gift is not new, but whenever it is formulated, as in a recent sermon by
Rev. Doctor Parkhurst, it startles many people and arouses antagonism,
so far as it is not truly understood. Yet it has its deepest aspects of
spiritual truth, and it is the idea constantly, persistently, and most
impressively taught by Saint Paul throughout the entire gospels. We are
constantly besought to _lay hold_ on the eternal life; to press forward
toward immortal things; to be renewed in the spirit; to "put on the new
man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness; to
follow Him, who is the Life, the Truth, the Way." The entire teaching of
the gospels is one forcible system of active and unfaltering endeavor in
the growing achievement of spirituality, which determines Immortality.
It is the exact accountant--measure for measure. So much spirituality,
so much immortality. Nor does this assertion partake in the slightest
degree of the nature of a metaphysical problem, to be comprehended only
by the theologian and the philosopher. It is the most simple, clear, and
direct of propositions. We all accept Saint Paul's assertion that flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. So far as one lives only
in the processes of the physical life he is not living the life of those
spiritual energies which alone lay hold on immortality. There is a
certain degree of intelligent consciousness that is inseparable from
this physical life; an intelligence that buys and sells, and bargains
and calculates on the physical plane, and is sufficient to produce a
certain rational status of life. There are not wanting individuals who
never rise above this plane. They may, and often do, acquire possessions
and even power on the limited plane of the outward life; they may even
have some formal and ceremonial religious observances which they mistake
for Christianity, but which are the framework ready and able to inspire
them if filled with the spirit, but which, to them, remain empty and
dead. The man whose body, simply, occupies his church pew on Sunday, and
who on Monday proceeds to cheat his neighbor, is not, we will all agree,
the man who has really entered into the true privileges offered by the
Church. The sacrament of Sunday must become the consecration of Monday.
Unless this be true the man has not _laid hold_ on Immortality. So we
see that this lower plane of considerable intelligence and
consciousness, related exclusively to the visible and the tangible, must
be eliminated from our conceptions of Immortality. There is nothing at
all in this that can possibly survive death. Doctor John Fiske gives a
fine and comprehensive definition of that degree of achievement which is
above the level of death when he says:--
"In the highest of creatures the Divine immanence has acquired
sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution
of the flesh, and assert an individuality untrammelled by the
limitations which in the present life everywhere persistently
surround it."
Here we have the initial truth. The acquirement of "sufficient
concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the
flesh,"--_and_ "to assert an individuality untrammelled by the
limitations of the present life,"--when man has progressed so far as
this, then, and then alone, has he _achieved_ immortality. He has laid
hold on its initial phase. For immortality is infinite beyond
conception. It is as infinite as space, and as the idea of God. To have
achieved enough of this "concentration and steadiness"--which is merely
another phrase for spirituality--to survive death, is no more achieving
immortality, in its wholeness and completeness, than learning the
alphabet is the achievement of scholarship in its infinite resources. It
cannot be conceived of as complete, but, instead, as an endless chain of
infinite possibilities, of ever new and ever widening vistas.
One of the noblest men and loftiest thinkers of the day, referring, in a
private letter, to this sermon of Doctor Parkhurst that inspired such
wide discussion, thus wrote:--
"That paragraph from Doctor Parkhurst expresses my idea regarding
immortality. There must be a master (good) thought or passion. It
is the angel with wings that wafts the soul where the man most
longed to be in life,--with the purest and best. 'As one thinks, so
he shall be,' is sound doctrine. All this embodies what I once read
of Sappho, who counselled her pupils to cultivate their thoughts
and grow, or they would have nothing to carry with them, nothing to
make a soul of, nothing to survive the grave.
"I believe that on this idea rests the scheme of life through faith
in Christ. As He is the highest, the ideal, the supreme, the soul
finds rest in Him, and there grows into a life that death cannot
annihilate. In the presence of the great master passion, with the
soul thrilling with nobleness, as when dying for another, burned at
the stake for righteousness' sake, the spirit goes straight to God,
into the infinite bosom, an angel fit for only heaven.
