWS LECTURES

ritual performance above moral attainment. There are
reasons other than ignorance, that dissuade us from
looking within ourselves. When the soul has not bowed
in allegiance to the claim of righteousness, nor sought
to bring the desires of the flesh under control of a higher
law of good, a religion of action offers escape from the
rebuke of conscience. We attempt to palliate wrong in
the soul by busUy fulfilling acts that bear the name
of religion yet make light demands on our reflective
powers. We attempt to propitiate God by making clean
the outward way of conduct, while the inward way of
thought remains uncleansed. A religion of character
believes in action, but only as expressing moral purpose,
inspired by vision of God. "Cast out first," says Christ,
" the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see
clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."^
Pious actions, gifts, sacrifices are, in the code of a reli-
gion of character, without value save as they are preceded
and accompanied by an inward unifying of thought and
purpose with the most pure and true that we know.
"Thou delightest not in sacrifice, else would I give it:
Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering. The sacri-
fices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite
heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.'"* When this
inward unifying of thought with the ethical ideal takes
place in a religion of character, the whole field of action
is flooded with sacred light. There remains no funda-
mental distinction between holy and common action,
for all actions are made holy by the pure moral purpose
in which they are done. The body, as well as the mind,

I Matt. 7:5. 2 Ps. 51:16, 17.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 141

becomes a temple of God. All days, places, estates of
life are unified and dignified by one central purpose of
good, commanding the rational soul. Life itself be-
comes blessed through the all-consecrating power of its
ideal. As of old in Greece, over the gateway of the
beautiful temple of Epidaurus, was inscribed: "He
that would enter the fragrant shrine must be pure, and
purity is to think holy things,'" so, over the temple
gate of our earthly life, the religion of character sets
these words: "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."^

By these examples, in several relations of joy, beauty,
contemplation, and action, I have sought to show how
a religion of character, through establishing the primacy
of the ethical, may be said to introduce a new element
into the thought of the world and, in that sense, to sup-
plement the earlier religious experience of man. Hav-
ing reached this point, we find ourselves in the presence
of a question larger and more fundamental. Wherein
consists the Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the Christian
Religion ? If the distinction of the Christian religion is
in the fact of its being a religion of character, from what
source does it obtain that distinction ? The importance
of a distinction is judged by what lies at the back of it ;
the distinction of wealth by substance and extent of
fortune on which it is based ; the distinction of military
fame by deeds and achievements on record ; the distinc-
tion of scholarship by thoroughness of training and
intellectual work; the distinction of moral authority by

I Noted by Clement of Alexan- Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1886),
dria, Strom., V, I, 13. See also p. 92.
Bigg, Christian Platonists (ed. = I Cor. 10:31.

142 BARROWS LECTURES

the source whence it issues. It is sometimes understood
by members of other rehgions (and I think not unnatu-
rally) that the distinction of the Christian religion as a
religion of character is supposed by its disciples to rest
on their own achievements, on churchly institutions,
on the civilisation of the West, on theological tradition,
on ecclesiastical authority, or on general assumptions
of superiority. But those of my learned hearers who
have done me the honour to follow my lectures to this
point have observed that my position is precisely oppo-
site to that implied in any such assumptions of supe-
riority. I do not disparage the religious institutions of
the West when I say that the strongest and best of them
could furnish but an insecure foundation for so unique
and vast a structure as the Christian religion. The fair
city of San Francisco tottered and fell upon the quaking
ground beneath her; so had Christianity long since
sunk in ruins if her foundation had been the institutions,
dogmas, tradition, or prestige of a single group of na-
tions. Not to any of these do we turn, or dream of turn-
ing in our search for the sources whence arose this
religion of character. It made the ethical interest su-
preme by evolving it from the most mystical sources. It
drew that interest forth from the most abstruse and
ancient consciousness of the pre-historic world, gathering
its essence more and more into the similitude of person-
ality, until, in the fulness of time it appeared among us,
my brethren, incarnate in the Man of men ; and a Voice
declared: ''Thou shalt call His Name Jesus, for it is He
that shall save His people from their sins.'"

I Matt. 1:21.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 143

Again and again, in the course of these lectures, I
have called for your co-operation as Orientals, sub-
limely gifted with powers to discern truth lying beneath
the surface of things, I have asked that you shall give me
your loving fellowship of spirit, as I, with all the limita-
tions of my Western life upon me, save that my heart
beats with yours, have attempted to trace the mystery
of godliness, to describe the Witness of God in the Soul
and the Witness of the Soul to God. At no point have
I so desired your fellowship as now, when I essay to
speak of the unfolding upon earth of the religion of
character. Whence came it that a faith, whose central
principle is the primacy of the ethical, arose in the earth
and entered into the experience of our race ? St. John in
his Gospel speaks of new lives of enlightenment which
were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God. ' We must admit, con-
cerning the Christian religion, that it was born not of
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. It was not
planned in the councils of power, nor promulgated by
earthly authority. He Who appeared as its Repre-
sentative and Interpreter was despised and rejected of
men, a M^-n of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The
immediate range of His influence, during the earthly
ministry, was limited. The importance of what He was
communicating to the world was understood by few
and by those, until their full enlightenment came, but
in part. When, as the result of His ideals and teachings,
He was swept to death on a wave of envy and malice, it
seemed that one more child of light had disappeared in

I C/. John 1:12, 13.

144 BARROWS LECTURES

the world's dark ocean of sorrow. But that deep engulf-
ment of His Life marked the beginning of His Glory.
Death could not detain Him. It was not possible that
He should be holden of it. With His rising again evi-
dence began to accumulate, evidence still accumulating
after two thousand years, and silently extending into
every part of the known earth, that in His Person a new
element entered into the life of the world, "transforming
and working a fundamental change in all the previous
materials of religious knowledge." That element is
the Religion of Character. As I discuss to-night before
you the moral authority of this religion, I do so, if I am
capable of knowing my own mind, as one approaching
the subject from the outside. I put aside my training
within this religion, my Christian ancestry, my Chris-
tian country, my Christian tradition, as matters irrele-
vant to the conditions in which I find myself at this
moment. The only personal feeling of which I make
no attempt to divest myself is that of affectionate desire
to win to the thoughtful study of this religion of char-
acter men who by their profound acquaintance with the
religion of Being are prepared to assimilate whatever
may supplement, enrich, and expand that primary postu-
late of consciousness. I have before me as data for my
problem the general religious consciousness of the world
and its philosophical significance. I have the specific
history of Christian experience as an ethical knowledge
of God realised through Christ. I have the historic fact
of Jesus Christ (a fact, the authenticity of which no
longer is questioned). I have the Bible, with interpre-
tations of the significance of Christ's Nature given by

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 145

men who came most immediately under His power.
Last of all I have myself, with the independent, invol-
untary witness of my own moral consciousness to what
this religion of character tends to accomplish in my life,
so far as I submit to its power. All of this is as open to
you as to me. Let us share it together, as friends and
companions in the search for truth. Permit me to tell
you what answer I seem to receive, when I approach
this new element that has come into the life of the world,
this religion that interprets all things in terms of the
ethical sense, and ask of it whence it has arisen. It is
too great a phenomenon readily to be accounted for.
The signs of external greatness which have attached
themselves in the course of time are the least significant
and the least important. From them I would with-
draw your eyes that I may fix them on other and better
things. I would not have you to suppose that, when I
speak of the greatness of the Christian religion, I mean
greatness in the worldly sense, splendour of buildings,
sumptuous ceremonialism, far-reaching sway of author-
ity, pomps and dignities of office. These are things
that nationalise religion ; that give to it the appearance
of a Western cult ; that disincline the mind of the East
from serious thought concerning it. I am speaking of
a greatness that is not of this world, that transcends
all outward forms and reveals itself through modes of
the Spirit.

When I approach this phenomenon, the religion of
character, which has power to cause man's active reli-
gious consciousness to pass through the lens of an
ethical ideal and thus to be changed from colourless

146 BARROWS LECTURES

meditation upon Being into vivid forms of moral expe-
rience, I find that I am investigating a power whose
sources are many and profound. For the satisfaction
of my spirit I ask. Whence has it arisen, on what does
it depend ? It answers : He who would apprehend the
Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the Christian Religion
must first consider the nature of man, the nature of God,
and the need of a religion of character in the world.
He must then consider the life purpose of Jesus Christ ;
the power of Jesus Christ in the Christian Consciousness ;
and the Divinity of Jesus Christ as the Revelation of the
Heart of God.

I do not deem it inappropriate that, at certain points,
my lecture should take on the form of autobiography and
become for the moment a record of personal experience.
Every man, accustomed to reflection, finds the higher
interests of religion to be personal ; not exterior to him-
self but pressing themselves home to the inner life of
consciousness and sub-consciousness. So long as religion
signifies chiefly external fulfilment of ritual, submission
to outward authority, or worship of outward objects, our
knowledge of its reality is scarcely begun; we are yet
babes in spiritual discernment, whose life is in the
limited realm of sensory impressions, not yet having
entered the broad inheritance of the Spirit. That there
is a measure of satisfaction in the religion of the external
is obvious, even as the babe has its own type and
measure of happiness, in watching shadows dance upon
the floor, or gazing on the gaily coloured toy in its hand.
In each case it is the satisfaction of incompleteness.
The babe is delighted with the play of sensory impres-

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 147

sions, because its powers of reflection have not yet
come to self-consciousness and made their demand for
recognition. The complacent worshipper of the exter-
nal is content, because the development of the soul
is unequal. Ignorant alike of its greater needs and
powers, he becomes a man in years but remains a child
in knowledge. Let the soul verily awake, arise from
dreams and plays of an inchoate consciousness to
mature reflection; let it take note of its own deep self-
hood and consider unimaginable longings put forth by
perceptions and affinities buried in its sub-conscious
life. Thus, coming to itself, it demands a religion
which shall not be completed in outward ritual or sacri-
fice, but in "the immediate feeling of a sympathetic
Divine Presence." It matters not whether a man have
behind him an ancestry Hindu, Mohammedan, or
Christian. Traditions, however great or good, cannot
take the place of experience, after our reflective powers
have awakened. One by one, each in his own way, we
seek God and are found of Him. I have had the purest
Christian ancestry, through many generations. As a
child, its mild momentum, like a soft-flowing stream,
bore me unresisting in the current of Christian observ-
ances. But when I became a man, the voice of a deeper
self spoke within me, refusing to be silenced by my
vague efforts to submit to the conventional and to be-
lieve as others believed. When, thinking to satisfy that
protesting voice, I appealed to the external as it stretched
back into the past — my Christian ancestry, the Church,
the word of authority, the continuity of Christian experi-
ence— my reflecting self told me that in all these there

148 BARROWS LECTURES

could be no final authority for me, save in those elements
that might be verified and assimilated in my own moral
consciousness. When, seeking firmer ground, I ap-
pealed to the external as it lay around me in the world
of contemporary thought, I found only confusion and
the strife of tongues. Many, absorbed in materialistic
theory, were questioning the validity of the unseen.
Many, active in criticism, were demonstrating by ap-
peals to history the need of formidable reconstructions
in the philosophy and history of religion. Many, loyal
to great traditional inheritances, were seeking to cover
them from assaults of scholarship. Many, "lacking
the real historical sense and psychological understand-
ing in handling religious problems,'" were applying to
the Christian Scriptures and to the religious conscious-
ness of early Christianity a form of rationalistic test that
completely antagonised faith in the Divinity of Christ.
It was evident to my reflecting self that I need expect no
voice from the uproar of clamouring tongues with a
final message of authority; that I need look for no
teacher to emerge from the throng of disputants and
give, by some magical word of certainty, appeasement
to my doubts and fears. I knew at last that I must go
within myself, bearing thither all the gains of study, all
the fruits of experience, all the conflicting opinions of
men. I knew that I must retire to the inner sanctuary
of soul-consciousness; where, for each one of us, did
we but know, is the secret place of the Most High, the
shadow of the Almighty. I knew that I must meditate,

I Cf. Pfleiderer, Christian Ori- Ph.D.; ed. London, n. d., T. Fisher
gins (transl. by D. A. Huebsch, Unwin), Introd., p. 12.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 149

and wait, and watch, and pray, until a Power not myself
should collect, organise, unify, interpret, and fill with
life diffused impressions of a supreme reality as yet
ungrasped; until that Power should tell me the secret
of the Christian religion and bring me to the peace of
God, which is the Truth. Long years of waiting fol-
lowed years of indeterminate experience, as of a spirit
moving about in worlds unrealised ; years of self-contra-
diction in practise, because of vagueness in philosophy;
years of incomplete perception of the basis of ethical
reality. But they were years of growth, even as they
were years of the great patience and mercy of God. If
they have borne any fruitage of reality, it is that which
I bring to you. I am here, as you well know, not pre-
suming, in a spirit of pride, to teach you, who in many
ways could teach me. The deep secret of the Christian
religion cannot be taught externally, by one to another.
No one man, nor any number of men, can project, by
force of authority or weight of argument, into another's
heart this sense of having found, through the religious
consciousness, a basis of ethical reality upon which all
one's personal life and all the life of the world may at
last be unified. The things of the Spirit are spiritually
discerned. But sometimes there is a power of sugges-
tion in testimony founded on experience, and therefore
I am here. Speaking wholly in the spirit of suggestion,
may I now indicate the steps that should be taken, and
the objects that should be considered, by one seeking
in the Christian religion, as a religion of character, a
basis of ethical reality ?

