{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_61004/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_61004","id":"gutenberg_61004","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61004","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Spiritual life"],"text":"SPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE\n\n\n\n\n                             [Illustration]\n\n                          THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                  NEW YORK \u00b7 BOSTON \u00b7 CHICAGO \u00b7 DALLAS\n                         ATLANTA \u00b7 SAN FRANCISCO\n\n                        MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED\n                       LONDON \u00b7 BOMBAY \u00b7 CALCUTTA\n                                MELBOURNE\n\n                    THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.\n                                 TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n                           SPIRITUAL ENERGIES\n                              IN DAILY LIFE\n\n                                   BY\n                      RUFUS M. JONES, LITT.D., D.D.\n              Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College\n\n       Author of _Studies in Mystical Religion_; _The Inner Life_;\n                        _The World Within_, etc.\n\n                                New York\n                          THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                                  1922\n\n                          _All rights reserved_\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1922,\n                        BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\n           Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922\n\n                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nI wish to thank the editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_ for his permission\nto print in this volume the chapter entitled \u201cThe Mystic\u2019s Experience of\nGod,\u201d also the editors of _The Journal of Religion_ for their permission\nto use the article on \u201cPsychology and the Spiritual Life.\u201d Some of\nthe shorter essays have been printed in _The_ (London) _Friend_ and\nin _The Homiletic Review_. Kind permission has been granted for their\nreproduction.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nRELIGION AS ENERGY\n\n\nReligion is an experience which no definition exhausts. One writer with\nexpert knowledge of anthropology tells us what it is, and we know as\nwe read his account that, however true it may be as far as it goes, it\nyet leaves untouched much undiscovered territory. We turn next to the\ntrained psychologist, who leads us \u201cdown the labyrinthine ways of our\nown mind\u201d and tells us why the human race has always been seeking God\nand worshiping Him. We are thankful for his Ariadne thread which guides\nus within the maze, but we feel convinced that there are doors which\nhe has not opened\u2014\u201cdoors to which he had no key.\u201d The theologian, with\ngreat assurance and without \u201cifs and buts,\u201d offers us the answer to all\nmysteries and the solution of all problems, but when we have gone \u201cup\nthe hill all the way to the very top\u201d with him, we find it a \u201chomesick\npeak\u201d\u2014_Heimwehfluh_\u2014and we still wonder over the real meaning of religion.\n\nWe are evidently dealing here with something like that drinking horn\nwhich the Norse God Thor tried to drain. He failed to do it because\nthe horn which he assayed to empty debouched into the endless ocean,\nand therefore to drain the horn meant drinking the ocean dry. To probe\nreligion down to the bottom means knowing \u201cwhat God and man is.\u201d Each\none of us, in his own tongue and in terms of his own field of knowledge,\ngives his partial word, his tiny glimpse of insight. But the returns are\nnever all in. There is always more to say. \u201cMan is incurably religious,\u201d\nthat fine scholar, Auguste Sabatier, said. Yes, he is. It is often wild\nand erratic religion which we find, no doubt, but the hunger and thirst\nof the human soul are an indubitable fact. In different forms of speech\nwe can all say with St. Augustine of Hippo: \u201cThou hast touched me and I\nam on fire for thy peace.\u201d\n\nIn saying that religion is energy I am only seizing one aspect of this\ngreat experience of the human heart. It is, however, I believe, an\nessential aspect. A religion that makes no difference to a person\u2019s life,\na religion that _does_ nothing, a religion that is utterly devoid of\npower, may for all practical purposes be treated as though it did not\nexist. The great experts\u2014those who know from the inside what religion\nis\u2014always make much of its dynamic power, its energizing and propulsive\npower. _Power_ is a word often on the lips of Jesus; never used, it\nshould be said, in the sense of extrinsic authority or the right to\ncommand and govern, but always in reference to an intrinsic and interior\nmoral and spiritual energy of life. The kingdom of God comes with power,\nnot because the Messiah is supplied with ten legions of angels and can\nsweep the Roman eagles back to the frontiers of the Holy Land, but it\n\u201ccomes with power\u201d because it is a divine and life-transforming energy,\nworking in the moral and spiritual nature of man, as the expanding\nyeast works in the flour or as the forces of life push the seed into\ngermination and on into the successive stages toward the maturity of the\nfull-grown plant and grain.\n\nThe little fellowship of followers and witnesses who formed the nucleus\nof the new-born Church felt themselves \u201cendued with power\u201d on the day of\nPentecost. Something new and dynamic entered the consciousness of the\nfeeble band and left them no longer feeble. There was an in-rushing,\nup-welling sense of invasion. They passed over from a visible Leader\nand Master to an invisible and inward Presence revealed to them as an\nunwonted energy. Ecstatic utterance, which seems to have followed,\nis not the all-important thing. The important thing is heightened\nmoral quality, intensified fellowship, a fused and undying loyalty,\nan irresistible boldness in the face of danger and opposition, a\nfortification of spirit which nothing could break. This energy which came\nwith their experience is what marks the event as an epoch.\n\nSt. Paul writes as though he were an expert in dynamics. \u201cDynamos,\u201d\nthe Greek word for power, is one of his favorite words. He seems to\nhave found out how to draw upon energies in the universe which nobody\nelse had suspected were even there. It is a fundamental feature of his\n\u201cAegean gospel\u201d that God is not self-contained but self-giving, that He\ncirculates, as does the sun, as does the sea, and comes into us as an\nenergy. This incoming energy he calls by many names: \u201cThe Spirit,\u201d \u201choly\nSpirit,\u201d \u201cChrist,\u201d \u201cthe Spirit of Christ,\u201d \u201cChrist in you,\u201d \u201cGod that\nworketh in us.\u201d Whatever his word or term is, he is always declaring,\nand he bases his testimony on experience, that God, as Christ reveals\nHim, is an active energy working with us and in us for the complete\ntransformation of our fundamental nature and for _a new creation_ in us.\n\nAll this perhaps sounds too grand and lofty, too remote and far away,\nto touch us with reality. We assume that it is for saints or apostles,\nbut not for common everyday people like ourselves. Well, that is where\nwe are wrong. The accounts which St. Paul gives of the energies of\nreligion are not for his own sake, or for persons who are _bien n\u00e9_ and\nnaturally saintly. They are for the rank and file of humans. In fact his\nCorinthian fellowship was raised by these energies out of the lowest\nstratum of society. The words which he uses to describe them are probably\nnot over strong: \u201cBe not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters,\nnor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,\nnor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners\nshall inherit the kingdom of God. _And such were some of you_: but ye are\nwashed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name [i.e. the\npower] of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.\u201d[1]\n\nIt is to be noticed, further, that St. Paul does not confine his list\nof energies to those mighty spiritual forces which come down from above\nand work upon us from the outside. Much more often our attention is\ndirected to energies which are potential within ourselves\u2014even in the\nmost ordinary of us\u2014energies which work as silently as molecular forces\nor as \u201cthe capillary oozing of water,\u201d but which nevertheless are as\nreconstructive as the forces of springtime, following the winter\u2019s havoc.\nIf the grace of God\u2014the unlimited sacrificing love of God revealed in\nChrist\u2014is for St. Paul the supreme spiritual energy of the universe,\nhardly less important is the simple human energy which meets that\ncentrifugal energy and makes it operate within the sphere of the moral\nwill. That dynamic energy, by which the man responds to God\u2019s upward pull\nand which makes all the difference, St. Paul calls faith.\n\nWe are so accustomed to the use of the word in a spurious sense that\nwe are slow to apprehend the immense significance of this human energy\nwhich lies potentially within us. Unfortunately trained young folks and\nscientifically minded people are apt to shy away from the word and put\nthemselves on the defensive, as though they were about to be asked to\nbelieve the impossible or the dubious or the unprovable. Faith in the\nsense in which St. Paul uses it does not mean _believing_ something.\nIt is a moral attitude and response of will to the character of God\nas He has been revealed in Christ. It is like the act which closes\nthe electric circuit, which act at once releases power. The dynamic\neffect which follows the act is the best possible verification of the\nrationality of the act. So, too, faith as a moral response is no blind\nleap, no wild venture; it is an act which can be tested and verified by\nmoral and spiritual effects, which are as real as the heat, light, and\nhorse power of the dynamo.\n\nFaith has come to be recognized as an energy in many spheres of life. We\nknow what a stabilizer it is in the sphere of finance. Stocks and bonds\nand banks shift their values as faith in them rises or falls. _Morale_\nis only another name for faith. Our human relationships, our social\nstructures, our enjoyment of one another, our satisfaction in books and\nin lectures rest upon faith and when that energy fails, collapses of the\nmost serious sort follow. We might as well try to build a world without\ncohesion as to maintain society without the energy of faith.\n\nWe have many illustrations of the important part which faith plays in\nthe sphere of physical health. The corpuscles of the blood and the\nmolecules of the body are altered by it. The tension of the arteries and\nthe efficiency of the digestive tract are affected by it. Nerves are\nin close sympathetic _rapport_ with faith. It is never safe to tell a\nstrong man that he is pale and that he looks ill. If two or three persons\nin succession give him a pessimistic account of his appearance, he will\nsoon begin to have the condition which has been imagined. Dr. William\nMcDougall gives the case of a boy who was being chased by a furious\nanimal and under the impulse of the emergency he leaped a fence which he\ncould never afterwards jump, even after long athletic training. The list\nof similar instances is a very long one. Every reader knows a case as\nimpressive as the one I have given. The varieties of \u201cshell-shock\u201d have\nfurnished volumes of illustrations of the energy of faith, its dynamic\ninfluence upon health and life and efficiency.\n\nFaith in the sphere of religion works the greatest miracles of life\nthat are ever worked. It makes the saint out of Magdalene, the heroic\nmissionary and martyr out of Paul, the spiritual statesman of the ages\nout of Carthaginian Augustine, the illuminated leader of men out of\nFrancis of Assisi, the maker of a new world epoch out of the nervously\nunstable monk Luther, the creator of a new type of spiritual society out\nof the untaught Leicestershire weaver, George Fox. Why do we not all\nexperience the miracle and find _the rest of ourselves_ through faith?\nThe main trouble is that we live victims of limiting inhibitions. We\nhold intellectual theories which keep back or check the outflow of\nthe energy of faith. We have a nice system of thought which accounts\nfor everything and explains everything and which leaves no place for\nfaith. We know too much. We say to ourselves that only the ignorant and\nuncultured are led by faith. And this same wise man, who is too proud to\nhave faith, holds all his inhibitory theories on a basis of faith! Every\none of them starts out on faith, gathers standing ground by faith, and\nbecomes a controlling force through faith!\n\nThere are many other spiritual energies, some of which will be dealt with\nspecifically or implicitly in the later chapters of this book. Not often\nin the history of the modern world certainly have spiritual energies\nseemed more urgently needed than to-day. Our troubles consist largely\nnow of failure to lay hold of moral and spiritual forces that lie near\nat hand and to utilize powers that are within our easy reach. Our stock\nof faith and hope and love has run low and we realize only feebly what\nmighty energies they can be.\n\nI hope that these short essays may help in some slight way to indicate\nthat the ancient realities by which men live still abide, and that\nthe invisible energies of the spirit are real, as they have always\nbeen real. We have had an impressive demonstration that a civilization\nbuilt on external force and measured in terms of economic achievements\ncannot stand its ground and is unable to speak to the condition of\npersons endowed and equipped as we are. We are bound to build a higher\ncivilization, to create a greater culture, and to form a truer kingdom\nof life or we must write \u201c_Mene_\u201d on all human undertakings. That is\nour task now, and it is a serious one for which we shall need all the\nenergies that the universe puts at our disposal. I am told that when\nthe great Hellgate bridge was being built over the East River in New\nYork the engineers came upon an old derelict ship, lying embedded in\nthe river mud, just where one of the central piers of the bridge was to\ngo down through to its bedrock foundation. No tug boat could be found\nthat was able to start the derelict from its ancient bed in the ooze.\nIt would not move, no matter what force was applied. Finally, with a\nsudden inspiration one of the workers hit upon this scheme. He took a\nlarge flat-boat, which had been used to bring stone down the river, and\nhe chained it to the old sunken ship when the tide was low. Then he\nwaited for the great tidal energies to do their work. Slowly the rising\ntide, with all the forces of the ocean behind it and the moon above it,\ncame up under the flat-boat, raising it inch by inch. And as it came up,\nlifted by irresistible power, the derelict came up with it, until it\nwas entirely out of the mud that had held it. Then the boat, with its\nsubterranean load, was towed out to sea where the old waterlogged ship\nwas unchained and allowed to drop forever out of sight and reach.\n\nThere are greater forces than those tidal energies waiting for us to use\nfor our tasks. They have always been there. They are there now. But they\ndo not _work_, they do not _operate_, until we lay hold of them and use\nthem for our present purposes. We must be _co-workers with God_.\n\n    Haverford, Pennsylvania.\n\n    Mid Winter, 1922.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                   PAGE\n\n         INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AS ENERGY           vii\n\n                       CHAPTER I\n\n                   THE CENTRAL PEACE\n\n      I. PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING              1\n\n     II. THE SEARCH FOR A REFUGE                      5\n\n    III. WHAT WE WANT MOST                           10\n\n                       CHAPTER II\n\n              THE GREAT ENERGIES THAT WORK\n\n      I. TRYING THE BETTER WAY                       15\n\n     II. HE CAME TO HIMSELF                          23\n\n    III. SOME NEW REASONS FOR \u201cLOVING ENEMIES\u201d       29\n\n                      CHAPTER III\n\n              THE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US\n\n      I. WHERE THE BEYOND BREAKS THROUGH             35\n\n     II. CONQUERING BY AN INNER FORCE                41\n\n    III. LIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ETERNAL       46\n\n                       CHAPTER IV\n\n                   THE WAY OF VISION\n\n      I. DAYS OF GREATER VISIBILITY                  50\n\n     II. THE PROPHET AND HIS TRAGEDIES               54\n\n    III. A LONG DISTANCE CALL                        60\n\n                       CHAPTER V\n\n                 THE WAY OF PERSONALITY\n\n      I. ANOTHER KIND OF HERO                        65\n\n     II. THE BETTER POSSESSION                       69\n\n    III. THE GREATEST RIVALRIES OF LIFE              74\n\n                       CHAPTER VI\n\n                AGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION\n\n      I. THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD                79\n\n     II. THE NURSERY OF SPIRITUAL LIFE               83\n\n    III. THE DEMOCRACY WE AIM AT                     86\n\n     IV. THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY         91\n\n                      CHAPTER VII\n\n                  THE NEAR AND THE FAR\n\n      I. THINGS PRESENT AND THINGS TO COME           98\n\n     II. TWO TYPES OF MINISTRY                      102\n\n    III. WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR                      106\n\n                      CHAPTER VIII\n\n               THE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY\n\n      I. THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH        111\n\n     II. THE NEW BORN OUT OF THE OLD                127\n\n                       CHAPTER IX\n\n             THE MYSTIC\u2019S EXPERIENCE OF GOD         133\n\n                       CHAPTER X\n\n          PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE         160\n\n\n\n\nSPIRITUAL ENERGIES IN DAILY LIFE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE CENTRAL PEACE\n\n\nI\n\nPEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING\n\nWe are all familiar with the coming of a peace into our life at the\nterminus of some great strain or after we have weathered a staggering\ncrisis. When a long-continued pain which has racked our nerves passes\naway and leaves us free, we suddenly come into a zone of peace. When we\nhave been watching by a bedside where a life, unspeakably precious to us,\nhas lain in the grip of some terrible disease and at length successfully\npasses the crisis, we walk out into the fields under the altered sky\nand feel a peace settle down upon us, which makes the whole world look\ndifferent. Or, again, we have been facing some threatening catastrophe\nwhich seemed likely to break in on our life and perhaps end forever\nthe calm and even tenor of it, and just when the hour of danger seemed\ndarkest and our fear was at its height, some sudden turn of things has\nbrought a happy shift of events, the danger has passed, and a great peace\nhas come over us instead of the threatened trouble. In all these cases\nthe peace which succeeds pain and strain and anxiety is a thoroughly\nnatural, reasonable peace, a peace which comes in normal sequence and\nis quite accessible to the understanding. We should be surprised and\nshould need an explanation if we heard of an instance of a passing pain\nor a yielding strain that was not followed by a corresponding sense of\npeace. One who has seen a child that was lost in a crowded city suddenly\nfind his mother and find safety in her dear arms has seen a good case of\nthis sequential peace, this peace which the understanding can grasp and\ncomprehend. We behold it and say, \u201cHow otherwise!\u201d\n\nThere is, St. Paul reminds us, another kind of peace of quite a different\norder. It baffles the understanding and transcends its categories. It is\na peace which comes, not after the pain is relieved, not after the crisis\nhas passed, not after the danger has disappeared; but in the midst of the\npain, while the crisis is still on, and even in the imminent presence\nof the danger. It is a peace that is not banished or destroyed by the\nfrustrations which beset our lives; rather it is in and through the\nfrustrations that we first come upon it and enter into it, as, to use St.\nPaul\u2019s phrase, into a garrison which guards our hearts and minds.\n\nEach tested soul has to meet its own peculiar frustrations. All of us who\nwork for \u201ccauses\u201d or who take up any great piece of moral or spiritual\nservice in the world know more about defeats and disappointments than\nwe do about success and triumphs. We have to learn to be patient and\nlong-suffering. We must become accustomed to postponements and delays,\nand sometimes we see the work of almost a lifetime suddenly fail of its\nend. Some turn of events upsets all our noble plans and frustrates the\nresult, just when it appeared ready to arrive. Death falls like lightning\non a home that had always before seemed sheltered and protected, and\ninstantly life is profoundly altered for those who are left behind.\nNothing can make up for the loss. There is no substitute for what\nis gone. The accounts will not balance; frustration in another form\nconfronts us. Or it may be a breakdown of physical or mental powers,\nor peradventure both together, just when the emergencies of the world\ncalled for added energy and increased range of power from us. The need\nis plain, the harvest is ripe, but the worker\u2019s hand fails and he must\ncontract when he would most expand. Frustration looks him straight in the\nface. Well, to achieve a peace under those circumstances is to have a\npeace which does not follow a normal sequence. It is not what the world\nexpects. It does not accord with the ways of thought and reasoning. It\npasses all understanding. It brings another kind of world into operation\nand reveals a play of invisible forces upon which the understanding\nhad not reckoned. In fact, this strange intellect-transcending peace,\nin the very midst of storm and strain and trial, is one of the surest\nevidences there is of God. One may in his own humble nerve-power succeed\nin acquiring a stoic resignation so that he can say,\n\n    \u201cIn the fell clutch of circumstance\n      I have not winced nor cried aloud.\n    Under the bludgeonings of chance\n      My head is bloody, but unbowed.\u201d\n\nHe may, by sheer force of will, keep down the lid upon his emotions\nand go on so nearly unmoved that his fellows can hear no groan and\nwill wonder at the way he stands the universe. But peace in the soul\nis another matter. To have the whole heart and mind garrisoned with\npeace even in Nero\u2019s dungeon, when the imperial death sentence brings\nfrustration to all plans and a terminus to all spiritual work, calls for\nsome world-transcending assistance to the human spirit. Such peace is\nexplained only when we discover that it is \u201cthe peace of God,\u201d and that\nit came because the soul broke through the ebbings and flowings of time\nand space and allied itself with the Eternal.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE SEARCH FOR A REFUGE\n\nFew things are more impressive than the persistent search which men have\nmade in all ages for a refuge against the dangers and the ills that\nbeset life. The cave-men, the cliff-dwellers, the primitive builders of\nshelters in inaccessible tree tops, are early examples of the search for\nhuman defenses against fear. Civilization slowly perfected methods of\nrefuge and defense of elaborate types, which, in turn, had to compete\nwith ever-increasing ingenuity of attack and assault. But I am not\nconcerned here with these material strongholds of refuge and defense. I\nam thinking rather of the human search for shelter against other weapons\nthan those which kill the body. We are all trying, in one way or another,\nto discover how to escape from \u201cthe heavy and weary weight of all this\nunintelligible world,\u201d how to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous\nfortune. We are sensitively constructed, with nerves exposed to easy\nattack. We are all shelterless at some point to the storms of the world.\nEven the most perfectly equipped and impervious heroes prove to be\nvulnerable at some one uncovered spot. Sooner or later our protections\nfail, and the pitiless enemies of our happiness get through the defenses\nand reach the quick and sensitive soul within us. How to rebuild our\nrefuge, how to find real shelter, is our problem. What fortress is there\nin which the soul is safe from fear and trouble?\n\nThe most common expedient is one which will drug the sensitive nerves\nand produce an easy relief from strain and worry. There is a magic in\nalcohol and kindred distillations, which, like Aladdin\u2019s genie, builds a\npalace of joy and, for the moment, banishes the enemy of all peace. The\nrefuge seems complete. All fear is gone, worry is a thing of the past.\nThe jargon of life is over, the pitiless problem of good and evil drops\nout of consciousness. The shelterless soul seems covered and housed.\nIntoxication is only one of the many quick expedients. It is always\npossible to retreat from the edge of strenuous battle into some one of\nthe many natural instincts as a way of refuge. The great instinctive\nemotions are absorbing, and tend to obliterate everything else. They\noccupy the entire stage of the inner drama, and push all other actors\naway from the footlights of consciousness, so that here, too, the enemies\nof peace and joy seem vanquished, and the refuge appears to be found.\n\nThat multitudes accept these easy ways of defense against the ills of\nlife is only too obvious. The medieval barons who could build themselves\ncastles of safety were few in number. Visible refuges in any case are\nrare and scarce, but the escape from the burdens and defeats of the\nworld in drink and drug and thrilling instinctive emotion is, without\nmuch difficulty, open to every man and within easy reach for rich and\npoor alike, and many there be that seize upon this method. The trouble\nwith it is that it is a very temporary refuge. It works, if at all, only\nfor a brief span. It plays havoc in the future with those who resort\nto it. It rolls up new liabilities to the ills one would escape. It\ninvolves far too great a price for the tiny respite gained. And, most\nof all, it discounts or fails to reckon with the inherent greatness of\nthe human soul. We are fashioned for stupendous issues. Our very sense\nof failure and defeat comes from a touch of the infinite in our being.\nWe look before and after, and sigh for that which is not, just because\nwe can not be contented with finite fragments of time and space. We are\nmeant for greater things than these trivial ones which so often get our\nattention and absorb us; but the moment the soul comes to itself, its\nreach goes beyond the grasp, and it feels an indescribable discontent\nand longing for that for which it was made. To seek refuge, therefore,\nin some narcotic joy, to still the onward yearning of the soul by\ndrowning consciousness, to banish the pain of pursuit by a barbaric surge\nof emotions, is to strike against the noblest trait of our spiritual\nstructure; it means committing suicide of the soul. It cannot be a real\nman\u2019s way of relief.\n\nIn fact, nothing short of finding the goal and object for which the soul,\nthe spiritual nature in us, is fitted will ever do for beings like us.\nSt. Augustine, in words of immortal beauty, has said that God has made\nus for himself, and our hearts are restless until we rest in him. It\nis not a theory of poet or theologian. It is a simple fact of life, as\nveritable as the human necessity for food. There is no other shelter for\nthe soul, no other refuge or fortress will ever do for us but God. \u201cWe\ntremble and we burn. We tremble, knowing that we are unlike him. We burn,\nfeeling that we are like him.\u201d\n\nIn hours of loss and sorrow, when the spurious props fail us, we are\nmore apt to find our way back to the real refuge. We are suddenly made\naware of our shelterless condition, alone, and in our own strength. Our\nstoic armor and our brave defenses of pride become utterly inadequate.\nWe are thrown back on reality. We have then our moments of sincerity and\ninsight. We feel that we cannot live without resources from beyond our\nown domain. We must have God. It is then, when one knows that nothing\nelse whatever will do, that the great discovery is made. Again and again\nthe psalms announce this. When the world has caved in; when the last\nextremity has been reached; when the billows and water-spouts of fortune\nhave done their worst, you hear the calm, heroic voice of the lonely man\nsaying: \u201cGod is our refuge and fortress, therefore will not we fear\nthough the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the\nmidst of the sea.\u201d That is great experience, but it is not reserved for\npsalmists and rare patriarchs like Job. It is a privilege for common\nmortals like us who struggle and agonize and feel the thorn in the flesh,\nand the bitter tragedy of life unhealed. Whether we make the discovery\nor not, God is there with us in the furnace. Only it makes all the\ndifference if we do find him as the one high tower where refuge is not\nfor the passing moment only, but is an eternal attainment.