for the production of different types of art, yet in appreciation all
are united. For example, it would be quite impossible for the great
Russian novels to be produced in any other country than Russia; it would
have been quite impossible for the great German philosophy to have been
produced in any other nation than Germany; it would have been quite
impossible for the great English poetry to have been produced in any
other nation than England. These literatures belong to the soil out of
which they spring. But the people of all the other nations can
appreciate them, and all are glad because they are different. And so
far as the artistic side of our nature governs our whole being, it is
capable of linking us together in a real fellowship, which includes and
is based upon our differences and the appreciation of them, and is
therefore firmly rooted, because what might have been the source of
antagonism is become itself the bond of unity.
But we must notice that each of these only reaches a very provisional
attainment. If science likes to mark off a certain department of
reality for its investigation, it can reach something like finality
concerning just that department. I suppose that mechanics is something
like a complete system of truth, so far as the mechanical aspect of
things can be isolated from all other aspects. But then, nothing in the
world is mechanical and only mechanical. Nothing in the world is
chemical and only chemical. There are always other qualities there,
from which abstraction has been made. Science therefore inevitably sets
before itself as its goal the understanding of the universe, and it
could not reach any absolute certainty concerning any real fact except
so far as it had obtained omniscience. In mathematics it reaches
certainty, because in mathematics the object is what it is defined to
be, and nothing else. But no given material thing is just a triangle.
It may even be disputed whether any given thing can be, according to the
definition, a triangle at all.
Science then is marked by a restlessness until it reaches this
omniscience. It began when the first man said "Why?" The moment that
question is asked, Science is launched upon its course. But the answer
to that question merely prompts anyone of scientific instincts to say
"Why?" to the answer. Why is there a war? Historical science will
point to the diplomatic documents, and from them to the course of
history moulding national aspiration. Then if we say, "Why was the
cause of war such? And, why were there such national aspirations?" we
shall find ourselves soon investigating the literature of the countries
and then their climates; from this we are shortly involved in astronomy
and geology and all the other sciences. You can have nothing that is
final until you reach omniscience. And so Science moves, perpetually
saying "Why?" to every statement that is made. Far in the distance, in
the infinite distance, is its goal of a complete satisfaction gained
through understanding the universe in its entirety.
Art can similarly only achieve a provisional attainment of its goal; but
the attainment while it lasts is more substantial. Its method, as
distinct from that of science, is mental rest. The aim of the artist is
to concentrate attention upon the object, holding it there by various
devices. That is why pictures are put into frames. Something abruptly
irrelevant, although not discordant, is put round the object to help us
fix our minds upon it. That is why poetry is written in metre. The
mind is abruptly brought back by the recurrence of the rhythm or the
recurrence of the sound in rhyme, and held within the total composition.
We notice that it is precisely where the subject matter of the poem is
slight that the rhythm needs to be strongly marked or the system of
rhyme complicated; where the subject matter itself has a strong appeal,
any rhyming seems to be out of place and tiresome. The aim is simply to
grip the attention and hold it upon the object and make us see it as it
is; not after the fashion of science, connecting it with other things,
but understanding it by getting to know it in and for itself as
thoroughly as may be.[#] Now in thus concentrating attention upon some
one object and claiming complete absorption in that object, art is
implicitly claiming to give a perfect mental satisfaction and an
absolute peace. But it can never succeed in that unless the object upon
which it is concentrating our attention is an adequate symbol for the
whole truth of things in which the whole of our nature will find such
satisfaction.
[#] This is why no great work of art over becomes out of date, whereas
the work of a great scientist is always liable to do so, because his
successors revise it in the light of ever widening knowledge.
Moreover, these activities of the mind or spirit fail to govern our
lives as a whole precisely because they are contemplative and not
active. We stand before the world gazing at it, setting our minds
indeed to work upon it in certain ways, yet not fundamentally changing
it. But we are active beings, with wills as well as contemplative
minds, and our volitional action lies very largely outside the range
which these activities and interests can control. And therefore it is
that so little real unity is reached by means of them.
