II. But, secondly, besides the Spontaneous-

ness there is this other great characteristic of Growth — Mysteriousness. Upon this quality depends the fact, probably, that so few men
140 GROWTH.
ever fathom its real character. "We are most onspiritual always in dealing with the simplest spiritual things. A lily grows mysteriously, pushing up its solid weight of stem and leaf in the teeth of gravity. Shaped into beauty by secret and invisible fingers, the flower develops we know not how. But we do not wonder at it. Every day the thing is done ; it is Nature, it is God. We are spiritual enough at least to understand that. But when. the soul rises slowly above the world, pushing up its delicate virtues in the teeth of sin, shaping itself mysteriously into the image of Christ, we deny that the power is not of man. A strong will, we say, a high ideal, the reward of virtue, Christian influence, — these will account for it. Spiritual character is merely the product of anxious work, self-command, and self- denial. We allow, that is to say, a miracle to the lily, but none to the man. The lily may grow; the man must fret and toil and spin.
Now grant for a moment that by hard work and self-restraint a man may attain to a very high character. It is not denied that this can be done. But what is denied is that this is growth, and that this process is Christianity. The fact that you can account for i' proves that it is not growth. For growth -s mysterious ; the pecu- liarity of it is that v ou cannot account for it. Mysteriousness, as Slozley has well observed, is " the test of spiritual birth." And this was Christ's test. " The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it
GROWTH. 141
goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The test of spirituality is that you cannot tell whence it coraeth or whither it goeth. If yon can tell, if you can account for it on philosophi- cal principles, on the doctrine of influence, on strength of will, on a favorable environment, it is not growth. It may be so far a success, it may be a perfectly honest, even remarkable, and praiseworthy imitation, but it is not the real thing. The fruits are wax, the flowers artificial — you can tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.
The conclusion is, then, that the Christian is a unique phenomenon. You cannot account for him. And if you could he would not be a Christian. Mozley has drawn the two char- acters for us in graphic words: "Take an ordinary man of the world — what he thinks and what he does, his whole standard of duty is taken from the society in which he lives. It is a borrowed standard : he is as good as other people are; he does, in the way of duty, what is generally considered proper and be- coming among those with whom his lot is thrown. He reflects established opinion on such points. He follows its lead. His aims and objects in life again are taken from the world around him, and from its dictation. What it considers honorable, worth having, advantageous and good, he thinks so too and pursues it. His motives all come from a vis- ible quarter. It would be absurd to say that there is any mystery in such a character as this, because it is formed from a known external
142 GROWTH.
influence — the influence of social opinion and the voice of the world. ' Whence such a char- acter cometh ' we see ; we venture to say that the source and origin of it is open and palpable, and we know it just as we know the physical causes of many common facts."
Then there is the other. " There is a certain character and disposition of uiind of which it is true to say that 'thou canst not tell whence it oometh or whither it goeth.' . . . There are those who stand out from among the crowd,, which reflects merely the atmosphere of feel- ing and standard of society around it, with an impress upon them which bespeaks a heavenly birth. . . . Now, when we see one of those characters, it is a question which we ask our- selves, How has the person become possessed of it? Has he caught it from society around him? That cannot be, because it is wholly different from that of the world around him. Has he caught it from the inoculation of crowds and masses, as the mere religious zealot catches- his character ? That cannot be either, for the type is altogether different from that which masses of men, under .ithusiastic impulses, exhibit. There is nothing gregarious in this character; it is the individual's own; it is not borrowed, it is not a reflection of any fashion or tone of the world utside ; it rises up from some fount within, and it is a creation of which the text says, We know not whence it cometh." *
Now we have all met these two characters
* University Sermons, up. 234-241.
GROWTH. 143
— the one eminently respectable, upright, virt- uous, a trifle cold perhaps, and generally, when critically examined, revealing somehow the mark of the tool ; the other with God's breath still upon it, an inspiration ; not more virtuous, but differently virtuous; not more humble, but different, wearing the meek and quiet spirit artlessly as to the manner born. The other-worldliness of such a character is the thing that strikes you ; you are not prepared for what it will do or say or become next, Tor it moves from a far-off centre, and in spite of its transparency and sweetness, that presence fills you always with awe. A man never feels the discord of his own life, never hears the jar of the machinery by which he tries to manufact- ure his own good points, till he has stood in the stillness of such a presence. Then he dis- cerns th"1 difference between growth and work. He has co idered the lilies, how they grow.
We have now seen that spiritual growth is a process maintained and secured by a sponta- neous and mysterious inward principle. It is a spontaneous principle even in its origin, for \L bloweth where it listeth ; mysterious in its operation, for we can never tell whence it corneth ; obscure in its destination, for we can- not tell whence it goeth. The whole process therefore transcends us ; we do not work, we are taken in hand — " it is God which worketh i i us, both to will and to do of His good pleas- ure." We do not plan — we are "created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."
144 GROWTH.
There may be an obvious objection to all this. It takes away all conflict from the Chris- tian life? It makes man, does it not, mere clay in the hands of the potter ? It crushes the old character to make a new one, and destroys man's responsibility for his own soul ?
Now we are not concerned here in once more striking the time-honored " balance between faith and works." We are considering how lilies grow and in a specific connection, namely, to discover the attitude of mind which the Christian should preserve regarding his spiritual growth. That attitude, primarily, is to be free from care. We are not lodging a plea for inactivity of the spiritual energies, but for the tranquillity of the spiritual mind. Christ's protest is not against work, but against anxious thought; and rather, there- fore, than complement the lesson by showing the other side, we take the risk of still further extending the plea in the original direction.
What is the relation, to recur again to anal- ogy, between growth and work in a boy ? Con- sciously, there is no relation at all. The boy never thinks of connecting his work with his growth. Work in fact is one thing and growth another, and it is so in the spiritual lifc . Tf it be asked therefore, Is the Chris' in,?, w ^ng in these ceaseless and agonizing efforts after growth ? the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong, or at least, he is quite mistaken. When a boy takes a meal or denies himself indigestible things, he does not say, " All this will minister to my growth " ; or when he runs a race La
GROWTH. 145
does not say, " This will help the next cubit of my stature." It may or it may not be true that these things will help his stature, "but, if he thinks of this, Ms idea of growth is morbid. And this is the point we are dealing with. His anxiety here is altogether irrelevant and super- fluous. Nature is far more bountiful than we think. When she gives us energy she asks none of it back to expend on our own growth. She will attend to that. " Give your work," she says, " and your anxiety to others ; trutt me to add the cubits to your stature.1 If God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding the new nature within us, it is a mistake to keep twitching at the petals with our coarse fingers. We must seek to kt thi Creative Hand alone. "It is God which giveth the in- crease." Yet we never know how little we liave learned of the fundamental principle of Christianity till we discover how much we are all bent on supplementing God's free grace. If God is spending work upon a Christian, let him be still and know that it is God. And if he wants work, he will find it there — in the being stilL
Not that there is no work for him who would grow, to do. There is work, and severe work, — work so great that the worker deserves to have himself relieved of all that is superfluouc •during his task. It' the amount of energy 1 >st in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the conditions of qrrowth, we should have many more jubits to show for our stature. It is with thise conditions that the personal work of th* 10
146 GROWTH.
Christian is chiefly concerned. Observe for a moment what they are, and their exact relation. For its growth the plant needs heat, light, air, and moisture. A man, therefore, must go in search of these, or their spiritual equivalents, and this is his work? By no means. The Christian's work is not yet. Does the plant go in search of its conditions ? Nay, the con- ditions come to the plant. It no more manu- factures the heat, light, afr, and moisture, than it manufactures its own stem. It finds them all around it in Nature. It simply stands still with its leaves spread out in unconscious prayer, and Nature lavishes upon it these and all other bounties, bathing it in sunshine, pour- ing the nourishing air over and over it, reviving it graciously with its nightly dew. Grace, too, is as free as the air. The Lord God is a Sun. He is as the Dew to Israel. A man has no more to manufacture these than he has to manufacture his own soul. He stands sur- rounded by them, bathed in them, beset behind and before by them. He lives and moves and has his being in them. How then shall he go in search of them ? Do not they rather go in search of him ? Does he not feel how they press themselves upon him? Does he not know how unweariedly they appeal to him? Has he not heard how they are sorrowful when he will not have them ? His work, therefore, is not yet. The voice still says, " Be still."
The conditions of growth then, and the in- ward principle of growth being both sup- plied by Nature, the thing man has to do, the
GROWTH. 147
little junction left for him to complete, is to apply the one to the other. He manufactures nothing ; he earns nothing ; he need be anxious for nothing ; his one duty is to be in these con- ditions, to abide in them, to allow grace to play over him, to be still therein and know that this is God.
The conflict begins and prevails in all its life- long agony the moment a man forgets this, He struggles to grow himself instead of strug- gling to get back again into position. He makes the church into a workshop when God meant it to be a beautiful garden. And even in his closet, where only should reign silence — a silence as of the mountains whereon the lilies grow — is heard the roar and tumult of machinery. True, a man will often have to wrestle with his God — but not for growth. The Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious people in the world are Christians — Christians who misun- derstand the nature of growth. Life is a per- petual self-condemning because they are not growing. And the effect is not only the loss of tranquillity to the individual. The energies which are meant to be spent on the work of Christ are consumed in the soul's own fever. So long as the Church's activities are spent on growing there is nothing to spare for the world. A soldier's time is not spent in earning the money to buy his armor, in finding food and raiment, in seeking shelter. His king provides these things that he may be the more at liberty to fight his battles. So, for the soldier
148 GEOWTH.
•of the Cross all is provided. His Government tms planned to leave him free for the King- dom's work.
The problem of the Christian life finally is simplified to this — man has but to preserve the right attitude. To abide in Christ, to be in position, that is all. Much work is done on board a ship crossing the Atlantic. Yet none of it is spent on making the ship go. The sailor but harnesses his vessel to the Mind. He puts his sail and rudder in position, and lo, the miracle is wrought. So everywhere God creates, man utilizes. All the work of the •world is merely a taking advantage of energies already there.1 God gives the wind and the water, and the heat ; man but puts himself in the way of the wind, fixes his water-wheel in the way of the river, puts his piston in the vray of the steam ; and so holding himself in position before God's Spirit, all the energies of Omnipotence course within his soul. He is like a tree planted by a river whose leaf is green and whose fruits fail not. Such is the deeper lesson to be learned from considering the lily. It is the voice of Nature echoing the •whole evangel of Jesus, " Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." ; ^
iSeeBushnell's "
DEATH.
" What could be easier than to form a catena of the most philosophical defenders of Christianity, who have exhausted language in declaring the impotence of the unassisted intellect ? Comte has not more ex- plicitly enounced the incapacity of man to deal with the Absolute and the Infinite than the whole series of orthodox writers. Trust your reason, we have been told till we are tired of the phrase, and you will be- come Atheists or Agnostics. "We take you at youi word ; we become Agnostics."
STEPHEN.
DEATH.
'* To be carnally minded is Death." — Paul. *' I do not wonder at what men suffer but I wonder often at what they lose." — Buskin.
" DEATH," wrote Faber, " is an unsurveyed land, an unarranged Science." Poetry draws near Death only to hover over it for a moment and withdraw in terror. History knows it simply as a universal fact. Philosophy finds it among the mysteries of being, the one great mystery of being not. All contributions to this dread theme are marked by an essential vagueness, and every avenue of approach seems darkened by impenetrable shadow.
But modern Biology has found it part of its work to push its way into this silent land, and at last the world is confronted with a scientific treatment of Death. Not that much is added to the old conception, or much taken from it. What it is, this certain Death with its uncertain issues, we know as little as before. But we can define more clearly and attach a narrower meaning to the momentous symbol.
The interest of the investigation here lies in the fact that Death is one of the outstanding things in Nature which has an acknowledged spiritual equivalent. The prominence of the
151
152 DEATH.
word in the vocabulary of Revelation cannot be exaggerated. Next to Life the most preg- nant symbol in religion is its antithesis, Death. And from the time that " If thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die " was heard in Paradise, this solemn word has been linked with human interests of eternal mom nt.
Notwithstanding the unparalleled emphasis upon this term in the Christian system, there is none more feebly expressive the ordinary mind. That mystery which surrounds the word in the natural world shrouds only too completely its spiritual import. The reluctance which prevents men from investigating the secrets of the King of Terrors is for a certain length entitled to respect. But it has left the- ology with only the vaguest materials to con- struct a doctrine which, intelligently enforced, ought to appeal to all men with convincing power and lend the most effective argument to Christianity. Whatever may have been its influence in the past, its threat is gone for the modern world. The word has grown weak. Ignorance has robbed the Grave of all its terror, and platitude despoilt Death of its sting. Death itself is ethically dead. Which of us, for example, enters fully into the meaning of words like these : " She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth " ? Who allows ade- quate weight to the metaphor in the Pauline phrase, " To be carnally minded is Death ; n or in this, " The wages of sin is Death " ? Or what theology has translated into the language of human life the terrific practical import of
DEATH. 153
« Dead in trespasses and sins w ? To seek to make these phrases once more real and burn- ing ; to clothe time-worn formulae with living truth ; to put the deepest ethical meaning into the gravest symbol of Nature, and fill up with its full consequence the darkest threat of Rev- elation— these are the objects before us now.
What*, then, is Death? Is it possible to define it and embody its essential meaning in an intelligible proposition ?
The most recent and the most scientific attempt to investigate Death we owe to the biological studies of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In his search for the meaning of Life the word Death crosses his path, and he turns aside for a moment to define it. Of course what Death is depends upon what Life is. Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Life, it is well known, has been subjected to serious criticism. While it has shed much light on many of the phe- nomena of Life, it cannot be affirmed that it has taken its place in science as the final solution of the fundamental problem of biology. No definition of Life, indeed, that has yet appeared can be said to be even approximately correct. Its mysterious quality evades us ; and we have to be content with outward characteristics and accompaniments, leaving the thing itself an unsolved riddle. At the same time Mr. Her- bert Spencer's masterly elucidation of the chief phenomena of Life has placed philosophy and science under many obligations, and in the paragraphs which follow we shall have to incur a further debt on behalf of religion.
