CENTURIES ago, in a far-off Eastern land, a philosopher poet set to
verse the sad music of his heart's doubts and longings, and the cry that
rings again and again through his poems finds an echo in men's hearts
to-day. The mystery of life and death over which Omar Khayam pondered
has never ceased to attract the thoughts of men. Returning spring brings
the old hopes back to our lives, sometimes with the same sadder echoes
that troubled Moschus and Horace, and still thinkers and poets bow
before the terror and the majesty of death which they are powerless to
explain.
What use then is it to trouble ourselves with a problem which is as old
as the life of man and which the greater intellects have failed to
solve? Think about it we must, again and again, unless we deliberately
stifle our thoughts when they turn to the things which matter most to
us. And since we are social beings, born dependent on each other and
made to help one another, it is natural that we should wish to share our
thoughts. [p.117]
Whence? and whither? and why? is a triad of questions over which men
have broken their hearts; in a sense they must always remain un
answered, or at least incompletely answered; and yet as long as men have
made them, one response at least has brought with it peace.
The problem of life and death was stated long ages before Omar's day by
another Eastern thinker, and with a poignancy greater at times than his.
Nowhere in Hebrew literature do we get a deeper sense of the gloomy
mystery of life than in the book of Ecclesiastes, where again and again
the writer makes lament over triumphant injustice, and the end that
comes alike to good and bad. There passes before his eyes the melancholy
pageant of the children of men, journeying along through the ages to the
common goal of endless oblivion. "All things come alike to all," he
cries; "there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the
good and to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to
him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that
sweareth as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil that is done under
the sun, that there is one event unto all; yea, also, the heart of the
sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they
live, and after that they go to the dead." And so too, he goes on to
speak of death as annihilation which puts the noblest of dead creatures
below the basest of the living. Probably most men have known some
[p.118] dark hour at least in which the tragedy of life comes home to
them, and they have wondered whether after all the old thinker was not
right. We take up as our own the refrain of Omar:
/I came like water, and like wind I go,/
/Into this Universe and why not knowing,/
/Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing,/
/And out of it as wind along the waste,/
/I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing./
Again there echo about us out of the past those ancient questions to
which the mind of man is ever framing answers, ever finding unsatisfying
those which others have made. How then can religion help, if even with
its presence those answers still remain incomplete?
When faith comes into our hearts, the mystics may tell us, uncertainty
does not go out of them. We are still facing an unknown future, and have
no more knowledge of the past than have our fellows. But a new factor
has come into our consciousness. We are able to go back and face the old
questions, and lo, they no longer seem to cut, as once they did, at the
roots of our being. We have hold of something which goes deeper than
doubt can reach, or fear can fall to. And strangely enough, the very
same metaphor which Omar uses to express his despair comes from the lips
of faith, but with how different a meaning:
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou nearest the sound thereof,
and canst not tell [p.119] whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is
everyone that is born of the spirit."
Beneath the unanswered question now, there is the abiding sense of the
reality that endures, a conviction that, though we do not understand its
purpose, life is not purposeless, and that though we cannot lift the
veil of death it is only a covering which hides from our eyes a wider
and greater world than ours.
It may be that some will feel that all such talk of faith is meaningless
to them. Religion and faith convey no such notions to their minds as
they seem to imply to others. What they want is the clear demonstration,
which a physicist might give us. If life goes on after death there must
surely be some proof of it.
If we try and look at life merely from the stand-point of the
physiologist, we do indeed perceive that we only observe it in
connection with certain structures of organic matter, and that, as far
as we are able to see, every act of human conscious ness is accompanied
by certain processes and changes in the grey tissues of the brain. When
those tissues are injured, the expression of this consciousness is
interfered with, and when a certain condition of the brain material
comes about life ceases, as far as our observation goes. So far as we
can observe, indeed, every act of life is accompanied by and connected
with some material condition, or at least some material concomitant. But
this is as far as the physi- [p.120] ologist can take us. What life is
he is still unable to say. To speak of life as energy, and to say that
energy is a potential property of matter, is only to hide from ourselves
with words the fact that life can only be explained to us in terms of
life: the physicists cannot tell us what life is.
