XII

_THE GOAL_

If the cosmic process in the physical sphere culminated with the

appearance of man, and if, since that culmination, its movement has been

toward the perfection of the soul, it is fit and proper that this book

should end with a study of the goal toward which the human spirit is

pressing. Is it possible for us, with our limitations, to have an

adequate conception of the man that is to be "when the times are ripe"

and the "crowning race" walks this earth of ours?--or, if not this

earth, at least, dwells in the spiritual city? The fascination of this

subject has been widely recognized. The answer must be secured from many

sources. Only in imagination can we follow the lines along which the

spirit will move in the far-off ages, and yet our conclusions will not

be wholly imaginative, for the direction in which those lines are

tending is clearly perceived. Under the circumstances, therefore,

imagination may not be an untrustworthy guide. We are now to deal with

prophecies, some of them easy and some of them difficult to read. But

reading prophecies is not prophesying. I shall not prophesy, but rather

endeavor to understand and to interpret a few of the many voices which

have spoken, and are speaking, on this subject.

The soul is itself a prediction of what it is to be. It utters a various

language.

The growth of intelligence is prophetic. Savage tribes suggest the

original condition of primitive man. The pigmies in Africa afford hints

of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. From such as they, and from lower types

still, the race has slowly and painfully risen. In them a certain rude

intelligence appears. They have cunning rather than reason. They are

half akin to brute and half akin to man. A kind of selfish intelligence

characterizes their thinking. They lack a sense of proportion and

relation. Before the ant a man looms as large as a mountain before us.

An insect does not see things as they are but as they seem to it. Growth

in intelligence necessitates a truer appreciation of proportions and

relations. The pigmy also sees little but himself, but years and

experience leave behind them wisdom. The civilized races have all risen

from barbarism and savagery--that is, from a state of imperfect thinking

as well as of imperfect loving and choosing. Experience and culture

bring larger knowledge and a more equable balance of the faculties. No

man should be measured by his achievement in any one field of endeavor.

He may paint like Titian and be as voluptuous; he may write tragedies

like Shakespeare and have no logic; he may be a gatherer of facts like

Darwin and have no power of philosophic analysis. The intellect grows

steadily toward perfection of vision and logical strength, and also and

quite as significantly, toward harmony in the development of all the

powers of thought.

The contrast between the selfish cunning of an African pigmy and the

large and noble minds which are steadily multiplying, is a prophecy of

the man who will dwell on this earth when the vision is clear and the

power of rational judgment is perfected.

The prophecy of the soul is not less evident in the emotional nature. At

first the soul is either so imperfect, or so limited by the body, that

it seems to be nothing but a creature of emotions. It loves, but its

affections are selfish and egotistic. What may be called the epochs in

its growth are finely treated by Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner" and

by Tennyson in "In Memoriam." The Ancient Mariner felt only selfish

affection. He had no love for "being as being." He killed the albatross

with as little heed as he disregarded his fellow-men; but the ministries

of his misery were multiplied until, at length, he was able to see

something beautiful even in the writhing green sea-serpents that

followed the ship of death on which he sailed. That was the first sign

of the larger interest which had long been growing within him, and which

was to continue to grow until he could say,

"He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small."

"In Memoriam" is the record of the expansion of a soul through its

increase in love. At the beginning of his grief the poet sings,

dolefully and hopelessly, through his tears,

"He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day."

But the soul is growing secretly and surely as wheat grows in winter.

The Christmas bells ring out their music and at first are almost hated,

but they break through the shell of sorrow and let in a faint echo of

the world's great suffering and the world's great joy. Thus human

sympathy is enlarged just a bit. In successive years the music of the

Christmas bells is heard more distinctly, the sorrow of the world

becomes more audible, sympathy reaches farther. At last the poem which

began with a _miserere_ ends with a marriage, and he who could at first

write that dreary line,

"On the bald street breaks the blank day"

testifies to the beneficence of the path in which he had been led in

this wise and beautiful stanza,

"Regret is dead, but love is more

Than in the summers that have flown,

For I myself with these have grown

To something greater than before."

