PART II.

THE Law of Continuity having been referred to already as a prominent factor in this in- quiry, it may not be out of place to sustain plea for Natural Law in the Spiritual Sphere by a brief statement and application of this great principle. The Law of Continuity fur- nishes an d priori argument for the position we are attempting to establish of the most convincing kind — of such a kind, indeed, as to seem to our mind final. Briefly indicated, the ground taken up is this, that if Nature be a harmony, Man in all his relations — physical,, mental, moral, and spiritual — falls to be in- cluded within its circle. It is altogether un- likely that man spiritual should be violently separated in all the conditions of growth, de- velopment, and life, from man physical. It is indeed difficult to conceive that one set of principles should guide the natural life, and these at a certain period — the very point where they are needed — suddenly give place to another set of principles altogether new and unrelated. Nature has never taught us to expect such a catastrophe. She has no- where prepared us for it. And Man cannot in the nature of things, in the nature of
64 IN TROD UCTION,
thought, in the nature of language, be sepa- rated into two such incoherent halves.
The spiritual man, it is true, is to be studied in a different department of science from the natural man. But the harmony established by science is not a harmony within specific departments. It is the universe that is the harmony, the universe of which these a're but parts. And the harmonies of the parts de- pend for all their weight and interest on the harmony of the whole. While, therefore, there are many harmonies, there is but one harmony. The breaking up of the phenomena of the universe into carefully guarded groups, and the allocation of certain prominent Laws to each, it must never be forgotten, and how- ever much Nature lends herself to it, are artificial. We find an evolution in Botany, another in Geology, and another in Astronomy, and the effect is to lead one insensibility to look upon these as three distinct evolutions. But these sciences, of course, are mere depart- ments created by ourselves to facilitate knowledge — reductions of Nature to the scale of our own intelligence. And we must beware of breaking up Nature except for this purpose. Science has so dissected everything, that it becomes a mental difficulty to put the puzzle together again ; and we must keep ourselves in practice by constantly thinking of Nature as a whole, if science is not to be spoiled by its own refinements. Evolution being found in so many different sciences, the likelihood is that it is a universal principle. And there is
INTRODUCTION. 55
no presumption whatever against this La\r and many others being excluded from the do- main of the spiritual life. On the other hand, there are very convincing reasons why the Natural Laws should be continuous through the Spiritual Sphere — not changed in any way to meet the new circumstances, but continuous as they stand.
But to the exposition. One of the most striking generalizations of recent science is that even Laws have their Law. Phenomena first, in the progress of knowledge, were grouped together, and Nature shortly presented the spectacle of a cosmos, the lines of beauty being the great Natural Laws. So long, however, as these Laws were merely great lines running through Nature, so long as they remained isolated from one another, the system of Nature was still incomplete. The principle which sought Law among phenomena had to go further and seek a Law among the Laws. Laws them- selves accordingly came to be treated as they treated phenomena, and found themselves finally grouped in a still narrowe rcircle. That inmost circle is governed by one great Law, the Law of Continuity. It is the Law for Laws.
It is perhaps significant that few exact defini- tions of Continuity are to be found. Even in Sir W. R. Grove's famous paper,1 the fountain- head of the modern form of this far from modern truth, there is no attempt at definition.
1 " The Correlation of Physical Forces," 6th Ed. p. 181 tt seq.
:66 IN TE OD UCTION.
In point of fact, its sweep is so magnificent, it: appeals so much more to the imagination than to the reason, that men have preferred to exhibit rather than to define it. Its true great- ness consists in the final impression it leaves on the mind with regard to the uniformity of Nature. For it was reserved for the Law of Continuity to put the finishing touch to the harmony of the universe.
Probably the most satisfactory way to secure ior oneself a just appreciation of the Principle of Continuity is to try to conceive the universe without it. The opposite of a continuous uni- verse would be a discontinuous universe, an Incoherent and irrelevant universe — as irrel- evant in all its ways of doing things as an irrelevant person. In effect, to withdraw Con- tinuity from the universe would be the same as to withdraw reason from an individual. The universe would run deranged ; the world would be a mad world.
There used to be a children's book which bore the fascinating title of " The Chance World." It described a world in which everything hap- pened by chance. The sun might rise or it might not ; or jjb might appear at any hour, or the moon might come up instead. When children were born they might have one head •or a dozen heads, and those heads might not be on their shoulders — there might be no shoulders — but arranged about the limbs. If one jumped up in the air it was impossible to predict whether he would ever come down again. That he came down yesterday was no guarantee that
INTRODUCTION. 57
he would do it next time. For every day antecedent and consequent varied, and gravita- tion and everything else changed from hour to hour. -To-day a child's body might be so light that it was impossible for it to descend from its chair to the floor ; but to-morrow, in attempt- ing the experiment again, the impetus might drive it through a three-story house and dash it to pieces somewhere near the centre of the earth. In this chance world cause and effect were abolished. Law was annihilated. And the result to the inhabitants of such a world could only be that reason would be impossible. It would be a lunatic world with a population of lunatics.
Now this is no more than a real picture of what the world would be without Law, or the universe without Continuity. And hence we come in sight of the necessity of some principle or Law according to which Laws shall be, and be " continuous " throughout the system. Man as a rational and moral being demands a pledge that if he depends on Nature for any given result on the ground that Nature has pre- viously led him to except such a result, his intellect shall not be insulted, nor his confi- dence in her abused. If he is to trust Nature, in short, it must be guaranteed to him that in doing so he will " never be put to confusion." The authors of the Unseen Universe conclude their examination of this principle by saying that "assuming the existence of a supreme Governor of the universe, the Principle of Continuity may be said to be the definite ex-
58 INTRODUCTION.
pression in words of our trust that He will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion, and we can easily conceive similar expressions of trust with reference to the other faculties of man." 1 Or, as it has been well put elsewhere, Continuity is the expression of "the Divine Veracity in Nature." 2 The most striking- examples of the continuousness of Law are perhaps those furnished by Astronomy, espe- cially in connection with the more recent appli- cations of spectrum analysis. But even in the case of the simpler Laws the demonstration is complete. There is no reason apart from Continuity to expect that «ravitation for instance should prevail outside our world. But wherever matter has been detected throughout the entire universe, whether in the form of star or planet, comet or meteorite, it is found to obey that Law. "If there were no other indication of unity than this, it would be almost enough. For the unity which is implied in the mechanism of the heavens is indeed a unity which is all-embracing and complete. The structure of our own bodies, with all that depends upon it, is a structure governed by, and therefore adapted to, the same force of gravitation which has determined the form and the movements of myriads f worlds. Every part of the human org n' '.m Is "tted to condi- tions which would all be d stroyed in a moment
1 "Unseen Universe," 6th Ed. p. 88.
2 "Old Faiths in New Light," by Newman Smith, Unwin's English edition, p. 252.
IN TROD UCTIOy. 59
if the forces of gravitation were to change or fail." »
But it is unnecessary to multiply illustra- tions. Having defined the principle we may proceed at once to apply it. And the argu- ment may be summed up in a sentence. As the Natural Laws are continuous through the universe of matter and of space, so will they be continuous through the universe of spirit.
If this be denied, what then? Those who deny it must furnish the disproof. The argu- ment is founded on a principle which is now acknowledged to be universal ; and the onus of disproof must lie with those who may be bold enough to take up the position that a region exists whereat last the Principle of Continuity fails. To do this one would firsf have to over- turn Nature, then science, and last, the human mind.
It may seem an obvious objection that many of the Natural Laws have no connection what- ever with the Spiritual "World, and as a matter of fact are not continued through it. Gravita- tion for instance — what direct application has that in the Spiritual World? The reply is threefold. First, there is no proof that it d es not hold there. If the spirit be in any sense material it certainly must hold. In the second place, gravitation may hold for the Spiritual Sphere although it cannot be directly proved. The spirit may be armed with powers which enable it to rise superior to gravity. During
1 The Duke of Argyll : Contemporary Review, Sept,, 1880, p. 358.
60 INTR OD UCTION.
the action of these powers gravity need be no more suspended than in the case of a plant which rises hi the air during the process of growth. It does this in virtue of a higher Law and in apparent defiance of the lower. Thirdly, if the spiritual he not material it still cannot be said that gravitation ceases at that point to be continuous. It is not gravitation that ceases — it is matter.
This point, however, will require develop- ment for another reason. In the case of the plant just referred to, there is a principle of growth or vitality at work superseding the at- traction of gravity. Why is there no trace of that Law in the Inorganic world ? Is not this another instance of the discontinuousness of Law ? If the Law of vitality has so little con- nection with the Inorganic kingdom — less even than avitation with the Spiritual, what be- comes of Continuity ? Is it not evident that each kingdom of Nature has its own set of Laws- which continue possibly untouched for the specific kingdom but never extend beyond it ?
It is quite true that when we pass from the Inorganic to the Organic, we come upon a new set of Laws. But the reason why the lower set do not se^m to act in the higher sphere is not that they are annihilated, but they are overruled. And the reason why the higher Laws are not found operating in the lower is not because they are not continuous down- wards, but because there is nothing for them there to act upon. It is not Law that fails, but opportunity. The biological Laws are con--
INTRODUCTION. 6!
tinuous for life. Wherever there is life, that is to say, they will be found acting, just as gravitation acts wherever there is matter.
We have purposely, in the last paragraph, indulged in a fallacy. We have said that the biological Laws would certainly be continuous in the lower or mineral sphere were there any- thing there for them to act upon. Now Laws do not act upon anything. It has been stated already, although apparently it cannot be too abundantly emphasized, that Laws are only modes of operation, not themselves operators. The accurate statement, therefore, would be that the biological Laws would be continuous in the lower sphere were there anything there for them, not to act upon, but to keep in order. If there is no acting going on, if there is noth- ing being kept in order, the responsibility does not lie with Continuity. The Law will always be at its post, not only when its services are required, but wherever they are possible.
Attention is drawn to this, for it is a correc- tion one will find oneself compelled often to make in his thinking. It is so difficult to keep out of mind the idea of substance in connection Avith the Natural Laws, the Idea that they are the movers, the essences, the ener 'es, that one is constantly on the verge of falling into false conclusions. Thus a hasty glance at the pres- ent argument on the part of any one ill-fur- nished enough to confound Law with substance or with cause would probably lead to its im- mediate rejection.
For, to continue the same line of illustration,
62 INTRODUCTION.
it iiu^ht next be urged that such a Law as Biogensis, which, as we hope to show after- wards, is the fundamental Law of life for both the natural and spiritual worlds, can have no application whatsoever in the latter sphere. Tho life with which it deals in the Natural World does not enter at all into the Spiritual WorL', and therefore, it might be argued, the Law of Biogenesis cannot be capable of ex- tension into it. The Law of Continuity se^ms tt be snapped at the point where the natural passes into the spiritual. The vital principle c-f the body is a different thing from the vital principle of the spiritual life. Biogenesis deals with Bofc with the natural life, with cells and germs, and as there are no exactly similar cells and germs in the Spiritual World, the Law cannot therefore apply. All of which is ao true as if one were to say that the fifth proposition of the First Book of Euclid applies when the figures are drawn with chalk upon a blackboard, but fails with regard to stru ;tures of wood or stone.
