KeepYoor Card in This Pocket
Books will be issued only on presentation of proper
library cards. , .
Unless labeled otherwise, books may be retained
for four weeks. Borrowers finding books marked, de-
faced or mutilated are expected to report same at
library desk; otherwise the last borrower will be held
responsible for all imperfections discovered.
The card holder is responsible for all books drawn
on this card.
Penalty for over-due boob 2c a day plus cost of
notices. ,
Lost cards and change of resident must be re-
ported promptly.
Public Library
Kansas City, Mo.
Keep Your Card ipTbisPockei
(fivnoxv oo.. x- e., MO.
THE INNER LIFE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NSW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA SAM FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE;
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE INISTIR LIFE
BY
RUFUS M. JONES, A.M., Lrrx.D.
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HAVERFORD COLLEGE
AUTHOR OF ** STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION "
*' SPIRITUAL REFORMERS," ETC.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, xgi6,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and elcctrotyped. Published October, 1916,
Reprinted January, 1917.
.
J. S. Gushing Go. Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION
THERE is no inner life that is not also
an outer life. To withdraw from the
stress and strain of practical action and
from the complication of problems into
the quiet cell of the inner life in order to
build its domain undisturbed is the sure
way to lose the inner life. The finest of
all the mystical writers of the fourteenth
century the author of Theologia Ger-
manica knew this as fully as we of this
psychologically trained generation know-
it. He intensely desired a rich inner life,
but he saw that to be beautiful within he
must live a radiant and effective life in
the world of men and events. "I would
fain be," he says, "to the eternal God
what a man's hand is to a man" i.e. he
seeks, with all the eagerness of his glow-
vi , INTRODUCTION
ing nature, to be an efficient instrument
of God in the world. In the practice of
the presence of God, the presence itself
becomes more sure and indubitable. 'Re-
ligion does not consist of inward thrills
and private enjoyment of God; it does
not terminate in beatific vision. It is
rather the joyous business of carrying the
Life of God into the lives of men of
being to the eternal God what a man's
hand is to a man.
There is no one exclusive "way" either
to the supreme realities or to the loftiest
experiences of life. The "way" which we
individuals select and proclaim as the
only highway of the soul back to its true
home turns out to be a revelation of our
own private selves fully as much as it is a
revelation of a via sacra to the one goal of
all human ' striving. Life is a very rich
and complex affair and it forever floods
over and inundates any feature which we
pick out as essential or as pivotal to its
consummation. God so completely over-
arches all that is and He is so genuinely 4
INTRODUCTION
Vll
the fulfillment of all which appears in-
complete and potential that we cannot
conceivably insist that there shall be only
one way of approach from the multiplic-
ity of the life which we know to the
infinite Being whom we seek.
Most persons are strangely prone to use
the "principle of parsimony." They
appear to have a kind of fascination
for the dilemma of either-or alternatives.
"Faith" or "works" is one of these
great historic alternatives. But this
cleavage is too artificial for full-rounded
reality. Each of these "halves" cries
for its other, and there cannot be any
great salvation until we rise from the
poverty of either half to the richness
of the united whole which includes both
"ways."
So, too, we have had the alternative
of "outer" or "inner" way forced upon
us. We are told that the only efficacious
way is the way of the cross, treated as
an outer historical transaction; and we
have, again, been told that there is no
viii INTRODUCTION
way except the inner way of direct ex-
perience and inner revelation. There are
those who say, with one of George Chap-
man's characters :
"I'll build all inward not a light shall ope
The common out-way.
I'll therefore live in dark ; and all my light
Like ancient temples, let in at my top."
Over against the mystic who glories in
the infinite depths of his own soul, the
evangelical, with excessive humility, allows
not even a spark of native grandeur to
the soul and denies that the inner way
leads to anything but will-o'-the-wisps.
This is a very inept and unnecessary
halving of what should be a whole. It
spoils religious Hfe, somewhat as the
execution of Solomon's proposal would
have spoiled for both mothers the living
child that was to be divided. Twenty-
five hundred years ago Heraclitus of
Ephesus declared that there is "a way
up and a way down and both are one."
So, too, there is an outer way and an
INTRODUCTION ix
inner way and both are one. It takes
both diverse aspects to ezpress the rich
and complete reality, which we mar and
mangle when we dichotomize it and
glorify our amputated half. There is a
tine saying of a medieval mystic: "He
who can see the inward in the outward
is more spiritual than he who can only
see the inward in the inward."