"If the soul hungers and thirsts for God it will reach him. If, at
the last moment, a man's whole nature cries longingly in faith to
Christ,--that will save him, waft him, draw him into the divine
abode. And this explains the Christian plan of so-called salvation.
Faith in Christ is the master passion, and love the magnet that
draws the soul to its own kind. It may be set down as true that
vice and sin have no vitality. Wickedness is death. Virtue and love
of God are life."
But the question recurs just here, Is there absolutely no possibility of
immortality for him who does not advance beyond a certain conscious and
partly automatic intelligence on the physical plane? Does the gate of
possibilities, does the door of opportunity close with this brief mortal
life? To that question science as well as faith answers "no." The law of
Evolution is the law of eternal possibility and opportunity. The spark
of immortality--the divine spark, implanted by God, when he made man in
His image,--this is eternal in its nature, and unquestionably survives
death. But immortality is the result of man's co-operation with the
Divine. God has implanted the spark. He has placed man in an environment
of discipline and of opportunity. The individual _may be_ whatever he,
himself, decides and chooses to be. Not all in an hour, or in a year;
not, perhaps, even in this entire lifetime; but sometime and somewhere
he who is unfaltering in his allegiance to his ideal shall realize it at
last. And the degree of immediateness and celerity with which he
realizes it depends entirely on the degree of spiritual energy that he
brings to bear on his purpose. The higher the potency, the swifter the
result.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.]
Science as well as ethics recognizes the reality of the unseen
potencies. Science is, indeed, pointing the way. "The influence of the
Holy Spirit, exquisitely called the Comforter," says Professor William
James, "is a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of
electro-magnetism," and he adds:--
"The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an
altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and
merely understandable world. Name it the mystical region, or the
supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as an ideal
impulse originates in this region (and most of them do originate in
it, for we find them possessing it in a way for which we cannot
otherwise account); we belong to it in a more intimate sense than
that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the
most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseen
region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in
the world. When we commune with it, work is absolutely done upon
our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and
consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon
our regenerative change. But that which produces effects in
another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we
had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world
unreal."
Not unreal. On the contrary, the unseen is the realm of that which is
alone real and abiding. The positiveness of the divine life is a quality
that has too little recognition from the world of philosophy and
speculation. It is an infinite reservoir of infinite energy, from which
may be drawn at any moment, peace, courage, and power. "Man can learn to
transcend the limitations of finite thought at will. The Divine Presence
is known through experience. The turning to a higher plane is a distinct
act of consciousness. It is not a vague twilight, or semi-conscious
experience. It is not an ecstasy. It is not a trance. It is not
super-consciousness in the Vedantic sense. It is not due to
self-hypnotization. It is a perfectly calm, sane, sound, rational,
common-sense shifting of consciousness from the phenomena of sense
perception to the phenomena of seer-ship, from the thought of self to a
distinctively higher realm. For example, if the lower self be nervous,
anxious, tense, one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. This is
not done by a word simply. Nor is it done by hypnotism. It is by the
exercise of power. One feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat
is perceived on a hot summer day. The power can be as surely used as the
sun's rays can be focussed and made to do work, to set fire to wood."
In these words there is very clearly set forth a certain spiritual
achievement of a definite nature. It is simply the act of liberating the
spiritual self from entanglement with the lower self,--the summoning
into ascendency of the higher powers. This intense degree of spiritual
energy may be achieved with the force and suddenness of a special
creation.
