Produced by Ruth Hart
THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUL
By
Lilian Staveley
The Author of "The Golden Fountain"
London
John M. Watkins
21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2
1920
What am I? In my flesh I am but equal to the beasts of the field. In
my heart and mind I am corrupt Humanity. In my soul I know not
what I am or may be, and therein lies my hope.
O wonderful and mysterious soul, more fragile than gossamer and
yet so strong that she may stand in the Presence of God and not
perish!
"Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of
a _dove."--Psalm lxviii. 13._
By what means shall the ordinary man and woman, living the usual
everyday life, whether of work or of leisure, find God? And this
without withdrawing themselves into a life apart--a "religious" life,
and without outward and conspicuous piety always running to public
worship (though often very cross and impatient at home); without
leaving undone any of the duties necessary to the welfare of those
dependent on them; without making themselves in any way
peculiar;--how shall these same people go up into the secret places
of God, how shall they find the marvellous peace of God, how
satisfy those vague persistent longings for a happiness more
complete than any they have so far known, yet a happiness which is
whispered of between the heart and the soul as something which is
to be possessed if we but knew how to get it? How shall ordinary
mortals whilst still in the flesh re-enter Eden even for an hour? for
Eden is not dead and gone, but we are dead to Eden--Eden, the
secret garden of enchantment where the soul and the mind and the
heart live in the presence of God and hear once more "the voice of
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. iii.).
It is possible for these things to come to us or we to them, and in
quite a few years if we set our hearts on them. First we must desire;
and after the desire, steady and persistent, God will give. And we
say, "But I have desired and I do desire, and God does not give.
Why is this?" There are two reasons for it. For one--are these
marvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulant
demand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour when
the world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, when
our plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are the
occasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call a
better world, and of the consolations of God.
But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon the
flood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much time
will he or she give to Almighty God?--not two moments during the
day. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable riches
upon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does a
man acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for two
moments of endeavour?
"Ah," some of us may cry, "but it is more than two moments that I
give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him." If that is
really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain
why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the
consciousness of the Presence of God. In this wall there is one Door,
and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found God because we have
not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether
we take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, or
whether we take it to our amusements, we shall not find Jesus in any
one place more than another if He is not already in our hearts to
begin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I have
never seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him very
persistently; by comparing the world and its friendships and its loves
and its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know of
the lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it is
impossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person that
we know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think about
Him, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him,
and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly in
our heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ and
afterwards that divine garden of the soul in which God seems to slip
His hand under our restless anxious heart and lift it high into a place
of safety and repose.
When for some time we have learnt to go in and out of this garden,
with God's tender help we make ourself a dear place--a nest under
God's wing, and yet mysteriously even nearer than this, it is so near
to God. To this place we learn to fly to and fro in a second of time:
so that, sitting weary and harassed in the counting-house, in an
instant a man can be away in his soul's nest; and so very great is the
refreshment of it and the strength of it that he comes back to his
work a new man, and so silently and quickly done that no one else in
the room would ever know he had been there: it is a secret between
his Lord and himself.
But the person who learns to do this does not remain the same raw
uncivilised creature that once he or she was: but slowly must
become quite changed; all tastes must alter, (all capacities will
increase in an extraordinary manner), and all thoughts of heart and
mind must become acceptable and pleasant to God.
The man who has not yet begun to seek God--that is to say, has not
even commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but lives
absorbed entirely in the things of the flesh--is a spiritual savage. To
watch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual man
the same thing as when a European watches an African in his native
haunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods,
amusements, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with his
own ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud European
does not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what the
savage is--quite dark; that to God's eyes his own ways and tastes are
as frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a man
above a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat,
the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn his
bookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to live
spiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Until
it is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneer
covering the raw instincts of the natural man--instincts satisfied
more carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but always
the same. There is little variety in the lusts of the flesh; they are all
after one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, and
are very limited.
It is not the clay of our bodies fashioned by God which makes some
common and some not. It is the independent and un-Godlike
thoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common,
and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, the
harmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is the
work in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts and
making for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force in
motion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living God.
For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire _willingness)_
to make us not only acceptable to God, but delightful to Him, so
much so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem not
to be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visits
us and dwells with us after His own marvellous fashion and catches
us up to Himself.
