I am not surprised to hear that you consider the theory above described
of Christ’s resurrection, “vague, shadowy, and unsatisfying.” But as in
the very same letter you say that you are quite convinced of the
unhistorical nature of the account of the resurrection of Christ’s
material body, I think you ought not to dismiss the subject without
giving more attention than you have given as yet to it. As a student of
history and as a young man bent on attaining such knowledge as can be
attained concerning the certainties or probabilities that have the most
important bearing on the life and conduct of myriads of your
fellow-creatures, you ought at least to ask yourself what better
explanation you have to offer of the marvellous phenomena of the
Christian Church and in particular of St. Paul’s part in spreading
Christianity.
I sympathize with the “sense of bathos,” as you call it, which comes
over you when you hear that the phenomena of the Resurrection of Christ
are to be explained by a study of the growth and development of the
revelation given to mankind through the Imagination. I sympathize with
you; but I sympathize with you as I should with a child who might be
standing by Elijah’s side at the time when the prophet saw his
never-to-be-forgotten vision. That child would feel, no doubt, “a sense
of bathos” because the Lord was not in the fire, nor in the whirlwind,
nor in the earthquake, but in the still small voice. You are in the
childish stage of susceptibility to anything that is noisy and big; you
have not been taught by experience and thought to appreciate the
divineness of things obvious, ordinary, and quiet; above all you have
not yet learned to revere your own nature nor to acknowledge (except
with your lips) that you are made in the image of God. Retaining still a
keen recollection of the pain with which I passed through that stage
myself, I have neither the inclination, nor the right, to despise your
present condition of mind; but I believe, if you will still keep the
question open in your mind, and if you will meditate a little now and
then on the frequency, or I may say the universality, of illusion in the
conveyance of all the highest truth, you will gradually come, as I came,
to perceive that the essence of the resurrection of Christ is that His
Spirit should have really triumphed over death, and not that His body
should have risen from the grave.
No doubt you would be much more impressed if the tangible body of some
dead friend of yours, after being buried in the earth, had appeared to
certain witnesses and touched them, and eaten in their company, than if
a vivid apparition of the friend had appeared to the same witnesses; but
I think you would much more easily believe the latter than the former;
and you might be more impressed by a strong conviction of the latter
than by a doubtful, timid, clinging to the former. I can hardly think
that if you had received several accounts from independent witnesses, of
apparitions of this kind resulting in a marvellous change of character
in all who had seen them, you would at once put them aside simply
because they might be called in some sense natural. The very fact of
their being natural would lead you to consider how strange must have
been the causes that had produced such strange results; how powerful
must have been the personality that had thus forced itself on the mental
retina of the seers of the apparition; and if something important had
followed from such a vision, say, for example, the writing of a great
poem, or the foundation of a noble empire, I cannot think that you would
set down the vision as a negligible trifle.
But you feel, I dare say, that, though you might be impressed by the
stories of such an apparition, you could not feel certain that the
apparition represented any reality; there would be no definite proof
that the witnesses of the apparition were not under the influence of a
delusion. Well, I will admit that there would be no proof of the
ordinary kind, that is to say, no proof such as is conveyed through the
senses about ordinary terrestrial phenomena; but I think you might feel
certain; only it would be that kind of certainty which is largely bred
from Faith and Hope. And this sort of certainty, and no other, appears
to me that which was intended to be produced by the Resurrection of
Christ. His manifestations were unseen and unheard save by the eye and
ear of Faith. If the proof of His resurrection had not depended upon
Faith, then the Roman soldiers would have seen His material body
miraculously issuing from the shattered sepulchre, and the companions of
Saul would have both seen Christ and understood the voice that cried,
“Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” If we could ascertain exactly the
historical basis for the account in the Fourth Gospel of Christ’s
manifestation to the doubting Thomas we should probably find—supposing
that we were really justified in treating the account as historical—that
there was in Thomas a strong desire to believe, combined with a strong
sense of the impossibility of attaining adequate proof. As in the life
of Christ, so in the resurrection of Christ, conviction appears never to
have been forced on any entirely unwilling unbeliever.
