say, expression follows conception--a precept evidenced by the
progressive works of men, which bear witness to their makers' increasing
power to give utterance to what has hitherto been unutterable because
incomprehensible. Thus considered, symbolism appears as the _alphabet of
truth_, whereby men may read the history of past days, and write the
record of their own achievements in the Book of Time. It is the link
between seen and unseen, real and ideal, knowledge and mystery, finite
and infinite. It is the seal of divinity set upon man who, made in the
image of God--an artistic expression of the supreme Spirit of Life--is
endowed with the attributes of his Creator, thereby enabled to manifest
his creative energy in his own works of art and so to offer continual
testimony to the indwelling and divine Spirit of his life. Thus the
glory of the Creator is made visible to His creatures not only in the
wonders of the natural world scientifically revealed in the course of
intellectual development, but also in a correspondingly progressive
spiritual revelation of essential truth behind the vesture of symbolic
being.
Contemplative life is to men the reflection of their minds, Nature
acting as the mirror of those mental visions which connect thought with
spiritual perception. And since psychical ideals are regulated by
intellectual limitations, _understanding_ of spiritual truths must be
proportionate to intellectual insight.
Jesus Christ offered no evidence of the essential truth of His spiritual
convictions save by symbolism. Like all idealists, He sought by means of
art to convey His ideas to the understanding of His disciples. This was
done in three ways. He spoke in parables; His actions were dramatically
contrived to illustrate His verbal teaching; and He ordained a
ceremony, the performance of which should perpetuate the epitome of His
doctrine. His view of life being the reflection of His spiritual ideals,
and more or less dependent upon His intellectual perceptions, it was
necessary, in order to make others see as He saw, to teach them to look
at life from His point of view.
He saw the earth and the fulness thereof as the outer sign of the
supreme Spirit of Life--Nature being the vesture of God, the cloak of
spirit, making all creatures likenesses of God and manifestations of the
divine will. God's works of art--natural phenomena--are variously
interpreted, because men's spiritual perception is regulated by their
intellectual capacity to understand what they perceive. In the same way
the symbolic works of art employed by Christ to illustrate His teaching
are variously interpreted according to men's ability to grasp the true
inner meaning behind the vesture of parable and ritual. His symbolic
teaching was interpreted literally by the materialists among His
audiences. Only a few understood that He spoke in parables, and that His
actions were intended to illustrate spiritual truths. Even His chosen
disciples failed sometimes to distinguish between the outer signs of His
doctrine and their inner significance. But Christ looked to the future
for a wider acceptance of His gospel of love and its application to the
whole scheme of life. He foresaw that by the spirit of truth inherent in
all knowledge and emanating from the supreme Spirit of Life, His
teaching would be tested and purged of whatever false interpretations
idolatrous generations of men might place upon it. "Heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matt. xxi. 35).
Truth is not bounded by the duration of men's finite term of earthly
life.
For the sake, therefore, of unborn generations of men He desired to
safeguard the perpetuation of His ideas of truth, so that they might
carry their message to a future and more spiritually minded age. Would
not a comprehensive symbol, a rite, carrying significance proportionate
to the discriminating intelligence of those who should witness it,
combat the danger of His doctrine becoming irretrievably corrupted? The
foundation of His gospel of love lay in His sense of union between God
as the supreme Spirit of Life and individual being--every form of life
appearing to Him as a manifestation of God and a part of the Divine
essence. The symbol He contrived must be closely associated with Himself
and with this doctrine. It must be the likeness of His idea, and as a
true work of art it must be capable of conveying its meaning to all able
to recognise a spiritual truth beneath its outward form. It must be the
epitome of all that was of vital importance in His teaching. It must be
suited to all countries, and to all manner of men at all times. And in
order to ensure its faithful perpetuation, it must be inaugurated as a
personal memorial of Himself, to be celebrated through all ages as a
symbol of the spiritual unity of life. What more fitting material for
His purpose than the common daily food and drink of people of all
classes? What could better illustrate the bond of union existing
throughout Nature than a ceremony which should show how living creatures
are sustained by the fruits of the earth, and which should emphasise the
fact that animate and inanimate Nature is pervaded by the same Spirit of
Life which works through a recurring cycle of birth and death for a
perpetual manifestation of God, _who is Life_, the vital principle of
being? What could better illustrate this Spirit of Life dwelling in
men's bodies and making them temples of God than a rite which drew
attention to the fact that nourishment of the body is necessary for the
continuance of the manifestation of the Spirit? Bread, the staff of
life, is in some form or other the daily food of all peoples. The
tilling of the fields, the garnering of the grain, the grinding of the
corn, bring men into intimate relation with Nature, and fittingly
demonstrate that connection between natural laws and the lives of men
fundamental to their existence and necessary for the maintenance of
life. The vine served as the subject of some of Christ's most beautiful
parables; it was an object of familiar interest to the people of Judæa;
its cultivation was associated with the habits of their daily lives. Its
fruit was thus another suitable symbol of intercommunion between the
products of the earth and the bodies of men.
