You take me to task for the abrupt termination of my last letter. I
broke off, you say, just when you thought I was on the point of
explaining what I meant by a spirit: “Surely you have some theory of
your own and are not content with disbelieving other people’s theories.”
Well, I thought I had said before that I am content to know merely this
about a spirit, that it possesses capabilities for loving and serving
God, or other nobler capabilities corresponding to these. But if you
press me to set up some theory of my own that you may have the pleasure
of pulling it to pieces, I will confess to you that my nearest
conception of a spirit is a personified virtue. This cannot very well be
quite right; any more than a carpenter can be like a door, or like
anything else that he has constructed. But it is the nearest I can come
to any conception that is not too repulsively material. And sometimes,
when I try to conceive of the causes of terrestrial thoughts, and
emotions, and spiritual movements, I find myself recurring to the
antique notion, hinted at in one or two passages of the Bible, and I
believe encouraged by some of the old Rabbis, that there are two worlds;
one visible, terrestrial, and material, the other invisible, celestial,
and spiritual; and that whatsoever takes place down here takes place
first (or simultaneously but causatively) up there; here, the mere
outsides of things; there, the causes and springs of action; the bodies
down on earth, the spirits up in heaven.
This is but a harmless fancy. Let me give you another. You know—or might
know if you would read a little book recently published called
_Flatland_, and still better, if you would study a very able and
original work by Mr. C. H. Hinton[31]—that a being of Four Dimensions,
if such there were, could come into our closed rooms without opening
door or window, nay, could even penetrate into, and inhabit, our bodies;
that he could simultaneously see the insides of all things and the
interior of the whole earth thrown open to his vision: he would also
have the power of making himself visible and invisible at pleasure; and
could address words to us from an invisible position outside us, or
inside our own person. Why then might not spirits be beings of the
Fourth Dimension? Well, I will tell you why. Although we cannot hope
ever to comprehend what a spirit is—just as we can never comprehend what
God is—yet St. Paul teaches us that the deep things of the spirit are in
some degree made known to us by our own spirits. Now when does the
spirit seem most active in us? or when do we seem nearest to the
apprehension of “the deep things of God”? Is it not when we are
exercising those virtues which, as St. Paul says, “abide”—I mean faith,
hope and love? Now there is obviously no connection between these
virtues and the Fourth Dimension. Even if we could conceive of space of
Four Dimensions—which we cannot do, although we can perhaps describe
what some of its phenomena would be if it existed—we should not be a
whit the better morally or spiritually. It seems to me rather a moral
than an intellectual process, to approximate to the conception of a
spirit: and toward this no knowledge of Quadridimensional space can
guide us.
What, for example, do we mean when we speak of the Holy Spirit, and
describe Him as the Third Person in the Trinity? I hope you will not
suppose—because I happen to be a rationalist as regards the historical
interpretation of certain parts of the Bible, or because I have not
disguised my dislike of the formal and quasi-arithmetical propositions
in which the Athanasian creed sets forth the doctrine of the
Trinity—that I reject the teaching of the New Testament on the nature
and functions of the Holy Spirit. Literary criticism may oblige us to
regard the long discourses on the functions of the Paraclete or Advocate
in the Fourth Gospel as being in the style of the author and not the
language of Christ; but it is difficult to suppose that the sublime
thoughts in those passages are the mere inventions of a disciple of
Jesus; and the characteristic sayings of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels
bear cogent though terse witness to His acknowledgment of a Holy Spirit
who should “speak” in His disciples, and “teach” His disciples what to
say, when they were summoned before the bar of princes: “it is not ye
that speak, but the Holy Spirit,” Mark xiii. 11; “it is not ye that
speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you,” Matth. x.