In Morality the practical instincts and impulses are for the first time
included. Morality is the science or the art, or both, of living in
society; of living, that is to say, as fellow members with other beings,
who also have aspirations and ideals as legitimate as our own, so that
our own claim to pursue our own ideals must be won by recognition of
their equal claim to pursue theirs. And the man who, with full mastery
of himself, if such a man exists, is following out a great purpose that
is adequate to satisfy his whole nature, is a man who has achieved the
conquest of Time in the completest way. It is essential to the pursuit
of a purpose that we move from stage to stage, as we adapt means to our
end, and yet all of it is one thing, thought and experienced as one.
Indeed a test that we always instinctively apply to a biography is
whether it enables us to see the different stages of a man's life as
constituting one spiritual whole. That is just what we desire the
biographer to set forth before us.
At the same time Morality conquers antagonism because it is the life of
fellowship. It begins with the recognition that other men have as much
right to live as we have, and we buy our rights precisely by conceding
theirs. Its root principle is the recognition of this brotherhood or
fellow-membership. And yet it, too, never reaches its goal; it fails in
two ways; every man in this world, however perfectly he may achieve
mastery of his own nature--and it may be doubted if any man has ever
done even that by his own strength--is so conditioned by circumstances
that he is never able to make his life a perfect masterpiece of art; and
as regards the whole fellowship of which he is a member, and his own
relation to it, he can find no absolute rules except the command to
reach a state of mind which he cannot reach by his own will. There are
no moral laws that are absolute except the law to love one's neighbour
as oneself. All the rest have exceptions somewhere. "Thou shall not
kill," was the formula of the old law. But we have altered it into,
"Thou shalt do no murder." It is always wrong to murder, because murder
is such killing as is wrong. But it is not always wrong to kill. And so
we find no principle that can be made entirely binding and universal,
except the law to love our neighbour as ourselves. But how are we to do
it? Is there any man who seriously thinks that by taking thought he can
make himself love somebody else?
All of these three then, and the last as emphatically as any, in spite
of its comprehending a greater section of human nature, fail to reach
their own achievement.
In the fourth stage, in Religion, all would find their fulfilment. For
the purpose of God, if there be a God, is the principle of unity which
the scientist is seeking. The nature of God, if there be a God, is that
perfect beauty which would be the culmination of the life of Art. The
righteousness of God, if there be a God, is the satisfaction of the
moral aspiration. But we are not left so to conjecture what life would
be like if we could carry our own spiritual faculties to their own
highest development. We are given the express image of the person of
God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." We shall not indeed
have perfect knowledge of the sphere of religion until we have seen how
the whole of history and every detail of our lives is, after all, the
result and work of creative Love; but while Science and Art and Morality
struggle towards their goal and only realise their need for it, God
gives Himself as the satisfaction of that need. It is His gift, not our
discovery; but we see that in this principle all Time is gathered up,
for if the life of Christ is the manifestation of the nature of God,
then it is the manifestation of the root-principle of all history.[#]
[#] I am aware that the argument here is _per saltum_, but space forbids
its full development. I hope soon to have completed a book which will
fill in the outline sketch offered in this Lecture. Meanwhile I would
refer to my essay on _The Divinity of Christ_ in _Foundations_,
specially pp. 213-223, 242-263.
Then we see, too, how all men may be united in perfect fellowship,
because all men loving God will find themselves loving those whom God so
loves. This hope or conviction remains in the region of faith, not of
knowledge; what of that? In the other departments also we have found no
knowledge. We have only found approximation towards it. We have, as it
were, converging lines which never meet; and we have also the point at
which we see they would meet if produced. Is that not enough? Here we
find is the principle that will give unity, as we work it out, to the
whole scheme of our spiritual life. Morality says, "Love all men." How
can I? Science says, "Realise the truth which explains the universe."
