THE ATONEMENT.
We will now proceed to study certain aspects of the Christ-Life, as they
appear among the doctrines of Christianity. In the exoteric teachings
they appear as attached only to the Person of the Christ; in the
esoteric they are seen as belonging indeed to Him, since in their
primary, their fullest and deepest meaning they form part of the
activities of the Logos, but as being only secondarily reflected in the
Christ, and therefore also in every Christ-Soul that treads the way of
the Cross. Thus studied they will be seen to be profoundly true, while
in their exoteric form they often bewilder the intelligence and jar the
emotions.
Among these stands prominently forward the doctrine of the Atonement;
not only has it been a point of bitter attack from those outside the
pale of Christianity, but it has wrung many sensitive consciences within
that pale. Some of the most deeply Christian thinkers of the last half
of the nineteenth century have been tortured with doubts as to the
teaching of the churches on this matter, and have striven to see, and to
present it, in a way that softens or explains away the cruder notions
based on an unintelligent reading of a few profoundly mystical texts.
Nowhere, perhaps, more than in connection with these should the warning
of S. Peter be borne in mind: "Our beloved brother Paul also, according
to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you--as also in all his
epistles--speaking in them of these things; in which are some things
hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest,
as they do also the other scriptures, unto own destruction."[213] For
the texts that tell of the identity of the Christ with His brother-men
have been wrested into a legal substitution of Himself for them, and
have thus been used as an escape from the results of sin, instead of as
an inspiration to righteousness.
The general teaching in the Early Church on the doctrine of the
Atonement was that Christ, as the Representative of Humanity, faced and
conquered Satan, the representative of the Dark Powers, who held
humanity in bondage, wrested his captive from him, and set him free.
Slowly, as Christian teachers lost touch with spiritual truths, and they
reflected their own increasing intolerance and harshness on the pure and
loving Father of the teachings of the Christ, they represented Him as
angry with man, and the Christ was made to save man from the wrath of
God instead of from the bondage of evil. Then legal phrases intruded,
still further materialising the once spiritual idea, and the "scheme of
redemption" was forensically outlined. "The seal was set on the
'redemption scheme' by Anselm in his great work, _Cur Deus Homo_, and
the doctrine which had been slowly growing into the theology of
Christendom was thenceforward stamped with the signet of the Church.
Roman Catholics and Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, alike
believed in the vicarious and substitutionary character of the atonement
wrought by Christ. There is no dispute between them on this point. I
prefer to allow the Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the
character of the atonement.... Luther teaches that 'Christ did truly and
effectually feel for all mankind the wrath of God, malediction, and
death.' Flavel says that 'to wrath, to the wrath of an infinite God
without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ delivered, and
that by the hand of his own father.' The Anglican homily preaches that
'sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the horrors and pains
of death,' and that man, being a firebrand of hell and a bondsman of the
devil, 'was ransomed by the death of his only and well-beloved son'; the
'heat of his wrath,' 'his burning wrath,' could only be 'pacified' by
Jesus, 'so pleasant was the sacrifice and oblation of his son's death.'
