blame you for thinking all was over with the sparrow; but to believe in
immortality for yourself, and not care to believe in it for the sparrow,
would be simply hard-hearted and selfish. If it would make you happy to
think there was life beyond death for the sparrow as well as for
yourself, I would gladly help you at least to hope that there may be.
I know of no reason why I should not look for the animals to rise again,
in the same sense in which I hope myself to rise again--which is, to
reappear, clothed with another and better form of life than before. If
the Father will raise his children, why should he not also raise those
whom he has taught his little ones to love? Love is the one bond of the
universe, the heart of God, the life of his children: if animals can be
loved, they are loveable; if they can love, they are yet more plainly
loveable: love is eternal; how then should its object perish? Must the
very immortality of love divide the bond of love? Must the love live on
for ever without its object? or worse still, must the love die with its
object, and be eternal no more than it? What a mis-invented correlation
in which the one side was eternal, the other, where not yet annihilated,
constantly perishing! Is not our love to the animals a precious variety
of love? And if God gave the creatures to us, that a new phase of love
might be born in us toward another kind of life from the same fountain,
why should the new life be more perishing than the new love? Can you
imagine that, if, here-after, one of God's little ones were to ask him
to give again one of the earth's old loves--kitten, or pony, or
squirrel, or dog, which he had taken from him, the Father would say no?
If the thing was so good that God made it for and gave it to the child
at first who never asked for it, why should he not give it again to the
child who prays for it because the Father had made him love it? What a
child may ask for, the Father will keep ready.
That there are difficulties in the way of believing thus, I grant; that
there are impossibilities, I deny. Perhaps the first difficulty that
occurs is, the many forms of life which we cannot desire again to see.
But while we would gladly keep the perfected forms of the higher
animals, we may hope that those of many other kinds are as transitory as
their bodies, belonging but to a stage of development. All animal forms
tend to higher: why should not the individual, as well as the race, pass
through stages of ascent. If I have myself gone through each of the
typical forms of lower life on my way to the human--a supposition by
antenatal history rendered probable--and therefore may have passed
through any number of individual forms of life, I do not see why each of
the lower animals should not as well pass upward through a succession of
bettering embodiments. I grant that the theory requires another to
complement it; namely, that those men and women, who do not even
approximately fulfil the conditions of their elevated rank, who will not
endeavour after the great human-divine idea, striving to ascend, are
sent away back down to that stage of development, say of fish or insect
or reptile, beyond which their moral nature has refused to advance. Who
has not seen or known men who _appeared_ not to have passed, or indeed
in some things to have approached the development of the more human of
the lower animals! Let those take care who look contemptuously upon the
animals, lest, in misusing one of them, they misuse some ancestor of
their own, sent back, as the one mercy for him, to reassume far past
forms and conditions--far past in physical, that is, but not in moral
development--and so have another opportunity of passing the
self-constituted barrier. The suggestion may appear very ridiculous, and
no doubt lends itself to humorous comment; but what if it should be
true! what if the amused reader should himself be getting ready to
follow the remanded ancestor! Upon it, however, I do not care to spend
thought or time, least of all argument; what I care to press is the
question--If we believe in the progress of creation as hitherto
manifested, also in the marvellous changes of form that take place in
every individual of certain classes, why should there be any difficulty
in hoping that old lives may reappear in new forms? The typical soul
reappears in higher formal type; why may not also the individual soul
reappear in higher form?
Multitudes evidently count it safest to hold by a dull scheme of things:
can it be because, like David in Browning's poem _Saul_, they dread lest
they should worst the Giver by inventing better gifts than his? That we
do not know, is the best reason for hoping to the full extent God has
made possible to us. If then we go wrong, it will be in the direction of
the right, and with such aberration as will be easier to correct than
what must come of refusing to imagine, and leaving the dullest
traditional prepossessions to rule our hearts and minds, with no claim
but the poverty of their expectation from the paternal riches. Those
that hope little cannot grow much. To them the very glory of God must be
a small thing, for their hope of it is so small as not to be worth
rejoicing in. That he is a faithful creator means nothing to them for
far the larger portion of the creatures he has made! Truly their notion
of faithfulness is poor enough; how then can their faith be strong! In
the very nature of divine things, the common-place must be false. The
stupid, self-satisfied soul, which cannot know its own stupidity, and
will not trouble itself either to understand or to imagine, is the
farthest behind of all the backward children in God's nursery.
