evidence of the spontaneousness of growth. The first is Science. And the
argument here could not be summed up better than in the words of Jesus.
The lilies grow, He says, of themselves; they toil not, neither do they
spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously, without trying,
without fretting, without thinking. Applied in any direction, to plant,
to animal, to the body or to the soul this law holds. A boy grows, for
example, without trying. One or two simple conditions are fulfilled, and
the growth goes on. He thinks probably as little about the condition as
about the result; he fulfills the conditions by habit, the result
follows by nature. Both processes go steadily on from year to year apart
from himself and all but in spite of himself. One would never think of
_telling_ a boy to grow. A doctor has no prescription for growth. He can
tell me how growth may be stunted or impaired, but the process itself is
recognized as beyond control--one of the few, and therefore very
significant, things which Nature keeps in her own hands. No physician of
souls, in like manner, has any prescription for spiritual growth. It is
the question he is most often asked and most often answers wrongly. He
may prescribe more earnestness, more prayer, more self-denial, or more
Christian work. These are prescriptions for something, but not for
growth. Not that they may not encourage growth; but the soul grows as
the lily grows, without trying, without fretting, without ever thinking.
Manuals of devotion, with complicated rules for getting on in the
Christian life, would do well sometimes to return to the simplicity of
nature; and earnest souls who are attempting sanctification by struggle
instead of sanctification by faith might be spared much humiliation by
learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount. There _can_ indeed be no
other principle of growth than this. It is a vital act. And to try to
_make_ a thing grow is as absurd as to help the tide to come in or the
sun rise.
Another argument for the spontaneousness of growth is universal
experience. A boy not only grows without trying, but he cannot grow if
he tries. No man by taking thought has ever added a cubit to his
stature; nor has any man by mere working at his soul ever approached
nearer to the stature of the Lord Jesus. The stature of the Lord Jesus
was not itself reached by work, and he who thinks to approach its
mystical height by anxious effort is really receding from it. Christ's
life unfolded itself from a divine germ, planted centrally in His
nature, which grew as naturally as a flower from a bud. This flower may
be imitated; but one can always tell an artificial flower. The human
form may be copied in wax, yet somehow one never fails to detect the
difference. And this precisely is the difference between a native growth
of Christian principle and the moral copy of it. The one is natural, the
other mechanical. The one is a growth, the other an accretion. Now this,
according to modern biology, is the fundamental distinction between the
living and the not living, between an organism and a crystal. The living
organism grows, the dead crystal increases. The first grows vitally from
within, the last adds new particles from the outside. The whole
difference between the Christian and the moralist lies here. The
Christian works from the center, the moralist from the circumference.
The one is an organism, in the center of which is planted by the living
God a living germ. The other is a crystal, very beautiful it may be; but
only a crystal--it wants the vital principle of growth.
And one sees here also, what is sometimes very difficult to see, why
salvation in the first instance is never connected directly with
morality. The reason is not that salvation does not demand morality, but
that it demands so much of it that the moralist can never reach up to
it. The end of Salvation is perfection, the Christ-like mind, character
and life. Morality is on the way to this perfection; it may go a
considerable distance toward it, but it can never reach it. Only Life
can do that. It requires something with enormous power of movement, of
growth, of overcoming obstacles, to attain the perfect. Therefore the
man who has within himself this great formative agent, Life, is nearer
the end than the man who has morality alone. The latter can never reach
perfection; the former _must_. For the Life must develop out according
to its type; and being a germ of the Christ-life, it must unfold into _a
Christ_. Morality, at the utmost, only develops the character in one or
two directions. It may perfect a single virtue here and there, but it
cannot perfect all. And especially it fails always to give that rounded
harmony of parts, that perfect tune to the whole orchestra, which is the
marked characteristic of life. Perfect life is not merely the possessing
of perfect functions, but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to
each other and all conspiring to a single result, the perfect working of
the whole organism. It is not said that the character will develop in
all its fullness in this life. That were a time too short for an
Evolution so magnificent. In this world only the cornless ear is seen;
sometimes only the small yet still prophetic blade. The sneer at the
godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing.
At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed
and downtrodden. But it is a living thing. That great dead stone beside
it is more imposing; only it will never be anything else than a stone.
But this small blade--_it doth not yet appear what it shall be_.
Seeing now that Growth can only be synonymous with a living automatic
process, it is all but superfluous to seek a third line of argument from
Scripture. Growth there is always described in the language of
physiology. The regenerate soul is a new creature. The Christian is a
new man in Christ Jesus. He adds the cubits to his stature just as the
old man does. He is rooted and built up in Christ; he abides in the
vine, and so abiding, not toiling or spinning, brings forth fruit. The
Christian in short, like the poet, is born not made; and the fruits of
his character are not manufactured things but living things, things
which have grown from the secret germ, the fruits of the living Spirit.
They are not the produce of this climate, but exotics from a sunnier
land.
II. But, secondly, besides this Spontaneousness there is this other
great characteristic of Growth--Mysteriousness. Upon this quality
depends the fact, probably, that so few men ever fathom its real
character. We are most unspiritual always in dealing with the simplest
spiritual things. A lily grows mysteriously, pushing up its solid weight
of stem and leaf in the teeth of gravity. Shaped into beauty by secret
and invisible fingers, the flower develops we know not how. But we do
not wonder at it. Every day the thing is done; it is Nature, it is God.
We are spiritual enough at least to understand that. But when the soul
rises slowly above the world, pushing up its delicate virtues in the
teeth of sin, shaping itself mysteriously into the image of Christ, we
deny that the power is not of man. A strong will, we say, a high ideal,
the reward of virtue, Christian influence--these will account for it.
Spiritual character is merely the product of anxious work, self-command,
and self-denial. We allow, that is to say, a miracle to the lily, but
none to the man. The lily may grow; the man must fret and toil and spin.
Now grant for a moment that by hard work and self-restraint a man may
attain to a very high character. It is not denied that this can be done.
But what is denied is that this is growth, and that this process is
Christianity. The fact that you can account for it proves that it is not
growth. For growth is mysterious; the peculiarity of it is that you
cannot account for it. Mysteriousness, as Mozley has well observed, is
"the test of spiritual birth." And this was Christ's test. "The wind
bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth, _so is every one that is born
of the Spirit_." The test of spirituality is that you cannot tell whence
it cometh or whither it goeth. If you can tell, if you can account for
it on philosophical principles, on the doctrine of influence, on
strength of will, on a favorable environment, it is not growth. It may
be so far a success, it may be a perfectly honest, even remarkable, and
praiseworthy imitation, but it is not the real thing. The fruits are
wax, the flowers artificial--you can tell whence it cometh and whither
it goeth.
The conclusion is, then, that the Christian is a unique phenomenon. You
cannot account for him. And if you could he would not be a Christian.
Mozley has drawn the two characters for us in graphic words: "Take an
ordinary man of the world--what he thinks and what he does, his whole
standard of duty is taken from the society in which he lives. It is a
borrowed standard: he is as good as other people are; he does, in the
way of duty, what is generally considered proper and becoming among
those with whom his lot is thrown. He reflects established opinion on
such points. He follows its lead. His aims and objects in life again are
taken from the world around him, and from its dictation. What it
considers honorable, worth having, advantageous and good, he thinks so
too and pursues it. His motives all come from a visible quarter. It
would be absurd to say that there is any mystery in such a character as
this, because it is formed from a known external influence--the
influence of social opinion and the voice of the world. 'Whence such a
character cometh' we see; we venture to say that the source and origin
of it is open and palpable, and we know it just as we know the physical
causes of many common facts."
Then there is the other. "There is a certain character and disposition
of mind of which it is true to say that 'thou canst not tell whence it
cometh or whither it goeth.' ... There are those who stand out from
among the crowd, which reflects merely the atmosphere of feeling and
standard of society around it, with an impress upon them which bespeaks
a heavenly birth.... Now, when we see one of those characters, it is a
question which we ask ourselves. How has the person become possessed of
it? Has he caught it from society around him? That cannot be, because it
is wholly different from that of the world around him. Has he caught it
from the inoculation of crowds and masses, as the mere religious zealot
catches his character? That cannot be either, for the type is altogether
different from that which masses of men, under enthusiastic impulses,
exhibit. There is nothing gregarious in this character; it is the
individual's own; it is not borrowed, it is not a reflection of any
fashion or tone of the world outside; it rises up from some fount
within, and it is a creation of which the text says, We know not whence
it cometh."[53]
Now we have all met these two characters--the one eminently respectable,
upright, virtuous, a trifle cold perhaps, and generally, when critically
examined, revealing somehow the mark of the tool; the other with God's
breath still upon it, an inspiration; not more virtuous, but differently
virtuous; not more humble, but different, wearing the meek and quiet
spirit artlessly as to the manner born. The other-worldliness of such a
character is the thing that strikes you; you are not prepared for what
it will do or say or become next, for it moves from a far-off center,
and in spite of its transparency and sweetness that presence fills you
always with awe. A man never feels the discord of his own life, never
hears the jar of the machinery by which he tries to manufacture his own
good points, till he has stood in the stillness of such a presence. Then
he discerns the difference between growth and work. He has considered
the lilies, how they grow.
We have now seen that spiritual growth is a process maintained and
secured by a spontaneous and mysterious inward principle. It is a
spontaneous principle even in its origin, for it bloweth where it
listeth; mysterious in its operation, for we can never tell whence it
cometh; obscure in its destination, for we cannot tell whence it goeth.
The whole process therefore transcends us; we do not work, we are taken
in hand--"it is God which worketh in us, both to will and to do of His
good pleasure." We do not plan--we are "created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
There may be an obvious objection to all this. It takes away all
conflict from the Christian life? It makes man, does it not, mere clay
in the hands of the potter? It crushes the old character to make a new
one, and destroys man's responsibility for his own soul?
Now we are not concerned here in once more striking the time-honored
"balance between faith and works." We are considering how lilies grow,
and in a specific connection, namely, to discover the attitude of mind
which the Christian should preserve regarding his spiritual growth. That
attitude, primarily, is to be free from care. We are not lodging a plea
for inactivity of the spiritual energies, but for the tranquillity of
the spiritual mind. Christ's protest is not against work, but against
anxious thought; and rather, therefore, than complement the lesson by
showing the other side, we take the risk of still further extending the
plea in the original direction.
What is the relation, to recur again to analogy, between growth and work
in a boy? Consciously, there is no relation at all. The boy never thinks
of connecting his work with his growth. Work in fact is one thing and
growth another, and it is so in the spiritual life. If it be asked
therefore, Is the Christian wrong in these ceaseless and agonizing
efforts after growth? the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong, or at
least, he is quite mistaken. When a boy takes a meal or denies himself
indigestible things, he does not say, "All this will minister to my
growth;" or when he runs a race he does not say, "This will help the
next cubit of my stature." It may or it may not be true that these
things will help his stature, but, if he thinks of this, his idea of
growth is morbid. And this is the point we are dealing with. His anxiety
here is altogether irrelevant and superfluous. Nature is far more
bountiful than we think. When she gives us energy she asks none of it
back to expend on our own growth. She will attend to that. "Give your
work," she says, "and your anxiety to others; trust me to add the cubits
to your stature." If God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding
the new nature within us, it is a mistake to keep twitching at the
petals with our coarse fingers. We must seek to let the Creative Hand
alone. "It is God which giveth the increase." Yet we never know how
little we have learned of the fundamental principle of Christianity till
we discover how much we are all bent on supplementing God's free grace.
