{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_9944/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_9944","id":"gutenberg_9944","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9944","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Fear"],"text":"Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and the Project\nGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE CONQUEST OF FEAR\n\nBASIL KING\n\nWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY\nHENRY C. LINK\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n      INTRODUCTION\n\n   I. FEAR AND THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE\n\n  II. THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE AND GOD\n\n III. GOD AND HIS SELF-EXPRESSION\n\n  IV. GOD'S SELF-EXPRESSION AND THE MIND OF TO-DAY\n\n   V. THE MIND OF TO-DAY AND THE WORLD AS IT IS\n\n  VI. THE WORLD AS IT IS AND THE FALSE GOD OF FEAR\n\n VII. THE FALSE GOD OF FEAR AND THE FEAR OF DEATH\n\nVIII. THE FEAR OF DEATH AND ABUNDANCE OF LIFE\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nby Henry C. Link, Ph.D.\n\n_Author of_ THE REDISCOVERY OF MAN, THE RETURN TO RELIGION, etc.\n\n\nThere are many books which give some help to many people. There are\nbooks which give a set of rules, or even one master rule, by which to\nmeet the problems of life. This is not such a book. It suggests no\nsimple recipe for the conquest of fear. Instead, it presents, what all\ntoo few of us to-day possess, a philosophy of life.\n\nMoreover, in contrast to the dominant thinking of our age, which is\nmaterialistic, King's philosophy is spiritual and religious. Indeed, the\nideas in this book are so profoundly different from the commonly\naccepted ideas of our times that they will come as a shock to many\nreaders. One purpose of this introduction is to prepare the reader for\nsuch a shock.\n\nI have said that the dominant thinking of our age is materialistic, and\nby that I mean also physical. Let me illustrate this broad statement\nwith reference to the subject of fears alone. The conquest of fear has\ngone on year after year chiefly through physical means. Physical pain\nhas always been one of the great sources of fear. Now ether and other\nanaesthetics have eliminated the chief pains of major operations. Older\npeople can still remember their fear of the dentist, when killing a\nnerve or pulling a tooth caused excruciating pain. Now local\nanaesthetics even in minor troubles have made dentistry almost painless.\nWe have not conquered these fears of pain--rather their cause has\nbeen removed.\n\nTwilight sleep, the artificial sleep to alleviate the pains of\nchildbirth, is the perfect expression of the scientific and\nmaterialistic elimination of fear. By a chemical blackout of the mind, a\ndimming of the conscious self, the person is enabled to escape the\nnecessity of facing and conquering fear through his own resources.\n\nI am not condemning the physical alleviation of pain or the progress of\nphysical science. I am only describing a trend, and that is the growing\nemphasis on the elimination of fears by science rather than on their\nconquest by the individual.\n\nIllness has always been a great source of fear, and still is. The dread\nof cancer is one of the terrifying fears of our time and fortunes are\nspent in cancer research and education. THE CONQUEST OF FEAR was written\nas a result of the author's threatened total blindness. He faced a fact\nfor which there seemed no physical remedy--hence his great need for a\nspiritual conquest of this great fear.\n\nAnd yet, year by year, physical science has been eliminating or\nreducing the dangers of sickness. Vaccines for the prevention of the\ndread disease, small-pox, are now a matter of course. Vaccines and\nspecifics against the deadly tetanus, against typhoid fever, diphtheria,\nsyphilis, and other fearful diseases have become commonplace. The fear\nof pneumonia has been almost eliminated through the discoveries of the\nmiraculous sulpha drugs. Science has done wonders toward the elimination\nof such fears. A man need hardly conquer the fear of any particular\nsickness--there is left for his conquest chiefly the fear of dying.\n\nIn addition to physical disease, our civilization has now developed\nmental ailments of all kinds. These include a large category of fears\ncalled phobias--claustrophobia, agoraphobia, photophobia, altaphobia,\nphonophobia, etc.\n\nThree fields or professions, other than religion and philosophy, have\nsought to deal with these fears, the psychiatric, the psychoanalytic,\nand the psychological. The medical psychiatric profession has naturally\nemphasized physical remedies beginning with sedatives and bromides to\ninduce artificial relaxation and ending up with lobectomy or the\ncomplete cutting off of the frontal lobes of the brain, the centers of\nman's highest thought processes. Between these two extremes are the\nshock treatments in which an injection of insulin or metrazol into the\nblood stream causes the person to fall into a sort of epileptic fit\nduring which he loses consciousness. Through a series of such shock\ntreatments some of the higher nerve centers or nerve pathways are\ndestroyed. By this process a person's fears may also be eliminated and\nhe may be permanently or temporarily cured. In short, the person does\nnot conquer the fears in his mind; the psychiatrist or neurologist, by\nphysically destroying a part of the person's brain, destroys also\nthe fears.\n\nHow strongly this physical approach has taken hold of people was made\nplain to me through an article of mine on how to conquer fears. The\nemphasis in this article was on how people could overcome their fears\nand worries through their own efforts. To illustrate the opposite\nextreme, I mentioned the brain operations and shock treatments by which\npsychiatry now often deals with fears. Among the many people who wrote\nto me as a result of this article, _the majority inquired where they\ncould obtain such an operation_! To such extremes have many people gone\nin their desire to eliminate fear by physical means rather than conquer\nit through their own spiritual powers.\n\nThe psychoanalyst deals with a person's phobias through what seems like\nan intellectual or rational process. According to psychoanalysis,\nphobias or fears are due to some buried or subconscious complex. By\ndaily or frequent talks with a psychoanalyst for a period of six months\nor a year, a person's subconscious disturbance _may_ be brought to\nlight, and if so, the fear is supposed automatically to disappear. Even\nif true, this process is a highly materialistic one, at least in the\nsense that only people who can spend thousands of dollars can afford\nsuch treatments.\n\nThe psychologist, as well as some psychiatrists who have studied normal\npsychology, regard many fears as normal experiences which the individual\ncan cope with largely through his own resources and with very little\nhelp in the way of visits or treatment. The trouble arises in the case\nof those people who have no personal resources to draw on. Their lives\nare so lacking in spiritual power, or so full of intellectual scepticism\nand distrust, that they cannot help themselves. They have no religious\nconvictions or certainties by which to obtain leverage in their\nstruggles. They have no firm philosophy of life on which they or those\nwho would help them can lay hold. They are putty in the hands of the\nfears and forces that beset them from without.\n\nThe psychologist and the psychiatrist both find it difficult to do much\nto help such a person. And yet, this is the kind of person our\ncivilization and education tends increasingly to produce. By the\nphysical elimination of the causes of fear we have gradually undermined\nman's inner resources for the conquest of fear.\n\nThis materialistic trend has received a new impetus from the fields of\npolitical science, economics, and sociology. A dozen years ago economic\ndisaster threatened to stampede the nation. Millions who had lost their\njobs began to fear penury and want. Millions who still had jobs feared\nthat they would lose them. Other millions began to fear the loss of\ntheir money and possessions. Rich and poor, becoming afraid that the\ncountry was going to pieces, rushed to the banks to withdraw their\nsavings and brought on the nation-wide bank closings. Those were days\nwhen everyone knew paralyzing fears.\n\nHistory will record the fact that these fears were met, not by conquest,\nnot by drawing on the moral resources and inner fortitude of the\nAmerican citizen, but by a collection of wholesale materialistic\nschemes. These schemes included such devices as inflating the dollar,\nraising prices, expanding the government debt, paying farmers not to\nproduce crops, government housing projects, and many others. The fears\nof unemployment and poverty in old age were to be eliminated wholesale\nthrough a planned economy, a new social order. By an elaborate system of\nbook-keeping called Social Security, a whole nation was to win freedom\nfrom want and freedom from fear.\n\nBut while we were building our smug little house of Social Security, the\nwhole world was crashing around us. Instead of achieving local security\nwe find ourselves now in the midst of world-wide insecurity. Far from\nhaving eliminated the economic causes of fear, we now find these causes\nmultiplied many times. To the fear of losing our money is now added the\nfear of losing our sons. To the fear of losing our jobs is added the\nfear of losing our lives. To the fear of depression and inflation is\nadded the fear of losing the very freedoms for which the war is\nbeing fought.\n\nAt last we see, or are on the point of seeing, that materialism breeds\nworse fears than it cures; that economics and sociology create more\nsocial problems than they solve; that science makes it possible to\ndestroy wealth and lives much faster than it can build them. It took\nyears of science to achieve the airplane and to eliminate people's fear\nof flying. Now, suddenly, the airplane has become the greatest source of\ndestruction and of fear on the globe. Cities which were decades in the\nbuilding are blasted out of being in a night. Millions of people must\nregulate their lives in fear of these dread visitors.\n\nThis is the background against which the conquest of fear presents its\nphilosophy of courage and of hope. It is a philosophy diametrically\nopposed to the dominant beliefs and practices of our materialistic age.\nOne hesitates to use the words spiritual and moral because they have\nbecome catch words. Nevertheless, King's philosophy is a spiritual and a\nmoral one, and the reader will gain from it a clearer concept of what\nthese words really mean.\n\nWhen I remember my reactions to the first portion of this book, I can\nreadily picture the impatience and even scorn of many intellectuals and\npseudo-intellectuals. Because of its emphasis on the religious nature of\nthe universe and on the spiritual power of the individual, it may seem\nto them naive. Because of its consistent condemnation of Mammon, of\nmaterialism and the economic-sociological interpretation of life, it may\nseem to them old-fashioned. Actually, the book is highly sophisticated\nand is more novel to-day than the day it was written because since that\ntime we have strayed twenty years further from the truth.\n\nOne day I was having luncheon with a man who, during the course of the\nconversation, remarked: \"I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your\nlatest book,--\" As almost any writer would, I pricked up my ears\nexpectantly.\n\n\"Yes,\" he went on, \"I got a great deal out of your recent book, but the\nbook which helped me more than any I have ever read is a book called THE\nCONQUEST OF FEAR, by Basil King. Do you happen to know it?\"\n\n\"Know it!\" I exclaimed. \"I not only know it, I am just on the point of\nwriting an introduction to a new edition of the book. Would you mind\ntelling me how it helped you?\"\n\nHe thereupon related how, at a certain period of his life, he had left\nan excellent position to take a new one which seemed more promising. It\nsoon developed that the difficulties of this position were such as to\nmake his success seem almost hopeless. He became obsessed with the idea\nthat the people with whom he had to deal were \"out to get him.\" His\nfears of the job and of his associates grew to the point where a nervous\nbreakdown seemed inevitable.\n\nOne day his daughter told him that she needed a book in her school work\nwhich he remembered having packed in a box that had been stored in the\nattic and not yet opened. When he opened the box, the first book which\nhe picked up was THE CONQUEST OF FEAR. It was evidently one of those\nbooks which had somehow come into the possession of his family, but\nwhich he had never read.\n\nThis time, however, he sat down in the attic and began to read it.\nDuring the course of the next year or so he read it carefully not once\nbut four or five times. \"It marked the turning point in my life,\" he\ntold me. \"It enabled me to conquer the fears which were threatening to\nruin me at the time, and it gave me a philosophy which has stood me in\ngood stead ever since.\"\n\nA philosophy which marked the turning point in his life and which has\nstood him in good stead ever since! THE CONQUEST OF FEAR offers\nsuch a philosophy not only to individuals suffering from fears peculiar\nto them, but to a world of individuals suffering, or about to suffer,\nfrom the collapse of world-wide materialism. In this day of chaos and\nuncertainty, here is the modern version of the parable of the man who\nbuilt his house upon a rock instead of on the sand: \"and the rain\ndescended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that\nhouse; and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock.\"\n\nH. C. L.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nFEAR AND THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nWhen I say that during most of my conscious life I have been a prey to\nfears I take it for granted that I am expressing the case of the\nmajority of people. I cannot remember the time when a dread of one kind\nor another was not in the air. In childhood it was the fear of going to\nbed, of that mysterious time when regular life was still going on\ndownstairs, while I was buried alive under sheets and blankets. Later it\nwas the fear of school, the first contact of the tender little soul with\nlife's crudeness. Later still there was the experience which all of us\nknow of waking in the morning with a feeling of dismay at what we have\nto do on getting up; the obvious duties in which perhaps we have grown\nstale; the things we have neglected; those in which we have made\nmistakes; those as to which we have wilfully done wrong; those which\nweary or bore or annoy or discourage us. Sometimes there are more\nserious things still: bereavements, or frightfully adverse conditions,\nor hardships we never expected brought on us by someone else.\n\nIt is unnecessary to catalogue these situations, since we all at times\nin our lives have to face them daily. Fear dogs one of us in one way and\nanother in another, but everyone in some way.\n\nLook at the people you run up against in the course of a few hours.\nEveryone is living or working in fear. The mother is afraid for her\nchildren. The father is afraid for his business. The clerk is afraid for\nhis job. The worker is afraid of his boss or his competitor. There is\nhardly a man who is not afraid that some other man will do him a bad\nturn. There is hardly a woman who is not afraid that things she craves\nmay be denied her, or that what she loves may be snatched away. There is\nnot a home or an office or a factory or a school or a church in which\nsome hang-dog apprehension is not eating at the hearts of the men,\nwomen, and children who go in and out. I am ready to guess that all the\nmiseries wrought by sin and sickness put together would not equal those\nwe bring on ourselves by the means which perhaps we do least to\ncounteract. We are not sick all the time; we are not sinning all the\ntime; but all the time all of us--or practically all of us--are afraid\nof someone or something. If, therefore, one has the feeblest\ncontribution to make to the defeat of such a foe it becomes difficult to\nwithhold it.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nBut even with a view to conquering fear I should not presume to offer to\nothers ideas worked out purely for myself had I not been so invited. I\ndo not affirm that I have conquered fear, but only that in self-defence\nI have been obliged to do something in that direction. I take it for\ngranted that what goes in that direction will go all the way if pursued\nwith perseverance and good will. Having thus made some simple\nexperiments--chiefly mental--with what to me are effective results, I\ncan hardly refuse to tell what they have been when others are so good as\nto ask me.\n\nAnd in making this attempt I must write from my own experience. No other\nmethod would be worth while. The mere exposition of a thesis would have\nlittle or no value. It is a case in which nothing can be helpful to\nothers which has not been demonstrated for oneself, even though the\ndemonstration be but partial.\n\nIn writing from my own experience I must ask the reader's pardon if I\nseem egoistic or autobiographical. Without taking oneself too smugly or\ntoo seriously one finds it the only way of reproducing the thing that\nhas happened in one's own life and which one actually knows.\n\nAnd when I speak above of ideas worked out purely for myself I do not,\nof course, mean that these ideas are original with me. All I have done\nhas been to put ideas through the mill of my own mind, co-ordinating\nthem to suit my own needs. The ideas themselves come from many sources.\nSome of these sources are, so deep in the past that I could no longer\ntrace them; some are so recent that I know the day and hour when they\nrevealed themselves, like brooks in the way. It would be possible to say\nto the reader, \"I owe this to such and such a teaching, and that to such\nand such a man,\" only that references of the kind would be tedious. I\nfall back on what Emerson says: \"Thought is the property of him who can\nentertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain\nawkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have\nlearned what to do with them, they become our own. Thus all originality\nis relative.\" The thoughts that I shall express are my own to the extent\nthat I have lived them--or tried to live them--though the wind that\nbloweth where it listeth may have brought them to my mind.\n\nNor do I think for a moment that what I have found helpful to me must of\nnecessity be helpful to everyone. It may be helpful to someone. That is\nthe limit of my hope. It is simple fact that no one can greatly help\nanyone else. The utmost we can do is to throw out an idea here and there\nwhich another may seize, and by which he may help himself. Borrowed help\nhas the awkwardness which Emerson attributes to borrowed thoughts. It is\nonly when a concept has lain for a time in a man's being, germinated\nthere, and sprung into active life, that it is of much use to him; but\nby that time it has become his own. The kingdom of heaven must begin\nwithin oneself or we shall probably not find it anywhere.\n\nThese pages will contain, then, no recipe for the conquest of fear; they\nwill offer, with much misgiving and diffidence, no more than the record\nof what one individual has done toward conquering it. This record is\npresented merely for what it is worth. It may be worth nothing. On the\nother hand, someone may find it worth something, and in that case all\nthat the writer hopes for will be attained.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nAs a matter of fact, in my own case the reaction against fear was from\nthe beginning more or less instinctive. With the first exercise of the\nreasoning faculty I tried to argue against the emotion. I remember that\nas a little boy I was afraid of a certain dog that barked at me when I\nwent to a certain house to which I was sent perhaps two or three times a\nweek. The house had a driveway, and from the minute of passing the\nentrance my knees trembled under me. But even then, I recall, it seemed\nto me that this terror was an incongruous thing in life, that it had no\nrightful place there, and that, if the world was what my elders told me\nit was, there must be in it a law of peace and harmony which as yet I\nhadn't arrived at. I cannot say that when the dog barked this reasoning\ndid more than nerve me to drag my quaking limbs up to the doorstep,\nwhence my enemy, a Skye terrier, invariably took flight.\n\nDuring a somewhat stormy childhood and boyhood, in which there was a\ngood deal of emotional stress, I never got beyond this point. Specific\ntroubles were not few, and by the time I reached early manhood a habit\nof looking for them had been established. \"What's it going to be now?\"\nbecame a formula of anticipation before every new event. New events\npresented themselves most frequently as menaces. Hopes rarely loomed up\nwithout accompanying probabilities of disappointment. One adopted the\nplan of \"expecting disappointment\" as a means of cheating the \"jinx.\" I\nam not painting my early life as any darker than most lives. It was, I\nfancy, as bright as the average life of youth.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nBut, contrary to what is generally held, I venture to think that youth\nis not a specially happy period. Because young people rarely voice\ntheir troubles we are likely to think them serene and unafraid. That has\nnot been my experience either with them or of them. While it is true\nthat cares of a certain type increase with age the knowledge of how to\ndeal with them increases, or ought to increase, in the same progression.\nWith no practical experience to support them the young are up against\nthe unknown and problematical--occupation, marriage, sexual urge, life\nin general--around which clings that terror of the dark which frightened\nthem in childhood. Home training, school training, college training,\nreligious training, social influences of every kind, throw the emphasis\non dangers rather than on securities, so that the young life emerges\ninto a haunted world. Some are reckless of these dangers, some grow\nhardened to them, some enjoy the tussle with them, some turn their minds\naway from them, while others, chiefly the imaginative or the\nintellectual, shrink from them with the discomfort which, as years go\non, becomes worry, anxiety, foreboding, or any other of the many\nforms of care.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nMy own life followed what I assume to be the usual course, though in\nsaying this I am anxious not to give an exaggerated impression. It was\nthe usual course, not an unusual one. \"There's always something\" came to\nbe a common mental phrase, and the something was, as a rule, not\ncheering. Neither, as a rule, was it terrible. It was just\n_something_--a sense of the carking hanging over life, and now and then\nturning to a real mischance or a heartache.\n\nIt strikes me as strange, on looking back, that so little attempt was\nmade to combat fear by religion. In fact, as far as I know, little\nattempt was made to combat fear in any way. One's attention was not\ncalled to it otherwise than as a wholly inevitable state. You were born\nsubject to fear as you were born subject to death, and that was an\nend of it.\n\nBrought up in an atmosphere in which religion was our main\npreoccupation, I cannot recall ever hearing it appealed to as a\ncounteragent to this most persistent enemy of man. In dealing with your\ndaily dreads you simply counted God out. Either He had nothing to do\nwith them or He brought them upon you. In any case His intervention on\nyour behalf was not supposed to be in this world, and to look for\nrewards from Him here and now was considered a form of impiety. You were\nto be willing to serve God for naught; after which unexpected favours\nmight be accorded you, but you were to hope for nothing as a right. I do\nnot say that this is what I was taught; it was what I understood; but to\nthe best of my memory it was the general understanding round about me.\nIn my fight against fear, in as far as I made one, God was for many\nyears of no help to me, or of no help of which I was aware. I shall\nreturn to the point later in telling how I came to \"discover God\" for\nmyself, but not quite the same God, or not quite the same concept of\nGod, which my youthful mind had supposed to be the only one.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nAt the same time it was to a small detail in my religious training--or\nto be more exact in the explanation of the Bible given me as a boy--that\nI harked back when it became plain to me that either I must conquer fear\nor fear must conquer me. Having fallen into my mind like a seed, it lay\nfor well on to thirty years with no sign of germination, till that\n\"need,\" of which I shall have more to say presently, called it\ninto life.\n\nLet me state in a few words how the need made itself pressing.\n\nIt was, as life goes, a tolerably dark hour. I was on the borderland\nbetween young manhood and early middle age. For some years I had been\nlosing my sight, on top of which came one of those troubles with the\nthyroid gland which medical science still finds obscure. For reasons\nwhich I need not go into I was spending an autumn at Versailles in\nFrance, unoccupied and alone.\n\nIf you know Versailles you know that it combines all that civilisation\nhas to offer of beauty, magnificence, and mournfulness. A day's visit\nfrom Paris will give you an inkling of this, but only an inkling. To get\nit all you must live there, to be interpenetrated by its glory of decay.\nIt is always the autumn of the spirit at Versailles, even in summer,\neven in spring; but in the autumn of the year the autumnal emotion of\nthe soul is poignant beyond expression. Sad gardens stretch into sad\nparks; sad parks into storied and haunting forests. Long avenues lead to\nforgotten chateaux mellowing into ruin. Ghostly white statues astonish\nyou far in the depths of woods where the wild things are now the most\nfrequent visitors. A Temple of Love--pillared, Corinthian, lovely--lost\nin a glade to which lovers have probably not come in a hundred\nyears--will remind you that there were once happy people where now the\nfriendliest sound is that of the wood-chopper's axe or the horn of some\nfar-away hunt. All the old tales of passion, ambition, feud, hatred,\nviolence, lust, and intrigue are softened here to an aching sense of\npity. At night you will hear the castle clock, which is said never once\nto have failed to strike the hour since Louis the Fourteenth put it in\nits place, tolling away your life as it has tolled away epochs.\n\nAmid these surroundings a man ill, lonely, threatened with blindness,\ncan easily feel what I may call the spiritual challenge of the ages. He\nmust either be strong and rule; or he must be weak and go down. He must\nget the dominion over circumstance, or circumstance must get the\ndominion over him. To be merely knocked about by fate and submit to it,\neven in the case of seemingly inevitable physical infirmity, began to\nstrike me as unworthy of a man.\n\nIt is one thing, however, to feel the impulse to get up and do\nsomething, and another to see what you can get up and do. For a time the\nspectre of fear had me in its power. The physical facts couldn't be\ndenied, and beyond the physical facts I could discern nothing. It was\nconceivable that one might react against a mental condition; but to\nreact against a mysterious malady coupled with possibly approaching\nblindness was hardly to be thought of. When one added one's incapacity\nto work and earn a living, with all that that implies, it seemed as if\nit would take the faith that moves mountains to throw off the weight\noppressing me. It is true that to move mountains you only need faith as\na grain of mustard seed, but as far as one can judge not many of us have\nthat much.\n\nIt was then that my mind went back all of a sudden to the kernel planted\nso many years before, in my island home, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. If\nI become prolix over this it is only that I want to show how often it\nhappens to parents, teachers, and others who deal with children, to\nthrow out a thought which after lying dormant for years will become a\nfactor in the life. Had it not been for the few words spoken then I\nshould not, as far as I can see, now have such mastery over self as I\nhave since attained--not very much--but I should not be writing\nthese lines.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nMy boyhood was placed in the times when Darwin's \"Origin of Species\" and\n\"Descent of Man\" had thrown the scientific and religious worlds into\nconvulsion. The struggle between the old ideas and the new calls for no\nmore than a reference here; but the teacher to whom I owe most was one\nwho, while valuing the old, saw only an enrichment in the new,\nexplaining the Bible in that spirit. So it happened that he spoke one\nday of the extraordinary ingenuity of the life-principle, which somehow\ncame to the earth, in adapting itself to perpetually new conditions.\n\nNothing defeated it. For millions of years it was threatened by climatic\nchanges, by the lack of food, by the ferocity of fellow-creatures. Heat,\ncold, flood, drought, earthquake, and volcanic eruption were forever\nagainst it. Struggling from stage to stage upward from the slime a new\ndanger was always to it a new incentive to finding a new resource.\n\nPursued through the water it sought the land. Pursued on the land it\nsought the air. Pursued in the air it developed fleetness of wing, and\nin fleetness of wing a capacity for soaring, circling, balancing,\ndipping, and swinging on itself of which the grace must not blind us to\nthe marvellous power of invention.\n\nIn other words, the impulses leading to the origin of species proclaim a\nresourcefulness on the part of what we call life which we have every\nreason to think inexhaustible. Whatever the Fount of Being from which\nthe life-principle first came into the waters of our earth there is no\nquestion but that with it came a conquest-principle as well. Had it been\npossible to exterminate the life-principle it would never have gone\nfurther than the age which saw the extinction of the great reptiles. The\ngreat reptiles went, but the life-principle stayed on, with the ability\nto assume, within our limited observation, all the forms between the\nbacillus and the elephant, while as to what lies beyond our observation\nthe possibilities are infinite.\n\nLong before it works up to man we see this amazing force stemming an\nuncountable number of attacks, and meeting ruinous conditions with\ndaring contrivances. For one kind of danger it develops a shell, for\nanother a sting, for another a poison, for another a protective\ncolouration. To breathe in the sea it puts forth gills, and makes lungs\nfor itself when stranded on the land. In glacial cold it finds the means\nof growing fur; when heat and cold assail it by turns it packs itself\nwith feathers; when climates become temperate it produces hair. For the\ncreature which keeps to the water it webs the foot; for that which takes\nto the trees it makes the toes prehensile; for the one which learns to\nstand erect and run along the ground it flattens the sole, making it\nsteady and supporting. To resist, to survive, to win through, is the end\nto which the life-principle sets itself with such singleness of aim as\nto unfold a wealth of potentiality astounding to us in looking backward.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nThis was the idea which came back to me that autumn at Versailles, and\nfrom which in the course of time I drew my conclusions.\n\nBriefly, those conclusions were to the effect that as individuals we\nneed difficulties to overcome, and that fear is a stimulus to overcoming\nthem. Otherwise expressed, fear loses much of its fearfulness when we\nsee it as the summons to putting forth new energies. Unless we were\nconscious of the energies such a call would not reach us. The creatures\npreceding man could have felt no misgiving, since they lacked the\nimagination essential to a dread. Such fear as they were equal to must\nhave seized them in paroxysms of terror when calamities threatened to\noverwhelm them. If they made good their escape no trace of the fear\nremained behind, the brain having little or no power of retention. We\nmay take it for granted that the pterodactyl and the trachodon had none\nof the foreboding based on experience which destroys the peace of man.\n\nFear, as we understand it, was in itself a signal of advance. It could\nonly have begun with the exercise of reason. Arrived at the rudiments of\nmemory the creature must have been able to perceive, however dimly, that\nthe thing which had happened might happen again. Adding the first\nstirrings of imagination he must have constructed possible events in\nwhich the danger would come from the same causes as before. With the\nfaculties to remember, to reason, and to imagine all at work we reach\nthe first stages of man.\n\nMan was born into fear in that he was born into a world of which most of\nthe energies were set against him. He was a lone thing fighting his own\nbattle. The instinct for association which made the mammals different\nfrom other animals didn't help him much, since association did not bring\nmutual help as a matter of course, and never has done so. A man could\ncount on no one but himself. Not only were prodigious natural forces\nalways menacing him with destruction; not only was the beast his enemy\nand he the enemy of the beast; but his hand was against his fellow-man\nand his fellow-man's hand against him. This mutual hostility followed\nmen in their first groupings into communities, and only to a degree have\nwe lived it down in the twentieth century.\n\nPerhaps this conviction that a man's strength lay in standing\nsingle-handed against circumstance was the first small discovery I made\nin my own fight with fear. Looking back on the developments which had\nbrought man into the world I saw a marvellous power of getting round\ndifficulties when you couldn't cut through them. Just as a river which\ncannot flow over a rock can glide about its feet and turn it into a\npicturesque promontory, so I recognised in myself an inborn human\nfaculty for \"sidestepping\" that which blocked my way, when I couldn't\nbreak it down.\n\nI left Versailles with just that much to the good--a perception that the\nages had bequeathed me a store of abilities which I was allowing to lie\nlatent. Moving into Paris, to more cheerful surroundings, I took up\nagain the writing of the book I had abandoned more than a year\npreviously. After long seclusion I began to see a few people, finding\nthem responsive and welcoming. My object in stating these unimportant\ndetails is merely to show that in proportion as I ceased to show fear\nthe life-principle hastened to my aid. Little by little I came to the\nbelief that the world about me was a system of co-operative\nfriendliness, and that it was my part to use it in that way.