154 DEATH.
The meaning of Death depending, as has been said, on the meaning of Life, we must first set ourselves to grasp the leading charac- teristics which distinguish living things. To a physiologist the living organism is distin- guished from the not-living by the per- formance of certain functions. These func- tions are four in number — Assimilation, Waste, Reproduction, and Growth. Nothing could be a more interesting task than to point out the co-relatives of these in the spiritual sphere, to show in what ways the discharge of these functions represent the true manifestations of spiritual life, and how the failure to perform them constitutes spiritual Death. But it will bring us more directly to the specific subject before us if we follow rather the newer bio- logical lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Accord- ing to his definition, Life is " The definite com- bination of heterogeneous changes, both simul- taneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences," a or more shortly " The continuous adjustment of inter- nal relations to external relations."2 An ex- ample or two will render these important state- ments at once intelligible.
The essential characteristic of a living organism, according to these definitions, is that it is in vital connection with its general surroundings. A human being, for instance, is in direct contact with the earth and air, With all surrounding things, with the warmth
» " Principles of Biology," vol. L p. 74. « Ibid.
DEATH. 155
of the sun, with the music of birds, with the countless influences and activities of nature and of his fellow-men. In biological language he is said th s to be " in correspondence with his environment." He is, that is to say, in active and vital connection with them, influenc- ing them possibly, but especially being in- fluenced by them. Now it is in virtue of this correspondence that he is entitled to be called alive. So long as he is in correspondence with any given point of his environment, he lives. To keep up this correspondence is to keep up life. If his environment changes he must in- stantly adjust himself to the change. And he continues living only as long as he succeeds in adjusting himself to the " simultaneous and successive changes in his environment," as these occur. What is meant by a change in his environment may be understood from an example, which will at the same time define more clearly the intimacy of the relation between environment and organism. Let us take the case of a civil-servant whose environ- ment is a district in India. It is a region sub- ject to occasional and prolonged droughts re- sulting in periodical famines. When such a period of scarcity arises, he proceeds immedi- ately to adjust himself to this external change. Having the power of locomotion, he may re- move himself to a more fertile district, or, pos- sessing the means of purchase, he may add to his old environment by importation the " ex- ternal relations," necessary to continued life. But if from any cause he fails to adjust him-
156 DEATH.
sel- to the altered circumstances, his body ia thrown ou f correspondence '.•dtL his environ- ment, his ad 'us led to his " external relations,' and his life must cease.
In ordinary circumstances, and in health, the human organism is in thorough correspond- ence with its surroundings ; but when any part of the organism by disease or accident is thrown out of correspondence, it is in that relation dead.
This Death, this want of correspondence, may be either partial or complete. Part of the organism may be dead to a part of the environ- ment, or the whole to the whole. Thus the victim of famine may have a certain number of his correspondences arrested by the change in his environment, but not all. Luxuries which he once enjoyed no longer enter the country, animals which once furnished his table are driven from it. These still exist, but they are beyond the limit of his correspondence. In relation to these things therefore he is dead. In one sense it might be said that it was the environment which played him false ; in an- other, that it was his own organization — that he was unable to adjust himself, or did not. But, however caused, he pays the penalty with partial Death.
Suppose next the case of a man who is thrown out of correspondence with a part of his environment by some physical infirmity. Let it be that by disease or accident he has been deprived of the use of his ears. The deaf man.
DEATH. 157
in virtue of this imperfection, is thrown out of rapport with a large and well-defined part of the environment, namely, its sounds. With regard to that "external relation," therefore, he is no longer living. Part of him may truly be held to be insensible or "Dead." A man who is also blind is thrown out of correspond- ence with another large part of his environ- ment. The beauty of sea and sky, the forms of cloud and mountain, the features and gest- ures of friends, are to him as if they were not. They are there, solid and real, but not to him ; he is still further " Dead." Next, let it be con- ceived, the subtle finger of cerebral disease lays hold of him. His whole brain is affected, -and the sensory nerves, the medium of com- munication with the environment, cease al- together to acquaint him with what is doing in the outside world. The outside world is still there, but not to him ; he is still fur- ther " Dead." And so the death of parts goes on. He becomes less and less alive. " Were the animal frame not the complicated machine we have seen it to be death might come as a sim- ple and gradual dissolution, the thing' being the last stage of the successive loss of fundamental powers." 1 But finally some important part of the mere animal frame- work that remains breaks down. The corre- lation with the other parts is very intimate, and the stoppage of correspondence with one means an interference with the work of the
1 Foster's " Physiology/' p. 642.
158 DEATH.
rest. Something central has snapped, and all are thrown out of work. The lungs refuse to correspond with the air, the heart with the blood. There is now no correspondence what- ever with environment — the thing, for it is now a thing, is Dead.
This then is Death ; " part of the framework breaks down," " something has snapped " — these phrases by which we describe the phases of death yield their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that " correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism which throws it out of correspondence with some necessary part of the environment. Death is the result produced, the want of correspondence. We do not say that this is all that is involved. But this is the root idea of Death — Failure to adjust internal relations to external relations, failure to repair the broken inward connection sufficiently to enable it to correspond again with the old surroundings. These preliminary statements may be fitly closed with the wordc of Mr. Herbert Spencer : " Death by natural decay occurs because in old age the relations between u.,oi milation, oxidation, and genesis of force going on in the organism gradually fall out of correspondence •* "ith the relations between oxygen and food an-' absorption of heat by the environment. Death from disease arises either when the organism is congenitally defective in its power to balance the ordinary external actions by the ordinary internal ac-
DEATH. 159
tions, or when there has taken place some un- tisual external action to which there was no answering internal action. Death by accident implies some neighboring mechanical changes of which the causes are either unnoticed from inattention, or are so intricate that their results cannot be foreseen, and consequently certain relations in the organism are not adjusted to the relations in the environment." l
With the help of these plain biological terms we may now proceed to examine the parallel phenomenon of Death in the spiritual world. The factors with which we have to deal are two in number as before — Organism and En- vironment. The relation between them may once more be denominated by " correspond- ence." And the truth to be emphasized re- solves itself into this, that Spiritual Death is a want of correspondence between the organism and the spiritual en .ronmcnt.
What is the spiritual environment ? This term obviously demands some further defini- tion. For Death is a relative term. And before we can define Death in the spiritual world we must first apprehend the particular relation with reference to which the expression is to be employed. We shall best reach the nature of this relation by considering for a moment the subject of environment generally. By the natural environment we mean the entire surroundings of the natural man, the entire ex- ternal world in which he lives and moves and
1 Op. cit., pp. 88, 89.
160 DEATH.
has his being. It is not involved in the idea that either with all or part of this environment he is in immediate correspondence. Whether he corresponds with it or not, it is there. There is in fact a conscious environment and an environment of which he is not conscious ; and it must be borne in mind that the conscious environment is not all the environment that is. All that surrounds him, all that environs him, conscious or unconscious, is environment. The moon and stars are part of it, though in the daytime he may not see them. The polar rogions are parts of it, though he is seldom aware of their influence. In its widest sense environment simply means all else that is.
Now it will next be manifest that different organisms correspond with this environment in varying degrees of completeness or incom- pleteness. At the bottom of the biological scale we find organisms which have only the most limited correspondence with their sur- roundings. A tree, for example, corresponds with the soil about its stem, with the sunlight, and with the air in contact with its leaves. But it is shut off by I comparatively low de- relopment from a whole wo: "d to which higher forms of life have additional access. The want of locomotion alone circum .cribes most seri- ously its area of correspond nre, so that to a large part of surrounding i.atur- it may truly be said to be dead. So far s consciousness is concerned, we should bu ;u: tified indeed in say- ing that it was not alive it all. The murmur of the stream which bathes its roots affects it not
DEATH. 161
The marvellous insect-life beneath its shadow excites in it no wonder. The tender mater- nity of the bird which has its nest among its leaves stirs no responsive sympathy. It cannot correspond with those things. To stream and insect and bird it is insensible, torpid, dead. For this is Death, this irresponsiveness.
The bird, again, which is higher in the scale of life, corresponds with a wider environment. The stream is real to it, and the insect. It knows what lies behind the hill ; it listens to the love-song of its mate. And to much be- sides beyond the simple world of the tree this- higher organism is alive. The bird we should say is more living than the tree ; it has a cor- respondence with a larger area of environment. But this bird-life is not yet the highest life. Even within the immediate bird-environment there is much to which the bird must still be held to be dead. Introduce a higher organism, place man himself within this same environ- ment, and see how much more living he is. A hundred things which the bird never saw in insect, stream and tree appeal to him. Each, single sense has something to correspond with. Each faculty finds an appropriate exercise. Man is a mass of correspondences, and be- cause of these, because he is alive to countless objects and influences to which lower organisms are dead, he is the most living of all creatures.
The relativity of Death will now have be- come sufficiently obvious. Man being lelt out of account, all organisms are seen as it were to be partly living and partly dead. The tree, 11
162 DEATH.
in correspondence with a narrow area of envi« ronment, is to that extent alive ; to all beyond, to the all but infinite area beyond, it is dead. A still wider portion of this vast area is the possession of the insect and the bird. Theirs also, nevertheless, is but a little world, and to an immense further area insect and bird are dead. All organisms likewise are living and dead — living to all within the circum- ference of their correspondences, dead to all beyond. As we rise in the scale of life, how- ever, it will be observed that the sway of Death is gradually weakened. More and more of the environment becomes accessible as we ascend, and the domain of lif in this way slowly ex- tends in ever- widening circles. But until man appears there is no organism to correspond with the whole environment. Till then the outermost circles have no correspondents. To the inhabitants of the innermost spheres they are as if they were not.
Now follows a momentous question. Is man in correspondence with the whole environ- ment? When we reach the highest living organism, is the final blow dealt to the king- dom of Death ? Has the last acre of the infinite area been taken in by his finite faculties ? Is his conscious environment the whole environ- ment? Or is there, among these outermost circles, one which with his multitudinous cor- respondences he fails to reach ? If so, this is Death. The question of Life or Death to him Is the question of the amount of remaining en- vironment he is able to compass. If there be
DEATH. 16»
one circle or one segment of a circle which he yet fails to reach, to correspond with, to know, to be influenced by, he is, with regard to that circle or segment, dead.
What then, practically, is the state of the case? Is man in correspondence with the whole environment or is he not ? There is but one answer. He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they are in living contact with that part of the environment which i» called the spiritual world. In introducing thi» new term spiritual worM, observe, \ve are not interpolating a new factor. This is an es- sential part of the old idea. We have been following out an ever-widening environment from point to point, and now we reach the outermost zones. The spiritual world is simply the outermost segment, circle, or circles, of the natural world. For purposes of convenience we separate the two just as we separate the animal world from the plant. But the animal world and the plant world are the same world. They are different parts of one environment. And the natural and spir- itual are likewise one. The inner circle* are called the natural, the outer the spiritual. And we call them spiritual simply because they are beyond us or beyond a part of us. What we have correspondence with, that we call natural ; what we have little or no cor- respondence with, tha', we call spiritual. But when the appropriate corresponding organism nnpears, the organism, that is, whi-jh can ii.i'v communicate with these outer circles,
164 DEATH.
the distinction necessarily disappears. The •spiritual to it becomes the outer circle of the natural.
Now of the great mass of living organisms, of the great mass of men, is it not to be affirmed that they are out of correspondence with this xmter circle ? Suppose, to make the final issue more real, we give this outermost circle of en- vironment a name. Suppose we call it God. Suppose also we substitute a word for " corre- spondence" to express more intimately the personal relation. Let us call it Communion. We can now determine accurately the spiritual relation of different sections of mankind. Those who are in communion with God live, those who are not are dead.
The extent or depth of this communion, the 'varying degrees of correspondence in different individuals, and the less or more abundant life *which these result in, need not concern us for the present. The task we have set ourselves is to investigate the essential nature of Spir- itual Death. And we have found it to consist in a want of communion with God. The un- -spiritual man is he who lives in the circum- scribed environment of this present world. 41 She that liveth in pleasure is Dead while she liveth." " To be carnally minded is Death." To be carnally minded, translated into the language of science, is to be limited in one's correspondences to the environment of the natural man. It is no necessary part of the conception that the mind should be either pur- posely irreligious, or directly vicious. The
DEATH. 165
mind of the flesh, 4>p6vr/na nyc Sa.pK.bs, by its very nature, limited capacity, and time-ward ten- dency, is e may be of noble calibre, enriched by culture,, high-toned, virtuous and pure. But if it know not God ? What though its correspondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp t' 5 magnitudes of Time and Space ? The stars of heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. This mind, certainly, has life, life up to its level. There is no trace ol Death. Possibly too, it carries its deprivation lightly, and, up to its- level, lives content. We do not picture the possessor of this carnal mind as in any sense a monster. We have said he may be high-toned, virtuous, and pure. The plant is not a monster because it is dead to the voice of the bird ; nor is he a monster who is dead to the voice of God. The contention at present simply is that he is Dead.
We do not need to go to Revelation for the proof of this. That has been rendered un- necessary by the testimony of the Dead them- selves. Thousands have uttered themselves upon their relation to the Spiritual World, and from their own lips we have the proclamation of their Death. The language of theology in describing the state of the natural man is often regarded as severe. The Pauline anthropology has been challenged as an insult to nunan nature. Culture has opposed the doctrine that " 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
166 DEATH.
are spiritually discerned." And even some modern theologies have refused to accept the most plain of the aphorisms of Jesus, that " Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." But this stern doctrine of the spiritual deadness of humanity is no mere dogma of a past theology. The history of thought during the present century proves that the world has come round spontaneously to the position of the first. One of the ablest philosophical schools of the day erects a whole antichristian system on this very doctrine. Seeking by means of it to sap the foundation of spiritual religion, it stands unconsciously as the most significant witness for its truth. What is the creed of he Agnostic, but the con- fession of the spiritual numbness of humanity ? The negative doctrine which it reiterates with such sad persistency, what is it but the echo of the oldest of scientific ' and religious truths ? And what are all these gloomy and rebellious infidelities, these touching, and too sincere confessions of universal nescience, but a protest against this ancient law of Death ? The Christian apologist never further misses the mark than when he refuses the testimony of t' Agnostic to himself. When the Agnos- tic tell • me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid and dead to the spiritual world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells me that. Science tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle ; and we are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores it as if, being a man without an ear, he pro*
DEATH. 167
fessed to know nothing of a musical world or being without taste, of a world of art. The nescience of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from experience that to be carnally minded is Death. Let the theological value of the concession be duly recognized. It brings no solace to the unspiritual man to be told he is mistaken. To say he is self- deceived is neither to compliment him nor Christianity. He builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the Unknown God. He does not know God. With all his marvellous and complex correspon- dences, he is still one correspondence short.
