God and man; philosophy of the higher life

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God and Ma

PHILOSOPHY OF THE HIGHER
LIFE

BY

E. ELLSWORTH SHUMAKER

Ph.D. (YALE)

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Zbe 'Knicherbocker iptesa

1909

Copyright, 1909

BY

K. ELLSWORTH SHUMAiC£R

ICbe fmklteTbocbev 8>res0, View ffotrlfc

ICL,A253047

(To

THE BEAUTIFUL MEMORY OF

PHILLIPS BROOKS

IN ENDURING GRATITUDE AND LOVE

PREFACE

ALL awaking natures are interested in the
Higher Life. Such life is our supreme
human concern. The reality of it is an increasing
fascination ; the process thereof, a growing inquiry.
The present work attempts to show how we enter
upon and actually live the Higher Life. It is
not a metaphysic, although an ultimate view of
things is implicit in it. Nor is it an apologetic,
though again it is hoped that it may reveal the
Rock under our feet and the Sky that arches over
our heads. Rather, it is a philosophy of life on
its higher planes.

So far from there being nothing new, every
human life is unique, every experience has some-
thing new in it. The great Revelation is not
ended, and will not be. God has much more to
show the wondering eyes of men. And every
life that deeply lives sees a fresh vision, and joy-
ously walks in a brightening light. The Spirit
of truth is not merely repeating itself. In this
work, the new view contained is the vision of
man's Great Environment, and of man himself
as veritably set into it, and forever living his
Higher Life in relation thereto. Modern science

vi Preface

has discovered anew man's lower environment,
and for the first time in the history of thought,
seriously has set man therein and thoroughly
related his life thereto. What remains is that
religious philosophy should discover man's Higher
Environment anew, and with equal thoroughness
set him into it, and seriously implicate his nobler
life therewith. In the whole progress of science,
there has been no more inclusive achievement
than the first. What then, in the advance of
religion, may the second prove?

Out of life this book grew; to life it makes its
call. Fourteen years ago the germinal idea of
it sprang from the grapple with human needs.
Six years ago its background was presented as
a Doctor's thesis at Yale University. The book
has been, I am free to say, a costly work. During
Harvard days, my interest was already philosophic,
looking to the deeper analysis of the religious
life. During the Princeton and New York (Gen.
Theol. Sem.) periods, that interest deepened.
Afterward at Berlin, philosophy of religion be-
came central. And later at Yale, the inquiry
had crystallized into what now has grown to the
present work. In the intervening pastorates,
our interpretation has been held close to palpi-
tating life. Every chapter and stage of the book
has been vivid with experience.

The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry,

Preface vii

of which Plato speaks, was composed in his fair
pages, when philosophy became beautiful with
life, and poetry became deep with wisdom. The
poets were right, when they shrank from the
pale systems, and felt that without the warmth
and colour of reality men were not dealing with
life at all. And the philosophers were right,
when they held aloof, and somewhat superiorly
insisted that without the solid framework of
truth neither things nor men were thinkable.
For unless truth rises into beauty, and unless
beauty springs out of truth, both alike are faulty
and unreal. Truth and grace meet together in
every perfect thing. We shall then seek for
truth indeed as for pearls of great price, but we
shall know that we hold the precious gems in our
hands, when they shine with living and during
beauty.

Human life has become too subjective to be
satisfied without explanation. We want to know
the secret of things, the "how" of the Higher
Life. We have lost, perhaps forever, the naivete
of our childhood. We shall win, I think, a new
and higher simplicity. For subjectivity is not
the end, nor explanation. A higher objectivity
is the true goal. But for the present, our stage
of progress seeks and needs a philosophy of life.
Through it, we shall pass enriched into a new
and larger faith and peace.

viii Preface

Some such approach to the great Realities,
and some such philosophy of life as lies before
us, I deeply believe, is the future path of the
human mind.

E. E. S.

Cambridge, Mass.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I

Man as Set into the Universe: or the
World-All in its Many Spheres as it En-
folds Man ...... I

A. The Physical Spheres That Enfold Man

CHAPTER II

The Enfolding World- All in its Many
Spheres . . . . . . -13

B. The Human Spheres That Enfold Man

CHAPTER III

The Enfolding World-All in its Many
Spheres ....... 43

C. The Higher Spheres That Enfold Man

CHAPTER IV

The Correspondingly Wide-Ranging Gamut
OF Man's Powers ..... 74

CHAPTER V

The World- All at Work: or the Pri-
ority, Parenthood, and Greater Working
OF God ....... 85

X Contents

FAGB

CHAPTER VI

Why is our Consciousness of God's Work-
ing so Meagre? . . . . . 130

CHAPTER VII

Man at Work, or the Responsive Receptiv-
ity and Co-operative Activity of Man . 141

CHAPTER VIII
What God is Working toward . . . 173

CHAPTER IX
What Man is Working toward . . . 208

CHAPTER X

God's Process: or God's Movement Man-
ward ....... 251

CHAPTER XI

Man's Progress: or Man's Movement God-
ward ....... 295

CHAPTER XII
Man's True Life in God .... 325

CHAPTER XIII
Humanity and the Individual . . . 354

Contents xi

PA.GK

CHAPTER XIV

Man the Expression op God and Partaker
OP THE Divine Nature .... 370

CHAPTER XV
Thb Abounding Riches op the Higher Lipb 3^3

God and Man: Philosophy of
the Higher Life

CHAPTER I

MAN AS SET INTO THE UNIVERSE; OR, THE WORLD
ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES AS IT ENFOLDS MAN

A. The Physical Spheres That Enfold Man

OUR total Environment that enspheres us
is so ever-present that we do not reahse
its presence. We do not know the primal fact
of things. We are unconscious of what is. If
we could begin life by waking with adult conscious-
ness at darkest midnight, and have that moment
as the beginning of conscious experience, we
should be in a condition no doubt for a revelation
of the truth of things as it is. We should discover
our body and that we are shut up within it. We
shoiild become aware of our head and that we
live in it, enclosed by it as by a nutshell. When
day broke, our eyes would open to a stupendous

2 God and Man

scene. We should step forth into an encircling
Universe. The earth would be under our feet;
the sky wotild arch over our head; we should be
ensphered. The solid earth would impress us
as a mighty fact, and we should realise that we
were standing upon it. But wherefore stand upon
this solid mass of earth? We might try to raise
one foot from it, and of course succeed. We
might then attempt to raise both feet from it,
and of course fail. This would be strange. The
earth would seem to have hold of us. We might
try to leap up from it. Up two feet we might
jump, but back we should come. The earth
surely would appear to have us in its grasp.
All our strength might be put forth in a mightier
leap. But back again we should come. In vain
would all such attempts be repeated. The earth
would grasp us still with resistless might. Here
would be stubborn fact. This would be the
beginning of the revelation of what is. The
conclusion would be quite irresistible that we are
held within the unbreakable grasp of earth.

We might have noticed ere this that we breathed.
The wind might have blown upon us and we have
become conscious of the atmosphere. It might
now flash in upon us that we breathed this atmo-
sphere. We might perceive that we breathed
it regularly and kept on doing so. "But what
is this air?" we might ask, "and why breathe
it? It is a mere nothing. The earth is a solid

The Physical Envelops 3

fact, but this atmosphere is unsubstantial noth-
ingness. We'll breathe it no more." Speedily
however there would be a growing inducement
to breathe again just this nothingness. We should
discover a "powerful weakness" in not doing so;
discover that this subtle, invisible, intangible
something all about us is indispensable; that
it is the life of our life; that when it pours itself
into us, we live; and that when we breathe it
not, we die. Here is another revelation of what
is. Here is a new fact, different from the mighty
fact of earth, but, in its way, just as stupendous
and resistless. We move about and explore
this new fact. We go backward; it is there.
We go forward, and sidewise ; it is there, and there.
We descend into a valley; it is there. We go
up to a hilltop ; it is there also. Everywhere and
everywhere it is present. It enfolds us. It
might be suggested to us that it is like an ocean
and that we are like fish; that we move about
within it as fish swim about in the sea; that we
continually breathe it and feed upon it as fish
breathe and feed upon the water. It might ftir-
ther be suggested that this atmospheric ocean
belongs to the earth just as the watery ocean
does; that it is in reality part of the earth just
as that is. Then we should at length realise
that this material sphere is not only under us
but also over us, and around us — yes, and in us ;
that we are in it, are ensphered by it perpetually;

4 God and Man

that we are held in its grasp, go not out from it,
live and move and have oiir being in it.

The primal facts are now before us. We are
ensphered by the globe of the head — a narrow
world. We are ensphered by the earth with its
power. We are ensphered by the air. Or, put-
ting all these together, we are ensphered by the
material world. Within these spheres we always
live, making no excursions beyond them.

It begins to grow apparent by this time what
the fact about man's place in the Universe is.
He lives his life within many envelopes. Many
concentric spheres, so to speak, enfold him.
He lives within them. He feeds out of and upon
them in many ways. They pour themselves
into him perpetually. He is a part of them, of
the spheres that encircle him.

But let us go on to think of other spheres.

Our thoughtful observer will not thus have
grown intelligent about body, earth, and air with-
out having noticed the glory of the sunlight that
floods the world. His eyes before this will have
followed the sunbeams up to the sun. He will
have noticed that he is enveloped in light, and
that earth and sky as well are filled with light
flowing forth from the sun. He may close his
eyes and discover how all the world is then shut
out as by a curtain. In this way he may learn
how light is poured into his eyes and how depend-
ent sight is upon it. Without light, earth, sky,

The Physical Envelops 5

a Universe would be curtained from vision. He
might feel also the warmth of the sun's rays.
Someone might inform him, however, that he had
not yet discovered a tithe of the meaning of this
to him new phenomenon of light. He might tell
him that without it earth and he alike would be
swathed in eternal ice and snow; that all forms
of life would pass away; and that death would
hold uninterrupted reign. As though this were
not wonder enough, he might tell him how distant
the orb and source of all this light is; how this
boundless sphere of light ever goes forth from
the sun, and is and remains essentially a part of
the sun. Hereupon our learner would discover
that being enswathed by light was being ensphered
in reality by the sun. That far-away orb was yet
so near, encircled him, and after its own fashion
held him in its mighty grasp. It poured light
into his eyes, warmth into his body, and, with
food, vitality into his very marrow-bones.

Here then is a new envelope. Man is ensphered
by the sun. Within this greater sphere he lives
his life, and, after a different sort, feeds out of
and upon it. In manifold ways it pours itself
into him and conditions all his life.

Already we are led to think that it is not alone
or chiefly what man does within his spheres,
but also what his spheres do within him. As we
go on it will appear that man is held within many
ensphering worlds, and that what they do to

6 God and Man

him and in him is much more than what he him-
self does.

Though man is ensphered by the earth, he is
encompassed also, as we now have seen, by the
sun. Thus far considered this last is in subtle
and intangible but powerfiil forms. There is
more truth to learn about this last, however.
The sun holds both man and world in its grasp.
Our learner will be told that the earth itself
holds not him with more irresistible power than
the sun holds the earth and all that is thereon.
The earth and all its belongings, he will be told,
is flung out into space and attracted by the sun
about its appointed orbit unceasingly, ever in
obedience to the central sim. With perfection
of power the earth is ensphered and held fast.
All that takes place on the earth comes to pass
within the enveloping control of the solar system.
This very solid globe itself knows how to do noth-
ing but haste to obey. It makes no excursions
beyond its appointed path. It is ever receptive
of a thousand influences. It is grasped by the
sun.

Up to the present we have seen man ensphered
by his body, ensphered by the earth, ensphered
by the sun. He does not hold his spheres, they
hold him. What he does is something. What
they do to him and in him is much more. He
lives his life within them. They in a broad
sense may be said to live their life into him.

The Physical Envelops 7

When we picture man standing upon the earth,
and the earth flying at a thousand-mile-a-minute
rate through space, circHng in unbroken obedience
around the sun; and then when we picture
sun, earth, and man as enveloped by the Universe,
we are beginning to make real to ourselves the
actual truth and fact of things. As we see the
sky arch over us and sweep round our world, so
we see the vaster universal heavens sweep round
and ensphere our solar system. We are held
sphere within sphere, the less enfolded in the
greater, out to the greatest. We are ensphered
by the Universe.

Nor is this to be acknowledged as fact and then
straightway made naught of. As though it were
indeed an infinite truth, but touched not our
lives — ^just as the broad heavens are it is true
above all our heads, but seem to unthinking
men to have little moment for us. On the con-
trary, the seeming indifferent sky is quite our
first concern. Within this universal sphere, we
have our existence, think our thought, do our
work, and develop our personality.

Vast symbol all this of the being of God. Per-
haps more than symbol; perhaps expression in
part of the reality. Perchance the infinite Uni-
verse that enfolds us is, in some sense, the infinite
God enfolding us. Perchance our thousand-fold
connection therewith is in reality thousand-fold
connection with God. Perhaps we, in a way,

8 God and Man

rest upon God when we stand upon the earth,
are encircled by God when enveloped by the air,
breathe in God when we breathe the atmosphere ■
in some sense, feed upon God when we feed upon
bread, are vitalised by God when quickened by
sunlight, and are held in the power of God when
held in the grasp of earth, sun, and Universe.
Such, one may well be persuaded, is the deepest
interpretation and truth of things. Living thus
within the Universe is in reality living, moving,
and having one's being in God. And the ten
thousand laws of the mighty system that lay
hold of us and work day and night upon and in
us are all powers that go forth from Him. In
the vast Universe, therefore, that enspheres us,
we see the infinite God ensphering us ; and in the
myriad laws that work in us we see the myriad
influences of God working out His will. All
envelopes are divine envelopes in the last meaning
of them. First and last we are held within an
infinite enfolding Life ; we are ensphered by God.

We live within the body; we live within the en-
circling earth ; we live within the ensphering sun |
we live within the all-enfolding Universe. This
is what we have seen. In the deepest meaning
of it all, we live within the enfolding Life of God.

These are some of the envelopes by which
man is ensphered. He lives perpetually in vital
mutual commerce with all these envelopes. Really
he is feeding upon them, in the broad sense, aU

The Physical Envelops 9

the time. They are the life of his life. One
needs to see clearly all the envelopes ; then to see
that man is really set into them all; then to see
how he actually lives his life within these spheres ;
— better, how the All lives its life into him, and
how he co-operates with the All ; — or, once more,
how the All inflows into him and how he lives
by and out of the feeding Absolute.

It is now apparent that we are set vastly deeper
into this system of things than we know. We
have infinitely more vital and real relationships,
connections, commerces with the Universe than
we realise. The way we are bedded and rooted
into this world and all things, in legionary vital
connection with all, is wonderful yet is the sober
truth . We are not like an island floating in infinite
emptiness alone and dissevered, but we are like
a tree rooted down into everything and branched
out into ever3rthing. The earth is not more really
set into million-fold connection with the Universe
than are we. This is what is. This is the primal
and fundamental fact of things. We seem as
disconnected as an eagle floating in mid-heaven.
We forget that every solar system, every star,
every satellite, every mote of matter in the wide
Universe sends a line of influence through the
centre of the eagle's body, and a million forces
focus and balance there. The eagle knows it not.
It only floats in freedom. So we each seem sepa-
rated and disconnected, but the truth and fact

lo God and Man

is that we are set into things, are a living part of
things, in deeper and more vital relationship
than V\^e shall ever comprehend. All that is
breathes in us, sends its life-blood through us,
vitalises us. The total system of beings and
powers lives and pulses in us. We are held in
truth in an infinite network of influences and
laws ; as though a vast spider-web stretched across
space and we were entangled in ten-million
meshes. So, and more so, are we knit into this
marvellous and multiform World-All.

If this is the fact and scientific truth of things ;
if the life of man is a sort of infinite thing, acted
upon in infinite ways and again acting in infinite
ways upon the universal environment, how can
the meagre field of consciousness ever know more
than a fraction of what is taking place? Only
the infinite Mind can know the endless involution
and detail of the process. Vastly more is going
on in man than he knows or can ever know. In
the main he carries not himself, but is borne on
the bosom of things. In the main he lives not
his own life, but the World- All lives its life in him.
So deep, so real, so vital, so mutual, so constant,
so multiform, so mysterious is this commerce
between man and his world.

Thus far we have come to this. Here are many
spheres enfolding man. Here is man enfolded
by all the spheres, yet a part of them. As a part,
man lives his life within the spheres. All these

The Physical Envelops ii

spheres also live their life, so to speak, in man.
Life is a constant renewal out of the envelopes,
a perpetual feeding out of and upon the spheres.
The feeding envelopes perpetually feed man.
What man does is something. What the envel-
opes do is much more. Man therefore, one may
say, lives a fed life within feeding worlds that
enfold him and of which he all the time forms
a part; the deepest interpretation of all this
being that man lives his life within the enfolding
Life of God.

In endeavouring to get at and realise man's
place in the cosmos we must not overlook the
influence upon him of the succession of day and
night, of the ever recurring seasons, the distance
of his home from the equator, the elevation of it
above sea-level, and the topography of the land
wherein he lives. Man builds no houses on the
Matterhorn, and makes no gardens on the summit
of the Himalayas. He achieves no great civili-
sations at the poles or at the equator. And the
pervasive and powerful influence of the seasons
and of the succession of day and night is incalcul-
able. What is more subtle than climate? or
than springtime? or than the influence of light?
The extent to which man is held within the power
of these is not to be measured by the space that
here can be given to them. They form other
atmospheres, so to speak, within which man lives
out his life.

12 God and Man

Here let it be noted that it is not our purpose to
attempt a precise statement or assessment of the
influence of these various factors upon man. It
is our object merely to call up the conditioning
atmospheres with the multitude of facts that
each readily suggests. It is not our interest
critically to enumerate the facts, setting down
no more no less, but rather to open our eyes to a
million patent facts, and to take them into the
account in working out our philosophy of life.
Accordingly we simply ask, for our purpose, that
the multiform influence upon man of the succession
of day and night, the recurring seasons, etc., be
realised. Thus we hope to see man set into his
worlds and to see the complexity of those worlds,
and thus we hope to produce the impression of
the myriad-sided relationship of the World-All
to man.

CHAPTER II

THE ENFOLDING WORLD-ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES

B. The Human Spheres That Enfold Man

WE now have seen man set into and enveloped
by diverse physical worlds. We have
seen him bound up with them by invisible bonds
that run from the centre of his being to the centre
of all and every being. We have seen perpetual
action and reaction, inflow and outflow, com-
parable to ceaseless inhalation and exhalation of
the many world-atmospheres that enfold him.
We have seen him sustaining to the All much the
same relation that the eye sustains to light, the
lungs to air, the fish to the ocean, or the tree to
nature. We have realised how involved and
complicated his life is with the World-All, and
how the vast Whole ceaselessly breathes into him
the breath of life ; how it is thus and not otherwise,
that he lives and must ever live ; and how this is
the unchangeable fact and reality of things.
Finally we have thought that this most primal
and fundamental fact, which is the background
against which all the other facts are set, must on

13

14 God and Man

no account be disregarded. One might as well
disregard the sunlight in springtime and then try
to make out the secret of growth, as try to deter-
mine the nature of man's higher life without set-
ting him into his spheres and seeing how he lives
his life out of and upon the feeding worlds.

In the main we have spoken hitherto of physical
spheres. But man is ensphered by other worlds
than physical. He is ensphered by life-worlds,
by society-worlds, by mind-worlds, and by truth-,
beauty-, ideal-, and spirit-worlds. Besides being
held in the grasp of earth and atmosphere, sun-
light and sun, universe and law, climate and
topography, day and night, summer and winter
(barring the equator), man is held in the grasp also
of these Human, and of these Higher worlds.

Now, therefore, let us turn from man's physical
first to man's human spheres, and see him set into
the home, the community, the race, and humanity,
reserving for later survey man's higher spheres.
We need to discover and appreciate the magnitude
of these and see the intimacy and extent of their
influence upon him ; for he is held within them and
conditioned by them to an unguessed degree.

From the time when as an ovum the individual
parted from the ovary of his mother and as a
sperm from his father's body, to the time when he
was born, on to the time when he leaves the paren-
tal circle to form, himself, half of a new home-
sphere, and to become the generator of children,

The Human Envelops 15

sprung from his own body, he is knit into vital
and manifold relationship with the home. No
words can set forth the vitality of his connection
with the family. He gets his being in the begin-
ning from a parent. He springs out of the parent
body as a bud from a tree. For months he is
held within and enclosed by the mother-life. He
is fed out of and upon it. Her circulation almost
is his, her life, even. His life is enclosed within
and is a part of a larger life. — And what if this,
man's first beginning and connection with the
larger life of the parent, be the symbol of his
eternally true and unchanging connection with
the World-All, or with God. What if it be that
from the beginning, man is held within and for-
ever fed out of an enfolding infinite Life. — ^And
after he is born he is still, in a changed but no less
real way, held within the encircling life of the
parent. He is fed still from his mother's body.
And this is no misfortune, but the true and happy
process of the child's self-realisation. — ^Type once
more it may be of the true and everlasting process
of man's self-realisation. — Nor does the mother-
life merely feed the child-life. In ways past
finding out, ways subtle, life-giving, and forma-
tive, she, along with the father, enfolds the child-
life with unceasing care, affection, thought, and
spiritual influence. The parent-life touches the
child-life at a thousand points. Through the
open instincts, through the open senses, the open

i6 God and Man

activities, the opening affections and mind, through
the ever3rwhere open life of the child, the person-
ality of the parent finds entrance. It may well
be doubted whether any of us has ever more than
begun to guess the subtlety, manifoldness, and
vitality of the influences that go forth from parent
to child. The whole gamut of parental being is
ever at work. And the wide ranges of heart-, mind-,
and soul-life, in inscrutable ways, work upon it.
Influences flow into it through every open pore.
The nature, the temperament, the tone, the tastes,
feelings, thoughts, ideals, beliefs, aspirations,
activities, experiences, and character of the parent
enfold and penetrate the child with the subtlety
and power of atmosphere and sunlight. A cloud
of anger passing over the spirit of a mother affects
the very milk her child nurses. Surely mental
and spiritual influences could tell of a variety
and delicacy that material influences can only
approximate. Yet how delicate and subtle are
even the material influences.

Such is the child as he is set into the bosom of
the family. Only the infinite complexity and
subtlety of the influences that work upon and in
him have not been half expressed. The life of
Tennyson, for example, with his rich and intri-
cate personality, found scores of ways of entering
and affecting the life of his son. In innumerable
ways, from the first giving of being to him, to the
incalculable parental influences that never ceased

The Human Envelops 17

to work, on to the thousand-fold variety of in-
fluence that permeated and leavened his growing
life, on to the end, his great rich personality en-
folded the child-life and poured itself in upon it.
The child received these influences coming through
all these channels, and, after its own child-fashion,
acted upon them. He knew how to get at his
father through many doors besides that of know-
ledge. In the beginning that door did not exist.
Yet a thousand other doors stood open. He
was enabled through every open pore of his na-
ture to absorb the enfolding life. As a leaf with
its ten thousand open mouths breathes in the
encircling atmosphere, so the child breathed in
the parental influence; so the parent-personality
breathed the breath of thousand-fold life into
the child. The child knew it not. For months
he knew not at all. For years the gateway of
knowledge was only a narrow gate indeed, but
broad and many all the while were the other ways.
So much for the enfolding life of the home.
Even strong statement has done it scant justice.

Out beyond the family is the community.
Man is set into that environment as well. A liv-
ing being set into a life-giving society — so runs
the truth of things. We must conceive facts
more vitally. If we know not of a hundred beat-
ing hearts of different kinds, and of as many life-
bloods, all different, circulating through all things

1 8 God and Man

and especially through human life, our under-
standing of Reality is as yet external and wooden.
Our minds must vitalise our worlds in order to
make the first beginning at discovery of what
the real nature of things is. Man set into society
therefore is a vital and not a mere mechanical
and dead fact. He is knit into society in living
connection with it. There are other connections
besides joints and ligaments. The body is not
the most alive thing in the world. As alive and
quivering with vitality as flame is, so alive are
feeling and thought and the activities of spirit.
Into these atmospheres and sunlights and elec-
tricities and spiritual climates and gravitations
the life of man is set. Society encompasses him
with many life-giving atmospheres. What has
been said of the child as held in the bosom of the
home is true of man as set into society. He is
shot through with as many influences as beams
of sunlight. The whole wide gamut of social
forces plays incessantly upon him. As complex
as is our mysterious humanity, as wide as is the
range of human faculty, so multiform are the cur-
rents of influence that flow through the being of
each of us. A flower blooming in the sunlight
seems attached to nothing but its stem. But a
score of thousands could not number the subtle
influences that have wrought upon it. It is as
though it were attached to and had grown upon
a thousand stems instead of one. So a life grafted

The Human Envelops 19

into society has flowing through it a hundred saps,
a hundred dews fall upon it along with a myriad
raindrops; and countless sunbeams of influence
pierce it through. And when we discover this
we simply open our eyes to what is. However
disconnected a life superficially may seem, it is
notwithstanding infinitely connected. In mutual
give-and-take, in numberless actions and reac-
tions, it lives and grows and comes to self-reali-
sation. This is the profound ever-operative fact
of things. A life may appear to be fastened to
society as simply as a tree seems to be fastened
to the earth — the single trunk seems to run down
into the ground, and that is all. But dig away
the surface of the soil and see a very network
and tangle of roots. The tree is fastened to the
earth with thousand-fold vital connection. So
a life, only much more intimately and complexly,
is connected with society. The atmosphere at
noonday is hardly more full of rays of light than
the world of society is full of powers. There are
no idle sunbeams. So there are no idle social
powers. They all work upon man. How subtle,
deep, and varied that working is only recent study
has begun at all adequately to reveal.

The more penetrating the study of nature and
of life becomes, the more complex and many-sided
they are seen to be. The germ cell used to be
spoken of as simple. Minuter research has
revealed unsuspected complexity. What was

20 God and Man

thought for ultimate analysis to be the unit of life,
turns out, itself, to be a manifold. Society, in like
manner, has revealed, on more searching examina-
tion, an intricacy and complexity of nature that
is inconceivable. Where the last and subtlest
workings of human life have their seat is not yet
discovered, and the fuller knowledge, as it comes,
seems only to push that discovery ever farther
off. Wheel within wheel, wheel within wheel,
out beyond our ken runs the involution and mys-
tery of human life. Into such a human environ-
ment is man set.

If we think of a tree with a multitude of roots
running down into the ground and with trunk
and innumerable branches stretching up and
spreading out into air and sunlight; and if we
think of every tendril as a point of contact and
of every leaf as a place of connection, and then
think of the multitudinous powers of nature that
are touching those tendrils and leaves constantly
— the million sunbeams and air-atoms and rain-
drops and food-particles that pass perpetually
into the tree's life and structure — we have not
even then an overdrawn conception of the re-
lation of man to society. Infinitely complex
and manifold is human society. This must be
realised. Set into such a plexus is the equally
manifold life of man. Between the two, countless
actions and reactions are ever proceeding.

The trend of the argum.ent has been growing.

The Human Envelops 21

I think, more and more apparent as the discussion
has proceeded. There is a very great conception,
I venture to think, which must be gotten at in
order to know man's place in the Universe, and
to discover the true character of the higher Hfe.
That conception is the thought of many enspher-
ing worlds, and of man as set into the centre and
focus of them all, the total system of beings and
powers environing him and working momentarily
upon him, while he, for his part, ceaselessly reacts
upon and coworks with them. When we see
the wide gamut of Reality ranged up and down,
and when we see face-to-face with it man with
equally wide range of being, and when we soberly
realise that that total system forever works upon
the total man, and that the total man likewise
forever works upon the total system, then we are
beginning to get some true conception of the
actual fact of things.

In some measure the relation of man to the
community now has been set forth in a general
way. Hereafter more specific facts will crop out
in the development.

Out beyond the community is the nationality
and the race. These also are spheres. So evident
however are these envelopes and so patent is their
determinative influence that space need not here
be given to their elaboration. Nevertheless they
shall not on that account be thought of unessen-
tial moment.

22 God and Man

Home, community, nationality, race, — out be-
yond these we shall now see the wider humanity.
By this greater sphere as well the individual is
encircled. "Very evidently so," one might ob-
serve. "It is siirely no revelation that man is
set into humanity. "-—The fact here considered,
nevertheless, is not meant to be quite the com-
monplace that at first sight it appears. Man
makes no excursions beyond his humanity. Human
nature in general gives law to the human indi-
vidual in particular. Man does not take on other
nature than human: he does not unfold into tree-
nature, nor into fish, bird, or animal nature.
Nor does he unfold into angel or archangel. From
this point of view he makes neither ascent nor
descent. He unfolds out along the lines of his
essential humanity. He never leaps its bounds.
It never occurs to him to be anything else than hu-
man. He is ensphered by his humanity. How
countless the influences that have marked out
his human bounds, how definitively humanity
has wrought upon him, or with what powers
of self-delimitation he himself has developed
within human lines, we but feebly conceive.
We may think of the tree as imparting tree-nature
to the seed, and so setting its bounds. Or we
may think of the seed as self-limiting in its de-
velopment. In either aspect, both of which are
real, numberless influences are at work. So we
may think of humanity as imparting human

The Human Envelops 23

nature to the human bud, so to speak, thus de-
fining its limits. Or we may think of the human
bud, the individual, as self-limiting in its develop-
ment. In either case, both of which are alike
real, the determinative forces have been infinitely
complex. So it is man is held within the envelope
of his humanity. It is a great enspherement.
All the meaning of it is not yet known. The
many-sidedness and importance of this great fact
must be more adequately reflected upon and taken
into account. It will not do to say, "Of course
man is ensphered by his humanity," and "Cer-
tainly that is the great elemental fact, " and then,
after all, make little account of that fact. It
would seem to be a prevalent weakness of our
human reflection that, in many cases, it makes
least account of the things that are really greatest.
Humanity, race, nationality, community, family;
the change of seasons, the succession of day and
night, topography, climate, the reign of law;
the earth under our feet, the sky above our heads,
the atmosphere we breathe, the vapoury clouds,
the vitalising sunlight, the central sun, even the
Universe itself are all taken as matters-of-course.
And then elaborate consideration is given to the
minor spheres that seem to touch life more inti-
mately. As though the facts of first and elemental
greatness were too vast for consideration, and
therefore we devoted ourselves to the exploration
of smaller worlds. "The boundless oceans with

24 God and Man

their mighty influences are too great; let us ex-
plore the inland lakes and ponds, " we seem to be
saying, "and thus let us endeavour to estimate the
significance of the watery world." But not so
does the significance of the great oceans get
discovered.

Much of the intellectual work of our time seems
to be of this character. Great things are not
seen in their greatness ; small things are examined
with microscopic care. The grand view is
everywhere lost. Infinite, endless details — the
mind is distracted with these and lost among
them. It has no energy left for great emprise
or vast conception. And great truth, hidden, as
it always is, in great worlds, remains like them
unrevealed and unknown. No ; there is no election.
The Universe, the solar system, the solid earth,
can not be taken as matters-of-course. Great
things must be greatly considered. So, and not
otherwise, will the great backgrounds of fact and
truth become revealed.

Throughout all this if the impression has been
deepening that the life of man is inwoven more
than a thread in a fabric, the desired result is being
attained. But the end is not yet. Still other
spheres enfold man. He is ensphered by heredity
and history, by civilisation and the evolutional
process, past, present, and future, and by the
Zeitgeist. The consideration of all these, it is

The Human Envelops 25

true, is but the more extended consideration of
the family, community, nationality, race and
humanity. Nevertheless it will be better to carry
forward the examination of these in the above
forms.

Doubtless present humanity influences the in-
dividual, but how is it with past humanity?
Have the generations that are gone influenced
him by all that they have done and been? Yes;
man is the child not only of the present but also
of the past. Strictly, all the generations that
have ever been, influence him now both by what
they did and by what they were. History and
heredity have present meaning.

It is not necessary for our present purpose to
go to either extreme — either to overstate the
importance of heredity, as seems to have been done
awhile ago, or to understate it, as seems to be
done by some to-day. It is not necessary to
make naught of personal initiative and of environ-
ment in order to make past process significant.
Nor is it necessary to make the past little in
order to make the present big. Individual initia-
tive and the influence of environment are great.
Past process is also great. Our present study,
however, does not depend upon the comparative
importance assessed to each. Without doubt
every generation that lives is influenced by all
the generations that have ever lived. That is
enough. How that influence has wrought and

26 God and Man

through what diverse channels it has poured
needs to be realised. A thing so involved and
complex as all the past human life of the world
could not affect so complex a thing as the modern
human individual except through numberless
channels. Influence him it certainly does. In-
fluence him in many ways it certainly must.

Once more we come to what is and shall be
throughout our central thought. Man is enveloped
by many worlds and in living contact with them
all. He is himself a complex being with wide
gamut of powers. He faces his worlds with many
attitudes, opennesses, receptivities, activities, com-
merces. Many are the relationships in which he
stands to the World-All. Ensphered and en-
sphered in this manner he lives his many-sided
life. This is the first and fundamental fact. In
the light of this primal and great fact the higher
life is alone to be seen and understood.

The individual is environed not only by the
present, but also, as we have said, by all the past
as well. Reflection upon the past, from this
point of view, is most instructive. Man is the
child of the past in more ways than ever have
dawned upon his consciousness. It must be
the common experience of reflective and scien-
tific thought to be surprised again and again
at the variety of past process as it still works on
in present-day life. The revelation is bewildering
and outgoes our powers of conception. One sees

The Human Envelops 27

in the past a kind of infinite thing, and with deep-
ening reflection doubts its effective potency less
and less.

In great broad surveys one sees how inevitable
it is that the past should live on in the present,
and how irrational it would be if the fact were
different. If the infinite toil and moil of the long
generations of struggling men could not in some
way be registered in the physical organism and
passed on through heredity as an accumulated
treasure; if the long emotional life of the race
with its untold joys and sorrows, its loves and
hates, its hopes and fears, its exaltations and
despairs, its passions and pains and pleasures,
could be experienced for hundreds of generations,
and then transmit no influence thereof to posterity ;
if the thought of man, that wondrous thing in his
mysterious life, with variety first and last com-
parable to the endless variety of all the objects
of thought, that descends to the minuti® of
microscopic worlds and ascends to the magni-
tudes of milky ways, needing a brain so complex
that its elements outnumber all the hosts of the
universal heavens, — ^if thought, I say, could course
through the brain of mankind for untold centuries
and after all project no trace whatever of influence
into the present, we should have a world as ab-
surd as mysterious. If the moral and spiritual
struggle of the race, with its shame and glory,
with its tragedy and pathos, could go on through-

28 God and Man

out the long history of the ascent of man; if the
conscience could know no increasing enlighten-
ment, the soiil no growing nobility, and character
no advancing strength and solidity, which they
could pass on at least as aptitudes to the new
generation, wisdom itself would be turned into
folly. Then all the struggle of the race, as such,
woidd be vain; all its tragic emotion without
significance, its thought hardly more than the
iridescence of a dream., without possibility of
widening, and all its spiritual endeavour mocked
in its attempted progress. Racial progress, as
such, there could not be. If past process had not
present meaning, then would the accumulated
experience of the race, more precious than the
gold of all the continents, be incapable of present
inheritance; then would its habits and customs,
those long-travelled roads, trodden and made
familiar and easy by the feet of countless genera-
tions, be barred and made inaccessible to the
oncoming time; then would language, the fine
product of so many ages, the most exquisite
instrument of human invention and the most
elaborate, never have risen above the level of a
"googly-goo," in the first place, or been passed on
from father to son in the second place ; then could
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, without
which the race would be poor indeed, which are
now handed down through tradition and litera-
ture, never become the assured and comparatively

The Human Envelops 29

easy heritage of the rising generation; then finally
could the arts and industries, the credits and
wealths, the governments and institutions, the
faiths and religions — in a word, all the civilisations
of man, which have cost the prolonged struggle
of all humankind, never be once transmitted.
Racial progress, as such, would be a thing unknown.
Our boundless heritage which we rarely and never
adequately appreciate, our gift from the past
which is undoubtedly ninety-nine one-hundredths
of our present possessions, would never have been
at all. All the past beginnings of the race would
have begun and ended literally with the bud and
would now possess for us hardly antiquarian
interest, certainly no serious concern, and each
new generation would of necessity begin the game
of life for itself afresh.

This is what one beholds in great broad surveys.
If past process had no present value, if heredity
and history had no present influence, if all that
the race has been and done did not project itself
into all that the race is and does to-day, we should
scarcely know our transformed selves or world
for very absurdity. No sort of treasure could
ever accumulate, whether one thinks of gold dug
out of the ground or of the priceless instincts
of the race, or of the long development of Christ-
ian culture and character, — ^nothing could ac-
cumulate, nothing be passed on to enrich the
race. Beyond the first rude beginnings nothing

30 God and Man

would be capable either of becoming or of con-
tinuing.

Not only progress but indeed the race itself
would be impossible. Self-perpetuation is really
the projection of the past into the present. Each
new generation is an epitome of all the past. If
heredity and history had no meaning for us to-day,
the race could not do even what the forest does.
It at least perpetuates itself, and in so doing bor-
rows from all its past. The grasses die, but live
again ; the forests pass away, yet remain ; animals
live on in their offspring; all that is, passes into
what is to be and so abides still. How utterly
empty and senseless the present would be, if
this were not true, one does not realise without
deliberate and prolonged effort. This lies on the
face of things and yet is not seen. It is like all
things of elemental greatness. They surround
us like atmospheres. They are breathed but
not thought about. I sometimes think of phi-
losophy as the deliberate attempt to estimate
the greatness of things which are really great —
the things which are taken for granted and then
forgotten, which really form the backgrounds of
all that is and yet somehow sink out of common
sight.

It requires no special scientific training to see
in the above manner what we have now seen —
the inestimable significance of the past. It all
lies open in broad surveys to the larger thought.

The Human Envelops 31

In this it shows the patent signs of greatness.
All vast truths that have something of the great-
ness of the Universe about them have something
also of the openness and omnipresence of the
same. They are not hidden in themselves, but
the eyes which should see them are holden, or
the souls which should feel them are dead or in-
capable through pettiness. The great continents
are not concealed ; they lie open to any eye that
has elevation and greatness enough to see them.
So the greatest truths are not to be searched
for in a corner; they too lie open; they await
only the coming of the great soul. The vastest
truths are neither hidden in themselves nor are
they to be discovered at the end of some minute
scientific analysis, as such. You shall never dis-
cover God shut up in a retort, nor be able to see
an ocean in a raindrop even under the microscope,
nor discover a "milky- way" in a molecule. Nor
will you see the mystery and soul and power of
speech under the bark of etymological roots;
nor will you see the palpitating life and passionate
struggle of the animal creation in the fossil frag-
ments that sow the rocks and sandpits; nor will
you see in the crust of the earth and the strata
of rocks the tumultuous fires, the cataclysmic
storms, the multitudinous life that constituted
the soul and true being of all that world-formative
process; nor yet will you be able to see in the
nerve-centres and blood-corpuscles and brain-

32 God and Man

cells of man the greatness of a great soul or the
glory of character. Christ was not seen and yet
He was not hidden. No scientific analysis coiild
discover Him. No petty soul could ever behold
Him. It is more difficult to catch the outlines
of a great personality than to see the outlines of a
continent. There are things that are not hidden
and yet lie open only to lives capable of great
vision. All the vastest truths and facts have this
character in common. There is a limit to what
minute analysis can reveal. The microscope in
itself can not go beyond the little, nor can the
telescope reveal the large if the soul that looks
through it is small. The greatest things, I am
persuaded, do not await more cunning instruments ;
they await the coming of more majestic lives.
They await what they have always waited for.
What hinders or has ever hindered any man from
taking in wide horizons but his own lack of eleva-
tion. Or what hinders or has ever hindered
him from seeing great truths but his own little-
ness? It is not scientific acuteness, it is large
philosophic vision that sees the greatest truths.
Even when, by scientific effort, a truth of elemen-
tal greatness and world-transforming significance
is discovered, it is not the nicety of the experi-
ment, or the minuteness of the analysis, it is not
the scientific method, as such, that makes the
great discovery; it is the great mind back of the
critical process. It is the philosopher in the

The Human Envelops 33

scientist who really gets the revelation. Laws
of gravitation do not flash upon little minds let
them ever so nicely observe falling apples. It is
given now, as it always has been given, to the
great and rich lives alone to behold the things
of universal greatness. Whenever a majestic
personality steps forth upon the earth, majestic
discovery, in the inner or outer world, follows.
Whether the method be this or that; whether
it be the introspective look, or critical analysis,
or reflective insight, or ratiocinative process, or
intuitive vision, or mystical meditation, or "cold"
scientific experiment, the great revelation comes
only to the great life. The vastest things, like
the earth and like the sky, are the most open
things. Not every eye that turns heavenward
really sees that majestical frame of things. They
err who think that great worlds are hid in out-
of-the-way corners, or that any "smart" observer
could discover them if only he had a sufficiently
cunning eye-glass. Minute scientific method has
its limits. Great souls alone see the visions.
Open to them are the mighty facts and truths,
hidden from all others they will ever remain.

Thus in broad outline the importance of heredity
and history is openly seen.

To the large philosophic look the great facts
lie open like continents to the eye of day. This
is what is seen by the larger vision. And this,
moreover, is what is confirmed b" scientific inves-

34 God and Man

ligation. Whether one takes the extreme or the
moderate view of the scope of heredity, its in-
fluence still remains great. Into the long story
of investigation we could not here go, were we
capable. Our proposed limits forbid that. But
it would seem to be the common judgment of
scientific men that heredity is no minor truth.
The last half-century, if no other, has made this
evident. The cumulative external evidence bear-
ing on the theory of evolution, and the history
of embryonic and foetal development through
ascending stages, add their strong confirmatory
testimony. In short, scientific inquiry confirms
the conclusion of our philosophic survey that
heredity is a fact of wide range and importance.
How numberless the influences are that come
out of the past we but feebly conceive. The
connection of a human life with the past is like
the connection of a tree with nature. Into what a
past a great tree roots itself. It is rooted into all
the ages of the earth's crust. Down into ten-
thousand forgotten changes, down into a multi-
tude of by-gone processes, down into countless
epochs and transformations, that mark the periods
of the soil's long and changeful history, it sends
its roots. What infinity of connection the great
tree has with all that past. One has only to see a
great oak overturned by a hurricane, or standing
on a river-bank after a flood has washed away the
soil and laied bare half its roots — a very network

The Human Envelops 35

and tangle of them, — to be impressed with the
thousand-fold connection of the tree with the
earth. Into what a past the tree roots itself,
and with what complexity of connection it touches
all that past. And into what a past the tree lifts
up its towering form. It lifts up its trunk and
sends out its branches into an atmosphere that
has passed through more changes than there are
stars in the sky. And it spreads out its leaves
to falling dews and rains that have fallen and
risen again, that have passed from sky to earth,
from earth to sea, from sea to sky, and down to
earth again more times than there are leaves upon
the tree. And the same leaves spread out to sun-
beams that carry within their subtle being effects
of past processes more numerous than the miles
through which they have sped. All the change-
ful history of the sun, all its cycles and transmu-
tations through an indefinite past of ever-during
change are recorded in those sunbeams. They
touch the leaves with chemic touch and all solar
history expresses itself to a degree in present
influence there. Into what a past the tree lifts
itself up and branches itself out. It is an alto-
gether marvellous story. And how innumerable
are the points of contact that the tree has with
air and dew and light. If one followed the tree
from trunk to lofty crest and each spreading limb
and branch and leaf, and noted the many open
mouths of each separate and single leaf, one would

36 God and Man

then have only a just conception of that contact.
Certainly it is a marvellous past the tree lifts
itself up and branches itself out into; and it is a
marvellous past into which it sends down its
roots. It requires the deliberate and sustained
exercise of imaginative power justly to conceive
that past or that connection.

But is a tree more complex than a man? Is
nature into which a tree is set more manifold than
humanity into which man is set? Is the past
therefore into which man is rooted and branched
any less infinite, and his connection therewith
any less manifold than the past into which the
tree is set and its connection therewith? — Of course
man is set into nature as well as into humanity,
and all that has been said about the tree can be
said from the same point of view of him as well.
But for the present we make account only of his
human past. —Undoubtedly heredity and history
are facts of thousand-fold present significance.
The tree helps us rightly to conceive this. Un-
doubtedly man's human past, in all the aspects
and forces of heredity, and in all the phases and
processes and influences of history, is a well-nigh
infinite thing.

The family, the community, the nation, the
race, humanity, heredity, and history — these are
the human envelopes that we have hitherto taken
note of. In addition to these man is ensphered

The Human Envelops 37

by civilisation, by the evolutionary process, and
by the spirit of the age.

Every man is a child of the present world-status.
He embodies the civilisation of his age. The
twentieth-century man does not express thir-
teenth-century civilisation. He expresses the civi-
lisation of to-day. Not that in every respect and
with literal minuteness he must be the child of the
present status. There may be seventeenth-cen-
tury elements lingering on in untimely influence
within him. Or there may be twenty-first-century
elements uttering themselves in first preludes.
In the great main, however, every man is the child
of the present status.

All that this signifies it is impossible more than
to approximate. Civilisation is a word of ency-
clopaedic meaning. It has as many aspects
and phases as the surface of the earth. To be
the child of the present world-status is to be the
focus and utterance of a myriad processes and
powers. No one suspects that his life is such an
infinite conglomerate until he enters somewhat
upon the serious business of reflection. To be
the child of an American or a European civilisa-
tion means more things than all the v/ise ones
could tell. To repeat the story of the manipula-
tion of fire alone, from the time when two sticks
were rubbed together to the time when Niagara
Falls was harnessed and turned into electricity
and heat to light and warm homes miles distant,

38 God and Man

is to repeat — ^we know not what. It represents
more experiences, more hard necessities, more
adaptations, flashes of genius and invention,
than one could spell out in a twelvemonth. Yet
every child is born an heir to all this without
effort. He drinks it in much as the Italian orange
groves and the vineyards along the Rhine drink
in the favouring influences of climate.

Or to tell the story of the cultivation of the
soil from the time when primitive man ineffect-
ually scratched it with a crooked stick, to the
time when the modern farmer comfortably rides
his steam-plough over his broad acres, sitting on a
spring seat and guiding the machine while it
easily rolls over a splendid fturow, straight as a
line far as the eye can see, is to recount a tale of
struggle, vicissitude, hardship, and inventive
triumph which only the great book of the Past
has compass enough duly to record. Yet here
again a child is born into all this simply by being
born into the modern world. He buys a plough
and learns to manipulate it with less effort than
that with which the Alaskan Indian learns to spear
fish. Thus the fruits that have grown on so
many successive life-trees drop so easily, compara-
tively, into his lap.

Or take the story of the abode of man. Follow
it from the time when the leader of the tribe with
the rest had nothing better than a cave in the
rocks, down through unrecorded and recorded

The Human Envelops 39

centuries, to the time when a captain of modern
industry dwells alone with his family in a spacious
house — a very palace for convenience and comfort.
That cave and this ample abode — ^what a preg-
nant contrast ! Through what a past the dweller
looks when he looks through his plate-glass win-
dows. What echoes of what a past sound in his
ears when he hears the ring of the electric bell.
How different the drip of the water in the rock-
roofed cave from the patter of the rain on the
copper-sheeted roof above his head. The long,
long life-history of man echoes in that difference.
What a past is spread out before him as he sits
down at his well-filled board. His long-forgotten
forbears fed on the bark of roots, he eats bread
grown on the western plains and ground by the
steel-roller process. Between those roots and
that fine flour how many developmental processes
are to be crowded. And when, by turning a
button, he turns night into day, what a long
evolutional process he lights up for the imagination.
And when he lies down on his bed at night, which
forms to every curve of his body, what a different
sound from the rustle of that bed of leaves on
the cave floor. Once more, we repeat, with
what comparative ease the modern child enters
into all this heritage.

These few illustrations must suffice merely
to suggest the world of light which we mean by
modern civilisation, albeit we have not even

I

40 God and Man

mentioned the distinctively intellectual and spirit-
ual elements thereof. Into such a light-world
every one of us is born; by such a light-world
we are environed. Civilisation enfolds us round
and touches us in multitudinous ways. We,
for our part, cowork with it and react upon it in a
multitude of ways. We thereby become partici-
pators in, and utterances of, the present world-
status.

Again. Man is held in the grasp not only of
the present world-status, or civilisation, but also
in that of a developmental process or evolution.
The status is not static in the absolute sense.
The present is a stage in a process and a part of a
universal ongoing. So that man is held within an
onmoving process as a drop of water is held within
the onmoving river. Whether the general scien-
tific statement of evolution shall undergo limita-
tion at the hands of more thorough inquiry or not,
there can be no sort of question that we and all
things are involved in a process of development.
The present century is not a mere mechanical
repetition of the past. Something gets' done.
Something new is begun, something old passes
away. There is an ongoing. The age in which
we live is not that of Homer, or of Pericles, or
of Augustus, or of Charlemagne. And the general
geologic period in which we are set is not the
Carboniferous or the Glacial. There is a world-

The Human Envelops 41

process unfolding and unfolding with the passing
centuries. From fire- mist to earth-crust, to
Athens, to London, is an altogether wonderful
progression. And all human-kind forms part of
the process and is swept onward with it. It is
bewildering to think of the myriad-sided relation-
ship implied in all this. The last few decades
have thought thereupon with unprecedented
thoroughness. Scientific study and imagination
have disclosed unsuspected complexity. We had
thought, with all children, that it is a very simple
thing to live. We are reminded that it is an
endlessly complicated thing. To be a part of a
universal process, to embody that process, and
utter its progression in ourselves, is to involve
an infinitude of touches and commerces which
only a universal mind could compass. More
than all that has been suggested before needs to
be said and suggested anew in this connection.
But with these mere hints and nothing more we
must be content. Suffice it that we here see a
great new sphere of movement and meaning
enveloping man. He is included in a mighty
world-process, embodying countless ideals and
moving toward ideal goals. To be thus involved
imports relationships without end.

Once more we see what we have so often seen
hitherto, that man is ensphered and ensphered
by many worlds, and that he has and must have
multitudinous commerces therewith. This is the

42 God and Man

very make and go and fact of things. Scientific
inquiry and philosophic insight here disclose but
do not create what is. It is the very fact-world
that here gets revealed. And this is the actual
relation of man to the Universe. In the light
of this relation alone the higher life is to be
revealed and interpreted.

A smaller envelope within the greater enfolding
spheres which we call civilisation and evolution
is the Zeitgeist. Every man breathes the spirit
of his time. "No history, " says Clifford, "can be
philosophic which does not trace the origin and
course of these [changes in the spirit of the age] :
things far more important than all the kings and
rulers and battles and dates which some people
imagine to be history." We must leave this,
however, merely suggested, not elaborated. In a
modified form what has been said above may be
understood here. A new sphere is thus brought
into the account.-

CHAPTER III

THE ENFOLDING WORLD-ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES

C. The Higher Spheres That Enfold Man

HITHERTO we have studied in the main the
physical and the human envelopes of man.
But besides being held in the grasp of earth and
atmosphere, sunlight and sun, universe and law,
climate and topography, day and night, summer
and winter; family, community, nationality,
race, and humanity ; heredity, history, civilisation,
evolution, and the Zeitgeist, man is held in the
grasp of Truth, Beauty, and Ideals. Last and
greatest, because inclusive of all the others,
man is held within the Life of God.

Although in our consideration thus far the
physical aspects of man's relation to the World-
All have stood prominently forth, it is not thereby
intended that they should appear to be the reg-
nant aspects, or to constitute the major part of
the Kingdom of Worlds. Even in what appeared
most physical it was always the total man —
feeling, intellect, will, and all — that was related
to the total environment. There was always the
higher spiritual element in greater or smaller

43

44 God and Man

proportion. And throughout, the physical has
been used largely to suggest the subtler elements
of Reality. Throughout, for our thought, the
myriad contacts have been, at bottom, not ma-
terial but spiritual, and the myriad powers have
been only apparently, not really, what men call
"physical" — ^if any one knows what "physical"
means. If it should turn out ultimately to
mean merely a lower form of spiritual manifesta-
tion, then our infinitude of relationships and
influences would at last be seen to be, in their in-
most character, spiritual. Always, for us, our
earths have rested, not on rock foundations,
solid as they may seem, but on subtle, inscrutable,
spiritual powers, stronger and more original than
the rocks. And our worlds have been flung out
on spirit-wings to speed them among the stars
with the flight of sunbeams, and the perfection
and ease. And mankind was fastened thereto,
not with chains of iron, but with spiritual bands,
infinitely more effective and enduring, so free
was the hold and yet so firm, so exquisitely perfect.
And when the environing world has seemed most
crude in its touch and influence, there always has
been, for finer vision, an underlying subtlety.
The effective contacts of nature with the tree,
for example, are not so crude as they seem. The
delicate touch upon the rootlets with their sen-
sitive tips; the subtle contacts with the leaves,
gentle as falling dew; the chemic touch of light,

The Higher Envelops 45

more delicate than the kiss of the soft air — these
are in reality the effective contacts of nature with
the tree, these the points at which and the touches
through which the real work and business is
done.

So is it with nature's effective touches upon
man. Back of seeming crudeness there is always
real fineness. He is not banged and battered into
shape. He grows. He unfolds from within as
all living things do. He involves the inscrutable
subtleties of all life-processes. He is touched with
the spiritual touch of the Dawn, or of advancing
springtime, or of the breath of the ocean, or of
the currents of atmosphere, or of climatic con-
ditions, or of vast and fertile plains, or of life-
conditioning hills and lofty mountains. The air
touches him with all the delicacy and efficiency
of breathing. The sunlight touches him with
the subtlety and spirituality of seeing. Even the
food that seems to enter him in chunks can effect
nothing in that crude manner. It must find
capillaries more sensitive and delicate than gossa-
mer threads. It must pass in through walls
thinner than soap-bubbles. It must move along
through a most exquisite system of canals. It
must then be taken up by ten million cells,
through openings infinitesimally minute, in ways
inconceivably subtle. Only in this delicate fashion
does that which seemed at the start so crudely
effective finally come to any effect whatever.

46 God and Man

The actual formative touches of the world upon
man are all of the subtle kind. Nature is never
effective until she becomes fine. Do the fields
feed man? It is done in the most exquisite
way. Does sunlight warm him and illumine
his darkness? Nothing could be subtler than
the process thereof. Does the earth hold him?
What coiild be more perfect than the way it is
done? Do continents and oceans, latitudes and
altitudes, changing seasons and successions of
day and night condition him? It is all so subtly
done that he wots not the process thereof. And
many live and die never realising the invisible
atmospheres that nevertheless have conditioned
all their living.

Subtler still and more multiplied are all the
human influences from out the past that meet in
him, and the complicated and multiplied elements
of a present enfolding civilisation, and the myriad-
sided contacts of an ensphering humanity, itself
inscrutably complex and ever-changing, and per-
petually moving toward still more multiform
complexity. Subtler and more complicated than
the climates and atmospheres and sunlights of
earth are the affective and the intellectual and
the spiritual climates and atmospheres of the
World- All. Range above range, realm above
realm, rise all the planes of Reality. From the
lowest, crassest, so-called "material substance,"
up to the highest, finest, spiritual Reality, extends

The Higher Envelops 47

the wide gamut of Being. And man is set into
all this wide range. His feet stand upon every
plane. He touches and is in living contact with
all that is. As the tree is rooted down into one
element, and lifted up and branched out into
another, and in contact with another (the vapory
clouds), and yet another still higher (the sun-
light), so man is rooted down as it were into
the physical and lifted up into commerce with
the spiritual. He touches all worlds, he lives
upon all. He breathes all atmospheres, he sees
by all sunlights, he is affected by all climates.
Himself a spiritual being, he is environed by
what is at bottom, we shall say, a spiritual Uni-
verse. His feet are upon the solid earth, his
thoughts "beyond the shining stars." He lives
a wide-ranging life when he is truly himself.
This is the sort of Universe it is into which man
is set. Ten thousand intellectual and spiritual
influences play upon him like sunbeams and pene-
trate with efficacy to the inmost core of his being.
Looking therefore upon a Universe that widens
as one rises from the earth, and grows greater and
more spiritual and more involved as one ascends
the ethereal heights, and knowing that the heav-
ens hold the earth and not the earth the heavens
in their grasp, we are enabled to set man into his
true Environment and are prepared to appreciate
somewhat the thousand-fold spiritual influences
of Truth upon him.