\n\n\nIII\n\nWHAT WE WANT MOST\n\nThere are many things which we want\u2014things for which we struggle hard and\ntoil painfully. Like the little child with his printed list for Santa\nClaus, we have our list, longer or shorter, of precious things which\nwe hope to see brought within our reach before we are gathered to our\nfathers. The difference is that the child is satisfied if he gets one\nthing which is on his list. We want everything on ours. The world is\nfull of hurry and rush, push and scramble, each man bent on winning some\none of his many goals. But, in spite of this excessive effort to secure\nthe tangible goods of the earth, it is nevertheless true that deep down\nin the heart most men want the peace of God. If you have an opportunity\nto work your way into that secret place where a man really lives, you\nwill find that he knows perfectly well that he is missing something.\nThis feeling of unrest and disquiet gets smothered for long periods in\nthe mass of other aims, and some men hardly know that they have such a\nthing as an immortal soul hidden away within. But, even so, it will not\nremain quiet. It cries out like the lost child who misses his home. When\nthe hard games of life prove losing ones, when the stupidity of striving\nso fiercely for such bubbles comes over him, when a hand from the dark\ncatches away the best earthly comfort he had, when the genuine realities\nof life assert themselves over sense, he wakes up to find himself hungry\nand thirsty for something which no one of his earthly pursuits has\nsupplied or can supply. He wants God. He wants peace. He wants to feel\nhis life founded on an absolute reality. He wants to have the same sort\nof peace and quiet steal over him which used to come when as a child he\nran to his mother and had all the ills of life banished from thought in\nthe warm love of her embrace.\n\nBut it is not only the driving, pushing man, ambitious for wealth and\nposition, who misses the best thing there is to get\u2014the peace of God.\nMany persons who are directly seeking it miss it. Here is a man who hopes\nto find it by solving all his difficult intellectual problems. When\nhe can answer the hard questions which life puts to him, and read the\nriddles which the ages have left unread, he thinks his soul will feel the\npeace of God. Not so, because each problem opens into a dozen more. It is\na noble undertaking to help read the riddles of the universe, but let no\none expect to enter into the peace of God by such a path. Here is another\nperson who devotes herself to nothing but to seeking the peace of God.\nWill she not find it? Not that way. It is not found when it is sought for\nits own sake. He or she who is living to get the joy of divine peace,\nwho would \u201chave no joy but calm,\u201d will probably never have the peace\nwhich passeth understanding. Like all the great blessings, it comes as a\nby-product when one is seeking something else. Christ\u2019s peace came to him\nnot because he sought it, but because he accepted the divine will which\nled to Gethsemane and Calvary. Paul\u2019s peace did not flow over him while\nhe was in Arabia seeking it, but while he was in Nero\u2019s prison, whither\nthe path of his labors for helping men had led him. He who forgets\nhimself in loving devotion, he who turns aside from his self-seeking aims\nto carry joy into any life, he who sets about doing any task for the love\nof God, has found the only possible road to the permanent peace of God.\n\nThere are no doubt a great many persons working for the good of others\nand for the betterment of the world who yet do not succeed in securing\nthe peace of God. They are in a frequent state of nerves; they are busy\nhere and there, rushing about perplexed and weary, fussy and irritable.\nWith all their efforts to promote good causes, they do not quite attain\nthe poise and calm of interior peace. They are like the tumultuous\nsurface of the ocean with its combers and its spray, and they seldom know\nthe deep quiet like that of the underlying, submerged waters far below\nthe surface. The trouble with them is that they are carrying themselves\nall the time. They do not forget themselves in their aims of service.\nThey are like the ill person who is so eager to get well that he keeps\nwatching his tongue, feeling his pulse, and getting his weight. Peace\ndoes not come to one who is watching continually for the results of his\nwork, or who is wondering what people are saying about it, or who is\nenvious and jealous of other persons working in the same field, or who is\ntouchy about \u201chonor\u201d or recognition. Those are just the attitudes which\nfrustrate peace and make it stay away from one\u2019s inner self.\n\nThere is a higher level of work and service and ministry, which, thank\nGod, men like us can reach. It is attained when one swings out into a\nway of life which is motived and controlled by genuine sincere love\nand devotion, when consecration obliterates self-seeking, when in some\nmeasure, like Christ, the worker can say without reservations, \u201cNot my\nwill but thine be done.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE GREAT ENERGIES THAT WORK\n\n\nI\n\nTRYING THE BETTER WAY\n\nA very fresh and unusual type of book has recently appeared under\nthe title, \u201c_By An Unknown Disciple_.\u201d It tells in a simple, direct,\nimpressive way, after the manner of the Gospels, the story of Christ\u2019s\nlife and works and message. It professes to be written by one who was an\nintimate disciple, and who was therefore an eye-witness of everything\ntold in the book. It is a vivid narrative and leaves the reader deeply\nmoved, because it brings him closer than most interpretations do into\nactual presence of and companionship with the great Galilean. The first\nchapter is a re-interpretation of the scene on the eastern shore of\nGennesaret, where Jesus casts the demons out of the maniac of Geresa. A\nman on the shore of the lake told Jesus, when he landed there with his\ndisciples in the early morning, that it was not safe for any one to go\nup the rugged hillside, because there were madmen hidden there among the\ntombs: \u201cpeople possessed by demons, who tear their flesh, and who can be\nheard screaming day and night.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know they are possessed by demons?\u201d asked Jesus.\n\n\u201cWhat else could it be?\u201d said the man. \u201cThere are none that can master\nthem. They are too fierce to be tamed.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas any man tried to tame them?\u201d asked Jesus.\n\n\u201cYes, Rabbi, they have been bound with chains and fetters. There was one\nthat I saw. He plucked the fetters from him as a child might break a\nchain of field flowers. Then he ran foaming into the wilderness, and no\nman dare pass by that way now....\u201d\n\n\u201cHave men tried only this way to tame him?\u201d Jesus asked.\n\n\u201cWhat other way is there, Rabbi?\u201d asked the man.\n\n\u201cThere is God\u2019s way,\u201d said Jesus. \u201cCome, let us try it.\u201d\n\nAs Jesus spoke, \u201cHis gaze went from man to man,\u201d the writer continues,\n\u201cand then his eyes fell upon me. It was as if a power passed from him to\nme, and immediately something inside me answered, \u2018Lead, and I follow.\u2019\u201d\nThe narrative proceeds to describe the encounter with the demoniac man\nwhose name was \u201cLegion.\u201d \u201cHe ran toward us, shrieking and bounding in the\nair. He had two sharp stones in his hand, and as he leaped he cut his\nflesh with them and the blood ran down his naked limbs. The men behind us\nscattered and fled down the hillside; but Jesus stood still and waited.\u201d\nThe effect of the calm, undisturbed, unfrightened presence of Jesus was\nastonishing. It was as though a new force suddenly came into operation.\nThe jagged stones were thrown from his hands, for he recognized at once\nin Jesus a friendly presence and a helper with an understanding heart.\nHis fear and terror left the demoniac man and he became quiet, composed\nand like a normal person. Meantime some of the men who ran away in fear,\nwhen the madman appeared, frightened a herd of swine feeding near by, and\nin their uncontrolled terror they rushed wildly toward the headland of\nthe lake and pitched over the top into the water where they were drowned.\n\u201cFear is a foul spirit,\u201d said Jesus, and it seemed plain and obvious\nthat the ungoverned fear which played such havoc with the man had taken\npossession also of the misguided swine. It was the same \u201cdemon,\u201d fear. A\nlittle later in the day when the companions of Jesus found him they saw\nthe man who had called himself \u201cLegion\u201d sitting at Jesus\u2019 feet, clothed\nand in his right mind\u2014a quieted and restored person.\n\nWe now know that this disease, called \u201cpossession,\u201d which appears so\noften in the New Testament accounts, is a very common present-day\ntrouble. The name and description given to it in the Bible make it often\nseem remote and unfamiliar to us, but it is, in fact, as prevalent in the\nworld to-day as it was in the first century. It is an extreme form of\nhysteria, a disorganization of normal functions, often causing delusions,\nloss of memory, the performance of automatic actions, and sometimes\nresulting in double, or multiple, personality, a condition in which a\nforeign self seems to usurp the control of the body and make it do many\nstrange and unwilled things. This disease is known in very many cases to\nbe produced by frights, fear, or terror, sometimes fears long hidden away\nand more or less suppressed.\n\nThe famous cases of Doris Fischer and Miss Beauchamp were both of this\ntype. They were only extreme instances of a fairly common form of\nmental trouble, generally due to fears, and capable of being cured by\nwise, skillful understanding and loving care, applied by one who shows\nconfidence and human interest and who knows how to use the powerful\ninfluence of _suggestion_. Dr. Morton Prince, who has reported these\ntwo cases, has achieved cures and restorations that read like miracles,\nand his narratives tell of minds, \u201cjangling, harsh, and out of tune,\u201d\nbroken into dissociated selves, which have been unified, organized,\nharmonized and restored to normal life. Few restorations are more\nwonderful than that effected upon a Philadelphia girl under the direction\nof Dr. Lightner Witmer. The girl was hopelessly incorrigible, stubborn,\nsullen, suspicious, and stupid. She screamed, kicked, and bit when she\nwas opposed, and she utterly refused to obey anybody. So unnatural and\ndehumanized was she that she was generally called \u201cDiabolical Mary.\u201d She\nwas examined by Dr. Witmer, underwent some simple surgical operations to\nremove her obvious physical handicaps, and then was put under the loving,\ntender care of a wise, attractive, and understanding woman. The girl\nresponded to the treatment at once and soon became profoundly changed,\nand the process went on until the girl became a wholly transformed and\nre-made person.\n\nThe so-called shell-shock cases which have bulked so large in the story\nof the wastage of men in all armies during the World War, turn out to be\ncases of mental disorganization, occasioned for the most part by immense\nemotional upheaval, especially through suppressed fear. The man affected\nwith the trouble has seemed to master his emotion. He has not winced or\nshown the slightest fear in the face of danger; but the pent-up emotion,\nthe suppressed fear and terror, insidiously throw the entire nervous\nmechanism out of gear. The successful treatment of such cases is, again,\nlike that for hysteria, one that brings confidence, calm, liberation\nof all strain and anxiety. The poor victim needs a patient, wise,\nskillful, psychologically trained physician, who has an understanding\nmind, a friendly, interested, intimate way, a spirit of love, and who\ncan arouse expectation of recovery and can suggest thoughts of health\nand the right emotional reactions. This method of cure has often been\ntried with striking effect upon the so-called criminal classes. Prisoners\nalmost always respond constructively to the personal manifestation of\nconfidence, sympathy, and love. Elizabeth Fry proved this principle in an\nastonishing way with the almost brutalized prisoners in Newgate. Thomas\nShillitoe\u2019s visit to the German prisoners at Spandau, who were believed\nto be beyond all human appeals, though not so well known and famous, is\nno less impressive and no less convincing.\n\nThere was perhaps never a time in the history of the world when an\napplication of this principle and method\u2014God\u2019s way\u2014was so needed in\nthe social sphere of life. Whole countries have the symptoms which\nappear in these nervous diseases. It is not merely an individual case\nhere and there; it takes on a corporate, a mass, form. The nerves are\noverstrained, the emotional stress has been more than could be borne,\nsuppressed fears have produced disorganization. There are signs of\nsocial \u201cdissociation.\u201d The remedy in such cases is not an application of\ncompelling force, not a resort to chains and fetters, not a screwing on\nof the \u201clid,\u201d not a method of starving out the victims. It is rather an\napplication of the principle which has always worked in individual cases\nof \u201cdissociation\u201d or \u201cpossession\u201d or \u201csuppressed fear\u201d\u2014the principle\nof sympathy, love and suggestion\u2014what Jesus, in the book mentioned\nabove, calls \u201cGod\u2019s way.\u201d The \u201cdissociation\u201d of labor and employers in\nthe social group, with its hysterical signs of strikes and lockouts,\nupheaval and threats, needs just now a very wise physician. Force,\nrestraint, compulsion, fastening down the \u201clid,\u201d imprisonment of leaders,\ndrastic laws against propaganda, will not cure the disease, any more\nthan chains cured the poor sufferer on the shores of Gennesaret. The\nsituation must first of all be _understood_. The inner attitude behind\nthe acts and deeds must be taken into account. The social mental state\nmust be diagnosed. The remedy, to be a remedy, must remove the causes\nwhich produce the dissociation. It can be accomplished only by one who\nhas an understanding heart, a good will, an unselfish purpose, and a\ncomprehending, i.e., a unifying, _suggestion_ of co\u00f6peration.\n\nThis _way_ is no less urgent for the solution of the most acute\ninternational situations. It has been assumed too long and too often that\nthese situations can be best handled by unlimited methods of restraint,\ncoercion, and reduction to helplessness. Some of the countries of Europe\nhave been plainly suffering from neurasthenia, dissociation, and the\nkindred forms of emotional, fear-caused diseases. Starvation always makes\nfor types of hysteria. It will not do now to apply, with cold, precise\nlogic, the old vindictive principle that when the sinner has been made\nto suffer enough to \u201ccover\u201d the enormity of his sin he can then be\nrestored to respectable society. It is not vindication of justice which\nmost concerns the world now; it is a return of health, a restoration of\nnormal functions, a reconstruction of the social body. That task calls\nfor the application of the deeper, truer principles of life. It calls for\na knowing heart, an understanding method, a healing plan, a sympathetic\nguide who can obliterate the fear-attitude and _suggest_ confidence and\nunity and trustful human relationships. Those great words, used in the\nEpistle of London Yearly Meeting of Friends in 1917, need to be revived\nand put to an experimental venture: \u201c_Love knows no frontiers._\u201d There is\nno limit to its healing force, there are no conditions it does not meet,\nthere is no terminus to its constructive operations.\n\n\nII\n\nHE CAME TO HIMSELF\n\nWas there ever such a short-story character sketch as this one of the\nprodigal son! No realism of details, no elaboration of his sins, and\nyet the immortal picture is burned forever into our imagination. The\n_d\u00e9b\u00e2cle_ of his life is as clear and vivid as words can portray the\nruin. Yet the phrase which arrests us most as we read the compact\nnarrative of his undoing is not the one which tells about \u201criotous\nliving,\u201d or the reckless squandering of his patrimony, or his hunger for\nswine husks, or his unshod feet and the loss of his tunic; it is rather\nthe one which says that when he was at the bottom of his fortune \u201che came\nto himself.\u201d\n\nHe had not been himself then, before. He was not finding himself in the\nlife of riotous indulgence. That did not turn out after all to be the\nlife for which he was meant. He missed himself more than he missed his\nlost shoes and tunic. That raises a nice question which is worth an\nanswer: When is a person his real self? When can he properly say, \u201cAt\nlast I have found myself; I am what I want to be?\u201d Robert Louis Stevenson\nhas given us in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a fine parable of the actual\ndouble self in us all, a higher and a lower self under our one hat. But\nI ask, which is the real me? Is it Jekyll or is it Hyde? Is it the best\nthat we can be or is it this worse thing which we just now are?\n\nMost answers to the question would be, I think, that the real self is\nthat ideal self of which in moments of rare visibility we sometimes\ncatch glimpses.\n\n    \u201cAll I could never be,\n    All, men ignored in me,\n    This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.\u201d\n\n\u201cDig deep enough into any man,\u201d St. Augustine said, \u201cand you will find\nsomething divine.\u201d We supposed he believed in total depravity, and\nhe does in theory believe in it; but when it is a matter of actual\nexperience, he announces this deep fact which fits perfectly with his\nother great utterance: \u201cThou, O God, hast made us for thyself, and we are\nrestless (dissatisfied) until we find ourselves in thee.\u201d\n\nToo long we have assumed that Adam, the failure, is the type of our\nlives, that he is the normal man, that to err is human, and that one\ntouch, that is, blight, of nature makes all men kin. What Christ has\nrevealed to us is the fact that we always have higher and diviner\npossibilities in us. He, the overcomer, and not Adam, is the true type,\nthe normal person, giving us at last the pattern of life which is life\nindeed.\n\nWhich is the real self, then? Surely this higher possible self, this one\nwhich we discover in our best moments. The Greeks always held that sin\nwas \u201cmissing the mark\u201d\u2014that is what the Greek word for sin means\u2014failure\nto arrive at, to reach, the real end toward which life aims. Sin is\ndefeat. It is loss of the trail. It is undoing. The sinner has not found\nhimself, he has not come to himself. He has missed the real me. He cannot\nsay, \u201cI am.\u201d\n\nIf that is a fact, and if the life of spiritual health and attainment is\nthe normal life, we surely ought to do more than is done to help young\npeople to realize it and to assist them to find themselves. We are much\nmore concerned to manufacture things than we are to make persons. We do\none very well and we do the other very badly. Kipling\u2019s \u201cThe Ship that\nFound Itself\u201d is a fine account of the care bestowed upon every rivet and\nscrew, every valve and piston. He pictures the ship in the stress and\nstrain of a great storm and each part of the ship from keel to funnel\ndescribes what it has to bear and to do in the emergency and how it has\nbeen prepared in advance for just this crisis. Nansen was asked how he\nfelt when he found that the _Fram_ was caught in the awful jam of the\nArctic ice-floe. \u201cI felt perfectly calm,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew she could\nstand it. I had watched every stick of timber and every piece of steel\nthat went into her hull. The result was that I could go to sleep and\nlet the ice do its worst.\u201d With even more care we build the airplane.\nThere must be no chance for capricious action. The propeller blades must\nbe made of perfect wood. There must be no defect in any piece of the\nstructure. The gasoline must be tested by all the methods of refinement.\nThe oil must be absolutely pure, free of every suspicion of grit.\n\nBut when we turn from ships and airplanes to the provisions for training\nyoung persons we are in a different world. The element of chance now\nbulks very large. We let the youth have pretty free opportunity to begin\nhis malformation before we begin seriously to construct him on right\nlines. We fail to note what an enormous fact \u201cdisposition\u201d is, and we\ntake little pains to form it early and to form it in the best way. We\nare far too apt to assume that all the fundamentals come by the road\nof heredity. We overwork this theory as much as earlier theologians\noverworked their dogma of original sin from poor old Adam.\n\nThe fact is that temperament and disposition and the traits of character\nwhich most definitely settle destiny are at least as much formed in those\nearly critical years of infancy as they are acquired by the strains of\nheredity. Education, which is more essential to the greatness of any\ncountry than even its manufactures, is one of the most neglected branches\nof life. We take it as we find it\u2014and lay its failures to Providence\nas we do deaths from typhoid. It must not always be so. We must be as\ngreatly concerned to form virile character in our boys and girls and\nto develop in them the capacity for moral and spiritual leadership in\nthis crisis as we are concerned over our coal supply or our industries.\nThere are ways of assisting the higher self to control and dominate the\nlife, ways by which the ideal person can become the real person. Why not\nconsider seriously how to do that?\n\nHe that overcomes, the prophet of Patmos says, receives a white stone\nwith a new name written on it, which no man knoweth save he that hath\nit. It is a symbolism which may mean many things. It seems at least to\nmean that he who subdues his lower self, holds out in the strain of life,\nand lives by the highest that he knows, will as a consequence receive a\ndistinct individuality, a clearly defined self, instead of being blurred\nin with the great level mass\u2014a self with a name of its own. And that self\nwill not be the old familiar self that everybody knows by traits of past\nachievement and by the old tendencies of habit. It will be the self\nwhich only God and the person himself in his deepest and most intimate\nmoments knew was possible\u2014and here at last it is found to be the real\nself. The man can say, \u201cI am.\u201d He has come to himself.\n\nWe ask, at the end, whether it may not be that the world will soon come\nto itself and discover the way back to some of its missed ideals. Here on\na large scale we have the story of a desperate hunger, squandered wealth,\nlost shoes, lost tunics, and even more precious things gone\u2014a world that\nhas missed its way and is floundering about without sufficient vision\nor adequate leadership. If it could only come to itself, discover what\nits true mission is and where its real sources of power and its line of\nprogress lie, it would still find that God and man together can rebuild\nwhat man by his blunders has destroyed.\n\n\nIII\n\nSOME NEW REASONS FOR \u201cLOVING ENEMIES\u201d\n\nNobody ever amounts to anything who lives without conflict with\nobstacles. It seems to be a law of the universe that nothing really good\ncan be got or held by soft, easy means.\n\nThe Persians were so impressed with this stern condition of life that\nthey interpreted the universe as the scene of endless warfare between\nhostile powers of the invisible world. Ormuzd, the god of light, and\nAhriman, the god of darkness, were believed to be engaged in a continual\nArmageddon. There could be no truce in the strife until one or the other\nshould win the victory by the annihilation of his opponent. This Persian\ndualism has touched all systems of thought and has left its influence\nupon all the religions of the world. The reasons why it has appealed so\npowerfully to men of all generations are, of course, that there is so\nmuch conflict involved in life and that no achievement of goodness is\never made without a hard battle for it against opposing forces. But if\nall this opposition and struggle is due to an \u201cenemy,\u201d we certainly ought\nto love this \u201cenemy,\u201d because it turns out to be the greatest possible\nblessing to us that we are forced to struggle with difficulties and to\nwrestle for what we get.\n\n\u201cCount it all joy,\u201d said the Apostle James in substance, writing to his\nfriends of the Dispersion, \u201cwhen you fall into manifold testings, or\ntrials, knowing that the proving of your faith worketh steadfastness,\nand let steadfastness have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and\nentire, lacking in nothing.\u201d St. Paul thought once that his \u201cthorn in the\nflesh\u201d was conferred upon him by Satan and was the malicious messenger\nof an enemy; but in the slow process of experience he came to see that\nthe painful \u201cthorn\u201d exercised a real ministry in his life, that through\nhis suffering and hardship he got a higher meaning of God\u2019s grace; and he\ndiscovered that divine power was thus made perfect through his weakness,\nso that he learned to love the \u201cenemy\u201d that buffeted him.\n\nThe Psalmist who wrote our best loved psalm, the twenty-third, thought at\nfirst that God was his Shepherd because he led him in green pastures and\nbeside still waters where there was no struggle and no enemy to fear. But\nhe learned at length that in the dark valleys of the shadow and on the\nrough jagged hillsides God was no less a good Shepherd than on the level\nplains and in the lush grass; and he found at last that even \u201cin the\npresence of enemies\u201d he could be fed with good things and have his table\nspread. The overflowing cup and the anointed head were not discovered\non the lower levels of ease and comfort; they came out of the harder\nexperiences when \u201cenemies\u201d of his peace were busy supplying obstacles\nand perplexities for him to overcome.\n\nIt is no accident that the book of Revelation puts so much stress upon\n\u201covercoming.\u201d The world seemed to the prophet on the volcanic island\nof Patmos essentially a place of strife and conflict\u2014an Armageddon of\nopposing forces. There are no beatitudes in this book promised to any\nexcept \u201covercomers.\u201d\n\n    \u201cNot to one church alone, but seven\n    The voice prophetic spake from heaven;\n    And unto each the promise came,\n    Diversified, but still the same;\n    For him that overcometh are\n    The new name written on the stone,\n    The raiment white, the crown, the throne,\n    And I will give him the Morning Star!\u201d\n\nBut the conflict that ends in such results can not be called misfortune,\nany more than Hercules\u2019 labors through which the legendary hero won his\nimmortality can be pronounced a misfortune for him. Once more, then, the\nsaint who has overcome discovers, at least in retrospect, that there is\ngood ground for loving his \u201cenemies\u201d!\n\nThe farmer, in his unceasing struggle with weeds, with parasites, with\npests visible and invisible, with blight and rot and uncongenial\nweather, sometimes feels tempted to blaspheme against the hard conditions\nunder which he labors and to assume that an \u201cenemy\u201d has cursed the ground\nwhich he tills and loaded the dice of nature against him. The best cure\nfor his \u201cmood\u201d is to visit the land of the bread-fruit tree, where nature\ndoes everything and man does nothing but eat what is gratuitously given\nhim, and to see there the kind of men you get under those kindly skies.\nThe virile fiber of muscle, the strong manly frame, the keen active mind\nthat meets each new \u201cpest\u201d with a successful invention, the spirit of\nconquest and courage that are revealed in the farmer at his best are no\naccident. They are the by-product of his battle with conditions, which if\nthey seem to come from an \u201cenemy,\u201d must come from one that ought to be\nloved for what he accomplishes.\n\nThese critics of ours who harshly review the books we write, the\naddresses we give, the schemes of reform for which we work so\nstrenuously\u2014do they do nothing for us? On the contrary, they force\nus to go deeper, to write with more care, to reconsider our hasty\ngeneralizations, to recast our pet schemes, to revise our crude\nendeavors. They may speak as \u201cenemies,\u201d and they may show a stern and\nhostile face; but we do well to love them, for they enable us to find\nour better self and our deeper powers. The hand may be the horny hand of\nEsau, but the voice is the kindly voice of Jacob.\n\nAll sorts of things \u201cwork\u201d for us, then, as St. Paul declared. Not only\ndoes love \u201cwork,\u201d and faith and grace; but tribulation \u201cworks,\u201d and\naffliction, and the seemingly hostile forces which block and buffet and\nhamper us. Everything that drives us deeper, that draws us closer to the\ngreat resources of life, that puts vigor into our frame and character\ninto our souls, is in the last resort a blessing to us, even though it\nseems on superficial examination to be the work of an \u201cenemy,\u201d and we\nshall be wise if we learn to love the \u201cenemies\u201d that give us the chance\nto overcome and to attain our true destiny. Perhaps the dualism of the\nuniverse is not quite as sharp as the old Persians thought. Perhaps, too,\nthe love of God reaches further under than we sometimes suppose. Perhaps\nin fact all things \u201cwork together for good,\u201d and even the enemy forces\nare helping to achieve the ultimate good that shall be revealed \u201cwhen God\nhath made the pile complete.