Natural Law in the Spiritual World
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Title: Natural Law in the Spiritual World
Author: Henry Drummond
Release date: November 5, 2007 [eBook #23334]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23334
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Stephen Blundell and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
NATURAL LAW
IN THE
SPIRITUAL WORLD.
BY
HENRY DRUMMOND. F.R.S.E.: F.G.S.
NEW YORK:
HURST & CO., PUBLISHERS,
122 NASSAU ST.
ARGYLE PRESS
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING,
24 & 26 WOOSTER ST., N. Y.
Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Greek
text has been transliterated and is shown between {braces}. The oe
ligature has been transcribed as [oe].
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE, 5
INTRODUCTION, 21
BIOGENESIS, 59
DEGENERATION, 83
GROWTH, 99
DEATH, 111
MORTIFICATION, 133
ETERNAL LIFE, 149
ENVIRONMENT, 181
CONFORMITY TO TYPE, 203
SEMI-PARASITISM, 223
PARASITISM, 237
CLASSIFICATION, 255
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 stated 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 everywhere run
through the Spiritual World is already beginning to be recognized. 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 apologize 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 address 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 myself, but to certain of my friends it
was more than 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 themselves. 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.
Now this was not simply a scientific coloring given to Religion, the
mere freshening of the theological 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 introduction 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 toward 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 counterpart 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]
The function of Parable in religion is to exhibit "form by form." Law
undertakes the profounder 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 crystallizing touch is needed in
Religion. Can it be said that the Phenomena of the Spiritual World are
other than scattered? 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, the organizing hand of
Law moved among the unordered 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
of 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
anything to myself so objectionable and so unwarrantable 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 relief to me throughout that the idea rose
up thus in the course of practical work and shaped itself day by day
unconsciously. It might be charged, nevertheless, that I was all the
time, whether 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
unbiased 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
Theology, whatever its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, whatever 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 interfere with the integrity of the results--to begin again
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
predicates of the Natural World, _Natura enim non nisi parendo
vincitur_, 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 scientific ideas
in the hope that they may be useful first of all in this direction.
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 truths, 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 contact in detail. The
solution of this great question of 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 ranking 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 forever 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 application 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 knowledge stand uncondemned. Within their own sphere the results
of Mr. Herbert Spencer are far from sterile--the application of Biology
to Political Economy is already revolutionizing the Science. If the
introduction of Natural Law into the Social sphere is no violent
contradiction but a genuine and permanent contribution, shall its
further extension to the Spiritual sphere be counted an extravagance?
Does not the Principle of Continuity demand its application in every
direction? To carry it as a working principle into so lofty a region may
appear impracticable. 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
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.
"Degeneration," "Growth," "Mortification," "Conformity to Type,"
"Semi-Parasitism," and "Parasitism" belong 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 circumstances 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 of Analogy to Laws, or rather the extension of the 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 I have not even
paused to define specially to what departments 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 was sooner or later
startled by a certain similarity in the general idea to something I had
heard before, 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 downward 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 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
articulate, 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 centuries of
uncontrolled speculation. They are the necessary result of the old
method and the 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
unsuccessful. But they would more than satisfy me if 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 recognized by all that the younger and abler minds
of this age find the most serious difficulty in accepting or retaining
the ordinary forms or 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 begins 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, 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 as 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 disciples. 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."[2]
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 to 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 splendor 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
intellect of his age is slowly divorcing itself from it. What is
required, therefore, to draw Science and Religion 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 naturalness of the Supernatural,
so the gift of Religion to 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 recognize the
Authority of God.
To those who already find themselves fully nourished 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 Christian life, haunted now
by a sense of instability in the foundation 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 ourselves, unbiased,
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, 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; especially should it seem
to substitute a Reign of Law and a Lawgiver for a Kingdom of Grace and a
Personal 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."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Aurora Leigh.
[2] "Meditationes Sacrae," x.
ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION.
[For the sake of the general reader who may desire to pass at once
to the practical applications, the following outline of the
Introduction--devoted rather to general principles--is here
presented.]
PART I.
NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL SPHERE.