The proposition is continuous for the whole world, and, doubtless, likewise for the sun and moon and stars. The same universality may be predicated likewise f r the Law of life. Wherever there is life we .i*y expect to find it arranged, ordered, governed according to the same Law. At the beginning of the natural life we find the Law that natural life can only come from pre-existing natural life ; and at the beginning of the spiritual life we find that the spiritual life can only come from pre-
INTRODUCTION. 63
existing spiritual life. But there are not two Laws ; there is one — Biogenesis. At one end the Law is dealing with matter, at the other with spirit. The qualitative terms natural and spiritual make no difference. Biogenesis is the Law for all life and for all kinds of life, and the particular substance with which it is associated is as different to Biogenesis as it is to Gravita- tion, Gravitation will act whether the sub- stance be suns and stars, or grains of sand, or raindrops. Biogenesis, in like manner, will wherever act there is life.
The conclusion finally is, that from the nature of Law in general, and from the scope of the Principle of Con tin i ity in particular, the Laws of the natural life must be those of the spiritual life. This does not exclude, observe, the possibility of there being new Laws in addition within the Spiritual Sphere ; nor does it even include the supposition that the old Laws will be the conspicuousLaws of the Spiritual World, both which points will be dealt with presently. It simply asserts that whatever else may be found, these must be found there ; that they must be there though they may not be seen there; and that they must project beyond there if there be anything beyond there. If the Law of Continuity is true, the only way to escape the conclusion that the Laws of the natural life are the Laws, or at least are Laws, of the spiritual life, is to say that there is no spiritual life. ' It is really easier to give up the phenomena than to give up the Law.
64 JLV TE OD UCTION.
Two questions now remain for further con- sideration — one bearing on the possibility of new Law in the spiritual; the other, on the assumed invisibility or inconspicuousness of the old Laws on account of their subordination to the new.
Let us begin by conceding that there may be new Laws. The argument might then be advanced that since, in Nature generally, we come upon new Laws as we pass from lower to higher kingdoms, the old still remaining in force, the newer Laws which one would expect to meet in the Spiritual World would so tran- scend and overwhelm the older as to make the analogy or identity, even if traced, of no practi- cal use. The new Laws would represent opera- tions and energies so different, and so much more elevated, that they would afford the true keys to the Spiritual World. As Gravitation is practically lost sight of when we pass into the domain of life, so Biogenesis would be lost sight of as we enter the Spiritual Sphere.
We must first separate in this statement the old confusion of Law and energy. Gravitation is not lost sight of in the organic world. Grav- ity may be, to a certain extent, but not Gravita- tion ; and gravity only where a higher power counteracts its action. At the same time it is not to be denied that the conspicuous thing in Organic Naiure is not the great Inorganic Law.
But the objection turns upon the statement that reasoning from analogy we should expect, in turn, to lose sight of Biogenesis as we enter the Spiritual Sphere. One answer to which is
JT AT Tit OD UCTION. 6&
chat, as a matter of fact, we do not lose sight of it. So far from being invisible, it lies across the very threshold of the Spiritual World, and, as we shall see, pervades it everywhere. What we lose sight of, to a certain extent, is the natural Bio?. In the Spiritual World that is not the conspicuous thing, and it is obscure there just as gravity becomes obscure in the Organic, because something higher, more po- tent, more characteristic of the higher plane, comes in. That there are higher energies, so to speak, in the Spiritual World is, of course, to be affirmed alike on the ground of analogy and of experience ; but it does not follow that these necessitate other Laws. A Law has nothing to do with potency. We may lose sight of a substance, or of an energy, but it is an abuse of language to talk of losing sight of Laws.
Are there, then, no other Laws in the Spirit- ual World except those which are the projec- tions or extensions of Natural Laws ? From the number of Natural Laws which are found in the higher sphere, from the large territory actually embraced by them, and from their special prominence throughout the whole re- gion, it may at least be answered that the mar- gin left for them is small. But if the objection is pressed that it is contrary to the analogy, and unreasonable in itself, that there should not be new Laws for this higher sphere, the reply is obvious. Let these Laws be produced. If the spiritual nature, in inception, growth, and development, does not follow natural prin-
36 INTRODUCTION.
ciples, let the true principles be stated and ex- plained. We have not denied that there may be new Laws. One would almost be surprised if there were not. The mass of material handed over from the natural to the spiritual, continu- ous, apparently, from the natural to the spirit- ual, is so great that till that is worked out it will be impossible to say what space is still left unembraced by Laws that are known. At present it is impossible even approximately to estimate the size of that supposed terra incog- nita. From one point of view it ought to be vast, from another extremely small. But how- ever large the region governed by the suspected new Laws may be that cannot diminish by a hair's-breadth the size of the territory where the old Laws still prevail. That territory it- self, relatively to us though perhaps not abso- lutely, must be of great extent. The size of the key which is to open it, that is, the size of all the Natural Laws which can be found to apply, is a guarantee that the region of the knowable in the Spiritual World is at least as wide as these regions of the Natural World which by the help of these Laws have been explored. No doubt also there yet remain some Natural Laws to be discovered, and these in time may have a further light to shed on the spiritual field. Then we may know all that is ? By. no means. We may only know all that may be known. And that may be very little. The Sovereign Will which sways the sceptre of that invisible empire must be granted a right of freedom — that freedom which by putting it
INTRODUCTION. 67
into our wills He surely teaches us to honor in His. In much of His dealing with us also, in what may be called the paternal relation, there may seem no special Law — no Law ex- cept the highest of all, that Law of which all other Laws are parts, that Law which neither Nature can wholly reflect nor the mind begin to fathom — the Law of Love. He adds noth- ing to that, however, who loses sight of all other Laws in that, nor does he take from it who finds specific Laws everywhere radiating from it.
With regard to the supposed new Laws of the Spiritual World — those Laws, that is, which are found for the first time in the Spirit- ual World, and have no analogies lower down — there is this to be said, that there is one strong reason against exaggerating either their num- ber or importance — their importance at least for our immediate needs. The connection be- tween language and the Law of Continuity has been referred to incidentally already. It is clear that we can only express the Spiritual Laws in language borrowed from the visible universe. Being dependent for our vocab- ulary on images, if an altogether new and foreign set of Laws existed in the Spiritual World, they could never take shape as definite ideas from mere want of words. The hypo- thetical new Laws which may remain to be dis- covered in the domain of Natural or Mental Science may afford some index of these hypo- thetical higher laws, but this would of course mean that the latter were no longer foreign
68 INTRODUCTION.
but in analogy, or, likelier still, identical. If, on the other hand, the Natural Laws of the future have nothing to say of these higher Laws, what can be said of them ! Where is the language to come from in which to frame £hem? If their disclosure could be of any practical use to us, we may be sure the clue to them, the revelation of them, in some way would have been put into Nature. If, on the contrary, they are not to be of immediate use to man, it is better they should not embarrass him. After all, then, our knowledge of higher Law must be limited by our knowledge of the lower. The Natural Laws as at present known, whatever additions may yet be made to them, give a fair rendering of the facts of Nature. And their analogies or their pro- jections in the Spiritual Sphere may also be said to offer a fair account of that sphere, or of one or two conspicuous departments of it. The time has come for that account to be given. The greatest among the theological Laws are the Laws of Nature in disguise. It will be the splendid task of the theology of the future to take off the mask and disclose to a waning scepticism the naturalness of the supernatural.
It is almost singular that the identification of the Laws of the Spiritual World with the Laws of Nature should so long have escaped recognition. For apart from the probability on cl priori grounds, it is involved in the whole structure of Parable. When any two Phe- nomena in the two spheres are seen to be anal-
INTRODUCTION. 69
ogous, the parallelism must depend upon the fact that the Laws governing them are not analogous but identical. And yet this basis for Parable seems to have been overlooked. Thus Principal Shairp : — " This seeing of Spiritual truths mirrored in the face of Nature rests not on any fancied, but in a real analogy between the natural and the spiritual worlds. They are in some sense ichich science has not ascertained, but which the vital and re- ligions imagination can perceive, counterparts one of the other."1 But is not this the ex- planation, that parallel Phenomena depend upon identical Laws ? It is a question indeed whether one can speak of Laws at all as being analogous. Phenomena are parallel, Laws which make them so are themselves one.
In discussing the relations of the Natural and Spiritual kingdom, it has been all but implied hitherto that the Spiritual Laws were framed originally on the plan of the Natural ; and the impression one might receive in studying the two worlds for the first time from the side of analogy would naturally be that the lower world was formed first, as a kind of scaffolding on which the higher and Spiritual should be afterwards raised. Now the exact opposite has been the case. The first in the field was the Spiritual World.
It is not necessary to reproduce here in detail the argument which has been stated recently with so much force in the " Unseen
1 "Poetic Interpretation of Nature," p. 115.
70 INTE OD UCTION.
Universe." The conclusion of that work re- mains still unassailed, that the visible universe has been developed from the unseen. Apart from the general proof from the Law of Con- tinuity, the more special grounds of such a conclusion are, first, the fact insisted upon by Herschel and Clerk- Maxwell that the atoms of which the visible universe is built up bear dis- tinct marks of being manufactured articles ; and, secondly, the origin in time of the visible universe is implied from known facts with re- gard to the dissipation of energy. With the gradual aggregation of mass the energy of the universe has been slowly disappearing, and this loss of energy must go on until none remains. There is, therefore, a point in time when the energy of the universe must come to an end ; and that which has its end in time cannot be infinite, it must also have had a beginning in time. Hence the unseen existed before the seen.
There is nothing so especially exalted there- fore in the Natural Laws in themselves as to make one anxious to find them blood relations of the Spiritual. It is not only because these Laws are on the ground, more accessible therefore to us who are but groundlings ; not only, as the " Unseen Universe " points out in another con- nection, " because they are at the bottom of the list — are in fact the simplest and lowest — that they are capable of being most readily grasped by the finite intelligences of the universe." J
1 6th Edition, p. 235.
INTRODUCTION. 71
But their true significance lies in the fact that they are on the list at all, and especially in that the list is the same list. Their dignity is hot as Natural Laws, but as Spiritual Laws, Laws which, as already said, at one end are deal- ing with Matter, and at the other with Spirit. " The physical properties of matter form the alphabet which is put into our hands by God, the study of which, if properly conducted, will enable us more perfectly to read that great book which we call the ' Universe.' " 1 But, over and above this, the Natural Laws will en- able us to read that great duplicate which we call the " Unseen Universe," and to think and live in fuller harmony with it. After all, the true greatness of Law lies in its vision of the Unseen. Law in the visible is the Invisible in the visible. And to speak of Laws as Natural is to define them in their application to a part of the universe, the sense-part, whereas a wider survey would lead us to regard all Law as essentially Spiritual. To magnify the Laws of Nature, as Laws of thig small world of ours, is to take a provincial view of the universe. Law is great not because the phenomenal world is great, but because these vanishing lines are the avenues into the eternal Order.
