of our own religion as of other religions, nay, even a more severe
trial. Our religion has sometimes been compared to a good ship that
is to carry us through the waves and tempests of this life to a
safe haven. Would it not be wise, therefore, to have it tested, and
submitted to the severest trials, before we entrust ourselves and
those dear to us to such a vessel. And remember, all men, except
those who take part in the foundation of a new religion, or have
been converted from an old to a new faith, have to accept their
religious belief on trust, long before they are able to judge for
themselves. And while in all other matters an independent judgment
in riper years is encouraged, every kind of influence is used to
discourage a free examination of religious dogmas, once engrafted on
our intellect in its tenderest stage. We condemn an examination of
our own religion, even though it arises from an honest desire to see
with our own eyes the truth which we mean to hold fast; and yet we
do not hesitate to send missionaries into all the world, asking the
faithful to re-examine their own time-honoured religions. We attack
their most sacred convictions, we wound their tenderest feelings,
we undermine the belief in which they have been brought up, and we
break up the peace and happiness of their homes. Yet if some learned
Jew, or subtle Brahman, or outspoken Zulu asks us to re-examine the
date and authorship of the Old or New Testament, or challenges us
to produce the evidence on which we also are quite ready to accept
certain miracles, we are offended, forgetting that with regard to
these questions we can claim no privilege, no immunity.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
If we can respect a childlike and even a childish faith, we ought
likewise to learn to respect even a philosophical atheism which
often contains the hidden seeds of the best and truest faith. We
ought never to call a man an atheist, and say that he does not
believe in God, till we know what kind of God it is he has been
brought up to believe in, and what kind of God it is that he
rejects, it may be, from the best and highest motives. We ought
never to forget that Socrates was called an atheist, that the early
Christians were all called atheists, that some of the best and
greatest men this world has ever known have been branded by that
name.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
I have heard and read the worst that can be said against our
religion--I mean the true original teaching of Christ--and I feel
that I am ready in mind, if not in body, to lay down my life for the
truth of His teaching. All our difficulties arise from the doctrines
of men, not from His doctrine. There is no outward evidence of the
truth of His doctrine, but the Spirit of God that is within us
testifieth to its truth. If it does not, we are not yet disciples of
Christ, but we may be hereafter.
_Life._
Be certain of this, that to repress a doubt is to repress the spirit
of truth; a doubt well spoken out is generally a doubt solved. But
all this requires great seriousness of mind--it must assume an
importance greater than anything else in life, and then we can fight
our way through it. God is with us in our struggles.
_Life._
EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
Evolution is really the same as history, if we take it in its
objective sense. Subjectively, history meant originally inquiry,
or a desire to know; it then came to mean knowledge, obtained by
inquiry, and lastly, in a purely objective sense, the objects of
such knowledge.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
We may discover in all the errors of mythology, and in what we call
the false or pagan religions of this world, a progress towards
truth, a yearning after something more than finite, a growing
recognition of the Infinite, throwing off some of its veils before
our eyes, and from century to century revealing itself to us more
and more in its own purity and holiness. And thus the two concepts,
that of evolution and that of revelation, which seem at first so
different, become one in the end. If there is a purpose running
through the ages, if nature is not blind, if there are agents,
recognised at last as the agents of one Will, behind the whole
phenomenal world, then the evolution of man's belief in that Supreme
Will is itself the truest revelation of that Supreme Will, and
must remain the adamantine foundation on which all religion rests,
whether we call it natural or supernatural.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
The same changes in the idea of God, which we see in the different
books of the Bible, take place in the different chapters of our own
life. The child cannot but represent God to himself as a venerable
man, walking about, warning and reproving the creatures He has made.