This little book on the "Inner Life"
does not assume to deal with the whole of
the religious life. It recognizes that the
outer in the long run is just as essential
as the inner. This one inner aspect is
selected for emphasis, without any inten-
tion of slighting the importance of the
other side .of the shining shield. Men
to-day are so overwhelmingly occupied
with objective tasks; they are so busy
with the field of outer action, that it is
a peculiarly opportune time to speak of
the interior world where the issues of
life are settled and the tissues of destiny
are woven. There will certainly be some
readers who will be glad to turn from
X INTRODUCTION
accounts of trenches lost or won to spend
a little time with the less noisy but no
less mysterious battle line inside the soul,
and from problems of foreign diplomacy
to the drama of the inner life.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
CHAPTER I. THE INNER WAY i
Sec. i. The Momentous Choice i
Sec. 2. Making a Life 9
Sec. 3. The Spirit of the Beatitudes . . 14
Sec. 4. The Way of Contagion ... 23
Sec. 5. The Second Mile .... 30
CHAPTER II. THE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL 39
Sec. i. Bags that Wax not Old ... 39
Sec. 2. Otherism 46
Sec. 3. Scavengers and the Kingdom . . 50
Sec. 4. "The Beyond is Within" . . 56
Sec. 5., The Attitude toward the Unseen . 61
CHAPTER III. SOME PROPHETS OF THE INNER
WAY 70
Sec. i. The Psalmist's Way ... 70
Sec. 2. The New and Living Way . . 77
Sec. 3. An Apostle of the Inner Way . . 82
Sec. 4. The Ephesian Gospel ... 90
xi
xii CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER IV. THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE . 97
Sec. i. Waiting on God .... 97
Sec. 2. In the Spirit 105
Sec, 3. The Power of Prayer . . , m
Sec* 4. The Mystery of Goodness . .116
Sec. 5. "As One having Authority' 1 . .123
Sec. 6. Seeing Him Who is Invisible . . 133
CHAPTER V. A FUNDAMENTAL SPIRITUAL
OUTLOOK . . . .138
CHAPTER VI. WHAT DOES RELIGIOUS EXPERI-
ENCE TELL Us ABOUT
GOD 164
THE INNER LIFE
THE INNER LIFE
CHAPTER I
THE INNER WAY
I
THE MOMENTOUS CHOICE
EVERY scrap of writing that sheds any
light on the life of Jesus, and every in-
cident that gives the least detail about
His movements or His teaching are precious
to us. One can hardly conceive the joy
and enthusiasm that would burst forth in
all lands, if new fragments of papyrus or
of parchment could be unearthed that
would add in any measure to our knowl-
edge of the way this Galilean life was
lived "beneath the Syrian blue." But it
may now probably be taken for granted
that the material will never be forth-
coming and it surely is not now in
hand for an adequate biography of
Z THE INNER LIFE [Cn. I
Him. The lives of Jesus that have been
written in modern times have a certain
value, as suggestive revelations of what
the writers thought He ought to have
been or ought to have done, but biogra-
phies, in the true sense of the word, they
are not. The Evangelists performed for
us an inestimable service, but they did
not furnish us the sort of data necessary
for a detailed biography, expressed in
clock-time language.
Our "sources" are much more adequate
when we turn our attention from external
events to the inner way which His life
reveals, though they still allow for free
play of imagination and for much fluidity
of subjective interpretation. It is possible, -
however, I believe, to look through the
genuine words that are preserved and to
see, with clairvoyant insight, the inner
kingdom of the soul in that Person whose
interior life was the richest of all those
who have walked our earth. There are
curious little playthings to be bought in
Rome. If one looks through a pin-hole
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 3
peep somewhere in one of these tiny
toys, one sees to his surprise the whole
mighty structure of St. Peter's Cathedral,
standing out as large as it looks in re-
ality. Perhaps we can find some pin-
hole peeps in the gospels that in a similar
way will let us see the marvelous inner
world, the extraordinary spiritual life, of
this Person whose outer biography so
baffles us*
Our first single glimpse of His interior
life must be got without the help of any
actual word of His. It is given to us in
the gospel accounts of His discovery of
His mission. How long the consciousness
of mission had been gestating we cannot
tell. What books He read, if any, are
never named. What ripening influence
the days of toil in the carpenter shop may
have had, is unnoted. What dawned
upon Him as He meditated in silence is
not reported. What formative ideas may
have come from the little groups of "the
quiet ones in the land" can only be
guessed at. We are merely told that He
4 THE INNER LIFE [Cm I
increased in wisdom as He advanced in
stature, which is the only conceivable
way that personality can be attained.
Suddenly the moment of clear insight
came and He saw what He was in the
world for.
It was usual for the great prophets of
His people to discover their mission in
some such moment of clarified inward
sight. Isaiah saw the Lord with His
train filling the temple, felt his lips cleansed,
and heard the call "who will go?" Eze-
kiel saw the indescribable living creature
with the hands of a man under the wings
of the Spirit and heard himself called to
his feet for his commission. So here,
there was a sudden invading consciousness
from beyond. The world with its solid
hills appears only the fragment, which it
is, and the World of wider Reality floods
in and reveals itself. The sky seems rent
apart, the Spirit, as though once more
brooding over a world in the making,
covers Him from above, and gives inward
birth to a conviction of uniqueness of Life
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 5
and uniqueness of mission. He feels Him-
self in union with His Father. 1
This experience of the invading Life,
awakening a consciousness of unique per-
sonal mission, brought with it, as an un-
avoidable sequence, the stress and. strain
of a very real temptation. The inner
world of self-consciousness has strange
watershed "divides" that shape the cur-
rents of the life as the mountain ridges of
the outer world do the rivers. No new
nativity, no fresh awakening, can come to
a soul without forcing the momentous
issue of its further meaning, or without
raising the urgent question, how shall the
new insight, the fresh light, the increased
power be wrought into life ? The deepest
issues turn, not upon the choice of " things,"
but upon the choice of the kind of self that
is to be, and the most decisive dramas are
those that are enacted in the inner world
before the footlights of our private theater.
The temptation is described by the Evan-
gelists in su<;h conventional language and
1 Mark I. lo-n.
6 THE INNER LIFE [Ca. I
in such popular and pictorial imagery that
its immense inner reality is often missed by
the reader. This oriental, pictorial way
of presenting the drama of the soul catches
the western mind in the toils of literalism.