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE POWER THAT WORKETH IN US\n\n\nI\n\nWHERE THE BEYOND BREAKS THROUGH\n\nIf we sprinkle iron filings over a sheet of paper and move a magnet\nbeneath the paper, the filings become active and combine and recombine\nin a great variety of groupings and regroupings. A beholder who knows\nnothing of the magnet underneath gazes upon the whole affair with a sense\nof awe and mystery, though he feels all the time that there must be some\nexplanation of the action and that some hidden power behind is operating\nas the cause of the groupings and regroupings of the iron particles.\nSomething certainly that we do not see is revealing its presence and its\npower.\n\nOur everyday experience is full of another series of activities even\nmore mysterious than these movements of the iron. Whenever we open our\neyes we see objects and colors confronting us and located in spaces far\nand near. What brings the object to us? What operates to produce the\ncontact? How does the far-away thing hit our organ of vision? This was to\nthe ancient philosopher a most difficult problem, a real mystery. He made\nmany guesses at a solution, but no guess which he could make satisfied\nhis judgment. Our answer is that an invisible and intangible substance\nwhich we call ether\u2014luminiferous ether\u2014fills all space, even the space\noccupied by visible objects, and that this ether which is capable of\namazing vibrations, billions of them a second, is set vibrating at\ndifferent velocities by different objects. These vibrations bombard the\nminute rods and cones of the retina at the back of the eye and, presto,\nwe see now one color and now another, now one object and now another.\nThis ether would forever have remained unknown to us had not this\nmarvelous structure of the retina given it a chance to break through and\nreveal itself. In many other ways, too, this ether breaks through into\nrevelation. It is responsible apparently for all the immensely varied\nphenomena of electricity, probably, too, of cohesion and gravitation.\nHere, again, the revelations remained inadequate and without clear\ninterpretation until we succeeded in constructing proper instruments and\ndevices for it to break through into active operation. The dynamo and\nthe other electrical mechanisms which we have invented do not make or\ncreate electricity. They merely let it come through, showing itself now\nas light, now as heat, now again as motive power. But always it was there\nbefore, unnoted, merely potential, and yet a vast surrounding ocean of\nenergy there behind, ready to break into active operation when the medium\nwas at hand for it.\n\nLife is another one of those strange mysteries that cannot be explained\nuntil we realize that something more than we see is breaking through\nmatter and revealing itself. The living thing is letting through some\ngreater power than itself, something beyond and behind, which is needed\nto account for what we see moving and acting with invention and purpose.\nMatter of itself is no explanation of life. The same elemental stuff is\nvery different until it becomes the instrument of something not itself\nwhich organizes it, pushes it upward and onward, and reveals itself\nthrough it. Something has at length come into view which is more than\nforce and mechanism. Here is intelligent purpose and forward-looking\nactivity and something capable of variation, novelty, and surprise.\nAnd when living substance has reached a certain stage of organization,\nsomething higher still begins to break through\u2014consciousness appears,\nand on its higher levels consciousness begins to reveal truth and moral\ngoodness. It is useless to try to explain consciousness\u2014especially\ntruth-bearing consciousness\u2014as a function of the brain, for it cannot be\ndone. That way of explanation no more explains mind than the Ptolemaic\ntheory explains the movements of the heavenly bodies. Once more,\nsomething breaks through and reveals itself, as surely as light breaks\nthrough a prism and reveals itself in the band of spectral colors. This\nconsciousness of ours, as I have said, is not merely awareness, not only\nintelligent response; it lays hold of and apprehends, i.e., reveals,\ntruth and goodness. What I think, when I really think, is not just\nmy private \u201copinion,\u201d or \u201cguess,\u201d or \u201cseeming\u201d; it turns out to have\nsomething universal and absolute about it. My multiplication-table is\neverybody\u2019s multiplication-table. It is true for me and for beyond me.\nAnd what is true of my mathematics is also true of other features of my\nthinking. When I properly organize my experience through rightly formed\nconcepts, I express aspects that are real and true for everybody\u2014I attain\nto something which can be called truth. The same way in the field of\nconduct: I can discover not only what is subjectively right, but I can\ngo farther and embody principles which are right not only for me but for\nevery good man. Something more than a petty, tiny, private consciousness\nis expressing itself through my personality. I am the organ of something\nmore than myself.\n\nPerhaps more wonderful still is the way in which beauty breaks through.\nIt breaks through not only at a few highly organized points, it breaks\nthrough almost everywhere. Even the minutest things reveal it as well\nas do the sublimest things, like the stars. Whatever one sees through\nthe microscope, a bit of mould for example, is charged with beauty.\nEverything from a dewdrop to Mount Shasta is the bearer of beauty. And\nyet beauty has no function, no utility. Its value is intrinsic, not\nextrinsic. It is its own excuse for being. It greases no wheels, it bakes\nno puddings. It is a gift of sheer grace, a gratuitous largess. It must\nimply behind things a Spirit that enjoys beauty for its own sake and\nthat floods the world everywhere with it. Wherever it can break through\nit does break through, and our joy in it shows that we are in some sense\nkindred to the giver and revealer of it.\n\nSomething higher and greater still breaks through and reveals a\ndeeper Reality than any that we see and touch. Love comes through\u2014not\neverywhere like beauty, but only where rare organization has prepared an\norgan for it. Some aspects of love appear very widely, are, at least,\nas universal as truth and moral goodness. But love in its full glory,\nlove in its height of unselfishness and with its passion of self-giving\nis a rare manifestation. One person\u2014the Galilean\u2014has been a perfect\nrevealing organ of it. In his life it broke through with the same perfect\nnaturalness as the beam of light breaks through the prism of waterdrops\nand reveals the rainbow. Love that understands, sympathizes, endures,\ninspires, recreates, and transforms, broke through and revealed itself so\nimpressively that those who see it and feel it are convinced that here at\nlast the real nature of God has come through to us and stands revealed.\nAnd St. Paul, who was absolutely convinced of this, went still further.\nHe held, with a faith buttressed in experience, that this same Christ,\nwho had made this demonstration of love, became after his resurrection\nan invisible presence, a life-giving Spirit who could work and act as a\nresident power within receptive, responsive, human spirits, and could\ntransform them into a likeness to himself and continue his revelation\nof love wherever he should find such organs of revelation. If that, or\nsomething like it, is true it is a very great truth. It was this that\ngood old William Dell meant when he said: \u201cThe believer is the only book\nin which God himself writes his New Testament.\u201d\n\n\nII\n\nCONQUERING BY AN INNER FORCE\n\nThere are few texts that have been more dynamic in the history of\nspiritual religion than the one which forms the keynote of the message of\nthe little book of Habakkuk: \u201cThe righteous man lives by faith\u201d (2:4). It\nbecame the central feature of St. Paul\u2019s message. It was the epoch-making\ndiscovery in Luther\u2019s experience, and it has always been the guiding\nprinciple of Protestant Christianity.\n\nThe profound significance of the words is often missed because the text\nis so easily turned into a phrase that is supposed just of itself to work\na kind of magic spell, and secondly because the meaning of \u201cfaith\u201d is so\nfrequently misinterpreted. When we go back to the original experience out\nof which the famous text was born we can get fresh light upon the heart\nof its meaning. The little book begins with a searching analysis of the\nconditions of the time. With an almost unparalleled boldness the prophet\nchallenges God to explain why the times are so badly out of joint, why\nthe social order is so topsy-turvy, and why injustice is allowed to run a\nlong course unchecked. God seems unconcerned with affairs\u2014the moral pilot\nappears not to be steering things.\n\nThen comes a moment of mental relief. The prophet hits upon the\nconclusion, arrived at by other prophets also, that God is about to use\nthe Chaldeans as a divine instrument to chastise the wicked element in\nthe nation, to right the wrongs of the disordered world, and to execute\njudgment. But as he begins to reflect he becomes more perplexed than\never. How can God, who is good, use such a terrible instrument for moral\npurposes? This people, which is assumed to be an instrument of moral\njudgment in a disordered world, is itself unspeakably perverse. It is\nfierce and wolfish. Its only god is might. It cares only for success. It\ncatches men, like fish, in its great dragnet, and \u201cthen he sacrificeth\nunto his net and burneth incense unto his drag.\u201d How can such a pitiless\nand insolent people, dominated by pride and love of conquest, be used to\nwork out the ends of righteousness and to act for God who is too pure\neven to look upon that which is evil and wrong? Here the prophet finds\nhimself suddenly up against the ancient problem of the moral government\nof the universe and the deep mystery of evil in it. He cannot untangle\nthe snarled threads of his skein. No solution of the mystery lies at\nhand. He decides to climb up into his \u201cwatch-tower\u201d and wait for an\nanswer from God. If it does not come at once, he proposes to stay until\nit does come\u2014\u201cif it tarry, wait for it; it will surely come.\u201d At length\nthe vision comes, so clear that a man running can read it. It is just\nthis famous discovery of the great text that a man cannot hope to get the\nworld-difficulties all straightened out to suit him, he cannot in some\neasy superficial way justify the ways of God in the course of history;\nbut, at least, he can live unswervingly and victoriously by his own\nsoul\u2019s insight, the insight of faith that God can be trusted to do the\nright thing for the universe which he is steering. It is beautifully\nexpressed in a well-known stanza of Whittier\u2019s:\n\n    \u201cI know not where His islands lift\n    Their fronded palms in air;\n    I only know I cannot drift\n    Beyond His love and care.\u201d\n\nMany things remain unexplained. The mysteries are not all dissipated.\nBut I see enough light to enable me to hold a steady course onward, and\nI have an inner confidence in God which nothing in the outward world can\nshatter. This is the message from Habakkuk\u2019s watch-tower: There is a\nfaith which goes so far into the heart of things that a man can live by\nit and stand all the water-spouts which break upon him.\n\nJosiah Royce once defined faith as an insight of the soul by which one\ncan stand everything that can happen to him, and that is what this text\nmeans. You arrive at such a personal assurance of God\u2019s character that\nyou can face any event and not be swept off your feet. If this is so,\nit means that the most important achievement in a man\u2019s career is the\nattainment of just this inner vision, the acquisition of an interior\nspiritual confidence which itself is the victory.\n\nWilliam James used often to close his lecture courses at Harvard with\nwhat he called a \u201cFaith-ladder.\u201d Round after round it went up from a mere\npossibility of hope to an inner conviction strong enough to dominate\naction. He would begin with some human faith which outstrips evidence and\nhe would say of it: It is at least not absurd, not self-contradictory,\nand, therefore, it might be true under certain conditions, in some kind\nof a world which we can conceive. It may be true even in this world and\nunder existing conditions. It is fit to be true; it ought to be true. The\nsoul in its moment of clearest insight feels that it must be true. It\nshall be true, then, at least for me, for I propose to act upon it, to\nlive by it, to stake my existence on it.\n\nThis watch-tower of Habakkuk is a similar faith-ladder. He sees no way\nto explain why the good suffer, or to account for the catastrophes of\nhistory, but at least he has found a faith in God which holds him like\nadamant: \u201cAlthough the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit\nbe in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall\nyield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold and there shall\nbe no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy\nin the God of my salvation.... He will make me to walk upon mine high\nplaces.\u201d Faith like that is always contagious. The unshaken soul kindles\nanother soul who believes in his belief, and the torch goes from this man\non his watch-tower to St. Paul, and from him on to the great reformer,\nand then to an unnamed multitude, who through their soul\u2019s insight can\nstand everything that may happen!\n\n\nIII\n\nLIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ETERNAL\n\nSome time ago I received a letter from a young minister who was about to\nsettle for religious work in a large manufacturing town. He and I were\nstrangers to each other in the flesh but friends through correspondence,\nand because we were kindred spirits he wrote to me to say: \u201cI have before\nme the great work of living in the eternal God and in a humanity toiling\nin factories and shops. Oh, if I could only make the presence of the\nEternal real to myself and to my people!\u201d Another minister, laboring in\na large suburb of New York City, also a stranger to me except through\ncorrespondence, wrote to say that he was glad for every voice which\nholds up before men the reality of the invisible Church and the idea of\nthe universal priesthood of believers. These letters coming within a\nweek\u2014and they are samples of many similar ones\u2014are signs of the times,\nand show clearly that thoughtful men all about us are done with the husk\nof religion and are devoting themselves to the heart of the matter. There\nis a deep movement under way which touches all denominations and is\nsteadily preparing in our busy, hurrying, materialistic America a true\nseed of the vital, spiritual religion that will later bear rich blossoms\nand ripe harvest.\n\nI want for the moment to return to the central desire of the young\nminister, in the hope that it may inspire some of us, especially some of\nour young ministers who are facing their new spiritual tasks: \u201cI have\nbefore me the great work of living in the eternal God and in a humanity\ntoiling in factories and shops. Oh, if I could only make the presence of\nthe Eternal real to myself and to them!\u201d\n\nIt is perhaps a new idea to some that living in the eternal God is\n\u201cwork.\u201d We are so accustomed to the idea that all that is required of us\nis a passive mind and a waiting spirit that we have never quite realized\nthis truth: No person can live in the eternal God unless he is ready for\nthe most intense activity and for the most strenuous life. Gladstone,\nin his old age, surprised his readers with his impressive phrase, \u201cthe\nwork of worship.\u201d The fact is, no man ever yet found his way into the\npermanent enjoyment of God along paths of least resistance or by any lazy\nmethods. How many of us have been humiliated to discover, in the silence\nor in the service, that nothing spiritual was happening within us. Our\nmind, unbent and passive enough, was like a stagnant pool, or, if not\nstagnant, was darting its feelers out and following in lazy fashion any\nline of suggestion which pulled it. Instead of finding ourselves \u201cliving\nin the eternal God\u201d and in the high enjoyment of him, we catch ourselves\nwondering what the next strike will be, or thinking about the mean and\nshabby way some one spoke to us an hour ago! There is no use blaming a\nmind because it wanders\u2014everybody\u2019s mind wanders\u2014but the real achievement\nis to make it wander in a region which ministers to our spiritual life;\nand that can be done only by getting supremely interested in the things\nof the Spirit. That is where the \u201cwork\u201d lies; that is where the effort\ncomes in. Attention is always determined by the fundamental interest.\nWhat we love supremely we attend to. It gets us, it holds us. One of the\ncolloquial phrases for being in love with a person is \u201cpaying attention\nto\u201d the person. It is a true phrase and goes straight to reality.\nIf we are to discover and enjoy the eternal Presence we must become\npassionately earnest in spirit and glowing with love for the Highest.\n\nMy friend brings two important things together: He proposes to undertake\nthe work of living in the eternal God and in toiling humanity. The two\nthings go together and cannot be safely separated. It is in the actual\nsharing of life through love and sympathy and sacrifice, in going out of\nself to feel the problems and difficulties and sufferings of others, that\nwe find and form a life rich in higher interests and centered on matters\nof eternal value. A man who has traveled through the deeps of life with\na fellow man comes to his hour of worship with a mind focused on the\nEternal and with a spirit girded for the inward wrestling, without which\nblessings of the greater sort do not come. And every time such a man\nfinds himself truly at home in the eternal God and fed from within, he\ncan go out, with the strength of ten, to the tasks of toiling humanity.\nThis is one of those spiritual circles which work both ways: He that\ndwells in God loves, and he that loves finds God, St. John tells us.\n\nIt is fine to see a strong man, trained in all his faculties, going to\nhis work with the quiet prayer: \u201cOh, that I may make the presence of the\nEternal real to myself and to my people.\u201d It is a good prayer for all of\nus.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE WAY OF VISION\n\n\nI\n\nDAYS OF GREATER VISIBILITY\n\nFrom the porch of my little summer cottage in Maine I can see, across the\nbeautiful stretch of lake in the foreground, the far-distant Kennebago\nMountains in their veil of purple. But we see them only when all the\nconditions of sky and air are absolutely right. Most of the time they\nare wrapped in clouds or are lost in a dim haze. Our visitors admire\nthe lake, are charmed with the islands, the picturesque shore and the\nsurrounding hills, but they do not suspect the existence of this added\nglory beyond the hills. We often tell them of the mountains \u201cjust over\nthere,\u201d which come out into full view when the sky clears all the way\nto the horizon and the wind blows fine from the northwest. They make a\ncasual remark about the sufficiency of what is already in sight, and go\ntheir way in satisfied ignorance of the \u201cbeyond.\u201d\n\nNext day, perhaps\u2014Oh wonder! The morning dawns with all the conditions\nfavorable for our distant view. The air is altogether right for far\nvisibility. The clouds are swept clean from the western rim, the blue is\nutterly transparent\u2014and there are the mountains! We wish our skeptical\nvisitors could be with us now. We guess that they would not easily\ntalk of the sufficiency of the near beauty, if they could once see the\novertopping glory of these mountains now fully unveiled and revealed.\nSomething like that, I feel sure, is true of God and of other great\nspiritual realities which are linked with his being. Most of the time\nwe get on with the things that are near at hand; the things we see and\nhandle and are sure of. The world is full of utility and we do well to\nappreciate what is there waiting to be used. There is always something\nsatisfying about beauty, and nature is very rich and lavish with it.\nFriendship and love are heavenly gifts, and when these are added to the\nother good things which the world gives us, it would seem, and it does\nseem, to many that we ought to be satisfied and not be homesick for the\nglory which lies beyond the horizon-line of the senses. I cannot help\nit; my soul will not stay satisfied with this near-at-hand supply. A\ndiscontent sweeps over me, an uncontrollable _Heimweh_\u2014homesickness of\nsoul\u2014surges up within me and I should be compelled to call the whole\nscheme miserable failure, if the near, visible skyline were the real\nboundary of all that is.\n\nSometimes\u2014Oh joy! When the inward weather is just right; when selfish\nimpulse has been hushed; when the clouds and shadows, which sin makes,\nare swept away and genuine love makes the whole inner atmosphere pure and\nfree from haze, then I know that I find a beyond which before was nowhere\nin sight and might easily not have been suspected. I cannot decide\nwhether this extended range of sight is due to alterations in myself,\nor whether it is due to some sudden increase of spiritual visibility in\nthe great reality itself. I only know the fact. Before, I was occupied\nwith things; now, I commune with God and am as sure of him as I am of the\nmountains beyond my lake, which my skeptical visitor has not yet seen.\n\nThere can be no adequate world here for us without at least a faith in\nthe reality beyond the line of what we see with our common eyes. We have\ntimes when we cannot live by bread alone, or by our increase of stocks;\nwhen we lose our interest in cosmic forces and need something more\nthan the slow justice which history weighs out on its great judgment\ndays. We want to feel a real heart beating somewhere through things; we\nwant to discover through the maze a loving will working out a purpose;\nwe want to know that our costly loyalties, our high endeavors, and our\nsacrifices which make the quivering flesh palpitate with pain, really\nmatter to Someone and fill up what is behind of his great suffering for\nlove\u2019s sake. We can not get on here with substitutes; we must have the\nreality itself. Religion is an awful farce if it is only a play-scheme, a\ncinematograph-show, which makes one believe he is seeing reality when he\nis, in fact, being fooled with a picture. We must at all costs insist on\nthe real things. It is God we want and not another, the real Face and not\na picture.\n\n    \u201cWe needs must love the highest when we see it;\n    Not Lancelot nor another.\u201d\n\nHe is surely there to be seen, like my mountain. Days may pass when we\nonly hope and long and guess. Then the weather comes right, the veil\nthins away and we see! It is, however, not a rare privilege reserved for\na tiny few. It is not a grudged miracle, granted only to saints who have\nkilled out all self. It belongs to the very nature of the soul to see\nGod. It is what makes life really life. It is as normal a function as\nbreathing or digestion. Only one must, of all things, intend to do it!\n\n\nII\n\nTHE PROPHET AND HIS TRAGEDIES\n\nThere will always be in the world a vast number of persons who take the\nmost comfortable form of religion which their generation affords. They\nare not path-breakers; they have nothing in their nature which pushes\nthem into the fields of discovery\u2014they are satisfied with the religion\nwhich has come down to them from the past. They accept what others have\nwon and tested, and are thankful that they are saved the struggle and the\nfire which are involved in first-hand experience and in fresh discovery.\n\nThe prophet, on the contrary, in whatever age he comes, can never take\nthis easy course. He cannot rest contented with the forms of religion\nwhich are accepted by others. He cannot enjoy the comforts of the calm\nand settled faith which those around him inherit and adopt. His soul\nforever hears the divine call to leave the old mountain and go forward,\nto conquer new fields, to fight new battles, to restate his faith in\nwords that are fresh and vital, in terms of the deepest life of his time.\nWe used to think\u2014many people still think\u2014that a prophet is a foreteller\nof future events, a kind of magical and miraculous person who speaks\nas an oracle and who announces, without knowing how or why, far-off,\ncoming occurrences that are communicated to him. To think thus is to miss\nthe deeper truth of the prophet\u2019s mission. He is primarily a religious\npatriot, a statesman with a moral and spiritual policy for the nation.\nHe is a person who sees what is involved in the eternal nature of things\nand therefore what the outcome of a course of life is bound to be. He\npossesses an unerring eye for curves of righteousness or unrighteousness,\nas the great artist has for lines of beauty and harmony, or as the great\nmathematician has for the completing lines of a curve, involved in any\ngiven arc of it. He is different from others, not in the fact that he\nhas ecstasies and lives in the realm of miracles, but rather that he has\na clearer conviction of God than most men have. He has found him as the\ncenter of all reality. He reads and interprets all history in the light\nof the indubitable fact of God, and he estimates life and deeds in\nterms of moral and spiritual laws, which are as inflexible as the laws\nof chemical atoms or of electrical forces. He looks for no capricious\nresults. He sees that this is a universe of moral and spiritual order.\n\nIf he is an Amos, he will refuse to fall in line with the easy worshipers\nof his age, who are satisfied with the old-time religion of \u201cburnt\nofferings\u201d and \u201cmeat offerings\u201d and \u201cpeace offerings of fat beasts.\u201d His\nsoul will cry out for a religion which makes a new moral and spiritual\nman, \u201cmakes righteousness run down as a mighty stream,\u201d and sets the\nworshiper into new social relations with his fellows. If he is an Isaiah,\nhe will refuse \u201cto tramp the temple\u201d with the mass of easy worshipers;\nhe will have his own vision of \u201cthe Lord high and lifted up,\u201d with his\nglory filling not only the temple but the whole earth, and he will\ndedicate himself to the task of preparing a holy people and a holy city\nfor this God who has been revealed to him as a thrice-holy God. If he is\na Jeremiah, he will not accept the view that the traditional religion of\nJerusalem is adequate for the crisis of the times. He will insist that\ntrue religion must be inwardly experienced; that the law of God must be\nwritten in the heart, and that the life of a man must be the living\nfruit of his faith. He will cry out against the idea that the moral\nwounds and spiritual sores of the daughter of Jerusalem can be healed\nwith easy salves and cheap panaceas.\n\nThe supreme example of this refusal to go along the easy line of\ncontemporary religion is that of One who was more than a prophet. His\npeople prided themselves on being the chosen people of the Lord. The\nscribal leaders had succeeded in drawing up a complete and perfect\ncatalogue of religious performances. They supplied minute directions for\none\u2019s religious duty in every detail, real or imaginary, of daily life,\nand the world has never seen a more elaborate form of religion than this\nof the Pharisees. But Christ refused to follow the path of custom; he\ncould not and he would not do the things which the scribes prescribed. He\nbroke a new path for the soul, and called men away from legalism and the\ndead routine of \u201cperformances\u201d to a life of individual faith and service,\nwhich involves suffering and self-sacrifice, but which brings the soul\ninto personal relation with the living God.\n\nSt. Paul, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a rabbinical scholar of the first\nrank, a man rising stage by stage to fame along the path marked out by\nthe traditions of his people, came back from his eventful journey to\nDamascus to take up the work of a path-breaker and to set himself like\na flint against the old-time religion in which he was born and reared.\nLuther, a devout monk, an ambassador to the papal court, a professor of\nscholastic theology, discovered that he could not find peace to his soul\nalong the path of the prevailing traditional religion, and he swung,\nwith all the fervor of his powerful nature, into a fresh track which\nhas blessed all ages since. These are some of the supreme leaders, but\nevery age has had its quota of minor prophets, who have heard the call to\nleave the old mountain and go forward and who have fearlessly entered the\nperilous and untried path of fresh vision. As we look back and see them\nin the perspective of their successful mission to the race, we thank God\nfor their bravery and their valiant service, but we are apt to forget the\ntragedies of their lives.