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THOUGHTS ON
LIFE AND RELIGION
THOUGHTS ON
LIFE AND RELIGION
An Aftermath from the Writings of
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
PROFESSOR MAX MÜLLER
BY HIS WIFE
THIRD IMPRESSION
London
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND
COMPANY LTD.
1907
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
PREFACE
This book has been prepared in accordance with a wish expressed by
many known and unknown admirers of my husband's writings, who desire
to possess in a portable form the passages that have specially
appealed to them in his different works, and in the _Life and
Letters_.
I have taken this opportunity of adding extracts from private
letters, and from the writings he left unfinished, which would not
otherwise have become known to any but his own family or a few
intimate friends.
Those who have read the _Life and Letters_, do not need to be told
that Max Müller lived from his earliest years in the firm conviction
that all is wisely ordered in this life, and 'all for our real good,
though we do not always see it, and though we cannot venture to
fathom the wisdom guiding our steps through life.'
To others his unswerving trust and faith as shown in these extracts
may be a revelation, for he seldom talked on such subjects. This
trust and faith gave him strength through the bitter struggles of
his early life, taught him resignation during the years when the
dearest wish of his heart seemed unattainable, supported him later
when those he tenderly loved were snatched from him by death, and
upheld him in his last long and depressing illness.
My earnest desire is that this little book may prove a help and
comfort to many exposed to like trials, and strengthen those whose
path now stretches before them as a sunny avenue, to meet the
sorrows that almost surely await them as life advances.
GEORGINA MAX MÜLLER.
_June 11, 1905_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Art of Life, 1
The Beautiful, 4
The Bible, 6
Children, 12
Christ, the Logos, 13
Christianity, 21
Death, 34
The Deity, 44
The Divine, 57
Doubts, 60
Evolution of Religion, 66
Faith, 70
The Fatherhood of God, 73
Future Life, 74
The Infinite, 87
Knowledge, 96
Language, 99
Life, 103
Love, 121
Mankind, 129
Mind or Thought, 132
Miracles, 135
Music, 138
Nature, 139
Obscurity, 142
Old Age, 143
Religion and Religions, 145
Revelation, 184
The Rig-Veda, 189
Science, 190
The Self, 192
Sorrow and Suffering, 198
The Soul, 208
Theosophy, 215
Truth, 217
The Will of God, 222
Wonder, 226
Words, 228
Work, 230
The World, 233
THE ART OF LIFE
To learn to understand one another is the great art of life, and to
'agree to differ' is the best lesson of the comparative science of
religion.
_Silesian Horseherd._
There is a higher kind of music which we all have to learn, if our
life is to be harmonious, beautiful, and useful. There are certain
intervals between the young and the old which must be there, which
are meant to be there, without which life would be monotonous; but
out of these intervals and varieties the true art of life knows
how to build up perfect harmonies.... Even great sorrow may be a
blessing, by drawing some of our affections away from this life to
a better life ... of which, it is true, we know nothing, but from
which, when we see the wisdom and love that underlie this life, we
may hope everything. We are meant to hope and to trust, and that is
often much harder than to see and to know.... The greatest of all
arts is the art of life, and the best of all music the harmony of
spirits. There are many little rules to be learnt for giving harmony
and melody to our life, but the thorough bass must be--love.
_Life._
One thing is necessary above all things in order to live
peaceably with people, that is, in Latin, _Humanitas_, German,
_Menschlichkeit_. It is difficult to describe, but it is to claim
as little as possible from others, neither an obliging temper
nor gratitude, and yet to do all one can to please others, yet
without expecting them always to find it out. As men are made up
of contradictions they are the more grateful and friendly the less
they see that we expect gratitude and friendliness. Even the least
cultivated people have their good points, and it is not only far
better but far more interesting if one takes trouble to find out
the best side and motives of people, rather than the worst and most
selfish.... Life is an art, and more difficult than Sanscrit or
anything else.
_Life._
We become chiefly what we are more through others than through
ourselves, and happy is the man whose path in life leads him only by
good men and brings him together with good men. How often we forget
in judging others the influences under which they have grown up. How
can one expect a child to be truthful when he sees how servants, yes
often parents, practise deceit. How many children hear from those
to whom they look up, expressions, principles, and prudent rules
of life, which consciously or unconsciously exercise an influence
on the young life of the child. Yet with how little of loving
introspection we pass our judgments.
_MS._
If you want to be at peace with yourself, do not mind being at war
with the world.
_MS._
THE BEAUTIFUL
Is the Beautiful without us, or is it not rather within us? What we
call sweet and bitter is our own sweetness, our own bitterness, for
nothing can be sweet or bitter without us. Is it not the same with
the Beautiful? The world is like a rich mine, full of precious ore,
but each man has to assay the ore for himself, before he knows what
is gold and what is not. What, then, is the touchstone by which we
assay the Beautiful? We have a touchstone for discovering the good.
