LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class

V*

SCIENCE

AND IMMORTALITY

SCIENCE AND

IMMORTALITY
BY

SIR OLIVER LODGE,

II

F.R.S.

THE

UNIVERSITY
Of

&LIFORNI&,

NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1909

Copyright 1908, by MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

NEW YORK
All Rights Reserved
Published October, 1908

Second Printing, November, 1908 Third Printing, February, 1909

CONTENTS
SECTION
I

SCIENCE AND FAITH

PAGE
Chapter
1.

THE

OUTSTANDING

CONTROVERSY
FAITH.
1

BETWEEN SCIENCE AND

Religion contrasted.

The Teachings of Orthodox Science and of Orthodox

Chapter
2.

THE

RECONCILIATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND FAITH

.

23

The Doctrines of Uniformity, Immanence, Agency,

and Control, emphasised.
Chapter
S.
.

RELIGION, SCIENCE,

AND MIRACLE.

48

Meaning of Miracle

Arguments concerning the Miraculous Law and Guidance Miracle and Science Miracle and Religion Human Experience.

SECTION

II

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

Chapter
4.

THE

ALLEGED INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION. ...

Church Attendance.

77

brief Essay on the Neglect of

CONTENTS
PAGE
Chapter
5.

UNION AND BREADTH.

86

A
Chapter

Plea for Essential Unity amid Formal Difference in a National Church.

6.

A REFORMED CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

Power
of
a

112

The

truly

comprehensive

National

Church.

Chapter

7.

SOME SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS REFORM.

,

126

SECTION

III

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Chapter
8.

Part

Chapter

9-

Part

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT II. THE PERMANENCE OF PERI.

143

SONALITY.

162

SECTION IV

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

Chapter
10.

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. v .197

.

....

Treating of the Atonement and of Regeneration, with a Criticism of the Doctrine of Vicarious Punishment.

Chapter

11.

SIN,

SUFFERING, AND WRATH.

.218

Sequel to the preceding.

CONTENTS
PAGE

Chapter 12. Part

I.

THE MATERIAL ELEMENT IN

.
.
. .

CHRISTIANITY.

249

(1) Correspondence of Spiritual and Material; (2) The Resurrection of the Body; (3) The Resurrection of Christ.

Chapter

13.

Part II.

THE DIVINE CHRISTIANITY.

ELEMENT IN
. .

....

272

(The Meaning and Importance of the Doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, or the Humanity of God.) (4) Christianity and History; (5) Varieties of Christianity; (6) Ecce Deus.

PREFATORY NOTE TO AMERICAN

EDITION.
This book is based upon articles by the author which have appeared in the Hibbert Journal and in
the

Contemporary Review, and incorporates the sub-

stance of

many of

those articles : but they have been

revised, in parts re-written, added to, and so as to develop a continuous treatment.

amended,

They are arranged in four sections or divisions: The first treats of the old problems of science and
faith, of belief in the miraculous, and in the efficacy of prayer; and adduces justification for some of those
beliefs.

The second
commonly
to say with

is

mainly concerned with what are

that
is

considered Ecclesiastical matters

Church organisation and with Public

what
is

Service of all kinds.

Future Life, of the Immortality of the Soul. The fourth represents the interaction between Science and Christianity. This part aims at expounding the fundamental Christian doctrines from a modern and scientific point of view, and at showing how ancient modes of expression, and the mediaeval language in which are embodied the most vital
third concerns
called the

The

and

treats

PREFATORY NOTE
truths

known

to mankind, can be interpreted

and

as-

similated

threat of unauthorised publication of some of the Hibbert articles, as they stand, has been received

by advanced thought.

any such publication appears, readers are hereby informed that it will not be the edited and authorised edition, but a mere reprint of unselected and unrevised material. OLIVER LODGE.
if

from America; but

University of Birmingham. May; 1908.

PREFACE
is difficult

ITeffort on his part can have any influence in turn-

for a lay individual to suppose that

ing the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and so in some slight degree preparing the way for the Coming of the Kingdom of Heaven

upon Earth and yet he may realise that those are his instructions, and that wonders are said to be possible
;

if action

be taken in a spirit of faith. Consequently a steward of the mysteries of physical science may, without undue presumption, proceed to utter such

thoughts as have been vouchsafed to him on topics which, however treated, are undoubtedly of the highest

moment

to

mankind.

LEBICI, April 1908,

COLLECT FOR THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT

(Composed by Bishop Cosinin, 1661)
at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise

"O

LORD JESU CHRIST, who

so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with

the

Father and the Holy

Spirit,

ever

one

God, world

without end.

Amen"

SECTION

SCIENCE AND FAITH

HE

UNIVERSITY

SCIENCE

AND FAITH
I

CHAPTER

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY]

IT

widely recognised at the present day that the modern spirit of scientific inquiry has in the main
is
it

upon Theology, clearof much of doubtful doctrine, encumbrance ing freeing it from slavery to the literal accuracy of historical records, and reducing the region of the miraculous or the incredible, with which it used to be almost conterminous, to a comparatively small area.
iThis influence is likely to continue as true science

exerted a wholesome influence

advances, but it by no means follows that the nature of the benefit will always be that of a clearing and unloading process. There must come a time when

such a process has gone far enough, and when some Whether positive contribution may be expected. such a time has now arrived or not is clearly open to
question, but I think it will be admitted that orthodox science at present, though it shows some sign of

abstaining

virulent criticism of religious creeds, is still a long way from contributing in any degree to their support ; nor are its followers ready to admit

from

that they have as yet gone too far, if even far enough,
in the negative direction.

No doubt both sides would

SCIENCE AND FAITH

allow that the highest Science and the truest Theology must ultimately be mutually consistent, and harmonious; but they are far from presenting that appearance at present. The term "Theology," as ordinarily used, necessarily signifies nothing ultimate or divine ; it signifies only the present state of human

knowledge on theological subjects. And similarly the term "Science," if correspondingly employed, represents no fetish to be worshipped blindly as absolute truth, but merely the present state of human knowledge on subjects within its grasp, together with
the practical consequences deducible from such knowledge in the opinion of the average scientific man: it

usually connotes what may be called orthodox science, the orthodox science of the present day, as set

forth by its professed exponents, and as indicated by the general atmosphere or setting in which figures in every branch of knowledge are now regarded by
cultivated men.

It

may be objected that there is no

definite

body of

doctrine which can be classed as orthodox science; and it is true that there is no formulated creed; but I sug-

than there

is more nearly an orthodox science an orthodox theology. Professors of theology differ among themselves in a rather conspicuous manner; and even in that branch of it with which alone most Englishmen are familiar, viz. Christian Theology, there are differences of opinion on ap-

gest that there

is

parently important issues, as

is

evidenced by the

existence of Sects, ranging from Unitarians on the one side, to Greek and Roman Catholics on the other.

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

In
science, sectarianism is less

marked, controversies detail, and on all imrage chiefly portant issues its professors are agreed. This general consensus of opinion on the part of experts, a general consensus which the public are willing enough to acquiesce in, and adopt as far as they can understand it, is what I mean by the term "science as now

round matters of

for brevity, "modern science." Similarly, by "religious doctrine" we shall mean the general consensus of theologians so far as they

understood,"

or,

are in agreement, especially perhaps the general consensus of Christian theologians; ignoring as far
as possible the

presumably minor points on which

level

they differ, and eliminating everything manifestly

below the moral

of dogma generally acceptable

at the present day.

I think, be admitted that the modern scientific atmosphere, in spite of much that is whole-

Now it must,

some and

nutritious, exercises a sort of blighting influence upon religious ardour. At any rate the great

have as a rule not been eminent for their acquaintance with exact scientific knowledge, but on the contrary, have felt a distrust and a dislike of that uncompromising quest for cold hard truth in which the leaders of science are engaged; while on the other hand, the leaders of science have shown an
saints or seers

aloofness from, if not a hostility towards, the theoretical aspects of religion. In fact, it may be held that
the general drift or atmosphere of modern science is adverse to the highest religious emotion, because unconvinced of the reality of many of the occurrences

SCIENCE AND FAITH

exalted state of feeling must be

upon which such an

based, if it
is

to be anything

more than a wave of

transient enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, we must admit that among men of science, there must be many now living, who accept fully the facts and implications of science,

who

accept also the creeds of the Church, and who do not keep the two sets of ideas in watertight compartments of their minds, but do distinctly pereeive a reconciling and fusing element.

If we proceed to ask what is this reconciling element, we find that it is neither science nor theology, but that it is either philosophy or poetry. By aid of philosophy, or by aid of poetry, a great deal can be accomplished. Mind and matter may be then no longer two, but one; this material universe may then become the living garment of God gross matter may be regarded as a mere appearance, a mode of apprehending an idealistic cosmic reality, in which we really live and move and have our being; the whole of existence can become infused and suffused with immanent
;

Deity.
the spiritual

would then be necessary between and the material, between the laws of Nature and the will of God, because the two would
reconciliation

No

be but aspects of one all-comprehensive pantheistic

entity.

All
not

may possibly be in some sort true, but it is science as now understood. It is no more science
this

than are the creeds of the Churches.

It

an

intuition,

an inspiration perhaps,

a guess, but it is not

is

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

it

a link in a chain of assured and reasoned knowledge ; can no more be clearly formulated in words, or clearly apprehended in thought, than can any of the

high and lofty conceptions of religion. It is, in fact, far more akin to religion than to science. It is no solution of the knotty entanglement, but a soaring above it; it is a reconciliation in excelsis.

Minds which can habitually rise to it are, ipso facto, essentially religious, and are exercising their religious
functions they have flown off the dull earth of exact
;

knowledge into an atmosphere of

faith.
it

But

if this flight

be possible, especially if

be ever

minds engaged in a daily round of scientific teaching and investigation, how can it be said that the atmosphere of modern science and the
possible to

atmosphere

of

religious

faith

are

incompatible?

Wherein

lies

the incompatibility?

reply briefly is and this is the kernel of what I have to say that orthodox modern science shows us a self-contained and self-sufficient universe, not in

TMy

touch with anything beyond or above eral trend and outline of it known;

itself,

the gen-

nothing supernatural or miraculous, no intervention of beings other than ourselves, being conceived possible.

While religion, on the other hand, requires us coneven afstantly and consciously to be in touch,
with a power, a mind, a being fectionately in touch, or beings, entirely out of our sphere, entirely beyond our scientific ken; the universe contemplated by
religion
cient,
is
it is

by no means self-contained or self-suffidependent for its origin and maintenance,

SCIENCE AND FAITH

are for our daily bread and future hopes, upon the power and the goodwill of a being or beings of
as

we

which science has no knowledge. Science does not indeed always or consistently deny the existence of such transcendent beings, nor does it make any effectual attempt to limit their potential powers, but it definitely disbelieves in their exerting any actual influence on the progress of events, or in their producing

or modifying the simplest physical phenomenon. "Tor instance, it is now considered unscientific to

pray for
to say:

rain,

and Professor Tyndall went

so far as

"The principle [of the conservation of energy] teaches us that the Italian wind gliding over the crest of the Matterhorn is as firmly ruled as the earth in its
of its vapour into clouds is exactly as much a matter of The dispernecessity as the return of the seasons. sion, therefore, of the slightest mist by the special volition of the Eternal, would be as much a miracle as the rolling of the Rhone over the Grimsel precipices, down the valley of Hasli to Meyringen and
orbital revolution
fall

round the sun; and that the

Brientz.

"Without the disturbance of a natural law, quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse, or the rolling of the river Niagara up the Falls no act of humiliation individual or national, could call one shower

from
the

heaven, or deflect towards us a single sun."

i

beam of

From Fragments

"

of Science,

Prayer and Natural Law."

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

Certain objections may be made to this statement of Professor Tyndall's, even from the strictly scientific point of view: the law of the conservation of

has nothing ourselves, for instance, really to do with it. have no hint of any power, to we nor though power, override the conservation of energy, are yet readily

energy

is

needlessly dragged in

when

it

We

able,

by a simple physical experiment, or by an en-

gineering operation, to deflect a ray of light or to dissipate a mist, or divert a wind, or pump water
uphill;

and further objections may be made to the form of the statement notably to the word "there-

ent in their terms.

nevertheless.

fore" as used to connect propositions entirely differBut the meaning is quite plain

The

assertion

is

that

any

act,

how-

ever simple, if achieved by special volition of the Eternal, would be a miracle; and the implied dogma is that the special volition of the Eternal cannot, or at

any rate does

not, accomplish anything whatever in

And this dogma, although not a deduction from really any of the known principles of physical science, and possibly open to objection as a
the physical world.
petitio principiij

may nevertheless

be taken as a some-

what exuberant statement of the generally accepted inductive teaching of orthodox science on the subject. It ought, however, to be admitted at once by Natural Philosophers that the unscientific character of prayer for rain depends really not upon its conflict

with any

physical law, since it need involve no greater interference with the order of nature than is implied in a request to a gardener to water the gar-

known

SCIENCE AND FAITH

den it does not really depend upon the impossibility of causing rain to fall when otherwise it might not but upon the disbelief of science in any power who can and will attend and act. To prove this, let us bethink ourselves that it is not an inconceivable possibility that at some future date mankind may acquire some control over the weather, and be able to influence it; not merely in an indirect manner, as at present they can affect climate, by felling forests or flooding deserts, but in some more direct fashion; in that case prayers for rain would begin again, only the petitions would be addressed, not to heaven, but to the Meteorological Office. do not at of ask the that secretary government present department to improve our seasons, simply because we do not think that he knows how; if we thought he did, we should not be debarred from approaching him by a suspicion of his possible non-existence, or a fear that our request would not be delivered. Professor if be found to necespressed, Tyndall's dogma will, sitate one of these last alternatives; although superficially it pretends to make the somewhat grotesque

We

suggestion that the alteration requested is so complicated and involved, that really, with the best intentions in the world, the Deity does not know how to do it.
attitude of pious resignation might be taken, that the central Office knew best what it was about,

An

were only worrying but that would be rather a supine and fatalistic attitude if we were in real distress, and certainly, on a higher level, it would be a very unfilial one. Religious people have been
petitions
;

and that

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

told,

on what they generally take to be good authorthat ity, prayer might be a miraculously powerful engine for achievement, even in the physical world,
if

they would only believe with sufficient vigour; but (I am not here questioning the soundness of their

position) they have dramatised or spiritualised away the statement, and act upon it no more. Influenced

have come definitely to disbelieve in physical interference of any kind whatever on the part of another order of beings, whether more exalted or more depraved than ourselves, although such beings are frequently mentioned
it is

to be

presumed by

science, they

in their sacred books.

able to do if they chose, such practical purposes beings are to the average scientific man purely imaginary, and he feels sure that we can never have experiential knowledge of them or their powers. In his view the universe lies

Whatever they might be

all

for

before us for investigation, and, so far as he can see, it is complete without them; it is subject to our own
partial control if we are willing patiently to learn how to exercise it, but of any other control, we would

Even in the most say, there is no perceptible trace. vital concerns of life, it is the doctor, not the priest,
who
is summoned : a pestilence is no longer attributed to Divine jealousy, nor would the threshing-floor of Araunah be used to stay it.

The two

subjects, moreover, adopt very different

modes of expression.
can be stated

The death of an

archbishop

from

scientifically in terms not very different those appropriate to the stoppage of a clock, or

10

SCIENCE AND FAITH

fire;

but the religious formula for the same event is that it has pleased God in His infinite wisdom to take to Himself the soul of our dear The very words of such a statement are brother, etc. to modern science unmeaning. (In saying this, I
trust to be understood as not

the extinction of a

now in the slightest to degree attempting prejudge the question, which form is the more appropriate.)

Religion may, in fact, be called supernatural or superscientific, if the term "natural" be limited to
that region of which
direct scientific

we now

believe that

we have any

knowledge. disposition also Religion and Science are opposite. Science cultivates a vigorous adult, intelligent, serpent-like wisdom, and active interference with the course of nature; religion fosters a meek, receptive, child-hearted attitude of dovelike resignation to the Divine will. Take a scientific man who is a man of science, pure and simple with no element either of a poet, or a philosopher, or a saint, and place him in the atmosphere habitual to the churches, and he must starve. He requires solid food, but his sole provision is air. He requires something to touch and define and know but all his surroundings are ethereal, indefinable,

In

illimitable,

incomprehensible, beautiful, and vague.

He dies
religion

of inanition. Take, again, a narrow religious

man

one in

whom

is the sole aptitude workof and where the science, tunnellings ings, gropings

into the cold dry

everything must be scrutinised and proved, distinctly

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

conceived and precisely formulated,
breathe.

11

He

requires ample

air

and he cannot and space; whereas

he finds himself underground, among foundations and masonry, very solid and substantial, but comHe dies of asphyxia. pletely cabined and confined. If a man be able to live in both regions, to be amphibious as
it

were,

able to take short flights occa-

burrow underground occasionally, sionally, accepting the solid work of science and believing its truth, realising the aerial structures of religion, and perceiving their beauty, will such a man be as happily and powerfully at home in the air as if he had no earth adhering to his wings? Is the modern man as happily and as powerfully religious as he might have been with less information about the universe? Or, I would add parenthetically, as he will yet assuredly become, with more?
able to

and

II

Leaving general considerations, and coming to details, let us look at a few of the simpler religious
doctrines, such as are
still,

I suppose, popularly held

in this country.

The

creed of the ancient Israelites was well, or at

least strikingly,

summarised by Mr. Huxley in one of his Nineteenth Century articles (March 1886). He there says "The chief articles of the theological creed of the old Israelites, which are made known to
:

us by the direct evidence of the ancient records, are as remarkable for that which they contain as for that which is absent from them. They reveal a firm
.
.

12

SCIENCE AND FAITH

conviction that, when death takes place, a something termed a soul, or spirit, leaves the body and continues to exist in Sheol for a period of indefinite duration, even though there is no proof of any belief
in absolute immortality; that such spirits can return to earth to possess and inspire the living; that they

are in appearance and in disposition likenesses of the men to whom they belonged, but that, as spirits, they

have larger powers and are freer from physical limitations that they thus form one of a number of kinds of spiritual existence known as Elohim, of whom Jahveh, the national God of Israel, is one; that, consistently with this view, Jahveh was conceived as a sort of spirit, human in aspect and in sense, and with many human passions, but with immensely greater intelligence and power than any other Elohim, whether human or divine." The mere calm statement of such a creed was plainly held by Mr. Huxley to be a sufficient refuta;

tion.

But we need not

limit ourselves to the

Old Testa-

ment, some of whose alleged facts may admittedly be abandoned without detriment, as belonging to the

legendary or the obscure; we may be constrained by science to go further, and to maintain that even what some regard as fundamental Christian tenets, such as the Incarnation or non-natural birth, and the Resurrection or non-natural disappearance of the body from the tomb, have, from the scientific point of view, no
reasonable likelihood or probability whatever. It may be, and often has been, asserted that they appear as

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

13

childish fancies, appropriate to the infancy of civilisation and a prescientific credulous age ; readily intelligi-

and student of folk-lore, but not The same has been said of every variety of alleged miraculous occurrence, and not merely of such dogmas as the fall of man from an original state of perfection, of the subsequent exble to the historian

otherwise interesting.

tirpation of the and so on.

human

race

down

to a single family,
it

The whole

historical record,

wherever

exceeds the

commonplace,
Deity, whether

every act attributed directly to the

it

fire from heaven, or or writing upon stone, leadings by cloud and fire, or conversations, whether during trance or otherwise, is incompatible with the teachings of modern science (let

be sending

it

be clearly remembered

how

I have defined the

;

phrase "modern

science" above)

and when

consid-

ered prosaically, much of the record is summarily Nor discredited, even by many theologians now. is this acquiescence in negation confined to the
leaders.

religious world has agreed apto overboard throw Jonah and the whale, parently Joshua and the sun, the three Children and the fiery

The general

does not seem to take anything in the book of Judges or the book of Daniel very seriously

furnace;

it

and though
Genesis,

it still

it is

clings pathetically to the book of willing to relegate to poetry, i.e. to im-

agination or fiction, such legends as the creation of the world, Adam and his rib, Eve and the apple, Noah and his ark, language and the tower of Babel,

Elijah and the chariot of

fire,

and many

others.

The

14

SCIENCE AND FAITH

stock reconciling phrase, applied to the legend of the six-days' creation, or the Levitican mistakes in Nat-

ural History, after the strained "day-period" mode of interpretation had been exploded in "Essays and

Reviews," used to be, that the Bible was never meant

to teach science ; wherefore, whenever
it

touches

upon

any branch of natural knowledge,

its

statements are

to be interpreted in a friendly spirit, i.e. it is to be glossed over, and in fact disbelieved. But a book

which deals with so prodigious a subject as the origin of all things, and the history of the human race, cannot avoid a treatment of natural facts which is really a teaching of science, whether such teaching is meant or not; and indeed the whole idea involved in the word "meant" is repugnant to the conceptions of biological science, which claims to have ousted teleol-

ogy from

its

arena.

Moreover, if religious people go as far as this, where are they to stop? What, then, do they propose to do with the turning of water into wine, the ejection of devils, the cursing of the fig-tree, the feeding of five thousand, the raising of Lazarus? Or, to go deeper still, what do they make of the scene at the Baptism, of the Transfiguration, of the
cension into heaven?
Crucifixion, the appearances after Death, the AsOn all these points I venture to

suggest that neither religion nor science has said its last word. But it may be urged that even these are but details

compared with the one transcendent doctrine of the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient benevo-

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

lent personal

15

God; the fundamental tenet of nearly all religions. But so far as science has anything to on this say subject, and it has not very much, its
is

throw mistrust, not upon the existence itself, but upon any adjectives applied to the Deity. "Infinite" and "eternal" may pass, and
tendency of Deity
to

"omnipotent" and "omniscient" may reluctantly be permitted to enter with them, these expansive epithets relieve the mind, without expressing more than
is

God. But concerning "personal" and "benevolent" and other anthropomorphic adjectives, science is exceedingly
implicitly contained in the substantive

cilable

dubious; nor is omnipotence itself very easily reconwith the actual condition of things as we now

experience them. The present state of the world is are things still very far short of perfection. imperfect if controlled by a benevolent omnipotence?

Why

indeed, does evil or pain at all exist? All very ancient puzzles these, but still alive; and the solution

Why,
to

them

so far attempted

by

science lies in the

word

Evolution, a word whose applicability to the work of a perfect God may readily be the subject of controversy.

-"Taught by science, we learn that there has been no of man, there has been a rise. Through an apelike ancestry, back through a tadpole and fishlike ancestry, away to the early beginnings of life, the origin of man is being traced by science. There was no specific creation of the world such as was conceived appropriate to a geocentric conception of the universe the world is a condensation of primeval gas,
fall
;

16

SCIENCE AND FAITH

a congeries of stones and meteors fallen together; still falling together, indeed, in a larger neighboring
the energy of that still persistent falling together, the ether near us is kept constantly agitated, and to the energy of this ethereal

mass (the Sun).

By

agitation all the manifold activity of our planet is due. The whole system has evolved itself from mere

moving matter in accordance with the law of gravitation, and there is no certain sign of either beginning or end. Solar systems can by collision or otherwise resolve themselves into nebulae, and nebulas left
to

themselves can condense into solar systems, everywhere in the spaces around us we see a part of

the process going on; the formation of solar systems from whirling nebulas lies before our eyes, if not in
itself, yet in the magnified photoof that sky. Even though the whole taken graphs process of evolution is not completely understood as yet, does anyone doubt that it will become more thoroughly understood in time? and if they do doubt it,

the visible sky

would they hope

such a doubt?
"""""HE-Hs difficult

effectively to bolster

up

religion

by

of "modern
sions.

to resist yielding to the bent and trend science," as well as to its proved conclu-

Its bent
its

and trend may have been wrongly

present disciples: a large tract of knowledge may have been omitted from its ken, which when included will revolutionise some of their

estimated by

accepted opinions; but, however this may be, there can be no doubt about the tendency of orthodox It suggests to us that science at the present time.

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

the

17

self-explanatory, self-contained, and From everlasting to everlasting self -maintaining.

is

Cosmos

the material universe rolls on, composing worlds

and disintegrating them, producing vegetable beauty and

evolving intelligent animal life, developing that into a self-conscious human race, and then plunging it once more into annihilation.
destroying
it,

"Thou makest thine appeal to me!

I bring to life, I bring to death,

The spirit does but mean the I know no more. ."

. .

breath,

the theologian happily and a crucial inquiry of science with eagerly interposes, about this same bringing to life. Granted that the blaze of the sun accounts for winds and waves, and
at
this

But

point

hail,

and

rain,

and

rivers,

and

all

the myriad activities

of the earth, does it account for life? Has it accounted for the life of the lowest animal, the tiniest plant, the simplest cell, hardly visible but yet selfmoving, in the field of a microscope?

And science, in chagrin,

in this direction

has to confess that hitherto

it has failed. It has not yet witnessed the origin of the smallest trace of life from dead matter: all life, so far as has been watched, proceeds

from antecedent life. Given the life of a single cell, science would esteem itself competent ultimately to
trace

evolution into all the myriad existences of and animal and man; but the origin of protoplant
its

plasmic activity itself as yet eludes it. But will the Theologian triumph in the admission? will he therein
detect at last the

dam which

shall

stem the torrent of

18

SCIENCE AND FAITH

scepticism? will he base an argument for the direct action of the Deity in mundane affairs on that failure,

and entrench himself behind that present incompetence of labouring men? If so, he takes his stand on what may prove a yielding foundation. The present power lessness of science to explain or originate life is a convenient weapon wherewith to fell a
pseudo-scientific antagonist

who

is

dogmatising too

loudly out of bounds; but it is not perfectly secure as a permanent support. In an early stage of civilisation it may have been supposed that flame only pro-

ceeded from antecedent flame, but the tinder-box and the lucif er-match were invented nevertheless. Theologians have probably learnt by this time that their central tenets should not be founded, even partially,

upon

nescience, or

upon negations of any

kind, lest

the placid progress of positive knowledge should once more undermine their position, and another dis-

covery have to be scouted with alarmed and violent anathemas.

any century, the physical aspect of the nature of life may become more intelligible, and may perhaps resolve itself into an action of already known forces on the very complex molecule of

Any

year, or

protoplasm.

Already in Germany have inorganic and artificial substances been found to crawl about on glass slides under the action of surface-tension or capillarity, with an appearance which is said to have

deceived even a biologist into hastily pronouncing them living amoebae. Life in its ultimate element and

on

its

material side

is

such a simple thing,

it is

but a

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

slight

19

chemical and physical able to respond to stimuli, to assimilate outside materials, and to subdivide. I apextension of
the cell
forces
;

known

must be

prehend that there is not a biologist but believes (perhaps quite erroneously) that sooner or later the discovery will be made, and that a cell having all the essential functions of life will be constructed out of
inorganic
material. Seventy years ago organic was the chemistry chemistry of vital products, of compounds that could not be made artificially by man. Now there is no such chemistry the name persists, but
;

its

meaning has changed.

It

may

alive,

be conceivably argued that after all we are and that if we ever learn how to make animals

or plants, they as our creation will originate

pre-existent life; just as
artificial selection

from

when we make new species we exercise a control over the by forces of nature which may have some remote likeness to Divine control. And this may possibly be a theme
capable of enlargement.

But meanwhile what do we mean by such a phrase

as "Divine control"? for, after all, the controversy between religion and science is not so much a contro-

versy as to the being or not being of a God. Science might be willing to concede His existence as a vague

and ineffective hypothesis, but there would still remain a question as to His mode of action, a controversy as to the method of the Divine government of
the world.

standing controversy, by no means Is the world conreally dead at the present day.
this is the

And

20
trolled

SCIENCE AND FAITH

by a living Person, accessible to prayer, influenced by love, able and willing to foresee, to intervene, to guide and wistfully to lead without compulsion spirits in some sort akin to Himself?
the world a self-generated, self -controlling machine, complete and fully organised for movement,
is

Or

or down, for progress or degeneration, according to the chances of heredity and the influence of environment? Has the world, as it were, secreted or arrived at life and mind and consciousness by the
either

up

play of natural forces acting on the complexities of highly developed molecular aggregates at first, lifecells, ultimately brain-cells; and these are not the organ or instrument, but the very reality and essence of life and of mind? If there be any other orders of conscious existence
;

in the universe, as probably there are, are they also locked up on their several planets, without the power

of communicating or helping or informing, and all working out their own destiny in permanent isolation? Everything in such a world would be not only apparently but really a definite sequence of cause and effect, just as it seems to us here; and prayer, to be effectual in such a world must be not what theologians mean by prayer, but must be either simple meditation for acquiescence in the inevitable, or else a petition addressed to some other of the dwellers in our time and place, that they may be induced by benevolent acts to ease some of the burdens to which their petitioners are liable.

THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY

21

We thus return to our original thesis, that the root

question or outstanding controversy between science and faith rests upon two distinct conceptions of the
universe:
sufficient universe,

the one, that of a self-contained and selfwith no outlook into or links with

anything beyond, uninfluenced by any life or mind except such as is connected with a visible and tangible material body; and the other conception, that of a universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through and through with a Divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds, acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and love behind the law: a universe by no means
self-sufficient or self-contained,
drils

but with sensitive ten-

groping into another supersensuous order of existence, where reign laws hitherto unimagined by
but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the material universe is governed. According to the one conception, faith is childish
science,

and prayer absurd; the only individual immortality lies in the memory of descendants; benevolence and
cheerful acquiescence in fate are the highest religious attributes possible and the future of the human race
;

is

determined by the law of gravitation and the cumstances of space.

cir-

According to the other conception, prayer may be mighty to the removal of mountains, and by faith we may feel ourselves citizens of an eternal and glorious cosmogony of mutual help and co-operation, advancing from lowly stages to ever higher states of happy

22
activity,

SCIENCE AND FAITH

world without end, and may catch in anticipation some glimpses of that "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." The whole controversy hinges, in one sense, on a practical pivot the efficacy of prayer. Is prayer to
hypothetical and supersensuous beings as senseless and useless as it is unscientific, or does prayer pierce

through the husk and apparent covering of the sensuous universe, and reach something living, loving,

and helpful beyond?

in another sense the controversy turns upon a we live in a universe permeated question of fact.

And

Do

with life and mind: life and mind independent of matter and unlimited in individual duration? Or is life limited, in space to the surface of planetary masses of matter, and in time to the duration of the
material envelope essential to
its

manifestation?

The answer
;

is

ern science, and

given in one way by orthodox modin another way by Religion of all

times and until these opposite answers are made consistent, the reconciliation between Science and Faith is
incomplete.

CHAPTER

II

THE RECONCILIATION

ITwho has read the previous chapter,

as
it

may

or

may

not have been observed, by anyone but in so far

has been missed, the whole meaning has been misconceived, that when speaking of the atmosphere
or the conclusions, the doctrines or the tendency, of "science," I was careful always to explain that I

meant orthodox or present-day science; meaning not the comprehensive grasp of a Newton, but science as now interpreted by its recognised official exponents, by the average Fellow of the Royal Society for instance. Just as by "faith" I intended not the ecstatic insight aroused in a seer by some momentary revelation, but the ordinary workaday belief of the average enlightened theologian. And my thesis was that the attitudes of mind appropriate to these two classes, were at present fundamentally diverse; that there was still an outstanding controversy, or ground for controversy, between science and faith, although active fighting has been suspended, and although all bitterness has passed from the conflict, let us hope never to return. But the diversity remains, and for
23

24

SCIENCE AtfD FAITH

the present

it is better so, if it has not achieved its work. Eliminating the bitterness, the conflict has been useful, and it would be far from well even to

attempt to bring it to a close prematurely. But yet there must be an end to it some time reconciliation is
;

somewhere in the future no two parts or aspects of the Universe can permanently and really be discordant. The only question is where the meeting-place may be whether it is nearest to the orthodox
to
lie
; ;

bound

faith or to the orthodox science of the present day. This question is the subject of the present chapter,

which
is

a sequel to the preceding. Let me, greatly daring, presume to enter upon the inquiry into what
is

opposing creeds, how much of each has its origin in over-hasty assumption or fancy, and how far the opposing views are merely a natural consequence of imperfect vision of opposite sides of the same veil. First among the truths that will have to be accepted by both sides, we may take the reign of Law, sometimes called the Uniformity of Nature. The discovery of uniformity must be regarded as mainly the work of Science: it did not come by revelation. In moments of inspiration it was glimpsed, "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," but the glimpse
really true

and

essential in the

was only momentary, the Hebrew "atmosphere" was

saturated with the mists of cataclysm, visible judgused to ments, and conspicuous interferences.

We

be told that the Creator's methods were adapted to the stage of His Creatures, and varied from age to age:
that
it

was

really

His

actions,

and not

their

mode of

THE RECONCILIATION

25

regarding them, that varied. The doctrine of uniformity first took root and grew in scientific soil.

At first sight this doctrine of uniformity excludes Divine control; and the law of evolution proceeds still further in the direction of excluding everything in the nature of personal will, of intention, of guidIt shows that ance, of adaptation, of management.
;

things change and

to

show why they

how they change, and it attempts change. The Darwinian form of it

attempts to account for the origin of species by inevitable necessity, free from artificial selection or operations analogous to those of the breeder. The old

Theology has gone, and guidance and purpose appear to have gone with it. At first sight, but at first sight only. So might an observer, inspecting some great and perfect factory, with machines constantly weaving patterns, some beautiful, some ugly, conclude, or permit himself to dream at least, after some hours' watching, during which everything proceeded without a hitch, driven as it were by inexorable fate, that everything went off
itself,

controlled

by cold dreary

necessity.

And

if

his scrutiny could

be continued for weeks or years, and it still presented the same aspect, his dream would begin to seem to be true: the perfection of mechanism would weary the spectator: his human weakness would long for something to go wrong, so that someone from an upper office might step down and set it right again. Humanity is accustomed to such interventions and breaks in a ceaseless sequence, and, when no such breaks and interventions occur,

26

SCIENCE AND FAITH

conclude hastily that the scheme is self -originatself -sustained, that it works to no ultimate and ing,

may

foreseen destiny. So sometimes, looking at the east end of London, or many another only smaller city, has the feeling of
despair seized men they wonder what it can all mean. So, on the other hand, looking at the loom of nature, has the feeling, not of despair, but of what has been
:

called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, arisen atheism never fully realised, and wrongly so-called; re:

cently
is

has been called severe Theism indeed; for it joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, exit

ultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied

with the perfection of the mechanism, content to be a part of the self -generated organism, and endeavouring to think that the feelings of duty, of earnest effort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously persist in spite of all discouragement, are on this

view

intelligible as well as instinctive,

less

and sure that

than unrepining, unfaltering, unswervnothing ing acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man. The law of evolution not only studies change and
progress, it seeks to trace sequences back to antecedents: it strains after the origin of all things. But

ultimate origins are inscrutable. Let us admit, as scientific men, that of real origin, even of the simplest thing,

a pebble. Sand is the debris of rocks, and fresh rocks can be formed of compacted sand but this suggests infinity,
;

we know nothing; not even of

not origin.

Infinity

is

non-human and we shrink

THE RECONCILIATION
from
it,

27

in space,

yet what else can there be in space? And if why not in time also? Much might be said must admit that science here, but let it pass. knows nothing of ultimate origins. Which first,

We

the hen or the egg? is a trivial form of a very real puzzle. That the world, in the sense of this
planet, this homely lump of matter we call the earth that this had an origin, a history, a past, intelligible more or less, growingly intelligible to the eye of

enough. The date when it was molten be may roughly estimated; the manner and mechanism of the birth of the moon has been guessed: the
science, is true

and moon then originated in one sense; before that they were part of a nebula, like the rest of the solar system; and some day the solar system may
earth

again be part of a nebula, by reason of collision with some at present tremendously distant mass. But all that is nothing to the Universe; nothing even to the visible universe. The collisions there take place every now and again before our eyes. The Universe is full of lumps of matter of every imaginable size: the history of a solar system may be written its birth and also its death, separated perhaps by millions of millions of years; but what of that? It is but an episode, a moment in the eternal cosmogony, and the eye of history looks to what happened before the

and after the death of any particular aggregate; just as a child may trace the origin and the destruction of a soap bubble, the form of which is evanbirth
escent, the material

of which

is

permanent.
it

While the soap bubble

lived

was the scene of

28

SCIENCE AND FAITH

order impossi-

much beauty and of a kind of law and

ble to the

mere water and soap out of which it was made, and into which again it has collapsed. The history of the soap bubble can be written, but there is a before and an after. So it is with the solar system so
;

with any assigned collocation of matter in the universe. No point in space can be thought of "at which if a man stand it shall be impossible for him to cast a
javelin into the beyond;" nor can any epoch be conceived in time at which the mind will not instantly

and automatically "what after?"

inquire,

"and what before," or

for something finite : it longs for a beginning, even if it could dispense with an end. It has tried of late to imagine that the

Yet

does the

human mind pine

law of dissipation of energy was a heaven-sent message of the finite duration of the Universe, so that before everything was, it could seek a Great First Cause; and after everything had been, could take
refuge once more in Him. Seen more closely, these are childish notions. They would give no real help if they were true; any more than other fairy tales suitable for children. In the dawn of civilisation God "walked in the garden in the cool of the day." Down to say the middle of the nineteenth century He brought things into existence by a creative Fiat, and looked on His work for a time with approbation; only to step down and destroy a good deal of it before many years had
elapsed,

and then
to time.

to patch

it

up and

try to

mend

it

from time

THE RECONCILIATION
All very
ery
is

29

human

the endless rumble of the machin-

distressing, perfection is intolerable. Still more intolerable is imperfection not attended to; the

machinery groans, lacks oil, shows signs of wear, some of the fabrics it is weaving are hideous; why, why, does no one care? Surely the manager will before long step down and put one of the looms to rights, or scold a workman, or tell us what it is all for, and why he needs the woven fabric, der Gottheit
lebendiges Kleid. see that he does not

We

now

interfere, not even

when things go very wrong;

the "hands" are left to

put things right as best they can, nothing mysterious ever happens now, it is all commonplace and semiintelligible

we ourselves could easily throw a machine out of gear; we do, sometimes; we ourselves if we
;

are clever

enough and patient enough, could even

perform the far harder task of putting one to right

could even suggest fresh patterns; we seem to be more than onlookers as musicians and
again;
artists

we

if ideas

perhaps we are foremen; and why should we not throw them into the common stock? There is no head manager at all, this thing has been always running; as the hands die off, others take their places; they have not been selected or appointed to the job; they are only here as the fittest of a large number of whom they alone survive; even the looms seem to have a selfcreate

we can

occur to us,

mending,

self -regenerative power; and we ourselves, are not looking at it or assisting in it for long. When we go, other brilliantly endowed and inventive

we

SO

SCIENCE AND FAITH

underspectators or helpers will take our places. stand the whole arrangement now; it it simpler than at first we thought.
Is
it,

We

then, so simple?

Does the uniformity and

the eternity and the self-sustainedness of it make it the easier to understand? Are we so sure that the

guidance and control are not really continuous, instead of being, as we expected, intermittent? May we be not looking at the working of the Manager all the time, and at nothing else? Why should He step down and interfere with Himself?
the lesson science has to teach theology to look for the action of the Deity, if at all, then
is

That

always not in the past alone, nor only in the future, but equally in the present. If His action is not visi;

ble now,

never will be, and never has been visible. Shall we look for it in toy eruptions in the West
it

Indies?

As

well look for

it

in the fall of a child's

box of bricks! Shall we hope to see the Deity some day step out of Himself and display His might or His love or some other attribute? We can see Him

now

if

we
is

look; if

we cannot

soe, it is

only that our

eyes are shut.

"Closer

He

than breathing, nearer than hands or feet:"

yes but also science; the real trend and meaning of Science, whether of orthodox "science" or not.
poetry,

II

There

is

nothing new in Pantheism:

indeed no!

But

there are different kinds of pantheism.

That

THE RECONCILIATION
the All
it is is

SI

a manifestation, a revelation of God, that in a manner, a dim and ungraspable manner, in

some sort God Himself, may be readily granted; but what does the All include? It were a strange kind of All that included mountains and trees, the forces of nature, and the visible material universe only, and excluded the intelligence, the will, the
emotions, the individuality or personality, of which we ourselves are immediately conscious. Shall we

and God not possess them? That would be no pantheism at all. Any power, any love,
possess these things

of which we ourselves are conscious does thereby certainly exist;

and and nobler form

so

it

must

exist in highly intensified

make

in the totality of things, unless we the grotesque assumption that in all the infinite

universe

denizens of planet Earth are the highest. Let no worthy human attribute be denied to the Deity.

we

In Anthropomorphism there are many errors, but there is one truth. Whatever worthy attribute belongs to man, be it personality or any other, its existence in the Universe
to the All.
is

thereby admitted;

it

belongs

The only
and
effort,

conceivable

way

of denying personality,
effort,

and

failure,

and renewed

and

consciousness, and love, and hate too, for that matter, in the real whole of things, is to regard them as
illusory,

physiological and purely material illusions in ourselves. Even so, they are in some sense there;

they are not unreal, however they are to be accounted for. must blink nothing; evolution is a truth, a

We

strange and puzzling truth; "the whole creation

32

SCIENCE AND FAITH

groaneth and travaileth together;" and the most perfect of all the sons of men, the likest God this
planet ever saw,

of what and sacrifice, and wistful yearning for something not

yet attainable, were not to be regarded as
attributes alone.

He to whom many look for their idea God is, surely He taught us that suffering,

human
In the

Must we not admit

the evil attributes also?

Whole, yes; but one of our experiences is that there are grades of existence. recognise that in our-

We

selves the

ape and

tiger are dying out, that the germs

;

made their appearance it is of the higher that we may infer in the more advanced grades of existence; intensification of the lower lies behind and beneath us. The inference or deduction of some of the attributes of Deity, from that which we can recognise as "the likest God within the soul," is a legitimate deducof higher faculties have

an

intensification

tion, if

properly carried out; and it is in close correspondence with the methods of physical science. It

has been said that from the properties of a drop of water the possibility of a Niagara or an Atlantic

might be inferred by a
neither.
1

man who had seen or heard of And it is true that by experiment on a small

quantity of water a man with the brain of Newton and the mathematical power and knowledge of Lord

Rayleigh could deduce by pure reasoning most if not all of the inorganic phenomena of an ocean and that not vaguely but definitely the existence of waves on its surface, the rate at which they would travel as
;
;

Sir

Conan Doyle,

Study in Scarlet.

THE RECONCILIATION

S3

dependent upon distance from crest to crest, their maximum height, their length as depending on depth of sea; the existence of ripples also, going at a different pace and following a different law the breaking of waves upon a shore; the tides also; the ocean currents caused by inequalities of temperature, and many other properties which are realised in an actual ocean: not as topographical realities indeed, but as necessary theoretical consequences of the hypothetical existence of so great a mass of water. Reasoning
;

to the great is legitimate reasoning, notwithstanding that by increase of size phenomena

into being.

from the small

wholly different and at first sight unexpected come No one not a mathematician looking at
;

a drop of water could infer the Atlantic billows or

the tides but they are all there in embryo, given gravitation; and yet not there in actuality in even the
smallest degree. increase of size is

People

sometimes

think

that

mere magnification, and introduces

no new property. They are mistaken. Waves could not be on a drop, nor tides either, nor waterspouts, nor storms. large makes it retain

The simple

fact that the earth

is

an atmosphere; and the existence

of an atmosphere enhances the importance of a globe beyond all comparison, and renders possible plant and animal life. The simple fact that the sun is very
large makes it hot, i.e. enables it to generate heat, and so fits it to be the centre and source of energy to

worlds of habitable activity. To suppose that the deduction of divine attributes by intensification of our own attributes must neces-

34.