" Is it less reverent to regard the universe as an illimitable avenue which leads up to God, than to look upon it as a limited area bounded by an impenetrable wall, which, if we could only pierce it, would admit us at once into the
1 6th Edition, p. 286.
72 INTRODUCTION.
presence of the Eternal ? " l Indeed the authors of the " Unseen Universe " demur even to the expression material universe, since, as they tell us " Matter is (though it may seem paradoxical to say so) the less important half of the material of the physical universe." 2 And even Mr. Huxley, though in a different sense, as- sures us, with Descartes, " that we know more of mind than we do of body ; that the im- material world is a firmer reality than the material." 8
How the priority of the Spiritual improves the strength and meaning of the whole argu- ment will be seen at once. The lines of the Spiritual existed first, and it was natural to expect that when the "Intelligence resident in the ' Unseen ':> proceeded to frame the material universe He should go upon the lines already laid down. He would, in short, simply project the higher Laws downward, so that the Natural World would become an incarnation, a visible representation, a working model of the Spiritual. The whole function of the material world lies here. The world is only a thing that is; it is not. It is a thing that teaches, yet not even a thing — a show that shows, a teaching shadow. However useless the demonstration otherwise, philosophy does well in proving that matter is a non-entity. We work with it as the mathematician with an «. The reality is alone the Spiritual. " It is
i " Unseen Universe," p. 96. 2 Ibid., p. 100.
8 " Science and Culture," p. 259."
INTRODUCTION. 73
very well for physicists to speak of * matter,' but for men generally to call this ' a material world ' is an absurdity. Should we call it an x- world it would mean as much, viz., that we do not know what it is." * When shall we learn the true mysticism of one who was yet far from being a mystic — " We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal ? " 2 The visible is the ladder up to the invisible ; the temporal is but the scaffolding of the eternal. And when the last immaterial souls have climbed through this material to God, the scaffolding shall be taken down, and the earth dissolved with fervent heat-— not because it was base, but because its work is done.
iHinton's " PMlosophy and Religion," p. 40. . 18.
BIOGENESIS.
" "What we require is no new Revelation, but simply an adequate conception of the true essence of Christi- anity. And I believe that, as time goes on, the work of the Holy Spirit will be continuously shown in the gradual insight which the human race will attain into the true essence of the Christian religion. I am thus of opinion that a standing miracle exists, and that it has ever existed — a direct and continued influence exerted by the supernatural on the natural."
PARADOXICAL PHILOSOPHY.
BIOGENESIS.
«* He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath Hot the Son of God hath not Life." — John. "Omne vivum ex vivo." — Harvey.
FOB two hundred years the scientific world has been rent with discussions upon the Origin of Life. Two great schools have defended exactly opposite views — one that matter can spontaneously generate life, the other that life can only come from pre-existing life. The doctrine of Spontaneous Generation, as the first is called, has been revived within recent years by Dr. Bastian, after a series of elaborate experiments on the Beginnings of Life. Stated in his own words, his conclusion is this : "Both observation and experiment unmistak- ably testify to the fact that living matter is con- tantly being formed de novo, in ohedience to the same laws and tendencies which determine all the more simple chemical combinations." 1 Life, that is to say, is not the Gift of Life. It is capable of springing into being of itself. It can be Spontaneously Generated.
1 " Beginnings of Life." By H. C. Bastian, M. A., M.D., F.R.S. Macmillan, vol. ii. p. 633.
77
78 BIOGENESIS.
This announcement called into the field a phalanx of observers, and the highest author- ities in biological science engaged themselves afresh upon the problem. The experiments necessary to test the matter can be followed or repeated by any one possessing the slightest manipulative skill. Glass vessels are three- parts filled with infusions of hay or any organic matter. They are boiled to kill all germs of life, and hermetically sealed to exclude the outer air. The air inside, having been exposed to the boiling temperature for many hours, is supposed to be likewise dead; so that any life which may subsequently appear in the closed flasks must have sprung into be- ing of itself. In Bastian's experiments after every expedient to secure sterility, life did appear inside in myriad quantity. Therefore, he argued, it was spontaneously generated.
But the phalanx of observers found two errors in this calculation. Professor Tyndall repeated the same experiment, only with a precaution to ensure absolute sterility sug- gested by the most recent science — a discovery of his own. After every care, he conceived, there might still be undestroyed germs in the air inside the flasks. If the air were absolutely germless and pure, would the myriad life appear ? He manipulated his experimental vessels in an atmosphere which under the high test of optical purity — the most delicate known test — was absolutely germless. Here not a vestige of life appeared. He varied the experi-
BIOGENESIS. 79
ment in every direction, but matter in the germless air never yielded life.
The other error was detected by Mr. Dal- lihger. He found among the lower forms of life the most surprising and indestructible vitality. Many animals could survive much higher temperatures .than Dr. Bastian had applied to annihilate them. Some germs almost refused to be annihilated — they were all but fire-proof.
These experiments have practically closed the question. A decided and authoritative conclusion has now taken its place in science. So far as science can settle anything, this ques- tion is settled. The attempt to get the living out of the dead has failed. Spontaneous Generation has had to be given up. And it is now recognized on every hand that Life can only come from the touch of Life. Huxley categorically announces that the doctrine of Biogenesis, or life only from life, is "victo- rious along the whole line at the present day." * And even whilst confessing that he wishes the evidence were the other way, Tyndall is com- pelled to say, " I affirm that no shred of trust- worthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared inde- pendently of antecedent life." a
For much more than two hundred years a similar discussion has dragged its length through the religious world. Two great schools
1 " Critiques and Addresses." T. H. Huxley, F. E. S.,
p. 239. 2 Nineteenth Century, 1878, p. 507.
80 BIOGENESIS.
here also have defended exactly opposite views — one that the Spiritual Life in man can only come from pre-existing Life, the other that it can Spontaneously Generate itself. Taking its stand upon the initial statement of the Author of the Spiritual Life, one small school, in the face of derision and opposition, has persistently maintained the doctrine of Bio- genesis. Another, larger and with greater pre- tension to philosophic form, has defended Spontaneous Generation. The weakness of the former school consists — though this has been much exaggerated — in its more or less general adherence to the extreme view that religion had nothing to do with the natural life ; the weakness of the latter lay in yielding to the more fatal extreme that it had nothing to do with anything else. That man, being a wor- shipping animal by nature, ought to maintain certain relations to the Supreme Being, was indeed to some extent conceded by the natu- ralistic school, but religion itself was looked upon as a thing to be spontaneously generated by the evolution of character in the laboratory of common life.
The difference between the two positions is radical. Translating from the language of Science into that of Religion, the theory of Spontaneous Generation is simply that a man may become gradually better and better until in course of the process he reaches that quality of religious nature known as Spiritual Law. This Life is not something added ab extra to the natural man ; it is the normal and appro-
BIOGENESIS. 81
priate development of the natural man. Bio- genesis opposes to this the whole doctrine of Regeneration. The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man. He is a New Creation born from Above. As well expect a hay infusion to become gradually more and more living until in course of the process it reached Vitality, as expect a man by becoming better and better to attain the Eter- nal Life.
The advocates of Biogenesis in Religion have founded their argument hitherto all but ex- clusively on Scripture. The relation of the doctrine to the constitution and course of Nature was not disclosed. Its importance, therefore, was solely as a dogma ; and being directly concerned with the Supernatural, it was valid for those alone who chose to accept the Supernatural.
Yet it has been keenly felt by those who attempt to defend this doctrine of the origin of the Spiritual Life, that they have nothing more to oppose to the rationalistic view than the ipse dixit of Revelation. The argument from experience, in the nature of the case, is seldom easy to apply, and Christianity has always found at this point a genuine difficulty in meet- ing the challenge of Natural Religions. The direct authority of Nature, using Nature in its limited sense, was not here to be sought for. On such a question its voice was necessarily silent ; and all that the apologist could look for lower down was a distant echo or analogy. 6
:B2 BIOGENESIS.
All that is really possible, indeed, is such an analogy ; arid if that can now be found in Biogenesis, Christianity in its most central posi- tion secures at length a support and basis in the Laws of Nature.
Up to the present time the analogy required has not been forthcoming. There was no known parallel in Nature for the spiritual phenomena in question. But now the case is altered. With the elevation of Biogenesis to the rank of a scientific fact, all problems con- cerning the Origin of Life are placed on a differ- ent footing. And it remains to be seen whether Religion cannot at once re-affirm and reshape its argument in the light of this modern truth.
If the doctrine of the Spontaneous Genera- tion of Spiritual Life can be met on scientific /grounds, it will mean the removal of the most serious enemy Christianity has to deal with, .and especially within its own borders, at the present day. The religion of Jesus has prob- ;aMy always suffered more from those who have misunderstood than from those who have opposed it. Of the multitudes who confess Christianity at this hour how many have clear in their minds the cardinal distinction estab- lished by its Founder between "born of the flesh "and "born of the Spirit?" By how many teachers of Christianity even is not this fundamental postulate persistently ignored? A thousand modern pulpits every seventh day .-are preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous -Generation. The finest and best of recent poetry is colored with this same error. Spon«
BIOGENESIS. g£
taneous Generation is the leading theology of the modern religious or irreligious novel ; and. much of the most serious and cultured writ- ing of the day devotes itself to earnest preaefr- ing of this impossible gospel. The current conception of the Christian religion in short — the conception which is held not only popularly but l>y men of culture — is founded upon a view of its origin which, if it were true, would ren- der the whole scheme abortive.
Let us first place vividly in our imaginatioiL the picture of the two great Kingdoms of Na- ture, the inorganic and organic, as these now stand in the light of the Law of Biogenesis-. What essentially is involved in saying that there is no Spontaneous Generation of Life t1 It is meant that the passage from the raineraL world to the plant or animal world is hermet- ically sealed on the mineral side. This in- organic world is staked off from the living, world by barriers which have never yet been crossed from within. No change of substance,, no modification of environment, no chemistry, no electricity, nor any form of energy, nor any evolution can endow any single atom of the* mineral world with the attribute of Life. Onfy by bending down into this dead world of som& living form can these dead atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality, without this preliminary contact with Life they remain fixed iu the inorganic sphere forever. It is a very mysterious Law which guards in this:- way the portals of the living world. And if there is one thing in Nature more worth
84 BIOGENESIS.
dering for its strangeness it is the spectacle of this vast helpless world of the dead cut off from the living by the Law of Biogenesis and denied forever the possibility of resurrection within itself. So very strange a thing, indeed, 3s this broad line in Nature, that Science has long and urgently sought to obliterate it. Bio- genesis stands in the way of some forms of Evolution with such stern persistency that the assaults upon this Law for number and thor- oughness have been unparalleled. But, as we have seen, it has stood the test. Nature, to the modern eye, stands broken in two. The physical Laws may explain the inorganic world ; the biological Laws may account for tjie development of the organic. But of the point where they meet, of that strange borderland between the dead and the living, Science is si- lent. It is as if God had placed everything in earth and heaven in the hands of Xature, but reserved a point at the genesis of Life for His direct appearing.