Edwards, being logical, saw that there was a gross injustice in sin
being twice punished, and in the pains of hell, the penalty of sin,
being twice inflicted, first on Jesus, the substitute of mankind, and
then on the lost, a portion of mankind; so he, in common with most
Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict the atonement to the
elect, and declared that Christ bore the sins, not of the world, but of
the chosen out of the world; he suffers 'not for the world, but for them
whom thou hast given me.' But Edwards adheres firmly to the belief in
substitution, and rejects the universal atonement for the very reason
that 'to believe Christ died for all is the surest way of proving that
he died for none in the sense Christians have hitherto believed.' He
declares that 'Christ suffered the wrath of God for men's sins'; that
'God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell
for,' sin. Owen regards Christ's sufferings as 'a full valuable
compensation to the justice of God for all the sins' of the elect, and
says that he underwent 'that same punishment which ... they themselves
were bound to undergo.'"[214]
To show that these views were still authoritatively taught in the
churches, I wrote further: "Stroud makes Christ drink 'the cup of the
wrath of God.' Jenkyn says 'He suffered as one disowned and reprobated
and forsaken of God.' Dwight considers that he endured God's 'hatred and
contempt.' Bishop Jeune tells us that 'after man had done his worst,
worse remained for Christ to bear. He had fallen into his father's
hands.' Archbishop Thomson preaches that 'the clouds of God's wrath
gathered thick over the whole human race: they discharged themselves on
Jesus only.' He 'becomes a curse for us and a vessel of wrath.' Liddon
echoes the same sentiment: 'The apostles teach that mankind are slaves,
and that Christ on the cross is paying their ransom. Christ crucified is
voluntarily devoted and accursed'; he even speaks of 'the precise amount
of ignominy and pain needed for the redemption,' and says that the
'divine victim' paid more than was absolutely necessary."[215]
These are the views against which the learned and deeply religious Dr.
McLeod Campbell wrote his well-known work, _On the Atonement_, a volume
containing many true and beautiful thoughts; F. D. Maurice and many
other Christian men have also striven to lift from Christianity the
burden of a doctrine so destructive of all true ideas as to the
relations between God and man.
None the less, as we look backwards over the effects produced by this
doctrine, we find that belief in it, even in its legal--and to us crude
exoteric--form, is connected with some of the very highest developments
of Christian conduct, and that some of the noblest examples of Christian
manhood and womanhood have drawn from it their strength, their
inspiration, and their comfort. It would be unjust not to recognise this
fact. And whenever we come upon a fact that seems to us startling and
incongruous, we do well to pause upon that fact, and to endeavour to
understand it. For if this doctrine contained nothing more than is seen
in it by its assailants inside and outside the churches, if it were in
its true meaning as repellent to the conscience and the intellect as it
is found to be by many thoughtful Christians, then it could not possibly
have exercised over the minds and hearts of men a compelling
fascination, nor could it have been the root of heroic self-surrenders,
of touching and pathetic examples of self-sacrifice in the service of
man. Something more there must be in it than lies on the surface, some
hidden kernel of life which has nourished those who have drawn from it
their inspiration. In studying it as one of the Lesser Mysteries we
shall find the hidden life which these noble ones have unconsciously
absorbed, these souls which were so at one with that life that the form
in which it was veiled could not repel them.
When we come to study it as one of the Lesser Mysteries, we shall feel
that for its understanding some spiritual development is needed, some
opening of the inner eyes. To grasp it requires that its spirit should
be partly evolved in the life, and only those who know practically
something of the meaning of self-surrender will be able to catch a
glimpse of what is implied in the esoteric teaching on this doctrine, as
the typical manifestation of the Law of Sacrifice. We can only
understand it as applied to the Christ, when we see it as a special
manifestation of the universal law, a reflection below of the Pattern
above, showing us in a concrete human life what sacrifice means.
The Law of Sacrifice underlies our system and all systems, and on it all
universes are builded. It lies at the root of evolution, and alone makes
it intelligible. In the doctrine of the Atonement it takes a concrete
form in connection with men who have reached a certain stage in
spiritual development, the stage that enables them to realise their
oneness with humanity, and to become, in very deed and truth, Saviours
of men.
All the great religions of the world have declared that the universe
begins by an act of sacrifice, and have incorporated the idea of
sacrifice into their most solemn rites. In Hinduism, the dawn of
manifestation is said to be by sacrifice,[216] mankind is emanated with
sacrifice,[217] and it is Deity who sacrifices Himself;[218] the object
of the sacrifice is manifestation; He cannot become manifest unless an
act of sacrifice be performed, and inasmuch as nothing can be manifest
until He manifests,[219] the act of sacrifice is called "the dawn" of
creation.