48 God and Man

For primitive man, for men engrossed in affairs,
and for unrefiective men generally, the word
"truth" has comparatively little conscious mean-
ing. For philosophic minds, on the other hand,
and for ripe and reflective men in general, truth
has a world of significance. Truth meant a vastly
different thing to the consciousness of Socrates
or of Plato from what it meant to the conscious-
ness of the goat-herds on the Attic hills. Pilate's
question, What is truth? showed how shadowy
and unreal all the truth- world was to him. Jesus'
declaration, on the contrary, that He was the
king of truth, that for this cause He was born and
to this end He came into the world that He might
bear witness to the truth, revealea how real, liv-
ing, and significant truth was to Him. Scarcely
anything is more striking and suggestive than
the meaning of the world of truth to different
minds. To one man it is a vague and unsubstan-
tial something, or nothing, to be little, or not at
all, regarded as it pleases him. To another it is
more real than oceans and continents, a thing
by all means to live for and to die for, sacred
and supreme. Truth appears to come to some,
so far as their conscious life is concerned, with
much of the impotence and unpracticalness of
moonlight, and even great principles seem to them
as far away and feeble in their working as the
scintillating stars. To others truth is like an
ever-present sunlight, indispensable to the very

The Higher Envelops 49

being of mind, the illumination of all inner worlds,
the life of their life ; and great principles are like
shining suns enlightening worlds and holding
systems in their unbreakable grasp.

To this shadowyness and impotence, on the
one hand, and this reality and power, on the other,
correspond two different philosophical views.
The one may be termed the trivial, the other the
serious, view of truth. The two views are as
old as the birth of philosophy. For the Sophists,
truth was no more to realities than shadows to
trees. For Plato, truth was the only thing in
the universe that had reality and causality in
the absolute sense. And at the present day, for
one type of thought truth is little more than what
photographs are to the Alps mountains. The
actual things ever3rwhere are the solid earths
and the real beings and processes and cycles
and events. The mental conceptions thereof,
the Veritas about things, are mere intellectual
duplicates, unsubstantial repetitions, which add
nothing to and take nothing from "real things,"
which make the world of realities neither richer
nor poorer. "There are stars and there are
earths," says this type of thought, "there are
trees and there are men, there are powers and
there are activities, — these are the real things.
Then there are humanly convenient cognitions
of these, and idle comments upon them. But
the stars are not multiplied by some man's sitting

50 God and Man

up o' nights to gaze through a telescope; and the
Western World was there before Columbus cog-
nised it, and the sequoias tossed their heads aloft
before any one was there to exclaim, Majestic!
and babies were facts before they could say,
I am; and the earth turned round in reality
before it turned round in Copernicus' head."
"Thoughts, " this view continues, "are convenient
cognitions of realities and idle comments upon
them. "

This of course is the trivial view of truth.
The term is not at all meant as a reflection, for
admittedly to this view truth is a slight and trivial
thing as compared with what it is to the other
view.

To this other view, the serious view, as we have
termed it, truth is a reality more primal and more
potent than "things." The acorn develops into
an oak and not into a palm ; the date develops
into a palm and not into an oak. There is some-
thing in the acorn that gives law and command-
ment to its unfolding. That something it heeds
w4th perfection of obedience. If all the acorns
that have dropped from a thousand forests were
planted in as many places with as many differing
environments, not one of them all would be in
the slightest degree tempted to depart from the
law of its being and unfold into a palm. Some-
thing forbids it; that something it invariably
obeys. We may call that something what we

The Higher Envelops 51

will — ^inherent idea, thought, ideal, form, law,
truth — it remains the same dominating power
under whatever name, to which every atom of
the oak's being is obedient.

In like manner the hen's egg develops into
a chick, the alligator's egg, into an alligator.
There is no departure from this. Within the
substance of the particular egg inheres the law of
its being, the idea of its kind. Under the posses-
sion of that idea all its doings and becomings take
place as though each several molecule were in-
stinct with that particular kind of life and no
other.

In like manner, also, the human ovum develops
into a human being, whereas the ovum of a
guinea-pig, though indistinguishable therefrom, as
is claimed, under the most powerful microscope,
invariably develops into a guinea-pig. Undoubt-
edly there is a power that absolutely permeates
and dominates each. Each is under the law of
an inhering idea.

Ideas turn out then to be significant. Truths
result in being not idle comments but potent
realities that give law and commandment to
things. They are not to trees what shadows
are, nor to ova, human or other, what photo-
graphs are. They rule their little or large worlds
with a perfection of process and effect that makes
kings seem but clumsy apprentices.

These are but examples. Everywhere the

52 God and Man

same regnancy of ideas is manifest. All the
vegetation of the world — from the lichen that
clings to the rock to the sequoia of the Calaveras
grove ; from the weed to the rose ; from the grass-
blade to the bending wheat-stock — ^is the expres-
sion and embodiment of ideas. Every worm
that crawls upon the ground, every fish that
swims in the sea, every bird that flies in the air,
every animal that breathes — from the sea-flower
to the elephant ; from the protozoon to the chim-
panzee, up to the genus humanum — ^is likewise
the expression and embodiment of ideas. Yes;
the universal process itself, from fire-mist to
flaming sun, to tumultuous storm-rent, but cool-
ing planet, to orderly world teeming with life, is
but the progressive utterance and realisation of
ideas.

All this for the same reason that the acorn does
not turn into the palm, nor the alHgator egg into
the chick, nor the human ovum into the guinea-
pig. Throughout the vegetal and the animal
kingdoms there is no seed, there is no egg that
does not know the law of its kind. From the
primordial cell up to the sessile animal where
the two kingdoms appear to meet, up to man the
crown of all, atoms are organised into specific and
individual forms. The law of kind is absolute.
All things are brought into subjection thereto.
Ideas then are not shadows or idle comments.
The kingdoms are theirs. As wide as are the

The Higher Envelops 53

realms of life, so wide at least are the realms of
ideas.

But we already have seen that, beyond the
organic world, earths and solar systems and milky
ways and universal processes are themselves utter-
ances and realisations of ideas. As far as order ex-
tends and as far as process is progressing toward an
understandable goal, so far certainly, in the vast
and limitless reaches of space, the World- Whole
is the manifestation and embodiment of ideas.

As far as progress extends, — that is manifest.
But is an ordered world teeming with life the
only goal of which we have any hint? Have we
not heard already of moons frozen, desolate, and
stationary? And shall we not hear of earths
cooled off and mantled in eternal snows? And
of suns burnt out like cinders and as cold as the
ethereal spaces? And shall not starlight, sun-
light, moonlight, all vanish as a dream and the
cosmos once more return to "Old Night" as it
was? And shall not ever-during midnight reign,
broken only by what would appear the mockery
of light, the occasional flash of a meteor as the
fragment of some shattered body strikes our
atmosphere with fitful gleam and goes out again
in unbroken night ? Is not this the goal at which
scientific thought more than hints? Is this then
the so-called dominion of ideas? An evolution
indeed this — toward universal death! "Eine
schoene Geschichtel "

54 God and Man

Can one then say that ideas reign? Despite
the apparently significant chapters now being
written in the great book of events, if the end is
what it is prophesied to be, do not ideas turn out
impotent and uncrowned kings? Do they indeed
hold worlds in their grasp if they come to such
final defeat?

True this is a scientific prediction and it gives
the believer in ideas no little perplexity. Still
one may well distrust such a barren conclusion.

In the first place all would not be lost. Much
order would yet remain. The moon though already
burnt out is very well behaved. The cosmos on
the worst showing would not be resolved back
into fire-mist. All therefore would not be even
apparently lost.

Moreover, it may be that nothing is really lost,
A glacial period has proved before a stage in
the process of world-making. Other things also
besides seeds and men may die to live. ' ' Stirb und
werde" may be the law of macrocosms as well
as of microcosms. Besides, we know too little
about those far-off events. The thought of w^hat
preludings of new cosmic processes may ere then
be seen, should fitly give us pause. World-
processes heretofore have not slipped through
either the careless or impotent fingers of God.
All appears hitherto to have been grasped into a
unity of progress. Indeed it is difficult often
for man to say when the on-moving river has

The Higher Envelops 55

been eddying and when advancing. What ap-
peared but eddying may be progress in disguise.
No man is wise enough to say to the contrary.
The Past has been an ahogether majestic story.
All the acts have been taken up, apparently,
into the unity of the grand cosmic drama. The
Present continues to be the manifestation of
victorious ideas. Shall the Future then alone
eventuate in defeat? Hitherto we have been
impressed with the grandeur of the movement.
We are still. Shall the Future then alone lose
the grasp of events and not know how to carry
on the cosmic drama? Shall the universal heav-
ens no longer be able to go round the happenings
of worlds and hold them in a unity of ordered
action? Shall not rather the predicted night of
the Universe break into a grander day, and the
predicted death rise into a higher life?

Futhermore, the following significant fact shall
be steadily considered. The past is comparatively
open to us. The present also is known. But
the future is, in the main, hidden. What we
really know is progress. What we are not sure
of is arrested development. As far as the process
until now has wrought itself out, the movement
has been an onward one. The general unknown
character of all the future, tiierefore, shall be
permitted to discount our wisest guesses as to
that far-off future.

What is more, even the known past and present

56 God and Man

are only very imperfectly known. The familiar
atmosphere and sunlight have but recently re-
vealed unsuspected new elements. The com-
plexity and mystery of the physical world about
us grow perpetually more bewildering. We sketch
our explored worlds even with no masterful hand
as yet. How much less can we map out the far-
off cosmic status with absoluteness. Slumbering
beneath our very feet may be unguessed powers
of regeneration. If in the diffused fire-mist
could lurk the potencies of all the cosmic drama
thus far, shall the ordered Universe itself now
become incapable ?

Once more : This physical system itself is only
a part, not the whole. There are other universes
besides the physical. There are universes of
affection, of thought, of will, of truth, of beauty,
of spirit. Universal Reality must be vast enough
to include them all. This physical system there-
fore can be, at most, but one continent on the
world-map. Whatever is said about it, conse-
quently, must be said with the consciousness
of all the other present continents. We must not
draw the boundaries of this continent alone and
think we have mapped out the total World. The
World- Whole must be sketched more magnificently.
Hence whatever scientific thought may, wisely or
unwisely, forecast as to the future physical status,
it must all be set into the vaster universal Reality
and interpreted in the light of the great Whole.

The Higher Envelops 57

Still again: Even the universal process, as
sketched by the larger evolutionary thought, is
plainly not the whole process. What was before
the diffused fire-mist? And what shall be after
the burnt-out cinder-status? Something was,
and something shall be. Thus even the larger
evolution gives us only a limited span between
limitless extensions. Beyond fire-mist was an
inconceivable past process. Beyond cinder-status
shall be again an inconceivable future process.
The story of evolution is therefore but one chapter,
so to speak, in the midst of a great book. That
chapter must be comprehended in its setting. It
is unallowable, not to say futile, to attempt to
understand it otherwise. The story of the single
evolutionary chapter, as is plain to see, must be
taken up into the much larger story of the whole
book, and the conclusion of the one chapter, the
cinder-status as we have termed it, must be under-
stood in the light of all the chapters, and of the
great book as a whole. For how can a single
stage in a process be the whole process? And
how can the terminal of one stage be the goal
of all the stages that went before and of all that
shall follow ? This magnificent cosmic processional
must needs stop short in such case. From fire-
mist to cinder-status is a grand stage, but it is
only a part of a much larger Whole, and must be
subordinated thereto in order to become, from
a philosophical point of view, even intelligible.

58 God and Man

Consequently when scientific prediction says
to us, "Look you! universal death is the end of
all" ; we shall answer: "Are you sure that what
you see is death? May it not be slumbering
life? Has it not proved so in the past?" We
shall say: "Are you certain that things then
shall have even the appearance of death? Have
not the potencies of spring lain dormant be-
neath the snows of every winter? And shall we
not look also for preludes of many a new cosmic
process before that far-off day?" And when
prediction shall say: "Look! these flaming suns
shall be burnt-out cinders, this magnificent pro-
cess shall all come to an inglorious end" ; we shall
answer: "When was the veil of the future thus
taken down? We hardly can say we know the
past, or even the present. How then can we say
so dogmatically what is to be, when as yet it is
not, nor shall be for a thousand million years?
And has the thing we know best no remaining
mystery? Is the present physical world an open
book as yet, a tale quite told ? Can we know the
mystery of matter and form so well for seons
unborn, whereas we know them so ill for the age
that now is? " Or when scientific prediction says,
"The goal of all the physical world is this"; we
shall answer: "The physical is not all, nor is it
the major part of the Whole. The wide gamut of
Being knows of worlds upon worlds above the
physical. Those realms beyond realms must be

The Higher Envelops 59

taken into the account. The real Universe must
be conceived in an ampler fashion. No mere
physiography can suffice." Or when prediction
says, ' ' Evolution eventuates thus " ; we shall reply :
"What is even the larger evolution but a minor
part of a vastly more extensive process? And
even though it eventuate thus — which is pro-
blematical— the meaning of this same 'thus' can
not begin to be understood except in the light
of the universal process itself. Evolution is but
a part of a larger Whole. "

We therefore shall claim that as all the past
submergings of continents have been stages in the
process of world-building, so all the future enig-
matical epochs shall be taken up into the unity
and triumph of the universal process. All that
is, all that shall be, shall prove understandable.
Thus ideas shall hold the ordered world in their
dominating grasp.

So much for the ordered universe.

But is this a Universe at all ? Has it not yet to
be proved a Universe ? Are there not other things
than order? other regions than the realms of
light? Have Chaos and Chance and Error and
Unsinn no fields where they pitch unmolested
their dusky tents? And are there not intimations
that those fields are very broad ? that they may
be even more extensive than the realms of light
and order? So some have claimed. But this
is to be over-wise concerning those vague and

6o God and Man

shadowy outskirts of Being. It is to go beyond,
we venture to think, even intelligent guesses.
What is near to us and what we know is an ordered
world. What we are impressed with is a sublime
reign of law, a majestic celestial order. Es springt
in die Augen. The revelations of the microscope
and of the telescope alike are of intelligible worlds.
The earth beneath and the heavens above declare
a glory. Science has ground for its magnificent
faith in a universal reign of law. The shadowy
outskirts of Reality may be this or that — ^we
know not —but the wide kingdoms of Being so
far as they have come within our ken have inspired
us with their marvellous order. Even the comets
report regularly. This is what impresses, even
amazes, chemist and astronomer, physicist and
biologist. And rightly we think do they project
the unknown curve from the arc that is known;
saying that the wider exploration extends, the
more extended becomes the reign of discovered
law ; the unknown accordingly must be of a piece
with the known; this frame of things must be a
System, a Cosmos, a Universe.

And thus we shall have it that, high over all,
ideas hold sway. Even the kingdoms that are
most rebellious are still theirs.

Finally, from a philosophic point of view, it
is of weight to observe that the words themselves
* ' chaos, " " chance, " " error, " " Unsinn, " etc. ,
could not be even understood except in the light

The Higher Envelops 6i

of "order," "plan," "truth," and "reason."
If these very words have to come and bow down
to their opposites to get even a meaning, perhaps
it is no accident. Order and plan, truth and
reason, it may be, wield legitimate and inherent,
not usurped or borrowed, sceptres. In the very
conception of their opposites they show themselves
to be law-giving. Ideas reign of right and can
not be discrowned even in thought.

Well-nigh the whole inorganic world crystallises
in definite ways from the crystal of rock to the
crystal of snow. The whole chemic world com-
bines according to definite laws. The entire
world of life unfolds in definite ways toward
definite forms, from the amoeba to man. Worlds
and systems develop. All is held within the
grasp of law and of ideas. Notwithstanding
many apparently refractory facts, the theory
that this whole of things is a Cosmos is the only
theory that works. One cannot make a beginning
even in thought with the chaos-theory. As such
and in itself it can not be conceived. And when
one goes forth and thinks he applies it to the facts
of the great world and accordingly declares that
he finds after all no order anywhere, he really
declares that there is order, at least in his own
mental operations, inasmuch as they are sane
enough to make the declaration. But if the
declaration were strictly true he could never know
it, because the analysis that dissolved the band of

62 God and Man

the Universe would have dissolved the band of
the mind as well, the band of sanity ; and an insane
mind in the midst of a chaotic Universe could
not know even the universal chaos. Accordingly
science assumes that this is a Cosmos, postulates
the unlimited reign of law, the universal validity
of cause and effect, and the essential intelligibility
of the whole. And under this banner she has
conquered wide kingdoms.

All we conclude is held within the grasp of
ideas. From the microscopic to the telescopic
worlds the might of the spiritual holds dominion.

"It is true, " says one, "that an invisible power
of some sort holds the molecule within and with-
out, as an ravisible power holds the earth within
and without, when flung forth in space, pendent
on nothing, based on nothing apparent. But
is it really an immaterial power that holds the
earth and all celestial bodies? Without the sun,
for example, where would be the spiritual grip
upon the earth of which you speak? The spirit-
ual grip turns out then to be a solar grip, does
it not?"

Closer examination will provide an answer.
How does the sun grasp the earth an3rway?
with material or with immaterial hand? Let
the sun be as crassly material as you will, yet
its grip of the earth is not material. It reaches
out no material hand over the wide millions of

The Higher Envelops 63

space. And the instant a mass goes beyond its
own material self and wields effective influence
at a distance, in the nature of things that influence
can not be material. Nor has it any of the charac-
teristics of the material. One can not see the
law of gravitation. One can not touch it. It
is not ponderable. That which gives weight
to all is itself imponderable. It does not occupy
space. It is not divisible. It has no inertia.
It has, in short, no material characteristic. It is
then really immaterial power that grasps and
holds the earth. Not one material touch does
the all-ruling sun lay upon the earth, not so
much as the material touch of a gossamer thread.
It is spiritual power that does the real grasping
both of earth and sun; yes, of all earths and all
suns.

Moreover it is a question whether matter as
such ever grasps an5rthing. Are not the atoms
of a molecule or the electrons of an atom held
together in reality by immaterial powder as truly
as the members of the solar system? Are not
chemical affinity, cohesion, adhesion, as imma-
terial as gravity? Whether in the molecule or
in the milky way, therefore, the power that holds
is spiritual, — always more than querying whether
the atom itself or the electron is not to be con-
ceived after an immaterial fashion as a centre
of spiritual power.

If the trend of the above be correct, we look

64 God and Man

forth indeed upon a wide-ranging Universe.
Above the so-called physical rises range beyond
range, the vaster universe of Reality. As above
and beyond the earth rises the wide and boundless
expanse of space, so above and beyond all the
physical rise the greater realms of universal Being.
We must conceive the World- Whole after an infi-
nite fashion, and the boundlessness of space, with
more than symbolic fitness and suggestion, aids us
in the attempt.

With somewhat of elaboration designedly the
above study of the higher and vaster worlds has
been made. For in them because of their great-
ness our main concern centres. They are the
truly great and significant worlds. Extended
consideration accordingly has been, we conceive,
essential to the just setting of all that shall follow.
We have now won the right, we think, to say
that out beyond the physical and human envel-
opes of man sweep the vaster ethereal spheres
of Truth, Beauty, Ideals, and Spirit.

For the present we attend only to the first.
Man is ensphered by Truth. As the tree is envel-
oped by atmosphere and sunlight and permeated
through and through by them in myriads of forma-
tive ways, so man is ensphered by truth. But
only an infinite mind knows all the detail of rela-
tionship and effect.'

How vast indeed is its working ! albeit meagre

The Higher Envelops 65

is our consciousness thereof. Let a truth be
selected, for example, from the field of mathe-
matics. Let it be the simple truth that a straight
line is the shortest distance between two points.
It is impossible to estimate the extent to which
this truth conditions practically all life. The fish
darting for a bait acts upon it but knows it not.
The spider spinning its web wots not of it but
obeys it. The ant making war upon an enemy
unconsciously observes it. The bee flying toward
the flower or returning to the hive unwittingly
heeds it. The hawk swooping down on its prey
obeys it. The dog chasing a deer, or the child
running for its ball, alike acts upon it unfailingly.
It conditions practically all life above the lowest
forms. Nowhere, notwithstanding, does it work
through knowledge except in man. And even
in human life, as widely extensive as its influence
there is, it probably works through knowledge
only as an exception, through other channels as
a rule. The child acts upon it but knows it not.
The lower types of men rarely have full conscious-
ness of it. The higher types act upon it usually
intuitively, or through habit. As with the fish,
the spider, the ant, etc., so, only less so, with
man; its action is, in the great main, through
other channels than that of knowledge.

Let it next be a truth of science. But a short
time ago comparatively, it was demonstrated
that heat could be converted into power and

66 God and Man

utilised by applying it to water. The British
Museum itself could not contain the books which
should undertake to tell of all the results of that
truth. Almost world-wide has been its influence
upon man. Yet not one in a thousand of its
workings has been known, it may be said, by the
recipient of them all.

Again, only the other day, comparatively
speaking, it was shown that heat or power could
be turned into electricity, and electricity again
converted into heat, light, or power. The influence
of this scientific discovery, even in a brief period,
has been incalculable. For Edison and some
others there has been considerable consciousness,
considerable knowledge. For the millions even
of intelligent men there has been much appro-
priation of results with little knowledge. One
gets into a street-car, for instance, on a winter
evening, sits down, and reads his paper. He is
carried along by electricity, he is enabled to read
by electricity, he is warmed by the same elec-
tricity. How little does he adequately realise of
all this? The whole thing is about as little an
affair of knowledge as his breathing is. So in
general; the influences of this discovered and
applied truth are unlimited, but the actual con-
sciousness thereof is most meagre. Nevertheless
if this particular truth had not been discovered,
the million-fold resiilt had not followed. Mani-
festly the wide result was the outworking of the

The Higher Envelops 67

scientific discovery. The striking thing is the
indirectness and unconsciousness of well-nigh
the total outcome.

Other scientific truths on examination yield
a like result. It was discovered that the carbon
of coal under proper conditions will unite with
the oxygen of the air. The outworkings of that
discovery have been incalculable. But a hundred
families might gather round as many firesides
and not one give mental heed to the process that
made possible their comfort. -

It was discovered that the instantaneous
combustion of certain materials within confined
limits would liberate an immense volume of gas
under high pressure, causing an explosion. Gun-
powder, and so on, have been the result. Modern
civilisation has been made thereby different from
what it would have been. Every child has been in-
fluenced in more ways than it could learn in a
term at school. In all probability, however, it did
not know it had been influenced at all until it
read about the fact in the books.

It was discovered that rays of light on being
passed through a lens are refracted. The micro-
scope and the telescope followed. The inventors
themselves, were they with us, could not in a
life-time trace the ever-augmenting influence of
their own inventions. Indeed every great ap-
plied truth has something of the working of great
natural powers about it. Like the atmosphere

68 God and Man

and the rain, like gravitation and cohesion, they
work, in the great main, unconsciously. Think of
any great scientific discovery one may, of the
circulation of the blood, of its aeration, of the law
of gravitation, of the revolution of the earth upon
its axis, or about the sun, — the vastness of the
actual result and the meagre consciousness of the
same are alike striking. Multitudes are barely
conscious of any influence whatever, and even
thoughtful men differ from them only in being a
little less ignorant. Nevertheless whole sciences
are largely based upon them, and our higher
civilisation is very appreciably conditioned by
them.

Once more, let the chosen example be the philo-
sophical thinking of Plato or of Kant. The influ-
ence of these two systems of thought has been
unreportable. The intellectual world one lives
in, the intellectual being one is, are both different
because of them. Yet hosts of men never once
in their lives have intelligently spoken the names
of Kant and Plato. They have been consistently
guiltless of ever consciously thinking Platonic
or Kantian thought. To be sure they have done
to a degree what they did not know they were
doing. But how meagre was the extent. Most
men would be utterly surprised on being made
acquainted with half the scope and depth of that
influence year by year. They have been as gener-
ally unconscious of it as men are generally of the

The Higher Envelops 69

world and of themselves. Men habitually over-
look the greatest things with their ever-present
influence. Accordingly the general unconscious-
ness that the Platonic and the Kantian and other
great systems of truth are perpetually condition-
ing the world in which they live, and contributing
to the composite beings that they themselves
are, is nothing accidental. On the contrary,
it accords with the essential and habitual process
of things. Great truths in general work, in the
main, unconsciously. Why should men know of
their working? Wherefore the prevalent feeling
of multitudes which asks. What is philosophy
to me? is in a sense not without cause. Con-
sciously philosophy is little or nothing to them.
Unconsciously it is very much. A Socrates,
living his near yet far-away life, or a Spinoza in
loneliness, thinking deep things and hoping to
utter truths destined to shape the lives of genera-
tions unborn, are always a perplexity and a source
of amusement to the market-place. But the
flight of years rewards their pious hope. The
life of a race becomes thereafter different. Mostly
unconsciously, however, this subtle leavening
goes on.

Finally let the test extend to the world of
ethical and religious truth. Nowhere is the
working of truth so subtle, so deep, so inclusive.
Whether one thinks of a Buddha, a Confucius,
a Mohammed, a Moses, a Paul, a Luther or of the

7o God and Man

Son of Man Himself, one thinks of ethical and
religious truth that has been nearly or quite as
a new birth and as a new life to nations and races.
But how they have been born and have lived
anew they have been only less conscious of than
of how they were born and have lived at all.
No one, I think, who has earned the right to an
opinion fails to see at once the vastness and the
hiddenness of the working of such truth. Does
Christendom know what the Christ-truth has
done for it? As little as it knows the greatness
and the mystery of either truth or life.

Throughout this entire inquiry into the way
man is set into the World- All, the thought has
been growing that he lives in touch with a very
wide-ranging Universe. He is ensphered and
ensphered. Greater worlds sweep round smaller.
All worlds hold him in their grasp and effectually
touch him at ten million points. He knows not
a tithe of the ways in which he is formed, nor a
tithe of the influences of which he is the uncon-
scious child. This is the common way of working,
to which there is no exception. This is the rela-
tion of every man to every world. As one in
thought ascends the heights of Reality, one
realises that round the life of a man sweeps,
besides other worlds, the ethereal universe of
truth. More subtly than an atmosphere, it
permeates and conditions in a multitude of ways

The Higher Envelops 71

all his being and living. Some of these ways he
knows in part; most of them he is unconscious
of. Even truth works, in the main, not through
knowledge. It works as all the other great life-
conditioning elements work. For all the great
world-facts and processes, as they enfold and
form the life of man, are at one in their working.
Truth differs only to a degree, in that some of
its workings are relatively more conscious.

We have attempted to set ourselves vitally
into the great enfolding ethereal sphere of truth.
The utmost conceptive and imaginative endeavour
has been required for only an inadequate result.
We need to multiply in thought the approaches
of truth to life. To that end we need to put as
many windows in man as there are pores in his
skin. And as the universal light of truth enters
all windows, the house of his life shall be filled with
light indeed, but the " how" thereof will be little
more conscious than the working of sunbeams.
Not that there is little consciousness, but that
there is much unconsciousness. We need for
realisation greatly to multiply and diversify the
approaches of truth to life.

It has been thought best to consider at length
the way in which truth enspheres the life of man.
Elaboration in this one case must serve to indicate
the treatment that should be given, did space
permit, to the other ethereal worlds of beauty,

72 God and Man

ideals, and spirit — not to speak of the all-inclusive
spiritual being, God. We can do no more than
suggest. The greatness, the omnipresence, and
the variety of the contact of truth with life must
indicate to us the greatness, the universalness,
and the multiplicity of the relationship of beauty,
ideals, spirit, and the all-inclusive Absolute to
life.

The Universe as we conceive it is a very great
system of Reality. The ethereal vastnesses are
far greater than the material. As the expanded
heavens stretch far beyond our earth, so the
universe of spiritual power and being stretches
far beyond our earth-sphere. This we take to
be in no sense fancy, but in every sense literal
fact. They are not seers with true vision of
Reality who see only a circumscribed lower ma-
terial world. The immensities are high above
and far out beyond our or any island-world.
The real infinities and complexities and subtleties
are the ethereal spheres of truth, beauty, ideals,
spirit, God. These are the main and great
Universe. To conceive of the World- Whole by
giving little heed to these, is to conceive of an
ocean by thinking of an island, little heeding the
boundless ocean itself. And into such a vast
and complicated and subtle Universe as this,
man is set. A thousand thousand are his rela-
tionships, commerces, communions. These again
are not airy nothings, but facts more real than

The Higher Envelops 73

solid earths and flaming suns. Verily man is
ensphered and ensphered by many a world. He
is the centre and focus of an infinity of influences.
Here and there their workings flash into con-
sciousness and are wrought through knowledge;
but this is exceptional. In the great main their
workings are unconscious. When we surround
the tree's roots with an earth and its trunk with
an atmosphere and a sunlight and put it in con-
nection with all nature, from the food-particles
of the soil to the bonfires of the sun, and see ten
million air-atoms and sunbeams and water-mole-
cules perpetually playing upon it, building its
very being, we have then a good though inade-
quate illustration of the way man is infinitely
related to an infinite World-All.

For long we have been studying the way man
is set into the Universe. We have seen him en-
sphered by and held in the grasp of earth and
atmosphere, sunlight and sun, physical universe
and law, climate and topography, day and night,
summer and winter; of family, community, na-
tionality, race, and humanity ; of heredity, history,
civilisation, evolution, and the Zeitgeist; of truth,
beauty, ideals, spirit, God — greater sphere enfold-
ing smaller, greater life smaller, out to the all-
enfolding Absolute.

CHAPTER IV

THE CORRESPONDINGLY WIDE-RANGING GAMUT OF
man's POWERS

ABOVE we saw man enveloped by many
spheres, by all that is. Ten thousand cos-
mic influences were playing incessantly upon
him. Such was his Total Environment and such
the endless variety of its influence upon him.
The first result was the impression of the myriad-
formed vital connection of the All with the individ-
ual. The second result was the anticipation that
the life of the individual himself would be found
on examination to be many-sided and complex
in order to be the locus of so many influences.

We now turn from the manifold Total Environ-
ment to the many-sided man himself.

We have been prepared by our previous study
to look for many doors and windows in the life
of man. These we shall find. It shall be our
task now to survey these many (human) doors
and windows, receptivities and activities, parts
and powers, of man's complex life.

As we have turned from sphere to sphere,
from the lowest material to the highest spiritual

74

The Wide-Ranging Human Gamut 75

spheres, and have seen them one after another
enfold the life of man and work in multitudinous
vital ways upon and in him, it has always been
the total man that our eyes naturally were fixed
upon. And the total man was always physical as
well as psychical man, body as well as mind. He
was more than cognitive power, more than consci-
ous being; he was a physico-psychic total. And
this is man as we shall view him, and as he is.
To think of man merely as a knower, is to leave
out the vaster part of his being. To think of
him as an intellect and as a will, is still to leave
out by far the greater part of his nature. Or to
think of him even as a cognitive, conative, and
affective being, is yet to leave out the greater
part of him. His unconscious and subconscious
natures are left out. These too are part of the
psyche. And his physical being as well is left
out of the account. We therefore remind our-
selves on the threshold of our analysis that man
is the total man and that with him as an integer
we here deal. Hence our present field is wider
than that of the psychologist. It widens into
that of the biologist. It widens also into that
of the physiologist, and even broadens out into
the field of the physicist. For inasmuch as man
is mass, all that can be said of the stone's varied
connections with the cosmos can be said of him.
And inasmuch as man is an organism, all that
can be said of the tree's cosmic connections can

76 God and Man

be said of him. Inasmuch also as he is a living
animal, all that can be said of the animal's vital
connections with the kingdoms of life and with
the World- Whole applies to him. Inasmuch
finally as he is distinctively a psyche, of course
all that can be said of psychic connections with
the Universe applies specially to him. And once
more we pause to say that this is veritable man,
the actual being that we see when we look at him
set into the total Environment, the locus and
focus of a myriad forces.

With this governing word by way of necessary
preface we hereupon turn to our analysis.

Man has many physical doors and windows,
receptivities and activities. As set bodily into
nature, we saw natural powers without number
playing incessantly upon him. The tree was no
more complicated with nature than was the body
of man. It had no more stomata than he. In
truth man's every pore is a door of ingress and
egress. His every cell is open on all sides to
perpetual inflow and outflow. Every nerve is
sensory or motor. How unnumbered are the
windows for the sunbeams or the openings for
the air and water molecules. And every atom of
his body is open to the incoming influence of all
the atoms of the Universe, and goes out of itself
also in reciprocal influence everywhere. In fine,
his body is a receiver with myriad receptivities.

The Wide-Ranging Human Gamut 77

an actor with myriad outgoing activities. It
has many doors that swing both in and out.

In all this we are attempting to see man as in a
true and living picture, with the earth under his
feet, the air and sunlight all about him, the sky
above, and universal Being ensphering him round.
We are fixing our eyes, however, upon him. We
want to see all the doors and windows there are
in his body, and then to see all the doors and
windows there are in his mind; all the while
remembering that he is set fixed into universal
Being, and that all his doors and windows tell
of the reciprocalness of his life with the World-
Whole.

Above, we have had suggested the countless
physical doors and windows. The astonishing
complexity and variety of the somatic life of
man has appeared.

But what has all this to do with the higher
life? That is a psychic fact. But these doors
and windows are physical facts. We reply that
our domain is broader than psychology ; it is pro-
perly Life. Man is more than a conscious being.
He is all that is shut up within his integument.
And we here deal with his true and total life.
Hence all his physical receptivities and activi-
ties are our present concern. It is therefore of
present moment that gravitation all the while lays
hold of every atom of his body, and that the body
responds in kind. It is of present moment that

78 God and Man

nerves are afferent and efferent; that pores are
mouths for ceaseless inhalation and exhalation,
and that every cell is like a jelly-fish, taking in
and giving out on all sides. It all shows that
man has many doors of many kinds; that they
swing both ways ; and that many are the constant
incomings and outgoings. Yet this physical is
part of the true and proper life of man — a fact
to be realised and not forgotten.

Here let us note again what our chapter is
undertaking. It is attempting to view all the
doors in the total life of man, both the physical
and the mental doors. — We already have taken
note of the former. They were legion. We now
turn to the latter.

If the body has so many connections with the
All, has not the mind thereby indefinite connection
also ? For the mind is joined to the body. Doubt-
less. As there is probably no psychosis without
a neurosis, so there may be no neurosis whatever
without a corresponding psychosis. Indeed, every
physical window may be an eye of the soul and
all physical doors may be indirectly psychical
too. It may be true, as Goethe says, that "mat-
ter can never exist and act without spirit, "
Certain at all events it is that through the myriad-
formed connection of the body with the cosmos,
the mind also is manifoldly connected therewith;
for the life is one, not multiple. Because there-

The Wide-Ranging Human Gamut 79

fore of its connection with the body, the mind
has many doors that swing in and out. We assume
that it is unnecessary further to elaborate the
point.

Now it is realised that nearly all the foregoing
processes are unconscious. The physical influ-
ences of the cosmos work, in the great main,
unconsciously. And the physiological processes
go on, with few exceptions, in the same way.
One has only to think of the processes of digestion
and assimilation, of aeration and circulation, of
catabolism and anabolism, of the million changing
neuroses, of the formation and action of ' ' physical
dispositions, " of the physiological side of the
phenomena of habit, association, and memory,
of sickness and health, and of physical fatigue
and buoyancy, — phenomena most complicated
in themselves, but rising into consciousness, if
at all, only in their simple general result. All
of these processes lie almost wholly beyond con-
sciousness. Nevertheless they are a true part
of life. And they are to be held steadfastly in
consideration. For the life with which we here
deal is more than the psychic ; it is the total life.

At this point we turn from the unconscious
to the subconscious areas of man's being. The
catalogue of them is very long drawn-out. One
studies with surprise the many subconscious
workings. To begin, how little does even the

8o God and Man

ripe life realise the workings of its humanity
as such. A revelation indeed are the subconscious
workings of race, nationality, family ; of tempera-
ment, sex, age; of heredity, instincts, aptitudes;
of physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual en-
vironment; of pleasure and pain, appetite and
passion, hope and fear, love and hate, content
and discontent; of selfishness, pride, ambition,
interest, curiosity, and taste; of doubt and belief;
of selective attention, association, retentiveness,
and habit; of the working of the principles of
harmony, simplicity, and rationality; of even
sensation, perception, conception, thought, and
reasoning ; of mental fatigue and rest ;of propensity,
speech, bearing, tact, skill, execution, and even
creative action ; of the workings of education and
culture; of imagination, intuition, and apprecia-
tion; finally of faith, conscience, adoration, and
character; not forgetting the subconscious work-
ings of the countless physical and physiological
processes as they project themselves into the
psychical areas.

Here we are content to point out simply the many
sides of man's complex nature, merely remarking
for the present that these subconscious activities
are withal a true part of life, and calling attention
to the comparative magnitude of their areas.

We turn finally to the conscious receptivities
and activities of man's life.

The Wide-Ranging Human Gamut 8i

A state of waking human life or of consciousness
is itself a complex state. That there is awareness
is manifest. That there is something more is
suggested by the fact that the state of conscious-
ness is not in reality a state (static) but an activity.
We are here coming in sight of conation. Indeed
consciousness itself in the most interior way
involves conation. For what is the process of
becoming conscious, but the rise, or spring, or
start into awareness. It is essential activity,
conation. — From another point of view, what is
the rise of consciousness but the grasping to-
gether of a little field as one. However slight
the consciousness, it is, as far as it is consciousness,
the grasping together of diversity into unity.
It is a synthesis; it is an activity of conation.
This is the internal and essential structure, as we
take it, of every activity of consciousness. Though
awareness is the prominent aspect, conation is
the deeper aspect.

But are these all? Is there not another ulti-
mate? Although I can not see that affection is
involved in all consciousness in the same necessary
way as conation, and although many of the at-
tempts to show this are to me inconclusive, it is
nevertheless present in actual life. It is an ever-
present fact of psychic experience. Indeed from
the side of fact I believe it can be shown that
affection (feeling) is the earliest form of awareness.
Further that essential affection (not conscious)

82 God and Man

even precedes all awareness. Therefore as a
fact the presence of affection as an ultimate con-
stituent of all psychic life is unquestioned.

At this point it will help us to look again at
what we are undertaking in our chapter. We
are endeavouring to view with care the varied
receptivities and activities of the total life of
man. Already we have noted the many uncon-
scious and the many subconscious processes.
We are now surveying the conscious processes of
his complex life. Hitherto we have come in
sight of awareness, conation, and affection. We
undertake further to note the remaining conscious
receptivities and activities.

As we leave the ultimate aspects there is no
longer question as to fact. That sensation, as-
sociation, and the rest are real psychic processes
need not be said. Beyond indicating the existence
of sensation and association, we are concerned
merely with noting the wide extent of their area
in the total field of psychic life. The Sensation-
Association School of psychologists, if nothing
else, have made it impossible to disregard their
magnitude and importance. Endless is the va-
riety of sensation, numberless are the threads of
association. Besides sensation and association
other conscious powers are ideation and perception.

Conation, affection, and awareness; sensation,
association, ideation, perception — these are the
conscious processes thus far considered.

The Wide-Ranging Human Gamut 83

We next think of the manifoldness of memory
and all the variety of imagination. Without the
former, past experience would be annihilated for
consciousness, and present experience utterly
transformed. Without the latter, conscious life
would be hopelessly narrowed and shut up within
the shrunken and contracted self. A deeper-
going psychology is all too late magnifying the
just domain of imagination.

We pass on to another group of conscious pro-
cesses— conception, thinking, judging, knowing,
reasoning. These in their order are like five
cylinders of a telescope, each succeeding larger
(more complex) term including all the preceding.
Obviously they are not severally independent.

We come at last to the final group of conscious
powers and capacities, esthetic constrtiction and
appreciation, intuition and faith, inspiration and
revelation. .Esthetic functioning is discoverable
in every field of knowledge. Intuition (imme-
diate apprehension) and faith permeate all con-
scious human life. Inspiration and revelation
also pervade, as we hold, all consciousness. — In
the final outcome these latter will stand forth
with central prominence.

We now have surveyed the conscious psychic
powers. These are what we have found : conation,
affection, and awareness; sensation, association,
ideation, and perception; memory and imagina-
tion; conception, thinking, judgment, knowledge.

84 God and Man

and reasoning; aesthetic construction and ap-
preciation, intuition and faith, inspiration and
revelation.

Another fact should be noted with special care,
because, in its essential form, it runs through the
entire work. If each of the above processes be
critically studied, it will be found to contain two
elements: the activity of the conscious centre,
and the activity of the Other. By the Other
is meant that outside of the conscious centre.
The activity of the Other, however, takes place in
and through the conscious centre. So that every
conscious process is a receptivity as well as an ac-
tivity— ^though every receptivity is also an ac-
tivity, as every activity is likewise a receptivity.
Consequently every conscious psychic process, as
indeed every psychic process, is a union of two
activities. The Other acts in and through the
conscious centre; the conscious centre receives
the activity and reacts in turn upon it. In this,
psychic action is like that of every living centre,
probably of every living thing. Throughout the
realm of life — if not farther — one law holds: every
centre of activity is at the same time a centre of
receptivity, the focus of other active powers.
This fact is of cardinal importance.

Herewith we close our analysis and survey of
the physical and the psychic (unconscious, sub-
conscious, and conscious) receptivities and ac-
tivities of man's life.

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD-ALL AT WORK I OR THE PRIORITY,
PARENTHOOD, AND GREATER WORKING OF GOD

UP to this point, we have seen all that is, the
infinite divine Environment ensphering and
ensphering man and the whole wide-ranging
gamut of powers that he is. Man does not hold
the world, the world holds him. We do not
envelop the heavens, the heavens ensphere us.
Even Leviathan does not contain the ocean, the
ocean contains him and he plays therein. The
tree does not environ nature, nature environs
and holds the tree. Before the tree existed,
nature was; before the whale, was the ocean;
before man, earth and the divine Heavens. Man
does not precede his worlds, his worlds precede
him.

The new-born babe is born into a home and a
Universe already prepared for it. From the
first, it opens its lungs to an atmosphere already
awaiting it, and its eyes upon a world of waiting
light. From the first, its ears are greeted by the
love-notes of parents, while the voices of children
and men and all the sounds of environing nature

85

86 God and Man

seek to awake its slumbering faculty. The up-
holding earth is already there as another mother-
bosom of support. The far-off anticipating sun
has hasted with the speed of light to warm the
welcoming earth, and already, with hands softer
and touch gentler than mother's, holds the babe
in its strong embrace. The anticipating stars
looked down as did the stars on Bethlehem.
And the foreknowing Heavens, from the begin-
ning, arched above and encircled all with large
pre-natal love. The child is born indeed into a
Universe already prepared. The home is there
to harbour it; humanity to help it; language
to teach it; tradition to lead it; law to govern
it; the school to educate it; the Church to con-
secrate and niirture it; play and work there to
develop it ; truth to enlighten it ; ideals to exalt
and idealise it; art and beauty to symmetrise
and refine it; the Son of God there to save and
shepherd it; and the divine Spirit to hallow,
spiritualise and fulfil it. Everything precedes
it, — from the house already built to the heavens
already spread out; from the parent already
waiting to the great God eternally first. The
child is born into a prepared Universe. If a man
stepped down from a star, he would not find the
earth more ready for his footstep, than the babe
finds all things made ready for its coming. Our
infinite total Environment is in readiness against
the day of our birth.

The Priority of God 87

We little note this. It is the mark of childhood
that it notes nothing deeply. And we linger too
much in childhood still. We are mostly unaware
and disregardful both of the fact, and of the limit-
less significance of the fact. Who of us have
seriously taken note of these pre-existing and
awaiting worlds? We enter into possession, for
the most part, as hereditary kings enter into
dominion of their realms, or as birds enter upon
the wide kingdom of the air. If we came into
existence, unparented by a father and mother, un-
brooded by a humanity, unmothered by an earth,
unparented by nature, unclaimed by a cosmos,
and unfathered by a God, because these — one
and all — as yet were not, and if we awoke with
adult consciousness to the fact, we should realise
that we were more destitute indeed than Milton's
fallen Archangel awaking on the burning marl;
for he at least awoke in hell and still could say,
"All is not lost." If we awoke to the fact —
but the truth is that we should never awake to
that or any other fact, neither to the non-existence
of them nor to the desolate being of ourselves.
Or if we awoke perchance in the remote and
dateless past, the first concreted thing afloat in
the primal fire-mist, in the beginning, before the
date of ordered systems, before the dawn of the
pleasant light, before the birth of the segregated
earth, before the being of the ambient air, before
even the blue sky rose and arched wide above, —

88 God and Man

in the beginning, when all was yet without form
and void, if, afloat in the diffused fire-mist, we
awoke, we should welcome forsooth even some
"pillared firmament of rottenness," and should
be grateful to have even "stubble" to build an
earth's base upon. We should realise then our
desolateness. Then we should know what it
meant to forerun the ordered Universe instead
of following it. We should be like a seed without
a soil, like a bird without an atmosphere, a star
without a course, or a king without a kingdom.
"The man without a country" was passing rich
compared with the creature of our supposition,
the man without a Universe. We do not realise
the backgrounds against which life is actually
set. We little heed how we are framed into and
set against the backgrounds of humanity, world,
sun, Universe, God. These all were prior to us,
as they are prior to the unformed child, and when
we came, we were born into all this infinite prior
Evironment.

We do well to consider this supremely. Here
we ponder matters of absolute greatness. There
are but two things in reality, Man and his Envi-
ronment. The question of Background is the
illimitable question. Into what is human life
framed and set? Does it ground in God? Does
the gamut of man's being ground in kindred
being? body in Nature? heart in Heart ? mind
in Mind ? spirit in Spirit ? The priority of Nature

The Priority of God 89

and of God is the illimitable fact for man. We
must abandon the task of thought, and the pre-
rogative of rational life, or we must realise supreme
conditions in their absolute greatness. We must
not take worlds and solar systems and universes
as matters of course. We must realise that all
depends on man having parents to bring him to
the birth, and air for his lungs, and food for his
hunger, and brooding care for his helplessness,
and voices for his ear, and language for his
tongue, and love for his heart, and authority for
his will, and vast space for his eye to look out
into, with objects to behold and light to see by,
and a World for a stage and humanity to play
with, the Universe for a school-room and every-
thing for a teacher, — duty for his conscience, work
for his hand, truth for his mind, and beauty for
his aesthetic being, the sky and mystery for his
imagination and wonder, the Kingdom of Grace
for his growing character, and God for his ever
worshipful soul. All depends on life's Back-
grounds. If in humanity and in nature and in the
infinite God we live and move and have our being,
then all things become possible. Life universally
parented is life indeed. Life utterly orphaned
is the night of death. Gothe's "sad stranger
upon a dark earth" was a fortunate wight in
comparison. If the starry heavens filled Kant's
soul with wonder and awe the more he gazed into
that excellent glory, with what consternation

go God and Man

of amazement would he have looked, if those
same heavens before his very eyes had been rolled
together as a scroll, and the earth from under his
feet had dissolved into the ancient mist, and all
things had suffered final shock, departing to
"leave not a rack behind"! Life without the
infinite Background is nought. It needs no more
than a nest of little birds, stretching up open
mouths, expecting food has come, while far away
the mother-bird, helpless upon the ground, is
trailing a broken wing ; no more than those hungry
little birds and that never-to-return mother with
the broken wing, is required to touch our natures
into melting tenderness. Is there a more delight-
some and perfect sight in all the world than a Ma-
donna and her child ? Is there a more melancholy
and moving spectacle anywhere than a living babe
upon the bosom of its mother still and cold in death ?
Life without its Backgrounds is nothing worth.

The priority of humanity and of nature and of
God is the all-conditioning fact for man. If we
are to take a true account of life at all, if we are
to quit ourselves like men and not to abandon
the prerogative and hilltop of human conscious-
ness, we must see life as it really is. We must
see man as set against all his Backgrounds, which
preceded him, which already were when as yet
he was not. In the beginning, we must see God
and we must see Him creating the heavens and
the earth and all the host of them, and elaborating

The Priority of God 91

them into form, and furnishing and garnishing
them as an abode fit for sons; and finally, in His
own image, creating man, — ^an ancestry already of
long line, before our particular natal day. Against
all these Backgrounds we are set. Into all these
things we are born. And God saw^ everything
that He had made, and behold it was very good.
To be born into these parenting environments, the
favoured child of all worlds, this it is to be well
born, this it is that is good. Surely not alone in
the Father's House of the future, but also in the
Father's world of all the past, the Lord of Life
goeth before man to prepare a place for him.

Here is what must be greatly considered. Vast
primordial fact gives the primal law to life. We
shall not take the first step in the true under-
standing of the higher or of any life, until we see
life's great Backgrounds. As well try to under-
stand a navigator without his ocean or an astrono-
mer without his heavens. And still there would
seem to be no great thing that is less considered.
The tree feeding on the sunbeams or drinking
in the falling dew, or the bird calmly floating in
the buoying air, or the babe peacefully sleeping on
its mother's bosom, are but little more unmindful
than are most men of the conditioning and indis-
pensable elements of life. Who thinks of the
earth upon which he walks, or of the atmosphere
which he momently breathes, or of the light from
above by which he sees his way? It is amazing

92 God and Man

how unaware we are of the very worlds in which
we Hve and of the very elements that make our
lives possible. If we could ascend in some great
balloon and look down upon the earth and see
continents and oceans and all the kingdoms of
the world spread out in endless panorama, and
if while we gazed in rapt wonder, the continents
suddenly dropped and sank, and the wild ocean
floods rushed in, a vast tide and tumult of gurg-
ling waters, overwhelming all beneath the waves a
league of fathoms deep ; if, suddenly, gone were the
vasty seas, gone were the broad sunny lands and
the little islands too, gone the proud cities and
the busy lives of men, gone the old homestead
and the children and the smiling play-ground and
the field of life's enterprise, all forever gone, —
if one looked down and saw the old home of man
vanish thus, one would realise what it means to
have a world to live in. But perhaps it is vain
to attempt fully to realise what so immeasurably
passes our comprehension. Nevertheless all this
vast Fact lives and works all the time, infinitely,
like God whether we realise it or not, and we are
carried upon its bosom every minute parented
endlessly by its vast mother-life.

The priority of nature and of humanity and
of God, of all man's ensphering worlds, wherein
he comes to live and move and have his being,
even this have we been toiling to appreciate.
To every baby born the waiting worlds would

The Parenthood of God 93

speak and say: Your mother and we were all
here before you came, little babe ; we were waiting
for you. And the full-grown man that in later
years would set in order the facts of life, and see
the seed spring from its soil and all things in their
actuality, will consider well what the waiting
worlds have to say to the babe. Its little ward-
robe, with the last deft stitch already taken
weeks before, and all so daintily folded and laid
away in the drawer, in boundless expectation,
is but a sweet symbol of forerunning Nature
in all her priority and endless preparation.

Not only did this infinite Environment precede
man, but more, it parented him. The branch
should know, not alone its connection with the
tree into which it is set, but also the close intimacy
of that connection. It should know itself as a
bud running back into and springing out of the
parenting life of the tree. Likewise, man must
know, not only his setting into the great Environ-
ment, but also the closeness of his vital connection
therewith. He must see his life as a bud running
back into and springing out of the parenting life
of the All. We shall never begin nor hope to
know what our human life really is here in this
world, until, deliberately and long, we look into
its actual genesis. We must burst asunder the
walls of our egoistic prison-house; we must fly
beyond the borders of juvenile and provincial

94 God and Man

consciousness. With the understanding of ma-
turity, we must follow life back into Nature's
womb. We must see our childhood in relation
to its great Correlate, Parenthood, and our crea-
ture-life in relation to its universal Creator, The
mighty fact that the World-All mothered us,
mothers us still, and will mother us forever; the
mighty fact of the parenting, eternally brooding
Life of God, must be appreciated by us in its
greatness, the first postulate of the human under-
standing of life. Man may indeed tell the tale
of his life for himself if he likes. But it will
remain a minor account. Only the mother who
bore him and this brooding Universe withal are
adequate to relate aright the great history.
Human life is parented, endlessly parented. Every
life-sphere that folds it round mothers it. The
unborn child held within and enfolded by the
larger, richer parent-life, is in the original locus
and primal condition of us all. A little life,
budding from the parent stock, held within and
fed out of the larger mother-life, is the first
state and stage of this our earthly pilgrimage.
And this, life's first condition, is essentially life's
subsequent and eternal condition. The forms
change. The encircling life-spheres become finer,
subtler, more spiritual, but the inner reality
abides eternal and changes not. A smaller life
held within and enfolded by a larger, richer
Life, that mothered it at the beginning, that

The Parenthood of God 95

mothers it still, and that will mother it evermore,
— ^this, I take it, is the primal and fundamental
and everlasting fact about our human life. No
life-fact is comparable to this. No philosophy
of life approaches this in truth and richness.
Here we look upon life's last Background. And
the foreground and the Background are one;
they tell the same story: our smaller human life
forever enfolded by and fed out of the infinite
parenting Life of God, — here is the transcendent
fact and philosophy of life, that makes all other
accounts, in reality, barren and unsatisfying.

Our life-spheres have mothered us without end.
In the beginning we were born, each of us. We
did not bear ourselves. Even Caesar, who would
fain play the god, could not say, "On such a day,
in such a year, I, C^sar, did myself bear." The
great Augustus, like every other mother's son,
had to say, "On such a day I was born, and my
mother bare me. " And after the little Augustus
and every other little beginner of us had been
mothered, according to the antique way, into
being and into birth, the mothering process even
then had but fairly begun. The body had been
born but the mind was not yet born, and the
heart was still unborn, and the spirit too was far
from birth. The child is not all born even on
its birthday. Mind, heart, and spirit must be
mothered still to the birth. How they all must
be brooded! As the little body was enveloped

g6 God and Man

and mothered, so the Httle mind must be
brooded and hovered over and parented into
life. Mind must mother mind as body mothered
body. What touchings and caressings of intel-
ligence; what beamings of parent faces; what
down-lookings into little eyes; what croonings;
what baby-words of mother-speech in ceaseless
variation; what perpetual down-shinings of the
light of parent-mind into the little windows of
dawning mind, before the first answering rays
of inner light are kindled and shine out in glad-
dening response! This is the way mind is
mothered into being and into birth. With power
subtler than the touch of sunbeams, all-brooding
mind penetrated to the seats of slumbering life,
and gently awakened each of us into responsive
mental life. Then the mind had its birthday.
And Nature, likewise, was carrying on her
mothering still. For with light and sound at once
she approached the gates of sense, and passing
quickly the outer portals, softly knocked at the
inner gates, seeking to awake the sleeper. For,
though with eyes wide-open, at first we see not-
and with open ears at first we hear not. Thus
both the worlds of nature and of mind carry on
and on the mothering process and travail still
to bring mentality to birth.

The little heart must be brooded too; for the
affections are not yet born. A thousand smiles
must hover over that little life. A thousand times

The Parenthood of God 97

mother-eyes must look love into baby-eyes.
Love-notes must vibrate in its ears from morn till
night. Its life must be warmed through and
through at its mother's heart. The whole parental
life of love must surround it perpetually like an
atmosphere and bathe it like a sunlight. Then
the first answering smile, at length, will ripple
up from the depths and play in sweet response
upon the face. Infantile affections are being
awakened; but long brooding will be needed yet
before those opening buds of promise will be un-
folded into the fair flowers of perfected affections.
And the spirit must be mothered also. It is
first the natural then the spiritual. In the begin-
ning the soul is hid away deep in the inner recesses
of possibility, as the roses are hid away in the
heart of the little rosebush. The moral and
spiritual nature is not yet born. The home must
fold the little life about with reverence and wor-
ship as with an atmosphere. Its little being must
dv/ell within mystery and awe and heaven-reach-
ing imagination as in a spiritual climate. The
words and solemn notes of prayer must echo
long in the inner chamber. The sacred music
of the higher life must reverberate through its
being. Divine seeds of truth must fall upon the
inner soil. Parental souls radiant with divine life
must ray their light into the inner room. The
sacred fires upon the altar of the soul must com-
municate their flame to the unkindled spirit.

qS God and Man

In a word, the entire religious life of the home
must brood the potential soul and quicken it into
conscious life and power. This is the way a soul
is born.

We were not all here on the day of our arrival.
Life is not a finished thing. It is a continuous
creation. A child on the day it is born is a little
animated bod}^, with splendid possibility and
program of something more. Some parts of the
body even are as yet but the outline sketch of
what they are to be. The brain particularly is
little more than the program of its future self.
Fathers and mothers must be parents to more
than their children's bodies. They must be in-
tellectual, they must be affectional, they must be
spiritual fathers and mothers to their children.
As they parented the child's body into the physi-
cal world, they must parent the child's heart into
the finer world of affection, and its mind into the
subtler world of intellection, and its soul into the
higher world of spirit. This is no fancy. This
is no theory. It is fact as literal as physical birth
itself. We are the poor dupes and slaves of our
senses. Because we do not hold the scales to
weigh the baby, we do not realise the moment-
ous and sacred fact of the birth and mothering
of Mind, Heart, and Spirit.

