*MYSTIC IMMANENCE*
THE INDWELLING SPIRIT
BY THE VENERABLE BASIL WILBERFORCE, D.D.
LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK
7, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1914
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*FOREWORD*
[Transcriber’s Note: Foreword missing from source book]
*CONTENTS*
FOREWORD (missing from source book)
INFINITE IMMANENT MIND
SPIRIT, SOUL, BODY
"OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE INTO HERE"
LAST WORDS
*MYSTIC IMMANENCE*
*Infinite Immanent Mind*
"Whose is this image and superscription?"—ST. MATT. xxii. 20.
The question, "Whose is this image and superscription?" is suggestive,
first, of the deeper meaning of a harvest festival, and that is the
recognition in public worship that the material universe is the visible
thought of God. What is the principle by which everything came into
being? Physical science has now reduced all material things to a
primary ether, universally distributed, whose innumerable particles are
in absolute equilibrium.[#] The initial movement, then, which began to
concentrate material substances out of the ether could not have
originated with the particles themselves, and we are logically compelled
to acknowledge the presence of a Creative Intelligence exercising
volition. That Creative Intelligence exercising volition, that Parent
Mind, has impressed His image and superscription upon all that is—upon
the life and beauty of the animal world, upon the marvels of the
vegetable world, the prolific fruits of the earth, the gorgeous flowers
with which church and altar are decorated to-day. Whose is their image
and superscription? Whom do they manifest? Whence come their life and
their beauty? To understand the deeper meaning of a church decorated
with fruits and flowers we must have risen to some conception of the
Invisible Intelligence that is realizing itself in concrete phenomena.
Everything in the physical world is what it is by reason of a
spirit-organism or mind-form which relates it to the Universal Mind, and
the Universal Mind is that Divine activity which St. John calls the
Word, the Logos, the Originator in creative activity. "Through every
grass-blade," says Carlyle, "the glory of the present God still beams."
It does, and therefore a harvest festival suggests, not only the obvious
duty of profound thanksgiving to a bounteous Father—that goes without
saying—but also a reverent mental recognition of the intense nearness of
God, that "Earth’s crammed with Heaven and every common bush afire with
God."
[#] _Cf._ Troward’s Edinburgh Lectures.
So the first thought of to-day is that the world is ruled by Mind and
not by Matter, that "there is a soul in all things, and that soul is
God," that in the true philosophy of Creation every atom, every germ,
has within it a principle, a life, a purpose, a degree of consciousness
appropriate to its position in the scheme of things. That
consciousness, that mind, differs in magnitude in its different
manifestations; higher in the insect than in the vegetable, higher in
the animal than in the insect, and occasionally there is evidenced in
the animal a shrewdness which implies observation and close reasoning.
For example, recently I was at Christchurch, in Hampshire, and was
conducted by Mr. Hart over his unique museum of birds, representing the
life-work of an expert and enthusiast. He told me many most interesting
things, and amongst them the following:
It is well known that the cuckoo makes no nest of its own, but places
its eggs in the nest of one of the smaller birds. Now, in order to
deceive the bird amongst whose eggs the cuckoo intends to place its own
egg, the cuckoo causes the egg it is about to lay to assume the colour
and markings of the eggs of the small bird who is to be the
foster-mother. Mr. Hart showed me over forty cuckoos’ eggs, each one
coloured to imitate the natural egg of the bird whose nest the cuckoo
had commandeered. This had been done with extraordinary accuracy, from
the bright blue of the hedge-sparrow’s egg to the dull olive of the
nightingale’s egg, and even the peculiar markings, like notes of music,
of the yellow-hammer’s egg, had been imitated.
Consider the extraordinary mental power implied. The cuckoo has first
to decide which nest she will lay under contribution. She has then to
study the colouring of the eggs in that nest; then, with some amazing
exercise of the creative power of thought, she has to cause her unlaid
egg to assume that colour. She then lays it on the ground, and,
carrying it in her beak, carefully places it amongst the eggs of the
little foster-mother. What an intense, ever-present reality is the
Infinite Mind! What a glorious thought it is that the Eternal Purpose is
everywhere! When the heart grows faint and the hands weary, how
sustaining it is to know that there is no chance, no mere
machinery—everywhere purpose, intelligence, evolution, love!
Now, obviously the operation of the Originating Mind in all that is
differs in quality of self-realization in proportion to the receptive
capacity of the matter in which it is immanent. It is not sufficient for
us intellectually to affirm the immanence of God in a blade of grass,
but it is for us to carry the thought higher, and not to rest until we
have realized that Divine immanence is in a far more intense degree in
ourselves. Man is the crown of Creation, and when our Lord took that
coin in His hand and asked the question, "Whose is this image and
superscription?" He was stimulating thinkers to consider man’s unique
place in the cosmic order, and man’s true relation to the Universal
Originating Spirit; and when a man has really found that, he is well on
his way to the region of understanding and realization.