If God is spending work upon a Christian, let him be still and know that
it is God. And if he wants work, he will find it there--in the being
still.
Not that there is no work for him who would grow, to do. There is work,
and severe work--work so great that the worker deserves to have himself
relieved of all that is superfluous during his task. If the amount of
energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the
conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show for our
stature. It is with these conditions that the personal work of the
Christian is chiefly concerned. Observe for a moment what they are, and
their exact relation. For its growth the plant needs heat, light, air,
and moisture. A man, therefore, must go in search of these, or their
spiritual equivalents, and this is his work? By no means. The
Christian's work is not yet. Does the plant go in search of its
conditions? Nay, the conditions come to the plant. It no more
manufactures the heat, light, air, and moisture, than it manufactures
its own stem. It finds them all around it in Nature. It simply stands
still with its leaves spread out in unconscious prayer, and Nature
lavishes upon it these and all other bounties, bathing it in sunshine,
pouring the nourishing air over and over it, reviving it graciously with
its nightly dew. Grace, too, is as free as the air. The Lord God is a
Sun. He is as the Dew to Israel. A man has no more to manufacture these
than he has to manufacture his own soul. He stands surrounded by them,
bathed in them, beset behind and before by them. He lives and moves and
has his being in them. How then shall he go in search of them? Do not
they rather go in search of him? Does he not feel how they press
themselves upon him? Does he not know how unweariedly they appeal to
him? Has he not heard how they are sorrowful when he will not have them?
His work, therefore, is not yet. The voice still says, "Be still."
The conditions of growth, then, and the inward principle of growth being
both supplied by Nature, the thing man has to do, the little junction
left for him to complete, is to apply the one to the other. He
manufactures nothing; he earns nothing; he need be anxious for nothing;
his one duty is _to be in_ these conditions, to abide in them, to allow
grace to play over him, to be still therein and know that this is God.
The conflict begins and prevails in all its life-long agony the moment a
man forgets this. He struggles to grow himself instead of struggling to
get back again into position. He makes the church into a workshop when
God meant it to be a beautiful garden. And even in his closet, where
only should reign silence--a silence as of the mountains whereon the
lilies grow--is heard the roar and tumult of machinery. True, a man
will often have to wrestle with his God--but not for growth. The
Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most
anxious people in the world are Christians--Christians who misunderstand
the nature of growth. Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they
are not growing. And the effect is not only the loss of tranquillity to
the individual. The energies which are meant to be spent on the work of
Christ are consumed in the soul's own fever. So long as the Church's
activities are spent on growing there is nothing to spare for the world.
A soldier's time is not spent in earning the money to buy his armor, in
finding food and raiment, in seeking shelter. His king provides these
things that he may be the more at liberty to fight his battles. So, for
the soldier of the Cross all is provided. His Government has planned to
leave him free for the Kingdom's work.
The problem of the Christian life finally is simplified to this--man has
but to preserve the right attitude. To abide in Christ, to be in
position, that is all. Much work is done on board a ship crossing the
Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the ship go. The sailor but
harnesses his vessel to the wind. He puts his sail and rudder in
position, and lo, the miracle is wrought. So everywhere God creates, man
utilizes. All the work of the world is merely a taking advantage of
energies already there.[54] God gives the wind, and the water, and the
heat; man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his water-wheel
in the way of the river, puts his piston in the way of the steam; and so
holding himself in position before God's Spirit, all the energies of
Omnipotence course within his soul. He is like a tree planted by a river
whose leaf is green and whose fruits fail not. Such is the deeper lesson
to be learned from considering the lily. It is the voice of Nature
echoing the whole evangel of Jesus, "Come unto Me, and I will give you
rest."
FOOTNOTES:
[53] University Sermons, pp. 234-241.
[54] See Bushnell's "New Life."
DEATH.
"What could be easier than to form a catena of the most
philosophical defenders of Christianity, who have exhausted language
in declaring the impotence of the unassisted intellect? Comte has
not more explicitly enounced the incapacity of man to deal with the
Absolute and the Infinite than the whole series of orthodox writers.
Trust your reason, we have been told till we are tired of the
phrase, and you will become Atheists or Agnostics. We take you at
your word; we become Agnostics."--_Leslie Stephen._
"To be carnally minded is Death."--_Paul._
"I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at what they
lose."--_Ruskin._
"Death," wrote Faber, "is an unsurveyed land, an unarranged Science."
Poetry draws near Death only to hover over it for a moment and withdraw
in terror. History knows it simply as a universal fact. Philosophy finds
it among the mysteries of being, the one great mystery of being not. All
contributions to this dead theme are marked by an essential vagueness,
and every avenue of approach seems darkened by impenetrable shadow.
But modern Biology has found it part of its work to push its way into
this silent land, and at last the world is confronted with a scientific
treatment of Death. Not that much is added to the old conception, or
much taken from it. What it is, this certain Death with its uncertain
issues, we know as little as before. But we can define more clearly and
attach a narrower meaning to the momentous symbol.
The interest of the investigation here lies in the fact that Death is
one of the outstanding things in Nature which has an acknowledged
spiritual equivalent. The prominence of the word in the vocabulary of
Revelation cannot be exaggerated. Next to Life the most pregnant symbol
in religion is its antithesis, Death. And from the time that "If thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" was heard in Paradise, this solemn
word has been linked with human interests of eternal moment.
Notwithstanding the unparalleled emphasis upon this term in the
Christian system, there is none more feebly expressive to the ordinary
mind. That mystery which surrounds the word in the natural world shrouds
only too completely its spiritual import. The reluctance which prevents
men from investigating the secrets of the King of Terrors is for a
certain length entitled to respect. But it has left theology with only
the vaguest materials to construct a doctrine which, intelligently
enforced, ought to appeal to all men with convincing power and lend the
most effective argument to Christianity. Whatever may have been its
influence in the past, its threat is gone for the modern world. The word
has grown weak. Ignorance has robbed the Grave of all its terror, and
platitude despoiled Death of its sting. Death itself is ethically dead.
Which of us, for example, enters fully into the meaning of words like
these: "She that liveth in pleasure is _dead_ while she liveth?" Who
allows adequate weight to the metaphor in the Pauline phrase, "To be
carnally minded is _Death_;" or in this, "The wages of sin is _Death_?"
Or what theology has translated into the language of human life the
terrific practical import of "Dead in trespasses and sins?" To seek to
make these phrases once more real and burning; to clothe time-worn
formulae with living truth; to put the deepest ethical meaning into the
gravest symbol of Nature, and fill up with its full consequence the
darkest threat of Revelation--these are the objects before us now.
What, then, is Death? Is it possible to define it and embody its
essential meaning in an intelligible proposition?
The most recent and the most scientific attempt to investigate Death we
owe to the biological studies of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In his search for
the meaning of Life the word Death crosses his path, and he turns aside
for a moment to define it. Of course what Death is depends upon what
Life is. Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Life, it is well known, has
been subjected to serious criticism. While it has shed much light on
many of the phenomena of Life, it cannot be affirmed that it has taken
its place in science as the final solution of the fundamental problem of
biology. No definition of Life, indeed, that has yet appeared can be
said to be even approximately correct. Its mysterious quality evades us;
and we have to be content with outward characteristics and
accompaniments, leaving the thing itself an unsolved riddle. At the same
time Mr. Herbert Spencer's masterly elucidation of the chief phenomena
of Life has placed philosophy and science under many obligations, and in
the paragraphs which follow we shall have to incur a further debt on
behalf of religion.
The meaning of Death depending, as has been said, on the meaning of
Life, we must first set ourselves to grasp the leading characteristics
which distinguish living things. To a physiologist the living organism
is distinguished from the not-living by the performance of certain
functions. These functions are four in number--Assimilation, Waste,
Reproduction, and Growth. Nothing could be a more interesting task than
to point out the co-relatives of these in the spiritual sphere, to show
in what ways the discharge of these functions represent the true
manifestations of spiritual life, and how the failure to perform them
constitutes spiritual Death. But it will bring us more directly to the
specific subject before us if we follow rather the newer biological
lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer. According to his definition, Life is "The
definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and
successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and
sequences,"[55] or more shortly "The continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations."[56] An example or two will render
these important statements at once intelligible.
The essential characteristic of a living organism, according to these
definitions, is that it is in vital connection with its general
surroundings. A human being, for instance, is in direct contact with the
earth and air, with all surrounding things, with the warmth of the sun,
with the music of birds, with the countless influences and activities of
nature and of his fellow-men. In biological language he is said thus to
be "in correspondence with his environment." He is, that is to say, in
active and vital connection with them, influencing them possibly, but
especially being influenced by them. Now it is in virtue of this
correspondence that he is entitled to be called alive. So long as he is
in correspondence with any given point of his environment, he lives. To
keep up this correspondence is to keep up life. If his environment
changes he must instantly adjust himself to the change. And he continues
living only as long as he succeeds in adjusting himself to the
"simultaneous and successive changes in his environment" as these occur.
What is meant by a change in his environment may be understood from an
example, which will at the same time define more clearly the intimacy of
the relation between environment and organism. Let us take the case of a
civil-servant whose environment is a district in India. It is a region
subject to occasional and prolonged droughts resulting in periodical
famines. When such a period of scarcity arises, he proceeds immediately
to adjust himself to this external change. Having the power of
locomotion, he may remove himself to a more fertile district, or,
possessing the means of purchase, he may add to his old environment by
importation the "external relations" necessary to continued life. But if
from any cause he fails to adjust himself to the altered circumstances,
his body is thrown out of correspondence with his environment, his
"internal relations" are no longer adjusted to his "external
relations," and his life must cease.
In ordinary circumstances, and in health, the human organism is in
thorough correspondence with its surroundings; but when any part of the
organism by disease or accident is thrown out of correspondence, it is
in that relation dead.
This Death, this want of correspondence, may be either partial or
complete. Part of the organism may be dead to a part of the environment,
or the whole to the whole. Thus the victim of famine may have a certain
number of his correspondences arrested by the change in his environment,
but not all. Luxuries which he once enjoyed no longer enter the country,
animals which once furnished his table are driven from it. These still
exist, but they are beyond the limit of his correspondence. In relation
to these things therefore he is dead. In one sense it might be said that
it was the environment which played him false; in another, that it was
his own organization--that he was unable to adjust himself, or did not.
But, however caused, he pays the penalty with partial Death.
Suppose next the case of a man who is thrown out of correspondence with
a part of his environment by some physical infirmity. Let it be that by
disease or accident he has been deprived of the use of his ears. The
deaf man, in virtue of this imperfection, is thrown out of _rapport_
with a large and well-defined part of the environment, namely, its
sounds. With regard to that "external relation," therefore, he is no
longer living. Part of him may truly be held to be insensible or "Dead."
