part in making the individual what be is. We

can estimate these early influences in any par- ticular case with but small imagination if we fail to see how powerfully they also have moulded mind and character, and in what subtle ways they have determined the course of the future life.
This twofold relation of the individual, first, to his parents, and second, to his circumstances, is not peculiar to human beings. These two factors are responsible for making all living organisms what they are. When a naturalist attempts to unfold the life-history of any ani- mal, he proceeds precisely on these same lines. Biography is really a branch of Natural His- tory; and the biographer who discusses bis hero as the resultant of these two tendencies, follows the scientific method as rigidly as Mr. Darwin in studying "Animals and Plants under Domestication."
Mr. Darwin, following Weismann, long ago pointed out that there are two main factors in all Evolution — the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions. We have chosen our illustration from the highest or human
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species in order to define the meaning of these factors in the clearest way ; but it must be re- membered that the development of man under these directive influences is essentially the same as that of any other organism in the hands of Nature. We are dealing therefore with universal Law. It will still further serve to complete the conception of the general prin- ciple if we now substitute for the casual phrases by which the factors have been de- scribed the more accurate terminology of Science. Thus what Biography describes as parental influences, Biology would speak of as Heredity; and all that is involved in the second factor — the action of external circum- stances and surroundings — the naturalist would include under the single term Environ- ment. These two, Heredity and Environment, are the master-influences of the organic world. These have made all of us what we are. These forces are still ceaselessly playing upon all our lives. And he who truly understands these influences ; he who has decided how much to allow to each ; he who can regulate new forces as they arise, or adjust them to the old, so di- recting them as at one moment to make them co-operate, at another to counteract one an- other, understands the rationale of personal development. To seize continuously the op- portunity of more and more perfect adjust- ment to better and higher conditions, to bal- ance some inward evil with some purer in* fluence acting from without, in a word to make our Environment at the same time that it is
252 ENVIRONMENT.
making us, — these are the secrets of a well* ordered and successful life.
In the spiritual world, also, the subtle influ- ences which form and transform the soul are Heredity and Environment. And here espe- cially where all is invisible, where much that we feel to be real is yet so ill-defined, it be- comes of vital practical moment to clarify the atmosphere as far as possible with conceptions borrowed from the natural life. Few things are less understood than the conditions of the spiritual life. The distressing incompetence of which most of us are conscious in trying to work out our spiritual experience is due per- haps less to the diseased will which we com- monly blame for it than to imperfect knowl- edge of the right conditions. It does not occur to us how natural the spiritual is. We still strive for some strange transcendent thing ; we seek to promote life by methods as un- natural as they prove unsuccessful ; and only the utter incomprehensibility of the whole region prevents us seeing fully — what we already half suspect — how completely we are missing the road. Living in the spiritual world, nevertheless, is just as simple as living in the natural world; and it is the same kind of simplicity. It is the same kind of simplic- ity for it is the same kind of world — there are not two kinds of worlds. The conditions of life in the one are the conditions of life in the other. And till these conditions are sensibly grasped, as the conditions of all life, it is im- possible that the personal effort after the high-
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est life should be other than a blind struggle carried on in fruitless sorrow and humilia- tion.
Of these two universal factors, Heredity and Environment, it is unnecessary to balance the relative importance here. The main influence, unquestionably, must be assigned to the former. In practice, however, and for an obvious reason, we are chiefly concerned with the latter. What Heredity has to do for us is determined outside ourselves. Xo man can select his own parents. But every man to some extent can choose his own Environment. His relation to it, however largely determined by Heredity in the first in- stance, is always open to alteration. And so great is his control over Environment and so radical its influence over him, that he can so direct it as either to undo, modify, perpetuate or intensify the earlier hereditary influences within certain limits. But the aspects of Environment which we have now to consider do not involve us in questions of such com- plexity. In what high and mystical sense, also, Heredity applies to the spiritual organism we need not just now inquire. In the simpler re- lations of the more external factor we shall find a large and fruitful field for study.
The Influence of Environment may be inves- tigated in two main aspects. First, one might discuss the modern and very interesting ques- tion as to the power f Environment to induce what is known to recent science as Variation. A change in the surroundings of any animal, it is now well-known, can so react upon it as to cause
254 ENVIRONMENT.
it to change. By the attempt, conscious or unconscious, to adjust itself to the new condi- tions, a true physiological change is gradually wrought within the organism. Hunter, for ex- ample, in a classical experiment, so changed the Environment of a sea-gull by keeping it in cap- tivity that it could only secure a grain diet. The effect was to modify the stomach of the bird, normally adapted to a fish diet, until in time it came to resemble in structure the gizzard of an ordinary grain-feeder such as the pigeon* Holmgren again reversed this experiment by feeding pigeons for a lengthened period on a meat-diet, with the result that the gizzard be- came transformed into the carnivorous stom- ach. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace mentions the case of a Brazilian parrot which changes its color from green to red or yellow when fed on the fat of certain fishes. Not only changes of food, however, but changes of climate and of temperature, changes in surrounding organ- isms, in the ease of marine animals even changes of pressure, of ocean currents, of light, and many other circumstances, are known to exert a powerful modifying influence upon living organisms. These relations are still being worked out in many directions, but the influ- ence of Environment as a prime factor in Vari- ation is now a recognized doctrine of science.1
lVid« Karl Semper' s '« The Xatural Conditions of Ex- istence as they affect Animal Life ; " Wallace's " Trop- ical Nature ; " Weismann's " Studies in the Theory ol Descent ; " Darwin's "Animals and Plants under Domes* tication."
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Even the popular mind has been struck with the curious adaptation of nearly all animals to their habitat, for example in the matter of color. The sandy hue of the sole and floun- der, the white of the polar bear with its sug- gestion of Arctic snows, the stripes of the Bengal tiger — as if the actual reeds of its native jungle had nature-printed themselves on its hide ;-— these and a hundred others which will occur to every one, are marked instances of adaptation to Environment, induced by Natural Selection or otherwise, for the purpose, obviously in these cases at least, of protection.
To continue the investigation of the modify- ing action of Environment into the moral and spiritual spheres, would be to open a fascinat- ing and suggestive inquiry. One might show hjw the moral man is acted upon and changed continuously by the influences, secret and open, of his surroundings, by the tone of society, by the company he keeps, by his occupation, by the books he reads, by Nature, by all, in short, that constitutes the habitual atmosphere of his thoughts and the little world of his daily choice. Or one might go deeper stul and prove how the spi^tual life also is modified from outsid sources — its health or disease, its growth or de- cay, all its changes for better or for worse being determined by the varying and successive cir- cumstances in which the religious habits are cultivated. But we must rather transfer our attention to a second aspect of Environment, not perhaps so fascinating but yet more inv portant.
256 ENVIRONMENT.
So much of the modern discussion of Envi- ronment revolves round the mere question of Variation that one is apt to overlook a previous question. Environment as a factor in life is not exhausted when we have realized its modifying influence. Its significance is snar^ely touched. The great function of Environment is not to modify but to sustain. In sustaining life, it is true, it modifies. But the 1 tter influence is incidental, the former essential. Our Environ- ment is that in which we live nd move and have our being. Without it w should neither liv nor move nor have any being. In the or- to ..nism lies the principle of ]' ; in the Envi- ronment are th condi^on? of life. Without the fulfilment of thes Conditions, which are wholly supplied by Environment, here can be no life. An organism in its 'If is but a part; Nature is its complement. Al ne, cut off from its sur- roundings, it is not. Alone, cut off from my surroundings, I am not — physically, I am not. I am, only as I am sustained. I continue only as I receive. My Environment may modify mer but it has first to keep me. And all the time its secret transforming power is indirectly moulding body and mind it is directly active in the more open task of ministering to my myriad wants and from hour to hour sustain- ing life itself.
To understand the sustaining influence of Environment in the animal world, one has only to recall what the biologist terms the extrinsic or subsidiary conditions of vitality. Every living thing normally requires for its develop*
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ment an Environment containing air, light, heat, and water. In addition to these, if vital- ity is to be prolonged for any length of time, and if it is to be accompanied with growth and the expenditure of energy, there must be a con- stant supply of food. When we remember how indispensable food is to growth and work, and when we further bear in mind that the food- supply is solely contributed by the Environ- ment, we shall realize at once the meaning and the truth of the proposition that without En- vironment there can be no life. Seventy per cent, at least of the human body is made of pure water, the rest of gases and earths. These have all come from Environment. Through the secret pores of the skin two pounds of water are exhaled daily from every healthy adult. The supply is kept up by Environ- ment. The Environment is really an unappro- priated part of ourselves. Definite portions are continuously abstracted from it and added to the organism. And so long as the organism continues to grow, act, think, speak, work, or perform any other function demanding a supply of energy, there is a constant simultaneous, and proportionate drain upon its surroundings.
This is a truth in the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it, for further confirmation, into another de- partment of nature. Its significance in Biology is self-evident ; let us appeal to Chemistry.
When a piece of coal is thrown on the fire, we say that it will radiate into the room a cer« 17
258 ENVIRONMENT.
tain quantity of heat. This heat, in the popu- lar conception, is supposed to reside in the coal and to be set free during the process of com- bustion. In reality, however, the heat energy is only in part contained in the coal. It is contained just as truly in the coal's Environ- ment— that is to say, in the oxygen of the air. The atoms of carbon which compose the coal have a powerful affinity for the oxygen of the air. Whenever they are made to approach within a certain distance of one another, by the initial application of heat, they rush together with inconceivable velocity. The heat which appears at this moment, comes neither from the carbon alone, nor from the oxygen alone. These two substances are really inconsumable, and continue to exist, after they meet in a com- bined form, as carbonic acid gas. The heat is due to the energy developed by the chemical embrace, the precipitate rushing together of the molecules of carbon and the molecules of oxy- gen. It comes, therefore, partly from the coal and partly from the Environment. Coal alone never could produce heat, neither alone could Environment. The two are mutually depend- ent. And although in nearly all the arts we credit everything to the substance which we can weigh and handle, it is certain that in most cases the larger debt is due to an invisible En- vironment.
This is one of those great commonplaces which slip out of general reckoning by reason of their very largeness and simplicity. How profound, nevertheless, are the issues which
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hang on this elementary truth, we shall dis- cover immediately. Nothing in this age ig more needed in every department of knowl- edge than the rejuvenescence of the common- place. In the spiritual world especially, he will be wise who courts acquaintance with the most ordinary and transparent facts of Nature ; and in laying the foundations for 'a religious life he will make no unworthy beginning who carries with him an impressive sense of so obvious a truth as that without Environment there can be no life.
For what does this amount to in the spirit- ual world? Is it not merely the scientific re- statement of the reiterated aphorism of Christ, "Without Me ye can do nothing"? There is in the spiritual organism a principle of life; but that is not self-existent. It requires a second factor, a something in which to live and move and have its being, an Environment. Without this it cannot live or move or have any being. Without Environment the soul is as the carbon without the oxygen, as the n'sh without the water, as the animal frame without the extrinsic conditions of vitality.
And what is the spiritual Environment ? It is God. Without this, therefore, there is no life, no thought, no energy, nothing — " without Me ye can do nothing."
The cardinal error in the religious life is to attempt t live without an Environment. Spiritual experience occupies itself, not too much, but too exclusively, with one factor—. the souh We delight in dissecting this muob
2(50 ENVIRONMENT.
tortured faculty, from time to time, in search of a certain something which we call our faith — forgetting that faith is but an attitude, an empty hand for grasping an environing Pres- ence. And when we feel the need of a power ^y which to overcome the world, how often do we not seek to generate it within our- selves by some forced process, some fresh gird- ing of the will, some strained activity which only leaves the soul in further exhaustion? To examine ourselves is good ; but useless un- less we also examine Environment. To bewail our weakness is right, but not remedial. The cause must be investigated as well as the re- sult. And yet, because we never see the other half of the problem, our failures even fail to instruct us. After each new collapse we begin our life anew, but on the old conditions ; and the attempt ends as usual in the repetition — in the circumstances the inevitable repetition — of the old disaster. Not that at times we do not obtain glimpses of the true state of the case. After seasons of much discouragement, with the sore sense upon us of our abject feebleness, we do confer with ourselves, insist- ing for the thousandth time, "My soul, wait thou only upon God." But, the lesson is soon forgotten. The strength supplied we speedily credit to our owji achievement ; and even the temporary success is mistaken for a symptom of improved inward vitality. Once more we become self-existent. Once1 more we go on liv- ing without an Environment. And once more, after days of wasting without repairing, of
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spending without replenishing, we begin ta perish with hunger, only returning to God again, as a last resort, when we have reached starvation point.
Now why do we do this ? Why do we seek to breathe without an atmosphere, to drink without a well? Why this unscientific at- tempt to sustain life for weeks at a time with- out an Environment ? It is because we have never truly seen the necessity for an Environ- ment. We have not been working with a principle. We are told to "wait only upon God," but we do not know why. It has never been as clear to us that without God the soul will die as that without food the body will perish. In short, we have never comprehended the doctrine of the Persistence of Force. In- stead of being content to transform energy we have tried to create it.
The Law of Nature here is as clear as Sci- ence can make it. In the words of Mr. Her- bert Spencer, "It is a corollary from that primordial truth which, as we have seen, underlies all other truths, that whatever amount of power an organism expends in any shape is the correlate and equivalent of a power that was taken into it from without." a We are dealing here with a simple question of dynamics. Whatever energy the soul expends- must first be " taken into it from without." We are not Creators, but crc atures ; God is our refuge and strength. Communion with God,
1 "Principles of Biology," p. 57.
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therefore, is a scientific necessity ; and nothing will more help the defeated spirit which is struggling in the wreck of its religious life than a common- sense hold of this plain bio- logical principle that without Environment he can do nothing. What he wants is not an occasional view, but a principle — a basal princi- ple Kke this, broad as the universe, solid as nature. In the natural world we act upon this law unconsciously. We absorb heat, breathe air, draw on Environment all but automatically for meat and drink, for the nourishment of the senses, for mental stimulus, for all that, pene- trating us from without, can prolong, enrich, and elevate life. But in the spiritual world we have all this to learn. We are new creatures, and even the bare living has to be acquired.
Now the great point in learning to live is to live naturally. As closely as possible we must follow the broad, clear lines of the natural life. And there are three things especially which it is necessary for us to keep continually in view. The first is that the organism contains within itself only one-half of what is essential to life ; the second is that the other half is contained in the Environment; the third, that the condi- tion of receptivity is simple union between the organism and the Environment.
