The Law of Continuity having been referred to already as a prominent
factor in this inquiry, it may not be out of place to sustain the plea
for Natural Law in the Spiritual Sphere by a brief statement and
application of this great principle. The Law of Continuity furnishes an
_a priori_ argument for the position we are attempting to establish of
the most convincing kind--of such a kind, indeed, as to seem to our mind
final. Briefly indicated, the ground taken up is this, that if Nature be
a harmony, Man in all his relations--physical, mental, moral, and
spiritual--falls to be included within its circle. It is altogether
unlikely that man spiritual should be violently separated in all the
conditions of growth, development, and life, from man physical. It is
indeed difficult to conceive that one set of principles should guide the
natural life, and these at a certain period--the very point where they
are needed--suddenly give place to another set of principles altogether
new and unrelated. Nature has never taught us to expect such a
catastrophe. She has nowhere prepared us for it. And Man cannot in the
nature of things, in the nature of thought, in the nature of language,
be separated into two such incoherent halves.
The spiritual man, it is true, is to be studied in a different
department of science from the natural man. But the harmony established
by science is not a harmony within specific departments. It is the
universe that is the harmony, the universe of which these are but parts.
And the harmonies of the parts depend for all their weight and interest
on the harmony of the whole. While, therefore, there are many
harmonies, there is but one harmony. The breaking up of the phenomena of
the universe into carefully guarded groups, and the allocation of
certain prominent Laws to each, it must never be forgotten, and however
much Nature lends herself to it, are artificial. We find an evolution in
Botany, another in Geology, and another in Astronomy, and the effect is
to lead one insensibly to look upon these as three distinct evolutions.
But these sciences, of course, are mere departments created by ourselves
to facilitate knowledge--reductions of Nature to the scale of our own
intelligence. And we must beware of breaking up Nature except for this
purpose. Science has so dissected everything, that it becomes a mental
difficulty to put the puzzle together again; and we must keep ourselves
in practice by constantly thinking of Nature as a whole, if science is
not to be spoiled by its own refinements. Evolution being found in so
many different sciences, the likelihood is that it is a universal
principle. And there is no presumption whatever against this Law and
many others being excluded from the domain of the spiritual life. On the
other hand, there are very convincing reasons why the Natural Laws
should be continuous through the Spiritual Sphere--not changed in any
way to meet the new circumstances, but continuous as they stand.
But to the exposition. One of the most striking generalizations of
recent science is that even Laws have their Law. Phenomena first, in the
progress of knowledge, were grouped together, and Nature shortly
presented the spectacle of a cosmos, the lines of beauty being the great
Natural Laws. So long, however, as these Laws were merely great lines
running through Nature, so long as they remained isolated from one
another, the system of Nature was still incomplete. The principle which
sought Law among phenomena had to go further and seek a Law among the
Laws. Laws themselves accordingly came to be treated as they treated
phenomena, and found themselves finally grouped in a still narrower
circle. That inmost circle is governed by one great Law, the Law of
Continuity. It is the Law for Laws.
It is perhaps significant that few exact definitions of Continuity are
to be found. Even in Sir W. R. Grove's famous paper,[21] the
fountain-head of the modern form of this far from modern truth, there is
no attempt at definition. In point of fact, its sweep is so magnificent,
it appeals so much more to the imagination than to the reason, that men
have preferred to exhibit rather than to define it. Its true greatness
consists in the final impression it leaves on the mind with regard to
the uniformity of Nature. For it was reserved for the Law of Continuity
to put the finishing touch to the harmony of the universe.
Probably the most satisfactory way to secure for one's self a just
appreciation of the Principle of Continuity is to try to conceive the
universe without it. The opposite of a continuous universe would be a
discontinuous universe, an incoherent and irrelevant universe--as
irrelevant in all its ways of doing things as an irrelevant person. In
effect, to withdraw Continuity from the universe would be the same as to
withdraw reason from an individual. The universe would run deranged; the
world would be a mad world.
There used to be a children's book which bore the fascinating title of
"The Chance World." It described a world in which everything happened by
chance. The sun might rise or it might not; or it might appear at any
hour, or the moon might come up instead. When children were born they
might have one head or a dozen heads, and those heads might not be on
their shoulders--there might be no shoulders--but arranged about the
limbs. If one jumped up in the air it was impossible to predict whether
he would ever come down again. That he came down yesterday was no
guarantee that he would do it next time. For every day antecedent and
consequent varied, and gravitation and everything else changed from
hour to hour. To-day a child's body might be so light that it was
impossible for it to descend from its chair to the floor; but to-morrow,
in attempting the experiment again, the impetus might drive it through a
three-story house and dash it to pieces somewhere near the center of the
earth. In this chance world cause and effect were abolished. Law was
annihilated. And the result to the inhabitants of such a world could
only be that reason would be impossible. It would be a lunatic world
with a population of lunatics.
Now this is no more than a real picture of what the world would be
without Law, or the universe without Continuity. And hence we come in
sight of the necessity of some principle of Law according to which Laws
shall be, and be "continuous" throughout the system. Man as a rational
and moral being demands a pledge that if he depends on Nature for any
given result on the ground that Nature has previously led him to expect
such a result, his intellect shall not be insulted, nor his confidence
in her abused. If he is to trust Nature, in short, it must be guaranteed
to him that in doing so he will "never be put to confusion." The authors
of the _Unseen Universe_ conclude their examination of this principle by
saying that "assuming the existence of a supreme Governor of the
universe, the Principle of Continuity may be said to be the definite
expression in words of our trust that He will not put us to permanent
intellectual confusion, and we can easily conceive similar expressions
of trust with reference to the other faculties of man."[22] Or, as it
has been well put elsewhere, Continuity is the expression of "the Divine
Veracity in Nature."[23] The most striking examples of the
continuousness of Law are perhaps those furnished by Astronomy,
especially in connection with the more recent applications of spectrum
analysis. But even in the case of the simpler Laws the demonstration is
complete. There is no reason apart from Continuity to expect that
gravitation for instance should prevail outside our world. But wherever
matter has been detected throughout the entire universe, whether in the
form of star or planet, comet or meteorite, it is found to obey that
Law. "If there were no other indication of unity than this, it would be
almost enough. For the unity which is implied in the mechanism of the
heavens is indeed a unity which is all-embracing and complete. The
structure of our own bodies, with all that depends upon it, is a
structure governed by, and therefore adapted to, the same force of
gravitation which has determined the form and the movements of myriads
of worlds. Every part of the human organism is fitted to conditions
which would all be destroyed in a moment if the forces of gravitation
were to change or fail."[24]
But it is unnecessary to multiply illustrations. Having defined the
principle we may proceed at once to apply it. And the argument may be
summed up in a sentence. As the Natural Laws are continuous through the
universe of matter and of space, so will they be continuous through the
universe of spirit.
If this be denied, what then? Those who deny it must furnish the
disproof. The argument is founded on a principle which is now
acknowledged to be universal; and the _onus_ of disproof must lie with
those who may be bold enough to take up the position that a region
exists where at last the Principle of Continuity fails. To do this one
would first have to overturn Nature, then science, and last, the human
mind.
It may seem an obvious objection that many of the Natural Laws have no
connection whatever with the Spiritual World, and as a matter of fact
are not continued through it. Gravitation for instance--what direct
application has that in the Spiritual World? The reply is threefold.
First, there is no proof that it does not hold there. If the spirit be
in any sense material it certainly must hold. In the second place,
gravitation may hold for the Spiritual Sphere although it cannot be
directly proved. The spirit may be armed with powers which enable it to
rise superior to gravity. During the action of these powers gravity need
be no more suspended than in the case of a plant which rises in the air
during the process of growth. It does this in virtue of a higher Law and
in apparent defiance of the lower. Thirdly, if the spiritual be not
material it still cannot be said that gravitation ceases at that point
to be continuous. It is not gravitation that ceases--it is matter.
This point, however, will require development for another reason. In the
case of the plant just referred to, there is a principle of growth or
vitality at work superseding the attraction of gravity. Why is there no
trace of that Law in the Inorganic world? Is not this another instance
of the discontinuousness of Law? If the Law of vitality has so little
connection with the Inorganic kingdom--less even than gravitation with
the Spiritual, what becomes of Continuity? Is it not evident that each
kingdom of Nature has its own set of Laws which continue possibly
untouched for the specific kingdom but never extend beyond it?
It is quite true that when we pass from the Inorganic to the Organic, we
come upon a new set of Laws. But the reason why the lower set do not
seem to act in the higher sphere is not that they are annihilated, but
that they are overruled. And the reason why the higher Laws are not
found operating in the lower is not because they are not continuous
downward, but because there is nothing for them there to act upon. It is
not Law that fails, but opportunity. The biological Laws are continuous
for life. Wherever there is life, that is to say, they will be found
acting, just as gravitation acts wherever there is matter.
We have purposely, in the last paragraph, indulged in a fallacy. We
have said that the biological Laws would certainly be continuous in the
lower or mineral sphere were there anything there for them to act upon.
Now Laws do not act upon anything. It has been stated already, although
apparently it cannot be too abundantly emphasized, that Laws are only
modes of operation, not themselves operators. The accurate statement,
therefore, would be that the biological Laws would be continuous in the
lower sphere were there anything there for them, not to act upon, but to
keep in order. If there is no acting going on, if there is nothing being
kept in order, the responsibility does not lie with Continuity. The Law
will always be at its post, not only when its services are required, but
wherever they are possible.
Attention is drawn to this, for it is a correction one will find one's
self compelled often to make in his thinking. It is so difficult to keep
out of mind the idea of substance in connection with the Natural Laws,
the idea that they are the movers, the essences, the energies, that one
is constantly on the verge of falling into false conclusions. Thus a
hasty glance at the present argument on the part of any one
ill-furnished enough to confound Law with substance or with cause would
probably lead to its immediate rejection. For, to continue the same line
of illustration, it might next be urged that such a Law as Biogenesis,
which, as we hope to show afterward, is the fundamental Law of life for
both the natural and spiritual worlds, can have no application
whatsoever in the latter sphere. The _life_ with which it deals in the
Natural World does not enter at all into the Spiritual World, and
therefore, it might be argued, the Law of Biogenesis cannot be capable
of extension into it. The Law of Continuity seems to be snapped at the
point where the natural passes into the spiritual. The vital principle
of the body is a different thing from the vital principle of the
spiritual life. Biogenesis deals with {bios}, with the natural life,
with cells and germs, and as there are no exactly similar cells and
germs in the Spiritual World, the Law cannot therefore apply. All which
is as true as if one were to say that the fifth proposition of the First
Book of Euclid applies when the figures are drawn with chalk upon a
blackboard, but fails with regard to structures of wood or stone.
The proposition is continuous for the whole world, and, doubtless,
likewise for the sun and moon and stars. The same universality may be
predicated likewise for the Law of life. Wherever there is life we may
expect to find it arranged, ordered, governed according to the same Law.
