{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_61078/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_61078","id":"gutenberg_61078","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61078","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Spiritual life"],"text":"THE INNER LIFE\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                             THE INNER LIFE\n\n                                   BY\n                      RUFUS M. JONES, A.M., LITT.D.\n              PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HAVERFORD COLLEGE\n\n                AUTHOR OF \u201cSTUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION\u201d\n                       \u201cSPIRITUAL REFORMERS,\u201d ETC.\n\n                                New York\n                          THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                                  1917\n\n                          _All rights reserved_\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1916,\n                        BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\n\n            Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916.\n                        Reprinted January, 1917.\n\n                              Norwood Press\n                  J. S. Cushing Co.\u2014Berwick & Smith Co.\n                         Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nThere is no inner life that is not also an outer life. To withdraw from\nthe stress and strain of practical action and from the complication of\nproblems into the quiet cell of the inner life in order to build its\ndomain undisturbed is the sure way to lose the inner life. The finest\nof all the mystical writers of the fourteenth century\u2014the author of\n_Theologia Germanica_\u2014knew this as fully as we of this psychologically\ntrained generation know it. He intensely desired a rich inner life, but\nhe saw that to be beautiful within he must live a radiant and effective\nlife in the world of men and events. \u201cI would fain be,\u201d he says, \u201cto the\neternal God what a man\u2019s hand is to a man\u201d\u2014_i.e._ he seeks, with all the\neagerness of his glowing nature, to be an efficient instrument of God in\nthe world. In the _practice_ of the presence of God, the presence itself\nbecomes more sure and indubitable. Religion does not consist of inward\nthrills and private enjoyment of God; it does not terminate in beatific\nvision. It is rather the joyous business of carrying the Life of God into\nthe lives of men\u2014of being to the eternal God what a man\u2019s hand is to a\nman.\n\nThere is no one exclusive \u201cway\u201d either to the supreme realities or to\nthe loftiest experiences of life. The \u201cway\u201d which we individuals select\nand proclaim as the only highway of the soul back to its true home turns\nout to be a revelation of our own private selves fully as much as it is\na revelation of a _via sacra_ to the one goal of all human striving.\nLife is a very rich and complex affair and it forever floods over and\ninundates any feature which we pick out as essential or as pivotal to\nits consummation. God so completely overarches all that is and He is so\ngenuinely the fulfillment of all which appears incomplete and potential\nthat we cannot conceivably insist that there shall be only one way of\napproach from the multiplicity of the life which we know to the infinite\nBeing whom we seek.\n\nMost persons are strangely prone to use the \u201cprinciple of parsimony.\u201d\nThey appear to have a kind of fascination for the dilemma of _either-or_\nalternatives. \u201cFaith\u201d or \u201cworks\u201d is one of these great historic\nalternatives. But this cleavage is too artificial for full-rounded\nreality. Each of these \u201chalves\u201d cries for its other, and there cannot be\nany great salvation until we rise from the poverty of either half to the\nrichness of the united whole which includes both \u201cways.\u201d\n\nSo, too, we have had the alternative of \u201couter\u201d or \u201cinner\u201d way forced\nupon us. We are told that the only efficacious way is the way of the\ncross, treated as an outer historical transaction; and we have, again,\nbeen told that there is no way except the inner way of direct experience\nand inner revelation. There are those who say, with one of George\nChapman\u2019s characters:\n\n    \u201cI\u2019ll build all inward\u2014not a light shall ope\n    The common out-way.\n    I\u2019ll therefore live in dark; and all my light\n    Like ancient temples, let in at my top.\u201d\n\nOver against the mystic who glories in the infinite depths of his own\nsoul, the evangelical, with excessive humility, allows not even a spark\nof native grandeur to the soul and denies that the inner way leads to\nanything but will-o\u2019-the-wisps. This is a very inept and unnecessary\nhalving of what should be a whole. It spoils religious life, somewhat as\nthe execution of Solomon\u2019s proposal would have spoiled for both mothers\nthe living child that was to be divided. Twenty-five hundred years ago\nHeraclitus of Ephesus declared that there is \u201ca way up and a way down and\nboth are one.\u201d So, too, there is an outer way and an inner way and both\nare one. It takes both diverse aspects to express the rich and complete\nreality, which we mar and mangle when we dichotomize it and glorify our\namputated half. There is a fine saying of a medieval mystic: \u201cHe who can\nsee the inward in the outward is more spiritual than he who can only see\nthe inward, in the inward.\u201d\n\nThis little book on the \u201cInner Life\u201d does not assume to deal with the\nwhole of the religious life. It recognizes that the outer in the long\nrun is just as essential as the inner. This one inner aspect is selected\nfor emphasis, without any intention of slighting the importance of the\nother side of the shining shield. Men to-day are so overwhelmingly\noccupied with objective tasks; they are so busy with the field of outer\naction, that it is a peculiarly opportune time to speak of the interior\nworld where the issues of life are settled and the tissues of destiny\nare woven. There will certainly be some readers who will be glad to turn\nfrom accounts of trenches lost or won to spend a little time with the\nless noisy but no less mysterious battle line inside the soul, and from\nproblems of foreign diplomacy to the drama of the inner life.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                      PAGE\n\n    INTRODUCTION                                                         v\n\n    CHAPTER I. THE INNER WAY                                             1\n\n        Sec. 1. The Momentous Choice                                     1\n\n        Sec. 2. Making a Life                                            9\n\n        Sec. 3. The Spirit of the Beatitudes                            14\n\n        Sec. 4. The Way of Contagion                                    23\n\n        Sec. 5. The Second Mile                                         30\n\n    CHAPTER II. THE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL                             39\n\n        Sec. 1. Bags that Wax not Old                                   39\n\n        Sec. 2. Otherism                                                46\n\n        Sec. 3. Scavengers and the Kingdom                              50\n\n        Sec. 4. \u201cThe Beyond is Within\u201d                                  56\n\n        Sec. 5. The Attitude toward the Unseen                          61\n\n    CHAPTER III. SOME PROPHETS OF THE INNER WAY                         70\n\n        Sec. 1. The Psalmist\u2019s Way                                      70\n\n        Sec. 2. The New and Living Way                                  77\n\n        Sec. 3. An Apostle of the Inner Way                             82\n\n        Sec. 4. The Ephesian Gospel                                     90\n\n    CHAPTER IV. THE WAY OF EXPERIENCE                                   97\n\n        Sec. 1. Waiting on God                                          97\n\n        Sec. 2. In the Spirit                                          105\n\n        Sec. 3. The Power of Prayer                                    111\n\n        Sec. 4. The Mystery of Goodness                                116\n\n        Sec. 5. \u201cAs One having Authority\u201d                              123\n\n        Sec. 6. Seeing Him Who is Invisible                            133\n\n    CHAPTER V. A FUNDAMENTAL SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK                         138\n\n    CHAPTER VI. WHAT DOES RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE TELL US ABOUT GOD       164\n\n\n\n\nTHE INNER LIFE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE INNER WAY\n\n\nI\n\nTHE MOMENTOUS CHOICE\n\nEvery scrap of writing that sheds any light on the life of Jesus, and\nevery incident that gives the least detail about His movements or\nHis teaching are precious to us. One can hardly conceive the joy and\nenthusiasm that would burst forth in all lands, if new fragments of\npapyrus or of parchment could be unearthed that would add in any measure\nto our knowledge of the way this Galilean life was lived \u201cbeneath the\nSyrian blue.\u201d But it may now probably be taken for granted that the\nmaterial will never be forthcoming\u2014and it surely is not now in hand\u2014for\nan adequate biography of Him. The lives of Jesus that have been written\nin modern times have a certain value, as suggestive revelations of what\nthe writers thought He ought to have been or ought to have done, but\nbiographies, in the true sense of the word, they are not. The Evangelists\nperformed for us an inestimable service, but they did not furnish us the\nsort of data necessary for a detailed biography, expressed in clock-time\nlanguage.\n\nOur \u201csources\u201d are much more adequate when we turn our attention from\nexternal events to the inner way which His life reveals, though they\nstill allow for free play of imagination and for much fluidity of\nsubjective interpretation. It is possible, however, I believe, to look\nthrough the genuine words that are preserved and to see, with clairvoyant\ninsight, the inner kingdom of the soul in that Person whose interior life\nwas the richest of all those who have walked our earth. There are curious\nlittle playthings to be bought in Rome. If one looks through a pin-hole\npeep somewhere in one of these tiny toys, one sees to his surprise the\nwhole mighty structure of St. Peter\u2019s Cathedral, standing out as large\nas it looks in reality. Perhaps we can find some pin-hole peeps in the\ngospels that in a similar way will let us see the marvelous inner world,\nthe extraordinary spiritual life, of this Person whose outer biography so\nbaffles us.\n\nOur first single glimpse of His interior life must be got without the\nhelp of any actual word of His. It is given to us in the gospel accounts\nof His discovery of His mission. How long the consciousness of mission\nhad been gestating we cannot tell. What books He read, if any, are never\nnamed. What ripening influence the days of toil in the carpenter shop may\nhave had, is unnoted. What dawned upon Him as He meditated in silence is\nnot reported. What formative ideas may have come from the little groups\nof \u201cthe quiet ones in the land\u201d can only be guessed at. We are merely\ntold that He increased in wisdom as He advanced in stature, which is\nthe only conceivable way that personality can be attained. Suddenly the\nmoment of clear insight came and He _saw_ what He was in the world for.\n\nIt was usual for the great prophets of His people to discover their\nmission in some such moment of clarified inward sight. Isaiah saw the\nLord with His train filling the temple, felt his lips cleansed, and heard\nthe call \u201cwho will go?\u201d Ezekiel saw the indescribable living creature\nwith the hands of a man under the wings of the Spirit and heard himself\ncalled to his feet for his commission. So here, there was a sudden\ninvading consciousness from beyond. The world with its solid hills\nappears only the fragment, which it is, and the World of wider Reality\nfloods in and reveals itself. The sky seems rent apart, the Spirit, as\nthough once more brooding over a world in the making, covers Him from\nabove, and gives inward birth to a conviction of uniqueness of Life and\nuniqueness of mission. He feels Himself in union with His Father.[1]\n\nThis experience of the invading Life, awakening a consciousness of\nunique personal mission, brought with it, as an unavoidable sequence,\nthe stress and strain of a very real temptation. The inner world of\nself-consciousness has strange watershed \u201cdivides\u201d that shape the\ncurrents of the life as the mountain ridges of the outer world do the\nrivers. No new nativity, no fresh awakening, can come to a soul without\nforcing the momentous issue of its further meaning, or without raising\nthe urgent question, how shall the new insight, the fresh light, the\nincreased power be wrought into life? The deepest issues turn, not\nupon the choice of \u201cthings,\u201d but upon the choice of the kind of self\nthat is to be, and the most decisive dramas are those that are enacted\nin the inner world before the footlights of our private theater. The\ntemptation is described by the Evangelists in such conventional language\nand in such popular and pictorial imagery that its immense inner\nreality is often missed by the reader. This oriental, pictorial way of\npresenting the drama of the soul catches the western mind in the toils of\nliteralism. The picture is taken for the reality. What we have here in\nthe temptation, when we go into the heart of the matter, is the momentous\nchoice of the kind of Person that is to emerge. It is the immemorial\nbattle between the higher and the lower self within. It was the line of\nleast resistance to accept popular expectation, to go forth to realize\nthe dream of the age. A person conscious of divine anointing, fired with\npassionate loyalty to the nation\u2019s hopes, gifted with extraordinary power\nof moving men to new issues would feel at once that he had only to put\nhimself forth as the expected Messiah in order to carry the enthusiastic\npeople with him. Let him but come with the spectacular powers of the\nMessiah that was eagerly looked for, the power to turn stones to bread,\nto leap from the pinnacle of the temple without injury, to break the\nRoman yoke and make Jerusalem once again the city of God\u2019s chosen\npeople\u2014and success was sure to follow. God\u2019s ancient covenant was an\nabsolute pledge to the faithful that He would in His own time make bare\nHis arm and deliver His people. As soon as the anointed one appeared all\nthe forces of the unseen world would be at his command and his triumph\nwould be assured.\n\nThe appeal of a career like that is no fictitious \u201ctemptation.\u201d It is of\na piece with what besets us all. It is out of the very stuff of nature.\nAt some such crossroad we have all stood\u2014with the issue of our inner\ndestiny in unstable equilibrium.\n\nOver against it, another \u201cway\u201d is set, another kind of life is dimly\noutlined, another type of anointed one is seen to be possible, another\nkingdom, totally different from the one of popular expectation, is\ndescried. This kingdom of His spiritual vision cannot come by miracle\nor by power; it can come only through complete adjustment of will to the\nwill of the Father-God. This anointed one of His higher aspiration will\nbe no temporal ruler, no political king, no spectacular wonder-worker.\nHe will rule only by the conquering power of love and goodness. He\nwill venture everything on sheer faith in the Father\u2019s love and on the\nappeal of uncalculating goodness of heart and will. This new kind of\nlife that draws Him from the line of least resistance is a life of utter\nsimplicity, which discounts what the world calls \u201cgoods,\u201d which draws\nupon an unseen environment for its resources and which expands inwardly,\nrather than outwardly, after the manner of the green bay tree. The new\n\u201cway\u201d that opens to His sight, and that beckons Him from all other ways\nof glory, is a way of suffering and sacrifice, a way of the cross. It\noffers itself not because self-giving is a better way than an easy, happy\npath, but because it is the _only way_ by which love in a world like\nours can reach its goal; it is the only way by which the kingdom of God\ncan be formed in the lives of men like us.\n\nHe came forth from those momentous days of inner struggle with the issue\nsettled, and with the first step taken in the way of the Kingdom.\n\n\nII\n\nMAKING A LIFE\n\nOur present-day age has a kind of passion for the study of developing\n_processes_. We do not feel quite at home with any subject until we can\nwork our way back to its origin or origins and then follow it in its\nunfoldings, explaining the higher and more complex stages in terms of the\nlower and more simple ones.\n\nThat method, however, cannot be successfully used to unlock the secret\nof the gospels. We do not find beginnings here; we cannot follow genetic\nprocesses; we are unable to discriminate higher and lower stages of\ninsight. We must launch out at the very start in mid-sea. Whatever words\nof Christ one begins with indicate that He has already arrived at an\nabsolute insight\u2014I mean, that He has found a way of living that is no\nlonger relatively good, but intrinsically and absolutely good.\n\nIt is an inveterate habit with men like us to estimate everything in\nterms of relative results. We are pragmatists by the very push of our\nimmemorial instincts. Our first question, consciously or unconsciously,\nis apt to be, what effects will come, if I act so, or so? Will this\ncourse work well? Will it further some issue or some interest? And this\ndeep-lying pragmatic tendency\u2014this aim at results\u2014appears woven into the\nvery fiber even of much of the religion of the world.\n\nSometimes the results sought are near, sometimes they are remote;\nsometimes they are sought for this world, sometimes they are sought\nfor the next world; sometimes the pragmatic aim at results is crudely\nand coarsely selfish, sometimes it is refined, or altogether veiled,\nbut religion has no doubt often enough been an impressive kind of\ndouble-entry bookkeeping, the piling up of credits or of merits which\nsome day will bring the sure result that is sought.\n\nJust that entire pragmatic attitude Christ has left forever behind. His\ninner way, His interior insight, passes on to a new level of life, to a\ntotally different type of religious aspiration and to another method of\nvaluation. For Him the beyond is always within. The only good thing is\na life that is intrinsically good; the only blessedness worth talking\nabout is a kind of blessedness which attaches by a law of inner necessity\nto the character of the life itself. It makes no difference what world\none may eventually be in\u2014if only it is still a world of spiritual\nissues\u2014goodness, holiness, likeness to God, will still constitute\nblessedness as they do in this world.\n\nWhen once this insight is reached, it affects all the pursuits and all\nthe valuations of the soul. All \u201cother things\u201d at once become secondary,\nand \u201centering into life,\u201d \u201cseeking life,\u201d \u201cfinding life,\u201d becomes the\nprimary thing. \u201cMaking a life\u201d overtops in importance even \u201cmaking a\nliving\u201d\u2014the life is more than meat, more than raiment, more than gaining\nthe whole world. It is better to enter into life halt and maimed\u2014with\nright hand cut off and eye plucked out\u2014than bend all one\u2019s energies\nto preserve the body whole and yet to miss _life_. The way to life is\nstrait, the entering gate is narrow. One cannot _enter_ without facing\nthe stern necessity of focusing the vision on the central purpose,\nwithout getting \u201ca single eye,\u201d without letting go _many things_ for the\nsake of _one thing_.\n\nSacrifice, surrender, negation, are inherently involved in any great\nonward-marching life. They go with any choice that can be made of a rich\nand intense life. It is impossible to find without losing, to get without\ngiving, to live without dying. But sacrifice, surrender, negation, are\nnever for their own sake; they are never ends in themselves. They are\ninvolved in life itself.\n\nOne great spiritual law comes to light and becomes operative, as soon as\nthe interior insight is won, as soon as the inner way is found: The law\nthat _the soul can have what it wants_. This law of the interior life,\nof the inner way, Christ affirms again and again in varying phrase. The\ninner attitude, the settled trend of desire, the persistent swing of the\nwill, are the very things that make life. The person who cherishes hate\nin his soul forms a disposition of hatred and must live in the atmosphere\nwhich that spirit forms. The person who longs for deeds that are wrong,\nand allows desire to play with free scope is inwardly as though he did\nthe deed. He is what he wants to be. And so, too, on the other hand,\nthe rightly fashioned will is its own reward and has its own peculiar\nblessedness. The person who hungers and thirsts for goodness will get\nwhat he wants. He who seeks, with undivided aspiration, will always\nfind. He who knocks with persistent desire for the gates of life to open\nwill see them swing apart for him to go through to his goal. He who asks,\nwith the ground swell of his whole inner being, for the things which\nminister to life and feed its deepest roots, will get what he asks for.\nThe very pity of the Pharisee\u2019s way of life is that he has his reward\u2014he\ngets what he is seeking. The glory of the other way is the glory of the\nimperfect\u2014the glory of living toward the flying goal of likeness to the\nFather in heaven.\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE SPIRIT OF THE BEATITUDES\n\nIn putting the emphasis for the moment on the inner way of religion, we\nmust be very careful not to encourage the heresy of treating religion\nas a withdrawal from the world, or as a retreat from the press and\nstrain of the practical issues and problems of the social order. That\nis the road to spiritual disaster, not to spiritual power. Christ gives\nno encouragement to the view that the spiritual ideal\u2014the Kingdom of\nGod\u2014can ever be achieved apart from the conquest of the whole of life or\nwithout the victory that overcomes the world. Religion can no more be cut\napart from the intellectual currents, or from the moral undertakings,\nor from the social tasks of an age, than any other form of life can be\nisolated from its native environment. To desert this world, which presses\nclose around us, for the sake of some remote world of our dreams, is to\nneglect our one chance to get a real religion.\n\nBut at the same time the only possible way to realize a kingdom of God\nin this world, or in any other world, is to begin by getting an inner\nspirit, the spirit of the Kingdom, formed within the lives of the few\nor many who are to be the \u201cseed\u201d of it. The \u201cBeatitudes\u201d furnish one of\nthese extraordinary pin-hole peeps, of which I spoke in a former section,\nthrough which this whole inner world can be seen. Here, in a few lines,\nloaded with insight, the seed-spirit of the Kingdom comes full into\nsight. We are given no new code, no new set of rules, no legal system at\nall. It is the proclamation of a new spirit, a new way of living, a new\ntype of person. To have a world of persons of this type, to have this\nspirit prevail, would mean the actual presence of the Kingdom of God,\nbecause this spirit would produce not only a new inner world, but a new\nouter world as well.\n\nThe first thing to note about the _blessedness_ proclaimed in the\nbeatitudes is that it is not a prize held out or promised as a final\nreward for a certain kind of conduct; it attaches by the inherent nature\nof things to a type of life, as light attaches to a luminous body, as\nmotion attaches to a spinning top, as gravitation attaches to every\nparticle of matter. To be this type of person is to be living the happy,\nblessed life, whatever the outward conditions may be. And the next thing\nto note is that this type of life carries in itself a principle of\nadvance. One reason why it is a blessed type of life is that it cannot\nbe arrested, it cannot be static. The beatitude lies not in attainment,\nnot in the arrival at a goal, but in the _way_, in the spirit, in the\nsearch, in the march.\n\nI suspect that the nature of \u201cthe happy life\u201d of the beatitudes can\nbe adequately grasped only when it is seen in contrast to that of the\nPharisee who is obviously in the background as a foil to bring out the\nportrait of the new type. The pity of the Pharisee\u2019s aim was that it\ncould be reached\u2014he gets his reward. He has a definite limit in view\u2014the\nkeeping of a fixed law. Beyond this there are no worlds to conquer. Once\nthe near finite goal is touched there is nothing to pursue. The immediate\neffect of this achievement is conceit and self-satisfaction. The trail of\ncalculation and barter lies over all his righteousness. There is in his\nmind an equation between goodness and prosperity, between righteousness\nand success: \u201cIf thou hast made the most High thy habitation there shall\nno evil befall thee; neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.