The picture is taken for the reality. What
we have here in the temptation, when we
go into the heart of the matter, is the
momentous choice of the kind of Person
that is to emerge. It is the immemorial
battle between the higher and the lower
self within. It was the line of least resist-
ance to accept popular expectation, to go
forth to realize the dream of the age. A
person conscious of divine anointing, fired
with passionate loyalty to the nation's
hopes, gifted with extraordinary power of
moving men to new issues would feel at
once that he had .only to put himself forth
as the expected Messiah in order to carry
the enthusiastic people with him- Let
him but come with the spectacular powers
of the Messiah that was eagerly looked for,
the power to turn stones to bread, to leap
from the pinnacle of the temple without
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 7
injury, to break the Roman yoke and
make Jerusalem once again the city of
God's chosen people and success was
sure to follow. God's ancient covenant
was an absolute pledge to the faithful
that He would in His own time make
bare His arm and deliver His people.
As soon as the anointed one appeared
all the forces of the unseen world would
be at his command and his triumph would
be assured.
The appeal of a career like that is no
fictitious "temptation." It is of a piece
with what besets us all. It is out of the
very stuff of nature. At some such cross-
road we have all stood with the issue
of our inner destiny in unstable equi-
librium.
Over against it, another "way" is set,
another kind of life is dimly outlined,
another type of anointed one is seen to
be possible, another kingdom, totally dif-
ferent from the one of popular expecta-
tion, is descried. This kingdom of His
spiritual vision cannot come by miracle
8 THE INNER LIFE
6r by power; it can come only through
complete adjustment of will to the will
of the Father-God. This anointed one of
His higher aspiration will be no temporal
ruler, no political king, no spectacular
wonder-worker. He will rule only by the
conquering power of love and goodness.
He will venture everything on sheer faith
in the Father's love and on the appeal
of uncalculating goodness of heart and
will. This new kind of life that draws
Him from the line of least resistance is a
life of utter simplicity, which discounts
what the world calls "goods," which
draws upon an unseen environment for
its resources and which expands inwardly,
rather than outwardly, after the manner
of the green bay tree. The new "way**
that opens to His sight, and that beckons
Him from all other ways of glory, is a
way of suffering and sacrifice, a way of
the cross. It offers itself not because
self-giving is a better way than an easy,
happy path, but because it is the only
way by which love in a world like ours
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 9
can reach its goal ; it is the only way by
which the kingdom of God can be formed
in the lives of men like us.
He came forth from those momentous
days of inner struggle with the issue
settled, and with the first step taken in
the way of the Kingdom.
II
MAKING A LIFE
Our present-day age has a kind of
passion for the study of developing pro-
cesses. We do not feel quite at home
with any subject until we can work our
way back to its origin or origins and then
follow it in its unfoldings, explaining the
higher and more complex stages in terms
of the lower and more simple ones.
That method, however, cannot be suc-
cessfully used to unlock the secret of the
gospels. We do not find beginnings here ;
we cannot follow genetic processes; we
are unable to discriminate higher and
lower stages of insight. We must launch
out at the very start in mid-sea. What-
10 THE INNER LIFE [Cta. I
ever words of Christ one begins with
indicate that He has already arrived at
an absolute insight I mean, that He
has found a way of living that is no longer
relatively good, but intrinsically and ab-
solutely good.
It is an inveterate habit with men like
us to estimate everything in terms of
relative results. We are pragmatists by
the very push of our immemorial instincts.
Our first question, consciously or un-
consciously, is apt to be, what effects will
come, if I act so, or so ? Will this course
work well ? Will it further some issue or
some interest ? And this deep-lying prag-
matic tendency this aim at results
appears woven into the very fiber even
of much of the religion of the world.
Sometimes the results sought are near,
sometimes they are remote; sometimes
they are sought for this world, sometimes
they are sought for the next world ; some-
times the pragmatic aim at results is
crudely and coarsely selfish, sometimes it
is refined, or altogether veiled, but religion
CH. I] THE INNER WAY n
has no doubt often enough been an im-
pressive kind of double-entry bookkeep-
ing, the piling up of credits or of merits
which some day will bring the sure result
that is sought.
Just that entire pragmatic attitude
Christ has left forever behind. His inner
way, His interior insight, passes on to a
new level of life, to a totally different
type of religious aspiration and to another
method of valuation. For Him the be-
yond is always within. The only good
thing is a life that is intrinsically good;
the only blessedness worth talking about
is a kind of blessedness which attaches
by a law of inner necessity to the char-
acter of the life itself. It makes no
difference what world one may eventually
be in if only it is still a world of spirit-
ual issues goodness, holiness, likeness
to God, will still constitute blessedness a/
they do in this world.
When once this insight is reached, it
affects all the pursuits and all the valua-
tions of the soul. All "other things" at
12 THE INNER LIFE [Cn. 1
once become secondary, and " entering into
life," "seeking life," "finding life," be-
comes the primary thing. "Making a
life" overtops in importance even "mak-
ing a living" the life is more than
meat, more than raiment, more than
gaining the whole world. It is better to
enter into life halt and maimed with
right hand cut off and eye plucked out
than bend all one's energies to preserve
the body whole and yet to miss life. The
way to life is strait, the entering gate is
narrow. One cannot enter without facing
the stern necessity of focusing the vision
on the central purpose, without getting
"a single eye," without letting go many
things for the sake of one thing.
Sacrifice, surrender, negation, are in-
herently involved in any great onward-
marching life. They go with any choice
that can be made of a rich and intense life.
It is impossible to find without losing,
to get without giving, to live without
dying. But sacrifice, surrender, negation,
are never for their own sake; they are
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 13
never ends in themselves. They are in-
volved in life itself.
X"'
One great spiritual law comes to light
and becomes operative, as soon as the
interior insight is won, as soon as the
inner way is found : The law that the
soul can have what it wants. This law of
the interior life, of the inner way, Christ
affirms again and again in varying phrase.