SCIENCE AND FAITH

sarily result in a "magnified non-natural man" is to forget these facts of physical science. If the rea-

bad, or the data insufficient, the result is worthless, but the method is legitimate, though far from easy; and it is hardly to be expected that the

soning

is

science of theology can yet have

had
it is it

its

even

its

Copernicus.

At

present

by

is inspiration; prophet rather than the theologian whom would prefer to trust.

faith

and

and

Newton, or safest to walk the saint and

humanity

Ill
our groping inquiry to the series of questions left unanswered in the latter portion of Chapter I and ask, what then of prayer, regarded scientifically; of miracle, if we like to call it miracle; of the region not only of emotion and intelligence, but of active work, guidance, and interference? Are these, after all, so rigorously excluded by the reign of law? Are not these also parts of its kingdom? Shall law apply only to the inorganic and the non-living? Shall it not rule the domain of life
this estimate; and if so, I defer to that the topics slightly glanced at in the first half of this section have been profoundly studied by them;
i

Now let us go back to

Theologians

may

differ

their opinion.

It is well

from known

but the subject

as

is

much progress has been made in Theology as in Not so much progress has been made even in the
in the

so difficult that an outsider can hardly assume that the physical sciences.
biological sciences as
its

more

specifically physical.
it
is

It is

sometimes said that biology has

Copernicus, and
did.

had

its

Newton, but

not so:

Darwin was

revolutionised ideas

as the era of Copernicus

Newton did not

era.

revolutionise ideas: his

was a synthetic and deductive

THE RECONCILIATION

35

and of mind too? Speaking or thinking of the Universe, we must exclude no part;
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul;"
"

For

as the reasonable soul

and human

flesh is

one

man "

so

God and man

by Let us take
it

acterized

constitute a unity, a unity charmoral freedom in accordance with law.

this question

of guidance.

We
see
it

see

in action

now

or never.

Do we
is

must now?
Is the

Orthodox theology vaguely assumes

science sees
it

it;

orthodox

not at

all.

What

the truth?

blindness of science subjective or objective? Is the vision absent because there is nothing to see or be-

cause

we have

shut our eyes, and have declined to con-

template a region of dim and misty fact? Take the origin of species by the persistence of
favourable variations, how is the appearance of those same favourable variations accounted for? Except

by

artificial selection,

ance, their

Given their appeardevelopment by struggle and inheritance

not at
all.

and survival can be explained; but that they arose spontaneously, by random change without purpose, is an assertion which cannot be made. Does anyone
skill of the beaver, the instinct of the the bee, genius of a man, arose by chance, and that its presence is accounted for by handing down and by

think that the

survival?

What

struggle for existence will explain

the advent of Beethoven?

What

pitiful necessity

for earning a living as a dramatist will educe for us

36

SCIENCE AND FAITH

Shakespeare? These things are beyond science of the orthodox type ; then let it be silent and deny nothing in the Universe till it has at least made an honest
eifort to

comprehend the whole.

Genius, however, science has made an effort not wholly to ignore; but take other human faculties

Premonition,

what

Inspiration, Prevision, Telepathy meaning of these things? Orthodox science refuses to contemplate them, orthodox theology also
is

the

them askance. Many philosophers have relegated them to the region of the unconscious, or the subconscious, where dwell things of nothing worth. A few Psychologists are beginning to attend.
looks at some of

Men of religion can hold aloof or not as they please

probably they had better hold aloof until the scientific basis of these things has been rendered more secure. At present they are beyond the pale of science, but they are some of them inside the Universe of fact, and their all of them, as I now begin to believe, So as must be extracted. this long region is meaning ignored, dogmatic science should be silent. It has a right to its own adopted region, it has no right to be

heard outside.

It cannot see guidance, it cannot recognise the meaning of the whole trend of things, the constant leadings, the control, the help, the revela-

beyond our normal bodily and mental powers. No, for it will not look. What becomes of an intelligence which has left this earth? Whence comes the nascent intelligence which arrives? What is the meaning of our human personality and
tions, the beckonings,

individuality?

Did we spring

into existence a

few

THE RECONCILIATION

37

years ago? Do we cease to exist a few years hence? It does not know. It does not want to know.

Does theology seek enlightenment any more energetically? No, it is satisfied with its present informa* tion, which some people mistake for divine knowledge on these subjects. Divine knowledge is perhaps not
obtained so easily. At present, in the cosmic scheme
the line at man.
life

we

strangely draw
slight hiatus

We know of every grade of animal

from the amoeba upwards, with some

here and there,

the lowest being single cells indistinguishable from plants, but the series terminates with man. From man the scale of existence is sup-

posed to step to God.

Is

it

not somewhat sudden?

to the amoeba
is

The

total descent

from man

an

in-

comparably smaller interval. Yet that is a deep Why this suddeclivity; profound, but not infinite. den jump from the altitude of man into infinity? Are there no intermediate states of existence? Perhaps on other planets, yes, bodily existence on other planets is probable, not necessarily on any planet of our solar system, but that is a trifle in the visible universe; it is as our little five-roomed house among all the dwellings of mankind. But why on

Why

other planets only? bodily existence only? think solely of those incarnate personalities

Why

from whom, by exigencies of place, we are most isolated? Because we feel more akin to such, and we know of no others. good answer so far, and a

true.

But do we wish

to

learn?

Have we our
adduced

minds open?

few men of

science have

38

SCIENCE AND FAITH

evidence of intelligence not wholly inaccessible and yet not familiarly accessible, intelligence perhaps a

part of ourselves, perhaps a part of others, intelligence which seems closely connected with the region of genius, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, to which I

have briefly referred.

Suppose for a moment that there were a God. Science has never really attempted to deny His existence. Conceive a scientific God. How would He work? Surely not by speech or by intermittent personal interference. He would be in, and among, and The universe is of, the whole scheme of things. l law connected effect is with cause if a governed by 2 thing moves it is because something moves it, effects are due and only due to agents. If there be guidance or control, it must be by agents that it is exerted. Then what in the scheme of things would be His
;

agents?

among such agents we must recognise ourwe can at least consider how we and other animals work. Watch the bird teaching its young to
Surely
selves:

the mother teaching a child to read, the statesman nursing the destiny of a new-born nation. Is
fly,

there no guidance there? What is the meaning of legislation

and municipal

government, and

acts

of reform, and

after better lives for ourselves

and Pure automatism, say some; an illusion of free will. Possibly; but even a dream is not an absolute nonenilf
2

the struggle others?

all

this involves controversy, then sequent with antecedent. This I wish to maintain in spite of controversy.

THE RECONCILIATION
tity; the effort,

39

however

it

be expressed or accounted

for, exists.

What is all the effort regarded scientifically but the action of the totality of things trying to improve itself, striving still to evolve something higher, There holier, and happier, out of an inchoate mass?
may
one. tion

be

many

other

ways of regarding
if perfection

it,

but this

is

Failures, mistakes, sins,

yes, they exist ; evolu-

would be meaningless

attained; but surely even now we see surely the effort of our saints is bearing fruit.

were already some progress,

This

planet has labored long and patiently for the advent of a human race, for millions of years it was the abode of strange beasts, and now recently it has become the

but imperfection would you expect? May it not be suggested that conscious evil or vice looms rather large in our eyes, oppresses us with a somewhat exaggerated sense of its cosmic importance, because it is peculiarly characteristic of the human stage of development the lower animals know little or nothing of it; they may indeed do things which in men would be sinful, but that is just what sin is reversion to a lower type after perception of a higher. The consciousness of crime, the active
:

abode of man.

What

pursuit of degradation, does not arise till something human intelligence is reached; and only a little higher up it ceases again. It appears to be a stage
like

rather rapidly passed through in the cosmic scheme. Greed, for instance, greed in the widest sense, accu-

mulation for accumulation's sake:

defect,

it

is

human

and one responsible for much misery to-day;

40

SCIENCE AND FAITH

it

but

arose recently, and already it is felt to be below the standard of the race. stage very little above not at all above the higher grades present humanity,

of present humanity, and we

again.

shall

be free from

it

Let us be thankful we have got thus far, and struggle on a little farther. It is our destiny, and
whether here or elsewhere it will be accomplished. are God's agents, visible and tangible agents, and we can help we ourselves can answer some kinds of prayer, so it be articulate; we ourselves can interfere with the course of inanimate nature, can make waste places habitable and habitable places waste. Not by breaking laws do we ever influence nature we cannot break a law of nature, it is not brittle, we only break ourselves if we try but by obeying them. In acordance with law we have to act, but act we can and do, and through us acts the Deity. And perhaps not alone through us. are the

We

We

highest bodily organisms on

the material control of
to the laws of Physics
it

this material planet,

and

and

belongs to us. It is subject to the laws of our minds

operating through our bodies. If there are other beings near us they do not trespass. It is our sphere,

Of any excepso far as Physics are concerned. tions to this statement, stringent proof must be forthcoming.
that under certain strange conditions physical interference does occur; but there

Assertions are

made

is

these things happen,

always a person of unusual type present when and until we know more of the

THE RECONCILIATION

41

power of the unconscious human personality, it is simplest to assume that these physical acts are due,
whether consciously, or unconsciously, to that person. But what about our mental acts? can operate on each other's minds through our physical envelope,

We

in other ways, "but we can do more: it appears that we can operate at a distance, by no apparent physical organ or medium; if by mechanism at all, then by mechanism at present un-

by speech and writing and

known

to us.

Supposing, then, that we are open to influence

from each other by non-corporeal methods, may we not be open also to influence from beings belonging
not be aided, not witinspired, guided, by a cloud of witnesses, nesses only, but helpers, agents like ourselves of the
if so,

to another order?

And

may we

immanent God?
do we know that in the mental sphere these cannot answer prayer, as we in the physical? It is
not a speculation only, it is a question for experience to decide. Are we conscious of guidance do we feel
;

How

that prayers are answered? that will, and to think, is given us?

power

to do,

and

to

Many

there are

who

with devout thankfulness will say yes. They attribute it to the Deity; so can

we

attribute

everything to the Deity, from thunder and lightning down to daily bread but is it direct action? Does He
;

not distribute the work

among agents? That is what but it is difficult to discriminate; analogy suggests, and it is not necessary; the whole is linked together,
"Bound by gold
chains about the feet of God,"

42

SCIENCE AND FAITH

all
it

and through it any hypothesis

to the highest shall come in

His energising Spirit runs. On must be to the Lord that we pray

;

we know or can conceive but the answer ways we do not know, and there must a be far always Higher than ever we can conceive.

Religious people seem to be losing some of their faith in prayer: they think it scientific not to pray in the sense of simple petition. They may be right: it

may

be the highest attitude never to ask for anything If saints feel it so, specific, only for acquiescence.

they are doubtless right but, so far as ordinary science has anything to say to the contrary, a more childlike attitude might turn out truer, more in ac-

cordance with the total scheme. Prayer for a fancied good that might really be an injury, would be foolish; prayer for breach of law would be not foolish only

but profane; but who are we to dogmatise too martyr may have positively concerning law? prayed that he should not feel the fire. Can it be doubted that, whether through what we call hypnotic

suggestion or by some other name, the granting of

it

Prayer, we have been told, is a mighty engine of achievement, but we have ceased to believe it. Why should we be so incredulous? Even in medicine, for instance, it is not really absurd to suggest that drugs and no prayer may be almost as

was

at least possible?

foolish as prayer
1

and no drugs. 1

Mental and phys-

gardening is a bacteriological problem. bacteria are good and useful and necessary; they act in digestion, in manures, etc.; others are baleful and mean disease. The gardener, like the physician, has to cultivate the plants and eradicate the weeds.
Diseases are like weeds ;

Some

THE RECONCILIATION
ical

43

are interlocked.

The

crudities

of "faith-healing"

have a germ of truth, perhaps as much truth as can be claimed by those who condemn them. How do we
not ignoring one side, that each is but half educated, each only adopting half measures? The whole truth may be completer and saner than the
that each
is

know

sectaries

dream: more things

Than
this

may be

"wrought by prayer world dreams of."

We are not bodies alone, nor spirits alone, but both ; our bodies isolate us, our spirits unite us: if I may venture on the construction of two lines, we are like
With deeply submerged
Floating lonely icebergs, our crests above the ocean, portions united by the sea.

The
part
is

conscious part is knowing; the subconscious ignorant yet the subconscious can achieve re:

can by no means either understand or perform. Witness the physical operations of "suggestion" and the occasional lucidity of trance. Each one of us has a great region of the subsults the conscious
If he ignores the existence of weeds and says they are all plants, he speaks truth as a botanist, but is not a practical gardener. If he says, "Gardening is all effort on my part, and nothing conies from the sky,
I will

errs foolishly

dig and I will water, I care not for casual rain or for sun," he on one side. If he says, "The sun and the rain do every-

thing, there is no need for my exertion," he errs on the other side, and errs more dangerously; because he can abstain from action, whereas he

cannot exclude rain and sun, however much he presumes to ignore them: he ought to be a part of the agency at work. Sobriety and sanity consist in

recognising

all

the operative causes

spiritual, mental,

and ma-

terial.

44

SCIENCE AND FAITH

conscious, to which

we do not and need not

it,

attend:

us not cut ourselves off sustaining power. If we have instinct for worship, for prayer, for communion with saints or with Deity, let us trust that instinct, for there lies

only

let

us not deny

let

from

its

the true realm of religion. may try to raise the subconscious region into the light of day, and study it with our intellect also; but let us not assume that

We

our present conscious intelligence is already so well informed that its knowledge exhausts or determines or bounds the region of the true and the impossible.

IV
As
to

what

is scientifically

possible or impossible,

anything not self -contradictory or inconsistent with other truth is possible. Speaking from our present
scientific ignorance,

and

in spite

of the extract from

Professor Tyndall quoted previously, this statement must be accepted as literally true, for all we know to the contrary. There may be reasons why certain things do not occur: our experience tells us
that they do not,

reason
tion,

and we may judge that there is some why they do not. There may be an adaptaan arrangement among the forces of nature
which en-

the forces of nature in their widest sense

chains

them and

screens us

from

their destructive

action; after the same .sort of fashion as the atmosphere screens the earth from the furious meteoric

buffeting

it

would otherwise encounter on

its

portent-

THE RECONCILIATION
ous journey through ever
1

45

new and

untried depths of

space.

We
we

indeed be well protected; we must, else should not be here; but as to what is possible

may

think of any lower creature, low enough in the scale of existence to ignore us, and to treat us, too, as among the forces of nature, and then let us bethink ourselves of how we may appear, not to God or to any
infinite being,

but to some personal intelligence high above us in the scale of existence. Consider a colony of ants, and conceive them conscious at their level;

what know they of fate and of the future? Much what we know. They may think themselves governed by uniform law uniform, that is, even to their understanding the march of the seasons, the struggle
for existence, the weight of the soil, the properties of matter as they encounter it no more. For centuries

they

may have

continued thus; when one day, quite

unexpectedly, a shipwrecked sailor strolling round kicks their ant-hill over. To and fro they run, overwhelmed with the catastrophe. What shall hinder his

crushing them with his heel?

their case.

Laborare est orare in Let them watch him and see, or fancy that he sees, in their movements the signs of industry, of system, of struggle against untoward circumstances; let him note the moving of eggs, the trying to save and to repair the act of destruction may by that means be averted.
i

the sun advances rather

tically a straight line.

The earth does not describe anything: like a closed curve per annum ; more than ten miles per second, in what is prac-

46

SCIENCE AND FAITH

Just as our earth
is

midway among

the

lumps of

matter, neither small like a meteoric stone, nor gigantic like a sun, so may be the place we, the human
race,

occupy in the

scale

of existence.

All our ordi-

nary views are based on the notion that we are highest

in the scale; upset that notion and anything is possible. Possible, but we have to ascertain the facts not
:

Into the lives of the lower creatures caprice assuredly seems to enter; the treatment of a fly by a child is capricious, and may be regarded as puzzling to the fly. As we rise in the
occur.

what might, but what does

that things get better; we have experience that they do. It may be said that up to a point in the scale of life vice and caprice
scale of existence

we hope

increase that the lower organisms know nothing of them, and that
; ;

and the plant world

man has been most wicked of all but they reach a maximum at a certain stage a stage the best of the human race have
already passed and we need not postulate either vice or caprice in our far superiors. Men have thought
themselves the sport of the gods before now, but let

us hope they were mistaken.

lead to madness and despair.

Such thoughts would

We

do not know the

laws which govern the interaction of different orders

of intelligence, nor do we know how much may depend on our own attitude and conduct. It may be that prayer is an instrument which can control or influence higher agencies, and by its neglect we may be losing the use of a mighty engine to help on our lives and those of others. The Universe is huge and awful every way, we

THE RECONCILIATION

47

might so easily be crushed by it; we need the help of every agency available, and if we had no helpers we should stand a poor chance. The loneliness of it when we leave the planet would be appalling; sometimes
even here the loneliness
is

great.

What the "protecting atmosphere" for our disembodied souls may be, I know not. Some may liken
man for a dog, of a for a child, of a far-seeing minister for a race of bewildered slaves while others may dash aside the
the protection to the care of a

woman

intermediate agencies, and feel themselves safe and enfolded in the protecting love

contemplation of

all

of

God

Himself.

true Religion and the region of a completer Science are one.

The region of

CHAPTER
RELIGION, SCIENCE
I.

III

AND MIRACLE

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

religious people dis-

rTlHERE
JL

was a time when

demned

trusted the increase of knowledge, and conthe mental attitude which takes delight in its

pursuit, being in dread lest part of the foundation of their faith should be undermined by a too ruthless

and unqualified spirit of investigation. There has been a time when men engaged in the quest of systematic knowledge had an idea that the results of their studies would be destructive not only
the

of outlying accretions but of substantial portions of edifice of religion which has been gradually
erected

by the prophets and

saints

of humanity.

these epochs will soon belong to history. Thoughtful men realise that truth is the important
thing,
to take refuge in any shelter less substantial than the truth is to render themselves liable

Both

and that

to abject exposure when a storm comes on. not aware that it is a sign of unbalanced

Few

are

judgment

to conclude, on the strength of a few momentous discoveries, that the whole structure of religious belief, built up through the ages by the developing
48

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

49

human
and

race from fundamental emotions and instincts

is

experiences,

unsubstantial and insecure.

Science, including in that term, for present purposes, philosophy and the science of criticism, is with foundations; the business of Religion is

The business of

with superstructure. Science has laboriously laid a solid foundation of great strength, and its votaries have rejoiced over it; though their joy must perforce

be somewhat

dumb and

vocal apostles of art and to decorate it with their light and more winsome tracery: so for the present the structure of science
strikes a stranger as severe

inexpressive until the more literature and music are able

and forbidding.

In a

neighbouring territory Religion occupies a splendid building a gorgeously-decorated palace; concerning which, Science, not yet having discovered a satisfactory
basis,- is

sometimes inclined to suspect that

it is

phantasmal and mainly supported on legend. Without any controversy it may be admitted that the foundation and the superstructure, as at present known, are inadequately fitted together; and that there is, in consequence, an apparent dislocation.

Men
is

of science have exclaimed that

all solid

truth

in their keeping; adopting in that sense the

words

of the poet:
Of Nature
trusts the

"To the solid ground mind which builds for

aye."

On

the

other

ensconced in their
the digging

hand men of Religion snugly traditional eyrie, and objecting to

and the hammering below, have shud-

50

SCIENCE AND FAITH

artificial

dered as the

props and

pillars

by which they
after

supposed

it

to

be buttressed gave

way one

they continue to enjoy peace in their exalted home if it turned out that part of it was suspended in air, with-

another; and have doubted whether

could

out

any perceptible foundation at all, like the phantom city in "Gareth and Lynette" whereof it
could be said:
"the city
is

built
all,

To

music, therefore never built at And therefore built for ever."

Remarks

as to lack of solid foundation

may

be re-

garded as typical of the mild kind of sarcasm which people with superficial smattering of popular science
sometimes try to pour upon religion. They think that to accuse a system of being devoid of solid foundation
is

equivalent to denying

as

Tennyson no doubt

thing that
It
is

may

contrary, perceived, the absence of anycrumble or decay, or be shaken by

its stability.

On the

an earthquake,
the Earth

is

a safeguard rather than a danger.

the absence of material foundation that

makes

itself, for instance, so secure: if it were based upon a pedestal, or otherwise solidly supported, we might be anxious about the stability and dura-

bility

of the support. the emptiness of space.

As

it is, it

floats securely in

Similarly the persistence of its diurnal spin is secured by the absence of anything to stop it not by any
:

maintaining mechanism. To say that a system does not

fact
is

not to

impugn

its

upon one special The body of stability.

rest

RELIGION, SCIENCE
scientific truth rests

AND MIRACLE

51

on no solitary material fact or but on a basis of harmony and consistency between facts: its support and ultimate sanction is of no material character. To conceive of

group of

facts,

Christianity as built upon an Empty Tomb, or any other plain physical or historical fact, is dangerous. To base it upon the primary facts of consciousness

or

upon
1

direct spiritual experience, as

Paul

did, is

There are parts of the structure of Religion may safely be underpinned by physical science the theory of death and of continued personal existence is one of them; there are many others and there will be more. But there are and always will be vast religious regions for which that kind of scientific foundation would be an impertinence, though a
safer.

which

Perhaps these such some may phrase as "the relation of the soul to God."
be

scientific contribution is appropriate.

summed up

in

Assertions are
the

made concerning
these
is

material facts in
is

name of

religion;

science

bound to

criticise.

borne to inner personal exTestimony perience; on that physical science does well to be Nevertheless many of us are impressed with silent.
;

the conviction that everything in the universe may become intelligible if we go the right way to work and
i It will be represented that I am here intending to cast doubt upon a fundamental tenet of the Church. That is not my intention. My contention here is merely that a great structure should not rest upon a So might a lawyer properly say: "To base a legal decision upon, point. the position of a comma, or other punctuation, however undisputed its occurrence is dangerous; to base it upon the general sense of a docu-

ment

is

safer."

52

SCIENCE AND FAITH

are coining to recognise, on the one hand, that every system of truth must be intimately connected with every other, and that this connection will conso
stitute a trustworthy

we

support as soon as
;

it is

revealed
laid

by the progress of knowledge and on the other hand,

that the extensive foundation of truth

now being

workers will ultimately support a gorgeous building of aesthetic feeling and religious faith. Theologians have been apt to be too easily satisfied with a pretended foundation that would not stand

by

scientific

scientific scrutiny;

ligious edifice,
spirit,

they seem to believe that the rewith its mighty halls for the human

can rest upon some event or statement, instead of upon man's nature as a whole and they are apt to decline to reconsider their formulae in the light of fuller knowledge and development. Scientific men, on the other hand, have been liable to suppose that no foundation which they have not themselves laid can be of a substantial character, thereby ignoring the possibility of an ancestral accumulation of sound through unformulated exAnd a few of the less considerate, about a perience. quarter of a century ago, amused themselves by instituting a kind of jubilant rat-hunt under the ven;

theological edifice: obnoxious to its occupants.

pleasant, but
its

erable

a procedure necessarily

The exploration was unhave been purifying and healthful, and the permanent substratum of fact will in due time be cleared of the decaying refuse of
results
centuries.

Some of

the

more

seriously conducted controversy

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

53

between the two contending parties turned upon those frequently discussed topics the possibility of the Miraculous, and the efficacy of Prayer. Let us elaborate the thesis maintained in the last chapter, by discussing further, though still briefly, these two connected subjects.
II.

MEANING or MIRACLE

must begin by admitting that the term "miracle" is ambiguous, and that no discussion which takes that term as a basis can be very fruitful, since the
all be meaning different things. of the term may mean merely an un1. One user usual event of which we do not know the history and

We

combatants

may

cause, a bare

wonder or prodigy such an event

;

as the

course of nature may, for all we know, bring about once in ten thousand years or so, leaving no record of

occurrence in the past and no anticipatory probaThe raining bility of its re-occurrence in the future.
its

or on Pompeii the sudden engulphing of Korah, or of Marcus Curtius, or, on a different plane, the advent of some transcendent
;

down of fire on Sodom,

genius, or even of a personality so lofty as to be called divine, may serve as examples.

2. Another employer of the term "miracle" may add to this idea a definite hypothesis, and may mean an act due to unknown intelligent and living agencies operating in a self-willed and unpredictable manner, thus effecting changes that would not otherwise have occurred and that are not in the regular course of

nature.

The

easiest

example to think of

is

one

54

SCIENCE AND FAITH

wherein the lower animals are chiefly concerned; for instance, consider the case of the community of an ant-hill, on a lonely uninhabited island, undisturbed
kicked over one day had reason to suppose They that events were uniform, and all their difficulties ancestrally known but they are perturbed by an unis

for centuries, whose dwelling

sailor.

by a shipwrecked

intelligible

miracle.

different illustration

is

af-

forded by the presence of an obtrusive but unsuspected live insect in a galvanometer or other measuring instrument in a physical laboratory; whereby
metrical observations would be complicated, and
all

regularity perturbed, in a puzzling and capricious and, to half -instructed knowledge, supernatural, or

even diabolical, manner.

3.

Not

dissimilar are

some of
the

the asserted events in a Seance

utilisation

Room.
to

Another may use the term "miracle"

mean

of unknown laws say of healing or of communication; laws unknown and unformulated, but instinctively put into operation by mental activity of some kind, sometimes through the unconscious inof so-called self-suggestion, sometimes fluence through the activity of another mind, or through the personal agency of highly gifted beings, operating on others; laws whereby time and space appear temporarily suspended, or extraordinary cures are effected, or other effects produced, such as the levitations

and other physical phenomena related of the

saints.
4.

cle"

Another may incorporate with the word "miraa still further infusion of theory, and may mean

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

55

always a direct interposition of Divine Providence, whereby at some one time and place a perfectly: unique occurrence is brought about, which is out of relation with the established order of things, is not due to what has gone before, and is not likely to occur again. The most striking examples of what can be claimed under this head are connected with the personality of Jesus Christ, notably the Virgin Birth and the Empty

which I mean the more material and controversial aspects of those generally accepted doc;

Tomb by

trines

the Incarnation

and the Resurrection.

four categories are:

To summarise

natural or orderly though unusual portent, (1) (2) a disturbance due to unknown live or capricious agencies, (3) a utilisation by mental or spiritual

this part, the

power of unknown laws,

the Deity.
III.

(4)

direct interposition

of

ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE MIRACULOUS.

cases

In some

miraculous will

an argument concerning the so-called turn upon the question whether such

things are theoretically possible. In other cases it will turn upon whether or not

they have ever actually happened. In a third case the argument will be directed to the question whether they happened or not on some particular occasion.

fourth case the argument will hinge upon the particular category under which any assigned occurrence is to be placed:

And in a

For

instance, take a circumstance

which undoubt-

56

SCIENCE AND FAITH

edly has occurred, one upon the actual existence of which there can be no dispute, and yet one of which the history and manner is quite unknown. Take, for instance, the origin of Life; or to be more definite, say the origin of life on any given planet, the Earth for instance. There is practically no doubt that the Earth was once a hot and molten and sterile globe. There is no doubt at all that it is now the abode of an immense variety of living organic nature. How did that life arise? Is it an event to be placed under head (1), as an unexpected outcome of the ordinary course of nature, a development naturally following upon the formation of extremely complex molecular aggregates protoplasm and the like as the Earth cooled; or must it be placed under head (4) as due to the direct Fiat of the Eternal? Again, take the existence of Christianity as a living force in the world of to-day. This is based upon a
,

series

of events of undoubtedly substantial truth cen;

tering round a historical personage under which category is that to be placed? Was his advent to be re-

garded as analogous to the appearance of a mighty genius such as may at any time revolutionise the course of human history; or is he to be regarded as a direct manifestation and incarnation of the Deity Himself? I am using these great themes as illustrations merely, for our present purpose; I have no intention
of entering upon them in this chapter. They are questions which have been asked, and presumably answered, again and again; and
it is

on

lines

such as

RELIGION, SCIENCE
these that

AND MIRACLE

57

usually conducted.

debates concerning the miraculous are But what I want to say is that

so long as we keep the discussion on these lines, and ask this sort of question, though we shall succeed in

emphasizing difficulties, we shall not progress far towards a solution of any of them: nor shall we gain much aid towards life.

IV.

LAW

AND GUIDANCE

The way
detail

and

to progress is not thus to lose ourselves in in confusing estimates of possibilities, but

to consider

two main
thus*:

issues

which

may

very briefly be

formulated
1.

2.

Are we Are we

to believe in irrefragable law? to believe in spiritual guidance?

first of these issues we accept an and systematic universe, with no arbitrary orderly cataclysms and no breaks in its essential continuity.

If we affirm the

Catastrophes occur, but they occur in the regular course of events, they are not brought about by capri-

and lawless agencies; they are a part of the entire cosmos, regulated on the principle of unity and uniformity: though to the dwellers in any time and place, from whose senses most of the cosmos is hidden, they may appear to be sudden and portentous
cious
dislocations of natural order.

So much
above

is

issues.

granted if we accept the first of the If we accept the second, we accept a

its

purposeful and directed universe, carrying on

evo-

58

SCIENCE AND FAITH

lutionary processes from an inevitable past into an anticipated future with a definite aim not left to the
;

random

control of inorganic forces like a motor-car

lost its driver,

which has

but permeated throughout

by mind and intention and foresight and will. Not mere energy, but constantly directed energy the
energy being controlled by something which is not energy, nor akin to energy, something which presumably is immanent and mind.
in the universe

and

is

akin to

life

The alternative to these two random chance and capricious

or universe at
all

beliefs is a universe of

disorder, not a cosmos

I take
beliefs.

it

that

we

all

a multiverse rather. Consequently hold to one or other of these two

to both?

But do we and can we hold

as I conceive

present mission, it is to urge that the two beliefs are not inconsistent with each other, and that we may and should contemplate

So far

my

and gradually
1.

feel our

way towards

accepting both.
is

We

must

realise that the

Whole

a single

undeviating law-saturated cosmos; 2. But we must also realise that the Whole con-

not of matter and motion alone, nor yet of spirit and will alone, but of both and all; we must even yet further, and enormously, enlarge our conception of what the
sists

Whole
Scientific

contains.

preached the first of these desiderata, but have been liable to take a narrow view

men have

RELIGION, SCIENCE
regarding the second.

AND MIRACLE
alive

59

Keenly

to law,

and

knowledge, and material fact, they have been occasionally blind to art, to emotion, to poetry,

and

to the

higher mental and spiritual environment which inspires

and

glorifies the

realm of knowledge.

The temptation of
direction of loo

religious

men has
;

also lain in the

narrow exclusiveness

for they have

been so occupied with their own conceptions of the fulness of things that they have failed to grasp what is implied by a strictly orderly cosmos. They

have allowed the emotional content to overpower the intellectual, and have too often ignored, disliked, and practically rejected, an integral portion of the scheme, appearing to desire, what no one can really wish for, a world of uncertainty and caprice, where effects can be produced without adequate cause, and where the connection of antecedent and consequent can be arbitrarily dislocated. The same error has therefore dogged the steps of both classes of men. An acceptance of miracle, in the crude sense of arbitrary intervention and special
providence, is appropriate to those who feel strangled in the grip of inorganic and mechanical law, without being able to reconcile it with the idea of friendly

guidance and intelligent control. And a denial of miracle, in every sense, that is of all providential leading, and all controlling intelligence, may be the out-

come of the same kind of

ferent temperament,

inability in people

of dif-

people who cannot recognise a directing intelligence in the midst of law and order, who regard the absence of dislocation and inter-

60

SCIENCE AND FAITH

ference as a

mark of

the inexorable.

the inorganic, the mechanical, Wherefore the denial of miracle has

often led to a sort of practical atheism and to an assertion of the valuelessness of prayer.

But

to those

who

are able to combine the acceptance

of both the above

faiths,

prayer

is

part of the orderly

cosmos, and may be an efficient portion of the guiding and controlling will somewhat as the desire of the inhabitants of a town for a civic improvement may be
;

a part of the agency which ultimately brings it about, no matter whether the city be representatively or au-

and effectively combined by those who think of themselves as something detached from and outside the cosmos, operating on it externally and seeking to modify its manifestations by vain petitions addressed to a system of
such persons the above propositions must seem contradictory or mutually exclusive.

tocratically governed. The two beliefs cannot be logically

ordered force.

To

But

if

we can grasp

the idea that

we

ourselves are

an

intimate part of the whole scheme, that our wishes and desires are a part of the controlling and guiding then our mental action cannot but be efficient, will,
if

we

exercise

it

in accordance with the highest

and

truest laws of our being.

V. MIRACLE AND SCIENCE

How
puzzle.

mind can

act on matter at all

is

at present

Life is clearly the intermediary, and a live thing can perform actions and bring about changes in the material world that cannot be predicted by me-

RELIGION, SCIENCE
chanics

AND MIRACLE

61

and that would not otherwise have occurred.

There have been many who believe that such changes affect the conservation of energy, and render that law doubtful, unless life itself be one of the forms of energy. But my contention is that life is, from the mechanical point of view, not a force nor an energy, but only a guiding and directing influence: affecting the quantity of energy no whit. It directs
energy along a certain channel, it utilises the energies which are running to waste, so to speak, and guides them in a specific way as a waterfall may
terrestrial
;

be

made

to light a

town instead of merely dashing

itself picturesquely against rocks.

This subject of "guidance" is a large one, and I must be brief. I have dealt with it in my book on Life and Matter; but it is a point of fundamental importance, and I will try to exhibit it still more clearly and illustrate what I mean by guidance, namely, the

influencing of activity without "work," the direction of energy without generating it, the utilising and

guiding existent activity for preconceived and purposed ends. To show that work is not necessary for guidance even in mechanics, we may instance the following railway guides a train to its destination; while the engine supplies the energy and propels it. Any force exerted by the rails is perpendicular to the motion and does no work; unless, indeed, by friction it exerts a retarding force not perpendicular to motion. But if this be used as a parable it may be objected that the exertion of force is itself a mechanical oper:

62

SCIENCE AND FAITH

;

ation, even though no work is done and that a force cannot act without altering the distribution of mo-

mentum, though

must leave the amount unaltered. and reaction are always equal and opposite, and both are always to be found in the
it

Quite true, action

out a stress in that world which would not otherwise exist then and there but it sustains none of the reaction never does
physical world.

Life

may

call

it

exert an unbalanced force, never does

it

generate

no more than it generates energy. It only directs operations which thoroughly obey the laws of mechanics, and from the mechanical point of view are complete in the physical world. Life and mind have determined where the rails shall be laid down, and when and whence and whither the trains are to be run, but they exert no iota of force upon them; so the distinction between a propelling and a deflecting force is a needless distinction
for our present purposes. Whenever a force is exerted it is exerted as a stress between two bodies, whether it be a working or a guiding force.

any momentum

But, for the kind of guidance exercised by life, force, through a common intermediary, is not a necessary one. path can guide a traveller to his destina-

tion without exerting

any force upon him at all. Conversely, a railway time-table, emanating from the Traffic Manager's office, determines the running of many trains but it is not a form of energy, nor does
;

it

exert force.

liberation of energy can be accomplished by svork entirely incommensurate with the result and so
:

The

RELIGION, SCIENCE
ultimately
it

AND MIRACLE
it

63

would appear that

can be achieved by

all, through the mysterious intervention of the brain as a connector between the psychical and phys-

none at

which otherwise would not be in touch. All that a human being can do is to get some of the energy from the outside world into his muscles by the act of feeding; and when there it is amenable to nerve messages sent from his brain, and so ultimately from his mind, which apparently has the power of liberating detents and pulling triggers in that strange physiological link with another order of existence. How the brain acts: how a thought or an act of will can liberate the energy of a brain cell in a particular direction: is not yet known. It belongs to the mysterious borderland between physics and psycan only appeal to the fact of conchology.
ical worlds,

We

sciousness,

and

illustrate it

by saying that a trigger

can precipitate an explosion, of violence quite incommensurable with that of the energy required to pull the trigger and the work done in pulling the trigger results in infinitesimal local heat, of just the same magnitude whether the prepared explosion results or not: it is independent also of the direction and the epoch of the shot. The aim, and the moment at which to pull the trigger, are determined by the mind of the sportsman, without affecting the question of energy. Life is not energy, but it is the director of energy, and of matter. It achieves results which would not
;

otherwise have occurred.

plant life does that, the green leaves direct the energy of sunshine to the

Even

decomposition

and re-invigoration

of

thoroughly

64.

SCIENCE AND FAITH

burned and stable compounds, carbonic acid and

water.

Engineering and architectural operations produce Forth Bridges, and tunnels, and buildings of a character instinct with mind and purpose. The organic energy needed for the operation is brought by the navvies in their tin cans, and they direct that energy so as to exert propulsive force and do the work; but the controlling mind is that of the architect and the
engineer.
is

that

The only thing that prevents our calling it a miracle we are so thoroughly accustomed to the occurdetermines.

rence.

Life directs. The material and energetic universe is dominated and controlled by these agencies; which utilise the energy they find
available,

Mind

and

direct

it

into appropriate channels.

Finally, whatever difficulties we may feel about understanding the process, we ought not to be accused of dualism by reason of our insistence on the separate categories of life and mind on the one hand, and body and mechanism on the other. However dominant one of these predicaments may be over the other, they may be all ultimately but parts of some comprehensive whole. Domination or even antagonism between the parts of a whole is common enough. One man can dominate or can oppose another, although both are members of the same race, nation, or family. The head can dominate a limb, though both are parts of a single body. So also can Mind and Life dominate and transcend matter and energy. And they do

RELIGION, SCIENCE
this just as effectually,

AND MIRACLE

65

even though in some ultimate monistic unity they can be all recognised as parts or aspects of some one stupendous Reality.

VI. MIRACLE AND RELIGION

So much for general considerations, which in this hy far the most important; we may now descend to a few practical remarks. When speaking of miracles, what people are usually interested in are miracles in detail; they have usually some special instances in their minds, and they want those instances discussed. Using the term "miracle" in quite a popular sense, and meaning by it nothing defined or suscase are
ceptible of definition, but simply the list of miracles they find recorded in the Bible or in the lives of the
Saints, they ask, "Has the progress of science rendered the occurrence of these things more or less probable?" The first and obvious answer, that it has

rendered them subjectively less probable, that is to say, less easy of acceptance than they were at the time

of their record, or even

fest to require giving.

fifty years ago,

is

too mani-

recently they were hardly questioned, except here and there by a few adventurous spirits who were liable to be stigmatised
till

For

as "infidel" for being faithful to their convictions. But if the subjective aspect is passed by as too obvious,

and

if it is

asked whether science has made the

occurrence of the so-called miracles objectively more reasonably probable, it is controversial, but it is not
absurd, to answer concerning several of

them

"in

66

SCIENCE AND FAITH

is

some

an answer which respects, yes": applicable to the miracles of healing.

most

readily;
?

And why

Be-

cause in modern medical practice, especially as developed on the Continent, some of these occurrences can be imitated to-day; for instance, the production, by

of wounds analogous to the "stigmata." assuming it for the moment to be a fact, is one to be welcomed or otherwise by interpreters of Holy Writ, is a question for
self or other suggestion,

Whether

this fact,

themselves to answer.
is that a complete nature enable of would us to recognise the knowledge rationale of every event which ever occurred, or ever can occur; and so it would seem to follow concerning

The

reasonable scientific view

happened in accordance with natural laws of which at present we are more or less ignorant. Some of the popularly-quoted miracles certainly did not happen, and were never by
it

any given apparent prodigy happen as related, or else that

either that it did not

competent judges really thought to have happened, as narrated by the poet or rhapsodist of the time. To regard the poetic suspension of the motion of the sun (or earth) as a scientific statement is absurd. But
while
it is

mere

illiteracy to

suppose that

all classes

of recorded miracle represent statements of fact

since careful precision in recording fact is a rather modern accomplishment, and not likely to be regarded

then, nor in

some quarters even now, as a particularly

them may be worthy of believed by the recorder

desirable or edifying accomplishment, yet certain of consideration, as at any rate

to have occurred as he states

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

67

them; and, besides, as not being wholly outside the range of conceivable possibility.
in so far as they are recognised as reasonably possible, they surely lose their power as specifically

But

and become merely a hint towards an extension of scientific fact. I suppose it must be admitted that the more natural and so to speak commonplace an event becomes, the less exceptional rereligious evidence,

Nevertheless it may be legitimate to recognise that a human being of specially lofty character may, perhaps inevitably, be endowed with faculties and powers beyond the present scope of the race: faculties and powers fully intelligible neither to himself nor to anyone else. Even a genius has an inkling of exceptional powers. No one can explain, or render ordinarily probable a priori, the existence of a child-prodigy capable of performances in music or in arithmetic beyond the power of nearly all adults. Genius combined with sainthood may achieve what to ordinary men are marvels and miracles. Even without sainthood, and without genius, some abnormally constituted species of the
ligious significance
it.

can be accorded to

ment

race possibly anticipating future developas a kind of premature sport, or possibly displaying the remains of ancestral powers now nearly

human

are found to possess faculties unusual and incredible, faculties which in fact are widely
lost to the race

and vigorously
studied them.

disbelieved

by nearly

all

who have not

Whether a given prophet has extraordinary power, and how far his power extends, is a matter for evi-

68
;

SCIENCE AND FAITH

his

dence but whatever his power, it is by the content of message that he is to be judged, not by some accompanying extension of the customary control of

mind over matter. All this is well-worn ground, and I refrain from emphasising a great number of obvious
it is quite wrong to accept a bad and immoral message because it is accompanied by conjuring tricks of amazing ingenuity; and the like. The worst of men can do things beyond the power of an insect, things which to its consciousness, if it had any, would be miraculous. Either there are modes of existence higher than

contentions, e.g., that

tHat displayed by our ordinary selves, or there are not. If there are, it is the business of science to ascertain
their existence

and what they can do

in the

way

of

interaction with our material surroundings: it is not necessarily the business of religion at all, though like

everything else But, because it

science, is
it

it
is

will have a bearing on religion. a nascent and infantile branch of

little importance or small All these things are essenBy tially worthy of investigation, and they will be investigated by those who feel called to the work, although they are looked at askance by some of the The gain of realising scientific magnates of to-day.

therefore of

interest?

no means.

that they are unessential to religion and to human hopes and fears, is that their investigation can be conducted in a cool calm spirit, without prejudice

and without preconception, with no object

in view

but simple ascertainment of truth. The atmosphere of religion should be recognised as enveloping and

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

69

permeating everything, and should not be specially or exclusively sought as an emanation from signs and wonders. Strange and ultranormal things may happen, and are well worthy of study, but they are not to be re-

garded as especially holy.

while others

Some

of

them may repre-

sent either extension or survival of

human

faculty,
at-

may

be an inevitable endowment or

tribute of a sufficiently lofty character; but

none of

them can be accepted without

Testiinvestigation. mony concerning such things is to be treated in a sceptical and yet open-minded spirit; the results of theory and experiment are to be utilised, as in any

other branch of natural knowledge; and indiscriminate dogmatic rejection is as inappropriate as wholesale uncritical acceptance.