These Pharisees were no obscurantists. Some of them were Essenes, some
Therapeuts, some Mystics; and when the Lord asked "Whose is this image?"
their minds would automatically have reverted to the profound
declaration of human origins in the Book of Genesis: "So God created man
in His own image, in the image of God created He him." They would have
realized that the question was a suggestion for a thought-excursion. It
was. It was a hint at the transcendent truth of the elemental
inseverability of God and man. It was an appeal to a Divine fact in
man; it was a reiteration of His dogma, "The kingdom of Heaven is within
you"; it was a reaffirmation of the truth that nothing can ever really
change the central current of man’s purpose, and regenerate man’s
nature, but the clear recognition of his dignity, his responsibility,
his potentiality, as a vehicle for the manifestation of God. If they
had brought to Jesus some utterly degraded specimen of the human race,
as they brought Him that silver didrachma, and asked Him the question,
"’Whose is the image and superscription’ on this man?" (and they
virtually did this when they brought Him the woman taken in adultery)
there could have been but one reply—"In the image of God created He
him"; and that which God has once impressed with His image, though that
image may be defaced and overlaid, is His for ever, and the impress can
never be obliterated.
You remember Tennyson’s words:
"For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Stamped with the image of the King."
"Stamped with the image of the King." The thought touches human life at
many points, theological, personal, practical. The theological lesson
from the human coin stamped with the Divine image is one of the utmost
importance as a stimulus to spiritual growth. It is the transcendent
twin-truth of the Eternal humanity in God, and the Eternal Divinity in
man; that inasmuch as all that is must have pre-existed, as a first
principle, in the mind of the Infinite Originator, and as the highest of
all that is, so far as we at present know, is man, the archetypal
original of man must be in the hidden nature of the Infinite Mind; and
therefore man, however buried and stifled for educative purposes in the
corruptible body, is in his inmost ego indestructible, and inseverably
linked to the Father of Spirits. God needs man as a vehicle for
Self-Manifestation. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the
firmament sheweth His handiwork"; but only man—mental, moral, volitional
man—can declare the nature of God and manifest the qualities of God. As
God’s power is revealed in the wheeling planet, God’s nature is revealed
in the thinking man. Man is therefore the special sphere of the
self-manifestation of the Originating Mind. We humans are personal
spirits who have proceeded from God into matter, and "the image and
superscription" of the Creative Sovereign Power, whence we came, remains
for ever indelibly impressed upon our inmost _ego_, and must work in us,
and will work in us, until at last it unites our conscious mind fully
with God. Inasmuch as humanity is the chosen vehicle of the
self-expression of the moral qualities of the Originating Spirit,
humanity will, through much initial imperfection and through many
changes, evolve upwards and onwards, until at last it shall be complete
in Him, and the preordained purpose of the Originating Spirit be
completely fulfilled. He who believes this must be, theologically, a
universalist.
There follows the personal lesson. The moral evolution of humanity is
not automatic, it is not generic, it is not impersonal. It is
individual, in accord with the personal equation of each one. Though it
is a necessary philosophic truth that our true _ego_, our imperishable
centre, is in the universal, and not in the imprisonment of what we now
call personality, still we shall never lose our individuality, we shall
always know that "I am I and no one else." "With God," said De
Tocqueville, "each one counts for one," and each one must work out his
own salvation. You and I will not drift onwards in a vague, impersonal
stream called "the race." Each one of us is a responsible life-centre
in which God has expressed Himself, and we have to become moral beings,
and a moral being is not machine-made—he must be grown; he is the
product of evolution, and for the purpose of evolution he must emerge
triumphant from resistance, as every flower, every grape, every grain of
corn in this church has emerged triumphant. In other words, he must be
exposed to what, with our present imperfect knowledge, we call evil. It
is just here that the analogy of the coin comes in. Man is a composite
being—he possesses an inferior animal nature, a lower region of
appetite, perception, imagination, and tendency; in other words, to
carry on the analogy used by our Lord, there is a reverse side to every
human coin. Don’t overpress the analogy, but note that to every current
coin there is a reverse side, and when you are looking at that side you
cannot see the King’s image. Generally on the reverse side there is
some device representing a myth, or tradition, or national
characteristic. For example, on the reverse side of this denarius, or
silver didrachma, that they brought to our Lord, was a representation of
Mercury with the Caduceus. Hold in your hand an English sovereign.