As I say, then, I know no cause of reasonable difficulty in regard to
the continued existence of the lower animals, except the present nature
of some of them. But what Christian will dare to say that God does not
care about them?--and he knows them as we cannot know them. Great or
small, they are his. Great are all his results; small are all his
beginnings. That we have to send many of his creatures out of this phase
of their life because of their hurtfulness in this phase of ours, is to
me no stumbling-block. The very fact that this has always had to be
done, the long protracted combat of the race with such, and the
constantly repeated though not invariable victory of the man, has had an
essential and incalculable share in the development of humanity, which
is the rendering of man capable of knowing God; and when their part to
that end is no longer necessary, changed conditions may speedily so
operate that the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie
down with the kid. The difficulty may go for nothing in view of the
forces of that future with which this loving speculation concerns
itself.
I would now lead my companion a little closer to what the apostle says
in the nineteenth verse; to come closer, if we may, to the idea that
burned in his heart when he wrote what we call the eighth chapter of his
epistle to the Romans. Oh, how far ahead he seems, in his hope for the
creation, of the footsore and halting brigade of Christians at present
crossing the world! He knew Christ, and could therefore look into the
will of the Father.
_For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God_!
At the head of one of his poems, Henry Vaughan has this Latin
translation of the verse: I do not know whether he found or made it, but
it is closer to its sense than ours:--
'Etenim res creatae exerto capite observantes expectant revelationem
filiorum Dei.'--'For the things created, watching with head thrust out,
await the revelation of the sons of God.'
Why?
Because God has subjected the creation to vanity, in the hope that the
creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God. For this double
deliverance--from corruption and the consequent subjection to vanity,
the creation is eagerly watching.
The bondage of corruption God encounters and counteracts by subjection
to vanity. Corruption is the breaking up of the essential idea; the
falling away from the original indwelling and life-causing thought. It
is met by the suffering which itself causes. That suffering is for
redemption, for deliverance. It is the life in the corrupting thing that
makes the suffering possible; it is the live part, not the corrupted
part that suffers; it is the redeemable, not the doomed thing, that is
subjected to vanity. The race in which evil--that is, corruption, is at
work, needs, as the one means for its rescue, subjection to vanity; it
is the one hope against the supremacy of corruption; and the whole
encircling, harboring, and helping creation must, for the sake of man,
its head, and for its own further sake too, share in this subjection to
vanity with its hope of deliverance.
Corruption brings in vanity, causes empty aching gaps in vitality. This
aching is what most people regard as evil: it is the unpleasant cure of
evil. It takes all shapes of suffering--of the body, of the mind, of the
heart, of the spirit. It is altogether beneficent: without this ever
invading vanity, what hope would there be for the rich and powerful,
accustomed to, and set upon their own way? what hope for the
self-indulgent, the conceited, the greedy, the miserly? The more things
men seek, the more varied the things they imagine they need, the more
are they subject to vanity--all the forms of which may be summed in the
word disappointment. He who would not house with disappointment, must
seek the incorruptible, the true. He must break the bondage of havings
and shows; of rumours, and praises, and pretences, and selfish
pleasures. He must come out of the false into the real; out of the
darkness into the light; out of the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God. To bring men to break with
corruption, the gulf of the inane yawns before them. Aghast in soul,
they cry, 'Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!' and beyond the abyss
begin to espy the eternal world of truth.
Note now 'the hope that the creation itself also,' as something besides
and other than God's men and women, 'shall be delivered from the bondage
of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.'
The creation then is to share in the deliverance and liberty and glory
of the children of God. Deliverance from corruption, liberty from
bondage, must include escape from the very home and goal of corruption,
namely death,--and that in all its kinds and degrees. When you say then
that for the children of God there is no more death, remember that the
deliverance of the creature is from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God. Dead, in bondage to
corruption, how can they share in the liberty of the children of Life?
Where is their deliverance?
If such then be the words of the apostle, does he, or does he not, I
ask, hold the idea of the immortality of the animals? If you say all he
means is, that the creatures alive at the coming of the Lord will be set
free from the tyranny of corrupt man, I refer you to what I have already
said of the poverty of such an interpretation, accepting the failure of
justice and love toward those that have passed away, are passing, and
must yet, ere that coming, be born to pass away for ever. For the man
whose heart aches to adore a faithful creator, what comfort lies in such
good news! He must perish for lack of a true God! Oh lame conclusion to
the grand prophecy! Is God a mocker, who will not be mocked? Is there a
past to God with which he has done? Is Time too much for him? Is he God
enough to care for those that happen to live at one present time, but
not God enough to care for those that happened to live at another
present time? Or did he care for them, but could not help them? Shall we
not rather believe that the vessels of less honour, the misused, the
maltreated, shall be filled full with creative wine at last? Shall not
the children have little dogs under the Father's table, to which to let
fall plenty of crumbs? If there was such provision for the sparrows of
our Lord's time of sojourn, and he will bring yet better with him when
he comes again, how should the dead sparrows and their sorrows be passed
over of him with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning? Or
would the deliverance of the creatures into the groaned-for liberty have
been much worth mentioning, if within a few years their share in the
glory of the sons of God was to die away in death? But the gifts of God
are without repentance.
