Natural law in the spiritual world

Gass_X
Book_

./■

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

The Greatest Thing in the World.

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NATURAL LAW

IN THE

SPIRITUAL WORLD

BY

HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E.; F.G.S.

NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS

Iig WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET

^

^A0

912

CONTENTS.

Preface • ••••••»••*

Introduction • •••••••• i

Biogenesis • •«•#*• 59

Degeneration. • ••••••« 95

Growth • •••••••• .121

Death • •••••••• 141

Mortification. • • , » * . . # 175
Eternal Life .•••»,••• 201
Environment . • * • , * . . ,251
Conformity to Type ...... 285

Semi-Parasitism • •*■•••• 315

Parasitism • • • •••••• 339

Classification • •/••••• 367

PREFACE.

No class of works is received with more suspicion,
I had almost said derision, than those which deal
with Science and Religion. Science is tired of
reconciliations between two things which never
should have been contrasted ; Religion is offended
by the patronage of an ally which it professes not
to need ; and the critics have rightly discovered
that, in most cases where Science is either pitted
against Religion or fused with it, there is some
fatal misconception to begin with as to the scope
and province of either. But although no initial
protest, probably, will save this work from the
unhappy reputation of its class, the thoughtful
mind will perceive that the fact of its subject-
matter being Law — a property peculiar neither to
Science nor to Religion — at once places it on a
somewhat different footing.

The real problem I have set myself may be sta.ted

PREFACE.

in a sentence. Is there not reason to believe that
many of the Laws of the Spiritual World, hitherto
regarded as occupying an entirely separate province,
are simply the Laws of the Natural World ? Can
we identify the Natural Laws, or any one of them,
in the Spiritual sphere ? That vague lines every-
where run through the Spiritual World is already
beginning to be recognised. Is it possible to link
them with those great lines running through the
visible universe which we call the Natural Laws, or
are they fundamentally distinct ? In a word, Is the
Supernatural natural or unnatural ?

I may, perhaps, be allowed to answer these
questions in the form in which they have answered
themselves to myself. And I must apologise at the
outset for personal references which, but for the
clearness they may lend to the statement, I would
surely avoid.

It has been my privilege for some years to ad-
dress regularly two very different audiences on. two
very different themes. On week days I have
lectured to a class of students on the Natural
Sciences, and on Sundays to an audience consisting
for the most part of working men on subjects of a
moral and religious character. I cannot say that
this collocation ever appeared as a difficulty to my-
self, but to certain of my friends it Aras more than

PREFACE. tA

a problem. It was solved to me, however, at first,
by what then seemed the necessities of the case—
I must keep the two departments entirely by them-
selves. They lay at opposite poles of thought ; and
for a time I succeeded in keeping the Science and
the Religion shut off from one another in two
separate compartments of my mind. But gradually
the wall of partition showed symptoms of giving
way. The two fountains of knowledge also slowly
began to overflow, and finally their waters met and
mingled. The great change was in the compartment
which held the Religion. It was not that the well
there was dried ; still less that the fermenting
waters were washed away by the flood of Science.
The actual contents remained the same. But the
crystals of former doctrine were dissolved ; and
as they precipitated themselves once more in
definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline
System was changed. New channels also for
outward expression opened, and some of the old
closed up ; and I found the truth running out
to my audience on the Sundays by the week-
day outlets. In other words, the subject-matter
Religion had taken on the method of expression
of Science, and I discovered myself enunciating
Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and
Physics.

PREFACE.

Now this was not simply a scientific colouring
given to Religion, the mere freshening of the theo-
logical air with natural facts and illustrations. It
was an entire re-casting of truth. And when I came
seriously to consider what it involved, I saw, or
seemed to see, that it meant essentially the intro-
duction of Natural Law into the Spiritual World.
It was not, I repeat, that new and detailed analogies
of Phenomena rose into view — although material for
Parable lies unnoticed and unused on the field of
recent Science in inexhaustible profusion. But
Law has a still grander function to discharge towards
Religion than Parable. There is a deeper unity
between the two Kingdoms than the analogy of
their Phenomena — a unity which the poet's vision,
more quick than the theologian's, has already dimly
seen : —

"And verily many thinkers of this age,
Aye, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpait completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line^
Form by form, nothing single nor alone^
The great below clenched by the great above.*1

1 Aurora Leigh.

PREFACE. a

The function of Parable in religion is to exhibit
* form by form." Law undertakes the profoundei
task of comparing "line by line." Thus Natural
Phenomena serve mainly an illustrative function in
Religion. Natural Law, on the other hand, could it
be traced in the Spiritual World, would have an
important scientific value — it would offer Religion
a new credential. The effect of the introduction of
Law among the scattered Phenomena of Nature has
simply been to make Science, to transform knowledge
into eternal truth. The same crystallising touch is
needed in Religion. Can it be said that the Pheno-
mena of the Spiritual World are other than scat-
tered ? Can we shut our eyes to the fact that the
religious opinions of mankind are in a state of flux ?
And when we regard the uncertainty of current
beliefs, the war of creeds, the havoc of inevitable as
well as of idle doubt, the reluctant abandonment of
early faith by those who would cherish it longer if
they could, is it not plain that the one thing thinking
men are waiting for is the introduction of Law
among the Phenomena of the Spiritual World ?
When that comes we shall offer to such men a truly
scientific theology. And the Reign of Law will
transform the whole Spiritual World as it has already
transformed the Natural World.

I confess that even when in the first dim vision,

8 PREFACE.

the organizing hand of Law moved among the un-
ordered truths of my Spiritual World, poor and
scantily-furnished as it was, there seemed to come
over it the beauty of a transfiguration. The change
was as great as from the old chaotic world oL
Pythagoras to the symmetrical and harmonious
universe of Newton. My Spiritual World before
was a chaos of facts ; my Theology, a Pythagorean
system trying to make the best of Phenomena apart
from the idea of Law. I make no charge against
Theology in general. I speak of my own. And I
say that I saw it to be in many essential respects
centuries behind every department of Science I
knew. It was the one region still unpossessed by
Law. I saw then why men of Science distrust
Theology ; why those who have learned to look
upon Law as Authority grow cold to it — it was the
Great Exception.

I have alluded to the genesis of the idea in my
own mind partly for another reason — to show its
naturalness. Certainly I never premeditated any-
thing to myself so objectionable and so unwarrant-
able in itself, as either to read Theology into
Science or Science into Theology. Nothing could
be more artificial than to attempt this on the
speculative side ; and it has been a substantial re-
lief to me throughout that the idea rose up thus

PREFACE.

in the course ot practical work and shaped itself
day by day unconsciously. It might be charged,
nevertheless, that I was all the time, whethef
consciously or unconsciously, simply reading my
Theology into my Science. And as this would
hopelessly vitiate the conclusions arrived at, I must
acquit myself at least of the intention. Of nothing
have I been more fearful throughout than of making
Nature parallel with my own or with any creed.
The only legitimate questions one dare put to
Nature are those which concern universal human
good and the Divine interpretation of things. These
I conceive may be there actually studied at first-
hand, and before their purity is soiled by human
touch. We have Truth in Nature as it came from
God. And it has to be read with the same un-
biassed mind, the same open eye, the same faith,
and the same reverence as all other Revelation.
All that is found there, whatever its place in Theo-
logy, whatever its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, what-
ever its narrowness or its breadth, we are bound to
accept as Doctrine from which on the lines of
Science there is no escape.

When this presented itself to me as a method, I
felt it to be due to it — were it only to secure, so far
as that was possible, that no former bias should inter-
fere with the integrity of the results — to begin again

i

*Ii PREFACE.

at the beginning and reconstruct my Spiritual World
step by step. The result of that inquiry, so far as its
expression in systematic form is concerned, I have
not given in this book. To reconstruct a Spiritual
Religion, or a department of Spiritual Religion — for
this is all the method can pretend to — on the lines of
Nature would be an attempt from which one better
equipped in both directions might well be pardoned
if he shrank. My object at present is the humbler
one of venturing a simple contribution to practical
Religion along the lines indicated. What Bacon pre-
dicates of the Natural World, Natura enim non nisi
parendo vinciUir, is also true, as Christ had already
told us, of the Spiritual World. And I present a few
samples of the religious teaching referred to formerly
as having been prepared under the influence of scien-
tific ideas in the hope that they may be useful first of
all in this directioa

I would, however, carefully point out that though
their unsystematic arrangement here may create the
impression that these papers are merely isolated
readings in Religion pointed by casual scientific
tiuths, they are organically connected by a single
principle. Nothing could be more false both to
Science and to Religion than attempts to adjust the
two spheres by making out ingenious points of con-
tact in detail. The solution of this great question of

PREFACE. mii

conciliation, if one may still refer to a problem so
gratuitous, must be general rather than particular.
The basis in a common principle — the Continuity of
Law — can alone save specific applications from rank-
ing as mere coincidences, or exempt them from the
reproach of being a hybrid between two things which
must be related by the deepest affinities or remain
for ever separate.

To the objection that even a basis in Law is no
warrant for so great a trespass as the intrusion into
another field of thought of the principles of Natural
Science, I would reply that in this I find I am
following a lead which in other departments has not
only been allowed but has achieved results as rich as
they were unexpected. What is the Physical Politic
of Mr. Walter Bagehot but the extension of Natural
Law to the Political World ? What is the Biological
Sociology of Mr. Herbert Spencer but the applica-
tion of Natural Law to the Social World ? Will it
be charged that the splendid achievements of such
thinkers are hybrids between things which Nature
has meant to remain apart ? Nature usually solves
such problems for herself. Inappropriate hybridism
is checked by the Law of Sterility. Judged by this
great Law these modern developments of our know-
ledge stand uncondemned. Within their own sphere
the results of Mr. Herbert Spencer are far from

riv PREFACE,

sterile — the application of Biology to Political Eco-
nomy is already revolutionizing the Science. If the
introduction of Natural Law into the Social sphere
is no violent contradiction but a genuine and perma-
nent contribution, shall its further extension to the
Spiritual sphere be counted an extravagance ? Does
not the Principle of Continuity demand its applica-
tion in every direction ? To carry it as a working
principle into so lofty a region may appear imprac-
ticable. Difficulties lie on the threshold which may
seem, at first sight, insurmountable. But obstacles to
a true method only test its validity. And he who
honestly faces the task may find relief in feeling that
whatever else of crudeness and imperfection mar it,
the attempt is at least in harmony with the thought
and movement of his time.

That these papers were not designed to appear in
a collective form, or indeed to court the more public
light at all, needs no disclosure. They are published
out of regard to the wish of known and unknown
friends by whom, when in a fugitive form, they were
received with so curious an interest as to make one
feel already that there are minds which such forms of
truth may touch. In making the present selection,
partly from manuscript, and partly from articles
already published, I have been guided less by the
wish to constitute the papers a connected series than

PREFACE. tv

to exhibit the application of the principle in various
directions. They will be found, therefore^ of unequal
interest and value, according to the standpoint from
which they are regarded. Thus some are designed
with a directly practical and popular bearing, others
being more expository, and slightly apologetic in
tone. The risk of combining two objects so very
different is somewhat serious. But, for the reason
named, having taken this responsibility, the only
compensation I can offer is to indicate which of the
papers incline to the one side or to the other. " De-
generation/' " Growth," " Mortification," " Conformity
to Type," " Semi-Parasitism," and " Parasitism " be-
long to the more practical order ; and while one or
two are intermediate, " Biogenesis," " Death," and
" Eternal Life " may be offered to those who find the
atmosphere of the former uncongenial. It will not
disguise itself, however, that, owing to the circum-
stances in which they were prepared, all the papers
are more or less practical in their aim ; so that to
the merely philosophical reader there is little to be
offered except — and that only with the greatest
diffidence — the Introductory chapter.

In the Introduction, which the general reader may
do well to ignore, I have briefly stated the case for
Natural Law in the Spiritual World. The extension
irf ArrJogy to Laws, or rather the extension of tho

PREFACE.

Laws themselves, so far as known to me, is new ; and
I cannot hope to have escaped the mistakes and
misadventures of a first exploration in an unsurveyed
land. So general has been the survey that 1 have
not even paused to define specifically to what de-
partments of the Spiritual World exclusively the
principle is to be applied. The danger of making
a new principle apply too widely inculcates here the
utmost caution. One thing is certain, and I state it
pointedly, the application of Natural Law to the
Spiritual World has decided and necessary limits.
And if elsewhere with undue enthusiasm I seem to
magnify the principle at stake, the exaggeration —
like the extreme amplification of the moon's disc
when near the horizon — must be charged to that
almost necessary aberration of light which distorts
every new idea while it is yet slowly climbing to its
zenith.

In what follows the Introduction, except in the
setting, there is nothing new. I trust there is nothing
new. When I began to follow out these lines, I had
no idea where they would lead me. I was prepared,
nevertheless, at least for the time, to be loyal to the
method throughout, and share with Nature whatever
consequences might ensue. But in almost every
case, after stating what appeared to be the truth in
words gathered directly from the lips of Nature, I

PREFACE. xvii

was sooner or later startled by a certain similarity
in the general idea to something I had heard beiorc,
and this often developed in a moment, and when
I was least expecting it, into recognition of some
familiar article of faith. I was not watching for this
result. I did not begin by tabulating the doctrines,
as I did the Laws of Nature, and then proceed with
the attempt to pair them. The majority of them
seemed at first too far removed from the natural
world even to suggest this. Still less did I begin
with doctrines and work downwards to find their
relations in the natural sphere. It was the opposite
process entirely. I ran up the Natural Law as far
as it would go, and the appropriate doctrine seldom
even loomed in sight till I had reached the top.
Then it burst into view in a single moment.

I can scarcely now say whether in those moments
I was more' overcome with thankfulness that Nature
was so like Revelation, or more filled with wonder
that Revelation was so like Nature. Nature, it is
true, is a part of Revelation — a much greater part
doubtless than is yet believed — and one could have
anticipated nothing but harmony here. But that a
derived Theology, in spite of the venerable verbiage
which has gathered round it, should be at bottom
and in all cardinal respects so faithful a transcript
of " the truth as it is in Nature " came as a surprise

xvffl PREFACE.

and to me at least as a rebuke. How, under the
rigid necessity of incorporating in its system much
that seemed nearly unintelligible, and much that was
barely credible, Theology has succeeded so perfectly
in adhering through good report and ill to what in
the main are truly the lines of Nature, awakens a
new admiration for those who constructed and kept
this faith. But however nobly it has held its ground,
Theology must feel to-day that the modern world
calls for a further proof. Nor will the best Theology
resent this demand ; it also demands it. Theology
is searching on every hand for another echo of the
Voice of which Revelation also is the echo, that out
of the mouths of two witnesses its truths should be
established. That other echo can only come from
Nature. Hitherto its voice has been muffled. But
now that Science has made the world around articu-
late, it speaks to Religion with a twofold purpose.
In the first place it offers to corroborate Theology,
in the second to purify it.

If the removal of suspicion from Theology is of
urgent moment, not less important is the removal
of its adulterations. These suspicions, many of them
at least, are new ; in a sense they mark progress.
But the adulterations are the artificial accumulations
of certuries of uncontrolled speculation. They are
the necessary result of the old method and the

PREFACE. m

warrant for its revision — they mark the impossibility
of progress without the guiding and restraining hand
of Law. The felt exhaustion of the former method,
the want of corroboration for the old evidence, the
protest of reason against the monstrous overgrowths
which conceal the real lines of truth, these summon
us to the search for a surer and more scientific
system. With truths of the theological order, with
dogmas which often depend for their existence on a
particular exegesis, with propositions which rest for
their evidence upon a balance of probabilities, or
upon the weight of authority ; with doctrines which
every age and nation may make or unmake, which
each sect may tamper with, and which even the
individual may modify for himself, a second court
of appeal has become an imperative necessity.

Science, therefore, may yet have to be called upon
to arbitrate at some points between conflicting
creeds. And while there are some departments of
Theology where its jurisdiction cannot be sought,
there are others in which Nature may yet have
to define the contents as well as the limits of
belief.

What I would desire especially is a thoughtful
consideration of the method. The applications
ventured upon here may be successful or unsuc-
cessful But they would more than satisfy me if

a PREFACE.

they suggested a method to others whose less clumsy
hands might work it out more profitably. For I am
convinced of the fertility of such a method at the
present time. It is recognised by all that the
younger and abler minds of this age find the most
serious difficulty in accepting or retaining the
ordinary forms of belief. Especially is this true of
those whose culture is scientific. And the reason
is palpable. No man can study modern Science
without a change coming over his view of truth
What impresses him about Nature is its solidity.
He is there standing upon actual things, among fixed
laws. And the integrity of the scientific method so
seizes him that all other forms of truth begin to
appear comparatively unstable. He did not know
before that any form of truth could so hold him ;
and the immediate effect is to lessen his interest in
all that stands on other bases. This he feels in spite
of himself; he struggles against it in vain; and he
finds perhaps to his alarm that he is drifting fast into
what looks at first like pure Positivism. This is an
inevitable result of the scientific training It is quite
erroneous to suppose that science ever overthrows
Faith, if by that is implied that any natural truth
can oppose successfully any single spiritual truth.
Science cannot overthrow Faith ; but it shakes It
Its own doctrines, grounded in Nature, are so certain,

PREFACE.

that the truths of Religion, resting to most men on
Authority, are felt to be strangely insecure. The
difficulty, therefore, which men of Science feel about
Religion is real and inevitable, and in so far a?
Doubt is a conscientious tribute to the inviolability
of Nature it is entitled to respect.

None but those who have passed through it can
appreciate the radical nature of the change wrought
by Science in the whole mental attitude of its dis-
ciples. What they really cry out for in Religion is a
new standpoint — a standpoint like their own. The
one hope, therefore, for Science is more Science.
Again, to quote Bacon — we shall hear enough from
the moderns by-and-by — "This I dare affirm in
knowledge of Nature, that a little natural philosophy,
and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion
to atheism ; but, on the other side, much natural
philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about
men's minds to religion." l

The application of similia similibus curantur was
never more in point If this is a disease, it is the
disease of Nature, and the cure is more Nature. For
what is this disquiet in the breasts of men but the
loyal fear that Nature is being violated ? Men must
oppose with every energy they possess what seems tc

** Meditationes Sacrae,*x.

udi PREFACE.

them to oppose the eternal course of things. And
the first step in their deliverance must be not to
" reconcile " Nature and Religion, but to exhibit
Nature in Religion. Even to convince them that
there is no controversy between Religion and Science
is insufficient. A mere flag of truce, in the nature
of the case, is here impossible ; at least, it is only
possible so long as neither party is sincere. No man
who knows the splendour of scientific achievement or
cares for it, no man who feels the solidity of its
method or works with it, can remain neutral with
regard to Religion. He must either extend his
method into it, or, if that is impossible, oppose it to
the knife. On the other hand, no one who knows
the content of Christianity, or feels the universal
need of a Religion, can stand idly by while the in-
tellect of his age is slowly divorcing itself from it.
What is required, therefore, to draw Science and Re-
ligion together again — for they began the centuries
hand in hand — is the disclosure of the naturalness of
the supernatural. Then, and not till then, will men
see how true it is, that to be loyal to all of Nature,
they must be loyal to the part defined as Spiritual.
No science contributes to another without receiving a
reciprocal benefit And even as the contribution of
Science to Religion is the vindication of the natural-
ness of the Supernatural, so the gift of Religion to

PREFACE. xxiii

Science is the demonstration of the supernaturalness
of the Natural. Thus, as the Supernatural becomes
slowly Natural, will also the Natural become slowly
Supernatural, until in the impersonal authority of
Law men everywhere recognise the Authority of
God.

To those who already find themselves fully nour-
ished on the older forms of truth, I do not commend
these pages. They will find them superfluous. Nor
is there any reason why they should mingle with
light which is already clear the distorting rays of a
foreign expression

But to those who are feeling their way to a Chris-
tian life, haunted now by a sense of instability in the
foundations of their faith, now brought to bay by
specific doubt at one point raising, as all doubt does,
the question for the whole, I would hold up a light
which has often been kind to me. There is a sense
of solidity about a Law of Nature which belongs to
nothing else in the world. Here, at last, amid all that
is shifting, is one thing sure ; one thing outside our-
selves, unbiassed, unprejudiced, uninfluenced by like
or dislike, by doubt or fear ; one thing that holds on
its way to me eternally, incorruptible, and undefiled.
This, more than anything else, makes one eager to
see the Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual Sphere.
And should this seem to some to offer only a surer,

PREFACE.

but not a higher Faith ; should the better ordering of
the Spiritual World appear to satisfy the intellect at
the sacrifice of reverence, simplicity, or love; espe-
cially should it seem to substitute a Reign of Law
and a Lawgiver for a Kingdom of Grace and a Per-
sonal God, I will say, with Browning, —

" I spoke as I saw.
I report, as a man may of God's work — all's Love ; yet all's

Law.
Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each faculty

tasked,
To perceive Him, has gained an abyss where a dewdrop was

asked."

ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION.

[For the sake of the general reader who may desire to pass at onc«
to the practical applications, the following outline of the Introductior
— devoted rather to general principles — is here presented.]

PART I.

Natural Law in the Spiritual Sphere.

I. The growth of the Idea of Law.

3. Its gradual extension throughout every department of Know-
ledge.

3. Except one. Religion hitherto the Great Exception. Why so ?

4. Previous attempts to trace analogies between the Natural and

Spiritual spheres. These have been limited to analogies
between Phenomena ; and are useful mainly as illustra-
tions. Analogies of Law would also have a Scientific
value.
§. Wherein that value would consist. (1) The Scientific de-
mand of the age would be met ; (2) Greater clearness
would be introduced into Religion practically ; (3) Theo-
logy, instead of resting on Authority, would rest equally
on Nature.

PART II.
The Law of Continuity.
A priori argument for Natural Law in the spiritual world.

1. The Law Discovered.

2. „ Defined.

3. „ Applied.

4. The objection answered that the material of the Natural and

Spiritual worlds being different they must be under
different Laws.

5. The existence of Laws in the Spiritual world other than the

Natural Laws (1) improbable, (2) unnecessary, (3) un-
known. Qualification.

6. The Spiritual not the projection upwards of the Natural ; but

the Natural the projection downwards of the SpirituaL

B

a This method tutns aside from hypotheses not to b$ tested by
any known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypo-
thesis claims support from intuition, aspiration or general
plausibility. And, again, this method turns aside from ideal
standards which avow themselves to be lawless, which profess
to transcend the field of law. We say, life and conduct shall
stand for us wholly on a basis of law, and must rest entirely
in that region of science {not physical, but moral and social
science), where we are free to use our intelligence in the methods
known to us as intelligible logic, methods which the intellect
can analyse. When you confront us with hypotheses, however
sublime and however affecting, if they cannot be stated in te?-ms
of the rest of our knowledge, if they are disparate to that world
of sequence and sensation which to us is the ultimate base oj
all our real knowledge, then we shake our heads and turn
osiaW

Frederick Harrison.

INTRODUCTION.

" Ethical science is already for ever completed, so far as
her general outline and main principles are concerned, and
has been, as it were, waiting for physical science to come up
with her." — Paradoxical Philosophy.

L

Natural Law is a new word. It is the last and
the most magnificent discovery of science. No
more telling proof is open to the modern world of
the greatness of the idea than the greatness of the
attempts which have always been made to justify it
In the earlier centuries, before the birth of science,
Phenomena were studied alone. The world then was
a chaos, a collection of single, isolated, and inde-
pendent facts. Deeper thinkers saw, indeed, that
relations must subsist between these facts, but the
Reign of Law was never more to the ancients than
a far-off vision. Their philosophies, conspicuously
those of the Stoics and Pythagoreans, heroically
sought to marshal the discrete materials of the
universe into thinkable form, but from these artificial
and fantastic systems nothing remains to us now but

1NTR0DUC1I0N.

an ancient testimony to the grandeur of that har-
mony which they failed to reach.

With Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler the first
regular lines of the universe began to be discerned.
When Nature yielded to Newton her great secret,
Gravitation was felt to be not greater as a fact in
itself than as a revelation that Law was fact. And
thenceforth the search for individual Phenomena
gave way before the larger study of their relations.
The pursuit of Law became the passion of science.

What that discovery of Law has done for Nature,
it is impossible to estimate. As a mere spectacle the
universe to-day discloses a beauty so transcendent
that he who disciplines himself by scientific work
finds it an overwhelming reward simply to behold it.
In these Laws one stands face to face with truth,
solid and unchangeable. Each single Law is an
instrument of scientific research, simple in its ad-
justments, universal in its application, infallible in its
results. And despite the limitations of its sphere on
every side Law is still the largest, richest, and surest
source of human knowledge.

It is not necessary for the present to more than
lightly touch on definitions of Natural Law. The
Duke of Argyll l indicates five senses in which the

1 " Reign of Law/' chap, ii

INTRODUCTION.

word is used, but we may content ourselves here by
taking it in its most simple and obvious significance
The fundamental conception of Law is an asceitained
working sequence or constant order among the
Phenomena of Nature. This impression of Law as
order it is important to receive in its simplicity, for
the idea is often corrupted by having attached to it
erroneous views of cause and effect. In its true
sense Natural Law predicates nothing of causes.
The Laws of Nature are simply statements of the
orderly condition of things in Nature, what is found
in Nature by a sufficient number of competent ob-
servers. What these Laws are in themselves is not
agreed. That they have any absolute existence even
is far from certain. They are relative to man in his
many limitations, and represent for him the constant
expression of what he may always expect to find in
the world around him. But that they have any
causal connection with the things around him is not
to be conceived. The Natural Laws originate nothing,
sustain nothing ; they are merely responsible for
uniformity in sustaining what has been originated
and what is being sustained. They are modes of
operation, therefore, not operators; processes, not
powers The Law of Gravitation, for instance, speaks
to science only of process. It has no light to offer as
to itself. Newton did not discover Gravity — that is

INTRODUCTION.

not discovered yet. He discovered its Law, which is
Gravitation, but that tells us nothing of its origin, of
its nature, or of its cause.

The Natural Laws then are great lines running
not only through the world, but, as we now know,
through the universe, reducing it like parallels of
latitude to intelligent order. In themselves, be it
once more repeated, they may have no more absolute
existence than parallels of latitude. But they exist
for us. They are drawn for us to understand the
part by some Hand that drew the whole ; so drawn,
perhaps, that, understanding the part, we too in time
may learn to understand the whole. Now the inquiry
we propose to ourselves resolves itself into the simple
question, Do these lines stop with what we call the
Natural sphere? Is it not possible that they may
lead further ? Is it probable that the Hand which
ruled them gave up the work where most of all they
were required ? Did that Hand divide the world into
two, a cosmos and a chaos, the higher being the
chaos ? With Nature as the symbol of all of har-
mony and beauty that is known to man, must we still
talk of the super-natural, not as a convenient word,
but as a different order of world, an unintelligible
world, where the Reign of Mystery supersedes the
Reign of Law ?

This question, let it be carefully observed, applies

INTRODUCTION,

to Laws not to Phenomena. That the Phenomena
of the Spiritual World are in analogy with the Pho*
nomena of the Natural World requires no restate*
ment Since Plato enunciated his doctrine of the
Cave or of the twice-divided line ; since Christ spake
in parables ; since Plotinus wrote of the world as
an imaged image ; since the mysticism of Sweden-
borg ; since Bacon and Pascal ; since " Sartor Re-
sartus" and "In Memoriam," it has been all but a
commonplace with thinkers that " the invisible things
of God from the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made."
Milton's question —

" What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on earth is thought ? *

is now superfluous. "In our doctrine of represen-
tations and correspondences," says Swedenborg, " we
shall treat of both these symbolical and typical
resemblances, and of the astonishing things that
occur, I will not say in the living body only, but
throughout Nature, and which correspond so entirely
to supreme and spiritual things, that one would
swear that the physical world was purely sym-
bolical of the spiritual world.1" And Carlyle:

1 "Animal Kingdom,"

INTRODUCTION.

"All visible things are emblems. What thou
seest is not there on its own account ; strictly
speaking is not there at all. Matter exists only
spiritually, and to represent some idea and body
it forth." l

But the analogies of Law are a totally different
thing from the analogies of Phenomena and have a
very different value. To say generally, with Pascal,
that "La nature est une image de la grace," is
merely to be poetical. The function of Hervey's
" Meditations in a Flower Garden," or, Flavel's
" Husbandry Spiritualized," is mainly homiletical.
That such works have an interest is not to be denied.
The place of parable in teaching, and especially
after the sanction of the greatest of Teachers, must
always be recognised. The very necessities of
language indeed demand this method of presenting
truth. The temporal is the husk and framework of
the eternal, and thoughts can be uttered only through
things.2

1 " Sartor Resartus," 1858 ed., p. 43.

1 Even parable, however, has always been considered to have
attached to it a measure of evidential as well as of illustrative
value. Thus : " The parable or other analogy to spiritual truth
appropriated from the world of nature or man, is not merely
illustrative, but also in some sort proof. It is not merely that
these analogies assist to make the truth intelligible or, if in-
telligible before, present it more vividly to the mind, which is
all that some will allow them. Their power lies deeper than

INTRODUCTION.

But analogies between Phenomena bear the same
relation to analogies of Law that Phenomena them-
selves bear to Law. The light of Law on truth, as
we have seen, is an immense advance upon the
light of Phenomena. ( The discovery of Law is sim-
ply the discovery of Science. And if the analogies
of Natural Law can be extended to the Spiritual
World, that whole region at once falls wTithin the
domain of science and secures a basis as well as an
illumination in the constitution and course of Nature.
All, therefore, that has been claimed for parable
can be predicated d fortiori of this — with the ad-
dition that a proof on the basis of Law would
want no criterion possessed by the most advanced
science.

That the validity of analogy generally has been
seriously questioned one must frankly own. Doubt-
less there is much difficulty and even liability to
gross error in attempting to establish analogy in
specific cases. The value of the likeness appears

this, in the harmony unconsciously felt by all men, and which all
deeper minds have delighted to trace, between the natural and
spiritual worlds, so that analogies from the first are felt to be
something more than illustrations happily but yet arbitrarily
chosen. They are arguments, and may be alleged as witnesses :
the world of nature being throughout a witness for the world of
spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the same
root, and being constituted for that very end." — (Archbishop
Trench : u Parables," pp. 12, 13.)

IO INTRODUCTION.

differently to different minds, and in discussing an
individual instance questions of relevancy will in
variably crop up. Of course, in the language ol
John Stuart Mill, " when the analogy can be proved,
the argument founded upon it cannot be resisted."1
But so great is the difficulty of proof that many are
compelled to attach the most inferior weight to
analogy as a method of reasoning. "Analogical
evidence is generally more successful in silencing
objections than in evincing truth. Though it rarely
refutes it frequently repels refutation ; like those
weapons which though they cannot kill the enemy,
will ward his blows. ... It must be allowed
that analogical evidence is at least but a feeble
support, and is hardly ever honoured with the name
of proof." 2 Other authorities on the other hand, such
as Sir William Hamilton, admit analogy to a primary
place in logic and regard it as the very basis of
induction.

But, fortunately, we are spared all discussion on
this worn subject, for two cogent reasons. For one
thing, we do not demand of Nature directly to
prove Religion. That was never its function. Its
function is to interpret. And this, after all, is pos-
sibly the most fruitful proof. The best proof of a

1 Mill's " Logic," vol. ii. p. 96.

• Campbell's "Rhetoric/' voL i. p. 114.

INTRODUCTION.

thing is that we see it ; if we do not see it, perhaps
proof will not convince us of it. It is the want
of the discerning faculty, the clairvoyant power
of seeing the eternal in the temporal, rather than
the failure of the reason, that begets the sceptic.
But secondly, and more particularly, a significant
circumstance has to be taken into account, which,
though it will appear more clearly afterwards, may
be stated here at once. The position we have been
led to take up is not that the Spiritual Laws are
analogous to the Natural Laws, but that they are
the same Laws. It is not a question of analogy
but of Identity. The Natural Laws are not the
shadows or images of the Spiritual in the same sense
as autumn is emblematical of Decay, or the falling
leaf of Death. The Natural Laws, as the Law of
Continuity might well warn us, do not stop with
the visible and then give place to a new set of
Laws bearing a strong similitude to them. The
Laws of the invisible are the same Laws, projections
of the natural not supernatural. Analogous Phe-
nomena are not the fruit of parallel Laws, but of
the same Laws — Laws which at one end, as it
were, may be dealing with Matter, at the other
end with Spirit. As there will be some incon-
venience, however, in dispensing with the word
analogy, we shall continue occasionally to employ it

12 INTRODUCTION.

Those who apprehend the real relation will mentally
substitute the larger term.

Let us now look for a moment at the present
state of the question. Can it be said that the Laws
of the Spiritual World are in any sense considered
even to have analogies with the Natural World ?
Here and there certainly one finds an attempt, and
a successful attempt, to exhibit on a rational basis
one or two of the great Moral Principles of the
Spiritual World. But the Physical World has not
been appealed to. Its magnificent system of Laws
remains outside, and its contribution meanwhile is
either silently ignored or purposely set aside. The
Physical, it is said, is too remote from the Spiritual.
The Moral World may afford a basis for religious
truth, but even this" is often the baldest con-
cession ; while the appeal to the Physical universe
is everywhere dismissed as, on the face of it,
irrelevant and unfruitful. From the scientific
side, again, nothing has been done to court a
closer fellowship. Science has taken theology at its
own estimate. It is a thing apart The Spiritual
World is not only a different world, but a different
kind of world, a world arranged on a totally
different principle, under a different governmental
scheme.

The Reign of Law has gradually crept into every

INTRODUCTION,

n

department of Nature, transforming knowledge
everywhere into Science. The process goes on, and
Nature slowly appears to us as one great unity,
until the borders of the Spiritual World are reached.
Theie the Law of Continuity ceases, and the har-
mony breaks down. And men who have learned
their elementary lessons truly from the alphabet of
the lower Laws, going on to seek a higher know-
ledge, are suddenly confronted with the Great Ex-
ception.

Even those who have examined most carefully
the relations of the Natural and the Spiritual, seem
to have committed themselves deliberately to a
final separation in matters of Law. It is a surprise
to find such a writer as Horace Bushnell, for
instance, describing the Spiritual World as " another
system of nature incommunicably separate from
ours," and further defining it thus : " God has, in
fact, erected another and higher system, that of
spiritual being and government for which nature
exists ; a system not under the law of cause and
effect, but ruled and marshalled under other kinds
of laws."1 Few men have shown more insight
than Bushnell in illustrating Spiritual truth from the
Natural World ; but he has not only failed to per-

* Nature and the Supernatural," p. 19.

14 INTRODUCTION.

ceive the analogy with regard to Law, but em-
phatically denies it

In the recent literature of this whole region there
nowhere seems any advance upon the position of
"Nature and the Supernatural." All are agreed in
speaking of Nature and the Supernatural. Nature
in the Supernatural, so far as Laws are concerned,
is still an unknown truth.

"The Scientific Basis of Faith" is a suggestive
title. The accomplished author announces that
the object of his investigation is to show that
"the world of nature and mind, as made known
Dy science, constitute a basis and a preparation
for that highest moral and spiritual life of man,
which is evoked by the self-revelation of God."1
On the whole, Mr. Murphy seems to be more
philosophical and more profound in his view of the
relation of science and religion than any writer of
modern times. His conception of religion is broad
and h)fty, his acquaintance with science adequate.
He makes constant, admirable, and often original
use of analogy ; and yet, in spite of the promise
of this quotation, he has failed to find any analogy
in that department of Law where surely, of all
others, it might . most reasonably be looked for,

» u The Scientific Basis of Faith." By J. J, Mnrphy, p. *6&

INTRODUl TION. 15

In the broad subject even of the analogies of what
he defines as " evangelical religion " with Nature,
Mr. Murphy discovers nothing. Nor can this be
traced either to short-sight or over-sight The sub-
ject occurs to him more than once, and he deliber-
ately dismisses it — dismisses it not merely as un-
fruitful, but with a distinct denial of its relevancy.
The memorable paragraph from Origen which
forms the text of Butler's "Analogy," he calls
"this shallow and false saying."1 He says: "The
designation of Butler's scheme of religious philo-
sophy ought then to be the analogy of religion,
legal and evangelical, to the constitution of nature.
But does this give altogether a true meaning ?
Does this double analogy really exist ? If justice
is natural law among beings having a moral
nature, there is the closest analogy between the
constitution of nature and merely legal religion.
Legal religion is only the extension of natural
justice into a future life. . . . But is this true
of evangelical religion ? Have the doctrines of
Divine grace any similar support in the analogies of
nature ? I trow not." s And with reference to a
specific question, speaking of immortality, he asserts
that " the analogies of mere nature are opposed to
the doctrine of immortality." s

1 Op. cit, p. 333. * Ibid., p. 333. * Ibid., p. 331.

INTRODUCTION.

With regard to Butler's great work in this de-
partment, it is needless at this time of day to point
out that his aims did not lie exactly in this direc-
tion He did not seek to indicate analogies
between religion and the constitution and course of
Nature. His theme was, " The Analogy of Religion
to the constitution and course of Nature." And
although he pointed out direct analogies of Phe-
nomena, such as those between the metamorphoses
of insects and the doctrine of a future state ; and
although he showed that " the natural and moral^
constitution and government of the world are so
connected as to make up together but one scheme," l
his real intention was not so much to construct
arguments as to repel objections. His emphasis
accordingly was laid upon the difficulties of the two
schemes rather than on their positive lines ; and
so thoroughly has he made out his point, that as
is well known, the effect upon many has been, not
to lead them to accept the Spiritual World on the
ground of the Natural, but to make them despair
of both. Butler lived at a time when defence was
more necessary than construction, when the materials
for construction were scarce and insecure, and when,
besides, some of the things to be defended were

A «

Analogy," chap, yiL

INTRODUCTION. 17

quite incapable of defence. Notwithstanding this,
his influence over the whole field since has been
unparalleled.

After all, then, the Spiritual World, as it appears
at this moment, is outside Natural Law. Theology
continues to be considered, as it has always been,
a thing apart. It remains still a stupendous and
splendid construction, but on lines altogether its
own. Nor is Theology to be blamed for this. Nature
has been long in speaking; even yet its voice is
low, sometimes inaudible. Science is the true de-
faulter, for Theology had to wait patiently for its
development As the highest of the sciences,
Theology in the order of evolution should be the
last to fall into rank. It is reserved for it to perfect
the final harmony. Still, if it continues longer to
remain a thing apart, writh increasing reason will be
such protests as this of the " Unseen Universe/' when,
in speaking of a view of miracles held by an older
Theology, it declares : — " If he submits to be guided
by such interpreters, each intelligent being will for
ever continue to be baffled in any attempt to explain
these phenomena, because they are said to have no
physical relation to anything that went before or that
followed after ; in fine, they are made to form a
universe within a universe, a portion cut off by an

18 INTRODUCTION

insurmountable barrier from the domain of scientific
inquiry." l

This is the secret of the present decadence of
Religion in the world of Science. For Science can
hear nothing of a Great Exception. Constructions
on unique lines, " portions cut off by an insurmount-
able barrier from the domain of scientific inquiry,"
it dare not recognise. Nature has taught it this
lesson, and Nature is right. It is the province of
Science to vindicate Nature here at any hazard.
But in blaming Theology for its intolerance, it has
been betrayed into an intolerance less excusable. It
has pronounced upon it too soon. What if Religion
be yet brought within the sphere of Law ? Law is
the revelation of time. One by one slowly through
the centuries the Sciences have crystallized into geo-
metrical form, each form not only perfect in itself,
but perfect in its relation to all other forms. Many
forms had to be perfected before the form of the
Spiritual. The Inorganic has to be worked out before
the Organic, the Natural before the Spiritual. Theology
at present has merely an ancient and provisional phi-
losophic form. By-and-by it will be seen whether it
be not susceptible of another. For Theology must
pass through the necessary stages of progress, like

1 " Unseen Universe," 6th ed, pp. 89, 9a

INTRODUCTION. 19

any other science. The method of science-making
is now fully established. In almost all cases the
natural history and development are the same.
Take, for example, the case of Geology. A century
ago there was none. Science went out to look for it,
and brought back a Geology which, if Nature were a
harmony, had falsehood written almost on its face.
It was the Geology of Catastrophism, a Geology so out
of line with Nature as revealed by the other sciences,
that on d priori grounds a thoughtful mind might
have been justified in dismissing it as a final form of
any science. And its fallacy was soon and tho-
roughly exposed. The advent of modified unifor-
mitarian principles all but banished the word catas-
trophe from science, and marked the birth of Geo-
logy as we know it now. Geology, that is to say, had
fallen at last into the great scheme of Law. Reli-
gious doctrines, many of them at least, have been up
to this time all but as catastrophic as the old Geology.
They are not on the lines of Nature as we have
learned to decipher her. If any one feel, as Science
complains that it feels, that the lie of things in the
Spiritual World as arranged by Theology is not in
harmony with the world around, is not, in short,
scientific, he is entitled to raise the question whether
this be really the final form of those departments of
Theology to which his complaint refers. He is justi*

20 INTRODUCTION.

fied, moreover, in demanding a new investigation
with all modern methods and resources ; and Science
is bound by its principles not less than by the lessons
of its own past, to suspend judgment till the last
attempt is made. The success of such an attempt
will be looked forward to with hopefulness or fearful-
ness just in proportion to one's confidence in Nature
— in proportion to one's belief in the divinity of man
and in the divinity of things. If there is any truth
in the unity of Nature, in that supreme principle of
Continuity which is growing in splendour with every
discovery of science, the conclusion is foregone. If
there is any foundation for Theology, if the pheno-
mena of the Spiritual World are real, in the nature
of things they ought to come into the sphere of
Law. Such is at once the demand of Science upon
Religion and the prophecy that it can and shall be
fulfilled.

The Botany of Linnaeus, a purely artificial system,
was a splendid contribution to human knowledge,
and did more in its day to enlarge the view of the
vegetable kingdom than all that had gone before.
But all artificial systems must pass away. None knew
better than the great Swedish naturalist himself that
his system, being artificial, was but provisional.
Nature must be read in its own light. And as the
botanical field became more luminous, the system of

INTRODUCTION,

Jussieu and De Candolle slowly emerged as a native
growth, unfolded itself as naturally as the petals of
one of its own flowers, and forcing itself upon men's
intelligence as the very voice of Nature, banished
the Linnaean system for ever. It were unjust to say
that the present Theology is as artificial as the sys-
tem of Linnaeus ; in many particulars it wants but a
fresh expression to make it in the most modern sense
scientific. But if it has a basis in the constitution
and course of Nature, that basis has never been ade-
quately shown. It has depended on Authority rather
than on Law ; and a new basis must be sought and
found if it is to be presented to those with whom
Law alone is Authority.

It is not of course to be inferred that the scientific
method will ever abolish the radical distinctions of
the Spiritual World. True science proposes to itself
no such general levelling in any department. Within
the unity of the whole there must always be room
for the characteristic differences of the parts, and
those tendencies of thought at the present time
which ignore such distinctions, in their zeal for
simplicity really create confusion. As has been
well said by Mr. Hutton : " Any attempt to merge
the distinctive characteristic of a higher science in a
lower — of chemical changes in mechanical — of phy-
3iological in chemical — above all, of mental changes

22 INTRODUCTION.

in physiological — is a neglect of the radical assump-
tion of all science, because it is an attempt to deduce
representations — or rather misrepresentations — of one
kind of phenomenon from a conception of another
kind which does not contain it, and must have it
implicitly and illicitly smuggled in before it can be
extracted out of it. Hence, instead of increasing
our means of representing the universe to ourselves
without the detailed examination of particulars, such
a procedure leads to misconstructions of fact on the
basis of an imported theory, and generally ends in
forcibly perverting the least-known science to the
type of the better known." l

What is wanted is simply a unity of conception,
but not such a unity of conception as should be
founded on an absolute identity of phenomena
This latter might indeed be a unity, but it would
be a very tame one. The perfection of unity is
attained where there is infinite variety of phe-
nomena, infinite complexity of relation, but great
simplicity of Law. Science will be complete when all
known phenomena can be arranged in one vast circle
in which a few well known Laws shall form the radii—
these radii at once separating and uniting, separating
into particular groups, yet uniting all to a common
centre. To show that the radii for some of the most
1 " Essays," vol. . p. 40.

INTRODUCTION.

23

characteristic phenomena of the Spiritual World are
already drawn within that circle by science is the
main object of the papers which follow. There will
be found an attempt to re-state a few of the more
elementary facts of the Spiritual Life in terms of
Biology. Any argument for Natural Law in the
Spiritual World may be best tested in the d posteriori
form. And although the succeeding pages are not
designed in the first instance to prove a principle,
they may yet be entered here as evidence. The
practical test is a severe one, but on that account all
the more satisfactory.

And what will be gained if the point be made out ?
Not a few things. For one, as partly indicated
already, the scientific demand of the age will be
satisfied. That demand is that all that concerns
life and conduct shall be placed on a scientific basis.
The only great attempt to meet that at present is
" Positivism.

But what again is a scientific basis ? What exactly
is this demand of the age ? " By Science I under-
stand," says Huxley, "all knowledge which rests
upon evidence and reasoning of a like character to
that which claims our assent to ordinary scientific
propositions ; and if any one is able to make good
the assertion that his theology rests upon valid
evidence and sound reasoning, then it appears to

24 INTRODUCTION.

me that such theology must take its place as a part
of science." That the assertion has been already
made good is claimed by many who deserve to be
heard on questions of scientific evidence. But if more
is wanted by some minds, more not perhaps of a higher
kind but of a different kind, at least the attempt can
be made to gratify them. Mr. Frederic Harrison,1
in name of the Positive method of thought, " turns
aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to
be lawless [the italics are Mr. Harrison's], which pro-
fess to transcend the field of law. We say, life and
conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis of law,
and must rest entirely in that region of science (not
physical, but moral and social science) where we are
free to use our intelligence, in the methods known to
us as intelligible logic, methods which the intellect
can analyse. When you confront us with hypotheses,
however sublime and however affecting, if they can-
not be stated in terms of the rest of our knowledge,
if they are disparate to that world of sequence and
sensation which to us is the ultimate base of all our
real knowledge, then we shake our heads and turn
aside." This is a most reasonable demand, and we
humbly accept the challenge. We think religious
ti uth, or at all events certain of the largest facts of

1 "A Modern Symposium." — Nineteenth Century ', vol. i
|K 625.

INTRODUCTION.

*5

the Spiritual Life, can be stated a in terms of the rest
of our knowledge."

We do not say, as already hinted, that the pro-
posal includes an attempt to prove the existence of
the Spiritual World. Does that need proof? And
if so, what sort of evidence would be considered
in court ? The facts of the Spiritual World are as
real to thousands as the facts of the Natural World —
and more real to hundreds. But were one asked to
prove that the Spiritual World can be discerned by
the appropriate faculties, one would do it precisely as
one would attempt to prove the Natural World to
be an object of recognition to the senses — and with
as much or as little success. In either instance
probably the fact would be found incapable of
demonstration, but not more in the one case than in
the other. Were one asked to prove the existence
of Spiritual Life, one would also do it exactly as one
would seek to prove Natural Life. And this perhaps
might be attempted with more hope. But this is
not on the immediate programme. Science deals
with known facts ; and accepting certain known
facts in the Spiritual World we proceed to arrange
them, to discover their Laws, to inquire if they can
be stated " in terms of the rest of our knowledge."

At the same time, although attempting no philo-
sophical proof of the existence of a Spiritual Life

26 INTRODUCTION

and a Spiritual World, we are not without hope
that the general line of thought here may be useful
to some who are honestly inquiring in these direc-
tions. The stumbling-block to most minds is pel-
haps less the mere existence of the unseen than the
want of definition, the apparently hopeless vague-
ness, and not least, the delight in this vagueness as
mere vagueness by some who look upon this as
the mark of quality in Spiritual things. It will
be at least something to tell earnest seekers that
the Spiritual World is not a castle in the air, of an
architecture unknown to earth or heaven, but a fair
ordered realm furnished with many familiar things
and ruled by well-remembered Laws.

It is scarcely necessary to emphasise under a
second head the gain in clearness. The Spiritual
World as it stands is full of perplexity. One can
escape doubt only by escaping thought. With re-
gard to many important articles of religion per-
haps the best and the worst course at present open
to a doubter is simple credulity. Who is to answer
for this state of things ? It comes as a necessary
tax for improvement on the age in which we live,
The old ground of faith, Authority, is given up ;
the new, Science, has not yet taken its place. Men
did not require to see truth before ; they only
needed to believe it Truth, therefore, had not

INTRODUCTION. 27

been put by Theology in a seeing form — which,
however, was its original form. But now they ask
to see it And when it is shown them they start
back in despair. We shall not say what they see.
But we shall say what they might see. If the
Natural Laws were run through the Spiritual World,
they might see the great lines of religious truth
as clearly and simply as the broad lines of science.
As they gazed into that Natural-Spiritual World
they would say to themselves, "We have seen
something like this before. This order is known
to us. It is not arbitrary. This Law here is that
old Law there, and this Phenomenon here, what can
it be but that which stood in precisely the same
relation to that Law yonder?" And so gradually
from the new form everything assumes new meaning.
So the Spiritual World becomes slowly Natural ; and,
what is of all but equal moment, the Natural World
becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is not a mere
image or emblem of the Spiritual. It is a working
model of the Spiritual. In the Spiritual World the/
same wheels revolve — but without the iron. The
same figures flit across the stage, the same processes
of growth go on, the same functions are discharged,
the same biological laws prevail — only with a dif-
ferent quality of /3/o?. Plato's prisoner, if not out
of the Cave, has at least his face to the light

INTRODUCTION.

u The earth is cram'd with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.*

How much of the Spiritual World is covered by
Natural law we do not propose at present to inquire.
It is certain, at least, that the whole is not covered.
And nothing more lends confidence to the method
than this. For one thing, room is still left for
mystery. Had no place remained for mystery it
had proved itself both unscientific and irreligious.
A Science without mystery is unknown ; a Religion
without mystery is absurd. This is no attempt to
reduce Religion to a question of mathematics, or
demonstrate God in biological formulae. The elimi-
nation of mystery from the universe is the elimina-
tion of Religion. However far the scientific method
may penetrate the Spiritual World, there will always
remain a region to be explored by a scientific
faith, " I shall never rise to the point of view
which wishes to 'raise* faith to knowledge. To
me, the way of truth is to come through the know-
ledge of my ignorance to the submissiveness of
faith, and then, making that my starting place, to
raise my knowledge into faith." V

Lest this proclamation of mystery should seem
alarming, let us add that this mystery also is scien-

1 Beck : " Bib. Psychol.," Clark's Tr., Pref., 2nd Ed. p. xiii.

INTRODUCTION. 29

tific. The one subject on which all scientific men
are agreed, the one theme on which all alike become
eloquent, the one strain of pathos in all their writing
and speaking and thinking, concerns that finai un*
certainty, that utter blackness of darkness bound-
ing their work on every side. If the light of Nature
is to illuminate for us the Spiritual Sphere there may
well be a black Unknown, corresponding, at least
at some points, to this zone of darkness round the
Natural World.

But the final gain would appear in the department
of Theology. The establishment of the Spiritual
Laws on " the solid ground of Nature," to which the
mind trusts "which builds for aye," would offer
a new basis for certainty in Religion. It has been
indicated that the authority of Authority is waning.
This is a plain fact And it was inevitable,
Authority — man's Authority, that is — is for children,
And there necessarily comes a time when they add
to the question, What shall I do ? or, What shall
I believe ? the adult's interrogation — Why ? Now
this question is sacred, and must be answered.

" How truly its central position is impregnable,"
Herbert Spencer has well discerned, " religion has
never adequately realized. In the devoutest faith,
as we habitually see it, there lies hidden an inner-
most core of scepticism ; and it is this scepticism

3°

INTRODUCTION.

which causes that dread of inquiry displayed by
religion when face to face with science." l True
indeed ; Religion has never realized how impregnable
are many of its positions. It has not yet been placed
on that basis which would make them impregnable.
And in a transition period like the present, holding
Authority with one hand, the other feeling all
around in the darkness for some strong new support,
Theology is surely to be pitied. Whence this dread
when brought face to face with Science ? It cannot
be dread of scientific fact No single fact in Science
has ever discredited a fact in Religion. The
theologian knows that, and admits that he has no
fear of facts. What then has Science done to make
Theology tremble ? It is its method. It is its
system. It is its Reign of Law. It is its harmony
and continuity. The attack is not specific. No one
point is assailed. It is the whole system which
when compared with the other and weighed in its
balance is found wanting. An eye which has looked
at the first cannot look upon this. To do that, and
rest in the contemplation, it has first to uncentury
itself.

Herbert Spencer points out further, with how
much truth need not now be discussed, that the

1 "First Principles,* p. 161

INTRODUCTION. 31

purification of Religion has always come from
Science. It is very apparent at all events that an
immense debt must soon be contracted. The shift-
ing of the furnishings will be a work of time. But
it must be accomplished. And not the least result
of the process will be the effect upon Science itself.
No department of knowledge ever contributes to
another without receiving its own again with usury
— witness the reciprocal favours of Biology and
Sociology. From the time that Comte defined the
analogy between the phenomena exhibited by
aggregations of associated men and those of animal
colonies, the Science of Life and the Science of
Society have been so contributing to one another
that their progress since has been all but hand-in-
hand. A conception borrowed by the one has been
observed in time finding its way back, and always in
an enlarged form, to further illuminate and enrich
the field it left. So must it be with Science and
Religion. If the purification of Religion comes from
Science, the purification of Science, in a deeper
sense, shall come from Religion, The true ministry
of Nature must at last be honoured, and Science
take its place as the great expositor. To Men ot
Science, not less than to Theologians,

" Science then
Shall be a preciois visitant ; and then,

3» INTRODUCTION.