To begin with, we must have a set purpose and _will_ towards God.
In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort,
which God will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing to
maintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus step
by step the spirit rises--first the effort, then the gift. First the will
to do--and then the grace to do it with. Without the willing will God
gives no grace: without God's grace no will of Man can reach
attainment. God's will and Man's will, God's love and Man's love--these
working and joining harmoniously together raise Man up into Eternal
Life.
* * *
God is desirous of communicating Himself to us in a Personal
manner. In the Scriptures we have the foundation, the basis, the
cause and reason of our Faith laid out before us; but He wills that we
go beyond this basis, this reasoning of Faith into experience of
Himself. For this end, then, He fills us with the aching desire to find
and know Him, to be filled with Him, to be comforted and consoled
by Him, to discover His joys. He fills us with these desires in order
that He may gratify us.
By being willing to receive and understand as only through the
medium of the _written_ word we limit God in His communications
with us. For by the Holy Ghost He will communicate not by written
word but by personal touching of love brought about for us by the
taking and enclosing of Jesus Christ within the heart not only as the
Written Word, the Promise and Hope of Scripture, but as the Living
God.
For this end inward meditation and pondering are a necessity.
* * *
How is it that we so often find great virtue, remarkable charity and
patience amongst persons who are yet not conscious of any direct
contact with God? They have never known the pains of repentance,
neither have they known the sublime joys of God. Are these the
ninety-and-nine just persons needing no repentance? Instinctively,
and almost unconsciously, they hold to, and draw upon, the
Universal Christ--or Spirit of Righteousness; but they have not laid
hold of nor taken into themselves that Spirit of the Personal Christ,
whom Christians receive and know through Jesus. He is the Door
into the unspeakable joys of God. What are these joys of God? They
are varying degrees of the manifestation and experience of
_reciprocal_ Divine Love.
What is the true aim of spiritual endeavour--an attempt at personal
and individual salvation? Yes, to commence with, but beyond that,
and more fully, it is the attempt to comply with the exquisite Will of
God; and the general and universal improving and raising of the
consciousness of the whole world. Yet this universal improvement
must take place in each individual spirit in an individual manner.
There are those who would deny to individuality its rights, claiming
that the highest spirituality is the total cessation of all individuality;
yet this would not appear to be God's view of the matter, for in the
most supreme contacts of the soul with Himself He does not wipe
out the consciousness of the soul's individual joy, but, on the
contrary, to an untenable extent He _increases_ it. And Jesus teaches
us that life here is both the means and the process of the gradual
conformation of the will of Man to the will of God, and our true
"work" is the individual learning of this process. But this cultivation
of our individuality must not be subverted to the purpose of the mere
gain of personal advantage, but because of the heartfelt wish to
conform to the glorious will of God. The failure of the human will to
run in conjunction with the Divine will is the cause, as we know, of
all sin. In the friction of these opposing wills, forces baneful to Man
are generated.
From its very earliest commencement in childhood our system of
education is based upon wrong ideas. With little or no regard to
God's plans Man lays out his own puny laws and ambitions and
teaches them to his young. We are not taught that what we are here
for is above all and before all to arrive at a sense of personal
connection with God, to identify ourselves with the spiritual while
still in the flesh. On the contrary, we are taught to grow shy, even
ashamed, of the spiritual! and to regard the world as a place
principally or even solely in which to enjoy ourselves or make a
"successful career."
Children are taught to look eagerly and mainly for holidays and
"parties"; grown men and women the same upon a larger and more
foolish scale, and always under the terribly mistaken belief that in
spiritual things no great happiness is to be found, but only in
materialism: yet very often we find the greatest unhappiness
amongst the wealthiest people.
Happiness! happiness! We see the great pursuit of it on every side,
and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but he
fails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, a
Finding-place for God. Whoever will obey the law of finding God
from this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he,
and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitive
mysterious unseen Something which--not knowing what it is, yet
feeling that it exists--we have named Happiness.
But how commence this formidable, this seemingly impossible task
of finding God in a world in which He is totally invisible? To the
"natural" or animal Man God is as totally hidden and inaccessible as
He is to the beasts of the field; yet encased within his bosom lies the
soul which can be the means of drawing Man and God together in a
glorious union. "I have known all this from my childhood," we cry,
"and the knowledge of it has not helped me one step upon my way."