At the beginning of the natural life we find the Law that natural life
can only come from preexisting natural life; and at the beginning of the
spiritual life we find that the spiritual life can only come from
preexisting spiritual life. But there are not two Laws; there is
one--Biogenesis. At one end the Law is dealing with matter, at the other
with spirit. The qualitative terms natural and spiritual make no
difference. Biogenesis is the Law for all life and for all kinds of
life, and the particular substance with which it is associated is as
indifferent to Biogenesis as it is to Gravitation. Gravitation will act
whether the substance be suns and stars, or grains of sand, or
raindrops. Biogenesis, in like manner, will act wherever there is life.
The conclusion finally is, that from the nature of Law in general, and
from the scope of the Principle of Continuity in particular, the Laws of
the natural life must be those of the spiritual life. This does not
exclude, observe, the possibility of there being new Laws in addition
within the Spiritual Sphere; nor does it even include the supposition
that the old Laws will be the conspicuous Laws of the Spiritual World,
both which points will be dealt with presently. It simply asserts that
whatever else may be found, these must be found there; that they must be
there though they may not be seen there; and that they must project
beyond there if there be anything beyond there. If the Law of Continuity
is true, the only way to escape the conclusion that the Laws of the
natural life are the Laws, or at least are Laws, of the spiritual life,
is to say that there is no spiritual life. It is really easier to give
up the phenomena than to give up the Law.
Two questions now remain for further consideration--one bearing on the
possibility of new Law in the spiritual; the other, on the assumed
invisibility or inconspicuousness of the old Laws on account of their
subordination to the new.
Let us begin by conceding that there may be new Laws. The argument might
then be advanced that since, in Nature generally, we come upon new Laws
as we pass from lower to higher kingdoms, the old still remaining in
force, the newer Laws which one would expect to meet in the Spiritual
World would so transcend and overwhelm the older as to make the analogy
or identity, even if traced, of no practical use. The new Laws would
represent operations and energies so different, and so much more
elevated, that they would afford the true keys to the Spiritual World.
As Gravitation is practically lost sight of when we pass into the domain
of life, so Biogenesis would be lost sight of as we enter the Spiritual
Sphere.
We must first separate in this statement the old confusion of Law and
energy. Gravitation is not lost sight of in the organic world. Gravity
may be, to a certain extent, but not Gravitation; and gravity only where
a higher power counteracts its action. At the same time it is not to be
denied that the conspicuous thing in Organic Nature is not the great
Inorganic Law.
But the objection turns upon the statement that reasoning from analogy
we should expect, in turn, to lose sight of Biogenesis as we enter the
Spiritual Sphere. One answer to which is that, as a matter of fact, we
do not lose sight of it. So far from being invisible, it lies across the
very threshold of the Spiritual World, and, as we shall see, pervades it
everywhere. What we lose sight of, to a certain extent, is the natural
{bios}. In the Spiritual World that is not the conspicuous thing, and it
is obscure there just as gravity becomes obscure in the Organic, because
something higher, more potent, more characteristic of the higher plane,
comes in. That there are higher energies, so to speak, in the Spiritual
World is, of course, to be affirmed alike on the ground of analogy and
of experience; but it does not follow that these necessitate other Laws.
A Law has nothing to do with potency. We may lose sight of a substance,
or of an energy, but it is an abuse of language to talk of losing sight
of Laws.
Are there, then, no other Laws in the Spiritual World except those which
are the projections or extensions of Natural Laws? From the number of
Natural Laws which are found in the higher sphere, from the large
territory actually embraced by them, and from their special prominence
throughout the whole region, it may at least be answered that the margin
left for them is small. But if the objection is pressed that it is
contrary to the analogy, and unreasonable in itself, that there should
not be new Laws for this higher sphere, the reply is obvious. Let these
Laws be produced. If the spiritual nature, in inception, growth, and
development, does not follow natural principles, let the true principles
be stated and explained. We have not denied that there may be new Laws.
One would almost be surprised if there were not. The mass of material
handed over from the natural to the spiritual, continuous, apparently,
from the natural to the spiritual, is so great that till that is worked
out it will be impossible to say what space is still left unembraced by
Laws that are known. At present it is impossible even approximately to
estimate the size of that supposed _terra incognita_. From one point of
view it ought to be vast, from another extremely small. But however
large the region governed by the suspected new Laws may be that cannot
diminish by a hair's-breadth the size of the territory where the old
Laws still prevail. That territory itself, relatively to us though
perhaps not absolutely, must be of great extent. The size of the key
which is to open it, that is, the size of all the Natural Laws which can
be found to apply, is a guarantee that the region of the knowable in the
Spiritual World is at least as wide as these regions of the Natural
World which by the help of these Laws have been explored. No doubt also
there yet remain some Natural Laws to be discovered, and these in time
may have a further light to shed on the spiritual field. Then we may
know all that is? By no means. We may only know all that may be known.
And that may be very little. The Sovereign Will which sways the scepter
of that invisible empire must be granted a right of freedom--that
freedom which by putting it into our wills He surely teaches us to honor
in His. In much of His dealing with us also, in what may be called the
paternal relation, there may seem no special Law--no Law except the
highest of all, that Law of which all other Laws are parts, that Law
which neither Nature can wholly reflect nor the mind begin to
fathom--the Law of Love. He adds nothing to that, however, who loses
sight of all other Laws in that, nor does he take from it who finds
specific Laws everywhere radiating from it.
With regard to the supposed new Laws of the Spiritual World--those Laws,
that is, which are found for the first time in the Spiritual World, and
have no analogies lower down--there is this to be said, that there is
one strong reason against exaggerating either their number or
importance--their importance at least for our immediate needs. The
connection between language and the Law of Continuity has been referred
to incidentally already. It is clear that we can only express the
Spiritual Laws in language borrowed from the visible universe. Being
dependent for our vocabulary on images, if an altogether new and foreign
set of Laws existed in the Spiritual World, they could never take shape
as definite ideas from mere want of words. The hypothetical new Laws
which may remain to be discovered in the domain of Natural or Mental
Science may afford some index of these hypothetical higher Laws, but
this would of course mean that the latter were no longer foreign but in
analogy, or, likelier still, identical. If, on the other hand, the
Natural Laws of the future have nothing to say of these higher Laws,
what can be said of them? Where is the language to come from in which to
frame them? If their disclosure could be of any practical use to us, we
may be sure the clue to them, the revelation of them, in some way would
have been put into Nature. If, on the contrary, they are not to be of
immediate use to man, it is better they should not embarrass him. After
all, then, our knowledge of higher Law must be limited by our knowledge
of the lower. The Natural Laws as at present known, whatever additions
may yet be made to them, give a fair rendering of the facts of Nature.
And their analogies or their projections in the Spiritual sphere may
also be said to offer a fair account of that sphere, or of one or two
conspicuous departments of it. The time has come for that account to be
given. The greatest among the theological Laws are the Laws of Nature in
disguise. It will be the splendid task of the theology of the future to
take off the mask and disclose to a waning scepticism the naturalness of
the supernatural.
It is almost singular that the identification of the Laws of the
Spiritual World with the Laws of Nature should so long have escaped
recognition. For apart from the probability on _a priori_ grounds, it is
involved in the whole structure of Parable. When any two Phenomena in
the two spheres are seen to be analogous, the parallelism must depend
upon the fact that the Laws governing them are not analogous but
identical. And yet this basis for Parable seems to have been overlooked.
Thus Principal Shairp:--"This seeing of Spiritual truths mirrored in the
face of Nature rests not on any fancied, but in a real analogy between
the natural and the spiritual worlds. They are _in some sense which
science has not ascertained_, but which the vital and religious
imagination can perceive, counterparts one of the other."[25] But is not
this the explanation, that parallel Phenomena depend upon identical
Laws? It is a question indeed whether one can speak of Laws at all as
being analogous. Phenomena are parallel, Laws which make them so are
themselves one.
In discussing the relations of the Natural and Spiritual kingdom, it has
been all but implied hitherto that the Spiritual Laws were framed
originally on the plan of the Natural; and the impression one might
receive in studying the two worlds for the first time from the side of
analogy would naturally be that the lower world was formed first, as a
kind of scaffolding on which the higher and Spiritual should be
afterward raised. Now the exact opposite has been the case. The first in
the field was the Spiritual World.
It is not necessary to reproduce here in detail the argument which has
been stated recently with so much force in the "Unseen Universe." The
conclusion of that work remains still unassailed, that the visible
universe has been developed from the unseen. Apart from the general
proof from the Law of Continuity, the more special grounds of such a
conclusion are, first, the fact insisted upon by Herschel and
Clerk-Maxwell that the atoms of which the visible universe is built up
bear distinct marks of being manufactured articles; and, secondly, the
origin in time of the visible universe is implied from known facts with
regard to the dissipation of energy. With the gradual aggregation of
mass the energy of the universe has been slowly disappearing, and this
loss of energy must go on until none remains. There is, therefore, a
point in time when the energy of the universe must come to an end; and
that which has its end in time cannot be infinite, it must also have had
a beginning in time. Hence the unseen existed before the seen.
There is nothing so especially exalted therefore in the Natural Laws in
themselves as to make one anxious to find them blood relations of the
Spiritual. It is not only because these Laws are on the ground, more
accessible therefore to us who are but groundlings; not only, as the
"Unseen Universe" points out in another connection, "because they are at
the bottom of the list--are in fact the simplest and lowest--that they
are capable of being most readily grasped by the finite intelligences of
the universe."[26] But their true significance lies in the fact that
they are on the list at all, and especially in that the list is the same
list. Their dignity is not as Natural Laws, but as Spiritual Laws, Laws
which, as already said, at one end are dealing with Matter, and at the
other with Spirit. "The physical properties of matter form the alphabet
which is put into our hands by God, the study of which, if properly
conducted, will enable us more perfectly to read that great book which
we call the 'Universe.'"[27] But, over and above this, the Natural Laws
will enable us to read that great duplicate which we call the "Unseen
Universe," and to think and live in fuller harmony with it. After all,
the true greatness of Law lies in its vision of the Unseen. Law in the
visible is the Invisible in the visible. And to speak of Laws as Natural
is to define them in their application to a part of the universe, the
sense-part, whereas a wider survey would lead us to regard all Law as
essentially Spiritual. To magnify the Laws of Nature, as Laws of this
small world of ours, is to take a provincial view of the universe. Law
is great not because the phenomenal world is great, but because these
vanishing lines are the avenues into the eternal Order. "It is less
reverent to regard the universe as an illimitable avenue which leads up
to God, than to look upon it as a limited area bounded by an
impenetrable wall, which, if we could only pierce it would admit us at
once into the presence of the Eternal?"[28] Indeed the authors of the
"Unseen Universe" demur even to the expression _material universe_,
since, as they tell us "Matter is (though it may seem paradoxical to say
so) the less important half of the material of the physical
universe."[29] And even Mr. Huxley, though in a different sense, assures
us, with Descartes, "that we know more of mind than we do of body; that
the immaterial world is a firmer reality than the material."[30]
How the priority of the Spiritual improves the strength and meaning of
the whole argument will be seen at once. The lines of the Spiritual
existed first, and it was natural to expect that when the "Intelligence
resident in the 'Unseen'" proceeded to frame the material universe He
should go upon the lines already laid down. He would, in short, simply
project the higher Laws downward, so that the Natural World would become
an incarnation, a visible representation, a working model of the
spiritual. The whole function of the material world lies here. The world
is only a thing that is; it is not. It is a thing that teaches, yet not
even a thing--a show that shows, a teaching shadow. However useless the
demonstration otherwise, philosophy does well in proving that matter is
a non-entity. We work with it as the mathematician with an _x_. The
reality is alone the Spiritual. "It is very well for physicists to speak
of 'matter,' but for men generally to call this 'a material world' is an
absurdity. Should we call it an _x_-world it would mean as much, viz.,
that we do not know what it is."[31] When shall we learn the true
mysticism of one who was yet far from being a mystic--"We look not at
the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the
things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen
are eternal?"[32] The visible is the ladder up to the invisible; the
temporal is but the scaffolding of the eternal. And when the last
immaterial souls have climbed through this material to God, the
scaffolding shall be taken down, and the earth dissolved with fervent
heat--not because it was base, but because its work is done.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] "Reign of Law," chap. ii.