In the Zoroastrian religion it was taught that in the Existence that is
boundless, unknowable, unnameable, sacrifice was performed and manifest
Deity appeared; Ahura-mazdao was born of an act of sacrifice.[220]
In the Christian religion the same idea is indicated in the phrase: "the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,"[221] slain at the origin
of things. These words can but refer to the important truth that there
can be no founding of a world until the Deity has made an act of
sacrifice. This act is explained as limiting Himself in order to become
manifest. "The Law of Sacrifice might perhaps more truly be called The
Law of Manifestation, or the Law of Love and of Life, for throughout the
universe, from the highest to the lowest, it is the cause of
manifestation and life."[222]
"Now, if we study this physical world, as being the most available
material, we find that all life in it, all growth, all progress, alike
for units and for aggregates, depend on continual sacrifice and the
endurance of pain. Mineral is sacrificed to vegetable, vegetable to
animal, both to man, men to men, and all the higher forms again break
up, and reinforce again with their separated constituents the lowest
kingdom. It is a continual sequence of sacrifices from the lowest to the
highest, and the very mark of progress is that the sacrifice from being
involuntary and imposed becomes voluntary and self-chosen, and those who
are recognised as greatest by man's intellect and loved most by man's
heart are the supreme sufferers, those heroic souls who wrought,
endured, and died that the race might profit by their pain. If the world
be the work of the Logos, and the law of the world's progress in the
whole and the parts is sacrifice, then the Law of Sacrifice must point
to something in the very nature of the Logos; it must have its root in
the Divine Nature itself. A little further thought shows us that if
there is to be a world, a universe at all, this can only be by the One
Existence conditioning Itself and thus making manifestation possible,
and that the very Logos is the Self-limited God; limited to become
manifest; manifested to bring a universe into being; such
self-limitation and manifestation can only be a supreme act of
sacrifice, and what wonder that on every hand the world should show its
birth-mark, and that the Law of Sacrifice should be the law of being,
the law of the derived lives.
"Further, as it is an act of sacrifice in order that individuals may
come into existence to share the Divine bliss, it is very truly a
vicarious act--an act done for the sake of others; hence the fact
already noted, that progress is marked by sacrifice becoming voluntary
and self-chosen, and we realise that humanity reaches its perfection in
the man who gives himself for men, and by his own suffering purchases
for the race some lofty good.
"Here, in the highest regions, is the inmost verity of vicarious
sacrifice, and however it may be degraded and distorted, this inner
spiritual truth makes it indestructible, eternal, and the fount whence
flows the spiritual energy which, in manifold forms and ways, redeems
the world from evil and draws it home to God."[223]
When the Logos comes forth from "the bosom of the Father" in that "Day"
when He is said to be "begotten,"[224] the dawn of the Day of Creation,
of Manifestation, when by Him God "made the worlds,"[225] He by His own
will limits Himself, making as it were a sphere enclosing the Divine
Life, coming forth as a radiant orb of Deity, the Divine Substance,
Spirit within and limitation, or Matter, without. This is the veil of
matter which makes possible the birth of the Logos, Mary, the
World-Mother, necessary for the manifestation in time of the Eternal,
that Deity may manifest for the building of the worlds.