Then try again, and reverse your method, for hitherto you have been
beseeching gifts from God, asking for gifts from Jesus, and have
_forgotten to give._ Give your love to Jesus, give _Him_ a home,
instead of asking Him to give you one. Give your heart to God, _set
it upon Him._
What is keeping you back? You are afraid of what it will entail; you
are afraid of what God will demand of you; those words "Forsake all,
and follow Me" fill you with something like terror. I cannot leave
my business, my children, my home, my luxuries, my games, my
dresses, my friends! Neither need you but, knowing this initial
agony of mind, Christ said it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle (the name of an exceedingly narrow gate into
Jerusalem) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What does it mean to "set the heart" upon something? We say, "I
have set my heart on going to see my son," "I have set my heart on
doing so-and-so," but this does not mean that in order to accomplish
it we must wander homeless and lonely until the day of achievement.
No; but we set our heart and mind upon eventually accomplishing
this wish, we shape all our plans towards it, we give it the first place.
This is what God asks us to do; to give Him the first place. We need
not go to Him in rags: David and Solomon were immensely wealthy,
Job was a rich man; but we must eventually think more of Him than
we do of our dress, more of Him than we do of our business, more
of Him than we do of lover, friend, or child. Many well-minded
people are under the impression that such love for an Invisible Being
is a total impossibility. Yet the great commandment stands written
all across the face of the heavens--"Thou shalt love Me with all thy
heart and mind and soul and strength." Are we then to suppose that
God asks the impossible of His own creatures, that He mocks us?
No; for when we desire He sends the capacity, and day by day sends
us the power to reach this love through Jesus Christ. There is
included in the words "Give us this day our daily bread," the bread
of the soul, which is Love.
Divine Love commences in us in a very small way, as a very feeble
flicker, for we are very feeble and small creatures. But God takes the
will for the deed, and the day comes when suddenly we are filled
with true love, as a gift. This is indeed the second baptism, the
baptism of fire, the baptism of the Holy Ghost; then at last the great
wall which has hitherto divided our consciousness from God goes
down in its entirety, never again to rise up and divide us. This is the
mighty work of Jesus Christ.
Though this is not our work, still we have had the earnest will, the
longing desire; we have made continually, perseveringly, our tiny,
often futile, efforts to please and place Him first, and though perhaps
almost all were failures, He has counted every one to us for
righteousness.
We may at all times be asking ourselves, "But how shall I know the
will of God, how shall I please Him, how shall I know what Christ
would wish me to do or to think?" There is one test more sure than
any other, which is to ask oneself, "Would Jesus have done
just this?" and the answer will come from the inward of us
instantaneously. But before we can use this test we must have made
a careful study of Scripture and also have begun the habit of inward
personal intimacy with Jesus Himself. So immense is the bounty of
God to the creature that truly and persistently wills and endeavours
to please Him, so great are the rewards of that creature for its tiny
work that it is as though a child should scratch bare ground with its
little spade and reap a harvest of sweet flowers as magic gifts. In this
way it is that we find actually fulfilled in ourselves the lovely words
of the prophet, "the desert shall blossom like the rose."
The great initial difficulty that surely most of us feel is how to come
into personal contact with this Jesus Christ, and to know which are
the first steps that we should take to bring about this contact. They
are just those same steps that we use to come to a nearer
understanding of and greater intimacy with any persons we are
desirous of making friends with. We commence by thinking about
them, by arranging to spend time in their companionship; and the
more we think about them and the more time we spend with them if
they are very attractive people, the more we feel in sympathy with
them. Form, then, the habit of making for brief instants a mental
picture of the Saviour. Note the exquisite tenderness of His hands,
so instantly ready to save and heal; note the calm strength and the
great love in His countenance, walk beside Him down the street, join
His daily life, learn to become familiar with Him as Jesus--what
would He do, how would He look, what would His thoughts be? To
feel sympathetically towards a person is to take one of the most
important steps towards friendship. How many of us stop in the rush
of our daily amusements, interests, and work to sympathise with
Christ? Most probably, if we think of Christ at all, it is to feel that
He ought to sympathise with us! Now Christ not only sympathises
with but ardently loves us, and our failure to receive the comfort and
help of this love is due to our failure in returning to Him these same
feelings of sympathy and love and friendship. We are not reciprocal,
but perpetually ask and never give.