1. The growth of the Idea of Law.
2. Its gradual extension throughout every department of Knowledge.
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 illustrations. Analogies of
_Law_ would also have a Scientific value.
5. Wherein that value would consist. (1) The Scientific demand of the
age would be met; (2) Greater clearness would be introduced into
Religion practically; (3) Theology, 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) unknown. Qualification.
6. The Spiritual not the projection upward of the Natural; but the
Natural the projection downward of the Spiritual.
INTRODUCTION.
"This method turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any
known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis
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 analyze. When you confront us with
hypotheses, however sublime and however affecting, if they cannot 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."--_Frederick Harrison._
"Ethical science is already forever 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._
PART I.
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 independent 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 an ancient testimony to the
grandeur of that harmony 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 adjustments, 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[3] indicates five senses
in which the 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 ascertained 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 observers. 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 not discovered yet. He
discovered its Law, which is Gravitation, but 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
harmony 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 to Laws not to
Phenomena. That the Phenomena of the Spiritual World are in analogy with
the Phenomena of the Natural World requires no restatement. 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 image;
since the mysticism of Swedenborg; since Bacon and Pascal; since "Sartor
Resartus" 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 representations 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 symbolical of the
spiritual world."[4] And Carlyle: "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."[5]
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 recognized. 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.[6]
But analogies between Phenomena bear the same relation to analogies of
Law that Phenomena themselves 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 simply the discovery of Science. And if the
analogies of Natural Law can be extended to the Spiritual World, that
whole region at once falls within 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 _a fortiori_ of this--with the addition 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. Doubtless there is much difficulty and even liability
to gross error in attempting to establish analogy in specific cases. The
value of the likeness appears differently to different minds, and in
discussing an individual instance questions of relevancy will invariably
crop up. Of course, in the language of John Stuart Mill, "when the
analogy can be proved, the argument founded upon it cannot be
resisted."[7] 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
honored with the name of proof."[8] 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 possibly the most fruitful proof. The
best proof of a 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 afterward,
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 Phenomena 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
inconvenience, however, in dispensing with the word analogy, we shall
continue occasionally to employ it. 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 concession; 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 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. There the Law of Continuity ceases, and the
harmony breaks down. And men who have learned their elementary lessons
truly from the alphabet of the lower Laws, going on to seek a higher
knowledge, are suddenly confronted with the Great Exception.
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 marshaled
under other kinds of laws."[9] Few men have shown more insight than
Bushnell in illustrating Spiritual truth from the Natural World; but he
has not only failed to perceive the analogy with regard to Law, but
emphatically 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 by 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."[10] 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 lofty, 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. 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 subject occurs to him more than once, and he
deliberately dismisses it--dismisses it not merely as unfruitful, 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."[11] He says: "The designation of Butler's
scheme of religious philosophy 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."[12] 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."[13]
With regard to Butler's great work in this department, it is needless at
this time of day to point out that his aims did not lie exactly in this
direction. 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 Phenomena, 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,"[14] 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 this 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
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 defaulter, 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, with 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
forever 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
insurmountable barrier from the domain of scientific inquiry."[15]
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 insurmountable
barrier from the domain of scientific inquiry," it dare not recognize.
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 geometrical 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 philosophic
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 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 _a
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 thoroughly exposed. The advent of modified uniformitarian principles
all but banished the word catastrophe from science, and marked the birth
of Geology as we know it now. Geology, that is to say, had fallen at
last into the great scheme of Law. Religious 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
justified, 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 fearfulness 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
splendor with every discovery of science, the conclusion is foregone. If
there is any foundation for Theology, if the phenomena 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 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 forever. It were
unjust to say that the present Theology is as artificial as the system
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 adequately
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 leveling 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 physiological in chemical--above all,
of mental changes in physiological--is a neglect of the radical
assumption of all science, because it is an attempt to deduce
representations--or rather misrepresentations--of one kind of phenomena
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."[16]
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
phenomena, 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 center. To show that the
radii for some of the most 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 restate 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 _a 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 understand," 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 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. Frederick Harrison,[17] 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
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 analyze. When you
confront us with hypotheses, however sublime and however affecting, if
they cannot 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 truth, or at all events certain of the
largest facts of the Spiritual Life, can be stated "in terms of the rest
of our knowledge."
