sides, and yet we fancy it is the whole universe. But when the door
opens and a loved one passes out, never to return, we too step to
the door and look out into the distance, and realise then how small
and empty the dwelling is, and how a larger, more beautiful world
waits for us without. How it is in that larger world, who can say?
but if we were so happy in the narrow dwelling, how far more happy
shall we be out there! Be not afraid. See how beautifully all is
ordered; look up to the widespread firmament, and think how small
it is in comparison with God's almighty power. He who regulates the
courses of the stars will regulate the fate of the souls of men, and
those souls who have once met, shall they not meet again like the
stars?
_MS._
Those who are absent are often nearer to us than those who are
present.
_MS._
We reckon too little with death, and then when it comes it
overwhelms us. We know all the time that our friends must go, and
that we must go, but we shut our eyes, and enjoy their love and
friendship as if life could never end. We should say good-bye to
each other every evening--perhaps the last good-bye would find us
then less unprepared.
_MS._
There is something so natural in death. We come and we go, there is
no break.
_Life._
What is more natural in life than death? and having lived this long
life, so full of light, having been led so kindly by a Fatherly hand
through all storms and struggles, why should I be afraid when I have
to make the last step?
_Life._
THE DEITY
We clearly see that the possibility of intercourse between man and
God, and a revelation of God to man, depends chiefly or exclusively
on the conception which man has previously formed of God and man.
In all theological researches we must carefully bear in mind that
the idea of God is _our_ idea, which we have formed in part through
tradition, and in part by our own thinking. God is and remains
_our_ God. We can have a knowledge of Him only through our inner
consciousness, not through our senses.
_Silesian Horseherd._
Our duties toward God and man, our love for God and for man, are
as nothing without the firm foundation which is formed only by our
faith in God, as the Thinker and Ruler of the world, the Father of
the Son, who was revealed through Him as the Father of all sons, of
all men.
_Silesian Horseherd._
Though Christianity has given us a purer and truer idea of the
Godhead, of the majesty of His power and the holiness of His will,
there remains with many of us the conception of a merely objective
Deity. God is still with many of us in the clouds, so far removed
from the earth and so high above anything human, that in trying
to realise fully the meaning of Christ's teaching we often shrink
from approaching too near to the blinding effulgence of Jehovah.
The idea that we should stand to Him in the relation of children
to their father seems to some people almost irreverent, and the
thought that God is near us everywhere, the belief that we are also
His offspring, nay, that there has never been an absolute barrier
between divinity and humanity, has often been branded as Pantheism.
Yet Christianity would not be Christianity without this so-called
Pantheism, and it is only some lingering belief in something like a
Jove-like Deus Optimus Maximus that keeps the eyes of our mind fixed
with awe on the God of Nature without, rather than on the much more
awful God of the soul within.
_Chips._
The idea of God is the result of an unbroken historical evolution,
call it a development, an unveiling, or a purification, but not
of a sudden revelation.... What right have we to find fault with
the manner in which the Divine revealed itself, first to the eyes,
and then to the mind, of man? Is the revelation in nature really
so contemptible a thing that we can afford to despise it, or at
the utmost treat it as good enough for the heathen world? Our eyes
must have grown very dim, our mind very dull, if we can no longer
perceive how the heavens declare the glory of God.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
A belief in one Supreme God, even if at first it was only a
henotheistic, and not yet a monotheistic belief, took possession of
the leading spirits of the Jewish race at a very early time. All
tradition assigns that belief in One God, the Most High, to Abraham.
Abraham, though he did not deny the existence of the gods worshipped
by the neighbouring tribes, yet looked upon them as different from,
and as decidedly inferior to, his own God. His monotheism was, no
doubt, narrow. His God was the friend of Abraham, as Abraham was
the friend of God. Yet the concept of God formed by Abraham was a
concept that could and did grow. Neither Moses, nor the Prophets,
nor Christ Himself, nor even Mohammed, had to introduce a new God.