The physical universe in which man finds himself is not only surrounded
by the spiritual universe, but the two are so absolutely interpenetrated
that he may live in both, and, as a matter of fact, whoever lives the
life of the spirit does live now and here, as an inhabitant of both
these realms. The spiritual universe is the reservoir of energy. "The
things that are seen are temporal, but those that are unseen are
eternal," and faith, as _the substance_ of those things not seen, is a
definite potency which is practically related to daily affairs. That is
to say, it is an absolute power, by means of which one can fulfil the
practical duties of every day. The degree of one's ability to draw from
this energy and assimilate it into his life measures his degree of
success.
Doctor Ostwald, a German scientist, claims that in energy he has
discovered the actual bridge, the missing link, between mind and matter,
between the spiritual and the physical worlds; that it is a bridge
"which covers the chasm between force and substance," and "which is of a
nature sufficiently manifest to embrace the totality of our experiences,
the interior as well as the exterior." Doctor Ostwald claims that there
is an immaterial factor, one endowed with neither weight nor mass, which
in a quantitative way is just as unchangeable as the mass and weight of
material substances, and which, exactly like these, can undergo
qualitative transformations of all kinds. He holds that energy may be
converted from every one of its forms into every other, and its power of
transformation is therefore unlimited, and that every change which
takes place in the outer world, and every process, may be described by a
statement of the kind and amount of energy that has undergone
conversion.
This conception of energy is a very clear and remarkable one, placing it
as the infinite power from which any form of force, spiritual or
mechanical, can be derived.
In the moral universe the true expression of this energy upon which one
may draw infinitely lies in service. It is in so enlarging the personal
sphere of life as to include the widest possible range of sympathy and
comprehension. The mystic spirit is full of value in reaching out into
the realm of spiritual forces, but when these forces are gained they
must be applied. The old religious idea used to include a great deal of
discussion about saving the soul; but the larger spiritual enlightenment
of to-day sees that the phrase "saving the soul" implies a present
condition,--the state of love, sympathy, service, by which the soul is
saved to-day, and not a vague condition to be only realized in some
remote eternity. _Now_ is the day of salvation. The success of life
lies not in possessions; it lies in keeping the harmonious and perfectly
receptive relation with the spiritual realm of forces, and using these
forces in every duty and need and opportunity that presents itself. As
for always compassing desires, or achieving the possession of this thing
or that, is in reality immaterial. The best things in life are often the
things one does not have; but they produce effects in the visible world,
and often, just in proportion as the things themselves remain in the
ethereal realm, is the potency of the effects they produce in the
physical realm. This other dimension of existence is one with which the
final reckoning must be made. It is no longer length of days, but
intensity of energy, that determines results. Not length of time, but
intensity of purpose, energy of action,--in these lie the secret of
achievement. The power that lies in brief moments is the power required
for effective life and work. Emerson truly says that we talk of the
shortness of life, but that life is unnecessarily long. Degree and not
duration is the test of power in any work, and the application of this
truth to the ordinary affairs of life would render it possible to have
every day hold in itself the value of a week or a month as usually
estimated. The entire trend of progress is toward that intensity of
creative energy that fairly speaks things into being. A business man has
now on his desk a long-distance telephone, connecting him with far-away
cities; he answers his letters by speaking into the phonograph; his
typewriting clerk copies them from this, and an hour of his morning
represents as much accomplishment as by the old and slower methods would
have required days; and thus time is constantly made more valuable.
The discoveries in nature are in a perfect correspondence with the
advancing requirements of human life.
The deeper researches of science are revealing the absolute unity of the
entire universe. The earth and the most remote stars are composed of the
same matter. The wonderful discovery of spectrum analysis by Kirchoff
and Bunsen in 1861 has shown that the whole stellar universe is made up
of the same chemical materials as those with which we are familiar upon
the earth. A part of the dazzling brilliance of the noonday sun is due
to the vapor of iron floating in his atmosphere, and the faint
luminosity of the remotest cloudlike nebula is the glow of just such
hydrogen as enters into every drop of water that we drink....
