THE NATURE OF EVIL
+The problem not insoluble.+--Before going on to say more about human
personality, especially the personality of Jesus, it is requisite that
we should determine our attitude toward a great question which in
manifold forms has beset the human intellect ever since the dawn of
history, namely, the problem of evil. It is still the fashion to
declare this problem insoluble, but I have the audacity to believe that
it is not so; mystery there may be, but it is not chiefly mystery. I
will even go so far as to assert that the problem had been solved in
human thought before Christianity began. What I have to say about it
now is ancient thinking confirmed by present-day experience.
Evil is a negative, not a positive term. It denotes the absence rather
than the presence of something. It is the perceived privation of good,
the shadow where the light ought to be. "The devil is a vacuum," as a
friend of mine once remarked to the no small bewilderment of a group of
listeners in whose imagination the devil was anything but a vacuum.
Evil is not an intruder in an otherwise perfect universe; finiteness
presumes it. A thing is only seen to be evil when the capacity for
good is present and unsatisfied. Evil is not a principle at war with
good. Good is being and evil is not-being. When consciousness of
being seeks further expression and finds itself hindered by its
limitations, it becomes aware of evil.
A little reflection ought to convince anyone that this is the true way
to look at the question of evil. Instead of asking how evil came to be
in the universe, we should recognise that nothing finite can exist
without it. Infinity alone can know nothing of evil because its
resources are illimitable and--if I may be permitted the
expression--every need is supplied before it can be felt. Evil and
good are not like two armies in deadly conflict with each other for the
possession of the city of God. We ought not to say that when one is in
the other is out, but rather when one _is_ the other is _not_. The
very word "good" implies evil. One is positive and the other negative.
Good only emerges in our experience in contrast with evil, and the
ideal existence must be that in which good and evil are both
transcended in the life eternal, when struggle and conflict are no
more. In our present state of existence evil is necessary in order
that we may know that there is such a thing as good, and therefore that
we may realise the true nature of the life eternal. Look at that
shadow on the pavement cast by the row of houses between your vision
and the rising sun. Until the sun made his presence felt, you did not
even know there was a shadow. Presently as the light giver climbs
beyond and above this temporary barrier you will watch the shadow
shrink and disappear. Where has it gone? If it were an entity in
itself, it would have moved off somewhere else, but you are well aware
that it has not done so, for it never had any real existence; real as
it seemed, so real that you were able to give it a name, it never did
more than show the place that needed to be filled with light. When the
light came the shadow was swallowed up. So it is with every kind of
evil, no matter what. Your perception of evil is the concomitant of
your expanding finite consciousness of good. The moment you see a
thing to be wrong you have affirmed that you know, however vaguely,
what is required to put it right. Even when evil comes in the form of
a calamity that lessens and diminishes your previous experience of
good, as in an earthquake or a pestilence, this statement as to its
true nature is in no way invalidated. It is not a thing in itself, it
is only the perceived privation of what you know to be good, and which
you know to be good because of the very presence of limitation,
hindrance, and imperfection.
+The relation of evil and pain.+--But to most minds evil is almost
synonymous with pain, at any rate in our experience it is associated
with pain. When men begin questioning the goodness of God because of
the evil of the world, they usually mean the pain of the world.
Perhaps their thought about sin is to some extent an exception; sin and
pain are not necessarily immediately associated in the theological
mind. But what is pain? Properly speaking it is not in itself evil,
but rather the evidence of evil, and also in a different way the
evidence of good. Pain is life asserting itself against death, the
higher struggling with the lower, the true with the false, the real
with the unreal. When a baby cries for food he does so in unconscious
obedience to the law of life; a stone does not cry for food. When a
strong man suffers in the grip of a fell disease, the life within him
is fighting for expression against something that seems to be
extinguishing it. The suffering is caused by the effort of the life to
retain its hold on the form, and yet if the disease succeeds in
breaking the form it has only released the life to find expression in
some higher form. When a guilty man suffers the tortures of remorse,
it means that the truth within him is declaring itself against the
falsehood, although it does not follow that it will immediately
conquer. This is what pain is: it is life pressing upon death, and
death resisting life. If a traveller falls asleep in the snow, or a
sailor is nearly drowned, the process of recovery is always painful
because the returning life has to overcome death. Carry the same
principle through the whole range of human experience, physical,
mental, and moral, and it will indicate the real significance of all
the pain which has ever been endured or ever will be endured by mankind.