It is only by returning love to Christ that we are able to receive the
benefits of His love for us. His mighty power and help flows around
but not through us until we place ourselves in individual and direct
contact with Him, until we make that mysterious inward and
spiritual connection with Him which can be achieved only through a
personal love for Him.
Again and again we may cry out, "But how love the invisible?"
Christ is invisible, but for all that, he is not unknown. We all of us
know Him. But we do not give ourselves time or opportunity to
know Him sufficiently well. What hours, months, years, we devote
to making and knowing our friends; yet a few moments a day are
more than enough for most of us to spend in becoming more
intimate with the only Friend whom it is worth our while to make.
"But life is so busy I have no time," you say. What of those hours
spent in the train, those moments spent waiting for an appointment,
that half-hour taken for a rest, but which is not a rest because of the
rushing inharmonious turmoil of your thoughts? No one is so restful
to think of as Jesus. Every single quality that we most admire, trust,
and love is to be found in Jesus Christ. The only reason of our
failure to love Him more ardently than any human being we know is
that we do not think enough about Him.
How much offended we should be if anyone dared to say to us,
"You are not a Christian." We all consider ourselves Christians as a
matter of course; but why this certainty, what reason can we give?
Many would say, "I keep the Commandments, and I am baptised in
Christ's name." But Christianity is not an act done by hands, it is a
life, and the Jews keep the Commandments even more strictly than
we and are not Christians. The mere fact of believing that Christ
once lived and was crucified is not enough. The Jews and also the
Mahommedans believe that He lived and was crucified.
What is then necessary? That we believe that He is indeed the Son
of God, the Messiah, the Saviour; for if He was no more than a holy
man, by what means has He power to save us more than Moses has
power to save us?
The true inward knowledge that Christ is God comes not by nature
to any man, but by gift of God--which gift must be earnestly sought,
striven, prayed for, and desired: this faith is the very coming to God
by which we are saved. If we are not yet in this faith that Jesus
Christ is the Messiah, then we are neither Jew, Mahommedan, nor
Christian, but wanderers without a fold, and without a Shepherd;
longing, and not yet comforted.
How do we come by this joy of the personal loving of God, this
Romance of the Soul brought to sensible fruition whilst still in the
flesh?
Is it a gift? Yes. Is it a gift because of some merit of goodness on our
part beyond the goodness of other persons who are without it,
though striving? No. Is it because of some work for God that we do
in this world, charitable or social? No. Is it, then, nothing but an
arbitrary favouritism on His part? No. Is it a sagacity or cleverness,
a height of learning, a result of close study? No.
It is simply and solely a certain and particular obedient attitude of
heart and mind towards God of the nature of a longing--giving, a
grateful outgoing thinking towards Him, continually maintained, and
a heart invitation to, and a receiving of Jesus Christ into ourselves.
Our part is to maintain this obedient tender-waiting, giving and
receiving attitude under all the circumstances of daily life, and
Christ with the Holy Ghost will then work the miracle in us.
But so difficult is this attitude to maintain that we are totally unable
to do it without another gift upon His part--Grace. The whole
process from first to last is gift upon gift, and that because first of
our belief and desire, and then of our continually remembering that
to receive these gifts we have a part to play which God will not dispense
with. For an illustration let us turn to the artist and his sitter.
The sitter does not produce the work of art, but must maintain his
attitude: if he refuses to do this, the work of the artist is marred and
even altogether foiled. So with Christ and His Divine Art in bringing
us to our Father--by not endeavouring to maintain our right attitude
we foil His work. God would seem to give us that which we seek
and ask for, and no more. Great ecclesiastics, theologians,
philosophers who sought and desired Him with the intelligence,
seeking for knowledge, for pre-eminence of spiritual wisdom, were
not given as an addition to their learning this exquisite fire and balm
of love. Those who desired of Christ the healing of the body
received that, and we are not told they received anything further. So
also with the woman at the well: "If thou hadst asked," Christ said to
her, "I would have given thee of the water of Life." Without we ask
for and receive this gift of Love we hang to God by Faith only.