In order to believe in the resurrection of Christ, it is not enough to
be convinced that the evidence is honest and genuine, and that the
witnesses could not be deceived; that kind of belief savours of the
law-court, and there is nothing spiritual in it; but the man who truly
and spiritually accepts Christ’s resurrection is he who says to himself
as he reviews the life of Christ and the history of the Church: “Being
what He was, and having done the work that He has done, this Jesus of
Nazareth ought not to have succumbed to death. If there is any evidence
to shew that the veil of the invisible has been so far thrown back, be
it for a moment, as to shew me Jesus in the spiritual world still living
and triumphant over death, my conscience opens its arms at once to
embrace that belief.” And there is this advantage in basing your faith
on the spiritual resurrection of Jesus, that you keep the region of
faith distinct from the region of disputable testimony. If you rest your
hopes on the material resurrection, that is a question of doubtful
evidence. Your heart says, “Oh that it might be true!” Your brain says,
“I cannot honestly say that I think it is true.” Hence a constant
conflict between heart and brain, while you are forced again and again
to ask yourself, “Must I be dishonest in order that I may persuade
myself that I am happy? And even if I can honestly believe in the
material resurrection to-day, how do I know that some new evidence—the
discovery of some new Gospel for example—may not overturn my belief
to-morrow?”
But the life and doctrine of Christ, the conversion and letters of St.
Paul, the growth and victories of the Church, and the present power of
Christ’s Spirit are facts that can never be overthrown; and if you say,
“On the basis of these indisputable facts, considered as a part of the
evolution and training of mankind I rest my hope and my faith that Jesus
has conquered death and still lives and works among us and for us”—why
then you rest on a basis that cannot be shaken. And surely such a faith
is more strong, more spiritual, more comforting, yes, and more certain
too, than a “knowledge” which you know in your own heart to be no
knowledge! How long will mankind be content to be ignorant that the HALF
which constitutes truth is worth more than the WHOLE which is made up of
truth and truth’s integumentary illusion! How many there are to whom the
saying of old Hesiod is still unmeaning:
_Alas thou know’st not, silly soul,
How much the half exceeds the whole!_
You cannot obtain, and must not expect to obtain, any demonstrative
proof of the Resurrection of Christ, any more than you can obtain a
demonstrative proof of the existence of a God: yet you can feel as
strong and as sincere a conviction of the former fact as of the latter.
It is curious that St. Paul’s parallel between the Resurrection of
Christ and that of men should be so habitually overlooked. He assumes,
as a matter of course, a similarity, almost an identity, between the
Resurrection of men and the Resurrection of Christ: “If there is no
resurrection of the dead neither hath Christ been raised,” and again:
“Now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them
that are asleep.” This reasoning holds excellently, if the Resurrection
is to be the same for us as it was for our Saviour, a spiritual
Resurrection, and if the Resurrection of Christ visibly revealed the
universal law which shall apply to all who are animated by the Spirit of
God. But if Christ’s Resurrection was of a quite different kind, if it
was a bodily stepping out of the tomb three days after burial, how can
this be called the “first fruits” of the Resurrection of men whose
bodies will all decay and for whom therefore no such stepping out from
the tomb can ever be anticipated? The best, the truest, the most
comforting belief in the end will be found to be that Jesus was “put to
death in the flesh but _quickened_ (not in the flesh but) _in the
spirit_.” And as it was with Him, so we believe it will be with us.
But perhaps you will remind me that one of the Creeds mentions “the
Resurrection of the _body_,” and that St. Paul anticipates the
Resurrection, not of a “spirit,” but of “a spiritual _body_;” and you
may ask me what I infer from this. I for my part infer that St. Paul
desired to guard against the notion that the dead lose their identity
and are merged in God or in some other essence; he wished to convey to
his hearers that they would still retain their individuality, the power
of loving and of being loved; possibly also he wished to suggest a life
of continued activity in the service of God; and in order to express
this he used such language (metaphorical of course) as would
unmistakeably imply that identity would be preserved, and activity would
be possible. But he took care to guard his language against
materialistic misinterpretation by insisting that the body would be
“spiritual” and therefore invisible to the earthly eye and cognizable
only by the spirit. The new body, he says, is “a building from God,” “a
house not made with hands, _eternal_;” and he prefaces this by saying
“the things which are seen are temporal, but the things _which are not
seen_ are _eternal_.” Hereby he clearly implies that the new body will
be “not seen.” Elsewhere he tells us that “the things prepared by God”
for them that love Him (and of course he includes in these the “building
from God, the house not made with hands”) are such as eye “_hath not
seen_ nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man; but
God hath revealed them unto us _by the Spirit_;” and again, “the things
of God none knoweth _save the Spirit of God_,” which has been imparted
to the faithful.