It is a point worthy of special note that the proclamation of this truth has always come from science rather than from religion. Its general acceptance by thinkers is based upon the universal failure of a universal experiment. The statement, therefore, that the natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit, is never to be charged against the intolerance of theo- logy. There is no point at which theology has been more modest than here. It has left the preaching of a great fundamental truth almost entirely to philosophy and science. And so very moderate has been its tone, so slight has been the emphasis placed upon the paralysis of the natural with regard to the spiritual, that it may seem to some to have been intolerantly tolerant. No harm certainly could come now, no offence could be given to science, if religion asserted more clearly its right to the spiritual world. Science has paved the way for the reception of one of the most revolutionary
168 DEATH.
doctrines of Christianity ; and if Christianity refuses to take advantage of the opening it will manifest a culpable want of confidence in itself. There never was a tune when its funda- mental doctrines could more boldly be pro- claimed, or when they could better secure the respect and arrest the interest of Science.
To all this, and apparently with force, it may, however, be objected that to every man who truly studies Nature there is a God. Call him by whatever name — a Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great First Cause, a Power that makes for Righteousness — Science has a God ; and he who believes in this, in spite of ^11 protest, possesses a theology. " If we will look at things, and not merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific man has a the- ology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful and glorious God. I say that man believes in a God, who feels himself in the presence of a Power which is not himself, and is immeasurably above himself, a Power in the oontemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds safety and happi- ness. And such now is Nature to the scien- tific man." l Such now, we humbly submit, is Nature to very few. Their own confession is against it. That they are " absorbed " in the contemplation we can well believe. That they might " find safety and happiness " in the knowledge of Him is also possible — if they had it. But this is just what they tell us they
1 "Natural Religion," p. 19.
DEATH. 169
have not. What they deny is not a God. It is the correspondence. The very confession of the Unknowable is itself the dull recognition of an Environment beyond themselves, and for which they feel they lack the correspondence. It is this want that makes their God the Un- known God. And it is this that makes them dead.
We have not said, or implied, that there is not a God of Nature. We have not affirmed that there is no Natural Religion. We are assured there is. We are even assured that without a Religion of Nature, Religion is only half complete ; that without a God of Nature, the God of Revelation is only half intelligible and only partially known. God is not confined to the outermost circle of environment, He lives And moves and has his being in the whole. Those who only seek Him in the further zone can only find a part. The Christian who knows not God in Nature, who does not, that is to say, correspond with the whole environment, most certainly is partially dead. The author of " Ecce Homo " may be partially right when he says : " I think a bystander would say that though Christianity had in it something far higher and deeper and more ennobling, yet the average scientific man worships just at present a more awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average Christian. In so many •Christians the idea of God has been degraded by childish and little-minded teaching ; the Eternal and the Infinite and the All-embracing has been represented as the head of the cleri-
170. DEATH.
cal interest, as a sort of clergyman, as a sort of schoolmaster, as a sort of philanthropist. But the scientific man knows Him to be eternal ; in astronomy, in geology, he becomes familiar with the countless millenniums of His lifetime. The scientific man strains his mind actually to realize God's infinity. As far off as the fixed stars he traces Him, 'distance inexpressible by numbers that have name.' Meanwhile, to the theologian, infinity and eternity are very much of empty words when applied to the Object of his worship. He does not realize them in actual facts and definite computations." l Let us accept this rebuke. The principle that want of correspondence is Death applies all round. He who knows not God in Nature only partially lives. The con- verse of this, however, is not true ; arid that is the point we are insisting on. He who knows God only in Nature lives not. There is no " correspondence " with an Unknown God, no "continuous adjustment" to a fixed First Cause. There is no " assimilation " of Natural Law ; no growth in the Image of " the All-em- bracing." To correspond with the God of Science assuredly is not to live. " This is Life Eternal, to know Thee, the true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent."
From the service we have tried to make natural science render to our religion, we might be expected possibly to take up the position that the absolute contribution of
1 "Natural Keligion," p. 20.
DEATH. 171
Science to Revelation was very great. On the contrary, it is very small. The absolute con- tribution, that is, is very small. The contri- bution on the whole is immense, vaster than we have yet any idea of. But without the aid of the higher Revelation this many-toned and far-reaching voice had been forever dumb. The light of Nature, say the most for it, is dim — how dim we ourselves, with the glare of other Light upon the modern world, can only realize when we seek among the pagan records of the past for the gropings after truth of those whose only light was this. Powerfully significant and touching as these efforts were in their success, they are far more significant and touching in their failure. For they did fail. It requires no philosophy now to speculate on the adequacy or inadequacy of the Religion of Nature. For us who could never weigh it rightly in the scales of Truth it has been tried in the balance of experience and found want- ing. Theism is the easiest of all religions to get, but the most difficult to keep. Individuals have kept it, but nations never. Socrates and Aristotle, Cicero and Epictetus had a theistic religion; Greece and Rome had none. And even after getting what seems like a firm place in the minds of men, its unstable equilibrium sooner or later betrays itself. On the one hand theism has always fallen into the wildest polytheism, or on the other into the blankest atheism. " It is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of special revela- tion, man has never obtained such a knowl-
172 DEATH.
edge of God as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the hea- then world, at its very best, was utterly inade- quate to the accomplishment of such a task as- creating a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions, purif y ing the heart and ennobling the conduct." l
What is the inference? That this poor rushlight by itself was never meant to lend the ray by which man should read the riddle of the universe. The mystery is too impene- trable and remote for its uncertain flicker to more than make the darkness deeper. What indeed if this were not a light at all, but only part of a light — the carbon point, the fragment of calcium, the reflector in the great Lantern which contains the Light of the World ?
This is one inference. But the most impor- tant is that the absence of the true Light means moral Death. The darkness of the natural world to the intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that always follows the abandonment of belief in a per- sonal God. It is not, as has been pointed out a hundred times, that morality in the abstract disappears, but the motive and sanction are gone. There is nothing to raise it from the dead. Man's attitude to it is left to himself. Grant that morals have their own base in hu- man life ; grant that Nature has a Religion whose creed is Science ; there is yet nothing
» Prof. Flint, "Theism," p. 305.
DEATH. 173
mpart from God to save the world from moral Death. Morality has the power to dictate but none to move. Nature directs but cannot con- trol. As was wisely expressed in one of many pregnant utterances during a recent Sympo- sium, " Though the decay of religion may leave the institutes of morality intact, it drains off their inward power. The devout faith of men expresses and measures the intensity of their moral nature, and it cannot be lost with- out a remission of enthusiasm, and under this low pressure, the successful re-entrance of importunate desires and clamorous passions which have been driven back. To believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme over the universe, is to invest moral distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift them from the provincial stage of human society to the imperishable theatre of all being. When planted thus in the very substance of things, they justify and support the ideal estimates of the conscience; they deepen every guilty shame ; they guarantee every righteous hope ; and they help the will with a Divine casting- Arote in every balance of temptation." 1 That morality has a basis in human society, that Nature has a Religion, surely makes the Death of the soul when left to itself all the more ap- palling. It means that, between them, Nature and morality provide all for virtue — except the Life to live it.
1 Martineau. Vide the whole Symposium on " The Influences upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Be- lief."— Nineteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 331, 531.
174 DEATH.
It is at this point accordingly that our sub- ject comes into intimate contact with Religion. The proposition that " to be carnally minded is Death" even the moralist will assent to. But when it is further announced that " the carnal mind is enmity against God" we find ourselves in a different region. And when we find it also stated that " the wages of sin is Death," we are in the heart of the profoundest questions of theology. What before was merely "enmity against society" becomes "enmity against God;" and what was "vice" is " sin." The conception of a God gives an altogether new color to worldliness and vice. Worldliness it changes into heathenism, vice into blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind which is turned away from God, which will not correspond with God — this is not moral only but spiritual Death. And Sin, that which separates from God, which disobeys God, which can not in that state correspond with God — this is hell.
To the estrangement of the soul from God the best of theology traces the ultimate cause of sin. Sin is simply apostasy from God, un- belief in God. " Sin is manifest in its true character when the demand of holiness in the conscience, presenting itself to the man as one of loving submission to God, is put from him with aversion. Here sin appears as it really is, a turning away from God ; and while the man's guilt is enhanced, there ensues a benumbing of the heart resulting from the crushing of those higher impulses. This is what is meant by the
UEATJI. 175
reprobate state of those who reject Christ and will not believe the Gospel, so often spoken of in the New Testament ; this unbelief is just the closing of the heart against the highest love." 1 The other view of sin, probably the more popular at present, that sin consists in selfishness, is merely this from another aspect. Obviously if the mind turns away from one part of the environment it will only do so under some temptation to correspond with another. This temptation, at bottom, can only come from one source — the love of self. The irreligious man's correspondences are concentrated upon himself. He worships himself. Self-gratifi- cation rather than self-denial ; independence rather than submission — these are the rules of life. And this is at once the poorest and the commonest form of idolatry.
But whichever of these views of sin we emphasize we find both equally connected with Death. If sin is estrangement from God, this very estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is selfishness, it is con- ducted at the expense of life. Its wages are Death — " he that loveth his life," said Christ, "shall lose it."
Yet the paralysis of the moral nature apart from God does not only depend for its evidence upon theology or even upon history. From the analogies of Nature one would expect this result as a necessary consequence. The de- velopment of any organism in any direction is
1Miiller; "Christian Doctrine of Sin," 2d Kd. vol. L p. 131,
176 DEATH,
dependent on its environment. A living cell cut off from air will die. A seed-germ apart from moisture and an appropriate tem- perature will make the ground its grave for centuries. Human nature, likewise, is subject to similar conditions. It can only develop in presence of its environment. No matter what its possibilities may be, no matter what seeds of thought or virtue, what germs of genius or of art, lie latent in its breast, until the appro- priate environment presents itself the corre- spondence is denied, the development discour- raged, the most splendid possibilities of life remain unrealized, and thought and virtue,, genius and art, are dead. The true environ- ment of the moral life is God. Here conscience wakes. Here kindles love. Duty here be- comes heroic; and that righteousness begins to live which alone is to live forever. But if this Atmosphere is not, the dwarfed soul must perish for mere want of its native air. And its Death is a strictly natural Death. It is not an exceptional judgment upon Atheism. la the same circumstances, in the same averted relation to their environment, the poet, the musician, the artist, would alike perish to po- etry, to music, and to art. Every environment is a cause. Its effect upon me is exactly pro- portionate to my correspondence with it. If I correspond with part of it, part of myself is influenced. If I correspond with more, more* of myself is influenced ; if with all, all is in- fluenced. If I correspond with the world, I be- come worldly ; if with God, I become Divine,
DEATH. 17?
As without correspondence of the scientific man with the natural environment there could be no Science and no action founded on the knowl- edge of Nature, so without communion with the spiritual Environment there can be no Religion. To refuse to cultivate the religious relation is to deny to the soul its highest right — the right to a further evolution.1
We have already admitted that he who knows not God may not be a monster ; we cannot say he will not be a dwarf. This precisely, and on perfectly natural principles, is what he must be. You can dwarf a soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full environment. Such a soul for a time may have " a name to live." Its character may betray no sign of atrophy. But its very virtue somehow has the pallor of a flower that is grown in dark- ness, or as the herb which has never seen the sun, no fragrance breathes from its spirit. To
1 It would not be difficult to show, were this the im- mediate subject, that it is not only a right but a duty to exercise the spiritual faculties, a duty demanded not by religion merely, but by science. Upon biological principles man owes his full development to himself, to nature, and to his fellow-men. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, " The performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is usually thought that morality requires us only to restrain such vital ac- tivities as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such as conflict with average welfare, special or general ; but it also requires us to carry on these vital activities up to their normal limits. All the animal functions, in common with all the higher functions, have, as thus understood, their imperativeness." — " The Data of Ethics," 2d Ed. p. 76. 12
178 DEATH.
morality, possibly, this organism offers the example of an irreproachable life ; but to sci- ence it is an instance of arrested development ; and to religion it presents the spectacle of a corpse — a living Death. With Ruskin, " I do do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at what they lose."
MORTIFICATION;
"If, by tying its main artery, we stop most of the blood going to a limb, then, for as long as the limb performs its function, those parts which are called into play must be wasted faster than they are re- paired : whence eventual disablement. The relation between due receipt of nutritive matters through its arteries, and due discharge of its duties by the limb, is a part of the physical order. If instead of cutting off the supply to a particular limb, we bleed the patient largely, so drafting away the materials needed for repairing not one limb but all limbs, and not limbs only but viscera, there results both a muscular debility and an enfeeblement of the vital functions. Here, again, cause and effect are necessarily related. . . . Pass now to those actions more commonly thought of as the occasions for rules of conduct."
HERBERT SPENCIK.
MORTIFICATION.
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon earth."— Paul. " O Star-eyed Science ! hast thou wandered there
To waft us home the message of despair ? " — Campbell.
THE definition of Death which science has given us is this : A falling out of correspondence icith environment. When, for example, a man loses the sight of his eyes, his correspondence with the environing world is curtailed. His life is limited in an important direction ; he is less living than he was before. If, in addition, he lose the senses of touch and hearing, his correspondences are still further limited ; he is therefore still further dead. And when all possible correspondences have ceased, when the nerves decline to respond to any stimulus, when the lungs close their gates against the air, when the heart refuses to correspond with the blood by so much as another beat, the in- sensate corpse is wholly and forever dead. The soul, in like manner, which has no corre- spondence with the spiritual environment is spiritually dead. It may be that it never possessed the spiritual eye or the spiritual ear, or a heart which throbbed in response to the love of God. If so, having never lived, it can-
182 MORTIFICATION:
not be said to have died. But not to have these correspondences is to be in the state of Death. To the spiritual world, to the Divine Environment, it is dead — as a stone which has never lived is dead to the environment of the organic world.
