infrequently invests relations that should only be those of joy and
peace and mutual inspiration, is an over and an undue emphasis on
material things. Now, when viewed in the light of absolute truth,
material things are of simply no consequence at all. They do not belong
to the category of realities. Money, possessions,--the mere goods and
chattels of life,--are, even at their best appraisal, a mere temporary
convenience. As a convenience they fill a place and are all very well.
As anything beyond that they have no place at all in one's
consciousness. Whatever luxury they can offer is simply in using them to
the best advantage, and human nature is so constituted that this best
advantage is usually more closely connected with those who are dear to
one than it is with himself. For himself alone, what does he want that
money, mere money, can buy? He wants and needs the average conditions of
life, in the "food, clothing, and shelter" line; he needs and requires
certain conditions of beauty, of harmony, of gratification of tastes and
enlargement of opportunities,--all these are legitimate needs, and are
part of the working conditions of life; of the right development and
progress which one is in duty bound to make, both for his own personal
progress and as the vantage ground of his efforts for usefulness. Beyond
that, the luxury of life lies in doing what the heart prompts. The one
heavenly joy of life is in the enlargement of social sympathies; it is
in the offering of whatever appreciation and devotion it is possible to
offer to those whose noble and beautiful lives inspire this devotion. To
have this accepted--not because it is of intrinsic value, not because it
is of any particular importance _per se_, but because it is the visible
representation of the spiritual gift of reverence, appreciation, and
devotion--is the purest happiness one may experience, and that which
inspires him anew to all endeavor and achievement. To have it refused or
denied is to have the golden portals close before one and shut him out
in the darkness. Why, the heavenly privilege, the infinite obligation,
is on the part of him who is permitted to offer his tribute of love and
devotion, expressed, if it so chances, in any material way,--and he is
denied his sweetest joy if this privilege be denied him. There are gifts
that are priceless, but they are not of the visible and tangible world.
They are the gifts of sympathy, of intuitive comprehension, of helpful
regard; and, curiously, these--the priceless and precious--are never
regarded as too valuable for acceptance, while regarding the material
and temporal, which, at best, are the merest transient convenience,
there will be hesitation and pain. And this hesitation arises, too, from
the most beautiful and delicately exquisite qualities, but it produces
the pain that is
"----the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute."
There is in life a proportion of pain and jarring that is inevitable,
probably, to the imperfect conditions with which the experience on earth
is temporarily invested; and because of this, all the range of
friendship should be held apart as divine, and any interchange of
material gifts should not receive this undue emphasis, but be regarded
as the mere incidental trifle of momentary convenience, while all the
regard and devotion that may lie behind should give its mutual joy as
free and as pure as the fragrance of a rose. Of all that a friend may be
Emerson so truly says:--
"I fancied he was fled,--
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again.
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form."
That alone is what all the loves and friendships of life are for,--that
through their ministry life may take on nobler form.
"I fancied he was fled."
But a friendship that is true cannot flee; it is, by its very quality
and nature, abiding. It may be silent forever; it may be invisible,
inaudible, immaterial, impersonal; but once forged it is of the heavenly
life, the heavenly language, and the Word of the Lord abideth forever!
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Love and Good Will.]
The stress and storm of life, however, fade away very largely before the
power of simple love and good will, which is the key to all situations
and the solution of all problems. "How shall I seem to love my people?"
asked a French king of his confessor. "My son, you _must_ love them,"
was the reply. When there is genuineness one does not need to engage in
the elaborate and arduous labor of counterfeiting qualities and
manufacturing appearances, and it is really easier--to say nothing of
its being a somewhat more dignified process--to _be_ what one wishes the
world to regard him, than it is to endeavor to merely produce the effect
of it.
Doctor Holmes had a bit of counsel for those who were out at sea,--that
they should not waste any energy in asking how they looked from the
shore; and the suggestion is not an infelicitous one in its general
application to life. It is quite enough for one to keep his feet, as
best he may, set on the upward and onward way, without concerning
himself too much as to the effect of his figure in the landscape. The
energy that goes towards attitudinizing is always wasted, while that
which expends itself on the legitimate fulfilment of tasks contributes
something of real importance to life.