How can I? But I can gaze upon the manifestation of God in Jesus
Christ; I can meditate upon His Cross and Resurrection. I can see here
and there how it may be true that this is indeed the explanation of all
the sorrow, even of all the sin. For if it is true that the supreme
manifestation of the love of God was historically conditioned by the
supreme sin of humanity in the treason of Judas, then surely one begins
to see how even out of the grossest evil the glory of God wins triumph
for itself, which we too may share if we are first drawn to share the
sacrifice.
As I become absorbed in that contemplation I find in the first place a
new power to love all men, as I remember that He died for them just as
He died for me. In the degree in which I really believe that this is
the manifestation of the power of God and the governing authority of the
universe, I find this thought over-ruling other thoughts and temptations
to hostility or enmity. As I remember that those whom I am inclined to
despise or hate are those for whom He thought it worth while to die, my
contempt and my hatred are rebuked and cancelled.
And similarly, if I realise--or in the degree in which I realise--that
here is set forth the power that governs all things, that this is the
way in which God rules the world, and that Calvary is the mode of His
omnipotence, I begin to find myself indifferent, and that increasingly,
to those things which are called sorrow and pain.
But we shall only find this as we expect to find it. All through our
spiritual life we may be perpetually in contact, as it were, with the
means of receiving what is good, and never receive it because we are not
expecting it. We have not expected peace of mind from our worship, we
have not expected a sense of security against evil; that is why we have
not found it; but it is our fault. And certainly most of us have not
expected to find fellowship from worship. We have known something of
the grace of Jesus Christ, perhaps even of the love of God; but of the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit, of the sense of being linked to one
another because all dominated by that one power, most of us have found
nothing, because we have not expected it.
But if we are expecting this, all the testimony of the saints in every
generation goes to show that we shall find what we have expected.
The power that can give us security against the transitoriness of the
world and against the instincts of antagonism is there in the faith that
we place in God. "I will put my trust in God," the Psalmist says, "I
will not fear what flesh can do unto me." This is not because flesh
will not do such hurt as it can to the man who puts his trust in
God--the Jews crucified Christ--but because to the man who puts his
trust in God, anything whatever that happens becomes part of God's
purpose for his life, and therefore he will not fear it. For "all
things," sorrow as well as joy, pain as well as pleasure, sin as well as
righteousness, "all things work together for good to them that love
God."
*LECTURE VI*
*GOD IN HISTORY*
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which
was and which is to come, the Almighty."--Revelation i. 8.
We have considered the two great instruments of God by which He fashions
the spiritual life of man, and we have considered that spiritual life
itself in the outline at least of its four main departments; and now, as
we close our line of thought, we need still to consider how it is that,
in these fields and by these instruments, God carries forward His work.
The conception of God as at work in human history, guiding it,
controlling it, and judging men by its course, is the great contribution
of Israel to the religion of the world. It is linked of course with
that belief in the union of perfect righteousness with the divine, power
which we usually speak of under the somewhat cumbrous title of Ethical
Monotheism. We remember what was really at stake in that great day upon
Mount Carmel when Elijah confronted the priests of Baal; it was whether
the conception of God as righteous and demanding righteousness should
prevail, or the conception of God as a capricious Being, needing only to
be propitiated, and in connection with whose very worship licentiousness
was tolerated and even encouraged.
But, after all, the greatest souls, at least in every highly-developed
religion, have believed that God is righteous in Himself. What gives to
Israel its supreme significance in the spiritual history of mankind is
the conviction that this righteous God is daily and hourly at work in
the history of men; and that conviction gives to the faith of Israel a
primacy and supremacy over all the other partial faiths, even though
they may be superior in certain departments.
If we think of some of the conceptions by means of which we try to bring
before our minds the meaning of the word "God," we may find that with
regard to several of them, other nations had advanced further than
Israel before the coming of the Lord.