The child has no higher conception as yet which it could apply to
God; if it heard of a higher one it could not grasp it. But as the
child grows and gathers in higher conceptions, the lower must give
way to the higher. As long as the evidence of the senses is the only
evidence which a child knows, he demands a visible God. When he
learns that the human senses are different modes of apprehension,
that according to their very nature they can never apprehend except
what is limited, then the mind involuntarily surrenders the visible
God, it believes in God as a Spirit. And so the growth of each man,
and the growth of the whole human race, goes on, and will go on;
and I cannot see how, if the world goes on as it has hitherto, it
can be otherwise but that much of the language of the New Testament
also will have to be surrendered. Changes have lately taken place
with the word _person_. Many things which were formerly comprehended
under personality have been discovered to be mere accessories, and
above the more material conception of personality, of individuality,
or of the I, a higher one is rising, that of the _Self_. The
I, the personality, is made up of many things which are purely
temporal--which are dear to us on earth, but which will pass away,
while the Self will abide for ever. Need we wonder, therefore, that
just those who wish to transfer only their highest to the Godhead
begin to shrink from speaking of a personal God? or insist on
defining the word 'personal' so that it should exclude all that is
incompatible with a perfect, unlimited, unchanging Being? What led
to such expressions as 'God is Love' but a feeling of reverence,
which shrank from speaking of God as loving as we love? This process
will go on as long as the thoughts and words of mankind grow and
change. Let us learn only from the Bible that those who spoke of God
as walking about in Paradise spoke as children, did the best they
could, gave all they had, and who shall say that their two mites
were in the sight of God less precious than all our creeds and
philosophies? They too will change, they too will be looked upon by
future generations as the language of children. But He to whom our
thoughts and prayers are addressed will interpret all languages and
dialects. Before Him the wisdom of the man will not sound much wiser
than the trustful ignorance of the child.
_MS._
FAITH
Next to our faith in God there is nothing so essential to the
healthy growth of our whole being as an unshaken faith in man.
_Chips._
Let us trust in Him to whom alone we owe all our blessings. If we
do not forsake Him, He will never forsake us--we cannot fathom His
love, but we can trust.
_MS._
Separation loses its bitterness when we have faith in each other and
in God. Faith in each other keeps us close together in life, and
faith in God keeps us together in eternity.
_MS._
Those who remember the happiness of the simple faith of their
childhood may well ask why it should ever be disturbed. Knowing
the blessedness of that faith we naturally abstain from everything
that might disturb it prematurely in the minds of those who are
entrusted to us. But, as the child, whether he likes it or not,
grows to be a man, so the faith of a child grows into the faith of
a man. It is not our doing, it is the work of Him who made us what
we are. As all our other ideas grow and change, so does our idea
of God. I know there are men and women who, when they perceive the
first warnings of that inward growth, become frightened and suppress
it with all their might. They shut their eyes and ears to all new
light from within and from without. They wish to remain as happy as
children, and many of them succeed in remaining as good as children.
Who would blame them or disturb them? But those who trust in God
and God's work within them, must go forth to the battle. With them
it would be cowardice and faithlessness to shrink from the trial.
They are not certain that they were meant to be here simply to enjoy
the happiness of a childlike faith. They feel they have a talent
committed to them which must not be wrapped up in a napkin. But the
battle is hard, and all the harder because, while they know they are
obeying the voice of truth, which is the voice of God, many of those
whom they love look upon them as disobeying the voice of God, as
disturbers of the peace, as giving offence to those little ones.
_MS._
There is a difference between the childlike faith of a man (all real
faith must be childlike) and the childlike faith of a child. The one
is Paradise not yet lost, the other Paradise lost but regained. The
one is right for the child, the other is right for the man. It is
the will of God that it should be so--but it is also the will of God
that we should all bear with each other, and join, each in his own
voice, in the great hymn of praise.
_MS._
Faith is that organ of knowledge by which we apprehend the Infinite,
namely, whatever transcends the ken of our senses and the grasp of
our reason. The Infinite is hidden from the senses, it is denied by
Reason, but it is perceived by Faith; and it is perceived, if once
perceived, as underlying both the experience of the senses and the
combinations of reason.
_Science of Language._
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD
Wherever our Father leads us there is our Fatherland.