[4] "Animal Kingdom."
[5] "Sartor Resartus," 1858 Ed., p. 43.
[6] Even parable, however, has always been considered to have attached
to it a measure of evidential as well as of illustrative value. Thus:
"The parable or other analogy to spiritual truth appropriated from the
world of nature or man, is not merely illustrative, but also in some
sort proof. It is not merely that these analogies assist to make the
truth intelligible or, if intelligible before, present it more vividly
to the mind, which is all that some will allow them. Their power lies
deeper than this, in the harmony unconsciously felt by all men, and
which all deeper minds have delighted to trace, between the natural and
spiritual worlds, so that analogies from the first are felt to be
something more than illustrations happily but yet arbitrarily chosen.
They are arguments, and may be alleged as witnesses; the world of nature
being throughout a witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the
same hand, growing out of the same root, and being constituted for that
very end."--(Archbishop Trench: "Parables," pp. 12, 13.)
[7] Mill's "Logic," vol. ii. p. 96.
[8] Campbell's "Rhetoric," vol. i. p. 114.
[9] "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 19.
[10] "The Scientific Basis of Faith." By J. J. Murphy, p. 466.
[11] Op. cit., p. 333.
[12] _Ibid._, p. 333.
[13] _Ibid._, p. 331.
[14] "Analogy," chap. vii.
[15] "Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., pp. 89, 90.
[16] "Essays," vol. i. p. 40.
[17] "A Modern Symposium."--_Nineteenth Century_, vol. i. p. 625.
[18] Beck: "Bib. Psychol.," Clark's Tr., Pref., 2d Ed., p. xiii.
[19] "First Principles," p. 161.
[20] Wordsworth's _Excursion_, Book iv.
[21] "The Correlation of Physical Forces," 6th Ed., p. 181 _et seq._
[22] "Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., p. 88.
[23] "Old Faiths in New Light," by Newman Smith. Unwin's English
edition, p. 252.
[24] The Duke of Argyll: _Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1880, p. 358.
[25] "Poetic Interpretation of Nature," p. 115.
[26] 6th edition, p. 235.
[27] _Ibid._, p. 286.
[28] "Unseen Universe," p. 96.
[29] "Unseen Universe," p. 100.
[30] "Science and Culture," p. 259.
[31] Hinton's "Philosophy and Religion," p. 40.
[32] 2 Cor. iv. 18.
BIOGENESIS.
"What we require is no new Revelation, but simply an adequate
conception of the true essence of Christianity. And I believe that,
as time goes on, the work of the Holy Spirit will be continuously
shown in the gradual insight which the human race will attain into
the true essence of the Christian religion. I am thus of opinion
that a standing miracle exists, and that it has ever existed--a
direct and continued influence exerted by the supernatural on the
natural."--_Paradoxical Philosophy._
"He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not Life."--_John._
"Omne vivum ex vivo."--_Harvey._
For two hundred years the scientific world has been rent with
discussions upon the Origin of Life. Two great schools have defended
exactly opposite views--one that matter can spontaneously generate life,
the other that life can only come from preexisting life. The doctrine of
Spontaneous Generation, as the first is called, has been revived within
recent years by Dr. Bastian, after a series of elaborate experiments on
the Beginnings of Life. Stated in his own words, his conclusion is this:
"Both observation and experiment unmistakably testify to the fact that
living matter is constantly being formed _de novo_, in obedience to the
same laws and tendencies which determined all the more simple chemical
combinations."[33] Life, that is to say, is not the Gift of Life. It is
capable of springing into being of itself. It can be Spontaneously
Generated.
This announcement called into the field a phalanx of observers, and the
highest authorities in biological science engaged themselves afresh
upon the problem. The experiments necessary to test the matter can be
followed or repeated by any one possessing the slightest manipulative
skill. Glass vessels are three-parts filled with infusions of hay or any
organic matter. They are boiled to kill all germs of life, and
hermetically sealed to exclude the outer air. The air inside, having
been exposed to the boiling temperature for many hours, is supposed to
be likewise dead; so that any life which may subsequently appear in the
closed flasks must have sprung into being of itself. In Bastian's
experiments, after every expedient to secure sterility, life did appear
inside in myriad quantity. Therefore, he argued, it was spontaneously
generated.
But the phalanx of observers found two errors in this calculation.
Professor Tyndall repeated the same experiment, only with a precaution
to insure absolute sterility suggested by the most recent science--a
discovery of his own. After every care, he conceived there might still
be undestroyed germs in the air inside the flasks. If the air were
absolutely germless and pure, would the myriad-life appear? He
manipulated his experimental vessels in an atmosphere which under the
high test of optical purity--the most delicate known test--was
absolutely germless. Here not a vestige of life appeared. He varied the
experiment in every direction, but matter in the germless air never
yielded life.
The other error was detected by Mr. Dallinger. He found among the lower
forms of life the most surprising and indestructible vitality. Many
animals could survive much higher temperatures than Dr. Bastian had
applied to annihilate them. Some germs almost refused to be
annihilated--they were all but fire-proof.
These experiments have practically closed the question. A decided and
authoritative conclusion has now taken its place in science. So far as
science can settle anything, this question is settled. The attempt to
get the living out of the dead has failed. Spontaneous Generation has
had to be given up. And it is now recognized on every hand that Life can
only come from the touch of Life. Huxley categorically announces that
the doctrine of Biogenesis, or life only from life, is "victorious along
the whole line at the present day."[34] And even while confessing that
he wishes the evidence were the other way, Tyndall is compelled to say,
"I affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to
prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent
life."[35]
For much more than two hundred years a similar discussion has dragged
its length through the religious world. Two great schools here also have
defended exactly opposite views--one that the Spiritual Life in man can
only come from preexisting Life, the other that it can Spontaneously
Generate itself. Taking its stand upon the initial statement of the
Author of the Spiritual Life, one small school, in the face of derision
and opposition, has persistently maintained the doctrine of Biogenesis.
Another, larger and with greater pretension to philosophic form, has
defended Spontaneous Generation. The weakness of the former school
consists--though this has been much exaggerated--in its more or less
general adherence to the extreme view that religion had nothing to do
with the natural life; the weakness of the latter lay in yielding to the
more fatal extreme that it had nothing to do with anything else. That
man, being a worshiping animal by nature, ought to maintain certain
relations to the Supreme Being, was indeed to some extent conceded by
the naturalistic school, but religion itself we looked upon as a thing
to be spontaneously generated by the evolution of character in the
laboratory of common life.
The difference between the two positions is radical. Translating from
the language of Science into that of Religion, the theory of
Spontaneous Generation is simply that a man may become gradually better
and better until in course of the process he reaches that quantity of
religious nature known as Spiritual Life. This Life is not something
added _ab extra_ to the natural man; it is the normal and appropriate
development of the natural man. Biogenesis opposes to this the whole
doctrine of Regeneration. The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living
Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man. He
is a New Creation born from Above. As well expect a hay infusion to
become gradually more and more living until in course of the process it
reached Vitality, as expect a man by becoming better and better to
attain the Eternal Life.
The advocates of Biogenesis in Religion have founded their argument
hitherto all but exclusively on Scripture. The relation of the doctrine
to the constitution and course of Nature was not disclosed. Its
importance, therefore, was solely as a dogma; and being directly
concerned with the Supernatural, it was valid for those alone who chose
to accept the Supernatural.
Yet it has been keenly felt by those who attempt to defend this doctrine
of the origin of the Spiritual Life, that they have nothing more to
oppose to the rationalistic view than the _ipse dixit_ of Revelation.
The argument from experience, in the nature of the case, is seldom easy
to apply, and Christianity has always found at this point a genuine
difficulty in meeting the challenge of Natural Religions. The direct
authority of Nature, using Nature in its limited sense, was not here to
be sought for. On such a question its voice was necessarily silent; and
all that the apologist could look for lower down was a distant echo or
analogy. All that is really possible, indeed, is such an analogy; and if
that can now be found in Biogenesis, Christianity in its most central
position secures at length a support and basis in the Laws of Nature.
Up to the present time the analogy required has not been forthcoming.
There was no known parallel in Nature for the spiritual phenomena in
question. But now the case is altered. With the elevation of Biogenesis
to the rank of a scientific fact, all problems concerning the Origin of
Life are placed on a different footing. And it remains to be seen
whether Religion cannot at once reaffirm and re-shape its argument in
the light of this modern truth.
If the doctrine of the Spontaneous Generation of Spiritual Life can be
met on scientific grounds, it will mean the removal of the most serious
enemy Christianity has to deal with, and especially within its own
borders, at the present day. The religion of Jesus has probably always
suffered more from those who have misunderstood than from those who have
opposed it. Of the multitudes who confess Christianity at this hour how
many have clear in their minds the cardinal distinction established by
its Founder between "born of the flesh" and "born of the Spirit?" By how
many teachers of Christianity even is not this fundamental postulate
persistently ignored? A thousand modern pulpits every seventh day are
preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. The finest and best of
recent poetry is colored with this same error. Spontaneous Generation is
the leading theology of the modern religious or irreligious novel; and
much of the most serious and cultured writing of the day devotes itself
to earnest preaching of this impossible gospel. The current conception
of the Christian religion in short--the conception which is held not
only popularly but by men of culture--is founded upon a view of its
origin which, if it were true, would render the whole scheme abortive.
Let us first place vividly in our imagination the picture of the two
great Kingdoms of Nature, the inorganic and organic, as these now stand
in the light of the Law of Biogenesis. What essentially is involved in
saying that there is no Spontaneous Generation of Life? It is meant that
the passage from the mineral world to the plant or animal world is
hermetically sealed on the mineral side. This inorganic world is staked
off from the living world by barriers which have never yet been crossed
from within. No change of substance, no modification of environment, no
chemistry, no electricity, nor any form of energy, nor any evolution can
endow any single atom of the mineral world with the attribute of Life.