A man who is also blind is thrown out of correspondence with another
large part of his environment. The beauty of sea and sky, the forms of
cloud and mountain, the features and gestures of friends, are to him as
if they were not. They are there, solid and real, but not to him; he is
still further "Dead." Next, let it be conceived, the subtle finger of
cerebral disease lays hold of him. His whole brain is affected, and the
sensory nerves, the medium of communication with the environment, cease
altogether to acquaint him with what is doing in the outside world. The
outside world is still there, but not to him; he is still further
"Dead." And so the death of parts goes on. He becomes less and less
alive. "Were the animal frame not the complicated machine we have seen
it to be, death might come as a simple and gradual dissolution, the
'sans everything' being the last stage of the successive loss of
fundamental powers."[57] But finally some important part of the mere
animal framework that remains breaks down. The correlation with the
other parts is very intimate, and the stoppage of correspondence with
one means an interference with the work of the rest. Something central
has snapped, and all are thrown out of work. The lungs refuse to
correspond with the air, the heart with the blood. There is now no
correspondence whatever with environment--the thing, for it is now a
thing, is Dead.
This then is Death; "part of the framework breaks down," "something has
snapped"--these phrases by which we describe the phases of death yield
their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that
"correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now
becomes clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism
which throws it out of correspondence with some necessary part of the
environment. Death is the result produced, the want of correspondence.
We do not say that this is all that is involved. But this is the root
idea of Death--Failure to adjust internal relations to external
relations, failure to repair the broken inward connection sufficiently
to enable it to correspond again with the old surroundings. These
preliminary statements may be fitly closed with the words of Mr. Herbert
Spencer: "Death by natural decay occurs because in old age the
relations between assimilation, oxidation, and genesis of force going
on in the organism gradually fall out of correspondence with the
relations between oxygen and food and absorption of heat by the
environment. Death from disease arises either when the organism is
congenitally defective in its power to balance the ordinary external
actions by the ordinary internal actions, or when there has taken place
some unusual external action to which there was no answering internal
action. Death by accident implies some neighboring mechanical changes of
which the causes are either unnoticed from inattention, or are so
intricate that their results cannot be foreseen, and consequently
certain relations in the organism are not adjusted to the relations in
the environment."[58]
With the help of these plain biological terms we may now proceed to
examine the parallel phenomenon of Death in the spiritual world. The
factors with which we have to deal are two in number as before--Organism
and Environment. The relation between them may once more be denominated
by "correspondence." And the truth to be emphasized resolves itself into
this, that Spiritual Death is a want of correspondence between the
organism and the spiritual environment.
What is the spiritual environment? This term obviously demands some
further definition. For Death is a relative term. And before we can
define Death in the spiritual world we must first apprehend the
particular relation with reference to which the expression is to be
employed. We shall best reach the nature of this relation by considering
for a moment the subject of environment generally. By the natural
environment we mean the entire surroundings of the natural man, the
entire external world in which he lives and moves and has his being. It
is not involved in the idea that either with all or part of the
environment he is in immediate correspondence. Whether he correspond
with it or not, it is there. There is in fact a conscious environment
and an environment of which he is not conscious; and it must be borne in
mind that the conscious environment is not all the environment that is.
All that surrounds him, all that environs him, conscious or unconscious,
is environment. The moon and stars are part of it, though in the daytime
he may not see them. The polar regions are parts of it, though he is
seldom aware of their influence. In its widest sense environment simply
means all else that is.
Now it will next be manifest that different organisms correspond with
this environment in varying degrees of completeness or incompleteness.
At the bottom of the biological scale we find organisms which have only
the most limited correspondence with their surroundings. A tree, for
example, corresponds with the soil about its stem, with the sunlight,
and with the air in contact with its leaves. But it is shut off by its
comparatively low development from a whole world to which higher forms
of life have additional access. The want of locomotion alone
circumscribes most seriously its area of correspondence, so that to a
large part of surrounding nature it may truly be said to be dead. So far
as consciousness is concerned, we should be justified indeed in saying
that it was not alive at all. The murmur of the stream which bathes its
roots affects it not. The marvelous insect-life beneath its shadow
excites in it no wonder. The tender maternity of the bird which has its
nest among its leaves stirs no responsive sympathy. It cannot correspond
with those things. To stream and insect and bird it is insensible,
torpid, dead. For this is Death, this irresponsiveness.
The bird, again, which is higher in the scale of life, corresponds with
a wider environment. The stream is real to it, and the insect. It knows
what lies behind the hill; it listens to the love-song of its mate. And
to much besides beyond the simple world of the tree this higher
organism is alive. The bird we should say is more living than the tree;
it has a correspondence with a larger area of environment. But this
bird-life is not yet the highest life. Even within the immediate
bird-environment there is much to which the bird must still be held to
be dead. Introduce a higher organism, place man himself within this same
environment, and see how much more living he is. A hundred things which
the bird never saw in insect, stream, and tree appeal to him. Each
single sense has something to correspond with. Each faculty finds an
appropriate exercise. Man is a mass of correspondences, and because of
these, because he is alive to countless objects and influences to which
lower organisms are dead, he is the most living of all creatures.
The relativity of Death will now have become sufficiently obvious. Man
being left out of account, all organisms are seen as it were to be
partly living and partly dead. The tree, in correspondence with a narrow
area of environment, is to that extent alive; to all beyond, to the all
but infinite area beyond, it is dead. A still wider portion of this vast
area is the possession of the insect and the bird. Their's also,
nevertheless, is but a little world, and to an immense further area
insect and bird are dead. All organisms likewise are living and
dead--living to all within the circumference of their correspondences,
dead to all beyond. As we rise in the scale of life, however, it will be
observed that the sway of Death is gradually weakened. More and more of
the environment becomes accessible as we ascend, and the domain of life
in this way slowly extends in ever-widening circles. But until man
appears there is no organism to correspond with the whole environment.
Till then the outermost circles have no correspondents. To the
inhabitants of the innermost spheres they are as if they were not.
Now follows a momentous question. Is man in correspondence with the
whole environment? When we reach the highest living organism, is the
final blow dealt to the kingdom of Death? Has the last acre of the
infinite area been taken in by his finite faculties? Is his conscious
environment the whole environment? Or is there, among these outermost
circles, one which with his multitudinous correspondences he fails to
reach? If so, this is Death. The question of Life or Death to him is the
question of the amount of remaining environment he is able to compass.
If there be one circle or one segment of a circle which he yet fails to
reach, to correspond with, to know, to be influenced by, he is, with
regard to that circle or segment, dead.
What then, practically, is the state of the case? Is man in
correspondence with the whole environment or is he not? There is but one
answer. He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they are in
living contact with that part of the environment which is called the
spiritual world. In introducing this new term spiritual world, observe,
we are not interpolating a new factor. This is an essential part of the
old idea. We have been following out an ever-widening environment from
point to point, and now we reach the outermost zones. The spiritual
world is simply the outermost segment, circle, or circles of the natural
world. For purposes of convenience we separate the two just as we
separate the animal world from the plant. But the animal world and the
plant world are the same world. They are different parts of one
environment. And the natural and spiritual are likewise one. The inner
circles are called the natural, the outer the spiritual. And we call
them spiritual simply because they are beyond us or beyond a part of us.
What we have correspondence with, that we call natural; what we have
little or no correspondence with, that we call spiritual. But when the
appropriate corresponding organism appears, the organism, that is, which
can freely communicate with these outer circles, the distinction
necessarily disappears. The spiritual to it becomes the outer circle of
the natural.
Now of the great mass of living organisms, of the great mass of men, is
it not to be affirmed that they are out of correspondence with this
outer circle? Suppose, to make the final issue more real, we give this
outermost circle of environment a name. Suppose we call it God. Suppose
also we substitute a word for "correspondence" to express more
intimately the personal relation. Let us call it Communion. We can now
determine accurately the spiritual relation of different sections of
mankind. Those who are in communion with God live, those who are not are
dead.
The extent or depth of this communion, the varying degrees of
correspondence in different individuals, and the less or more abundant
life which these result in, need not concern us for the present. The
task we have set ourselves is to investigate the essential nature of
Spiritual Death. And we have found it to consist in a want of communion
with God. The unspiritual man is he who lives in the circumscribed
environment of this present world. "She that liveth in pleasure is Dead
while she liveth." "To be carnally minded is Death." To be carnally
minded, translated into the language of science, is to be limited in
one's correspondences to the environment of the natural man. It is no
necessary part of the conception that the mind should be either
purposely irreligious, or directly vicious. The mind of the flesh,
{phronema tes sarkos}, by its very nature, limited capacity, and
time-ward tendency, is {thanatos}, Death. This earthly mind may be of
noble caliber, enriched by culture, high toned, virtuous and pure. But
if it know not God? What though its correspondences reach to the stars
of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time and Space? The stars of heaven
are not heaven. Space is not God. This mind certainly, has life, life up
to its level. There is no trace of Death. Possibly, too, it carries its
deprivation lightly, and, up to its level, lies content. We do not
picture the possessor of this carnal mind as in any sense a monster. We
have said he may be high-toned, virtuous, and pure. The plant is not a
monster because it is dead to the voice of the bird; nor is he a monster
who is dead to the voice of God. The contention at present simply is
that he is _Dead_.
We do not need to go to Revelation for the proof of this. That has been
rendered unnecessary by the testimony of the Dead themselves. Thousands
have uttered themselves upon their relation to the Spiritual World, and
from their own lips we have the proclamation of their Death. The
language of theology in describing the state of the natural man is often
regarded as severe. The Pauline anthropology has been challenged as an
insult to human nature. Culture has opposed the doctrine that "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." And even some modern theologies have refused to
accept the most plain of the aphorisms of Jesus, that "Except a man be
born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." But this stern doctrine of
the spiritual deadness of humanity is no mere dogma of a past theology.
The history of thought during the present century proves that the world
has come round spontaneously to the position of the first. One of the
ablest philosophical schools of the day erects a whole antichristian
system on this very doctrine. Seeking by means of it to sap the
foundation of spiritual religion, it stands unconsciously as the most
significant witness for its truth. What is the creed of the Agnostic,
but the confession of the spiritual numbness of humanity? The negative
doctrine which it reiterates with such sad persistency, what is it but
the echo of the oldest of scientific and religious truths? And what are
all these gloomy and rebellious infidelities, these touching, and too
sincere confessions of universal nescience, but a protest against this
ancient law of Death?
The Christian apologist never further misses the mark than when he
refuses the testimony of the Agnostic to himself. When the Agnostic
tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid and dead to the spiritual
world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells me that.
Science tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle; and we
are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores it as
if, being a man without an ear, he professed to know nothing of a
musical world, or being without taste, of a world of art. The nescience
of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from experience that to be
carnally minded is Death. Let the theological value of the concession be
duly recognized. It brings no solace to the unspiritual man to be told
he is mistaken. To say he is self-deceived is neither to compliment him
nor Christianity. He builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the
_Unknown_ God. He does not know God. With all his marvelous and complex
correspondences, he is still one correspondence short.