Translated into the language of religion these propositions yield, and place on a scienti- fic basis, truths of immense practical interest. To say, first, that the organism contains within itself only one-half of what is essential to life, is to repeat the evangelical confession,
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BO worn and yet so true to universal experi- ence, of the utter helplessness of man. Who has not come to the conclusion that he is but a part, a fraction of some larger whole ? Who does not miss at every turn of his life an ab- sent God ? That man is but a part, he knows, for there is room in him or more. That God is the other part, he feels, because at times He satisfies his need. Who does not tremble often under that sicklier symptom of his incom- pleteness, his want of spiritual energy, his helplessness with sin? But now he under- stands both — the void in his life, the power- lessness of his will. He understands that, like all other energy, spiritual power is con- tained in Environment. He finds here at last the true root of all human frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin. This is why "without Me ye can do nothing." Powerlessness is the normal state not only of this but of every organism — of every organism apart from its Environment
The entire dependence of the soul upon God is not an exceptional mystery, nor is man's helplessness an arbitrary and unprecedented phenomenon. It is the law of all Nature. The spiritual man is not taxed beyond the natural. He is not purposely handicapped by singular limitations or unusual incapacities. God has not designedly made the religious life as hard as possible. The arrangements for the spiritual life are the same as for the natural life. When in their hours of unbelief men challenge their Creator for placing the
264 ENVIRONMENT.
obstacle of human frailty in the way of their highest development, their protest is against the order of nature. They object to the sun for being the source of energy and not the en- gine, to the carbonic acid being in the air and not in the plant. They would equip each organism with a personal atmosphere, each brain, with a private store of energy ; they would grow corn in the interior of the body, and make bread by a special apparatus in the digestive organs. They must, in short, have the creature transformed into a Creator. The organism must either depend on his environ- ment, or be self-sufficient. But who will not rather approve the arrangement by which man in his creatural life may have unbroken access to an Infinite Power ? What soul will seek to remain self-luminous when it knows that "The Lord God is a Sun"? Who will not willingly exchange his shallow vessel for Christ's well of living water? Even if the organism, launched into being like a ship put- ting out to sea, possessed a full equipment, its little store must soon come to an end. But in contact with a large and bounteous Environ- ment its supply is limitless. In every direc- tion its resources are infinite.
There is a modern school which protests against the doctrine of man's inability as the heartless fiction of a past theology. While some forms of that dogma, t6 any one who knows man, are incapable of defence, there are others which, to any one who knows Nature, are incapable of denial. Those who oppose
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it, in their jealousy for humanity, credit the organism with the properties of Environment. All true theology, on the other hand, has re- mained loyal to at least the root-idea in this truth. The New Testament is nowhere more impressive than where it insists on the fact of man's dependence. In its view the first step in religion is for man to feel his helplessness. Christ's first beatitude is to the poor in spirit. The condition of entrance into the spiritual kingdom is to possess the child-spirit — that state of mind combining at once the profoundest helplessness with the most artless feeling of dependence. Substantially the same idea underlies the countless passages in which Christ affirms that He has not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And in that farewell discourse into which the Great Teacher poured the most burning convictions of His life, He gives to this doctrine an ever increasing emphasis. No words could be more solemn or arresting than the sentence in the last great allegory devoted to this theme, " As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me." The word here, it will be observed again, is cannot. It is the imperative of natural law. Fruit-bearing without Christ is not an improbability, but an impossibility. As well expect the natural fruit to flourish with, •out air and heat, without soil and sunshine. How thoroughly also Paul grasped this truth is apparent from a hundred pregnant passages in which he echoes his Master's teaching. To
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him life was hid with Christ in God. And that he embraced this not as a theory but as an ex- perimental truth we gather from his constant confession, " When I am weak, then ain I strong."
This leads by a natural transition to the second of the three points we are seeking to illustrate. We have seen that the organism contains within itself only one half of what is essential to life. We have next to observe, as the complement of this, how the second half is contained in the Environment.
One result of the due apprehension of our personal helplessness will be that we shall no longer wTaste our time over the impossible task of manufacturing energy for ourselves. Our science will bring to an abrupt end the long series of severe experiments in which we have indulged in the hope of finding a perpetual motion. And having decided upon this once for all, our first step in seeking a more satis- factory state of things must be to find a new source of energy. Following Nature, only one course is open to us. We must refer to Environment. The natural life owes all to Environment, so must the spiritual. Now the Environment of the spiritual life is God. As Nature therefore forms the complement of the natural life, God is the complement of the p^iritual.
The proof of this ? That Nature is not more natural to my body than God is to my soul. Every animal and plant has its own Environ- ment. And the further one inquires into the
ENVIRONMENT. -Jd7
relations of the one to the other, the aiore one sees the marvellous intricacy and beauty of the adjustments. These wonderful adapta- tions of each organism to its surroundings — of the fish to the water, of the eagle io the air, of the insect to the forest-bed ; and of each part of every organism — the fish's swim-bladder, the eagle's eye, the insect's breathing tubes — which the old argument from design brought home to us with such enthusiasm, inspire us still with a sense of the boundless resource and skill of Nature in perfecting her arrangements for each single life. Down to the last detail the world is made for what is in it ; and by whatever process things are as they are, all organisms find in surrounding Nature the ample comple- ment of themselves. Man, too, finds in his Environment provision for all capacities, scope for the exercise of every faculty, room for the indulgence of each appetite, a just supply for every want. So the spiritual man at the apex of the pyramid of life finds in the vaster range of his Environment a provision, as much higher, it is true, as he is higher, but as del- icately adjusted to his varying needs. And all this is supplied to him just as the lower organisms are ministered to by the lower en- vironment, in the same simple ways, in the same constant sequence, as appropriately and as lavishly. We fail to praise the ceaseless ministry of the great inanimate world around us only because its kindness is unobtrusive. Nature is always noiseless. All her greatest gifts are given in secret. And we forget how
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truly every good and perfect gift comes from without, and from above, because no pause in her changeless beneficence teaches us the sad lessons of deprivation.
It is not a strange thing, then, for the soul to find its life in God. This is its native air. God as the Environment of the soul has been from the remotest age the doctrine of all the deepest thinkers in religion. How profouudly Hebrew poetry is saturated with this high thought will appear when we try to conceive of it with this left out. True poetry is only science in another form. And long before it was possible for religion to give scientific expression to its greatest truths, men of insight uttered themselves in psalms which could not have been truer to Nature had the most modern light con- trolled the inspiration. " As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God." What fine sense of the analogy of the natural and the spiritual does not underlie these words ! As the hart after its Environment, so man after his ; as the water-brooks are fitly designed to meet the natural wants, so fitly does God implement the spiritual need of man. It will be noticed that in the Hebrew poets the longing for God never strikes one as morbid, or unnatural to the men who uttered it. It is as natural to them to long for God as for the swallow to seek her nest. Throughout all their images no suspi- cion rises within us that they are exaggerating. We feel how truly they are reading themselves, their deepest selves. No false note occurs i»
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all their aspiration. There is no weariness even in their ceaseless sighing, except the lover's weariness for the absent — if they would fly away, it is only to be at rest. Men who have no soul can only wonder at this. Men who have a soul, but with little faith, can only envy it. How joyous a thing it was to the Hebrews to seek their God ! How artlessly they call upon Him to entertain them in His pavilion, to cover them with His feathers, to hide them in II is secret place, to hold them in the hollow of His hand or stretch around them the everlasting arms! These men were true children of Nature. As the humming-bird among its own palm-trees, as the ephemera in the sunshine of a summer evening, so they lived their joyous lives. And even the full share of the sadder experiences of life which came to all of them but drove them the further into the Secret Place, and led them with more consecration to make, as they expressed it, "the Lord their portion." All that has been said since from Marcus Aurelius to Swedenborg, from Augustine to Schleiermacher of a beset- ting God as the final complement of humanity is but a repetition of the Hebrew poet's faith. And even the New Testament has nothing higher to offer man than this. The psalmist's " God is our refuge and strength " is only the earlier form, less defined, less practicable, but not less noble, of Christ's " Come unto Me, and I will give you rest."
There is a brief phrase of Paul's which de- fines the relation with almost scientific accu-
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racy, — "Ye are complete in Him." In this ia summed up the whole of the Bible anthropology — the completeness of man in God, his incom- pleteness apart from God.
If it be asked, in what is man incomplete, or, In what does God complete him ? the question is a wide one. But it may serve to show at least the direction in which the Divine En- vironment forms the complement of human life if we ask ourselves once more what it is in life that needs complementing. And to this question we receive the significant answer that it is in the higher departments alone, or mainly, that the incompleteness of our life appears. The lower departments of Nature are already complete enough. The world itself is about as good a world as might be. It has been long in the making, its furniture is all in, its laws are in perfect working order; and although wise men at various times have suggested improve- ments, there is on the whole a tolerably unanimous vote of confidence in things as they exist. The Divine Environment has little more to do for this planet so far as we can see, and so far as the existing generation is con- cerned. Then the lower organic life of the world is also so far complete. God, through Evolution or otherwise, may still have finish- ing touches to add here and there, but, already it is "all very good." It is difficult to con- ceive anything better of its kind than a lily or a cedar, an ant or an ant-eater. These organ- isms, so far as we can judge, lack nothing. It might be said of them, " they are complete in
ENVIRONMENT. 27*
Nature." Of man also, of man the animal, it may be affirmed that his Environment satisfies him. He has food and drink, and good food and good drink. And there is in him no purely animal want which is not really provided for, and that apparently in the happiest possible way.
But the moment we pass beyond the mere animal life we begin to come upon an incom- pleteness. The symptoms at first are slight, and betray themselves only by an unexplained 'restlessness or a dull sense of want. Then the feverishness increases, becomes more defined, and passes slowly into abiding pain. To some come darker moments when the unrest deepens into a mental agony of which all the other woes of earth are mockeries — moments when the forsaken soul can only cry in terror for the Living God. Up to a point the natural En- vironment supplies man's wants, beyond that it only derides him. How much in man lies beyond that point? Very much — almost all, all that makes man man. The first suspicion of the terrible truth — so for the time let us call it — wakens with the dawn of the intel- lectual life. It is a solemn moment when the slow-moving mind reaches at length the verge of its mental horizon, and, looking over, sees nothing more. Its straining makes the abyss but more profound. Its cry comes back with- out an echo. Where is the Environment to complete this rational soul ? Men either find one, — One — or spend the rest of their days in trying to shut their eyes. The alternatives of
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the intellectual life are Christianity or Ag- nosticism. The Agnostic is right when he trumpets his incompleteness. He who is not complete in Him must forever incomplete. Still more grave becomes man's case when he begins further to explore his moral and social nature. The problems of the heart and con- science are infinitely more perplexing than those of the intellect. Has love no future ? Has right no triumph ? Is the unfinished self to remain unfinished ? Again the alternatives are two, Christianity or Pessimism. But when ' we ascend the further height of the religious na- ture, the crisis comes. There, without Environ- ment, the darkness is unutterable. So madden- ing now becomes the mystery that men are com- pelled to construct an Environment for them- selves. No Environment here is unthinkable. An altar of some sort men must have — God, or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only a negative proof of man's incomplete- ness. A witness more overwhelming is the prayer of the Christian. What a very strange thing, is it not, for man to pray? It is the symbol at once of his littleness and of his greatness. Here the sense of imperfection, controlled and silenced in the narrower reaches of his being, becomes audible. Now he must utter himself. The sense of need is so real, and the sense of Environment, that he calls put to it, addressing it articulately, and imploring it to satisfy his need. Surely there is nothing more touching in Nature than this ? Man could never so expose himself, so break through
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all constraint, except from a dire necessity. It is the suddenness and unpremeditatedness of Prayer that gives it a unique value as an apologetic.
Man has three questions to put to his En- vironment, three Symbols of his incomplete* ness. They come from three different centre* of his being. The first is the question of the intellect, What is Truth? The natural En- vironment answers, " Increase of Knowledge increaseth Sorrow," and "much study is a Weariness." Christ replies, " Learn of Me, and ye shall find Rest." Contrast the world's word " Weariness " with Christ's word " Rest.'* No other teacher since the world began ha* ever associated " learn " with " Rest." Leant of me, says the philosopher, and you shall find Restlessness. Learn of Me, says Christ, and ye shall find Rest. Thought, which the god- less man has cursed, that eternally starved yet ever living spectre, finds at last its imperish- able glory ; Thought is complete in Him. The second question is sent up from the moral nature, Who will show us any good ? And again we have a contrast : the world's verdict, " There is none that doeth good, no, not one;'* and Christ's, " There is none good but God only." And, finally, there is the lonely cry of the spirit, most pathetic and most deep of all, Where is he whom my soul seeketh? And the yearning is met as before, " I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me ; refuge failed me ; no man cared for my soul. I cried unto 18
274 ENVIRONMENT.
Thee, 0 Lord : I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the nd of the living." 1
Are these the directions in which men in these d ys ar~ seeking to complete their lives ? The completion of Life is just now a supreme question. It is important to observe how it is being answered. If we ask Science or Phi- losophy they will refer us to Evolution. The struggle for Life, they assure us, is steadily eliminating imperfect forms, and as the fittest continue to survive we shall have a gradual perfecting of being. That is to say, that com- pleteness is to be sought for in the organism — we are to be complete in Nature and in our- selves. To Evolution, certainly, all men will look for a further perfecting of Life. But it must be an Evolution which includes all the factors. Civilization, it may be said, will deal with the second factor. It will improve the Environment step by step as it improves the organism, or the organism as it improves the Environment. This is well, and it will perfect Life up to a point. But beyond that it cannot carry us. As the possibilities of the natural Life become more defined, its impossibilities will become the more appalling. The most perfect civilization would leave the best part of us still incomplete. Men will have to give up the experiment of attempting to live in half an Environment. Half an Environment will give but half a Life. Half an Environment? He whose correspondences are with this world
IPS. cxlii. 4, 5.
ENVIRONMENT. 275
alone has only a thousandth part, a fraction, the mere rim and shade of an Environment, and only the fraction of a Life. How long will it take Science to believe its own creed, that the material universe we see around us is only a fragment of the universe we do not see ? The very retention of the phrase "Material Uni- verse," we are told, is the confession of our unbelief and ignorance ; since " matter is the less important half of the material of the physical universe." 1
The thing to be aimed at is not an organism self-contained and self-sufficient, however high in the scale of being, but an organism complete in the whole Environment. It is open to any one to aim at a self-sufficient Life, but he will find no encouragement in Nature. The Life of the body may complete itself in the physical world ; that is its legitimate Environment. The Life of the senses, high and low, may perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of thought may find a large complement in sur- rounding things. But the higher thought, and the conscience, and the religious Life, can only perfect themselves in God. To make the in- fluence of Environment stop with the natural world is to doom the spiritual nature to death. For the soul, like the body, can never perfect itself in isolation. The law for both is to be complete in the appropriate Environment. And the perfection to be sought in the spiritual world is a perfection of relation, a perfect
1The " Unseen Universe," 6th Ed. p. 100.
276 ENVIRONMENT.
adjustment of that which is becoming perfect to that which is perfect.
The third problem, now simplified to a point, finally presents itself. * Where do organism and Environment meet ? How does that which is becoming perfect avail itself of its perfecting Environment ? And the answer is, just as in Nature. The condition is simply receptivity. And yet this is perhaps the least simple of all •conditions. It is so simple that we will not act upon it. But there is no other condition. Christ has condensed the whole truth into one memorable sentence, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me." And an the positive side, " He that abideth in Me Hie same bringeth forth much fruit."
CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
" ' So careful of the type ?' but no, From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone,
I care for nothing, all shall go.
' Thou makest thine appeal to me ; I bring to life, I bring to death : The spirit does but mean thy breath :
I know no more.' And lie, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seern'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, "Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With rapine, shriek'd against his creed —
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust
Or seal'd within the iron hills?"
IN MEMORIAM,
CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
u Until Christ be formed in you." — Paul.
" The one end to which, in all living heings, the form- ative impulse is tending — the one scheme which the Archseus of the old speculators strives to carry out, seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the parent. It is the first great law of reproduction, that the offspring tends to resemble its parent or parents more closely than anything else." — Huxley.'
IF a botanist be asked the difference between an oak, a palm-tree, and a lichen, he will declare that they are separated from one another by the broadest line known to classification. Without taking into account the outward dif- ferences of size and form, the variety of flower and fruit, the peculiarities of leaf and branch, he sees even in their general architecture types of structure as distinct as Norman, Gothic and Egyptian. But if the first young germs of these three plants are placed before him and he is called upon to define the difference, he finds it impossible. He cannot even say which is which. Examined under the highest powers of the microscope they yield no clue. Analyzed by the chemist with all the appliances of his laboratory they keep their secret.
The same experiment can be tried with the embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the
280 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
worm, the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let the most skilled observer apply the most searching tests to distinguish one from the other and he will fail. But there is something more surprising still. Compare next the two sets of germs, the vegetable and the animal. And there s still no shade of difference. Oak and palm, worm and man, all start in life together. No matter into what strangely different forms they may afterwards develop, no matt - whether hey are to live on sea or land, creep or fly, swim or walk, think or vegetate, in the embry as first meets the -eye of Science they ar indistinguishable. The apple which fell in Newton's Garden, Newton's dog Diamond, and Newton himself, began life at the same point.1
If we analyze this material point at which all life starts, we shall find it to consist of a
1 " There is, Indeed, a period in the development of -every tissue and every living thing known to us when there are actually no structural peculiarities whatever — when the whole organism consists of transparent, struct- ureless, semi-fluid living bioplasm — when it would not be possible to distinguish the growing moving matter which was to evolve the oak from that which was the germ of a vertebrate animal. Nor can any difference be discerned between the bioplasm matter of the lowest, simplest, epithelial scale of man's organism and that from which the nerve cells of his brain are to be evolved. Neither by studying bioplasm under the microscope nor by any kind of physical or chemical investigation known, can we form any notion of the nature of the substance which is to be formed by the bioplasm, or what will be the ordinary results of the living." " Bioplasm," Lionel S. Beale, F. R. S. , pp. 17, 18.
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 281
clear structureless, jelly-like substance resem« bling albumen or white of egg. It is made of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Its name is protoplasm. And it is not only the structural unit with which all living bodies start in life, but with which they are subse- quently built up. " Protoplasm," says Huxley, *' simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the Potter. ' "Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of pro- toplasm with nucleus." l
What then determines the difference between different animals ? What makes one little speck of protoplasm grow into Newton's dog Diamond, and another exactly the same, into Newton himself? It is a mysterious some- thing which has entered into this protoplasm. No eye can see it. No science can define it. There is a different something for Newton's dog and a different something for Newton ; so that though both use the same matter they build it up in these widely different ways. Protoplasm being the clay, this something is the Potter. And as there is only one clay and yet all these curious forms are developed out of it, it follows necessarily that the difference lies in the potters. There must in short be as many potters as there are forms. There is the potter who segments the worm, and the potter who builds up the form of the dog, and the
Huxley : " Lay Sermons," 6th. Ed. pp. 127,129.
282 CONFORMITY TO TYP&.
potter who moulds the man. To understand unmistakably that it is really the potter who does the work, let us follow for a moment a description of the process by a trained eye-wit- ness. The observer is Mr. Huxley. Through the tube of his microscope he is watching the development, out of a speck of protoplasm, of one of the commonest animals: "Strange possibilities," he says, "lie dormant in that semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purposelike in their succession that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And, then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the con tour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due proportions in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involun- tarily possessed by the notion, that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work." l
1 Huxley 5 " Lay Sermons," 6th Ed. p. 261.
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 283
•
Besides the fact, so luminously brought out here, that the artist is distinct from the " semi- fluid globule " of protoplasm in which he works, there is this other essential point to notice, that in all his " skilful manipulation " the artist is not working at random, but accord- ing to law. He has " his plan 1 ^fore him." In the zoological laboratory of Nature it is not as in a workshop where a skilled artisan can turn his hand to anything — where the same potter one day moulds a dog, the next a bird, and the next a man. In Nature one pot- ter is set apart to make each. It is a more complete system of division of labor. One artist makes all the dogs, another makes all the birds, a third makes all the men. More- over, each artist confines himself exclusively to working out his own plan. He appears to have his own plan somewhat stamped upon himself, and his work is rigidly to reproduce himself.
The Scientific Law by which this takes place is the Law of Conformity to Type. It is con- tained, to a large extent, in the ordinary Law of Inheritance; or it may be considered as simply another way of stating what Darwin calls the Law of Unity of Type. Darwin de- fines it thus: "By Unity of Type is meant that fundamental agreement in structure which we see in organic beings of the same class, and which is quite independent of their habits of life." l According to this law every
1 " Origin of Species," p. 166.
284 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
•
living thing that comes into the world is com- pelled to stamp upon its offspring the image of itself. The dog, according to its type, pro- duces a dog; the bird a bird.
The Artist who operates upon matter in this subtle way and carries out this law is Life. There are a great many different kinds of Life. If one might give the broader meaning to the words of the apostle : " All life is not the same life. There is one kind of life of men, another life of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." There is the Life, or the Artist, or the Potter who segments the worm, the potter who forms the dog, the potter who moulds the man. *
What goes on then in the animal kingdom is this — the Bird-Life seizes upon the bird- germ and builds it up into a bird, the image of itself. The Reptile-Life seizes upon another germinal speck, assimilates surrounding mat- ter, and fashions it into a reptile. The Rep- tile-Life thus simply makes an incarnation of itself. The visible bird is simply an incarna- tion of the invisible Bird-Life.
1 There is no intention here to countenance the old doctrine of the permanence of species. Whether the word species represent a fixed quantity or the reverse does not affect the question. The facts as stated are true in contemporary zoology if not in palaeontology. It may also be added that the general conception of a definite Vital Principle is used here simply as a working hypothesis. Science may yet have to give up what the Germans call the " ontogenetic directive Force." But in the absence of any proof to the contrary, and espe- cially of any satisfactory alternative, we are justified iir working still with the old theory.
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 285
we are nearing the point where the spiritual analogy appears. It is a very won- derful analogy, so wonderful that one almost hesitates to put it into words. Yet Nature is reverent ; and it is her voice to which we listen. These lower phenomena of life, she says, are but an allegory. There is another kind of Life of which Science as yet has taken little cognizance. It obeys the same laws. It builds up an organism into its own form. It is the Christ- Life. As the Bird- Life builds up a bird, the image of itself, so the Christ-Life builds up a Christ, the image of Himself, in the inward nature of man. When a man becomes a Chris- tian the natural process is this : The Living Christ enters into his soul. Development be- gins. The quickening Life seizes upon the soul, assimilates surrounding elements, and begins to fashion it. According to the great Law of Conformity to Type this fashioning takes a specific form. It is that of the Artist who fashions. And all through Life this won- derful, mystical, glorious, yet perfectly definite process goes on "until Christ be formed" in it.
The Christian Life is not a vague effort after righteousness — an ill-defined pointless struggle for an ill-defined pointless end. Religion is no dishevelled mass of aspiration, prayer, and faith. There is no more mystery in Religion as to its processes than in Biology. There is much mystery in Biology. We knew all but nothing of Life yet, nothing of development. There is the same mystery in the spiritual Life,
286 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
But the great lines are the same, as decided, as luminous ; and the laws of natural and spiritual are the -same, as unerring, as simple. Will everything else in the natural world unfold its order, and yield to Science more and more a vision of harmony and Religion, which should complement and 'perfect all, remain a chaos? From the standpoint of Revelation no truth is more obscure than Conformity to Type. If Science can furnish a companion phenomenon from an every-day process of the natural life, it may at least throw this most mystical doc- trine of Christianity into thinkable form. Is there any fallacy in speaking of the Embry- ology of the New Life ? Is the analogy invalid ? Are there not vital processes in the Spiritual as well as in the Natural world ? The Bird being an incarnation of the Bird-Life, may not the Christian be a spiritual incarnation of the Christ-Life ? And is there not a real justifi- cation in the processes of the New Birth for such a parallel ?
Let us appeal to the record of these pro- cesses.
In what terms does the New Testament describe them? The answer is sufficiently striking. It uses everywhere the language of Biology. It is impossible that the New Testa- ment writers should have been familiar with these biological facts. It is impossible that their views of this great truth should have been as clear as Science can make them now. But they had no alternative. There was no other way of expressing this truth. It was a
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 287
biological question. So they struck out un- hesitatingly into the new field of words, and, with an originality which commands both reverence and surprise, stated their truth with such light, or darkness, as they had. They did not mean to be scientific, only to be accurate, and their fearless accuracy has made them scientific.
What could be more original, for instance, than the apostle's reiteration that the Christian was a new creature, a new man, a babe ? l Or that this new man was "begotten of God," God's workmanship ? 3 And what could be a more accurate expression of the law of Con- formity to Type than this : " Put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him " ? 8 Or this, " We are changed into the same image from glory to glory"?4 And elsewhere we are expressly told by the same writer that this Conformity is the end and goal of the Christian life. To work this Type in us is the whole purpose of God and man. "Whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be con- formed to the image of His Son." 6
One must confess that the originality of this entire New Testament conception is most startling. Even for the nineteenth century it is most startling. But when one remembers that such an idea took form in the first, he cannot fail to be impressed with a deepening wonder
1 2 Cor. v. 17. 2 1 John v. 18 ; 1 Pet. L a
8 Col. lit. 9, 10. *2 Cor. iii. 18.
• Rom. vui. 29.
288 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
at the system which begat and cherished it. Men seek the origin of Christianity among the philosophies of that age. Scholars contrast it still with these philosophies, and scheme to fit it in to those of later growth. Has it never occurred to them how much more it is than a philosophy, that it includes a science, a Biology pure and simple ? As well might naturalists contrast zoology with chemistry, or seek to in- corporate geology with botany — the living with the dead — as try to explain the spiritual life in terms of mind alone. When will it be seen that the characteristic of the Christian Religion is its Life, that a true theology must begin with a Biology ? Theology is the Science of God. Why will men treat God as inorganic ?
If this analogy is capable of being worked out, we should expect answers to at least three questions.
First : What corresponds to the protoplasm in the spiritual sphere?
Second : What is the Life, the Hidden Artist who fashions it ?
Third: What do we know of the process and the plan ?
First : The Protoplasm.
We should be forsaking the lines of nature were we to imagine for a moment that the new creature was to be formed out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil — nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and indestruc- tible; Nature and man can only form and transform. Hence when a new animal is made, no new clay is made. Life merely enters into
CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
already existing matter, assimilates more of the same sort and rebuilds it. The spiritual Artist works in the same way. He must have a peculiar kind of protoplasm, a basis of life, and that must be already existing.
Xow He finds this in the materials of char- acter with which the natural man is previously provided. Mind and character, the will and the affections, the moral nature — these form the bases of spiritual life. To look in this direc- tion for the protoplasm of the spiritual life is consistent with all analogy. The lowest or mineral world mainly supplies the material— and this is true even for insectivorous species — for the vegetable kingdom. The vegetable supplies the material for the animal. Next hi turn, the animal furnishes material for the mental, and lastly, the mental for the spiritual. Each member of the series is complete only when the steps below it are complete; the highest demands all. It is not necessary for the immediate purpose to go so far into the psychology either of the new creature or of the old as to define more clearly what these moral bases are. It is enough to discover that in this womb the new creature is to be born, fashioned out of the mental and moral parts, substance, or essence of the natural man. The only thing to be insisted upon is that in the natural man this mental and moral substance or basis is spiritually lifeless. However active the intellectual or moral life may be, from the point of view jf *,his other Life it is dead. That which is flesh is flesh. It wants, that is 19
290 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
to say, the kind of Life which constitutes the difference between the Christian and the not-a- Christian. It has not yet been " born of the Spirit."
To show further that this protoplasm pos- sesses the necessary properties of a normal protoplasm it will be necessary to examine in passing what these properties are. They are two in number, the capacity for life and plas- ticity. Consider first the capacity for life. It is not enough to find an adequate supply of material. That material must be of the right kind. For all kinds of matter have not the power to be the vehicle of life — all kinds of matter are not even fitted to be the vehicle of electricity. What peculiarity there is in Car- bon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, when combined in a ;ertain way, to receive life, we cannot tell. Te only know that life is always associated in N tur with this particular phys- ical basis an ever with any other. But we are not in th same darkness with regard to the moral protoplasm. When we look at this complex combination which we have predi- cated as the basis of spiritual life, we do find something which gives it a peculiar qualifi- cation for being the protoplasm of the Christ- Life. We discover one strong reason at least, not only why this kind of life should be asso- ciated with this kind of protoplasm, but why it should never be associated with other kinda which seem to resemble it — why, for instance, this spiritual life should not be engrafted upon the intelligence of a dog or the instinct of an ant.
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 291
The protoplasm in man has a something in addition to its instincts or its habits. It has a capacity for God. In this capacity for God lies its receptivity; it is the very protoplasm that was necessary. The chamber is not only ready to receive the new Life, but the Guest is expected, and, till He comes, is missed. Till then the soul longs and yearns, wastes and pines, waving its tentacles piteously in the empty air, feeling after God if so be that it may find Him. This is not peculiar to the protoplasm of the Christian's soul. In every land and in every age there have been altars to the Known or Unknown God. It is now agreed as a mere question of anthropology that the universal language of the human soul haa always been " I perish with hunger." This is what fits it for Christ. There is a grandeur in this cry from the depths which makes its very unhappiness sublime.
The other quality we are to look for in the soul is mouldableness, plasticity. Conformity demands conforrnability. Now plasticity is not only a marked characteristic of all forms of life, but in a special sense of the highest forms. It increases steadily as we rise in the scale. The inorganic world, to begin with, is rigid. A crystal of silica dissolved and redissolved a thousand times will never assume any other form than the hexagonal. The plant next, though plastic in its elements, is comparatively insusceptible of change. The very fixity of its sphere, the imprisonment for life in a single spot of earth, is the symbol of a certain degra-
U92 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
Nation. The animal in all its parts is mobile, sensitive, free ; the highest aniui ,1, man, is the most mobile, the most at 1 isurt from routine, the most impressioiable, the most open for •change. And when we reach the mind and soul, this mobility is found in its most de- veloped form. Whether we regard its sus- ceptibility to impressions, its lightning-like re- sponse even to influences the most impalpable •and subtle, its power of instantaneous adjust- ment, or whether we regard the delicacy and variety of its moods, or its vast powers of growth, we are forced to recognize in this the most perfect capacity for change. The mar- •vellous plasticity of mind contains at once the possibility and prophecy of its transformation. "The soul, in a word, is made to be converted.