What is true religion, what is that religion by which we shall feel
_wholly satisfied?_ It is to have Christ recognised, known, adored,
and living in the soul. This is the New Life within us, this is the New
Birth. The first proofs of the power of this New Life in us is the
victory over all the lower passions, victory over the animal "that
once was ourself"! A victory so complete that not only do we cease
to desire those former things or be troubled by them but we no
longer "respond" to that which is base, even though we be brought
into visual contact with such things as would formerly have
inevitably excited at least a passing response in us. Can any man
free himself in such a manner from his own nature? Common sense
forbids us imagine it. It is then a Living Power within us, slowly
transforming us to higher levels, from the fleshly to the spiritual, and
shaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tender
consideration of this Power for our weakness that while we are
learning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higher
pleasures of the soul--we are not left comfortless. So in our earlier
stages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later are
altogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired by
the soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which all now ask
and desire one favour only--to be on earth in continual fellowship
with Christ Jesus and ever able to enter into the love of God. To be
without this glorious power of entering Responsive Love of God, to
be cut off from this, is the great and only fear of the soul. This fear it
is which holds the soul and the creature towards God both day and
night lest by the least forgetfulness or wrongful attitude they should
lose Him or displease Him.
All these changes no man can bring about for himself--they are
accomplished for him by the Holy Spirit; but this he can and _must_
do for himself, invite Sweet Jesus into his heart and enthrone Him
there as Ruler. This once accomplished, that mysterious monitor
within us commonly known as "Conscience" grows until it attains an
excessive sensitiveness which penetrates the minutest acts of life
and the deepest recesses of heart and mind. It becomes inexorable, it
demands instant and complete obedience. Because of it relations
with other persons undergo a drastic change. Complete, instant,
entire forgiveness for every offence is demanded, and at last even a
momentary annoyance must be effaced; no matter how great the
cause of annoyance, it must be effaced in the same instant as that in
which it crosses the mind, for a single adverse thought eventually
proves as injurious to the Spirit as a grain of sand is to the eyes.
The petty human aims, the smallness of all our former standards, the
instinct for "retaliation" must all be overcome, laid upon one side--a
slow task of much humiliation to the creature, revealing to it its own
smallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness of
self-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absolute
self-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor--the
Soul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of the
power of God does the regenerated creature think of those
alterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, are
eventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilised
because not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becoming
gifts--that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itself
has been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be said
that to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail--and
this in the very meanest way!
We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, a
wanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of means
except the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Women
devote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, and
dogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games,
and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in all
their being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dust
of disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungry
pleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and the
most their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one.
But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does not
bring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of the
flesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God.
This world is the very place in which we can most easily and
quickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere act
of dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusion
of the Enemy--it is living here which can fit us and carry us to
heaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven is
a state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousness
we become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as the
flesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short of
those required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longing
of the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilst
we are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewildering
vortex of a life of terrible intensity and great solitude. We are aware
of nothing but Self, are tormented by Self with its forever
unsatisfied longings, and by the _impossibility of achieving any
other Self._ In this intensity of self-tormenting loneliness the soul
feels to gyrate, and all that she knows of that which is outside of this
Self is the sound of the rushing of invisible things, for she is blind.
Without the light of this world and without the light of Christ. The
joys of space are not open to her, only the dark and lonely horrors of
it: she is in an incalculably greater state of isolation from God than
here in this world! The remedy for all this lies here; let no one think
he can afford to wait to find this remedy until after he leaves this
world, for then his chance is gone, and who is able to foretell when
it will return? What can be more beautiful, more happy, than to find
this remedy, to find the only Being who loves us as much as we love
ourselves! the gentle, tender, gracious, all-sufficing Christ; that
all-mighty ever-giving Christ who yearns over and longs for us--what
madness is it that prevents us seeking Him?