"... The generalization of the metamorphosis of forces, which was begun a
century ago by Count Rumford when he recognized heat as a mode of
molecular motion, was consummated about the middle of the century, when
Doctor Joule showed mathematically just how much heat is equivalent to
just how much visible motion, and when the researches of Helmholtz,
Mayer, and Faraday completed the grand demonstration that light and heat
and magnetism and electricity and visible motion are all interchangeable
one into the other, and are continually thus interchanging from moment
to moment."
It is not a far cry from these scientific data to the recognition that
force, in all its various forms of manifestation, proceeds from the same
energy, and that the curious manifestation of it in radium is explained
by the possibility that this substance is merely a remarkable conductor
of this intense energy in the ether. The human organism may make itself
increasingly a conductor and transmitter of this energy, and the secret
of coming into perfectly harmonious relations with this energy is the
secret of all achievement. "Life is a search after power," says Emerson,
"and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,--there is
no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,--that no honest seeking
goes unrewarded.... All power," he adds, "is of one kind; a sharing of
the nature of the world."
With his characteristically marvellous insight, Emerson has, in this
paragraph, recognized the truth that, in these latter days, is a matter
of absolute scientific discovery.
The "life that now is and that which is to come" are no more definitely
separable than are the periods of childhood and youth, or youth and
manhood. The advance is by evolutionary progress, with no sudden, or
visible, change from day to day. The life that now is creates and
determines the life that is to come. A man is what he is to-day because
of the life he lived yesterday, and last year, and a decade, or several
decades, ago. That which we call life--environment, circumstances,
conditions--is the sum of the expression of all its past experiences,
thought, aspirations, energy, or the lack of thought, aspirations, and
energy. One's life is in his own hands; it is subject to his own will
power, to his own energy of aspiration. He must aspire and go forward or
he will degenerate. There is no possibility of an epoch that is
stationary. Both in any form of work or art, as well as in mental and
spiritual life, one must constantly go forward, or he will find himself
going backward. Even a pianist as great as Paderewski must keep his
fingers in practice on the keyboard every day. The painter cannot long
absent himself from his canvas without losing in his art. The thinker,
the student, must be forever conquering new realms.
Science is demonstrating the actual existence of another world,
transcending, pervading, surrounding this one; a world which
interpenetrates our own,--the ethereal in the atmospheric,--and there is
one part of the personality of man that dwells continually on this
ethereal side. The physical body only conveys a partial expression of
the entire being. The spiritual self lived long before it tenanted this
present body, and it will continue to live after it has discarded this
body. The life that is constantly proceeds to create the life that is to
come.
In this ethereal world,--which interpenetrates our atmosphere and in
which the higher part of man's being continually dwells,--there are
stored the finer forces which humanity is now discovering and learning
to use. In this realm spirit speaks to spirit, telepathically. The power
to thus communicate is an attribute of the spirit, and, whether in or
out of the body, does not seem to affect the power. In this ethereal
realm are the currents that make possible wireless telegraphy. The
grouping and combination of these finer and more intense potencies
result in great inventions. This realm is, in short, the miracle world;
but a miracle is not something outside the laws of nature. Indeed, as
Phillips Brooks truly said, "A miracle is an essential part of the plan
of God." It is simply an occurrence under the higher laws, and on a
higher plane. The great truths of spiritual life are pouring themselves
out to this age with larger revelations of God. They teach the
deepening necessity for constant love, for larger service, for a more
complete consecration to the Divine life that may contribute more and
more of usefulness to the human life. To achieve that "closer walk with
God" that alone gives power, one must constantly seek larger fields of
effort and endeavor, and bring himself face to face with great problems.
To live the higher life, the life of the spirit, is not to seek
cloistered seclusion, but to enter into all the great opportunities, the
difficulties, the privileges, or the penalties, that attend every real
endeavor. In this, alone, does one find the life more abundant. In this,
alone, lies the secret of making noble the life that now is and
glorifying that which is to come.