And so, any significance of achievement seems to be exactly conditioned
by the degree of energy involved--the finer the energy, the more potent
the achievement. It would seem as if all the noble order of success
hinged on two conditions,--the initial one of generating sufficient
energy, and the second that of applying it worthily.
The present age is characterized as that in which new forms of force
appear,--in both the physical and the spiritual realms of life. What a
marvel is the new chemical force, thermite, of which the first
demonstration in America was made in 1902, by the Columbia University
Chemical Society in New York. Here is a force that dissolves iron and
stone. An extremely interesting account of this new energy appeared in
the "New York Herald," in which the writer vivifies the subject by
saying of thermite:--
"Under its awful lightning blaze granite flows like water and big
steel rails are welded in the twinkling of an eye.... The interior
of Mount Pelee, whose fiery blast destroyed St. Pierre in a moment
and crumbled its buildings into dust, would be cool compared with
this temperature of 5400 deg. It would melt the White Mountains into
rivers of liquid fire. Nothing could withstand its consuming
power.... And what makes this stupendous force? The answer seems
incredible as the claims for the force itself. It is produced by
simply putting a match to a mixture of aluminum filings and oxide
of chromium, both metallic, and yet, as by magic, a mighty force is
instantly created."
The writer describes the discovery and processes at some length, and
adds:--
"Such are the wonders of chemistry suggesting Emerson's claim,
'Thought sets men free.' By a simple process--flame applied to
metal filings--prison bars melt and vaulted dungeons flow like
water."
The article closes with this wonderful paragraph:--
"By chemistry the pale-faced modern Faust, working in his
laboratory, makes metals out of clay and many marvellous
combinations. What they will do when skilfully proportioned and
exposed to heat, the story related gives a hint,--accounting, as it
were, for the forces at work in space, creating heat and
electricity, making suns burn with indescribable fury, colliding
with peaceful planets, mixing their metals in a second of
time,--and new worlds seem to leap into vision, balls of molten
fire sweeping through space; vast cyclones of flame, making Pelee a
cold-storage vault by comparison. All this seems simple enough as
explained by modern chemistry, giving men unlimited power, making
them gods, as it were, to first master themselves and then the
universe."
This description of the new force, whose intensity is almost beyond
realization, is hardly less remarkable than is the energy described; and
it lends itself, with perfect rhythm of correspondence, to analysis on
the side of the spiritual forces of life. "Cast thyself into the will of
God and thou shalt become as God" is one of the most illuminating of the
mystic truths. The "will of God" is the supreme potency, the very
highest degree of energy, in the spiritual realm, which is the realm of
cause, while the outer world is the realm of effects. Now if one may so
ally himself to the divine will as to share in its all-conquering power,
he partakes of creative power and eternal life, now and here, just in
proportion to the degree to which he can identify his entire trend of
desire and purpose with this Infinite will. This energy is fairly
typified in the physical world by the stupendous new force called
"thermite," and it is as resistless as that attraction which holds the
stars in their courses and the universe in their solar relations.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Diviner Possibilities.]
It is a fallacy to suppose that it is a hardship and a trial to live the
more divine and uplifting life, and that ease and pleasure are only to
be found in non-resistance to the faults and defects of character. The
truth is just the opposite of this, and the twentieth century will
reveal a fairly revolutionary philosophy in this respect. Heretofore
poet and prophet have always questioned despondently,--
"Does the road wind up hill all the way?"
as if to wind up hill were the type of trial, and the "descent of
Avernus" were the type of joy.
Does the road wind up hill? Most certainly, and thereby it leads on into
the purer light, the fairer radiance, the wider view. Does one prefer to
go down hill into some dark ravine or deep mountain gorge? It is a great
fallacy that it is the hardship of life to live in the best instead of
in the worst. It is the way of the _transgressor_ which is hard--not of
him who endeavors to follow the divine leading. The deeper truth is that
the moment one commits all his purposes and his aspirations into the
Divine keeping he connects himself by that very act with a current of
irresistible energy; one that reinforces him with power utterly
undreamed of before.