The starting-point is one's self. Wonderful is the

150 BARROWS LECTURES

fascination of the study of self. Thousands of years
ago a great Hebrew lyric was written, in which the poet,
after acknowledging the glories of nature, concludes
that the supreme wonder of existence is man.

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the
moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that
Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man that Thou visitest
him ? For Thou hast made him but little lower than God, and
crownest him with glory and honour.^

The seers of pantheism studied the Absolute through
the study of the self and wrought out a philosophy of
Being which, directly or indirectly, by acceptance or
rejection, has affected the entire philosophical thinking
of the world. It is, as I need not explain to this cul-
tured audience, the philosophy of absolute idealism,
which identifies the finite self with the Universal Self;
making man and God one. Upon the basis laid down
in pantheism has occurred, as I have already pointed
out, further research into the mystery of the self. The
attempt to fathom the secret of its being is now paralleled
by the effort to discern the modes and qualities of its
nature; to comprehend, that is to say, not only the
existence of the self but its character. Lying evidently
upon the surface of the self we find action, conduct,
innumerable multitudes of deeds and words. Wonder-
ful are these results and products of selfhood, considered
in their relation to the world. We stand amazed before
the potential influence of deeds and words. Many of
them are, of necessity, shortlived and apparently unim-
portant; others carry with them incalculable and ever-

'Ps. 8:3-5.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 151

lasting effects. Deeds, wrought by a single self, or by a
few of these mysterious selves in co-operation, have
changed the face of the world. Words, spoken ages
ago, live and speak to-day, thrilling the souls of the
living. Beneath the deeds and words of the self we
find thought, with all varied equipments of the intellect :
perception, reason, judgment, memory, consciousness,
self-knowledge. Who can describe in adequate words
this subtle, delicate, and beauteous gift of thought ; this
well of living water springing up within the mind ; this
eagle of mentality spreading broad pinions to soar to the
heights or fly to the ends of the world; this garden of
beauty, producing flowers more lovely than lilies and
amaranths; this torch, kindled in the fire of eternal
wisdom, to give lights of knowledge to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death. But when we
have taken note of action and thought, there remains a
region of the self separable in theory, if not in fact, from
other elements of the mind ; appearing to extend down
toward those depths of which I have spoken in a former
lecture, the depths of the sub-conscious life. There,
where the calculable and definite processes of thought
broaden out toward infinity, where thoughts that can be
put into words mingle with those "that break through lan-
guage and escape," we discern in the self two elements,
the foundations of which are planted too deep in Ulti-
mate Being to be explored fully by reason : I mean the
will and the ethical element. Will is the power of initia-
tive ; the power of choice ; the executive. It reacts con-
tinually upon thought, producing decisions and their
volitional effects. How the will acts I know not; in

152 BARROWS LECTURES

what manner it lays hold of thought, reacts upon feeling,
accomplishes choice, I know not. We must agree with
von Hartmann:

The laboratory of volition is hidden in the Unconscious; we
can only get to see the finished result, and then only at the moment
when it in fact comes to practical application. The glances that
we throw into that laboratory never reveal those unconscious
depths of the soul where occur the reaction of the will on motives
and its passage into definite volition.^

In that solemn depth the will is not alone. There
also is the ethical sense — the intuition of right. As, in
the Old Testament story, there walked with the three
that were thrown for conscience' sake into the furnace
of fire, a fourth, having the similitude of the Son of God,""
so, in that lowest crucible of the soul, where fiery motives
play upon the will and solicit its reaction, there is another
element present, having the simUtude of eternal right-
eousness. In my last lecture I dwelt upon the ethical
element in consciousness. It is the capacity of moral
distinction, the power to discern good and evil. It is
the sense of the value of good ; the authority of good for
ourselves ; its right to command us, to compel us to say,
"I ought."

I Philosophy of the Unconscious, still more remote from our conscious-

Vol. I, p. 263. Cj. also the observa- ness and the sublimated ego of pure

tion of VON Hartmann {op. cit., p. self-consciousness than anything else

264): "This inmost care of the indi- in us. We can most easily get to

vidual soul, whose efHux is the char- know this deepest core of ourselves

acter; that most strictly practical in the same way as we come to know

ego of the human being, to which that of other men, namely, by infer-

one reckons desert and guilt, and ences from action."
ascribes responsibility; this peculiar ^ ^, y^ ,

essence, which we ourselves are, is

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 153

The self is not one but many. Every man feels it
within him, and, looking into his brother's eyes, beholds
it there also. It matters not where he looks: at the
brother by blood, born of the same mother; at the
brother by tribe and by race, sharing the same tradi-
tions; or at the stranger, the alien, with whom he deems
himself to have nothing in common. Let him look
where he may, always a self looks back at him in return.
Whether he will or no, as the other eyes meet his, in
friendship, hatred, or indifference; in knowledge, igno-
rance, purity, or sin; the self is there, disguised, con-
cealed, perverted, or confessed. Never have I had this
borne in upon me with such startling clearness as in the
Oriental world. My selfhood pierces through the veil,
woven of a thousand strands of difference, and meets on
the other side the answering eyes of a similar elemental
self. So we conclude that these many selves are one;
that they are not isolated facts of being, appearing
fortuitously like motes in a sunbeam. They are differ-
entiated indeed into self-contained responsible person-
alities, yet are they nevertheless one in tlie Common
Ground and Source of their being. The ocean enters the
land by ten thousand inlets, each distinct in itself and
marked by its own environment, yet all are one in that
all are filled by one inrush of a single tide. A boat may
pass from inlet to inlet because upborne by a common
element that enters all. So the innumerable selves that
open like inlets to receive the common tide of an undif-
ferentiated ocean of life are many yet one. Many, in
that each stands in its own environment and flows in its
own channel; one, in that one tide from a shoreless,

154 BARROWS LECTURES

soundless sea of life flows and ebbs within their finite
channels. Because of that one tide of immanent life,
thoughts and feelings, intellectual and moral affinities,
relationships of the spirit pass and repass, speak and
answer, enter and return.

As we ponder this mystery: the oneness in diversity
of the innumerable selves; the monism in pluralism,
which is, I believe, the most adequate and rational inter-
pretation of personality, reached either by philosophy
or religion, we are led toward a conception of the nature
of God in its relation to the nature of man.

Monism [says Picton] may take as many forms as Spinoza's
infinite substance, and we need not commit ourselves to any one
of them. But so far as it stands for a devout faith that all things
are ultimately one, not many — and still less two — we may safely
regard it as the irreversible tendency of all the best thought of the
world. ^

With these words I find myself in hearty sympathy,
although far from agreement with the conclusions
reached by the author touching the Person of Christ and
the survival of personality after death. We perceive that
God is not a Being isolated from man, but a Source from
Whose depth man is projected, toward Whose depths
man's nature tends as the tidal river toward the parent
sea. Because of this there are marvellous intimations
of the nature of Divinity in the elemental consciousness
of man. There is a sense of infiniteness that accom-
panies the action of his mind ; a suggestion of an ideal
righteousness that plays like the glittering path of

I C/. J. Allanson Picton, The Religion o) the Universe (London,
Macmillan, 1904), p. 136.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 155

moonlight on the breast of a river, across his moral
conciousness. We see further that the greatness and
infiniteness of God are not wholly alien to man's con-
sciousness, but related thereto by the unity of life. Man
cannot indeed know God's greatness nor fathom His
infiniteness. He may sound the shallows of the inlet,
although he cannot know the secrets of the sea. Yet
between inlet and sea there is a correspondence, a tidal
fellowship. So man knows that God is not a name for
some gigantic and inconceivable monster of power, but
for intelligible life which even here one may know in
part. The inconceivability of God is not in kind but in
degree. For we are His offspring and in Him we live.
In language that seems to be the very product of in-
spiration, a Christian poet has given utterance to this
all but unutterable idea:

O Majesty unspeakable and dread !

Wert Thou less mighty than Thou art,
Thou wert, O Lord ! too great for our belief,

Too little for our heart.

Thy greatness would seem monstrous by the side

Of creatures frail and undivine;
Yet they would have a greatness of their own

Free and apart from Thine.

Such grandeur were but a created thing,

A spectre, terror and a grief;
Out of all keeping with a world so calm —

Oppressing our belief.

It would outgrow us from the face of things

Still prospering as we decayed;
And, like a tyrannous rival, it would feed

Upon the wrecks it made.

156 BARROWS LECTURES

But what is Infinite, must be a home,

A shelter for the meanest life;
Where it is free to reach its greatest growth

Far from the touch of strife.

We share in what is Infinite; 'tis ours.

For we and it alike are Thine ;
What I enjoy, Great God ! by right of Thee

Is more than doubly mine.^

But the secret of the Christian religion cannot be
found in abstract meditation on the nature of being. The
conclusions to which we are brought by that meditation
are, indeed, of fundamental importance; without them
we have no clue to the mystery of life; with them we
reach the sure ground held by many ages of Eastern
philosophy and affirmed in these lectures — the ground
of the Divine immanence. But from this ground of
Divine immanence we must still advance. At the point
where we have now arrived I am able to show you con-
cretely how Christianity has pressed on to further con-
clusions touching man's life and God's Life, which are
of the highest value for the world. Abstract meditation
on the nature of being leads to no practical moral con-
clusions. Absolute idealism, that pure and perfect
monism which makes God and man identical terms, is
relatively a simple and easy solution of the problem of
existence. But it is a solution that derives its simplicity
by covering rather than by considering the most urgent
facts of consciousness. Man has an invincible sense
that he is in a measure free to follow or to turn from a
consciously conceived ideal.