Think of our Lord’s analogy. Let the mind wander back into the distant
past, and consider the ages during which that sovereign has been in the
making: the precipitation of the chemical constituents of gold in
prehistoric times, when the planet was emerging from the fiery womb that
bore it; the forcing of the metal into the cells of the quartz under the
incalculable pressure of the contracting, cooling world; the ages upon
ages of concealment in the depths of the earth; the discovery of the
metal, and all that was implied; the toil of the miners, the smelting,
the refining, the alloying; and, at last, the stamping with the image
and superscription of the reigning sovereign. And once stamped in the
Mint it is an essential item in the economy of a great empire. It is
legal tender—no man may refuse it in payment; at his peril does any man
clip it or take from its weight. The image and superscription of the
reigning sovereign gives it its dignity, its sphere of usefulness, even
its name. Now turn it over; you can no longer see the image of the
King. What is this on the reverse side? Another device, an heraldic
design, symbolical of the traditions and myths of the nation; a
transition from the real to the illusory, a representation of St. George
fighting the dragon. "Whose is this image and superscription?" Whose
handiwork is this? Examine closely the reverse side of a sovereign.
Close to the date you will see some minute capital letters. They are
the initials of the talented chief engraver to the Mint in the reign of
George III., the designer of both sides of the coin which Ruskin said
was the most beautiful coin in Europe, the English sovereign. Who is
the engraver who has stamped the reverse of every human coin with the
mythical designs of our human imagination, the pleasing illusions of our
natural self-life, the device of our outer and common humanity, the
conditions of our flesh-and-blood existence? Do you really believe that
this was done by some powerful enemy of the Most High? The mythical,
demonized objectification of what we call evil is greatly in the way of
clear thought. St. Paul is careful to point out, in Romans viii., that
there is only one Originator, and He can never be taken by surprise.
Paul says man was "made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by God."
The same omnipotent hand that stamped the King’s image stamped also the
reverse of the coin. The device on the reverse side of the human coin
is the device of human heredity, the qualities of temperament, the
race-memories which belong to the region of animal life-power. We have
had "fathers of our flesh," the Apostle reminds us. They have
transmitted to us, by human generations, tendencies appertaining to
corporeal life. There is nothing to deprecate in these tendencies in
themselves; they are all within the majestic lines of nature.
Obviously, if we concentrate all our attention on the reverse side of
the coin, if we persist in imagining that our animal nature is our real
self, we forget that the King’s image is on the other side. We can only
see one side at a time, and while we gaze at the reverse side, and the
other side is hidden, doubt, depression, pessimism, sense of
separateness from God, are the inevitable result.
What is the moral of the analogy? It is this: Do not always harp upon
the worst side of yourself. We are bound to become what we see
ourselves ideally to be. The higher your ideal of yourself, the more
rapid your spiritual growth; see yourself ideally as Divine, and you
will become it. Remember, you cannot see both sides of the coin of
yourself at once. When you are discouraged by the prominence of the
animal nature; when you are prone to give way to appetite or temper, or
despondency, or self-detestation, instantly force yourself to turn over,
as it were, the coin of yourself; "reckon yourself," as Paul says,
"alive to God"; forcibly detach your attention from the reverse side;
think intensely into the other side. Say, "I am spirit, I am the
Lord’s; His image is stamped on me, His life is in me. His eternal
purpose is my perfection, my true ego is His Divine Life; I am a
personal spirit, thought-begotten by the Father-Spirit in His own image
and likeness, made subject to the vanity of human birth, that through
the bondage of corruption I may attain to the conscious liberty of the
glory of Sonship. This body is not I, not the real I." The thought,
when persisted in, becomes creative; it restores the equilibrium; it
helps the at-one-ment of the two sides of the coin, the human and the
Divine, making, as the Apostle says, "of the twain one new man."
The same rule applies as to our judgments of others. Remember, we
cannot see both sides of the human coin at once, and therefore our
judgments are literally one-sided. This they are in both directions.
The people we admire are not deserving of all the worship we give them;
the people we dislike are not as black as we paint them. Some people
live with only the reverse side visible, but always there is the other
side of the coin. I have never honestly tried mentally to turn over a
human coin of this description without finding the King’s image often
defaced and covered with accretions, but always there. If asked of the
most degraded, "Whose is this image?" I should not hesitate in my reply:
"The qualities, potentialities, of Spirit are here though hidden." The
conclusion is, Never despair of anyone, and never despise thy brother
man; always believe the best of other people; be sure that the name of
the Eternal Father is impressed on their true _ego_. That Divine name
is ineradicable. In the end it will save the worst, though, it may be,
"yet so as by fire."