To appreciate how this our human life is paren-
ted, we ought somehow to see ourselves over again
from the beginning as in moving pictures of

The Parenthood of God 99

growing life. If one by one ten thousand pictures
passed before our eyes revealing the marvellous
stages of our growth, and if the ever-present
mother formed the background of -each, every-
where brooding and ministering, as truly as when,
a babe in arms, we nursed in sweet content, and
if as we looked at each scene, we thought, "that
art thou," we should realise how infinitely this
our human life is parented. To every devoted,
thoughtful mother it all must come home in
flashes of revelation. The truth about one's own
life and its connection with the great world of
fostering life must shine out clear as the morning.

But we do not look long enough at that revela-
tion; we do not see deeply enough into that
morning of life. For the last revelation is like the
first. And the noon of life is like the morning;
and the evening is not different. What is begun
in the dawn is continued in the day. Life was
mothered before and after birth. It is mothered
still. It will be forever. As every new life-ring
on the possibly five-thousand-year-old sequoia,
most venerable of earth's living forms, is parented
now, as ever, by prior life and mothering nature,
so every new ring of growth that is added to our
hiiman life-tree is likewise parented. Each fresh
flower that blooms on the rosebush is mothered ;
every new grace that flowers on the most ven-
erable life, as truly.

Science on her own account, with new emphasis,

loo God and Man

records the same history. She reports no lite-
form that has not been parented by prior life
and the mothering environment. Is there a
chick ; there has been a hen. Is there a tadpole ;
there has been a frog. Is there an acorn ; there
has been an oak. Is there a grassblade ; there has
been another. Is there a cell; there has been a
parent cell. Wherever there is a web-foot, there
has been water. Wherever there is a wing, there
has been air. The atmosphere called forth the
breathing lung ; the lung did not give rise to the
atmosphere. The light called forth the seeing
eye; the eye did not bring forth the shining
light. Take the light away, the eye in time
becomes a vestige. This is the story of the sea;
this is the story of the land ; the report of the rocks ;
the tale of the whispering air. A parenting life,
a mothering environment everywhere, from top
to bottom, from bottom to top, throughout all
the kingdoms of ascending life.

The new miracle of the springtime and the
pageant of the summer repeat each marvellous
year the ancient chronicle of Life, What could
be more suggestive for our thought than the
coming of the spring? and the' manner of its
coming? The multitudinous forms of vegetal
life did not first awake and shout to the laggard
sun to arouse him to his shining. On the contrary,
the unwearied sun from day to day higher climbed
in the patient heavens, while below all the laggard

The Parenthood of God loi

life of earth slumbered still in the cold and frozen
lap of winter. The spring did not bring the vernal
sun; the vernal sun brought the spring. Month
after month that patient traveller journeyed
toward this northland, carrying the new miracle
of spring within his fiery being. Assaulting sun-
beams had to be rolled in endless billows against
this resisting continent. Bars and barriers of
ice and snow had first to be broken down and
melted into congenial confederates. The cold
bosom of the earth had to be warmed into hos-
pitality. The chill and torpid heart of things
had to be thawed out and set throbbing with new
life. And when after long months of travail,
at length the myriad germs and buds and forms
of sleeping life had been warmed and awaked,
then behold the miracle of the springtime! a
miracle as fresh and marvellous and momentous
as was the first glorious bridal of heaven and
earth. This is the way the multitudinous life
of every spring and summer is mothered into
being and into growth. — Is it not all a majestic
symbol of God? The all-brooding, warming,
life-giving Heavens: the torpid, reluctant, yield-
ing, awaking, developing earth. The all-giving
Parent: the all-receiving child. It is the story
of our human life.

The brooding life of Christ makes this story
uniquely vivid and concrete. Like a new morn-
ing He rose upon His disciples' lives and poured

I02 God and Man

a world of light around them. The sunlight of
His truth shone round about them like a heavenly-
radiance. This "Light of the world" was a new
day of God for man. He was rolled into its dawn,
and this new day of God's truth was all glorious
about him. He dwelt in the "light of life."
This is the way Christ thought of Himself in
relation to man. This is the way God, the Father,
thought of Him. From the time when, at the
beginning, the "glory of the Lord shone round
about" the startled shepherds, to the time when
at the end on the Cross, the sun's light was with-
drawn and darkness, like a funeral pall, was
thrown over the earth, on to when a "light from
heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shone
round about" the persecuting Saul, to the final
picture of the Heavenly City, where the "lamp
thereof is the Lamb," Christ is revealed as the
Light of God to the lives of men. "The people
that walked in darkness have seen a great light ' ' ;
thus wrote the forward-looking Prophet. * ' Until
the day dawn and the day-star arise in your
hearts"; thus wrote the backward-looking Apos-
tle, who was " with Him in the holy mount, " and
an "eyewitness of His majesty, " when "His face
did shine as the sun, and His garments became
white as the light. "

This light of divine truth shone and shone
from His radiant personality into the dull lives
about Him. Truth poured from His lips into

The Parenthood of God 103

their hearing ears. It streamed from His eyes
into their opening eyes. It beamed from His
countenance into their kindling faces. It uttered
itself in His mighty deeds to their wondering
minds. It spoke from the repose and majesty
and simplicity of His bearing to their intuitive
being. It glowed from the inner glory of His
character into their deepest nature. His mind
brooded theirs and mothered them into an intel-
lectual new-birth. His large life hovered over
them like a sky and enfolded them like a sun-lit
atmosphere. Within His large radiance they
dwelt as in a temple filled with God's glory.
This is the way He nourished and cherished them
like a parent. And this is the way, at last, spring
and exuberant summer succeeded to the torpid
winter of their intellectual life.

The account of the mind is the essential story
as well of the awaking heart and of the nascent
soul. Jesus folded the great world of His influence
around the disciples ' lives, until their total natures
began to stir and awake into newness of life.
He kept them by His side day after day, week
after week, month after month, into the years,
Sabbaths and weekdays, day and night. They
ate at the same board with Him, and slept with
Him in the same house. They drank at the same
wells, visited the same cities, journeyed across
the same fields and along the same roads, and
sailed in the same boat on blue Galilee. He

I04 God and Man

drew them closer and closer to Himself, into the
inmost circles, where friend meeteth with friend.
He flowed round their lives with the tides of
His love as the ocean flows round an island.
His sympathy breathed upon them as gently as
the soft breath from the warm southland. He won
them to lean back upon His divine bosom, and
lay their lives, childlike, against His great life. He
gave His sacred face to their lips to touch. He
broke the loaves beside the sea and revealed
Himself as the bread of Heaven that had come
down from God to give life unto the world.
They ate of that heavenly bread and began to
live in the strength of the eternal years. He called
all that thirsted unto the fountain of His life.
They drank, and the water became in them a
living spring, welling up from the deeps of God's
exhaustless Being, springing and overflowing
forever with pure water of life. He revealed to
them His own ideals, the "heavenly vision."
He carried them up to the hilltops and let them
look out over the vast purposes of God. He led
them forth into the exceeding broad and happy
fields of redeemed activity. He chastened them
like a father. He looked into their eyes, back into
their souls, with His calm holy eyes, and their beings
were stirred to the bottom with deep repentance.
And He played the flame of His glowing soul against
the candles of their spirits to cause them to burn
with holy fire, like a "candle of the Lord. "

The Parenthood of God 105

The numberless contacts of the infinitely
varied and subtle relationships of His great life
to theirs are good to ponder. They open our
crass and stupid eyes to the finer kingdoms of
Reality. They enable us to become deliberately
aware of other rains and falling dews, of other
atmospheres and sunlights, of other gravitations
and affinities. We verily realise that there are
other motions indeed than those of masses,
other waves than ocean billows, other winds
than atmospheric, and other vibrations than
ether. We awake to appreciate the vast reaches
and ranges of spiritual Reality. We see those
high regions, and we begin to know their subtle
environments, their spiritual climates, their divine
electricities, their heavenly laws, their still small
voices. And when we behold the Son of God
coming to earth, bringing with Him that infinite
Kingdom of Heaven, and when we consider His
boundless Personality, ranging from humanity to
Divinity, and when we see Him throwing all
those untold infiuences about the lives of His
disciples, then we realise how wonderfully they
were parented and brooded and unfolded to
higher form.

His influence penetrated like leaven through
the dough of their lives. His word fell like a
mustard seed into the ground of their heart.
His Spirit, like the vital breath of God, entered,
they knew not how, into the spirit and background

io6 God and Man

of their being, and changed the primal sources
and springs of all their living. Lo! life was
different. A new soul had passed into everything.
They had the mind of Christ. A new radiance
fell across all the fields of life. The horizons
lifted. Great visions swept out into far vistas.
It was good to look. Their feelings had deepened ;
their affections grown diviner and fuller; their
interests, loftier; their ambitions, greater and
holier. And humankind had changed. They
were seen through a white transfiguring light;
they were the fair children of God. And a new
face was upon the fields of earth. They were
the rich garment of a present God. And the
heavens were new. They were the new home.
A before unseen glory shone through their majes-
tic frame. And God too was different. He was
revealed in the nearness and warmth of His
Fatherhood; in the inner beauty and sweetness
and love of His Being. All things were changed.
A new glory had passed over the face of every-
thing. For the first time they were seen in their
essential truth.

Thus did Christ enfold the lives of His disciples.
Thus did He throw His large life, too great to
limit theirs, about them. He took them up indeed
into its large rooms. They abode in Him. They
were at home as in the Father's house. They
became as "little children" over against Him,
They became "fools that they might become

The Parenthood of God 107

wise, " Healing virtue went out from Him into
their frames. They confessed their sins that
He might baptise them with the Holy Spirit.
They brought their sick souls and minds to Him
and He breathed into them holiness and health.
They became aware of their emptiness and He
filled them with His abounding life. They
yielded to Him, and He took their wills up into
His great will and fulfilled them, their lives up into
His all-enriching, all-fulfilling life. They lived;
yet not they, but Christ lived in them. He be-
came the heart of their heart and the mind of
their mind and the spirit of their spirit. They
lived and moved and had their being in Him.
He was the vine, they were the branches. He
poured His life-saps into them. They drew all
their growth and foliage and bloom and fruit
from Him. In a sense as real and profound as
life, they abode in Him, while He was with them.
And after His physical form had been taken
away, in every essential and great sense, they
abode in Him still. "Abide in me, and I in
you." "Lo, I am with you alway. " "If a
man love me he will keep my word ; and my Father
will love him, and we will come unto him, and
make our abode with him. "

And so it was the Lord Christ, the Prince of
Life, became the new Promised Land in which
His disciples dwelt, the new Temple of God
wherein they abode, and from which they went

io8 God and Man

no more out forever. And so it was He folded
His limitless Life in myriad ways about them and
parented and brooded and unfolded their lives
into sons and daughters of God.

In all this it is clear that Christ's work is the
great factor. And here we arrive at the third
large aspect of our chapter — the greater working
of God. The priority of God, or of the divine
World-All, grew for us into the vast background
against which human life is set. The parent-
hood of God, or of the divine World- All, revealed
the true, intimate, and infinitely rich relationship
of the All to the individual. And now the greater
working of God, or of the divine World- All,
should be realised.

No one can see what we have seen within the
circles of Christ's influence, without feeling the
surpassing greatness of His working. What
those disciples did for themselves was, indeed,
something. But what He did for them was
vastly more. It may have seemed to Peter
when he went out and wept bitterly, that the
struggle was all a painful, desperate, personal
one. It may have seemed that he had to work
out his salvation alone in tragedy and tears.
Nevertheless, back of all, he must have felt that
the great Protagonist was not absent from the
conflict. And all along, however evident the
personal side of life's struggle, back of ever3^thing

The Greater Working of God 109

he must have realised the greater working of
Christ. Subtle instincts and deep intuitions
must have told him of that omnipresent Power.
It is suggestive of the range and mystery of life
that we may be quite absorbed, apparently, in
the individual and personal struggle, while at
the same time, underlying all, is the subtle con-
sciousness of other Presences and Powers. As
we look on and see Jesus at work upon Peter,
it seems to us more like the supreme Artist bring-
ing forth the statue out of the marble, than like
Peter alone hewing and shaping himself into
form. Even when he went forth and wept, it
was the look of Jesus into his soul that sent him
forth, and that was the power of that deep repent-
ance. And, at the beginning, if Jesus saw for
Peter rock character underneath, in the hidden
depths of possibility, it was yet He, more than
all else, who would have to upheave that granitic
substrate and lift it up into Alpine strength and
solidity. The man he was to be rose like a rock
out of the fickle sea of impulse, but Jesus was the
power of his rising. When he left all and followed
Jesus, he was in the grasp of a new power stronger
than the gravitations of earth. He walked the
waves only as long as his eyes were fastened on
Jesus. It was the outstretched hand, that lifted
his sinking form into safety again. Life's peril-
ous sea could not be trodden by Peter's merely
human feet. When he gazed into the Holy

no God and Man

of Holies of Jesus' life and saw the glory of
Divinity there, it was Jesus Himself who opened
the eyes of his soul, as the rising sun opens the
lilies. The power that exalted was the power
also that abased him. "Get thee behind me,
Satan," was the rigour of divine rebuke. When
he fell at Jesus' feet it was the humbling power
of holiness. When he climbed the Mount of
Transfiguration and beheld the vision that never
died out of his soul, Jesus was both the vision
and the after-power of his life's long transfigura-
tion. Thus Jesus wrought in truth, like unto a
Creator upon a new creation. The burden of
the work was his.

If we could only see Jesus truly, as the painters
have tried to see Him, His great spiritual person-
ality the centre of every picture and group, clothed
in calm majesty, radiant with the inner glory
of the soul, pouring light about Him and into
the disciples' faces, creating a new atmosphere
of grace around them, enfolding their lives with
His love as with the warmth of spring, speaking
words of eternal life that penetrated to the seats
of being, quickening their dead affections, awak-
ing the mysterious depths of their natures, shed-
ding His spirit, like holy fire, through all the
fram.e of being, driving the clouds from their
minds and revealing the clear skies of divine
truth, deepening the springs and sources of the
heart until they opened down into the exhaust-

The Greater Working of God 1 1 1

less Life of God, taking their little wills and setting
them into the great fulfilling divine Will, develop-
ing and purifying their souls until they could
see God and consciously live within His enfolding
Life, exalting and refining their powers into
appreciation of the glory of God and the beauty
of holiness; and withal enlarging and enriching
their total lives until they seemed to abound in
all riches and to open out everywhere into infinite
worths, — ^if indeed we could see Christ thus in
the midst of His disciples, we should marvel at
the magnitude of His working.

He was the great worker in and through the
whole magnificent process. Of this we become
the more profoundly conscious the more clearly
we see His great spiritual personality, and realise
the height and depth of His influence upon those
disciples. And of this Jesus also was aware.
He knew that their regeneration and sanctification
and transfiguration depended primarily upon
Himself. This He assumed and manifested every-
where and throughout. This He implied in the
significant symbol of the Vine and the Branches.
And this He calmly declared to the Father, in
one of the most solemn hours of His life, when in
His great prayer. He said: While I was with
them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast
given me; and I guarded them, and not one of
them perished, but the son of perdition. He knew
perfectly that all their real work was begun,

112 God and Man

continued, and ended in Him ; that He was back
of all as the vine is back of the branches ; and that
without Him they could do nothing. Jesus was
the great worker.

What is true of Jesus is true of the Divine
in general. My Father, said Jesus, worketh
hitherto. God Himself is the infinite worker.
In due time it shall appear that what man does
is much. But here and always it must be realised
that what God does is much more. It is of no
less than transcendent importance that the greater
working of God should be realised.

Whither shall I go from Thy spirit ?

Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there :

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall Thy hand lead me,

And Thy right hand shall hold me.

Does the great God dwell and work in the life
of man as He works in all the fields of space?
There the Lord is God indeed. We behold Him
there the cause of every cause, the law of every
law; the source of the phenomena of heaven, the
power of the processes of earth; the original of
milky ways and all their shining frame, the ground
of the birth of worlds and all their evolutional
advance ; the origin of cosmic order, the seat of

The Greater Workine^ of God 113

universal beauty,' the fountain of all life — ^the
Creator, the everlasting God, the Almighty,
without whom "not a sparrow falleth to the
ground."

But does He work in the life of man as well?
From Him we came, deriving being. He created
us in His own image and breathed into us the
breath of life. We are life of the Father-Life,
heart of the divine Heart, mind of the infinite
Mind, and spirit of the eternal Spirit. He fur-
nished us with our marvellous heritage, making
us heirs of all the ages; and He set us into this
infinite total Environment. In Him we live
and move and have our being. He pours His
life into us every moment. He throbs in every
heart-beat and breathes in every breath. He
weaves every life-tissue and builds up every
cell. He acts in every instinct and pours Himself
through every passion ; He moves in every impulse
and utters Himself in every intuition. Through
all the ranges of the body He reigns supreme,
and throughout all the realm of sub-conscious
mind. But does He dwell in consciousness and
the Higher Life also ? He is in the root and stem
and branch and bud of life. Is He in the flower
too?

Multitudes may not realise that God is in
Consciousness as truly as He is in nature, and in
their own bodies, and in their sub-conscious
life. Spiritual realities do not wave banners

8

114 God and Man

and shout. The divine Presence may be all the
more real and rich the farther it is removed from
"observation. " God was not in the ' ' earthquake. "
The field of consciousness after all may be the
peculiar field for the "still small voice. " Because
multitudes fail to realise the presence of God
does not determine that He is absent. "Surely
God is in this place, and I knew it not." All
things of surpassing greatness work with little
observation. How does environment work? How
does the sky itself work? How does all nature
work? How does heredity? How does civi-
lisation? Or how does the infinite Yesterday
work on in To-day? With little comprehension
indeed. Silently the vital air feeds all the fiames
of life. Holy light transfigures earths and the
lives of men, they know not how. Celestial
beauty works in human sotils subtly like an ether.
Divine truth brings heaven to earth and works
like a hidden leaven. All the vastest energies
act noiselessly like the Dawn. While we slept in
the night, we sped among the stars, carried on
the bosom of a fast-gliding world; and ere we
awaked, we were rolled into a sea of light. The
Universe itself acts upon us in majestic silence.
And God too ever worketh and must work with
the infinite subtleness of Spirit.

God is in His heavens; God is in His earth;
He is in the bodies of men, and in their sub-
conscious lives. Is He in consciousness more?

The Greater Working of God 115

He is in the darkness. Is He in the day yet more ?
"Through night to light" do we come into the
fuller presence of God ?

The fields of nature can never be His very
home. His life divine can dwell richly only in
the high temple of a kindred spirit. All lower
things are too poor in kind to be surcharged with
His high life. He is present indeed in the vibrant
atom, but His home is in the trembling hearts
of men. He dwells in the wave of ether it is
true, but more richly in a wave of love. He is
in a flash of lightning, but more in a flash of
thought. He is in the falling dew, but more in an
ascending prayer. He is in the propulsion of a
meteor, but more in the will of man. He is in
the orbits of stars, but more in the shining paths
of saints. He dwells in the beauty of sunsets,
but more richly in a beautiful life. He is in the
singing of birds, but far more in the song of the
soiil. God is ever3^where in the ascent of nature,
but more truly in the aspirations and ascent of
humanity. He lives indeed in all that is, but
His true home is in the hearts of men. Not in
flaming stars, nor rock-ribbed earth; not in the
glory of sunsets, nor the stately march of seasons ;
not in the spangled heavens, nor the happenings
of worlds, nor in all the pageantries of earth and
sky, is the proper abode of God. He dwells
in the higher glories of character; in the pure
heart and the holy will; in godlike thought and

ii6 God and Man

divine affection; in the kindred temple of the
Hving soul. Lower forms of Reality can contain
Him but meagrely. They are too poor in quality
to hold the fulness of His life. God is Spirit;
and Spirit can dwell richly only in spirit; Mind
only in mind.

But why is it then that He is more readily
manifest in nature than in humanity? Why is
He more evidently present in the orbit of a star
than in the will of a man? The lower the order
of Reality, the more transparent the veil. The
higher the order, the less transparent the veil.
He is more simply, readily evident in the blowing
of the wind than in the inspiration of a soul;
in the uplifting of a continent than in the uplifting
of a character ; in the rising of the sun than in the
dawn of a new civilisation. Because the higher
forms of Reality are more complex and involved,
His working there is subtler, deeper, more hidden.
For the same reason the activity of man is more
evident in the building of a cathedral than in the
composition of a symphony ; and in the composi-
tion of a symphony than in the renaissance of a
life. The mother's activity is more manifest
in the new gown she has made for her daughter
than in the new life she has been labouring to
develop. Our parents are always more simply
evident in the houses they build for us and the
dinners they prepare, than in the beings they
impart and the ctdtiires they give. Likewise

The Greater Working of God 117

God is more readily manifest in nature than in
humanity ; for nature is lower, simpler ; humanity
is higher, more complex. Nevertheless, nowhere
is humanity so deep in its activity and so illimitable
in its scope as in parenthood ; and nowhere is Di-
vinity so rich in its working as in the creation
and new-creation of sons and daughters of God.

Take the richest and noblest life that ever it
has been one's joy to contemplate and think
how it is charged and surcharged with the life
of God. Look at its large and fair proportions
and see how God has been the sovereign worker
in and through the whole resplendent result.
He is all its light and splendour as the sun is
the radiant glory of the jewel. Could we behold
what God has wrought within that shining life,
the story would be worth the telling. In the
beginning He conceived its rich design and from
His own life sent it forth a created being. He
imparted to it those limitless possibilities and
shut up within its hidden chambers those mys-
terious powers. He brooded with His quickening
life all the stages of its growth. He was the light
of its dawning consciousness, the affection within
its awaking feeling. He was the revealer within
its budding knowledge, the wilier within its
forming will. He was the thinker within the
thought, the doer within the deed. He was the
spring of its holy motive, the source of its nobler
appreciation, the secret of its nameless longing,

ii8 God and Man

the power of its boundless aspiration. He was
both the vision of its soul and the light of all its
seeing, — God, the orderer of its harmony, the
grace of its graces, the Spirit of its spirit, the
great Background of all its being and doing.
He was the "author and finisher" of its glory.
"Of Him and through Him and unto Him,"
were all the things that constituted its light and
splendour.

It is with a rich life as it is with a growing
plant. God is the great worker in and through
a beautiful character, as nature is the great worker
in and through a plant or a flower. First the
blade then the ear then the full corn in the ear,
marks the stages of the growing corn, and doubt-
less each several stock has had its own struggle
for existence. Doubtless every fibre and every
cell has wrought incessantly to the golden end.
The plant for its part was all activity. But if
the waving corn could know the larger truth;
if the roots could know of the broad earth under-
neath, and the stem could know of the elemental
air around, and of the vapoury clouds above,
and of the far-off oceans that feed them, and of
the boundless light and heat of the sun, — if it
could know that the nourishing earth fed its
every rootlet, and the vital air breathed life in
through its every pore, and the dew and the rain
watered all its thirst, and the light of the sun shot
it through and through with its golden beams until

The Greater Working of God 119

the yellow corn was changed into the very gold
of the sun,- — if the waving corn knew what all
nature through every stage of its growth had
done, it would know that the divine Universe,
and not itself, was the great worker. One has
only to drop a seed into the ground and to think,
that the instant it touches the earth, back of that
little seed is the round world and the mighty sun
and the wide heavens and all the infinite network
of cosmic influences, — one has only to contemplate
that vast background and feel how it works in
and through the little seed day and night, from
the first sprouting of the germ to the final ripen-
ing of the harvest, in order to realise forever the
incomparable activity of nature. The harvest
was the result. But heaven and earth certainly,
and not the tiny seed, were the great agency.
By this time surely it must be clearly evident
that what we here have seen, the relation of
nature to a growing plant, is something more
than a weak symbol of God's relation to a grow-
ing life. The plant against its infinite background
is more than typical of human life against the
infinite God. For the plant, set into nature,
lives and grows and has its being in God as truly
as we; and human life, set into God, lives and
moves and has its being in nature as truly as
the plant. A beautiful soul is of a higher order,
and soars up into the life of God as the plant
can not. But it is forever fixed and set into that

I20 God and Man

infinite Life, as a star is set into the heavens or as
a plant is set into the earth.

Man works out his own salvation, it is true,
with fear and trembling; but back of all, as we
thus have seen, it is God that worketh in him both
to will and to work, of His good pleasiire. Every
good gift and every perfect boon is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights. Of
Him are all things, and unto Him is the glory.
God is the great worker.

Scarcely anything is more important than to
realise that the living God is working in human
life, and that, if any of us ever come to nobility
and richness of character, it will be God, and
not we, who will be the supreme agency therein.

Now of this momentous fact men are more or
less aware. Because this is what all men vaguely
feel. This is what religious lives always vividly
have realised. This is what the deepest religious
spirits most profoundly have felt; what the pro-
foundest religions always have seen and pro-
claimed; and what Christ Himself, with His
perfect wisdom, has confirmed and sealed.

This is what all men at least vaguely have felt.
They are not totally unconscious of the great
Background. However absorbed they may be
in their private selves, they are not wholly oblivi-
ous of the Universe. They are at least vaguely
aware of that universal Frame and of its eternal

The Greater Working of God 121

presence in their lives. Man cannot live in a
Universe and be altogether dead to the infinite
fact. The part must subtly feel the presence of
the conditioning Whole. Men ever3rwhere like-
wise vaguely feel the presence of God.

Not a few moreover have become so aware of
life's great Environment that the thought of it
has come to be even oppressive. They have
grown so conscious of its vastness and of its all-
conditioning influence, that there seems little
room left for personal agency of any kind. To
such a degree are they aware of other presences
and powers, that they fear lest the nucleus of
Self may dissolve into common nature. At any
rate it is very evident that men feel the presence
of something besides, and vastly greater than,
themselves.

We do not live long in this mysterious sphere
before we get the conviction that life is more
than it seems. We become convinced that there
are more things in our little world than at first
we dreamed of. There are intimations of currents
beneath. Consciousness feels the presence of the
sub-conscious. The crest of the wave feels the
push of the sea. The surfaces ever3rwhere become
conscious of the deeps. Life indeed is like a
bubbling spring at the foot of a mountain. At
first it is aware of itself only as it wells up and
overflows. There is where it comes to the sur-
face and to the light. But at length it must feel

122 God and Man

the pressure of the streams below, and know its
connection with the watery chambers in the
mountain's heart, and with the snow and the rain
that fall upon its summit, and with the moving
clouds above, and with all the ocean sources far
away. Life truly is not what at first it seems.
Its inland springs are connected with such distant
seas, its surfaces with such profound deeps.

This is the normal life of every day. This is
the life of the tranquil sea and of the gentle
breeze and of the smiling sunlight. In hours
like these life may glide so smoothly on that the
fair ship may little heed the elements. It may
be little conscious of anything besides its own
gallant self. But lo ! let the elements change. Let
a dark frown settle on all the face of things.
Let a hurricane burst suddenly upon the waters.
Let the tempestuous waves rise and break in
fury, and the winds rage and strike with unpitying
wrath, and the storm beat and howl with terrify-
ing and awful power, and the blackness of night
encircle everything like a funeral pall, — ^let the
proud ship be caught and whirled and torn in such
titanic forces, and it will feel as never before the
presence and grasp upon itself of the most common
environing elements. A ship in a storm becomes
conscious of everything. It creaks and trembles
under the rude knocking of their presence. It is
even so with human life. It is in the storm and
crisis that we are made painfully aware of the

The Greater Working of God 123

everlasting forces that hold us. It is when we
are buffeted by the winds of fortune, or tossed
upon the seas of trial, or smitten by the storms
of adversity, or enshrouded by the night of des-
pair, that we plainly realise how we are held
in the inexorable hand of power. Nevertheless
it was the ocean from the beginning that buoyed
up the ship throughout. And it was the wind
all the while that swelled in its full sails. And
it was the abiding heavens that gave it the guiding
stars to the end. It is not otherwise with human
life. For although in the storm and crisis things
are more acute, nevertheless, from beginning to
end we are held in the constant pressure of life's
atmospheres, and upborne ceaselessly by the
faithful continents of earth, and surrounded ever
by the unchanging heavens that sleep not.

There are few times in life's brief span when
we are made more aware of the grasp of nature
and of God than when overtaken by sudden
sickness. And there are few things in life more
full of pathos and suggestion than the sight of a
grown man lying in weakness on a bed of pain.
But yesterday he awoke with the dawn and re-
joiced as a strong man to run his course. To-day
he has not strength to raise his head. And it
all seems to him as though he were held in the
unbreakable grasp of alien forces; as though he
were caught irresistibly "in this common net of
death and woe and life, which binds to both."

124 God and Man

But in reality he is no more in the hand of nature
and of God in sickness than in health.

With each new morning we vaguely feel as
though life were given to us anew out of the hand
of God. We take up once more this ' ' pleasing anx-
ious being," and it seems as though it were given
to us afresh out of the fulness of that divine Life
which slumbereth not neither is weary. And
every night as we lie down to sleep, it seems like
laying our tired head against the bosom of God
and yielding back this costly conscious life into
the keeping of the eternal Parent. We let go
our very body, and give up our intimate self,
and surrender our little life to that great divine
Life, and sweetly sleep. When we awake we
seem to be with God, and when we sleep we fall
asleep in Him, But again, in reality, we are
no more with Him at the waking dawn and at the
close of our conscious day, than we are with Him
through all life's active and eager hours.

And in that greater morning, at the dawn of our
adult life, we had a like though larger experience.
Then we felt that life itself was a gift. We knew
that we did not make ourselves, but that the
great gift came to us from above. We awoke
to self-consciousness and discovered that we had
"ourselves on our hands." When life's candle
was lit, lo! the candle itself was already there,
set into its golden socket. In that first great
morning of life, the larger truth was all so simple

The Greater Working of God 125

and clear: we were so close to the Creator, so
newly come from Him, that His divine Father-
hood and our human childhood and life itself
as the gift of God, were truths as clear and fresh
as that first morning. It was as though a little
island had been lifted up out of the mighty sea,
and when morning broke, it discovered itself,
and lo! it was already there, set and framed in
the infinite sea.

And at the end, in life's great close, men feel
more vividly still how near the human is to the
Divine. They are face-to-face with the great
Beyond. They feel that they are passing into
the presence of God. They have not the power
to stay, nor yet the power, like a sovereign, to
go. A thousand forces, not themselves, close
round them here in victory. Other forces from
out the great Beyond are sweeping them irresisti-
bly on. They leave this bourn of time, and are
carried by other tides out upon the ocean of
eternity. They are taken. They are with God.
In such great hours all men feel how much God
has to do with human life. At the two horizons,
plainly, of life's morning and of life's evening,
the Heavens bend down and touch the earth.
But again the sky that we touched so plainly
in life's morning and once more so plainly touched
in life's evening, arched above us through all our
earthly pilgrimage, and was the supreme deter-
mining factor throughout: as the Heavens, not

126 God and Man

the earth, are always the chief factor in every
product here below.

Thus we all at least vaguely feel the presence
of God. We feel Him as we feel the Universe.
We feel the subtle tides of His life in our calm
and uneventful hours; but in the great storms
and crises we feel the mighty and awful pressures
of His presence. We feel Him again and again
at the waking dawn and at the close of our con-
scious day. And we feel Him in life's great
beginning, and in its great and solemn close.
God is the great Background.

Moreover what all men feel vaguely is precisely
what religious lives come to feel vividly, and what
the deepest religious souls have always most
profoundly realised. That God is the great
worker in and through our human life is no dead
truth to men and women who are really religious.
It has dawned upon their consciousness as one
of the mightiest facts in our human history.
They see that their higher life is His spiritual
creation. They feel Him everywhere. They feel
His presence underneath working up and through
all. They feel Him at the centre. They know
that He is the prime mover in every action. They
feel Him in the fountain and in the stream.
They have passed from self-consciousness to a
great God-consciousness. The clouds and dark-
ness that shut them into their little world of self
have lifted. They have discovered the divine

The Greater Working of God 127

Heavens. They have seen them go round the
earth. They have seen them take up the Httle
earth into their own vast celestial system and
movement, and penetrate every atom and activity
of its being with their infinite influence. And
they have seen the heavens as the supreme agency
in every process and product of earth. Thus
likewise they have seen God enfold their human
life as the author and finisher of all its virtue.
And thus deeply religious lives come to feel the
presence of God everywhere. They, the pure
in heart, see God. They experience Him as the
background of their own life and that of humanity ;
as the background of nature and the kingdom
of truth ; as the ground of beauty and all ideals.
Ever3rwhere they dwell in the presence of the
living God. One has only to think of Paul, or
Origen, or Augustine, or Calvin, or Edwards,
or Phillips Brooks. To them verily God be-
came evermore the "All in all. "

The deepest religions, as we should expect,
have always seen and proclaimed this great truth.
Buddhism is perpetually in danger of remerging
the individual completely, Mohammedanism will
hear nothing but its own cry, "Allah is great!"
"Allah is great!" and naught of human free will.
Judaism looks up to its sublime Jehovah in whose
hand our breath is and whose are all our ways.
And Christianity, in deeper wise, will see man as
living and moving and having his being in God.

128 God and Man

More than all, this is what Christ Himself has
confirmed and sealed. He saw perfectly that
God is the great worker everjrwhere. He saw
Him in the birds of the heaven and in the lilies
of the field ; in the sun which He makes to shine
on the evil and the good, and in the rain which
He sends upon the just and the unjust; in the
stature of man to which man could not add one
cubit, and in the hairs of his head, not one of
which he could make white or black ; in the human
talents with which God entrusted man, and in
the higher life that ever must come to him as a
new birth from above. Everywhere He saw the
superior working of God: in life's Baptism and
in life's Pentecost ; in life's nourishing Communion,
and in its growing Transfiguration.

Now all this indeed is what we should expect
if God is really God and man is man. In the
nature of things God must be the supreme worker
everywhere. He must be verily God in the life
of man as He is in the shining stars and the grow-
ing plants. In truth, in the higher life of man
He is more fully and perfectly God than anywhere
else. He can not be so richly and completely
such on any lower plane. And though He
must work through the spirit and will of man
in producing the excellency of character, never-
theless it is there that He is pre-eminently
present, as the sun is more richly present in the
flower than in the stock. In the temple of

The Greater Working of God 129

man's higher life is where God is present in His
glory.

This finally is what men rejoice in when the
gracious and sublime fact has become even meas-
urably revealed. It is the joy of all living to
know that God is in our life. We rejoice in it
as we rejoice in the sky and as the bud rejoices
in the springtime. To have a great element of
Life, that is more congenial to us than a mother,
that parented us at the beginning, that parents
us still, that carries us up from one degree of
glory to another, that is the impulse of our flight
and the wings by which we rise, — ^that surely
is a cause for fundamental and enduring joy.
Those who thus deeply come to themselves, and
so come unto the Father, have found the secret
place where joy abides.

CHAPTER VI

WHY IS OUR CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD'S WORKING
SO MEAGRE?

IF the great truth about each of our Hves is that
of the priority and parenthood and greater
working of God, why are we not more conscious
of the fact? Why is God's working not more
evident? Why does He hide Himself to such a
degree?

This is one of life's great questions, — just and
necessary, and of intimate concern to us all.
For men in general have but a meagre God-
consciousness. Only the richly religious lives
have the rich consciousness of God. This ques-
tion is so insistent, and the great human experience
that urges it, so widespread, that already, in
chapter five, we were obliged to give certain
suggestions of the answer.

Why is not every man more aware of the fact,
we ask, if God has so much to do with his life ?

The truth is we are so absorbed in self and self-
activity that we little heed the not-self. In this
self-conscious stage, we have discovered the self
and are supremely interested in it. We have

130

God's Working — ^Why not more Clear 131

discovered our varied active powers and are
supremely engaged in their exercise. The other
powers that work in and through us are not to the
fore. We are absorbed in the everywhere pre-
dominant self. This is the stage in which the
consciousness of God is most meagre. We see
youth almost universally in this stage, and nearly
all men, who have not developed the deeper life,
we see lingering in this stage still. Multitudes
of such persons are about us on every side. They
are all self-consciousness, all activity. They are
busied in a thousand things; they are swallowed
up in the whirlpool of self. Of course such men
are little conscious of God as they are little con-
scious of anything outside, even the Universe.
It is a most wonderful fact that men by the
million can become so absorbed in self and self-
activity that they are ail-but oblivious even of
the Universe. Such men would seem to be in-
deed no more oblivious of God than they are of
the Cosmos. The almightiness of a fact and the
vastness of its actual influence would seem to be
no guaranty whatever of its place and prominence
in human consciousness. It is as though the
volcano became so absorbed in its own eruptions
that it quite forgot the liquid fires and the sub-
terranean forces beneath. Here is a part of the
reason why God is not more manifest in the
consciousness of the multitude.

Let us deliberately look at the greatness of this

132 God and Man

thing that is before our eyes. On the one hand,
we have the mighty fact of the omnipresent God
creating and preserving human Hfe everywhere
and bearing the great relation to all its growth
that the vernal sun bears to the spring. On the
other hand, we have the consciousness of most
men well-nigh oblivious of the mighty fact. Why
is this? We are here attempting a serious answer
to this assuredly great and grave question.

But the answer must go deeper. It is, in large
measure, because of the nature, particular devel-
opment, and limitation of this our human type
of consciousness.

It is of the nature of human consciousness
that it should be more aware of the human than
of the divine side of life. For life is a double
thing, made up of a particular and of a universal
element, just as a grass-blade is a double thing,
made up of the special nature of the grass and
of the common nature of the Universe. Accord-
ingly we are more conscious of the near than of
the far side of life, of the particular than of the
universal element. It is the siirfaces of life's
sea that are lit up by consciousness. The deeps
lie hidden in the darkness underneath. Never-
theless the deeps are always there, and it is the
depths that bear the surfaces, not the surfaces the
depths. Still it is the surfaces that, in the first
instance, we are most aware of. It is the hither
side, the individual, the particular, the distinctive,

God's Working — Why not more Clear 133

the self-hood side, of which, in the egoistic stage,
men are mainly conscious. It is in the nature,
therefore, of our human type of consciousness
that we should be more aware of the human than
of the divine side of life. This is specially true
in the period in which we are developing toward
the fuller self-consciousness, gathering into in-
dividuality, rounding to a separate self.

And this brings us to another truth. It is
because also of the particular development of our
htmian consciousness that we are not more aware
of life's background. At first we are not con-
scious of anything, not even of ourselves. Then
we pass into a very simple objective consciousness.
Then we develop gradually into a pronounced
subjective consciousness. And finally, if life
completes itself, we unfold into a higher objective
consciousness again. Not that we pass from
stage to stage as we pass from country to country,
leaving each land behind us at the boundary
line. Rather we pass from stage to stage of our
growing consciousness as we pass from childhood
to youth and from youth to manhood. The
child and the youth are taken up into the man.
For about the true manhood there is something
essentially childlike, and the true old age is
always "young with the eternal youth." Ac-
cordingly in childhood we have a very simple
and instinctive consciousness of the not-self and
of God, with a vague consciousness of self. In

134 God and Man

youth, a growingly clear and pronounced con-
sciousness of self, with a lingering instinctive
consciousness of God, but with preludings toward
a higher consciousness. And in adult life, if that
fuller stage is really attained, we have a higher
intellectual and spiritual consciousness of God,
with a subordinated consciousness of self.

Another fact, involved in the above, is the
permanent limitation of the conscious field.
Incalculably more things are represented in life
than are presented to consciousness. We range
also from the zero of infancy up to the highest,
fiillest consciousness of maturity, and from the
unconsciousness of sleep up to the amplest con-
sciousness of our richest waking hours. Very
evidently our human consciousness is limited —
not that of the commonplace man merely, but
that of Plato and Shakespeare as well. The
richest moments of the highest consciousness of
human-kind are yet severely limited. All worlds
are represented within the circle of life. But
little thereof is reported. This is true even of
lower worlds. It is doubly true of the higher,
subtler, greater worlds. The heavens, indeed,
may be mirrored in a mountain lake as it lies still
in the moonlight. But the lake itself may be
conscious of little more than its own shimmering
surface, and only the eye that looks down into it
is aware of the heavens that are mirrored in its
depths. The permanent and severe limitation of

God's Working — Why not more Clear 135

the illuminated surfaces of life as compared with
its mysterious and unfathomed deeps is and re-
mains a fact of large magnitude in accounting
for the poverty of our consciousness of God. Not
that life may not go on, if it will, and fulfil itself
in a rich knowledge of God ; but even so a tithe will
not be known of the God that is dwelling and
working within.

What has now been said about consciousness
has a legitimate range and implication which
must not be limited by the necessary brevity of
our treatment. Most fundamental and determi-
native aspects of life have been indicated. The
nature, and the particular development, and the
permanent limitation of this our human type of
consciousness account for much indeed of the
poverty of our consciousness of God.

Another deep and far-reaching fact about life is
the law that it is first the natural then the spiritual.
When life begins, as our human lives do, with the
physical and unfolds and unfolds toward the
spiritual, it is inevitable that God should be thus
hidden in the earlier stages. We have only to
contemplate with adequate insight our pre- and
post-natal history, to follow the course of life
through the various stages of its progression, in
order to understand that the fuller spiritual ex-
periences must await the fulness of time. We
do not expect the flower to burst from the root.
We understand that the course of development

136 God and Man

is first the grosser root and last the finer
flower.

Herewith we arrive at the law, that, back of all,
it is the spiritual and only the spiritual that is
able to realise the presence and activity of God.
Only to the degree that human life is spiritually
developed, only to the degree that it is made like
God, can it ever either become aware of, or
appreciate, the working of God who is Spirit.
Spiritual realities are spiritually discerned. Bles-
sed are the pure in heart, for they, and they
only, shall see God. We see only what we have
eyes to see. The world may be radiant with
light, but the unawakened eye sees it not. Earth
and sky may be all glorious with beauty, but the
slumbering aesthetic nature perceives it not.
The lines of truth may have gone out through all
the earth and her words to the end of the world,
but the unquickened mind little heeds them.
Even so God may pervade everything that the
eye looks out upon and the very being of the
onlooker too, but the unawakened soul is little
conscious of His presence. We see only what we
have eyes to see.

Already we have crossed more than the threshold
of our next truth, that it is only the richly de-
veloped spiritual life that can realise richly the
presence of God. Therefore the reason why
most men have such a meagre consciousness of
God is because their spiritual natures are so little

God's Working — Why not more Clear 137

developed. On the other hand, the reason why
some lives see God everywhere, see everything in
God, and God as the great Background of all,
is that their spiritual natures have been superla-
tively and beautifully unfolded.

That this must be so is involved in the concept
itself of the religious life, as we look upon its
nature. For one of the deepest possible views
is that which sees it as the development of the
God-consciousness along with the self-conscious-
ness, and the proper harmonising of both in the
unity of the higher life. That in such a higher
life God is consciously realised, is involved in the
nature of the life. That the atmosphere as well
as the oil is present in the flame, is already im-
plied in the nature of the flame. And whenever
human life bursts into a divine flame, God is
always present as the chief element in the flame.
This being the essential nature of the religious
life, we no more expect to find it without the
indwelling God, than we expect to find flowers
without sunlight or ripened intelligences without
truth.

There are other reasons why God is not more
manifest, to be found in the character and nature
of God. God does not send the fuller light of
noon-day to the life that has turned away from
the dawn. The universal law of reverent use is
applicable pre-eminently on the high plane of the
Spirit. To him that hath shall be given, and

138 God and Man

from him that hath not shall be taken away even
that which he hath. He gives not that which is
holy unto the dogs, neither casts He His pearls
before the swine.

Moreover God always proportions His great
revelations to the capacity of His children — milk
for babes, strong meat for men ; the intimate inner
circles for the growing spiritual friendships.

Nor, as President King has pointed out, does
God obtrude Himself. He seeks, not to make
machines, but to develop persons. He does not
thrust Himself into the centre and displace the
personal self. He so acts as in every way to
develop that self. And although He is the su-
preme agency in this as in all things. His activity
here is such as, not to annihilate, but to brood
and augment personality. Just as the wise
human parent is careful not to intrude into the
inner circle of the child's personal will, but seeks
to foster its centrality and bring it into more
pronounced activity and final dominion. Even
so God acts, always with most delicate regard for
the free personality of His children. Otherwise
He would interfere with, instead of promoting,
their development.

Finally and more fundamentally still, God
could not develop our human life into true spir-
ituality unless He Himself wrought as spirit. In
the last analysis spirit can be developed only
through the pure working of Spirit. God could

God's Working — Why not more Clear 139

not work as physical phenomenon, or as cosmic
law, or as animal life, or as rational truth, or as
natural beauty, and develop man as spirit. He
could not work as earthquake or as whirlwind
or as fire. He must work spiritually after the
manner of the still small voice. He must work
with the immediacy and subtlety and reality of
Spirit. He must work as inspiration. Only so
could He create and new-create a soul. Only so
could He awake and perfect the higher life of
man. Herein is to be found the ultimate reason
why God, as Spirit, is not more manifest in the
lower ranges of human life. He can reveal Him-
self as Spirit only in the higher life of man. And
only as He is realised as Spirit, is He truly and
richly known. But He can not be thus known
except by the developed soul.

The reason, as we view it, now has been set
forth, why God is not more clearly evident in the
consciousness of most men. Subjectively, it is
because they are so absorbed in self and self-
activity ; it is because of the nature, the particular
development, and the limitation of this our
human type of consciousness; because, in the
course of life, it is first the natural then the
spiritual; because Spirit is apprehended only
through spirituality; and because men's spiritual
natures are so undeveloped — which, by the very
concept of the religious life, precludes the reali-

I40 God and Man

sation of God. Objectively, it is because God
does not send the fuller light to those who are
untrue to the light they have; it is because He
proportions His revelation to the capacity of His
children ; because He does not obtrude and hamper
their free self-realisation; and above all because
He must work as Spirit in order to develop
spirit in man.

CHAPTER VII

MAN AT WORK, OR THE RESPONSIVE RECEPTIVITY
AND CO-OPERATIVE ACTIVITY OF MAN

HITHERTO we have been made aware of the
great Environment, the realms of ReaHty
rising range beyond range, range beyond range,
from the lowest physical up to the highest spir-
itual. We have realised that the true vastnesses
and immensities are the infinite ethereal and
spiritual domains. We have seen that vast
divine Environment, those infinite circles and
systems and spheres, enfold and enfold the life
of man endlessly. Then we have witnessed them
at work. We have seen the heavens of truth,
beauty, ideals, and Spirit acting upon the life of
man. We have seen the great divine Environ-
ment in its unfailing priority forever anteceding
and parenting all his life. And we have realised
that the Heavens are always the supreme agency
in every process and product here below. Thereby
we have become conscious of the infinite Environ-
ment, and of the Priority, Parenthood, and
greater Working of God.

When thus we behold Heaven and Earth con-

141

142 God and Man

federate and co-operant, saying, "Let us make
man," and see them moving together in creative
activity upon him, and God working in and
through all, creating man in His own image, in
an unbroken continuity of process, then we want
to turn and look at man who is the focus and
centre thereof, and see and know what response
he is permitted to make thereto, what part and
lot he himself has therein. Herewith we arrive
at the Responsive Receptivity and Co-operative
Activity of Man.

First of all it is given man to accept or reject
the great circles and spheres of higher power.

He may accept or reject the higher life of the
Home. Whatever treasures of affection, what-
ever riches of thought, whatever purity and
sweetness of spirit there may be, they are forever
pressing themselves upon young life for accept-
ance. And youth may either accept or reject
them. This is the power that is given to every
life sooner or later in growing degree. We did
not choose our parents, we say, we were not
consulted. And that is true — but true only along
the lower ranges of life. If those who were
fathers and mothers to our bodies and to the
inferior ranges of our psychic beings, ever became
an3^hing more, if ever they became in the true
and large sense intellectual and spiritual fathers
and mothers to us, it was not without our con-
sent. Their principles, their ideals, their fineness of

Responsive Receptivity of Man 1 43

spirit, the graces and amenities of their character,
all the superior wealth of their lives, could be
given to us largely only through our own consent
and co-operation. They could become parents
to us in the nobler and fuller sense, parents to
our higher life, only through our free choice. So
it comes to pass that we choose our parents in the
highest sense. Lower parenthoods we do not
choose. Higher parenthoods we do. It is a
remarkable fact that even our own fathers and
mothers could not father and mother us in the
highest way without our free consent. And
many a man accordingly owes his larger mental
and spiritual parentage, not to those whose name
he bears, but to some other rich and noble life
outside the home altogether. Thus, like the
prodigal, we all may accept or reject the higher
life of the Home.

In the same way we may welcome or refuse
the higher life of Humanity. All the noblest life
of the world and the redeemed life of the Church
and the higher civilisations of mankind are
perpetually pressing upon us for acceptance.
The prophets and seers of the higher are forever
seeking us out and calling to us while we sleep.
The apostles and missionaries of the Kingdom
of Heaven sail over all seas and land upon every
shore, cr3dng: Behold we stand at your door and
knock. And the civilisation of the West presses
and beats upon the sleeping East, vexing and

144 God and Man

troubling her sleep and her dreams, until a new
India, a new Japan, a new Egypt, a new China,
awakes into higher life. So it is, all the higher
life of the world, like a new morning, is beating
at our windows. But we may keep the shutters
closed and the curtains drawn if we will. In the
deepest sense no new day shall ever dawn upon
our inner life without our consent. In ways pro-
founder than we commonly note, and with pre-
rogative almost divine, we either say or refuse
to say: For this our inner world, let there be
light.

It is given us also to receive or reject the life
of God itself. That great life, it is true, is always
seeking us and drawing near to us like light from
heaven; is always bending over us like a sky and
sending down its blessed rains and dews; is
surrounding us day and night and ever pressing
upon us like an atmosphere. It reveals itself in
the countless phases of truth, and comes to us
in all the forms of beauty, and manifests itself
in the perfect loveliness of ideals. And it comes
yet closer in the mighty and mysterious incarna-
tion of Christ the Son, and closer still in the
subtle and divine inspirations of the Holy Spirit.
That great Life indeed is always pressing upon us.
Nevertheless it is in our power, if we like, to
reject His divine truth, and deaden our souls
to the celestial beauty, and to resist the charm
of the lovely ideals, and to refuse His divine and

Responsive Receptivity of Man 1 45

only Son, and to grieve His Holy Spirit withal.
We may accept or reject God.

The stupendous fact is that all the varied and
combined kingdoms of higher life are besetting
us behind and before and pressing in upon us
perpetually. And we may accept or reject them.
Nothing is more certain than the mighty and
infinite Environment into which we are set.
Nothing is more sure than that that great En-
vironment is not dead but alive, not inert but
active. It is the prevalent dulness of our ordinary
consciousness that we are so nearly oblivious to
the mighty fact, or that we so lightly regard it.
For scientific and philosophic and spiritual in-
sight, on the contrary, the marvellous fact is
becoming more and more impressively real year
by year. How fine and subtle and varied, as
well as vast, those higher realms of Reality are
is becoming likewise realised. Our scientists at
length are telling us what our philosophers told
us long ago and what our spiritual men knew
from of old. They are telling us of the wonderful
subtlety and complexity and variety of the
ethereal realms of Reality. For all deepest
insight and experience those realms are most
real — ^those higher atmospheres and sunlights
and ethers and electricities; those spiritual laws
and harmonies ; those eternal truths and heavenly
ideals; those divine beauties and glories; those
spiritual natures and societies, and that infinite

146 God and Man

spiritual life of God, penetrating everything like
an ether, and surrounding all like the heavens.
How marvellous the fact is! How kingdom
interpenetrates kingdom, element pervades ele-
ment ! The finer atmosphere pervades our coarser
body; the still finer heat and light pervade both;
and the subtler ether permeates them all. In-
visible electricities and motions and energies
vibrate and beat through everything. Law and
order reign. Truth grounds and conditions all.
Harmony and beauty and ideals suffuse the
whole. Life animates ever3rthing. Sensation
quivers throughout. Reason rules ; will energises ;
love is interfused; mind pervades and dominates
everywhere. And Spirit, over and around and
in and through all, infinite Spirit.

All these inscrutable circles and spheres and
systems of power are pressing upon our lives and
permeating them ceaselessly. And God is pour-
ing His life in varied ways through them all, and
coming to us always and offering us Himself.
We do not go up into heaven to bring Him down ;
He comes to us and presses upon us like the
atmosphere; He comes and would penetrate us
like the sunlight; He comes to enter us like
Spirit. The pressures of His presence are upon
us ever3Awhere.

And it is ours to accept or reject. We may
open or close ourselves as we like. This is the
part and prerogative of man. Our atmosphere

Responsive Receptivity of Man 147

is not indifferent and aloof ; it seeks to rush in and
give life. But we may keep it out if we will.
Our sunbeams are not idle; they would pierce
into the seats and centres. But we may close
our eyes to them if we choose. And we move
about here in more than one divine atmosphere;
we live our lives in more than one world of light.
The world of truth is not dead. The realms of
beauty are not inert. The firmament of ideals
is not passive. They are as active as air, as
eager as light. Civilisation is not dormant.
Higher natures and societies are not inoperant.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not in pause. Nor
is Christ dead, nor the Holy Spirit in suspense,
nor the living God asleep. And we live our lives
in the centre and focus of all these active and
eager spheres of Power. We may open our-
selves to them, or we may close ourselves to them
as we will. This is the sovereign part and pre-
rogative of our human nature. Yea ; every ocean
of influence is washing our shores; every wind of
God is blowing upon our lives; every star in His
sky is piercing our night. The living God through
the living Spirit, the living Christ, the living
ideals, the living beauty, the living truth, the
living Church, through the whole living Heavens
and earth and all that is therein, is always coming
to us and knocking at all our doors. We for our
part may open, if we will, and no one can shut.
We may shut and no one can open. We may

148 God and Man

receive or reject God. Here is the prerogative
of man.

The newer science fortunately has obliged
us to turn our eyes toward the Environment.
So doing it has been true to Reality, and has
rendered humanity measureless and abiding ser-
vice. But Reality is vaster than earth. The
great Environment is more than physical nature.
There is a heart, mind, and spirit environment.
There is a truth, beauty, and ideal environment.
There is the infinite environment of Deity. So
then there is a spiritual Heavens as w^ell as a
physical earth. And the Heavens are greater
than the earth. But together they make up
the great Environment into which the life of
man is set. We look at the primal fact of things
when we turn thither, and up into the infinite
greatnesses when we gaze into the sky and at the
life of God. How vast the totality is; how
wonderful; how bewildering! Yet it is only when
in this way we sweep up from earth into the heaven
of heavens that we gain the true vision at all.
And it is the total Reality, the World-All in its
integrity, and not a part thereof, that is the true
world of man. That is his great Environment.

If there is thus an environing Heavens as well
as an environing earth, an environing Deity as
well as an environing nature, how different at
once the mighty fact of environment becomes!
Man's environment? Yes; but what is it? Mat-

Responsive Receptivity of Man 149

ter? Certainly; but Spirit more. Humanity?
Yes; but Divinity yet more. The true environ-
ment must be the total Environment. Man may
be provincial in his thought, but in his life he
is not provincial; his body connects with the
cosmos, his mind is implicated with the infinite
Universe. God says to man: Lift up your eyes
unto the heavens of Divinity and behold your
great Environment.

And we are beginning to learn that the great
Environment is not an infinite passivity. It
broods all life as the wing of the bird broods the
egg in the nest, or as the heavens in May brood
all the up-springing life of earth. The Kingdoms
of Heaven besiege and beset the life of man.
The great Environment is in truth an infinite
parenthood, — from the parenthood of the family
up to the parenthood of God, from the mothering
of Nature up to the mothering of the Infinite
Love. All is parental. God is forth-going. He
bows the heavens and comes down.

How majestic the truth is! How sublime and
satisfying the movements of God toward man
are ! His divine mornings break upon our world.
The laws of God come down upon earth's Sinais.
The Son of God from the excellent glory descends
to men. The Spirit of fire is poured out from
heaven upon all the upturned faces. God Him-
self ever comes. Lo! He is with us alway.