How St Paul longs for and loves liberty! Only true lover of liberty is
he, who will die to give it to his neighbour! St Paul loved liberty more
than his own liberty. But then see how different his notion of the
liberty on its way to the children of God, from the dull modern fancies
of heaven still set forth in the popular hymn-books! The new heaven and
the new earth will at least be a heaven and an earth! What would the
newest earth be to the old children without its animals? Barer than the
heavens emptied of the constellations that are called by their names.
Then, if the earth must have its animals, why not the old ones, already
dear? The sons of God are not a new race of sons of God, but the old
race glorified:--why a new race of animals, and not the old ones
glorified?
The apostle says they are to share in the liberty of the sons of God:
will it not then be a liberty like ours, a liberty always ready to be
offered on the altar of love? What sweet service will not that of the
animals be, thus offered! How sweet also to minister to them in their
turns of need! For to us doubtless will they then flee for help in any
difficulty, as now they flee from us in dread of our tyranny. What
lovelier feature in the newness of the new earth, than the old animals
glorified with us, in their home with us--our common home, the house of
our father--each kind an unfailing pleasure to the other! Ah, what
horses! Ah, what dogs! Ah, what wild beasts, and what birds in the air!
The whole redeemed creation goes to make up St Paul's heaven. He had
learned of him who would leave no one out; who made the excuse for his
murderers that they did not know what they were doing.
Is not the prophecy on the groaning creation to have its fulfilment in
the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness? Does
not this involve its existence beyond what we call this world? Why
should it not then involve immortality? Would it not be more like the
king eternal, immortal, invisible, to know no life but the immortal? to
create nothing that could die; to slay nothing but evil? 'For he is not
a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him.'
But what is this liberty of the children of God, for which the whole
creation is waiting? The children themselves are waiting for it: when
they have it, then will their house and retinue, the creation, whose
fate hangs on that of the children, share it with them: what is this
liberty?
All liberty must of course consist in the realization of the ideal
harmony between the creative will and the created life; in the
correspondence of the creature's active being to the creator's idea,
which is his substantial soul. In other words the creature's liberty is
what his obedience to the law of his existence, the will of his maker,
effects for him. The instant a soul moves counter to the will of its
prime cause, the universe is its prison; it dashes against the walls of
it, and the sweetest of its uplifting and sustaining forces at once
become its manacles and fetters. But St Paul is not at the moment
thinking either of the metaphysical notion of liberty, or of its
religious realization; he has in his thought the birth of the soul's
consciousness of freedom.
'And not only so'--that the creation groaneth and travaileth--'but
ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even we
ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for.... the redemption of our
body.'--We are not free, he implies, until our body is redeemed; then
all the creation will be free with us. He regards the creation as part
of our embodiment. The whole creation is waiting for the manifestation
of the sons of God--that is, the redemption of their body, the idea of
which extends to their whole material envelopment, with all the life
that belongs to it. For this as for them, the bonds of corruption must
fall away; it must enter into the same liberty with them, and be that
for which it was created--a vital temple, perfected by the unbroken
indwelling of its divinity.
The liberty here intended, it may be unnecessary to say, is not that
essential liberty--freedom from sin, but the completing of the
redemption of the spirit by the redemption of the body, the perfecting
of the greater by its necessary complement of the less. Evil has been
constantly at work, turning our house of the body into a prison;
rendering it more opaque and heavy and insensible; casting about it
bands and cerements, and filling it with aches and pains. The freest
soul, the purest of lovers, the man most incapable of anything mean,
would not, for all his mighty liberty, yet feel absolutely at large
while chained to a dying body--nor the less hampered, but the more, that
that dying body was his own. The redemption of the body, therefore, the
making of it for the man a genuine, perfected, responsive house-alive,
is essential to the apostle's notion of a man's deliverance. The new man
must have a new body with a new heaven and earth. St Paul never thinks
of himself as released from body; he desires a perfect one, and of a
nobler sort; he would inhabit a heaven-made house, and give up the
earth-made one, suitable only to this lower stage of life, infected and
unsafe from the first, and now much dilapidated in the service of the
Master who could so easily give him a better. He wants a spiritual
body--a body that will not thwart but second the needs and aspirations
of the spirit. He had in his mind, I presume, such a body as the Lord
died with, changed by the interpenetrating of the creative indwelling
will, to a heavenly body, the body with which he rose. A body like the
Lord's is, I imagine, necessary to bring us into true and perfect
contact with the creation, of which there must be multitudinous phases
whereof we cannot now be even aware.