Only by the bending down into this dead world of some living form can
these dead atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality, without this
preliminary contact with Life they remain fixed in the inorganic sphere
forever. It is a very mysterious Law which guards in this way the
portals of the living world. And if there is one thing in Nature more
worth pondering for its strangeness it is the spectacle of this vast
helpless world of the dead cut off from the living by the Law of
Biogenesis and denied forever the possibility of resurrection within
itself. So very strange a thing, indeed, is this broad line in Nature,
that Science has long and urgently sought to obliterate it. Biogenesis
stands in the way of some forms of Evolution with such stern persistency
that the assaults upon this Law for number and thoroughness have been
unparalleled. But, as we have seen, it has stood the test. Nature, to
the modern eye, stands broken in two. The physical Laws may explain the
inorganic world; the biological Laws may account for the development of
the organic. But of the point where they meet, of that strange
borderland between the dead and the living, Science is silent. It is as
if God had placed everything in earth and heaven in the hands of Nature,
but reserved a point at the genesis of Life for His direct appearing.
The power of the analogy, for which we are laying the foundations, to
seize and impress the mind, will largely depend on the vividness with
which one realizes the gulf which Nature places between the living and
the dead.[36] But those who, in contemplating Nature, have found their
attention arrested by this extraordinary dividing-line severing the
visible universe eternally into two; those who in watching the progress
of science have seen barrier after barrier disappear--barrier between
plant and plant, between animal and animal, and even between animal and
plant--but this gulf yawn more hopelessly wide with every advance of
knowledge, will be prepared to attach a significance to the Law of
Biogenesis and its analogies more profound perhaps than to any other
fact or law in Nature. If, as Pascal says, Nature is an image of grace;
if the things that are seen are in any sense the images of the unseen,
there must lie in this great gulf fixed, this most unique and startling
of all natural phenomena, a meaning of peculiar moment.
Where now in the Spiritual spheres shall we meet a companion phenomena
to this? What in the Unseen shall be likened to this deep dividing-line,
or where in human experience is another barrier which never can be
crossed?
There is such a barrier. In the dim but not inadequate vision of the
Spiritual World presented in the Word of God, the first thing that
strikes the eye is a great gulf fixed. The passage from the Natural
World to the Spiritual World is hermetically sealed on the natural side.
The door from the inorganic to the organic is shut, no mineral can open
it; so the door from the natural to the spiritual is shut, and no man
can open it. This world of natural men is staked off from the Spiritual
World by barriers which have never yet been crossed from within. No
organic change, no modification of environment, no mental energy, no
moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization can
endow any single human soul with the attribute of Spiritual Life. The
Spiritual World is guarded from the world next in order beneath it by a
law of Biogenesis--_except a man be born again ... except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God_.
It is not said, in this enunciation of the law, that if the condition be
not fulfilled the natural man _will not_ enter the Kingdom of God. The
word is _cannot_. For the exclusion of the spiritually inorganic from
the Kingdom of the spiritually organic is not arbitrary. Nor is the
natural man refused admission on unexplained grounds. His admission is a
scientific impossibility. Except a mineral be born "from above"--from
the Kingdom just _above_ it--it cannot enter the Kingdom just above it.
And except a man be born "from above," by the same law, he cannot enter
the Kingdom just above him. There being no passage from one Kingdom to
another, whether from inorganic to organic, or from organic to
spiritual, the intervention of Life is a scientific necessity if a stone
or a plant or an animal or a man is to pass from a lower to a higher
sphere. The plant stretches down to the dead world beneath it, touches
its minerals and gases with its mystery of Life, and brings them up
ennobled and transformed to the living sphere. The breath of God,
blowing where it listeth, touches with its mystery of Life the dead
souls of men, bears them across the bridgeless gulf between the natural
and the spiritual, between the spiritually inorganic and the spiritually
organic, endows them with its own high qualities, and develops within
them these new and secret faculties, by which those who are born again
are said to _see the Kingdom of God_.
What is the evidence for this great gulf fixed at the portals of the
Spiritual World? Does Science close this gate, or Reason, or Experience,
or Revelation? We reply, all four. The initial statement, it is not to
be denied, reaches us from Revelation. But is not this evidence here in
court? Or shall it be said that any argument deduced from this is a
transparent circle--that after all we simply come back to the
unsubstantiality of the _ipse dixit_? Not altogether, for the analogy
lends an altogether new authority to the _ipse dixit_. How substantial
that argument really is, is seldom realized. We yield the point here
much too easily. The right of the Spiritual World to speak of its own
phenomena is as secure as the right of the Natural World to speak of
itself. What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural
men? What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to
Spiritual men? Let us at least ask what Revelation has announced with
reference to this Spiritual Law of Biogenesis; afterward we shall
inquire whether Science, while indorsing the verdict, may not also have
some further vindication of its title to be heard.
The words of Scripture which preface this inquiry contain an explicit
and original statement of the Law of Biogenesis for the Spiritual Life.
"He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not Life." Life, that is to say, depends upon contact with Life. It
cannot spring up of itself. It cannot develop out of anything that is
not Life. There is no Spontaneous Generation in religion any more than
in Nature. Christ is the source of Life in the Spiritual World; and he
that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son, whatever else
he may have, hath not Life. Here, in short, is the categorical denial of
Abiogenesis and the establishment in this high field of the classical
formula _Omne vivum ex vivo_--no Life without antecedent Life. In this
mystical theory of the Origin of Life the whole of the New Testament
writers are agreed. And, as we have already seen, Christ Himself founds
Christianity upon Biogenesis stated in its most literal form. "Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom
of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born
of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be
born again."[37] Why did He add _Marvel not_? Did He seek to allay the
fear in the bewildered ruler's mind that there was more in this novel
doctrine than a simple analogy from the first to the second birth?
The attitude of the natural man, again, with reference to the Spiritual,
is a subject on which the New Testament is equally pronounced. Not only
in his relation to the spiritual man, but to the whole Spiritual World,
the natural man is regarded as _dead_. He is as a crystal to an
organism. The natural world is to the Spiritual as the inorganic to the
organic. "To be carnally minded is _Death_."[38] "Thou hast a name to
live, but art _Dead_."[39] "She that liveth in pleasure is _Dead_ while
she liveth."[40] "To you he Hath given Life which were _Dead_ in
trespasses and sins."[41]
It is clear that a remarkable harmony exists here between the Organic
World as arranged by Science and the Spiritual World as arranged by
Scripture. We find one great Law guarding the thresholds of both worlds,
securing that entrance from a lower sphere shall only take place by a
direct regenerating act, and that emanating from the world next in order
above. There are not two laws of Biogenesis, one for the natural, the
other for the Spiritual; one law is for both. Wherever there is Life,
Life of any kind, this same law holds. The analogy, therefore, is only
among the phenomena; between laws there is no analogy--there is
Continuity. In either case, the first step in peopling these worlds
with the appropriate living forms is virtually miracle. Nor in one case
is there less of mystery in the act than in the other. The second birth
is scarcely less perplexing to the theologian than the first to the
embryologist.
A moment's reflection ought now to make it clear why in the Spiritual
World there had to be added to this mystery the further mystery of its
proclamation through the medium of Revelation. This is the point at
which the scientific man is apt to part company with the theologian. He
insists on having all things materialized before his eyes in Nature. If
Nature cannot discuss this with him, there is nothing to discuss. But
Nature can discuss this with him--only she cannot open the discussion or
supply all the material to begin with. If Science averred that she could
do this, the theologian this time must part company with such Science.
For any Science which makes such a demand is false to the doctrines of
Biogenesis. What is this but the demand that a lower world, hermetically
sealed against all communication with a world above it, should have a
mature and intelligent acquaintance with its phenomena and laws? Can the
mineral discourse to me of animal Life? Can it tell me what lies beyond
the narrow boundary of its inert being? Knowing nothing of other than
the chemical and physical laws, what is its criticism worth of the
principles of Biology? And even when some visitor from the upper world,
for example some root from a living tree, penetrating its dark recess,
honors it with a touch, will it presume to define the form and purpose
of its patron, or until the bioplasm has done its gracious work can it
even know that it is being touched? The barrier which separates Kingdoms
from one another restricts mind not less than matter. Any information of
the Kingdoms above it that could come to the mineral world could only
come by a communication from above. An analogy from the lower world
might make such communication intelligible as well as credible, but the
information in the first instance must be vouchsafed as a _revelation_.
Similarly if those in the organic Kingdom are to know anything of the
Spiritual World, that knowledge must at least begin as Revelation. Men
who reject this source of information, by the Law of Biogenesis, can
have no other. It is no spell of ignorance arbitrarily laid upon certain
members of the Organic Kingdom that prevents them reading the secrets of
the Spiritual World. It is a scientific necessity. No exposition of the
case could be more truly scientific than this: "The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness
unto him: _neither can he know them_, because they are spiritually
discerned."[42] The verb here, it will be again observed, is potential.
This is not a dogma of theology, but a necessity of Science. And
Science, for the most part, has consistently accepted the situation. It
has always proclaimed its ignorance of the Spiritual World. When Mr.
Herbert Spencer affirms, "Regarding Science as a gradually increasing
sphere we may say that every addition to its surface does but bring it
into wider contact with surrounding nescience,"[43] from his standpoint
he is quite correct. The endeavors of well-meaning persons to show that
the Agnostic's position, when he asserts his ignorance of the Spiritual
World, is only a pretence; the attempts to prove that he really knows a
great deal about it if he would only admit it, are quite misplaced. He
really does not know. The verdict that the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God, that they are foolishness unto him, that
_neither can he_ know them, is final as a statement of scientific
truth--a statement on which the entire Agnostic literature is simply one
long commentary.
We are now in a better position to follow out the more practical
bearings of Biogenesis. There is an immense region surrounding
Regeneration, a dark and perplexing region where men would be thankful
for any light. It may well be that Biogenesis in its many ramifications
may yet reach down to some of the deeper mysteries of the Spiritual
Life. But meantime there is much to define even on the surface. And for
the present we shall content ourselves by turning its light upon one or
two points of current interest.
It must long ago have appeared how decisive is the answer of Science to
the practical question with which we set out as to the possibility of a
Spontaneous Development of Spiritual Life in the individual soul. The
inquiry into the Origin of Life is the fundamental question alike of
Biology and Christianity. We can afford to enlarge upon it, therefore,
even at the risk of repetition. When men are offering us a Christianity
without a living Spirit, and a personal religion without _conversion_,
no emphasis or reiteration can be extreme. Besides, the clearness as
well as the definiteness of the Testimony of Nature to any Spiritual
truth is of immense importance. Regeneration has not merely been an
outstanding difficulty, but an overwhelming obscurity. Even to earnest
minds the difficulty of grasping the truth at all has always proved
extreme. Philosophically one scarcely sees either the necessity or the
possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not simply
grow better and better until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of
God is what thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand. Now
Philosophy cannot help us here. Her arguments are, if anything, against
us. But Science answers to the appeal at once. If it be simply pointed
out that this is the same absurdity as to ask why a stone should not
grow more and more living till it enters the Organic World, the point is
clear in an instant.