Still this would not satisfy everyone who feels compassion for cosmic
suffering. Professor Huxley has told us that there is no sadder story
than the story of sentient life upon this planet, and in so saying he
has the testimony of modern science behind him. A vast amount of
attention has been directed to this phase of the subject within the
past fifty years. We seem to be more sensitive to the presence of pain
as well as more sympathetic than our fathers were, and this tendency
shows itself in a recognition of the solidarity of humanity with the
lower creation. Theology has had practically nothing to say about the
suffering or even about the significance of the myriad forms of life
which exist below the human scale. But why ought they to be ignored?
Indeed, how can they be ignored? The theology that has nothing to say
about my clever and loyal four-footed companion, with his magnanimity,
his sensitive spirit, and even his moral qualities, omits something of
considerable importance to a thorough and consistent world-view. "Not
a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father," said one who
spake as never man spake. I think it was Schopenhauer who once
remarked, "The more I see of human nature the more I respect my dog."
Now the New Theology finds no difficulty in recognising the importance
of the brute creation, for it believes in a practical recognition of
the solidarity of all existence. There is no life that is not of God,
and therefore no life can ever perish, whatever may become of the form.
If we can explain human suffering, the same explanation covers the
suffering of all sub-human life.
+The true extent of the problem of pain.+--But the problem is not so
large as it looks. When we hear of a terrible event like the Jamaica
disaster, we are apt to jump to the conclusion that the amount of
suffering in the world is specially and enormously greater because of
it. But that is not so. Our standard of measurement is a false one.
The amount of pain endured depends upon the consciousness enduring it
and upon its capacity for looking before and after. Besides we only
suffer individually, and therefore all the pain of the world is
comprised within the experience of the being who suffers most, whoever
that may be. We ought to estimate the actual amount of cosmic
suffering by the intensity of the suffering borne by any one individual
at any one time. We are not immediately conscious of all the woe of
the universe; we are each of us conscious of our own, even though it
may be caused by sympathy with others; and the world's woe taken as a
whole is not greater than the amount borne by him whose consciousness
of it is greatest. This is what we may call the intensive as
contrasted with the extensive observation of the problem of pain. It
is a kind of barometrical measurement. We do not gauge the weather by
adding together the figures of all the storm-glasses in the world; the
rise or fall of the mercury in any one of them, especially the best one
among them, comprehends the whole. Here is the problem of pain in a
nutshell. The whole appalling tale of cosmic suffering can be
compressed within the limits of the individual consciousness which has
endured the most.
+The purpose of pain.+--Nor is there the slightest need to be afraid of
it. Theologians may tell us that we should never have known anything
about it but for man's first disobedience, and humanists may maintain
that it is impossible to reconcile it with belief in the goodness of
God; but they are both wrong. There are some things impossible even to
omnipotence, and one of them is the realisation of a love which has
never known pain. If creation is the self-expression of God, pain was
inevitable from the first. For what is the nature of God? According
to the Christian religion it is love. And what is love? Here is
another slippery word which has had some contradictory connotations in
the course of its history. Some time ago Mr. G. Bernard Shaw delivered
a lecture at the City Temple on the "Religion of the British Empire,"
in the course of which he said that, if I knew as much about
stage-plays as he did, I should distrust the word "love," for it was
bound up with an amount of false and gusty sentiment. He himself
preferred the word "life" to express what I meant by the word "love."
But love is too good a word to be given over to the sentimentalists,
although Mr. Shaw was perfectly right as to the way in which it has
been misused. Love _is_ life, the life eternal, the life of God.