The accounts of the inauguration of the rite of communion given by St
Matthew, St Mark, and St Luke agree in the statement that it occurred
when Christ and His disciples met together to celebrate the Feast of the
Passover, immediately before the betrayal by Judas. The occasion was
clearly chosen by Christ as suitable in all respects for the institution
of the ceremony He had conceived as adequately embodying a symbolic
epitome of His doctrine. Throughout His mission He had rigorously
observed the letter of the Jewish law, it being in accord with His
office as a reformer of a distorted religious symbolism to utilise
existing ritual in order to expatiate on its neglected spiritual
significance. The keeping of the Passover with His twelve disciples
could be made to signify very much. It would be the last Passover He
would keep with them. Nay, more, it would be the last meal. When the
Feast next occurred this present celebration would be remembered as the
last occasion when He had broken bread with them. All that He had then
said and done would be graven on their memories as the last words and
deeds of their beloved Master before He was taken from them to undergo
His trial and death. He would appeal, therefore, to their affectionate
memory of Him in order to induce a faithful performance of the rite He
was inaugurating. Though they might fail to grasp its full spiritual
significance, their attachment to Him would ensure the carrying out of
His command to fulfil it in memory of Him. If the faithful celebration
of the rite were secured, there was made possible a fuller understanding
of its meaning by future and more enlightened generations, who would
subject His doctrine to the test of the Spirit of Truth, proceeding from
the supreme Spirit of Life, and inherent in all knowledge.
St John gives no account of the institution of the rite at the time of
the Passover, although he alone of the four Evangelists reports Christ's
verbal teaching of the doctrine thus embodied on occasions other than
its inauguration as a symbol of communion. In the sixth chapter of his
gospel we find Christ reported as using the same symbolic phraseology
with regard to His flesh and blood that He employed in His speech
introducing the rite at the Last Supper. We read of the disciples and
the Jews disputing Christ's words, interpreting them literally, and
calling forth His explanation that "It is the Spirit that quickeneth;
the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."
Notwithstanding the implied injunction that His doctrine of the unity of
life was to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, we find that "from that
time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him."
Since then, how many literal interpreters of Christ's symbolic
utterances have turned aside from following after Him, and have been led
away into idolatrous worship of the letter of His teaching to the
neglect of its spiritual significance!
It would appear that the symbolic epitome of the doctrine of communion
had been conceived by Christ some time before He introduced it as a rite
on the occasion of the Last Supper; that the idea had already been
verbally expounded by Him; and that its consolidation into the form
eventually chosen was achieved as a dramatic finale to the whole of His
previous teaching. If the fourth gospel be the work of John, the
disciple whom Christ loved, it is significant that he alone reported
the injunction that Christ's words were to be interpreted in a spiritual
sense. The doctrine of the unity of life, incorporated in the rite of
communion, permeates the whole of the gospel, and lends strength to the
supposition that its writer had in some special way known personal
intimacy with Christ. Union between God as the supreme Spirit of Life,
and the Word as the expression of God, is the basis of its doctrinal
construction; and the institution of the rite of communion, duly
reported in the other gospels, is here shown to be the logical
conclusion, in the form of a symbolic epitome, of the premisses adopted
by the writer.
Supposition, however, is not evidence. In order to determine the
significance of the rite of communion, and thus to arrive at some idea
of its importance in Christian doctrine, it is necessary to subject it
to that test which Christ Himself declared to be the proper criterion of
merit--the Spirit of Truth. In these later days, nearly two thousand
years since He utilised the loving obedience of His disciples to
institute symbolic evidence of the spiritual unity of life--a rite
designed to give light to untold generations to come--how have men
obeyed His injunction to test His words and deeds by the Spirit of
Truth?
"The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my
name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (St John xiv. 26).
"When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father,
even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall
testify of me" (St John xv. 26).
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into
all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall
hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. He shall
glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you"
(St John xvi. 12).
In these sayings, among very many others, we have a declaration that the
Spirit of Truth, inherent in knowledge and proceeding from God, the
supreme Spirit of Life, accompanies intellectual and spiritual
evolution. Christ's doctrine was not intended only for His immediate
followers and men of His own race and time. Much that was to them
incomprehensible, much that by reason of their intellectual limitations
He could only teach by implication, He referred to future generations of
men who might discover and appreciate by the clearer light of after-days
the intrinsic truth of His doctrine of spiritual unity. How has His
appeal to posterity been answered? How has His recommendation to test
His words by the Spirit of Truth been obeyed?