\u201d\nThe person who has loss or trouble or suffering must have been an overt\nor a secret sinner, as the question about the blind man indicates.\n\nThe goodness portrayed in the \u201cbeatitudes\u201d is different from this by\nthe width of the sky. Christ does not call the _righteous person_\nthe happy man. He does not pronounce the attainment of righteousness\nblessed, because a \u201crighteousness\u201d that gets attained is always external\nand conventional; it is a kind that has definable, quantitative\nlimits\u2014\u201chow many times must I forgive my brother?\u201d \u201cWho is my neighbor?\u201d\nThe beatitude attaches rather to hunger and thirst for goodness. The\naspiration, and not the attainment, is singled out for blessing. In the\npopular estimate, happiness consists in getting desires satisfied. For\nChrist the real concern is to get new and greater desires\u2014desires for\ninfinite things. The reach must always exceed the grasp. The heart must\nforever be throbbing for an attainment that lies beyond any present\nconsummation. It is the \u201cglory of going on,\u201d the joy of discovering unwon\nterritory beyond the margin of each, spiritual conquest.\n\nPoverty of spirit\u2014another beatitude-trait\u2014is bound up with hunger for\ngoodness as the convex side of a curve is bound up with the concave\nside. They are different aspects of the same attitude. The poor in\nspirit are by no means poor-spirited. They are persons who see so much\nto be, so much to do, such limitless reaches to life and goodness that\nthey are profoundly conscious of their insufficiency and incompleteness.\nSelf-satisfaction and pride of spiritual achievement are washed clean\nout of their nature. They are open-hearted, open-windowed to all truth,\npossessed of an abiding disposition to receive, impressed with a sense\nof inner need and of childlike dependence. Just that attitude is its own\nsure reward. By an unescapable spiritual gravitation the best things in\nthe universe belong to open-hearted, open-windowed souls. Again, in the\nbeatitude on the mourner, He reverses the Pharisaic and popular judgment.\nLosses and crosses, pains and burdens, heartaches and bereavements,\nempty chairs and darkened windows, are the antipodes of our desires and\nlast of all things to be expected in the list of beatitudes. They were\nthen, and still often are, counted as visitations of divine disapproval.\nChrist rejects the superficial way of measuring the success of a life\nby the smoothness of its road or by its freedom from trial, and He will\nnot allow the false view to stand; namely, that success is the reward\nof piety, and trouble the return for lack of righteousness. There is\nno way to depth of life, to richness of spirit, by shun-pikes that go\naround hard experiences. The very discovery of the nearness of God, of\nthe sustaining power of His love, of the sufficiency of His grace, has\ncome to men in all ages through pain, and suffering and loss. We always\ngo for comfort to those who have passed through deeps of life and we may\nwell trust Christ when He tells us that it is not the lotus-eater but the\nsufferer who is in the way of blessing and is forming the spirit of the\nKingdom.\n\nMeekness and mercy and peace-making are high among the qualities that\ncharacterize the inner spirit of the kingdom. Patience, endurance,\nsteadfastness, confidence in the eternal nature of things, determination\nto win by the slow method that is right rather than by the quick and\nstrenuous method that is wrong are other ways of naming meekness.\nMercy is tenderness of heart, ability to put oneself in another\u2019s\nplace, confidence in the power of love and gentleness, the practice of\nforgiveness and the joyous bestowal of sympathy. Peace-making is the\ndivine business of drawing men together into unity of spirit and purpose,\nteaching them to live the love-way, and forming in the very warp and\nwoof of human society the spirit of altruism and loyalty to the higher\ninterests of the group. These traits belong to the inmost nature of\nGod and of course those who have them are blessed, and it is equally\nclear that the Kingdom is theirs. There is furthermore, in this happy\nway of life, a condition of heart to which the vision of God inherently\nattaches. He is no longer argued about and speculated upon. He is seen\nand felt. He becomes as sure as the sky above us or our own pulse beat\nwithin us. We spoil our vision with selfishness, we cloud it with\nprejudices, we blur it with impure aims. We cast our own shadow across\nour field of view and make a dark eclipse. It is not better spectacles\nwe need. It is a pure, clean, sincere, loving, forgiving, passionately\ndevoted heart. God who is love can be _seen_, can be found, only by a\nheart that intensely loves and that hates everything that hinders love.\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE WAY OF CONTAGION\n\nWe have seen that religion cannot be sundered from the intellectual\ncurrents, or from the moral undertakings, or from the social tasks of the\nworld. It cannot be _merely_ inward. It can preserve its inward power\nonly as it lives in actual correspondence with its whole environment and\nbecomes also outward. But the primary thing for Christ, we saw, was the\nattainment of an inner spirit, the seed-spirit of the Kingdom, the spirit\nof the beatitudes\u2014the attainment of a type of life to which blessedness\ninherently attaches.\n\nThe question at once arises, how shall this inner spirit be spread and\npropagated? How is religion of the inner type to grow and expand? There\nare two characteristic ways of propagating religious ideas, of carrying\nspiritual discoveries into the life of the world. One way is the way of\n_organization_; the other way is the way of _contagion_. The way of\norganization, which is as old as human history, is too familiar to need\nany description. Our age has almost unlimited faith in it. If we wish to\ncarry a live idea into action, we _organize_. We select officials. We\nmake \u201cmotions.\u201d We pass resolutions. We appoint committees or boards or\ncommissions. We hold endless conferences. We issue propaganda material.\nWe have street processions. We use placards and billboards. We found\ninstitutions, and devise machinery. We have collisions between \u201cpros\u201d\nand \u201cantis\u201d and stir up enthusiasm and passion for our \u201ccause.\u201d The\nChristian Church is probably the most impressive instance of organization\nin the entire history of man\u2019s undertakings. It has become, in its\nhistorical development, almost infinitely complex, with organizations\nwithin organizations and suborganizations within suborganizations. It has\nemployed every known expedient, even the sword, for the advancement of\nits \u201ccause,\u201d it has created a perfect maze of institutions and it has\noriginated a vast variety of educational methods for carrying forward its\ntruth.\n\nBut great as has been the historical emphasis on organization, it\nnevertheless occupies a very slender place in the consciousness of\nChrist. There is no clear indication that He appointed any officials,\nor organized any society, or founded any institution. There are two\n\u201csayings\u201d in Matthew which use the word \u201cChurch,\u201d but they almost\ncertainly bear the mark and coloring of a later time, when the Church\nhad already come into existence and had formed its practices and its\ntraditions. And even though the great \u201csaying\u201d at C\u00e6sarea Philippi\nwere accepted as the actual words of Jesus, it is still quite possible\nto see in it the announcement of a spiritual fellowship, spreading by\ninspiration and contagion, rather than the founding of an official\ninstitution. It is, no doubt, fortunate on the whole that the Church\nwas organized, and that the great _idea_ found a visible body through\nwhich to express itself, though nobody can fail to see that the Church,\nwhile meaning to propagate the gospel, has always profoundly modified and\ntransformed it, and that it has brought into play a great many tendencies\nforeign to the original gospel.\n\nChrist\u2019s way of propagating the truth\u2014the way that inherently fits\nthe inner life and spirit of the gospel of the Kingdom\u2014was the way of\npersonal _contagion_. Instead of founding an institution, or organizing\nan official society, or forming a system, or creating external machinery,\nHe counted almost wholly upon the spontaneous and dynamic influence of\nlife upon life, of personality upon personality. He would produce a\nnew world, a new social order, through the contagious and transmissive\ncharacter of personal goodness. He practically ignored, or positively\nrejected, the method of _restraint_, and trusted absolutely to the\nconquering power of loyalty and consecration. It was His faith that,\nif you get into the world anywhere a _seed_ of the Kingdom, a nucleus\nof persons who exhibit the blessed life, who are dedicated to expanding\ngoodness, who rely implicitly on love and sympathy, who try in meek\npatience the slow method that is right, who still feel the clasping\nhands of love even when they go through pain and trial and loss, this\nseed-spirit will spread, this nucleus will enlarge and create a society.\nIf the new spirit of passionate love, and of uncalculating goodness gets\nformed in one person, by a silent alchemy a group of persons will soon\nbecome permeated and charged with the same spirit, new conditions will be\nformed, and in time children will be born into a new social environment\nand will suck in new ideals with their mother\u2019s milk.\n\nPersons of the blessed life, Christ says, are the saving _salt_ of the\nearth. They carry their wholesome savor into everything they touch. They\ndo not try to save themselves. They are ready like salt to dissolve and\ndisappear, but, the more they give themselves away, the more antiseptic\nand preservative they become to the society in which they live. They keep\nthe old world from spoiling and corrupting not by attack and restraint,\nnot by excision and amputation, but by pouring the preservative savor\nof their lives of goodness into all the channels of the world. This\npreservative and saving influence on society depends, however, entirely\non the continuance of the inner quality of life and it will be certain to\ncease if ever the salt lose its savor, _i.e._ if the _soul_ of religion\nwanes or dies away and only the outer form of it remains.\n\nBut such lives are more than antiseptic and preservative; they are\nkindling and illuminative. They become \u201ccandles of the Lord.\u201d Candles\nemit their light and kindle other candles by burning themselves up and\ntransmitting their flame. When a life is set on fire, and is radiant with\nself-consuming love, it will invariably set other lives on fire. Such a\nperson may teach many valuable ideas, he may organize many movements,\nhe may attack many evil customs, but the best thing he will ever do will\nbe to fuse and kindle other souls with the fire of his passion. His own\nburning, shining life is always his supreme service.\n\n    \u201cThe greatest legacy the hero leaves his race\n    Is\u2014to have been a hero.\u201d\n\nSuch a person will be eager to decrease that his kindling power may\nincrease. He will not care to save himself, or to reap a reward for his\nservice. He may not even know that he is shining, like the early saint\nwho \u201cwist not that his face did shine.\u201d But for all that, men will see\nthe way by his light and will catch the glory of living because he\nexhibits it. He can no more be hid than can a hill-top city, or the\nheadlight of a locomotive, or the newly risen sun.\n\nThat is Christ\u2019s way of spreading the life of the Kingdom, that is His\nmethod of propagating the inner spirit, and of producing a society of\nblessed people.\n\n\nV\n\nTHE SECOND MILE\n\nIt may seem to some incongruous to be writing about an inner way of life\nin these days when _action_ is felt by so many to be the only reality and\nwhen in every direction outside there is dire human need to be met.\n\n    \u201cLeave, then, your wonted prattle,\n      The oaten reed forbear;\n    For I hear a sound of battle,\n      And trumpets rend the air.\u201d\n\nBut more than ever is it necessary for us to center down to eternal\nprinciples of life and action, to attain and maintain the right inner\nspirit, and to _see_ what in its faith and essence Christianity really\nmeans. Precisely now when the Sermon on the Mount seems least to be the\nprogram of action and the map of life, is it a suitable time for us to\nendeavor to discover what Christ\u2019s way means, by looking through the\nliteral phrases in clairvoyant fashion to the spirit treasured and\nembalmed within the wonderful words?\n\nThere is one phrase which seems to me to be, in a rare and peculiar\ndegree, the key to the entire gospel\u2014I mean the invitation to go \u201cthe\nsecond mile\u201d: \u201cIf any man compel you to go a mile, go two miles.\u201d It is\nalways dangerous, I know, to fly away from the literal significance of\nwords and to indulge in far-fetched \u201cspiritual\u201d interpretations. But it\nis even more dangerous, perhaps, to read words of oriental imagery and\nparadox as though they were the plain prose speech of the occidental\nmind, and to be taken only at their face value.\n\nThere will probably always be Tolstoys\u2014great or small\u2014who will make the\ndifficult, and never very successful, experiment of taking this and the\nother \u201ccommands\u201d of the Sermon on the Mount in a literal and legalistic\nsense, but to do so is almost certainly to be \u201cslow of heart,\u201d and\nto miss Christ\u2019s meaning. Whatever else may be true or false in our\ninterpretations of the teachings of Christ, it may always be taken for\ncertain that He did not inaugurate a religion of the legalistic type,\nconsisting of commands and exact directions, to be literally followed\nand obeyed as a way to secure merit and reward. To go \u201cthe second mile,\u201d\nthen, is an attitude and character of spirit rather than a mere rule and\nformula for the legs.\n\nChrist always shows a very slender appreciation of any act of religion or\nof ethics which does not reach beyond the stage of _compulsion_. What is\ndone because it _must_ be done; because the law requires it, or because\nsociety expects it, or because convention prescribes it, or because the\ndoer of it is afraid of consequences if he omits it, may, of course, be\nrightly done and meritoriously done, but an act on that level is not yet\nquite in the region where for Christ the highest moral and religious\nacts have their spring. The typical Pharisee was an appalling instance\nof the inadequacy of \u201cthe first-mile\u201d kind of religion and ethics. He\nplodded his hard mile, and \u201cdid all the things required\u201d of him. In the\nregion of commands, or \u201ctouching the law\u201d he was \u201cblameless.\u201d But there\nwas no spontaneity in his religion, no free initiative, no enthusiastic\npassion, no joyous abandon, no gratuitous and uncalculating acts. He did\nthings enough, but he did them because he _had_ to do them, not because\nsome mighty love possessed him and flooded him and inspired him to go not\nonly the expected mile, but to go on without any calculation out beyond\nmilestones altogether. Just here appears the new inner way of Christ\u2019s\nreligion. The legalist, like the rich young man, \u201cdoes all the things\nthat are commanded in the law,\u201d but still painfully \u201clacks\u201d something.\nTo get into Christ\u2019s way, to \u201cfollow\u201d in any real sense, he must cut his\ncables and swing out from the moorings where he is _tied_. He must catch\nsuch a passion of love that giving either of his money or of himself,\nshall no longer be for him an imposed duty but rather a joy of spirit.\n\nThe parable of the \u201cgreat surprise\u201d is another illustration, a glorious\nillustration, of the spirit of the \u201csecond mile.\u201d The \u201cblessed ones\u201d in\nthe picture (which is an unveiling of actual everyday life in its eternal\nmeaning rather than a portraiture of the day of judgment) find themselves\nat home with God, drawn into His presence, crowned with His approval, and\nsealed with His fellowship. They are surprised. They had not been adding\nup their merits or calculating their chances of winning heaven. They are\nbeautifully artless and na\u00efve: \u201cWhen saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee?\u201d\nThey have been doing deeds of love, saying kind words, relieving human\nneed, banishing human loneliness, making life easier and more joyous,\nbecause they had caught a spirit of love and tenderness, and, therefore,\n\u201ccould not do otherwise,\u201d and now they suddenly discover that those whom\nthey helped and rescued and served were bound up in one inseparable life\nwith God himself, so that what was done to them was done to Him, and they\nfind that _their_ spontaneous and uncalculating love was one in essence\nand substance with the love of God and that they are eternally at home\nwith Him.\n\nThe tender, immortal stories of the woman who broke her alabaster vase of\nprecious nard and \u201cfilled all the house with the odor,\u201d and of the woman\n(perhaps the same one) who had been a sinner and who from her passion of\nlove for her great forgiveness wet Christ\u2019s feet with her tears, even\nbefore she could open her cruse of ointment, are the finest possible\nillustrations of the spirit of \u201cthe second mile.\u201d They picture, in\nsubtly suggestive imagery, the immense contrast between the spontaneous,\nuncalculating act of one who \u201cloves much\u201d and does with grace what love\nprompts; and acts, on the other hand, like that of Simon the pharisaic\nhost, who offers Jesus a purely conventional and grudging hospitality,\nor like that of the disciples who sit indeed at the table with Jesus but\ncome to it absorbed with the burning question, \u201cwho among us is to be\nfirst and greatest,\u201d not only at the table but \u201cin the Kingdom!\u201d\n\nWhat grace and unexpected love come into action in the simple deed of the\n\u201cSamaritan\u201d who, from nobility of nature, does what official Priest and\nLevite leave undone! The hated foreigner, spit at and stoned as he walked\nthe roads of Judea, under no obligation to be kind or serviceable, is the\nreal \u201cneighbor,\u201d the bearer of balm and healing, the dispenser of love\nand sympathy. He may have no ordination to the priesthood, but he finely\nexhibits the attitude of grace which belongs in the religion of \u201cthe\nsecond mile.\u201d\n\nBut we do not reach the full significance of \u201cthe second mile\u201d until we\nsee that it is something more than the highest level of human grace.\nWhat shines through the gospels everywhere, like a new-risen sun, is\nthe revelation that _this_\u2014this grace of the second mile\u2014is the supreme\ntrait and character-nature of God as well. How surprising and unexpected\nis that extraordinary unveiling of the divine nature in the story of\nthe prodigal boy! It is wonderful enough that one who has wasted his\nsubstance and squandered his own very life should still be able in his\nsqualor and misery to come to himself and want to go home; but the fact\nwhich radiates this sublime story like a glory is the uncalculating,\nungrudging, unlimited love of the Father, which remains unchanged by the\nboy\u2019s blunder, which has never failed in the period of his absence, and\nwhich bursts out in the cry of joy: \u201cThis my son was dead and is alive\nagain, he was lost and is found.\u201d\n\nIt is, and always has been, the very center of our Christian faith that\nthe real nature and character of God come full into view in Christ,\nthat God is in mind and heart and will revealed in the Person whom we\ncall Christ. \u201cThe grace,\u201d then, \u201cof the Lord Jesus Christ,\u201d of which\nwe are reminded in that great word of apostolic benediction, is a true\nmanifestation of the deepest nature and character of God Himself. The\nCross is not an artificial scheme. The Cross is the eternal grace, the\nspontaneous, uncalculating love of God made visible and vocal in our\ntemporal world. It is the apotheosis of the spirit of the second mile.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE KINGDOM WITHIN THE SOUL\n\n\nI\n\nBAGS THAT WAX NOT OLD\n\nThe ancient world found it very difficult to keep money even after it was\ngot. There were almost constant wars involving the dire stripping of the\nunprotected country districts, and the siege and devastation of cities.\nIn those times almost everything was fragile. It was never easy to\ndiscover any form of wealth that was surely abiding. Even if the besom of\nan invading army did not sweep away the labor of years, still there were\nother enemies to be feared. Tyrants were, always on the watch for ways of\nrelieving wealthy men of their treasures. There were robber bands lying\nin wait for the traveler, and neighborhood thieves found it a small\nmatter to break into private houses and to steal hidden money. It was no\nuncommon thing for men to dig in the ground and hide the talent which\nthey had saved, or to bury the pearl of great price, or other precious\njewel, in a field. If one invested his wealth in garments, then another\nenemy was to be feared. The moth is as old as clothes, and he got in even\nwhere the thief failed to break through.\n\nThe problem of getting an indestructible money-bag was, thus, a problem\nof first importance. A journey to Jericho might any day reduce a man\nto primitive conditions, or a passing army might make him a beggar, or\nthe visit of a thief might strip him of all his living, or the silent\nwork of a brood of moths might ruin the savings of years. There were no\nperdurable purses, no nonbreakable banks, no irreducible forms of wealth.\n\nChrist evidently recognized that there was a value in money. He did\nnot apparently demand from his follower the absolute renunciation of\nownership. He expounded no new theory of economics. But he was profoundly\nimpressed by the moral havoc and the social calamities caused by the\nexcessive ambition for, and pursuit of, wealth. He saw how the mad rush\nfor money and the overvaluation of it killed out the noblest fundamental\ntraits of the soul, and, more than all else, he felt the tragedy of human\nlives being focused with intensity of strain and fixed with burning\npassion on the pursuit of such pitiably fragile treasures\u2014money-bags of\nall sorts waxing old and becoming incapable of holding the hoard that\nabsorbed the whole life.\n\nChrist, then, proposes a new kind of purse, an indestructible and\nimmutable treasure-bag\u2014\u201cmake for yourselves bags that wax not old.\u201d Such\npurses are not on the market, they cannot be purchased, they must be\nwoven by each person for himself, and they must be woven, if at all, out\nof the stuff of _life_ itself. We here pass over, as so often in Christ\u2019s\nteaching, from extrinsic wealth to intrinsic, from the wealth which men\nmerely possess to the kind of wealth which they can themselves _be_. We\nonce more find ourselves brought to an inner way of living, where the\nissue is no longer how to accumulate goods, but rather how to become\ngood. The problem is the problem of what men live by. We are called to\nloosen our grip on perishable treasures only that we may tighten our\nhold on heavenly, _i.e._ spiritual, treasure. We are shown the folly of\nspending a life building barns for expanding earthly possessions, while\nwe are taking no pains to make ourselves rich in God.\n\nWhat is it, then, that men live by? What will prove to be imperishable\nwealth, whether we are in this world, or in any other world of real moral\nissues? It is obviously not money, for men often live nobly after the\nmoney-bag has waxed old and after the bank has failed, and it is our most\nelemental faith that life blossoms out into its consummate richness after\nall earthly affairs come to a complete close, and after every penny\nof visible wealth has been left forever behind. Money is plainly not\nintrinsic treasure; love is, goodness is, joy is. A beloved disciple, in\na moment of inspiration, announced the profound truth that love is \u201cof\nGod.\u201d Men wrongly divide love into two types, \u201chuman love\u201d and \u201cdivine\nlove,\u201d but in reality there is only _love_. Wherever love has become\nthe nature of the soul, and it has become \u201cnatural\u201d now to forget self\nfor others, to seek to give rather than to get, to share rather than to\npossess, to be impoverished in order that some loved one may abound,\nthere a divine and Godlike spirit has been formed. And we now come upon\na new kind of wealth, a kind that accumulates with use, because it is\na law that the more the spirit of love is exercised, the more the soul\nspends itself in love, so much the more love it has, the richer it grows,\nthe diviner its nature becomes. But at the same time, it is a fact that\nlove is never complete, never reaches its full scope and measure until\nour love takes on an eternal aspect\u2014until we love God in Himself or love\nHim in our loved ones. One reason why love is exalted by death is that we\nno longer love our immortal loved one in any narrow and selfish way; we\nlove now for pure love\u2019s sake, and the truest of all treasures which can\nbe laid up in imperishable bags is this stock of unalloyed love for that\nwhich is most lovely\u2014for God and for souls that are given to us to bring\nsome of His nature closer to our human hearts.