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nTo use it in that way was not easy. I was so accustomed to the thought\nof Nature as a complex of self-seeking cruelties, the strong preying on\nthe weak, and the weak defenceless, that the mere idea of its containing\na ruling co-operative principle seemed at times far-fetched. To the\ncommon opinion of the day, my own included, the conception of a\nuniverse that would come to a man's aid the minute a man came to his own\nwas too much like a fairy tale. It may indeed be a fairy tale. All I\nknow is that in my own case it is the way in which it seems to have\nworked. I think I have caught a glimpse of a constructive use for that\nwhich I had previously thought of as only destructive and terrible.\n\nThis is what I mean. The life-principle having, through unknown millions\nof years, developed the conquest-principle by meeting difficulties and\novercoming them, the difficulties had a value. To man, especially, the\nmenace of Nature, the ferocity of the beast, and the enmity of his\nfellow-man furnished the incentive to his upward climb. Had all been\neasy he would have stayed where he was. He would never have called\nmental powers to his physical aid, nor appealed to spiritual faculties\nwhen the mental fell short of his requirements. Spurred on by a\nnecessity which grew more urgent in proportion as the life-principle\nwidened its scope, the conquest-principle became an impulse which would\nbrook no denying. Man grew by it; but the fact remains that he would not\nhave grown had there been nothing for him to struggle with.\n\nTo me it seems basic to the getting rid of fear to know that our trials,\nof whatever nature, are not motiveless. In our present stage of\ndevelopment we could hardly do without them. So often looking like mere\nugly excrescences on life they are in reality the branches by which we\ncatch on and climb. They are not obstacles to happiness for the reason\nthat the only satisfying happiness we are equal to as yet is that of\nwrestling with the difficult and overcoming it. Every call of duty has\nits place in this ideal; every irksome job, every wearisome\nresponsibility. The fact that we are not always aware of it in no way\nannuls the other fact that it is so. Boredom, monotony, drudgery,\nbereavement, loneliness, all the clamour of unsatisfied ambitions and\naching sensibilities, have their share in this divine yearning of the\nspirit to grasp what as yet is beyond its reach. All of that hacking of\nthe man to fit the job rather than the shaping of the job to fit the\nman, which is, I imagine, the source of most of the discontent on earth,\nhas its place here, as well as the hundreds of things we shouldn't do if\nwe were not compelled to. Whatever summons us to conflict summons us to\nlife, and life, as we learn from a glance at the past, never shirks the\nchallenge.\n\nIt never shirks the challenge, and, what is more, it never fails to find\nthe expedient by which the new demand is to be satisfied. To the\nconquest of fear that plank must be foundational. As far as we can learn\nthere never was an emergency yet which the life-principle was not\nequipped to meet. When all existing methods had been used up it invented\nnew ones; when seemingly at the end of its new resources it was only\nbeginning to go on again.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nThe deduction I make is this, that a law which was operative on such a\nscale before man had come into the world at all must be still more\neffective now that we can help to carry it out. The life-principle is\nnot less ingenious than it ever was, while the conquest-principle must\nhave widely expanded. It is an axiom in all progress that the more we\nconquer the more easily we conquer. We form a habit of conquering as\ninsistent as any other habit. Victory becomes, to some degree, a state\nof mind. Knowing ourselves superior to the anxieties, troubles, and\nworries which obsess us, we _are_ superior. It is a question of attitude\nin confronting them. It is more mental than it is material. To be in\nharmony with the life-principle and the conquest-principle is to be in\nharmony with power; and to be in harmony with power is to be strong as a\nmatter of course.\n\nThe individual is thus at liberty to say: \"The force which never failed\nbefore is not likely to fail in my case. The fertility of resource which\ncircumvented every kind of obstacle to make me what I am--a vertebrate,\nbreathing, walking, thinking entity, capable of some creative\nexpression of my own--will probably not fall short now that I have\nimmediate use for it. Of what I get from the past, prehistoric and\nhistoric, perhaps the most subtle distillation is the fact that so far\nis the life-principle from balking at need, need is essential to its\nactivity. Where there is no need it seems to be quiescent; where there\nis something to be met, contended with, and overcome, it is furiously\n'on the job.' That life-principle is my principle. It is the seed from\nwhich I spring. It is my blood, my breath, my brain. I cannot cut myself\noff from it; it cannot cut itself off from me. Having formed the\nmastodon to meet one set of needs and the butterfly to meet another, it\nwill form, something to meet mine, even if something altogether new. The\nnew--or what seems new to me--is apparently the medium in which it is\nmost at home. It repeats itself never--not in two rosebuds, not in two\nsnowflakes. Who am I that I should be overlooked by it, or miss being\nmade the expression of its infinite energies?\"\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nWhat this reasoning did for me from the start was to give me a new\nattitude toward the multifold activity we call life. I saw it as\ncontaining a principle that would work with me if I could work with it.\nMy working with it was the main point, since _it_ was working with me\nalways. Exactly what that principle was I could not at the time have\nsaid; I merely recognised it as being there.\n\nThe method of working with it was simple in idea, however difficult in\npractice. It was a question of my own orientation. I had to get mentally\ninto harmony with the people and conditions I found about me. I was not\nto distrust them; still less was I to run away from them. I was to make\na parable of my childish experience with the Skye terrier, assuming that\nlife was organised to do me good. I remembered how many times the Bible\nbegins some bit of pleading or injunction with the words, \"Fear not.\"\nOther similar appeals came back to me. \"Say to them that are of a\nfearful heart, Be strong I fear not.\"[1] \"Quit yourselves like men; be\nstrong.\"[2] \"O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be unto thee! Be\nstrong, yea, be Strong.\"[3] When, at some occasional test, dismay or\nself-pity took hold of me I formed a habit of saying to myself, in our\nexpressive American idiom: \"This is your special stunt. It's up to you\nto do this thing just as if you had all the facilities. Go at it boldly,\nand you'll find unexpected forces closing round you and Coming to\nyour aid.\"\n\n[1] The Book of Isaiah.\n\n[2] First Book of Samuel.\n\n[3] Book of Daniel.\n\nWhich is just what I did find. To an amazing degree people were\nfriendly, while conditions became easier. Fear diminished because I had\nfewer things to be afraid of. Having fewer things to be afraid of my\nmind was clearer for work. Work becoming not only more of a resource but\nmore remunerative as well, all life grew brighter. Fear was not\novercome; I had only made a more or less hesitating stand against it;\nbut even from doing that I got positive results.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE LIFE-PRINCIPLE AND GOD\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nIt is obvious that one could not dwell much on the power of the\nlife-principle without coming sooner or later to the thought of God. As\nalready hinted, I did not come to it at once because my conception of\nGod made Him of so little use to me.\n\nAnd yet, in popular phraseology, I had \"served\" God all my life. That\nis, brought up in an atmosphere in which the Church was a divinely\ninstituted system for utilising God, I served the system, without\ngetting much beyond the surface plane of what were technically known as\n\"services.\" When trial came such services offered me an anodyne, but\nnot a cure.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nThe first suggestion, that my concept of God might not be sufficient to\nmy needs came out of a conversation in New York. It was with a lady whom\nI met but that once, within a year or two after my experience at\nVersailles. I have forgotten how we chanced on the subject, but I\nremember that she asked me these questions:\n\n\"When you think of God _how_ do you think of Him? How do you picture\nHim? What does He seem like?\"\n\nTrying to reply I recognised a certain naivete, a certain childishness,\nin my words even as I uttered them. In my thoughts I saw God as three\nsupernal men, seated on three supernal thrones, enshrined in some vague\ncelestial portion of space which I denominated Heaven. Between Him and\nme there was an incalculable distance which He could bridge but I could\nnot. Always He had me at the disadvantage that He saw what I did, heard\nwhat I said, read what I thought, punishing me for everything amiss,\nwhile I could reach Him only by the uncertain telephony of what I\nunderstood as prayer. Even then my telephone worked imperfectly. Either\nthe help I implored wasn't good for me, or my voice couldn't soar to\nHis throne.\n\nThe lady smiled, but said nothing. The smile was significant. It made me\nfeel that a God who was no more than what I had described could hardly\nbe the Universal Father, and set me to thinking on my own account.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nI wish it were possible to speak of God without the implication of\ndealing with religion. By this I mean that I am anxious to keep religion\nout of this whole subject of the conquest of fear. The minute you touch\non religion, as commonly understood, you reach the sectarian. The minute\nyou reach the sectarian you start enmities. The minute you start\nenmities you get mental discords. And the minute you get mental\ndiscords no stand against fear is possible.\n\nBut I mean a little more than this. Man, as at present developed, has\nshown that he hardly knows what to do with religion, or where to put it\nin his life. This is especially true of the Caucasian, the least\nspiritually intelligent of all the great types of our race.\nFundamentally the white man is hostile to religion. He attacks it as a\nbull a red cloak, goring it, stamping on it, tearing it to shreds. With\nthe Caucasian as he is this fury is instinctive. Recognising religion as\nthe foe of the materialistic ideal he has made his own he does his best\nto render it ineffective.\n\nOf this we need no better illustration than the state of what we\nconventionally know as Christendom. Christendom as we see it is a purely\nCaucasian phase of man's struggle upward, with Caucasian merits and\nCaucasian defects. Nowhere is its defectiveness more visible than in\nwhat the Caucasian has made of the teaching of Jesus Christ. It was\nprobably a misfortune for the world that almost from the beginning that\nteaching passed into Caucasian guardianship. I see in the New Testament\nno indication on the part of Our Lord and the Apostles of wishing to\nseparate themselves from Semitic co-operation. The former taught daily\nin the Temple; the latter, as they went about the world, made the\nsynagogue the base of all their missions. The responsibility for the\nbreach is not under discussion here. It is enough to note that it took\nplace, and that Caucasian materialism was thus deprived of a\ncounteragent in Hebrew spiritual wisdom. Had this corrective maintained\nits place it is possible that religion might now be a pervasive element\nin the Caucasian's life instead of being pigeon-holed.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nThe Caucasian pigeon-holes God. Otherwise expressed, he keeps God in a\nspecially labelled compartment of life, to be brought out for occasional\nuse, and put back when the need is over. It is difficult to mention God\nto a Caucasian reader without inducing an artificial frame of mind. As\nthere are people who put on for strangers and guests an affected,\nunnatural politeness different from their usual breezy spontaneity, so\nthe Caucasian assumes at the thought of God a mental habit which can\nonly be described as sanctimonious. God is not natural to the Caucasian;\nthe Caucasian is not natural with God. The mere concept takes him into\nregions in which he feels uneasy. He may call his uneasiness reserve or\nreverence, or by some other dignified name; but at bottom it is neither\nmore nor less than uneasiness. To minimise this distress he relegates\nGod to special days, to special hours, to services and ceremonials. He\ncan thus wear and bear his uncomfortable cloak of gravity for special\ntimes, after which he can be himself again. To appeal to God otherwise\nthan according to the tacitly accepted protocol is to the average\nCaucasian either annoying or in bad form.\n\nI should like, then, to dissociate the thought of God from the\nartificial, sanctimonious, preternaturally solemn connotations which\nthe Name is certain to bring up. I want to speak of Him with the same\nkind of ease as of the life-principle. I repeat, that I never found Him\nof much use in allaying fear till I released Him from the Caucasian\npigeon-hole to see Him, as it were, in the open. Once in the open I got\nrid, to some degree, of the Caucasian limitations of thinking along the\nlines of sect, just as in the infinitude of the air you can forget for a\nminute houses with rooms and walls. The discovery--that is, discovery\nfor myself--that God is Universal, which is not so obvious as it sounds,\nwas, I think, the first great step I made in finding that within that\nUniversal fear should be impossible.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nAbout the same time I chanced on a passage written by Joseph Joubert, an\neighteenth-century French Catholic, not so well known to the modern\nreader as he ought to be, which impressed me deeply.\n\n\"L'ame ne peut se mouvoir, s'eveiller, ouvrir les yeux, sans santir\nDieu. On sent Dieu avec l'ame comme on sent l'air avec le corps.\nOseraije le dire? On connait Dieu facilement pourvu qu'on ne se\ncontraigne pas a le definir--The soul cannot move, wake, or open the\neyes without perceiving God. We perceive God through the soul as we feel\nair on the body. Dare I say it? We can know God easily so long as we do\nnot feel it necessary to define Him.\"\n\nI began to see that, like most Caucasian Christians, I had been laying\ntoo much stress on the definition. The Trinity had, so to speak, come\nbetween me and the Godhead. I had, unconsciously, attached more\nimportance to God's being Three than to His being God. Seeing Him as\nThree I instinctively saw Him as Three Persons. Seeing Him as Three\nPersons I did not reflect that the word Person as applied to God must be\nused in a sense wholly different from that in which we employ it with\nregard to men. To get into what I call the open I had to bring myself to\nunderstand that we cannot enclose the Infinite in a shape, or three\nshapes, resembling in any way the being with digestive organs, arms, and\nlegs, which worked its way up from slime.\n\nThat is, in order to \"dwell in the secret place of the Most High,\"[4]\nwhere one is immune from fear, I was obliged to give up the habit of\nembodying God in any form. I had to confess that what is meant by the\nThree Persons in One God I did not know. Furthermore, I saw no necessity\nfor thinking that I knew, since such knowledge must transcend all scope\nof the human mind. The formula, if you must have a formula, is one\nthing; but the turning it into a statute of limitations and applying it\nto the Illimitable is another.\n\n[4] The Book of Psalms.\n\nTo make my position clearer, and to avoid the subject of religion, let\nme add that, inferring from the Bible that there is a Father, a Son, and\na Holy Ghost, I did not feel it imperative on my part to go beyond this\nuse of terms. Merely to abstain from definition was like a load taken\noff my mind. How the Son was begotten of the Father, or the Holy Ghost\nproceeded from them both, or what eternal mysteries were symbolised in\nthis purely human phraseology, were, it seemed to me, matters with which\nI need not concern myself, seeing that they passed all my comprehension.\nNot the Trinity should come first to powers so limited as mine--but God.\n\nIt dawned on me, too, that God need not necessarily be to me what He is\nto others, nor to others what He is to me. Of the Infinite the finite\nmind can only catch a finite glimpse. I see what I can see; another sees\nwhat he can see. The visions may be different, and yet each vision may\nbe true. Just as two painters painting the same landscape will give\ndissimilar views of it, so two minds contemplating God will take of Him\nonly what each is fitted to receive. Water poured into differently\ncoloured glasses will take on the colour of the cup which it fills, even\nthough it be the self-same water in them all. If I find God for myself I\nshall probably not behold in Him exactly what anyone else in the whole\nworld or in all time has ever beheld in Him before.\n\nI saw, too, that from a certain point of view the stand of the agnostic\nis a right one. We cannot know God in the sense of knowing His being or\nHis \"Personality,\" any more than we can know the essence of the\nlife-principle. Just as we know the life-principle only from what it\ndoes, so we know God only from such manifestations of Himself as reach\nour observation. Everything else is inference. Because we see something\nof His goodness we infer that He is good; because we experience\nsomething of His love we infer that He is loving; because we behold\nsomething of His power we infer that He is almighty. It is first of all\na matter of drawing our conclusions, and then of making those\nconclusions the food of the inner spiritual man whose life is\nindependent of the mortal heart and brain. But a sense in which God is\n\"unknowable\" to us has to be admitted.\n\nI make this statement now in order not to be misunderstood when later I\nmay say that God must be this or that. Though I shall do so for the\nsake of brevity it will always be in the sense that, if God is what we\nhave inferred from His manifestations, He must be this or that. In other\nwords, having to some degree worked my own way out of fear I must tell\nhow I came to feel that I know the Unknowable, doing it with the inexact\nphraseology which is all I find to hand.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nReaching the conclusions noted above I was relieved of the pressure of\ntraditions and instructions. Traditions and instructions helped me in\nthat they built the ship in which I was to put to sea. The discoveries\nhad to be my own. The God of whom I had heard at my mother's knee, as\nthe phrase goes, had always been shadowy to me; the God who was served\nby \"services\" had always seemed remote. A God who should be \"_my_ God,\"\nas the psalmists say so often, must, I felt, be found by me myself,\nthrough living, searching, suffering, and struggling onward a step or\ntwo at a time. \"That's pretty near free-thinking, isn't it?\" a\nclergyman, to whom I tried to explain myself, once said to me. \"No,\" I\nreplied; \"but it _is_ pretty near thinking _free_.\"\n\nTo think freely about God became a first necessity; to think simply a\nsecond one. The Universal Father had been almost lost to me behind veil\nafter veil of complexities. The approaches to Him seemed to have been\nmade so roundabout, requiring so many intermediaries. Long before I had\ndared to think of what I may call emancipation, the \"scheme of\nsalvation,\" as it was termed, had struck me as an excessively\ncomplicated system of machinery, considering the millions upon millions\nwho had need of it. In theory you were told, according to St. Paul, to\n\"come boldly before the throne of the heavenly grace,\" but in practice\nyou were expected to do it timidly.\n\nYou were expected to do it timidly because the pigeon-holed Caucasian\nGod was represented--unconsciously perhaps--as difficult, ungenial,\neasily offended. He measured your blindness and weakness by the\nstandard of His own knowledge and almightiness. A puritan God, extremely\npreoccupied with morals as some people saw them, He was lenient,\napparently, to the narrow-minded, the bitter of tongue, and the\nintolerant in heart. He was not generous. He was merciful only when you\npaid for His mercy in advance. To a not inconsiderable degree He was the\nhard Caucasian business man, of whom He was the reflection, only\nglorified and crowned.\n\nIt will be evident, of course, that I am not speaking of \"the Father\" of\nthe New Testament, nor of the official teaching of any church or\ntheology. To the rank and file of Caucasians \"the Father\" of the New\nTestament is very little known, while the official teaching of churches\nand theologies is so hard to explain that not much of it gets over to\nthe masses of those willing to subscribe to it. I refer only to the\nimpression on the mind of the man in the street; and to the man in the\nstreet God, as he understands Him, is neither a very friendly nor a very\ncomprehensible element in life. Instead of mitigating fear He adds to\nit, not in the Biblical sense of \"fearing God,\" but in that of sheer\nanimal distrust.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nWhile turning these things over in my mind I got some help from two of\nthe words most currently in Christian use. I had long known that the\nEnglish equivalents of the Latin equivalents of the terms the New\nTestament writers used gave but a distorted idea of the original sense;\nbut I had let that knowledge lie fallow.\n\nThe first of these words was Repentance. In these syllables there is\nalmost no hint of the idea which fell from the evangelistic pen, while\nthe word has been soaked in emotional and sentimental associations it\nwas never intended to be mixed with. The _Metanoia_; which painted a\nsober, reflective turning of the mind, had been so overcharged with the\ndramatic that sober, reflective people could hardly use the expression\nany more. Repentance had come to have so strong a gloss of the\nhysterical as to be almost discredited by men of common sense. It was a\nrelief, therefore, to remember that it implied no more than a turning to\nGod by a process of thought; and that a process of thought would\nfind Him.\n\nThe other word was Salvation. Here again our term of Latin derivation\ngives no more than the faintest impression of the beauty beyond beauty\nin that which the sacred writer used. _Soteria_--a Safe Return! That is\nall. Nothing complicated; nothing high-strung; nothing casuistical. Only\na--Safe Return! Yet all human experience can be read into the little\nphrase, with all human liberty to wander--and come back. True, one son\nmay never leave the Father's home, so that all that it contains is his;\nbut there is no restraint on the other son from getting his knowledge as\nhe will, even to the extent of becoming a prodigal. The essential is in\nthe Safe Return, the _Soteria_, when the harlots and the husks have been\ntried and found wanting.\n\nI do not exaggerate when I say that the simplicity of these conceptions\nwas so refreshing as almost to give me a new life. One could say to God,\nwith the psalmist, \"Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me\nfrom trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of\ndeliverance\"--and mean it. One could conceive of it as possible to turn\ntoward Him--and reach, the objective. The way was open; the access was\nfree; the progress as rapid as thought could make it. One could think of\noneself as _knowing God_, and be aware of no forcing of the note.\n\n\"We can know God easily so long as we do not feel it necessary to define\nHim.\" Once having grasped this truth I began to see how natural knowing\nGod became. The difficulty of the forced, of the artificial, of the mere\nassent to what other people say, of which the Caucasian to his credit is\nalways impatient, seemed by degrees to melt away from me. No longer\ndefining God I no longer tried to know Him in senses obviously\nimpossible. I ceased trying to _imagine_ Him. Seeing Him as infinite,\neternal, changeless, formless because transcending form, and\nindescribable because transcending words and thoughts, I could give\nmyself up to finding Him in the ways in which He would naturally be\nrevealed to me.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nThese, of course, were in His qualities and His works.\n\nLet me speak of the latter first.\n\nI think light was the medium through which I at once felt myself to be\nseeing God. By this I mean nothing pantheistic--not that the light was\nGod--but God's first and most evident great sign. Then there was the\nrestful darkness. There were the moon and the stars, \"the hosts of\nheaven,\" as the Hebrews aptly called them, becoming more and more\namazing as an expression of God the more we learn how to read them. Then\nthere were the elements, the purifying wind, the fruitful rain, the\nexhilaration of snow-storms, the action and reaction from heat and cold.\nThen there was beauty: first, the beauty of the earth, of mountains, of\nseas, and all waters, of meadows, grainfields, orchards, gardens, and\nall growing things; then, the beauty of sound, from the soughing of the\nwind in the pines to the song of the hermit-thrush. There was the beauty\nwrought by man, music, painting, literature, and all art. There were the\nmyriad forms of life. There were kindness and friendship and family\naffection and fun--but the time would fail me! God being the summing up\nof all good things, since all good things proceed from Him, must be seen\nby me in all good things it I am to see Him at all.\n\nI had heard from childhood of a world in which God was seen, and of\nanother world, this world, in which He was not seen. I came to the\nconclusion that there was no such fantastic, unnatural division in what\nwe call creation--that there was only one world--the world in which God\nis seen. \"The soul cannot move, wake, or open the eyes without\nperceiving God.\" It is a question of physical vision, with spiritual\ncomprehension.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nSeeing God breaking through all that I had previously thought of as\nbarriers, it was easy to begin to think of Him as Universal. I say begin\nto think, because God's Infinitude had been only a word to me hitherto,\nnot a quality realised and felt. I do not presume to say that to any\nadequate degree I feel and realise it now; but the habit of looking on\nevery good thing as a sign of His activity cannot but bring Him close\nto me.\n\nThat is my chief point with regard to the Infinite--that it must be\n_here_. As I used to think of infinity I saw it stretching to boundless\nreaches away from me; but only from the point of view of present Good\nbeing present God did the value of the Infinite come to lie in its\nnearness rather than in its power of filling unimaginable space. On my\npart it was inverse mental action, seeking God where I was capable of\nfinding Him, and not in regions I could never range.\n\nBut having grasped the fact that the Universal, wherever else it was,\nmust be with me the purely abstract became a living influence. I felt\nthis the more when to the concept of Infinitude I added that of\nIntelligence. I use the much-worked word intelligence because there is\nno other; but when one thinks for a second of what must be the\nunderstanding of an Infinite Mind, intelligence as a descriptive term\nbecomes absurdly inadequate.\n\nThis was the next fact which, if I may so express myself, I made my\nown--that not only the Universal is ever with me, but that it is ever\nwith me with ever-active concern. There was a time when it was hard for\nme to believe that a Mind busied with the immensities of the universe\ncould come down to such trivial affairs as mine. Important as I might be\nto myself I could hardly be otherwise than lost amid the billions of\nforms of life which had come into existence through the ages. To the\nThree in One, on the Great White Throne, in the far-away Heaven, I must\nbe a negligible thing, except when I forced myself on the divine\nattention. Even then it was hardly conceivable that, with whole solar\nsystems to regulate, I could claim more than a passing glance from the\nall-seeing eye.\n\nBut to an Infinite Mind bathing me round and round I must be as much the\nobject of regard as any solar system. To such a Mind nothing is small,\nno one thing farther from its scope than another. God could have no\n_difficulty_ in attending to me, seeing that from the nature of His\nmental activity, to put it in that way, He could not lose sight of me\nnor let me go. When an object is immersed in water it gives no extra\ntrouble to the water to close round it. It can't help doing it. The\nobject may be as small as a grain of dust or as big as a warship; to the\nwater it is all the same. Immersed in the Infinite Mind, closed round by\nit, it was giving God no extra trouble to think of me, of my work, my\ndesires, the objects with which I was living, since by the nature of His\nBeing He could do nothing else.\n\nHaving established it with myself that Universal Presence was also\nUniversal Thought I had made another step toward the elimination of\nfear. I took still another when I added the truth of Universal Love.\n\nI need hardly say that this progression was not of necessity in a\nstrictly consecutive order, nor did it come by a process of reasoning\nout from point to point. I was simply the man in the street dealing with\ngreat ideas of which he had heard ever since he had been able to hear\nanything, but trying at last to see what they meant to him. My position\nmight have been described in the words used by William James in one of\nhis _Letters_ to indicate his own. \"The Divine, for my _active_ life, is\nlimited to abstract concepts, which, as ideals, interest and determine\nme, but do so but faintly, in comparison with what a feeling of God\nmight effect, if I had one. It is largely a question of intensity, but\ndifferences of intensity may make the whole centre of one's energy\nshift.\" I did have a \"feeling of God\" however vague; but I had more of\nthe feeling of a Church. I could dimly discern the Way, without going\non to the Truth and the Life which give the Way its value. It will be\nevident then that if my \"discoveries\" along these lines were discoveries\nin the obvious, it was in that obvious to which we mortals so often\nremain blind.\n\nDuring many years the expression, the love of God, was to me like a\nwinter sunshine, bright without yielding warmth. I liked the words; I\nknew they expressed a truth; but between me and the truth there was the\nsame kind of distance which I felt to lie between myself and God. \"It is\nlargely a question of intensity,\" to repeat what has just been quoted\nfrom William James, \"but differences of intensity may make the whole\ncentre of one's energy shift.\" My conception of the love of God lacked\njust that quality--intensity.\n\nIt came, to some degree, with the realisation that the Universal Thought\nmust be with _me_. A non-loving Universal Thought was too monstrous a\nconcept to entertain. The God who \"broke through\" my many\nmisunderstandings with so much good and beauty could have only one\npredominating motive. The coming of my spiritual being to this planet\nmight be a mystery wrapped in darkness, and yet I could not but believe\nthat the Universal Father was behind that coming and that I was His son.\nI could rest my case there. The love of God, after having long been like\na doctrinal tenet for which one had to strive, became reasonable,\nnatural, something to be understood. Finding that love in so many places\nin which I had seen mere physical phenomena, and in so many lovely\nthings I had never placed to its credit, I began to feel that life could\nbe infused and transformed by it, in proportion as my own perception\ngrew. So, little by little, the centre of energy shifted, as one came to\nunderstand what the Sons of Korah meant when they sang, \"God is our\nrefuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore _will we\nnot fear_ though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be\ncarried into, the midst of the sea.\"[5] With Universal Thought\nconcentrated in love upon oneself fear must be forced backward.\n\n[5] The Book of Psalms.\n\nAnd especially when you add to that the concept of Almighty Power. This\nfourth and last of the great attributes is the one with which I, as an\nindividual, have found it most difficult to clothe the Infinite. I mean\nthat it is the one for which it is hardest for me to develop what\nWilliam James calls \"a feeling,\" an inner realisation. I lay no stress\nupon this. It is a question of growth. The Presence, the Thought, the\nLove have become to me what I may be permitted to call tremulously\nvivid. In proportion as they are vivid I get the \"feeling\" of\nAlmightiness exercised on my behalf; in proportion as they are tremulous\nthe Almightiness may remain in my consciousness, but it seems exercised\non my behalf but slightly.\n\nIn other words, the Infinitude of Thought and Love are, to some extent,\napprehended by my inner self, while the Infinitude of Power is as yet to\nme rather an intellectual abstraction. What my inner self may be I am\nnot prepared to say, but I know that it is there, as everyone else\nknows that it is in him. \"Strengthened with might by the Spirit in the\ninner man,\"[6] is what St. Paul says, and I suppose most of us recognise\nthe fact that our inner self is stronger or weaker in proportion as it\nis more nourished or less nourished by our sense of the Being of God. It\nis largely a question of intensity. If I interpret William James aright\nhe means by \"a feeling\" an intellectual concept after it has passed\nbeyond the preliminary keeping of the brain, and become the possession\nof that inner man which is the vital self. To this vital self the sense\nof Almighty Power really used for me is still, to a great degree,\noutside my range.\n\n[6] Epistle to the Ephesians.\n\nI make the confession not because it is of interest, but because it\nillustrates a main deduction which I should now like to draw. It is to\nthe effect that God is with us _to be utilised_. His Power, His Love,\nHis Thought, His Presence, must be at our disposal, like other great\nforces, such as sunshine and wind and rain. We can use them or not, as\nwe please. That we could use them to their full potentiality is, of\ncourse, not to be thought of; but we can use them in proportion to our\nability. If I, the individual, still lack many things; if I am still a\nprey to lingering fears; it is probably because I have not yet rooted\nout a stubborn disbelief in His Power. If I succeed in this I shall\ndoubtless be able to seize more of His bounty. It is not a question of\nHis giving, but of my capacity to take.