It is part of the function of scientific criticism to examine emotional
apprehension, and to corroborate or disprove by means of evidential
testimony the truth in spiritual suppositions. The modern view of the
universe, which recognises for the elements of matter an essential
correlation of principle, may thus be regarded as the rational
endorsement of Christ's spiritual apprehension of the intercommunion and
oneness of all forms of life. That the bodies of men are reared upon and
sustained by innumerable other forms of life; that every individual is
in reality an aggregate of others; that Nature rests upon the continued
intercommunion of all its parts; that no one part has power and meaning
save in conjunction with others; that correlation is the perpetuating
principle of life; that the very universe depends upon the mutual
support of its component parts--are scientific facts that have their
psychical counterparts in the spiritual ideals contained in Christ's
gospel of love, and are emphasised in the symbolic summary of His
teaching--the rite of communion.
Let us now take the actual words supposed to have been used on the
occasion of the inauguration of this rite, and examine them by the
light of attested scientific facts:--
"Take eat, this is my body which is given for you."
"This cup is the New Testament of my blood which is shed for you."
Christ spoke as an incarnate son of God, as a human manifestation of the
Spirit of Life. His form, derived from and nourished by the fruits of
the earth, was in its elemental essence one with the vital principle of
all forms of life. The bread was His body. His physical life was
sustained by His participation in the sacrificial intercommunion of
Nature. But the time was come when His body was to suffer death. He had
risked His life by preaching reformatory doctrine. Now this work was
done. He was aware of His impending death, therefore He would not eat
again. But His disciples were not yet to die, for their work was not yet
done. Therefore He bid them eat and drink, and thus continue to benefit
from the intercommunion of Nature, in which all forms of life obtain
mutual sustenance by mutual sacrifice.
The wine was His blood. In an agricultural and vine-growing country such
as Judæa, bread and wine were suitable examples of nutriment necessary
for the maintenance of physical life. The flesh and blood of men are
drawn from the products of the earth, and are resolved into their
elemental parts when the spirit is separated by death from the body.
Starvation weakens and finally destroys the body, but nourishment
restores waste and makes continued manifestation of the spirit possible.
Christ's blood had been formed from the fruits of the earth. Now it was
to be shed. Sacrifice according to the Jewish law necessitated the
shedding of blood. Was not the Feast of the Passover, which He was then
keeping with His apostles, a sacrifice of blood? But He announced the
institution of a new testimony of His blood which should not only
witness to His death, but should show forth the victory of the Spirit
over physical dissolution. The symbol of sacrifice was to be
spiritualised. Whereas the old Jewish idea of worship necessitated the
taking of life and emphasised the shedding of blood as pleasing to God,
the spiritual significance of sacrifice was now re-illustrated by
Christ's new interpretation of the sacrament of life. The kindly fruits
of the earth; the increase of the earth; the bursting forth of vital
energy from the earth--was now to yield the symbolism of the communion
of life. Not death, but life was to be emphasised as the will of God.
The veil of the Spirit was to be lifted, showing Nature as the outer
sign of life, as the veritable vesture of God.
It is noteworthy that this interpretation of the rite of communion in no
way contradicts the constructions placed upon it by the Catholic Church.
Instead, it reconciles certain differences of opinion, and may be seen
to offer a point where religion and science may meet in a special
endorsement of the unity of Nature.
The doctrine of transubstantiation is coherent and reasonable if
prefaced by recognition of God as the supreme Spirit of Life present in
all form. It is absence of this spiritual acknowledgment that has laid
the teaching of the Church of Rome open to the charge of idolatry. Both
before and after the "consecration," the bread and wine are most truly
the body and blood of God if Nature be recognised as the vesture of the
Divine Spirit. The repetition of the words spoken by Christ at His
institution of the rite serve to emphasise this spiritual truth. The
idea of _corporal_ union with Christ, obtained by partaking of the
consecrated elements, does not adequately illustrate the fact that all
life is one, and that all form is pervaded by the same one Spirit of
Life. His body and blood is not the only touch-stone of union among men,
since the whole of Nature is one communion of life, wherein all
creatures are one by reason of their common spiritual source of life.
The same principle by which the fruits of the earth built up and
sustained the human body of Christ works to-day throughout Nature. Here,
indeed, is the outer sign of the sacrament of union, as illustrated in
His rite of communion. But the spiritual significance of this kinship of
Nature there made evident, although latent in the Roman interpretation
of the rite, suffers neglect in practice, and its symbolism is thus in
danger of degeneration towards idolatry.