And only then, be worthy of her name ;

For then her heart shall kindle, her dull eye,

Dull and inanimate, no more shall hang

Chained to its object in brute slavery ;

But taught with patient interest to watch

The process of things, and serve the cause

Of order and distinctness, not for this

Shall it forget that its most noble use,

Its most illustrious province, must be found

In furnishing clear guidance, a support,

Not treacherous, to the mind's excursive power.*

But the gift of Science to Theology shall be not
less rich. With the inspiration of Nature to illu-
minate what the inspiration of Revelation has left
obscure, heresy in certain whole departments shall
become impossible. With the demonstration of the
naturalness of the supernatural, scepticism even may
come to be regarded as unscientific. And those
who have wrestled long for a few bare truths to
ennoble lire and rest their souls in thinking of the
future \$A\ not be left in doubt.

It is impossible to believe that the amazing suc-
cession of revelations in the domain of Nature during
the last few centuries, at which the world has all but
grown tired wondering, are to yield nothing for
the higher life. If the development of doctrine is
to have any meaning for the future, Theology must

1 Wordsworth's Excursion^ Book iv.

INTRODUCTION. 33

draw upon the further revelation of the seen for the
further revelation of the unseen. It need, and can,
add nothing to fact ; but as the vision of Newton
rented on a clearer and richer world than that of
Plato, so, though seeing the same things in the Spi-
ritual World as our fathers, we may see them clearer
and richer. With the work of the centuries upon it,
the mental eye is a finer instrument, and demands a
more ordered world. Had the revelation of Law
been given sooner, it had been unintelligible. Re-
velation never volunteers anything that man could
discover for himself — on the principle, probably, that
it is only when he is capable of discovering it that
he is capable of appreciating it. Besides, children
do not need Laws, except Laws in the sense of com-
mandments. They repose with simplicity on author-
ity, and ask no questions. But there comes a time,
as the world reaches its manhood, when they will ask
questions, and stake, moreover, everything on the
answers. That time is now. Hence we must ex-
hibit our doctrines, not lying athwart the lines of the
woild's thinking, in a place reserved, and therefore
shunned, for the Great Exception ; but in their kin-
ship to all truth and in their Law-relation to the whole
of Nature. This is, indeed, simply following out the
system of teaching begun by Christ Himself. And
what is the search for spiritual truth in the Laws of

O

34 INTRODUCTION.

Nature but an attempt to utter the parables which
have been hid so long in th/5 world around without a
preacher, and to tell men once more that the King-
dom of Heaven is like unto this and to that ?

PART II.

The Law of Continuity having been referred to
already as a prominent factor in this inquiry, it may
not be out of place to sustain the plea for Natural
Law in the Spiritual Sphere by a brief statement
and application of this great principle. The Law
of Continuity furnishes an a ^priori argument for the
position we are attempting to establish of the most
convincing kind — of such a kind, indeed, as to seem
to our mind final Briefly indicated, the ground
taken up is this, that if Nature be a harmony, Man
in all his relations — physical, mental, moral, and
spiritual — falls to be included within its circle. It is
altogether unlikely that man spiritual should be vio-
lently separated in all the conditions of growth, de-
velopment, and life, from man physical. It is indeed
difficult to conceive that one set of principles should
guide the natural life, and these at a certain period —
the very point where they are needed — suddenly give
place to another set of principles altogether new and

36 INTRODUCTION.

unrelated. Nature has never taught us to expect
such a catastrophe. She has nowhere prepared us
for it. And Man cannot in the nature of things, in
the nature of thought, in the nature of language, be
separated into two such incoherent halves.

The spiritual man, it is true, is to be studied in a
different department of science from the natural
man. ' But the harmony established by science is
not a harmony within specific departments. It is
the universe that is the harmony, the universe of
which these are but parts. And the harmonies of
the parts depend for all their weight and interest on
the harmony of the whole. While, therefore, there
are many harmonies, there is but one harmony. The
breaking up of the phenomena of the universe into
carefully guarded groups, and the allocation of cer-
tain prominent Laws to each, it must never be for-
gotten, and however much Nature lends herself to it,
are artificial. We find an evolution in Botany, another
in Geology, and another in Astronomy, and the effect
is to lead one insensibly to look upon these as three
distinct evolutions. But these sciences, of course,
are mere departments created by ourselves to facili-
tate knowledge — reductions of Nature to the scale
of oix own intelligence. And we must beware of
breaking up Nature except for this purpose. Science
has so dissected everything, that it becomes a

INTRODUCTION. 37

mental difficulty to put the puzzle together again ;
and we must keep ourselves in practice by constantly
thinking of Nature as a whole, if science is not to
be spoiled by its own refinements. Evolution being
found in so many different sciences, the likelihood is
that it is a universal principle. And there is no pre-
sumption whatever against this Law and many others
being excluded from the domain of the spiritual life.
On the other hand, there are very convincing reasons
why the Natural Laws should be continuous through
the Spiritual Sphere— not changed in any way to
meet the new circumstances, but continuous as they
stand.

But to the exposition. One of the most striking
generalisations of recent science is that even Laws
have their Law. Phenomena first, in the progress
of knowledge, were grouped together, and Nature
shortly presented the spectacle of a cosmos, the lines
of beauty being the great Natural Laws. So long,
however, as these Laws were merely great lines run-
ning through Nature, so long as they remained isolated
from one another, the system of Nature was still
incomplete. The principle which sought Law among
phenomena had to go further and seek a Law among
the Laws. Laws themselves accordingly came to be
treated as they treated phenomena, and found them-
selves finally grouped in a still narrower circle. That

38 INTRODUCTION.

inmost circle is governed by one great Law, the Law
of Continuity. It is the Law for Laws.

It is perhaps significant that few exact definitions
of Continuity are to be found. Even in Sir W. R,
Grove's famous paper,1 the fountain-head of the
modern form of this far from modern truth, there is
no attempt at definition. In point of fact, its sweep
is so magnificent, it appeals so much more to the
imagination than to the reason, that men have pre-
ferred to exhibit rather than to define it Its true
greatness consists in the final impression it leaves on
the mind with regard to the uniformity of Nature.
For it was reserved for the Law of Continuity to
put the finishing touch to the harmony of the uni-
verse.

Probably the most satisfactory way to secure for
oneself a just appreciation of the Principle of Con-
tinuity is to try to conceive the universe without it
The opposite of a continuous universe would be a
discontinuous universe, an incoherent and irrelevant
universe — as irrelevant in all its ways of doing things
as an irrelevant person. In effect, to withdraw Con-
tinuity from the universe would be the same as to
withdraw reason from an individual. The universe
would run deranged ; the world would be a mad
world.

* "The Correlation of Physical Forces," 6th ed, p. 181 et uq,

INTRODUCTION. 39

There used to be a children's book which bore
the fascinating title of "The Chance World." It
described a world in which everything happened by
chance. The sun might rise or it might not ; or it
might appear at any hour, or the moon might come
up instead. When children were born they might
have one head or a dozen heads, and those heads
might not be on their shoulders — there might be no
shoulders — but arranged about the limbs. If one
jumped up in the air it was impossible to predict
whether he would ever come down again. That he
came down yesterday was no guarantee that he
would do it next time. For every day antecedent
and consequent varied, and gravitation and every-
thing else changed from hour to hour. To-day a
child's body might be so light that it was impossible
for it to descend from its chair to the floor ; but to-
morrow, in attempting the experiment again, the
impetus might drive it through a three-storey house
and dash it to pieces somewhere near the centre of
the earth. In this chance world cause and effect
were abolished. Law was annihilated. And the
result to the inhabitants of such a world could only
be that reason would be impossible. It would be a
lunatic world with a population of lunatics.

Now this is no more than a real picture of what
the world would be without Law, or the universe

<p INTRODUCTION.

without Continuity. And hence we come in sight oi
the necessity of some principle or Law according to
which Laws shall be, and be " continuous " throughout
the system. Man as a rational and moral being
demands a pledge that if he depends on Nature for
any given result on the ground that Nature has
previously led him to expect such a result, his
intellect shall not be insulted, nor his confidence in
her abused. If he is to trust Nature, in short, it must
be guaranteed to him that in doing so he will
"never be put to confusion." The authors of the
Unseen Universe conclude their examination of this
principle by saying that " assuming the existence of
a supreme Governor of the universe, the Principle
of Continuity may be said to be the definite expres-
sion in words of our trust that He will not put us
to permanent intellectual confusion, and we can
easily conceive similar expressions of trust with
reference to the other faculties of man."1 Or, as
it has been well put elsewhere, Continuity is the
expression of the Divine Veracity in Nature." 2 The
most striking examples of the continuousness of
Law are perhaps those furnished by Astronomy,
especially in connection with the more recent appli-

1 " Unseen Universe," 6th ed., p. 88.

* " Old Faiths in New Light," by Newman Smith. Unwin'i
English edition, p. 252.

INTRODUCTION. 41

cations of spectrum analysis. But even in the case
of the simpler Laws the demonstration is complete,
There is no reason apart from Continuity to expect
that gravitation for instance should prevail outside
our world. But wherever matter has been detected
throughout the entire universe, whether in the form
of star or planet, comet or meteorite, it is found to
obey that Law. " If there were no other indication
of unity than this, it would be almost enough. For
the unity which is implied in the mechanism of the
heavens is indeed a unity which is all-embracing and
complete. The structure of our own bodies, with all
that depends upon it, is a structure governed by,
and therefore adapted to, the same force of gravita-
tion which has determined the form and the move-
ments of myriads of worlds. Every part of the
human organism is fitted to conditions which would
all be destroyed in a moment if the forces of gravita-
tion were to change or fail." l

But it is unnecessary to multiply illustrations.
Having defined the principle we may proceed at
once to apply it. And the argument may be
summed up in a sentence. As the Natural Laws are
continuous through the universe of matter and of

1 The Duke of Argyll : Contemporary Review, Sept., i88o(
P. 35&

42 INTRODUCTION.

space, so will they be continuous through the
universe of spirit.

If this be denied, what then ? Those who deny it
must furnish the disproof. The argument is founded
on a principle which is now acknowledged to be
universal ; and the onus of disproof must lie with
those who maybe bold enough to take up the position
that a region exists where at last the Principle of
Continuity fails. To do this one would first have
to overturn Nature, then science, and last, the human
mind.

It may seem an obvious objection that many of
the Natural Laws have no connection whatever with
the Spiritual World, and as a matter of fact are not
continued through it. Gravitation for instance — what
direct application has that in the Spiritual World ?
The reply is threefold. First, there is no proof that
it does not hold there. If the spirit be in any sense
material it certainly must hold. In the second place,
gravitation may hold for the Spiritual Sphere al-
though it cannot be directly proved. The spirit
may be armed with powers which enable it to rise
superior to gravity. During the action of these
powers gravity need be no more suspended than in
the case of a plant which rises in the air during the
process of growth. It does this in virtue of a highei
Law and in apparent defiance of the lower. Thirdly,

INTRODUCTION. 43

if the spiritual be not material it still cannot be said
that gravitation ceases at that point to be continuous.
It is not gravitation that ceases — it is matter.

This point, however, will require development for
another reason. In the case of the plant just referred
to, there is a principle of growth or vitality at work
superseding the attraction of gravity. Why is there
no trace of that Law in the Inorganic world ? Is not
this another instance of the discontinuousness of
Law ? If the Law of vitality has so little connection
with the Inorganic kingdom — less even than gravi-
tation with the Spiritual, what becomes of Con-
tinuity ? Is it not evident that each kingdom of
Nature has its own set of Laws which continue
possibly untouched for the specific kingdom but
never extend beyond it?

It is quite true that when we pass from the In-
organic to the Organic, we come upon a new set of
Laws. But the reason why the lower set do not seem
to act in the higher sphere is not* that they are anni-
hilated, but that they are overruled. And the reason
why the higher Laws are not found operating in the
lower is not because they are not continuous down-
wards, but because there is nothing for them there to
ict upon. It is not Law that fails, but opportunity.
The biological Laws are continuous for life. Wher-
ever there is life, that is to say, they will be found

44 INTRODUCTION.

acting, just as gravitation acts wherever there is
matter.

We have purposely, in the last paragraph, indulged
in a fallacy. We have said that the biological Laws
would certainly be continuous in the lower or mineral
sphere were there anything there for them to act
upon. Now Laws do not act upon anything. It has
been stated already, although apparently it cannot
be too abundantly emphasized, that Laws are only
modes of operation, not themselves operators. The
accurate statement, therefore, would be that the
biological Laws wrould be continuous in the lower
sphere were there anything there for them, not to act
upon, but to keep in order. If there is no acting
going on, if there is nothing being kept in order, the
responsibility does not lie with Continuity. The Law
will always be at its post, not only when its services
are required, but wherever they are possible.

Attention is drawn to this, for it is a correction
one will find oneself compelled often to make in his
thinking. It is so difficult to keep out of mind the
idea of substance in connection with the Natural
Laws, the idea that they are the movers, the essences,
the energies, that one is constantly on the verge
of falling into false conclusions. Thus a hasty
glance at the present argument on the part of any
one ill-furnished enough to confound Law with sub-

INTR OD UC TION. 45

stance or with cause would probably lead to its
immediate rejection.

For, to continue the same line of illustration, it
might next be urged that such a (Law as Biogenesis,")
which, as we hope to show afterwards, is the funda-
mental Law of life for both the natural and spiritual
worlds, can have no application whatsoever in the
latter sphere. The life with which it deals in the
Natural World does not enter at all into the Spiritual
World, and therefore, it might be argued, the Law of
Biogenesis cannot be capable of extension into it.
The Law of Continuity seems to be snapped at the
point where the natural passes into the spirituaL
The vital principle of the body is a different thing
from the vital principle of the spiritual life. Bio-
genesis deals with /3io<?} with the natural life, with
cells and germs, and as there are no exactly similar
cells and germs in the Spiritual World, the Law can-
not therefore apply. All which is as true as if one
were to say that the fifth proposition of the First
Book of Euclid applies when the figures are drawn
with chalk upon a blackboard, but fails with regard
to structures of wood or stone.

The proposition is continuous for the whole world,
and, doubtless, likewise for the sun and moon and
stars. The same universality may be predicated
likewise for the Law of life. Wherever there is life we

46 INTRODUCTION.

may expect to find it arranged, ordered, governed
according to the same Law. At the beginning of the
natural life we find the Law that natural life can only
come from pre-existing natural life ; and at the be-
ginning of the spiritual life we find that the spiritual
life can only come from pre-existing spiritual life.
But there are not two Laws ; there is one — Bio-
genesis. At one end the Law is dealing with matter,
at the other with spirit. The qualitative terms
natural and spiritual make no difference. Biogenesis
is the Law for all life and for all kinds of life, and
the particular substance with which it is associated
is as indifferent to Biogenesis as it is to Gravitation.
Gravitation will act whether the substance be suns
and stars, or grains of sand, or raindrops. Bio-
genesis, in like manner, will act wherever there is
life.

The conclusion finally is, that from the nature of
Law in general, and from the scope of the Principle
of Continuity in particular, the Laws of the natural
life must be those of the spiritual life. This does not
exclude, observe, the possibility of there being new
Laws in addition within the Spiritual Sphere; nor
does it even include the supposition that the old I,aws
will be the conspicuous Laws of the Spiritual World,
both which ooints will be dealt with presently. It
simply asserts that whatever else may be found,

INTRODUCTION. 47

these must be found there ; that they must be there
though they may not be seen there ; and that they
must project beyond there if there be anything
beyond there. If the Law of Continuity is true, the
only way to escape the conclusion that the Laws of
the natural life are the Laws, or at least are Laws, of
the spiritual life, is to say that there is no spiritual
life. It is really easier to give up the phenomena
than to give up the Law.

Two questions now remain for further considera-
tion— one bearing on the possibility of new Law in
the spiritual ; the other, on the assumed invisibility
or inconspicuousness of the old Laws on account of
their subordination to the new.

Let us begin by conceding that there may be new
Laws. The argument might then be advanced that
since, in Nature generally, we come upon new Laws
as we pass from lower to higher kingdoms, the old
still remaining in force, the newer Laws which one
would expect to meet in the Spiritual World would
so transcend and overwhelm the older as to make the
analogy or identity, even if traced, of no practical
use. The new Laws would represent operations and
energies so different, and so much more elevated,
that they would afford the true keys to the Spiritual
World. As Gravitation is practically lost sight of
when we pass into the domain of life, so Biogenesis

INTRO D UCT10N.

would be lost sight of as we enter the Spiritual
Sphere

We must first separate in this statement the old
confusion of Law and energy. Gravitation is not lost
sight of in the organic world. Gravity may be, to a
certain extent, but not Gravitation ; and gravity only
where a higher power counteracts its action. At
the same time it is not to be denied that the con-
spicuous thing in Organic Nature is not the great
Inorganic Law.

But the objection turns upon the statement that
reasoning from analogy we should expect, in turn, to
lose sight of Biogenesis as we enter the Spiritual
Sphere. One answer to which is that, as a matter of
fact, we do not lose sight of it. So far from being in-
visible, it lies across the very threshold of the Spiritual
World, and, as we shall see, pervades it everywhere.
What we lose sight of, to a certain extent, is the
natural /3/09. In the Spiritual World that is not the
conspicuous thing, and it is obscure there just as
gravity becomes obscure in the Organic, because
something higher, more potent, more characteristic of
the higher plane, comes in. That there are higher
energies, so to speak, in the Spiritual World is, of
course, to be affirmed alike on the ground of analogy
and of experience ; but it does not follow that these
necessitate other Laws. A Law has nothing to dc

INTRODUCTION. 49

with potency. We may lose sight of a substance,
or of an energy, but it is an abuse of language to
talk of losing sight of Laws.

Are there, then, no other Laws in the Spiritual
World except those which are the projections or
extensions of Natural Laws? From the number of
Natural Laws which are found in the higher sphere,
from the large territory actually embraced by them,
and from their special prominence throughout the
whole region, it may at least be answered that the
margin left for them is small But if the objection
is pressed that it is contrary to the analogy, and
unreasonable in itself, that there should not be new
Laws for this higher sphere, the reply is obvious. Let
these Laws be produced. If the spiritual nature, in
inception, growth, and development, does not follow
natural principles, let the true principles be stated
and explained. We have not denied that there may
be new Laws. One would almost be surprised if there
were not. The mass of material handed over from
the natural to the spiritual, continuous, apparently,
from the natural to the spiritual, is so great that till
that is worked out it will be. impossible to say what
space is still left unembraced by Laws that are known.
At present it is impossible even approximately to
estimate the size of that supposed terra incognita.
From one point of view it ought to be vast, from

E

50 INTRODUCTION.

another extremely small. But however large the
region governed by the suspected new Laws may be
that cannot diminish by a hair's-breadth the size of
the territory where the old Laws still prevail. That
territory itself, relatively to us though perhaps not
absolutely, must be of great extent. The size of the
key which is to open it, that is, the size of all the
Natural Laws which can be found to apply, is a guar-
antee that the region of the knowable in the Spiritual
World is at least as wide as these regions of the
Natural World which by the help of these Laws have
been explored. No doubt also there yet remain
some Natural Laws to be discovered, and these in
time may have a further light to shed on the spiritual
field. Then we may know all that is? By no
means. We may only know all that may be known.
And that may be very little. The Sovereign Will
which sways the sceptre of that invisible empire
must be granted a right of freedom — that freedom
which by putting it into our wills He surely teaches
us to honour in His. In much of His dealing with
us also in what may be called the paternal relation,
there may seem no special Law — no Law except the
highest of all, that Law of which all other Laws are
parts, that Law which neither Nature can wholly reflect
nor the mind begin to fathom — the Law of Love. He
adds nothing to that, however, who loses sight of all

INTRODUCTION. 51

other Laws in that, nor does he take from it who finds
epecific Laws everywhere radiating from it

With regard to the supposed new Laws of the
Spiritual World — those Laws, that is, which are found
for the first time in the Spiritual World, and have no
analogies lower down — there is this to be said, that
there is one strong reason against exaggerating either
their number or importance — their importance at least
for our immediate needs. The connection between
language and the Law of Continuity has been referred
to incidentally already. It is clear that we can only
express the Spiritual Laws in language borrowed from
the visible universe. Being dependent for our vocab-
ulary on images, if an altogether new and foreign set
of Laws existed in the Spiritual World, they could
never take shape as definite ideas from mere want
of words. The hypothetical new Laws which may
remain to be discovered in the domain of Natural or
Mental Science may afford some index of these hypo-
thetical higher Laws, but this would of course mean
that the latter were no longer foreign but in analogy,
or, likelier still, identical. If, on the other hand, the
Natural Laws of the future have nothing to say of
these higher Laws, what can be said of them ?
Where is the language to come from in which to
frame them ? If their disclosure could be of any
practical use to us, we may be sure the clue to them,

52 INTRODUCTION.

the revelation of them, in some way would have been
put into Nature. If, on the contrary, they are not to be
of immediate use to man, it is better they should not
embarrass him. After all, then, our knowledge of
higher Law must be limited by our knowledge of the
lower. The Natural Laws as at present known, what-
ever additions may yet be made to them, give a fair
rendering of the facts of Nature. And their ana-
logies or their projections in the Spiritual sphere may
also be said to offer a fair account of that sphere, or
of one or two conspicuous departments of it. The
time has come for that account to be given. The
greatest among the theological Laws are the Laws
of Nature in disguise. It will be the splendid task
of the theology of the future to take off the mask
and disclose to a waning scepticism the naturalness
of the supernatural.

It is almost singular that the identification of the
Laws of the Spiritual World with the Laws of Nature
should so long have escaped recognition. For apart
from the probability on d priori grounds, it is in-
volved in the whole structure of Parable. When
any two Phenomena in the two spheres are seen to
be analogous, the parallelism must depend upon the
fact that the Laws governing them are not analogous
but identical. And yet this basis for Parable seems
to have been overlooked. Thus Principal Shairp 5—

INTRODUCTION. 53

* This seeing of Spiritual truths mirrored in the face
of Nature rests not on any fancied, but in a real
analogy between the natural and the spiritual worlds
They are in some sense which science has not ascer*
tainedy but which the vital and religious imagination
can perceive, counterparts one of the other." l But
is not this the explanation, that parallel Phenomena
depend upon identical Laws ? It is a question in-
deed whether one can speak of Laws at all as being
analogous. Phenomena are parallel, Laws which
make them so aie themselves one.

In discussing the relations of the Natural and Spiri-
tual kingdom, it has been all but implied hitherto
that the Spiritual Laws were framed originally on
the plan of the Natural ; and the impression one
might receive in studying the two worlds for the first
time from the side of analogy would naturally be
that the lower world was formed first, as a kind of
scaffolding on which the higher and Spiritual should
be afterwards raised. Now the exact opposite has
been the case. The first in the field was the Spiritual
World.

It is not necessary to reproduce here in detail the
argument which has been stated recently with so
much force in the " Unseen Universe/' The conclu-

1 u Poetic Interpretation of Nature," p. 115.

54 INTRODUCTION.

sion of that work remains still unassailed that the
visible universe has been developed from the unseen.
Apart from the general proof from the Law of Con-
tinuity, the more special grounds of such a conclusion
are, first, the fact insisted upon by Herschel and
Clerk-Maxwell that the atoms of which the visible
universe is built up bear distinct marks of being
manufactured articles ; and, secondly, the origin in
time of the visible universe is implied from known
facts with regard to the dissipation of energy. With
the gradual aggregation of mass the energy of the
universe has been slowly disappearing, and this loss
of energy must go on until none remains. There is,
therefore, a point in time when the energy of the
universe must come to an end ; and that which has
its end in time cannot be infinite, it must also have
had a beginning in time. Hence the unseen existed
before the seen.

There is nothing so especially exalted therefore
in the Natural Laws in themselves as to make one
anxious to find them blood relations of the Spiritual.
It is not only because these Laws are on the ground,
more accessible therefore to us who are but ground-
lings ; not only, as the " Unseen Universe " points
out in another connection, " because they are at the
bottom of the list — are in fact the simplest and
lowest — that they are capable of being most readily

IN1R0DUCTI0N. 55

grasped by the finite intelligences of the universe."1
But their true significance lies in the fact that they
are on the list at all, and especially in that the list .s
the same list. Their dignity is not as Natural Laws,
but as Spiritual Laws, Laws which, as already said,
at one end are dealing with Matter, and at the other
with Spirit "The physical properties of matter form
the alphabet which is put into our hands by God, the
study of which, if properly conducted, will enable
us more perfectly to read that great book which we
call the ' Universe.' " 2 But, over and above this, the
Natural Laws will enable us to read that great dupli-
cate which we call the " Unseen Universe/' and to
think and live in fuller harmony with it. After all,
the true greatness of Law lies in its vision of the
Unseen. Law in the visible is the Invisible in the
visible. And to speak of Laws as Natural is to
define them in their application to a part of the
universe, the sense-part, whereas a wider survey
would lead us to regard all Law as essentially
Spiritual. To magnify the Laws of Nature, as Laws
of this small world of ours, is to take a provincial
view of the universe. Law is great not because the
phenomenal world is great, but because these vanish-
ing lines are the avenues into the eternal Order

1 6th edition, p. 235. f Ibid.% p. 286,

56 INTRODUCTION.

H Is it less reverent to regard the universe as an
illimitable avenue which leads up to God, than to
look upon it as a limited area bounded by an im-
penetrable wall, which, if we could only pierce it
would admit us at once into the presence of the
Eternal ? " l Indeed the authors of the " Unseen Uni-
verse " demur even to the expression material uni-
verse, since, as they tell us " Matter is (though it may
seem paradoxical to say so) the less important half
of the material of the physical universe."2 And
even Mr. Huxley, though in a different sense, assures
us, with Descartes, "that we know more of mind
than we do of body ; that the immaterial world is
a firmer reality than the material." 8

How the priority of the Spiritual improves the
strength and meaning of the whole argument will be
seen at once. The lines of the Spiritual existed first,
and it was natural to expect that when the " Intelli-
gence resident in the ' Unseen ' ■' proceeded to frame
the material universe He should go upon the lines
already laid down. He would, in short, simply pro-
ject the higher Laws downward, so that the Natural
World would become an incarnation, a visible repre-
sentation, a working model of the spiritual. The
whole function of the material world lies here. The

1 " Unseen Universe," p. 96. 2 Ibid.y p. 100.

8 "Science and Culture," p. 259.

INTRODUCTION. 57

world is only a thing that is; it is not It is a

thing that teaches, yet not even a thing — a show that
shows, a teaching shadow. However useless the
demonstration otherwise, philosophy does well in
proving that matter is a non-entity. We work with
it as the mathematician with an x. The reality is
alone the Spiritual. "It is very well for physicists
to speak of • matter/ but for men generally to call
this 'a material world* is an absurdity. Should we
call it an ^r-world it would mean as much, viz., that
we do not know what it is." l When shall we learn
the true mysticism of one who was yet far from
being a mystic — " We look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are not seen ;
for the things which are seen are temporal, but the
things which are not seen are eternal ? " 2 The visible
is the ladder up to the invisible ; the temporal is but
the scaffolding of the eternal. And when the last
immaterial souls have climbed through this material
to God, the scaffolding shall be taken down, and the
earth dissolved with fervent heat — not because it was
base, but because its work is done.

1 Hinton's " Philosophy and Religion," p. 4a
• 3 Cor. iv. 18.

BIOGENESIS.

" What we require is no 7iew Revelation, but simply an
adequate conception, of the true essence of Christianity. And
I believe that, as ti?ne goes on, the work of the Holy Spirit
will be continuously shown in the gradual insight which the
human race will attain into the true essence of the Christian
religion. I am thus of opinion that a standing miracle
exists, and that it has ever existed — a direct and continued
influence exerted by the supernatural on the natural."

Paradoxical Philosophy.

BIOGENESIS.

" He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the
Son of God hath not Life."— John.
u Omne vivum ex vivo." — Harvey.

FOR two hundred years the scientific world has been
rent with discussions upon the Origin of Life. Two
great schools have defended exactly opposite views ^s
— one that matter can spontaneously generate life,
the other that life can only come from pre-existing
life. The doctrine of Spontaneous Generation, as
the first is called, has been revived within recent
years by Dr. Bastian, after a series of elaborate ex-
periments on the Beginnings of Life. Stated in his
own words, his conclusion is this : " Both observation
and experiment unmistakeably testify to the fact
that living matter is constantly being formed de novo,
in obedience to the same laws and tendencies which
determine all the more simple chemical combina-
tions."1 Life, that is to say, is not the Gift of Life.

1 " Beginnings of Life." By H. C Bastian, M.A^ M.D.,
F.R.S. Macmillan, vol. ii. p. 633.

62 BIOGENESIS.

It is capable of springing into being of itself. It
can be Spontaneously Generated.

This announcement called into the field a phalanx
of observers, and the highest authorities in bio-
logical science engaged themselves afresh upon the
problem. The experiments necessary to test the
matter can be followed or repeated by any one pos-
sessing the slightest manipulative skill. Glass vessels
are three-parts filled with infusions of hay or any
organic matter. They are boiled to kill all germs
of life, and hermetically sealed to exclude the outer
air. The air inside, having been exposed to the
boiling temperature for many hours, is supposed to
be likewise dead ; so that any life which may sub-
sequently appear in the closed flasks must have
sprung into being of itself. In Bastian's experiments,
after every expedient to secure sterility, life did
appear inside in myriad quantity. Therefore, he
argued, it was spontaneously generated.

But the phalanx of observers found two errors
in this calculation. Professor Tyndall repeated the
same experiment, only with a precaution to ensure
absolute sterility suggested by the most recent
science — a discovery of his own. After every care,
he conceived there might still be undestroyed germs
in the air inside the flasks. If the air were abso-
lutely germless and pure, would the myriad-life

BIOGENESIS. 63

appear? He manipulated his experimental vessels
in an atmosphere which under the high test of
optical purity — the most delicate known test — was
absolutely germless. Here not a vestige of life ap-
peared. He varied the experiment in every direc-
tion, but matter in the germless air never yielded
life.

The other error was detected by Mr. Dallinger.
He found among the lower forms of life the most
surprising and indestructible vitality. Many animals
could survive much higher temperatures than Dr.
Bastian had applied to annihilate them. Some
germs almost refused to be annihilated — they were
all but fire-proof.

These experiments have practically closed the
question. A decided and authoritative conclusion
has now taken its place in science. So far as science
can settle anything, this question is settled. The
attempt to get the living out of the dead has failed.
Spontaneous Generation has had to be given up.
And it is now recognised on every hand that Life
can only come from the touch of Life. Huxley cat-
egorically announces that the doctrine of Biogenesis,
or life only from life, is " victorious along the whole
line at the present day."1 And even whilst confess-

1 * Critiques and Addresses." T. H. Huxley, F.R.S., p 239

/

64 BIOGENESIS.

ing that he wishes the evidence were the other way,
Tyndall is compelled to say, " I affirm that no shred
of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to
prove that life in our day has ever appeared indepen-
dently of antecedent life." l

For much more than two hundred years a similaf
discussion has dragged its length through the reli-
gious world. Two great schools here also have de-
fended exactly opposite views — one that the Spiritual
Life in man can only come from pre-existing Life,
the other that it can Spontaneously Generate itself.
Taking its stand upon the initial statement of the
Author of the Spiritual Life, one small school, in
the face of derision and opposition, has persistently
maintained the doctrine of Biogenesis. Another,
larger and with greater pretension to philosophic
form, has defended Spontaneous Generation. The
weakness of the former school consists — though this
has been much exaggerated — in its more or less
general adherence to the extreme view that religion
had nothing to do with the natural life ; the weakness
of the latter lay in yielding to the more fatal ex-
treme that it had nothing to do with anything else
That man, being a worshipping animal by nature,
ought to maintain certain relations to the Supreme

1 Nineteenth Century ', 1878, p. 507.

BIOGENESIS. 65

Being, was indeed to some extent conceded by the
naturalistic school, but religion itself was looked
upon as a thing to be spontaneously generated by
the evolution of character in the laboratory of com-
mon life.

The difference between the two positions is radical
Translating from the language of Science into that
of Religion, the theory of Spontaneous Generation
is simply that a man may become gradually better
and better until in course of the process he reaches
that quality of religious nature known as Spiritual
Life. This Life is not something added ab extra to
the natural man ; it is the normal and appropriate
development of the natural man. Biogenesis op-
poses to this the whole doctrine of Regeneration.
The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living Spirit. The
spiritual man is no mere development of the natural
man. H e is a New Creation born from Above. As
well expect a hay infusion to become gradually more
and more living until in course of the process it
reached Vitality, as expect a man by becoming better
and better to attain the Eternal Life.

The advocates of Biogenesis in Religion have
founded their argument hitherto all but exclusively
on Scripture. The relation of the doctrine to the
constitution and course of Nature was not disclosed.
Its importance, therefore, was solely as a dogma ;

F

66 BIOGENESIS.

and being directly concerned with the Supernatural,
it was valid for those alone who chose to accept the
Supernatural.

Yet it has been keenly felt by those who attempt
to defend this doctrine of the origin of the Spiritual
Life, that they have nothing more to oppose to the
rationalistic view than the ipse dixit of Revelation.
The argument from experience, in the nature of the
case, is seldom easy to apply, and Christianity has
always found at this point a genuine difficulty in
meeting the challenge of Natural Religions. The
direct authority of Nature, using Nature in its limi-
ted sense, was not here to be sought fo*. On such
a question its voice was necessarily silent ; and all
that the apologist could look for lower down was k
distant echo or analogy. All that is really possible,
indeed, is such an analogy ; and if that can now be
found in Biogenesis, Christianity in its most central
position secures at length a support and basis in the
Laws of Nature,

Up to the present time the analogy required has
not been forthcoming. There was no known parallel
in Nature for the spiritual phenomena in question.
But now the case is altered. With the elevation of
Biogenesis to the rank of a scientific fact, all pro-
blems concerning the Origin of Life are placed on
a different footing. And it remains to be seen

BIOGENESIS. 67

whether Religion cannot at once re-affirm and re-
shape its argument in the light of this modern
truth.

If the doctrine of the Spontaneous Generation of
Spiritual Life can be met on scientific grounds, it
will mean the removal of the most serious enemy
Christianity has to deal with, and especially within
its own borders, at the present day. The religion
of Jesus has probably always suffered more from
those who have misunderstood than from those who
have opposed it. Of the multitudes who confess
Christianity at this hour how many have clear in
their minds the cardinal distinction established by
its Founder between " born of the flesh " and " born
of the Spirit"? By how many teachers of Chris-
tianity even is not this fundamental postulate per-
sistently ignored ? A thousand modern pulpits every
seventh day are preaching the doctrine of Spon-
taneous Generation. The finest and best of recent
poetry is coloured with this same error. Spontaneous
Generation is the leading theology of the modern
religious or irreligious novel ; and much of the
most serious and cultured writing of the day devotes
itself to earnest preaching of this impossible gospel.
The current conception of the Christian religion in
short — the conception which is held not only popu-
larly but by men of culture — is founded upon a view

68 BIOGENESIS.

of its origin which, if it were true, would render the
whole scheme abortive.

Let us first place vividly in our imagination the
picture of the two great Kingdoms of Nature, the
inorganic and organic, as these now stand in the
light of the Law of Biogenesis. What essentially
is involved in saying that there is no Spontaneous
Generation of Life ? It is meant that the passage
from the mineral world to the plant or animal world
is hermetically sealed on the mineral side. This in-
organic world is staked off from the living world by
barriers which have never yet been crossed from
within. No change of substance, no modification of
environment, no chemistry, no electricity, nor any
form of energy, nor any evolution can endow any
single atom of the mineral world with the attribute
of Life. Only by the bending down into this
dead world of some living form can these dead
atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality, with-
out this preliminary contact with Life they remain
fixed in the inorganic sphere for ever. It is a very
mysterious Law which guards in this way the portals
of the living world. And if there is one thing in
Nature more worth pondering for its strangeness it
ib the spectacle of this vast helpless world of the
dead cut off from the living by the Law of Bio-
genesis and denied for ever the possibility of resur-

BIOGENESIS. 60

rection within itself. So very strange a thing, in-
deed, is this broad line in Nature, that Science has
long and urgently sought to obliterate it. Bio-
genesis stands in the way of some forms of Evolution
with such stern persistency that the assaults upon
this Law for number and thoroughness have been
unparalleled. But, as we have seen, it has stood the
test. Nature, to the modern eye, stands broken in
two. The physical Laws may explain the inorganic
world ; the biological Laws may account for the de-
velopment of the organic. But of the point where
they meet, of that strange borderland between the
dead and the living, Science is silent It is as if God
had placed everytning in earth and heaven in the
hands of Nature, but reserved a point at the genesis
of Life for His direct appearing.

The power of the analogy, for which we are laying
the foundations, to seize and impress the mind, v/ill
largely depend on the vividness with which one
realizes the gulf which Nature places between the
living and the dead.1 But those who, in contemplat-

1 This being the crucial point it may not be inappropriate to
wpplement the quotations already given in the text with thf
following : —

" We are in the presence of the one incommunicable gulf—
the gulf of all gulfs — that gulf which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm
is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has

70 BIOGENESIS.

Jng Nature, have found their attention arrested by
this extraordinary dividing-line severing the visible
universe eternally into two ; those who in watching
the progress of science have seen barrier after barrier
disappear — barrier between plant and plant, between
animal and animal, and even between animal and
plant — but this gulf yawn more hopelessly wide with
every advance of knowledge, will be prepared to
attach a significance to the Law of Biogenesis and
its analogies more profound perhaps than to any
other fact or law in Nature. If, as Pascal says,
Nature is an image of grace ; if the things that are
seen are in any sense the images of the unseen, there
must lie in this great gulf fixed, this most unique

ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into it-
the mighty gulf between death and life." — "As Regards Proto-
plasm." By J. Hutchinson Stirling, LL.D., p. 42.

11 The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link be-
tween the living and the not-living." — Huxley, " Encyclopaedia
Britannica" (new Ed.). Art. " Biology."

" Whoever recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the
attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for
the generatio aquivoca in the lower forms of transition from the
inorganic to the organic world, will feel it doubly serious to de-
mand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any
way accepted as the basis of all our views of life." — Virchow :
" The Freedom of Science in the Modern State."

"All really scientific experience tells us that life can be pro-
duced from a living antecedent only." — "The Unseen Universe/
6th Ed. p. 229.

BIOGENESIS. 71

and startling of all natural phenomena, a meaning
of peculiar moment

Where now in the Spiritual spheres shall we meet
a companion phenomenon to this ? What in the
Unseen shall be likened to this deep dividing-line,
or where in human experience is another barrier
which never can be crossed ?

There is such a barrier. In the dim but not
inadequate vision of the Spiritual World presented
in the Word of God, the first thing that strikes
the eye is a great gulf fixed. The passage from
the Natural World to the Spiritual World is hermeti-
cally sealed on the natural side. The door from
the inorganic to the organic is shut, no mineral
can open it ; so the door from the natural to the
spiritual is shut, and no man can open it. This
world of natural men is staked off from the Spiritual
WoHd by barriers which have never yet been crossed
from within. No organic change, no modification
of environment, no mental energy, no moral effort,
no evolution of character, no progress of civilization
can endow any single human soul with the attribute
of Spiritual Life. The Spiritual World is guarded
from the world next in order beneath it by a law
of Biogenesis — except a man be born again . . .
except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, hi
cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

72 BIOGENESIS.

It is not said, in this enunciation of the law, that
if the condition be not fulfilled the natural man
will not enter the Kingdom of God. The word is
-annot. For the exclusion of the spiritually inor-
ganic from the Kingdom of the spiritually organic
is not arbitrary. Nor is the natural man refused
admission on unexplained grounds. His admission
is a scientific impossibility. Except a mineral be
born " from above " — from the Kingdom just above
it — it cannot enter the Kingdom just above it
And except a man be born " from above," by the
same law, he cannot enter the Kingdom just above
him. There being no passage from one Kingdom to
another, whether from inorganic to organic, or from
organic to spiritual, the intervention of Life is a
scientific necessity if a stone or a plant or an animal
or a man is to pass from a lower to a higher sphere.
The plant stretches down to the dead world beneath
it, touches its minerals and gases with its mystery
of Life, and brings them up ennobled and trans-
formed to the living sphere. The breath of God,
blowing .where it listeth, touches with its mystery
of Life the dead souls of men, bears them across
the bridgeless gulf between the natural and the
spiritual, between the spiritually inorganic and the
spiritually organic, endows them with its own high
qualities, and develops within them these new and

BIOGENESIS.

73

secret faculties, by which those who are born again
are said to see the Kingdom of God.

What is the evidence for this great gulf fixed at
the portals of the Spiritual World ? Does Science
close this gate, or Reason, or Experience, or Reve-
lation ? We reply, all four. The initial statement,
it is not to be denied, reaches us from Revelation.
But is not this evidence here in court ? Or shall it
be said that any argument deduced from this is a
transparent circle — that after all we simply come
back to the unsubstantially of the ipse dixit t Not
altogether, for the analogy lends an altogether new
authority to the ipse dixit How substantial that
argument really is, is seldom realized. We yield
the point here much too easily. The right of the
Spiritual World to speak of its own phenomena
is as secure as the right of the Natural World to
speak of itself. What is Science but what the
Natural World has said to natural men ? What is
Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said
to Spiritual men ? Let us at least ask what Reve-
lation has announced with reference to this Spiritual
Law of Biogenesis ; afterwards we shall inquire
whether Science, while endorsing the verdict, may
not also have some further vindication of its title
to be heard.

The words of Scripture which preface this inquiry

74 BIOGENESIS.

contain an explicit and original statement of the
Law of Biogenesis for the Spiritual Life. " He
that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not
the Son of God hath not Life." Life, that is to say,
depends upon contact with Life. It cannot spring
up of itself. It cannot develop out of anything
that is not Life. There is no Spontaneous
Generation in religion any more than in Nature.
Christ is the source of Life in the Spiritual World ;
and he that hath the Son hath Life, and he that
hath not the Son, whatever else he may have, hath
not Life. Here, in short, is the categorical denial
of Abiogenesis and the establishment in this high
field of the classical formula Omne vivum ex vivo —
no Life without antecedent Life. In this mystical
theory of the Origin of Life the whole of the New
Testament writers are agreed. And, as we have
already seen, Christ Himself founds Christianity
upon Biogenesis stated in its most literal form.
" Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit
he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which
is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that
I said unto you, ye must be born again."1 Why
did He add Marvel not? Did He seek to allay

1 John iii

BIOGENESIS. 75

the fear in the bewildered ruler's mind that there
was more in this novel doctrine than a simple
analogy from the first to the second birth ?

The attitude of the natural man, again, with
reference to the Spiritual, is a subject on which the
New Testament is equally pronounced. Not only
in his relation to the spiritual man, but to the
whole Spiritual World, the natural man is regarded
as dead. He is as a crystal to an organism. The
natural world is to the Spiritual as the inorganic
to the organic. " To be carnally minded is Death." l
" Thou hast a name to live, but art Dead!' 2 " She
that liveth in pleasure is Dead while she liveth."3
" To you hath He given Life which were Dead in
trespasses and sins."4

It is clear that a remarkable harmony exists
here between the Organic World as arranged by
Science and the Spiritual World as arranged by
Scripture. We find one great Law guarding the
thresholds of both worlds, securing that entrance
from a lower sphere shall only take place by a
direct regenerating act, and that emanating from
the world next in order above. There are not two
laws of Biogenesis, one for the natural, the other
for the Spiritual ; one law is for both. Wherever

4 Rom. viii. 6. * Rev. iii. I. • I Tim. v. 6. 4 Eph. ii. 1,5,

76 BIOGENESIS.

there is Life, Life of any kind, this same law holds.
The analogy, therefore, is only among the phe-
nomena ; between laws there is no analogy— • there
is Continuity. In either case, the first step in
peopling these worlds with the appropriate living
forms is virtually miracle. Nor in one case is there
less of mystery in the act than in the other. The
second birth is scarcely less perplexing to the theo-
logian than the first to the embryologist.

A moment's reflection ought now to make it clear
why in the Spiritual World there had to be added
to this mystery the further mystery of its proclama-
tion through the medium of Revelation. This is the
point at which the scientific man is apt to part
company with the theologian. He insists on having
all things materialised before his eyes in Nature.
If Nature cannot discuss this with him, there is
nothing to discuss. But Nature can discuss this
with him — only she cannot open the discussion or
supply all the material to begin with. If Science
averred that she could do this, the- theologian this
time must part company with such Science. For
any Science which makes such a demand is false to
the doctrines of Biogenesis. What is this but the
demand that a lower world, hermetically sealed
against all communication with a world above it,
should have a mature and intelligent acquaintance

BIOGENESIS. 77

with its phenomena and laws ? Can the mineral
discourse to me of animal Life ? Can it tell me
what lies beyond the narrow boundary of its inert
being ? Knowing nothing of other than the chemical
and physical laws, what is its criticism worth of the
principles of Biology ? And even when some visitor
from the upper world, for example some root from
a living tree, penetrating its dark recess, honours
it with a touch, will it presume to define the form
and purpose of its patron, or until the bioplasm has
done its gracious work can it even know that it is
being touched ? The barrier which separates King-
doms from one another restricts mind not less than
matter. Any information of the Kingdoms above
it that could come to the mineral world could only
come by a communication from above. An analogy
from the lower world might make such communi-
cation intelligible as well as credible, but the infor-
mation in the first instance must be vouchsafed as
a revelation. Similarly if those in the Organic
Kingdom are to know anything of the Spiritual
World, that knowledge must at least begin as Reve-
lation. Men who reject this source of information,
by the Law of Biogenesis, can have no other. It
is no spell of ignorance arbitrarily laid upon certain
members of the Organic Kingdom that prevents
them reading the secrets of the Spiritual World

78 BIOGENESIS.

It is a scientific necessity. No exposition of the
case could be more truly scientific than this : " The
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God ; for they are foolishness unto him : neithet
can he know them, because they are spiritually dis-
cerned." l The verb here, it will be again observed,
is potential. This is not a dogma of theology,
but a necessity of Science. And Science, for the
most part, has consistently accepted the situation.
It has always proclaimed its ignorance of the
Spiritual World. When Mr. Herbert Spencer
affirms, " Regarding Science as a gradually increas-
ing sphere we may say that every addition to its
surface does but bring it into wider contact with
surrounding nescience,"2 from his standpoint he
is quite correct. The endeavours of well-meaning
persons to show that the Agnostic's position, when
he asserts his ignorance of the Spiritual World, is
only a pretence ; the attempts to prove that he
really knows a great deal about it if he would only
admit it, are quite misplaced. He really does not
know. The verdict that the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, that they are
foolishness unto him, that neither can he know them,
is final as a statement of scientific truth — a statement

1 i Cor. ii. 14.

1 * First Principles," 2nd Ed., p. 17.

BIOGENESIS. 79

on which the entire Agnostic literature is simply
one long commentary.

We are now in a better position to follow out the
more practical bearings of Biogenesis. There is an
immense region surrounding Regeneration, a dark
and perplexing region where men would be thank-
ful for any light It may well be that Biogenesis
in its many ramifications may yet reach down to
some of the deeper mysteries of the Spiritual Life.
But meantime there is much to define even on the
surface. And for the present we shall content
ourselves by turning its light upon one or * two
points of current interest.

It must long ago have appeared how decisive
is the answer of Science to the practical question
with which we set out as to the possibility of
a Spontaneous Development of Spiritual Life in
the individual soul. The inquiry into the Origin
of Life is the fundamental question alike of Biology
and Christianity. We can afford to enlarge upon
it, therefore, even at the risk of repetition. When
men are offering us a Christianity without a living
Spirit, and a personal religion without conversion, no
emphasis or reiteration can be extreme. Besides,
the clearness as well as the definiteness of the
Testimony of Nature to any Spiritual truth is of
immense importance. Regeneration has not merely

So BIOGENESIS.

been an outstanding difficulty, but an overwhelming
obscurity. Even to earnest minds the difficulty of
grasping the truth at all has always proved extreme
Philosophically one scarcely sees either the necessity
or the possibility of being born again. Why a vir-
tuous man should not simply grow better and better
until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of God
is what thousands honestly and seriously fail to
understand. Now Philosophy cannot help us here.
Her arguments are, if anything, against us. But
Science answers to the appeal at once. If it be
simply pointed out that this is the same absurdity
as to ask why a stone should not grow more and
more living till it enters the Organic World, the point
is clear in an instant.

What now, let us ask specifically, distinguishes
a Christian man from a non-Christian man ? Is it
that he has certain mental characteristics not pos-
sessed by the other ? Is it that certain faculties
have been trained in him, that morality assumes
special and higher manifestations, and character
a nobler lorm ? Is the Christian merely an ordinary
man who happens from birth to have been sur-
rounded with a peculiar set of ideas? Is his religion
merely th at peculiar quality of the moral life defined
by Mr. Matthew Arnold as "morality touched by
emotion " ? And does the possession of a high ideal,

BIOGENESIS. 8l

benevolent sympathies, a reverent -spirit, and a
favourable environment account for what men call
his Spiritual Life ?

The distinction between them is the same as that
between the Organic and the Inorganic, the living
and the dead. What is the difference between
a crystal and an organism, a stone and a plant ?
They have much in common. Both are made of the
same atoms. Both display the same properties
of matter. Both are subject to the Physical Laws.
Both may be very beautiful. But besides possessing
all that the crystal has, the plant possesses something
more — a mysterious something called Life. This
Life is not something which existed in the crystal
only in a less developed form. There is nothing
at all like it in the crystal, There is nothing like
the first beginning of it in the crystal, not a trace
or symptom of it. This plant is tenanted by some-
thing new, an original and unique possession added
over and above all the properties common to both.
When from vegetable Life we rise to animal Life,
here again we find something original and unique-
unique at least as compared with the mineral
From animal Life we ascend again to Spiritual Life.
And here also is something new, something still
more unique. He who lives the Spiritual Life has
a distinct kind of Life added to all the other phase.*?

G

82 BIOGENESIS.

of Life which he manifests — a kind of Life infinitely
more distinct than is the active Life of a plant
from the inertia of a stone. The Spiritual man is
more distinct in point of fact than is the plant from
the stone. This is the one possible comparison in
Nature, for it is the widest distinction in Nature ;
but compared with the difference between the
Natural and the Spiritual the gulf which divides
the organic from the inorganic is a hair's-breadth.
The natural man belongs essentially to this present
order of things. He is endowed simply with a high
quality of the natural animal Life. But it is Life
of so poor a quality that it is not Life at all. He
that hath not the Son hath not Life ; but he that
hath the Son hath Life — a new and distinct and
supernatural endowment. He is not of this world.
He* is of the timeless state, of Eternity. It doth not
yet appear what he shall be.

The difference then between the Spiritual man and
the Natural man is not a difference of development,
but of generation. It is a distinction of quality not
of quantity. A man cannot rise by any natural
development from " morality touched by emotion,"
to " morality touched by Life." Were we to con-
struct a scientific classification, Science would compel
us to arrange all natural men, moral or immoral,
educated or vulgar, as one family. One might be

BIOGENESIS. 83

high in the family group, another low ; yet, practi-
cally, they are marked by the same set of character-
istics— they eat, sleep, work, think, live, die. But
the Spiritual man is removed from this family so
utterly by the possession of an additional character-
istic that a biologist, fully informed of the whole
circumstances, would not hesitate a moment to
classify him elsewhere. And if he really entered
into these circumstances it would not be in another
family but in another Kingdom. It is an old-
fashioned theology which divides the world in this
way — which speaks of men as Living and Dead,
Lost and Saved:— a stern theology all but fallen into
disuse. This difference between the Living and the
Dead in souls is so unproved by casual observation,
so impalpable in itself, so startling as a doctrine,
that schools of culture have ridiculed or denied the
grim distinction. Nevertheless the grim distinction
must be retained. It is a scientific distinction. " He
that hath not the Son hath not Life."

Now it is this great Law which finally distinguishes
Christianity from all other religions. It places the
religion of Christ upon a footing altogether unique.
There is no analogy between the Christian religion
and, say, Buddhism or the Mohammedan religion.
There is no true sense in which a man can say, He
that hath Buddha hath Life. Buddha has nothing

84 BIOGENESIS.

to do with Life. He may have something to do
with morality. He may stimulate, impress, teach,
guide, but there is no distinct new thing added to
the souls of those who profess Buddhism. These
religions may be developments of the natural, mental,
or moral man. But Christianity professes to be
more. It is the mental or moral man plus something
else or some One else. It is the infusion into the
Spiritual man of a New Life, of a quality unlike
anything else in Nature. This constitutes the sepa-
rate Kingdom of Christ, and gives to Christianity
alone of all the religions of mankind the strange
mark of Divinity.

Shall we next inquire more precisely what is this
something extra which constitutes Spiritual Life?
What is this strange and new endowment in its
nature and vital essence ? And the answer is brief —
it is Christ. He that hath tJie Son hath Life.

Are we forsaking the lines of Science in saying
so? Yes and No. Science has drawn for us the
distinction. It has no voice as to the nature of the
distinction except this — that the new endowment is
a something different from anything else with which
it deals. It is not ordinary Vitality, it is not intel-
lectual, it is not moral, but something beyond. And
Revelation steps in and names what it is — it is Christ
Out of the multitude of sentences where this an-

BIOGENESIS. 85

nouncement is made, these few may be selected :
"Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ
is in you?"1 "Your bodies are the members of
Christ." 2 " At that day ye shall know that I am in
the F^'-her, and ye in Me, and I in you."3 "We
will come unto him and make our abode with him." 4
" I am the Vine, ye are the branches." 5 "I am
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me." 6

Three things are clear from these statements ;
First, They are not mere figures of rhetoric. They
are explicit declarations. If language means any-
thing these words announce a literal fact. In some
of Christ's own statements the literalism is if possible
still more impressive. For instance, " Except ye eat
the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye
have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh and
drinketh My blood hath eternal life ; and I will raise
him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat indeed,
and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My
flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in
him"

In the second place, Spiritual Life is not some-
thing outside ourselves. The idea is not that Christ
19 in heaven and that we can stretch out some

1 2 Cor. xii. 5. 2 1 Cor. vi. 15. * John xiv. 10.