We do not say, as already hinted, that the proposal 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 philosophical proof of the
existence of a Spiritual Life 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 directions. The stumbling-block to most
minds is perhaps less the mere existence of the unseen than the want of
definition, the apparently hopeless vagueness, 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 emphasize 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 regard to many important
articles of religion perhaps 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 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 different quality of {bios}. Plato's prisoner,
if not out of the Cave, has at least his face to the light.
"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
elimination of mystery from the universe is the elimination 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 knowledge
of my ignorance to the submissiveness of faith, and then, making that
my starting place, to raise my knowledge into faith."[18]
Lest this proclamation of mystery should seem alarming, let us add that
this mystery also is scientific. 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 final uncertainty, that utter blackness of darkness
bounding 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 innermost
core of scepticism; and it is this scepticism which causes that dread of
inquiry displayed by religion when face to face with science."[19]
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 purification of Religion has always come from
Science. It is very apparent at all events that an immense debt must
soon be contracted. The shifting 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 favors 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 honored, and Science take its place as the
great expositor. To Men of Science, not less than to Theologians,
"Science then
Shall be a precious visitant; and then,
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."[20]
But the gift of Science to Theology shall be not less rich. With the
inspiration of Nature to illuminate 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 life
and rest their souls in thinking of the future will not be left in
doubt.
It is impossible to believe that the amazing succession 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 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 rested on a clearer and richer
world than that of Plato, so, though seeing the same things in the
Spiritual 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. Revelation 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 commandments. They repose with simplicity on authority, 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 exhibit our doctrines, not
lying athwart the lines of the world's thinking, in a place reserved,
and therefore shunned, for the Great Exception; but in their kinship 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
Nature but an attempt to utter the parables which have been hid so long
in the world around without a preacher, and to tell men at once more
that the Kingdom 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 violently separated in all the
conditions of growth, development, 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 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
certain prominent Laws to each, it must never be forgotten, 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 facilitate knowledge--reductions of Nature to the scale of our own
intelligence. And we must beware of breaking up Nature except for this
purpose. Science has so dissected everything, that it becomes a 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 presumption 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 generalizations 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
running 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 themselves finally grouped in a still narrower
circle. That 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,[21] 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 preferred 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 universe.
Probably the most satisfactory way to secure for one's self a just
appreciation of the Principle of Continuity 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 Continuity 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.
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 everything 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-story house and dash it to pieces somewhere near the center 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 without Continuity. And hence we come in
sight of the necessity of some principle of 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
expression 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."[22] Or, as it
has been well put elsewhere, Continuity is the expression of "the Divine
Veracity in Nature."[23] The most striking examples of the
continuousness of Law are perhaps those furnished by Astronomy,
especially in connection with the more recent applications 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
gravitation which has determined the form and the movements 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 gravitation
were to change or fail."[24]
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 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 may be 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 although 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 higher Law and
in apparent defiance of the lower. Thirdly, 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 gravitation with
the Spiritual, what becomes of Continuity? 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 Inorganic 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 annihilated, 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
downward, but because there is nothing for them there to act upon. It is
not Law that fails, but opportunity. The biological Laws are continuous
for life. Wherever there is life, that is to say, they will be found
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 would 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 one's
self 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 substance 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 afterward, is the fundamental 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. Biogenesis deals with {bios}, with the natural life,
with cells and germs, and as there are no exactly similar cells and
germs in the Spiritual World, the Law cannot 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 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 preexisting natural life; and at the beginning of the
spiritual life we find that the spiritual life can only come from
preexisting spiritual life. But there are not two Laws; there is
one--Biogenesis. 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. Biogenesis, 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 Laws will be the conspicuous Laws of the Spiritual World,
both which points will be dealt with presently. It simply asserts that
whatever else may be found, 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 consideration--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 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 conspicuous 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 invisible, 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
{bios}. 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 do 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 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 guarantee 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 scepter
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 honor
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 other Laws in that, nor does he take from it who finds
specific 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 vocabulary 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 hypothetical 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, 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, whatever additions
may yet be made to them, give a fair rendering of the facts of Nature.