Whatever is unselfish is good. But--though nothing can be beautiful,
except what is in some sense or other good, not everything that is
good is also beautiful. What, then, is that something which, added
to the good, makes it beautiful? It is a great mystery. It is so to
us as it was to Plato. We must have gazed on the Beautiful in the
dreams of childhood, or, it may be, in a former life, and now we
look for it everywhere, but we can never find it,--never at least in
all its brightness and fulness again, never as we remember it once
as the vision of a half-forgotten dream. Nor do we all remember the
same ideal--some poor creatures remember none at all.... The ideal,
therefore, of what is beautiful is within us, that is all we know;
how it came there we shall never know. It is certainly not of this
life, else we could define it; but it underlies this life, else we
could not feel it. Sometimes it meets us like a smile of Nature,
sometimes like a glance of God; and if anything proves that there is
a great past, and a great future, a Beyond, a higher world, a hidden
life, it is our faith in the Beautiful.
_Chips._
THE BIBLE
The fault is ours, not theirs, if we wilfully misinterpret the
language of ancient prophets, if we persist in understanding their
words in their outward and material aspect only, and forget that
before language had sanctioned a distinction between the concrete
and the abstract, between the purely spiritual as opposed to the
coarsely material, the intention of the speakers comprehended both
the concrete and the abstract, both the material and the spiritual,
in a manner which has become quite strange to us, though it lives on
in the language of every true poet.
_Science of Religion._
Canonical books give the reflected image only of the real doctrines
of the founder of a new religion; an image always blurred and
distorted by the medium through which it had to pass.
_Science of Religion._
The Old Testament stands on a higher ethical stage than other sacred
books,--it certainly does not lose by a comparison with them. I
always said so, but people would not believe it. Still, anything to
show the truly historical and human character of the Old Testament
would be extremely useful in any sense, and would in nowise injure
the high character which it possesses.
_Life._
If we have once learnt to be charitable and reasonable in the
interpretation of the sacred books of other religions, we shall more
easily learn to be charitable and reasonable in the interpretation
of our own. We shall no longer try to force a literal sense on words
which, if interpreted literally, must lose their true and original
purport; we shall no longer interpret the Law and the Prophets as if
they had been written in the English of our own century, but read
them in a truly historical spirit, prepared for many difficulties,
undiscouraged by many contradictions, which, so far from disproving
the authenticity, become to the historian of ancient language and
ancient thought the strongest confirmatory evidence of the age, the
genuineness, and the real truth of ancient sacred books. Let us but
treat our own sacred books with neither more nor less mercy than
the sacred books of any other nations, and they will soon regain
that position and influence which they once possessed, but which the
artificial and unhistorical theories of the last three centuries
have wellnigh destroyed.
_Science of Religion._
By the students of the science of religion the Old Testament can
only be looked upon as a strictly historical book by the side
of other historical books. It can claim no privilege before the
tribunal of history, nay, to claim such a privilege would be to
really deprive it of the high position which it justly holds
among the most valuable monuments of the distant past. But the
authorship of the single books which form the Old Testament, and
more particularly the dates at which they were reduced to writing,
form the subject of keen controversy, not among critics hostile to
religion, but among theologians who treat these questions in the
most independent, but at the same time the most candid and judicial,
spirit. By this treatment many difficulties, which in former times
disturbed the minds of thoughtful theologians, have been removed,
and the Old Testament has resumed its rightful place among the most
valuable monuments of antiquity.... But this was possible on one
condition only, namely, that the Old Testament should be treated
simply as an historical book, willing to submit to all the tests of
historical criticism to which other historical books have submitted.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
What the student of the history of the continuous growth of religion
looks for in vain in the books of the Old Testament, are the
successive stages in the development of religious concepts. He does
not know which books he may consider as more ancient or more modern
than other books. He asks in vain how much of the religious ideas
reflected in certain of these books may be due to ancient tradition,
how much to the mind of the latest writer. In Exodus iii. God is
revealed to Moses, not only as the supreme, but as the only God.
But we are now told by competent scholars that Exodus could not
have been written down till probably a thousand years after Moses.
How then can we rely on it as an accurate picture of the thoughts
of Moses and his contemporaries? It has been said with great truth
that 'it is almost impossible to believe that a people who had been
emancipated from superstition at the time of the Exodus, and who had
been all along taught to conceive God as the one universal Spirit,
existing only in truth and righteousness, should be found at the
time of Josiah, nearly nine hundred years later, steeped in every
superstition.' Still, if the writings of the Old Testament[1] were
contemporaneous with the events they relate, this retrogressive
movement would have to be admitted. Most of these difficulties
are removed, or considerably lessened, if we accept the results
of modern Hebrew scholarship, and remember that though the Old
Testament may contain very ancient traditions, they probably were
not reduced to writing till the middle of the fifth century B.C.,
and may have been modified by and mixed up with ideas belonging to
the time of Ezra.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
[Footnote 1: The reader is reminded that these lectures were
published in 1891, before English theologians had reached any
generally received results in the study of the dates of the
various parts of the Old Testament. It would be more correct now
to substitute 'the Pentateuch' in the above sentence for the 'Old
Testament.' For a statement of the modern views of the several
periods to which the different books may be assigned, see Canon
Driver's _Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament_.]