The bearing on

the hopes

and

fears of

humanity
be con-

of such unusual facts as can be verified

may

siderable, but they bear no exceptional witness to

guidance and control. Guidance and control, if admitted at all, must be regarded as constant and continuous; and it is just this uniform character that

makes them
difficult to

so difficult to recognise.

It

is

always

perceive or apprehend anything which is Those fish, for perfectly regular and continuous. instance, which are submerged in ocean-depths, betides, are probably of water; and, existence unconscious of the utterly however intelligent, they can have but little reason

yond the reach of waves and

to believe in that

medium, notwithstanding that

their

70

SCIENCE AND FAITH

life,

whole being,

and motion,

is

dependent upon

it

from

instant to instant.

The motion of

again, furious rush though it is than a cannon ball is quite inappreciable to our senses; it has to be inferred from celestial observations,

the earth, fifty times faster

and

it

was strenuously
earlier day.
is

disbelieved

by the agour senses

nostics of

an

Uniformity
are not

always
it;

difficult to

grasp

and yet it is characteristic of everything that is most efficient. Jerks and jolts are easy to appreciate, but they do not conduce to progress. Steady motion is what conveys us on our way,
for
collisions are

made

but a retarding influence.

;

The

seeker

sive sense,

after miracle, in the exceptional and narrow or excluis pining for a catastrophe the investigator

of miracle, in the continuous and broad or comprehensive sense, has the universe for a laboratory.

VII.

HUMAN

EXPERIENCE
few
score years incarnate

Let us survey our

position.

We
here,

find ourselves for a

intelligences

on

this planet;

and we

shall not

fact, each of us, for can study the conditions of existence while here, and we perceive clearly that a certain amount of guidance and control are in our hands. For better for worse

we have not always been always be here we are here in but a very short period; but we
:

we

can,

and our

of the planet. can tory."

legislators do, influence the destinies The process is called "making hisall,

We

even the humblest, to some extent

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

71

influence the destinies of individuals with

whom we

come

into contact.

We have therefore a certain sense

of power and responsibility. It is not likely that we are the only, or the highest, intelligent agents in the whole wide universe, nor
that
else;

we
nor

possess faculties and powers denied to all is it likely that our own activity will be

always as limited as it is now. The Parable of the Talents is full of meaning, and it contains a meaning that is not often brought out. It is absurd to deny the attributes of guidance and
intelligence

and personality and love to the Whole, are part of the Whole, and are personally aware of what we mean by those words in
seeing that
ourselves.

we

These attributes are existent therefore, and cannot be denied; cannot be denied even to the
Deity. Is the planet subject to intelligent control? know that it is: we ourselves can change the course

We

of rivers for predestined ends, we can make highways, can unite oceans, can devise inventions, can make

new compounds, can transmute species, can plan fresh variety of organic life; we can create works of art; we can embody new ideas and lofty emotions in
forms of language and music, and can leave them as * Platonic offspring to remote posterity. Our power is doubtless limited, but we can surely learn to do
far more than

we have

yet so far in the infancy of

humanity accomplished; more even than we have yet conjectured as within the range of possibility.
*

Symposium,

209.

72

SCIENCE AND FAITH

progress already has been considerable. It is but a moderate time since our greatest men were chip-

Our

ping

flints

and carving bones

into the likeness of

reindeer.

cathedrals
rily

More recently they became able to build and make poems. Now we are momentadiverted from immortal pursuits by vivid interest
which has replaced the
privilege which have

in that kind of competition

inequalities of possession

competition of the sword, and by those extraordinary

and

from the invention of an indestructible and transmissible form of riches, a form over which neither moth nor rust has any power. We raise an increase of smoke, and offer sacrifices of squalor and ugliness, in worship of this new idol. But it will pass human life is not meant to continue as it is now in city slums nor is the strenuous futility of mere accumulation likely to satisfy people when once they have been really educated; the world is beautiful, and may be far more widely happy than it has been yet. Those who have preached this hitherto have been heard with deaf ears, but some day we shall awake to a sense of our true planetary importance and shall
resulted
;

recognise the higher possibilities of existence.

shall

Then
is

we

realise

volved in

and practically believe what those words of poetic insight:

in-

The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's: but the earth hath

He

given to the children of men.

a vast truth in this yet to be discovered; power and influence and responsibility lie before us, appalling in their magriitude, and as yet we are but
is

There

RELIGION, SCIENCE

AND MIRACLE

73

children playing on the stage before the curtain is rolled up for the drama in which we are to take part. But we are not left to our own devices we of this
:

living generation are not alone in the universe. What we call the individual is strengthened by elements

whole out of which he is are not things of yesterday, nor of toborn. do not indeed remember our past, we morrow. are not aware of our future, but in common with everything else we must have had a past and must be going to have a future. Some day we may find oursocial

emerging from the

We We

selves able to realise both.

Meanwhile, what has been our experience here?

We have not been left solitary.

Every newcomer

to

the planet, however helpless and strange he be, finds friends awaiting him, devoted and self-sacrificing
friends, eager to care for and protect his infancy and to train him in the ways of this curious world. It is

typical of what goes on throughout conscious existence; the guidance which we exert, and to which we

are subject now, is but a phase of something running through the universe. And when the time comes for

us to quit this sphere and enter some larger field of action, I doubt not that we shall find there also that kindness and help and patience and love, without

which no existence would be tolerable or even at some

stages possible. Miracles lie all around us

only they are not miraculous. Special providences envelop us only they are not special. Prayer is a means of communication as
:
:

natural and as simple as

is

speech.

74

SCIENCE AND FAITH

Realise that you are part of a great orderly and mutually helpful cosmos, that you are not stranded or isolated in a foreign universe, but that you are part

and your sense of sympathy will be enlarged, your power of free communication will be opened, and the heartfelt aspiration and communion and petition that we call prayer will come as easily and as naturally as converse with those human friends and relations whose visible bodily presence gladdens and enriches your present life.
of
it

and

closely akin to

it

SECTION

II

CORPORATE

WORSHIP

AND SERVICE

CHAPTER

IV

THE ALLEGED INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN

TO RELIGION
average layman of the present day is often accused of being indifferent to religion. But
is

THE

worded seems to me untrue, unless the great mass of the peounderstood by "laymen" Even then I doubt if they are indifferent to ple.
the allegation as
real religion, or to reality

and

sincerity

and

lofty-

mindedness of any kind. No one can be really inthe mysdifferent to the great problem of existence teries of life and death and of human destiny. It is doubtful whether people in general can be considered not to probindifferent even to theology, of a sort, connected with lems apparent oppositions between knowledge and faith, for instance, nor to questions of Biblical interpretation and the nature of Inspiration. They are not unopen to the influence of a saintly life, or disposed to treat lightly such fundamental subjects as the existence of Deity and the relations between man and God.
I gather that they are not indifferent in this country to these topics, because they seem always willing
to read about

them or to discuss them. And if this refers chiefly to the more educated classes, it may be maintained on behalf of the masses that their apparently perennial excitement about what doctrines
77

78

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

taught to small children, though it may lack lucidity, seems to argue anything but indifference. In Germany and France, so far as I can judge, people in general do not care in the same way to discuss religious questions, and theological magazines are confined to specialists there is little or nothing of
;

shall be

and wide circulation on the subject. In those countries minds seems closed, either in the
general interest
positive or in the negative direction, as regards re-

heard

But here it is otherwise, and I have maintained at a discussion society that there was really nothing except religion and politics which was worth the trouble of getting excited about. Nevertheless there is a sense in which people in this
ligious beliefs.
it

country are indifferent to something allied to religion at any rate to its outward and visible manifestations.

Ecclesiasticism they are indifferent, and they do not in any great number go to church. I take the allegation which is here being dealt with to intend
to ask the question,

To

Why is this? Why have

lost

the out-

ward and

forms of religion educated and uneducated people?

visible

hold

of both

I believe that over-pressure is one answer a general sense of the shortness of life and the immense

amount there

This holds true whether the press of occupation is caused by the demands of pleasure, or of business, or of investigation,
is
it.
1 1 say "lost" hold, because I suppose I may assume, from the churches which they erected, as well as from the example of truly Roman Catholic

to be done in

countries at the present day, that, in say the twelfth century, observance of the outward forms of religion once really had a firm grasp of the

majority of Englishmen.

INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION

79

or of work for the public weal. In each case time is all too short for what can now be crowded into it. As

soon as our faculties are well developed, and our influence fairly active, it is almost time to begin to think of being called to service elsewhere, there is
leisure to expend in unprofitable directions. Is going to church unprofitable, then? To some men often yes; to others, I suppose, always no: save

no

in the sense that they have not profited by it. Perhaps to none is it quite unprofitable, but they may think it

acted as a stimulus and an inspiration and a help to life, then surely people in general would not be so foolish as to be indifferent to it. But they may
so.

If

it

be mistaken this
;

pressure,

and

it

the age of strenuousness and high may be that a quiet two hours of
is

peaceful meditation would be the very best sedative and rest-cure for many men whose activities are wear-

ing them out. Some, and those the most strenuous of all, have found it so. Mr. Gladstone, for instance,

was a studious attendant

at public worship, and I should not be surprised to hear that the German Emperor and President Roosevelt are so likewise; possi-

bly in their case partly as an example, but also quite

possibly as a private solace.

One cannot but admire men, to whom every five minutes is of value, who thus give up large tracts of time to religious exercises and it is possible that many active men who ignore this help would be the better
;

in every

way

if

they too submitted themselves to the

same discipline. It may be one of those cases where more haste is the less speed, and where the public as-

80

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

sembling of ourselves together in a reverent and worshipful spirit would be a real contribution to vitality
it

and power. Under certain conditions I feel sure that would be so, but is it so under present conditions? The answer must depend partly on individual temperament, partly on the form of "service" available. We must all be acquainted with the soothed and
sympathetic feeling which is sometimes the result of attendance at a place of worship in company with others, even if nothing particular has been said worth
carrying away this is felt especially if the occasion is a symbolic one a national thanksgiving, for instance,
:

a demonstration of religious feeling by members of a scientific body, or other occasion of that kind; but if
it is

a mere everyday or weekly service, there must be some special harmony or congruity between the as-

sembly and the words that have been said, or the ceremonies that have been performed, in order that the effect may be produced. There appear to be some ecclesiastically minded persons who can derive sustenance from what to others may seem extraordinarily commonplace, or even childish, proceedings. I have seen Mr. Gladstone (the name of so great a man may be employed as illustration without impertinence) in an attitude of rapt and earnest attention, not to the words of the Bible, which anyone might be glad to hear, nor to the words of the Prayer Book, which to those with a strongly-developed historic sense may carry with them a world of half-felt emotion but to the utterance from the pulpit of a very ordinary; discourse.

INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION

81

To most
to

of

us,

however, this patient self -contribution

what is going on is denied; and the feeling with which some go away from an average place of worship is too often a feeling of irritation and regret for wasted time. I have known men of energy supply the needed intellectual exercise, and contrive to stimulate their historic sense, by using a Latin Prayer Book and a Greek Testament and something of the sort is sorely needed if one is to attempt to keep one's attention fixed on the ancient formularies, so familiar from childhood, and recited or chanted in so meaningless a manner. The greater number of men, I believe, cultivate
;

the habit of inattention during the greater part of the proceedings; and it is possible, though less easy,
to preserve

an attitude of mental inattention even

when

To attend reciting formularies with the lips. to of the the in a creed, clauses, strenuously meaning

for instance, or even in the Lord's Prayer, is an effort. I do not believe it is often made. The words are
slipped through, and if an idea is caught every now and again, that is all that can be expected. There was a time when this inattentive recital of the well-

known and

familiar could be tolerated

days of education it may be useful still to others

is,

and before the was probably useful. To some it

;

it is

tedious.

The

fact

the conventional English

Church

Service, or eclec-

tic

admixture of combined as I think, too mechanical.

oppressively tedious

services, is too long, and,

The

Psalter as a whole

is

I speak for myself;

many

82

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

The jewels would is weary of. more brightly if re-set. Some of the prayers are beautiful, or would be if they were properly read and were not spoiled by such frequent iteration. The little song at the end of each commandment is gorgeous when one hears it in the Elijah,, but it gets
of the chants one
shine out

tiresome at the ninth repetition.

is

The "Confession"
;

historically interesting propriate, but as a rule it

is

and sometimes perhaps apexcessive and unreal and

it is not a thing one wishes to sing in to sing at all, still less to pay a few nor indeed public, illiterate boys and men to sing or monotone for one. The Te Deum> on a national occasion, and sung slowly and emphatically, may be magnificent: as ordinarily treated it is almost useless, and seems only inserted as a convenient break between the Lessons;

if ever true,

the setting and singing are specially good, in which case it can be enjoyed as an oratorio is enjoyed.

save occasionally

when

Some people may be

service

able to utilise parts of the

it

which to others are tedious, and

is

may

be con-

tended that there

something for everybody; but

for most people there must be long spells of dulness. Length, however, is not the only objection: rapidity, which is perhaps a consequence of length, is an-

Constantly and rapidly repeated formularies must surely tend to become mechanical. jeer at
other.

We

the

Thibetan water-worked praying-wheel as a mechanical form of prayer; and yet I can imagine a peasant joyfully going on with his labour in the
fields, in

the consciousness that his prayer

was being

INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION

periodically turned nature, and his soul

83

by the forces of send an aspiration after it, might without interfering with the industry of his hody. I doubt if such a ritual is really more mechanical than some English services which I have attended. I know

up

to heaven

any liturgy the bleakest as well as the most can elevate the soul of the truly pious; but this minority cannot be included among the laity of whom indifference to religion is even alleged. As to the recital of a few incredible articles in the creeds, I say nothing: they are not numerous, and hardly act as a strong deterrent except to a few earnest souls; if there were reality about the procedure, some of the clauses would be repellent, but as it is, the so-called Athanasian hymn can be chanted through with the rest: it is an interesting glimpse
well that

ornate

an ingenious mediaeval mind, to whom all the mystery of Divinity was expressible in words, with great positiveness of assurance, and with arithmetical
into

precision of specification. But so far as the Creeds and the Articles contain things to which we and our
teachers, the beneficed clergy, are expected to adhere, they may be to some extent deterrent; and it must be

admitted that they require a good deal of explanation, and in manner of expression are rather out of
date.

the enthusiasm for religion in the world, I would say to professional Churchmen, you really
all

With

cannot continue to expect people to wade continually through so much mediaeval and ecclesiastical lore. You must free the ship of official religion from in-

84

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

it is

water-logged and overburdened now, and its sails are patched and outworn. I do not ask you to use steam or any new-fangled mode of propulsion. By all means keep your attachment to the past, but study reality and sincerity; strive to say
crustation:

what you
others

mean, and to say it in such way that know that you mean it, and may feel that may they mean it too. The American Church has modireally

some of the features characteristic of the Anglican Liturgy; and its authorised Prayer Book contains interesting minor variations all of which are devised in the interests of elasticity and freedom, yet subject to a commendable spirit of conservatism. I trust that it is not an inseparable concomitant of a State religion that petitions should be tied and bound in rigid forms, that no audible prayer can be uttered except what is printed and authorised; it is
fied
;

the only initiation permitted, even at times of stress, lies in the emphasis which may be
pitiful

when

thrown upon certain words, and the pauses that may be made after them. But at least the sermon is free. So let preachers realise their opportunities and make use of them, and let them no longer throw away their chance of moving the hearts of men towards a higher and more useful and unselfish life, by over-attention
to the conventional arrangement called the Church's

Year. The annual commemoration of everything is often made an excuse for laziness: it saves the trouble of choosing a subject. It provides a hackneyed theme ready to hand, to be treated in a conventional

INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION

85

and hackneyed manner. Silently and patiently the people sit there, and are not fed. Religion is one thing; Church services as often
conducted are quite another thing. Modification be resented and opposed by some singularly minded lay Churchmen nevertheless, if more eminent ability is to be attracted to the service of the Church, if the great body of the laity are to be reached in any;
will
;

serious

and

effective

and reforms are necessary. It

people are indifferent.

manner, modifications, excisions, is not religion to which

CHAPTER V
UNION AND BREADTH

A PLEA FOR ESSENTIAL

"The true tragedy
wrong."
is

UNITY AMID FORMAL DIF-

FERENCE IN A NATIONAL CHURCH

a conflict of right with right, not of right with

HEGEL.

became aware that

The Substance of Faith could hardly be re1SOON garded as an eirenicon in respect of the present English

my

little

book called

Education controversy, though I began

still

it

some-

what with that hope, and of some assistance in that

think that

it

should be

direction ; for

it is

apparent
is

that the dispute between Church

and Dissent

not

only of long standing historically, but is intrinsically deepseated. It would be worth a considerable eif ort

due to that chronic sore could be the but cure should be attempted, not by reduced; blinking or denying the reality of the differences, but
if the inflammation

rather
their

by facing them resolutely and understanding nature and origin before seeking to prescribe a

remedy.

The dispute which is most alive to-day between State Church and Free Churches is not exactly religious it seems to be rather ethnological or anthropo:

logical.

to say, it may be held to represent a difference inherent in the varied nature of humanity,
is

That

86

UNION AND BREADTH

and

87,

to correspond to the divergent views taken of reIf there is ligion by two different types of mind.

ought surely to be posto adjust our arrangements to it, as to any other of the facts of nature. It must have been frequently pointed out before but sometimes statements bear and need repetition that there are two chief religious types: one type valuing ceremony and artistic accessories and human

any truth

in this statement,

it

sible to recognise the fact,

and

organisation

and

thinking

itself

intervention; while the other, competent to dispense with what it

to

may

consider adventitious aids, seeks

worship,

neither in temple nor even in mountain, but directly in spirit and in truth. This one thinks that the Holy

equally accessible to every individual. That one conceives that a Special Power is miraculously
Spirit
is

transmitted by ceremonial means, namely, by the imposition of hands.

be called the Apostolic view, necessarily exalt the Church, which to them is God's vicegerent upon earth for its priests possess a power denied not only to laymen but to ministers of all other denominations, who in this essential rethis

Those who take

which

may
;

spect are and must be regarded as laymen. that the branches of the Catholic and

It

is

true

Apostolic

Church do not agree among themselves

entirely as to

the authentic channels of this mysterious influence. To the Roman, the Anglican Catholic is a layman,

even though he be a prelate.

iThe

To

the Anglican, the

question of the recognition or non-recognition of Anglican Or-

Sd

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

President of the Wesleyan Conference, or the Moderator of the Presbyterian Synod, may he in friendship a brother, and in good works a helper, but he has no claim to recognition as a priest: nor, indeed, does

he prefer such a claim, because he does not belong to the type which appreciates the idea of Divine influence ceremonially conveyed from one human being
to another.

the distinction of type is not confined to the clergy it runs through the laity likewise. Those who believe in the special and exclusive character of eccle:

But

priesthood are bound to venerate the Officers invested with those powers, and to submit to their
siastical

teaching and influence, irrespective of their personality; for they can not only help and strengthen you by administration of the Sacraments: they actually

have the power of forgiving your sins, or, still more remarkable, of preventing the forgiveness of your sins, if they be so minded. Baptismal regeneration is only one of the things which can be effected through their agency, but that too is a power of great magnitude, and if your child is to be eternally lost without their aid their aid must be sought for in this ceremony he is made, according to the Catechism not recognised only and admitted into the Church as such, but actually made a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. 1
;

ders

is

sometimes said to have been decided

like

a move in a game or

in party politics after private discussion as to which course was best calculated to benefit one side and to damage the other. The subject ap-

pears to be eminently fitted for such treatment. iThe preposition "in" is used in the Catechism, but "by" occurs in

UNION AND BREADTH

and

89

True, they must be regarded only as instruments vehicles of Divine mercy but in so far as Divine
;

by which become of dispensed overwhelming interest; and if they, as Officers of a corporate and divinely ordained Church, really have in any sense a monopoly

mercy
it is

is felt

to be a vital thing, the channels

of the Holy Spirit, their unfolding of the Bible may be the only explication religiously permissible. It is only those who have no belief in the reality of

powers of this kind people to whom such seem like superstition, who prefer to worry powers out truth for themselves, and who pray directly to the Fountain of Infinite Wisdom to keep them from being deceived and to lead them into the way of truth it is only these who can afford to dispense with, or in some cases even to resent, the good offices of the Catholic Church, whether in its Greek or Roman or
priestly

Anglican branches. If now we bethink ourselves what

stitutes the essential difference

is it

that con-

shall find that

feature of the

of type, I think we we must admit as the most distinctive Prayer Book, from the denominational

and ultra-protestant point of view, not the ordinary popular services of Matins and Evensong, nor the still more beautiful form for Holy Communion, but
the regulation for the Ordering of Priests. The undeas be of that service greater part may passed

nominational, save that naturally expressly to sever the Anglican

one form of the baptismal service: is by baptism regenerate."
"Seeing

it

seems intended

from the Roman

. .
.

now

that this child

90

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

priesthood, but the official sentence which accompanies the laying on of hands is distinctly and purposely

Those who accept that are Churchmen; those who rejoice at it are high- Churchmen. All
hierarchical.

other details sink into insignificance before this Epis-

copal pronouncement: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the

a priest in

and work of the Church of God, now committed unto

office

thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained."

This has been said ceremonially to every Anglican parish priest in the British Isles, some of whom doubtless believe that a mysterious efficacy has descended

upon them, and that they possess the awful power thus conferred.
to

That being so, it should be, and probably is, clear any contending and opposing party that priests so consecrated, and animated by such beliefs, cannot

possibly consent to open their schools to dissenters: it would be more reasonable for doctors to open the
hospitals to quacks.

They

are

bound

to insist

their high prerogative, and to teach children to to them for the sacramental and other inspired influ-

on come

ences which they can bestow on the penitent and the 1 And conversely, faithful, or be false to their trust.
i "Experience has shown the inefficacy of the mere injunctions of Church order, however scripturally enforced, in restraining from schism the awakened and anxious sinner; who goes to a dissenting preacher 'because (as he expresses it) he gets good from him': and though he

does not stand excused in God's sight for yielding to the temptation, surely the ministers of the Church are not blameless if, by keeping back

UNION AND BREADTH

those

91

who

stoutly

deny and conscientiously resent the

who quote in opspecial privileges for 1 Cor. i. 17 may feel bound instance, position, to express their views also, and may earnestly seek to prevent their children from coming under avowedly sacerdotal influence. The text or texts in the Bible
idea of

any such

on which an absolution dogma is based must be held responsible for a good deal of the perennial conflict between Church and Dissent. It may be possible for Biblical critics to say that John xx. 21-23 is a later insertion, like Matt. xvi. 19 and the end of Mark; but assuming the most orthodox possible view, and taking the record of the words about the forgiveness and the retention of sins as exact, it is open even to
devout Bibliolators to argue against the modern use of such a formula, somewhat as follows "By whom," "were these words ask, they might spoken to the disNot ciples? by Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh, but
:

by the

risen Lord just before His Ascension and Session at the right hand of God. That which could to those whom comfortless was then, say leaving

He

He

for the ten days between His departure and the feast of Pentecost, is now said by every bishop of the Church. But it does not follow that what could be
said once,

under exceptional circumstances,

the

is

suitable
ones of

the more gracious and consoling truths provided for Had he been Christ, they indirectly lead him into it. that the Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources that the Apostolical ministry had a virtue in it which
it

little

taught as a child, of Divine Grace; went out over the

whole Church, when sought by the prayer of faith; that fellowship with was a gift and privilege, as well as a duty, we could not have had
so

many wanderers from our fold, nor so (Advt. to Tracts for the Times, 1834).

many

cold hearts within it"

92

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

for indefinite repetition." Thus might opponents contend, and their contention might have to be admitted as true, and the modern use of the formula virtually explained away, save by a few extremists who
still

adhere to

its literal
is

interpretation.

a well-marked cause of difference, and justification of a militant attitude. then can it be hoped to effect formal reconciliation of the
there

Hence

How

religious types ? At first sight, only in one of two ways either by general admission of truth in a sacer-

two

dotal of this kind; or, on the other hand, by the equally improbable admission of the imaginary char-

any sort of basis for such a claim a perception that, though it has survived the shocks of time, and come down the centuries to our own day, it is yet a human imagination, and essentially false. Taken in its literal and bald signification, the ordination sentence above quoted would be intolerable to a low or to a broad Churchman consequently he must be able to interpret it otherwise. He would doubtacter of
;

less

ment of

it signifies the right to declare the judgthe Christian conscience, or at any rate of the Christian Church, as to details of right and wrong:

claim that

to formulate, in fact, the

judgments of the Holy

Spirit, under whose guidance he is henceforth to act. Securus judicat orbis t errarum. It is not, however, a barren formula removed from practice: it enters into the pastoral work of the priest, and is applied to sick persons in the following form: "By his authority committed to me, I absolve thee

from

all

thy

sins,

In the name,"

etc.

UNION AND BREADTH

93

Even this, however though challenged by John Henry Newman, and regarded by him as inadmissible save under the Roman asgis, is doubtless capable of refined interpretation. And so it is with all the formularies else it were impossible for great and good men, to whom the natural sense of some of them must be repugnant to hold office in the Church to-day. Let it be admitted, once for all, that saving and min-

imising interpretations are known and utilised by many of those inside the pale; and I shall assume,

without question now, that they are justified in these

But those interpretations under the circumstances. outside the pale, and those who are hesitating to enmore nearly at and to mistrust ingenuity of interWherefore and that is my point such pretation. formulas act as obstacles, as weapons of exclusion, and as causes of dissension and bitterness; even among
ter
it,

are liable to take these formulas

their face-value,

those

who

in all essentials agree.

And

they have

another function, perhaps equally harmful: they encourage extreme sacerdotal pretensions in a few exceptionally constituted persons, who, whatever may be
their saintly character, are in disaccord with the reliSo much so, indeed, that gious ideals of the nation.

they might find their proper place in another and a foreign communion. Seeing, therefore, that such formulas may do harm, it is open to question whether they do a compensating amount of good. Words, such as those above quoted,

mean something definite, or they do not. If confer they any real power, if they give real strength
either

94

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

must be retained but
;

to the Church, they

if

they serve
is

no useful purpose,
urally
to be

if they signify only

what

nat-

namely, the power of appreciating and fostering the good, of detecting and condemning the bad, which is possessed by every decent man if they are only a difficulty to be boggled at and explained away, they constitute a
weakness, not a strength, and
it

expected without them

may

be well to have

them changed. In any case it

is quite absurd for either side in the the ancient controversy between Cathocontroversy lic and Protestant, between Priest and Presbyter, be-

tween High Anglican and Free Churchman, between upholders of public ritual and insisters on private conscience, between the objective and the subjective types of worshippers, between those who lay stress on the Brotherhood and those who emphasise the indifutile for either side to pretend that wicked and schismatic and alienated from God. So perhaps there is a third course what some think the fatal course of compromise in which the permanent vitality of the two types of religious humanity is recognised, and something of absolute truth admitted to be visible from both points of view. In which case it might not be too much to hope that the two groups, no longer hostile, could ultimately agree to live together in harmony, as two wings of an enlarged National Church; without need for anyone to abandon the phase of truth, or the form of worship which especially appeals to his disposition and theo-

vidual life

it is

the other side

is

logical understanding.

At

present there are

Non-

UNION AND BREADTH

95

conformists, obedient to private judgment and disobedient to authority, at both ends of the Church of

England:
sidered too

those

who

left

it

when what they

con-

much superstition was enforced; and those without who, leaving it, feel conscientiously impelled to ignore both lay jurisdiction and episcopal "admonition"

when

ing by

superstition is ordered; mean"superstition," in this connexion, the outcome

too

little

in practice

of over-belief.
their

I do not venture to suggest inclusion in a National

Church of those who take a non-national view of

civil obligations. question of union or of adaptation can be entertained by those who regard a for-

No

eign Potentate and foreign Conclave as supreme authority and fount of inspiration nothing short of submission and conversion would be acceptable to them.
:

Nor

is it

possible for

them

to join a merely national

Church, however nearly their creed may approach one section of it on the purely religious side: a certain canon which I presume is still in force to wit, that subjects of a temporal ruler disapproved by the Church may be relieved of their allegiance, and that the promulgation of unacceptable doctrine is to be
suppressed with a high hand constitutes a sufficient 1 obstacle. It is far from desirable that any ecclesiasi The Lateran Council decree, above referred to, part of the Roman Canon Law, is guarded against in the English Church by the oath of

the King's sovereignty administered to deacons, which runs as follows: "I A. B. do swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure,
as impious and heretical, that damnable Doctrine and Position, That Princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, or any Authority of

Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects, or any other whatsoever. And I do declare, that no foreign Prince, Person,
the See of

96
tical

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

gauntlet which investigators of truth may have to run should in the smallest degree be hacked up by the power of the State. But no such difficulty arises

when contemplating a reincorporation of the Free Churches which have grown up and divaricated in
consequence of a long spell of intolerant bigotry ending in an act of disruption in and about the year 1662.

Many
tional

of them could easily rejoin one pole of a NaChurch if it sought to attract them; at any rate they need not be repelled by enforced uniformity in The detail, nor by any kind of secular legislation. Legislature conspicuously shrinks from interference with liberty of conscience and must recognise that it made mistakes in the past whenever it consented to

be coaxed or coerced into narrowness

and brutality in matters of faith. It would surely welcome a movement in favor of breadth and reintegration, if it were mooted by those most concerned. There is the more hope for some such solution, inasmuch as none but a bigot could claim to grasp in
Prelate, State, or Potentate, hath, or ought to have, any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiority, Pre-eminence, or Authority, Ecclesiastical or SpirSo help me God.'' itual, within this Realm. This is the wording of the decree: "Let the secular powers, whatoffices they may exercise exterminate from the territories under their jurisdiction heretics of all kinds marked out by the Church. . But if any temporal ruler, being required and admonished by . the Church, shall neglect to purge his land from this heretical filth, let him be bound in the chain of excommunication by the metropolitan and other bishops of the province. And if he shall disdain to make satisfaction within a year, let this be signified to the Supreme Pontiff, that he may declare the vassals of that ruler henceforth released from their allegiance, and may offer the land to occupation by Catholics, who, having exterminated the heretics, may possess it in peace and preserve

ever

it

steadfast in the Faith."

UNION AND BREADTH

his

97

own person
infinite

of

the whole truth concerning a subject magnitude, or could suppose that the
suited to himself

precise

form of worship most

be

must

necessarily

dominant

throughout

the

cosmos.

Wherefore it might be recognised, by reasonable persons on either side, that the manifest enthusiasm and religious fervour of those from whom they differ are roused, not by falsehood and error, but by real poreven though they be fragmentary portions, of Divine truth which have hitherto escaped their own ken, or for which their own emotional and aesthetic nature happens to be unfitted. The possibility of such a concordat may at first sight seem remote, but it is worth more than momentions,

tary consideration, and it is possible to detect more reasonableness embedded in the proposal than appears

on the surface.
First of
all,

then, let us ask

is it

true that any

worshipper, however spiritually minded, can dispense altogether with material facts as an aid to the expression and realisation of spiritual truth, and as an external stimulus to the attitude of worship? Can
the spiritual and the material, in fact, be entirely and I will not ask utterly discriminated and separated?

whether such separation

not point out

is

or

is

not desirable; I will

how much loss would be sustained if it were practicable how fatal to half of nature such an
achievement would immediately be but I will simply I believe that a little ask, is it ever done, as a fact? consideration will show that it is never really accom;

98

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

plished, and that some material agent is active even It will in the most refined and spiritual perceptions. at least be admitted that in the case of some religiously

minded persons the sights and sounds of nature awaken a sense of Divine presence. In others the same feelings are aroused by hearing of some human
action, or

by meeting other human beings with

whom

they are in sympathy. Some men are carried Godward by beauty, others by truth, others by goodness; and some even by the commonplace actions of daily
life.

A remarkable

face, casually encountered, or

stranger, has been known occasioncall to up thoughts akin to worship, even in the ally most unritualistic follower of George Fox.

word even from a

"Just when

we

are safest, there's a sunset-touch,

A A

fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, chorus-ending from Euripides, And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul."

If there be any truth in the suggestion and it is a question which must be answered by each for himself, it can hardly be put in a form that will equally apply to every individual then an essential feature of the sacramental efficacy of material or external things,
spiritually regarded and transfigured in the of a dominating faith, is admitted: for material light means whereby the soul can be elevated, and brought into conscious relation with Deity, are essentially of the nature of sacraments.

when

"To attempt

to grasp the infinite

;

by reason," says

Plotinus, "is futile

it

can only be known in immedi-

UNION AND BREADTH

ate presence.
itself

99

The

faculty by which the

is

mind

divests

of

its

personality

becomes loosed from

its

Ecstasy. In ecstasy the soul material prison, separated

from individual
in the Infinite

and becomes absorbed Intelligence from which it emanated."

consciousness,

This condition of inspiration, direct intuition, or ensome approach to what is meant by "seeing God," is but transitory, and may be rare, but it can be induced by a great variety of instrument. few attain it during the contemplation of law and order enshrined in a mathematical expression, or in
thusiasm,

some comprehensive philosophic formula but to many the transfiguring and revealing experience is her;

alded by the song of birds, by sunshine upon grass, by the wind in tree-tops, or by the wild solitude of

mountains. To one the vision comes during the music of an orchestra or the sight of a great work of art to another, the atmosphere of an empty cathedral is full of it; while to another, again, the same cathe;

and incense in order effecmedium. To many the acts of common worship are an invaluable aid; while others
dral
lights

must contain

tively to act

as a

find their fullest help towards realising the Divine presence in the consecrated materials of a purposely

arranged and specially organised Sacrament. The means of grace last mentioned being consciously directed to a desired end must be considered
as especially forcible and effective; at any rate for those who are constituted in such a way as to appreciate accessories and aids of this kind. But it is not to

be denied that, in spite of good intention, these eccle-

100

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

forms and ceremonies
strike another

siastical

type of

religious disposition as so humanly ingenious and specifically organised as to repel rather than attract di-

vine thoughts; which with these people arise in more spontaneous fashion, amid the simplicity of almost unassisted worship in plain buildings, or among the solitudes of unconsecrated nature.

must be admitted however, and I presume that Nonconformists would be the last to deny it, that there is always a danger lest, if human effort and orIt

ganisation be altogether discarded, as they sometimes are by religiously minded secularists, the opportunities for spontaneous excitation of religious thoughts may

seldom or never occur and so gradually the power of

;

entertaining lofty ideas may become atrophied by lack of use. Moreover, those who depend entirely on
the capacities of their own unaided individual soul may find, in times of stress, a sad emptiness and dearth of comfort there. That is at once the weak-

and strength of an emphatically spiritual religion: it makes a severe demand on the worshippers' own powers and faculties. This constitutes a weakfor there come times when the spirit is so ness, harassed by the troubles and trials of existence that
ness

even the stoutest cannot stand the strain but it coninasmuch as it braces and stitutes also a strength, exercises and develops the fibres of the character.
;

There
so

will also be those

who

are impressed with, not

much

and on the other hand there

the right as the duty of private judgment; will always be those who

willingly submit to authority.

In the same way we

UNION AND BREADTH

must recognise a

101

constitutional difference, a differ-

ence of temperament, a difference of response to diverse appeals. But the difference is only dependent on "accident" or appropriateness of vehicle: it is not

a difference of really fundamental character; and though it is natural to prefer one form of material accessory to another, it is not human, at least it is not
religious, to despise

the perhaps nature of a is sacrament general recognised by the English Church very likely by the Roman Church for it is definitely laid down in the "Homilies" too, that in a certain sense there may be many sacraments "Therefore neither it, nor any other sacrament else, be such sacraments as Baptism and Communion are; but in a general acception the name of a sacrament may be attributed to anything whereby an holy thing
is
:

It

reject them all. not known to everybody that

and

is

signified"
.

(Homily on

Common

Prayer and Sac-

raments]

Wherefore, opponents
out this doctrine into

may ask, why not then carry practice? why urge the imporis

tance of two, or of seven?

One orthodox answer

to
salvation,"

that the

two are "necessary

corresponding with the over-literal misreading of a text, and not really believed any more than the corresponding "AthanaBut a better answer, and sian" clauses are believed. indeed the answer of Christendom generally with few
doctrine
exceptions, is that the two were in a special sense authorised and enjoined by Christ; so in order to estimate their crucial character it is instructive to con-

102

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

how

sider

these specially Christian sacraments arose. to add an element of mysticism to the bare easy facts, and those who make this addition may claim it

It

is

as a sign of spiritual

be voluntary, it tion. The bare facts themselves

growth but the addition should cannot wisely be imposed by legisla;

may

be legitimately

and inoffensively regarded somewhat thus: Jesus found the old baptismal act of ceremonial washing revived and used as a sign of repentance by
his great precursor, or else as a symbolic

either as a symbolic cleansing, burying to sin and new birth to

righteousness (for both significations can be attached to the rite of immersion) instinctively he recognised
;

the advantage of associating divine thoughts with so common an act as bathing or washing, and, just as he utilised any common event for doctrinal purposes, so

he utilised

this act,
it

by submitting himself

to

it

there-

by canonising

among

Christians for all time.

But

then he did the same thing virtually with the sower and the seed, with a marriage feast, with fisherman's
nets,

with carpenters' tools, and a multitude of comincidents of life; though in these the Church, perhaps fortunately, has been slower to follow him to

mon

I say fortunately, because it is so apt to let its enthusiasm carry it unwisely far in the case of baptism it has at certain periods of its history, at
the full extent.
:

any rate in some of its branches, gone too far, and converted a ceremony of admission into a miraculous
rite

of saving

efficacy.

has not only followed, but has emphatically gone beyond and exceeded, its incase also
it

In another

UNION AND BREADTH

structions, to

103

what many think a lamentable extent at times even daring to inflict torture and death on those
;

who could not

tended road.
drinking was

travel with

humanly exFor the common act of eating and

it

along

this

Christ; on discourse on his approaching fate, and much figurative speech concerning the necessity for complete union with himself, he took up the bread and the wine,

those conspicuously sanctified by that pathetic occasion when, after long

among

no doubt blessing them after the still extant Jewish fashion, and then perhaps half thinking of ancient

pagan rites, wherein exuberant gentile worshippers had spoken of eating the flesh of a god, and certainly] remembering the sacrifices of flesh and blood familiar in their own scriptures and in the forthcoming passover
added, in a moment of enthusiasm fraught with strange destiny for the future Church, "This is my

and this is my blood. Bless it, and take it, and remember me whenever henceforth ye feed together." As for himself, this was his last fpod and his last drink a long spasm of torture and hunger and thirst was all that lay before him on earth "I shall taste no more of the fruit of the vine till I drink it new with
flesh

you in the Kingdom of my Father." Regarded simply and naturally, it is a gracious domestic ceremony akin to the toast of good fellowship, but with the sadness of pain and parting commingled. It was surely intended as an act of union and brotherhood, not as a testing instrument or divid;

ing engine.

by

St.

Paul

recognised a of as the Cor. x. oneness (1 symbol 17)

The sharing of one

loaf

is

104

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

of the many in the Christian body a true communion. Looked at from the point of view of subsequent history, and what human organisation has made of it, even devout worshippers must admit that superstition has been prone to enter, and that its ecclesiastical developments have been at times painful beyond description.

Yet

that should not prevent those

who prefer not

to partake of ecclesiastically administered sacrament from recognising that to others it constitutes the very

and that to worshippers of this character the meaning and efficacy of the symbols are enhanced beyond measure by ceremonial observance and ritual.
bread of
life,

What

has been said about sacraments can be in-

terpreted as applying to priesthood also. priest is a vehicle of the Holy Ghost, an interpreter of divine Priesthood things, and a helper towards higher life.
is

it
it

a reality but, if my interpretation of it be correct, cannot be a professional monopoly. Like genius,

;

evades definition; but is it not likely to be coercible and transmissible by ceremonial means. Surely it

must be true that the Spirit moveth where it listeth, and is not amenable to clerical control. Every man, woman, or child who has the power of
elevating the thought of another human being, everyone who is chosen to act as a channel of the Divine
Spirit, is for the

time a priest.

It

may

be well to

set

aside

and

train

and guard a band of persons who

feel

UNION AND BREADTH

105

specially called to this high office; in the hope that by discipline and custom their powers of true priesthood

and sainthood may increase. It is desirable that the Church should set store by and guard its priests, just as it guards its sacraments, from pollution and contamination with the things of the outer world.

Pre-

cautionary and reverential arrangements are humanly intelligible and more or less necessary, but they are not essential; they are matters of ecclesiastical polity,

not of divine ordinance.

The Church recognises, indeed, that every man is in some small sense a priest in his own household, and
admits that in times of emergency he may act as such, up to the point of administering the minor sacrament of Baptism, provided he employs the right material

and the authorised form of words;

charitable
rites

but, save for this

and

authority ordained: thereby and to that extent appearing to claim a monopoly of the Holy Spirit, which, in the judgment of many, it cannot rigorously sustain, except in so far as it ience and usage.

jealously guards its own privileges, and denies the real apostolic to all save those whom it has itself

exception,

it

may

be justified by public convenspecial priesthood

is

recognised as possessed only in a representative capacity, it can do no harm. Harm begins when an exclusive

So long

as specific

and

claimed for it. The true official priest is representative or typical of the potential priesthood of all religious humanity, a symbol of the close concharacter
is

nection and affectionate intercourse between

God and

106

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

as Christ

man: somewhat

was

essentially the son

of

man and
brethren.

son of God, to the exclusion of none of his

In

this

form

the office

is

not to be stigmatised as

sacerdotal

it is

claims to be exclusive, of the grace of God.

only to be so stigmatised when it when it seeks to be a monopoly

So

also the Eucharist

may

legitimately be held to

represent or typify a Divine Presence, provided it is likewise taught that all nature is the living garment of

God, and that space and time are expressions of His thoughts. It is not a claim for the Divine presence, but a claim for the Divine absence anywhere that
should be resisted.

There

is

no need for nonconformist feeling

in these

matters, except in details of administration which may well be made more elastic. Priesthood and sacra-

ments are

forms and orderly ceremonies are necessary for collective human worship it is their exaggeration and misunderstanding that is to be depreThose who think cated, not the things themselves.
realities
;
:

they are worshipping in spirit only, are really using forms and material aids, though the forms may be of a simple character. An attitude of body, an enforced

a gathering together into an accustomed building, the reading of a book, the singing of a hymn
silence,
all

these are physical and material aids to spiritual growth, and are therefore essentially sacramental.
It
is

but a question of degree; and those who cannot utilise forms of so simple a character are justified in

UNION AND BREADTH

elaborate kind.

I07i

seeking to invent and enjoy ceremonies of a more

So also, everyone privileged to act as a minister of God, a true vehicle of the Holy Spirit, is for the time being a priest by right divine. It is only because under present conditions such influence is comparatively rare, that we have to betake ourselves to a professional priesthood. It is a necessity: it is not an
ideal.