Their God was always called the God of Abraham, even when freed
from all that was local and narrow in the faith of that patriarch.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
To some any attempt to trace back the name and concept of Jehovah
to the same hidden sources from which other nations derived their
first intimation of deity may seem almost sacrilegious. They forget
the difference between the human concept of the Deity and the
Deity itself, which is beyond the reach of all human concepts. But
the historian reads deeper lessons in the growth of these human
concepts, as they spring up everywhere in the minds of men who have
been seekers after truth--seeking the Lord if haply they might feel
after Him and find Him--and when he can show the slow but healthy
growth of the noblest and sublimest thoughts out of small and
apparently insignificant beginnings, he rejoices as the labourer
rejoices over his golden harvest; nay, he often wonders what is
more truly wonderful, the butterfly that soars up to heaven on its
silvery wings, or the grub that hides within its mean chrysalis such
marvellous possibilities.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
The concept of God arises out of necessity in the human mind, and
is not, as many theologians will have it, the result of one special
disclosure, granted to Jews and Christians only. It seems to me
impossible to resist this conviction, where a comparative study
of the great religions of the world shows us that the highest
attributes which we claim for the Deity are likewise ascribed to it
by the Sacred Books of other religions.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
We can now repeat the words which have been settled for us centuries
ago, and which we have learnt by heart in our childhood--I believe
in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth--with the conviction
that they express, not only the faith of the apostles, or of
oecumenical councils, but that they contain the Confession of
Faith of the whole world, expressed in different ways, conveyed in
thousands of languages, but always embodying the same fundamental
truth. I call it fundamental, because it is founded, in the very
nature of our mind, our reason, and our language, on a simple and
ineradicable conviction that where there are acts there must be
agents, and in the end one Prime Agent, whom man may know, not
indeed in His own inscrutable essence, yet in His acts, as revealed
in Nature.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
The historical proof of the existence of God, which is supplied to
us by the history of the religions of the world, has never been
refuted, and cannot be refuted. It forms the foundation of all the
other proofs, call them cosmological, ontological, or teleological,
or rather it absorbs them all, and makes them superfluous. There
are those who declare that they require no proof at all for the
existence of a Supreme Being, or if they did, they would find it
in revelation, and nowhere else. Suppose they wanted no proof
themselves, would they really not care at all to know how the
human race, and how they themselves, came in possession of what, I
suppose, they value as their most precious inheritance? An appeal
to revelation is of no avail in deciding questions of this kind,
unless it is first explained what is really meant by revelation. The
history of religions teaches us that the same appeal to a special
revelation is made, not only by Christianity, but by the defenders
of Brâhmanism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism, and where is the
tribunal to adjudicate on the conflicting appeals of these and other
claimants? The followers of every one of these religions declare
their belief in the revealed character of their own religion, never
in that of any other religion. There is, no doubt, a revelation to
which we may appeal in the court of our own conscience, but before
the court of universal appeal we require different proofs for the
faith that is in us.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
Given man, such as he is, and given the world, such as it is, a
belief in divine beings, and, at last, in one Divine Being, is not
only a universal, but an inevitable fact.... If from the standpoint
of human reason no flaw can be pointed out in the intellectual
process which led to the admission of something within, behind, or
beyond nature, call it the Infinite or any other name you like, it
follows that the history of that process is really, at the same
time, the best proof of the legitimacy and truth of the conclusions
to which it has led.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
There is no predicate in human language worthy of God, all we can
say of Him is what the Upanishads said of Him, No, No! What does
that mean? It meant that if God is called all-powerful, we have
to say No, because whatever we comprehend by powerful is nothing
compared with the power of God. If God is called all-wise, we have
again to say No, because what we call wisdom cannot approach the
wisdom of God. If God is called holy, again we have to say No, for
what can our conception of holiness be compared with the holiness
of God? This is what the thinkers of the Upanishads meant when they
said that all we can say of God is No, No.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
If people would only define what they mean by knowing, they would
shrink from the very idea that God can ever be known by us in the
same sense in which everything else is known, or that with regard
to Him we could ever be anything but Agnostics. All human knowledge
begins with the senses, and goes on from sensations to percepts,
from percepts to concepts and names. And yet the same people who
insist that they know God, will declare in the same breath that
no one can see God and live. Let us only define the meaning of
knowing, and keep the different senses in which this word has been
used carefully apart, and I doubt whether any one would venture
to say that, in the true sense of the word, he is not an Agnostic
as regards the true nature of God. This silence before a nameless
Being does not exclude a true belief in God, nor devotion, nor love
of a Being beyond our senses, beyond our understanding, beyond our
reason, and therefore beyond all names.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
Every one of the names given to this infinite Being by finite
beings marks a stage in the evolution of religious truth. If once
we try to understand these names, we shall find that they were all
well meant, that, for the time being, they were probably the only
possible names. The Historical School does not look upon all the
names given to divine powers as simply true or simply false. We look
upon all of them as well meant and true for the time being, as steps
on the ladder on which the angels of God ascend and descend. There
was no harm in the ancient people, when they were thirsting for
rain, invoking the sky, and saying, 'O, dear sky, send us rain!' And
when after a time they used more and more general words, when they
addressed the powers (of nature) as bright, or rich, or mighty, all
these were meant for something else, for something they were seeking
for, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him. This is St.