\n\nThe contrary, I venture to think, is the point of view of most of us. We\nconsider God somewhat as we do a wealthy man whom we know to be a miser,\nforming the shrewd surmise that we shall not get much out of him. The\nGod who fails to protect us from fear fails, I believe, because we see\nHim first of all as a niggard God. He is a niggard not merely with\nregard to money but all the good things for which He has given us a\ndesire, with no intention of allowing that desire to be gratified. Once\nmore, He is the hard Caucasian business man, whom His subordinates serve\nbecause they don't see what else to do, but whom they rarely love.\n\nWe shall not, in my judgment, overcome fear till we see Him as He surely\nmust be, generous beyond all our conceptions of generosity. Years,\nexperience, many trials, and some knowledge of the world, have convinced\nme that we have no lawful or harmless cravings for which, _as far as God\nis concerned_, there is not abundant satisfaction. I am convinced that\nabsolute confidence in God's overflowing liberality of every sort is\nessential to the conquest of fear. If we don't profit by that liberality\nthe fault is not His but our own. I am tempted to think that the belief\nof so many generations of nominal Christians in a God whose power was\nchiefly shown in repressions, denials, and capricious disappointments is\nresponsible, in so small measure, for our present world-distress.\n\nIn my own case it was a matter of re-education. To find God for myself I\nhad to be willing to let some of my old cherished ideas go. They may\nhave been true of God as He reveals Himself to others; they are not true\nof Him as He makes Himself known to me. The Way that leads _me_ to the\nTruth and the Life is undoubtedly the Way I must follow.\n\nDoing that I have found so much, mentally, emotionally, materially,\nwhich I never had before, that I cannot but look for more as my\nabsorbing power increases. The process is akin to that of the\nunshrivelling of the inner man, as a bud will unfold when the sunshine\nbecomes strong enough. The transformation must be in thought. There must\nbe first the _Metanoia_, the change of mind, the new set of concepts;\nand then the _Soteria_, the Safe Return, to the high, sane ideal of a\nco-operative Universe, with a loving, lavish Universal Heart behind it.\n\n\"To the chief Musician for the Sons of Korah:\n\n\"'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.\nTherefore will we not fear though the earth be removed, and though the\nmountains be carried into the midst of the sea.... Come, behold the\nworks of the Lord.... He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the\nearth; he breaketh the bow, he cutteth the spear in sunder, he burneth\nthe chariot in the fire.... _Be still then, and know that I am\nGod,'\"_[7]\n\n[7] Book of Psalms.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nGOD AND HIS SELF-EXPRESSION\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nIt will be clear from what I have said already that I see no fundamental\nconquest of fear that is not based in God. There may be knacks by which\nfear can be nipped and expedients by which it may be outwitted, but its\nextermination can be brought about, it seems to me, only in one way.\nAccording to our capacity and our individual needs we must know God; and\nknowing God is not as difficult as the Caucasian mind is apt to think.\nIt stands to reason that if knowing God, in the senses in which it is\npossible to know Him, is so essential to mankind it could not be\ndifficult. The making it difficult is part of the dust the Caucasian\nthrows in his own eyes.\n\nWe know God through His Self-Expression, and His Self-Expression is\nround about us in every form. Except through His Self-Expression there\nis no way of our knowing Him. No speculation or theory will teach us to\nknow Him. It must be His own revelation of Himself, or nothing.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nSuch little knowledge of Him as has come to me came much more freely\nwhen I began to look for that revelation not alone in solemn mysteries,\nor through the mediumship of prophets, apostles, and ancient scriptures,\nbut in the sights and sounds and happenings of every day. Here I must\nask not to be misunderstood. The solemn mysteries have their place, but\nit is one of climax. The mediumship of prophets, apostles, and ancient\nscriptures is of unreckonable value, after I have done something for\nmyself. By this I do not mean that all cannot work together\nsimultaneously, but rather that it is useless for the soul to strike\nonly at the more advanced, having ignored the elementary.\n\nAs I write I look out on a street full of the touches of spring. The\nrain-washed grass is of bright new green. The elms are in tenderest\nleaf, the hawthorn bursting into flower. Here and there a yellow clump\nof forsythia is like a spot of sunshine. Tulips are opening their\nvariegated cups, and daffodils line the walls. Dogs are capering about,\na collie, a setter, a Boston terrier. Birds are carrying straws or bits\nof string to weave into their nests--or singing--or flying--or perching\non boughs. Children are playing--boys on bicycles eagerly racing\nnowhere--little girls with arms round each others' waists, prattling\nafter their kind. Overhead is a sky of that peculiar blue for which the\nChinese have a word which means \"the blue of the sky after rain,\" a hue\nwhich only these masters in colour have, to my knowledge,\nspecially observed.\n\nHow can I help seeing so much beauty and sweetness as the manifestation\nof God? How could He show Himself to me more smilingly? How can I talk\nof not seeing God when I see _this_? True, it may be no more than the\ntip of the fringe of the hem of the robe in which His Being is arrayed;\nbut at least it must be that. True, also, that beautiful as these things\nappear to physical eyes they must be still more beautiful to spiritual\neyes--the eyes of those who have passed on, for instance--to say nothing\nof the delight which God must have in them Himself. But even with my\nimperfect mortal vision they are rapturously good, a veritable glimpse\nof the Divine.\n\nThis is what I mean by the elementary--the common, primary thing, the\nthing I look at every day and hardly ever accredit to its source. I am\nnot speaking pantheistically here, any more than when I spoke of light.\nThese things are not God, or part of God. They are expressions of God.\nIf I speak of seeing God in them I mean that in them, as well as in many\nother simple things, we see Him as nearly as is possible to such\ncomprehension as ours. \"No human eye,\" writes St. John, \"has ever seen\nGod: the only Son, who is in the Father's bosom--He has made Him\nknown.\"[8] He made Him known in His own Person; but He appealed also to\nthe everyday sights and sounds, the lily of the field, the blowing wind,\nthe sparrow falling, the children at their mothers' knees, for the\nevidence to declare Him. As expressions of Him they may be\nmisinterpreted by the error in my physical senses, or distorted by my\nlimitations of spiritual perception; but even then they bring Him near\nto me in the kind of radiance which I can catch.\n\n[8] Most of the quotations from the New Testament are taken from a\nrecent translation, \"The New Testament in Modern Speech,\" by R.F.\nWeymouth and E. Hampden-Cook.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nIn order to banish fear I think it necessary to train the thought to\nseeing God as expressing Himself in all the good and pleasant and\nenjoyable things that come to us. This means forming a habit. It means\nsaying to oneself daily, hourly, \"This is God,\" \"That is God,\" of\nincidents, persons, and things we have rarely thought of in that\nrelation. To do this is not as easy as it would be if our race-mind\nworked that way; but unfortunately it does not. In general we take our\ngood things for granted, complaining that they are not better. The\nthings we lack are more vivid to us, as a rule, than those we have\nacquired. Having hung, as it were, a cloud about ourselves we disregard\nthe uncountable ways in which God persists in shining through, in spite\nof our efforts to shut Him out.\n\nTo try to enumerate the uncountable would be folly. You cannot reckon\nthe good which comes to every one of us through such channels as family,\nhome, friendship, income, business, amusements, studies, holidays,\njourneys, sports, books, pictures, music, and the other hardly noticed\npleasures of any single day. We are used to them. To ascribe them\nspecially to God would seem to us far-fetched. That is, theoretically we\nmay ascribe them to God, but practically we dissociate Him from them.\nFew of us, I think, ever pause to remember that through them He is\nmaking Himself known to us before doing it in any other way.\n\nAnd yet, it seems to me, this is the beginning of our recognition of the\nDivine. I have little hesitation in saying that this is what parents\nshould teach children before they teach them to lisp prayers. The\nprayers have hardly any meaning to the baby-mind, and not much more than\na sentimental influence on the later life, if they have as much as that.\nBut any child, from the very budding of the intelligence, could grasp\nthe idea of a great, loving Super-Father, who was making Himself visible\nthrough gifts and care. If he prayed to Him later he would know to whom\nhe was praying. As it is, the later prayers are neglected, or definitely\ngiven up, oftener than not, because this is precisely what the child\ndoes _not_ know. He does not know it because he was never taught it; and\nhe was never taught it because his parents have probably not been aware\nof it themselves.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nI myself was never taught it. Notwithstanding all for which I am truly\ngrateful, I regret most deeply that so many years of my life went by\nbefore I was led to the fact. I am willing to believe that the lack of\nunderstanding was my own fault, but a lack of understanding there was. I\ngot the impression that God, so far from making Himself known to me, was\nhiding away from me, and that I must have faith to believe in One of\nwhom I had no more than hearsay evidence. If I could do this violence to\nsuch measure of reason as I possessed I could count on a reward in some\nother world than this, though on little or nothing here.\n\nFaith I saw as of the nature of a _tour de force_. You took it as you\ntook a leap. It was spiritually acrobatic. You didn't understand but you\n_believed_. The less you understood the more credit your belief became\nto you. The more hidden and difficult and mysterious and unintelligible\nGod made Himself the greater your merit in having faith in spite of\neverything. I am far from saying that this is the common understanding\nof Christians, or from holding others responsible for my misconceptions.\nI speak of these misconceptions only because they were mine, and it was\nI who had to work away from them.\n\nFor this reason, too, I speak of my reaching the idea of a God who had\nbeen visibly smiling at me all my life while I had never seen Him, as a\n\"discovery.\" To me it _was_ a discovery; and it came at a moment when I\nsorely needed something of the kind.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nIt was perhaps three or four years after the turning-point at\nVersailles. The intervening time had been one of what I may call\nspiritual ups and downs. It had not all been straight progress by any\nmeans. I had got hold of what for me was a great idea, round which other\ngreat ideas grouped themselves; but I grasped them waveringly or\nintermittently. Nevertheless, during seasons in Boston, Nice, Cannes,\nMunich, London, and Berlin, life on the whole went hopefully. The malady\nI have already mentioned tended to grow better rather than worse; the\nadvancing blindness became definitely arrested. I worked easily,\nhappily, successfully. Returning to the New England city which had\nbecome my adopted home, I bought a house and settled down to American\nlife once more.\n\nI mention these facts only because they help me to make myself clearer.\nFor all at once my affairs, like the chariots of Pharaoh in crossing the\nRed Sea, began to drive heavily. Trust in an all-conquering\nlife-principle which had meant much to me for a time no longer seemed\neffective. Difficulties massed themselves. Business misunderstandings\nsprang up. Friendships on which I had counted suddenly grew cold. Worse\nthan all, the working impulse gave out. There were two whole years in\nwhich I slaved at producing little more than what had to be thrown away.\nMy active life had apparently come to another deadening full stop.\n\nI reached the decision that there was but one thing to do--give up the\npretence at working, sell the house to which I had grown attached, and\nresume once more the life of aimless, but at that time inexpensive,\nEuropean wandering. There came a day when I actually offered my\nhouse for sale.\n\nAnd yet that day proved to be another turning-point. On the very morning\nwhen I had put my house in the market the chain of small events which we\ncommonly call accidents brought me into touch with a man I had never\nseen before. During a first meeting, as well as in several that\nfollowed, he made certain matters clear to me which changed my course\nnot only then but ever since. These explanations came under three\ndistinct headings, to each of which I should like to give a\nlittle space.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nOf these the one I put first is probably familiar to most of my readers,\nbut to me, I confess, it was new.\n\nGod among His other functions must be a tireless activity working\ntowards an end. Everything He calls into being works toward that end, I\nmyself with the rest. I am not a purposeless bit of jetsam flung out on\nthe ocean of time to be tossed about helplessly. God couldn't so will an\nexistence. It would not be in keeping with His economy to have any\nentity wasted. As Our Lord puts it, the sparrow cannot fall without Him;\nwithout Him the lilies are not decked; the knowledge possessed by His\ninfinite intelligence is so minute that the very hairs of the head are\nnumbered. My life, my work, myself--all are as much a necessary part of\nHis design as the thread the weaver weaves into the pattern in a carpet.\n\nIn other words, I am not a free agent. I am His agent. Not only am I\nresponsible to him, but He is responsible for me. His responsibility for\nme will be seen as soon as I give up being responsible for myself.\n\nIt was upon this last point that I seized with most avidity. I was tired\nof trying to steer a course for myself, with no compass to go by. I was\ntired of incessantly travelling along roads which seemed to lead to\nnothing but blind-ends. To change the figure to one I used not\ninfrequently at that time, my life seemed pitchforked, first in one way\nand then in another, no way bringing me anywhere. It had no even tenor.\nIt was a series of seismic pulls and jerks.\n\nBut in the light of what my new friend told me I saw I had been too\nbusily engaged in directing my life for myself. I was like a child who\nhopes to make a smoothly working machine go still more smoothly by\nprodding it. I couldn't leave it alone. It had not occurred to me that\nthe course of that life was God's own business, and that if I could\nfollow the psalmist's advice and \"commit my way unto him he would bring\nit to pass.\" It had seemed to me that nothing would be brought to pass\nunless I worried and fretted over it myself, whereas the same wise old\npsalmist says, in words which our generation would do well to lay to\nheart, _\"fret not thyself_ else shall thou be moved to do evil.\"\n\n\"Trust in the Lord and do good,\" he goes on; \"so shalt thou dwell in\nthe land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the\nLord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.\"\n\nThis was nothing new; it was only new to me. To feel that I could give\nup being responsible for results and devote myself to my work was in\nitself a relief. If I tried to \"trust in the Lord and do good\"--by which\nI suppose is meant doing my duty to the best of my small ability--He\nwould look after the rest. My position was somewhat that of a trusted\nsubordinate given a free hand, but having over him a supreme authority\ntaking charge of all consequences. I was not working on what our modern\nidiom neatly summarises as \"my own.\" _I was His agent_.\n\nThus it might be said to be to His interest to see that as His agent I\nwas sheltered, clothed, fed, and in every way kept in such condition as\nto be up to the highest standard of His work. This provision would\nnaturally include those dependent on me, and without whose well-being I\ncould not have peace of mind. I need worry about them no more than about\nmyself. They, too, were His agents. In certain conditions He might\nprovide for them through me, or in certain conditions He might provide\nfor me through them; but in all conditions He would provide for all\nof us.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nThe second point was this: those with whom I had had misunderstandings\nwere equally His agents. They might not be more aware of the fact than\nI; but this in no way disqualified them as His trusted subordinates\ngiven a free hand. Their work with me and mine with them, whatever its\nnature, wrought one of the infinite number of blends going to make up\nthe vast complexity of His design.\n\nIt was, therefore, out of the range of possibility that under Him there\ncould be opposition or contradiction between one of His agents and\nanother. It would be inconsistent with His being that one man's\nadvantage should be brought about at another man's cost. Where that was\napparently the case it was due to both sides taking the authority into\ntheir own hands, and neither sufficiently recognising Him. If His\ntrusted subordinates in being given a free hand played Him false, they\nnaturally played each other false, and played false to themselves first\nof all. Where one was afraid of another and strove to outwit him there\nwas treachery against the supreme command.\n\nAgain there was nothing new in this; but to me it was a new point of\nview with regard to those with whom and for whom I worked. For the first\ntime I saw their true relation to me, as mine to them, and something of\nthe principle of brotherhood. Up to this time brotherhood had been a\ncharming, sentimental word to me, and not much more. Children of one\nFather, yes; but discordant children, with no restraint that I could see\non their natural cut-throat enmities.\n\nBut here was a truth which made all other men my necessary helpmates,\nand me the necessary helpmate of all other men. I couldn't do without\nthem; they couldn't do without me. Hostility between us was as out of\nplace as between men pulling together on the rope which is to save all\ntheir lives. If peril could bring about unity God could bring it about\neven more effectively. God was the great positive, the solvent in which\nirritation and unfriendliness must necessarily melt away.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nThe third point, involving my obvious first step, was to put suspicion\nout of my own mind. I was to see myself as God's Self-Expression working\nwith others who were also His Self-Expression to the same extent as I.\nIt was in the fact of our uniting together to produce His\nSelf-Expression that I was to look for my security. No one could\neffectively work against me while I was consciously trying to work with\nGod. Moreover, it was probable that no one was working against me, or\nhad any intention of working against me, but that my own point of view\nbeing wrong I had put the harmonious action of my life out of order.\nSuspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were\nmany that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.\n\nThis does not mean that in our effort to reproduce harmonious action we\nshould shut our eyes to what is evidently wrong, or blandly ignore what\nis plainly being done to our disadvantage. Of course not! One uses all\nthe common-sense methods of getting justice for oneself and protecting\none's own interests. But it does mean that when I can no longer protect\nmy own interests, when my affairs depend upon others far more than on\nmyself--a condition in which we all occasionally find ourselves--I am\nnot to _fret myself_, not to churn my spirit into nameless fears. I am\nnot a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents.\nGod is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He\nexpresses Himself through them; we all. I as well as they, they as well\nas I, are partakers of His Sonship; and the Son--His Expression--is\nalways \"in the Father's bosom,\" [9] in His love and care.\n\n[9] St. John\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nHaving grasped this idea the new orientation was not difficult. There\nwas in it too much solace to allow of its being difficult. If I state\nthe results it is once more not because I consider them important to\nanyone but myself, but only because they became the starting-point of a\nnew advance in the conquest of fear.\n\nWithin forty-eight hours, with no action on my part except the\n_Metanoia_, the change in my point of view, all misunderstandings had\nbeen cleared away. The other side had taken the entire initiative, I\nmaking no advance whatever toward them. A telegram expressing their\nhearty good will was followed by an interview, after which I was at work\nagain. I have not only worked easily ever since but with such fecundity\nthat one plan is always formed before I have its predecessor off my\nhands. This says nothing of the quality of my work, which, humble as it\nmay be, is simply the best I know how to do. I refer only to its\nabundance. I have found that in \"working together with God,\" I am less\ninvolved in conflicts of wills than I was before, and that the words of\nAmos are literally fulfilled to me, \"that the plowman shall overtake the\nreaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed.\" I say it\nwithout knocking on wood, and with no fear lest my \"good luck\" will be\nwithdrawn, that from that time to this I have had plenty of work which I\nhave accomplished happily, and have never lacked a market for my\nmodest wares.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nFrom all of which I have drawn one main inference--the imperative\nurgency of Trust.\n\nI had hitherto thought of trust as a gritting of the teeth and a\nstiffening of the nerves to believe and endure, no matter what\ncompulsion one put upon oneself. Gradually, in the light of the\nexperience sketched above, I came to see it as simply the knowledge that\nthe supreme command rules everything to everyone's advantage. The more\nwe can rest mentally, keep ourselves at peace, _be still and know that\nit is God_,[10] the single and sole Director, the more our interests will\nbe safe. This, I take it, is the kind of trust for which the great\npioneers of truth plead so persistently in both the Old and New\nTestaments.\n\n[10] The Book of Psalms.\n\nTrust, then, is not a force we wrest from ourselves against reason,\nagainst the grain. To be trust at all it must be loving and spontaneous.\nIt cannot be loving and spontaneous unless there is a natural impulse\nbehind it. And there can be no natural impulse behind it unless we have\nsomething in our own experience which corroborates the mere hearsay\ntestimony that there is a Power worth trusting to. Job's \"Though He slay\nme yet will I trust in Him,\" could only have been wrung from a heart\nwhich had proved the Divine Good Will a thousand times and knew what it\nwas doing. Some experience of our own we _must_ have. It is an absolute\nnecessity. Desperate hope in another man's God may do something for us,\nbut it cannot do much. A small thing which I have proved for myself is a\nbetter foundation for trust than a Bible learnt parrot-like by rote and\nnot put to the practical test. Once I have found out for myself that to\nrest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him is the surest way to\nsecurity and peace I have the more willing confidence in doing it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nGOD'S SELF-EXPRESSION AND THE MIND OF TO-DAY\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nTo the mind of to-day trust would be easier were it not for the terror\nlest God's plans involve us in fearful things from which we shrink. We\nhave heard so much of the trials He sends; of the gifts of Tantalus He\nkeeps forever in our sight but just beyond our reach; of the blessings\nHe actually bestows upon us only to snatch them away when we have come\nto love them most--we have heard so much of this that we are often\nafraid of His will as the greatest among the evils of which we stand\nin dread.\n\nIn many cases this is the root of our fear. We cannot trust without\nmisgiving to the love of God. What is there then that we can trust to?\nWe can't trust to ourselves; still less can we trust to our fellow-men.\nThose whom we love and in whom we have confidence being as weak as\nourselves, if not weaker than we, establish our spirits not at all. If,\ntherefore, we mentally poison the well of Universal Good-intent at its\nvery source what have we to depend on?\n\nI have already referred to the God of repressions and denials, and now\nmust speak a little more freely of this travesty on \"the Father,\" as\nexpressed to us in Jesus Christ. Of all the obstacles to the rooting out\nof fear the lingering belief in such a distortion of Divine Love is to\nmy mind the most deeply based.\n\nI often think it a proof of the vital truth in the message of Jesus\nChrist that it persists in holding the heart in spite of the ugly thing\nwhich, from so many points of view, the Caucasian has managed to make of\nit. Nowhere is the cruelty of Caucasian misinterpretation more evident\nthan in the meanings given to the glorious phrase, \"the Will of God.\" I\ndo not exaggerate when I say that in most Caucasian minds the Will of\nGod is a bitter, ruthless force, to which we can only drug ourselves\ninto submission. It is always ready to thwart us, to stab us in the\nback, or to strike us where our affections are tenderest. We hold our\nblessings only on the tenure of its caprice. Our pleasures are but the\nstolen moments we can snatch from its inattention.\n\nAs an example I quote some stanzas from a hymn frequently sung where\nEnglish-speaking people worship, and more or less expressive of the\nwhole Caucasian attitude toward \"God's Will.\"\n\nMy God, my Father, while I stray\nFar from my home on life's rough way,\nOh, teach me from my heart to say,\n    Thy Will be done.\n\nThough dark my path and sad my lot,\nLet me be still, and murmur not,\nOr breathe the prayer divinely taught,\n    Thy Will be done.\n\nWhat though in lonely grief I sigh\nFor friends beloved no longer nigh,\nSubmissive still would I reply,\n    Thy Will be done.\n\nIf thou shouldst call me to resign\nWhat most I prize, it ne'er was mine;\nI only yield thee what is thine;\n    Thy Will be done.\n\nThese lines, typical of a whole class of sentimental hymnology, are\nimportant only in as far as they are widely known and express a more or\nless standardised point of view. The implication they contain is that\nall deprivation is brought upon us by the Will of God, and that our\nwisest course is to beat ourselves down before that which we cannot\nmodify. Beneath the car of this Juggernaut we must flout our judgments\nand crush our affections. As He knows so well where to hit us we must\nstifle our moans when He does so. As He knows so well what will ring our\nhearts we must be content to let Him give so that He can the more\npoignantly take away. The highest exercise of our own free will is to\n\"be still and murmur not\"--to admit that we need the chastisement--to\ncrouch beneath the blows which we tell ourselves are delivered in love,\neven though it is hard to see where the love comes in.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nI know nothing more tragic than those efforts on the part of\nheart-broken people, coming within the experience of all of us, to make\nthemselves feel that this terrible \"Will of God\" must be right, no\nmatter how much it seems wrong.\n\nA young man with a wife and family to support is struck down by a\nlingering illness which makes him a burden. All his Job's comforters\ntell him that God has brought the affliction upon him, and that to bow\nto the \"Inscrutable Will\" must be his first act of piety.\n\nA young mother is rejoicing in her baby when its little life is suddenly\nsnuffed out. She must school herself to say, quite irrespective of the\nspirit of renunciation which inspires the words, \"The Lord gave and the\nLord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.\"\n\nA woman is left a widow to earn a living for herself, and bring up her\nchildren fatherless. She must assume that the Lord had some good purpose\nin leaving her thus bereft and must drill herself into waiting on a\nWill so impossible to comprehend.\n\nStorms sink ships, drowning passengers and crew; lightning sets fire to\nhouses and strikes human beings dead; earthquakes swallow up whole\ndistricts destroying industry and human life; tidal waves sweep inland\ncarrying away towns; and our legal phraseology can think of no better\nexplanation of such calamity than to ascribe it to \"the act of God.\"\n\nIt is needless to multiply these instances. Our own knowledge supplies\nthem by the score. Our personal lives are full of them. God's Will,\nGod's Love, God's Mercy, become strangely ironic forces, grim beyond any\nopen enmity. They remind us of the \"love,\" the \"pity,\" the \"mercy,\" in\nwhich the orthodox sent the heretic to the hangman or the stake,\ndestroying the body to save the soul.\n\nIt is a far cry from this appalling vision of \"the Father\" to the\npsalmist's \"Delight thou in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires\nof thine heart.\" How could anyone delight in the Caucasian God, as the\nmajority of Caucasians conceive of Him? As a matter of fact, how many\nCaucasians themselves, however devout, however orthodox, attempt to\ndelight, or pretend to delight, in the God to whom on occasions they bow\ndown? Delight is a strong word, and a lovely one; but used of the\nCaucasian and his Deity it is not without its elements of humour.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nNaturally enough! It is impossible for any human being to delight in a\nGod whose first impulse in \"doing us good\" is so often to ravage our\nprosperity and affections. So long as we believe in Him fear will rule\nour lives. It is because the Caucasian believes in Him that he lives in\nfear and dies in fear. To attempt to eliminate fear and retain this\nconcept of God is vain.\n\nUnderstanding this the average Caucasian has made little or no effort to\neliminate fear. He would rather live and die in fear than change this\nconcept of God. It is dear to him. He finds it useful. To its shoulders\nhe can shift the ills of which he is unwilling himself to accept the\nresponsibility. Where God is a puzzle life is a puzzle; and where life\nis a puzzle the Caucasian gets his chance for making the materialistic\nideal the only one that seems practical. In a world which was to any\nnoticeable degree freed from the spectre of fear most of our existing\nsystems of government, religion, business, law, and national and\ninternational politics, would have to be remodelled. There would be\nlittle or no use for them. Built on fear and run by fear, fear is as\nessential to their existence as coal to our industries. A society that\nhad escaped from fear would escape from their control.\n\nIn this present spring of 1921 we are having an exhibition of fear on a\nscale so colossal that the heart of man is dazed by it. There is not a\ngovernment which is not afraid of some other government. There is not a\ngovernment which is not afraid of its own people. There is not a people\nwhich is not afraid of its own government. There is not a country in\nwhich one group is not afraid of some other group. All is rivalry,\nenmity, suspicion, confusion, and distrust, \"while men's hearts are\nfainting for fear, and for anxious expectation of what is coming on the\nworld.\" All statesmen, all ministers, all ambassadors, all politicians,\nall bankers, all business men, all professional men, all journalists,\nall farmers, all laborers, all workers in the arts, all men and women of\nall kinds--with the exception of one here and there who has reached the\nunderstanding of the love which casteth out fear--live and work in fear,\nand in mistrust of their colleagues. From the supreme councils of the\nAllies down to the crooks and conspirators in dives and joints everyone\nis afraid of being double-crossed. There is so much double-crossing\neverywhere that we have been obliged to invent this name for the\noperation. England is afraid of being double-crossed by Germany, France\nby England, Italy by France, the United States by Europe, and Japan by\nthe United States, while within these general limitations minor\ndouble-crossing interests seethe like bacteria in a drop of poisoned\nblood. The nations are infected with fear because they elect to believe\nin a God of fear, and the Caucasians more than others because they have\nchosen to see a God of fear in Him who was put before them as a God\nof Love.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nI see no way out of all this except as one of us after another reaches\nthe _Metanoia_, the new point of view as regards God. Other ways have\nbeen sought, and have been found no more than blind alleys. Much\nreference is made nowadays to the disillusionment of those who hoped\nthat the war would lead to social and spiritual renovation; but any such\nhope was doomed in advance, so long as the Caucasian concept of God was\nunchanged. When you cannot trust God you cannot trust anything; and when\nyou cannot trust anything you get the condition of the world as it is\nto-day. And that you _cannot_ trust a God whose \"love\" will paralyse the\nhand by which you have to earn a living, or snatch your baby from your\nbreast--to say nothing of a thousand ingenious forms of torture\ninflicted just because \"He sees that it is best for you,\" after having\nled you to see otherwise--that you cannot trust a God like that must be\nmore or less self-evident. If you are part of His Self-Expression He\ncannot practise futilities through your experience and personality. He\nmust be kind with a common-sense kindness, loving with a common-sense\nlove. Whatever explanation of our sufferings and failures there may be\nwe must not shuffle them off on God. \"Let us hold God to be true,\" St.\nPaul writes, \"though every man should prove false.