If we admit that we cannot explain what it is in its ultimate nature, we
are yet all of us conscious enough of what we mean ourselves by life.
The word has a real significance to us, although we cannot define it or
explain it in any way.
Can we then find any answer from physical science as to whether or no
our life continues when the bodily change which we call death happens?
Since life is always connected, as far as we are able to observe it,
with certain physical conditions of the body, can it continue when those
conditions are no longer present?
There have been many thinkers impressed by the sense of a universe
governed by necessary and unchanging laws, who have felt that they could
only answer that since life is in our experience always accompanied by
certain material conditions, it must cease to exist when those
conditions have been removed.
There is one great assumption, however, which consciously or
unconsciously underlies this position, that the only universe which
exists is one that is intelligible to our thought, and that something
[p.121] which we cannot possibly understand, necessarily cannot possibly
exist.
But there is yet another thought which seems to have escaped such a
thinker: the possibility of the co-existence of more than one world and
of life passing from one world to another. Mathematicians have already
shown the possibility of this by discussing the existence of a fourth
dimension, and even working out problems involving the assumption of the
existence of this fourth dimension. The suggestion has been made
especially easy to grasp in the remarkable anonymous romance "Flatland,"
published some thirty years ago, which pictures the world of two
dimensions, wherein one person gets the notion of the existence of a
third dimension, and the extraordinary results that follow his heresy,
or madness, as it seems to his less enlightened fellows.
If the theory of the existence of another, or other dimensions be a
tenable one, we can conceive of the existence of a number of worlds
around us, co-existing with our own and including it, of which we are
either wholly unconscious or only very dimly conscious, and that not by
the faculties by means of which we have knowledge of our own world.
Now if we suppose that somewhere within us, at the centre of our lives,
is some meeting-point, some door through which we may have contact with
these other worlds and pass out into them, [p.122] we can also conceive
of a development growing out from this point of contact into that larger
life of which we should necessarily remain unconscious here, or even if
our whole nature were suddenly to be filled by a consciousness of how
its life extended beyond this universe into those other worlds, we
should yet be unable to express in terms of our own world this wider
life, or could only express it by symbols. The incapacity of our friends
to understand our experience would be no proof that it was not true, nor
would our own inability to express it in any way lessen the reality of
that experience to us. If such a hypothesis be correct, what may happen
at death may be that we pass out of the narrower world of three
dimensions into the wider world, which includes this and much more.
Another way of looking at the problem has been to conceive of our
various senses as channels through which we have entered into
communication with the world without us. At present we most of us are
only conscious of five such channels. We may conceive of the possibility
of many other channels of which we have no experience (and indeed
observation of certain living creatures has already led to the
hypothesis of a sixth sense, different from any of our own), and we can
also think of the channels as being one by one closed. So that at death
we may conceive of all our existing lines of communication with the
outer world being removed, and wholly new channels, with [p.123] what
may seem like an entirely different world, being opened up.[29] <#_edn29>
Such an explanation of the working of our universe is but a hypothesis.
Yet after all, it may to some extent help us to understand phenomena
otherwise very difficult to explain. Are not the mystics and seers, the
inspired poets and prophets, just those whose lives are more in touch
than ours with a world we cannot see, often able only imperfectly to
express themselves, but yet conscious of vast realities beyond our ken?
And may we not to some extent look upon faith as such a faculty, or
sixth sense, taking hold of the unseen and translating it into our own life?
But all have not this faith, it may be urged; it is strongest often when
the intellectual powers are weak enough, and men of the greatest genius
tell us they are wholly without it. Yet cannot we conceive of a
community of people almost wholly devoid of one of our own five senses,
say that of hearing? How difficult it would be for one of them whose
ears were suddenly opened to explain to his friends the new world about
him. Imagine these people watching a skylark, and looking on with
astonishment at the joy of the one man who heard it singing. A dull
brown bird flying aimlessly up into the air: why should he look on it
[p.124] with such wonder? They see all that he sees, and if he should
try to explain his feelings as he listens to its song, will they not one
and all be convinced that he is mad, or that he is at best only
recounting some subjective illusion? If he would convince them, let him
translate into terms of sight these curious sensations. He cannot do it,
and they can only pity his condition.