\n\nGoodness is, of course, notoriously hard to define. It is never an\nabstract quality that can be described by logical concepts. It is a\nway of living, a way of acting, a way of working out relationships. It\nis, like love, a cumulative thing. To be good inherently means to be\nbecoming better, to be on the way to an unattained goal of action, or\nof character. It is the glory of going on to be perfect like our Father\nin heaven. To be rich in goodness of character, therefore, is to be on\nthe way to become ever richer, however long the journey lasts, however\nfar the spiral winds, for goodness, like love, is of God, and steadily\nassimilates our imperfect human nature to the perfect divine nature.\n\nJoy is, perhaps, not often thought of as one of the things men live\nby, as the soul\u2019s eternal wealth. Life is so full of sorrow and pain\nthat joy seems like a fleeting, vanishing asset. But that is because\njoy is confused with pleasure. True joy is not a thing of moods, not a\ncapricious emotion, tied to fluctuating experiences. It is a state and\ncondition of the soul. It survives through pain and sorrow and, like a\nsubterranean spring, waters the whole life. It is intimately allied and\nbound up with love and goodness, and so is deeply rooted in the life\nof God. Joy is the most perfect and complete mark and sign of immortal\nwealth, because it indicates that the soul is living by love and by\ngoodness, and is very rich in God.\n\n\nII\n\nOTHERISM\n\n(_Matt. VII. 1-12_)\n\nAltruism is an honored word. Otherism is only recently coined and has not\nyet become widely current in good speech. We need, however, a word that\nhas more inward depth than altruism usually carries, and perhaps otherism\nwill eventually take that vacant place.\n\nNot merely in these days of war, but in all our human relations all the\ntime we greatly need to get the interior vision which enables us to\nunderstand from within those with whom we live and work. Nobody sees life\ncorrectly until he has corrected his own views by a true appreciation of\nthe views of others. From the outside it is impossible to estimate any\nlife fairly. We have long ago learned that we can get no true account of\nany historical character unless we have a historian who can put himself\nin the place of the person he is describing. He must have imagination\nand be able to see clearly the conditions and forces, the influences and\nthe atmosphere in which the man lived. The problems which he had to deal\nwith, the conceptions which governed men\u2019s thoughts when he lived\u2014all\nthese must be understood, before we can get any estimate of the man\nhimself. The same sort of imagination is necessary to judge the person\nwho lives next door. We dare not pronounce upon him until we know all\nthat he has to face. If we could once feel his quivering spirit and could\nsee his inward struggles, we could not set up our private tribunal and\npass our cold individual judgment upon him. The real remedy for this hard\ncritical spirit which breaks society up into independent units is the\nspirit of love, the spirit of otherism.\n\nThe moment we put ourselves in the place of others, and pronounce no\njudgment upon persons until we have seen all the circumstances of their\nlife, a new state of things at once appears. Genuine sympathy, clear\ninterior insight into the personality of others, immediately creates a\nnew world. The trouble too often is that we see all the defects in others\nand forget our own. We want to take the mote out of another person\u2019s eye\nwhile all the time there is a whole fence rail in our own. Christ\u2019s rule\nis to make oneself perfect before one goes to correcting others. \u201cLet him\nwho is without sin cast the first stone.\u201d\n\nThere is another situation also which would be remedied if we learned\nto put ourselves in the other person\u2019s place\u2014if we had the spirit of\notherism. Christ sums it up in the proverb about _casting pearls before\nswine_, _i.e._ giving what is a misfit. Many of our well-meant charities\nare of this sort. We blunder in our efforts to help poor needy people,\nbecause we do not get their point of view. We do not live our way into\ntheir lives. There is no fit between our gift and their need. They get a\nstone for bread.\n\nThe same thing happens in much of our public speaking. Many persons have\nthe barbarous habit of never imagining the listeners\u2019 point of view. They\ngo on speaking as unconscious of the condition confronting them as the\nhose pipe is when the water is turned on. The remedy again is otherism.\nIt is impossible to help anybody with a message until you can in some\nmeasure _share_ his life.\n\n    \u201cThe Holy Supper is kept, indeed,\n    In whatso we share with another\u2019s need.\u201d\n\nThis teaching is all summed up in the golden rule, \u201cAll things that ye\nwould that men should do unto you do ye also unto them.\u201d It is clear at\nonce that to do this one must cultivate both his spirit of love and his\npower of imagination. It is never enough to want to help a person. We\nmust put ourself in his place and be able to do what really _will help\nhim_. It would appear, therefore, that the most difficult and at the same\ntime the most heavenly attainment in the world is sympathy\u2014the spirit of\notherism.\n\n\nIII\n\nSCAVENGERS AND THE KINGDOM\n\nWe no longer expect a world of perfect conditions to appear by sudden\nintervention. We have explained so many things by the discovery of\nantecedent developmental processes that we have leaped to the working\nfaith that all things come that way. We do, no doubt, find unbridged gaps\nin the enormous series of events that have culminated in our present\nworld, and we must admit that nature seems sometimes to desert her usual\nplacid way of process for what looks like a steeplechase of sudden\n\u201cjumps,\u201d but we feel pretty sure that even these \u201cjumps\u201d have been slowly\nprepared for and are themselves part of the process-method.\n\nThen, too, we find it very difficult to conceive how a spiritual\nkingdom\u2014a world which is built and held together by the inner gravitation\nof love\u2014could come by a fiat, or a stroke, or a jet. The qualities which\nform and characterize the kingdom of God are all qualities that are\nborn and cultivated within by personal choices, by the formation of\nrightly-fashioned wills, by the growth of love and sympathy in the heart,\nby the creation of pure and elevated desires. Those traits must be won\nand achieved. They cannot be shot into souls from without. If, therefore,\nwe are to expect the crowning age that shall usher in a world in which\nwrath and hate no longer destroy, from which injustice is banished and\nthe central law of which is love like that of Christ\u2019s, then we must look\nfor this age, it seems to me, to come by slow increments and gains of\nadvancing personal and social goodness, and by divine and human processes\nalready at work in some degree in the lives of men.\n\nChrist often seems to teach this view. There is a strand in his sayings\nthat certainly implies a kingdom coming by a long process of slow\nspiritual gains. There is first the seed, then the blade, then the\near and finally the full corn in the ear. The mustard seed, though\nso minute and tiny, is a type of the kingdom because it contains the\npotentiality of a vast growth and expansion. The yeast is likewise a\nfigure of ever-growing, permeating, penetrating living force which in\ntime leavens the whole mass. The kingdom is frequently described as an\ninner life, a victorious spirit. It \u201ccomes\u201d when God\u2019s will is done in a\nperson as it is done in heaven, and, therefore, it is not a spectacle to\nbe \u201cobserved,\u201d like the passing of C\u00e6sar\u2019s legions, or the installation\nof a new ruler. But, on the other hand, there are plainly many sayings\nwhich point toward the expectation of a mighty sudden _event_. We seem,\nagain and again, to be hearing not of process, but of apocalypse, not\nof slow development, but of a mysterious leap. There can be no question\nthat most devout Jews of the first century expected the world\u2019s relief\nexpedition to come by miracle, and it is evident that there was an\nintense hope in the minds of men that, in one way or another, God\nwould intervene and put things right. Many think that Christ shared\nthat hope and expectation. It is of course possible that in sharing, as\nHe did, the actual life of man, He partook of the hopes and travails\nand expectations of His times. But, I think, we need to go very slowly\nand cautiously in this direction. To interpret Christ\u2019s message mainly\nin terms of apocalypse and sudden interventions is surely to miss its\nnaturalness, its spiritual vision, and its inward depth. We can well\nadmit that nobody then had quite our modern conception of process or our\npresent day dislike of breaks, interruptions, and interventions. There\nwas no difficulty in thinking of a new age or dispensation miraculously\ninaugurated. Only it looks as though Christ had discovered an ethical and\nspiritual way which made it unnecessary to count on miracle. There was\nmuch refuse to be consumed, much corruption to be removed, before the new\ncondition of life could be in full play, but He seems to have seen that\nthe consuming fire and the cleansing work were an essential and inherent\npart of the _process_ that was bringing the kingdom.\n\nWhen he was asked _where_ men were to look for the kingdom, His answer\nwas that they were to find a figure and parable of it in the normal\nprocess of nature\u2019s scavengers. The carcass lies decaying in the sun,\ncorrupting the air and tainting everything in its region. There can\nbe no wholesome conditions of life in that spot until the corruption\nis removed. But nature has provided a way of cleansing the air. The\nscavenger comes and removes the refuse and corruption and turns it\nby a strange alchemy into living matter. Life feeds on the decaying\nrefuse, raises it back into life, and cleanses the world by making\neven corruption minister to its own life processes. We could not live\nan hour in our world if it were not alive with a myriad variety of\nscavenging methods that burn up effete matter, transmute noxious forms\ninto wholesome stuff, cleanse away the poisons, and transmute, not by\nan apocalypse, but by a process, death into life and corruption into\nsweetness. May not the vulture, like the tiny sparrow who cannot fall\nwithout divine regard, be a sign, a figure, a parable? When we look for\nthe kingdom, in the light of this sign, we shall not search the clouds\nof heaven, we shall not consult \u201cthe number of the beast\u201d\u2014we shall look\nfor it wherever we see life conquering death, wherever the white tents\nof love are pitched against the black tents of hate, wherever the living\nforces of goodness are battering down the strongholds of evil, wherever\nthe sinner is being changed to a saint, wherever ancient survivals of\ninstinct and custom are yielding to the sway of growing vision and\ninsight and ideal. It is \u201cslow and late\u201d to come, this kingdom! So was\nlife slow to come, while all that was to be\n\n    \u201cWhirl\u2019d for a million \u00e6ons thro\u2019 the vast\n    Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light.\u201d\n\nSo was man slow to come, while fantastic creatures were \u201ctearing each\nother in the slime.\u201d So was a spirit-governed Person slow to come, while\nmen lived in lust and war and hate. But in God\u2019s world at length the\nthings that ought to come do come, and we may faintly guess by what we\nsee that the kingdom, too, is coming. There is something like it now in\nsome lives.\n\n\nIV\n\n\u201cTHE BEYOND IS WITHIN\u201d\n\nAmong the parables of Christ there is a very impressive one on the shut\ndoor. It is a story of ten country maidens who were invited to a wedding.\nThey were to meet the bridegroom coming from a distance, as soon as his\narrival should be announced, and with their lighted lamps they were to\nguide him and his attendants through the darkness to the home of the\nbride, where the banquet and the festal dance were to be held.\n\nFor many days these simple maidens had been living in the thrilling\nexpectation of the great event in which they were to take a leading part.\n\nThey had been busy with their preparations, drilling their rhythmic\nsteps, and talking eagerly of the approaching night. But five of them\nfoolishly neglected the critically important part of the preparation\u2014they\ntook no oil to supply their lamps and at the dramatic moment they found\nthemselves compelled to withdraw from the joyous throng and to go in\nsearch of the necessary equipment. When at length they arrived with their\noil, the illuminated procession was over and the door of the festal house\nwas shut.\n\nThe simple maidens soon discovered that there was a stern finality to\nthis shut door. Their blunder had irrevocable consequences. They may have\nhad other interesting opportunities as life went on, but they forever\nmissed this joyous procession and this wedding feast. \u201cToo late, too\nlate. Ye cannot enter now.\u201d\n\nChrist turns this common, trivial neighborhood incident into a parable\nof the Kingdom of God. Those who believe that He was looking, as so many\nin His time were looking, for a sudden shift of dispensations and for a\nKingdom to be ushered in by a stupendous apocalyptic event, find in this\nirrevocably shut door of the parable a figure of the doom of those who\nfailed to prepare for the sudden coming of this crisis, decisive of the\ndestiny of men.\n\nBut there is another, and, I think, a truer, way of interpreting this\nshut door. There is a stern finality to all opportunities that have been\nmissed and to all high occasions that have been blundered and bungled.\nAll decisions of the will, all choices of life have, in their very\nnature, apocalyptic finality. They suddenly reveal and unveil character\nand they are loaded with destiny which can be changed only by a change\nof character. Other opportunities may offer themselves and new chances\nmay indeed come, but when any choice has been made or any opportunity has\nbeen missed that chance has gone by and that door is shut.\n\nThe football player who has had a chance in the great game of the year\nto make a goal, and instead of doing it fumbled the ball and lost the\nopportunity to score, may just possibly have another chance sometime, but\nno apologies and no explanations can ever change the apocalyptic finality\nof that fumble.\n\nSomething like that is involved in all the spiritual issues of life, and\nour deeds and attitudes are all the time irrevocably opening or shutting\ndoors, which prove to be doors to the Kingdom of God. Christ may possibly\nat times have looked for some sudden revelation of destiny, but surely\nfor the most part He looked for the momentous issues of the Kingdom\n_within the soul itself_ rather than in a spectacular event in the outer\nworld. This principle throws light on all Christ\u2019s sayings about the\nfuture. The coming destiny is not in the stars, it is not in the sentence\nof a Great Assize, it is not in the sudden shift of \u201cdispensations\u201d; it\nis in the character and inner nature, as they have been formed within\neach soul. The thing to be concerned about is not so much a day of\njudgment or an apocalyptic moment, as the trend of the will, the attitude\nof the spirit, the formation of inner disposition and character. We\nare always facing issues of an eternal aspect, and every day is a day\nof judgment, revealing the line of march and the issues of destiny.\nConversion crises are fortunately possible, when suddenly a new level\nof life may be reached and a fresh start may be made, and in this inner\nworld of personality, there are always new possibilities occurring, but,\nas at oriental marriage feasts, neglected opportunities are irreversibly\nneglected, shut doors are irrevocably shut, and blunders that affect\nthe issues of the soul have an apocalyptic finality about them. New\ndispensations may await us; the Kingdom may come in ways we never dreamed\nof; the beyond may be more momentous than we have ever expected, but\nalways and everywhere \u201cthe within\u201d determines \u201cthe beyond,\u201d and character\nis destiny.\n\n\nV\n\nTHE ATTITUDE TOWARD THE UNSEEN\n\n\u201cNowhere as yet has history spoken in favor of the ideal of a morality\nwithout religion. New active forces of will, so far as we can observe,\nhave always arisen in conjunction with ideas about the unseen.\u201d So\nwrote the great German historian and philosopher, Wilhelm Dilthey. The\ngreatest experts in the field both of ethics and of religion agree with\nthis view. Henry Sidgwick and Leslie Stephen are experts in the field\nof ethics who cannot be suspected of holding a brief for religion, and\nyet Sidgwick says: \u201cEthics is an imperfect science alone. It must run up\ninto religion to complete itself;\u201d and Leslie Stephen says: \u201cMorality\nand religion stand or fall together.\u201d Spinoza, who was denounced during\nhis lifetime as an atheist and a destroyer of the faith, nevertheless\nmakes love of God the whole basis of genuine ethics, insisting that there\nis no morality conceivable without love of God. St. Augustine\u2019s famous\ntestimony may suffice as a religious expert\u2019s view. He says, \u201cLove God\nand then you may do what you please,\u201d meaning, of course, that you cannot\nthen approve a wrong course of action or of life.\n\nNowhere, certainly, are religion and ethics so wonderfully fused into\none indissoluble whole as in the experience and teaching of Christ. This\nappears not only in His supreme rule for religion and for good conduct:\n\u201cThou shalt love God with all thy powers and thy neighbor as thyself,\u201d\nbut still more does it appear in the inner steps and processes which\nunderlie and prepare the way for the decisions and acts of Christ\u2019s\nown life. Here, unmistakably, _all the active forces of will arose in\nconjunction with ideas about the unseen_.\n\nIt is the modern custom to talk much about the ethics of Jesus and to see\nin the Sermon on the Mount an ideal of human personality and a program\nfor an ideal social order. But a careful reader cannot fail to feel in\nChrist\u2019s teaching the complete fusion of His ideal for the individual\nand for society with His consciousness of the world of unseen realities.\nThe new person and the new society are possible in His thought, only\nthrough unbroken _correspondence_ with the world of higher forces and\nof perfect conditions. The only way to be perfect is to be on the way\ntoward likeness to the heavenly Father, the only moral dynamic that will\nwork is a love, like that of God\u2019s love, which expels all selfishness\nand all tendency to stop at partial and inadequate goods. If any kingdom\nof heavenly conditions is ever to be expected on earth, if ever we may\nhope for a day to dawn when the divine will is to be exhibited among men\nand they are to live the love-way of goodness, it is because God is our\nFather and we have the possibilities of His nature.\n\nThe ethical ideals of the Kingdom are inherently attached to the prayer\nexperience of Jesus. The kind of human world which His faith builds for\nmen is forever linked to the kind of God to whom He prays. Cut the link\nand both worlds fall away. We cannot shuffle the cold, hard, loveless\natoms of our social world into lovely forms of co\u00f6perative relationship.\nThe atoms must be changed. In some way we must learn how to lift men into\nthe faith which Christ had, that God is the Father who is seeking to draw\nus all into correspondence with His unseen world of Life and Love. \u201cAfter\nthis manner pray ye. Our heavenly Father of the holy name, thy Kingdom\ncome, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.\u201d The two faiths make\none faith\u2014the faith in a Father-God who cares, and the faith in the\nrealization of an ideal society based on co\u00f6perative love.\n\n\u201cAnd as He was praying, the fashion of His countenance was altered and\nHis raiment became white and dazzling.\u201d This is a simple, synoptic\naccount of an experience attaching to a supreme crisis of personal\ndecision in the life of Jesus. His so-called ethics, as I have been\ninsisting, is indivisibly bound up with His attitude toward the\nunseen, with His experience of a realm where what ought to be, really\nis. So, too, it is because He has found His inward relation with God\nthat He makes His great decision to go forward toward Jerusalem, to\nmeet the onset of opposition, to see His work frustrated by the rulers\nof the nation, to suffer and to die at the hands of His enemies. The\nTransfiguration has been treated as a myth and again as a misplaced\nresurrection story. But it is certainly best to treat it as a genuine\npsychological narrative which fits reality and life at every point. As\nthe clouds darken and the danger threatens and the successful issue of\nHis mission seems impossible, Jesus falls back upon God, brings His\nspirit into absolute parallelism with the heavenly will and accepts\nwhatever may be involved in the pursuit of the course to which He is\ncommitted. When He pushes back into the inner experience of relation\nwith His Father and the circuit of connection closes and living faith\nfloods through Him and fixes His decision unalterably to go forward, His\nface and form are transfigured and illuminated through the experience of\nunion. This prayer of illumination reported in the gospels, is not an\nisolated instance, a solitary experience. The altered face, the changed\nbody, the glorified figure, the radiation of light, have marked many a\nsubordinate saint, and may well have characterized the Master as He found\nthe true attitude of soul toward the unseen and formed His momentous\ndecision to be faithful unto death in His manifestation of love.\n\nIn Gethsemane, as the awful moment came nearer, once more we catch a\nglimpse of His attitude to the unseen. In place of illuminated form and\nshining garments, we hear now of a face covered with the sweat and blood\nof agony. Just in front are the shouting rabble, the cross and the nails,\nthe defeat of lifelong hopes and the defection of the inner fellowship,\nbut the triumphant spirit within Him unites with the infinite will that\nis steering the world and piloting all lives, and calmly acquiesces with\nit. But to this suffering soul, battling in the dark night of agony,\nthe infinite will is no abstract Power, no blind fate, to be dumbly\nyielded to. The great word which breaks out from these quivering lips\nis the dear word for \u201cFather\u201d that the little child\u2019s lips have learned\nto say: \u201cAbba.\u201d The will above is His will now and He goes forward to\nthe pain and death in the strength of communion and fellowship with\nHis Abba-Father. There may have been a single moment of desolation in\nthe agony of the next day when the cry escaped, \u201cMy God, why hast thou\nforsaken me?\u201d but immediately the inner spirit recovers its connection\nand its confidence and the crucifixion ends, as it should, with the words\nof triumphant faith, \u201cFather, into thy hands I intrust my spirit.\u201d\n\nThe most important fact of this Life, which has ever since poured Alpine\nstreams of power into the life of the world, is its attitude toward the\nunseen. We miss the heart of things when we reduce the gospel to ethics\nor when we transform it into dry theology. Through all the story and\nbehind all the teaching is the mighty inner fact of an intimate personal\n_experience_ of God as Father. To live is to be about the \u201cFather\u2019s\nbusiness.\u201d In great moments of intercourse there comes to Him a flooding\nconsciousness of sonship, joyous both to Father and Son: \u201cIn Him I am\nwell pleased,\u201d and in times of strain and tragedy the onward course is\npossible because the inner bond holds fast and the Abba-experience abides.\n\nIt is not strange that a synoptic writer reports the saying: \u201cNo man\nknoweth the Father but the Son.\u201d The passage as it stands reported in\nMatthew may be colored by later theology, but there is a nucleus of\nabsolute truth hidden in the saying. There is no other way to know God\nbut this way of inner love-experience. Only a son can know a Father. Only\none who has trodden the wine-press in anguish and pain, and through\nit all has felt the enfolding love of an Abba-father really _knows_.\nMysticism has its pitfalls and its limitations, but this much is sound\nand true, that the way to know God is to have inner heart\u2019s experience of\nHim, like the experience of the Son.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nSOME PROPHETS OF THE INNER WAY\n\n\nI\n\nTHE PSALMIST\u2019S WAY\n\nEmerson\u2019s friend, Margaret Fuller, coined the phrase, \u201cstanding the\nuniverse.\u201d \u201cI can stand the universe,\u201d was her brave statement. But long\nbefore Concord was discovered or \u201cthe transcendental school\u201d was dreamed\nof a school of Hebrew saints had learned how to stand the universe.