4 John xiv. 21-23. • John xv. 4. • Gal. ii. 20.

86 BIOGENESIS.

mysteiious faculty and deal with Him there. This
is the vague form in which many conceive the truths
but it is contrary to Christ's teaching and to the
analogy of nature. Vegetable Life is not contained
in a reservoir somewhere in the skies, and measured
out spasmodically at certain seasons. The Life is in
every plant and tree, inside its own substance and
tissue, and continues there until it dies. This locali-
sation of Life in the individual is precisely the point
where Vitality differs from the other forces of nature,
such as magnetism and electricity. Vitality has
much in common with such forces as magnetism
and electricity, but there is one inviolable distinction
between them — that Life is permanently fixed and
rooted in the organism. The doctrines of conserva-
tion and transformation of energy, that is to say, do
not hold for Vitality. The electrician can demag-
netise a bar of iron, that is, he can transform its
energy of magnetism into something else—heat, or
motion, or light — and then re-form these back into
magnetism. For magnetism has no root, no indi-
viduality, no fixed indwelling. But the biologist
cannot devitalise a plant or an animal and revivify
it again.1 Life is not one of the homeless forces

1 One must not be misled by popular statements in this
connection, such as this of Professor Owen's : " There are
organisms which we can devitalise and revitalise — devive and

BIOGENESIS. 87

which promiscuously inhabit space, or which can be
gathered like electricity from the clouds and dissi-
pated back again into space. Life is definite and
resident ; and Spiritual Life is not a visit from a
force, but a resident tenant in the soul.

This is, however, to formulate the statement of the
third point, that spiritual Life is not an ordinary
form of energy or force. The analogy from Nature
endorses this, but here Nature stops. It cannot say
what • Spiritual Life is. Indeed what natural Life is
remains unknown, and the word Life still wanders
through Science without a definition. Nature is
silent, therefore, and must be as to Spiritual Life.
But in the absence of natural light we fall back upon
that complementary revelation which always shines
when truth is necessary and where Nature fails. We
ask with Paul when this Life first visited him on the
Damascus road, What is this ? * Who art Thou
Lord ? " And we hear, " I am Jesus." l

We must expect to find this denied. Besides a
proof from Revelation, this is an argument from
experience. And yet we shall still be told that this
Spiritual Life is a force. But let it be remembered

revive — many times." {Monthly Microscopical Journal, May,
1869, p. 294.) The reference is of course to the extraordinary
capacity for resits citation possessed by many of the Protozoa
and other low forms of life.
1 Acts ix. 5.

8S BIOGENESIS.

what this means in Science, it means the heresy of
confounding Force with Vitality. We must also
expect to be told that this Spiritual Life is simply a
development of ordinary Life — just as Dr. Bastian
tells us that natural Life is formed according to the
same laws which determine the more simple chemical
combinations. But remember what this means in
Science. It is the heresy of Spontaneous Generation,
a heresy so thoroughly discredited now that scarcely
an authority in Europe will lend his name tc it
Who art Thou, Lord ? Unless we are to be allowed
to hold Spontaneous Generation there is no alterna-
tive : Life can only come from Life : " I am Jesus."

A hundred other questions now rush into the mind
about this Life : How does it come ? Why does it
come ? How is it manifested ? What faculty does
it employ ? Where does it reside ? Is it communi-
cable ? What are its conditions ? One or two of
these questions may be vaguely answered, the rest
bring us face to face with mystery. Let it not be
thought that the scientific treatment of a Spiritual
subject has reduced religion to a problem of physics,
or demonstrated God by the laws of biology. A
religion without mystery is an absurdity. Even
Science has its mysteries, none more inscrutable than
around this Science of Life. It taught us sooner of
later to expect mystery, and now we enter its domain

BIOGENESIS. 89

Let it be carefully marked, however, that the cloud
does not fall and cover us till we have ascertained
the most momentous truth of Religion — that Christ
is in the Christian.

Not that there is anything new in this. The
Churches have always held that Christ was the
source of Life. No spiritual man ever claims that his
spirituality is his own. " I live," he will tell you ;
" nevertheless it is not I, but Christ liveth in me."
Christ our Life has indeed been the only doctrine in
the Christian Church from Paul to Augustine, from
Calvin to Newman. Yet, when the Spiritual man
is cross-examined upon this confession it is astonish-
ing to find what uncertain hold it has upon his mind.
Doctrinally he states it adequately and holds it
unhesitatingly. But when pressed with the literal
question he shrinks from the answer. We do not
really believe that the Living Christ has touched us,
that He makes His abode in us. Spiritual Life is
not as real to us as natural Life. And we cover our
retreat into unbelieving vagueness with a plea of
reverence, justified, as we think, by the "Thus far
and no farther " of ancient Scriptures. There is
often a great deal of intellectual sin concealed under
this old aphorism. When men do not really wish to
go farther they find it an honourable convenience
sometimes to sit down on the outermost edge of the

90 BIOGENESIS.

Holy Ground on the pretext of taking off their shoes.
Yet we must be certain that, making a virtue of
reverence, we are not merely excusing ignorance ;
or, under the plea of mystery, evading a truth which
has been stated in the New Testament a hundred
times, in the most literal form, and with all but
monotonous repetition. The greatest truths are
always the most loosely held. And not the least of
the advantages of taking up this question from the
present standpoint is that we may see how a con-
fused doctrine can really bear the luminous definition
of Science and force itself upon us with all the
weight of Natural Law.

What is mystery to many men, what feeds their
worship, and at the same time spoils it, is that area
round all great truth which is really capable of illu-
mination, and into which every earnest mind is
permitted and commanded to go with a light We
cry mystery long before the region of mystery comes.
True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a
sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of
knowledge ; its form is irregular, but its lips are
clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to the very
verge and look down the precipice into the dim
abyss, —

" Where writhing clouds unroll,
Striving to utter themselves in shapes.*

BIOGENESIS. gi

We have gone with a light to the very verge of this
truth. We have seen that the Spiritual Life is
an endowment from the Spiritual World, and that
the Living Spirit of Christ dwells in the Christian,
But now the gulf yawns black before us. What
more does Science know of Life ? Nothing. It
knows nothing further about its origin in detail.
It knows nothing about its ultimate nature. It
cannot even define it There is a helplessness in
scientific books here, and a continual confession of
it which to thoughtful minds is almost touching.
Science, therefore, has not eliminated the true mys-
teries from our faith, but only the false. And it has
done more. It has made true mystery scientific.
Religion in having mystery is in analogy with all
around it. Where there is exceptional mystery in
the Spiritual world It will generally be found that
there is a corresponding mystery in the natural
world. And, as Origen centuries ago insisted, the
difficulties of Religion are simply the difficulties of
Nature.

One question more we may look at for a moment
What can be gathered on the surface as to the
process of Regeneration in the individual soul ?
From the analogies of Biology we should expect
three things : First, that the New Life should dawn
suddenly ; Second, that it should come " without ob«

92 BIOGENESIS.

servation " ; Third, that it should develop gradually.
On two of these points there can be little controversy,
The gradualness of growth is a characteristic which
strikes the simplest observer, Long before the word
Evolution was coined Christ applied it in this very
connection — " First the blade, then the ear, then the
full corn in the ear." It is well known also to those
who study the parables of Nature that there is an
ascending scale of slowness as we rise in the scale
of Life. Growth is most gradual in the highest
forms. Man attains his maturity after a score of
years ; the monad completes its humble cycle in a
day. What wonder if development be tardy in the
Creature of Eternity ? A Christian's sun has some-
times set, and a critical world has seen as yet no corn
in the ear. As yet ? " As yet," in this long Life,
has not begun. Grant him the years proportionate
to his place in the scale of Life. "The time of
harvest is not yet. "

Again, in addition to being slow, the phenomena
of growth are secret. Life is invisible. When the
New Life manifests itself it is a surprise. Thou canst
not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. When
the plant lives whence has the Life come ? When
it dies whither has it gone ? Thou canst not tell

. . so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Fot
the kingdom of God cometh without observation.

BIOGENESIS. 93

Yet once more, — and this is a point of strange and
frivolous dispute, — this Life comes suddenly. This is
the only way in which Life can come. Life cannot
come gradually — health can, structure can, but not
Life, A new theology has laughed at the Doctrine
of Conversion. Sudden Conversion especially has
been ridiculed as untrue to philosophy and impossible
to human nature. We may not be concerned in
buttressing any theology because it is old. But we
find that this old theology is scientific. There may
be cases — they are probably in the majority — where
the moment of contact with the Living Spirit though
sudden has been obscure. But the real moment
and the conscious moment are two different things.
Science pronounces nothing as to the conscious
moment. If it did it would probably say that
that was seldom the real moment — just as in the
natural Life the conscious moment is not the real
moment. The moment of birth in the natural world
is not a conscious moment — we do not know we are
born till long afterward. Yet there are men to whom
the Origin of the New Life in time has been no
difficulty. To Paul, for instance, Christ seems to
have come at a definite period of time, the exact
moment and second of which could have been
known. And this is certainly, in theory at least, the
normal Origin of Life, according to the principles

94 BIOGENESIS.

of Biology. The line between the living and the
dead is a sharp line. When the dead atoms of
Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, are seized
upon by Life, the organism at first is very lowly.
It possesses few functions. It has little beauty.
Growth is the work of time. But Life is not. That
comes in a moment. At one moment it was dead ;
the next it lived. This is conversion, the "passing,"
as the Bible calls it, " from Death unto Life." Those
who have stood by another's side at the solemn hour
of this dread possession have been conscious some-
times of an experience which words are not allowed
to utter — a something like the sudden snapping of a
chain, the waking from a dream.

DEGENERATION,

" / went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard
of the man void of understanding ; and to, it was all grown
over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof,
and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw
and considered it well ; I looked upon it and received
instruction." — Solomon.

DEGENERATION.

" How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? " — ■
Hebrews.

11 We have as possibilities either Balance, or Elaboration,
or Degeneration." — E. Ray Lankesier.

In <*.te of his best known books, Mr. Darwin brings
out % fact which may be illustrated in some such
way is this: Suppose a bird fancier collects a flock
of time pigeons distinguished by all the infinite
ornamentations of their race. They are of all kinds,
of every shade of colour, and adorned with every
variety of marking. He takes them to an unin-
habited island and allows them to fly off wild into
the woods. They found a colony there, and after
the lapse of many years the owner returns to the
spot. He will find that a remarkable change has
taken place in the interval. The birds, or their
descendants rather, have all become changed into
the same colour. The black, the white and the
dun, the striped, the spotted, and the ringed, are all
metamorphosed into one — a dark slaty blue. Two

H

98 DEGENERATION.

plain black bands monotonously repeat themselves
upon the wings of each, and the loins beneath are
white ; but all the variety, all the beautiful colours*
all the old graces of form it may be, have disap-
peared. These improvements were the result of care
and nurture, of domestication, of civilization ; and
now that these influences are removed, the birds
themselves undo the past and lose what they had
gained, The attempt to elevate the race has been
mysteriously thwarted. It is as if the original bird,
the far remote ancestor of all doves, had been blue,
and these had been compelled by some strange law
to discard the badges of their civilization and con-
form to the ruder image of the first. The natural
law by which such a change occurs is called The
Principle of Reversion to Type,

It is a proof of the universality of this law that
the same thing will happen with a plant. A garden
is planted, let us say, with strawberries and roses,
and for a number of years is left alone. In process
of time it will run to waste. But this does not mean
that the plants will really waste away, but that they
will change into something else, and, as it invariably
appears, into something worse ; in the one case,
namely, into the small, wild strawberry of the woods,
and in the other into the primitive dog-rose of the
hedges.

DEGENERATION. 99

If we neglect a garden plant, then, a natural
principle of deterioration comes in, and changes it
into a worse plant And if we neglect a bird, by
the same imperious law it will be gradually changed
into an uglier bird. Or if we neglect almost any
of the domestic animals, they will rapidly revert
to wild and worthless forms again.

Now the same thing exactly would happen in the
case of you or me. Why should Man be an excep-
tion to any of the laws of Nature ? Nature knows
him simply as an animal — Sub-kingdom Vertebrata,
Class Mammalia, Order Bimana. And the law ol
Reversion to Type runs through all creation. If a
man neglect himself for a few years he will change
into a worse man and a lower man. If it is his
body that he neglects, he will deteriorate into a wild
and bestial savage-— like the de-humanized men who
are discovered sometimes upon desert islands. If
it is his mind, it will degenerate into imbecility and
madness — solitary confinement has the power to
unmake men's minds and leave them idiots. If he
neglect his conscience, it will run off into lawlessness
and vice. Or, lastly, if it is his soul, it must in-
evitably atrophy, drop off in ruin and decay.

We have here, then, a thoroughly natural basis for
the question before us. If we neglect, with this
universal principle staring us in the face, how shall

LcfC.

roo DEGENERATION.

we escape? If we neglect the ordinary means of
keeping a garden in order, how shall it escape run-
ning to weeds and waste? Or, if we neglect the
opportunities for cultivating the mind, how shall it
escape ignorance and feebleness ? So, if we neglect
the soul, how shall it escape the natural retrograde
movement, the inevitable relapse into barrenness
and death ?

It is not necessary, surely, to pause for proof that
there is such a retrograde principle in the being oi
every man. It is demonstrated by facts, and by
the analogy of all Nature. Three possibilities of life,
according to Science, are open to all living organisms
— Balance, Evolution, and Degeneration. The first
denotes the precarious persistence of a life along
what looks like a level path, a character which seems
to hold its own alike against the attacks of evil and
the appeals of good. It implies a set of circumstances
so balanced by choice or fortune that they neithei
influence for better nor for worse. But except in
theory this state of equilibrium, normal in the in-
organic kingdom, is really foreign to the world of
life ; and what seems inertia may be a true Evolution
unnoticed from its slowness, or likelier still a move-
ment of Degeneration subtly obliterating as it falls
the very traces of its former height. From this state
of apparent Balance, Evolution is the escape in the

DEGENERATION. 101

upward direction, Degeneration in the lower. But
Degeneration, rather than Balance or Elaboration, is
the possibility of life embraced by the majority of
mankind. And the choice is determined by man's own
nature. The life of Balance is difficult. It lies on the
verge of continual temptation, its perpetual adjust-
ments become fatiguing, its measured virtue is mono-
tonous and uninspiring. More difficult still, appar-
ently, is the life of ever upward growth. Most men
attempt it for a time, but growth is slow ; and despair
overtakes them while the goal is far away. Yet
none of these reasons fully explains the fact that the
alternative which remains is adopted by the majority
of men. That Degeneration is easy only half
accounts for it. Why is it easy ? Why but that
already in each man's very nature this principle is
supreme ? He feels within his soul a silent drifting
motion impelling him downward with irresistible
force. Instead of aspiring to Conversion to a higher
Type he submits by a law of his nature to Reversion
to a lower. This is Degeneration — that principle by
which the organism, failing to develop itself, failing
even to keep what it has got, deteriorates, and
becomes more and more adapted to a degraded form
of life.

All men who know themselves are conscious that
this tendency, deep-rooted and active, exists within

io2 DEGENERATION.

their nature. Theologically it is described as a
gravitation, a bias toward evil. The Bible view is
that man is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity.
And experience tells him that he will shape himself
into further sin and ever deepening iniquity without
the smallest effort, without in the least intending it,
and in the most natural way in the world if he
simply let his life run. It is on this principle that,
completing the conception, the wicked are said
further in the Bible to be lost. They are not really
lost as yet, but they are on the sure way to it. The
bias of their lives is in full action. There is no drag
on anywhere. The natural tendencies are having
it all their own way ; and although the victims may
be quite unconscious that all this is going on, it is
patent to every one who considers even the natural
bearings of the case that "the end of these things
is Death." When we see a man fall from the top
of a five-storey house, we say the man is lost. We
say that before he has fallen a foot; for the same
principle that made him fall the one foot will un-
doubtedly make him complete the descent by falling
other eighty or ninety feet. So that he is a dead
man, or a lost man from the very first. The gravi-
tation of sin in a human soul acts precisely in the
same way. Gradually, with gathering momentum
it sinks a man further and further from God and

DEGENERATION. 103

righteousness, and lands him, by the sheer action ol
a natural law, in the hell of a neglected life.

But the lesson is not less clear from analogy
Apart even from the law of Degeneration, apart
from Reversion to Type, there is in every living
organism a law of Death. We are wont to imagine
that Nature is full of Life. In reality it is full of
Death. One cannot say it is natural for a plant to
live. Examine its nature fully, and you have to
admit that its natural tendency is to die. It is
kept from dying by a mere temporary endowment,
which gives it an ephemeral dominion over the
elements — gives it power to utilize for a brief span
the rain, the sunshine, and the air. Withdraw this
temporary endowment for a moment and its true
nature is revealed. Instead of overcoming Nature it
is overcome. The very things which appeared to
minister to its growth and beauty now turn against
it and make it decay and die. The sun which
warmed it, withers it; the air and rain which
nourished it, rot it. It is the very forces which
we associate with life which, when their true nature
appears, are discovered to be really the ministers
of death.

This law, which is true for the whole plant-world,
is also valid for the animal and for man. Air is
not life, but corruption — so literally corruption that

io4 DEGENERATION.

the only way to keep out corruption, when life has
ebbed, is to keep out air. Life is merely a tempo-
rary suspension of these destructive powers ; and
this is truly one of the most accurate definitions
of life we have yet received — " the sum total of the
functions which resist death/'

Spiritual life, in like manner, is the sum total of
the functions which resist sin. The soul's atmosphere
is the daily trial, circumstance, and temptation of
the world. And as it is life alone which gives the
plant power to utilize the elements, and as, without
it, they utilize it, so it is the spiritual life alone
which gives the soul power to utilize temptation and
trial ; and without it they destroy the soul. How
shall we escape if we refuse to exercise these func-
tions— in other words, if we neglect ?

This destroying process, observe, goes on quite
independently of God's judgment on sin. God's
judgment on sin is another and a more awful fact
of which this may be a part But it is a distinct
fact by itself, which we can hold and examine
separately, that on purely natural principles the
soul that is left to itself unwatched, uncultivated,
unredeemed, must fall away into death by its own
nature. The soul that sinneth "it shall die." It
shall die, no'; necessarily because God passes sen-
tence of death upon it, but because it cannot help

DEGENERA T10N.

io5

dying. It has neglected " the functions which resist
death," and has always been dying. The punish-
ment is in its very nature, and the sentence is being
gradually carried out all along the path of life by
ordinary processes which enforce the verdict with
the appalling faithfulness of law.

There is an affectation that religious truths lie
beyond the sphere of the comprehension which
serves men in ordinary things. This question at
least must be an exception. It lies as near the
natural as the spiritual. If it makes no impression
on a man to know that God will visit his iniquities
upon him, he cannot blind himself to the fact that
Nature will. Do we not all know what it is to be
punished by Nature for disobeying her ? We have
looked round the wards of a hospital, a prison, or
a madhouse, and seen there Nature at work squaring
her accounts with sin. And we knew as we looked
that if no Judge sat on the throne of heaven at
all there was a Judgment there, where an inexorable
Nature was crying aloud for justice, and carrying
out her heavy sentences for violated laws.

When God gave Nature the law into her own
hands in this way, He seems to have given her
two rules upon which her sentences were to be based.
The one is formally enunciated in this sentence,
"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he

io6 DEGENERA TION.

ALSO REAP." The other is informally expressed in
this, "If we neglect how shall we escape ?n

The first is the positive law, and deals with sins
of commission. The other, which we are now dis-
cussing, is the negative, and deals with sins of
omission. It does not say anything about sowing,
but about not sowing. It takes up the case of souls
which are lying fallow. It does not say, if we sow
corruption we shall reap corruption. Perhaps we
would not be so unwise, so regardless of ourselves,
of public opinion, as to sow corruption. It does
not say, if we sow tares we shall reap tares. We
might never do anything so foolish as sow tares.
But if we sow nothing, it says, we shall reap nothing.
If we put nothing into the field, we shall take nothing
out. If we neglect to cultivate in summer, how
shall we escape starving in winter ?

Now the Bible raises this question, but does not
answer it — because it is too obvious to need answer-
ing. How shall we escape if we neglect ? The
answer is, we cannot. In the nature of things we
cannot. We cannot escape any more than a man
can escape drowning who falls into the sea and
has neglected to learn to swim. In the nature of
things he cannot escape — nor can he escape who has
neglected the great salvation.

Now why should such fatal consequences follow

DEGENERATION. 107

a simple process like neglect ? The popular im-
pression is that a man, to be what is called lost, must
be an open and notorious sinner, He must be one
who has abandoned all that is good and pure in life,
and sown to the flesh with all his might and main.
But this principle goes further. It says simply,
0 If we neglect." Any one may see the reason
why a notoriously wicked person should not escape ;
but why should not all the rest of us escape ? What
is to hinder people who are not notoriously wicked
escaping— people who never sowed anything in par-
ticular? Why is it such a sin to sow nothing in
particular ?

There must be some hidden and vital relation
between these three words, Salvation, Neglect, and
Escape — some reasonable, essential, and indissoluble
connection. Why are these words so linked together
as to weight this clause with all the authority and
solemnity of a sentence of death ?

The explanation has partly been given already
It lies still further, however, in the meaning of the
word Salvation. And this, of course, is not at all
Salvation in the ordinary sense of forgiveness of sin.
This is one great meaning of Salvation, the first and
the greatest. But this is spoken to people who are
supposed to have had this. It is the broader word,
therefore, and includes not only forgiveness of sin

io8 DEGENERATION.

but salvation or deliverance from the downward bias
of the soul. It takes in that whole process of rescue
from the power of sin and selfishness that should
be going on from day to day in every human life.
We have seen that there is a natural principle in
man lowering him, deadening him, pulling him down
by inches to the mere animal plane, blinding reason,
searing conscience, paralysing will. This is the
active destroying principle, or Sin. Now to counter-
act this, God has discovered to us another principle
which will stop this drifting process in the soul,
steer it round, and make it drift the other way.
This is the active saving principle, or Salvation. If
a man find the first of these powers furiously at
work within him, dragging his whole life downward
to destruction, there is only one way to escape his
fate — to take resolute hold of the upward power,
and be borne by it to the opposite goal. And as
this second power is the only one in the universe
which has the slightest real effect upon the first,
how shall a man escape if he neglect it ? To neglect
it is to cut off the only possible chance of escape.
In declining this he is simply abandoning himself
with his eyes open to that other and terrible energy
which is already there, and which, in the natural
course of things, is bearing him every moment
furthei and further from escape.

DEGENERA T/ON.

log

From the very nature of Salvation, therefore, it is
plain that the only thing necessary to make it of no
eftect is neglect. Hence the Bible could not fail to
lay strong emphasis on a word so vital. It was not
necessary for it to say, how shall we escape if we
trample upon the great salvation, or doubt, or de-
spise, or reject it A man who has been poisoned
only need neglect the antidote and he will die. It
makes no difference whether he dashes it on the
ground, or pours it out of the window, or sets it down
by his bedside, and stares at it all the time he is
dying. He will die just the same, whether he de-
stroys it in a passion, or coolly refuses to have any-
thing to do with it. And as a matter of fact probably
most deaths, spiritually, are gradual dissolutions of
the last class rather than rash suicides of the first.

This, then, is the effect of neglecting salvation
from the side of salvation itself; and the conclusion
is that from the very nature of salvation escape is out
of the question. Salvation is a definite process. If
a man refuse to submit himself to that process,
clearly he cannot have the benefits of it As many
as received Him to them gave He power to become the
sons of God. He does not avail himself of this
power. It may be mere carelessness or apathy.
Nevertheless the neglect is fatal He cannot escape
because he will not

I IO DE GENERA TION.

Turn now to another aspect of the case — to the
effect upor the soul itself. Neglect does more for
the soul than make it miss salvation. It despoils
it of its capacity for salvation. Degeneration in
the spiritual sphere involves primarily the impairing
of the faculties of salvation and ultimately the loss
of them. It really means that the very soul itself
becomes piecemeal destroyed until the very capacity
for God and righteousness is gone.

The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity for
God. It is like a curious chamber added on to being,
and somehow involving being, a chamber with elastic
and contractile walls, which can be expanded, with
God as its guest, illimitably, but which without God
shrinks and shrivels until every vestige of the Divine
is gone, and God's image is left without God's Spirit.
One cannot call what is left a soul ; it is a shrunken,
useless organ, a capacity sentenced to death by dis-
use, which droops as a withered hand by the side,
and cumbers nature like a rotted branch. Nature
has her revenge upon neglect as well as upon extra-
vagance. Misuse, with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse.

There are certain burrowing animals — the mole for
instance — which have taken to spending their lives
beneath the surface of the ground. And Nature has
taken her revenge upon them in a thoroughly natural
way — she has closed up their eyes. If they mean to

DEGENERATION-. in

live in darkness, she argues, eyes are obviously a
superfluous function. By neglecting them these
animals made it clear they do not want them.
And as one of Nature's fixed principles is that
nothing shall exist in vain, the eyes are presently
taken away, or reduced to a rudimentary state.
There are fishes also which have had to pay the
same terrible forfeit for having made their abode in
dark caverns where eyes can never be required. And
in exactly the same way the spiritual eye must die
and lose its power by purely natural law if the soul
choose to walk in darkness rather than in light.

This is the meaning of the favourite paradox of
Christ, " From him that hath not shall be taken
away even that which he hath ; " " take therefore the
talent from him." The religious faculty is a talent,
the most splendid and sacred talent we possess. Yet
it is subject to the natural conditions and laws. II
any man take his talent and hide it in a napkin,
although it is doing him neither harm nor good
apparently, God will not allow him to have it. Al-
though it is lying there rolled up in the darkness, not
conspicuously affecting any one, still God will not
allow him to keep it. He will not allow him to keep
it any more than Nature would allow the fish to
keep their eyes. Therefore, He says, "take the
talent from him." And Nature does it

112 DEGENERATION,

This man's crime was simply neglect — "thou
wicked and slothful servant." It was a wasted life —
a life which failed in the holy stewardship of itself.
Such a life is a peril to all who cross its path. De-
generation compasses Degeneration. It is only a
character which is itself developing that can aid the
Evolution of the world and so fulfil the end of life
For this high usury each of our lives, however small
may seem our capital, was given us by God. And it
is just the men whose capital seems small who need
to choose the best investments. It is significant that
it was the man who had only one talent who was
guilty of neglecting it. Men with ten talents, men of
large gifts and burning energies, either direct their
powers nobly and usefully, or misdirect them irre-
trievably. It is those who belong to the rank and
file of life who need this warning most. Others have
an abundant store and sow to the spirit or the flesh
with a lavish hand. But we, with our small gift,
what boots our sowing ? Our temptation as ordinary
men is to neglect to sow at all. The interest on our
talent would be so small that we excuse ourselves
with the reflection that it is not worth while.

It is no objection to all this to say that we arc
unconscious of this neglect or misdirection of our
powers. That is the darkest feature in the case. If
there were uneasiness there might be hope. If there

DEGENERATION. 113

were, somewhere about our soul, a something which
was not gone to sleep like all the rest ; if there were
a contending force anywhere ; if we would let even
that work instead of neglecting it, it would gain
strength from hour to hour, and waken up one at a
time each torpid and dishonoured faculty till our
whole nature became alive with strivings against self,
and every avenue was open wide for God. But the
apathy, the numbness of the soul, what can be said of
such a symptom but that it means the creeping on
of death ? There are accidents in which the victims
feel no pain. They are well and strong they think.
But they are dying. And if you ask the surgeon by
their side what makes him give this verdict, he will
say it is this numbness over the frame which tells hoM
some of the parts have lost already the very capacity
for life.

Nor is it the least tragic accompaniment of this
process that its effects may even be concealed from
others. The soul undergoing Degeneration, surely
by some arrangement with Temptation planned in
the uttermost hell, possesses the power of absolute
secrecy. When all within is festering decay and
rottenness, a Judas, without afiomaly, may kiss his
Lord. This invisible consumption, like its fell ana-
logue in the natural world, may even keep its victim
beautiful while slowly slaying it When one ex-

1

1 14 DEGENERA TION.

amines the little Crustacea which have inhabited for
centuries the lakes of the Mammoth Cave of Ken-
tucky, one is at first astonished to find these animals
apparently endowed with perfect eyes. The pallor
of the head is broken by two black pigment specks,
conspicuous indeed as the only bits of colour on the
whole blanched body ; and these, even to the casual
observer, certainly represent well-defined organs of
vision. But what do they with eyes in these Sty-
gian waters? There reigns an everlasting night
Is the law for once at fault ? A swift incision with
the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is
betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally
they are organs of vision — the front of the eye is
perfect ; behind, there is nothing but a mass of ruins.
The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insen-
sate thread. These animals have organs of vision,
and yet they have no vision. They have eyes, but
they see not.

Exactly what Christ said of men : They had eyes,
but no vision. And the reason is the same. It is
the simplest problem of natural history. The Crus-
tacea of the Mammoth Cave have chosen to abide in
darkness. Therefore they have become fitted for it
By refusing to see they have waived the right to see.
And Nature has grimly humoured them. Nature had
to do it by her very constitution. It is hei defence

DEGENERATION. 115

against waste that decay of faculty should imme-
diately follow disuse of function. He that hath ears
to hear, he whose ears have not degenerated, let him
hear.

Men tell us sometimes there is no such thing as
an atheist. There must be. There are some men to
whom it is true that there is no God. They cannot
see God because they have no eye. They have only
an abortive organ, atrophied by neglect.

All this, it is commonplace again to insist, is not
the effect of neglect when we die, but while we live.
The process is in full career and operation now. It
is useless projecting consequences into the future
when the effects may be measured now. We are
always practising these little deceptions upon our-
selves, postponing the consequences of our misdeeds
as if they were to culminate some other day about
the time of death. It makes us sin with a lighter
hand to run an account with retribution, as it were,
and delay the reckoning time with God. But every
day is a reckoning day. Every soul is a Book of
Judgment, and Nature, as a recording angel, marks
there every sin. As all will be judged by the great
Judge some day, all are judged by Nature now. The
sin of yesterday, as part of its penalty, has the sin of
to-day. All follow us in silent retribution on our
past, and go with us to the grave. We cannot cheat

1 16 DEGENERA TION.

Nature. No sleight-of-heart can rob religion of a

present, the immortal nature of a now. The poet

sings —

u I looked behind to find my past,
And lo, it had gone before. "

But no, not all. The unforgiven sins are not away in
keeping somewhere to be let loose upon us when we
die ; they are here, within us, now. To-day brings
the resurrection of their past, to-morrow of to-day.
And the powers of sin, to the exact strength that we
have developed them, nearing their dreadful culmina-
tion with every breath we draw, are here, within us,
now. The souls of some men are already honey-
combed through and through with the eternal con-
sequences of neglect, so that taking the natural and
rational view of their case just now, it is simply
inconceivable that there is any escape just now.
What a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of
the living God ! A fearful thing even if, as the
philosopher tells us, " the hands of the Living God
are the Laws of Nature."

Whatever hopes of a " heaven " a neglected soul
may have, can be shown to be an ignorant and
delusive dream. How is the soul to escape to
heaven if it has neglected for a lifetime the means
of escape from the world and self? And where is
the capacity for heaven to come firm if it be not

DE GEN ERA TION. 1 17

developed on earth ? Where, indeed, is even the
smallest spiritual appreciation of God and heaven to
come from when so little of spirituality has ever been
known or manifested here ? If every Godward
aspiration of the soul has been allowed to become
extinct, and every inlet that was open to heaven to
be choked, and every talent for religious love and
trust to have been persistently neglected and ignored,
where are the faculties to come from that would even
find the faintest relish in such things as God and
heaven give ?

These three words, Salvation, Escape, and Neglect,,
then, are not casually, but organically and necessarily
connected. Their doctrine is scientific, not arbitrary.
Escape means nothing more than the gradual emer-
gence of the higher being from the lower, and
nothing less. It means the gradual putting off of
all that cannot enter the higher state, or heaven, and
simultaneously the putting on of Christ. It involves
the slow completing of the soul and the development
of the capacity for God.

Should any one object that from this scientific
standpoint the opposite of salvation is annihilation,
the answer is at hand. From this standpoint there
is no such word.

If, then, escape is to be open to us, it is not to
come to us somehow, vaguely. We are not to hope

n8 DEGENERATION.

for anything startling or mysterious. It is a definite
opening along certain lines which are definitely
marked by God, which begin at the Cross of Christ,
and lead direct to Him Each man in the silence of
his own soul must work out this salvation for himself
with fear and trembling — with fear, realizing the
momentous issues of his task ; with trembling, lest
before the tardy work be done the voice of Death
should summon him to stop.

What these lines are may, in closing, be indicated
in a word.- The true problem of the spiritual life
may be said to be, do the opposite of Neglect.
Whatever this is, do it, and you shall escape. It will
just mean that you are so to cultivate the soul that
all its powers will open out to God, and in beholding
God be drawn away from sin. The idea really is to
develop among the ruins of the old a new " creature "
— a new creature which, while the old is suffering
Degeneration from Neglect, is gradually to unfold, to
escape away and develop on spiritual lines to spiri-
tual beauty and strength. And as our conception of
spiritual being must be taken simply from natural
being, our ideas of the lines along which the new
religious nature is to run must be borrowed from the
known lines of the old.

There is, for example, a Sense of Sight in the
religious nature. Neglect this, leave it undeveloped,

DEGENERA TION. I 19

and yo : never miss it. You simply see nothing
But develop it and you see God. And the line
along which to develop it is known to us. Become
pure in heart. The pure in heart shall see God.
Here, then, is one opening for soul-culture — the
avenue through purity of heart to the spiritual seeing
of God.

Then there is a Sense of Sound. Neglect this,
leave it undeveloped, and you never miss it You
simply hear nothing. Develop it, and you hear God.
And the line along which to develop it is known to
us. Obey Christ. Become one of Christ's flock.
"The sheep hear His voice, and He calleth them by
name." Here, then, is another opportunity for the
culture of the soul — a gateway through the Shep-
herd's fold to hear the Shepherd's voice.

And there is a Sense of Touch to be acquired —
such a sense as the woman had who touched the
hem of Christ's garment, that wonderful electric
touch called faith, which moves the very heart of
God.

And there is a Sense of Taste — a spiritual hunger
after God ; a something within which tastes and sees
that He is good. And there is the Talent for Inspira-
tion Neglect that, and all the scenery of the spiri-
tual world is flat and frozen. But cultivate it, and
it penetrates the whole soul with sacred fire, and

120 DEGENERATION.

illuminates creation with God. And last of all there
is the great capacity for Love, even for the love of
God — the expanding capacity for feeling more and
more its height and depth, its length and breadth.
Till that is felt no man can really understand that
word, "so great salvation," for what is its measure
but that other " so " of Christ — God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son ? Verily,
how shall we escape if we neglect that ? x

1 For the scientific basis of this spiritual law the following
works may be consulted . —

"The Origin of Species/' By Charles Darwin, F.R.S.
London : John Murray. 1872.

" Degeneration." By E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S. London :
Macn Ulan. 1880.

" Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Princip des Func-
tions -Wtchsels." Dr. A. Dorhn. Leipzig: 1875.

" Lessons from Nature." By St. George Mivart, F.R.S.
London : John Murray. 1876.

w The Natural Conditions of Existence as they Affect Animal
Life.* Karl Semper. London : C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1881.

<~

GROWTH.

"Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the
greatest works in existence f Do they 710 1 say plaifily to us,
not ' there has been a great effort here' but ' there has been
a great power here ' ? It is not the weariness of mortality
but the stre7igth of divinity, which we have to recognise in
all mighty things/ and that is just what we now never
recognise, but think that we are to do great things by help
of iron bars and perspiration ; alas ! we shall do nothing
that way, but lose some pounds of our own weight."

RUSKIN.

GROWTH.

" Consider the lilies of the field how they grow." — The Ser-
mon on the Mount.

11 Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit." — Juvenal.

What gives the peculiar point to this object-lesson
from the lips of Jesus is, that He not only made
the illustration, but made the lilies. It is like an
inventor describing his own machine. He made the
lilies and He made me — both on the same broad
principle. Both together, man and flower, He
planted deep in the Providence of God ; but as men
are dull at studying themselves He points to this
companion-phenomenon to teach us how to live a
free and natural life, a life which God will unfold
for us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the
flower. For Christ's words are not a general appeal
to consider nature. Men are not to consider the
lilies simply to admire their beauty, to dream over
the delicate strength and grace of stem and leaf.
The point they were to consider was how they grew
—how without anxiety or care the flower woke

124 GROWTH.

into loveliness, how without weaving these leaves
were woven, how without toiling these complex
tissues spun themselves, and how without any effort
or friction the whole slowly came ready-made from
the loom of God in its more than Solomon-like
glory. * So/ He says, making the application
beyond dispute, * you care-worn, anxious men
must grow. You, too, need take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink
or what ye shall put on. For if God so clothe the
grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow
is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith ? '

This nature-lesson was a great novelty in its day ;
but all men now who have even a " little faith " have
learned this Christian secret of a composed life.
Apart even from the parable of the lily, the failures
of the past have taught most of us the folly of dis-
quieting ourselves in vain, and we have given up
the idea that by taking thought we can add a cubit
to our stature.

But no sooner has our life settled down to this
calm trust in God than a new and graver anxiety
begins This time it is not for the body we are
in travail, but for the soul. For the temporal life
we have considered the lilies, but how is the
spiritual life to grow? How are we to become

GROWTH. 125

better men? How are we to grow in grace? By
what thought shall we add the cubits to the spiritual
stature and reach the fulness of the Perfect Man ?
And because we know ill how to do this, the old
anxiety comes back again and our inner life is once
more an agony of conflict and remorse. After all,
we have but transferred our anxious thoughts from
the body to the soul. Our efforts after Christian
growth seem only a succession of failures, and in
stead of rising into the beauty of holiness our life
is a daily heartbreak and humiliation.

Now the reason of this is very plain. We have
forgotten the parable of the lily. Violent efforts
to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly wrong
in principle. There is but one principle of growth
both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and
plant, for body and soul. For all growth is an
organic thing. And the principle of growing in
grace is once more this, " Consider the lilies how
they grow?

In seeking to extend the analogy from the body to
the soul there are two things about the lilies' growth,
two characteristics of all growth, on which one must
fix attention. These are, —

First, Spontaneousness.

Second, Mysteriousness.

I. Spontaneousness. There are three lines along

126 GROWTH.

which one may seek for evidence of the spontaneous-
ness of growth. The first is Science. And the
argument here could not be summed up better than
in the words of Jesus. The lilies grow, He says,
of themselves ; they toil not, neither do they spin.
They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously,
without trying, without fretting, without thinking.
Applied in any direction, to plant, to animal, to
the body or to the soul this law holds. A boy
grows, for example, without trying. One or two
simple conditions are fulfilled, and the growth goes
on. He thinks probably as little about the con-
dition as about the result ; he fulfils the conditions
by habit, the result follows by nature. Both pro-
cesses go steadily on from year to year apart from
himself and all but in spite of himself. One would
never think of telling a boy to grow. A doctor has
no prescription for growth. He can tell me how
growth may be stunted or impaired, but the process
itself is recognised as beyond control — one of the
few, and therefore very significant, things which
Nature keeps in her own hands. No physician of
souls, in like manner, has any prescription for
spiritual growth. It is the question he is most
often asked and most often answers wrongly. He
may prescribe more earnestness, more prayer, more
self-denial, or more Christian work. These are pre-

GROWTH. 127

scriptions for something, but not for growth. Not
that they may not encourage growth ; but the soul
grows as the lily grows, without trying, without
fretting, without ever thinking. Manuals of devotion,
with complicated rules for getting on in the
Christian life, would do well sometimes to return
to the simplicity of nature ; and earnest souls who
are attempting sanctification by struggle instead of
salification by faith might be spared much humili-
ation by learning the botany of the Sermon on the
Mount There can indeed be no other principle of
growth than this. It is a vital act. And to try to
make a thing grow is as absurd as to help the tide
to come in or the sun rise.

Another argument for the spontaneousness of
growth is universal experience. A boy not only
grows without trying, but he cannot grow if he
tries. No man by taking thought has ever added
a cubit to his stature ; nor has any man by mere
working at his soul ever approached nearer to the
stature of the Lord Jesus. The stature of the
Lord Jesus was not itself reached by work, and
he who thinks to approach its mystical height bv
anxious effort is really receding from it Christ's
life unfolded itself from a divine germ, planted
centrally in His nature, which grew as naturally as
a flower from a bud. This flower may be imitated ;

128 GROWTH.

but one can always tell an artificial flower. The
human form may be copied in wax, yet somehow
one never fails to detect the difference. And this
precisely is the difference between a native growth
of Christian principle and the moral copy of it.
The one is natural, the other mechanical. The
one is a growth, the other an accretion. Now this,
according to modern biology, is the fundamental
distinction between the living and the not living,
between an organism and a crystal. The living
organism grows, the dead crystal increases. The
first grows vitally from within, the last adds new
particles from the outside. The whole difference be-
tween the Christian and the moralist lies here. The
Christian works from the centre, the moralist from
the circumference. The one is an organism, in the
centre of which is planted by the living God a
living germ. The other is a crystal, very beautiful
it may be ; but only a crystal — it wants the vital
principle of growth.

And one sees here also, what is sometimes very
difficult to see, why salvation in the first instance
is never connected directly with morality. The
reason is not that salvation does not demand
morality, but that it demands so much of it that
the moralist can never reach up to it. The end of
Salvation is perfection, the Christlike mind, character

GROWTH.

129

and life. Mor tlity is on the way to this perfection :
it may go a considerable distance towards it, but
it can never reach it. Only Life can do that It
requires something with enormous power of move-
ment, of growth, of overcoming obstacles, to attain
the perfect. Therefore the man who has within
himself this great formative agent, Life, is nearer
the end than the man who has morality alone.
The latter can never reach perfection ; the former
must. For the Life must develop out according to
its type ; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it
must unfold into a Christ. Morality, at the utmost,
only develops the character in one or two direc-
tions. It may perfect a single virtue here and
there, but it cannot perfect all. And especially it
fails always to give that rounded harmony of parts,
that perfect tune to the whole orchestra, which is
the marked characteristic of life. Perfect life is
not merely the possessing of perfect functions, but
of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to each other
and all conspiring to a single result, the perfect
working of the whole organism. It is not said
that the character will develop in all its fulness in
this life. That were a time too short for an Evolu-
tion so magnificent. In this wcrld only the corn-
less ear is seen ; sometimes only the small yet still
prophetic blade. The sneer at the godly man for

K

130 GROWTH.

his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small
thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is
often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it
is a living thing. That great dead stone beside it
is more imposing ; only it will never be anything
else than a stone. But this small blade — it doth
not yet appear what it shall be.

Seeing now that Growth can only be synonymous
with a living automatic process, it is all but super-
fluous to seek a third line of argument from Scrip-
ture. Growth there is always described in the
language of physiology. The regenerate soul is a
new creature. The Christian is a new man in
Christ Jesus. He adds the cubits to his stature
just as the old man does. He is rooted and built
up in Christ ; he abides in the vine, and so abiding,
not toiling or spinning, brings forth fruit. The
Christian in short, like the poet, is born not made ;
and the fruits of his character are not manufactured
things but living things, things which have grown
from the secret germ, the fruits of the living Spirit.
They are not the produce of this climate, but
exotics from a sunnier land.

II. But, secondly, besides this Spontaneousness
there is this other great characteristic of Growth —
Mysteriousness. Upon this quality depends the fact,
probably, that so few men ever fathom its real

GROWTH. 131

character. We are most unspiritual always in deal-
ing with the simplest spiritual things. A lily grows
mysteriously, pushing up its solid weight of stem
and leaf in the teeth of gravity. Shaped into
beauty by secret and invisible fingers, the flower
develops we know not how. But we do not wonder
at it Every day the thing is done ; it is Nature, it
is God. We are spiritual enough at least to under-
stand that. But when the soul rises slowly above
the world, pushing up its delicate virtues in the teeth
of sin, shaping itself mysteriously into the image
of Christ, we deny that the power is not of man.
A strong will, we say, a high ideal, the reward of
virtue, Christian influence, — these will account for it.
Spiritual character is merely the product of anxious
work, self-command, and self-denial. We allow, that
is to say, a miracle to the lily, but none to the man.
The lily may grow ; the man must fret ana toil and
spin.

Now grant for a moment that by hard work and
self-restraint a man may attain to a very high
character. It is not denied that this can be done.
But what is denied is that this is growth, and that
this process is Christianity. The fact that you can
account for it proves that it is not growth. For
growth is mysterious ; the peculiarity of it is that
you cannot account for it Mysteriousness, as

i32 GROWTH.

Mozley has well observed, is "the test of spiritual
birth/' And this was Christ's test " The wind
bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or
whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the
Spirit? The test of spirituality is that you cannot
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. If you
can tell, if you can account for it on philosophical
principles, on the doctrine of influence, on strength
of will, on a favourable environment, it is not growth^
It may be so far a success, it may be a perfectly
honest, even remarkable, and praiseworthy imitation,
but it is not the real thing. The fruits are wax, the
flowers artificial — you can tell whence it cometh and
whither it goeth.

The conclusion is, then, that the Christian is a unique
phenomenon. You cannot account for him. And if
you could he would not be a Christian. Mozley has
drawn the two characters for us in graphic words :
"Take an ordinary man of the world — what he
thinks and what he does, his whole standard of duty
is taken from the society in which he lives. It is a
borrowed standard : he is as good as other people
aie; he does, in the way of duty, what is generally
considered proper and becoming among those with
whom his lot is thrown. He reflects established
opinion on such points. He follows its lead. His

GROWTH. 133

aims and objects in life again are taken from the
world around him, and from its dictation. What it
considers honourable, worth having, advantageous
and good, he thinks so too and pursues it. His
motives all come from a visible quarter. It would be
absurd to say that there is any mystery in such a
character as this, because it is formed from a known
external influence — the influence of social , opinion
and the voice of the world. * Whence such a char-
acter cometh ' we see ; we venture to say that the
source and origin of it is open and palpable, and we
know it just as we know the physical causes of many
common facts."

Then there is the other. "There is a certain
character and disposition of mind of which it is true
to say that ' thou canst not tell whence it cometh or
whither it goeth/ . . . There are those who stand
out from among the crowd, which reflects merely the
atmosphere of feeling and standard of society around
it, with an impress upon them which bespeaks a
heavenly birth. . . . Now, when we see one of
those characters, it is a question which we ask our-
selves, How has the person become possessed of it ?
Has he caught it from society around him ? Thai
cannot be, because it is wholly different from that
of the world around him. Has he caught it from
the inoculation of crowds and masses, as the mere

i34 GROWTH,

religious zealot catches his character? That cannot
be either, for the type is altogether different from
that which masses of men, under enthusiastic impulses,
exhibit. There is nothing gregarious in this char-
acter ; it is the individual's own ; it is not borrowed,
it is not a reflection of any fashion or tone of the
world outside; it rises up from some fount within,
and it is a creation of which the text says, We know
not whence it cometh." l

Now we have all met these two characters — the
one eminently respectable, upright, virtuous, a trifle
cold perhaps, and generally, when critically examined,
revealing somehow the mark of the tool ; the other
with God's breath still upon it, an inspiration ; not
more virtuous, but differently virtuous ; not more
humble, but different, wearing the meek and quiet
spirit artlessly as to the manner born. The other-
worldliness of such a character is the thing that strikes
you ; you are not prepared for what it will do or say
or become next, for it moves from a far-off centre, and
in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that pre-
sence fills you always with awe. A man never feels
the discord of his own life, never hears the jar of the
machinery by which he tries to manufacture his own
good points, till he has stood in the stillness of such

1 University Sermons, pp. 234-241.

GROWTH. 135

a presence. Then he discerns the difference between
growth and work. He has considered the lilies, how
they grow.

We have now seen that spiritual growth is a
process maintained and secured by a spontaneous
and mysterious inward principle. It is a spontan-
eous principle even in its origin, for it bloweth where
it listeth ; mysterious in its operation, for we can
never tell whence it cometh ; obscure in its destina-
tion, for we cannot tell whence it goeth. The whole
process therefore transcends us ; we do not work, we
are taken in hand — " it is God which worketh in us,
both to will and to do of His good pleasure." We
do not plan — we are " created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that
we should walk in them."

There may be an obvious objection to all this. It
takes away all conflict from the Christian life? It
makes man, does it not, mere clay in the hands of
the potter? It crushes the old character to make
a new one, and destroys man's responsibility for his
own soul ?

Now we are not concerned here in once more
striking the time-honoured "balance between faith
and works." We are considering how lilies grow,
and in a specific connection, namely, to discover the
attitude of mind which the Christian should preserve

136 GROWTH.

regarding his spiritual growth. That attitude, pri-
marily, is to be free from care. We are not lodging
a plea for inactivity of the spiritual energies, but foi
the tranquillity of the spiritual mind. Christ's protest
is not against work, but against anxious thought;
and rather, therefore, than complement the lesson
by showing the other side, we take the risk of still
further extending the plea in the original direction.

What is the relation, to recur again to analogy,
between growth and work in a boy ? Consciously,
there is no relation at all. The boy never thinks of
connecting his work with his growth. Work in fact
is one thing and growth another, and it is so in the
spiritual life. If it be asked therefore, Is the Chris-
tian wrong in these ceaseless and agonizing efforts
after growth ? the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong,
or at least, he is quite mistaken. When a boy takes
a meal or denies himself indigestible things, he does
not say, " All this will minister to my growth " ; or
when he runs a race he does not say, "This will
help the next cubit of my stature." It may or it
may not be true that these things will help his
stature, but, if he thinks of this, his idea of growth
is morbid. And this is the point we are dealing
with. His anxiety here is altogether irrelevant and
superfluous. Nature is far more bountiful than we
think. When she gives us energy she asks none

GROWTH. 137

of it back to expend on our own growth. She will
attend to that " Give your work,'* she says, " and
your anxiety to others ; trust me to add the cubits
to your stature." If God is adding to our spiritual
stature, unfolding the new nature within us, it is
a mistake to keep twitching at the petals with our
coarse fingers. We must seek to let the Creative
Hand alone. " It is God which giveth the increase."
Yet we never know how little we have learned of the
fundamental principle of Christianity till we discover
how much we are all bent on supplementing God?b
free grace. If God is spending work upon a Chris-
tian, let him be still and know that it is God. And
if he wants work, he will find it there — in the being
still

Not that there is no work for him who would
grow, to do. There is work, and severe work, —
work so great that the worker deserves to have
himself relieved of all that is superfluous during his
task. If the amount of energy lost in trying to grow
were spent in fulfilling rather the conditions of
growth, we should have many more cubits to show
for our stature. It is with these conditions that the
personal work of the Christian is chiefly concerned.
Observe for a moment what they are, and their
exact relation. For its growth the plant needs heat,
light, air, and moisture. A man, therefore, must go

138 GROWTH.

in search of these, or their spiritual equivalents, and
this is his work ? By no means. The Christian's
work is not yet. Does the plant go in search of its
conditions ? Nay, the conditions come to the plant.
It no more manufactures the heat, light, air, and
moisture, than it manufactures its own stem. It
finds them all around it in Nature. It simply stands
still with its leaves spread out in unconscious prayer,
and Nature lavishes upon it these and all other
bounties, bathing it in sunshine, pouring the nourish-
ing air over and over it, reviving it graciously with
its nightly dew. Grace, too, is as free as the air.
The Lord God is a Sun. He is as the Dew to Israel.
A man has no more to manufacture these than
he has to manufacture his own soul. He stands
surrounded by them, bathed in them, beset behind
and before by them. He lives and moves and has
his being in them. How then shall he go in search
of them ? Do not they rather go in search of him ?
Does he not feel how they press themselves upon
him? Does he not know how unweariedly they appeal
to him ? Has he not heard how they are sorrowful
when he will not have them ? His work, therefore,
is not yet The voice still says, " Be still."

The conditions of growth, then, and the inward
principle of growth being both supplied by Nature,
the thing man has to do, the little junction left for

GROWTH. 139

him to complete, is to apply the one to the other.
He manufactures nothing ; he earns nothing ; he
need be anxious for nothing; his one duty is to be
in these conditions, to abide in them, to allow grace
to play over him, to be still therein and know that
this is God.

The conflict begins and prevails in all its life-long
agony the moment a man forgets this. He struggles
to grow himself instead of struggling to get back
again into position. He makes the church into a
workshop when God meant it to be a beautiful
garden. And even in his closet, where only should
reign silence — a silence as of the mountains whereon
the lilies grow — is heard the roar and tumult of ma-
chinery. True, a man will often have to wrestle with
his God — but not for growth. The Christian life is
a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the
most anxious people in the world are Christians —
Christians who misunderstand the nature of growth.
Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they are
not growing. And the effect is not only the loss of
tranquillity to the individual. The energies which
are meant to be spent on the work of Christ are
consumed in the soul's own fever. So long as the
Church's activities are spent on growing there is
nothing to spare for the world. A soldier's time is
not spent in earning the money to buy his armour, in

140 GROWTH.

finding food and raiment, in seeking shelter. His
king provides these things that he may be the more
at liberty to fight his battles. So, for the soldier of
the Cross all is provided. His Government has
planned to leave him free for the Kingdom's work.
The problem of the Christian life finally is sim-
plified to this — man has but to preserve the right
attitude. To abide in Christ, to be in position, that
is all. Much work is done on board a ship crossing
the Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the
ship go. The sailor but harnesses his vessel to the
wind. He puts his sail and rudder in position, and
lo, the miracle is wrought So everywhere God
creates, man utilizes. All the work of the world is
merely a taking advantage of energies already there.1
God gives the wind, and the water, and the heat ;
man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes
his water-wheel in the way of the river, puts his
piston in the way of the steam ; and so holding him-
self in position before God's Spirit, all the energies of
Omnipotence course within his soul. He is like a
tree planted by a river whose leaf is green and whose
fruits fail not. Such is the deeper lesson to be
learned from considering the lily. It is the voice of
Nature echoing the whole evangel of Jesus, " Come
unto Me, and I will give you rest."