The power of the analogy, for which we are laying the foundations, to seize and impress the mind, will largely depend on the vividness with which one realizes the gulf which Xature places between the living and the dead.1 But
1 This being the crucial point it may not be inappro- priate to supplement the quotations already given in the text with the following: —
"We are in the presence of the one incommunicable gulf — the gulf of all gulfs — that gulf which Mr. Hux- ley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been suggested since
BIOGENESIS. 85
those who, in contemplating Nature, have found their attention arrested by this extraor- dinary dividing-line severing the visible uni- verse eternally into two ; those who in watch- ing the progress of science have seen barrier after barrier disappear — barrier between plant and plant, between animal and animal, and even between animal and plant — but this gulf yawn more hopelessly wide with every advance of knowledge, will be prepared to attach a signifi- cance to the Law of Biogenesis and its analogies more profound perhaps than to any other fact or law in Nature. If, as Pascal says, Nature is an image of grace ; if the things that are seen are in any sense the images of the un- seen, there must lie in this great gulf fixed, this most unique and startling of all natural phenomena, a meaning of peculiar moment.
the eyes of men first looked into it — the mighty gulf between death and life." — "As Regards Protoplasm." By J. Hutchinson Sterling, LL.D., p. 42.
" The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living." — Hux- ley, "Encyclopaedia Britaunica" (new Ed.). Art. "Biology."
" Whoever recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very recently to discover a de- cided support for the generatio cequivoca in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world, will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way ac- cepted as the basis of all our views of life." — Virchow : " The Freedom of Science in the Modern State." " All really scientific experience tells us that life can be pro- duced from a living antecedent only." — " The Unseen Universe." 6th Ed. p. 229.
$6 BIOGENESIS.
Where now in the Spiritual spheres shall we meet a companion phenomenon to this ? What iu the Unseen shall be likened this deep divid- ing-line, or where in human experience is an- other barrier which never can be crossed ?
'There is such a barrier. In the dim but not inadequate vision of the Spiritual "World pre- sented in the Word of God, the first thing that strikes the eye is a great gulf fixed. The pass- age from the Natural World to the Spiritual World is hermetically sealed on the natural side. The door from the inorganic to the or- .ganic is shut, no mineral can open it; so the door from the natural to the spiritual is shut, a,nd no man can open it. This world of natural men is staked off from the Spiritual World by barriers which have never yet been crossed from within. Xo organic change, no modification of environment, no mental energy, no moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization can endow any single liuman soul with the attribute of Spiritual ILife. The Spiritual World is guarded from the world next in order beneath it by a law of ^Biogenesis — except a man be born ay a in . . . isccept a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Einydon> of God.
It is not said in this enunciation of the law, iiiat if the condition be not fulfilled the natural man will not enter the Kingdom of God. The word is cannot. For the exclusion of the spiritually inorganic from the Kingdom of the spiritually organic is not arbitrary. Xor is the ?.iatural man refused admission on unexplained
BIOGENESIS. 8T
grounds. His admission is a scientific impos- sibility. Except a mineral be born " from, above " — from the Kingdom just above it — it cannot enter the Kingdom just above it. And except a man be born " from above," by the same law, he cannot enter the Kingdom just above him. There being no passage from one King- dom to another, whether from inorganic to or- ganic, or from organic to spiritual, the inter- vention of Life is a scientific necessity if % stone or a plant or an animal or a man is to pass from a lower to a higher sphere. The plant stretches down to the dead world beneath it, touches its minerals and gases with its mystery of Life, and brings them up ennobled and. transformed to the living sphere. The breath: of God, blowing where it listeth, touches with its mystery of Life the dead souls of men, bears them across the bridgeless gulf between, the natural and the spiritual, between the spir- itually inorganic and the spiritually organi^ endows them with its own high qualities, and. develops within them these new and secret faculties, bv which those who are born aintin
' */ C7
are said to see the Kingdom of God.
What is the evidence for this great gulf fixed at the portals of the Spiritual World? Does Science close this gate, or Reason, or Experience, or Revelation? We reply, fill four. The initial statement, it is not to be- denied, reaches us from Revelation. But is- not this evidence here in court ? Or shall it be said that any argument deduced from this is a transparent circle — that after all we simply
88 BIOGENESIS.
come back to the unsubstantiality of the ipss dfait. Not altogether, for the analogy lends an altogether new authority to the ipse dixit. How substantial that argument really is, is seldom realized. We yield the point here much too easily. The right of the Spirit- ual World to speak of its own phenomena is as secure as the right of the Natural World to speak of itself. What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural men : What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to Spiritual men? Let us at least ask what Revelation has announced with reference to the Spiritual Law of Biogenesis ; afterwards we shall inquire whether Science, while endorsing the verdict, may not also have some further vindication of its title to be heard.
The words of Scripture which preface this inquiry contain an explicit and original state- ment of the Law of Biogenesis for the Spiritual Life. " He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not Life." Life, that is to say, depends upon con- tact with Life. It cannot spring up of itself. It cannot develop out of anything that is not Life. There is no Spontaneous Generation hi religion any more than in Nature. Christ is the source of Life in the Spiritual World ; and he that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son, whatever else he may have, hath not Life. Here, in short, is the categori- cal denial of Abiogenesis and the establishment in this high field of the classical formula
BIOGENESIS. 89
Omne mvum ex vivo — no Life without an- tecedent Life. In this mystical theory of the Origin of Life the whole of the New Testament writers are agreed. And, as we have already seen, Christ Himself founds Christianity upon Biogenesis stated in its most literal" form. " Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom oi God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be born again." 1 Why did He add Marvel not? Did He seek to allay the fear in the bewildered ruler's mind that there was more in this novel doctrine than a simple analogy from the first to the second birth ?
The attitude of the natural man, again, with reference to the Spiritual, is a subject on which the New Testament is equally pronounced. Not only in his relation to the spiritual man, but to the whole Spiritual World, the natural man is regarded as dead. He is as a crystal to an organism. The natural world is to the Spiritual as the inorganic to the organic. " To be carnally minded is Death.'" 2 " Thou hast a name to live, but art Dead." 8 " She that liveth in pleasure is Dead while she liveth." * " To you hath He given Life which were Dead in trespasses and sins." s
It is clear that a remarkable harmony exists here between the Organic World as arranged
1 John iii. 2 Rom. viii. 6. 8 Rev. iii. 1.
* 1 Tim. v. 6. 6 Eph. ii. 1, 5.
90 BIOGENESIS.
by Science and the Spiritual World as arranged by Scripture. We find one great Law guarding the thresholds of both worlds, securing that entrance from a lower sphere shall only take place by a direct regenerating act, and that emanating from the world next in order above. There are not two laws of Biogenesis, one for the natural, the other for the Spiritual ; one law is for both. Wherever there is Life, Life of any kind, this same law holds. The an- alogy, therefore, is only among the phenomena ; between laws there is no analogy — there is Continuity. In either case, the first step in peopling these worlds with the appropriate living forms is virtually miracle. Nor in one case is there less of mystery in the act than in the other. The second birth is scarcely less perplexing to the theologian than the first to the einbryologist.
A moment's reflection ought now to make it clear why in the Spiritual World there had to be added to this mystery the further mys- tery of its proclamation through the medium of Revelation. This is the point at which the scientific man is apt to part company with the theologian. He insists on having all things materialized before his eyes in Nature. If Nature cannot discuss this with him, there is nothing to discuss. But Nature can discuss this with him — only she cannot open the dis- cussion or supply all the material to begin with. If Science averred that she could do this, the theologian this time must part com- pany with such Science. For any Science
BIOGENESIS. 91
which makes such a demand is false to the doctrines of Biogenesis. What is this but the demand that a lower world, hermetically sealed against all communication with a world above it, should have a mature and intelligent ac- quaintance with its phenomena and laws ? Can the mineral discourse to me of animal Life? Can it tell me what lies beyond the narrow boundary of its inert being? Know- ing nothing of other than the chemical and physical laws, what is its criticism worth of the principles of Biology? And even when some visitor from the upper world, for example some root from a living tree, penetrating its dark recess, honors it with a touch, will it presume to define the form and purpose of its patron, or until the bioplasm has done its gra- cious work can it even know that it is being touched? The barrier which separates King- doms from one another restricts mind not less than matter. Any information of the King- doms above it that could come to the mineral world could only come by a communication from above. An analogy from the lower world might make such communication intelligible as well as credible, but the information in the first instance must be vouchsafed as a revela- tion. Similarly if those in the Organic King- dom are to know anything of the Spiritual World, that knowledge must at least begin as Revelation. Men who reject this source of information, by the Law of Biogenesis, can have no other. It is no spell of ignorance arbitrarily laid upon certain members of the
92 BIOGENESIS.
Organic Kingdom that prevents them reading the secrets of the Spiritual World. It is a scientific necessity. No exposition of the case could be more truly scientific than this : " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." * The verb here, it will be again observed, is potential. This is not a dogma of theology, but a necessity of Science. And Science, for the most part, has consistently accepted the situation. It has always proclaimed its ignorance of the Spir- itual World. When Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "Regarding Science as a gradually increasing sphere we may say that every addi- tion to its surface does but bring it into wider contact with surrounding nescience," 2 from his standpoint he is quite correct. The en- deavors of well-meaning persons to show that the Agnostic's position, when he asserts his ignorance of the Spiritual World, is only a pretence ; the attempts to prove that he really knows a great deal about it if he would only admit it, are quite misplaced. He really does not know. The verdict that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, that they are foolishness unto him, that neither can he know them, is final as a statement of scientific truth — a statement on which the entire Agnostic literature is simply one long commentary.
1 1 Cor. If. 14
* " First Principles," 2d Ed. p. 17.
BIOGENESIS. 93
We are now in a better position to follow out the more practical bearings of Biogenesis. There is an immense region surrounding Regeneration, a dark and perplexing region where men would be thankful for any light. It may well be that Biogenesis in its many ramifications may yet reach down to some of the deeper mysteries of the Spiritual Life. But meantime there is much to define even on the surface. And for the present we shall content ourselves by turning its light upon one or two points of current interest.