The

ideal held out

by Christ himself was a

high one. "Be ye perfect," he said. Be a Christ, he might have said: be thyself a messenger and revealer of divine truth, up to the measure of thy ca"Receive ye the Holy Spirit." did not pacity. say these things to the priest and orthodox worshippers of his own day to them he said quite other
these high injunctions he laid upon a body of things trained and chosen peasants who had loved and followed him, and thus ordained them with genuine
:

He

priesthood. And to all the animate

and inanimate creatures, of he sea, gave a message too. On nothall of them he conferred sacramental efficacy in the is or unclean can ing join unholy everything song of joy and worship that rises from all healthy nature. By his teaching the whole world of matter is transfigured and glorified before our eyes it is suffused with immanent Deity, and has become, for those with eyes to see, a mirror of the Almighty.
earth and air

and

Now

all this,

which to most of us

is

so clear

now,

108

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

was not equally clear to the generality of folk in the times gone by. Saints here and there seized the truth, no doubt, and tried to express it in language fitted to their time; but from the great mass of the people it was hidden. Persons in high office Archbishop Cranmer and others put together our liturgy,
during a moderately exalted period of English history, utilising many beautiful petitions and formularies, and showing great genius for the work; but it is not to be supposed that they were gifted with infallibility,

so that they grasped the truth completely and expressed it for all time. Nor was the Act of Parlia-

ment which crystallised and congealed the Prayer Book an inspired document. 1 Admitting that historic

revision

special appeal to the emotions, of the Prayer Book on the intellectual side ought to be and is necessary, especially after a

forms make a

century of great intellectual achievement. The question arises whether the time is not ripe for revision

now.

Loth

as I

am

to

meddle with professional and

ec-

clesiastical matters, the present

of the English Church and ciently important to compel those who recognise the pressing need for social reform, and the great power and influence for good which a truly efficient Church would possess, to urge a reconsideration of the implicit tests and requirements imposed on candidates
i

juncture in the history nation seems to me suffi-

Even Newman,

in a tract urging

no concession or

tittle

of alter-

"I confess that there are few parts of the Service that I could not disturb myself about and feel fastidious at, if I allowed my
ation, says:

mind

in this abuse of reason."

UNION AND BREADTH

for

109

Holy Orders

in the

Church of England

at various

The fact that it is a National stages in their career. Church removes the charge of impertinence from the
utterance of a layman on such matters.
the following sentences, taken

The spirit of from "His Majesty's

Declaration"

Book,

is

printed in every Anglican Prayer not attractive to an age which has imbibed

the idea of evolution

and some conception of the faithful investigation of truth: . "the settled Continuance of the Doctrine and
. .

Disciple of the Church of England now established; from which will not endure any varying or de-

We

. parting in the least Degree. . further curious search be laid aside.

.

We
.

will, that all

.

And

that

no man hereafter shall either print, or preach, to draw the Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof: and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and
grammatical sense. "That if any publick Reader in either of Our Universities, or any Head or Master of a College, or any
other person respectively in either of them, shall affix any new sense to any Article, or shall publickly read, determine, or hold any publick Disputation, or suffer any such to be held either way, in either the Universities or Colleges respectively; or if any Divine in the Universities shall preach or print any thing

either

way, other than

is

vocation with

Our Royal

already established in ConAssent; he, or they, the Of-

fenders, shall be liable to

Our

displeasure,

and the

110

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

as well as

Church's censure in our Commission Ecclesiastical, will see there shall be any other: And

We

due Execution upon them." If the Church excludes, and to some extent even
if it only threatens to exclude, from its ministry all young men who are unable to accept a system of

archaic
clauses

formulas

as

valid,
it

with

whatever saving
in

and subterfuges
it

dilutes

practice

its

theoretical requirements,

may

be creating for
does
it

itself

an "unnatural

selection," so to speak, a survival or

selection of the weakest.

And if it

so,

any

other organism in the same case,

its

must

then, like in the

long run infallibly degenerate.

I believe that
it

leaders, its real leaders,

admit that

could with advantage

amend

its
it

eral particulars; especially that

elasticity in the

procedure in sevcould diminish the

amount of mechanical uniformity and allow some

use of a liturgy which, though fragrant with historical aroma, has now become to many people monotonous and barren. But the chief wish

of those who love the idea of a National Church

that
it

is

would
its

so

modify

its

entrance barriers, and so

simplify
view.

formularies, as to
character,

young men of

draw to itself more intellect, and breadth of

Only so can it once more become, what it ought to be and is not, a truly comprehensive National Church, one flock under one Shepherd, elevating and
sanctifying the State by connexion with it instead of, what many now consider it, an unholy alliance of mingled constraint and privilege, hampered in its
;

UNION AND BREADTH

own
actions

111

by the rigidity of its connexion with Parliament, and yet drawing thence so much worldly dignity and social independence as to be regarded with suspicion by an able and energetic portion of a religiously minded nation, whose ministers are excluded from co-operation in the National ceremonies and from official recognition by the State, and who
tible

consequently conduct their ministrations at a percepdisadvantage a disadvantage which to Newman

:

how

seemed so serious that he wrote, in 1833: "We know miserable is the condition of religious bodies not

supported by the State." The difficulties surrounding reform are considerable, though it is possible to exaggerate them; but sooner or later it will be undertaken; and the exclusiveness of State connexion will be broken down, either by the method of disestablishment, or by that of greater comprehensiveness and union. Would that a movement might be made towards union Not union in every minor doctrine, nor in every detail of practice, but unison of effort, coupled with clear practical perception of the real needs of the time. To this end artificial boundaries must be broken down, and the domain covered by the National Church must be broadened till it includes all aspiring workers who are casting out devils in the one Name.
!

CHAPTER

VI

A REFORMED CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

"Religion was once the pillar of fire which went before the human race in its great march through history, showing it the way. Now it is
fast assuming the role of the

ambulance which follows

in the rear

and

picks up the exhausted and wounded. This, too, is a great work, but it is not sufficient. And when religion has disburdened herself of all her

dead values, she will once more, in intimate association with ethics, rise to be a power which leads men forward." HOFFDING.

the preceding chapter I have urged that the recreation and continuance of a truly National Church must involve a great simplification of Church

IN

enactments, so as to leave fair freedom of interpretation concerning the meaning of Christian ceremonies ; and that the way to reform lies through a movement

of breadth and incorporation, which should consolidate the

now

prevalent desire for greater tolerance

and union. In the belief that the subject is of great importance, and that the time is nearly ripe for reform, I now wish to proceed further in the same direction, and to urge that, putting less trust in oaths and formularies, we should cease from attempting to bind by anticipation revolting and unwilling spirits, and show more faith in living humanity especially in the kind of humanity which feels called to work in the Chris112

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

tian vineyard.

113

There need be no forced alteration

of procedure in religious services, but there should be large avoidance of compulsory uniformity. must admit the existence of worshippers of different

We

realise the need for growth and deand must encourage loyalty to the spirit velopment,

types,

we must

of truth

good

especially among those who co-operate in works; in the assurance that, by those who do

the works, all essential doctrine will be sufficiently accepted, without compulsion, in due time.

inappropriate, and in strict sense imfor a student of science to feel strongly on pertinent, such topics, but it is an inappropriateness not without The general welfare of humanity, and precedent.
It

may seem

the stability of advancing civilisation, are themes of interest to all, whatever our special studies may be;
to

and before now a prophet of Art has felt constrained urge that artistic development must be stunted, and

the highest art impossible, until social conditions are improved. So also some writers and speakers, with the ear of the populace, condemn a peaceful absorption in scientific pursuits, amid the surrounding mass of poverty and misery, as a mark of selfishness and

good of abstruse scientific theories, they say, when what people need is wholesome food and warmth and decent homes And
hard-heartedness.
is

What

the

the thoughts of many a would-be student are perturbed in the same way. These good and sympathetic people vicariously feel the pressure of life so keenly
that no occupation save relieving the pain seems worth while. Their lives and sympathies are so absorbed

114

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

under
in the tormenting problems of a great present conditions, that they grow to reinterests

and exhausted
city,

gard the multifarious

of the world through

the perspective of the victim on the rack, to whom but one thing is needful. But I lay no particular stress on a likelihood of

injury to knowledge, through prevalent lack of sympathy with pure science and ignorance of its intrinsic value, nor on any other merely intellectual obstacle; that is not the sort of thing which paralyses activity

If society were in a healthy condition, if the development and elevation of man had not to take a secondary and quite subordinate place to the development and accumulation of property, a few generations of better education could easily mend it on the intellectual side; but it is the greedy and essentially uncivilised condition of what prides itself as the most practical part of society, and the consequent deep-rooted and unadmitted canker eating into the bones of the social organism, that is disquieting and oppressive. It is against all this that a National Church is or should be fighting. If these evils are to be uprooted, I cannot see how the uprooting can be done by a single reformer or prophet a Carlyle, a Ruskin, or a Morris here and there; they must be attacked by an organised army of workers and thinkers, imbued with the right spirit, informed as to the real facts, devoted to the cause of goodness, and trained for the detection of long-accustomed errors and for the development of human life.
acts as a constant sore.

and

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

115

An
should

efficient

contingent of such an

army

exists, or

Here

exist, in the churches of every denomination. are men picked out, we must suppose, for their

keen perception of right and wrong, for their enthusiasm and longing after higher life, men who are
subjected to special training for the work, and then sent as missionaries throughout the whole range of society, to preach Christ's Gospel and to bring the

of commanding power, if only it be in real touch with the people, if only it realises the extent and the quality of its mission, and is properly prepared to cope with it. But it
staff

Kingdom of Heaven into Here should be a general

realisation

upon

earth.

must concentrate its weapons upon the enemy, and must not employ them in internecine warfare. An army whose officers dispute among themselves, whose horse and foot are in conflict, and whose artillery is trained upon its engineers, is not an efficient instrument of conquest. Those who realise to some extent what a power for good a truly National Church might be, and how with
comparative ease the earnest religious spirit of England could absorb and utilise the energies of such a Church a truly Christian and truly comprehensive
Church, with the best men attracted, not repelled, the present narrow mechanical uniformity superseded by breadth and liberality, with errors of past history discarded,

mean

composed and strengthening of the Church is perhaps the best though not the most direct route towards elimination

jealousies extinguished, and differences such persons may feel that the reform

116

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

evils

of the wrongs and amelioration of the

social state.

of our

At

present

many

of the thinking workis

ers are alienated

from what they imagine

secularisation
is

religion;

and a cry for general

The

State

may be

rightly

urged to have nothing

gaining ground. to do

with controversial religion; but the elimination of religious disputes and the elimination of religion are not

same thing. The cessation of all reof religion itself by the State is certainly cognition not a step in the right direction. The cry for disestablishment is not loud just now; but it is liable to be raised at any time, so long as the present condition of special privilege continues. The cry is really a cry for more equality of treatment
necessarily the

Only a few want to separate all religion from the State though many might rejoice at freedom from so-called Erasfor more national recognition
all

round.

tian control.

A section of Presbyterians north of the

opposed to Stateconnexion of any kind, and some Nonconformists may imagine that they feel conscientious objection; but that is not the real bugbear in England; it is the limitation and narrowness of the connexion that is really objected to. Broaden the Church out till it is
feel conscientiously

Tweed may

truly national, by removing the preposterous coercion and the in detail which is now nominally exercised,

The National Church could grievance disappears. then absorb the best activities of all denominations,
and the nation would be strengthened on its highest side to an incalculable extent. Efforts at betterment of human conditions are precarious and difficult and

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

117

rather blind, so long as mutual hostility or suspicion persists among the branches of the Christian Church.

Either corporate action towards amelioration is impossible, or the Church, in the most comprehensive sense, should be the most powerful army for good in
existence.
Its ministers are like officers distributed

throughout the country, with social prestige and the attentive ear of a large proportion of the more leisured and opulent classes; these Officers should be engaged, even more than at present, in training and enlarging and disciplining the forces of progress, ready for a re-birth of society. Herein lies, I believe, the most vital reform of all; but it is not a reform that can be procured by direct

aim

it

the best

must and

ablest

arrive spontaneously after attraction of men to the ministry. The nation

should

demand

the Ministry of

its

best

men

in the

Church

as well as in the Cabinet.

the reform contemplated should be real and genuine; the Confession of sin repeated in ecclesiastical buildings

And

should be no conventional and meannor should it be supposed to apply only ingless chant, to individual and personal sinfulness; it should above
all,

apply to collective sin, to that sinfulness of society which Christ would denounce if he came again among us. The vigour of
in collective worship,

that denunciation would, I expect, eclipse anything now heard from pulpits; though it would, I believe,

take a different and unexpected direction, and concern itself less with the weaknesses and follies and half -repented sins of humanity, than with the greed,

118

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

the selfishness, the sheer individualism and mammonworship which excite but occasional reprobation; it

would attack the

heartless

and contented acquiescence

in conditions which debase the soul of a people and erect the extravagant luxury of a few on the grind-

ing poverty of many.

In that sense an acknowledgment of fault is indeed urgently and constantly needed; but the feeling should be driven home and made real; confession should never be allowed to degenerate into an easy perfunctory form. The selfishness of society is the really burning sin of our time, and it is the more dangerous because so generally unrecognised. It has been unrecognised in the chancel as well as in the nave it seems never to have been adequately recognised by an Established Church as a whole and to this one cause such a Church is thought to owe much of its impotence to this is due much of the mistrust of the Church by the people, who have found it in the
;

past often against themselves, and siding with the

rich

and powerful; an attitude singularly different from that of its Master. That inspired song the

"Magnificat" struck the keynote of primitive Christianity.

Let us freely and heartily admit that a great internal effort is now being made to revive the early the spirit of brotherhood and spirit in the Church
social

work.

And yet

there

is

room.

The enthusiasm

and exertion of some Anglican leaders are beyond praise, but their spirit has not yet permeated the whole mass. Wherever thel right spirit exists the

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

people respond to
it,

119

as they did in A.D. 30. Christ's teachings frequently dealt with the subject of riches, even then, when vast accumulations were hardly feasi-

save in a form accessible to the ravages of moth and rust but with the invention of stocks and shares the possibilities of property have enlarged, and his denunciations now might be unexpectedly welcomed by some who do not profess and call themselves Christians. There are men men of influence among the artisans who openly scoff at what they call religion, who nevertheless plead "not guilty" for the downtrodden victims of pernicious surroundings; who emble,
;

who

phasise the fact that we are our brothers' keepers; really long for a fairer and wholesomer setting

and who have been renot pelled Christianity, by the teachings of Christ himself, but by the confusions and errors of his nominal disciples. These men call out for the clergy to be "converted to Christianity." What do they
for the life of
beings,

human

from

It were perhaps well for ministers of all denominations to consider what they mean.

mean?

Doubtless in so speaking they are to some extent making the mistake illustrated by the above-quoted objection to unharassed scientific work. For just as strenuous intellectual concentration needs eyes temporarily shut to the mass of avoidable misery and

inhuman

human stupidity and by almost to which everyone must shut his selfishness, eyes at times, or life were impossible so the clergy must at times possess their souls in peace and compain pain caused by
fort; they have to minister to believers

and sinners

120

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

and saints, as well as to contend against hypocrites and pharisees and servants of Mammon. The Church cannot only struggle and fight, it must sometimes
stretch out its hands towards the farther shore, un-

hindered by differences and controversies, and unburdened by the sense of social misery and degradation. Not all services need be mission services
;

every

now and

then saints

may

allow their souls

to

Supreme, and may expand aim at devout contemplation and ecstacy; on certain
in mystic worship of the

days their "Divine Service" may be limited to the ecclesiastical and esoteric kind which now all but monopolises that splendid name. But that must not be the chief employment of their The Church lives; not while present evils continue. must be militant if it is to become triumphant; it

must learn
but
is

strategy,

and must throw

its

forces in the

right direction.

Right belief is intensely important, slow of attainment, and for the present right action is more prominently called for. It is no time
:

for vegetating and leaf -development it is fruits that will be looked for. There must be far less of "Whosoever will be saved must thus think," and far more of "Whosoever will save others must thus do" God's
in

His heaven truly, but all is not right with the world. Books written to-day immerse us, and rightly immerse us, in a welter of poverty and misery. The
bitter cry of the victims of competition, of the outcasts of civilisation, and of the children who are born

to sin

and wretchedness, when they are not born to the cry of multitudes with hardly any chance death,

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

121

of decent happiness and no outlook upon the beauty of this world, this cry must be ringing in the ears of God till He cannot hear the chants of the churches, however musically they may be intoned, however frequently they may be repeated, and however completely
be obeyed. The spirit of greed is abroad; its net has gathered human beings together in heaps, has removed them from the fields and hedgerows, and has forced them into crowded
the Ornaments-rubic

may

doing devil's work; and its ally, smug self-satisfied stupidity, are the modern fiends; these are the Satans with which the Church should be fighting. What we have to learn is that the will of God is to be done on earth; that the Kingdom of Heaven is to be a present kingdom, here and now, not relegated
is

dens.

With

success this spirit

it

always to the future. Eternity is not something in the future, any more than it is something in the past : it extends into the future and it extends into the past without limit both ways, but this is eternity, this moment we are alive, and the message of Christ relates to "is" not to "will be" The present is the only
est here.

are to realise the highopportunity for a deed. If not here in this condition, why anywhere in any condition? For wherever we are will always be "here," and the time will always be "now." As soon as God's will is done on earth as it is done in heaven, a great part of the distinction between the two states of existence is abolished. That diminution of
distinction
is

We

what the
is

terrestrial

Church has

to strive
its in-

to accomplish; that

the ultimate object of

122

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

spiration and its labour: the ideal is to be made real, the world is to be transfigured and transformed. The

task of the priest is the reconciliation, in our consciousness, of self, the world, and God. It is with a knowledge of a mass of feeling and

some of it at present soured and hostile towards what it used to hear preached from pulpits of nearly every kind, but genuine in its aims and its love for humanity, that using the word "Church" in the broadest sense, as the combined and corporate society of good men in action, men whose lives and energies
effort,

are devoted to the highest aims, in the spirit of real and effective and universal Christianity I urge that

be regenerated, it must be regenerated through the agency of The Church. There must be a union of effort among all who are casting out devils in the one Name. But how great a change is needed! Contrasting the work that is to be done with the means adopted in too many cases for avoiding the doing of it, a prophet would be justified in exclaiming to the churches, and to the Church of this country, "Awake thou that
if the nation is to

sleepest

and

arise

from the dead, and Christ

shall give

thee life!"

DIVINE SERVICE

The popular notion of Divine

Service

makes

it

con-

sist of a multiplicity of so-called "services," which are too often no service at all, but recreation or sensuous enjoyment to those engaged in them; a kind of

service perhaps as unacceptable to the Deity,

under

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

123

existing circumstances, as those other religious cere-

monies inveighed against by the first Isaiah, in a period of less opportunity and responsibility than the present, when, as now, it could be said of a large part of society, "every one loveth gifts and followeth after rewards . ." and the cry of the oppressed is not heard even at the temple altars
.
:

who "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices hath required this at your hands. vain no more oblations; Bring incense is an abomination unto me. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. . . . When ye make many prayers I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to
. . .
. .
.

do well; seek

justice, set right the oppressor, relieve the oppressed."

nor will

The Church was not founded by temple services, it grow in that way. An exceptional Forty

Days, for the strengthening of the soul, and invigoration or insurance of its dominion over the body, must be wholesome and right and other times of seclusion, as means to ends, are more than justified; but it is as means to an end that they should be regarded, and the end is nothing less than the reform of social abuses, and the rescue of humanity from the damning conditions of hopeless and degrading squalor. The kind of society which allows its children to be befouled and degraded and brought up in an atmosphere of crime, is the kind of society that should be dealt with by the aid of a millstone and a rope. If it
;

uses

its

fresh

ish in a

rank way,

iant growth,

human material as manure, it may flourit may shoot up a coarse and luxurit may yield a crop of millionaires but
;

124

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

some kinds of fruit are too expensive for rational cultivation, some are not altogether wholesome: there are trees which must be hewn down and cast into the
fire.

Religious bodies may pride themselves on the soundness and orthodoxy of their beliefs; but "he
that doeth righteousness is righteous" and supposed good beliefs are no compensation for bad results,
;

To speak society or in an individual. strictly, such results are inconsistent with healthy be"do well will follow thought" if the thought be liefs
either

in

of the right kind; and there is high authority for the It is deeds uselessness of merely crying Lord, Lord far more than creeds that are wanted now; or rather,
!

creeds interpreted and acted out in deeds. have to discover,, but we have also to realise.
it is

We We do

not want matter without form, any more than we want form without matter. An idea must be incarnated

before

That is how Christianity was founded, when the Logos was made flesh,
it is

effective.

"And

so the

Word had

breath and wrought

With human hands

the creed of creeds

In loveliness of perfect deeds

More strong than

all poetic

thought."

Nothing

less

will reinvigorate the faith of

than a re-incarnation of the Logos Christendom and carry

forward the salvation of mankind. That is the meaning of the Second Advent. It is in our power to make ready the way; that is what our enlightenment and education and privileges are for. Man, though a little lower than the angels, is a messenger and serv-

CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS

ant of
fest.

125

God just

as truly,

and

his

high mission

is

mani-

We as a nation have gone already into the ends

of the earth; let us see to it that we understand and carry out rightly our great commission, in no narrow
iconoclastic spirit; remembering that, unless we set things right at home, our teaching will be ineffective, and sarcasm will be the emotion excited by our

and

example. The second incarnation will be in the hearts of all men a reign of brotherhood and love for which the heralds are already preparing their songs. Already there are "signs of his coming and sounds of
his feet"
this

and upon our Advent depends.

;

terrestrial activity the date

of

CHAPTER

VII

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS REFORM

I were challenged to say wherein I think that an improvement might be made in the regulations and arrangements for a National Christian Church

IF

under present conditions, I should emphasise three

things
:

First,

Church

more spontaneity and less monotony in service of all kinds, and the abandonment of

mechanical uniformity in worship. Second, more liberal education for Ministers; and the broadening and simplification of tests, so as to exclude as few good men as possible.
Third,

and consequent upon these two,

clear-

sighted recognition of the signs of the times, study

and enlightened encouragement of true beneficence, and stalwart opposition to all abuses of power.
I hesitate to enter into detail concerning these things, and yet I feel impelled to make the attempt;
so, if

I proceed, I will do so straightforwardly and without expressed apology.

RUBRICS
First, concerning regulations for the services

of the

Church.

Here I plead not

for legislation, but for the

126

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

absence of legislation

127

for the removal of the close

now. Permissively the Prayer Book can remain unchanged, with merely a substitution of "may" for "shall," and with the occasional iteration of words stating that for many centuries such and such was the thereby indicating a respect practice of the Church, for historic continuity; but all sentences laying down a prescribed procedure, not as advisable only, but as

and

definite legislation

which

exists

compulsory becomes an
courts

so that

any the

least variation

from

it

illegality to be proceeded against in law should surely be cancelled. Within the Church itself some rules can be laid

be thought wise by the several branches, but they will not be burdensome upon the conscience. In the Episcopal branch the Bishops will naturally have paternal authority, which

down, as from time to time

may

doubtless they will exercise with moderation and wisdom; in the Presbyterian branch the Presbytery will

have appropriate authority; in the Congregational branch, it is to be presumed, the Council; and so on. Details of practice and use of formularies would thus be decided on by eligible and sometimes competent bodies, who can readily modify them from time to time, and can leave what elasticity they think wise; and Parliament would be relieved of a burdensome

and archaic

responsibility.

The Prayer Book, considered as a legal document, was drawn upon the assumption that any freedom or
elasticity or spontaneity in

sure to be misused

conducting a service was not through malice and wicked-

128

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

ness, but

through ignorance and stupidity. It is, in fact, founded on mistrust of intellectual or spiritual competence, mistrust which tends to justify itself by reaction of the mechanical system itself upon
those constantly subjected to its constricting influence. It is also based on the idea that religious feel-

a proper subject for legislation, and that it is possible to coerce men's beliefs, to govern their in-

ing

is

clinations

rigid rubies

and control their consciences, by a system of and regulations; whereas it is notorious,

proverbial, that if the will to break law is most carefully drafted clauses have ex-

and almost
active, the

tremely

little

binding force.
sort

For

their interpretation

depends

in

no

on the intention of those who

framed or of those who authorised them; their interpretation can be garbled to suit an emergency, or can
be adapted to a changed system of opinions. For instance, the Thirty-Nine Articles, agreed upon by Convocation in 1562 "for the avoiding of

of opinions," were for the most part drawn up by Protestants as a bulwark against the Church of Rome a defence against any approach to the doctrines of that Church in certain well-known and famous controversies: such as, Scripture not the Rule of faith; Faith not the sole Instrument of Justification; Infallibility of General Councils; Purgatory, Pardons, Relics, Invocation of Saints five additional Sacraments; Transubstantiation the sacrifices of the Mass. But Cardinal Newman, while still a minister of the Church of England, was able to show, in his
diversities
;

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

famous Tract
90, that the

129

wording of the

Articles,

when taken

in conjunction with the similiarly Protestant "Homilies," did not, as a matter of fact, ex-

clude the interpretation regarded as baneful by those who formulated them; in fact, that the Articles lent

themselves to

Roman

interpretation.

They

did not

indeed suggest such an interpretation on their surHe argued this face, but they were patient of it. with extreme ingenuity, and some special pleading,
but, as I think, with a

good deal of

success.

Cer-

had followers who have largely availed themselves of an unexpected and welcome elasticity in the direction of Romanism, thus unexpectedly discovered in, or extracted out of, or perhaps foisted
tainly he has
into

what was intended to be a rigidly Protestant document and scheme of Protestant theology. And so it will always be with a living and growing

Church, or any other organism quite irrespective of the rights and wrongs of any particular controversy or School of thought. If the thought or School
exist, if living
lie

and earnest people

feel that truth

and

in a particular direction, then, however progress ultimately mistaken they turn out to be, no system of formularies can bind them; they will not hand over

and their judgment to the custody of can be loyal to a living and present They spirit in the Church to-day, but not to dead formularies. These they will either ignore, or will take in a non-natural sense, or will twist till they mean the opform posite of what they were intended to mean.
their conscience

a past.

130

CORPORATE WORSHIP. AND SERVICE

is

of words

usually capable of interpretation in accordance with a living will; and if not, it can be

either ignored or altered.

History is familiar enough with obsolete and repealed Statutes why should the Statutes which regulate so vital a thing as the professed National Religion alone be free from reconsideration and amendment? If non-alteration be regarded as neces:

sitated

by some theory, that theory is a superstition ; the only justification for rigid adherence to fixed forms is the practical danger of licence and unset-

tling of faith that

might result from freedom. That of is a point policy on which it is possible for reasonable people to take opposite sides, at any particular juncture or crisis; but it will be generally admitted that a faith dependent on blinkers and fetters for its maintenance is not likely in a progressive age to last many generations. Anchorage to a submerged rock
is

not safe amid rising waters.

SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING THE LITURGY

The Liturgy
and
it is

itself

must be

dealt with

by experts,

barely proper for me to make suggestions; but having gone so far I will hesitate no more, but

what I

will proceed in brief and dogmatic fashion to say feel constrained to say. For it is an admitted

Church of England is less in touch with it used to be, and this is not likely to be wholly and solely the fault of the people. Indeed it may be due to unwisdom rather than to fault of
fact that the

the people than

any kind.

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

131

present both the Daily Services are supposed to open with the note of personal sin. But it is to a

At

great extent unreal, and the declaration of absolution follows far too cheaply and easily. Moreover, even if such a beginning is appropriate sometimes, or to

some people, it is not always and equally appropriate and when constantly repeated such confession becomes merely monotonous, exciting no feeling or in;

telligence whatever. If a service is to be efficacious against sin, it should deal with it far more seriously and continuously. If

no light matter, and should not be casually slurred over. During such a service, dominated by the sense of personal sinfulness and contrition, the confession of the Communion service The is likely to be more effective than the other. Litany would be an appropriate continuation: many things should precede a declaration of Remission. But there should be more than one form of service there might be at least three alternative forms sometimes one, sometimes another to be used. One form of service should sound a different note; it might be a service not of contrition but of praise.
felt as

a reality sin

is

It

might open with the Benedictus, continue with the General Thanksgiving, with the Te Deum, the CanVenite
without the Jewish ending if
possible

tate, or the

and so forth. And in all these services the and great eloquent short prayers need never be omitprayer of St. Chrysostom, the ColPeace and for Grace, and, when appropriate,
Collects, as also that for the special day,

ted, such as the

lects for

the

Evening

132

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

together with Epistle and Gospel and of course the Lessons. But the multiplicity and wearisome number of ex-

from the Psalter might be mitigated with advantage. The Psalms for the day might be omitted altogether. There can be no need to work through the whole Psalter every month it is a useless burden besides, a few of the Psalms are hardly edifying in
tracts
:

worship, however instructive they are as historical

and biographical

lessons.

times of stress or anxiety a special selection of prayers might be made, and at all times extempore

At

and spontaneous prayer should be permissible. It is profoundly wrong that a petition from the heart of
a minister of
service.

God is never to be uttered during Divine

It is an edict of suppression and impotence for the reading desk: of dulness and starvation for the pew. "For a certain measure of variety arrests

and engages the attention of worshippers, and

tains their interest."
is

sus-

full

The very name "reading desk" of wrong suggestions. The lectern is appronamed, and so

is the pulpit, but the spirit of should brood over at least a part genuine supplication of the service.

priately

Another form of service where forms are used might be dominated by the idea of collective or social struggle and error, by the sense of national and corporate sin, by effort after better conditions of existence for others, and by the spirit of public service.

Here would come

ment, for the Clergy, for

the prayer for Royalty, for Parliaall people as well as others

;

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

133

appropriately chosen, and many added to suit the needs of the time. At all times it is appropriate to remember the sick

and

suffering, the prisoners late and oppressed; just as

;

and
it

is

captives, the desoalways natural to

pray for peace and in these cases prayer is not merely intercessory prayer, but is a petition for the impulse

what lies in our own power to aid in these so touching and so accessible ranges of activity
ourselves to do
in direct

human

service.

The keynote of each service should be reality. There should be no vain repetition and no mere formulas recited in haste

At

present far too

in quantity,

without attention to meaning. is attempted far too much and this perhaps is responsible for the

much

hurry and apparent desire to get through.

everything said should be said deliberately Possibly, however, the present pressively.

Surely

of utterance is not really or solely amount to be got through in the time, but is a relic of the Roman practice of reciting prayers in Latin, so as not to be understanded of the common people; with the object apparently of exciting vague emotion undiluted with intelligence. The practice is venerable but it is hardly consistent with the genius of the Church of England. Intelligibility throughout is surely not a thing to be deprecated, if it can be secured. To this end the service should be short in length, even though not always short in time. Non multa sed multum applies intensely to the effective
use of a Liturgy.

and immanner dependent on the

quantity gabbled through

is

134

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

small amount really and unimpressive. driven home is far more effective. The Te Deum is specially effective when sung slowly and deliberately. It was so sung in more than one church at the last
useless

Declaration of Peace. Above all, the Lord's Prayer, with its brief and profound sentences, is not properly treated when subjected to the gabble of a choir. Every sentence involves thought.

The

single phrase

"Thy Kingdom
for a

come" speaks volumes, and by

morning's worship.
develops
it

itself is sufficient

As

a musician takes a theme and

fugally and antiphonally with devices of augmentation and diminution and with illuminating counterpoint, so could such a theme as this be made to

dominate and re-appear throughout a service. The repetition of the Lord's Prayer several times in an hour signifies the intention to use it as a sort of refrain; but as a refrain it is ineffective, the repetition The clauses are is far too mechanical and careless. worthy of better treatment than that. Take such a clause as "Thy will be done"; it embraces the whole of religion. If I were a musician I would set the Lord's Prayer to music, and with clashes of instruments and with silences would bring 1 out a part of its meaning in unmistakable manner. The opening phrase "Our Father which art in heaven" may in its full form exhibit signs of liturgical growth or addition, but the note "Father," the dominant of all the chords, is authentic enough. It
i

When

wrote

this

"

The Kingdom " had not been produced, and

did not then

know

the scheme of Sir

Edward

Elgar's work.

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

is

135

all
,

that appears in

Luke (Hort and

Westcott's

text)

and

it is

enough.

WIDER EDUCATION
need only refer in very general terms to the of education appropriate to a candidate for the Ministry of the Gospel. He must be instructed in professional subjects, of course I say nothing about those but it is plain that if he is to have any influence on the thought of his time, he must not be ignorant of that thought. If he is to mix with people, and adapt himself to various conditions of men, he must
sort
;

We

be able to retain their respect.

Immersion

in the at-

mosphere of

scholastic theology alone will not suffice. a literature with which he must be familIf he iar, but he must not be a man of one book. knows only the Bible, he will not know that. broad

The Bible

is

and general education should be his, and the discoveries of his age should not be alien to him. In the course of his career he is bound to meet argumentative sceptics; men sometimes of narrow sympathies, but occasionally of fairly wide reading. These he should be able to encounter on their own ground. It is true that to take a leading position, and to
grasp a considerable range of human knowledge, is not given to all; there must be some whose lives are

amid simpler surroundings, and who will there feel more at home. That is well but we are considering the ideal up to which a few can be trained, while
cast
;

the majority will rise towards it as far as they can, though they fall short of attainment. The ideal for

136

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

a minister of Christ to-day is not represented by that held out in the charge of the Ordination service, "apply yourselves wholly to this one thing, and draw all

your cares and studies this way;" it is not enough, nor is it even wise, to limit study to one thing, and to forsake and set aside all other studies. Certainly something just and needful is intended, by that warning against worldly cares and studies,
but
it is

liable to

be misunderstood.

And

even in af-

of business, it may be argued that as so many of the clergy have to address men of business, it would be wise for them not to be wholly ignorant and incompetent even in that atmosphere. It is no easy service which the nation demands of its religious teachers it is the highest and most difficult possible; and the very best and ablest men are needed for the work, if it is to be done properly. At present many
fairs

are deflected to other careers.

deflection
is

many it man is either

the

In some cases the due to attraction elsewhere; but in too must happen that a faithful and competent
consciously or unconsciously repelled by

demands and injunctions placed in his way, by the attempt made to scare his present conscience or to He knows that the critical snare his future one.
spirit is

not the

spirit

of worship; but he knows also

that,

however successfully his critical faculty may be to sleep for a time, it will rise and torment him put
later

on

if

he abandons his birthright of growth and

freedom.

So he chooses another

vocation.

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

TESTS

137

And

now, what about

tests?

What

tests

should be

applied to candidates for ordination, so as to exclude

self-seeking hypocrites and stealthy infidels? Whatever words are used, the test-formula should be said

by the candidate himself, not by another for him and it should be said without prompting. The amount of
;

memory needed, for a simple rehearsal like that, is not too much to expect from a man to whom preaching
and the cure of souls is to be entrusted. simple form should suffice why should not the following be
:

held sufficient?

Here, solemnly in the face of this congregation, I declare before Almighty God, to whose holy will I entirely submit myself, that I long for Christ's ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth; and, God helping me, I will with all my power and ability strive to this end and to no other, with such wisdom
Spirit to confer upon me; for whose guidance I will always pray to the Father, in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.
as
it

may

please the

Holy

declaration, made in full voice and with would be far more solemn and impreshand, uplifted sive as an answer to the question whether he thinks he is truly called to the ministry of the Church, than the present curious expected answer, "I think so." Some further declaration on the secular side, against the domination of any foreign potentate in this realm, and some precautionary statement against

Such a

Jesuitical interpretation

and underground scheming,

138

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

would seem

to be necessary also. Moreover, it would be desirable so to legislate that no weapon of superstition could ever be wielded, by Church authority, so

as to inflict on the laity that element of compulsion from which the clergy had been freed. It is to be
practices will never be permitted in the National Church, how-

hoped that certain anti-English auricular

it

ever comprehensive

may

become.

RE-INCORPORATION
This article ought to close with practical suggestions as to

how Nonconformist

bodies are to be re-

incorporated into the National Church ; but that must be left to others. I know that at the time of writing

an unexpected and most regrettable recrudescence of hostilities has arisen between the State Church and the Free Churches animosity breaking out over the
primary education of the children of the poor showing that the pugnacious spirit was only dormant, and that any immediately practical suggestions towards general Christian co-operation would be untimely. But surely such a state of things can only be temporary. Either some mutual understanding is possible on such a subject, or the country is on the verge of an era of secularism. It may be that thorough union will come only
through disestablishment that a truly comprehensive National Church is impossible. That is one way towards freedom of conscience. Either the State Church must be enlarged, broadened, and liberated

SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM

139

or

freed from exclusive dignities too dearly bought, it must cease to be a State Church. I will not attempt to forecast the course of history I

concerned to urge is union, for the purpose of fighting a common foe, cessation of internecine quarrels, unison of effort among all the branches of the Church of Christ. To me it seems that, as soon
all that

am

are removed, the re-incorporation will be almost automatic or would be so were it not for the question of pre-restoradisabilities

as artificial restrictions

and

If a money question is all that would then hinder union if there is nothing more serious and fundamental than property to be considered it would be a fact worth finding out.
tion endowments.

My attention has just been called to certain articles

on Church and State, issued in 1891 by Dr. Martineau as vol. ii. of his collected Essays, Reviews, and ^Addresses. Some of them deal with this very matter, especially the essay called "The National Church as a Federal Union." He pointed out the inconsistency of a Church priding itself, simultaneously, both on its rigorous uniformity and on the width of the range of its belief; and says that while the Acts of Uniformity remain, the work of the Church will be honeycombed by the canker of unveracity and selfarguments and proposals, for whether those particular proposals are hopeless or not, the spirit of his vision of the unity of Christendom the longing to see the various folds all one flock, in accordance with the parting prayer of Christ,
sophistication. I will not repeat his

140

CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE

.
.

"for them which shall helieve on me that they all may be one" remains as real as ever. Moreover, of the non-established Churches are riper for many union among- themselves now than they were even a
.

short time ago and I will quote the concluding words of the preface to the volume containing Martineau's
;

ecclesiastical essays:

"I cannot withdraw a protest, however hopeless

seem, against allowing the Christian Church to remain a mere cluster of rival orthodoxies, disownit

may

ing and repelling each other; while, in the inmost heart of all, secret affections live and pray, with eye

upturned to the same Infinite Perfection, and tears let fall for the same universal sorrows."

SECTION
Drew foundation

III

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

section

The substance of

this

was given

as the first lecture on the

established in connexion with

Hackney

College,

Lon-

don, under the presidency of Dr. Forsyth.

141

CHAPTER

VIII

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

PART I
"If a

man

is

an

essential condition of his seeing the sky.

shut up in a house, the transparency of the windows is But it would not be prudent

to infer that, if he walked out of the house, he could not see the sky because there was no longer any glass through which he might see it."

M'TAGGART, Some Dogmas of Religion,

p. 105.

book called Some Dogmas of Religion3 from which I have taken the excellent apologue 1 prefixed as a sort of motto to this article, says some things with which I am not able
in his

DR.

M'TAGGART,

wholly to agree. I should like to deal with these at greater length in some other connexion, but meanwhile I will quote one of them. In his chapter on Human Immortality he says that an affirmative answer to the question "Has man an immortal soul?" would be absurd. He wishes to maintain that man is a soul rather than that he has one because the possessive case would indicate, he says, that the man himself was his body, or was something that died with
;

the body,

which at
1

and that he owned something, not himself, death was set free.

risively calls the

This must not be understood as sustaining what Mr. Haldane de"window" theory of the senses, as if they were apertures
alien universe: a parable

through which an inner man looked out at an must not be pressed unduly.

144

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

that

But if we make the correlative statement, and say "man has a body," surely we are stating an un-

deniable truth.

And

as to

what the

man

himself
;

is

I apprehend that he is a union of soul and body and that without the one or the other he is incomplete as a man, and becomes something else a corpse perhaps, a

be both. But whereas the two were necessarily united during the man's life, death separates them; and the final product, whatever it is, can be described as "man" no
spirit

perhaps, or

it

may

form of the question preferred by Dr. M'Taggart, "Are men immortal?" does not seem to me so appropriate as the more popular and antique form, "Is the soul immortal?" For surely without hesitation everybody must give to his ques^ tion, about man, the answer: "Not wholly," or "Not every part of him." Part of what constitutes human
longer.

Hence

the

On one side man uncertainly mortal. to the animal kingdom, and flourdoubtedly belongs ishes on this planet, the Earth, by aid of particles of
nature
is

terrestrial

matter which he

the soul, then, we which is dissociated from the body at death that part which is characteristic of a living man as distinct from

By

for that purpose. must mean that part of man

utilises
:

a corpse.
is

It

may

be said that

inter-relation than a part,

and
;

really more an that this inter-relation

it is it

what

is

meant by vitality

so that

has been roundly

asserted that the apparently disappeared "vitality" is a nonentity or figment of the imagination, and that to

speak of

it

as

still

existing

is

like

speaking of the

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

145

"horologity" of a clock which someone has smashed with a hammer.

Very

well,

admitting that vitality

is

a mere relation

between the body and something else, it is just the nature of this "something else" that we are discussing; and it is no help to start by assuming that this dissociated and perhaps imaginary portion is the man himself, any more than it is helpful to start with the
equally gratuitous assumption that the visible and tangible body is the man himself.

The vanished constituent with its attributes may turn out to be more intimately characteristic of, and essential to, the man's real nature and existence, than is the material instrument or organ which has been discarded without having disappeared they may turn out to have a more permanent and therefore a more real existence than the temporary vehicle which served
:

and properties during their short tenure of earth life they may be more especially the seat of his personality and individuality;
to manifest those attributes
;

but those are just the things which are subjectmatter for debate, and they must not be postulated a
priori.

a matter of nomenclature, I want to discriminate between the term "vitality" and the term "life"; to use the former as signifying a union or relation be-

As

tween the body and something else, and the latter to denote the unknown entity which by interaction with
material particles is responsible for their vitality. True, life, thus defined, is a portion or partial aspect

146

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

of what is often spoken of as "soul," but the term life can be used by many to whom some of the associations of the more comprehensive term are objectionable. The first simple and important truth that must be insisted on, is the commonplace but often ignored and even denied fact, that there is nothing immortal or persistent about the material instrument of our present senses, except the atoms of which it is composed. Any notion that these same atoms will at some future date be re-collected and united with the dissociated and immaterial portion, so as to constitute once more the complete man as he appeared here on

of that

any notion most or believed, though unfortunately at least taught, by one great branch of the Christian Church, is a superstition, not by any means yet really and thoroughly extinct or without influence on sentiment, even in quarters where it may be denied in
earth,
is

who

thereafter to last for ever,

sort,

words.
extinct.