Paul's view of the growth of religion.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
When God has once been conceived without 'any manner of similitude,'
He may be meditated on, revered, and adored, but that fervent
passion of the human breast, that love with all our heart, and all
our soul, and all our might, seems to become hushed before that
solemn presence. We may love our father and mother with all our
heart, we may cling to our children with all our soul, we may be
devoted to wife, or husband, or friend with all our might, but to
throw all these feelings in their concentrated force and truth on
the Deity has been given to very few on earth.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
If the history of religion has taught us anything, it has taught
us to distinguish between the names and the thing named. The names
may change, and become more and more perfect, and our concepts of
the Deity may become more perfect also, but the Deity itself is
not affected by our names. However much the names may differ and
change, there remains, as the last result of the study of religion,
the everlasting conviction that behind all the names there is
something named, that there is an agent behind all acts, that there
is an Infinite behind the finite, that there is a God in Nature.
That God is the abiding goal of many names, all well meant and well
aimed, and yet all far, far away from the goal which no man can
see and--live. All names that human language has invented may be
imperfect. But the name 'I am that I am' will remain for those who
think Semitic thought, while to those who speak Aryan languages
it will be difficult to invent a better name than the Vedanta
Sa_k_-_k_id-ânanda, He who is, who knows, who is blessed.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
However much we may cease to speak the language of the faith of our
childhood, the faith in a superintending and ever-present Providence
grows only stronger the more we see of life, the more we know of
ourselves. When that Bass-note is right, we may indulge in many
variations, we shall never go entirely wrong.
_MS._
We do not see the hand that takes our dear ones from us, but we
know whose hand it is, whose will it is. We have no name for Him,
we do not know Him, but we know that whatever name we give, He will
understand it. That is the foundation of all religion. Let us give
the best name we can find in us, let us know that even that must be
a very imperfect name, but let us trust that if we only believe in
that name, if we use it, not because it is the fashion, but because
we can find no better name, He will understand and forgive. Every
name is true if we are true, every name is false if we are false. If
we are true our religion is true, if we are false our religion is
false. An honest fetish worshipper even is better than a scoffing
Pope.
_MS._
In the ordinary sense of knowledge we cannot have any knowledge of
God; our very idea of God implies that He is beyond our powers of
perception and understanding. Then what can we do? Shut our eyes
and be silent? That will not satisfy creatures such as we are.
We must speak, but all our words apply to things perceptible or
intelligible. The old Buddhists used to say, The only thing we can
say of God is No, No! He is not this, He is not that. Whatever we
can see or understand, He is not that. But again I say that kind of
self-denial will not satisfy such creatures as we are. What can we
do? We can only give the best we have. Now the best we have or know
on earth is Love, therefore we say God is Love or loving. Love is
entire self-surrender, we can go no further in our conception of
what is best. And yet how poor a name it is in comparison of what
we want to name. Our idea of love includes, as you say, humility, a
looking up and worshipping. Can we say that of God's love? Depend
upon it, the best we say is but poor endeavour,--it is well we
should know it,--and yet, if it is the best we have and can give, we
need not be ashamed.
_Life._
And now that generations after generations have passed away, with
their languages--adoring and worshipping the Name of God--preaching
and dying in the Name of God--thinking and meditating on the Name
of God--there the old word stands still, breathing to us the pure
air of the dawn of humanity, carrying with it all the thoughts and
sighs, the doubts and tears, of our bygone brethren, and still
rising up to heaven with the same sound from the basilicas of Rome
and the temples of Benares, as if embracing by its simple spell
millions and millions of hearts in their longing desire to give
utterance to the unutterable, to express the inexpressible.
_Life._
THE DIVINE
It was, after all, the Jew who, in the great history of the world,
was destined to solve the riddle of the Divine in man. It was the
soil of Jewish thought that in the end gave birth to the true
conception of the relation between the Divine in nature and the
Divine in man.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
When the Divine in the outward world has once been fully recognised,
there can be nothing more or less divine, nothing more or less
miraculous, either in nature or in history. Those who assign a
divine and miraculous character to certain consecrated events only
in the history of the world, are in great danger of desecrating
thereby the whole drama of history, and of making it, not only
profane, but godless. It is easy to call this a pantheistic view of
the world. It is pantheistic, in the best sense of the word, so much
so that any other view would soon become atheistic. Even the Greeks
suspected the omnipresence of the Divine, when, as early as the
time of Thales, they declared that _all_ is full of the gods. The
choice here lies really between Pantheism and Atheism. If anything,
the greatest or the smallest, can ever happen without the will of
God, then God is no longer God. To distinguish between a direct and
indirect influence of the Divine, to admit a general and a special
providence, is like a relapse into polytheism, a belief in one and
many gods.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
Human nature is divine nature modified. It can be nothing else.