The profound significance, and the illumination brought to the problem
of living by simply giving one's self entirely, with belief, and love,
and joy, to the will of God, is an experience that transcends human
language. Too often has the acceptance of God's will been held to be a
spirit of the abandonment of despair, or of the mere inertia that ceases
from striving and from aspiration. On the contrary, it is the most
intense form of action. It embodies the loftiest aspiration. It compels
the highest degree of energy. It calls into play every intellectual
faculty; it arouses and inspires. It is the regeneration of the
individual. He does not know what life is; he does not even begin to
live, at all, in any sense worth the name, until he lives and moves and
has his being in the will of God. It is, indeed, as Professor Carl Hilty
has said, a sense of initiative and power. "What is the happy life?"
questions Professor Hilty. "It is a life of conscious harmony with the
Divine order of the world, a sense, that is to say, of God's
companionship.... The better world we enter is, indeed, entered by faith
and not by sight; but this faith grows more confident and more
supporting, until it is like an inward faculty of life itself. To
substitute for this a world of the outward senses is to find no meaning
in life which can convey confidence. Faith in God," continues Professor
Hilty, "is a form of experience, not a form of proof.... Here then, is
the first step toward the discovery of the meaning of life. It is an act
of will, a moral venture, a listening to experience. No man can omit
this initial step, and no man can teach another the lesson which lies in
his own experience. The prophets of the Old Testament found an accurate
expression for this act of will when they described it as a 'turning,'
and they went on to assure their people of the perfect inward peace and
the sense of confidence which followed this act. 'Look unto me and be ye
saved,' says Isaiah; 'Incline your ear and come unto me; hear, and your
soul shall live.' From that time to this, thousands of those who have
thus changed the direction of their wills have entered into the same
sense of peace; while no man who has thus given his will to God has ever
felt himself permanently bewildered or forsaken.
"Here, also, in this free act of the will is attained that sense of
liberty which is described as righteousness. It is a sense of initiative
and power, as though one were not wholly the subject of arbitrary grace,
but had a certain positive companionship with God.... This step once
taken both the world in which one lives and one's own personal life get
a clear and intelligible meaning."
Mrs. Browning has a line in "Aurora Leigh" that runs,--
"And having tried all other ways, to just try God's."
Ignorance and blindness may "try all other ways," and they prove
unavailing. There is no success, there is no happiness, there is no
progress, until there is the clear inner recognition and the profound
and loving and joyful acceptance of the Divine will; of coming into such
perfect acceptance of it as to make one's own will identified with its
harmony.
Thus, when Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," He
simply expressed a fact that cannot be negatived nor ignored. It is an
actual, a positive law, as impossible to evade as the law of
gravitation. One may refuse "the way, the truth, and the life," and
wander in bewilderment and inaction; but he will never be able to
achieve worthy work, or personal peace, until he accepts and lives by
this law. As Professor Hilty so well says, this, alone, gives life an
intelligent meaning. "As one follows the way, he gains, first of all,
courage, so that he dares to go on in his search. He goes still
further, and the way opens into the assurance that life, with all its
mystery, is not lived in vain. He pushes on, and the way issues into
health, not only of the soul, but even of the body; for bodily health is
more dependent on spiritual condition than spiritual condition is on
bodily health; and modern medicine can never restore and assure health
to the body if it limit its problem to physical relief alone. Nor is
even this the end of the 'way' of Christ. Here alone is positive social
redemption.... Finally, the way is sure to lead every life which follows
it, and is willing to pay the price for the possession of truth, into
the region of spiritual peace."
Thus, in the end, "out of the midst of evil, issues at last the mastery
of the good." Thus moral progress itself is the witness of God.
Living by this faith, life becomes strong, serene, and radiant. "The
Magi have but to follow their Star in peace.... The Divine action
marvellously adjusts all things. The order of God sends each moment the
appropriate instrument for its work; and the soul, enlightened by faith,
finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she
possesses."