1 See Bushnell's " New Life.*

DEATH.

" What could be easier than to form a catena of the most
philosophical defenders of Christianity , who have exhausted
language in declaring the impotence of the unassisted intel-
lect? Comte has not more explicitly enounced the incapa-
city of man to deal with the Absolute and the Infinite than
the whole series of orthodox writers. Trust your reason,
we have been told till we are tired of the phrase, and you
will become Atheists or Agnostics. We take you at your
word ; we become Agnostics."

Leslie Stephen.

DEATH.

* To be carnally minded is Death." — Paul.

" I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often
at what they lose." — Ruskin.

H Death," wrote Faber, " is an unsurveyed land, an
unarranged Science." Poetry draws near Death
only to hover over it for a moment and withdraw
in terror. History knows it simply as a universal
fact. Philosophy finds it among the mysteries of
being, the one great mystery of being not. All
contributions to this dread theme are marked by
an essential vagueness, and every avenue of approach
seems darkened by impenetrable shadow.

But modern Biology has found it part of its work
to push its way into this silent land, and at last
the world is confronted with a scientific treatment
of Death. Not that much is added to the old
conception, or much taken from it. What it is, this
certain Death with its uncertain issues, we know
as little as before. But we can define more clearly
and attach a narrower meaning to the momentous
symbol.

144 DEATH.

The interest of the investigation here lies in
the fact that Death is one of the outstanding things
in Nature which has an acknowledged spiritual
equivalent. The prominence of the #01 d in the
vocabulary of Revelation cannot be exaggerated.
Next to Life the most pregnant symbol in religion
is its antithesis, Death. And from the time that
11 If thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die " was
heard in Paradise, this solemn word has been linked
with human interests of eternal moment.

Notwithstanding the unparalleled emphasis upon
this term in the Christian system, there is none
more feebly expressive to the ordinary mind. That
mystery which surrounds the word in the natural
world shrouds only too completely its spiritual im-
port. The reluctance which prevents men from
investigating the secrets of the King of Terrors is
for a certain length entitled to respect. But it has
left theology with only the vaguest materials to
construct a doctrine which, intelligently enforced,
ought to appeal to all men with convincing power
and lend the most effective argument to Christianity.
Whatever may havp been its influence in the past,
its threat is gone for the modern world. The word
has grown weak. Ignorance has robbed the Grave
of all its terror, and platitude despoilt Death of
its sting. Death itself is ethically dead. Which

DEATH. 145

of us, for example, enters fully into the meaning
of words like these : " She that liveth in pleasure
is dead while she liveth " ? Who allows adequate
weight to the metaphor in the Pauline phrase,
"To be carnally minded is Death;" or in this,
" The wages of sin is Death " ? Or what theology
has translated into the language of human life the
terrific practical import of "Dead in trespasses and
sins M ? To seek to make these phrases once more
real and burning ; to clothe time-worn formulae with
living truth ; to put the deepest ethical meaning into
the gravest symbol of Nature, and fill up with its
full consequence the darkest threat of Revelation —
these are the objects before us now.

What, then, is Death? Is it possible to define
it and embody its essential meaning in an intelli-
gible proposition ?

The most recent and the most scientific attempt
to investigate Death we owe to the biological studies
of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In his search for the
meaning of Life the word Death crosses his path,
and he turns aside for a moment to define it. Of
course what Death is depends upon what Life is.
Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Life, it is well
known, has been subjected to serious criticism.
While it has shed much light on many of the
phenomena of Life, it cannot be affirmed that it

L

146 DEA TH.

has taken its place in science as the final solution
of the fundamental problem of biology. No defi-
nition of Life, indeed, that has yet appeared can
be saiJ to be even approximately correct. Its
mysterious quality evades us ; and we have to be
content with outward characteristics and accom-
paniments, leaving the thing itself an unsolved
riddle. At the same time Mr. Herbert Spencer's
masterly elucidation of the chief phenomena of
Life has placed philosophy and science under many
obligations, and in the paragraphs which follow we
shall have to incur a further debt on behalf of
religion.

The meaning of Death depending, as has been
said, on the meaning of Life, we must first set
ourselves to grasp the leading characteristics which
distinguish living things. To a physiologist the
living organism is distinguished from the not-living
by the performance of certain functions. These
functions are four in number — Assimilation, Waste
Reproduction, and Growth. Nothing could be a
more interesting task than to point out the co-
relatives of these in the spiritual sphere, to show
in what ways the discharge of these functions
represent the true manifestations of spiritual life,
and how the failure to perform them constitutes
spiritual Death. But it will bring us more directly

DEA TH. I47

to the specific subject before us if we follow rathei
the newer biological lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer,
According to his definition, Life is "The definite
combination of heterogeneous changes, both simul*
taneous and successive, in correspondence with ex-
ternal co-existences and sequences," l or more shortly
"The continuous adjustment of internal relations
to external relations."2 An example or two will
render these important statements at once intelli-
gible.

The essential characteristic of a living organism,
according to these definitions, is that it is in vital
connection with its general surroundings. A human
being, for instance, is in direct contact with the earth
and air, with all surrounding things, with the warmth
of the sun, with the music of birds, with the count-
less influences and activities of nature and of his
fellow-men. In biological language he is said thus
to be " in correspondence with his environment." He
is, that is to say, in active and vital connection with
them, influencing them possibly, but especially being
influenced by them. Now it is in virtue of this
correspondence that he is entitled to be called alive.
So long as he is in correspondence with any given
point of his environment, he lives. To keep up

1 * Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 74. f Ibid.

148 DBA TH.

this correspondence is to keep up life. If his en
vironment changes he must instantly adjust himseli
to the change. And he continues living only as long
as he succeeds in adjusting himself to the "simulta-
neous and successive changes in his environment " as
these occur. What is meant by a change in his
environment may be understood from an example,
which will at the same time define more clearly
the intimacy of the relation between environment
and organism. Let us take the case of a civil-ser-
vant whose environment is a district in India. It
is a region subject to occasional and prolonged
droughts resulting in periodical famines. When such
a period of scarcity arises, he proceeds immediately
to adjust himself to this external change. Having
the power of locomotion, he may remove himself to
a more fertile district, or, possessing the means of
purchase, he may add to his old environment by
importation the " external relations " necessary to
continued life. But if from any cause he fails to
adjust himself to the altered circumstances, his body
is thrown out of correspondence with his environ-
ment, his "internal relations " are no longer adjusted
to his " external relations," and his life must cease.
In ordinary circumstances, and in health, the hu-
man organism is in thorough correspondence with its
surroundings ; but when any part of the organism by

DEATH, 149

disease or accident is thrown out of correspondence,
it is in that relation dead.

This Death, this want of correspondence, may be
either paitial or complete. Part of the organism may
be dead to a part of the environi ient, or the whole
to the whole. Thus the victim of famine may have
a certain number of his correspondences arrested by
the change in his environment, but not all. Luxuries
which he once enjoyed no longer enter the country,
animals which once furnished his table are driven
from it These still exist, but they are beyond the
limit of his correspondence. In relation to these
things therefore he is dead. In one sense it might
be said that it was the environment which playea
him false ; in another, that it was his .own organiza-
tion— that he was unable to adjust himself, or did
not. But, however caused, he pays the penalty with
partial Death.

Suppose next the case of a man who is thrown
out of correspondence with a part of his environ-
ment by some physical infirmity. Let it be that by
disease or accident he has been deprived of the use
of his ears. The deaf man, in virtue of this imper-
fection, is thrown out of rapport with a large and
well-defined part of the environment, namely, its
sounds. With regard to that " external relation,"
therefore, he is no longer living. Part of him may

150 DEATH.

truly be held to be insensible or " Dead." A man
who is also blind is thrown out of correspondence
with another large part of his environment. The
beauty of sea and sky, the forms of cloud and moun-
tain, the features 1 id gestures of friends, are to him
as if they were not. They are there, solid and real,
but not to him ; he is still further " Dead." Next,
let it be conceived, the subtle finger of cerebral dis-
ease lays hold of him. His whole brain is affected,
and the sensory nerves, the medium of communica-
tion with the environment, cease altogether to ac-
quaint him with what is doing in the outside world.
The outside world is still there, but not to him ; he is
still further " Dead." And so the death of parts goes
on. He becomes less and less alive. " Were the
animal frame not the complicated machine we have
seen it to be, death might come as a simple and
gradual dissolution, the ' sans everything ' being the
last stage of the successive loss of fundamental
powers."1 But finally some important part of the
mere animal framework that remains breaks down.
The correlation with the other parts is very intimate,
and the stoppage of correspondence with one means
an interference with the work of the rest Some-
thing central has snapped, and all are thrown out ol

1 Foster's " Physiology/' p, 642.

DEATH. 151

work. The lungs refuse to conespond with the air,
the heart with the blood. There is now no corre-
spondence whatever with environment — the thing, for
it is now a thing, is Dead.

This then is Death; "part of the framework breaks
down," " something has snapped " — these phrases by
which we describe the phases of death yield their
full meaning. They are different ways of saying that
"correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific
meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible.
Dying is that breakdown in an organism which
throws it out of correspondence with some necessary
part of the environment. Death is the result pro-
duced, the want of correspondence. We do not say
that this is all that is involved. But this is the root
idea of Death — Failure to adjust internal relations
to external relations, failure to repair the broken
inward connection sufficiently to enable it to corre-
spond again with the old surroundings. These pre-
liminary statements may be fitly closed with the
words of Mr. Herbert Spencer : " Death by natural
decay occurs because in old age the relations be-
tween assimilation, oxidation, and genesis of force
going on in the organism gradually fall out of corre-
spondence with the relations between oxygen and
food and absorption of heat by the environment
Death from disease arises either when the organism

152 DEATH.

is congenitally defective in its power to balance the
ordinary external actions by the ordinary internal
actions, or when there has taken place some un-
usual external action to which there was no answer-
ing internal action. Death by accident implies some
neighbouring mechanical changes of which the causes
are either unnoticed from inattention, or are so in-
tricate that their results cannot be foreseen, and con-
sequently certain relations in the organism are not
adjusted to the relations in the environment."1

With the help of these plain biological terms we
may now proceed to examine the parallel phenome-
non of Death in the spiritual world. The factors
with which we have to deal are two in number as
before — Organism and Environment The relation
between them may once more be denominated by
" correspondence." And the truth to be emphasised
resolves itself into this, that Spiritua/ Death is a
want of correspondence between the organism and
the spiritual environment.

What is the spiritual environment? This term
obviously demands some further definition. For
Death is a relative term. And before we can define
Death in the spiritual world we must first apprehend
the particular relation with reference to which the

1 Op. cit, pp. 88, 89.

DEATH.

"53

expression is to be employed. We shall best reach
the nature of this relation by considering for a
moment the subject of environment generally. By
the natural environment we mean the entire surround-
ings of the natural man, the entire external world in
which he lives and moves and has his being. It is
not involved in the idea that either with all or part
of this environment he is in immediate correspond-
ence. Whether he correspond with it or not, it is
there. There is in fact a conscious environment and
an environment of which he is not conscious ; and it
must be borne in mind that the conscious environ-
ment is not all the environment that is. All that
surrounds him, all that environs him, conscious or
unconscious, is environment. The moon and stars
are part of it, though in the daytime he may not see
them. The polar regions are parts of it, though he
is seldom aware of their influence. Iii its widest
sense environment simply means all else that is.

Now it will next be manifest that different organ-
isms correspond with this environment in varying
degrees of completeness or incompleteness. At the
bottom of the biological scale we find organisms
which have only the most limited correspondence
with their surroundings. A tree, for example, cor-
responds with the soil about its stem, with the sun-
light, and with the air in contact with its leaves

154 DEATH.

But it is shut off by its comparatively low develop-
ment from a whole world to which higher forms ol
life have additional access. The want of locomotion
alone circumscribes most seriously its area of corre-
spondence, so that to a large part of surrounding
nature it may truly be said to be dead. So far as
consciousness is concerned, we should be justified
indeed in saying that it was not alive at all. The
murmur of the stream which bathes its roots affects
it not. The marvellous insect-life beneath its shadow
excites in it no wonder. The tender maternity of
the bird which has its nest among its leaves stirs
no responsive sympathy. It cannot correspond with
those things. To stream and insect and bird it
is insensible, torpid, dead. For this is Death, this
irresponsiveness.

The bird, again, which is higher in the scale of life,
corresponds with a wider environment. The stream
is real to it, and the insect. It knows what lies
behind the hill ; it listens to the love-song of its
mate. And to much besides beyond the simple
world of the tree this higher organism is alive. The
bird we should say is more living than the tree ; it
has a correspondence with a larger area of environ-
ment. But this bird-life is not yet the highest life.
Even within the immediate bird-environment there
is much to which the bird must still be held to

DEATH. 155

be dead. Introduce a higher organism, place man
himself within this same environment, and see how
much more living he is. A hundred things which
the bird never saw in insect, stream, and tree appeal
to him. Each single sense has something to cor-
respond with. Each faculty finds an appropriate
exercise. Man is a mass of correspondences, and
because of these, because he is alive to countless
objects and influences to which lower organisms are
dead, he is the most living of all creatures.

The relativity of Death will now have become
sufficiently obvious. Man being left out of account,
all organisms are seen as it were to be partly living
and partly dead. The tree, in correspondence with
a narrow area of environment, is to that extent alive ;
to all beyond, to the all but infinite area beyond, it
is dead. A still wider portion of this vast area is
the possession of the insect and the bird. Their's
also, nevertheless, is but a little world, and to an
immense further area insect and bird are dead. All
organisms likewise are living and dead — living to all
within the circumference of their correspondences,
dead to all beyond. As we rise in the scale of life,
however, it will be observed that the sway of Death
is gradually weakened. More and more of the en-
vironment becomes accessible as we ascend, and the
domain of life in this way slowly extends in ever-

156 DEATH.

widening circles. But until man appears there is no
organism to correspond with the whole environment
Till then the outermost circles have no correspond*
ents. To the inhabitants of the innermost spheres
they are as if they were not.

Now follows a momentous question. Is man in
correspondence with the whole environment ? When
we reach the highest living organism, is the final
blow dealt to the kingdom of Death ? Has the last
acre of the infinite area been taken in by his finite
faculties? Is his conscious environment the whole
environment? Or is there, among these outermost
circles, one which with his multitudinous correspond-
ences he fails to reach ? If so, this is Death. The
question of Life or Death to him is the question
of the amount of remaining environment he is able
to compass. If there be one circle or one segment
of a circle which he yet fails to reach, to correspond
with, to know, to be influenced by, he is, with regard
to that circle or segment, dead.

What then, practically, is the state of the case ?
Is man in correspondence with the whole environ-
ment or is he not ? There is but one answer. He
is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they
are in living contact with that part of the environ-
ment which is called the spiritual world In intro-
ducing this new term spiritual world, observe, we are

DEATH. 157

not interpolating a new factor. This is an essential
part of the old idea. We have been following out an
ever-widening environment from point to point, and
now we reach the outermost zones. The spiritual
world is simply the outermost segment, circle, of
circles, of the natural world. For purposes of con-
venience we separate the two just as we separate the
animal world from the plant. But the animal world
and the plant world are the same world. They are
different parts of one environment. And the natural
and spiritual are likewise one. The inner circles are
called the natural, the outer the spiritual. And we
call them spiritual simply because they are beyond
us or beyond a part of us. What we have corre-
spondence with, that we call natural ; what we have
little or no correspondence with, that we call spiritual.
But when the appropriate corresponding organism
appears, the organism, that is, which can freely com-
municate with these outer circles, the distinction
necessarily disappears. The spiritual to it becomes
the outer circle of the natural.

Now of the great mass of living organisms, of the
great mass of men, is it not to be affirmed that they
are out of correspondence with this outer circle ?
Suppose, to make the final issue more real, we give
this outermost circle of environment a name. Sup-
pose we call it God Suppose also we substitute

i5S DEATH.

a word for " correspondence " to express more in.
timately the personal relation. Let us call it Com-
munion. We can now determine accurately the
spiritual relation of different sections of mankind.
Those who are in communion with God live, those
who are not are dead.

The extent or depth of this communion, the
varying degrees of correspondence in different indi-
viduals, and the less or more abundant life which
these result in, need not concern us for the present.
The task we have set ourselves is to investigate the
essential nature of Spiritual Death. And we have
found it to consist in a want of communion with God.
The unspiritual man is he who lives in the circum-
scribed environment of this present world. "She
that liveth in pleasure is Dead while she liveth."
" To be carnally minded is Death." To be carnally
minded, translated into the language of science, is
to be limited in one's correspondences to the environ-
ment of the natural man. It is no necessary part
of the conception that the mind should be either
purposely irreligious, or directly vicious. The mind
of the flesh, Qpovrj/jLa tt)? crap/cos, by its very nature,
Jimited capacity, and time-ward tendency, is Qavaro^
Death. This earthly mind may be of noble calibre,
enriched by culture, high toned, virtuous and pure.
But if it know not God ? What though its cor-

DEA TH. 159

respondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp
the magnitudes of Time and Space ? The stars of
heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. This
mind, certainly, has life, life up to its level. There
is no trace of Death. Possibly too, it carries its
deprivation lightly, and, up to its level, lives content.
We do not picture the possessor of this carnal mind
as in any sense a monster. We have said he may be
high-toned, virtuous, and pure. The plant is not a
monster because it is dead to the voice of the bird ;
nor is he a monster who is dead to the voice of God.
The contention at present simply is that he is Dead,

We do not need to go to Revelation for the proof
of this. That has been rendered unnecessary by the
testimony of the Dead themselves. Thousands have
uttered themselves upon their relation to the Spiritual
World, and from their own lips we have the proclam-
ation of their Death The language of theology in
describing the state of the natural man is often
regarded as severe. The Pauline anthropology has
been challenged as an insult to human nature.
Culture has opposed the doctrine that " The natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
And even some modern theologies have refused to
accept the most plain of the aphorisms of Jesus, that

160 DEATH.

"Except a man be born again he cannot see the
Kingdom of God." But this stern doctrine of the
spiritual deadness of humanity is no mere dogma of
a past theology. The history of thought during the
present century proves that the world has come
round spontaneously to the position of the first
One of the ablest philosophical schools of the day
erects a whole antichristian system on this very
doctrine. Seeking by means of it to sap the founda-
tion of spiritual religion, it stands unconsciously as
the most significant witness for its truth. What is
the creed of the Agnostic, but the confession of the
spiritual numbness of humanity? The negative
doctrine which it reiterates with such sad persistency,
what is it but the echo of the oldest of scientific and
religious truths ? And what are all these gloomy
and rebellious infidelities, these touching, and too
sincere confessions of universal nescience, but a pro-
test against this ancient law of Death ?

The Christian apologist never further misses the
mark than when he refuses the testimony of the
Agnostic to himself. When the Agnostic tells me
he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid and dead to the
spiritual world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me
that. Paul tells me that. Science tells me that
He knows nothing of this outermost circle ; and we
are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when

DEATH. 161

he deplores it as if, being a man without an ear, he
professed to know nothing of a musical world, of
being without taste, of a world of art. The nescience
of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from ex-
perience that to be carnally minded is Death. Let
the theological value of the concession be duly recog-
nised. It brings no solace to the unspiritual man
to be told he is mistaken. To say he is self-deceived
is neither to compliment him nor Christianity. He
builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the
Unknown God. He does not know God. With all
his marvellous and complex correspondences, he is
still one correspondence short.

It is a point worthy of special note that the pro-
clamation of this truth has always come from science
rather than from religion. Its general acceptance
by thinkers is based upon the universal failure of a
universal experiment. The statement, therefore, that
the natural man discerneth not the things of the
spirit, is never to be charged against the intolerance
of theology. There is no point at which theology
has been more modest than here. It has left the
preaching of a great fundamental truth almost en-
tirely to philosophy and science. And so very
moderate has been its tone, so slight has been the
emphasis placed upon the paralysis of the natural
with regard to the spiritual, that it may seem to

M

162 DEATH.

some to have been intolerantly tolerant. No harm
certainly could come now, no offence could be given
to science, if religion asserted more clearly its right
to the spiritual world. Science has paved the way
for the reception of one of the most revolutionary
doctrines of Christianity ; and if Christianity refuses
to take advantage of the opening it will manifest a
culpable want of confidence in itself. There never
was a time when its fundamental doctrines could
more boldly be proclaimed, or when they could
better secure the respect and arrest the interest of
Science.

To all this, and apparently with force, it may,
however, be objected that to every man who truly
Studies Nature there is a God. Call Him by what-
ever name — a Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great
First Cause, a Power that makes for Righteousness —
Science has a God ; and he who believes in this, in
spite of all protest, possesses a theology. " If we
will look at things, and not merely at words, we
shall soon see that the scientific man has a theology
and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful
and glorious God. I say that man believes in a
God, who feels himself in the presence of a Power
which is not himself, and is immeasurably above
himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he
is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds

DEATH.

163

safety and happiness. And such now is Nature to
the scientific man."1 Such now, we humbly submit,
is Nature to very few. Their own confession is
against it That they are " absorbed " in the contem-
plation we can well believe. That they might " find
safety and happiness " in the knowledge of Him is
also possible — if they had it. But this is just what
they tell us they have not. What they deny is not
a God. It is the correspondence. The very con-
fession of the Unknowable is itself the dull recog-
nition of an Environment beyond themselves, and
for which they feel they lack the correspondence.
It is this want that makes their God the Unknown
God. And it is this that makes them dead.

We have not said, or implied, that there is not a
God of Nature. We have not affirmed that there
is no Natural Religion. We are assured there is.
We are even assured that without a Religion of
Nature Religion is only half complete ; that without
a God of Nature the God of Revelation is only half
intelligible and only partially known. God is not
confined to the outermost circle of environment, He
lives and moves and has His being in the whole.
Those who only seek Him in the further zone can
only fin4 a part The Christian who knows not

1 " Natural Religion," p. 19.

164 DEATH.

God in Nature, who does not, that is to say, corre-
spond with the whole environment, most certainly is
partially dead. The author of " Ecce Homo " may be
partially right when he says : " I think a bystander
would say that though Christianity had in it some*
thing far higher and deeper and more ennobling,
yet the average scientific man worships just at
present a more awful, and, as it were, a greater
Deity than the average Christian. In so many
Christians the idea of God has been degraded by
childish and little-minded teaching ; the Eternal and
the Infinite and the All-embracing has been repre-
sented as the head of the clerical interest, as a sort
of clergyman, as a sort of schoolmaster, as a sort of
philanthropist. But the scientific man knows Him
to be eternal ; in astronomy, in geology, he becomes
familiar with the countless millenniums of His life-
time. The scientific man strains his mind actually
to realize God's infinity. As far off as the fixed
stars he traces Him, 'distance inexpressible by
numbers that have name/ Meanwhile, to the theo-
logian, infinity and eternity are very much of empty
words when applied to the Object of his worship.
He does not realize them in actual facts and definite
computations."1 Let us accept this rebuke. The

1 a Natural Religion," p. 2a

DEATH. 65

principle that want of correspondence is Death
applies all round. He who knows not God in Nature
only partially lives. The converse of this, however,
is not true ; and that is the point we are insisting
on. He who knows God only in Nature lives not
There is no " correspondence " with an Unknown
God, no "continuous adjustment" to a fixed First
Cause. There is no "assimilation" of Natural Law;
no growth in the Image of " the All-embracing." To
correspond with the God of Science assuredly is not
to live. "This is Life Eternal, to know Thee, tJie
true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent."

From the service we have tried to make natural
science render to our religion, we might be expected
possibly to take up the position that the absolute
contribution of Science to Revelation was very great
On the contrary, it is very small. The absolute con-
tribution, that is, is very small. The contribution on
the whole is immense, vaster than we have yet any
idea of. But without the aid of the higher Revela-
tion this many-toned and far-reaching voice had been
for ever dumb. The light of Nature, say the most
for it, is dim — how dim we ourselves, with the glare
of other Light upon the modern world, can only re-
alize when we seek among the pagan records of the
past for the gropings after truth of those whose only
light was this. Powerfully significant and touching

166 DEATH.

as these efforts were in their success, they are far
more significant and touching in their failure. Fof
they did fail. It requires no philosophy now to
speculate on the adequacy or inadequacy of the Re-
ligion of Nature. For us who could never weigh it
rightly in the scales of Truth it has been tried in the
balance of experience and found wanting. Theism
is the easiest of all religions to get, but the most
difficult to keep. Individuals have kept it, but na-
tions never. Socrates and Aristotle, Cicero and
Epictetus had a theistic religion ; Greece and Rome
had none. And even after getting what seems like
a firm place in the minds of men, its unstable equili-
brium sooner or later betrays itself. On the one
hand theism has always fallen into the wildest poly-
theism, or on the other into the blankest atheism.
" It is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of
the sphere of special revelation, man has never ob-
tained such a knowledge of God as a responsible and
religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the
heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inade-
quate to the accomplishment of such a task as creat-
ing a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions,
purifying the heart, and ennobling the conduct." l
What is the inference ? That this poor rush-light

1 Prof. Flint, "Theism/' p. 305.

DEATH, 167

by itself was never meant to lend the ray by which
man should read the riddle of the universe. The
mystery is too impenetrable and remote for its un-
certain flicker to more than make the darkness
deeper. What indeed if this were not a light at all,
but only part of a light — the carbon point, the frag-
ment of calcium, the reflector in the great Lantern
which contains the Light of the World ?

This is one inference. But the most important is
that the absence of the true Light means moral
Death. The darkness of the natural world to the
intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first
the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that
always follows the abandonment of belief in a per-
sonal God. It is not, as has been pointed out a
hundred times, that morality in the abstract dis-
appears, but the motive and sanction are gone.
There is nothing to raise it from the dead. Man's
attitude to it is left to himself. Grant that morals
have their own base in human life ; grant that
Nature has a Religion whose creed is Science ; there
is yet nothing apart from God to save the world from
moral Death. Morality has the power to dictate but
none tc move. Nature directs but cannot control.
As was wisely expressed in one of many pregnant
utterances during a recent Symposiumy " Though the
decay of rel;gion may leave the institutes of morality

168 DEA TJH.

intact, it drains off their inward power. The devout
faith of men expresses and measures the intensity of
their moral nature, and it cannot be lost without a
remission of enthusiasm, and under this low pressure,
the successful reentrance of importunate desires and
clamorous \ assions which had been driven back. To
believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme
over the universe, is to invest moral distinctions with
immensity and eternity, and lift them from the
provincial stage of human society to the imperishable
theatre of all being. When planted thus in the very
substance of things, they justify and support the ideal
estimates of the conscience ; they deepen every guilty
shame ; they guarantee every righteous hope ; and
they help the will with a Divine casting-vote in every
balance of temptation."1 That morality has a basis
in human society, that Nature has a Religion, surely
makes the Death of the soul when left to itself all
the more appalling. It means that, between them,
Nature and morality provide all for virtue — except
the Life to live it

It is at this point accordingly that our subject
comes into intimate contact with Religion. The pro-
position that "to be carnally minded is Death " even

1 Martineau Vide the whole Symposium m " The Influ-
ences upon Morality of a Decline in Religious BeJiek" — Nine
teentk Century , vol i. pp. 331, 531.

DEA TH. 169

the moralist will assent to. But when it is further
announced that uthe carnal mind is enmity against
God" we find ourselves In a different region. And
when we find it also stated that " the wages of sin is
Death," we are in the heart of the profoundest ques-
tions of theology. What before was merely " enmity
against society" becomes "enmity against God;" and
what was " vice " is " sin." The conception of a God
gives an altogether new colour to worldliness and
vice. Worldliness it changes into heathenism, vice
into blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind which
is turned away from God, which will not correspond
with God — this is not moral only but spiritual Death.
And Sin, that which separates from God, which dis-
obeys God, which can not in that state correspond
with God — this is hell

To the estrangement of the soul from God the best
of theology traces the ultimate cause of sin. Sin is
simply apostasy from God, unbelief in God. " Sin
is manifest in its true character when the demand of
holiness in the conscience, presenting itself to the
man as one of loving submission to God, is put from
him with aversion. Here sin appears as it really is,
a turning away from God ; and while the man's guilt
is enhanced, there ensues a benumbing of the heart
resulting from the crushing of those higher impulse*
This is what is meant by the reprobate state of thos 1

170 DEATH,

who reject Christ and will not believe the Gospel, so
often spoken of in the New Testament ; this unbelief
is just the closing of the heart against the highest
love."1 The other view of sin, probably the more
popular at present, that sin consists in selfishness, is
merely this from another aspect. Obviously if the
mind turns away from one part of the environment
it will only do so under some temptation to corre-
spond with another. This temptation, at bottom, can
only come from one source — the love of self. The
irreligious man's correspondences are concentrated
upon himself. He worships himself. Self-gratifica-
tion rather than self-denial ; independence rather
than submission — these are the rules of life. And
this is at once the poorest and the commonest form
of idolatry.

But whichever of these views of sin we emphasize,
we find both equally connected with Death. If
sin is estrangement from God, this very estrange-
ment is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If
sin is selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of
life. Its wages are Death — " he that loveth his life/
said Christ, "shall lose it."

Yet the paralysis of the moral nature apart from
God does not only depend for its evidence upon

1 Muller: * Christian Doctrine of Sin." 2nd Ed vol. I p. 131.

DEATH. 171

theology or even upon history. From the analogies
of Nature one would expect this result as a necessary
consequence. The development of any organism in
any direction is dependent on its environment. A
living cell cut off from air will die. A seed-germ
apart from moisture and an appropriate temperature
will make the ground its grave for centuries. Human
nature, likewise, is subject to similar conditions. It
can only develop in presence of its environment No
matter what its possibilities may be, no matter what
seeds of thought or virtue, what germs of genius or
of art, lie latent in its breast, until the appropriate
environment present itself the correspondence is
denied, the development discouraged, the most
splendid possibilities of life remain unrealized, and
thought and virtue, genius and art, are dead. The
true environment of the moral life is God. Here
conscience wakes. Here kindles love. Duty here
becomes heroic ; and that righteousness begins tc
live which alone is to live for ever. But if this Atmo-
sphere is not, the dwarfed soul must perish for mere
want of its native air. And its Death is a strictly
natural Death. It is not an exceptional judgment
upon Atheism. In the same circumstances, ui the
same averted relation to their environment, the poet,
the musician, the artist, would alike perish to poetry.
to music, and to art Every environment is a cause,

172 DEATH.

Its effect upon me is exactly proportionate to my
correspondence with it. If I correspond with part of
it, part of myself is influenced. If I correspond with
more, more of myself is influenced ; if with all, all is
influenced. If I correspond with the world, I become
worldly ; if with God, I become Divine. As without
correspondence of the scientific man with the natural
environment there could be no Science and no action
founded on the knowledge of Nature, so without
communion with the spiritual Environment there can
be no Religion. To refuse to cultivate the religious
relation is to deny to the soul its highest right — the
right to a further evolution.1

We have already admitted that he who knows
not God may not be a monster ; we cannot say he
will not be a dwarf. This precisely, and on perfectly

1 It would not be difficult to show, were this the immediate
subject, that it is not only a right but a duty to exercise the
spiiitual faculties, a duty demanded not by religion merely, but
by science. Upon biok>gical principles man owes his full de-
velopment to himself, to nature, and to his fellow-men. Thus
Mr. "Herbert Spencer affirms, " The performance of every func-
tion is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is usually thought
that morality requires us only to restrain .such vital activities
as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such as
conflict with average welfare, special or general ; but it also
requires us to carry on these vital activities up to their normal
limits. All the animal functions, in common with all the highei
functions, have, as thus understood, their imperativeness, "—
u The Data of Ethics," 2nd Ed., p. 76.

DEA TH. 173

natural principles, is what he must be. You can
dwarf a soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by de-
priving it of a full environment. Such a soul for a
time may have "a name to live." Its character may
betray no sign of atrophy. But its very virtue
somehow has the pallor of a flower that is grown in
darkness, or as the herb which has never seen the sun,
no fragrance breathes from its spirit. To morality,
possibly, this organism offers the example of an
irreproachable life ; but to science it is an instance of
arrested development ; and to religion it presents the
spectacle of a corpse — a living Death. With Ruskin,
" I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder
often at what they lose.''

MORTIFICATION.

" Jf,-by tying its main artery, we stop most of the blood
going to a limb, then, for as long as the limb performs its
function, those parts which are called into play must be
wasted faster than they are repaired : whence eventual dis-
ablement. The relation between due receipt of nutritive
matters through its arteries, and due discharge of its duties
by tJie limb, is a part of the physical order. If instead of
cutti?ig off the sufiply to a particular limb, we bleed the
patient largely , so drafting away the materials needed for
repairing not one limb but all limbs, and not limbs only but
viscera, there results both a muscular debility and an
enfeeblement of the vital functions. Here, again, cause and
effect are necessarily related. . . . Pass now to those
actions more com?nonly thought of as the occasions for rules
of conduct."

Herbert Spencer.

MORTIFICATION.

; Mortify therefore your members which are upon earth." —

Paul.
11 O Star-eyed Science ! hast thou wandered there
To waft us home the message of despair ? " — Cam£

THE definition of Death which science has given us
is this : A falling out of correspondence with envir-
onment. When, for example, a man loses the sight
of his eyes, his correspondence with the environing
world is curtailed. His life is limited in an impor-
tant direction ; he is less living than he was before.
If, in addition, he lose the senses of touch and hear-
ing, his correspondences are still further limited; he
is therefore still further dead. And when all possible
correspondences have ceased, when the nerves decline
to respond to any stimulus, when the lungs close
their gates against the air, when the heart refuses to
correspond with the blood by so much as another
beat, the insensate corpse is wholly and for ever
dead. The soul, in like manner, which has no corre-
spondence with the spiritual environment is spiritually

N

1 78 MOR TIFICA TION.

dead. It may be that it never possessed the spiritual
eye or the spiritual ear, or a heart which throbbed
in response to the love of God. If so, having nevei
lived, it cannot be said to have died. But not to
have these correspondences is to be in the state of
Death. To the spiritual world, to the Divine Envir-
onment, it is dead — as a stone which has never
lived is dead to the environment of the organic
world.

Having already abundantly illustrated this use of
the symbol Death, we may proceed to deal with
another class of expressions where the same term is
employed in an exactly opposite connection. It is a
proof of the radical nature of religion that a word
so extreme should have to be used again and again
in Christian teaching, to define in different directions
the true spiritual relations of mankind. Hitherto we
have concerned ourselves with the condition of the
natural man with regard to the spiritual world. We
have now to speak of the relations of the spiritual
man with regard to the natural world. Carrying
with us the same essential principle — want of corre-
spondence— underlying the meaning of Death, we
shall find that the relation of the spiritual man to the
natural world, or at least to part of it, is to be that of
Death.

When the natural man becomes the spiritual man,

MOR TIFICA TION. 179

the great change is described by Christ as a passing
from Death unto Life. Before the transition occurred,
the practical difficulty was this, how to get into cor-
respondence with the new Environment ? But no
sooner is this correspondence established than the
problem is reversed. The question now is, how to
get out of correspondence with the old environment ?
The moment the new life is begun there comes a
genuine anxiety to break with the old. For the
former environment has now become embarrassing.
It refuses its dismissal from consciousness. It com-
petes doggedly with the new Environment for a share
of the correspondences. And in a hundred ways the
former traditions, the memories and passions of the
past, the fixed associations and habits of the earlier
life, now complicate the new relation. The complex
and bewildered soul, in fact, finds itself in correspon-
dence with two environments, each with urgent but
yet incompatible claims. It is a dual soul living
in a double world, a world whose inhabitants are
deadly enemies, and engaged in perpetual civil-
war.

The position of things is perplexing. It is clear
that no man can attempt to live both lives. To walk
both in the flesh and in the spirit is morally im-
possible. "No man," as Christ so often emphasized,
" can serve two masters." And yet, as matter oi

i8o M OR TIFICA TIOAT.

fact, here is the new-born being in communication
with both environments ? With sin and purity, light
and darkness, time and Eternity, God and Devil, the
confused and undecided soul is now in correspon-
dence. What is to be done in such an emergency ?
How can the New Life deliver itself from the still-
persistent past ?

A ready solution of the difficulty would be to die.
Were one to die organically, to die and "go to
heaven/' all correspondence with the lower environ-
ment would be arrested at a stroke. For Physical
Death of course simply means the final stoppage of
all natural correspondences with this sinful world.
But this alternative, fortunately or unfortunately, is
not open. The detention here of body and spirit
for a given period is determined for us, and we are
morally bound to accept the situation. We must
look then for a further alternative.

Actual Death being denied us, we must ask our-
selves if there is nothing else resembling it — no
artificial relation, no imitation or semblance of Death
which would serve our purpose. If we cannot yet die
absolutely, surely the next best thing will be to find
a temporary substitute. If we cannot die altogether,
in short, the most we can do is to die as much as we
can. And we now know this is open to us, and
how. To die to any environment is to withdraw cor-

M OR TIF1CA TION. 181

rospondence with it, to cut ourselves off, so far as
possible, from all communication with it So that
the solution of the problem will simply be this, for
the spiritual life to reverse continuously the processes
of the natural life. The spiritual man having passed
from Death unto Life, the natural man must next
proceed to pass from Life unto Death. Having
opened the new set of correspondences, he must de-
liberately close up the old. Regeneration in short
must be accompanied by Degeneration.

Now it is no surprise to find that this is the pro-
cess everywhere described and recommended by the
founders of the Christian system. Their proposal to
the natural man, or rather to the natural part of the
spiritual man, with regard to a whole series of inim-
ical relations, is precisely this. If he cannot really
die, he must make an adequate approach to it by
"reckoning himself dead." Seeing that, until the
cycle of his organic life is complete he cannot die
physically, he must meantime die morally, reckon-
ing himself morally dead to that environment which,
by competing for his correspondences, has now
become an obstacle to his spiritual life.

The variety of ways in which the New Testament
writers insist upon this somewhat extraordinary
method is sufficiently remarkable. And although the
idea involved is essentially the same throughout, it

*82 MORTIFICATION.

will clearly illustrate the nature of the act if we
examine separately three different modes of expres-
sion employed in the later Scriptures in this conneo
tioa The methods by which the spiritual man is to
withdraw himself from the old environment — or from
that part of it which will directly hinder the spiritual
life — are three in number : —

First, Suicide.
Second, Mortification,
Third, Limitation.

It will be found in practice that these different
methods are adapted, respectively, to meet three
different forms of temptation ; so that we possess a
sufficient warrant for giving a brief separate treat-
ment to each.

First, Suicide. Stated in undisguised phraseology,
the advice of Paul to the Christian, with regard to a
part of his nature, is to commit suicide. If the Chris-
tian is to " live unto God," he must " die unto sin."
If he does not kill sin, sin will inevitably kill him.
Recognising this, he must set himself to reduce the
number of his correspondences — retaining and de*
veloping those which lead to a fuller life, uncondition-
ally withdrawing those which in any way tend in an
opposite direction. This stoppage of correspondences

MORTIFICATION. 183

is a voluntary act, a crucifixion of the flesh, a
suicide.

Now the least experience of life will make it evi*
dent that a large class of sins can only be met, as
it were, by Suicide. The peculiar feature of Death
by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but
sudden. And there are many sins which must either
be dealt with suddenly or not at all. Under this
category, for instance, are to be included generally all
sins of the appetites and passions. Other sins, from
their peculiar nature, can only be treated by methods
less abrupt, but the sudden operation of the knife is
the only successful means of dealing with fleshly sins.
For example, the correspondence of the drunkard
with his wine is a thing which can be broken off by
degrees only in the rarest cases. To attempt it
gradually may in an isolated case succeed, but even
then the slightly prolonged gratification is no com-
pensation for the slow torture of a gradually di-
minishing indulgence. " If thine appetite offend thee
cut it off," may seem at first but a harsh remedy ;
but when we contemplate on the one hand the
lingering pain of the gradual process, on the other
its constant peril, we are compelled to admit that
the principle is as kind as it is wise. The expression
" total abstinence M in such a case is a strictly bio-
logical formula. It implies the sudden destruction

1 84 MOR TIFICA TION.

of a definite portion of environment by the total
withdrawal of all the connecting links. Obviously of
course total abstinence ought thus to be allowed a
much wider application than to cases of " intemper-
ance." It is the only decisive method of dealing with
any sin of the flesh. The very nature of the relations
makes it absolutely imperative that every victim of
unlawful appetite, in whatever direction, shall totally
abstain. Hence Chrises apparently extreme and per-
emptory language defines the only possible, as well
as the only charitable, expedient : " If thy right eye
offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. And
if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it
from thee."

The humanity of what is called " sudden conver-
sion " has never been insisted on as it deserves. In
discussing " Biogenesis " l it has been already pointed
out that while growth is a slow and gradual process,
the change from Death to Life alike in the natural
and spiritual spheres is the work of a moment.
Whatever the conscious hour of the second birth may
be — in the case of an adult it is probably defined by
the first real victory over sin — it is certain that on
oiological principles the real turning-point is literally
a moment But on moral and humane grounds this

1 Page 93.

MOR TIFICA TION. 185

misunderstood, perverted, and therefore despised doc-
trine is equally capable of defence. Were any re-
former, with an adequate knowledge of human life, to
sit down and plan a scheme for the salvation of sinful
men, he would probably come to the conclusion that
the best way after all, perhaps indeed the only way,
to turn a sinner from the error of his ways would be
to do it suddenly.

Suppose a drunkard were advised to take off one
portion from his usual allowance the first week, an-
other the second, and so on ! Or suppose at first
he only allowed himself to become intoxicated in the
evenings, then every second evening, then only on
Saturday nights, and finally only every Christmas?
How would a thief be reformed if he slowly reduced
the number of his burglaries, or a wife-beater by
gradually diminishing the number of his blows ?
The argument ends with an ad absitrdum. " Let him
that stole steal no more," is the only feasible, the only
moral, and the only humane way. This may not
apply to every case, but when any part of man's
sinful life can be dealt with by immediate Suicide, to
make him reach the end, even were it possible, by a
lingering death, would be a monstrous cruelty. And
yet k is this very thing in " sudden conversion," that
men object to — the sudden change, the decisive
stand, the uncompromising rupture with the past, the

1 86 MOR TIF1CA TIOW.

precipitate flight from sin as of one escaping for his
life. Men surely forget that this is an escaping for
one's life. Let the poor prisoner run — madly and
blindly if he likes, for the terror of Death is upon
him. God knows, when the pause comes, how the
chains will gall him still.

It is a peculiarity of the sinful state, that as a
general rule men are linked to evil mainly by a
single correspondence. Few men break the whole
law. Our natures, fortunately, are not large enough
to make us guilty of all, and the restraints of cir-
cumstances are usually such as to leave a loophole
in the life of each individual for only a single
habitual sin. But it is very easy to see how this
reduction of our intercourse with evil to a single
correspondence blinds us to our true position. Our
correspondences, as a whole, are not with evil, and
in our calculations as to our spiritual condition we
emphasize the many negatives rather than the single
positive. One little weakness, we are apt to fancy,
all men must be allowed, and we even claim a cer-
tain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature
which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with
the lower environment at all, to many, is to break
at this single point. It is the only important point
at which they touch it, circumstances or natural
disposition making habitual contact at other places

MORTIFICATION. 187

impossible. The sinful environment, in short, to
them means a small but well-defined area. Now if
contact at this point be not broken off, they arc
virtually in contact still with the whole environment.
There may be only one avenue between the new life
and the old, it may be but a small and subterranean
passage, but this is sufficient to keep the old life in.
So long as that remains the victim is not "dead
unto sin," and therefore he cannot " live unto God."
Hence the reasonableness of the words, "Whosoever
shall keep the whole law, and yet offend at one point,
he is guilty of all." In the natural world it only
requires a single vital correspondence of the body to
be out of order to ensure Death. It is not necessary
to have consumption, diabetes, and an aneurism to
bring the body to the grave if it have heart-disease.
He who is fatally diseased in one organ necessarily
pays the penalty with his life, though all the others
be in perfect health. And such, likewise, are the
mysterious unity and correlation of functions in the
spiritual organism that the disease of one member
may involve the ruin of the whole. The reason,
therefore, with which Christ follows up the announce-
ment «* His Doctrine of Mutilation, or local Suicide,
finds here at once its justification and interpretation :
" If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of

ii>8 MORTIFICATION.

thy members should perish, and not that thy whole
body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand
offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for it is
profitable for thee that one of thy members should
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast
into hell."

Secondly, Mortification. The warrant for the use
of this expression is found in the well-known phrases
of Paul, " If ye through the Spirit do mortify the
deeds of the body ye shall live," and " Mortify there-
fore your members which are upon earth." The
word mortify here is, literally, to make to die. It is
used, of course, in no specially technical sense ; and
to attempt to draw a detailed moral from the patho-
logy of mortification would be equally fantastic and
irrelevant. But without in any way straining the
meaning it is obvious that we have here a slight
addition to our conception of dying to sin. In con-
trast with Suicide, Mortification implies a gradual
rather than a sudden process. The contexts in which
the passages occur will make this meaning so clear,
and are otherwise so instructive in the general connec-
tion, that we may quote them, from the New Version,
at length \ ' They that are after the flesh do mind
the things of the flesh ; but they that are after the
Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the
flesh is death ; but the mind of the Spirit is life and

MOR TIFICA TION. 1 89

peace : because the mind of the flesh is enmity
against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can it be : and they that are in the
flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the
flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of
God dwell in you. But if any man hath not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ
is in you, the body is dead because of sin ; but the
Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from
the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies
through His Spirit that dwelleth in you. So then,
brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live
after the flesh : for if ye live after the flesh ye must
die ; but if by the Spirit ye mortify the doings
(rriarg.) of the body, ye shall live." 1

And again, " If then ye were raised together with
Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ
is seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind
on the things that are above, not on the things that
are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is
hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is oui
life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him
be manifested in glory. Mortify therefore your

1 Rom. viii. 5-13.

190 MOR TIFICA T10N.

members which are upon the earth ; fornication, un-
cleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the
which is idolatry; for which things' sake cometh
th^ wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience ;
in the which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived
in these things. But now put ye also away all
these ; anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speak-
ing out of your mouth : lie not one to another ; see-
ing that ye have put off the old man with his doings,
and have put on the new man, which is being renewed
unto knowledge after the image of Him that created
him."1

From the nature of the case as here stated it is
evident that no sudden process could entirely transfer
a man from the old into the new relation. To break
altogether, and at every point, with the old environ-
ment, is a simple impossibility. So long as the
regenerate man is kept in this world, he must find
the old environment at many points a severe temp-
tation. Power over very many of the commonest
temptations is only to be won by degrees, and how-
ever anxious one might be to apply the summary
method to every case, he soon finds it impossible in
practice. The difficulty in these cases arises from a
peculiar feature of the temptation. The difference

1 CoL iii. i-io

MOR TIFICA TION. 191

between a sin of drunkenness, and, let us say, a sin
of temper, is that in the former case the victim who
would reform has mainly to deal with the environ*
ment, but in the latter with the correspondence.
The drunkard's temptation is a known and definite
quantity. His safety lies in avoiding some external
and material substance. Of course, at bottom, he is
really dealing with the correspondence every time he
resists ; he is distinctly controlling appetite. Never-
theless it is less the appetite that absorbs his mind
than the environment. And so long as he can keep
himself clear of the " external relation," to use Mr.
Herbert Spencers phraseology, he has much less dif-
ficulty with the "internal relation." The ill-tempered
person, on the other hand, can make very little of his
environment. However he may attempt to circum-
scribe it in certain directions, there will always re-
main a wide and ever-changing area to stimulate
his irascibility. His environment, in short, is an in-
constant quantity, and his most elaborate calcula-
tions and precautions must often and suddenly fail
him.

What he has to deal with, then, mainly is the
correspondence, the temper itself. And that, he
well knows, involves a long and humiliating dis-
cipline. The case now is not at all a surgical but
a medical one, and the knife is here of no more use

192 M OR TIFICA T10N.

than in a fever. A specific irritant has poisoned his
veins. And the acrid humours that are breaking out
all over the surface of his life are only to be subdued
by a gradual sweetening of the inward spirit It is
now known that the human body acts towards certain
fever-germs as a sort oi soil. The man whose blood
is pure has nothing to fear So he whose spirit is
purified and sweetened becomes proof against these
germs of sin. " Anger, wrath, malice and railing "
in such a soil can find no root

The difference between this and the former method
of dealing with sin may be illustrated by another
analogy. The two processes depend upon two
different natural principles. The Mutilation of a
member, for instance, finds its analogue in the horti-
cultural operation of pruning, where the object is to
divert life from a useless into a useful channel. A
part of a plant which previously monopolised a large
share of the vigour of the total organism, but with-
out yielding any adequate return, is suddenly cut off,
so that the vital processes may proceed more actively
in some fruitful parts. Christ's use of this figure is
well-known : " Every branch in Me that beareth not
fruit He purgeth it that it may bring forth more
fruit" The strength of the plant, that is, being given
to the formation of mere wood, a number of useless
correspondences hav_ to be abruptly closed while the

MOR TIFICA TION. 193

useful connections are allowed to remain. The
Mortification of a member, again, is based on the Law
of Degeneration. The useless member here is not
cut off, but simply relieved as much as possible of all
exercise. This encourages the gradual decay of the
parts, and as it is more and more neglected it ceases
to be a channel for life at all. So an organism
" mortifies " its members.

Thirdly, Limitation. While a large number of
correspondences between man and his environment-
can be stopped in these ways, there are many more
which neither can be reduced by a gradual Mortifi-
cation nor cut short by sudden Death. One reason
for this is that to tamper with these correspondences
might involve injury to closely related vital parts.
Or, again, there are organs which are really essential
to the normal life of the organism, and which there-
fore the organism cannot afford to lose even though
at times they act prejudicially. Not a few corre-
spondences, for instance, are not wrong in themselves
but only in their extremes. Up to a certain point
they are lawful and necessary ; beyond that point
they may become not only unnecessary but sinful.
The appropriate treatment in these and similar cases
consists in a process of limitation. The perform-
ance of this operation, it must be confessed, r**quires
a most delicate hand. It is an art, moreover, which

O

194 MOR TIFICA TION.

no one can teach another. And yet, if it is not
learned by all who are trying to lead the Christian
life, it cannot be for want of practice. For, as we
shall see, the Christian is called upon to exercise
few things more frequently.

An easy illustration of a correspondence which in
only wrong when carried to an extreme, is the love
of money. The love of money up to a certain point
is a necessity ; beyond that it may become one of
the worst of sins. Christ said : " Ye cannot serve
God and Mammon." The two services, at a definite
point, become incompatible, and hence correspond-
ence with one must cease. At what point, however,
it must cease each man has to determine for himself.
And in this consists at once the difficulty and the
dignity of Limitation.

There is another class of cases where the adjust-
ments are still more difficult to determine. Innumer-
able points exist in our surroundings with which it
is perfectly legitimate to enjoy, and even to cultivate,
correspondence, but which privilege, at the same
time, it were better on the whole that we did not
use. Circumstances are occasionally such — the
demands of others upon us, for example, may be so
clamant — that we have voluntarily to reduce the
area of legitimate pleasure. Or, instead of it coming
from others, the claim may come from a still higher

MORTIFICATION. 195

direction Man's spiritual life consists in the number
and fulness of his correspondences with God. In
order to develop these he may be constrained to
insulate them, to enclose them from the other cor»
respondences, to shut himseif in with them. It
many ways the limitation of the natural life is the
necessary condition of the full enjoyment of the
spiritual life.

In this principle lies the true philosophy of self-
denial. No man is called to a life of self-denial for
its own sake. It is in order to a compensation which,
though sometimes difficult to see, is always real and
always proportionate. No truth, perhaps, in practical
religion is more lost sight of. We cherish somehow
a lingering rebellion against the doctrine of self-
denial — as if our nature, or our circumstances, or our
conscience, dealt with us severely in loading us with
the daily cross. But is it not plain after all that
the life of self-denial is the more abundant life —
more abundant just in proportion to the ampler
crucifixion of the narrower life ? Is it not a clear
case of exchange — an exchange however where the
advantage is entirely on our side ? We give up
a correspondence in which there is a little life to
enjoy a correspondence in which there is an abundant
life. What though we sacrifice a hundred such
correspondences? We make but the more room

196 MORTIFICATION.

for the great one that is left. The lesson of self-
denial, that is to say of Limitation, is concentration,
Do not spoil your life, it says, at the outset with
unworthy and impoverishing correspondences ; and if
it is growing truly rich and abundant, be very jealous
of ever diluting its high eternal quality with anything
of earth. To concentrate upon a few great corre-
spondences, to oppose to the death the perpetual
petty larceny of our life by trifles — these are the
conditions for the highest and happiest life. It is
only Limitation which can secure the Illimitable.

The penalty of evading self-denial also is just that
we get the lesser instead of the larger good. The
punishment of sin is inseparably bound up with
itself. To refuse to deny one's self is just to be left
with the self undenied. When the balance of life
is struck, the self will be found still there. The
discipline of life was meant to destroy this self, but
that discipline having been evaded — and we all to
some extent have opportunities, and too often exer-
cise them, of taking the narrow path by the shortest
cuts — its purpose is baulked. But the soul is the
loser. In seeking to gain its life it has really lost it
This is what Christ meant when He said : " He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his
life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

Why does Christ say: « Hate Life " ? Does He

MOR TIFICA TION. 197

mean that life is a sin ? No. Life is not a sin.
Still, He says we must hate it. But we must live,
Why should we hate what we must do ? For this
reason : Life is not a sin, but th< love of life may be
a sin And the best way not to love life is to hate
it Is it a sin then to love life / Not a sin exactly,
but a mistake. It is a sin 10 love some life, a
mistake to love the rest. Because that love is lost
All that is lavished on it is lost. Christ does not
say it is wrong to love life. He simply says it is
loss. Each man has only a certain amount of life,
of time, of attention — a definite measurable quantity.
If he gives any of it to this life solely it is wasted.
Therefore Christ says, Hate life, limit life, lest you
steal your love for it from something that deserves it
more.