There is no limit to the power one may draw from the unseen universe.
"It is possible, I dare to say," says a thoughtful writer, "for those
who will indeed draw on their Lord's power for deliverance and victory,
to live a life on which His promises are taken as they stand and found
to be true. It is possible to cast every care on Him daily, and to be at
peace amidst the pressure. It is possible to see the will of God in
everything, and to find it not a sigh but a song. It is possible in the
world of inner act and motion to put away all bitterness, and wrath, and
anger, and evil speaking, daily and hourly. It is possible, by
unreserved resort to divine power, under divine conditions, to become
strongest at our weakest point; to find the thing which yesterday upset
all our obligations to patience, an occasion to-day, through Him who
loveth us and worketh in us, for a joyful consent to His will and a
delightful sense of His presence. These things are divinely possible."
One very practical question that cannot but confront the world at the
present time is as to whether there is any relation between religion, in
its highest and most inclusive and spiritually uplifting sense, and the
possibility of communication between those in this life and those who
have passed through the change we call death and have entered on the
next round of experience. It is a fact--albeit a rather curious and
unaccountable one--that organized religion, as a whole, has been largely
opposed to the idea of possible communication between what is currently
termed the living and the dead. Yet when one focusses the question to a
matter of personal individuality, it does not stand the test. Take, for
instance, the revered name of a man who was universally recognized as
one of the greatest spiritual leaders the world has known,--Phillips
Brooks. When he was the rector of Trinity Church, or the Bishop of the
Massachusetts diocese, no one who sought his companionship or counsel
would have been regarded as being wrong to do so. Now,--always provided
that there is full conviction of immortality,--why should it be wrong to
seek his companionship or counsel from the unseen life? Death has no
power over the essential individuality. Indeed, in being freed from the
physical body, the spiritual man becomes only more powerful, and with
his power acting from a higher plane of energy. Regarding ourselves as
spiritual beings,--and if we are not that we are nothing,--regarding
ourselves as _temporarily inhabiting_ a physical body, but in no sense
identified with it save as we use this body for our instrument of
communication with the physical world; what more logical or natural than
that the spiritual being, not yet released from his physical body,
should hold sweet and intimate communion with the spiritual being that
_has_ been released from this physical environment? Telepathy has
already become a recognized law. That mind to mind, spirit to spirit,
flashes its messages here in this present life, is a fact attested by
too great an array of evidence to be doubted or denied. Now the
spiritual being who is released from the physical body is infinitely
more sensitive to impression, more responsive to mental call, than was
possible in conditions here. The experimental research and investigation
in psychology, as shown in such work as that of Professor Muensterberg of
Harvard in the university laboratory, reveals increasingly that the
brain is an electric battery of the most potent and sensitive order;
that it generates electric thought waves and receives them. Does it lose
this power by the change called death? Is this power only inherent in
the physical structure? On the contrary, Professor William James has
demonstrated with scientific accuracy in his book called "Human
Freedom," that this is not the case. If, then, intellectual energy
survives the process of death,--and if it does not then there is no
immortality,--the communication between those in the Unseen and those in
the Seen is as perfectly natural as is any form of companionship or of
social life here.
As all kinds of people live, so all kinds of people die, and the mere
fact of death is not a transforming process, spiritually. He who has
not developed the spiritual faculties while here; who has lived the mere
life of the senses with the mere ordinary intelligence, or without it,
but never rising to the nobler intellectual and moral life--is no more
desirable as a companion because he has died than he was before he died.