The practical lesson scarcely needs enforcement. "Whose is this image
and superscription?" asks the Head of humanity of the human items that
make up the race. A recognition of the fact that the real _ego_ in
every man is Divine would be the golden key which would unlock the most
puzzling of the social problems of the age. The prominent evils which
degrade humanity would pass away before it, and in private life love
would reign instead of harsh criticism. If the answer were clearly and
intelligently given to the question, "Whose is this image and
superscription?" and it were recognized that humanity is God-souled, and
that the Originating Spirit is the self-evolving image in all, it would
not only mitigate our personal judgments of others, but it would break
down the prejudices which now divide us. The regenerating transforming
mission of love would knit souls together, there would be no "Eastern
question," for, in God, there are no Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians,
Russians, Austrians, there are only men.
The universality of the Divine impress, the certainty that every
individual life-centre is a manifestation of God, should convince us
that "one is our Father and all we are brethren." To know that humanity
is God’s child, though it has a side weighted with crime, brutality, and
degradation, should stimulate us, first, always to see the best side in
people we dislike, and, secondly, to associate ourselves with all
ameliorating work for humanity in a vast Empire city like London. The
human coins are sometimes for a while lost, and it is our duty to find
them. Our Lord once drew a vivid picture of a search for a lost coin.
He implied that it was the Church’s fault (for the woman in that parable
is the Church) that the coin was lost. He suggested that we should
light a candle and stir up the dust from the unswept floor of our
distorted social conditions, and actively, eagerly search for His
God-stamped human coins till we found them. To keep others and to make
others happy is the road to personal happiness, that is implied in the
conclusion of that allegory of the lost coin. The successful searcher
is represented as calling upon friends and neighbours to rejoice with
her, for she has found the coin which was lost. To manifest love and
help to make others happy is the highest credential for the future life
beyond, for "Heaven is not Heaven to one alone. Save thou one soul, and
thou mayest save thine own."
*Spirit, Soul, Body.*
"A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his
steps."—PROV. xvi. 9.
A profound philosophy underlies that inspired maxim. Man is a threefold
being, composed of spirit, soul, and body, and this proverb indicates
the true relation which should exist between these three functioning
centres in each individual man. Soul is the region of the intellect,
where a man does his conscious thinking. Soul "deviseth man’s way" and
plans details. Spirit, the innermost being, the immortal _ego_,
Infinite Mind differentiated into an individual life-centre, when not
grieved, controls soul, and of this control soul is sometimes conscious,
but more often not conscious. Body, the external part of man’s being,
the association of organs whereby the spirit comes into contact with the
physical universe, ought to obey soul, controlled by spirit, and then
all is well. That is the ideal relation between the three functioning
centres in individual man. Spirit is the seat of our God-consciousness.
Soul is the seat of our self-consciousness. Body is the seat of our
sense-consciousness. In the spirit God dwells; in the soul self dwells;
in the body sense dwells. The at-one-ment is the realized equipoise of
these functioning factors in the complex mechanism of the individual
man. The body, with its senses, subject to the soul with its conscious
mind. The soul, with its conscious mind, subject to the spirit which is
Divine. And when a man knows this inter-relation, and gives spirit the
pre-eminence, he does not sin. Disharmony, or, as we call it, sin, when
it is mental, is the assertion of self, seeking its life and its
happiness through human intelligence only. Sin, when it is bodily, is
the assertion of animal appetite, seeking its life and its happiness
through the senses only. Harmony lies in the soul-self, of which the
conscious mind is the functioning power, seeking its life and its
happiness in obedience to spirit, thinking itself into conscious oneness
with spirit, the inmost shrine of our complex nature. Then, as Soul
will be no longer functioning from the plane of material conditions,
Body obeys Soul, and thus, though a man’s conscious mind "deviseth his
way," Spirit "directeth his steps."
There is a restful universalism in this analysis, because spirit is the
true man. Spirit is "the kingdom of heaven within." Spirit is "the
Father within you." The one ever-lasting impossibility to man is to
sever himself from immanent spirit. A man’s soul may have so wrongly
"devised his way" as to be derelict; the nightmare of life may have been
so heavy that a man has not recognized that the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven within him are committed to him. He may not yet have awakened to
the truth that God’s intensity dwells within him; he may even plunge
into animalism; he may pass out of this life still in his dream, but,
though he knows it not, whatever his mind may devise, the Lord, Immanent
Spirit, will still "direct his steps" to the ultimate issue. Into
whatever educative school a human being may pass. Spirit goes with him.
"If I go down into Hades, Thou art there; if I take the wings of the
morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy
right hand lead me." And where Spirit is, there is Love—tireless,
patient, remedial, effective, and "at last, far off, at last," every
wandering derelict human being will "arise and go to its Father." I
know that you cannot make another person see what you see yourself, but
I long to encourage all to believe it, to test it, to live it, to
proclaim it. Some think I err by ceaselessly reiterating the same
truth. I cannot help it; it is the ideal I am striving to attain
myself. I must give it to others. As Whittier said:
"If there be some weaker one,
Give me strength to help him on.