20; “the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to
say,” Luke xii. 12. I need not remind you how large a space “the Spirit”
claims in St. Paul’s Epistles, and especially of the use which the
Apostle makes of the triple combination of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. Even, therefore, if I could give no explanation of the
whole of it, nor so much as put into words the faint glimpse I may have
gained into the meaning of a part of this doctrine, I should be inclined
to accept the existence of the Holy Spirit on the authority of Christ or
St. Paul, as being a doctrine that does not enter into the domain of
evidence, a conception of the divine nature from which I might hope to
learn much, if I would reverently keep it before me and try to apprehend
it. But I seem to have a glimpse of it. That influence or “idea” of the
dead which, as Shakespeare says, “creeps into our study of imagination,”
and which reproduces all the best and essential characteristics of the
departed—when this has once taken possession of us, do we not naturally
say that we now realize “the spirit” of the dead, feeling that it guides
us for the first time to the appreciation of his words and deeds? Now as
God, the initial Thought, needed to be revealed to us by means of the
Word of God, so the Word needed to be revealed to us by means of the
Influence of the Word. Or, to put it more personally, as the Father
needed to be revealed by the Son, so the Son needed to be revealed by
the Spirit. Those who knew Christ merely in the flesh knew but little of
Him, and had little understanding of His words. It was the Spirit of
Christ that guided, and still guides, His disciples into the fuller
knowledge of the meaning of His past life on earth and His present
purposes in heaven.
I own, however, that I have sometimes felt at a loss when I have asked
myself, “How is this Spirit a Person? And do I love Him or It? And if
Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus are two Persons, then must I also infer
two personalities for myself, one for my mortal terrestrial humanity,
another for my immortal celestial spirit?” These questions are extremely
difficult for me to answer with confidence: yet I feel instinctively
that they have a profound and satisfying answer to which I have not yet
attained; but I suggest some answer of this kind, “When we endeavour to
form a conception of God we ought to put aside the limitations of human
individuality. Now we cannot do this while we conceive of God simply as
the Father, and still less while we conceive of Him simply as the Son;
but we can do it when we conceive of Him as being an all-pervasive
Power, the source of order and harmony and light, sometimes as a Breath
breathing life into all things good and beautiful, sometimes as a Bond,
or Law, linking or attracting together all things material and spiritual
so as to make up the Kosmos or Order of the Universe. The traditions of
the Church have taught us that there has been such a Power, subsisting
from the first with the Father and the Eternal Son, in whom the Father
and the Son were, and are, united; and by whom the whole human race is
bound together in brotherhood to one another and in sonship to the
Eternal Father. What is this Being but the Personification of that Power
which, in the material world, we call Attraction and in the immaterial,
Love? Is it not conceivable that this Being which breathes good thoughts
into every human breast should love those whom It inspires? And we—can
we love our country, and love Goodness, Purity, Honour, Faith, Hope, and
yet must we find it impossible to love this personified Love, this Holy
Spirit? But if we love the Spirit of God, and the Spirit loves us, then
we can understand how it may be called a Person.”
I foresee the answer that might be given to these—I will not call them
reasonings, say meditations. “All this is the mere play of fancy: you
personify England, Virtue, Goodness, Hope, Faith, and the like; and such
personifications are tolerable in poetry; but you do not surely maintain
that such personifications have any real existence: in the same way, you
may find a certain conception of the Supreme Being useful for the
encouragement of devotion, but you have no right hence to infer that
this conception represents an objective reality, much less God Himself.”
My reply is that in the region of theological contemplation where
demonstration, and proof of the ordinary kind, are both impossible, I
conceive I “have a right” to do this on the authority of Christ and St.
Paul and the Fourth Gospel, and the general tradition of the Church. I
would sooner believe that myself and my spirit have a dual personality;
I would sooner recognize the presence of the Angels of England and
France and the other great nations of the world about the heavenly
throne, like the Angels of the seven churches of Asia or the Angel of
the Chosen People; I would sooner acknowledge the actual personality of
Hope, Faith, and I know not what other celestial ministers between God
and man; I would sooner, in a word, believe that personality depends
upon some subtle combination such as only poets have dimly guessed at,
than I would give up the belief that there is beside the Eternal Father,
and the Eternal Son, an Eternal Spirit, to the description of whom we
can best approximate by calling Him personified Love.
