It has been truly said, and most emphatically, by Dr. Newman, that
neither a belief in God by itself, nor a belief in the soul by
itself, would constitute religion, and that real religion is founded
on a true perception of the relation of the soul to God, and of God
to the soul.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
It may be truly said that the founders of the religions of the world
have all been bridge-builders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond,
of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us, had
been recognised, a great gulf seemed to be fixed between what was
called by various names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material
and the spiritual, the phenomenal and nomenal, or best of all, the
visible and invisible world, and it was the chief object of religion
to unite these two worlds again, whether by the arches of hope and
fear, or by the iron chains of logical syllogisms.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
Religion, in order to be _real_ religion, a man's own religion,
must be searched for, must be discovered, must be conquered. If it
is simply inherited, or accepted as a matter of course, it often
happens that in later years it falls away, and has either to be
reconquered, or to be replaced by another religion.
_Autobiography._
Religion is growth, never finished. From the lowest to the highest
stages it is growth, not willed only, nor given only, but both. The
lowest stages may seem very imperfect to us, but they are all the
more important. Language and mythology show us the old path on which
man travelled from Nature to God.
_MS._
There is no lesson which at the present time seems more important
than to learn that in every religion there are precious grains; that
we must draw in every religion a broad distinction between what is
essential and what is not, between the eternal and the temporary,
between the divine and the human, and that though the non-essential
may fill many volumes, the essential can often be comprehended in a
few words, but words on which 'hang all the law and the prophets.'
_Preface, Sacred Books of the East._
Religions were meant to be many, like languages. To us, one language
for the whole human race would seem to be far better; but it was
not to be. Each language was to be a school for each race, a talent
committed to each nation. And so it is with religion. There is
truth in all of them, the whole truth in none. Let each one cherish
his own, purify his own, and throw away what is dead and decaying.
But to give up one's religion is like giving up one's life. Even
the lowest savage must keep his own old faith in God, when he
becomes converted to Christianity, or he will have lost the living
and life-giving root of his faith. If people would only learn to
look for what is good in all religions, how far more beautiful the
world would appear in their eyes. They dig hard enough to get the
ore from out a mine, they sift it, smelt it, purify it, and then
keep the small pieces of gold they have got with all this trouble,
forgetting the _scoriae_ and all the refuse. That is what we must
do as students of religion; but we do the very contrary--we hug the
_scoriae_ and shut our eyes to the glittering rays of gold. Jews
and Christians are worse in that respect than all other people.
It may be because their religions are freer from human impurities
than all other religions. But why should that make them blind to
what is really good in other religions, why should it blind them so
much that they look upon other religions as the work of the Devil?
The power of evil has had its work in all religions, our own not
excepted--but the power of goodness prevails everywhere. Till we
know that, life and history seem intolerable. It would not put an
end to missionary labour, it would only make it more a labour of
love, less painful to those whom we wish to win, not away from their
God, but back to their God, Him whom they ignorantly worship, and
whom we should declare unto them, according to our own light, such
as it is, less dark than theirs on many points, but yet dark, as
those know best who, like St. Paul, have striven hardest to look
through the glass of our own weak human mind.
_MS._
If people would only learn to see that there is really a religion
beyond all religions, that each man must have his own religion which
he has conquered for himself, and that we must learn to tolerate
religion wherever we find it! Christianity would be a perfect
religion, if it did not go beyond the simple words of Christ, and
if, even in these words, we made full allowance for the time and
place and circumstances in which they were spoken--that is, if we
simply followed Christ where He wishes us to follow Him. We have
gone far beyond those times and circumstances in many things, but
in what is most essential we are still far behind the teaching of
Christ. How many call themselves Christians who have no idea how
difficult it is to be a Christian, a follower of Christ! It is easy
enough to repeat creeds, and to work ourselves into a frame of mind
when miracles seem most easy.
_MS._
It was the duty of the Apostles and of the early Christians in
general to stand forth in the name of the only true God, and to
prove to the world that their God had nothing in common with the
idols worshipped at Athens and Ephesus. It was the duty of the
early converts to forswear all allegiance to their former deities,
and if they could not at once bring themselves to believe that the
gods whom they had worshipped had no existence at all, they were
naturally led on to ascribe to them a kind of demoniacal nature,
and to curse them as the offspring of that new principle of Evil
with which they had become acquainted in the doctrines of the early
Church.... Through the whole of St. Augustine's works, and through
all the works of earlier Christian divines, there runs the same
spirit of hostility blinding them to all that may be good, and true,
and sacred, and magnifying all that is bad, false, and corrupt,
in the ancient religions of mankind. Only the Apostles and their
immediate disciples venture to speak in a different and, no doubt,
in a more truly Christian spirit of the old forms of worships....