\n\nCanaan, with all its milk and honey, was never a land arranged by\npre\u00ebstablished harmony as a paradise for the idealist. It enjoyed no\nspecial millennium privileges. Whatever rainbow dreams may have filled\nthe mind of optimistic prophets were always quickly put to flight by the\niron facts of the rigid world which ringed them round. The Philistines\nwere pitiless neighbors. Like Gawain, they were spiritually too blind\neven to have desires to _see_. Coats of mail, gigantic spear heads,\niron chariots, and Goliath champions were their arguments. How could a\nnation like Israel be free to work out its spiritual career with these\ncrude materialistic Philistines always hanging on its borders and always\nthreatening its national existence? When the Philistines were temporarily\nquiet there were Moabites, or Edomites, or Syrians ready to take a turn\nat hampering the ideals of Israel. And worse still was ahead. From the\ntime of the battle of Karkar (854 B.C.) on, the armies of Assyria had to\nbe reckoned with. Here was another pitiless foe; efficient, militant,\ninventive, with a culture and religion suited to its genius, but as\nruthless as a wolf toward everything in its path. It smashed whatever\nit struck and in the course of events Jerusalem was ground in its\nirresistible mill.\n\nWhen a \u201creturn\u201d was granted under the Persians, and the national and\nreligious life was restored in Jerusalem, new difficulties swarmed.\nDuring the long period of \u201crestoration\u201d the half-breed peoples in\nPalestine with their low ideals threatened to defeat the hopes of\nthe returned exiles and made their feeble beginnings as difficult as\npossible. Then, again, the new nation was hardly firm in its re-found\nlife when it had to meet the forces of Hellenism which rose out of\nthe expansion policies of Alexander. A culture incompatible with the\nideals and passions of the Hebrews broke in and surrounded them. It was\na different enemy to any they had yet met but no less irreconcilable.\nUnder the Hellenized kings of Antioch all the hopes and ideals of this\nlong-suffering race were put in jeopardy, and the very existence of the\nchosen nation was in desperate peril in the period of the Maccabean\nstruggle.\n\nBut through all these centuries of warfare with alien peoples, and during\nall these hard periods of strain and anguish, there existed a school of\nsaints who were learning how to stand the universe and who were teaching\nthe world a way of victory even in the midst of outward defeat. Their\n\u201cway\u201d was the fortification of the soul, the construction of the interior\nlife; and the literature which they produced has proved to be one of\nthe most precious treasures of the race. The gold dust words of these\nsaints are scattered through most of the early books of Israel, for in\nall periods the poets of this race were mainly busy with this central\nproblem of life, the problem of standing the universe. But it is in the\ncollection which we call the _Psalms_ that we find the supreme literature\nof this inner way of fortification and victory.\n\n\u201cThou restorest my soul,\u201d is the joyous testimony of one of these saints,\nand this testimony of the best loved member of this school of saints is\nthe key to the Psalmist\u2019s way of triumph in general. In the confusion\nof events and the irrationality of things\u2014_die Ohnmacht der Natur_\u2014he\nfelt his way back, like a little child in the dark feeling for his\nmother, until he found God as the rock on which his feet could stand.\nThe processes of reconstruction are never traced out. The logic of this\nway back to the fortification of the soul through the discovery of God\nis not given in detail. The moments when we shift the levels of life are\nnever quite describable. But somehow when the way outside goes on into\nthe valley of the shadow of death, and the table is set in the face of\nenemies, the soul falls back upon God and is _restored_.\n\n\u201cI could not understand,\u201d another Psalmist declares. Everything was\nbaffling. The wicked seemed to prosper and the righteous to suffer. The\nworld appeared out of joint and the whole web of life hopelessly tangled;\n\u201cbut,\u201d he adds with no further explanation, \u201cI came into the sanctuary of\nGod and then I saw.\u201d It is like the final solution in the great inner\ndrama of Job. _God answers_ and Job\u2019s problem is solved: \u201cI had heard\nof thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee.\u201d In the\ngreat phrase of the book, \u201c_God_ turned the captivity of Job.\u201d\n\nThese men who gave us our Psalms had learned how to bear adversity and\naffliction without being overwhelmed or defeated. \u201cAll thy waves and thy\nbillows have gone over me,\u201d one of them cries. He has lost his land and\nhas only the _memory_ of Jordan and Hermon and Mizar. His adversaries\nare a constant \u201csword in his bones.\u201d They jeer at him and ask, \u201cWhere\nnow is thy God?\u201d but his trust holds steadily on: \u201cThe Lord will command\nHis loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be\nwith me!\u201d Even when the water-spouts of trouble break over him, when \u201cthe\nwaters roar and are troubled,\u201d when the \u201cnations rage and kingdoms are\nmoved,\u201d when \u201cdesolations are abroad in the earth,\u201d God abides for him \u201ca\nvery present help in time of trouble,\u201d \u201ca refuge and strength\u201d for his\nsoul. Dismay and trembling may be abroad; pain may come as on a woman in\ntravail, yet this deep soul can calmly say, \u201cGod is our God forever; He\nwill be our guide even unto death.\u201d\n\nThis element of _trust_ and _confidence_ has never anywhere had grander\nutterance. The Psalmist has got beyond reliance on \u201chorses and chariots,\u201d\nbeyond trust in \u201criches,\u201d \u201cprinces,\u201d in \u201cthe bow or the sword,\u201d or\nin \u201cman, whose breath is in his nostrils.\u201d He rests his case on God\nalone, and builds on naked faith in His goodness and care: \u201c_Thou_ hast\ndelivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from\nfalling.\u201d Puzzled he often is with the prosperity of the wicked, who\n\u201cflourish like green bay-trees\u201d; perplexed he sometimes is with God\u2019s\ndelay in coming to the help of the poor and needy and oppressed; but\nhis faith holds on and he does not \u201cslide.\u201d It gives us almost a sense\nof awe as we see a valiant soul, hard pressed, hemmed around, deep in\naffliction and sorrow, \u201cstanding the world\u201d and saying in clear voice:\n\u201cOh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; His loving-kindness\nendureth forever!\u201d\n\nWe understand when we read such words why this collection of Psalms\nhas held its place in the religious life of the world. It contains the\nliving, throbbing _experience_ of great souls, who cared absolutely for\none thing\u2014to find God and to enjoy Him, and who, having found their one\nprecious jewel, could do without all else, and by this inner experience\ncould stand the world.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE NEW AND LIVING WAY\n\nThe writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that Christ has\nintroduced into the world \u201ca new and living way\u201d to God. The concrete\nproblems confronting this writer to a Jewish circle of the first century\nwere very different from our own problems to-day, but he so succeeded in\nseizing an eternal aspect of the issue that his word about the new and\nliving way is as vital now as it was then.\n\nHis \u201cnew and living way,\u201d as the tenth chapter shows, is the way of\npersonal consecration as a substitute for the old way of sacrifice. The\nmanner of his exposition may seem to us now a little artificial, but\nthere can be no question of the religious significance of the conclusion.\nFollowing his usual line of interpretation, he begins by treating the\ngreat national system of sacrifices as a \u201cshadow,\u201d _i.e._ a parable, or\na figure, or a symbol, of a true and higher reality. Then he goes on\nboldly to declare that \u201csacrifices\u201d have become empty performances\u2014it is\nimpossible, he says, that the blood of bulls and goats works any real\nchange in the nature or the attitude of the soul. Next he buttresses his\nradical conclusion with a citation of Scripture to the effect that God\nhas never taken pleasure in burnt offerings and ritual sacrifices, and\non this Scripture text from the Psalms he rises to his new insight,\nthat Christ has come not to do the sacrificial work of a priest, not to\nsatisfy God by a sacrifice, but to reveal the personal power of a life of\nconsecration: \u201cThen said I, lo, I come to do thy will, O God.\u201d This way\nof dedication to the divine will, this complete consecration of self out\nof love for the will of God, the writer calls \u201cthe new and living way.\u201d\n\nTwo very important conclusions are inherently bound up with this\ntransition from a religion of sacrifices to a religion of dedication.\nFirst, if carries a wholly new conception of God and secondly, it\ninvolves a complete reinterpretation of human ministry. If God does not\ntake any pleasure in sacrifice, then the whole idea that He is a Being\nto be appeased by gifts, by offerings, by incense, by blood, or by\nself-inflicted suffering of any sort, falls to the ground. These things\nare not shadows or symbols; they are blunders and mistakes. The God for\nwhom they are intended needs and asks for no such form of approach.\nThat has always been the contention of the supreme prophets of the race,\nand Christ in His unveiling of God has made the fact sun-clear that God\nis not rightly conceived when He is thought of as needing any kind of\nsacrifice or any inducement to make Him forgiving or loving. Love is His\nnature. The new and living way leads first of all to this new revelation\nof God.\n\nBut no less certainly it leads to a new type of minister. The priest was\nconceived as an expert in ways of _satisfying_ God and of _appeasing_\nHim. He was supposed to know what God required and how to perform the\nthings required. He was indispensable, because only an expert, duly\nordained, could do the work that was necessary for bringing God and man\ninto relation with each other. Under \u201cthe new and living way,\u201d however,\nthe priest has lost his occupation and the minister becomes an expert\nin ways of expanding human life and in bringing men to a dedication of\nthemselves to the will of God and to the spiritual tasks of the world. In\naccordance with this new insight, everything that concerns religion must\nin some way attach to life. It must promote, or advance life, increase\nlife, add to its height and depth, or, in some manner, make life richer\nand more joyous. The minister of the new and living way may be called, as\nhe no doubt will be called, to make many sacrifices of things that are\nprecious, and surrenders of things as dear as life itself, but there will\nbe no inherent magic in these sacrifices. They will not be efficacious\nas a satisfaction to God. They will be only means toward some larger\nend of life, as was the case with Christ\u2019s surrenders and sacrifices.\nThe ascetic temper will be left forever behind. Whatever is cut off, or\nplucked out, will be removed only for the sake of increasing the quality\nof life and the dynamic of it. The final test is always to be sought in\nthe expansion of capacity, in the increase of talents, in the formation\nof personality, in dedication to the task of widening the area of life.\n\nThe true minister will, like the great apostle, present his body, his\nentire being, in living dedication. He will be satisfied with nothing\nshort of a holy and acceptable service\u2014acceptable, because Christlike\u2014he\nwill endeavor to make all his service \u201creasonable service\u201d; that is,\nintelligent service, and he will strive earnestly not to become _set_\ninto the mold of the world or into any deadening groove of habit, but to\nbe _transformed_ by a steady increase of life and a renewing of spiritual\ninsight, so that he can prove what is the perfect will of God and so that\nhe can minister to the growing life of the world.\n\n\nIII\n\nAN APOSTLE OF THE INNER WAY\n\nIt is always a foolish blunder to take half when it is just as easy to\nhave a whole, but the tendency to dichotomize all realities into halves\nand to assume that we are shut up to an _either-or_ selection, is an\nancient tendency and one that very often keeps us from winning the full\nrichness of the life that is possible for us. Human history is strewn\nwith dualistic formulations which have sorted men into _either-or_\ngroups. Now it is \u201cspirit\u201d and \u201cflesh\u201d that are sharply antagonistic and\nmen are called upon to settle which of these two halves of man\u2019s life is\nto have their loyalty. Again, it is \u201cthis world\u201d and \u201cthe next world\u201d\u2014the\nhere and the yonder\u2014that bid for our heart\u2019s suffrage. \u201cThe Church\u201d and\n\u201cthe world\u201d; \u201cfaith\u201d and \u201creason\u201d; \u201cthe sacred\u201d and \u201cthe secular\u201d are\nother twin pairs that call for a sharp decision of allegiance. So, too,\nit has been customary to cut apart the outer life and the inner life and,\nwith a stern _either-or_, to put them into rivalry with one another.\nOne camp insists that religion is to be sought in deeds and effects;\nthe other camp asserts that religion is an inward condition of life\u2014_to\nbe_ is more important than _to do_. But this method of cutting is like\nthat which the unnatural mother asked Solomon to perform upon the living\nchild. It sunders what was alive and throbbing into two dead fragments,\nneither of which is a real half of the united living whole. In place of\nall the _either-or_ formulations that force a choice between the halves\nof great spiritual realities I should put the living and undivided whole.\nInstead of selecting _either-or_, I prefer to take _both_. There is no\nline that splits the outer life and the inner life into two compartments.\nNobody can _do_ without _being_ and nobody can _be_ without _doing_.\nPersonality is the most complete unity in the universe and it binds\nforever into an indissoluble and integral whole the outer and the inner,\nthe spirit and the deed.\n\nBut at the same time it is interesting to see what a supremely great and\nmany-sided soul like St. Paul has to say of the inwardness and interior\ndepth of religion. That he was a man of action is plain enough to be\nseen and nobody can easily miss his clarion call to arm _cap-a-pie_ for\nthe positive, moral battles of life. He was ethical in the noblest sense\nof the word, but there was an inner core of religious experience in him\nwhich is as unique and wonderful as is his athletic ethical purpose or\nhis imperial spirit of moral conquest.\n\nThere was for him no kind of \u201cdoing\u201d which could ever be a substitute for\nthe spiritual health of the soul. Nobody has ever lived who has been more\ndeeply concerned than was St. Paul over the primary problem of life: How\ncan my soul be saved? To be \u201csaved\u201d for him, however, does not mean to be\nrescued from dire torment or from the consequences which follow sin and\ndog the sinner. No transaction in another world can accomplish salvation\nfor him; no mere change from debit to credit side in the heavenly ledgers\ncan make him a saved man. To be saved for St. Paul is to become a new\nkind of person, with a new inner nature, a new dimension of life, a new\njoy and triumph of soul. There is a certain inner _feeling_ here which\nsystematic theology can no more convey than a botanical description of\na flower can convey what the poet feels in the presence of the flower\nitself. There is no lack of books and articles which spread before us\nSt. Paul\u2019s doctrines and which tell us his theory\u2014his _gnosis_\u2014of the\nplan of salvation. The trouble with all these external accounts is that\nthey clank like hollow armor. They are like sounding brass and clanging\ncymbals. We miss the _real thing_ that matters\u2014the inner throbbing heart\nof the living experience.\n\nWhat he is always trying to tell us is that a new \u201cnature\u201d has been\nformed within him, a new spirit has come to birth in his inmost self.\nOnce he was weak, now he is strong. Once he was permanently defeated,\nnow he is \u201cled in a continual triumph.\u201d Once he was at the mercy of the\nforces of blind instinct and habit which dragged him whither he would\nnot, now he feels free from the dominion of sin and its inherent peril to\nthe soul. Once, with all his pride of pharisaism, he was an alien to the\ncommonwealth of God, now he is a fellow citizen with all the inward sense\nof loyalty that makes citizenship real.\n\nHe traces the immense transformation to his personal discovery of a\nmighty forgiving love, where he had least expected to find it, in the\nheart of God\u2014\u201cWe are more than conquerors through Him that loved us;\u201d\n\u201cThe life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me\nand gave Himself for me.\u201d _Faith_, wherever St. Paul uses it to express\nthe central human fact of the religious life, is a word of tremendous\ninward depth. It is bathed and saturated with personal experience, and it\nproves to be a constructive life-principle of the first importance. Faith\n_works_; it is something by which one lives: \u201cThe life I now live, I live\nby faith.\u201d\n\nBut the full measure\u2014the length and breadth, depth and height\u2014of his new\ninner world does not come full into view until one sees how through faith\nand love this man has come into conscious relation with the Spirit of God\ninwardly revealed to him, and operative as a resident presence in his own\nspirit. No forensic account of salvation can reach this central feature\nof real salvation, which now appears as new inward life and power. St.\nPaul takes religion out of the sphere of logic into the primary region\nof life. There are ways of living upon the Life of God as direct and\nverifiable as is the correspondence between the plant and its natural\nenvironment. To _live_, in the full spiritual meaning of this word as St.\nPaul uses it, is to be immersed in the living currents of the circulating\nLife of God, and to be fed from within by those sources of creative Life\nwhich feed the evolving world: \u201cBeholding as in a mirror the glory of\nthe Lord, we are transformed into the same image by the Spirit of the\nLord;\u201d \u201cHe hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying\nAbba;\u201d \u201cThe Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are sons of\nGod.\u201d With the progress of his experience and the maturing of his thought\nupon it, there came to St. Paul an extraordinary insight. He came to\nidentify Christ with the Spirit: \u201cThe Lord is the Spirit.\u201d He no longer\nthought of Him as merely the historical person of Galilee, but rather\nas the eternal revelation of God, first in a definite form as Jesus\nthe Christ, and then, after the resurrection, as Christ the invisible\nSpirit, working within men, recreating and renewing their spiritual\nlives. The influence of Christ for salvation was, thus, with him far\nmore than a moral influence. It was of the nature of a real energism\u2014a\nspiritual power co\u00f6perating with the human will and remaking men by the\nformation of a new Christ-natured self within him. The process has no\nknown or conceivable limits. Its goal is the formation of a man \u201cafter\nChrist\u201d: \u201cTill Christ be formed in you.\u201d \u201cThat you may grow up into Him\nin all things who is the Head;\u201d \u201cTill we all come to the measure of the\nstature of the fulness of Christ.\u201d The \u201cfruit\u201d of the Spirit, matured\nin the inward realm of man\u2019s central being and expressed in common acts\nof daily life, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,\nfaithfulness, meekness, self-control\u2014a nature in all things like that\nwhich was revealed in glory and fulness in the face of Jesus Christ.\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE EPHESIAN GOSPEL\n\nIn his fresh, impressive book, _The Ephesian Gospel_, Dr. Percy\nGardner says that in the early period of Christianity no city, save\nonly Jerusalem, was more influential for the development of Christian\nthought than was the city of Ephesus. It was here in Ephesus, scholars\nare convinced, some time about the end of the first century, that the\nlife and message of Jesus received its most sublime and wonderful\ninterpretation, and it was through this Ephesian interpretation that the\ngathered mysticism of Greece and the other ancient religions of the world\nwas indissolubly fused with the great ethical teachings of the Galilean.\n\nIt will never be known, with absolute certainty, who was the profound\ngenius that made this Ephesian interpretation, but it will always\ncontinue to be called the gospel \u201caccording to John.\u201d There will never be\nany doubt, in the minds of those who read appreciatively, that, either\ninwardly or outwardly, the writer of it had \u201clain on Christ\u2019s bosom\u201d;\nthat he had \u201creceived of His fulness,\u201d and that he had \u201cseen with his\neyes, and heard with his ears and handled with his hands the Word of\nLife.\u201d He was, we can almost certainly say, one of St. Paul\u2019s men. He\nhas fully grasped the central ideas of the apostle who first planted the\ntruth in Ephesus, and he carries out in powerful fashion the Pauline\ndiscovery that Christ has become an invisible, eternal presence in the\nworld. At the same time he possesses, either at first or second hand, a\nlarge amount of narrative material for the expansion of the simple gospel\nstory as it had come from the three synoptic writers. But from first to\nlast everything in this gospel is told for a definite purpose and every\nincident is loaded with a spiritual, interpretative content and meaning.\nHe does not undervalue history or the details of the Life lived in Judea\nand Galilee, but he is concerned at every point to raise men\u2019s thoughts\nto the eternal meaning of Christ\u2019s coming, to cultivate inward fellowship\nwith Him, and to reveal the last great _beatitude_, that those who have\nnot seen with outward eyes, but nevertheless have _believed_, are the\ntruly blessed ones.\n\nThe earliest of our gospel documents\u2014the document now called Q\u2014centers\nupon the \u201cmessage,\u201d and gives us a collection of simple but bottomlessly\nprofound sayings of Jesus. Another document\u2014the gospel of Mark\u2014hardly\nless primitive and no less wonderful, focuses upon the person of Jesus\nand His doings. Here we have in very narrow compass the earliest story\nof this Life, inexhaustible in its depth of love and grace, which has\never since woven itself into the very tissue of human life and thought.\nBut now this final document, which we have been calling \u201cthe Ephesian\nGospel,\u201d makes a unique contribution and carries us up to a new level\nof life. It announces that Jesus who gave the message, the Jesus who\nlived this extraordinary personal life and did the deeds of love and\nsacrifice, has become an ever-living, environing, permeative Spirit,\ncontinuing His revelation, reliving His life, extending His sway in men\nof faith. He is no longer of one date and one locality, but is present to\nopen, responsive human hearts everywhere as the atmosphere is present to\nbreathing lungs, or the sea to swimming fish, or the sunlight to growing\nplants. We can no more lose this Christ of experience than we can lose\nthe sky.\n\nChristianity is in this interpretation vastly more than an historical\nreligion, bound up forever with the incidents of its temporal origin.\nIt is as much a present fact and a present power as electricity is. It\nis rooted in an inexhaustible source of Life. It is as dynamic as the\ncentral springs of the universe, and it is perpetually supplied from\nwithin by invisible fountains of living energy. But this triumphant and\neternal principle of the spiritual life is, \u201caccording to John,\u201d no\nvague, abstract principle of logic, but instead a warm, tender, intimate,\nconcrete personification of Life, Light, and Love who has definitely\nincarnated the Truth and revealed the nature of God and the possible\nglory of man.\n\nThe great Ephesian makes no division between history and experience. The\nChrist of his faith and of his account is alike the Christ of history and\nof experience. He looks backward, and he looks inward, and the Christ of\nhis story is the seamless and invisible product of this double process.\nThis is wholly in the manner of the great apostle who declared \u201cif we\nhave known Christ after the flesh we know Him so now no more,\u201d and yet\nneither the Ephesian disciple nor the apostolic master discounted the\nimportance of the facts of the Christ after the flesh. The transcendent\ntruth for them both is the truth that the Church still has its Christ,\nwho is leading it into all the truth and progressively revealing Himself\nwith the expanding ages.