Looking at the Spirit of God in this way I sometimes seem to discern a
closer connection than is generally recognized between the Resurrection
and the power of loving. You will remember that St. Paul constantly
connects the Resurrection of Christ with the “Spirit;” Christ was
“raised from the dead _in_, or _by_, _the Spirit_;” and St. Peter says
that Christ was “put to death in the flesh, but quickened _in the
Spirit_.” Now this Spirit is the Power of Love. Do we ask for an
explanation of this connection? It is surely obvious that the
Resurrection of Christ would not have directly availed men (so far as we
can see) unless it had been manifested to them. But how was it
manifested? We think it was by love: on the one hand by the unsatisfied
and longing love of the sorrowing disciples, creating a blank in the
heart which could only be filled by the image of the risen Saviour; on
the other hand by the unsatisfied and longing love of the Lord Jesus
Christ, dying with a purpose as yet unfulfilled. Thus—so far as concerns
the influence of the Resurrection of Jesus upon humanity—it was the
Spirit of Love that raised Jesus from the abyss of inert oblivion and
exalted Him to the right hand of God in the souls of men. I dare not say
that, if Jesus had failed to root Himself in the hearts of men He could
never have been raised from the dead; just as I dare not say that, if
St. Peter had not been inspired to say “Thou art the Christ,” the Church
could never have been founded on the rock of heaven-imparted faith. Let
us avoid this way of looking at things, as being repulsive and
preposterous, putting things terrestrial before things celestial. Let us
rather say that, because the rock of faith was being set up by the hand
of God in heaven, therefore at that same instant the Apostle received
the strength to utter his confession of faith; and because Christ’s
Spirit had soared up after death to the heaven of heavens and thence was
bending down lovingly to look upon His despairing followers, therefore
they received power to see Him again, living for them on earth.
Yet as regards ordinary men, I cannot help occasionally reviving that
same preposterous method which I would discard in the case of Christ.
And starting from terrestrial phenomena first, I sometimes ask myself,
Is it possible that the resurrection of each human soul may depend upon
the degree to which it has rooted itself in the affection of others? The
Roman Catholic Church teaches that the condition of the dead may be
affected by the prayers of survivors; and many abuses have resulted from
a perverted and mechanical misinterpretation of that doctrine; but how
if the spirit of a dead man actually owes its spiritual resurrection,
not indeed to formally uttered petitions, but to the silent prayers, the
loving wishes, the irrepressible desires of fellow-spirits on earth and
in heaven? How if a man lives in heaven and in the second life so far as
his spirit has imprinted itself on the loving memories of others above
and below? “Has the dead man kindled in the heart of one single human
being a spark of genuine unselfish affection? To that extent, then, he
receives a proportional germ of expansive and eternal life—might it not
be so? And if it were so, then we could better understand how both the
Lord Jesus Christ, and we mortal men, die in the flesh but are raised to
a life eternal after death ‘in the Spirit’ and ‘by the Spirit’—that
great pervasive spiritual Power of Love which links all things in heaven
and earth together.”
I trust I have theorized enough to please you. I have done so because on
the whole I think it best that you should see all the weakness, as well
as all the strength, of my position—the credulous and fanciful side of
it, as well as its breadth, its naturalness, its reasonableness, its
spiritual comfort, its dependence on moral effort, its recognition of
Law, its consistency with facts, and its absolute freedom from
intellectual difficulties. Regarded in the ordinary way, as being the
revivification of the material body, the Resurrection of Christ becomes
an isolated portent in history; regarded naturally, it becomes the
triumph of the Spirit over the fear of death, the central event of our
earthly history. Central I say, but not isolated; because there are seen
converging towards it, as it were predictively, all the phenomena of the
evolution and training of the Imagination; all instances of true poetic
and prophetic vision; the stars of heaven and all the creative
provisions of night and darkness and sleep and dreams, nay even death
itself. And what higher tribute (short of actual worship) can be paid to
the personality of Christ than to say that “the phenomena of His
resurrection are natural.” I think if I were depressed and shaken in
faith—as one is liable to be at times, not by intellectual but by moral
considerations, when one feels that evil is stronger than it should be,
both in oneself and outside oneself—it would be a great help to go and
hear some agnostic saying with vehement conviction, “The resurrection of
Christ was natural, purely natural.” I should bid him say it again, and
again; and I would go home and say it over and over again to myself by
way of comfort, to strengthen my faith: “The manifestations of the
Resurrection of Christ were purely natural. So they were. Things could
not be otherwise. Being what He was, Christ could not but thus be
manifested to His followers after death. It was the natural effect of
Christ’s personality upon the disciples; and through the disciples upon
St. Paul. Then what a Person have we here! A Person consciously superior
to death, and, after His death, fulfilling a promise which He made to
His disciples that He would still be present with them! What wonder if
He is even now present with us, influencing us with something of the
power with which He moved the last of the Apostles! What wonder if He is
destined yet for future ages to be a present Power among men until the
establishment of that Kingdom which He proclaimed upon earth, the
Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man!”
Footnote 31:
“_A Romance of the Fourth Dimension_,” Swan & Sonnenschein.
XXV
THE INCARNATION