That circumscription, that self-limitation, is the act of sacrifice, a
voluntary action done for love's sake, that other lives may be born from
Him. Such a manifestation has been regarded as a death, for, in
comparison with the unimaginable life of God in Himself, such
circumscription in matter may truly be called death. It has been
regarded, as we have seen, as a crucifixion in matter, and has been thus
figured, the true origin of the symbol of the cross, whether in its
so-called Greek form, wherein the vivifying of matter by the Holy Ghost
is signified, or in its so-called Latin, whereby the Heavenly Man is
figured, the supernal Christ.[226]
"In tracing the symbolism of the Latin cross, or rather of the crucifix,
back into the night of time, the investigators had expected to find the
figure disappear, leaving behind what they supposed to be the earlier
cross-emblem. As a matter of fact exactly the reverse took place, and
they were startled to find that eventually the cross drops away, leaving
only the figure with uplifted arms. No longer is there any thought of
pain or sorrow connected with that figure, though still it tells of
sacrifice; rather is it now the symbol of the purest joy the world can
hold--the joy of freely giving--for it typifies the Divine Man standing
in space with arms upraised in blessing, casting abroad His gifts to all
humanity, pouring forth freely of Himself in all directions, descending
into that 'dense sea' of matter, to be cribbed, cabined, and confined
therein, in order that through that descent _we_ may come into
being."[227]
This sacrifice is perpetual, for in every form in this universe of
infinite diversity this life is enfolded, and is its very heart, the
"Heart of Silence" of the Egyptian ritual, the "Hidden God." This
sacrifice is the secret of evolution. The Divine Life, cabined within a
form, ever presses outwards in order that the form may expand, but
presses gently, lest the form should break ere yet it had reached its
utmost limit of expansion. With infinite patience and tact and
discretion, the divine One keeps up the constant pressure that expands,
without loosing a force that would disrupt. In every form, in mineral,
in vegetable, in animal, in man, this expansive energy of the Logos is
ceaselessly working. That is the evolutionary force, the lifting life
within the forms, the rising energy that science glimpses, but knows not
whence it comes. The botanist tells of an energy within the plant, that
pulls ever upwards; he knows not how, he knows not why, but he gives it
a name--the _vis a fronte_--because he finds it there, or rather finds
its results. Just as it is in plant life, so is it in other forms as
well, making them more and more expressive of the life within them. When
the limit of any form is reached, and it can grow no further, so that
nothing more can be gained through it by the soul of it--that germ of
Himself, which the Logos is brooding over--then He draws away His
energy, and the form disintegrates--we call it death and decay. But the
soul is with Him, and He shapes for it a new form, and the death of the
form is the birth of the soul into fuller life. If we saw with the eyes
of the Spirit instead of with the eyes of the flesh, we should not weep
over a form, which is a corpse giving back the materials out of which it
was builded, but we should joy over the life passing onwards into nobler
form, to expand under the unchanging process the powers still latent
within.
Through that perpetual sacrifice of the Logos all lives exist; it is the
life by which the universe is ever becoming. This life is One, but it
embodies itself in myriad forms, ever drawing them together and gently
overcoming their resistance. Thus it is an At-one-ment, a unifying
force, by which the separated lives are gradually made conscious of
their unity, labouring to develop in each a self-consciousness, which
shall at last know itself to be one with all others, and its root One
and divine.
This is the primary and ever-continued sacrifice, and it will be seen
that it is an outpouring of Life directed by Love, a voluntary and glad
pouring forth of Self for the making of other Selves. This is "the joy
of thy Lord"[228] into which the faithful servant enters, significantly
followed by the statement that He was hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, a
stranger and in prison, in the helped or neglected children of men. To
the free Spirit to give itself is joy, and it feels its life the more
keenly, the more it pours itself forth. And the more it gives, the more
it grows, for the law of the growth of life is that it increases by
pouring itself forth and not by drawing from without--by giving, not by
taking. Sacrifice, then, in its primary meaning, is a thing of joy; the
Logos pours Himself out to make a world, and, seeing the travail of His
soul, is satisfied.[229]
But the word has come to be associated with suffering, and in all
religious rites of sacrifice some suffering, if only that of a trivial
loss to the sacrificer, is present. It is well to understand how this
change has come about, so that when the word "sacrifice" is used the
instinctive connotation is one of pain.
The explanation is seen when we turn from the manifesting Life to the
forms in which it is embodied, and look at the question of sacrifice
from the side of the forms. While the life of Life is in giving, the
life, or persistence, of form is in taking, for the form is wasted as it
is exercised, it is diminished as it is exerted. If the form is to
continue, it must draw fresh material from outside itself in order to
repair its losses, else will it waste and vanish away. The form must
grasp, keep, build into itself what it has grasped, else it cannot
persist; and the law of growth of the form is to take and assimilate
that which the wider universe supplies. As the consciousness identifies
itself with the form, regarding the form as itself, sacrifice takes on a
painful aspect; to give, to surrender, to lose what has been acquired,
is felt to undermine the persistence of the form, and thus the Law of
Sacrifice becomes a law of pain instead of a law of joy.