The English version inclines towards the other extreme by unduly
neglecting the outer sign of union, thus detracting from the full
significance of the rite. It does not emphasise the corporate
brotherhood of man, and it does not therefore appear fully in accord
with the scientific doctrine of the unity of Nature. In striving to
avoid the supposed idolatrous errors of Rome, the rite has been deprived
of half its meaning. The Church of England strains towards a spiritual
interpretation at the expense of the actual; whereas the Church of Rome
accentuates the actual to the neglect of the spiritual. Neither version
attains an adequate appreciation of the fact that the rite of communion
is primarily a symbol, whose meaning can only be properly gauged by due
attention to both its outward sign and its inner meaning. The spiritual
is manifested through the actual, as the infinite through the finite.
Understanding of essential truth is gained through the senses, not in
spite of them. But the word is neither of greater or lesser importance
than the thought. Is not the one an expression of the other, as
Nature--the vesture of God--is the expression of the Spirit of Life?
Thus, in the words of Christ: "I have manifested thy name unto the men
which thou gavest me out of the world: I have given them thy word. Thy
word is truth" (St John xvii.).
If God be recognised as the supreme Spirit of Life, love must be seen to
be the expression of life, and the perpetuating principle of life. Life
is a whole, and the Spirit of Life pervading all form is manifested by
the intercommunion of all its parts. Thus, the formation of flower and
fruit secure the perpetuation of plant life, with whose existence is
entwined the preservation of other forms of life. With higher organisms
propagation is achieved by the same principle of sacrificial love, the
intercommunion of all forms of life being necessary for the continuity
of life as a whole.
Thus considered, love appears as a symbol, the outer sign of the
sacrament of life, wherein individuals are united in spirit, and as a
consequence of this union obtain increasing consciousness of their
immortality. The attainment of such spiritual consciousness entails the
subservience of personal identity to the consciousness of kinship with
the Whole of Life. Christ's gospel of love, with its repeated assertions
of the necessity for self-surrender as prefatory to the acquirement of
spiritual joy, finds a parallel in the pursuit of happiness undertaken
by men and women in the occurrences of everyday life. Do not the joys of
love in its human relations between friends, husband and wife, parents
and children, rest on a mutual surrender of self-interest?
The rite of communion can thus be resolved into a sacramental work of
art, whose outer sign is love, and whose inner meaning is life. Through
Christ's symbolic work of art, the vesture of God which manifests the
Spirit of Life is seen to rest upon all form. The symbols chosen by Him
to summarise His teaching are of an exact appropriateness. By His
illustrations of bread and wine, designated by Him as His flesh and
blood, the gospel of love and the scientific doctrine of the common
derivative union of all forms of life are brought together and shown to
be the inseparable accompaniment of the whole of manifested life.
Therefore the declaration, "This is my body.... This is my blood ..." is
not only true of the physical relationship which He Himself bore to
Nature as the vesture of the Spirit of Life, but is applicable in its
verity to every man who, in obedience to Christ's command to "Do this
in remembrance of me," comes to recognise in his employment of the
prescribed formula the true expression of his own union with the
elements of Nature, and his own relation to the supreme Spirit of Life
as a child of God, made manifest through love.
Christ's words are not therefore to be repeated only as a quotation of a
formula applicable solely to Himself as a being differing from all other
men, by reason of a divine origin possessed by Him alone; but as living
truth, capable of realisation by every thinking man and woman as an
epitomised testimony to the essential unity of all forms of life, a
unity manifested in form by the perpetuating principle of love.
This unity of Nature is attested by the intercommunion maintained
between its parts through the mutual surrender of individual advantage
and personal identity, which sacrifice enables the perpetuation of the
whole of manifested life to be carried on.
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose
his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (St Luke ix. 24).
In these words Christ, conscious of Himself as a manifestation of the
supreme Spirit of Life, and speaking as Incarnate Love, urges a similar
spiritual realisation on His fellow-men; so that they also, through
voluntary self-surrender in the communion of love, may obtain spiritual
union with the Source of Life, and become consciously clothed with the
vesture of God.
VI
SPIRITUAL CORRESPONDENCE
CAREFUL examination of the articles of most religious creeds reveals so
remarkable a connection between the ideas of prayer and immortality
inculcated therein, that in an attempt to trace and summarise the effect
of either of these devotional outcomes of the religious sense over the
spiritual evolution of mankind, it is expedient to subject them to a
dual consideration.
The infinite diversity of the human mind is made strikingly apparent by
the different ideas of the significance and utility of prayer existing
at various periods in the history of religion; and if this exercise of
the evolving soul of man be recognised as yielding the basis of those
conceptions of human immortality which, when defined as the goal of
established creeds, distinguish such from all purely philosophical
systems of thought, the difficulty of dissociating these two devotional
factors in the development of spiritual correspondence becomes even more
clearly apparent.