This may help us to realize how narrow a view that is of life which
conceives of this world of our consciousness as the only one which
exists. It may even help us to frame a physical hypothesis of another
life; but this is not enough for our need. If we are to go to the centre
of the problem we must turn not to physical difficulties, but to the
moral and spiritual ones. It is above all in its failure to solve the
problems of our inward life that the materialistic explanation of the
world breaks down.
All the explanations thus suggested have been too much akin to the
physical one to touch the heart of the problem. It is when we realize
the meaning of faith in our own lives here and now, that we cease to
trouble about the future. In the realization of the supreme value of
goodness, and the infinite meaning of it, we begin to understand that it
must endure, in a sense far deeper than mere extension in time or space.
Faith is the organ of spiritual apprehension, and comes into play
whenever we recognise in practice the claim of the ethical ideal as
opposed [p.125] to the materialistic, when the will to do the good
triumphs over the desire to get the good for our selves. In every act of
the inward life by which being is set above having, and by which our own
visible happiness is subordinated to that of our fellows, there comes
into play this activity of the soul which we call faith, by which we
come into contact with that which underlies our hopes, and put to test
the things we do not see. [30] <#_edn30>
As this faith comes to dominate and control our lives we are able to
reach a point at which the old doubts cease to pain us. We may still
repeat to ourselves the riddle of life, and seek for an answer; but
though we may continue to puzzle to find an explanation, we are
conscious that we have known something in the presence of which the
ancient questionings cease to trouble. We feel that somehow we have come
into touch with a presence which brings with it the solution of the
greatest of all problems. In the depths of our lives we listen to the
answer of faith.
Thus it is that the very words which ring with such a sense of awful
despair in the poem of Omar may express nothing but peace to one who has
gone through this experience: "He knows about it all, He knows, He
knows." The difference lies in this, that to Omar there is as he writes
no sense of contact with the Unseen, the Omniscient, in whose power he
lies; but to him who [p.126] has heard the answer of Faith that sense of
contact has come. He knows that in this deepest experience God has come
into touch with him, and henceforth life to him both came and goes, out
of God's hand into God's hand.
When Christ was confronted by the sceptical Sadducees with the problem
of human life enduring beyond the grave, he pointed to their faith that
the heroes of old time, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had had knowledge of
God, and told them that this knowledge of God meant life. A being that
has come to have communion with the Eternal cannot be conceived of as
passing away with the changing husk of things, the accidents of the body
and the outer world. Eternal life does not consist in the duration for
ever of an accidental process. If we could conceive of a jelly-fish
continuing thus an indefinite existence, which should involve neither
inward development nor the possession of higher powers than such a
creature is commonly believed to be capable of, we should still surely
be unable to speak of such existence as eternal life. For what we mean
by this is not the mere continuity of existence from a present of
transient accidents into a like future, but something which goes beyond
death because it goes beyond life too, as life is ordinarily pictured.
But can we hope to tread ourselves this way of the Divine life? There
are times when, the spiritual end which is ever present in our lives
makes itself evident to us, and now and again [p.127] across the
centuries come periods when the latent desires of men seem to come to
the surface. Such was that epoch of spiritual unrest and stirring which
came to England in the seventeenth century, in which the Quaker and
Quietest movements had their birth, and it may be that we are not far
away from the dawn of such another age to-day. Now, as then, men turn
from orthodoxy in search of something deeper and wider than its mere
creeds can give. The works of the old mystics are reissued from the
press, and in the by-ways of literature men are seeking for paths that
may lead them to inward peace. It is still twilight time. No prophet's
voice is clearly heard calling us towards the full light of the day, but
our eyes turn towards the horizon and watch for the signs of dawn.