\n\nNobody can enter a fresh path, or bring a new vision of the meaning of\nlife, or reinterpret old truths\u2014in short, nobody can be a prophet\u2014without\narousing the suspicion and, sooner or later, the bitter hatred of those\nwho are the keepers and guardians of the existing forms and traditions,\nand the path-breaker must expect to see his old friends misunderstand\nhim, turn against him, and reproach him. He must endure the hard\nexperience of being called a destroyer of the very things he is giving\nhis life to build. Christ is, for example, hurried to the cross as a\nblasphemer, and each prophet, in his degree, has had to hear himself\ncharged with being the very opposite of what he really is in heart and\nlife. To be a prophet at all he must be a sensitive soul, and yet he must\nlive and work in a pitiless rain of misunderstanding and attack. Still\nmore tragic, perhaps, is the necessity which the prophet is under of\ndoing his hard tasks without living to see the triumphant results. He is,\nnaturally, ahead of his time\u2014a path-breaker\u2014and his contemporaries are\nalways slow to discover and to realize what he is doing. Even those who\nlove him and appreciate him only half see his true purpose, and thus he\nfeels alone and solitary, though he may be in the thick of the throng.\nIt is only when he is long dead and the mists have cleared away that he\nis called a prophet and comes to his true place. While he lived he was\nsure of only one Friend who completely understood him and approved of his\ncourse, and that was his invisible and heavenly Friend. But in spite of\nthe tragedy and the pain and the hard road, the prophet, \u201cseeing him who\nis invisible,\u201d prefers to all other paths, however easy and popular, the\npath of his vision and call.\n\n\nIII\n\nA LONG DISTANCE CALL\n\nJust when life seems peculiarly crowded with items of complexity and\nimportance, the telephone rings a determined, significant kind of ring.\nThis is evidently no ordinary passing-the-time-of-day affair. I interrupt\nmy weighty concerns and take up the receiver with expectation. I say\n\u201cHello!\u201d but there is no answer, no human recognition. The wire hums and\nbuzzes, instruments click far away, plugs are pulled out and pushed in.\nLittle tiny scraps of remote, inane, unintelligible conversation between\nunknown mortals furnish the only evidence I get that there is any human\npurpose going forward in this strange world inside the telephone system\nwhere I can see nothing happening.\n\nSuddenly a voice which is evidently hunting for me breaks in: \u201cIs this\nMr. \u2014\u2014?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cHold the wire, please.\u201d I am led on with increasing\ninterest and confidence. Somebody somewhere miles away in this invisible\nworld of electrical connections is seeking for me. I forget the\nmultitudinous problems that were besieging me when the telephone first\nrang, and I listen with suppressed breath and strained muscles. All I\nget, however, is an immense confusion. There is no coherence or order to\nanything that reaches me. Faint and far away in some still remoter center\nthan at first I hear clicks and buzzes, vague unmeaning noises, and the\ndull thud of shifting plugs that connect the lines. Once more a kindly\nvoice breaks in on the confusion, a voice seeking after me from some\ndistant city: \u201cIs this Mr. \u2014\u2014?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cWait a minute.\u201d\n\nI do wait a minute as patiently as I can. I dimly feel that we are\nplunging out into yet remoter space, and that I am being connected up\nwith the person who all the time has been seeking me. A low hum of\nthe far-away wire is all I get to repay me for the long wait. I grow\nimpatient. I shout \u201cHello!\u201d \u201cIs anybody there?\u201d \u201cDo you want me?\u201d Not a\nword comes back, only endless, empty murmurs of people who have found one\nanother and are talking so far off that the sense is lost in the mere\nbroth of sounds. This dull world inside the telephone seems to be a mad\nworld of noise and confusion but no substance, no real correspondence. I\nam on the verge of giving the whole business up and of returning to my\ninterrupted tasks, which at least were rational.\n\nSuddenly a voice breaks in, this time a voice I know and recognize. The\nperson who had been seeking me all the time, across these spaces and\nover this network of interlaced wires, calls me by name, speaks words of\ninsight and intelligence, and gives me a message which moves me deeply\nand raises the whole tone of my spirit. When finally I \u201chang up\u201d and\nreturn to the things in hand, I have renewed my strength and can work\nwith clearer head and faster pace. The pause has been like a pause in\na piece of music. It has been full of significance, and it has helped\ntoward a higher level.\n\nSomething like this telephone experience happens in another and very\ndifferent sphere\u2014a sphere where there are no wires. In the hush and\nsilence, when the conditions are right for it, it often seems as\nthough some one were trying to communicate with us, seeking for actual\ncorrespondence with us. We turn from the din and turmoil of busy efforts\nand listen for the voice. We listen intently and we hear\u2014our own heart\nbeating. We feel the strain of our muscles across the chest. We push back\na little deeper and try again. We feel the tension of the skin over the\nforehead and we note that we are pulling the eyeballs up and inward for\nmore concentrated meditation. All the muscles of the scalp are drawn\nand we notice them perhaps for the first time. Strange little bits of\nthought flit across the threshold of the mind. We catch glimpses of dim\nideas knocking at the windows for admission to the inner domain where\nwe live. Then, all of a sudden, we succeed in pushing further back. We\nforget our strained muscles and are unconscious of the corporeal bulk of\nourselves. We get in past the flitting thoughts and the procession of\nideas contending for entrance. The track seems open for the Someone who\nis seeking us no less certainly than we are seeking him. If we do not\nhear our name called, and do not hear distinctly a message in well-known\nwords, we do at least feel that we have found a real Presence and have\nreceived fresh vital energy from the creative center of life itself, so\nthat we come back to action, after our pause, restored, refreshed, and\n\u201ccharged\u201d with new force to live by.\n\nSome time ago a long distance call came to my telephone and I went\nthrough all the stages of waiting and of confusion and finally heard the\nclear voice calling me, but I could not get any answer back. I heard\nperfectly across the five hundred intervening miles, but my correspondent\nnever got a single clear word from me. We found that something was wrong\nwith our transmitter. The connection was good, the line was pervious, the\nseeking voice was at the other end, but I did not succeed in transmitting\nwhat ought to have been said. Here is where most of us fail in this other\nsphere\u2014this inner wireless sphere\u2014we are poor transmitters. We make the\nconnection, we receive the gift of grace, we are flooded with the incomes\nof life and power and we freely take, but we do not give. We absorb and\naccumulate what we can, but we transmit little of all that comes to us.\nOur radius of out-giving influence is far too small. We need, on the one\nhand, to listen deeper, to get further in beyond the tensions and the\nnoises, but on the other hand we need to be more radio-active, better\ntransmitters of the grace of God.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE WAY OF PERSONALITY\n\n\nI\n\nANOTHER KIND OF HERO\n\nA generation ago almost everybody read, at least once, Carlyle\u2019s great\nbook on heroes. He gave us the hero as prophet, as priest, as poet,\nas king, and he made us realize that these heroes have been the real\nmakers of human society. I should like to add a chapter on another kind\nof hero, who has, perhaps, not done much to build cities and states and\nchurch systems, but who has, almost more than anybody else, shown us the\nspiritual value of endurance\u2014I mean the hero as invalid.\n\nIt is the hardest kind of heroism there is to achieve. Most of us know\nsome man\u2014too often it is oneself\u2014who is a very fair Christian when he is\nin normal health and absorbed in interesting work, who carries a smooth\nforehead and easily drops into a good-natured smile, but who becomes\n\u201cblue\u201d and irritable and a storm center in the family weather as soon\nas the bodily apparatus is thrown out of gear. Most of us have had a\ntaste of humiliation as we have witnessed our own defeat in the presence\nof some thorn in the flesh, which stubbornly pricked us, even though we\nprayed to have it removed and urged the doctor to hurry up and remove it.\n\nWhat a hero, then, must he be, who, with a weak and broken body, a\nprey to pain and doomed to die daily, learns how to live in calm faith\nthat God is good and makes his life a center of cheer and sunshine!\nThe heroism of the battlefield and the man-of-war looks cheap and thin\ncompared with this. We could all rally to meet some glorious moment\nwhen a trusted leader shouted to us, \u201cYour country expects you to do\nyour duty!\u201d But to drag on through days and nights, through weeks and\nmonths, through recurring birthdays, with vital energy low, with sluggish\nappetite, with none of that ground-swell of superfluous vigor which makes\nhealthy life so good, and still to prove that life is good and to radiate\njoy and triumph\u2014that is the very flower and perfume of heroism. If we\nare making up a bead-roll of heroes, let us put at the top the names of\nthose quiet friends of ours who have played the man or revealed the woman\nthrough hard periods of invalidism and have exhibited to us the fine\nglory of a courageous spirit.\n\nOne of the hardest and most difficult features to bear is the inability\nto work at one\u2019s former pace and with the old-time constructive power.\nThe prayer of the Psalmist that his work, the contribution of his life,\nmight be preserved is very touching: \u201cEstablish thou the work of our\nhands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.\u201d What can be\nmore tragic than the cry of Othello: \u201cMy occupation is gone!\u201d So long as\nthe hand keeps its cunning and the mind remains clear and creative, one\ncan stand physical handicap and pain, but when the working power of mind\nor body is threatened, then the test of faith and heroism indeed arrives.\n\nA man whose life meant much to me and whose intimacy was very precious\nto me made me see many years ago how wonderfully this test could be\nmet. He was a great teacher, the head of a distinguished boys\u2019 school.\nHe was experiencing the full measure of success, and his influence over\nhis boys was extraordinary. He realized, as his work went on, that his\nhearing was becoming dull and was steadily failing. He went to New York\nand consulted a famous specialist. After making a careful examination the\nspecialist said, with perfect frankness: \u201cYour case is hopeless. Nothing\ncan be done to check the disaster. You are hard of hearing already, but\nin a very short time you will have no hearing at all.\u201d Without a quaver\nthe teacher said: \u201cDon\u2019t you think, doctor, that I shall hear Gabriel\u2019s\ntrumpet when it blows!\u201d He went back to his school, learned to read lips,\nreorganized his life, accepted without a murmur his loss of a major\nsense, and finished his splendid career of work in an undefeated spirit\nand with a grace and joy which were envied by many persons in possession\nof all their powers.\n\nAll my readers will think of some \u201cstar player\u201d in this hard game of\npatience and endurance, and will have watched with awe and reverence the\nglorious fight of some of those unrecorded heroes who won but got no\nvalor medal. The only person who ranks higher in the scale of heroism\nthan the hero as invalid is possibly the person who patiently, lovingly\nnurses and cares for some invalid through years of decline and suffering.\nGenerally, though not always, it is a woman. Not seldom she is called\nupon to consecrate her life to the task, and often she gives what is much\nmore precious than life itself. We build no monuments to daughters who\nunmurmuringly forego the joy of married life, who refuse the suit of\nlove in order to be free to ease the closing years of father or mother,\ngrown helpless; but where is there higher consecration or finer heroism?\nMen sometimes complain that the days of chivalry and heroism are past. On\nthe contrary, they are more truly dawning. As Christianity ripens love\ngrows richer and deeper, and where love appears heroism is always close\nat hand. Our best heroes are mothers and wives and daughters, fathers and\nhusbands and sons.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE BETTER POSSESSION\n\nDuring one of the intense persecutions by which an early Roman emperor\nharried the Christians of the first century, some unknown writer (Harnack\nthinks It was a woman) wrote an extraordinary little book to hearten\nthose who were undergoing the trial of their faith. I mean, of course,\nthe Epistle to the Hebrews. It is marked by rare genius and by undoubted\ninspiration. It is full of vital messages and it contains passages of\ngreat power. Just before the most loved section of the little book\u2014the\naccount of the faith-heroes\u2014the author, in a passage open to a variety\nof translations, refers to the fact that those to whom he is writing\nhave suffered, and have suffered joyfully, the spoiling of their\npossessions, \u201cknowing,\u201d he says, \u201cthat you have your own selves for a\nbetter possession\u201d\u2014you yourselves are a better possession than any of\nthose goods which you have lost for your faith.\n\nI wonder if the readers fully realized the truth, or if we should to-day\nrealize it had we suffered a similar stripping. We are very slow to take\naccount of that type of stock. We are very keen about our own assets,\nbut we often fail to prize this supreme ownership, the possession of\nourselves. There is a story, both sad and amusing, of an insane man who\nwas seen wildly rushing about the house, from room to room, looking in\ncupboards and clothes-presses, crawling under beds, obviously searching\nfor something. When questioned as to what he was so frantically looking\nfor, he replied, \u201cI am trying to find my self!\u201d It is not as mad as it\nseems. I am not sure but that we who are not trying to find ourselves are\nafter all more crazy still.\n\nOld Burton, who wrote _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, well said:\n\n    \u201cMen look to their tools; a painter will wash his pencils; a\n    smith will look to his hammer, anvil, and forge; a husbandman\n    will mend his plow-irons and grind his hatchet, if it be dull;\n    a musician will string and unstring his lute; only scholars\n    neglect that instrument, their brains and spirits I mean, which\n    they daily use.\u201d\n\nNot scholars only, but all classes and conditions of men are guilty\nof this strange insanity. If the Duke of Westminster should offer to\ntransfer to us his estates, we would rush with all conceivable speed to\nacquire our new potential possessions. We would go as with wings of an\naeroplane to get the transaction accomplished before anything could occur\nto keep us from entering into our fortune. But here we are already within\nreach of a vastly better possession, of which we are strangely negligent.\nIf it came to a choice between himself and his outward possessions, this\nduke who owns so much would not hesitate a minute which to prefer. If in\na crisis of illness he could save himself by surrender of his goods, they\nwould instantly go. \u201cGive me health and a day,\u201d Emerson said, \u201cand I will\nmake the pomp of emperors ridiculous.\u201d\n\nWhat we would do in a crisis we often fail to do when no crisis confronts\nus, and it is a fact that too often we miss and even squander that\nbetter possession, ourselves. The best way to win it and enjoy it is\nto cultivate those inner experiences and endowments which make us\nindependent of external fortune. All Christ\u2019s beatitudes attach to some\ninherent quality of life itself. The meek, the merciful, the pure, are\n\u201chappy,\u201d not because the external world conforms to their wishes, but\nbecause they have resources of life within themselves and have entered\nupon a way of life which continually opens out into more life and richer\nlife. They have found a kind of Canaan that \u201ccomes\u201d in continuous\ninstalments.\n\nOne of the simplest ways to heighten the total value of life is to form\na habit of appreciating the world we have here and now. It presents\noccasional inconveniences, no doubt, but think of the amazing donations\nwhich come to us: the tilting of the earth\u2019s axis twenty-three and a\nhalf degrees to the ecliptic by which contrivance we have our seasons;\nthe fact that the proportion of earth and water is just right to give\nus a fine balance of rain and sunshine; the extraordinary way in which\nthe entire universe submits to our mathematics so that every movement of\nmatter and every vibration of ether conforms to laws which we formulate;\nthe accumulation and storage of fuel and motor power, with the prospect\nof even greater resources of energy to be had from the unoccupied space\nsurrounding the earth. Then, again, it cannot be a matter of unconcern\nthat there is such a wealth of beauty lavished upon us everywhere,\nwaiting for us to enjoy it. There is here a strange fit between the outer\nand the inner. The more one draws upon the beauty of the world and enjoys\nit, so much the more does he increase his capacity to discover and enjoy\nbeauty. Coal and oil may become exhausted, but beauty is inexhaustible.\nThe only trouble is that we are so limited in our range of appreciation\nof it. We turn to cheaper values and miss so much of this free gift of\nloveliness.\n\nGreater still should be our resources of love and friendship. Nothing\ncould be stranger or more wonderful than that in a world where struggle\nfor existence is the law this other trait should have emerged. It is\neasy to explain selfishness; love is the mystery. Love forgets itself;\nit scorns double-entry bookkeeping; it gives, it bestows, it shares, it\nsacrifices without asking whether anything is coming back. And it turns\nout to be a fact that nothing else so enhances and increases the value of\nthis \u201cbetter possession which is ourselves.\u201d\n\nEven more wonderful, if that is possible, is the way we are formed\nand contrived to have intercourse with the Eternal. With all our\nmaterial furnishings we strangely open out into the infinite and\npartake of a spiritual nature. God has set eternity in our hearts. We\ncannot win this better possession nor hold it permanently unless we\nexercise these spiritual capacities, which expand our being and add the\nrichest qualities of life. \u201cThou hast made us for thyself,\u201d Augustine\nacknowledged in his great prayer at the opening of the _Confessions_ and\n\u201cwe are restless until we find thee as our true rest.\u201d It is as true now\nas in the fourth century. Barns and houses, lands and stocks, mortgages\nand bonds, do not constitute life unless one learns how to win and\npossess his soul and to keep that best of all possessions\u2014himself.\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE GREATEST RIVALRIES OF LIFE\n\n\u201cAfter experience had taught me that all things which are encountered in\nhuman life are vain and futile.... I at length determined to inquire if\nthere was anything which was a true good.\u201d Those are the words of a great\nphilosopher who says that he found himself \u201cled by the hand up to the\nhighest blessedness.\u201d\n\nNot everybody finds the choice of ends so easy as Spinoza did; not all of\nus are carried along into sustained and unmistakable blessedness. Life\nis full of rivalries which tend to divide our interest and to dissipate\nour attention. We wake up, perhaps, with surprise to discover that we\nare being carried, by the hand or by the hair, straight away from \u201cthe\nhighest blessedness.\u201d Not seldom the sternest tragedies of human life are\noccasioned by success. Failure overtaking one in his aim will often shake\nhim awake and make him see that he was pursuing an end in sharp rivalry\nwith his highest good. But success often dulls the vision for other\nissues and gives one the specious confidence that he is on the right\ntrack and \u201call\u2019s well.\u201d\n\nChrist has a vivid parable which touches upon the rivalries of life. It\nis the story of a great feast to which many guests are invited. When\nthe critical moment for the dinner comes the other rivalries begin to\noperate. One man, attracted by his possessions, \u201cbegs off,\u201d to use the\ngraphic phrase of the original. Another, occupied with the complex\ninterests of business and busy with the affairs of trade, prays to be\nexcused. A third is immersed in the joys and responsibilities of married\nlife and he abruptly dispatches his \u201cregrets.\u201d It was not that they were\nunconcerned about the sumptuous feast, but that they were carried along\nby rival interests.\n\nThe feast in this parable plainly stands for the \u201ctrue good,\u201d the\n\u201chighest blessedness\u201d of life. It symbolizes the goal and crown of life,\nthe full realization of our best human possibilities, the attainment of\nthat for which we were made aspiring beings. The invitation is a mark\nof amazing grace and the recipient of it has the clearest evidence that\nthe feast would satisfy him. But there are the other things with their\nrival attractions! Possessions and business and domestic life pull us in\na contrary direction. We send our cards of regret and beg off from the\ngreat feast.\n\nThe real mistake lies in treating these things as rivals. If we only\nknew it, an affirmative response to the great invitation of life would\nprepare us for all the other things and would heighten the value of all\nwe own, of all we do, and of all we love. Salvation is not some remote\nand ghostly thing that has to do with another world. It is the infusion\nof new life and power into all the concerns and affairs of this present\nworld where we are. It means, as Christ said, receiving \u201ca hundredfold\nnow in this time, houses and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and\nchildren, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal\nlife.\u201d\n\nNothing could be a more mistaken way than to regard human love as a\nrival to the highest of all relations, the love of the soul for God.\nOne of the medieval saints said: \u201cGod brooks no rival\u201d; but that phrase\nshows that the saint was caught napping, and in any case did not quite\nunderstand what love is. The way up to the highest love is not to be\nfound by turning away from those experiences which give us training\nand preparation for the highest; but rather it is found in and through\nthe experience of loving some person who, however imperfectly, is a\nrevelation of the beauty and divineness of love. Not by some sheer leap\nfrom the earth does the soul arrive at its height of blessedness, but by\nsteps and stages, by processes which bring illumination and richness of\nlife. The man who has married a wife will do well to say when he answers\nthe great invitation: \u201cI have just married a wife and therefore I am\npeculiarly glad to come to thy feast, since fellowship with thee will\nmake my love more real and true as that in turn will enable me to rise to\na more genuine appreciation of thy love.\u201d\n\nThe same is true of houses and lands, of business and trade. There is no\nnecessary rivalry here. Religion does not rob us of earthly interests,\nit does not strip us of the good things of this world. It only corrects\nour perspective and enables us to see the true scale of values. The\ntrivial and fragmentary things of the world no longer absorb us. We\nrefuse now to allow them to own us and drive us, or drag us. We see\nthings steadily and we see them whole. We discover through our higher\ncontacts and inspirations how to flood light back upon our occupations\nand upon the things we own, and how to make these subordinate things\nminister to the higher functions and attitudes of life. We get not some\nother world, but this world here and now transmuted and raised a little\nnearer to the ideal and perfect world of our hopes and dreams. We get it\nback item for item increased a hundredfold, raised to a higher spiritual\nlevel. The wise owner of property and the intelligent man of affairs will\nnot beg off when the great invitation comes to him. He will say: \u201cI have\njust come into possession of a piece of land, I have bought five yoke\nof oxen, and therefore I want to come to thy divine feast so that I may\nlearn how to turn all I possess into the channels of real service and to\nmake these things which thou hast given me help me find the way to the\nhighest joy and blessedness of life.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nAGENCIES OF CONSTRUCTION\n\n\nI\n\nTHE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD\n\nWe have all been asking, \u201cWhat is the matter with the Church? Why is it\nso weak and ineffective? Why does it exercise such a feeble influence\nin the world to-day? Why do men care so little for its message and its\nmission?\u201d There are no doubt many answers to these questions, but one\nanswer concerns us here. It is this: We who compose the Church do not\nsufficiently realize that God is a living God and that the Church is\nintended to be the living body through which he works in the world and\nthrough which he reveals himself. We think of him as far away in space\nand remote in time, a God who created once and who worked wonders in\nancient times long past, but we do not, as we should, vividly think of\nhim as a living reality, as near to us as the air is to the flying bird\nor the water to the swimming fish. We suppose that the Church is made\nup of just people, and is a human convenience for getting things done in\nthe world. We do not see as we should that it is meant to be both divine\nand human and that it never is properly a Church unless God lives in it,\nreveals himself by means of it and works his spiritual work in the world\nthrough it.\n\nThis truth of the real Presence breaks through many of Christ\u2019s great\nsayings and was one of the most evident features of the experience of the\nearly Church. \u201cWherever in all the world two or three shall gather in my\nname there am I in the midst of them.\u201d \u201cLo, I am with you always, even\nunto the end of the world.\u201d \u201cWherever there is one alone,\u201d according to\nthe newly found \u201csaying\u201d of Jesus, \u201cI am with him. Raise the stone and\nthere thou shalt find me; cleave the wood and there am I.\u201d\n\nNot once alone was the early Church invaded by a life and power from\nbeyond itself as at Pentecost. The consciousness which characterized this\n\u201cupper room\u201d experience was repeated in some degree wherever a Church\nof the living God came into existence, as \u201ca tiny island in a sea of\nsurrounding paganism.\u201d To belong to the Church meant to St. Paul to be\n\u201cjoined to the Lord in one spirit,\u201d while the Church itself in his great\nphrase is the body of Christ and each individual a member in particular\nof that body.\n\nWhat a difference it would make if we could rise to the height of St.\nPaul\u2019s expectation and be actually \u201cbuilded together for an habitation\nof God through the Spirit!\u201d We try plenty of other expedients. We\npopularize our message; we take up fads; we adjust as far as we can to\nthe tendencies of the time; but only one thing really works after all and\nthat is having the Church become the organ of the living God, and having\nit \u201ccharged\u201d with what Paul so often calls the power of God\u2014\u201cthe power\nthat worketh in us.\u201d\n\nI saw a car wheel recently that had been running many miles with the\nbrake clamped tight against it. It was white hot and it glowed with\nheat and light until it seemed almost transparent in its extraordinary\nluminosity. Those Christians in the upper room at Pentecost were baptized\nwith fire so that the whole personality of each of them was glowing with\nheat and light, for the fire had gone all through them. They suddenly\nbecame conscious that their divine Leader who was no longer visible\nwith them had become an invisible presence and a living power working\nthrough them. It is no wonder that all Jerusalem and its multitudinous\nsojourners were at once awakened to the fact that something novel had\nhappened.\n\nOur controversies which have divided us have been controversies about\nthings out at the periphery, not about realities at the heart and center.\nWe disagree about baptism, and we are at variance over problems of\norganization, ministry, and ordination, but the thing that really matters\nis the depth of conviction, consciousness of God, certainty of communion\nand fellowship with the Spirit. These experiences unite and never divide.\n\nThere is after all, in spite of all our gaps and chasms, only one Church.\nIt is the Church of the living God. We are named with many names. We bear\nthe sign of a particular denomination, but if we belong truly to the\nChurch, then we belong to the great Church of the living God. It is built\nupon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself\nbeing the chief cornerstone, in whom the building, fitly framed together,\ngrows into an holy temple in the Lord. This is \u201cthe blessed community,\u201d\nthe living, expanding fellowship of vital faith, and it has the promise\nof the future, whether conferences on \u201cfaith and order\u201d succeed or not,\nbecause it is the Church of the living God.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE NURSERY OF SPIRITUAL LIFE\n\nWe are coming more and more to realize that religion attaches to the\nsimple, elemental aspects of our human life. We shall not look for it in\na few rare, exalted, and so-called \u201csacred\u201d aspects of life, separated\noff from the rest of life and raised to a place apart. Religion to be\nreal and vital must be rooted in life itself and it must express itself\nthrough the whole life. It should begin, where all effective education\nmust begin, in the home, which should be the nursery of spiritual life.