Second, the Life.
The main reason for giving the Life, the ;agent of this change, a separate treatment, is to emphasize the distinction between it . nd the natural man on the one hand, and the spiritual man on the other. The natural man is its basis, the spiritual man is its product, the Life itself is something different. Just as in an or- ganism we have these three things — formative matter, formed matter, and the forming prin- ciple or life ; so in the soul we have th° old nature, the renewed nature, and the transform- ing Life.
This being made evident, little remains here to be added. No man has ever seen this Life. Jt cannot be analyzed, or weighed, or traced in its essential nature. But this is just what we
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 29*
expected. This invisibility is the same prop- erty which we found to be peculiar to the nat- ural life. We saw no life in the first embryos,, in oak, in palm, or in bird. In. the adult it likewise escapes us. We shall not wonder if we cannot see it in the Christian. We shall not expect to see it. A fortiori we shall not expect to see it, for we are further removed from the coarser matter — moving now among1 ethereal and spiritual things. It is because it conforms to the law of this analogy so well that men, not seeing it, have denied its being. Is it hopeless to point out that one of the most recognizable characteristics of life is its un- recognizableness, and that the very token of its spiritual nature lies in its being beyond the grossness of our eyes ?
We do not pretend that Science can define this Life to be Christ. It has no definition to give even of its own life, much less of this. But there are converging lines which point, at least, in the direction that it is Christ. There was One whom history acknowledges to have been the Truth. One of His claims was this, " I am the Life." According to the doctrine of Biogenesis, life can only come from life. It was His additional claim that His- function in the world was to give men Life. " I am come that ye might have Life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." This could not refer to the natural life, for men had that already. He that hath the Son hath an- other Life. " Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you,"
294 CONFOEM1TY TO TYPE.
Again, there are men whose characters a*. Bume a strange resemblance to Him who was the Life. When we see the bird-character ap- pear in an organism we assume that the Bird- Life has been there at work. And when we behold Conformity to Type in a Christian, and know moreover that the type-organization can be produced by the type-life alone, does this not lend support to the hypothesis that the Type- Life also has been here at work? If every effect demands a cause, what other cause is there for the Christian? When we have a cause, and an adequate cause, and no other adequate cause ; when we have the ex- press statement of that Cause that he is that cause, what more is possible ? Let not Science, knowing nothing of its own life, go further than to say it knows nothing of this Life. We shall not dissent from its silence. But till it tells us what it is, we wait for evidence that it is not this.
Third, the Process.
It is impossible to enter at length into any details of the great miracle by which this pro- toplasm is to be conformed to the Image of the Son. We enter that province now only so far as this Law of Conformity compels us. Xor is it so much the nature of the process we have to consider as its general direction and results. We are dealing with a question of morphology rather than of physiology.
It must occur to one on reaching this point, that a new element here comes in which com- pels us, for the moment, to part company with
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 295
zoology. That element is the conscious power of choice. The animal in following the type is blind. It does not only follow the type involuntarily and compulsorily, but does not know that it is following it. We might cer- tainly have been made to conform to the Type in the higher sphere with no more knowledge or power of choice than animals or automata. But then we should not have been men. It ia a possible case, but not possible to the kind of protoplasm with which men are furnished. Owing to the peculiar characteristics of this protoplasm an additional and exceptional pro- vision is essential.
The first demand is that being conscious and having this power of choice, the mind should have an adequate knowledge of what it is to choose. Some revelation of the Type, that is to say, is necessary. And as that revelation can only come from the Type, we must look there for it.
We are confronted at once with the Incar- nation. There we find how the Christ-Life has clothed Himself with matter, taking literal flesh, and dwelt among us. The Incarnation is the Life revealing the Type. Men are long since agreed that this is the end of the Incarna- tion— the revealing of God. But why should God be revealed ? Why, indeed, but for man ? Why but that "beholding as in a glass the glory of the only begotten we should be changed into the same Image " ?
To meet the power of choice, however, some- thing more was necessary than the mere reve-
CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
Jation of the Type — it was necessary that the Type should be the highest conceivable Type. In other words, the Type must be an Ideal. For •all true human growth, effort, and achievement, an ideal is acknowledged to be indispensable. And all men accordingly whose lives are based on principle, have set themselves an ideal, more or less perfect. It is this which first deflects the will from what is base, and turns the way- ward life to what is holy. So much is true as mere philosophy. But philosophy failed to pre- sent men with their ideal. It has never been suggested that Christianity has failed. Be- lievers and unbelievers have been compelled to acknowledge that Christianity holds up to the world the missing Type, the Perfect Man.
The recognition of the Ideal is the first step in the direction of Conformity. But let it be «learly observed that it is but a step. There is no vital connection between merely seeing the Ideal and being conformed to it. Thou- sands admire Christ who never become Chris- tians.
But the great question still remains, How is the Christian to be conformed to the Type, or as we should now say, dealing with conscious- ness, to the Ideal? The mere knowledge of the Ideal is no more than a motive. How is the process to be practically accomplished? Who is to do it ? Where, when, how ? This is the test question of Christianity. It is here that all theories of Christianity, all attempts to explain it on natural principles, all reduc- tions of it to philosophy, inevitably break down.
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 297
It is here that all imitations of Christianity perish. It is here, also, that personal religion finds its most fatal obstacle. Men are all quite clear about the Ideal. We are all convinced of the duty of mankind regarding it. But how to secure that willing men shall attain it — that is the problem of religion. It is the failure to understand the dynamics of Christianity that has most seriously and most pitifully hindered its growth both in the individual and in the race.
From the standpoint of biology this practical difficulty vanishes in a moment. It is probably the very simplicity of the law regarding it that has made men stumble. For nothing is so in- visible to most men as transparency. The law here is the same biological law that exists in the natural world. For centuries men have striven to find out ways and means to conform themselves to this type. Impressive motives have been pictured, the proper circumstances arranged, the direction of effort defined, and men have toiled, struggled, and agonized to conform themselves to the Image of the Son. Can the protoplasm conform itself to its type ? Can the embryo fashion itself? Is Conformity to Type produced by the matter or by the life, by the protoplasm or by the Type ? Is organi- zation the cause of life or the effect of it? It is the effect of it. Conformity to Type, there- fore, is secured by the type. Christ makes the Christian.
Men need only to reflect on the automatic processes of their natural body to discover that
298 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
this is the universal law of Life. "What does any man consciously do, for instance, in the matter of breathing ? What part does he take in circulating the blood, in keeping up the rhythm of his heart? What control has he over growth ? What man by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature? What part voluntarily does man take in secretion, in di- gestion, in the reflex actions ? In point of fact is he not after all the veriest automaton, every organ of his body given him, every function arranged for him, brain and nerve, thought and sensation, will and conscience, all provided for him ready made ? And yet he turns upon his soul and wishes to organize that himself ! O preposterous and vain man, thou who couldest not make a finger nail of thy body, thinkest thou to fashion this wonderful, mysterious, subtle soul of thine after the ineffable Image ? Wilt thou ever permit thyself to be conformed to the Image of the Son? Wilt thou, who canst not add a cubit to thy stature, submit to be raised by the Type- Life within thee to the perfect stature of Christ ?
This is a humbling conclusion. And there- fore men will resent it. Men will still experi- ment " by works of righteousness which they have done" to earn the Ideal life. The doc- trine of Human Inability, as the Church calls it, has always been objectionable to men who do not know themselves. The doctrine itself, perhaps, has been partly to blame. While it has been often affirmed in such language as rightly to humble men, it has also been stated
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. '299
and cast in their teeth with words which could only insult them. Merely to assert dogmati- cally that man has no power to move hand or foot to help himself toward Christ, carries no real conviction. The weight of human author- ity is always powerless, and ought to be where the intelligence is denied a rationale. In the light of modern science when men seek a reason for every thought of God or man, this old doc- trine \vith its severe and almost inhuman as- pect— till rightly understood — must presently have succumbed. But to the biologist it can- not die. It stands to him on the solid ground of Nature. It has a reason in the laws of life which must resuscitate it and give it another lease of years. Bird-Life makes the Bird. Christ-Life makes the Christian. No man by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature. So much for the scientific evidence. Here is the corresponding statement of the truth from Scripture. Observe the passive voice in these sentences : " -Begotten of God ; " " The new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of Him that created him ; " or this, " We are changed into the same Image;" or this-, " Predestinate to be conformed to the Image of His Son;" or again, "Until Christ be formed in you ; " or, " Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God ; *' " Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he can- not enter the Kingdom of God." There is one outstanding verse which seems at first sight on the other side : " Work out your own sal- vation with fear and trembling ; " but as one
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reads on he finds, as if the writer dreaded the very misconception, the complement, " For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."
It will be noticed in these passages, and in others which might be named, that the process of transformation is referred indifferently to the agency of each Person of the Trinity in turn. We are not concerned to take up this question of detail. It is sufficient that the transformation is wrought.
Theologians, however, distinguish thus : the indirect agent is Christ, the direct influence is the Holy Spirit. In other words, Christ by His Spirit renews the souls of men.
Is man, then, out of the arena altogether? Is he mere clay in the hands of the potter, a machine, a tool, an automaton ? Yes and ISTo. If he were a tool he would not be a man. If he were a man he would have something to do» One need not seek to balance what God does here, and what man does. But we shall attain to a sufficient measure of truth on a most deli- cate problem if we make a final appeal to the natural life. We find that in maintaining this natural life Nature has a share and man has a share. By far the larger part is done for us — the breathing, the secreting, the circulating,, of the blood, the building up of the organism. And although the part which man plays is a minor part, yet, strange to say, it is not less essential to the well-being, and even to the being of the whole. For instance, man has to take food. He has nothing to do with it aftel
CONFORMITY TO TYPE. 301
he has once taken it, for the moment it passes his lips it is taken in hand by reflex actions and handed on from one organ to another, his control over it, in the natural course of things, being completely lost. But the initial act was his. And without that nothing could have been done. Now whether there be an exact analogy between the voluntary and involuntary functions in the body, and the corresponding processes in the soul, we do not at present inquire. But this will indicate, at least, that man has his own part to play. Let him choose Life ; let him daily nourish his soul ; let him forever starve the old life ; let him abide con- tinuously as a living branch in the Vine, and the True- Vine Life will flow into his soul ; as- similating, renewing, conforming to Type, till Christ, pledged by His own law, be formed in him.
"We have been dealing with Christianity at its most mystical point. Mark here once more its absolute naturalness. The pursuit of the Type is just what all Nature is engaged in. Plant and insect, fish and reptile, bird and mammal — these in their several spheres are striving after the Type. To prevent its extinc- tion, to ennoble it, to people earth and sea and sky with it ; this is the meaning of the Struggle for Life. And this is our life — to pursue the Type, to populate the world with it.
Our religion is not all a mistake. We are not visionaries. We are not " unpractical," as men pronounce us, when we worship. To try to follow Christ is not to be "righteous
£i02 CONFORMITY TO TYPE.
overmuch." True men are not rhapsodizing when they preach ; nor do those waste their lives who waste themselves in striving to extend the Kingdom of God on earth. This is what life is for. The Christian in his life-aim is in strict line with Nature. What men call his supernatural is quite natural.
Mark well also the splendor of this idea of salvation. It is not merely final " safety," to be forgiven sin, to evade the curse. It is not, vaguely, " to get to heaven." It is to be con- formed to the Image of the Son. It is for these poor elements to attain to the Supreme Beauty. The organizing Life being Eternal, so must this Beauty be immortal. Its progress towards the Immaculate is already guaranteed. And more than all there is here fulfilled the sub- limest of all prophecies ; not Beauty alone but Unity is secured by the type — Unity of man and man, God and man, God and Christ and man, till " all shall be one."
Could Science in its most brilliant anticipa- tions for the future of its highest organism ever have foreshadowed a development like this ? Now that the revelation is made to it, it surely recognizes it as the missing point in Evolution, the climax to which all Creation tends. Hi herto Evolution had no future. It was a pillar with marvellous carving, growing richer and finer towards the top, but without a capital; a pyramid, the vast base buried in the inorganic,' towering higher and higher, tier above tier, life above life, mind above mind, ever more perfect in its workmanship, more noble
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in its symmetry, and yet withal so much the more mysterious in its aspiration. The most curious eye, following it upwards, saw nothing. The cloud fell and covered it. Just what men wanted to see was hid. The work of the ages had no apex. But the work begun by Nature is finished by the Sup rnatural — as we are wont to call the higher natural. And s the veil is lifted by Christianity it strikes men dumb with wonder. For the goal of Evolution is Jesus Christ.
The Christian life is the only life that will ever be completed. Apart from Christ the life of man is a broken pillar, the race of Men an unfinished pyramid. One by one in sight of Eternity all human Ideals fall short, one by one before the open grave all human hopes dissolve. The Laureate sees a moment's light in Nature's jealousy for the Type ; but that too vanishes.
" ' So careful of the type ? ' but no, From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, ' A thousand types are gone ; I care for nothing, all shall go.' ''
All shall go? No, one Type remains. "Whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the Image of His Son." And "when Christ who is our life shall appear, than shall ye also appear with Him in glory."
SEMI-PABASITISM.
" The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom, and working, believe, live, be free." CJLRLYLE.
SEMI-PARASITISM.
"Work out your own salvation." — Paul.
" Any new set of conditions occurring to an animal which render its food and safety very easily attained, eeem to lead as a rule to degeneration." — E. Bay Lan- kester.
PARASITES are the paupers of Nature. They are forms of life which will not take the trouble to find their own food, but borrow or steal it from the more industrious. So deep- rooted is this tendency in Nature, that plants may become parasitic — it is an acquired habit — as well as animals ; and both are found in every state of beggary, some doing a little for themselves, while others, more abject, refuse even to prepare their own food.
There are certain plants — the Dodder, for instance — which begin life with the best inten- tions, strike true roots into the soil, and really appear as if they meant to be independent for life. But after supporting themselves for a brief period they fix curious sucking discs into the stem and branches of adjacent plants. And after a little experimenting, the epiphyte finally ceases to do anything for its own sup- port, thenceforth drawing all its supplies ready-made from the sap of its host. In this parasitic state it has no need for organs of
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nutrition of its own, and Nature therefore takes them away. Henceforth, to the botanist, the adult Dodder presents the degraded spec- tacle of a plant without a root, without a twig, without a leaf, and having a stem so useless as to be inadequate to bear its own weight.
In the Mistletoe the parasitic habit has reached a stage in some respects lower still. It has persisted in the downward course for so many generations that the young forms even have acquired the habit and usually begin life at once as parasites. The Mistletoe berries, which contain the seed of the future plant, are •developed specially to minister to this degen- eracy, for they glue themselves to the branches •of some neighboring oak or apple, and there the young Mistletoe starts as a dependent from the first.