We share a common life, and our need to-day is the same, though we may
express it in different ways. We are conscious of something lacking in
our lives, sensible at least at times of the evil there. We feel the
darkness about us, and long for light and for a power that shall take us
out of our lower natures, upward and onward. At such moments we may
earnestly desire to come ourselves into communion with God, that his
life may flow into ours and transform it. But how, after all, are we to
attain to some dim realization of this knowledge of God which illumines
the lives of the great mystics and brings peace to-day to many a life
which otherwise would be full of painful failure? [p.128] Perhaps
another saying from the book of Ecclesiastes may put us upon the path to
find the answer. It is one of those words which come sometimes to poet
and thinker, bearing within them fuller depth of meaning than was clear
to the writer who first framed them, groping as he may have been at the
edge of some great truth which he has never consciously apprehended.
"Also He hath set Eternity in their heart." [31] The words
were written in sadness, but there is within them the promise of hope.
There lies at once the key to the mystery of human unrest and the hope
for some deeper peace than the world without can give. Somewhere in the
depths of his own life every man is in touch with the Eternal. Sometimes
we are conscious of this higher reality surrounding us, as pervading all
about us; on some glorious day alone with Nature the wonder of the world
flashes upon us, and all things become radiant with a new light which
fills both us and them. Or silently in the quiet of the night, before
the mystery of the starry sky, a great peace comes over us in which our
own tiny life seems to take its place amidst the ordered harmony of all
the spheres.
But we come, too, to a vision of the Infinite in other ways; whenever we
see a good deed done, and behold its goodness, we are touching the hem
of the robe of the Eternal. In the inward recognition of the supreme
beauty of unselfish love we are directly conscious of a flash of
intuition [p.129] which illumines not the intellect alone, but our whole
nature. We are brought into touch with God at the very centre of our
lives. Nature is indeed the priest of the Eternal, and every high place
has still its altar, where we may worship in spirit and in truth. But in
an even deeper sense is the priesthood given to man. There is no man but
is called to that true temple service wherein every good act is filled
with meaning, not for himself only, but for his fellows. Every pure and
unselfish deed is sacramental, bringing the soul of him who beholds it
into touch with the God who inspired the act. And this contact with the
Divine through goodness in another may come to us in spite of all
intellectual barriers. If with our whole heart we honour a good deed
done our nature does obeisance to the God who is working within it, who
makes the deed of worth. Unknown to ourselves, we are drawn nearer to
Him, and His life touches our lives, and transforms them a little nearer
to His likeness. For every pure and lovely act that men do is not only a
revelation but an inspiration and an influence drawing others upward. We
have never had trust enough in the infectious power of a good deed.
Thus as we are faithful to the highest it has been given us to see, our
sight will be strengthened to see further: at the moment of vision we
are conscious that in the presence of the good thought, the good
personality, we are in contact with the source of strength that we need.
We must keep [p.130] close to the same source when the darkness is about us.
It is surely this truth that has helped to make the worship of the
Saints the power for good which it has been in the lives of devout souls
within the Catholic Church of Rome and of the East. They have done
reverence to that in the Saints which was of God, and in drawing near to
them they have been drawn near to Him also. The worship of the Saints
has done harm, not only in the case of the false reverence of the market
place, but whenever it has led men to turn from the source of the
saint's power to the accidentals of his life and character, and to
imitate the man, rather than to get into touch with his spirit. But the
words of the old Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," express
a great reality. We can get the greatest help from this belief in the
dark hours of the soul, and in all times of transition to fuller
knowledge of the truth, if by belief in the Church we mean belief in the
whole body of those who have come into touch with God through Christ,
and through his spirit, and who can be recognised as his disciples
because they bear in their lives his likeness. As we believe in the
Church in this sense, we shall strive to feel the inner bond of union
that connects together the good and holy of all creeds and nations, and
to bring our lives into harmony with the same spirit of unity.
Men who have shown singular devotion to some [p.131] hero saint whom
they love may have erred in the past in trying to reproduce his life
under altered conditions; and such imitation has sometimes led them all
too far from the spirit of the one whom they have sought to follow. St.