God is Spirit. The Hindu knew that, and knows it still, quite as much
as Israel.
God is Law. The more thoughtful at least among the ancient Romans, and
particularly the great Roman Stoics, knew that with a vividness that was
scarcely ever attained in Israel.
God is Beauty. Assuredly the ancient Greeks knew that as Israel never
realised it at all.
But the conception of Israel that God is at work in history means that
the God of Israel gives to these other gods or conceptions of God, each
its own time and place of emergence and decay. The God who is revealed
to us in the Old Testament is Himself the Being who appoints that the
Indian or the Roman or the Greek should reach these particular
convictions; and in these partial apprehensions of the Divine, before
the full revelation came, the faith of Israel is determinative and
regulative for all the other faiths; and moreover, it is this faith that
God is at work in the actual daily history of men, which makes the faith
of Israel the natural and proper introduction to the Incarnation, where
God Himself took flesh and lived among men and died at a time and in a
place--in Palestine and under Pontius Pilate.
This exaltation of the Holy God, actually at work within men and at
their side, while it leads to a sense of awe before the Holiness of the
Almighty, also leads to a sense of the dignity of this world, and of
man's life in it, which is lacking, as a rule, from other great
religions, and that too in proportion as those other religions are
spiritual. For the Hindu, for example, this world and all that is in it
is mere illusion. He is spiritual enough but he is not material enough;
and we find there that contempt for the things of the body which
invariably issues in a contempt for moral conduct; for our moral conduct
here, while we live upon this planet, is wrought out through our bodies.
But the religion of Israel, and especially its completion in the
Incarnation, wherein God Himself came in the flesh, gives at once a
dignity to this world of ours, to our bodies, and to all the material
side of life.
When Christ stood before Pilate, the Kingdom of God was in appearance,
at least, undergoing judgment at the hands of the kingdom of this world;
but it is not merely a contrast of good with evil. It is a contrast of
the perfect with the very imperfect, but yet not merely evil, power.
Pilate is not Satan; and the Lord Himself, in the moment of His trial,
recognises that the authority by which He is condemned is an authority
that is derived from God--"Thou couldest have no power at all against
Me, except it were given thee from above." The kingdoms of this world,
which are to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ, are not
simply something evil. The contrast of Church and World is not the
contrast between good and evil; but it is the contrast between two
stages in the work which God is accomplishing in history, and those two
may often come into conflict.
Let us then ask what is the central principle of God's guidance of His
people, so far as it may be deduced from the tiny fragment of history
that we really know. In that fragment at least, we may say, I think,
with little hesitation, that its method and its aim is spiritual growth,
or, if you like to put it an expansion and enrichment of personality.
We are sometimes inclined to think our own personality is something that
is given to us from the outset, and entirely belongs to us; but that
idea will not stand examination for a moment. Individual personality is
a social product. It can only be developed under social influences. A
man may be born with many great talents, but if his environment does not
encourage their development, these talents will remain for the most part
undeveloped and unknown--either to himself or to anybody else. Indeed
the greater the talent with which a man is endowed, the more difference
is made to him by the kind of surroundings in which he is put. A man of
very few gifts and little natural capacity will be much the same,
whether he has abundant opportunity for mental and spiritual growth or
little opportunity; but the man of great capacities, needing for their
development the encouragement of surroundings, is an entirely different
being according as those surroundings are favourable or the reverse; and
so we reach the curious result that the greatest personality, while no
doubt he must have brought into the world something given to him by God
that was capable of development, is yet more entirely dependent upon the
society in which he is living than people with a less wide range of
gifts.
Again, it is only within a society which has developed some character
for itself, which has indeed a personality of its own, that individual
personality can reach very much development. You cannot have genius in a
savage tribe. Genius is the focal expression of the personality of a
whole people. It is that people coming to life, and possessed of voice;
and you do not find it where there is little social development. It is
only as the tribe or the nation begins to have some definite character
of its own that it is itself sufficiently organised to develop from its
own individual member those gifts, and elicit those activities, which
are the signs of genius.