_Life._
Man must discover that God is his father before he can become a
son of God. To know is here to be, to be to know. No mere miracle
will make man the son of God. That sonship can be gained through
knowledge only, 'through man knowing God, or rather being known of
God,' and till it is so gained it does not exist, even though it
be a fact. If we apply this to the words in which Christ speaks
of Himself as the Son of God, we shall see that to Him it is no
miracle, it is no mystery, it is no question of supernatural
contrivance; it is simply clear knowledge, and it was this
self-knowledge which made Christ what He was, it was this which
constituted His true, His eternal divinity.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
FUTURE LIFE
One wonders indeed how kindred souls become separated, and one feels
startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were on
earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is continuity in
the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what has been
will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and if
only we trust in the Wisdom that pervades and overshadows the whole
Universe, we need not know.
_Auld Lang Syne._
Even if we resign ourselves to the thought that the likenesses and
likelihoods which we project upon the unseen and unknown, nay, that
the hope of our meeting again as we once met on earth, need not
be fulfilled exactly as we shape them to ourselves, where is the
argument to make us believe that the real fulfilment can be less
perfect than what even a weak human heart devises and desires?
This trust that whatever is will be best, is what is meant by
faith, true, because inevitable, faith. We see traces of it in
many places and many religions, but I doubt whether anywhere that
faith is more simply and more powerfully expressed than in the Old
and New Testaments: 'For since the beginning of the world men have
not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O
God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for
Him' (Isaiah lxiv. 4). 'As it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love Him' (1 Cor. ii. 9).
_Hibbert Lectures._
The highest which man can comprehend is man. One step only he may
go beyond, and say that what is beyond may be different, but it
cannot be less perfect than the present; the future cannot be worse
than the past.... That much-decried philosophy of evolution, if it
teaches us anything, teaches us a firm belief in a better future,
and in a higher perfection which man is destined to reach.
_Hibbert Lectures._
In our longings for the departed we often think of them as young
or old, we think of them as man or woman, as father or mother, as
husband or wife. Even nationality and language are supposed to
remain after death, and we often hear expressions, 'Oh! if the
souls are without all this, without age, and sex, and national
character, without even their native language, what will they be to
us?' The answer is, They will really be the same to us they were
in this life. Unless we can bring ourselves to believe that a soul
has a beginning, and that our soul sprang into being at the time of
our birth, the soul within us must have existed before. But however
convinced we may be of the soul's eternal existence, we shall always
remain ignorant as to how it existed. And yet we do not murmur or
complain. Our soul on awakening here is not quite a stranger to
itself, and the souls who, as our parents, our wives, and husbands,
our children, and our friends, have greeted us at first as strangers
in this life, have become to us as if we had known them for ever,
and as if we could never lose them again. If it were to be so again
in the next life, if there also we should meet at first as strangers
till drawn together by the same mysterious love that has drawn us
together here, why should we murmur or complain? Thousands of years
ago we read of a husband telling his wife, 'Verily a wife is not
dear that you may love the wife, but that you may love the soul,
therefore a wife is dear.' What does that mean? It means that true
love consists not in loving what is perishable, but in discovering
and loving what is eternal in man or woman. In Sanscrit that eternal
part is called by many names, but the best seems that used in this
passage, Atma. We translate it by Soul, but it is even higher and
purer than Soul, it is best translated by the word _Self_. That
which constitutes the true Self, the looker-on, the witness within
us, that which is everywhere in the body and yet nowhere to be
touched, that which cannot die or expire, because it never breathed,
that is the Infinite in man which philosophers have been groping
for, though 'he is not far from every one of us.' It is the Divine
or God-like in man.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
The southern Aryans were absorbed in the struggles of thought:
their past is the problem of creation, their future the problem of
existence, and the present, which ought to be the solution of both,
seems never to have attracted their attention, or called forth their
energies. There never was a nation believing so firmly in another
world, and so little concerned about this. Their condition on earth
was to them a problem; their real and eternal life a simple fact.
Though this is true chiefly before they were brought in contact
with foreign conquerors, traces of this character are still visible
in the Hindus as described by the companions of Alexander, nay,
even in the Hindus of the present day. The only sphere in which
the Indian mind finds itself at liberty to act, to create, and to
worship is the sphere of religion and philosophy, and nowhere have
religious and metaphysical ideas struck root so deeply in the mind
of a nation as in India. History supplies no second instance where
the inward life of the soul has so completely absorbed all the other
faculties of a people.