What can be more convincing, more powerful, than the language of St.
Paul at Athens?
_Science of Language._
Those who believe that there is a God, and that He created heaven
and earth, and that He ruleth the world by His unceasing providence,
cannot believe that millions of human beings, all created like
ourselves in the image of God, were, in their time of ignorance, so
utterly abandoned that their whole religion was falsehood, their
whole worship a farce, their whole life a mockery. An honest and
independent study of the religions of the world will teach us that
it was not so, ... that there is no religion which does not contain
some grains of truth. Nay, it will teach us more; it will teach us
to see in the history of the ancient religions, more clearly than
anywhere else, the _Divine education of the human race_.
_Science of Religion._
The Divine, if it is to reveal itself at all to us, will best reveal
itself in our own human form. However far the human may be from the
Divine, nothing on earth is nearer to God than man, nothing on earth
more godlike than man. And as man grows from childhood to old age,
the idea of the Divine must grow with us from the cradle to the
grave, from grace to grace. A religion which is not able thus to
grow and live with us as we grow and live, is dead already. Definite
and unvarying uniformity, so far from being a sign of honesty and
life, is always a sign of dishonesty and death. Every religion, if
it is to be a bond between the wise and the foolish, the old and
the young, must be pliant, must be high and deep and broad; bearing
all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all
things. The more it is so, the greater its vitality, the greater the
strength and warmth of its embrace.
_Hibbert Lectures._
REVELATION
True inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of truth
within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It is
truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth.
Whoever knows what truth is knows also what inspiration is: not only
_theopneustos_, blown into the soul by God, but the very voice of
God, the real presence of God, the only presence in which we, as
human beings, can ever perceive Him.
_Autobiography._
There is nothing in the idea of revelation that excludes progress,
for whatever definition of revelation we may adopt, it always
represents a communication between the Divine on one side and
the Human on the other. Let us grant that the Divine element in
revelation, that is, whatever of truth there is in revelation, is
immutable, yet the human element, the recipient, must always be
liable to the accidents and infirmities of human nature. That human
element can never be eliminated in any religion.... To ignore that
human element in all religions is like ignoring the eye as the
recipient and determinant of the colours of light. We know more of
the sun than our forefathers, though the same sun shone on them that
shines on us; and if astronomy has benefited by its telescopes,
... theology also ought not to despise whatever can strengthen the
far-sightedness of human reason in its endeavour to gain a truer
and purer idea of the Divine. A veil will always remain. But as in
every other pursuit, so in religion also, we want less and less
of darkness, more and more of light; we want, call it life, or
growth, or development, or progress; we do not want mere rest, mere
stagnation, mere death.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
It was the sense of an overpowering truth which led to the admission
of a revelation. But while in the beginning truth made revelation,
it soon came to pass that revelation was supposed to make truth.
When we see this happening in every part of the world, when we can
watch the psychological progress which leads in the most natural way
to a belief in supernatural inspiration, it will hardly be said that
an historical study of religion may be useful to the antiquarian,
but cannot help us to solve the burning questions of the day.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
I believe in one revelation only--the revelation within us, which is
much better than any revelations which come from without. Why should
we look for God and listen for His voice outside us only, and not
within us? Where is the temple of God, or the true kingdom of God?
_Life._
There are Christian mystics who would not place internal revelation,
or the voice of God within the heart, so far below external
revelation. To those who know the presence of God within the heart,
this revelation is far more real than any other can be. They hold
with St. Paul that man is in the full sense of the word the temple
of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth within him, nay, they
go even further, and both as Christians and as mystics they cling
to the belief that all men are one in the Father and the Son, as
the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father. There is no
conflict in their minds between Christian doctrine and mystic
doctrine. They are one and the same in character, the one imparted
through Christ on earth, the other imparted through the indwelling
spirit of God, which again is Christ, as born within us. The Gospel
of St. John is full of passages to which the Christian mystic
clings, and by which he justifies his belief in the indwelling
spirit of God, or, as he also calls it, the birth of Christ in the
human soul.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
I cannot connect any meaning with a primeval revelation, or with
an original knowledge of God. A knowledge of God is surely at all
times impossible; man can only trust, he cannot know. He can feel
the Infinite, and the Divine, he can never class it or subdue it by
knowledge. The question seems to me, how our unconscious relation
to God, which must be there and can never be destroyed, becomes
gradually more and more conscious; and that is what one can best
learn to understand in the history of the various religions of the
world--so many voyages of discovery, each full of sufferings and
heroic feats, all looking towards the same Pole, each to be judged
by itself, none, I believe, to be condemned altogether.