Francis of Assisi, and in later days John Wycliffe, and George Fox, have
each had followers such as these. But there is at least one to whom we
may look for this guidance without any of the narrowing influence that
other hero worship so often brings. We cannot read about our heroes,
look up to them and think of them, without coming under the influence of
their personality and without our character growing unconsciously to
bear in it some faint trace at least of theirs. Let us then turn thus in
the dark hour to Jesus Christ. No matter if for the moment we cannot
regard him as we have been taught the Church does. Let us put aside all
theories as to his birth; the miracles which puzzle us, even the fact of
the Resurrection, and the speculations of theology as to his Divine
nature. Not because these are not important matters, and not because we
may not have to go on thinking about them, and seeking more light about
them; but because for the guidance which most of all we need we can go
deeper than all these doubts and speculations. Let us make Christ our
teacher as his earliest disciples did, who knew nothing about his birth,
and only followed him at first just because they felt he was far better
than they and they had need of him and loved him. [p.132] As we do this,
and simply endeavour to keep near to his thoughts, to think over the
meaning of his words and to act as men who are seeking to follow him, we
shall begin to realize that there is in Christ himself a greater miracle
than anything recorded of him in the Gospels, and that whatever the
correct theory of the Resurrection may be, He is still a living
influence working upon our hearts and inspiring us onward to good. When
we doubt of God because of the world's evil, we can hear his voice speak
of the love which watches even over the fall of the sparrow, and some
sense of that love comes to us too, in the midst of our darkness. And
when the sense of our own wrong-doing is heavy upon us, we may feel
cheered to think that our Teacher never turned from the men of the world
and the profligate when they sought his help in honest sorrow, but
rather sought them first, and for the disciple who denied him had
nothing but a look of love. He knew what it was himself to be
discouraged, to spend long hours in prayer, to be misunderstood and to
fail. And sometimes there may come to us a glimpse of even deeper depths
into which he went for his fellow- men. As we feel all this we may not
be able to explain it, but we know ourselves the stronger for it, the
better able to face misfortune and temptation and suffering, and to hold
manfully to the best that we know, in the midst of doubt. And thus,
little by little, we come to feel we have found one who not only makes
us realize what failures [p.133] we have been, but is ever calling out
the best that is in us, drawing us on to a higher ground and clearer
air, where our vision carries further, until at length there may come to
us some glimpse of the Divine Love at work in the world and within us,
and some sense that Christ has brought to us God's expression of Himself
in the terms of humanity, so that we begin to understand a little of the
meaning of the words: "This is life eternal, that they may know Thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."
And meanwhile, let us have faith too for those who cannot yet feel this
attractive power as we, perhaps, have known it. In the Fourth Gospel the
Master tells his disciples that he has other sheep who are not of this
fold; we may picture his thought as going out to far-off lands where men
were striving to do their duty or to find the truth without any
knowledge of him, without any intellectual knowledge of God perhaps;
some legionary guarding the peace of the empire at the gates of the
North, some Roman government official upholding the dignity and justice
of the law amongst jealous robber tribes and unscrupulous traders, some
Greek philosopher seeking to know a yet higher law, and simple men and
women practising it unknown to themselves; or, further away in the
far-off East, the Buddhist missionary teaching the worth of gentleness
and mercy, or the disciple of Confucius learning to reverence the great
moral truths he knew, and to apply them [p.134] in all life's relations.
Some day all these should hear his voice; already they were his sheep.
And so to-day, wherever the lonely thinker spends his hours in seeking,
and the servant of science unselfishly gives up all thought of personal
advancement and delight in the pursuit of truth, wherever in the
politics of towns or peoples men seek to work out a higher form of
public life, or in business as in leisure to be faithful not merely to
their own interests, but to a wider ideal, we must see the seekers and
servants of good, who are God's servants too. Sooner or later for these
too will be fulfilled the words: "Blessed are they that have not seen
and yet have believed."