Having already abundantly illustrated this use of the symbol Death, we may proceed to deal with another class of expressions where the same term is employed in an exactly opposite connection. It is a proof of the radical nature of religion that a word so extreme should have to be used again and again in Christian teaching, to define in different direc- tions the true s; iritual relations of mankind. Hitherto we have concerned ourselves with the condition of the natural man with regard to the spiritual wo: Id. We have now to speak jf ihe relations of the spiritual man with regard to the natural world. Carrying with us the same essential princ pie — want of correspond- ence— underlying the meaning of Death, we shall find that th^ relation of the spiritual man to the natura wo Id, or at least to part of it, is to be that of Dea h.
When the natura] man becomes the spiritual man, the great change is described by Christ as a passing from Death unto Life. Before the transition occurred, the practical difficulty was this, how to get into correspondence with the new Environment ? But no sooner is this correspondence established than the problem is reversed. The question now is, how to get out of correspondence with the old environ-
MORTIFICATION. 183
ment ? The moment the new life is begun there comes a genuine anxiety to break with the old. For the former environment has now become embarrassing. It refuses its dismissal from consciousness. It competes doggedly with the new Environment for a share of the corre- spondences. And in a hundred ways the former traditions, the memories and passions of the past, the fixed associations and habits of the earlier life, now complicate the new relation. The complex and bewildered soul, in fact, finds itself in correspondence with two environments, each with urgent but yet incompatible claims. It is a dual soul living in a double world, a world whose inhabitants are deadly enemies, and en- gaged in perpetual civil-war.
The position of things is perplexing. It is clear that no man can attempt to live both lives. To walk both in the flesh and in the spirit is morally impossible. "No man," as Christ so often emphasized, " can serve two masters." And yet, as matter of fact, here is the new-born being in communication with both environments? With sin and purity, light and darkness, time and Eternity, God and Devil, the confused and undecided soul is now in correspondence. What is to be done in such an emergency? How can the New Life deliver itself from the still-persistent past ?
A ready solution of the difficulty would be to die. Were one to die organically, to die and " go to heaven,'' all correspondence with the lower environment would be arrested at a stroke. For Physical Death of course simply
184 MORTIFICATION.
means the final stoppage of all natural corre- spondences with this sinful world. But this alternative, fortunately or unfortunately, is not open. The detention here of body and spirit for a gr~en period is determined for us, and w are morally bound to accept the situation. We must look then for a further alternative.
Actual Death being denied us, we must ask ou selves if here is nothing else resembling it — no artificial relation, no imitation or sem- blance of Death which would serve our purpose. If we cannot yet die absolutely, surely the next best thing will be to find a temporary substitute. If we cannot die altogether, in short, the most we can do is to die as much as we can. And we now know this is open to us, and how. To die to any environment is to withdraw correspondence with it, to cut our- selves off, so far as possible, from all com- munication with it. So that the solution of the probl m will simply be this, for the spirit- ual life to reverse continuously the processes of the natural life. The spiritual man having passed from Death unto Life, the natural man must next proceed to pass from Life unto Death. Having opened the new set of corre- spondences, he must deliberately close up the old. Regeneration in short must be accom- panied by Degeneration.
Now it is no surprise to find that this is the process everywhere described and recom- mended by the founders of the Christian sys- tem. Their proposal to the natural man, or
MORTIFICATION. 185
rather to the natural part of the spiritual man, with regard to a whole series of inimical rela- tions, is precisely this. If he cannot really die, he must make an adequate approach to it by " reckoning himself dead." Seeing that, until the cycle of his organic life is complete he cannot die physically, he must meantime die morally, reckoning himself morally dead to that environment which, by competing for his correspondences, has now become an ob- stacle to his spiritual life.
The variety of ways in which the New Tes- tament writers insist upon this somewhat ex- traordinary method is sufficiently remarkable. And although the idea involved is essentially the same throughout, it will clearly illustrate the nature of the act if we examine separately three different modes of expression employed in the later Scriptures in this connection. The methods by which the spiritual man is to with- draw himself from the old environment — or from that part of it which will directly hinder the spiritual life — are three in number :
First, Suicide. Second, Mortification. Third, Limitation.
It will be found In practice that these dif- ferent methods are adapted, respectively, to meet three different forms of temptation ; so that we possess a sufficient warrant for giving a brief separate treatment to each.
First, Suicide. Stated in undisguised phra*
186 MORTIFICATION.
geology, the advice of Paul to the Christian, with regard to a part of his nature, is to com- mit suicide. If the Christian is to " live unto God," he must " die unto sin." If he does not kill sin, sin will inevitably kill him. Recog- nising this, he must set himself to reduce the number of his correspondences — retaining and developing those which lead to a fuller life, unconditionally withdrawing those which in any way tend in an opposite direction. This stoppage of correspondences is a voluntary act, a crucifixion of the flesh, a suicide.
Now the least experience of life will make it evident that a large class of sins can only be met, as it were, by Suicide. The peculiar feature of Death by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but sudden. And there are many sins which must either be dealt with suddenly or not at all. Under this category, for instance, are to be included generally all sins of the appetites and passions. Other sins, from their peculiar nature, can only be treated by methods less abrupt, but the sudden opera- tion of the knife is the only successful means of dealing with fleshly sins. For example, the correspondence of the drunkard with his wine is a thing which can be broken off by degrees only in the rarest cases. To attempt it grad- ually may in an isolated case succeed, but even then the slightly prolonged gratification is no compensation for the slow torture of a grad- ually diminishing indulgence. "If thine ap- petite offend thee cut it off," may seem at first but a harsh remedy; but when we contem-
MORTIFICATION. 187
plate on the one hand the lingering pain of the gradual process, on the other its constant peril, we are compelled to admit that the principle is as kind as it is wise. The expression " total abstinence," in such a case is a strictly bio- logical formula. It implies the sudden de- struction of a definite portion of environment by the total withdrawal of all the connecting links. Obviously of course total abstinence ought thus to be allowed a much wider ap- plication than to cases of " intemperance." It is the only decisive method of dealing with any ein of the flesh. The very nature of the rela- tions makes it absolutely imperative that every victim of unlawful appetite, in whatever direction, shall totally abstain. Hence Christ's apparently extreme and peremptory language defines the only possible, as well as the only charitable* expedient : " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee."
The humanity of what is called "sudden conversion" has never been insisted on as it deserves. In discussing " Biogenesis," l it has been already pointed out that while growth is a slow and gradual process, the change from Death to Life alike in the natural and spiritual spheres is the work of a moment. Whatever the conscious hour of the second birth may be — in the case of an adult it is probably defined by the first real victory over sin — it is certain
•Page 93.
188 MORTIFICATION.
that on biological principles the real turning-- point is literally a moment. But on moral and humane grounds this misunderstood, per- verted, and therefore despised doctrine is equally capable of defence. Were any re- former, with an adequate knowledge of human life, to sit down and plan a scheme for the salvation of sinful men, he woul d probably come to the conclusion that the best way after all, perhaps indeed the only way, to turn a sinner from the errors of his ways would be to do it suddenly.
Suppose a drunkard were advised to take off one portion from his usual allowance the first week, another the second, and so on ! Or suppose at first he only allowed himself to be- come intoxicated in the evenings, then every second evening, then only on Saturday nights, and finally only every Christmas? How would a thief be reformed if he slowly reduced the number of his burglaries, or a wife-beater by gradually diminishing the number of his blows? The argument ends with an ad ab- surdum. " Let him that stole steal no more" is the only feasible, the only moral, and the only humane way. This may not apply to every case, but when any part of man's sinful life can be dealt with by immediate Suicide, to make him reach the end, even were it pos- sible, by a lingering death, would be a monstrous cruelty. And yet it is this very thing in "sudden conversion," that men ob- ject to — the sudden change, the decisive stand, the uncompromising rupture with the past, the
MORTIFICATION. 189
precipitate flight from sin as of one escaping for his life. Men surely forget that this is an escaping for one's life. Let the poor prisoner run — madly and blindly if he likes, for the terror of Death is upon him. God knows, when the pause comes, how the chains will gall him still.
It is a peculiarity of the sinful state, that as a general rule men are linked to evil mainly by a single correspondence. Few men break the whole law. Our natures, fortunately, are not large enough to make us guilty of all, and the restraints of circumstances are usually such as to leave a loophole in the life of each individual for only a single habitual sin. But it is very easy to see how this reduction of our intercourse with evil to a single correspond- ence blinds us to our true position. Our cor- respondences, as a whole, are not with evil, and in our calculations as to our spiritual con- dition we emphasize the many negatives rather than the single positive. One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, And we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point. It is the only important point at which they touch it, circumstances or natural disposition making habitual contact at other places impossible. The sinful environ- ment, in short, to them means a small but well-defined area. Now if contact at this point be not broken off, they are virtually
1 90 M OR TIF1 CA TION.
in contact still with the whole environment. There may be only one avenue between the new life and the old, it may be but a small and sub- terranean passage, but this is sufficient to keep the old life in. So long as that remains the Tictim is not " dead unto sin," and therefore he cannot " live unto God." Hence the rea- sonableness of the words, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend at one point, he is guilty of all." In the natural world it only requires a single vital correspond- ence of the body to be out of order to ensure Death. It is not necessary to have consump- tion, diabetes, and aneurism to bring the body to the grave if it have heart-disease. He who is fatally diseased in one organ necessarily pays the penalty with his life, though all the others be in perfect health. And such, like- wise, are the mysterious unity and correlation of functions in the spiritual organism that the disease of one member may involve the ruin of the whole. The reason, therefore, with which Christ follows up the announcement of His Doctrine of Mutilation, or local Suicide, finds here at once its justification and interpretation : " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into helL"
MORTIFICATION. 191
Secondly, Mortification. The warrant for the use of this expression is found in the well- known phrases of Paul, " If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live," and " Mortify therefore your members which are upon earth." The word mortify here is, literally, to make to die. It is used, :>f course, in no specially technical sense ; and to attempt to draw a detailed moral from the pathology of mortification would be equally fantastic and irrelevant. But without in any way straining the meaning it is obvious that we have here a slight addition to our concep- tion of dying to sin. In contrast with suicide, Mortification implies a gradual rather than a sudden process. The contexts in which the passages occur will make this meaning so clear, and are otherwise so instructive in the general connc -tion, that we may quote them, from the New Version, at length : " They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh ; but they that are aft r the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death ; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace : because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God ; for it is not ubject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be : and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin ; but the Spirit is life because of righteous- ness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up
192 MORTIFICATION.
Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you. So then, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the flesh : for if ye live after the flesh ye must die ; but if by the spirit ye mortify the doings (marg.) of the body, ye shall live." 1
And again, " If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When C oist, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in glory. Mortify there- fore your members which are upon the earth ; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the which is idolatry; for which things' sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience; in the which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived in these things. But now put ye also away all these ; anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth : lie not one to an- other ; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him." 2
From he nature of the case as h re stated it is evident that no sudden process could en-
* Rome, viii. 5-13. a Col. iii. 1-1C.
MORTIFICATION. 19b
tirely transfer a man from the old into the new relation. To break altogether, and at every point, with the old environment, is a simple impossibility. So long as the regenerate man is kept in this world, he must find the old en- vironment at many points a severe temptation. Power over very many of the commonest temp- tations is only to be won by degrees, and how- ever anxious one might be to apply the sum- mary method to every case, he soon finds it impossible in practice. The difficulty in these cases arises from a peculiar feature of the temptation. The difference between a sin of drunkenness, and, let us say, a sin of temper, is that in the former case the victim who would reform has mainly to deal with the en- vironment, but in the latter with he correspon- dence. The drunkard's temptation is a known and definite quantity. His safety lies in avoid- ing some external and material substance. Of course, at bottom, he is really dealing with the correspondence every time he resists; he is distinctly controlling appetite. Nevertheless it is less the appetite that absorbs his mind than the environment. And so long as he can keep himself clear of the " external relation," to use Mr. Herbert Spencer's phraseology, he has much less difficulty with the " internal relation." The ill-tempered person, on the other hand, can make very little of his environment. However he may attempt to circumscribe it in certain directions, tnere will always remain » wide and ever-changing area to stimulate his irascibility. His environment, in short, is ac
194 MORTIFICATION.
inconstant quantity, and his most elaborate calculations and precautions must often and suddenly fail him.
What he has to deal with, then, mainly is the correspondence, the temper itself. And that, he well knows, involves a long and humiliating discipline. The case now is not at all a surgical but a medical one, and the knife is here of no more use than in a fever. A specific irritant has poisoned his veins. And the acrid humors that are breaking out all over the surface of his life are only to be subdued by a gradual sweetening of the inward spirit. It is now known that the human body acts towards certain fever-germs as a sort of soil. The man whose blood is pure has nothing to fear. So he whose spirit is purified and sweetened be- comes proof against these germs of sin. " An- ger, wrath, malice and railing " in such a soil can find no root.
The difference between this and the former method of dealing with sin may be illustrated by another analogy. The two processes depend upon two different natural principles. The muti- lation of a member, for instance, finds its ana- logue in the horticultural operation of pruning, where the object is to divert life from a useless into a useful channel. A part of a plant which previously monopolized a large share of the vigor of the total organism, but without yielding any adequate return, is suddenly cut off, so that the vital processes may proceed more actively in some fruitful parts. Christ's use of this fig- ure is well-known: "Every branch in Me that
MORTIFICATION. 195
beareth not fruit He purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." The strength of the plant, that is, being given to the formation of mere wood, a number of useless correspond- ences have to be abruptly closed while the use- ful connections are allowed to remain. The Mortification of a member, again, is based 011 the Law of Degeneration. The useless mem- ber here is not cut off, but simply relieved as much as possible of all exercise. This en- courages the gradual decay of the parts, and as it is more and more neglected it ceases to be a channel for life at all. So an organism " morti- fies " its members.