Jesus and His New Testament followers used both terms as expressive of
the innermost of God. The life of God is such that in the presence of
need it must give itself just as water will run down hill; this is the
law of its being. Where no need exists, that is, where life is
infinite, love finds no expression. To realise itself for what it is,
sacrifice, that is self-limitation, becomes necessary. Love is
essentially self-giving. It is the living of the individual life in
terms of the whole. In a finite world this cannot but mean pain, but
it is also self-fulfilment. "Whosoever shall save his life shall lose
it, but whosoever will lose his life shall find it." This profound
saying of Jesus is older even than Jesus; it is the law of God's own
being, the law of love, the means to the realisation of the life
eternal. It is so plain and simple, and withal so sublime, that we
cannot but see it to be true, and can do no other than bow before it.
The law of the universe is the law of sacrifice in order to
self-manifestation. In this age-long process all sentient life has its
part, for it is of the infinite, and to the infinite it will return.
When, therefore, you feel compassion for the rabbit which is being
killed by the weasel, or the stag that falls before the hounds, you can
remember at the same time that this is not meaningless cruelty, but the
operation of the same law that governs the highest activities of your
own soul. You are right to feel the compassion; you were meant to feel
it; and there is good reason why you should, for the suffering is real
enough to awaken it. But do not forget that the suffering is not quite
what it appears to you; it is only yours as it enters into your own
consciousness and you suffer along with the actual victim. Compassion
in such a case is the initial impulse toward self-offering, the desire
to take the victim's place. But the suffering of the rabbit or the
stag is to be measured by the consciousness of the rabbit or the stag,
not by yours. In the slaughter nothing perishes but the form, the life
returns to the Soul of the universe.
+The nature of sin.+--What, then, is sin? In the light of the
foregoing considerations that question should not be difficult to
answer. Some of my recent critics have been declaring that I deny the
existence of sin, and am teaching that as there is no sin there is no
need for Atonement. This looks like wilful misrepresentation, for my
words on the subject have been clear enough and I have nothing to
un-say, but perhaps it would be better to allow that the critics have
made the mistake of rushing into print without carefully examining the
utterances which they denounce. Let me say, then, that sin is the
opposite of love. All possible activities of the soul are between two
poles,--self on the one hand and the common life on the other.
Everything we can think or say or do is in one or other of these
directions; we are either living for the self at the expense of the
whole, or we are fulfilling the self by serving the whole. Sin is
therefore selfishness. If the true life is the life which is lived in
terms of the whole, then the sinful life is the life which is lived for
self alone. No man, however depraved, succeeds in living the selfish
life all the time; if he did he would sink below the level of the
brutes. Sin makes for death; love makes for life. Sin is self-ward;
love is All-ward. Sin is always a blunder; in the long run it becomes
its own punishment, for it is the soul imposing fetters upon itself,
which fetters must be broken by the reassertion of the universal life.
Sin is actually a quest for life, but a quest which is pursued in the
wrong way. The man who is living a selfish life must think, if he
thinks about it at all, that he can gratify himself in that way, that
is, he can get more abundant life. But in this he is mistaken; he is
trying to cut himself off from the source of life. He is like a man
seated on the branch of a tree and sawing it off from the trunk. But
when theologians talk of the wrath of God against sin, and the wrong
which sin has inflicted upon God, they employ figures of speech which
are distinctly misleading. In fact, they do not seem to have a clear
idea as to what sin really is. They use vague language about it as
though it were some kind of corporate offence against God of which the
whole race has been guilty without being able to help it, and which no
individual can escape although he is as much to blame as if he could.
But sin has never injured God except through man. It is the God within
who is injured by it rather than the God without. It is time we had
done with the unreal language about the Judge on the great white
throne, whose justice must be satisfied before His mercy can operate.
The figure contains a truth which everyone knows well enough, but it is
not easy to recognise it under this form.