\n\nEvery Christian mystic for nineteen hundred years has felt the influence\nof this great Ephesian prophet, and his message has become a part of\nthe necessary air we breathe. His gospel and his brief epistle, loaded\nwith its message of love, are, as Deissmann has well said, the greatest\nmonument of the appreciation of the mystical teaching of St. Paul that\nhas ever been reared in the world. The man who performed this immense\nliterary task for us of the after ages now\n\n    \u201cLies as he lay once, breast to breast with God,\u201d\n\nbut his _word_ is still quick and powerful and he has helped us more\nthan any other writer has done to interpret our own experience, and more\nthan any other prophet this Ephesian has inspired our faith in the real\npresence and has given us the assurance, inwardly verified, that we are\nnot comfortless and alone, in a world of pain and loss and death, but are\nbound as living twigs in one sap-giving Vine of Life, participants of the\nvitalizing, refreshing, joy-bringing bread and water of Life, and with\nopen access to the infinite healing and comfort and fortification of the\nEternal Christ.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE WAY OF EXPERIENCE\n\n\nI\n\nWAITING ON GOD\n\nAs worship, taken in its highest sense and widest scope, is man\u2019s\nloftiest undertaking, we cannot too often return to the perennial\nquestions: What is worship? Why do we worship? How do we best perform\nthis supreme human function? Worship is too great an experience to\nbe defined in any sharp or rigid or exclusive fashion. The history\nof religion through the ages reveals the fact that there have been\nmultitudinous ways of worshiping God, all of them yielding real returns\nof life and joy and power to large groups of men. At its best and truest,\nhowever, worship seems to me to be _direct, vital, joyous, personal\nexperience and practice of the presence of God_.\n\nThe very fact that such a mighty experience as this is possible means\nthat there is some inner meeting place between the soul and God; in other\nwords, that the divine and human, God and man, are not wholly sundered.\nIn an earlier time God was conceived as remote and transcendent. He\ndwelt in the citadel of the sky, was worshiped with ascending incense\nand communicated His will to beings beneath through celestial messengers\nor by mysterious oracles. We have now more ground than ever before\nfor conceiving God as transcendent; that is, as above and beyond any\nrevelation of Himself, and as more than any finite experience can\napprehend. But at the same time, our experience and our ever-growing\nknowledge of the outer and inner universe confirm our faith that God is\nalso immanent, a real presence, a spiritual reality, immediately to be\nfelt and known, a vital, life-giving environment of the soul. He is a\nBeing who can pour His life and energy into human souls, even as the sun\ncan flood the world with light and resident forces, or as the sea can\nsend its refreshing tides into all the bays and inlets of the coast, or\nas the atmosphere can pour its life-giving supplies into the fountains\nof the blood in the meeting place of the lungs; or, better still, as the\nmother fuses her spirit into the spirit of her responsive child, and lays\nher mind on him until he believes in her belief.\n\nIt will be impossible for some of us ever to lose our faith in, our\ncertainty of, this vital presence which overarches our inner lives as\nsurely as the sky does our outer lives. The more we know of the great\nunveiling of God in Christ, the more we see that He is a Being who can\nbe thus revealed in a personal life that is parallel in will with Him\nand perfectly responsive in heart and mind to the spiritual presence. We\ncan use as our own the inscription on the wall of the ancient temple in\nEgypt. On one of the walls a priest of the old religion had written for\nhis divinity: \u201cI am He who was and is and ever shall be, and my veil hath\nno man lifted.\u201d On the opposite wall, some one who had found his way into\nthe later, richer faith, wrote this inscription: \u201cVeil after veil have we\nlifted and ever the Face is more wonderful!\u201d\n\nIt must be held, I think, as Emerson so well puts it, that there is \u201cno\nbar or wall in the soul\u201d separating God and man. We lie open on one side\nof our nature to God, who is the Oversoul of our souls, the Overmind of\nour minds, the Overperson of our personal selves. There are deeps in our\nconsciousness which no private plumb line of our own can sound; there are\nheights in our moral conscience which no ladder of our human intelligence\ncan scale; there are spiritual hungers, longings, yearnings, passions,\nwhich find no explanation in terms of our physical inheritance or of our\noutside world. We touch upon the coasts of a deeper universe, not yet\nexplored or mapped, but no less real and certain than this one in which\nour mortal senses are at home. We cannot explain our normal selves or\naccount for the best things we know\u2014or even for our condemnation of our\npoorer, lower self\u2014without an appeal to and acknowledgment of a divine\nGuest and Companion who is the real presence of our central being. How\nshall we best come into conscious fellowship with God and turn this\nenvironing presence into a positive source of inner power, and of energy\nfor the practical tasks and duties of daily life?\n\nIt is never easy to tell in plain words what prepares the soul for\nintercourse with God; what it is that produces the consciousness of\ndivine tides, the joyous certainty that our central life is being flooded\nand bathed by celestial currents. No person ever quite understands how\nhis tongue utters its loftiest words, how his pen writes its noblest\nphrases, how his clearest insights came to him, how his most heroic\ndeeds got done, or how the finest strands of his character were woven.\nHere is a mystery which we never quite uncover\u2014a background which we\nnever wholly explore lies along the fringes of the most illumined part of\nour lives. This mystery surrounds all the supreme acts of religion. They\ncannot be _reduced_ to a cold and naked rational analysis. The intellect\npossesses no master key which unlocks all the secrets of the soul.\n\nWe can say, however, that purity of heart is one of the most essential\npreconditions for this high-tide experience of worship. That means, of\ncourse, much more than absence of moral impurity, freedom from soilure\nand stain of willful sins. It means, besides, a cleansing away of\nprejudice and harsh judgment. It means sincerity of soul, a believing,\ntrusting, loving spirit. It means intensity of desire for God, singleness\nof purpose, integrity of heart. The flabby nature, the duplex will, the\njudging spirit, will hardly succeed in worshiping God in any great or\ntransforming way.\n\nSilence is, again, a very important condition for the great inner action\nwhich we call worship. So long as we are content to speak our own\n_patois_, to live in the din of our narrow, private affairs, and to tune\nour minds to stock broker\u2019s tickers, we shall not arrive at the lofty\ngoal of the soul\u2019s quest. We shall hear the noises of our outer universe\nand nothing more. When we learn how to center down into the stillness and\nquiet, to listen with our souls for the whisperings of Life and Truth,\nto bring all our inner powers into parallelism with the set of divine\ncurrents, we shall hear tidings from the inner world at the heart and\ncenter of which is God.\n\nBut by far the most influential condition for effective worship is\ngroup-silence\u2014the waiting, seeking, expectant attitude permeating and\npenetrating a gathered company of persons. We hardly know in what the\ngroup-influence consists, or why the presence of others heightens the\nsensitive, responsive quality in each soul, but there can be no doubt\nof the fact. There is some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the\nliving silence of a congregation which makes every earnest seeker more\nquick to feel the presence of God, more acute of inner ear, more tender\nof heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them\nwould be in isolation. Somehow we are able to \u201clend our minds out,\u201d as\nBrowning puts it, or at least to contribute toward the formation of an\natmosphere that favors communion and co\u00f6peration with God.\n\nIf this is so, if each assists all and all in turn assist each, our\nresponsibilities in meetings for worship are very real and very great and\nwe must try to realize that there is a form of ministry which is dynamic\neven when the lips are sealed.\n\n\nII\n\nIN THE SPIRIT\n\nThere has surely been no lack of discussion on the Trinity during the\ncenturies of Christian history! But in all the welter and turmoil of\nwords there has been surprisingly little said about the Spirit. The\nnature of the Father and the Son has always been the central theme, and\nwhatever is said of the Spirit is vague and brief. The Creeds are very\nprecise in their accounts of God the Father and of Christ the Son, but of\nthe Spirit, they merely say without explanation or expansion: \u201cI believe\nin the Holy Spirit.\u201d\n\nThe mystics and the heretics have generally had more to say of the\nSpirit. They have almost always claimed for themselves direct and inward\nguidance; they have insisted that God is near at hand, a presence to\nbe felt, and they have endeavored to bring in a \u201cdispensation\u201d of the\nreligion of the Spirit. But they, too, have contented themselves with\nvague and hazy accounts of the nature and operation of the Spirit. It\nhas largely remained a subject of mystery, a kind of \u201cfringe\u201d with no\ndefinite idea corresponding to the word.\n\nOne reason for this haze and vagueness is due to the fact that the\nSpirit has generally been supposed to act suddenly, miraculously, and\n\u201cas He lists,\u201d so that no law or principle or method of His operation\ncan be discovered. He has been conceived as working upon or through the\nindividual in such a way that the individual is merely an \u201cinstrument,\u201d\nreceiving and transmitting what comes entirely from \u201cbeyond\u201d himself.\nConsequently to be \u201cin the Spirit\u201d has meant to be \u201cout of oneself,\u201d\n_i.e._ to be a channel for something that has had no origin in, and no\nassistance from, our own personal consciousness. As Philo, the famous\nAlexandrian teacher of the first century, states this view: \u201cIdeas in an\ninvisible manner are suddenly showered upon me and implanted in me by an\ninspiration from on high.\u201d\n\nThere is no doubt that in some cases in all ages men and women have had\nexperiences like that of Philo\u2019s. But they are by no means universal;\nthey are extremely rare and unusual. God does sometimes \u201cgive to His\nbeloved in sleep\u201d and He does apparently sometimes open the windows of\nthe soul by sudden inrushes of light and power. It is, however, a grave\nmistake to limit the sphere and operation of the divine Spirit to these\nsudden, unusual, miraculous incursions. It is precisely that mistake\u2014made\nby so many spiritual persons\u2014that has kept Christians in general from\nrealizing the immense importance of the work of the Spirit in everyday\nreligious life. The mistake is, of course, due to our persistent tendency\nto separate the divine from the human as two independent \u201crealities,\u201d and\nto treat the divine as something \u201caway,\u201d \u201cabove,\u201d and \u201cbeyond.\u201d\n\nSt. Paul, in spite of all his rabbinical training and the dualisms\nof his age, is still the supreme exponent of the genuine, as opposed\nto the false, idea of the Spirit. Whether the sermon on the Areopagus\nas given in Acts is an exact report of an actual speech, or not, the\nwords, \u201cin Him we live and move and are,\u201d express very well St. Paul\u2019s\nmature conception of the all-pervasive immanence of God, though they\nby no means indicate the extraordinary richness and boldness of his\nthought. He identifies Christ and the Spirit\u2014\u201cthe Lord is the Spirit.\u201d[2]\nThe resurrected and glorified Christ, he holds, relives, reincarnates\nHimself, in Christian believers. He becomes the spirit and life of their\nlives. He makes through them a new body for Himself, a new kind of\nrevelation of Himself. They themselves are \u201cletters of Jesus Christ,\u201d\nwritten by the Spirit. He is no longer limited to one locality of the\nworld or to one epoch of time. He is \u201cpresent\u201d wherever two or three\nbelievers meet in loyalty to Him. He is revealed wherever any of His\nfaithful followers are working in love and devotion to extend the sway of\nHis Kingdom. The Church, which for St. Paul means always the fellowship\nof believers, living in and through the Spirit, is \u201ca growing habitation\nof God.\u201d\n\nThe \u201csign\u201d of the Spirit\u2019s presence is, however, no sudden miraculous\nbestowal like an unknown tongue or an extraordinary gift of healing. It\nis just a normal thing like the manifestation of love. It is proved by\nthe increase of fellowship, the growth of group-spirit, the spread of\ncommunity-loyalty. When love has come, the Spirit is there, and when\nlove comes, those who are in its spirit suffer long and are kind; they\nenvy not; they are not provoked; they do not exalt mistakes; they bear\nall things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. Love\nconstructs, because it is the inherent evidence of the Spirit, living,\nworking, operating in the persons who love. Through them the incarnation\nof God is continued in the world, the Spirit of Christ finds its organ\nof expression and life, and the Kingdom of God comes on earth as it\nis in heaven. This \u201cbody,\u201d this Church, this community-group of loyal\nbelievers, is \u201cthe completion of Him who through all and in all is being\nfulfilled.\u201d[3]\n\nIf this Pauline idea of the Spirit is the true idea\u2014and I believe it\nis\u2014then we are to look for the divine presence, the divine guidance,\nthe divine inspiration, not so much in sudden extraordinary inrushes\nand miraculous bestowals, as in the processes which transform our\nstubborn nature, which make us loyal and loving, which bind us into\nfellowship with others, which form in us community-spirit and sympathetic\nco\u00f6peration, and which make us efficient organs of the Christ-life and of\nthe growing Kingdom of God.\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE POWER OF PRAYER\n\nIt seems to me very clear that there is a native, elemental homing\ninstinct in our souls which turns us to God as naturally as the flower\nturns to the sun. Apparently everybody in intense moments of human need\nreaches out for some great source of life and help beyond himself. That\nis one reason why we can pray and do pray, however conditions alter.\nIt is further clear that persons who pray in living faith, in some way\nunlock reservoirs of energy and release great sources of power within\ntheir interior depths. There is an experimental energy in prayer as\ncertainly as there is a force of gravitation or of electricity. In a\nrecent investigation of the value of prayer, nearly seventy per cent of\nthe persons questioned declared that they felt the presence of a higher\npower while in the act of praying. As one of these personal testimonies\nputs it: prayer makes it possible to carry heavy burdens with serenity;\nit produces an atmosphere of spirit which triumphs over difficulties.\n\nIt certainly is true that a door opens into a larger life and a new\ndimension when the soul flings itself out in real prayer, and incomes of\npower are experienced which heighten all capacities and which enable the\nrecipient to withstand temptation, endure trial, and conquer obstacles.\nBut prayer has always meant vastly more than that to the saints of past\nages. It was assuredly to them a homing instinct and it was the occasion\nof refreshed and quickened life, but, more than that, it meant to them\na time of intimate personal intercourse and fellowship with a divine\nCompanion. It was two-sided, and not a solitary and one-sided heightening\nof energy and of functions. Nor was that all. To the great host of\nspiritual and triumphant souls who are behind us prayer was an _effective\nand operative power_. It accomplished results and wrought effects beyond\nthe range of the inner life of the person who was praying. It was a way\nof setting vast spiritual currents into circulation which worked mightily\nthrough the world and upon the lives of men. It was believed to be an\noperation of grace by which the fervent human will could influence the\ncourse of divine action in the secret channels of the universe.\n\nIs this two-sided and objective view of prayer, as real intercourse and\nas effective power, still tenable? Can men who accept the conclusions of\nscience still pray in living faith and with real expectation of results?\nI see no ground against an affirmative answer. Science has furnished\nno evidence which compels us to give up believing in the reality of\na personal conscious self which has a certain area of power over its\nown acts and its own destiny, and which is capable of intercourse,\nfellowship, friendship, and love with other personal selves. Science has\ndiscovered no method of describing this spiritual reality, which we\ncall a self, nor can it explain what its ultimate nature is, or how it\ncreatively acts and reacts in love and fellowship toward other beings\nlike itself. This lies beyond the sphere and purview of science.\n\nScience, again, has furnished no evidence whatever against the reality of\na great spiritual universe, at the heart and center of which is a living,\nloving Person who is capable of intercourse and fellowship and friendship\nand love with finite spirits like us. That is also a field into which\nscience has no _entr\u00e9e_; it is a matter which none of her conclusions\ntouch. Her business is to tell how natural phenomena act and what their\nunvarying laws are. She has nothing to say and can have nothing to say\nabout the reality of a divine Person in a sphere within or above or\nbeyond the phenomenal realm, _i.e._ the realm where things appear in the\ndescribable terms of space and time and causality.\n\nReal and convincing intimations have broken into our world that there\nactually is a spiritual universe and a divine Person at the heart and\ncenter of it who is in living and personal correspondence with us. This\nis the most solid substance, the very warp and woof, of Christ\u2019s entire\nrevelation. The universe is not a mere play of forces, nor limited to\nthings we see and touch and measure. Above, beyond, within, or rather in\na way transcending all words of space, there is a Father-God who is Love\nand Life and Light and Spirit, and who is as open of access to us as the\nlungs to the air. Nothing in our world of space disproves the truth of\nChrist\u2019s report. Our hearts tell us that it might be true, that it ought\nto be true, that it is true. And if it is true, prayer, in all the senses\nin which I have used it, may still be real and still be operative.\n\nThere is no doubt a region where events occur under the play of\ndescribable forces, where consequent follows antecedents and where\nlaw and causality appear rigid and unvarying. In that narrow, limited\nrealm of space particles we shall perhaps not expect interruptions or\ninterferences. We shall rather learn how to adjust to what is there, and\nto respect it as the highest will of the deepest nature and wisdom of\nthings. But in the realm of personal relationships, in all that touches\nthe hidden springs of life, in the stress and strain of human strivings,\nin the interconnections of man with man, and group with group, in the\nvital matters by which we live or die, in the weaving of personal and\nnational issues and destinies, we may well throw ourselves unperplexed on\nGod, and believe implicitly that what we pray for affects the heart of\nGod and influences the course and current of this Deeper Life that makes\nthe world.\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE MYSTERY OF GOODNESS\n\nWe generally use the word \u201cmystery\u201d to indicate the dark, baffling,\nand forbidding aspects of our life-experience. The things which spoil\nour peace and mar our harmonies and break our unions are for us\ncharacteristically _mysteries_. Pain, suffering, and death are the most\nancient of mysteries, which philosophers and poets have always been\nstriving to solve and unravel. Evil in all its complicated forms and sin\nin all its hideous varieties constitute another group of these dark and\nforbidding mysteries, about which the race has forever speculated. The\nproblem of evil has been the prolific source both of mythological stories\nand of systems of philosophy.\n\nEvery war that has swept the world, from that of Chedorlaomer to that\nof Europe to-day, has driven this mystery of evil into the foreground\nof consciousness, wherever the dark trail of ruin and devastation and\nmyriad woe has lain, or lies, across the lives and hearts of men. Now,\nas always, burning homes, ruined business, masses of slain, maimed\nbodies, the welter of animal instincts, the suffering of women and\nlittle children, and the hates enflamed between races form the greatest\nsummation of baffling evils that man has known.\n\nBut it is an interesting fact that the mysteries referred to by the\ngreatest prophets of the soul are not of this dark and baffling type.\nThey are mysteries of light rather than mysteries of darkness. Christ\nspeaks of \u201cthe mystery of the Kingdom of God.\u201d Saint Paul finds the\ncentral mystery to be an incarnational revelation of a suffering, loving\nGod, who re-lives His life in us, and the author of the Epistle to\nTimothy announces \u201cthe great mystery of _godliness_.\u201d[4] Love is put\nabove all mysteries; the gospel of grace is more \u201cunsearchable\u201d than\nany suffering of this present time, and the real mystery is to be found\nrather in resurrection than in death: \u201cBehold I show you a mystery. We\nshall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed and the dead shall be\nraised.\u201d\n\nScience has confirmed this emphasis of the spiritual prophets. We come\nback from the greatest books of the present time with the same conclusion\nas this of the New Testament that the prime mysteries of the world are\nmysteries of goodness and not of evil; of light and not of darkness.\nWe can pretty easily understand how there should be \u201cevil\u201d in a world\nthat has evolved under the two great biological conditions: (1) Every\nbeing that survives wins out because he is more physically fit than his\nneighbors in the struggle for existence, and (2) there is a tendency for\nall inherited traits to persist in offspring. In order to have \u201cnature\u201d\nat all, there must be a heavy tinge of redness in tooth and claw. The\nprimitive passions must be strong in order to insure any beings that can\nsurvive. And if there is to be inheritance of parental traits, then the\ntendencies of bygone ages are bound to persist on, even into a world of\nmore highly evolved beings, and there will be inherited \u201crelics\u201d of\nfears, of appetites, of impulses, of instincts, and of desires, as there\nare inherited \u201crelics\u201d in the physical structure, and men will continue\nto do things which would better suit the animal level. And, finally, if\nthe world is to be made by evolving processes, there will of necessity\nbe an overlapping of \u201chigh\u201d and \u201clow.\u201d The world cannot _go on_ without\ncarrying its past along with the advancing line, so that in the light of\nthe new and better that comes, the old and out-passed seems \u201cevil\u201d and\n\u201cbad.\u201d\n\nWe can see plainly enough where the drive of selfishness came from,\nwhere the passionate fears and angers and hates that mar our world\ngot into the system. What is not so clear and plain is how we came to\nbe possessed of a driving hunger for _goodness_, how we ever got a\nbent for self-sacrifice, how we derived our disposition for love, how\nwe discovered that it is more blessed to give than to receive. The\nmystery after all _is_ the mystery of goodness. The gradual growth of\na Kingdom of God, in which men live by love and brotherhood, in which\nthey give without expecting returns, in which they decrease that others\nmay increase, and in which their joy is fulfilled in the _spreading_ of\njoy\u2014that is, after all, the mystery.\n\nThe coming, into this checkerboard world, of One who practiced love in\nall the varying issues of life,\n\n    \u201cWho nailed all flesh to the cross\n    Till self died out in the love of his kind,\u201d\n\nand who Himself believed, and taught others to believe, that His Life was\na genuine revelation of God and the spiritual realm of reality\u2014there is a\nmystery.\n\nThat this Life which was in Him is an actual incursion from a higher,\ninexhaustible world of Spirit, that we all may partake of it, draw upon\nit, live in it, and have it live in us, so that in some sense it becomes\ntrue that _Christ lives in us_ and we are raised from the dead\u2014that is\nthe mystery.\n\nThis word \u201cmystery\u201d or \u201cmysteries\u201d did not, however, stand in the thought\nof the early Christians for something mysterious and inscrutable. It\nstood rather for some unspeakably precious reality which could be known\nonly by initiation and to the initiate. The \u201cmysteries\u201d of Mithra were\nforever hidden to those on the outside; to those who formed the inner\ncircle the secret of the real presence of the god was as open and clear\nas the sunlight under the sky. So, too, with the \u201cmysteries\u201d of the\ngospel. They could not be conveyed by word of wisdom or by proof of\nlogic. Then, and always, the love of Christ \u201cpasses knowledge,\u201d \u201cthe\npeace of God\u201d overtops processes of thought. Love, Grace, Goodness,\nGodliness, Christlikeness breaking forth in men like us, remains a\n\u201cmystery\u201d\u2014a thing not \u201cexplainable\u201d in terms of empirical causation\nand not capable of being \u201cknown\u201d except to those who see and taste and\ntouch, because they have been \u201cinitiated into this Life.