It

is

too

much

to expect that is should be so

Nevertheless, the teaching of natural science is in accordance with the teaching of common sense in this matter. The present body is wholly composed of terrestrial particles; it consists of atoms of matter collected

from food and air, and arranged in a certain complicated and characteristic frm. The elemental
atoms are
first

called protoplasm, which is whose chemical constitution

combined into the complex aggregate an unstable compound

is

at present

unknown,
:

but whose property it is to be always in a state of flux it is not rigid or stagnant or fixed, but is constantly

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

breaking
so that
iod.
it

147

down

and constantly being renewed or

into simpler constituents built up

on one side, on the other,

has a kind of life-history, for a certain per-

This period of activity, in any given case, lasts as long as the balance between association and dissociation continues. While the balance is tilting in

favour of assimilation, we have the period of youth and growth when the balance begins to tilt in favour of disintegration, we have the commencement of old age and decay until at a certain, or rather an uncer;
;

tain, stage, the

victory, and denly ceases.

disintegrating forces gain a final assimilation wholly and sometimes sud-

Then presently and by slow degrees

the

residue of protoplasm left in the body unless it is speedily incorporated into some other animal or plant
is

resolved into similar

and simpler compounds, and

is

ultimately into inorganic constituents; and so stored to mother Earth, whence it sprang.

re-

can be legitimately meant by the phrase Resurrection of the body? Well it is highly desirable to disentangle the element of truth which underlies ancient beliefs and is the condition of their durability; and, whatever may be the case with other forms of religion, it is clear that Christianity both by

What,

then,

its

doctrines

and

its

ceremonies rightly emphasises the

material aspect of existence. For it is founded upon the idea of incarnation; and its belief in some sort of bodily resurrection is based on the idea that every real

personal existence must have a double aspect spiritual alone, nor physical alone, but in some
both.

not

Such an opinion,

in a refined form,

is

way common

148

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

is

to

many systems of philosophy and out of harmony with science.

spirit,

by no means

Christianity, therefore, reasonably supplements the

mere survival of a discarnate

a homeless wan-

derer or melancholy ghost, with the warm and comfortable clothing of something that may legitimately

be spoken of as a "body" that is to say it postulates a supersensually appreciable vehicle or mode of manifestation, fitted to subserve the needs of future ex;

istence as our bodies subserve the needs of terrestrial

life:

an

etherial or other entity constituting the perfulfilling

sistent "other aspect,"

tions

and which the atoms of

some of the funcmatter are con-

terrestrial

assume, as consonant with or even as part of Christianity, the doctrine of the dignity and sacramental character of some
physical or quasi-material counterpart of every spiritual essence.

strained to fulfil now.

And we may

But though some such connexion

actual instance of
it

is

essential, any-

may be accidental and temporary. Take our present incarnation as an example. display ourselves to mankind in the garb of certain

We

clothes, artificially constructed

of animal and vegetacertain material

ble materials,

and

in the

form of a

assimilation
terials.

organism, put together by processes of digestion and and likewise composed of terrestrial ma-

The

source of these chemical compounds

;

is

evidently not important nor is their special character maintained. Whether they formed part of sheep or
birds or fish or plants, they are assimilated
;

and be-

come part of us being arranged by our subconscious

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

activities

149

vital processes into appropriate form, as other materials are consciously woven just as truly into garments, no matter what their origin. More-

and

over, just as our clothes wear out and require darning and patching, so our bodies wear out; the particles

are in continual flux, each giving place to others and being constantly discarded and renewed. The identity

of the actual or instantaneous body is therefore an affair of no importance: the body which finally dies is no more fully representative of the individual than any of the other bodies which have gradually been discarded en route: there is no reason why it should persist any more than they: the individuality, if there is one, must lie deeper than any particular body, and must belong to whatever it is which put the particles
together in this shape and not another.

There is nothing at all similar to this automatic decay and replacement, this preservation of form amid diversity of particles, in the mechanism of a clock. All that its "horologity" could mean would be the special assemblage or grouping of parts which enables it to fulfil certain functions till it wears out, or so
long as

worn parts are periodically replaced by the clockmaker. The "vitality" of an organism means this and more, for it can replace its own worn parts.
its

A clock

has nothing of personal identity, it is not a of a living organism. The identity good of a river is a much closer analogy and many are the
illustration
;

associations which have accordingly gathered

round

the

names "Tiber," "Ganges," "Nile." Rivers have always had attributed to them a kind of goetic per-

150

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

sonality, though no one can have really supposed them to possess genuine life. I wish here to make a short digression in order to say that the old and true statement that "everything

flows and nothing is stagnant," thus conspicuously exemplified by the material basis of life, need not in the
least signify, as it is
is

sometimes taken to signify, that

evanescent and nothing is permanent; everything still less than everything is fanciful and nothing is
real.

ancient aphorism of the inspired Heraclitus makes a statement about existence which is
vitally

The

and comprehensively true; and

it

is

a truth

which constitutes the keynote of evolution. To return. The more frankly and clearly the truth about the body is realised, namely, that the body is a flowing and constantly changing episode in material history, having no more identity than has a river, no identity whatever in its material constitution, but only
its form, identity only in the personal expression or manifestation which is achieved through the agency

in

of a fresh and constantly differing sequence of material particles,

the

more frankly

all this is realised,

the better for our understanding of most of the prob-

lems of

life

and being.
is

The body
and

the instrument or organ of the soul:

in its special

form and aggregation

is

certainly

temporary, exceedingly temporary, for in the most durable cases it lasts only about a thousand months a mere instant in the life-history of a planet.

But

if the

body

is

thus

trivial

and temporary,

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

151

though while it lasts most beautiful and useful and wonderful, what is it that puts it together and keeps it active and retains it fairly constant through all the vicissitudes of climate and condition, and through all
the fluctuations of material constitution?

For remember that we are now not dealing with the human body alone. All animals have bodies and so
have plants. All that has been said, of the temporary character of the material aggregate animated by life, applies to a vast variety of organisms, many of which can be encountered on the earth: not to speak of the myriads of other worlds.

What
porated
into the

first into

causes the very same particles to be incorthe form of a blade of grass, then
;

form of a sheep, then into the form of a man then into the form of some law invertebrates "politic

worms" (for whose

cases there
is,

existence,

however, in normal

I believe, no biological authority),

then perhaps into a bird, then once more into vegetation perhaps a tree? What is it that combines and

arranges the particles, so that if absorbed by root or leaves they correspond to and form the tissue of an
oak, if picked
cles

up by
if

talons, they help to feed the

mus-

of an eagle,

cooked for dinner, they enter into

the nerves

and brain of a man?

What

is

the control-

ling entity in each case, which causes each to have its own form and not another, and preserves the form

constant amid the widest diversity of particles? call it life, we call it soul, we call it by various

We

names, and

we do not know what

it is.

But common

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

sense rebels against
its

being "nothing"; nor has any

to declare that
it is

genuine science

presumed

purely"

imaginary. Let us now, therefore, try to define what we mean by "soul," though in our necessary ignorance the task
is

not easy.

The term
think
it is

many may
the

indeed so ambiguous that better avoided altogether; but

is

more

sive

precise term "mind" is too narrow and exclufor our present purpose.
definition

The following

may

sufficiently represent

my

is that controlling present meaning: and guiding principle which is responsible for our personal expression and for the construction of the body, under the restrictions of physical condition and anIn its higher development it includes also cestry. and feeling intelligence and will, and is the store-

The

soul

house of mental experience.

The body
to receive

is its

instru-

ment or organ, enabling physical impressions, and matter and energy.

it

and

to convey

to affect

and be affected by

When the body is

destroyed, therefore, the soul dis-

appears from physical ken; when the body is impaired, its function is interfered with, and the soul's physical reaction becomes feeble and unsatisfactory. Thus
has arisen the popular misconception that the soul of a slain person or of a cripple or paralytic has been des-

troyed or damaged; whereas only its instrument of manifestation need have been affected. The kind of evils which really assault and hurt the soul belong to
a different category. It may be said that, in so far as soul
is

responsible

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

15$

for bodily shape, soul seems identical with the principle of life, and that all living things must possess

some rudiment of

soul.

Well, for myself, I do not see how to draw a hardand-fast distinction between one form of life and another. All are animated by something which does not belong to the realm of physics and chemistry, but lies outside their province, though it interacts with the material entities of their realm. Life is not matter, nor is it energy, it is a guiding and directing prin-

and when considered as incorporated in a certain organism, it, and all that appertains to it, may well be called the soul or constructive and controlling
ciple;

element in that organism.

The

soul in this sense

is

somewhat the same way

the universe
;

related to the organism in as the "Logos" is related to

it

it is

that without which

does not exist,

in-

that which vivifies

and

constructs, or

composes and

forms, the whole.

Moreover, in the higher organisms the soul conspicuously has lofty potentialities it not only includes what is connoted by the term "mind," but it begins to
;

acquire some of the character of "spirit"; by which means it becomes related to the Divine Being. Soul

appears to be the link between "spirit" and "matter" ; and, according to its grade, it may be chiefly associated with one or with the other of these two great aspects of the universe.

Now let us

consider what
is

Is there anything that

is meant by Immortality. not subject to death and an-

154

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Can we

predicate immortality about anything? Everything is subject to change, but are all things subject to death? Without change there could be no activity, and the universe would be stagnant;
nihilation?

but without death it is not so clear that its progress would be obstructed; unless death be only a sort of
change.

But
to

is it

amples:

not a sort of change? Consider some exWhen a piece of coal is burnt and brought
particles

an apparent end, the

of long-fossilised

wood

are not destroyed; they enter into the atmosphere as gaseous constituents, and the long-lockedup solar energy is released from its potential form

and appears once more

as light

and

heat.

The burn-

ing of the coal is a kind of resurrection; and yet it is a kind of death too, and to the superficial eye nothing is left but ashes. Take next the destruction of a picture or a statue, let it be torn to pieces or mashed to powder: there is nothing to suggest resurrection about that, and the
beautiful

form embodied
dissolution
is

in the material has disap-

peared.

Such a

may
is

a more serious matter, and be the result of a really malicious act. It is per-

haps the nearest approach to genuine destruction that

cases represents the material concomitant of a hideous crime. True, noth-

possible to

man, and

in

some

ing material is destroyed, the particles weigh just as much as before yet the expression is gone, the beauty
;

is

defaced, an idea perhaps

is lost.

But, after

all,

the idea was never really in the

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

155

marble or in the pigments; it was embodied or incarnate or displayed by them, in a sense, but it was not It was in the mind of the artist who really there. constructed the work, and it entered the mind of the spectators who beheld it at least of those who had the requisite perceptive faculty; but it was never in

The inert material, from the impress all. of mind it had received, was able to call out and liberate in a kindred mind some of the original feelings and
the stone at

thoughts which had gone to fashion it. Without a perceptive faculty, without a sympathetic mind, the material was powerless. Set up in, or sent to, a world inhabited only by lower animals, it would con-

vey no message whatever, it would be wholly meaningless; just as a piece of manuscript would be, in
such a world, though
ever written.
Nevertheless, by the supposed act of vandalism a certain incarnation of beauty has been lost to the world. Though even so it is not destroyed out of the
it

contained the divinest

poem

universe

remains the possession of the artist and of those privileged to feel along with him. Consider next the destruction of a tree or of an ani:

it

mal.
fore,

Here again the

it is

particles

remain as
is

many
;

as be-

only their

arrangement that

altered; the

matter
is

is conserved but has lost its shape the energy constant in quantity but has changed its form. What has disappeared? The thing that has disap-

the life which appeared to be in the tree or the animal, the life which had composed or constructed it by aid of sunshine and atmosphere, and

peared

is

the life

156

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

was manifested by it. Its incarnate form has now gone no more will that life be displayed amidst its old surroundings, it has disappeared from our ken; apparently it has disappeared from the planet. Has
it

gone out of existence altogether? If it were really generated de novo, created out of

nothing, at the birth of the animal or of the tree, we should be entitled to assume that at death it may have

returned to the nonentity whence it came. But why nonentity? What do we know of nonentity?

Is

it

a reasonable or conceivable idea?

are

Things

only hidden. And so conversely: it is readily intelligible that some existence, some bodily presentation, can be evoked out of a hidden or imperceptible or latent or potential exist-

when they vanish

ence,

and be made actual and perceptible and what we

It occurs
it

call real.

curring.

Instances of that sort are constantly ocwhen a composer produces a piece

occurs
it

of music,

when an artisan constructs a piece when a spider spins a web, and when the atmosphere deposits dew. But what example can we think of where existence is created out
of furniture,
occurs

of nonentity, where nothing turns into something? can think of plenty of examples of change, of organisation, of something apparently complex and highly developed arising out of a germ apparently simple; but there must always be at least a seed, or nothing will arise; nothing can come out of nothing: something must always have its origin in something. radium atom is an element possessing in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Every now and then

We

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

it

157

explodes and fires off a portion of itself. This can occur several times in succession, and finally it seems

radium or anything like it; it is thought by some to have become lead, while the particles thrown off have become helium, or Let us supoccasionally neon, or sometimes argon. that. We cannot we are bound to go pose stop there, on to ask what was the origin of the radium itself. If it explodes itself to pieces in the course of a few thousand years, why does any radium still exist?
to

become

inert

and

to cease to be

being born? Does it spring into existence out of nothing, or has it some parent ? And if it has a parent, what was the origin of that parent ?
is it

How

Never

moment
from

in physical science do we surmise for a that something suddenly springs into being previous non-existence. All that we perceive

can be accounted for by changes of aggregation, by assemblage and dispersion. Of material aggregates we can trace the history, as we can trace the history of continents and islands, of suns and planets and stars we can say, or try to say, whence they arose and what they will become but never do we state that they will vanish into nothingness, nor do we ever conjecture
;

that they arose from nothing. It is true that in religion we seek to trace things farther back still, and ultimately say that everything

arose

from God and

;

there, perforce,

our chain of ex-

our links of antecedence and sequence must to allow such a statement to act as an intellectual refuge can only be a concession to human
istence,

cease.

But

infirmity.

Everything truly arose from God; but

158

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

is

nothing specially illuminating in such a statement as that, for everything is in God now and everything will continue to be animated and sustained by
there
;

God

to all eternity.

It

is-

introduce the idea of

God

not legitimate explicitly to to explain the past alone;

the term applies equally to the present future.

and

to the

So the
only a
is is

assertion just made,

shall be,

though true enough,

is

mode of saying that what was

in the beginning,

now, and ever

a religious

world without end.

This

mode of expressing our

conviction of the

uniformity of the Eternal Character, but it is not a statement which adds to our scientific information.

We

not be able to understand Nature, we are unable to comprehend God. If we say that certainly Nature is an aspect of the Divine Being, we must be speaking truly but that only strengthens our present

may

and permanence, for we not thus be led to attribute to anything so qualified any power of either jumping into or jumping out of existence. To make the statement
argument
as to its durability
shall certainly

that

Nature is an aspect of the Godhead is explicitly to postulate eternity for every really existing thing, and to say that what we call death is not annihilation
but only change. Birth is change. Death is change. happy change, perhaps a melancholy change, perThat all depends upon circumstances and haps. special cases, and on the point of view from which

things

are

regarded;

but,

anyhow, an inevitable

change. I want to

make

the distinct assertion that no really

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

159

existing thing perishes, but only changes its form. Physical science teaches us this, clearly enough, con-

which

cerning matter and energy the two great entities with it has to do. And there is no likelihood of any
:

great modification in this teaching. It may, perhaps, be induced in the long-run to modify the form of statement and to assert conservation and real existence of ether and motion (or, perhaps only, of ether in

motion) rather than of matter and energy. That is quite possible, but the apparent variation of statement is only a variant in form its essence and meaning are
;

the same, except that it is now more general and would allow even the atoms of matter themselves to have

day and cease to be being resolved, perhaps, into electricity, and that into some hitherto unimagined mode of motion of the ether. But all this is far from being accepted at present, and need not here be contheir
;

sidered.

The
what

distinction

between what

is

transitory

and

is permanent is quite clear. Evanescence is to be stated concerning every kind of "system" and agcrowd assembles, and gregation and grouping. then it disperses: it is a crowd no more. cloud

forms in the sky, and soon once more the sky is blue again; the cloud has died. Dew forms on a leaf: a
little while, and it has gone again gone apparently into nothingness, like the cloud. But we know better,

both for cloud and dew.

was and soon

In an imperceptible form it an imperceptible form it will again have passed; but meanwhile there is the dewdrop glistening in the sun, reflecting all the movements of
into

160

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

the neighbouring world, and contributing its little share to the beauty and the serviceableness of creation.
Its perceptible or incarnate existence is temporary. As a drop it was born, and as a drop it dies; but as

aqueous vapour it persists: an intrinsically imperishable substance, with all the properties persisting which enabled it to condense into drop or cloud. Even it, therefore, has the attribute of immortality. Can that be a nonentity So, then, what about life? which has built up particles of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen into the form of an oak or an eagle or a man? Is it something which is really nothing; and soon shall it be manifestly the nothing that an ignorant and purblind creature may suppose it to be? Not so nor is it so with intellect and consciousness and will, nor with memory and love and adoration, nor all the manifold activities which at present strangely interact with matter and appeal to our bodily senses and terrestrial knowledge; they are not nothing, nor shall they ever vanish into nothingness or cease to be. They did not arise with us they never
;
:

head

did spring into being ; they are as eternal as the Goditself, and in the eternal Being they shall endure

for ever.
Though earth and man were gone,

And suns and universes ceased And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would

to be,

exist in Thee."

So sang Emily Bronte on her deathbed, in a poem which Mr. Haldane quotes in full, in his GifFord Lectures, as containing true philosophy. And, surely

THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT

in this respect there
is

161

a unity running through the universe, and a kinship between the human and the Divine: witness the eloquent ejaculation of Carlyle:

"What,

then,

is

man!

What,

then,

is

man!

endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a
there already (as all faith from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains not to this wild death-element of Time that triumphs

"He

faithful

man

is

over Time, and

is 9

and

will be,

when Time

shall be

no

more."

CHAPTER IX
THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY
PART II
"After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity." KANT, quoted by HEINZE.

IN the Permanent," permanence was claimed for the

all

the preceding chapter on

"The Transitory and

essence, the intrinsic reality, the soul of anything ; and that is, for transitoriness for its bodily presentment

such things as special groupings, arrangements, systems, which are liable to break up into their constituent elements, and cease to cohere into a united and organised aggregate. The only real destruction

known to us, in fact, is this disintegration or breaking up of an assemblage: things themselves never spring All we can cause or can obinto or out of existence.
serve
tion.
is

variety of motion never creation or annihilaAnd even the motion is transferred from one
;

body

and transformed in the process it is not generated from nothing, nor can it be destroyed. Special groupings and appearances are transitory; it is their intrinsic and constructive essence which is perto another,

manent.

But

then,

what about personality,

162

individuality, our

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY,

own
character and self?

163

Are

these akin to the tem-

porary groupings which

shall be dissolved, or are they;

among

the substantial realities that shall endure?

Let us see how to define the idea of personality or personal and individual character memory, a consciousness, and a will, in so far as they form a consistent harmonious whole, constitute a personality which thus has relations with the past, the present, and the
:

future.

And we

viduality itself

argue that personality or indidominates and transcends all temporal

shall

modes of expression, and

wherever
it exists.

so

is

essentially eternal

The

life

of an insect or a tree

may

in

some

sort

must, one would think, in some sort persist, but surely not its personal character! Why not? Becan hardly imcause, presumably, it has none. that such a has agine thing any individuality or personality it appears to us to be merely one of a group,

We

a mere unit in a world of being, without personality of its own. That is what I assume, though I do not dogmatise; nor do I consider it certain, for some of
the higher animals. Anyhow we may at once admit that, for all those things which only share in a general life, the temporarily separated portion of that general life will return, undiff erentiated and unidentified,

to

its

central store: just as happens in the bet-

ter-understood categories of matter and energy.

That
dividual

is

simple enough.

But suppose

that some in-

character, some personality, does exist. that not only life, but intellect and emotion Suppose and consciousness and will are all associated with a

164

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

certain physical organism; and suppose that these things have a real and undeniable existence an existence strengthened and compacted by experience and suffering and joy, till it is no longer only a funcis

tion of the material aggregate in which for a time it embodied, but belongs to a universe of spirit closely related to immanent and transcendent Diety; what

that really exists, in the highest sense, is immortal, we have only to ask whether our personall

then?

If

ality,

our character, our

self, is sufficiently individual,

sufficiently characteristic,

sufficiently developed,
is,

in

a word, sufficiently real; for if it no doubt of its continuance. It

in

there can then be

some

may return, indeed, to the central sense, store, but not without
CONSERVATION OF VALUE

identity; its individual character will be preserved.

Professor Hoffding of Copenhagen goes farther than this. In his book on the Philosophy of Religion he teaches that what he calls the axiom of "the conservation of value" is the fundamental ingredient in all religions the foundation without which none of

them could

stand.

In

his view, as a philosopher,

agreeing therein with Browning and other poets, no real Value or Good is ever lost. The whole progress

and course of evolution

the Valuable

is

to increase

and intensify
is

that which "avails" or

serviceable

for highest purposes, and it does so by bringing out that which was potential or latent, so as to make Real it was, no doubt, all the time it actual and real.
in

some

sense, as

an oak

is

implicit in

an acorn or a

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY!

flower in a bud, but in process of time it unfolds adds to the realised Value of the universe.

165

and

To
thus:

carry out this idea

is

we might

define immortality;

Immortality
the real:
it

the persistence of the essential and applies to things which the universe has

gained
go.

things which, once acquired, cannot be let It is an example of the conservation of Value.
evolution
it is

The tendency of
able form.

of Value, converting

from

to increase the actuality a potential into an avail-

Value may, however, be something more than merely constant in quantity, according to Professor HofFding. Experience of evolution suggests that it must increase. Certainly it passes from latent to more patent forms; and though it sometimes swings back, yet, on the whole, progress seems upward. Is it not legitimate to conjecture that while Matter and Energy neither increase nor decrease, but only change in form; and while life too perhaps is constant in quantity, though alternating into and out of
incarnation according as material organisms are put together or worn out; yet that some of the higher
attributes of existence,
love, shall

haps, what
as

be generalised as Availability or Value, may actually increase: their apparent alternations being really the curves of

may

we say, joy perGood generally, or

an optimistic faith, but it is the faith of the poets and seers. Whatever evil days may fall upon an individual or a nation, or even sometimes on a whole planet, yet the material is an upward-tending
spiral?

It

is

166

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

subordinate to the spiritual; and if the spiritual persists, it cannot be stationary it must surely rise in the
:

scale

of existence.

For

evil is that

which retards or

frustrates development, in any part of the universe subject to its sway, and, accordingly, its kingdom cannot stand: evil contains an essentially suicidal ele-

ment, so that on the whole the realm of the good must tend to increase, the realm of the bad to diminish. "No existing universe can tend on the whole to-

wards contraction and decay because that would foster annihilation, and so any incipient attempt would not have survived; consequently an actually existing and flowing universe must on the whole cherish development, expansion, growth: and so tend towards
;

infinity rather

than towards

zero.

The problem

is

therefore only a variant of the general problem of Given existence, of a non-stagnant kind, existence.

and ultimate development must be

evil

its

law.

Good and

can be defined in terms of development and decay This may be regarded as part of a respectively. revelation of the nature of God" (The Substance of
Faith).

From this
Good
shall

point of view the law of evolution is that on the whole increase in the universe with

the process of the suns: that immortality itself is a special case of a more general Law, namely, that in the whole universe nothing really finally perishes that
is

worth keeping, that a thing once attained is not thrown away. The general mutability and mortality in the world need not perturb us. The things we see perishing

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

we hope

167

and dying are not of the same kind as those which will endure. Death and decay, as we know

them, are interesting physical processes, which may be studied and understood; they have seized the imagination of man, and govern his emotions, perhaps unduly, but there is nothing in them to suggest ultimate destruction, or the final triumph of ill; they are
necessary correlatives to conception and birth into a material world; they do not really contradict an optimistic view of existence.

So far
no

as

we can

tell,

there need be

no

real waste,

no annihilation; but everything suffibe it beauty, artistic achievement, valuable, ciently knowledge, unselfish affection, may be thought of as
real loss,

enduring henceforth and for ever if not with an individual and personal existence, yet as part of the eternal Being of God.

PERMANENT ELEMENT IN

MAN

And

this carries

with

it

ality in all creatures

who have

the persistence of personrisen to the attainment

of God-like

faculties, such as self-determination

and

other attributes which suggest kinship with Deity and make their possessor a member of the Divine
family. For whether or not this incipient theory of the conservation of value stand the test of criticism,
it is

undeniable that, as in the quotation from Carlyle at the end of my last article, seers do not hesitate to
attribute

permanence and timeless existence to the

essential element in

man

himself.

They

realise that

he

is

one with the universe, that he

may come

to be in

168

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

tune with the infinite, and that his spasmodic efforts towards a state wherein the average will rise to a level now attained by only the few, are part of the evolutionary travailing of the whole creation. "All

omens," says Myers, "point towards the steady continuance of just such labour as has already taught us all we know. Perhaps, indeed, in this complex of interpenetrating spirits our own effort is no individual, no transitory, thing. That which lies at the root of each of us lies at the root of the Cosmos too. Our struggle is the struggle of the Universe itself; and the very Godhead finds fulfilment through our upward-striving souls" (Myers,
p. 277)
.

Human

Personality,

ii.

return to the problem of individual existence and to a more prosaic atmosphere. What we are

To

claiming

is

no

less

than

this

that,

whereas

it is

cer-

tain that the present body cannot long exist without the soul, it is quite possible and indeed necessary for

base the soul to exist without the present body. manifest soul's on the on this claim its transcendence, and on the of law the general pergenuine reality,
sistence of all real existence.

We

Recognition of the permanent element in man and of the probability of his individual survival, that
is

to say, of the persistence of intelligence and memory after the destruction of the brain if such re-

cognition is to be of the greatest use to mankind, should be based on general considerations open and
familiar to
all,

with results

and be independent of special study But if general verified by only a few.

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

arguments are
tience with a
insufficient,

169

and

if the reader has pa-

of investigation, then I submit that the question can also be studied by the
specific line

more

aid of observation

and experiment, and that a con-

viction of persistence of personality can be strengthened by the record and discovery of specific facts.

EXPRESSION OF

THOUGHT

IN

TERMS OF MOTION

The
chical

brain

and

definitely the link between the psythe physical, which in themselves belong to
is

different orders of being. In the psychical region "thought" is the dominant reality; in the physical "motion." The bodily organism mysteriously enables

one to be translated in terms of the other. Without some connecting mechanism, such as that afforded by brain, nerve, and muscle, the things we call intelligence and will however real, would be incapable of moving the smallest particle of matter. Now, since
it is

solely

by moving matter that we can operate

at all

in the material world, or can make ourselves known to our fellows, for in the last resort speech and

writing and every action reduce themselves to muscular movement, and since death inhibits this power, by breaking the link between soul and body, death
naturally stops all manifestation, interrupts all intercourse, and so has been superficially thought to be the
annihilation of the soul.

But such a conclusion is quite unwarranted. Existence need not make itself conspicuous: things are
always
difficult to discover

when they make no imis

pression on the senses: the human race

hardly yet

170

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

;

aware, for instance, of the Ether of space and there may be a multitude of other things towards which it
is

in the

same predicament.
is

Superficially, nothing just as when the brain is

easier

than to claim that

the

damaged

when the brain is destroyed the The reasoning is so plausible and obvious, so within reach of the meanest capacity, that those who use it
so

memory fails, memory ceases.

against adversaries of any but the lowest intelligence might surely assume that it had already occurred to

them and exhibited

in the

its

weak
tacit
;

point.

The weak

point

argument

non-manifest is traces of guilt is equivalent to annihilating a crime; and that by destroying the mechanism of interaction between the spiritual and the material aspects of existence

assumption that what is non-existent that smoothing out the

is its

necessarily be destroying one or other of those aspects themselves.

you must
brain
is

The

Granted; but

it

present organ of thought. does not follow that brain controls

our

inspiration is a physiological process, or that every thinking creature in the universe must possess a brain. Really we know too

and dominates thought, that

about the way the brain thinks, if it can propbe said to think at all, to be able to make any such erly assertion as that. terrestrial animals are all as it were one family, and our hereditary links with the psychical universe consist of the physiological
little

We

mechanism

called brain

and nerve.

But

these most

interesting material structures are our servants, not our masters: we have to train them to serve our pur-

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

171

poses; and if one side of the brain is injured, the other side may be trained to act instead. Destroy certain parts of the brain completely, however, and connexion between the psychic and the material regions
is

True but cutting off or damaging communication is not the same as destroying or damaging the communicator: nor is smashing an organ When the Atequivalent to killing the organist.
for us severed.
;

lantic cable broke, in 1858, intimate

communication

between England and America was destroyed; but that fact did not involve the destruction of either
It appears to be necessary to emphasise this elementary matter, because the contrary contention is supposed to cut straight at the root

America or England.

of every kind of general argument for survival hitherto adduced. But after all, it may be said, the above contention proves nothing either way; granted that breach of communication does not mean destruction of terminal
stations, it leaves the question as to their persistence

an open one. Yes, it does it leaves persistence to be sustained by general arguments, such as those of the preceding chapter, which were directed to establishing the priority in essence of the spiritual to the material, of idea to bodily presentation; and to be supported by any kind of additional and special experi;

ence.

ARGUMENT FROM TELEPATHY

First of
all,

then,

we must

ask, are
is

we

quite sure
definite

that the breach of intercourse

as clear

and

172

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

and complete as had been supposed? We have i\6 glimmering conception of the process by which mental activity operates on the matter of the brain so we
;

cannot be sure that

its

influence

is

limited entirely to

the brain material belonging to its own special organism. It may conceivably be able to affect other brains
too, either directly, or indirectly through an immediate influence on the mind associated with them. In-

normally carried on by means of conventional mechanical movements, calcutelligent

communication

is

lated to set

up

special aerial or etherial tremors;

which have to be apprehended through sense organs and brain, and interpreted back again into thought.
are constrained to contemplate the possibility of a more direct method, and to ask, is there ever any direct psychical connection between mind and mind, It irrespective of intermediate physical processes? is a definite though difficult question, to be answered by experience. And an affirmative answer would

But we

suggest,
ity
is

other things, that though individualdependent upon brain for physical manifesta-

among

tion, it

may

not be dependent on brain for psychical

existence.

Such independence is difficult to prove directly, in a way convincing to those who approach the subject without previous study, or with prejudices against it; because in the proof, or to produce any recordable impression, a bodily organ such as brain or muscle are not, and cannot be, commust be used. pletely independent of the body in this earth life but we can bring forward facts which seem to indicate

We

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

and peculiarly

173

psychical, and modes of comonly slightly physical. physical munication between mind and mind there are many varieties none of which do we really understand, beactivity specially

an

Of

yond a knowledge of

their physical details,

though

we

are well accustomed to

them

all;

but

we know of

one which appears not to be physical, save at its terminals, and which has the appearance of being, in its mode of transmission, exclusively psychical. That is to say, it occurs as if one mind operated directly either on another brain or on another mind across a
distance (if distance has any or as if one mind exerted
in such a case) ; its influence on another

meaning

through the conscious intervention of a third mind acting as messenger or as if mental intercourse were effected unconsciously, through a general nexus of communication a universal world-mind. All these hypotheses have been suggested at different times by the phenomenon of telepathy; and which of them is nearest the truth it is difficult to say. There are some
;

who

think that

all

are true,

and that

different

means

are employed at different times. What we can assert is this, that the facts of "tele-

pathy," and in a less degree of what is called "clairvoyance," must be regarded as practically established, in the minds of those who have studied them.

There

may

be,

indeed there

is, still

much doubt about

;

the explanation to be attached to those facts there is uncertainty as to their real meaning, and as to

whether the idea half -suggested by the word "telepathy" is completely correct; but the facts them-

174

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

even if

numerous and well authenticated to be we except from our survey the didoubted, rectly experimental cases designed to test and bring to book this strange human faculty. Thus telepathy opens a new chapter in science, and is of an importance that cannot be exaggerated.
selves are too

Even

alone,

it

ment for transcendence of mind over body,

tends mightily to strengthen the arguso that

we may

reasonably expect the one to be capable of existing independently and of surviving the other; though by itself, or in a discarnate condition, it is

presumably unable to achieve anything directly on

the physical plane.

Telepindeed only the first link in a chain: there are further links, further stages on the road to

But telepathy

is

not

all.

athy

is

scientific proof.

ARGUMENTS FROM PR^TERNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY

Have we no

facts to

go upon, only speculation,

concerning the actual persistence of individual memory and consciousness, of much that characterises a personality apart from a bodily vehicle? Facts we
have; but they are not generally known, nor are they universally accepted: they have still, many of them,
to

run the gauntlet of

scientific criticism

even

among

few students who take the trouble to study them. Their theory has been worked at pertinaciously, but it is still in a rudimentary stage, and by the mass of
the
scientific

men

the whole subject

is

at present ignored,

because

it seems an elusive and disappointing inquiry, and because there are other fields which are easier of

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

cultivation

175

and promise more immediate

fertility.

The
long

chief of the facts to which

we can appeal
:

be-

to one of three

marked regions

First, experiences connected with genius, vision, and dream, extending up to premonition and

clairvoyance,
gion.

the specially psychological re-

Second, the singular modification of bodily faculty sometimes experienced, ranging from un-

of sensory and muscular as such powers, hypersesthesia and what is technically known as automatism, up to various grades of what has been described as materialusual
extention
all which great group of asserted and controverted phenomena may be said to belong to the physiological region.

isation;

Third, the at first sight disconcerting facts connected with apparent changes, dislocations and
disintegrations, of personality
call the pathological region.

what we may

mass of information, not only is the theory far from distinct, but many of the facts themselves are only sparsely known: they belong to a special branch of study, which, conducted under
Concerning
all this

many

difficulties,

cannot be properly apprehended

it is

at second hand.

quite clear that manifestation of memory and consciousness, in a form capable of being appreciated by or demonstrated to us, is evidently not possible without

Suffice

it

therefore to say, that whereas

176

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

a material organism or body of some kind, yet in the judgment of many students of the subject a
surviving

memory
still

or personality, even though dis-

carnate, need not be utterly

and completely preoperating

in

vented
sphere.

from

occasionally

our

For as it was possible for what, in Chapter VIII., we defined as "soul" to compose and employ an organ
suited to itself, out of various kinds of nutriment, so also it appears to be possible, though not without difficulty and extraordinary trouble, for a discarnate
entity or psychical unit occasionally to utilise a body constructed by some other similar "soul," and to make

an attempt at communication and manifestation through that. It has even been conjectured that by special exertion of psychical power a temporary organ of materialisation can he constructed, presumably of organic particles, sufficient to enable some interaction between spirit and matter, and even to display some personal characteristics, through the utilisation of a form partially separate from, though also closely connected with, and as some think even borrowed from, the bodily organism of the auxiliary person known technically as the "medium" of communication, whose presence is certainly necessary. In favour of such an occurrence there is much evidence, some of it of a weak kind, some of it quite valueless; but again some of it is strong, evidenced by weighing, and vouched for by experienced naturalists and observers such as Dr. A. R. Wallace and
Sir

W,

Crookes, as well as by the eminent physi-

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

ologist Professor Kichet,

1771

and by Professors SchiapLornbroso, and other foreign men of science. The idea here suggested is admittedly bizarre and at first sight absurd; nevertheless something of the kind has the appearance of being true, in spite of its
arelli,

having been discredited by much professional fraud

exercised

upon
it is

on which

based

too willing dupes. The phenomenon is at any rate a puzzling one, call-

ing for further investigation: which must ultimately pursue it into a region quite apart from and beyond the obvious possibilities of fraud; that is to say, must not only establish it as a fact, if it be a fact, but must ascertain the laws which govern it.

ARGUMENT FROM AUTOMATISM

frequently, however, a simpler method, akin to telepathy and to what is commonly known as inspiration or "possession," is employed; whereby some portion of the brain of "the automatist" appears to

More

be operated upon directly, so as to produce intelligible statements, in speech or writing, often of considerable length and occasionally in unknown languages; these messages being, at least in the cases where they are not merely subjective and of little interest, apparently irrespective of the ordinary consciousness, and only slightly sophisticated by the normal mental
activity,

wielded, and to

of the person by whom this organ is usually] whom it nominally "belongs." The body, in fact, or some part of the body,

though usually controlled and directed by the particular psychical agent which has composed and

178

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

to
it,

grown accustomed

can sometimes be found

capable of responding to a foreign intelligence, acting either telepathically through the mind or telerg-

by a more direct process straight on the brain. Sometimes the controlling intelligence belongs to a living person, as in cases of hypnotism more usually it is an influence emanating from what we must consider some portion of the automatist's own larger or
ically
;

Occasionally a person appears able to respond to thoughts or stimuli embedded, as it were, among psycho-physical surroundings in a mansubliminal self.

ner at present ill understood and almost incredible; as if strong emotions could be unconsciously recorded in matter, so that the deposit shall thereafter affect a sufficiently sensitive organism, and cause similar emotions to reproduce themselves in its subconsciousness, in a

to the customary conscious interpretation of photographic or phono-

manner analogous

graphic records, and indeed of pictures or music and artistic embodiment generally. And lastly, there are people who seem able to respond to a psychical agency

apparently related to the surviving portion of intelligences now discarnate, in such a way as to suggest
that the said intelligences are picking

up

the thread

of their old thoughts, and entering into something like their old surroundings and their old feelings though often only in a more or less dreamy and semientranced condition for the purpose of conveying
hallucinatory or other impressions to those still in the completely embodied state.

who

are

It would be a great mistake to assume, without

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

proof,
that

179

any given automatic message really; emanates from the person to whom it is attributed; and such a generalisation applied to all so-called messages would be grotesquely untrue. But then neither should we be safe in maintaining that none of them have an authentic character, and that they are never in any degree what they purport to be. The elimination of the normal personality of the automatist, and
the proof of the supposed communicator's identity, are singularly difficult; but in a few cases the evi-

remarkably strong. The substance of the message and the kind of memory displayed in these cases belong not at all to the brain of the automatist, but clearly to the intelligence of the asserted control: of whose identity and special knowledge they are sometimes strongly characteristic. As to the elimination of normal personality, however, it must be admitted that, in all cases, the manner and accidents or accessories of the message are liable to be modified by the material instrument or organ through which the thought or idea is for our information reproduced. The reproduction of a in our world appears to demand distinct efthought fort on the part of a transcendental thinker, and it seems to be almost a matter of indifference, or so to speak of accident not determined by the thinker, whether it make its appearance here in the form of speech or of writing, or whether it take the form of a work of art, or of unusual spiritual illumination. This is surely true of orthodox inspiration, as well as of what we are now conjecturing may perhaps be
dence for identity
is

180!

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Moreover, in both
cases, lucidity is only obtained, in flashes. The

an attempt at some additional method of arousing

ideas in us.
to be expected, and is only best of us only get flashes of genius

now and

then,

seldom unduly prolonged. we to be otherwise? should it Why expect There is another aspect of the matter that may be mentioned too. For most of the difficulty of intercommunication we ourselves must be held responsible. Our normal immersion in mundane affairs may be
is

and the experience

very sensible and practical, and

is

probably essential

to earthly progress until our civilisation is rather more consolidated and developed, but it can hardly
facilitate

Nor

is it

communion with another order of existence. likely that we should be able to appreciate
if it

the intimate concerns of that other order, even

were feasible to convey a detailed account of them. It is true that messages are often vague and disappointing even when apparently genuine untrue that they are invariably futile and useless and inapprosuch an assertion could only be made by peopriate, ple imperfectly acquainted with the facts. In certain cases it is quite clear that a bodily organism has been controlled by something other than its usual and normal intelligence, and in a few cases the identity
;

of the control has been almost crucially established: though that is a matter to be dealt with more technically;

elsewhere.

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY,

SUBLIMINAL FACULTY

181

extension of faculty exhibited during some trance states has suggested that a similar enlargement of memory and consciousness may follow or acthis life, and is partly of for the notion existence of a subthe responsible liminal or normally unconscious portion of our total

The

company our departure from

personality. On this subject I can conveniently refer to the summary contained in Myers' chapters on

"Disintegrations of Personality" and on "Genius," in vol. i. of his Human Personality. This doctrine
the theory of a larger and permanent personality of which the conscious self is only a fraction in process of individualisation, the fraction being greater or less

according to the magnitude of the individual, this doctrine, as a working hypothesis, illuminates many
obscure facts, and serves as a thread through an otherwise bewildering labyrinth. It removes a number of

elementary

stumbling-blocks

which

otherwise

ob-

struct an attempt to realise vividly the incipient stages of personal existence; it accounts for the extraordinary rapidity with which the development of

an individual proceeds and it eases the theory of ordinary birth and death. It achieves all this as well as the office for which it was originally designed, namely, the elucidation of unusual experiences, such as those associated with dreams, premonitions, and Many great and universally prodigies of genius.
;

1 recognised thinkers, Plato, Virgil, Kant, I think,

iln

justification

of the inclusion of this name, the following

may

182

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

of
this

and Wordsworth,
less
;

had room for an idea more or kind which indeed, in some form, is almost
all

necessitated

by a consideration of our habitually un-

conscious performance of organic function. Whatever it is that controls our physiological mechanism,

own consciousness; nor is it of our recognised and obvious personality. any part
it is

certainly not our

"

We

feel that

we

are greater than

we know."

hulls of ships

be likened to that of the dim ocean among many submerged strange beasts, propelled in a blind manner through space; proud perhaps of accumulating many barnacles as decoration; only recognising our destination
present state

Our

may

in a

by bumping against the dock wall. With no cognisance of the deck and the cabins, the spars and the sails; no thought of the sextant and the compass and the captain no perception of the lookout on the mast, of the distant horizon; no vision of objects far ahead,
;

dangers to be avoided, destinations to be reached, other ships to be spoken with by other means than bodily contact; a region of sunshine and cloud, of space, of perception, and of intelligence, utterly inaccessible to the parts below the water-line. To suppose that we know and understand the universe, to suppose that we have grasped its main outlines, that we realise pretty completely not only what is in it, but the still more stupendous problem of what
"For if we should see things and ourselves as suffice as an example: they are, we would see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures with which our entire real relation neither began at birth nor ended with the
body's death."

KAXT, quoted by HEINZE.

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

is

183

not and cannot be in

(self-styled exercise of limited intelligence, only possible to a certain very practical and useful order of brain, which

some of our gnostic "agnostic") friends is a presumptuous

it

as do

has good solid work of a commonplace kind to do in the world, and has been restricted in its outlook, let us say by Providence, in order that it may do that

one thing and do

it

well.

just as we fail to grasp the universe so do fail as yet to know ourselves: the part of which

And

we we

have become aware, the part which manifestly governs our planetary life, is probably far from being 1 the whole. The assumption that the true self is comand that a larger range of memory may ultiplex, mately be attained, is justified by the researches of alienists, and mental physicians generally, into those curious pathological cases of "strata of memory" or dislocations of personality, on which many medical
books and papers are available for the student. In cases of multiple personality, the patients, when in
the ordinary or normally conscious state, are usually ignorant of what has happened in the intervening pei Such an admission is quite consistent with recognition of the momentous character of this present stage of existence, not only while it lasts, but as influencing, and contributing in every sense to, the future; the doctrine of the subliminal self throws no sort of contempt or discouragement on the things which really ought to interest us here and now. There is "danger of losing sight of the ideal in our immediate life, and

thinking that it is to be found only in the past or in the future," says Professor Caird; whereas our little struggle is part of the great conflict of good and evil in the universe, and we should be encouraged were we to
"realise that our life is not

an aimless or meaningless vicissitude of

events, but

an

essential step in the great process."