Now this does not apply to all life. It is " life in
this world " that is to be hated. For life in this
world implies conformity to this world. It may not
mean pursuing worldly pleasures, or mixing with
worldly sets ; but a subtler thing than that — a silent
deference to worldly opinion ; an almost unconscious
lowering of religious tone to the level of the worldly-
religious world around ; a subdued resistance to the
soul's delicate promptings to greater consecration,
out of deference to " breadth " or fear of ridicule.
These, and such things, are what Christ tells us we

MOR TIFICA TION.

must hate. For these things are of the very essence
of worldliness. " If any man love the world," even
tr this sense^ " the love of the Father is not in him."

There are two ways of hating life, a true and a
false. Some men hate life because it hates them.
They have seen through it, and it has turned round
upon them. They have drunk it, and come to the
dregs; therefore they hate it This is one of the
ways in which the man who loves his life literally
loses it He loves it till he loses it, then he hates it
because it has fooled him. The other way is the
religious. For religious reasons a man deliberately
Draces himself to the systematic hating of his life.
1 No man can serve two masters, for either he must
hate the one and love the other, or else he must hold
to the one and despise the other." Despising the
other — this is hating life, limiting life. It is not
misanthropy, but Christianity.

This principle, as has been said, contains the true
philosophy of self-denial. It also holds the secret
by which self-denial may be most easily borne. A
common conception of self-denial is that there are
a multitude of things about life which are to be put
down with a high hand the moment they make their
appearance. They are temptations which are not to
be tolerated, but must be instantly crushed out of
being with pang and effort

MORTIFICATION. 199

So life comes to be a constant and sore cutting off
ot things which we love as our right hand. But now
suppose one tried boldly to hate these things ?
Suppose we deliberately made up our minds as to
what things we were henceforth to allow to become
our life ? Suppose we selected a given area of our
environment and determined once for all that our
correspondences should go to that alone, fencing in
*his area all round with a morally impassable wall ?
True, to others, we should seem to live a poorer
life ; they would see that our environment was cir-
cumscribed, and call us narrow because it was narrow.
But, well-chosen, this limited life would be really the
fullest life ; it would be rich in the highest and
worthiest, and poor in the smallest and basest cor-
respondences. The well-defined spiritual life is not
only the highest life, but it is also the most easily
lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than
the half. It is the man who tries to make the best of
both worlds who makes nothing of either. And he
who seeks to serve two masters misses the bene-
diction of both. But he who has taken his stand,
who has drawn a boundary line, sharp and deep
about his religious life, who has marked Dff all
beyond as for ever forbidden ground to him, finds
the yoke easy and the burden light. For this for-
bidden environment comes to be as if it were not

200 MOR TIFICA TION.

His faculties falling out of correspondence, slowly
lose their sensibilities. And the balm of Death
numbing his lower nature releases him for the
scarce disturbed communion of a higher life. So
even here to die is gain.

ETERNAL LIFE.

" Supposing that man, in some form, is permitted to
remain on the earth for a long series of years, we merely
lengthen out the period, but we cannot escape the final
catastrophe. The earth will gradually lose its energy of
rotation, as well as that of revolution round the sun. The
sun himself will wax dim and become iLseless as a source
of energy, until at last the favourable conditions of the
present solar system will have quite disappeared.

" But what happens to our syste?7i will happen likewise to
the whole visible universe, which will, if finite, become a
lifeless mass, if indeed it be not doomed to utter dissolution.
In fine, it will become old and effete, no less truly tJian the
individual. It is a glorious garment, this visible universe,
but not an immortal one. We must look elsewhere if we are
to be clothed with immortality as with a garmeiit."

The Unseen Universe.

ETERNAL LIFE.

11 This is Life Eternal — that they might know Thee, the True
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." — Jesus Christ.

" Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there
no changes in the environment but such as the organism had
adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the effi-
ciency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence
and eternal knowledge." — Herbert Spencer.

One of the most startling achievements of recent
science is a definition of Eternal Life. To the reli-
gious mind this is a contribution of immense moment.
For eighteen hundred years only one definition of
Life Eternal was before the world. Now there are
two.

Through all these centuries revealed religion had
this doctrine to itself. Ethics had a voice, as well
as Christianity, on the question of the summum
bonum; Philosophy ventured to speculate on the
Being of a God. But no source outside Christianity
contributed anything to the doctrine of Eternal Life,
Apart from Revelation, this great truth was un-
guaranteed. It was the one thing in the Christian

204 ETERNAL LIFE.

system that most needed verification from without,
yet none was forthcoming. And never has any
further light been thrown upon the question why in
its very nature the Christian Life should be Eternal
Christianity itself even upon this point has been
obscure. Its decision upon the bare fact is authori-
tative and specific. But as to what there is in the
Spiritual Life necessarily endowing it with the
element of Eternity, the maturest theology is all but
silent.

It has been reserved for modern biology at once
to defend and illuminate this central truth of the
Christian faith. And hence in the interests of reli-
gion, practical and evidential, this second and scientific
definition of Eternal Life is to be hailed as an
announcement of commanding interest. Why it
should not yet have received the recognition of
religious thinkers — for already it has lain some years
unnoticed — is not difficult to understand. The belief /
in Science as an aid to faith is not yet ripe enough
to warrant men in searching there for witnesses to
the highest Christian truths. The inspiration of
Nature, it is thought, extends to the humbler doc-
trines alone. And yet the reverent inquirer who
guides his steps in the right direction may find even
now in the still dim twilight of the scientific world
much that will illuminate and intensify his sublimest

ETERNAL LIFE. 205

faith. Here, at least, comes, and comes unbidden,
the opportunity of testing the most vital point of the
(Christian system. Hitherto the Christian philo-
sopher has remained content with the scientific evi-
dence against Annihilation. Or, with Butler, he has
reasoned from the Metamorphoses of Insects to a
future life. Or again, with the authors of "The
Unseen Universe/' the apologist has constructed
elaborate, and certainly impressive, arguments upor.
the Law of Continuity. But now we may draw nearer.
For the first time Science touches Christianity posi-
tively on the doctrine of Immortality. It confronts
us with an actual definition of an Eternal Life,
based on a full and rigidly accurate examination ot
the necessary conditions. Science does not pretend
that it can fulfil these conditions. Its votaries make
no claim to possess the Eternal Life. It simply
postulates the requisite conditions without concern-
ing itself whether any organism should ever appear,
or does now exist, which might fulfil them. The
claim of religion, on the other hand, is that there are
organisms which possess Eternal Life. And the
problem for us to solve is this : Do those who pro-
fess to possess Eternal Life fulfil the conditions
required by Science, or are they different conditions ?
In a word, Is the Christian conception of Eternal
Life scientific ?

206 ETERNAL LIFE.

It may be unnecessary to notice at the outset that
the definition of Eternal Life drawn up by Science
was framed without reference to religion. It must
indeed have been the last thought with the thinkei
to whom we chiefly owe it, that in unfolding the
conception of a Life in its very nature necessarily
eternal, he was contributing to Theology.

Mr. Herbert Spencer — for it is to him we owe it —
would be the first to admit the impartiality of his
definition ; and from the connection in which it
occurs in his writings, it is obvious that religion was
not even present to his mind. He is analysing with
minute care the relations between Environment and
Life. He unfolds the principle according to which
Life is high or low, long or short. He shows why
organisms live and why they die. And finally he
defines a condition of things in which an organism
would never die — in which it would enjoy a perpetual
and perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a
speculation. Life Eternal is a biological conceit.
The conditions necessary to an Eternal Life do not
exist in the natural world. So that the definition is
altogether impartial and independent. A Perfect
Life, to Science, is simply a thing which is theoreti-
cally possible — like a Perfect Vacuum.

Before giving, in so many words, the definition of
Mr. Herbert Spencer, it will render it fully intelli-

ETERNAL LIFE, 207

gible if we gradually lead up to it by a brief ie-
hearsal of the few and simple biological facts on
which it is based. In considering the subject of
Death, we have formerly seen that there are
degrees of Life. By this is meant that some liver
have more and fuller correspondence with Environ-
ment than others. The amount of correspondence,
again, is determined by the greater or less complex-
ity of the organism. Thus a simple organism like
the Amoeba is possessed of very few correspondences.
It is a mere sac of transparent structureless jelly for
which organization has done almost nothing, and
hence it can only communicate with the smallest
possible area of Environment. An insect, in virtue
of its more complex structure, corresponds with a
wider area. Nature has endowed it with special
faculties for reaching out to the Environment on
many sides ; it has more life than the Amoeba. In
other words, it is a higher animal. Man again,
whose body is still further differentiated, or broken
up into different correspondences, finds himself en
rapport with his surroundings to a further extent.
And therefor® he is higher still, more living stilL
And this law, that the degree of Life varies with the
degree of correspondence, holds to the minutest
detail throughout the entire range of living things.
Life becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer, more

208 ETERNAL LIFE

and more sensitive and responsive to an ever-
widening Environment as we rise in the chain ol
being.

Now it will speedily appear that a distinct rela-
tion exists, and must exist, between complexity
and longevity. Death being brought about by the
failure of an organism to adjust itself to some
change in the Environment, it follows that those
organisms which are able to adjust themselves most
readily and successfully will live the longest. They
will continue time after time to effect the appro-
priate adjustment, and their power of doing so will
be exactly proportionate to their complexity — that
is, to the amount of Environment they can controi
with their correspondences. There are, for example,
in the Environment of every animal certain things
which are directly or indirectly dangerous to Life.
If its equipment of correspondences is not com-
plete enough to enable it to avoid these dangers
in all possible circumstances, it must sooner or
later succumb. The organism then with the most
perfect set of correspondences, that is, the highest
and most complex organism, has an obvious advan-
tage over less complex forms. It can adjust itself
more perfectly and frequently. But this is just
the biological way of saying that it can live the
longest. And hence the relation between com-

ETERNAL LIFE. 209

plexity and longevity may be expressed thus — the
most complex organisms are the longest lived.

To state and illustrate the proposition conversely
may make the point still further clear. The less
highly organized an animal is, the less will be its
chance of remaining in lengthened correspondence
with its Environment. At some time or other in
its career circumstances are sure to occur to which
the comparatively immobile organism finds itself
structurally unable to respond. Thus a Medusa
tossed ashore by a wave, finds itself so out of cor-
respondence with its new surroundings that its life
must pay the forfeit. Had it been able by internal
change to adapt itself to external change — to cor-
respond sufficiently with the new environment, as
for example to crawl, as an eel would have done,
back into that environment with which it had
completer correspondence — its life might have been
spared. But had this happened it would continue
to live henceforth only so long as it could continue
in correspondence with all the circumstances in
which it might find itself. Even if, however, it
became complex enough to resist the ordinary and
direct dangers of its environment, it might still be
out of correspondence with others. A naturalist
for instance, might take advantage of its want of
correspondence with particular sights and sound to

P

ETERNAL LIFE.

capture it for his cabinet, or the sudden dropping
of a yacht's anchor or the turn of a screw might
cause its untimely death.

Again, in the case of a bird in virtue of its
more complex organization, there is command over
a much larger area of environment. It can take
precautions such as the Medusa could not ; it has
increased facilities for securing food ; its adjust-
ments all round are more complex ; and therefore
it ought to be able to maintain its Life for a longei
period. There is still a large area, however, over
which it has no control. Its power of internal
change is not complete enough to afford it perfect
correspondence with all external changes, and its
tenure of Life is to that extent insecure. Its cor-
respondence, moreover, is limited even with regard
to those external conditions with which it has been
partially established. Thus a bird in ordinary cir-
cumstances has no difficulty in adapting itself to
changes of temperature, but if these are varied
beyond the point at which its capacity of adjust-
ment begins to fail — for example, during an extreme
winter — the organism being unable to meet the con-
dition must perish. The human organism, on the
other hand, can respond to this external condition,
a.s well as to countless other vicissitudes under
which lower forms would inf vitably succumb. Man's

ETERNAL LIFE.

adjustments are to the largest known area of En-
vironment, and hence he ought to be able furthest
to prolong his Life.

It becomes evident, then, that as we ascend in
the scale of Life we rise also in the scale of lon-
gevity. The lowest organisms are, as a rule, short-
lived, and the rate of mortality diminishes more
or less regularly as we ascend in the animal scale.
So extraordinary indeed is the mortality among
lowly-organized forms that in most cases a compen-
sation is actually provided, nature endowing them
with a marvellously increased fertility in order to
guard against absolute extinction. Almost all lower
forms are furnished not only with great reproduc-
tive powers, but with different methods of propa-
gation, by which, in various circumstances, and in
an incredibly short time, the species can be indefi-
nitely multiplied. Ehrenberg found that by the
repeated subdivisions of a single Paramecium, no
fewer than 268,000,000 similar organisms might be
produced in one month. This power steadily de-
creases as we rise higher in the scale, until forms
are reached in which one, two, or at most three,
come into being at a birth. It decreases, however
because it is no longer needed. These forms have
a much longer lease of Life. And it may be taken
as a rule, although it has exceptions, that com-

212 ETERNAL LIFE.

plexity in animal organisms is always associated
with longevity.

It may be objected that these illustrations are
taken merely from morbid conditions. But whether
the Life be cut short by accident or by disease
the principle is the same. AH dissolution is brought
about practically in the same way. A certain con-
dition in the Environment fails to be met by a
corresponding condition in the organism, and this
is death. And conversely the more an organism in
virtue of its complexity can adapt itself to all the
parts of its Environment, the longer it will live.
" It is manifest a priori" says Mr. Herbert Spencer,
"that since changes in the physical state of the
environment, as also those mechanical actions and
those variations of available food which occur in
it, are liable to stop the processes going on in the
organism ; and since the adaptive changes in the
organism have the effects of directly or indirectly
counterbalancing these changes in the environment,
it follows that the life of the organism will be short
or long, low or high, according to the extent tc
which changes in the environment are met by cor-
responding changes in the organism. Allowing a
margin for perturbations, the life will continue only
while the correspondence continues ; the com-
pleteness of the life will be proportionate to the

ETERNAL LIFE. 213

completeness of the correspondence ; and the life
will be perfect only when the correspondence is
pei feet" l

We are now all but in sight of our scientific defi-
nition of Eternal Life. The desideratum is an organ-
ism with a correspondence of a very exceptional
kind. It must lie beyond the reach of those "me-
chanical actions" and those "variations of available
food/' which are " liable to stop the processes going
on in the organism." Before we reach an Eternal
Life we must pass beyond that point at which all
ordinary correspondences inevitably cease. We
must find an organism so high and complex, that at
some point in its development it shall have added a
correspondence which organic death is powerless to
arrest. We must in short pass beyond that finite
region where the correspondences depend on evan-
escent and material media, and enter a further region
where the Environment corresponded with is itself
Eternal. Such an Environment exists. The En-
vironment of the Spiritual world is outside the
influence of these u mechanical actions," which sooner
or later interrupt the processes going on in all finite
organisms. If then we can find an organism which
has established a correspondence with the spiritual

1 u Principles of Biology," p. 82.

214 ETERNAL LIFE.

world, that correspondence will possess the elements
of eternity — provided only one other condition be
fulfilled.

Thai condition is that the Environment be perfect
If it is not perfect, if it is not the highest, if it is
endowed with the finite quality of change, there can
be no guarantee that the Life of its correspondents
will be eternal. Some change might occur in it
which the correspondents had no adaptive changes
to meet, and Life would cease. But grant a spiritual
organism in perfect correspondence with a perfect
spiritual Environment, and the conditions necessary
to Eternal Life are satisfied.

The exact terms of Mr. Herbert Spencer's defini-
tion of Eternal Life may now be given. And it will
be seen that they include essentially the conditions
here laid down. u Perfect correspondence would be
perfect life. Were there no changes in the environ-
ment but such as the organism had adapted changes
to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency
with which it met them, there would be eternal
existence and eternal knowledge." l Reserving the
question as to the possible fulfilment of these con-
ditions, let us turn for a moment to the definition of
Eternal Life laid down by Christ. Let us place it

i «

Principles of Biology," p. 88,

ETERNAL LIFE. 21$

alongside the definition of Science, and mark the
points of contact. Uninterrupted correspondence
with a perfect Environment is Eternal Life according
to Science. " This is Life Eternal," said Christ*
"that they may know Thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" 1 Life Eternal
is to know God. To know God is to " correspond "
with God. To correspond with God is to correspond
with a Perfect Environment. And the organism
which attains to this, in the nature of things must
live for ever. Here is u eternal existence and eternal
knowledge."

The main point of agreement between the scientific
and the religious definition is that Life consists in a
peculiar and personal relation defined as a " corre-
spondence." This conception, that Life consists in
correspondences, has been so abundantly illustrated
already that it is now unnecessary to discuss it
further. All Life indeed consists essentially in
correspondences with various Environments. The
artist's life is a correspondence with art ; the musi-
cian's with music. To cut them off from these En-
vironments is in that relation to cut off* their Life,
To be cut off from all Environment is death. To
find a new Environment again and cultivate relation

S

1 John xvii

216 ETERNAL LIFE.

with it is to find a new Life. To live is to corre-
spond, and to correspond is to live. So much is true
in Science. But it is also true in Religion. And it
is of great importance to observe that to Religion
also the conception of Life is a correspondence. No
truth of Christianity has been more ignorantly or
wilfully travestied than the doctrine of Immortality.
The popular idea, in spite of a hundred protests, is
that Eternal Life is to live for ever. A single glance
at the locus classicus, might have made this error
impossible. There we are told that Life Eternal is
not to live. This is Life Eternal — to know. And yet
— and it is a notorious instance of the fact that men
who are opposed to Religion will take their con-
ceptions of its profoundest truths from mere vulgar
perversions — this view still represents to many cul-
tivated men the Scriptural doctrine of Eternal Life.
From time to time the taunt is thrown at Religion,
not unseldom from lips which Science ought to
have taught rfiore caution, that the Future Life of
Christianity is simply a prolonged existence, an
eternal monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance
of being. The Bible never could commit itself to
any such empty platitude ; nor could Christianity
ever offer to the world a hope so colourless. Not
that Eternal Life has nothing to do with everlasting-
ness. That is part of the conception And it is this

ETERNAL LIFE. 21?

aspect of the question that first arrests us in the field
of Science. But even Science has more in its defi-
nition than longevity. It has a correspondence and
8ti Environment ; and although it cannot fill up
these terms for Religion, it can indicate at least the
nature of the relation, the kind of thing that is meant
by Life. Science speaks to us indeed of much more
than numbers of years. It defines degrees of Life.
It explains a widening Environment. It unfolds
the relation between a widening Environment and
increasing complexity in organisms. And if it has no
absolute contribution to the content of Religion, its
analogies are not limited to a point. It yields to
Immortality, and this is the most that Science can
do in any case, the broad framework for a doctrine.

The further definition, moreover, of this corre-
spondence as knowing is in the highest degree signi-
ficant. Is not this the precise quality in an Eternal
correspondence which the analogies of Science would
prepare us to look for ? Longevity is associated
with complexity. And complexity in organisms is
manifested by the successive addition of correspon-
dences, each richer and larger than those which have
gof.e before. The differentiation, therefore, of the
spiritual organism ought to be signalized by the
addition of the highest possible correspondence. It
is not essential to the idea that the correspondence

2iS ETERNAL LIFE.

should be altogether novel ; it is necessary rathei
that it should not. An altogether new correspon-
dence appearing suddenly without shadow or pro-
phecy would be a violation of continuity. What we
should expect would be something new, and yet
something that we were already prepared for. We
should look for a further development in harmony
with current developments ; the extension of the last
and highest correspondence in a new and higher
direction. And this is exactly what we have. In
the world with which biology deals, Evolution cul-
minates in Knowledge,

At whatever point in the zoological scale this cor-
respondence, or set of correspondences, begins, it is
certain there is nothing higher. In its stunted
infancy merely, when we meet with its rudest be-
ginnings in animal intelligence, it is a thing so won-
derful, as to strike every thoughtful and reverent
observer with awe. Even among the invertebrates
so marvellously are these or kindred powers dis-
played, that naturalists do not hesitate now, on the
ground of intelligence at least, to classify some of the
humblest creatures next to man himself.1 Nothing
in nature, indeed, is so unlike the rest of nature, so
prophetic of what is beyond it, so supernatural. And

1 Vide Sir John Lubbock's " Ants, Bees, and Wasps," pp. I
181,

ETERNAL LIFE, 219

as manifested in Man who crowns creation with his
all-embracing consciousness, there is but one word
to describe his knowledge : it is Divir 1 If then
from this point there is to be any further Evolution,
this surely must be the correspondence in which it
shall take place? This correspondence is great
enough to demand development ; and yet it is little
enough to need it. The magnificence of what it has
achieved relatively, is the pledge of the possibility
of more ; the insignificance of its conquest absolute-
ly involves the probability of still richer triumphs.
If anything, in short, in humanity is to go on it
must be this. Other correspondences may continue
likewise ; others, again, we can well afford to leave
behind. But this cannot cease. This correspon-
dence— or this set of correspondences, for it is very
complex — is it not that to which men with one
consent would attach Eternal Life ? Is there any-
thing else to which they would attach it ? Is any-
thing better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller,
nobler, anything which would represent a higher form
of Evolution or offer a more perfect ideal for an
Eternal Life ?

But these are questions of quality ; and the
moment we pass from quantity to quality we leave
Science behind. In the vocabulary of Science,
Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means

ETERNAL LIFE.

v

mere everlastingness. To Religion, on the other
hand, Eternity has little to do with time. To
correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal
Unknowable, would be everlasting existence ; to
correspond with " the true God and Jesus Christ,"
is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life
alone makes the heaven ; mere everlastingness
might be no boon. Even the brief span of the
temporal life is too long for those who spend its
years in sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eternity,
is all but excruciating to Doubt. And many be-
sides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded con-
sciousness as the hideous mistake and malady of
Nature. Therefore we must not only have quantity
of years, to speak in the language of the present,
but quality of correspondence. When we leave
Science behind, this correspondence also receives
a higher name. It becomes communion. Other
names there are for it, religious and theological.
It may be included in a general expression, Faith ;
or we may call it by a personal and specific term,
Love. For the knowing of a Whole so great in-
volves the co-operation of many parts.

Communion with God — can it be demonstrated
in terms of Science that this is a correspondence
which will never break ? We do not appeal to
Science for such a testimony. We have asked foi

ETERNAL LIFE. 221

its conception of an Eternal Life ; and we have
received for answer that Eternal Life would consist
in a correspondence which should never cease, with
an Environment which should never pass away.
And yet what would Science demand of a perfect
correspondence that is not met by this, the knowing
of God? There is no other correspondence which
could satisfy one at least of the conditions. Not
one could be named which would not bear on the
face of it the mark and pledge of its mortality.
But this, to know God, stands alone. To 'know
God, to be linked with God, to be linked with
Eternity — if this is not the "eternal existence " of
biology, what can more nearly approach it ? And
yet we are still a great way off — to establish a
communication with the Eternal is not to secure
Eternal Life. It must be assumed that the com-
munication could be sustained. And to assume
this would be to beg the question. So that we
have still to prove Eternal Life. But let it be
again repeated, we are not here seeking proofs.
We are seeking light. We are merely reconnoitring
from the furthest promontory of Science if so be
that through the haze we may discern the outline
of a distant coast and come to some conclusion as
to the possibility of landing.

But, it may be replied, it is not open to any one

222 ETERNAL LIFE.

handling the question of Immortality from the side
of Science to remain neutral as to the question of
fact It is not enough to announce that he has
no addition to make to the positive argument*
This may be permitted with reference to othef
points of contact between Science and Religion,
but not with this. We are told this question is
settled — that there is no positive side. Science
meets the entire conception of Immortality with a
direct negative. In the face of a powerful consensus
against even the possibility of a Future Life, to
content oneself with saying that Science pretended
to no argument in favour of it would be at once
impertinent and dishonest. We must therefore
devote ourselves for a moment to the question of
possibility.

The problem is, with a material body and a
mental organization inseparably connected with it,
to bridge the grave. Emotion, volition, thought
itself, are functions of the brain. When the brain
is impaired, they are impaired. When the brain is
not, they are not. Everything ceases with the
dissolution of the material fabric ; muscular activity
and mental activity perish alike. With the pro-
nounced positive statements on this point from
many departments of modern Science we are all
familiar. The fatal verdict is recorded by a hundred

ETERNAL LIFE. 223

hands and with scarcely a shadow of qualification.
"Unprejudiced philosophy is compelled t> reject
the idea of an individual immortality and of a
personal continuance after death. With the decay
and dissolution of its material substratum, through
which alone it has acquired a conscious existence
and become a person, and upon which it was
dependent, the spirit must cease to exist." l To the
same effect Vogt : " Physiology decides definitely
and categorically against individual immortality, as
against any special existence of the soul. The soul
does not enter the foetus like the evil spirit into
persons possessed, but is a product of the develop-
ment of the brain, just as muscular activity is a
product of muscular development, and secretion a
product of glandular development." After a careful
review of the position of recent Science with regard
to the whole doctrine, Mr. Graham sums up thus:
" Such is the argument of Science, seemingly
decisive against a future life. As we listen to her
array of syllogisms, our hearts die within us. The
hopes of men, placed in one scale to be weighed,
seem to fly up against the massive weight of her
evidence, placed in the other. It seems as if all
our arguments were vain and unsubstantial, as if

. * Buchner : " Force and Matter," 3rd Ed., p. 23a.

224 ETERNAL LIFE.

our future expectations were the foolish dreams of
children, as if there could not be any other possible
verdict arrived at upon the evidence brought for-
ward." l

Can we go on in the teeth of so real an obstruc-
tion ? Has not our own weapon turned against us,
Science abolishing with authoritative hand the very
truth we are asking it to define?

What the philosopher has to throw into the other
scale can be easily indicated. Generally speaking,
he demurs to the dogmatism of the conclusion.
That mind and brain react, that the mental and
the physiological processes are related, and very
intimately related, is beyond controversy. But how
they are related, he submits, it still altogether un-
known. The correlation of mind and brain do not
involve their identity. And not a few authorities
accordingly have consistently hesitated to draw any
conclusion at all. Even Biichner's statement turns
out, on close examination, to be tentative in the
extreme. In prefacing his chapter on Personal
Continuance, after a single sentence on the de-
pendence of the soul and its manifestations upon
a material substratum, he remarks, " Though we are
unable to form a definite idea as to the how of this

1 "The Creed of Science," p. 169.

ETERNAL LIFE. 225

connection, we are still by these facts justified in
Asserting, that the mode of this connection renders
it apparently impossible that they should continue
tc exist separately."1 There is, therefore, a flaw at
this point in the argument for materialism. It
may not help the spiritualist in the least degree
positively. He may be as far as ever from a
theory of how consciousness could continue with-
out the material tissue. But his contention secures
for him the right of speculation. The path beyond
may lie in hopeless gloom ; but it is not barred.
He may bring forward his theory if he will. And
this is something. For a permission to go on is
often the most that Science can grant to Religion.

Men have taken advantage of this loophole in
various ways. And though it cannot be said that
these speculations offer us more than a proba-
bility, this is still enough to combine with the
deep-seated expectation in the bosom of mankind
and give fresh lustre to the hope of a future
life. Whether we find relief in the theory of a
simple dualism ; whether with Ulrici we further
define the soul as an invisible enswathement of the
body, material yet non-atomic ; whether, with the
H Unseen Universe," we are helped by the spectacle

1 •'Force and Matter," p. 231.

226 ETERNAL LIFE.

of known forms of matter shading off into an
ever-growing subtilty, mobility, and immateriality;
or whether, with Wundt, we regard the soul as
"the ordered unity of many elements/* it is cer-
tain that shapes can be given to the conception
of a correspondence which shall bridge the grave
such as to satisfy minds too much accustomed to
weigh evidence to put themselves off with fancies.

But whether the possibilities of physiology or the
theories of philosophy do or do not substantially
assist us in realizing Immortality, is to Religion, to
Religion at least regarded from the present point of
view, of inferior moment The fact of Immortality
rests for us on a different basis. Probably, indeed,
after all the Christian philosopher never engaged him-
self in a more superfluous task than in seeking along
physiological lines to find room for a soul. The
theory of Christianity has only to be fairly stated to
make manifest its thorough independence of all the
usual speculations on Immortality. The theory is
not that thought, volition, or emotion, as such are
to survive the grave. The difficulty of holding a
doctrine in this form, in spite of what has been
advanced to the contrary, in spite of the hopes and
wishes of mankind, in spite of all the scientific and
philosophical attempts to make it tenable, is still
profound No secular theory of personal continu-

ETERNAL LIFE. 227

ance, as even Butler acknowledged, does not
equally demand the eternity of the brute. No
secular theory defines the point in the chain of
Evolution at which organisms became endowed
with Immortality. No secular theory explains the
condition of the endowment, nor indicates its goal.
And if we have nothing more to fan hope than
the unexplored mystery of the whole region, or the
unknown remainders among the potencies of Life,
then, as those who have " hope only in this world,"
we are "of all men the most miserable."

When we turn, on the other hand, to the doc-
trine as it came from the lips of Christ, we find
ourselves in an entirely different region. He makes
no attempt to project the material into the imma-
terial. The old elements, however refined and subtil
as to their matter, are not in themselves to inherit
the Kingdom of God. That which is flesh is flesh.
Instead of attaching Immortality to the natural
organism, He introduces a new and original factor
which none of the secular, and few even of the
theological theories, seem to take sufficiently into
account. To Christianity, " he that hath the Son ol
God hath Life, and he that hath not the Son hath
not Life." This, as we take it, defines the corre-
spondence which is to bridge the grave. This is the
clue to the nature of the Life that lies at the back

228 ETERNAL LIFE

of the spiritual organism. And this is the true
solution of the mystery of Eternal Life.

There lies a something at the back of the corre*
spondences of the spiritual organism — just as there
lies a something at the back of the natural corre-
spondences. To say that Life is a correspondence is
only to express the partial truth. There is some-
thing behind. Life manifests itself in correspon-
dences. But what determines them ? The organism
exhibits a variety of correspondences. What organ-
izes them? As in the natural, so in the spiritual,
there is a Principle of Life. We cannot get rid of
that term. However clumsy, however provisional,
however much a mere cloak for ignorance, Science
as yet is unable to dispense with the idea of a
Principle of Life. We must work with the word
till we get a better. Now that which determines
the correspondence of the spiritual organism is a
Principle of Spiritual Life. It is a new and Divine
Possession. He that hath the Son hath Life ;
conversely, he that hath Life hath the Son. And
this indicates at once the quality and the quantity
of the correspondence which is to bridge the grave.
He that hath Life hath the Son. He possesses the
Spirit of a Son. That spirit is, so to speak,
organized within him by the Son. It is the mani«
festatf Qn of the new nature— of which more anon

ETERNAL LIFE. 229

The fact to note at present is that this is not an
organic correspondence, but a spiritual correspon-
dence. It comes not from generation, but from
regeneration. The relation between the spiritual
man and his Environment is, in theological lan-
guage, a filial relation. With the new Spirit, the
filial correspondence, he knows the Father — and
this is Life Eternal. This is not only the real
relation, but the only possible relation : " Neither
knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he
to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." And
this on purely natural grounds. It takes the Divine
to know the Divine — but in no more mysterious
sense than it takes the human to understand the
human. The analogy, indeed, for the whole field
here has been finely expressed already by Paul :
" What man," he asks, " knoweth the things of a
man, save the spirit of man which is in him ?
even so the things of God knoweth no man, but
the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God ;
that we might know the things that are freely
given to us of God."1

It were idle, such being the quality of the new
1 elation, to add that this also contains the guarantee

1 I Cor. ii. 11, IX

230 ETERNAL LIFE.

of its eternity. Here at last is a correspondence
which will never cease. Its powers in bridging the
grave have been tried. The correspondence of the
spiritual man possesses the supernatural virtues oi
the Resurrection and the Life. It is known by
former experiment to have survived the "changes
in the physical state of the environment," and those
" mechanical actions " and " variations of available
food," which Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us are " liable
to stop the processes going on in the organism." In
short, this is a correspondence which at once satisfies
the demands of Science and Religion. In mere
quantity it is different from every other corre-
spondence known. Setting aside everything else in
Religion, everything adventitious, local, and pro-
visional ; dissecting in to the bone and marrow we
find this — a correspondence which can never break
with ar Environment which can never change.
Here is a relation established with Eternity. The
passing years lay no limiting hand on it. Cor-
ruption injures it not It survives Death. It, and
it only, will stretch beyond the grave and be found
inviolate —

"When the moon is old,
And the stars are cold,
And the books of the Judgment-day unfold."

The misgiving which will creep sometimes over the

ETERNAL LIFE. 231

brightest faith has already received its expression
and its rebuke : "Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, oi
sword?" Shall these "changes in the physical state
of the environment" which threaten death to the
natural man destroy the spiritual ? Shall death, or
life, or angels, or principalities, or powers, arrest
or tamper with his eternal correspondences ? " Nay,
in all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principali-
ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." l /

It may seem an objection to some that the " per-
fect correspondence " should come to man in so
extraordinary a way. The earlier stages in the
doctrine are promising enough ; they are entirely in
line with Nature. And if Nature had also furnished
the " perfect correspondence " demanded for an
Eternal Life the position might be unassailable.
But this sudden reference to a something outside the
natural Environment destroys the continuity, and

1 Rom. viii. 35-39.

232 ETERNAL LIFE.

discovers a permanent weakness in the whole theory?

To which there is a twofold reply. In the first
place, to go outside what we call Nature is not to
go outside Environment. Nature, the natural Envir-
onment, is only a part of Environment. There
is another large part which, though some profess
to have no correspondence with it, is not on that
account unreal, or even unnaturaL The mental and
moral world is unknown to the plant. But it is real.
It cannot be affirmed either that it is unnatural to
the plant ; although it might be said that from the
point of view of the Vegetable Kingdom it was
supernatural. Things are natural or supernatural
simply according to where one stands. Man is
supernatural to the mineral ; God is supernatural to
the man. When a mineral is seized upon by the
living plant and elevated to the organic kingdom,
no trespass against Nature is committed. It merely
enters a larger Environment, which before was super-
natural to it, but which now is entirely natural.
When the heart of a man, again, is seized upon by
the quickening Spirit of God, no further violence is
done to natural law. It is another case of the in-
organic, so to speak, passing into the organic

But, in the second place, it is complained as if it
were an enormity in itself that the spiritual corre-
spondence should be furnished from the spiritual

ETERNAL LIFE. 233

world. And to this the answer lies in the same
direction. Correspondence in any case is the gift of
Environment. The natural Environment gives men
their natural faculties ; the spiritual affords them
their spiritual faculties. It is natural for the spiritual
Environment to supply the spiritual faculties ; it
would be quite unnatural for the natural Environ-
ment to do it. The natural law of Biogenesis forbids
it ; the moral fact that the finite cannot comprehend
the Infinite is against it ; the spiritual principle that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God
renders it absurd. Not, however, that the spiritual
faculties are, as it were, manufactured in the spiritual
world and supplied ready-made to the spiritual organ-
ism— forced upon it as an external equipment. This
certainly is not involved in saying that the spiritual
faculties are furnished by the spiritual world. Or-
ganisms are not added to by accretion, as in the case
of minerals, but by growth. And the spiritual
faculties are organized in the spiritual protoplasm of
the soul, just as other faculties are organized in the
protoplasm of the body. The plant is made of
materials which have once been inorganic. An
organizing principle not belonging to their kingdom
lays hold of them and elaborates them until they
have correspondences with the kingdom to which the
organizing principle belonged. Their original organ-

234 ETERNAL LIFE.

izing principle, if it can be called by this name,
was Crystallisation ; so that we have now a distinctly
foreign power organizing in totally new and higher
directions. In the spiritual world, similarly, we find
an organizing principle at work among the materials
of the organic kingdom, performing a further mir-
acle, but not a different kind of miracle, producing
organizations of a novel kind, but not by a novel
method. The second process, in fact, is simply what
an enlightened evolutionist would have expected
from the first. It marks the natural and legitimate
progress of the development. And this in the line
of the true Evolution — not the linear Evolution,
which would look for the development of the natural
man through powers already inherent, as if one were
to look to Crystallisation to accomplish the develop-
ment of the mineral into the plant, — but that larger
form of Evolution which includes among its factors
the double Law of Biogenesis and the immense
further truth that this involves.

What is further included in this complex corre-
spondence we shall have opportunity to illustrate
afterwards.1 Meantime let it be noted on what the
Christian argument for Immortality really rests. It
stands upon the pedestal on which the theologiao

1 Vide " Conformity to Type," page 287,

ETERNAL LIFE. 235

rests the whole of historical Christianity — the Resur-
rection of Jesus Christ.

It ought to be placed in the forefront of all Chris*
tian teaching that Christ's mission on earth was to
give men Life. "I am come He said, "that ye
might have Life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." And that He meant literal Life, literal
spiritual and Eternal Life, is clear from the whole
course of His teaching and acting. To impose a
metaphorical meaning on the commonest word of the
New Testament is to violate every canon of interpre-
tation, and at the same time to charge the greatest
of teachers with persistently mystifying His hearers
by an unusual use of so exact a vehicle for express-
ing definite thought as the Greek language, and that
on the most momentous subject of which He ever
spoke to men. It is a canon of interpretation, ac-
cording to Alford, that " a figurative sense of words
is never admissible except when required by the
context." The context, in most cases, is not only
directly unfavourable to a figurative meaning, but in
innumerable instances in Christ's teaching Life is
broadly contrasted with Death. In the teaching of
the apostles, again, we find that, without exception,
they accepted the term in its simple literal sense,
Reuss defines the apostolic belief with his usual im-
partiality when — and the quotation is doubly perti*

236 ETERNAL LIFE.

nent here — he discovers in the apostle's conception
of Life, first, " the idea of a real existence, an exis-
tence such as is proper to God and to the Word ; an
imperishable existence — that is to say, not subject to
the vicissitudes and imperfections of the finite world.
This primary idea is repeatedly expressed, at least
in a negative form ; it leads to a doctrine of immor-
tality, or, to speak more correctly, of life, far surpass-
ing any that had been expressed in the formulas oi
the current philosophy or theology, and resting upon
premises and conceptions altogether different. In
fact, it can dispense both with the philosophical
thesis of the immateriality or indestructibility of the
human soul, and with the theological thesis of a
miraculous corporeal reconstruction of our person ;
theses, the first of which is altogether foreign to the
religion of the Bible, and the second absolutely
opposed to reason." Second, " the idea of life, as it
is conceived in this system, implies the idea of a
power, an operation, a communication, since this life
no longer remains, so to speak, latent or passive in
God and in the Word, but through them reaches the
believer. It is not a mental somnolent thing ; it is
not a plant without fruit ; it is a germ which is to
find fullest development." l

1 a History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age," vol
ii, p. 490.

ETERNAL LIFE. 237

If we are asked to define more clearly what is
meant by this mysterious endowment of Life, we
again hand over the difficulty to Science. When
Science can define the Natural Life and the Physical
Force we may hope for further clearness on the
nature and action of the Spiritual Powers. The
effort to detect the living Spirit must be at least as
idle as the attempt to subject protoplasm to micro-
scopic examination in the hope of discovering Life.
We are warned, also, not to expect too much.
"Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it
goeth." This being its quality, when the Spiritual
Life is discovered in the laboratory it will possibly
be time to give it up altogether. It may say, as
Socrates of his soul, " You may bury me — if you can
catch me."

Science never corroborates a spiritual truth with-
out illuminating it. The threshold of Eternity is a
place where many shadows me^t. And the light of
Science here, where everything is so dark, is welcome
a thousand times. Many men would be religious if
they knew where to begin ; many would be more
religious if they were sure where it would end. It
is not indifference that keeps some men from God,
but ignorance. " Good Master, what must I do to
inherit Eternal Life ? " is still the deepest question
of the age. What is Religion ? What am I to be-

238 ETERNAL LIFE.

lieve ? What seek with all my heart and soul and
mind ? — this is the imperious question sent up to
consciousness from the depths of being in all earnest
hours ; sent down again, alas, with many of us, time
after time, unanswered. Into all our thought and
work and reading this question pursues us. But the
theories are rejected one by one ; the great books are
returned sadly to their shelves, the years pass, and
the problem remains unsolved. The confusion of
tongues here is terrible. Every day a new authority
announces himself. Poets, philosophers, preachers
try their hand on us in turn. New prophets arise,
and beseech us for our soul's sake to give ear to
them — at last in an hour of inspiration they have
discovered the final truth. Yet the doctrine of yes-
terday is challenged by a fresh philosophy to-day ;
and the creed of to-day will fall in turn before the
criticism of to-morrow. Increase of knowledge in-
creaseth sorrow. And at length the conflicting truths,
like the beams of light in the laboratory experiment,
combine in the mind to make total darkness.

But here are two outstanding authorities agreed—
not men, not philosophers, not creeds. Here is the
voice of God and the voice of Nature. I cannot be
wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes when uncer*
tain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the
missing syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we

ETERNAL LIFE. 239

have Voice and Echo. When I hear both, I am
assured. My sense of hearing does not betray me
twice. I recognise the Voice in the Echo, the Echo
makes me certain of the Voice ; I listen and I know.
The question of a Future Life is a biological ques-
tion. Nature may be silent on other problems of
Religion ; but here she has a right to speak. The
whole confusion around the doctrine of Eternal Life
has arisen from making it a question of Philosophy.
We shall do ill to refuse a hearing to any speculation
of Philosophy ; the ethical relations here especially
are intimate and real. But in the first instance
Eternal Life, as a question of Life, is a problem for
Biology. The soul is a living organism. And for
any question as to the soul's Life we must appeal to
Life-science. And what does the Life-science teach ?
That if I am to inherit Eternal Life, I must cultivate
a correspondence with the Eternal. This is a simple
proposition, for Nature is always simple. I take
this proposition, and, leaving Nature, proceed to fill
it in. I search everywhere for a clue to the Eternal.
I ransack literature for a definition of a correspond-
ence between man and God. Obviously that can
only come from one source. And the analogies of
Science permit us to apply to it. All knowledge lies
in Environment. When I want to know about min-
erals I go to minerals. When I want to know about

24° ETERNAL LIFE.

flowers I go to flowers. And they tell me. In theii
own way they speak to me, each in its own way, and
each for itself — not the mineral for the flower, which
is impossible, nor the flower for the mineral, which is
also impossible. So if I want to know about Man,
I go to his part of the Environment. And he tells
me about himself, not as the plant or the mineral, for
he is neither, but in his own way. And if I want to
know about God, I go to His part of the Environ-
ment. And He tells me about Himself, not as a
Man, for He is not Man, but in His own way. And
just as naturally as the flower and the mineral and
the Man, each in their own way, tell me about them-
selves, He tells me about Himself. He very strangely
condescends indeed in making things plain to me,
actually assuming for a time the Form of a Man that
I at my poor level may better see Him. This is my
opportunity to know Him, This incarnation is God
making Himself accessible to human thought — God
opening to man the possibility of correspondence
through Jesus Christ And this correspondence and
this Environment are those I seek. He Himself
assures me, " This is Life Eternal, that they might
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
Thou hast sent." Do I not now discern the deeper
meaning in "Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent99}
Do I not better understand with what vision and

ETERNAL LIFE. 241

rapture the profoundest of the disciples exclaims,
* The Son of God is come,, and hath given us an
understanding that we might know Him that is
Tiue"?1

Having opened correspondence with the Eternal
Environment, the subsequent stages are in the line of
all other normal development We have but to con-
tinue, to deepen, to extend, and to enrich the corre-
spondence that has been begun. And we shall soon
find to our surprise that this is accompanied by
another and parallel process. The action is not all
upon our side. The Environment also will be found
to correspond. The influence of Environment is one
of the greatest and most substantial of modern bio-
logical doctrines. Of the power of Environment to
form or transform organisms, of its ability to develop
or suppress function, of its potency in determining
growth, and generally of its immense influence in
Evolution, there is no need now to speak. But En-
vironment is now acknowledged to be one of the
most potent factors in the Evolution of Life. The
influence of Environment too seems to increase rather
than diminish as we approach the higher forms of
being. The highest forms are the most mobile ; their
capacity *>f change is the greatest ; they are, in short,

1 1 John v, aa

242 ETERNAL LIFE.

most easily acted on by Environment. And not only
are the highest organisms the most mobile, but the
highest parts of the highest organisms are more
mobile than the lower. Environment can do little^
comparatively, in the direction of inducing variation
in the body of a child ; but how plastic is its mind !
How infinitely sensitive is its soul ! How infallibly
can it be tuned to music or to dissonance by the
moral harmony or discord of its outward lot ! How
decisively indeed are we not all formed and moulded,
made or unmade, by external circumstance ! Might
we not all confess with Ulysses, —

u I am a part of all that I have met " ?

Much more, then, shall we look for the influence of
Environment on the spiritual nature of him who has
opened correspondence with God. Reaching out his
eager and quickened faculties to the spiritual world
around him, shall he not become spiritual ? In vital
contact with Holiness, shall he not become holy?
Breathing now an atmosphere of ineffable Purity,
shall he miss becoming pure ? Walking with God
from day to day, shall he fail to be taught of God ?
Growth in grace is sometimes described as a
strange, mystical, and unintelligible process. It is
mystical, but neither strange nor unintelligible. It
proceeds according to Natural Law, and the leading

ETERNAL LIFE. 243

factor in sanctification is Influence of Environment
The possibility of it depends upon the mobility ol
the organism; the result, on the extent and frequency
of certain correspondences. These facts insensibly
lead on to a further suggestion. Is it not possible
that these biological truths may carry with them the
clue to a still profounder philosophy — even that oi
Regeneration?

Evolutionists tell us that by the influence of en-
vironment certain aquatic animals have become
adapted to a terrestrial mode of life. Breathing
normally by gills, as the result and reward of a
continued effort carried on from generation to gener-
ation to inspire the air of heaven direct, they have
slowly acquired the lung-function. In the young
organism, true to the ancestral type, the gill still
persists — as in the tadpole of the common frog
But as maturity approaches the true lung appears ;
the gill gradually transfers its task to the higher
organ. It then becomes atrophied and disappears,
and finally respiration in the adult is conducted by
lungs alone.1 We may be far, in the meantime, from
saying that this is proved. It is for those who accept
it to deny the justice of the spiritual analogy. Is

1 Vide also the remarkable experiments of Fraulein v. Chauvin
on the Transformation of the Mexican Axolotl into Amblystoma.
-Weismann's " Studies in the Theory of Descent," vol ii. pt. iii

244 ETERNAL LIFE.

religion to them unscientific in its doctrine of Re*
generation ? Will the evolutionist who admits the
regeneration of the frog under the modifying influence
of a continued correspondence with a new environ-
ment, care to question the possibility of the soui
acquiring such a faculty as that of Prayer, the mar-
vellous breathing-function of the new creature, when
in contact with the atmosphere of a besetting God ?
Is the change from the earthly to the heavenly more
mysterious than the change from the aquatic to
the terrestrial mode of life ? Is Evolution to stop
with the organic? If it be objected that it has taken
ages to perfect the function in the batrachian, the
reply is, that it will take ages to perfect the function
in the Christian. For every thousand years the
natural evolution will allow for the development of
its organism, the Higher Biology will grant its
product millions. We have indeed spoken of the
spiritual correspondence as already perfect — but it
is perfect only as the bud is perfect. •' It doth
not yet appear what it shall be," any more than it
appeared a million years ago what the evolving
batrachian would be.

But to return. We have been dealing with the
scientific aspects of communion with God. Insen-
sibly, from quantity we have been led to speak of
quality. And enough has now been advanced to

ETERNAL LIFE, 245

indicate generally the nature of that correspondence
with which is necessarily associated Eternal Life.
There remain but one or two details to which we
must lastly, and very briefly, address ourselves.

The quality of everlastingness belongs, as we have
seen, to a single correspondence, or rather to a single
set of correspondences. But it is apparent that
before this correspondence can take full and final
effect a further process is necessary. By some means
it must be separated from all the other correspon-
dences of the organism which do not share its
peculiar quality. In this life it is restrained by these
other correspondences. They may contribute to it,
or hinder it ; but they are essentially of a different
order. They belong not to Eternity but to Time,
and to this present world ; and, unless some provision
is made for dealing with them, they will detain the
aspiring organism in this present world till Time is
ended. Of course, in a sense, all that belongs to
Time belongs also to Eternity ; but these lower
correspondences are in their nature unfitted for an
Eternal Life. Even if they were perfect in their
relation to their Environment, they would still not
be Eternal However opposed, apparently, to the
scientific definition of Eternal Life, it is yet true
that perfect correspondence with Environment is not
Eternal Life. A very important word in the com*

246 ETERNAL LIFE.

plete definition is, in this sentence, omitted. On
that word it has not been necessary hitherto, and
for obvious reasons, to place any emphasis, but when
we come to deal with false pretenders to Immortality
we must return to it. Were the definition complete
as it stands, it might, with the permission of the
psycho-physiologist, guarantee the Immortality of
every living thing. In the dog, for instance, the
material framework giving way at death might leave
the released canine spirit still free to inhabit the
old Environment. And so with every creature which
had ever established a conscious relation with sur-
rounding things. Now the difficulty in framing a
theory of Eternal Life has been to construct one
which will exclude the brute creation, drawing the
line rigidly at man, or at least somewhere within
the human race. Not that we need object to the
Immortality of the dog, or of the whole inferior
creation. Nor that we need refuse a place to any
intelligible speculation which would people the earth
to-day with the invisible forms of all things that
have ever lived. Only we still insist that this is
not Eternal Life. And why ? Because their En-
vironment is not Eternal. Their correspondence,
however firmly established, is established with that
which shall pass away. An Eternal Life demands
an Eternal Environment

ETERNAL LIFE. 247

The demand for a perfect Environment as well
as for a perfect correspondence is less clear in Mr.
Herbert Spencer's definition than it might be. But
it is an essential factor. An organism might remain
true to its Environment, but what if the Environ-
ment played it false ? If the organism possessed the
power to change, it could adapt itself to successive
changes in the Environment. And if this were
guaranteed we should also have the conditions for
Eternal Life fulfilled. But what if the Environment
passed away altogether ? What if the earth swept
suddenly into the sun ? This is a change of
Environment against which there could be no
precaution and for which there could be as little
provision. With a changing Environment even,
there must always remain the dread and possibility
of a falling out of correspondence. At the best, Life
would be uncertain. But with a changeless Environ-
ment— such as that possessed by the spiritual
organism — the perpetuity of the correspondence, so
far as the external relation is concerned, is guar-
anteed. This quality of permanence in the Environ-
ment distinguishes the religious relation from every
other. Why should not the musician's life be an
Eternal Life ? Because, for one thing, the musical
world, the Environment with which he corresponds,
is not eternal. Even if his correspondence in itself

2*8 ETERNAL LIFE.

could last eternally, the environing material things
with which he corresponds must pass away. His
soul might last for ever — but not his violin. So
the man of the world might lctst for ever — but not
the world. His Environment ic not eternal ; nor are
even his correspondences — the world passeth away
and the lust thereof.

We find then that man, or the spiritual man, is
equipped with two sets of correspondences. One
set possesses the quality of everlastingness, the other
is temporal. But unless these are separated by some
means the temporal will continue to impair and
hinder the eternal. The final preparation, therefore,
for the inheriting of Eternal Life must consist in the
abandonment of the non-eternal elements. These
must be unloosed and dissociated from the higher
elements. And this is effected by a closing catas-
trophe— Death.

Death ensues because certain relations in the
organism are not adjusted to certain relations in the
Environment There will come a time in each
history when the imperfect correspondences of the
organism will betray themselves by a failure to
compass some necessary adjustment This is why
Death is associated with Imperfection. Death is the
necessary result of Imperfection, and the necessary
end of it Imperfect correspondence gives imperfect

ETERNAL LIFE. 249

and uncertain Life. " Perfect correspondence/ on
the other hand, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer,
would be " perfect Life." To abolish Death, there-
fore, all that would be necessary would be ttf
abolish Imperfection. But it is the claim of Chris-
tianity that it can abolish Death. And it is signifi-
cant to notice that it does so by meeting this very
demand of Science — it abolishes Imperfection.

The part of the organism which begins to get out
of correspondence with the Organic Environment is
the only part which is in vital correspondence with
it Though a fatal disadvantage to the natural
man to be thrown out of correspondence with this
Environment, it is of inestimable importance to the
spiritual man. For so long as it is maintained the
way is barred for a further Evolution. And hence
the condition necessary for the further Evolution is
that the spiritual be released from the natural. That
is to say, the condition of the further Evolution is
Death. Mors janua Vita, therefore, becomes a
scientific formula. Death, being the final sifting of
all the correspondences, is the indispensable factor of
the higher Life. In the language of Science, not less
than of Scripture, " To die is gain."

The sifting of the correspondences is done by
Nature. This is its last and greatest contribution
to mankind Over the mouth of the grave the

250 ETERNAL LIFE.

perfect and the imperfect submit to their final
separation. Each goes to its own — earth to earth,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Spirit to Spirit.
" The dust shall return to the earth as it was; and
the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it."

ENVIRONMENT.

" When I talked with an ardent missionary and pointed
out to him that his creed found no support in my experience,
he replied : 'It is not so in your experience, but is so in the
other world* I answer : 'Other world ! There is no other
world. God is one and omnipresent ; here or nowhere is
the whole fact' "

Emerson.

ENVIRONMENT.

"Ye are complete in Him." — Paul.

"Whatever amount of power an organism expends in any
shape is the correlate and equivalent of a power that was
taken into it from without." — Herbert Spencer.

STUDENTS of Biography will observe that in all well-
written Lives attention is concentrated for the first
few chapters upon two points. We are first intro-
duced to the family to which the subject of memoir
belonged. The grandparents, or even the more
remote ancestors, are briefly sketched and their chief
characteristics brought prominently into view. Then
the parents themselves are photographed in detail.
Their appearance and physique, their character, their
disposition, their mental qualities, are set before us
in a critical analysis. And finally we are asked to
observe how much the father and the mother respec-
tively have transmitted of their peculiar nature to
their offspring. How faithfully the ancestral lines
have met in the latest product, how mysteriously the

254 ENVIR JNMRNT.

joint characteristics of body and mind have blendedf
and how unexpected yet how entirely natural a re-
combination is the result — these points are elaborated
with cumulative effect until we realize at last how
little we are dealing with an independent unit, how
much with a survival and reorganization of what
seemed buried in the grave.