\u201d We shall\nno doubt still puzzle over the dark enigmas of pain and death, of war\nand its train of woe, but we shall do well to remember that there is\na greater mystery than any of these\u2014the mystery of the suffering, yet\never-conquering love of God which no one _knows_ except he who is\nimmersed in it.\n\n\nV\n\n\u201cAS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY\u201d\n\nThe word \u201cauthority\u201d has shifted its meaning many times. We do not mean\nnow by it what churchmen of former times meant when they used it. Even as\nlate as the beginning of the twentieth century a great French scholar,\nAuguste Sabatier, wrote an influential book in which he contrasted\n\u201cReligions of Authority\u201d with \u201cReligions of the Spirit.\u201d By religions of\nauthority he meant types of religion which rest on a dogmatic basis and\non the super-ordinary power of ecclesiastical officials to _guarantee_\nthe truth. However authoritative a religion of that type may once\nhave been, it is so no longer, at least with those who have caught the\nintellectual spirit of our age.\n\n\u201cAuthority\u201d is found now for most of us where the common people who\nlistened to Jesus found it\u2014in the convincing and verifying power of\nthe message itself. We should not now think for a moment of taking our\nviews on astronomy or geology or physiology\u2014about the circulation of the\nblood, for instance\u2014on the \u201cauthority\u201d of a priest, assuming that his\nordination supplied him with oracular knowledge on these subjects. We\nwant to know rather what the facts in any one of these fields compel us\nto conclude, and we go for assistance to persons who have trained and\ndisciplined their powers of observation and who can make us see what\nthey see. Our \u201cauthority\u201d in the last resort to-day is the _evidence_ of\nobservable facts and legitimate _inference_ from these facts. A religion\nof authority, then, for our generation rests, not on the infallible\nguarantee of any ordained man, or of any miraculously equipped church,\nbut on the spiritual nature of human life itself and on the verifiable\nrelations of the soul with the unseen realities of the universe.\n\nI need hardly say\u2014it is so plain that the runner can see it\u2014that the\nso-called Sermon on the Mount is one of the best illustrations available\nof this type of authoritative religion. Whatever is declared as truth in\nthat discourse is true, not because a messenger from heaven brought it,\nnot because a supernatural authority guaranteed it, but _because it is\ninherently so_, and if any statement here obviously conflicted with the\nfacts of life and stood confuted by the testimony of the soul itself,\nit would in the end, in the long run as we say, have to go. The whole\nmessage, from the beatitude upon the poor-in-spirit to the judgment test\nof life in action, as revealed in the figure of the two houses, is a\nmessage which can be verified and tried out as searchingly as can the\nlaw of gravitation or the theory of luminiferous ether. All the results\nthat are here announced are results which attach to the essential nature\nof the soul, and the conditions of blessedness are as much bound up with\nthe nature of things as are the conditions of physical health for a man,\nor the conditions of literary success for an author.\n\nAny one who has read William James\u2019 chapter on \u201cHabit\u201d knows how it\nfeels to be reading something which verifies itself and which convicts\nthe judgment of the reader in almost every sentence. As one comes toward\nthe end of the chapter he finds these words: \u201cEvery smallest stroke of\nvirtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van\nWinkle excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, \u2018I won\u2019t\ncount this time!\u2019 Well! he may not count it, and a kind heaven may not\ncount it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among the nerve\ncells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing\nit up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.\u201d These words\nhave the irresistible drive of observable facts behind them. We have come\nupon _something which is so because it is so_. It can no more be juggled\nwith or dodged than can the fact of the precession of the equinoxes. The\ncalm authority of that chapter might well be the envy of every preacher\nof the gospel and of every writer of articles on religion. If either the\npreacher or the religious writer expects to speak to the condition of\nhis age, then he must acquire this authoritative way of dealing with the\nissues of life, for the other kind of \u201cauthority\u201d has had its day.\n\nIt is interesting to discover that Tertullian and St. Augustine\u2014two\nmen who, almost beyond all others, helped to forge this waning type of\n\u201cauthority\u201d\u2014came very near risking the whole case of religion in their\nday on the primary authority of first-hand experience and the testimony\nof the soul itself. \u201cI call in,\u201d Tertullian wrote, \u201ca new testimony; yea,\none that is better known than all literature, more discussed than all\ndoctrine, more public than all publications, greater than the whole man\u2014I\nmean all which is man\u2019s. Stand forth, O soul, ... and give thy witness\n... I want thy experience. I demand of thee the things thou bringest with\nthee into man, the things thou knowest either from thyself or from thy\nAuthor.... Whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit or a\nsleep or a sickness and attains something of its natural soundness, it\nspeaks of God.\u201d\n\nNobody has ever shown more skill and subtlety in examining the actual\nprocesses of the inner life than has Augustine, nor has any one more\npowerfully revealed the native hunger of the soul for God, or the\nco\u00f6perative working of divine grace in the inner region where all the\nissues of life are settled. Take this vivid passage, picturing the\nhesitating will, zig-zagging between the upward pull and the tug of the\nold self just before the last great act of decision which led to his\nconversion.\n\n\u201cThus was I sick and suffering in mind, upbraiding myself more bitterly\nthan ever before, twisting and turning in my chains in the hope that they\nwould soon snap, for they had almost worn too thin to hold me. Yet they\ndid still hold me. But Thou wast instant with me in the inner man, with\nmerciful severity, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame, lest I should\ncease from struggling.... I kept saying within my heart, \u2018Let it be now,\nnow!\u2019\u2014and with the word I was on the point of going on to the resolve. I\nhad almost done it, but I had not done it; and yet I did not slip back\nto where I was at first, but held my footing at a short remove and drew\nbreath. And again I tried; I came a little nearer, and again a little\nnearer, and now\u2014now\u2014I was in act to grasp and hold it; but still I did\nnot reach it, nor grasp it, nor hold it, ... for the worse that I knew\nso well had more power over me than the better that I knew not, and the\nabsolute point of time at which I was to change filled me with greater\ndread the more nearly I approached it.\u201d\n\nThat is straight out of life. The thing which really matters there is\nnot some fine-spun dogma or the power of some mitered priest, but the\nanswer of the soul, the obedience of the will in the presence of what is\nunmistakably divine. \u201cThe whole work of this life,\u201d he once said, \u201cis\nto heal the eye of the heart by which we see God.\u201d Both these men made\ngreat contributions to the imperial, authoritative church and they were\nforemost architects of the immense system of dogma under which men lived\nfor long centuries, but the religion by which they themselves lived was\nborn in their own experience, and back of all their secondary authority\nwas this primary authority of the soul\u2019s own testimony.\n\nWhat our generation needs above everything, if I read its problems\nrightly, is a clearer interpretation of the spiritual capacities and the\nunseen compulsions of the ordinary human soul; that is to say, a more\nauthoritative and so more compelling psychological account of the actual\nand potential nature of our own human self, with its amazing depths and\nits infinite relationships. We have had fifteen hundred years under the\ndogma of original sin and total depravity; now let us have a period of\nactually facing our own souls as they reveal themselves, not to the\ntheologian, but to the expert in souls. We shall find them mysterious\nand bad enough no doubt, but we shall also find that they are strangely\nlinked up with that unseen and yet absolutely real Heart of all things\nwhom we call God. And our generation also needs a more authoritative\naccount of Jesus Christ\u2014more authoritative because more truly and more\nhistorically drawn. We have had centuries of the Christ of dogma and\neven to-day the Church is split and sundered by its attempt to maintain\ndogmatic constructions about His Person. Was He monophysite? Was he\ndiphysite? Those dead questions have divided the world in former ages\nand still rally oriental sects. Our problem is different. We want to\nsee how He lived. We want to discover what He said. We want to feel the\npower of His attractive personality. We want to find out what His own\nexperience was and what bearing it has on life to-day. We need to have\nHim reinterpreted to us in terms of life, so that once again He becomes\nfor us as real and as dynamic as He was for Paul in Corinth or for John\nin Ephesus. The moment anybody succeeds in doing _that_, He proves to be\nas much alive as ever, and religion becomes as authoritative as ever.\nTheology is not extinct, but it is becoming wholly transformed and the\ntheology of the coming time will be a knowledge of God builded not on\nabstract logic, but on a penetrating psychology of man\u2019s inner nature\nand a no less penetrating interpretation of history and biography,\nespecially at the points where the revelation of God has most evidently\nshone forth and broken in upon us.\n\n\nVI\n\nSEEING HIM WHO IS INVISIBLE\n\nThe power \u201cto see the invisible\u201d is as essential in science, in\nphilosophy, in art, and in common life as it is in religion. The world\nwith which science deals is not made out of \u201cthings that do appear.\u201d\nEvery step in the advance of science has been made by the discovery of\ninvisible things which explain the crude visible things of our uncritical\nexperience. We seldom see any of the things the scientists talk\nabout\u2014atoms and molecules and cells, laws and causes and energies. These\nthings have been found first, not with the eyes of sense, but with the\nvision of the mind.\n\nNewton found the support that holds the earth to the sun and the moon to\nthe earth, but there was no visible cable, no mighty grooves in which\nthe poles of the earth\u2019s axis spin. There was nothing to see, and yet his\nmind discovered an invisible link that fastens every particle of matter\nin the universe to every other particle, however remote. One fact after\nanother has forced the scientist to-day to draw upon an invisible world\nof ether for his explanations of a vast number of the things that appear.\nGravitation, electrical phenomena, light and color vision, and, perhaps,\nthe very origin of matter, are due, his mind sees, to the presence of\nthis extraordinary world within, or behind, the world we see.\n\nOne of the greatest advances that has ever been made in the progress\nof medicine was made through the discovery of invisible microbes as\nthe cause of contagious and infectious diseases. The ancients had also\nbelieved the cause of many diseases to be the presence of invisible\nagents, which they called \u201cdemons,\u201d but they could hit upon no way of\n_finding_ the \u201cdemons\u201d or of banishing them. The scientific physician\n\u201csees\u201d the invisible microbe and he \u201csees\u201d what will put this enemy _hors\nde combat_.\n\nThe study of philosophy is chiefly the cultivation of the power to see\nthe invisible. Pythagoras is said to have required a period of a year of\nsilence as an initiation into the business of philosophy\u2014because there\nwas nothing to talk about until the beginner had learned how to see the\ninvisible! The great realities to which the philosopher is dedicated\nare not things to be found, even with microscopes or telescopes. Nobody\nis qualified to enter the philosophical race at all\u2014even for the\nhundred-yard dash\u2014unless in the temporal he can see the eternal, and in\nthe visible the invisible, and in the material the spiritual. There can\nbe no artistic creation until some one comes who has \u201cthe faculty divine\u201d\nto see\n\n            \u201cThe gleam,\n    The light that never was, on sea or land.\u201d\n\nSuch artistic creations must not be unreal. On the contrary, they must\nbe more real than the scenes we photograph or the factual events we\ndescribe. They must present to us something that is in all respects _as\nit ought to be_. The artist, the poet, the musician succeed in making\nsome object, or some character, or some series of events or sounds raise\nus above our usual restraints of space and time and imperfection and for\na moment give us a glimpse of something eternal.\n\nBut we see the invisible in our common daily life much more than we\nrealize. The simple cobbler of shoes stitches and pegs at his little\nshoe, and makes it as honestly as he can, for some child whom he has\nnever seen and perhaps never will see. The merchant expands his business\nbecause he forecasts the expanding need for his articles in China,\nAfrica, or South America. The statesman at every move is dealing as much\nwith the country of his inner vision as with the country his eyes see.\nSo, too, is the parent as he plans for the discipline and education\nof his child. No one can be a good person\u2014however simple, or however\ngreat\u2014without leaving the things that are behind, _i.e._ the things that\nare actual, and going on to realize what is not yet apprehended, what\nexists only in forecast and vision. Religion, then, is not alone in\ndemanding the supreme faculty of seeing the invisible. We live on all\nlife-levels by faith, by assent to realities which are not there for\nour eyes. Religion only demands of us that we _see_ the whole Reality\nwhich this visible fragment of nature implies, that we _see_ the larger\nspirit which our own human spirits call for, that we _see_ the eternal\nsignificance revealed in the life of Christ and in the conquests of His\nspirit through the ages.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nA FUNDAMENTAL SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK\n\n\nThe most important constructive work just now laid upon us is the serious\ntask of helping to restore faith in the actual reality of God and in the\nfundamental spiritual nature of our world. There is no substitute for\nthe transforming power and inward depth which an irresistible first-hand\nconviction of God gives a man. Carlyle, in his usual vivid fashion, says\nthat one man with faith in God is \u201cstronger, not than ten men that have\nit not, or than ten thousand, but than _all_ men that have it not!\u201d A man\ncan face anything when he knows absolutely that at bottom the universe\nis not force nor mechanism but intelligent and loving purpose, and that\nthrough the seeming confusion and welter there is a loving, throbbing,\npersonal Heart answering back to us. The cultivation of this experience\nis the greatest prophetic mission laid upon the spiritual leaders of\nany age. Isaiah is at his fullest stature when in a fearful crisis he\ncalls his nation from a military _alliance_ with Egypt, whose people, he\nsays, are \u201cmen and not God and whose horses are flesh and not spirit,\u201d\nto a _reliance_ on God and on eternal resources: \u201cIn returning and rest\nshall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.\u201d\nGeorge Fox is most clearly a prophet when he reports his own experience\nof God: \u201cI saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but that an\ninfinite ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean of darkness. In\n_that_ I saw the infinite love of God.\u201d\n\nIf we are to assist in the creation of a higher civilization than that\nagainst which the hand on the wall is writing \u201cmene,\u201d we must speak\nof God in the present tense, we must live by truths and convictions\nthat are grounded in our own experience, and we must endeavor to find a\nspiritual basis underlying all the processes of the world. Men have been\nliving for a generation\u2014or at least trying to live\u2014on a naturalistic\ninterpretation of the universe which chokes and stifles the higher\nspiritual life of man. We must help those who have been caught in this\ndrift of materialism to find their way back to the spiritual meaning of\nthe world.\n\nWe get a vivid impression of the stern and iron character of this\nmaterialistic universe from the writings of Bertrand Russell. Here are\ntwo extracts:\n\n    \u201cMan is the product of causes which had no prevision of the\n    end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes\n    and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of\n    accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no\n    intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual\n    life beyond the grave; all the labours of the ages, all the\n    devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of\n    human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of\n    the solar system, and the whole temple of man\u2019s achievement\n    must inevitably be buried beneath the d\u00e9bris of a universe in\n    ruins\u2014all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so\n    nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope\n    to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only\n    on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul\u2019s\n    habitation henceforth be safely built.\u201d[5]\n\n    \u201cBrief and powerless is man\u2019s life; on him and all his race\n    the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and\n    evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its\n    relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest,\n    to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it\n    remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty\n    thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward\n    terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that\n    his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance,\n    to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his\n    outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that\n    tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to\n    sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that\n    his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of\n    unconscious power.\u201d[6]\n\nMuch of the present confusion has been due to a false interpretation of\nthe doctrine of evolution. It has been assumed\u2014not indeed by scientists\nof the first rank, but by a host of influential interpreters\u2014that the\nbasis of evolution, the law which runs the cosmic train, is competitive\nstruggle for existence, that is to say the natural selection of the\nfittest to survive, and the fittest on this count are of course the\nphysically fittest, the most efficient. This principle, used first to\nexplain biological development, has been taken up and expanded and used\nto explain all ethical and social progress. Any nation that has won\nout and prevailed has done so, on this theory, because it made itself\nstronger than those nations with which it competed. This theory has\ncontributed immensely toward bringing on the catastrophe in Europe. It\nis a breeder of racial rivalries, it is loaded with emotional stress, it\ncultivates fear, one of the main causes of war, and it runs on all fours\nwith materialism.\n\nBut it does not fit the facts of life and it is as much a mental\nconstruction and as untrue to the complete nature of things as were the\npopular pre-evolution theories. Here, as everywhere else, the truth is\nthe only adequate remedy, and the truth would set men free. Biologists\nof the most eminent rank have all along been insisting that life has not\nevolved through the operation of one single factor; for example, the\nlaw of competing struggle. Everywhere in the process, from lowest to\nhighest, there has been present the operation of another force as primary\nas the egoistic factor, namely the operation of mutual aid, co\u00f6peration,\nstruggle for the life of others, mother-traits and father-traits,\nsacrifice of self for the group, a love-factor implicit at the bottom but\ngloriously conscious and consecrated at the top. Nature has always been\nforerunning and crying in the wilderness that the way of _love_ will work.\n\nIt is impossible to account for a continuously progressive evolution on\nany mechanical basis. As soon as life appeared there came into play some\ndegree of spontaneity, something unpredictable; something which is not\nmechanism. The future in any life-series is never an equation with the\npast. What has been, does not quite determine what will be. Life carries\nin itself a creative tendency\u2014a tendency to exhibit surprises, novelties,\nvariations, mutations, unpredictable leaps. We can name this tendency,\nthis upward-changing drive, \u201cvital impulse,\u201d but however we name it, we\ncannot explain it. The variation which raises the entire level of life is\nas mysterious as a virgin birth, or a resurrection from the dead. There\nis no help in the word \u201cfortuitous,\u201d or \u201caccidental,\u201d there is no answer\nwhen the appeal is made either to heredity or to physical environment.\nThere is in favorable mutations a revelation of some kind of intelligent\npush, a power of life working toward an end. The end or goal of the\nprocess seems to be an operative factor _in_ the process. Evolution seems\nto be due to a mighty living, conscious, spiritual driving force, that\nis pouring itself forth in ever-heightening ways of manifestation and\nthat differentiates itself into myriad varieties of form and activity,\neach one with its own peculiar potency of advance. Consciousness, in\nHenri Bergson\u2019s illuminating interpretation of evolution, is the original\ncreative cosmic force. It is before matter, and its onward destiny is\nnot bound up with matter. Wherever it appears there is vital impulse,\nupward-pointing mutations, free action, and potency. But no life is\nisolated or cut apart. Each particular manifestation of life is one of\nthe rills into which the immense river of consciousness divides, and this\nirresistible river with its onward leaps seems able to beat down every\nresistance and clear away the most formidable obstacles\u2014perhaps even\ndeath itself.\n\nBut it is not merely in the evolutionary process that we need to\nreinterpret the spiritual factor; it is urgently called for in our\ndealing with the whole of nature. We must learn how to interpret the\nfundamental spiritual implications involved in the nature of beauty, of\nmoral goodness, of verifiable knowledge, and of personality itself.\n\nIn an impressive way Arthur Balfour in his _Theism and Humanism_ has\npointed out that it is impossible to find any adequate rational basis\nfor our experience of beauty, or for our pursuit of moral ends of\ngoodness, or for our confidence in the validity of knowledge or truth,\nunless we assume the reality of an underlying spiritual universe as\nthe root and ground both of nature without us and of mind within us.\n\u201c\u00c6sthetic values,\u201d Balfour says, \u201care in part dependent upon a spiritual\nconception of the world in which we live.\u201d[7] \u201cEthics,\u201d again he says,\n\u201cmust have its roots in the divine; and in the divine it must find its\nconsummation\u201d[8] and, finally, he says that if rational values are to\nremain undimmed and unimpaired, God must be treated as real\u2014\u201cHe is\nHimself the condition of scientific knowledge.\u201d[9]\u2014\u201cWe must hold that\nreason and the works of reason have their source in God: that from Him\nthey draw their inspiration, and that if they repudiate their origin, by\nthis very act they proclaim their own insufficiency.\u201d[10]\n\nPersonality carries in all its larger aspects inevitable implications\nof a spiritual universe. In the first place, it is forever utterly\nimpossible to find a materialistic or naturalistic _origin_ for\npersonality. Whenever we deal with \u201cmatter\u201d or with \u201cnature,\u201d\nconsciousness is always presupposed, and the \u201cmatter\u201d we talk about,\nor the \u201cnature\u201d we talk about, is \u201cmatter\u201d or \u201cnature\u201d as existing for\nconsciousness or as conceived by consciousness. It is impossible to get\nany world at all without a uniting, connecting principle of consciousness\nwhich binds fact to fact, item to item, event to event, into a whole\nwhich is known to us through the action of our organizing consciousness.