\"[11] Let us hold that\nGod would not hurt us, however much we may wilfully hurt each other or\nourselves.\n\n[11] Epistle to the Romans.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nI should not lay so much emphasis on this if so much emphasis were not\nlaid on it in the other direction. God has so persistently, and for so\nmany generations, been held up to us as a God who tries and torments and\npunishes that we can hardly see Him as anything else. Torture comes, in\nthe minds of many of us, to be not only His main function but His only\nfunction. \"I am all right,\" is the unspoken thought in many a heart, \"so\nlong as I am not overtaken by the Will of God. When that calamity falls\non me my poor little human happiness will be wrecked like a skiff in a\ncyclone.\" This is not an exaggeration. It is the secret mental attitude\nof perhaps ninety percent of those Caucasians who believe in a God of\nany kind. Their root-conviction is that if God would only let them alone\nthey would get along well enough; but as a terrible avenging spirit,\nlike the Fury or the Nemesis of the ancients, he is always tracking them\ndown. The aversion from God so noticeable in the mind of to-day is, I\nventure to think, chiefly inspired by the instinct to get away from, or\nto hide from, the pursuit of this Avenger.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nAnd in a measure this impulse to flight can be understood. I can\nunderstand that common-sense men should be cold toward the Caucasian\nGod, and that they should even renounce and denounce him. I will go so\nfar as to say that I can more easily understand the atheist than I can\nmany of my own friends who pathetically try to love and adore their\ncapricious un-Christlike Deity. To my certain knowledge many of them are\ndoing it against their own natural and better instincts, because they\ndare not forsake the tradition in which they have been dyed. \"I try to\nlove God and I can't,\" has been said to me many a time by conscientious\npeople who felt that the fault must lie in themselves. There was no\nfault in themselves. If their God could have been loved they would have\nloved him.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nI come here to a point of no small importance to the conquest of fear,\nthe courage to release oneself from the tether of tradition. Few people\nhave it, in the sense of rejecting old theories because of having worked\nout to new spiritual knowledge. When it comes to the eternal verities\nmany of us are cowardly; nearly all of us are timid. The immense\nmajority of us prefer a God at second or third hand. We will accept what\nsomebody else has learned, rather than incur the trouble or the\nresponsibility of learning anything for ourselves. We take our knowledge\nof God as we take our doses of medicine, from a prescription which one\nman has written down, and another has \"put up,\" and still another\nadministers. By the time this traditional, handed-on knowledge of God\nhas reached ourselves it is diluted by all kinds of outside opinions and\npersonalities. It is not strange that when we have swallowed the dose it\ndoes little to effect a cure. I do not deny that a second or third hand\nknowledge of God may do something. I only deny that it can do much. To\nsupport my denial I need only point to what the world has become in a\nsecond and third hand Christendom. The illustration is enough.\n\nIt should be plain, I think, that no one will ever be released from fear\nby clinging to the teachings which have inspired fear. We are fearless\nin proportion as we grow independent enough to know for ourselves. I\ncannot but stress this point to some extent, for the reason that I\nmyself suffered so long from inability to let the traditional go. It\nseemed to me to have a sanctity just because it was traditional. The\nfact that other people had accepted certain ideas had weight in making\nme feel that I should accept them too. To go off on a line of my own\nseemed dangerous. I might make mistakes. I might go far wrong. Safety\nwas spelled by hanging with the crowd.\n\nIt was the chance remark of an old acquaintance which dislodged me from\nthis position. In the lobby of a hotel we had met by chance, after not\nhaving seen each other for a good many years. The conversation, having\ntouched on one theme and another, drifted to subjects akin to that which\nI am now discussing. I ventured to disclose some of my own \"seeking God,\nif perhaps I could grope for Him and find Him.\"[12]\n\n[12] Acts of the Apostles.\n\nMy friend straightened himself and squared his shoulders. \"I stand\nexactly where I did thirty years ago.\"\n\nThere was a pride in the statement with regard to which my first feeling\nwas a pang of envy. A rapid calculation told me that thirty years ago he\nhad been about twenty; and the superiority of a man who at twenty had\nattained to so much spiritual insight that he had not needed to learn\nanything more in the interim was evident. I was two or three days\nturning this incident over in my mind before the exclamation came to me,\n\"How terrible!\" To have lived through the thirty years of the richest\nexperience the ordinary man ever knows and still have remained on\nprecisely the same spot as to spiritual things struck me then as a\nwoeful confession.\n\nI beg to say here that I am not talking of external and official\nreligious connections. I am trying to avoid the subject of external and\nofficial religion altogether. I am speaking not of religion but of God.\nTo my mind the two have no more than the relation of the words of a song\nand the music of its setting. You may use them together or you may\nconsider them apart. I am considering them apart, and confining myself\nwholly to the words of the song. What is known as church-affiliation,\nthe music of the setting, I am not concerned with. My only topic is the\nway in which the meaning of the words gets over to the average inner\nman, and the effect upon him mentally.\n\nI revert, therefore, to the statement that to make the kind of spiritual\nprogress which will overcome fear it will be often necessary to let go\nthe thing we have outlived. Often the thing we have outlived will be\nsomething dear to us, because there was once a time when it served our\nturn. But our turn to-day may need something different from the turn of\nyesterday, and the refusal to follow new light simply because it is new\nleads in the end to mental paralysis. I was once asked to sign a\npetition to the mayor of a city praying that, on the ground of its\nnovelty, electric lighting might be excluded from the street in which I\nlived. Exactly this same reluctance often keeps us from making changes\nof another sort, even when we feel that the light which hitherto was\nenough for us has been outgrown and outclassed.\n\nThe danger of the lone quest leading a man astray can be easily\nexaggerated. It is not as if God were difficult to find. \"The soul\ncannot move, wake, or open the eyes, without perceiving God.\" \"For this\ncommandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee,\nneither is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldest say, Who\nshall go up for us to heaven and bring it down unto us that we may hear\nit and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say, Who\nshall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us that we may hear it\nand do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy\nheart.\"[13] No motion toward the Universal can miss the Universal. I\ncannot escape from the Ever-Present; the Ever-Present cannot escape from\nme. Intellectually I may make mistakes in deduction, but spiritually I\ncannot but find God. The little I learn of God for myself is to me\nworth more than all the second and third hand knowledge I can gather\nfrom the saints.\n\n[13] The Book of Deuteronomy.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nIt is the more necessary to dwell on this for the reason that whatever\n_Metanoia_, or new orientation, is to be brought about must be on the\npart of individuals. There is no hope for large numbers acting together,\nor for any kind of group-impulse. Group-impulse among Caucasians is\nnearly always frightened, conservative, reactionary, or derisive of the\nforward step. There is hardly an exception to this in the whole history\nof Caucasian ideas.\n\nOtherwise it would be a pleasant dream to imagine what might now be\nhappening on the great international stage. Let us suppose that the\nleaders of the so-called Christian countries were all convinced of the\nthree main lines of God's direction I have already tried to sketch. Let\nus think of such men as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Sforza, President\nHarding, and the heads of government in Belgium, Russia, Germany, and\nall other countries affected by the present war of moves and\ncounter-moves--let us think of them as agreed on the principles:\n\n1. That each knows himself and his country as an agent in the hand of\nGod, directed surely toward a good end;\n\n2. That each knows each of his colleagues and his country as equally an\nagent in the hand of God, directed surely toward a similar good end;\n\n3. That each knows that between God's agents there can be neither\nconflicting interests nor clash of wills, and that suspicion and\ncounter-suspicion must be out of place, since under God's direction no\ndouble-crossing is possible.\n\nThe picture is almost comic in its incongruity with what actually is.\nThe mere thought of these protagonists of the century working in harmony\nto one great purpose, without distrust of each other's motives, and with\nno necessity for anyone's dodging political foul play, summons the smile\nof irony. Mutual trust was never so much a suggestion to laugh down.\nThe mere hint that it might be possible would make one a target for the\nwit of the experienced.\n\nIn what we call the practical world of to-day there is no appeal from\nthe God of Fear but _to_ the God of Fear. The great mass of Caucasians\nwill not have it otherwise. And it requires no prophetic vision to\nforesee the results of the efforts to bring about international harmony\nwhile all are obeying the decrees of the Goddess of Discord. Nearly\nthree years after the signing of the armistice the world is in a more\nhopeless situation than it was when at war. Up to the present each new\nmove only makes matters worse. There are those who believe that our\nphase of civilisation is staggering into the abyss and that nothing, as\nfar as can now be descried, will save it from the deluge.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nPossibly! Fear tends always to produce the thing it is afraid of. I\nmention this dark outlook only for the reason that even if the\ncataclysm were to come the individual can escape from it.\n\nCataclysms are not new in the history of our race. The rise and fall of\ncivilisations may be called mankind's lessons in \"how not to do it.\" Of\nthese lessons there are no such records as those which we find in the\nOld Testament; and in these records it is unfailingly pointed out that\nwhatever the calamity which overtakes the world at large the individual\nhas, if he chooses, a way of safety. The innocent are not overwhelmed\nwith the guilty, except when the innocent deliberately shut their eyes\nto the opening toward the _Soteria_--the Safe Return. But that,\nunhappily, the innocent do so shut their eyes is one of the commonest\nfacts in life.\n\nBack in that twilight of history of which the later tale could be told\nonly by some symbol, some legendary hieroglyph, there was already an\n\"Ark\" by which the faithful few could be saved from the \"Flood.\" The\nsymbol became permanent. The Ark of the Covenant--the sign of a great\nspiritual understanding--remained as a token to man that in God he had\na sure refuge. It was laid up in his Holy of Holies, a mystic,\nconsecrated pledge, till the ruthless Caucasian came and rifled it.\n\nBut no rifling could deprive mankind of its significance. That endures.\nTo bring it home to the desolate and oppressed was a large part of the\nmission of psalmists and prophets. The Ark of the Covenant--of the Great\nUnderstanding--meant as much to those who sought God in the ancient\nworld as the Cross does to Christendom. It meant that whatever the\ncollapse, national or general, through siege or sack or famine, those\nwho would escape could escape by the simple process of mentally taking\nrefuge in God. The Ark of God would bear them safely when all material\nhelp failed.\n\nAmong the themes which run through the Old Testament this is of\nparamount importance. It is impossible to do more than refer to the many\ntimes the spiritually minded were implored to seek this protection. It\nwas needful to implore them since they found the assurance so difficult\nto believe. No matter how often it was proved to them they still\ndoubted it. Saved by this method once they would reject it when it came\nto danger the second time. Saved the second time they rejected it the\nthird. \"Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on\nthee, because he trusteth in thee,\" is the declaration of Jeremiah, who\nperhaps more than any other was a prophet of disaster. Similar\nstatements are scattered through the Old Testament by the score, by the\nhundred. It was a point on which leaders, seers, and teachers insisted\nwith a passionate insistence. They knew. They had tested the truth for\nthemselves. Disaster was a common feature in their history. During the\nthree thousand years and more which their experiences cover these\nIsraelites had seen more than one invasion sweep across their land, more\nthan one civilisation come and go. All that Belgium knew in the Great\nWar they knew time and time again. Between Egypt and Assyria, the France\nand Germany of that special epoch, theirs was a kind of buffer state\nover which every new anguish rolled. \"Let it roll,\" was the cry of\ntheir prophets. \"The Lord will fight for you. Stand still and see what\nhe will do. His arm is not shortened neither his strength diminished. It\nis of the Lord to save whether by many or by few. Trust in the Lord and\nbe doing good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be\nfed. Oh, how great is thy goodness which thou hast wrought for them that\ntrust in thee before the sons of men. I said in my haste, I am cut off!\nNevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried\nunto thee. Be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye\nthat hope in the Lord.\"[14]\n\n[14] Various Old Testament Sources.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nIn many ways this is the burden of the more ancient Scriptures--the\nprotection which surrounds those who know that protection is God. It was\na gospel that had to be preached with tears and beseechings from one\ngeneration to another. No generation accepted it. The belief in\nmaterial power was always too dense. It is still too dense. In the Ark\nof the Great Understanding the Caucasian has practically never seen more\nthan a symbol that has gone out of date. Lost materially in the Tiber\nmud it was, for him, lost forever. But not so. Its significance remains\nas vital to mankind as when, veiled and venerated, it stood between\nthe cherubim.\n\nThe time may be close at hand when we shall need this assurance as we\nneed nothing else. However optimistic we try to keep ourselves, no\nthinking man or woman can be free, at this crisis in world-history, from\ndeep foreboding. For the memory to go back ten years is, even for us in\nthe New World, like returning to a Golden Age; while for the Old World\nmere recollection must be poignant.\n\nThe possibility that all countries in both hemispheres may find\nthemselves in some such agony as that of the Russia of to-day is not too\nextravagant to be entertained. This is not saying that they are likely\nso to find themselves; it means only that in the world as it is the\nsafest is not very safe. My point is that whether catastrophe\noverwhelms us or not, he who chooses not to fear can be free from fear.\nThere is a refuge for him, a defence, a safeguard which no material\nattack can break down. \"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most\nHigh shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the\nLord, He is my refuge--my fortress--my God. In Him will I trust.\"[15]\nThere is this Ark for me, this Ark of the Great Understanding, and I can\nretire into it. I can also have this further assurance: \"Because thou\nhast made the Lord which is my refuge--even the Most High--thy\nhabitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague\ncome nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee to\nkeep thee in all thy ways.\"[16]\n\n[15] The Book of Psalms.\n\n[16] The Book of Psalms.\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nThis is the eternal agreement, but an agreement of which we find it\ndifficult to accept the terms. To the material alone we are in the habit\nof ascribing power. Though we repeat a thousand times in the course of\na year, \"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,\" we do not\nbelieve it. To few of us is it more than a sonorous phrase.\n\nI remember the impression of this which one received at the great\nthanksgiving for peace in St. Paul's Cathedral in London some twenty\nyears ago. The Boer War had ended in an English victory, and while the\nthanksgiving was not precisely for this, it did express the relief of an\nanxious nation that peace was again restored. It was what is generally\nknown as a most impressive service. All that a great spectacle can offer\nto God it offered. King, queen, princes, princesses, ambassadors,\nministers, clergy, admirals, generals, and a vast assembly of citizens\nfilled the choir and nave with colour and life, while the music was of\nthat passionless beauty of which the English cathedral choirs guard\nthe secret.\n\nBut the detail I remember best was the way in which the repetition of\nthe Lord's Prayer rolled from the lips of the assembly like the sound\nof the surging of the sea. It was the emotional effect of a strongly\nemotional moment. One felt tense. It was hard to restrain tears. As far\nas crowd-sympathy has any spiritual value it was there. The Caucasian\nGod was taken out of His pigeon-hole and publicly recognised.\n\nThen He was put back.\n\nI take this service merely as an instance of what happens in all the\nso-called Christian capitals in moments of national stress. Outwardly it\nhappens less in the United States than it does elsewhere, for the reason\nthat this country has no one representative spiritual expression; but it\ndoes happen here in diffused and general effect. As a Christian nation\nwe ascribe in common with other Christian nations the kingdom, the\npower, and the glory to God--on occasions. We do it with the pious\ngesture and the sonorous phrase. Then we forget it. The habit of\nmaterial trust is too strong for us. Kings, queens, presidents, princes,\nprime ministers, congresses, parliaments, and all other representatives\nof material strength, may repeat for formal use the conventional clause;\nbut there is always what we flippantly know as a \"joker\" in the\nlip-recitation. \"Kingdom, power, and glory,\" we can hear ourselves\nsaying in a heart-aside, \"lie in money, guns, commerce, and police. God\nis not sufficiently a force in the affairs of this world for us to give\nHim more than the consideration of an act of courtesy.\"\n\nPractically that is all we ever get from group-impulse--an act of\ncourtesy. I repeat and repeat again that whatever is done toward the\nconquest of fear must be done by the individual. _I_ must do what I can\nto conquer fear in myself, regardless of the attitude or opinions of men\nin general.\n\nTo men in general the appeal to spiritual force to bring to naught\nmaterial force is little short of fanatical. It has never been otherwise\nas yet; it will probably not be otherwise for long generations to come.\nMeanwhile it is much for the individual to know that he can act on his\nown initiative, and that when it comes to making God his refuge he can\ngo into that refuge alone. He needs no nation, or government, or\nsociety, or companions before him or behind him. He needs neither leader\nnor guide nor friend. In the fortress of God he is free to enter merely\nas himself, and there know that he is safe amid a world in agony.\n\n\n\nXII\n\n\nThis is not theory; it is not doctrine; it is not opinion. It is what\nthe great pioneers of truth have first deduced from what they understood\nto be the essential beneficence of God, and then proved by actual\ndemonstration. Anyone else can demonstrate it who chooses to make the\nexperiment. My own weakness is such that I have made the experiment but\npartially; but partial experiment convinces me beyond all further\nquestioning that the witness of the great pioneers is true.\n\n\n\nXIII\n\n\nNor is this conviction to be classed as idealism, or ecclesiasticism, or\nmysticism, or anything else to which we can put a tag. It is not\nsectarian; it is not peculiarly Christian. It is the general possession\nof mankind. True, it is easier for the Christian than for any other to\nenter on this heritage, since his spiritual descent is more directly\nfrom the pioneers of truth who first discovered God to be His children's\nsafety; but the Universal is the Universal, the property of all.\nDiscovery gives no one an exclusive hold on it. Anyone with a\nconsciousness of Almighty, Ever-Present Intelligence must have some\ndegree of access to it, though his access may not be to the fullest or\nthe easiest. It is not possible that the Universal Father should be the\nspecial property of the Christian or of anyone else. The Christian view\nof the Father is undoubtedly the truest; but every view is true in\nproportion to its grasp of truth. No one will deny that the Buddhist,\nthe Mahometan, the Confucianist, have their grasp of truth. Even the\nprimitive idolater has some faint gleam of it, distorted though it may\nhave become. Very well, then; the faintest gleam of such knowledge will\nnot go without its recompense.\n\n\n\nXIV\n\n\nExclusiveness is too much our Caucasian habit of mind. It is linked with\nour instinct for ownership. Because through Jesus Christ we have a\nclearer view of a greater segment of the Universal, if I may so express\nmyself, than the Buddhist can have through Buddha or the Mahometan\nthrough Mahomet, our tendency is to think that we know the whole of the\nUniversal, and have it to give away. Any other view of the Universal is\nto us so false as to merit not merely condemnation but extirpation.\nExtirpation has been the watchword with which Caucasian Christianity has\ngone about the world. We have taken toward other views of truth no such\nsympathetic stand as St. Paul to that which he found in Greece, and\nwhich is worth recalling:\n\n\"Men of Athens, I perceive that you are in every respect remarkably\nreligious. For as I passed along and observed the things you worship, I\nfound also an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. The\nBeing, therefore, whom you, without knowing it, revere, Him I now\nproclaim to you. God who made the universe and everything in it--He\nbeing Lord of heaven and earth--does not dwell in sanctuaries built by\nmen. Nor is He administered to by human hands as though He needed\nanything--but He Himself gives to all men life and breath and all\nthings. He caused to spring from one forefather people of every race,\nfor them to live on the whole surface of the earth, and marked for them\nan appointed span of life, and the boundaries of their homes; that they\nmight seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him. Yes,\nthough He is not far from any one of us. For it is in closest union with\nHim that we live and move and have our being; as in fact some of the\npoets in repute among yourselves have said, 'For we are also His\noffspring.'\"[17]\n\n[17] Acts of the Apostles.\n\nTo the conquest of fear this splendid universalism is another\nessential. God being \"not far from any one of us\" cannot be far from me.\nHe who gives to all men life and breath and all things will not possibly\ndeny me the things I require most urgently. Our whole civilisation may\ngo to pieces; the job by which I earn a living may cease to be a job;\nthe money I have invested may become of no more value than Russian\nbonds; the children whom I hoped I had provided for may have to face\nlife empty-handed; all my accustomed landmarks may be removed, and my\nsocial moorings swept away; nevertheless, the Universal cannot fail me.\n\"Although the figtree shall not blossom nor fruit be in the vines;\nthough the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields yield no meat;\nthough the flocks be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the\nstalls; yet I will rejoice in God, I will joy in the God of my\nsalvation.\" It is safe to say that this confidence on the part of\nHabakkuk was not due to mere grim forcing of the will. It was the fruit\nof experience, of knowledge, of demonstration. In spite of the dangers\nnational and personal he saw threatening, his certainty of God must\nhave been spontaneous.\n\nAnyone, in any country, in any epoch, and of any creed or no creed, who\nhas shared this experience shares also this assurance. To the Christian\nit comes easiest; but that it does not come easy even to the Christian\nis a matter of common observation. It can only come easily when some\ndemonstration has been made for oneself, after which there is no more\ndisputing it.\n\n\n\nXV\n\n\nNor is it a question of morals or morality.\n\nI must venture here on delicate ground and say what I should hesitate to\nsay were the contrary not so strongly underscored. I mean that God, from\nwhat we understand to be His nature, could not accord us His protection\nby weighing the good and the evil in our conduct, and giving or\nwithholding help according to our worthiness. The Universal is too great\nto be measured and doled in that way. Nothing but our own pinchbeck\nideas could ascribe to Him this pettiness. As it is the kind of sliding\nscale we ourselves adopt, we limit the Divine Generosity by our own\nlimitations.\n\nNot so was the understanding of Jesus Christ. That we should be kind to\nthe so-called evil as we are to the so-called good was a point on which\nHe dwelt in the Sermon on the Mount. To discriminate between them when\nit comes to the possibility of conferring benefits is in His opinion\nsmall. \"You have heard that it was said, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor,\nand hate thine enemy.' But I command you all, Love your enemies, and\npray for your persecutors; that so you may become true sons of your\nFather in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the wicked as well as\non the good, and sends rain upon those who do right and those who do\nwrong.\"[18]\n\n[18] St. Matthew.\n\nIn other words, we are not to feel ourselves turned out of our\n\"habitation\" in God by a sense of our moral lapses. Moral lapses are to\nbe regretted, of course; but they do not vitiate our status as the Sons\nof God. It is possible that no one believes they do; but much of the\nloose statement current among those who lay emphasis on morals would\ngive that impression. There is a whole vernacular in vogue in which\nsouls are \"lost\" or \"saved\" according to the degree to which they\nconform or do not conform to other people's views as to what they ought\nto do. Much of our pietism is to the effect that God is at the bestowal\nnot merely of a sect, but of some section of a sect, and cannot be found\nthrough any other source.\n\n\n\nXVI\n\n\nThis brings me to the distinction between morals and righteousness,\nwhich is one for the mind of to-day to keep as clearly as possible\nbefore it. I have said that the refuge in God is not a question of\nmorals; but it is one of righteousness. Between righteousness and morals\nthe difference is important.\n\nMorals stand for a code of observances; righteousness for a direction of\nthe life.\n\nMorals represent just what the word implies, the customs of an age, a\ncountry, or a phase in civilisation. They have no absolute standard. The\nmorals of one century are not those of another. The morals of one race\nare not those of another even in the same century. In many respects the\nmorals of the Oriental differ radically from those of the Occidental,\nage-long usage being behind each. It is as hard to convince either that\nhis are the inferior as it would be to make him think so of his\nmother-tongue. I once asked a cultivated Chinaman, a graduate of one of\nthe great American universities and a Christian of the third generation,\nin what main respect he thought China superior to the United States. \"In\nmorals,\" he replied, promptly; but even as a Christian educated in\nAmerica his theory of morals was different from ours.\n\nAmong ourselves in the United States the essence of morals is by no\nmeans a subject of unanimous agreement. You might say that a standard of\nmorals is entirely a matter of opinion. There are millions of people who\nthink it immoral to play cards, to go to the theatre, to dance, or to\ndrink wine. There are millions of other people who hold all these acts\nto be consistent with the highest moral conduct.\n\nMoreover, wherever the emphasis is thrown on morals as distinct from\nrighteousness there is a tendency to put the weight on two or three\npoints in which nations or individuals excel, and to ignore the rest.\nFor example, not to go outside ourselves, the American people may be\nfairly said to exemplify two of the great virtues: On the whole they\nare, first, sober; secondly, continent. As a result we accentuate morals\nin these respects, but not in any others.\n\nFor instance, the current expression, \"an immoral man,\" is almost\ncertain to apply only under the two headings cited above, and probably\nonly under one. All other morals and immoralities go by the board. We\nshould not class a dishonest man as an immoral man, nor an untruthful\nman, nor a profane, or spiteful, or ungenial, or bad-tempered, man. Our\nnotion of morals hardly ever rises above the average custom of the\ncommunity in which we happen to live. Except in the rarest instances we\nnever pause to reflect as to whether the customs of that community are\nor are not well founded. The consequence is that our cities, villages,\ncountrysides, and social groupings are filled with men and women moral\nenough as far as the custom of the country goes, but quite noticeably\nunrighteous.\n\nIt is also a fact that where you find one or two virtues singled out for\nobservance and the rest obscured there you find, too, throngs of\noutwardly \"moral\" people with corroded hearts. Villages, churches, and\nall the quieter communities are notorious for this, the peculiarity\nhaving formed for a hundred and fifty years the stock-in-trade of\nnovelists. Sobriety and continence being more or less in evidence the\nassumption is that all the requirements have been fulfilled. The\ncommunity is \"moral\" notwithstanding the back-bitings, heart-burnings,\nslanders, cheatings, envies, hatreds, and bitternesses that may permeate\nit through and through. As I write, the cramped, venomous, unlovely life\nof the American small town is the favourite theme of our authors and\nreaders of fiction. Since a number of the works now on the market have\nmet with national approval one must assume that the pictures they paint\nare accurate. The conditions are appalling, but, according to the custom\nof the country, they are \"moral.\" The shadow of insobriety and\nincontinence doesn't touch the characters who move across these pages,\nand yet the level of the life is pictured as debased, and habits\nas hideous.\n\n\n\nXVII\n\n\nWith morals in this accepted American sense righteousness has little to\ndo. The two are different in origin. Morals imply the compulsion of men,\nand are never more binding than the customs of men render them. They are\nthus imposed from without, while righteousness springs from within. The\nessence of righteousness lies in the turning of the individual\ntoward God.\n\nI think it safe to say that righteousness is expressed more accurately\nin attitude than in conduct. It is expressed in conduct, of course; but\nconduct may fail while the attitude can remain constant. It is worthy of\nremark that some of the great examples of righteousness cited in the\nBible were conspicuously sinners. That is to say, they were men of\nstrong human impulses against which they were not always sufficiently on\nguard, but who turned towards God in spite of everything. In the long\nline spanning the centuries between Noah and Abraham and Peter and\nPaul--from the almost prehistoric out into the light of day--not one is\nput before us except in his weakness as well as in his strength. Some of\nthem commit gross sins; but apparently even gross sins do not debar them\nfrom their privileges in God's love. This principle was expressed in the\nwords of Samuel: \"Fear not: ye have done all this wickedness; yet turn\nnot aside from following the Lord.... For the Lord will not forsake his\npeople for his great name's sake.\" That the Universal who has all the\nblessings of creation to bestow should deprive me of anything just\nbecause in my folly or weakness I have committed sins is not consistent\nwith \"his great name's sake.\" It would not be causing His sun to rise on\nthe wicked as well as on the good nor sending rain on those who do right\nand those who do wrong. I am too small for His immensity to crush with\nits punishments, but not too small to be the object of His entire love.\n\n\n\nXVIII\n\n\nI hope it is plain that I say this not to make little of doing wrong but\nto put the love and fulness of God in the dominating place. I must make\nit clear to myself that He does not shut me out of His heart because I\nam guilty of sins. I may shut myself out of His heart, unless I direct\nmy mind rightly; but He is always there, unchanged, unchangeable, the\never-loving, ever-welcoming Father. Whatever I have done I can return to\nHim with the knowledge that He will take me back. Far from sure of\nmyself, I can always be sure of Him.\n\nThere are those who would warn me against saying this through fear lest\nit should be interpreted as, \"Don't be afraid to sin so long as you keep\nmentally close to God.\" I prefer to run that risk. The dread figure of\n\"an angry God\" has been so worked to terrorise men that large numbers of\nus have been terrorised. But experience shows us every day that being\nterrorised never produces the results at which it aims. It does not win\nus; it drives us away.\n\nMuch of the alienation from God in the mind of to-day is due to\nrebellion on the part of our sense of justice. We are sinners, of\ncourse; but not such sinners as to merit the revenge which an outraged\ndeity is described as planning against us. That the All-loving and\nAll-mighty should smite us in our dearest aims or our sweetest\naffections just because we have not conformed to the lop-sided morality\nof men is revolting to our instincts. We are repulsed by the God of Fear\nwhen we are drawn, comforted, strengthened, and changed by Him who is\nnever anything toward us but \"the Father.