And their analogies 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 _a priori_ grounds, it is
involved 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:--"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 ascertained_, but which the vital and religious
imagination can perceive, counterparts one of the other."[25] But is not
this the explanation, that parallel Phenomena depend upon identical
Laws? It is a question indeed whether one can speak of Laws at all as
being analogous. Phenomena are parallel, Laws which make them so are
themselves one.
In discussing the relations of the Natural and Spiritual 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
afterward 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
conclusion 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 Continuity, 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 groundlings; 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 grasped by the finite intelligences of
the universe."[26] But their true significance lies in the fact that
they are on the list at all, and especially in that the list is 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.'"[27] But, over and above this, the Natural Laws
will enable us to read that great duplicate 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
vanishing lines are the avenues into the eternal Order. "It is 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
impenetrable wall, which, if we could only pierce it would admit us at
once into the presence of the Eternal?"[28] Indeed the authors of the
"Unseen Universe" demur even to the expression _material universe_,
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."[29] 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."[30]
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 "Intelligence
resident in the 'Unseen'" proceeded to frame the material universe He
should go upon the lines already laid down. He would, in short, simply
project the higher Laws downward, so that the Natural World would become
an incarnation, a visible representation, a working model of the
spiritual. The whole function of the material world lies here. The 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 _x_-world it would mean as much, viz.,
that we do not know what it is."[31] 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?"[32] 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "Reign of Law," chap. ii.
[4] "Animal Kingdom."
[5] "Sartor Resartus," 1858 Ed., p. 43.
[6] 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 intelligible before, present it more vividly
to the mind, which is all that some will allow them. Their power lies
deeper than 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: "Parables," pp. 12, 13.)
[7] Mill's "Logic," vol. ii. p. 96.
[8] Campbell's "Rhetoric," vol. i. p. 114.
[9] "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 19.
[10] "The Scientific Basis of Faith." By J. J. Murphy, p. 466.
[11] Op. cit., p. 333.
[12] _Ibid._, p. 333.
[13] _Ibid._, p. 331.
[14] "Analogy," chap. vii.
[15] "Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., pp. 89, 90.
[16] "Essays," vol. i. p. 40.
[17] "A Modern Symposium."--_Nineteenth Century_, vol. i. p. 625.
[18] Beck: "Bib. Psychol.," Clark's Tr., Pref., 2d Ed., p. xiii.
[19] "First Principles," p. 161.
[20] Wordsworth's _Excursion_, Book iv.
[21] "The Correlation of Physical Forces," 6th Ed., p. 181 _et seq._
[22] "Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., p. 88.
[23] "Old Faiths in New Light," by Newman Smith. Unwin's English
edition, p. 252.
[24] The Duke of Argyll: _Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1880, p. 358.
[25] "Poetic Interpretation of Nature," p. 115.
[26] 6th edition, p. 235.
[27] _Ibid._, p. 286.
[28] "Unseen Universe," p. 96.
[29] "Unseen Universe," p. 100.
[30] "Science and Culture," p. 259.
[31] Hinton's "Philosophy and Religion," p. 40.
[32] 2 Cor. iv. 18.
BIOGENESIS.