May we, or may we not, interpret, as students of language, and
particularly as students of Oriental languages, the language of
the Old Testament as a primitive and as an Oriental language? May
we, or may we not, as true believers, see through the veil which
human language always throws over the most sacred mysteries of the
soul, and instead of dragging the sublimity of Abraham's trial and
Abraham's faith down to the level of a merely preternatural event,
recognise in it the real trial of a human soul, the real faith of
the friend of God, a faith without stormwinds, without earthquakes
and fires, a faith in the still small voice of God?
_MS._
Is it really necessary to say again and again what the Buddhists
have said so often and well, that the act of creation is perfectly
inconceivable to any human understanding, and that, if we speak of
it at all, we can only do so anthropomorphically or mythologically?
_MS._
CHILDREN
All seems so bright and perfect, and quite a new life seems to
open before me, in that beloved little child. She helps me to look
forward to such a far distance, and opens quite a new view of one's
own purpose and duties on earth. It is something new to live for, to
train a human soul entrusted to us, and to fit her for her true home
beyond this life.
_Life._
I doubt whether it is possible to take too high a view of life
where the education of children is concerned. It is the one great
work entrusted to us, it forms the true religion of life. Nothing
is small or unimportant in forming the next generation, which is to
carry on the work where we have to leave it unfinished. No single
soul can be spared--every one is important, every one may be the
cause of infinite good, or of infinite mischief, for ever hereafter.
_MS._
CHRIST, THE LOGOS
An explanation of _Logos_ in Greek philosophy is much simpler than
is commonly supposed. It is only needful not to forget that for the
Greeks thought and word were inseparable, and that the same term,
namely _Logos_, expressed both, though they distinguished the inner
from the outer _Logos_. It is one of the most remarkable aberrations
of the human mind to imagine that there could be a word without
thought, or a thought without word. The two are inseparable; one
cannot exist or be even conceived without the other.
_Silesian Horseherd._
In nearly all religions God remains far from man. I say in nearly
all religions: for in Brahmanism the unity, not the union, of the
human soul with Brahma is recognised as the highest aim. This unity
with Deity, together with phenomenal difference, Jesus expressed in
part through the _Logos_, in part through the Son. There is nothing
so closely allied as thought and word, Father and Son. They can
be distinguished but never separated, for they exist only through
each other. In this matter the Greek philosophers considered all
creation as the thought or the word of God, and the thought 'man'
became naturally the highest _Logos_, realised in millions of men,
and raised to the highest perfection in Jesus. As the thought exists
only through the word, and the word only through the thought, so
also the Father exists only through the Son, and the Son through the
Father, and in this sense Jesus feels and declares himself the Son
of God, and all men who believe in Him His brethren. This revelation
or inspiration came to mankind through Jesus. No one knew the Father
except the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and those to whom
the Son willeth to reveal Him. This is the Christian Revelation in
the true sense of the word.
_Silesian Horseherd._
Small as may be the emphasis that we now lay on the _Logos_
doctrine, in that period (_i.e._ of the Fourth Gospel) it was the
centre, the vital germ, of the whole Christian teaching. If we read
any of the writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church
fathers, we shall be surprised to see how all of them begin with the
word (_Logos_) as a fixed point of departure, and then proceed to
prove that the Word is the Son of God, and finally that the Son of
God is Jesus of Nazareth. Religion and philosophy are here closely
related.
_Silesian Horseherd._
What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the true
sonship of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised,
but had never seen realised on earth? Here is the point where the
two great intellectual currents of the Aryan and Semitic worlds
flow together, in that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was
recognised as the _Logos_, the true Son of God, and that He opened
or revealed to every man the possibility to become what he had
always been, but had never before apprehended, the highest thought,
the Word, the Logos, the Son of God.
_Silesian Horseherd._
Eternal life consists in knowing that men have their Father and
their true being in the only true God, and that as sons of this same
Father, they are of like nature with God and Christ.
_Silesian Horseherd._
Why should the belief in the Son give everlasting life? Because
Jesus has through His own sonship in God declared to us ours also.
This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we
too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word
of God, the Son whom He hath sent. Jesus Himself, however, is the
only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and
illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men, and made it
possible for all men to become actually what they have always been
potentially--sons of God.