Man had to learn by the constant breaking up of forms, and the pain
involved in the breaking, that he must not identify himself with the
wasting and changing forms, but with the growing persistent life, and he
was taught his lesson not only by external nature, but by the deliberate
lessons of the Teachers who gave him religions.
We can trace in the religions of the world four great stages of
instruction in the Law of Sacrifice. First, man was taught to sacrifice
part of his material possession in order to gain increased material
prosperity, and sacrifices were made in charity to men and in offerings
to Deities, as we may read in the scriptures of the Hindus, the
Zoroastrians, the Hebrews, indeed all the world over. The man gave up
something he valued to insure future prosperity to himself, his family,
his community, his nation. He sacrificed in the present to gain in the
future. Secondly, came a lesson a little harder to learn; instead of
physical prosperity and worldly good, the fruit to be gained by
sacrifice was celestial bliss. Heaven was to be won, happiness was to
be enjoyed on the other side of death--such was the reward for
sacrifices made during the life led on earth.
A considerable step forward was made when a man learned to give up the
things for which his body craved for the sake of a distant good which he
could not see nor demonstrate. He learned to surrender the visible for
the invisible, and in so doing rose in the scale of being; for so great
is the fascination of the visible and the tangible, that if a man be
able to surrender them for the sake of an unseen world in which he
believes, he has acquired much strength and has made a long step towards
the realisation of that unseen world. Over and over again martyrdom has
been endured, obloquy has been faced, man has learned to stand alone,
bearing all that his race could pour upon him of pain, misery, and
shame, looking to that which is beyond the grave. True, there still
remains in this a longing for celestial glory, but it is no small thing
to be able to stand alone on earth and rest on spiritual companionship,
to cling firmly to the inner life when the outer is all torture.
The third lesson came when a man, seeing himself as part of a greater
life, was willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole, and so
became strong enough to recognise that sacrifice was right, that a part,
a fragment, a unit in the sum total of life, should subordinate the part
to the whole, the fragment to the totality. Then he learned to do right,
without being affected by the outcome to his own person, to do duty,
without wishing for result to himself, to endure because endurance was
right not because it would be crowned, to give because gifts were due to
humanity not because they would be repaid by the Lord. The hero-soul
thus trained was ready for the fourth lesson: that sacrifice of all the
separated fragment possesses is to be offered because the Spirit is not
really separate but is part of the divine Life, and knowing no
difference, feeling no separation, the man pours himself forth as part
of the Life Universal, and in the expression of that Life he shares the
joy of his Lord.
It is in the three earlier stages that the pain-aspect of sacrifice is
seen. The first meets but small sufferings; in the second the physical
life and all that earth has to give may be sacrificed; the third is the
great time of testing, of trying, of the growth and evolution of the
human soul. For in that stage duty may demand all in which life seems to
consist, and the man, still identified in _feeling_ with the form,
though _knowing_ himself theoretically to transcend it, finds that all
he feels as life is demanded of him, and questions: "If I let this go,
what then will remain?" It seems as though consciousness itself would
cease with this surrender, for it must loose its hold on all it
realises, and it sees nothing to grasp on the other side. An
over-mastering conviction, an imperious voice, call on him to surrender
his very life. If he shrinks back, he must go on in the life of
sensation, the life of the intellect, the life of the world, and as he
has the joys he dared not resign, he finds a constant dissatisfaction, a
constant craving, a constant regret and lack of pleasure in the world,
and he realises the truth of the saying of the Christ that "he that
will save his life shall lose it,"[230] and that the life that was loved
and clung to is only lost at last. Whereas if he risks all in obedience
to the voice that summons, if he throws away his life, then in losing
it, he finds it unto life eternal,[231] and he discovers that the life
he surrendered was only death in life, that all he gave up was illusion,
and that he found reality. In that choice the metal of the soul is
proved, and only the pure gold comes forth from the fiery furnace, where
life seemed to be surrendered but where life was won. And then follows
the joyous discovery that the life thus won is won for all, not for the
separated self, that the abandoning of the separated self has meant the
realising of the Self in man, and that the resignation of the limit
which alone seemed to make life possible has meant the pouring out into
myriad forms, an undreamed vividness and fulness, "the power of an
endless life."[232]
Such is an outline of the Law of Sacrifice, based on the primary
Sacrifice of the Logos, that Sacrifice of which all other sacrifices are
reflexions.