If a blinder soul there be,
Let me guide him nearer Thee."
I desire to encourage all to aim at conscious identification with
Spirit, and to bear witness by the peace it brings into their lives.
"That to believe these things are so,
This firm faith never to forego,
Despite of all which seems at strife
With blessing, all with curses rife,
That this is blessing, this is life."
The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the eighth Sunday after Trinity
help the attainment of this mental attitude. The Epistle touches upon a
question of importance to those who are learning the glorious truth of
the Immanence of God. Do not let concentration upon your oneness with
Infinite Spirit Immanent hinder your consciousness of Infinite Spirit
Transcendent—that is, external to you. The Lord Jesus, knowing that the
human mind can only cognize in terms of human experience, gave us the
name "Father" to help us mentally to personify Infinite Spirit
Transcendent—that is, external to us. The Lord Jesus was intensely
conscious of the Immanence of God, He called it "the Father in Him," but
He also prayed definitely to the Father outside Him. St. Paul suggests
that when we pray to undifferentiated Spirit, who is God outside us, we
should use the familar [Transcriber’s note: familiar?] affectionate
title "Abba." The Lord Jesus is only recorded to have used this title
once, at the moment of His deepest agony, and it is in suffering,
physical or mental, that you most want it. It is a declaration of your
estimate of God, and therefore important, because the ability of Divine
Love to help and soothe you is conditioned by your appreciation of Him
and your mental attitude of receptivity towards Himself. So in those
times of deepest darkness, when He seems most absent, it is well to
address Him by the tenderest name, and say, Abba, Father. "Abba,
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me."
Let us consider the Collect. How it redeems our Liturgy from its leaven
of Augustinianism! How it silences the obscurantists who accuse
believers in universal restitution of going beyond the Church’s
teaching! Is this collect an authoritative formula of the Church, or is
it not? "O God, whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things both
in Heaven and on earth." In other words, a man’s conscious mind may
wrongly "devise his way," but "the Lord will direct his steps."
Saturate your mind with that thought. Speak to the universal Spirit
outside you and individualize Him. Say, "Abba, Father, whose
never-failing providence ordereth all things both in Heaven and on
earth, though my heart may be ’devising my way’ wrongly and tortuously,
I know Thou wilt ’direct my steps’ into Thy purpose." In that attitude
of mind you know that God will be in whatever happens to you. This gives
you a great freedom in worshipping Infinite Spirit. You feel yourself
emancipated from all traditional conceptions, and you feel in yourself
the aspiration of Faber when he wrote:
"Oh, for freedom, for freedom in worshipping God,
For the mountain-top feeling of generous souls,
For the health, for the air, of the hearts deep and broad,
Where grace, not in rills, but in cataracts rolls!"
It is well to face the principle underlying these words of the collect:
Abba, Father, "ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth." Then,
as His will is man’s sanctification, the logical conclusion is an
absolute ultimate universalism.
The absurdity of the paradox that man by wrongly "devising his way" can
ultimately defeat the predestined purpose of Infinite Originating Mind
is self-evident. Sophocles and Plato taught that omnipotent purpose
governed the apparently accidental phenomena of life, and the writer of
the book of Proverbs says plainly: "A man’s heart may devise his way,"
but "the Lord will direct his steps." That is the inspired statement of
the problem. Milton thought the problem insoluble, and describes the
fallen angels exercising their minds on "fixed fate, free will,
fore-knowledge absolute," and being "in wandering mazes lost," I really
think it only needs common sense. Infinite Mind expresses Himself in
individual human life-centres that He may realize His own qualities and
have millions of separate entities to love and, after education, to love
Him. Is it conceivable that He would so overdo His creative work as to
produce beings with a superior will to Himself capable of resisting Him
through the endless ages, and putting His purpose to complete confusion?
Is it not obvious that He would only give them enough will to train
them? The will of man, such as it is, has its clearly-defined sphere.