His part, we know, is the great part from ever-

ISO God and Man

lasting. He comes and floods all the heavens
with light. Nevertheless the earth for its part
must roll into the dawn for itself. Man must
turn and face the morning and enter into every
new day of God for himself. His part is less,
but still is great. It is his to accept or reject
the great circles and spheres and systems of
higher power.

It is not his to step forth and speak the world
into being, and set in motion its waves and tides
of influence. It is not his to lift up the skies and
charge the heavens with power and set going
their infinite processes. It is not his to awake
the morning and the springtime with a shout
and command their coming. It is not his to
create the mighty worlds of truth and beauty
and ideals and fill them with their subtle and
vivifying life and activity. Nor is it his to speak
the divine Logos into existence and bid Him be
about the universal business of the Father. Nor,
to cause the quickening Spirit of life to be, and
to brood the face of the deep and the lives of men.
Nor yet is it his to authorise the infinite and
eternal Background of all and to start it on its
course of never-ceasing creation.

But it is his in every higher way to accept or
reject any or all of these. He may accept or
reject in the higher sense even the earth on which
he stands. For the earth has something more
to do than furnish a foundation; it has a high

Responsive Receptivity of Man 151

ministry to the mind. He may accept or reject
in the higher sense the starry heavens above.
For they have something more to do than grasp
him with physical power; they have to suggest
that his own life should . have a sky, and take
part in the creation thereof. Likewise he may
accept or reject human-kind; not in the lower
sense, to be sure, but in every higher sense.
There is not a world that he may not choose or
refuse. In lower and cruder ways the world
of truth may impart itself without consulting
us; but not in higher ways. In all nobler and
ampler forms man may close himself to that fine
world if he choose. Universal beauty can work
upon us in low degree without our leave. But
that subtle world can do none of its diviner work
in us against our will. Christ acts upon us in
His inferior ministries whether or no. But in
His high salvations we must freely choose and
accept. Even to Him we may open or shut.
We can not go anywhere away from the divine
Spirit, and His elementary functioning He will
fulfil without permission. But His true celestial
work He never will do against the barrier of our
will. And though God Himself is and remains in
all the bases of our life and is our Father in the
lower sense, yet He is neither God nor Father in
the higher sense and will never be unless we
choose Him with the everlasting yea and amen
of our total being. So it comes to pass that not

152 God and Man

one of all otir worlds can do its diviner work
without our co-operant assent. They all may
work in the inferior and coarser ways, but not
in the superior and finer. Earth, sky, humanity,
truth, beauty, ideals, Christ, God Himself may
do no glorious thing, may build no cathedral
character, apart from human choice. Such is the
Father's will.

Man in truth may withhold or grant to his
worlds all their high permissions. He may choose
or refuse to say: "O Earth, thou art permitted
now to feed as thou desirest my higher nature and
not alone my lower. 0 Sky, now art thou permitted
to hold me as thou seekest to do, with thy celestial
gravitations, and create a sky within. O Human-
kind, now mayest thou fulfil thy work and im-
part the bloom and glory of thy life to mine. O
Truth, now mayest thou flood my heavens with
thy divine light. O Beauty, now mayest thou
refine and transfigure my whole being forever.
O ideal World, now thou mayest reveal thy
heavenly vision to my willing soul. Son of the
Father, now mayest Thou come unto Thine own
and unfold the image of God within. Now, O
divine Spirit, mayest Thou awake and glorify
my life without end. And now. Father in heaven,
mayest Thou unhindered build the temple of
character, and make me at last a son indeed."
Man may verily veto or permit the higher minis-
tries of every sphere. The lower ministries are

Responsive Receptivity of Man 153

beyond his power. The higher he solemnly
elects.

It is very impressive and magnificent to think
of man thus. It is solemnising too. In lower
ways he is the child of all worlds, willingly or
unwillingly. In higher ways he becomes the
child of none, apart from his own choice. There
is splendour of prerogative indeed. There is
royal lot enough. What truly is man, that thus
Thou art mindful of him? For Thou hast created
him verily but little lower than God. Thou hast
crowned him with glory and honour.

We come then to this : that though apparently
we are thrust into the world without our consent,
and though apparently earth and sky and all the
spheres of our great Environment are thrust
upon us without our leave, it is so only in lower
ways. It is not so in higher. The truth is that
in higher ways nothing is thrust upon us. We
choose all and every world, else they remain
forever without their high product.

Moreover the crowning fact is added that, in
the higher sense, we choose life itself. Quite
the opposite of this, at first sight, would seem to
be the fact. Life, if nothing else, would seem to
be thrust upon us, not elected. But this is true as
before only on the lower ranges. It is true only
of the bulb and root of life. It is not true of
the higher stem and glorious flower and divine
fruitage. All rich and full and excellent life for-

154 God and Man

ever must be our own solemn and persistent
choice.

It therefore and finally appears that it is our
high prerogative to accept or reject both the great
Environment in all its nobler agencies and life
itself in all its nobler ranges.

How all this accords with the great simple
positive messages of the Bible and the living
pulpit is plain to see. The question of acceptance
or rejection instinctively has been felt to be the
fundamental and critical question of life. There-
fore the divine voices from the beginning have
cried: "Accept the Christ"; "Come home unto
the Father"; "Receive the Holy Spirit"; "Open
your heart to the truth"; "Become receptive
to the divine beauty and glory"; "Adopt the
Christian ideals forever. " And the lowliest
herald of such great things has been wise indeed
with a deeper wisdom than he knew.

This is true for incommensurable reasons.
Because to accept or reject is to connect or dis-
connect with the great circles and spheres and
systems of higher power; and to connect or
disconnect, is to let those worlds of power pour
into and have free course in human life. Here
is the mysterious greatness of acceptance or
rejection.

A little child takes an acorn in its hand and
lays it upon the ground and covers it over with

Responsive Receptivity of Man 155

a handful of brown soil. The instant the seed
touches the earth it makes connection with all
nature, new and different connection. It con-
nects with the whole world and with the living
atmosphere and with the rain-clouds above; it
connects with the sunbeams and the mighty sun;
it connects with the total Universe. Back of that
little seed at once are the earth and the solar
system and the infinite cosmos. All the energies
of heaven and earth forthwith lay hold upon
it and pour their influences into it. The very
moment therefore that the little seed touches the
ground it makes connection with all worlds and
opens itself to the mighty influences of them all.
That is a marvellous touch. Those are stupen-
dous and amazing results awaiting thereon. As
though the sun stood still in the heavens and all
nature were in pause, waiting for that touch,
before they would go on with the grand pro-
cessional of creation.

The seed is man. Its touch is his acceptance.
Its connection with nature is his connection with
the infinite God. Thereby he connects in a new
and higher way with the Divine, and opens him-
self to the infinite spiritual energies, and permits
them to enter into and have free course in his
higher life. Here is the mysterious greatness
of acceptance or rejection.

When an artist embraces with his whole being
the world of beauty, he lets into his life, by that

156 God and Man

beautiful alliance, immeasurable influences. When
an earnest soul opens itself seriously to the world
of truth, it lets in boundless power. When a
poet flings wide open the doors of his nature to
the true, the beautiful, and the good, he lets in
celestial fascinations and diminions. When a
persecuting Saul beholds the heavenly Christ and
opens his soul to Him, he lets in the Lord of all
authority, and henceforth his life is held as with
the hand of Heaven. And whenever seekers after
the Divine an3rwhere open wide their believing
hearts, they welcome and let in the almighty
and eternal God.

Man stands as it were within the dynamic room
of creation. He presses the buttons of the uni-
versal batteries. He connects with the infinite
and celestial energies. Thereby he lets them
into his life and gives them free course, unto the
glorifying of his humanity and to the glory of
God. To accept the Divine is to connect with
the Divine.

We now have arrived at a point where we may
sketch to the best advantage the relation of our
human life to the Divine. We have given the
great higher Environment and its creative ac-
tivity and never-ceasing stimulation. We have
then the life of man accepting or rejecting this;
so connecting or disconnecting from it all ; thereby
letting the higher powers into his life through

Responsive Activity of Man 157

a great receptivity. But all receptivity is also
activity; and all activity in response to a stimu-
lating environment must be co-operative. Hence
we have the great receptivity and co-operating
activity of man. Moreover the activity must
grow with all his growth into a great co-operating
activity. But co-operative activity itself is, on
the other side, receptivity. Hence both the re-
ceptivity and the activity of man imply the great
Environment and its continuous stimulation.
Therefore they are both responsive. Consequently
we have, at the beginning and throughout, the
great divine Environment and its activity of
creation and its never-ceasing stimulation. And
in response thereto, we have the great receptivity
and the ever-growing co-operative activity of
man.

Now we have made the transition from re-
ceptivity to activity, for all receptivity is at
bottom activity. We have made the transition
also from activity to co-operating action, for all
activity in response to a stimulating environment
is co-operative. With this we come in sight of
the third aspect of the part man plays in the
world. Already we have seen that he accepts or
rejects the higher; that thereby he connects or
disconnects with the higher; thus letting the
divine influences freely into his life. Now we see
that he also co-works with the Divine in the
upbuilding of his own higher being. When he

158 God and Man

accepts God and when he connects with God and
when he lets the divine powers into his Hfe to
change and to spiritualise and to develop, he is
not like the bay that passively receives the ocean
tides, nor like the windmill that motionless waits
for the winds of heaven. He is active and co-
operant through all. He actively accepts, he
actively connects with, he actively co-works with
the great God throughout.

Life in all its forms is active and co-operant.
There is no non-active life. Life and activity
are inseparable. The humblest cell is and remains
a wonderful centre of activity and co-operation.
The great Environment can not be so overwhelm-
ing in its greatness as to reduce the tiniest living
thing into insignificance and bare receptivity.
A speck of protoplasm can maintain itself in its
true nature and activity as over against the
stimulating worlds. Wherever in general there
is a living thing there is activity and co-working.
Up and down through all the kingdoms of life
there can be no mere mechanism or dead me-
chanical response. Nature in all its greatness
does not suppress the individuality of a grass-
blade. On the contrary, it begets and promotes
it. And the grass-blade set into universal nature
is not only receptive throughout its every pore
but also active and co-operant in every cell of
its being. Even the himible grass-blade does its
part, and co-works with the Universe.

Responsive Activity of Man 159

Much more does man do his part. He does his
great part on every plane. He co-works with God
ever3^where. The peasant co-works with God
when he turns the furrow and scatters the seed.
The woodman co-works with God when he fells
the tree and frames the house. The miner co-
works with God when he digs out the ore and
smelts it in the flame. The mariner co-works
with God when he makes the seas his pathway and
guides his craft by the stars. The engineer co-
works with God when he lays down the rails of
commerce across the face of a continent. The
inventor co-works with God when he dallies and
conjures with the sunbeams and yokes the winds
and harnesses the vapours and tames the lightnings
and speaks through the atmosphere above or
through the ocean depths below. The artist
co-works with God when he makes the marble
live under his touch or the canvas mirror the
beauty and soul of humanity. The composer
co-works with God when he fills the temple of
man's spirit with sweet sounds and makes life
itself a symphony. The poet co-works with God
when he sings of truth and life and goodness and
glory and of the Author of them all. And the
devout soul co-works with God when it repents
and prays and wrestles and yields and loses
itself and then finds itself again on a nobler plane,
become the servant and apostle of the Highest
forever. Man co-works with God on every plane.

i6o God and Man

He co-works with God more intimately and
richly on the higher planes than on the lower. In
the fields of agriculture it is true he may plough
and hoe; but he remains outside of the growing
corn. He does not enter like raindrops into the
sap. In the marts of commerce he may buy and
sell ; but he lays remote and foreign hands on all
he touches. In the centres of manufacture he
may combine and form; but he is always other
than the thing he makes. He is outside, like the
potter with the clay. In the world of invention
he may render matter plastic to the touch of
ideas; but the invention continues too much one
thing, the inventor another. In the sphere of
architecture he may build the cathedral, and in
a way may build himself into the temple he rears ;
but he is not yet himself the thing he makes.
In the kingdom of science we note a difference:
there he may come upon the great cosmic law;
but it is difficult to say whether he discovers it
in the world without or uncovers it in the world
within, or rather in both. In the realm of real
art he is freer. There he does not copy, he creates.
He hews himself out of the marble. He paints
himself upon the canvas. In deeper and more
intimate ways he co-works with beauty, and
with God. In the world of music he is even
freer. He pours forth the symphony from his
soul. The glorious creation and his own more
glorious powers unite in one. In the high domain

Responsive Activity of Man i6i

of poetry he co-works more intimately still.
He sings the great poem out of his own deep life
and is himself the poem that he sings. But
nowhere is he so free as. in the superior dominion
of life and character. There he co-works with
God most deeply and intimately of all. There
he becomes the truth that he obeys, the love that
he longs for, the spirit that he welcomes, and
the life that he receives. He works together
with God in the inner room of being, as spirit
working with Spirit. On the superior planes
of life man co-works with God most intimately,
most richly.

It is indispensable that man should do his part.
It is thus that God has created and constituted
the inner nature of things. It is not that God
alone shall work in man both to will and to work
of His good pleasure; but that man also shall
work out his own salvation with fear and
trembling. The stimulating Environment with
its ten thousand stimulations shall never un-
fold and complete one living organism, if it
work alone through all eternity. The living
thing must do its part. It must co-w^ork in its
own production. The lifeless product may be
manufactured from without. The living thing
must live and grow from within. It must act
and co-work in its own upbuilding. The very
structure and make, the essential nature and
concept of life involves this. Life must act, must

i62 God and Man

organise, must co-work in its own creation. Of
the two concepts, receptivity and activity, it is
activity that is necessary and indispensable to
the nature and being and inner idea of a living
thing. Therefore it is not alone the stimula-
tion of the Evironment, but also the response of
the organism. It is not alone action from with-
out, but also action and reaction from within.
Every living thing must act and co-work in
creating the being that it becomes. Much more
must man act and co-work in his own upbuilding.
The dews of heaven fall in vain upon the barren
rocks. In vain does spring speak to the dead
and unresponsive tree, though its roots are still
in the ground and its branches still stretch out
into the atmosphere. In vain does the mother-
bird bring food to the little fledgling lying sick
and dying in the nest. In vain does light itself
fall upon the heavy and sleeping eyes. In vain
do the sounds of words strike upon deaf and
unregarding ears. In vain do the long rows of
wise books in the great library surround the heed-
less and unresponding page and look down upon
him to no purpose from their classic shelves.
In vain do the famous galleries, with their immor-
tal canvases painted in heaven, look down year
after year upon many an ancient care-taker.
In vain does the glory of the day and the solemn
majesty of the night roll over the silent city of
the dead. All these call in vain where there is

Responsive Activity of Man 163

no response. The voices of earth and sea and
sky, all the influences of human-kind and of heaven
together could not produce one curve of beauty
or one line of grace upon the face of human char-
acter without human response and co-working.

After a fashion we all know this ; we know that
we must do our part, that we must put forth
effort. We know that we must look in order to
see, listen in order to hear, attend in order to
feel. We know that the books of men and the
book of nature and the Book of God are not read
merely by being opened. We know well that
the mind must go forth and mingle with and
penetrate them in order to read their great pages.
We know that we must act and go forth and meet
the worlds of beauty. We must enter into the
quiet beauty of the meadows, enter into the
glory and solitude of the mountains, into the wild
grandeur of the ocean storm, into the sacred
splendour of the setting suns. Deeper insight has
made it clear that we must act and go forth and
co-operate in order to present any outside object
to consciousness, must go forth in a spontaneous
activity of creation in order to present any exter-
nal world whatever, or to have such a world for
consciousness at all. Indeed consciousness itself
is an activity, an up-springing, and no world
without or object within shall ever be felt or
known without our personal activity and co-
working. Thus it is experientially seen and

1 64 God and Man

critically shown that the law of activity and co-
working is everywhere operant on the lower
planes. But it is not sharply realised by every-
body that the same law is equally operant on
all the higher planes. Those however who have
experienced and known, those who dwell in the
highlands, realise that the law of co-operation is
just as imperiously necessary there as it is on
any of the lowlands of human life. There more-
over is where the law is most pronounced. There
is where man's agency is most free. As we climb
up the ascending terraces of human life, human
activity, as we have learned, becomes constantly
freer, richer, and more prominent. Those who
really exercise faith, know that faith in the divine
and invisible is a great and forth-going activity
of life. Those who really love know that love to-
ward God is a most rich and elevated and com-
prehensive activity. Those who really pray know
that profound prayer is a large and wondrous
outpouring of the whole stream of life toward God.
Those who really surrender know that total self-
surrender to God is the greatest, most inclusive,
most difficult, most triumphant of human acts
and achievements. Those who really appreciate
know that true appreciation of the divine and
the ideal is magisterial and sublime activity of
the human spirit. Those who seek really to
know God and to be like Him, to change light
into life, divine ideals into living character, know

Responsive Activity of Man 165

that here is humanity's hilltop of abiding and
glorious struggle. All in truth who really live
know that life itself is a grand perpetual deed.
They realise that it is a soldier business, a quitting
of themselves like men, a warring of a good war-
fare on to the end. So certain is it that men must
stir up the gift of God that is in them and fight
the good fight and be workers together with
God.

Moreover it is no external co-operation. It
is intimate and internal. We co-work with God
in building up our own higher being. We are
not completed when we come to the years of
accountability and to the day of life's consecration.
We are only successfully begun. We are only
the foundation of what we are to be. On that
foundation is yet to be built the true temple of
character, the temple of the higher life. And we
co-work with God in utter faithfulness in all such
temple-building. It is as though the mountain
wrought in its own uplifting, or as though the
star wrought in the creation of its own shining
being. It seems passing wonderful that we are our
own co-creators. Yet in this we are not unique.
All life from the amoeba up to man co-works
in its own creation after its own degree. This
is the note and character of life. We can not
conceive of life at all or of any living thing as
not participating in its own upbuilding. The
little coral animal may make its calcareous deposit

1 66 God and Man

upon the rising island, and the island in this way
may be formed by additions from without,
until at last it lifts itself in "soft and gentle
loveliness" like a crown above the sea. But the
little anthozoon itself was not so built. It w^as
of a different order and grew from within and
took part in its own upbuilding.

The same is pre-eminently true of man. He
is the summit and crown of life. He pre-eminently
co-works in his own creation. Consider for
example the venerable countenance of Gladstone
in its rich and marvellous personality. And
consider the part he himself had in that mag-
nificent achievement. His face remains before
one's eyes. How wonderful it is! How large
the light of his intellect ; how strong and majestic
his will; how fine and magnanimous his feeling;
how elevated and grand his soul; what calm
consciousness of power; what triumph of the
profounder self ; what massive solidity of character ;
what subtle suggestions of infinite connections
and belongings! Compare the greatness and
splendour of that result with the first infantile
beginnings, and compute the part he had in that
grand attainment. It is as though the little
redwood seed had grown into the giant sequoia,
or as though the lowly foundation had risen and
climbed into a glorious cathedral. So different
is the tiny beginning from the majestic culmina-
tion. But not one white stone of character

Responsive Activity of Man 167

wotild have been laid upon another; not one tier
of greatness would have risen; not one suggestion
of mass; not one line of magnificence; not one
pinnacle of glory would have come into being,
without him. He co-worked in his own creation
and the result was a "spiritual splendour"; but
without him no cathedral character would have
risen at all.

It is illuminating to contemplate this. It is
deeply instructive and quickening. The develop-
ment is so great. The beginning is so humble;
the end so magnificent ; and man's part so re-
gal and pronounced. Behold what man hath
wrought! — Behold what God hath wrought ! Un-
der God man decrees or vetoes his own higher
being. And under God he co-works in its con-
tinuous and sublime creation.

It is apparent from the foregoing how absolutely
we look upon a human life at birth as only begun.
It is apparent that we regard life as capable of a
marvellous and continuous creation. And it is
precisely this magnificent development and expan-
sion that alone represents our proper and essential
humanity. We are not properly human at
birth; we are born to become human. Human
nature is not flesh and bones, but developed
mind and spirit. Not the little infant, Saul,
but the full-grown man, Paul, properly represents
our humanity. It is the rich and complex per-
sonality that alone realises and reveals our

i68 ■ God and Man

essential human kind. Not the little seedling
but the grown tree, that has come to full bloom
and gone on until at last it is heavy-laden with
the fruit of life's mellow autumn, properly typifies
our human kind. But no nature-type can begin
to do justice to our complex and wonderfiil
unfolding. The utmost conceptive and imagi-
native endeavour can not justly picture the elab-
oration and range of the full human spirit.
What a piece of work indeed is man! "how noble
in faculty! how infinite in reason! in form and
moving how express and admirable! in action
how like an angel! in apprehension how like a
God!" Yet all this majestic dignity and marvel-
lous richness and range would be impossible with-
out human endeavour and co-working. Under God
man decrees his own higher being. And under
Him he co-labours in its progressive creation.

And under God we determine oiir own higher
participation in the divine Nature. God on His
part hath granted unto us all things that pertain
unto life and godliness, through the knowledge
of Him that called us by His own glory and virtue ;
whereby He hath granted unto us His precious
and exceeding great promises ; that through these
we may become partakers of the divine Nature.
Yea, and for this very cause, we, on our part,
must add all diligence; and in our faith supply
virtue; and in our virtue knowledge; and in our
knowledge temperance; and in our temperance

Responsive Activity of Man 169

patience ; and in our patience godliness ; and in our
godliness love of the brethren; and in our love
of the brethren love universal. For if these
things are ours and abound, they make us to be
not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ, Wherefore we, for our
part, are to give the more diligence to make our
calling and election sure; for thus shall be richly
supplied unto us the entrance into the eternal
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
So it is, under God, we determine our own higher
participation in the divine Nature. With God
are the primary decrees always. With Him are
the absolute creations. And His are the primal
determinations as well. But with man are the
secondary decrees. And with him are the co-
operant creations. And his also are the secondary
determinations. This is the part and high pre-
rogative of the individual man in relation to
himself.

In relation to God, man decrees or vetoes, in a
secondary way, the divine purpose for his higher
human life. "This is the will of my Father,
that every one that beholdeth the Son, and be-
lieveth on Him, should have eternal life." "Ye
will not come to me that ye may have life, " And
in relation to God, man promotes or thwarts
the divine purpose and activity of continuous
creation on the plane of the higher human life.
"As many as received Him, to them gave He

lyo God and Man

the right to become children of God, even to them
that believe on His name: which were born, not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God." "He could there do
no mighty work," because of their unbelief.
And in relation to God, man elects or refuses to
become the expression and manifestation of
God — ^the expression and manifestation in a higher
way of the nature and character and life of God.
"I am the vine, ye are the branches." "That
ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who
called you out of darkness into His marvellous
light." Thus in relation to God man decrees
or vetoes His purpose, promotes or thwarts His
creative activity, and becomes or refuses to
become the manifestation of Him in the world.

In relation to other human beings man, under
God, decrees or vetoes their very existence. And
when they are born he decrees or vetoes, in a
more limited way, their higher life and co-works
in its development. Thus in relation to other
lives man chooses or refuses to become the channel
and medium of the purposive and creative life
of God. One of the most amazing things that it
is given each generation to do is to stand between
the creative life of God and the new generation
to be. This to every thoughtful mind must seem
a growing wonder.

In every great direction the part and prerogative
of man are surpassing. In relation to himself

Responsive Activity of Man 171

he co-creates his own higher Hfe. In relation to
God he co-decrees and co-labours in the progres-
sive creation. In relation to other human beings
he stands between the creative life of God and
all the generations unborn.

The part and prerogative of man are surpassing
indeed. His responsive receptivity and co-opera-
tive activity are great to a kingly degree. In
all higher ways it is his to accept or reject the
Divine, to connect or disconnect with the Divine,
and to co-work therewith in all God's creative
activity humanity- ward. No Kingdom of Heaven,
no higher kingdom, is brought in without his co-
operation. This is the way God has set man into
His on-going plan and process. Truly the Father
has created His children in His own image and
crowned them with regal dignity. "Is it not
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If He
called them gods, unto whom the word of God
came, and the scripture can not be broken ."

We have attributed now to man a large and
surpassing prerogative and function. We have
assigned to him superlative worth. We have
crowned him, as God crowned him, with glory
and honour.

Finally let it be said that nothing but a large
and worthy view would seem to be possible. It
must be large enough to balance our great human
duties and responsibilities. The Christian religion
is forever weighing the soul of man over against

172 God and Man

worlds ; forever attaching unspeakable importance
to human choices ; forever attributing momentous
and endless consequences to human deeds; for-
ever declaring a high and eternal destiny as gravely
conditioned upon our earth-life here below. Hu-
man life must be of infinite pith and moment to
match such boundless consequence. Great con-
ception must company with great conception.

We therefore attribute to man under God a
supreme receptivity, a supreme activity, and a
supreme responsibility. He works out his own
salvation with fear and trembling; and it is all
a great and grave and glorious business. And God
works in him all the while both to will and to
work; and this only adds to life's greatness and
significance.

Herewith is sketched what appears to us the
true conception of the responsive receptivity and
co-operative activity of man — of the part man
plays here in the world.

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT GOD IS WORKING TOWARD

THUS far we have set man into his actual
Universe and have seen God enfold his
life with many spheres. We have looked upon
the corresponding variety of human powers.
We have beheld God at work as the Great Worker.
We have inquired why man is not more conscious
of the divine working. And we have witnessed
man too at work in response to God. Now we
would see what God is working toward, what He
is seeking to produce.

He is seeking to create a complete man. Through
all the kingdoms of Reality that fold us round,
He is seeking to create a centre of life of high
complex order, to produce a complete human
being. God said : Let us make man.

Nature is seeking to produce the full-grown
man. The kingdom of life is struggling up to-
ward its culmination in man. Civilisation is
seeking to crown the world with man. Christianity
is labouring to produce the perfect man. If
God is not seeking to create the complete human
life, then He is out of harmony with His universe.

173

174 God and Man

No ; nature and life and civilisation and Christian-
ity are expressions of God. What they are pro-
ducing He is creating. In and through the
World- Whole, in and through each several sphere
of Reality He is seeking to develop the perfect
man.

God is seeking to do on the higher human plane
what He has done on the lower planes of life,
vegetal and animal, only He is seeking a result
of far superior type: He is seeking to produce a
centre of life, but a centre of high complex order.
He is seeking to produce a universally and per-
petually receptive centre of life; a being whose
receptivity is so perfect that he shall become
medium and agency of Divinity. He is seeking
to produce a universally and perpetually active
centre of life; a being with activity so high that
he shall become parent of humanity and co-
creator with Deity. He is seeking to produce
a centre of high complex life, with nature so
varied and comprehensive that it shall be a wide-
ranging human personality; of so high an order
that it shall be an expression and child of God.
Thus He is seeking to make the complete mian.

It is good to know that what God is doing
on the plane of humanity is to a degree parallel
with what He has been doing on the vegetal
and animal planes. For here as there He seeks
to produce a centre of life, only the result that
He seeks is of far superior type. From bottom

What God is Working Toward 175

to top of the vegetal realm, from the single cell
up to the regal oak of the forest or to the sensitive
plant, God has made each separate thing a dis-
tinct centre of life. Likewise throughout the
animal kingdom, from the protozoon up to the
anthropoid ape. He has created each organic
form an individual centre of life. Order above
order, range above range. He has lifted up the
forms of life into a grand scale of organic being.
At the top He would create a centre of life of
transcendent order. As therefore we look down
and up the long ascent, one sees man set by God
into the developing history, a part of the age-
long evolution of life.

It is good to see man thus. It is good to see
him set into the vegetal-animal kingdom of life,
when we see also that he is king of the kingdom.
It is good to see him a part of the long ascending
series, when we see him the culminating and final
term thereof. It is good to see him connected
with all the lower forms of life, when we also see
him in his mysterious being rise and soar above
them. We shall understand both him and them
better, understand the life-process better, and
understand God's goal for man and his continu-
ously creative activity upon him better.

God is seeking to create a universally and
perpetually receptive centre of life, a being wide-
open to all worlds.

He has suggested after what fashion He would

176 God and Man

have man open to Nature by the way He has
made him open and receptive in his body. His
physical being is open to all the foods of earth,
his lungs open to the atmosphere, his eyes to
light, his ears to sound, his mouth to tastes, and
his nostrils to odors. His skin is made sensitive
to heat, his muscles to pressures, his nerves to
stimuli. He is influenced by waves of ether
from far-off stars, and affected by electricities
that flash through the infinite spaces, and held
fast by the cords that bind the Universe into one.
In fine he is blown upon by all the winds of heaven
and caught in all the currents of earth. God
has made man in his body as open and receptive
to nature as a sponge is to water.

Similarly He would have him wide-open in
all higher ways. He would have him open and
receptive to the mighty fact and solid reality
of nature; open to the immensity, the irresistible
power, and the ^Eonian persistence of nature;
open to the variety in unity and the unity in
variety; open to the change in the midst of con-
tinuity and the continuity in the midst of change;
open to the ceaseless ongoing, the mighty fact of
growth, and the perpetual new-creations therein;
open to the struggle, tragedy, a,nd death ; open to
the springtimes of victory and life; open to her law
and order and symmetry and beauty and perfec-
tion ; open to her rigour and domination ; to her
gentleness, parenthood, and servantship as well;

What God is Workinor Toward 177

open to her honesty, obedience, faithfulness, and
patience ; open to her freshness and health and san-
ity and peace ; open to her joy and seriousness and
solemnity; open to nature's solitude and society,
to her silence and speech; open to her order and
ranges of Reality, to her fundamental fineness
of being and process, to her depth and mystery,
to her basic divinity, to her immanence, transcend-
ence, and inclusiveness, and to her subtle and
inexhaustible symbolism. God would have man
open and receptive to nature in all her aspects
and on all her planes. It would be a pleasure
to expand each theme of the above into a para-
graph did our limits permit. The wide-openness
of the full-grown man to nature is a rich and inspir-
ing thing to contemplate. Any system of philo-
sophy or science or religion that does not make
much of this must prove hopelessly inadequate.
Man's eldest parent and Bible must remain his
living mother and nurse and teacher and com-
panion to the end.

In the same way God seeks to create a centre
of life open and receptive to Humanity. He would
make a great and complete man, sensitive to the
tender yet fathomless appeal and mission of the
little child, sensitive to the morning freshness
and heavenly fires and divine prophecy of youth,
open to the enterprise and achievement and
mastery and character of maturity, and receptive
to the sweetness and mellowness and richness and

178 God and Man

glory of age. The complete man is open to the
small and the great, the commonplace and the
unique, the naive and the cultured. The great
and complete man that God would make, is open
to humanity with all its hopes and fears, its
doubts and beliefs, its defeats and victories,
sorrows and joys. For the man indeed that
God intends, the teachers do not teach in vain
and the statesmen plan in vain, and in vain the
inventors contrive. Neither in vain for him
do the scientists discover and the philosophers
think and the artists create and the musicians
compose and the poets write and the preachers
preach and the prophets prophesy. He is as
open in his affections as he is in his instincts^
as open in his mind as in his heart, and as open-
souled as open-minded. He is ever alive and
receptive to the incomparably greater riches of
the universal heart, receptive to the greater
treasures of the racial mind, and open to the more
priceless treasures of humanity's soul. The great
and complete man is open and receptive in all
the ranges of his being to the greater humanity
on all its ranges.

Likewise He would develop a centre of life,
a human personality, open to universal Law and
Order. Physical law, mental law, ethical law,
spiritual law — to all these realms He would have
man open; not merely as the unconscious subject
of them in his body and in his subliminal life,

What God is Working Toward 179

but also as their conscious knower and wide-open
recipient. There has come to the modern mind
a new and greater consciousness of natural law,
greater than the world has ever known. What
does it mean but that a grander and more insistent
consciousness of moral and spiritual law shall
come? There never has been and can never be
a magnificent life without a magnificent conscious-
ness of law. Other backgrounds there must be
we know, but this too is absolutely indispensable.
A great consciousness of a majestic moral order
and of the majesty of spiritual law is and will
ever be indispensable to majestic strength and
growth. Nothing could be finer in its sphere
than the splendid vision of cosmic law that has
been coming to human- kind. What is needed is a
sublime and more constant vision of the highei
law of God. Kant's great consciousness of the
majesty of the moral law needs indeed to become
universalised. And what are the starry heavens
themselves and their majestic calm order for,
but to tell of the sublimer order and symphony
of a greater Background? To this most of all
wo-uld God have man open and receptive. And
through His divine order ever3rwhere He would
have him behold the everlasting Divinity, as
men behold the sun through the glory of the light.
Again God would develop a being wide-open
to the world of Truth. He would make a man
noble enough to love truth for its own pure sake.

i8o God and Man

wise enough to know that truth is the mind's
proper and essential food, sure that any admixture
of error is like a fcetid thing attainting the pure
atmosphere, great enough to know great truths
from small and to keep great things in the central
places of life, and high enough and clear enough
to distinguish higher truth from lower and to
keep the sky forever above the earth, — not being
mentally confused and bewildered like a sand-
storm in a desert, when earth and sky seem com-
mingled and all becomes the dust of earth. A
being, in a word, God would create who knows
how to go up and down on the heavenly ladder
of truth and feels most at home on the upper
rounds, as open to all truth as the diamond to
light, and craving ever more and greater truth
as he advances toward the stature of the full-
grown man, knowing certainly that the greater
the tree the more it drinks in of heaven's atmo-
sphere and sunlight. This is the man that God
delights to develop, one who rejoices in the truth
and watches for it as they that watch for the
morning. Such a man, open in his total nature
to all truth from the lowest to the highest, will
be indeed reverently open to the God of truth.
A great aspect that is not emphasised enough
I wish particularly to magnify. God would
produce a personality open on all sides to Beauty.
How God must love beauty! He has made earth
and sea and sky beautiful. The grasses, the

What God is Working Toward i8i

flowers, and the trees ; the valleys, the mountains,
the hills, and the plains; the brooks, the rivers,
and the sweet lakes; the islands, the oceans,
and the waves; the clouds, the atmosphere,
the light, the stars — almost everything in heaven
and earth He has made beautiful. The animals
and the insects and the birds are beautiful; the
little child is beautiful ; the maiden in her bloom
is more beautiful; the mother with her babe is
yet more beautiful ; and the aged mother in Israel,
with God in her ripened so\A and His sweet grace
in her countenance, is more beautiful still. And
what is all this beauty for? That man should
close his eyes and deaden his soul to it? Has it
not a ministry? Is it not prophetic? Does it
not tell of the possible flowering and beauty of
human character, and subtly minister to that
high result?

But this is only the beginning of beauty. There
is also the beauty of law and order pervading
nature everywhere like some fine intelligence;
and there is the higher beauty of the world of
manifold truth, finer and purer; and the yet higher
spiritual beauty of holiness, the costly glories of
character; and raised above them like the stars
in the sky the perfect beauty of the divine ideals
in which the true, the beautiful, and the good
have united in one supernal radiance. And high
over all there is the transcendent beauty and
glory of God, fount and source of all other beauty,

1 82 God and Man

the divine beauty and glory of perfect holiness
and love. And what woiild God have? What
wotild He produce? He would produce a hu-
man being on w^hom he should not waste a uni-
verse of beauty. The sphere of nature, the
realm of cosmic law and order, the world of
truth, the kingdom of character, the heaven of
ideals,' — ^to the beauty of all these He would
have man perfectly open. That lute of three
thousand strings, the human ear, that "most
pure spirit of sense," the eye, the fathomless
heart of man, the magisterial mind, the mysteri-
ous soul, — He would have them as open to beauty
everywhere as the welcoming eye is to light.
Especially and pre-eminently would He have
him alive and not dead to that supreme Beauty
and Glory that is back of all.

God would develop a being, moreover, wide-
open to the heaven of divine Ideals. How early
and how naturally a life opens to ideals. It is
impossible for the awaking of the sentiments or
the awaking of the intellect or the awaking of the
soul to take place, without awaking to the world
of ideals. And in all healthy lives this takes
place early. Morning does not come at noon.
It is with a normal life as it is with an apple-tree.
The perfect fruit grows and ripens through many
and many a day, but the apple blossoms that
are the promise of the fruit, open wide their
bosoms to heaven early in nature's springtime.

What God is Working Toward 183

And the ideals are as numerous as the stars in
the sky. There is an ideal for every activity
of man. The Indian chief would be a perfect
chieftain and the warrior a perfect warrior; the
yachtsman would be a perfect sailor and the
tennis-player play the faultless game; the farmer
would carry on the ideal farm and the carpenter
would build the perfect house ; the teacher would
have the ideal school and the lawyer make the
perfect plea and the artist paint the perfect pic-
ture and the poet write the great and perfect
poem. From the noble labourer who digs his
honest ditch, up to Dante who writes his Divine
Comedy; from the little boy who says, Look, see
me play ball, up to Edwin Booth who plays the
involved and baffling Hamlet; from the bashful
youth who strives to possess his two hands and
feet and not be painfully awkward, to the courtly
Sir Philip Sidney; or from our fierce Teutonic
ancestors who buried the adulterer alive, up to the
saint on the mountain top wrestling for divine
experience and the perfect life, each and every
endeavour of man takes place under the power
of an ideal. All aspiration looks up and follows
the gleam. And it is a notable thing that it
always aims at the perfect. The hunter aims
at the perfect shot, the wrestler at the perfect
skill, the singer at the perfect expression, the
sculptor at the perfect statue. No true effort
consciously aims at the imperfect. The Indian

i84 God and Man

who built his canoe was aiming at the perfect
canoe as triily as Paul was aiming at the perfect
man. It is not strange consequently that Jesus
said: Ye therefore shall be perfect as your
heavenly Father is perfect. The ideal pervades
all life everywhere and all true activity is forever
aiming at the perfect. Jesus would have man
do on the highest plane consciously and continu-
ously and richly, what he is doing on all lower
planes, generally half consciously and intermit-
tently and poorly. On the spiritual plane He
would have him open to the absolute Ideal.

Further, it is characteristic of ideals that they
appeal to all that is in us. They appeal to the
intellect no less than to the feelings, and to the
will no less than to the intellect. An ideal is a
thing at once to be known, to be appreciated,
and to be striven for. And what is just as im-
portant, they appeal to all sides of us equally
and harmoniously. It is a sign indeed of the
supremacy of ideals that they thus appeal to
\)ur total nature and to all sides alike. If we
Were right in saying that the ideal unites within
its radiant being the true, the beautiful, and the
good, then the foregoing is what we should expect.
And herewith is implied the superior character
and rank of ideals. We naturally think of the
supernal stars when we think of the higher ideals.
And rightly; for ideals constitute the supernal
heavens of reality, next to the transcendent

What God is Working Toward 185

divine Reality itself. And God would have man
open eagerly and perfectly to this heaven of
ideals. He would produce a symmetrical life,
open alike in its clear intellect, its appreciative
heart, and its devoted spirit. And through the
shining ideals He would have man forever see
streaming light and life from the great divine
Source.

Thus God would produce a harmonious and
complete man, open wide to the heaven of ideals
to which he so early and naturally turns, which
in itself is as rich and varied as the variety of
his human activities, which appeals at once to
every essential side of his nature, and which
itself is a most pure and supernal realm of Reality
through which the divine Light forever streams.

Finally God would create a being open wide
to Himself, spirit to infinite Spirit. It is a com-
mon experience that in the midst of the solemn
grandeur of the mountains, or gazing out over
the mysterious vastness of the ocean, or looking
up into the glory of the midnight sky, we want
to pray. Those who open themselves deeply
to nature feel this deeply. What does it mean?
It means that we want to open our deepest being
to the deepest Reality, want to open our human
spirit to the infinite Spirit, to come into immediate
communion with God. The same thing is true
of all our deepest relations to humanity. Who
that opened himself profoundly to the utterance

i86 God and Man

of Phillips Brooks's deep nature did not want to
go and pray? The same is true when we open
ourselves deeply to the world of law and order,
or to the world of truth, or to the world of beauty,
or to the world of ideals. In the deepest com-
munion with God's worlds everywhere we are
moved to pray. Even undeveloped men feel
the deep stir to a degree. In those sacred mo-
ments when we are really face-to-face with God's
worlds we want to come face-to-face with God.
When we have come into spiritual relationship to
His universe, we want to come into spiritual
relationship to Him. And we are not satisfied
until we thus spiritually touch. We want im-
mediate commerce. We want direct communion.
Just as we are not satisfied until we come into
first-hand relationship with nature. No report
about nature will answer. No picture will suffice.
We must see with our own eyes and feel direct
original contact. Immediate commerce with hu-
man life, original relationship with the world
of truth or the world of beauty, unmediated
communion with any world, is the only thing
that will satisfy. Man must go direct to the
great sources. His spirit must drink immediately
from all the great fountains. Even so he must
know God with immediacy of experience and
drink for himself direct at the everlasting Foun-
tainhead. There is profound suggestion here —
if in the soul's deepest experiences with nature

What God is Working Toward 187

and humanity and the divine order and the worlds
of truth and beauty and ideals, we want to pray.
Certain it is that centre feels for Centre, spirit
would open to Spirit.

This is the highest and truest stage of human
development. When man as spirit opens to God
as Spirit there is nothing higher. We can not
conceive anything beyond. He is standing on
the mountain summit where heaven and earth
meet. In such spiritual immediacy the child
directly knows and communes with the Father,

Now this is what the deepest religions and the
greatest prophets from of old have pointed to-
ward. And this is what our profoundest being
ever has craved. Man has dreamed of a spiritual
mountain-top where the human and the Divine
came together. And this dream of direct com-
munion he would never let die. It is the dream
of dreams. But precisely this it is that is open
to the deepest skepticism, both theoretical and
practical. Man doubts. It is difficult to believe
in the greatest things. It is so hard really to
have faith in the highest visions. Let me believe,
we say, in nature and humanity and the moral
order and truth and beauty and ideals and in
indirect communion, but do not bid me believe
in direct communion and spiritual immediacy.
It is the cry of weakness, but a most natural
weakness. The highest and greatest things are
always the most exposed to doubt. The mists

1 88 God and Man

gather most readily about the loftiest mountain
summits, not about the ordinary hilltops. The
most difficult thing in the world is really to
believe in the supreme vision. Nevertheless this
is what must be steadfastly affirmed. The pos-
sibility of an open and clear sky between the
soul and God must be proclaimed to the ends of
the earth. Granted that it is difficult really to
worship in spirit and truth, to open spirit to
Spirit. But when was it ever promised that the
supreme thing should be easy? This moreover
is what Christ in His great personality exempli-
fied, and what He proclaimed for humanity.
This also is what Christianity richly attained unto
in the Upper Room. And this finally is what God
Himself is ever striving to lead mankind up to
through all its communions with nature and the
divine order and the worlds of truth, beauty, and
ideals. God would create a being open wide to
Himself, spirit to infinite Spirit.

So God would have man open to all spheres of
Reality. If we could set man in thought into
all worlds as we see him set into nature, open and
receptive to the higher as to the lower, we should
see then the first half of what God intends. For
He would have a life first of all universally open
and receptive. He would have it as receptive to
all nature as the lungs to atmosphere, as open to
humanity as the babe to its mother, as sensitive
to moral law as to physical, as open to truth as

What God is Working Toward 189

the eye to light, as receptive to beauty as the
heart to love, as hospitable to ideals as the night
to stars, and as open and receptive to God as the
world to springtime. See a tree open in its roots
to the lower earth, in its leaves to the higher
atmosphere, and in its whole being to heaven's
rains and sunlights : so God would have man wide
open to Heaven and earth. The first half then
of what God intends is that man shall become
universally and perpetually open and receptive.

And this receptivity shall be of so rich and
complete a character that man shall become an
ever more and more perfect medium and agency
of Divinity. God would pour His life not only
into but also through humanity. He would
have "free course" in our human life. But of
this great side of the truth we shall hear more
later.

The second half of what God intends is that
man shall become a universally and perpetually
active centre of life. He shall react toward the
Universe. Receptivity is to the end of activity.
Man shall respond to all worlds. What has been
said as to his rich receptivities in every direction
must be duplicated in thought about his activities
in all directions. Suffice it that the complete
man must be multitudinous in his activities.
He must co-work with all nature, work together
with humanity, obey universal law, be the apostle
of all truth, a worshipper of beauty everywhere,

igo God and Man

an unwearying pursuer of the ideal, and the
co-worker with God on every plane.

It is best to think of higher worlds after God's
own lower analogue. When the farmer scatters
the seed, he co-works with vast and limitless
nature. Likewise, when man co-works with higher
worlds, he is co-operant as truly with infinite
systems of Reality. When you set man into any
world, it is as though you set a star against the
infinite background of the sky. The humblest
child with its little feet stands upon the whole
world, and so doing, stands upon the Universe.
After this fashion are we to think of man in all
his great receptivities and co-operant activities.

This now is what we have come to. God
would develop a centre of life, on the one side
universally and perpetually receptive, on the
other side universally and perpetually active.
He would have all worlds pour their life into man,
• — ^boundless nature, mothering humanity, cosmic
and higher law, universal truth, the realms of
beauty, the heaven of ideals, the infinite divine
Life itself. And man, for his part. He would
have equally rich in his responsive and co-operant
activities. In this way justice would be done
both to the individual and to the Environment.
The vast Environment would have its great story
told. And the individual would realise himself
by thus being the focus and centre of a myriad
receptivities and countervailing activities. Na-

What God is Working Toward 191

ture woiild be but the lower ranges of the infinite
ascending heights of Reality. All realms from the
lowest to the highest of the infinite Environment
would report themselves in man. And man for
his part would actively receive their reports, and
in turn send back a unique account of himself
in ten thousand intenser activities of response.
Most of all would God have the higher worlds
mirrored in man's life, and man thereunto pre-
eminently responsive — as a tree is specially
responsive to the mothering heavens in spring,
and so answers back with the glory of its blossoms.
Thus God would have man a citizen of all worlds,
but because he is man, most naturally at home
in the higher.

It is good to endeavour to see both the simplicity
and the vast reach of what we have considered.
Man, on the one side, is receptive; on the other
side, active. We may draw, with science, the line
of the sunbeam to the mirror, and see it thrown
back again in the line of reflection. So we may
draw ten thousand lines of influence from the
physical environment to the life of man and then
see him send back his myriad lines of response.
In this way all that is true in the new evolutionary
teaching, with its strong emphasis on environ-
ment, may be freely and gladly recognised. But
we must also draw ten-thousand lines of influence
from the affectional, the intellectual, and the
spiritual environment of humanity to the indi-

192 God and Man

vidual ; and draw myriads of other lines from the
vast moral order of the Universe to the life of man ;
with unnumbered other lines from the worlds of
truth to the circle of his life ; and lines from all
the realms of beauty to the human soul; not
leaving out the starry sky of ideals that is ever
over him and sending down its countless rays
of influence, nor forgetting the infinite beams
of the God who is Light. And we must see a
great and complete man sending back myriad
lines of response. Then have we seen the Environ-
ment indeed and not merely the lower margins of
it. Then have we beheld the great Environment
at work. And then only have we proclaimed
a doctrine of environment that is adequate.
Then also have we seen man in the lofty trunk
and tree-top of his being, and not merely in his
lower roots. Then have we seen him alive indeed
in all the higher ranges of his powers. And then
have we set forth a doctrine of freedom that alone
is large and fit. See the total Environment,
from nature to infinite Spirit, pouring its streams
into man, and see a great and complete man send-
ing back his fit and majestic response, and then,
but not before, have we come to whole views of
life. From the lowest reaction of the body to
physical stimuli, up to the highest response of
the soul to God, is truly a vast range.

Plainly here is a picture that does justice to all
that is true in physiology, or in the new evolution-

What God is Working Toward 193

ary teaching with its doctrine of environment,
or in the new biology or the new psychology.
It does justice besides to that great diremption
of the Universe into the "ego" and the "non-ego,"
and to the whole sensory and the whole motor
side of man. It finds, moreover, in the sensory-
motor system the principle, taken broadly, of
all possible human life. For what could connect
a life with a lower environment that is forever
acting upon it but a sensory system? And what
again could connect a life that is forever reacting
thereupon but a motor system? We have there-
fore in the afferent and the efferent nerves,
joined together in the ganglionic centres, the
suggestive principle of all human life. All living
is a perpetual intaldng and a perpetual outgiving.
It may well be that in the higher ranges the tele-
graphic wires indeed may be dispensed with,
and the wireless messages come through the
trackless air. But come they must, and the
messages and inspirations must be responded to,
or life is not life.

A centre of life, on the one side universally
and perpetually receptive, on the other side
universally and perpetually active, open in recep-
tivity to all worlds, co-operant in activity with
all worlds, — ^this then is what God is seeking to
produce.

Receptivity and activity, but both of superior
order. Everything indeed is the medium of
13

194 God and Man

God. He pours Himself into and through all
things. But human-kind He would have as His
supreme medium and agency here below. Into
man He would pour not only His power but also
His truth and wisdom and love and spirit and
life. He would have humanity the manifestation
point of the divine life and character as the arc-
light is the manifestation point of the electricity
of the world. Here is receptivity certainly of
transcendent order. To be a medium and agency
of the divine life and character and activity;
to be brooded and inspired by God; to be shone
through and spoken through and loved through
and wrought through; and to be flowed through
by all the streams of natiire that rise in the Foun-
tainhead of the infinite Life, is wide-ranging
receptivity indeed. But this is man. This is
God's idea of man. To have a life universally
and perpetually open, with a receptivity so per-
fect that it becomes a surpassing medium and
agency of Divinity, this is to fulfil God's thought
of man. A closed and impervious human life
is a monstrosity.

Similarly God would have man's activity of a
supreme kind. He would produce a centre of
life whose activity was of so high a type and so
perfect a character that it could become parent-
hood of humanity. In the natural order of life
the child becomes parent. The receiver gives.
The produced reproduces. The mothered and

What God is Working Toward 195

fathered in tiirn fathers or mothers. Rich recep-
tivity passes into rich activity; for there is no
activity so great and complete as perfect parent-
hood. In this most common but most wonderful
fact is laid down, I venture to say, the plan and
true progression of all human life. Parenthood,
not merely physical parenthood, but moral parent-
hood and intellectual parenthood and spiritual
parenthood as well and chiefly: parenthood, not
merely of our private family, but moral and intel-
lectual and spiritual parenthood of humanity
also and mainly, — ^this is the parenthood that
we mean. This is the true idea of parenthood.
To be a father or mother in Israel, to be a parent
of humanity, to come to the unbounded mother
heart, the unlimited father spirit, to be a universal
parent, — ^this is what parenthood means. And to
develop from full rich childhood to rich complete
parenthood of this character is to pass through
the divinely intended human progression. Here
is activity in its completed stage. Action that
stops short of this is an arrested development.
Parenthood of humanity — how shall we find
terms large enough to match the truth of the idea.
Ever3rwhere to father and mother our human-
kind ; to be an affectional, an intellectual, and a
spiritual parent of every life that comes within
our touch, this is the most complex and complete
activity that takes place on the earth. To be
a parent of the higher life of the world, — there

196 God and Man

is nothing so expansive, nothing so aboundingly
active, nothing so unselfish, so overflowing, so
creative, so magnificent as this anywhere. In
this man shows likest God.

And what is it to pass through this great pro-
gression? It is to spring like a bud from the par-
ent stock. It is to be mothered into being and
into birth. It is to be nourished and cherished
and brooded into adulthood. It is then to send
off buds from our own being. It is to parent
body. It is to mother heart and bring affections
to the birth. It is to parent nascent mind and
mother it into being and into flower. It is to
parent formative spirit and awake it into life
and unfold it into splendoiir. And it is to do
this on the higher planes for our human kind in
general. To develop from perfect receptivity
thus into perfect activity; to pass from being
endlessly parented into such parenthood without
limit, is to unfold through the great human stages
of growth.

From childhood to parenthood of humanity,
this is the true evolution of man. What takes
place in the cottager's home, if he be worthy,
sketches already the plan of the ages. And what
takes place on the lowest plane typifies what
takes place on the highest. Even physical par-
enthood symbolises the highest spiritual. Jesus
saw His perfect spiritual parenting of the souls
of men typified even in the hen that gathered

What God is Working Toward 197

her brood under her wings. It is suggestive
beyond measure to see the plan of the highest
sketched in the lowest. It links the Kingdom
of Heaven with the cradle of the home and even
with the nest of the bird. The most ideal life
that ever has graced the circles of men was but a
rich fulfilment of what was already outlined in
the humblest life. The deep insight of Socrates
did not fail to see that his own parenting of the
intellectual and moral and spiritual lives of men
was like unto the work of the midwife. It is the
divine intention that all the larger, richer, ma-
turer life of the world shall forever give itself to
the littler, poorer, cruder life. Humanity shall
forever parent humanity.

Perfect receptivity and perfect activity ; on the
one side perfect and perpetual childhood toward
God, on the other side perfect and perpetual
parenthood toward humanity; this is the com-
plete receptivity and the crowning activity for
man that God intends. Hereby man shall forever
keep his childhood, receptivity, and humility.
Hereby also he shall surely attain unto manhood,
full activity, and growing worth. It is a sublime
unfolding to become a child of God. It is an
immense and glorious evolution to become a
rich parent of humanity.

In attaining unto such activity and parent-
hood man becomes, under God, a creator. He
is co-creator of his human-kind and of his own

198 God and Man

higher being. To be in any sense a creator is
great. To be in this way a co-creator, under God,
is consummate.

A universally and perpetually receptive centre
of life, with receptivity so perfect that it shall
become medium and agency of Divinity; a uni-
versally and perpetually active centre of life,
with activity so complete that it shall become
parenthood of humanity and co-creatorship with
Deity, — this, as we have seen, is what God is
seeking to produce.

And the centre of life that He intends shall
be of so rich and complex a character that it
shall be a wide-ranging htiman personality, of
so high an order that it shall be a child of God,
and so a complete man. What is meant by a
wide-ranging personality is, of course, a life wide
open to all Reality, from nature up to God,
developed in all its ranges, from body up to
spirit.

A high complex centre of life, a parent of human-
ity, a child of God and so a complete man, —
this, in fine, is what God would make.

To that end He seeks to develop a self that
He may develop a socius; an adult that He may
develop a parent; a particular that He may de-
velop a universal; an individual that He may
develop a person.

Hitherto we have described in general outline

What God is Working Toward 199

and in large terms what God would produce.
We have sketched man first in relation to the
whole kingdom of life ; next in his relation to the
World-All as a receiver and to the same as an
actor ; then in his relation to God on the one side
and to humanity on the other; and finally we
glanced at his own central being. Now, however,
we must give sharp and specific heed to the order
of progression, to the evolution of personality.
God does not make a person with one stamp
of a die. There is a great double process. He
produces a self, an adult, a particular, an individ-
ual, first, that He may develop a socius, a parent,
a universal, a personality, at last. It is of the
utmost importance to know and mark the process.
He would produce first a separate centre of life,
an individual consciousness, an awareness of
selfhood, a potentiality of Will. He would then
have such an adult life give itself absolutely to
the All, pouring itself forth in new being a,nd life,
reproducing and parenting human-kind in the
most comprehensive and ceaseless manner, and
thereby itself developing into full personality.
It is needless to say that the two stages are not,
in all respects, as temporally and essentially
distinct as is here roundly stated. That said,
at once let us re-emphasise and appreciate the
two stages. Out from the All, God would gradu-
ally separate a little life and unfold it into relative
independence and develop it into distinctive

200 God and Man

selfhood. And then again in a higher form He
wotdd re- unite that same Hf e to the All in a spiritual
union through the perfect consecration of its own
free individuality. It is as though the sun flung
off from its own fiery being a planet and imparted
to it the essential elements and powers that would
transform it into an ordered world; and then as
though that same world, when it came to itself,
bound itself back again through the co-operation
of its own power with that of the sun, found its
appointed orbit and in glad obedience forever
kept it, opened the wide bosom of its continents
to the mysterious and mighty call of the sunbeams,
and answered back thereto with the miracle of
a thousand springtimes as it went singing on its
way.

What God does in the human world He does,
in a way, in all the biological realms. He makes
even the cell develop to a certain point before
He has it give part of its being back to the world
of life, producing a new cell by fission. The
grasses and trees do not flower and bring forth
seed on the first morning of their existence.
Reproduction is the crowning stage in all animal
forms. And the higher we ascend in the scale
of life, the more prolonged is the period of child-
hood and the more delayed and marked is the
evolution of parenthood.