Thirdly, Limitation. While a large number of correspondences between man and his en- vironment can be stopped in these ways, there are many more which neither can be reduced by a gradual Mortification nor cut short by sudden Death. One reason for this is that to tamper with these correspondences might in- volve injury to closely related vital parts. Or, again, there are organs which are really essen- tial to the normal life of the organism, and which therefore the organism cannot afford to lose even though at times they act prejudi- cially. Not a few correspondences, for instance, are not wrong in themselves but only in their extremes. Up to a certain point they are law- ful and necessary ; beyond that point they may become not only unnecessary but sinful. The appropriate treatment in these and similar cases consists in a process of Limitation. The performance of this operation, it must be con-
196 MORTIFICATION.
fessed, requires a most delicate hand. It ia an art, moreover, which no one can teach another. And yet, if it is not learned by all who are trying to lead the Christian life, it cannot be for want of practice. For, as we ihall see, the Christian is called upon to exer- cise few things more frequently.
An easy illustration of a correspondence which is only wrong when carried to an ex- treme, is the love of money. The love of money up to a certain peint is a necessity; beyond that it may become one of the worst of sins. Christ said : " Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." The two services, at a definite point, become incompatible, and hence corre- spondence with one must cease. At what point, however, it must cease each man has to de- termine for himself. And in this consists at once the difficulty and the dignity of Limita- tion.
There is another class of cases where the adjustments are still more difficult to deter- mine. Innumerable points exist in our sur- roundings with which it is perfectly legitimate to enjoy, and even to cultivate, correspondence, but which privilege, at the same time, it were better on the whole that we did not use. Cir- cumstances are occasionally such — the de- mands of others upon us, for example, may be so clamant — that we have voluntarily to reduce the area of legitimate pleasure. Or, instead of it coming from others, the claim may come from a still higher direction. Man's spiritual Mfe consists in the number and fulness of his
M OR TIFICA TION. 1 97
correspondences with God. In order to de- velop these he may be constrained to insulate them, to enclose them from the other corre- spondences, to shut himself in with them. In many ways the limitation of the natural life is. the necessary condition of the full enjoyment of the spiritual life.
In this principle lies the true philosophy of self-denial. No man is called to a life of self- denial for its own sake. It is in order to a compensation which, though sometimes diffi- cult to see, is always real and always propor- tionate. No truth, perhaps, in practical re- ligion is more lost sight of. We cherish some- how a lingering rebellion against the doctrine of self-denial — as if our nature, or our circum- stances, or our conscience, dealt with us severely in loading us with the daily cross. But is it not plain after all that the life of self- denial is the more abundant life — more abun- dant just in proportion to the ampler crucifixion of th narrower life ? Is it not a clear case of exchange — an exchange however where the advantage is entirely on our side ? We give up a correspondence in which there is a little life to enj y a correspondence in which there is an abundant life. What though we sacrifice a hundred such orrespondences ? We make but the more room for the great one that is left. The lesson of self-denial, that is to say of Limitation, is concentration. Do not spoil your life, it says, at the outset with un- worthy and impoverishing correspondences ; and if it is growing truly rich and abundant^
198 MORTIFICATION.
foe very jealous of ever diluting its high eternal quality with anything of earth. To concentrate upon a few great correspondences, to oppose to the death the perpetual petty larceny of our life by trifles — these are the conditions for the highest and happiest life. It is only Limita- tion which can secure the Illimitable.
The penalty of evading self-denial also is just that we get the lesser instead of the larger good. The punishment of sin is inseparably bound up with itself. To refuse to deny one's self is just to be left with the self undenied. When the balance of life is struck, the self will ba found still there. The discipline of life was meant to destroy this self, but that discipline having been evaded — and we all to some extent have opportunities, and too often exercise them, of taking the narrow path by the shortest cuts — its purpose is balked. But the soul is the loser. In seeking to gain its life it has really lost it. This is what Christ meant when He said : " He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
Why does Christ say : " Hate Life " ? Does He mean that life is a sin ? Xo. Life is not a sin. Still, He says we must hate it. But we must live. Why should we hate what we must do ? For this reason, Life is not a sin, but the love of life may be a sin. And the best way not to love life is to hate it. Is it a sin then to love life ? Not a sin exactly, but a mistake. It is a sin to love some life, a mis- take to love the rest. Because that love is
MORTIFICATION. 199
lost. All that is lavished on it is lost. Christ does not say it is wrong to love life. He simply says it is loss. Each man has only a certain amount of life, of time, of attention — a definite measurable quantity. If he gives any of it to this life solely it is wasted. Therefore Christ say , Hate life, limit life, lest you steal youi love for it from something that deserves it more.
Now this does not apply to all life. It IR " life in this world " that is to be hated. For life in this world implies conformity to this world. It may not mean pursuing worldly "ensures, or mixing with worldly sets ; but asubtler thing than that — a silent deference to worldly opinion ; an almost unconscious lower- ing of religious tone to the level of the worldly religious world around ; a subdued resistance to the soul's delicate promptings to greater consecration, out of deference to " breadth " or fear of ridicule. These, and such things, are what Christ tells us we must hate. For these things are of the very essence of worldliness. " If any man love the world," even in this sense, " the love of the Father is not in him."
There are two ways of hating life, a true and a false. Some men hate life because it hates them. They have seen through it, and it has turned round upon them. They have drunk it, and came to the dregs ; therefore they hate it. This is one of the ways in which the man who loves his life literally loses it. He loves it till he loses it, then he hates it because it has fooled him. The other way is the religious.
200 MORTIFICATION.
For religious reasons a man deliberately braces himself to the systematic hating of his life. " No man can serve two masters, for either he must hate the one and love the other, or else he must hold to the one and despise the other." Despising the other — this is hating life, limit- ing life. It is not misanthropy, but Chris- tianity.
This principle, as has been said, contains the true philosophy of self-denial. It also holds the secret by which self-denial may be most easily borne. A common conception of self- denial is that there are a multitude of things about life which are to be put down with a high hand the moment they make their appear- ance. They are temptations which are not to be tolerated, but must be instantly crushed out of being with pang and effort.
So life comes to be a constant and sore cut- ting off of things which we love as our right hand. But now suppose one tried boldly to hate these things? Suppose we deliberately made up our minds as to what things we were henceforth to allow to become our life? Sup- pose we selected a given area of our environ- ment and determined once for all that our cor- respondences should go to that alone, fencing in this area all round with a morally impassa- ble wall ? True, to others, we should seem to live a poorer life ; they would see that our en- vironment was circumscribed, and call us nar- row because it was narrow. But, well-chosen, this limited life would be really the fullest life ; it would be rich in the highest and worthiest,
MORTIFICATION. 201
and poor in the smallest and basest correspond- ences. The well-defined spiritual life is not only the highest life, hut it is also the most easily lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than the half. It is the man who tries to make the best of both worlds who makes nothing of either. And he who seeks to serve two masters misses the benediction of both. But he who has taken his stand, who has drawn a boundary line, sharp and deep about his religious life, who has marked off all be- yond as forever forbidden ground to him, finds the yoke easy and the burden light. For this forbidden environment comes to be as if it were not. His faculties falling out of corre- spondence, slowly lose their sensibilities. And the balm of Death numbing his lower nature releases him for the scarce disturbed com- munion of a higher life. So even here to die is gain.
ETERNAL LIFE.
" Supposing that man, in some form, is permitted to remain on the earth for a long series of years, we merely lengthen out the period, but we cannot escape the final catastrophe^ The earth will gradually lose its energy of rotation, as well as that of revolution round the sun. The sun himself will wax dim and become useless as a source of energy, until at last the favor- able condition of the present solar system will have quite disappeared.
" But what happens to our system will happen like- wise to the whole visible universe, which will, if finite, become a lifeless mass, if indeed it be not doomed to utter dissolution. In fine, it will become old and effete, no less truly than the individual. It is a glorious gar- ment, this visible universe, but not an immortal one. We must look elsewhere if we are to be clothed with immortality as with a garment."
THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE.
ETERNAL
" This is Life Eternal— that they might know Thee the True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." — Jesus Christ.
" Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal knowledge." — Herbert Spencer.
ONE of the most startling achievements of recent science is a definition of Eternal Life. To the religious mind this is a contribution of immense moment. For eighteen hundred years only one definition of Life Eternal was before the world. Now there are two.
Through all these centuries revealed religion had this doctrine to itself. Ethics had a voice, as well as Christianity, on the question of the siimmum bomim ; Philosophy ventured to speculate on the Being of a God. But no source outside Christianity contributed any- thing to the doctrine of Eternal Life. Apart from Revelation, this great truth was un- guaranteed. It was the one thing in the Chris- tian system that most needed verification from without, yet none was forthcoming. And never has any further light been thrown upon
205
ETERNAL LIFE.
the question why in its very nature the Chris- tian Life should be Eternal. Christianity itself even upon this point has been obscure. Its decision upon the bare fact is authoritative and specific. But as to what there is in the Spiritual Life necessarily endowing it with the element of Eternity, the mature'st theology is all bui silent.
It has been reserved for modern biology at once to defend and illuminate this central truth of the Christian faith. And hence in the interests of religion, practical and eviden- tial, this second and scientific definition of Eternal Life is to be hailed as an announcement of commanding interest. Why it should not yet have received the recognition of religious thinkers — for already it has lain some years unnoticed — is not difficult to understand. The belief in Science as an aid to faith is not yet ripe enough to warrant men in searching there for witnesses to the highest Christian truths. The inspiration of Nature, it is thought, ex- tends to the humbler doctrines alone. And yet the reverent inquirer who guides his steps in the right direction may find even now in the still dim twilight of the scientific world much that will illuminate and intensify his sublimest faith. Here, at least, comes, and conies unbid- den, the opportunity of testing the most vital point of the Christian system. Hitherto the Christian philosopher has remained content with the scientific evidence against Annihila- tion. Or, with Butler, he has reasoned from the Metamorphoses of Insects to a future life.
ETEENAL LIFE. 207
Or again, with the authors of " The Unseen Universe," the apologist has constructed elab- orate, and certainly impressive, arguments upon the Law of Continuity. But now we may draw nearer. For the first time Science touches Christianity positively on the doctrine of Immortality. It confronts us with an actual definition of an Eternal Life, based on a full and rigidly accurate examination of the neces- sary conditions. Science does not pretend that it can fulfil these conditions. Its votaries make no claim to possess the Eternal Life. It simply postulates the requisite conditions with- out concerning itself whether any organism should ever appear, or does now exis^ which mighv fulfil them. The claim of religion, on the other hand, is that there are organisms which possess Eternal Life. And the problem for us to solve is this : Do those who profess to possess Eternal Life fulfil the conditions required by Science, or are they different con- ditions ? In a word, Is the Christian concep- tion of Eternal Life scientific ?
It may be unnecessary to notice at the out- set that the definition of Eternal Life drawn up by Science was framed without reference to religion. It must indeed have been the last thought with the thinker to whom we chiefly owe it, that in unfolding the conception of a Life in its very nature necessarily eternal, he was contributing to Theology.
Mr. Herbert Spencer — for it is to him we owe it — would be the first to admit the impar- tiality of his definition ; and from the conneo
208 ETERNAL LIFE.
tion in which it occurs in his writings, it i? obvious that religion was not even present to his mind. He is analyzing with minute care the relations between Environment and Life. fie unfolds the principle according to which Life is high or low, long or short. He shows why organisms live and why they die. And finally he defines a condition of things in which an organism would never die — in which it would enjoy a perpetual and perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a speculation. Life Eternal is a biological conceit. The condi- tions necessary to an Eternal Life do not exist in the natural world. So that the definition is altogether impartial and independent. A Per- fect Life, to Science, is simply a thing which is theoretically possible — like a Perfect Vacuum. Before giving, in so many words, the defini- t' of Mr. Herbert Spencer, it will render it fully intelligible if we gradually lead up to it by a brief rehearsal of the few and simple bi- ological facts on which it is based. In con- sidering the subject of Death, we have formerly seen that there are degrees of Life. By this is meant hat some lives have more and duller correspondence with Environment than others. r he amount of correspondence, again, is determined by the greater or less complexity of the organism. Thus a simple organism like t e Amoeba is possessed of very few correspondences. It is a mere sac of transparent structureless jelly for which organization has done almost nothing, and hence it can only communicate with the small-
ETERNAL LIFE. 209
est possible area of Environment. An in- sect, in virtue of its more complex structure, corresponds with a wider area. Nature has endowed it with special faculties for reaching out to the Environment on many sides : it has more life than the Amosba. In other words, it is a higher animal. Man again, whose body is still further differentiated, or broken up into different correspondences, finds himself en rapport with his surroundings to a further ex- tent. And therefore he is higher still, more living still. And this law, that the degree of Life varies with the degree of correspondence, holds to the minutest detail throughout the entire range of living things. Life becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer, more and more sensitive and responsive to an ever- widening Environment as we rise in the chain of being.
Now it will speedily appear that a distinct relation exists, and must exist, between com- plexity and longevity. Death being brought about by the failure of an organism to adjust itself to some change in the Environment, it follows that those organisms which are able to adjust themselves most readily and successfully will live the longest. They will continue time after time to effect the appropriate adjustment, and their power of doing so will be exactly proportionate to their complexity — that is, to the amount of Environment they can control with their correspondences. There are, for example, in the Environment of every animal certain things which are directly or indirectly 14
210 STERNAL LIFE.
dangerous to Life. If its equipment of spondences is not complete enough to enable it to avoid these dangers hi all possible circumstances, it must sooner or later suc- cumb. The organism then with the most perfect set of correspondences, that is, the highest and most complex organism, has an obvious advantage over less complex forms. It can adjust itself more perfectly and fre- quently. But this is just the biological way of saying that it can live the longest. And hence the relation between complexity and longevity may be expressed thus — the most complex organisms are the longest lived.