\"\n\nI have no hesitation, therefore, in throwing the emphasis in what I\nhave to say on the fact that He is \"a place to hide me in\"--the Ark of\nthe Great Understanding--always open to my approach--into which,\nwhatever I have done, I can go boldly.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE MIND OF TO-DAY AND THE WORLD AS IT IS\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nMuch of what I have written will seem inconsistent with the fact that in\nthe world as it is there are undeniable and inevitable hardships. True!\nI do not escape them more than any other man, the relative relief from\nfear saving me from only some of them.\n\nI have not meant to say that even with one's refuge in God there is\nnothing left to struggle with. My point is that whatever there may be to\nstruggle with there is nothing to be afraid of. Freedom from struggle\nwould profit us not at all. On the contrary, it would render us\nnerveless, flabby, flaccid, and inert.\n\nBut fear, as a rule, being connected with our struggles, it is\nimportant, I think, to be as clear as we can concerning the purport of\nthose struggles, and their source. We have already seen that fear is\ndiminished in proportion as we understand that our trials are not\nmotiveless, and perhaps this is the point at which to consider briefly\nwhat the motives are.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nStruggle we may define as the act of wrestling with trial, so as to come\nout of it victoriously. It is a constant element in every human life.\nFurthermore, I am inclined to think that, taking trial as an average,\nthe amount which enters into one life differs little from that which\nenters into another.\n\nThere was a time when I did not think so. Some lives struck me as\nsingled out for trouble; others were left comparatively immune from it.\nOne would have said that destinies had been mapped with a strange\ndisregard for justice. Those who didn't deserve it suffered; those whom\nsuffering might have purified went scot free. Some were rich, others\nwere poor; some had high positions, others humble ones; some had the\nrespect of the world from the day they were born, others crept along\nfrom birth to death in restriction and obscurity. The contrasts were so\ncruel that they scorched the eyes of the soul.\n\nThis is true, of course; and I am not saying that in the testing to\nwhich everyone is subjected all have an equal share of the opportunities\nfor triumphing. I am speaking for the moment only of the degree to which\nthe testing comes. As to that, I am inclined to feel that there is\nlittle to choose between one life and another, since each of us seems to\nbe tried for all that he can bear.\n\nOne is impressed with that in one's reading of biography. Only the lives\nof what we may call the favoured few get into print, and of those few it\nis chiefly the external events that are given us. Glimpses of the inner\nexperience may be obtained from time to time, but they are rarely more\nthan glimpses. Of what the man or the woman has endured in the secret\nfastnesses of the inner life practically nothing can be told. And yet\neven with the little that finds its way into words how much there is of\ndesperate fighting. To this there is never an exception. The great\nstatesman, the great poet, the great priest, the great scientist, the\ngreat explorer, the great painter, the great novelist--not one but\nsuffers as anyone suffers, and of not one would the reader, as a rule,\nput himself in the place.\n\nI bring up this fact because we so often feel that the other man has an\neasier task than ourselves. The very thing I lack is that with which he\nis blessed. I see him smiling and debonair at the minute when I am in a\nferment. While I hardly know how to make both ends meet he is building a\nbig house or buying a new motor-car. While I am burying hope or love he\nis in the full enjoyment of all that makes for happiness and prosperity.\n\nWe are always prone to contrast our darker minutes with our friends'\nbrighter ones. We forget, or perhaps we never know, that they do the\nsame with us. At times we are as much the object of their envy as they\never are of ours.\n\nI say this not on the principle that misery loves company, but in order\nto do away with the heathen suspicion lingering in many minds that God\nsingles _me_ out for trial, heaping benefits on others who deserve them\nno more than I do.\n\nGod singles no one out for trial. When trials come they spring, as\nnearly as I can observe, from one or all of the three following sources.\nThere are:\n\nA. The trials which come from a world of matter;\n\nB. The trials which come from a world of men;\n\nC. The trials we bring on ourselves.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nA. The minute we speak of matter we speak of a medium which the mind of\nto-day is just beginning to understand. The mind of other days did not\nunderstand it at all. Few phases of modern advance seem to me more\nsignificant of a closer approach to the understanding of spiritual\nthings than that which has been made along these lines.\n\nTo all the generations before our own matter was a sheer and positive\ndensity. Its hardness, solidity, and actuality could not be gainsaid.\nEarth was earth; iron was iron; wood was wood. Blood was blood; flesh\nwas flesh; bone was bone. A man was a material being attached to a\nmaterial planet, as a sponge is attached to the bottom of the sea. All\nthat he touched and ate and wore and used was of the same material\nAbsolute. As to the spiritual there could be a question; as to the\nmaterial there could be none. The speculation of occasional\nphilosophers, that matter might not after all be more than a mental\nphenomenon, was invariably hooted down. \"I know that matter is matter by\nstanding on it,\" are in substance the words attributed to even so\nspiritually-minded a man as the great Dr. Johnson. On this point, as\nperhaps on some others, he may be taken as a spokesman for the Caucasian\nportion of our race.\n\nAnd now comes modern physical science reducing matter to a tenuousness\nonly one remove from the purely spiritual, if it is as much as that.\nGone is the mass of the mountains, the stoniness of rocks, the hard\nsolidity of iron. The human body, as someone puts it, is no more than a\nfew pails of water and a handful of ash. Ash and water are alike\ndissipated into gases, and gases into elements more subtle still.\nKeeping strictly to the material modern science has reached the confines\nof materiality. Where it will lead us next no man knows.\n\nBut the inference is not unfair that the world of matter is to a\nconsiderable degree, and perhaps altogether, a world of man's own\ncreation. That is to say, while God is doing one thing with it, the\nhuman mind understands another. For the human point of view to develop\nand develop and develop till it becomes identical with God's is perhaps\nthe whole purpose of existence.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nTo me personally it was no small help in overcoming fear when I saw the\npurpose of existence as expressed in the single word, Growth. That, at\nleast, is a legitimate inference to draw from the history of life on\nthis planet. Assuming that the universe contains an intelligible design\nof any sort, and that life on this planet is part of it, a vast\ndevelopment going on eternally toward complete understanding of Infinite\nRight and Happiness would give us some explanation of the mystery of our\nbeing here. Beginning, for reasons at which we can only guess, far away\nfrom that understanding, we are forever approaching it, with forever the\njoy of something new to master or to learn. New perceptions, new\ncomprehensions, new insights gained, new victories, even little\nvictories, won, constitute, I think, our treasures laid up in that\nheaven where neither moth nor wear-and-tear destroys, and where thieves\ndo not break in and steal. Where this treasure is, there, naturally\nenough, our hearts will be also. Looking back over the ages since the\nlife-principle first glided into our planet waters--how it did so is as\nyet part of our unsolved mystery--what we chiefly see is a great\nsurging of the living thing upward and upward toward that Highest\nUniversal to which we give the name of God.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nThat is a point which we do not sufficiently seize--that God is not\nrevealed to us by one avenue of truth alone, but by all the avenues of\ntruth working together. With our tendency to keep the Universal in a\nspecial compartment of life we see Him as making Himself known through a\nline of teachers culminating in a Church or a complex of churches; and\nwe rarely think of Him as making Himself known in any other way. To\nchange the figure, He trickles to us like a brook instead of bathing us\nround and round like light or air.\n\nBut all good things must express the Universal; and all discovery of\ntruth, whether by religion, science, philosophy, or imaginative art,\nmust be discovery in God. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the\nMount are discoveries in God, but so are the advances in knowledge made\nby Plato, Aristotle, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Edison. He shows Himself\nthrough Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, but also through Homer,\nShakespeare, Michael Angelo, Beethoven, Darwin, George Eliot, William\nJames, and Henry Irving. I take the names at random as illustrating\ndifferent branches of endeavour, and if I use only great ones it is not\nthat the lesser are excluded. No one department of human effort is\nspecially His, or is His special expression. The Church cannot be so\nmore than the stage, or music more than philosophy. His Holy Spirit can\nbe no more outpoured on the bishop or the elder for his work than on the\ninventor or the scientist for his work. I say so not to minimise the\noutpouring on the bishop or the elder, but to magnify that on everyone\nworking for progress. This, I take it, is what St. John means when he\nsays, \"God does not give the Spirit with limitations.\" He who always\ngives all to all His children cannot give more.\n\nWhen our Lord restores sight to a blind man, or Peter and John cause a\nlame man to walk, we see manifestations of God; but we see equal\nmanifestations of God when one man gives us the telephone, another the\nmotor-car, and another wireless telegraphy. Whatever declares His power\ndeclares Him; and whatever declares Him is a means by which we press\nupward to the perception of His loving almightiness. The advance may be\nirregular but it is advance; and all advance is advance toward Him.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nThat is to say, we are rising above a conception of life in which matter\nis our master; and yet we are rising above it slowly. This is my chief\npoint here, because by understanding it we see why we still suffer from\nmaterial afflictions. We have overcome some of them, but only some of\nthem. It is a question of racial development. As we glance backward we\nsee how much of the way we have covered; as we look round on our\npresent conditions we see how much there is still to be achieved.\n\nTo diminish fear we should have it, I think, clearly before us that the\nhuman race has done as yet only part of its work, and put us in\npossession of only part of the resources which will one day belong to\nus. If we could compare ourselves with our ancestors in the days, let us\nsay, of Christopher Columbus or William the Conqueror we should seem in\nrelation to them like children of a higher phase of creation. If we\ncould compare ourselves with our descendants of five hundred or a\nthousand years hence we should probably be amazed at our present\nfutility and grossness. Our ancestors in the Middle Ages could do\ncertain great things, as we, too, can do certain great things; but in\ngeneral access to the Universal Storehouse which is God we have made\nprogress in ways unknown to them, as our children will make such\nprogress after us.\n\nBut we have made only the progress we have made. We have its advantages,\nbut there are advantages to which we have not yet attained. We might\nliken ourselves to people who have reached the fourth or fifth step of a\nstairway in which there are twenty or thirty. We have climbed to a\ncertain height, but we are far from having reached the plane to which we\nare ascending.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nIt is worth noting this for the reason that we are so likely to think of\nourselves as the climax to which the ages have worked up, and after\nwhich there is no beyond. We are the final word, or as the French\nexpress it, the last cry, _le dernier cri_. All that can be felt we have\nfelt, all that can be known we have experienced. For the most part this\nstand is taken by the intellectuals in all modern countries. In us of\nto-day, of this very hour, the wave of Eternity has broken, throwing\nnothing at our feet but froth. The literature of the past ten years is\nsoaked in the pessimism of those who regret that this should be all that\nthe travail of Time could produce for us.\n\nIn view of this moan from so many of the writers who have the public\near, especially in Europe, it is the more important to keep before us\nthe fact that we are children of a race but partially developed at best.\nCompared with what will one day be within human scope our actual reach\nis only a little beyond impotence. I say this not merely at a venture,\nbut on the strength of what has happened in the past. We are not a\npeople which has accomplished much, but one on the way to\naccomplishment. The achievements of which we can boast are relatively\nlike those of a child of five who boasts that he can count. Our whole\nworld-condition shows us to be racially incompetent, and able to produce\nno more than incompetent leaders. That is our present high-water mark,\nand with our high-water mark we must learn to be satisfied.\n\nEscaping from matter we are still within the grasp of matter, and shall\nprobably so continue for generations to come. Our struggles must\ntherefore be largely with matter, till little by little we achieve its\ndomination. In proportion as the individual does so now he reaps the\nreward of his victory; and in proportion as he reaps that reward fear is\novercome. Our primary fear being fear of matter, much is gained by\ngrasping the fact which modern science for the past ten or fifteen years\nhas been carefully putting before us--vainly as far as most of us are\nconcerned--that what we call matter is a force subject to the control of\nmind, while the directing of mind rests wholly with ourselves. Since we\nhave controlled matter to make it in so many ways a hostile force, it\nought to be within our power to turn it in our favour.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nWhich is, I suppose, the trend we are following, even if we follow it\nunconsciously. For the turning of the matter in our favour we have\nfortunately some notable examples. Our race has produced one perfectly\nnormal man to whom all of us sub-normals can look as the type of what we\nare one day to become.\n\nI think it a pity that so much of our thought of Him makes Him an\nexception to human possibilities. In speaking of Him as the Son of God\nwe fancy Him as being in another category from ourselves. We forget that\nwe, too, are sons of God--\"heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.\"[19] It\nis true that He realised that Sonship to a degree which we do not; but\nit is also true that we ourselves realise it to some degree. In the\ndetail of the mastery of matter to which we shall attain it is fair, I\nthink, to take Him as our standard.\n\n[19] Epistle to the Romans.\n\nTaking Him as our standard we shall work out, I venture to think, to the\nfollowing points of progress.\n\na. The control of matter in furnishing ourselves with food and drink, by\nmeans more direct than at present employed, as He turned water into wine\nand fed the multitudes with the loaves and fishes.\n\nb. The control of matter by putting away from ourselves, by methods more\nsure and less roundabout than those of to-day, sickness, blindness,\ninfirmity, and deformity.\n\nc. The control of matter by regulating our atmospheric conditions as He\nstilled the tempest.\n\nd. The control of matter by restoring to this phase of existence those\nwho have passed out of it before their time, or who can ill be spared\nfrom it, as He \"raised\" three young people from \"the dead\" and Peter and\nPaul followed His example.\n\ne. The control of matter in putting it off and on at will, as He in His\ndeath and resurrection.\n\nf. The control of matter in passing altogether out of it, as He in what\nwe call His Ascension into Heaven.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nIt will be observed that I take as historic records the statements of\nthe Bible. This I do in face of the efforts of many of the clergy in a\nnumber of the churches to make me see in the Old Testament chiefly a\ncollection of myths, and in the New a series of compilations by\nirresponsible hands, of doubtful date and authority, leaving, in the\ncase of our Lord, only a substratum which can be relied on as\nbiographical.\n\nAs an instance of what I mean I quote the following: A few weeks ago I\nhappened to mention to the distinguished head of one of the most\nimportant theological schools of one of the largest denominations in the\ncountry, our Lord's turning the water into wine. \"I've no idea that He\never did anything of the kind,\" were the words with which he dismissed\nthe subject, which I did not take up again. I am not arguing here\nagainst his point of view. I merely state that I do not share it, and\nfor these two main reasons:\n\nFirst, because the so-called Higher Criticism on which it is based is a\npurely evanescent phase of man's learning, likely to be rejected\nto-morrow by those who accept it to-day, as has been the case with other\nsuch phases;\n\nSecondly, because I feel sure that, with the mastery of matter to which\nwe have already attained, the future development of our race will\njustify these seeming \"miracles,\" and make them as natural and\ncommonplace as telegraphy and telephony.\n\nI speak only for myself when I say that the more I can feel round me the\natmosphere of omnipotence the less I am aware of fear. It is a matter of\ncourse that the one should exclude the other. The sense of being myself,\nin a measure, the inheritor of omnipotence, as an heir of God and a\nco-heir with Christ, becomes, therefore, one to cultivate. This I can do\nonly in proportion as I see that my Standard and Example cultivated it\nbefore me. In my capacity as a son of God I take as applying to myself\nthe words reported by St. John: \"In most solemn truth I tell you that\nthe Son can do nothing of Himself--He can only do what He sees the\nFather doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does in like manner.\"\n\nWhile sayings like these, of which there are many in the New Testament,\napply doubtless, in the first place, to Him who best exemplifies the\nSonship of God, they must apply, in the second place, I suppose, to all\nwho exemplify that Sonship to any degree whatever. Man is the Son of\nGod; and it is worth noting that He who is specially termed the Son of\nGod is also specially termed the Son of Man. \"Dear friends,\" St. John\nwrites, elsewhere, \"we are now God's children, but what we are to be in\nthe future has not been fully revealed to us.\" I take it, therefore, as\nno presumption on my part to emphasise in my daily thought my place as a\nco-heir with Christ, feeling that not only is God's almightiness\nexercised on my behalf, but that as much of it as I know how to use is\nplaced in my hands.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nThis last, of course, is very little. Even that little I use doubtfully,\ntimidly, tremblingly. That is the utmost reach to which present\nrace-development and personal development have brought me. With regard\nto the opportunities all round me I am as if I stood beside an airship\nin which I could fly if I knew how to work its engines, which I do not.\nOther conveniences besides airships would be of no good at all to me if\nsomeone more skilful than I didn't come to my aid. There is probably no\nperson living of whom the same is not true. Large portions of\nomnipotence are placed within hands which are too busy grasping other\nthings to seize all that they could hold.\n\nI remember the encouragement it was to me when I understood that to hold\nanything at all was so much to the good as a starting-point. I had been\nin the habit of dwelling on the much I had missed rather than on the\nlittle I had apprehended. But the little I had apprehended was, after\nall, my real possession, and one I could increase. It is like the few\ndollars a man has in a savings bank. That at least is his,\nnotwithstanding the millions he might have possessed if he had only\nknown how to acquire them. There are many instances of a few dollars in\nthe savings bank becoming the seedling of millions before the span of a\nman's life is passed.\n\nTo be glad of what we can do while knowing it is only a portion of what\nwill one day be done is to me a helpful point of view. \"There may be\ntruth in all this,\" is the observation of a young lady who has scanned\nwhat I have written, \"and yet I don't believe that we shall ever conquer\nfear.\" That, it seems to me, is to tie chains and iron weights about\none's feet when starting on a race. If we are to keep in the race at\nall, to say nothing of winning it, the spirit must be free. One must add\nthe courage which springs from a partial knowledge of the truth to the\npatience one gets from the understanding that as yet our knowledge of\nthe truth is but partial.\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nI often think that if the churches could come to this last admission it\nwould be a help to themselves and to all of us. As already hinted I am\nanxious to keep away from the subject of churches through a natural\ndread of bitterness; but this much I feel at liberty to say, saying it\nas I do in deep respect for the bodies which have kept alive the glimmer\nof Divine Light in a world which would have blown it out. In a\npartially developed race the churches can have no more than a partially\ndeveloped grasp of truth. A partially developed grasp of truth is\nmuch--it is pricelessly much--but it is not a knowledge of the whole\ntruth. Not being a knowledge of the whole truth it should be humble,\ntolerant, and eager to expand.\n\nThe weakness of the ecclesiastical system strikes me as lying in the\nassumption, or practical assumption, on the part of each sect that _it_\nis the sole repository of truth, and of all the truth. There is no sect\nwhich does not claim more than all mankind can claim. Moreover, there is\nno sect which does not make its claims exclusively, asserting not only\nthat these claims are right, but that all other claims are wrong. To the\nbest of my knowledge, the sect has not yet risen which would make more\nthan shadowy concessions to any other sect.\n\nTrue, it must not be forgotten that no sect bases its teaching on what\nit has worked out for itself, but on the revelation made to it in Jesus\nChrist. Every sect would admit that its own view of truth might have\nbeen partial were it not for the fact that in Jesus Christ it has\neverything. Where the theories of men might be inadequate His immense\nknowledge comes in as supplementary.\n\nThis might be so had He Himself undertaken to give more than a partial\nview of truth. But He says expressly that He does not. He gives what His\nhearers might be assumed to be able to assimilate; but that is all. \"I\nhave much more to say to you, but you are unable at present to bear the\nburden of it.\"[20] It being an axiom in teaching to give the pupil only\nwhat he can receive, this is the utmost that our Lord attempts.\n\n[20] St. John.\n\nHe goes on, however, to add these words, which are significant: \"But\nwhen He has come--the Spirit of Truth--He will guide you into all the\ntruth.\"[21] No doubt that process is even now going on, and will continue\nto go on in proportion as our race develops. We are being guided into\nall the truth, through all kinds of channels, spiritual, literary,\nscientific, philosophical. The naive supposition that this promise was\nkept on the Day of Pentecost, when a sudden access of knowledge\ncommitted all truth to the apostles and through them to the Church\nforevermore, is contradicted by the facts. The apostles had no such\nknowledge and made no claims to its possession. The Church has never had\nit, either. \"All truth\" covers much more ground than do questions of\necclesiastical forms of government or of the nature of the sacraments.\n\"All truth\" must go as far as the Universal goes, leaving nothing\noutside its range. \"All truth\" must surely be such self-evident truth as\nto admit of no further dissensions.\n\n[21] St. John.\n\nTaking truth as a circle, the symbol of perfection, we may assume that\nour Lord disclosed a view of a very large arc in its circumference. But\nof the arc which He disclosed no one group of His followers has as yet\nperceived the whole. At the same time it is probable that each group has\nperceived some arc of that arc, and an arc perceived by no other group.\n\"All truth\" being too large for any one group to grasp, the Baptist sees\nhis segment, the Catholic his, the Methodist his, the Anglican his, the\nCongregationalist his, until the vision of Christ is made up. I name\nonly the groups with which we are commonly most familiar, though we\nmight go through the hundreds of Christian sects and agree that each has\nits angle from which it sees what is visible from no other. Though there\nis likely to be error in all such perceptions a considerable portion of\ntruth must be there, or the sect in question would not survive. It is\nsafe to say that no sect comes into existence, thrives, and endures,\nunless it is to supply that which has been missed elsewhere.\n\n\n\nXII\n\n\nWhat place is there then for intersectarian or ecclesiastical arrogance?\n\nThe question is far from foreign to my subject. Fear is what arrogance\nfeeds upon; fear is what arrogance produces; and arrogance is the\nspecial immorality of churches. To my mind the churches are almost\nprecluded from combating fear, for the reason that arrogance is to so\nmarked a degree their outstanding vice.\n\nThe Catholic is arrogant toward the Protestant; the Protestant is\narrogant toward the Catholic; the Anglican is arrogant to him whom he\ncalls a Dissenter in England, and merely \"unchurches\" in America; the\nUnitarian is arrogant to those whom he thinks less intellectual than\nhimself; those who believe in the Trinity are arrogant toward the\nUnitarian. All other Christian bodies have their own shades of\narrogance, entirely permitted by their codes, like scorn of the weak to\nthe knights of Arthur's court. An active, recognised, and mutual\narrogance all round is the reason why it is so rare to see any two or\nthree or half a dozen Christian sects work for any cause in harmony.\nArrogance begets fear as surely and prolifically as certain of the\nrodents beget offspring.\n\nMuch has been written during the past fifty years on the beautiful theme\nof the reunion of Christendom. Rarely does any great synod or\nconvention or council meet without some scheme or some aspiration toward\nthis end. Every now and then a programme is put forth, now by this body,\nnow by that, with yearning and good intentions. And in every such\nprogramme the same grim humour is to be read behind the brotherly\ninvitation. \"We can all unite--if others will think as we do.\" Is it any\nwonder that nothing ever comes of these efforts? And yet, I am\npersuaded, a day will dawn when something will.\n\n\n\nXIII\n\n\n\"When he has come--the Spirit of Truth--he will guide you into all the\ntruth.\" That will be in the course of our race-development. As step is\nadded to step, as milestone is passed after milestone, as we see more\nclearly what counts and what doesn't count, as we outgrow childishness,\nas we come more nearly to what St. Paul calls \"mature manhood, the\nstature of full-grown men in Christ,\"[22] we shall do many things that\nnow seem impossible. Among them I think we shall view intersectarian\narrogance as a mark of enfeebled intelligence. There will come an era of\necclesiastical climbing down. We shall see more distinctly our own\nsegment of the arc which our Lord has revealed, and because of that we\nshall know that another man sees what we have missed. The Methodist will\nthen acknowledge that he has much to learn from the Catholic; the\nCatholic will know the same of the Baptist; the Anglican of the\nPresbyterian; the Unitarian of the Anglican; and a co-operative universe\nbe reflected in a co-operative Church. Each will lose something of his\npresent cocksureness and exclusiveness. God will be seen as too big for\nany sect, while all the sects together will sink out of sight in God.\n\n[22] Epistle to the Ephesians.\n\nIn the meantime we are only working toward that end, but toward it we\nare working. Every man who believes in a church is doing something to\nbring that end about when he gives a kindly thought to any other church.\nI say this the more sincerely owing to the fact that I myself am\nnaturally bigoted, and such kindly thought does not come to me easily.\nThere are sects I dislike so much that my eyes jump from the very\nparagraphs in the newspapers which mention them. And yet when I curb\nmyself, when I force myself to read them, when I force myself to read\nthem sympathetically and with a good wish in my heart, my mental\natmosphere grows wider and I am in a stronger, surer, steadier, and more\nfearless world.\n\nMuch criticism has been levelled at the Church within the past few\nyears; but it should be remembered that the Church no more than\ngovernment, no more than business, no more than education, can be ahead\nof the only partially developed race of which she is one of the\nexpressions. She is not yet out of the world of matter, though she is\nemerging. In proportion as her concepts, hopes, and aims remain material\nshe will be as incompetent as any other body with the same handicaps and\nlimitations. In proportion as she learns to \"overthrow arrogant\nreckonings and every stronghold that towers high in defiance of the\nknowledge of God,\"[23] she will become the leader of the world, and our\ngreat deliverer from fear.\n\n[23] Second Epistle to the Corinthians.\n\n\n\nXIV\n\n\nB. Of the trials brought upon us by a world of men perhaps our chief\nresentment springs from their unreasonableness. They are not necessary;\nthey might be avoided; at their worst they could be tempered. For this\nreason, too, they take us by surprise. Those who bring them on us seem\ncaptious, thoughtless, cruel. When they could so easily offer us a\nhelping hand they obstruct us for the mere sport of doing so. People\ntoward whom we have never had an unkindly thought will often go out of\ntheir way to do us a bad turn.\n\nI shall not enlarge on this, since most of us are in a position to\nenlarge on it for ourselves. There is scarcely an individual for whom\nthe way, hard enough at any time, has not been made harder by the barbed\nwire entanglements which other people throw across his path. Almost\nanything we plan we plan in the teeth of someone's opposition; almost\nanything with which we try to associate ourselves is fraught with\ndiscords and irritations that often inspire disgust. The worlds in which\nco-operation is essential, from that of governmental politics to that of\noffices and homes, are centres of animosities and suspicions, and\ntherefore breeding-grounds of fear.\n\nI suppose most grown-up people can recall the wounded amazement with\nwhich they first found themselves attacked by someone to whom they were\nnot conscious of ever having given cause. Some are sensitive to this\nsort of thing; some grow callous to it; some are indifferent; and some\nare said to enjoy it. In the main I think we are sensitive and remain\nsensitive. I have been told by a relative of one of the three or four\ngreatest living writers of English that the unfavourable comment of a\nchild would affect him so that he would be depressed for hours.\nStatesmen and politicians, I understand, suffer far more deeply in the\ninner self than the outer self ever gives a sign of. The fact that our\nown weakness or folly or recklessness or wrong-doing lays us open to a\nblow is not much consolation when it falls.\n\n\n\nXV\n\n\nFor myself all this became more tolerable when I had fully grasped the\nfact that we are still to a considerable degree a race of savages. From\nsavages one cannot expect too much, not even from oneself. We have\nadvanced beyond the stage at which one naturally attacked a stranger\nsimply because he was a stranger, but we have not advanced very far. The\ninstinct to do one another harm is still strong in us. We do one another\nharm when it would be just as easy, perhaps easier, to do one another\ngood. Just as the Ashanti hiding in the bush will hurl his assegai at a\npasser-by for no other reason than that he is passing, so our love of\ndoing harm will spit itself out on people just because we know\ntheir names.\n\nPersonally I find myself often doing it. I could on the spur of the\nmoment write as many as twenty names of people of whom I am accustomed\nto speak ill without really knowing much about them. I make it an excuse\nthat they are in the public eye, that I don't like their politics, or\ntheir social opinions, or their literary output, or the things they do\non the stage. Anything will serve so long as it gives me the opportunity\nto hurl my assegai as I see them pass. One does it instinctively,\nviciously, because like other semi-savages one is undeveloped mentally,\nand it is to be expected.\n\nBy expecting it from others half our resentment is forestalled. Knowing\nthat from a race such as ours we shall not get anything else we learn to\ntake it philosophically. If I hurl my assegai at another, another hurls\nhis assegai at me, and in a measure we are quits. Even if, trying to\nrise above my inborn savagery, I withhold my assegai, it is no sign that\nanother will withhold his, and I may be wounded even in the effort to do\nmy best. Very well; that, too, is to be expected and must be\ntaken manfully.\n\nThe learning to take it manfully is what as individuals we get out of\nit. For the most part we are soft at heart, soft, I mean, not in the\nsense of being tender, but in that of being flabby.\n\nOn myself this was borne in less than a year ago. I had for some months\nbeen working hard at a picture-play which when put before the public was\nlargely misunderstood. While some of the papers praised it others\ncriticised it severely, but whether they praised or blamed I was seen as\n\"teaching a lesson,\" a presumption from which I shrink. It is not that\nthere is any harm in teaching a lesson if a man is qualified, but I no\nlonger consider myself qualified. Sharing ideas is one thing, and the\nhighest pleasure of the reason; but the assumption that because you\nsuggest an idea you seek to convert is quite another thing. If I failed\nto make it plain that in this present book I was merely offering ideas\nfor inspection, and in the hope of getting others in return, I should\nput it in the fire.