All of us would seem to have two personalities: we are the repentant
and the unrepentant Magdalene and daily change from one to the
other. But true repentance cannot come before love: if we think we
repent before we love, then it is no more than a repentance of the
mind, which says to itself, "I must stand well with God because of
my future well-being." Where love comes first we get the repentance
of the heart, which works this way in us--we love Jesus a little, we
love Him more and more, and because of this love increasing to real
warmth we suddenly perceive the frightful offences we have
committed against this sweet love, and instantly the heart melts and
breaks and we are shaken to our depths that we have ever grieved
our Holy Lover. This is true repentance--no anxious fears for our
own future, but love grieving and agonised for its offences. Such
repentance as this pierces to the deepest recesses of the heart and
mind, and leaves upon them a deep indelible mark, changing all the
aims of our life, and is the beginning of all joys in Christ Jesus. Let
us aim therefore not first at repentance, but first at love. A little love
to Jesus given many times a day as we walk or wait or work, if only
at first said by the lips with desire for more warmth, after a while we
shall find ourselves giving it from the heart; then the Divine Seed
has begun to grow because we have watered it.
If the natural man were asked, "What is life? what is it to live?" he
would reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure or
pain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that I
do all these things." Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck of
consciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinking
man tells him that this is so. But how uncover a further
consciousness? This is the secret of the soul.
To pass from one form of consciousness to another--this is to
increase life fifty, a hundred, a thousand times according to the
degrees of consciousness we can attain. These degrees would seem
to be irrevocably limited because of the mechanical actions of heart
and breathing, which automatic actions become suspended or
seriously interfered with in very high states of consciousness. When
first these very great expansions of consciousness take place, the
creature is under strong conviction that the soul has left the
body--that it has gone upon some mysterious journey--this because of
several reasons. The first is because of a certain persistent sound of
rushing; the second is because of the sense of living at tremendous
speed, in a manner previously altogether unknown and totally
undreamed of, in which the senses of the body have no concern
whatever and are completely closed down; thirdly, on returning
from this "journey" we are not immediately able to exact obedience
from the body, which remains inert and stiffly cold and suffers
distress with too slow breathing. But reason demands, "How is it
possible that the soul should leave the body and the body not die?
and also we perceive this, that, though the consciousness is
projected to an infinite distance, or includes that infinite distance
within itself, it yet remains aware of the existence of the body,
though very dimly."
The method employed, then, for administering these experiences to
the soul and the creature is not by means of drawing the soul out of
the body, but by a withdrawal of the condition of insulation from
Divine Life or great magnetic emanation, in which insulation all
creatures have their normal existence, living in a condition which
may be termed a state of total Unawareness. By Will of God this
condition of insulation is removed, the soul enters Connection and
becomes instantly and vividly aware of Spiritual Life and of that
which Is, at an infinite distance from herself, so that the soul is at
one and the same time in paradise or heaven, and upon the earth:
space is eaten up. Without seeing or hearing, the soul partakes in a
tremendous and unspeakable manner of the joys of God, which, all
unfelt by us as "natural" man, pass unceasingly throughout the
universe.
These experiences give an immense and unshakable knowledge to
the soul and the creature of the immense reality of the Unseen Life,
and are doubtless sent us to effect this knowledge. Why, then, is not
every man given this knowledge? Because the creature must qualify
before being allowed to receive it, and too many hold back from the
tests. By these experiences we learn some little portion of the
mystery which lies between the pettiness of that which we now are
and the great glories that we shall come to; and in this awful
heavenly mystery in which are fires that have no flame, and melody
which has no sound, the soul is drawn to Everlasting Love. But we
cannot endure the bliss of it, and the soul prays to be covered on
account of the creature.
But because of the limitations of the flesh we are not to despise it
but regard it not as an aim or end (as that if we satisfy its lusts that
shall be our paradise), but regard it as a means. Christ willed the
flesh and the world to be a rapid means of our return to God. Subdue
the flesh without despising it, in humility and thankfulness. Suffer
its trials and penalties not in dejection, rebellion, or hopelessness,
but as a means to an end. "For everyone shall be salted with fire,"
says Scripture; and can anything whatever be well forged or made
without it be first melted and cleaned? So, then, for each his
Gethsemane. As for Christ, so for Judas, who, not being able to
endure, went out and hanged himself. Let our care, then, be to
choose that Gethsemane which shall open to us the gates of heaven
and not hell.