We have seen how the man Jesus, the Hebrew disciple, laid down His body
in glad surrender that a higher Life might descend and become embodied
in the form He thus willingly sacrificed, and how by that act He became
a Christ of full stature, to be the Guardian of Christianity, and to
pour out His life into the great religion founded by the Mighty One with
whom the sacrifice had identified Him. We have seen the Christ-Soul
passing through the great Initiations--born as a little child, stepping
down into the river of the world's sorrows, with the waters of which he
must be baptised into his active ministry, transfigured on the Mount,
led to the scene of his last combat, and triumphing over death. We have
now to see in what sense he is an atonement, how in the Christ-life the
Law of Sacrifice finds a perfect expression.
The beginning of what may be called the ministry of the Christ come to
manhood is in that intense and permanent sympathy with the world's
sorrows which is typified by the stepping down into the river. From that
time forward the life must be summed up in the phrase, "He went about
doing good;" for those who sacrifice the separated life to be a channel
of the divine Life, can have no interest in this world save the helping
of others. He learns to identify himself with the consciousness of those
around him, to feel as they feel, think as they think, enjoy as they
enjoy, suffer as they suffer, and thus he brings into his daily waking
life that sense of unity with others which he experiences in the higher
realms of being. He must develop a sympathy which vibrates in perfect
harmony with the many-toned chord of human life, so that he may link in
himself the human and the divine lives, and become a mediator between
heaven and earth.
Power is now manifested in him, for the Spirit is resting on him, and he
begins to stand out in the eyes of men as one of those who are able to
help their younger brethren to tread the path of life. As they gather
round him, they feel the power that comes out from him, the divine Life
in the accredited Son of the Highest. The souls that are hungry come to
him and he feeds them with the bread of life; the diseased with sin
approach him, and he heals them with the living word which cures the
sickness and makes whole the soul; the blind with ignorance draw nigh
him, and he opens their eyes by the light of his wisdom. It is the chief
mark in his ministry that the lowest and the poorest, the most desperate
and the most degraded, feel in approaching him no wall of separation,
feel as they throng around him welcome and not repulsion; for there
radiates from him a love that understands and that can therefore never
wish to repel. However low the soul may be, he never feels the
Christ-Soul as standing above him but rather as standing beside him,
treading with human feet the ground he also treads; yet as filled with
some strange uplifting power that raises him upwards and fills him also
with new impulse and fresh inspiration.
Thus he lives and labours, a true Saviour of men, until the time comes
when he must learn another lesson, losing for awhile his consciousness
of that divine Life of which his own has been becoming ever more and
more the expression. And this lesson is that the true centre of divine
Life lies within and not without. The Self has its centre within each
human soul--truly is "the centre everywhere," for Christ is _in_ all,
and God in Christ--and no embodied life, nothing "out of the
Eternal"[233] can help him in his direst need. He has to learn that the
true unity of Father and Son is to be found within and not without, and
this lesson can only come in uttermost isolation, when he feels forsaken
by the God outside himself. As this trial approaches, he cries out to
those who are nearest to him to watch with him through his hour of
darkness; and then, by the breaking of every human sympathy, the failing
of every human love, he finds himself thrown back on the life of the
divine Spirit, and cries out to his Father, feeling himself in conscious
union with Him, that the cup may pass away. Having stood alone, save for
that divine Helper, he is worthy to face the last ordeal, where the God
without him vanishes, and only the God within is left. "My God, my God,
why hast Thou forsaken me?" rings out the bitter cry of startled love
and fear. The last loneliness descends on him, and he feels himself
forsaken and alone. Yet never is the Father nearer to the Son than at
the moment when the Christ-Soul feels himself forsaken, for as he thus
touches the lowest depth of sorrow, the hour of his triumph begins to
dawn. For now he learns that he must himself become the God to whom he
cries, and by feeling the last pang of separation he finds the eternal
unity, he feels the fount of life is within, and knows himself eternal.