I F. W. Faber.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 157

The living, throbbing experience of the moral man [to use
the words of Professor James Seth of Halifax], remorse and retri-
bution and reward, all the grief and humiliation of his life, all its
joy and exaltation, imply a deep and ineradicable conviction that
his destiny, if partly shaped for him by a power beyond himself,
is yet, in its grand outline, in his own hands, to make it, or to mar
it, as he will. All the passion of his moral experience gathers
itself up in the conviction of his infinite and eternal superiority to
Nature; she "cannot do otherwise;" he can.^

The absolute idealist tells him that this impression
which he has of his own freedom is an illusion of igno-
rance, destined to disappear in the attainment of higher
knowledge; that his apparent personality is but an
aspect of "the all-comprehending Divine Nature, from
the necessity of which all things, without exception,
follow;"'' and that the mysterious energy of self, which,
to him, seems so free, is, really, no free, initiating source
of conduct but a mass of sensations and desires deter-
mined by other sensations and desires that have pre-
ceded them. I need not tell you what must be the
effect upon the mind, if such an explanation of will and
conscience be accepted as final. It removes attention
from the field of moral consciousness and concentrates
it upon the field of speculative intellect, the former
being adjudged a mechanism of unreality. It con-
fuses the sense of right and wrong by causing it to
associate moral distinctions with the automatic move-
ment of other phenomena, as part of one vast shadow

I Cf. throughout an important William Blackwood & Sons, 1891).

pamphlet. Freedom as Ethical Pos- , c^^„ >. -,

^ ^ ' . 2 Seth, op. ctt., p. 10.

hi/ate (Edinburgh and London,

158 BARROWS LECTURES

play. It leads us to think, as Martineau has phrased
the thought, that

our belief in our own independence arises merely from a partial
ignorance of the complex influences that mould our decisions, and
that, when our inward history is all unfolded and laid bare, each
volition will be found to have its place in a regular consecution of
phenomena as uniform as those of physical nature and as little
open to the entrance of contingency.^

It tempts us to think lightly of the moral imperative, and
its unconditional demand ; to set good aside as without
absolute value, and, abstracting the mind from ethical
problems and responsibilities, to fix it on a colourless
metaphysic of existence, while conduct, divorced from
reason, follows the devices and desires of an impulsive
naturalism. The Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the
Christian Religion consists in its refusal to accept abso-
lute idealism as a complete solution of the problem of
existence. It agrees with absolute idealism, as these
lectures have abundantly shown, in its establishment
of a unifying Source and Ground, but it cannot obliterate
human personality by ignoring the significance of the
moral consciousness. It does not undertake to dispel
the mystery (a mystery that some have openly called an
antithesis) in which we shroud the problem of Being
when we affirm the monistic ground of the universe and
also affirm that God's determining force is so far with-
drawn from the human will that the will becomes a real,
self-electing other toward Himself. Nor does the
Christian religion in any degree lose sight of the many

I Cf. "Determinism and Free Religion (2d ed., Oxford, Clarendon
Will" in Martineau, A Study 0} Press,' 18S9), Vol. II.^p. 185.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 159

influences, inherited or otherwise produced, that work
upon our will to affect, if possible to predetermine, its
volitions. But when allowance has been made for these
influences, concerning which we may not be responsible,
the Christian religion sees, grasps, organises the whole
system of thinking around the central fact of a perma-
nent self, an innermost ego that is so far free as to be an
other to God ; a moral person, responsible for its choices
and acts. "There remains," says Martineau, "the
indelible conviction that we are not bound hand and
foot by either our present incentives or our own past;
but that, drag as they may, a power remains with us to
make a new beginning along another path than theirs."'
The limits of my time prevent me from expanding the
thought upon which we are now engaged. But even a
momentary glance shows us in what directions it must
inevitably lead and what kinds of moral needs and
aspirations it must inevitably suggest. You see at once
that the whole of conduct, the whole of thought, all that
we are and do, comes into the moral field of vision and
must be dealt with from the moral point of view. And
what, my friends, are the two realities that appear and
fill the universe with their conflicting presences when
we advance from the position of philosophical panthe-
ism to the Christian affirmation of the personal responsi-
bility of the self ? They are evil and good ; moral evil
and moral good; that is — sin and righteousness. I
have shown you the Distinctive Moral Grandeur of the
Christian Religion, when I have shown you that it
exists to deal with these two ethical realities, moral evil

' op. cit., p. 226, "Psychology of Voluntary Action."

i6o BARROWS LECTURES

and moral good. This is its reason for being; its mes-
sage to the world. It is a religion of character.

It has often been said, and in this lecture I have, in
effect, said, that the limitation in disciples of pantheistic
thought is relative inability to realise practical moral
distinctions, to feel the difference between right and
wrong. This relative inability I do not for a moment
associate with the persons themselves as inherent in
their character, but with the speculative tendency of
certain philosophical aspects. While philosophical pan-
theism thus may be said to work to the disadvantage of
practical morality, it is, however, a superb preparation
for it. Who is so prepared to measure the tragedy of
sin, to renounce it himself, and to work for the deliver-
ance of others, as he who has studied the mystery of
Being and believes that the Eternal One Who differen-
tiates His own self-subsisting energy into the infinite
variety of finite existences is still immanent and living
in every one of these dependent modes of Being, and
who believes that it is because "all finite beings are only
partially individual and still remain in vital union with
God that they are able to enter into relations with the
Eternal Being with Whom their own existence is in some
measure indivisibly conjoined"?' There is no finer
preparation than this to qualify one to enter, not nomi-
nally and externally, but inwardly and profoundly, the
Christian life. It is the immemorial heritage of the
East thus to conceive of Being. Men of all Oriental
faiths, consciously or unconsciously, have shared this
heritage; it is in the air; it is in the fibre of your souls.

I C/. Upton; quoted in Lecture III, p. 69.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION i6i

Therefore I look for the East to produce the most
spiritual type of Christianity that has yet appeared on
earth. The Christianity of many has been superficial
and shortlived who were trained in the deistic concep-
tions that have, alas, prevailed through large portions
of the Western world. The reason is obvious : a funda-
mental deficiency in the conception of God. He was
conceived as a Being apart; dwelling by Himself, speak-
ing to man externally by means of a law; much as the
state speaks to its citizens by means of laws. Obedi-
ence was an outgoing homage to an external Divinity;
the forms of the Church were the expressions of that
obedience; righteousness tended to become identified
with regularity in making those expressions, sin with
carelessness in their fulfilment. It is no surprise to
find a religion of externalism built upon the foundation
of an external God, and a divided, shallow, inconsistent
life of thought and conduct produced by a deficient
theory of self, as a creature having by nature no affinity
with God and only joined to Him through a process
fixed by law and consummated by sacraments. I speak
with sadness of this temperamental tendency of the
West to externalise God and believe in a self wholly
severed from His Essence, and needing the authority of
churches and priests to bring it in relation thereto. How
this has hindered the inward development of the West-
ern religious consciousness and fostered the overgrowth
of its ecclesiasticism ! Few and exceptional for many
centuries were the mystics of the West, the souls indif-
ferent to forms and orders, whose interest in religion was
" to realise, in thought and feeling, the immanence of the

1 62 BARROWS LECTURES

temporal in the eternal and of the eternal in the tem-
poral,'" that is, to know their abiding in the Living God
and the abiding of the Living God in them. Wondrous
is the development of the mystical element in Western
Christianity since the idealism of the East began, like a
sunrise, to temper the gloom of our austere ecclesias-
ticism. With that growth of the mystical sense, the
sense of God's oneness with man, there is coming in the
West as there must ever come, when true mysticism is
also truly Christian, an intensified consciousness of sin,
not as an outward breach of ceremonial command-
ments but as an inward rending of the unity of life,
as a revolt of the will from its Source and Ground, as
disloyalty of self-consciousness to an ideal of holy love
engendered within us by the indwelling Essence of the
Eternal, as the canker that is eating out the heart of the
individual, and the heart of the world. The religion
of character, inwardly apprehended, gives to the soul an
experience of moral suffering not produced by external
appeals, threatenings, or laws. It is the consequence of
inward knowledge of the mystery of our own being:
God in us, the Immanent Eternal Spring of conscious-
ness, we in Him as the Source and Ground of all that we
are, in Whose depths our sub-conscious life loses itself,
as the river in the sea. It is a needed suffering, to bring
us to ethical reality; to humiliate the complacent pride
of exterior religiousness; to give us, through the death
of the superficial self, access to a deeper life. It consists
in knowing at last what is the offence, the shame, the
bitterness of sin. "Against Thee, Thee only, have I

I Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 5; quoted in Lecture II; p. 35.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 163

sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight." '
But through this experience comes the unifying of Hfe.
Its divided selfhood is healed. Our mystical con-
sciousness of God becomes at length a witness not of
anguish and humiliation, but of peace. Aspiration
comes to us. The sense of the absoluteness of good
and of its value for us is established with power. The
ethical imperative speaks with command and is an-
swered with joy. We want to know and to attain the
best. The power to discern between lower and higher
affections asserts itself. The unified soul, disburdened
of its weights and hindrances, seeks the things that are
above. Clear-eyed, sensitive to righteousness, it sepa-
rates the less from the greater, rising ever in thought
toward a purer atmosphere.

At length ethical aspiration can rise no higher. It
comes to that which, for it, is supreme. That supreme
is holy love. Its beauty is the beauty of holiness, its
passion is the passion of renunciation. Obedience to
this love means abolition of selfishness, dethroning of
pride, patience toward the weak, compassion toward the
erring, sympathy for the ignorant, tenderness for the sor-
rowing, participation in the universal life, reverence for
all men, faith in humanity.^ The unified soul discerns
in holy love the highest ideal of moral consciousness.
It conceives that this may be the inmost character of
God. Therefore to this it consecrates itself, and lives
henceforth as one born again. My brethren, in this
delineation of the ethical consciousness in a Christian
life, I have opened to you my heart. How much of

I Ps. 51:4. ' C}. Lecture IV, p. 131.

1 64 BARROWS LECTURES

what I have said is autobiography, how much is the
record of experiences that I have been privileged to
observe in others, need not here be said. It is enough
that every word of this is true. And being true, it
suggests a question, which is, for Christianity, the
question of questions. I shall ask this question and
give answer to it as I close. If the distinction of the
Christian religion be that it is a religion of character,
what answer does it give to the highest moral aspirations
of our souls ? This, I afhrm, is the question of ques-
tions. Our capacities reach out into the universe,
demanding appropriate and sufficient answers. The
hand, with its skill and strength, demands the fabric of
a material world to deal with, and finds it waiting to
be used. The power of aesthetic judgment calls for
beauty in all realms of being, and finds it in nature, in
art, in letters. The vital consciousness that is in us, a
thrilling sense of unconquerable life, demands an answer-
ing assurance, and finds it in the infinitude of God.
The moral imperative in the soul, the perception of the
value of goodness, the power of ethical aspiration, the
tentative sense of having reached the best in reaching
the ideal of holy love, is the involuntary cry, not of con-
sciousness alone, but of our sub-conscious life, for some
authoritative answer coming from the unknowable
depths of God into the range of our knowledge, to con-
firm that best, to identify it with Absolute Reality.
What answer does the religion of character give to this
involuntary cry of the soul ? Its answer is the fact of
Jesus Christ. My interest in setting this fact before
you here is that of one who believes profoundly and

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 165

unreservedly in his subject. My belief is a passionate
yet reasoned conviction. For me, the assurance that the
historic Christ is the Divine answer to the soul's supreme
moral aspiration is as conclusive as the assurance of my
own moral personality. My interest in bringing the fact
of Christ to your attention in this form is furthermore
the interest of one who views with alarm and sorrow
a characteristic tendency in modern Western criticism
to discard the witness concerning Christ given by
the philosophical culture of the first and second cen-
turies (a Greek culture with Oriental affinities and
insights) and to measure Him, after the manner of
Western externalism, by purely naturalistic methods
remote from His time. My interest, finally, is that of
one who looks to the sublime elements of the Oriental
Consciousness as the source of power that can counter-
act this enfeebled apprehension of the fact of Christ, and
give back to the world the fervour, depth, and sacred-
ness of Apostolic thought and feeling. The stupendous
power of Christ, discerned by those philosophic minds,
lifted them to conceptions of Divine Life and fellowship
fast fading out from the world's consciousness in the
glare and noise of Western progress. Augustine said of
St. John: "Such men dwelt apart in loneliness like that
of the great mountains, whose loftiness is measured not
by comparison nor yet by imagination but by the flood
of blessing which they pour down on the little hills and
plains below."' Hidden in India and in the Farther
East, there are, I believe, such potential apostles of the
Lord Jesus Christ ; men not alien to the philosophy that

I Quoted by Picton, Mystery of Matter, p. 265.

i66 BARROWS LECTURES

governed St. John and some of his successors; accus-
tomed to unworldly contemplation of God ; unmoved by
the audacious self-possession of modern irreverence.
I look for such to emerge at the bidding of the Spirit, to
address their minds to the fact of Jesus Christ, and to
lay, not the East only, but the world, under obligation
by restoring to the hungering, groping, fettered souls of
men their birthright and their emancipation.

