manifested by the response of an organism to its environment, and in the
case of organisms characterised by the possession of brain, more
particularly by the power to register sensation. Human consciousness is
achieved largely by an ability to perceive and register _contrast_ in
the impressions conveyed to the understanding, and it is the exercising
of this faculty which leads to an established recognition of Moral Law.
Appreciation of the existence of shadow and darkness presupposes the
existence of light, and distinction between these contrasts is
summarised by the sense of sight. In like manner, the perception of
truth rests upon the power to recognise falsehood, and an estimation of
what constitutes honesty on a corresponding idea of dishonesty. The
sensation of pleasure is obtained from the possession of a
correspondingly acute capacity to feel pain, discrimination placing
value on either polaric contrary proportionate to the sensory capacity
involved. In short, the register of abstract qualities is more or less
dependent upon an appreciation of their antitheses--the moral worth of
virtue being determinable by the degree of perceptive discrimination
displayed in recognition of its contrast. Just as vision is a result of
light, only known to us as vision and formulated as such by reason of
its contrast or absence, darkness, which spells blindness, so the idea
of good is only known to us by force of its contrast, evil. Registration
of the alternating sides of the swing of this polaric machinery of sense
makes for an advance in moral and spiritual, as well as in physical
consciousness. Evil, on the moral plane of consideration, is as entirely
a result of ignorance and absence of good as blindness on the physical
plane of actuality is the consequence of perpetual darkness, or
insensibility to light. The negative elements of both conditions possess
a potential possibility of transmutation into positive elements--the
operation of psychical and physical alchemism forming the dual
revelation of a God of Love, whereby those who are blind in spirit and
body are made to see, to the end that the whole consciousness of man may
be confirmed by his increasing knowledge of the glory of his Creator.
To be unable to suffer would entail insensibility to pleasure, and no
moral meaning could in this case be evolved from and attached to the
idea of feeling. But it is precisely by reason of his attainment of a
high degree of consciousness, manifested by the ability to register
sensation, that man can claim a comparatively high position in the
evolutionary scale; and if suffering and death be indeed a result of his
prehistoric interference with an originally painless scheme of Creation,
it is difficult to reconcile the benefits he appears to have thereby
gained with the idea of such being a punishment for his wrong-doing
inflicted upon him by God. For since perception of contrast in abstract
quality is absolutely necessary for the obtaining of conscience on the
moral plane of thought--that is, for recognition of good and evil, and
for the ability to transmute evil into good--it follows that where such
perception does not exist there can be no moral responsibility attaching
to individual action, no possibility of attaining a dominant spiritual
consciousness, and no question of sharing the redemptive mission of
Love. In the words of Christ, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin:
but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth" (St John ix. 41).
It is conceivable that just as that which to the eyes of men appears as
darkness is not in the same degree dark to creatures whose habits have
developed visual organs differing from those of man, so on the moral
plane that which appears as evil to one man may to his differently
developed brother seem less evil, and to creatures less highly organised
than man, even good. No quality, physical, moral or spiritual, can be
restricted or finally actualised; and no one man's opinion of what is
estimable can stand as a perfectly true expression of any but his own
ideas.
To sum up. The existence of pain is as necessary to the appreciation of
pleasure as the existence of evil is to the appreciation of good.
Therefore we may regard the sliding scale of consciousness as a register
of sensation, a scale adapted to actual physical life and necessary for
its continuity and development; and a scale which has its exact
psychical counterpart in moral ideals, from which the evolving
aspirations and perceptions of men reach out towards spiritual life. The
degree of all quality, physical and moral, appears to be primarily
dependent upon the capacity to feel--the capacity of consciousness. And
upon the perception of contrast rests the possibility of attaining to a
dominant plane of spiritual consciousness, and the power to become an
active and willing agent in the divinely ordered transmuting,
redemptive, and progressive government of life.
It is especially with regard to the spiritual consciousness of man, and
of man's participation in the divine government of life, that the
doctrine of Christ controverts the idea of suffering as an evil. In His
verbal teaching, and in His rite of communion established as a symbolic
epitome of His spiritual convictions, there is a clear acknowledgment of
the fundamental unity of Nature--a basic point of argument which is also
adopted to-day by every scientist in all departments of research. Christ
laid particular emphasis upon the spiritual unity of man with God, He
Himself speaking as a son of God--a manifestation of the divine Spirit
of Life. He urged the following of His example upon His disciples,
trying to open the blind eyes and deaf ears of men who had as yet so
imperfect an understanding of spiritual things. He tried to teach them
to look at life from His point of view. Did He not regard the son of man
as the expression of God, recognition of which spiritual truth gave
Him, as it can give to all, assurance of eternal life? The Spirit of
Life which is in every man cannot die, for it is part of God, who is
Life without beginning and without end. Only the expression or medium of
spirit, only the finite form, is mortal. Spirit is infinite and
immortal.