To state and illustrate the proposition con- versely may make the point still further clear. The less highly organized an animal is, the less will be its chance of remaining in lengthened correspondence with its environment. At some time or other in its career circumstances are sure to occur to which the comparatively immobile organism finds itself structurally unable to respond. Thus a Medusa tossed ashore by a wave, finds itself so out of corre- spondence with its new surroundings that its life must pay the forfeit. Had it been able by internal change to adapt itself to external change — to correspond sufficiently with the new environment, as for example to crawl, as an eel would have done, back into that environ- ment with which it had completer correspond- ence— its life might have been spared. But had this happened it would continue to live henceforth only so long as it could continue
ETERNAL LIFE. 211
In correspondence with all the circumstances in which it might find itself. Even if, how- ever, it became complex enough to resist the ordinary and direct dangers of its environ- ment, it might still be out of correspondence with others. A naturalist, for instance, might take advantage of its want of correspondence with particular sights and sounds to capture it for his cabinet, or the sudden dropping of a yacht's anchor or the turn of a screw might cause its untimely death.
Again, in the case of a bird, in virtue of its more complex organization, there is command over a much larger area of environment. It can take precautions such as the Medusa could not; it has increased facilities for securing food ; its adjustments all round are more com- plex ; and therefore it ought to be able to main- tain its Life for a longer period. There is still a large area, however, over which it has no control. Its power of internal change is not complete enough to afford it perfect corre- spondence with all external changes, and its tenure of life is to that extent insecure. Its correspondence, moreover, is limited even with regard to those external conditions with which it has been partially established. Thus a bird In ordinary circumstances has no difficulty in adapting itself to changes of temperature, but if these are varied beyond the point at which its capacity of adjustment begins to fail — for example, during an extreme winter — the or- ganism being unable to meet the condition must perish. The human organism, on the
212 ETERNAL LIFE.
other hand, can respond to this external con- dition, as well as to countless other vicissitudes under which lower forms would inevitably succumb. Man's adjustments are to the larg- est known area of Environment, and hence he 3nght to be able furthest to prolong his Life.
/It becomes evident, then, that as we ascend in the scale of Life we rise also in the scale of longevity. The lowest organisms are, as a rule, short-lived, and the rate of mortality di- minishes more or less regularly as we ascend in the animal scale. So extraordinary indeed is the mortality among lowly-organized forms that in most cases a compensation is actually provided, nature endowing them with a mar- vellously increased fertility in order to guard against absolute extinction. Almost all lower forms are furnished not only with great re- productive powers, but with different methods of propagation, by which, in various circum- stances, and in an incredibly short time, the species can be indefinitely multiplied. Ehren- berg found that by the repeated subdivisions of a single Paramecium, no fewer than 268,000,- 000 similar organisms might be produced in one month. This power steadily decreases as we rise higher in the scale, until forms are reached in which one, two, or at most three, come into being at a birth. It decreases, how- ever, because it is no longer needed. These forms have a much longer lease of Life. And it may be taken as a rule, although it has ex- ceptions, that complexity in animal organisms is always associated with longevity.
ETERNAL LIFE. 213
It may be objected that these illustrations are taken merely from morbid conditions. But whether the Life be cut short by accident or by disease the principle is the same. All dis- solution is brought about practically in the same way. A certain condition in the Environ- ment fails to be met by a corresponding con- dition in the organism, and this is death. And conversely the more an organism in virtue of its complexity can adapt itself to all the parts of its Environment, the longer it will live. "It is manifest d, priori," says Mr. Herbert Spencer. " that since changes in the physical state of the environment, as also those mechan- ical actions and those variations of available food which occur in it, are liable to stop the processes going on in the organism ; and since the adaptive changes in the organism have the effects of directly or indirectly counterbalanc- ing these changes in the environment, it fol- lows that the life of the organism will be short or long, low or high, according to the extent to which changes in the environment are met by corresponding changes in the organism. Allowing a margin for perturbations, the life will continue only while the correspondence continues; the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence; and the life will be perfect only when the correspondence ia perfect." l
We are now all but in sight of our scientific
> " Principles of Biology," p. 82.
214 ETEENAL LIFE.
definition of Eternal Life. The desideratum is an organism with a correspondence of a very exceptional kind. It must lie beyond the reach of those " mechanical actions " and those " variations of available food," which are " liable to stop the processes going on in the organism." Before we reach an Eternal Life we must pass beyond that point at which all ordinary correspondences inevitably cease. We must find an organism so high and complex, that at some point in its development it shall have added a correspondence which organic death is powerless to arrest. "We must in short pass beyond that finite region where the correspondences depend on evanescent and material media, and enter a further region wh re the Environment corresponded with is itself Eternal. Such an Environment exists. The Environment of the Spiritual world is out- side the influence of these" mechanical actions," which sooner or later interrupt the processes going on in all finite organisms. If then we can find an organism which has established a correspondence with the spiritual world, that correspondence will possess the elements of eternity — provided only one other condition be fulfilled.
That condition is that the Environment be perfect. If it is not perfect, if it is not the highest, if it is endowed with the finite quality of change, there can be no guarantee that the Life of its correspondents will be eternal. Some change might occur in it which the correspondents had no adaptive changes to
ETERNAL LIFE. 2ls»
meet, and Life would erase. But grant a spiritual organism i perfect correspondence with a perfect sp: itual Environment and the conditions necessary to Eternal Lif" are satis- fied.
The exact terms of Mr. H rbert Spencer's definition of Eternal Life may now be given. And it will be seen that they incluie essen- tially the conditions here laid down, " Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal ex- istence and eternal knowledge." * Reserving the question as to the possible fulfilment of these conditions, let us turn for a moment to the definition of Eternal Life laid down by Christ. Let us place it alongside the defini- tion of Science, and mark the points of con- tact. Uninterrupted correspondence with a perfect Environment is Eternal Life according to Science. " This is Life Eternal," said Christ, " that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."2 Life Eternal is to know God. To know God is to " correspond " with God. To correspond with God is to correspond with a Perfect Environ- ment. And the organism which attains to this, in the nature of things must live forever. Here is " eternal existence and eternal knowl- edge."
1 Principles of Biology," p. 88.
* John x viL
216 ETERNAL LIFE.
The main point of agreement between the scientific and the religious definition is that Life consists in a peculiar and personal relation defined as a "correspondence." This concep- tion, that Life consists in correspondences, has been so abundantly illustrated already that it is now unnecessary to discuss it further. All Life indeed consists essentially in correspond- ences with various Environments. The artist's life is a correspondence with art ; the musi- cian's with music. To cut them off from these Environments is in that relation to cut off their Life. To be cut off from all Environ- ment is death. To find a new Environment again and cultivate relation with it is to find a new Life. To Live is to correspond, and to correspond is to live. So much is true in Science. But it is also true in Religion. And it is of great importance to observe that to Religion also the conception of Life is a corre- spondence. No truth of Christianity has been more ignorantly or wilfully travestied than the doctrine of ImmortaL y. The popular idea, in spite of a hundred protests, is that Eternal Life is to live forever. A single glance at the locus classicits, might have made this error impossible There we are told that Life Eternal is not to live. This is Life Eternal — to know. And yet — and it is a notorious instance of the fact that men \rho are opposed to Religion will take their conception of its profoundest truths from mere vulgar perversions — this view still represents to many cultivated men the Scriptural doctrine of Eternal Life. From time to time the taunt
ETERNAL LIFE. 217
is thrown at Religion, not unseldom from lips which Science ought to have taught more cau- tion, that the Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged, existence, an eternal mo- notony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being. The Bible never could commit itself to any such empty platitude ; nor could Chris- tianity ever offer to the world a hope so color- less. Not that Eternal Life has nothing to do with everlastingness. That is part of the con- ception. And it is this aspect of the question that first arrests us in the field of Science. But even Science has more in its definition than longevity. It has a correspondence and an Environment ; and although it cannot fill up these terms for Religion, it can indicate at least the nature of the relation, the kind of thing that is meant by Life. Science speaks to us indeed of much more than numbers of years. It defines degrees of Life. It explains a widening Environment. It unfolds the re- lation between a widening Environment and increasing complexity in organisms. And if it has no absolute contribution to the content of Religion its analogies are not limited to a point. It yields to Immortality, and this is the most that Science can do in any case, the broad framework for a doctrine.
The further definition, moreover, of this correspondence as knowing is in the highest degree significant. Is not this the precise quality in an Eternal correspondence which the analogies of Science would prepare us to look
£18 ETERNAL LIFE.
for? Longevity is associated with complexity. And complexity in organisms is manifested by the successive addition of correspondences, each richer and larger than those which have gone before. The differentiation, therefore, of the spiritual organism ought to be signalized by the addition of the highest possible corre- spondence. It is not essential to the idea that the correspondence should be altogether novel ; it is necessary rather that it should not. An altogether new correspondence appearing sud- denly without shadow or prophecy would be a violation of continuity. What we should expect would be something new, and yet something that we were already prepared for. We should look for a further development in harmony with current developments ; the extension of the last and highest correspond- ence in a new and higher direction. And this is exactly what we have. In the world with which biology deals, Evolution culminates- in Knowledge.
At whatever point in the zoological scale this correspondence, or set of correspondences,, begins, it is certain there is nothing higher. In its stunted infancy merely, when we meet with its rudest beginnings in animal intelli- gence, it is a thing so wonderful, as to strike every thoughtful and reverent observer with awe. Even among the invertebrates so mar- vellously are these or kindred powers dis- played, that naturalists do not hesitate now, on the ground of intelligence at least, to clas-
ETERNAL LIFE. 219
some of the humblest creatures next to man himself. * Nothing in nature, indeed, is so unlike the rest of nature, so prophetic of what is beyond it, so supernatural. And as manifested in Man who crowns creation with his all-embracing consciousness, there is but one word to describe his knowledge : it is Di- vine. If then from this point there is to be any further Evolution, this surely must be the correspondence in which it shall take place ? This correspondence is great enough to de- mand development ; and yet it is little enough to need it. The magnificence of what it has achieved relatively, is the pledge of the possi- bility of more ; the insignificance of its con- quest absolutely involves the probability of still richer triumphs. If anything, in short, in humanity is to go on it must be this. Other correspondences may continue likewise ; others, again, we can well afford to leave behind. But this cannot cease/ This correspondence — or this set of correspondences, for it is very complex — is it not that to which men with one consent would attach Eternal Life ? Is there anything else to which they would attach it? Is anything better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller, nobler, anything which would represent a higher iorin of Evolution or offer a more perfect ideal for an Eternal Life ?
But these are questions of quality ; and the moment we pass from quantity to quality we leave Science behind. In the vocabulary of
1 Vide Sir John Lubbock's " Ants, Bees, and Wasps." pp. 1-181.
220 STERNAL LIFE.
Science, Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means mere everlastingness. To Religion, on the other hand, Eternity has little to do with time. To correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable, would be everlasting existence ; to correspond with " the true God and Jesus Christ," is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone makes the heaven ; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eterni 'y. is all but excruciating to Doubt. And many be- sides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded consciousness as the hideous mistake and mal- ady of Nature. Therefore we must not only have quantity of years, to speak in the lan- guage of the present, but quality of corre- spondence. "When we leave Science b hind, this orrespondence also receives a higher name. It becomes communion. Other names there are for it, religious and theological. It may be included in a general expression, Faith ; or we may call it by a personal and specific term, Love. For the knowing of a Whole so great involves the co-operation of many parts. Communion with God — can it be demon- strated in terms of Science that this is a correspondence which will never break ? "We do not appeal to Science for such a testimony. We have asked for its conception of an Eternal ~ife; and we ha re received for answer that Jterral Life would consist in a correspondence which should never cease, with an Environ-
STERNAL LIFE. 221
ment which should never pass away. And yet what would Science demand of a perfect corre- spondence that is not met by this, the knowing of God? There is no other correspondence which could satisfy one at least of the conditions. Not one could be named which would not bear on the face of it the mark and pledge of its mortality. But this, to know God, stands alone. To know God, to be linked with God, to be linked with Eternity — if this is not the nearly approach it ? And yet we are still a great way off — to establish a communication with the Eternal is not to secure Eternal Life. It must be assumed that the communication could be sustained. And to assume this would be t beg1 the question. So that we have still to prove Eternal Life. But let it be again repeate ', we are not here seeking proofs. We are seeking light. We are merely reconnoi- tring from the furthest promontory of Science if so be that through the haze we may discern the outline of a distant coast and come to some conclusion as to the possibility of landing.
But, it may be replied, it is not open to any one handling the question of Immortality from the side of So'ence to remain neutral as to the qu stion of fact. It s not enough to announce that h has no addition to ma" e to the positive argument. This may be permitted with ref- erence to other points • f ontact between Science and Religion, but lot with this. We are told this question is setMert — that there is no positive side. Science meets the entire
222 ETERNAL LIFE.
conception of immortality with a direct negative. In the face of a powerful concensus against even the possibility of a Future Life, to content oneself with saying that Science pretended to no argument in favor of it would be at once impertinent and dishonest. We must therefore devote ourselves for a moment to the question of possibility.
The problem is, with a material body and a mental organization inseparably connected with it, to bridge the grave. Emotion, volition, thought itself, are functions of the brain. When the brain is impaired, they are impaired. When the brain is not, they are not. Every- thing ceases with the dissolution of the material fabric ; muscular activity and mental activity perish alike. With the pronounced positive statements on this point from many depart- ments of modern Science we are all familiar. The fatal verdict is recorded by a hundred hands and with scarcely a shadow of qualifi- cation. " Unprejudiced philosophy is com- pelled to reject the idea of an individual im- mortality and of a personal continuance after death. With the decay and dissolution of its material substratum, through which alone it has acquired a conscious existence and become a person, and upon which it was dependent, the spirit must cease to exist." * To the same effect Vogt : " Physiology decides definitely and categorically against individual immor- tality, as against any special existence of the
» Biicliner : " Force and Matter," 3d Ed. p. 232.