+The Fall.+--The theological muddle is largely caused by the inability
of many people to free themselves from archaic notions which have
really nothing to do with Christianity, although they have been
imported into it. The principal of these, in relation to the question
of sin, is the doctrine of the Fall. This doctrine has played a
mischievous part in Christian thought, more especially perhaps since
the Reformation. In broad outline it is as follows: Man was created
originally innocent and pure,--for what reason is not quite clear, but
it is said to be for the glory of God,--but by an act of disobedience
to a divine command he fell from his high estate and in his fall
dragged down the whole creation and blighted posterity. Things have
been wrong ever since, and God has been angry not only with the
original transgressor but with all his descendants. God is a God of
righteousness and therefore in a future world He will torture every
human being who dies without availing himself of a certain "plan of
salvation" designed to give him a chance of escape. This is a queer
sort of righteousness! The plan of salvation consists in sending His
own Son--a Son who has existed eternally, which the rest of us have
not--to live a few years on earth and go through a certain programme
ending with a violent death. In consideration of this death, God
undertakes to forgive His erring children, who could not help being
sinners, and yet are just as much to blame as if they could, but only
on consideration that they "believe" in time to flee from the wrath to
come. If they happen to die half a minute too late, repentance will be
of no avail.
Dogmatic theologians must really excuse me for paraphrasing their words
in this way. I know they do not put the case with such irritating
clearness, but this is what they mean. Their forefathers used to put
it plainly enough. Turn up John Knox's "Confession of Faith," for
instance, and it will be found that my statement of the case is
mildness itself compared to his; John saw no necessity for mincing
matters. It may be contended that no orthodox theologian of any repute
now believes in an actual historical fall of the race. Perhaps not,
but theological writers go on using language which implies it and so do
preachers of the gospel. I do not mean that they are dishonest, but
they cannot get their perspective right. They think that by giving up
belief in a historical fall of the race they would have to give up a
great deal more. Without the Fall they do not know what to say about
sin, salvation, the Atonement, etc. They are mistaken in this
supposition, as I trust I have already shown to some extent when
discussing the question of sin, and as I shall hope to show more
clearly still when we come to deal with the Atonement. What I now wish
to insist upon is that it is absolutely impossible for any intelligent
man to continue to believe in the Fall as it is literally understood
and taught.
+The Genesis account.+--It is popularly supposed that the doctrine is
derived from the book of Genesis, but that is hardly the case. No
doubt the Genesis myth about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden forms
the background of it, but it is not consonant with the doctrine itself.
The Genesis narrative says nothing about the ruined creation or the
curse upon posterity. There is no hint of individual immortality, much
less of heaven and hell; no Christ, no cross, no future judgment, no
vicarious Atonement. It is a composite primitive story. A careful
examination of its constituents will show that more than one account of
the event has been drawn upon to supply materials for the narrative as
it now stands. The legend was in existence as oral tradition ages
before it became literature. How old it may be we have no means of
knowing with certainty, but the parallel stories in other Semitic
religions are of great antiquity and had originally no ethical
significance whatever. The Genesis story of the Fall exercised no
influence upon Old Testament religion; it is scarcely alluded to in the
best Old Testament writings, some of them earlier probably than the
Genesis account itself. It was not until after the great captivity
that it showed any tendency toward becoming an article of faith. At
the time when Jesus was born it had passed into the popular Jewish
religion. There is a psychological reason for the gradual
transformation of a primitive legend into a religious dogma. The
Jewish nation has fallen upon evil days. For generations after the
great captivity they had been ground under the heel of a succession of
foreign masters. Under the cruel rule of Antiochus Epiphanes, about
the middle of the second century B.C., their very religion seemed
likely to be crushed out by merciless persecution. It was no wonder
that the serious minds of the day became inclined to look upon the
present as being but the ruin of the past, the sorry remainder of what
had once been an ideal world. This tendency showed itself in various
ways, the chief of which was a looking back to the great days of David
and Solomon as the period of Israel's brightest splendour and
prosperity. Of this I must say a little more presently when we come to
consider the genesis of the idea of the kingdom of God. Another way in
which the same tendency showed itself was that of taking the legend of
the Fall more or less literally. A suffering generation could hardly
help thinking of their woes as being the result of some primitive act
of transgression. This is the way in which the rabbis came to speak of
the Fall as being an actual fact of religious and ethical importance.