It is with his will he "deviseth his way," and that "devising his way"
is the test of his life; but he can no more escape the ultimate purpose
of Abba, Father, than a material substance on this planet can escape the
law of gravitation. Obviously we have volition, we have the power to
"devise our way." This must be so for two reasons. First, Originating
Spirit desires to realize His highest qualities in man. Therefore, man
must have liberty to withhold his co-operation or he would be only an
automaton. Mechanical moral qualities would not be moral any more than
your watch is moral. To receive and to distribute the nature of the
Divine mind, not mechanism, but mental acquiescence is necessary. "The
heavens declare the glory of God," but they do it mechanically, not
morally. The solar system is a perfect work of mechanical creation, but
the planet cannot leave its appointed orbit. Man can. If man obeyed
God, only as a planet revolves in its orbit, he would "declare the glory
of God," but he would not be a man; that is, he would not be a mental
centre in which the Originating Mind could realize Itself. Then, again,
without being free to disobey, we could never become moral beings. The
antagonistic pressure of non-moral inclinations challenges our highest
self, and as we make, within our limited sphere, correct choice between
alternatives presented, we are built up Godward or the reverse. But
inasmuch as Infinite Spirit and His vehicles are elementally
inseverable, and "Abba, Father, ordereth all things," though wrong
choice, and the selection of lower standards, will occasion pain and
unrest, and delay the evolution of the Eternal purpose, and grieve the
Spirit within us. Creative Spirit is Omnipotent, to defeat Him is
impossible. He will ultimately, in ways of His own, "direct man’s
steps" without turning him into an automaton. When once you perceive
that man in his inmost nature is the product of the Divine Mind, imaging
forth an image of Itself, you are certain that no negation can finally
frustrate the evolution of the Divine principle which is the inmost
centre in us all. It must ultimately blend with the ocean of uncreated
life whence it came, and whither from all Eternity it is predestined to
return, for Infinite Mind has declared of His human children, "Ye shall
be perfect." Of course, we must ourselves "open out the way." In that
obligation lies the function of our Will and our responsibility for
using the Keys of our own Kingdom of Heaven within.
As Browning expresses it so grandly in "Paracelsus":
"There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in.
... TO KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without."
Those who use the Keys of their Kingdom of Heaven know, and "open out
the way." And for those who don’t know, though they blunder terribly
and suffer in the blundering, the Immanent Spirit "directs their steps."
Do you say this implies fatalism, submission to impersonal destiny
destructive of independence and self-reliance? The Gospel negatives the
suggestion, and demonstrates that this "ordering all things" is not the
despotic overrule of an irresistible law, but the immanent influence of
an omnipotent Providence ceaselessly suggesting to the Soul of man. The
Lord Jesus said: "I can do nothing of Myself, the Father in Me doeth the
works." Was that fatalism? No, the Lord Jesus was consciously working
out the thoughts, the ideas of the Immanent Spirit, and the Epistle
says; "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the
children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ." "Joint-heirs with Christ," that is, that the
same spirit that was in perfection in the Christ is germinally in us,
and though we may not yet be conscious of it, we are co-partners in the
same splendid inheritance. Again, the prevalence of evil is to some a
stumbling-block. They say God is all, and all is God, and God is Love,
resistless, resourceful, perfect. He "ordereth all things both in
Heaven and on earth," why, then, this discord between the heart that
"deviseth the way" and the Lord who "directeth the steps"? why all this
misunderstanding? Have we not learnt the answer? It is an interesting
study in human psychology to note how thoughtful men will stumble over
the answer. I am always repeating the axiom: Even God cannot make
anything except by means of the process through which it becomes what it
is. He is making moral beings. He can only make moral beings by means
of the process through which a moral being becomes what he is, and that
is, by having the opportunity of being non-moral. Therefore Infinite
Spirit, who can never make a mistake, is responsible for the conditions
under which what we call evil becomes possible, because by those
conditions alone can men become moral beings, and these conditions
underlie the three functioning centres in the complex mechanism of human
beings.
That is the inner meaning of that metaphor about gathering grapes from
thorns and figs from thistles in the Gospel. The thorn and the thistle,
the grape and the fig, do not signify separate types of men. If so, the
force of the metaphor would fail, and Necessitarian Calvinism would be
established.
The thorn and the thistle are obeying God’s own law of heredity and
affinity by producing only thorns and thistles; they would violate the
law of their being if they produced grapes and figs. It is an allegory
of our separate selves, of that complex nature which differentiates us
from the immanence of God as subconscious mind in the vegetable and the
animal. Each man is the soil in which the "soul-man" and the "body-man"
produce thorn and thistle, and the "spirit-man" produces grape and fig.
The opposing functioning centres in the same individual strive for the
mastery, and from this very striving emerges the perfected life of the
Child of God, and that is where the possibility of what we call evil
comes in. Our own limited minds teach us that God’s thought-forms,
imaged forth from the womb of Infinite Mind, could never attain
Self-consciousness unless associated with matter in some definite form.
That association with matter involved body with its "thorn and thistle"
tendencies, which tendencies are the training-ground of the individual,
and this training will be complete when the "spirit-man," through the
"soul-man," controls the "body-man," and he can say with Paul: "I keep
under my body and bring it into subjection."
As vehicles of spirit we have the capacity of living by a definite
effort and purpose the higher life, the fruit-bearing life, and, as we
live it, we weaken and starve the thorn-bearing life. "We are debtors,"
says the Apostle, we, who have received the Keys of our own Kingdom of
Heaven within—"we are debtors not to live after the flesh."