The fact of Jesus Christ is a threefold fact. To
grasp it in its entirety, one must keep in view and con-
sider as aspects of one truth, the life purpose of Jesus
Christ as shown historically in His Visible Ministry,
the continuous power of Jesus Christ in the Christian
Consciousness, and the Divinity of Jesus Christ as the
Revelation of the Heart of God. These aspects acted
and reacted in the philosophic consciousness of the first
and second centuries, as the spiritual eyesight became
adjusted to the new Light that had come into the world.
We have observed how even the common happenings of
our lives, many times, are not apprehended in their full
meaning in the hour of their occurrence and of their
sensible perception. Not until afterward does the mind
have leisure to bring to bear its reflective powers, and
grasp the real value of what has taken place. A friend
crosses our path, tarries a moment in eager conversa-
tion, and is gone. In the brief moment of his tarrying
we are absorbed in perceiving the outward data of his
presence. We look in his face, hear his voice, touch his
hand, listen to his words, bid him good-bye. In after
hours, memory, collecting these perceptual impressions,
brings them to reason, which ponders and interprets.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 167

We understand now the unwonted mark of joy or sor-
row on his face, we discern the deeper meaning in his
words, we feel, as we fek not at the moment, the great
peace or conflict that was in his soul. Our reflective
consciousness gives the truer record of the fact. So
went Jesus of Nazareth, for a few short years, in and out
before men. By many His presence was not noticed,
by a few it was admired and loved, by none was it under-
stood completely until all was over: the gracious words,
the deeds of sacrificial tenderness, the stainless, shadow-
less living, the loneliness, the secret affinities of power,
the burden of sins not His own, the patient anguish, the
words from the Cross, the death silence, the awaking,
the coming forth, the world-wide commandment: ''Go
ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole
creation."^ Then the reflective powers of their minds
were roused and their hearts began to burn within them.
They recalled His words and the spirit of His Life.
They comprehended His purpose and perceived that it
was universal. They knew that He was a prophet, but
not like any other prophet, for in Him wisdom found its
source. They knew that He was great, but not with the
mere greatness of men, for men centre their greatness
in themselves, and His seemed to go forth from Himself
and be lost in sacrifice, upon the world.

It is confessedly difficult [says one] for any who feel their hearts
warm toward the spiritual glory of Christ, to put into words the
impression He makes upon them. For most of the notes of human
greatness seem weak, inapplicable, even incongruous when attrib-
uted to Him. For instance, individuality, which is so striking a

I Mark 16:15.

i68 BARROWS LECTURES

characteristic of all rightful kings of men, seems very inapt in a
description of the Person of Christ. That His character and His
powers do, on any interpretation, stand alone in world-wide history,
every one must feel. But the loneliness is not that of individuality.
For this word is suggestive of some intense, self-centred fire. And
it is rather the absence of this that makes the greatness of Christ
so sacred.^

They recalled the philosophic ideals of a Wisdom, an
intelligible Word, coming out from the abyss of the
Unknowable to interpret the secrets of the Divine intel-
ligence, to be a Mediator between the Eternal and the
ephemeral, the Sum of the thoughts of God, the Idea of
Ideas. And as these recollections of philosophical aspi-
ration came to them and set their hearts on fire they
perceived that they were divinely kindled, as the burn-
ing glass borrows its power of kindling from the sun.^
Through distant Oriental sources they had entered and
filled the Greek consciousness; to find, as it seemed,
their correction and completion in Christ. Therefore
these majestic souls, on whom Christ's power had fallen,
came through years of reflective experience to discern
His meaning and His nature. For them He was the
loving Spirit of the Lord that filleth all the earth, the
Brightness of the everlasting Light, the unspotted Mir-
ror of the Power of God, the Image of his Goodness, the
Prophet of the Most High, the Mediator, the Heavenly
Man, representing before the eyes of God the whole
family upon earth. ^ He was the Word that was in the

1 C/. PiCTON, Christian Payithe- 3 In this account of Alexandrian
ism, p. 43. Christology I have been much helped

2 Clement of Alexandria, Strom., by Canon Bigg, Christian Pla-
VI, 17, 19. tonists of Alexandria.

MORAL GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION 169

beginning with God, that came from the Unknowable
into the knowable, as a Son from a Father, that was
made flesh and dwelt among men, that men might be-
hold His glory, full of grace and truth. It was a
wondrous interpretation of a wondrous fact; an inter-
pretation rich with the mystical spirit of the Oriental
Consciousness. Time only could show whether it was
an advance upon pantheism or a restatement of it in
another form. It might grow away from the historical
and the ethical, and, interested only in the metaphysical,
might pass into the upper air of theory, and be lost in a
maze of speculative deductions. After two thousand
years of testing in the crucible of experience, the Chris-
tian religion comes to us to-day a religion of character
founded in the dignity of Christ as the Moral Revelation
of God, the answer to the highest aspiration of man's
soul. Like gold thrice refined, both elements, the his-
torical and the mystical, have been subject to every test
that the wisdom, pride, or sin of man can apply; and
both remain to-day. By hatred and love, by evil report
and good report, by prosperity and adversity, by learning
and culture, by ignorance and superstition, by science,
philosophy, and ethics, have these elements been tested
until the essential truth of the historical and the mystical
in the Christian religion have been completely proven,
and have taken their place among the things that cannot
be shaken. The life purpose of Jesus Christ answers
and fulfils the highest possible aspiration in the moral
consciousness of humanity. We cannot feel the abso-
lute value of good nor recognise its authority in higher
senses than appear in Christ. From this we conclude

lyo BARROWS LECTURES

that He is the outspeaking Voice from the shoreless,
soundless depths of Infinite Being, confirming goodness
as the inner Essence of the Heart of God. And this
Christ we know immediately in our souls. All that He
is historically in and for the life of the world, He is per-
sonally in and for each one of us who immediately and
mystically know Him, and, knowing Him, know God in
Him. But the world, blinded by material objects and
hardened by self-centred motives, needs a fresh inter-
pretation of Christ from some human source where
faith in the Invisible is still the great reality, and interest
in the ultimate problems of the soul, still an unspent
river of delight. In the day when the Oriental Con-
sciousness perceives the nature of this soul-chastening,
soul-redeeming, soul-unifying Christ of God, and gives
its sublime powers to the religion of character as, since
the dawn of history, it has given them to the religion of
Being, there shall come back upon all nations, from the
ancestral home of the world's religious consciousness, a
recovery of the essence that must live beneath the form,
of the spirit that must speak through the letter, of the
morality of holy love that must purge and refashion the
morality of custom and law, by setting right above might,
and ministrations of brotherhood above aggressions of
power.

LECTURE SIX

THE MINISTRY OF THE ORIENTAL CONSCIOUS-
NESS IN A WORLD-WIDE KINGDOM
OF CHRIST

In closing the previous lecture, upon the Distinctive
Moral Grandeur of the Christian Religion, I made use
of the following words:

In the day when the Oriental Consciousness perceives the
nature of this soul-chastening, soul-redeeming, soul-unifying
Christ of God and gives its sublime powers to the religion of char-
acter, as, since the dawn of history, it has given them to the
religion of Being, there shall come back upon all nations, from the
ancestral home of the world's religious consciousness, a recovery
of the essence that must live beneath the form, of the spirit that
must speak through the letter, of the morality of holy love that
must purge and refashion the morality of custom and law, by set-
ting right above might, and ministrations of brotherhood above
aggressions of power.

It is in the spirit of these words, and for the better
understanding of their meaning, that I enter upon the
sixth and last lecture of this course, taking for my theme
"The Ministry of the Oriental Consciousness in a
World-wide Kingdom of Christ." I have not at any
time concealed or attempted to conceal my ultimate
desire in the delivery of these lectures. It has been
apparent to all that have heard them that my heart is
with the East in respect, admiration, and love. It has
also appeared that my belief is unbounded in the Divine
source and world-wide significance of the Christian

171

172' BARROWS LECTURES

religion as a religion of character. I have repeatedly
expressed my dissatisfaction with some aspects of
religious thinking in the Western world and my fear
that tendencies are at work which, unless modified by
powerful counter-influences, may diffuse, at all events
for a time, an enfeebled and superficial estimate of
some of the deeper truths and values of the Christian
religion. Such a result, even if temporary, would be
a calamity not for the West alone, but for the world.
It would feed the spirit of aggression, authority, insti-
tutional pride, externalism, and the consuming love
of pleasure. These things flourish in the soil of the
natural heart, and are not subdued by theoretical ethics,
but only by the growth of spiritual reverence and holy
love born of inward communion with God. The pride
of external authority is never merely a local ill. It
becomes a devouring passion, not only thinking more
and more of self, but less and less of others. It takes
to itself rights of conquest and persuades itself that
those rights are Divine. It binds on men's shoulders
burdens grievous to be borne, and claims, in the act, to
be doing God service. This as history shows becomes
a far-spreading calamity. The serious fact in those
aspects of religious thinking to which I have alluded
with dissatisfaction, is that the deeper truths and values
of the Christian religion which modern civilisation tends
to depreciate are those which have the greatest power
to subdue worldly pride, to correct cruel and intolerant
ambition, to restrain worship of visible and sensuous
ends, to teach men and nations gentleness, patience,
sympathy, self-sacrifice. These truths and values lie

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 173

chiefly in the mystical realm. They have to do with
God's abiding in the soul and the soul's abiding in
God, with knowledge as a religious experience, imme-
diate, self-attesting. They have to do with the Universal
Life, the substance underlying and unifying all individu-
alities, making all men members one of another. They
have to do, in particular, with the Divinity of Jesus
Christ as the background of His ethical authority ; that
He is, not an occasional teacher who arose, testified,
and departed ; but the Eternal Answer which has come
forth from unknowable depths of the Infinite, to con-
firm the soul's highest moral ideal, to disclose the holy
love which is the central principle in the Heart of God,
to interpret that love by sacrifice.

The argument that I shall attempt to present in this,
my last lecture, grows out of the above-mentioned
facts. The dominating civilisations of the world, with
their fierce cry of progress, which is like the shout of
a cavalry charge, turn from, if they do not trample on,
essential qualities of the Christian religion. Tenacious
of forms, they become, through hardness of heart,
unable to retain the spirit of that religion. Reverencing
the Cross as a symbol, they are prevented, by ambition,
from conforming to the mind of the Crucified. This,
as I shall show you, is not a situation of merely local
importance. It is a calamity, progressively affecting
the w^hole world ; inasmuch as the spirit of the Christian
religion, the mind of Christ, contains in principle the
redress of all grievances springing from injustice, inhu-
manity, and unscrupulous ambition. It is a calamity
already felt by the East and likely to be felt m^ore keenly.