As we have seen, God would develop a self
that He may develop a socius, an adult that He

What God is Working Toward 201

may develop a parent, a particular that He may
develop a universal, an individual that He may
develop a person; thereby producing the complete
man. It will be noted that through all this runs
the idea, first, of the progressive separation of a
human life from the parenting World- All, and
the development of it into a relatively independent
and free spiritual being; then throughout runs
the idea of the progressive re-uniting of this free
life to the All in a higher spiritual alliance. And
only in the second great stage of the making of
a man is personality realised. These stages of
development we look upon as absolutely essen-
tial and fundamental. The child must be born,
and must be parented into adulthood. The adult
must then unite himself in marriage with his kind,
reproduce his own humanity, and parent lesser
lives without end. And this before he can repeat
in his own life the wide and noble parenthood
that gave him being, or at all measure up to the
true idea of a human life. What is here sketched
in principle, muist of course be lifted up in idea
to all the higher planes and there realised in a
splendid spiritual personality. Man's everlasting
childhood toward God must be achieved, and
his ceaseless and comprehensive parenthood to-
ward all littler lives must be richly realised. It
need hardly be said that the true idea of parent-
hood comprehends far more aflectional and intel-
lectual and spiritual parenthood than bodily,

202 God and Man

far more the universal parental spirit than the
particular physical motherhood and fatherhood.
Although even physical parenthood is in no way
to be belittled but in every way ideally to be
glorified. And it is glorified when it is fulfilled
as God intends in the other higher and nobler
parenthoods that follow.

Here then is the man that God would make,
and here are the stages of the continuous creation
whereby He would produce him. In a word,
God, the ensphering Universal, would produce a
particular which in turn shall become, in its de-
gree, an ensphering producing universal; thereby
becoming both a child of God and a complete man.

But why is it necessary to go through the two
stages? Why is it necessary to develop the self
first? Without the individual self there can be
no high complex centre of life, no socius, no parent,
no human personality. In a being that starts
from the zero of unconsciousness, and develops
into a conscious life, and then into a richly active
part of a Universe, co-acting with a Universe
all the time, there must be, in the interior nature
and necessary evolution of such a being, the
development first of all of an individual self.
One has only to follow with faithful insight the
course of such a being to see that, in the very fact
and idea of a human life, there must be such a
development. You must get your world before
it can respond with harvests. You must light

What God is Working Toward 203

your fire before it can drive your engine. We
must come to conscious selfhood, before we can
function as conscious selves. The soldiers must
be there before they can give themselves in heroic
life or death for their country. You must get
your scholars before they can devote themselves
in humility and singleness to science, like an
Agassiz. We must have men and women before
we can have fathers and mothers even in the
narrow sense, not to speak of such parenthood
as we have had in mind. Differentiation into
adulthood, individuality first, personality second.
For personality is achieved only when the individ-
ual self devotes that self to God and man, thereby
coming into higher union with the All and thereby
attaining unto a kind of universal life. This we
shall see must be dwelt upon extensively later.

Here is the everlasting strength and justifica-
tion of all individualistic doctrine. And here
also is its incompleteness. For the human being
must be differentiated into a distinct ego, into
an individual consciousness, into a centre of life
and will,' — it must come to selfhood, or it is noth-
ing. The more of an individual indeed, the
more of a possible personality. They are per-
fectly right who contend for individualism as
for something inestimable. The might and tenac-
ity of selfishness itself has a certain deep justifica-
tion. If the choice were between individualism
and something less and lower, there could not

204 God and Man

be a moment's hesitation. Rightly viewed, indi-
vidualism may be said to be even a splendid
achievement. It marks a vast advance over
that childhood of the race in which human lives
were not sufficiently developed to become sharply
defined. There was then a nebulous mass, but
there were no stars. The choice however is not
between individualism and something less and
lower, but between individualism and something
more and vastly higher. The positive content
that individualists contend so sturdily for is
indeed a priceless treasure. It is the first grand
stage in the making of men. It is as indispensable
to a Pauline character as a foundation to a cathe-
dral. Without the pronounced ego, there is no
splendid personality possible. Here is why God
must develop a self, a particular, an individual,
first. The tree must be, before it can bloom and
be glorified.

It is clear that we must have the differentiated
self. But why must we have more? Why is
not the individual self sufficient? Here is where
the battle royal comes. Many in a manner seem
to say that that is sufficient. And untold multi-
tudes act as though it were sufficient. But we
must have more. Given the individual ego, we
have, it is true, a great start ; but in reality the
making of a person is only splendidly begun.
God must consecrate the individual self before
He can make the high complex centre of life

What God is Working Toward 205

richly receptive and richly active. He must
consecrate the individual self before He can
develop the true socius or parent or universal
or human personality. He must perfectly con-
secrate the individual before He can make a
child of God, and so a complete man. The
concept of a high complex centre of life is that
of a being who consciously, freely, and joyously
opens himself to all worlds in receptivity, and
who, with the same conscious freedom and joy,
opens himself toward all worlds in activity.
And such a being can be produced only through
perfect consecration. Neither receptivity of this
lofty kind, nor activity of this character, can be
produced in any other way. Only the perfectly
consecrated life can become the perfect medium
and agency of God. The life that does not give
can not receive. The river of God must have
an outlet. Equally manifest is it that a true
socius or parent or universal can be produced in
no other way. In the structure and nature of
the idea, that is implied. An undevoted friend-
ship or parenthood is a contradiction in terms.
And the universal or personal life is precisely
the high achievement or development itself,
that results from noble consecration.

Thus if we view God as seeking to produce a
high representative of Himself in the world, a
child of God, a complete man, we see at once that
He can do so in no other way. First He must

2o6 God and Man

create an individual self, and then He must inspire
that free individual joyously to devote himself
in noble consecration. And if we pass from in-
sight to history, we see again that this is the way
God actually does make men. It is the story
of all the noble life of the world. It is the process
of evolving human personality. But we must
go into this fundamental process much farther
as we progress.

In conclusion let us answer again the question of
this chapter as to what God is seeking to produce,
in the words that we set upon its first page. God
is seeking to do on the higher human plane what
He has done on the lower planes of life, vegetal
and animal, only He is seeking a result of far
superior type : He is seeking to produce a centre
of life, but a centre of high complex order. He
is seeking to produce a universally and perpetually
receptive centre of life; a being whose receptivity
is so perfect that he shall become medium and
agency of Divinity. He is seeking to produce a
universally and perpetually active centre of
life; a being with activity so high that he shall
become parent of humanity and co-creator with
Deity. He is seeking to produce a centre of
high complex life, with nature so varied and com-
prehensive that it shall be a wide-ranging human
personality; of so high an order that it shall be
an expression and child of God. Thus He is
seeking to make the complete man. Or, in a

What God is Working Toward 207

word, God, the ensphering Universal, would
produce a particular which, in turn, shall become,
in its degree, an ensphering producing universal ;
thereby becoming both a fiill-grown child of God
and a complete man.

CHAPTER IX

WHAT MAN IS WORKING TOWARD

IN the preceding chapter we saw in broad surveys
what God is working toward. In the present
chapter we must see what man is working toward.
There we looked at things from the divine side.
Here we shall look at things from the human
side. We have the same great facts before us of
necessity in both cases, for God and man are
working toward the same end. Only now we
must look indeed more penetratingly into those
broad outlines.

What is the true quest of man ? When he comes
to himself, what does he work toward? He
seeks to develop from self-consciousness into con-
sciousness of the All; from self-relationship into
relationship to the All ; and from self-service into
service of the All. That is, he seeks to develop
from a particular into a universal, to attain unto
the higher, larger life.

Here, for example, is a normal young life of
twenty, standing forth in fine physical proportions.
He has come to a rich consciousness of himself.
He is aware of himself as a will. He is conscious

208

What Man is Working Toward 209

of power. The self is vivid and intimate and
endlessly interesting. The ego is in the bright
centre of the conscious field. He is supremely
conscious of himself. Beyond, are all humanity
and the great world and the vast frame of things
and the infinite God. But he is less conscious of
them. They are present in his instincts and
feelings. They are over him and around, it is
true, and in him all the time. They are indeed
implicated in all his being. But they are not in
the focus of interest. He is at that stage when
he is supremely aware of the self. With such
a young life of promise standing out before us,
what shall we say that he is intended in his nature
to progress toward? What is the true goal of
his development, his true evolution? The true
course and goal of his life is progress from self-
consciousness to God-consciousness, with all that
that implies. He has waked up; he has found
himself; he has himself on his hands. His pro-
blem now is how to get rid of himself. How
shall he lose himself, get rid of his self-conscious-
ness, pass beyond it to something higher?

He must turn and deliberately face the great
World- All of which he is a part. He must shift
the centre of his interest. He must realise the
great divine Environment. The World-All, as
we have said, has been present in his consciousness
to a degree all the time. Without it, without
a certain awareness of the not-self, he never could

2IO God and Man

have come to such high self-consciousness at
all. But now he must pass beyond this to a
higher objective consciousness. And it is through
his high self-consciousness that he is able to do
this, that he is able to advance to a higher objective
consciousness that shall become permanent. In
childhood, he had a naive objective consciousness,
while the subjective was most vague. In youth,
he developed a high subjective consciousness,
with the objective less prominent. In manhood,
he shall advance to the higher objective conscious-
ness that shall be permanent, while the subjective
shall not indeed disappear, but shall be subli-
mated rather and fulfilled, and life shall come
to a higher unity. In fine, he must turn and
deliberately face the great World- All, as we have
said. He must know life's great Backgrounds.
He must become adequately aware of the vast
divine Environment. In a word, he must know
God, And knowing God with a great God-
consciousness, he must relate himself richly and
freely to God and to all His worlds: thus shift-
ing his interest, and becoming God-centred,
and entering into a new and higher union with
God, into a rich and free spiritual life.

The supreme question for such a young life,
as for every normal human life, as he stands face-
to-face with God and all His worlds, is: What
will he do with himself? Will he devote himself?
Will he ally himself with all worlds? Will he

What Man is Working Toward 211

use himself for God and man? That supreme
question includes all others. The answer to it
is in principle the answer to all. For this cause
was he brought into the world. For this cause
was he brought face-to-face with himself. Indeed
he was brought face-to-face with himself to
the great end that he might be brought face-to-
face with God. He was revealed to himself
in order that he might become alive to God. A
great consciousness of the divine Environment,
a great God-consciousness, a great new life with
God — ^this is the meaning of his human life.
Here worlds of significance may be locked
up in a single word. In these high concerns it is
not possible for language to utter the boundless
truth. For a human being to change his centre,
for him to pass from self-consciousness to God-
consciousness, and from self-service to self-
consecration, is like passing from his egoistic
prison-house out into the great and spacious
world of life. It is like an eagle, leaving the nest
where he got his being and came to himself, and
soaring out upon the wide kingdom of the air.
It is to turn one's human telescope toward the
heavens, to develop from a Ptolymaist into a
Copernican, to discover the infinite Universe
to which one really belongs. Then he will no
longer merely revolve, like a little planet, upon
his own private axis, but will discover his true
orbit about the central life of God, fling himself

212 God and Man

eagerly out upon it, and determine forever to
fulfil himself in light and law and love. No
longer then, in the light of this new heavenly-
vision, will he seek to make the infinite Universe
revolve about himself, but instead will rejoice
to know that he has an appointed place therein,
will count it his glory to find it, and to enter for-
ever upon that shining path of obedience and
service.

This is the grand shifting of centres that should
take place in every life. This is the great God-
consciousness to which every self-consciousness
is intended to lead. If every man was once a
Ptolymaist, every man should come to be speedily
and for all time a Copernican. And the change
will prove no less vast in the kingdom of life
than it proved in the kingdom of thought. All
the true greatnesses were then for the first time
discovered, and all true astronomic science of
heaven and earth dates therefrom. So will it
ever be in a human life. Then alone shall he
discover the true magnitude of the spiritual
Heavens and his own infinite belongings thereto.
And then only shall he truly know both himself
and God.

How shall we set forth the magnitude of such
a transformation. Its meaning sweeps out to-
ward the immensities and the eternities. In it
man says his everlasting "Yea" to God and his
everlasting "No" to self. It is his great new

What Man is Working Toward 213

birth into infinite higher worlds. For this the
angels above look down expectant. For this the
seasons of God wait. Hereunto have all things
come. To this end has God made man. And
to this end has He brought him into the world,
a crown of glory to the whole creation.

Here is man, fresh from the hand of God,
magnificent in promise, with prerogative and
possibilities almost divine. How fearfully and
wonderfully he is made! God has created him
in His own image. He has "rounded him to a
separate self." He has given him an eye that
looks out into the limitless spaces of light, a mind
whose "thoughts wander through eternity,"
an imagination that soars toward the infinite
Ideal, a heart that is forever restless until it
rests in God. This is man in the promise and
programme of his being, in the glorious morning
of youth. What will his fulfilment be? What will
it be to realise himself in God? What will the
transformation from selfishness into spirituality
be like? Jesus called it a new birth of the Spirit.
And it would seem that no name for it ever has
been given among men so expressive and so fit.
As though in Jesus' thought all life shaped and
grew toward that spiritual natal day. As though
all creation waited for the revealing of this son of
God. Or as though, when his slumbering nature
was touched from above, and the awaking of the
soul took place, and life became alive to God, as

214 God and Man

though man had a new and higher birth and opened
his eyes upon another and infinite spiritual king-
dom of ReaHty. And what could be more expres-
sive of the truth ? Then for the first time he really
entered upon life. Then for the first time God be-
came very God to him. Then for the first time
he really discovered the infinite divine Environ-
ment to which he belonged. Before, he was like
Plato's cave-dweller, living in his narrow house, ,
receiving only fragmentary beams from a mysteri-
ous Universe of light. Now, he has come forth
into the great world, and his eyes are greeted by the
boundless spaces of light, and he stands amazed,
but at home, under an infinite Sky.

Although we have seen all this in the rich
colour of beauty, it is Reality that we have been
looking at. The sun is no less a real sun because
it is glorious. The earth does not have to be
wrapped in drabs and greys in order to be real.
The real world rather is not seen until it is trans-
figured in light. And the real heavens are shut
out by Veiling mists, unless their glory is seen.
We do not see the diamond at all until we see
it burning in splendoiir. Both the diamond
and its beauty are hidden, in perfect darkness
or when covered by thick dust. And the great-
est and highest things especially are not truly
seen unless they are seen in their majesty.

Therefore we do well to strive to behold the
sublime magnitude of the transformation in man

What Man is Working Toward 215

and his life-world, when his soul really sees the
heavenly vision. And we ought to expect some-
thing as great and magnificent and amazing,
certainly, in God's transcendent spiritual King-
dom as He is showing to the wondering eyes of
His children every day in His starry skies. In-
deed eternity is set only in the soul of things,
and infinity is properly a word of Spirit, while
perfection has its being only in God. The supreme
things are found nowhere but in the spiritual
realm.

Progress then of the true and normal life is
from self-consciousness, self-relationship, and self-
service into consciousness, relationship, and service
of God; from a partictilar into a universal; from
an ensphered particular into an ensphering pro-
ducing universal, — that is, from childhood into
parenthood; from narrow, meagre, temporal life
into broad, rich, eternal life, — ^that is, from indi-
vidualism into personality; and from a child of
the animal kingdom into a child of the spiritual
Kingdom, — that is, into a child of God, so into
a complete man.

It will be realised that the soul and meaning of
all this is an unfolding from individualism into
personality. But why is it so necessary to ad-
vance beyond individualism? Why must there
be self-sacrifice? Why must the self be tran-
scended ? Now we are to close with individualism
in earnest.

2i6 God and Man

First and most fundamental, each human life
is a part of the World- All and forever will remain
such. It is part of a family, of humanity, earth,
solar system, Universe. It was born of parents,
so never was independent. It sprang as a bud
out of humanity, hence always was a part thereof.
It was gathered together out of terrestrial elements
and every time it opens its mouth for food or
air, shows that it is still a part of the earth.
It was quickened by the heat of the sun, as the
egg is brooded by the mother hen, and every
time it opens its eyes to the light, it proves that
it is still a part of the sun, which is both the light
of its vision and the power by which it opens
its eyes. And whenever it looks up and sees
the sky arch over it, it is reminded that it is
part of the Universe. This is the first and most
fundamental fact of our human existence, the
basis and condition of all true philosophising
about life. We are a part of the great World- All,
inextricably implicated therewith, woven like
a thread into the infinite fabric. This absolute
conditioning fact is, to be sure, implied in all
our living and instinctively taken for granted
all the time, but it is rarely considered deeply.
Few stop to take it in. Few have pondered it
deliberately. Yet beyond question it is the
foundation of all that ever will be abidingly
established touching the philosophy of our human
life and its potentialities.

What Man is Working Toward 217

If a part, then connected and bound. If part
of a family, then bound by all the laws of family.
If part of humanity, then connected and bound
by the natural laws of our common humanity.
If part of earth and solar system and Universe,
then bound by all terrestrial and solar and cosmic
law. If part of higher worlds, if part of an affec-
tional, an intellectual, and a spiritual realm;
if heart of the universal Heart, mind of the in-
finite Mind, and spirit of the eternal Spirit, then
endlessly connected and bound. In what number-
less ways and with what various enfolding spheres
each life is connected, we endeavoured elaborately
to set forth in the beginning of our task. We
strove to realise the vast total Environment
into which a human life is set. And we laboured
to appreciate how complexly and subtly every
life is bound up with that manifold Totality.
Its connection is bewildering in its extent. It
is the centre of legionary influence.

If a part of a mighty Whole, the focus of powers
innumerable, then it must act accordingly; it
must live in harmony with the great Whole.
It must obey and serve. It must accord with
Heaven and earth. It must live in true alliance
with all the spheres that enfold it. It must be
the expression of universal law, the utterance
and agency of God. It must obey physical law,
or it dies. It must obey the laws of the mind,
or it goes mad. It must obey moral and spiritual

21 8 God and Man

law, or it becomes imbecile or worse. It must
obey the laws of action, or atrophy falls on all
the powers. And higher laws must be obeyed as
absolutely as lower. Nothing is so exacting as
Heaven. The laws of spirit can no more be
disregarded than the laws of light. Truth can
no more be trifled with than the law of gravity.
Love itself is law, and there is even a "law
of liberty." And the Kingdom of Heaven can
never come unless a Will is done.

No sphere of Reality can be set at nought.
We can not flout nature or humanity or truth
or beauty or ideals or Spirit. As well might the
earth flout the sun or a star the heavens. As
well might the lungs flout the atmosphere or the
eye flout light. No fact- world can be ignored.
Every realm of Reality with which we are con-
nected must be seriously taken into account. We
can no more disregard the sun than disregard the
earth, and no more disregard the Universe than
the sun. We are part of every sphere, therefore
we can ignore none.

It would seem as though science had taught
this lesson once for all, but she has not. It
would seem as though, with her majestic emphasis
upon law and her revelation that every mote of
matter is intimately connected with the most
distant nooks of the universe and with the most
ancient processes of the past, as though she had
adequately impressed the mind of man with the

What Man is Working Toward 219

truth that no fact-world can be ignored. Yet mul-
titudes live in the main as though that were not
true, and not a few deliberately. Specially with
higher Worlds do they seem to think they can
play fast-and-loose. Men that would not trifle
with gravitation, trifle with the majesty of truth.
Men that would not play with fire, lightly dally
with lust. Women that would purchase beauty
of complexion at any price, are quite indifferent
to the supreme beauty of holiness. People that
send for a physician the instant their bodies fall
sick, will not hearken and open even to a Saviour
who stands knocking at the door of their sick
souls. Yes; many who would not disregard
an east wind, practically act as though they
could ignore the whole spiritual Universe and as
though it mattered little whether they took even
the infinite God into account at all. Neverthe-
less, no fact-world can be ignored. Is Truth
a mighty fact? Is Beauty a boundless fact?
Is the Ideal a supreme fact? Is Spirit a tran-
scendent fact? Is God the awful and infinite
Reality of realities? Then they can not be unre-
garded without loss incalculable. It not only
will be, it is now ill for those who virtually ignore.
It is not and never can be well. Eternal disre-
gard, if such there be, of supreme and infinite
Realities means, and must ever mean, endless
loss. We can not close our eyes without shutting
out a universe of light. Nor can we shut Heaven

220 God and Man

out of oior lives without shutting our lives out
of Heaven.

Now all pure selfishness, all consistent individ-
ualism, when analysed to its bottom, is seen to
do precisely what we have been thinking of.
It attempts to set at naught the great kingdoms
and their august demands. Individualism, when
consistent, is strictly self-centred. It is occu-
pied with its own ego. It ignores ever37thing
outside of its own circle. When it ceases to do
this, it ceases to be strictly individualistic. Nay ;
it does more. It not only sets all others at naught,
but also seeks to subordinate humanity and all
things beside to its own aggrandisement. It
would turn heaven and earth, man and God, into
its servant and slave. It never can succeed.
The mills of the Universe will grind it to powder
first. This is why the self must be sacrificed,
the individualistic ego overcome, the particular
raised up into the universal. This is the only
true thing to do with the self. It must not act
as though it were not a part. It must not attempt
to unhook its innumerable fastenings. It must
not try to set at naught the Universe. And it
must not undertake to subordinate the universe
and God to its own ego. Rather it must live,
as a part ever must, in the mutuality and har-
mony of law.

The withering interrogation to put to all selfish-
ness is this: Are you a part? If so, then you

What Man is Working Toward 221

are endlessly connected; if so, then endlessly
bound in the mutuality of law and service.

If selfishness stopped once and listened to its
own heart-beat, or noted intelligently its breath
of life, or sent one thoughtful memory back to
its mother, or pondered for one moment the two
hemispheres of sex, or once looked down with
seeing eyes at the earth, or up with unblinded
vision into the sky, never more could it be so
insufferably stupid. Or if but once it stopped
and asked itself, "Whence this truth that now
turns my inner darkness into light ? " or, " Whence
this beauty that fascinates and feeds?" or,
* ' Whence this ideal that beckons and prophesies ? ' '
or, "Whence this inspiration that thrills and
elevates?" — ^if it stopped to ask even one of these
questions truly, it would realise that the end of
selfishness is the beginning of the life of wisdom.
The basic and fatal fault with selfishness is that
it is false. It is partial, and when erected into
a course of life, simply untrue to fact. It ignores
the mighty Whole of which it is part. And when
observed closely it is discovered to be self-con-
tradictory as well. It says by its attitude:
"I am, and beside me there is no other of worth. "
And at the same time it seeks to subordinate all
other persons and things to its own private ends.
In the same act, it both denies and affirms.
It says: "You are naught to me"; and at the
same time, "You are somewhat for my private

222 God and Man

gain. " Therein also it shows that its objective
relationship is perverted. It can not be totally
unregardful of the not-self, yet it regards it only
as means. Thereby once more it becomes false.

It will be realised that we have used selfishness
and individualism as practically synonymous terms
— ^and with substantial justice. For individualism
is emphasis on what is particular, distinctive,
unique, individualistic, private, partial. And
selfishness is simply that emphasis erected into
the sole course and law of life. Individualism,
without its greater complement, and its great
corrective, altruism, is unavoidably selfishness.
And individualism, thus enlarged and fulfilled,
is no longer pure individualism. Individualism
as a stage of development is absolutely indispen-
sable. As a finality it is arrested development,
and becomes, in a cosmos of mutualities and
reciprocities, a monstrosity.

It is with pure and consistent individualism
as it would be with a player in some great orches-
tra who, in the midst of the symphony, wilfully
struck out for himself, utterly disregardful of all
the other players and parts; nay more, who de-
liberately strove to subordinate the whole orches-
tra and theme and leader to his own private
pipe or harp. Or it is with individualism as it
would be with a soldier of a great army, who, in
the day of battle, disloyally broke from the
ranks and set up a little conflict on his own

What Man is Working Toward 223

account, totally ignoring the great army and plan
of campaign; yes, who even attempted to sub-
ordinate the whole army and plan and com-
mandery to his own private whim. Or it is
with individualism as it would be with a planet
that arbitrarily broke away from some mighty
solar system and struck out on its own independ-
ent track through the uncharted spaces, utterly
scornful of its true orbit and of all cosmic restraint ;
yes, that even proposed to set itself up as a new
centre, to stop the heavens in their course, and
to constrain the Milky- Way and all things besides
to circle like a troop of satellites around its own
little ball. The only result would be that in the
news of the Universe next morning it would be
chronicled that "last night another fool-comet
went out in flame and sowed itself as star-dust
athwart the heavens."

Let us resume the argument in this warfare.
Every human being is a part of a mighty whole.
Therefore he is endlessly connected. Conse-
quently he is immeasurably obligated to a life
of mutuality and reciprocity. Hence he may
not ignore any fact-world. Much less may he
try to subordinate the great World- All to his own
ego. But it is precisely this that individualism
tries to do. Therefore it becomes selfishness,
and, like all selfishness, in its double attitude self-
contradictory and finally abnormal.

Our life is not only a part but also a minor

22 4 God and Man

and dependent part. It is not necessary surely
that we should enlarge here, important as these
two truths are. If human life could tie Orion to
its belt or had the MUky-Way as the tail of its
kite; if it held some major place among magni-
tudes, it might essay some egoistic role. Or if we
were not dependent upon Heaven for life and
breath and growth and all things, again we might
attempt some proud and self-centred programme.
But as well might a whale forsake the ocean,
with the proud purpose of independence and
dominion. We are minor and dependent with
all that those terms import. True we are most
significant minors and glorious even in our de-
pendence. At the same time, no individualistic,
no arbitrary and egoistic life is becoming to such
as we are. Therefore once more the self must
die to live.

Moreover, in relation to God, we are created
beings and lower in dignity than Deity. If we
were simply the creatures of our own parents and
of nothing more ultimate, we should still feel
the bonds of creaturehood. We should not ignore
the life that begat or that which bore. Or if
we were the creations of the earth or of the sun
or of the molar masses in general, and nothing
more, we should still feel the bonds of our crea-
tureship. For that which knows at all must know
truth and fact. Much more if we are the creations
of God shall we feel the deep ties of creature-

What Man is Working Toward 225

hood. Human-kind has never been able to look
up toward God and deeply realise the divine
Creatorship without responding in those filial
acts that the race has beautifully named piety.
We feel our creaturehood and we know its impli-
cates. When the horizon is limited so that the
vision is mostly that of humanity, the response
naturally is piety toward parents and ancestor-
worship. When the horizon is still limited so
that the vision is mainly that of physical spheres,
the response of our creatureship is for the most
part the worship of nature. But when the ho-
rizon has broadened so that the vision becomes
that of the divine Creator, the response of the
creature rises into filial piety toward God the
Father. The creature acknowledges the Creator in
every article of his creaturehood. The Universe
is broad, but there is no room in it for selfishness.
There is room only for devotion and co-opera-
tion. There is no place whatever for individual-
istic selfishness in either a life or a cosmos that
God alone has created and made. And this is
what every true and healthy mind instinctively
feels. And this is what all selfishness virtually
acknowledges in that it instinctively hides itself
from the light.

And when we add to creaturehood the fact
that, in the order and rank of Reality, our place
is not that of Deity, we gain a new weapon against
egoism. We are created at least a "'little lower

IS

226 God and Man

than God." Rather we are oppressed by the
sense of disparateness than by the sense of likeness.
The immemorial struggle of saints and prophets
has been to bring God near. Now what is the
only true attitude of the lower in the presence of
the higher, of the human in the presence of the
Divine? It is reverence, worship, adoration,
service. Whenever and wherever excellence is
revealed to consciousness, or holiness is disclosed
to human eyes, or God shows His glory to man,
there is only one normal and true attitude. The
soul that does not bow in the presence of the
Higher and begin the sacred quest and devote
itself in high service and joy, is an impossible
soul. If Moses does not take the sandals off his
feet in the presence of the Burning Bush, he is not
worthy of that or of any other high vision. Face-
to-face with God, there is but one attitude. All
high things must be hallowed. The inalienable
right of law, the natural authority of truth, the
divine sovereignty of beauty, the inherent impera-
tive of the ideal, the eternal dominion of the
Divine, this must be felt and owned by every
normal and worthy life. If there is any life
that remains unmoved in the presence of excel-
lence or glory or Divinity, there is nothing to
say to it. It is sealed with the mark of death.
For what else is there for a soul that owns any
kinship with nobility to do in the presence of
the true, the beautiful, and the good, but to

What Man is Working Toward 227

claim them for its eternal sphere and home, and
become their consecrated disciple and apostle
forever? "The Lord is in His holy temple, let
all the earth keep silence before Him." "Holy,
holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth
are full of Thy majesty." "Not -unto us, not
unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory for ever
and ever!" What other meet and right attitude
for a soul is there but to be bowed and solemnised
into worship? But how absolutely all egoism
or selfish individualism is shut out of true wor-
ship! "God is Spirit, and they that worship Him
must worship in spirit and truth, for such doth
the Father seek to be His worshippers. " Into
the unity and purity of Spirit, worship must rise.
Out of separateness into oneness, out of the par-
ticular into the universal, true worship must
mount. But this means the overcoming of self,
the consecration and exaltation of individualism
into unity of spirit with God. Therefore again
the self must die to live.

Up to this point we have realised that our
human life is a part, therefore must live in har-
mony with the Whole; that it is a minor part,
hence must heed the law of the major ; that it is
a dependent part, consequently must not forget
the hand that feeds it ; that it is a created part,
so must remember its creaturehood ; and that it
is lower than God and accordingly must own and
claim its true life of reverence and service. From

228 God and Man

every side individualism and particularism as a
law of life is excluded. There is not room for it
in the Universe. The self must die to live, or it
lives only to die.

This when we look at the relation of life to the
All, But when we turn our eyes and look at
the life itself, a whole new series of considerations
come into view. Every human life as such is
a particular and a universal, a less and a greater,
a lower and a higher, an actual and an ideal, a
temporal and an eternal, in one and the same
circle of being.

Life is a particular and a universal. Every
leaf, for instance, is a particular and a universal,
made up of the special nature of the leaf and the
general nature of the World- All. Every plant
or fruit, every insect or animal, is a double thing,
made up of the special nature of the plant, frmt,
insect, or animal, and the general nature of the
All. In like manner every human life is a particu-
lar and a universal, made up of the unique indi-
viduality of the particular life and the general
natiire of all the spheres. It coiild not be other-
wise, if all the spheres have contributed to the
production of each living thing and are represented
in its structure and being. Every life is in a
sense a miniature; the macrocosm reports itself
in the microcosm. Therefore every life is a uni-
versal. No two lives, moreover, are alike. Hence

What Man is Working Toward 229

each is a particular. Even though two human
beings had absolutely like constitution, they
would not be alike. Every consciousness is in its
nature distinctive and unique. No human con-
sciousness, accordingly, as long as it remains
conscious, can ever lose its individuality. For
consciousness as such is this particular conscious-
ness ; it is not this and that. And no life can lose
its universality any more than its individuality,
for it is and continues the representative and to
a degree the locus of the All. Now when such
an organism functions, it must function according
to the being that it is. It must act out its double
nature. It must live both as a particular and as
a universal. In all its receptivities and activi-
ties it must act perpetually as this individual
ego, and at the same time it must be the medium
and agency of the universal spheres. Nothing
human may be foreign to it, nothing cosmic,
nothing Divine. It must function in responsive
receptivity and co-operative activity with all
worlds. Yet life must be a unity. There must
be one central principle. There can not be two
sovereign centres. Either the particular must
be held within the dominion of the universal,
or the universal must be subordinated to the
particular. Which now shall it be? If the
particular is not subordinated to the universal,
then the law of all possible organic life is violated.
If the particular is not subordinated, the idea

230 God and Man

of a common humanity is unattainable. If the
particular is not subordinated, there can be no
such thing as a true cosmic system, nor can the
idea of a Universe itself be carried through ; for
a Universe is the realisation of unity in and through
manifold variety. Indeed the idea even of a
sole and sovereign Divinity becomes then un-
thinkable. But if, on the other hand, the universal
is subordinated to the particular, pandemonium
itself is let loose. Therefore the particular must
find its true place in subordination. Then all
high things become possible' — organic life, a
common humanity, cosmic law, a unitary system,
the idea of monotheism itself.

For these reasons the particular must be
subordinated to the universal. But when it is
realised that the universal is no merely external
thing, but is a part of the life itself, the reason
for subordination becomes at once more plain
and its appeal more intimate and personal.
If the universal is also within us and is the deeper
and more constitutive element of our being, then
of course the particular must be subordinated.
As long as the universal is felt to be an external
thing only, and our life as the particular merely
that is to be sacrificed to it, the appeal is dista nt
and cold. Sacrifice of the self to an outside law
or principle or power or Deity always has seemed
unnatural and painfully hard. And it has seemed
like total loss. But when all this is changed;

What Man is Working Toward 231

when the outer law becomes the inner law of our
being, and the principle and power become the
deeper side of our life, and the transcendent
Deity becomes also the immanent God, then
self-sacrifice too becomes a different thing. It
becomes dying to live, sacrifice of the super-
ficial to the deeper self, subordination of the
particular to the universal side of our being.
Then however difficult self-sacrifice may still
remain, it is of course the thing that must be.
Because we must realise our deeper self.

And when we consider that the universal within
us represents pre-eminently the life of God in
the soul of man, a deeper cogency is added.
But why conclude that the universal is the locus
of God's presence? and why pre-eminently so?
Earth and sky and humanity are represented in
the universal side of man's being. Truth and
beauty and ideals are represented there. Is
God alone absent ? It would be nearer the truth
to say that He alone is present. For what are
all other presences but manifestations of Him?
It comes to this: Is God verily God? Does He
really carry on the divine business of Godhead?
Is He a living God indeed to our thought ? The
moment we make serious work with the idea of
God and carry the concept through, we see that
He must be represented and present in every life,
or He is in no sense the living God. And He
must be pre-eminently present in the deeper

232 God and Man

universal side of man's life. He is not absent
from the particiilar. But it is precisely the par-
ticular, the individual, that He has constituted
our distinctive humanity. Thereof we may say
with most truth: This is I and not God. But
the distinction, though profound, is not absolute.
In the universal however He must be pre-emi-
nently present, for therein man is one with all
Reality. If this is true, if the universal thus
represents the life of God in the soul of man,
then the particular must know its place. It
must discover its true life and fulfil itself in per-
fect devotion. Life has become sacred. Divin-
ity is interior to the soul. Consecration is the
only thing fitting. The particular self must be
sacrificed.

After the foregoing it seems natural to say
that every life is also a less and a greater, a
lower and a higher. This is true in general,
but specially true of human life. That which
the leaf has in common with the tree is greater
than that which differentiates it. Consequently
it lives in subordination and harmony. And
that which the tree has in common with nature
is greater than that which differentiates it.
Therefore it lives in harmonious subordination.
That again which the animal has in common with
the World- All is greater than that which differen-
tiates it. Hence it lives in fitting harmony.
The same is true of man. That which each of

What Man is Working Toward 233

us has in common with the All is greater than
that which differentiates each. Therefore he
should live in subordination and harmony. The
less should serve the greater.

No one can look long into the depths of
life without seeing that there are greater things
than appear on its surface. The mysterious
greatness of life becomes more and more im-
pressive to deepening insight. The territories
back of the frontiers, the depths of human
tragedy and suffering, the heights of triumph
and joy, the dim and darkening regions beyond
the horizon, tell of life's unmeasured great-
ness. Now and then we turn a sharp corner
and catch glimpses of vast areas that generally
lie hidden. At times elemental fires burst up
through from abysmal depths beneath, or strange
lights shoot up above the horizon in life's distant
sky, or again we hear the waves from the mighty
ocean break upon our shores, or feel its silent
tides flow into our bays "too full for sound."
Life indeed is a great continent of mystery,
embosomed in vast mysterious oceans, and en-
shrouded by an infinite mysterious sky. Once
in a while a great poet and seer arises to tell of
life's depths and greatness and to sing of the
mystery of man. Then the imagination of a
people is kindled and all men feel anew the great
mysterious background. In truth, human life
must have a certain infinite quality about it.

234 God and Man

Otherwise it is difficult to see how it could arrive
at the thought of the infinite, or hold the idea
of the perfect, or feel after the infinite God, or
be capable of eternal life and of endless devel-
opment. Such vast conception, such boundless
yearning, such unconfined destiny do not comport
with an absolutely limited being. That which
only infinite Divinity can satisfy must itself have
a certain infinite quality about it. Now this
infinite quality, this larger background, this
major side of life, is not the individualistic element.
It is the stake that humanity has in us. It is
the common ground of nature. It is the common
field of truth and beauty and ideals. It is the
universal life of God. The individual, the differ-
entiating element, never constituted the greater
side of any life. The differentiae are never the
major element of an3rthing. It is with life as
it is with a true picture, the foreground is never
greater than the background. The individual
then is the minor. As minor, it must devote
itself. The less must give itself to the greater.
The foreground must set itself against the back-
ground and find its true place and life there.
The finite must consecrate itself to the infinite
in life. Once more the individual self must die
to live.

Our many-sided life as we have noted is also
a lower and a higher. If that be true of course
the lower must serve the higher. Wherever the

What Man is Working Toward 235

lower touches the higher, in any orderly system,
or living organism, or rational field, or spiritual
kingdom, the lower always must serve. The
body must obey the mind. The lower ranges of
the mind must obey the higher moral and spiritual
ranges. The nobler always must give the law.
And if it be true that the highest within us re-
presents the presence of God in the soul, then
our spiritual nature is clothed with superior
sovereignty indeed. But however stupendous
this fact, nothing less can be true. God above
all must be present.

We do not sufficiently take in and deeply in-
terpret the momentous fact that all worlds are
represented in our life. Sun, moon, and stars
are represented. The mighty cosmic system
has set up its kingdom within. The realms of
truth have their seat there. All beauty is mir-
rored in our life. And the supernal ideals have
their special place there. Is the omnipresent
God alone absent ? We do not make serious work
with our idea of God. Scientifically, nothing is
more sure than that earth and sky and all the
subtler kingdoms are represented in life. How
then is this fact to be interpreted? Is God there,
or not? Are the bodies of things present and
is the Soul of them absent? Are the spheres
only spheres? Is He who pervades and informs
all, absent from the forms? Are not they all
forms of His presence? Shall all worlds, shall

/

236 God and Man

the Universe, be present in man's life and God
alone be absent? On the contrary are not man
and worlds, rather, taken up and held within
that infinite Life, in whom all things consist?
This is the only interpretation for one who makes
serious work with the idea of God. All others
play with the idea. They have no living God
in their thoughts. All laws, all powers, all forms
finally are His presence. All voices are His voices
in the end. If it be a most certain fact that all
spheres are represented in man, much more is
God represented, or God is not God.

It is a most irradiating and wholesome thing
for us, in this manner, to take account of our-
selves. What is this mysterious universal side
of our life anyway? Is it only so much earth-
crust, and solidified sunlight and systematised
law, etc. ? Or is it the presence of the Divine in
reality? the presence of the absolute Universal
back of all, "of whom, through whom, and unto
whom, are all things, and we unto Him. " We
are, it is true, earth of earth, vapour of vapour,
atmosphere of atmosphere, light of light, ether
of ether, law of law, truth of truth, beauty of
beauty, ideal of ideal, and life of life; but back
of all and through all, we are spirit of infinite
Spirit. We are children of God. Therefore the
background of life is divine. God is present in
our humanity. He has not shut Himself out
of His own temple. The higher side of life then

What Man is Working Toward 237

is the "Holy of Holies"; the lower, the "holy
place " that exists for and finds its meaning in
the higher. Accordingly the lower must give
itself — ^and be glorified. So again we must die
to live.

Study of the other aspects of life will empha-
sise the same result, for we are an actual and an
ideal, a temporal and an eternal, in one and the
same life. Our actual life is evident. We are
clearly aware of it. It is all too apt to seem our
real life. Our ideal life is hidden. We believe
in it. But it is apt to seem vague. Nevertheless
the actual is not the deepest, it is not our truest
life. It is not the truest life of anyone, not even
of the most complete saint. For him, every
to-morrow has a deeper, richer thing to show.
But if the life be, not the choice soul, but the
common unconsecrated life of the individualistic
stage, the actual is far from the true. If we are
not living in the depths, in the profound universal
side of our being, life is far indeed from the true.
The true life is always the deepest, most perfect
thing of which our being is capable. It is never
wholly attained. The actual therefore is a
perpetual falling short, even in the consecrated
life that has related the surface to the depths.
The actual therefore must receive the law, not
give it. The true law-giver is the ideal, the
universal, the prophetic.

Take what stage of development you will.

238 God and Man

Take the selfish, egoistic stage of the unconse-
crated life, or the devoted stage of the consecrated
life, the law of subordination holds. The actual
Paul must be subordinated to the ideal Paul,
just as certainly as the actual Saul. The Prodigal,
returned and at home, must sacrifice the actual
to the ideal, just as truly as the Prodigal in the
far country. The most perfect to-day must be
sacrificed to the more perfect to-morrow. If the
law holds on the higher plane, it certainly holds
on the lower. Certainly the selfish egoistic life
must be subordinated. Always the actual must
be sacrificed to the ideal. And if the ideal is not
only something outside and above but also some-
thing inside and deep within us, if in reality it
is our profoundest, truest self, then sacrifice of
the actual to the ideal becomes an intimate and
insistent afTair. Nothing could be more vital
and personal. Then too self-sacrifice loses, in
the deepest sense, its repellent character. The
pain still remains, but it becomes the pangs of
the higher birth. And when we consider that
our to-day at its best is no more than the sketch
of the pictiire that is to be, when we remind our-
selves that our noblest attainment is but a very
far-off approach to our own ideal and to the finished
picture as it hangs in the gallery of God's mind,
we realise anew that the actual must be sacrificedto
the ideal. Only so can the costly glories of the
higher life come. Once more we must die to live.

What Man is Working Toward 239

Finally life is both a temporal and an eternal.
If this meant simply that life is divided into two
epochs, the temporal life that we are living here
and the eternal life that we enter upon beyond,
it still would remain true that the temporal must
be subordinated to the eternal. The moment
must give way to the cycle. When however we
come to a juster, richer conception of the eternal,
when we conceive of it, not merely as an adden-
dum to the present without reference or relation
to the here-and-now, but rather as the deeper,
truer side of our present life, the reason for
self-sacrifice becomes greatly enriched. The eter-
nal is brought out of the far-off other world
down into the circle of the present. It becomes
the serious concern, not only of the future life,
but also of the life that now is. For it is seen
to be the significant, unfathomable side of the
present, the ocean underneath the waves that
are borne upon its surface. But when a yet
truer view of the eternal is attained, when it is
seen to come closer home still, seen not merely
as the deeper side, related to life as depth to
surface, but even as the pervasive animating
soul and significant content of every present
moment, self-sacrifice becomes almost an axiom
of normal living. Manifestly the temporal must
be subordinated to the eternal if the "now"
deeply understood is seen to be such a significant
thing, if it is both a temporal and an eternal in

240 God and Man

one. If that be true, no man may say: "As
for my part, I choose the present moment, and
reck not the eternal life. ' ' For what is the pre-
sent moment that he chooses ? It is a temporal-
eternal in one. So that if he knows what he is
choosing, if he really chooses the present moment,
the true present, he chooses the eternal life in
the present. Just as the wave, if it deeply
chose itself, would choose the ocean too. For
eternity is in the present moment and the present
moment is a wave on the ocean of eternity.
Whosoever therefore triily chooses the present
and lives therein, lives also the life eternal here
and now. The temporal still must be subordi-
nated, the law of sacrifice still holds. But how
different it is, how changed! Now eternity is
set in the heart of man, and all the present has
become rich with its unfathomable meaning.

It has resulted that each time we have studied
a new aspect of life, our thought has followed
a similar path. The superficial each time has
deepened into the profound. Life, we said, is a
particular and a universal, a less and a greater,
a lower and a higher, an actual and an ideal,
a temporal and an eternal, in one and the same
circle of being. But as we have drawn nearer
and come to a more intimate and interior view,
we have seen the universal become the constitutive
element of the particular; the greater, the back-
ground of the less; the higher, the life and law

What Man is Working Toward 241

of the lower; the ideal, the deeper being and
spirit of the actual; and the eternal, the infinite
meaning and soul of the temporal. Accordingly
we have seen, in a nearer and more vital way,
why the particular, the less, the lower, the actual,
the temporal, must be subordinated; why the
egoistic self must be sacrificed. But we have
seen also the law of self-sacrifice become an
immeasurably deeper and different thing. It has
not lost the character and pain of sacrifice, but
it has become a law of life. We die to live.

If now to all this we could add, that the only
way really to save these individualistic elements
of life is to consecrate them, the only way to
eternalise them is to sacrifice them, a fitting and
happy climax would be given. And this is the
certain and impressive fact. As the only way to
save a seed is to plant it, and the only way
to save strength is to use it, and the only way to
save love is to give it away, and the only way
to save our youth is to devote it and pass the
finer soul of it on into manhood, so the only way
to save the self is to consecrate it. If the partic-
ular, or less, or lower, or actual, or temporal, side
of our life undertakes to set up for itself and be
somewhat on its own account and tries to live
for itself, it is overtaken at last with self-defeat
and ends in utter loss. As a wasted youth, a
hardened heart, a narrowed soul, a shrunken
and isolated individuality, that all men shun,
16

2 42 God and Man

and at the last a sorrowftil and embittered old
age forever bear witness. On the contrary,
no devoted, usefiil life is ever lost. The patriot
whose grave we strew with flowers, the philan-
thropist whose memory we perpetuate with our
monument, the martyr for a great cause whose
blood becomes the seed of reform, dies with
shining face, and all men sing his worth and are
thankful. The way to eternalise the self is to
sacrifice it. "Whosoever would save his life
shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life
for my sake shall find it. "

Another series of considerations meets us as
soon as we view life not as static but as active —
which is the only final and real way of viewing it.
Because we are centres of life, receptive and active,
and developing beings, unfinished in creation,
and ideally children of God.

We are centres of life, receptive and active.
Now no selfish life can be richly receptive. Sel-
fishness in its nature is unopenness. It can not
sympathise; it can not love; it can not forget
and lose itself. So it can not open itself wide
to any world. It can not be richly receptive
to nature, or truth, or beauty, or ideals, to human-
ity or to God. Men instinctively turn aw^ay and
will not give themselves to the selfish life. Nature
can not give itself to the unappreciative soul.
Truth and beauty and ideals can give themselves

What Man is Working Toward 243

abundantly only to the life that loves. And God
can not pour Himself into the selfish heart.
The essential incapacity of selfishness to receive
is a startling and sobering fact. And it is espe-
cially true touching all the finer worlds. The
more spiritual and precious the realm of Reality
is, the more incapable is the selfish life of com-
muning with and sharing it. Yet it is commonly
taken for granted by blind selfishness that at
any rate it can receive without limit. Few things,
however, are farther from the truth. Its heart
is dead, its soul is closed.

Nor can any selfish life be richly active. It is
ungenerous in its nature. Its doors do not swing
easily open. It lacks motive. The deep impulse
of the forth-pouring life is wanting. It is narrow
also in its interests. The broad fields of kindness,
the realms of love, the many valleys of sympathy,
the wide areas of helpfulness, the worlds of sacri-
fice, it is shut out from. It seeks them not.
It has no desire to pour itself out, and has nothing
to pour. Its activity toward all the great king-
doms of light and sweetness and grace and nobility
is paral3^sed. It is like a many-mouthed fountain
frozen at its heart. It is appalling how meagre the
activity of a hard and selfish heart can become.
It is shut out from every great and generous
world, and lives a withering life in an ever-
narrowing shell. And even though it attempted
to pour itself forth, neither God nor man would

244 God and Man

receive it. Men will not hear its words nor wel-
come its deeds. They will accept counsel only
from sympathetic lips and be saved only by
self-sacrificing love. And God will not hear its
prayers. The Pharisee must ever stand and
pray "thus with himself.'' And what have the
great worlds of truth and beauty and ideals to
do with a petty and self-centred life? Their
nature is broad and general as the sky and finer
than light. They resist the non-kindred and
coarse approaches of egoism. And though egoism
had the fulness of the ocean it could not pour
itself forth. It lacks the objective attitude.
Only the life that is deeply interested in the great
higher worlds and that can forget itself and give
itself with perfect abandon, can pour itself out
in full rich action. But this is the antithesis of
the selfish life. In the nature of things, therefore,
all rich receptivity and rich activity are impos-
sible to the selfish soul.

If this be true, a curse rests upon selfishness on
both the great sides of life ; for every living being,
every centre of life, has two great sides, recep-
tivity and activity. Incapacity to receive and
incapacity to give must mean ever-deepening
poverty. The "mighty famine" inevitably must
arise in every land whither selfishness takes its
unblest way. Involved in all this, of course,
is the fact that this double incapacity means
the inhibition of growth. For the life that does

What Man is Working Toward 245

not richly receive and richly give can not de-
velop. But this is so evident that, important
as it is, with a passing word it may be left to
the imagination.

Moreover man, in his wonderful being and
unlimited possibilities of development, is the
most unfinished of all the works of God. The
creative Hands are still upon him. He is in the
initial stage. But selfishness in its very nature
hinders God's continuously creative action. It is
as though a marvellous statue, when little more
than outlined, resisted, and took itself out from
under the creative hands of the sculptor.

The natural culmination of this group of
thoughts is that man is ideally a child of God.
But plainly that high goal must be forever for-
bidden and denied the persistently selfish life.

Thus the blight and curse of selfishness falls
everywhere on life. All rich receptivity is made
impossible; all rich activity; and hence all rich
development. The continuous creative work of
God is hindered; and so the attainment of life's
great goal in perfect childhood to God, inhib-
ited forever. Of all the follies and sins of
man, selfishness is the most comprehensive and
consummate.

After this extended and critical analysis, in
which we have seen from many points of view
why the egoistic self must be overcome, let us

246 God and Man

turn to the idea of the human life as such. The
concept itself of a full human life will be found,
I think, upon examination to imply transcended
egoism. No one means by a human being a
merely individualistic self. No one means a
life that has not worthily used its strength, nor
devoted its affections, nor consecrated its thought
and its spirit. A self-centred creature that never
matched his strength against the world's work,
or devoted his affections to the great objects,
or measured his mind against the universe, or
exercised his soul toward the Divine, is not what
we mean by man. Had Brutus been such,
Shakespeare never would have put upon the
lips of Antony the words :

" His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!' "

The full concept of a human being always means,
for ouf thought, a life that richly has come to
itself, then poured itself out toward all worlds
in rich activity and devoted service. One who
has gifts but never has used them worthily, has
failed, we say, to "make a man of himself."
The representative man is the devoted man. If
this be true, then instinctively we have gathered
together in our concept itself of a human life
the same developments that our searching analy-
sis brought to light. And instinctively, in thought ,

What Man is Working Toward 247

a selfish being is as unsatisfactory as he is prac-
tically in life.

Last of all, if appeal is made to consciousness
and experience, down deep in our being we know
well that the egoistic self must be sacrificed,
that we must die to live. If we have any doubt
about the matter, our friends have not. Nothing
is more absurdly patent to them. Every man
instantly ' can place the key in his neighbour's
hand.

Herewith we complete our examination into
many of the deep unchanging reasons why the
self must be sacrificed, why we must develop
from self -consciousness, self-relationship, and self-
service, into consciousness, relationship^ and ser-
vice of God, from an individual self into a univer-
sal self. The reasons have gone as deep as the
foundations and laws of life and growth. They
have had about them something of the magni-
tude of the great spheres with which life is bound
up. We have realised that we are parts of the
All, and forever will remain such; that we are
minor, dependent, and created parts; and that
we are lower in dignity than Divinity. Conse-
quently the particular, egoistic self must be
subordinated. Otherwise we disregard the total
truth and fact of things and the inherent qual-
ity and sovereignty of the Divine. And we set
ourselves against the Universe and the Universe

248 God and Man

against us. This we realised when we studied
the relation of a life to the All, and noted the
essential attitude of selfishness. But when we
turned and looked at human life itself, and saw
that it is always a double thing, a particular and
an individual, a less and a greater, a lower and
a higher, an actual and an ideal, a temporal
and an eternal, in one and the same circle of
being, the conclusion was confirmed. Whoever
stays long enough with the terms to comprehend
them, feels that the first series must be subordi-
nated to the second. When again we studied
life in its real nature, and viewed it as a living
process, not as a static whole to be analysed, but
as a living being forever changing and developing,
we saw how antithetic selfishness is to the very
processes of life and growth. Because to live
is to receive ; to live is to act ; to live is to renew
life and grow. To live is to be perpetually and
progressively created, and to unfold without end
toward the higher childhood to God. But the
selfish life can neither richly receive, nor give,
nor grow. And it thwarts God's creative activity
upon it, and arrests its own ascent. It shuts
itself out from all the great worlds and lives a
perpetually narrowing life. Of all the fatuities
and sins of our human kind, selfishness is the
deepest, most inclusive, most persistent, most
egregious. The battle against it is life's great
conflict; self-conquest is life's great triumph;

What Man is Working Toward 249

and the attainment of the higher humility Hfe's
last glory. We must indeed die to live, but then
we live indeed.

If now we have won our conclusion, if we have
dug down to the Rock of the deeper self, we may
raise again the question of our chapter: What
is man in the world for? What is he working
toward? What is he seeking to become? And
again we may answer that he is seeking to pro-
gress from self-consciousness, relationship, and
service into consciousness, relationship, and ser-
vice of God ; from a particular into a universal ;
from an ensphered particular, or child, into an
ensphering, producing universal, or parent; from
narrow, meagre, temporal life, or individuality,
into broad, rich, eternal life, or personality; and
from a child of the animal Idngdom into a child
of the spiritual kingdom, — ^that is into a child
of God, and so into a complete man. He is
seeking to attain the higher life. His deep
quest, even through all his bewildered struggle,
is for the truer, larger self. He dies to live the
larger life.

A natural question here arises, and with its
answer we may close the chapter. If thus loss
is gain, if losing is finding, why does it still
seem like sacrifice? and why is it still so diffi-
cult ? Because it is sacrifice, genuine sacrifice ; of
the individual self to the All, of the particular
to the universal, of the intimate little to the

250 God and Man

remote large, of the vivid to the vague self,
of the warm and living present to the seeming-
cold and distant future, and of the primordial
lower to the subsequent higher. It never will
appear, in the first instance, anything but sacri-
fice. The higher birth will always be in pain.
It will represent to the end the costly glories of
the Higher Life.

CHAPTER X
god's process: or god's movement manward

LET us run back over the road by which we
have come. We saw the vast World-All
as it enfolds the life of man with its many spheres.
We saw the wide-ranging and corresponding
gamut of our human powers. We saw the
World- All at work, or the priority and parent-
hood and greater working of God. We strove
to see why man is not more conscious of the
divine working. We saw man at work. We
inquired what God is working toward. And we
saw what man is working toward, or what he
is seeking to become.

We now wish to see how God proceeds, how
He comes to humanity, the way He develops
the complete man.

God develops man by a great process of Self-
revelation, by a vast and perpetual coming to
man.

The forth-going of God, the coming of God

to man, is the first and fundamental condition of

air hope and progress. It is most essential to

realise this. And it is profoundly and abidingly

251

252 God and Man

helpM. God must come to man in creative
activity, creating his higher Hfe as He created
his lower. Man could not create the one; he
can not create the other. And he is an unfinished
creation. As God went forth and created man's
body and lower life and laid in the depths of
his being a germinal nature capable of higher
things, so He must continue to go forth and
create man's higher life. Whatever man himself
may do to achieve, he can do nothing at bottom
to create. What he does is indeed great, but
what God does is primal. He is as helpless in his
higher being without the prior and parenting
God as he is in his lower without the anteced-
ent Universe. The vernal sun must precede the
flowers of every spring. How absolutely our
higher nature waits upon God, as Spring waits
upon the sun, we do not begin to appreciate.
Next to the fact that God and man exist, is the
supreme condition of the priority of God. Things
must begin at the primal Source. Unless God
acts, unless He goes forth toward man, nothing is
possible. Nature flows from Him. Life streams
from Him. He is the absolute pre-condition.
Unless He moves manward in continuous crea-
tive activity there is no possible efflorescence for
man.

The way God forever flows forth in continuous
creative process is not duly contemplated. For
if He perpetually proceeds, if He is the fountain-

God's Movement Manward 253

head of all the universal streams, and if without
Him nothing comes into being or maintains
existence for an instant, then that He should go
forth toward the higher life of man, would seem
indeed most natural and not strange; and that
without such procession no higher life would
be possible, would seem indeed impressively cer-
tain. He must come to man as a parent to a
child. Unless He were forever coming all man's
aspiration and toil would be vain. He could
no more attain unto a developed mind than unto
a developed body.