In our raw state we fear the Will of God, thinking it a path of thorns;
but as Christ moulds and teaches us we grow to know the Will of
God as a great Balm: to long to conform to it, joyfully to join it, to
sink into it as into an immense security where we are safe from all
ills; and at last, no matter what temporary trials we endure, so great
does our love and confidence grow by _Grace_ of God upholding
our tiny efforts that, like Job, we cry to Him with absolute sincerity
and confidence, "Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee";
having learnt it is not His Will to slay but to restore and purify and
make glad. Incessant work is the lot of the awakened and returning
soul, and justly so, for because of what folly and ingratitude did she
ever leave God? A multiplicity of choices lie before her, and her
great concern is which amongst all these possible decisions will
prove the shortest path to God. These choices and decisions must be
brought down to the meanest details of everyday life. At first on
awakening the soul would like nothing better than to forsake and
cast away material things altogether, and is inclined to despise the
body. But Jesus teaches her that this is not pleasing: it is His Will
that she should continually lend assistance to the creature in its
weaknesses and uncertainties, not disdaining it but helping it. It is
the soul which maintains contact with the Divine Guide, and then in
turn should guide the creature. As the Divine Guide condescends to
the soul, never despising her, so must the soul condescend to the
creature: acknowledging and understanding that nothing is too small
or humble for the soul to attend to and lead the creature to do in a
beautiful and gentle manner.
By these means the permeation of the natural world by the Divine is
carried out, and no act or fact of life can be considered too
insignificant for the soul to attend to for the development of this aim.
The more we become familiar with spiritual life the more we
observe the regularity of certain laws in it, and the more we find
analogies between these new and unmapped laws and the laws and
forces already known to us in the visible world. Rightly expounded
by some scientific mind, these could bring the world of human
thought and aspirations straight into the arms of God.
Science is the friend and not the enemy of religion. Science will
light up and illuminate the dark gaps. This world is a house fully
wired for lighting: the wiring is perfect, the bulbs alone are
incomplete; they give no light: it is the task of the soul to perfect
these human bulbs.
The life of conscious connection with God is true living as far as we
may know it in the flesh, an enormous increase over the petty
normal life of the world or, more rightly, the petty and _lacking_ life
of the world. For in this life of God-consciousness is an immense
sanity and poise, a balance between soul and body and heart and
mind never achieved in the "normal" or "natural" life. Therefore the
God-conscious life is not to be named an abnormal but the complete,
full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creature
have found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts is
brought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnified
intelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this world
would automatically become Paradise. In this true life living and
feeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can be
imagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some idea
of this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, still
there are some types of persons to whom a little something of the
commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be
conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature,
of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest
moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable
Something--an expansion, a going out towards, a longing--yearning,
subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth,
beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a
Nameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this is
the commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne has
become to the soul that which It really is--God--and _He sends His
responses to her,_ then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life as
we may know it in the flesh.
But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receive
His responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance of
their ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this mode
of living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner,
because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousness
of God, and this in a lively and acute degree.
One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merely
half-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours of
Him, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longings
towards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounder
unbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy is
a deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His part
to keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to this
end. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperity
that causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some or
all of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are most
tender--there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else or
anything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard to
bear," we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use,
and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing and
trying to save us, and we will not be saved.
If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason of
our life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees,
humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened and
purified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations.
We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferent
wrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. First
we must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus the
Christ: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once found
and known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakable
condescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul is
filled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her Holy
Lover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns to
Him He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filial
love, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness of
the finding and knowing of God!
Let the man who would know happiness here study the works of
God, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that he
sees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It is
very real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it,
and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made--God's
things, not trivial man-made things--let him observe how all are
made with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violet
perfect as the oak." Let him learn the manner of the ways of light
and the colours of all that he sees,[*] and then stop to consider how,
having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicate
eyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider all
these things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heart
and the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise but
like sunshine upon water.
[*] _Scientific Ideas of To-day,_ by C. Gibson.
What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of an
invisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having done
this, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing of
beauty He has fashioned here: and this praising and blessing of God
becomes nothing less than a continual ecstasy for both soul and
creature, and, indeed, because of this and by means of this burning
appreciation of God's works, both soul and creature find their
sweetest consolations as they wait to be taken to a holier world.