We find then, that individual personality, or spiritual life, is
dependent upon the spiritual life of society; and we need to notice that
this society has every mark by which we distinguish personality in the
individual. It has aspirations: it has a predominant character; it has
claims, and it has duties. It has in fact, in the literal sense of the
word, corporate personality, and just as the many instincts and impulses
which are to be found in human nature, and may be very discordant with
one another, are welded together to make up the single life of a human
being, so the whole gifts and instincts and ambitions and aspirations of
all the individual citizens are welded together, to make up the
personality of the whole society.
Moreover, every nation is in itself not only the combination of
individual citizens, but also of minor groups within itself, all of
which have these same marks, and all of which are in the real genuine
sense persons, spiritual individuals with a life of their own.
Now, as we look over the history of the development which thus goes on
side by side in the individual and in society, we find that its
principle in the fragment of history that we really know has been that
isolated excellences should be brought to perfection first; and after
something like perfection has been reached in the separate departments
taken singly, the combination of them is brought about, in order that
the richer and fuller life may be perfected, in which all of them find a
place.
European history derives its whole life from Palestine, Greece and Rome;
and in each of those three peoples, some one excellence was developed to
a peculiar degree. Rome perfected and has bequeathed to us the
instincts for social order, as embodied in law. The history of the Roman
people is of significance, precisely because one may there trace the
growth and working out of this instinct for social or political life.
There has never been anything to rival it in history. No modern nation
has shown the same extraordinary political sense and sanity. The Romans
were not great political philosophers. They did not think very much
about the principles on which they acted; but simply because of their
peculiar gift in this direction they welded together a social order
which lasted throughout their Empire in a wonderful way; and to this day
the law of Europe is to an enormous extent the law of ancient Rome.
To ancient Greece, it is hard to say what we do not owe. Her peculiar
characteristic is intellectual passion; a passion for reaching
perfection in just what the intellect is particularly qualified to
grasp, truth and beauty. No doubt the ancient Greeks themselves thought
a great deal about their ordinary politics and their military
activities, and the wars between the various States; but these matter
very little. The Greek people are significant for evermore not because
of the Athenian trireme or the Macedonian phalanx, but because Aeschylus
stood in astonished awe before the operation of the Divine Justice;
because Sophocles reflected the whole of human life, even its ugliest
manifestations, in the mirror of a soul so calm and pure, that as we
look at that reflection all life seems bathed in peace and beauty;
because Euripides entered into the sorrows of simple folk; because
Thucydides, with a still unrivalled zeal for the genuine truth of
history, said the wise word about nearly every political condition that
has arisen since his time; because Plato dreamed "a Vision of all time
and all existence," proclaimed that it can never be just to do harm to
any man whatever harm he may have done to us; proclaimed also that "God
is in no way unrighteous, but in all ways absolutely righteous, nor is
anything more like to God than whosoever among men shall become
perfectly righteous;" foreseeing also that if a perfectly righteous man
should come on earth he would die, scourged and crucified.[#] There is
nowhere before the New Testament anything that comes nearer to its own
highest truths, not in the Old Testament itself, than what you will find
in Plato.
[#] _Republic_ i. 335*d*; _Theaetetus_ 176*c*; _Republic_ ii. 361*e*.
This influence,--the influence of this intellectual passion--has been
the driving force in nearly all the movements since that time. It has
been said there is nothing in the world which moves that is not Greek in
origin, and it is almost true; it is from the Greeks that we have learnt
"the use of reason to modify experience" and they derived it from the
intellectual passion for truth and beauty.
To Palestine we owe the inspiring and governing faith of which I have
already spoken--the one faith that can give real significance to these
other two, faith in the Holy God at work in history.