\n\nThe Christian home is the highest product of civilization; in fact there\nis nothing that can be called civilization where the home is absent. The\nsavage is on his way out of savagery as soon as he can create a home and\nmake family life at all sacred. The real horror of the \u201cslums\u201d in our\ngreat cities is that there are no homes there, but human beings crowded\nindiscriminately into one room. It is the real trouble with the \u201cpoor\nwhites\u201d whether in the South or in the North that they have failed to\npreserve the home as a sacred center of life.\n\nOne of the first services of the foreign missionary is to help to\nestablish homes among the people whom he hopes to Christianize. In short,\nthe home is the true unit of society. It determines what the individual\nshall be; it shapes the social life; it makes the Church possible; it is\nthe basis of the state and nation. A society of mere individual units is\ninconceivable. Men and women, each for self, and with no holy center for\nfamily life, could never compose either a Church or a State.\n\nChristianity has created the home as we know it, and that is its highest\nservice to the world, for the kingdom of heaven would be realized if\nthe Christian home were universal. The mother\u2019s knee is still the\nholiest place in the world; and the home life determines more than all\ninfluences combined what the destiny of the boy or girl shall be. The\nformation of disposition and early habits of thought and manner as well\nas the fundamental emotions and sentiments do more to shape and fix the\npermanent character than do any other forces in the world.\n\nWe may well rejoice in the power of the Sunday school, the Christian\nministry, the secular school, the college, the university; but all\ntogether they do not measure up to the power of the homes which are\nsilently, gradually determining the future lives of those who will\ncompose the Sunday school, the Church, the school, and the college.\n\nThe woman who is successful in making a true home, where peace and love\ndwell, in which the children whom God gives her feel the sacredness and\nholy meaning of life, where her husband renews his strength for the\nstruggles and activities of his life, and in which all unite to promote\nthe happiness and highest welfare of each other\u2014that woman has won the\nbest crown there is in this life, and she has served the world in a\nvery high degree. The union of man and woman for the creation of a home\nbreathing an atmosphere of love is Christ\u2019s best parable of the highest\npossible spiritual union where the soul is the bride and he is the\nEternal Bridegroom, and they are one.\n\nIt seems strange that these vital matters are so little emphasized or\nregarded. Few things in fact are more ominous than the signs of the\ndisintegration of the home as a nursery of spiritual life. We can,\nperhaps, weather catastrophes which may break down many of our ancient\ncustoms and even obliterate some of the institutions which now seem\nessential to civilization; but the home is a fundamental necessity for\ntrue spiritual nurture and culture, and if it does not perform its\nfunction the world will drift on toward unspeakable moral disasters.\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE DEMOCRACY WE AIM AT\n\nDemocracy was in an earlier period only a political aim; it has now\nbecome a deep religious issue. It must be discussed not only in caucuses\nand conventions, but in churches as well. For a century and a quarter\n\u201cdemocracy\u201d has been a great human battle word, and battle words never\nhave very exact definitions. It has all the time been charged with\nexplosive forces, and it has produced a kind of magic spell on men\u2019s\nminds during this long transitional period. But the word democracy has,\nthroughout this time, remained fluid and ill-defined\u2014sometimes expressing\nthe loftiest aspirations and sometimes serving the coarse demagogue in\nhis pursuit of selfish ends.\n\nThe goal or aim of the early struggle after democracy was the overthrow\nof human inequalities. Men were thought of in terms of individual\nunits, and the units were declared to be intrinsically equal. The\ncontention was made that they all had, or ought to have, the same rights\nand privileges. This equality-note has, too, dominated the social and\neconomic struggles of the last seventy-five years. The focus has been\ncentered upon rights and privileges. Men have been thought of, all along,\nas individual units, and the goal has been conceived in political and\neconomic terms. Democracy is still supposed, in many quarters, to be an\norganization of society in which the units have equal political rights.\nMuch of the talk concerning democracy is still in terms of privileges.\nIt is a striving to secure opportunities and chances. The aim is the\nattainment of a social order in which guarantee is given to every\nindividual that he shall have his full economic and political rights.\n\nI would not, in the least, belittle the importance of these claims,\nor underestimate the human gains which have been made thus far in the\ndirection of greater equality and larger freedom. But these achievements,\nhowever valuable, are not enough. They can only form the base from which\nto start the drive for a more genuine and adequate type of democracy. At\nits best this scheme of \u201cequality\u201d is abstract and superficial. Nobody\nwill ever be satisfied with an achievement of flat equality. Persons can\nnever be reduced to homogeneous units. There are individual differences\nwoven into the very fiber of human life, and no type of democracy can\never satisfy men like us until it gets beyond this artificial scheme and\nlearns to deal with the problem in more adequate fashion.\n\nA genuinely Christian democracy such as the religious soul is after can\nnot be conceived in economic terms, nor can it be content with social\nunits of equality or sameness. We want a democracy that is vitally and\nspiritually conceived, which recognizes and safeguards the irreducible\nuniqueness of every member of the social whole. This means that we can\nnot deal with personal life in terms of external behavior. We can not\nthink of society as an aggregation of units possessing individual rights\nand privileges. We shall no longer be satisfied to regard persons as\nbeings possessing utilitarian value or made for economic uses. We shall\nforever transcend the instrumental idea. We shall begin rather with\nthe inalienable fact of spiritual worth as the central feature of the\npersonal life. This would mean that every person, however humble or\nlimited in scope or range, has divine possibilities to be realized; is\nnot a \u201cthing\u201d to be used and exploited, but a spiritual creation to be\nexpanded until its true nature is revealed. The democracy I want will\ntreat every human person as a unique, sacred, and indispensable member\nof a spiritual whole, a whole which remains imperfect if even one of\nits \u201clittle ones\u201d is missing; and its fundamental axiom will be the\nliberation and realization of the inner life which is potential in every\nmember of the human race.\n\nOn the economic and equality level we never reach the true conception\nof personal life. Men are thought of as units having desires, needs,\nand wants to be satisfied. We are, on this basis, aiming to achieve a\ncondition in which the desires, wants, and needs are well met, in which\neach individual contributes his share of supplies to the common stock of\neconomic values, and receives in turn his equitable amount. I am dealing,\non the other hand, with a way of life which begins and ends, not with a\nmaterial value-concept at all, but rather with a central faith in the\nintrinsic worth and infinite spiritual possibilities of every person in\nthe social organism\u2014a democracy of spiritual agents.\n\nIt is true, no doubt, as Shylock said, that we all have \u201ceyes, hands,\norgans, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,\u201d are \u201csubject to\ndiseases,\u201d and \u201cwarmed and cooled by summer and winter.\u201d \u201cIf you prick\nus we bleed, if you tickle us we laugh, if you poison us we die,\u201d and so\non. We do surely have wants and needs. We must consider values. We must\nhave food and clothes and houses. We must have some fair share of the\nearth and its privileges. But that is only the basement and foundation\nof real living, and we want a democracy that is supremely concerned with\nthe development of personality and with the spiritual organization of\nsociety. We shall not make our estimates of persons on a basis of their\nuses, or on the ground of their behavior as animal beings; we shall\nlive and work, if we are Christ\u2019s disciples, in the faith that man is\nessentially a spiritual being, in a world which is essentially spiritual,\nand that we are committed to the task of awakening a like faith in others\nand of helping realize an organic solidarity of persons who practice\nthis faith. Our rule of life would be something like the following: to\nact everywhere and always as though we knew that we are members of a\nspiritual community, each one possessed of infinite worth, of irreducible\nuniqueness, and indispensable to the spiritual unity of the whole\u2014a\ncommunity that is being continually enlarged by the faith and action of\nthose who now compose it, and so in some measure being formed by our\nhuman effort to achieve a divine ideal.\n\nThe most important service we can render our fellow men is to awaken\nin them a real faith in their own spiritual nature and in their own\npotential energies, and to set them to the task of building the ideal\ndemocracy in which personality is treated as sacred and held safe from\nviolation, infringement, or exploitation, and, more than that, in which\nwe altogether respect the worth and the divine hopes inherent in our\nbeing as men.\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY\n\nThere are few questions more difficult to answer than the question, What\nis Christianity? Every attempt to answer it reveals the peculiar focus of\ninterest in the mind of the writer, but it leaves the main question still\nasking for a new answer.\n\n\u201cAlways it asketh, asketh,\u201d and each answer, to say the least, is\ninadequate. Harnack, Loisy, and Tolstoy have given three characteristic\nanswers to the great question. Their books are touched with genius and\nwill long continue to be read, but, like the other books, they, too,\nreveal the writers rather than solve the central problem.\n\nOne of the greatest difficulties about the whole matter is the difficulty\nof deciding where to look for the essential traits of Christianity.\nAre they to be found in the teaching of Jesus? Are they revealed in\nthe message of St. Paul? Are they embodied in the Messianic hope? Are\nthey exhibited in the primitive apostolic Church? Are they set forth\nin the great creeds of orthodoxy? Are they expressed in the imperial\nauthoritative Church? Are they to be discovered in the Protestantism\nof the modern world? This catalogue of preliminary questions shows how\ncomplicated the subject really is. To start in on any one of these lines\nwould be of necessity to arrive at a partial and one-sided answer.\n\nNowhere can we find pure and unalloyed Christianity; always we have\nit mixed and combined with something else, more or less foreign to\nit. The creeds contain a larger element of Greek philosophy than of\nthe pure original gospel. The Messianic hope is far more Jewish than\nit is \u201cChristian.\u201d The imperial authoritative Church is Christianity\ninterpreted through the Roman genius for organization and merged\nand fused with the age-long faiths and customs of pagan peoples.\nProtestantism is an amazingly complex blend of ideas and ideals and\neverywhere interwoven with the long processes of history. Even this did\nnot drop from the sky ready-made! Nor did St. Paul\u2019s message flash in\nupon him with the Damascus vision, as a pure heaven-presented truth. It\nproves to be a very difficult task to find one\u2019s way back to the pure,\nunalloyed teaching of Jesus, and, strangely enough, the moment one\nendeavors to constitute this by itself \u201cChristianity,\u201d and undertakes to\nturn it into a set of commands and to make it a \u201cnew law,\u201d he ends with a\ndry legalism and not a vital, universal Christianity.\n\nWhat, then, is Christianity? In answering this question we can not\nconfine ourselves to the teaching and the work of Jesus. Important as it\nis to go \u201cback to Jesus\u201d that is not enough. We can not fully comprehend\nthe meaning of Christianity until we take into account the fact that\nthe invisible, resurrected Christ is the continuation through the ages\nof the same revelation begun in the life and teaching of Jesus. Galilee\nand Judea mark only one stage of the gospel, which is, in its fullness,\nan eternal gospel. The Christian revelation which came to light first\nin one Life\u2014its master interpretation and incarnation\u2014has since been\ngoing forward in a continuous and unbroken manifestation of Christ\nthrough many lives and through many groups and through the spiritual\nachievements of all those who have lived by him. Christianity is, thus,\nthe revelation of God through personal life\u2014God humanly revealed. St.\nPaul and the writer of the Fourth Gospel were the first to reach this\nprofound insight into its fuller meaning, though it is plainly suggested\nin some of the sayings of Jesus and in the pentecostal experiences of the\nfirst Christians. It is the very heart of the Pauline and the Johannine\nChristianity. Important as is the backward look to Jesus in both these\nwriters, the central emphasis is unmistakably upon the inward experience\nof the invisible, spiritual Christ. This is the expectation in the Fourth\nGospel: Greater things than these shall ye do when the Spirit comes upon\nyou. This is the mystery, the secret of the gospel, St. Paul says, Christ\nin you.\n\nIf this is the right clew, Christianity is not a new law, nor an\ninstitution, nor a creed, nor a body of doctrine, nor a millennial\nhope. It is a type of life, it is a way of living. The most essential\nthing about it is the fact of the incursion of God into human life,\nthe revelation of the eternal in the midst of time, the new discovery\nwhich it brought of God\u2019s nature and character. We nowhere else come so\nclose to the essential truth of Christianity as we do in the life and\nexperience of Jesus. The life at every point floods over and transcends\nthe teaching. He is the most complete and adequate exhibition of what I\nhave called the incursion of God into human life, but even so he is the\nbeginning, not the end, of the revelation of God through humanity\u2014the\nChrist-revelation of God\u2014and this Christ-revelation of God _is_ God, so\nfar as he is at all adequately known.\n\nSome persons talk as though God were a kind of composite Being, got by\nadding up the God of the natural order, the God of the Old Testament,\nand the God as Father about whom Jesus taught. He is, according to this\nscheme, in some way a compound aggregate of infinite power, irresistible\njustice, and eternal love. Sometimes one \u201cattribute\u201d is predominant,\nand sometimes another, while in some mysterious way all the dissonant\nattributes get \u201creconciled.\u201d This is surely boggy ground to build upon.\n\nChristianity is essentially, I should say, a unique revelation of God.\nHere for the first time the race discovers that God identifies himself\nwith humanity, is in the stream of it, is suffering with us, is in\nmoral conflict with sin and evil, is conquering through the travail\nand tragedy of finite persons, and is eternally, in mind and heart and\nwill, a God of triumphing Love. No texts adequately \u201cprove\u201d this mighty\ntruth. We cannot tie it down to \u201csayings,\u201d though there are \u201csayings\u201d\nwhich declare it. The life of Jesus, the supreme decisions through which\nhe expresses his purpose, the spirit which dominates him and guides his\ndecisive actions, make the truth plain that God meant _that_ to him and\nthat his way of life revealed that kind of God.\n\nThrough all the fusions and confusions of history and through all the\nvagaries of man\u2019s tortuous course since the Church began to be built,\nChrist as eternal Spirit has gone on revealing this truth about God and\ndemonstrating the victorious power of this way of life. The making of\na kingdom of God in the world, the spread of the brother-spirit, the\nexpansion of the love-method, the increase of co\u00f6peration, sympathy,\nand service, the continued incursion of the divine into the life of the\nhuman, these are the things now and always which indicate the vitality\nand progress of Christianity, and the uninterrupted revelation of God.\n\nAlways, in every period of history, the essential truth of Christianity\nmust be revealed and expressed in and through a medium not altogether\nadapted to it. It is always living and working in a world more or less\nalien to it. It has at any stage only partially realized its ideal, and\nonly achieved in a fragmentary way the goal toward which it is moving.\nIt means endless conquest and ever fresh winning of unwon victories. It\nmust be for us all a vision and a venture, it must be a thing of faith\nand forecast. At the same time it is, in a very real sense, experience\nand achievement. God _has_ entered into humanity. Love has revealed its\nredeeming power. Grace is as much a reality as mountains are. The kingdom\nof God though not all in sight yet is, I believe, as sure as gravitation.\nThe invisible, eternal Christ, living in the soul of man, revealing\nhis will in moral and spiritual victories in personal lives, is, I am\nconvinced, as genuine a fact as electricity is. But we shall see _all_\nthat Christianity means only when the living totality of the revelation\nof God through humanity is complete.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE NEAR AND THE FAR\n\n\nI\n\nTHINGS PRESENT AND THINGS TO COME\n\nAnaxagoras said twenty-five hundred years ago that men are always\ncutting the world in two with a hatchet. William James, in one of his\nliving phrases, says with the same import that everybody dichotomizes\nthe cosmos. It is so. We all incline to bisect life into alternative\npossibilities. We split realities into opposing halves. We show a kind\nof fascination for an \u201ceither-or\u201d selection. We are prone to use the\nprinciple of parsimony, and to be content with one side of a dilemma.\nHistory presents a multitude of dualistic pairs from which one was\nsupposed to make his individual selection. There was the choice between\nthis world and the next world; the here and the yonder; the flesh and the\nspirit; faith and reason; the sacred and the secular; the outward and\nthe inward, and many more similar alternatives. This \u201ceither-or\u201d method\nalways leaves its trail of leanness behind. It makes life thin and narrow\nwhere it might be rich and broad, for in almost every case it is just as\npossible to have a whole as to have a half, to take both as to select an\nalternative. St. Paul found his Corinthians bisecting their spiritual\nlives and narrowing their interests to one or two possibilities. One of\nthem would choose Paul as his representative of the truth and then see no\nvalue in the interpretation which Apollos had to give. Another attached\nhimself to Apollos and missed all the rich contributions of Paul. Some of\nthe \u201csaints\u201d of the Church selected Cephas as the only oracle, and they\nlost all the breadth which would have come to them had they been able\nto make a synthesis of the opposing aspects. St. Paul called them from\ntheir divided half to a completed whole. He told them that instead of\n\u201ceither-or\u201d they could have both. \u201cAll things are yours; whether Paul or\nApollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present or\nthings to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ\u2019s and Christ is God\u2019s.\u201d\nThis is the method of synthesis. This is the substitution of wholes for\nhalves, the proffer of both for an \u201ceither-or\u201d alternative.\n\nThat last pair of alternatives is an interesting one, and many persons\nmake their bisecting choice of life there. One well-known type of person\nfocuses on the near, the here and now, the things present. Those who\nbelong to this class propose to make hay while the sun shines. They glory\nin being practical. They have what doctors call myopia. They see only the\nnear. Their lenses will not adjust for the remote. They believe in quick\nreturns and bank upon practical results. Those of the other type have\npresbyopia, or far-sightedness. They are dedicated to the far-away, the\nremote, the yonder. They are pursuing rainbows and distant ideals. They\nare so eager for the millennium that they forget the problem of their\nstreet and of the present day. Browning has given us a picture of both\nthese types:\n\n    \u201cThat low man seeks a little thing to do,\n      Sees it and does it:\n    This high man, with a great thing to pursue,\n      Dies ere he knows it.\n\n    That low man goes on adding one to one,\n      His hundred\u2019s soon hit:\n    This high man, aiming at a million,\n      Misses an unit.\u201d\n\nBrowning\u2019s sympathies are plainly with the \u201chigh man\u201d who misses the\nunit, but it is one more case of unnecessary dichotomy. What we want is\nthe discovery of a way to unite into one synthesis things present and\nthings to come. We need to learn how to seize this narrow isthmus of a\npresent and to enrich it with the momentous significance of past and\nfuture. Henry Bergson has been telling us that all rich moments of life\nare rich just because they roll up and accumulate the meaning of the past\nand because they are crowded with anticipations of the future. They are\nfused with memory and expectation, and one of these two factors is as\nimportant as the other. If either dies away the present becomes a useless\nhalf, like the divided parts of the child which Solomon proposed to\nbisect for the two contending mothers.\n\nWe are at one of those momentous ridges of time at the present moment.\nSome are so busy with the near and immediately practical that they cannot\nsee the far vision of the world that is to be built. Others are so\nimpressed with past issues that have become paramount, with the glorious\nmemories of the blessed Monroe Doctrine, for instance, that they have no\nexpectant eyes for the creation of an interrelated and unified world.\nAnother group is so concerned with the social millennium that they\ndiscount the lessons of the past, the message of history, the wisdom of\nexperience, and fly to the useless task of constructing abstract human\nparadises and dreams of a world-kingdom which could exist only in a realm\nwhere men had ceased to be men.\n\nWhat we want is a synthesis of things present and things to come, a union\nof the practical, tested experience of life and the inspired vision of\nthe prophet who sees unfolding the possibilities of human life raised to\nits fuller glory in Christ, the incarnation of the way of love, which\nalways has worked, is working now, and always will work.\n\n\nII\n\nTWO TYPES OF MINISTRY\n\nMost people like to be told what they already think. They enjoy hearing\ntheir own opinions and ideas promulgated, and no amens are so hearty as\nthe ones which greet the reannouncement of views we have already held.\n\nThe natural result is that speakers are apt to give their hearers what\nthey want. They take the line of least resistance and say what will\narouse the enthusiasm of the people before them, and they get their quick\nreward. They are popular at once. There is a high tide of emotion as they\nproceed to tell what everybody present already thinks, and they soon find\nthemselves in great demand.\n\nThe main trouble with such an easy ministry is that it isn\u2019t worth doing.\nIt accomplishes next to nothing. It merely arouses a pleasurable emotion\nand leaves lives where they were before. And yet not quite where they\nwere either, for the constant repetition of things we already believe\ndulls the mind and deadens the will and weakens rather than strengthens\nthe power of life. It is an easy ministry both for speakers and hearers,\nbut it is ominous for them both.\n\nThe prophet has a very different task. He cannot give people what they\nwant. He is under an unescapable compulsion to give them what his soul\nbelieves to be true. He cannot take lines of least resistance; he must\nwork straight up against the current. He cannot work for quick effects;\nhe must slowly educate his people and compel them to see what they have\nnot seen before. The amens are very slow to come to his words, and he\ncannot look for emotional thrills. He must risk all that is dear to\nhimself, except the truth, as he sets himself to his task, and he is\nbound to tread lonely wine-presses before he can see of the travail of\nhis soul and be satisfied.\n\nEvery age has these two types of ministry. They are both ancient and\nfamiliar. There are always persons who are satisfied to give what is\nwanted, who are glad to cater to popular taste, who like the quick\nreturns. But there are, too, always a few souls to be found who volunteer\nfor the harder task. They forego the amens and patiently teach men to see\nfarther than they have seen before. Their first question is not, What do\npeople want me to say? but, What is God\u2019s truth which to-day ought to be\nheard through me? and knowing that, they speak. They do not move their\nhearers as the other type does; they do not reach so many, and they miss\nthe popular rewards\u2014but they are compassed about by a great cloud of\nwitnesses as they fight their battles for the truth, and they have their\njoy.\n\nBut this is not quite all there is to say. It is not possible to teach\nthe new effectively without linking it up with the old. The wholly new is\ngenerally not true. New, fresh truth emerges out of ancient experience;\nit does not drop like a shooting star from the distant skies. The great\nprophets in all ages have lived close to the people. They have not had\ntheir \u201cear to the ground,\u201d to use a political phrase, but they have\nunderstood the human heart. They have lived in the great currents of\nlife. They have heard the going in the mulberry trees, and have felt the\nbreaking forth of the dawning light just because of their double union\nwith men and God.\n\nAll sound pedagogy recognizes this principle. The good teacher knits\nthe new material which he wishes learned on to the old and familiar. He\ntakes his student forward by gradual stages, not by leaps and bounds, and\nhe binds the known and unknown together by rational synthesis, not by\nsome strange, foreign, magical glue. The more we wish to belong to the\nprophet-class and to raise our hearers to new and greater levels of truth\nand insight, the more we shall strive to understand the truth that has\nalready been revealed, to saturate ourselves with it, to fuse and kindle\nour lives with those immense realities by which men in past ages have\nlived and conquered. So, and only so, can we go forward and take others\nforward with us to new experiences and to new discoveries of the light\nthat never was on sea or land.\n\n\nIII\n\n\u201cWE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR\u201d\n\nEvery time the Christmas anniversary returns, the heart renews its\nyouthful joy in the thrilling stories of the nativity. We cannot be too\nthankful for the inspiration and poetry and imagination which touch and\nglorify every aspect of our religious faith. Some dull and leaden-minded\npedants appear to think that the \u201creal\u201d Christ is the person we get when\nwe take, for the construction of our figure, only those facts about him\nwhich can be rationalistically, historically, and critically verified. We\nare thus reduced to a few religious ideas, a little group of \u201csayings,\u201d\na tiny body of events, which explain none of the immense results that\nfollowed. The real Christ, on the contrary, is this rich, wonderful,\nmysterious, baffling person whose life was vastly greater even than his\ndeeds or his words, who aroused the wonder and imagination of all who\ncame in contact with him, who touched everything with emotion, and fused\nreligion forever with poetry and feeling. He, in a very true sense,\n\n    \u201c ... touches all things common,\n    Till they rise to touch the spheres.\u201d\n\nNot only over the manger, but over the entire story of his life, hovers\nthe glory of the star. It is a life that will not stay down on the dull\nearth of mere fact; it always rises into the region of idealism and\nbeauty. It always transcends the things of sight and touch. We have a\nreligion which cannot be confined in a system of doctrine or a code of\nethics; it partakes too intimately of life for that. It is, like its\nFounder, a full rounded reality, rich in inspiration and emotion and\nwonder, as well as in intellectual ideas and truth. When the star wanes\nand imagination falls away, and we hold in our thin hands only the husks\nof a dead system, the power of religion is over.\n\nThe same thing is true of the cross. Its power lies in the fullness and\nrichness of the reality. We do not want to reduce it, but to raise it\nto its full meaning and glory as a way of complete life. The direction\nof present-day Christianity is certainly not away from Calvary, but\nquite the opposite. The men who are in these days trying to deliver our\nreligion from formalism and tradition find not less meaning in the cross\nthan a former generation did, but vastly more. The atonement remains at\nthe center, as it has always done, in vital Christianity. All attempts to\nreduce Christianity to a dry and bloodless system of philosophy, with\nthe appeal of the heart left out, fail now as they have always failed.