How all things wait upon God and how per-
fectly and absolutely He is their pre-condition,
how He is the originating activity of all being
and becoming, of all earth's birth and growth,
we little regard because of the very magnitude
and depth of the truth. If God moves, then all
things are possible. If God is God indeed, if
He undertakes for man, then "exceeding great
and precious promises" are in no way absurd.
Here is the first postulate of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Here is the secret of life. Here also is
the key of failure. Humanity's great failure is not
on the surface but in the depths. It is failure
to believe in a living God. The true vision of
God lingers and the divine Fatherhood is emptied
of content, therefore the human childhood is
feeble and poor. "If God is for us, who is against
us?" But if He be not a living God, if He be

2 54 God and Man

not the infinite quickening Background of whom
and through whom- are all things, if He be not as
active as fire, as vivifying as light, as creative
as spirit, then unrelieved despair falls like a
shadow athwart the fields of life. From such
night and despair we turn quickly away.

If, on the contrary, as is true, God is the "infi-
nite and eternal Energy from whom all things
proceed," if He is the everlasting God, the Al-
mighty, the "Creator of the ends of the earth,
who fainteth not, neither is weary," if He is the
universal enfolding Life in whom we all "live
and move and have our being," then "all things
are possible to him that believeth."

And if He is God indeed. He must be so after
His own magnitudes. He must act after an
infinite sort. He must move in ways majestical.
Our expectancy, therefore, should be great.
We should anticipate something worthy of God.
We should look for a divine Self-revelation, a
movement of God toward man, paralleling in the
realm of Spirit His vast Self-expression in nature.
That is, we should be prepared for a revelation
of the divine Background, His infinite and eternal
Divinity; we should be prepared for the coming
of God to man in the sufficiency of a divine Incar-
nation; we should be prepared for a perfect
communication of Himself in the final and un-
changing procession of the Spirit, For some
such surpassing fulness of His coming, we should

God's Movement Manward 255

wait expectant, if God is God indeed in the
realms of Spirit as He is in the fields of space.

The Divine then must go forth creating and
to create, or God is not God. If the story of
the higher life told of the priority of the human,
then of course man would have become God.
True Godhood must create. God must come,
therefore, in perpetual creative process to the
unfinished life of man.

Not only so, but He must provide as well a
higher spiritual Environment for man's higher
life. As God has uttered Himself, as He has
externalised Himself, as He has gone forth in a
vast physical environment corresponding to man's
body, so we should expect Him to go forth in
a vast spiritual Environment corresponding to
man's soul. God does not create things within
the inner circle of divine Spirit. They would
not be things. They would be pure Spirit as
He is. Creation is through externalisation. God
creates and develops things through a vast divine
procession, through a vast externalisation, through
an infinite Environment, lower and higher. With-
out an environment, no living, growing thing.
Without a great affectional, mental, spiritual
Environment, no developing, maturing, human
spirit. The indispensable, the absolute necessity
of a great higher Environment, forever mothering
the higher life of man, must profoundly impress
all modem minds. Some such conception, some

256 God and Man

such reality, as the Kingdom of Heaven is the
first postiilate of all truly human life. Conse-
quently, according to God's own forth-going
creative process, and according to the deep
needs of the unfinished human spirit. He must
provide a great higher Environment for man.

And He must go forth delivering man from
the overwhelming dominion of the lower environ-
ment. The lower gravitations are too puissant.
Nothing but new celestial gravitations, mightier
than they, proceeding perpetually from a great
higher Environment, could equal the task. How
man ever could sever himself from the clay and
"work out the beast" without a positive King-
dom of Heaven, in which almighty God was
forever coming to his higher nature, is past
comprehension.

God must go forth too and precede with kindred
life the kind of life He would develop. If He
would develop the human heart, He must sur-
round it with a world of affection. If He would
develop the human mind. He must surround it
with a world of thought. If He would develop
the spirit of man, He must brood it with a world
of spirit. Throughout the wide biological realms
everywhere life mothers life. It is not different
in the finer kingdom of the soul. In the ultimate
view God Himself is man's great Environment.
The brooding life of God forever enfolds his
human life. Love begetting love. Mind quickening

God's Movement Manward 257

mind, and Spirit brooding spirit. Everywhere
He precedes with kindred Hfe the kind of hfe
He would develop. "We love because He first
loved us."

Finally God must go forth and own and legiti-
mate our boundless human aspiration. For what
would all man's struggle boot if the heavens were
brass and the stars in their courses fought against
his ideals? He must know that the background
of Reality is kindred and kind. He must know
that his aspiration fits into the divine Life as
the lily fits into the sunlight. He must know that
his deep prayer, his high resolve, his immemorial
struggle for the right, his unwearying quest of
the "beauty of holiness," is heaven-suggested
and heaven-sent. Back of all he must know
that "every good gift and every perfect boon is
from above, " and that he lives his high life by the
inspiration of almighty God. Otherwise virtue
is the most homeless thing in all a hostile Universe.

God accordingly must come to man, forever
creating our higher life as He creates our lower,
forever providing a higher Environment as He
provides a lower, effectually delivering man from
the overwhelming dominion of the lower, every-
where preceding with kindred life the kind of
life He would develop, and owning and legiti-
mating our boundless human aspiration.

May we now hope that this foreword has been

258 God and Man

adequate? May we conclude that a just sense
of the inherent and absolute necessity of the
perpetual coming of God to man has been gained ?
a realisation of the primal fact that unless He
were forever coming, no aspiration ever would
spring, or prayer rise, or grace grow? If so,
we now may ask. How has God come? and how
does He thereby develop man?

He has come first of all in the way in which
humanity needs Him. We need before all else
to feel that everything has its source in God and
proceeds from Him, to know that the background
of the Universe is divine. Accordingly, God
has revealed Himself as the God of nature and
of humanity, as the ground of all being and be-
coming. He has revealed Himself as the seat
of all law, the spring of all truth, the fountain of
all beauty, the source of all ideals. He has made
Himself known as the Love back of love, the
Thought back of thought, the Will back of will,
and the Spirit back of spirit. He has manifested
Himself as the infinite and eternal Ground of
universal existence, by whom stars shine and
kings rule, by whom planets move and nations
rise, by whom the most ancient heavens are and
are strong and the seasons come and go and the
race renews its youth and life advances in a divine
progression and all things move toward cosmic
beauty. In a word. He has revealed Himself
as the illimitable Sea and Source of all being and

God's Movement Manward 259

process, into whose infinite Life all worlds are
set as the stars are set into the sky. This is
God's primal Self-revelation.

If it is necessary, first of all, to realise the
infinite divine Background, to feel Divinity
everywhere' — Divinit}^ in nature and Divinity in
life, Divinity in law and Divinity in truth,
Divinity in beauty and Divinity in ideals, —
and if, before all else, God has revealed Himself
as the divine ground of all being and process,
we need next to realise that He has come yet
closer in an ineffable divine Incarnation.

Though we see God as the Divinity that hedges
everything, still the vision is vague. Though
we see Him pervading all and enfolding all like
an ether, yet His presence is like some fine essence
diffused. We can not grat,p Him. We can not
hold Him. It is like grasping the atmosphere
or holding communion with the sky. If He would
gather Himself up like some mighty sun, if He
would manifest Himself in some glorious incar-
nation, as concrete and definite as the star of
Bethlehem, then we could see Him and know
Him. This is what God has done. Out of
vagueness into definiteness, out of the universal
into the particular, He has come. The divine
electricity has gathered itself up in a manifesta-
tion point of light. And this is what humanity
needs. It is true we need a divine background
as universal as nature, but we need also a divine

26o God and Man

foreground as definite as a human parent. We
need a great ideal, fathomless Personality set
alongside our human life, who shall be to us
through all the years what our parents have been,
but vastly more. Until then our great higher
Environment is incomplete. So God must come
near. He must come into our humanity in the
fulness of incarnate Divinity. He must come
as Son of God and son of man. When we can
see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,
and when, beholding as in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, we can be changed into the same image
from glory unto glory, then we are no longer
"infants crying in the night," no longer "infants
crying for the light. " God has come near then
indeed, and the "Day Star" may arise in our
hearts. "Behold I bring you good tidings of
great joy which shall be to all the people, for unto
you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord," And he that hath
seen Him hath seen the Father. This is God's
richer coming to man, His richer self-revelation,
the humanising of God, His perfect incarnation.
God has come as incarnate Divinity.

If we could feel the divine Background every-
where, then apprehend the incarnate Divinity,
the nearer approach of the Divine to the human,
and then finally receive the divine Spirit of it all,
the circle would be complete and our human need
would be filled to the full. For indeed nothing

God's Movement Manward 261

is richly received until its spirit is received.
Hence we must receive the spirit of art, we must
receive the spirit of beauty, we must receive
the spirit of truth, or the deep being and soul
of them, is not won. For this unchanging reason
every deep thing seeks at last to impart its spirit.
A great poem, a great philosophy, a great picture,
a great symphony, a great life, every form and
realm of Reality, seeks to open its heart and pour
forth its spirit. It is so with religion. It is so
with God. He would reveal His very self. He
would pour forth His essential life He would
come at last as divine Spirit to spirit. This is
the fullest coming of God to man. For when
Spirit to spirit speaks, the perfect has come.
At last divine Spirit — for every deepest reason.
Spirit is final. It is the highest possible concept.
We can not think of an3rthing beyond. It is the
ultimate and absolute for our thought. God is
Spirit. We are spirit in possibility, tending
toward spirit in actuality, tending toward the
realisation of ourselves in spiritual personality.
Spirit is the richest of our human terms. Spirit
is back of all, the creative essence, the inclusive
principle of ever3rthing. To live in a rich con-
sciousness of God as Spirit, to live by perpetual
divine inspiration, to unfold and unfold toward
a fine and great spiritual personality, is a most
magnificent growth and goal. Is an3/thing richer
than life in the secret and soul of things? Is

262 God and Man

anything more exalted than elevation into the
spiritual unity and atmosphere of things? Is
anything more glorious than to be a spirit?
It is the free supernal life of the sons of God.
How free it is ! how strong ! how pure ! One pene-
trates through the outer folds of things and
enters the inner soul. One dwells where life is
fluid and free, where spirit is creative, consti-
tuting forms. One is taken into the secret of
life, where thought rises and love begins and
will springs, where inspiration enters, and the
genius of man and the Spirit of God come to-
gether in the freedom and power of new creation.
This is life. Here is what the poet is seeking
when he pierces through the bodies of things
and lives in their essence and soul. Here is what
the artist is seeking when he penetrates through
the forms and dwells in the deep secret and spirit
of art. Here is what the philosopher is seeking
when he looks back of and beyond all appearance
and abides in the heart and soul of Reality.
And here is what all deep lives are seeking in
every kingdom of thought and action. Here too
is what the awakened soul is seeking. It asks,
for all life and for life as a whole, what in other
ways we ask for a part of life. It demands that
all life shall be lived in the Spirit. It strives
to realise its true self as spirit and to dwell per-
petually in the atmosphere and divine environ-
ment of Spirit. It seeks in fine a great, free,

God's Movement Man ward 263

holy, and creative life in perfect and joyous
alliance with God. May we not then say that,
for reasons as deep as the divine Life and the
deeps of the soul, God finally and consummately
reveals Himself to man in the procession of the
Spirit ?

But if the dispensation of the Spirit is thus
final and consummate, why the Incarnation?
Without the Incarnation there could be no rich
communication or rich reception of the Spirit.
Nature can impart something of her spirit even
in winter. But when she has uttered herself
in the multitudinous forms and processes of
spring and summer, she can impart her spirit in
thousand-fold ampler way. A great life can
communicate something of its spirit even through
a photograph. But when like Luther it lives
in community of life with a people, and reveals
itself in great words and utters itself in greater
deeds, it can communicate its spirit to that people
with thousand-fold augmentation. Even so God
can impart His spirit to a degree through the
silent words of stars and worlds. But the Pente-
cost of His spirit will not come until He has
revealed Himself in the rm.searchable riches of
His incarnate Son.

We may find this great truth everywhere.
Charles Darwin can impart his new spirit to the
world of science only through a long and faithful
life of persistent and patient expression. Na-

264 God and Man

poleon must utter himself in appalling battles, in
astounding designs, and in bewildering achieve-
ments, before he can imbue a nation with his
spirit and array a continent in arms. Dante
must become the "voice often silent centuries"
and incarnate himself in the most serious of
world-poems before he can pour forth his spirit
into many generations. Beethoven must em-
body his spirit in immortal symphonies before he
can pour it into the soul of the world. Michael
Angelo must reveal his inner life in great pictures,
and utter it in many marbles, before he can give
his spirit to the world of art. Every true mother
strives to impart her spirit to her growing boy.
But how? She seeks by love, by deed, by word,
by living her life, by self-revelation through
incarnation, to pervade with her deeper spirit
his unfolding life. A great university would
imbue the troops of youth who press yearly
through her gates. They have caught already
something of her spirit before they came. They
receive something more through the first look
and touch and breath. But the depth and
fulness thereof can not yet be given. She must
speak first with many voices and shine through
many men; she must reveal her ideals in expand-
ing vision and tell anew the tradition of her
generations; she must repeat indeed her long
history and relive her life before the mind and
imagination of this her new generation of children.

God's Movement Manward 265

before she can give to them the secret and deep
spirit of her Hfe. It is not different in other
realms. The New World can impart its new
spirit to the immigrant only slowly and through
most varied and prolonged self-manifestation.
And on a larger scale the Occident can give its
progressive spirit to the Orient only by first
showing forth its world-masteries, its boundless
wealths, its amazing sciences and great literatures,
and its impressive and convincing achievements.
In short, neither nature nor art, neither a nation
nor an individual, neither a civilisation nor an
institution can richly pour forth its spirit except
through a rich self -manifest ion. Spirit every-
where waits upon expression. It is so in religion.
It is so with the Holy Spirit. And even when
the supreme Incarnation has come, Christ stands
face-to-face with His first disciples, unable as
yet to pour forth the depths of His spirit. He
first must reveal and reveal Himself in words
and deeds; He must show forth and in a way
repeat His Incarnation before their heart and
understanding and imagination, ere He can
permeate and fill them with His Spirit divine.
At the last Pentecost ; but first the Incarnation.
God reveals Himself in light and Life before He
reveals Himself in Spirit.

We now have contemplated the Self-revelation
of God, the coming of God to man in three-fold

266 God and Man

form: divine Background, incarnate Divinity,
divine Spirit. It is illuminating to note that,
in a somewhat similar way, essentially, a great
human personality reveals itself. Take Bis-
marck for instance. No one can draw near to
modern Germany without feeling his great life.
He pervades the nation like a subtle presence.
Vaguely at least we feel him everywhere. So
much we gather at once from the atmosphere
we breathe. But let the national history be
read and the unique biography be studied; let
his masterful personality and his changing times
pass before our thoughtful imagination, and how
different the impression. Now the vague becomes
vivid and full. The dominating personality stands
out clear and strong. The mind is impressed a
thousand-fold with its reality and power. Now
also the presence and might of his re-moulding
spirit are felt and profoundly realised.

In like manner essentially a great civilisation
reveals itself. Look at the Greek civilisation.
Western Europe in the Middle Ages felt its in-
fluence at least vaguely everywhere. It was
hidden in the roots of its life. It was present in
the phrases of its speech. It was in the forms
of its thought. It was in the ideals of its imagi-
nation. It was in the instinctive movement
of its spirit toward freedom. Dimly at any rate
its pervasive presence was felt through the cen-
turies. But when the sublime creations of its

God's Movement Manward 267

literature were made known; when the perfect
forms of its art were re-discovered; when the
transcendent constructions of its philosophy were
realised; when the greatness and finish of its
personalities were appreciated; and when the
freedom and originality and abundance of its
total life were consciously perceived, what a
change followed! It was like a new birth. It
was the Renaissance of the nations. Then too
the rich spirit of its literature and the graceful
spirit of its art and the deep spirit of its philosophy
and the free spirit of its life could be poured forth
and received in unwonted measure.

This three-fold self-revelation is no chance and
vagrant happening. Rather it is in the deep and
essential nature of life. At the present time
it may be seen on a stupendous scale in the
Awakening of China. That great quiescent Em-
pire vaguely has felt the presence of the Western
World. It has been troubled by its irresistible
power. Though it only dimly apprehended it,
it dreaded it. But when a vast revelation of the
civilisations of half a World shall have taken
place, and when China, like Japan, shall have
drunk deeply of the new spirit of the Occident,
what a change will follow. There will be an
awakening unparalleled likely in the annals of
nations, a renaissance of the oldest, most populous,
and most unchanging of human societies, the
coming of a New China.

268 God and Man

How similar all this is to the revelation of God.
First He is felt as a vague Presence pervading
everything ; and though dimly apprehended, often
He is dreaded. Then a vast Self -revelation takes
place. The peoples that sit in darkness see a
great Light. The Light of the world dawns.
The Incarnation comes. And then the passing
of the external form of the Incarnation, and the
pouring out of the deep life and Spirit of it, the
coming of the Spirit of truth, the final and com-
plete coming of God to man.

Can any of these revelations be dispensed with?
Would the Self-manifestation of God be complete
if either of them were lacking? The necessary
answer has been more than suggested. To leave
out the first would be like leaving out the Ground
of the world. The most indispensable of all
revelations is that of the divine Background of
the Universe, the primal and all-inclusive fact
that in God we live and move and have our
being, as Paul standing, not in the streets of
Jerusalem, but in the Areopagus of Athens,
declared. To leave out the second would be
like leaving the sun out of our heavens and walk-
ing by the dim light of the stars. To leave out the
third would be to leave out the deepest secret
and soul and dynamic of life. Could the Renais-
sance take place without the rising of the sun of

God's Movement Manward 269

Greek civilisation? And could the spirit thereof
be imparted without that illumination? Can
the awakening of China take place without the
revelation of our modem civilisation? And can
the new spirit be given without that revelation?

The indispensability of the first is manifest.
The incompleteness of life and of the great Envi-
ronment, without the divine Background, needs
not further emphasis.

It is good however to see more comprehensively
and penetratingly how deeply essential is the
second. God can fully reveal Himself only
through Incarnation. Expression is through ex-
ternalisation. Revelation is through creation.
In the nature of things the highest Self-revelation
must be through the highest form of creation.
So God can more perfectly reveal Himself only
through Incarnation. This history richly con-
firms. The Incarnation of Christ has revealed
the divine in and back of everything as nothing
else has ever revealed it. The divine Background
has become incomparably more real.

Moreover the Divine can not adequately come
to the human except through Incarnation. Lower
forms of Reality are too poor to express the
wealth of the divine life. But in His incarnate
Son God can come to man in inexhaustible
richness.

Through the Incarnation also the Divine
comes out of the vague into the definite, out of

270 God and Man

the universal into the particular; it gathers itself
up in a manifestation point of light. It defines
itself to the human mind.

Through the Incarnation too God draws inti-
mately near. He becomes Immanuel. He is
no longer far away. His immanence becomes
a living reality to human consciousness.

Through the Incarnation besides God shows
us the Divine and the human brought together,
the ideal realised, the perfect life attained.

Through the Incarnation, furthermore, God
sets alongside of each developing life a great
inexhaustible personality.

Finally , through the Incarnation God can reveal
Himself in the supreme way as Spirit and impart
Himself richly as Spirit. In and through all
this God provides a great higher Environment —
a thing as necessary to the higher life of man as
the lower environment is to his body. As the
rising of the sun brings the infinite universe into
vitalising touch with the earth and into efficacy,
providing a boundless environment of light and
warmth, wherein and whereby a great kingdom
of life alone is made possible upon the earth,
so the Incarnation brings the infinite God into
effective touch with man, creating an illimitable
higher Environment of light and life, wherein
man's higher life is naturally at home and whereby
it is endlessly unfolded toward perfection.

The Incarnation makes the divine Background

God's Movement Manward 271

revelation incomparably more rich and real.
It makes also the divine Spirit revelation in its
fulness possible. And in itself it is a revelation
and a magnitude, comparable to the other two
magnitudes, a greatness worthy of the great God.
Is it possible that such a magnitude can be super-
fluous? Can such a Foreground to the great
World-Picture be dispensed with?

Or are we right in conceiving the Incarnation
as such a magnitude? God has made the divine
Background revelation an illimitable magnitude.
He has made the divine Spirit revelation such a
magnitude. Are we not to expect that He will
make the Incarnation also a like magnitude?
It is the infinite God who is revealing Himself
in each case. Will not each revelation therefore
be after the greatness of God and so have the
infinite quality about it?

Moreover every sphere that surrounds our
human life has the same boundless character,
the same infinite quality. Nature has it; law
has it ; truth has it ; beauty has it ; the ideal has it.
What would life do without vast nature and
illimitable law and infinite truth and inexhaustible
beauty and the unlimited ideal? Though God
has made each Reality -sphere touch our humanity
with the definiteness of the hand of gravity or
the touch of the sunbeam, yet He has made each
sphere open out beyond us with the vastness of

272 God and Man

the sky. He has combined the two, definite
touch and ilHmitable magnitude, in every great
sphere. If this is the character that God has
given to all these Reality -spheres that enfold us,
what character may we expect Him to give to
the highest life-spheres? Shall they alone lack
the illimitable quality ? or shall any one of them ?
Shall man's body even move about in greater
worlds than man's spirit? Shall the lowest
environment be given a greatness that is denied
the highest? No; rather all alike shall be given
the boundless character. As all these great
spheres of Reality have the illimitable quality —
nature, law, truth, beauty, ideals — so the supreme
Life-spheres, the ineffable Self-revelations of God
— divine Background, incarnate Divinity, and
divine Spirit — shall have it likewise. If God has
set man into boundless worlds everywhere else,
will He set him into diminutive spheres in religion?
The human mind can not abide a cabined
world. It cannot endure a narrowed and limited
truth, nor an exhaustible beauty, nor a finite
ideal. Much less can it endure a limited supreme
Environment. What were a bounded divine
Background? or a limited Christ? or a finite
Spirit? It were a narrow world unworthy of
the infinite God, unadorable to man, and withal
fruitless. As every other great Reality -sphere
has the illimitable qualit}^ so it would appear has
the Incarnation. Otherwise it could not satisfy

God's Movement Manward 273

our human mind in its demand for the Infinite,
nor meet our human Hfe-need.

And, in the last analysis, what is it that gives
to all these great spheres their boundless character ?
It is God. It is His illimitable life pouring per-
petually through them. Consequently it is not
strange that they should have a kind of infinite
quality about them. This is pre-eminently true
of the highest realms. Through them God pours
His infinite life most abundantly. Through them
He would create an infinite divine Environment
for man's higher life. Through them He Himself
would become man's infinite Environment. But
He can not pour His boundless life through them,
and through them become man's infinite Environ-
ment, without imparting to them an illimitable
character. Therefore the incarnate Divinity also
must be a revelation and a magnitude, comparable
to the other magnitudes, the divine Background
and the divine Spirit. Is it possible that such
a magnitude can be either theoretically or prac-
tically superfluous? Who that deeply knows
the greatness of the revelation in Christ could
dispense with it without a sense of infinite loss?
The "Light of the World," the luminous Fore-
ground of the divine World-Picture would be
gone.

Can God's final Self -revelation be dispensed
with? His infinite coming in the fulness of the
Spirit? It is enough to know that no deep thing

274 God and Man

is fully revealed until it reveals itself as spirit,
and that no illuminated life can rest content
until it enters into the heart and secret and soul
of Reality. Unless God comes as divine Spirit,
God in His fulness has not come, Man in every
Sacred City of life, and in every Upper Room of
Art or Truth or Beauty or Religion, waits with
upturned face for the Spirit's Pentecost.

If it is impossible on the one hand for the mind
to dispense with either divine revelation without
infinite loss, is it possible on the other hand for it
to add anything thereto, even in thought? Can
we conceive of anything additional that will make
the revelation more complete? One finds it
instructive and valuable to make the attempt.
One finds first that nothing could be more funda-
mental or needful than the divine Background;
second, that nothing could be more ideal-real
than the divine Incarnation; third, that nothing
could be higher and more perfect than divine
Spirit. Together, they make up the complete
revelation of the Divine to the human. It is
impossible we think for the mind to add thereto,
as it were, a fourth dimension.

This is the threefold Self-revelation of God,
omitting either form of which, the mind feels a
sense of grave incompleteness and unspeakable
loss, and to the totality of which it is unable to
add a fourth, even in thought, making it more
complete.

God's Movement Manward 275

Is it possible now to indicate with any degree
of definiteness wherein these three forms differ
from one another and wherein they are alike?
Let us try.

The divine Background is the primal Self-
revelation of God. It is a revelation through
externalisation, through creation, in nature and
humanity — or in the cosmos. It is the revelation
of God as Source, as Creator, as Father — not of
course in the fulness of fatherhood. It is the
revelation of God as the universal, or as the
unitary principle of Reality. And it is the revela-
tion of God as Spirit — vaguely and meagrely, it
is true, still really as Spirit.

The divine Incarnation also is a Self-revelation
of God through creation. It is indeed the cul-
mination of revelation through creation, or the
perfect Incarnation. God externalises Himself
in every form of nature and of humanity. But
here is the culminating form of creation, God's
supreme externalisation. So here is the richest
revelation possible through a created form. The
incarnate Divinity is the revelation of God as
light, truth, reason, life. It is the revelation of
God as a particular in the supreme form, and as
the principle of individuation. It is the revela-
tion of God as perfect union of the universal and
the particular, as the ideal realised, the perfect
life attained. Finally, it is the richer revelation
of God as Spirit, — not Spirit in its final and

276 God and Man

complete fulness, and still no longer the vague
and general divine Background.

The divine Spirit is the Self-revelation of God
through nature, humanity, and the Incarnation, —
through the totality of creation, or through the
total externalisation of God. It is the perfect
Spirit of God pouring through His perfect crea-
tion— not a revelation through a new creation.
It is the higher Universal. There is a lower unity
of the Spirit, and there is a higher unity of the
Spirit. The lower unity has not been enriched
by the Incarnation. The higher unity includes
the Incarnation, includes the particular, and rises
above it into a higher inclusive unity. The higher
Universal includes the particular and transcends
it. The divine Spirit is the final and complete
Self-revelation of God. It is complete because
it includes the preceding moments, divine Back-
ground, and incarnate Divinity. It is the revela-
tion of God as God, as Absolute Spirit.

We have here what we may call the Spiral of
the Spirit. From the earth it rises circling through
a sea of light, mounting up and losing itself in the
mysterious radiance of the Heavens, completing
itself in one majestic perfect circuit. From the
divine Ground of the first revelation, up through
the sea of light of the Incarnation, to the high
Heavens of the life of God, the complete revela-
tion of the divine as Spirit, it ascends. The
Spiral of the Spirit is Spirit in the beginning,

God's Movement Manward 277

middle, and end. The divine Ground is Spirit,
though opaque. The Incarnation is Spirit, re-
vealed in a transparent atmosphere of light. The
divine Spirit is Spirit revealed in the fulness of
its nature, God in His glory. The Spiral of the
Spirit includes all the forms of the manifestation.
Though the highest form transcends the others,
it includes them; as maturity, though it tran-
scends childhood and youth, yet includes them.
The Spiral of the Spirit, as it ascends, passes
round in its course into opposition to itself at
its beginning, and then rising higher it returns
upon itself again when the circuit is complete
at the summit. The Incarnation is the side in
opposition, when the Spiral of the Spirit stands
over against itself, facing its own beginning and
its close. It is Spirit in its completest objecti-
fication. Spirit in its most perfect externalisation,
where perfect Personality stands over against
perfect Personality. But the Incarnation is in-
cluded therein and the circuit is one Spiral of
the Spirit throughout.

Our figure is not perfect, to be sure, and must
not be pressed unduly. Still within limits it may
represent the threefold Self -manifestation of God.
The second stage is not reached without the first,
nor the third without the first and second. And
the second, when it comes, rises above and in-
cludes the first; and the third rises above and
includes the first and second. Here again our

2 78 God and Man

figure is faithful to the Reality. The Incarna-
tion does not come until after the divine Back-
ground revelation, nor the divine Spirit till after
the Incarnation. And the Incarnation, when it
comes, rises above and includes the primal revela-
tion, revealing and enriching its meaning; and
the divine Spirit rises above and includes them
both, revealing and enlarging the meaning of
each. For the divine Fatherhood means vastly
more since Christ has come, and both it and
the Incarnation mean more since the Spirit was
given.

And although these three modes of Self -mani-
festation were historical and epochal in their
appearance, none of them ever really has passed
away. The outward form of the Incarnation has
passed, the reality abides. Essentially they all
abide. They co-exist, and together they make
up now the threefold and perfect Self-revelation
of God to man. The divine Background abides
and is the constant field against which the incar-
nate Divinity is set, giving to it fathomless mean-
ing. The Incarnation abides and makes the divine
Background for us ever more and more luminous,
large, and deep. And the divine Background and
the Incarnation together are still the revelations
through which the Spirit is poured forth, while
the outpouring Spirit in turn for ever makes both
the divine Background and the Incarnation shine
with deeper truth.

God's Movement Manward 279

This is the way God reveals Himself and comes
to man.

Looking at it now from the human side, what
shall we say? It is a revelation and a coming
in accordance with our nature. It accords with
us as instinctive, as intellectual, and as spiritual
beings. Of course here there can be no abso-
lute delimitations. The lines can not be drawn
with nicety. For our instinctive nature suffuses
the intellect and the spirit ; and these in turn are
implicated with our instinctive being.

Naturally the divine Background revelation
appeals first of all to our instincts and feelings,
our faiths and intuitions. It is the elementary
revelation of the spiritual unity of the World-All.
It comes to us accordingly with its appeal to the
primal unity of our nature. This does not mean,
to be sure, that it makes no approach whatever
to the intellect and the spirit. Its primary appeal
however is not to them. It must be remembered
that the intellect may be even largely developed,
yet be unaccustomed to sustained thought God-
ward. It does not follow, therefore, that because
the intellect of a nation or of an individual is well
developed, necessarily it must be correspondingly
occupied with things divine. It is deplorably true
that even yet, when the higher revelations long since
have come, the intellect is little used upon the high-
est things, and few people love God with the mind.

28o God and Man

The Incarnation is the great revelation and
coming of the Divine to the intellect of man. It
is an appeal to the heart and spirit too, but pre-
eminently it is God's coming to the mind. It is
the Divine gathering itself up in a manifestation-
point, the Divine coming near. But this is lan-
guage importing appeal to the intellect. The
Incarnation is the coming of the Universal and
Divine into the particular. The Divine particu-
larises itself in stars and worlds, in trees and
flowers, in all the forms of nature. Now wher-
ever there is particularisation there is a resting-
point for the mind. The mind does not easily
think about a diffused fire-mist. It does think
easily about concreted worlds. Differentiation is
thought's opportunity. Objects appeal to sub-
jects. Therefore when the Divine humanises
itself and comes to man in personal form, it is
pre-eminently an approach to his conscious
intellect.

The Incarnation also is the union of the true
Universal with the perfect particular. The per-
fect particular is human personality at its summit.
The true Universal is Divinity itself and not a
semblance thereof. The perfect Incarnation is
the perfect union of the two. In such a life one
will see the pronounced and perfect individual,
but it will be the mirror in which one will see
also the perfect Universal, the Divine. As in
the perfect picture, one will see the true and

God's Movement Manward 281

definite whole with characteristic individuality,
but will see also the shining universal. Or as
in the perfect poem, one will see the definite
unity and individuality, but will see as well the
universal truth and beauty. Every perfect thing
is the perfect union of the particular and the
universal; and one sees therein the glory of the
universal shining through the particular. But
the seeing is with open eyes. It is a live con-
sciousness that sees. So when one sees in the
Incarnate Christ, as in a mirror, the glory of God,
it is the awakened mind that sees.

The Incarnation, moreover, is the coming of
God in the supreme sense, as truth to the human
mind. It is also His coming as a supreme Life.
Truth alone, even the highest, can not satisfy
the whole mind. A life can. When God comes
as a Consciousness to a consciousness, then the
mind is filled and satisfied. Here again we have
notably the language of cognition. The Incar-
nation furthermore is the coming of God to man
as realised ideal. But only an exalted conscious-
ness can behold and appreciate the ideal. Here
once more we have the Incarnation as pre-emi-
nently an appeal to the mind.

Finally, the Incarnation is the supreme exter-
nalisation, the supreme objectification of God.
All things are externalisations of God — the
heavens above, the earth beneath, and man
upon the earth. All creation is externalisation,

282 God and Man

objectification. Christ is the supreme objecti-
fication. He is perfect PersonaUty set over
against perfect PersonaUty. Therefore He is the
supreme approach of God to consciousness.
Objects are for consciousness. All objectifica-
tion as such is an appeal to consciousness as such.
The very form of consciousness is subject-object.
Consequently the supreme objectification of the
Divine in the perfect personality of Christ is God's
supreme appeal to our consciousness as conscious-
ness. The Incarnation, we conclude, is the char-
acteristic appeal of God to the mind, the supreme
revelation of the Divine to the intellect.

But is not the revelation hard to comprehend?
Is not the great answer of God to the mind diffi-
cult to understand? No; and Yes. No, for the
Christ-story and the Christ-life appeal even re-
markably to children and childlike peoples. Yes,
for it transcends and outgoes the fascinated and
wondering minds of the wisest and greatest. But
in this it is like all of God's great answers in
nature, and like all of man's great answers in
science, in poetry, in philosophy. And it is like
the answer in all great personalities. They are near
yet far. Like the ocean, they break at our feet.
Like the ocean, they sweep out beyond our ken.
Christ too is near yet far. The heavens are all about
us, yet they are so high above us. This must ever
be and remain the character of all the highest reve-
lations, of all the supreme answers of God to man.

God's Movement Manward 283

The Incarnation, we have said, is God's great
movement toward man as an intellectual being.
See how this corresponds with Jesus' view of
Himself. No one knoweth who the Father is
save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son
willeth to reveal Him. I am the truth. I am
the way. I am the life. (And the life was the
light of men.) I am the light of the world; he
that foUoweth me shall not walk in the darkness
but shall have the light of life. To this end have
I been bom, and to this end am I come into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.

It corresponds likewise with the view others
had of Him. And the Logos (Word) became flesh
and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory,
glory as of the only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth. There was the true
light, even the light which light eth every man,
coming into the world. No man hath seen God
at any time; the only begotten Son, which is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
Him. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
That they might know the mystery of God, even
Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge hidden. Seeing it is God that
said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ. Even as truth is in Jesus.

The divine Background revelation is in the

284 God and Man

main the coming of the Divine to the instinctive
being of man, to his feeHngs, faiths, and intui-
tions. But the Incarnation is above all else the
coming of God to the mind. The Light of the
world is God's response to the human intellect.
This is very beautifully gathered up into a symbol
in the "glory of the Lord" that shone round
about the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem,
and in the ' ' light from heaven above the bright-
ness of the sun" that shone round about Paul
and those that journeyed with him.

If this be true the religion of the Incarnation
is the religion of light. Wherever this religion
goes truth can not be rationally slighted or human
intelligence lightly regarded. Wherever the in-
tellect is neglected in the interest of the feelings,
there inevitably religion must tend to lose the
characteristic light of the Incarnation, and to
decline toward the instinctive religion of the first
stage. Feeling itself can not remain high and
pure when truth is obscured. And wherever the
intellect is slighted in the interest of the spirit,
there again the spiritual life will lose its necessary
light and decline toward the spiritual status of
the primal stage. The Holy Spirit that was
poured out after the Incarnation was the " Spirit
of truth," who took of the things of Christ and
showed them unto the disciples, and so led them
on and on into all truth.

The final coming of God to man as divine Spirit

God's Movement Manward 285

is also a coming in accordance with our nature.
It is a coming of Spirit to spirit. Nothing more
than simple statement here is needed.

Thus the three modes of the Self -manifestation
of God are all in fitting accord with our human
nature.

They accord also with the stages of our human
development, instinctive, intellectual, and spirit-
ual, and with our threefold capacity to receive.
Here again enlargement may be left to the
thoughtful imagination.

This is the way God comes. Let us see how
all other realms and orders of Reality come.
Take nature for example. She reveals herself,
her presence and being, in the first instance,
through a thousand pressures, contacts, com-
merces, mainly through instinct, sense, feeling.
By-and-by she reveals herself more and more
in her diversity and individuality, in her varied
beauty, in her underlying law and order, and
in her implicit truth. Thus she makes her great
appeal to the mind. But in and through all the
foregoing, she leads more and more deeply and
surely into the spirit of diversity and form, iato
the spirit of beauty, into the spirit of law and
harmony, and into the spirit of truth. She makes
her deep ultimate appeal to the spirit — "Wie
spricht ein Geist zum andern Geist."

Take humanity. Take any parent. A mother

286 God and Man

reveals herself, her presence and being, to her
child, first through instinct and sense, feeling,
intuition, and faith. Intellect as such is little
to the fore; spirit less. By degrees, to the child's
and youth's awakening mind, she reveals, through
countless extemalisations in word and deed, her
individuality, her thought and will, her senti-
ments and faiths, her ideals and character, — in
a word, reveals the variety in unity of her com-
plex personality. But in and through all these
the real mother is seeking more and more richly
to impart the deep spirit of her truth, the spirit
of her ideals, the spirit of her faith, — ^the secret of
her life. This is the course and consummation
of every complete and full parenthood. But this
is typical. Every life that enters into full and
complete relationship with humanity reveals it-
self in the same way. Think of a Plato, a Paul,
an Augustine, a Dante, a Luther.

The wide realm of law and order, the kingdoms
of truth, the worlds of beauty, the starry sky of
ideals, reveal themselves in essentially the same
way. First they reveal their being and presence
vaguely through the feelings. Then they rise
with their light and truth like a growing day
upon the mind. And then, when the proceeding
is perfect and complete, through all the fore-
going manifestation they pour forth their subtle
creative spirit into man's soul.

It is so that an art or a craft or a calling or

God's Movement Manward 287

any life-work reveals itself. First, the vague
fact; next, the luminous reality; last, when the
process is true and successful, the deep spirit.

The worlds of science and art and music and
poetry and philosophy come to us in the same
way. They are all about us from our earliest
years. They affect us through our feelings in
ways that we only dimly realise. Later they
define themselves in lines of light and truth to
our awakened and fascinated minds. Thereby,
at length, the deeper, richer spirit of science and
art and music and poetry and philosophy imparts
itself to our awakening souls.

A language reveals itself to every unfolding
life in the same way. Thus essentially every
religion reveals itself. And thus even Christ
reveals Himself, as we before have seen. First
He is dimly felt; then He is consciously known;
then and thereby, if the rich process truly com-
pletes itself. His deep spirit is spiritually received.
But He must first externalise Himself in count-
less words and deeds; He must reveal Himself
anew before our heart and mind and imagination ;
He must, as it were, incarnate Himself again
before our awakened consciousness, ere His deep
spirit can be either richly given or received.

Thus essentially all the realms and orders of
Reality come. They must externalise themselves
in new springs and summers, in new creations
of art, in new dramas of life, in new triumphs

288 God and Man

of invention and skill, in new embodiments of
the ideal, before they can awaken and satisfy
man's mind, and before they can impart their
subtle and creative spirit to his soul.

And so God comes. And it is not strange that
thus He comes. All creation is a kind of incar-
nation. And Christ is the supreme and perfect
form thereof.

Historically this is the way God has come also
to mankind at large, vaguely and generally.
Nothing is more universal in the religious life
of the race than the dim sense of the Divine as
the ground of all existence. And in all creation
humanity everywhere have seen more or less
definite embodiments of the Divine. They have
seen it in sun and stars; they have seen it
in mountains and hills; in trees and fountains;
in rivers and the mysterious oceans ; in the storm-
cloud and the lightning. They have seen it in
birds and animals and insects. They have seen
it in their prophets and seers; in their kings and
heroes; in their tribal ancestors and demigods.
Every idol that ever has been set up, every an-
cestor that has been worshipped, every human
being that ever has been listened to as the voice
of God, bears witness to the fact that humanity
has thought that the Divine embodied itself and
came near. And truly what is all creation, as
we have said, but the externalisation, the mani-

God's Movement Manward 289

festation of God? Does He not clothe Himself
with light as with a vesture? And is not nature
the "living garment" of God? And wherever
there have been deep souls in all the world, have
they not yearned for something yet deeper?
Have they not craved and vaguely prayed for
the divine Spirit of it all? And have they not
received according to their measure? Have the
Socrateses and Platos, the Senecas and Epicte-
tuses, the Buddhas and Mohammeds prayed in
vain? "Of a truth I perceive that God is no
respecter of persons: but in every nation he that
feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is ac-
ceptable to Him."

It need not be said that this is the way his-
torically God has revealed Himself to Christendom
vividly and perfectly. The Old Testament is
before us. The Four Gospels are open. The
Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles and the
long and incomparable history of the Christian
Church are known. The divine Background is
there revealed:

Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place
In all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting. Thou art
God.

The Incarnation is there revealed: And the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we

290 God and Man

beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten
from the Father) , full of grace and truth. Behold,
a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.

And the divine Spirit is there poured forth:
Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not
many days hence. And when the day of Pente-
cost was now come, they were all together in
one place. And suddenly there came from heaven
a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and
it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And there appeared unto them tongues parting
asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one
of them. And they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit. — The divine Background — the primal re-
velation through creation in nature and humanity ;
the incarnate Divinity — ^the ideal-real Self -mani-
festation of Deity; the divine Spirit — ^the final
and perfect coming of God to man. God is
Spirit.

Moreover, this is the way God manifests Him-
self still. Wherever a human being is born, God
reveals Himself still as the divine Background
against which all our lives are set, as they are
set against the bosom of the mothering earth.
And wherever life becomes full-grown, and religion
goes forward to its unspeakably richer develop-
ments, there God still comes to man in His Son,
and Christ is formed within the hope of glory,
and life knows and rejoices in its unending

God's Movement Manward 291

Pentecost. To multitudes this is perpetually
profoundly true.

What is more, I venture to think that this is
the way God always will come to man, as long
as human nature is human, and as long as Spirit
speaks to and develops spirit through a created
universe. And broadly speaking, this is the way
all the realms and orders of Reality will come
to us and dawn upon us as long as consciousness
tabernacles as it does.

Furthermore it is a remarkable thing, yet to
a deeper view most natural, that this is the way
humanity has prophesied God would come.
Witness the whole history of the Jewish people.
Witness all the reported theophanies to mankind,
and the background of expectation, against which
they are to be set. And in addition, as soon as
we entered deeply into the nature of things, this
is the way we ourselves should expect God to
come. For how else could He come, if He is
Spirit, and we are spirit, and all nature between,
revealing yet concealing?

This threefold Self -revelation, these three modes
of manifestation — we have seen them everywhere.
They are in the coming of God to man. They
are in the revelations of nature. They are in
the revelations of humanity. They are indeed
in the revelation of a man to himself. It is, so
to say, first the natural, then the intellectual.

292 God and Man

then the spiritual. If we may thus describe it,
it is first the cruder earth and atmosphere, then
the fiaer, higher sunHght, and then the subtle
final ether. The ascending Spiral of the Spirit
is in all realms. It is in nature, it is in life; it
is in the Macrocosm, it is in the microcosm; it is
in the general coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is the way all the kingdoms of Reality come
to man, for it is the way that accords with his
nature. It is in a word the human way.

What now shall we say to this ? Are all things
being accommodated to man's nature, simply?
Does Nature come to man, and God come to
man, and all Reality come to man in the way
they do, simply because man is what he is? Is
all creation a Spiral of the Spirit, and is the
Self-manifestation of God a Spiral of the Spirit
because man's developing life is that? Rather,
are not the microcosm and the Macrocosm and
the entire Self -revelation of God what they are
because God is what He is? That there is a
correspondent something in the deep nature of
God, which is the reason why He utters Himself
in this threefold manner through all the realms
of Reality, must seem to me always the pro-
founder and truer view. Man and nature and
the Kingdom of Heaven are what they are because
God is what He is. All things flow forth from
and manifest His nature.

The divine Background revelation, the incar-

God's Movement Manward 293

nate Divinity manifestation, the divine Spirit
procession, — ^these, together and synchronously,
make up the great Environment of man's higher
life — the Universe of the Soul.

Does this seem to be a formative and growing
Universe, and one that is recent, coming into
manifestation in the annals of time? What, we
ask, could be more fitting to the living God, and
what could accord better with His continuously
creative Life? What also could be more har-
monious with an ever-developing cosmos? and
what more accordant with and grateful to an
ever becoming and developing humanity? This
is the growing Universe of the soul, the great
higher Environment of the spirit, which is as
necessary to man's higher life as earths and skies,
atmospheres and sunlights, are to his lower.

Finally in this great spiritual Environment, to
make at last the appeal to results, all things have
seemed possible to men. Here the heart has
come to its true expression and the mind has
come to flower and the soul has opened into
beauty. In this Kingdom of Heaven, the Johns
and the Pauls and the Magdalens and the Marys
have been produced. By their fruits ye shall
know them. Indeed this great higher Environ-
ment has proved as exquisitely and perfectly
adapted to man's higher life, as the lower atmos-
phere to his lungs, or as light to his eyes. For,

294 God and Man

verily, it is the Life of God that thus has come
near, and thus effectually has become the great
Environment of man's soul.

This is God's threefold Self -revelation, God's
movement manward, His process of developing
a full and complete man.

CHAPTER XI
man's progress: or man's movement godward

OUR first or naive stage of religious develop-
ment is the stage of instinct and feeling,
intuition and faith. It is the hereditary stage.
It is the stage of our childhood. It is the stage
that has not yet differentiated itself, that still
lives in community of life with humanity and
God. It is the nature-stage of religion, in which
the Divine is vaguely mingled with all the forms
and processes of nature, and with aU the springs
and streams of life.

Not that our naive stage of religious development
has no intellectual elements pervading it and no
spiritual elements implicit in it. It has. But the
characteristic fact is, not intellect or spirit, but
feeling. Just as the characteristic note of child-
hood is, not intellect or spirit, but instinct and
feeling, intuition and faith, although intellect
and spirit are involved in it from the beginning,
even as youth and maturity are locked up in
childhood's opening bud.

Naturally the naive stage of our religious
development corresponds with the divine Back-

295

296 God and Man

ground revelation. We vaguely feel God every-
where. We feel His presence in the vastness and
power and reality of the Universe. We dimly
feel Him in all the forms and processes of nature.
We feel Him in all the life and experience of
humanity. He comes to us through the invisible
channels of instinct; He wells up in our hearts;
He shines in through our intuitions; He reveals
Himself in childhood's marvellous faiths. We see
Him in the colours and imagery of imagination;
our early thoughts turn readily toward Him; He
rises upon us with our conscious dawn.

This is the stage of the first impressions of the
Divine, the first feelings, the first thoughts of
God. In this stage we are one with nature and
humanity and Divinity. We are like the young
acorn on the mother tree. The growing acorn
is one with the parent tree, with the earth be-
neath, with the sky above, and with the atmos-
phere around. It has not yet broken with its
early environment. It holds its original con-
nection with nature. The vitality of the earth
pours into it through the parent roots. The
atmosphere and rain and sunbeams penetrate it
through the leaves of the parent tree. Earth
and sky and atmosphere are in all its being, but
they come into it through unbroken and original
parent channels. It is still one with nature like
any child. True the time must come when it
must break with the mother tree for very self-

Man's Movement Godward 297

hood's sake. It must break with its original
nature connections. It must fall and touch the
earth for itself. It must send down its own
roots into the great world. It must make new
connections with the sources and draw vitality
therefrom for itself. It must lift itself up with
its own stem and spread out branches and put
forth many leaves for itself, thus again making
new connection with the vast sources, with atmos-
phere and rain and quickening sun. And unless
these new connections with heaven and earth are
made, there is no "to-morrow" for it. All this
is true, and these things must come to pass. But
that time is not yet. For the present it is simply
a young acorn on the mother tree, living at one
with all nature like any child.

This naive stage of our religious development
is very important. It is difficult to overstate its
significance. Like childhood, it contains within
itself all future growth. It is the fundamental
revelation of God in human life. All that God
has taught man through vast nature is essen-
tially represented there. All that man has learned
of God through untold generations and expe-
riences is in a manner there contained. It is
the background of all possible religious life and
achievement. To this primal revelation Paul,
speaking to the Epicurean and Stoic philoso-
phers, appealed. To this John G. Paton appealed,
in the South Sea Islanders. To this Jesus

298 God and Man

appealed, talking to the cultured Nicodemus, or
to the peasants of Galilee. Without this elemen-
tary revelation indeed no higher voices could be
heard or heeded. Except man first read nature's
Bible, he will read no other. Except God first
be present in the heart of man, even Jesus will
speak in vain. Except we first are children, we
never shall be men.

Childhood is indispensable, but no growing life
remains in perpetual childhood. Normal life
develops from the first religious stage into the
second. We pass out of the stage of feeling into
the stage of knowledge; out of the vague into the
definite; out of dim general consciousness into
clear specific consciousness ; out of the undifferen-
tiated into the differentiated ; out of the universal
into the particular; out of community into in-
dividuality; out of union into polarity; again,
out of polarity into higher union; and in general
out of instinctive experience into highly conscious,
voluntary, and profound experience.

This is the evolution of the normal religious
life from the first stage of feeling to the second
stage of knowledge. It is a complex growth.
It is many things in one. Looked at in one way,
it is a development out of the vague into the
definite, out of dim and general consciousness
into clear and specific consciousness. Looked at
in another way, it is development out of the

Man's Movement Godward 299

undifferentiated into the differentiated, from the
universal into the particular, from community
of life into individuality. Looked at in still
another way, it is development out of union
into polarity; again out of polarity into a
higher union, and from vague, instinctive experi-
ence into highly conscious, voluntary, and pro-
found experience.

Here we have the natural growth of every
healthy religious life. It is our advance from
childhood to adulthood; progress from the dawn
to the full day of consciousness ; development out
of community of life into sharp individuality and
polarity. Thus it is a bringing of the definite
self face-to-face with its clear vision and task;
then a willing devotion to the heavenly vision;
and then a new and higher union with God;
so of course a profounder and richer religious
experience.

The boy that was led by his father's hand now
stands forth a man. He looks out over the world.
He sees life's far vision. He is conscious of him-
self and of power. He solemnly dedicates his
life. No longer is he a child, living in community
of life. He has separated and rounded into self-
hood. No longer are all things mingled in the
undifferentiated unity of feeling. Everything has
become clear and pronounced in the growing light
of consciousness and knowledge. The individual
stands forth in his polarity, facing the world.

300 God and Man

Conscious of himself and of God, he consecrates
his life.

Whatever else forms part of our progress from
the first stage into the second, the characteristic
quality of it is development into more and more
clear consciousness and knowledge. Other things
naturally attend. But the characteristic note of
life is consciousness, as the characteristic note
of the day is light; and the mark of adulthood
is high developed consciousness. Without con-
sciousness, we sleep. Without high conscious-
ness, we are impotent. And the man-like will
and deed can follow only the man-like conscious-
ness and knowledge. God first turns on the light
in the inner world as He first turns on the light
in the outer. Thereafter, the high resolve, and
many other things may follow. We may rise
to our life-work then, as we rise to our daily task
when day has come.

Now this second or knowledge stage of our
religious development corresponds to the Incar-
nation. We said above that Christ is the great
approach of the Divine to the awakened con-
sciousness of man. We now say that this know-
ledge stage of our development is the human
correspondent thereto.

Let us plunge into the midst of things and see
whether this is really true, for we here have a
cardinal statement.

Let Jesus then stand face -to -face with the

Man's Movement Godward 301

rich young man of the Gospels. That young
man represents awakened consciousness, vivid
knowledge, pronounced individuality, and sharp
polarity of life, as he stands facing the Son of
man. Christ looking upon him says : ' ' Behold me ;
know me; choose me; follow me for ever." It is
an appeal to all his awakened being. It is not
an appeal to the mere surface of the intellect.
It is to the whole mind, the whole will, the whole
soul. The Divine now is no longer vague, it is
perfectly definite. It is no longer general, it is
absolutely specific and particular. Jesus' indi-
viduality is as sharp and pronoimced as his own.
When this clear divine Personality makes its great
demand, when it speaks the words of the great
imperative, saying, "Follow me; I am the way,
and the truth, and the life; follow me," it is a
moment of supreme and comprehensive conscious-
ness; it is an appeal to the total awakened life.
It is a definite coming of the God of light to the
awakened and responsible mind of man. And
when the rich young man turned his face away
from Jesus and went away sorrowful, he knew
that God was making a demand upon him that
was perfectly definite. He understood that it
meant his whole nature, from top to bottom. He
knew that the religious life ultimately is no mere
vague and general affair, but something as clear
sind definite as the giving of his own individual
.soul in absolute and loving devotion for ever

302 God and Man

to the personality of Jesus as Lord. Had he
stood the test, had he said his everlasting " Yea"
to God, it would have meant an awakened intel-
lect, an awakened heart, an awakened soul, an
awakened will, consecrated for ever. It would
have meant a new and higher alliance with the
Divine. It would have meant a transcendence
of his narrow individuality. In a word, the losing
of his life and the finding of a larger life.

Here, if ever, is a transaction in the clear and
open day. Things are no longer in the sub-
conscious realm of instinct, and no longer in the
twilight dawn of feeling. On the one hand the
Divine has become as definite as the face of
Jesus. On the other hand the human has become
as individual as that rich young man whom Jesus
loved. All heaven has approached and appealed
to life in the light of that divine face. All our
awakened consciousness is responding there, either
in acceptance or rejection. It is as though the
world of beauty and art gathered itself up in a
glorious picture and unveiled itself before the
awakened soul of some young artist; then as
though that young artist felt through all his
being the divine appeal, and understood that
the call was to his total nature, and knew that
it was for life. The Incarnation is the coming
of God in truth and light to the awakened con-
sciousness of man. The knowledge stage of reli-
gious growth is our human response thereto.

Man's Movement Godward 303

Jesus, face-to-face with the rich young man or
in the centre of His disciple group, is asking for
conscious discipleship.

Let us look at this with searching scrutiny.
Here we deal with a stage of religious develop-
ment of surpassing importance. The Incarnation
is the appeal of the definite Divine to the definite
human. The second stage of our religious devel-
opment is the response of the definite human to
the definite Divine. Jesus is the Divine become
definite. The rich young man or the young John
or the yoimg Saul is the human developed into
definite individuality. Nothing could be more
specific than the Divine has become in the indi-
viduality of Jesus. Nothing could be more specific
than the human, as it stands there in defined
selfhood, a distinct centre of life, sharp and clear
in its individuality. The Divine indeed is as
defined as the face of Jesus. The human is as
sharp and clear as the striking individuality of
the young Saul. On the one hand the Divine
speaks in the definiteness of human words, acts
in the definiteness of human deeds, and reveals
itself in the unique definiteness of individuality.
On the other hand the human stands with awak-
ened consciousness, distinct selfhood, and defined
individuality, aware of itself as a centre of high
life, will, and power. Jesus and Saul, the definite
Divine appealing to the definite human. And
when the Divine thus comes to the human, making

304 God and Man

its great clear claim upon life, and when the
human thus responds to the Divine, offering up
its conscious selfhood, then we have the perfect
call of God and the fitting response of man.

This perfect appeal of the definite Divine to
the definite human, and this fitting response of
the human to the Divine is the making of the
religious life. It is the attainment of the second
stage of progress. It is the achievement of indi-
viduality in religion. The marked individuality
of Saul, face-to-face with the definite personality
of Jesus, consciously offers up the man he is in
total and irreversible devotion. It is the making
of him. Saul becomes Paul. That clear self-
hood, that pronoimced individuality, with awak-
ened consciousness, power, and freedom, beholds
the Christ, and consecrates himself irreversibly
for ever. It is the man's response to God. It is
the great response of htmian individuality to the
definite Divinity that spoke in Jesus. It is the
attainment of individuality, the coming to one's
majority in the life religious. It is the making
of Paul, or Luther, or Phillips Brooks.

Unless the Divine thus appeals to the human,
and unless the human thus responds to the Di-
vine,— unless human individuality in the full tide
of its selfhood consciously devotes itself, there
is no possible growth; there can be no possible
advance from the first religious stage to the
second.

Man's Movement Godward 305

It is with the reUgious life as it is with the
poet's Hfe. Out of the universal truth, the uni-
versal beauty, the universal goodness, definite
pictures of the true, the beautiful, and the good
rise in the field of vision and reveal themselves
to the soul of the young poet. There too the
perfect picture of the ideal poem rises and mani-
fests itself in lines of light and shade, in delicate
harmonies of colour, and in inner unity of thought
and plan. It is the call of the ideal world. The
young poet, with the deep fire kindling within,
with nature as sensitive to all influences as the
harp to the breath of the winds, and with soul
awaking to truth and beauty and excellence
everywhere, beholds the vision. He looks long
in awe and exaltation. He feels through all his
being the charm and call of the eternal ideal.
Solemnly he dedicates his life, and becomes a
priest of Beauty for ever. It is the definite
summons of the ideal world. It is the definite
response of the awakened being of the poet.