The inner attitude, the settled trend of
desire, the persistent swing of the will, are
the very things that make life. The
person who cherishes hate in his soul
forms a disposition of hatred and must
live in the atmosphere which that spirit
forms. The person who longs for deeds
that are wrong, and allows desire to play
with free scope is inwardly as though he
did the deed. He is what he wants to be.
And so, too, on the other hand, the rightly
fashioned will is its own reward and has
its own peculiar blessedness. The person
who hungers and thirsts for goodness will
get what he wants. He who seeks, with
undivided aspiration, will always find.
I 4 THE INNER LIFE [Cm. I
He who knocks with persistent desire for
the gates of life to open will see them swing
apart for him to go through to his goal.
He who asks, with the ground swell of
his whole inner being, for the things
which minister to life and feed its deepest
roots, will get what he asks for. The
very pity of the Pharisee's way of life
is that he has his reward he gets what
he is seeking. The glory of the other
way is the glory of the imperfect the
glory of living toward the flying goal of
likeness to the Father in heaven.
Ill
THE SPIRIT OF THE BEATITUDES
In putting the emphasis for the moment
on the inner way of religion, we must be
very careful not to encourage the heresy
of treating religion as a withdrawal from
the world, or as a retreat from the press
and strain of the practical issues and
problems of the social order. That is the
road to spiritual disaster, not to spiritual
power. Christ gives no encouragement
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 15
to the view that the spiritual ideal
the Kingdom of God can ever be
achieved apart from the conquest of the
whole of life or without the victory that
overcomes the world. Religion can no*
more be cut apart from the intellectual
currents, or from the moral undertakings,
or from the social tasks of an age, than any
other form of life can be isolated from its
native environment. To desert this world,
which presses close around us, for the sake
of some remote world of our dreams, is to
neglect our one chance to get a real re-
ligion.
But at the same time the only possible
way to realize a kingdom of God in this
world, or in any other world, is to begin
by getting an inner spirit, the spirit of
the Kingdom, formed within the lives of
the few or many who are to be the "seed"
of it. The "Beatitudes" furnish one of
these extraordinary pin-hole peeps, of which
I spoke in a former section, through which
this whole inner world can be seen. Here,
in a few lines, loaded with insight, the
16 THE INNER LIFE [Ca. I
seed-spirit of the Kingdom comes full into
sight. We are given no new code, no
new set of rules, no legal system at all.
It is the proclamation of a new spirit,
a new way of living, a new type of per-
son. To have a world of persons of this
type, to have this spirit prevail, would
mean the actual presence of the Kingdom
of God, because this spirit would produce
not only a new inner world, but a new
outer world as well.
The first thing to note about the blessed-
ness proclaimed in the beatitudes is that
it is not a prize held out or promised as a
final reward for a certain kind of con-
duct; it attaches by the inherent nature
of things to a type of life, as light attaches
to a luminous body, as motion attaches
to a spinning top, as gravitation attaches
to every particle of matter. To be this
type of person is to be living the happy,
blessed life, whatever the outward con-
ditions may be. And the next thing to
note is that this type of life carries in
itself a principle of advance. One reason
CH. IJ THE INNER WAY 17
why it is a blessed type of life is that it
cannot be arrested, it cannot be static.
The beatitude lies not in attainment,
not in the arrival at a goal, but in the
way, in the spirit, in the search, in the
march.
I suspect that the nature of "the happy
life" of the beatitudes can be adequately
grasped only when it is seen in contrast
to that of the Pharisee who is obviously
in the background as a foil to bring out
the portrait of the new type. The pity
of the Pharisee's aim was that it could
be reached he gets his reward. He has
a definite limit in view the keeping of a
fixed law. Beyond this there are no
worlds to conquer. Once the near finite
goal is touched there is nothing to pursue.
The immediate effect of this achievement
is conceit and self-satisfaction. The trail
of calculation and barter lies over all his
righteousness. There is in his mind an
equation between goodness and prosperity,
between righteousness and success: "If
thou hast made the most High thy habita-
18 THE INNER LIFE [Cn. I
tion there shall no evil befall thee ; neither
shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. 5 '
The person who has loss or trouble or
suffering must have been an overt or a
secret sinner, as the question about the
blind man indicates.
The goodness portrayed in the "beati-
tudes" is different from this by the width
of the sky. Christ does not call the
righteous person the happy man. He
does not pronounce the attainment of
righteousness blessed, because a "right-
eousness" that gets attained is always
external and conventional; it is a kind
that has definable, quantitative limits
"how many times must I forgive my
brother?" "Who is my neighbor?"
The beatitude attaches rather to hunger
and thirst for goodness. The aspiration,
and not the attainment, is singled out for
blessing. In the popular estimate, happi-
ness consists in getting desires satisfied.
For Christ the real concern is to get new
and greater desires desires for infinite
things. The reach must always exceed
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 19
the grasp. The heart must forever be
throbbing for an attainment that lies
beyond aay present consummation. It is
the "glory- cdf going on," the joy of dis-
covering imwcn territory beyond the mar-
gin of each, spiritual conquest.
Poverty of spirit another beatitude-
trait is bound up with hunger for good-
ness as the convex side of a curve is bound
up with the concave side. They are
different aspects of the same attitude.
The poor in spirit are by no means poor-
spirited. They are persons who see so
much to be, so much to do, such limitless
reaches to life and goodness that they
are profoundly conscious of their insuffi?
ciency and incompleteness. Self-satisfac-
tion and pride of spiritual achievement
are washed clean out of their nature.