To speak honestly, I must add that, even if I found St. Paul had
committed himself repeatedly to any theory of a material or
semi-material Resurrection, consonant with the feelings of his times, I
should not have felt bound to place a belief in a materialistic detail
of this kind upon the same high and authoritative level as the belief in
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or any other general and
spiritual article of faith. But I find no such materialism in St. Paul.
He appears to me to say consistently, 1st, that Christ’s Resurrection
was a type of (“the first fruits of”) the Resurrection of mankind; 2nd,
that in contrast to the first man Adam, the earthy, who became a living
soul, the last Adam, the heavenly, became a “life-giving spirit;” 3rd,
that, as we have borne the image of the earthy, so we shall also bear
the image of the heavenly; 4th, that the “body” of the faithful after
death will be “spiritual,” just as the Church of God is “a _spiritual_
house,” and the sacrifices of the saints are “_spiritual_ sacrifices.”
There is no more ground for thinking that St. Paul supposed that we
should hereafter have spiritual hands, or be spiritual bipeds, than for
thinking that he supposed the sacrifices of the Church to be spiritual
sheep, or the temple of the Church to be composed of celestial stones.
After our Resurrection, we are still to be conscious of God’s past love,
still to rejoice in His present and never-ending love, still to be
capable of glorifying and serving God, of loving as well as of being
loved—this St. Paul’s theory of the “spiritual body” certainly implies;
and it need not imply more. And what our Resurrection will be, that
Christ’s Resurrection was.
The ordinary fancies about the Resurrection teem with absurdities, and
are redeemed from being ridiculous, only because they all spring from
the natural and reasonable desire that we may hereafter preserve our
identity. But they ought to be suppressed if they create, as I fear they
create, additional difficulties in the way of conceiving, and believing
in, a future life. I do not wish to scoff at the popular views; but it
is important that those who adopt the materialistic theory of the
Resurrection should realize the unnecessary and grotesque
inconsistencies with which they obscure the Christian faith. Popular
Christianity appears generally to accept a sensuous paradise, only
excluding what some may deem the coarser senses, the smell, touch, and
taste. But what is the special merit of the other two senses, hearing
and seeing, that they alone should be allowed places in Paradise? And
this visible, semi-spiritual body upon which the vulgar fancy so
insists—what purpose will it serve? “The purposes of recognition between
friends.” Then it will be like the old material body of the departed—at
what period of his existence? Shall he be represented as a youth of
twenty or a man of forty, or of fifty, or as a child of ten? And how as
to the body of one who was deformed, maimed, or hideously misshapen and
ugly? “It would be a purified likeness, summarizing, as it were, every
period of life, so that it would be recognizable, not indeed by our eyes
but by those of spiritual beings.” That is conceivable: but why all this
trouble to obtain a visible body that shall make recognition difficult,
when recognition can be conceived so much more easily as the result of
mere spiritual communion? Keep by all means the language of the
_Apocalypse_ and of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ in order to describe in
poetry the condition of the blessed dead; but remember that it is the
language of poetry; and let every such use of words be concluded (as
with a doxology) by the thought, “Thus will it be, only far better,
infinitely better; for God is love; and our future communion with the
love of God will be a height of happiness such as no power of sense can
reveal, and only the spirit-guided soul can faintly apprehend.”
But perhaps you will say “You are ready enough to attack other people’s
notions about the semi-material resurrection; but you are not equally
ready to explain your own notions about a spiritual resurrection. You
cannot even tell us what a spiritual body is, except that it has the
power of loving and being loved.” Precisely so; I am quite ignorant. Yet
in my knowledge of this matter I am superior to a very great number of
other theologians. For they think they know, whereas I know that neither
I nor they know. Let me go a little further in my confession of
ignorance and admit that I do not really possess knowledge about a
number of other matters about which many profess with great glibness to
know everything. I am certain that I exist; but I doubt whether I can
analyse and explain the reasons for my certainty, and I am quite sure I
cannot prove my existence by logic. If I am pressed for a proof, I
should say (as I have stated in a previous letter) that my belief in my
existence was largely due to the Imagination. _Cogito, ergo sum_, “I
think, therefore I am,”—if intended as a serious proof, and if there is
any real meaning in the “_ergo_”—appears to me to be the most babyish of
arguments. I respect the gigantic intellect of the arguer, but not even
a giant can make ropes of sand; and it needs but a little grammar to
dissolve this reasoning to nothing. “I think” means “I am one thinking.”
In some languages, in Hebrew for example, you might have no other way of
expressing the proposition than in this form: “I am one thinking.” What
sort of reasoning then is this! “I _am_ one thinking, therefore I _am_.”