_MS._
To assume that every word, every letter, every parable, every
figure was whispered to the authors of the Gospels, is certainly
an absurdity, and rests only on human ... authority. But the true
revelation, the real truth, as it was already anticipated by the
Greek philosophers, slowly accepted by Jews, like Philo and the
contemporaries of Jesus, taught by men like Clement and Origen in
the ancient Greek Church, and, in fine, realised in the life of
Jesus, and sealed by His death, is no absurdity: it is for every
thinking Christian the eternal life, or the Kingdom of God on earth,
which Jesus wished to establish, and in part did establish. To
become a citizen of this Kingdom is the highest that man can attain,
but it is not attained merely through baptism and confirmation; it
must be gained in earnest spiritual conflict.
_Silesian Horseherd._
THE RIG-VEDA
The _Veda_ alone of all works I know treats of a genesis of
God-consciousness, compared to which the Theogony of Hesiod is
like a worn-out creature. We see it grow slowly and gradually with
all its contradictions, its sudden terrors, its amazements, and
its triumphs. As God reveals His Being in nature in her order, her
indestructibility, in the eternal victory of light over darkness,
of spring over winter, in the eternally returning course of the
sun and the stars, so man has gradually spelt out of nature the
Being of God, and after trying a thousand names for God in vain,
we find Him in the _Veda_ already saying: 'They call him Indra,
Mitra, Varuna; then they call him the Heavenly, the bird with
beautiful wings; that which is One they call in various ways.'...
The belief in Immortality is only the other side, as it were, of the
God-consciousness, and both are originally natural to the Aryan race.
_Life._
SCIENCE
Every true Science is like a hardy Alpine guide that leads us on
from the narrow, though it may be the more peaceful and charming,
valleys of our preconceived opinions, to higher points, apparently
less attractive, nay often disappointing for a time, till, after
hours of patient and silent climbing, we look round and see a new
world around us.
_Chips._
A new horizon has opened, our eyes see far and wide, and as the
world beneath us grows wider and larger, our own hearts seem to
grow wider and larger, and we learn to embrace the far and distant,
and all that before seemed strange and indifferent, with a warmer
recognition and a deeper human sympathy; we form wider concepts, we
perceive higher truths.
_Chips._
What is natural is divine; what is supernatural is human.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
Man is the measurer of all things; and what is Science but the
reflection of the outer world on the mirror of the mind, growing
more perfect, more orderly, more definite, more great, with every
generation? To attempt to study nature without studying man is as
impossible as to study light without studying the eye. I have no
misgivings, therefore, that the lines on which this College (Mason
Science College) is founded will ever become so narrow as to exclude
the science of man, and the science of that which makes man, the
science of language, and, what is really the same, the science of
thought. And where can we study the science of thought, that most
wonderful instance of development, except in the languages and
literatures of the past? How are we to do justice to our ancestors
except by letting them plead their own case in their own language?
Literary culture can far better dispense with physical science than
physical science with literary culture, though nothing is more
satisfactory than a perfect combination of the two.
_Life._
THE SELF
As behind the various gods of nature, one supreme deity was at last
discovered in India, the Brahmans imagined that they perceived
behind the different manifestations of feeling, thought, and will
also, a supreme power which they called Atma, or Self, and of
which the intellectual powers or faculties were but the outward
manifestations. This led to a philosophy which took the place of
religion, and recognised in the self the only true being, the
unborn and therefore immortal element in man. A step further led
to the recognition of the original identity of the subjective Self
in man, and the objective Self in nature, and thus, from an Indian
point of view, to a solution of all the riddles of the world. The
first commandment of all philosophy, 'Know thyself,' became in the
philosophy of the Upanishads, 'Know thyself as the Self,' or, if we
translate it into religious language, 'Know that we live and move
and have our being in God.'
_Gifford Lectures, I._
The death of a child is as if the flash of the Divine eye had
turned quickly away from the mirror of this world, before the human
consciousness woke up and thought it recognised itself in the
mirror, often only to perceive for a moment, just as it closes its
eyes for the last time, that that which it took for itself was the
shadow or reflection of its eternal self.
_Life._
A man need not go into a cave because he has found his true Self;
he may live and act like everybody else; he is 'living but free.'
All remains just the same, except the sense of unchangeable,
imperishable self which lifts him above the phenomenal self. He
knows he is wearing clothes, that is all. If a man does not see it,
if some of his clothes stick to him like his very skin, if he fears
he might lose his identity by not being a male instead of a female,
by not being English instead of German, by not being a child instead
of a man, he must wait and work on. Good works lead to quietness of
mind, and quietness of mind to true self-knowledge. Is it so very
little to be only Self, to be the subject that can resist, i.e.
perceive the whole universe, and turn it into his object? Can we
wish for more than what we are, lookers-on--resisting what tries to
crush us, call it force, or evil, or anything else?