+The doctrine transferred to Christianity.+--A similar set of political
and social conditions carried the doctrine over into Christianity,
chiefly through the influence of the apostle Paul who had received a
rabbinical training. Not only Hebrews but Greeks had begun to feel
that the world was decaying and perhaps nearing the end. They
idealised the past and contrasted it with the present. All
civilisation lay under the dominion of Rome, and Rome herself was
subject to a military dictator. The heart of the world-wide empire was
a hotbed of corruption where every form of vice took root and
flourished. The Greek thinkers and scholars despised their masters,
but their own heroic days were gone and they were helpless to cast off
the yoke. They had no Pericles now, no Leonidas, no Miltiades. Gone
were the men of Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis. These were lesser,
darker days. With a sure instinct men were ceasing to feel any
confidence in the future of this pagan civilisation. It had its great
elements, but the signs of disruption were already apparent and no one
could foresee what would take its place. The mood of the time is
reflected in the pages of Tacitus and Juvenal. Into this atmosphere
came Christianity with its doctrine of the holy love of God and its
adoring faith in Jesus. But both Judaism and Hellenism had already the
tendency to look back toward a better and happier time and to think of
the present as a fall from it. Paul felt this like everyone else, and
forthwith took some kind of a fall for granted when unfolding his
system of thought. It is doubtful whether he took the Genesis story
literally or not, and he certainly made Adam the type of the unideal or
earthly man who had become estranged from God. He was too great a man
to be pinned down to mere literalism in a question of this kind, so in
his use of the terms supplied by the rabbinical version of the legend
he glides easily into the statement of the obvious truth that the Adam,
or lower man, or earthly principle in every human being, needs to be
transformed by the uprising of the Christ or ideal man, within the
soul. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive." "The first man is of the earth earthy: the second man is the
Lord from heaven."
Here, then, we have the origins of the doctrine of the Fall. Right
through Christian history the tendency has run to look upon the world
as the ruins of a divine plan marred by man's perversity and self-will.
It is time we got rid of it, for it has had a blighting, deadening
influence upon hopeful endeavour for the good of the race. It is not
integral to Christianity, for Jesus never said a word about it and did
not even allude to it indirectly. It implies a view of the nature and
dealings of God with men which is unethical and untrue. Surely, if God
knew beforehand that the world would go wrong, the blame for
catastrophe was not all man's. If He were so baffled and
horror-stricken by the results as the dogmatic theologian makes out, He
ought to have been more careful about the way He did His work at the
beginning; a world which went wrong so early and so easily was anything
but "very good," although He pronounced it to be so according to the
Genesis writer. Besides, why should a trivial act of transgression
have sent it all wrong? We take leave of our common sense when we talk
Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree.
To be sure Milton did not believe it himself when he wrote that line,
but his Puritan associates and Catholic ancestors did, and orthodoxy
professes to do so still, though it does not know quite how to put it
without falling into absurdity. Again, why should God feel Himself so
much aggrieved by Adam's peccadillo? If it were not for the
theological atmosphere which surrounds the question, we should see at
once that it was ridiculous. Why should the consequences continue
through countless generations? Remember this was supposed to be the
very start of humanity's career. What a dreary, hopeless outlook was
left to it! The notion is incredible, and most of the clear-headed men
who hold it would scout it without discussion if they heard of it now
for the first time. As it is, however, they go on talking of the
"awful holiness" of God, the offence against the divine majesty, and so
on. But what is this divine holiness? I can well remember that as a
child I used to tremble at the thought of it, for somehow, like a good
many other people, I had been taught to think of the divine holiness as
synonymous with merciless inflexibility. But holiness, righteousness,
justice, mercy, love, are but different expressions of the same
spiritual reality. One might go on multiplying these considerations
for ever, but there is no need to do so. Sufficient has been said to
demonstrate the fact that the doctrine of the Fall is an absurdity from
the point of view both of ethical consistency and common sense.