_Silesian Horseherd._
We make the fullest allowance for those who, from reverence for
God and for Christ, and from the purest motives, protest against
claiming for man the full brotherhood of Christ. But when they say
that the difference between Christ and mankind is one of kind, and
not of degree, they know not what they do, they nullify the whole of
Christ's teaching, and they deny the Incarnation which they pretend
to teach.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
The Ammergau play must be very powerful. And I feel sure just now
nothing is more wanted than to be powerfully impressed with the
truly human character of Christ; it has almost vanished under the
extravagant phraseology of hymns and creeds, and yet how much
greater is the simple story of His unselfish life than all the
superlatives of later Theology. If one knows what it is to lose a
human soul whom one has loved--how one forgets all that was human,
and only clings to what was eternal in it, one can understand
the feelings of Christ's friends and disciples when they saw Him
crucified and sacrificed, the innocent for those whom He wished to
guide and save.
_MS._
Jesus destroyed the barrier between man and God, the veil that hid
the Holiest was withdrawn. Man was taught to see what the prophets
had seen dimly, that he was near to God, that God was near to every
one of us, that the old Jewish view of a distant Jehovah had arisen
from an excess of reverence, had filled the heart of man with fear,
but not with love. Jesus did not teach a new doctrine, but He
removed an old error, and that error, that slavish fear of God, once
removed, the human heart would recover the old trust in God--man
would return like a lost son to his lost father, he would feel that
if he was anything, he could only be what his God had made him,
and wished him to be. And if a name was wanted for that intimate
relation between God and man, what better name was there than Father
and Son?
_MS._
Those who deprived Jesus of His real humanity in order to exalt
Him above all humanity were really undoing His work. Christ came
to teach us, not what He was, but what we are. He had seen that
man, unless he learnt himself to be the child of God, was lost.
All his aspirations were vain unless they all sprang from one
deep aspiration, love of God. And how can we love what is totally
different from ourselves? If there is in us a likeness, however
small, of God, then we can love our God, feel ourselves drawn
towards Him, have our true being in Him. That is the essence of
Christianity, that is what distinguishes the Christian from all
other religions. And yet that very kernel and seed of Christianity
is constantly disregarded, is even looked upon with distrust. Was
not Christ, who died for us, more than we ourselves? it is said. Or
again, Are we to make ourselves gods? Christ never says that He is
different from ourselves; He never taught as a God might teach. His
constant teaching is, that we are His brethren, and that we ought to
follow His example, to become like Him, because we were meant to be
like Him. In that He has come near to God, as near as a son can be
to His father; He is what He was meant to be. We are not, and hence
the deep difference between Him and us.
_MS._
Then it is said, Is not Christ God? Yes, He is, but in His own
sense, not in the Jewish nor in the Greek sense, nor in the sense
which so many Christians attach to that article of their faith.
Christ's teaching is that we are of God, that there is in us
something divine, that we are nothing if we are not that. He also
teaches that through our own fault we are now widely separated from
God, as a son may be entirely separated and alienated from his
father. But God is a perfect and loving Father--He knows that we can
be weak, and yet be good, and when His lost sons return to Him He
receives them and forgives them as only a father can forgive. Let
us bestow all praise and glory on Christ as the best son of God.
Let us feel how unworthy we are to be called His brothers, and the
children of God, but let us not lose Christ, and lose our Father
whom He came to show us, by exalting Jesus beyond the place which He
claimed Himself. Christ never calls Himself the Father, He speaks of
His Father with love, but always with humility and reverence. All
attempts to find in human language a better expression than that of
son have failed. Theologians and philosophers have tried in vain
to define more accurately the relation of Christ to the Father, of
man to God. They have called Christ another person of the Godhead.
Is that better than Christ's own simple human language, I go to my
Father?
_MS._
Christ has been made so unreal to us, He has been spoken of in
such unmeasured terms that it is very difficult to gain Him back,
such as He was, without a fear of showing less reverence and love
of Him than others. And yet, unreal expressions are always false
expressions--nothing is so bad as if we do not fully mean what we
say. Of course we know Christ through His friends only, they tell us
what He told them--they represent Him as He appeared to them. What
fallible judges they often were they do not disguise, and that, no
doubt, raises the value of their testimony, but we can only see Him
as they saw Him; the fact remains we know very little of Him. Still,
enough remains to show that Christ was full of love, that He loved
not only His friends, but His enemies. Christ's whole life seems
to have been one of love, not of coldness. He perceived our common
brotherhood, and what it was based on, our common Father beyond this
world, in heaven, as He said.