174 BARROWS LECTURES

according to the caprice or passion of these civilisations.
It is a calamity that cannot be averted by the appeal
to external force, answering blow with blow; for its
cause is not physical but spiritual. The dominating
civilisations of the twentieth century are what they are,
not in one country alone, but in all countries, selfish,
aggressive, violent, in matters pertaining to world-
politics and race relations, because the mind of men is
set on outward ends and the faculty of inward vision
fails through disuse. The prestige of nations, like a
glare of insufferable light, bluids the eye of the soul.
Sins of injustice, tyrannous impositions of physical
power are condoned at the bar of modern civilisation
by an ethical sense dulled by unfamUiarity with the
larger truths of the Spirit. That this tendency cannot
run unchecked without plunging the world in fresh
sorrows, I am certain. That it may be checked by
the influx of some powerful counter-sentim.ent, I am
sure. That that check is to be given by the East, I
believe. But in what way? I cannot think that the
East would be quite true to its best tradition, nor that
it would rise quite to its own ideal, if it sought to rebuke
and check these excesses by corresponding polities of
violence and retaliation. Not that courage, skill, or
power are lacking to qualify the East in rendering meas-
ure for measure, a full return in kind for all that she has
received. The brilliant and self-contained Empire of
Japan has given expression to that courage, skill, and
power in a manner that convincingly suggests the ability
of the East to meet the West on its own terms, to fight
it with its own. weapons. The salutary effect of that

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 175

demonstration appears in many ways. Yet I cannot con-
ceive that it points to a final solution of contemporary
difficulties, nor that it represents the highest ministry
open to the East on behalf of the world. The terrible
sword of the East, smiting in righteous retribution,
might palliate but could not remove the present diffi-
culty. For that difficulty is spiritual and may not be
reached by the thrust of carnal weapons. The core of the
difficulty is in the spirit of the dominating civilisations,
which have gained outwardly, but lost inwardly. They
have gained in knowledge of the constitution and use
of matter, in application of force, in theories of gov-
ernment, social order, liberty, individual rights and
destinies. They have lost in depth of God-conscious-
ness whereby alone all theories are saved from narrow
interpretation and formal use. They have gained in
outlook, but lost in vision. They have gained in ethical
ideal, but lost in mystical apprehension of the Source
and Ground of that ideal. The present situation calls,
not for an answer of wrath, but for an answer of wisdom.
It needs to be dealt with, not by an antagonist, but by
an enlightener. It is a case not for the warrior so much
as for the prophet. The tension now upon the world
will not yield to force. If relaxed for the moment at
one point it tightens at another. It results from the
power of traditional ideas to control the imagination,
and necessitate the policy, of governments. Associa-
tion of national glory with military achievement ; tend-
ency of power toward oppression; territorial jealousy,
exploiting of weakness by strength; increase of armed
force; diplomatic belligerency, like perpetual mutter-

176 BARROWS LECTURES

ings of distant thunder, seem to predetermine the spirit
of the dominating civilisations of the world. The
internal life of these nations is not more satisfactory
at the present time than their external relations. Pov-
erty is not sensibly alleviated. Labour troubles are
not less, but more, acute, and accompanied with more
ominous demonstrations. Certain social vices are
believed to be increasing. A sinister type of practical
atheism extends its influence. In the meantime the
ideals of thoughtful men are more lofty than ever before.
Counsels of perfection abound. The Fatherhood of
God is cherished as an approximate expression of His
Nature. The universal brotherhood of man is a watch-
word of social theory. Abhorrence of war professes
to increase on the ground that war is a survival from
lower civilisation and should be displaced by arbitration.
Sympathy with suffering finds expression in a measure
which, upon occasion, becomes sublime. There is
found a strange blending of evil and good. Light is in
the world but the darkness comprehends it not. Good
holds evil somewhat in check. Evil keeps good from
triumphant advance. The outcome is negative. It
is like the grappling of well-matched wrestlers : a long
struggle on the same ground. It is impossible to look
upon this long-drawn battle with indifference, for our
own interests, and those of all the world, are involved.
No interests are more surely or deeply involved in the
pending issues than those of the East; for as go the
dominant civilisations, so goes the world. If the West-
ern nations are to become more possessed of the pride
of militarism, more aggressive and belligerent, more

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 177

grasping and audacious, it means for the East more
sorrow, injustice, and deprivation of rights. If, on
the other hand, some new influence is to be brought
that shall break the present deadlock between good
and evil, by liberating fresh spiritual forces to soften
the hearts and uplift the purposes of men, the first to
feel the beneficence of the new order will be the East.

Two questions at once present themselves: Of
what nature should this influence be, and from whence
may it come? As to its nature one may speak with
confidence. The influence most sorely needed by
modern civilisation, to soften its asperities, correct its
abuses, and lift its aims, is not more of ethical idealism,
but more of the spirit of religion, which means more
consciousness of the indwelling Life of God. Ethical
idealism is the sense of knowing what ought to be.
The spirit of religion is the power to live up to that
knowledge. There is no lack of the first, there is a
dearth of the last. Never was there an age when thought
soared higher in the realm of ethical theory, or analysed
more acutely the moral forces. Never was the desire
more compelling for a Kingdom of God on earth, a
kingdom of righteousness, peace, and social love. The
Western world has its prophets of the ideal, and their
sight is clear, even as their hearts are pure and warm
with love. But ideals, however great and just, cannot
produce results in a civilisation that lacks the spirit
of religion, even as palm trees cannot come to their
fruitage in an atmosphere untempered by tropical
warmth. In this I state the exact point of deficiency
in the modern world. The forms, doctrines, and

178 BARROWS LECTURES

institutions of the Christian religion cover the West
and, to some extent, enter the East. Individual lives
and groups of lives are to be found in relative abundance
possessing the inward spirit of that religion, the spirit
of holy and sacrificial love, formed by enlightened
knowledge of God. But these individuals and groups
are not strong enough to affect race tendencies and
instincts that determine the temper of Western civilisa-
tion. I shall speak presently of those tendencies.
Great in themselves and invaluable for the advance of
the world, they run toward external issues, formal
results, and brilliant ideals. They lack subjectivity,
the power of concentration upon the Unseen, the spirit
of religion. Hence Christianity, accepted and inter-
preted only by the West, moves away from the burn-
ing altars of its earlier and semi-Oriental interpreters,
and becomes cold, formal, unspiritual. It cannot be
otherwise until there is the influx of some powerful
counter-sentim.ent, represented not by individual but
racial gifts and qualities, a sentiment of gentleness, of
reverence ; of exalting thought above action, of temper-
ing impetuosity with meditation. Such a sentiment
is foreign to Western civilisation as a whole. It cannot
be expected to develop within it. It must come from
some other source. Martineau in his Study 0} Religion
speaks of the word "pantheism" as seeming "to mark
a temperament more than a system;" and of pantheistic
systems of philosophy he says "the tendency which
gives rise to them is so foreign to our prevailing English
genius, that it is not easy to awaken much sympathy
with it, or to give a clear impression of the theory it has

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 179

created."' This naive statement is precisely true.
The West has Httle patience with the pantheistic tem-
perament. Its natural interests are scientific and
historical. Its treasure is the world; and where its
treasure is, there is its heart also. As the West, in the
course of time, has conformed its civilisation to these
interests, it has progressively conformed its interpreta-
tion of Christianity to the same interests, scientific and
historical. This is good in outward result, but deficient
in inward spirit, and, because thus deficient, harmful.
The counter-sentiment of gentleness, of reverence, of
exalting thought above action, of tempering impetuosity
with meditation belongs to the East. To her God has
given the spirit of religion more than the form. The
religious qualities of the Eastern mind lend themselves
to interpretation more than to observation. Her calm,
reflective gaze ignores the transitory and is lost in con-
templation of the Eternal. It is to that spirit that I
appeal, in this closing lecture. I seek to call it forth
from its traditional seclusion; to enlist it in the service
of mankind. Not by polities of violence and retaliation
shall the East correct the excesses of selfishness and
injustice that now appear in the dominating civilisations
of the world. Blow answering blow but hardens hearts
already hard and infuriates national ambitions already
over-stimulated. There is a better way. I would see
the East rise to her glorious height and face the modern
world, her eyes not blazing with revenge but beaming
with holy love; her hand not grasping the sword, but
opening the Christian Scripture, too little understood

I Vol. II, p. 133 (Oxford, 1889).

i8o BARROWS LECTURES

by those who have had it longest; her voice not raised
in wrath but speaking, with measured gentleness, the
deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ. I would see the
East overcome evil with good. I would behold the
teacher of the deeper truths vanquish the tyrant-spirit
of the modern age. That I may make myself well
understood in a matter which I can say with truth is
more vital to me than my own life, let me freely speak
to you, men and brethren, of three things: the deeper
mysteries of Jesus Christ ; the qualities in modern civili-
sation that blind men to these mysteries; the qualities
in Oriental Consciousness that are divinely empowered
to interpret them.

I deem it the highest honour that life can contain to
speak with freedom to your deliberative minds concern-
ing the deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ. In doing
so I feel that your great pantheistic inheritances qualify
you in an exceptional degree not only to apprehend
the spirit in which I speak, but to carry my statement
on to conclusions more ultimate than those, which I, as
an Occidental, may have reached or may be capable
of reaching. I have long rested on the belief that the
deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ may not be unfolded
to the world until East joins West for their interpreta-
tion. Precisely for this reason I am little surprised
that, up to the present time, the East, regarding Christ
merely as a Gum, a gifted teacher of the past, rejects
His Divine claim. So long as He is conceived by the
Oriental Consciousness as a teacher only, however
distinguished, sentiments of loyalty to other teachers
must inhibit you from acknowledging Christ to be

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS i8l

supreme. Why indeed should He claim supremacy
if but a teacher! You have had great masters and
seers, a glorious train, extending back through ages.
Being dead, they yet speak to you. Into that company
you are willing to admit Christ, for He was a great
teacher. His wisdom was unsearchable, and His
speech most gracious. Some said in their enthusiasm,
"Never man spake like this man." But why single
Him out from others, to place on His brow the chaplet
of supremacy ? The objection seems to me unanswer-
able, if Christ is a teacher only. Why crown a Semitic
prophet, and leave the mighty Aryans uncrowned?
It has been said that the Divinity of Christ must act
as a bar to the Christianising of the Oriental world.
So it must be while the thought remains that He is but
a prophet for Whom His disciples are trying to win a
title; or so long as His Divinity is grounded on any
narrow or local system of theology. "Pantheism,"
as Martineau said, "is a temperament rather than a
system," and minds with that great inheritance must
move toward the deeper mysteries of the Christian
religion in their own way and by their own processes
of assimilation, or not at all. But of nothing am I
more sure than that the day is coming when the East,
so far from being repelled by the Divinity of Christ,
shall become the champion and exponent of that Divin-
ity, recovering its meaning for the world. For it is a
truth that, rightly conceived, is so enormous in its sug-
gestions and implications, points to such mysteries,
lifts to such experiences, that it is supremely adapted
to the Oriental Consciousness and the Oriental Con-

i82 BARROWS LECTURES

sciousness to it. The West has ever felt its power, and
pondered its meaning. So long as the Eastern influence
continued potent in the West, and wherever it still
lingers, the deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ have pre-
served their precious meanings. But there are certain
motives in the dominating civilisations of the West
that react against those meanings, set them aside as
too mystical, too much allied to the subjective, and
offer others in their stead that combine more readily
with what is called a practical age. These substitutions,
consisting mainly in deifications of the words of Jesus,
with rationalistic accounts of His Person, have helped
to make the modern world what it is. When I turn
from these utilitarian substitutions, products of a critical
externalism, to speak to an Eastern audience of the
deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ, I feel delight mingled
with fear : delight, in presenting to religious minds that
which is the essence of the religion of character; fear,
through the sense of incapacity to speak adequately
to such a theme. With the Psalmist, I cry, "Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot
attain unto it.'"

For the purpose of illustration, yet not without hope
that the illustration is also the fact, I shall assume that,
among the most cultivated minds assembled here, are
some that ask a way of access to these deeper mysteries
of Jesus Christ, saying: If He be more than a teacher
of antiquity. Who gathered disciples, and spoke words
of exceeding wisdom, how shall one attempt to compre-
hend what and who He is? The answer must be

' Ps. 139:6.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 183

threefold. He who would have access to the deeper
mysteries must begin his approach in the historical fact:
the life purpose of Jesus Christ. From this he must
advance into experience: the power of Jesus Christ
in the Christian Consciousness. From this he is pre-
pared to advance into revelation : the Divinity of Jesus
Christ as the Revelation of the Heart of God. No
thoughtful mind, travelling this noble threefold path,
can fail at least to apprehend, whether ultimately it
accepts them or not, the deeper mysteries of Jesus
Christ.