Among animals these lazzaroni are more largely represented still. Almost every ani- mal is a living poor-house, and harbors one •or more species of epizoa or entozoa, supplying them gratis, not only with a permanent home, but with all the necessaries and luxuries of life.
Why does the naturalist think hardly of the parasites ? Why does he speak of them as de- graded, and despise them as the most ignoble creatures in Nature? What more can an ani- mal do than eat, drink, and die to-morrow? If under the fostering care and protection of a higher organism it can eat better, drink more easily, live more merrily, and die, perhaps not until the day after, why should it not do so ? Is parasitism, after all, not a somewhat clever
SEMI-PARASITISM.
ruse ? Is it not an ingenious way of securing the benefits of life while evading its responsi- bilities? And although this mode of liveli- hood is selfish, and possibly undignified, can it be said that it is immoral ?
The naturalist's reply to this is brief. Para- sitism, he will say, is one of the gravest crimes in Nature. It is a breach of the law of Evo- lution. Thou shalt evolve, thou shalt develop all thy faculties to the full, thou shalt attain to the highest conceivable perfection of thy race — and so perfect thy race — this is the first and greatest commandment of Nature. But the parasite has no thought for its race, or for perfection in any sliape or form. It wants two things — food and shelter. How it gets them is of no moment. Each member lives exclu- sively on its own account, an isolated, indolent, selfish, and backs ding life.
The remarkabl thing is that Nature permits the community to be taxed in this way appar- ently without protest. For the parasite is a consumer pure and simple. And the " Perfect Economy of Nature " is surely for once at fault when it encourages species numbered by thou- sands which produce nothing for their own or for the general good., but live, and live luxur- iously, at the expense f others ?
Now when we look into the matter, we very soon perceive that instead of secretly coun- tenancing this ingenious device by which parasitic animals and plants evade the great law of the Struggle for Life, Nature sets her face most sternly against it And, instead oi
31G SEMI-PARASITISM.
allowing the transgressors to slip through her fingers, as one might at first suppose, she visits upon them the most severe and terrible penalties. The parasite, she argues, not only injures itself, but wrongs others. It disobeys the fundamental law of its own being, and taxes the innocent to contribute to its disgrace. So that if Nature is just, if Nature has an aveng- ing hand, if she holds one vial of wrath more full and bitter than another, it shall surely be poured out upon those who are guilty of this double sin. Let us see what form this punish- ment takes.
Observant visitors to the sea-side, or let us say to an aquarium, are familiar with those curious little creatures known as Hermit- crabs. The peculiarity of the Hermits is that they take up their abode in the cast-off shell of some other animal, not unusually the whelk ; and here, like Diogenes in his tub, the creature lives a solitarv, but by no means an inactive life.
The Pagurus, however, is not a parasite. And yet although in no sense of the word a parasite, this way of inhabiting throughout life a house built by another animal approaches so closely the parasitic habit, that we shall find it instructive as a preliminary illustration, to consider the effect of this free-house policy on the occupant. There is no doubt, to begin with, that, as has been already indicated, the habit is an acquired one. In its general an- atomy the Hermit is essentially a crab. Now the crab is an animal which, from the nature
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of its environment, has to lead a somewhat rough and perilous life. Its days are spent amongst jagged rocks and boulders. Dashed about by every wave, attacked on every side by monsters of the deep, the crustacean has to protect itself by developing a strong and ser- viceable coat of mail.
How best to protect themselves has been the problem to which the whole crab family have addressed themselves ; and, in considering the matter, the ancestors of the Hermit-crab hit on the happy device of re-utilizing the habitations of the molluscs which lay around them in plenty, well-built, and ready for im- mediate occupation. For generations and gen- erations accordingly, the Hermit-crab has ceased to exercise itself upon questions of safety, and dwells in its little shell as proudly and securely as if its second-hand house were a fortress erected especially for its private use.
Wherein, then, has the Hermit suffered for this cheap, but real solution of a practical difficulty ? Whether its laziness costs it any moral qualms, or whether its cleverness be- comes to it a source of congratulation, we do not know ; but judged from the appearance the animal makes under the searching gaze of the zoologist, its expedient is certainly not one to be commended. To the eye of Science its sin is written in the plainest characters on its very organization. It has suffered in its own anatomical structure just by as much as it has borrowed from an external source. Instead of being a perfect crustacean it has allowed
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certain important parts of its body to deteri- orate. And several vital organs are partially or wholly atrophied.
Its sphere of life also is now seriously limited ; and by a cheap expedient to secure safety, it has fatally lost its independence. It is plain from its anatomy that the Hermit-crab was not always a Hermit-crab. It was meant for higher tilings. Its ancestors doubtless were more or less perfect crustaceans, though what exact stage of development was reached before the hermit habit became fixed in the species we cannot tell. But from the moment the creature took to relying on an external source, it began to fall. It slowly lost in its own person all that it now draws from external aid.
As an important item in the day's work, namely, the securing of safety and shelter, was now guaranteed to it, one of the chief induce- ments to a life of high and vigilant effort was at the same time withdrawn. A number of functions, in fact, struck work. The whole of the parts, therefore, of the complex organism which ministered to these functions, from lack of exercise, or total disuse, became gradually ieeble ; and ultimately, by the stern law that an unused organ must suffer a slow but in- evitable atrophy, the creature not only lost all power of motion in these parts, but lost the parts themselves, and otherwise sank into a relatively degenerate condition.
Every normal crustacean, on the other hand, has the abdominal region of the body covered
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by a thick chitinous shell. In the Hermits this is represented only by a thin and delicate membrane — of which the sorry figure the creature cuts when drawn from its foreign hiding-place is sufficient evidence. Any one who now examines further this half-naked and woe-begone object, will perceive also that the fourth and fifth pair of limbs are either so small and wasted as to be quite useless or altogether rudimentary ; and, although cer- tainly the additional development of the ex- tremity of the tail into an organ for holding on to its extemporized retreat may be regarded as a slight compensation, it is clear from the whole structure of the animal that it has allowed itself to undergo severe Degeneration.
In dealing with the Hermit-crab, in short, we are dealing with a case of physiological backsliding. That the creature has lost any- thing by this process from a practical point of view ,is not now argued. It might fairly be shown, as already indicated, that its freedom is impaired by its cumbrous eko-skeleton, and that, in contrast with other crabs, who lead a free and roving life, its independence generally is greatly limited. But from the physiological standpoint, there is no question that the Hermit tribe have neither discharged their responsibility to Nature nor to themselves. If the end of life is merely to escape death, and serve themselves, possibly they have done well ; but if it is to attain an ever-increasing perfection, then are they backsliders indeed.
A zoologist's verdict would be that by this
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act they have forfeited to some extent theii place in the animal scale. An animal is classed as low or high according as it is adapted to less or more complex conditions of life. This is the true standpoint from which to judge all living organisms. "Were perfection merely a matter of continual eating and drinking, the Amoeba — the lowest known organism — might take rank with the highest, !Man, for the one nourishes itself and saves its skin almost as completely as the other. But judged by the higher standard of Complexity, that is, by greater or lesser adaptation to more or less complex conditions, the gulf between them is infinite.
We have now received a preliminary idea, although not from the study of a true parasite, of the essential principles involved in a para- sitism. And we may proceed to point out the correlative in the moral and spiritual spheres. We confine ourselves for the present to one point. The difference between the Hermit- crab and a true parasite is, that the former has acquired a semi-parasitic habit only with reference to safety. It may be that the Hermit devours as a preliminary the accommodating mollusc whose tenement it covets ; but it would become a real parasite only on the supposition that the whelk was of such size as to keep providing for it throughout life, and that the external and internal organs of the crab should disappear, while it lived henceforth, by simple imbibition, upon the elaborated juices of its host. All the mollusc provides, however, for
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the crustacean in this instance is safety, and, accordingly, in the mean time we limit our ap- plication to this. The true parasite presents us with an organism so much more degraded in all its parts, that its lessons may well be re- served until we have paved the way to under- stand the deeper bearings of the subject.
The spiritual principle to be illustrated in the meantime stands thus : Any principle which secures the safety of the individual with- out personal effortor the vital exercise of fac- ulty is disastrous to moral character. We do not begin by attempting to define words. Were we to define truly what is meant by safety or salvation, we should be spared further elaboration, and the law would stand out as a sententious commonplace. But we have to deal with the ideas of safety as these are popu- larly held, and the chief purpose at this stage is to expose what may be called the Parasitic Doctrine of Salvation. The phases of religious experience about to be described may be un- known to many. It remains for those who are familiar with the religious conceptions of the masses to determine whether or not we are wasting words.
What is meant by the Parasitic Doctrine of Salvation one may, perhaps, best explain by sketching two of its leading types. The first is the doctrine of the Church of Rome ; the second, that represented by the narrower Evan- gelical Religion. We take these religions, however, not in their ideal form, with which possibly we should have little quarrel, but in
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their practical working, or in the form in which they itre held especially by the rank and file of those who belong respectively to these com- munions. For the strength or weakness of any religious system is best judged from the form in which it presents itself to, and influ- ences the common mind.
No more perfect or more sad example of semi-parasitism exists than in the case of those illiterate thousands who, scattered everywhere throughout the habitable globe, swell the lower ranks of the Church of Rome. Had an organ- ization, been specially designed, indeed, to in- duce the parasitic habit in the souls of men, nothing better fitted to its disastrous end could be established than the system of Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism offers to the masses a molluscan shell. They have simply to shelter themselves within its pale and they are "safe." But what is this " safe " ? It is an external safety — the safety of an institution. It is a salvation recom- mended to men by all that appeals to the motives in most common use with the vulgar and the superstitious, but which has as little vital connection with the individual soul as the dead whelk's shell with the living Hermit. Salvation is a relation at once vital, personal, and spiritual. This is mechanical and purely external. And this is of course the final secret of its marvellous success and world- wide power. A cheap religion is the desideratum of the human heart ; and an assurance of sal- vation at the smallest possible cost forms the
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tempting bait held out to a conscience-stricken world by the Romish Church. Thousands, therefore, who have never been taught to use their faculties in "working out their own salvation," thousands who will not exercise themselves religiously, and who yet cannot be "without the exercises of religions, intrust them- selves in idle faith to that venerable house of refuge which for centuries has stood between God and man. A Church which has harbored generations of the elect, whose archives en- shrine the names of saints, whose foundations are consecrated with martyrs' blood — shall it not afford a sure asylum for any soul which would make its peace with God ? So. as the Hermit into the molluscan shell, creeps the poor soul within the pale of Rome, seeking, like Adam in the garden, to hide its naked- ness from God.
Why does the true lover of men restrain not his lips in warning his fellows against this *md all other priestly religion ? It is not be- cause he fails to see the prodigious energy of the Papal See, or to appreciate the many noble types of Christian manhood nurtured within its pale. Nor is it because its teachers are often corrupt and its system of doctrine in-adequate as a representation of the Truth — charges which have to be made more or less against all religions. But it is because it ministers falsely to the deepest need of man, reduces the end of religion to selfishness, and offers safety without spirituality. That these, theoretically, are its pretensions, we do not affirm ; but that
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its practical working is to induce in man, and in its worst forms, the parasitic habit, is testi- fied by results. No one who has studied the religion of the Continent upon the spot, has failed to be impressed with the appalling spec- tacle of tens of thousands of unregenerate men sheltering themselves, as they conceive it for Eternity, behind the Sacraments of Rome. There is no stronger evidence of the inborn parasitic tendency in man in things religious than the absolute complacency with which even cultured men will hand over their eternal interests to the care of a Church. We can never dismiss from memory the sadness with which we once listened to the confession of a certain foreign professor : " I used to be con- cerned about religion," he said in substance, " but religion is a great subject. I was very busy ; there was little time to settle it for my- self. A Protestant, my attention was called to the Roman Catholic religion. It suited my case. And instead of dabbling in religion for myself I put myself in its hands. Once a year," he con- cluded, " I go to mass." These were the words of one whose work will live in the history of his country, one, too, who knew all about para- tism. Yet, though he thought it not, this is parasitism in its worst and most degrading form. Nor, in spite of its intellectual, not to say moral sin, is this an extreme or exceptional case. It is a case which is being duplicated every day in our own country, only here the confession is expressed with a candor which is rare in company with actions betraying so signally the want of it.
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The form of parasitism exhibited by a cer- tain section of the narrower Evangelical school is altogether different from that of the Church of Rome. The parasite in this case seeks its shelter, not in a Church, but in a Doctrine or a Creed. Let it be observed again that we are not dealing with the Evangelical Religion, but only with one of its parasitic forms — a form which will at once be recognized by all who know the popular Protestantism of this coun- try. We confine ourselves also at present to that form which finds its encouragement in a single doctrine, that doctrine being a Doctrine of the Atonement — let us say, rather, a per- verted form of this central truth.
The perverted Doctrine of the Atonement, which tends to beget the parasitic habit, may be defined in a single sentence — it is very much because it can be defined in a single sentence that it is a perversion. Let us state it in a concrete form. It is put to the individual in the following syllogism : " You believe Christ died for sinners ; you are a sinner ; therefore Christ died for you ; and hence you are saved." Now what is this but another species of mol- luscan shell ? Could any trap for a benighted soul be more ingeniously planned ? It is not superstition that is appealed to this time ; it is reason. The agitated soul is invited to creep into the convolutions of a syllogism, and en- trench itself behind a Doctrine more venerable even than the Church. But words are mere chitine. Doctrines may have no more vital contact with the soul than priest or sacrament,
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no further influence on life and character than stone and lime. And yet the apostles of par- asitism pick a blackguard from the streets, pass him through this plausible formula, and turn him out a convert in the space of as many minutes as it takes to tell it.
The zeal of these men, assuredly, is not to be questioned ; their instincts are right, and their work is often not in vain. It is possible, too, up to a certain point, to defend this Salvation by Formula. Are these not the very words of Scripture ? Did not Christ Himself say, " It is finished " ? And is it not written, " By grace are ye saved through faith," •" Xot of works, lest any man should boast," and He " that be- lieveth on the Son hath everlasting life " ? To which, however, one might also answer in the words of Scripture, " The Devils also believe," and " Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." But without seem- ing to make text refute text, let us ask rather what the supposed convert possesses at the end of the process. That Christ saves sinners, even blackguards from the street, is a great fact ; and that the simple words of the street evangelist do sometimes bring this home to man with convincing power is also a fact. But in ordinary circumstances, when the in- quirer's mind is rapidly urged through the various stages of the above piece of logic, he is left to face the future and blot out the past with a formula of words.