They are open-hearted, open-windowed
to all truth,, possessed of an abiding
disposition to receive, impressed with a
sense of inner need and of childlike de-
pendence. Jtast that attitude is its own
sure reward, By an unescapable spiritual
20 THE INNER LIFE [Ca. I
gravitation the best things in the universe
belong to open-hearted, open-windowed
souls. Again, in the beatitude on the
mourner, He reverses the Pharisaic and
popular judgment. Losses and crosses,
pains and burdens, heartaches and bereave-
ments, empty chairs and darkened win-
dows, are the antipodes of our desires and
last of all things to be expected in the list
of beatitudes. They were then, and still
often are, counted as visitations of divine
disapproval. Christ rejects the superficial
way of measuring the success of a life by
the smoothness of its road or by its free-
dom from trial, and He will not allow the
false view to stand ; namely, that success
is the reward of piety, and trouble the
return for lack of righteousness. There
is no way to depth of life, to richness of
spirit, by shun-pikes that go around hard
experiences. The very discovery of the
nearness of God, of the sustaining power
of His love, of the sufficiency of His grace,
has come to men in all ages through pain,
and suffering and loss. We always go for
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 21
comfort to those who have passed through
deeps of life and we may well trust Christ
when He tells us that it is not the lotus-
eater but the sufferer who is in the way
of blessing and is forming the spirit of
the Kingdom.
Meekness and mercy and peace-making
are high among the qualities that charac-
terize the inner spirit of the kingdom.
Patience, endurance, steadfastness, con-
fidence in the eternal nature of things,
determination to win by the slow method
that is right rather than by the quick and
strenuous method that is wrong are other
ways of -naming meekness. Mercy is
tenderness of heart, ability to put oneself
in another's place, confidence in the power
of love and gentleness, the practice of
forgiveness and the joyous bestowal of
^sympathy. Peace-making is the divine
business of drawing men together into
unity of spirit and purpose, teaching
them to live the love-way, and forming
in the very warp and woof of human
society the spirit of altruism and loyalty
22 THE INNER LIFE [Cs. I
to the higher interests of the group.
These traits belong to the inmost nature
of God and of course those who have them
are blessed, and it is equally clear that
the Kingdom is theirs. There is further-
more, in this happy way of life, a condition
of heart to which the vision of God in-
herently attaches. He is no longer argued
about 1 and speculated upon. He is seen
and felt. He becomes as sure as the sky
above us or our own pulse beat within us.
We spoil our vision with selfishness, we
cloud it with prejudices, we blur it with
impure aims. We cast our own shadow
across our field of view and make a dark
eclipse.* It is not better spectacles we
need. It is a pure, clean, sincere, loving,
forgiving, passionately devoted heart.;
God who is love can be seen, can be found,
only by a heart that intensely loves and
that hates everything that hinders love.
CH I] THE INNER WAY 23
IV
THE WAY OF CONTAGION
We have seen that religion cannot be
sundered from the intellectual currents,
or from the moral undertakings, or from
the social tasks of the world. It cannot
be merely inward. It can preserve its
inward power only as it lives in actual
correspondence with its whole environ-
ment and becomes also outward. But the
primary thing for Christ, we saw, was the
attainment of an inner spirit, the seed--
spirit of the Kingdom, the spirit of the
beatitudes the attainment of a type
of life to which blessedness inherently
attaches.
The question at once arises, how shall
this inner spirit be spread and propagated ?
How is religion of the inner type to grow
and expand ? There are two character-
istic ways of propagating religious ideas,
of carrying spiritual discoveries into the
life of the world. One way is the way of
organization; the other way is the way of
24 THE INNER LIFE [Cn. I
contagion. The way of organization, which
is as old as human history, is too familiar
to need any description. Our age has
almost unlimited faith in it. If we wish
to carry a live idea into action, we or-
ganize. We select officials. We make
"motions." We pass resolutions. We ap-
point committees or boards or commis-
sions. We hold endless conferences. We
issue propaganda material. We have
street processions. We use placards and
billboards. We found institutions, and
devise machinery. We have collisions
between "pros" and "antis" and stir
up enthusiasm and passion for our
"cause." The Christian Church is prob-
ably the most impressive instance of
organization in the entire history of
man's undertakings. - It has become, in
its historical development, almost in-
finitely complex, with organizations
within organizations and suborganiza-
tions within suborganizations. It has
employed every known expedient, even
the sword, for the advancement of its
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 25
"cause," it has created a perfect maze
of institutions and it has originated a
vast variety of educational methods for
carrying forward its truth.
But great as has been the historical
emphasis on organization, it nevertheless
occupies a very slender place in the con-
sciousness of Christ. There is no clear
indication that He appointed any officials,
or organized any society, or founded any
institution. There are two " sayings" in
Matthew which use the word "Church,"
but they almost certainly bear the mark
and coloring of a later time, when the
Church had already come into existence
and had formed its practices and its
traditions. And even though the great
"saying" at Caesarea Philippi were ac-
cepted as the actual words of Jesus, it is
still quite possible to" see in it the an-
nouncement of a spiritual fellowship,
spreading by inspiration and contagion,
rather than the founding of an official
institution. It is, no doubt, fortunate
on the whole that the Church was or-
26 THE INNER LIFE [Gs. I
ganized, and that the great idea found a
visible body through which to express it-
self, though nobody can fail to see that
the Church, while meaning to propagate
the gospel, has always profoundly modified
and transformed it, and that it has brought
into play a great many tendencies foreign
to the original gospel.