_India._
Our happiness here is but a foretaste of our blessed life hereafter.
We must never forget that. We shall be called away, but we shall
meet again.
_Life._
We must have patience--and we all cling to life as long as there are
those who love us here. Those who love us there are always ours.
Nothing is lost in the world. How it will be, we know not, but if
we have recognised the working of a divine wisdom and love here on
earth, we can take comfort, and wait patiently for that which is to
come.
_Life._
Truly those who die young are blest. And shall we find them again
such as they left us? Why not? It is really here on earth that
those whom we love change, it is here that they die every day....
Where are all those bright joyous faces which we look at when we
open our photograph books from year to year? On earth they are lost,
but are they not treasured up for another life, where we shall be
not only what we are from day to day, never the same to-morrow as we
were yesterday, but where we are at once all that we can be--where
memory is not different from perception, nor our wills different
from our acts? We shall soon know--till then surely we have a right
to be what we are, and to cling to our human hopes. The more human
they are, the nearer the truth they are likely to be.
_Life._
I believe in all our hopes we cannot be human enough. Let us be what
we are--men, feel as men, sorrow as men, hope as men. It is true
our hopes are human, but what are the doubts and difficulties? Are
they not human too? Shall we meet again as we left? Why not? We do
not know _how_ it will be so, but who has a right to say it _cannot_
be so? Let us imagine and hope for the best that, as men, we can
conceive, and then rest convinced that it will be a thousand times
better.
_Life._
The inward voice never suggested or allowed me the slightest doubt
or misgiving about the reality of a future life. If there is
continuity in the world everywhere, why should there be a wrench
and annihilation only with us? It will be as it has been--that is
the lesson we learn from nature--_how_ it will be we are not meant
to know. There is an old Greek saying to the effect, to try to know
what the gods did not tell us is not piety. If God wished us to know
what is to be, He would tell us. Darwin has shown us that there is
continuity from beginning to end.
_Life._
I believe in the continuity of Self. If there were an annihilation
or complete change of our individual self-consciousness, we might
become somebody else, but we should not be ourselves. Personally, I
have no doubt of the persistence of the individual after death, as
we call it. I cannot imagine the very crown and flower of creation
being destroyed by its author. I do not say it is impossible, it
is not for us to say either yes or no; we have simply to trust,
but that trust or faith is implanted in us, and is strengthened by
everything around us.
_Life._
Do we really lose those who are called before us? I feel that they
are even nearer to us than when they were with us in life. We must
take a larger view. Our life does not end here, if only we can see
that our horizon here is but like a curtain that separates us from
what is beyond. Those who go before us are beyond our horizon at
present, but we have no right to suppose that they have completely
vanished. We cannot see them, that is all. And even that, we know,
can last for a short time only. We have lived and done our work in
life, before we knew those we loved, and we may have to live the
same number of years separated from them. But nothing can be lost:
it depends on ourselves to keep those we loved always near to our
thoughts, even though our eyes look in vain for them. The world is
larger than this little earth, our thoughts go further than this
short life, and if we can but find our home in this larger world, we
shall find that this larger home is full of those whom we loved, and
who loved us. There is no _chance_ in life; a few years more, a few
years less, will seem as nothing to us hereafter.
_Life._
I fully take in the real death (of my child), I know I shall follow
and die the same real death, and through that same real death I
trust the spirit of Christ will be my guide and helper, and bring
me to a better life, and unite me again with those whom I have
loved, and whom I love still, and those who have loved me and love
me still. God is no giver of imperfect gifts, and He has given me
life, but life on earth is imperfect. He has given me love, but love
on earth is imperfect. I believe, I must believe in perfection, and
therefore I believe in a life perfected and in a love perfected.
'Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders--Gott helfe mich Amen.'
_MS._
It seems hard, it seems so unintelligible, so far above us, that we
should know nothing at all of what is to come--that we should be
so completely separated for a time from those whom we love. Whence
all these limits? whence all those desires in us that cannot be
fulfilled? The limits teach us one lesson, that we are in the Hands
of a Higher Power. Wonderful as our body and our senses are, they
are a prison and chains, and they could not be meant for anything
else.