It must long ago have appeared how decisive is the answer of Science to the practical ques- tion with which we set out as to the possi- bility of a Spontaneous Development of Spir- itual Life in the individual soul. The inquiry into the Origin of Life is the fundamental question alike of Biology and Christianity. We can afford to enlarge upon it, therefore, even at the risk of repetition. When men are offering us a Christianity without a living Spirit, and a personal religion without conver- sion, no emphasis or reiteration can be extreme. Besides, the clearness as well as the definite- ness of the Testimony of Nature to any Spir- itual truth is of immense importance. Re- generation has not merely been an outstand- ing difficulty, but an overwhelming obscurity. Even to earnest minds the difficulty of grasp- ing the truth at all has always proved extreme. Philosophically one scarcely sees either the necessity or the possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not
9i BIOGENESIS.
simply grow better and better until in his own right lie enter the Kingdom of God is what thousands honestly and sincerely fail to understand. Now Philosophy cannot help us here. Her arguments are, if anything, against us. But Science answers to the appeal at once. If it be simply pointed out that this is the same absurdity as to ask why a stone should not grow more and more living till it enters the Organic World, the point is clear in an instant.
"What now, let us ask specifically, dis- tinguishes a Christian man from a non- Christian man? Is it that he has certain mental characteristics not possessed by the other ? Is it that certain faculties have been trained in him, that morality assumes special and higher manifestations, and character a nobler form ? Is the Christian merely an ordinary man who happens from birth to have been surrounded with a peculiar set of ideas ? Is his religion merely that peculiar quality of the moral life defined by Mr. Matthew Arnold as " morality touched by emotion ? " And does- the possession of a high ideal, benevolent sympathies, a reverent spirit, and a favorable environment account for what men call his Spiritual Life ?
The distinction between them is the same as that between the Organic and the Inorganic, the living and the dead. What is the differ- ence between a crystal and an organism, a stone and a plant ? They have much in com- mon. Both are made of the same atoms..
BIOGENESIS. 95
Both display the same properties of matter. Both tire subject to the Physical Laws. Both may be very beautiful. But besides possess- ing all that the crystal has, the plant possesses something more — a mysterious something called Life. Th1'"1- Life is not something which existed in the crystal only in a less developed form. There is nothing at all like it in the crystal. There is nothing like the first be- ginning of it in the crystal, not a trace or symptom of it. This plant is tenanted by something new, an original and unique posses- sion added over and above all the properties common to both. When from vegetable Life we rise to animal Life, here again we find something original and unique — unique at least as compared with the mineral. From animal Life we ascend again to Spiritual Life. And here also is something new, something still more unique. He who lives the Spiritual Life has a distinct kind of Life added to all the other phases of Life which he manifests — a kind of Life infinitely more distinct than is the active Life of a plant from the inertia of a stone. The Spiritual man is more distinct in point of fact than is the plant from the stone. This is the one possible comparison in Nature, for it is the wildest distinction in Nature ; but compared with the difference between the Natural and the Spiritual the gulf which di- vides the organic from the inorganic is a hair's- breadth. The natural man belongs essentially to this present order of things. He is endowed simply with, a high quality of the natural animal
96 BIOGENESIS.
Life. But it is Life of so poor a quality that it is not Life at all. He that hath not the Son hath not Life; but he that hath the Son hath Life — a new and distinct and supernatural endow- ment. He is not of this world. He is of the timeless state, of Eternity. It doth not yet ap- pear ichat he shall be.
The difference then between the Spiritual man and the Natural man is not a difference of development, but of generation. It is a dis- tinction of quality not of quantity. A man cannot rise by any natural development from " morality touched by emotion," to " morality touched by Life." Were we to construct a scientific classification, Science would compel us to arrange all natural men, moral or immoral, educated or vulgar, as one family. One might be high in the family group, another low ; yet, practically, they are marked by the same set of characteristics — they eat, sleep, work, think, live, die. But the Spiritual man is removed from his family so utterly by the possession of an additional characteristic that a biologist, fully informed of the whole circumstances, would not hesitate a moment to classify him elsewhere. And if he really entered into these circumstances it would not be in another family but in another Kingdom. It is an old-fashioned theology which divides the world in this way — which speaks of men as Living and Dead, Lost and Saved — a stern theology all but fallen into disuse. This difference between the Liv- ing and the Dead in souls is so unproved by casual observation, so impalpable in itself, so
BIOGENESIS. 9/
startling as a doctrine, that schools of culture have ridiculed or denied the grim distinction. Nevertheless the grim distinction must be re- tained. It is a scientific distinction. "He that hath not the Son hath not Life."
Now it is this great Law which finally dis- tinguishes Christianity from all other religions. It places the religion of Christ upon a footing altogether unique.
There is no analogy between the Christian religion and, say, Buddhism or the Moham- medan religion. There is no true sense in which a man can say, He that hath Buddha hath Life. Buddha has nothing to do with Life. He may have something to do with mo- rality. He may stimulate, impress, teach, guide, but there is no distinct new thing added to the souls of those who profess Buddhism. These religions may be developments of the natural, mental, or moral man. But Christi- anity professes to be more. It is the mental or moral man plus something else or some One else. It is the infusion into the Spiritual man of a New Life, of a quality unlike anything else in Nature. This constitutes the separate Kingdom of Christ, and gives to Christianity alone of all the religions of mankind the strange mark of Divinity.
Shall we next inquire more precisely what is this something extra which constitutes Spiritual Life ? What is this strange and new endowment in its nature and vital essence? And the answer is brief — it is Christ. He Chat hath the Son hath Life.
$8 BIOGENESTS.
Are we forsaking the lines of Science in saying so ? Yes and No. Science has drawn for us the distinction. It has no voice as to the nature of the distinction except this — that the new endowment is a something different from anything else with which it deals. It is not ordinary Vitality, it is not intellectual, it is not moral, but something beyond. And Revelation steps in and names what it is — it is Christ. Out of the multitude of sentences where this announcement is made, these few may be selected: "Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you ? " * "Your bodies are the members of Christ."1 " At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." 8 " We will come unto him and make our abode with him." 4 "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." 6 *' I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 6
Three things are cle r f m these state- ments: First, They are n t - ere figures of rhetoric. They are expl 't declarations. If language means anything tlrse words an- nounce a literal fact. Tn ome of Christ's own statements the literalism s if possible still more impressi.e. Foi ins ance, "Except ye eat the flesh of the .on >f man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day.
« 2 Cor. xii. 5. *1 Cor. vi. 15. 8 John xiv. 10. * John xiv. 21-23. » John xv. 4. « Gal. ii. **
BIOGENESIS. 99
For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in him."
In the second place, Spiritual Life is not something outside ourselves. The idea is not that Christ is in heaven and that we can stretch out some mysterious faculty and deal with Him there. This is the vague form in which many conceive the truth, but it is con- trary to Christ's teaching and to the analogy of nature. Vegetable Life is not contained in a reservoir somewhere in the skies, and meas- ured out spasmodically at certain seasons. The Life is in every plant and tree, inside its own substance and tissues, and continues there until it dies. This localization of Life in the individual is precisely the point where Vitality differs from the other forces of nature, such as magnetism and electricity. Vitality has much in common with such forces as magnetism and electricity, but there is one inviolable dis- tinction between them — that Life is perma- nently fixed and rooted in the organism. The doctrines of conservation and transformation of energy, that is to say, do not hold for Vitality. The electrician can demagnetize a, bar of iron, that is, he can transform its energy of magnetism into, something else — heat, or motion, or light — and then re-form these back into magnetism. For magnetism has no root, no individuality, no fixed indwelling. But the biologist cannot devitalize a plant or an animal
100 BIOGENESIS.
and revivify it again.1 Life is not one of the homeless forces which promiscuously inhabit space, or which can be gathered like electricity from the clouds and dissipated back again into space. Life is definite and resident ; and Spiritual Life is not a visit from a force, but a resident tenant in the soul.
This is, however, to formulate the statement of the third point, that spiritual Life is not an ordinary form of energy or force. The analogy from Nature endorses this, but here Nature stops. It cannot say what Spiritual Life is. Indeed what natural Life is remains unknown, and the word Life still wanders through Science without a definition. Nature is silent, therefore, and must be as to Spiritual Life. But in the absence of natural light we fall back upon that complementary revelation which always shines when truth is necessary and where Nature fails. We ask with Paul when this Life first visited him on the Da- mascus road, What is this ? " Who art Thou, Lord ? " And we hear, " I am Jesus." 2
We must expect to find this denied. Be- sides a proof from Revelation, this is an argu- ment from experience. And yet we shall still
1 One must not be misled by popular statements in this connection, such as this of Professor Owen's : " There are organisms which we can devitalize and re- vitalize— devive and revive — many times.'7 (Monthly Microscopical Journal, May, 1869, p. 294.) The refer- ence is of course to the extraordinary capacity for resus- citation possessed by many of the Protozoa and othet low forms of life.
2 Acts ix. 5.
BIOGENESIS. 101
be told that this Spiritual Life is a force. But let it be remembered what this means in Science, it means the heresy of confounding Force with Vitality. We must also expect to be told that this Spiritual Life is simply a development of ordinary Life — just as Dr. Bastian tells us that natural Life is formed according to the same laws which determine the more simple chemical combinations. But remember what this means in Science. It is the heresy of Spontaneous Generation, a heresy so thoroughly discredited now that scarcely an authority in Europe will lend his name to it. Who art Thou, Lord ? Unless we are to be allowed to hold Spontaneous Generation there is no alternative : Life can only come from Life : " I am Jesus."
A hundred other questions now rush into the mind about this Life : How does it come ? Why does it come? How is it manifested? What faculty does it employ ? Where does it reside? Is it communicable? What are its conditions ? One or two of these questions may be vaguely answered, the rest bring us face to face with mystery. Let it not be thought that the scientific treatment of a Spiritual subject has reduced religion to a problem of physics, or demonstrated God by the laws of biology. A religion without mystery is an absurdity. Even Science has its mysteries, none more inscrutable than around this Science of Life. It taught us sooner or later to expect mystery, and now we enter its dorjain. Let it be carefully marked,
102 BIOGENESIS.
however, that the cloud does not fall and cover us till we have ascertained the most moment- ous truth of Religion — that Christ is in the Christian.