From dwelling in a prison with grief as a jailer he has caught a vision

of the,

"One far off divine event

To which the whole creation moves."

This expansion of the soul is not difficult to follow. Traces of it may

be seen in the enlarged sympathy, the growing brotherhood, and in the

rapidly increasing conviction that even nationalities are only temporary

expedients for bringing the day when love shall be the universal law.

The charities and philanthropies which are blossoming in every city and

country district, the consciousness of responsibility for the poor and

weak, the angel songs which are heard in the midst of battle, and the

gradual disappearance of war, are all vague but true prophecies of what

the soul will be when love is perfected. The knowledge of past progress

is an inspiration, and the imagination of what will be a glorious hope.

A single clause in the Apocalypse has long seemed to me as fine a

statement of the condition which will prevail, when this prophecy is a

reality, as could be phrased,--"The Lamb is the light thereof." Light is

the medium in which objects are visible, and the Lamb is the symbol of

sacrificial love. The great dreamer, in his vision, beheld a time when

spirits would see in sacrificial love as now we see physical objects in

the medium of light. To those who have studied the expansion of

individual souls, and who then have contrasted the selfishness of

earlier social conditions with the love of men as it is revealed in the

laws, institutions, ministries of to-day, this dream of the Apostle

rises in the distance as a new continent to a voyager over the wide and

desolate ocean.

Equally prophetic is the advance which has been made from the passion

of savage barbarism, or infantile wilfulness, to the moral reason of the

present day as seen in the highest types of humanity in civilized lands.

Wilfulness characterizes the childish nature and passion the savage

nature. But with the growth of the soul choices are differentiated from

impulses, and more and more regularly are inspired by intelligence and

unselfish affection. This progress toward intelligent and unselfish

choice distinguishes the movement toward civilization. Here, again, the

advance made by the individual soul and by the race are equally

prophetic. With the years the choices become more rational and loving.

Time mellows all men somewhat, and forces a little wisdom into the

hardest heads. Even slight growth prophesies that which shall be swifter

when conditions are more favorable.

The soul is a prediction of clearer vision, truer thought, more

unselfish love and wiser choices. It is a prophecy of the perfect man.

History is also prophetic of larger souls. The stream of human history,

after it has been followed backward a few thousand years, leads into the

region of legend and myth--that is, to a time when history could not be

written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in

symbolical forms. That means toward a time of narrow experience, and of

knowledge far more limited than the present. Memory, in those days, was

enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no

appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others

were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends.

What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There

was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain,

much passion but little love. Out of the darkness of the past the stream

of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily

expanded and deepened. Men are now equally intense but far clearer in

vision, nobler in purpose, and purer in character. Their laws year by

year have become more humane, their sympathies less contracted, their

institutions more civilized. Nature's secret drawers have been unlocked.

We are sometimes told that science has added much to the store of man's

knowledge but nothing to the strength of his mind or the nobility of his

character. That is a serious mistake. With the enlarged visions of the

universe, with clearer conceptions of our cosmic relations, with the

national neighborliness which is now a necessity, the capacity and the

quality of the soul must change. Nay, it has already changed, for we

inhabit the same lands over which savages formerly roamed, and we find

in the earth and air what they never found; and when we look up into the

great wide sky and say, "The Heavens declare the glory of God," we are

not thinking of a tribal Deity, or a partial, and more or less

passionate, monarch enthroned in the midst of his splendors, but of the

King Eternal, immortal, invisible. Knowledge tends to enlarge the mind

by which it is acquired. All faculties are strengthened by use.

History has moved along a bloody pathway, or, to revert to the figure of

a stream, is indeed a river of "tears and blood." The horrors of the

process by which the race has been lifted can hardly be exaggerated. I

do not forget them while I put stronger emphasis on the fact that the

outcome of all the struggle of individuals, the conflict of classes, and

the wars of nations has been a nobler and purer quality of soul,--not

less heroic but more sacrificial, not less strong but far more virtuous.