What now, let us ask specifically, distinguishes a Christian man from a
non-Christian man? Is it that he has certain mental characteristics not
possessed by the other? Is it that certain faculties have been trained
in him, that morality assumes special and higher manifestations, and
character a nobler form? Is the Christian merely an ordinary man who
happens from birth to have been surrounded with a peculiar set of ideas?
Is his religion merely that peculiar quality of the moral life defined
by Mr. Matthew Arnold as "morality touched by emotion?" And does the
possession of a high ideal, benevolent sympathies, a reverent spirit,
and a favorable environment account for what men call his Spiritual
Life?
The distinction between them is the same as that between the Organic and
the Inorganic, the living and the dead. What is the difference between a
crystal and an organism, a stone and a plant? They have much in common.
Both are made of the same atoms. Both display the same properties of
matter. Both are subject to the Physical Laws. Both may be very
beautiful. But besides possessing all that the crystal has, the plant
possesses something more--a mysterious something called Life. This Life
is not something which existed in the crystal only in a less developed
form. There is nothing at all like it in the crystal. There is nothing
like the first beginning of it in the crystal, not a trace or symptom of
it. This plant is tenanted by something new, an original and unique
possession added over and above all the properties common to both. When
from vegetable Life we rise to animal Life, here again we find something
original and unique--unique at least as compared with the mineral. From
animal Life we ascend again to Spiritual Life. And here also is
something new, something still more unique. He who lives the Spiritual
Life has a distinct kind of Life added to all the other phases of Life
which he manifests--a kind of Life infinitely more distinct than is the
active Life of a plant from the inertia of a stone. The Spiritual man is
more distinct in point of fact than is the plant from the stone. This is
the one possible comparison in Nature, for it is the widest distinction
in Nature; but compared with the difference between the Natural and the
Spiritual the gulf which divides the organic from the inorganic is a
hair's-breadth. The natural man belongs essentially to this present
order of things. He is endowed simply with a high quality of the natural
animal Life. But it is Life of so poor a quality that it is not Life at
all. He that hath not the Son _hath not Life_; but he that hath the Son
hath Life--a new and distinct and supernatural endowment. He is not of
this world. He is of the timeless state, of Eternity. _It doth not yet
appear what he shall be._
The difference between the Spiritual man and the Natural man is not a
difference of development, but of generation. It is a distinction of
quality not of quantity. A man cannot rise by any natural development
from "morality touched by emotion," to "morality touched by Life." Were
we to construct a scientific classification, Science would compel us to
arrange all natural men, moral or immoral, educated or vulgar, as one
family. One might be high in the family group, another low; yet,
practically, they are marked by the same set of characteristics--they
eat, sleep, work, think, live, die. But the Spiritual man is removed
from this family so utterly by the possession of an additional
characteristic that a biologist, fully informed of the whole
circumstances, would not hesitate a moment to classify him elsewhere.
And if he really entered into these circumstances it would not be in
another family but in another Kingdom. It is an old-fashioned theology
which divides the world in this way--which speaks of men as Living and
Dead, Lost and Saved--a stern theology all but fallen into disuse. This
difference between the Living and the Dead in souls is so unproved by
casual observation, so impalpable in itself, so startling as a doctrine,
that schools of culture have ridiculed or denied the grim distinction.
Nevertheless the grim distinction must be retained. It is a scientific
distinction. "He that hath not the Son hath not Life."
Now it is this great Law which finally distinguishes Christianity from
all other religions. It places the religion of Christ upon a footing
altogether unique. There is no analogy between the Christian religion
and, say, Buddhism or the Mohammedan religion. There is no true sense in
which a man can say, He that hath Buddha hath Life. Buddha has nothing
to do with Life. He may have something to do with morality. He may
stimulate, impress, teach, guide, but there is no distinct new thing
added to the souls of those who profess Buddhism. These religions _may_
be developments of the natural, mental, or moral man. But Christianity
professes to be more. It is the mental or moral man _plus_ something
else or some One else. It is the infusion into the Spiritual man of a
New Life, of a quality unlike anything else in Nature. This constitutes
the separate Kingdom of Christ, and gives to Christianity alone of all
the religions of mankind the strange mark of Divinity.
Shall we next inquire more precisely what is this something extra which
constitutes Spiritual Life? What is this strange and new endowment in
its nature and vital essence? And the answer is brief--it is Christ. He
that hath _the Son_ hath Life.
Are we forsaking the lines of Science in saying so? Yes and No. Science
has drawn for us the distinction. It has no voice as to the nature of
the distinction except this--that the new endowment is a something
different from anything else with which it deals. It is not ordinary
Vitality, it is not intellectual, it is not moral, but something beyond.
And Revelation steps in and names what it is--it is Christ. Out of the
multitude of sentences where this announcement is made, these few may be
selected: "Know ye not your own selves how that _Jesus Christ is in
you_?"[44] "Your bodies are the members of Christ."[45] "At that day ye
shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you."[46] "We
will come unto him and make our abode with him."[47] "I am the Vine, ye
are the branches."[48] "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live,
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."[49]
Three things are clear from these statements: First, they are not mere
figures of rhetoric. They are explicit declarations. If language means
anything these words announce a literal fact. In some of Christ's own
statements the literalism is if possible still more impressive. For
instance, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His
blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My
blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My
flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My
flesh and drinketh My blood _dwelleth in Me and I in him_."
In the second place, Spiritual Life is not something outside ourselves.
The idea is not that Christ is in heaven and that we can stretch out
some mysterious faculty and deal with Him there. This is the vague form
in which many conceive the truth, but it is contrary to Christ's
teaching and to the analogy of nature. Vegetable Life is not contained
in a reservoir somewhere in the skies, and measured out spasmodically at
certain seasons. The Life is _in_ every plant and tree, inside its own
substance and tissue, and continues there until it dies. This
localization of Life in the individual is precisely the point where
Vitality differs from the other forces of nature, such as magnetism and
electricity. Vitality has much in common with such forces as magnetism
and electricity, but there is one inviolable distinction between
them--that Life is permanently fixed and rooted in the organism. The
doctrines of conservation and transformation of energy, that is to say,
do not hold for Vitality. The electrician can demagnetize a bar of iron,
that is, he can transform its energy of magnetism into something
else--heat, or motion, or light--and then re-form these back into
magnetism. For magnetism has no root, no individuality, no fixed
indwelling. But the biologist cannot devitalize a plant or an animal and
revivify it again.[50] Life is not one of the homeless forces which
promiscuously inhabit space, or which can be gathered like electricity
from the clouds and dissipated back again into space. Life is definite
and resident; and Spiritual Life is not a visit from a force, but a
resident tenant in the soul.
This is, however, to formulate the statement of the third point, that
Spiritual Life is not an ordinary form of energy or force. The analogy
from Nature indorses this, but here Nature stops. It cannot say what
Spiritual Life is. Indeed what natural Life is remains unknown, and the
word Life still wanders through Science without a definition. Nature is
silent, therefore, and must be as to Spiritual Life. But in the absence
of natural light we fall back upon that complementary revelation which
always shines, when truth is necessary and where Nature fails. We ask
with Paul when this Life first visited him on the Damascus road, What is
this? "Who art Thou, Lord?" And we hear, "I am Jesus."[51]
We must expect to find this denied. Besides a proof from Revelation,
this is an argument from experience. And yet we shall still be told that
this Spiritual Life is a force. But let it be remembered what this means
in Science, it means the heresy of confounding Force with Vitality. We
must also expect to be told that this Spiritual Life is simply a
development of ordinary Life--just as Dr. Bastian tells us that natural
Life is formed according to the same laws which determine the more
simple chemical combinations. But remember what this means in Science.
It is the heresy of Spontaneous Generation, a heresy so thoroughly
discredited now that scarcely an authority in Europe will lend his name
to it. Who art Thou, Lord? Unless we are to be allowed to hold
Spontaneous Generation there is no alternative: Life can only come from
Life: "I am Jesus."
A hundred other questions now rush into the mind about this Life: How
does it come? Why does it come? How is it manifested? What faculty does
it employ? Where does it reside? Is it communicable? What are its
conditions? One or two of these questions may be vaguely answered, the
rest bring us face to face with mystery. Let it not be thought that the
scientific treatment of a Spiritual subject has reduced religion to a
problem of physics, or demonstrated God by the laws of biology. A
religion without mystery is an absurdity. Even Science has its
mysteries, none more inscrutable than around this Science of Life. It
taught us sooner or later to expect mystery, and now we enter its
domain. Let it be carefully marked, however, that the cloud does not
fall and cover us till we have ascertained the most momentous truth of
Religion--that Christ is in the Christian.
Not that there is anything new in this. The Churches have always held
that Christ was the source of Life. No spiritual man ever claims that
his spirituality is his own. "I live," he will tell you; "nevertheless
it is not I, but Christ liveth in me." Christ our Life has indeed been
the only doctrine in the Christian Church from Paul to Augustine, from
Calvin to Newman. Yet, when the Spiritual man is cross-examined upon
this confession it is astonishing to find what uncertain hold it has
upon his mind. Doctrinally he states it adequately and holds it
unhesitatingly. But when pressed with the literal question he shrinks
from the answer. We do not really believe that the Living Christ has
touched us, that He makes His abode in us. Spiritual Life is not as
real to us as natural Life. And we cover our retreat into unbelieving
vagueness with a plea of reverence, justified, as we think, by the "Thus
far and no farther" of ancient Scriptures. There is often a great deal
of intellectual sin concealed under this old aphorism. When men do not
really wish to go farther they find it an honorable convenience
sometimes to sit down on the outermost edge of the Holy Ground on the
pretext of taking off their shoes. Yet we must be certain that, making a
virtue of reverence, we are not merely excusing ignorance; or, under the
plea of mystery, evading a truth which has been stated in the New
Testament a hundred times, in the most literal form, and with all but
monotonous repetition. The greatest truths are always the most loosely
held. And not the least of the advantages of taking up this question
from the present standpoint is that we may see how a confused doctrine
can really bear the luminous definition of Science and force itself upon
us with all the weight of Natural Law.
What is mystery to many men, what feeds their worship, and at the same
time spoils it, is that area round all great truth which is really
capable of illumination, and into which every earnest mind is permitted
and commanded to go with a light. We cry mystery long before the region
of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a sudden
and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge; its form is
irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to
the very verge and look down the precipice into the dim abyss--
"Where writhing clouds unroll,
Striving to utter themselves in shapes."