_MS._
Of what is to come, what is in store for us, we know nothing; and
the more we know that, the greater and stronger our faith. It must
be right, it cannot be wrong. Why was the past often so beautiful?
Because all tends to beauty, to perfection, and the highest point
of perfection is love. We are far from that here, yet all the
miseries of this life, or many at least, would vanish before love.
Life seems most unnatural in what we call the most highly civilised
countries--the struggle of life is fiercest there. Rest and love
seem impossible, and yet that is what we are yearning for, and it
may be granted us hereafter.
_MS._
How is it that we know so little of life after death? that we can
hardly imagine anything without feeling that it is all human poetry?
We are to believe the best, but nothing definite, nothing that can
be described. It is the same with God, we are to believe the best we
can believe, and yet all is earthly, human, weak. We are in a dark
prison here; let us believe that outside it there is no darkness,
but light--but what light, who knows?
_MS._
Wait, wait, do not ask. Children ask every year what the Christ
Child will bring them, but they are not told, they wait in the dark
room. Every year they expect something quite new, but it is always
the same old Christmas-tree, with its lights and flowers, and all
the rest. And why should it be so different when the door opens,
and we step out of this dark life into the bright room? Why should
all be different? We have stepped into this dark room here on earth,
and how often did we think it was very bright and very warm. We
shall step into another room, and it will be brighter, warmer, more
pure, more perfect.
_MS._
What is past, present, future? Is it not all one? only the past and
the future somewhere where at present we cannot be. Wait a little
time, and the eternal will take the place of the present,--and we
shall have the past again,--for the past is not lost. Nothing is
lost--but this waiting is sometimes very hard, and this longing very
hard. Friends go on all sides, it seems a different world, yet there
is work to do, and there is much left to love.
_MS._
If immortality is meant for no more than a continuance of existence,
if by a belief in immortality on the part of the Jews is meant no
more than that the Jews did not believe in the annihilation of the
soul at the time of death, we may confidently assert that, to the
bulk of the Jewish nation, this very idea of annihilation was as
yet unfamiliar. The fact is that the idea of absolute annihilation
and nothingness is hardly ever found except among people whose
mind has received some amount of philosophical education, certainly
more than what the Jews possessed in early times. The Jews did not
believe in the utter destruction of the soul, but, on the other
hand, their idea of life after death was hardly that of life at all.
It was existence without life. Death was considered by them, as by
the Greeks, as the greatest of misfortunes. To rejoice in death is a
purely Christian, not a Jewish, idea. Though the Jews believed that
the souls continued to exist in Sheol, they did not believe that the
wicked would there be punished and the good rewarded. All rewards
and punishments for virtue or vice were confined to this world, and
a long life was regarded as a sure proof of the favour of Jehovah.
It was the Jewish conception of God, as infinitely removed from this
world, that made a belief in true immortality almost impossible for
them, and excluded all hope for a nearer approach to God, or for
any share in that true immortality which belonged to Him and to Him
alone.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
Our angels live in heaven, not on earth. We only recognise the
angelic in man, even in those we love the most, when we can no
longer see them. They are then nearer us than ever, we love them
more than ever. Happy are those who have such angels in heaven,
who draw our hearts away from earth and fill them with longing for
our true home. They lighten the burden of life, they give a quiet,
gentle tone to the joys of life, and they teach us to love those who
are left to us on earth, it may be but for a few days or years, with
a love which we never knew before, a love which bears all things,
believes all things, and gladly pardons all things.
_MS._
Life Eternal. Why do we so seldom face the great problem? With me
the chief reason was the conviction that we can _know_ nothing--that
we must wait and trust--do our work for the day which is--and
believe that nothing can happen to us unless God wills it. Know,
where knowledge is possible; believe, trust where faith only is
possible.
_MS._
I know we shall meet again, for God does not destroy what He has
made, nor do souls meet by accident. This life is full of riddles,
but divine riddles have a divine solution.
_Life._
THE INFINITE