No one needs the pulpit to tell them what is the life "not after the
flesh." Every purposeful encouragement of the Divine nature within,
every clinging to principle in time of temptation, every masterful
conquest over bodily desires by forcing the mind away from sense
impressions into recollection of the Divinity within, every quenching of
anger by a kind and gentle word, ministers to the fruit-bearing life and
withers the thorn.
In one word, the higher life is the continuous conscious blending of the
human mind with the Infinite Mind. Remember conscious mind is part of
the "soul-man," and our ability to gain dominion over the physical body
develops as we use our will to blend our thought-power with the Infinite
Mind, for the "spirit-man" influences the "body-man," through the
channel of the "soul-man," which is the seat of mind.
Begin it by suffering the indwelling Spirit to realize itself as love.
The Master taught us that to manifest love is to live not as an isolated
unit but in terms of the larger life of humanity. When He was asked,
"What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He replied with the parable
of the Good Samaritan. Manifest love to theological and political
opponents, and unlovable people generally, and the thorn and thistle
within you will have a poor chance of life.
When you express love you are functioning from Spirit. Then "soul-man"
and "body-man" must obey. "Soul-man" must help for will is part of
"soul-man." Watch yourself. Keep the tongue from evil and the lips
that they speak no guile. Never allow yourself to repeat that which
will prejudice your hearer against another. Don’t repeat a scandal. It
causes an evil thought-atmosphere to prevail; it thwarts the God within;
it grieves the Spirit more fatally than breaches of the moral law.
This, then, is the message of to-day. Use your will to keep your mental
faculties in conscious realization of your true relation to Infinite
Mind, as one of His vehicles, and you will not grieve the Spirit. Know
that God is the Spirit within you, and never forget that He is also
Abba, Father, outside you. Abba, Father, longs for us far more than we
long for Him. Around us always are the everlasting arms. He knows our
imperfections and weaknesses of character far better than we know those
of our own children, and our Lord said: "If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your
Heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask Him?"
*"Out of the Everywhere into Here."*
"Of His own will He brought us forth by the Word, wherefore receive with
meekness the inborn Word."—ST. JAMES i. 18, 21 (R.V.).
Though I have repeatedly spoken on the words of the Epistle for the
fourth Sunday after Easter, I simply cannot pass them by now. They
illuminate conspicuously the thesis that we were "thought-forms" in the
womb of Infinite Mind before we were "body-forms" in this terrestrial
school, and they affirm the closeness of our intimacy with Infinite Mind
and the obviousness of our life’s duty. Grant the axiom that the power
of Infinite Mind to realize in us, and express through us, and
externalize love in the circumstances of our life, is strictly
conditioned by our appreciation of what Infinite Mind is in Itself, then
the more familiar, the more reverently tender, our estimate of
Originating Spirit, the more will It be able to manifest in our lives.
St. James in the words I have quoted has suggested to us a conception of
Infinite Creative Mind so exalted, so metaphysical, and yet so personal,
that, if by spiritual consciousness we can grasp it, we possess the
highest possible estimate of the All-Conscious Life-Principle whence we
came. St. James says: "He brought us forth with the Word," "He willed
us forth from Himself by the Logos." In the Greek there is, of course,
no personal pronoun, and, indeed, it is a paradox to put the masculine
personal pronoun before this Greek word, _apekúêsen_, a word used, and
only used, for the birth of a child from its mother; it has no other
meaning. Imagine the motherly tenderness of this metaphor. Can it be
used by accident? Does it not suggest the words: "Can a woman forget
her sucking child that she should not have compassion upon the son of
her womb?" Can Infinite Mind forget the individual life-centre which
has come forth from its creative thought-womb? You say this is emotion,
this is sentiment. Quite so; that is exactly what is needed; our
relations to Originating Mind are too formal, too cold, too perfunctory,
too theological.
The Mother-Soul, _apekúêsen_, "brought us forth," "bore us," body-formed
us, that by separation we might come to know our Parentage as we could
never have known it if we had remained in the womb of Creative Mind,
just as between human child and mother there can be no conscious
cognizing intercourse till they are separated.
I pray that I may realize how profoundly this inspired metaphor of St.
James reaches into the deep things of God. It proves that the
irrevocability of Divine Immanence in man is not the product of human
speculation, but an authoritative revelation. As the child in the womb
receives the nature of the mother, and is born into the world bearing
that nature, part of the mother, a repetition of the mother, so have we
come into this world with a Divine nature within us, which is our real
self, our eternal humanity. It is true for us, when it is not yet true
to us, that we are the offspring of the Infinite Parent-Spirit by a
process more intimate than anything implied by the word "creation."
What a glorious confidence ought to be inspired by this assurance! How
it ought to alter our outlook upon life! The nature and perfections of
God, as Omnipotent Love and Wisdom, are germinally within us, and are
gradually advancing mankind, by an agency ultimately irresistible, to a
more and ever more perfect condition. Based on this proposition of St.