It is a point worthy of special note that the proclamation of this truth
has always come from science rather than from religion. Its general
acceptance by thinkers is based upon the universal failure of a
universal experiment. The statement, therefore, that the natural man
discerneth not the things of the spirit, is never to be charged against
the intolerance of theology. There is no point at which theology has
been more modest than here. It has left the preaching of a great
fundamental truth almost entirely to philosophy and science. And so very
moderate has been its tone, so slight has been the emphasis placed upon
the paralysis of the natural with regard to the spiritual, that it may
seem to some to have been intolerant. No harm certainly could come now,
no offence could be given to science, if religion asserted more clearly
its right to the spiritual world. Science has paved the way for the
reception of one of the most revolutionary doctrines of Christianity;
and if Christianity refuses to take advantage of the opening it will
manifest a culpable want of confidence in itself. There never was a time
when its fundamental doctrines could more boldly be proclaimed, or when
they could better secure the respect and arrest the interest of Science.
To all this, and apparently with force, it may, however, be objected
that to every man who truly studies Nature there is a God. Call Him by
whatever name--a Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great First Cause, a Power
that makes for Righteousness--Science has a God; and he who believes in
this, in spite of all protest, possesses a theology. "If we will look at
things, and not merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific
man has a theology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful
and glorious God. I say that man believes in a God who feels himself in
the presence of a Power which is not himself, and is immeasurably above
himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the
knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness. And such now is Nature
to the scientific man."[59] Such now, we humbly submit, is Nature to the
very few. Their own confession is against it. That they are "absorbed"
in the contemplation we can well believe. That they might "find safety
and happiness" in the knowledge of Him is also possible--if they had it.
But this is just what they tell us they have not. What they deny is not
a God. It is the correspondence. The very confession of the Unknowable
is itself the dull recognition of an Environment beyond themselves, and
for which they feel they lack the correspondence. It is this want that
makes their God the Unknown God. And it is this that makes them _dead_.
We have not said, or implied, that there is not a God of Nature. We have
not affirmed that there is no Natural Religion. We are assured there is.
We are even assured that without a Religion of Nature Religion is only
half complete; that without a God of Nature the God of Revelation is
only half intelligible and only partially known. God is not confined to
the outermost circle of environment, He lives and moves and has His
being in the whole. Those who only seek Him in the further zone can
only find a part. The Christian who knows not God in Nature, who does
not, that is to say, correspond with the whole environment, most
certainly is partially dead. The author of "Ecce Homo" may be partially
right when he says: "I think a bystander would say that though
Christianity had in it something far higher and deeper and more
ennobling, yet the average scientific man worships just at present a
more awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average Christian.
In so many Christians the idea of God has been degraded by childish and
little-minded teaching; the Eternal and the Infinite and the
All-embracing has been represented as the head of the clerical interest,
as a sort of clergyman, as a sort of schoolmaster, as a sort of
philanthropist. But the scientific man knows Him to be eternal; in
astronomy, in geology, he becomes familiar with the countless
millenniums of His lifetime. The scientific man strains his mind
actually to realize God's infinity. As far off as the fixed stars he
traces Him, 'distance inexpressible by numbers that have name.'
Meanwhile, to the theologian, infinity and eternity are very much of
empty words when applied to the object of his worship. He does not
realize them in actual facts and definite computations."[60] Let us
accept this rebuke. The principle that want of correspondence is Death
applies all round. He who knows not God in Nature only partially lives.
The converse of this, however, is not true; and that is the point we are
insisting on. He who knows God only in Nature lives not. There is no
"correspondence" with an Unknown God, no "continuous adjustment" to a
fixed First Cause. There is no "assimilation" of Natural Law; no growth
in the Image of "the All-embracing." To correspond with the God of
Science assuredly is not to live. "This is Life Eternal, to know Thee,
_the true God_, and _Jesus Christ_ Whom Thou hast sent."
From the service we have tried to make natural science render to our
religion, we might be expected possibly to take up the position that the
absolute contribution of Science to Revelation was very great. On the
contrary, it is very small. The _absolute_ contribution, that is, is
very small. The contribution on the whole is immense, vaster than we
have yet any idea of. But without the aid of the higher Revelation this
many-toned and far-reaching voice had been forever dumb. The light of
Nature, say the most for it, is dim--how dim we ourselves, with the
glare of other Light upon the modern world, can only realize when we
seek among the pagan records of the past for the groupings after truth
of those whose only light was this. Powerfully significant and touching
as these efforts were in their success, they are far more significant
and touching in their failure. For they did fail. It requires no
philosophy now to speculate on the adequacy or inadequacy of the
Religion of Nature. For us who could never weigh it rightly in the
scales of Truth it has been tried in the balance of experience and found
wanting. Theism is the easiest of all religions to get, but the most
difficult to keep. Individuals have kept it, but nations never. Socrates
and Aristotle, Cicero and Epictetus had a theistic religion; Greece and
Rome had none. And even after getting what seems like a firm place in
the minds of men, its unstable equilibrium sooner or later betrays
itself. On the one hand theism has always fallen into the wildest
polytheism, or on the other into the blankest atheism. "It is an
indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of special
revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God as a
responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the
heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the
accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin,
controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the
conduct."[61]
What is the inference? That this poor rush-light by itself was never
meant to lend the ray by which man should read the riddle of the
universe. The mystery is too impenetrable and remote for its uncertain
flicker to more than make the darkness deeper. What indeed if this were
not a light at all, but only part of a light--the carbon point, the
fragment of calcium, the reflector in the great Lantern which contains
the Light of the World?
This is one inference. But the most important is that the absence of the
true Light means moral Death. The darkness of the natural world to the
intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first the partial,
and then the total eclipse of virtue that always follows the abandonment
of belief in a personal God. It is not, as has been pointed out a
hundred times, that morality in the abstract disappears, but the motive
and sanction are gone. There is nothing to raise it from the dead. Man's
attitude to it is left to himself. Grant that morals have their own base
in human life; grant that Nature has a Religion whose creed is Science;
there is yet nothing apart from God to save the world from moral Death.
Morality has the power to dictate but none to move. Nature directs but
cannot control. As was wisely expressed in one of many pregnant
utterances during a recent _Symposium_, "Though the decay of religion
may leave the institutes of morality intact, it drains off their inward
power. The devout faith of men expresses and measures the intensity of
their moral nature, and it cannot be lost without a remission of
enthusiasm, and under this low pressure, the successful reentrance of
importunate desires and clamorous passions which had been driven back.
To believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme over the
universe, is to invest moral distinctions with immensity and eternity,
and lift them from the provincial stage of human society to the
imperishable theater of all being. When planted thus in the very
substance of things, they justify and support the ideal estimates of
the conscience; they deepen every guilty shame; they guarantee every
righteous hope; and they help the will with a Divine casting-vote in
every balance of temptation."[62] That morality has a basis in human
society, that Nature has a Religion, surely makes the Death of the soul
when left to itself all the more appalling. It means that, between them,
Nature and morality provide all for virtue--except the Life to live it.
It is at this point accordingly that our subject comes into intimate
contact with Religion. The proposition that "to be carnally minded is
Death" even the moralist will assent to. But when it is further
announced that "the carnal mind is _enmity against God_" we find
ourselves in a different region. And when we find it also stated that
"the wages of _sin_ is Death," we are in the heart of the profoundest
questions of theology. What before was merely "enmity against society"
becomes "enmity against God;" and what was "vice" is "sin." The
conception of a God gives an altogether new color to worldliness and
vice. Worldliness it changes into heathenism, vice into blasphemy. The
carnal mind, the mind which is turned away from God, which will not
correspond with God--this is not moral only but spiritual Death. And
Sin, that which separates from God, which disobeys God, which _can_ not
in that state correspond with God--this is hell.
To the estrangement of the soul from God the best of theology traces the
ultimate cause of sin. Sin is simply apostasy from God, unbelief in God.
"Sin is manifest in its true character when the demand of holiness in
the conscience, presenting itself to the man as one of loving submission
to God, is put from him with aversion. Here sin appears as it really is,
a turning away from God; and while the man's guilt is enhanced, there
ensues a benumbing of the heart resulting from the crushing of those
higher impulses. This is what is meant by the reprobate state of those
who reject Christ and will not believe the Gospel, so often spoken of in
the New Testament; this unbelief is just the closing of the heart
against the highest love."[63] The other view of sin, probably the more
popular at present, that sin consists in selfishness, is merely this
from another aspect. Obviously if the mind turns away from one part of
the environment it will only do so under some temptation to correspond
with another. This temptation, at bottom, can only come from one
source--the love of self. The irreligious man's correspondences are
concentrated upon himself. He worships himself. Self-gratification
rather than self-denial; independence rather than submission--these are
the rules of life. And this is at once the poorest and the commonest
form of idolatry.
But whichever of these views of sin we emphasize, we find both equally
connected with Death. If sin is estrangement from God, this very
estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is
selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are
Death--"he that loveth his life," said Christ, "shall lose it."
Yet the paralysis of the moral nature apart from God does not only
depend for its evidence upon theology or even upon history. From the
analogies of Nature one would expect this result as a necessary
consequence. The development of any organism in any direction is
dependent on its environment. A living cell cut off from air will die. A
seed-germ apart from moisture and an appropriate temperature will make
the ground its grave for centuries. Human nature, likewise, is subject
to similar conditions. It can only develop in presence of its
environment. No matter what its possibilities may be, no matter what
seeds of thought or virtue, what germs of genius or of art, lie latent
in its breast, until the appropriate environment present itself the
correspondence is denied, the development discouraged, the most splendid
possibilities of life remain unrealized, and thought and virtue, genius
and art, are dead. The true environment of the moral life is God. Here
conscience wakes. Here kindles love. Duty here becomes heroic; and that
righteousness begins to live which alone is to live forever. But if this
Atmosphere is not, the dwarfed soul must perish for mere want of its
native air. And its Death is a strictly natural Death. It is not an
exceptional judgment upon Atheism. In the same circumstances, in the
same averted relation to their environment, the poet, the musician, the
artist, would alike perish to poetry, to music, and to art. Every
environment is a cause. Its effect upon me is exactly proportionate to
my correspondence with it. If I correspond with part of it, part of
myself is influenced. If I correspond with more, more of myself is
influenced; if with all, all is influenced. If I correspond with the
world, I become worldly; if with God, I become Divine. As without
correspondence of the scientific man with the natural environment there
could be no Science and no action founded on the knowledge of Nature, so
without communion with the spiritual Environment there can be no
Religion. To refuse to cultivate the religious relation is to deny to
the soul its highest right--the right to a further evolution.[64] We
have already admitted that he who knows not God may not be a monster; we
cannot say he will not be a dwarf. This precisely, and on perfectly
natural principles, is what he must be. You can dwarf a soul just as
you can dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full environment. Such a
soul for a time may have "a name to live." Its character may betray no
sign of atrophy. But its very virtue somehow has the pallor of a flower
that is grown in darkness, or as the herb which has never seen the sun,
no fragrance breathes from its spirit. To morality, possibly, this
organism offers the example of an irreproachable life; but to science it
is an instance of arrested development; and to religion it presents the
spectacle of a corpse--a living Death. With Ruskin, "I do not wonder at
what men suffer, but I wonder often at what they lose."
FOOTNOTES:
[55] "Principles of Biology," vol. i, p. 74.
[56] _Ibid._
[57] Foster's "Physiology," p. 642.
[58] Op. cit., pp. 88, 89.
[59] "Natural Religion," p. 19.