To be sure these words may already convey a germ of truth, they may yet be filled in with
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a wealth of meaning and become a lifelong power. But we would state the case against Salvation by Formula with ignorant and unwarranted clemency did we for a moment convey the idea that this is always the actual re- sult. The doctrine plays too well into the hands of the parasitic tendency to make it possible that in more than a minority of cases the result is anything but disastrous. And it is disastrous not in that, sooner or later, after losing half their lives, those who rely on the naked syllogism come to see their mistake, but in that thou- sands never come to see it all. Are there not men who can prove to you and to the world, by the irresistible logic of text, that they are- saved, whom you know to be not only unworthy of the Kingdom of God — which we all are — but absolutely incapable of entering it ? The con- dition of membership in the Kingdom of God is well known ; who fulfil this condition and who do not, is not well known. And yet the moral test, in spite of the difficulty of its appli- cations, will always, and rightly, be preferred by the world to the theological. Nevertheless, in spite of the world's verdict, the parasite is- content. He is "safe." Years ago his mind worked through a certain chain of phrases in which the words " believe " and " saved " were the conspicuous terms. And from that mo- ment, by all Scriptures, by all logic, and by all theology, his future was guaranteed. He took out, in short, an insurance policy, by which he- was infallibly secured eternal life at death. This is not a matter to make light of. We
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wish we were caricaturing instead of represent- ing things as they are. But we carry with us all who intimately know the spiritual condition of the Narrow Church in asserting that in some cases at least its members have nothing more to show for their religion than a formula, a syllogism, a cant phrase, or an experience of some kind which happened long ago, and which men told them at the time was called Salvation. Need we proceed to formulate objections to the parasitism of Evangelicism ? Between it and the Religion of the Church of Rome there is an affinity as real as it is unsuspected. For one thing these religions are spiritually disastrous as well as theologically erroneous in propagat- ing a false conception of Christianity. The fundamental idea alike of the extreme Roman Catholic and extreme Evangelical Religions is Escape. Man's chief end is to " get off." And all factors in religion, the highest and most sacred, are degraded to this level. God, for example, is a Great Lawyer. Or he is the Al- mighty Enemy ; it is from Him we have to " get off." Jesus Christ is the One who gets us off — a theological figure who contrives so to adjust matters federally that the way is clear. The Church in the one instance is a kind of conveyancing office where the transaction is duly concluded, each party accepting the other's terms ; in the other case, a species of sheep-pen where the flock awaits impatiently and indo- lently the final consummation. Generally, the means are mistaken for the end, and the open- ing up of the possibility of spiritual growth be- comes the signal to stop growing.
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Second, these being cheap religions, are in- evitably accompanied by a cheap life. Safety being guaranteed from the first, there remains nothing else to be done. The mechanical way in which the transaction is effected, leaves the soul without stimulus, and the character re- mains untouched by the moral aspects of the sacrifice of Christ. He who is unjust is unjust still ; he who is unholy is unholy still. Thus the whole scheme ministers to the Degeneration of Organs. For here, again, by just as much as- the organism borrows mechanically from an external source, by so much exactly does it lose in its own organization. Whatever rest is provided by Christianity for the children of God, it is certainly never contemplated that it should supersede personal effort. And any rest which ministers to indifference is immoral and unreal — it makes parasites and not men. Just because God worketh in him, as the evi- dence and triumph of it, the true child of God works out his own salvation — works it out hav- ing really received it — not as a light thing, a superfluous labor, but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and indispensable service.
It it be asked, then, shall the parasite be saved or shall he not, the answer is that the idea of salvation conveyed by the question makes a reply all but hopeless. But if by salvation is meant, a trusting in Christ in order to likeness to Christ, in order to that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, the re- ply is that the parasite's hope is absolutely vain. So far from ministering to growth, parasitism
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ministers to decay. So far from ministering to holiness, that is to wholeness, parasitism ministers to exactly the opposite. One by one the spiritual faculties droop and die, one by one from lack of exercise the muscles of the 3oul grow weak and flaccid, one by one the moral activities cease. So from him that hath not, is taken away that which he hath, and after a few years of parasitism there is noth- ing left to save.
If our meaning up to this point has been sufficiently obscure to make the objection now possible that this protest against Parasitism is opposed to the doctrines of Free Grace, we cannot hope in a closing sentence to free the argument from a suspicion so ill-judged. The adjustment between Faith and Works does not fall within our province now. Salvation truly is the free gift of God, but he who really knows how much this means knows — and just because it means so much — how much of conse- quent action it involves. With the central doctrines of grace the whole scientific argu- ment is in too wonderful harmony to be found wanting here. The natural life, not less than the eternal, is the gift of God. But life in either case is the beginning of growth and not the end of grace. To pause where we should begin, to retrograde where we should advance, to seek a mechanical security that we may cover inertia and find a wholesale salvation in which there is no personal sanctiflcation — this is Parasitism.
PARASITISM.
" And so I live, you see, Go through the world, try, prove, reject, Prefer, still struggling to effect My warfare ; happy that I can Be crossed and thwarted as a man, Not left in God's contempt apart, With ghastly smooth lif c, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. *****
Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian, as I said."
BROWMNO.
PARASITISM.
" Work out your own salvation." — Paul.
" Be no longer a chaos, but a World, or even World- kin. Produce I Produce ! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name I" — Carlyle.
FROM a study of the habits and organization of the family of Hermit-crabs we have already gained some insight into the nature and effects of parasitism. But the Hermit-crab, be it re- membered, is in no real sense a parasite. And before we can apply the general principle further we must address ourselves briefly to the examination of a true case of parasitism.
\Ve have not far to seek. Within the body of the Hermit-crab a minute organism may frequently be discovered resembling, when magnified, a miniature kidney-bean. A bunch of root-like processes hangs from one side, and the extremities of these are seen to ramify in delicate films through the 1 ving tissues of the crab. This simple organisi- is known to the naturalist as a Sacculina ; and though a full- grown animal, it consists f no more parts than those just named. Xo' a trace of structure is to be detected within this rude and all but in- animate frame ; it possesses neither legs, nor eyes, nor mouth, nor throat, nor stomach, nor
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any other organs, external or internal. This Sacculina is a typical parasite. By means of its twining and theftuous roots it imbibes automatically its nourishment ready-prepared from the body of the crab. It boards indeed entirely at the expense of its host, who supplies it liberally with food and shelter and every- thing else it wants. So far as the result to itself is concerned this arrangement may seem at first sight satisfactory enough ; but when we inquire into the life history of this small creature we unearth a career of degeneracy all but unparalleled in nature.
The most certain clue to what nature meant any animal to become is to be learned from its embryology. Let us, therefore, examine for a moment the earliest positive stage in the de- velopment of the Sacculina. When the embryo first makes its appearance it bears not the re- motest resemblance to the adult animal. A different name even is given to it by the biologist, who knows it at this period as a Nauplius. This minute organism has an oval body, supplied with six well-jointed feet by means of which it paddles briskly through the water. For a time it leads an active and independent life, in- dustriously securing its own food and escap- ing enemies by its own gallantry. But soon a change takes place. The hereditary taint of parasitism is in its blood, and it proceeds to adapt itself to the pauper habits of its race. The tiny body first doubles in upon itself, and from the two front limbs elongated filaments protrude. Its four hind limbs entirely dis-
PARASITISM. 329
appear, and twelve short-forked swimming organs temporarily take their place. Thus strangely metamorphosed the Sacculina sets out in search of a suitable host, and in an evil hour, by that fate which is always ready to accom- modate the transgressor, is thrown into the company of the Hermit-crab. With its two filamentary processes — which afterwards de- velop into the root-like organs — it penetrates the body ; the sac-like form is gradually as- sumed ; the whole of the swimming feet drop off, — they will never be needed again, — and the animal settles down for the rest of its life as a parasite.
One reason which makes a zoologist certain that the Sacculina is a degenerate type is, that in almost all other instances of animals which begin life in the Kauplius-form — and there are several — the Nauplius develops through higher and higher stages, and arrives finally at the high perfection displayed by the shrimp, lob- ster, crab, and other crustaceans. But instead of rising to its opportunities, the sacculine Nauplius having reached a certain point turned back. It shrunk from the struggle for life, and beginning probably by seeking shelter from its host went on to demand its food ; and so fall- ing from bad to worse, became in time an entire dependant.
In the eyes of Nature this was a twofold crime. It was first a disregard of evolution, and second, which is practically the same thing, an evasion of the great law of work. And the revenge of Nature was therefore necessary.
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It could not help punishing the Sacculina fo? violated law, and the punishment, according to the strange and noteworthy way in which Nature usually punishes, was meted out by natural processes, carried on within its own. organization. Its punishment was simply that it was a Sacculina — that it was a Sacculina when it might have been a Crustacean. In- stead of being a free and independent organism high in structure, original in action, vital with energy, it deteriorated into a torpid and all but amorphous sac confined to perpetual imprison- ment and doomed to a living death. " Any new set of conditions," says Ray Lankester, " oc- curring to an animal which render its food and safety very easily attained, seem to lead as a rule to degeneration ; just as an active healthy man sometimes degenerates when he becomes suddenly possessed of a fortune ; or as Rome degenerated when possessed of the riches of the ancient world. The habit of parasitism clearly acts upon animal organization in this way. Let the parasitic life once be secured, and away go legs, jaws, eyes, and ears ; the active, highly-gifted crab, insect, or annelid may become a mere sac, absorbing nourishment and laying eggs." 1
There could be no more impressive illustra- tion than this of what with entire appropriate- ness one might call " the physiology of back- sliding." We fail to appreciate the meaning of spiritual degeneration or detect the terrible
1 " Degeneration, " by E. Kay Lankester, p. 33.
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nature of the consequences only because they evade the eye of sense. But could we investi- gate the spirit as a living organism, or study the soul of the backslider on principles of com- parative anatomy, we should have a revelation of the organic effects of sin, even of the mere sin of carelessness as to growth and work, which must revolutionize our ideas of practi- cal religion. There is no room for the doubt «ven that what goes on in the body does not with equal certainty take place in the spirit under the corresponding conditions.
The penalty of backsliding is not something unreal and vague, some unknown quantity which may be measured out to us dispropor- tionately, or which perchance, since God is good, we may altogether evade. The con- sequences are already marked within the structure of the soul. So to speak, they are physiological. The thing affected by our in- difference or by our indulgence is not the book of final judgment but the present fabric of the soul. The punishment of degeneration is sim- ply degeneration — the loss of functions, the decay of organs, the atrophy of the spiritual nature. It is well known that the recovery of the backslider is one of the hardest prob- lems in spiritual work. To reinvigorate an old organ seems more difficult and hopeless than to develop a new one; and the back- slider's terrible lot is to have to retrace with enfeebled feet each step of the way along which he strayed ; to make up inch by inch tb3 lee-way he has lost, carrying with him a
332 PAEASITISM.
dead- weight of acquired reluctance, and scarce knowing whether to be stimulated or dis- couraged by the oppressive memory of the pre- vious fall.
We are not, however, to discuss at present the physiology of backsliding. Xor need we point out at greater length that parasitism is always and indissolubly accompanied by de- generation. We wish rather to examine one or two leading tendencies of the modern re- ligious life which directly or indirectly induce the parasitic habit and bring upon thousands of unsuspecting victims such secret and ap- palling penalties as have been named.
Two main causes are known to the biologist as tending to induce the parasitic habit. These are, first, the temptation to secure safety with- out the vital exercise of faculties, and, second, the disposition to find food without earning it. The first, which we have formally considered, is probably the preliminary stage in most cases. The animal, seeking shelter, finds un- expectedly that it can also thereby gain a cer- tain measure of food. Compelled in the first instance, perhaps by stress of circumstances, to rob its host of a meal or perish, it gradually acquires the habit of drawing all its supplies from the same source, and thus becomes in time a confirmed parasite. Whatever be its origin, however, it is certain that the main evil of parasitism is connected with the further question of food. Mere safety with Nature is a secondary, though by no means an insignifi- cant, consideration. And while the organism
PARASITISM. 333
forfeits a part of its organization by any method of evading enemies which demands no per- sonal effort, the most entire degeneration of the whole system follows the neglect or abuse of the functions of nutrition.
The direction in which we have to seek the wider application of the subject will now ap- pear. We have to look into those cases in the moral and spiritual sphere in which the func- tions of nutrition are either neglected or abused. To sustain life, physical, mental, moral, or spiritual, some sort of food is essential. To secure an adequate supply each organism also is provided with special and appropriate facul- ties. But the final gain to the organism does not depend so much on the actual amount of food procured as on the exercise required to obtain it. In one sense the exercise is only a means to an end, namely, the finding food; but in another and equally real sense, the ex- ercise is the end, the food the means to attain that. Neither is of permanent use without the other, but the correlation between them, is so intimat. that it were idle to say that one is more nece°sary than the other. Without food exercise is impossible, but without exer- cise food is useless.
Thus exercise is in order to food, and food is in order to exercise — in order especially to that further progress and maturity which only ceaseless activity can promote. Now food too easily acquired means food without that ac- companiment of discipline which is infinitely more valuable than the food itself. It meana
334 PARASITISM.
the possibility of a life which is a mere exist* ence. It leaves the organism in statu qu.\. undeveloped, immature, low in the scale of organization and with a growing tendency to pass from the state of equilibrium to that of increasing degeneration. What an organism is depends upon what it does ; its activities make it. And if the stimulus to the exercise of all the innumerable faculties concerned in nutrition be withdrawn by the conditions and circumstances of life becoming, or being made to become, too easy, there is first an ar- rest of development, and finally a loss of the parts themselves. If, in short, an organism does nothing in that relation it is nothing.
We may, therefore, formulate the general principle thus: Any principle which secures food to the individual without the expenditure of work is injurious, and accompanied by the degeneration and loss of parts.
The social and political analogies of this law, which have been casually referred to already, are sufficiently familiar to render any further development in these directions superfluous. After the eloquent preaching of the Gospel of Work by Th as Carlyle, this century at least can never plead that one of the most impor- tant moral bearings of the subject has not been duly impressed upon it. All that can be said of idleness generally might be fitly urged in support of this great practical truth. All nations which have prematurely passed away, buried in graves dug by their own effeminacy ; all those individuals who have secured a hasty
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wealth by the chances of speculation ; all chil- dren of fortune ; all victims of inheritance ; all social sponges ; all satellites of the court ; all beggars of the market-place — all these are living and unlying witnesses to the unaltera- ble retributions of the law of parasitism. But it is when we come to study the working of the principle in the religious sphere that we discover the full extent of the ravages which the parasitic habit can make on the souls of men. We can only hope to indicate here one or two of the things in modern Christianity which minister most subtly and widely to this as yet all but unnamed sin.
We begin in what may seem a somewhat unlooked-for quarter. One of the things in the religious world which tends most strongly to induce the parasitic habit is Going to Church. Church-going itself every Christian will rightly consider an invaluable aid to the ripe develop- ment of the spiritual life. Public worship has a place in the national religious life so firmly established that nothing is ever likely to shake its influence. So supreme, indeed, is the ec- clesiastical system hi all Christian countries that with thousands the religion of the Church and the religion of the individual are one. But just because of its high and unique place in religious regard, does it become men from time to time to inquire how far the Church is really ministering to the spiritual health of the im- mense religious community which looks to it as its foster-mother. And if it falls to us here reluctantly to expose some secret abuses of
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this venerable system, let it be well under- stood that these are abuses, and not that the sacred institution itself is being violated by the attack of an impious hand.