James, final restitution stands upon an impregnable foundation; the
terrifying problem of evil, while it remains as an urgent motive for
action, loses its power to perplex. As an Infinite Motherliness is the
sole producing agent of all that is, and as all that is must have been
in the thought-womb of Infinite Motherliness before coming into
existence, the whole mystery of the dark side of life must be within the
purpose of the eternal order, and there can be no independent rival to
the Author of the Universe. Again, this amazing revelation of the
Creative Motherliness should help us in realizing the oneness of
humanity. It should stimulate us to generous strivings for better
social conditions and more brotherly relations between man and man. It
ought to make impossible the international jealousies which provoke
taunts and defiances between European nations which ultimately issue in
the misery and wickedness of war. Above all, it should impress upon us
the dignity, the priceless dignity, of every individual human life, as
drawn directly from the Originating Spirit.
I desire to apply this thought. I will take myself. I ask, "What am
I?" Now, don’t imagine that you honour God by calling yourself a poor
worm and a miserable sinner, whatever you may justly feel; it is gravely
discourteous to the Supreme Source of your being. Say: "I am a human
life, a personal spirit, body-formed into terrestrial birth. I
recognize that I have a double consciousness, that two distinct planes
of thought and initiative compose my life: the one is the natural or the
animal man, the product of evolution through the operation of the Cosmic
Mind; the other is the spiritual man, the essential inner nature,
equipped with all the potentialities and the qualities of the Infinite
Creative Mother-Soul. In the recognition of this duality lies the
wisdom of life; in the reconciliation of these two planes of
consciousness lies the battle of life; and in the supremacy of the
higher plane of consciousness lies the victory of life. I recognize my
limitations, and I regretfully acknowledge my many defeats."
Upon what does victory depend? It depends upon our use of our
will-power in constraining our mental faculty to rise above the mere
sense-impressions of our lower consciousness, and intensify upon the
eternal fact of our oneness with the Infinite Life from which we have
come forth as a child comes from its mother’s womb. St. James puts it
perfectly clearly. He does not perplex us with theological casuistry or
schemes of salvation; he just bids us use our Divine heredity. He says
Infinite Mind has given birth to you by the Logos, the Word. Creative
Motherliness has "brought you forth (_apekúêsen_) by the Logos,"
wherefore "receive with meekness the ’Logos Emphutos,’ the ’inborn
Word,’ ’the hereditary Divine nature,’ which is able to save your
souls." "With meekness"—that is, with receptivity. Mentally practise
Divine self-realization, become conscious that the Logos, which is the
mystic Christ, the image and nature of the Mother-God, is within you,
"inborn." Be receptive to its promptings, acknowledge it, recognize it,
realize it, appeal to it; put away purposely what St. James calls "all
superfluity of naughtiness"—an expression which each must interpret for
himself. Strengthen it by inhibiting wrong thoughts, by secret communion
with it, and it will rapidly evolve, and as it grows it will externalize
in the conditions of your life, it will become more and more a power in
the affairs of your daily duty, it will build up your character, it will
bring you into right relations with your fellow-men, and make you kind
to others. As it awakens the nature of the Infinite Mother-Soul within
you it will teach you what is God’s ideal of humanity—namely, that God’s
true son is not one perfect man, though one perfect Man alone realized
the ideal, but the whole multitudinous race of men, of which race God is
the Father, the Mother, the Soul, the Glory, and the Eternity.
Now, how do I know this? How can I be certain of this? How do I know
that the "Logos Emphutos," the inherited nature from the prolific
Mother-Spirit, is within me and "able to save my soul"? I might have
arrived at the knowledge by induction, as did Charles Kingsley when he
said that logic required him to believe that there must have been, or
will be, an Incarnation. I arrive at it by Revelation; the central
figure of the Christian Revelation proves to me incontestably the fact.
This "Logos Emphutos," this inborn Word, this hereditary witness of the
close and tender relationship between ourselves and Creative
Motherliness, this "urge" of the Creative Mother-Soul, is a universal
principle. It is not easy to define it; but what existence is to being,
what the spoken word is to thought, what the lightning-flash is to
electricity, that the Logos is to the Creative Mother-Soul—its
expression, its activity, its self-utterance. The Logos is the quality
of Originating Mind that forms, upholds, sustains all that is. "Without
the Logos was not anything made that was made"; "in the Logos all things
consist." "By the Logos," says St. Paul, "the heavens were made." The
Logos is the one life in all, the cosmic mind in all—in the mineral, the
crystal, the lower order of animal life, and above all, in its highest
function, it is the dominating power in the soul of man, and in the
angels and archangels of the higher spheres of light and life.