_MS._
CHRISTIANITY
Christianity is Christianity by this one fundamental truth, that
as God is the father of man, so truly, and not poetically, or
metaphorically only, man is the son of God, participating in God's
very essence and nature, though separated from God by self and
sin. This oneness of nature between the Divine and the human does
not lower the concept of God by bringing it nearer to the level of
humanity; on the contrary, it raises the old concept of man and
brings it nearer to its true ideal. The true relation between God
and man had been dimly foreseen by many prophets and poets, but
Christ was the first to proclaim that relation in clear and simple
language. He called Himself the Son of God, and He was the firstborn
son of God in the fullest sense of that word. But He never made
Himself equal with the Father in whom He lived and moved and had
His being. He was man in the new and true sense of the word, and in
the new and true sense of the word He was God. To my mind man is
nothing if He does not participate in the Divine.
_Chips._
True Christianity lives, not in our belief, but in our love, in our
love of God, and in our love of man founded on our love of God.
_Chips._
True Christianity, I mean the religion of Christ, seems to me to
become more and more exalted the more we know and the more we
appreciate the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions
of the world. But no one can honestly arrive at that conviction
unless he uses honestly the same measure for all religions.
_Science of Religion._
The position which Christianity from the very beginning took up
with regard to Judaism served as the first lesson in comparative
theology, and directed the attention even of the unlearned to a
comparison of two religions, differing in their conception of the
Deity, in their estimate of humanity, in their motives of morality,
and in their hope of immortality, yet sharing so much in common that
there are but few of the psalms and prayers in the Old Testament in
which a Christian cannot heartily join even now, and but few rules
of morality which he ought not even now to obey.
_Science of Religion._
It was exactly because the doctrine of Christ, more than that of
the founders of any other religion, offered in the beginning an
expression of the highest truths in which Jewish carpenters, Roman
publicans, and Greek philosophers could join without dishonesty,
that it has conquered the best part of the world. It was because
attempts were made from very early times to narrow and stiffen the
outward expression of our faith, to put narrow dogma in the place of
trust and love, that the Christian Church often lost those who might
have been its best defenders, and that the religion of Christ has
almost ceased to be what, before all things, it was meant to be, a
religion of world-wide love and charity.
_Hibbert Lectures._
The founder of Christianity insisted again and again on the
fact that He came to fulfil, and not to destroy; and we know
how impossible it would be to understand the true position of
Christianity in the history of the world, the true purport of the
'fullness of time,' unless we always remember that its founder was
born and lived and died an Israelite. Many of the parables and
sayings of the New Testament have now been traced back, not only to
the Old Testament, but to the Talmud also; and we know how difficult
it was at first for any but a Jew to understand the true meaning of
the new Christian doctrine.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
There is no religion in the whole world which in simplicity, in
purity of purpose, in charity, and true humanity, comes near to that
religion which Christ taught to His disciples. And yet that very
religion, we are told, is being attacked on all sides. The principal
reason for this omnipresent unbelief is, I believe, the neglect of
our foundations, the disregard of our own bookless religion, the
almost disdain of Natural Religion. Even bishops will curl their
lips when you speak to them of that natural and universal _religion_
which existed before the advent of our historical religions, nay,
without which all historical religions would have been as impossible
as poetry is without language. Natural religion may exist and does
exist without revealed religion--revealed religion without natural
religion is an utter impossibility.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
There can be no doubt that free inquiry has swept away, and will
sweep away, many things which have been highly valued, nay, which
were considered essential by many honest and pious minds. And yet
who will say that true Christianity, Christianity which is known by
its fruits, is less vigorous now than it has ever been before? There
have been discussions in the Christian Church from the time of the
Apostles to our own times. We have passed through them ourselves, we
are passing through them now.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
When we think of the exalted character of Christ's teaching, may
we not ask ourselves once more, What would He have said if He had
seen the fabulous stories of His birth and childhood, or if He had
thought that His Divine character would ever be made to depend on
the historical truth of the _Evangelia Infantiae_?
_Gifford Lectures, II._
Much of the mere outworks of Christianity cannot hold the ground
on which they have been planted, they have to be given up by force
at last, when they ought to have been given up long before; and
when given up at last, they often tear away with them part of the
strength of that faith of which they had previously been not only
the buttress outside, but a part of the living framework.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
What we call Christianity embraces several fundamental doctrines,
but the most important of them all is the recognition of the Divine
in man, or, as we call it, the belief in the Divinity of the Son.
The belief in God, let us say in God the Father, or the Creator
and Ruler of the world, had been elaborated by the Jews, and most
of the civilised and uncivilised nations of the world had arrived
at it. But when the Founder of Christianity called God His Father,
and not only His Father, but the Father of all mankind, He did no
longer speak the language of either Jews or Greeks. To the Jews,
to claim Divine sonship for man would have been blasphemy. To the
Greeks, Divine sonship would have meant no more than a miraculous,
a mythological event. Christ spoke a new language, a language
liable, no doubt, to be misunderstood, as all language is; but a
language which to those who understood it has imparted a new glory
to the face of the whole world. It is well known how this event,
the discovery of the Divine in man, which involves a complete
change in the spiritual condition of mankind, and marks the great
turning-point in the history of the world, has been surrounded by
a legendary halo, has been obscured, has been changed into mere
mythology, so that its real meaning has often been quite forgotten,
and has to be discovered again by honest and fearless seeking.