The danger of church-going largely depends on the form of worship, but it may be affirmed that even the most perfect Church affords to- all worshippers a greater or less temptation to parasitism. It consists essentially in the deputy-work or deputy-worship inseparable from church or chapel ministrations. One man is set apart to prepare a certain amount of spiritual truth for the rest. He, if he is a true man, gets all the benefits of original work. He finds the truth, digests it, is nourished and enriched by it before he offers it to his flock. To a large extent it will nourish and enrich in- turn a number of his hearers. But still they will lack something. The faculty of selecting truth at first hand and appropriating it for one's self is a lawful possession to every Chris- tian. Rightly ex rcised it conveys to him truth in its freshest form; it offers him the opportunity of verifying doctrines for himself j it makes religi n personal ; it deepens and in- tensifies the nly convictions that are worth deepening, those, namely, which are honest; and it supplies the mind with a basis of cer- tainty in religion. But if all one's truth is derived by imbibition from the Church, the faculties for receiving truth are not only undeveloped but one's whole view of truth becomes distorted,, He who abandons the per- sonal search for truth, under whatever pre-
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text, abandons truth. The very word truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning ; and faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity, resting on mere opinion.
In those churches especially where all parts of the worship are subordinated to the sermon, this species of parasitism is peculiarly encour- aged. What is meant to be a stimulus to thought becomes the substitute for it. The hearer never really learns, he only listens. And while truth and knowledge seem to in- crease, life and character are left in arrear. Such truth, of course, and such knowledge, are a mere seeming. Having cost nothing, they come to nothing. The organism acquires a growing immobility, and finally exists in a state of entire intellectual helplessness and inertia. So the parasitic Church-member, the literal "adherent," comes not merely to live only within the circle of ideas of his minister, but to be content that his minister has these ideas — like the literary parasite who fancies he knows everything because he has a good library.
Where the worship, again, is largely liturgi- cal the danger assumes an even more serious form, and it acts in some such way as this. Every sincere man who sets out in the Chris- tian race begins by attempting to exercise the spiritual faculties for himself. The young life throbs in his veins, and he sets himself to the further progress with earnest purpose and resolute will. For a time he bids fair to 22
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attain a high and original development. But the temptation to relax the always difficult effort at spirituality is greater than he knows. The " carnal mind " itself is " enmity against God," and the antipathy, or the deadlier apathy within, is unexpectedly encouraged from that very outside source from which he anticipates the greatest help. Connecting him- self with a Church he is no less interested than surprised to find how rich is the provision there for every part of his spiritual nature. Each service satisfies or surfeits. Twice, or even three times a week, this feast is spread for him. The thoughts are deeper than his own, the faith keener, the worship loftier, the whole ritual more reverent and splendid. What more natural than that he should grad- ually exchange his personal religion for that of the congregation ? What more likely than that a public religion should by insensible stages supplant his individual faith? What more simple than to content himself with the warmth of another's soul ? What more tempt- ing than to give up private prayer for the easier worship of the liturgy or of the church ? What, in short, more natural than for the in- dependent, free-moving, growing Sacculina to degenerate into the listless, useless, pampered parasite of the pew? The very means he takes to nurse his personal religion often come in time to wean him from it. Hanging admir- ingly, or even enthusiastically, on the lips of eloquence, his senses now stirred by ceremony, now soothed by music, the parasite of the pew
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enjoys his weekly worship — his character un- touched, his will unbraced, his crude soul un- quickened and unimproved. Thus, instead of ministering to the growth of individual mem- bers, and very often just in proportion to the superior excellence of the provision made for them by another, does this gigantic system of deputy-nutrition tend to destroy development and arrest the genuine culture of the soul. Our churches overflow with members who are mere consumers. Their interest in religion is purely parasitic. Their only spiritual exercise is the automatic one of imbibition, the clergy- man being the faithful Hermit-crab who is to be depended on every Sunday for at least a week's supply.
A physiologist would describe the organism resulting from such a process as a case of "arrested development." Instead of having learned to pray, the ecclesiastical parasite be- comes satisfied with being prayed for. His transactions with the Eternal are effected by commission. His work for Christ is done by a paid deputy. His whole life is a prolonged indulgence in the bounties of the Church ; and surely — in some cases at least the crowning irony — he sends for the minister when he lies down to die.
Other signs and consequences of this species of parasitism soon become very apparent. The first symptom is idleness. When a Church is off its true diet it is off its true work. Hence one explanation of the hundreds of large and influential congregations ministered to from
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week to week by men of eminent learning and earnestness, which yet do little or nothing in the line of these special activities for which all churches exist. An outstanding man at the head of a huge, useless and torpid congregation IB always a puzzle. But is the reason not this» that the congregation gets too good food too cheap ? Providence has mercifully delivered the Church from too many great men in her pulpits, but there are enough in every country- side to play the host disastrously to a large circle of otherwise able-bodied Christian people, who, thrown on their own resources, might fatten themselves and help others. There are compensations to a flock for a poor minister after all. Where the fare is indifferent those who are really hungry will exert themselves to procure their own supply.
That the Church has indispensable functions to discharge to the individual is not denied ; but taking into consideration the universal tendency to parasitism in the human soul, it is a grave question whether in some cases it does not really effect more harm than good. A dead church certainly, a church having no reaction on the community, a church without propagative power in the world, cannot be other than a calamity to all within its borders. Such a church is an institution, first for making, then for screening parasites; and instead of representing to the world the Kingdom of God on earth, it is despised alike by godly and by godless men as the reiuge for fear and for- malism and the nursery of superstition.
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And this suggests a second and not less practical evil of a parasitic piety — that it presents to the world a false conception of the religion of Christ. One notices with a fre- quency which may well excite alarm that the children of church-going parents often break away as they grow in intelligence, not only from church-connection but from the whole system of family religion. In some cases this is doubt- less due to natural perversity, but in others it certainly arises from the hollowness of the out- ward forms which pass current in society and at home for vital Christianity. These spurious forms, fortunately or unfortunately, soon betray themselves. How little there is in them be- comes gradually apparent. And rather than indulge in a sham the budding sceptic, as the first step, parts with the form, and in nine cases out of ten concerns himself no further to find a substitute. Quite deliberately, quite honestly, sometimes with real regret and even at personal sacrifice, he takes up his position, and to his parent's sorrow and his church's dishonor forsakes forever the faith and re- ligion of his fathers. Who will deny that this is a true account of the natural history of much modern scepticism ? A formal religion can never hold its own in the nineteenth century. It is better that it should not. We must either be real or cease to be. We must either give up our Parasitism or our sons.
Any one who will take the trouble to investi- gate a number of cases, where whole families of outwardly godly parents have gone astray,
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will probably find that the household religion had either some palpable defect, or belonged essentially to the parasitic order. The popular belief that the sons of clergymen turn out worse than those of the laity is, of course, with- out foundation ; but it may also probably be verified that in the instances where clergymen's sons notoriously discredit their father's minis- try, that ministry in a majority of cases will be found to be professional and theological rather than human and spiritual. Sequences in the moral and spiritual world follow more closely than we yet discern the great law of Heredity. The Parasite begets the Parasite — only in the second generation the offspring are sometimes sufficiently wise to make the discovery, and honest enough to proclaim it.
We now pass on to the consideration of an- other form of Parasitism which, though closely related to that just discussed, is of sufficient importance to justify a separate reference. Appealing to a somewhat smaller circle, but affecting it not less disastrously, is the Para- sitism induced by certain abuses of Systems of Theology.
in its own place, of course, Theology is no more to be dispensed with than the Church. In every perfect religious system three great departments must always be represented — criticism, dogmatism, and evangelism. With- out the first there is no guarantee of truth, without the second no defence of truth, and without the third no propagation of truth. Bnt when these departments become mixed up,
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when their separate functions are forgotten, when one is made to do duty for another, or where either is developed by the church or the individual at the expense of the rest, the result is fatal. The particular abuse, however, of which we have now to speak, concerns the tendency in orthodox communities, first to exalt orthodoxy above all other elements in religion, and secondly to make the possession of sound beliefs equivalent to the possession of truth.
Doctrinal preaching, fortunately, as a con- stant practice is less f n vogue than in a former age, but there are still large numbers whose only contact with religion is through theo- logical forms. The method is supported by a plausible defence. What is doctrine but a compressed form of truth, systematized by able and pious men, and sanctioned by the imprimatur of the Church? If the greatest minds of the Church's past, having exercised themselves profoundly upon the problems of religion, formulated as with one voice a system of doctrine, why should the humble inquirer not gratefully accept it? Why go over the ground again ? Why with his dim light should he betake himself afresh to Bible study and with so great a body of divinity already com- piled, presume himself to be still a seeker after truth? Does not Theology give him Bible truth in reliable, convenient and moreover, in logical propositions? There it lies extended to the last detail in the tomes of the Fathers, or abridged in a hundred modern compendia ready-made to his hand, all cut and dry, guar- anteed sound and wholesome, why not use itf
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Just because it is all cut and dry. Just because it is ready-made. Just because it lies there in reliable, convenient and logical prop- ositions. The moment you appropriate truth in such a shape you appropriate a form. You cannot cut and dry truth. You cannot accept truth ready-made without it ceasing to nourish the soul as truth. You cannot live on theo- logical forms without becoming a Parasite and ceasing to be a man.
There is no worse enemy to a living Church than a prepositional theology, with the latter controlling the former by traditional authority. For one does not then receive the truth for himself, he accepts it bodily. He begins the Christian life set up by his Church with a stock-in-trade which has cost him nothing, and which, though it may serve him all his life, is just exactly worth as much as his belief in his Church. This possession of truth, moreover, thus lightly won, is given to him as infallible. It is a system. There is nothing to add to it. At his peril let him question or take from it. To start a convert in life with such a principle is unspeakably degrading. All through life instead of working towards truth he must work from it. An infallible standard is a temptation to a mechanical faith. Infallibility always paralyzes. It gives rest ; but it is the rest of stagnation. Men perform one great act of faith at the beginning of their life, then have done with it forever. All moral, intellectual and spiritual effort is over ; and a cheap the ology ends in a cheap life.
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The same thing that makes men take refuge in the Church of Rome makes them take refuge in a set of dogmas. Infallibility meets the deepest desire of man, but meets it in the most fatal form. Men deal with the hunger after truth in two ways. First by Unbelief— which crushes it by blind force; or, secondly, by resorting to some external source credited with Infallibility — which lulls it to sleep by blind faith. The effect of a doctrinal theology is the effect of Infallibility. And the wholesale belief in such a system, however accurate it may be — grant even that it were infallible — is not Faith though it always gets that name. It is mere Credulity. It is a complacent and idle rest upon authority, not a hard-earned, self- obtained, personal possession. The moral responsibility here, besides, is reduced to nothing. Those who framed the Thirty-nine Articles or the Westminster Confession are responsible. And anything which destroys responsibility, or transfers it, cannot be other than injurious in its moral tendency and use- less in itself.
It may be objected perhaps that this state- ment of the paralysis spiritual and mental induced by Infallibility applies also to the Bible. The answer is that though the Bible is infallible, the Infallibility is not in such a form as to become a temptation. There is the widest possible difference between the form of truth in the Bible and the form in theology.
In theology truth is propositional — tied up in neat parcels, systematized, and arranged in
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logical order. The Trinity is an intricate doctrinal problem. The Supreme Being is discussed in terms of philosophy. The Atone- ment is a formula which is to be demonstrated like a proposition in Euclid. And Justification is to be worked out as a question of jurispru- dence. There is no necessary connection be- tween these doctrines and the life of him who holds them. They make him orthodox, not necessarily righteous. They satisfy the intel- lect but need not touch the heart. It does not,, in short, take a religious man to be a theologian. It simply takes a man with fair reasoning powers. This man happens to apply these powers to theological subjects — but in no other sense than he might apply them to astronomy or physics. But truth in the Bible is a fountain. It is a diffused nutriment, so diffused that no one can put himself off with the form. It is reached not by thinking, but by doing. It is seen, discerned, not demonstrated. It cannot be bolted whole, but must be slowly absorbed into the system. Its vagueness to the mere intellect, its refusal to be packed into portable phrases, its satisfying unsatisfyingness, its vast atmosphere, its finding of us, its mystical hold of us, these are the tokens of its infinity. Nature never provides for man's wants in any direction, bodily, mental, or spiritual, in such a form as that he can simply accept her gifts automatically. She puts all the mechanical powers at his disposal — but he must make bis lever. She gives him corn, but he must grind it. She elaborates coal, but be must dig for it
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Corn is perfect, all the products of Nature are perfect, but he has everything to do to them before he can use them. So with truth ; it is perfect, infallible. But he cannot use it as it stands. He must work, think separate, dis- solve, absorb, digest ; and most of these he must do for himself and within himself. If it be replied that this is exactly what theology does, we answer it is exactly what it does not. It simply does what the greengrocer does when he arranges his apples and plums in his shop- window. He may tell me a magnum bonum from a Victoria, or a Baldwin from a Newton Pippin. But he does not help me to eat it. His information is useful, and for scientific horticulture essential. Should a sceptical pomologist deny that there was such a thing as a Baldwin, or mistake it for a Newton Pip- pin, we should be glad to refer to him ; but if we were hungry, and an orchard were handy, we should not trouble him. Truth in the Bible is an orchard rather than a museum. Dogma- tism will be very valuable to us when scientific necessity makes us go to the museum. Criti- cism will be very useful in seeing that only fruit-bearers grow in the orchard. But truth in the doctrinal form is not natural, proper, assimilable food for the soul of man.
Is this a plea then for doubt ? Yes, for that philosophic doubt which is the evidence of a faculty doing its own work. It is more neces- sary for us to be active than to be orthodox. To be orthodox is what we wish to be, but we can only truly reach it by being honest, by
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being original, by seeing with our own eyes, by believing with our own heart. " An idle life," says Goethe, "is death anticipated." Better far be burned at the stake of Public Opinion than die the living death of Parasitism. Better an aberrant theology than a suppressed organi- zation. Better a little faith dearly won, better launched alone on the infinite bewilderment of Truth, than perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds. Such Doubt is no self- willed presumption. Nor, truly exercised, will it prove itself, as much doubt does, the synonym for sorrow. It aims at a lifelong learning, pre- pared for any sacrifice of will, yet for none of independence; at that high progressive education which yields rest in work and work in rest, and the development of immortal facul- ties in both ; at that deeper faith which believes in the vastness and variety of the revelations of God, and their accessibility to all obedient hearts.
CLASSIFICATION.
"I judge of the order of the world, although I know not its end, because to judge of this order I only need mutually to compare the parts, to study their functions, their relations, and to remark their concert. I know not why the universe exists, but I do not desist from seeing how it is modified ; I do not cease to see the intimate agreement by which the beings that compose it render a mutual help. I am like a man who should see for the first time an open watch, who should not cease to admire the workmanship of it, although he knows not the use of the machine, and had never seen dials. I do not know, he would say, what all this is for, but I see that each piece is made for the others ; I admire the worker in the detail of his work, and I am very sure that all these wheel- works only go thus in concert for a commonend which I cannot perceive." ROUSSEAU.