None can become fully a Saviour of men nor sympathise perfectly with all
human suffering, unless he has faced and conquered pain and fear and
death unaided, save by the aid he draws from the God within him. It is
easy to suffer when there is unbroken consciousness between the higher
and the lower; nay, suffering is not, while that consciousness remains
unbroken, for the light of the higher makes darkness in the lower
impossible, and pain is not pain when borne in the smile of God. There
is a suffering that men have to face, that every Saviour of man must
face, where darkness is on the human consciousness, and never a glimmer
of light comes through; he must know the pang of the despair felt by the
human soul when there is darkness on every side, and the groping
consciousness cannot find a hand to clasp. Into that darkness every Son
of Man goes down, ere he rises triumphant; that bitterest experience is
tasted by every Christ, ere he is "able to save them to the
uttermost"[234] who seek the Divine through him.
Such a one has become truly divine, a Saviour of men, and he takes up
the world-work for which all this has been the preparation. Into him
must pour all the forces that make against man, in order that in him
they may be changed into forces that help. Thus he becomes one of the
Peace-centres of the world, which transmute the forces of combat that
would otherwise crush man. For the Christs of the world are these
Peace-centres into which pour all warring forces, to be changed within
them and then poured out as forces that work for harmony.
Part of the sufferings of the Christ not yet perfect lies in this
harmonising of the discord-making forces in the world. Although a Son,
he yet learns by suffering and is thus "made perfect."[235] Humanity
would be far more full of combat and rent with strife were it not for
the Christ-disciples living in its midst, and harmonising many of the
warring forces into peace.
When it is said that the Christ suffers "for men," that His strength
replaces their weakness, His purity their sin, His wisdom their
ignorance, a truth is spoken; for the Christ so becomes one with men
that they share with Him and He with them. There is no substitution of
Him for them, but the taking of their lives into His, and the pouring of
His life into theirs. For, having risen to the plane of unity, He is
able to share all He has gained, to give all He has won. Standing above
the plane of separateness and looking down at the souls immersed in
separateness, He can reach each while they cannot reach each other.
Water can flow from above into many pipes, open to the reservoir though
closed as regards each other, and so He can send His life into each
soul. Only one condition is needed in order that a Christ may share His
strength with a younger brother: that in the separated life the human
consciousness will open itself to the divine, will show itself receptive
of the offered life, and take the freely outpoured gift. For so reverent
is God to that Spirit which is Himself in man, that He will not even
pour into the human soul a flood of strength and life unless that soul
is willing to receive it. There must be an opening from below as well as
an outpouring from above, the receptiveness of the lower nature as well
as the willingness of the higher to give. That is the link between the
Christ and the man; that is what the churches have called the outpouring
of "divine grace"; that is what is meant by the "faith" necessary to
make the grace effective. As Giordano Bruno once put it--the human soul
has windows, and can shut those windows close. The sun outside is
shining, the light is unchanging; let the windows be opened and the
sunlight must stream in. The light of God is beating against the windows
of every human soul, and when the windows are thrown open, the soul
becomes illuminated. There is no change in God, but there is a change in
man; and man's will may not be forced, else were the divine Life in him
blocked in its due evolution.