Not that there is anything new in this. The Churches have always held that Christ was the source of Life. No spiritual man ever claims that his spirituality is his own. "I live," he will tell you ; " nevertheless it is not I, but Christ liveth in me." Christ our Life has indeed been the only doctrine in the Christian Church from Paul to Augustine, from Calvin to Newman. Yet, when the Spiritual man is cross-examined upon this confession it is astonishing to find what uncertain hold it has upon his mind. Doctrinally he states it adequately and holds it unhesitatingly. But when pressed with the literal question he shrinks from the answer. We do not really believe that the Living Christ has touched us, that He makes His abode in us. Spiritual Life is not as real to us as natural Life. And we cover our retreat into unbelieving vagueness with a plea of reverence, justified, as we think, by the " Thus far and no f arther " of ancient Scriptures. There is often a great deal of intellectual sin concealed under this old aphorism. When men do not really wish to go farther they find it an honorable con- venience sometimes to sit down on the outer- most edge of the Holy Ground on the pretext of taking off their shoes. Yet we must be •certain that, making a virtue of reverence, we not merely excusing ignorance ; or, under
BIOGENESIS. 10a
the plea of mystery, evading a truth which has been stated in the New Testament a hundred times, in the most literal form, and with all but monotonous repetition. The greatest truths are always the most loosely held. And not the least of the advantages of taking up this question from the present standpoint is that we may see how a confused doctrine can really bear the luminous definition of Science and force itself upon us with all the weight of Natural Law.
What is mystery to many men, what feeds their worship, and at the same time spoils it, is that area round all great truth which is really capable of illumination, and into which. every earnest mind is permitted and com- manded to go with a light. "We cry mystery long before the region of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge ; its form is irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to the very verge and look down the precipice into the dim abyss, —
" Where writhing clouds unroll, Striving to utter themselves in shapes."
We have gone with a light to the very verge of this truth. We have seen that the Spiritual Life is an endowment from the Spiritual World*, and that the Living Spirit of Christ dwells in the Christian. But now the gulf yawns black before us. What more does Science know ot
104 BIOGENESIS.
Life? Nothing. It knows nothing further about its origin in detail. It knows nothing about its ultimate nature. It cannot even define it. There is a helplessness in scientific books here, and a continual confession of it which to thoughtful minds is almost touching. Science, therefore, has not eliminated the true mysteries from our faith, but only the false. And it has done more. It has made true mys- tery scientific. Religion in having mystery is in analogy with all around it. Where there is exceptional- mystery in the Spiritual world it will generally be found that there is a cor- responding mystery in the natural world. And, as Origen centuries ago insisted, the difficulties of Religion are simply the difficulties of Nature.
One question more we may look at for a moment. What can be gathered on the surface as to the process of Regeneration in the in- dividual soul ? From the analogies of Biology we should expect three things : First, that the New Life should dawn suddenly ; Second, that it should come " without observation " ; Third, that it should develop gradually. On two of these points there can be little controversy. The gradualness of growth is a characteristic which strikes the simplest observer. Long be- fore the word Evolution was coined Christ applied it in this very connection — " First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the car." It is well known also to those who study the parables of Nature that there is an ascend- ing scale of slowness as we rise in the scale of
BIOGENESIS. 105
Life. Growth is most gradual in the highest forms. Man attains his maturity after a score of years ; the monad completes its humble cycle in a day. What wonder if development be tardy in the Creature of Eternity ? A Chris- tian's sun has sometimes set, and a critical world has seen as yet no corn hi the ear . As yet? "As yet," in this long Life, has not begun. Grant him the years proportionate to his place in the scale of Life. " The time of harvest is not yet"
Again, in addition to being slow, the phenom- ena of growth are secret. Life is invisible. When the New Life manifests itself it is a surprise. Thou canst not tell whence it comsth or whither it goeth. When the plant lives whence has the Life come? When it dies whither has it gone ? Thou canst not tell . . . so is every one that is born of the Spirit. For the Kingdom of God cometh without ob- servation.
Yet once more, — and this is a point of strange and frivolous dispute, — this Life comes suddenly. This is the only way in which Life can come. Life cannot c me gradually — health can, structure can, but not Life. A new the- ology has laughed at the Doctrine of Conver- sion. Sudden Conversion especially has been ridiculed as untrue to philosophy and impos- sible to human nature. We may not be con. cerned in buttressing any theology because it is old. But we find that this old theology is scientific. There may be cases — they are prob- ably in the majority — where the moment of
106 BIOGENESIS.
contact with the Living Spirit though sudden has been obscure. But the real moment and the conscious moment are two different things. Science pronounces nothing as to the con- scious moment. If it did it would probably say that that was seldom the real moment — just as in the natural Life the conscious moment is not the real moment. The moment of birth in the natural world is not a conscious moment — we do not know we are born till long afterward. Yet there are men to whom the Origin of the Xew Life in time has been no difficulty. To Paul, for instance, Christ seems to have come at a definite period of time, the exact moment and second of which could have been known. And this is certainly, in theory at least, the nor- ^al Origin of Life, according to the prin- ciples of Biology. The line between the living: and the dead is a sharp line. When the dead atoms of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, are seized upon by Life, the organism at first is very lowly. It possesses few functions. It has little beauty. Growth is the work of time. But Life is not. That comes in a moment. At one moment it was dead ; the next it lived. This is conversion, the " passing," as the Bible calls it, " from Death unto Life." Those who have stood by another's side at the solemn hour of this dread possession have been con- scious sometimes of an experience which words are not allowed to utter — a something like the sudden snapping of a chain, the waking from a dream.
DEGENERATION.
I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vine- yard of the man void of understanding ; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon it and received instruction." — SOLOMON.
DEGENERATION.
*' How shall we escape if we neglect so great salva- tion ? " — Hebrews.
" We have as possibilities either Balance, or Elabora- tion, or Degeneration." — E. Bay Lankester.
IN one of his best known books, Mr. Darwin brings out a fact which may be illustrated in some such way as this : Suppose a bird fan- cier collects a flock of tame pigeons distin- guished by all the infinite ornamentations of their race. They are of all kinds, of every shade of color, and adorned with every variety of marking. He takes th m to an uninhabited island and allows them to fly off wild into the woods. They found a colony there, and after the lapse of many years the owner returns to the spot. He will find that a remarkable change has taken place in the interval. The birds, or their descendants rather, have all be- come changed into the same color. The black, the white and the dun, the striped, the spot- ted, and the ringed, are all metamorphosed into one — a dark slaty blue. Two plain black bands monotonously repeat themselves upon the wings of each, and the loins beneath are white; but all tho variety, all the beautiful colors, all the old graces of form it may be,
109
110 DEGENERATION.
have disappeared. These improvements were the result of care and nurture, of domestica- tion, of civilization ; and now that these influ- ences are removed, the birds themselves undo the past and lose what they had gained. The attempt to elevate the race has "been mysteri- ously thwarted. It is as if the original bird, the far remote ancestor of all doves, had been blue, and these had been compelled by some strange law to discard the badges of their civilization and conform to the ruder image of the first. The natural law by which such a change occurs is called The Principle of Re- version to Type.
It is a proof of the universality of this law that the same thing will happen with a plant. A garden is planted, let us say, with straw- berries and roses, and for a number of years is left alone. In process of time it will run to waste. But this does not mean that the plants will really waste away, but that they will change into something else, and, as it in- variably appears, into something worse; in the one case, namely, into the small, wild strawberry of the woods, and in the other into the primitive dog-rose of the hedges.
If we neglect a garden plant, then, a natural principle of deterioration comes in, and changes it into a worse plant. And if we neglect a bird, by the same imperious law it will be gradually changed into an uglier bird. Or if we neglect almost any of the domestic ani- mals, they will rapidly revert to wild and worthless forms again.
LEGENEEAT1ON. H\
Now the same thing exactly would happen In the case of you or me. Why should Man be an exception to any of the laws of Nature ? Nature knows him simply as an animal — Sub- kingdom Vertebrata, Class Mammalia, Order Himana. And the law of Reversion to Type runs through all creation. If a man neglect himself for a few years he will change into a worse man and a lower man. If it is his body that he neglects, he will deteriorate into a wild and bestial savage — like the de- humanized men who are discovered sometimes upon desert islands. If it is his mind, it will degenerate into imbecility and madness — soli- tary confinement has the power to unmake men's minds and leave them idiots. If he neglect his conscience, it will run off into law« lessness and vice. Or, lastly, if it is his soul, it must inevitably atrophy, drop off iu ruin and decay.
We have here, then, a thoroughly natural basis for the question before us. If we neglect, with this universal principle staring us in the face, how shall we escape ? If we neglect the ordinary means of keeping a garden in order, how shall it escape running to weeds and waste? Or, if we neglect the opportunities for cultivating the mind, how shall it escape ignorance and feebleness ? So, if we neglect the soul, how shall it escape the natural ret- rograde movement, the inevitable relapse into barrenness and death ?
It is not necessary, surely, to pause for proof that there is such a retrograde principle
112 DEGENERATION.
in the being of every man. It is demonstrate ed b\ facts, am" by '-he analogy of all Nature. Three possibilities of life, according to Science, are open to all living organisms — Balance, Evolution, and Degeneral >n. The first denotes the precarious persistence of a life along what looks like a level path, a character which seems to hold its own alike against the attacks of evil and the appeals of good. It implies a set of circumstances so balanced by choice of fortune that they neither influence for better nor for worse. But except in theory this state of equilibrium, normal in the inor- ganic kingdom, is really foreign in the world of fe ; and what seems inertia may be a true Evolution unnoticed from its slowness, or likelier still a movement of Degeneration subtly obliterating as it falls the very traces of its former height. From this state of apparent Balance, Evolution is the escape in the up- ward direction, Degeneration in the lower. But Degeneration, rather than Balance or Elaboration, is the possibility of life embraced by the majority of mankind. And the choice is determined by man's own nature. The life of Balance is difficult. It lies on the verge of continual temptation, its perpetual adjust- ments become fatiguing, its measured virtue is monotonous and uninspiring. More diffi- cult still, apparently, is the life of ever upward growth. Most men attempt it for a time, but growth is slow ; and despair overtakes them while the goal is far away. Yet none of these reasons fully explains the fact that the alter-
DEGENERATION. 113
native which remains is adopted by the ma- jority of men. That Degeneration is easy only half accounts for it. Why is it easy? Why but that already in each man's very nature this principle is supreme? He feels within his soul a silent drifting motion impelling him downward with irresistible force. Instead of aspiring to Conversion to a higher Type he sub- mits by a law of his nature to Reversion to a lower. This is Degeneration — that principle by which the organism, failing to develop itself, failing even to keep what it has got, deterio- rates, and becomes more cind more adapted to a degraded form of life.
All men who know themselves are conscious that this tendency, deep-rooted and active, exists within their nature. Theologically it is described as a gravitation, a bias toward evil. The Bible view is that man is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. And experience tells him that he will shape himself into further sin and ever-deepening iniquity without the small- est effort, without in the least intending it, and in the most natural way in the world if he simply let his life run. It is on this prin- ciple that, completing the conception, the wicked are said further in the Bible to be lost. They are not really lost as yet, but they are on the sure way to it. The bias of their lives is in full action. There is no drag on anywhere. The natural tendencies are having it all their own way ; and although the victims may be quite unconscious that all this is going on, it is patent to every one who considers even th« 8
114 DEGENERATION.
natural bearings of the case that " the end oi these things is Death." When we see a man fall from the top of a five-story house, we say the man is lost. We say that before he has fallen a foot ; for the same principle that made him fall the one foot will undoubtedly malra him complete the descent by falling1 othe- eighty or ninety feet. So that he is a dead man, or a lost man from the very first, The gravitation of sin in a human soul acts pre- cisely in the same way. Gradually, with gathering momentum it sinks a man further and further from God and righteousness, and lands him, by the sheer action of a natural Jaw, in the hell of a neglected life.