+Science and the Fall.+--After this it is almost superfluous to point
out that modern science knows nothing of it and can find no trace of
such a cataclysm in human history. On the contrary, it asserts that
there has been a gradual and unmistakable rise; the law of evolution
governs human affairs just as it does every other part of the cosmic
process. This statement is quite consistent with the admission that
there have been periods of retrogression as well as of advance, and
that the advance itself has not been steady and uniform from first to
last; there have been long stretches of history during which humanity
has seemed to mark time and then a sudden outburst of intellectual
activity and moral achievement. It could hardly be maintained, for
instance, that the Athens of Socrates was not superior to the France of
Fulk the black of Anjou, or that the Assyria of Asshur-bani-pal was not
quite as civilised as the Germany of the ninth century A.D. Alfred
Russel Wallace has shown in his popular book, "The Wonderful Century,"
that the latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed a greater
advance in man's power over nature than the fifteen hundred years
preceding it. There are some people who maintain that while the
material advance is unquestionable, the intellectual advance is on the
whole more doubtful, and that, morally speaking, human nature is no
different from what it ever was. But I do not think any serious
historian would say this. Intellectually, the average man may still be
inferior to Plato,--though even Plato did not understand the need for
exact thought as modern philosophers do,--but civilisation as a whole
has produced a higher level of intellectual attainment than had been
reached by Plato's world. A civilisation in which four-fifths of the
people were helots kept in ignorance in order that an aristocratic few
might enjoy the benefits of culture was not equal to ours, great and
glaring as the defects of ours may be. Again, while it is only too
sadly true that modern civilisation contains plenty of callous
selfishness, gross injustice, and abominable cruelty, it can hardly be
denied that these relics of our brute ancestry are universally
deplored, and that society recognises them to be inimical to its
well-being and seeks to get rid of them. Thank God, as Anthony
Trollope said, that bad as men are to-day they are not as men were in
the days of the Caesars.
If the New Theology controversy had arisen a few hundred years ago,
theological disputants would not have wasted time in writing newspaper
articles; they would have met in solemn conclave and condemned the
heretic to be flayed alive or hung over a slow fire or treated in some
similarly convincing manner. Of course it is remotely possible that
some of them would like to do it now, but public opinion would not let
them; things have changed, and the change is in the direction of a
higher general morality. If any man feels pessimistic about the
present, let him study the past and he will feel reassured. Those who
maintain that society is not morally better but only more sentimental,
beg the question. What they call sentimentalism is greater
sensibility, greater sympathy, a keener sense of justice. What is the
moral ideal but love? Every advance in the direction of universal love
and brotherhood is a moral advance. The sternness of Stoicism or
Puritanism was an imperfect morality. The grandeur and impressiveness
of it were due to the fact that Stoics and Puritans for the most part
took their ideal seriously; they aimed at something high and dedicated
their lives to it. This dedication of the life to something higher
than self-interest is of the very essence of true morality, and its
highest reach is perfect love. We are a long way from that yet,
although the ideal was manifested two thousand years ago. The average
man to-day is certainly not nobler than the apostle Paul, nor does he
see more deeply into the true meaning of life than did John the divine,
but the general level is higher. Slowly, very slowly, with every now
and then a depressing set-back, the race is climbing the steep ascent
toward the ideal of universal brotherhood.
It is sometimes maintained by thinkers who account themselves
progressive that the law of evolution holds good of mankind so far as
our physical constitution is concerned, but that a special act of
creation took place as soon as the physical frame was sufficiently
developed to become the receptacle of a higher principle, and that
then, and not till then, "man became a living soul." But it is
impossible to square the circle in this way, and to contrive to get the
doctrine of the Fall in by the back door, so to speak. The idea in the
minds of those who hold this view appears to be that the tenant of the
body which had been so long in preparation was a simple but intelligent
and morally innocent personality who forthwith proceeded to do all that
Adam is credited with and therefore spoiled what would otherwise have
been a harmonious and orderly development; what we now see is not
evolution as God meant it, but evolution perverted by human
wrong-headedness. But this theory contains more difficulties than the
older one it aims to replace. It makes God even more incompetent then
the traditional view does. For untold ages, apparently, He has been
preparing the world for the advent of humanity, only to find that the
moment humanity enters it the whole scheme is spoiled. But we need not
seriously consider this view; the facts are overwhelmingly against it.