Thus in every Christ that rises, all humanity is lifted a step higher,
and by His wisdom the ignorance of the whole world is lessened. Each man
is less weak because of His strength, which pours out over all humanity
and enters the separated soul. Out of that doctrine, seen narrowly, and
therefore mis-seen, grew the idea of the vicarious Atonement as a legal
transaction between God and man, in which Jesus took the place of the
sinner. It was not understood that One who had touched that height was
verily one with all His brethren; identity of nature was mistaken for a
personal substitution, and thus the spiritual truth was lost in the
harshness of a judicial exchange.
"Then he comes to a knowledge of his place in the world, of his function
in nature--to be a Saviour and to make atonement for the sins of the
people. He stands in the inner Heart of the world, the Holy of Holies,
as a High Priest of Humanity. He is one with all his brethren, not by a
vicarious substitution, but by the unity of a common life. Is any
sinful? he is sinful in them, that his purity may purge them. Is any
sorrowful? in them he is the man of sorrows; every broken heart breaks
his, in every pierced heart his heart is pierced. Is any glad? in them
he is joyous, and pours out his bliss. Is any craving? in them he is
feeling want that he may fill them with his utter satisfaction. He has
everything, and because it is his it is theirs. He is perfect; then they
are perfect with him. He is strong; who then can be weak, since he is in
them? He climbed to his high place that he might pour out to all below
him, and he lives in order that all may share his life. He lifts the
whole world with him as he rises, the path is easier for all men,
because he has trodden it.
"Every son of man may become such a manifested Son of God, such a
Saviour of the world. In each such Son is 'God manifest in the
flesh,'[236] the atonement that aids all mankind, the living power that
makes all things new. Only one thing is needed to bring that power into
manifested activity in any individual soul; the soul must open the door
and let Him in. Even He, all-permeating, cannot force His way against
His brother's will; the human will can hold its own alike against God
and man, and by the law of evolution it must voluntarily associate
itself with divine action, and not be broken into sullen submission. Let
the will throw open the door, and the life will flood the soul. While
the door is closed it will only gently breathe through it its
unutterable fragrance, that the sweetness of that fragrance may win,
where the barrier may not be forced by strength.
"This it is, in part, to be a Christ; but how can mortal pen mirror the
immortal, or mortal words tell of that which is beyond the power of
speech? Tongue may not utter, the unillumined mind may not grasp, that
mystery of the Son who has become one with the Father, carrying in His
bosom the sons of men."[237]
Those who would prepare to rise to such a life in the future must begin
even now to tread in the lower life the path of the Shadow of the Cross.
Nor should they doubt their power to rise, for to do so is to doubt the
God within them. "Have faith in yourself," is one of the lessons that
comes from the higher view of man, for that faith is really in the God
within. There is a way by which the shadow of the Christ-life may fall
on the common life of man, and that is by doing every act as a
sacrifice, not for what it will bring to the doer but for what it will
bring to others, and, in the daily common life of small duties, petty
actions, narrow interests, by changing the motive and thus changing all.
Not one thing in the outer life need necessarily be varied; in any life
sacrifice may be offered, amid any surroundings God may be served.
Evolving spirituality is marked not by what a man does, but by how he
does it; not in the circumstances, but in the attitude of a man towards
them, lies the opportunity of growth. "And indeed this symbol of the
cross may be to us as a touchstone to distinguish the good from the evil
in many of the difficulties of life. 'Only those actions through which
shines the light of the cross are worthy of the life of the disciple,'
says one of the verses in a book of occult maxims; and it is interpreted
to mean that all that the aspirant does should be prompted by the
fervour of self-sacrificing love. The same thought appears in a later
verse: 'When one enters the path, he lays his heart upon the cross; when
the cross and the heart have become one, then hath he reached the goal.'
So, perchance, we may measure our progress by watching whether
selfishness or self-sacrifice is dominant in our lives."[238]
Every life which begins thus to shape itself is preparing the cave in
which the Child-Christ shall be born, and the life shall become a
constant at-one-ment, bringing the divine more and more into the human.
Every such life shall grow into the life of a "beloved Son," and shall
have in it the glory of the Christ. Every man may work in that direction
by making every act and power a sacrifice, until the gold is purged from
the dross, and only the pure ore remains.