The approach to knowledge of the Divinity of Christ
begins in history. He appears in the world within a
measurable distance from the present age; well within
the period covered by scientific research. The place
of Christ in history is less ancient than some of the most
treasured religious inheritances of India, visible monu-
ments of which exist at the present moment. The
pillars of Asoka, the magnificent rock temples of Nassik
and Karli are more ancient than the historical period
of Jesus Christ.' Notwithstanding this, persistent
efforts were made in Europe, soon after the middle of
the last century, to undermine the historical reality
of Christ and to relegate Him to the cloudland of poetry
and myth. It became necessary, therefore, to subject
the evidence to the most rigorous tests known to science.
Every traditional belief, every statement of the New
Testament in favour of His historical reality was passed
through the fires of research. Out of the alembic came

I Cf. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London,
Murray, 1876), pp. 47, 52, 110-22.

i84 BARROWS LECTURES

the gold of fact. It is now known that He appeared
at the time alleged. He did His works, uttered His
teachings, and, with majestic devotion to His life pur-
pose, died a public and suffering death. In the belief
of His disciples, and upon their solemn and uncontra-
dicted testimony, He arose from the dead, and, after
making provision for the diffusion of His message and
His influence throughout all nations, withdrew His
presence from sight; henceforth continuing it for ever
by means of a spiritual power, exerted inwardly upon
the consciousness of men. I shall never forget an after-
noon in 1902 when I drove from Benares to Sarnath, and
stood in the silence of the Deer Park beside the tope
that commemorates the Great Master, the Buddha, who,
a thousand years before its erection, taught his disci-
ples there. The sun was setting. Floods of golden light
irradiated the exquisite band of sculptured ornament,
and shed calm glory upon the neighbouring mounds
and ruins. Through the silence, the still, small voice
of an immortal past spoke in my soul; and then, as
often before and after, I measured the greatness of
your religious inheritances. They qualify you, my
friends, as belief and reverence ever qualify, to stand
with me within the sacred enclosure of the Christian
Scripture, while together we think of the life purpose
of Jesus Christ. Very gradual was the manner in which
the influence of the personal presence of Christ took
hold of His immediate disciples. It was an influence
deeper and more potent, while less obvious, than that
produced by brilliant teachings or striking miracles.
The disciples came slowly to realise that what Christ

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 185

was in Himself was greater than anything He taught
or did. A modern writer says :

We are apt to depreciate the potency of Christ's Personal
Influence on His disciples, because personal influence is so subtle
in its operation; because it does not, hke teaching and miracle,
formally challenge a verdict. Yet every one knows that the hold
which a moral leader has over his followers is not created simply
by the thrilling utterances or heroisms of great moments. By
these, indeed, he first arrests and inspires them. But their belief
in him only gains depth and completeness, if those quieter hours
which show the real man reveal the same spirit which shines so
brilliantly at special times. Every part of conduct adds its colour
to the impression. The tone in which he speaks, his bearing
under suspicion, his reserves, his silences are the deep roots out of
which alone springs that sure confidence, which, as Burke says,
"is a plant of slow growth."^

He who, desiring knowledge of the Divinity of Jesus
Christ, begins his approach in the history of His Life
as lived on earth finds that the conviction of Divinity
does not chiefly lay hold of the mind by considering
the teachings and the miracles of the Lord, but by slowly
approaching His life purpose. His teachings are indeed
utterances of perfect wisdom and crystalline purity.
They strike at the centre of man's need. They answer
the questions of the soul. They divide evil from good
as with a surgeon's knife. His miracles display control
in the realms of life and death, and, by their tender
helpfulness, show His amazing consideration and love
for man. But these outgoings of wisdom and power,
that appear on the surface of the history and first attract

I Cf. Forrest, Christ of History and of Experience (3d ed., Edinburgh,
1901), pp. 127, 128.

i86 BARROWS LECTURES

the eye, are less convincing than that personal effect
of His own consciousness which emanates from His
Life, apart from word or deed ; which is the life itself.
The Divinity of Christ appears, in history, chiefly in
the purpose governing His life. Anyone who studies
the life of Christ as recorded in the New Testament
must feel its perfect symmetry and simplicity. One
vast purpose, progressively expressed, filled and con-
trolled His mind. As a child He felt it in anticipation
and said: "I must be about my Father's business."
As a sufferer, dying on the Cross, He felt it in consum-
mation and cried: "It is finished." It has been said
of Him: "No other career ever had so much unity, no
other biography is so simple. Men in general take up
scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or
another. But Christ formed one plan and executed
it."' The plan of Christ was the royal plan of a kingly
mind. It was, in essence, a plan to give happiness to
the world by establishing a world-wide kingdom of
righteousness; "to create a new society which would
stand in a peculiar relation to God, and which should
have a legislation different from and higher than that
which springs up in secular states."^ In conceiving
this society, this kingdom of righteousness. His purpose
was not exclusive but inclusive. It was for humanity.
To be a human being was to be eligible for entrance into
this Kingdom of God. It was a vast purpose to unify
the world, to gather together all nations and kindreds
and peoples into an ethical relationship of goodness,

I C/. Sir J. R. Seeley, Ecce of God" (ed. Macmillan, 1904).
Homo, chap, iii, "The Kingdom = Seeley, op. cit., p. 13.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 187

peace, and love. Of this Kingdom He Himself was to
be the Head. His meek and lowly spirit felt no incon-
sistency in making this claim. For He knew Himself
to be a King indeed, yet not after the pattern of an
earthly sovereign. Pride of station, pomp of equipage,
haughty self-seclusion, arbitrary exertion of power
were abhorrent to Him. He neither possessed nor
desired earthly honour and resources. He went through
the world a lowly pilgrim. He had not where to lay
His head. Yet the consciousness of power was in His
soul, and when He taught, it was as one having author-
ity. This glorious sense of power He attributed to
His mystical oneness with the Eternal Father, from
Whom He came, and on Whose behalf He lived and
died. His throne was the radiant purpose in His own
soul. Surely it was a throne more splendid than the
jewelled thrones of emperors. From it He looked out
on the whole world and saw it as one potential society
of righteous happiness, bound to Himself by harmony
with His spirit. "Whosoever shall do the will of my
Father which is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
and mother." ' Magnificent as is this kingly conception
of Jesus Christ, it becomes yet more magnificent when
we consider the end, the law, the life, the inspiration,
and the power of this Kingdom. Its end was liberty,
intellectual and moral, through the power of truth.
''Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free."" He proposed no esoteric doctrine to be proudly
held by a few ; He kept back no secrets which man was
able to receive. He wanted all men to come to the

' Matt. 12:50. 2 John 8:32.

BARROWS LECTURES

knowledge of the truth that their minds might be at
liberty, in the freedom of the sons of God. He wanted
men to think, to know, to choose. But to Him intel-
lectual liberty was not possible except with moral liberty :
the breaking of the fetters of sin; the casting out
of devils of untruth, deception, hypocrisy, impurity;
the cleansing of the soul ; the regeneration of heart and
conscience. So, while the end of His Kingdom was
liberty, its law was holiness. This holiness was intrinsic,
not ceremonial. It was not the washing of the outside
of cup and platter, but purgation of the inmost life.
It was godlikeness born from above; a new nativity,
in the soul of man; godlike vision of the difference
between evil and good; godlike detestation of unholy
desire, purpose, word, and deed; godlike delight in
purity and honour. "Ye therefore shall be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect.'" Being godlike,
this holiness was active and altruistic; not considering
perfection of character an end in itself, but a means of
usefulness. He declared that He had come "not to
be ministered unto but to minister."^ Therefore the
life in this Kingdom must be service. Its members
must live for one another, bearing one another's burdens
and so fulfilling the law of Christ. They must learn
His great solicitudes for the wandering and the fallen;
His great compassions for them that are ignorant and
out of the way; His great forbearance toward the un-
thankful and unworthy; His great tenderness toward
the sorrowing and desolate; His great guardianship
of childhood and immaturity. But such a life of service

I Matt. 5 :48. 2 c}. Matt. 20: 28.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 189

requires some overmastering inspiration. Men cannot
by natural impulse thus live out of themselves, in effort
often unrewarded, for their human brethren. They
do not instinctively feel moved to give time and strength
for lives that may reject or nullify their efforts, and
even turn against those that offer them. If they are
to live this life of service, which is the opposite of the
life of passive or aggressive selfishness, they must be
inspired to live it. Christ provided a deathless inspira-
tion, moved by which nothing has seemed too exhausting
or too degrading to be done for others by such as truly
have caught the spirit of His Kingdom. That motive
is love, enthusiasm for humanity, devotion to mankind.
He imparted that inspiration, not by formal precept but
by incarnating Himself in the race and living in it and
for it with passionate, self-spending affection. Those
who know Him receive this inspiration. They come
to look upon mankind as through His loving eyes, to
judge mankind as through His compassionating judg-
ment ; and thus, in their several measures, and with a
love like His, they follow in His train. They feel, as
keenly as others, the ignorance, insensibility, vileness,
malevolence, and folly that appear too often in human
lives. They know how, by nature, men speak evil of
one another, and of the race. But when discouraged,
repulsed, betrayed, they remember Christ, and are
glad, with His gladness, to go on.

Of this race [says one] Christ Himself was a Member, and to
this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species,
the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest,
that a human brain was behind His forehead and a human heart

igo BARROWS LECTURES

beating in His breast, and that within the whole creation of God
nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than
He? He associated by preference with the meanest of the race;
no contempt for them did He ever express, no suspicion that they
might be less dear than the best and wisest to the common Father;
no doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral
elevation like His own. An eternal glory has been shed upon the
human race by the love Christ bore to it. And those who would
for a moment know His Heart and understand His Life must
begin by thinking of the whole race of man and of each member
of the race, with awful reverence and hope.^

Such was the life purpose of Jesus Christ: to be
this King over this Kingdom, to create, out of the fulness
of love in His soul, a new society of mankind, world-
wide in scope, related to God in and through Himself,
making for righteousness, peace, and joy upon earth —
a Kingdom having for its end intellectual and moral
liberty, through knowledge of truth; for its law, holi-
ness of the soul; for its life, service of mankind; for
its inspiration, love and enthusiasm for humanity.
By what power did He proceed to carry out His life
purpose? Not by the appeal to force. He carried
in His hand no sword. He called to His aid no legions
of men or angels. He formed no alliance with states
and governments. Neither did He appeal to miracle.
That He wrought miracles is true, and that some of His
miracles impressed men greatly is true ; yet on miracle
He never depended as the power whereby to establish
His Kingdom. His miracles were incidental acts of
love and comfort, or of instruction. When, in His
temptation. He was asked to awe and win the multitudes

I Cf. Seeley, op. cit., pp. 56, 57.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 191

by flinging Himself from the pinnacle of the temple,
He rejected the suggestion with anger. When solicited
by the scribes to establish His claim by a sign, He
refused. Far different was the power on which He
relied. It was the power of self-sacrifice. He offered
all the privileges and joys of His Kingdom to men.
If they accepted them and entered into the liberty of
righteousness, He was glad. If they turned and as-
sailed Him, He submitted to assault and injury; giving
Himself through suffering for those who would receive
Him on no other terms. At last the radiant life pur-
pose in His soul, rising to vanquish absolute rejection
by absolute self-giving, spoke triumphantly through
death. By suffering all things. He entered into His
Glory. His Cross became His throne. There He
conquered, by giving up all for others.

We may not know, we cannot tell,.

What pains He had to bear;
But we believe it was for us

He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,

He died to make us good;
That we might go at last to heaven,

Saved by His precious Blood.

Oh ! dearly, dearly has He loved,

And we must love Him too;
And trust in His Redeeming Blood,

And try His works to do.^

If, as we have reason to believe, Christ was sorely
tempted early in His ministry to accomplish His life

Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander.

192 BARROWS LECTURES

purpose by the ordinary means open to ambition, what
complete victory over that temptation He achieved,
when, on the Cross, He gave up all !