_Life._
The impression made on me by the look of a child who is not yet
conscious of himself and of the world round him is that of still
undisturbed godliness. Only when self-consciousness wakes little by
little, through pleasure or pain, when the spirit accustoms itself
to its bodily covering, when man begins to say _I_ and the world to
call things _his_, then the full separation of the human self from
the Divine begins, and it is only after long struggles that the
light of _true_ self-consciousness sooner or later breaks through
the clouds of earthly semblances, and makes us again like the little
children 'of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.' In God we live and move
and have our being, that is the sum of all human wisdom, and he who
does not find it here, will find it in another life. All else that
we learn on earth, be it the history of nature or of mankind, is
for this end alone, to show us everywhere the presence of a Divine
providence, and to lead us through the knowledge of the history of
the human spirit to the knowledge of ourselves, and through the
knowledge of the laws of nature to the understanding of that human
nature to which we are subjected in life.
_Life._
To my mind the birth of a child is not a breach of the law of
continuity, but on that very ground I must admit the previous
existence of the Self that is here born as a child, and
which brings with it into this new order of things simply its
Self-consciousness, and even that not developed but undeveloped
potentia, in a sleep. When afterwards a child awakes to
self-consciousness, that is really its remembrance of its former
existence. The Self which it becomes conscious of, remember, is in
its essence not of this world only, but of a former as well as of a
future world. This constitutes in fact the only distinct remembrance
in every human being of a former life. There are besides indistinct
remembrances of his former existence, viz. the many dispositions
which every thinking man finds in himself, and which are not simply
the result of the impressions of this world on a so-called _tabula
rasa_. Unless we begin life as _tabula rasa_ we begin it as _tabula
preparata_, as _leukomata_, and whatever colour or disposition,
or talent, or temperament, whatever there is inexplicable in each
individual, that he will perceive, or possibly remember, as the
result of the continuity between his present and former life.
_MS._
What, then, is that which we call Death? Separation of the Self from
a living body. If so, does the body die because the Self leaves it,
or does the Self leave the body because it dies? What has life to do
with the Self? Has the Self which for a time dwells in a living body
anything to do with what we call the life of that body? Does the
Self take possession of a body because it lives, or does the body
live because the Self has taken possession of it? The difficulty
arises from our vague conception of _life_. Life is only a mode of
existence. Existence is possible without what we call life, not
life without existence. To live means to be able to absorb, but
who or what is able? The Self exists, it is sentient, capable of
perception by becoming embodied. It is perceptive because sentient,
it is conceptive because perceptive. The difficulty lies in the
embodiment. It is there where all philosophy becomes ridiculous.
_MS._
Knowledge belongs to the Self alone, call it what we will. The nerve
fibres might vibrate as often as they pleased, millions and millions
of times in a second; they could never produce the sensation of
red if there were no Self as the receiver and illuminator, the
translator of these vibrations of ether; this Self that alone
receives, alone illumines, alone knows, and of which we can say
nothing more than that it exists, that it perceives, and as the
Indian philosophers add, that it is blessed, _i.e._ that it is
complete in itself, serene, and eternal.
_Silesian Horseherd._
Nothing eternal can have a beginning, and there can be no immortal
life after death, unless our true immortal life has been realised
here on earth. Hindu philosophers called those who had realised
their true, immortal, eternal, or divine Self 'free while living.'
_MS._
SORROW AND SUFFERING
How mysterious all this suffering is, particularly when it produces
such prostration that it must lose all that elevating power which
one knows suffering does exercise in many cases. It seems sometimes
as if a large debt of suffering had to be paid off, and that some
are chosen to pay a large, very large sum, so that others may go
free. We have our own burden to bear, but it is a burden that seems
to make other things easy to bear--it strengthens even when it seems
to crush. But how could one bear that complete prostration of all
powers which must make death seem so much preferable to life. And
yet life goes on, and people care about a hundred little things, and
break their hearts if they do not get them.
_MS._
Such trials as you have had to pass through are not sent without a
purpose, and if you say that they have changed your views of life,
such a change in a character like yours can only be a change in
advance, a firmer faith in those truths which have been revealed
to the dim sight of human nature, a stronger will to resist all
falsehood and tampering with the truth, and a deeper conviction that
we owe our life to Him who has given it, and that we must fight His
battle when He calls us to do it.
_MS._
God knows that we want rain and storm as much as sunshine, and He
sends us both as seems best to His love and wisdom. When all breaks
down He lifts us up. But when we feel quite crushed and forsaken and
alone, we then feel the real presence of our truest Friend, who,
whether by joys or sorrows, is always calling us to Him, and leading
us to that true Home where we shall find Him, and in Him all we
loved, with Him all we believed, and through Him all we hoped for
and aspired to on earth. Our broken hearts are the truest earnest of
everlasting life.
_Life._