Christ had to speak the language of His time, but He gave a new
meaning to it, and yet that language has often retained its old
discarded meaning in the minds of His earliest, nay sometimes of His
latest disciples also. The Divine sonship of which He speaks was
not blasphemy as the Jews thought, nor mythology as so many of His
own followers imagined, and still imagine. Father and Son, divine
and human, were like the old bottles that could hardly hold the new
wine; and yet how often have the old broken bottles been preferred
to the new wine that was to give new life to the world.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
If we have learnt to look upon Christianity, not as something
unreal and unhistorical, but as an integral part of history, of
the historical growth of the human race, we can see how all the
searchings after the Divine or Infinite in man were fulfilled in the
simple utterances of Christ. His preaching, we are told, brought
life and immortality to light. Life, the life of the soul, and
immortality, the immortality of the soul, were there and had always
been there. But they were brought to light, man was made fully
conscious of them, man remembered his royal birth, when the word had
been spoken by Christ.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
We must never forget that it was not the principal object of
Christ's teaching to make others believe that He only was divine,
immortal, or the son of God. He wished them to believe this for
_their own_ sake, for _their own_ regeneration. 'As many as received
Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.' It might be
thought, at first, that this recognition of a Divine element in man
must necessarily lower the conception of the Divine. And so it does
in one sense. It brings God nearer to us, it bridges over the abyss
by which the Divine and the human were completely separated in the
Jewish, and likewise in many of the pagan religions. It rends the
veil of the temple. This lowering, therefore, is no real lowering
of the Divine. It is an expanding of the concept of the Divine, and
at the same time a raising of the concept of humanity, or rather
a restoration of what is called human to its true character,--a
regeneration, or a second birth, as it is called by Christ Himself.
'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'
_Gifford Lectures, III._
There is a constant action and reaction in the growth of religious
ideas, and the first action by which the Divine was separated from
and placed almost beyond the reach of the human mind, was followed
by a reaction which tried to reunite the two. This process, though
visible in many religions, was most pronounced in Judaism in its
transition to Christianity. Nowhere had the invisible God been
further removed from the visible world than in the ancient Jewish
religion, and nowhere have the two been so closely drawn together
again and made one as by that fundamental doctrine of Christianity,
the Divine sonship of man.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
Christ spoke to men, women, and children, not to theologians, and
the classification of His sayings should be made, not according to
theological technicalities, but according to what makes our own
heart beat.
_Life._
The yearning for union or unity with God, which we see as the
highest goal in other religions, finds its fullest recognition in
Christianity, if but properly understood, that is, if but treated
historically, and it is inseparable from our belief in man's full
brotherhood with Christ. However imperfect the forms may be in
which that human yearning for God has found expression in different
religions, it has always been the deepest spring of all religions,
and the highest summit reached by Natural Religion. The different
bridges that have been thrown across the gulf that seems to separate
earth from heaven and man from God, may be more or less crude and
faulty, yet we may trust that many a faithful soul has been carried
across by them to a better home. It is quite true that to speak of
a bridge between man and God, even if that bridge is called the
Self, is but a metaphor. But how can we speak of these things except
in metaphors? To return to God is a metaphor, to stand before the
throne of God is a metaphor, to be in Paradise with Christ is a
metaphor.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
The Christian religion should challenge rather than deprecate
comparison. If we find certain doctrines which we thought the
exclusive property of Christianity in other religions also, does
Christianity lose thereby, or is the truth of these doctrines
impaired by being recognised by other teachers also?
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
Love--superseding faith--seems to be the keynote of all
Christianity. But the world is still far from true Christianity, and
whoever is honest towards himself knows how far away he himself is
from the ideal he wishes to reach. One can hardly imagine what this
world would be if we were really what we profess to be, followers
of Christ. The first thing we have to learn is that we are not what
we profess to be. When we have learnt that, we shall at all events
be more forbearing, forgiving, and loving towards others. We shall
believe in them, give them credit for good intentions, with which, I
hope, not hell, but heaven, is paved.
_Life._
Our religion is certainly better and purer than others, but in the
essential points all religions have something in common. They all
start with the belief that there is something beyond, and they are
all attempts to reach out to it.
_Life._
How little was taught by Christ, and yet that is enough, and every
addition is of evil. Love God, love men--that is the whole law and
the prophets--not the Creeds and the Catechism and the Articles and
the endless theological discussions. We want no more, and those who
try to fulfil that simple law, know best how difficult it is, and
how our whole life and our whole power are hardly sufficient to
fulfil that short law.