In the second place, we are invited to consider
more external influences — schools and schoolmasters,
neighbours, home, pecuniary circumstances, scenery,
and, by-and-by, the religious and political atmo-
sphere of the time. These also we are assured have
played their part in making the individual what he
is. We can estimate these early influences in any
particular case with but small imagination if we fail
to see how powerfully they also have moulded mind
and character, and in what subtle ways they have
determined the course of the future life.

This twofold relation of the individual, first, to his
parents, and second, to his circumstances, is not
peculiar to human beings. These two factors are
responsible for making all living organisms what they
are. When a naturalist attempts to unfold the life-
history of any animal, he proceeds precisely on these
same lines. Biography is really a branch of Natural
History ; and the biographer who discusses his hero
as the resultant of these two tendencies, follows the

ENVIRONMENT. 255

scientific method as rigidly as Mr. Darwin in study-
ing " Animals and Plants under Domestication."

Mr. Darwin, following Weismann, long ago pointed
out that there are two main factors in all Evolution —
the nature of the organism and the nature of the
conditions. We have chosen our illustration from
the highest or human species in order to define the
meaning of these factors in the clearest way ; but it
must be remembered that the development of man
under these directive influences is essentially the
same as that of any other organism in the hands of
Nature. We are dealing therefore with universal
Law. It will still further serve to complete the con-
ception of the general principle if we now substitute
for the casual phrases by which the factors have been
described the more accurate terminology of Science.
Thus what Biography describes as parental influences,
Biology would speak of as Heredity ; and all that is
involved in the second factor — the action of external
circumstances and surroundings — the naturalist would
include under the single term Environment. These
two, Heredity and Environment, are the master-
influences of the organic world. These have made
all of us what we are. These forces are still cease-
lessly playing upon all our lives. And he who truly
understands these influences ; he who has decided
how much to allow to each ; he who can regulate

256 ENVIRONMENT.

new forces as they arise, or adjust them to the old,
so directing them as at one moment to make them
co-operate, at another to counteract one another, un*
derstands the rationale of personal development To
seize continuously the opportunity of more and more
perfect adjustment to better and higher conditions, to
balance some inward evil with some purer influence
acting from without, in a word to make our Environ-
ment at the same time that it is making us, — these
are the secrets of a well-ordered and successful life.

In the spiritual world, also, the subtle influences
which form and transform the soul are Heredity and
Environment And here especially where all is in-
visible, where much that we feel to be real is yet so
ill-defined, it becomes of vital practical moment to
clarify the atmosphere as far as possible with con-
ceptions borrowed from the natural life. Few things
are less understood than the conditions of the spi-
ritual life* The distressing incompetence of which
most of us are conscious in trying to work out our
spiritual experience is due perhaps less to the
diseased will which we commonly blame for it than
to imperfect knowledge of the right conditions. It
does not occur to us how natural the spiritual is.
We still strive for some strange transcendent thing ;
we seek to promote life by methods as unnatural as
they prove unsuccessful ; and only the utter incom-

ENVIRONMENT. 2tf

prehensibility of the whole region prevents us seeing
fully — what we already half-suspect — how completely
we are missing the road. Living in the spiritual
world, nevertheless, is just as simple as living in the
natural world ; and it is the same kind of simplicity.
It is the same kind of simplicity for it is the same
kind of world — there are not two kinds of worlds.
The conditions of life in the one are the conditions of
life in the other. And till these conditions are sen-
sibly grasped, as the conditions of all life, it is impos-
sible that the personal effort after the highest life
should be other than a blind struggle carried on in
fruitless sorrow and humiliation.

Of these two universal factors, Heredity and En-
vironment, it is unnecessary to balance the relative
importance here. The main influence, unquestion-
ably, must be assigned to the former. In practice,
however, and for an obvious reason, we are chiefly
concerned with the latter. What Heredity has to do
for us is determined outside ourselves. No man can
select his own parents. ; But every man to some
extent can choose his own Environment. His rela-
tion to it, however largely determined by Heredity
in the first instance, is always open to alteration.
And so great is his control over Environment
and so radical its influence over him, that he can
so direct it as either to undo, modify, perpetuate

S

258 ENVIRONMENT.

or intensify the earlier hereditary influences within
certain limits. But the aspects of Environment
which we have now to consider do not involve us in
questions of such complexity. In what high and
mystical sense, also, Heredity applies to the spiritual
organism we need not just now inquire. In the sim-
pler relations of the more external factor we shall
find a large and fruitful field for study.

The Influence of Environment may be investigated
in two main aspects. First, one might discuss the
modern and very interesting question as to the power
of Environment to induce what is known to recent
science as Variation. A change in the surroundings
of any animal, it is now well-known, can so react
upon it as to cause it to change. By the attempt,
conscious or unconscious, to adjust itself to the new
conditions, a true physiological change is gradually
wrought within the organism. Hunter, for example,
in a classical experiment, so changed the Environ-
ment of a sea-gull by keeping it in captivity that
it could only secure a grain diet. The effect was to
modify the stomach of the bird, normally adapted to
a fish diet, until in time it came to resemble in struc-
ture the gizzard of an ordinary grain-feeder such as
the pigeon. Holmgren again reversed this experi-
ment by feeding pigeons for a lengthened period on a
meat-diet, with the result that the gizzard became

ENVIRONMENT. 259

transformed into the carnivorous stomach. Mr
Alfred Russel Wallace mentions the case of a
Brazilian parrot which changes its coloui from green
to red or yellow when fed on the fat of certain fishes,
Not only changes of food, however, but changes ol
climate and of temperature, changes in surrounding
organisms, in the case of marine animals even
changes of pressure, of ocean currents, of light, and
of many other circumstances, are known to exert a
powerful modifying influence upon living organisms.
These relations are still being worked out in many
directions, but the influence of Environment as a
prime factor in Variation is now a recognised doctrine
of science.1

Even the popular mind has been struck with the
curious adaptation of nearly all animals to their
habitat, for example in the matter of colour. The
sandy hue of the sole and flounder, the white of the
polar bear with its suggestion of Arctic snows, the
stripes of the Bengal tiger — as if the actual reeds of
its native jungle had nature-printed themselves on its
hide ; — these, and a hundred others which will occur

1 Vide Karl Semper's " The Natural Conditions of Existence
as they affect Animal Life ; " Wallace's " Tropical Nature ; "
Weismann's " Studies in the Theory of Descent ;* Darwin's
* Animals and Plants under Domestication"

26o ENVIRONMENT.

to every one, are marked instances of adaptation to
Environment induced, by Natural Selection or other-
wise, for the purpose, obviously in these cases at least,
of protection.

To continue the investigation of the modifying
action of Environment into the moral and spiritual
spheres, would be to open a fascinating and sug-
gestive inquiry. One might show how the moral
man is acted upon and changed continuously by the
influences, secret and open, of his surroundings, by
the tone of society, by the company he keeps, by his
occupation, by the books he reads, by Nature, by all,
in short, that constitutes the habitual atmosphere of
his thoughts and the little world of his daily choice.
Or one might go deeper still and prove how the
spiritual life also is modified from outside sources —
its health or disease, its growth or decay, all its
changes for better or for worse being determined by
the varying and successive circumstances in which the
religious habits are cultivated. But we must rather
transfer our attention to a second aspect of Environ-
ment, not perhaps so fascinating but yet more im-
portant.

So much of the modern discussion of Environment
revolves round the mere question of Variation that
one is apt to overlook a previous question. Environ-
ment as a factor in life is not exhausted when we

ENVIRONMENT. 261

have realized its modifying influence. Its signifi-
cance is scarcely touched. The great function of
Environment is not to modify but to sustain. In
sustaining life, it is true, it modifies. But the latter
influence is incidental, the former essential. Our
Environment is that in which we live and move and
have our being. Without it we should neither live
nor move nor have any being. In the organism lies
the principle of life ; in the Environment are the
conditions of life. Without the fulfilment of these
conditions, which are wholly supplied by Environ-
ment, there can be no life. An organism in itself is
but a part ; Nature is its complement. Alone, cut
off" from its surroundings, it is not. Alone, cut off
from my surroundings, I am not — physically I am
not. I am, only as I am sustained. I continue only
as I receive. My Environment may modify me, but
it has first to keep me. And all the time its secret
transforming power is indirectly moulding body and
mind it is directly active in the more open task of
ministering to my myriad wants and from hour to
hour sustaining life itself.

To understand the sustaining influence of Envir-
on cnent in the animal world, one has only to recall
what the biologist terms the extrinsic or subsidiary
conditions of vitality. Every living thing normally
requires for its development an Environment con-

262 ENVIRONMENT.

taming air, light, heat, and water. In addition tc
these, if vitality is to be prolonged for any length of
time, and if it is to be accompanied with growth and
the expenditure of energy, there must be a constant
supply of food. When we simply remember how
indispensable food is to growth and work, and when
we further bear in mind that the food-supply is solely
contributed by the Environment, we shall realize at
once the meaning and the truth of the proposition
that without Environment there can be no life.
Seventy per cent, at least of the human body is made
of pure water, the rest of gases and earths. These
have all come from Environment. Through the
secret pores of the skin two pounds of water are
exhaled daily from every healthy adult The supply
is kept up by Environment. The Environment is
really an unappropriated part of ourselves. Definite
portions are continuously abstracted from it and
added to the organism. And so long as the organ-
ism continues to grow, act, think, speak, work, or
perform any other function demanding a supply of
energy, there is a constant, simultaneous, and pro-
portionate drain upon its surroundings.

This is a truth in the physical, and therefore in
the spiritual, world of so great importance that we
shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further
confirmation, into another department of nature,

ENVIRONMENT. 263

Its significance in Biology is self-evident ; let us
appeal to Chemistry.

When a piece of coal is thrown on the fire, we say
that it will radiate into the room a certain quantity
of heat. This heat, in the popular conception, is
supposed to reside in the coal and to be set free
during the process of combustion. In reality, how-
ever, the heat energy is only in part contained in the
coal. It is contained just as truly in the coal's
Environment — that is to say, in the oxygen of the
air. The atoms of carbon which compose the coal
have a powerful affinity for the oxygen of the air.
Whenever they are made to approach within a certain
distance of one another, by the initial application of
heat, they rush together with inconceivable velocity
The heat which appears at this moment, comes
neither from the carbon alone, nor from the oxygen
alone. These two substances are really inconsum-
able, and continue to exist, after they meet in a
combined form, as carbonic acid gas. The heat is
due to the energy developed by the chemical em-
brace, the precipitate rushing together of the mole-
cules of carbon and the molecules of oxygen. It
comes, therefore, partly from the coal and partiy
from the Environment. Coal alone never could
produce heat, neither alone could Environment. The
two are mutually dependent. And although in

264 ENVIRONMENT.

nearly all the arts we credit everything to the
substance which we can weigh and handle, it is
certain that in most cases the larger debt is due to
an invisible Environment

This is one of those great commonplaces which
slip out of general reckoning by reason of their very
largeness and simplicity. How profound, neverthe-
less, are the issues which hang on this elementary
truth, we shall discover immediately. Nothing in
this age is more needed in every department of
knowledge than the rejuvenescence of the common-
place. In the spiritual world especially, he will be
wise who courts acquaintance with the most ordinary
and transparent facts of Nature ; and in laying the
foundations for a religious life he will make no
unworthy beginning who carries with him an im-
pressive sense of so obvious a truth as that without
Environment there can be no life.

For what does this amount to in the spiritual
world ? Is it not merely the scientific re-statement
of the reiterated aphorism of Christ, "Without Me
ye can do nothing " ? There is in the spiritual
organism a principle of life ; but that is not self-
existent. It requires a second factor, a something
in which to live and move and have its being, an
Environment. Without this it cannot live or move
or have any being. Without Environment the soul

ENVIRONMENT. 265

is as the carbon without the oxygen, as the fish
without the water, as the animal frame without the
extrinsic conditions of vitality.

And what is the spiritual Environment? It is
God. Without this, therefore, there is no life, no
thought, no energy, nothing — u without Me ye can
do nothing."

The cardinal error in the religious life is to attempt
to live without an Environment. Spiritual experi-
ence occupies itself, not too much, but too exclu-
sively, with one factor— the soul. We delight in
dissecting this much tortured faculty, from time to
time, in search of a certain something which we call
our faith — forgetting that faith is but an attitude, an
empty hand for grasping an environing Presence.
And when we feel the need of a power by which to
overcome the world, how often do we not seek to
generate it within ourselves by some forced process,
some fresh girding of the will, some strained activity
which only leaves the soul in further exhaustion ?
To examine ourselves is good ; but useless unless we
also examine Environment. To bewail our weakness
is right, but not remedial. The cause must be in-
vestigated as well as the result. And yet, because
we never see the other half of the problem, our
failures even fail to instruct us. After each new
collapse we begin our life anew, but on the old

266 ENVIRONMENT.

conditions; and the attempt ends as usual in the
repetition — in the circumstances the inevitable repe*
tition— of the old disaster. Not that at times we do
not obtain glimpses of the true state of the case.
After seasons of much discouragement, with the sore
sense upon us of our abject feebleness, we do confef
with ourselves, insisting for the thousandth time,
"My soul, wait thou only upon God." But, the
lesson is soon forgotten. The strength supplied we
speedily credit to our own achievement ; and even
the temporary success is mistaken for a symptom of
improved inward vitality. Once more we become
self-existent. Once more we go on living without
an Environment. And once more, after days of
wasting without repairing, of spending without re-
plenishing, we begin to perish with hunger, only
returning to God again, as a last resort, when we
have reached starvation point.

Now why do we do this? Why do we seek to
breathe without an atmosphere, to drink without a
well ? Why this unscientific attempt to sustain life
for weeks at a time without an Environment ? It is
because we have never truly seen the necessity for an
Environment We have not been working with a
principle. We are told to "wait only upon God,1
but we do not know why. It has never been as clear
to us that without God the soul will die as that with-

ENVIRONMENT. 2&j

out food the body will perish. In short, we have
never comprehended the doctrine of the Persistence
of Force. Instead of being content to transform
energy we have tried to create it

The Law of Nature here is as clear as Science can
make it. In the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, " It
is a corollary from that primordial truth which, as we
have seen, underlies all other truths, that whatever
amount of power an organism expends in any shape
is the correlate and equivalent of a power that was
taken into it from without."1 We are dealing here
with a simple question of dynamics. Whatever
energy the soul expends must first be " taken into
it from without." We are not Creators, but crea-
tures ; God is our refuge and strength Communion
with God, therefore, is a scientific necessity; and
nothing will more help the defeated spirit which is
struggling in the wreck of its religious life than a
common-sense hold of this plain biological principle
that without Environment he can do nothing. What
he wants is not an occasional view, but a principle —
a basal principle like this, broad as the universe,
solid as nature. In the natural world we act upon
this law unconsciously. We absorb heat, breathe air,
draw on Environment all but automatically for meat

1 * Principles of Biology ," p 57.

268 ENVIRONMENT.

and drink, for the nourishment of the senses, foi
mental stimulus, for all that, penetrating us from
without, can prolong, enrich, and elevate life. Bat in
the spiritual world we have all this to learn. We are
new creatures, and even the bare living has to be
acquired.

Now the great point in learning, to live is to live
naturally.. As closely as possible we must follow the
broad, clear lines of the natural life. And there are
three things especially which it is necessary for us to
keep continually in view. The first is that the
organism contains within itself only one-half of what
is essential to life ; the second is that the other half
is contained in the Environment ; the third, that the
condition of receptivity is simple union between the
organism and the Environment.

Translated into the language of religion these
propositions yield, and place on a scientific basis,
truths of immense practical interest To say, first,
that the organism contains within itself only one-half
of what is essential to life, is to repeat the evangelical
confession, so worn and yet so true to universal
experience, of the utter helplessness of man. Who
has not come to the conclusion that he is but a part,
a fraction of some larger whole ? Who does not miss
at every turn of his life an absent God ? That man
is but a part, he knows, for there is room in him

ENVIRONMENT, 269

or more. That God is the other part, he feels, be-
cause at times He satisfies his need. Who does not
tremble often under that sicklier symptom of his in-
completeness, his want of spiritual energy, his help-
lessness with sin ? But now he understands both —
the void in his life, the powerlessness of his will. He
understands that, like all other energy, spiritual
power is contained in Environment. He finds here at
last the true root of all human frailty, emptiness,
nothingness, sin. This is why " without Me ye can
do nothing." Powerlessness is the normal state not
only of this but of every organism — of every organ-
ism apart from its Environment.

The entire dependence of the soul upon God is not
an exceptional mystery, nor is man's helplessness an
arbitrary and unprecedented phenomenon. It is the
law of all Nature. The spiritual man is not taxed
beyond the natural. He is not purposely handi-
capped by singular limitations or unusual incapa-
cities. God has not designedly made the religious
life as hard as possible. The arrangements for the
spiritual life are the same as for the natural life*
When in their hours of unbelief men challenge their
Creator for placing the obstacle of human frailty in
the way of their highest development, their protest is
against the order of nature They object to the sun
for being the source of energy and not the engine, to

270 ENVIRONMENT.

the carbonic acid being in the air and not in the
plant They would equip each organism with a
personal atmosphere, each brain with a private store
of energy ; they would grow corn in the interior of
the body, and make bread by a special apparatus in
the digestive organs. They must, in short, have the
creature transformed into a Creator. The organism
must either depend on his environment, or be self-
sufficient But who will not rather approve the
arrangement by which man in his creatural life may
have unbroken access to an Infinite Power ? What
soul will seek to remain self-luminous when it knows
that "The Lord God is a Sun" f Who will not
willingly exchange his shallow vessel for Christ's
well of living water ? Even if the organism, launched
into being like a ship putting out to sea, possessed a
full equipment, its little store must soon come to an
end. But in contact with a large and bounteous
Environment its supply is limitless. In every direc-
tion its resources are infinite.

There is a modern school which protests against the
doctrine of man's inability as the heartless fiction of
a past theology. While some forms of that dogma, to
any one who knows man, are incapable of defence,
there are others which, to any one who knows Nature,
are incapable of denial. Those who oppose it, in
their jealousy for humanity, credit the organisitt with

ENVIRONMENT. 271

the properties of Environment. All true theology,
on the other hand, has remained loyal to at least the
root-idea in this truth. The New Testament is no-
where more impressive than where it insists cm the
fact of man's dependence. In its view the first
step in religion is for man to feel his helplessness.
Christ's first beatitude is to the poor in spirit. The
condition of entrance into the spiritual kingdom is to
possess the child-spirit — that state of mind com-
bining at once the profoundest helplessness with the
most artless feeling of dependence. Substantially
the same idea underlies the countless passages in
which Christ affirms that He has not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And in
that farewell discourse into which the Great Teacher
poured the most burning convictions of His life, He
gives to this doctrine an ever increasing emphasis.
No words could be more solemn or arresting than
the sentence in the last great allegory devoted to this
theme, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself
except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye
abide in Me." The word here, it will be observed
again, is cannot It is the imperative of natural law.
Fruit-bearing without Christ is not an improbability,
but an impossibility. As well expect the natural
fruit to flourish without air and heat, without soil and
sunshine How thoroughly also Paul grasped this

272 ENVIRONMENT.

truth is apparent from a hundred pregnant passage*
in which he echoes his Master's teaching To him
life was hid with Christ in God. And that he
embraced this not as a theory but as an experimental
truth we gather from his constant confession, " When
I am weak, then am I strong."

This leads by a natural transition to the second
of the three points we are seeking to illustrate.
We have seen that the organism contains within
itself only one half of what is essential to life.
We have next to observe, as the complement of
this, how the second half is contained in the En-
vironment.

One result of the due apprehension of our
personal helplessness will be that we shall no longer
waste our time over the impossible task of manu-
facturing energy for ourselves. Our science will
bring to an abrupt end the long series of severe
experiments in which we have indulged in the
hope of finding a perpetual motion. And having
decided upon this once for all, our first step in
seeking a more satisfactory state of things must
be to find a new source of energy. Following
Nature, only one course is open to us. We must
refer to Environment. The natural life ewes all to
Environment, so must the spiritual Now the
Environment of the spiritual life is God As Nature

ENVIRONMENT. 273

therefore forms the complement of the natural life,
God is the complement of the spiritual.

The proof of this ? That Nature is not more
natural to my body than God is to my soul Every
animal and plant has its own Environment. And
the further one inquires into the relations of the
one to the other, the more one sees the marvellous
intricacy and beauty of the adjustments. These
wonderful adaptations of each organism to its sur-
roundings— of the fish to the water, of the eagle
to the air, of the insect to the forest-bed ; and ol
each part of every organism — the fish's swim-bladder,
the eagle's eye, the insect's breathing tubes — which
the old argument from design brought home to us
with such enthusiasm, inspire us still with a sense
of the boundless resource and skill of Nature in
perfecting her arrangements for each single life.
Down to the last detail the world is made for what
is in it ; and by whatever process things are as they
are, all organisms find in surrounding Nature the
ample complement of themselves. Man, too, finds
in his Environment provision for all capacities, scope
for the exercise of every faculty, room for the
indulgence of each appetite, a just supply for every
want So the spiritual man at the apex of the
pyramid of life finds in the vaster range of his
Environment a provision, as much higher, it is true

T

274 ENVIRONMENT.

as he is higher, but as delicately adjusted to his
varying needs. And all this is supplied to him
just as the lower organisms are ministered to by
the lower environment, in the same simple ways,
in the same constant sequence, as appropriately and
as lavishly. We fail to praise the ceaseless ministry
of the great inanimate world around us only because
its kindness is unobtrusive. Nature is always noise-
less. All her greatest gifts are given in secret. And
we forget how truly every good and perfect gift
comes from without, and from above, because no
pause in her changeless beneficence teaches us th?
sad lessons of deprivation.

It is not a strange thing, then, for the soul to
find its life in God. This is its native air. God
as the Environment of the soul has been from
the remotest age the doctrine of all the deepest
thinkers in religion. How profoundly Hebrew
poetry is saturated with this high thought will appear
when we try to conceive of it with this left out
True poetry is only science in another form. And
long before it was possible for religion to give
scientific expression to its greatest truths, men of
insight uttered themselves in psalms which could
not have been truer to Nature had the most modern
light controlled the inspiration. "As the hart
pantefch after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul

ENVIRONMENT. 275

after Thee, O God." What fine sense of the analogy
of the natural and the spiritual does not underlie
these words. As the hart after its Environment* so
man after his ; as the water-brooks are fitly designed
to meet the natural wants, so fitly does God imple-
ment the spiritual need of man. It will be noticed
that in the Hebrew poets the longing for God never
strikes one as morbid, or unnatural to the men who
uttered it. It is as natural to them to long for
God as for the swallow to seek her nest. Through-
out all their images no suspicion rises within us
that they are exaggerating. We feel how truly they
are reading themselves, their deepest selves. No
false note occurs in all their aspiration. There is
no weariness even in their ceaseless sighing, except
the lover's weariness for the absent- — if they would
fly away, it is only to be at rest. Men who have
no soul can only wonder at this. Men who have
a soul, but with little faith, can only envy it. How
joyous a thing it was to the Hebrews to seek their
God ! How artlessly they call upon Him to enter-
tain them in His pavilion, to cover them with His
feathers, to hide them in His secret place, to hold
them in the hollow of His hand or stretch around
them the everlasting arms ! These men were true
children of Nature. As the humming-bird among
its own palm-trees, as the ephemera in the sunshine

276 ENVIRONMENT.

of a summer evening, so they lived their joyous
lives. And even the full share of the sadder ex peri-
ences of life which came to all of them but diove
them the further into the Secret Place, and led them
with more consecration to make, as they expressed
it, " the Lord their portion." All that has been said
since from Marcus Aurelius to Swedenborg, from
Augustine to Schleiermacher of a besetting God as
the final complement of humanity is but a repetition
of the Hebrew poets' faith. And even the New
Testament has nothing higher to offer man than
this. The psalmist's * God is our refuge and
strength " is only the earlier form, less defined, less
practicable, but not less noble, of Christ's "Come
unto Me, and I will give you rest"

There is a brief phrase of Paul's which defines
the relation with almost scientific accuracy, — "Ye
are complete in Him." In this is summed up the
whole of the Bible anthropology — the completeness
of man in God, his incompleteness apart from God.

If it be asked, In what is man incomplete, or,
In what does God complete him ? the question is
a wide one. But it may serve to show at least the
direction in which the Divine Environment forms
the complement of human life if we ask ourselves
once more what it is in life that needs comple-
menting. And to this question we receive the

ENVIRONMENT. 2tf

significant answer that it is in the higher depart-
ments alone, or mainly, that the incompleteness of
our life appears. The lower departments of Nature
are already complete enough. The world itself is
about as good a world as might be. It has been
long in the making, its furniture is all in, its laws
are in perfect working order ; and although wise
men at various times have suggested improvements,
there is on the whole a tolerably unanimous vote
of confidence in things as they exist. The Divine
Environment has little more to do for this planet
so far as we can see, and so far as the existing
generation is concerned. Then the lower organic
life of the world is also so far complete. God,
through Evolution or otherwise, may still have
finishing touches to add here and there, but already
it is " all very good." It is difficult to conceive any-
thing better of its kind than a lily or a cedar, an
ant or an ant-eater. These organisms, so far as we
can judge, lack nothing. It might be said of them,
M they are complete in Nature." Of man also, of
man the animal, it may be affirmed that his En-
vironment satisfies him. He has food and drink,
and good food and good drink. And there is in
him no purely animal want which is not really
provided for, and that apparently in the happiest
possible way.

278 ENVIRONMENT.

But the moment we pass beyond the mere animal
life we begin to come upon an incompleteness. The
symptoms at first are slight, and betray themselves
only by an unexplained restlessness or a dull sense
of want. Then the feverishness increases, becomes
more defined, and passes slowly into abiding pain.
To some come darker moments when the unrest
deepens into a mental agony of which all the other
woes of earth are mockeries — moments when the
forsaken soul can only cry in terror for the Living
God. Up to a point the natural Environment
supplies man's wants, beyond that it only derides
him. How much in man lies beyond that point ?
Very much — almost all, all that makes man man.
The first suspicion of the terrible truth — so for the
time let us call it — wakens with the dawn of the
intellectual life. It is a solemn moment when the
slow-moving mind reaches at length the verge of
its mental horizon, and, looking over, sees nothing
more. Its straining makes the abyss but more
profound. Its cry comes back without an echo.
Where is the Environment to complete this rational
soul ? Men either find one, — One — or spend the rest
of their days in trying to shut their eyes. The
alternatives of the intellectual life are Christianity
or Agnosticism. The Agnostic is right when he
trumpets his incompleteness. He who is not com-

ENVIRONMENT. 279

plete in Him must be for ever incomplete. Still
more grave becomes man's case when he begins
further to explore his moral and social nature
The problems of the heart and conscience are in-
finitely more perplexing than those of the intellect
Has love no future ? Has right no triumph ? Is
the unfinished self to remain unfinished ? Again,
the alternatives are two, Christianity or Pessimism.
But when we ascend the further height of the
religious nature, the crisis comes. There, without
Environment, the darkness is unutterable. So mad-
dening now becomes the mystery that men are
compelled to construct an Environment for them-
selves. No Environment here is unthinkable. An
altar of some sort men must have — God, or Nature,
or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only a
negative proof of man's incompleteness. A witness
more overwhelming is the prayer of the Christian.
What a very strange thing, is it not, for man to
pray ? It is the symbol at once of his littleness
and of his greatness. Here the sense of imperfec-
tion, controlled and silenced in the narrower reaches
of his being, becomes audible. Now he must utter
himself. The sense of need is so real, and the sense
of Environment, that he calls out to it, address*
ing it articulately, and imploring it to satisfy his
need. Surely there is nothing more touching in

2go ENVIRONMENT.

Nature than this ? Man could never so expose him
self, so break through all constraint, except from -a
dire necessity. It is the suddenness and unpre*
meditatedness of Prayer that gives it a unique value
as an apologetic.

Man has three questions to put to his Environ-
ment, three symbols of his incompleteness. They
come from three different centres of his being. The
first is the question of the intellect, What is Truth ?
The natural Environment answers, " Increase of
Knowledge increaseth Sorrow/' and " much study
is a Weariness/' Christ replies, " Learn of Me, and
ye shall find Rest" Contrast the world's word
" Weariness " with Christ's word " Rest." No other
teacher since the world began has ever associated
" learn " with " Rest." Learn of me, says the
philosopher, and you shall find Restlessness. Learn
of Me, says Christ, and ye shall find Rest.
Thought, which the godless man has cursed, that
eternally starved yet ever living spectre, finds at
last its imperishable glory ; Thought is complete in
Him. The second question is sent up from the
moral nature, Who will show us any good ? And
again we have a contrast : the world's verdict,
"There is none that doeth good, no, not one;"
and Christ's, " There is none good but God only."
And, finally, there is the lonely cry of the spirit,

ENVIRONMENT 281

most pathetic and most deep of all, Where is he
whom my soul seeketh ? And the yearning is met
as before, " I looked on my right hand, and beheld,
but there was no man that would know me ; refuge
failed me ; no man cared for my soul. I cried unto
Thee, O Lord : I said, Thou art my refuge and my
portion in the land of the living." l

Are these the directions in which men in these
days are seeking to complete their lives ? The
completion of Life is just now a supreme question.
It is important to observe how it is being answered.
If we ask Science or Philosophy they will refer us
to Evolution. The struggle for Life, they assure us,
is steadily eliminating imperfect forms, and as the
fittest continue to survive we shall have a gradual
perfecting of being. That is to say, that completeness
is to be sought for in the organism — we are to be
complete in Nature and in ourselves. To Evolution,
certainly, all men will look for a further perfecting of
Life. But it must be an Evolution which includes
all the factors. Civilization, it may be said, will deal
with the second factor. It will improve the Envir-
onment step by step as it improves the organism, or
the organism as it improves the Environment. This
is well, and it will perfect Life up to a point But

• Ps. cxlil 4, 5.

282 ENVIRONMENT.

beyond that it cannot carry us. As the possibili-
ties of the natural Life become more defined, its
impossibilities will become the more appalling. The
most perfect civilization would leave the best part
of us still incomplete. Men will have to give
up the experiment of attempting to live in half an
Environment Half an Environment will give but
half a Life. Half an Environment ? He whose cor-
respondences are with this world alone has only a
thousandth part, a fraction, the mere rim and shade
of an Environment, and only the fraction of a Life
How long will it take Science to believe its own
creed, that the material universe we see around us
is only a fragment of the universe we do not see?
The very retention of the phrase " Material Uni-
verse," we are told, is the confession of our unbelief
and ignorance; since "matter is the less important
half of the material of the physical universe." 1

The thing to be aimed at is not an organism self-
contained and self-sufficient, however high in the
scale of being, but an organism complete in the
whole Environment. It is open to any one to aim at
a self-sufficient Life, but he will find no encourage-
ment in Nature. The Life of the body may complete
itself in the physical world ; that is its legitimate

1 The " Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., p. iocx

ENVIRONMENT. 283

Environment. The Life of the senses, high and low,
may perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of
thought may find a large complement in surrounding
things. But the higher thought, and the consciencej
and the religious Life, can only perfect themselves in
God. To make the influence of Environment stop
with the natural world is to doom the spiritual nature
to death. For the soul, like the body, can never
perfect itself in isolation. The law for both is to be
complete in the appropriate Environment. And the
perfection to be sought in the spiritual world is a
perfection of relation, a perfect adjustment of that
which is becoming perfect to that which is perfect
The third problem, now simplified to a point,
finally presents itself. Where do organism and
Environment meet ? How does that which is becom-
ing perfect avail itself of its perfecting Environment ?
And the answer is, just as in Nature. The condition
is simple receptivity. And yet this is perhaps the
least simple of all conditions. It is so simple that we
will not act upon it. But there is no other condition.
Christ has condensed the whole truth into one
memorable sentence, "As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can
ye except ye abide in Me." And on the positive
side, " He that abideth in Me the same bringeth
forth much fruit."

CONFORMITY TO TYPE,

" ' So careful of the type ? ' but no,

From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ' A thousand types are gone,
I care for nothing, all shall go.

1 Thou makes t thine appeal to me j
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit does but mean thy breath :

I know 710 more.y And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seeind so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolVd the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer.

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation 's final law —
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek 'd against his creed —

Who loved, who suffer d countless tils,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust
Or seaVd within the iron hills ? "

In Memoriam.

CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

" Until Christ be formed in you." — Paul.

"The one end to which, in all living beings, the formative
impulse is tending — the one scheme which the Archaeus of the
old speculators strives to carry out, seems to be to mould the
offspring into the likeness of the parent. It is the first great
law of reproduction, that the offspring tends to resemble its
parent or parents more closely than anything else." — Huxley.

If a botanist be asked the difference between an
oak, a palm-tree, and a lichen, he will declare that
they are separated from one another by the broadest
line known to classification. Without taking into
account the outward differences of size and form, the
variety of flower and fruit, the peculiarities of leaf
and branch, he sees even in their general architecture
types of structure as distinct as Norman, Gothic and
Egyptian But if the first young germs of these
three plants are placed before him and he is called
upon to define the difference, he finds it impossible.
He cannot even say which is which. Examined
under the highest powers of the microscope they

288 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

yield no clue. Analysed by the chemist with all the
appliances of his laboratory they keep their secret.

The same experiment can be tried with the
embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the worm,
the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let the
most skilled observer apply the most searching tests
to distinguish one from the other and he will fail.
But there is something more surprising still. Com-
pare next the two sets of germs, the vegetable and
the animal. And there is still no shade of difference.
Oak and palm, worm and man all start in life
together. No matter into what strangely different
forms they may afterwards develop, no matter
whether they are to live on sea or land, creep or fly,
swim or walk, think or vegetate, in the embryo as it
first meets the eye of Science they are indistinguish-
able. The apple which fell in Newton's Garden,
Newton's dog Diamond, and Newton himself, began
life at the same point1

1 " There is, indeed, a period in the development of every
tissue and every living thing known to us when there are
actually no structural peculiarities whatever — when the whole
organism consists of transparent, structureless, semi-fluid living
bioplasm — when it would not be possible to distinguish the
growing moving matter which was to evolve the oak from that
which was the germ of a vertebrate animal. Nor can any
difference be discerned between the bioplasm matter of the
lowest, simplest, epithelial scale of man's organism and that
from which the nerve cells of his brain are to be evolved

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 289

If we analyse this material point at which all life
starts, we shall find it to consist of a clear structure
less jelly-like substance resembling albumen or white
of egg. It is made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen
and Nitrogen. Its name is protoplasm. And it is
not only the structural unit with which all living
bodies start in life, but with which they are sub-
sequently built up. " Protoplasm," says Huxley,
" simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life.
It is the clay of the Potter." "Beast and fowl,
reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype are all
composed of structural units of the same character,
namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus." l

What then determines the difference between
different animals ? What makes one little speck of
protoplasm grow into Newton's dog Diamond, and
another, exactly the same, into Newton himself? It
is a mysterious something which has entered into
this protoplasm. No eye can see it. No science
can define it. There is a different something for
Newton's dog and a different something for New
ton ; so that though both use the same matter they

Neither by studying bioplasm under the microscope nor by any
kind of physical or chemical investigation known, can we form
Any notion of the nature of the substance which is to be formed
by the bioplasm, or what will be the ordinary results of the
Living."—" Bioplasm," Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S., pp. 17, 18.
1 Huxley; "Lay Sermons," 6th Ed., pp. 127, 129.

U

290 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

build it up in these widely different ways. Proto-
plasm being the clay, this something is the Potter,
And as there is only one clay and yet all these
curious forms are developed out of it, it follows
necessarily that the difference lies in the potters.
There must in short be as many potters as there are
forms. There is the potter who segments the worm,
and the potter who builds up the form of the dog,
and the potter who moulds the man. To under-
stand unmistakably that it is really the potter who
does the work, let us follow for a moment a descrip-
tion of the process by a trained eye-witness. The
observer is Mr. Huxley. Through the tube of his
microscope he is watching the development, out of
a speck of protoplasm, of one of the commonest
animals : " Strange possibilities," he says, " lie dor-
mant in that semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate sup-
ply of warmth reach its watery cradle and the plastic
matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady
and purposelike in their succession that one can only
compare them to those operated by a skilled model-
ler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invis-
ible trowel the mass is divided and subdivided into
smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an
aggregation of granules not too large to build withal
the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And,
then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 291

be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the
contour of the body ; pinching up the head at one
end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and
limb into due proportions in so artistic a way, that,
after watching the process hour by hour, one is
almost involuntarily possessed by the notion, that
some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic
would show the hidden artist, with his plan before
him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his
work."1

Besides the fact, so luminously brought out here,
that the artist is distinct from the "semi-fluid
globule " of protoplasm in which he works, there is
this other essential point to notice, that in all his
"skilful manipulation" the artist is not working at
random, but according to law. He has "his plan
before him." In the zoological laboratoiy of Nature
it is not as in a workshop where a skilled artisan can
turn his hand to anything — where the same potter
one day moulds a dog, the next a bird, and the next
a man. In Nature one potter is set apart to make
each. It is a more complete system of division of
labour. One artist makes all the dogs, another
makes all the birds, a third makes all the men.
Moreover, each artist confines himself exclusively
to working out his own plan. He appears to havo
1 Huxley * " Lay Sermons," 6th Ed., p. 261.

292 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

his own plan somehow stamped upon himself, and
his work is rigidly to reproduce himself.

The Scientific Law by which this takes place is the
Law of Conformity to Type. It is contained, to a large
extent, in the ordinary Law of Inheritance ; or it
may be considered as simply another way of stating
what Darwin calls the Law of Unity of Type. Dar-
win defines it thus : " By Unity of Type is meant
that fundamental agreement in structure which we
see in organic beings of the same class, and which is
quite independent of their habits of life." l Accord-
ing to this law every living thing that comes into the
world is compelled to stamp upon its offspring the
image of itself. The dog, according to its type,
produces a dog ; the bird a bird.

The Artist who operates upon matter in this subtle
way and carries out this law is Life. There are a
great many different kinds of Life. If one might give
the broader meaning to the words of the apostle :
" All life is not the same life. There is one kind of
life of men, another life of beasts, another of fishes,
and another of birds." There is the Life, or the Artist,
or the Potter who segments the worm, the potter who
forms the dog, the potter who moulds the man,8

1 " Origin of Species, p. 166.

1 There is no intention here to countenance the old doctrine
of the permanence of species. Whether the word species

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 293

What goes on then in the animal kingdom is this—
the Bird-Life seizes upon the bird-germ and builds it
up into a bird, the image of itself. The Reptiles-Life
seizes upon another germinal speck, assimilates sur-
rounding matter, and fashions it into a reptile. The
Reptile-Life thus simply makes an incarnation of
itself. The visible bird is simply an incarnation of
the invisible Bird-Life.

Now we are nearing the point where the spiritual
analogy appears. It is a very wonderful analogy, so
wonderful that one almost hesitates to put it into
words. Yet Nature is reverent ; and it is her voice
to which we listen. These lower phenomena of life,
she says, are but an allegory. There is another kind
of Life of which Science as yet has taken little
cognisance. It obeys the same laws. It builds up
an organism into its own form. It is the Christ-Life.
As the Bird-Life builds up a bird, the image of itself,
so the Christ-Life builds up a Christ, the image of
Himself, in the inward nature of man. When a man

represent a fixed quantity or the reverse does not affect the
question. The facts as stated are true in contemporary zoology
if not in palaeontology. It may also be added that the general
conception of a definite Vital Principle is used here simply as a
working hypothesis. Science may yet have to give up what the
Germans call the " ontogenetic directive Force. n But in the
absence of any proof to the contrary, and especially of any
satisfactory alternative, we are justified in working still with th«
oH theory.

(294 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

becomes a Christian the natural process is this : The
Living Christ enters into his soul. Development
begins. The quickening Life seizes upon the soul,
assimilates surrounding elements, and begins to
fashion it According to the great Law of Con-
formity to Type this fashioning takes a specific form.
It is that of the Artist who fashions. And all
through Life this wonderful, mystical, glorious, yet
perfectly definite process, goes on " until Christ be
formed " in it

The Christian Life is not a vague effort after
righteousness — an ill-defined pointless struggle for
an ill-defined pointless end. Religion is no dis-
hevelled mass of aspiration, prayer, and faith. [ There
is no more mystery in Religion as to its processes
than in Biology. There is much mystery in Biology.
We know all but nothing of Life yet, nothing of
development. There is the same mystery in the
spiritual Life. But the great lines are the same, as
decided, as luminous; and the laws of natural and
spiritual are the same, as unerring, as simple. Will
everything else in the natural world unfold its order,
and yield to Science more and more a vision of har-
mony and Religion, which should complement and
perfect all, remain a chaos ? From the standpoint of
Revelation no truth is more obscure than Conformity
to Type. If Science can furnish a companion pheno-

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 295

menon from an every-day process of the natural life,
it may at least throw this most mystical doctrine of
Christianity into thinkable form. Is there any fallacy
in speaking of the Embryology of the New Life?
Is the analogy invalid ? Are there not vital processes
in the Spiritual as well as in the Natural world ?
The Bird being an incarnation of the Bird-Life,
may not the Christian be a spiritual incarnation of
the Christ- Life? And is there not a real justification
in the processes of the New Birth for such a parallel ?

Let us appeal to the record of these processes.

In what terms does the New Testament describe
them ? The answer is sufficiently striking. It uses
everywhere the language of Biology. It is im-
possible that the New Testament writers should
have been familiar with these biological facts. It is
impossible that their views of this great truth should
have been as clear as Science can make them now.
But they had no alternative. There was no other
way of expressing this truth. It was a biological
question. So they struck out unhesitatingly into the
new field of words, and, with an originality which
commands both reverence and surprise, stated their
truth with such light, or darkness, as they had.
They did not mean to be scientific, only to be
accurate, and their fearless accuracy has made them
scientific.

296 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

What could be more original, for instance, than the
Apostle's reiteration that the Christian was a new
creature, a new man, a babe?1 Or that this new
man was " begotten of God," God's workmanship ? *
And what could be a more accurate expression )f the
law of Conformity to Type than this : " Put on the
new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the
image of Him that created him "? s Or this, "We are
changed into the same image from glory to glory " ? 4
And elsewhere we are expressly told by the same
writer that this Conformity is the end and goal of the
Christian life. To work this Type in us is the whole
purpose of God for man. " Whom He did foreknow
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the
image of His Son."6

One must confess that the originality of this entire
New Testament conception is most startling Even
for the nineteenth century it is most startling. But
when one remembers that such an idea took form in
the first, he cannot fail to be impressed with a deep-
ening wonder at the system which begat and cher-
ished it. Men seek the origin of Christianity among
the philosophies of that age. Scholars contrast it
still with these philosophies, and scheme to fit it in

1 1 Cor. v. 17. * I John v. 18 ; 1 Pet L 3

* Col. iii. 9, I a 4 2 Cor. iii. 18

• Rom. viii. 29.

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 297

to those of later growth. Has it never occurred to
them how much more it is than a philosophy, that
it includes a science, a Biology pure and simple J
As well might naturalists contrast zoology with
chemistry, or seek to incorporate geology with
botany — the living with the dead — as try to explain
the spiritual life in terms of mind alone. When
will it be seen that the characteristic of the Chris-
tian Religion is its Life, that a true theology must
begin with a Biology ? Theology is the Science of
God. Why will men treat God as inorganic ?

If this analogy is capable of being worked out, we
should expect answers to at least three questions.

First : What corresponds to the protoplasm in the
spiritual sphere ?

Second : What is the Life, the Hidden Artist who
fashions it ?

Third : What do we know of the process and the
plan ?

First : The Protoplasm.

We should be forsaking the lines of nature were
we to imagine for a moment that the new creature
was to be formed out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil —
nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is un-
creatable and indestructible; Nature and man can
only form and transform. Hence when a new animal
is made, no new clay is made. Life merely enters

298 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

into already existing matter, assimilates more of the
same sort and re-builds it. The spiritual Artist
works in the same way. He must have a peculiar
kind of protoplasm, a basis of life, and that must be
already existing.

Now He finds this in the materials of character
with which the natural man is previously provided.
Mind and character, the will and the affections, the
moral nature — these form the bases of spiritual life.
To look in this direction for the protoplasm of the
spiritual life is consistent with all analogy. The
lowest or mineral world mainly supplies the material
— and this is true even for insectivorous species — for
the vegetable kingdom. The vegetable supplies the
material for the animal. Next in turn, the animal
furnishes material for the mental, and lastly, the
mental for the spiritual. Each member of the series
is complete only when the steps below it are com-
plete ; the highest demands all. It is not necessary
for the immediate purpose to go so far into the psy-
chology either of the new creature or of the old as to
define more clearly what these moral bases are. It
is enough to discover that in this womb the new
creature is to be born, fashioned out of the mental
and moral parts, substance, or essence of the natural
man. The only thing to be insisted upon is that in
the natural man this mental and moral substance 01

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 299

basis is spiritually lifeless. However active the intel-
lectual or moral life may be, from the point of view
of this other Life it is dead. That which is flesh is
flesh. It wants, that is to say, the kind of Life whicb
constitutes the difference between the Christian and
the not-a-Christian. It has not yet been " born of
the Spirit."

To show further that this protoplasm possesses the
necessary properties of a normal protoplasm it will
be necessary to examine in passing what these pro-
perties are. They are two in number, the capacity
for life and plasticity. Consider first the capacity
for life. It is not enough to find an adequate supply
of material. That material must be of the right
kind. For all kinds of matter have not the power to
be the vehicle of life — all kinds of matter are not
even fitted to be the vehicle of electricity. What
peculiarity there is in Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen,
and Nitrogen, when combined in a certain way, to
receive life, we cannot tell. We only know that life
is always associated in Nature with this particulai
physical basis and never with any other. But we are
not in the same darkness with regard to the mora!
protoplasm. When we look at this complex com-
bination which we have predicated as the basis ot
spiritual life, we do find something which gives it a
peculiar qualification for being the protoplasm of the

300 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

Christ-Life. We discover one strong reason at least,
not only why this kind of life should be associated
with this kind of protoplasm, but why it should never
be associated with other kinds which seem to
resemble it — why, for instance, this spiritual life
should not be engrafted upon the intelligence of
a dog or the instincts of an ant.

The protoplasm in man has a something in ad-
dition to its instincts or its habits. It has a
capacity for God. In this capacity for God lies
its receptivity; it is the very protoplasm that was
necessary. The chamber is not only ready to
receive the new Life, but the Guest is expected,
and, till He comes, is missed. Till then the soul
longs and yearns, wastes and pines, waving its
tentacles piteously in the empty air, feeling after God
if so be that it may find Him. This is not peculiar
to the protoplasm of the Christian's soul. In every
land and in every age there have been altars to the
Known or Unknown God. It is now agreed as a
mere question of anthropology that the universal
language of the human soul has always been " I
perish with hunger." This is what fits it for Christ
There is a grandeur in this cry from the depths which
makes its very unhappiness sublime.

The other quality we are to look for in the soul h
mouldableness, plasticity. Conformity demands con-

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 301

formability. Now plasticity is not only a marked
characteristic of all forms of life, but in a special
sense of the highest forms. It increases steadily aa
wq rise in the scale. The inorganic world, to begin
with, is rigid. A crystal of silica dissolved and re-
dissolved a thousand times will never assume any
other form than the hexagonal. The plant next,
though plastic in its elements, is comparatively insus-
ceptible of change. The very fixity of its sphere,
the imprisonment for life in a single spot of earth, is
the symbol of a certain degradation. The animal in
all its parts is mobile, sensitive, free; the highest
animal, man, is the most mobile, the most at leisure
from routine, the most impressionable, the most open
for change. And when we reach the mind and soul,
this mobility is found in its most developed form.
Whether we regard its susceptibility to impressions,
its lightning-like response even to influences the most
impalpable and subtle, its power of instantaneous
adjustment, or whether we regard the delicacy and
variety of its moods, or its vast powers of growth, we
are forced to recognise in this the most perfect
capacity for change. This marvellous plasticity of
mind contains at once the possibility and prophecy of
its transformation. The soul, in a word, is made tc
be converted.

302 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

Second, The Life.

The main reason for giving the Life, the agent oi
this change, a separate treatment, is to emphasize
the distinction between it and the natural man on the
one hand, and the spiritual man on the other. The
natural man is its basis, the spiritual man is its
product, the Life itself is something different Just
as in an organism we have these three things —
formative matter, formed matter, and the forming
principle or life ; so in the soul we have the old
nature, the renewed nature, and the transforming
Life.

This being made evident, little remains here to
be added. No man has ever seen this Life. It
cannot be analysed, or weighed, or traced in its
essential nature. But this is just what we expected.
This invisibility is the same property which we found
to be peculiar to the natural life. We saw no life in
the first embryos, in oak, in palm, or in bird. In the
adult it likewise escapes us. We shall not wonder
if we cannot see it in the Christian. We shall not
expect to see it A fortiori we shall not expect to
see it, for we are further removed from the coarser
matter — moving now among ethereal and spiritual
things. It is because it conforms to the law of this
analogy so well that men, not seeing it, have denied
its being. Is it hopeless to point out that one of the

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 303

most recognisable characteristics of life is its un-
recognisableness, and that the very token of its
spiritual nature lies in its being beyond the grossness
of our eyes ?

We do not pretend that Science can define this
Life to be Christ. It has no definition to give even
of its own life, much less of this. But there are
converging lines which point, at least, in the direction
that it is Christ. There was One whom history
acknowledges to have been the Truth. One of His
claims was this, " I am the Life." According to the
doctrine of Biogenesis, life can only come from life.
It was His additional claim that His function in the
world was to give men Life. " I am come that ye
might have Life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." This could not refer to the natural
life, for men had that already. He that hath the Son
hath another Life. " Know ye not your own selves
how that Jesus Christ is in you."

Again, there are men whose characters assume a
strange resemblance to Him who was the Life.
When we see the bird-character appear in an organ-
ism we assume that the Bird-Life has been there at
work. And when we behold Conformity to Type
in a Christian, and know moreover that the type-
organization can be produced by the type-life alone
does this not lend support to the hypothesis that the

304 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

Type-Life also has been here at work ? If every
effect demands a cause, what other cause is there foi
the Christian? When we have a cause, and an
adequate cause, and no other adequate cause ; when
we have the express statement of that Cause that
he is that cause, what more is possible ? Let not
Science, knowing nothing of its own life, go further
than to say it knows nothing of this Life. We shall
not dissent from its silence. But till it tells us what
it is, we wait for evidence that it is not this.
I Third, the Process.

It is impossible to enter at length into any details
of the great miracle by which this protoplasm is to
be conformed to the Image of the Son. We enter
that province now only so far as this Law of Con-
formity compels us. Nor is it so much the nature
of the process we have to consider as its general
direction and results. We are dealing with a ques-
tion of morphology rather than of physiology.

It must occur to one on reaching this point, that
a new element here comes in which compels us, foi
the moment, to part company with zoology. That
element is the conscious power of choice. The
anLnal in following the type is blind. It does not
only follow the type involuntarily and compulsorily,
but does not know that it is following it We might
certainly have been made to conform to the Type

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 305

in the higher sphere with no more knowledge or
power of choice than animals or uitomata. But
then we should not have been men. It is a possible
case, but not possible to the kind of protoplasm with
which men are furnished. Owing to the peculiar
characteristics of this protoplasm an additional and
exceptional provision is essential.

The first demand is that ^being conscious and
having this power of choice, the mind should have
an adequate knowledge of what it is to choosev
Some revelation of the Type, that is to say, is ne-
cessary. And as that revelation can only come from
the Type, we must look there for it.

We are confronted at once with the Incarnation.
There we find how the Christ-Life has clothed
Himself with matter, taken literal flesh, and dwelt
among us. The Incarnation is the Life revealing the
Type. Men are long since agreed that this is the
end of the Incarnation — the revealing of God. But
why should God be revealed ? Why, indeed, but for
man ? Why but that " beholding as in a glass the
glory of the only begotten we should be changed
intc the same Image " ?

To meet the power of choice, however, something
more was necessary than the mere revelation of the
Type — it was necessary that the Type should be the
highest conceivable Type. In other words, the Type

x

306 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

must be an Ideal For all true human growth,
effort, and achievement, an ideal is acknowledged to
be indispensable. And all men accordingly whose
lives are based on principle, have set themselves an
ideal, more or less perfect. It is this which first
deflects the will from what is base, and turns the
wayward life to what is holy. So much is true as
mere philosophy. But philosophy failed to present
men with their ideal. It has never been suggested
that Christianity has failed. Believers and unbe-
lievers have been compelled to acknowledge that
Christianity holds up to the world the missing Type,
the Perfect Man.

The recognition of the Ideal is the first step in the
direction of Conformity. But let it be clearly ob-
served that it is but a step. There is no vital
connection between merely seeing the Ideal and
being conformed to it. Thousands admire Chrkt
who never become Christians.

But the great question still remains, How is the
Christian to be conformed to the Type, or as we
should now say, dealing with consciousness, to the
Ideal ? The mere knowledge of the Ideal is no more
than a motive. How is the process to be practically
accomplished ? Who is to do it ? Where, when,
how ? This is the test question of Christianity. It
is here that all theories of Christianity, all attempts

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 30}

to explain it on natural principles, all reductions of
it to philosophy, inevitably break down. It is here
that all imitations of Christianity perish. It is here,
also, that personal religion finds its most fatal ob-
stacle. Men are all quite clear about the Ideal. We
are all convinced of the duty of mankind regarding
it But how to secure that willing men shall attain
it — that is the problem of religion, lit is the failure
to understand the dynamics of Christianity that has
most seriously and most pitifully hindered its growth
both in the individual and in the race.