Such sayings as the following, attributed to Christ and His disciples,
are expressive of the relation of man to God, and each may be seen to
form a logical corollary of the other:--
"I and my Father are one" (St John x. 30). This is the simple summary of
Christ's conviction of fundamental union between the Spirit of Life,
God, and manifested being.
"My Father is greater than I" (St John xiv. 28) expresses the fact that
the Spirit of Life as a whole is greater than its manifested parts,
although those parts are contained by the whole and are at one with the
whole.
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (St John xiv. 9). Here
Christ speaks of Himself as a manifested part of the Spirit of Life, in
which sense every man can see in his fellow-creatures the same
manifested Spirit, who is God. He who looks at the son of man as the
incarnate Son of God is following the example of Christ, who taught the
brotherhood of man.
"No man hath seen God at any time" (St John i. 18)--shows the futility
of imagining it possible to confine the supreme Spirit of Life in any
one form at any one period of time. All form is manifested Spirit, but
the Spirit of Life is not only in all, but over all.
The following, among very many other sayings, are also susceptible of
the same interpretation:--
"I came from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the
world, and go to the Father" (St John xvi. 28).
"As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have
life in himself" (St John v. 26).
This doctrine of Christ, indicative of His sense of union between God as
the supreme Spirit of Life and of individual being--a union unbroken by
the incidents of birth and death attendant upon the manifestation of the
Spirit--harmonises with the scientific doctrine of the unity of nature,
and if accepted as a fundamental clue to His reported words and deeds,
very many of the difficulties and supposed inconsistencies apparent in a
purely ecclesiastical interpretation of His person and mission melt
away, leaving a beautiful coherency of religious truth in accord with
the revelations of natural science.
When men look at life from Christ's point of view, thereby attaining
recognition of God as their Father, they become spiritual creatures who
hold the moral responsibility of their beings in trust to the Spirit of
Life. Christ lived in advance of the intellectual thought of His day,
having intuitive knowledge of the unity of nature, but no scientific
evidence to offer in its support. But His life and doctrine afford
convincing illustrations of His spiritual convictions, and the key to
the mystery of His miraculous works of love may perhaps be found in our
realisation of His sense of kinship with all living creatures. His
acquiescence with natural laws, known by Him to be the working of the
will of the Spirit of Life, gave Him influence over all persons with
whom He was able to establish a spiritual relation--with all who were
willing to co-operate with Him in the alchemistic law of love. His own
self-command gave Him dominion over those weaker than Himself, who did
not resist His will, who, in the language of Scripture, "had faith in
Him." Without such faith we are told He could do no mighty works. But
given this receptive attitude of mind, He was able to infuse strength
into a sick person and thus to stimulate the Spirit to resume its normal
correspondence with the functions of the flesh.
Realisation of union with God as the supreme Spirit of Life entails an
awakening to the significance of the unity of nature, and calls for an
adjustment of the physical equipment of sense into accord with what is
perceived to be the will of the Spirit of Life. With the desire to be at
one with the Will of God, consciousness of those influences hitherto
dimly apprehended to control existence as though by autocratic law,
widens into perception of a progressive government of the whole of life,
in the ordinance of which men may take an active part. Here, surely, is
that recognition of God possible to all, to which Christ referred in the
words, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth" (St John iv). This is that heaven of light and
truth, to be excluded from which is to dwell in the outer darkness of
spiritual ignorance. And this is the new birth unto righteousness with a
death unto sin which is the epitome of the ethical teaching of Christ.
But, it will be asked, how does this view of life eliminate suffering as
an evil from the world? How can it be shown that disease and death, the
fear and danger of which cast a perpetual shadow over life, are not evil
things, responsible as such for the suffering of all creatures? Granted
that man has attained his present high position in the evolutionary
scale chiefly through his ability to feel, to suffer; granted that the
establishment of morality, brought about largely by registration of
contrast in sensation, leads directly to realisation of spiritual life;
granted that we may be privileged thereby to exercise a transmuting
influence upon evil and its effects, thus making us partakers in the
progressive government of life; if our future evolution, proceeding on
the same lines of development, entails an ever greater capacity to
suffer, is it a desirable thing? Have not less highly organised
creatures, with correspondingly lower degrees of consciousness and with
less knowledge of the governing principle of life and their own
responsibility towards that government, happier lives than men? Whither
are we tending? What is the ultimate goal of the recurring cycle of
birth and death, manifested by the operation of natural laws, in the
general scheme of life in which the evolution of man is but a part?