But the lesson is not less clear from analogy. Apart even from the law of Degeneration, apart from Reversion to Type, there is in every living organism a law of Death. We are wont to imagine that Nature is full of Life. In reality it is full of Death. One cannot say it is natural for a plant to live. Examine its nature fully, and you have to admit that its natural tendency is to die. It is kept from dying by a mere temporary endowment, which gives it an ephemeral dominion over the ele- ments— gives it power to utilize for a brief span the rain, the sunshine, and the air. With- draw this temporary endowment for a moment -and its true nature is revealed. Instead of overcoming Nature it is overcome. The very things which appeared to minister to its growth and beauty now turn against it and make it decay and die. The sun which warmed it,
DEGENERATION. 115
withers it ; the air and rain which nourished it, rot it. It is the very forces which we asso- ciate with life which, when their true nature appears, are discovered to be really the min- isters of death.
This law, which is true for the whole plant- world, is also valid for the animal and for man. Air is not life, but corruption — so literally cor- ruption that the only way to keep out corrup- tion, when life has ebbed, is to keep out air. Life is merely a temporary suspension of these destructive powers ; and this is truly one of the most accurate definitions of life we have yet received — " the sum total of the functions which resist death."
Spiritual life, in like manner, is the sum total of the functions which resist sin. The soul's atmosphere is the daily trial, circum- stance, and temptation of the world. And as it is life alone which gives the plant power to utilize the elements, and as, without it, they utilize it, so it is the spiritual life alone which, gives the soul power to utilize temptation and trial ; and without l th destroy the souL How shall we escape '". wo refuse to exercise these functions — in other words, if we neglect ?
This destroying .recess, observe, goes on quite independently of G 's judgment on sin. God's judgment on sin is another and a more awful fact of which this may be a part. But it is a distinct fact by itself, which we can hold and examine separately, that on purely natural principles the soul that is left to itself un- watched, uncultivated, unredeemed, must fall
116 DEGENERATION.
away into death by its own nature. The sotd that sinneth " it shall die." It shall die, not necessarily because God passes sentence of death upon it, but because it cannot help dying. It has neglected " the functions which resist death," and has always been dying. The punishment is in its very nature, and the sen- tence is being gradually carried out all along the path of life by ordinary processes which enforce the verdict with the appalling faithful- ness of law.
There is an affectation that religious truths lie beyond the sphere of the comprehension which serves men in ordinary things. This question at least must be an exception. It lies as near the natural as the spiritual. If it makes no impression on a man to know that God will visit his iniquities upon him, he can- not blind himself to the fact that Nature will. Do we not all know what it is to be punished by Nature for disobeying her ? We have looked round the wards of a hospital, a prison, or a madhouse, and seen there Nature at work squaring her accounts with sin. And we knew as we looked that if no Judge sat on the throne of heaven at all there was a Judgment there, where an inexorable Nature was crying aloud for justice, and carrying out her heavy sen- tences for violated laws.
When God gave Nature the law into her own hands in this way, He seems to have given her two rules upon which her sentences were to be based. The one is formally enun- ciated in this sentence, " WHATSOEVER A MAN
DEGENERATION. 117
BOWETH THAT SHALL HE ALSO EEAP." The
other is informally expressed in this, "!F WE
NEGLECT HOW SHALL WE ESCAPE?"
The first is the positive law, and deals with sins of commission. The other, which we are now discussing, is the negative, and deals with sins of omission. It does not say anything about sowing, but about not sowing. It takes up the case of souls which are lying fallow. It does not say, if we sow corruption, we shall reap corruption. Perhaps we would not be so unwise, so regardless of ourselves, of public opinion, as to sow corruption. It does not say, if we sow tares we shall reap tares. We might never do anything so foolish as sow tares. But if we sow nothing, it says, we shall reap nothing. If we put nothing into the field, we shall take nothing out. If we neglect to cul- tivate in summer, how shall we escape starv- ing in winter?
Now the Bible raises this question, but does not answer it — because it is too obvious to need answering. How shall we escape if we neg- lect? The answer is, we cannot. In the nature of things we cannot. We cannot escape any more than a man can escape drowning who falls into the sea and has neglected to learn to swim. In the nature of things he cannot escape — nor can he escape who has neglected the great salvation.
Now why should such fatal consequences follow a simple process like neglect? The popular impression is that a man, to be what is called lost, must be an open and notorious
118 DEGENERATION.
sinner. He must be one who has abandoned all that is good and pure in life, and sown tc the flesh with all his might and main. But this principle goes further. It says simply, •" If we neglect." Any one may see the reason why a notoriously wicked person should not escape ; but why should not all the rest of us escape? What is to hinder people who are not notoriously wicked escaping — people who never sowed anything in particular? Why is it such a sin to sow nothing in particular 't
There must be some hidden and vital rela- tion between these three words, Salvation, Neglect, and Escape — some reasonable, es- sential, and indissoluble connection. Why are these words so linked together as to weight this clause with all the authority and solemnity of a sentence of death ?
The explanation has partly been given already. It lies still further, however, in the meaning of the word Salvation. And this, of course, is not at all Salvation in the ordinary sense of forgiveness of sin. This is one great meaning of Salvation, the first and the greatest. But this is spoken to people who are supposed to have had this. It is the broader word, therefore, and includes not only forgiveness of sin but salvation or deliverance from the down- ward bias of the soul. It takes in that whole process of rescue from the power of sin and selfishness that should be going on from day to day in every human life. We have seen that there is a natural principle in man lower- ing him, deadening him, pulling him down by
DEGENERATION.
inches to the mere animal plane, blinding- reason, searing conscience, paralyzing will. This is the active destroying principle, or Sin. Now to counteract this, God has discovered to us another principle which will stop this drift- ing process in the soul, steer it round, and maker it drift the other way. This is the active sav- ing principle, or Salvation. If a man find the* first of these powers furiously at work within him, dragging his whole life downward to de- struction, there is only one way to escape hia fate — to take resolute hold of the upward power, and be borne by it to the opposite goal. And as this second power is the only one in, the universe which has the slightest real effect upon the first, how shall a man escape if he neglect it ? To neglect it is to cut off the only possible chance of escape. In declining thia he is simply abandoning himself with his eyea open to that other and terrible energy which is already there, and which, in the natural course of things, is bearing him every moment further and further from escape.
From the very nature of Salvation, there* fore, it is plain that the only thing necessary to make it of no effect is neglect. Hence the Bible could not fail to lay strong emphasis on a word so vital. It was not necessary for it to say, how shall we escape if we trample upon the great salvation, or doubt, or despise,, or reject it. A man whr has been poisoned only need neglcc'j the antidote and ho will die. It makes no ^liffcrence whether he dashes it on the ground, or pours it out of the window,
1 20 DEGENERA TION.
or sets it down by his bedside, and stares at it all the time he is dying. He will die just the same, whether he destroys it in a passion, or coolly refuses to have anything to do with it. And as a matter of fact probably most deaths, spiritually, are gradual dissolutions of the last class rather than rash suicides of the first.
This, then, is the effect of neglecting salva- tion from the side of salvation itself; and the conclusion is that from the very nature of salvation escape is out of the question. Salva- tion is a definite process. If a man refuse to submit himself to that process, clearly he can- not have the benefits of it. As many as re- ceived Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God, He does not avail himself of this power. It may be mere carelessness or apathy. Nevertheless the neglect is fatal. He cannot escape because he will not.
Turn now to another aspect of the case — to the effect upon the soul itself. Neglect does more for the soul than make it miss salvation. It despoils it of its ca acity for salvation. Degeneration in the spiritual sphere involves primarily the impairing of the faculties of salvation and ultimal -ly the loss of them. It really means that the very soul itself becomes piecemeal destroyed until the very capacity for God and righteousness is gone.
The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity for God. It is like a curious chamber added on to being, and somehow involving being, a chamber with elastic and contractile walls, which can be expanded, with God as its
DEGENERATION. 121
guest, inimitably, but which without God shrinks and shrivels until every vestige of the Divine is gone, and God's image is left with- out God's Spirit. One cannot call what is left a soul; it is a shrunken, useless organ, a capacity sentenced to death by disuse, which droops as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers nature like a rotted branch. Nature has her revenge upon neglect as well as upon extravagance. Misuse, with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse.
There are certain burrowing animals — the mole for instance — which have taken to spend- ing their lives beneath the surface of the ground. And Nature has taken her revenge upon them in a thoroughly natural way — she has closed up their eyes. If they mean to live in darkness, she argues, eyes are obviously a superfluous function. By neglecting them these animals made it clear they do not want them. And as one of Nature's fixed principles is that noth- ing shall exist in vain, the eyes are presently taken away, or reduced to a rudimentary state. There are fishes also which have had to pay the same terrible forfeit for having made their abode in dark caverns where eyes can never be required. And in exactly the «ame way the spiritual eye must die and lose its power by purely natural law if the soul choose to walk in darkness rather than in light.
This is the meaning of the favorite paradox of Christ, " From him that hath not shall be taken away even that v/hich he hath ; " " take therefore the talent from him." The religious
122 DEGENERATION,
faculty is a talent, the most splendid and sacred talent we possess. Yet it is subject to the nat- ural conditions and laws. If any man take his talent and hide it in a napkin, although it is doing him neither harm nor good apparently, God will not allow him to have it. Although it is lying there rolled up in the darkness, not conspicuously affecting any one, still God will not allow him to keep it. He will not allow him to keep it any more than Nature would allow the fish to keep their eyes. Therefore, He says, * take the talent from him." And Nature does it. This man's crime was simply neglect — " thou wicked and slothful servant." It was a wasted life— a life which failed in the holy steward- ship of itself. Such a life is a peril to all who cross its path. Degeneration compasses De- generation. It is only a character which is itself developing that can aid the Evolution of the world 'and so fulfil the end f life. For this high usury each of our lives, however sm 11 may seem our capital, was given us by God. And it is just the men whose capital seems- small who need to choose the best investments. It is significant that it was the man who had only one talen who was guilty of neglecting it. Men with ten talents, men of large gifts and burning energies, either direct their powers nobly and usefully, or misdirect them irretriev- ably* It is those who belong to the rank and file of life who need this warning most. Others have an abundant store and sow to the spirit or the flesh with a lavish hand. But we, with our •mall gift> what boots our sowing ? Our temp-
DEGENERATION. 123
tation as ordinary men is to neglect to sow at all. The interest on our talent would be so small that we excuse ourselves with the reflection that it is not worth while.