“This _is_ white paper, therefore it _is_!” Surely a ridiculous
offspring to issue from great logical travail! And besides, what
infinite assumptions are presupposed in that monosyllable “I”! How do I
know that “_I_ think,” and that it is not the great world-spirit who
thinks in me, as well as rains outside me? Why ought I not to say “_it_
thinks,” just as I say “_it_ rains”? What do you mean by “I”? Tell us
what “I” is. And how can the desperate logician set about telling us
what “I” is, without assuming that his own “I” is, which is equivalent
to assuming “I _am_”? Surely this is altogether a hopeless muddle, and
we ought to give up reasoning about “I” and “am;” yes, and I would add
not only about “I” and “am,” but also about a number of other
fundamental conceptions, which are far more profitably assumed as
axioms. For my part, whenever I use the words “mind,” “matter,”
“substance,” “spirit,” “soul,” “intellect,” and the like, and make any
serious statement about them, I hardly ever do so without a mental
reservation, saying to myself—“but of course there may be no such things
precisely as these, but some other things quite different, producing the
results which we ascribe to these; so that all these statements may be
only proportionately true.”
I do not object to the use of the materialistic language where it is
recognized as metaphor by those who use and those who hear it; but the
mischief is that it is often not so recognized. Once make yourself the
slave of the popular language about “spirit,” and “substance,” and what
not—and you are in danger of being manacled intellectually as well as
theologically. The popular belief is that a man’s spirit is inside him,
like his qualities; the latter like peas in a box, the former like gas
in a bladder. Drive a hole through a man’s left side or the middle of
his head, and—out goes the spirit; that is the common materialistic
creed. Now I have a strong desire to declare that this creed is
ridiculously false. But I will be consistent and simply say that I know
nothing whatever about it. My spirit may possibly be inside me; but it
may possibly be outside me; say at a point six feet, or six miles, above
me; or away in Jupiter, or Saturn, or down at the earth’s centre; or it
may be incapable of occupying space. What does it matter to you or to
me, theologically or intellectually, whether that part of us which we
call our “spirit” has its local habitation inside us, or outside, or in
no locality at all? Is it not enough to recognize that we have powers of
acting, loving, trusting, and believing, and to feel certain that God
intends these powers to be developed and never to perish? Yet I remember
that a friend of mine was shocked, and almost appalled, when I avowed
ignorance as to the locality of my spirit. He seemed to think I might as
well have no spirit at all, if it could not prove its respectability by
giving its name and address!
For my part I am now quite certain of Christ’s spiritual Resurrection,
and in that conviction I am far happier and far more trustful than when
I at first mechanically accepted upon authority and evidence the belief
in the Resurrection of Christ’s body, and subsequently strove to retain
that belief, against the testimony of my intelligence and my conscience.
I think you also will find, as years go on, when it becomes your lot to
stand by the grave into which friend after friend is lowered, that a
heartfelt conviction of the spiritual Resurrection of Christ affords
more comfort to you at such moments than your old belief—based largely
upon historical evidence, and brain-felt rather than heart-felt—in His
physical Resurrection. For the former unites us with Christ, the latter
separates us from Christ. We none of us expect that the material and
tangible bodies of our friends will rise from the dead in the flesh
without “seeing corruption;” but we do trust that they shall rise as
“spiritual bodies” over whom death shall have no power. This trust is
confirmed by the belief that Christ rose as we trust they shall
hereafter rise. If, therefore, Christ rose a material body from the
grave—that stirs no hope in us. But if, while His body remained in the
grave, His spirit rose triumphant to the throne of God, then we see a
hope indeed that may suit our case and give us some gleam of
consolation. The bodies of the dead may lie there and decay; but what of
that? Even so was it with the Saviour: but the spiritual body is
independent of the flesh and shall rise superior to death.
Do not imagine that the spiritual body is one whit less real than the
material body; only, as the material body belongs to the time-world, so
the spiritual body belongs to the eternal world. Each is suited to its
own environment, but each of them is a real body. As to the relation
between the material and the spiritual body we know nothing, and we need
know nothing.
When will men learn to be less greedy of shams and bubbles of pretended
material knowledge, and more earnest and patient in their sober
aspirations after spiritual truth? When will they realize that an
unhesitating faith in a few elementary principles is better than a
tremulous quasi-knowledge of a whole globe of dogmas?
XXIV
WHAT IS A SPIRIT?