[60] "Natural Religion," p. 20.
[61] Prof. Flint, "Theism," p. 805.
[62] Martineau. _Vide_ the whole Symposium on "The Influences upon
Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief."--_Nineteenth Century_, vol.
i. pp. 331, 531.
[63] Mueller: "Christian Doctrine of Sin." 2d Ed., vol i. p 131.
[64] It would not be difficult to show, were this the immediate subject,
that it is not only a right but a duty to exercise the spiritual
faculties, a duty demanded not by religion merely, but by science. Upon
biological principles man owes his full development to himself, to
nature, and to his fellow-men. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "The
performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is
usually thought that morality requires us only to restrain such vital
activities as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such
as conflict with average welfare, special or general: but it also
requires us to carry on these vital activities up to their normal
limits. All the animal functions, in common with all the higher
functions, have, as thus understood, their imperativeness."--"The Data
of Ethics," 2d Ed., p. 76.
MORTIFICATION.
"If, by tying its main artery, we stop most of the blood going to a
limb, then, for as long as the limb performs its functions, those
parts which are called into play must be wasted faster than they are
repaired: whence eventual disablement. The relation between due
receipt of nutritive matters through its arteries, and due discharge
of its duties by the limb, is a part of the physical order. If
instead of cutting off the supply to a particular limb, we bleed the
patient largely, so drafting away the materials needed for repairing
not one limb but all limbs, and not limbs only but viscera, there
results both a muscular debility and an enfeeblement of the vital
functions. Here, again, cause and effect are necessarily related....
Pass now to those actions more commonly thought of as the occasions
for rules of conduct."--_Herbert Spencer._
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon earth."--_Paul._
"O Star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there
To waft us home the message of despair?"--_Campbell._
The definition of Death which science has given us is this: _A falling
out of correspondence with environment._ When, for example, a man loses
the sight of his eyes, his correspondence with the environing world is
curtailed. His life is limited in an important direction; he is less
living than he was before. If, in addition, he loses the senses of touch
and hearing, his correspondences are still further limited; he is
therefore still further dead. And when all possible correspondences have
ceased, when the nerves decline to respond to any stimulus, when the
lungs close their gates against the air, when the heart refuses to
correspond with the blood by so much as another beat, the insensate
corpse is wholly and forever dead. The soul, in like manner, which has
no correspondence with the spiritual environment is spiritually dead. It
may be that it never possessed the spiritual eye or the spiritual ear,
or a heart which throbbed in response to the love of God. If so, having
never lived, it cannot be said to have died. But not to have these
correspondences is to be in the state of Death. To the spiritual world,
to the Divine Environment, it is dead--as a stone which has never lived
is dead to the environment of the organic world.
Having already abundantly illustrated this use of the symbol Death, we
may proceed to deal with another class of expressions where the same
term is employed in an exactly opposite connection. It is a proof of the
radical nature of religion that a word so extreme should have to be used
again and again in Christian teaching, to define in different directions
the true spiritual relations of mankind. Hitherto we have concerned
ourselves with the condition of the natural man with regard to the
spiritual world. We have now to speak of the relations of the spiritual
man with regard to the natural world. Carrying with us the same
essential principle--want of correspondence--underlying the meaning of
Death, we shall find that the relation of the spiritual man to the
natural world, or at least to part of it, is to be that of Death.
When the natural man becomes the spiritual man, the great change is
described by Christ as a passing from Death unto Life. Before the
transition occurred, the practical difficulty was this, how to get into
correspondence with the new Environment? But no sooner is this
correspondence established than the problem is reversed. The question
now is, how to get out of correspondence with the old environment? The
moment the new life is begun there comes a genuine anxiety to break with
the old. For the former environment has now become embarrassing. It
refuses its dismissal from consciousness. It competes doggedly with the
new Environment for a share of the correspondences. And in a hundred
ways the former traditions, the memories and passions of the past, the
fixed associations and habits of the earlier life, now complicate the
new relation. The complex and bewildered soul, in fact, finds itself in
correspondence with two environments, each with urgent but yet
incompatible claims. It is a dual soul living in a double world, a world
whose inhabitants are deadly enemies, and engaged in perpetual
civil-war.
The position of things is perplexing. It is clear that no man can
attempt to live both lives. To walk both in the flesh and in the spirit
is morally impossible. "No man," as Christ so often emphasized, "can
serve two masters." And yet, as matter of fact, here is the new-born
being in communication with both environments? With sin and purity,
light and darkness, time and Eternity, God and Devil, the confused and
undecided soul is now in correspondence. What is to be done in such an
emergency? How can the New Life deliver itself from the still-persistent
past?
A ready solution of the difficulty would be _to die_. Were one to die
organically, to die and "go to heaven," all correspondence with the
lower environment would be arrested at a stroke. For Physical Death of
course simply means the final stoppage of all natural correspondences
with this sinful world.
But this alternative, fortunately or unfortunately, is not open. The
detention here of body and spirit for a given period is determined for
us, and we are morally bound to accept the situation. We must look then
for a further alternative.
Actual Death being denied us, we must ask ourselves if there is nothing
else resembling it--no artificial relation, no imitation or semblance of
Death which would serve our purpose. If we cannot yet die absolutely,
surely the next best thing will be to find a temporary substitute. If we
cannot die altogether, in short, the most we can do is to die as much as
we can. And we now know this is open to us, and how. To die to any
environment is to withdraw correspondence with it, to cut ourselves off,
so far as possible, from all communication with it. So that the solution
of the problem will simply be this, for the spiritual life to reverse
continuously the processes of the natural life. The spiritual man having
passed from Death unto Life, the natural man must next proceed to pass
from Life unto Death. Having opened the new set of correspondences, he
must deliberately close up the old. Regeneration in short must be
accompanied by Degeneration.
Now it is no surprise to find that this is the process everywhere
described and recommended by the founders of the Christian system. Their
proposal to the natural man, or rather to the natural part of the
spiritual man, with regard to a whole series of inimical relations, is
precisely this. If he cannot really die, he must make an adequate
approach to it by "reckoning himself dead." Seeing that, until the cycle
of his organic life is complete he cannot die physically, he must
meantime die morally, reckoning himself morally dead to that environment
which, by competing for his correspondences, has now become an obstacle
to his spiritual life.
The variety of ways in which the New Testament writers insist upon this
somewhat extraordinary method is sufficiently remarkable. And although
the idea involved is essentially the same throughout, it will clearly
illustrate the nature of the act if we examine separately three
different modes of expression employed in the later Scriptures in this
connection. The methods by which the spiritual man is to withdraw
himself from the old environment--or from that part of it which will
directly hinder the spiritual life--are three in number:--
First, Suicide.
Second, Mortification.
Third, Limitation.
It will be found in practice that these different methods are adapted,
respectively, to meet three different forms of temptation; so that we
possess a sufficient warrant for giving a brief separate treatment to
each.
First, Suicide. Stated in undisguised phraseology, the advice of Paul to
the Christian, with regard to a part of his nature, is to commit
suicide. If the Christian is to "live unto God," he must "die unto sin."
If he does not kill sin, sin will inevitably kill him. Recognizing this,
he must set himself to reduce the number of his correspondences--retaining
and developing those which lead to a fuller life, unconditionally
withdrawing those which in any way tend in an opposite direction. This
stoppage of correspondences is a voluntary act, a crucifixion of the
flesh, a suicide.
Now the least experience of life will make it evident that a large class
of sins can only be met, as it were, by Suicide. The peculiar feature of
Death by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but sudden. And
there are many sins which must either be dealt with suddenly or not at
all. Under this category, for instance, are to be included generally all
sins of the appetites and passions. Other sins, from their peculiar
nature, can only be treated by methods less abrupt, but the sudden
operation of the knife is the only successful means of dealing with
fleshly sins. For example, the correspondence of the drunkard with his
wine is a thing which can be broken off by degrees only in the rarest
cases. To attempt it gradually may in an isolated case succeed, but even
then the slightly prolonged gratification is no compensation for the
slow torture of a gradually diminishing indulgence. "If thine appetite
offend thee cut it off," may seem at first but a harsh remedy; but when
we contemplate on the one hand the lingering pain of the gradual
process, on the other its constant peril, we are compelled to admit that
the principle is as kind as it is wise. The expression "total
abstinence" in such a case is a strictly biological formula. It implies
the sudden destruction of a definite portion of environment by the total
withdrawal of all the connecting links. Obviously of course total
abstinence ought thus to be allowed a much wider application than to
cases of "intemperance." It's the only decisive method of dealing with
any sin of the flesh; The very nature of the relations makes it
absolutely imperative that every victim of unlawful appetite, in
whatever direction, shall totally abstain. Hence Christ's apparently
extreme and peremptory language defines the only possible, as well as
the only charitable, expedient: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it
out, and cast it from thee. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it
off, and cast it from thee."
The humanity of what is called "sudden conversion" has never been
insisted on as it deserves. In discussing "Biogenesis"[65] it has been
already pointed out that while growth is a slow and gradual process, the
change from Death to Life alike in the natural and spiritual spheres is
the work of a moment. Whatever the conscious hour of the second birth
may be--in the case of an adult it is probably defined by the first real
victory over sin--it is certain that on biological principles the real
turning-point is literally a moment. But on moral and humane grounds
this misunderstood, perverted, and therefore despised doctrine is
equally capable of defence. Were any reformer, with an adequate
knowledge of human life, to sit down and plan a scheme for the salvation
of sinful men, he would probably come to the conclusion that the best
way after all, perhaps indeed the only way, to turn a sinner from the
error of his ways would be to do it suddenly.
Suppose a drunkard were advised to take off one portion from his usual
allowance the first week, another the second, and so on! Or suppose at
first, he only allowed himself to become intoxicated in the evenings,
then every second evening, then only on Saturday nights, and finally
only every Christmas? How would a thief be reformed if he slowly reduced
the number of his burglaries, or a wife-beater by gradually diminishing
the number of his blows? The argument ends with an _ad absurdum_. "Let
him that stole _steal no more_," is the only feasible, the only moral,
and the only humane way. This may not apply to every case, but when any
part of man's sinful life can be dealt with by immediate Suicide, to
make him reach the end, even were it possible, by a lingering death,
would be a monstrous cruelty. And yet it is this very thing in "sudden
conversion," that men object to--the sudden change, the decisive stand,
the uncompromising rupture with the past, the precipitate flight from
sin as of one escaping for his life. Men surely forget that this is an
escaping for one's life. Let the poor prisoner run--madly and blindly if
he like, for the terror of Death is upon him. God knows, when the pause
comes, how the chains will gall him still.
It is a peculiarity of the sinful state, that as a general rule men are
linked to evil mainly by a single correspondence. Few men break the
whole law. Our natures, fortunately, are not large enough to make us
guilty of all, and the restraints of circumstances are usually such as
to leave a loophole in the life of each individual for only a single
habitual sin. But it is very easy to see how this reduction of our
intercourse with evil to a single correspondence blinds us to our true
position. Our correspondences, as a whole, are not with evil, and in our
calculations as to our spiritual condition we emphasize the many
negatives rather than the single positive. One little weakness, we are
apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain
indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our
besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many,
is to break at this single point. It is the only important point at
which they touch it, circumstances or natural disposition making
habitual contact at other places impossible. The sinful environment, in
short, to them means a small but well-defined area. Now if contact at
this point be not broken off, they are virtually in contact still with
the whole environment. There may be only one avenue between the new life
and the old, it may be but a small and _subterranean passage_, but this
is sufficient to keep the old life in. So long as that remains the
victim is not "dead unto sin," and therefore he cannot "live unto God."