\nSince it is through consciousness that a connected universe of experience\nis possible it seems absurd to suppose that consciousness is a product\nof matter or of any natural, mechanical process. Every effort to find a\ngenesis of knowledge in any other source than spirit, derived in turn\nfrom self-existing Spirit, has always failed and from the logical nature\nof the case must fail. There is no answer to the question, how did we\nbegin to be persons? which does not refer the genesis to an eternal\nspiritual Principle in the universe, transcending space and time, life\nand death, matter and motion, cause and effect\u2014a Principle which itself\nis the condition of temporal beginnings and temporal changes or ends.\n\nNormal human experience is, too, heavily loaded with further inevitable\nimplications of an environing spiritual world. The consciousness of\nfiniteness with which we are haunted presupposes something infinite\nalready in consciousness, just as our knowledge of \u201cspaces\u201d presupposes\n_space_, of which definite spaces are determinate parts. That we are\noppressed with our own littleness, that we revolt from our meannesses,\nthat we \u201clook before and after, and sigh for what is not,\u201d that we are\nnever satisfied with any achievement, that each attainment inaugurates a\nnew drive, that we feel \u201cthe glory of the imperfect,\u201d means that in some\nway we partake of an infinite revealed in us by an inherent necessity of\nself-consciousness. We are made for something which does not yet appear,\nwe are inalienably kin to the perfect that always draws and attracts us.\nWe are forever seeking God because, in some sense, however fragmentary,\nwe have found Him.\n\n    \u201cHere sits he shaping wings to fly;\n    His heart forbodes a mystery:\n    He names the name Eternity.\n\n    \u201cThat type of Perfect in his mind\n    In Nature can he nowhere find.\n    He sows himself on every wind.\n\n    \u201cHe seems to hear a heavenly Friend,\n    And through thick veils to apprehend\n    A labor working to an end.\u201d[11]\n\nThe most august thing in us is that creative center of our being, that\nautonomous citadel of personality, where we form for ourselves ideals of\nbeauty, of truth, and of goodness by which we live. This power to extend\nlife in ideal fashion is the elemental moral fact of personal life. These\nideals which shape our life are manifestly things which cannot be \u201cfound\u201d\nanywhere in our world of sense experience. They are not on land or sea.\nWe live, and, when the call for it comes, we joyously _die_ for things\nwhich our eyes have never seen in this world of molecular currents, for\nthings which are not here in the world of space, but which are not on\nthat account any less _real_. We create, by some higher drive of spirit,\nvisions of _a world that ought to be_ and these visions make us forever\ndissatisfied with _the world that is_, and it is through these visions\nthat we reshape and reconstruct the world which is being made. The\nelemental spiritual core in us which we call conscience can have come\nfrom nowhere but from a deeper spiritual universe with which we have\nrelations. It cannot be traced to any physical origin. It cannot be\nreduced to any biological function. It cannot be explained in utilitarian\nterms. It is an august and authoritative loyalty of soul to a Good that\ntranscends all goods and which will not allow us to substitute prudence\nfor intrinsic goodness. This inner imperative overarches our moral life,\nand it rationally presupposes a spiritual universe with which we are\nallied.\n\nThere is, too, an immense interior depth to our human personality. Only\nthe surface of our inner self is lighted up and is brought into clear\nfocal consciousness. There are, however, dim depths underlying every\nmoment of consciousness and these subterranean deeps are all the time\nshaping or determining the ideas, emotions, and decisions which surge up\ninto the illuminated apex of consciousness. This submerged life is in\npart, no doubt, the slow deposit of previous experiences, the gathered\nwisdom of the social group in which we are imbedded, the residual savings\nfrom unuttered hopes and wishes, aspirations and intentions,\n\n    \u201cAll I could never be,\n    All, men ignored in me.\u201d\n\nBut at times our interior deep seems to be more than a deposit of the\npast. Incursions from beyond our own margin seem to occur. Inrushes from\na wider spiritual world seem to take place. Vitalizing, energizing,\nconstructive forces come from somewhere into men, as though another\nuniverse impinged upon our finite spirits. We cannot _prove_ by these\nsomewhat rare and unusual mystical openings that there is an actual\nspiritual environment surrounding our souls, but there are certainly\nexperiences which are best explained on that hypothesis, and there is no\ngood reason for drawing any impervious boundary around the margins of\nthe spiritual self within us.\n\nAll attempts to reduce man\u2019s inner spiritual life to the play of\nmolecular forces have fallen through. Correlation between mind and\nbrain cortex there certainly is and spirit, as we know it, expresses\nitself under, or in relation to, certain physical conditions. But it is\nimpossible to establish a complete parallelism between mind-functions and\nbrain-functions. The psychical, that is to say spirit, seems immensely to\noutrun its organ and to use brain as a musician uses an instrument.\n\nThe psychological studies of Henri Bergson in France and of Dr. William\nMcDougall at Oxford make a very strong argument for the view that the\nhigher forms of consciousness cannot be explained in terms of brain\naction and that there is no well-defined physical correlate to the\nhighest and most central psychical processes. I shall follow in the main\nthe positions of my old teacher, Dr. McDougall, as worked out in his\n_Body and Mind_.\n\nOne of the most important differences between human and animal\nconsciousness comes to light in the appearance of \u201cmeaning\u201d which is\na differentiating characteristic of _personal_ consciousness. We pass\n\u201ca great divide\u201d when we pass from bare sensory experience, common to\nall higher animals, to _consciousness of \u201cmeaning,\u201d_ which is a trait\ncommon only to persons. We all know what it is to hear words which\nmake a clear impression and which yet arouse no \u201cmeaning.\u201d We often\ngaze at objects and yet, like Macbeth, have \u201cno speculation in our\neyes\u201d\u2014we apprehend no significant \u201cmeaning\u201d in the thing upon which we\nare looking. We sometimes catch ourselves in the very act of passing\nfrom mere sense or bare image to the higher level of \u201cmeaning.\u201d While\nwe gaze or while we listen we suddenly feel the \u201cmeaning\u201d flood in and\ntransform the whole content of consciousness. All the higher ranges of\nexperience depend on this unique feature which is something over and\nabove the mere sensory stage. The words, \u201cthe quality of mercy is not\nstrain\u2019d\u201d remain just word-sounds until in a flash one sees that mercy\nis \u201cnot something that comes out grudgingly in drops,\u201d and then the mind\nrises to \u201ca consciousness of meaning.\u201d[12] In this higher experience,\n\u201cmeaning\u201d stands vividly in the focus of consciousness and, in a case,\nfor instance, of grasping a long sentence, or of appreciating a piece\nof music, consciousness of \u201cmeaning\u201d is an integral unitary whole.\nNow there is no corresponding unitary whole in the brain which could\nstand as the physical correlate to this consciousness of \u201cmeaning.\u201d The\nsimple sensational experiences correspond in some way to parallel brain\nprocesses but these elemental experiences are merely cues which evoke\nhigher forms of psychical \u201cmeaning,\u201d that have no physical or mechanical\ncorrelate in the brain.\n\nThis is still more strikingly the case in the higher forms of memory.\nThe lower and more mechanical forms of memory may be treated as a\nhabit-sequence, linked up with permanent brain paths. But memory proper\ndepends, as does \u201cmeaning,\u201d upon a single act of mental apprehension. As\nMcDougall well says: \u201cthe whole process and effect, the apprehension and\nthe retention and the remembering, are absolutely unique and distinct\nfrom all other apprehensions and retentions and rememberings.\u201d[13] The\nhigher kind of memory involves \u201cmeaning\u201d and, the moment \u201cmeaning\u201d floods\nin, vast and complicated wholes of experience tend to become a permanent\npossession, while only with multitudinous repetitions can we fix and keep\nprocesses that are meaningless and without psychical significance. But\nhere once more this higher unitary consciousness of a remembered whole of\nexperience has no assignable physical correlate in the brain-processes.\nCertain sensory cues evoke or recall a synthetic whole of consciousness\nwhich has no parallel in the material world.\n\nStill more obviously in the higher \u00e6sthetic sentiments and volitional\nprocesses is there a spiritual activity which transcends the mechanical\nand physical order. \u00c6sthetic joy depends upon a spiritual power to\ncombine many elements of experience to form an object of a higher order\nthan any object given to sense. It is particularly true of the highest\n\u00e6sthetic joy, for example, enjoyment of poetic creations where the\nideal and intellectual element vastly overtops the sensuous, and where\nthe words and imagery really carry the reader on into another world\nthan the one of sight and sound. Here in a very high degree we attain a\nunified whole of consciousness that has no physical correlate among the\nbrain-processes. It is further apparent that the higher forms of pleasure\nsomehow exert an effective influence upon the physical system itself as\nthough some new and heightening energy poured back from consciousness\ninto the cerebral processes and drained down through the system. William\nJames has given a very successful account of the way in which pleasure\nand pain as spiritual energies reinforce or damp the physical activities,\nso that the personal soul seems to take a unique part from within in\ndetermining the physical process. Here are his words:\n\n    \u201cTremendous as the part is which pleasure and pain play in our\n    psychic life, we must confess that absolutely nothing is known\n    of their cerebral conditions. It is hard to imagine them as\n    having special centres; it is harder still to invent peculiar\n    forms of process in each and every centre, to which these\n    feelings may be due. And let one try as one will to represent\n    the cerebral activity in exclusively mechanical terms, I, for\n    one, find it quite impossible to enumerate what seem to be the\n    facts and yet to make no mention of the psychic side which\n    they possess. However it be with other drainage currents and\n    discharges, the drainage currents and discharges of the brain\n    are not purely physical facts. They are _psycho-physical_\n    facts, and the spiritual quality of them seems a codeterminant\n    of their mechanical effectiveness. If the mechanical activities\n    in a cell, as they increase, give pleasure, they seem to\n    increase all the more rapidly for that fact; if they give\n    displeasure, the displeasure seems to damp the activities. The\n    psychic side of the phenomenon thus seems somewhat like the\n    applause or hissing at a spectacle, to be an encouraging or\n    adverse _comment_ on what the machinery brings forth.\u201d[14]\n\nThe unifying effect and the dynamic quality of a persistent resolution\nof will is another case in point which seems to show that the psychical\nreality in us vastly overtops the mechanism through which it works. A\nfixed purpose, a moral ideal, a determined intention, work far-reaching\nresults and in some way organize and reinforce the entire nervous\nmechanism. The whole phenomenon of _attention_ which has a primary\nimportance for decisions of will and immense bearing on the problem of\nfreedom of will is something which cannot be worked out in brain-terms.\nThere seems to be some unifying central psychical core within us that\nraises us out of the level of mechanism and makes us autonomous creative\nbeings. Once more I quote William James, whom many of us of this\ngeneration revere both as teacher and friend:\n\n    \u201cIt often takes effort to keep the mind upon an object. We\n    feel that we can make more or less of effort as we choose. If\n    this feeling be not deceptive, if our effort be a spiritual\n    force, and an indeterminate one, then of course it contributes\n    coequally with the cerebral conditions to the result. Though it\n    _introduce_ no new idea, it will deepen and prolong the stay in\n    consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more\n    quickly away. The delay thus gained might not be more than a\n    second in duration\u2014but that second may be _critical_; for in\n    the constant rising and falling of considerations in the mind,\n    where two associated systems of them are nearly in equilibrium\n    it is often a matter of but a second more or less of attention\n    at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy\n    the field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be\n    excluded itself by the other. When developed, it may make us\n    act; and that act may seal our doom. The whole drama of the\n    voluntary life hinges on the amount of attention, slightly\n    more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas receive. But\n    the whole feeling of reality, the whole sting and excitement\n    of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it things\n    are _really being decided_ from one moment to another, and\n    that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was\n    forged innumerable ages ago. This appearance, which makes\n    life and history tingle with such a tragic zest, _may_ not be\n    an illusion. Effort may be an original force and not a mere\n    effect, and it may be indeterminate in amount.\u201d[15]\n\nThere are thus a number of modes of consciousness, and I have mentioned\nonly a few of them, which have no traceable counterpart in the physical\nsphere, and which presuppose a spiritual reality at the center of\nour personal life, and this spiritual reality, as we have seen, can\ntrace its origin only to a self-existing, self-explanatory, environing\nconsciousness, sufficiently personal to be the source of our developing\npersonality. If this view is correct and sound, there is no scientific\nargument against the continuation of life after death. If personality is\nfundamentally a spiritual affair and the body is only a medium and organ\nhere in space and time of a psychical reality, there are good grounds and\nsolid hopes of permanent conservation.\n\nBut after all the supreme evidence that the universe is fundamentally\nspiritual is found in the revelation of personal life where it has\nappeared at its highest and best in history, that is in Jesus Christ. In\nHim we have a master manifestation of that creative upward tendency of\nlife, a surprising mutation, which in a unique way brought into history\nan unpredictable inrush of life\u2019s higher forces. The central fact which\nconcerns us here is that He is the revealing organ of a new and higher\norder of life. We cannot appropriate the gospel by reducing it to a\ndoctrine, nor by crystallizing it into an institution, nor by postponing\nits prophesies of moral achievement to some remote world beyond the\nstars. We can appropriate it only when we realize that this Christ is\na revelation here in time and mutability of the eternal nature and\ncharacter of that conscious personal Spirit that environs all life and\nthat steers the entire system of things, and that He has come to bring us\nall into an abundant life like His own. Here in Him the love-principle\nwhich was heralded all through the long, slow process has come into full\nsight and into full operation as the way of life. He shows us the meaning\nand possibility of genuine spiritual life. He makes us sure that His kind\nof life is divine, and that in His face we are seeing the heart and mind\nand will of God. Here at least is one place in our mysterious world where\nlove breaks through\u2014the love that will not let go, the love that suffers\nlong and is kind. He makes the eternal Father\u2019s love visible and vocal\nin a life near enough to our own to move us with its appeal and enough\nbeyond us to be forever our spiritual goal. We have here revealed a\ndivine-human life which we can even now in some measure live and in which\nwe can find our peace and joy, and through which we can so enter into\nrelation with God that life becomes a radiant thing, as it was with Him,\nand death becomes, as with Him, a way of going to the Father.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nWHAT DOES RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE TELL US ABOUT GOD\n\n\n    \u201cA noiseless, patient spider,\n    I mark\u2019d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;\n    Mark\u2019d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,\n    It launch\u2019d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;\n    Ever unreeling them\u2014ever tirelessly speeding them.\n\n    \u201cAnd you, O my Soul, where you stand,\n    Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,\n    Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,\u2014seeking the spheres, to\n      connect them;\n    Till the bridge you will need, be form\u2019d\u2014till the ductile anchor hold;\n    Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my soul.\u201d\n\n                                                           \u2014WALT WHITMAN.\n\nThere are many forms of experience which in the primary, unanalyzed,\nunreflective stage appear to bring us into immediate contact with\nself-transcending reality. We seem to be nearer the heart of things,\nmore imbedded in life and in reality itself when consciousness is fused\nand unified in an undifferentiated whole of experience than in the\nlater stage of reflection and description. This later stage necessarily\ninvolves reduction because it involves abstraction. We cannot bring any\nobject or any experience to exact description without stripping it of its\nlife and its mystery and without reducing it to the abstract qualities\nwhich are unvarying and repeatable.\n\nThere can be no doubt that our experiences of beauty, for instance, have\na physical and describable aspect. The sunset which thrills us is for\ndescriptive purposes an aggregation of minute water-drops which set ether\nwaves vibrating at different velocities, and, as a result, we receive\ncertain nerve shocks that are pleasurable. These nerve shocks modify\nbrain cells and affect arterial and visceral vibrations, all of which\nmight conceivably be accurately described. But no complete account of\nthese minute cloud particles, or of these ether vibrations; no catalogue\nof these nerve shocks, cell changes, or arterial throbs can catch or\npresent to us what we get in the na\u00efve and palpitating experience of\nbeauty itself. Something there in the field of perception has suddenly\nfused our consciousness into an undifferentiated whole in which sensuous\nelements, intellectual and ideal elements, emotional and conative\nelements are indissolubly merged into a vital _system_ which baffles all\nanalysis. Something got through perception puts all the powers of the\ninner self into play and into harmony, overcomes all dualisms of self and\nother, annuls all contradictions that may later be discovered, lifts the\nmind to the apprehension of objects of a higher order than that of sense,\nand liberates and vitalizes the soul with a consciousness of possession\nand joy and freedom.\n\nThe flower of the botanist is an aggregation of ovary, calyx, petals,\npistil, and pollen\u2014a thing which can be exactly analyzed and described.\nThe poet\u2019s flower, on the other hand, is never a flower which could be\npressed in a book or dried in an herbarium. It is a tiny finite object\nwhich suddenly opens a glimpse into a world which mere sense-eyes\nnever see. It gives \u201cthoughts that do lie too deep for tears.\u201d It is\nsomething so bound in with the whole of things that if one understood it\naltogether, he would know \u201cwhat God and man is.\u201d\n\nThese experiences, even if they do not _prove_ that there is a world of\na higher order than that of mechanism and causal systems, at least bring\nthe recipient moments of relief when he no longer cares for proof and\nthey enable him to feel that he has authentic tidings of a world which is\nas it ought to be.\n\nOur world of \u201cinner experience\u201d can in a similar way be dealt with\nby either one of these two characteristically different methods of\napproach. We can say, if we wish to do so, as Professor Leuba does in\nhis _Psychology of Religion_, that \u201cinner experience belongs entirely\nto psychology,\u201d \u201cthe conscious life belongs entirely to science,\u201d[16]\n\u201cwe must deal with inner experience according to the best scientific\nmethods;\u201d[17] or we can seize by an interior integral insight the\nrich concrete _meaning_ and significance of the unanalyzed whole of\nconsciousness, as it lives and moves in us.\n\nPsychology, like all sciences, proceeds by analysis and limitation.\nIt breaks up the integral whole of inner experience. It strips away\nall mystery, all that is private and unique, and it selects for exact\ndescription the permanent and repeatable aspects, and ends with a\nconsciousness which consists of \u201cmind-states,\u201d or describable \u201ccontents.\u201d\nEverything that will not reduce to this scientific \u201cform\u201d is ousted\nfrom the lists as negligible. All independent variables, all aspects of\n\u201cmeaning,\u201d all will-attitudes, the unique feature of personal ideals,\nthe integral consciousness of self-identity, the inherent tendency to\ntranscend the \u201cgiven\u201d\u2014all these features are either ignored or explained\nin terms of substitutes. Psychology confines itself, and must confine\nitself, to an empirical and describable order of facts. It could no more\ndiscover a transcendent world-order than could geology or astronomy. Its\nfield is phenomena and the \u201cman\u201d it reports upon is \u201ca naturalistic man,\u201d\nas completely describable as the sunset cloud or the botanist\u2019s flower.\n\nWhat I insist upon, however, is that this \u201cdescribed, naturalistic\nman\u201d is not a real existing, living, acting man possessed of interior\nexperience. He is a constructed man. No addition of described\n\u201cmind-states,\u201d no summation of \u201cmind-contents\u201d would ever give\nconsciousness in its inner living wholeness. The reality whose presence\nmakes all the difference may be named \u201cfringe,\u201d or \u201cconnecting\nprinciple,\u201d or \u201csynthetic unity\u201d or anything you please\u2014\u201cbut oh! the\ndifference to me!\u201d The \u201cpsychic elements\u201d of the psychologist are never\nreally _parts_. Every psychical state is in reality what it is because\nit belongs to a person, is flooded with unique life, and is imbedded\nin a peculiar whole of personality. Forever psychology by its method\nof analysis misses, and must miss, the central core of the reality.\nIt can analyze, reduce, and describe the abstract, universal, and\nrepeatable aspects, but it cannot catch the thing itself any more than a\ncinematograph can.\n\nHere in the inner life, if anywhere, we are justified in seizing and\nvaluing the unified and undifferentiated whole of experience in its\ncentral meaning. If this primary experience of integral wholeness and\nunity of self be treated as an illusion, to what other pillar and\nground of truth can we fasten? The object of beauty always reveals to\nus something which must be comprehended as a totality greater than the\nsum of its parts. The thing of beauty takes us beyond the range of the\nmethod of description. So, too, in the case of our richest, most intense,\nand unified moments of inner consciousness, we cannot get an adequate\naccount by the method of analysis. We must supplement science by the\nbest testimony we can get of the worth and meaning and implications of\ninterior insight. We must get, where possible, appreciative accounts of\nthe undifferentiated and unreduced experience and then we can raise the\nquestion as to what is rationally involved in such personal experiences.\n\nAs mystical experience supplies us with moments of the highest integral\nunity, the richest wholes of consciousness, I shall deal mainly with\nthat type, and I shall endeavor to see whether it gives any proof of\na trans-subjective reality. There can be no doubt that this type of\nexperience brings the recipient spiritual holidays from strain and\nstress, that it gives life an optimistic tone, and leaves behind a fresh\nsupply of energy to live by, but can it carry us any farther? Does it\nsupply us with a ladder or a bridge by which we can get \u201cyonder\u201d?\n\nJosiah Royce in _The World and the Individual_ says that the mystic \u201cgets\nhis reality not by thinking, but by consulting the data of experience. He\nis trying very skillfully to be a pure empiricist.\u201d \u201cIndeed,\u201d he adds, \u201cI\nshould maintain that the mystics are the only thoroughgoing empiricists\nin the history of philosophy.