"What we require is no new Revelation, but simply an adequate
conception of the true essence of Christianity. And I believe that,
as time 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._
"He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not Life."--_John._
"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--one that matter can spontaneously generate life,
the other that life can only come from preexisting 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 experiments on
the Beginnings of Life. Stated in his own words, his conclusion is this:
"Both observation and experiment unmistakably testify to the fact that
living matter is constantly being formed _de novo_, in obedience to the
same laws and tendencies which determined all the more simple chemical
combinations."[33] Life, that is to say, is not the Gift of Life. 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 biological science engaged themselves afresh
upon the problem. The experiments necessary to test the matter can be
followed or repeated by any one possessing 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 subsequently 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 insure 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
absolutely germless and pure, would the myriad-life 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 appeared. He varied the
experiment in every direction, 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 recognized on every hand that Life can
only come from the touch of Life. Huxley categorically announces that
the doctrine of Biogenesis, or life only from life, is "victorious along
the whole line at the present day."[34] And even while confessing 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 independently of antecedent
life."[35]
For much more than two hundred years a similar discussion has dragged
its length through the religious world. Two great schools here also have
defended exactly opposite views--one that the Spiritual Life in man can
only come from preexisting 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 extreme that it had nothing to do with anything else. That
man, being a worshiping animal by nature, ought to maintain certain
relations to the Supreme Being, was indeed to some extent conceded by
the naturalistic school, but religion itself we looked upon as a thing
to be spontaneously generated by the evolution of character in the
laboratory of common 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 quantity 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 opposes 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. He
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; 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 limited sense, was not here to
be sought for. On such a question its voice was necessarily silent; and
all that the apologist could look for lower down was a 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 problems concerning the Origin of
Life are placed on a different footing. And it remains to be seen
whether Religion cannot at once reaffirm 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 Christianity even is not this fundamental postulate
persistently ignored? A thousand modern pulpits every seventh day are
preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. The finest and best of
recent poetry is colored 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 popularly but by men of culture--is founded upon a view 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 inorganic 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, without this
preliminary contact with Life they remain fixed in the inorganic sphere
forever. 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 is the spectacle of this vast
helpless world of the dead cut off from the living by the Law of
Biogenesis and denied forever the possibility of resurrection within
itself. So very strange a thing, indeed, is this broad line in Nature,
that Science has long and urgently sought to obliterate it. Biogenesis
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 development 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 everything 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, will largely depend on the vividness with
which one realizes the gulf which Nature places between the living and
the dead.[36] But those who, in contemplating 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 and startling
of all natural phenomena, a meaning of peculiar moment.
Where now in the Spiritual spheres shall we meet a companion phenomena
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 hermetically 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
World 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, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God_.
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 _cannot_. For the exclusion of the spiritually inorganic 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 transformed 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 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 Revelation? 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
unsubstantiality of the _ipse dixit_? 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 Revelation has announced with
reference to this Spiritual Law of Biogenesis; afterward we shall
inquire whether Science, while indorsing the verdict, may not also have
some further vindication of its title to be heard.
The words of Scripture which preface this inquiry 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."[37] Why did He add _Marvel not_? Did He seek to allay 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_."[38] "Thou hast a name to
live, but art _Dead_."[39] "She that liveth in pleasure is _Dead_ while
she liveth."[40] "To you he Hath given Life which were _Dead_ in
trespasses and sins."[41]
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 there is Life,
Life of any kind, this same law holds. The analogy, therefore, is only
among the phenomena; 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 theologian 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
proclamation 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 materialized 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 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,
honors 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 Kingdoms
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 communication intelligible as well as credible, but the
information 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 Revelation. 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. 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: _neither can he know them_, because they are spiritually
discerned."[42] 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 increasing
sphere we may say that every addition to its surface does but bring it
into wider contact with surrounding nescience,"[43] from his standpoint
he is quite correct. The endeavors 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 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 thankful
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 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 virtuous 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
possessed by the other? Is it that certain faculties have been trained
in him, that morality assumes special and higher manifestations, and
character a nobler form? Is the Christian merely an ordinary man who
happens from birth to have been surrounded with a peculiar set of ideas?
Is his religion merely that peculiar quality of the moral life defined
by Mr. Matthew Arnold as "morality touched by emotion?" And does the
possession of a high ideal, benevolent sympathies, a reverent spirit,
and a favorable 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 something 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 phases 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 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 construct a scientific classification, Science would compel us to
arrange all natural men, moral or immoral, educated or vulgar, as one
family. One might be high in the family group, another low; yet,
practically, they are marked by the same set of characteristics--they
eat, sleep, work, think, live, die. But the Spiritual man is removed
from this family so utterly by the possession of an additional
characteristic 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
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 separate 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 _the 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 intellectual, 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 announcement is made, these few may be
selected: "Know ye not your own selves how that _Jesus Christ is in
you_?"[44] "Your bodies are the members of Christ."[45] "At that day ye
shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you."[46] "We
will come unto him and make our abode with him."[47] "I am the Vine, ye
are the branches."[48] "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live,
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."[49]
Three things are clear from these statements: First, they are not mere
figures of rhetoric. They are explicit declarations. If language means
anything 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 something outside ourselves.