The history, even of the most recent civilisations, is, comparatively
speaking, only as old as yesterday, whereas the presence of human life
on this planet is traceable into the almost illimitable past. But the
farther we go back in our investigation of human origins the less
possible does it appear that the primitive man of theological tradition
has ever existed. The Adam of the dogmatic theologian is like the
economic man of the older school of writers on political science, the
man who always wants to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the
dearest, and whose one consistent endeavour is to seek pleasure and
avoid pain; he has never existed.
+Divine immanence and its Fall.+--Besides, we do not want him to exist.
The Fall theory is not only impossible in face of the findings of
modern science; it is a real hindrance to religion. So far from having
to give it up because science would have nothing to say to it, the
difficulty would be to retain it and yet have anything like a rational
view of the relation of God and the world. It has already been stated
that the starting-point of the New Theology is a recognition of the
truth that God is expressing Himself through His world. This truth
occupied a place in religious thought ages before modern science was
thought of; science has confirmed it, but has not compelled us to think
it; if science had never existed, it would still remain the only
reasonable ground for an adequate explanation of the relation of man to
the universe. It simplifies all our questionings and coördinates all
our activities. There is not a single one in the whole vast range of
human interests which it does not cover. There is nothing which
humanity can do or seek to do which is not immediately dependent upon
it. The grandest task and the lowliest are both implied in it. It
declares the common basis of religion and morality. Religion is the
response of human nature to the whole of things considered as an order;
morality is the living of the individual life in such a way as to be
and do the most for humanity as a whole; it is making the most of one's
self for the sake of the whole. Morality is not self-immolation. To
jump off London Bridge would be self-immolation, but it would not be an
act conducive to the welfare of the community; it might indeed be a
very selfish and cowardly act. True morality involves the duty of
self-formation and the exercise of judgment and self-discipline in
order that the individual life may become as great a gift as possible
to the common life. It will therefore be seen at once that there is a
vital relation between morality and religion; the one implies the other
even though the fact may not always be recognised, and both are based
upon the immanence of God.
+The truth beneath the doctrine of the Fall.+--But never yet has a
particular doctrine or mode of stating truth held its own for any
length of time in human history unless there was some genuine truth
beneath it, and the doctrine of the Fall is no exception. It does
contain a truth, a truth which can be stated in a few words, and which
might be inferred from what has already been said about the
relationship of man and God. The coming of a finite creation into
being is itself of the nature of a fall, a coming down from perfection
to imperfection. We have seen the reason for that coming down; it is
that the universal life may realise its own nature by attenuating or
limiting its perfection. If I want to understand the composition of
the ordinary pure white ray, I take a prism and break it up into its
constituents. This is just what God has been doing in creation. Our
present consciousness of ourselves and of the world can reasonably be
accounted a fall, for we came from the infinite and unto the infinite
perfection we shall in the end return. I do not mean that our present
consciousness of ourselves is eternal; I only assert that our true
being is eternally one with the being of God and that to be separated
from a full knowledge of that truth is to have undergone a fall. But
this fall has no sinister antecedents; its purpose is good, and there
is nothing to mourn over except our own slowness at getting into line
with the cosmic purpose. Another way of describing it would be to call
it the incarnation of God in nature and man, a subject about which I
must say more in another chapter. This view of the meaning and
significance of the Fall can be traced in all great religious
literature. Perhaps one of the best statements of it that has ever
been made is the one set forth by Paul of Tarsus in the eighth chapter
of his letter to the Romans: "For I reckon that the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall
be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by the reason of him who hath
subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be
delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of
the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now." Passages like this make it
impossible to believe that Paul was ever really tied down to the
literal rabbinical view of Adam's transgression and its consequences;
and these words are a clear statement of the truth that the
imperfection of the finite Creation is not man's fault but God's will,
and is a means toward a great end.