How characteristic of the Lamb of God was the resistance of
the temptation and at the same time how incomparably great the
self-restraint involved in that resistance ! One who believes Him-
self born for universal monarchy, and capable by His rule of giving
happiness to the world, is entrusted with powers which seem to
afford the ready means of attaining that supremacy. By the over-
whelming force of visible miracle it is possible for Him to establish
an absolute dominion and to give to the race the laws which may
make it happy. But He deliberately determines to adopt another
course; to found His empire upon the consent and not the fears of
mankind; to trust Himself with His royal claims and His terrible
purity and superiority defenceless among mankind; and however
bitterly their envy may persecute Him, to use His supernatural
powers only in doing them good. This He actually did, and
evidently in pursuance of a fixed plan. He persevered in His
course, although politically, so to speak, it was fatal to his position,
and though it bewildered His most attached followers. But by
doing so He raised Himself to a Throne on which He has been
seated for nigh two thousand years, and gained an authority over
men greater far than they have allowed to any legislator; greater
than prophecy had ever attributed to the Messiah Himself.^

I said, a few moments ago, that he who would have
access to the deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ must
begin his approach in the historical fact, the life purpose
of Christ. On this we have dwelt; with the result, I
venture to hope, of seeing how it sets Him apart from
others. He can no longer be identified with the great
sages of the world, for they, even the most noble, com-
plete themselves in their teachings. Wisdom is their

• C/. Seeley, op. cit., p. 6.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 193

end, and, in the utterance of wisdom, they fulfil their
lives. Not so with Him. His teachings are of incal-
culable gravity and excellence. We know that He was
a Teacher sent from God. The words that He speaks
unto us, are spirit and life. Nevertheless He does not,
like the sages, fulfil Himself in His teachings. His end
is not the utterance of wisdom, to leave behind Him
books of instruction. There is in Him, as the very
soul of His being, a life purpose that lifts Him and pro-
jects Him far out beyond the limits of spoken wisdom,
so that He embraces the world, not with a view to in-
struct it but to change it, to recombine its elements, to
purge and redeem it unto righteousness, to govern and
guide it unto holy happiness ; to bring it out of darkness
into His marvellous light by the power of His marvel-
lous love. Christ is a Saviour, not a sage.

Neither may Christ, in His kingly purpose, be classi-
fied with any who have worn earthly crowns and exer-
cised lordship over their fellow-men. It is inevitable
among these that they carry the signs of distinction.
The royalty of the world has its appropriate modes of
expression, its natural separations from common life.
Splendid equipment, rigid etiquette, wealth, courtly
attendants are not luxuries only but necessities of kings.
By common consent the world accords them these, as
reasonable perquisites of office. Christ, claiming sov-
ereignty over all kings, and control in all kingdoms,
depends on and possesses none of these things. No
palace, no fortress, no sceptre, no courtiers, no luxurious
repose, no separation from the common — yet King of
kings. He purposed to rule the world, yet through a

194 BARROWS LECTURES

Kingdom that is not of this world; a Kingdom that
derives none of its support from armies, taxes, alliances,
or prestige ; that has nothing to do with war or violence ;
that is founded in character, governed by holiness, in-
spired by love. His Kingdom is righteousness and
peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. He is a King, but
from all kings, as from all sages, He is set apart. He
stands alone ; the First and the Last ; His power, love ;
His throne, the Cross, as the sign of his life purpose.
Having now come to see the uniqueness of Christ
and wherein that uniqueness consists, even in the life
of holiness and the death of sacrifice, he who would
have access to the deeper mysteries of Jesus Christ
must advance from the study of history into the study
of experience: he must consider the power of Christ
in the Christian Consciousness. May I recall to your
memory some words in my first lecture about the nature
of individual consciousness ? Consciousness is " knowl-
edge, through testimony within oneself, of impressions,
thoughts, feelings that make up conscious existence.
It is the self -knowing soul, holding counsel with itself,
taking knowledge of itself inwardly as an entity sepa-
rable from the whole outlying universe."' In the Bri-
hadaranyaka Upanishad the question is proposed:
"What do you mean by self?" And the answer is
given: "It is the spirit behind the organs of sense which
is essential knowledge, and shines within the heart. ""^
It is within the self-knowing soul of every man who
will receive Him, that Jesus Christ, day by day, year
by year, seeks to accomplish His life purpose. Within

I C/. lecture in loc, p. 15. 2 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4: 3.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 195

the circle of consciousness He enters, not as a bodily
appearance, but as a spiritual presence. In the his-
torical and fleshly manifesting of Christ, of which we
have become cognisant through trustworthy records
of Scripture, we know Him objectively, as a person
apart from ourselves. We discover the prophetic and
kingly purpose of His Incarnation. This is funda-
mental knowledge of Christ, inestimable and indispen-
sable. But it is not the highest form of knowledge.
From knowledge of Christ Historical we advance into
knowledge of Christ Mystical. Him Whom we have
known objectively, as an adorable fact, an ideal expres-
sion of holy love, we now discern subjectively, as the
inseparable and inmost life of the soul; the Ground
of our transformed and illumined consciousness, the
hidden Fountain of our being, springing up within us
unto everlasting life. Those who attain this mystical,
immediate consciousness of Christ, as in oneness with
themselves, know by its testimony that they have ad-
vanced in spiritual life to a maturity, in comparison
with which the first historical apprehension of a Jesus
of the past is the correct but inchoate knowledge of
childhood. That knowledge never ceases to be pre-
cious; but its distinctive message is absorbed and
swallowed up in the mystical unfoldings of Christian
experience ; so that one may say : Though I have known
Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth I know Him
thus no more. For me to live is Christ. Yet in this
absorbing of the Christ Historical in the profounder
experiential knowledge of the Christ Mystical, the sense
of identity between the earlier and the later knowledge

196 BARROWS LECTURES

continually intensifies. The Christ Mystical, imme-
diately discerned in the circle of consciousness, is the
continuous, present, subjective manifestation of the
same Christ Historical, and not another. The marks of
His character, clearly defined upon the page of history,
are not lost in a vague spiritual presence. The spiritual
presence of Christ is not a moving cloud of impersonal
influence; it is a fixed, determined experience; fixed
by historical facts. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
and to-day, and for ever. The Christ Historical and
the Christ Mystical are one. When we consider His
character objectively, as embodied in His historical
life among men, its moral splendour invests His human-
ity with Godlike majesty and completely establishes
an ideal of manhood. Holy, guileless, undefiled, sepa-
rate from sinners. He assimilates all good, rejects all
evil. Our thought cannot rise to a higher ethical con-
ception than that which He embodies. His humanity
is the Alpha and Omega of perfection. When we know
Him mystically, as the Christ within us, the Ground
and Spring of our illumined consciousness, all the force
of His ideal manhood is brought to bear subjectively
upon our own. Being in Christ we are made new
creatures. Old corruptions of desire and purpose
stand condemned in the presence of new conceptions
of a potential manhood, conformed in thought, word,
and deed to the measure of the stature of the fulness
of Christ. A new moral imperative is enthroned in
consciousness, and summons every thought, desire,
and volition to submit to the law of a new manhood
revealed in Christ Jesus. In like manner we may con-

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 197

sider objectively the disposition of sacrificial love, em-
bodied in Christ's historical life among men. We may
note His persistent purpose to overcome others by
loving ministration rather than by argument or force ; to
give Himself unsparingly to whatever He was prompted
to do by His affection for the world and His dis-
cernment of its needs; "to found His empire on the
consent and not the fears of mankind, and however
bitterly their envy may persecute Him, to use His super-
natural powers only in doing them good.'" We may
stand, where reverent observers for twenty centuries
have stood, before the Cross of Calvary, lost in wonder,
as the suffering and shame of the public crucifixion give
occasion for more splendid demonstrations of love
which the most horrible of deaths cannot quench. But
when we know Him mystically, as the Christ within
us, the Ground and Spring of our illumined conscious-
ness, this invincible love individualises itself in our
experience, speaks to us in terms of personal affection,
wells up into consciousness with tremendous appeal
to our noblest instincts. We know that He Who wit-
nesses mystically within us is He Who has taken us
up, through His Cross and Passion, into a higher life
in God, the Eternal Source and Home of finite conscious-
ness. Life takes on new meaning as Christ Crucified
becomes identified with us and we with Him, Who
loved us and gave Himself up for us; in union with
Whose death we also may die unto sin.

I have said that the knowledge of Christ Historical
is not the highest form of knowledge. From it we

' Cf. Seeley, op. cit., p. 6.

198 BARROWS LECTURES

advance to knowledge of Christ Mystical, immediately
discerned in consciousness, and, so doing, we reach a
spiritual life of greater maturity. The mysteries of
Jesus Christ are not nature-marvels, external signs, and
portents. They are mysteries of the Spirit, inwardly
apprehended in terms of ethical self-realisation. He
comes to animate and control our moral powers; to
regulate our natural tendencies, by furnishing us with
new motives; to interpret to us the depths of our own
being, the suggestions of our sub-conscious life. He
comes, I say, to animate and control our moral powers.
In northern countries animals are found that pass into
a state of torpor at the approach of frost and remain in
winter sleep, or hibernation, until the vivifying airs and
sunshine of spring return. There is, common to man,
a state of the soul which is moral hibernation, a winter
sleep of conscience. The ethical sense is torpid. Dis-
tinctions of right and wrong become inoperative. Sin
awakens no remorse; holiness, no zeal. Conduct
moves at the bidding of inclination, and leaves behind
its trail of results, as ships cast over the waste into the
sea, heedless of its character. All this is changed when
Christ is known mystically within the circle of conscious-
ness. With Him comes, not remote and academic
impulse from an historical ideal, but immediate resur-
rection of the ethical sense, as power bom again within
us. Conscience springs from its winter sleep, sensitive
and strong. Love of righteousness, hatred of sin
become passions of the regenerate soul. The eyes of
the understanding are opened. The veil of illusory
egotism is rent in twain. The soul perceives its true

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 199

selfhood as hid with Christ in God. As one passed
out of death into hfe it says: It is no longer I that live,
but Christ liveth in me. '

He comes also to regulate our natural tendencies
by furnishing us with new motives. Christ does not
make men holy by dehumanising them, but by teaching
them to regulate their humanity. He does not require
men to extirpate natural tendencies by violent asceticism.
Sharing their humanity, He helps them to place those
tendencies under control of the highest principles of
personal and social righteousness. It has been said:

The revelation of God in Christ is not meant to supplant His
prior revelations of Himself in nature and in man. It takes
account of them and is built upon them. No doubt it subordinates
the natural qualities and tendencies to the higher truth it reveals.
But though thus denying to them a false independence and suprem-
acy, it does not lessen but heighten their value, by supplying
them with new motives and loftier aims.^

Finally, He comes to interpret to us the depths of
our own being, the suggestions of our sub-conscious
life. Christ, mystically known, present within the
circle of consciousness, is the answer to those vast and
shadowy questions, those subtle approximations to
infinity, those brief and blessed intimations of kinship
with God, that pass and repass within the soul at depths
that at once preclude expression and suggest certitude.
Apart from Him, those solemn intimations of the soul's
boundlessness are bewildering. They issue in unquench-
able thirstings; in cries of the soul to which no response
comes; in the stretching out of hands to which no

I Gal. 2 : 20. 2 Forrest, op. cit., pp. 288, 289.

200 BARROWS LECTURES

answering touch is given. But in Him, as in another
and greater self, the soul gains insight to its own ideal,
receives the answer to its own questions, is made com-
plete; and, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord,
is changed into the same image. Such is the power
of Christ in the Christian Consciousness, when one
advances from knowledge of Christ Historical into
knowledge of Christ Mystical.