We have gone with a light to the very verge of this truth. We have seen
that the Spiritual Life is an endowment from the Spiritual World, and
that the Living Spirit of Christ dwells in the Christian. But now the
gulf yawns black before us. What more does Science know of life?
Nothing. It knows nothing further about its origin in detail. It knows
nothing about its ultimate nature. It cannot even define it. There is a
helplessness in scientific books here, and a continual confession of it
which to thoughtful minds is almost touching. Science, therefore, has
not eliminated the true mysteries from our faith, but only the false.
And it has done more. It has made true mystery scientific. Religion in
having mystery is in analogy with all around it. Where there is
exceptional mystery in the Spiritual world it will generally be found
that there is a corresponding mystery in the natural world. And, as
Origen centuries ago insisted, the difficulties of Religion are simply
the difficulties of Nature.
One question more we may look at for a moment. What can be gathered on
the surface as to the process of Regeneration in the individual soul?
From the analogies of Biology we should expect three things: First, that
the New Life should dawn suddenly; Second, that it should come "without
observation;" Third, that it should develop gradually. On two of these
points there can be little controversy. The gradualness of growth is a
characteristic which strikes the simplest observer. Long before the word
Evolution was coined Christ applied it in this very connection--"First
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." It is well
known also to those who study the parables of Nature that there is an
ascending scale of slowness as we rise in the scale of Life. Growth is
most gradual in the highest forms. Man attains his maturity after a
score of years; the monad completes its humble cycle in a day. What
wonder if development be tardy in the Creature of Eternity? A
Christian's sun has sometimes set, and a critical world has seen as yet
no corn in the ear. As yet? "As yet," in this long Life, has not begun.
Grant him the years proportionate to his place in the scale of Life.
"The time of harvest is _not yet_."
Again, in addition to being slow, the phenomena of growth are secret.
Life is invisible. When the New Life manifests itself it is a surprise.
_Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth._ When the
plant lives whence has the Life come? When it dies whither has it gone?
_Thou canst not tell ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit. For
the kingdom of God cometh without observation._
Yet once more--and this is a point of strange and frivolous
dispute--this Life comes suddenly. This is the only way in which Life
can come. Life cannot come gradually--health can, structure can, but not
Life. A new theology has laughed at the Doctrine of Conversion. Sudden
Conversion especially has been ridiculed as untrue to philosophy and
impossible to human nature. We may not be concerned in buttressing any
theology because it is old. But we find that this old theology is
scientific. There may be cases--they are probably in the majority--where
the moment of contact with the Living Spirit though sudden has been
obscure. But the real moment and the conscious moment are two different
things. Science pronounces nothing as to the conscious moment. If it did
it would probably say that that was seldom the real moment--just as in
the natural Life the conscious moment is not the real moment. The moment
of birth in the natural world is not a conscious moment--we do not know
we are born till long afterward. Yet there are men to whom the Origin of
the New Life in time has been no difficulty. To Paul, for instance,
Christ seems to have come at a definite period of time, the exact moment
and second of which could have been known. And this is certainly, in
theory at least, the normal Origin of Life, according to the principles
of Biology. The line between the living and the dead is a sharp line.
When the dead atoms of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, are seized
upon by Life, the organism at first is very lowly. It possesses few
functions. It has little beauty. Growth is the work of time. But Life is
not. That comes in a moment. At one moment it was dead; the next it
lived. This is conversion, the "passing," as the Bible calls it, "from
Death unto Life." Those who have stood by another's side at the solemn
hour of this dread possession have been conscious sometimes of an
experience which words are not allowed to utter--a something like the
sudden snapping of a chain, the waking from a dream.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] "Beginnings of Life." By H. C. Bastian, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
Macmillan, vol. ii. p. 633.
[34] "Critiques and Addresses." T. H. Huxley. F.R.S., p. 239.
[35] _Nineteenth Century_, 1878, p. 507.
[36] This being the crucial point it may not be inappropriate to
supplement the quotations already given in the text with the
following:--
"We are in the presence of the one incommunicable gulf--the gulf of all
gulfs--that gulf which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface
as any other material expedient that has ever been suggested since the
eyes of men first looked into it--the mighty gulf between death and
life."--"As Regards Protoplasm." By J. Hutchinson Stirling, LL.D., p.
42.
"The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the
living and the not-living."--Huxley, "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (new
Ed.). Art. "Biology."
"Whoever recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made
very recently to discover a decided support for the _generatio aequivoca_
in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic
world, will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so
utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all
our views of life."--Virchow: "The Freedom of Science in the Modern
State."
"All really scientific experience tells us that life can be produced
from a living antecedent only."--"The Unseen Universe," 6th Ed., p. 229.
[37] John iii.
[38] Rom. viii. 6.
[39] Rev. iii. 1.
[40] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[41] Eph. ii. 1, 5.
[42] 1 Cor. ii. 14.
[43] "First Principles," 2d Ed., p. 17.
[44] 2 Cor. xii. 5.
[45] 1 Cor. vi. 15.
[46] John xiv. 20.
[47] John xiv. 21-23.
[48] John xv. 4.
[49] Gal. ii. 20.
[50] One must not be misled by popular statements in this connection,
such as this of Professor Owen's: "There are organisms which we can
devitalize and revitalize--devive and revive--many times." (_Monthly
Microscopical Journal_, May, 1869, p. 294.) The reference is of course
to the extraordinary capacity for _resuscitation_ possessed by many of
the Protozoa and other low forms of life.
[51] Acts ix. 5.
DEGENERATION.
"I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man
void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns,
and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof
was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon it
and received instruction."--_Solomon._
"How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"--_Hebrews._
"We have as possibilities either Balance, or Elaboration, or
Degeneration."--_E. Ray Lankester._
In one of his best known books, Mr. Darwin brings out a fact which may
be illustrated in some such way as this: Suppose a bird fancier collects
a flock of tame pigeons distinguished by all the infinite ornamentations
of their race. They are of all kinds, of every shade of color, and
adorned with every variety of marking. He takes them to an uninhabited
island and allows them to fly off wild into the woods. They found a
colony there, and after the lapse of many years the owner returns to the
spot. He will find that a remarkable change has taken place in the
interval. The birds, or their descendants rather, have all become
changed into the same color. The black, the white and the dun, the
striped, the spotted, and the ringed, are all metamorphosed into one--a
dark slaty blue. Two plain black bands monotonously repeat themselves
upon the wings of each, and the loins beneath are white; but all the
variety, all the beautiful colors, all the old graces of form it may be,
have disappeared. These improvements were the result of care and nature,
of domestication, of civilization; and now that these influences are
removed, the birds themselves undo the past and lose what they had
gained. The attempt to elevate the race has been mysteriously thwarted.
It is as if the original bird, the far remote ancestor of all doves, had
been blue, and these had been compelled by some strange law to discard
the badges of their civilization and conform to the ruder image of the
first. The natural law by which such a change occurs is called _The
Principle of Reversion to Type_.
It is a proof of the universality of this law that the same thing will
happen with a plant. A garden is planted, let us say, with strawberries
and roses, and for a number of years is left alone. In process of time
it will run to waste. But this does not mean that the plants will really
waste away, but that they will change into something else, and, as it
invariably appears, into something worse; in the one case, namely, into
the small, wild strawberry of the woods, and in the other into the
primitive dog-rose of the hedges.
If we neglect a garden plant, then, a natural principle of deterioration
comes in, and changes it into a worse plant. And if we neglect a bird,
by the same imperious law it will be gradually changed into an uglier
bird. Or if we neglect almost any of the domestic animals, they will
rapidly revert to wild and worthless forms again.
Now the same thing exactly would happen in the case of you or me. Why
should Man be an exception to any of the laws of Nature? Nature knows
him simply as an animal--Sub-kingdom _Vertebrata_, Class _Mammalia_,
Order _Bimana_. And the law of Reversion to Type runs through all
creation. If a man neglect himself for a few years he will change into a
worse man and a lower man. If it is his body that he neglects, he will
deteriorate into a wild and bestial savage--like the de-humanized men
who are discovered sometimes upon desert islands. If it is his mind, it
will degenerate into imbecility and madness--solitary confinement has
the power to unmake men's minds and leave them idiots. If he neglect his
conscience, it will run off into lawlessness and vice. Or, lastly, if
it is his soul, it must inevitably atrophy, drop off in ruin and decay.
We have here, then, a thoroughly natural basis for the question before
us. If we neglect, with this universal principle staring us in the face,
how shall we escape? If we neglect the ordinary means of keeping a
garden in order, how shall it escape running to weeds and waste? Or, if
we neglect the opportunities for cultivating the mind, how shall it
escape ignorance and feebleness? So, if we neglect the soul, how shall
it escape the natural retrograde movement, the inevitable relapse into
barrenness and death?
It is not necessary, surely, to pause for proof that there is such a
retrograde principle in the being of every man. It is demonstrated by
facts, and by the analogy of all Nature. Three possibilities of life,
according to Science, are open to all living organisms--Balance,
Evolution, and Degeneration. The first denotes the precarious
persistence of a life along what looks like a level path, a character
which seems to hold its own alike against the attacks of evil and the
appeals of good. It implies a set of circumstances so balanced by choice
or fortune that they neither influence for better nor for worse. But
except in theory this state of equilibrium, normal in the inorganic
kingdom, is really foreign to the world of life; and what seems inertia
may be a true Evolution unnoticed from its slowness, or likelier still a
movement of Degeneration subtly obliterating as it falls the very traces
of its former height. From this state of apparent Balance, Evolution is
the escape in the upward direction, Degeneration in the lower. But
Degeneration, rather than Balance or Elaboration, is the possibility of
life embraced by the majority of mankind. And the choice is determined
by man's own nature. The life of Balance is difficult. It lies on the
verge of continual temptation, its perpetual adjustments become
fatiguing, its measured virtue is monotonous and uninspiring. More
difficult still, apparently, is the life of ever upward growth. Most men
attempt it for a time, but growth is slow; and despair overtakes them
while the goal is far away. Yet none of these reasons fully explains the
fact that the alternative which remains is adopted by the majority of
men. That Degeneration is easy only half accounts for it. Why is it
easy? Why but that already in each man's very nature this principle is
supreme? He feels within his soul a silent drifting motion impelling him
downward with irresistible force. Instead of aspiring to Conversion to a
higher Type he submits by a law of his nature to Reversion to a lower.
This is Degeneration--that principle by which the organism, failing to
develop itself, failing even to keep what it has got, deteriorates, and
becomes more and more adapted to a degraded form of life.