The way in which both good and indifferent people alike lay the blame on
their bodies, and look to death rather than God-aided struggle to set
them at liberty, appears to me low and cowardly: it is the master
fleeing from the slave, despising at once and fearing him. We must hold
the supremacy over our bodies, but we must not despise body; it is a
divine thing. Body and soul are in the image of God; and the lord of
life was last seen in the glorified body of his death. I believe that he
still wears that body. But we shall do better without these bodies that
suffer and grow old--which may indeed, as some think, be but the outer
cases, the husks of our real bodies. Endlessly helpful as they have been
to us, and that, in a measure incalculable, through their very
subjection to vanity, we are yet surely not in altogether and only
helpful company, so long as the houses wherein we live have so many
spots and stains in them which friendly death, it may be, can alone wash
out--so many weather-eaten and self-engendered sores which the builder's
hand, pulling down and rebuilding of fresh and nobler material, alone
can banish.
When the sons, then, are free, when their bodies are redeemed, they will
lift up with them the lower creation into their liberty. St Paul seems
to believe that perfection in their kind awaits also the humbler
inhabitants of our world, its advent to follow immediately on the
manifestation of the sons of God: for our sakes and their own they have
been made subject to vanity; for our sakes and their own they shall be
restored and glorified, that is, raised higher with us.
Has the question no interest for you? It would have much, had you now
what you must one day have--a heart big enough to love any life God has
thought fit to create. Had the Lord cared no more for what of his
father's was lower than himself, than you do for what of your father's
is lower than you, you would not now be looking for any sort of
redemption.
I have omitted in my quotations the word _adoption_ used in both English
versions: it is no translation of the Greek word for which it stands. It
is used by St Paul as meaning the same thing with the phrase, 'the
redemption of the body'--a fact to bring the interpretation given it at
once into question. Falser translation, if we look at the importance of
the thing signified, and its utter loss in the word used to represent
it, not to mention the substitution for that of the apostle, of an idea
not only untrue but actively mischievous, was never made. The thing St
Paul means in the word he uses, has simply nothing to do with
adoption--nothing whatever. In the beginning of the fourth chapter of
his epistle to the Galatians, he makes perfectly clear what he intends
by it. His unusual word means the father's recognition, when he comes of
age, of the child's relation to him, by giving him his fitting place of
dignity in the house; and here the deliverance of the body is the act of
this recognition by the great Father, completing and crowning and
declaring the freedom of the man, the perfecting of the last lingering
remnant of his deliverance. St Paul's word, I repeat, has nothing to do
with _adoption_; it means the manifestation of the grown-up sons of God;
the showing of those as sons, who have always been his children; the
bringing of them out before the universe in such suitable attire and
with such fit attendance, that to look at them is to see what they are,
the sons of the house--such to whom their elder brother applied the
words: 'I said ye are Gods.'
If then the sons groan within themselves, looking to be lifted up, and
the other inhabitants of the same world groan with them and cry, shall
they not also be lifted up? Have they not also a faithful creator? He
must be a selfish man indeed who does not desire that it should be so.
It appears then, that, in the expectation of the apostle, the new
heavens and the new earth in which dwell the sons of God, are to be
inhabited by blessed animals also--inferior, but risen--and I think, yet
to rise in continuous development.
Here let me revert a moment, and say a little more clearly and strongly
a thing I have already said:--
When the apostle speaks of the whole creation, is it possible he should
have dismissed the animals from his thoughts, to regard the trees and
flowers bearing their part in the groaning and travailing of the sore
burdened world? Or could he, animals and trees and flowers forgotten,
have intended by the creation that groaned and travailed, only the bulk
of the earth, its mountains and valleys, plains and seas and rivers, its
agglomeration of hard and soft, of hot and cold, of moist and dry? If
he could, then the portion that least can be supposed to feel or know,
is regarded by the apostle of love as immeasurably more important than
the portion that loves and moans and cries. Nor is this all; for
thereupon he attributes the suffering-faculty of the excluded, far more
sentient portion at least, to the altogether inferior and less sentient,
and upon the ground of that faculty builds the vision of its redemption!
If it could be so, then how should the seeming apostle's affected
rhapsody of hope be to us other than a mere puff-ball of falsest
rhetoric, a special-pleading for nothing, as degrading to art as
objectless in nature?
Much would I like to know clearly what animals the apostle saw on his
travels, or around his home when he had one--their conditions, and their
relations to their superiors. Anyhow they were often suffering
creatures; and Paul was a man growing hourly in likeness to his maker
and theirs, therefore overflowing with sympathy. Perhaps as he wrote,
there passed through his mind a throb of pity for the beasts he had to
kill at Ephesus.