Christ, in shaking off all that is not divine in man,--let us call
it by one general name, all that is selfish,--resumed His own
divinity.
_MS._
God comes to us in the likeness of man--there is no other likeness
for God. And that likeness is not forbidden, Christ has taught us
to see and love God in man. We cannot go further. If we attempt
to conceive anything more than human, our mind breaks down. But
we can conceive and perceive the Divine in man, and most in those
who are risen from the earth. While we live our love is human, and
mixed with earthly things. We love and do not love--we even hate,
or imagine we do. But we do not really hate any man, we only hate
something that surrounds and hides man. What is behind, the true
nature of man, we always love. Death purifies man, it takes away the
earthly crust, and we can love those who are dead far better than
those who are still living: that is the truth. We do not deceive
ourselves, we do not use vain words. Love is really purer, stronger,
and more unselfish when it embraces those who are risen. That is why
the Apostles loved Christ so much better when He was no longer with
them. While He lived, Peter could deny Him--when He had returned to
the Father, Peter was willing to die for Him. All that is so true,
only one must have gone through it, felt it oneself, in order to
understand it. If one knows the love one feels for the blessed, one
wants no temporary resurrection to account for the rekindled love of
the Apostles. They believed that Christ had truly risen, that death
had no power over Him, that He was with the Father. Was not that
more, far more, than a return to this fleeting life for a few hours,
or days, or weeks, or than an ascent through the clouds to the blue
sky? Ah! how the great truths have been exchanged for small fancies,
the _mira_ for the _miracula_.
_MS._
DOUBTS
There is certainly no happier life than a life of simple faith; of
literal acceptance, of rosy dreams. We must all grant that, if it
were possible, nothing would be more perfect. I gladly acknowledge
that some of the happiest, and also some of the best men and women
I have known, were those who would have shrunk with horror from
questioning a single letter of the Bible, or doubting that a serpent
actually spoke to Eve, and an ass to Balaam. But can we prevent the
light of the sun and the noises of the street from waking the happy
child from his heavenly dreams? Nay, is it not our duty to wake the
child, when the time has come that he must be up and doing, and take
his share in the toils of the day? And is it not well for those who
for the first time open their eyes and look around, that they should
see by their side some who have woke before them, who understand
their inquiring looks, and can answer their timid questions and
tell them in the simple-hearted language of the old poet:
'There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.'
_Gifford Lectures, III._
There is an atheism which is unto death, there is another atheism
which is the life-blood of all true faith. It is the power of
giving up what, in our best, our most honest, moments, we know to
be no longer true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect,
however dear, however sacred it may have been to us, by the more
perfect, however much it may be detested, as yet, by the world. It
is the true self-surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest
trust in truth, the truest faith. Without that atheism religion
would long ago have become a petrified hypocrisy; without that
atheism no new religion, no reform, no reformation, no resuscitation
would ever have been possible; without that atheism no new life is
possible for any one of us.
_Hibbert Lectures._
How many men in all countries and all ages have been called
atheists, not because they denied that there existed anything beyond
the visible and the finite, or because they declared that the world,
such as it was, could be explained without a cause, without a
purpose, without a God, but often because they differed only from
the traditional conception of the Deity prevalent at the time, and
were yearning after a higher conception of God than what they had
learnt in their childhood.
_Hibbert Lectures._
There are moments in our life when those who seek most earnestly
after God think they are forsaken of God; when they hardly venture
to ask themselves, Do I then believe in God, or do I not? Let them
not despair, and let us not judge harshly of them; their despair may
be better than many creeds.... Honest doubt is the deepest spring of
honest faith; only he who has lost can find.
_Hibbert Lectures._
If we have once claimed the freedom of the spirit which St. Paul
claimed: to prove all things and hold fast that which is good: we
cannot turn back, we cannot say that no one shall prove our own
religion, no one shall prove other religions and compare them with
our own. We have to choose once for all between freedom and slavery
of judgment, and though I do not wish to argue with those who prefer
slavery, yet one may remind them that even they, in deliberately
choosing slavery, follow their own private judgment quite as much
as others do in choosing freedom.
_Gifford Lectures, III._