All men who know themselves are conscious that this tendency,
deep-rooted and active, exists within their nature. Theologically it is
described as a gravitation, a bias toward evil. The Bible view is that
man is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. And experience tells him
that he will shape himself into further sin and ever deepening iniquity
without the smallest effort, without in the least intending it, and in
the most natural way in the world if he simply let his life run. It is
on this principle that, completing the conception, the wicked are said
further in the Bible to be lost. They are not really lost as yet, but
they are on the sure way to it. The bias of their lives is in full
action. There is no drag on anywhere. The natural tendencies are having
it all their own way; and although the victims may be quite unconscious
that all this is going on, it is patent to every one who considers even
the natural bearings of the case that "the end of these things is
Death." When we see a man fall from the top of a five-story house, we
say the man is lost. We say that before he has fallen a foot; for the
same principle that made him fall the one foot will undoubtedly make him
complete the descent by falling another eighty or ninety feet. So that
he is a dead man, or a lost man from the very first. The gravitation of
sin in a human soul acts precisely in the same way. Gradually, with
gathering momentum it sinks a man further and further from God and
righteousness, and lands him, by the sheer action of a natural law, in
the hell of a neglected life.
But the lesson is not less clear from analogy. Apart even from the law
of Degeneration, apart from Reversion to Type, there is in every living
organism a law of Death. We are wont to imagine that Nature is full of
Life. In reality it is full of Death. One cannot say it is natural for a
plant to live. Examine its nature fully, and you have to admit that its
natural tendency is to die. It is kept from dying by a mere temporary
endowment which gives it an ephemeral dominion over the elements--gives
it power to utilize for a brief span the rain, the sunshine, and the
air. Withdraw this temporary endowment for a moment and its true nature
is revealed. Instead of overcoming Nature it is overcome. The very
things which appeared to minister to its growth and beauty now turn
against it and make it decay and die. The sun which warmed it, withers
it; the air and rain which nourished it, rot it. It is the very forces
which we associate with life which, when their true nature appears, are
discovered to be really the ministers of death.
This law, which is true for the whole plant-world, is also valid for the
animal and for man. Air is not life, but corruption--so literally
corruption that the only way to keep out corruption, when life has
ebbed, is to keep out air. Life is merely a temporary suspension of
these destructive powers; and this is truly one of the most accurate
definitions of life we have yet received--"the sum total of the
functions which resist death."
Spiritual life, in like manner, is the sum total of the functions which
resist sin. The soul's atmosphere is the daily trial, circumstance, and
temptation of the world. And as it is life alone which gives the plant
power to utilize the elements, and as, without it, they utilize it, so
it is the spiritual life alone which gives the soul power to utilize
temptation and trial; and without it they destroy the soul. How shall we
escape if we refuse to exercise these functions--in other words, if we
neglect?
This destroying process, observe, goes on quite independently of God's
judgment on sin. God's judgment on sin is another and a more awful fact
of which this may be a part. But it is a distinct fact by itself, which
we can hold and examine separately, that on purely natural principles
the soul that is left to itself unwatched, uncultivated, unredeemed,
must fall away into death by its own nature. The soul that sinneth "it
shall die." It shall die, not necessarily because God passes sentence of
death upon it, but because it cannot help dying. It has neglected "the
functions which resist death" and has always been dying. The punishment
is in its very nature, and the sentence is being gradually carried out
all along the path of life by ordinary processes which enforce the
verdict with the appalling faithfulness of law.
There is an affectation that religious truths lie beyond the sphere of
the comprehension which serves men in ordinary things. This question at
least must be an exception. It lies as near the natural as the
spiritual. If it makes no impression on a man to know that God will
visit his iniquities upon him, he cannot blind himself to the fact that
Nature will. Do we not all know what it is to be punished by Nature for
disobeying her? We have looked round the wards of a hospital, a prison,
or a madhouse, and seen there Nature at work squaring her accounts with
sin. And we knew as we looked that if no Judge sat on the throne of
heaven at all there was a Judgment there, where an inexorable Nature was
crying aloud for justice, and carrying out her heavy sentences for
violated laws.
When God gave Nature the law into her own hands in this way, He seems to
have given her two rules upon which her sentences were to be based. The
one is formally enunciated in this sentence, "WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH
THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP." The other is informally expressed in this, "IF
WE NEGLECT HOW SHALL WE ESCAPE?"
The first is the positive law, and deals with sins of commission. The
other, which we are now discussing, is the negative, and deals with sins
of omission. It does not say anything about sowing but about not sowing.
It takes up the case of souls which are lying fallow. It does not say,
if we sow corruption we shall reap corruption. Perhaps we would not be
so unwise, so regardless of ourselves, of public opinion, as to sow
corruption. It does not say, if we sow tares we shall reap tares. We
might never do anything so foolish as sow tares. But if we sow nothing,
it says, we shall reap nothing. If we put nothing into the field, we
shall take nothing out. If we neglect to cultivate in summer, how shall
we escape starving in winter?
Now the Bible raises this question, but does not answer it--because it
is too obvious to need answering. How shall we escape if we neglect? The
answer is, we cannot. In the nature of things we cannot. We cannot
escape any more than a man can escape drowning who falls into the sea
and has neglected to learn to swim. In the nature of things he cannot
escape--nor can he escape who has neglected the great salvation.
Now why should such fatal consequences follow a simple process like
neglect? The popular impression is that a man, to be what is called
lost, must be an open and notorious sinner. He must be one who has
abandoned all that is good and pure in life, and sown to the flesh with
all his might and main. But this principle goes further. It says simply,
"If we neglect." Any one may see the reason why a notoriously wicked
person should not escape; but why should not all the rest of us escape?
What is to hinder people who are not notoriously wicked escaping--people
who never sowed anything in particular? Why is it such a sin to sow
nothing in particular?
There must be some hidden and vital relation between these three words,
Salvation, Neglect, and Escape--some reasonable, essential, and
indissoluble connection. Why are these words so linked together as to
weight this clause with all the authority and solemnity of a sentence of
death?
The explanation has partly been given already. It lies still further,
however, in the meaning of the word Salvation. And this, of course, is
not at all Salvation in the ordinary sense of forgiveness of sin. This
is one great meaning of Salvation, the first and the greatest. But this
is spoken to people who are supposed to have had this. It is the broader
word, therefore, and includes not only forgiveness of sin but salvation
or deliverance from the downward bias of the soul. It takes in that
whole process of rescue from the power of sin and selfishness that
should be going on from day to day in every human life. We have seen
that there is a natural principle in man lowering him, deadening him,
pulling him down by inches to the mere animal plane, blinding reason,
searing conscience, paralyzing will. This is the active destroying
principle, or Sin. Now to counteract this, God has discovered to us
another principle which will stop this drifting process in the soul,
steer it round, and make it drift the other way. This is the active
saving principle, or Salvation. If a man find the first of these powers
furiously at work within him, dragging his whole life downward to
destruction, there is only one way to escape his fate--to take resolute
hold of the upward power, and be borne by it to the opposite goal. And
as this second power is the only one in the universe which has the
slightest real effect upon the first, how shall a man escape if he
neglect it? To neglect it is to cut off the only possible chance of
escape. In declining this he is simply abandoning himself with his eyes
open to that other and terrible energy which is already there, and
which, in the natural course of things, is bearing him every moment
further and further from escape.
From the very nature of Salvation, therefore, it is plain that the only
thing necessary to make it of no effect is neglect. Hence the Bible
could not fail to lay strong emphasis on a word so vital. It was not
necessary for it to say, how shall we escape if we trample upon the
great salvation, or doubt, or despise, or reject it. A man who has been
poisoned only need neglect the antidote and he will die. It makes no
difference whether he dashes it on the ground, or pours it out of the
window, or sets it down by his bedside, and stares at it all the time he
is dying. He will die just the same, whether he destroys it in a
passion, or coolly refuses to have anything to do with it. And as a
matter of fact probably most deaths, spiritually, are gradual
dissolutions of the last class rather than rash suicides of the first.
This, then, is the effect of neglecting salvation from the side of
salvation itself; and the conclusion is that from the very nature of
salvation escape is out of the question. Salvation is a definite
process. If a man refuse to submit himself to that process, clearly he
cannot have the benefits of it. _As many as received Him to them gave
He_ power _to become the sons of God._ He does not avail himself of this
power. It may be mere carelessness or apathy. Nevertheless the neglect
is fatal. He cannot escape because he will not.
Turn now to another aspect of the case--to the effect upon the soul
itself. Neglect does more for the soul than make it miss salvation. It
despoils it of its capacity for salvation. Degeneration in the spiritual
sphere involves primarily the impairing of the faculties of salvation
and ultimately the loss of them. It really means that the very soul
itself becomes piecemeal destroyed until the very capacity for God and
righteousness is gone.
The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity for God. It is like a
curious chamber added on to being, and somehow involving being, a
chamber with elastic and contractile walls, which can be expanded, with
God as its guest, illimitably, but which without God shrinks and
shrivels until every vestige of the Divine is gone, and God's image is
left without God's Spirit. One cannot call what is left a soul; it is a
shrunken, useless organ, a capacity sentenced to death by disuse, which
droops as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers nature like a rotted
branch. Nature has her revenge upon neglect as well as upon
extravagance. Misuse, with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse.
There are certain burrowing animals--the mole for instance--which have
taken to spending their lives beneath the surface of the ground. And
Nature has taken her revenge upon them in a thoroughly natural way--she
has closed up their eyes. If they mean to live in darkness, she argues,
eyes are obviously a superfluous function. By neglecting them these
animals made it clear they do not want them. And as one of Nature's
fixed principles is that nothing shall exist in vain, the eyes are
presently taken away, or reduced to a rudimentary state. There are
fishes also which have had to pay the same terrible forfeit for having
made their abode in dark caverns where eyes can never be required. And
in exactly the same way the spiritual eye must die and lose its power by
purely natural law if the soul choose to walk in darkness rather than in
light.
This is the meaning of the favorite paradox of Christ, "From him that
hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath;" "take therefore
the talent from him." The religious faculty is a talent, the most
splendid and sacred talent we possess. Yet it is subject to the natural
conditions and laws. If any man take his talent and hide it in a napkin,
although it is doing him neither harm nor good apparently, God will not
allow him to have it. Although it is lying there rolled up in the
darkness, not conspicuously affecting any one, still God will not allow
him to keep it. He will not allow him to keep it any more than Nature
would allow the fish to keep their eyes. Therefore, He says, "take the
talent from him." And Nature does it.
This man's crime was simply neglect--"thou wicked and _slothful_
servant." It was a wasted life--a life which failed in the holy
stewardship of itself. Such a life is a peril to all who cross its path.
Degeneration compasses Degeneration. It is only a character which is
itself developing that can aid the Evolution of the world and so fulfill
the end of life. For this high usury each of our lives, however small
may seem our capital, was given us by God. And it is just the men whose
capital seems small who need to choose the best investments. It is
significant that it was the man who had only one talent who was guilty
of neglecting it. Men with ten talents, men of large gifts and burning
energies, either direct their powers nobly and usefully, or misdirect
them irretrievably. It is those who belong to the rank and file of life
who need this warning most. Others have an abundant store and sow to the
spirit or the flesh with a lavish hand. But we, with our small gift,
what boots our sowing? Our temptation as ordinary men is to neglect to
sow at all. The interest on our talent would be so small that we excuse
ourselves with the reflection that it is not worth while.