\nIt is a Savior that men, tangled in their sins and their sorrows, still\nwant\u2014not merely a great thinker or a great teacher.\n\nThe Church has, no doubt, far too much neglected the idea of the kingdom\nof God as Christ expounded it in sermon and parable, and hosts of\nprominent Christians do not at all understand what this great, central\nteaching of the Master meant then and means now. His transforming\nrevelation of the nature of God has, too, been missed by multitudes, who\nstill hold Jewish rather than Christian conceptions of God. But patient\nstudy of the gospel is slowly forcing these ideas into the thought of\nmen everywhere, and books abound now which make his teaching clear and\nluminous.\n\nWhat is needed above everything else now is that we shall not lose any\nof our vision of Christ as Savior, and that we shall live our lives\nin his presence. It is through the cross that we touch closest to the\nSavior-heart, and it is here that we feel our lives most powerfully moved\nby the certainty of his divine nature. Arguments may fail, but one who\nlooks steadily at this voluntary Sufferer, giving himself for us, will\ncry out, with one of old, \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d\n\nNothing short of that will do, I believe, if Christianity is to remain\na saving religion. Good men have died in all ages; great teachers have\nagain and again gone to their deaths in behalf of their truth or out\nof love for their disciples. It touches us as we read of their bravery\nand their loyalty, but we do not and we cannot build a world-saving\nreligion upon them. Christ is different! We feel that in him the veil is\nlifted and we are face to face with God. When we hear with our hearts\nthe words, \u201cIn the world ye shall have tribulation; but fear not, for I\nhave overcome the world,\u201d we feel that we are hearing the triumph of God\nin the midst of suffering\u2014we are hearing of an eternal triumph. Christ\ncan not be for us less than God manifested here in a world of time and\nspace and finiteness, doing in time what God does in eternity\u2014suffering\nover sin, entering vicariously into the tragedy of evil, and triumphing\nwhile he treads the winepress. No one has fathomed the awfulness of sin,\nuntil, in some sense, he feels that his sin makes God suffer, that it\ncrucifies him afresh. If Christ is God revealed in time\u2014made visible and\nvocal to men\u2014then, through the cross, we shall discover that we are not\nto think of God henceforth as Sovereign\u2014not a Being yonder, enjoying his\nroyal splendor. We must think of him all the time in terms of Christ. He\nis an eternal Lover of our hearts. We pierce him with our sins; we wound\nhim with our wickedness. He suffers, as mothers who love suffer, and he\nenters vicariously into all the tragic deeps of our lives, striving to\nbring us home to him. Jan Ruysbroeck says:\n\n    \u201cYou must love the Love which loves you everlastingly, and if\n    you hold fast by his love, he remakes you by his Spirit, and\n    then joy is yours. The Spirit of God breathes into you, and you\n    breathe it out in rest and joy and love. This is eternal life,\n    just as in our mortal life we breathe out the air that is in us\n    and breathe in fresh air.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY\n\n\nI\n\nTHE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH\n\nThe Greeks had their story of Tithonus, a deeply significant myth of a\nman who could not die, but who grew ever older and more decrepit until\nthe tragedy became unendurable and he envied those \u201chappy men that have\nthe power to die.\u201d Methuselah\u2019s biography is brief and compact, but it\nis full of pathos: \u201cHe lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he\ndied.\u201d There was nothing more to add. Somebody has invented a radium\nmotor which strikes a little bell every second and is warranted to go\non doing that for thirty thousand years. The Methuselah monotony and\ntedium seem much like that thin _seriatim_ row of items. It just goes on\nwith no novelty and no cumulation, and finally the one relieving novelty\nis introduced\u2014\u201che died.\u201d What a happy fact it was! The wandering Jew\nstands out in imaginative fiction as one of the saddest of all men\u2014a\nbeing who endlessly goes on. The angel of death seems a gentle, gracious\nmessenger when one thinks of the prospect of unending life, going on\nin a one-dimensional series, with no new values and no fresh powers of\nexpansion. To many persons the idea of heaven is simply an expanded\nMethuselah biography.\n\nBiologists have completely reversed the theory that death is an enemy.\nIt has long ago taken its place in the system of teleology, among \u201cthe\nthings that are for us.\u201d Death has, beyond question, and has had, \u201ca\nnatural utility.\u201d It has played an important _r\u00f4le_ in raising life from\nthe low unicellular type to the rich complex forms of higher organisms,\nfrom \u201cthe am\u0153ba that never dies of old age\u201d to the new dynasty of beings\nthat have greater range and scope, but which nevertheless do die. Edwin\nArnold in his striking essay on _Death_ says: \u201cThe lowest living thing,\nthe Protam\u0153ba, has obviously never died! It is a formless film of\nprotoplasm, which multiplies by simple division; and the specimen under\nany microscope derives, and must derive, in unbroken existence from the\nam\u0153ba which moved and fed forty \u00e6ons ago. The slime of our nearest puddle\nlived before the Alps were made!\u201d Methuselah was a mere child in a\nperambulator compared to an am\u0153ba.\n\nIn cases where the continued process of cell-division produced a lowered\nand weakened type of am\u0153ba a rudimentary form of union of cells took\nplace, which resulted in raising the entire level of life and eventually\ncarried the biological order up to wholly new possibilities. So that\nthe threatened approach of death was met with an increase of life. \u201cIt\nis more probable that death is a consequence of life,\u201d says the famous\nbiologist, Edward Cope, \u201crather than that the living is a product of the\nnon-living.\u201d[2]\n\nBut in any case the testimony of biology can give us little help. Even if\ndeath has had a function in the process of evolution, as seems likely,\nthat in no way eases the situation when the staggering blow falls into\nour precious circle and removes from it an intimate personal life that\nwas indispensable to us. It is poor, cold comfort to be told that death\nhas assisted through the long \u00e6ons in the slow process of heightening\nthe entire scale of life, if there is nothing more to say regarding the\nfuture of this dear one whose frail bark has now gone to wreck. We must\nsomehow rise above the level of brute facts and discover some spiritual\nsignificance which death has revealed, before we can arrive at any source\nof comfort. We are all agreed with Shakespeare\u2019s Claudio that \u201c\u2019tis too\nhorrible\u201d to think of death as a sheer terminus:\n\n    \u201c ... to die and go we know not where;\n    To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;\n    This sensible warm motion to become\n    A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit\n    To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside\n    In thrilling regions of rock-ribbed ice;\n    To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,\n    And blown with restless violence round about\n    The pendent world.\u201d\n\nDeath has undoubtedly brought to consciousness, as has perhaps no other\nexperience, the deeper meaning and significance of personal life. This\nand not its biological function is what concerns us now. It has been\nsaid that \u201cfreedom,\u201d so far as it is achieved, \u201cis the main achievement\nof man in the past.\u201d[3] I should be inclined rather to hold that man\u2019s\nmain achievement on the planet so far has been to discover that personal\nlife reveals within itself an absolute value and possesses unmistakable\ncapacity to transcend the finite and temporal, an experience which\nmakes freedom possible. I believe death has ministered more than any\nother single fact that confronts us in bringing those truths to clear\nconsciousness. We cannot, of course, dissociate death and separate it\nfrom pain, suffering, struggle and danger, which are essentially bound up\nwith it. If the world were to be freed completely from death it would at\nonce _ipso facto_ be freed from the danger of it and by the same altered\ncondition struggle would to a large degree be eliminated, and likewise\nthose other great tests of life\u2014pain and suffering, which culminate in\ndeath. These things are all \u201cperilous incidents\u201d of finiteness, but of\na finiteness which transcends itself and is allied to something beyond\nitself. To eliminate these things would be to miss the discovery of this\nstrange finite-infinite nature of ours which makes life such a venture\nand so full of mystery and wonder. If we had been only naturalistic\nbeings, curious bits of the earth\u2019s crust merely capable of recording the\nempirical facts as they occurred, death would have taken an unimportant\nplace as one more event in a successive series of phenomena. Built as we\nare, however, with a beyond within ourselves, the fact of mutability and\nmortality has occasioned a transformation of our entire estimate of life\nand has led us by the hand to a Pisgah view which we should never have\ngot if there had been no invasion of death into our world.\n\n\u201cIt is a venerable commonplace,\u201d as Professor Schiller of Oxford has\nsaid, \u201cthat among the melancholy prerogatives which distinguish man\nfrom the other animals and bestow a deeper significance on human life\nis the fact that man alone is aware of the doom that terminates his\nearthly existence, and on this account lives a more spiritual life, in\nthe ineffable consciousness of the \u2018sword of Damocles\u2019 which overshadows\nhim and weights his lightest action with gigantic import. Nay, more;\nstimulated by the ineluctable necessity of facing death, and of living so\nas to face it with fortitude, man has not abandoned himself to nerveless\ninaction, to pusillanimous despair; he has conceived the thought, he\nhas cherished the hope, he has embraced the belief, of a life beyond\nthe grave, and opened his soul to the religions which baulk the king of\nterrors of his victims and defraud him of his victory. Thus, the fear\nof death has been redeemed, and ennobled by the consoling belief in\nimmortality, a belief from which none are base enough to withhold their\nmoral homage, even though the debility of mortal knowledge may debar a\nfew from a full acceptance of its promise.\u201d[4]\n\nThe early animistic views of survival, which were the first forecasts of\na life beyond, were due not so much to the consciousness of the moral\ngrandeur of life as to _actual experiences_ which gave to primitive\nman a confident assurance of some form of life after the death of the\nbody. Dreams had an important part in leading man to this na\u00efve and yet\nmomentous discovery. In a world which had no established criterion of\n\u201creality,\u201d the experiences of vivid dreams were taken to be as real as\nany other experiences, and in these dreams the dreamer often found his\ndead ancestors and friends and tribesmen once more present with him,\nactive in the chase or the fight and as real as ever they were in life.\nTrance, hallucination, telepathy, mediumship, possession, are not new\nphenomena; they are very primitive and ancient. These things are as old\nas smiling and weeping. These psychic experiences had their part to\nplay also in giving the early races their belief that the dead person\nstill existed though in an altered and attenuated form as an _animus_ or\n\u201cspirit\u201d or \u201cshade.\u201d This empirical view of survival, built on actual\nexperiences, was more or less incapable of advance. No further knowledge\ncould be acquired and the constructions fashioned by imagination, in\nreference to \u201cthe scenery and circumstance\u201d of the departed soul, could\nsatisfy only an uncritical mind. These constructions were, too, often\ncrude and bizarre, and tended, in the hands of priests, to hamper man\u2019s\nmoral development rather than to further it. But in any case man had made\nthe momentous guess that death did not utterly end him or his career.\nPoor and thin as this dimly conceived future world of primitive man\u2019s\nhope may have been, the psychological effect of the hope was by no means\nnegligible. Professor Shaler of Harvard was probably speaking truly when\nhe wrote:\n\n\u201cIf we should seek some one mark, which in the intellectual advance from\nthe brutes to man, might denote the passage to the human side, we might\nwell find it in the moment when it dawned upon the nascent man that death\nwas a mystery which he had in his turn to meet. From the time when man\nbegan to face death to the present stage of his development there has\nbeen a continuous struggle between the motives of personal fear on the\none hand, and valor on the other. That of fear has been constantly aided\nby the work of the imagination. For one fact of danger there have been\nscores of fancied risks to come from the unseen world. Against this great\nhost of imaginary ills, which tended utterly to bear men down, they had\nbut one helper\u2014their spirit of valiant self-sacrifice for the good of\ntheir family, their clan, their state, their race, or, in the climax, for\nthe Infinite above.\u201d[5]\n\nIt marked a still greater intellectual advance when primitive man came to\nthe immense conclusion not only that death was a mystery which he in turn\nmust meet, but that he was a being that would survive death.\n\nIt is, however, in another field that we must look for the most important\nspiritual results from the contemplation of death, that is in what we\nmay call the field of spiritual values. I have already contended that\nman\u2019s greatest discovery was his discovery of the absolute value of moral\npersonality. Of course, it came fairly late in the development of the\nrace and by no means has everybody made it yet! But at any rate there\ncame a time somewhere in the process of history when man did discover a\nbeyond within himself, a greater inclusive self present within his own\nfragmentary, finite spirit, revealed as a passion for perfection not yet\nattained or experienced, a prophesying consciousness of eternity within\nhis often baffled and defeated temporal life. No one has expressed the\nfact of this inner beyond within us better than old Sir Thomas Browne\ndid in the seventeenth century: \u201cWe are men and we know not how; there\nis something in us that can be without us and will be after us, though\nit is strange that it hath no history of what it was before us, nor can\ntell how it entered in us.... There is surely a piece of Divinity in us,\nsomething that was before the elements and owes not homage unto the Sun.\u201d\n\nThe sublimity and grandeur revealed in nature, the majesty of mountains,\nthe might of seas, the mystery of the ocean, the glory of the sun and\nstars, the awe inspired by the thunderstorm, awakened man\u2019s own spirit\nand made him dimly conscious of a kindred grandeur in his own answering\nsoul. The greatest step of all was taken when man awoke to the meaning\nand value of love. In some dim sense love preceded the emergence of man.\nThe evolution of a mother and of a father, as Drummond showed, began far\nback in forms of life below man. But the type of love which transcends\ninstinct, which is raised above sex-assertion, and is transmuted into an\nunselfish appreciation of the beauty and worth of personal character\u2014that\ntype of love is one of the most wonderful flowers that has yet blossomed\non our Igdrasil tree of life and it was late and slow to come, like\nflowers on the century-plant.\n\nWhen death broke in and separated those who loved in this great fashion\nthe whole problem of death at once became an urgent one. In fact death\nreceived _attention_ in proportion as the higher values of life began to\nbe realized. Walt Whitman\u2019s fiery outburst reveals clearly his estimate\nof the worth of personality. \u201cIf rats and maggots end us, then alarum!\nfor we are betrayed\u201d\u2014he might have said \u201cif microbes end us.\u201d Emerson\u2019s\npoignant outcry of soul is found in his greatest poem\u2014\u201cThrenody\u201d:\n\n    \u201cThere\u2019s not a sparrow or a wren,\n    There\u2019s not a blade of autumn grain,\n    Which the four seasons do not tend\n    And tides of life and increase lend;\n    And every chick of every bird,\n    And weed and rock-moss is preferred.\n    O ostrich-like forgetfulness!\n    O loss of larger in the less!\n    Was there no star that could be sent,\n    No watcher in the firmament,\n    No angel from the countless host\n    That loiters round the crystal coast,\n    Could stoop to heal that only child,\n    Nature\u2019s sweet marvel undefiled,\n    And keep the blossom of the earth,\n    Which all her harvests were not worth?\u201d\n\nNo such high revolt of spirit was occasioned so long as death was a mere\nbiological event, terminating one life to give room for another. This\ncry of soul means the discovery of the infinite preciousness of personal\nlife. The mind now turns in on itself and takes a new account of its\nstock, and as a result man began to solve the problem of death in an\nenlarged way. He was no longer satisfied with a form of survival based\nupon his experiences in dreams, trance and hallucination; he came to feel\nthat he must have a destiny which fitted his spiritual worth as a man. He\nfinds within himself intimation of powers and possibilities beyond those\nrequired for the struggle of life here. He feels by that same insight\nwhich carries him out beyond the seen to a rational faith in the unseen\nthat is necessary to complete it, that this little arc of earthly life\nwith its revelations of spiritual value and its transcendent prophecies\nof more must find fulfillment somewhere in a form of life that rounds it\nout full circle.\n\nThe argument does not build on a passion of desire, as some doubters have\nsaid. We do not assume immortality just because we want it. It rests upon\nthe moral consistency of the universe, upon the trustworthy character\nof the eternal nature of things. The moral values which are revealed in\nfully developed personality are certainly as _real_, as much a fact of\nthe universe, as are the tides or the orbits of planets. If we can count\nupon the continuity of these occurrences and upon our predictions of\nthem, just as surely can we count on the consistency of the universe in\nreference to spiritual values. If there is conservation of matter there\nis at least as good ground for affirming conservation of moral values.\nIf biological life can pass over the slender bridge of a microscopic\ngerm-plasm and can carry with itself over that feeble bridge the traces\nof habit and feature, the curve of nose and the emotional tone of some\nfar-off dead ancestor, and all the heredity gains of the past, may we not\ncount upon the permanence of that in us which allies us to that infinite\nSpirit who is even now the invisible environment of all we see and touch?\n\nIt is not a matter of reward or of \u201cwages\u201d that concerns us. It is not\n\u201chappy isles\u201d or care-free \u201cEdens\u201d that we seek, not \u201cgolden streets\u201d\nand endless comfort to make up for the stress and toil of the lean years\nhere below. We want to find the whole of ourselves, we ask the privilege\nof seeing this fragmentary being of ours unfold into the full expression\nof its gifts and powers. The new period may be even more strenuous and\nhazardous than this one has been\u2014still we want the venture. We ask for\nthe culminating acts that will complete the drama, so far only fairly\nbegun. It must be not a mere serial, or straight line, existence; it\nmust be the opening out and expansion of the possibilities which we feel\nwithin ourselves\u2014new dimensions, please God.\n\nI am not wrong, I am sure, in claiming that this postulate, this rational\nfaith in the conservation of values, is an asset which death has revealed\nto the race. The shock of death has always made love appear a greater\nthing than we knew before the baffling crisis came upon us. It has, too,\nby the same shock of contrast, awakened man to the full comprehension\nof the moral sublimity of the good life. Kant maintained that the sense\nof the sublime is due to the fact that when we are confronted with the\nsupreme powers of nature we then become aware of something unfathomable\nin ourselves, and feel that we are superior to the might of the storm,\nor the mountain or the cataract. Nowhere is this truer than when man\u2014man\nin his full, rich powers\u2014is confronted by death. Instead of cringing in\nfear, he rises to an unaccustomed height of greatness and is utterly\nsuperior to death and aware of some quality of being in himself which\ndeath cannot touch. It is just then in that moment of seeming disaster\nand dissolution that a brave, good man is most triumphant and ready to\nburn all bridges behind him in his great adventure. Mrs. Browning, all\nher life an invalid, says about this so-called gigantic enemy: \u201cI cannot\nlook on the earthside of death. When I look deathwards I look over death\nand upwards.\u201d Her husband, who was \u201cever a fighter,\u201d has this way of\nannouncing the triumph:\n\n    \u201cAnd then as, \u2019mid the dark, a gleam\n    Of yet another morning breaks,\n      And like the hand which ends a dream,\n    Death, with the might of his sunbeam,\n    Touches the flesh and the soul awakes.\u201d[6]\n\nHere is the testimony of a French soldier who writes at a moment when\ndeath is close beside him: \u201cI had often known the joy of seeing a spring\ncome like this, but never before had I been given the power of living in\nevery instant. So it is that one wins, without the help of any science, a\nvague but indisputable intuition of the Absolute.... These are hours of\nsuch beauty that he who embraces them knows not what death means.\u201d\n\nHaving come upon the higher values of personal life which death has\nforced upon us we can never again, as men, be satisfied with such\nfacts of survival as may come to light through dreams, hallucinations,\ntelepathy and mediums, or in fact through any empirical experiences. Even\nif the evidence were vastly greater than it is for some form of animistic\nsurvival, it would fall far short of our moral and spiritual demands. We\nalready have some intimations in us of \u201cthe power of an endless life,\u201d\nand we seek for a chance to bring it full into play, for the \u201cheavenly\nperiod\u201d to \u201cperfect the earthen,\u201d for an ampler life that will reveal\nwhat we have all the time _meant_ life to be.\n\nWinifred Kirkland in _The New Death_ well says: \u201cThe New Death, _i.e._,\nthe new view of death, is the perception of our mortal end as the mere\nportal of an eternal progression and the immediate result is the\nconsecration of all living.... It is a new illumination, a New Death,\nwhen dying can be the greatest inspiration of our everyday energy, the\nstrongest impulse toward daily joy.\u201d\n\n\nII\n\nTHE NEW BORN OUT OF THE OLD\n\nWalking across the fields in the spring I found the empty shell of a\nbird\u2019s egg. The tiny bird that once was in it was lying still and happy\nunder its mother\u2019s wings, or was chirping its new-born song from the limb\nof a nearby tree, or was trying its new-found wings on the buoyant air.\nThe empty shell was utterly worthless, a mere plaything for the wind.\nThe miracle of life that had stirred within it and had used it for its\nshelter had gone on and left it deserted. There is a fine proverb which\nsays, \u201cGod empties the nest by hatching out the eggs,\u201d and the world\nis full of this gentle, silent, divine method of abolishing the old by\nsetting free to higher ends all that was true and living in it.\n\n    \u201cTo-day I saw the dragon-fly\n    Come from the wells where he did lie.\n    An inner impulse rent the veil\n    Of his old husk: from head to tail\n    Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.\n    He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;\n    Through crofts and pastures wet with dew\n    A living flash of light he flew.\u201d\n\nIn the water below, the \u201cold husk\u201d lay empty and useless, while the\nbright-colored living thing found its freedom in the invisible air. I\nnever go to a funeral without thinking of this miracle of transformation\nwhich brings the bird out of the egg, the flower out of the seed, the\ndragon-fly out of its water-larva. In his own mysterious way God has\nemptied the nest by the hatching method, and all that was excellent,\nlovable, and permanent in the one we loved has found itself in the realm\nfor which it was fitted. The body is only the empty shell, the shattered\nseed, the old husk, which the silent forces of nature will slowly turn\nback again into its original elements, to use over again for its myriad\nprocesses of building:\n\n    \u201cAnd from his ashes may be made\n    The violet of his native land.\u201d\n\nThose who treasure up the outworn dust and ashes, who make their thoughts\ncenter about the empty shell, are failing to read aright the deeper\nfact, which life everywhere is trying to utter, that that which belongs\nin the higher sphere cannot be pent up in the lower.\n\nThis divine hatching method may be seen, too, in the progress of truth,\nas it unfolds from stage to stage. Nothing is more common than to see a\nperson holding on to a shell in which truth has dwelt, without realizing\nthat the precious thing he wants has gone on and re\u00ebmbodied itself in\nnew and living ways which he fails to follow and comprehend. While he is\nsaying in melancholy tones, \u201cThey have taken away my Lord and I know not\nwhere they have laid him,\u201d the living Lord is saying, \u201cHave I been so\nlong time with thee and yet dost thou not know me?\u201d\n\nTruth can no more keep a fixed and permanent form than life can. It lives\nonly by hatching out into higher and ever more adequate expressions of\nitself, and the old forms in which it lived, the old words through which\nit uttered itself, become empty and hollow because the warm breath of God\nhas raised the inner life, the spiritual reality, to a higher form of\nexpression.\n\nThe writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews was very much impressed with\nthis crumbling of old forms and expressions to give place to the new.\nGod spoke, he says, to our fathers in sundered portions and in a variety\nof manners, but he is speaking to us now by his Son. The things that can\nbe shaken, he writes, are being removed that the things which cannot be\nshaken may remain. Luther must have felt this shaking process in his day;\nand when he saw the old forms of religion crumbling, he wrote that great\nhymn of the Reformation, \u201cA Mighty Fortress is Our God.\u201d He had found\nsomething that could not be shaken. He could stand his ground and face\nthe seen and unseen world in faith, because he knew that the hatching was\ngoing on, and the new was being born in higher, truer, and more adequate\nforms as the old was vanishing.\n\nLet us hope that this ancient divine method may still operate in this\nmomentous hour of human history. Never, perhaps, since the fall of Rome,\nhas there been such a world-shaking process affecting every country and\nall peoples. Immense changes are under way. Nothing will ever be quite\nthe same again. The old is vanishing before our eyes and the new is\nbeing born. So much was wrong and outworn, and unjust and inhuman, that\nthe changes must go very far, and they will necessarily involve some\nbreakage. But even now, in this most dynamic period of modern history,\nthat which is to mark permanent progress will come forth, not by a\nsmashing process, but by the hatching of the eggs, by the emergence of\nthe underlying forces of life and the realization of those human hopes\nand aspirations that have long been held in and suppressed.\n\nThere is always the gravest danger from blind rage and sullen wrath. The\npassionate resentment for the suffering of immemorial wrongs, when once\nit breaks through the dams of restraint, is an almost irresistible force;\nbut sooner or later the sound, serious sense of the intelligent human\nrace comes into play and brings the world back to order and system. The\nreal gains in these crises are made not by the smashings and the blind\niconoclastic blows, but by the wise, clear-sighted fulfillment of the\nslowly formed ideals which have been the inspiration of many lives before\nthe crisis came. May it be so now! It must not be, it cannot be, that\nthese millions of men shall have unavailingly faced death and mutilation.\nIt was not wreckage and chaos they sought in their brave adventure with\ndeath. They went out to build a new world and to destroy, only that a new\nre-creation might begin. This is the time of incubation and birth, for\nripening into reality those mighty hopes that make us men.\n\nIt means at once that we must deepen down our lives into the life of God,\nthat we must suppress our petty individual passions and feel the sweep of\nGod\u2019s purposes for the new age. In a multitude of ways the world moves\non, and as it moves the Spirit of God ends old forms and methods and\nbrings fresh and living ways to light. May we have eyes to see what is of\nhis divine hatching and what is empty shell!