ETERNAL LIFE. 223
«oul. The soul does not enter the foetus like the evil spirit into persons possessed, but is a product of the development of the brr-in, just as muscular activity is a product of muscular development, and secretion a product of gland- ular development." After a careful review >t the position of recent Science with regard to the whole doctrine, Mr. Graham sums up thus : " Such is the argument of Science, seemingly de- cisive against a future life. As we listen to her array of syllogisms, our hearts die within us. The hopes of men, placed in one scale to be weighed, seem to fly up against the massive weight of her evidence, placed in the other. It seems as if all our arguments were vain and unsubstantial, as if our future expectations were the foolish dreams of children, as if there could not be any other possible verdict arrived at upon the evidence brought forward." l
Can we go on in the teeth of so real an obstruction ? Has not our own weapon turned against us, Science abolishing with authorita- tive hand the very truth we are asking it to define ?
What the philosopher has to throw into the other scale can be easily indicated. Generally speaking, he demurs to the dogmatism of the conclusion. That mind and brain react, that the mental and the physiological processes are related, and very intimately related, is beyond controversy. But how they are related, he submits, is still altogether unknown. The
1 " The Creed of Science," p. 169.
224 ETERNAL LIFE.
correlation of mind and brain do not involve their identity. And not a few authorities accordingly have consistently hesitated to draw any conclusion at all. Even Buchner's state- ment turns out, on close examination, to be ten- tative in the extrem In prefacing his chapter on Personal Continuance, after a single sen- tence on the dependence of the soul and its manifestations upon a material substratum, he remarks, " Though we are unable to form a definite idea as to the how of this connection, we are still by these facts justified in asserting, that the mode of this connection renders it ap- parently impossible that they should continue to exist separately." 1 There is, therefore, a flaw at this point in the argument for materialism. It may not help the spiritualist in the least de- gree positively. He may be as far as ever from a theory of how consciousness could continue without the material tissue. But his contention secures for him the right of speculation. The path beyond may lie in hopeless gloom ; but it is not barred. He may bring forward his theory if he will. And this is something. For a permission to go on is often the most that Science can grant to Religion.
Men have taken advantage of this loophole in various ways. And though it cannot be said that these speculations offer us more than a probability, this is still enough to combine with the deep-seated expectation in the bosom of mankind and give fresh lustre to the hope of a future life. Whether we find relief in the
1 " Force and Matter," p. 231.
ETERNAL LIFE. 225
theory of a simple dualism; whether with Ulrici we further define the soul as an invisible enswathement of the body, material yet non- atomic ; whether, with the " Unseen Universe." we are helped by the spectacle of known forms of matter shading off into an ever-growing subtilty, mobility, and immateriality ; or whether, with Wundt, we regard the soul as " the ordered unity of many elements," it is, certain that shapes can be given to the con- ception of a correspondence which shall bridge the grave such as to satisfy minds too much accustomed to weigh evidence to put them- selves off with fancies.
But whether the possibilities of physiology or the theories of philosophy do or do not sub- stantially assist us in realizing Immortality, is to Religion, to Religion at least regarded from the present point of view, of inferior moment. The fact of Immortality rests for us on a different basis. Probably, indeed, after all the Christian philosopher never engaged himself in a more superfluous task than in seeking along physiological lines to find room for a soul. The theory of Christianity has. only to be fairly stated to make manifest its thorough independence of all the usual specu- lations on Immortality. The theory is not that thought, volition, or emotion, as such are to survive the grave. The difficulty of hold- ing a doctrine in this form, in spite of what has been advanced to the contrary, in spite of the hopes and wishes of mankind, in spite of all the scientific and philosophical attempts to 15
226 ETERNAL LIFE.
make it tenable, is still profound. No secular theory of personal continuance, as even Butler acknowledged, does not equally demand the eternity of the brute. Xo secular the r_y de- fines the point in the chain of Evolution at which organisms became endowed with Im- mortality. No secular theory explains the condition of the endowment, nor indicates its goal. And if we have nothing more to fan hope than the unexplored mystery of the whole region, or the unknown remainders among the potencies of Life, then, as those who have " hope only in this world," we are " of all men the most miserable."
When we turn, on the other hand, to the doctrine as it came from the lips of Christ, we find ourselves in an entirely different region. He makes no attempt to project the material into the immaterial. The old elements, how- ever refined and subtile as to their matter, are not in themselves to inherit the Kingdom of God. That which is flesh is flesh. Instead of attaching Immortality to the natural organism, He introduces a new and original factor which none of the secular, and few even of the theo- logical theories, seem to take sufficiently into account. To Christianity, " he that hath the Son of God hath Life, and he that hath not the Son hath not Life." This, as we take it, de- fines the correspondence which is to bridge the grave. This is the clue to the nature of the Life that lies at the back of the spiritual •organism. And this is the true solution of the mystery of Eternal Life.
ETERNAL LIFE. 227
There lies a something at the back of the correspondences of the spiritual organisms — just as there lies a something at the back of the natural correspondences. To say that Life is a correspondence is only to express the par- tial truth. There is something behind. Life manifests itself in correspondences. But what determines them? The organism exhibits a variety of correspondences. What organizes them ? As in the natural, so in the spiritual^ there is a Principle of Life. We cannot get rid of that term. However clumsy, however provisional, however much a mere cloak for ignorance, Science as yet is unable to dispense with the idea of a Principle of Life. We must work with the word till we get a better. Xow that which determines the correspondence of the spiritual organism is a Principle of Spiritual Life. It is a new and Divine Posses- sion. He that hath the Son hath Life; con- versely, he that hath Life hath the Son. And this indicates at once the quality and the quantity of the correspondence which is to- bridge the grave. He that hath Life hath the Son. He possesses the Spirit of a son. That spirit is, so to speak, organized within him by the Son. It is the manifestation of the new nature — of which more anon. The fact to- note at present is that this is not an organic correspondence, but a spiritual correspondence. It comes not from generation, but from re- generation. The relation between the spirit- ual man and his Environment is in theological language, a filial relation. With the
228 ETERNAL LIFE.
"Spirit, the filial correspondence, be knows the Father — and this is Life Eternal. This is not only the real relation, but the only possible relation: "Neither knoweth any man tbe Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." And this on purely natural grounds. It takes the Divine to know the Divine — but in no more mysterious sense than it takes the human to understand the human. The analogy, indeed, for the "whole field here has been finely expressed already by Paul: "What man," he asks, "knoweth th: things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God ; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." * It were idle, such being the quality of the new relation, to add that this also contains th« guarantee of its eternity. Here at last is a correspondence which will never cease. Its powers in bridging the grave have been tried. The correspondence of +he spiritual man pos- sesses th' supernatural virtues of the Resurrec- tion and the Life. It is known by former ex- periment to have survived the "changes in the physical state of the environment," and those " mechanical actions " and " variations of available food," which Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us are " liable to stop the processes going on in the organism." In short, this is a cor- respondence wh;ch at once satisfies the de-
1 1 Cor. ii. 11, 12.
ETERNAL LIFE.
mands of Science and Religion. In mere quantity it is different from every other cor- respondence known. Setting aside everything else in Religion, everything adventitious, local and provisional ; dissecting in to the bone and marrow we find this — a correspondence which can never break with an Environment which can never change. Here is a relation estab- lished with Eternity. The passing years lay no limiting hand on it. Corruption injures it not. It survives Death. It, and it only, will stretch beyond the grave and be found inviolate —
" When the moon is old, And the stars are cold, And the books of the Judgment-day unfold."
The misgiving which will creep sometimes- over the brightest faith has already received its expression and its rebuke : " Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Shall these " changes in the physical state of the environment" which threaten death to the natural man destroy ,he spiritual ? Shall death, or life, or angels, or principalities, or powers, arrest or tamper with his eternal cor- respondences ? " Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the
,230 ETERNAL LIFE.
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
It may seem an objection to some that the «' perfect correspondence" should come to man in so extraordinary a way. The earlier stages in the doctrine are promising enough ; they are entirely in line with Nature.' And if Nature has also furnished the " perfect corre- spondence " demanded for an Eternal Life the position might be unassailable. But this sud- den reference to a something outside the natural Environment destroys the continuity, ^ind discovers a permanent weakness in the whole theory ? To which there is a twofold reply. In the first place, to go outside what we call Nature is not to go outside Environ- ment. Nature, the natural Environment, is only a part of Environment. There is another large part which, though some profess to have no correspondence with it, is not on that ac- count unreal, or even unnatural. The mental and moral wor'd is unknown to the plant. But it is real. It cannot be affirmed either that it is unnatural to the plant; although it might be said that from the point of view of the Vegetable Kingdom it was supernatural. Things are natural or supernatural simply ac- cording to where one stands. Man is super- natural to the mineral ; God is supernatural to the man. When a mineral is seized upon by the living plant and elevated to the organic kingdom, no trespass against Nature is com- mitted. It merely enters a larger Environ-
» Rom. viii. 35-S9.
ETERNAL LIFE. 231
ment, which before was supernatural to itr but which now is entirely natural. When the- heart of a man, again, is seized upon by the quickening Spirit of God, no further violence is done to natural law. It is another case of the inorganic, so to speak, passing into the- organic.
But, in the second place, it is complained as if it were an enormity in itself that the spir- itual correspondence should be furnished from the spiritual world. And to this the answer lies in the same direction. Correspondence in any case is the gift of Environment. The natural Environment gives men their natural faculties; the spiritual affords them their spiritual faculties. It is natural for the spirit- ual Environment to supply the spiritual facul- ties ; it would be quite unnatural for the nat- ural Environment to do it. The natural law of Biogenesis forbids it; the moral fact that the finite cannot comprehend the Infinite is- against it ; the spiritual principle that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God renders it absurd. Not, however, that the spiritual faculties are, as it were, manufact- ured in the spiritual world and supplied ready- made to the spiritr 1 organism — -forced upon, it as an external equipment. This certainly is not involved in saying that the spiritual faculties are furnished by the spiritual world. Organisms are not added to by accre- tion, as in the case of minerals, but by growth. And the spiritual faculties are organized in the spiritual protoplasm of the soul, just as other
232 ETERNAL LIFE.
faculties are organized in the protoplasm of the body. The plant is made of materials which have once been inorganic. An organiz- ing principle not belonging to their kingdom lays hold of them and elaborates them until they have correspondences with the kingdom to which the organizing principle belonged. Their original organizing principle, if it can be called by this name, was Crystallization; so that we have now a distinctly foreign power organizing in totally new and higher directions. In the spiritual world, similarly, we find an organizing principle at work among the mate- rials of the organic kingdom, performing a fur- ther miracle, but not a different kind of mir- acle, producing organizations of a novel kind, but not by a novel method. The second pro- cess, in fact, is simply what an enlightened evolutionist would have expected from the first. It marks the natural and legitimate progress of the development. And this in the line of the true Evolution — not the linear Evolution, which would look for the develop- ment of the natural man through powers al- readj7 inherent, as if one were to look to Crys- tallization to accomplish the development of the mineral into the plant, — but that larger form of Evolution which includes among its factors the double Law of Biogenesis and the immense further truth that this involves.
What is further included in this complex correspondence we shall have opportunity to illustrate afterwards."1 Meantime let it ba
1 Vide " Conformity to Type, " page 279.
ETERNAL LIFE. 233
noted on what the Christian argument for Im- mortality really rests. It stands upon the pedestal on which the theologian rests the whole of historical Christianity — the Resurrec- tion of Jesus Christ.
It ought to be placed in the forefront of all Christian teaching that Christ's mission on earth was to give men Life. " I am come," He said. " that ye might have Life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." And that He meant literal Life, literal spiritual and Eternal Life, is clear from the whole course of His teaching and acting. To impose a meta- phorical meaning on the commonest word of the New Testament is to violate every canon of interpretation, and at the same time to charge the greatest of teachers with persist- ently mystifying His hearers by an unusual use of so exact a vehicle for expressing definite thought as the Greek language, and that on the most momentous subject of which He ever spoke to men. It is a canon of interpreta- tion, according to Alford, that "a figurative sense of words is never admissible except when required by the context." The context, in most cases, is not only directly unfavorable to a figurative meaning, but in innumerable instances in Christ's teaching Life is broadly contrasted with Death. In the teaching of the apostles, again, we find that, without excep- tion, they accepted the term in its simple literal sense. Reuss defines the apostolic belief with his usual impartiality when — and the quota- tion is doubly pertinent here — he discovers in
234 ETERNAL LIFE.
the apostle's conception of Life, first, "the idea of a real existence, an existence such as is proper to God and to the Word ; an imperish- able existence— that is to say, not subject to the vicissitudes and imperfections of the finite world. This primary idea is repeatedly ex- pressed, at least in a negative form ; it leads to a doctrine of immortality, or, to speak more correctly, of life, far surpassing any that had been expressed in the formulas of the current philosophy or theology, and resting upon pre- mises and conceptions altogether different. In fact, it can dispense both with the philoso- phical thesis of the immateriality or indestruc- tibility of the human soul, and with the theo- logical thesis of a miraculous corporeal recon- struction of our person ; thesis, the first of which is altogether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second absolutely opposed to reason." Second, " the idea of life, as it is conceived in this system, implies the idea of a power, an operation, a communication, since this life no longer remains, so to speak, latent or passive in God and in the Word, but through them reaches the believer. It is not a mental somnolent thing; it is not a plant without fruit ; it is a germ which is to find fullest development." l
If we are asked to define more clearly what is meant by this mysterious endowment of Life, we again hand over the difficulty ta Science. When Science can define the Xatural
1 " History of Christian Theology in the Apostolur Age," vol. ii. p. 496.
ETERNAL LIFE. 235
Life and the Physical Force we may hope for further clearness on the nature and action of the Spiritual Powers. The effort to detect the living Spirit must be at least as idle as the at- tempt to subject protoplasm to microscopic examination in the hope of discovering Life. We are warned, also, not to expect too much. "Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." This being its quality, when the Spiritual Life is discovered in tha laboratory it will possibly be time to give it up altogether. It may say, as Socrates of his soul, "You may bury me — if you can catch me."