Let it now be the young artist, or the young
composer, or the young actor, or the young
scholar. The story is the same. It is the appeal
of the defiaite vision to the definite and awak-
ened individualit}^ It is the same with the
physician, or the mechanic, the citizen, the pa-
triot, or the lover. The life-work gathers itself
up into a clear call. The life and spirit of the
nation gather into a specific demand for the ideal

3o6 God and Man

patriot and citizen. The realm of human love
and parenthood gathers into a call for the true
lover and parent. In all the fields of life it is
the appeal of the specific to the specific.

Naturally it is so with religion. In the Incar-
nation we see it ia its perfect form. God reveals
Himself in the clear personality of Jesus. The
summons is to the awakened consciousness, the
full-blown individuality of man.

Everywhere it is the definite alone that can
appeal to and develop the definite. It is the
definite sun, not the undifferentiated nebula, that
brings spring and specific growth to the life of
man. It is the definite earth, the definite seas
and continents, the definite trees and flowers,
animals and human beings, that awake and de-
velop the specific thought, love, deed, life, in us.
Infinite sameness never could brood and call
forth the particular anywhere.

God accordingly externalises and reveals Him-
self in infinite variety of forms, in serial and
ascending ranks and orders, from the lowest differ-
entiated minerals up to the highest differentiated
men, who show forth the perfect differentiation
of human individuality. Everywhere it is the
particular calling to the particular, the higher
ranges to the higher powers, from the solid earth
up to the ethereal sunbeam, from the mew of a
kitten to the articulate human voice, from the
breast at which the babe nurses to the brooding

Man's Movement Godward 307

spirit of the mother life. This is the way God
develops eye, ear, hand, heart, intellect, soul, of
man. In the endless varieties of nature, in the
supreme individualisations of mankind, He ap-
pears. He speaks with myriad voices to our
many-sided human life, but always it is the
definite calling to the definite. At last on the
hilltop of creation, in these our fields of space
and time, Jesus stands, the crown and summit
of the definite, the perfect manifestation of the
particular. It is the supreme externalisation of
God. It is the unique approach and appeal of
the definite Divine to the definite human. What
God has done partially and imperfectly in stars
and earths, in flowers and human beings, and
in special seers and prophets, He has done per-
fectly in His Son.

And when, over against the figure of this
"strong Son of God," human life stands forth
in the early strength of manhood, in the defi-
niteness of selfhood, in the uniqueness of individ-
uality, and in the fulness of consciousness, and
dedicates itself to discipleship and apostleship
for ever, it is the perfect response of the human
to the Divine. The young John at the Jordan,
the young Paul on the way to Damascus, the
young Augustine in Milan, face-to-face with the
Christ and the great clear call of God, solemnly
dedicate themselves. With one supreme con-
secration that includes a thousand others, and

3o8 God and Man

in an exaltation of consciousness that involves
the whole awakened life, they devote themselves
to God, as the young Darwin devotes himself
to science, or the young Washington to his
country. It is the response of the definite human
to the definite Divine, of our humanity when it
has come to man's estate, to Divinity as it has
come to us in Christ. It is the second stage of
our movement Godward, the second stage of our
religious development.

There remains the fiaal stage of our religious
progress. We all know what a spiritual face is
and a spiritual life, but they are not easily put
into words. When, however, that which is deepest
in us has permeated and leavened all life and
come to the surface; when that which is purest
and most divine has come to the throne and
wields dominion and holds all the lower life in
a perfect harmony of control ; when the individu-
alistic ego has been overcome and transcended
and taken up into the higher and larger Universal;
when the sharp polarity of life has been raised
and finely resolved iato a new and perfect unity;
when acute self-consciousness has been elevated
into clear and abiding God-consciousness; when
we have made indeed the great revolution of
conscious experience and passed thereby into the
deep mystery and soul of things; and when the
Divine finally comes to the human in its pure

Man's Movement Godward 309

and essential Divinity and Spirit freely flows to
spirit; then at length we have reached the third
and ultimate stage of our religious development.
It is the spiritualising and glorifying of life. It
is life coming to its potential best. It is more
than the first stage of feeling, though it includes
it. It is more than the second stage of awak-
ened and devoted consciousness, though it in-
cludes that also. It is the whole life elevated
into the beauty of holiness. A spiritual face
is the most beautiful thing ever looked upon.
A spiritual life is the crowning excellence of the
world.

It is obvious that this spiritual stage of our
development corresponds to the divine Self-
revelation as Spirit.

Spirit, as here we know it, is no longer a diffused
and attenuated something; it is no longer im-
palpable and fugitive, no longer vague and elusive,
dimly suggesting its subtle presence everywhere,
but adequately revealing its rich reality nowhere.
On the contrary, it is a full and opulent life, the
Reality of realities, the Holy Spirit of the final
divine revelation.

The divine Background revelation, as we have
observed, moved from the vague toward the
definite. The incarnate Divinity also developed
from the vague into the definite. And the divine
Spirit likewise has evolved from the vague into
the definite. The Jewish people, on the highlands

3IO God and Man

of the Old Testament, knew more of the di-
vine Background than others. The disciples of
Jesus knew far more of the Incarnation than
the Jews had been taught or had divined. And
the hundred and twenty in the Upper Room knew
manifold more of the Holy Spirit than ever they
had learned before. Even Spirit moved toward
the rich definiteness of Pentecost.

Over against all this the same process obtains
in our human world. The naive stage of our
religious development has unfolded from the vague
toward the definite. The stage of awakened con-
sciousness likewise has developed from the vague
into the specific. And the human spirit as well
has developed out of the dim and vague into the
clear and definite. The ripened spiritual life is
the full rich human personality. It includes the
preceding stages of feeling and awakened con-
sciousness and transcends them. They are mo-
ments in its rich and complete life. The spiritual
is the full and complete man.

We have then our human life in the full richness
of spiritual personality, over against and corre-
sponding to the divine Life disclosed in its fulness
as Spirit.

It is a most interesting fact, far-reaching in
implicates and suggestion, that in the field of
human progress and in the realm of divine revela-
tion, all development is from the undifferentiated

Man's Movement Godward 311

toward the differentiated. We follow thus the
universal law of progress, from the development
of a plant or animal to the growth of a world,
or the making of a solar system, or the evolution
of a cosmos. The tree that does not halt but
grows from seedling into grand and waving form,
bearing blossoms and fruit; the animal that does
not stop but develops into the full and complex
life of matured form and function; a formless
earth that does not stay in its progress but steadily
moves toward those differentiated seas and con-
tinents which constitute a habitable world; a
nebulous solar mass unfolding into the grand
variety in unity of a superb stellar system; an
undifferentiated waste of matter that, without
rest, evolves toward that infinite and harmonious
variety in unity which makes a cosmos — this is
what constitutes a developed and real tree, or
animal, or world, or solar system, or Universe.
Likewise the religious life which, unarrested in
its development, unfolds and unfolds toward the
rich variety in unity of the full-grown man, is
the true and complete and the only true and
complete human life. Likewise also the divine
Self-revelation which, not stopping short with the
vague and indefinite primal stage, steadily moves
forward, disclosing its own uniquely perfect va-
riety in unity, is the developed and complete,
and the only developed and complete, divine
revelation and theology.

312 God and Man

In the above, glimpses at least of a very wide
generalisation have been seen. The foregoing
three stages in their essential nature and in their
main outlines appear indeed in all progress.
Wherever human life develops in a normal and
true way in relation to any realm of reality, it
ripens through the same essential stages. It
matters not here what realm we look toward,
nor what kindred side of human life we study,
in its responsive growth. But, inasmuch as music
and art always have been felt to be closely related
to religion, let us see how life develops there.

The young musician subtly feels through all
his being the harmony of existence. The chords
of his nature readily vibrate in unison with all
the spheres. Instinctively, like a harp in the
winds, he murmurs music to himself. It is the
nascent period, the stage of all beginnings. It
is the young Haydn, already feeling the imder-
lying music of the world, and quivering with the
preludes of song.

But no one certainly who lingers in this in-
stinctive stage of feeling ever can be a musician.
The real musician must awake first through all
the ranges of his life; he must unfold the hidden
and complex involutions of his being; he must
circle through life's great revolution of conscious
experience; he must penetrate also with under-
standing mind far into the nature of music; and
with awakened and exalted consciousness, he

Man's Movement Godward 313

must survey her glorious world and comprehend
her subtle meaning and message. Life here as
elsewhere must come to its full and conscious
day, and the radiant world must reveal its
variety and change in the midst of abiding
unity.

But again no one who tarries here can be a
true musician. The real musician must penetrate
deep into the soul of music. Through her varied
forms and ranges, through her self -manifestations,
through the elaborations of her life, through her
many themes, through all her meanings and mes-
sages, he must enter into her inmost spirit, he
must dwell in the hidden soul and mystery of
music. Not until he has passed into the deep
spirit of harmony and the spirit has passed into
him, awaking his profoundest life, giving him,
not merely the comprehensions and experiences
of the awakened consciousness, but also and
supremely the spiritual appreciations and ex-
periences of the awakened and developed soul,
does he become the true and real musician.

What has been said of music is no less true
of art. He is not yet an artist in whom the
passion for beauty is only beginning to kindle
like the latent fires of youth. Nor is he yet an
artist whose eesthetic consciousness, and little
more, has awakened and unfolded, even though
he be exquisitely sensitive and discriminating.
He only is an artist who through all this has

314 God and Man

passed into the deep spirit of art and thereby
has developed his own artistic soul.

The same is true of the scientist, or poet, or
philosopher. It is first the naive, instinctive stage
of feeling, then the stage of awakened and devoted
consciousness, and then the developed spiritual
stage.

The same is true of all departments of life.
It is true of the farmer or the lawyer, of the
artificer or the statesman. It is true of citizen-
ships and patriotisms. It is true of all friend-
ships, loves, parenthoods, and philanthropies. It
is true of education and culture, and of every
developed civilisation. In a word, wherever hu-
man life stands face -to -face with any realm of
reality, and ia response thereto grows and unfolds
toward normal maturity, it passes through the
same essential stages. Indeed they are the natu-
ral and true stages of all human growth. They
are life's childhood, life's youth, and life's full
maturity.

In truth, I am convinced that it would be found
impossible for a human being to make the pas-
sage from infancy to life's three-score-and-ten
without at least dimly outlining all of the stages,
even the last. And this, notwithstanding that
the individual in question might be the antipode
of all developed and true spirituality. So deeply
human are the stages of our religious development,
so essentially normal is our Higher Life.

Man's Movement Godward 315

It comes to this: the stages of our religious
growth are the three human stages raised to their
highest possibiHty; the spirituaHsation of Hfe is
really the humanisation of life; and the true
humanisation of life is the spirituaHsation of it.

In this development of a life, this achievement
of the three stages of human growth, this evolving
and making of a full and complete man, there
is a great essential process that cannot be too
clearly brought to the light of day. It is the
early union, the later polarity, and the final
higher union of a life with every realm of Reality
in relation to which it consciously develops.

Let us look at life as it develops in relation
to law. The little child at its mother's breast
is one with humanity, one with nature, one with
God. It is in accord with universal law. As
yet it has no selfhood to separate it into the
polarity of conscious life. In process of time,
however, it has rounded into selfhood, it has come
to stand over against its world in the sharpness
of individuality, with the pronounced polarity of
awakened and developed consciousness and will.
It has attained the explicit subject-object stage,
indispensable to unfolding consciousness. Now
law is as sharp and clear on the one side as will
is on the other — law everywhere in the depths
and in the heights. And now this cosmic and di-
vine law speaks from its many Sinais, everywhere

3i6 God and Man

saying to conscious will, "Thou shalt." While
conscious will, for its part, realises that it is
face-to-face with Authority, and with life's in-
finite alternatives. It is the normal and neces-
sary polarity of conscious will and law that here
we see.

But this is not the end. This is not intended
to be the final stage. It is meant that every
man reverently should go up into life's Sinai and
there, alone with God, solemnly and joyously
should receive the divine law for himself, and,
pressing it close to his obedient heart, like Moses,
should return again to the fields of toil and duty
with shining face. Then man enters into the
final higher union with all cosmic and divine
law, which is, as well, the deep law of his own
being. Then law is taken into the heart of man,
and law and will become one, and divine law
becomes divine life.

The naive instinctive stage of feeling; the stage
of the awakened and devoted consciousness; the
developed spiritual stage: early union, later po-
larity, final higher union. But it is to be marked
that this final higher union is a vastly different thing
from that initial lower union. This is conscious,
voluntary, comprehensive, rich. This is attained
only by circling through the great revolution of
conscious experience, which alone evolves and
makes human individuality.

But again right in the midst of this progres-

Man's Movement Godward 317

sion there is a crisis, a natural and necessary
crisis, momentous to life. Unless the conscious
ego, unless the pronounced individuality, unless
the sharply developed will subordinates itself to
universal law, unless selfishness changes into serv-
ice, there can be no third stage, there can be
no final higher union.

Essentially the same evolution and the same
crisis are seen everywhere. They are seen in
the relation of the individual to humanity. The
little boy in his father's home; the prodigal turn-
ing his back upon that home and going away
into the far country ; the repentant son returning
and meeting his father and in humility saying,
"Father, I have sinned against heaven and in
thy sight," then receiving the kiss of welcome
and reconciliation: early union, later separation,
final higher union. And the crisis, "when he
came to himself"; "I am not worthy"; "I will
arise and go to my father."

In no other way can any individual enter into
full, rich relationship with humanity. This is
the way essentially every true neighbour or friend
or brother or philanthropist has been produced.
This is the way the human individual normally
develops into the human socius, passes into the
final higher union with humanity, unfolds into
the perfect stage of love.

Early union,- later polarity, final higher union,
with the momentous formative crisis in the midst,

3i8 God and Man

is the story of every developing life as it unfolds
in relation to any realm of Reality. It would
be easy to show that it is the story of the making
of every true artist or composer or poet or scien-
tist or philosopher; of the making of every true
physician or jurist; every true citizen or states-
man ; every true mechanic or captain of industry ;
soldier or commander; patriot or leader. The
man who does not victoriously rise above self,
in supreme devotion to beauty or harmony or
ideals or nature or truth or law or work or right
or country or humanity, can not be the true or
developed man anywhere. The true and great
man is the great true servant. And he alone
truly serves who deeply loves. This is the per-
fect final union, won through battle, costly but
glorious.

It is not strange nor accidental that this crisis
must be. It is as normal and necessary as the
life-process itself. It is involved in the nature
of consciousness. It is inherent in the developed
subject-object form of human awareness. It is
inseparable from selfhood, indispensable to high
individuality. Our individualistic ego can not be
overcome without a crisis. Self-consciousness can
not pass into God-consciousness, selfishness can
not rise into service, without it. No rich complex
centre of life anywhere can stand out in pro-
nounced polarity facing the World-All, then
transcend itself, resolving its individualistic

Man's Movement God ward 319

polarity into a higher unity, without self-sacrifice.
Selfishness is not overcome without a crisis; it
is not changed into generosity without a battle.
Indeed the crisis is the transition itself from
self -consciousness and self-seeking into God-con-
sciousness and service of the All.

If early union, later polarity, and final higher
richer union is the story of the making of the
full-grown artist or poet or artisan or philan-
thropist, or what we will, because it is the story
of the making of the full-grown human being,
and if no artist can give himself with perfect
abandon to beauty as long as he is selfish; and
no scientist can devote himself with single eye
to truth while he is selfish; and no patriot can
lose himself in high devotion to country if he
is still selfish ; and if, in the very nature of selfish-
ness, it can not be overcome without the crisis
of battle, sharp and signal as well as prolonged
and progressively victorious, much more is all
this true on the high religious plane.

The child is at one with God as it is one with
the home and with nature. The grown youth
stands out in the polarity of individuality, in the
separateness of selfhood, with developed human
will over against revealed divine Will. The full-
grown life has come to the higher, richer union
with the Divine. Its individualistic polarity has
been resolved into a higher unity, through the
marriage of the human will with the will of God.

320 God and Man

The true and complete man has climbed the
mountain of his own ego and stands at length
with victorious feet on its summit, while the
mountain of self is underneath and overcome.
Standing in splendid triumph there, now he can
look away from self and unhindered see the great
world and the vast sky, and now heaven and
earth for him can come together in a new and
higher union. But the hard climbing had to come
first, and first the victorious feet had to stand
on the summit of a vanquished self.

Early union, later polarity, and final higher
union, we repeat, with the crisis and the conquest
that make the last and greatest possible — this is
what we see in making the full-grown religious
life as in making the full-grown aesthetic, or civic,
or social life, or human life in general. Only
here the stages are more developed and marked,
the crisis is more momentous and pronounced.
Here the highest evolution of life takes place, so the
clearest differentiation ; here as well the total be-
ing is involved, and so we have the supreme crisis.

And this crisis, this transition, this dying to
live, this losing self and finding God, this emerg-
ing out of the littler into the larger life, is itself
the deep process of conversion, is the great and
profound change that Jesus named the new birth.
And obedience to this law of the larger, higher
life is righteousness. And disobedience to this
higher divine law is sin.

Man's Movement Godward 321

The above then is what we see when we view
a life as it develops in relation to its environment,
in response to its higher divine Universe.

But life may be studied in another way. It
may be viewed as it grows and develops in itself.
Then we have the three stages; human childhood,
human individuality, human personality.

Already we have made the first so clear that
we leave it with the bare mention, not forgetting,
however, that it is the indispensable background
of everything. Already too the second stage has
become so familiar that we merely point to it
as the prominent figure and focal centre of life's
picture. It is the young Sir Galahad, in the
splendour of young manhood, consciously kneeling
for the dedication of life. Without this strong
and pronounced individuality, once for all we
say, there could be no strong, rich religious or
Eesthetic or industrial or social or human life.

The third stage, human personality, we must
dwell upon. When the young poet solemnly
dedicates himself to the service of the true, the
beautiful, and the good, and gives back in great
poems what they gave to him in great vision
and inspiration, then he becomes a poet. When
the young soldier gathers up his energies and
talents and reverently lays them upon the altar
of his country, rendering back in patriotic and
heroic service the gifts that he has received, then

322 God and Man

he becomes a soldier. And when the human
individual, in the kingliness of individuality,
stands face-to-face with God and His Universe,
and, reverently gathering up his total powers and
life, solemnly and joyously dedicates them to
God and man, rendering back in high and endur-
ing service the talents with which he had been
entrusted, then he becomes a human being, then
he fills out the full idea of a man; he then, and
only then, attains to human personality.

Man must make the great return. He must
take his life and all his gifts and lay them back
into the hand of God. Voluntarily he must set
himself into all his worlds; into nature and into
humanity and into the higher worlds of law,
truth, beauty, ideals. Spirit. Failing this he
fails of proper humanity. How true this is and
how growingly clear. Man stands forth on the
hilltop of the world, looking up into God's sky.
There he is in the magnificence of his powers.
Heaven and earth have bestowed the largess of
their gifts upon him. God and humanity have
endued him with faculties almost divine. He
is a treasury of talents. But now he must make
the great return. He must give back magnifi-
cently. He must set himself freely into all worlds.
He must render back his splendid gifts in splendid
works. Failing this he fails of essential humanity.
That which makes the mirror is the reflection;
that which makes the man is the return.

Man's Movement God ward 323

Here we have before us the fundamental func-
tions of the biological world, receptivity and
activity. We have the Universe pouring its mul-
titude of gifts into life, and we have life giving
back to the Universe those gifts in the multi-
plicities of action. But it is the latter, it is
action, that makes life more than animal, that
makes it definitively human. When man takes
his multitudinous gifts, and, in the superior human
way, pours them out in high service toward the
great Sources, then he becomes man, but not
till then.

Incisive and austere as this law is, I believe
it to be psychologically and philosophically true.
When all the gifts of God have been concentred
in the life of man and placed at the bidding of
his most sovereign will, they simply spell, " Oppor-
tunity." But when he freely takes them and
relates them to the All, and in noble service re-
flects them back again, then he becomes the
mirror of God, and so a man. It is essentially
this relating of life to the All, this placing of
the human imprimatur of great return upon life's
action, that constitutes human living and human
life. The fruit tree is not a fruit tree, until it
blossoms and bears fruit, giving back to nature
and humankind what they have entrusted to it.
The ship is not a ship, until it gives itself to the
ocean, rendering back to trade and humanity the
gifts that they have given to it. The engine is

324 God and Man

not an engine, until it has set itself upon the
track and rolled out across a continent, rendering
back in units of work performed the coal that
was put into its furnace and the skill that was
put into its wheels. So man is not man, until
he makes the great return.

And this is what we have described as achieving
personality. Hence the personalisation of life is
really the humanisation of life; and the true
humanisation of life is the personalisation of it.
But we saw above that the spiritualisation of
life also is the humanisation of it. Therefore the
personalisation and the spiritualisation of life are
the true humanisation of it. So it follows finally
that the achieving of spiritual personality is the
coming to a full-grown human life, to a true and
complete man.

The naive instinctive stage of feeling; the stage
of awakened and devoted consciousness; the final
spiritual stage: early union; later separation or
polarity; final higher union, with the supreme
crisis of self -conquest in the midst: childhood,
individuality, personality, — this as we have seen
is the story of our human progress, these are the
stages of our movement God ward.

CHAPTER XII

man's true life in god

WE have climbed the mountain summit where
heaven and earth come together. We
have seen the Divine and the human meet in a
new and higher union. There is then a supernal
alliance and a higher life for man. This is at
once the sublime and the inexhaustible fact of
our human existence.

There is a higher union with God. Man may
give himself unreservedly with glorious abandon;
he can pour out his thought toward God; he can
pour forth his love, that wells out of the depths
of his life like a sweet spring; he can devote his
will; he can work in unison with God; he can
become one in spirit with Him; he can appre-
ciate the divineness of the Divine ; through purity
of heart, he can see God and can feel His living
presence. In truth, he can open his life wide
to God and receive the ' ' mind that was in Christ ' ' ;
God may pour His thought into him; His word
may have free course in his life; His will may be
done; His love may be shed abroad within; the
Holy Spirit in fulness may come. And when

325

326 God and Man

this rich life has become a reality; when man's
prayer is unhindered and his commimion is full
and free and childhood to God has become the
jewel of his existence and God's fatherhood has
become an abounding fact and the Spirit bears
witness with his spirit that he is a child of God;
when in the depths of his life he feels at one with
the Divine and feels at home, then he has achieved
indeed the higher union.

There is nothing so ample and glorious in
existence as this higher union with the Divine,
nothing that finds our life in such deep ways,
nothing so truly and profoundly homelike and
natural. It is as though the orange tree were
carried back to its home in the sunny Southland,
or as though a continent were rolled into the
warmth and luxuriance of spring, or as though
a lark left the lowly earth and finding its wings
soared into the sea of blue thrilling with song,
or as though a life went up into its appointed
Mount of Transfiguration. And there is nothing
so real, so convincingly and satisfyingly real; for
there is nothing that so fills all the heights and
horizons of being, imparting the sense of bound-
less reality. Thoughts of God may become as
natural as the river of truth that courses through
the mind. Love toward God may prove as native
as affection to the human heart. Prayer may
become as natural as breathing, high service as
native as will and action. The divine Life may

Man's True Life in God 327

flow through us as naturally as blood through
our veins and the inspirations of God come like
heaven's quickening light. As the sailor may
make his home on the wide seas, and the
astronomer his home ia the starry skies, and
the artist in the world of beauty, and the phi-
losopher in the universe of truth, so the child of
God may make his home in his Heavenly Father's
house. All worlds are his worlds to live in di-
vinely. Nature and humanity, law and truth,
beauty and ideals, and universal Spirit are his
intended abode. He can live like a child of the
Highest at home in the Highest, and thus come
to discover the Divine everywhere and dwell
in it.

This is the life Jesus lived. This is the life
He taught His disciples to live. And this is the
meaning of the great fact of the promised Spirit.
Life was to be indwelt. It was to realise itself
as spirit, and live without end an inspired life
in the infinite Environment of perfecting Spirit.
"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you
another Paraclete, that he may be with you for
ever, even the Spirit of truth." " I am the vine,
ye are the branches. Abide in me, and I in you."
" If a man love me, he will keep my word: and
my Father will love him, and We will come unto
him, and make Our abode with him." Thus
though a man's feet press the solid earth his true
citizenship may be in heaven. This is the life

328 God and Man

that is hid with Christ in God, and the Hfe that
is "Hfe indeed."

The statement that man can enter into new
and higher union with the Divine strikes us as
strange at first. But consider the apple tree in
winter. It is then connected with nature it is
true. Its roots have hold of the earth. Its trunk
is in touch with the sunbeams. They pierce it
through and through and keep it alive. Other-
wise it would freeze to its centre. Yet how dif-
ferent is its connection later. When it comes to
put forth leaves it makes new and higher union
with atmosphere and sunlight and falling rain.
And when at length it bursts into bloom and
spreads out delicate petals with texture finer than
silk, again it makes new and higher connections
with light and air and dew. Its more exquisite
organs form subtler unions. And not only these,
but the roots themselves enter into new and
richer commerce with the earth. Contrast, there-
fore, the apple tree in December with the same
tree in May. Its connections have become ines-
timably more numerous, ampler, and finer. If a
tree then can enter into new and higher commerce
with heaven and earth, can not our human nature
with its vastly wider ranging gamut of powers
enter into new and higher union with God and
His worlds? It can. Human nature too only
waits for its spring, for its renaissance and flower-
ing. But every spring and summer is from above,

Man's True Life in God 329

though earth and man respond in living robes of
glory.

And it is this great response and return, it is
this larger and higher activity, this new and higher
union with the Divine, this communal life with
God, this realised childhood to the divine Father-
hood, that alone rises to the plane and dignity
of properly human life. In so far as a being merely
vegetates, functioning only as the plants, it is
not properly human. Or in so far as it merely
functions as the animals function, it is not prop-
erly human. Only when a being rises to those
planes of action whose order and rank are essen-
tially human, does it attain to real humanity.
Mere receptivity and inferior activity never could
constitute that high complex centre of life with
its superior activity that we have in mind when
we speak of a human being. It is only when a
life takes itself and, ia this high way, actively
relates itself to the All, only when it sets itself
freely into all worlds, by thought and feeling and
will and action, and by kinship of spirit, that it
functions in the essentially human way. Just as
it is only when a prince comes of age and enters
upon his kingdom and verily takes up the real
business of reigning, bringing himself and his
realm into world commerce and world politics,
that he is truly a king.

And, once a life has made the great response
and return and given itself, and freely set itself

330 God and Man

into the All, then also it unfolds its hidden poten-
tialities into new and higher activities, as the
tree evolves its latent leaves and blossoms. So
it results that a life, by consecration and high
activity, not only enters into new and higher
union with the All, as an acorn by planting itself
enters into new and higher connection with nature,
but also that it puts forth new and finer powers
of action, which in turn form new and subtler
connections. Here is the kind of fimctioning
that makes a being human. When a life thus
takes itself and sets itself into nature and human-
ity, into law and into truth, into beauty and into
ideals and into the life of God, it comes to truly
human activity and development. It is this great
responsive activity, this great return, that lifts
life to the human order.

It is not what talents are given to us that
makes us truly human, but what use we make
of our gifts when we become aware of them.
Our distinctively human side does not come to
the fore until responses, until activities, as over
against receptivities, begin. Our receptivities
represent in the main what is done to us, our
activities represent what we ourselves do. It is
in our activities that we claim our birthright
and enter upon kingship.

But there is small action and there is great
action; there is petty action and there is sublime
action. Great and sublime action is that which

Man's True Life in God 331

has the universal quaHty about it. So long as
a life acts as a private individual for itself, it is
an individual. Only when it acts as a universal
for the Whole does it become a universal. It
becomes a universal when it takes its private
individuality and devotes it in high service, just
as the private soldier becomes a national patriot
when he gives himself for his country. Truly
human action is that which has the universal
quality about it, that which is harmonic with
the Universe, just as the true action of a plant
or a star is that which is concordant with the
All. For we must not forget that every life is
both a particular and a universal, and that its
deepest nature is found in the universal. But
as long as it acts only as a particular, it remains
a particular. When, however, it acts also as a
universal, it becomes a universal, realising itself
as such. The complete life realises itself both as
a particular and as a universal; it becomes aware
of itself first as a particular, and then by devoting
its particular individual ego, it realises itself also
as a universal. The particular is not destroyed,
it is sublimated and fulfilled; it is taken up and
held as a moment in the heart of the universal.
A life therefore comes to truly human action
only when it acts in the larger way, when through
its individuality it realises itself as a universal.

Acting and realising itself as a universal, of
course the individual becomes harmonious with

332 God and Man

the Universe. That is its true life. Anything
that ignores or sets at naught the cosmos, or any
part thereof; anything that disregards the "not-
self," or flouts any realm of Reality, is not liv-
ing its true life. It is not its true self; for it
itself is a part of the All. The Universe is re-
flected in it, is represented in its being, is indeed
the deep constitutive element of its nature. Hence
it must set itself into the All, and must live in the
richest relationship with all worlds that its nature
makes possible. Otherwise it is out of harmony
with itself and with its Universe.

Moreover it must so live that God may pour
His life freety not only into but also through it;
just as a plant or animal must so live that nature
may pour her life freely both into and through
it. No animal, no plant, no living thing can
become a mere pocket. It must be a channel
and medium or it dies. Nature must have free
course in every living thing. Only as heaven
and earth pour themselves freely and fully into
and through animals and plants do they come
to perfect form and function, and so to their true
life. Likewise only as God has free course in a
human being, richly expressing Himself in and
pouring His life through it, does it come to normal
growth and action, and so to its true life.

Properly human life therefore is found in ac-
tivity rather than in passivity, in activity along
the higher ranges, in acting as a universal rather

Man's True Life in God 333

than as a particular, in action that is in harmony
with the total Environment, and in such activity
as may be the free and rich expression of the
Divine.

And this it is to be human. We would indeed
maintain without qualification that, only when a
life lights its lamp and burns and shines does it
become truly a lamp, properly a human life.
We would maintain that only when a life acts
in superior ways, functioning toward the higher
ranges of Reality, being really alive in its higher
nature and not merely in its lower root, does it
become properly a human being. We would main-
tain that, only when a life acts as a universal and
not merely as a particular, only when it acts for
the Whole, like Jesus, and not merely for the
private self, like Napoleon, does it truly achieve
humanit}^ We would maintain that, only when
a life equilibrates itself with the All, acting in
the widest harmony with the Universe of which
its nature is capable, not negating any world
nor functioning discordantly, does it live as a
really human being. We would maintain, finally,
that only when a lifQ becomes a free expression
and servant of the cosmos and of Deity, only
when it becomes a free channel and agency of
the Divine, into and through which God freely
may pour His life and work, does it attain unto
essential humanity or arrive at what it means
to be human.

334 God and Man

And in the midst of this the supreme crisis
we would recall, that is, the conquest and tran-
scendence of the egoistic, the individualistic self.
Man is not man until he rounds the human curve
and makes the great return. When he gathers
up in himself all the gifts of God and reflects
them back, as a lake in the starlight reflects
back the heavens from its bosom, then he becomes
truly an actor and citizen in the Universe, and
so properly a man.

This larger universal life is what we deliber-
ately have called the personal life. The smaller
particular we have called the individual life.
And only as we live, in principle, as a universal
human brother, in spirit as a universal parent,
in mind and action as a true cosmopolitan,
and in our whole life as a genuine child of God,
do we really live the personal life and achieve
human personality.

If we could follow the path and course of life
in its making and see the human bud spring
from the human life-tree and develop toward
separate selfhood, until it arrived at distinct and
independent individuality, we should see that,
like the detached acorn, it then only had arrived
at the stage of true and independent life. The
oak tree then merely was made possible. Not
until the independent acorn gives itself back to
nature, making new and higher connection with

Man's True Life in God 335

the earth and the Universe, does the true and
possible oak tree become a reality. In like man-
ner not until the free and independent individu-
ality enters upon the role of action and gives
itself back to the World-All, setting itself in
manhood's way into humanity and into nature,
into the universe of law and truth and beauty
and ideals, and into the life of God, — not until
then does the true human being become a reality.
The scientist must set himself into the world of
law, the artist must set himself into the world
of beauty, the philosopher must set himself into
the world of truth, the worker must set himself
into the world of work, the friend and brother
and lover and parent must set himself into the
world of humanity, or there can be no scientist
or artist or philosopher or worker or socius or
parent. Even so the individual must set himself
into all his worlds or no high complex centre of
life can be developed; there can be no man. As
we have said, man is not man until he rounds
the human curve and makes the great return.
And this great process is the development from
human individuality into human personality.

We now have seen that this new and higher un-
ion with God and His worlds, this action as a uni-
versal and not as a particular, is the properly human
life. Naivete is not the properly human life. Indi-
vidualism is not the properly human life. Man is not
man until he is his larger self, until he is a person.

336 God and Man

It is a deep and natural witness to the truth
of the above that no man can Hve at all without
in some way living the larger life. Every one
must live as a universal, although it be in a per-
verted and limited way. Nobody can do any-
thing without co-operating with the All. Does
a man breathe, he breathes the world's atmos-
phere. Does he see, he beholds the natural
objects with nature's light. Does he eat, he
feeds on the fruits of earth. We can not lift a
foot from the ground without co-working with
the universal energies and laws. We can not
hate or love, think or become conscious, even
of ourselves, without an objective world and an
objective brain loaned by nature. If a man
works, he must have a field. If he moves, he
must have space. If he even exists, he must
have place. In short, we can not live without
co-working. The most selfish man that walks
the earth draws his selfish breath, lays his selfish
plans, and lives his selfish life, all with the being
and strength that God and nature lend. Herein
is the baseness of his life. In outer fact he must
live, if he live at all, as a universal. In inner
spirit, he may live also as a private ego and
individualist. He must use his worlds, though
he abuses them. It is a striking thing that even
the egoist must call the Universe into his thought
and act, in order to live even selfishly. Therefore
even the selfish life shows forth the type of the

Man's True Life in God 337

true, as counterfeits show forth the image of the
true coin. What every one does in a way, in
order to live at all, though he does it perversely
and limitedly, is what the true man should do
grandly and aboundingly. The true and normal
man should live perpetually as a universal, in
higher union with God and His worlds, and
therein should find his native home and glory;
for that is man's true and appointed life.

When we turn our thoughts from the sub-
jective toward the objective side, we realise more
and more that the Divine is the true Environ-
ment and Home of man. Already the great
concept of environment is familiar through
science and through the xinfolding of our pres-
ent thought. Already, too, the absolute neces-
sity of a kindred environment is established.
And we have arrived as well at the culminating
idea of a divine Environment.

Like every other environment the divine En-
vironment is both transcendent and immanent.
As nature indwells the opening flower, working
in its secret springs and being, and at the same
time is outside of and beyond, outgoing and tran-
scending it, so the divine Environment works in
a human life, in all its springs and streams, and
at the same time is external to it, vastly out-
going and transcending it. What were a sun
that did not work in the inmost heart of trees

338 God and Man

and flowers, while at the same time, imconfined
to their Httle being, he held high state in the
transcendent sky. And what were a sky that
was not the prime mover in all the most intimate
happenings of earth, while at the same time
remaining yon majestical and boundless sky. So
what were a divine Environment, a Kingdom
of Heaven, or a God, that did not move in all
the hidden motions of man, in his inmost pur-
poses and plans, while at the same time, uncon-
fined to that little state, filling the farthest realms
with their presence and rising like a sky supernal
and transcendent over all. Men feel that God
must be in the very cryptic springs and sources
of human life and in its every stream, or He is
not very God. Again men feel that God must
not be confined to man's little kingdom, nor
exhausted in one or in all His worlds, but must
be greater than all the lower realms of Reality,
outgoing and transcending them all like another
and more supernal sky. For behold the heaven
of heavens can not contain Him — how much less
the little house of man's soul. Both the imma-
nent and the transcendent God, both the imma-
nent and the transcendent Kingdom of Heaven,
or divine Environment, is what the whole need
of man calls for. And this is what is provided;
just as this is what every kind of environment
severally provides for each kindred object that
lives in it. An earth, a sky, a nature that were

Man's True Life in God 339

not in the root, stem, and fruit of the tree would
be without function or sense. Likewise an earth,
sky, nature that were there and nowhere else,
and exhausted therein, would be wanting in the
first character and condition of an environment;
for an environment as such is both immanent and
transcendent to the thing that it environs and
vivifies . The divine Environment therefore being,
like all other environments, both immanent and
transcendent to the life of man, affords the fitting
world, home, and nursery of his growing life.

Being both transcendent and immanent, a
divine Environment enables life to be both
healthily objective and at the same time whole-
somely subjective. If the Divine were merely
immanent, religious life would be merely sub-
jective. If the Divine were only transcendent,
naturally religious life would be only objective.
But if the great divine Environment, the true
sphere of man's higher life, is in reality both
immanent and transcendent, then, correspond-
ingly, our religious life can be both subjective
and objective. Of course the suppositions of
mere immanence and mere transcendence have
been made only for the purpose of our thought,
not that they are inherently possible. Because
the Divine that were merely immanent would
become one and identical with the life that it
indwelt, and would not be God over all, so not
God at all. And the Divine that were merely

340 God and Man

transcendent would lack all connection with our
human life and so would not be God for us in
any sense. True Divinity and divine Environ-
ment must be as certainly immanent as it is
surely transcendent; then, as we have said, our
religious life can be both wholesomely subjective
and healthily objective.

The world of beauty is without and within;
but the external is far the greater. The universe
of truth is both without and within; but again
the external is vastly the greater. This leads to
the true proportion between the objective and the
subjective. No true lover of beauty and no
true child of truth is either disproportionately
objective or one-sidedly subjective. But a true
subjectivity is held at the centre of a prevailing
objectivity. Lil<:ewise the Divinity that is out-
side of and beyond us is vastly greater than the
divine revelation within; and so naturally life's
regard is mainly objective, while the subjective
is held as the inner circle in a larger prevailing
objectivity. This is what we have called a healthy
objectivity and a wholesome subjectivity. Few
things are more important than the right mixture
here. Undue objectivity or abnormal subjectiv-
ity is as unwholesome as it is unsymmetrical and
disorganising. And nothing can mix these two
indispensable elements so naturally in the right
and intended proportions as a great environment.
Man set into nature, in tune with her processes

Man's True Life in God 341

and laws, will be in the main objective. But
the subjective will not be suppressed; rather it
will be fulfilled, by being held at the centre of
the enfolding objective life. A human being set
into the great environment of his humankind,
living in true mutuality and reciprocity of life,
will be naturally and mainly objective. The sub-
jective will be held at the centre of a prevailing
objectivity. Just as naturally a human life, set
into a great divine Environment, in right rela-
tion therewith, will be mainly objective. The
subjective will not be denied, but, as before, will
be held at the centre of a larger prevailing objec-
tivity. The lungs that felt themselves more than
the atmosphere they breathed; the eye that saw
itself more than the light; the astronomer who
regarded himself more than his heavens, would
be anomalous and perverse enough. So the mind
that thought more of itself than of truth, or the
man who thought more of himself than of human-
ity, or the life that regarded itself more than God
and all His higher worlds besides, would be an
unnatural and perverted product. It is end-
lessly suggestive that nothing strikes its true
balance until it touches its true element. The
wild eagle on the wing can forget himself in his
free and glorious flight. The caged bird must
remember himself still in his restless discontent.
In the same way a human being can lose himself
in adoration and in the glory of great service.

342 God and Man

when he becomes a citizen of his true sphere, his
higher divine Environment. There the objective
does not superficiaHse itself, until it loses the
depth and richness of subjectivity. And there
the subjective does not pervert and internalise
itself until it cuts itself off and loses the normality
and largeness of the objective world and life.
Rather, there a wholesome subjectivity is held
as the inner circle of a larger, healthy objectiv-
ity and the two are united in a true and rich
life.

A Kingdom of Heaven, or divine Environment,
is the true sphere, home, and nursery of man's
growing life. It is so because, as we have seen,
it is both transcendent and immanent, and there-
fore enables life to be both healthily objective
and wholesomely subjective. And it is so because
it furnishes the necessary element and condition
of great and endlessly progressive growth.

A kindred spiritual Environment is as neces-
sary for our higher nature as a physical environ-
ment for our lower. Human affection can spring
and grow only in a sunny world of affection.
Mind can unfold only in a world of mind. Spirit
can flower only in a world of Spirit. An Environ-
ment first to brood life, and then to furnish the
field of life's campaign. A spiritual will without
a spiritual World is as hopeless as a hand without
a task or a wing without an atmosphere.

Man's True Life in God 343

All this in a way is as evident as light. Never-
theless it is feebly realised with deliberate and
intelligent consciousness. That the soul must have
an atmosphere; that the ethical will must have
a moral order; that the awakened mind must
have a divine truth- world; that love must have
the light and warmth of love is, in its higher way,
a fact no less real and mighty than the fact that
the foot must have an earth under it and the
head a sky over it. The indispensable and abso-
lute necessity of a realm of Reality, corresponding
to a Kingdom of Heaven, as the pre-condition
of all higher life and growth, should become a
spiritual axiom to the human mind. A brother
without a brotherhood; a child without a family
or Fatherhood; a disciple without a Master; a
spirit without an Inspirer; a member without a
society of kindred souls or a Church; in fine,
a human life without a great enfolding divine
Life in which consciously, here and now, it might
live and move and have its being, would be like
a star without a sky. A kindred Environment
as congenial to the soul as nature in springtime
to the grasses and flowers — ^this is what must be.

Such an Environment would be imperfect if
in its culmination and final nature it were not
verily Divine. It must be a Kingdom of Heaven
in very truth. It must be as high as aspiration
or thought ; at the same time it must come as close
as life. It must be to it all that the parent is

344 God and Man

to the infant, but more. It must touch it with
all the intimacy of motherhood, but must rise
above it with all the higher degrees of maturity
like something supernal. It must be to it what
ideals are, but more. It must touch Hfe with
the closeness of ideals, but must soar above it
to ideal and astral heights. It must be indeed
like the heavens, in us and all around us, and at
the same time transcendently above us. If there
were a possibility in a flower that was not appealed
to by its great nature-environment, that environ-
ment would be imperfect. Similarly, if there were
a potentiality in the depths of a human life that
was not appealed to by our higher Environment,
that Environment would be inadequate. Is there
the possibility of divine life at the centre and core
of our being, then there must be divine life in
our Environment, or it is imfit. Is there Divinity
in our human thought and quest, then again there
must be Divinity in our Environment. And if
it is the very God that we think of and seek, then
the very God, and not a semblance thereof, must
be in our Environment, or it is not adequate —
to say nothing about how that possibility ever
could have got lodged in flower or life unless it
had pre-existed in its environment; inasmuch as
flowers and lives are to their environment what
buds are to the mother-tree. But if our Environ-
ment is really adequate to our total nature,
thought, and life, in both its actuality and its

Man's True Life in God 345

possibility; if it is truly Divine, touching us with
the intimacy of an atmosphere, and at the same
time mounting above us with the transcendence
of the heavens, then indeed we have the natural
element and condition of all great and endless
growth. Then the kindred and congenial King-
dom of Heaven, then God Himself in reality, has
become the soul's great Environment, and end-
less progress is the natural evolution. Given a
divine Environment to human life and you have
given sunny Italy to the orange, or the Garden
of Paradise to the rose. Then truly the Kingdom
of Heaven is at hand, the fitting sphere, home,
and nursery of man's ever-growing life.

Such a divine Environment, and nothing less,
is what God has provided in His Self-revelation
as divine Background, incarnate Divinity, and
divine Spirit. How shall we make this real?
When we ponder how the cosmos itself furnishes
the great nature-environment for the lower life
of man; when we contemplate how the universe
of Reality forms the background against which
all life is set; when we see how the universal
ground then, as it were, gathers itself up for us
in a particular sun; and when we consider how
the impalpable ether permeates all, according to
the new view, as the subtle life and essence of
ever3d:hing, we have a concept and a vision that
are striking in their reality and their intellectual
appeal. I know of nothing so naturally helpful.

346 God and Man

The lower environment suggests the higher, and
furnishes the transition in thought. Nature leads
to God as it should. A divine Background then
that, like the Universe, forms the field against
which life is set ; an incarnate Divinity that gathers
the universal Divine up into the particular Ufe of
Christ, and comes near in approach and efficiency,
like the sun ; and a divine Spirit that, like an ether,
permeates everything and constitutes the invis-
ible soul and quickening life of all — ^this is the
higher divine Environment that God has provided
for man's higher life.

Unless God, in some perfectly effective way,
becomes the Environment of man's life, that Envi-
ronment is inadequate. Because in the first place
nothing but the Divine can create and mother
man's being; and in the second place, nothing
but the Divine can appeal to his deepest Hfe and
furnish the proper object for his thought and
worship. Not only man's higher Environment
must be essentially divine, but also his lower
environment, the cosmos itself, must be finally
revealed to him in essentially divine aspects;
otherwise his total Environment is imperfect
and inadequate to his total nature and need.
Accordingly God Himself has become man's
element and home. He has become the sphere
of his life, the enfolding Fatherhood in which
he lives and moves and has his being. He has
become the incarnate Christ, the great human

Man's True Life in God 347

and divine Personality, as definite and near as
a mother to a child, more transcendent and inex-
haustible than an ideal. He has become the
Holy Spirit to man, indwelling and inspiring,
greatening and glorifying, without end. This is
man's perfect higher Environment, first creating,
second meeting man's nature and need in its
length and breadth and height and depth. As
a concept, we even have ventured to say that it
is absolute in its completeness, challenging our
human mind to add a new dimension or take
away an old. As a reality, it has proved the
perfect coming of the Divine to the human, as
sufficient and satisfying to man's higher being
as nature to his lower.

A divine Environment for the ever-growing
life of man ; a Kingdom of Heaven for the child-
ren of the King; God Himself become, in a
perfectly sufficing way, the very sphere and
element of the human heart, intellect, spirit,
and will — ^here is the higher world of Reality
that God has provided for the higher life, through
His Self-revelation as Fatherhood-Divine-Back-
ground, Incarnate Divinity, and Divine Spirit.
Such is the incomparable Kingdom and Home
that Christianity reveals and forever proclaims,
an Environment worthy indeed to be called a
Kingdom of Heaven-at-hand. And such the
awakened and awakening souls of untold mul-
titudes have found it as they have opened

348 God and Man

themselves wide to its power and been changed
more and more into the image and glory of God.

If now in addition this higher world of Reality,
this revelation of Divinity as such, this Kingdom
of Heaven, could change somehow the cosmos
also into a kind of divine Environment, could
transfigure it for man and reveal it in divine
aspects, thus making the total Environment in
some sense divine, the story of fulfilment would
be complete. If in some way all nature could
be thus viewed as well as humanity and law,
truth, beauty, and ideals, then the entire En-
vironment would become for man divine, and
hence kindred and propitious. Most happily
this is what comes to pass. The citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven, the life spiritualised in
the divine Environment, the soul cleansed into
purity so that it can see God, begins to see the
Divine everywhere, — God in nature and in hu-
manity, in law and in truth, in beauty and in
ideals; God in all things and all things in God.
To such a life, as to Jesus, the heavens become
the throne of God and the earth itself the foot-
stool of His feet; every city becomes a sacred
City of the great King, and even the body of
man His sacred handiwork, to whose stature man
can not add one cubit, and of whose head he
can not make one hair white or black. Thus
to such an awakened and illumined soul the

Man's True Life in God 349

cosmos itself becomes a vast divine Environ-
ment; all worlds become God's worlds; and God
Himself becomes God over all, and in all, and
through all. A higher Environment and a spirit-
ualised life, turning all Reality into an infinite
divine Environment, the fitting sphere, home,
and nursery of man's ever-growing life — it is a
consummation indeed fulfilling quite the total
nature and need of man.

Hitherto we have considered our higher union
with God, and the Divine as the true Environ-
ment of our life. Naturally in this Kingdom
of Heaven thus at hand and this citizenship
therein, God is forever working in man and man
forever co- working with God in the supreme way.
For God is working in man as Spirit, and man is
co-working with God under inspiration.

In the Holy Spirit God's working is consum-
mate and complete. The primal but unending
revelation through nature and humanity, law
and truth, beauty and ideals, becomes indefinitely
ampler in the light and life of the Spirit. The
cosmos itself is born anew for man in his own
new birth and awakening. Human life is seen
transfigured in the light of God. Law becomes a
vaster and diviner concept. Truth becomes more
illimitable and august. Beauty becomes wider-
ranging and more sacred. Ideals become fuller
and more heavenly.

35° God and Man

When God works as Spirit, the greatest possible
elevation of life takes place. All the ranges of
our human nature are lifted up into the exaltation.
Even the body becomes a temple. Thus our
humanity is spiritualised and glorified, "changed
from glory into glory." This is the supreme work-
ing of God upon life. And thus God transfigures
His Universe for us, as the earth is glorified by
the dawn. This is God's supreme working upon
His worlds, transfiguriag them all into a divine
Environment for man. When God works as
Spirit, the divine Background too becomes farther
unveiled to the spiritualised sight. So it becomes
richer. And the objective Christ is revealed in
heavenly vision that does not pass. And the sub-
jective Christ is revealed within, being formed in us
more and more. So the Incarnation also is richer.
While at the same time God pours forth His life
as pure Spirit, unmixed with matter, unmingled
with our humanity, not clothed with the vestments
of creation, but coming as pure Spirit to spirit.

Not that God could come as pure Spirit to
spirit if there had been no cosmos and no Incar-
nation. God, as we have seen, had to externalise
Himself first in nature and in Christ, as first He
had to externalise Himself in humanity, creating
and evolving man spiritward through the early
stages of naivete and individualism, before He
could internalise Himself and come to our human
life as pure Spirit to spirit.

Man's True Life in God 351

Here, therefore, is the complete and supreme
working of God. Divine Spirit has enriched itself
with the preceding moments and transcends them.
God at length reveals Himself and works as God,
coming as pure Spirit. God is Spirit.

Correspondingly here is found as well the
supreme form of human activity. When man
co-works with God under inspiration he comes
to his coronation. It is illuminating to reflect
how this idea is embedded in human thought.
If a poem comes like a divine inspiration, or a
great symphony is heard in the soul as though
the music of Heaven were echoed there, or a
lovely picture is caught in transport of vision,
or a great prophet preaches as one inspired, it
is enough. Humanity is at the summit of its
activity. There is no loftier exercise of our
human powers, nothing higher that man can do.
This is recognised everywhere, from the invention
that comes like a flash from above, to the writing
of a Bible for the race. But nowhere is this
so supremely and naturally true as in religion.
When man seeks not only to invent or write or
compose or paint or speak as one inspired, but
also to live as one inspired, his human powers
have claimed indeed their noblest exaltation and
exercise. It is the activity of our total nature
Godward on the supreme spiritual plane. Nothing
that we ever do is so inclusive and so elevated.
Perfect prayer is the supreme exercise of the

352 God and Man

human mind. The effort to open ourselves as
spirit to God as Spirit is the crowning effort of
life. It is the fullest and most exalted con-
sciousness that we ever know. Life's Upper
Room is its highest room, and life's Pentecost
is its supreme experience. To pray so as to re-
ceive divine inspiration, to work under heavenly
impulsion, and to live as one inspired, — in a word
to co-work with God in the Kingdom of Heaven
under the inspiration of the Spirit, is to live in
the fulness and the glory of life. It is to live as
Jesus lived. This is life's hilltop, where Heaven
and earth come together, where God's working is
consummated, where man's activity is supreme.

God ever working in man as Spirit; man ever
CO- working with God under inspiration: the su-
preme form of both divine and human activity —
here is the summit that we have reached.

What now shall we say? Is this the destruc-
tion of human individuality? Rather is it not
its conservation and fulfilment? When is man
so individual as when he is supremely active?
And when is he so supremely active as when
he is living an inspired life? Man's individual
quality is no more negated when shone through
by God's light, than is a stained-glass window.
Rather his unique individuality is then brought
out and glorified. When he endeavours to behold
Christ in the richness and beauty of His character

Man's True Life in God 353

and struggles to appreciate Him; when he seeks
so to live that God may reveal His Son in him
and Christ may be formed within more and more
perfectly; when he strives to open his life wide
to God, as spirit to Holy Spirit, and to abide in
God and God in him, — is he ever more completely
himself? Is not his activity then as exalted and
rich as it is excellent and arduous? Is he ever
so free as on that hilltop? Does the earth ever
lie so completely at his feet? And is he ever so
master of himself and his world? The Son has
made him free then and he is free indeed. His
individuality is not destroyed, it is conserved
and fulfilled. ' ' I came not to destroy but to fulfil. ' '
Individuality is fulfilled in personality.

Herewith we have seen that the higher union
with God is the true life of man ; that the Divine
is man's true Environment and Home; and that
God ever working in man as Spirit, and man ever
co-working with God under inspiration, is man's
supreme activity, and therefore the fulfilment,
not the negation, of his human individuality.
Thus we see: — Man's True Life in God.

CHAPTER XIII

HUMANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

IN all the foregoing we have been considering
the relation of God to man and of man to
God. We have not studied in any thoroughgoing
fashion the relation of humanity to the individual,
or of the individual to humanity. It is clear,
however, that any philosophy of 3ife that does
not include the latter and show its inner connection
with the former is incomplete and unsatisfying.
The enspherement of the individual by hu-
manity; the prior and major working thereof;
and the effort of the same to produce a full and
complete man, has been either set forth or sug-
gested in a manner that makes enlargement here
unnecessary. Ensphering humanity, in a way,
is a part of the ensphering life of God, that we
dwelt upon so extensively at the beginning and
that has formed the background of all our later
chapters. Humanity is one of the many spheres
that enfold our human life. The prior and major
working thereof is a part of the priority, parent-
hood, and greater working of God, that we also
have dwelt upon. And the effort of the same to
produce a full-grown human life is implied in the

354

Humanity and the Individual 355

like purpose of God; for it is a part of that great
purpose, and the procedure therein a part of His
great process. How humanity therefore broods
our life and is the prior and major worker in the
effort to produce a full and complete human
being, here must be left to our thought and
imagination to revive and picture.

In response to this ensphering, producing
humanity, the individual for his part, if his
growth be true, develops from receptivity into
activity, from egoism into altruism, from child-
hood into parenthood, and from discipleship into
apostleship, or into the larger parenthood.

That a human life must develop from receptivity
into activity would seem so palpable indeed as to
render the statement needless. But that a life
must develop as well from egoism into altruism
would seem at first far from palpable. Still the
latter is equally true. For there can be no rich
activity that is not extra-regarding and altru-
istic ; and there can be no rich receptivity without
rich activity. And of course without both these
there can be no rich growth and self-realisation.
All this has been abundantly shown in a preceding
section. As there must be worlds from which to
receive, so there must be worlds toward which
to act. And the life that does not forget itself
as it pours itself out toward nature or humanity
or law or truth or beauty or ideals or God, is a
life that does not deeply or richly act. Wide

3 5^ God and Man

open in rich receptivity on the one side, wide
open in rich activity on the other side, toward
all worlds — ^this is the law of all rich life and
growth.

If we contemplate more particularly the relation
of humanity to the individual and of the indi-
vidual to humanity, as in the present chapter
we seek to do, we shall realise that nowhere is
the general law more strikingly operant. For a
life that does not evolve from a true childhood
into a true parenthood, that is not in the first
place endlessly fathered and mothered and so
abundantly receptive, and that does not in the
second place come in turn endlessly to parent
other lives and so come to the most abounding
and deepest activity of which life is capable, is
itself an arrested development, a non-normal life.
It need not here be said that any parenthood
that is not unselfish and altruistic is not worthy
of that high name; here we are regarding true
and normal life. Let us also remind ourselves
anew that the parenthood we contemplate is
broader than the physical; it is as wide as the
gamut of our human nature. Wherever body
parents body, or affection parents affection, or
mind mothers mind, or spirit broods spirit, there
is the parenthood we mean. For the complete
parenthood includes all of these. Although it is
perfectly true that the higher parenthoods can
exist and often do exist without the lower.