The growth of the individual soul is mirrored in the progress of the

race. When we have learned to read aright the history of the world, we

are informed as to the interior forces which have made civilization.

Events are expressions of thoughts; institutions are manifestations of

soul. If there has been progress in institutions there must have been an

equal progress in the souls which are the real forces by which progress

is always won. As history has been the evolution of humanity toward

finer forms, so it is the assurance that the forces which have been at

work in the past will not cease, but steadily continue until "the pile

is complete." The perfect society will be composed of perfected

individuals. History as prophecy is harmonious with soul as prophecy.

The future state of the soul has been the subject of rare fascination

for the world's great thinkers. Nearly all religions have a forward

look. "The Golden Age" lies far in the distance, but it has commanded

the faith of all the seers. It has sometimes been a dream concerning

individuals, and again a vision of the perfected society, but in reality

the two are one, for the social organism is but a congeries of

individuals. Bacon dreamed of New Atlantis, Sir Thomas More saw the fair

walls of Utopia rising in the future, Plato defined the boundaries of

the ideal Republic, Augustine wrote of the glories of the _Civitate

Dei_, and Tennyson with matchless music has sung of the crowning race:--

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be."

The common characteristic of these social ideals is their dependence on

the culture of individuals. With the incoming of "the valiant man and

free," the man of "larger heart and kindlier hand," there is a

reasonable hope that the darkness of the land will disappear.

With that deep look into the inmost secrets of human experience which

sounds strangely autobiographical, Browning wrote in "Rabbi Ben Ezra,"

"Praise be thine!

I see the whole design,

I, who saw power, see love now perfect too;

Perfect I call thy plan;

Thanks that I was a man!

Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

"Therefore I summon age

To grant youth's heritage,

Life's struggle having so far reached its term;

Thence shall I pass, approved

A man, for aye removed

From the developed brute; a god though in the germ."

Those last lines condense Browning's creed concerning man. He is "for

aye removed from the developed brute," and is "a god in the germ."

Browning holds that while in the future there will surely be expansion

of soul, evolution as a physical process is at an end. Henceforward

there will be no passing from one species to another. Species have to do

with physical organisms, not with spirits. Soul in man is but God "in

the germ."

Emerson and Matthew Arnold have written much about education. The one

foretells a day when the soul, after mounting and meliorating, finds

that even the hells are turned into benefit; and the other makes his own

the thought of Bishop Wilson that culture is a study of perfection, and

that the soul must ever seek increased life, increased light, and

increased power.

Education is the word of the hour and of the century. It is believed to

be the panacea for all ills, individual and social. But, precisely, what

does this passion for education signify if not that, either

intelligently or otherwise, all believe in the perfectibility of the

soul, and that it will have all the time that it needs for the process.