Christ's way of propagating the truth
the way that inherently fits the inner
life and spirit of the gospel of the King-
dom was the way of personal con-
tagion. Instead of founding an institu-
tion, or organizing an official society, or
forming a system, or creating external
machinery, He counted almost wholly
upon the spontaneous and dynamic in-
fluence of life upon life, of personality
upon personality. He would produce a
new world, a new social order, through
the contagious and transmissive character
of personal goodness. He practically ig-
nored, or positively rejected, the method
of restraint, and trusted absolutely to the
conquering power of loyalty and consecra-
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 27
tion. It was His faith that, if you get
into the world anywhere a seed of the
Kingdom, a nucleus of persons who ex-
hibit the blessed life, who are dedicated
to expanding goodness, who rely im-
plicitly on love and sympathy, who try
in meek patience the slow method that
is right, who still feel the clasping hands
of love even when they go through pain
and trial and loss, this seed-spirit will
spread, this nucleus will enlarge and
create a society. If the new spirit of
passionate love, and of uncalculating good-
ness gets formed in one person, by a
silent alchemy a group of persons will
soon become permeated and charged with
the same spirit, new conditions will be
formed, and in time children will be born
into a new social environmentand will suck
in rxew ideals with their mother's milk.
Persons of the blessed life, Christ says,
are the saving salt of the earth. They
carry their wholesome savor into every-
thing they touch. They do not try to
save themselves. They are ready like
28 THE INNER LIFE [Cn. I
salt to dissolve and disappear, but, the
more they give themselves away, the
more antiseptic and preservative they
become to the society in which they live.
They keep the old world from spoiling
and corrupting not by attack and re-
straint, not by excision and amputation,
but by pouring the preservative savor of
their lives of goodness into all the chan-
nels of the world. This preservative and
saving influence on society depends, how-
ever, entirely on the continuance of the
inner quality of life and it will be certain
to cease if ever the salt lose its savor, i.e.
if the soul of religion wanes or dies away
and only the outer form of it remains.
But such lives are more than antiseptic
and preservative; they are kindling and
illuminative. They become "candles of
the Lord." Candles emit their light and
kindle other candles by burning them-
selves up and transmitting their flame.
When a life is set on fire, and is radiant
with self-consuming love, it will invariably
set other lives on fire. Such a person may
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 29
teach many valuable ideas, he may organize
many movements, he may attack many evil
customs, but the best thing he will ever do
will be to fuse and kindle other souls with
the fire of his passion. His own burning,
shining life is always his supreme service.
"The greatest legacy the hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero."
Such a person will be eager to decrease
that his kindling power may increase.
He will not care to save himself, or to
reap a reward for his service. He may
not even know that he is shining, like the
early saint who "wist not that his face
did shine." But for all that, men will
see the way by his light and will catch
the glory of living because he exhibits it.
He can no more be hid than can a hill-top
city, or the headlight of a locomotive, or
the newly risen sun.
That is Christ's way of spreading the
life of the Kingdom, that is His method
of propagating the inner spirit, and of
producing a society of blessed people.
30 THE INNER LIFE [CH. I
THE SECOND MILE
It may seem to some incongruous to be
writing about an inner way of life in these
days when action is felt by so many to be
the only reality and when in every direc-
tion outside there is dire human need to
be met.
"Leave, then, your wonted prattle,
The oaten reed forbear ;
For I hear a sound of battle,
And trumpets rend the air."
But more than ever is it necessary for
us to center down to eternal principles
of life and action, to attain and maintain
the right inner spirit, and to see what in
its faith and essence Christianity really
means. Precisely now when the Sermon
on the Mount seems least to be the pro-
gram of action and the map of life, is it
a suitable time for us to endeavor to dis-
cover what Christ's way means, by look-
ing through the literal phrases in clair-
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 31
voyant fashion to the spirit treasured and
embalmed within the wonderful words ?
There is one phrase which seems to me
to be, in a rare and peculiar degree, the
key to the entire gospel I mean the
invitation to go "the second mile" :
"If any man compel you to go a mile,
go two miles." It is always dangerous,
I know, to fly away from the literal sig-
nificance of words and to indulge in far-
fetched "spiritual" interpretations. But
it is even more dangerous, perhaps, to
read words of oriental imagery and para-
dox as though they were the plain prose
speech of the occidental mind, and to be
taken only at their face value.
There will probably always be Tolstoys
great or small who will make the
difficult, and never very successful, ex-
periment of taking this and the other
"commands" of the Sermon on the Mount
in a literal and legalistic sense, but to do
so is almost certainly to be "slow of
heart," and to miss Christ's meaning.
Whatever else may be true or false in
3 2 THE INNER LIFE [Cu. I
our interpretations of the teachings of
Christ, it may always be taken for certain
that He did not inaugurate a religion of
the legalistic type, consisting of com-
mands and exact directions, to be liter-
ally followed and obeyed as a way to
secure merit and reward. To go "the
second mile," then, is an attitude and
character of spirit rather than a mere
rule and formula for the legs.
Christ always shows a very slender
appreciation of any act of religion or of
ethics which does not reach beyond the
stage of compulsion. What is done be-
cause it must be done; because the law
requires it, or because society expects it,
or because convention prescribes it, or
because the doer of it is afraid of conse-
quences if he omits it, may, of course, be
rightly done and meritoriously done, but
an act on that level is not yet quite in
the region where for Christ the highest
moral and religious acts have their spring.
The typical Pharisee was an appalling
instance of the inadequacy of "the first-
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 33
mile" kind of religion and ethics. He
plodded his hard mile, and "did all the
things required" of him. In the region
of commands, or "touching the law" he
was "blameless." But there was no spon-
taneity in his religion, no free initiative,
no enthusiastic passion, no joyous abandon,
no gratuitous and uncalculating acts. He
did things enough, but he did them be-
cause he had to do them, not because
some mighty love possessed him and
flooded him and inspired him to go not
only the expected mile, but to go on
without any calculation out beyond mile-
stones altogether. Just here appears the
new inner way of Christ's religion. The
legalist, like the rich young man, "does
all the things that are commanded in
the law," but still painfully "lacks"
something. To get into Christ's way,
to "follow" in any real sense, he must
cut his cables and swing out from the
moorings where he is tied. He must
catch such a passion of love that giving
either of his money or of himself, shall
34 THE INNER LIFE [Ce. I
no longer be for him an imposed duty
but rather a joy of spirit.