\u201d[18] \u201cFinite as we are,\u201d Royce says\nelsewhere in the same book, \u201clost though we may seem to be in the woods\nor in the wide air\u2019s wilderness, in the world of time and chance, we have\nstill, like the strayed animals or like the migrating birds, our homing\ninstinct.\u201d[19]\n\nNow the mystics in all ages have insisted that, whether the process\nbe named \u201cinstinct,\u201d or \u201cintuition,\u201d or \u201cinner sense,\u201d or \u201cuprushes,\u201d\nthe spirit of man is capable of immediate experience of God. There is\nsomething in man, \u201ca soul-center\u201d or \u201can apex of soul,\u201d which directly\napprehends God. It is an immense claim, but those who have the experience\nare as sure that they have found a wider world of life as is the person\nwho thrills with the appreciation of beauty.\n\nCases of the experience are so well known to us all to-day that I shall\nquote only a very few accounts. It looks to me as though some of this\ndirect and immediate experience underlay the entire fabric of St. Paul\u2019s\ntransforming and dynamic religious life. \u201cIt pleased God to reveal His\nSon in me.\u201d \u201cIt is no longer I that live but Christ liveth in me.\u201d \u201cGod\nsent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying _Abba_, Father.\u201d\n\u201cGod who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our\nhearts.\u201d The entire autobiographical story, wherever it comes into light,\nlets us see a man who is able to face immense tasks and to die daily\nbecause he feels in some real way that his life has become \u201ca habitation\nof God through the Spirit\u201d and that he is being \u201cfilled to all fullness\nwith God.\u201d St. Augustine in the same way makes the reader of the\n_Confessions_ feel that the most wonderful thing about this strange\nAfrican who was for a thousand years to be the Atlas, on whose shoulders\nthe Church rested, was his experience of God. He is speaking out of\nexperience when he says, \u201cMy God is the Life of my life.\u201d \u201cThou, O God,\nhast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in\nThee.\u201d \u201cI tremble and I burn; I tremble feeling that I am unlike Him; I\nburn feeling that I am like Him.\u201d \u201cI heard God as the heart heareth.\u201d \u201cWe\nclimbed in inner thought and speech, and in wonder of Thy works, until we\nreached our own minds and passed beyond them and touched That which is\nnot made but is now as it ever shall be, or rather in It is neither \u2018hath\nbeen\u2019 nor \u2018shall be\u2019 but only \u2018is\u2019\u2014just for an instant touched It and in\none trembling glance arrived at That which is.\u201d\n\nJacob Boehme\u2019s testimony is very familiar, but it is such a good\ninterior account that I must repeat it.\n\n    \u201cWhile I was in affliction and trouble, I elevated my spirit,\n    and earnestly raised it up unto God, as with a great stress\n    and onset, lifting up my whole heart and mind and will and\n    resolution to wrestle with the love and mercy of God and not\n    to give over unless He blessed me\u2014then the Spirit did break\n    through. When in my resolved zeal I made such an assault,\n    storm, and onset upon God, as if I had more reserves of virtue\n    and power ready, with a resolution to hazard my life upon it,\n    suddenly my spirit did break through the Gate, not without the\n    assistance of the Holy Spirit, and I reached to the innermost\n    Birth of the Deity, and there I was embraced with love as a\n    bridegroom embraces his bride. My triumphing can be compared to\n    nothing but the experience in which life is generated in the\n    midst of death or like the resurrection from the dead. In this\n    Light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in all created\n    things, even in herbs and grass, I knew God\u2014who He is, how He\n    is, and what His will is.\u201d[20]\n\nVery impressive are the less well-known words of Isaac Penington: \u201cThis\nis He, this is He: There is no other. This is He whom I have waited for\nand sought after from my childhood. I have met with my God; I have met\nwith my Savior. I have felt the healings drop into my soul from under His\nwings.\u201d[21]\n\nEdward Carpenter has given many accounts of the transforming experience\nwhen he felt himself united in a living junction with the infinite\n\u201cincluding Self.\u201d \u201cThe prince of love,\u201d he says, \u201ctouched the walls of\nmy hut with his finger from within, and passing through like a great\nfire delivered me with unspeakable deliverance.\u201d[22] It brought him,\nas he himself says, \u201can absolute freedom from mortality accompanied\nby an indescribable calm and joy.\u201d[23] A nameless writer in the\n\u201cAtlantic Monthly\u201d for May, 1916, has given a remarkable description\nof an experience which is called \u201cTwenty Minutes of Reality.\u201d \u201cI only\nremember,\u201d the writer says, \u201cfinding myself in the very midst of those\nwonderful moments, beholding life for the first time in all its\nyoung intoxication of loveliness in its unspeakable joy, beauty, and\nimportance. I cannot say what the mysterious change was\u2014I saw no new\nthing, but I saw all the usual things in a miraculous new light\u2014in\nwhat I believe is their true light.... Once out of all the gray days\nof my life I have looked into the heart of reality; I have witnessed\nthe truth; I have seen life as it really is\u2014ravishingly, ecstatically,\nmadly beautiful, and filled to overflowing with a wild joy and a value\nunspeakable.\u201d\n\nFinally, I shall give a modern Russian writer\u2019s appreciative report of a\ntypical mystical experience:\n\n    \u201cThere are seconds when you suddenly feel the presence of\n    the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It\u2019s something not\n    earthly\u2014I don\u2019t mean in the sense that it\u2019s heavenly\u2014but in\n    that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect.\n    He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear\n    and unmistakable; it\u2019s as though you apprehend all nature and\n    suddenly say, \u2018Yes, that\u2019s right.\u2019 God, when He created the\n    world, said at the end of each day of creation, \u2018Yes, it\u2019s\n    right, it\u2019s good.\u2019 It ... it\u2019s not being deeply moved, but\n    simply joy. You don\u2019t forgive anything because there is no\n    more need of forgiveness. It\u2019s not that you love\u2014oh, there\u2019s\n    something in it higher than love\u2014what\u2019s most awful is that\n    it\u2019s terribly clear and such joy. In those five seconds I\n    live through a lifetime, and I\u2019d give my whole life for them,\n    because they are worth it.\u201d[24]\n\nIt should always be noted that the number of persons who are subject to\nmystical experiences\u2014that is to say, persons who feel themselves brought\ninto contact with an environing Presence and supplied with new energy to\nlive by\u2014is much larger than we usually suppose. We know only the mystics\nwho were dowered with a literary gift and who could tell in impressive\nlanguage what had come to them, but of the multitude of those who have\nfelt and seen and who yet were unable to tell in words about their\nexperience, of these we are ignorant. An undeveloped and uncultivated\nform of mystical consciousness is present, I think, in most religious\nsouls, and whenever it is unusually awake and vivid the whole inner and\nouter life is intensified by such experiences, even though there may\nbe little that can be put into explicit account in language. There are\nmultitudes of men and women now living, often in out-of-the-way places,\nin remote hamlets or on isolated farms, who are the salt of the earth\nand the light of the world in their communities, because they have had\nvital experiences that revealed to them realities which their neighbors\nmissed and that supplied them with energy to live by which the mere\n\u201cchurch-goers\u201d failed to find.\n\nI am more and more convinced, as I pursue my studies on the meaning and\nvalue of mysticism, with the conviction that religion, _i.e._ religion\nwhen it is real, alive, vital, and transforming, is essentially and at\nbottom a mystical act, a direct response to an inner world of spiritual\nreality, an implicit relationship between the finite and infinite,\nbetween the part and the whole. The French philosopher, \u00c9mile Boutroux,\nhas finely called this junction of finite and infinite in us, by which\nthese mystical experiences are made possible, \u201cthe Beyond that is\nwithin\u201d\u2014\u201cthe Beyond,\u201d as he says, \u201cwith which man comes in touch on the\ninner side of his nature.\u201d\n\nWhenever we go back to the fundamental mystical experience, to the soul\u2019s\nfirst-hand testimony, we come upon a conviction that the human spirit\ntranscends itself and is environed by a spiritual world with which it\nholds commerce and vital relationship. The constructive mystics, not\nonly of the Christian communions but also those of other religions, have\nexplored higher levels of life than those on which men usually live, and\nthey have given impressive demonstration through the heightened dynamic\nquality of their lives and service that they have been drawing upon and\nutilizing reservoirs of vital energy. They have revealed a peculiar\naptitude for correspondence with the Beyond that is within, and they\nhave exhibited a genius for living by their inner conviction of God, \u201cof\npracticing God,\u201d as Jeremy Taylor called it.\n\nBut are we justified in making such large affirmations? Is there anything\nin the nature of mystical experience that warrants us in taking the\nleap from inner vision to existential reality? Can we legitimately get\nfrom a finite, subjective feeling to an objective and infinite God?\nThe answer is of course obvious. There is no way to get a bridge from\nfinite to infinite, from subject to object, from _idea_ to that which\nthe idea _means_, from human to divine, from mere man to God, if they\nare isolated, sundered, disparate entities to start with. No mere\nfinite experience of a mere finite thing can be anything but finite,\nand no juggling can get out of the experience what is not in it. If we\nmean by \u201cempirical\u201d that which is \u201cgiven\u201d as explicit sense-content of\nconsciousness, then the only empirical argument that could be would be\nthe statement that we experience what we experience. We should not get\nbeyond the consciousness of interjection\u2014\u201clo!\u201d \u201cvoila!\u201d\n\nIn this sense of the term, of course nobody ever did or ever could\n\u201cexperience God.\u201d We are shut up entirely to a stream of inner states,\na seriatim consciousness, \u201ca shower of shot,\u201d which can give us no\n_knowledge_ at all, either, in Berkeley\u2019s words, of \u201cthe choir of heaven\u201d\nor of \u201cthe furniture of earth\u201d or of \u201cthe mighty frame of the world,\u201d or\nin fact, of any permanent self within us.\n\nUsed in the narrow Humian sense there are no \u201cempirical arguments\u201d for\nthe existence of God, but the misery of it is there are no arguments\nfor anything else either! We must therefore widen out the meaning of\nthe term \u201cempirical\u201d and include in it not only the actual \u201ccontent\u201d of\nexperience, but all that is involved and implicated _in_ experience.\nWe cannot talk about any kind of reality until we interpret experience\nthrough its rational implications. Nobody ever perceives \u201ca black\nbeetle\u201d and knows it as \u201ca black beetle\u201d without transcending \u201cpure\nempiricism,\u201d _i.e._ without using categories which are not a product of\nexperience. All experience which has any knowledge-import, or value,\npossesses within itself self-transcendence, that is to say, it apprehends\nor takes by storm some sort of external or objective reality. Nobody\nis ever disturbed by the fallacy of subjectivism until he has become\ndebauched by metaphysics. The fallacy of subjectivism is always the\nproduct of the abstract intellect, _i.e._ the intellect which divides\nexperience, and takes an abstract part for a whole.\n\nIt is further true that all knowledge-experience possesses within itself\nfinite-transcendence, _i.e._ it contains in itself a principle of\ninfinity and could become absolutely rationalized only in an infinite\nwhole of reality with which the experience is in organic unity. I agree\nfully with Professor Hocking that \u201cit is doubtful whether there are\nany finite ideas at all.\u201d The consciousness of the finite has working\nin it the reality of the whole. The finite can never be considered as\nself-existent; it can never be real. There is forever present in the\nvery heart and nature of consciousness a trope, a nisus, a straining\nof the fragment to link itself up with the self-complete whole, and\nevery flash of knowledge and every pursuit of the good reveals that\n_trend_. Something of the _other_ is always in the _me_\u2014and however\nfinite I may be I am always beyond myself, and am conjunct with \u201cthe\npulse beat of the whole system.\u201d Either we must give up talking of\nknowledge or we must affirm that knowledge involves a self-complete and\nself-explanatory reality with which our consciousness has connection.\nWe cannot think finite and contingent things, or aim at goodness\nhowever fragmentary, without rational appeal to something infinite and\nnecessary. Human experience cannot be rationally conceived except as a\nfragment of a vastly more inclusive experience, always implied within\nthe finite spirit, unifying and binding together into one whole all that\nis absolutely real and true. Whether we are dealing with the so-called\nmystical experience or any other kind of experience we are bound to\npostulate, or take for granted, whatever is rationally implicated in the\nvery nature of the experience on our hands.\n\nNo type of consciousness carries the implication of self-transcendence,\nor finite-transcendence, more coercively than does genuine mystical\nexperience. The central aspect of it is the fusion of the self into a\nlarger undifferentiated whole. It is thus much more the type of \u00e6sthetic\nexperience than it is the type of knowledge-experience. In both types\u2014the\n\u00e6sthetic and the mystical\u2014consciousness is fused into union with its\nobject, that is to say, the usual dualistic character of consciousness\nis transcended, though of course not wholly obliterated. A new level\nof consciousness is gained in which the division of self and other is\nminimal. But it is by no means, in either case, an empty or a negative\nstate. The impression which so many mystics have given of negation or\npassivity springs, as Von H\u00fcgel declares, from an unusually large amount\nof actualized energy, an energy which is now penetrating and finding\nexpression by every pore and fiber of the soul. The whole moral and\nspiritual creature expands and rests, yes: but this very rest is produced\nby action \u201cunperceived because so fleet,\u201d \u201cso near, so all fulfilling;\nor rather by a tissue of single acts, mental, emotional, volitional,\nso finely interwoven, so exceptionally stimulative and expressive of\nthe soul\u2019s deepest aspirations, that these acts are not perceived as\nsingle acts, indeed that their very collective presence is apt to remain\nunnoticed by the soul itself.\u201d[25] Wordsworth\u2019s account passes almost\nunconsciously from appreciation of beauty into joyous apprehension of God\nand it is a wonderful self-revelation of fused consciousness which is\npositively affirmative.\n\n    \u201cSensation, soul and form\n    All melted into him; they swallowed up\n    His animal being; in them did he live,\n    And by them did he live; they were his life.\n    In such access of mind, in such high hours\n    Of visitation from the living God,\n    Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.\n    No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;\n    Rapt into still communion that transcends\n    The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,\n    His mind was a thanksgiving to the power\n    That made him; it was blessedness and love.\u201d\n\nTennyson has given many accounts both in prose and poetry of similar\naffirmation experiences, sometimes initiated from within and sometimes\nfrom without. This account from the _Memoirs_ is a good specimen: \u201cI\nhave frequently had a kind of waking trance\u2014this for the lack of a\nbetter word\u2014quite up from my boyhood, when I have been all alone. This\nhas come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till\nall at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of\nindividuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away\ninto boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest,\nthe surest of the surest, utterly beyond words\u2014where death was almost\nlaughable impossibility\u2014the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming\nno extinction, but the only true life.\u201d\n\nLike the \u00e6sthetic experience, again, the mystical experience brings an\nextraordinary integration, or unifying, of the self, a flooding of the\nentire being with joy and an expansion which, as in the case of the\nhighest \u00e6sthetic experiences, takes the soul out into a world which\n\u201cnever was on sea or land,\u201d and which, nevertheless, for the moment seems\nthe only world.\n\nBalfour has finely pointed out in his _Theism and Humanism_, that this\nexpansion and joy and infinite aspect which are inherent in the \u00e6sthetic\nvalues cannot be rationally explained except on the supposition that\nthese values are in part dependent upon a spiritual conception of the\nworld\u2014the experience must have a pedigree adequate to account for its\ngreatness. We cannot begin with an experience which gives an absolutely\nnew dimension of life and a new world of joy, and then end in our\nexplanation with a phenomenal play of cosmic atoms\u2014\u201cfull of sound and\nfury, signifying nothing.\u201d\n\nThe same thing is true with our mystical experience. We cannot, of\ncourse, say offhand that here we experience God as one experiences\nan object of sense, or that we have at last found an infallible and\nindubitable evidence of the infinite God. My only contention is that\nhere is a form of experience which implies one of two things. Either\nthere is far greater depth and complexity to the inmost nature of\npersonal self-consciousness than we usually take into account, that\nis, we ourselves are bottomless and inwardly exhaustless in range\nand scope; _or_ the fragmentary thing we call our self is continuous\ninwardly with a wider spiritual world with which we have some sort of\ncontact-relationship and from which vitalizing energy comes in to us. It\nis too soon to decide between these two alternatives. We are only at the\nvery beginning of the study of the submerged life within ourselves, and\nwe must know vastly more about it than we now know before we can draw the\nboundaries of the soul or declare with certainty what comes from its own\ndeeps and what comes from beyond its farthest margins. The studies of\nBergson and still more emphatically the studies of Dr. William McDougall\nin _Body and Mind_ show very conclusively that the consciousness of\n_meaning_, the higher forms of memory, the richer and more subtle\nemotional experiences and the more significant facts of attention,\nconation, and will cannot be explained in terms of cerebral activities or\nby any kind of mechanical causation.[26]\n\nTo arrive at any explanation of the most central activities of personal\nconsciousness we must assume that consciousness is a reality existing in\nits own sphere and vastly transcending the physical mechanism which it\nuses. If this is a fact\u2014and McDougall\u2019s argument is the work of one of\nthe most careful and scientifically trained of modern psychologists\u2014then\nthere is no reason why what we call the \u201csoul\u201d might not on occasions\nreceive incomes of life and spiritual energy from the infinite source\nof consciousness. I can only say that the mystic in his highest moments\nfeels himself to be and believes himself to be in vital fellowship with\nAnother than himself\u2014and what is more, some power to live by does come\nin from somewhere. Mystical experiences in a large number of instances\nnot only permanently integrate the self but also bring an added and\nheightened moral and spiritual quality and a greatly increased dynamic\neffect.\n\nWe are still in the stage of mystery in dealing with the causes of\nvariations and mutations in the biological order. Something surprising\nand novel, something that was not there before, something incalculable\nand unpredictable suddenly appears and a little living creature arrives\nequipped with a trait which no ancestor had and by means of which he can\nendure better, can see farther or run faster, can survive longer, and is,\nin fact, on a higher life-level. We do not know how the little midget\ndid it. But some _\u00e9lan vital_ may have burst in from an invisible and\nintangible environment, more real even than the environment we see. The\nuniverse, as Professor Shaler once said, seems to be \u201ca realm of unending\nand infinitely varied originations.\u201d So, too, these flushes of splendor\nwhich break through the \u201cSoul\u2019s east window of divine surprise\u201d may\ncome from a perfectly real spiritual environment without which a finite\nspirit could not be at all or live at all. I do not know. Our fragmentary\nexperiences cannot enable us to furnish irrefragible proof. It only looks\n_as though_ God were within reach and _as though_ at moments we were at\nhome with Him.\n\nGilbert Murray\u2019s cautious conclusion in his fine essay on _Stoicism_ is a\ngood word with which to close this chapter.\n\n\u201cWe seem to find,\u201d he says, \u201cnot only in all religions, but in\npractically all philosophies, some belief that man is not quite alone\nin the universe, but is met in his endeavours towards the good by\nsome external help or sympathy.... It is important to realize that\nthe so-called belief is not really an intellectual judgment so much\nas a craving of the whole nature [in us].... It is only of very late\nyears that psychologists have begun to realize the enormous dominion\nof those forces in man of which he is normally unconscious. We cannot\nescape as easily as these brave men [the Stoics] dreamed from the grip\nof the blind powers beneath the threshold. Indeed, as I see philosophy\nafter philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the Friend behind\nphenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a moment and by\nan effort, refrain from making the same assumption, it seems to me that\nperhaps here, too, we are under the spell of a very old ineradicable\ninstinct. We are gregarious animals; our ancestors have been such for\ncountless ages. We cannot help looking out on the world as gregarious\nanimals do; we see it in terms of humanity and of fellowship. Students of\nanimals under domestication have shown us how the habits of a gregarious\ncreature, taken away from his kind, are shaped in a thousand details by\nreference to the lost pack which is no longer there\u2014the pack which a dog\ntries to smell his way back to all the time he is out walking, the pack\nhe calls to for help when danger threatens. It is a strange and touching\nthing, this eternal hunger of the gregarious animal for the herd of\nfriends who are not there. And it may be, it may very possibly be, that,\nin the matter of this Friend behind phenomena, our own yearning and our\nown almost ineradicable instinctive conviction, since they are certainly\nnot founded on either reason or observation, are in origin the groping of\na lonely-souled gregarious animal to find its herd or its herd-leader in\nthe great spaces between the stars.\n\n\u201cAt any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] Mark I. 10-11.\n\n[2] II Corinthians III. 17.\n\n[3] Ephesians I. 23.\n\n[4] It is true, no doubt, that the word \u201cmystery\u201d in the New Testament is\ngenerally used with a technical meaning. I shall refer later to the true\nsignificance of the word, but for the moment it is not overstraining it\nto use it as I have done in the text.\n\n[5] Bertrand Russell\u2019s _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 60, 61.\n\n[6] _Ibid._, p. 70.\n\n[7] Arthur Balfour\u2019s _Theism and Humanism_, p. 87.\n\n[8] _Ibid._, p. 134.\n\n[9] _Ibid._, p. 273.\n\n[10] _Ibid._, p. 274.\n\n[11] Tennyson\u2019s _Two Voices_.\n\n[12] Titchener\u2019s _Beginner\u2019s Psychology_, p. 19.\n\n[13] Dr. William McDougall\u2019s _Body and Mind_, p. 335.\n\n[14] William James\u2019 _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 583.\n\n[15] James\u2019 _Psychology_ (Briefer Course), p. 237.\n\n[16] Leuba\u2019s _Psychology of Religion_, p. 212.\n\n[17] _Ibid._, p. 277.\n\n[18] _The World and the Individual_, Vol. I, p. 81.\n\n[19] _Ibid._, p. 181.\n\n[20] _The Aurora_, Chap. XIX, pp. 10-13.\n\n[21] Isaac Penington, _Works_, Vol. I, p. xxxvii.\n\n[22] _Towards Democracy_, p. 190.\n\n[23] _Ibid._, p. 513.\n\n[24] Dostoievsky\u2019s _The Possessed_.\n\n[25] _The Mystical Element_, Vol. II, p. 132.\n\n[26] This point has been discussed in the previous chapter.\n\n    Printed in the United States of America.","title":"The Inner Life","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":33874}