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE MYSTIC\u2019S EXPERIENCE OF GOD\n\n\nI\n\nThe revival of mysticism which has been one of the noteworthy features\nin the Christianity of our time has presented us with a number of\ninteresting and important questions. We want to know, first of all, what\nmysticism really is. Secondly, we want to know whether it is a normal or\nabnormal experience. And omitting many other questions which must wait\ntheir turn, we want to know whether mystical experiences actually enlarge\nour sphere of knowledge, i.e., whether they are trustworthy sources of\nauthentic information and authoritative truth concerning realities which\nlie beyond the range of human senses.\n\nThe answer to the first question appears to be as difficult to accomplish\nas the return of Ulysses was. The secret is kept in book after book.\nOne can marshall a formidable array of definitions, but they oppose and\nchallenge one another, like the men sprung from the dragon\u2019s teeth.\nFor the purposes of the present consideration we can eliminate what is\nusually included under psychical phenomena, that is, the phenomena of\ndreams, visions and trances, hysteria and dissociation and esoteric\nand occult phenomena. Thirty years ago Professor Royce said: \u201cIn the\nFather\u2019s house are many mansions, and their furniture is extremely\nmanifold. Astral bodies and palmistry, trances and mental healing,\ncommunications from the dead and \u2018phantasms of the living\u2019\u2014such things\nare for some people to-day the sole quite unmistakable evidences of the\nsupremacy of the spiritual world.\u201d These phenomena are worthy of careful\npainstaking study and attention, for they will eventually throw much\nlight upon the deep and complex nature of human personality, are in fact\nalready throwing much light upon it. But they furnish us slender data\nfor understanding what is properly meant by mystical experience and its\nreligious and spiritual bearing.\n\nWe can, too, leave on one side the metaphysical doctrines which fill a\nlarge amount of space in the books of the great mystics. These doctrines\nhad a long historical development and they would have taken essentially\nthe same form if the exponents of them had not been mystics. Mystical\nexperience is confined to no one form of philosophy, though some ways of\nthinking no doubt favor and other ways retard the experience, as they\nalso often do in the case of religious _faith_ in general. Mystical\nexperience, furthermore, must not be confused with what technical expert\nwriters call \u201cthe mystic way.\u201d There are as many mystical \u201cways\u201d as there\nare gates to the New Jerusalem: \u201cOn the east three gates, on the north\nthree gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates.\u201d One\nmight as well try to describe _the way_ of making love, or _the way_ of\nappreciating the grand canyon as to describe _the way_ to the discovery\nof God, as though there were only one way.\n\nI am not interested in mysticism as an _ism_. It turns out in most\naccounts to be a dry and abstract thing, hardly more like the warm and\nintimate experience than the color of a map is like the country for which\nit stands. \u201cCanada is very pink,\u201d seems quite an inadequate description\nof the noble country north of our border. It is mystical experience and\nnot mysticism that is worthy of our study. We are concerned with the\nexperience itself, not with second-hand formulations of it. \u201cThe mystic,\u201d\nsays Professor Royce, \u201cis a thorough-going empiricist;\u201d \u201cGod ceases to\nbe an object and becomes an experience,\u201d says Professor Pringle-Pattison.\nIf it is an experience we want to find out what happens to the mystic\nhimself inside where he lives. According to those who have been there\nthe experience which we call mystical is charged with the conviction of\nreal, direct contact and commerce with God. It is the almost universal\ntestimony of those who are mystics that they find God through their\nexperience. John Tauler says that in his best moments of \u201cdevout prayer\nand the uplifting of the mind to God,\u201d he experiences \u201cthe pure presence\nof God in his own soul,\u201d but he adds that all he can tell others about\nthe experience is \u201cas poor and unlike it as the point of a needle is\nto the heavens above us.\u201d \u201cI have met with my God; I have met with\nmy Savior. I have felt the healings drop upon my soul from under His\nwings,\u201d says Isaac Penington in the joy of his first mystical experience.\nWithout needlessly multiplying such testimonies for data, we can say\nwith considerable assurance that mystical experience is consciousness of\ndirect and immediate relationship with some transcendent reality which in\nthe moment of experience is believed to be God. \u201cThis is He, this is He,\u201d\nexclaims Isaac Penington, \u201cthere is no other: This is He whom I have\nwaited for and sought after from my childhood.\u201d Angela of Foligno says\nthat she experienced God, and saw that the whole world was full of God.\n\n\nII\n\nThere are many different degrees of intensity, concentration and\nconviction in the experiences of different individual mystics, and also\nin the various experiences of the same individual from time to time.\nThere has been a tendency in most studies of mysticism to regard the\nstate of ecstasy as _par excellence_ mystical experience. That is,\nhowever, a grave mistake. The calmer, more meditative, less emotional,\nless ecstatic experiences of God are not less convincing and possess\ngreater constructive value for life and character than do ecstatic\nexperiences which presuppose a peculiar psychical frame and disposition.\nThe seasoned Quaker in the corporate hush and stillness of a silent\nmeeting is far removed from ecstasy, but he is not the less convinced\nthat he is meeting with God. For the _essentia_ of mysticism we do not\nneed to insist upon a certain \u201csacred\u201d mystic way nor upon ecstasy,\nnor upon any peculiar type of rare psychic upheavals. We do need to\ninsist, however, upon a consciousness of commerce with God amounting to\nconviction of his presence.\n\n    \u201cWhere one heard noise\n    And one saw flame,\n    I only knew He named my name.\u201d\n\nJacob Boehme calls the experience which came to him, \u201cbreaking through\nthe gate,\u201d into \u201ca new birth or resurrection from the dead,\u201d so that, he\nsays, \u201cI knew God.\u201d \u201cI am certain,\u201d says Eckhart, \u201cas certain as that I\nlive, that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I\nam to myself.\u201d One of these experiences\u2014the first one\u2014was an ecstasy,\nand the other, so far as we can tell, was not. It was the flooding in of\na moment of God-consciousness in the act of preaching a sermon to the\ncommon people of Cologne. The experience of Penington, again, was not\nan ecstasy; it was the vital surge of fresh life on the first occasion\nof hearing George Fox preach after a long period of waiting silence. A\nsimple normal case of a mild type is given in a little book of recent\ndate, reprinted from the _Atlantic Monthly_: \u201cAfter a long time of\njangling conflict and inner misery, I one day, _quite quietly and with\nno conscious effort_, stopped doing the dis-ingenuous thing [I had been\ndoing]. Then the marvel happened. It was as if a great rubber band which\nhad been stretched almost to the breaking point were suddenly released\nand snapped back to its normal condition. Heaven and earth were changed\nfor me. Everything was glorious because of its relation to some great\ncentral life\u2014nothing seemed to matter but that life.\u201d Brother Lawrence,\na barefooted lay-brother of the seventeenth century, according to the\ntestimony of the brotherhood, attained \u201can unbroken and undisturbed sense\nof the Presence of God.\u201d He was not an ecstatic; he was a quiet, faithful\nman who did his ordinary daily tasks with what seemed to his friends\n\u201can unclouded vision, an illuminated love and an uninterrupted joy.\u201d\nSimple and humble though he was, he nevertheless acquired, through his\nexperience of God, \u201can extraordinary spaciousness of mind.\u201d\n\nThe more normal, expansive mystical experiences come apparently when the\npersonal self is at its best. Its powers and capacities are raised to an\nunusual unity and fused together. The whole being, with its accumulated\nsubmerged life, _finds itself_. The process of preparing for any high\nachievement is a severe and laborious one, but nothing seems easier in\nthe moment of success than is the accomplishment for which the life\nhas been prepared. There comes to be formed within the person what\nAristotle called \u201ca dexterity of soul,\u201d so that the person does with ease\nwhat he has become skilled to do. Clement of Alexandria called a fully\norganized and spiritualized person \u201ca harmonized man,\u201d that is, adjusted,\norganized and ready to be a transmissive organ for the revelation of\nGod. Brother Lawrence, who was thus \u201charmonized,\u201d finely says, \u201cThe most\nexcellent method which I found of going to God was that of _doing my\ncommon business_, purely for the love of God.\u201d An earlier mystic of the\nfourteenth century stated the same principle in these words: \u201cIt is my\naim to be to the Eternal God what a man\u2019s hand is to a man.\u201d\n\nThere are many human experiences which carry a man up to levels where\nhe has not usually been before and where he finds himself possessed of\ninsight and energies he had hardly suspected were his until that moment.\nOne leaps to his full height when the right inner spring is reached. We\nare quite familiar with the way in which instinctive tendencies in us\nand emotions both egoistic and social, become organized under a group\nof ideas and ideals into a single system which we call a sentiment,\nsuch as love, or patriotism, or devotion to truth. It forms slowly and\none hardly realizes that it has formed until some occasion unexpectedly\nbrings it into full operation, and we find ourselves able with perfect\nease to overcome the most powerful inhibitory and opposing instincts\nand habits, which, until then, had usually controlled us. We are\nfamiliar, too, with the way in which a well-trained and disciplined mind,\nconfronted by a concrete situation, will sometimes\u2014alas not always\u2014in a\nsudden flash of imaginative insight, discover a universal law revealed\nthere and then in the single phenomenon, as Sir Isaac Newton did and\nas, in a no less striking way, Sir William Rowan Hamilton did in his\ndiscovery of Quaternions. Literary and artistic geniuses supply us with\nmany instances in which, in a sudden flash, the crude material at hand is\nshot through with vision, and the complicated plot of a drama, the full\nsignificance of a character, or the complete glory of a statue stands\nrevealed, as though, to use R. L. Stevenson\u2019s illustration, a genie\nhad brought it on a golden tray as a gift from another world. Abraham\nLincoln, striking off in a few intense minutes his Gettysburg address, as\nbeautiful in style and perfect in form as anything in human literature,\nis as good an illustration as we need of the way in which a highly\norganized person, by a kindling flash, has at his hand all the moral and\nspiritual gains of a life time.\n\nThere is a famous account of the flash of inspiration given by Philo,\nwhich can hardly be improved. It is as follows: \u201cI am not ashamed to\nrecount my own experience. At times, when I have proposed to enter upon\nmy wonted task of writing on philosophical doctrines, with an exact\nknowledge of the materials which were to be put together, I have had\nto leave off without any work accomplished, finding my mind barren and\nfruitless, and upbraiding it for its self-complacency, while startled at\nthe might of the Existent One, in whose power it lies to open and close\nthe wombs of the soul. But at other times, when I had come empty, all of\na sudden I have been filled with thoughts, showered down and sown upon\nme unseen from above, so that by Divine possession I have fallen into\na rapture and become ignorant of everything, the place, those present,\nmyself, what was spoken or written. For I have received a stream of\ninterpretation, a fruition of light, the most clear-cut sharpness of\nvision, the most vividly distinct view of the matter before me, such as\nmight be received through the eyes from the most luminous presentation.\u201d\n\nThe most important mystical experiences are something like that. They\noccur usually not at the beginning of the religious life but rather in\nthe ripe and developed stage of it. They are the fruit of long-maturing\nprocesses. Clement\u2019s \u201cthe harmonized man\u201d is always a person who has\nbrought his soul into parallelism with divine currents, has habitually\npracticed his religious insights and has finally formed a unified\ncentral self, subtly sensitive, acutely responsive to the Beyond within\nhim. In such experiences which may come suddenly or may come as a more\ngradual process, the whole self operates and masses all the cumulations\nof a lifetime. They are no more emotional than they are rational and\nvolitional. We have a total personality, awake, active, and \u201caware of his\nlife\u2019s flow.\u201d Instead of seeing in a flash a law of gravitation, or the\nplot and character of Hamlet, or the uncarven form of Moses the Law-giver\nin a block of marble, one sees at such times the moral demonstrations\nof a lifetime and vividly feels the implications that are essentially\ninvolved in a spiritual life. In the high moment God is seen to be as\nsure as the soul is.\n\n    \u201cI stood at Naples once, a night so dark\n    I could have scarce conjectured there was earth\n    Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all:\n    But the night\u2019s black was burst through by a blaze\u2014\n    Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,\n    Through her whole length of mountain visible:\n    There lay the city thick and plain with spires,\n    And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.\n    So may the truth be flashed out by one blow.\u201d\n\nTo some the truth of God never comes closer than a logical conclusion. He\nis held to be as a living item in a creed. To the mystic he becomes real\nin the same sense that experienced beauty is real, or the feel of spring\nis real, or that summer sunlight is real\u2014he has been found, he has been\nmet, he is present.\n\nBefore discussing the crucial question whether these experiences are\nevidential and are worthy of consideration as an addition to the world\u2019s\nstock of truth and knowledge I must say a few words about the normality\nor abnormality of them. Nothing of any value can be said on this point\nof mystical experience in the _abstract_. One must first catch his\nconcrete case. Some instances are normal and some are undoubtedly\nabnormal. Trance, ecstasy and rapture are unusual experiences and in\nthat sense not normal occurrences. They usually indicate, furthermore, a\npathological condition of personality and are thus abnormal in the more\ntechnical sense. There is, however, something more to be said on this\npoint. It seems pretty well established that some persons\u2014and they have\noften been creative leaders and religious geniuses\u2014have succeeded in\norganizing their lives, in finding their trail, in charging their whole\npersonality with power, in attaining a moral dynamic and in tapping vast\nreservoirs of energy by means of states which, if occurring in other\npersons, would no doubt be called pathological. The real test here is\na pragmatic one. It seems hardly sound to call a state abnormal if it\nhas raised the experiencer, as a mystic experience often does, into a\nhundred horse-power man and through his influence has turned multitudes\nof other men and women into more joyous, hopeful and efficient persons.\nThis question of abnormality and reality is thus not one to be settled\noff-hand by a superficial diagnosis.\n\nAn experience which brings spaciousness of mind, new interior dimensions,\nability to stand the universe\u2014and the people in it\u2014and capacity to\nwork at human tasks with patience, endurance and wisdom may quite\nintelligently be called normal, though to an external beholder it\nmay look like what he usually calls a trance of hysteria, a state of\ndissociation, or hypnosis by auto-suggestion. It should be added,\nhowever, as I have already said, that mystical experience is not\nconfined to these extremer types. They may or may not be pathological.\nThe calmer and more restrained stages of mysticism are more important and\nsignificant and are no more marked with the stigma of hysteria than is\nlove-making, enjoyment of music, devotion to altruistic causes, risking\none\u2019s life for country, or any lofty experience of _value_.\n\n\nIII\n\nWe come at length to the central question of our consideration: Do\nmystical experiences settle anything? Are they purely subjective and\none-sided, or do they prove to have objective reference and so to be\ntwo-sided? Do they take the experiencer across the chasm that separates\n\u201cself\u201d from \u201cOther\u201d? Mystical experience undoubtedly feels as though it\nhad objective reference. It comes to the individual with indubitable\nauthority. He is certain that he has found some thing other than himself.\nHe has an unescapable conviction that he is in contact and commerce with\nreality beyond the margins of his personal self. \u201cA tremendous muchness\nis suddenly revealed,\u201d as William James once put it.\n\nWe do not get very far when we undertake to reduce knowledge to an\naffair of sense-experience. \u201cThey reckon ill who leave me out,\u201d can be\nsaid by the organized, personal, creative mind as truly as by Brahma.\nThere are many forms of human experience in which the data of the\nsenses are so vastly transcended that they fail to furnish any real\nexplanation of what occurs in consciousness. This is true of all our\nexperiences of _value_, which apparently spring out of synthetic or\nsynoptic activities of the mind, i.e., activities in which the mind is\nunified and creative. The vibrations of ether which bombard the rods and\ncones of the retina may be the occasion for the appreciation of beauty\nin sky or sea or flower, but they are surely not the _cause_ of it. The\nconcrete event which confronts me is very likely the occasion for the\naugust pronouncement of moral issues which my conscience makes, but it\ncan not be said that the concrete event in any proper sense _causes_ this\nconsciousness of moral obligation. The famous answer of Leibnitz to the\ncrude sense-philosophy of his time is still cogent. To the phrase: \u201cThere\nis nothing in the mind that has not come through the senses,\u201d Leibnitz\nadded, \u201cexcept the mind itself.\u201d That means that the creative activity\nof the mind is always an important factor in experience and one that can\nnot be ignored in any of the processes of knowledge. Unfortunately we\nhave done very little yet in the direction of comprehending the interior\ndepth of the personal mind or of estimating adequately the part which\nmind itself in its creative capacity plays in all knowledge functions. It\nwill only be when we have succeeded in getting beyond what Plato called\nthe bird-cage theory of knowledge to a sound theory of knowledge and\nto a solid basis for spiritual values that we shall be able to discuss\nintelligently the \u201cfindings\u201d of the mystic.\n\nThe world at the present moment is pitiably \u201cshort\u201d in its stock of\nsound theories of knowledge. The prevailing psychologies do not explain\nknowledge at all. The behaviorists do not try to explain it any more\nthan the astronomer or the physicist does. The psychologist who reduces\nmind to an aggregation of describable \u201cmind-states\u201d has started out on\na course which makes an explanation forever impossible, since knowledge\ncan be explained only through unity and integral wholeness, never through\nan aggregation of parts, as though it were a mental \u201cshower of shot.\u201d If\nwe expect to talk about _knowledge_ and seriously propose to use that\ngreat word _truth_, we must at least begin with the assumption of an\nintelligent, creative, organizing center of self-consciousness which can\ntranscend itself and can _know_ what is beyond and other than itself. In\nshort, the talk about a \u201cchasm\u201d between subject and object\u2014knower and\nthing known\u2014is as absurd as it would be to talk of a chasm between the\nconvex and the concave sides of a curve. Knowledge is always knowledge\nof an object and mystical experience has all the essential marks of\nobjective reference, as certainly as other forms of experience have.\n\nProfessor J. M. Baldwin very well says that there is a form of\ncontemplation in which, as in \u00e6sthetic experience, the strands of\nthe mind\u2019s diverging dualisms are \u201c_merged and fused_.\u201d He adds: \u201cIn\nthis experience of a fusion which is not a mixture but which issues\nin a meaning of its own sort and kind, an experience whose essential\ncharacter is just this unity of comprehension, consciousness attains its\ncompletest, its most direct, and its final apprehension of what Reality\nis and means.\u201d It really comes round to the question whether the mind of\na self-conscious person has any way of approach, except by way of the\nsenses, to any kind of reality. There is no _a priori_ answer to that\nquestion. It can only be settled by experience. It is, therefore, pure\ndogmatism to say, as Professor Dunlap in his recent attack on mysticism\ndoes, that all conscious processes are based on sense-stimulation and\nall thought as well as perception depends on reaction to sense-stimulus.\nIt is no doubt true that behavior psychology must resort to some such\nformula, but that only means that such psychology is always dealing\nwith greatly transformed and reduced beings, when it attempts to deal\nwith persons like us who, in the richness of our concrete lives, are\nnever reduced to \u201cbehavior-beings.\u201d We have interior dimensions and that\nis the end on\u2019t! Some persons\u2014and they are by no means feeble-minded\nindividuals\u2014are as certain that they have commerce with a world within\nas they are that they have experiences of a world outside in space.\nThomas Aquinas, who neither in method nor in doctrine leaned toward\nmysticism, though he was most certainly \u201ca harmonized man,\u201d and who in\ntheory postponed the vision of God to a realm beyond death, nevertheless\nhad an experience two years before he died which made him put his pen\nand inkhorn on the shelf and never write another word of his _Summa\nTheologiae_. When he was reminded of the incomplete state of his great\nwork and was urged to go on with it, he only replied, \u201cI have seen that\nwhich makes all that I have written look small to me.\u201d\n\nIt may be just possible that there is a universe of spiritual reality\nupon which our finite spirits open inward as inlets open into the sea.\n\n    \u201cLike the tides on the crescent sea-beach\n    When the moon is new and thin\n    Into our hearts high yearnings\n    Come welling and surging in;\n    Come from that mystic ocean\n    Whose rim no foot has trod.\n    Some call it longing\n    But others call it God.\u201d\n\nSuch a view is perfectly sane and tenable; it conflicts with no proved\nand demonstrated facts either in the nature of the universe or of\nmind. It seems anyway to the mystic that there is such a world, that\nhe has found it as surely as Columbus found San Salvador, and that his\nexperience is a truth-telling experience.\n\n\nIV\n\nBut granting that it is truth-telling and has objective reference, is the\nmystic justified in claiming that he has found and knows God? One does\nnot need to be a very wide and extensive student of mystical experience\nto discover what a meager stock of knowledge the genuine mystic reports.\nWilliam James\u2019 remarkable experience in the Adirondack woods very well\nillustrates the type. It had, he says, \u201can intense significance of some\nsort, if one could only _tell_ the significance.... In point of fact, I\ncan\u2019t find a single word for all that significance and don\u2019t know what it\nwas significant of, so that it remains a mere boulder of impression.\u201d[7]\nAt a later date James refers to that \u201cextraordinary vivacity of man\u2019s\npsychological commerce with something Ideal that _feels as if_ it were\nalso actual.\u201d[8] The greatest of all the fourteenth century mystics,\nMeister Eckhart, could not put his _impression_ into words or ideas. What\nhe found was a \u201cwilderness of the Godhead where no one is at home,\u201d i.e.,\nan Object with no particular differentiated, concrete characteristics.\nIt was not an accident that so many of the mystics hit upon the _via\nnegativa_, the way of negation, or that they called their discovery \u201cthe\ndivine Dark.\u201d\n\n    \u201cWhatever your mind comes at\n    I tell you flat\n    God is not that.\u201d\n\nMystical experience does not supply concrete information. It does not\nbring new finite facts, new items that can be used in a description of\n\u201cthe scenery and circumstance\u201d of the realm beyond our sense horizons.\nIt is the awareness of a Presence, the consciousness of a Beyond, the\ndiscovery, as James puts it, that \u201cwe are continuous with a More of the\nsame quality, which is operative in us and in touch with us.\u201d\n\nThe most striking effect of such experience is not new fact-knowledge,\nnot new items of empirical information, but new moral energy, heightened\nconviction, increased caloric quality, enlarged spiritual vision, an\nunusual radiant power of life. In short, the whole personality, in the\ncase of the constructive mystics, appears to be raised to a new level of\nlife and to have gained from somewhere many calories of life-feeding,\nspiritual substance. We are quite familiar with the way in which\nadrenalin suddenly flushes into the physical system and adds a new and\nincalculable power to brain and muscle. Under its stimulus a man can\ncarry out a piano when the house is on fire. May not, perhaps, some\nenergy from some Source with which our spirits are allied flush our inner\nbeing with forces and powers by which we can be fortified to stand the\nuniverse and more than stand it! \u201cWe are more than conquerors through\nHim that loved us,\u201d is the way one of the world\u2019s greatest mystics felt.\n\nMystical experience\u2014and we must remember as Santayana has said, that\n\u201cexperience is like a shrapnel shell and bursts into a thousand\nmeanings\u201d\u2014does at least one thing. It makes God sure to the person who\nhas had the experience. It raises faith and conviction to the nth power.\n\u201cThe God who said, \u2018Let light shine out of darkness,\u2019 has shined into my\nheart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,\u201d is St.\nPaul\u2019s testimony. \u201cI knew God by revelation,\u201d declares George Fox. \u201cI was\nas one who hath the key and doth open.\u201d \u201cThe man who has attained this\nfelicity,\u201d Plotinus says, \u201cmeets some turn of fortune that he would not\nhave chosen, but there is not the slightest lessening of his happiness\nfor that\u201d (En. I: iv. 7). But this experience, with its overwhelming\nconviction and its dynamic effect, can not be put into the common coin of\nspeech. Frederic Myers has well expressed the difficulty:\n\n    \u201cOh could I tell ye surely would believe it!\n      Oh could I only say what I have seen!\n    How should I tell or how can ye receive it,\n      How, till He bringeth you where I have been?\u201d\n\nThere is no concrete \u201cinformation\u201d which can be shared with others.\n\nWhen Columbus found San Salvador he was able to describe it to those who\ndid not sail with him in the Santa Maria, but when the mystic finds God\nhe can not give us any \u201cknowledge\u201d in plain words of everyday speech. He\ncan only refer to his boulder, or his Gibraltar, of _impression_ That\nsituation is what we should expect. We can not, either, describe any of\nour great emotions. We can not impart what flushes into our consciousness\nin moments of lofty intuition. We have a submerged life within us which\nis certainly no less real than our hand or foot. It influences all that\nwe do or say, but we do not find it easy to utter it. In the presence of\nthe sublime we have nothing to say\u2014or if we do say anything it is a great\nmistake! Language is forged to deal with experiences which are common\nto many persons, i.e., to experiences which refer to objects in space.\nWe have no vocabulary for the subtle, elusive flashes of vision which\nare unique, individual and unsharable, as for instance is our personal\nsense of \u201cthe tender grace of a day that is dead.\u201d We are forced in all\nthese matters to resort to symbolic suggestion and to artistic devices.\nCoventry Patmore said with much insight:\n\n    \u201cIn divinity and love\n    What\u2019s best worth saying can\u2019t be said.\u201d\n\nI believe that mystical experiences do in the long run expand our\nknowledge of God and do succeed in verifying themselves. Mysticism is a\nsort of spiritual protoplasm that underlies, as a basic substance, much\nthat is best in religion, in ethics and in life itself. It has generally\nbeen the mystic, the prophet, the seer that has spotted out new ways\nforward in the jungle of our world, or lifted our race to new spiritual\nlevels. Their experiences have in some way equipped them for unusual\ntasks, have given supplies of energy to them which their neighbors did\nnot have, and have apparently brought them into vital correspondence with\ndimensions and regions of reality that others miss. The proof that they\nhave found God, or at least a domain of spiritual reality, does not lie\nin some new stock of knowledge, not in some gnostic secret, which they\nbring back; it is to be seen rather in the moral and spiritual fruits\nwhich test out and verify the experience.