The parable of the "great surprise" is
another illustration, a glorious illustra-
tion, of the spirit of the "second mile."
The "blessed ones" in the picture (which
is an unveiling of actual everyday life in
its eternal meaning rather than a por-
traiture of the day of judgment) find
themselves at home with God, drawn
into His presence, crowned with His
approval, and sealed with His fellowship.
They are surprised. They had not been
adding up their merits or calculating
their chances of winning heaven. They
are beautifully artless and naive: "When
saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee?"
They have been doing deeds of love, say-
ing kind words, relieving human need,
banishing human loneliness, making life
easier and more joyous, because they
had caught a spirit of love and tender-
ness, and, therefore, "could not do other-
wise," and now they suddenly discover
that those whom they helped and rescued
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 35
and served were bound up in one insepa-
rable life with God himself, so that what
was done to them was done to Him, and
they find that their spontaneous and un-
calculating love was one in essence and
substance with the love of God and that
they are eternally at home with Him.
The tender, immortal stories of the
woman who broke her alabaster vase of
precious nard and "filled all the house
with the odor," and of the woman (per-
haps the same one) who had been a
sinner and who from her passion of love
for her great forgiveness wet Christ's
feet with her tears, even before she could
open her cruse of ointment, are the finest
possible illustrations of the spirit of "the
second mile." They picture, in subtly
suggestive imagery, the immense contrast
between the spontaneous, uncalculating
act of one who "loves much" and does
with grace what love prompts; and acts,
on the other hand, like that of Simon
the pharisaic host, who offers Jesus a
purely conventional and grudging hos-
36 THE INNER LIFE [Cn. I
pitality, or like that of the disciples who
sit indeed at the table with Jesus but
come to it absorbed with the burning
question, "who among us is to be first
and greatest," not only at the table but
"in the Kingdom!"
What grace and unexpected love come
into action in the simple deed of the
"Samaritan" who, from nobility of na-
ture, does what official Priest and Levite
leave undone! The hated foreigner, spit
at and stoned as he walked the roads of
Judea, under no obligation to be kind or
serviceable, is the real "neighbor," the
bearer of balm and healing, the dispenser
of love and sympathy. He may have
no ordination to the priesthood, but he
finely exhibits the attitude of grace which
belongs in the religion of "the second
mile."
But we do not reach the full significance
of "the second mile" until we see that it
is something more than the highest level
of human grace. What shines through
the gospels everywhere, like a new-risen
CH. I] THE INNER WAY 37
sun, is the revelation that this this
grace of the second mile is the supreme
trait and character-nature of God as
well. How surprising and unexpected is
that extraordinary unveiling of the divine
nature in the story of the prodigal boy!
It is wonderful enough that one who has
wasted his substance and squandered his
own very life should still be able in his
squalor and misery to come to himself
and want to go home ; but the fact which
radiates this sublime story like a glory
is the uncalculating, ungrudging, un-
limited love of the Father, which remains
unchanged by the boy's blunder, which
has never failed in the period of his ab-
sence, and which bursts out in the cry
of joy: "This my son was dead and is
alive again, he was lost and is found/ 5
It is, and always has been, the very
center of our Christian faith that the
real nature and character of God come
full into view in Christ, that God is in
mind and heart and will revealed in the
Person ' whom we call Christ. "The
3 8 THE INNER LIFE [Cn. I
grace," then, "of the Lord Jesus Christ,"
of which we are reminded in that great
word of apostolic benediction, is a true
manifestation of the deepest nature and
character, of God Himself, The Gross
is not an artificial scheme. The Cross
is the eternal grace, the spontaneous,
uncalculating love of God made visible
and vocal in our temporal world. It is
the apotheosis of the spirit of the second
mile.
CHAPTER II
THE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL
BAGS THAT WAX NOT OLD
THE ancient world found it very diffi-
cult to keep money even after it was got.
There were almost constant wars involv-
ing the dire stripping of the unprotected
country districts, and the siege and devas-
tation of cities. In those times almost
everything was fragile. It was never easy
to discover any form of wealth that was
surely abiding. Even if the besom of an
invading army did not sweep away the
labor of years, still there were other
enemies to be feared. Tyrants were, al-
ways on the watch for ways of relieving
wealthy men of their treasures. There
were robber bands lying in wait for the
traveler, and neighborhood thieves found
39
40 THE INNER LIFE [Co. 11
it a small matter to break into private
houses and to steal hidden money. It
was no uncommon thing for men to dig
in the ground and hide the talent which
they had saved, or to bury the pearl of
great price, or other precious jewel, in a
field. If one invested his wealth in gar-
ments, then another enemy was to be
feared. The moth is as old as clothes,
and he got in even where the thief failed
to break through.
The problem of getting an indestructible
money-bag was, thus, a problem of first
importance. A journey to Jericho might
any day reduce a man to primitive con-
ditions, or a passing army might make
him a beggar, or the visit of a thief might
strip him of all his living, or the silent
work of a brood of moths might ruin the
savings of years. There were no perdur-
able purses, no nonbreakable banks, no
irreducible forms of wealth.
Christ evidently recognized that there
was a value in money. He did not ap-
parently demand from his follower the
CH. II] KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL 41
absolute renunciation of ownership. He
expounded no new theory of economics.