It is no objection to all this to say that we are unconscious of this
neglect or misdirection of our powers. That is the darkest feature in
the case. If there were uneasiness there might be hope. If there were,
somewhere about our soul, a something which was not gone to sleep like
all the rest; if there were a contending force anywhere; if we would let
even that work instead of neglecting it, it would gain strength from
hour to hour, and waken up one at a time each torpid and dishonored
faculty till our whole nature became alive with strivings against self,
and every avenue was open wide for God. But the apathy, the numbness of
the soul, what can be said of such a symptom but that it means the
creeping on of death? There are accidents in which the victims feel no
pain. They are well and strong they think. But they are dying. And if
you ask the surgeon by their side what makes him give this verdict, he
will say it is this numbness over the frame which tells how some of the
parts have lost already the very capacity for life.
Nor is it the least tragic accompaniment of this process that its
effects may even be concealed from others. The soul undergoing
Degeneration, surely by some arrangement with Temptation planned in the
uttermost hell, possesses the power of absolute secrecy. When all within
is festering decay and rottenness, a Judas, without anomaly, may kiss
his Lord. This invisible consumption, like its fell analogue in the
natural world, may even keep its victim beautiful while slowly slaying
it. When one examines the little _Crustacea_ which have inhabited for
centuries the lakes of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, one is at first
astonished to find these animals apparently endowed with perfect eyes.
The pallor of the head is broken by two black pigment specks,
conspicuous indeed as the only bits of color on the whole blanched body;
and these, even to the casual observer, certainly represent well-defined
organs of vision. But what do they with eyes in these Stygian waters?
There reigns an everlasting night. Is the law for once at fault? A swift
incision with the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is
betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of
vision--the front of the eye is perfect; behind, there is nothing but a
mass of ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate
thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no
vision. They have eyes, but they see not.
Exactly what Christ said of men: They had eyes, but no vision. And the
reason is the same. It is the simplest problem of natural history. The
_Crustacea_ of the Mammoth Cave have chosen to abide in darkness.
Therefore they have become fitted for it. By refusing to see they have
waived the right to see. And Nature has grimly humored them. Nature had
to do it by her very constitution. It is her defence against waste that
decay of faculty should immediately follow disuse of function. He that
hath ears to hear, he whose ears have not degenerated, let him hear.
Men tell us sometimes there is no such thing as an atheist. There must
be. There are some men to whom it is true that there is no God. They
cannot see God because they have no eye. They have only an abortive
organ, atrophied by neglect.
All this, it is commonplace again to insist, is not the effect of
neglect when we die, but while we live. The process is in full career
and operation now. It is useless projecting consequences into the future
when the effects may be measured now. We are always practicing these
little deceptions upon ourselves, postponing the consequences of our
misdeeds as if they were to culminate some other day about the time of
death. It makes us sin with a lighter hand to run an account with
retribution, as it were, and delay the reckoning time with God. But
every day is a reckoning day. Every soul is a Book of Judgment and
Nature, as a recording angel, marks there every sin. As all will be
judged by the great Judge some day, all are judged by Nature now. The
sin of yesterday, as part of its penalty, has the sin of to-day. All
follow us in silent retribution on our past, and go with us to the
grave. We cannot cheat Nature. No sleight-of-heart can rob religion of
_a present_, the immortal nature of a _now_. The poet sings--
"I looked behind to find my past,
And lo, it had gone before."
But no, not all. The unforgiven sins are not away in keeping somewhere
to be let loose upon us when we die; they are here, within us, now.
To-day brings the resurrection of their past, to-morrow of to-day. And
the powers of sin, to the exact strength that we have developed them,
nearing their dreadful culmination with every breath we draw, are here,
within us, now. The souls of some men are already honey-combed through
and through with the eternal consequences of neglect, so that taking the
natural and rational view of their case _just now_, it is simply
inconceivable that there is any escape _just now_. What a fearful thing
it is to fall into the hands of the living God! A fearful thing even if,
as the philosopher tells us, "the hands of the Living God are the Laws
of Nature."
Whatever hopes of a "heaven" a neglected soul may have, can be shown to
be an ignorant and delusive dream. How is the soul to escape to heaven
if it has neglected for a lifetime the means of escape from the world
and self? And where is the capacity for heaven to come from if it be not
developed on earth? Where, indeed, is even the smallest spiritual
appreciation of God and heaven to come from when so little of
spirituality has ever been known or manifested here? If every Godward
aspiration of the soul has been allowed to become extinct, and every
inlet that was open to heaven to be choked, and every talent for
religious love and trust to have been persistently neglected and
ignored, where are the faculties to come from that would ever find the
faintest relish in such things as God and heaven give?
These three words, Salvation, Escape, and Neglect, then, are not
casually, but organically and necessarily connected. Their doctrine is
scientific, not arbitrary. Escape means nothing more than the gradual
emergence of the higher being from the lower, and nothing less. It means
the gradual putting off of all that cannot enter the higher state, or
heaven, and simultaneously the putting on of Christ. It involves the
slow completing of the soul and the development of the capacity for God.
Should any one object that from this scientific standpoint the opposite
of salvation is annihilation, the answer is at hand. From this
standpoint there is no such word.
If, then, escape is to be open to us, it is not to come to us somehow,
vaguely. We are not to hope for anything startling or mysterious. It is
a definite opening along certain lines which are definitely marked by
God, which begin at the Cross of Christ, and lead direct to Him. Each
man in the silence of his own soul must work out this salvation for
himself with fear and trembling--with fear, realizing the momentous
issues of his task; with trembling, lest before the tardy work be done
the voice of Death should summon him to stop.
What these lines are may, in closing, be indicated in a word. The true
problem of the spiritual life may be said to be, do the opposite of
Neglect. Whatever this is, do it, and you shall escape. It will just
mean that you are so to cultivate the soul that all its powers will open
out to God, and in beholding God be drawn away from sin. The idea really
is to develop among the ruins of the old a new "creature"--a new
creature which, while the old is suffering Degeneration from Neglect, is
gradually to unfold, to escape away and develop on spiritual lines to
spiritual beauty and strength. And as our conception of spiritual being
must be taken simply from natural being, our ideas of the lines along
which the new religious nature is to run must be borrowed from the known
lines of the old.
There is, for example, a Sense of Sight in the religious nature. Neglect
this, leave it undeveloped and you never miss it. You simply see
nothing. But develop it and you see God. And the line along which to
develop it is known to us. Become pure in heart. The pure in heart shall
see God. Here, then, is one opening for soul-culture--the avenue through
purity of heart to the spiritual seeing of God.
Then there is a Sense of Sound. Neglect this, leave it undeveloped, and
you never miss it. You simply hear nothing. Develop it, and you hear
God. And the line along which to develop it is known to us. Obey Christ.
Become one of Christ's flock. "The sheep hear His voice, and He calleth
them by name." Here, then, is another opportunity for the culture of the
soul--a gateway through the Shepherd's fold to hear the Shepherd's
voice.
And there is a Sense of Touch to be acquired--such a sense as the woman
had who touched the hem of Christ's garment, that wonderful electric
touch called faith, which moves the very heart of God.
And there is a Sense of Taste--a spiritual hunger after God; a something
within which tastes and sees that He is good. And there is the Talent
for Inspiration. Neglect that, and all the scenery of the spiritual
world is flat and frozen. But cultivate it, and it penetrates the whole
soul with sacred fire, and illuminates creation with God. And last of
all there is the great capacity for Love, even for the love of God--the
expanding capacity for feeling more and more its height and depth, its
length and breadth. Till that is felt no man can really understand that
word, "so great salvation," for what is its measure but that other "so"
of Christ--God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son?
Verily, how shall we escape if we neglect that?[52]
FOOTNOTES:
[52] For the scientific basis of this spiritual law the following works
may be consulted:--
"The Origin of Species." By Charles Darwin, F.R.S. London: John Murray.
1872.
"Degeneration." By E. Ray Lankester, F.R.S. London: Macmillan. 1880.
"Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Princip des Functions Wechsels."
Dr. A. Dorhn. Leipzig: 1875.
"Lessons from Nature." By St. George Mivart, F.R.S. London: John Murray.
1876.
"The Natural Conditions of Existence as they Affect Animal Life." Karl
Semper. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1881.
GROWTH.
"Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the greatest
works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not 'there has
been a great _effort_ here,' but 'there has been a great _power_
here?' It is not the weariness of mortality but the strength of
divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that
is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do
great things by help of iron bars and perspiration; alas! we shall
do nothing that way, but lose some pounds of our own
weight."--_Ruskin._
"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow."--_The Sermon on
the Mount._
"Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit."--_Juvenal._
What gives the peculiar point to this object-lesson from the lips of
Jesus is, that He not only made the illustration, but made the lilies.
It is like an inventor describing his own machine. He made the lilies
and He made me--both on the same broad principle. Both together, man and
flower, He planted deep in the Providence of God; but as men are dull at
studying themselves He points to this companion-phenomenon to teach us
how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will unfold for
us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. For Christ's words
are not a general appeal to consider nature. Men are not to consider the
lilies simply to admire their beauty, to dream over the delicate
strength and grace of stem and leaf. The point they were to consider was
_how they grew_--how without anxiety or care the flower woke into
loveliness, how without weaving these leaves were woven, how without
toiling these complex tissues spun themselves, and how without any
effort or friction the whole slowly came ready-made from the loom of God
in its more than Solomon-like glory. "So," He says, making the
application beyond dispute, "you care-worn, anxious men must grow. You,
too, need take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye
shall drink or what ye shall put on. For if God so clothe the grass of
the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall
He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?"
This nature-lesson was a great novelty in its day; but all men now who
have even a "little faith" have learned this Christian secret of a
composed life. Apart even from the parable of the lily, the failures of
the past have taught most of us the folly of disquieting ourselves in
vain, and we have given up the idea that by taking thought we can add a
cubit to our stature.
But no sooner has our life settled down to this calm trust in God than a
new and graver anxiety begins. This time it is not for the body we are
in travail, but for the soul. For the temporal life we have considered
the lilies, but how is the spiritual life to grow. How are we to become
better men? How are we to grow in grace? By what thought shall we add
the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fullness of the
Perfect Man? And because we know ill how to do this, the old anxiety
comes back again and our inner life is once more an agony of conflict
and remorse. After all, we have but transferred our anxious thoughts
from the body to the soul. Our efforts after Christian growth seem only
a succession of failures, and instead of rising into the beauty of
holiness our life is a daily heartbreak and humiliation.
Now the reason of this is very plain. We have forgotten the parable of
the lily. Violent efforts to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly
wrong in principle. There is but one principle of growth both for the
natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and soul. For all
growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace is
once more this, "Consider the lilies _how they grow_."
In seeking to extend the analogy from the body to the soul there are two
things about the lilies' growth, two characteristics of all growth, on
which one must fix attention. These are--
First, Spontaneousness.
Second, Mysteriousness.