Hence the reasonableness of the words, "Whatsoever shall keep the whole
law, and yet offend at one point, he is guilty of all." In the natural
world it only requires a single vital correspondence of the body to be
out of order to insure Death. It is not necessary to have consumption,
diabetes, and an aneurism to bring the body to the grave if it have
heart-disease. He who is fatally diseased in one organ necessarily pays
the penalty with his life, though all the others be in perfect health.
And such, likewise, are the mysterious unity and correlation of
functions in the spiritual organism that the disease of one member may
involve the ruin of the whole. The reason, therefore, with which Christ
follows up the announcement of His Doctrine of Mutilation, or local
Suicide, finds here at once its justification and interpretation: "If
thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: _for_ it
is profitable for thee that _one_ of thy members should perish, and not
that thy _whole body_ should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand
offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: _for_ it is profitable
for thee that _one_ of thy members should perish, and not that thy
_whole body_ should be cast into hell."
Secondly, Mortification. The warrant for the use of this expression is
found in the well-known phrases of Paul, "If ye through the Spirit do
mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live," and "Mortify therefore
your members which are upon earth." The word mortify here is, literally,
to make to die. It is used, of course, in no specially technical sense;
and to attempt to draw a detailed moral from the pathology of
mortification would be equally fantastic and irrelevant. But without in
any way straining the meaning it is obvious that we have here a slight
addition to our conception of dying to sin. In contrast with Suicide,
Mortification implies a gradual rather than a sudden process. The
contexts in which the passages occur will make this meaning so clear,
and are otherwise so instructive in the general connection, that we may
quote them, from the New Version, at length: "They that are after the
flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the
Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death; but
the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh
is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But
ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of
God dwell in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin;
but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of
Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised
up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies
through His Spirit that dwelleth in you. So then, brethren, we are
debtors not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after
the flesh ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye mortify the doings
(marg.) of the body, ye shall live."[66]
And again, "If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Set
your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon
the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When
Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with
Him be manifested in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are
upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and
covetousness, the which is idolatry; for which things' sake cometh the
wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience; in the which ye also walked
aforetime, when ye lived in these things. But now put ye also away all
these; anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your
mouth: lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man
with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed
unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him."[67]
From the nature of the case as here stated it is evident that no sudden
process could entirely transfer a man from the old into the new
relation. To break altogether, and at every point, with the old
environment, is a simple impossibility. So long as the regenerate man is
kept in this world, he must find the old environment at many points a
severe temptation. Power over very many of the commonest temptations is
only to be won by degrees, and however anxious one might be to apply the
summary method to every case, he soon finds it impossible in practice.
The difficulty in these cases arises from a peculiar feature of the
temptation. The difference between a sin of drunkenness, and, let us
say, a sin of temper, is that in the former case the victim who would
reform has mainly to deal with the environment, but in the latter with
the correspondence. The drunkard's temptation is a known and definite
quantity. His safety lies in avoiding some external and material
substance. Of course, at bottom, he is really dealing with the
correspondence every time he resists; he is distinctly controlling
appetite. Nevertheless it is less the appetite that absorbs his mind
than the environment. And so long as he can keep himself clear of the
"external relation," to use Mr. Herbert Spencer's phraseology, he has
much less difficulty with the "internal relation." The ill-tempered
person, on the other hand, can make very little of his environment.
However he may attempt to circumscribe it in certain directions, there
will always remain a wide and ever-changing area to stimulate his
irascibility. His environment, in short, is an inconstant quantity, and
his most elaborate calculations and precautions must often and suddenly
fail him.
What he has to deal with, then, mainly is the correspondence, the
temper itself. And that, he well knows, involves a long and humiliating
discipline. The case now is not at all a surgical but a medical one, and
the knife is here of no more use than in a fever. A specific irritant
has poisoned his veins. And the acrid humors that are breaking out all
over the surface of his life are only to be subdued by a gradual
sweetening of the inward spirit. It is now known that the human body
acts toward certain fever-germs as a sort of soil. The man whose blood
is pure has nothing to fear. So he whose spirit is purified and
sweetened becomes proof against these germs of sin. "Anger, wrath,
malice and railing" in such a soil can find no root.
The difference between this and the former method of dealing with sin
may be illustrated by another analogy. The two processes depend upon two
different natural principles. The Mutilation of a member, for instance,
finds its analogue in the horticultural operation of _pruning_, where
the object is to divert life from a useless into a useful channel. A
part of a plant which previously monopolized a large share of the vigor
of the total organism, but without yielding any adequate return, is
suddenly cut off, so that the vital processes may proceed more actively
in some fruitful parts. Christ's use of this figure is well-known:
"Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He purgeth it that it may
bring forth more fruit." The strength of the plant, that is, being given
to the formation of mere wood, a number of useless correspondences have
to be abruptly closed while the useful connections are allowed to
remain. The Mortification of a member, again, is based on the Law of
Degeneration. The useless member here is not cut off, but simply
relieved as much as possible of all exercise. This encourages the
gradual decay of the parts, and as it is more and more neglected it
ceases to be a channel for life at all. So an organism "mortifies" its
members.
Thirdly, Limitation. While a large number of correspondences between man
and his environment can be stopped in these ways, there are many more
which neither can be reduced by a gradual Mortification nor cut short by
sudden Death. One reason for this is that to tamper with these
correspondences might involve injury to closely related vital parts. Or,
again, there are organs which are really essential to the normal life of
the organism, and which therefore the organism cannot afford to lose
even though at times they act prejudicially. Not a few correspondences,
for instance, are not wrong in themselves but only in their extremes. Up
to a certain point they are lawful and necessary; beyond that point they
may become not only unnecessary but sinful. The appropriate treatment in
these and similar cases consists in a process of Limitation. The
performance of this operation, it must be confessed, requires a most
delicate hand. It is an art, moreover, which no one can teach another.
And yet, if it is not learned by all who are trying to lead the
Christian life, it cannot be for want of practice. For, as we shall see,
the Christian is called upon to exercise few things more frequently.
An easy illustration of a correspondence which is only wrong when
carried to an extreme, is the love of money. The love of money up to a
certain point is a necessity; beyond that it may become one of the worst
of sins. Christ said: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." The two
services, at a definite point, become incompatible, and hence
correspondence with one must cease. At what point, however, it must
cease each man has to determine for himself. And in this consists at
once the difficulty and the dignity of Limitation.
There is another class of cases where the adjustments are still more
difficult to determine. Innumerable points exist in our surroundings
with which it is perfectly legitimate to enjoy, and even to cultivate,
correspondence, but which privilege, at the same time, it were better on
the whole that we did not use. Circumstances are occasionally such--the
demands of others upon us, for example, may be so clamant--that we have
voluntarily to reduce the area of legitimate pleasure. Or, instead of
it coming from others, the claim may come from a still higher direction.
Man's spiritual life consists in the number and fullness of his
correspondences with God. In order to develop these he may be
constrained to insulate them, to inclose them from the other
correspondences, to shut himself in with them. In many ways the
limitation of the natural life is the necessary condition of the full
enjoyment of the spiritual life.
In this principle lies the true philosophy of self-denial. No man is
called to a life of self-denial for its own sake. It is in order to a
compensation which, though sometimes difficult to see, is always real
and always proportionate. No truth, perhaps, in practical religion is
more lost sight of. We cherish somehow a lingering rebellion against the
doctrine of self-denial--as if our nature, or our circumstances, or our
conscience, dealt with us severely in loading us with the daily cross.
But is it not plain after all that the life of self-denial is the more
abundant life--more abundant just in proportion to the ampler
crucifixion of the narrower life? Is it not a clear case of exchange--an
exchange however where the advantage is entirely on our side? We give up
a correspondence in which there is a little life to enjoy a
correspondence in which there is an abundant life. What though we
sacrifice a hundred such correspondences? We make but the more room for
the great one that is left. The lesson of self-denial, that is to say of
Limitation, is _concentration_. Do not spoil your life, it says, at the
outset with unworthy and impoverishing correspondences; and if it is
growing truly rich and abundant, be very jealous of ever diluting its
high eternal quality with anything of earth. To concentrate upon a few
great correspondences, to oppose to the death the perpetual petty
larceny of our life by trifles--these are the conditions for the highest
and happiest life. It is only Limitation which can secure the
Illimitable.
The penalty of evading self-denial also is just that we get the lesser
instead of the larger good. The punishment of sin is inseparably bound
up with itself. To refuse to deny one's self is just to be left with
the self undenied. When the balance of life is struck, the self will be
found still there. The discipline of life was meant to destroy this
self, but that discipline having been evaded--and we all to some extent
have opportunities, and too often exercise them, of taking the narrow
path by the shortest cuts--its purpose is balked. But the soul is the
loser. In seeking to gain its life it has really lost it. This is what
Christ meant when He said: "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and
he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
Why does Christ say: "Hate Life?" Does He mean that life is a sin? No.
Life is not a sin. Still, He says we must hate it. But we must live. Why
should we hate what we must do? For this reason: Life is not a sin, but
the love of life may be a sin. And the best way not to love life is to
hate it. Is it a sin then to love life? Not a sin exactly, but a
mistake. It is a sin to love some life, a mistake to love the rest.
Because that love is lost. All that is lavished on it is lost. Christ
does not say it is wrong to love life. He simply says it is _loss_. Each
man has only a certain amount of life, of time, of attention--a definite
measurable quantity. If he gives any of it to this life solely it is
wasted. Therefore Christ says, Hate life, limit life, lest you steal
your love for it from something that deserves it more.
Now this does not apply to all life. It is "life in this world" that is
to be hated. For life in this world implies conformity to this world. It
may not mean pursuing worldly pleasures, or mixing with worldly sets;
but a subtler thing than that--a silent deference to worldly opinion; an
almost unconscious lowering of religious tone to the level of the
worldly-religious world around; a subdued resistance to the soul's
delicate promptings to greater consecration, out of deference to
"breadth" or fear of ridicule. These, and such things, are what Christ
tells us we must hate. For these things are of the very essence of
worldliness. "If any man love the world," even in this sense, "the love
of the Father is not in him."
There are two ways of hating life, a true and a false. Some men hate
life because it hates them. They have seen through it, and it has turned
round upon them. They have drunk it, and come to the dregs; therefore
they hate it. This is one of the ways in which the man who loves his
life literally loses it. He loves it till he loses it, then he hates it
because it has fooled him. The other way is the religious. For religious
reasons a man deliberately braces himself to the systematic hating of
his life. "No man can serve two masters, for either he must hate the one
and love the other, or else he must hold to the one and despise the
other." Despising the other--this is hating life, limiting life. It is
not misanthropy, but Christianity.
This principle, as has been said, contains the true philosophy of
self-denial. It also holds the secret by which self-denial may be most
easily borne. A common conception of self-denial is that there are a
multitude of things about life which are to be put down with a high hand
the moment they make their appearance. They are temptations which are
not to be tolerated, but must be instantly crushed out of being with
pang and effort.