But he was profoundly impressed by the
moral havoc and the social calamities
caused by the excessive ambition for, and
pursuit of, wealth. He saw how the mad
rush for money and the overvaluation
of it killed out the noblest fundamental
traits of the soul, and, more than all
else, he felt the tragedy of human lives
being focused with intensity of strain
and fixed with burning passion on the
pursuit of such pitiably fragile treasures
money-bags of all sorts waxing old
and becoming incapable of . holding the
hoard that absorbed the whole life.
Christ, then, proposes a new kind of
purse, an indestructible and immutable
treasure-bag "make for yourselves bags
that wax not old." Such purses are not
on the market, they cannot be purchased,
they must be woven by each person for
himself, and they must be woven, if at
all, out of the stuff of life itself. We here
pass over, as so often in Christ's teaching,
42 THE INNER LIFE [On. II
from extrinsic wealth to intrinsic, from
the .wealth which men merely possess to
the kind of wealth which they can them-
selves, be. We once more find ourselves
brought to an inner way of living, where
the issue is no longer how to accumulate
goods, but rather how to become good.
The problem is the problem of what men
live by* We are called to loosen our
grip on perishable treasures only that we
may tighten our hold on heavenly, i.e.
spiritual, treasure. We are shown the
folly of spending a life building barns for
expanding earthly possessions, while we
are taking no pains to make ourselves
rich in God.
What is it, then, that men live by?
What will prove to be imperishable wealth,
whether we are in this world, or in any
other world of real moral issues ? It is
obviously not money, for men often live
nobly after the money-bag has waxed old
and after the bank has failed, and it is our
most elemental faith that life blossoms
out into its consummate richness after all
CH. II] KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL 43
earthly affairs come to a complete close,
and after every penny of visible wealth
has been left forever behind. Money is
plainly not intrinsic treasure; love is,
goodness is, joy is. A beloved disciple,
in a moment of inspiration, announced
the profound truth that love is "of God."
Men wrongly divide love into two types,
"human love" and "divine love/ 5 but
in reality there is only love. Wherever
love has become the nature of the soul,
and it has become "natural" now to for-
get self for others, to seek to give rather
than to get, to share rather than to pos-
sess, to be impoverished in order that
some loved one may abound, there a
divine and Godlike spirit has been formed.
And we now come upon a new kind of
wealth, a kind that accumulates with use,
because it is a law that the more the spirit
of love is exercised, the more the soul
spends itself in love, so much the more
love it has, the richer it grows, the
.diviner its nature becomes. But at the
same time, it is a fact that love is never
44 THE INNER LIFE [Cu. II
complete, never reaches its full scope and
measure until our love takes on an eternal
aspect until we love God in Himself
or love Him in our loved ones. One
reason why love is exalted by death is
that we no longer love our immortal loved
one in any narrow and selfish way; we
love now for pure love's sake, and the
truest of all treasures which can be laid
up in imperishable bags is this stock of
unalloyed love for that which is most
'lovely for God and for souls that are
given to us to bring some of His nature
closer to our human hearts.
Goodness is, of course, notoriously hard
to define. It is never an abstract quality
that can be described by logical concepts.
It is a way of living, a way of acting, a
way of working out relationships. It is,
like love, a cumulative thing. To be
good inherently means to be becoming
better, to be on the way to an unattained
goal of action, or of character. It is the
glory of going on to be perfect like our
Father in heaven. To be rich in goodness
CH I&,|HJN$DOM WITHIN THE SOUL 45
of (h praetor, t^c \*"<*\\ . is to be on the way
to become e^P" richer, however long the
journey laftt^ ^pwever far the spiral winds,
for goodness, Mljke love, is of God, and
steadily asshmij&tes our imperfect human
nature to the j^^ffect divine nature
Joy is, perftjm^j&ot often thought of as
one of the thiags|ften live by, as the soul's
eternal wealth; jyfe is so full of sorrow
and pain that ftifr eems like a fleeting,
vanishing asset. ' fe$t that is because joy
is confused with pleasure. True joy is
not a thing of moods, not a capricious
emotion, tied to fluctuating experiences
It is a state and condition of the soul.
It survives through pain and sorrow and,
like a subterranean spring, waters the
whole life. It is intimately allied and
bound up with love and goodness, and so
is deeply rooted m the life of God. Joy
is the most perfect and complete mark
and sign of immortal wealth, because it
indicates that the soul is living by love
and by goodness, and is very rich m
God.
46 THE INNER LIFE [Ca. II
II
OTHERISM
(Matt. VII. I-I2)
Altruism is an honored word. Other-
ism is only recently coined and has not
yet become widely current in good speech.
We need, however, a word that has more
inward depth than altruism usually carries,
and perhaps otherism wUl eventually take
that vacant place.
Not merely in these days of war, but in
all our human relations all the time we
greatly need to get the interior vision
which enables us to understand from
within those with whom we live and work.
Nobody sees life correctly until he has
corrected his own views by a true apprecia-
tion of the views of others. From the
outside it is impossible to estimate any life
fairly. We have long ago learned that
we can get no true account of any historical
character unless we have a historian who
can put himself in the place of the person
he is describing. He must have imagina-
CH. II] ( K|N^OM WITHIN THE SOUL 47
tion and ifefs^He to see clearly the con-
ditions aif^'i&^es, the influences and the
atmospheli- il M i; 1J(iliich the man lived. The
problems ifijffi&e had to deal with, the
conceptions ;vl$^%overned men's thoughts
i' ' ".f' 1 ' 1 ''f ''''i
when he liv