The idea is not that Christ is in heaven and that we can stretch out
some mysterious faculty and deal with Him there. This is the vague form
in which many conceive the truth, 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
localization 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 conservation and transformation of energy, that is to say,
do not hold for Vitality. The electrician can demagnetize 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 individuality, no fixed
indwelling. But the biologist cannot devitalize a plant or an animal and
revivify it again.[50] Life is not one of the homeless forces which
promiscuously inhabit space, or which can be gathered like electricity
from the clouds and dissipated 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 indorses 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."[51]
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 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
to it. Who art Thou, Lord? Unless we are to be allowed to hold
Spontaneous Generation there is no alternative: 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 communicable? 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 or later to expect mystery, and now we enter its
domain. 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 astonishing 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 honorable convenience
sometimes to sit down on the outermost edge of the 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 confused 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 illumination, 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."
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 mysteries 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
observation;" 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 sometimes 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. For
the kingdom of God cometh without observation._
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
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 sometimes of an
experience which words are not allowed to utter--a something like the
sudden snapping of a chain, the waking from a dream.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] "Beginnings of Life." By H. C. Bastian, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
Macmillan, vol. ii. p. 633.
[34] "Critiques and Addresses." T. H. Huxley. F.R.S., p. 239.
[35] _Nineteenth Century_, 1878, p. 507.
[36] This being the crucial point it may not be inappropriate to
supplement the quotations already given in the text with the
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 ever been suggested since the
eyes of men first looked into it--the mighty gulf between death and
life."--"As Regards Protoplasm." By J. Hutchinson Stirling, LL.D., p.
42.
"The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between 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 aequivoca_
in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic
world, will feel it doubly serious to demand 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 produced
from a living antecedent only."--"The Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., p. 229.
[37] John iii.
[38] Rom. viii. 6.
[39] Rev. iii. 1.
[40] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[41] Eph. ii. 1, 5.
[42] 1 Cor. ii. 14.
[43] "First Principles," 2d Ed., p. 17.
[44] 2 Cor. xii. 5.
[45] 1 Cor. vi. 15.
[46] John xiv. 20.
[47] John xiv. 21-23.
[48] John xv. 4.
[49] Gal. ii. 20.
[50] One must not be misled by popular statements in this connection,
such as this of Professor Owen's: "There are organisms which we can
devitalize and revitalize--devive and revive--many times." (_Monthly
Microscopical Journal_, May, 1869, p. 294.) The reference is of course
to the extraordinary capacity for _resuscitation_ possessed by many of
the Protozoa and other low forms of life.
[51] Acts ix. 5.
DEGENERATION.
"I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man
void of understanding; and lo, 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._
"How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"--_Hebrews._
"We have as possibilities either Balance, or Elaboration, or
Degeneration."--_E. Ray Lankester._
In one of his best known books, Mr. Darwin brings out a fact which may
be illustrated in some such way as this: Suppose a bird fancier collects
a flock of tame pigeons distinguished by all the infinite ornamentations
of their race. They are of all kinds, of every shade of color, and
adorned with every variety of marking. He takes them to an uninhabited
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 color. The black, the white and the dun, the
striped, the spotted, and the ringed, are all metamorphosed into one--a
dark slaty blue. Two plain black bands monotonously repeat themselves
upon the wings of each, and the loins beneath are white; but all the
variety, all the beautiful colors, all the old graces of form it may be,
have disappeared. These improvements were the result of care and nature,
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 conform 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.
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 exception to any of the laws of Nature? Nature knows
him simply as an animal--Sub-kingdom _Vertebrata_, Class _Mammalia_,
Order _Bimana_. And the law of 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 inevitably 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 we escape? If we neglect the ordinary means of keeping a
garden in order, how shall it escape running 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 of 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 neither influence for better nor for worse. But
except in theory this state of equilibrium, normal in the inorganic
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
movement 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 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 adjustments become
fatiguing, its measured virtue is monotonous and uninspiring. More
difficult still, apparently, 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 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-story 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 undoubtedly make him
complete the descent by falling another eighty or ninety feet. So that
he is a dead man, or a lost man from the very first. The gravitation 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
righteousness, and lands him, by the sheer action of 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 the only way to keep out corruption, when life has
ebbed, is to keep out air. Life is merely a temporary 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 functions--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, not necessarily because God passes sentence of
death upon it, but because it cannot help dying. It has neglected "the
functions which resist death" and has always been dying. The punishment
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 ALSO REAP." The other is informally expressed in this, "IF
WE NEGLECT HOW SHALL WE ESCAPE?"