Science never corroborates a spiritual truth without illuminating it. The threshold of Eternity is a place where many shadows meet. And the light of Science here, where every- thing is so dark, is welcome a thousand times. Many men would be religious if they knew where to begin ; many would be more religious if they were sure where it would end. It is not indifference that keeps some men from God, but ignorance. " Good Master, what must I do to inherit Eternal Life?" is still the deepest question of the age. What is Religion ? What am I to believe ? What seek with all my heart and soul and mind ? — this is the imperious question sent up to conscious- ness from the depths of being in all earnest hours ; sent down again, alas, with many of us, time after time, unanswered. Into all our thought and work and reading this question pursues us. But the theories are rejected one
236 ETERNAL LIFE.
by one ; the great books are returned sadly to their shelves, the years pass, and the problem remains unsolved. The confusion of tongues here is terrible. Every day a new author- ity announces himself. Poets, philosophers, preachers try their hand on us in turn. New prophets arise, and beseech us for our soul's sake to give ear to them — at last in an hour of inspiration they have discovered the final truth. Yet the doctrine of yesterday is challenged by a fresh philosophy to-day ; and the creed of to- day will fall in turn before the criticism of to- morrow. Increase of knowledge increaseth sorrow. And at length the conflicting truths, lil:j the beams of light in the laboratory ex- periment, combine in the mind to make total darkness.
But here are two outstanding authorities agreed — not men, not philosophers, not creeds> Here is the voice of God and the voice of Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes when uncertain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo. When I hear both, I am assured. My sense ' hearing does not betray me twice. I recognize the Voice in the Echo, the Echo makes me certain of the Voice ; I listen and I know. The question of a Future Life is a biological question. Nature may be silent on other problems of Religion; but here she has a right to speak. The whole confusion around the doctrine of Eternal Life has arisen from making it a question of Philosophy. We
ETERNAL LIFE, '. 37
li do ill to refuse a hearing to any specula- tion of Philosophy ; the ethical relations here especially are intimate and real. But in the first instance Eternal Life, as a question of Life, is a problem for Biology. The soul is a living organism. And for any question as to the soul's Life we must appeal to Life-science. And what does the Life-science teach ? That if I am to inherit Eternal Life, I must cultivate a correspondence with the Eternal. This is a simple proposition, for Nature is always simple. I take this proposition, and, leaving Nature, proceed to fill it in. I search everywhere for a clue to the Eternal. I ransack literature for a definition of a correspondence between mail and God. Obviously that can only come from one source. And the analogies of Science per- mit us to apply to it. All knowledge lies in Environment. When I want to know about minerals I go to minerals. When I want to know about flowers I go to flowers. And they tell me. In their own way they speak to me, each in its own way, and each for itself — not the mineral for the flower, which is impossible, nor the flower for the mineral, which is also impossible. So if I want to know about Man, I go to his part of the Environment. And he tells me about himself, not as the plant or the mineral, for he is neither, but in his own way. And if I want to know about God, I go to his part of the Environment. And lie tells me about Himself, not as a Man, for He is not Man, but in His own way. And just as naturally js the flower and the mineral ana tlie Man,
238 ETERNAL ^
each in their own way, tell me about them- selves, He tells me about Himself. He very strangely condescends indeed in making things plain to me, actually assuming for a time the Form of a Man that I at my poor level may better see Him. This is my opportunity to know Him. This incarnation is God making Himself accessible to human thought — God opening to man the possibility of correspond- ence through Jesus Christ. And this corre- spondence and this Environment are those I seek. He Himself assures me, " This is Life Eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Do I not now discern the deeper mean- ing in " Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent"? Do I not better understand with what vision and rapture the profoundest of the disciples exclaims, " The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we might know Him that is true"?1
Having opened correspondence with the Eternal Environment, the subsequent stages are in the line of all other normal develop- ment. We have but to continue, to deepen, to extend, and to enrich the correspondence that has been begun. And we shall soon find to our surprise that this is accompanied by another and parallel process. The action is not all upon our side. The Environment also will be found to correspond. The influence of Environment is one of the greatest and most substantial of modern biological doctrines. Of the power of Environment to form or
ETEENAL LIFE. 239
transform organisms, of its ability to develop or suppress function, of its potency in deter- mining growth, and generally of its immense influence in Evolution, there is no need now to speak. But Environment is now acknowl- edged to be one of the most potent factors in the Evolution of Life. The influence of En- vironment too seems to increase rather than diminish as we approach the higher forms of being. The highest forms are the most mobile; their capacity of change is the greatest ; they are, in short, most easily acted on by Environment. And not only are the highest organisms the most mobile, but the highest parts of the highest organisms are more mobile than the lower. Environment can do little, comparatively, in the direction of inducing variation in the body of a child ; but how plastic is its mind ! How infinitely sensitive is its soul ! How infallibly can it be turned to music or to dissonance by the moral harmony or discord of its outward lot ! How decisively indeed are we not all formed and moulded, made or unmade, by external circumstance ! Might we not all confess with Ulysses, —
"I am a part of all that I have met " ?
Much more, then, shall we look for the in- fluence of Environment on the spiritual nature of him who has opened correspondence with God. Reaching out his eager and quickened faculties to the spiritual world around him, shall he not become spiritual ? In vital con-
240 ETERNAL LIFE.
tact with Holiness, shall he not become holy t Breathing now an atmosphere of ineffable Purity, shall he miss becoming pure ? Walk- ing with God from day to day shall he fail to be taught of God ?
Growth in grace is sometimes described as a strange, mystical, and unintelligible process. It is mystical, but neither strange nor unin- telligible. It proceeds according to Natural Law, and the leading factor in sanctification is Influence of Environment. The possibility of it depends upon the mobility of the organism ; the result, on the extent and frequency of certain correspondences. These facts insensi- bly lead on to a further suggestion. Is it not possible that these biological truths may c ^.rry with them the clue to a still profoundcr phi- losophy— even that of Regeneration ?
Evolutionists tell us that by the influence of environment certain aquatic animals have be- come adapted to a terrestrial mode of life. Breathing normally by gills, as the result and reward of a continued effort carried on from generation to generation to inspire the air of heaven direct, they have slowly acquired the lung-function. In the young organism, true to the ancestral type, the gill still persists — as in the tadpole of the common frog. But as maturity approaches the true lung appears ; the gill gradually transfers its task to the higher organ. It then becomes atrophied and disappears, and finally respiration in the adult is conducted by lungs alone.1 "We may be far,
1 Vide also the remarkable experiments of Fraulein v.
ETERNAL LIFE. 241
in the meantime, from saying that this ia proved. It is for those who accept it to deny the justice of the spiritual analogy. Is relig- ion to them unscientific in its doctrine of Re- generation? Will the evolutionist who admits the regeneration of the frog under the modify- ing influence of a continued correspondence with a new environment, care to question the possibility of the soul acquiring such a faculty as that of Prayer, the marvellous breathing- function of the new creature, when in contact with the atmosphere of a besetting God ? Is the change from the earthly to the heavenly more mysterious than the change from the aquatic co the terrestrial mode of Life ? Is Evolution to stop with the organic ? If it be objected that it has taken ages to perfect the function in the batrachian, the reply is, that it will take ag • to perfect the function in the Christian. " ^r every thousand years the natural evolu- tion will allow for the development of its organism, the Higher Biology will grant its product millions. We have indeed spoken of t e spiritual correspondence as already perfect — but it is perfect only as the bud is perfect. " It doth not yet appear what it shall be," any more than it appeared a million years ago what the evolving batrachian would be.
But to return. We have been dealing with the scientific aspects of communion with God. Insensibly, from quantity we have been led to
Chauvin on the Transformation of the Mexican Axolotl into Amblystoms. — Weismann'a "Studies in the Theory of Descent," rel. ii. pt. iii.
1C
242 ETERNAL LIFE.
speak of quality. And enough has no\v been advanced to indicate generally the nature of that correspondence with which is necessarily associated Eternal Life. There remains but one or two details to which we must lastly, and very briefly, address ourselves.
The quality of everlastingness belongs, as we have seen, to a single correspondence, or rather to a single set of correspondences. But it is apparent that before this correspondence can take full and final effect a further process is necessary. By some means it must be sep- arated from all the other correspondences of the organism which do not share its pecul- iar quality. In this life it is restrained by these other correspondences. They may con- tribute to it, or hinder it; but they are essentially of a different order. They belong not to Eternity but to Time, and to this pres- ent world ; and, unless some provision is made for dealing with them, they will detain the aspiring organism in this present world till Time is ended. Of course, in a sense, all that belongs to Time belongs also to Eternity ; but these lower correspondences are in their nature unfitted for an Eternal Life. Even if they were perfect in their relation to their Environ- ment, they would still not be Eternal. However opposed, apparently, to the scientific definition of Eternal Life, it is yet true that perfect correspondence with Environment is not Eternal Life. A very important word in the complete definition 'is, in this sentence, omitted. On that word it has not been neces-
ETERNAL LIFE.
sary hitherto, and for obvious reasons, to place any emphasis, but when we come to deal with false pretenders to Immortality we must return to it. Were the definition complete as it stands, it might, with the permission of the psycho-physiologist, guarantee the Immortality of every living thing. In the dog, for instance,, the material framework giving way at death might leave the released canine spirit still free to inhabit the old Environment. And so with every creature which had ever established a conscious relation with surrounding things. Now the difficulty in framing a theory of Eternal Life has been to construct one which will exclude the brn'e creation, drawing the line rigidly at intr, or at least somewhere within the human race. Not that we need ob- ject to the Immortal' ty of the dog, or of the whole inferior creat'on. Nor that we need refuse a place to any intelligible speculation which would peop^ die earth to-day with the invisible forms of aL things that have ever lived. Only we st.ll insist that this is not Eternal Life. And why ? Because their En- vironment is not Eternal. Their correspond- ence, however firmly established, is established with that which shall pass away. An Eternal Life demands an Eternal Environment.
The demand for a perfect Environment as well as for a perfect correspondence is less clear in Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition than it might be. But it is n essential factor. An organism might remain true to itc Environ, ment, but what if the Environment played it
244 ETERNAL LIFE.
false ? If the organism possessed the power to change, it could adapt itself to successive changes in the Environment. And if this were guaranteed we should also have the conditions for Eternal Life fulfilled. But what if the Environment passed away altogether ? What if the earth swept suddenly into the sun? This is a change of Environment against which there could be no precaution and for which there could be as little provision. With a changing Environment even, there must always remain the dread and possibility of a falling out of correspondence. At the best, Life would be uncertain. But with a changeless Environment — such as that pos- sessed by the spiritual organism — the per- petuity of the correspondence, so far as the external relation is concerned, is guaranteed. This quality of permanence in the Environment distinguishes the religious relation from every other. Why should not the musician's life be an Eternal Life ? Because, for one thing, the musical world, the Environment with which he corresponds, is not eternal. Even if his correspondence in itself could last eternally, the environing material things with which he corresponds must pass away. His soul might last forever — but not his violin. So the man of the world might last forever — but not the world. His Environment is not eternal ; nor are even his correspondences — the world passeth away and the lust thereof.
We find then that man, or the spiritual man, is equipped with two sets of correspondences.
ETERNAL LIFE. 245
One set possesses the quality of everlastingness, the other is temporal. But unless these are separated by some means the temporal will continue to impair and hinder the eternal. The final preparation, therefore, for the in- heriting of Eternal Life must consist in the abandonment of the non-eternal elements. These must be unloosed and dissociated from the higher elements. And this is effected by a closing catastrophe — Death.
Death ensues because certain relations in the organism are not adjusted to certain relations in the Environment. There will come a time in each history when the imper- fect correspondences of the organism will betray themselves by a failure to compass some necessary adjustment. This is why Death is associated with Imperfection. Death is the necessary result of Imperfection, and the necessary end of it. Imperfect correspond- ence gives imperfect and uncertain Life. "Perfect correspondence," on the other hand, according to Mr. Herbet Spencer, would be "perfect Life." To abolish Death, therefore, all that would be necessary would be to abol- ish Imperfection. But it is the claim of Chris- tianity that it can abolish Death. And it is significant to notice that it does so by meeting this very demand of Science — it abolishes Im- perfection.
The part of the organism which begins to get out of correspondence with the Organic Environment is the only part which is in vital correspondence with it. Though a fatal dis-
;246 ETERNAL LIFE.
advantage to the natural man to be thrown out of correspondence with this Environment, it is of inestimable importance to the spiritual man. For so long as it is maintained the way is barred for a further Evolution. And hence the condition necessary for the further Evolu- tion is that the spiritual be released from the natural. That is to say, the condition of the further Evolution is Death. Mors janua Vitce, therefore, becomes a scientific formula. Death, being the final sifting of all the corre- spondences, is the indispensable factor of the higher Life. In the language of Science, not less than of Scripture, " To die is gain."
The sifting of the correspondences is done by Nature. This is its last and greatest contri- bution to mankind. Over the mouth of the grave the perfect and the imperfect submit to their final separation. Each goes to its own — earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Spirit to Spirit. " The dust shall return to the «arth as it was ; and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
1SNVIRONMENT
"When I talked with an ardent missionary and pointed out to him that his creed found no support in my experience, he replied : ' It is not so in your ex- perience, but is so in the other world.' I answer: 4 Other world 1 There is no other world. God is rne and omnipresent; here or nowhere is the whole fact.'" EMEKSON.
ENVIRONMENT.
*• Ye are complete In Him." — Paul.
" Whatever amount of power an organism expends in ftny shape Is the correlate and equivalent of a power that was taken into it from without." — Herbert Spear ter.
STUDENTS of Biography will observe that in all well- written Lives attention is concentrated for the first few chapters upon two points. We are first introduced to the family to which the subject of memoir belonged. The grand- parents, or even the more remote ancestors, are briefly sketched and their chief character- istics brought prominently into view. Then the parents themselves are photographed in detail. Their appearance and physique, their character, their disposition, their mental qual- ities, are set before us in a critical analysis. And finally we are asked to observe how much the father and the mother respectively have transmitted of their peculiar nature to their offspring. How faithfully the ancestral lines have met in the latest product, how mysteri- ously the joint characteristics of body and mind have blended, and how unexpected yet how entirely natural a recombination is there- suit — these points are elaborated with cumula- tive effect until we realize at last how little we
250 ENVIRONMENT.
are dealing with an independent unit, how much with a survival and reorganization of what seemed buried ill the grave.
In the second place, we are invited to con- sider more external influences — schools and schoolmasters, neighbors, home, pecuniary cir- "unistances, scenery, and, by and by, the relig- ious and political atmosphere of the time. These also we are assured have played their