It is no objection to all this to say that we are unconscious of this neglect or misdirection of our powers. That is the darkest feature in the case. If there were uneasiness there might b sr>ui, a something which was not gone to sleep like all the rest ; if there were a contending force anywhere; it we would let even that work instead of neglecting it, it would gain strength from hour to hour, and waken up one at a time each torpid and dishonored faculty till our whole nature becomes alive with striv- ings against self, and every avenue was open wide for God. But the apathy, the numbness of the soul, what can be said of such a symptom but that it means the creeping on of death ? There are accidents in which the victims feel no pain. They are well and strong they think. But they are dying. And if you ask the sur- geon by their side what makes him give this verdict, he will say it is this numbness over the frame which tells how some of the parts have lost already the very capacity for life.
Nor is it the least tragic accompaniment of this process that its effect may even be concealed from others. The soul undergoing Degenera- tion, surely by some arrangement with Temp- tation planned in the uttermost hell, possesses the power of absolute secrecy. When all with- in is festering decay and rottenness, a Judas,
124 DEGENERATION.
without anomaly, may kiss his Loid. Thit invisible consumption, like its fell analogue in the natural world, may even keep its victim beautiful while slowly slaying it. When one examines the little Crustacea which have in- habited for centuries the lakes of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, one is at first astonished to find these animals apparently endowed with perfect eyes. The pallor of the head is broken by two black pigment specks, conspicuous indeed as the only bits of color on the wh.^e blanched body ; and these, even to the casual observer, certainly represent well-defined or. gans of vision. But what do they with ey:s in these Stygian waters? There reigns an everlasting night. Is the law for once at fault I A swift incision with the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of vision — the front of the eye is perfect ; behind, there is nothing but a mass of ruins. The optio nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no vision. They have eyes, but they see not.
Exactly what Christ said of men : They had eyes, but no vision. And the reason is the same. It is the simplest problem of natural history. The Crustacea of the Mammoth Cave have chosen to abide in darkness. Therefore they have become fitted for it. By refusing to see they have waived the right to see. And Nature has grimly humored them. Nature had to do it by her very constitution. It is her de-
DEGENERATION. 125
fence against waste that decay of faculty should immediately follow disuse of function. He that hath ears to hear, he whose ears have not de- generated, let him hear.
Men tell us sometimes there is no such thing as an atheist. There must be. There are some men to whom it is true that there is no God. They cannot see God because they have no eye. They have only an abortive organ, atrophied by neglect.
All this, it is commonplace again to insist, is not the effect of neglect when we die, but while we live. The process is in full career and operation now. It is useless projecting con- sequences into the future when the effects may be measured now. We are always practising these little deceptions upon ourselves, post- poning the consequences of our misdeeds as if they were to culminate some other day about the time of death. It makes us sin with a lighter hand to run an account with retribution, as it were, and delay the reckoning time with God. But every day is a reckoning day. Every soul is a Book of Judg- ment, and Nature, as a recording angel, marks their every sin. As all will be "judged by the great Judge some day, all are judged by Nature now. The sin of yesterday, as part of its penalty, has the sin of to-day. All follow us in silent retribution on our past, and go with us to the grave. We cannot cheat Nature. No sleigh t-of -heart can rob religion of a present, the immortal nature of a noio. The poet sings —
120 DEGENERATION.
** I looked behind to find my past, Andlo, it had gone before."
But no, not all. The unforgiven sins are not away in keeping somewhere to be let loose up- on us when we die ; they are here within us, now. To-day brings the resurrection of their past, to-morrow of to-day. And the powers of sin, to the exact strength that we tmve developed them, nearing their dreadful culmina- tion with every breath we draw, are here, with- in us, now. The souls of some men are al- ready honeycombed through and through with the eternal consequences of neglect, so that taking the natural and rational view of their case just now, it is simply inconceivable that there is any escape just now. What a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God ! A fearful thing even if, as the philosc* pher tells us, " the hands of the Living God are the Laws of Nature."
Whatever hopes of a " heaven " a neglected soul may have, can be shown to be an ignorant and delusive dream. How is the soul to escape to heaven if it has neglected for a lifetime the means of escape from the world and self ? And where Is the capacity for heaven to come from if it be not developed on earth ? Where, indeed, is even the smallest spiritual apprecia- tion of God and heaven to come from when so little of spirituality has ever been known or manifested here ? If every Godward aspira- tion of the soul has been allowed to become extinct, and every inlet that was open to heaven to be choked, and every talent for
DEGENERATION. 127
religions love and trust to have been persist- ently neglected and ignored, where are the faculties to come from that would even find the faintest relish in such things as God and heaven gives ?
These three words, Salvation, Escape, and Neglect, then, are not casually, but organically and necessarily connected. Their doctrine is scientific, not arbitrary. Escape means noth- ing more than the gradual emergence of the higher being from the lower, and nothing less. It means the gradual putting off of all that can- not enter the higher state, or heaven, and simultaneously the putting on of Christ. It involves the slow completing of the soul and the development of the capacity for God.
Should any one object that from this scien- tific standpoint the opposite of salvation is annihilation, the answer is at hand. From this standpoint there is no such word.
If, then, escape is to be open to us, it is not to come to us somehow, vaguely. We are not to hope for anything startling or mysterious. It is a definite opening along certain lines which are definitely marked by God, which begin at the Cross of Christ, and lead direct to Him. Each man in the silence of his own soul must work out this salvation for himself with fear and trembling — with fear, realizing the mo- mentous issues of his task ; with trembling, lest before the tardy work be done the voice of Death should summon him to stop.
What these lines are may, in closing, be in- dicated in a word. The true problem of th"
128 DEGENERATION.
spiritual life may be said to be, do the opposite of Neglect. Whatever this is, do it and you shall escape. It will just mean that you are so to cultivate the soul that all its powers will open, out to God, and in beholding God be drawn away from sin. The idea really is to develop among the ruins of the old a new " creature " — a new creature which, while the old is suffering De- generation from Neglect, is gradually to unfold, to escape away and develop on spiritual lines to spiritual beauty and strength. And as our conception of spiritual being must be taken simply from natural being, our ideas of the lives along which the new religious nature is to run must be borrowed from the known lines of the old.
There is, for example, a Sense of Sight in the religious nature. Neglect this, leave it un- developed, and you never miss it. You simply see nothing. But develop it and you see God. And the line along which to develop it is known to us. Become pure in heart. The pure in heart shall see God. Here, then, is one opening for soul-culture — the avenue through purity of heart to the spiritual seeing of God.
Then there is a Sense of Sound. Neglect this, leave it undeveloped, and you never miss it. You simply hear nothing. Develop it, and you hear God. And the line along which to develop it is known to us. Obey Christ. Be- come one of Christ's flock. " The sheep hear His voice, and He calleth them by name.'*' Here, then, is another opportunity for the cult- ure of the soul — a gateway through the Shep« herd's fold to hear the Shepherd's voice.
DEGENERATION.
And there is a Sense of Touch to be ac- quired— such a sense as the woman had who touched the hem of Christ's garment, that wonderful electric touch called faith, which moves the very heart of God.
And there is Sense of Taste — a spiritual hunger after God ; a something within which tastes and sees that He is good. And there is the Talent for Inspiration. Neglect that, and all the scenery of the spiritual world is flat and frozen. But cultivate it, and it pene- trates the whole soul with sacred fire, and illu- minates creation with God. And last of all there is the great capacity for Love, even for the love of God — the expanding capacity for feeling more and more its height and depth, its length and breadth. Till taat is felt no man can really understand that word, " so great salvation," for what is its measure but that other " so " of Christ — God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son ? Verily, how shall we escape if we neglect that ? 1
1 For the scientific basis of this spiritual law the follow- ing works may be consulted : —
44 The Origin of Species." By Charles Darwin, F.R.S. London : John Murray. 1872.
44 Degeneration." By E. Kay Lankester, F.R.S. London : Macmillan. 1880.
44 Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Princlp des Functions-Wechsels." Dr. A. Dorhn. Leipzig : 1875.
44 Lessons from Nature." By St. George Mivart, F.R.S. London : John Murray. 1876.
44 The Natural Conditions of Existence as they Affect Animal Life." Karl Semper. London : C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1881.
9
GROWTH.
" Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the greatest works iu existence ? Do they not say plainly to us, not * there has been a great effort here,' but ' there has been a great power here ' ? It is not the weariness of mortality but the strength of divin- ity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things, and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration ; alas f we shall do nothing that way, but lose some pw?*** of our cwu weight."
GROWTH.
" Consider the lilies of the field how they grow."— The Sermon on the Mount.
"Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit." — Juvenal.
WHAT gives the peculiar point to this object- lesson from the lips of Jesus is, that He not only made the illustration, but made the lilies. It is like an inventor describing his own ma- chine. He made the lilies and He made me — both on the same broad principle. Both to- gether, man and flower, He planted deep in the Providence of God ; but as men are dull at studying themselves He points to this com- panion-phenomenon to teach us how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will un- fold for us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. For Christ's words are not a general appeal to consider nature. Men are not to consider the lilies simply to admire their beauty, to dream over the delicate strength and grace of stem and leaf. The point they were to consider was how they grew — how without anxiety or care the flower woke into loveliness, how without weaving these leaves were woven, how without toiling these complex tissues spun themselves, and how
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134 GROWTH.
without any effort or friction the whole slowly came ready-made from the loom of God in its more than Solomon-like glory. " So," He says, making the application beyond dispute, " you care-worn, anxious men must grow. You, too, need take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink or what ye shall put on. For if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?"
This nature-lesson was a great novelty in its day ; but all men now who have even a " little faith " have learned this Christian secret of a composed life. Apart even from the parable of the lily, the failures of the past have taught most of us the folly of disquieting ourselves in vain, and we have given up the idea that by taking thought we can add a cubit to our stature.
But no sooner has our life settled down to this calm trust in God than a new and graver anxiety begins. This time it is not for the body we are in travail, but for the soul. For the temporal life we have considered the lilies, but how is the spiritual life to grow ? How are we to become better men ? How are we to grow in grace? By what thought shall we add the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fulness of the Perfect Man ? And because we know ill how to do this, the old anxiety comes back again and our inner life is once more an agony of conflict and remorse. After all, we have but transferred our anxious
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thoughts from the body to the soul. Our efforts after Christian growth seem only a succession of failures, and instead of rising into the beauty of holiness our life is a daily heartbreak and humiliation.
Now the reason of this is very plain. We have forgotten the parable of the lily. Violent efforts to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly wrong in principle. There is but one principle of growth both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and soul. For all growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace is once more this, " Consider the lilies how they yrow"
In seeking to extend the analogy from the body to the soul there are two things about the lilies' growth, two characteristics of all growth, on which one must fix attention. These are, —
First, Spontaneousness.
Second, Mysteriousness.