From the standpoint of biology this practical
difficulty vanishes in a moment. It is probably the
very simplicity of the law regarding it that has
made men stumble. For nothing is so invisible to
most men as transparency. The law here is the
same biological law that exists in the natural world.
For centuries men have striven to find out ways
and means to conform themselves to this type.
Impressive motives have been pictured, the proper
circumstances arranged, the direction of effort de-
fined, and men have toiled, struggled, and agonized
to conform themselves to the Image of the Son.
Can the protoplasm conform itself to its type?
Can the embryo fashion itself? Is Conformity to
Type produced by the matter or by the life, by
the protoplasm or by the Type? Is organization

308 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

the cause of life or the effect of it ? It is the
effect of it. Conformity to Type, therefore, is secured
by the type. Christ makes the Christian.

Men need only reflect on the automatic processes
of their natural body to discover that this is the
universal law of Life. What does any man con-
sciously do, for instance, in the matter of breathing ?
What part does he take in circulating the blood, in
keeping up the rhythm of his heart ? What control
has he over growth ? What man by taking thought
can add a cubit to his stature ? What part volun-
tarily does man take in secretion, in digestion, in
the reflex actions ? In point of fact is he not
after all the veriest automaton, every organ of his
body given him, every function arranged for him,
brain and nerve, thought and sensation, will and
conscience, all provided for him ready made ? And
yet he turns upon his soul and wishes to organize
that himself! O preposterous and vain man, thou
who couldest not make a finger nail of thy body,
thinkest thou to fashion this wonderful, myste-
rious, subtle soul of thine after the ineffable Image ?
Wilt thou ever permit thyself to be conformed to
the Image of the Son ? Wilt thou, who canst not
add a cubit to thy stature, submit to be raised by
the Type-Life within thee to the perfect stature of
Christ ?

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 309

This is a humbling conclusion. And therefore
men will resent it. Men will still experiment " by
works of righteousness which they have done" to
earn the Ideal life. The doctrine of Human In-
ability, as the Church calls it, has always been
objectionable to men who do not know themselves.
The doctrine itself, perhaps, has been partly to
blame. While it has been often affirmed in such
anguage as rightly to humble men, it has also
been stated and cast in their teeth with words
which could only insult them. Merely to assert
dogmatically that man has no power to move hand
or foot to help himself towards Christ, carries no
real conviction. The weight of human authority is
always powerless, and ought to be, where the in-
telligence is denied a rationale. In the light of
modern science when men seek a reason for every
thought of God or man, this old doctrine with its
severe and almost inhuman aspect — till rightly un-
derstood— must presently have succumbed. But to
the biologist it cannot die. It stands to him on the
solid ground of Nature. It has a reason in the laws
of life which must resuscitate it and give it another
lease of years. Bird-Life makes the Bird. Christ-
Life makes the Christian. No man by taking
thought can add a cubit to his stature.

So much for the scientific evidence. Here is the

310 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

corresponding statement of the truth from Scripture.
Observe the passive voice in these sentences : u Be*
gotten of God ; " " The new man which is renewed
in knowledge after the Image of Him that created
him ; " or this, " We are changed into the same
Image ; M or this, " Predestinate to be conformed to
the Image of His Son ; " or again, " Until Christ
be formed in you;" or "Except a man be born
again he cannot see the Kingdom of God ; " " Ex-
cept a man be born of water and of the Spirit he
cannot enter the Kingdom of God." There is one
outstanding verse which seems at first sight on the
other side : " Work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling ; " but as one reads on he finds,
as if the writer dreaded the very misconception,
the complement, " For it is God which worketh in
you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

It will be noticed in these passages, and in others
which might be named, that the process of trans-
formation is referred indifferently to the agency of
each Person of the Trinity in turn. We are not
concerned to take up this question of detail. It
is sufficient that the transformation is wrought
Theologians, however, distinguish thus : the indirect
agent is Christ, the direct influence is the Holy
Spirit. In other words, Christ by His Spirit renews
the souls of men.

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 311

Is man, then, out of the arena altogether? Is
he mere clay in the hands of the potter, a machine,
a tool, an automaton ? Yes and No. If he were a
tool he would not be a man. If he were a man
he would have something to do. One need not
seek to balance what God does here, and what man
does. But we shall attain to a sufficient measure
of truth on a most delicate problem if we make a
final appeal to the natural life. We find that in
maintaining this natural life Nature has a share and
man has a share. By far the larger part is done
for us — the breathing, the secreting, the circulating
of the blood, the building up of the organism. And
although the part which man plays is a minor part,
yet, strange to say, it is not less essential to the
well-being, and even to the being, of the whole.
For instance, man has to take food. He has no-
thing to do with it after he has once taken it, for
the moment it passes his lips it is taken in hand
by reflex actions and handed on from one organ to
another, his control over it, in the natural course
of things, being completely lost. But the initial
act was his. And without that nothing could have
been done. Now whether there be an exact analogy
between the voluntary and involuntary functicns in
the body, and the corresponding processes ;o the
loul, we do not at present inquire. But this will

312 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

indicate, at least, that man has his own part tc
play. Let him choose Life ; let him daily nourish
his soul ; let him for ever starve the old life ; let
him abide continuously as a living branch in the
Vine, and the True- Vine Life will flow into his
soul, assimilating, renewing, conforming to Type, till
Christ, pledged by His own law, be formed in him.

We have been dealing with Christianity at its
most mystical point. Mark here once more its
absolute naturalness. The pursuit of the Type is
just what all Nature is engaged in. Plant and insect,
fish and reptile, bird and mammal — these in their
several spheres are striving after the Type. To
prevent its extinction, to ennoble it, to people earth
and sea and sky with it ; this is the meaning of the
Struggle for Life. And this is our life — to pursue
the Type, to populate the world with it.

Our religion is not all a mistake. We are not
visionaries. We are not " unpractical," as men
pronounce us, when we worship. To try to follow
Christ is not to be "lighteous overmuch." True
men are not rhapsodizing when they preach ; nor
do those waste their lives who waste themselves in
striving to extend the Kingdom of God on earth.
This is what life is for. The Christian in his life-
aim is in strict line with Nature. What men call
his supernatural is quite natural.

CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 313

Mark well also the splendour of this idea oi
salvation. It is not merely final " safety," to be for-
given sin, to evade the curse. It is not, vaguely,
"to get to heaven." It is to be conformed to the
Image of the Son. It is for these poor elements to
attain to the Supreme Beauty. The organizing Life
being Eternal, so must this Beauty be immortal. Its
progress towards the Immaculate is already guar-
anteed. And more than all there is here fulfilled
the sublimest of all prophecies ; not Beauty alone
but Unity is secured by the Type — Unity of man
and man, God and man, God and Christ and man,
till " all shall be one."

Could Science in its most brilliant anticipations
for the future of its highest organism ever have fore-
shadowed a development like this ? Now that the
revelation is made to it, it surely recognises it as the
missing point in Evolution, the climax to which all
Creation tends. Hitherto Evolution had no future.
It was a pillar with marvellous carving, growing
richer and finer towards the top, but without a
capital; a pyramid, the vast base buried in the
inorganic, towering higher and higher, tier above tier,
life above life, mind above mind, ever more perfect
in its workmanship, more noble in its. symmetry, and
yet withal so much the more mysterious in its aspira-
tion. The most curious eye, following it upward^

314 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.

saw nothing. The cloud fell and covered it. Just
what men wanted to see was hid. The work of the
ages had no apex. But the work begun by Nature
is finished by the Supernatural — as we are wont to
call the higher natural. And as the veil is lifted by
Christianity it strikes men dumb with wonder. For
the goal of Evolution is Jesus Christ

The Christian life is the only life that will ever be
completed. Apart from Christ the life of man is
a broken pillar, the race of men an unfinished
pyramid. One by one in sight of Eternity all human
Ideals fall short, one by one before the open grave
all human hopes dissolve. The Laureate sees a
moment's light in Nature's jealousy for the Type;
but that too vanishes.

a 4 So careful of the type ? ' but no

From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ' A thousand types are gone ;
I care for nothing, all shall go.' "

All shall go ? No, one Type remains. " Whom He
did foreknow He also did predestinate to be con-
formed to the Image of His Son." And "when
Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also
appear with Him in glory."

SEMI-PARASITISM.

" The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never
yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable,
hai7ipered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now stand-
est, here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ;
a?id working, believe, live, be free."

Carlyle.

SEMI-PARASITISM.

'I Work out your own salvation." — Paul.

u Any new set of conditions occurring to an animal which
render its food and safety very easily attained, seem to lead as
A rule to degeneration." — £. Ray Lankester.

Parasites are the paupers of Nature. They are
forms of life which will not take the trouble to find
their own food, but borrow or steal it from the more
industrious. So deep-rooted is this tendency in
Nature, that plants may become parasitic — it is an
acquired habit — as well as animals ; and both are
found in every state of beggary, some doing a little
for themselves, while others, more abject, refuse even
to prepare their own food.

There are certain plants — the Dodder, for instance
—which begin life with the best intentions, stiike
true roots into the soil, and really appear as if they
meant to be independent for life. But after support-
ing themselves for a brief period they fix curious
sucking discs into the stem and branches of adjacent
plants. And after a little experimenting, the

318 SEML PARASITISM

epiphyte finally ceases to do anything for its own
support, thenceforth drawing all its supplies ready-
made from the sap of its host. In this parasitic state
it has no need for organs of nutrition of its own, and
Nature therefore takes them away. Henceforth, to
the botanist, the adult Dodder presents the degraded
spectacle of a plant without a root, without a twig,
without a leaf, and having a stem so useless as to be
inadequate to bear its own weight.

In the Mistletoe the parasitic habit has reached a
stage in some respects lower still. It has persisted in
the downward course for m many generations that
the young forms even have acquired the habit and
usually begin life at once as parasites. The Mistletoe
berries, which contain the seed of the future plant, are
developed specially to minister to this degeneracy, for
they glue themselves to the branches of some neigh-
bouring oak or apple, and there the young Mistletoe
starts as a dependent from the fii^rt.

Among animals these lazzaroni art more largely
represented still. Almost every animal is a living
poor-house, and harbours one or more species of
epizoa or entozoa, supplying them gratis, not only
with a permanent home, but with all the necessaries
and luxuries of life.

Why does the naturalist think hardly of the
parasites ? Why does he speak of them as degraded,

SEMI-PARASITISM. 319

and despise them as the most ignoble creatures in
Nature ? What more can an animal do than eat,
drink, and die to-morrow? If under the fostering
care and protection of a higher organism it can eat
better, drink more easily, live more merrily, and die>
perhaps, not till the day after, why should it not do
so ? Is parasitism, after all, not a somewhat clever
ruse} Is it not an ingenious way of securing the
benefits of life while evading its responsibilities ?
And although this mode of livelihood is selfish, and
possibly undignified, can it be said that it is im-
moral ?

The naturalist's reply to this is brief. Parasitism,
he will say, is one of the gravest crimes in Nature.
It is a breach of the law of Evolution. Thou shalt
evolve, thou shalt develop all thy faculties to the
full, thou shalt attain to the highest conceivable
perfection of thy race — and so perfect thy race — this
is the first and greatest commandment of Nature.
But the parasite has no thought for its race, or for
perfection in any shape or form. It wants two
things — food and shelter. How it gets them is of
no moment. Each member lives exclusively on its
own account, an isolated, indolent, selfish, and back-
sliding life.

The remarkable thing is that Nature permits the
community to be taxed in this way apparently with-

320 SEMI-PARASITISM.

out protest. For the parasite is a consumer pure
and simple. And the " Perfect Economy of Nature "
is surely for once at fault when it encourages species
numbered by thousands which produce nothing for
their own or for the general good, but live, and live
luxuriously, at the expense of others ?

Now when we look into the matter, we very soon
perceive that instead of secretly countenancing this
ingenious device by which parasitic animals and
plants evade the great law of the Struggle for Life,
Nature sets her face most sternly against it. And,
instead of allowing the transgressors to slip through
her fingers, as one might at first suppose, she visits
upon them the most severe and terrible penalties.
The parasite, she argues, not only injures itself, but
wrongs others. It disobeys the fundamental law of its
own being, and taxes the innocent to contribute to its
disgrace. So that if Nature is just, if Nature has an
avenging hand, if she holds one vial of wrath more
full and bitter than another, it shall surely be poured
out upon those who are guilty of this double sin.
Let us see what form this punishment takes.

Observant visitors to the sea-side, or let us say to
an aquarium, are familiar with those curious little
creatures known as Hermit-crabs. The peculiarity
of the Hermits is that they take up their abode in
the cast-off shell of some other animal, not unusually

SEMI-PARASITISM. 321

the whelk ; and here, like Diogenes in his tub, the
creature lives a solitary, but by no means an inactive
life.

The Pagurus, however, is not a parasite. And yet
although in no sense of the word a parasite, this
way of inhabiting throughout life a house built by
another animal approaches so closely the parasitic
habit, that we shall find it instructive as a prelimi-
nary illustration, to consider the effect of this free-
house policy on the occupant. There is no doubt, to
begin with, that, as has been already indicated, the
habit is an acquired one. In its general anatomy the
Hermit is essentially a crab. Now the crab is an
animal which, from the nature of its environment,
has to lead a somewhat rough and perilous life. Its
days are spent amongst jagged rocks and boulders.
Dashed about by every wave, attacked on every side
by monsters of the deep, the crustacean has to
protect itself by developing a strong and serviceable
coat of mail.

How best to protect themselves has been the
problem to which the whole crab family have
addressed themselves ; and, in considering the matter,
the ancestors of the Hermit-crab hit on the happy
device of re-utilising the habitations of the molluscs
which lay around them in plenty, well-built, and
ready for immediate occupation. For generations

Y

322 SEMI-PARASITISM.

and generations accordingly, the Hermit-crab has
ceased to exercise itself upon questions of safety, and
dwells in its little shell as proudly and securely as if
its second-hand house were a fortress erected es-
pecially for its private use.

Wherein, then, has the Hermit suffered for this
cheap, but real solution of a practical difficulty?
Whether its laziness costs it any moral qualms, or
whether its cleverness becomes to it a source of con-
gratulation, we do not know ; but judged from the
appearance the animal makes under the searching
gaze of the zoologist, its expedient is certainly not
one to be commended. To the eye of Science its sin
is written in the plainest characters on its very
organization. It has suffered in its own anatomical
structure just by as much as it has borrowed from
an external source. Instead of being a perfect
crustacean it has allowed certain important parts of
its body to deteriorate. And several vital organs are
partially or wholly atrophied.

Its sphere of life also is now seriously limited ;
and by a cheap expedient to secure safety, it has
fatally lost its independence. It is plain from its
anatomy that the Hermit-crab was not always a
Hermit-crab. It was meant for higher things. Its
ancestors doubtless were more or less perfect crus-
taceans, though what exact stage of development

SEMI-PARASITISM. 323

aras reached before the hermit habit became fixed in
the species we cannot tell. But from the moment
the creature took to relying on an external scurce,
it began to fall. It slowly lost in its own person all
that it now draws from external aid.

As an important item in the day's work, namely,
the securing of safety and shelter, was now guaran-
teed to it, one of the chief inducements to a life of
high and vigilant effort was at the same time with-
drawn. A number of functions, in fact, struck work
The whole of the parts, therefore, of the complex
organism which ministered to these functions, from
lack of exercise, or total disuse, became gradually
feeble ; and ultimately, by the stern law that an un-
used organ must suffer a slow but inevitable atrophy,
the creature not only lost all power of motion in
these parts, but lost the parts themselves, and other-
wise sank into a relatively degenerate condition.

Every normal crustacean, on the other hand, has
the abdominal region of the body covered by a thick
chitinous shell. In the Hermits this is represented
only by a thin and delicate membrane — of which the
sorry figure the creature cuts when drawn from its
foreign hiding-place is sufficient evidence. Any one
who now examines further this half-naked and woe-
begone object, will perceive also that the fourth and
fifth pair of limbs are either so small and wasted a*

324 SEMI-PARASITISM.

to be quite useless or altogether rudimentary ; and,
although certainly the additional development of the
extremity of the tail into an organ for holding on to
its extemporised retreat may be regarded as a slight
compensation, it is clear from the whole structure of
the animal that it has allowed itself to undergo severe
Degeneration.

In dealing with the Hermit-crab, in short, we are
dealing with a case of physiological backsliding
That the creature has lost anything by this process
from a practical point of view is not now argued. It
might fairly be shown, as already indicated, that its
freedom is impaired by its cumbrous eko-skeleton,
and that, in contrast with other crabs, who lead a
free and roving life, its independence generally is
greatly limited. But from the physiological stand-
point, there is no question that the Hermit tribe have
neither discharged their responsibilities to Nature nor
to themselves. If the end of life is merely to escape
death, and serve themselves, possibly they have done
well ; but if it is to attain an ever increasing perfec-
tion, then are they backsliders indeed.

A zoologist's verdict would be that by this act
they have forfeited to some extent their place in the
animal scale. An animal is classed as low or high
according as it is adapted to less or more complex
conditions of life. This is the true standpoint from

SEMI-PARASITISM. 325

which to judge all living organisms. Were perfection
merely a matter of continual eating and drinking,
the Amoeba — the lowest known organism — might
take rank with the highest, Man, for the one nou-
rishes itself and saves its skin almost as completely
as the other. But judged by the higher standard ol
Complexity, that is, by greater or lesser adaptation
to more or less complex conditions, the gulf between
them is infinite.

We have now received a preliminary idea, although
not from the study of a true parasite, of the essential
principles involved in parasitism. And we may pro-
ceed to point out the correlative in the moral and
spiritual spheres. We confine ourselves for the pre-
sent to one point. The difference between the
Hermit-crab and a true parasite is, that the formei
has acquired a semi-parasitic habit only with refer-
ence to safety. It may be that the Hermit devours
as a preliminary the accommodating mollusc whose
tenement it covets ; but it would become a real
parasite only on the supposition that the whelk was
of such size as to keep providing for it throughout
life, and that the external and internal organs of the
crab should disappear, while it lived henceforth, by
simple imbibation, upon the elaborated juices of its
host. All the mollusc provides, however, for the
crustacean in this instance is safety, and, accordingly

SEMI-PARASITISM.

in the meantime we limit our application to this.
The true parasite presents us with an organism so
much more degraded in all its parts, that its lessons
may well be reserved until we have paved the way
to understand the deeper bearings of the subject

The spiritual principle to be illustrated in the
meantime stands thus : Any principle which secures the
safety of the individual without personal effort or ths
vital exercise of faculty is disastrous to moral character.
We do not begin by attempting to define words.
Were we to define truly what is meant by safety or
salvation, we should be spared further elaboration,
and the law would stand out as a sententious com-
mon-place. But we have to deal with the ideas of
safety as these are popularly held, and the chief pur-
pose at this stage is to expose what may be called
the Parasitic Doctrine of Salvation. The phases of
religious experience about to be described may be
unknown to many. It remains for those who are
familiar with the religious conceptions of the masses
to determine whether or not we are wasting words.

What is meant by the Parasitic Doctrine of Salva-
tion one may, perhaps, best explain by sketching two
of its leading types. The first is the doctrine of the
Church of Rome ; the second, that represented by
the narrower Evangelical Religion. We take these
religions, however, not in their ideal form, with which

SEMI-PAR A SITZSM. 327

possibly we should have little quarrel, but in theif
practical working, or in the form in which they are
held especially by the rank and file of those who
belong respectively to these communions. For the
strength or weakness of any religious system is best
judged from the form in which it presents itself to,
and influences the common mind.

No more perfect or more sad example of semi-
parasitism exists than in the case of those illiterate
thousands who, scattered everywhere throughout
the habitable globe, swell the lower ranks of the
Church of Rome. Had an organization been spe-
cially designed, indeed, to induce the parasitic habit
in the souls of men, nothing better fitted to its dis-
astrous end could be established than the system of
Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism offers to
the masses a molluscan shell. They have simp(y to
shelter themselves within its pale, and they are
"safe." But what is this "safe"? It is an external
safety — the safety of an institution. It is a salvation
recommended to men by all that appeals to the
motives in most common use with the vulgar and
the superstitious, but which has as little vital connec-
tion with the individual soul as the dead whelk's
shell with the living Hermit. Salvation is a relation
at once vital, personal, and spiritual. This is me-
chanical and purely external. And this is of course

328 SEMI-PARASITISM.

the final secret of its marvellous success and world-
wide power. A cheap religion is the desideratum of
the human heart ; and an assurance of salvation at
the smallest possible cost forms the tempting bait
held out to a conscience-stricken world by the Romish
Church. Thousands, therefore, who have never been
taught to use their faculties in " working out their
own salvation," thousands who will not exercise
themselves religiously, and who yet cannot be with-
out the exercises of religion, intrust themselves in
idle faith to that venerable house of refuge which
for centuries has stood between God and man. A
Church which has harboured generations of the
elect, whose archives enshrine the names of saints
whose foundations are consecrated with martyrs'
blood — shall it not afford a sure asylum still for any
soul which would make its peace with God ? So, as
the Hermit into the molluscan shell, creeps the poor
soul within the pale of Rome, seeking, like Adam in
the garden, to hide its nakedness from God.

Why does the true lover of men restrain not
nis lips in warning his fellows against this and all
other priestly religions ? It is not because he fails to
see the prodigious energy of the Papal See, or to
appreciate the many noble types of Christian man-
hood nurtured within its pale. Nor is it because its
teachers are often corrupt and its system of doctrine

SEMI-PARASITISM. 329

inadequate as a representation of the Truth — charges
which have to be made more or less against all re*
ligions. But it is because it ministers falsely to the
deepest need of man, reduces the end of religion
to selfishness, and offers safety without spirituality.
That these, theoretically, are its pretensions, we do
not affirm ; but that its practical working is to induce
in man, and in its vtorst forms, the parasitic habit, is
testified by results. No one who has studied the
religion of the Continent upon the spot, has failed to
be impressed with the appalling spectacle of tens of
thousands of unregenerate men sheltering themselves,
as they conceive it for Eternity, behind the Sacra-
ments of Rome.

There is no stronger evidence of the inborn para-
sitic tendency in man in things religious than the
absolute complacency with which even cultured men
will hand over their eternal interests to the care of a
Church. We can never dismiss from memory the
sadness with which we once listened to the confession
of a certain foreign professor: "I used to be con-
cerned about religion," he said in substance, "but
religion is a great subject I was very busy ; there
was little time to settle it for myself. A Protestant,
my attention was called to the Roman Catholic
religion. It suited my case. And instead of dab-
bling in religion for myself I put myself in its hands

330 SEMI-PARASITISM.

Once a year," he concluded, " I go to mass." These
were the words of one whose work will live in the
history of his country, one, too, who knew all about
parasitism. Yet, though he thought it not, this is
parasitism in its worst and most degrading form.
Nor, in spite of its intellectual, not to say moral sin,
is this an extreme or exceptional case. It is a case,
which is being duplicated every day in our own
country, only here the confession is expressed with a
candour which is rare in company with actions be-
traying so signally the want of it.

The form of parasitism exhibited by a certain sec
tion of the narrower Evangelical school is altogether
different from that of the Church of Rome The
parasite in this case seeks its shelter, not in a Church,
but in a Doctrine or a Creed Let it be observed
again that we are not dealing with the Evangelical
Religion, but only with one of its parasitic forms — a
form which will at once be recognised by all who
know the popular Protestantism of this country We
confine ourselves also at present to that form which
finds its encouragement in a single doctrine, that
doctrine being the Doctrine of the Atonement — let
us say, rather, a perverted form of this central truth.

The perverted Doctrine of the Atonement, which
tends to beget the parasitic habit, may be defined in
a single sentence — it is very much because it can be

SEMI-PARASITISM. 331

defined in a single sentence that it is a perversioa
Let us state it in a concrete form. It is put to the
individual in the following syllogism : " You believe
Christ died for sinners ; you are a sinner ; therefore
Christ died for you ; and hence you are saved" Now
what is this but another species of molluscan shell ?
Could any trap for a benighted soul be more ingen-
iously planned ? It is not superstition that is ap-
pealed to this time ; it is reason. The agitated soul
is invited to creep into the convolutions of a syllo-
gism, and entrench itself behind a Doctrine more
venerable even than the Church. But words are
mere chitine. Doctrines may have no more vital
contact with the soul than priest or sacrament, no
further influence on life and character than stone and
lime. And yet the apostles of parasitism pick a
blackguard from the streets, pass him through this
plausible formula, and turn him out a convert in the
space of as many minutes as it takes to tell it.

The zeal of these men, assuredly, is not to be
questioned : their instincts are right, and their work
is often not in vain. It is possible, too, up to a
certain point, to defend this Salvation by Formula.
Are these not the very words of Scripture? Did
not Christ Himself say, " It is finished " ? And is it
not written, " By grace are ye saved through faith/'
u Not of works, lest any man should boast," and " He

332 SEMI-PARASITISM.

that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life"? To
which, however, one might also answer in the words
of Scripture, "The Devils also believe,,, and "Except
a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of
God." But without seeming to make text refute
text, let us ask rather what the supposed convert
possesses at the end of the process. That Christ
saves sinners, even blackguards from the streets, is a
great fact ; and that the simple words of the street
evangelist do sometimes bring this home to man with
convincing power is also a fact. But in ordinary
circumstances, when the inquirer's mind is rapidly
urged through the various stages of the above piece
of logic, he is left to face the future and blot out the
past with a formula of words.

To be sure these words may already convey a
germ of truth, they may yet be filled in with a
wealth of meaning and become a lifelong power.
But we would state the case against Salvation by
Formula with ignorant and unwarranted clemency
did we for a moment convey the idea that this is
always the actual result. The doctrine plays too
well into the hands of the parasitic tendency to make
it possible that in more than a minority of cases the
result is anything but disastrous. And it is disas-
trous not in that, sooner or later, after losing half
their Uvea, those who rely on the naked syllogism

SE ATI- PARASITISM. 333

come to see their mistake, but in that thousands
never come to see it all. Are there not men who
can prove to you and to the world, by the irresistible
logic of texts, that they are saved, whom you know
to be not only unworthy of the Kingdom of God — -
which we all are— but absolutely incapable of enter-
ing it? The condition of membership in the King-
dom of God is well known ; who fulfil this condition
and who do not, is not well known. And yet the
moral test, in spite of the difficulty of its applications,
will always; and rightly, be preferred by the world to
the theological. Nevertheless, in spite of the world's
verdict, the parasite is content He is " safe." Years
ago his mind worked through a certain chain of
phrases in which the words " believe " and " saved "
were the conspicuous terms. And from that mo-
ment, by all Scriptures, by all logic, and by all
theology, "his future was guaranteed. He took out,
in short, an insurance policy, by which he was in-
fallibly secured eternal life at death. This is not a
matter to make light of. We wish we were caricatur-
ing instead of representing things as they are. But
we carry with us all who intimately know the spiri-
tual condition of the Narrow Church in asserting
that in some cases at least its members have nothing
more to show for their religion than a formula, a
syllogism, a cant phrase or an experience of some

334 SEMI-PARASITISM.

kind which happened long ago, and vrnich men told
them at the time was called Salvation. Need we
proceed to formulate objections to the parasitism of
Evangelicism ? Between it and the Religion of the
Church of Rome there is an affinity as real as it is
unsuspected. For one thing these religions are spiri-
tually disastrous as well as theologically erroneous in
propagating a false conception of Christianity. The
fundamental idea alike of the extreme Roman
Catholic and extreme Evangelical Religions is
Escape. Man's chief end is to "get off." And all
factors in religion, the highest and most sacred, are
degraded to this level. God, for example, is a Great
Lawyer. Or He is the Almighty Enemy ; it is from
Him we have to " get off." Jesus Christ is the One
who gets us off — a theological figure who contrives
so to adjust matters federally that the way is clear.
The Church in the one instance is a kind of con-
veyancing office where the transaction is duly con-
cluded, each party accepting the other's terms; in
the other case, a species of sheep-pen where the flock
awaits impatiently and indolently the final consum-
mation. Generally, the means are mistaken for the
end, and the opening-up of the possibility of spiritual
growth becomes the signal to stop growing.

Second, these being cheap religions, are inevitably
accompanied by a cheap life. Safety being guaran-

SEMI-PARASITISM. 335

teed from the first, there remains nothing else to
be done. The mechanical way in which the trans-
action is effected, leaves the soul without stimulus,
and the character remains untouched by the moral
aspects of the sacrifice of Christ He who is unjust
is unjust still; he who is unholy is unholy stilL
Thus the whole scheme ministers to the Degenera-
tion of Organs. For here, again, by just as much as
the organism borrows mechanically from an external
source, by so much exactly does it lose in its own
organization. Whatever rest is provided by Chris-
tianity for the children of God, it is certainly never
contemplated that it should supersede personal effort.
And any rest which ministers to indifference is im-
moral and unreal — it makes parasites and not men
Just because God worketh in him, as the evidence
and triumph of it, the true child of God works out
his own salvation — works it out having really re-
ceived it — not as a light thing, a superfluous labour,
but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and in-
dispensable service.

If it be asked, then, shall the parasite be saved or
shall he not, the answer is that the idea of salvation
conveyed by the question makes a reply all but
hopeless. But if by salvation is meant, a trusting in
Christ in order to likeness to Christ, in order to that
holiness without which no man shall see *he Lord,

336 SEMI-PARASITISM.

the reply is that the parasite's hope is absolutely vaia
So far from ministering to growth, parasitism minis-
ters to decay. So far from ministering to holiness,
that is to wholeness, parasitism ministers to exactly
the opposite. One by one the spiritual faculties
droop and die, one by one from lack of exercise the
muscles of the soul grow weak and flaccid, one by
one the moral activities cease. So from him that
hath not, is taken away that which he hath, and after
a few years of parasitism there is nothing left to
save.

If our meaning up to this point has been suffi-
ciently obscure to make the objection now possible
that this protest against Parasitism is opposed to the
doctrines of Free Grace, we cannot hope in a closing
sentence to free the argument from a suspicion so
ill-judged. The adjustment between Faith and
Works does not fall within our province now. Sal-
vation truly is the free gift of God, but he who really
knows how much this means knows — and just be-
cause it means so much— how much of consequent
action it involves. With the central doctrines of
grace the whole scientific argument is in too wonder-
ful harmony to be found wanting here. The natural
life, not less than the eternal, is the gift of God. But
life in either case is the beginning of growth and not
the end of grace. To pause where we should begin,

SEMI-PARASITISM. 337

to retrograde where we should advance, to seek a
mechanical security that we may cover inertia and
find a wholesale salvation in which there is no per-
sonal sanctification — this is Parasitism.

PARASITISM.

" And so I live, you see,
Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
Prefer, still struggling to effect
My warfare j happy that I can
Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
Not left in God's contempt apart,
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.

Thank God, no paradise stands barred
To entry , and I find it hard
To be a Christian, as I said''

Browning,

PARASITISM.

" Work out your own salvation." — Paul.

"Be no longer a chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin.
Produce ! Produce ! Were it but the pitifullest infmitesmal
fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name ! " — Carlyle.

FROM a study of the habits and organization of
the family of Hermit-crabs we have already gained
some insight into the nature and effects of para-
sitism. But the Hermit-crab, be it remembered, is
in no real sense a parasite. And before we can
apply the general principle further we must address
ourselves briefly to the examination of a true case
of parasitism.

We have not far to seek. Within the body of
the Hermit-crab a minute organism may frequently
be discovered resembling, when magnified, a minia-
ture kidney-bean. A bunch of root-like processes
hangs from one side, and the extremities of these
are seen to ramify in delicate films through the
living tissues of the crab. This simple organism
is known to the naturalist as a Sacculina ; and

342 PARASITISM.

though a full-grown animal, it consists of no more
parts than those just named. Not a trace of struc-
ture is to be detected within this rude and all but
inanimate frame ; it possesses neither legs, nor
eyes, nor mouth, nor throat, nor stomach, nor
any other organs, external or internal. This Sac-
culina is a typical parasite. By means of its twining
and theftuous roots it imbibes automatically its
nourishment ready-prepared from the body of the
crab. It boards indeed entirely at the expense of
its host, who supplies it liberally with food and
shelter and everything else it wants. So far as the
result to itself is concerned this arrangement may
seem at first sight satisfactory enough ; but when
we inquire into the life history of this small creature
we unearth a career of degeneracy all but unparal-
leled in nature

The most certain clue to what nature meant any
animal to become is to be learned from its embry-
ology. Let us, therefore, examine for a moment the
earliest positive stage in the development of the
Sacculina. When the embryo first makes its ap-
pearance it bears not the remotest resemblance to
the adult animal. A different name even is given
tc it by the biologist, who knows it at this period
as a Nauplius. This minute organism has an oval
body, supplied with six well-jointed feet by means

PARASITISM. 343

of which it paddles briskly through the water. For
a time it leads an active and independent life, in-
dustriously securing its own food and escaping
enemies by its own gallantry. But soon a change
takes place. The hereditary taint of parasitism is
in its blood, and it proceeds to adapt itself to the
pauper habits of its race. The tiny body first
doubles in upon itself, and from the two front limbs
elongated filaments protrude. Its four hind limbs
entirely disappear, and twelve short-forked swimming
organs temporarily take their place. Thus strangely
metamorphosed the Sacculina sets out in search of
a suitable host, and in an evil hour, by that fate
which is always ready to accommodate the trans-
gressor, is thrown into the company of the Hermit-
crab. With its two filamentary processes — which
afterwards develop into the root-like organs — it
penetrates the body ; the sac-like form is gradually
assumed ; the whole of the swimming feet drop off.
— they will never be needed again, — and the animal
settles down for the rest of its life as a parasite.

One reason which makes a zoologist certain that
the Sacculina is a degenerate type is, that in almost
all other instances of animals which begin life in
the Nauplius-form — and there are several — the
Nauplius develops through higher and higher stages,
and arrives finally at the high perfection displayed

344 PARASITISM.

by the shrimp, lobster, crab, and other crustaceana
But instead of rising to its opportunities, the sac-
culine Nauplius having reached a certain point
turned back. It shrunk from the struggle for life,
and beginning probably by seeking shelter from its
host went on to demand its food ; and so falling
from bad to worse, became in time an entire de-
pendant.

In the eyes of Nature this was a twofold crime.
It was first a disregard of evolution, and second,
which is practically the same thing, an evasion of
the great law of work. And the revenge of Nature
was therefore necessary. It could not help punishing
the Sacculina for violated law, and the punishment,
according to the strange and noteworthy way in
which Nature usually punishes, was meted out by
natural processes, carried on within its own organiza-
tion. Its punishment was simply that it was a
Sacculina — that it was a Sacculina when it might
have been a Crustacean. Instead of being a free
and independent organism high in structure, original
in action, vital with energy, it deteriorated into a
torpid and all but amorphous sac confined to per-
petual imprisonment and doomed to a living death.
"Any new set of conditions," says Ray Lankester,
* occurring to an animal which render its food and
safety very easily attained, seem to lead as a rule

PARASITISM. 345

to degeneration ; just as an active healthy man
sometimes degenerates when he becomes suddenly
possessed of a fortune ; or as Rome degenerated
when possessed of the riches of the ancient world.
The habit of parasitism clearly acts upon animal
organization in this way. Let the parasitic life once
be secured, and away go legs, jaws, eyesf and ears ;
the active, highly-gifted crab, insect, or annelid may
become a mere sac, absorbing nourishment and
laying eggs." l

There could be no more impressive illustration
than this of what with entire appropriateness one
might call " the physiology of backsliding." We
fail to appreciate the meaning of spiritual degenera-
tion or detect the terrible nature of the consequences
only because they evade the eye of sense. But
could we investigate the spirit as a living organism,
or study the soul of the backslider on principles of
comparative anatomy, we should have a revelation
of the organic effects of sin, even of the mere sin
of carelessness as to growth and work, which must
revolutionize our ideas of practical religion. There
is no room for the doubt even that what goes on in
the body does not with equal certainty take place
in the spirit under the corresponding conditions.

Degeneration," by E. Ray Lankester, p. 33.

346 PARASITISM.

The penalty of backsliding is not something unreal
and vague, some unknown quantity which may be
measured out to us disproportionately, or which
perchance, since God is good, we may altogether
evade. The consequences are already marked within
the structure of the soul. So to speak, they are
physiological. The thing affected by our indifference
or by our indulgence is not the book of final judg-
ment but the present fabric of the soul. The punish-
ment of degeneration is simply degeneration — the
loss of functions, the decay of organs, the atrophy of
the spiritual nature. It is well known that the
recovery of the backslider is one of the hardest
problems in spiritual work. To reinvigorate an old
organ seems more difficult and hopeless than to
develop a new one ; and the backslider's terrible
lot is to have to retrace with enfeebled feet each step
of the way along which he strayed ; to make up
inch by inch the lee-way he has lost, carrying with
him a dead-weight of acquired reluctance, and scarce
knowing whether to be stimulated or discouraged
by the oppressive memory of the previous fall.

We are not, however, to discuss at present the
physiology of backsliding. Nor need we point out
at greater length that parasitism is always and
indissolubly accompanied by degeneration. We
wish rather to examine one or two leading tendencies

PARASITISM. 347

of the modern religious life which directly or in-
directly induce the parasitic habit and bring upon
thousands of unsuspecting victims such secret and
appalling penalties as have been named.

Two main causes are known to the biologist as
tending to induce the parasitic habit. These are,
first, the temptation to secure safety without the
vital exercise of faculties, and, second, the dispo-
sition to find food without earning it The first,
which we have formally considered, is probably the
preliminary stage in most cases. The animal, seek-
ing shelter, finds unexpectedly that it can also
thereby gain a certain measure of food. Compelled
in the first instance, perhaps by stress of circum-
stances, to rob its host of a meal or perish, it gradually
acquires the habit of drawing all its supplies from
the same source, and thus becomes in time a con-
f rmed parasite. Whatever be its origin, however,
t is certain that the main evil of parasitism is con-
nected with the further question of food. Mere
safety with Nature is a secondary, though by no
means an insignificant, consideration. And while
the organism forfeits a part of its organization by
any method of evading enemies which demands no
personal effort, the most entire degeneration of the
whole system follows the neglect or abuse of the
functions of nutrition.

348 PARASITISM.

The direction in which we have to seek the wider
application of the subject will now appear. We
have to look into those cases in the moral and
spiritual sphere in which the functions of nutrition
are either neglected or abused. To sustain life,
physical, mental, moral, or spiritual, some sort of
food is essential. To secure an adequate supply each
organism also is provided with special and appro-
priate faculties. But the final gain to the organism
does not depend so much on the actual amount of
fcod procured as on the exercise required to obtain
~1> In one sense the exercise is only a means to an
end, namely, the finding food ; but in another and
equally real sense, the exercise is the end, the food
the means to attain that. Neither is of permanent
use without the other, but the correlation between
them is so intimate that it were idle to say that one
is more necessary than the other. Without food
exercise is impossible, but without exercise food is
useless.

Thus exercise is in order to food, and food is in
order to exercise — in order especially to that further
progress and maturity which only ceaseless activity
can promote. Now food too easily acquired means
food without that accompaniment of discipline which
is infinitely more valuable than the food itself. It
means the possibility of a life which is a mere ex-

PARASITISM. 349

istence. It leaves the organism in statu quo, unde-
veloped, immature, low in the scale of organization
and with a growing tendency to- pass from the state
Df equilibrium to that of increasing degeneration.
What an organism is depends upon what it does ;
its activities make it And if the stimulus to the
exercise of all the innumerable faculties concerned
in nutrition be withdrawn by the conditions and cir-
cumstances of life becoming, or being made to
become, too easy, there is first an arrest of develop-
ment, and finally a loss of the parts themselves, If,
in short, an organism does nothing, in that relation
it is nothing.

We may, therefore, formulate the general principle
thus: Any principle which secures food to the in-
dividual without the expenditure of woi'k is injur ioiis,
and accompanied by the degeneration and loss of parts.

The social and political analogies of this law,
which have been casually referred to already, are
sufficiently familiar to render any further develop-
ment in these directions superfluous. After the
eloquent preaching of the Gospel of Work by Thomas
Carlyle, this century at least can never plead that
one of the most important moral bearings of the
subject has not been duly impressed upon it All
that can be said of idleness generally might be fitly
urged in support of this great practical truth All

35<> PARASITISM.

nations which have prematurely passed away, buried
in graves dug by their own effeminacy ; all those in-
dividuals who have secured a hasty wealth by the
chances of speculation ; all children -of fortune ; all
victims of inheritance ; all social sponges ; all satel-
lites of the court ; all beggars of the market-place —
all these are living and unlying witnesses to the
unalterable retributions of the law of parasitism.
But it is when we come to study the working of the
principle in the religious sphere that we discover the
full extent of the ravages which the parasitic habit
can make on the souls of men. We can only hope
to indicate here one or two of the things in modern
Christianity which minister most subtly and widely
to this as yet all but unnamed sin.

We begin in what may seem a somewhat unlooked-
for quarter. One of the things in the religious world
which tends most strongly to induce the parasitic
habit is Going to Church. Church-going itself every
Christian will rightly consider an invaluable aid to
the ripe development of the spiritual life. Public
worship has a place in the national religious life so
firmly established that nothing is ever likely to shake
its influence. So supreme indeed, is the ecclesias-
tical system in all Christian countries that with
thousands the religion of the Church and the religion
of the individual are one. But just because of its

PARASITISM. 351

high and unique place in religious regard, does it
become men from time to time to inquire how far
the Church is really ministering to the spiritual health
of the immense religious community which looks to
it as its foster-mother. And if it falls to us here
reluctantly to expose some secret abuses of this
venerable system, let it be well understood that these
are abuses, and not that the sacred institution itself
is being violated by the attack of an impious hand.

The danger of church-going largely depends on
the form of worship, but it may be affirmed that
even the most perfect Church affords to all wor-
shippers a greater or less temptation to parasitism.
It consists essentially in the deputy-work or deputy-
worship inseparable from church or chapel ministra-
tions. One man is set apart to prepare a certain
amount of spiritual truth for the rest. He, if he
is a true man, gets all the benefits of original work^
He finds the truth, digests it, is nourished and en-
riched by it before he offers it to his flock. To a
large extent it will nourish and enrich in turn a
number of his hearers. But still they will lack some-
thing. The faculty of selecting truth at first hand
and appropriating it for one's self is a lawful posses-
sion to every Christian. Rightly exercised it con-
veys to him truth in its freshest form ; it offers him
the opportunity of verifying doctrines for himself;

352 PARASITISM.

it makes religion personal ; it deepens and intensifies
the only convictions that are worth deepening, those,
namely, which are honest ; and it supplies the mind
with a basis of certainty in religion. But if all one's
truth is derived by imbibition from the Church, the
faculties for receiving truth are not only undeveloped
but one's whole view of truth becomes distorted.
He who abandons the personal search for truth, under
whatever pretext, abandons truth. The very word
truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild,
ceases to have any meaning ; and faith, which can
only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity,
resting on mere opinion.

In those churches especially where all parts of the
worship are subordinated to the sermon, this species
of parasitism is peculiarly encouraged. What is
meant to be a stimulus to thought becomes the sub-
stitute for it. The hearer never really learns, he only
listens. And while truth and knowledge seem to
increase, life and character are left in arrear. Such
truth, of course, and such knowledge, are a mere
seeming. Having cost nothing, they come to
nothing. The organism acquires a growing immo-
bility, and finally exists in a state of entire intellec-
tual helplessness and inertia. So the parasitic
Church-member, the literal " adherent," comes not
merely to live only within the circle of ideas of his

PARASITISM. 353

minister, but to be content that his minister has
these ideas — like the literary parasite who fancies he
knows everything because he has a good library.

Where the worship, again, is largely liturgical the
danger assumes an even more serious form, and it
acts in some such way as this. Every sincere man
who sets out in the Christian race begins by at-
tempting to exercise the spiritual faculties for him-
self. The young life throbs in his veins, and he
sets himself to the further progress with earnest
purpose and resolute will. For a time he bids fair
to attain a high and original development. But
the temptation to relax the always difficult effort
at spirituality is greater than he knows. The
u carnal mind " itself is " enmity against God," and
the antipathy, or the deadlier apathy within, is
unexpectedly encouraged from that very outside
source from which he anticipates the greatest help.
Connecting himself with a Church he is no less
interested than surprised to find how rich is the
provision there for every part of his spiritual nature.
Each service satisfies or surfeits. Twice, or even
three times a week, this feast is spread for him.
The thoughts are deeper than his own, the faith
keener, the worship loftier, the whole ritual more
reverent and splendid. What more natural than
that he should gradually exchange his personal

A A

354 PARASITISM.

religion for that of the congregation ? What more
likely than that a public religion should by in-
sensible stages supplant his individual faith ? What
more simple than to content himself with the warmth
of another's soul? What more tempting than to
give up private prayer for the easier worship of the
liturgy or of the church ? What, in short, more
natural than for the independent, free-moving, grow-
ing Sacculina to degenerate into the listless, useless,
pampered parasite of the pew ? The very means
he takes to nurse his personal religion often come
in time to wean him from it. Hanging admiringly,
or even enthusiastically, on the lips of eloquence,
his senses now stirred by ceremony, now soothed
by music, the parasite of the pew enjoys his weekly
worship — his character untouched, his will unbraced,
his crude soul unquickened and unimproved. Thus,
instead of ministering to the growth of individual
members, and very often just in proportion to the
superior excellence of the provision made for them
by another, does this gigantic system of deputy-
nutrition tend to destroy development and arrest
the genuine culture of the soul. Our churches over-
flow with members who are mere consumers. Their
interest in religion is purely parasitic. Their only
spiritual exercise is the automatic one of imbibi-
tion, the clergyman being the faithful Hermit-crab

PARASITISM. 355

who is to be depended on every Sunday for at
least a week's supply.

A physiologist would describe the organism re-
sulting from such a process as a case of " arrested
development." Instead of having learned to pray,
the ecclesiastical parasite becomes satisfied with
being prayed for. His transactions with the Eternal
are effected by commission. His work for Christ
is done by a paid deputy. His whole life is a
prolonged indulgence in the bounties of the Church ;
and surely — in some cases at least the crowning
irony — he sends for the minister when he lies down
to die.

Other signs and consequences of this species of
parasitism soon become very apparent. The first
symptom is idleness. When a Church is off its
true diet it is off its true work. Hence one ex-
planation of the hundreds of large and influential
congregations ministered to from week to week by
men of eminent learning and earnestness, which
yet do little or nothing in the line of these special
activities for which all churches exist. An out*
standing man at the head of a huge, useless and
torpid congregation is always a puzzle. But is the
reason not this, that the congregation gets too good
food too cheap ? Providence has mercifully de-
livered the Church from too ma ay great men in

356 PARASITISM.

her pulpits, but there are enough in every country-
side to play the host disastrously to a large circle
of otherwise able-bodied Christian people, who,
thrown on their own resources, might fatten them-
selves and help others. There are compensations
to a flock for a poor minister after all. Where
the fare is indifferent those who are really hungry
will exert themselves to procure their own supply.

That the Church has indispensable functions to
discharge to the individual is not denied ; but taking
into consideration the universal tendency to para-
sitism in the human soul it is a grave question
whether in some cases it does not really effect
more harm than good. A dead church certainly,
a church having no reaction on the community,
a church without propagative power in the world,
cannot be other than a calamity to all within its
borders. Such a church is an institution, first for
making, then for screening parasites ; and instead
of representing to the world the Kingdom of God
on earth, it is despised alike by godly and by
godless men as the refuge for fear and formalism
and the nursery of superstition.

And this suggests a second and not less practical
evil of a parasitic piety — that it presents to the world
a false conception of the religion of Christ. One
notices with a frequency which may well excite alarm

PARASITISM. 357

that the children of church-going parents often break
away as they grow in intelligence, not only from
church-connection but from the whole system of
family religion. In some cases this is doubtless due
to natural perversity, but in others it certainly arises
from the hollowness of the outward forms which pass
current in society and at home for vital Christianity.
These spurious forms, fortunately or unfortunately,
soon betray themselves. How little there is in them
becomes gradually apparent. And rather than in-
dulge in a sham the budding sceptic, as the first step,
parts with the form and in nine cases out of ten
concerns himself no further to find a substitute.
Quite deliberately, quite honestly, sometimes with
real regret and even at personal sacrifice he takes up
his position, and to his parent's sorrow and his
church's dishonour forsakes for ever the faith and
religion of his fathers. Who will deny that this is a
true account of the natural history of much modern
scepticism ? A formal religion can never hold its
own in the nineteenth century. It is better that it
should not. We must either be real or cease to be
We must either give up our Parasitism or our sons.

Any one who will take the trouble to investigate
a number of cases where whole families of c \twardly
godly parents have gone astray, will probably find
that the household religion had either some palpable

358 PARASITISM.

defect, or belonged essentially to the parasitic order.
The popular belief that the sons of clergymen turn
out worse than those of the laity is, of course, with-
out foundation ; but it may also probably be verified
that in the instances where clergymen's sons noto-
riously discredit their father's ministry, that ministry
in a majority of cases, will be found to be professional
and theological rather than human and spiritual.
Sequences in the moral and spiritual world follow
more closely than we yet discern the great law of
Heredity. The Parasite begets the Parasite — only in
the second generation the offspring are sometimes
sufficiently wise to make the discovery, and honeet
enough to proclaim it.

We now pass on to the consideration of another
form of Parasitism which, though closely related to
that just discussed, is of sufficient importance to
justify a separate reference. Appealing to a some-
what smaller circle, but affecting it not less dis-
astrously, is the Parasitism induced by certain abuses
of Systems of Theology.

In its own place, of course, Theology is no more
to be dispensed with than the Church. In every
perfect religious system three great departments
must always be represented — criticism, dogmatism,
and evangelism. Without the first there is no
guarantee of truth, without the second no defence

PARASITISM. 359

of truth, aud without the third no propagation oi
truth. But when these departments become mixed
up, when their separate functions are forgotten, when
one is made to do duty for another, or where either
is developed by the church or the individual at the
expense of the rest, the result is fatal. The particular
abuse, however, of which we have now to speak,
concerns the tendency in orthodox communities,
first to exalt orthodoxy above all other elements in
religion, and secondly to make the possession of
sound beliefs equivalent to the possession of truth.

Doctrinal preaching, fortunately, as a constant
practice is less in vogue than in a former age, but
there are still large numbers whose only contact with
religion is through theological forms. The method is
supported by a plausible defence. What is doctrine
but a compressed form of truth, systematised by able
and pious men, and sanctioned by the imprimatur of
the Church ? If the greatest minds of the Church's
past, having exercised themselves profoundly upon
the problems of religion, formulated as with one voice
a system of doctrine, why should the humble in-
quirer not gratefully accept it ? Why go over the
ground again ? Why with his dim light should he
betake himself afresh to Bible study and with so
great a body of divinity already compiled, presume
himself to be still a seeker after truth ? Does not

360 PARASITISM.

Theology give him Bible truth in reliable, convenient,
and moreover, in logical propositions ? There it lies
extended to the last detail in the tomes of the
Fathers, or abridged in a hundred modern compendia,
ready-made to his hand, all cut and dry, guaranteed
sound and wholesome, why not use it ?

Just because it is all cut and dry. Just because it
is ready-made. Just because it lies there in reliable,
convenient and logical propositions. The moment
you appropriate truth in such a shape you appro-
priate a form. You cannot cut and dry truth. You
cannot accept truth ready-made without it ceasing to
nourish the soul as truth. You cannot live on theo-
logical forms without becoming a Parasite and ceasing
to be a man. j

There is no worse enemy to a living Church than
a propositional theology, with the latter controlling
the former by traditional authority. For one does
not then receive the truth for himself, he accepts it
bodily. He begins the Christian life set up by his
Church with a stock-in-trade which has cost him
nothing, and which, though it may serve him all his
life, is just exactly worth as much as his belief in his
Church. This possession of truth, moreover, thus
lightly won, is given to him as infallible. It is a
system. There is nothing to add to it. At his peril
let him question or take from it To start a convert

PARASITISM. 361

'n life with such a principle is unspeakably degrading,
All through life instead of working towards truth
he must work from it. An infallible standard is
a temptation to a mechanical faith. Infallibility
always paralyses. It gives rest ; but it is the rest
of stagnation. Men perform one great act of faith
at the beginning of their life, then have done with it
for ever. All moral, intellectual and spiritual effort
is over ; and a cheap theology ends in a cheap life.

The same thing that makes men take refuge in
the Church of Rome makes them take refuge in
a set of dogmas. Infallibility meets the deepest
desire of man, but meets it in the most fatal form.
Men deal with the hunger after truth in two ways.
First by Unbelief — which crushes it by blind force ;
or, secondly, by resorting to some external source
credited with Infallibility — which lulls it to sleep
by blind faith. The effect of a doctrinal theology
is the effect of Infallibility. And the wholesale
belief in such a system, however accurate it may
be — grant even that it were infallible — is not Faith
though it always gets that name. It is mere
Credulity. It is a complacent and idle rest upon
authority, not a hard-earned, self-obtained, personal
possession. The moral responsibility here, beside s$
is reduced to nothing. Those who framed the
Thirty-nine Articles or the Westminster Confession

362 PARASITISM.

are responsible. And anything which destroys re-
sponsibility, or transfers it, cannot be other than
injurious in its moral tendency and useless in it-
self.

It may be objected perhaps that this statement
of the paralysis spiritual and mental induced by
Infallibility applies also to the Bible. The answer
is that though the Bible is infallible, the Infallibility
is not in such a form as to become a temptation.
There is the widest possible difference between the
form of truth in the Bible and the form in the-
ology.