So life comes to be a constant and sore cutting off of things which we
love as our right hand. But now suppose one tried boldly to hate these
things? Suppose we deliberately made up our minds as to what things we
were henceforth to allow to become our life? Suppose we selected a given
area of our environment and determined once for all that our
correspondences should go to that alone, fencing in this area all round
with a morally impassable wall? True, to others, we should seem to live
a poorer life; they would see that our environment was circumscribed,
and call us narrow because it was narrow. But, well-chosen, this limited
life would be really the fullest life; it would be rich in the highest
and worthiest, and poor in the smallest and basest correspondences. The
well-defined spiritual life is not only the highest life, but it is also
the most easily lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than the
half. It is the man who tries to make the best of both worlds who makes
nothing of either. And he who seeks to serve two masters misses the
benediction of both. But he who has taken his stand, who has drawn a
boundary line, sharp and deep about his religious life, who has marked
off all beyond as forever forbidden ground to him, finds the yoke easy
and the burden light. For this forbidden environment comes to be as if
it were not. His faculties falling out of correspondence, slowly lose
their sensibilities. And the balm of Death numbing his lower nature
releases him for the scarce disturbed communion of a higher life. So
even here to die is gain.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Page 80.
[66] Rom. viii. 5-13.
[67] Col. iii. 1-10.
ETERNAL LIFE.
"Supposing that man, in some form, is permitted to remain on the
earth for a long series of years, we merely lengthen out the period,
but we cannot escape the final catastrophe. The earth will gradually
lose its energy of relation, as well as that of revolution round the
sun. The sun himself will wax dim and become useless as a source of
energy, until at last the favorable conditions of the present solar
system will have quite disappeared.
"But what happens to our system will happen likewise to the whole
visible universe, which will, if finite, become a lifeless mass, if
indeed it be not doomed to utter dissolution. In fine, it will
become old and effete, no less truly than the individual. It is a
glorious garment, this visible universe, but not an immortal one. We
must look elsewhere if we are to be clothed with immortality as with
a garment."--_The Unseen Universe._
"This is Life Eternal--that they might know Thee, the True God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."--_Jesus Christ._
"Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes
in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to
meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met
them, there would be eternal existence and eternal
knowledge."--_Herbert Spencer._
One of the most startling achievements of recent science is a definition
of Eternal Life. To the religious mind this is a contribution of immense
moment. For eighteen hundred years only one definition of Life Eternal
was before the world. Now there are two.
Through all these centuries revealed religion had this doctrine to
itself. Ethics had a voice, as well as Christianity, on the question of
the _summum bonum_; Philosophy ventured to speculate on the Being of a
God. But no source outside Christianity contributed anything to the
doctrine of Eternal Life. Apart from Revelation, this great truth was
unguaranteed. It was the one thing in the Christian system that most
needed verification from without, yet none was forthcoming. And never
has any further light been thrown upon the question why in its very
nature the Christian Life should be Eternal. Christianity itself even
upon this point has been obscure. Its decision upon the bare fact is
authoritative and specific. But as to what there is in the Spiritual
Life necessarily endowing it with the element of Eternity, the maturest
theology is all but silent.
It has been reserved for modern biology at once to defend and illuminate
this central truth of the Christian faith. And hence in the interests of
religion, practical and evidential, this second and scientific
definition of Eternal Life is to be hailed as an announcement of
commanding interest. Why it should not yet have received the recognition
of religious thinkers--for already it has lain some years unnoticed--is
not difficult to understand. The belief in Science as an aid to faith is
not yet ripe enough to warrant men in searching there for witnesses to
the highest Christian truths. The inspiration of Nature, it is thought,
extends to the humbler doctrines alone. And yet the reverent inquirer
who guides his steps in the right direction may find even now in the
still dim twilight of the scientific world much that will illuminate and
intensify his sublimest faith. Here, at least, comes, and comes
unbidden, the opportunity of testing the most vital point of the
Christian system. Hitherto the Christian philosopher has remained
content with the scientific evidence against Annihilation. Or, with
Butler, he has reasoned from the Metamorphoses of Insects to a future
life. Or again, with the authors of "The Unseen Universe," the apologist
has constructed elaborate, and certainly impressive, arguments upon the
Law of Continuity. But now we may draw nearer. For the first time
Science touches Christianity _positively_ on the doctrine of
Immortality. It confronts us with an actual definition of an Eternal
Life, based on a full and rigidly accurate examination of the necessary
conditions. Science does not pretend that it can fulfill these
conditions. Its votaries make no claim to possess the Eternal Life. It
simply postulates the requisite conditions without concerning itself
whether any organism should ever appear, or does now exist, which might
fulfill them. The claim of religion, on the other hand, is that there
are organisms which possess Eternal Life. And the problem for us to
solve is this: Do those who profess to possess Eternal Life fulfill the
conditions required by Science, or are they different conditions? In a
word, Is the Christian conception of Eternal Life scientific?
It may be unnecessary to notice at the outset that the definition of
Eternal Life drawn up by Science was framed without reference to
religion. It must indeed have been the last thought with the thinker to
whom we chiefly owe it, that in unfolding the conception of a Life in
its very nature necessarily eternal, he was contributing to Theology.
Mr. Herbert Spencer--for it is to him we owe it--would be the first to
admit the impartiality of his definition; and from the connection in
which it occurs in his writings, it is obvious that religion was not
even present to his mind. He is analyzing with minute care the relations
between Environment and Life. He unfolds the principle according to
which Life is high or low, long or short. He shows why organisms live
and why they die. And finally he defines a condition of things in which
an organism would never die--in which it would enjoy a perpetual and
perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a speculation. Life Eternal
is a biological conceit. The conditions necessary to an Eternal Life do
not exist in the natural world. So that the definition is altogether
impartial and independent. A Perfect Life, to Science, is simply a thing
which is theoretically possible--like a Perfect Vacuum.
Before giving, in so many words, the definition of Mr. Herbert Spencer,
it will render it fully intelligible if we gradually lead up to it by a
brief rehearsal of the few and simple biological facts on which it is
based. In considering the subject of Death, we have formerly seen that
there are degrees of Life. By this is meant that some lives have more
and fuller correspondence with Environment than others. The amount of
correspondence, again, is determined by the greater or less complexity
of the organism. Thus a simple organism like the Amoeba is possessed of
very few correspondences. It is a mere sac of transparent structureless
jelly for which organization has done almost nothing, and hence it can
only communicate with the smallest possible area of Environment. An
insect, in virtue of its more complex structure, corresponds with a
wider area. Nature has endowed it with special faculties for reaching
out to the Environment on many sides; it has more life than the Amoeba.
In other words, it is a higher animal. Man again, whose body is still
further differentiated, or broken up into different correspondences,
finds himself _en rapport_ with his surroundings to a further extent.
And therefore he is higher still, more living still. And this law, that
the degree of Life varies with the degree of correspondence, holds to
the minutest detail throughout the entire range of living things. Life
becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer, more and more sensitive
and responsive to an ever-widening Environment as we arise in the chain
of being.
Now it will speedily appear that a distinct relation exists, and must
exist, between complexity and longevity. Death being brought about by
the failure of an organism to adjust itself to some change in the
Environment, it follows that those organisms which are able to adjust
themselves most readily and successfully will live the longest. They
will continue time after time to effect the appropriate adjustment, and
their power of doing so will be exactly proportionate to their
complexity--that is, to the amount of Environment they can control with
their correspondences. There are, for example, in the Environment of
every animal certain things which are directly or indirectly dangerous
to Life. If its equipment of correspondences is not complete enough to
enable it to avoid these dangers in all possible circumstances, it must
sooner or later succumb. The organism then with the most perfect set of
correspondences, that is, the highest and most complex organism, has an
obvious advantage over less complex forms. It can adjust itself more
perfectly and frequently. But this is just the biological way of saying
that it can live the longest. And hence the relation between complexity
and longevity may be expressed thus--the most complex organisms are the
longest lived.
To state and illustrate the proposition conversely may the point still
further clear. The less highly organized an animal is, the less will be
its chance of remaining in lengthened correspondence with its
Environment. At some time or other in its career circumstances are sure
to occur to which the comparatively immobile organism finds itself
structurally unable to respond. Thus a _Medusa_ tossed ashore by a wave,
finds itself so out of correspondence with its new surroundings that its
life must pay the forfeit. Had it been able by internal change to adapt
itself to external change--to correspond sufficiently with the new
environment, as for example to crawl, as an eel would have done, back
into that environment with which it had completer correspondence--its
life might have been spared. But had this happened it would continue to
live henceforth only so long as it could continue in correspondence with
all the circumstances in which it might find itself. Even if, however,
it became complex enough to resist the ordinary and direct dangers of
its environment, it might still be out of correspondence with others. A
naturalist for instance, might take advantage of its want of
correspondence with particular sights and sounds to capture it for his
cabinet, or the sudden dropping of a yacht's anchor or the turn of a
screw might cause its untimely death.
Again, in the case of a bird, in virtue of its more complex
organization, there is command over a much larger area of environment.
It can take precautions such as the _Medusa_ could not; it has increased
facilities for securing food; its adjustments all round are more
complex; and therefore it ought to be able to maintain its Life for a
longer period. There is still a large area, however, over which it has
no control. Its power of internal change is not complete enough to
afford it perfect correspondence with all external changes, and its
tenure of Life is to that extent insecure. Its correspondence, moreover,
is limited even with regard to those external conditions with which it
has been partially established. Thus a bird in ordinary circumstances
has no difficulty in adapting itself to changes of temperature, but if
these are varied beyond the point at which its capacity of adjustment
begins to fail--for example, during an extreme winter--the organism
being unable to meet the condition must perish. The human organism, on
the other hand, can respond to this external condition, as well as to
countless other vicissitudes under which lower forms would inevitably
succumb. Man's adjustments are to the largest known area of Environment,
and hence he ought to be able furthest to prolong his Life.
It becomes evident, then, that as we ascend in the scale of Life we rise
also in the scale of longevity. The lowest organisms are, as a rule,
short-lived, and the rate of mortality diminishes more or less regularly
as we ascend in the animal scale. So extraordinary indeed is the
mortality among lowly-organized forms that in most cases a compensation
is actually provided, nature endowing them with a marvelously increased
fertility in order to guard against absolute extinction. Almost all
lower forms are furnished not only with great reproductive powers, but
with different methods of propagation, by which, in various
circumstances, and in an incredibly short time, the species can be
indefinitely multiplied. Ehrenberg found that by the repeated
subdivisions of a single _Paramecium_, no fewer than 268,000,000
similar organisms might be produced in one month. This power steadily
decreases as we rise higher in the scale, until forms are reached in
which one, two, or at most three, come into being at a birth. It
decreases, however, because it is no longer needed. These forms have a
much longer lease of Life. And it may be taken as a rule, although it
has exceptions, that complexity in animal organisms is always associated
with longevity.