\n\nMy picture-play once handed over to the public I experienced an intense\nreaction of depression. To figure through the country, wherever there\nare screens, as \"teaching a lesson\" seemed more than I could bear. It\n_was_ more than I could bear, till it flashed on me that I couldn't bear\nit merely because I was inwardly flabby. I was not taking the experience\nmanfully. I was not standing up to it, nor getting from it that\ntoughening of the inner fibre which it had to yield. As usual in my\ncase, owing to an acquaintance with the Bible imparted to me in\nchildhood, a suggestion from the Bible was that which righted me again\ntoward cheerfulness. It came, as such things always do, without any\nseeking, or other operation beyond that of the subconscious self.\n\n_Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ._[24]\n\n[24] St Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy.\n\nIt was exactly what I needed to do--to endure hardness--to take it--to\nbear it--to be more of a man for it. Moreover, the idea was a new\nsuggestion. I had not understood before that to the conquest of fear the\nhardening of the inner man is an auxiliary. My object had been to ward\noff fear so that it shouldn't touch me; but to let it strike and rebound\nbecause it could make no impact was an enlarging of the principle.\nViewing the experience as a strengthening process enabled me not only to\ngo through it but to do so with serenity.\n\nThis, I imagine, is the main thing we are to get out of the struggle\nbrought on us through living in a world of men such as men are to-day.\nIt is a pity they are not better, but being no better than they are we\ncan get that much from the fact--the inner hardening. When, justly or\nunjustly, others attack or hurt or worry or anger or annoy me, the\nknowledge that through the very trial I am toughening within, where so\noften I am without moral muscle, can be a perceptible support.\n\n\n\nXVI\n\n\nC. Of the two main trials we bring on ourselves I suppose it would be\nonly right to put sickness first.\n\nUnder sickness I include everything that makes for age, decay, and the\nconditions commonly classed as \"breaking up.\" It is becoming more and\nmore recognised, I think, that physical collapse has generally behind it\na mental cause, or a long series of mental causes too subtle for\ntabulation.\n\nI shall not dwell on this, for the reason that during the past fifty\nyears so much has been written on the subject. A number of movements for\nhuman betterment have kept the whole idea in the forefront of the public\nmind. It is an idea only partially accepted as yet, arousing as much\nopposition among the conservative as hope on the part of the\nprogressive. Since, however, science and religion are both, in their\ndifferent ways, working on it together, some principle which can no\nlonger be questioned is likely to be worked out within the next few\ngenerations.\n\nAll I shall attempt to do now is to re-state what seems to me the\nfact--stated by others with knowledge and authority--that God, rightly\nunderstood, is the cure of disease and not the cause of it. There is\nsomething repugnant in the thought of Universal Intelligence\npropagating harmful bacteria, and selecting the crises at which we shall\nsuccumb to their effects. The belief that God sends sickness upon us\namounts to neither less nor more than that. The bacilli which we try to\ndestroy He uses His almighty power to cultivate, so that even our\nefforts to protect ourselves become defiances of His Will.\n\nSurely the following incident, which gives our Lord's attitude toward\ndisease, affords a reasonable basis for our own.\n\n\"Once He was teaching on the Sabbath in one of the synagogues where a\nwoman was present who for eighteen years had been a confirmed invalid;\nshe was bent double, and was unable to lift herself to her full height.\nBut Jesus saw her, and calling to her, He said to her, 'Woman, you are\nfree from your weakness.' And He put His hands on her, and she\nimmediately stood upright and began to give glory to God. Then the\nWarden of the Synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured her on the\nSabbath day, said to the crowd, 'There are six days in the week on\nwhich people ought to work. On those days therefore come and get\nyourselves cured, and not on the Sabbath day.' But the Lord's reply to\nhim was, 'Hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath day untie his\nbullock or his ass from the stall and lead him to water? And this woman,\ndaughter of Abraham as she is, _whom Satan had bound_ for no less than\neighteen years, was she not to be loosed from this chain because it is\nthe Sabbath day?' When He had said this all His opponents were ashamed,\nwhile the whole multitude was delighted at the many glorious things\ncontinually done by Him.\"[25]\n\n[25] St. Luke.\n\nIt was not God, in His opinion, who had afflicted this woman; it was\nSatan, the personification of all evil. But in order that such\nreferences should not be misunderstood He had said of Satan, only a\nshort time before, \"I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.\"[26]\n\n[26] St. Luke.\n\nHeaven, I take it, is creation as its Creator sees it. \"God saw\neverything that he had made, and behold it was very good.\"[27] And from\nthis creation, with the rapidity of the quickest thing we know anything\nabout, a flash of lightning, our Lord saw the personification of evil\nblotted out. What thought had formed thought could destroy. The spectre\nwhich misunderstanding of God had raised in a life in which everything\nwas _very good_ became nothing at the instant when God was understood.\n\n[27] The Book of Genesis.\n\nThe occasion of His speaking the words I have quoted is worth noting as\nbearing on the subject.\n\nA little earlier He had sent out seventy of His disciples to be the\nheralds of the Kingdom. \"Cure the sick in that town, and tell them the\nKingdom of God is now at your door.\"[28] By this time the seventy had\nreturned, exclaiming joyfully, \"Master, even the demons submit to us\nwhen we utter your name.\"[29] It was apparently the use of this word\n_demons_ which called forth from Him that explanation, \"I beheld Satan\nas lightning fall from heaven.\" In other words, Satan is the creation of\nwrong thought; the demons are the creations of wrong thought. Where the\nUniversal Good is all there can be no place for evil or evil spirits.\nBanish the concept and you banish the thing. The action is as quick as\nthought, and thought is as quick as lightning. \"I have given you power,\"\nHe goes on to add, \"to tread serpents and scorpions underfoot, and to\ntrample on all the power of the Enemy; and in no case shall anything do\nyou harm.\"[30]\n\n[28] St. Luke.\n\n[29] St. Luke.\n\n[30] St. Luke.\n\nThis was no special gift bestowed on them and only on them. God has\nnever, as far as we can see, dealt in special and temporary gifts. He\nhelps us to see those we possess already. What our Lord seems anxious to\nmake clear is the power over evil with which the human being is always\nendowed. It is probably to be one of our great future discoveries that\nin no case shall anything do us harm. As yet we scarcely believe it.\nOnly an individual here and there sees that freedom and domination must\nbelong to us. But, if I read the signs of the times aright, the rest of\nus are slowly coming to the same conclusion. We are less scornful of\nspiritual power than we were even a few years ago. The cocksure\nscientific which in its time was not a whit less arrogant than the\ncocksure ecclesiastical is giving place to a consciousness that man is\nthe master of many things of which he was once supposed to be the slave.\nIn proportion as the wiser among us are able to corroborate that which\nwe simpler ones feel by a sixth or seventh sense, a long step will be\ntaken toward the immunity from suffering which our Lord knew to be\nideally our inheritance.\n\n\n\nXVII\n\n\nSickness, age, decay, with all the horrors with which we invest our exit\nfrom this phase of existence, I take to be a misreading of God's\nintentions. We shall learn to read better by and by, and have already\nbegun to do so. To this beginning I attribute the improvement which in\none way or another has taken place in our general health--an\nimprovement in which science and religion have worked together, often\nwithout perceiving the association--and in the prolonging of youth which\nin countries like the British Empire and the United States is, within\nthirty or forty years, to be noted easily.\n\nMisreading of God's intentions I might compare to that misreading of his\nparent's intentions which goes on in the mind of every child of six or\nseven. He sees the happenings in the household, but sees them in a light\nof his own. Years afterwards, when their real significance comes to him,\nhe smiles at his childish distortions of the obvious.\n\nIn comparison with what St. Paul calls \"mature manhood, the stature of\nfull-grown men in Christ,\" our present rating might be that of a child\nof this age. It is no higher. Misreading is all that we are equal to,\nbut it is something to be able to misread. It is a step on the way to\nreading correctly. Though our impulse to learn works feebly it works\nrestlessly; and a day will surely come when we shall be able to\ninterpret God aright.\n\n\n\nXVIII\n\n\nNext to sickness I should place poverty as the second of the two great\ntrials we bring upon ourselves.\n\nUnder poverty I class all sense of restriction, limitation, and material\nhelplessness. As the subject will be taken up more in detail elsewhere I\nwish for the minute to say no more than this: that, in an existence of\nwhich Growth seems to be the purpose, God could not intend that any of\nus should be without full power of expansion.\n\nWhat we are worth to him we must be worth as individuals; and what we\nare worth as individuals must depend on the peculiar combination of\nqualities which goes to make up each one of us. _I_, poor creature that\nI sometimes seem to others and always to myself, am so composed that God\nnever before had anything exactly like me in the whole round of His\ncreation. My value lies in a special blend of potentialities. Of the\nbillions and trillions of human beings who have passed across this\nplanet not one could ever have done what I can do, or have filled my\nplace toward God and His designs.\n\nAmong the billions and trillions I may seem trivial--to men. I may even\nseem trivial to myself. To such numbers as these I can add so little\nwhen I come, and take away so little from them when I go, that I am not\nworth counting. Quite so--to all human reckoning. But my value is not my\nvalue to men; it is not even my value to myself; it is my value to God.\nHe alone knows my use, and the peculiar beauty I bring to the ages in\nmaking my contribution. It is no presumptuous thing to say that He could\nno more spare me than any other father of a normal and loving family\ncould spare one of the children of his flesh and blood.\n\nNow, my value to God is my first reckoning. We commonly make it the\nlast, if we ever make it at all; but it is the first and the ruling one.\n\nWhat I am to my family, my country, myself, is all secondary. They\ndetermine only the secondary results. The first results come from my\nfirst relationship, and my first relationship is to God. As the child of\nmy parents, as a citizen of my country, as a denizen of this planet, my\nplace is a temporary one. As the son of God I am from everlasting to\neverlasting, a splendid being with the universe as my home.\n\nNow this, it seems to me, is my point of departure for the estimate of\nmy possible resources. I cannot expect less of the good things of the\nuniverse than God would naturally bestow on His son. To expect less is\nto get less, since it is to dwarf my own power of receiving. If I close\nthe opening through which abundance flows it cannot be strange if I shut\nabundance out.\n\nAnd that is precisely what we find throughout the human race, millions\nupon millions of lives tightly shut against His generosity. The most\ngenerous treatment for which the majority of us look is man's. The only\nstandard by which the majority of us appraise our work is man's. You\nhave a job; you get your twenty or thirty or fifty or a hundred dollars\na week for it; and by those dollars you judge your earning capacity and\nallow it to be judged. You hardly ever pause to remember that there is\nan estimate of earning capacity which measures industry and good will\nand integrity and devotion, and puts them above all tricks of trade _and\nrewards them_--rewards them, I mean, not merely in mystical blessings in\neons far off, possibly the highest blessings we shall ever know, but\nrewards them in a way that will satisfy you now.\n\n\"He satisfieth the empty soul,\" writes the psalmist, in one of the\nsublimest lyrics ever penned, \"and filleth the hungry soul with\ngoodness.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" says the Caucasian. \"When you have crushed out all\nyour present cravings and forgotten them, He will give you joys of which\nnow you have no conception.\"\n\nBut are not my present cravings those which count for me? and do they\nnot make up precisely that character which renders me unique? True, my\nlongings now may have to the longings I shall one day entertain only the\nrelation of your little boy's craving for an alphabetic picture-book to\nthe course in philosophy he will take when he is twenty-five; but so\nlong as the picture-book is the thing he can appreciate you give it to\nhim. Is not this common sense? And can we expect the Father of us all to\nact in other than common-sense ways?\n\nIt is because we do so expect--because we do so almost universally--that\nwe have blocked the channels of His blessings. The world is crowded with\nmen and women working their fingers to the bone, and even so just\nsqueaking along betwixt life and death and dragging their children after\nthem. They are the great problem of mankind; they rend the heart with\npity. They rend the heart with pity all the more for the reason that\nthere is no sense in their poverty. There is no need of it. God never\nwilled it, and what God never willed can go out of life with the speed\nof Satan out of Heaven. We have only to fulfil certain conditions,\ncertain conditions quite _easy_ to fulfil, to find the stores of the\nUniversal laid as a matter of course at the feet of the sons of God.\n\n\"Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts,\" are the striking words\nof the prophet Malachi, \"if I will not open you the windows of heaven\nand pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to\nreceive it.... And all nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a\ndelightsome land,\"\n\n\n\nXIX\n\n\nBut it is the old story: we do not believe it. It is too good to be\ntrue, so we put it away from us. In a world where the material is so\npressing we use only material measures, and bow only to material force.\n\nSo be it! That is apparently as far as our race-development takes us. It\ntakes us into suffering, but not out of it. Individuals have come into\nit and worked their way out again; but most of us can go no faster than\nthe crowd. In that case we must suffer. In a terrible crisis in his\nhistory, and after many sins, David was able to write these words: \"I\nsought the Lord ... and He delivered me out of all my fears.\" It is the\nroyal avenue, and it is open to anyone. And yet if we do not take it, it\nstill does not follow that all is lost.\n\nOf the world as it is the outstanding fact is the necessity for\nstruggle. Struggle may conceivably enter into every other world. There\nis something in us which requires it, which craves for it. A static\nheaven in which all is won and there is nothing forevermore but to enjoy\nhas never made much appeal to us. If eternal life means eternal growth\nwe shall always have something with which to strive, since growth means\novercoming.\n\nWhile sorry, then, that we have not released ourselves to a greater\ndegree than we have, we may take heart of grace from what we have\nachieved. We must simply struggle on. Struggle will continue to make and\nshape us. Whether our problems spring from a world of matter, from a\nworld of men, or from ourselves, their solving brings us a fuller grasp\nof truth. The progress may be slow but it is progress. Hardship by\nhardship, task by task, failure by failure, conquest by conquest, we\npull ourselves up a little higher in the scale. Some day we shall see in\nthe Universal all that we have been looking for, and be delivered out of\nall our fears.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE WORLD AS IT IS AND THE FALSE GOD OF FEAR\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nOf all fears the most dogging and haunting are those connected with\nmoney. Everyone knows them, even the rich. For many years I was their\nvictim, and will now try to tell how I got rid of them so effectively\nthat I may call it entirely.\n\nHaving a good many responsibilities I lived in terror of not being able\nto keep pace with their demands. The dread was like a malign invisible\npresence, never leaving me. With much in the way of travel, friendship,\nand variety of experience, which I could have enjoyed, the evil thing\nwas forever at my side. \"This is all very well,\" it would whisper in\nmoments of pleasure, \"but it will be over in an hour or two, and then\nyou'll be alone with me as before.\"\n\nI can recall minutes when the delight in landscape, or art, or social\nintercourse, became alien to me, something to be thrust away. Once in\ndriving through rich, lush, storied Warwickshire on the way to\nStratford-on-Avon--once in a great Parisian restaurant where the\nrefinement, brilliancy, and luxury of the world seemed crushed into\nepitome--once at a stupendous performance of _Goetterdaemmerung_ at\nMunich--once while standing on the shores of a lovely New Hampshire lake\nlooking up at a mountain round which, as Emerson says, the Spirit of\nMystery hovers and broods--but these are only remembered high points of\na constant dread of not being able to meet my needs and undertakings.\nThere used to be an hour in the very early morning--\"the coward hour\nbefore the dawn,\" it is called by a poet-friend of my own--when I was in\nthe habit of waking, only to hear the sleepless thing saying, as my\nsenses struggled back into play, \"My God, can you be sleeping\npeacefully, with possible ruin just ahead of you?\" After that further\nsleep would become impossible for an hour or two, such wakings\noccurring, in periods of stress, as often as two and three times a week.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nIt was the spiritually minded man whom I have already quoted as giving\nme the three great points as to God's direction who first helped me to\nsee that, on the part of anyone working hard and trying on the whole to\ndo right, the fear of being left without means amounts in effect to\ndenial of God. Thinking this over for myself during the course of some\nyears, this fear has come to seem to me of the nature of blasphemy. It\nis like the \"Curse God and die,\" of the wife of Job. I shall not\nhesitate to speak strongly on the subject, because so few are speaking\non it strongly--while the urgency is pressing.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nI have already said that it does not seem reasonable that the Father\nshould put us into His universe to expand, and then deny us the power\nof expanding. The power of expanding is not wrapped up in money, but in\nthe world as it is the independence of the one of the other is not very\ngreat. \"One of the hardest things I ever had to do,\" a mother said to\nme, not long ago, \"was to tell my little girl that her father and I\ncould not afford to send her to college.\" That is what I mean. To most\nof us \"expanding\" and \"affording\" amount to the same thing.\n\nTrue, there are natures which transcend the limitations of \"affording,\"\nand by innate strength do what others resign themselves to not doing.\nFor instance, there are men and women who \"put themselves\" through\ncollege, doing similar things which bring out the best in their\ncharacters. These are the exceptions; and they are the exceptions\nprecisely for the reason that, whether they know it or not, they are\nnearer than their fellows to the divine working principle. It is not\nnecessary for us to be conscious of that principle in order to get much\nof its result, though consciousness enables us to get more of it. The\nstrong are strong because of harmony with God, at least to some extent.\nThey may misuse their strength, as we can misuse anything; but the mere\nfact of possessing it shows a certain degree of touch with the\nUniversal. But I am speaking chiefly of the weak, of those who think\nfirst of all in terms of restriction rather than in those of privilege\nto come and go and be and do.\n\nI repeat that though this privilege is not dependent on money, money\nexpresses it to the average mind.\n\nAnd what is money after all? It is only a counter for what we call\ngoods. Goods is the word with which, according to our Anglo-Saxon genius\nfor the right phrase, we sum up the good things with which the Father\nblesses His children. The root connection between good, goods, and God\nis worth everyone's attention, A hundred dollars is simply a standard of\nmeasurement for so much of God's good things. A thousand dollars\nrepresents so much more; a million dollars so much more again. But it is\nimportant to note that this is not God's standard of measurement; it is\nman's, and adopted only for man's convenience.\n\nAs for God's standard of measurement it is inconceivable that the\nUniversal Father should give to one of His children far more of His\n\"goods\" than he can use, while denying to another that which he is in\nabsolute need of. The Universal Father could surely not do otherwise\nthan bless all alike. With His command of resources He must bless all\nalike, not by depriving anyone, but by enriching everyone. If everyone\ndoes not enjoy plenty it must be because of the bringing in of some\nprinciple of distribution which could never have been His.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nThe right and the wrong principles of distribution are indirectly placed\nbefore us by our Lord in one of the most beautiful passages which ever\nfell from human lips. Familiar as it is, I venture to quote it at\nlength, for the reason that the modern translation makes some of the\npoints clearer than they are in the King James version which most of us\nknow best.\n\n\"No man can be the bondservant of two masters; for either he will\ndislike one and like the other, or he will attach himself to one and\nthink slightingly of the other. You cannot be the bondservants both of\nGod and of gold. For this reason I charge you not to be over-anxious\nabout your lives, inquiring what you are to eat or what you are to\ndrink, nor yet about your bodies, inquiring what clothes you are to put\non. Is not the life more precious than its food, and the body than its\nclothing? Look at the birds which fly in the air; they do not sow or\nreap or store up in barns, but your Heavenly Father feeds them; are you\nnot of much greater value than they? Which of you by being over-anxious\ncan add a single foot to his height? And why be anxious about clothing?\nLearn a lesson of the wild lilies. Watch their growth. They neither toil\nnor spin, and yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his\nmagnificence could array himself like one of these. And yet if God so\nclothes the wild herbage which to-day flourishes and to-morrow is cast\ninto the oven, is it not much more certain that he will clothe you, you\nmen of little faith? Do not even begin to be anxious, therefore, saying,\n'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'\nFor all these are questions that Gentiles are always asking; but your\nHeavenly Father knows that you need these things--all of them. But make\nHis Kingdom and righteousness your chief aim, and then these things\nshall be given you in addition. Do not be over-anxious, therefore, about\nto-morrow, for to-morrow will bring its own cares. Enough for each day\nare its own troubles.\"\n\nIn this passage there are two points, each of which may merit a few\nwords as a means of eliminating fear.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nThe first point is the reference to what we are to make our \"chief\naim\"--the Kingdom of God and righteousness.\n\nI feel sure we generally miss the force of these words through our\nCaucasian sanctimoniousness. We can think of God's Kingdom and\nrighteousness only in the light of the pietistic. The minute they are\nmentioned we strike what I have already called our artificial pose, our\nfunereal frame of mind. I am not flippant when I say that in the mind of\nthe Caucasian the first step toward seeking the Kingdom of God and\nrighteousness is in pulling a long face. We can hardly think of\nrighteousness except as dressed in our Sunday clothes, and looking and\nfeeling wobegone. To most of us the seeking of righteousness suggests at\nonce an increase in attending church services, or going to\nprayer-meetings, or making missionary efforts--excellent practices in\nthemselves--according to the form of pietism we are most familiar with.\nThose of us who have no form of pietism feel cut off from making the\nattempt at all.\n\nOh, to be simple!--to be natural!--to be spontaneous!--to be free from\nthe concept of a God shut up within the four walls of a building and\nwhose chief interests are the sermon and the number of parishioners!\nThe Kingdom of God is the Universal Kingdom, including everyone and\neverything--all interests, all commerce, all government, all invention,\nall art, all amusement, all the staid pursuits of the old and all the\nardour of the young, all sport, all laughter, all that makes for\ngladness. It is the Kingdom of the bird and the flower and the horse and\nthe motor-car and the motion-picture house and the office and the\ntheatre and the ballroom and the school and the college and everything\nelse that man has evolved for himself. He has evolved these things\nwrongly because nine times out of ten he has seen them as outside God's\nKingdom, instead as being God's own undertakings because they are ours.\nAll that we have to do to seek His Kingdom is to do what we are doing\nevery day, with energy and fun, but to do it knowing we are His agents\nand co-workers. As a matter of fact, most of us are, to some extent,\ndoing that already, getting food, shelter, clothing, and all other\nnecessary things as our reward. What we do not get is relief from fear,\nbecause we do not understand that fear above all things is what He\nwould take away from us.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nThe second point is a curious one, and all the more emphatic for being\ncurious. Our Lord invents a false god. He names the false god of fear,\nwho was never named before. Mammon is the word which the modern\ntranslator gives as gold. As Mammon it is translated in the Authorised\nVersion, whence we get the familiar phrase, \"Ye cannot serve God\nand Mammon.\"\n\nBut Mammon was never the name of an idol or other form of false deity.\nThe word, which is Syriac, means money. Our Lord, apparently, made it\nthe name of a false god in order to set before us, and make vivid to us,\na false principle.\n\nThat false principle is in the belief that the material essentials for\nliving and expanding are dependent on man's economic laws.\n\nThis is a point of vast importance to the individual who desires to\nstrike out beyond the crowd, not only getting what he needs, but\nridding himself of fear.\n\nThe law of supply and demand is the most practical which the human race\nin its present stage has been able to evolve. That it is not an ideal\nlaw is obvious. There are ways in which it works, and ways in which it\ndoes not. When the Christians began to act for themselves they\nestablished a community of goods, such as had obtained among the little\nband who gathered round our Lord. Almost at once it was given up,\npresumably as being too advanced for the existing world of men. I\nsuppose we might say the same of the various systems of Socialism and\nCommunism urged on us at the present day. However good they may be, we\nare not ready to put them into practice. That, I judge--without\npositively knowing--is the reason why certain great Christian bodies\noppose both. These bodies, I assume, are not hostile to equal\ndistribution in itself, but only to equal distribution before men are\ndeveloped to a stage at which it would be wise.\n\nBut my point is independent of all men's theories, and rests simply on\nthe fact that, whatever the law of man, God is not bound by it.\n\nIf we can believe the Old and New Testaments--which, of course, some of\nus do not--He has shown on many, many occasions that He is far from\nbeing bound by it. Time after time He comes to the individual's relief\naccording to His own law. We reject these occurrences as mythical on the\nground that the laws of supply and demand--and some other laws as law is\nunderstood by us--do not support them; and yet it is in the power of the\nindividual to test the truth for himself.\n\nThat is one of the burdens of both Testaments. The individual is\nimplored to see the only real system for the distribution of \"goods\" as\nGod's. It is not expressed in that way, but that is what it comes to.\nGod owns and disposes of everything. He has not put us into His Universe\nand left us to fend for ourselves. He follows us. He cares for us. Not\none is forgotten or overlooked by Him. It is personal watching and\nbrooding and defence. He is our Father, not merely for the purpose of\nhearing us sing hymns, and forgiving our sins when we stop committing\nthem, but for all our aims and objects. Nothing that concerns us is so\nsmall but that His Infinite Intelligence follows it; no need of ours is\nso large but that His All-Ownership can meet it. \"Do not two sparrows\nsell for a half-penny?\" is our Lord's illustration on this point, \"yet\nnot one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave. But\nas for you,\" He reasons, in order that we may understand the\ninfinitesimal nature of God's care, \"the very hairs on your heads are\nall numbered. Away then with fear!\"[31]\n\n[31] St Matthew.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nAway then with fear, because our first and over-ruling and\nall-determining relationship is to Him.\n\nIn eliminating money-fears from my own life that was the fact which\nhelped me most. I had not only to seize it intellectually, but to get\nwhat William James calls the \"feeling\" of it, the apprehension of it in\nmy subconsciousness. It was like acquiring a new instinct. The\n_Metanoia_, the re-directing of my thought, was a thorough and\nbasic change.\n\nIt meant getting up in the morning with a new conception as to why I was\nworking and for whom. I had taken it for granted hitherto that I was\nworking for such and such a firm, for as much money as they would pay\nme. As much money as they would pay me was the limit of my expectation.\nBeyond the law of supply and demand I had no vision; and whenever the\ndemand fell short fear was the result.\n\nThe change in my base was in seeing that working for such and such a\nfirm, for as much money as they would pay me, was merely incidental. It\nwas secondary. It was not what determined my position. It was not what\ndetermined my reward. It was a small way of looking at a situation which\nwas big. It was a small way of looking at a situation which was big,\nmerely to confine my objective to such selling and buying as goes on in\nthe planet called the Earth. I was working for the Master of the\nUniverse, who had all the resources of the universe with which to pay me\nfor what I was worth _to Him_.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nIt is this last fact, as I have hinted already, which fixes my true\nvalue. To the firm for which I am working I am worth so many dollars and\ncents, and if for any reason I am unable to do their work they will get\nsomeone else who can. I am not essential to them in any way, however\nessential they may be to me. It is my part to \"keep my job,\" since if I\ndon't I may find it hard to get another. If I do get another it will be\non the same principle, of being paid what I can be made to work for, and\nnot a penny more.\n\nBut in working for the Master of the Universe I am working for One to\nwhom I am essential. My \"job\" could not be \"swung\" by anyone else, since\neveryone else is essential to the swinging of his own. I am not \"taken\non\" to do what anyone else could do as well; I am positively needed for\nthis thing and for no other thing.\n\nThe nature of \"this thing\" for which I am needed may be seen in the\nobvious duties of my situation--as regards my family, my employers, and\nmy surroundings, which sum up my responsibilities toward men in general.\nNo explanation of myself can be independent of men in general, since my\nwork is for them in its final aim. If I forget them I forget God, God\nexpressing Himself to me through men in general, as through my family\nand my employers in particular.\n\nIncidentally, then, I work for men, but essentially and consciously I\nwork for God, and look to God for my recompense.\n\nNow God is the most generous of all paymasters. It is natural enough\nthat He should be so. He who delights in the grace of a bird or the\ncolour of a flower must delight in a man in proportion to a man's higher\nplace in the creative scale. As our Lord points out, that is no more\nthan common sense. And, delighting in us as He does, God could not\npossibly stint us in what we earn from Him. Merely to suppose so is to\ndishonour Him. A large part of His joy must be in our joy.\n\nThe simplest way in which I can express it is that in consciously trying\nto work with God, not man, as our employer, things happen to us which,\nto the best of our foresight, would not have happened otherwise. Often\nthey seem accidental, and possibly we ascribe them to accident till the\ncoincidences become too numerous to explain by coincidence and nothing\nmore. It constantly happens to myself, for instance, to find the whole\nsolution of some tangled financial problem hanging on the chance turning\nof my steps to someone's office, and the chance turning of the\nconversation to some specific observation. Chance is the explanation\nwhich comes to me first, till I reflect on the finespun chain which\nbrought me to that particular spot and those particular words. Leading\nis what I see then; and seeing it once I am more confident of being led\nthe next time. The next time, therefore, I am the less afraid, having\nthe definite experience to support me.