\n\nConsciousness of beauty or of truth or of goodness baffles analysis\nas much as consciousness of God does. These values have no objective\nstanding ground in current psychology. They are not things in the world\nof space. They submit to no adequate casual explanation. They have their\nground of being in some other kind of world than that of the mechanical\norder, a world composed of quantitative masses of matter in motion. These\nexperiences of value, which are as real for consciousness as stone walls\nare, make very clear the fact that there are depths and capacities in\nthe nature of the normal human mind which we do not usually recognize\nand of which we have scant and imperfect accounts in our text-books.\nOur minds taken in their full range, in other words, have some sort of\ncontact and relationship with an eternal nature of things far deeper than\natoms and molecules. Only very slowly and gradually has the race learned\nthrough finite symbols and temporal forms to interpret beauty and truth\nand goodness which in their essence are as ineffable and indescribable\nas the mystic\u2019s experience of God is. Plato often speaks as though he\nhad high moments of experience when he rose to the naked vision of\nbeauty\u2014beauty \u201calone, separate and eternal,\u201d as he says, and his myths\nare very likely told, as J. A. Stewart believes, to assist others to\nexperience this same vision\u2014a beauty which \u201cdoes not grow nor perish,\nis without increase or diminution and endures for everlasting.\u201d But as\na matter of fact, however exalted heavenly and enduring beauty may be\nin its essence we know _what it is_ only as it appears in fair forms of\nobjects, of body, of soul, of actions; in harmonious blending of sounds\nor colors; in well-ordered or happily-combined groupings of many aspects\nin one unity which is as it ought to be. Truth and moral goodness always\ntranscend our attainments and we sometimes feel that the very end and\ngoal of life is the pursuit of that truth or that goodness which eye\nhath not seen nor ear heard. But whatever truth we do attain or whatever\ngoodness we do achieve is always concrete. Truth is just this one more\nadded fact that resists all attempts to doubt it. Goodness is just this\nsimple everyday deed that reveals a heroic spirit and a brave venture of\nfaith in the midst of difficulties. So, too, the mystic knowledge of God\nis not some esoteric communication, supplied through trance or ecstasy;\nit is an intuitive personal touch with God, felt to be the essentially\nreal, the bursting forth of an intense love for him which heightens all\nthe capacities and activities of life, followed by the slow laboratory\nresults which verify it. \u201cAll I could never be\u201d now is. It seems possible\nto stand the universe\u2014even to do something toward the transformation\nof it. The bans are read for that most difficult of all marriages, the\nmarriage of the possible with the actual, the ideal with the real. And\nif the experience does not prove that the soul has found God, it at\nleast does this: it makes the soul feel that proofs of God are wholly\nunnecessary.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nPSYCHOLOGY AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE\n\n\nI\n\nTwenty years ago in _A Dynamic Faith_, after reviewing the new questions\nwhich the great sciences had raised for religion, I said: \u201cThere are\nstill harder problems than any of these. Psychology has opened a series\nof questions which make the boldest tremble for his faith in an endless\nlife or in any spiritual reality.\u201d The twenty years that have intervened\nhave made my point much more clear. It is now pretty generally recognized\nthat the deepest issues of the faith are to be settled in this field.\nThe problem of the real nature of the human soul is at the present\nmoment probably the most important religious question before us, for\nupon the answer to it all our vital spiritual interests depend. If man\nhas no unique interior domain, if he is only a tiny bit of that vast\nsystem of naturalism in which every curve of process and development is\nrigidly determined by antecedent causes, then \u201cspiritual\u201d is only a\nhigh-sounding word with a metaphorical significance, but with no basis\nof reality in the nature of things. There is certainly no \u201cplace\u201d in the\nexternal world of space where we can expect to find spiritual realities.\nThey are not to be found by going \u201csomewhere.\u201d Olympus has been climbed,\nand it was as naturalistic as any other mountain peak. Eden is only a\ndefined area of Mesopotamia, and that blessed word can work no miracles\nfor us now. The dome of the sky is only an optical illusion. It is no\nsupersensuous realm on which we can build our hopes. The beyond as a\nspiritual reality is within, or it is nowhere. Psychology, however, has\nnot been very encouraging in promises of hope. It has gone the way of the\nother sciences and has taken an ever increasing slant toward naturalism.\nThe result is that most so-called \u201cpsychologies of religion\u201d reduce\nreligion either to a naturalistic or to a subjective basis, which means\nin either case that religion as a way to some objective spiritual reality\nhas eluded us and has disappeared as a constructive power. Many a modern\npsychologist can say with Browning\u2019s Cleon:\n\n    \u201cAnd I have written three books on the soul,\n    Proving absurd all written hitherto,\n    And putting us to ignorance again.\u201d\n\nTwo of the main tendencies in what is usually called scientific\npsychology are (1) the \u201cbehaviorist\u201d tendency and (2) the tendency to\nreduce the inner life to a series of \u201cmind states.\u201d Let us consider\nbehaviorism first. This turns psychology into \u201ca purely objective\nexperimental branch of natural science.\u201d[9] It aims at \u201cthe prediction\nand control of behavior.\u201d \u201cIntrospection forms no essential part of\nits method.\u201d One is not concerned with \u201cinterpretation in terms of\nconsciousness,\u201d one is interested only in reactions, responses\u2014in short,\nin _behavior_ in the presence of stimuli which produce movements. The\nbody is a complicated organ and \u201cmind\u201d is merely a convenient term to\nexpress its \u201cactivities.\u201d[10] The behaviorist \u201crecognizes no dividing\nline between man and brute.\u201d Psychology becomes \u201cthe science of\nbehavior,\u201d[11] the study of \u201cthe activity of man or animal as it can be\nobserved from the outside, either with or without attempting to determine\nthe mental states by inference from these acts.\u201d Emotions become reduced\nforthwith to \u201cthe bodily resonance\u201d set up in the muscular and visceral\nsystems by instinctive movements in the presence of objects, these\ncurious movements being due entirely to the inheritance of physiological\nstructure adapted at least in the early stages to aid survival. There is\nno way by which behaviorist psychology can give any standing to religion\nor to any type of spiritual values. \u201c\u00c6sthetics is the study of the\nuseless,\u201d as William James baldly states the case. Conscience disappears\nor becomes another name for the inheritance or acquisition of certain\ntypes of social behavior. Everything which we call ethics or morality\nchanges into well-defined and rigidly determined behavior. There is\nnothing more \u201cspiritual\u201d about it than there is in the fall of a raindrop\nor in the luminous trail of a meteor, or in any form of what has happily\nbeen called \u201ccosmic weather.\u201d\n\nThis reduction of personality to a center of activity is a reaction from\nthe dualistic sundering of mind and body inherited from Descartes. The\ntheory of psycho-physical parallelism is utterly bankrupt. Idealism,\nwhich is an attempt to get round the _impasse_ of dualism by treating\nmind as the only reality, is abhorrent to scientists and unpopular\nwith young philosophers, especially in America. Some other solution\nis therefore urgent. The easiest one at hand, though it is obviously\ntemporary and superficial, is to cut across the mind loop, ignore its\nunique, originative, creative capacity and its interior depth, to deal\nonly with body plus body\u2019s activities, and to call that \u201cpsychology.\u201d\n\nThe \u201cmind-state\u201d psychology takes us little farther on. It also is a\nform of naturalism. \u201cMind-state\u201d psychology makes more of introspection\nthan behaviorist psychology does, and it works more than the latter\ndoes in terms of consciousness, which for the behaviorist can be almost\nignored or questioned as an existing reality. According to this view,\nmind or consciousness is composed of a vast number of \u201celemental units,\u201d\nand the business of psychology is to analyze and describe these units\nor states and to discover the laws of their arrangement or succession.\nMind, on this theory, is an aggregate or sum total of \u201cstates.\u201d Professor\nJames, who gives great place to \u201cmind states,\u201d will, however, not admit\nthat they are permanent and repeatable \u201cunits,\u201d passing and returning\nunaltered. In his usual vivid way he says that \u201ca permanently existing\n\u2018idea\u2019 [i.e., mental unit] which makes its appearance before the\nfootlights of consciousness at periodical intervals is as mythological\nan entity as the Jack of Spades.\u201d[12] And yet he continues to deal with\nmind as a vast series of more or less describable states. Some states are\n\u201csubstantive,\u201d such as our \u201cperceptions,\u201d our \u201cmemories,\u201d or our definite\n\u201cimages,\u201d when the mind perches and rests upon some clear and describable\nthought, and on the other hand there are \u201ctransitive states\u201d which are\nvague, hard to catch or hold or express, and which reveal the mind in\nflight, in passage, on the way from one substantive state to another.\n\nWhen we ask the \u201cmind-state\u201d psychologist to tell us about the soul or to\nsupply us with a working substitute for it, he relegates it to the scrap\nheap where lie the collected rubbish and the antiquated mental furniture\nof the medieval centuries. We have no need of it. It is only a _word_\nanyhow. It has always been an expensive luxury and a continual bother. We\nare better off with it gone. When we look about for a \u201cself as knower,\u201d\nor for a guardian of our identity, we find all that we need in these same\n\u201cpassing states of consciousness.\u201d They not only know things and facts,\nbut they also know themselves, and successively inherit and adapt all the\npreceding \u201cstates\u201d have gained and acquired. The state of the present\nmoment owns the thoughts and experiences which preceded it, for \u201cwhat\npossesses the possessor possesses the possessed.\u201d \u201cIn our waking hours,\u201d\nProfessor James says, \u201cthough each pulse of consciousness dies away and\nis replaced by another, yet that other, among the things it knows, knows\nits own predecessor and finding it \u2018warm,\u2019 greets it saying, \u2018Thou art\n_mine_ and part of the same self with me.\u2019\u201d It seems, then, this famous\nwriter concludes, that \u201cstates of consciousness are all that psychology\nneeds to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the soul to\nexist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle\nof unity is superfluous.\u201d[13] We are certainly hard up if we must depend\non proofs which theology can give us!\n\nWe are thus once more reduced to a condition of sheer naturalism. Our\nstream of consciousness is only a rapid succession of passing states,\neach \u201cstate\u201d causally attached to a molecular process in the brain.\n\u201cEvery _psychosis_ is the result of a _neurosis_.\u201d There is no soul,\nthere is no creative spiritual pilot of the stream, there is no freedom,\nthere are no moral values, there is nothing but passing \u201ccosmic weather,\u201d\nsometimes peeps of sunshine, sometimes moonshine, sometimes drizzle or\nblizzard, and sometimes cyclone or waterspout! To meet the appalling\nthinness of this \u201ccinema\u201d of mind states, we are given the comfort of\nbelieving that there is an under-threshold world within, possibly more\nreal and surely more important than this little rivulet of states which\nmake up our conscious life. There is a \u201cfringe\u201d to consciousness more\nwonderful than that which adorned the robe of the high priest. This\n\u201cfringe\u201d defies description and baffles all analysis. It is a halo or\npenumbra which surrounds every \u201cstate\u201d and holds all the states vitally\ntogether, so that \u201cstates\u201d turn out to be unsundered in some deeper\nmysterious currents of being. Others would call this same underlying,\nmysterious part of us the subliminal \u201cself,\u201d i.e., under-threshold\n\u201cself.\u201d It is a kind of semi-spiritual matrix where the states of\nconsciousness are formed and gestated. It is the source to which we\nmay trace everything that can not be explained by the avenues of the\nsenses. Demons and divinities knock at its doors and visitants from\nsuperterrestrial shores peep in at its windows. It is often treated,\nespecially of course by Frederic Myers, as a deeper \u201cself,\u201d more or less\ndiscontinuous with our conscious upper self, the self of mind states.\nAll work of genius is due to \u201csubliminal uprushes,\u201d \u201can emergence into\nthe current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other\nideas which he has not consciously originated, but which have shaped\nthemselves beyond his will in profounder regions of his being.\u201d As is\nwell known, Professor James resorts to these \u201csubliminal uprushes\u201d for\nhis explanation of all the deeper religious experiences and he has done\nmuch to give credit to these \u201cprofounder regions of our being\u201d and to\nmake the subliminal theory popular. He does not, however, as Myers does,\ntreat it as another \u201cself,\u201d an intermediary between earth and heaven, a\nmessenger and a mediator of all those higher and diviner aspects of life\nwhich transcend the sphere of sense and of the empirical world.\n\n\nII\n\nNo theory certainly is sound which begins by cutting the subconscious\nand the conscious life apart into two more or less dissociated selves.\nThere is every indication and evidence of continuity and correlation\nbetween what is above and what is below the threshold which in any case\nis as relative and artificial a line as is the horizon. The so-called\n\u201cuprushes\u201d of the genius are finely correlated with his normal experience\ninto which they \u201cuprush.\u201d The \u201cuprushes\u201d which convey truth to Socrates\nbeautifully fit, first, the character of the man and, secondly, the\ndemands of the temporal environment. Dante\u2019s \u201cuprushes\u201d correspond to\nthe psychological climate of the medieval world, and Shakespeare\u2019s\n\u201cuprushes\u201d are well suited to the later period of the Renaissance. All\nsubliminal communications are congruent and consonant with the experience\nof the person who receives them. The visions of apocalyptic seers are\nall couched in the imagery of the apocalyptic schools, and so, too, the\nreports of mediums are all in terms of spiritualistic beliefs. We shall\nnever find the solution of our religious problems by dividing the inner\nlife of man into two unrelated selves, by whatever name we call them,\nfor any religion that is to be real must go all the way through us, must\nunify all our powers, and must furnish a spring and power by which we\nlive here and now in the sphere of our consciousness, our character, and\nour will.\n\nIt proves to be just as impossible to cut consciousness up into the\nfragmentary bits or units called mind states, or to sunder it into\na so-called \u201cself as knower\u201d and \u201cself as known.\u201d Consciousness is\nnever a shower of shot\u2014a series of discontinuous units. It is the most\ncompletely integral unity known to us anywhere in the universe. There\nare no \u201cparts\u201d to it; it is without breaks or gaps. It is one undivided\nwhole. The only unit we can properly talk about is our unique persisting\npersonal self in conscious relation to an environment. We can, of course,\ntreat consciousness in the abstract as an aggregate of states and we can\nformulate a scientific account of this constructed entity as we can of\nany other abstracted section of reality. But this abstracted entity is\nforever totally different from the warm and intimate inner life within\nus, as we actually live it and feel its flow. Any state or process which\nwe may talk about is only an artificial fragment of a larger, deeper\nreality which gives the \u201cfragment\u201d its peculiar being and makes it what\nit is. Underneath all that appears and happens in the conscious flow is\nthe personal self for whom the appearances occur. Any psychologist who\nexplicitly leaves this out of his account always implicitly smuggles it\nin again.\n\nThe most striking fact of experience is _knowing that we know_. The\nsame consciousness which knows any given object in the same pulse of\nconsciousness knows itself as knowing it. Self-consciousness is present\nin all consciousness of objects. The thinker that thinks is involved in\nand is bound up with all knowledge, even of the simplest sort. Every\nidea, every feeling, and every act of will is what it is because it\nis in living unity with our entire personal self. If any such \u201cstate\u201d\ngot dissociated, slipped away and undertook to do business on its own\nhook, it would be as unknown to us as our guardian angel is. The mind\nthat knows can never be separated from the world that is known. One can\nthink in abstraction of a mind apart by itself and of a world equally\nisolated\u2014but no such mind and no such world actually exist. To be a\nreal mind, a real self, is to be in active commerce with a real world\ngiven in experience. One thinks his object in the same unified pulse\nof consciousness in which he thinks himself and vice versa. There is\nno self-consciousness without object-consciousness, and there is no\nobject-consciousness without self-consciousness. Outer and inner, knower\nand known, are not two but forever one. The \u201csoul,\u201d therefore, is not\nsomething hidden away in behind or above and beyond our ideas and\nfeelings and will activities. It is the active living unity of personal\nconsciousness\u2014the one psychic integer and unit for a true psychology. It\nbinds all the items of experience into one indivisible unity, one organic\nwhole through which our personal type of life is made possible. At every\nmoment of waking, intelligent life we look out upon each fact, each\nevent, each experience from a wider self which organizes the new fact in\nwith its former experiences, weaves it into the web of its memories and\nemotions and purposes, makes the new fact a part of itself, and yet at\nthe same time knows itself as transcending and outliving the momentary\nfact.\n\nWhen we study the personal self deeply enough, not as cut up into\nartificial units, but as the living, undivided whole, which is implied in\nall coherent experience, we find at once a basis for those ideal values\nthat are rightly called spiritual and for \u201cthose mighty hopes that make\nus men.\u201d The first step toward a genuine basis of spiritual life is to\nbe found in the restoration of the personal self to its true place as\nthe ultimate fact, or datum, of self-conscious experience. As soon as\nwe come back to this central reality, our unified, unique, self-active\npersonality, we find ourselves in possession of material enough; as\nBrowning would say,\n\n          \u201cFor fifty hopes and fears\n    As old and new at once as nature\u2019s self,\n    To rap and knock and enter in our soul,\n    Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,\n    Round the ancient idol, on his base again,\u2014\n    The grand Perhaps!\u201d\n\nWhat we find at once, even without a resort to a subliminal self, or to\n\u201cuprushes,\u201d is that our normal, personal self-consciousness is a unique,\nliving, self-active, creative center of energies, dealing not only with\nspace and time and tangible things, but dealing as well with realities\nwhich are space- and time-transcending. \u201cThe things that are not\u201d prove\nto be immense factors in our lives and constantly \u201cbring to naught the\nthings that are.\u201d The greatest events of history have not been due to\nphysical forces; they have been due to plans and ideals which were real\nonly in the viewless minds of men. What _was not yet_ brought about what\nwas to be. Alexander the Great with his physical forces, sweeping across\nthe ancient world like a cataclysm of nature, was certainly no more truly\na world-builder than was Jesus, who had no armies, who used no tangible\nforces, but merely put into operation those \u201cthings that were not,\u201d i.e.,\nhis ideas of what ought to be and his conviction that love is stronger\nthan Roman legions. The simplest and humblest of us, like the Psalmist,\nfind the Meshech where we sojourn too straitened and narrow for us. We\nhave all cried, \u201cWoe is me that I sojourn in Meshech!\u201d The reason that\nwe discover the limits and bounds of our poor Meshech is that we are all\nthe time going beyond the hampering Meshech that tries to contain and\nimprison us.\n\nThe thing which spoils all our finite camping places is our unstilled\nconsciousness that we are made for something more than we have yet\nrealized or attained. Our ideals are an unmistakable intimation of our\ntime-transcending nature. We can no more stop with _that which is_ than\nNiagara can stop at the fringe of the fall. All consciousness of the\nhigher rational type is continually carried forward toward the larger\nwhole that would complete and fulfill its present experience. We are\naware of the limit only because we are already beyond it. The present is\na pledge of more; the little arc which we have gives us a ground of faith\nin the full circle which we seek. A study of man\u2019s life which does not\ndeal with this inherent idealizing tendency is like _Hamlet_ with Hamlet\nleft out. Martineau declared:\n\n    \u201cAmid all the sickly talk about \u2018ideals\u2019 which has become the\n    commonplace of our age, it is well to remember that so long\n    as they are dreams of future possibility and not faiths in\n    present realities, so long as they are a mere self-painting\n    of the yearning spirit and not its personal surrender to\n    immediate communion with an infinite Perfection, they have no\n    more solidity or steadiness than floating air-bubbles, gay in\n    the sunshine and broken by the passing wind.... The very gate\n    of entrance to religion, the moment of its new birth, is the\n    discovery that your ideal is the everlasting Real, no transient\n    brush of a fancied angel wing, but the abiding presence and\n    persuasion of the Soul of souls.\u201d[14]\n\nIn the same vein Pringle-Pattison, one of the wisest of our living\nteachers, has said:\n\n    \u201cConsciousness of imperfection, the capacity for progress,\n    and the pursuit of perfection, are alike possible to man only\n    through the universal life of thought and goodness in which\n    he shares and which, at once an indwelling presence and an\n    unattainable ideal, draws him \u2018on and always on.\u2019\u201d[15]\n\nIt is here in these experiences of ours which spring out of our real\nnature, but which always carry us beyond _what is_ and which make it\nimpossible for us to live in a world composed of \u201cthings,\u201d no matter\nhow golden they are, that we have the source of our spiritual values.\nWhen we talk about values we may use the word in two senses. In the\nordinary sense we mean something extrinsic, utilitarian. We mean that\nwe possess something which can be exchanged for something else. It is\nprecious because we can sell it or swap it or use it to keep life going.\nIn the other sense we see value in reference to something which _ought\nto be_, whether it now is or not. It is _fit_ to be, it would justify\nits being in relation to the whole reality. When we speak of ethical or\nspiritual values we are thinking of something that will minister to the\nhighest good of persons or of a society of persons. Value in this loftier\nmeaning always has to do with ideals. A being without any conscious\nend or goal, i.e., without an ideal, would have no sense of worth, no\nspiritual values. It does not appear on the level of instinct. It arises\nas an appreciation of what ought to be realized in order to complete and\nfulfill any life which is to be called good. Obviously a person with\nrich and complex interests will have many scales of value, but lower and\nlesser ones will fall into place under wider and higher ones, so that one\nforms a kind of hierarchical system of values with some overtopping end\nof supreme worth dominating the will.\n\nIt becomes one of the deepest questions in the world what connection\nthere is between man\u2019s spiritual values or ideals and the eternal nature\nof things in the universe. Are these ideals of ours, these values which\nseem to raise us from the naturalistic to the spiritual level, just\nour subjective creations, or are they expressions of a co\u00f6perating and\nrational power beyond us and yet in us, giving us intimations of what\nis true and best in a world more real than that of matter and motion?\nThese ideal values, such as our appreciation of beauty, our confidence\nin truth, our dedication to moral causes, our love for worthy persons,\nour loyalty to the Kingdom of God, are not born of selfish preference\nor individual desire. They are not capricious like dreams and visions.\nThey attach to something deeper than our personal wishes, in fact our\nfaith in them and our devotion to them often cause us to take lines of\naction straight against our personal wishes and our individual desires.\nThey stand the test of stress and strain, they weather the storms of time\nwhich submerge most things, they survive all shock and mutations and only\nincrease in worth with the wastage of secondary goods. They rest on no\nmere temporary impulse or sporadic whim. They have their roots deep in\nthe life of the race. They have lasted better than Andes or Ararat, and\nthey are based upon common, universal aspects of rational life. They are\nat least as sure and prophetic as are laws of triangles and relations of\nspace. If we can count on the permanence of the multiplication table and\non the continuity of nature, no less can we count on the conservation of\nvalues and the continued significance of life.\n\nThey seem thus to belong to the system of the universe and to have the\nguardianship of some invisible Pilot of the cosmic ship. The streams\nof moral power and the spiritual energies that have their rise in good\npersons are as much to be respected facts of the universe as are the\nrivers that carry ships of commerce. Moral goodness is a factor in the\nconstitution of the world, and the eternal nature of the universe backs\nit as surely as it backs the laws of hydrogen. It does not back every\nideal, for some ideals are unfit and do not minister to a coherent and\nrationally ordered scheme of life. Those ideals only have the august\nsanction and right of way which are born out of the age-long spiritual\ntravail of the race and which tend to organize men for better team\nefforts, i.e., which promote the social community life, the organism of\nthe Spirit. Through these spiritual forces, revealed in normal ethical\npersons, we are, I believe, nearer to the life of God and closer to\nthe revealing centers of the universe than we are when we turn to the\nsubliminal selves of hysterics. The normal interior life of man is\nboundless and bottomless. It is not a physical reality, to be measured by\nfoot rules or yardsticks. It is a reality of a wholly different order.\nIt is essentially spiritual, i.e., of spirit. In its organized and\ndifferentiated life this personal self of ours is often weak and erratic.\nWe feel the _urge_ which belongs to the very nature of _spirit_, but we\nblunder in our direction, we bungle our aims and purposes, we fail to\ndiscover what it is that we really want. But we are never insulated from\nthe wider spiritual environment which constitutes the true inner world\nfrom which we have come and to which we belong. There are many ways of\ncorrespondence with this environment. No way, however, is more vital,\nmore life-giving than this way of dedication to the advancement of the\nmoral ideals of the world.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] 1 Cor. VI. 9-11.\n\n[2] _Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_, p. 483.\n\n[3] Bosanquet, _Value and Destiny of the Individual_, p. 320.\n\n[4] F. C. S. Schiller, _Humanism_, pp. 228-9.\n\n[5] Shaler, _The Individual_, p. 194.\n\n[6] \u201cThe Flight of the Duchess.\u201d\n\n[7] _Letters of William James_, Vol. II. p. 76.\n\n[8] _Ibid._, Vol. II. p. 269.\n\n[9] Watson, _Behavior_, p. 1.\n\n[10] See Ralph Barton Perry\u2019s article \u201cA Behavioristic View of Purpose\u201d\nin the _Journal of Philosophy_, February 17, 1921.\n\n[11] Pillsbury, _Fundamentals of Psychology_, p. 4.\n\n[12] _Psychology_ (Briefer Course), p. 197.\n\n[13] _Ibid._, p. 203.\n\n[14] Martineau, _A Study of Religion_ (2d ed.), I, 12.\n\n[15] _The Philosophical Radicals_, pp. 97-98.","title":"Spiritual Energies in Daily Life","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":40408}