184

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

riods

when they were not in that state, and are not aware of what they have done when in one of the
deeper states; but as soon as the personality has enit is often found to

tered an ultra-normal condition,

be aware, not only of its previous actions when in that condition, but also of what was felt and known while at the ordinary grade of intelligence. The analogy pointed to is that whereas we living men and women, while associated with this mortal organism, are ignorant of whatever experience our larger selves may have gone through in the past yet when we wake out of this present materialised condition, and enter the region of larger consciousness,

we may gradually

realise in

what a curious

though legitimate condition of ignorance

we now

are

and may become aware of our fuller possession, with all that has happened here and now fully remembered and incorporated as an additional experience
into the wide range of

knowledge which that larger

entity must have accumulated since its intelligence and memory began. The transition called death may thus be an awaking rather than a sleeping; it may be that we, still involved in mortal coil, are in the more dream-like and unreal condition:
"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awakened from the dream of life
'Tis

we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife."

(SHELLEY'S "Adonais.")

The

ideas thus briefly indicated have been sug-

gested by a mass of unfamiliar experience, upon

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY!

which
it is

[185

legitimate to speculate, though quite illegitimate to dogmatise; but in case they seem too fanciful to serve as any part of a basis for human

it may be well to show how clearly the of a larger and fuller existence than the possibility present is indicated by facts with which we are all

immortality,

familiar.

ARGUMENT FROM GENIUS

must be apparent how few of our faculties can really be accounted for by the need of sustenance and by the struggle for existence; and how those necessary faculties and powers naturally assume an overweening importance here and now, from the fact
It that they are so specially fitted to our present surSo that the less immediately practical roundings.

mental and spiritual characteristics can be spoken of by anthropologists as if they were of the nature of sports and by-products, not in the direct line of evolutional advance.

But, says Myers: "The faculties which befit the material environment have absolutely no primacy, unless it be of the merely chronological kind, over those faculties which science has often called by-products> because they have no manifest tendency to aid their possessor in the strug-

The higher gle for existence in a material world. of the gifts genius poetry, plastic arts, music, philosophy, pure mathematics all of tHese are precisely
as

of evolution are perceptions of new truth and powers of new action just
in the central stream

much

186

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

as decisively predestined for the race of man as the aboriginal Australian's faculty for throwing a boom-

erang or for swarming up a tree for grubs. There is, then, about those loftier interests nothing exotic, nothing accidental; they are an intrinsic part of that ever-evolving response to our surroundings which forms not only the planetary but the cosmic history of all our race." can regard these higher faculties, these inspirations of genius and the like, not only as contributing to our best moments now, but as forecasts or indications of something still more specially appropriate to our surroundings in the future anticipations of worlds not realised rudiments of what will develop

We

more

fully hereafter; so that their apparent incongruousness and occasional inconvenience, under present mundane conditions, are quite natural. Ulti-

mately they may be found to be nearer to the heart of things than the attributes which are successful in the stage to which this world has at present attained; though they can only exhibit their full meaning and
attain their full development in a higher condition of existence, whether that be found by the race on
this planet or

by the individual

in a life to come.

often-quoted analogy has here a closer appliThe grub cation than is commonly apprehended.

"An

comes from the egg laid by a winged insect, and a winged insect it must itself become; but meantime it must for the sake of its own nurture and preservation

acquire

certain

larval

characters

characters

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

187

sometimes so complex that the observer may be excused for mistaking that larva for a perfect insect destined for no further change save death. Such

of a temporary environment, I seem to see in man's earthly

larval characters acquired to
risks

meet the

strength and glory. In these I see the human analogues of the poisonous tufts which choke the captor
the attitudes of mimicry which suggest an absent sting the 'death's head' coloration which disconcerts

a stronger foe." For the triumphs of natural selection, then, we must look not to the spiritual faculties and endow-

ments of the race, but to the businesslike masterfulness which makes one man a conqueror and another a millionaire. These we can regard as larval characters, of special service in the present stage of existence, but destined to be discarded, or modified almost out of recognition, in proportion as a higher state is
attained.

This I take to be the deep meaning of the Gospel sentence beginning "How hardly!" But to continue Myers' biological parable:

species, even before they sink into their transitional slumber the rudiments, of wings still helpless protrude awkwardly beneath the larval skin. Those who call Shelley, for
his

"Meantime the adaptation to aerial on; something of the imago or perfect formed within the grub; and in some

life is

going
is

insect

per-

instance, 'a beautiful but ineffectual angel beating wings in the void,' may adopt, if they choose, this

homelier but exacter parallel.

Shelley's special gifts

188

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

were no more by-products of Shelley's digestive system than the wings are by-products of the grub" (Myers, i. p. 97). The meaning, you see, is that they are in the direct line of evolution, when the whole of existence is taken into account; and that similarly in the evolution of genius we are watching the emergence of unguessed
potentialities

from the primal germ,

the

first

reveal-

ings
"Of

To

faculties, displayed in vain, but born prosper in some better sphere."

(BROWNING'S "Paracelsus.")

Moreover, what is true for the individual must be true also in some measure for the race. Embryology teaches us that each organism rapidly recapitulates
or epitomises,

amid how different

It
is

conditions,

its

an-

cestral past history.

same of the individual and the progress of the race as in some degree concurrent; since their potentialities are
though their surroundings This argument, so far as I know, undeserving of attention.
similar,

legitimate to extend the idea to the future, and to regard the progress

will be different.
is

novel, but not

ARGUMENT FROM MENTAL PATHOLOGY

the as to the disintegrations of personality, the of of defects will, lapses painful memory, the

And

of sensation such as are manifested by the hysteric patients of the Salpetriere and other hosthe lesson to be learnt from those pathologpitals, ical cases is not one of despair at the weaknesses and
losses

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

on
this view, it is

189

ghastly imperfections possible to humanity; rather,

one of hope and inspiration. For they point to the possibility that our present condition may be as much below an attainable standard as the condition of these poor patients is below what by a natural convention we have agreed to regard as the "normal" state. might indeed feel bound to regard it not only as normal but as ultimate, were it not that some specimens of our race have already transcended it, have shown that genius, almost superhuman, is possible to man, and have thereby foreshadowed the existence of a larger personality for us all. Nay, they have done more, for in thus realising in the flesh some of the less accessible of human attributes, they have become the first-fruits of a brotherhood higher than the human; we may hail them as the forerunners of a nobler race. Such a race, I venture to predict, will yet come into existence, not only in the vista of what may seem to some of us an unattractive and unsubstantial future, but here in the sunshine on this planet Earth.

We

"Prognostics told

Man's near approach; so in man's self arise August anticipations, symbols, types Of a dim splendour ever on before."

as the hysteric stands in comparison with us ordinary men, so perhaps do we ordinary men stand
in comparison with a not impossible ideal of faculty
self-control. "Might not," says Myers, "all the historic tale be told, mutato nomine, of the whole race of mortal men? What assurance have we that

For

and of

190

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUU

from some point of higher vision we men are not as these shrunken and shadowed souls? Suppose that we had all been a community of hysterics, all of us
together subject to these shifting losses of sensation,
these inexplicable gaps of memory, these sudden defects and paralyses of movement and of will. As-

suredly

should soon have argued that our actual powers were all with which the human organism was or could be endowed. Nay, if we had been a
. . .

we

populace of hysterics we should have acquiesced in our hysteria. should have pushed aside as a fan-

We

tastic enthusiast the fellow-sufferer

us that this was not

all

that

who strove to telL we were meant to be. As

we now

stand, each one of us totus, teres, atque rotundus in his own esteem, we see at least how cowardly would have been that contentment, how vast

the ignored possibilities, the forgotten hope. Yet who assures us that even here and now we have de-

veloped into the full height and scope of our being? moment comes when the most beclouded of these moment hysterics has a glimpse of the truth. comes when, after a profound slumber, she wakes into an instant clair a flash of full perception, which

shows her as solid, vivid realities all that she has in her bewilderment been apprehending phantasmally as a dream. ... Is there for us also any possibility of
a like resurrection into reality and day? Is there for us any sleep so deep that waking from it after the likeness' of perfect man we shall be satisfied; and shall see face to face; and shall know even as also we
are

known?"

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY!

191

Whatever may be the answer to this question, it is undoubtedly true now and that it is true is largely " owing to him and his co-workers that these disturbances of personality are no longer for us as they were even for the last generation mere empty marvels, which the old-fashioned sceptic would often

plume himself on refusing

to believe.

On

the con-

trary, they are beginning to be recognised as psycho-

pathological problems of the utmost interest; no one of them exactly like another, and no one of them without some possible apercu into the intimate structure of man."

RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS

Whatever objections to the above argument may be adduced from the side of science and there are sure to be many, for free criticism is its natural atmosphere, there is one from the side of religion
more often felt than expressed perhaps must in conclusion briefly notice:
which I

Objection is sometimes taken against any attempt being made gradually to arrive at what in process of time may come to be regarded as a scientific proof of such a thing as immortality; on the ground that it is an encroachment on the region of faith, a presumptuous interference with what ought to be
treated as the territory of religion alone. To meet these objectors on their own ground, they might be reminded of such texts as 2 Pet. i. 5, Prov.

xxv.

2, as well as

of the

still

more authoritative en-

couragement

to investigation contained in

Luke

xi.

192

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

i.

the latter, or indeed both, being an expression of the basal postulate of the man of science, namely, the ultimate intelligibility of the Uni-

9 and in 1 John

verse.
this kind can only be think that by knowledge is the enemy of belief, instead of its strengthener and supporter, and second by those who unconsciously fear that the domain of religion is finite, and who there-

But, after

all,

an objection of

felt, first

those

who

fore resent encroachments as diminishing its already too restricted area. It cannot be felt by people who
realise that the

unlimited, and that there is infinite scope for faith, however far knowledge real and accurate scientific knowledge

dominion of religion

is

extends

its

boundaries.
is

The enlargement of

those

boundaries

gain; for thus the one area is increased while the other is not diminished. Infinity
all

cannot be diminished by subtraction. No such objection to the spread of knowledge was felt by that
inspired writer who hoped for the time when "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as

the waters cover the sea."

to establish:
it has a right a has right, duty. Whatever science can examine into, that it has a right to examine into. If there be things which we are not

Whatever

science can establish, that

it

more than a

intended to know, be assured that we shall never know them: we shall not know enough about them

even to ask a question or start an inquiry. The intention of the universe is not going to be frustrated by the insignificant efforts of its own creatures. I

THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY

we
refrain
ter reason

193

from examination and inquiry, for no betthan the fanciful notion that perhaps we may be trespassing on forbidden ground, such hesitation argues a pitiful lack of faith in the goodwill
and
friendliness

and power of the forces that make

for righteousness. Let us study all the facts that are open to us, with a trusting and an open mind; with care and candour
testing all our provisional hypotheses, and with slow and cautious verification making good our steps as

we proceed. Thus may we hope to reach out farther and ever farther into the unknown; sure that as we grope in the darkness we shall encounter no clammy horror, but shall receive an assistance and sympathy which it is legitimate to symbolise as a clasp from the hand of Christ himself.

SECTION

IV SCIENCE

AND CHRIS

TIANITY

195

CHAPTER

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

is being born again in the spirit of modern criticism and scientific knowledge, may it not be well to ask whether the formal statement of some of the doc-

NOW

that religion

is

becoming so much more

real,

which we have inherited from mediaeval and still earlier times cannot be wisely and inoffensively modified? There is usually some sort of forced sense in which almost any statement can be judged to have in it an element of truth, especially a statement which embodies the beliefs of many generations. But when the element of truth is quite other than had been supposed, and when the original statement has to be
trines

tortured in order to display

sider whether without

it, it

may

be time to con-

harm its mode of expression can be reconsidered and redrafted, to the ultimate benefit indeed of that religion of truth and clearness which we all seek to attain. No doubt the crudity of popular statements of doctrine
is

recognised by

experts, who intention and

theologians and have travelled far beyond the original

superficial

many modern

interpretation of their creeds and formularies; and these may be ready and anxious for revision, although their responsible ut197

198

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

terances on fundamental subjects are duly restrained and cautious, lest they offend the ignorant whose

minds are not yet ripe. In that case it may be permissible for laymen to show that they at least are
ready for a doctrinal revision a kind of stocktaking such as is necessary from time to time in all living

and expanding

now

especially necessary after a century of notable advance in natural

subjects,

and

is

knowledge. It may be objected that revision of religious formulas is no concern of mine and there is force in the I find that I have said below that harm is retort. liable to dog the footsteps of a well-meaning fanatic or a blatant fool. Possibly it is in something akin to the spirit of the fanatic that I take the risk of en;

tering

upon what may prove a thorny path, though I earnestly trust that very little pain to others need accrue from any errors of mine.

Consider, then, the doctrine of the Atonement, and us ask whether the expression of that doctrine traditionally and officially held or supposed to be held
let

by the churches to-day is satisfactory. In days when the vicariousness of sin could be accepted, and when an original fall of Adam could be held as imputed to the race, it was natural to admit the possibility of a vicarious punishment and to accept an imputed righteousness. In the days when God could be thought of as an angry Jehovah who sent pestilences until He was propitiated by the smell of a burnt-offering, it was possible to imagine that

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
the just anger of an offended God could be the sacrifice of an innocent victim.

199

met by

The

fall

fore in a

man and the redemption by blood theremeasure go together, and may be said to
of

constitute the backbone of Evangelical Christianity, which in some of its crude and revivalistic forms

always lays great stress upon blood and

its

potent re-

deeming

efficacy.

older than Christianity; and it is clarifying to realise how these strange doctrines, preached even at this day, represent a survival of reall this is

But

much

ligious beliefs held five or six centuries before the Christian era.

In those admirable translations of Euripides with which Professor Gilbert Murray has delighted the heart not only of scholars but of at least one student of science, we find in his notes on The Bacchce the following passages:
relic of primitive superstition and remained cruelty firmly embedded in Orphism a

"A

curious

doctrine irrational

and

unintelligible,

and for that

very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the sacrifice of Dionysus himself,

purification of man by his blood. "It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in

and the

the fury of their worship on the mountains, when they were possessed by the god and became 'wild
beasts,' actually tore

with their teeth and hands any hares, goats, fawns, or the like that they came across. There survives a constant tradition of inspired Bacchanals in their miraculous strength tearing even bulls

200

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

a feat, happily, beyond the bounds of huThe wild beast that tore was, of possibility.

asunder

man

course, the savage

god

himself.

And by one of these

also the god! later times, in their

curious confusions of thought, which seem so inconceivable to us and so absolutely natural and obvious
to primitive men, the beast torn

was

The Orphic congregations of most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, which was, by a mystery, the blood of
Dionysus Zagreus himself, the 'Bull of God,' in sacrifice for the purification of man.
slain

is noteworthy, and throws much light on the of Orphism, that, apart from this sacramental spirit tasting of the blood, the Orphic worshipper held it an abomination to eat the flesh of animals at all. ... It

"It

fascinated
tive

him just because it was so incredibly primiand uncanny; because it was a mystery which
1

transcended reason!" Professor Murray seems to think

it

hard for a
priest as

modern
in

to contemplate the victim

and the

any sense one person, but orthodox religious people will experience no difficulty, as is evidenced by the
accustomed to sing
:

line they are

"Himself the Victim and Himself the Priest,"

which,

must be admitted, forms a curious parallel; though the meaning is simple and legitimate enough,
it
1

Mr. L. P. Jacks has called

my

similar subject,

by Dr. Farnell,

attention to an interesting article in the Hibbert Journal.

on a

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

201

namely, that the sacrifice is voluntary: else, indeed were it mere execution. But a few strange hymns are more worthy of the worship of Dionysus, at least in some of its older and more primitive and purer forms, than of a place in a church-service (A. Sp M.) collection of to-day. These hymns emphasise, for the edification of the laity, the more barbarous concomitants of sacrificial and vicarious redemption, by blood drawn from and pain inflicted on an innocent victim who is likewise a god.

Sometimes the blood

for cleansing purposes:
"Oh, wash

is

represented as being used

me

in

Thy

precious blood."

Sometimes

it is

described as a vivifying draught:

those precious fountains

"May

Drink to thirsty souls afford;"

but pagan precedents are closely followed, and pagan

survival
is clear.

The

idea of sacrificial suffering judicially self-

inflicted

by a widely vengeful Deity

:

is

an

essential

element in popular theology

"He,

Who

Whelmed

once in righteous vengeance the world beneath the flood,

Once again in mercy cleansed it With His own most precious Blood, Coming from His throne on high

On

the painful Cross to die.

"We

were sinners doomed to die;

Jesus paid the penalty."

202

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

It is more like a legal fiction or commercial transaction than a natural process.

"Scourged with unrelenting fury For the sins which we deplore, By His livid stripes He heals us, Raising us to fall no more."

"Had

Jesus never bled and died, Then what could thee and all betide But uttermost damnation?"

This sort of crude materialism naturally leads to a kind of idolatry:

"Faithful Cross, above all other, One and only noble Tree,

None None

in foliage, none in blossom,

in fruit thy peer may be; Sweetest wood, and sweetest iron;

Sweetest weight

is

hung on

thee.

"Thou alone wast counted worthy This world's ransom to sustain, That a shipwrecked race for ever

With

Might a port of refuge gain, the sacred Blood anointed

the

Of

Lamb

for sinners slain."

Suppose, however, that the belief in the efficacy sacrifice is old, and that our form of it has a long ancestry which may be traced: that need not undermine its essential truth; it will only mean that humanity had glimpses of truth earlier than the full revelation, and the familiar doctrine of "types" will

of

be appealed

to.

certain beliefs, such as that of immortality, I should myself allow the argument to have weight,

In

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
and should not be unwilling
of

203

human

tradition as tending in favour of

to appeal to the antiquity some sort

of truth underlying this perennial and protean faith; and so in the matter of vicarious punishment and bloody atonement by an innocent victim or by an incarnate god for the sins of humanity, if we could
feel a real

and helpful truth underlying

it,

we might

its

admit that the antiquity of the tradition was even in favour. But it cannot be that all religious creeds, without exception, which are inherited from barbarous times have a true ethical significance: some of them must surely be mistaken, and it becomes a question which of them we may retain and which we must gradually seek to emancipate ourselves from. I would not be in the least dogmatic in such a matter, but surely it is generally recognised that although the sufferings and violent death of Christ were natural consequences of His birth so far in advance of His age, and although the pity and terror of such a
ghastly tragedy has a purifying and sacramental influence, yet we are now unable to detect in it anything of the nature of punishment; nor do we imagine for a

moment
is

that an angry

God was

appeased by

it,

and

consequently disposed to treat more lightly the sins

of men here and now, or any otherwise than as they have always been treated by a constant, steadfast, persevering Universe.
that leaders of theologic are able to derive satisfaction from the more thought modern doctrine (perhaps, for all I know, a heresy) that it was not so much an infinite punishment as an

Nor can we suppose

204
infinite

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

repentance that was efficacious; so that, adequate repentance having been achieved once for all long ago, sinners have nothing further to do but to
believe

and acquiesce

in

it.

a matter of fact, the higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their

As

punishment. His mission, if he is good for anything, 1 and in so far as he acts is to be up and doing, wrongly or unwisely he expects to suffer. He may unconsciously plead for mitigation on the ground of

good

intentions,

consciously will ment to fall on

it

but never either consciously or unanyone but a cur ask for the punishelse,

someone

nor rejoice

if told that

already has so fallen. As for "original sin" or "birth sin" or other notion
that
sits

of that kind, by which

parents,

partly meant the sin of his asbolutely lightly on him. As a

is

matter of fact it is non-existent, and no one but a monk could have invented it. Whatever it be it is not a business for which we are responsible. did not make the world and an attempt to punish us for

We

our animal origin and ancestry would be simply comic, if anyone could be found who was willing to take it seriously.

Here we are; we have risen, as to our bodies, from the beasts; as a race the struggle has been severe, and there have been both rises and falls. have been

We

helped

now and again by

xii.

vidual examples
i

bright and shining inditrue incarnations of diviner spirits

2

Matt. xxiv. 46,

43.

Matt. xxv. 25.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
than our own,
Spirit

205

who

notably by one supremely bright blazed out nineteen hundred years ago,

and was speedily murdered by the representatives of that class whose mission it appears to be to wage war against the prophets, and to do their worst to exterminate new ideas and kinds of goodness to which they
are not accustomed.

Fortunately for the race,

;

they;

are only able to kill the body the soul, the inspiration, the germ of a new and higher faith, seems for ever

beyond

their grasp.

recognise his

orthodox people enthusiastically supreme goodness, they take steps to deny that he was effectively man, only half man 1 say some, only quarter man say others: human only on one side they feel he must have been, else he could not have been so good, so wise, so patient. So the hope of a higher humanity is to be taken from us, in
that

But now

order that man's sins

may be superhumanly atoned

for

and an angry God

Well, well!
those days. quity of the belief
2

illogically appeased.

demi-gods were common enough in And again it may be said that the antiis

to

its credit,

and that these

tales

of the gods were but crude heraldings of a divine truth some day to be made clear. But why, why, what is the good of it? Can a divine spirit not enter into a man born of two parents? Is divine inspiration to be limited to a being of ex1 This is a reference to the doctrine concerning the supposed origin of the Virgin. 2 Familiar to the Jews during their Babylonian captivity and the

Roman

conquest.

206

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

ceptional parentage? If we grant that it is a physiological condition towards or at which the race should

aim,

if

we suppose

that

some day we
is
it.

shall

have

one parent only, and that that

there

would be meaning

in

to he our apotheosis, In that case Christ

would indeed be the first-fruits, and would represent some unknown possibility in our physical nature.

But do people think

is

that?

And

if

not,

what

the virtue of semi-parentage?

as well admit
it

If for a Diat
all,

vine Incarnation

we admit human parentage

If a taint is altogether. conveyed by inheritance from or dependence on human flesh grossly built up by daily food of terresthat trial materials and grossly cleared of refuse taint appertains not to fatherhood only, but to motherhood also; and the only way to avoid the imaginary
to postulate a being sprung like Pallas from the brain of Zeus a pure embodiment of thought, a
stain
is

we may

That Christ postrue psychological "conception." sessed a divine spirit in excess, to an extent unknown
to us

that he
1

was an embodiment of truly Divine

attributes, which as thus revealed we worship may be willingly admitted; that he represents a standard or peak towards which humanity may try to aim, is a tenable and helpful creed; but that his body was abnormally produced, even if it be the fact, seems to give no assistance. I derive no sort of comfort or

intellectual aid

from an idea of that

kind.

For what
i

is

virgin birth? merely a case of par-

John

xvi. 28, xvii. 4,

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

207

It has been asserted perhaps erronethenogenesis. that ously, X-rays have the power to produce parthe1 nogenetic development in some lowly kinds of ova.
It
is is

I would not say it doubtless thinkable enough. The impossible, but that it is ethically useless.
;

lowest organisms multiply by fission, sexual reproduction

comes in later as an improved form but it comes as low down as the higher plants in very low down and exists throughout the main animal kingdom. Possibly at some other stage, or by some other process, it

may

be dispensed with.

If

so, it will

be a bi-

ological fact of scientific interest, and, if ever applicable to man, a development of astounding social sigis no virtue in than there is more multiplication by fission, any vice in multiplication by sex. Both are superla-

nificance,

but nothing more.

There

tively interesting
science,

facts, like

and no one can say

many other facts of that we understand the

extraordinary truth that a gentle warmth applied for a certain time to a sparrow's egg will result in a live creature breaking forth, which had not existed before,

endowed with power

propagate his kind to the third

and feel and grow and and fourth thousandth generation. For some reason a wise and good social reason mankind, living in a crowded state, has surrounded the multiplication process with ritual and emotion and fear. No doubt this is absolutely justifiable and right, and, by experience, necessary; but it may in some cases have gone too far and it seems to
to live
;

British Medical Journal, 13th February 1904, p. 383.

208

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

to

go too far when it denies that a divine spirit can enter into any body except one that has been produced in an exceptional way. Whatever the mysterious phrase "Son of God" means, and it probably means something mighty and true, it cannot mean A belief in that is materialism run rampant. that.
yet even materialism need not be a term of abuse; for if matter be the living garment of God, and as it certainly is the temporary raiment of man,

me

And

Divine Spirit be immanent in everything that exists, I do not say that a glorified materialism may not enshrine some elements of truth, when properly understood; nor would I seek to deny the benefit of
if the

Sacraments, in spite of their curiously material charthe vicarious expiation, the judicial punishment of the innocent, and the appeasement of an
acter.

But

angry God, are surely now recognisable as savage inventions though they have left their traces on surviv;

ing formulas, which accordingly have to be explained away. And so likewise the superior virtue of a one-

any Redeemer or Exemplar of mankind, seems to me unworthy of a period of

sided
origin, for spiritual

human

awakening, of a cleansing acceptance of the facts of nature, of a purification of the material universe by the recognised permeance of an immanent energising God, of whom we too are fragmentary,
struggling, helpful portions.

II

What,

then, are the Truths underlying the great

mysteries connected with the appearance and

work

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
of Christ?

209

the positive part of my task, entering a region already flooded with literature ; yet must I not shrink from an attempt to supplement

Here I approach

negative criticism by such provisional and tentative positive judgment as I have been able to form, from
the scientific point of view the only kind of judgment to which I am entitled, concerning the under-

lying Realities. No justification of this course should be necessary, because a fine jewel only flashes the brighter when turned about so as to expose every
facet to the light; so I proceed without hesitation, though as briefly as is consistent with intelligibility,
to set
1.

them down:

2. 3.

Incarnation with Pre-existence. Revelation or Discovery.

is

Continuity and persistent Influence. The utterance of science on these heads

is

not loud

not positive, but I claim that at least it is not No science asserts that our personality will negative.
quarter of a century hence, nor does any science assert that it began half a century ago. Spiritual existence "before all worlds" is a legitimate
cease a
creed.

and

No
ality

science maintains that the whole

is

incarnate here and

now

it is

in fact

of our personbeginning

to surmise the contrary,

and

to suspect the existence

We

of a larger transcendental individuality, with which men of genius are in touch more than ordinary men. may be all partial incarnations of a larger
Incarnation of a portion of a divine spirit self. therefore involves no scientific dislocation or contra-

210
diction,

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

nor need it involve any material mechanism 1 For other than that to which we are accustomed.
only the
built

germ

is

derived

from

others; the

body

is

under the guidance of the indwelling, living, personal entity: it is adapted to and serves to display the features of that entity under the limitations and disabilities of a material aspect; as the epiphany of an artist's conception is restrained by the limitations of his medium, as well as by his lack of executive skill. Granting, then, the advent of as lofty a Spirit as we can conceive, perfectly human on the bodily side, with all that that implies, and perfectly Divine on the what sort spiritual side, whatever that may mean, of result may be expected to follow?

mankind, risen from the beasts, making gods in the likeness of its in something worse than its own likeness, ancestors, cruel, jealous, bloody gods, who order massacres of helpless non-combatants and cattle, the courts of whose temples and tabernacles are a shambles served by a greedy self-seeking priesthood and by professposition.
is

Consider the

Here

Into ional religious people who play to a gallery. such a world, that is to say, a world with these general characteristics, in spite of occasional bursts of brightness

and much homely

virtue,

imagine the thorough

incarnation of a truly Divine Spirit, and what would be the consequences?

The immediate consequences we know.

1

On

the

part of the priests hostility and murder; on the part

John
Matt,
i.

12-14; 1 John

iii.

2.

xxiii. 5.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

211

of peasantry, curiosity growing into sympathy; on the

part of a few earnest souls love and adoration. But what in the long-run would be the permanent conse-

quences? Surely a discovery of the truer nature of God: one of the veils would be drawn aside from the
face of Deity, and there would partially emerge, not Jehovah any more than Baal, but a Being whom it

was
is

possible to love, to serve, to worship ; for whom it possible to live and work, and, if need be, die.

There would be the beginnings of a real at-one-ment between man and God. 1 Observe that the influence exerted is exerted wholly on man. The attitude of God has changed no whit; there never was any hostility to be washed out in blood; He had felt no stupid wrath at the blind efforts, the risings and sinkings of men struggling in the mire from bestial to human attributes; there was nothing to appease. But there was plenty to reveal: an infinitude of compassion, an ideal of righteousness, the inevitableness of law, the hopelessness of rebel2 lion, the power of faith, the quenching of superstitious fear in filial love a real and not a mechanical salvation, no legal quibble but a deep eternal truth. Let man but see the face of God, so far as it can be revealed in the flesh, and he will catch a glimpse of a Holy of Holies such as he had not conceived. The
;

savage inventions of a jealous God who resents the worship of anything but himself, who thinks more of his own glory and dignity than of the creative work
i

John

xiv. 7;

Mark

xv. 38.

John

xvi. 8.

212

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

of evolution, who arranges that if people do not theorise correctly here and now then they shall suffer eternal pain all these ignorances fall into the region of blasphemous fahles, henceforth to be promulgated

by fanatics

alone.

And yet let us be fair. The worship of Jehovah was based on a recognition of the majesty and sacredness of Law; an element nevermore to be deAnd as to punishment for wrong belief, stroyed. the notion of an eternal penalty attaching to discordance or dislocation between ourselves and the Universe of which we are a part is a true and luminous idea.

When our beliefs are out of harmony with facts, when

our theories are
false,

we

are liable to act erroneously,

and accordingly

to suffer

by

conflict

with inevitable

law, even though we act in accordance with our faith, ^nd so are not consciously wicked or infidel. The

connexion between true theory and right action is real and close, although very likely the commonest faults of men are due less to wrong notions than to weak
but the sins due to wrong theory are liable to 1 be much more really deadly there is no wickedness
wills;
;

so violent as that organised

is doing God service, than can follow the footsteps of a well-meaning blatant fool. And the penalty is in a sense eternal, that

he

by the fanatic who thinks nor is there any harm worse

is
1

to say seonic,
Matt,
2

for

it is

incurable except

by mental

xxiii. 30, 34.

There seems to be a popular idea abroad that the derivation of the word eternal signifies without end I suppose from e and terminus and that the word aeonic is milder. But in truth they mean just the same; only one is the Latin and the other the Greek form. The supposed popular derivation is a false one.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
and

213

So long as wrong beliefs spiritual revolution. continue, so long there must be a sense of dislocation,

a feeling of friction and of grit: the only remedy is The sin and the damto get right with the Universe.
nation are co-eternal or co-seonal.

sults

The law thus stated from no arbitrary

no theologic dogma, it refiat, it is the commonplace exis

pression of a natural fact.

It

is

exemplified in the

running of every piece of human machinery, and in the working of our own bodies. Anything out of gear is a source of disquiet, of inefficiency, and of
pain; health and happiness result of harmony.

from a

restoration

the cosmic organism may be a hard question; perhaps it has never yet been out. This may be a narrow, temporal way of conceiving
the matter

How the grit got into

we
and

but let it pass for the present. Anyhow could not have become what we are without it;
the

word

"grit" has acquired a forcible psychic

connotation.

place
it

it

After all, grit is only matter out of has no intrinsic or absolute quality. Whether

exists for
it is

good or for

ill,

we

did not put

it

there;

though

our privilege to help to remove it. are the artisans of creation, at least in this outlying planetary district, and a magnificent co-operation is our highest privilege. 1

We

Almost every widespread doctrine has a meaning and enshrines a truth, visible when freed from its blasphemous accretions; and the doctrine of aeonic
i

John

v. 17,

214.

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

damnation, even as too specifically interpreted by Athanasius, is a glimpse of the truth that whosoever

joy of the Lord must endeavour to understand rightly the cosmic scheme, 1 and that except a man get into harmony with Truth and Reality he cannot ascend to the destiny in store for him He cannot be "saved." In the same way a germ of truth can be detected in that persistent element of popular theology, the idea of sacrificial suffering, self-inflicted. There must be such a germ, else the belief could not have proved itself of such "saving" power; and even the current crudities of expression may have had their use, in the recent transitional age of the earth's history the geological epoch during which the evolution of man has been beginning that uneducated age out of which we cannot yet be said to have emerged. The essence of truth contained in it would appear to be that the responsible task of evolution from animal to higher man, the struggle humanam condere gentem, could not be undertaken and carried through even by Deity without grievous suffering and agonising patience 2 and this sympathetic shudder through the whole of Existence might well be parabolically expressed in terms of current altruistic sacrificial legend. Subject
will enter into the
;

to proper interpretation, the legend has a meaning: the mistake lay in imagining it an expiatory transaction, instead

unlike the alternate

of a natural and necessary process, quite moods of fury and affection some2

times exhibited by a chief to slaves.

i

Matt.

xxii. 11.

Rom.

viii.

22.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
It

215

was not a bare necessary and natural process, however; the aspects of Deity are so infinite that they
cannot be grasped simultaneously. The personal as1 pect is as vivid as any of the others and, from this
point of view, the genuineness of Divine suffering, no matter how inevitable, 2 has always been recognised as a revelation of Divine and Fatherly love.

The redeeming and

conviction
is

elevating efficacy of such a

manifest.

The perception of something

in the Universe which not only makes for righteousness, but which loves and sympathises in the process;

and yet
lieving

is

no mere indiscriminate

charity,

weakly

re-

man from

the consequences of his blunders or

undermining his powers of self-help, but a true benevolence, which healthily and strongly and if need be sternly convinces him that the path of duty 3 is the path of joy, that sacrifice and not selfishness 4 is the road to the heights of existence, that it is far 5 better to suffer wrong than to do wrong such a perstealthily
:

far above "the yelp of the beast," "saves" him, saves him truly, from aeons of degradation, and enables him to "stand on the
ception inevitably raises

man

heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that

higher."

is

and
1 2

Selfishness long continued must lead to isolation 6 so to a sort of practical extinction: it is like a
See Chapter
II.
iv.

above.

Luke

xv. 4.

3 Matt. xxv. 21, 30. 4 Matt. xvi. 25 ; John xii. S3.

s

Plato, Gorgias 469, conversation with Polus;

and elsewhere,

e Cecilia

de Noel, by Lanoe Falconer.

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

disintegrating or repulsive force in the material cosmos, while love is like a cohesive and constructive
force. All this is no new doctrine, thank goodness it has been preached and practised by the prophets and saints of the human race for generations by some
!

mighty ones even before the advent of Jesus of Nazthe quickening force of the spiritual universe, and that its fruition would lead to super-humanity, had been clearly stated before it was
areth.

For

that love

is

Fourth Gospel supremely emphasised; and the words put by the Socrates of Plato into the mouth of Diotima the prophetess of Mantineia l have a deep and growing meaning for those who have ears to
in the
hear.

A discovery once made by the human race

nent:
it

fades no more, and

its

influence

age to age.

We
;

permagrows from

is

are

now beginning

to realise a fur;

ther stage in the process of atonement we are rising to the conviction that we are a part of nature, and so a part of God that the whole creation the One and

Many and All-One is travailing together towards some great end; and that now, after ages of development, we have at length become conscious portions of the great scheme, and can co-operate in it with knowledge and with joy. We are no aliens in a stranger universe governed by an outside God we are parts of a developing whole, all enfolded in an embracing and interpenetrating love, of which we too,
the
;

each to other, sometimes experience the joy too deep

i

Symposium, 191-212.
i.

Best translation in Myers'

Human

Personality,

vol.

p. 113.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

And this strengthening vision, this sense of union with Divinity, this, and not anything artificial or legal or commercial, is what science will some day tell us is the inner meaning of the Redemption of
for words.

Man,

CHAPTER XI
SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

IN

the last chapter certain great topics were dealt with so briefly that if left without amplification

they may give rise to misunderstanding; indeed their treatment has already aroused some criticism, notably

an extremely friendly comment by Dr. Talbot, now Bishop of Southwark, published in the Hibbert Journal,,

less

wherein, while criticising judicially, he nevertheholds out a hand of welcome.

article

was replied to sufficiently in the sucnumber of the Hibbert Journal, and not ceeding
This
reply need be here reproduced. I will only say that whereas in the greater part of the present book, and indeed of my writings generally, the mode of treatment aims at being positive rather than negative seeking to construct rather than to destroy, and hoping to replace error quietly by substitution of truth the last chapter does
to

much of my

some extent take a negative or destructive attitude and accordingly demands extremely careful treatment.
I do not conceive of myself, however, as attacking Theology or Theological doctrine: I discern an ele-

ment of truth

in nearly every doctrine, perhaps in

quite every doctrine which the

218

human

race has been

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

219

able to believe for a long period; but I am seeking to scrutinise more closely, and if possible display to greater advantage, that side of those doctrines which

faces us across the frontier of our scientific territory. This side has been less efficiently attended to by the
builders than the

faade devoted

to edification;

and

some or our own outworks approach so near to the Theological position on its more prosaic side, that an occasional raid, inspired by admiration and conducted
with reverence, may be pardoned. It looks to me as if part of the building were need-

obscured by coatings and stucco and excrescences, once thought ornamental. Perhaps this extraneous matter had the useful effect of protecting the building through times of ignorance and violence, but some of it is now seen to be little better than dislessly

figurement and crudity, hiding the beautiful structure beneath; it was this extraneous matter alone that I intended to attack in my last chapter.
ent day a

work at the presare engaged; some operatives doing their occasional best from outside, like myself,
in this legitimate restoration

But

number of

others, as regular

Dr. Talbot.
seen

workmen acting from within, like With his scheme of the structure, as

of view and stated in the Hibbert Journal^ I have extremely little cause to disagree. He is one of the many whom I referred to as
his point

from

having already emancipated themselves from errors of the past to a large extent; and if it still seems to

me

that here

and there

in his statement traces of

crudeness remain,

who am

I that I should suppose

220

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

myself capable of infallibly detecting and evaluating all forms of crudity? I notice that Professor Masterman admits the crudity of ordinary statements of Christian doctrine, but justifies it as necessary to catch the attention of
ignorant laymen, terms of "blood."

who

I think

are accustomed to speak in it possible for the clergy

and ignorance of the laity. professional jargon is apt to be employed which by habit may sound appropriate on Sundays, but does not represent the mental attitude of anyone at other times. Perhaps spirit and character once reto over-estimate the crudity

sided in the blood, as compassion in the bowels, virulence in the spleen, love in the heart, and other emotions in other viscera, but

few persons imagine that

they live there now. I say nothing against the methods of the Salvation Army in its own sphere of acthese may be justified by their results. I somewhat doubt whether ordinary Church procedure
tivity:
is

so justified.

not wise to assume too invincible an ignorance on the part of habitual worshippers. It may, for instance, be of doubtful wisdom to withI suggest that
it is

draw documents from common use on this ground alone, and at the same time to suggest that nevertheless

they convey essential truth to

clerics instructed

in refinements of interpretation; it is rather too suggestive of the attitude of the priests in John vii. 49.

The really learned in theology are respected by all, but they are infrequently encountered. It would be fairer to admit that some of the documents in use

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

221'

and antiquated, that they have been in many respects outgrown, and that truth as now perceived can now be more clearly expressed. But I refrain from any more ecclesiastical suggesare themselves imperfect
tions.

Perhaps, however, I may unobtrusively remark that such expressions as righteous vengeance, angry Father, wrathful Lamb, do not seem satisfactory

forms whereby to represent what the Bishop well calls "a stately and austere conception of order." Nor is it likely that "the bright front and buoyant tread of
early discipleship" arose
sin
it was and though it certainly contributed to the Apostles; inspiration of the Magdalene, we should hardly speak of "bright front and buoyant tread" in her case. Something more positive is needed to explain any living and energising enthusiasm. The incidental

overcome:

so negative as not that which animated the

from anything

treatment of sin in Chapter X. is, however, one of the points on which further explanation is certainly desirable; and all the supplementary points I now propose to deal with
as follows:

may

be grouped under four heads

That evolutionary treatment of sin is apt to minimise unduly the sense of sinfulness. 2. That it is misleading to deny the revealed Wrathi
1.

of the Holy One against

3.

sin.

That heresy lurks

relation

ment of the

any non-professional treatbetween the Humanity and Di-

in

vinity of Christ.

222
4.

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

That while controverting the notion of
vicarious

punishment, the true significance of the doctrine of a vicarious Atonement may be missed. Let us take these points in order.
1.

On

page 204 above the following sentence

oc-

curs:

"As a matter of fact the higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their punishment: his mission if he is good for anything,
is

to be

up and doing."

When
they laid

me open

writing these words I was well aware that to a retort based upon John ix. 41 ;

me true "as a matof ter fact," provided by "higher men" are understood leaders in the world's activity, whether they are
nevertheless the statement seems to
office,

in the public eye or in the study or in the or anywhere save in the cloister. Perhaps when so put it will be granted, merely as a matter of fact,

working

if saints are excluded,

favour of the thesis

is

no moral judgment in claimed or supposed to be inif

and

volved in the statement.

But

it

will be

contended that

more than a matter of fact was implied in that sentence, that there was an element of judgment also, and that it was one of approbation: that the epithet "higher" signified that a man who was up and doing, instead of introspecting and mourning over his sins, was in the path of progress, and was to be praised
rather than blamed.

Undoubtedly I did mean that

in order implicitly to justify that attitude, too; without presumption and without tedious contention,

and

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

223

I gave two Biblical references one to Matt. xxiv. 46, where the "servant who is found so doing" is authoritatively "blessed," and the other to the warning contained in Matt. xii. 43, that apologue about the

was left unoccupied after havbeen and cleansed decorated. ing It may surely without unorthodoxy be held that there are two ways of overcoming sin and sinful tendencies one the direct way, of concentrating attention on them with brooding and lamentation the other the
fate of a house which
:

indirect and, as I think, the safer

and more

efficacious

and altogether more profitable way, of putting in so many hours' work per day, and of excluding weeds from the garden by energetic cultivation of healthy
plants. It will be said that brooding and lamentation is not a fit description of the exercises of religion, that a

safeguard of a higher order than any terrestrial occupation can be secured by conscious emotional penitence and aspiration. It may be so but it is not quite certain. The following sonnet may or may not be good poetry, but it would appear to embody, in exaggerated and feminine form, a phase of experience not unfamiliar to the ordinary human soul:
;

"A

many longings entered late chapel like a jewel blazing bright, And fell upon the altar steps. All night She held with hopes and agonies debate;

soul of

With

tears the litanies love-passionate

Drenched her; triumphant colours burned her white; And, as the incense flamed in silver light, God sealed her to His own novitiate.

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

"And

And

then, because her eyes were charmed with peace, blinded by the stars new-born within

The lit sweet lids God's dreams had lovered, Nine paces from that House of Ecstasies Her feet were taken in the snares of sin; And, ere the morning quickened, she was dead."

We must all of us have known what

it is

to be com-

pelled to say, not always, nor often, it is to be hoped, it is as stupid to exaggerate in these as in any other matters, but occasionally in the course of our lives,

or even constantly in connexion with some minor ingrained habit which we should like to overcome,
"Video meliora, proboque,
.Deteriora sequor."