And the objection to any of the ordinary _seance_ phenomena is, that
whatever manifestations are genuine proceed very largely, if not
entirely, from this strata of the crude and inconsequential, if not the
vicious, with whom the high-minded man or woman would not have
associated in life, and after death their presence would be quite as
much to be deplored. Granted all these exceptions. One may sweep them
off and clear the decks. Then what remains? There remains the truth of
the unity of the spiritual universe; of the truth that the mere change
of death is not a revolutionary one, transforming the individual into
some inconceivable state of being and removing him, in a geographical
sense, into some unrevealed region in space; there remains the truth
that life is evolutionary in its processes; that there is no more
violent and arbitrary and instantaneous change by the event of death,
than there is in the change from infancy into childhood, from childhood
into manhood. There remains the truth that the ethereal and the physical
worlds are inter-related, inter-blended; that man, now and here, lives
partially in each, and that the more closely he can relate himself to
the diviner forces by prayer, by aspiration, by every thought and deed
that is noble and generous and true, and inspired by love, the more he
dwells in this ethereal atmosphere and is in touch with its forces and
in companionship with his chosen friends who have gone on into that
world. There is nothing in this theory that is incompatible with the
teachings of the Church, with all that makes up for us the religious
life. On the contrary, it vitalizes and reinforces that life. This life
of the spirit must be in God. Let one, indeed, on his first waking each
day, place his entire life, all his heart, mind, and faculties, in God's
hands; asking Him "to take entire possession, to be the guide of the
soul." Thus one shall dwell hourly, daily, in the divine atmosphere, and
spirit to spirit may enjoy their communion and companionship. The
experience of personal spiritual companionship between those here and
those on the next plane of life is included in the higher religious life
of the spirit while living here on earth. It vivifies and lends joy to
it; for the joy of sympathetic companionship is the one supreme and
transcendent happiness in life. And to live in this atmosphere requires
one absolute and inevitable condition, the constant exercise of the
moral virtues,--of truth, rectitude, generosity, and love. The life held
amenable to these, the life which commits itself utterly into the divine
keeping, is not a life of hardship; the "road that winds up hill" is the
road of perpetual interest and exhilaration. It is a fatal fallacy to
invest it with gloom and despair. It is the only possible source of the
constant, intellectual energy of life, of sweetness, of joy, of
happiness.
The only standard which is worthy for one to hold as that by which he
measures his life is the divine one illustrated in the character of
Jesus. To measure one's quality of daily life by this is always to fall
short of satisfactory achievement; and still there is always the
realization that its achievement is only a question of persistence and
of time. It is the direction in which one is moving that determines his
final destination. There is the deepest inspiration to the soul in
taking for one's perpetual watchword, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father in heaven is perfect." Not that this divine state is
attained; but there is perpetual aid in the conviction that one's
self--his spiritual self--_can_ "press on to the high calling of God."
Man is a divine being; the divine life is his only true life.
The deepest loyalty to the divine ideal involves, however, not only the
striving after perfection, but the charity for imperfection. To denounce
evil is a part of rectitude; to condemn sin is a moral duty; but to
condemn the sinner is not infrequently to be more deeply at fault than
is he who thus offended. An illustration of this point has recently been
before the public. A New York clergyman preached on Easter Sunday a
sermon that was not his own. He gave no credit to its writer. The sermon
was published, and a minister of another church, recognizing it, at once
proceeded to "expose" the matter in the daily press. Not only did he
call public attention to the error, but he did it in a manner that
seemed to rejoice in the opportunity; a manner so devoid of sorrow or
sympathy as to fill the reader with despair at such an exhibition. Rev.
E. Walpole Warren fittingly rebuked the evident malice with which the
fault was exposed, and quoted the words of Saint Paul in the injunction:
"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual
restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest
thou also be tempted." To have gone, in a spirit of love, privately and
quietly, and pointed out the error, would have been Christian-like; to
exult in it must be described by a very different term. Devotion to
truth is good, but it is "speaking the truth in love" that is the ideal.