In theology truth is propositional — tied up in
neat parcels, systematized, and arranged in logical
order. The Trinity is an intricate doctrinal pro-
blem. The Supreme Being is discussed in terms of
philosophy. The Atonement is a formula which is
to be demonstrated like a proposition in Euclid.
And Justification is to be worked out as a question
of jurisprudence. There is no necessary connection
between these doctrines and the life of him who
holds them. They make him orthodox, not neces-
sarily righteous. They satisfy the intellect but need
•aot touch the heart. It does not, in short, take a
religious man to be a theologian. It simply takes
a man with fair reasoning powers. This man hap-
pens to apply these powers to theological subjects

PARASITISM. 363

— but in no other sense than he might apply them
to astronomy or physics. But truth in the Bible
is a fountain. It is a diffused nutriment, so diffused
that no one can put himself off with the fcrm. It
is reached not by thinking, but by doing. It is
seen, discerned, not demonstrated. It cannot be
bolted whole, but must be slowly absorbed into the
system. Its vagueness to the mere intellect, its
refusal to be packed into portable phrases, its satis-
fying unsatisfyingness, its vast atmosphere, its ' find-
ing of us, its mystical hold of us, these are the
tokens of its infinity.

Nature never provides for man's wants in any
direction, bodily, mental, or spiritual, in such a
form as that he can simply accept her gifts auto-
matically. She puts all the mechanical powers at
his disposal — but he must make his lever. She
gives him corn, but he must grind it. She elabo-
rates coal, but he must dig for it. Corn is perfect,
all the products of Nature are perfect, but he has
everything to do to them before he can use them.
So with truth ; it is perfect, infallible. But he can-
not use it as it stands. He must work, think,
separate, dissolve, absorb, digest ; and most of these
he must do for himself and within himself. If it be
replied that this is exactly what theology does, iVe
answer it is exactly what it does not. It simply

#4 PARASITISM.

does what the greengrocer does when he arranges
his apples and plums in his shop window. He may
tell me a magnum bonum from a Victoria, or a
Baldwin from a Newtown Pippin. But he does not
help me to eat it. His information is useful, and
for scientific horticulture essential. Should a scepti-
cal pomologist deny that there was such a thing as
a Baldwin, or mistake it for a Newtown Pippin, we
should be glad to refer to him ; but if we were
hungry, and an orchard were handy, we should not
trouble him. Truth in the Bible is an orchard
rather than a museum. Dogmatism will be very
valuable to us when scientific necessity makes us
go to the museum. Criticism will be very useful
in seeing that only fruit-bearers grow in the orchard.
But truth in the doctrinal form is not natural, pro-
per, assimilable food for the soul of man.

Is this a plea then for doubt ? Yes, for that
philosophic doubt which is the evidence of a faculty
doing its own work. It is more necessary for us
lo be active than to be orthodox. To be orthodox
is what we wish to be, but we can only truly reach
it by being honest, by being original, by seeing
with our own eyes, by believing with our own heart
M An idle life," says Goethe, " is death anticipated."
Better far be burned at the stake of Public Opinion
than die the living death of Parasitism. Better an

PARASITISM. 365

aberrant theology than a suppressed organization,
Better a little faith dearly won, better launched
alone on the infinite bewilderment of Truth, "ban
perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds.
Such Doubt is no self-willed presumption. Nor,
truly exercised, will it prove itself, as much doubt
does, the synonym for sorrow. It aims at a life-
long learning, prepared for any sacrifice of will yet
for none of independence ; at that high progressive
education which yields rest in work and work in
rest, and the development of immortal faculties in
both ; at that deeper faith which believes in the
vastness and variety of the revelations of God, and
their accessibility to all obedient hearts.

CLASSIFICATION.

" I judge of the order of the world, although I know not
its end, because to judge of this order I only need mutually
to C07nftare the parts, to study their functions, their rela-
tions, and to remark their concert. I know not why the uni-
verse exists, but I do not desist from seeing how it is modi-
fied j I do not cease to see the intimate agreement by which
the beings that compose it render a mutual help. 1 am
like a man who should see for the first time an open watch,
who should not cease to admire the workmanship of it,
although he knows not the use of the machi7ie, and had
never seen dials. I do not know, he would say, what all
this is for, but I see that each piece is made for the others;
I admire the worker in the detail of his work, and I a?n
very sure that all these wheelworks only go thus in concert
for a common end which I cannot perceive"

Rousseau.

CLASSIFICATION.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit." — Christ.

" In early attempts to arrange organic beings in some syste-
matic manner, we see at first a guidance by conspicuous and
simple characters, and a tendency towards arrangement in
linear order. In successively later attempts, we see more re-
gard paid to combinations of character which are essential but
often inconspicuous ; and a gradual abandonment of a linear
arrangement." — Herbert Spencer.

On one of the shelves in a certain museum lie two
small boxes filled with earth. A low mountain in
Arran has furnished the first ; the contents of the
second came from the Island of Barbadoes. When
examined with a pocket lens, the Arran earth is
found to be full of small objects, clear as crystal,
fashioned by some mysterious geometry into forms
of exquisite symmetry. The substance is silica, a
natural glass ; and the prevailing shape is a six-
sided prism capped at either end by little pyramids
modelled with consummate grace.

When the second specimen is examined, the
revelation is, if possible, more surprising. Here,

B B

S70 CLASSIFICATION.

also, is a vast assemblage of small glassy or per-
cellanous objects built up into curious forms. The
material, chemically, remains the same, but the
angles of pyramid and prism have given place to
curved lines, so that the contour is entirely different
The appearance is that of a vast collection of mi-
croscopic urns, goblets, and vases, each richly orna-
mented with small sculptured discs or perforations
which are disposed over the pure white surface in
regular belts and rows. Each tiny urn is chiselled
into the most faultless proportion, and the whole
presents a vision of magic beauty.

Judged by the standard of their loveliness there
is little to choose between these two sets of objects.
Yet there is one cardinal difference between them.
They belong to different worlds. The last belong
to the living world, the former to the dead. The
first are crystals, the last are shells.

No power on earth can make these little urns of
the Polycystince except Life. We can melt them
down in the laboratory, but no ingenuity of chem-
istry can reproduce their sculptured forms. We are
sure that Life has formed them, however, for tiny
creatures allied to those which made the Barbadoes*
earth are living still, fashioning their fairy palaces
of flint in the same mysterious way On the other
hand, chemistry has no difficulty in making these

CLASSIFICATION. 371

crystals. We can melt down this Arran earth and
reproduce the pyramids and prisms in endless num-
bers. Nay, if we do melt it down, we cannot help
reproducing the pyramid and the prism, There is
a six-sided ness, as it were, in the very nature of this
substance which will infallibly manifest itself if the
crystallizing substance only be allowed fair play.
This six-sided tendency is its Law of Crystallization
— a law of its nature which it cannot resist. But
in the crystal there is nothing at all corresponding
to Life. There is simply an inherent force which
can be called into action at any moment, and which
cannot be separated from the particles in which it
resides. The crystal may be ground to pieces, but
this force remains intact. And even after being re-
duced to powder, and running the gauntlet of every
process in the chemical laboratory, the moment the
substance is left to itself under possible conditions
it will proceed to recrystallize anew. But if the
Polycystine urn be broken, no inorganic agency can
build it up again. So far as any inherent urn-
building power, analogous to the crystalline force, is
concerned, it might lie there in a shapeless mass foi
ever. That which modelled it at first is gone from
it It was Vital ; while the force which built the
crystal was only Molecular.

From an artistic point of view this distinction is

372 CLASSIFICATION.

of small importance. iEsthetically, the Law ol
Crystallization is probably as useful in ministering
to natural beauty as Vitality. What are more
beautiful than the crystals of a snowflake ? Oi
what frond of fern or feather of bird can vie with
the tracery of the frost upon a window-pane ? Can
it be said that the lichen is more lovely than the
striated crystals of the granite on which it grows,
or the moss on the mountain side more satisfying
than the hidden amethyst and cairngorm in the
rock beneath ? Or is the botanist more astonished
when his microscope reveals the architecture of spiral
tissue in the stem of a plant, or the mineralogist who
beholds for the first time the chaos of beauty in the
sliced specimen of some common stone ? So far as
beauty goes the organic world and the inorganic are
one.

To the man of science, however, this identity of
beauty signifies nothing. His concern, in the first
instance, is not with the forms but with the natures
of things. It is no valid answer to him, when he
asks the difference between the moss and the cairn-
gorm, the frost-work and the fern, to be assured that
both are beautiful. For no fundamental distinction
in Science depends upon beauty. He wants an
answer in terms of chemistry, are they organic or
inorganic? or in terms of biology, are they living

CLASSIFICA TION.

373

or dead ? But when he is told that the one is living
and the other dead, he is in possession of a cha-
racteristic and fundamental scientific distinction.
From this point of view, however much they may
possess in common of material substance and beauty,
they are separated from one another by a wide and
unbridged gulf. The classification of these forms,
therefore, depends upon the standpoint, and we
should pronounce them like or unlike, related or
unrelated, according as we judged them from the
point of view of Art or of Science.

The drift of these introductory paragraphs must
already be apparent We propose to inquire whether
among men, clothed apparently with a common
beauty of character, there may not yet be distinctions
as radical as between the crystal and the shell ; and,
further, whether the current classification of men,
based upon Moral Beauty, is wholly satisfactory
either from the standpoint of Science or of Christian-
ity. Here, for example, are two characters, pure and
elevated, adorned with conspicuous virtues, stirred by
lofty impulses, and commanding a spontaneous ad-
miration from all who look on them — may not this
similarity of outward form be accompanied by a
total dissimilarity of inward nature ? Is the exter-
nal appearance the truest criterion of the ultimate
nature ? Or, as in the crystal and the shell, may there

374 CLASSIFICATION.

not exist distinctions more profound and basal ? The
distinctions drawn between men, in short, are com-
monly based on the outward appearance of goodness
or badness, on the ground of moral beauty or moral
deformity — is this classification scientific ? Or is
there a deeper distinction between the Christian and
the not-a-Christian as fundamental as that between
the organic and the inorganic ?

There can be little doubt, to begin with, that with
the great majority of people religion is regarded as
essentially one with morality. Whole schools of
philosophy have treated the Christian Religion as a
question of beauty, and discussed its place among
other systems of ethic. Even those systems of theo-
logy which profess to draw a deeper distinction have
rarely succeeded in establishing it upon any valid
basis, or seem even to have made that distinction
perceptible to others. So little, indeed, has the
rationale of the science of religion been understood
that there is still no more unsatisfactory province
in theology than where morality and religion are
contrasted, and the adjustment attempted between
moral philosophy and what are known as the doc-
trines of grace.

Examples of this confusion are so numerous that
if one were to proceed to proof he would have to
cite almost the entire European philosophy of the

CLASSIFICATION. 375

(&

last three hundred years. From Spinoza down
ward through the whole naturalistic school, Morai
eauty is persistently regarded as synonymous with
religion and the spiritual life. The most earnest
thinking of the present day is steeped in the same
confusion. We have even the remarkable spectacle
presented to us just now of a sublime Morality-
Religion divorced from Christianity altogether, and
wedded to the baldest form of materialism. It is
claimed, moreover, that the moral scheme of this
high atheism is loftier and more perfect than
that of Christianity, and men are asked to take
their choice as if the morality were everything, the
Christianity or the atheism which nourished it being
neither here nor there. Others, again, studying this
moral beauty carefully, have detected a something
in its Christian forms which has compelled them to
declare that a distinction certainly exists. But in
scarcely a single instance is the gravity of the dis-
tinction more than dimly apprehended. Few con-
ceive of it as other than a difference of degree, or
could give a more definite account of it than Mr.
Matthew Arnold's " Religion is morality touched by
Emotion " — an utterance significant mainly as the
testimonj of an acute mind that a distinction of
some kind does exist. In a recent Symposium,
where the question as to " The influence upoc

376 CLASSIFICATION.

Morality of a decline in Religious Belief," was dis-
cussed at length by writers of whom this century
is justly proud, there appears scarcely so much as
a recognition of the fathomless chasm separating the
leading terms of debate.

If beauty is the criterion of religion, this view
of the relation of religion to morality is justified.
But what if there be the same difference in the
beauty of two separate characters that there is
between the mineral and the shell ? What if there
be a moral beauty and a spiritual beauty? What
answer shall we get if we demand a more scientific
distinction between characters than that based on
mere outward form ? It is not enough from the
standpoint of biological religion to say of two
characters that both are beautiful. For, again, no
fundamental distinction in Science depends upon
beauty. We ask an answer in terms of biology,
are they flesh or spirit ; are they living or dead ?

If this is really a scientific question, if it is a
question not of moral philosophy only, but of
biology, we are compelled to repudiate beauty as
the criterion of spirituality. It is not, of course,
meant by this that spirituality is not morally
beautiful. Spirituality must be morally very beau-
tiful— so much so that popularly one is justified in
judging of religion by its beauty. Nor is it meant

CLASSIFICA TION.

377

that morality is not a criterion. All that is con
tended for is that, from the scientific standpoint, it
is not the criterion. We can judge of the crystal
and the shell from many other standpoints besides
those named, each classification having an import-
ance in its own sphere. Thus we might class them
according to their size and weight, their percentage
of silica, their use in the arts, or their commercial
value. Each science or art is entitled to regard
them from its own point of view ; and when the
biologist announces his classification he does not
interfere with those based on other grounds. Only,
having chosen his standpoint, he is bound to frame
his classification in terms of it.

It may be well to state emphatically, that in
proposing a new classification — or rather, in reviving
the primitive one — in the spiritual sphere we leave
untouched, as of supreme value in its own province,
the test of morality. Morality is certainly a test
of religion — for most practical purposes the very
best test. And so far from tending to depreciate
morality, the bringing into prominence of the true
basis is entirely in its interests — in the interests
of a moral beauty, indeed, infinitely surpassing the
highest attainable perfection on merely natura1
lines.

The warrant for seeking a further classification

378 CLASSIFICATION.

is twofold. It is a principle in science that classifi-
cation should rest on the most basal characteristics.
To determine what these are may not always be
easy, but it is at least evident that a classification
framed on the ultimate nature of organisms must
be more distinctive than one based on external
characters. Before the principles of classification
were understood, organisms were invariably arranged
according to some merely external resemblance.
Thus plants were classed according to size as Herbs,
Shrubs, and Trees; and animals according to their
appearance as Birds, Beasts, and Fishes. The Bat
upon this principle was a bird, the Whale a fish ;
and so thoroughly artificial were these early systems
that animals were often tabulated among the plants,
and plants among the animals. " In early attempts,"
says Herbert Spencer, "to arrange organic beings
in some systematic manner, we see at first a
guidance by conspicuous and simple characters, and
a tendency towards arrangement in linear order. In
successively later attempts, we see more regard paid
to combinations of characters which are essential
but often inconspicuous; and a gradual abandon-
ment of a linear arrangement for an arrangement
ill divergent groups and re-divergent sub-groups.1

1 w Principles of Biology," p. 294.

CLASSIFICATION. 379

Almost all the natural sciences have already passed
through these stages ; and one or two which rested
entirely on external characters have all but ceased
to exist — Conchology, for example, which has
yielded its place to Malacology. Following in the
wake of the other sciences, the classifications of
Theology may have to be remodelled in the same
way. The popular classification, whatever its merits
from a practical point of view, is essentially a clas-
sification based on Morphology. The whole ten*
dency of science now is to include along with
morphological considerations the profounder general-
isations of Physiology and Embryology. And the
contribution of the latter science especially has been
found so important that biology henceforth must
look for its classification largely to Embryological
characters.

But apart from the demand of modern scientific
culture it is palpably foreign to Christianity, not
merely as a Philosophy but as a Biology, to classify
men only in terms of the former. And it is some-
what remarkable that the writers of both the Old
and New Testaments seem to have recognised the
deeper basis. The favourite classification of the
Old Testament was into "the nations which knew
God" and "the nations which knew not God" — a
distinction which we have formerly seen to be, at

380 CLASSIFICATION.

bottom, biological. In the New Testament again
the ethical characters are more prominent, but the
cardinal distinctions based on regeneration, if not
always actually referred to, are throughout kept in
view, both in the sayings of Christ and in the
Epistles.

What then is the deeper distinction drawn by
Christianity? What is the essential difference be-
tween the Christian and the not-a-Christian, between
the spiritual beauty and the moral beauty ? It is
the distinction between the Organic and the In-
organic. Moral beauty is the product of the natural
man, spiritual beauty of the spiritual man. And
these two, according to the law of Biogenesis, are
separated from one another by the deepest line
known to Science. This Law is at once the founda-
tion of Biology and of Spiritual religion. And the
whole fabric of Christianity falls into confusion if
we attempt to ignore it. The Law of Biogenesis,
in fact, is to be regarded as the equivalent in
biology of the First Law of Motion in physics:
Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform
motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is
compelled by forces to change that state. The first
Law of biology is: That which is Mineral is
Mineral ; that which is Flesh is Flesh ; that which
is Spirit is Spirit The mineral * remains in the

CLASSIFICATION. 381

inorganic world until it is seized upon by a some-
thing called Life outside the inorganic world ; the
natural man remains the natural man, until a
Spiritual Life from without the natural life seizes
upon him, regenerates him, changes him into a
spiritual man. The peril of the illustration from
the law of motion will not be felt at least by those
who appreciate the distinction between Physics and
biology, between Energy and Life. The change of
state here is not as in physics a mere change of direc-
tion, the affections directed to a new object, the will
into a new channel. The change involves all this,
but is something deeper. It is a change of nature, a
regeneration, a passing from death into life. Hence
relatively to this higher life the natural life is no
longer Life, but Death, and the natural man from
the standpoint of Christianity is dead. Whatever
assent the mind may give to this proposition, how-
ever much it has been overlooked in the past,
however it compares with casual observation, it is
certain that the Founder of the Christian religion
intended this to be the keystone of Christianity.
In the proposition That which is flesh is flesh, and
that which is spirit is spirit, Christ formulates the
first law of biological religion, and lays the basis
for a final classification. He divides men into two
classes, the living and the not-living. And Paul

382 CLASSIFICATION.

afterwards carries out the classification consistently,
making his entire system depend on it, and through-
out arranging men, on the one hand as TrvevfAaTt/cos—
spiritual, on the other as ^w^itco? — carnal, in terms
of Christ's distinction.

Suppose now it be granted for a moment that the
character of the not-a-Christian is as beautiful as
that of the Christian. This is simply to say that the
crystal is as beautiful as the organism. One is quite
entitled to hold this ; but what he is not entitled to
hold is that both in the same sense are living. H*
that hath the Son hath Life> and he that hath not the
Son of God hath not Life, And in the face of this
law, no other conclusion is possible than that that
which is flesh remains flesh. No matter how great
the development of beauty, that which is flesh is
withal flesh. The elaborateness or the perfection of
the moral development in any given instance can do
nothing to break down this distinction. Man is a
moral animal, and can, and ought to, arrive at great
natural beauty of character. But this is simply to
obey the law of his nature — the law of his flesh ;
and no progress along that line can project him into
the spiritual sphere. If any one choose to claim that
the mineral beauty, the fleshly beauty, the natural
moral beauty, is all he covets, he is entitled to his
claim. To be good and true, pure and benevolent in

CLASSIFICATION. 383

the moral sphere, are high and, so far, legitimate
objects of life. If he deliberately stop here, he is at
liberty to do so. But what he is not entitled to do h
to call himself a Christian, or to claim to discharge
the functions peculiar to the Christian life. His
molality is mere crystallisation, the crystallising forces
having had fair play in his development. But these
forces have no more touched the sphere of Christian-
ity than the frost on the window-pane can do more
than simulate the external forms of life. And if he
considers that the high development to which he has
reached may pass by an insensible transition into
spirituality, or that his moral nature of itself may
flash into the flame of regenerate Life, he has to be
reminded that in spite of the apparent connection
of these things from one standpoint, from another
there is none at all, or none discoverable by us. On
the one hand, there being no such thing as Spontan-
eous Generation, his moral nature, however it may
encourage it, cannot generate Life ; while, on the
other, his high organization can never in itself result
in Life, Life being always the cause of organization
and never the effect of it.

The practical question may now be asked, is this
distinction palpable? Is it a mere conceit of Science,
or what human interests attach to it ? If it cannot
be proved that the resulting moral or spiritual

384 CLASSIFICATION.

beauty is higher in the one case than in the other
the biological distinction is useless. And if the ob<
jection is pressed that the spiritual man has nothing
further to effect in the direction of morality, seeing
that the natural man can successfully compete with
him, the questions thus raised become of serious
significance. That objection would certainly be fatal
which could show that the spiritual world was not
as high in its demand for a lofty morality as the
natural ; and that biology would be equally false and
dangerous which should in the least encourage the
view that " without holiness " a man could " see the
Lord." These questions accordingly we must briefly
consider. It is necessary to premise, however, that
the difficulty is not peculiar to the present position.
This is simply the old difficulty of distinguishing
spirituality and morality.

In seeking whatever light Science may have to offer
as to the difference between the natural and the spiri-
tual man, we first submit the question to Embryology.
And if its actual contribution is small, we shall at
least be indebted to it for an important reason why
the difficulty should exist at all. That there is grave
difficulty in deciding between two given characters,
the one natural, the other spiritual, is conceded.
But if we can find a sufficient justification for so
perplexing a circumstance, the fact loses weight as

CLASSIFICATION. 385

an objection, and the whole problem is placed on a
different footing.

The difference on the score of beauty between the
crystal and the shell, let us say once more, is im-
perceptible. But fix attention for a moment, not
upon their appearance, but upon their possibilities,
upon their relation to the future, and upon their
place in evolution. The crystal has reached its
ultimate stage of development. It can never be
more beautiful than it is now. Take it to pieces and
give it the opportunity to beautify itself afresh, and it
will just do the same thing over again. It will form
itself into a six-sided pyramid, and go on repeating
this same form ad infinitum as often as it is dis-
solved, and without ever improving by a hairsbreadth.
Its law of crystallisation allows it to reach this limit,
and nothing else within its kingdom can do any
more for it. In dealing with the crystal, in short,
we are dealing with the maximum beauty of the
inorganic world. But in dealing with the shell, we
are not dealing with the maximum achievement of
the organic world. In itself it is one of the humblest
forms of the invertebrate sub-kingdom of the organic
world ; and there are other forms within this king-
dom so different from the shell in a hundred respects
that to mistake them would simply be impossible.

In dealing with a man of fine moral character,

c c

386 classification.

again, we are dealing with the highest achievement
of the organic kingdom. But in dealing with a
spiritual man we are dealing with the lowest form oj
life in the spiritual world. To contrast the two,
therefore, and marvel that the one is apparently so
little better than the other, is unscientific and unjust.
The spiritual man is a mere unformed embryo,
hidden as yet in his earthly chrysalis-case, while the
natural man has the breeding and evolution of ages
represented in his character. But what are the
possibilities of this spiritual organism ? What is yet
to emerge from this chrysalis-case? The natural
character finds its limits within the organic sphere.
But who is to define the limits of the spiritual?
Even now it is very beautiful. Even as an embryo
it contains some prophecy of its future glory. But
the point to mark is, that it doth not yet appear what
it shall be.

The> want of organization, thus, does not surprise
us. All life begins at the Amoeboid stage. Evolution
is from the simple to the complex ; and in every case
it is some time before organization is advanced
enough to admit of exact classification. A natural*
isfs only serious difficulty in classification is when
he comes to deal with low or embryonic forms. It
is impossible, for instance, to mistake an oak for
an elephant ; but at the bottom of the vegetable

CLASSIFICA TION.

series, and at the bottom of the animal series,
there are organisms of so doubtful a character that
it is equally impossible to distinguish them. So
formidable, indeed, has been this difficulty that
Haeckel has had to propose an intermediate regnum
protisticum to contain those forms the rudimentary
character of which makes it impossible to apply the
determining tests.

We mention this merely to show the difficulty of
classification and not for analogy ; for the proper
analogy is not between vegetal and animal forms,
whether high or low, but between the living and the
dead. And here the difficulty is certainly not so
great. By suitable tests it is generally possible to
distinguish the organic from the inorganic. The
ordinary eye may fail to detect the difference, and
innumerable forms are assigned by the popular judg-
ment to the inorganic world which are nevertheless
undoubtedly alive. And it is the same in the spirit-
ual world. To a cursory glance these rudimentary
spiritual forms may not seem to exhibit the pheno-
mena of Life, and therefore the living and the dead
may be often classed as one. But let the appropriate

v scientific tests be applied. In the almost amorphous
organism, the physiologist ought already to be able
to detect the symptoms of a dawning life. And
further research might even bring to light some faint

CLASSIFICA TION

indication of the lines along which the future de-
velopment was to proceed. Now it is not impossible
that among the tests for Life there may be some
whLh may fitly be applied to the spiritual organism.
We may therefore at this point hand over the prob
lem to Physiology.

The tests for Life are of two kinds. It is remark-
able that one of them was proposed, in the spiritual
sphere, by Christ. Foreseeing the difficulty of
determining the characters and functions of rudi-
mentary organisms, He suggested that the point be
decided by a further evolution. Time for develop-
ment was to be allowed, during which the marks of
Life, if any, would become more pronounced, while
in the meantime judgment was to be suspended.
" Let both grow together," He said, " until the
harvest." This is a thoroughly scientific test. Ob-
viously, however, it cannot assist us for the present —
except in the way of enforcing extreme caution in
attempting any classification at all.

The second test is at least not so manifestly im-
practicable It is to apply the ordinary methods by
which biology attempts to distinguish the organic
from the inorganic The characteristics of Life,
according to Physiology, are four in number — -
Assimilation, Waste, Reproduction, and Spontaneous
Action. If an organism is found to exercise these

CLASSIFICATION. 3%>

functions, it is said to be alive. Now these tests, in
a spiritual sense, might fairly be applied to the
spiritual man. The experiment would be a delicate
one It might not be open to every one to attempt
it This is a scientific question ; and the experiment
would have to be conducted under proper conditions
and by competent persons. But even on the first
statement it will be plain to all who are familiar
with spiritual diagnosis that the experiment could
be made, and especially on oneself, with some hope
of success. Biological considerations, however, would
warn us not to expect too much. Whatever be the
inadequacy of Morphology, Physiology can never
be studied apart from it ; and the investigation of
function merely as function is a task of extreme
difficulty. Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, " We have
next to no power of tracing up the genesis of a
function considered purely as a function — no op-
portunity of observing the progressively-increasing
quantities of a given action that have arisen in any
order of organisms. In nearly all cases we are able
only to establish the greater growth of the part which
we have found performs the action, and to infer that
greater action of the part has accompanied greater
growth of it"1 Such being the case, it would serve

1 " Principles of Biology," voL ii. pp. 222, 223.

390 CLASSIFICATION.

no purpose to indicate the details of a barely possible
experiment. We are merely showing, at the mo-
ment, that the question " How do I know that I am
alive" is not, in the spiritual sphere, incapable of
solution. One might, nevertheless, single out some
distinctively spiritual function and ask himself if he
consciously discharged it. The discharging of that
function is, upon biological principles, equivalent to
being alive, and therefore the subject of the experi-
ment could certainly come to some conclusion as to
his place on a biological scale. The real significance
of his actions on the moral scale might be less easy
to determine, but he could at least tell where he
stood as tested by the standard of life — he would
know whether he were living or dead. After all, the
best test for Life is just living. And living consists,
as we have formerly seen, in corresponding with
Environment. Those therefore who find within
themselves, and regularly exercise, the faculties for
corresponding with the Divine Environment, may be
said to live the Spiritual Life.

That this Life also, even in the embryonic or-
ganism, ought already to betray itself to others, is
certainly what one would expect Every organism
has its own reaction upon Nature, and the reaction
of the spiritual organism upon the community must
be looked for. In the absence of any such reaction

CLASSIFICATION. 391

in the absence of any token that it lived for a higher
purpose, or that its real interests were those of the
Kingdom to which it professed to belong, we should
be entitled to question its being in that Kingdom.
It is obvious that each Kingdom has its own ends
and interests, its own functions to discharge in
Nature. It is also a law that every organism lives
for its Kingdom. And man's place in Nature, or
his position among the Kingdoms, is to be decided
by the characteristic functions habitually discharged
by him Now when the habits of certain individuals
are closely observed, when the total effect of their
life and work, with regard to the community, is
gauged — as carefully observed and gauged as the
influence of certain individuals in a colony of ants
might be observed and gauged by Sir John Lubbock
— there ought to be no difficulty in deciding whether
they are living for the Organic or for the Spiritual ;
in plainer language, for the world or for God. The
question of Kingdoms, at least, would be settled
without mistake. The place of any given individual
in his own Kingdom is a different matter. That is
a question possibly for ethics. But from the bio-
logical standpoint, if a man is living for the world it
is immaterial how well he lives for it He ought to
live well for it. However important it is for his own
Kingdom, it does not affect his biological relation to

392 CLASSIFICATION.

the other Kingdom whether his character is perfect
or imperfect. He may even to some extent as3ume
the outward form of organisms belonging to the higher
Kingdom ; but so long as his reaction upon the
world is the reaction of his species, he is to be classed
with his species, so long as the bent of his life is in
the direction of the world, he remains a worldling.

Recent botanical and entomological researches
have made Science familiar with what is termed
Mimicry. Certain organisms in one Kingdom as-
sume, for purposes of their own, the outward form
of organisms belonging to another. This curious
hypocrisy is practised both by plants and animals,
the object being to secure some personal advantage,
usually safety, which would be denied were the
organism always to play its part in Nature in propria
persona. Thus the Ceroxylus laceratus of Borneo
has assumed so perfectly the disguise of a moss-
covered branch as to evade the attack of insecti-
vorous birds ; and others of the walking-stick insects
and leaf-butterflies practise similar deceptions with
great effrontery and success. It is a startling result
of the indirect influence of Christianity, or of a
spurious Christianity, that the religious world has
come to be populated — how largely one can scarce
venture to think — with mimetic species. In few
cases, probably, is this a conscious deception. In

CLASSIFICATION. 393

many doubtless it is induced, as in Ceroxylas, by
the desire for safety. But in a majority of instances
it is the natural effect of the prestige of a great
system upon those who, coveting its benedictions,
yet fail to understand its true nature, or decline
to bear its profounder responsibilities. It is here
that the test of Life becomes of supreme import-
ance. No classification on the ground of form can
exclude mimetic species, or discover them to them-
selves. But if man's place among the Kingdoms
is determined by his functions, a careful estimate ^of
his life in itself and in its reaction upon surrounding
lives, ought at once to betray his real position. No
matter what may be the moral uprightness of his
life, the honourableness of his career, or the ortho-
doxy of his creed, if he exercises the function of
loving the world, that defines his world — he belongs
to the Organic Kingdom. He cannot in that case
belong to the higher Kingdom. " If any man love
the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
After all, it is by the general bent of a man's life,
by his heart-impulses and secret desires, his spon-
taneous actions and abiding motives, that his gene-
ration is declared.

The exclusiveness of Christianity, separation from
the world, uncompromising allegiance to the King-
dom of God, entire surrender of body, soul, and

394 CLASSIFICATION.

spirit to Christ — these are truths which rise into
prominence from time to time, become the watch-
words of insignificant parties, rouse the church to
attention and the world to opposition, and die- down
ultimately for want of lives to live them. The few
enthusiasts who distinguish in these requirements
the essential conditions of entrance into the King-
dom of Christ are overpowered by the weight of
numbers, who see nothing more in Christianity than
a mild religiousness, and who demand nothing more
in themselves or in their fellow- Christians than the
participation in a conventional worship, the accept-
ance of traditional beliefs, and the living of an
honest life. Yet nothing is more certain than that
the enthusiasts are right. Any impartial survey —
such as the unique analysis in gi Ecce Homo " — of the
claims of Christ and of the nature of His society,
will convince any one who cares to make the inquiry
of the outstanding difference between the system
of Christianity in the original contemplation and its
representations in modern life. Christianity marks
the advent of what is simply a new Kingdom. Its
distinctions from the Kingdom below it are funda-
mental. It demands from its members activities
and responses of an altogether novel order. It is,
in the conception of its Founder, a Kingdom for
Jirhich all its adherents must henceforth exclusively

CLASSIFICA TION.

395

live and work, and which opens its gates alone upon
those who, having counted the cost, are prepared
to follow it if need be to the death. The surrender
Christ demanded was absolute. Every aspirant fof
membership must seek first the Kingdom of God
And in order to enforce the demand of allegiance,
or rather with an unconsciousness which contains the
finest evidence for its justice, He even assumed the
title of King — a claim which in other circumstances,
and were these not the symbols of a higher royalty
seems so strangely foreign to one who is meek and
lowly in heart.

But this imperious claim of a Kingdom upon its
members is not peculiar to Christianity. It is the
law in all departments of Nature that every
organism must live for its Kingdom. And in de-
fining living for the higher Kingdom as the con-
dition of living in it, Christ enunciates a principle
which all Nature has prepared us to expect. Every
province has its peculiar exactions, every Kingdom
levies upon its subjects the tax of an exclusive
obedience, and punishes disloyalty always with
death. It was the neglect of this principle — that
every organism must live for its Kingdom if it is
to live in it — which first slowly depopulated the
spiritual world. The example of its Founder ceased
to find imitators, and the consecration of His early

396 CLASSIFICATION.

followers came to be regarded as a superfluous
enthusiasm. And it is this same misconception of
the fundamental principle of all Kingdoms that has
deprived modern Christianity of its vitality. The
failure to regard the exclusive claims of Christ as
more than accidental, rhetorical, or ideal ; the failure
to discern the essential difference between His King-
dom and all other systems based on the lines of
natural religion, and therefore merely Organic ; in
a word, the general neglect of the claims of Christ
as the Founder of a new and higher Kingdom —
these have taken the very heart from the religion
of Christ and left its evangel without power to
impress or bless the world. Until even religious
men see the uniqueness of Christ's society, until
they acknowledge to the full extent its claim to be
nothing less than a new Kingdom, they will continue
the hopeless attempt to live for two Kingdoms at
once. And hence the value of a more explicit
Classification. For probably the most of the diffi-
culties of trying to live the Christian life arise from
attempting to half-live it

As a merely verbal matter, this identification of
the Spiritual World with what are known to Science
as Kingdoms, necessitates an explanation. The
suggested relation of the Kingdom of Christ to the
Mineral and Animal Kingdoms does not, of course

CLASSIFICA TION.

397

depend upon the accident that the Spiritual World
is named in the sacred writings by the same word
This certainly lends an appearance of fancy to the
generalisation : and one feels tempted at first to
dismiss it with a smile. But, in truth, it is no
mere play on the word Kingdom. Science de-
mands the classification of every organism. And
here is an organism of a unique kind, a living
snergetic spirit, a new creature which, by an act
of generation, has been begotten of God. Starting
from the point that the spiritual life is to be studied
biologically, we must at once proceed, as the first
step in the scientific examination of this organism,
to enter it in its appropriate class. Now two King-
doms, at the present time, are known to Science —
the Inorganic and the Organic It does not belong
to the Inorganic Kingdom, because it lives. It does
not belong to the Organic Kingdom, because it is
endowed with a kind of Life infinitely removed from
either the vegetal or animal. Where then shall it
be classed ? We are left without an alternative.
There being no Kingdom known to Science which
can contain it, we must construct one. Or rather
we must include in the programme of Science a
Kingdom already constructed but the place of which
in science has not yet been recognised. That King-
dom is the Kingdom of God

3 9 8 CLASS1FICA TION.

Taking now this larger view of the content of
science, we may leave the case of the individuaJ
and pass on to outline the scheme of Nature as a
whole. The general conception will be as follows : —

First, we find at the bottom of everything the
Mineral or Inorganic Kingdom. Its characteristics
are, first, that so far as the sphere above it is con-
cerned it is dead ; second, that although dead it
furnishes the physical basis of life to the Kingdom
next in order. It is thus absolutely essential to
the Kingdom above it. And the more minutely
the detailed structure and ordering of the whole
fabric are investigated it becomes increasingly ap-
parent that the Inorganic Kingdom is the pre-
paration for, and the prophecy of, the- Organic.

Second, we come to the world next in order, the
world containing plant, and animal, and man, the
Organic Kingdom. Its characteristics are, first, that
so far as the sphere above it is concerned it is dead ;
and, second, although dead it supplies in turn the
basis of life to the Kingdom next in order. And
the more minutely the detailed structure and order-
ing of the whole fabric are investigated, it is obvious,
to turn, that the Organic Kingdom is the preparation
for, and the prophecy of, the Spiritual.

Third, and highest, we reach the Spiritual King-
dom, or the Kingdom of Heaven. What its charac-

CLA SSIFICA TION. 399

teristics are, relatively to any hypothetical higher
Kingdom, necessarily remain unknown. That the
Spiritual, in turn, may be the preparation for, and
the prophecy of, something still higher is not im-
possible. But the very conception of a Fourth
Kingdom transcends us, and if it exist, the Spiritual
organism, by the analogy, must remain at present
wholly dead to it.

The warrant for adding this Third Kingdom con-
sists, as just stated, in the fact that there are
organisms which from their peculiar origin, nature,
and destiny cannot be fitly entered in either of the
two Kingdoms now known to science. The Second
Kingdom is proclaimed by the advent upon the
stage of the First, of once-born organisms. The
Third is ushered in by the appearance, among these
once-born organisms, of forms of life which have
been born again — twice-born organisms. The classi-
fication, therefore, is based, from the scientific side
on certain facts of embryology and on the Law of
Biogenesis ; and from the theological side on cer-
tain facts of experience and on the doctrine of Re-
generation. To those who hold either to Biogenesis
or to Regeneration, there is no escape from a Third
Kingdom.1

1 Philosophical classifications in this direction (see for instance
Godet's " Old Testament Studies," pp. 2-40), owing to their neglect

400 CLASSIFICATION.

There is, in this conception of a high and spiritual
organism rising out of the highest point of the
Organic Kingdom, in the hypothesis of the Spiritual
Kingdom itself, a Third Kingdom following the
Second in sequence as orderly as the Second follows
the First, a Kingdom utilising the materials of both
the Kingdoms beneath it, continuing their laws, and,
above all, accounting for these lower Kingdoms in a
legitimate way and complementing them in the only
known way — there is in all this a suggestion of the
greatest of modern scientific doctrines, the Evolution
hypothesis, too impressive to pass unnoticed. The
strength of the doctrine of Evolution, at least in its
broader outlines, is now such that its verdict on any
biological question is a consideration of moment.
And if any further defence is needed for the idea of

of the facts of Biogenesis can never satisfy the biologist — any
more than the above will wholly satisfy the philosopher. Both
are needed. Rothe, in his "Aphorisms, strikingly notes one
point : " Es ist beachtenswerth, wie in der Schopfung immer
aus der Auflosung der nachst niederen Stufe die nachst hohere
hervorgeht, so dass jene immer das Substrat zur Erzeugung
dieser Kraft der schopferischen Einwirkung bildet. (Wie es
denn nicht anders sein kann bei einer.Entwicklung der Kreatur
aus sich selbst.) Aus den zersetzten Elementen erheben sich
das Mineral, aus dem verwitterten Material die Pflanze, aus del
verwesten Pflanze das Thier. So erhebt sich auch aus dem in
die Elemente zuriicksinkenden Materiellen Menschen der Geist,
das geistige Geschopf." — " Stille Stunden," p. 64.

CLA SSIFICA TION. 401

a Third Kingdom it may be found in the singular
harmony of the whole conception with this great
modern truth. It might even be asked whether a
complete and consistent theory of Evolution does
not really demand such a conception ? Why should
Evolution stop with the Organic ? It is surely
obvious that the complement of Evolution is Advo-
lution, and the inquiry, Whence has all this system
of things come, is, after all, of minor importance
compared with the question, Whither does all this
tend ? Science, as such, may have little to say on
such a question. And it is perhaps impossible, with
such faculties as we now possess, to imagine an
Evolution with a future as great as its past. So
stupendous is the development from the atom to the
man that no point can be fixed in the future as
distant from what man is now as he is from the
atom. But it has been given to Christianity to
disclose the lines of a further Evolution. And if
Science also professes to offer a further Evolution,
not the most sanguine evolutionist will venture to
contrast it, either as regards the dignity of its
methods, the magnificence of its aims, or the cer-
tainty of its hopes, with the prospects of the Spiritual
Kingdom. That Science has a prospect of some sort
to hold out to man, is not denied. But its limits are
already marked. Mr. Herbert Spencer, after in-

D D

402 CLASSIFICATION.

vestigating its possibilities fully, tells us, " Evolution
has an impassable limit." l It is the distinct claim
of the Third Kingdom that this limit is not final
Christianity opens a way to a further development
— a development apart from which the magnificent
past of Nature has been in vain, and without which
Organic Evolution, in spite of the elaborateness of
its processes and the vastness of its achievements,
is simply a stupendous cul de sac. Far as Nature
carries on the task, vast as is the distance between
the atom and the man, she has to lay down her tools
when the work is just begun. Man, her most rich
and finished product, marvellous in his complexity,
all but Divine in sensibility, is to the Third Kingdom
not even a shapeless embryo. The old chain of pro-
cesses must begin again on the higher plane if there
is to be a further Evolution. The highest organism
of the Second Kingdom — simple, immobile, dead as
the inorganic crystal, towards the sphere above —
must be vitalized afresh. Then from a mass of all
but homogeneous " protoplasm " the organism must
pass through all the stages of differentiation and in-
tegration, growing in perfectness and beauty under
the unfolding of the higher Evolution, until it reaches
the Infinite Complexity, the Infinite Sensibility, God

I " First Principles," p. 440.

CLASSIFICATION. 403

So the spiritual carries on the marvellous process to
which all lower Nature ministers, and perfects it
when the ministry of lower Nature fails.

This conception of a further Evolution carries with
it the final answer to the charge that, as regards
morality, the Spiritual world has nothing to offer
man that is not already within his reach. Will it be
contended that a perfect morality is already within
the reach of the natural man ? What product of the
organic creation has ever attained to the fulness of
the stature of Him who is the Founder and Type
of the Spiritual Kingdom ? What do men know of
the qualities enjoined in His Beatitudes, or at what
value do they even estimate them ? Proved by
results, it is surely already decided that on merely
natural lines moral perfection is unattainable. And
even Science is beginning to waken to the mo-
mentous truth that Man, the highest product of the
Organic Kingdom, is a disappointment. But even
were it otherwise, if even in prospect the hopes of
the Organic Kingdom could be justified, its standard
of beauty is not so high, nor, in spite of the dreams
of Evolution, is its guarantee so certain. The goal
of the organisms of the Spiritual World is nothing
less than this— to be "holy as He is holy, and pure
as He is pure." And by the Law of Conformity to
Type, their final perfection is secured. The inward

404 CLASSIFICATION.

nature must develop out according to its Type, until
the consummation of oneness with God is reached

These proposals of the Spiritual Kingdom in the
direction of Evolution are at least entitled to be
carefully considered by Science. Christianity defines
the highest conceivable future for mankind. It
satisfies the Law of Continuity. It guarantees the
necessary conditions for carrying on the organism
successfully, from stage to stage. It provides against
the tendency to Degeneration. And finally, instead
of limiting the yearning hope of final perfection to
the organisms of a future age, — an age so remote that
the hope for thousands of years must still be. hope-
less,— instead of inflicting this cruelty on intelligences
mature enough to know perfection and earnest
enough to wish it, Christianity puts the prize within
immediate reach of man.

This attempt to incorporate the Spiritual Kingdom
in the scheme of Evolution, may be met by what
seems at first sight a fatal objection. So far from
the idea of a Spiritual Kingdom being in harmony
with the doctrine of Evolution, it may be said that
it is violently opposed to it It announces a new
Kingdom starting off suddenly on a different plane
and in direct violation of the primary princ/ple of
development. Instead of carrying the organic evo-
lution further on its own lines, theology at a given

CI ASSIFICA TION.

405

point interposes a sudden and hopeless barrier — the
barrier between the natural and the spiritual— and
insists that the evolutionary process must begin
again at the beginning. At this point, in fact,
Nature acts per saltum. This is no Evolution, but
a Catastrophe — such a Catastrophe as must be fatal
to any consistent development hypothesis.

On the surface this objection seems final — but it
is only on the surface. It arises from taking a too
narrow view of what Evolution is. It takes evolution
in zoology for Evolution as a whole. Evolution
began, let us say, with some primeval nebulous mass
in which lay potentially all future worlds. Under
the evolutionary hand, the amorphous cloud broke
up, condensed, took definite shape, and in the line
of true development assumed a gradually increasing
complexity. Finally there emerged the cooled and
finished earth, highly differentiated, so to speak,
complete and fully equipped. And what followed ?
Let it be well observed — a Catastrophe. Instead of
carrying the process further, the Evolution, if this is
Evolution, here also abruptly stops. A sudden and
hopeless barrier — the barrier between the Inorganic
and the Organic — interposes, and the process has to
begin again at the beginning with the creation of
Life Here then is a barrier placed by Science at
the close of the Inorganic similar to the barriei

406 CLASSIFICATION.

placed by Theology at the close of the Organic
Science has used every effort to abolish this first
barrier, but there it still stands challenging the
attention of the modern world, and no consistent
theory of Evolution can fail to reckon with it. Any
objection, then, to the Catastrophe introduced by
Christianity between the Natural and Spiritual
Kingdoms applies with equal force against the
barrier which Science places between the Inorganic
and the Organic. The reserve of Life in either case
is a fact, and a fact of exceptional significance.

What then becomes of Evolution ? Do these two
great barriers destroy it? By no means. But they
make it necessary to frame a larger doctrine. And
the doctrine gains immeasurably by such an enlarge-
ment. For now the case stands thus : Evolution, in
harmony with its own law that progress is from the
simple to the complex, begins itself to pass towards
the complex. The materialistic Evolution, so to
speak, is a straight line. Making all else complex,
it alone remains simple — unscientifically simple.
But as Evolution unfolds everything else, it is now
seen to be itself slowly unfolding. The straight line
is coming out gradually in curves. At a given point
a new forre appears deflecting it ; and at another
given point a new force appears deflecting that.
These points are not unrelated points ; these forces

CLA SSIFICA TION. 407

are not unrelated forces. The arrangement is still
harmonious, and the development throughout obeys
the evolutionary law in being from the general to the
special, from the lower to the higher. What we are
reaching, in short, is nothing less than the evolution
of Evolution,

Now to both Science and Christianity, and espe-
cially to Science, this enrichment of Evolution is
important. And, on the part of Christianity, the
contribution to the system of Nature of a second
barrier is of real scientific value. At first it may
seem merely to increase the difficulty. But in reality
it abolishes it However paradoxical it seems, it is
nevertheless the case that two barriers are more easy
to understand than one, — two mysteries are less
mysterious than a single mystery. For it requires
two to constitute a harmony. One by itself is a
Catastrophe. But, just as the recurrence of an
eclipse at different periods makes an eclipse no
breach of Continuity ; just as the fact that the astro-
nomical conditions necessary to cause a Glacial
Period will in the remote future again be fulfilled
constitutes the Great Ice Age a normal phenomenon ;
so the recurrence of two periods associated with
special phenomena of Life, the second higher, and
by the 'aw necessarily higher, is no violation of the
principle of Evolution. Thus even in the matter ol

*o8 CLASSIFICATION.

adding a second to the one barrier of Nature, the
Third Kingdom may already claim to complement
the Science of the Second. The overthrow of Spon-
taneous Generation has left a break in Continuity
which continues to put Science to confusion. Alone,
it is as abnormal and perplexing to the intellect as
the first eclipse. But if the Spiritual Kingdom can
supply Science with a companion-phenomenon, the
most exceptional thing in the scientific sphere falls
within the domain of Law. This, however, is no
more than might be expected from a Third King-
dom. True to its place as the highest of the King-
doms, it ought to embrace all that lies beneath and
give to the First and Second their final explanation.

How much more in the under-Kingdoms might be
explained or illuminated upon this principle, how-
ever tempting might be the inquiry, we cannot turn
aside to ask. But the rank of the Third Kingdom
in the order of Evolution implies that it holds the
key to much that is obscure in the world around —
much that, apart from it, must always remain obscure.
A single obvious instance will serve to illustrate he
fertility of the method. What has this Kingdom to
contribute to Science with regard to the problem of
the origin of Life itself? Taking this as an isolated
phenomenon, neither the Second Kingdom, nor
the Third, apart from revelation, has anything to

CLASSIFICATION. 409

pronounce. But when we observe the companion-
phenomenon in the higher Kingdom, the question
is simplified. It will be disputed by none that the
source of Life in the Spiritual World is God. And
as the same Law of Biogenesis prevails in both
spheres, we may reason from the higher to the lowei
and affirm it to be at least likely that the origin of
life there has been the same.

There remains yet one other objection of a some-
what different order, and which is only referred to
because it is certain to be raised by those who fail to
appreciate the distinctions of Biology. Those whose
sympathies are rather with Philosophy than with
Science may incline to dispute the allocation of so
high an organism as man to the merely vegetal and
animal Kingdom, Recognising the immense moral
and intellectual distinctions between him and even
the highest animal, they would introduce a third
barrier between man and animal — a barrier even
greater than that between the Inorganic and the
Organic Now, no science can be blind to these
distinctions. The only question is whether they are
of such a kind as to make it necessary to classify
man it a separate Kingdom. And to this the answer
of Science is in the negative. Modern Science
knows only two Kingdoms — the Inorganic and the
Organic A barrier between man and animal there

410 CLASSIFICATION.

may be, but it is a different barrier from that which
separates Inorganic from Organic. But even wer6
this to be denied, and in spite of all science it will be
denied, it would make no difference as regards the
general question. It would merely interpose anothei
Kingdom between the Organic and the Spiritual, the
other relations remaining as before. Any one, there -
fore, with a theory to support as to the exceptional
creation of the Human Race will find the present
classification elastic enough for his purpose. Philo-
sophy, of course, may propose another arrangement
of the Kingdoms if it chooses. It is only contended
that this is the order demanded by Biology. To add
another Kingdom mid-way between the Organic and
the Spiritual, could that be justified at any future
time on scientific grounds, would be a mere question
of further detail.

Studies in Classification, beginning with consider-
ations of quality, usually end with a reference to
quantity. And though one would willingly terminate
the inquiry on the threshold of such a subject, the
example of Revelation not less than the analogies of
Nature press for at least a general statement.

The broad impression gathered from the utterances
ot the Founder of the Spiritual Kingdom is that the
number of organisms to be included in it is to be
comparatively smalL The outstanding characteristic

CLASSIFICATION. 411

of the new Society is to be its sekctness. " Many
are called," said Christ, " but few are chosen." And
when one recalls, on the one hand, the conditions of
membership, and, on the other, observes the lives and
aspirations of average men, the force of the verdict
becomes apparent. In its bearing upon the general
question, such a conclusion is not without suggestive-
ness. Here again is another evidence of the radical
nature of Christianity. That " few are chosen " indi-
cates a deeper view of the relation of Christ's King-
dom to the world, and stricter qualifications of
membership, than lie on the surface or are allowed
for in the ordinary practice of religion.

The analogy of Nature upon this point is not less
striking — it may be added, not less solemn. Tt is an
open secret, to be read in a hundred analogies from
the world around, that of the millions of possible en-
trants for advancement in any department of Nature
the number ultimately selected for preferment is small.
Here also " many are called and few are chosen,"
The analogies from the waste of seed, of pollen, of
human lives, are too familiar to be quoted. In certain
details, possibly, these comparisons are inappropriate.
But there are other analogies, wider and more just,
which strike deeper into the system of Nature A
comprehensive view of the whole field of Nature
discloses the fact that the circle of the rhosen slowly

41* CLASSIFICATION.

contracts as we rise in the scale of b^ing. Some
mineral, but not all, becomes vegetable ; some vege*
table, but not all, becomes animal ; some animal>
but not all, becomes human ; some human, but not
all, becomes Divine. Thus the area narrows. At
the base is the mineral, most broad and simple ; the
spiritual at the apex, smallest, but most highly differ-
entiated. So form rises above form, Kingdom above
Kingdom. Quantity decreases as quality increases.

The gravitation of the whole system of Nature
towards quality is surely a phenomenon of com-
manding interest. And if among the more recent
revelations of Nature there is one thing more signifi-
cant for Religion than another, it is the majestic
spectacle of the rise of Kingdoms towards scarcer
yet nobler forms, and simpler yet diviner ends. Of
the early stage, the first development of the earth
from the nebulous matrix of space, Science speaks
with reserve. The second, the evolution of each
individual from the simple protoplasmic cell to the
formed adult, is proved. The still wider evolution,
not of solitary individuals, but of all the individuals
within each province— in the vegetal world from the
unicellular cryptogam to the highest phanerogam, in
the animal world from the amorphous amoeba to
Man — is at least suspected, the gradual rise of types
being at all events a fact. But now, at last, we

CLASSIFICA TION. 41 3

see the Kingdoms themselves evolving. And that
supreme law which has guided the development from
simple to complex in matter, in individual, in sub-
Kingdom, and in Kingdom, until only two or three
great Kingdoms remain, now begins at the begin-
ning again, directing the evolution of these million-
peopled worlds as if they were simple cells or
organisms. Thus, what applies to the individual
applies to the family, what applies to the family
applies to the Kingdom, what applies to the King-
dom applies to the Kingdoms. And so, out of the
infinite complexity there rises an infinite simplicity.
the foreshadowing of a final unity, of that

" One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves." l

TKis is the final triumph of Continuity, the heart
secret of Creation, the unspoken prophecy of Christi-
anity. To Science, defining it as a working principle,
this mighty process of amelioration is simply Evolu-
tion. To Christianity, discerning the «id through
the means, it is Redemption. These silent and
patient processes, elaborating, eliminating, develop-
ing all from the first of time, conducting the evolu-
tion from millennium to millennium with unaltering

1 u In Memoriam *

4H CLASSIFICATION.

purpose and unfaltering power, are the early stages
in the redemptive work — the unseen approach of that
Kingdom whose strange mark is that it "cometh
without observation." And these Kingdoms rising
tier above tier in ever increasing sublimity and
beauty, their foundations visibly fixed in the past,
their progress, and the direction of their progress,
being facts in Nature still, are the signs which, since
the Magi saw His star in the East, have never been
wanting from the firmament of truth, and which ic
every age with growing clearness to the wise, and
with ever-gathering mystery to the uninitiated, pro-
claim that " the Kingdom of God is at hand."

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