It may be objected that these illustrations are taken merely from morbid
conditions. But whether the Life be cut short by accident or by disease
the principle is the same. All dissolution is brought about practically
in the same way. A certain condition in the Environment fails to be met
by a corresponding condition in the organism, and this is death. And
conversely the more an organism in virtue of its complexity can adapt
itself to all the parts of its Environment, the longer it will live. "It
is manifest _a priori_," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "that since changes
in the physical state of the environment, as also those mechanical
actions and those variations of available food which occur in it, are
liable to stop the processes going on in the organism; and since the
adaptive changes in the organism have the effects of directly or
indirectly counterbalancing these changes in the environment, it follows
that the life of the organism will be short or long, low or high,
according to the extent to which changes in the environment are met by
corresponding changes in the organism. Allowing a margin for
perturbations, the life will continue only while the correspondence
continues; the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the
completeness of the correspondence; and the life will be perfect only
when the correspondence is perfect."[68]
We are now all but in sight of our scientific definitions of Eternal
Life. The desideratum is an organism with a correspondence of a very
exceptional kind. It must lie beyond the reach of those "mechanical
actions" and those "variations of available food," which are "liable to
stop the processes going on in the organism." Before we reach an Eternal
Life we must pass beyond that point at which all ordinary
correspondences inevitably cease. We must find an organism so high and
complex, that at some point in its development it shall have added a
correspondence which organic death is powerless to arrest. We must in
short pass beyond that definite region where the correspondences depend
on evanescent and material media, and enter a further region where the
Environment corresponded with is itself Eternal. Such an Environment
exists. The Environment of the Spiritual world is outside the influence
of these "mechanical actions," which sooner or later interrupt the
processes going on in all finite organisms. If then we can find an
organism which has established a correspondence with the spiritual
world, that correspondence will possess the elements of
eternity--provided only one other condition be fulfilled.
That condition is that the Environment be perfect. If it is not perfect,
if it is not the highest, if it is endowed with the finite quality of
change, there can be no guarantee that the Life of its correspondents
will be eternal. Some change might occur in it which the correspondents
had no adaptive changes to meet, and Life would cease. But grant a
spiritual organism in perfect correspondence with a perfect spiritual
Environment, and the conditions necessary to Eternal Life are satisfied.
The exact terms of Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Eternal Life may
now be given. And it will be seen that they include essentially the
conditions here laid down. "Perfect correspondence would be perfect
life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism
had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency
with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal
knowledge."[69] Reserving the question as to the possible fulfillment of
these conditions, let us turn for a moment to the definition of Eternal
Life laid down by Christ. Let us place it alongside the definition of
Science, and mark the points of contact. Uninterrupted correspondence
with a perfect Environment is Eternal Life according to Science. "This
is Life Eternal," said Christ, "that they may know Thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."[70] Life Eternal is to know
God. To know God is to "correspond" with God. To correspond with God is
to correspond with a Perfect Environment. And the organism which attains
to this, in the nature of things must live forever. Here is "eternal
existence and eternal knowledge."
The main point of agreement between the scientific and the religious
definition is that Life consists in a peculiar and personal relation
defined as a "correspondence." This conception, that Life consists in
correspondences, has been so abundantly illustrated already that it is
now unnecessary to discuss it further. All Life indeed consists
essentially in correspondences with various Environments. The artist's
life is a correspondence with art; the musician's with music. To cut
them off from these Environments is in that relation to cut off their
Life. To be cut off from all Environment is death. To find a new
Environment again and cultivate relation with it is to find a new Life.
To live is to correspond, and to correspond is to live. So much is true
in Science. But it is also true in Religion. And it is of great
importance to observe that to Religion also the conception of Life is a
correspondence. No truth of Christianity has been more ignorantly or
willfully travestied than the doctrine of Immortality. The popular idea,
in spite of a hundred protests, is that Eternal Life is to live forever.
A single glance at the _locus classicus_ might have made this error
impossible. There we are told that Life Eternal is not to live. This is
Life Eternal--_to know_. And yet--and it is a notorious instance of the
fact that men who are opposed to Religion will take their conceptions of
its profoundest truths from mere vulgar perversions--this view still
represents to many cultivated men the Scriptural doctrine of Eternal
Life. From time to time the taunt is thrown at Religion, not unseldom
from lips which Science ought to have taught more caution, that the
Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged existence, an eternal
monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being. The Bible never
could commit itself to any such empty platitudes; nor could Christianity
ever offer to the world a hope so colorless. Not that Eternal Life has
nothing to do with everlastingness. That is part of the conception. And
it is this aspect of the question that first arrests us in the field of
Science. But even Science has more in its definition than longevity. It
has a correspondence and an Environment; and although it cannot fill up
these terms for Religion, it can indicate at least the nature of the
relation, the kind of thing that is meant by Life. Science speaks to us
indeed of much more than numbers of years. It defines degrees of Life.
It explains a widening Environment. It unfolds the relation between a
widening Environment and increasing complexity in organisms. And if it
has no absolute contribution to the content of Religion, its analogies
are not limited to a point. It yields to Immortality, and this is the
most that Science can do in any case, the board framework for a
doctrine.
The further definition, moreover, of this correspondence as _knowing_ is
in the highest degree significant. Is not this the precise quality in an
Eternal correspondence which the analogies of Science would prepare us
to look for? Longevity is associated with complexity. And complexity in
organisms is manifested by the successive addition of correspondences,
each richer and larger than those which have gone before. The
differentiation, therefore, of the spiritual organism ought to be
signalized by the addition of the highest possible correspondence. It is
not essential to the idea that the correspondence should be altogether
novel; it is necessary rather that it should not. An altogether new
correspondence appearing suddenly without shadow or prophecy would be a
violation of continuity. What we should expect would be something new,
and yet something that we were already prepared for. We should look for
a further development in harmony with current developments; the
extension of the last and highest correspondence in a new and higher
direction. And this is exactly what we have. In the world with which
biology deals, Evolution culminates in Knowledge.
At whatever point in the zoological scale this correspondence, or set of
correspondences, begins, it is certain there is nothing higher. In its
stunted infancy merely, when we meet with its rudest beginnings in
animal intelligence, it is a thing so wonderful, as to strike every
thoughtful and reverent observer with awe. Even among the invertebrates
so marvelously are these or kindred powers displayed, that naturalists
do not hesitate now, on the ground of intelligence at least, to classify
some of the humblest creatures next to man himself.[71] Nothing in
nature, indeed, is so unlike the rest of nature, so prophetic of what is
beyond it, so supernatural. And as manifested in Man who crowns creation
with his all-embracing consciousness, there is but one word to describe
his knowledge: it is Divine. If then from this point there is to be any
further Evolution, this surely must be the correspondence in which it
shall take place? This correspondence is great enough to demand
development; and yet it is little enough to need it. The magnificence of
what it has achieved relatively, is the pledge of the possibility of
more; the insignificance of its conquest absolutely involves the
probability of still richer triumphs. If anything, in short, in humanity
is to go on it must be this. Other correspondences may continue
likewise; others, again, we can well afford to leave behind. But this
cannot cease. This correspondence--or this set of correspondences, for
it is very complex--is it not that to which men with one consent would
attach Eternal Life? Is there anything else to which they would attach
it? Is anything better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller, nobler,
anything which would represent a higher form of Evolution or offer a
more perfect ideal for an Eternal Life?
But these are questions of quality; and the moment we pass from quantity
to quality we leave Science behind. In the vocabulary of Science,
Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means mere everlastingness.
To Religion, on the other hand, Eternity has little to do with time. To
correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable, would be
everlasting existence; to correspond with "the true God and Jesus
Christ," is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone makes
the heaven; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span
of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in
sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eternity, is all but excruciating to
Doubt. And many besides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded
consciousness as the hideous mistake and malady of Nature. Therefore we
must not only have quantity of years, to speak in the language of the
present, but quality of correspondence. When we leave Science behind,
this correspondence also receives a higher name. It becomes communion.
Other names there are for it, religious and theological. It may be
included in a general expression, Faith; or we may call it by a personal
and specific term, Love. For the knowing of a Whole so great involves
the co-operation of many parts.
Communion with God--can it be demonstrated in terms of Science that this
is a correspondence which will never break? We do not appeal to Science
for such a testimony. We have asked for its conception of an Eternal
Life; and we have received for answer that Eternal Life would consist in
a correspondence which should never cease, with an Environment which
should never pass away. And yet what would Science demand of a perfect
correspondence that is not met by this, _the knowing of God_? There is
no other correspondence which could satisfy one at least of the
conditions. Not one could be named which would not bear on the face of
it the mark and pledge of its mortality. But this, to know God, stands
alone. To know God, to be linked with God, to be linked with
Eternity--if this is not the "eternal existence" of biology, what can
more nearly approach it? And yet we are still a great way off--to
establish a communication with the Eternal is not to secure Eternal
Life. It must be assumed that the communication could be sustained. And
to assume this would be to beg the question. So that we have still to
prove Eternal Life. But let it be again repeated, we are not here
seeking proofs. We are seeking light. We are merely reconnoitring from
the furthest promontory of Science if so be that through the haze we may
discern the outline of a distant coast and come to some conclusion as to
the possibility of landing.
But, it may be replied, it is not open to any one handling the question
of Immortality from the side of Science to remain neutral as to the
question of fact. It is not enough to announce that he has no addition
to make to the positive argument. This may be permitted with reference
to other points of contact between Science and Religion, but not with
this. We are told this question is settled--that there is no positive
side. Science meets the entire conception of Immortality with a direct
negative. In the face of a powerful consensus against even the
possibility of a Future Life, to content one's self with saying that
Science pretended to no argument in favor of it would be at once
impertinent and dishonest. We must therefore devote ourselves for a
moment to the question of possibility.
The problem is, with a material body and a mental organization
inseparably connected with it, to bridge the grave. Emotion, volition,
thought itself, are functions of the brain. When the brain is impaired,
they are impaired. When the brain is not, they are not. Everything
ceases with the dissolution of the material fabric; muscular activity
and mental activity perish alike. With the pronounced positive
statements on this point from many departments of modern Science we are
all familiar. The fatal verdict is recorded by a hundred hands and with
scarcely a shadow of qualification. "Unprejudiced philosophy is
compelled to reject the idea of an individual immortality and of a
personal continuance after death. With the decay and dissolution of its
material substratum, through which alone it has acquired a conscious
existence and become a person, and upon which it was dependent, the
spirit must cease to exist."[72] To the same effect Vogt: "Physiology
decides definitely and categorically against individual immortality, as
against any special existence of the soul. The soul does not enter the
f[oe]tus like the evil spirit into persons possessed, but is a product
of the development of the brain, just as muscular activity is a product
of muscular development, and secretion a product of glandular
development." After a careful review of the position of recent Science
with regard to the whole doctrine, Mr. Graham sums up thus: "Such is the
argument of Science, seemingly decisive against a future life. As we
listen to her array of syllogisms, our hearts die within us. The hopes
of men, placed in one scale to be weighed, seem to fly up against the
massive weight of her evidence, placed in the other. It seems as if all
our arguments were vain and unsubstantial, as if our future
expectations were the foolish dreams of children, as if there could not
be any other possible verdict arrived at upon the evidence brought
forward."[73]
Can we go on in the teeth of so real an obstruction? Has not our own
weapon turned against us, Science abolishing with authoritative hand the
very truth we are asking it to define?