The welfare of individual man has no meaning apart from its relation to
the benefit of mankind as a progressive whole. If a man participate in
the common habits of his fellows, he must take his share in those
dangers to individual existence which the development of his race
necessitates. The advantages which we to-day derive from our employment
of social and scientific contrivances common to civilised communities
have been wrought from the effort and suffering of men of past times. We
are debtors to our ancestors who, by their own labour and sacrifice,
have given us a better equipment for the battle of life than was their
own inheritance from their forefathers. We are under an obligation to
our race which, whether we discharge it willingly or no, is drawn from
us by the operation of forces beyond our own control, as the just
equivalent of our gain. We cannot separate ourselves, humanly speaking,
from our kind. Inasmuch as the spirit of humanity reaches out towards
immortality from one generation to another, our lives are not our own.
Rather are they hostages to fortune, to that evolutionary principle
which, while allowing us as individuals to participate in the benefits
actualised to-day as the results of the labours of past generations of
men, also exacts from us our own contribution towards the slow
perfecting of our kind.
It is indubitable that suffering is an important factor in the evolution
of the mind as well as of the body of man. Inefficiency and defect in
scientific and social contrivances are made apparent by accident, which,
having entailed human suffering, is therefore productive of effort to
rectify the cause of danger, and thus of reducing the risk of further
punishment.
Could perfect correspondence between an organism and its environment be
perpetually maintained, physical death could only occur as the final
stage in the gradual decline of the medium of the spirit. Such natural
dissolution appears to be part of the order of manifested life,
requisite for its continuity and for the evolution of species, and
necessary for the development of the spiritual desire for immortality.
It is not of necessity a painful process, since the slow decline in
physical vitality implies a corresponding decrease in sensibility, or,
in other words, a decrease of physical consciousness. Premature death,
the result of disease and accident, and accompanied by more or less
suffering, constitutes the wages of ignorance, and only in this sense
can pain and death be said to be a punishment for sin inflicted by God.
If man, individually and socially, does not know how to protect himself
from danger, he must pay the penalty for ignorance. Only a perfected
organism, maintaining a permanent correspondence with its environment,
could be permanently capable of combating physical death. And since the
cycle of the birth and death of all forms of life constitutes the
central principle of natural law, it is difficult to imagine an eventual
eternal preservation of individual physical life to be the ordained end
of the evolution of humanity.
When life is looked at as a whole--a point of view entailing perception
of God as the supreme Spirit of Life informing and governing all
matter--there appears no injustice in the suffering of the human race,or
of other organisms whose evolution requires their conscious
susceptibility to environment. Men must suffer for their ignorance in
order to become wise, and to get wisdom they must eat from the tree of
good and evil. Those who are ignorant of what is necessary for the
preservation of health receive the wages of their imperfection--suffering,
and premature death unto the third and fourth generations--not as the
vindictive vengeance of an offended Deity, but as the remedial
vindication of a persisting will of love, a transmuting process which
must endure until the result of fatal ignorance is expurgated from a
progressive world.
If individual thought, individual free-will and action, were more
generally recognised to be the prime factors by which human evolution is
forwarded or deterred; if concern for the preservation of individual
advantage were dominated by a desire to promote the welfare of the race;
if the willing transmutation by vicarious suffering of the effects of
evil into elements of good were more readily accepted as the privilege
of the members of the communion of love; we are justified in believing
that unnatural suffering and death, with their manifold accompaniment of
sorrow and fear, would be gradually eliminated from the lives of men
according as they grew into a more perfect wisdom and understanding of
the meaning and purpose of life.
Like Christ, we must be perfected through suffering. The whole creation
groaneth and travaileth together, to the end that the incarnate purpose
of life may be fulfilled, and that the increasing sum of the spiritual
consciousness of creation may be brought into co-operation with the
Divine Creator and so actively and willingly share in the divine
government of life.
V
THE VESTURE OF GOD
WHEN Paul of Tarsus reproved the men of Athens for ignorantly
worshipping an unknown God, he was virtually denouncing the tendency
towards idolatry which is inherent in all religious symbolism. Public
worship of an unknown and unseen God must be more or less symbolic in
order to express any particular idea of the nature of the supposed
divinity. But a stranger in a strange land, uninitiated into the
symbolism of the religious faith there practised, is apt to infer
idolatry in the ritual he witnesses simply because he cannot
discriminate between the thing seen and its esoteric significance. The
programme of Christianity delivered by St Paul to the Athenians
practically excluded ceremony as a necessary accompaniment of worship.
He preached a known God, a seen God, revealed in the person of Jesus
Christ, and requiring no likening unto gold, silver, or stone images,
graven by art and men's devices.