And

this

doing not what

we

see to be best, but

some-

thing inferior which we do not really approve or will to do, is what constitutes one aspect of sin. Plato, indeed, argues in the Gorgias that a wicked man is
not really obeying his

own will,

that he

is

enslaved and

acting contrary to his true self; but whether that be so or not, few of us have the spirit to be wilful sinners.

Wilful

sin

is,

as has been often said, rebellion

and

and misapplication of natural powers; it is akin to dirt, to disease, to weeds i.e. to matter and cells and plants out of place, and
lawlessness, the misuse

working harm instead of good. It is like a fire escaped from control and consuming instead of serving. Even so a banked-up lake constructed for the watersupply of a city, if it burst its embankment, may

whelm
1

villages in flood.

One of Rachael Annand Taylor's poems, called "The Vanity of Vows," quoted in the Times Literary Supplement for 15th April 1904.

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

is

225

and control, to direct and The guide, the forces of nature and our own forces. man of vigorous sin, rightly trained and directed, may become the man of wholesome energy. There is some

Our business

to restrain

claimed

valuable material being wasted in our prisons: unresoil festering for lack of plough and harrow.

Good men of
constitute the

most

small and restrained activity may not efficient or the most approved in-

struments of progress. The ascetic may endeavour by never making a mountain lake, by never lighting a fire, by never going to sea, by runto avoid all danger,

ning no risks and living a poverty-stricken existence and may succumb after all as soldiers may be economised in war till they fall victims to some miserably
;
:

are called upon rather for ignominious disease. full exercise of all our powers, for full vigour of life, but subject to discipline and reason and restraint. .What we call vices and virtues are compounded of

We

very similar vital forces their character is dependent on the direction we give them. Every activity can be
:

deflected

from the

vicious into the virtuous direction;

and an unsought joy is the reward. While dealing with these everyday considerations,
desirable to avoid misconception by explicitly making the admission that doubtless there is a sense in
it
is

which radical imperfection can be predicated of the whole human race without exception: the sense in which the heavens can be said to be unclean and the angels to be chargeable with folly; the sense in which Job, though able to rebut the charge of hidden wick-

226

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

edness brought by his friends, was willing abundantly to admit vileness when accosted by the Deity.

For

devotional purposes this comparison of

human-

ity with infinite Perfection

and infinite attributes genand be useful, though no finite erally may appropriate emendation can be effective against it one would ex;

pect the feeling aroused by contemplation of Infinitude to be one of humility and abasement rather than

one of contrition and penitence, but I admit that saints have found it otherwise, and that their experience is
conclusive.

So much for practical and human considerations but there is another and more important matter, on
2.
;

which explanation is needed, namely, where I contend that the sacrifice of Christ need not be regarded as expiatory, or as appeasing the righteous anger of a wrathful God, because (p. 211). "He had felt no wrath at the blind efforts, the risings and sinkings, of men struggling in the mire from
bestial to

human

attributes

there

was nothing
:

to ap-

pease."

This has been attacked as unscriptural "Angry with the wicked every day," "The wrath of the Lamb," and a multitude of familiar texts, can easily be quoted.
well, the epithet "unscriptural" has no coercive force unless the text appealed to carries with it a

Very

conviction of

plenty of "anger" in the Old Testament undoubtedly, but that

its

own

inspiration.

There

is

is

just where one would expect to find

it

on the sur-

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

227

vival hypothesis; and I doubt not the Prophets 1 plenty to make them angry.

had

scarcely worth while to waste time in discussing the relative authority of texts every one must be aware that this is no rose-water world; the things
it is
:

But

that have

happened
it,

in

it,

happen

in

are appalling.

and the things that may yet We must admit the force

of experiences which gave birth to ejaculations such as Luke xii. 5 and Hebrews x. 31, whoever may have been their author, and I am glad of the opportunity of enlarging upon this subject of sin and Divine

anger somewhat;
ficially

it

was quite too

:

briefly
it

treated in Chapter
all.

X. indeed

and superwas not really

dealt with at

when a budding nation

to weld
it

It suited the priests to say that God was angry desired to have a king in order
together.

angry when
i
vii.

them to say that he was taken were captive instead of prisoners

It suited

Of
11,

the two texts above quoted at random the first is from Psalm and the words "with the wicked" seem to be a gratuitous in-

terpolation of the translators, an evident attempt to make intelligible the supposed sentence, "God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry every day." The Prayer Book version more effective as usual renit thus, "God is a righteous Judge, strong and patient, and God provoked every day"; which is doubtless as true as any statement of the kind can be. "The wrath of the Lamb" occurs only in Revelation, so far as I know; and there also is to be found that hyperbole, intensified from Isaiah and from a common industry of the country, about the vintage of blood flowing "to the horse-bridles" from the trodden winepress of the wrath of God. The author's feelings are evidently overcharged. And if we had lived in times of really efficient persecution we too might have tried, less poetically, to assuage our indignant helplessness in the same sort of way.

ders
is

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY,

being massacred; and again that he was wroth when the first census was contemplated. So also in rather later times God was represented as angry with idolaters, not ostensibly because some special practices of idol-worship may have been debasing, but because he was "jealous." There are plenty of good reasons against idolatry among intelli-

gent and "chosen" people, but this is not one of them: nor is it to be supposed that the stock of a tree is ever really worshipped, even when prostrated to. An idol, to ignorant and undeveloped people, is a symbol of something which they are really worshipping under a material form and embodiment: the sensuous presentation assists their infantile efforts towards abstract thought, as material sacraments help people in

a higher stage of religious development. But some of these helps should be outgrown. An adult mathematician hardly needs a geometrical figure, crudely composed of fragments of chalk or smears of plum-

bago or ink, to help him to reason; and if he uses such a diagram he is aware that he is not really attending to it, but is reasoning about ideal and unrealisable perfections; he has soared above the symbol, and is away among the cementing laws of the universe.

If an image or a tree-trunk or other symbol helps a savage to meditate on some divine and intractable conception, if it has been so used by thousands of his ancestors, and has acquired a halo of reverence through antiquity and by the accumulation of human emotion
lavished

upon

it,

a missionary should think twice

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

229

We

before He is rude to it, or abuses it or pulls it down. do not rebuke a child for lavishing a wealth of

nascent maternal affection on some grotesque blackBetty of a wooden rag-covered doll; we do not despise,

we honour, a regiment
save
its flag,

so

it

may

nonentity.

And so if

content to be decimated which materially is almost a we send missionaries, we should

send competent men, who will gradually educate by implanting useful arts and positive virtues; and we should tell these messengers clearly that negative and iconoclastic teaching may be very cruel. These things depend upon grade attained. It was
very right for
to

wax

sarcastic

Hebrew prophets to feel indignant and when they saw the degenerate wor-

ship of a moderately enlightened people descending to the level of a grinning idol or the stock of a tree ;

and they may have rightly felt that to replace such symbols as these by the more advanced symbol of an angry and jealous God would be a spiritual help of
the highest kind possible to a nation at such a stage of ethical development. In this manner the texts con-

cerning anger and jealousy can be amply accounted

for.

Moreover, like most other symbolism, they embody a real truth. Quite irrespective of texts in its favour, we may be willing to recognise Divine wrath as a real

though we must also be ready to admit that the gloom of religions antecedent to Christianity, and its own later struggle amid nascent civilisation, overshadowed the Gospel message unduly; and fear was a powerful weapon in the hands of

and

terrible thing;

230
priests,

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

which they did not
fail to

employ.

But I

feel

no contradiction between all this and the above quotation from page 211. So far as I can judge, it is not likely that a Deity operating through a process of evolution can feel wrath at the blind efforts of his
creatures struggling upward in the mire. I judge rather that the human impulse to lend them a pitiful

and helpful hand can with difficulty be restrained, can indeed only be restrained by lofty and far-seeing Wisdom, and by perception of "the far-off interest of
tears."

Nevertheless, I am sure that what may without irreverence be humanly spoken of as fierce Wrath
is

against sin, and even against a certain class of sinner, a Divine attribute. But, then, what do we mean by
"sin" in this connection?
It
is

a term which, in a dif-

charity, likewise covers a multitude. I do not wish to enter upon a dissertation on the na-

ferent sense

from

ture of sin in general

from the

scientific standpoint.

For our present purpose we can regard the matter quite simply, as something of which we have all plenty of experience but I maintain that when we are speaking of the sin against which God's anger blazes, we do not mean the sins of failure, the burden of remorse,
;

the acts which cause contrition

and penitence on the

;

part of a saint or a child or a labouring man a labouring man or woman of any class we mean something quite other than that. And I assume that
therein

we

are consistent with the doctrines of the

Church.

If not a wicked absurdity,

it is

surely a libel to as-

SIN,
sert that

SUFFERING AND WRATH

231

angry with ordinary human failings, and with the dismal lapses from virtue of poor outis

God

casts of civilisation.

We

are familiar, for instance,

with the fierce wrath of Christ, his language was denunciatory in the extreme but against what sort of
:

people?

It

was not the publicans and the harlots

he stigmatised as a generation of vipers, or he threatened with the damnation of hell; rather it was some specimens of the unco' guid of that day people perfectly satisfied with themselves, people ready to forbid deeds of healing on the Sabbath, and eager to stifle the holiest if they had the chance l it was with these that he was angry, not with anyone who could be described as helplessly and inefficiently struggling out of the mire towards better
things.

whom whom

There were

sins

of which

he

was

genuinely;

ashamed, so that he stooped and wrote upon the ground when they were suddenly obtruded upon his

by coarse experimenters: shame so acute that even those ruffians had the grace subsequently to slink away; but it was stoning of the Prophets, wilful
notice

blindness to the Highest, it was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that excited his fiercest reprobation.

Just as it is impossible for the human race at any given time to select that one of their number who will be best remembered a thousand years hence, so it is
for us to judge what class of people are rendthemselves most liable to high Displeasure now. ering
difficult
i

Mark

iii.

5, 6, 29.

232

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

I suppose that the respectable and religious world of Judaea was genuinely astonished, and not a little scandalised, at its vigorous denunciation by an itinerant
Preacher, long ago; and it is just possible that to-day those self-satisfied people who shut their eyes to truth,

and propagate
for
its
1

error, are at least as

harmful to the

general advance as are some individuals

own

safety finds

it

Society in secluto necessary keep

whom

sion.

let us say, excommunicates Tolbe stoi may possibly composed of pious individuals whom it does not become us to judge, but I can conceive that in its corporate capacity any Church which opposes reform, which persistently takes the wrong side, which sustains abuses such as the droits de seigneur in the past, and perhaps other only less flagrant abuses to-day, may be regarded as deserving of vigorous Denunciation; and if such an institution, in

Church which,

some neighbouring country or elsewhere, should happen to fall upon evil days, it may find itself unsuccessful in its endeavour to fasten the blame upon anything but
itself.

know
i

There are many grades of sin; and anyone may the kind of sin which excites the anger of God, by bethinking him of the kind which arouses his own
And,
incidentally,

may

it

not be also possible that the omission on

serious
it

the part of Society to

make any

and humanise and redeem those whom

and satisfactory effort to train thus takes under its providential

control (not to mention their subjection to the inhuman device of solitary confinement) is liable to be regarded in High Quarters as deserving of

reprobation just as severe as that accorded to any more actively committed crime?

SIN,
best

SUFFERING AND WRATH

233

I can imagine that the infernal proceedings of Nero and of the Holy

and most righteous anger.

and nauseating to the was almost unbearable. The fierce indignation that would blaze out if one were maliciously to torture a child or an animal in view of an ordinary man or woman, would surely be a spark of the Divine wrath and we have been told that a millstone round the neck of a child-abuser is too
Inquisition were repugnant Universe to a degree which
;

light a penalty.

Sins of this kind are a boil, an abscess, on the Universe they must be attacked and cured by human co:

l operators, they are hardly tractable otherwise; just as in the complex aggregate of cells we call our body

the dominant intelligence cannot unaided cope with its own disease, but must depend on the labours of its

micro-organisms, the phagocytes, which

swarm to any and there and poisoned plague spot, actively painfully struggle with and inflame and attack the evil, till one side or other is overcome: so it is with man as an
active ingredient in the universe.

We

are the white

corpuscles of the cosmos: and like the corpuscles we are an essential ingredient of the system, our full potentiality being latent until stimulated into activity by disease.

If

it is

possible for a

man

at times to feel a sort of

hatred and anger against his own weaker and worser self, so I can imagine a God feeling what may be imperfectly spoken of as disgust and wrath at dei

Psalm

cxv. 16.

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

Universe in Himself, which in a manner he is in say? defects for some sort responsible, defects which he has either caused, or for ultimate reasons permitted, or has not yet, in the present stage of evolution, been able to
fects
still

which

exist in his

dare

we

cure consistently with full education and adequate scope for free development of personality; defects

which surely his conscious creatures will assist him to remove, now that the bare possibility of the existence of these ferocious evils has done its salutary and ultimately beneficent work.

In
to

would be inappropriate amount wrath of deny any against sin and even
this sense, therefore, it

against the blatant sinner the class of people who can only be impressed by the falling of a stone which shall grind them to powder. But it is not for people
in the vicious state that the consolations of religion are available, they are not the bruised reed whom he
will not break:

and there

is

no sense

in perplexing or-

dinary struggling, kindly, weak, unhappy humanity, with alleged fearful penalties attaching to even minor disobedience: penalties which must be exacted

somehow, no matter much from whom; nor need we spoil people's conception of the Fatherhood of God with distorted legends, representing him as a Roman Father who will not scruple to visit their sins and shortcomings upon the innocent body of his own Son, since that is the only condition on which his wrath may be turned away and his hand not stretched out
still.

SIN,
3.

SUFFERING AND WRATH

235

There

is

one sentence in

my last

chapter wherein

his spirit divine; thus

I appear to suggest that Christ's body was human, making a possibly untenable

though simple distinction between the vehicle and the manifestation, and trespassing on a theological territory which is full of heretical pit-falls. It would have been better to avoid even the appearance of entering on so large a question as the nature of Christ by a mere side-door. My object at the moment was not anything so ambitious, but merely to indicate what would be the effect on mankind of the arrival of a personage, with a human and therefore accessible and mortal body, animated by a spirit of divine perfection. I wished to urge that among the results of the thorough incarnation of a truly Divine Spirit would be the beginnings of a real atonement between man and God and that the influence exerted would be exerted wholly on man. Farther than that I did not then intend to go; nor do I propose to go
;

much

farther now, though the temptation is considerable. It is easy to recognise that the subjects of the Incarnation and the Resurrection are profoundly dif-

and yet to feel impelled to express surprise at the language which eminent theologians sometimes permit themselves to employ. I take the following
ficult,

astounding sentence from Canon Moberly's

article in

Lux Mundi:
one will now dispute that Jesus died If He did not on the third day rise upon again from that death to life cadit qucestio all

P. 236.

"No

the Cross.

Christian dogma,

all

Christian faith,

is

at

an end."

236

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY,

I suppose it is intended as a paraphrase of St. Paul's "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain." But the two state-

ments are perfectly different. If Christ be not risen in some sense or other, if his death was the end of him,
according to the current but perhaps not quite correct conception of the death of a dog, then indeed is
the prospect blank.

But "rise again from death to life on the third day" must mean far more than persistent existence and influence it seems to mean resuscitation, after the man:

Indeed, the fourth article of the Church definitely asserts that it does mean that and more. But an attempt to link the whole of Christian

ner of Lazarus.

faith inextricably with an anatomical statement about flesh and bones, as in Article 4 of the Anglican

Church,

is
:

rash.

Again

P. 237. truly man.

"No one
Is
it

to-day disputes that

He

was
It
is

true that

He

was very God?

either true or false.

As to

two

alternatives.

And

the fact there are only the between the two the gulf is
it is

impassable. absolutely true

If

it is

not false

true.

If

it is

not

it is

absolutely false."

always know what they mean when they glibly use, in a serious and solemn sense, the awful term God? Have they any notion of the Universe at all?

Do theologians

Are they

still

tary conceptions of Deity? talk, about "dispensations."

limited to tribal or planeThey talk, or used to

We

ourselves, as a na-

tion, give dispensations to children or savages other

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

;

237

than we should give to developed people a planetary dispensation is one thing, a planetary God another. These attempted identifications of the Messiah with
the

Most High, verge on

Peter was

the blasphemous. When blessed for a burst of bold and enthusiastic

and adequate recognition of Christ's divine nature, he said no such thing as that. What he said was, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
affirmation

As to affirming that Christ is either God or is not God and that there is nothing more to be said: there
so simple a For affirmation can be made. or positive negative instance, it is almost proverbially difficult to reply to the childish question whether a given historical char-

are

few complex propositions of which

acter

was "good" or was not good.

The word God must have an infinite diversity of meaning, and two uses of the term are prominent. One connotes vaguely the Absolute Sustainer and
Comprehender of
all

existence: the other signifies

such detailed conception of Godhead as the human race has been able to frame. This latter has been
helped on mightily by the revelation of Jesus, among those who can accept it, the revelation of genuinely

human

faculties

and

feelings,

and even something of

the unconscious simplicity, of childhood, 1 in the Divine Being, and the further revelation, so enthusiastically

glimpsed by the youthful David near the end of Browning's poem "Saul," the perception that Dii

Luke

ix. 48.

238

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

vine as well as

human

love

may

be and actually

is

strong enough fering on behalf of the beloved.

to submit to sacrifice

and genuine suf-

This revelation and perception may to some have become so keen and piercing that to no other aspect of Godhead can they pay attention. These are they

who say

that Christ was very God in the absolute and sense; subjectively they may be right. It is a statement, not of what they conceive of Christ, but of what they mean by God. One cannot define or explain the known in terms of the unknown.

we come to the doctrine of a vicarious in what sense that can be considered and Atonement, to embody a genuine truth. The late Bishop of Southampton, Dr. Arthur Lyttelton, in his article on the Atonement in Lux Mundi (pp. 282, 283), says that"It was from the Law that the Jews derived their
4.

Lastly

religious language; their conceptions of sacrifice, of atonement, of the effects of sin, were moulded by the

influence of the Mosaic ceremonies.

ficial

The

sacri-

ceremonies and language of the Law throw light upon the apostolic conception of the Sacrifice, the

Atonement of

Christ."

With

this historical estimate

I entirely agree.

The

ceremony of the Scapegoat, and indeed the whole socalled Mosaic system, are clearly responsible for a
great deal of the doctrine which penetrated into the New Testament, and has survived even to the present
day.

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

found that
this

239

same Article is a word which emfull of the word "propitiation": bodies compactly what I regard as an error or a crudity, and serves to focus the issue. The basis of
it

But then

will be

his contention

throughout is given succinctly in the following passage (p. 282) "Examination of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is necessary in a discussion of the doctrine of the Atonement, for several reasons. "The institutions of the Law were, in the first place, ordained by God, and therefore intended to reveal in some degree His purposes, His mind towards
:

man." That

where I join issue. I would rather go to the opposite extreme and say that the Gospel was an attempt to break away from sacrificial and priestly tradition; that the "not destroy but fulfil" referred
is

to the

major denunciations and other accumulations of race-experience, which were on right lines as far as they went, not to the minor institutions and superstitions which had become an incubus destructive of
living personal religion.

We

may

not

all in

every

respect be equally

enamoured of the parable of the

Prodigal Son I myself am conscious of a subterranean sympathy with the sentiments expressed by but the whole story is very human, his elder brother very familiar, and full of manifest inspiration; and without wishing to press it unduly, we must admit that any feeling of wrath against the offender, or even
against the offence, is rather conspicuously absent from its scheme. The sense of guilt is there, in pro-

240

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

nounced form, but as a one-sided feeling; and its paternal counterpart seems not to have been removed

by expiatory

sacrifice or

by propitiation of any kind,

but simply to be non-existent. There is very little residue of the Mosaic dispensation in that story. So markedly has this been felt indeed by some

dismay at finding themselves familiar adrift from their moorings, a few have actually seized upon the fatted calf and tried to
preachers
that,

in

construct some kind of propitiatory sacrifice out of

that.

But observe

that I have never said a

word against

a very different idea. But I cannot agree with everything that is said even about vicarous suffering real though it admitFor instance, the Bishop of Southwark tedly is. urges that the vicarious suffering of the Atonement

vicarious suffering: notion of vicarious

I have contended against the

punishment

did

somehow

redress, cancel, redeem,

these

words are used in a private

letter,

propitiate, while their

substance appears in the article above referred to, and he appears to insist that the idea of a Father who is necessarily hard upon us because himself so righteous,

With great deis a part of the orthodox view. ference I cannot admit the appropriateness of the

above verbs to modern insight: they seem to me saturated with the atmosphere of pagan survival and of ante-Isaiah Jewish traditions. No one supposes them
to apply to vicious and persistent sins; but if they only apply to negligences and ignorances for which

we

are heartily sorry

and earnestly repent, they are

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

241

unnecessary, except in a subjective and comforting

sense.

But then

this is

a real sense: there must be some

meaning in the perennial experience of relief and it not there that Chrisrenovation at the Cross.

Was

tian's

burden

fell,

type of

many

thousands of de-

vout persons?

work

in justification of this

Is there no regenerating agency at mass of real human ex-

perience?
to

hoves me,

Far be it from me to doubt it; and it bewho have presumed to emphasise one aspect, emphasise the other also, in order to make a picture
its

not too obviously incomplete and one-sided. I am now going to use the word "sin" in

theo-

the sense of logical and, so to speak, "official" sense, imperfection, disunion, lack of harmony, the struggle among the members that St. Paul for all time exis usually associated with it a sense of a impotence, recognition of the impossibility of achieving peace and unity in one's own person, a feeling that aid must be forthcoming from a higher source. It is this feeling which enables the spectacle of any noble self-sacrificing human action to have an

pressed; there

elevating effect, it is this which gropes after the possibilities of the highest in human nature, it is a feeling which for large tracts of this planet has found its
life

highest stimulus and completest satisfaction in the and death of Christ. All religions worthy of the

name
life,

upon some heroic and self-sacrificing some man with clearer vision than his felupon lows, one who is in closer touch and sympathy with
are based

the Divine.

242

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

not insight and heroism alone
:

And

Paul was able

to bear the sufferings of this present time with heroism, but Paul was not crucified for us, nor are we baptised in the

name of Paul.

No, there

is

evidently

something unique about the majesty of Jesus of Nazareth which raises him above the rank of man; and the willingness of such a Being to share our nature,
to live the life of a peasant,

and

to face the horrible

certainty of execution by torture, in order personally to help those whom he was pleased to call his brethren, is a race-asset which, however masked and overlaid with foreign growths, yet gleams through every covering and suffuses the details of common life with

fragrance.

This conspicuously has been a redeeming, or rather a regenerating agency I know nothing of "cancelling," "redressing," or "propitiating": those

words I

for by filling the repudiate; but it has regenerated, soul with love and adoration and fellow-feeling for the Highest, the old cravings have often been almost hypnotically rendered distasteful and repellent, the bondage of sin has been loosened from many a spirit,
the lower entangled self has been helped from the slough of despond and raised to the shores of a larger

hope, whence
peace.

it

can gradually attain to harmony and

There are other parts of the Hon. Arthur Lyttelton's beautiful essay on the Atonement in Lux Mundi I find myself in to which I should like to refer. agreement with the initial three or four pages and

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

243

with the concluding three or four pages almost entirely. By dint of working through a maze of rather
intractable material, which he treats as well as it is possible for it to be treated, he arrives at what I con-

discards ceive to be the legitimate conclusion. the infinite-punishment doctrine completely, he

He

brushes lightly aside M'Leod Campbell's infinite-repentance modification of it, and he attempts to justify
the view of a perfect sacrifice. So far as he associates this with vicarious penalty and emphasises the propitiatory aspect of the Atone-

ment, he goes, as I consider, wrong; he even argues that in his agony and death the Son must have been
in propitiating not only his Father's wrath but his own also; that he was, in fact, taking upon

engaged

himself,

and prospectively warding off from others, the wrath of the Lamb. This truly is a logical outcome of the orthodox doctrine, but it should serve as one of the modes of discrediting some of the crudity in that doctrine and reand
so both retrospectively

ducing

it

to a kind of absurdity.

But when Dr. Lyttelton arrives at page 310 he has emerged from Mosaic medisevalism into an atmosphere of truth: it is true that Christ bore his sufferings, as we should learn to bear ours, victoriously and in unbroken union with God. He showed that the
highest and the best might have to suffer, so long as
the world

was imperfect.

In an admirable essay on "Pain" by J. R. Tilingworth in Lux Mundi this part of the matter is put
with great clearness:

244

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

"Once for all the sinless suffering of the Cross has parted sin from suffering with a clearness of distinction never before achieved.
sinlessness
.
.
.

The

sight of perfect

combined with cleared our view for ever.

perfect suffering has Sin indeed always . .

.

brings suffering in its train, but the suffering we now . But while . see to be of the nature of its antidote.
sin involves suffering, suffering does not involve sin. . . suffer because we sin, but we also sin because .

We

we

The pleasures of each gendecline to suffer. . . eration evaporate in air; it is their pains that increase the spiritual momentum of the world." And so on
.

;(p.

123 to the end) The problem which had puzzled the ages, the problem of the book of Job, of the tower of Siloam, was
.

practically solved.

the sting might be taken out of all suffering by meeting it with a spirit of undaunted faith. The power of sin lay in the presence
Christ showed
rebellious disposition. Rid of that, and sorrows would come as before, they and though pains

And

how

of an

evil

and

spirit, not of submission only, but of undying love and hope and almost joy. So the cognate or complementary problem of the Greek Dramatists also the problem which looms large in the tragedies of Euripides in especial the dread that man is the sport and plaything of omnipotence the fear, the paralysing fear, of caprice or even wickedness on the part of higher powers the dismal uncertainty whether pain is not sometimes mere gratuitous torture, the outcome of divine jeal-

could be faced in a

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

245

ousy or malevolence or anger or some other pagan

attribute: all this

was somehow removed from man-

kind by the victory of Christ, and except in a few individual cases has never very seriously troubled it
since.

indifference to suffering and temporal loss the outcome of it, but there was superadded a certain glory in suffering, in emulation of so noble

Not only was

an example: to fill up, as was hyperbolically said, what was behind; this feeling infused such vitality into the Apostles and the early Church as to carry them victoriously through a terrible period of danger and. untold misery. It made them staunch men and emperors found that they simply could not effectively hurt those whom this faith had seized. And in less troublous times the element of suffering and poverty was still felt to be so vital that it was often self-inflicted in order to secure a deeper joy. So is it always in ages of burning faith; comfort and luxury and
;

this present life,

that they rightly contain of happiness, are cast aside as almost worthless in exchange for a spiritual exaltation.

with

all

But

it

will

be said that

this violent

enthusiasm and
is

contempt for mere individual temporal well-being

not Christian alone, that it is common to all religions. Granted. I will not contend that Christ was the only

channel of this influence, though he has been the channel for most of us; nor do Buddhism, Brahminism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism, exhaust the catelar.

gory of religions more or less efficient in this particuIn islands of strange worship, amid savages of

246

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

life,

unclean

the same enthusiasm for the spiritual as

;

dominating the material is felt for it is a part of the truth of God, and is limited to no age or creed. And
superficial outsiders are said to have no religious faith it is to be found. The Japanese soldier throws away his individual life by the

in countries which

by

thousand, in order that his nation may take a noble place in the world and begin its destined work of
is dead what is Asia or must be dominated by a living faith, in perhaps he knows not what. He may not be able to express it, but his faith may be none the less efficient for lacking the outward precision of an

civilising Asia; yet his country to him?

when he

He

Athanasian formula. But whatever be the case with other religions, the sacrifice of Christ has convinced the Western world of sin to a unique degree, of its reality and dire consequence, of its unreasonableness, its aspect as a disease which must be cured with the knife if need be, but cured; we have learnt that it is foreign to the universe, it is not the will of God, it is not due to his
caprice, or

amusement, or
it is

dictation, or predestination,

something which gives even pagan example; Him pain and suffering; it is something to be rid of, and there is no peace or joy to be had until unity of will is secured and past rebellions are forgiven. The
or
sin of the creature involves suffering in the Creator: the whole of existence is so bound together that dis-

ease in one part

means pain throughout.

This

is

the

element of truth in the vicariousness of suffering,

SIN,

SUFFERING AND WRATH

and
is

in extension of suffering to the Highest; but it not vicariously penal, nor is it propitiatory. The orthodox doctrine of the Atonement implicitly

cannot forgive sin, unless and until He has exacted an adequate penalty somewhere. This does embody a kind of truth, for an eddy of conduct, good or ill, can only disappear by expending In one its energy in producing some definite effect.
maintains that
sense, therefore, a penalty

God

monious action:
doer alone, but,

must follow every inhara penalty not falling on the wronginvolving the innocent likewise, and

bringing needless pain into existence. Perception of this may be part of the punishment, for there can
hardly be a fiercer feeling than remorse but the sting will not be fully felt till the spirit has become broken and contrite and open to the healing influences of
;

forgiveness.

animation.

no agony like that of returning Forgiveness removes no penalty: it may

There
is

even increase pain, though only that of a regenerative kind; it leaves material consequences unaltered, but it may achieve spiritual reform. Divine forgiveness is undoubtedly mysterious, but it must be real, for we are conscious that we can forgive each other. It should be an axiom that whatever man can do, God a fortiori can do also meaning by "man" not merely any poor individual man, but the whole highest ethos of the race, including saints,
;

apostles, prophets, everybody,

and including Christ

to ask for forgiveness

himself.

How
As we

are

we taught

of sins?

forgive others.

This does not solely

248

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

it is

mean, as

usually taken to mean, because we forgive others, nor in so far as, nor on condition that we forgive our fellows, but it means after the same

fashion as we forgive or should forgive them. And the reason given is a luminous one; it has nothing to do with propitiation, it makes no reference to sacrifice
or vicarious penalty, nor to the merits of any mediator ; no, the reason given is a noble and sufficient one,

and it is simply this: "For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, for ever." What more can we add but the word "Amen"?

CHAPTER

XII

THE MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

terial world alone, and habitually close their minds to the influences of poetry and of emotional and religious and even philosophical literature gen-

MEN

of science

who make

a life-study of the

ma-

apt to grow into the belief that the material aspect of the universe is the only aspect which matsometimes going so far as to hold that it is the ters,
only aspect which
is

erally, are

truly real.

Theologians and mystics and even men of letters, are liable to err in a similar though complementary manner, and by exclusive attention to one region of

human

nature become so imbued with

its

supreme

importance that they ignore and despise the universe of matter, force, and energy; regarding with complacence not only their own ignorance, but the ignorance also of teachers of youth. This distinction between schools of thought on
the intellectual plane is fairly obvious; and a similar distinction holds also in the religious sphere.

There are those, on the one hand, who hold that "God" and "spiritual beings" and "guidance" and "intelligent control" are words of only superstitious

meaning
is

that the world, as revealed by our senses, the sole reality, our bodily life our true and only; 249

25Q
existence,

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

and the world of poetry and
religion but a

dream.

There are those, on the other hand, who so immerse themselves in spiritual contemplation that the things of sense shrink into nothingness, and our present life, with all that pertains to bodily and terrestrial activity, becomes insignificant, or even acquires a negative value, since material things are a snare and a temptation, tending to divert our feet from the true path, and apt to fill our souls with clogging and
vicious trifles.

The extreme in the one case has been called roughly materialism or naturalism or positivism; its religion is a practical religion of human nature and earthly
service, its

god a

glorified humanity,

and

its

immor-

tality

merely

racial,

being one of sentiment and

memspirit-

ory.

The extreme

in the other case has

been called

ualism or mysticism or asceticism or puritanism, for it has many phases; its religion is largely occupied

with worship, sometimes in the form of contemplative awe and ecstasy, sometimes of labour for the glory of God; its God is a high and holy Personality of
illimitable perfection, far

gles

and

trials

of this

removed from the strugmortal life, which is a mere epi-

sode or probationary discipline before men's souls are lapped for ever in the peace of the Eternal, or are
tortured by exclusion from His presence for
nity.
all eter-

Between the extremes comes the religion which we know as Christianity. Looked at cosmically, this

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

251

aims at being a comprehensive and inclusive scheme, capable of embracing the essential elements of both
the other systems, recognising and worshipping God in the Highest, loving and serving man even at his
lowest, accepting the facts of nature and despising nothing that exists, desiring to utilise the opportunities of this present life to the uttermost, and yet be-

lieving that it is possibly not the beginning, certainly not the end, of our existence; rejoicing in the objects of sense, realising also the beauty and truth of things

only reached

studious contemplation, rejecting the idea of any ultimate conflict between matter and spirit, and, when they appear to conflict, giving supremacy to the spiritual.
the mission of the Priest to emphasise one of these aspects; it is the business of the Naturalist to
It
is

now by

emphasise the other it is the desire of the Philosopher to realise the element of truth in both departments, to grasp truth in its breadth and comprehensiveness; while it is the duty of the Religious man to apply the truths, so recognised, in the conduct of practical life.
;

not an easy one it is not to be supposed that every exuberant utterance of the mystic is true, that every balanced imitation of the
the task of the unifier
is
;

But

naturalist

is true, and that it only remains to understand and accept both. His task is much harder than that: he has to exercise discrimination, to scrutinise

and weigh carefully, not letting himself be over-persuaded by the enthusiasts on either side, and so gradually to evolve for himself a system of thought which is as true and helpful as may be possible to a being in his

252

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

present state of development. This is the task which lies before us all, and this is the task upon which the
great prophets of humanity, each in his day and genThis work absorbs the eration, have been engaged.
attention of

the present time

many leading men who

Christian theologians at
exhibit

welcome breadth
scientific

of knowledge and are imbued with

I.

method.

THE CORRESPONDENCE
First of
all,

OF SPIRITUAL AND TERIAL

MA-

then, the whole doctrine of "Incarnation" exhibits an idea of the interaction between the
spiritual

and material. Just

felt

as

man has at least a dual

nature
so
it

was

directly

and the dominant mind must God be thought of as interacting with this material scheme, and must be supthe material organism

posed incarnated in or clothed upon with a material body, subject to growth, disintegration, and death, like our ow n. An extraordinary and bold conception, manifestly symbolic or pictorial of something, not literal nor reducible to any simple formula, it
r

nevertheless involves a great truth, the kinship between spirit and matter. Any divine revelation to be

must have an accessible and bodily So must a ghost or vision however objectively unreal it may be, it must appear in the likeness of man, and will usually have garments such as we have been accustomed to associate with human beings: it must
accessible to us,

form.

appear in material
at
all.

That

is

could not appear the essence of revelation and even in

accessories, or
it
:

the most sublimated case, even if no outward

form or

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

253

voice were subjectively constructed, yet something in the brain must be affected, else not only could there be

neither speech nor language, there could not be any definite impression, not even the vanishing impression

of a dream.
the materialising tendency of the human race has gone farther than that. Given the incarnation of

But

a divine spirit in a mortal frame, they have not been content with that already sufficiently difficult idea; they have pressed further to ask how that body was produced, and what ultimately became of it; and so

we have legends of abnormal

resurrection.

birth

and of bodily

But
the

the latter difficulty is not a problem raised by phenomena associated with Christ alone; it is a

are which has troubled all humanity. with to be endowed spirits immortality, supposed as taught the ancients; but we all have bodies the apparently necessary medium of manifestation and of what becomes of them? Socrates was individuality, content to suppose that the body remained behind, sloughed off, and was restored to the elements of this material world. But the early Christians were not satisfied thus to get rid of their material part a vein of materialism ran through their Christianity; they supposed that the bodies were only temporarily disdifficulty
all
:

We

carded,

and would ultimately

spirits

vorced

and rejoin their diat the sound of some future signal: a

rise
still

grotesque idea which, strange to say,

survives in
in

the thoughts of unimaginative persons portions of the liturgy.

and

some

254

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

it

But,

is

contended, this

is

an

essential part

of

Christianity, however it be interpreted; the mere persistence of existence was a pagan idea and existed long

was not the survival or persistence of

;

of Christianity existence, even of individual existence, but the resurrection of the body and hence this doctrine is rightly emphasised in
before Christ.
special feature

The

the creeds.

Moreover, the very basis of Christianity

carnation
that

the In-

and

emphasises and dignifies the perception consists essentially of both soul and body, that he is to be aided and raised and saved, not by

man

spiritual influences alone, but by agencies appealing to his senses and acting primarily upon his bodily or-

ganism.
It is the neglect of this truth which has often rendered the evangelising activity of religious bodies so futile. They have tried to save souls alone. They

are growing wiser now, and are beginning to realise that once bodily conditions are set fairly right, people's souls are much better than has been credited; there is a lot of innate goodness in humanity, and to

enable

it

to blossom

and

flourish

it

needs

little

more

than the material care which is lavished upon the plants in the garden. They themselves do the flowering and fruiting, the gardener has only to expose them to sun and air to keep them clear of parasites and weeds.

And

so,

throughout,

it

will

be found that Christi;

anity has a definitely materialistic side and it becomes a question for us what is to be the modern interpreta-

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

255

tion of all the singularly developed mediseval doctrine, and how far it is to be accepted as in any sense

corresponding to reality. For that it is not to be accepted in a crude form, such as that in which it is preached by ignorant persons to-day, was obvious to
the

New Testament writers, and doubtless to the most

enlightened saints of all time; but that it contains some element of truth, enshrined in its strange formalism is to be strongly maintained. The purely spiritual side of religion, so far as it
contents itself with positive assertion and is not occupied with denying material facts, does not now con-

cern us.

It

is

the material side which I wish to con-

sider, especially
terialistic basis,

whether religion should have a ma-

and how far

its

excursion into ma-

terialism

be warranted by experience. It is plain that for our present mode of apprehending the universe a material vehicle is essential; that which has no contact with the world of matter cannot be directly apprehended, and has for us no effective existence. purely spiritual agency may be active and

may

be guessed at or inferred, and may in, but the only evidence of its existence that can be adduced is the manifestation of that activity through matter, and the only moments when a
the activity be believed

may

at which action

glimpse can be caught of the activity are the moments on matter occurs.

Dreams,

visions, thoughts, inspirations,

all

things

known

no matter how intangible and subtle are enabled to enter what we call our their essence consciousness solely by some action on, or acpresent
to us,

256

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

tion in, the brain.

They may

act

on other material

particles too, but on the matter of the brain they must act, or they give no sign. whole world may exist beyond our senses, may exist even in space and close to us for all we can tell, and yet if it has no means of connexion, no links with

the material world,

sciousness;

it

and

this isolation

must remain outside our conmust last until we grow

a new sense, or otherwise develop fresh faculties, so that intercommunication and interaction can begin.

Whether there is any interaction at present between this and a supersensual world is a question that may
be debated, but the above assertion that some such interaction is an essential preliminary to our recognition of such a world is hardly susceptible of debate. Now, this dependence of the spiritual on a vehicle for manifestation is not likely to be a purely tempor-

ary condition: it is probably a sign or example of something which has an eternal significance, a representation of some permanent truth.

That is certainly the working hypothesis which, until negatived, we ought to make. Our senses limit us, but do not deceive us: so far as they go, they tell
us the truth. I wish to proceed on that hypothesis. To suppose that our experience of the necessary and fundamental connexion between the two things the

something which we know as mind and the something which is now represented by matter has no counterpart or enlargement in the actual scheme of the universe, as
it

really exists,

is

needlessly to postulate con-

fusion and instrumental deception.

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

257

Philosophers have been so impressed with this that they have conjectured that mind and matter are but
aspects, or

modes of perception, of one fundamental

comprehensive unity; a unity which is neither exactly mind nor exactly matter as we conceive them, but is something fundamental and underlying both, as the ether is now conceived of as sustaining and in some
sense constituting all the universe.
1

phenomena of the
all, is

visible

This monistic view, if true at

likely to be per-

manently and actually true; and, though it by no means follows that mind is dependent on matter as we know it, it will probably be still by means of something
something which can act as a veit in the same sort of way that it matter represents now that it will hereafter be
akin to matter
hicle

and represent

manifested.

This probability or possibility may be regarded as one form of statement of an orthodox Christian doctrine. Assuming that Christianity emphasises the material aspect of religion, as its supporters assert that it does, it supplements the mere survival of a discar-

nate
that

a homeless wanderer or melancholy ghos :, with the warm and comfortable clothing of something
1

spirit,

legitimately be spoken of as a "body"; that is to say, it postulates a supersensually visible and tangible vehicle or mode of manifestation, fitted to sub-

may

serve the needs of future existence as our bodies sub-

an ethereal or other entity constituting the persistent "other aspect," and

serve the needs of terrestrial life

258
fulfilling

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

some of the functions which the atoms of

matter are employed to fulfil now. Not only the authority of St. Paul, but the influence also of poets, can be appealed to as sustaining
terrestrial

some truth underlying the crude idea above formuTo them the highest feelings have, and appear necessarily to have, a material outcome or counterpart
lated.

associated with them.

Take

"love," for
spiritualise

instance:
it

many

have been the attempts to

into a

discarnate entity; and doubtless it is in its highest form the purest and least gross of all the emotions
;

yet

it

must ultimately be recognised that

it

has a sac-

ramental or material side, wherein the flesh and the spirit are united and inseparable, and where neither can be discarded without loss to the other. It has been

always easy to deride and condemn the bodily side of our nature, but by the highest seers this has not been
done.

The

glorification

and

transfiguration, not the

reprobation, of the body has been the theme of the highest prophets and poets, and those who in "matter" detect nothing but evil are essential, though wellmeaning, blasphemers. It has been easy also to tilt
the balance the other way, and, by discarding or ignoring the spiritual side, to wallow and blaspheme in a

far more degraded and degrading manner. This in times of decadence has been dominant, tendency

and nations and individuals have had to struggle with the overweight of their animal ancestry, and some have succumbed but, shorn of its exaggeration, there
;

a truth to be perceived on the material side too, and we must be careful that in spurning the exaggeration
is

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

we do not
it.

259

lose

some of the

essential truth

embodied in

"fleshly school of poetis not for instance, fleshly in any low sense, but ry," inspired, the permanence and importance and dignity

In so far as the mis-called

of the side

now known as material is the It may happen that being preached.

1

truth which
in

is

some

cases

the message

may

too dazzling for the messenger, and he succumb to the enchantment of his vision, so that
is

he lose the jewel itself and be left blindly grasping only its empty setting; but the message itself must not be unduly discredited on that account. Assuming then as consonant with, or even as part the doctrine of the dignity and necof, Christianity essary character of some quasi-material counterpart of every spiritual essence, it becomes our duty to inquire what part of this connexion is essential, and what is accidental and temporary. Take our present incarnation as an example. We display ourselves to mankind in the garb of certain clothes, artificially constructed of animal and vegetable materials, and in the form of a certain material organism, put together by processes of digestion and as-

composed of terrestrial materials. of the identity corporeal substances and chemical compounds is evidently not of a permanent and important character. Whether they formed part of
similation, likewise

The

sheep or birds or fish or plants, they are assimilated

regret to have to refer, even for the sake of illustration, to and noxious criticism of the poetry of Rossetti, but I hope that the lofty character of the thing criticised is sufficiently manifest to enable every reader to perceive the beauty of the message and the
1

this discredited

inspiration of the poet,

260

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

and become part of us, being arranged by our subconscious activities and vital processes into appropriate form, just as truly as other materials are consciously woven into garments, no matter what they or-

Moreover, just as our clothes wear out and require darning and patching, so our
iginally

sprang from.

bodies wear out; the particles are in continual flux; each giving place to others, and being constantly dis-

carded and renewed.

instantaneous body is tance: the individuality

identity of the actual or therefore an affair of no impor-

The
lies

longs to whatever it is in this shape and not another.