_MS._
Christ's teaching is plainly that as He is the Son of God so we are
His brothers. His conception of man is a new one, and as that is
new, so must His conception of God be new. He lifts up humanity, and
brings deity near to humanity, and He expresses their inseparable
nature and their separate existences by the best simile which the
world supplies, that of Father and Son. He claims no more for
Himself than He claims for us. His only excellence is that which is
due to Himself--His having been the first to find the Father, and
become again His Son, and His having remained in life and death more
one with the Father than any one of those who professed to believe
in Him, and to follow His example.
_MS._
If Jesus was not God, was He, they ask, a mere man? A _mere_ man? Is
there anything among the works of God, anything next to God, more
wonderful, more awful, more holy than man? Much rather should we
ask, Was then Jesus a mere God? Look at the miserable conceptions
which man made to himself as long as he spoke of gods beside God?
It could not be otherwise. God is one, and he who admits other gods
beside or without Him degrades, nay, denies and destroys the One
God. _A_ God is less than man. True Christianity does not degrade
the Godhead, it exalts manhood, by bringing it back near to God,
as near as it is possible for the human thought to approach the
ineffable and inconceivable Majesty of the true God.
_MS._
If I ventured to speak of God's purpose at all, I should say,
that it is not God's purpose to win only the spiritually gifted,
the humble, the tender hearted, the souls that are discontented
with their own shortcomings, the souls that find happiness in
self-sacrifice--those are His already--but to win the intellectually
gifted, the wise, the cultivated, the clever, or better still, to
win them both. It would be an evil day for Christianity if it could
no longer win the intellectually gifted, the wise, the cultivated,
the clever, and it seems to me the duty of all who really believe in
Christ to show that Christianity, if truly understood, can win the
highest as well as the humblest intellects.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
DEATH
Trust in God! What He does is well done. What we are, we are through
Him; what we suffer, we suffer through His will. We cannot conceive
His wisdom, we cannot fathom His love; but we can trust with a trust
stronger than all other trusts that He will not forsake us, when we
cling to Him, and call on Him, as His Son Jesus Christ has taught us
to call on Him, 'Our Father.' Though this earthly form of ours must
perish, all that was good, and pure, and unselfish in us will live.
Death has no power over what is of God within us. Death changes and
purifies and perfects us, Death brings us nearer to God, where we
shall meet again those that are God's, and love them with that godly
love which can never perish.
_Life._
Would that loving Father begin such a work in us as is now going
on, and then destroy it, leave it unfinished? No, what is will be;
what really is in us will always be; we shall be because we are.
Many things which are now will change, but what we really are we
shall always be; and if love forms really part of our very life,
that love, changed it may be, purified, sanctified, will be with
us, and remain with us through that greatest change which we call
death. The pangs of death will be the same for all that, just as the
pangs of childbirth seem ordained by God in order to moderate the
exceeding joy that a child is born into the world. And as the pain
is forgotten when the child is born, so it will be after death--the
joy will be commensurate to the sorrow. The sorrow is but the effort
necessary to raise ourselves to that new and higher state of being,
and without that supreme effort or agony, the new life that waits
for us is beyond our horizon, beyond our conception. It is childish
to try to anticipate, we cannot know anything about it; we are
meant to be ignorant; even the _Divina Commedia_ of a great poet
and thinker is but child's play, and nothing else.... No illusions,
no anticipations; only that certainty, that quiet rest in God, that
submissive expectation of the soul, which knows that all is good,
all comes from God, all tends to God.
_MS._
As one gets older death seems hardly to make so wide a gap--a few
years more or less, that is all--meantime we know in whose hands we
all are, that life is very beautiful, but death has its beauty too.
_Life._
We accustom ourselves so easily to life as a second nature,
and in spite of the graves around us, death remains something
unnatural, hard and terrifying. That should not be. An early death
is terrifying, but as we grow older our thoughts should accustom
themselves to passing away at the end of a long life's journey. All
is so beautiful, so good, so wisely ordered, that even death can be
nothing hard, nothing disturbing; it all belongs to a great plan,
which we do not understand, but of which we know that it is wiser
than all wisdom, better than all good, that it cannot be otherwise,
cannot be better. In faith we can live and we can die--can even see
those go before us who came before us, and whom we must follow.
All is not according to our will, to our wisdom, but according to
a heavenly will, and those who have once found each other through
God's hand will, clinging to His hand, find each other again.
_Life._
If we are called away sooner or later we ought to part cheerfully,
knowing that this earth could give no more than has been ours, and
looking forward to our new home, as to a more perfect state where
all that was good and true and unselfish in us will live and expand,
and all that was bad and mean will be purified and cast off. So let
us work here as long as it is day, but without fearing the night
that will lead us to a new and brighter dawn of life.