Humanity and the Individual 357

And this brings us naturally to that general
development from discipleship into apostleship
of which we have spoken, the larger parenthood
which must characterise every true and complete
life. The amplitudes of meaning that are here
indicated must be left to the reader. Suffice it
that a man or a woman who does not in disciple-
ship forever reverently listen and learn, sitting
at the feet of God and in communion with all
His worlds, and who does not also forever become
an apostle and parent to humanity in all the
high things of the heart and mind and spirit, can
never grow or become a true and representative
life. That is, an individual who does not develop
from an ensphered particular, or child, into an
ensphering, producing universal, or parent, re-
mains to the end an arrested, dwarfed, and lim-
ited thing.

Consider the goal reached: the life that will
not live for others is doomed to blight and atro-
phy, or worse. The law of self-realisation is the
law of self-sacrifice and social service. Egoism is
death; altruism is life.

Here is what we have desiderated; here is the
rational basis of self-sacrifice. H the life that
will not give itself to others can neither profoundly
act nor receive and so can not develop, but must
remain in perpetual childhood, selfishness verily
becomes death, while self-sacrifice becomes the
law of life. This on the one side is the tragic.

358 God and Man

on the other side the glorious law. It is not
merely that others need the help that we can
give for the perfecting of their lives, but also
that, unless we give that help richly, unless we
pour forth our life abundantly, unless we act
with our total nature toward their total nature,
all life stagnates within us, all the intakes of life
are clogged, and we do not go forth to that vaster
development from individuality into personality.
Here is the gravamen and criticalness of action.
Unless we open out toward humanity, unless we
bloom, we can never develop the seeds and soul
of character within, or bring out and realise the
possible beauty of our being, or send forth a
sweet fragrance to the world. A heart that does
not pity, that does not sympathise and love; a
mind that does not consider, that does not pene-
trate and search out and plan for and teach other
minds ; a soul that does not yearn after and brood
and quicken other souls, is a heart, a mind, a spirit
that is without a great and fitting occupation.
Such a life can never grow. It is like a landscape
in winter, or like an orange tree that has met a
killing frost and all the saps of life are frozen in
its arteries and buds. The life that will not
become humane can not continue to be human.
He that findeth his life shall lose it, but he that
loseth his life shall find it.

Parenthood indeed is essential and blessed,
not only to childhood but also to manhood and

Humanity and the Individual 359

womanhood. Universal parenthood is absolutely
indispensable to self-realisation. Self-sacrifice in
truth is implicated in the very constitution and
law and process of our being and becoming; and
that vaster development from individuality into
personality, that alone makes life truly human,
is perpetually inhibited to the selfish soul. The
selfish life must forever remain a torso. Here,
then, is the rational basis of self-sacrifice. We
die to live. The universal parent and apostle
to humanity becomes the true and complete hu-
man being.

It is in no wise strange that this should be.
It is according to a deep universal law. No
environment does, the Universe itself does not,
pour its living energies into us as though we were
a mere reservoir and receptacle. Not into but
into and through is the formula. Life is not a
pocket or sink, it is a medium, channel, agency.
All the realms of Reality pour themselves into
and through us as the oceans pour themselves
into and through the rivers of the world. Life
is not like the Dead Sea that swallows up the
sweet Jordan, but like Galilee with its perpetual
inflow and outflow. One of the most instructive
and sobering things for human contemplation is
the way all realms give and take back again their
own. Do they lend us strength to-day, they claim
it back to-morrow. The energy we take in as food

360 God and Man

we give out as work. Even our solid bones melt,
thaw, and flow away while new bones flow into
their place. And at the last this congeries of
elements, this body, we return to the earth as it
was. Nothing stays. Thought comes and goes.
Feelings pass like waves. Consciousness itself is
a stream. It is not ours to have and to hold.
We can not reverse this unalterable law. Shylock
may bathe his hands in yellow ducats up to his
elbows, but soon his bony fingers must let the
last piece fall. We give back all that we get.
It is ours to use or abuse, not to keep. We may
put the universal energies to splendid use as they
flow through us, or we may desecrate them by
abuse. We may even greatly enlarge life's inlets,
especially the higher, but we can not stop the
river in its flow. Nature flows into and through
us; humanity flows into and through us; the life
of God flows into and through us. Thus not into,
but into and through, is the universal law.

A human life then is a medium and agency.
It is a true medium and agency when it lets all
worlds flow through it freely. It lets all worlds
flow through it freely when it itself develops
richly from receptivity into activity, from egoism
into altruism, from childhood into parenthood,
and from discipleship into apostleship, or univer-
sal parenthood; or in general when it develops
from a particular into a universal, or from indi-
viduality into personality. But this, on the other

Humanity and the Individual 361

side, is self-sacrifice; it is dying. Yes; but it is
dying to live. Here, consequentl3% is the rational
basis of the universal law of self-sacrifice. Not
into, but into and through, is the universal law,
the law both of self-sacrifice and of life. To
be a rich medium and agency is to become a
rich life.

Apply this now to the relation of the individual
life to humanity. It is a medium and agency
as before. It is so truly when it lets humanity
flow through it freely. It does this richly when
it itself becomes perfectly unselfish; that is, when
it develops from receptivity into activity, from
egoism into altruism, from childhood into parent-
hood, and from discipleship into apostleship, or
universal parenthood. But once more this is
self-sacrifice; it is dying. True; but it is dying
to live. Consequently here again we have the
rational basis of self-sacrifice. The individual
life becomes a rich medium and agency of hu-
manity and thereby realises itself and becomes
a rich life.

It is a labour to appreciate the magnitude of
the fact we now are looking out upon. We see
life as it is, set into the All, the perpetual centre
and focus of countless streams of energy that
flow into it from every realm of Reality. We
also see it as the perpetual fountain-head of count-
less streams of influence that flow from it in every

o

62 God and Man

direction toward all worlds. If life itself were
thought of as a great heart, and the venous sys-
tem as numberless channels forever bringing the
streams into it, and the arterial system as innu-
merable conduits constantly leading the streams
away, then its ceaseless diastole and systole would
represent its perpetual intake and output. And
the representation would be essentially true to
reality. For life is no more severed from the
great systems of the Universe than the heart
from the venous and arterial systems of the body.
And as one sees a heart truly only when one sees
it in its vital setting, a beating centre, connecting
complex systems on the one side and on the
other, ceaselessly intaking and as ceaselessly out-
pouring, so one sees a human being truly only
when one sees him set into the organic Universe,
a throbbing centre of high complex life, con-
necting vast systems on the one side and on the
other, perpetually receiving from all worlds and
perpetually outgiving toward all. This is life,
veritable life. Anything else is like a human
heart in a jar of alcohol, or a manikin in a glass
case. And any view of life that does not see it
thus as the living centre and focus of all worlds
is utterly superficial and false. Therefore we
must see heaven and earth and all the realms
between, universal law, truth, beauty, and ideals,
humanity and God forever pouring their energy
and life into and through man; and man for his

Humanity and the Individual 363

part, not as an impossible reservoir without out-
let, but as a wonderful channel, medium, and
agency of it all.

What a different view of life this is from the
individualistic! And how different the impli-
cates that go with it! If the individual life is,
like a circle, complete in itself, of course there
is no rational basis of self-sacrifice. But if life
is not a circle, as self-complete and detached as
though it existed in an infinite void, but on the
contrary is a living channel, medium, and agency,
into and through which all worlds stream and
act, then at once a rational basis of self-sacrifice
is in sight. The individual then must be a fit
medium and agency through which all realms
may have free course. But no selfish life can
be such. For selfishness in its essential nature
refuses to give itself. It is like a gigantic spider
sitting at the focus of its web. It would draw
all things into itself; it would give nothing out.
Only the unselfish life can have true commerce,
with natural inflow and outflow. But this is
self-sacrifice. How inevitably then we reach the
result that only the sacrificial life can be a true
medium and agency, receiving richly from every
world and pouring out richly toward all. And
how rational becomes the law of self-sacrifice.
It is in reality fit adjustment to the Universe.
It is recognition of the great fact-worlds. It is
acknowledgment of connection. It is acceptance

364 God and Man

of the law of finite life, namely, that all the realms
of Reality pour their energies, not merely into,
but into and through every living thing. And
it is acceptance at the same time of its own deeper
being; for it itself is, not only a private individual,
but also a public universal; it is a part of the
Universe. So sacrifice is only of the individual-
istic self, and self-sacrifice becomes self-realisation.
For when a life lets all worlds flow through it
freely, richly and unselfishly co-operating there-
with, it realises its true self, as the diamond
realises itself when it lets ten thousand sunbeams
pour through its being. To be perfectly trans-
parent; to let the sunbeams come into it; to
shatter them into their elemental glory; and
to flash them out again — ^this is the splendour
of the diamond, this is the making of the jewel.
Any opacity on its part, any selfish absorption
of the rays, any refusal to be a transparent me-
dium, sullies its own beauty. Most normal and
rational accordingly is self-sacrifice, or spiritual
purity and transparency of soul. Because life
is a medium and agency, therefore self-sacrifice
is the only true attitude.

It is noteworthy that our true relation to
humanity is not different from our right relation
toward all other worlds. Our attitude toward
nature, toward law, truth, beauty, and ideals,
as well as toward God, is not essentially different.
Face-to-face with these, reverent receptivity and

Humanity and the Individual 365

unselfish activity are the only appropriate atti-
tude. Here, as ia the human sphere, selfishness
is self -defeat, while humility is iaheritance.
They can pour themselves abundantly only
through an open and generous soul. So the
law of self-sacrifice is a universal law, applying
to the individual, not only in his relation to
humanity, but also in his relation to every realm
of Reality, and for the same reason; for life is
set into the All, everywhere as a medium and
agency.

Have we put unmeasured emphasis upon this
last? We have done so deliberately; for to be
a true medium and agency is about the chief
end of man. To be such in relation to human-
kind, to be such in relation to the cosmos, and
to be such in relation to God is to find one's true
place and fulfil one's function in the World-All.

What is it then to be a true medium and agency
of humanity? It is first to be a true child of
humanity; it is second to be a true parent of
humanity. When we are children humanity
enspheres our life; it is an ensphering, producing
universal. When we become parents, we en-
sphere other lives ; we in turn become ensphering,
producing universals. Our development thus is
from an ensphered particular into an ensphering,
producing universal. Not, of course, that hu-
manity ever ceases to be to each of us, in subtle
ways, what it was at the first. It is plain, too,

366 God and Man

that parenthood, as here used, is more than
physical, having all the scope of affectional,
intellectual, and spiritual parenthood. To be
such a universal parent means to become a co-
creator with humanity on every plane of life.
Medium and agency, universal parent or enspher-
ing universal, and co-creator, — ^this is what every
developed life in relation to humanity becomes.

Is such language unfamiliar? It, or some such
terms, with the great ideas for which they stand,
speedily must become familiar. No longer may
we view a human life as a self-complete and de-
tached thing. There is no such monstrosity in
the world. Rather we must see life as it is, see
it in its connections, see it set into humanity as
its medium and agency, and every normal and
growing life as a universal parent and co-creator
of its human-kind.

What now shall we say to this? how estimate
it? Certainly no one could ask a greater ofQce.
No human relationship could be deeper, richer,
and more intimate. At once the loftiest char-
acters of history rise in our thought. We witness
the spiritual fathers and Madonnas of the race.
To be a true medium and agency, a gracious
parent, a co-creator of our kind is to attain, to
be numbered among the great and good.

So here is the true and intended relationship
of man to humanity, in which egoism passes into
concrete altruism, selfishness changes into par-

Humanity and the Individual 367

ental love, and self-sacrifice is seen to be the
only normal and rational thing in the world and
to be crowned at last with self-realisation.

Again it is noteworthy that the same concept
that indicates the right relation of the individual
to society, indicates essentially the true relation
of a life to the cosmos and to God. To be a
perfect medium and agency of the cosmos, to
develop from an ensphered particular into an
ensphering, producing universal, and to become
a co-creator therein is to find one's place and
function. The like is true of man's supreme rela-
tionship. For to be a fitting medium and agency
of the Divine, to develop into universal parent-
hood under God, and to become a co-creator with
Him is indeed to find one's true place and life.
One law therefore holds throughout. The same
note of harmony is struck in the great circle of
Divinity that is struck in the smaller circles.
Our supreme relationship furnishes the key to
our subordinate relationships, and vice versa.
The life that has found its place in God has found
its true place also in the cosmos and in humanity,
for the ways are one.

At this stage we have sought to lift up into
centrality a great normative fact that in former
chapters we only casually have touched. This
great fact is that life is a focus and centre between
vast systems, that it is a part of the All, set into
Reality as a medium and agency of every world.

368 God and Man

and as a co-creator therein. Heretofore we have
studied on the one side all worlds in relation to
man, on the other side man in relation to the
World- All, We have seen the universal lines
converge and focus in him; we have seen all the
lines of influence radiate from him. We have
studied him, that is, on the one side and on the
other, but we have not thoughtfully viewed him
as the centre and focus of both these great pro-
cesses at once: we have not finally set him as an
actual life into his actual worlds. This is what
our present chapter has sought to do. Herein
is its essential advance. Man's true relation to
humanity, as well as his true relation to every
world, flows naturally therefrom.

We must see life then set into the World-All
as we see a star set into the cosmos. All realms
of Reality stream toward that star; all lines of
influence radiate from it. Better, all worlds pour
their influences into and through it. It is their
perfect channel and medium. So with life; it is
the medium and agency of all the spheres.

Does this seem imaginative ? It is the veritable
transcript of fact. We imagine a vain thing,
rather, when we abstract, and treat the individual
as an independent entity, as though he were some
self-complete circle. The truth is, we are so near
ourselves that we can not see ourselves, just as
we are so near the earth that we can not see it.
If we saw the earth afar off, hanging like the

Humanity and the Individual 369

moon in the sky, then we should see that all the
while it is set into the universal system and is
the channel and medium of every realm. So
with us 5 all the while we are set into the universal
Whole, the medium and agency of every sphere,
however provincial and short-sighted our ordinary
view may be.

With this true setting of life, the true law of
life and the right relation thereof to humanity,
nature, and all higher worlds, together with the
deep, rational basis of self-sacrifice toward every
realm, are naturally and logically given.

Thus man is a medium and agency. His great
business is to be a true medium and agency.
He can be such only by being perfectly open
and unselfish. Thereby he becomes, under God,
a co-creator ; toward humanity, a universal parent ;
and in himself, a true and complete man.

CHAPTER XIV

MAN THE EXPRESSION OF GOD AND PARTAKER OF
THE DIVINE NATURE

STAGE by stage, from the beginning, we have
studied life in relation to its great Environ-
ment. First we have looked at the divine side,
then at the human, back and forth, up to the
present. Now it will be good to connect the
different stages in parallel series and see each
in its connection.

Man finds himself, at the beginning, set into
the World-All and endowed with a marvellous
gamut of possibilities. He starts in harmony
and union with his environment, the lower union
of childhood's instinctive plane. He grows and
separates into the polarity of an individual will.
He advances then into the higher union with
God and His worlds, developing from individu-
ality into personality. Thereby he rises into rich
co-operation with and co-creatorship under God.
Thus at length he becomes a true medium and
agency of the Divine, more and more an expres-
sion of God, and at last a partaker of the divine
nature. So he develops into a child of God and

370

Man the Expression of God 371

into a full-grown man. Here is the normal course
of our human progress as we advance from child-
hood to ripe manhood. This is the view from
the human side.

On the divine side, God creates us and enfolds
us with His universal spheres. He is and remains
the prior and major worker in all our human life.
He works to unfold us into full and complete
personality. He does this by a vast threefold
Self -revelation through all media, till Spirit to
spirit speaks. In this rich and trinal way He
ever works in us, progressively creating. Thus
He develops and raises us into higher union and
co-operation with Himself and into co-creator-
ship. Thereby we are made a true medium and
agency of His life, a rich expression of God, and
a partaker of the divine Nature. So He develops
us at last into a child of God and a complete man.
This is the view from the divine side.

So much for each series in its connection. The
terms that we have not yet considered are: Life
as an expression of God, and finally a partaker
of the divine Nature.

If it is a different and higher view of life to
see it as we have done, as the channel and agency
of God and His worlds, and if this is the deep and
decisive corrective of all insulating individualism, it
is also a loftier and truer view to contemplate it as
the expression of the Divine; and the correctives
of this view are no less positive and wholesome.

372 God and Man

Human life the expression of God. But does
not God express Himself in and through all His
worlds? and is not our realisation of this simply
the apprehending of the true function and God-
hood of Deity? In what distinctive way then
does He express Himself through man ? He utters
Himself in rich and superlative degree.

It is very wonderful to think of our human
life as the expression of the Divine, to think of
the very God as dwelling in us, and to realise
that He utters Himself through us in far higher
and richer ways than through mineral crystal,
or vegetal life, or animal form. It is a supreme
and transporting view. For into us He sheds
His love, into us He pours His thought, unto us
He imparts His Spirit, and through us executes
His higher will. It is wondrous to think of God's
uttering Himself through us at all ; it is surpassing
to think of His expressing Himself in this tran-
scendent way. A marvellous organ of God is the
consciousness of man. When it is lifted up to
its highest forms it is a sublime expression.
Nothing in truth so glorifies our human nature
to our thought as the fact that God is pouring
His creative power and life through it. If that
unfathomable, full, and perfect Being is pouring
His high life through all the gateways of our
nature and especially through its nobler gates,
then is our nature glorious indeed, and then is
our higher Hfe unsearchable. No man thinks of

Man the Expression of God 373

himself worthily or of his privilege nobly who
does not think of his life thus as the possible
image and rich expression of God. And when
he realises that God is speaking through him in
a thousand ways, that He is streaming through
all the channels of his being, and working in him
both to will and to work according to His good
pleasure, he realises that it is half divine to live.
So elevated and rich is the higher life. The im-
manent God is the glory of man as thesimlight
is the glory of the jewel.

Nor have men been blind to this. In all times
wherever a man has realised that God verily was
speaking to him and that he was the voice of
God to men, he has been raised into uncommon
exaltation. And wherever humanity have been
convinced that some chosen man was the mes-
senger of the Most High to them, they have looked
upon him with wonder and awe. To feel that
one is a herald of the Divine, to know that one
has a message from above, and to be sure that
God is speaking in the soul and impelling it to
become a voice is, men know, an incomparable
consciousness. It is that that has made the
great prophets of the race; it is that that has
written the supreme pages of history. It reaches
up to the highest altitudes of our human expe-
rience. It is of a piece with the consciousness
of Jesus, who was aware that His Heavenly
Father forever was speaking through Him. We

374 God and Man

need very great elevation in order to see and
appreciate this. There is no higher view of life
than that which sees it as some great jewel through
which the light of God may gloriously stream.

The other side of this radiant and supreme
privilege is that man may show forth God to
the world, the human may be the mirror of the
Divine. On the one side we may hold, as we
have seen, our purified being up to God and
know that that transcendent Light and Life are
forever pouring into us. On the other side we
may hold our reflecting nature up to the world
and humbly know that, even in marvellous degree,
we may show forth God to men. But again we
ask: Does not every crystal, does not every flower,
every bird, every star show forth God? And
again we answer: They do; but man, in his
higher life, may show forth God in superlative
ways.

Two men were coming from Trinity Church
where they had listened to Phillips Brooks, when
one was heard to say to the other: "There is
something divine about that man." He had
shown forth God to them. At once we feel that
that is the limit. Higher function than that
there is not nor can be on earth or in heaven.
To manifest His character in the world, to utter
His word in His spirit, to show forth the will
and work of God, so to exhibit His life and grace
that men seeing us may think of Him and feel

Man, Partaker of the Divine Nature 375

that we are revealing the heart of God, is an
office and privilege little less than divine. How
far it is from all sordid self -display, how excel-
lent, how perfect. The life of man the mirror
of God — 'tis an office fit for an angel. To be
such a mirror truly, to reflect more and more
perfectly the glory of God would make "brutes
men and men divine."

Most naturally this leads us to our next view:
man a partaker of the divine Nature. From life
as an expression of God, to life as a partaker
of the divine Nature, thought rightly and easily
passes. For how we could reflect as in a mirror
the glory of the Lord and not be changed into
the same image from glory unto glory would
more than puzzle the mind. And with this our
human life attaias. For the supreme function
of man is to show forth God in the world, and
the supreme goal of life is to become a partaker
of the divine Nature. This is more than evident
in the nature of things. Because God is the
limiting term upward, and the most overweening
ambition of man has known not how to attempt
anything higher than self -deification. To share
in God's world, work, thought, will, love, life,
and nature! how could one write another ascend-
ing series comparable to that? It is the soul's
stairway to Heaven. And other sancta scala of
Reality there is not and can be none. Unto this

37^ God and Man

God, through all media, through all His vast
and augmenting Self-manifestation, seeks to bring
us. And unto this the Son of God is the Saviour
and perfect Way. " And God created man in His
own image, in the image of God created He him;
male and female created He them." " He hath
granted unto us His precious and exceeding great
promises; that through these ye may become
partakers of the divine nature." "Behold what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us, that we should be called children of God: and
such we are."

What we have been leading up to we now have
reached: life as a fulfilled child of God and a
complete man. When is this realised? Already
we have seen in part; now we may see in full.

Here we need to recall the great gamut of
Reality. We need to see the World-All rising
from the lowest physical up to the highest spirit-
ual, from nature up to life, law, truth, beauty,
ideals, and God. And over against that great
gamut, we need to see man unfolding Godward,
developing from body with its physical life, up
to mind with its subconscious instinct, and its
lower subliminal ranges of feeling, intellect, will,
intuition, and faith; on up to conscious mind with
its higher ranges of life, affectional, intellectual,
and volitional, esthetic, moral, and spiritual.
When man thus stands over against the World-
All, the minor gamut over against the major.

Man, Partaker of the Divine Nature 377

corresponding to it range for range, then in one
great aspect thereof, human Hfe has been fulfi-hed.
It must unfold through the whole gamut, from
the physical up to the spiritual, or it is not com-
plete. The scale of Reality must reproduce itself
in miniature in man. He must match himself
over against the World-All, he must be a micro-
cosm in the Macrocosm, or he is not a full-grown
man. Otherwise he would be like a bare and
leafless tree, with no rich correspondence and
connection with the atmosphere of earth or the
sunlight of heaven; and little enough like a per-
fect tree, green with leaves and glorious with
blossoms, in luxuriantly rich correspondence and
union with earth and sky.

Not only must the whole gamut of life be there,
matching the World-All, but also life must be
spiritualised. When a life becomes spiritual, it
is not merely that it develops a new and topmost
plane, adding thereby the final range to life, but
as well that that supreme spiritual plane pervades
with its fine influence all the lower ranges and
imbues even the body. The whole life thus is
spiritualised. The higher organises and informs
the lower. Just as a truly intellectual life not
only possesses that high range, but also per-
meates with its subtle power all the lower ranges ;
or just as a really loving life imbues the whole
nature with the grace of love. Here is another
great aspect of the fulfilled life.

Z7^ God and Man

We now may venture a complete answer to
our question as to when a life realises itself.
When man has unfolded all the possible ranges
of his nature, and the World- All has reproduced
itself in miniature in him; when he has become
spiritualised throughout, and the World- All has
become divinised for him; when the human has
become a rich medium and agency of the Divine,
a superior expression of God, and a partaker of
the divine Nature, and God has developed His
own image in him, has reproduced Himself in
him in rich degree, then is man a fulfilled child
of God, and so a complete man.

Three great essentials are here present on the
human side. First, human life has developed
from its budding infancy and lifted itself up
through all the ranges of growth until it stands
in the full stature of manhood, crowned with
spirituality. Second, the crowning spiritual na-
ture has wrought down through all the lower
ranges like a divine leaven, spiritualising all and
giving the total life elevation. Third, the devel-
oped personality thus has become a noble medium
and agency of the Divine, a rich expression of
God, and a partaker of the divine Nature.

And three great essentials are present on the
divine side. The World-All has reproduced itself
in man; the Divine has revealed itself to him as
Spirit and so the Universe has become spiritual-
ised; and God has reproduced His image in him.

Man, Partaker of the Divine Nature 379

Here it is especially noteworthy as a thing
of first importance, that the World-All repro-
duces itself in miniature in man. Because this
makes the human product as profoundly and
essentially natural on a higher plane as the pro-
duction of a rose on the lower. For what could
be more fundamentally natural than that a parent
should reproduce itself essentially in a child? If
there is a physical kingdom why should we not
be physical ? If there is a vegetal-animal realm
of life, why should it not reappear in us ? If there
are realms of law, truth, beauty, and ideals, why
should they not be represented in our wide-
ranging nature? And if there are higher and
vaster realms of mental and spiritual Reality,
why should they not reproduce themselves in the
mind and spirit of man? Nothing in the world
would appear more essentially normal and natural
than this. The only fundamentally unnatural
and abnormal thing in all our life is sin and
arrested development. The acorn that never
becomes an oak, the blasted life that never un-
folds its hidden potencies, is the one certain
abnormality.

Like unto the first in importance is the second :
the World- All has become divinised or spiritual-
ised for man. Under the inspiration of God the
developed spirit of man comes to behold the
Divine everywhere. He sees God in nature and
God in life, God in law and God in truth, God

380 God and Man

in beauty and in ideals, and pre-eminently in
His unique and only-begotten Son. In differing
degrees the light of God shines through all His
worlds into the truly awakened human soul.

The culminating fact of course is the third:
God has reproduced His own image in man. The
developed life indeed has come to be affection
of the infinite Affection, intellect of the divine
Intellect, and will of the eternal Will — in a word,
spirit of the absolute Spirit, a partaker of the
divine Nature.

This is what it means to be a fulfilled child
of God; this it is to be human, to be a full-grown
man.

Particular attention now may be called to the
essential harmony of this outcome with the funda-
mental position of our book. Supreme emphasis
has been put upon the vast and total Environ-
ment. The priority and parenthood of God have
been made pre-eminent. And with this our pres-
ent result accords. For the World- All has repro-
duced itself in miniature in man; so man has
unfolded through his wide-ranging gamut: God
has revealed Himself as Spirit, spiritualising the
Universe for man; so man has realised himself
as spirit, attaining to spirituality: and God has
developed His own image in man; and so he has
become an expression and partaker of the divine
Nature.

Man, Partaker of the Divine Nature 381

Again looking over the entire development we
see that, through all this vast, incommensurable
process, the Universe and man alike have become
spiritualised ; progressively God has revealed Him-
self as Spirit, and man has realised himself as
spirit. So that at length Spirit to spirit speaks,
and spirit with Spirit dwells. And this more-
over forever to go forward, that Spirit, God, may
become AU-in-AU.

Here is the divine goal toward which all crea-
tion moves. Man's significance is not thereby
negated but fulfilled. He becomes a spiritual
personality within the all-enfolding life of God.
Man glorifies God, and God glorifies Himself in
m.an, as the child glorifies the father and the
father glorifies himself in the perfect child. Not
"eternal form," but eternal personality, "shall
still divide the eternal soul from all beside."

When this shall be, when God shall be All-in-
AU, we shall have entered into the soul of things :
the bodies shall have passed: the spirit and the
eternal reality shall abide. Physical being, child-
hood, youth, on the subjective side; nature, divine
background revelation, and incarnate Divinity,
on the objective side shall have passed away, it
is true, in their temporal actuality, but shall
abide in their eternal and essential reality. Life
shall forever be different because it tabernacled
in this intimate and dear frame. Childhood shall

382 God and Man

forever live at the heart of manhood. And ma-
turity shall be "yoiing with the eternal youth."
The essential soul of all temporal forms shall have
passed into the eternal Spirit, and so abide. Even
past forms therefore shall not have proved in the
end merely empty and meaningless, but shall have
revealed within a deeper significance that endures.

CHAPTER XV

THE ABOUNDING RICHES OF THE HIGHER LIFE

OUR task in the main is done. The body
and articulation of truth have been at
length set forth. It is now our privilege to
estimate the splendid outcome. If our evalua-
tion shall justify the magnificent claims of the
higher life, the result will be happy indeed. We
turn then from realm to realm, to value and
judge that life in relation to the different fields
of Reality.

And first the higher life with Nature. Nature
is different to Jesus than to Judas. The ennobled
life, as we should expect, looks out upon a changed
cosmos. All nature to such a soul becomes a vast
revelation of God. Her immensities tell of His
infinitude as nothing else could; her irresistible
might impressively reveals His omnipotence; her
endless variety and system, His fathomless wis-
dom; her majesty, His divine glory. Ever3rthing
is pstinct with His presence. The face of nature
is indeed a wondrous mirror, her framework an
endless symbolism, her fields the leaves of the
eldest Bible of the race, her myriad voices His

383

384 God and Man

various speech, and all her processes a vast,
divine processional, the ongoings of God. To
the pure and clarified being of a Wordsworth,
nature is not dead and mechanical, but quick
with life and purpose; her inmost essence is not
crass and material, but fine and spiritual; her
opacity becomes at least translucent ; her mystery
is changed from the dark and depressing mystery
of Fate into the fascinating mystery of light;
and her meaning is incommensurably enriched.
To such a life ever5rthing is changed. The might
and immensity of nature are no longer crushing,
but rather uplifting and enlarging. Instead of
his producer, she becomes his mother, his com-
pendious teacher, his life-long friend. Her wide
house now becomes his kindred and congenial
home; her high vault, his spiritual temple; and
her endless variety and change, his living and
never-failing inspiration. In a word, nature is
spiritualised and glorified to the noble soul. The
higher life with nature is like a continual morning
of privilege. So rich and real and inexhaustible
it is daily to unnumbered thousands.

Let us think of the higher life next in relation
to Law. Few are the ideas that have had a
larger part in shaping the nobler life of the race.
This regnant concept is peculiarly the treasure
of advanced civilisation. It is priceless and in-
dispensable. And as humankind has climbed to
higher planes, it has caught sight of finer and

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 385

finer ranges of law. And from those elevations,
too, all the lower forms of law have been seen
in a different light. They have been seen as
lowly ministrant to some excellent end. Many
are the aspects in which law is beheld. The
higher life feels the reign of law as the actuality
of the boundless World- All outside of us, assert-
ing its august rights and layiag its majestic claim
upon life. It goes farther. It apprehends law
as the reality of God, ensphering us, the almighty
Hand, holding us everywhere. Deeper still, it
apprehends law as the Will of God. And it
presses yet farther back, and realises it as a
revelation of the character and life of God. From
law as a meaniagless sequence of events, on to
law as the presence and self-revelation of God,
is a wide and happy flight. The higher life sees
law also as the principle of order and as the soul
of harmony. It perceives it as an essential mo-
ment of all rational life. It detects it as the
counterpart of our rational self in the cosmos.
It recognises it as the other half of freedom,
and as the strong ally and partner of the higher
union which constitutes the higher life. And
finally it experiences it as the means of its own
self-organisation, self-conquest, and self-realisa-
tion. Consequently it realises law as life, and
so law as love.

With such attributes, little wonder that law has
been a mighty factor in human consciousness.

as

386 God and Man

We can account now for both the awe and
the love of law, that the profoundest souls
have felt from of old. For from the inside they
have realised the gracious blessedness of law as
well as its majestic strength. "Lord, how love
I Thy law." "The law of the Lord is perfect,
restoring the soul." "That ye may prove what
is the good and acceptable and perfect will of
God." "Not my will, but Thine, be done."
" I worship Thee, sweet Will of God."

And to the end of time there never will be
a rich life that is not built on the strong frame-
work of law, nor a wise, deep life that does not
see that that which is so strong is also sweet
and gracious. And so law is love and love is
law, and the men and women of the higher life
discover that the Will of God is a law of liberty.

The view grows yet richer when we turn to
other realms. We contemplate now the relation
of the higher life to Truth. Those who live on
life's hilltops see orders of truth that are hidden
from other eyes; not only broader horizons, but
also higher kinds. These are the richer realms
of truth. And those who see and live in accord
with these higher realms, live in harmony with
all truth. Just as those who live unto the spirit,
live also in harmony with the body; but those
who live unto the flesh are out of harmony with
everything.

Above all the higher life discovers the soul

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 387

of truth and enters into it. For it, truth has
a soul, an essential reality; it is not simply empty
appearance, the mere form in which things mani-
fest themselves to the mind. Truth is the thought
of God, the bright disclosure of His nature. It
is sacred and inviolate. It is living and abiding.
Something of the life and reality and eternity of
God is in it. It is, in its way, divine. This is
what we mean by the soul of truth. God is in
it in a higher degree than He could be in the lower
orders of Reality. And hence the miysterious
depth and vitality of truth; hence its majesty
and authority; hence its spirituality and glory.
For if the inexhaustible God is in truth, some-
thing of His eternal life and abundance must
be in it also. This is what the higher life dis-
covers and enters into. It discovers its own soul,
and therefore discovers the soul of truth, and
of all things besides. It is spirit that awakes to
Spirit. The vast kingdoms of truth open up to
it in their real worth and wealth. It enters into
them, and into their riches. So the higher life
knows, appreciates, lives, and at length becomes
the truth ; and in turn her vast and rich domains
become the mind's natural and great home.

How real this is to countless souls; how real
to all the happy children of truth; and how real
it was to Jesus, the King of truth, Himself the
way, the truth, and the life. " Ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free."

388 God and Man

Let us now go on and look at the higher life
in relation to Beauty. Every sensitive nature
has felt the natural kinship of the religious life
thereto. For what is the spiritualisation of life,
but the elevation and refinement of our whole
being? And what could make life kindred to
beauty, if that did not? It seems in a way tau-
tologous. For when not only the higher powers
are nobly active, but also the lower powers are
lifted up into their finest exercise, what should
we expect but natural kinship and conjunction
with the beautiful ?

And the higher life sees the higher forms.
One of the most important things in the relation
of our life to beauty is a broad consciousness
of its wide-ranging orders; for there are realms
above realms. But this is denied to the coarse
and rude soul. The exquisiteness of sensuous
beauty is one thing; the perfection of character-
beauty is another. But all character-beauty, all
spiritual excellence, all divine glories are veiled
worlds to the life that roots only in the earth.
The higher visions are given only to the higher
life. And not only this, but also the finer forms
and subtler qualities of all the lower orders of
beauty, as well, are hidden from the crass and
unrefined nature.

Thus the higher life claims all beauty for its
empire. It alone has eyes to see and ears to
hear. It alone enters into the soul's great birth-

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 389

right. And although the beauty of holiness and
the glory of the Divine are the peculiar world of
the higher life, yet it delights greatly in every
province of beauty. Whether it be the delicacy
of the flower or the charm of the human coun-
tenance, whether the sublimity of the mountains
or the grandeur of the wide and rolling sea,
whether the loveliness of a morning in June or
the starry beauty of the wintry sky, the pure
heart sees and loves it all. All order, all har-
mony, all cosmic beauty, the grace of motion
and the mould of form, all the exquisiteness of
colour and the subtlety of relation, the fine soul
owns and exults in. It rejoices in the sublime
products of musical genius, in the immortal ideal-
isations of the artist, in the grand creations of
poetic imagination, in all the beautiful works of
man. But it knows and loves best the pure,
spiritual beauties; for they are highest. The
beauty of Christ-like sympathy and unselfishness,
the beauty of gentleness, the beauty of moral
strength, the excellence of purity and love, the
grace and glory of beautiful character, — it knows
well that these are the divinest things that the
sun looks down upon.

And everywhere in beauty the spiritualised life
sees the reflection of God. The skirts of His
glory sweep through the Universe. Beauty, for
the higher life, is no mere subjective titillation,
without further meaning. Rather it feels a divine

390 God and Man

soul in beauty as it sees a soul in truth. For
here indeed is the secret of its mysterious charm,
the deep cause of its inspiration, the source of
its endless variety and wealth. How beautiful
God must be, how glorious, how perfect ! Heaven
and earth are filled with His glory. And into
all this riches of beauty the higher life enters
far, and by it is transfigured more and more into
a beautiful soul.

He who dwells with truth and beauty dwells
hard by the ideal world. It is time then to view
the higher life in relation to Ideals. It is notable
how early these typal unions of truth and beauty,
called ideals, appeal to us. They challenge the
opening mind. They do not wait until the higher
life is developed. As soon as our broad human
consciousness awakes, they make their appeal.
It is the definite call of spiritual truth and beauty
to our humanity. Archetypal and personal, they
lay their practical claim upon life and summon
it to its high quest. Their worth is recognised;
their strange fascination is heeded ; their authority
is acknowledged. They form a continuous and
common field uniting civilisation and the Kingdom
of Heaven. Morality begins in the field of ideals.
Religion never soars above them.

Yet how much deeper they become to the
profoundly religious life, how much more power-
ful their sway. Higher worlds of truth, beauty,
and spirit gather themselves up like stars in the

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 391

spiritual sky and appear in heavenly vision that
never dies out of the devout soul. They become
the voice and call of God. They are the shin-
ing goals of life. They are the pictures in the
gallery of God's mind toward which life is ever
progressing. Hence their superlative worth.
They are not mere mental constructs, useful but
factitious, and without final reality. God is in
them; they are His eternal thoughts; the perfect
ends toward which He is unfolding His wonderful
children. Could anything, therefore, be richer
than ideals; anything truer and more beautiful;
. more vital and ultimately valid?

This is what the religious life sees. Its whole
affirmation is that things are deep, soulful, won-
drous, at last divine. It rejects with quiet and
noble wrath the opposite view, that things are
superficial, mechanical, and soulless, in the end
without meaning or worth, and undivine. Its
great insight and affirmation, of values, ideals,
and Divinity everywhere, it proclaims as the great
evangel, and itself lives and has its glad being
in the deep and hidden soul of Reality. The
spirit that denies depth, worth, and God is the
unreligious spirit everywhere. The spirit that
affirms truth, soul, and Divinity, and lives in
them, is the religious spirit. Let every man take
his choice.

Here then is the reality and riches of ideals;
and here is the insight and abundance of the

392 God and Man

higher life, as it enters deep into their charmed
kingdom.

Next in order we must see and evaluate the
relation of the higher life to Humanity. Now
the very idea of a higher life with humanity
involves that we shall enter into a new spiritual
relation; soul shall be in commerce with soul.
And all other relationships also shall be carried
up and elevated; they shall be touched into
nobility. Every social, civic, and industrial rela-
tion, every human tie, shall partake of the redemp-
tion. This in itself makes the higher life rich.
But when in addition we look upon others, not
in their actuality merely, but in their ideal and
possibility as well; and when we go farther and
see in a human being the hidden image and child
of God, as we inevitably do when our own child-
hood to Him has become a rich reality, then
indeed we have unlocked one of life's deep treas-
ure stores.

The higher life in truth gathers up our human
relationships and perfects them into a divine
brotherhood under one common Fatherhood,
and at length also into a rich spiritual parent-
hood, of every larger life to the smaller, — as we
have seen above in extenso. Because, in its
essential nature, the higher life is a forthgoing,
an outflowing, of life toward life; and when that
is perfected, it means spiritual parenthood. But
consider how such an outgo involves an ever-

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 393

developing capacity on our part of continual self-
replenishment out of the fulness of God.

A true sense of the radical significance of the
higher life is brought home to us as soon as we
reflect that humanity is the most congenial ma-
terial for us to work upon, the most natural field
of our exercise here below. It thus furnishes the
opportunity for our maximal activity and the
very condition of our true growth. No man ever
has developed, and no man ever will, except in
noble and numberless relationships with his kind.
And the sooner all our stupid selfishness awakes
to this beautiful but inexorable fact, the happier
for our human welfare.

The higher life with humanity becomes, there-
fore, self-realisation and self -enrichment. True,
we can not enter into the greater wealth of human-
kind unless we give ourselves to it and for it.
But the door that opens and lets us out, also
opens and lets humanity in. The tides of the
ocean return to the little bay that empties into
it. So that the higher life in the end is enlarged
and enriched out of all the fulness of the race.

We shall see greater things than these. We
now draw near the Christ. In this rich and
magnificent survey, we must view the higher life
in relation to Him,

One is distinctly conscious of passing into
a higher realm, as soon as one turns from
other spheres to contemplate the Christ. His

394 God and Man

" unsearchable riches" is of a higher and purer or-
der; He speaks words of eternal life; He does
the things that none other did ; His consciousness
is of God and of things on their Godward side;
His nature past finding out. He comes with the
light of other worlds in His face. He is as near
to us as the earth, yet farther above us than the
sky. He is like us, still so different. So simple,
yet so profound; so gentle, but so strong; so
human, yet so divine. As particular and indi-
vidualistic as a Jewish countenance, more gen-
eral and universal than the race. All beauty,
all truth, all goodness seem to gather themselves
up in Him in a manifestation point of life: the
perfect picture of humanity, the express image
of Divinity. How rich and inexhaustible His
personality is; how free from limitation in all its
limits; so great that it does not hamper and hem
us; so perfect that the universal streams through
it unhindered; framing its particularity into a
divine lens through which we may look out into
the infinite Reality; and fitting our human life
with the perfection of an ideal. So real indeed
that we feel at home in Him here and now; so
ideal that we may abide in Him forever.

Such is the Christ; and such the purest souls
have found Him. They have sat at His feet
and learned; they have stood by His Cross and
repented; they have gone up into the Upper
Room and waited; they have prayed open the

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 395

closed doors of their lives and He has entered.
What the soul has longed for it now has — a
definite Presence, the Divine within. It is satis-
fied. Eternal life is now begun in the fields of
time.

But to whom is this a rich reality? to whom
is the living Christ a great and unfathomable
life-experience? To those only who live the
higher life; to those who open wide the door.
For all others the wealth and glory are hidden.
The Day Star remains below their horizon. It
does not rise in their hearts. Though He makes
"many rich," they remain poor.

We approach at last the mountain-top of life.
All our journey has been an expectant ascent;
for the culminating glory of the summit is before
us, the view of the higher life in relation to God.

But here we may inquire whether, throughout,
we have not been viewing the relation of the
higher life to God, Has not all our seeking and
survey been a quest of Him ? Is there any realm
that we have entered where we have not dis-
covered God underneath? And is not the true
meaning of the higher life precisely this, funda-
mentally, the vision and appropriation of the
Divine everywhere? Wherein then does the
higher life with God differ? In nature, law,
truth, beauty, ideals, and humanity we behold
God as in a mirror, more or less darkly. In
Christ, we see Him in His supreme objective

39^ God and Man

manifestation. In the Holy Spirit, we know Him
as He is. The higher Hfe with God, in its perfect
form, is the spiritual experience of, and life with,
God as Spirit, It is true that through the higher
life we behold God in all the fields of Reality, and
nowhere is the vision insignificant. In Christ
indeed the vision is perfect — so far as God can
become objective, so far as the divine picture
can be framed in the human frame. But in the
Holy Spirit we know God absolutely, as Spirit.

Let it never be lost from sight that into this
final stage, into this perfect knowledge of the
Father, Jesus Himself sought to lead men. He
knew that this is the ultimate. He knew that
life is not perfect until it realises itself as spirit.
And He knew also that God is not finally known,
until known spiritually as Spirit. "It is expedi-
ent for you that I go away."

And what is highest is also richest. It is a
marvellous scene, that in the Upper Room where
the hundred and twenty are gathered together.
Their faces are upturned; their eyes are closed;
their souls are expectant with a great expecta-
tion; their hearts are of one accord; they con-
tinue steadfastly in prayer. Nothing but the
soul and God are there. Nature is shut out ; law
as such is out of mind; formal truth is in the
background; the fields of beauty are disregarded;
the shining ideals are not consciously to the fore;
and the incarnate Christ has taken Himself away.

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 397

The soul and God alone are there. No Moses,
no great prophet, stands forth to lead them.
No Bible is unrolled before them to be steadily
pondered. No gorgeous temple lifts its walls
around them, as though the glories of art needs
must mediate between the soul and God. In
the simple Upper Room they pray. The God
who has come to them through nature and hu-
manity, through law and truth, through beauty
and ideals, and through the Incarnation, must
also come to them directly. He who has come
mediately, must also come immediately. For
the God of nature and humanity, law and truth,
beauty and ideals, and the God of the Incarna-
tion is not the final God of the soul. The final
God of the soul must be the God of the Holy
Spirit. God must come as Spirit to spirit or
the highest has not come. Now, for souls that
have been coming to God through all media, to
gather together in that Upper Room and seek
to come to Him also immediately, and, with
unmatched expectation, to wait before Him there
day after day with uplifted face, is a spiritual
emprise unparalleled in history. No human scene
is comparable to it. For the spirit of man thus
to wait for the Spirit of God is the ultimate.
It is indeed the supreme exercise of the supreme
function of the human soul. It is prayer at its
highest. And if ever there should be anything
that matched it, it would have to be, in the

398 God and Man

nature of the case, essentially the same scene
repeated. Life's Upper Room therefore is the
supreme picture, and life's Pentecost is the
supreme experience of the human soul.

All that this means words of course can not
utter. Experience alone can comprehend. But
never before did the disciples feel such complete-
ness and wealth of realisation. Such sober cer-
tainty of waking inspiration they never knew till
then. At no time when Jesus was at their side
did He work such fulness and perfection of result.
They found it so, even as He had said, that it
was expedient for them that He should go away.

And the Upper Room in Jerusalem is the Upper
Room in London or in New York, in palace or
in cottage, in the first century or the twentieth.
And life's Pentecost, in its very nature, is and
will remain life's consummation and glory. For
no man is great and complete until he becomes
a spirit, living in mutuality of life with God as
Spirit.

Does this mean that all the media by which
a soul has come to itself and God become at
length meaningless and futile? No. They are
still the stairway by which life climbs to its
Upper Room, and, in their spiritual essence,
they are still the atmosphere through which the
soul looks out toward the Divine. But they bring
life also into final immediacy.

We have now surveyed the higher life in relation

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 399

to nature and law, truth and beauty, ideals and
humanity, Christ and God; and we have found
it incomparably rich. Let us turn finally and
glance at the higher life in relation to itself.

In all the foregoing, as we have entered into
the different realms and found them so abundant,
we also have been digging down into the deeper
mines of our own being. Not that these two
great processes are indeed separable; for the
richly objective and the richly subjective go
together, in equal balance, in every wholesome
life. But it is certainly true that they who seek
God, find also their own souls in the profoundest
and richest of all subjective lives. Deep calls
unto deep. What a marvellous awaking can take
place! The heart can awake to its hidden, half-
divine possibilities; the intellect can become con-
scious of its wide and sublime ranges; the soul
know its mysterious and solemn depths: circle
within circle, room beyond room ; while unguessed
chambers open wide their doors and sacred cur-
tains are rent from top to bottom and holy and
most holy places are freely entered. O the mys-
tery of man, the inner world and its wealth, how
great it is! Little wonder that Socrates must
say to every soul. Know thyself. He that loses
his life findeth it indeed.

Now the truth of all this untold thousands
have proved. One needs not know half the treas-
ure of Paul's or of Phillips Brooks' deep life to

400 God and Man

realise how affluent and boundless the profoundly
religious spirit in time becomes. Such a life
possesses both self and God. All worlds are its
worlds and the treasures thereof.

It appears thus that the higher life is the
gateway into all the rich kingdoms of God. And
that is the truth. Into what fxclds of privilege
did not Milton, or Tennyson, or Emerson, or
Phillips Brooks enter. Let us speak particularly
of Phillips Brooks. How rich he was. Nature
opened to him her great Paradise; law revealed
her stern but gentle glory; truth took him into
her universal empire; beauty made him at home
in her many worlds ; while the starry sky of ideals
was ever above his happy life. How truly rich
he was. To him the treasure-house of humanity
opened wide its doors. To him the personality
of Christ, with its "unsearchable riches" and
charm, was an ever great ening power and delight.
And to him God was the infinite sea of the soul's
voyage and rapture. But into all these realms
of privilege, the higher life was the golden gateway.

So it is always. We never possess our worlds
until we enter into them through the gates of
Life. Like symphonies to the deaf, and like sun-
set glories to the blind, are all the kingdoms of
heaven to Caliban. The grovelling soul inevitably
shuts itself out from every Paradise of God.

Through the higher life we first really possess

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 401

our worlds. Moreover, thereby we gain and hold
them with a possession greater than actual appro-
priation. Rarely does one contemplate a truth
more important and more fascinating than this.
For here is the secret of the illimitable quality,
characteristic of all supreme experiences.

Possession greater than actual appropriation.
As one sits on a lofty cliff and gazes out over
the vast ocean, rolling in tumultuous splendour,
and as one thinks of its immensity and glory,
of its depth and fulness, of its eternity and power,
and of its ageless mystery, one is rapt and lost
in a great experience. We become one with the
sea. The spirit of the sea, the meanings of the
sea, the vastness of the sea, are ours. We own
them in the exaltation of a supreme experience.
As the ocean rises up and meets the sky, and
as the sky bends down and claim.s the ocean,
so we become one with the sea. It is a perfect
hour. But what constitutes the completeness
and perfection of that experience? What gives
it the illimitable quality, without which no expe-
rience is perfect? It is the mystery, but the
reality, of higher, vaster possession — ^possession
beyond actual appropriation.

The same is true everywhere. It is indeed a
subtle, intangible reality, this with which we here
deal, but one of the most momentous of all our
human experience.

Take a perfect morning in spring. The green

402 God and Man

fields, the waving trees, the fresh foliage, the
distant hills, the calm river, the soft breeze, the
flowers, the birds, the golden sunlight, and over
all the deep blue sky. Who has not known a
transporting hour in such a scene. The fulness
of it, the freshness, the rapture, the inspiration:
as though all the elevated feelings and thoughts
of the soul combined with all the loveliness of
earth and sky in the exquisiteness and glow of a
perfect experience. But again what constitutes
the consummation and ineffableness of such an
hour ? It is the sense of imity with all the beauty
of nature and the vitality of earth, with all the
processes of the Universe and the renewing life
of God. It is the sense that all things are ours.
It is possession beyond appropriation, possession
through elevation.

Sink ourselves in whatever great experience
we may, fathom it, interpret it, reveal the mystery
of its ineffable satisfaction; in it we always shall
find the same illimitable quality, a certain subtle
possession far greater than actual appropriation.
It is what lies outside the little circle, it is the
limitless beyond; that is what gives the unspeak-
able character to every great and perfect expe-
rience. Whether we stand by Niagara Falls or
look down upon the world from the summit of
the Alps ; whether we are in the luxuriance of the
Southland or in the barren ice-fields of the North;
whether we sit on the border of a wooded lake

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 403

in summer or look into the starry sky in winter,
the experience is the same. It is the inimitable
beyond. It is the sense of oneness with the All,
the feeling of boundless possession. When we
stand on the earth, we stand on the whole world.
When we stand on the world, we stand on the
Universe. We possess the globe and the spacious
firmament. We are all universals. This is what
makes life unconfined; this is what gives expe-
rience the infinite quality. The patriot in his
pride of country or the lover in his ecstasy of
love; the artist painting his divine vision or the
scientist making his wonderful discovery ; the poet
creating his immortal epic or the prophet writing
his inspired Book — all know the perfect hour, the
illimitable experience, the boundless possession.

I am solicitous that this supreme fact that lies
always, like the greater world, beyond our limited
horizon shall be lifted up out of dim into clear
consciousness. We greatly need it; we must do
our work in the knowledge of it; life requires its
inexhaustible inspiration. Therefore its abiding
reality can not be too clearly known.

Into whatever field indeed we look we may
see this universal fact. When Agassiz glows with
noble passion for nature, and kindles a thousand
others; when Kant stands in awe and wonder
before the starry heavens above and the moral
law within ; when Webster holds the United States
Senate for hours as in a spell through the power

404 God and Man

and majesty of truth; when Murillo is transported
in the presence of the vision of pure beauty; or
when Plato dwells like an immortal in the world
of ideas and ideals, we see the same great expe-
rience proceeding from the same great cause.
Life has come to its own, it is at one with Reality.
At home in its great kingdom, it claims the
Universe, as the star claims the sky.

Or does some Francis of Assisi or some George
Miiller, in noble service, lose and find himself
in the rich field of humanity ; or some Paul behold
life's Christ in heavenly vision; or some Spinoza
gaze into philosophy's divine mirror until he
becomes a "God-intoxicated" man? It is all
the same: again the soul knows the perfect hour,
the illimitable experience, the boundless posses-
sion. And whatever the great experience may
be, — some lowly mother in her great motherhood,
some youth in the new-birth of the mind, some
soul writing its penitential psalm, some fisherman
on the Mount of Transfiguration, some life alone
in its Gethsemane, some martyr victoriously dying
for a great cause, — whatever the great experience,
whether in the deep shadows or in the joyous light,
the secret of it is the same. It is the sense of the
infinite. We look out into a limitless cosmos; we
contemplate a Universe of law ; we abide in infinite
realms of truth; we live in boundless worlds of
beauty ; we seek unlimited ideals ;■ — the unbounded
realm of personality, the unfathomable Christ,

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 405

the God who is All-in- All, — these are the
mighty Backgrounds of our great experiences.
Conscious of them, or oblivious to them, the
mighty Backgrounds are there. And these are
what give vastness and transcendence to expe-
rience. We possess them all. We are citizens
of all worlds, — nature, law, truth, beauty, ideals,
humanity, Christ, God, — we live and move and
have our being in them all. And our supreme
and perfect experiences are our periods of super-
eminent consciousness of them and commerce
with them. Possessing thus our worlds with a
possession indefinitely greater than actual appro-
priation, we live, in truth, as universals in our
Universe.

And from the beginning, now, and evermore,
this is what the living God intends for His living
sons and daughters. He who lives not thus is,
in the saddest sense, without God and without
true possession of any world — "a melancholy
stranger on a dark earth." But he who thus
lives is alive indeed. "This my son was dead
and is alive again."

But all this subtle, abundant possession is
through the golden gateway of the higher life,
ownership through elevation, through kindred
character.

One thing more is needed to make life supremely
rich — possession of the past and future as well as
of the present. Three things, higher possession

4o6 God and Man

of all our great worlds, possession inimitably
greater than actual appropriation, and possession
of the past and future as well as of the present,
eternal possession, — these three are the factors
of all supremely rich life. We are made rich
by memory and hope as well as by vivid present
experience. We must live both as universals and
as eternals. Now it is evident that the higher
life, being spiritual, brings us, not only into the
true and illimitable, but also into the eternal,
possession of our worlds. When the spiritual
life is there, "eternity is set in the heart of man."
There is such a thing as subtle present experience
of the past and future. Rather there is in truth
no punctual, momentary, present experience.
So the higher life does indeed far more completely
what all life does meagrely, — it transcends the
"temporal present" and rises into the eternal
present. It lives the eternal life here and now.
And this is not theoretic, but real; and not occa-
sional, but constant. In some measure all lives
experience it; in superlative measure many lives
come to know it. This is the way Jesus lived;
and into this He led His disciples. This is life
eternal, that they should know Thee the only
true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even
Jesus Christ.

It would be easy to point out the great con-
tribution of this necessary and familiar constituent
to all rich life. No life is rich without a past.

Abounding Riches of the Higher Life 407

The magic of memory keeps up its wonders.
The treasures that are gone are still ours. Yes,
in a deep way, we possess our past, and both
the racial and cosmic past. They are the sub-
liminal sea of the surface waves of our present
conscious experience.

And no life is rich without a future. The
workings of hope more than equal even the
marvels of memory. The treasures that are to
be are already ours: the creative future, the new
and larger things, the truer vision of concealed
excellence, the constant growth, the great ex-
pansion, the spirit ualisation of life, the rise from
glory unto glory, the perfect friendships, the
knowledge and love of God, the joy forever. All
potentialities are already ours. We are now what
we are to be — not of course in full realisation.
The acorn is the oak — ^the acorn is not the oak.
What would life be truly without a future? The
little bird in the nest dreams of the wings that
are to be and of the wide world. The boy
dreams of the man. Without a future we could
not take one present step : we step into the future.
This new dimension alone makes life complete.
Like a ship without a voyage, or like a clock with-
out time, is life without the future. Spring carries
summer already in its being. The babe has the
image of God already within. The saint carries
Heaven in his heart. We possess the future as
we possess the sky. Though we live on the earth,

4o8 God and Man

we live in the heavens; we speed among the stars;
we Hve in the total Universe. Even so we pos-
sess the future. Paul's citizenship was in Heaven
even while his feet "pressed the solid earth."

This adds the last dimension to life. How
rich then the Higher Life is. The present is
ours; the past is ours; the future is ours; we live
the eternal life here and now; we enter into the
higher possession of all our worlds ; we claim them
with a possession greater than actual appropri-
ation; we move forward toward the complete
realisation; we unfold toward perfect spirit.
Behold the abounding riches of the Higher Life!

All things are yours ; whether Paul, or Apollos,
or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or
things present, or things to come; all are
yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

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