It is noteworthy that every religion in its infancy is but sparely
attended by forms and ceremonies, the more or less elaborate ritual that
accompanies its subsequent growth being an almost inevitable result of
its consolidation into a definite creed which shall stand as the
supposed likeness of its original spiritual conception. This rise of
ritual is largely responsible for the need of periodical reform which is
a common occurrence in the development of every religion that has
outlived its infancy. The history of Christianity, with which alone we
have here to deal, affords recurring examples of agitation directed
against a perverted religious symbolism--a dangerous degeneration which,
by crushing the spirit beneath the letter of observance, leads to
hypocritical and idolatrous practices.
It is difficult to think that St Paul, when condemning the symbolic
worship of the Athenians and Ephesians, foresaw the growth of that
elaborate ritual, formulated gradually as symbolic evidence of Christian
doctrine, which has become so inextricably a part of the Catholic faith
as taught in the Church to-day. Christ's remark, "Except ye be
converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven" (Matt. xviii. 3), might with advantage be applied to
religious organisations as well as to individuals. But although as a
reformer of the Jewish faith He denounced symbolism, which had become
corrupt, inasmuch as undue stress was laid upon the letter to the
neglect of the spirit of the law, He yet submitted to the ordinance of
the law in all particulars, perceiving that a proper attention to the
spirit did not necessarily entail neglect of the letter of its
observance. He was a reformer, not an iconoclast. He came not to
destroy, but to fulfil. But His outspoken denunciation of the
hypocritical and idolatrous practices of the Scribes and Pharisees
roused an active hostility to His teaching, since reversion to the
simple ethical principles such as was advocated by the later prophets,
with a proper appreciation of symbolism as symbolism, implied the
downfall of those whose tenure of authority over the masses of the
people depended upon the strict maintenance of a complicated and
mystifying ritual.
Symbolic worship is an attestation to an unseen God, its ostensible
purpose being of course that a gradual revelation of God may be
vouchsafed to the pious devotees of sacraments and ceremonies. The
inaugurator of a rite, desiring to express his ideas of abstract or
absolute truth, contrives a symbol, a work of art that shall stand as
the likeness of his thoughts--a likeness capable of carrying
significance according to the discriminating intelligence of all who may
behold it. He cannot be held responsible for any subsequent confounding
of his artistic symbol with its esoteric meaning; but to those who
cannot distinguish between an image and its significance--who interpret
the letter as synonymous with the spirit of a rite--the observance of
symbolic worship becomes perforce an introductory step towards idolatry,
the practice of which is fatal to intellectual and spiritual progress.
Not only with regard to religion, but in every branch of art, in the
common habits of daily life, in the very language that clothes thought,
this dangerous tendency of the human mind towards idolatry may be
observed. Thus, worship of beauty for beauty's sake is idolatrous. But
its recognition as the outward sign of inner grace is one of the lay
sacraments of life which link the real to the ideal realm of thought and
give an added glory to human existence. Is not man a dual creature? Is
not his body an artistic expression of the divine Spirit of Life, in
whose likeness he is made? And are not his works representations of his
creative and executive powers, even as the works of nature are
representations of the supreme Spirit of Life?
The minds of individuals, as of races, find expression in their works,
the worth of all artistic symbols of endeavour (whether of so-called
secular or sacred significance) being determined by the evidential
testimony they convey of abstract and absolute truth. Now, illumination
of unproven supposition being prefatory to its establishment as fact,
the evidence of things unseen and unknown is resolved into the
foundation of comprehension. The execution of a work of art is only
truly estimable when its realism affords an adequate expression of its
maker's mind--when, in short, it forms the outward sign of inward
meaning, and is recognisable as such.
Thus considered, words stand as symbols, language being evidence of
thought. The extent of a man's vocabulary may be taken as a fair
criterion of his ideas about the things of which his words are the
expression, always supposing he does not fall into idolatrous worship of
words as words, to the neglect of their proper significance and value.
Again, figures as symbols of calculative thought, while valueless in
themselves, are of inestimable importance when rightly utilised as an
effective means to an end. Through the science of mathematics, the
relation between magnitudes only conceivable to the mathematician by his
employment of calculative symbols, can be correctly ascertained, and a
working hypothesis for practical purposes thereby obtained. Mathematical
formulæ thus regarded appear as the outer signs of a reasoning process
that resolves the unseen and unknown into proven facts.
The rituals of religious creeds, regarded as combinations of symbols as
infinite in variety and arrangement as the needs of men, may surely be
designated as works of art if it be remembered that admiration and
imitation of natural objects is mainly responsible for the conception of
those several deities whose supposed supernatural authority forms the
summit of each particular creed, and whose character stands not only as
a summary of a people's appreciation of what is admirable in human
conduct, but also as an expression of artistic feeling.