II.

deeper than that, and bewhich put the particles together

THE RESURRECTION
therefore, at

OF THE BODY
call death, this

When,

what we

con-

trolling entity leaves the terrestrial sphere of things assuming that it does not promptly go out of existence, a thing which it would be very surprising for any existing entity to do it is unnecessary to suppose

that

it

will continue in

a wholly discarnate condition

for a time, until presently it becomes able to resume the poor decayed refuse which it left behind on this
planet.

The idea of rejoining the corpse in this sense is unthinkable and repulsive it could only arise in ages of The identity of the material particles ignorance.
:

does not constitute the identity of the person, nor is What is it essential to the identity of the body. wanted to make definite our thoughts of the persistent
existence of

what we

call

our immortal part,

is

simply

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

261

the persistent power of manifesting itself to friends, i.e. to persons with whom we are in sympathy, by;

means

as plain and substantial in that order of existence as the body was here though the manifesta-

tion need not be of so broadcast

and indiscriminate a

character as it is now ;* we may surmise that any immortal part must have the power of constructing for itself a suitable vehicle of manifestation which is the
essential

meaning of the term "body."

individuality and personal and consciousness and memory, and all that identity constitutes an ego, are preserved, is worthy of examination and research the fate of the terrestrial residue not much more than if it is of no great consequence
;

The question whether the

consisted solely of old clothes. To those who stigmatise this as dualism, and say that it is contrary to the ultimate identity of matter

I reply No. Monism does not assert that atoms of matter are any aspect of me. The penholder is an instrument subservient to my will, and it

and

spirit,

may be made to express my thought, but it is no part of me I can throw it down when done with, and
when worn out I can burn or bury
1

it,
:

but I do not

This sentence probably requires amplification its meaning is this Present human bodies bring us into contact with strangers and make us aware of people in whom perchance we take no interest. Hereafter our acquaintanceship may perhaps be limited to those with whom we
are linked by ties of affinity and affection the mode of communication being probably of a more sympathetic or telepathic character, and less physical, than now. If so, this planetary episode is a great opportunity for enlarging our sympathies and for making new friends; so that the emphasis laid by great prophets on "love," and their condemnation of selfishness as a deadly vice specially destructive of fulness of personality and wealth of existence, becomes amply intelligible.

262

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

thereby lose the power of taking another, nor of learning to write with a different instrument and in another

There may be a sense in which all matter is evidence of, and an aspect of, the thought of some World-Mind; but most of it is certainly neither evidence nor aspect of my mind. Matter divorced from all Mind whatever
language
if I travel to other countries.

may

possibly thereby cease to exist but the furniture certainly does not cease to exist when I leave the room,
;

nor would

it

be affected if

all

humanity were to

perish off the planet.

Those who press monism to these absurd lengths

will find a difficulty in preserving the clearness of their thoughts and in self-defence they will take ref;

narrow and illiterate and most unscientific uge variety of dogmatic scepticism, or agnostic dogmain a
tism.

SOUL AND BODY

The phrase
"resurrection of the body" undoubtedly

dates back to a period when it was thought that the residue laid in the grave would at some future signal

be collected and resuscitated and raised in the air and superstitions about missing fragments and about the permissibility of cremation, even to this day, are not
:

and has long been discarded by leaders of thought; and it were good if the phrases responsible for the misunderstanding could be amended also. "Resurrection of a body" would be but little imextinct.
all this is clearly infantile,

But

provement, for the body that hereafter "shall be"

is

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

263

not that body which was planted in the ground; and the future "body" can hardly be said to have risen

from the grave. Nor does the Nicene version "resurrection of the dead" give much assistance, for that
which survives
is just that which never was dead; it did not cease to be, and then arise to new life its ex;

istence, if persistent at all, is necessarily continuous;

the whole argument for persistence of existence depends on continuity, on the fact that real existence

does not suddenly spring into being out of nothing, and then suddenly vanish as if it had not been.

Perhaps the word "resurrection" may be interpreted meaning revival or survival; and "death" can be defined as a separation between the psychical and physical aspects of an individual, and as a definite physicoas
vehicle

chemical process occurring to the body or material of manifestation. So far as the undying essence or spirit is concerned the teaching of Socrates holds to this day: "Let them bury him if they could catch him: but he himself would be out of their reach."

very well to stigmatise this as pagan teachit is teaching to ing, and to hold it in light esteem, which multitudes to-day have not risen; and a real and
It
is all

vital belief in

such a doctrine could not but have a be-

neficent influence

be true to say Christianity assumes all that, and supplements it with the Pauline doctrine of a resurrection-body, or spiritIt

on conduct.

may

ual body;

it does, but it is likewise true that the of the Church do not assist people to grasp phrases even the truth underlying the Socratic doctrine of im-

mortality,

and

so,

when they

perceive the falsity of

264

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

corporeal resurrection, they are apt to lose faith even in persistence of existence. Having been accustomed
to associate personality with a buried corpse, the manifest decay and dissipation of the body destroys, in the

semi-educated, the whole idea of immortality and with it is apt to go religion too. "Resurrection" is itself
;

a misleading word the phrases which suggest that the person himself is entombed, the phrases about wait:

ing

the last day, and about the general resurrection, even the habit of burying with the face to the east, and the custom of burying relatives together, are
till

or are liable to misinterpretation. these customs are legitimate and humanly intelligible; and so strong a hold have these ideas on
all

misleading

Some of

mankind, that even the greatest poets, who have shaken themselves loose from the thought, cannot, and possibly do not wish to, shake themselves loose from the time-honoured language in which it was embedded, for even Tennyson says
:

"in the vast Cathedral leave him."

c

forbid that I should presume to pragmatise or dogmatise as to the language which ought to

But God

be employed: let us get our thoughts clear, and the language of devotion and of poetry may continue to be employed in due season. Words and ancient phrases can touch the emotions, as music can, without
being too closely scrutinised by the intellect; the formulas of centuries must be respected, and a priggish
precision of expression
ship.

may

be quite unsuited to wor-

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY,

265

III.

THE RESURRECTION

or CHRIST

then, in a spirit of orthodoxy, now approach the person of Christ the Christ long recognised by Christendom as a Divine Person in human form: let

Let us

us assume that in order to display himself to the inhabitants of this planet he was provided with a body
like

our own, eating and drinking and sleeping and suffering and dying like any of us: what should we
expect to happen to his body
the body of Jesus of

Nazareth when it was done with? That he should survive death, that he should be able to appear to worshippers, that he would exert a perennial and vivifying influence on his disciples of all time
all this is

science as I conceive

orthodox, and all this is not repugnant to it. Is anything more necessary?

legend should have grown up concerning the disappearance of the body from a tomb is almost inevitable, considering the state of belief a.t the time. If an apparition of someone recently deceased
historial

That a

appeared now to ignorant people, I imagine that most of them would expect the corpse to have been utilised for the purpose, and to have been either temporarily
or permanently disturbed in its grave. And to disprove a continued existence it might be held sufficient, among ignorant people, to point triumphantly to a

tomb not empty.

But, then, Christ by ecclesiastical hypothesis was unique: he was not as one of us, his appearance was to be likely to transcend ours, and his body was
likely

266

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

from ours
:

differently constituted tained.

so

it

has been main-

be argued that, thus conceived, the Incarnation would hardly sustain the complete and efficient character which orthodox creeds claim for it. The whole idea of the Manhood is that he was a man like ourselves, subject to human needs, open even to
I think
it

may

temptation, obedient to pain and death. That his spirit was superior to ours few deny, but that his body was essentially different I confess seems to me like
superstition.

His raiment
it

at

any rate was made in

splendid

the ordinary way, yet

transfiguration.

too shared in the glory of the

The Transfiguration was a

episode, typifying the dignifying matter by the indwelling spirit.

and dominating of

shining in the eye of genius, the almost visible glow pervading the body in moments of exaltation, this, raised to a higher

The

power, permeated and suffused the poor human body and travel-worn peasant garments of Christ, till the few privileged witnesses had to shade their eyes.

So it is reported concerning Moses after his solitary communion with Jehovah; so it may have been with Joan of Arc; so it may be again from time to time
with the most exalted
saints.

These things are

;

le-

gends, it is true, but they are more than legends they bear on their face the signs of hyperphysical truth not in detail of narration, perhaps, but in essence. So
it

have been with the scene at the Baptism; so, it is not inconceivable, may there be some foundation of truth
vision at
;

was with Saul's

Damascus

so

it

may

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

267

even for the legendary appearances to Magi and to shepherds at the Nativity. The mental and the physical are so interwoven, the possibilities of clairvoyance are so unexplored, that I do not feel constrained to abandon the traditional idea

coming or the going of a great personality be heralded and accompanied by strange ocmay currences in the region of physical force. The mind
that the

of man is competent to enchain and enthrall the forces of nature, and to produce strange and weird effects that would not otherwise have occurred. Shall the

power be limited
it

to his conscious intelligence?

May

not also be within the power of the subconscious intelligence, at moments of ecstasy, or at epochs of strong emotion or of transition?

That there should be storms and earthquakes

is

at the

Crucifixion sure to be legendary, but that it was likewise true is not in the least inconceivable.

We

know too little to be able to dogmatise on such things: we must observe and generalise as we can.
if the historical evidence is strong and defor the disappearance, not of bodies from tombs, but of that one Body from its tomb the exception being justified on the ground of its having been infinite

Hence

habited by an exceptionally mighty Spirit I am not one to seek to deny the possibility on scientific

grounds.

I will only say that the proof of material

resurrection or resuscitation adduced in the Gospel is not such as will bear scrutiny: it offers no case what-

ever to the Society for Psychical Research.

If the

268

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

and the seal and the watch had been found inand yet the tomb empty, there would have been

stone
tact,

find the place abandoned, and the stone rolled away, is equivalent to find the grave rifled no question of dematerialisation need

something to investigate.
:

But to

arise.

But surely that is not what should be meant by Christian Resurrection I submit that for the purposes
:

of religion at the present day no exceptional treatment of the discarded human body is necessary; and the difficulties introduced by the effort to contemplate
the circumstances of anything approaching physical resuscitation, or re-employment of the same body, are

very great.

The Appearances during

the Forty

Days

are not

inconsistent with the legends of apparitions the world over; and a farewell phantasmal appearance des-

cribed as an Ascension

is

credible
is

enough.
:

The

presence of the wounds also

what is by no means establish physical identity. The body notoriously had not its old properties, for it appeared and disappeared and penetrated walls and ultimately
;

quite consistent with observable in apparitions as known to us they

supposed compound of terrestrial particles ascended into another order of things, "and sat down are out of for ever at the right hand of God." the region of physics here, and attention to the details of any material body in such an atmosphere introduces strangely inappropriate considerations the very atoms
this

We

of which

it

was composed would not

last

for ever, the

chemical compounds would soon decay: surely we need not assert such a thing of the body which was

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

269

buried in the tomb, any more than we assert it of the four or five previous bodies which, during the Incarnation,
ticle.
it is depressing to the ordinary Christian, or ought to know that his own flesh, bones, and other appurtenances will assuredly not rise, to

had been worn and discarded,

particle

by par-

Moreover,

who knows

have to think of Christ's Resurrection as a unique occurrence; for the express Pauline doctrine of the Resurrection is that it is the type or pattern of our resurrection; and the more normally we can regard the human side of Christ, and everything connected with his body both before and after death, the better and more hopeful is it for us his brethren. May I suggest that the mystical spirit, which is the vital essence of any church or religious fellowship, though it may be incarnate for a time in a creed, should not be for ever fossilised therein, but should continue open to the fertilising influences of reason

and expanding kowledge, and, like any other should dominate and survive its material body.

spirit,

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER
Lest
it

XII

be thought that a wholesome and proper inof materialism as an element in Christianity gredient has been in this chapter attacked, let me try to make
plainer the balanced position taken or intended by attempting a summary of its main points. Its contentions are as follows
1.
:

That Christianity

is

an intermediate and unify-

270

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

ing religion, between the extremes of spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other; and that the whole idea of a divine Incarnation as well as many of the miracles and the sacraments, can be regarded as expressive of this comprehensive character.

That the correspondence or connexion between matter and spirit, as now known, is probably a symbol
2.

or sample of something permanently true, so that a double aspect of every fundamental existence is likely always to continue; but that the supposed necessary

and perpetual dependence of the human spirit on

nary chemical

ordi-

terrestrial matter, for its manifestation

and
3.

activity, is

illusory

and

superstitious.

1 Cor. xv,

49, 50.

That not only

persistence of existence but full

retention of personality and individuality can be conceived, without the hypothesis of retention of any
particles of terrestrial matter; since identity of person in no way depends upon identity of particles even

now.

That the real meaning of the term "body" should be explained and emphasised as connoting anything which is able to manifest feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and at the same time to operate efficiently on its environment. The temporary character of the
4.

present

human body

should be admitted for purposes

it

usefully and truthfully displays the incarnate part of us during the brief episode of terrestrial life. Job. xix, 26.

of religion; although

5.

That the incarnation of Divine

Spirit

called

Christ revealed to humanity certain aspects of Deity

MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

271

in a unique degree ; but the more akin to ordinary humanity the human side of Christ can be considered,

the more luminous is the teaching, and the better for 1 Cor. xv, 16. the hold of Christianity upon the race. 6. One of the lessons to be learned is the potentiality of the Divine latent in all humanity and this is
:

displayed both in its freedom to rebel and in its power of indispensable and filial service. John x, 30, 35. 7. That the spread of scepticism and dogmatic agnosticism
is largely due to the attempted maintenance of incredible and materialistic dogmas by the orthodox; to the comparative neglect of the essential, the spiritual, and the practical. 8. That materialism of an untransfigured and unglorified description is out of place in religion, but that the right kind of materialism is in place. For the mystical or sacramental use of earthly materials is helpful, though there always comes a point at which

they cease to be expressive.

An attempt to press them

beyond their significant point leads to impossible details, and becomes indistinguishable from fidgetting and worrying superstition, unworthy of an emancipated and Affiliated race. 9. That the salvation offered by Christianity is of the whole man body and soul together and that
this

the supreme justification for energetic practical effort in rectifying social abuses, in improving social conditions, and securing to people generally
fact
is

a fair opportunity for a decent and honourable

life.

CHAPTER
THE DIVINE ELEMENT

XIII

IN CHRISTIANITY!

IV. CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY

AS
the

a physicist

sible to

my desire is to go out as far as posmeet theologians on their approach to

physical science; for it is generally far to discover points of possible agreement than to emphasise points of difference. To com-

camp of

more useful

my

rades in science I would point out that the leading men among orthodox Christians now set us a good ex-

ample, since they no longer seem to desire to interpose any insuperable protest against overhauling from time to time the material and historical assertions associated

with Christianity, and discarding those which cannot be established as facts. Discarding, that is to say, those which do not satisfy one at least of two criteria
or conditions that of being well evidenced historically on the one hand, and that of satisfying or being felt
:

essential to spiritual aspiration, either

of an individual

or of a church or fellowship on the other. If I am right in this understanding, I am willing to accept the criteria suggested, without further criticism, and have

pleaded in the foregoing pages for the gradual reconsideration of certain traditional tenets, on the

grounds

272

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

(a)

273

That they are not of a nature to be well evidenced historically (to say more than that would imply that I regarded myself as a
competent
historical critic)
;

(6)

That they are not edifying

reasonable
intellectual

to people at any level; while as to

it is

higher spiritual aspiration, of them.

It
is

independent

satisfactory that culture

and learned theolog-

welcome

ians of the present day profess themselves ready to criticism of dogmas in which no doubt they

personally believe ; and we can now shortly proceed to the more positive or constructive division of our subject.

reasonable to accept the historic Christ, as represented in the Gospel, together with the general account given of his teachings. In so far as
it is

Meanwhile

is not accurate and even without any of criticism we must admit that it biblical knowledge is bound to be inaccurate we may be sure that the

the record

likely to be inferior to the reality, that the the teachings may have been spoiled and of report garbled in places but is not likely to have been imSome of these spoilings may have been due proved.

record

is

to misunderstanding, others to a desire for extra edification; and it is difficult to say which attitude of a

transcriber

is

the

more dangerous.

similar view, however,

may

be held concerning

the record of the words of

his contemporaries

any astounding genius; and immediate successors are not

274
likely to

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

improve upon his teachings: even as mere commentators they may exhibit well-intentioned stupidity; but, if they have to act also as reporters, omission eked out by exaggeration must be prominent,

and unconscious misrepresentation

is

bound

to occur.

But now

in the case of Christ

;

we may

surely

much

farther

we may admit

his inspiration in

go an ex-

traordinary sense, and may accept the general consensus of Christendom as testifying to his essentially

must perceive that he has revealed to the inhabitants of this planet some of the salient features of Godhead to an altogether
divine character in other words, he
:

exceptional extent.

He displays, in fact,

attributes

which

many

persons

understand and signify when they use the word "God": so much so, that they call him by the name of 1 the Spirit which he reveals. He does not display all the known attributes of God not those studied in Natural Theology, for instance, but he exhibits those which are most important to poor struggling humanity, and those which by their very simplicity and naturalness might otherwise have been overlooked by
the
race, or stigmatised as too hopelessly anthropomorphic. The attributes of Fatherhood, for in-

human

stance, strongly and simply realised, constitute one revelation; the effective combination, or even identification,

with service of neighbour, constitutes another; and there is, it seems to me, an
iThe statement that the Christ depicted in the gospels is God, is a statement illustrative of our conception of Godhead, and not really an explanatory statement concerning Christ: we cannot define or explain
the

of love of

God

known

in terms of the

unknown.

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

275

even bolder conception of Deity suggested, in the dramatic parable "the child in the midst," of which I fancy we have but an abbreviated version.

The only
tate,
istic

place where we find it necessary to hesiand perhaps to remonstrate, is on the materialthe place where side of orthodox Christianity

the ordinary phenomena of nature enter into the doctrines, and are more or less associated or incorporated with them. Here it is natural to plead for more elas-

treatment, and here alone do I imagine that the modern mind can see farther and walk more securely than the mediaeval mind it is possible that in the light of accumulated knowledge it can in some respects see more clearly than even the saints and prophets of
tic
;

the past. It has been the perennial glory of Christianity that can it adapt itself to all conditions of men and to all

changing periods of time; but it has done so always by modification of the non-essential: the spirit and essence have preserved their identity; the accidentals,
in Judaea, in ancient Rome, in mediaeval Germany, in modern England and America, the accidentals have

been different.

But throughout,
terial

it

will be said, certain

of the ma-

aspects have preserved their continuity and identity unchanged. Some of the miracles, especially

the physical details supposed to accompany, or by some even to constitute, the Incarnation and the

Resurrection, have never been doubted by Christians. Until recently, I agree, no, not to any great extent;

but half a century ago they were seriously doubted

276

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

felt

themselves outside the flock, but who in all practical details of life and conduct were as good as well, were comparable with

by the people who thereby

orthodox Christians. The disbelief went, in my judgment, too far: it extended itself to some of the spiritual teachings

and

it

those concerning prayer, for instance threw needless doubt upon some phenomena,

such as those referred to in the last chapter, which may after all have been facts. Whether it went too far or not, an atmosphere of disbelief became prevalent;

and it was generated by the persistence of the faithful in certain material statements which to an

age of more knowledge had become incredible. The extreme excursion of the pendulum has subsided now, but it is still swinging, and when it settles down it will
not occupy precisely the same place as it did before the oscillation began. The swing was caused by a of the or fulcrum shifting point of support, and only has become our duty to what direction the real pivot of the pendulum has been effectively moved, and
it

the bob has been visible.

So

determine

how much and

is

in

the position which will be taken by the oscillating mass of -opinion when present disturbances have subsided. Those, if there be any, who
to realise that that

think that

can ever go back permanently to a prenineteenth-century position, or to a position deterit

mined by the

first six

or any other past centuries, are

assuredly mistaken.

We

shall

now endeavour
what

preciation of

to arrive at a closer apthe essence of Christianity really

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

is; first,

277

however, recollecting what it has been considered to be by all sorts and conditions of men.

V. VARIETIES OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity is a word of wide significance, not easy to attach to it a definite meaning.
it

and
It

it is

is

clear that as

exists

among us

it

has

many

phases,

which
types.
1.

may

be grouped around five or six principal

is

evangelical or spiritual Christianity, usually associated with the name of Paul, which seeks to emphasise a forensic scheme of salva-

First there

tion,

and to link by

lenistic

on to the Hebraistic and Helideas of blood and vicarious sacrifice. Salvaitself

tion

Atonement is the central feature of this scheme, and right conduct is a secondary though natural sequel to right belief and to trust in what by Divine mercy has been already fully accomplished; so that no "performance" is necessary for salvation, but only assimilation of the sacrifice and oblation of Christ, once and for ever accomplished.
faith in the

This variety of Christianity aims at attending to the spiritual aspect only, and despises the material; it rejects the intervention of men and of material aids;
it

and ornament, and it endeavours, sometimes with poor success, to condemn

mistrusts the use of music the beauty of this present world in comparison with the glory that shall be revealed even the sacraments
;

it is

inclined to minimise,

and to regard them as mespirit,

morial services helpful to the

rather than as

278

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY,

agencies of real and present efficacy achieving some-, thing otherwise unattainable. Definite historical fact

of supreme importance to this variety of belief; for if that be taken away the basis of faith is underis

mined, and the system totters to destruction. 2. Next there is ecclesiastical or dogmatic Christianity, usually associated with the name of Peter, which is apt to emphasise the efficacy of ceremonies,
to regard material actions and priestly offices as essential to salvation, and to insist not only on their symbolic

interpretation,

but on some actual physical

It

transformation, some bodily or material efficacy.

builds less

historic past, and more upon a present virtue residing in the Church, or accessible to and utilisable by the proper officers and dispensers

upon an

of the means of grace.

It feels the importance of

times and seasons and buildings and sensuous representation; it is apt to concentrate attention on ecclesiastical details,

with a zest for minutiae, which, when

vital issues at stake, strikes

compared with the

an out-

sider as rather pathetically humourous; and it sometimes so elaborates the material acts of worship, such

as the sacraments, that they tend to take on the nature of incantation, and are occasionally performed by the
priest alone, the congregation passively sharing in their mysterious and miraculous virtue.

energetic form of associated with the name of Christianity, usually James, which emphasises the virtue of good works
3.

Then there is the practical and

and the importance of conduct, which regards belief and doctrine as of secondary importance, which seeks

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

no

279

cloistered virtue, but throws itself vigorously into social movement, and endeavours both by word and

deed to serve the brethren, and by active charity to ameliorate the lot of those whom it thinks of as
Christ's poor.
4. Yet another variety is the mystical or emotional form of Christianity, usually associated with the name of John, which seeks by rapt adoration and worship of the Redeemer and love of all whom he has

called

his

brethren

"even the least of these

my

brethren,"

plation and quest to isolate itself

:

to rise to the height of spiritual contemecstasy tending somewhat in this its high

from the world,

in order to lose

an anticipation of heaven. There exists also, one must admit, some trace of what may be called governing or hierarchical Christianity, which glorifies the priestly office, which seeks after temporal power, which regards the material prosperity of the Church as of more importance than the welfare of states and peoples, which joins hands with autocratic rulers for the oppression of the poor, which blesses and sustains violence, so it be used against the Church's enemies, which banishes and excommunicates the saints even those of its own houseand by corruption of the best succeeds in abethold, ting the cause of the worst. This is the kind of Christianity which attracts the special notice of sceptics and scoffers; and most of the diatribes of good men against Christianity and the Christian ideal are based upon some confused apprehension of this ghastly and blasphemous travesty.
itself in
5.

280

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

it exists,

Whether
is

not for

me

here and there, in this country it to say, but it certainly has some existence

in that country which must some day pass through the throes of an ultimately beneficent revolution the

country whose Church has excommunicated Tolstoi, and whose late Procurator of Holy Synod, in furtherance of what he conceived as legitimate ecclesiastical aggrandisement, exhorted the Czar to folly and wickedness in terms of fulsome and superstitious
adulation.
6.

ties

Lastly and ostensibly the base of all these variebut how different from some of them, there is

the Christianity particularly exemplified and taught by that Syrian Carpenter, during his three years of

public sqrvice, before his execution as a criminal blasphemer. The name of that gentle and pathetic figure

has been used by the greater part of the Western world ever since, sometimes to sanctify enterprises
of pity and tenderness, sometimes to cloak miserable ambitions, sometimes as a mere garment of
respectability.

Whatever view we may take of this

can most of us recognise
it

Personality, we as the greatest that has yet

existed on this planet; hence, if it is through human nature that we can gradually grow to some dim con-

ception of the majesty of the Eternal, it is the life and teachings of that greatest Prophet that we shall

do well to study diligently when we wish to disentangle and display some of the secrets of the spiritual universe; and, by the saints, his words have always been recognised as the highest yet spoken on earth

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

281

concerning the relations between man and man and between man and God. It is certain that only a few of his utterances are contained in our documentary records, and it is probable that some of them have been mutilated and spoiled in transmission neverthe;

less it is of interest to

take those recorded words and

see

how

far they countenance the various schemes or

types of Christianity which have been based upon them. And in particular I wish to select those

which seem to strengthen the case for either a partly

material

or

purely

spiritual

interpretation

of

Christianity. First, to clear

away

the blasphemous use of Christ's

name

in association with political or temporal or hierarchical Christianity, the following will suffice:

"My kingdom
"Woe unto "Ye make
tion."

is

not of this world."

you, generation of vipers, that stoneth the prophets," etc. the commandments of God of none effect by your tradi-

There are many emphatic statements that religion

is

peculiarly a spiritual affair:

In favour of a
"God
is

spiritual

form of

religion

spirit,
-.

and they that

." . worship him "Neither in this mountain nor ." yet in Jerusalem "The words that I speak unto
. .

"The sabbath was made for man." "Meat ye know not of." "The kingdom of heaven is within you."

you they are spirit "That born of flesh

.

."

"Beware of the leaven of the

of
Pharisees and Sadducees."
"It
is

is

flesh,

spirit is spirit."

the spirit that quickenetlL,

"Ye make
the cup."

clean the outside of

the flesh profiteth nothing." "How is it that ye do not under-

"Pray in

secret."

stand?"

"Mint, anise, and cummin."

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

the other hand, there are several texts whicK appear to support material accessories
:

On

In favour of a ceremonial and material form of

ligion
"This
is

re-

my

be so Baptism. now." "This kind goeth not out save by prayer and fasting." (Questionably genuine.)

body." "Suffer it to

"Eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood." "Spit and touched his tongue."
Anointing eyes,

Wedding garment
terpretable).

(otherwise in-

Breaking of bread and giving

thanks.

But

the most numerous of the teachings have an

immediately practical bearing:

In favour of a

practical

form of

religion

Grapes and thistles. Heal the broken-hearted, liberty

to captives, etc. "Inasmuch as ye did it . . ." "Go and sell all that thou hast."

Sower and

seed.

Good Samaritan,
"Casting out devils in thy name."

"Heareth and doeth." Tree known by fruit.

fruits

"By

their

"Worketh
.
.

and I work." "Well done, good and faithful

hitherto,
."

Do
trine.

the will to

know of

the doc-

"Blessed

is

that servant

who

is

ye shall know them." "They that have done good to the resurrection of life," etc. "Not every one that saith Lord, Lord." Cup of cold water,

found so doing."
Fruitless tree cut down.

"He
etc.

that doeth the will of

is

my

Father, the same

my

brother,"
live."

"I was an hungered." "Gather them that do iniquity n

"This do and thou shalt

In many statements the human

is

side

of the Messiah

specially emphasised

Emphasising the human

"The Son can do nothing of himself."

side of^ Christ

"I

seek not

my own

will."

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

am come in my; Father's name." "He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory." "He hath given me a commandment what I should say."
"I

"Son of man."

"Why

callest

thou

me

good?"
I do."
later.)

"Ye both know me and know whence I am." "As the Father gave me commandment, even so

(Statements emphasising the Divine side will be referred to

A few texts, so far as they are genuine, can be appealed to as supporting ecclesiastical Christianity:

In favour of an

ecclesiastical

form of

Christianity

"Keys of the kingdom of heaven."

"Sitting on twelve thrones judging," etc. "Bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."

"If he refuses to hear the church,

let

him

be," etc.

must be remembered that the frequency of expressions which, though full of meaning, can hardly
it

But

be taken

literally, but were so strongly figurative that even his Eastern associates were misled, is notorious
:

Figurative expressions
"Hateth father and mother." "Renounceth not all that he
hath."

"Let the dead bury their dead."

to me and drink." "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."

"Come

"Prophet cannot perish out of

Jerusalem."

"Let him

sell his

cloke and buy

"Remove mountains." "Some standing here

taste of death."

shall

not

a sword." "Not to
sword."

give

peace

but

Camel through
"
Sit

needle's eye.

"Keys of kingdom of heaven." "Bread of life." "Born again."

"Destroy temple."

on twelve thrones judging." "Son coming in the clouds of

"This generation shall not pass

"He
judged."

that

believeth

is

not

heaven."

"Eat
blood."

my

flesh

and drink my;

away."
"I

came not
is

to judge the world,"

"Everlasting

fire,"

"This

my

body,"

284

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

all

If we endeavour to draw from

these texts a

general deduction concerning the kind of religion intended and taught by the Founder of Christianity,
I cannot but feel that the balance inclines strongly in the double direction of a spiritual interpretation on
the theoretical side, combined with a thoroughly practical and simple outcome in daily life. These elethe the the and ments, spiritual practical worship of

God as

a Spirit, and the service of

as
it

man

as a brother

are undoubted

and emphatic constituents

the

warp

and the woof,

were of the pure Christian faith, but it is difficult to maintain that they are uniquely characteristic of it; even when taken together they can hardly be said to constitute a feature which
creeds.

distinguishes it from all other religious For a still more fundamental substratum or framework for a perception of the really characteristic and essential element in Christianity we must look away from the detailed words and teachings and

sharply

contemplate the Life as a whole.

VI. ECCE DEUS

What,

then,

is

the essential element in Christianity,

the essential theoretical element which inspires its teachings on the ethical side? In the inculcation of
practical righteousness other noble religions must be admitted to share, but there must be an element which
it

some vital element possesses in excess above others which has enabled it to survive all the struggles for
existence,

and

to dominate the

most

civilised peoples

of the world.

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

285

A religion
sences,
ients,

is

and is some worthy, some unworthy; but these

and for
its

necessarily compounded of many essure to be mingled with foreign ingredacces-

sories cannot account for its vitality, for its adaptation

to various ages, tions of men.

acceptance by all condimiraculous birth and resurrection

were certainly not distinctive of Christianity; they have appeared in other religions too; we must look
for some feature specially characteristic and quite

fundamental.
I believe that the most essential element in Christianity is its conception of a human God; of a God, in the first place, not apart from the universe, not out-

and distinct from it but immanent in it; yet not immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate 1 The nature of in it and revealed in the Incarnation.
side it

God
fully

is

displayed in part by everything, to those

is

who

have eyes to see, but

displayed most clearly and

existence, the highest to which the process of evolution has so experience

by the highest type of

By what else indeed can it manifest? Naturally the be rendered conceivably conception of Godhead is still only indistinct and parfar opened our senses.
hardly fair to treat the doctrine of Incarnation as of Immanence; inasmuch as some may consider them almost antithetic. Spinoza, for instance, held the one, but would assuredly have eschewed the other. I do not disagree, but point
i

It

may appear

an

intensification of the doctrine

a tendency nowadays to strive rather towards a unificaIt may be admitted that emphasis on the doctrines. recent on the part philosophical notion of Immanence is comparatively of theologians; but it can hardly ever have been completely absent from the Christian atmosphere, since St. Paul in his Athenian address clearly lent it his countenance, and it is implicit in the doctrine of the Logos.
out that there
is

tion of the

two

286
tial,

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

but so far as
it

must reach
intricacy

are as yet able to grasp it, we through recognition of the extent and

we

of the cosmos, and more particularly; the through highest type and loftiest spiritual development of man himself.

This perception of a human God, or of a God in the form of humanity is a perception which welds together Christianity and Pantheism and Paganism and Philosophy. It has been seized and travestied by Comtists, whose God is rather limited to the human aspect instead of being only revealed through it. It
has been preached by some Unitarians, though reverently denied by others and by Jews, who have felt
that

God

could not be incarnate in man: "This be far

from

thee,

Lord."

It has been recognised

and even

exaggerated by Catholics, who have almost lost the humanity in the Divinity, though they tend to restore the balance by practical worship of the Mother and of canonical saints. But whatever its unconscious treatment by the sects may have been, this idea the humanity of God or the Divinity of man I conceive to be the truth which constituted the chief secret and inspiration of Jesus: "I and the Father are one." "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." "The Son of Man," and equally "The Son of God." "Before Abraham was I am." "I am in the Father and the Father in me." And though admittedly "My Father is greater than I," yet "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father"; and "he that believeth on me
hath everlasting life." The world has been slow to grasp the meaning o

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

all this.

287

The conception of Godhead formed by some

though
still

devout philosophers and mystics has quite rightly been

assuredly utterly necessarily beneath reality, that the notion of a God revealed in human form born, sufso immeasurably vast,

inadequate and

fering, tormented, killed has been utterly incredible. "A crucified prophet, yes; but a crucified God! I

shudder at the blasphemy,"

phemy

is

yet that apparent blasthe soul of Christianity. It calls upon us to

recognise and worship a crucified, an executed, God. The genuine humanity of Christ is now manifest

and

clear enough,
lost.

of being

though that too has been in danger There have been efforts to ignore it,

and many to confuse it attempts are still made to regard him as unique, rather than as the first-fruits
of humanity, the first-born among many brethren. Realisation of the genuine and straightforward humanity of Christ is obscured by a reverent misapprehension, akin in spirit to that which originated the Arian denial of his divinity. Both modes of thought shrank amazed from the suggestion that God can be
really incarnate in, and manifested through, man: at any rate, not in normal man; such a thing only beis abnormal comes permissible and credible if the

Man

and unique, according to the orthodox view.

orthodox, therefore, to maintain that Christ's birth was miraculous and his death portentous, that he continued in existence otherwise than as we men conIt
is

tinue,
i

that his very

body rose and ascended

into

Kingsley's Hypatia.

288

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

whatever that collocation of words may; mean. But I suggest that such an attempt at excepa tional glorification of his body is a pious heresy
heaven,

heresy which misses the truth lying open to our eyes. His humanity is to be recognised as real and ordinary

and thorough and complete not in middle life alone, but at birth and at death and after death. Whatever happened to him may happen to any one of us, pro:

attain the appropriate altitude: an altitude which, whether within our individual reach or not, is

vided

we

what he urged again and again. "Be born again." "Be ye perfect." "Ye are the sons of God." "My Father and your Father, my God and your God." A
assuredly within reach of humanity.
is

That

The tmuniqueness of
Christ
is

the ordinary humanity of

and patent truth, masked only by reverent But the secsuperstition. well-meaning and ond truth is greater than that without it the first
the
first

would be meaningless and useless, if man what gain have we ? The world is full of men. the world wants is a God. Behold the God!

alone,

What
re-

The Divinity of Jesus new knowledge,

is

the truth which

now

quires to be re-perceived, to be illumined afresh by to be cleansed and revivified by the

wholesome flood of scepticism which has poured over it; it can be freed now from all trace of grovelling superstition, and can be recognised freely and enthusiastically the Divinity of Jesus, and of all other noble and saintly souls, in so far as they too have been inflamed by a spark of Deity in so far as they too can be recognised as manifestations of the Divine. Nor
:

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

is it

289

even through

though through
nature, and

man alone that the revelation comes, man and the highest man it comes
of

chiefly ; the revelation is implicit in all the processes

explicit too, so far as human vision, in the person of its seers and poets and men of science, has been as yet sufficiently cleared and strengthened

to perceive it. For consider

what is involved in the astounding idea of Evolution and Progress as applied to the whole
universe.

If it God is one be a fact, what an illuminating fact it is of God. revelation the universe is an aspect and a
Either
it is

a fact or

it is

a dream.
!

The universe

is

struggling

upward

yet attained. I see in the mighty an eternal struggle towards more

ception,

to a perfection not process of evolution

and more

self -per-

and fuller and more all-embracing Existence not only on the part of what is customarily spoken of as Creation but, in so far as Nature is an aspect and revelation of God, and in so far as Time has any
ultimate meaning or significance, we must dare to extend the thought of growth and progress and de-

velopment even up to the height of all that we can In some parts of the realise of the Supernal Being. universe perhaps already the ideal conception has been attained; and the region of such attainment the full blaze of self-conscious Deity is too bright for mortal eyes, is utterly beyond our highest thoughts; but in part the attainment is as yet very
imperfect; in what we know as the material part, which is our present home, it is nascent, or only just beginning; and our own struggles and efforts and

290

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY,

disappointments and aspirations the felt groaning and travailing of Creation these are evidence of the indeed they themselves are part of the effort, towards fuller and completer and more conscious exeffort,

On this planet man is the highest outcome of the process so far, and is therefore the highest representation of Deity that here exists. Terribly imistence.
1

perfect as yet, because so recently evolved, he is nevertheless a being which has at length attained to
consciousness

and

free-will,

a being unable to be co-

erced by the whole force of the universe, against his will; a spark of the Divine Spirit, therefore, never

more

Open still to awful horrors, to of but to floods of joy also he perremorse, agonies sists, and his destiny is largely in his own hands; he may proceed up or down, he may 'advance towards a magnificent ascendancy, he may recede towards depths of infamy. He is not coerced: he is guided and influenced, but he is free to choose. The evil and
to be quenched.

the good are necessary correlatives freedom to choose the one involves freedom to choose the other.
;

So it must have been elsewhere, amid the depths of cosmic space, myriads of times over in all the vistas of the past; and thus may have arisen legends of the
iSo, in Professor Gilbert Murray's version of "The Trojan women" of Euripides, whose tragedies represent a parting of the ways between an old theology and a new, the tortured Queen Hecuba turns from the gods that know but help not, to the majesty of her own immeasurable grief, and in a moment of exalted vision perceives that even through her sorrow life had somehow been enriched, and that though Troy was burning and the race of Priam extinct, they had attained immortality in ways undreamed of, and would add to the harmony of
the eternal music.

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

291

evolution of what are popularly called angels, some ascendant in the struggle, others fallen by their own
rebellion.

Let

it

not be supposed that these instinctive

legends are based on nothing: they are a pictorial travesty doubtless, but they are not gratuitous inventions it is doubtful if entirely baseless or purely grat;

would have any vitality, every living idea must surely be based upon something these coruitous inventions
;

respond to something innate in the ideas of humanity, because embedded in the structure of the universe of

which that humanity

a part. question presses on the optimist for answer therefore Are the rebellious and the sinful not also on the
is

up grade? Ultimately and

in the last resort will not

they too put themselves in tune with the harmony of is to say? Time is infinite, eternity existence? is before us as well as behind us, and the end is not

Who

yet.
is

There is no "ultimately" in the matter, for there no end: there is room for an eternity of rebellion and degradation and misery, as well as for one of joy and hope and love. We can see that virtue and happiness must be on the winning side, while crime is a fruit of arrested development, or reversion to an ancestral type; we can perceive that vice contains suicidal elements, while every step in an upward direction

increases the potential energy of the moral universe; yet clearly there is to be no compulsion; the door of

hope is not closed, but it must of free-will be entered, and good and evil will be intermingled with us for many aeons yet. The law of progress by struggle and effort is not soon to be abrogated and replaced by a

292

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

Nirvana of passive contemplation. There is too much to do in this busy universe, and all must help. The universe is not a "being" but a "becoming" an ancient but light-bringing doctrine when realised, in change, in development, in movement, upward
it is

and

downward, that

activity consists.

A stationary condi-

would to us be simple non-existof the element ence; progression, of change, of activity, must be as durable as the universe itself. Motion, or stagnation,

notony, in the sense of absolute immobility, is unthinkable, unreal, and cannot anywhere exist: save

where things have ceased to be. Such ideas, the ideas of development and progress, extend even up to God Himself, according to the Christian conception. So we return to that with which we started: The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside the universe, above its struggles and advances, looking on and taking no part in the process, solely exalted, beneficent, self-determined and complete; no, it is also that of a God who loves, who
yearns,

who

suffers,

who keenly laments

the rebellious

and misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself, who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to conditions as the Soul of it all conditions not artificial and
;

transitory, but inherent in the process of producing free and conscious beings, and essential to the full

of Deity. a marvellous and bewildering thought, but whatever its value, and whether it be an ultimate reveself -development even

It

is

lation or not,

it is

the revelation of Christ.

Whether

DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY

it

293

be considered blasphemous or not and in his own day it was certainly considered blasphemous this was

the idea he grasped during those forty days of solitary

communion, and never subsequently let go. This is the truth which has been reverberating down
the ages ever since ;

of

has been the hidden inspiration saint, apostle, prophet, martyr, and, in however dim and vague a form, has given hope and consolait

tion to the unlettered

A God that could understand, that could suffer, that

could sympathise, that had felt the extremity of human anguish, the agony of bereavement, had sub-

and poverty-stricken

millions

mitted even to the brutal hopeless torture of the innocent, and had become acquainted with the pangs of
death,
tion of
this

has been the chief consolation of the

Christian religion.

This is the extraordinary concepGodhead to which we have thus far risen.

"This

is

my

beloved Son."

The

Christian

God

is re-

vealed as the incarnate spirit of humanity, or rather the incarnate spirit of humanity is recognised as a real
intrinsic part
:

of God.

"The Kingdom of Heaven

is

within you" surely one of the most inspired utterances of antiquity.

Infinitely patient the Universe has been while man has groped his way to this truth: so simple and con-

soling in one of its aspects, so inconceivable and incredible in another. Dimly and partially it has been

seen by all the prophets, and doubtless by many of the pagan saints. Dimly and partially we see it now; but in the life-blood of Christianity this is the most
vital element.

It

is

not likely to be the attribute of

294-

SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

any one religion alone, it may be the essence of truth in all terrestrial religions but it is conspicuously Christian. Its boldest statement was when a child was
placed in the midst and was regarded as a symbol of the Deity; but it was fore-shadowed even in the early
conceptions of Olympus, whose gods and goddesses were affected with the passions of men; it is the root
fact underlying the superstitions of idolatry
varieties

and

all

of anthropomorphism. "Thou shalt have none other gods but me" and with dim eyes and dull ears and misunderstanding hearts men have sought to
:

obey the commandment, seeking after God if haply they might find Him; while all the time their God was very nigh unto them, in their midst and of their fellowship sympathising with their struggles, rejoicing in their successes, and evoking even in their own poor nature some dim and broken image of Himself.

END

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

BERKELEY
Return
This book
is

to desk

from which borrowed.

the last date stamped below.

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MAY 27

194 8

28Nov'55VU

NQV1419S5US APR 28 1991

All

DISC

APR

22 '91

LD

21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476

XC 98420

C031605M41

181100