The absorbing devotion to intellectual training suggests the inquiry as

to whether many who affirm that they are agnostic concerning immortality

are not in reality earnest in their faith; for why should they seek the

culture of that which fades, as the flowers fade; when it approaches

life's winter? But, whether faith in continuance of being is firm or

frail, few doubt the perfectibility of spirit, because, beyond almost

all things, they are seeking its perfection. Literature, which is but

the thoughts of the great souls of successive periods recorded,

prophesies a day when all that hinders or taints shall be done away, and

when the divine in the germ shall have grown to large and fair

proportions. If there were no other light the outlook would still be

inspiring. It is well sometimes to ask ourselves what we were made to

be--not these bodies which are clearly decaying--but these spirits

which seem to grow younger with the passage of time. I have sometimes

thought that the very idea of second childhood is itself a prophecy of

the soul's eternal youth. Certain it is that we are the masters of the

years. The oldest persons that we know are usually the youngest in their

sympathies and ideals. Sorrow and opposition should not destroy, but

only strengthen the spiritual powers. Intelligence grows from more to

more. The sure reward of love is the capacity and opportunity for larger

love. Virtuous choices gradually become the law of liberty. These facts

are index fingers pointing toward large and loving, strenuous and

sympathetic manhood. And toward such human types, as a matter of fact,

the race has been moving. The expectation of the seers and prophets,

also, has been of a golden age in which all souls will have had time,

and opportunity, of reaching the far-off but splendid goal. Believing,

as we do, that death is never a finality, but that it is only an

incident in progress; that instead of being an end it is only freedom

from limitation, we find ourselves often vaguely, but ever eagerly,

asking, To what are all these souls tending? Toward a state glorious

beyond language to utter we deeply feel. But has no clearer voice

spoken? At last we have reached the end of our inquiry. If any other

voices speak they must sound from above. We stand by the unseen like

children by the ocean's shore. They know that beyond the storms and

waves lie fair and wealthy lands, but the waters separate and their eyes

are weak. So we stand before the future, and ask, Toward what goal are

all this education, experience and discipline tending? Are they

perfecting souls which at last are to be laid away with the bodies which

were fortunate enough to win an earlier death? It would be impiety to

believe that. Then indeed should we be put to "permanent intellectual

confusion." If all the voices of the soul are mockeries, then life is

worse than a mistake--it is a crime.

The solution of the mystery is now before us. The man that is to be has

walked this earth, and wrought with human hands, and lived and labored

and loved, and passed into the silent land. Is Jesus the unique

revelation of the divine? There may be many to question that, but there

are few, indeed, who doubt that He embodied all of the perfect humanity

which could be expressed within the limitations of the body. He

represented Himself as essential truth and very life. He condensed duty

into such love as He manifested toward men. He embodied the heroism of

meekness, the courage of self-sacrifice, the vision of goodness. He was

an example of all that is strong, serene, sacrificial, in the midst of

the lowest and most unresponsive conditions. So much we see, and the

rest we dimly, but surely, feel.

It was reserved for Paul, in a moment of inspiration, to put into a

single phrase a description of the goal of the human spirit, as

something which may be forever approached but never reached, in these

words, "Till we all attain unto the measure of the stature of the

fullness of Christ." The fullness of Christ! That is the soul's final

destiny. It was the far call of that goal which it faintly heard at its

first awakening and which has never entirely ceased to sound in his

ears. Who shall explore the contents of that great phrase? It is a

subject for meditation, for prayer, but never for discussion. He who

approaches it in a controversial spirit never understands it. What are

the qualities of the character of Christ? Some of them lie on the

surface of the story. He never doubted God, or, if so, but for a single

moment; He was unselfish; He lived to love and to express love; He had

some mysterious preternatural power over nature--such, perhaps, as

science is approaching in later times; kindness, sympathy, helpfulness,

purity, shone from His words and actions. He declared that the privilege

of dying to save those who despised Him was a joy. He lived in the

limitations of the human condition and, therefore, on the earth only

hints of "His fullness" are discernible. The full revelation is to be

the endless study of those who are able to see and to appreciate things

as they are. But we may ask ourselves whither these lines tend. When the

intelligence, the love, the compassion, the mercy, the purity, the moral

power and spiritual grandeur which only in dim outline are revealed in

the Christ, have perfect manifestations, what will the vision be? The

very thought transcends the farthest flights of the poet's imagination

and the most daring speculations of philosophers. In "the fullness of

Christ" is the soul's true goal. For that all men, and not the elect

few, were created. That is the revelation of the divine plan for

humanity. Toward that evolution has been slowly, and often painfully,

pressing from those dim æons when the earth was without form and void.

When man appeared as the flower of all the cosmic process he started at

once toward this goal. And with great modesty, and simply because I

believe in God and that His love cannot be defeated, I dare to hope

that, sometime and somehow, after all the pains of retribution and moral

discipline have done their inevitable work, after all the fires of

Gehenna have consumed the desire to sin, after Hades and Purgatory have

been passed, the souls which, for a time, have dwelt in these mortal

bodies, purified and without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, will be

given the beatific vision and permitted to realize the height and

depth, the length and breadth of "the fullness of Christ."

"That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,

Or decomposes but to recompose,

Become my universe that feels and knows."