There remains one further step to be taken by him
who would have access to the deeper mysteries of Jesus
Christ. Having begun in the historical fact, the life
purpose of Jesus Christ, and having advanced into the
region of experience, there learning the power of Christ
in the Christian Consciousness, he is prepared for the
final and distinctive truth of the Christian religion:
the Divinity of Jesus Christ as the Revelation of the
Heart of God. To that final truth I can well conceive
the Oriental Consciousness returning as to a congenial
resting-place, an inheritance alienated for generations;
and now, by the sure reversion of time, brought back
to those capable of restoring its pristine grandeur. In
closing the preceding lecture I spoke of those Pales-
tinian Orientals on whom rested the immediate power
of Christ's presence at the time of His historical mani-
festation. Permit me to recall the words then spoken :

The reflective powers of their minds were roused ; their hearts
began to burn within them. They recalled His Words and the
spirit of His life; they comprehended His purpose, and perceived
that it was universal. They knew that He was a prophet, but not
like any other prophet, for in Him viisdom found its source. They
knew that He was great, but not with the mere greatness of men,

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 201

for men centre their greatness in themselves, and His seemed'to go
forth from Himself and be lost in sacrifice upon the world. Then
they recalled the philosophic ideals of a Wisdom, an intelligible
Word, coming out from the abyss of the Unknowable, to interpret
the secrets of the Divine intelligence, to be a Mediator between the
Eternal and the ephemeral, the sum of the thoughts of God, the
idea of ideas. ^

From distant Oriental sources these intimations
had entered and filled the Greek consciousness, corrob-
orating impressions already there. In the Rig Veda is a
whole hymn addressed and devoted to the Word — the
Logos. In the Mahdbhdrata we read: ''The Eternal
Word, without beginning, without end, was uttered
by the Self existent."^ To those Orientals who came
under the immediate power of Christ it seemed that
these impressions and hopes of the ancient East were
corrected and completed in Him. Therefore these
majestic souls discerned His meaning and His nature.
For them He was the loving Spirit of the Lord that
filleth all the earth, the Brightness of the Everlasting
Light, the Unspotted Mirror of the Power of God,
the Image of His Goodness, the Mediator, the Heavenly
Man, the Word that was in the beginning with God,
that was made flesh and dwelt among men, that men
might behold His glory, full of grace and truth. It
was a wondrous interpretation, rich with the mystical
spirit of the Oriental Consciousness. Time has but
confirmed this interpretation. Christ Mystical, enter-
ing the circle of consciousness, has corroborated the

1 C). Lecture V, p. 167. Herbert BayisTES, M.R.A.S., Royal

2 Mahdbhdrata 8. 533. Cf. article Asiatic Society's Journal, April,
on the "History of the Logos," by 1906, pp. 373-85.

202 BARROWS LECTURES

first impression produced by Christ Historical. We
know that the life purpose of Jesus Christ answers and
fulfils the highest aspiration in the moral consciousness
of humanity; that we cannot feel the absolute value
of good nor recognise its authority in higher senses
than appear in Christ. From this we conclude "that He
is the Outspeaking Voice from the shoreless, soundless
depths of Infinite Being, confirming the goodness of
holy love as the inner Essence of the Heart of God.
This is the Divinity of Christ expressed through the
words and acts of His human personality ; not a mechan-
ical or local divinity existing by the side of, yet apart
from, our human nature; but a Divine Nature that
blends and identifies itself with the thoughts, feelings,
volitions of human individuality. ' Herein is the gospel
of the higher Christian monism, the gospel of .the one-
ness of man with God. This Christ, Whom we discern
in the circle of consciousness as so absolutely one with
us that we are "members of His body," is none other
than the very Word of the Infinite, mediating to us,
on the ethical side, the truth of our oneness with God
and the implications contained in that truth, even as,
on the intellectual side, the same truth of man's oneness
with God has long been mediated to the higher religious
thinking of the East, through its philosophy and meta-
physics. Christ, as the revelation of the Heart of God,
speaks to us supremely through His Cross and Passion.
There pain and sacrifice appear in a new light. No
longer are they marks of weakness and defeat, no longer
pitiable evils born in the travail of a groaning creation,

I Cf. John Caird, Fundamental Ideas, Vol. I, pp. 14, 15.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 203

but disclosures of the character of the Eternal, expres-
sions of love's holiest purpose, to save others by giving
itself. The anguish of Christ upon the Cross no longer
is mistaken by us for the torture of the vanquished. It
is the lonely ecstasy of the Divine Sufferer, Whose love
demands pain as the only available language through
which to make His purpose understood. How splendid
is the loneliness of that sacrificial life when we recognise
in it the revelation of God ! Not expecting, not demand-
ing, not receiving full response, yet still finding its joy,
and the fulfilment of its deepest self-realisation, in the
boundless giving forth of itself in love. Reflections
of this spirit we have seen in Christly souls, whose lives,
animated by the same sacrificial purpose, have taken on
a Godlike dignity, gravity, tenderness. But in Christ
we rise, through His crucified humanity, into the region
of the Infinite. We touch the Heart of God, the foun-
tain of holy love, out of which all holy love in us has
emerged as the secondary and responsive image of Him-
self. Well may I quote at this point the words of Caird
of Glasgow, which, were they spoken here in India,
might not unworthily be the words of an Oriental seer :

Can we think, then, of this finite world as constituting, for
infinite as for finite intelligence, the medium of its self-realisation ?
Have we here that second self of infinitude, in the knowledge of
which the riches of the Divine nature, its boundless capacities, are
unfolded ? There is a sense in which this is true. God reveals
Himself in nature and in the finite spirits He has made in His own
Image. The capacity of love in the heart of God may be said to
find a new channel for its outflow in every human soul; and in the
responsive love which that love awakens there is something which
we can think of as adding a new sweetness and joy to the very

204 BARROWS LECTURES

blessedness of the Infinite. Nay, seeing that love reaches and can
only reach its highest expression in suffering and sacrifice, and that
the richest, purest blessedness is that which comes through pain
and sorrow, can it be wrong to ascribe to God a capacity of self-
sacrifice, a giving up of Himself, a going forth of His Own Being
for the redemption of the world from sin and sorrow ?^

Gentlemen of the East: It remains for me to close
this course of lectures. I do so with regret for myself
on withdrawing from this sweet association with your
minds, and with gratitude to you for your sustaining
and inspiring attention. I trust that I am not guilty
of presumption in attributing your close following of
my remarks, not exclusively to your distinguished and
gracious courtesy toward a guest, but in part also to
your interested consideration of the matters which have
been under discussion. I have presented what may
be described as the Oriental aspects of the Christian
religion, namely, those that involve the mystical and
subjective relations between God and the soul, and
that reach their highest perfection wherever the Divinity
of Jesus Christ, as the Word, the Logos, of the Infinite,
is most profoundly entertained within the circle of con-
sciousness. As a student of religion I observe that
certain civilisations lend themselves and others do not
lend themselves to these aspects of Christianity. The
civilisations of the West have many noble qualities and
are contributing indispensable elements to the religious
development of the world. They are great in applica-
tions of religion to practical affairs, in nurture of reli-
gious institutions, in recovery of historic doctrines,

^ John Caird, Fundamental Ideas, Vol. I, p. 73.

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 205

methods, records, in appreciations of Christ as a teacher,
in attempts to incorporate His ethical ideals into modern
life. But the civilisations of the West are deficient in
the theory of religion, and, more especially, in the
metaphysic of life that lies back of religion and involves
the fundamental questions of Being. More and more
those civilisations are surrendering themselves to a pas-
sion for progress, which, being analysed, is found to
signify increased efficiency in methods of living, better-
ment of the world as a safe and convenient dwelling-
place for men, improvement of the human stock in com-
ing generations, custodianship of the earth by strong
races. I do not for a moment question the value of
these ideas, if properly subordinated to an adequate
metaphysic of life, and grounded in discriminating
theory of Absolute Being and the unity of the race in
God. No doubt it may be the will of God that Western
races shall be the world's reformers, and the world's
educators in the art of living. Nor do I for a moment
forget the peril of over-concentration upon a metaphysic
of life, and a theory of Ultimate Being. ,The life of
pure thought may disqualify for the life of action.
Speculative pursuit of the ideal may make the practical
and the real repellant, may produce timidity of soul,
paralysis of the will, irresolution; may relegate men
and even nations to the sphere of inefficiency and back-
wardness; always preparing, never accomplishing.
But the genius of Western civilisation tends to the
opposite extreme. Zeal for the practical aspects of
religion increases because of their obvious relations to
progress; but interest and faith alike decline in the

2o6 BARROWS LECTURES

deep mysteries of Godliness, the profound relations
of the finite soul of humanity to the Ultimate Ground
of Being. The improved future of the world absorbs
the attention of the West. Meanwhile it loses touch
with great inheritances of the spirit, and sacrifices the
ancient metaphysic of the manifested Godhead in Christ
to the strenuous dynamic of modern utilitarianism.
In other words: the Oriental aspects of the Christian
religion are being overlooked by the West in its prac-
tical ambition to reform and educate the world. This
is a calamity, as I pointed out in opening this lecture.
It is a situation that feeds instincts of aggression, author-
ity, pride, externalism, already more than sufficiently
developed in the Western world ; that depreciates those
deeper truths and values of the Christian religion which
subdue worldly pride, correct cruel and intolerant
ambition, restrain worship of the visible, and teach
men and nations gentleness, patience, sympathy, self-
sacrifice. At this juncture one thing is needed above
all else for the religious development of the human race :
the influence of the Oriental Consciousness for the
reinterpretation of Christianity to the modern world.
In the diversity of His gifts, a good God has endowed
the East with certain sublime traits, which, in the first
lecture of this course, I attempted to describe: the Con-
templative Life ; the Presence of the Unseen ; the Aspi-
ration for Ultimate Being ; Reverence for the Sanctions
of the Past. To attribute these to you is no flattery,
for by the grace of God you are what you are. To
suggest the service which, by the consecration of these
traits to Christ, you can render to the world is no pre-

MINISTRY OF ORIENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS 207

sumption, for we are members one of the other and have
a right to summon one another in the name of the com-
mon good.

I approach you, therefore, at this last moment, with
frankness and fearlessness. We stand on the border
of a new age, when great reconstructions in world
relations are imminent. We, who are now of mature
age, may not live to witness their fulfilment, but our
children and our children's children shall see them.
In those reconstructions the initiative of the East shall
be felt in ways undreamed of by our fathers. The
East shall come to its own again and speak in the coun-
cls of the world. Time, the great restorer of post-
poned inheritances, the great adjuster of equities, shall
summon the East not to the recrudescence of old con-
flicts but to new rivalries of the mind and of the spirit.
The day of her visitation, the hour of her opportunity,
shall come from God. Shall she know that day and
be ready for that hour ? The answer to that question
is bound up in another: Shall the Oriental Conscious-
ness place its sublime qualities at the service of Jesus
Christ, and become unto the twentieth century what
she was unto the first, a prophet of the Highest ? The
Oriental Consciousness has the gifts that the world
needs to offset its strenuous externalism and guide it
back to the secret place of the Most High. The Con-
templative Life, the Presence of the Unseen, the Aspira-
tion for Ultimate Being, Reverence for the Sanctions
of the Past are the Four Gospels with which a Christian
East may re-evangelise the West ; giving back to it the
spirit of the first days ; co-operating with it to lead the

2o8 BARROWS LECTURES

world out of its confusion, grossness, and sin, into the
peace and purity of Jesus Christ.

Gentlemen and friends: My message is delivered.
Faulty and feeble though it be, it is yet the word of one
who loves India as few Occidentals have loved her. It
may be that never again I shall visit this land. In the
course of time I shall pass from the earth into that
Unseen, upon which in common we love to meditate.
But were I to return from some other world to visit
you, my counsel and exhortation would be unchanged :
Receive Jesus Christ as the Word — the Logos of the
Infinite — ^Who reveals in sacrifice the Heart of God.
Honour Him indeed as a Sage, Who comes not to destroy
but to fulfil your traditional aspirations. But do more
than that: Worship Him as a Saviour Who enters the
circle of consciousness to make all things new, purging
away the lusts of sin. Then go forth as His prophets
and make Him known Eastward and Westward, dedi-
cating your splendid gifts to Him for the world's sake,
until His Kingdom come and His Will be done, in earth
as it is in Heaven !

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