The first is the positive law, and deals with sins of commission. The
other, which we are now discussing, 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 answering. 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 a simple process like
neglect? The popular impression 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,
"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 particular? 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 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, paralyzing will. This is the active destroying
principle, or Sin. Now to counteract 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
further and further from escape.
From the very nature of Salvation, therefore, it is plain that the only
thing necessary to make it of no effect 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 despise, 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 destroys it in a
passion, or coolly refuses to have anything 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.
Turn now to another aspect of the case--to the effect upon 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 disuse, 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
extravagance. 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 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 favorite 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. If 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. Although 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.
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.
Degeneration compasses Degeneration. It is only a character which is
itself developing that can aid the Evolution of the world and so fulfill
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 irretrievably. 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 are 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 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 dishonored
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 how 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 anomaly, may kiss
his Lord. This invisible consumption, like its fell analogue in the
natural world, may even keep its victim beautiful while slowly slaying
it. When one examines the little _Crustacea_ which have inhabited for
centuries the lakes of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 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 color 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 Stygian 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 insensate
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
_Crustacea_ 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 humored them. Nature had
to do it by her very constitution. It is her defence against waste that
decay of faculty should immediately 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 practicing these
little deceptions upon ourselves, 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 Nature. No sleight-of-heart can rob religion of
_a present_, the immortal nature of a _now_. The poet sings--
"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 culmination 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 consequences 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 from if it be not
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 ever 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
emergence 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 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
spiritual 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 and you 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 Shepherd'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 Inspiration. Neglect that, and all the scenery of the spiritual
world is flat and frozen. But cultivate it, and it penetrates the whole
soul with sacred fire, and 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?[52]
FOOTNOTES:
[52] 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: Macmillan. 1880.
"Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Princip des Functions Wechsels."
Dr. A. Dorhn. Leipzig: 1875.
"Lessons from Nature." By St. George Mivart, F.R.S. London: John Murray.
1876.
"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? Do they not say plainly 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 strength of
divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that
is just what we now never recognize, 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._
"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow."--_The Sermon on
the Mount._
"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 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 disquieting 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
better men? How are we to grow in grace? By what thought shall we add
the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fullness 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 instead 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 which one may seek for
evidence of the spontaneousness 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 condition as
about the result; he fulfills the conditions by habit, the result
follows by nature. Both processes 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
recognized 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 prescriptions 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 sanctification by faith might be spared much humiliation 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 by 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; 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 between the Christian and the moralist lies here. The
Christian works from the center, the moralist from the circumference.
The one is an organism, in the center 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 Christ-like mind, character
and life. Morality is on the way to this perfection; it may go a
considerable distance toward it, but it can never reach it. Only Life
can do that. It requires something with enormous power of movement, 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 directions. 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 fullness in this life. That were a time too short for an
Evolution so magnificent. In this world only the cornless ear is seen;
sometimes only the small yet still prophetic blade. The sneer at the
godly man for 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 superfluous to seek a third line of argument from
Scripture. 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
character. We are most unspiritual always in dealing 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 understand 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 and 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 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 favorable 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 are; 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 aims and objects in life again are
taken from the world around him, and from its dictation. What it
considers honorable, 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
character 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 ourselves. How has the person become possessed of
it? Has he caught it from society around him? That 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 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 character; 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."[53]
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 center,
and in spite of its transparency and sweetness that presence 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 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
spontaneous 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 destination, 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-honored
"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 regarding his spiritual growth. That
attitude, primarily, is to be free from care. We are not lodging a plea
for inactivity of the spiritual energies, but for 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 Christian 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 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's free grace.
If God is spending work upon a Christian, 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 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 nourishing 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 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 machinery. 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 the
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