\n\nThere are millions of men and women to whom life brings no more than the\nmonotony of a treadmill round, year in and year out, with a cramping of\nmind, spirit, and ambition, who might have been free had they measured\nthemselves by God's standards and not by men's. It is simply the taking\nof a point of view, and adjusting the life to it. In doing one's work\nprimarily for God, the fear of undue restriction is put, sooner or\nlater, out of the question. He pays me and He pays me well. He pays me\nand He will not fail to pay me. He pays me not merely for the rule of\nthumb task which is all that men recognise, but for everything else I\nbring to my job in the way of industry, good intention, and\ncheerfulness. If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, as St Paul says, we\nmay depend upon it that He loveth a cheerful worker; and where we can\ncleave the way to His love there we find His endless generosity.\n\nIn my own case this generosity has most frequently been shown in\nopening doors for me where I saw nothing but blank walls. He has made\nfavourable things happen. It may be said that they would have happened\nanyhow; but when they have happened on my looking to Him, and have not\nhappened when I did not look to Him, it is only fair to draw the\nconclusion that He was behind the event.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nIt may also be urged that if there was really a God who delighted in us\nHe would make favourable things happen to us whether we looked to Him or\nnot. So He does. Every life, even among those who never think of Him, is\nfull of such occurrences. Every individual gets some measure of supply\nfor his necessities, and in many instances a liberal one. God's sun\nrises on the wicked as well as on the good, and His rain falls on those\nwho do right and those who do wrong.\n\nAt the same time there is a force generated by working consciously with\nHim which we have to go without when we disregard Him. It is not, I\nsuppose, that He refuses to co-operate with us, but that it is out of\nour power to co-operate with Him. If His is the only right way to our\nsuccess and prosperity, and we are, to any extent, taking the wrong, it\nstands to reason that to that extent we must fail.\n\nIt is doubtless for this reason that our Lord emphasises seeking His\nrighteousness as well as His Kingdom. His Kingdom might be roughly\ndefined as His power; righteousness as the right way of doing anything.\nBut you never obtain power by going the wrong way to work; whereas by\nworking in the right way you get your result. The conclusion is obvious.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nIt is often objected to the point of view I have been trying to express\nthat so much weight is thrown on material blessing. God gives spiritual\nrewards, it is contended, not material ones. To expect the material from\nHim is to make Him gross, and to become gross ourselves.\n\nAnd yet those who put forth this objection are doing their utmost to\nsecure material comforts, and to make material provision for the future.\nAre they doing it independently of God? Are they working in a medium\ninto which God cannot enter? Is it argued for a single minute that\n\"goods\" are not God's good things, and that money is not their token?\nTrue, the love of money is the root of all evil. Of course--when you\nseparate money from God, as Caucasians mostly do; not when you take\nmoney as one of the material symbols for God's love toward his sons.\n\nAs a matter of fact, we dig a gulf between the material and the\nspiritual which does not exist. We have seen that modern physical\nscience is showing us how near to spirit matter comes, while it is\nhighly probable that further research will diminish even the slight\nexisting difference between them. Matter may really be considered as our\nsensuous misreading of the spiritual. That is to say, God sees one\nthing; our senses see another. In the wild lily cited by our Lord our\nsenses see a thing exquisite in form and colour; and yet, relatively\nspeaking, it is no more than a distortion of what God beholds and\ndelights in. It is a commonplace fact that, even within the limitations\nof the senses, our sense-faculties perceive few things, if anything,\nquite accurately. Matter may therefore be considered as our wrong view\nof what God sees rightly. Both for Him and for us the object is there;\nbut it is there with higher qualities than we can appreciate or\nunderstand.\n\nThe situation is not unknown among ourselves. A picture by a great\nmaster hangs on a wall. Two men look at it--the one with an expert\nknowledge of painting, the other with none. The untrained eye will\ntranslate into daubs of colour and meaningless forms what the skilled\nunderstanding will perceive as a masterly setting forth of beauty. So\nthe good things--the \"goods\"--with which God blesses us, as well as the\nmoney which is their symbol, may be taken as having to God a meaning\nwhich they do not possess for us, but not as being outside the sphere\nof His interest and control.\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nIt is the tendency to puts \"goods\" and money outside the sphere of His\ninterest and control which has impelled us--and perhaps the Caucasian\nespecially--to have one God for the spiritual and another for the\nmaterial. We try to serve God and Mammon to an extent far beyond\nanything we are generally aware of. It is not merely the individual who\nis doing it; it is part of our collective, social, and national life.\nOur civilisation is more or less based on the principle.\n\nIt is a mistake to suppose that a formal belief in One Almighty,\nAll-knowing, All-loving God has, to the immense majority of us, ever\nbeen more than an ideal. It is a mistake to suppose that because the\nfalse god is no longer erected before us in silver or stone he is no\nlonger served. The world has never outgrown idolatry, the so-called\nChristian world no more than any other. \"Dear children,\" are the words\nwith which St. John closes one of his epistles, \"guard yourselves from\nidols.\" He at least did not think that the idol had been forsaken\nbecause the use of his name was given up.\n\nWe may define as a god any force to which we ascribe a supreme and\ncontrolling power in our lives. It is of little consequence whether or\nnot we give it name and personality, so long as that force rules us. So\nlong, too, as it wields a power which the One God does not, so long as\nwe make the false god greater than the true, and more influential.\n\nThis is no mere figure of speech; it is fact. We have never guarded\nourselves from idols. We have never done more toward recognising the\nFather than the putting Him in the pantheon with our other gods. Even\nthough we have inscribed the whole pantheon with His name, the other\ngods have been in it.\n\n\n\nXII\n\n\nI have said that our whole collective life is based on the principle of\none God for the soul and another for the body; and so it is. In what we\ncall our temporal life God gets only a formal recognition, while Mammon\nis the referee. Beyond the controlling power of money we have no vision,\nand we see no laws. The sphere of material productivity being one in\nwhich, according to our foregone conclusion, God does not operate, we\nhave to make the controlling power of money our only practical standard.\nIt has its laws--chiefly the laws of supply and demand--within whose\nworking we human beings are caught like flies in spider-webs. Though we\nstruggle, and know we are struggling, we take it for granted that there\nis nothing to do but struggle, and struggle vainly. We take it for\ngranted that we are born into a vast industrial spider-web, whence there\nis no possibility of getting out, and in which we can only churn our\nspirits rebelliously. In proportion as God is a God of love, Mammon is a\ngod of torture; but such is our supineness of spiritual energy that we\ngo on serving Mammon.\n\n\n\nXIII\n\n\nBut I am writing only for the individual. I am trying to suggest to him\nthat however much his race, his nation, his society, may serve Mammon,\nhe is free to renounce the idol and escape the idol's laws. Escaping the\nidol's laws he comes within the realm of God's laws; and coming within\nthe realm of God's laws he reaches the region of plenty.\n\nHe may be the poorest and most ill-paid labourer; but God will recognise\nhis industry not in proportion to its technical skill, but according to\nthe spiritual excellence which goes into it. Technical skill depends\nlargely on the right man finding the right job; but as our world is\norganised at present the right man, more often than not, is put into the\nwrong job and has to do his best with it. God sees and estimates that\nbest; and as surely as He makes His sun to rise and His rain to fall\nwill give it its just compensation.\n\n\n\nXIV\n\n\nOur industrial questions are primarily spiritual. That is why they can\nnever be settled on a purely economic basis, and why every attempt to\nsettle them on a purely economic basis leads to conditions more confused\nthan those from which we have emerged. The so-called purely economic\nbasis is the basis where only Mammon's laws are considered, and God's\nare held to be impractical.\n\nQuite so! But even then the individual is free. Working with God he is\nalways master of the situation as it affects _him_.\n\nThe problem of Capital and Labour, for example, has, in one form or\nanother, been before the world for thousands of years. The more acute it\nbecomes the further we are from a solution, and were never so far from a\nsolution as we are to-day. Poverty, again, is the canker at the heart of\nboth Church and State, and has been so in every stage of our\ncivilisation. In 1921 it is no more under control than it was in the\ndays of Charlemagne or Attila or Xerxes. Charitable efforts to relieve\nit have proved as effective as tickling with a feather to cure disease.\nOr again, high prices and low wages, high wages creating high prices,\nresented conditions leading to strikes, strikes bringing confusion to\nboth wages and prices alike--these things perplex the most clear-sighted\namong us, compelling us to wonder as to what new troubles we are heaping\nup. Or again, taxes crippling incomes and gnawing at the heart of\nindustry vex us each year with a sense of the futility of all man's\nefforts for the common good, and the uselessness of our energies. These\ndifficulties, with many kindred ones, are the working of the laws of\nMammon. The case is simple. We shall never be free from the difficulties\ntill we are free from the laws. The bondservants of Mammon will go on\nfrom misery to misery, till the will which opposes God is broken down.\nThere is no other way. The colossal disintegration of the world now\ntaking place before our eyes may be the beginning of this end.\n\n\n\nXV\n\n\nBut I return to the point I have emphasised already, the only point to\nthis book. The individual can act on his own account. He does not have\nto wait till the race as a whole gives up the service of Mammon, or even\nthe nation to which he belongs. He can set _himself_ free, and enjoy the\nbenefits of freedom.\n\nThere must be many to whom, as to myself, the kingdom of heaven will\nreally be at hand when they are delivered from the snares and\nentanglements of man's economic systems. Caught in those systems,\nimprisoned in them, more hopelessly enmeshed the more they struggle to\nsave themselves, the suggestion that a change in point of view will take\nus out of them will seem to some of us too amazing to be true.\n\nNothing will prove it true but a man's own experience. Mine will\nconvince nobody; no other man's can convince me. Demonstration must be\npersonal before we can make anything our own. But the fact remains, as\nsure as the surest thing we know anything about, that the law of Mammon\ndoes not work, while the law of God does work, and will work for anyone\nwho calls it to his aid.\n\nNo one who has ever seen the early morning trains into any great city\nvomiting forth their hundreds of thousands of men and women, trudging\nmore or less dispiritedly to uncongenial jobs, can have felt anything\nbut pity for so many lives squeezed into the smallest possible\nlimitations. Admitting cheerfulness, admitting a measure of content, and\na larger measure of acceptance of what can't be helped, there still\nremains over these hordes the shadow of a cloud from which they know\nthey never will escape. Clerks, factory hands, tradesmen, working men\nand women of every stamp and occupation, they bow to the fact that they\nwill always work hard at tasks which are rarely their own choice, that\nthey will always work for little money, that they will always be denied\ntheir desires for expansion; that as it was with their fathers and\nmothers before them, so it will be with them, and so it will be with\ntheir children after them.\n\nWith the supineness of our race most of them force themselves to be\nsatisfied with what comes. But here and there is a rebel. Here and there\nis a man or a woman who feels that joyless work, and small pay, and\nlittle or nothing to look forward to, are cruel elements in life, not\nfair, not just, on the part of God or man. But what can they do? They\nare in man's economic machine. The machine turns round and they turn\nwith it. They can do nothing else but turn with it. They see no prospect\nexcept of turning with it till they die.\n\nIt is out of such men and women that our modern world breeds\nrevolutionists, that exalted and yet dangerous band who seek redress\nfrom the laws of Mammon by appealing _to_ the laws of Mammon, so making\nconfusion worse confounded.\n\n\n\nXVI\n\n\nA revolution indeed is needed; but a revolution in point of view.\n\nPolitical revolution, for the sake of righting governmental abuses,\nhas been known to produce beneficent results.\n\nMaterial revolution, the attack of the poor on the rich to take away\ntheir possessions, has never achieved anything. Many a time it has been\ntried, and many a time it has failed. Being part of the system of Mammon\nit could do nothing else than fail. The evils which Mammon has wrought\nMammon will never remedy. There may be instances in history of economic\ncures for economic ills; but I think they are few. In general such cures\nare of the nature of our \"settlements\" of strikes. They settle to-day\nwhat is again unsettled to-morrow, leaving the work to be done all over\nagain, and so on into a far future.\n\nThe revolution in point of view has these great advantages:\n\nFirst, it contains within it the seeds of success, since it is\nrevolution toward God, the owner of the Earth and the fulness thereof;\nNext, it takes place within the individual himself, doing no one\nelse any harm;\n\nLastly, it does not run counter to man's economic laws; it only uses and\ntranscends them. It directs and corrects them. Working along their lines\nit stimulates their fruit. Letting the inner man out of the economic\ntrap it sets him in a world in which first, and last, and before\neverything else, he is God's servant in God's pay. God's pay being sure,\nand paid in the way we need it, we no longer have money-fear to be\nafraid of. Money-fear being set aside we can the more easily give\nourselves to the knowledge that \"the Kingdom of God does not consist of\neating and drinking, but of right conduct, peace, and joy, through the\nHoly Spirit; and whoever in this way devotedly serves Christ, God takes\npleasure in him, and men commend him highly.\"[32]\n\n[32] Epistle to the Romans.\n\n\n\nXVII\n\n\nAnd lest what I have said should seem fanciful or chimerical let me add\nthat I am not saying these things merely on my own responsibility. To\nmy certain knowledge there are hundreds of thousands--some millions--of\npeople throughout the world who at this very minute are living according\nto this principle, and proving that it works in practical effect.\n\nNeither am I speaking theoretically, as I have tried to make plain. To a\ndegree that convinces myself I have made the demonstration. Where my\nlife was like a dark and crooked lane in which I might easily be lost,\nit has now become as an easy and open highway; where money-fear was the\nvery air I breathed, it is now no more than a nebulous shred on a far\nhorizon. Money-fear comes occasionally; but only as the memory of pain\nto a wound which you know to be healed. It comes; but, like Satan out of\nHeaven, I can cast it from me with a thought.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE FALSE GOD OF FEAR AND THE FEAR OF DEATH\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nThe fear of death was greatly diminished for me on grasping the\nprinciple of everlasting Growth.\n\nThis principle we gather from whatever we know of life. Our observation\nof life is, of course, limited to this planet; but as far as it goes it\nshows us a persistent and perpetual system of development. We have only\nto let our imaginations go back to the first feeble stirrings of life in\nthe ooze of the primeval seas, contrasting that with what it became in\nPlato, Sophocles, St. Peter, St. Paul, Raphael, Shakespeare, and Darwin,\nto see how high the climb upward has reached. Jesus of Nazareth I put on\na plane to which we have not yet attained, though in sight as the great\nobjective.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nThat the same law operates in the individual life is a matter of\neveryone's experience. Such knowledge as each man has of himself is that\nof a growing entity. Each year, each day, expands him a little further,\nwith increased fulness of character. At thirty he is more than he was at\ntwenty; at fifty more than he was at thirty; at eighty more than he was\nat fifty. Nothing but a perverted mortal point of view stands in the way\nof further expansion still.\n\nThe perverted mortal point of view is one of the impulses we have to\nstruggle with. The mortal tendency, which means the deadly tendency,\nalways seeks to kill whatever has the principle of life. This tendency\nis in every one of us; but in some of us more than in others.\n\nYou can see it at work in the morbid mind, in the mind that is easily\ndepressed, and in the mind that easily closes.\n\nPerhaps it is in this last that it becomes our most pernicious enemy.\nThe closing mind is found in all our ranks; the closed mind is the\ndeadwood of all our professions. It is not only deadwood; it is\ndeath-in-life, the foe of the developing life-principle, the enemy of\nthe Holy Ghost.\n\nThat the dead mind should be found among people who have had few\nintellectual advantages is not surprising. On them it is forced from\nwithout, by sheer pressure of circumstance. Where it is most painful is\nprecisely where it does most harm, among the classes we call\nprofessional. There, too, it seems commonest. Lawyers, doctors,\nclergymen, teachers, writers, politicians, business men with dead minds\nchoke all the highways of life. To the extent that they have influence\nthey are obstacles to progress; but sooner or later the time comes when\nthey no longer have influence. Life shelves them on the plea that they\nare old; but that is not the reason. They are shelved because they have\nkilled their minds, becoming living dead men.\n\nAs a matter of fact, one of the most valuable of our social and\nnational assets is the old man who has kept his mind open. Found all too\nrarely, he is never shelved, for the reason that life cannot do without\nhim. Having the habit of expansion he continues to expand, keeping\nabreast of youth and even a little in advance of it. The exception\nrather than the rule, there is no reason why he should not be the\nracial type.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nHe is not the racial type because so many of us begin to die almost as\nsoon as we have begun to live. Our very fear of the death-principle\nadmits it into our consciousness. Admitted into our consciousness it\nstarts its work of killing us. It wrinkles the face, it turns the hair\ngrey, it enfeebles the limbs, it stupefies the brain. One of its most\ndeadly weapons is fatigue, or the simulation of fatigue. The tired\nbusiness man, who rules American life, is oftener than not a dead\nbusiness man. If he looked ahead he would see what we idiomatically know\nas his \"finish.\" He is not only dying but he infuses death into\nmanners, literature, and art, since he so largely sets the standard\nwhich becomes the rule.\n\nWar on the death-principle should be, it seems to me, one of the aims to\nwhich the individual gives his strength; and once more he can do it on\nhis own account.\n\nIn the first place, he can watch himself, that he does not mentally\nbegin to grow old. To begin mentally to grow old is to begin mentally to\ndie. He must think of himself as an expanding being, not as a\ncontracting one. He must keep in sympathetic touch with the new, damning\nthe know-it-all frame of mind. He must keep in sympathetic touch with\nyouth, knowing that youth is the next generation in advance. The secrets\nof one generation are not those of another; but if he who possesses the\nearlier masters also the later he is that much the richer and wiser. The\ngulf which separates parents and children is one which the parents must\ncross. They can work onward, while the children cannot work backward. Up\nto a certain point the older teach the younger; beyond a certain point\nthe younger teach the older. He who would go on living and not begin to\ndie must be willing to be taught, reaping the harvest of both youth\nand age.\n\nIn the second place, he who would live must not kill anyone else. The\ndeadly tendency in ourselves is forever at work on those about us,\nchiefly on those we love. We watch, tabulate, and recount their symptoms\nof decay. Making notes of them for ourselves we discourse of them to\nothers. \"He begins to look old,\" is a commonplace. The response will\nprobably emphasise the fact. By response to response we spin round a\nfriend the age-web which lengthens into the death-web. In our expressive\nAmerican vernacular we speak of \"wishing\" conditions on others, an\ninstinctive folk-recognition of the force of mentality. We do it in a\nsinister sense more often than by way of helpfulness. We \"wish\" by\nthinking, by talking, by creating an atmosphere, by forcing things into\nthe general consciousness. Old age and decay, bad enough in themselves,\nwe intensify by our habits of mind. Death, which in any case awaits our\nfriends, we woo to them by anticipations of demise. It is not\nill-intentioned. It comes out of a subconsciousness in which death and\nnot life is the base.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nFor most of us the fear of death is a subconscious rather than an active\nfear. It becomes active for those who through illness, or in some other\nway, see a sentence of death hanging over them; but during the greater\npart of the life-span we are able to beat it off.\n\nAs to the life-span itself there is reason to suppose that it is meant\nto be more regular than man allows it to become. There may easily be an\n\"appointed time\" to which we do not suffer ourselves, or each other, to\nattain. Those strange, inequalities by which one human being is left to\npass over the century mark, another is cut off just when he is most\nneeded, while a third does no more than touch this plane for an hour or\ntwo, may be the results of our misreadings of God's Will, and not the\ndecrees of that Will itself.\n\nWe are here on ground which may be termed that of speculation; and yet\nspeculation is not quite the right word. I dare to think that we have\nreached a stage of our development at which we are entitled to make with\nregard to death certain inferences which were hardly possible before our\ntime. We may make them timidly, with all hesitation and reserve, aware\nthat we cannot propound them as facts; and yet we may make them. The\nhuman mind is no longer where it was a hundred years ago, still less\nwhere it was five hundred years ago. Though we make little progress we\nmake some. We are not always marking time on the same spot of ignorance\nand helplessness. What is mystery for one age is not of necessity\nmystery for another. Even when mysteries remain, they do not of\nnecessity remain without some hint of a dawn which may broaden into day.\nMany of our most precious illuminations have come in just this way; a\nfaint light--which slowly, feebly, through centuries perhaps, waxes\ntill it becomes a radiance.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nI talked some time ago to an orthodox Christian lady whose brother had\nrecently died, and who was speaking of death.\n\n\"The one mystery,\" she called it, \"on which no single ray of light has\nbeen vouchsafed in all the ages man has been on earth.\"\n\nI did not agree with her, but knowing her to be an orthodox Christian\nlady I did not venture to express my opinion.\n\nBut hers is the position which many, perhaps most, of us take. \"No one\nhas ever come back,\" we say, \"to tell us what his experience has been,\"\nand we drop the subject there. Not only do we drop the subject there,\nbut we resent it if everyone else does not drop the subject there. \"God\nhas hidden it from us,\" we declare, \"and what He has hidden from us it\nis presumption for us to pry into.\" It is useless to urge the fact that\nthis way of reasoning would have kept us still in the Stone Age; we are\nnot to be reached by argument.\n\nLet me say at once that I am not taking up the question of the psychic,\nor entering into it at all. I shall keep myself to the two points of\nview which have helped me, as an individual, to overcome, to some\ndegree, the fear of death, considering them in reverse order from that\nin which I have mentioned them. Those two points of view are:\n\nA. That, according to God's Will, we come into this phase of being for\nan \"appointed time\" which we do not always reach;\n\nB. That we pass out of this phase of being as we came into it, for\nGrowth.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nA. The question of an appointed time seems important chiefly to the\nright understanding of God's love. Between us and the understanding of\nthat love bereavement is often a great obstacle. Oftener still it is a\ngreat puzzle. I do not have to catalogue the conditions in which the\ntaking away of men, women, and children, sorely needed here if for no\nother purpose than to love, has moved us to deep perplexity, or to\nsomething like a doubt of God. We have probably all known cases where\nsuch tragedy has driven sufferers to renounce God altogether, and to\ncurse Him. Some of us who have been smitten may have come near to doing\nthis ourselves, or may have done it.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nI have already spoken of the Caucasian's habit of shuffling off on God\nthose ills for which he will not face the responsibility himself, and I\nam inclined to think that this is one of them. In my own experience the\nexplanation of \"God's Will\" made to the mother of a little family left\nfatherless, or to the parents of a dead baby, or to a young man with a\nyoung wife in her coffin, has always been revolting. I have made it; I\nhave tried, on the faith of others, to think it must be so. I have long\nsince ceased to think it, and feel happier for not crediting the\nUniversal Father with any such futile tricks.\n\nI should not go so far as to say that we human beings have misapplied\nthe laws of life in such a way as to kill those who are dear to us;\nrather, I think, we have never learned those laws except in their merest\nrudiments. We are not yet prepared to do more than bungle the good\nthings offered us on earth, and more or less misuse them. We misuse them\nourselves; we teach others to misuse them; we create systems of which\nthe pressure is so terrible that under it the weak can do nothing but\ndie. We give them no chance. We squeeze the life out of them. And then\nwe say piously, \"The blessed Will of God!\"\n\nAs an illustration of what I mean let me cite the two following cases\namong people I have known:\n\nA young lady belonging to a family of means was found to be suffering\nfrom incipient tuberculosis. The doctors ordered her to Saranac. To\nSaranac she went, with two nurses. Within eighteen months she was home\nagain, quite restored to health. This was as it should have been.\n\nAt the same time I knew a car-conductor, married some six or seven\nyears, and the father of three children. He, too, was found to be\nsuffering from incipient tuberculosis. He, too, was ordered to Saranac.\nBut having a wife and three children to support, Saranac was out of the\nquestion. He went on conducting his car till his cough became\ndistressing, whereupon he was \"fired.\" A minimum allowance from his\nchurch kept the family from starvation, while the nearest approach to\nSaranac that could be contrived was an arrangement by which he slept\nwith his head out the window. In course of time he died, and his widow\nwas exhorted to submit to the Will of God.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nI cite the latter case as typical of millions and millions of deaths of\nthe kind at which we stand aghast at God's extraordinary rulings. Why is\nit, we ask, that He snatches away those who are needed, leaving those\nwho might be spared? As to the latter part of the question I have\nnothing to say; but when it comes to \"snatching away\" I feel it\nimportant to \"absolve God\" of the blame for it.\n\nIn the instance I have quoted the blame for it is clear. Falling on no\none individual, it does fall on an organisation of life which gives all\nthe chances to some, denying them to others. So long as we feel unable\nto improve on this organisation we shall have these inequalities. But\nlet us face honestly the consequences they bring. Let us not confuse all\nthe issues of life and death as we do, by saddling the good and\nbeautiful Will of God with the ills we make for ourselves.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nAll untimely bereavement is, of course, not of the nature of the above\nillustration. And yet I venture to believe that in all untimely\nbereavement some similar explanation could be found. For example, in the\nintervals of writing these lines I have been reading a recent biography\nof Madame de Maintenon. In it is a chapter describing the series of\ncatastrophes which fell on Louis the Fourteenth, and the French kingdom,\nwithin little more than a twelvemonth. His son and heir, his grandson,\nthe second heir, his great-grandson, the third heir, the second heir's\nwife, and still another grandson were all carried off by smallpox. In\nthe apartments of Madame de Maintenon, his wife, the aged monarch was\ncounselled to submit to the awful Will of God which saw fit thus to\nsmite him. What no one perceived was that by crowding round the bed of\neach sufferer in turn the survivors courted contagion.\n\nBut, there again, it is not much more than a century since this fact\nbecame known to anyone. Easily within living memory is the discovery\nthat disease is due to bacteria. Our whole system of sanitation is of\nrecent development, and obtains only among the English and the Americans\neven now. In many parts of Europe and America, to say nothing of Asia\nand Africa, people still live as in the Middle Ages, and infant\nmortality is appalling. Those of us who pay most attention to sanitary\nlaws live unhealthily, diminishing our powers to resist attack. I\nmention these facts, not as making a list of them, but to indicate the\nmany causes through which we bring bereavement on ourselves, when the\nWill of God would naturally make for survival and happiness.\n\nIt must never be forgotten that in this phase of our existence we never\ncarry out that Will except to a remote degree. We only struggle towards\ndoing it. When great sorrows come it is because in the struggle we have\nnot been successful. Either we ourselves have failed; or the failure of\nothers affects us indirectly. While God's Will may be for our happiness,\nwe can attain to neither the happiness nor the Will--as yet.\n\nNevertheless, we would not have it otherwise. In our more thoughtless or\nmore agonised minutes we are likely to cry out for a life in which the\nconditions ensuring our happiness could not so easily miscarry; but that\nwould mean a static life, and a static life, above all things, we will\nnot endure. As already seen, we ask for difficulties to conquer,\nsuccesses to achieve. To contend is our instinct, not to be passive\nand enjoy.\n\nDifficulties to conquer can only exist side by side with the possibility\nof not conquering them. The victory which is merely a walk-over is\nscarcely a victory. Achievement counts only when something has been\novercome. Even then the overcoming of one thing merely spurs us on to\novercome another. To rest on our laurels is doom. For a race which has\nthe infinite as its goal the word must be on and on. The static heaven\nof bearing palms and playing harps and bliss, which the naive\ninterpretation of our fathers drew from the imagery of the Apocalypse,\nhas long since made us rebellious. Something to strive for we demand,\neven at the risk of bereavement.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nIt is at once the disadvantage and the glory of our own generation that\nit is only on the fourth or fifth step of the stairway by which we are\nclimbing. But at least it is heir to the conquests which go to its stage\nof advance. Untimely bereavement is less common to-day than it was a\nfew centuries ago; it is more common to-day than it will be a few\ncenturies hence. Such storms of affliction as in 1712 swept over the\nhouse of Louis Quatorze occur less frequently now. But they still occur.\nWe have not got beyond them. They are only bound to occur less and less\nfrequently, till they become no more than matters of scarcely\ncredible record.\n\nIn the meanwhile it may be a comfort to others, as it is to me, to be\nable to \"absolve God\" from the charge of capricious and intolerable\nthwarting of our love. To me, at least, the blow is easier to bear when\nI know that His beloved hand didn't strike it. I cannot understand being\ntortured out of sheer love, while patience with what leaves me with my\nwhole life maimed is only the patience of the vanquished.\n\nOn the other hand, I can bear with my mistakes, I can bear with the\nmistakes of others, I can bear with the failures which are the fruit of\nour lack of race-development, so long as I know that God is on my side.\nThe affliction which would be too poignant as coming directly from Him\nis half soothed already when I know that He is soothing it. I may have\nlost what He gave; but far from snatching it from me He would have had\nme keep it. Of all my comforts that assurance is the first.\n\nIn addition, I have the satisfaction--a meagre satisfaction you may call\nit, but a satisfaction all the same--of knowing that by the ploughing\nand harrowing of my heart a step is taken toward that future in which\nhearts shall be less harrowed and ploughed. \"It must never happen\nagain.