It is even possible to convey questioning, counsel, encouragement, or
reproach without the spoken word; to send the message by the law of
suggestion from mind to mind. The mental intimation will reach the one
to whom it is sent if the conditions for telepathy are observed, for
thought is far more penetrative than the Roentgen ray, and the
atmosphere is magnetic, and carries it as the wire does the electric
current. All these finer conditions are beginning to make themselves
felt as practicable forces. Humanity is becoming "plastic to the spirit
touch;" sensitive to those vibrations too fine to be registered by the
outward ear.
"Thought is the wages
For which I sell days,"
said Emerson. Thought is the motor of the future. "As a man thinketh, so
is he," is one of the most practical and literal truths.
It is only by the divine law that one can measure the ethics of
companionship. The frequent experiences in life of broken friendships;
of those alliances of good will, of mutual sympathies and mutual
enjoyment, that, at last, some way became entangled amid discords and
barriers, and thus come to a disastrous end,--such experiences could be
escaped were life lived by the diviner standards. Friendship need never
deteriorate in quality if each lives nobly. If one conceives of life
more nobly and generously than the other, it may become, not a means of
separation and alienation, but a means and measure of just
responsibility. There are friendships whose shipwreck is on the rock of
undue encroachment on one side and undue endurance--which has not the
noble and spontaneous character of generosity--on the other. One
imposes, the other is imposed on,--and so things run on from bad to
worse, till at last a crisis comes, and those who had once been much to
each other are farther apart than strangers. In such circumstances there
has been a serious failure,--the failure of not speaking the truth in
love. The failure on the part of the one more spiritually enlightened
toward the one less enlightened. One should no more consent that his
friend should do an ignoble thing than he should consent to do an
ignoble thing himself. He should hold his friend in thought to the
divine standard. He should conceive of him nobly and expect from him
only honor and integrity. "Those who trust us educate us," says George
Eliot; and still more do they who hold us in the highest thought draw us
upward to that atmosphere through which no evil may pass. Each one is
his brother's keeper, and life achieves only its just and reasonable
possibilities when it is held constantly amenable to the divine
ideal,--when it is lived according to that inspiring injunction of
Phillips Brooks: "Be such a man, live such a life, that if all lives
were like yours earth would be Paradise."
Let one put aside sorrow and enter into the joy and radiance. "Omit the
negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives." If
biography teaches any lesson, it is that the events which occur in life
are of far less consequence than the spirit in which they are received.
It is the attitude of mental receptivity which is the alchemy to
transmute events and circumstances into experience, and it is experience
alone which determines both the quality and the trend of life. It is in
activity; in doing and giving and loving, that the joy of life must be
sought. And it is joy which is the normal condition rather than
depression and sadness, as health and not illness is the normal state.
Disease and sadness are abnormal, and if one finds himself "blue," it is
his first business to escape from it, to change the conditions and the
atmosphere. The radiant life is the ideal state, both for achievement as
well as for that finer quality of personal influence which cannot
emanate from gloom and depression. "Everything good is on the highway,"
said Emerson, and the first and only lasting success is that of
character. It may not be, for the moment, exhilarating to realize that
one's ill fortune is usually the result of some defect in his selection,
or error in his judgment, but, on the other hand, if the cause of his
unhappiness lies in himself, the cause of his happiness may also lie
with himself, and thus it is in his power to so transform his attitude
to life as to reverse the gloom and have the joy and sweetness rather
than the bitterness and sadness of life. Everything, in the last
analysis, is a matter of temperament. Nothing is hopeless, for life is
infinite, and new factors can be evolved whose working out will create
the new heaven and the new earth.
* * * * *
Here, in the earth life, we have it in our power to seize our
future destination.--FICHTE.
[Sidenote: The Weight of the Past.]
One of the most inspiring injunctions of Saint Paul is that in which he
bids us to "lay aside every weight." Poet and prophet have always
recognized the weight of the past as a serious problem. One has made all
sorts of mistakes; he is entangled in the consequences of his "errors
and ignorances," if not in his sins, and how can he enter on a Life
Radiant with this burden? Well does Sidney Lanier express this feeling
in the stanzas:--