When they both bless God with the fire of their love for every tender
thing that He has made, then their days become to them one long
delight.
This blessing of God and His works is not just a blessing with lips,
but feels this way. The words being said by the heart, a burning
spark of enthusiasm is immediately kindled there, which spark sets
light to a spark in the soul; and this invisible fire joining another
Invisible Fire, instantly in immense exaltation we enter the joys of
God. But because of our flesh we cannot stay but only enter and
come back.
We are made to love and adore God, but the mode of entry into this
is not by beseeching God to come down and love us, but by constant
endeavour to enter up into _His_ estate, to offer _Him_ love: this
enthusiasm for God brings about a mysterious accomplishment of all
needs, desires, joys.
We are made to love and adore God, and because of this without
Him we are an Emptiness, a Great Want. Such is the lovely and
perfect reciprocity of love that as this Great Want we are the
pleasure and the joy of the All-Giving God. And He is the
All-Giving that He may rejoice and fill our extremity of Want. So we
are each to each that which each most desires. This is Divine Love.
Do not let us imagine that by making very much of earthly loves we
shall by that obtain the heavenly: on the contrary, love of creatures,
and too much turning to and thinking of and depending upon
creatures, is a sure manner of hindering us _till_ we have learnt to
unite with Divine Love. This love for creatures is often for the heart
and soul what treacle is to the wings of a fly! Do not be content with
creatures, but seek beyond the creaturely for the heavenly.
This is not to say that we are not to love our fellow-creatures, attend
to them, wait upon them, bear with them, and work for them; but
whilst doing all these we are not to make them the object of our life:
we are not to think that by merely running about amongst creatures
frenzied with plans for their social improvement and comfort the
nearer we are necessarily getting to God, or even truly pleasing Him.
All these multiplicities of frenzied interests are best centred upon the
finding and knowing and loving of Jesus Christ within our own
hearts. When this finding, knowing, loving and believing has been
accomplished, then we shall have accomplished the only work God
asks us to accomplish, and all other works will automatically,
peacefully, and smoothly come to their proper fruition in us through
Him.
Neither imagine we shall do this finding of Jesus in, or because of,
another person. We shall not find Him in another person or
anywhere till we have first found Him in ourselves: and this by
inward pondering, delicate tender thinkings, loving comparisons,
sweet enthusiasms, persistent endeavours to imitate His gentle ways
and manners as being some proof of our desire to love and find Him.
The need which is the most pressing of all our needs is to find that
Light which will light us when we have to go out from the light of
this world into the awful solitudes of that which we often so lightly
and confidently speak of as "the other world."
Without Christ we go out into a fearful loneliness: with Christ we
walk the rainbow paths of Paradise.
* * *
Having tasted the blissful wonders of God, nothing less than God
Himself can satisfy, comfort, or fill either the soul, heart, or mind;
and yet we are still in a too small and imperfect condition to endure
the power and strength of God's bliss for more than brief spells, so
that after coming to these high things our portion here is to learn to
be a useful willing servant, carrying with as cheerful a face as we are
able the burden of life in the flesh, and endure this waiting to be
with Christ free of the flesh.
What are these blisses of God? They are contact with an
immeasurable Ardour, they are our ardour meeting the Fountain of
all Ardours: and God is communicated to us by a magnetism which
in its higher degrees becomes luminous and unbearable.
Are these divine joys and comforts of God towards us because we
are more loved by God, because our salvation is more sure than that
of those who are without these comforts? Most emphatically no. It is
because we obey a particular and subtle law of giving to God, and
do not (as is more natural to us) content ourselves with merely
believing, expecting, and hoping to receive _from_ God.
Let us pray more frequently than we do: "My Lord, increase my
faith, increase my love, and increase my understanding of how to
use this faith and this love when they have been begotten in me."
* * *
On every side we hear complaints against the Church. It is suggested
that we are falling away from God because of some lack in the
Church. But this fault of the Church is exactly the same fault which
is to be found in the members of the congregation which compose it--a
tepid love for a dimly known Lord. When the priest and every
member of the congregation in his own heart worships the beloved
Christ, then the Church will be found to have gained just that which
is now lacking, and which we attribute to some priestly failure and
not our own also.