\" That is what we keep saying with regard to the Great War. Well,\nit may happen again. We have as yet no trustworthy pledge to the\ncontrary. But of this we may be sure, that it will not happen again very\noften. It is less likely to happen again for the very reason that it has\nhappened. If the Great War does not prove to be the last war it is the\nmore probable that the next war will. I mean that we do learn our\nlessons, though we learn them only as feeble-minded children learn\ntheirs. Agony by agony, something is gained, and my personal agony\ncounts with the rest. The fact may give me no more than the faintest\nconsolation, and possibly none at all; and still in the long, slow\nstages of our upward climb my agony counts, whether its counting\nconsoles me or not.\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nThe inference that we come into the life of this planet for an\n\"appointed time\" we draw from what we see of God's system of order. All\nother things do so, as far as we observe. The plant springs, to grow and\nbloom, to bear fruit and seed, and so renew itself. Fish, bird, and\nanimal have their appointed round varying only in detail from that of\nthe plant. Man's appointed round would seem to vary only in detail from\nthat of the animal, except that he himself interferes with it.\n\nTo the best of my knowledge the plant, from the blade of grass to the\noak or the orchid, always fulfils its life-span, unless some act or\naccident cripples or destroys it. I mean that we never see God bringing\nthe shoot above the soil just to nip it before it unfolds. We never see\nHim bring the bud to the eve of blossoming just to wither it. Having\ngiven it its mission He supplies it with rain, sun, and sustenance to\nbring that mission to its end. True, the plant has enemies, like\neverything else, enemies which it may not escape. But generally\nspeaking, it does escape them, and lives to finish its task.\n\nSo, too, with the more active living thing. It, too, has its enemies.\nIt, too, may not escape them. But assuming that it does, God allows it,\nto the best of our observation, to work out its full development. The\nonly \"bereavement\" he brings to the lion, the thrush, or the elephant,\nor any other creature capable of grief is, apparently, from those\nhostile sources of which the hostility is more or less gratuitous. A man\nshoots a lion, or the lion kills an antelope; but they do so through\nmisreading of God's Will, not through fulfilling it.\n\nFor the lower ranks of creation misread that Will in their way as much\nas the higher in theirs. All ferocity must be misinterpretation of the\ndivine law of harmony and mutual help. Internecine destruction probably\nhas a meaning we can only guess at. Guessing at it we are at liberty to\nsurmise that what God sees as loving contention for excellence, each\ngaining by the other's gain, we understand as bitter strife, and\nconsumption of the flesh and blood. The rivalry we can best appreciate\nis that of brutality; the chief benefit the stronger creature seeks from\nthe weaker is in killing and eating him. Why this should be part of our\nstruggle I do not know; but part of our struggle it seems to be--from\nthe humblest organism up to man--the mistaking of God's Will before\nlearning to understand it.\n\nAnd lest I should seem to assume too much, in saying this, let me add\nthat our progress out of this state of preying on each other has long\nbeen foreseen by the pioneers of truth. The vision is at least as\nancient as Isaiah, when he descried from afar the accomplished rule of\nthe Son of David:\n\n\"With righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity\nfor the meek of the earth.... And righteousness shall be the girdle of\nhis loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall\ndwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and\nthe calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child\nshall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones\nshall lie down together.... And the sucking child shall play on the hole\nof the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.\nThey shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; _for the earth\nshall be full of the knowledge of the Lord_, as the waters cover\nthe seas.\"\n\n\n\nXII\n\n\nIf I am correct in thinking that our passage across the life of this\nplanet is meant to last for an \"appointed time,\" I presume that that\ntime would be measured by experience rather than by years. There exists\nwhat we vaguely call the round of life. We are born; we grow; we know\nfamily interests; we learn; we work; we love; we marry; we beget\nchildren; we train them to take our places; we pass beyond. There are\nvariations on this routine, some of us having more, some of us having\nless; but in general it may be taken as typical. It is our mission, as\nthe plants and the lower living things have theirs.\n\nIt seems reasonable, then, to think that each baby born is meant by the\nFather's Will to reap this experience before it proceeds to further\nexperience. It must be a stage in its growth or it would not come into\nit. When it is balked of it something is amiss. The child who dies in\ninfancy has lost something. The lad or the girl whom our organised life\ndrives from this plane before reaching fruition has lost something. The\nparent whom our conditions force onward before he has brought his task\nto a stage at which he can peacefully lay it down has lost something. I\nam not saying that God does not control resources by which that loss can\nbe abundantly made up, but only that the loss would seem to be there.\nIt is loss for the one who departs as well as for those who\nremain behind.\n\n\n\nXIII\n\n\nThat is what I gather from the instances in the Old and New Testament in\nwhich those who had gone on before their time were called back again.\nThere are six of these instances in all: one in the Old Testament, and\nfive in the New. Of four of them we are expressly told that those\nrestored were young; of the other two nothing is said as to age, but one\nat least was probably young, while the other was greatly needed.\n\nThe child called back by Elisha was still a little boy. The daughter of\nJairus was still a little girl. The son of the widow of Nain was a young\nman, as was also Eutychus raised by St. Paul. Though we are not told the\nage of Lazarus we judge that he was at most no more than in man's\nmaturity. Dorcas of Lydda may have been of any age, but, judging by the\ncircumstances, she had not completed her task.\n\n\n\nXIV\n\n\nMy point is this, that if these things happened, they seem to bear out\nmy suggestion that our own inducement of premature death cuts us off\nfrom fulfilling our appointed time and getting our appointed experience.\nOnly on some such ground can we believe that any would be permitted\nto return.\n\nShould this be so we would be in a position to assume that all who go\nover ahead of time would be allowed to come back, if we had sufficient\nspiritual power to recall them. But that power is of the rarest. Our\nLord, apparently, was in control of it only at times, and on at least\none occasion, that of the raising of Lazarus, its exercise was not what\nwe should call easy. But that He believed it to be at human command to\nsome extent is clear from the fact that its use became one of His four\nbasic principles. \"Raise the dead,\" was the second of the commands with\nwhich He sent out his first seventy disciples.\n\n\n\nXV\n\n\nI dwell on the subject only because of its bearing on the love of God.\nIf it becomes plain to us that by the understanding of God's Will we\ngain a richer experience, with less fear of being cut off before our\nwork is done, that Will makes a stronger appeal for being understood.\nThat we have not understood it earlier, that we have not particularly\ncared to understand it, is due, I think, to our assumption of its\ncapriciousness. It has been so underscored as inscrutable--the word\ngenerally applied to it--that the man in the street has felt mystified\nby it from the start. Being mystified he has settled down to think as\nlittle about it as he could.\n\nBut a great force striving with man to put common sense into his methods\nis worth comprehending. It does not compel us to common-sense methods\nfor the reason that we value only that which we work out for ourselves.\nWe work nothing out but through suffering. We learn nothing, we take no\nforward step, except as we are whipped to it by anguish. That is why\nthere is so much mourning in the world. God does not cause it; we bring\nit on ourselves; but each time we bring it on ourselves we creep one\ntiny step nearer that race-conclusion which is now coming to us about\nwar, and will one day come to us about death, that \"It must never\nhappen again.\"\n\n\n\nXVI\n\n\nIn other words, death will be abolished by race-unanimity not to submit\nto it. We shall have travelled far in this direction when the average\nmind begins to perceive that God did not send death into His creation,\nbut that we ourselves developed it. Having developed it ourselves we\nmust get rid of it ourselves, and already some of that work has been\ndone. \"For seeing that death came through man,\" are the words of St.\nPaul, \"through man comes also the resurrection of the dead.\" When he\nspeaks of \"Jesus Christ who hath abolished death,\" his words are\nstronger still. \"He has put an end to death and has brought Life and\nImmortality to light by the Good News, of which I have been appointed a\npreacher, apostle, and teacher.\"\n\nThis Life and Immortality are not to be relegated to other ages and\nworlds; they are for us to work out now.\n\nThe degree to which we work them out depends on our own efforts. Death\nwill be our doom for many generations to come, because so few of us have\nthe energy to strive against it. Release can come only when the race at\nlarge is willing to cast the evil thing off. One would suppose that we\nwould be willing now; but we are far from being willing. We shall go on\nforcing our dear ones to die before their time, falling sick ourselves,\nenduring agonies, and rotting in graves, till we have suffered to the\npoint at which we cry out that we have had enough. There will be a day\nwhen in presence of the useless thing we shall say, with something\namounting to one accord, \"It must stop.\" That day will be the beginning\nof the end of the age-long curse to which we still submit ourselves. In\nthe language of St. Paul, \"The last enemy to be destroyed is death,\"\nleaving us with the belief that, when we have progressed to the\noverthrow of other forces opposed to us, we shall go on to the overthrow\nof this one--and that it will be overthrown.\n\n\n\nXVII\n\n\nFrom one kind of fear this reasoning has almost entirely delivered\nme--that of being taken away in the midst of my responsibilities, and\nbefore my work is done. I am not so audacious as to say that it may not\nhappen; but only that, reasoning as I do, I am no longer a prey to\napprehensions on the point. They used to come to me, not like the\nmoney-fear, an abiding visitant, but in spells of intense dread.\n\nI suppose that most men with families, and much unfinished business,\nknow this dread, and have suffered from it. You think of the home you\nhave built up, and of what it would be without you. You think of your\nwife, grappling with a kind of difficulty to which she is unaccustomed.\nYou think of your children who turn to you as their central point, and\nwho would be left without your guidance. You think of other duties you\nhave undertaken, and wonder who will carry them through. You seem to be\nso essential to everyone and everything; and yet, you have been told, it\nmay be the Will of God to remove you from them, and either let your\nplans collapse, or put their execution on the shoulders of someone else.\n\nI am not so presumptuous as to say that for me this may not happen. I\nonly say that I do not think it will. I do not think so because,\naccording to my judgment, He having helped me to go as far as I have\ngone, will help me to finish my task before giving me another one.\n\nMy task, I think, He must estimate as I do. That is, my duties to others\nbeing not wholly of my choosing, but having come to me according to what\nI may call His weighing and measuring, I take them to be the duties He\nwould have me perform. If so, He would naturally have me perform them\ntill I come to the place where I can reasonably lay them down.\n\nTherefore, I dismiss the fear of untimely separation from my appointed\nwork. Such a separation may come; but if it does, it will probably come\nby some such means as I have briefly tried to sketch; my own mistakes;\nthe mistakes of others; the effect of race-pressure. In any case, my\npersonal resistance, it seems to me, is made the stouter by feeling that\nmy tasks are His tasks, and so that so long as I am needful to their\naccomplishment, I remain. If I go, it will be because He has the\nsuccession of events so planned as to reduce collapse, failure, or\nsuffering to a minimum.\n\n\n\nXVIII\n\n\nB. The thought that the minute after death will only be another little\nstep in Growth, to be followed by another and then another, as we are\nused to growing here, greatly diminishes one's shrinking at the change.\n\nIt is entirely a modern thought. The past, even of a few centuries ago,\nnever entertained it. It is doubtful if it was mentally prepared to\nentertain it, or evolve the idea.\n\nThis is not to depreciate our fathers' mental powers. Different\ngenerations have different gifts. One age works along one line, another\nalong another. The past had a certain revelation of truth; but the\nrevelation of truth did not end with the past. Our ancestors received as\nmuch as they could take. What, it seems, they were unable to take was\nanything which made death less horrible. We may say, in fact, that they\ndidn't want it. They liked having death made horrible. Many people like\nit still. The mitigation of that horror they condemn, resent, and often\nascribe to the devil.\n\nAnd yet there is a tendency to see light through this gloom, and to seek\nviews of death more in the line of common sense than those which have\ncome down to us. It is not a strong tendency, but it exists. It exists\nin the face of opposition on the part of those religious conservatives\nwho think conservatism and orthodoxy the same thing; and it runs the\ngauntlet of the sneers and jeers of the materially minded who make\ncommon cause with the old guard of the churches; but it exists. It\nexists, and goes forward, becoming a factor in the thought-life of\nour time.\n\nIt is not yet two hundred years since the plea was put forth on behalf\nof mankind that, in the administration of divine justice, no one suffers\nless than he deserves, but also that no one suffers more.\n\nThe hostility to this seemingly harmless teaching was of the most\nintense. There is hostility to it still, but mild as compared with that\nfelt by our great-great-grandfathers. That no one should suffer less\nthan he deserves went without saying; but that no one should suffer more\nwas declared a black heresy. As there are those who declare it a black\nheresy to-day, it may be worth while, in the interests of the conquest\nof fear, to say a word as to the relation of God and punishment.\n\n\n\nXIX\n\n\nTo my mind it is chiefly verbal.\n\nIt is permissible to say that there is no such thing as punishment;\nthere are only wrong results. It depends upon your way of putting it.\nThe wrong method produces wrong results in proportion as it is wrong.\nWrong results mean wrong conditions; and wrong conditions mean\nsuffering. You may call this the law of God, but it is the law of\nanything. It is not positive law, it is negative. As a matter of fact,\nGod does not need to put forth a law on the point since everything\nworks that way.\n\nWhat we call sin is simply a wrong method. It may be a wrong method\nmeant to produce wrong; or it may be a wrong method in the hope of\nproducing right. In any case it brings its consequence in pain.\n\nThat consequence may be corrected in this phase of our being, or it may\nbe carried over into the next. Carried over into the next the\nindividual, according to our ancestral teaching, comes under the\nsentence in which our fathers delighted as \"damnation.\" Not only did\ndamnation involve the most fiendish torture the Almighty could invent,\nbut the torture was inflicted, without an instant of relief, throughout\nthe eons of eternity.\n\nI recall a sermon to which I listened as a boy of nine. It was on a\nsummer's evening, when the windows of the church were open. A moth\nfluttered about a light. The church stood at the foot of a mountain. The\npreacher was trying to explain to us the eternal duration of God's\npunishment. \"Think of that moth,\" he said, \"carrying away one grain of\nsand from that mountain, and going off for a million years, after which\nit would return and take away another grain. And think of it keeping\nthis up, one grain every million years, till the whole mountain was\nremoved. Well, that would be only a moment as compared with the time you\nwould be in hell.\"\n\nOn the generations comforted and fortified by this sort of teaching I\nhave no comment to make; but we of another generation should surely not\nbe reproved for moving away from it. We move away from it in the\ndirection of common sense, since common sense must be an attribute of\nthe Universal Father as it is of the wiser among mankind.\n\n\n\nXX\n\n\nI revert, then, to my statement that God's relation to punishment is\nchiefly verbal. His \"wrath against sin\" is a way of \"putting it.\" If you\ncan best express the suffering which springs from wrong methods as\n\"God's wrath\" you are at liberty so to express yourself; but we should\nnot lose sight of the fact that the wrong methods produce the suffering,\nand not an outburst of fury on the part of One who is put before us\nas Love.\n\nThe fact that the Hebrew writers often used a vivid form of warning and\ninvective is not a reason why we should keep on doing it. The Hebrew\nwriter was a primitive speaking to primitives. Meaning what we mean, he\nrequired a stronger, fiercer vocabulary than we ever need. In saying\nthis I am not dodging the issue; I am stating a fact which rules in all\nhistorical interpretation. To make the phraseology of two thousand years\nbefore Christ the literal expression of the thought of two thousand\nyears after Him is to be archaic beyond reason. Having grasped a\nprinciple, we phrase it in the language of our time.\n\nThe language of our time makes, on the whole, for restraint, sobriety,\nand exactitude of statement. Few of our habits modify themselves more\nconstantly and more rapidly than our forms of speech. Not only does each\ngeneration find something special to itself, but each year and each\nseason. To me it seems that much of our misunderstanding of God springs\nfrom the effort to fix on Him forevermore the peculiarities we infer\nfrom the idiom of five thousand years ago. Only to a degree does that\nidiom convey to us what is conveyed to those who heard it as a living\ntongue; and of that degree much is lost when it percolates through\ntranslation. To cling to words when all we need is to know principles,\nclothing them in our own way, seems to me not only absurd in fact but\nlamentable in result. I venture to think that more people have been\nalienated from God by a pious but misapplied verbal use than were ever\nestranged from Him by sin.\n\n\n\nXXI\n\n\nOur ancient Hebrew predecessors understood God in their own way. We\nunderstand Him in the same way, but with the clarification wrought by\nthe intervening years of progress. In other words, they bequeath us a\ntreasure which we are free to enrich with our own discoveries.\n\nAmong our own discoveries is a clearer comprehension of pain as\nresulting from wrong methods, and of God's detachment from pain. More\nand more, punishment becomes a concept we reject. Even in our penal\ninstitutions, which have been for so many centuries a barbarous token of\nour incompetence, we begin to substitute for punishment something more\nnearly akin to cure. If we find mere vengeance unworthy of ourselves we\nmust find it unworthy of the Universal Father. If we concede to the\ncriminal the right to a further chance we concede it to ourselves. If we\nrecognise the fact that the sinner on earth may redeem himself, working\nfrom error towards righteousness, the same principle should rule in the\nwhole range of existence. There is nothing about the earth-life to make\nit the only phase of effort and probation. Effort and probation are\nprobably conditions of eternity. They will be in our next experience as\nthey have been in this, leading us on from strength to strength.\n\n\n\nXXII\n\n\nOne main difference between the mind of the past and the modern mind is\nthat the mind of the past tended to be static, while the mind of to-day\nis more and more attuned to a dynamic universe. Civilisation before the\nnineteenth century was accustomed to long periods with relatively little\nchange. Most people spent their entire lives in the same town or the\nsame countryside. In the class in which they were born they lived and\ndied, with little thought of getting out of it. This being so they\nlooked for the same static conditions after death as they saw before it.\nA changeless heaven appalled them with no sense of monotony, nor did a\nchangeless hell do anything to shake their nerves. Their nerves were not\neasily shaken. They were a phlegmatic race, placid, unimaginative,\nreposeful.\n\nBecause we of to-day are more restless it does not follow that our views\nshould be truer. We only know they are truer because we are so much\nnearer the truth than they had the opportunity to come. We prove that we\nare nearer the truth by our greater command of the Father's resources.\nIf our whole horizon of truth were not broadened, we could not possess\nthis command.\n\n\n\nXXIII\n\n\nChanging our static conception of life to that of a dynamic will to\nunfold, we see the climax we commonly call death as only a new step in\nunfoldment. Whatever I have been, the step must be one in advance. It\nwould not be in accord with creative energy that I should go backward.\nThe advance may entail suffering, since it is probable that it will give\nme a heightened perception of the wrong in my methods; but there are\nconditions in which suffering signifies advance.\n\nAnd yet if I suffer it can only be with what I may call a curative\nsuffering. It will be suffering that comes from the recognition of\nmistake; not the hopeless anguish of the damned. Having learned \"how not\nto do it,\" I perceive \"how to do it\"--and go on.\n\nBut the perception of \"how to do it\" is precisely what most of us have\nbeen acquiring. I venture to think that few of us will come face to face\nwith death without being more or less prepared for it. Life is so\norganised that, at its worst, all but the rare exceptions make progress\ndaily, through obedience to the laws of righteousness.\n\nIn saying this we must count as righteousness not merely the carrying\nout of a rule of thumb laid down by man's so-called morality, or the\ntechnical regulations prescribed by the churches for the use of their\nadherents; we must include every response to every high call. We must\nremember that all a man does in the way of effort to be a good son, a\ngood brother, a good husband, a good father, a good workman, a good\ncitizen, is of the nature of slowly creeping forward. Above every other\nform of training of the self this endeavour determines a man's spiritual\nstanding, and his state of worthiness. He may know some failure in each\nof these details; and yet the fact that in the main he is set--as I am\nconvinced the great majority are set--toward fulfilling his\nresponsibilities helps him to be ready when the time comes to put the\nmaterial away.\n\nThe great common sense of the nations brought us to this perception\nduring the years when the young men of the world were going down like\nwheat before the reaping machine. For the most part, doubtless, they\nwere young men in whom the ladies who attend our churches would have\nseen much to reprimand. The moral customs of their countries were\npossibly held by them lightly. The two points which constitute pretty\nnearly all of American morality they may have disregarded. And yet we\nfelt that their answer to the summons, which to them at least was a\nsummons to sacrifice, showed them as men who had largely worked out\ntheir redemption. Whatever our traditions, we were sure that those who\nwere ready to do anything so great could go to the Father without fear.\n\nBut war calls for no more than a summing up and distillation of the\nqualities we cultivate in peace. These men were ready because homes,\noffices, banks, shops, factories, and farms had trained them to be\nready. So they are training all of us. Traditions help; the churches\nhelp; but when it comes to the directing of the life toward\nrighteousness--the effort to do everything rightly--no one thing has\nthe monopoly.\n\n\n\nXXIV\n\n\nGoing to the Father without fear! All the joy of life seems to me to\nhang on that little phrase. I used it just now of the young men who\npassed over from the battlefield; but I used it there with limitations.\nGoing to the Father without fear is a privilege for every minute of the\nday. More and more knowledge of the Father is the progress for which we\ncrave, since more knowledge of the Father means a fuller view of all\nthat makes up the spiritual universe. Into that knowledge we are\nadvancing every hour we live; into that knowledge we shall still be\nadvancing at the hour when we die. The Father will still be showing us\nsomething new; the something new will still be showing us the Father.\n\nIt will be something new, as we can receive it. He who can receive\nlittle will be given little; he who can receive much will be given much.\nIn growth all is adjusted to capacity; it is not meant to shock, force,\nor frighten. The next step in growth being always an easy step, I can\nfeel sure of moving onwards easily--\"from strength to strength,\" in the\nwords of one of the Songs for the Sons of Korah, \"until unto the God of\ngods appeareth everyone of them in Zion.\"[33]\n\n[33] The Book of Psalms.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE FEAR OF DEATH AND ABUNDANCE OF LIFE\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nAfter all, the conquest of fear is largely a question of vitality. Those\nwho have most life are most fearless. The main question is as to the\nsource from which an increase of life is to be obtained.\n\nAn important psychological truth was involved when our Lord made the\ndeclaration, \"I am come that they might have life, and that they might\nhave it more abundantly.\" This, I think, was the first plain statement\never made that life was a quantitative energy; that it is less or more\ndynamic according to the measure in which the individual seizes it. But\nonce more the Caucasian has stultified the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth\nby evaporating it to the tenuous wisp which he understands as\nspiritual. Between the pale ghost of such spiritual life as he has\nevoked from the Saviour's words and manly and womanly vigour in\nfull-blooded exercise he has seen no connection.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nFew of us do see a connection between strength of spirit and strength of\nlimb; but it is there. I am not saying that a strong spirit cannot\ncoexist with a feeble frame; but the feeble frame is a mistake. It is\nthe result of apprehension and misapprehension, and bred of race-fear.\nThe strong spirit would have put forth a strong frame if we had given it\na chance. Abundant life must be _life_, healthy, active, and radiant. It\nshould show the life-principle no longer driven from sea to land, and\nfrom land to air, or battling with a million foes, but vigorous and\ntriumphant.\n\nThis vigour and triumph we ought to work into our point of view, so\nkneading it into our subconsciousness. Strong in proportion as our\nsubconsciousness is strong, fearless in proportion as our\nsubconsciousness is fearless, the going from strength to strength\nbecomes a matter of course to us. Urging us on in sheer joy of power,\nabundance of life becomes still more abundant through the indwelling of\nthe life-principle. That mystic resistless force, which has fashioned\nalready so many forms, is forever at work fashioning a higher type\nof man.\n\nEach one of us is that higher type of man potentially. Though we can\nforge but little ahead of our time and generation, it is much to know\nthat the Holy Ghost of Life is our animating breath, pushing us on to\nthe overcoming of all obstacles. For me as an individual it is a support\nto feel that the principle which was never yet defeated is my principle,\nand that whatever the task of to-day or to-morrow I have the ability to\nperform it well. The hesitation that may seize me, or the questioning\nwhich for an instant may shake my faith, is but a reminder that the\nlife-principle is not only with me, but more abundantly with me in\nproportion to my need. My need is its call. The spasm of fear which\ncrosses my heart summons it to my aid. It not only never deserts me, but\nit never delays, and is never at a loss for some new ingenuity to meet\nnew requirements. \"From strength to strength\" is its law, carrying me on\nwith the impetus of its own mounting toward God.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nAnd the impetus of its own mounting toward God is not confined to what\nwe view as the great things of life. Between great and small it makes no\ndistinction. It is as eager on behalf of the man behind a counter as on\nthat of him who is governing a country. The woman who has on her\nshoulders the social duties of an embassy, or the financial cares of a\ngreat business, has it no more at her command than she who is nursing\nher baby or reckoning her pennies to make both ends meet. It rushes to\nthe help of all. Wherever there is duty or responsibility it is begging\nat the doors of our hearts to be let in, to share the work and ease\nthe burden.\n\nAs I get up each morning, it is there. As I plan my day while I dress\nmyself, it is there. As I think with misgiving of some letter I tremble\nat receiving, or with distaste at some job I must tackle before night,\nit is there.\n\nIt is there, not only with its help, but with its absolute knowledge of\nthe right way for me to act. The care that worries me may be so big as\nto involve millions of other people's money, or it may be as small as\nthe typing of a letter; but the right way of fulfilling either task is\npleading to be allowed to enter my intelligence. My task is its task. My\nsuccess will be its success. My failure will react on it, since failure\nsets back by that degree the whole procession of the ages. Whether I am\npainting a great masterpiece or sewing on a button my success is\nessential to the Holy Ghost of Life.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nSo I, the individual, try to confront each day with the knowledge that I\nam infused with a guiding, animating principle which will not let me\ndrop behind, or lose my modest reward, so long as I trust to the force\nwhich carries me along. By trusting to it I mean resting on it quietly,\nwithout worrying, without being afraid that it will fail me. \"Fret not\nthyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.\"[34] By doing evil, I\npresume is meant making a mistake, taking the wrong course. If, however\ngreat the cause, I fret myself I disturb the right conditions. By\ndisturbing the right conditions I choke off the flow of the\nlife-principle through my energies.\n\n[34] The Book of Psalms.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nAt a moment when the little buffer state between Egypt and Assyria was\nafraid of being overrun by the one or the other it was frantically\ncasting about to decide with which it would throw in its lot. \"With\nneither,\" a great prophet thundered in the ears of the people. \"In\ncalmly resting your safety lieth; in quiet trust shall be your\nstrength.\"[35]\n\n[35] The Book of Isaiah.\n\nMy small experience in the conquest of fear can be condensed into these\nfour words: Calmly resting! quiet trust! That amid the turmoil of the\ntime and the feverishness of our days it is always easy I do not\npretend. Still less do I pretend that I accomplish it. I have said, a\nfew lines above, that _I tried_. Trying is as far as I have gone; but\neven trying is productive of wonderful results.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nLeast of all do I claim to have covered the whole ground, or to have\ndiscussed to its fulness any one of the points which I have raised.\nWhole regions of thought which bear on my subject--such as psychology,\nphilosophy, and religion as I understand the word--I have carefully\nendeavoured to avoid. My object has been to keep as closely as possible\nto the line of personal experience, which has a value only because it is\npersonal. Telling no more than what one man has endeavoured to work out,\nwhat I have written seeks no converts. Though, for the sake of brevity,\nit may at times seem to take a hortatory tone, it is a record and no\nmore. In it the reader will doubtless find much to correct, and\npossibly to reject; and this must be as it happens. What I hope he will\nneither correct nor reject is the sincerity of the longing to find God's\nrelations to the phenomena of life, and the extent to which the\nphenomena of life reflect God.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nIn the end we come back to that, the eternal struggle whereby that which\nis unlike God becomes more and more like Him. In watching the process,\nand taking part in it, there is, when all is said and done, a sense of\nglorious striving and success. With each generation some veil which hid\nthe Creator from the creature is torn forever aside. God, who is always\nhere, is seen a little more clearly by each generation as being; here.\nGod, who ever since His sun first rose and His rain first fell has been\nmaking Himself known to us, is by each generation a little better\nunderstood. God, whom we have tried to lock up in churches or banish to\nSundays and special holy days, is breaking through all our\nprohibitions, growing more and more a force in our homes and our\nschools, in our shops and our factories, in our offices and our banks,\nin our embassies, congresses, parliaments, and seats of government. Into\nHis light we advance slowly, unwillingly, driven by our pain; but\nwe advance.\n\nThe further we advance the more we perceive of power. The more we\nperceive of power the more we are freed from fear. The more we are freed\nfrom fear the more exultantly we feel our abundance of life. The more\nexultantly we feel our abundance of life the more we reject death in any\nof its forms. And the more we reject death in any of its forms the more\nwe reflect that Holy Ghost of Life which urges us on from conquest to\nconquest, from strength to strength, to the fulfilling of ourselves.","title":"The Conquest of Fear","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":50203}