_MS._
Annihilation ... is a word without any conceivable meaning. We
are--that is enough. What we are does not depend on us; what we
shall be neither. We may conceive the idea of change in form, but
not of cessation or destruction of substance. People mean frequently
by annihilation the loss of conscious personality, as distinct from
material annihilation. What I feel about it is shortly this. If
there is anything real and substantial in our conscious personality,
then whatever there is real and substantial cannot cease to exist.
If on the contrary we mean by conscious personality something that
is the result of accidental circumstances, then, no doubt, we must
face the idea of such a personality ceasing to be what it now
is. I believe, however, that the true source and essence of our
personality lies in what is the most real of all real things, and in
so far as it is true, it cannot be destroyed. There is a distinction
between conscious personality and personal consciousness. A child
has personal consciousness, a man who is this or that, a Napoleon,
a Talleyrand, has conscious personality. Much of that conscious
personality is merely temporary, and passes away, but the personal
consciousness remains.
_Life._
One look up to heaven, and all this dust of the highroad of life
vanishes. Yes! one look up to heaven and that dark shadow of death
vanishes. We have made the darkness of that shadow ourselves, and
our thoughts about death are very ungodly. God has willed it so;
there is to be a change, and a change of such magnitude that even
if angels were to come down and tell us all about it, we could not
understand it, as little as the new-born child would understand
what human language could tell about the present life. Think what
the birth of a child, of a human soul, is; and when you have felt
the utter impossibility of fathoming that mystery, then turn your
thoughts upon death, and see in it a new birth equally unfathomable,
but only the continuation of that joyful mystery which we call a
birth. It is all God's work, and where is there a flaw in that
wonder of all wonders, God's ever-working work? If people talk of
the miseries of life, are they not all man's work?
_Life._
Great happiness makes one feel so often that it cannot last, and
that we will have some day to give up all to which one's heart
clings so. A few years sooner or later, but the time will come, and
come quicker than one expects. Therefore I believe it is right to
accustom oneself to the thought that we can none of us escape death,
and that all our happiness here is only lent us. But at the same
time we can thankfully enjoy all that God gives us, ... and there is
still so much left us, so much to be happy and thankful for, and yet
here too the thought always rushes across one's brightest hours: it
cannot last, it is only for a few years and then it must be given
up. Let us work as long as it is day, let us try to do our duty, and
be very thankful for God's blessings which have been showered upon
us so richly--but let us learn also always to look beyond, and learn
to be ready to give up everything,--and yet say, Thy Will be done.
_MS._
It is the most painful work I know looking through the papers and
other things belonging to one who is no more with us. How different
everything looks to what it did before. There is one beautiful
feature about death, it carries off all the small faults of the soul
we loved, it makes us see the true littleness of little things, it
takes away all the shadows, and only leaves the light. That is how
it ought to be; and if in judging of a person we could only bring
ourselves to think how we should judge of them if we saw them on
the bed of death, how different life would be! We always judge in
self-defence, and that makes our judgments so harsh. When they are
gone how readily we forget and forgive everything, how truly we love
all that was lovable in them, how we blame ourselves for our own
littleness in minding this and that, and not simply and truly loving
all that was good and bright and noble. How different life might be
if we could all bring ourselves to be what we really are, good and
loving, and could blow away the dust that somehow or other will fall
on all of us. It is never too late to begin again.
_Life._
The death of those we love is the last lesson we receive in
life--the rest we must learn for ourselves. To me, the older I grow,
and the nearer I feel that to me the end must be, the more perfect
and beautiful all seems to be; one feels surrounded and supported
everywhere by power, wisdom, and love, content to trust and wait,
incapable of murmuring, very helpless, very weak, yet strong in that
very helplessness, because it teaches us to trust in something not
ourselves. Yet parting with those we love is hard--only I fear there
is nothing else that would have kept our eyes open to what is beyond
this life.
_MS._
It is strange how little we all think of death as the condition of
all the happiness we enjoy now. If we could but learn to value each
hour of life, to enjoy it fully, to use it fully, never to spoil
a minute by selfishness, then death would never come too soon; it
is the wasted hours which are like death in life, and which make
life really so short. It is not too late to learn to try to be more
humble, more forbearing, more courteous, or, what is at the root of
all, more loving.
_Life._
The great world for which we live seems to me as good as the little
world in which we live, and I have never known why faith should
fail, when everything, even pain and sorrow, is so wonderfully good
and beautiful. All that we say to console ourselves on the death
of those we loved, and who loved us, is hollow and false; the only
true thing is rest and silence. We cannot understand, and therefore
we must and can trust. There can be no mistake, no gap, in the
world-poem to which we belong; and I believe that those stars which
without their own contrivance have met, will meet again. How, where,
when? God knows this, and that is enough.
_MS._
God has taught us that death is not so terrible as it appears to
most men--it is but a separation for a few short days, and then,
too, eternity awaits us.
_Life._