CLASSIFICATION.
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and thai which is born of the Spirit is spirit." — Christ.
" In early attempts to arrange organic beings in some systematic manner, we see at first a guidance by conspicu- ous and simple characters, and a tendency towards ar- rangement in linear order. In successively later at- tempts, we see more regard paid to combinations of character which are essential but often inconspicuous ; and a gradual abandonment of a linear arrangement." — Herbert Spencer.
Ox one of the shelves in a certain museum lie two small boxes filled with earth. A low mountain in Arran has furnished the first ; the contents of the second came from the Island of Barbadoes. When examined with a pocket lens, the Arran earth is found to be full of small objects, clear as crystal, fashioned by some mysterious geometry into forms of ex- quisite symmetry. The substance is silica, a natural glass ; and the prevailing shape is a six-sided prism capped at either end by little pyramids modelled with consummate grace.
When the second specimen is examined, the revelation is, if possible, more surprising. Here, also, is a vast assemblage of small glassy or porcellaneous objects built up into curious forms. The material, chemically, remains the same, but the angles of pyramid and prism have
352 CLASSIFICATION.
given place to curved lines, so that the contour is entirely different. The appearance is that of a vast collection of microscopic urns, gob- lets, and vases, each richly ornamented with small sculptured discs or perforations which are disposed over the pure white surface in regular belts and rows. Each tiny urn is chiselled into the most faultless proportion, and the whole presents a vision of magic beauty.
Judged by the standard of their loveliness there is little to choose between these two sets of objects. Yet there is one cardinal difference between them. They belong to different worlds. The last belong to the living world, the former to the dead. The first are crystals, the last are shells.
No power on earth can make these little urns of the Polycystince except Life. We can melt them down in the laboratory, but no ingenuity of chemistry can reproduce their sculptured forms. We are sure that Life has formed them, however, for tiny creatures allied to those which made the Barbadoes' earth are living still, fashioning their fairy palaces of flint in the same mysterious way. On the other hand, chemistry has no difficulty in making these crystals. We can melt down this Arran earth and reproduce the pyramids and prisms in end- less numbers. N"ay, if we do melt it down, we cannot help reproducing the pyramid and the prism. There is a six-sidedness, as it were, in the very nature of this substance which will infallibly manifest itself if the crystallizing
CLA SSIFICA TION. 353;
substance only be allowed fair play. This six- sided tendency is its Law of Crystallization — a law of its nature which it cannot resist. But in the crystal there is nothing at all correspond- ing to Life. There is simply an inherent force which can be called into action at any moment, and which cannot be separated from the par- ticles in which it resides. The crystal may be ground to pieces, but this force remains intact. And even after being reduced to powder, and running the gauntlet of every process in the chemical laboratory, the moment the substance is left to itself under possible conditions it will proceed to recrystallize anew. But if the Polycystine urn be broken, no inorganic agency can build it up again. So far as any inherent urn-building power, analogous to the crystal- line force, is concerned, it might lie there in a shapeless mass forever. That which mod- elled it at first is gone from it. It was Vital,; while the force which built the crystal was only Molecular.
From an artistic point of view this distinc- tion is of small importance. ^Esthetically, the Law of Crystallization is probably as useful in ministering to natural beauty as Vitality. What are more beautiful than the crystals of a> snowflake ? Or what frond of fern or feather of bird can vie with the tracery of the frost upon a window-pane? Can it be said that the lichen is more lovely than the striated crystals of the granite on which it grows, or the moss on the mountain-side more satisfying than the hidden amethyst and cairngorm in the rock: 23
354 CLASSIFICATION.
beneath ? Or is the botanist more astonished when his microscope reveals the architecture of spiral tissue in the stem of a plant, or the mineralogist who beholds for the first time the chaos of beauty in the sliced specimen of some common stone? So far as beauty goes the organic world and the inorganic are one.
To the man of science, however, this identity of beauty signifies nothing. His concern, in the first instance, is not with the forms but with the natures of things. It is no valid answer to him, when he asks the difference between the moss and the cairngorm, the frost-work and the rn, to be assured that both are beautiful. Toi no fundamental distinction in Science depend ., upon beauty. He wants an answer in terms of chemistry, are they organic or inorg viiic ? or in terms of biology, are they living r dead ". Bu when he is told that the one is 'iving and the other dead, he is in possession of a characteristic and fundamental scientific distinction. From this point of view, however much they may possess in common of material substance and beauty, they are separated from one another by a wide and unbridged gulf. The lassifica- tion of these forms, therefore, depends upon the standpoint, and we should pronounce them like or unlike, related or unrelated, according as we judged them from the point of view of Art or Science.
The drift of these introductory paragraphs must already be apparent. We propose to in- quire whether among men, clothed apparently with a common beauty of character, there may
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flot yet be distinctions as radical as betweea the crystal and the shell ; and, further, whether the current classification of men, based upon Moral Beauty, is wholly satisfactory either from the standpoint of Science or of Christian* ity. Here, for example, are two characters, pure and elevated, adorned with conspicuous virtues, stirred by lofty impulses, and com- manding a spontaneous admiration from all who look on them — may not this similarity of outward form be accompanied by a total dis- similarity of inward nature ? Is the external appearance the truest criterion of the ultimate nature ? Or, as in the crystal and the shell, may there not exist distinctions more profound and basal? The distinctions drawn between men, in short, are commonly based on the out- ward appearance of goodness or badness, on the ground of moral beauty or moral deformity- is this classification scientific? Or is there a deeper distinction between the Christian and the not-a-Christian as fundamental as that between the organic and the inorganic?
There can belittle doubt, to begin with, that with the great majority of people religion is> regarded as essentially one with morality. Whole schools of philosophy have treated the Christian Religion as a questi n of beauty, and discussed its place among other systems of ethics. Even those systems of theology which profess to draw a deeper distinction have rarely succeeded in establishing it upon any valid basis, or seem even to have made that distinc- tion perceptible to others. So little, indeed, ha*
356 CLA SSIFICA TION.
the rationale of the science of religion been understood that there is still no more unsatis- factory province in theology than where mor- ality and religion are contrasted, and the ad- justment attempted between moral philosophy and what are known as the doctrines of grace. Examples of this confusion are so numerous that if one were to proceed to prooi he would have to cite almost the entire European phi- losophy of the last three hundred years. From Spinoza downward through the whole natural- istic school, Moral Beauty is persistently re- garded as synonymous with religion and the spiritual life. The most earnest thinking of the present day is steeped in the same con- fusion. We have even the remarkable spec- tacle presented to us just now of a sublime Morality-Religion divorced from Christianity altogether, and wedded to the baldest form of materialism. It is claimed, moreover, that the moral scheme of this high atheism is loftier and more perfect than that of Christianity, and men are asked to take their choice as if the morality were everything, the Christianity or the atheism vlucb nourished it being neither here nor there. Others, again, studying this moral beauty carefully, have detected a some- thing in its Chri tian forms which has com- pelled them to declare thaj a distinction cer- tainly exists. Bu' in scarcely a single instance is the gravity of the distinction more than dimly apprehended. Few conceive of it as other than a difference of degree, or could give a more definite account of i', than Mr. Matthew
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Arnold's " Religion is morality touched by Emotion " — an utterance significant mainly as the testimony of an acute mind that a dis- tinction of some kind does exist. In a recent Symposium where the question as to " The in- fluence upon Morality of a decline in Religious Belief," was discussed at length by writers of whom this century is justly proud, there ap- pears scarcely so much as a recognition of the fathomless chasm separating the leading terms of debate.
If beauty is the criterion of religion, this view of the relation of religion to morality is justified. But what if there be the same dif- ference in the beauty of two separate characters that there is between the mineral and the shell ? What if there be a moral beauty and a spiritual beauty ? What answer shall we get if we demand a more scientific distinction between characters than that based on mere outward form? It is not enough from the standpoint of biological religion to say of two characters that both are beautiful. For, again, no fundamental distinction in Science depends upon beauty. We ask an answer in terms of biology, are they flesh or spirit ; are they living or dead?
If this is really a scientific question, if it is a question not of moral philosophy only, but of biology, we are compelled to repu iate beauty as the criterion of spirituality. It is not, of course, meant by this that spiritualty is not morally beautiful. Spirituality must be morally very beautiful— so much so that popularly one
358 CLA SSIFICA TTOH.
is justified in judging of religion by its beauty. Nor is it meant that morality is not a crite- rion. All that is contended for is that, from the scientific standpoint, it is not the criterion. We can judge of the crystal and the shell from many other standpoints besides those named, each classification having an importance in its own sphere. Thus we might class them ac- cording to their size and weight, their percent- age of silica, their use in the arts, or their com- mercial value. Each science or art is entitled to regard them from its own point of view; and when the biologist announces his classifi- cation he does not interfere with those based on other grounds. Only, having chosen his standpoint, he is bound to frame his classifi- cation in terms of it.
It may be well to state emphatically, that in proposing a new classification — or rather, in reviving the primitive one — in the spiritual sphere we leave untouched, as cf supreme value in its own province, the test of morality. .Morality is certainly a test of religion — for most practical purposes the very best test. And so far from tending to depreciate morality, the bringing into prominence of the true basis is entirely in its interests — in the interests of a moral beauty, indeed, infinitely surpassing the highest attainable perfection on merely natural lines.
The warrant for seeking a further classifica- tion is twofold. It is a principle in science that classification should rest on the most basal characteristics. To determine what
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these are may not always be easy, but it is at least evident that a classification framed on the ultimate nature of organisms must be' more distinctive than one based on external characters. Before the principles of classifica- tion were understood, organisms were invaria- bly arranged according to some merely exter- nal resemblance. Thus plants were classed according to size as Herbs, Shrubs, and Trees; and animals according to their appearance as Birds, Beasts, and Fishes. The Bat upon this principle was a bird, the Whale a fish ; and so thoroughly artificial were these early systems that animals were often tabulated among the plants, and plants among the animals. "In early attempts," says Herbert Spencer, "to arrange organic beings in some systematic manner, we see at first a guidance by conspic- uous and simple characters, and a tendency toward arrangement in lineal order. In suc- cessively later attempts, we see more regard paid to combinations of characters which are- essential but often inconspicuous; and a grad- ual abandonment of a linear arrangement for an arrangement in divergent groups and re- divergent sub-groups.1 Almost all the natural sciences have already passed through these stages ; and one or two which rested entirely on external characters have all but ceased to exist — Conchology, for example, which has- yielded its place to Malacology. Following ift the wake of the other sciences, the classifica--
» "Principles of Biology," p. 294,
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tions of Theology may have to be remodelled in the same way. The popular classification, whatever its merits from a practical point of view, is essentially a classification based on Morphology. The whole tendency of science now is to include along with morphological considerations the profounder generalizations of Physiology and Embryology. And the con- tribution of the latter science espe ;ally has been found so important that biology hence- forth must look for its classification largely to Embryological character.
But apart from the demand of modern scien- tific culture it is palpably foreign to Christian- ity, not merely as a Philosophy but as a Biology, to classify men only in terms of the former. And it is somewhat remarkable that the writers of both the Old and Xew Testa- ments seem to have recognized the deeper basis. The favorite classification of the Old Testament was into " the nations which knew God " and " the nations which knew not God " — a distinction which we have formerly seen to be, at bottom, biological. In the New Tes- tament again the ethical characters are more prominent, but the cardinal di tinctions based on regeneration, if not alway^ actually referred to, are throughout kept in view, both in the sayings of Christ and in th Epistles.
What then is the deeper distinction drawn by Christianity? What is ch. essential differ- ence between the Christian and th not-a-Chris- tian, between the spiritual beauty and the mor- al beauty ? It is the distinction between the
CLASSIFICATION. 361
Organic and the Inorganic. Moral beauty ia the product of the natural man, spiritual beauty of the spiritual man. And these two, according to the law of Biogenesis, are sepa- rated from one another by the deepest line known to Science. This Law is at once the foundation of Biology and of Spiritual religion. And the whole fabric of Christianity falls into confusion if we attempt to ignore it. The Law of Biogenesis, in fact, is to be regarded as the equivalent in biology of the First Law of Motion in physics: Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is compelled by forces to change that state. The first Law of biology is : That which is Mineral is Min- eral ; that which is Flesh is Flesh ; that which is Spirit is Spirit. The mineral remains in the inorganic world until it is seized upon by a something called Life outside the inorganic world ; the natural man remains the natural man, until a Spiritual Life from without the natural life seizes upon him, regenerates him, changes him into a spiritual man. The peril of the illustration from the law of motion will not be felt at least by those who appreciate the distinction between Physics and Biology, be- tween Energy and Life. The change of state, here is not as in physics a mere change of direc- tion, the affections directed to a new object, the will into a new channel. The change involves all this, but is something deeper. It is a change of nature, a regeneration, a passing from death into life. Hence relatively to this higher
362 CLASSIFICATION.
life the natural life is no longer Life, but Death, and the natural man from the stand- point of Christianity is dead. Whatever assent the mind may give to this proposition, however much it has been overlooked in the past, however it compares with casual observa- tion, it is certain that the Founder of the Chris- tian religion intended this to be the keystone of Christianity. In the proposition That which is flesh is flesh, and that which is spirit is spirit^ Christ formulates the first law of biological religion, and lays the basis for a final classifi- cation. He divides men into two classes, the living and the not-living. And Paul after- wards carries out the classification consistently, making his entire system depend on it, and throughout arranging men, en the one hand as TvsuijLa.Tix.6z — spiritual, on tha cl/her as (fo-^ix.6^ — carnal, in terms of Christ's distinction.
Suppose now it be granted for a moment that the character of the not-a-Christian is as beautiful as that of the Christian. This is. simply to say that the crystal is as beautiful as the organism. One is quite entitled to hold this ; but what he is not entitled to hold is that both in the same sense are living. He that hath the Son has Life, and he «,.' at hath not the Son of God has not Life. And i tin face of this law, no other conclusion is possible than that that which is flesh remains ile^h. No matter how great the development of beauty, that which is flesh is withal flesh. The elaborateness or the perfection of the moral development in any given instance can do
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nothing to break down this distinction. Man is a moral animal, and can, and ought to, arrive at great natural beauty of character. But this is simply to obey the law of his nature — the law of his flesh ; and no progress along that line can project him into the spiritual sphere. If any one choose to claim that the mineral beauty, the fleshly beauty, the natural morrfl beauty, is all he covets, he is entitled to his claim. To be good and true, pure and benevolent in the moral sphere, are high, and, so far, legitimate objects of life. If he delib- erately stop here, he is at liberty to do so. But what he is not entitled to do is to call himself a Christian, or to claim to discharge the func- tions peculiar to the Christian life. His mor- ality is mere crystallization, the crystallizing forces having had fair play in his development. But these forces have no more touched the sphere of Christianity than the frost on the window-pane can do more than simulate the •external forms of life. And if he considers that the high development to which he has reached may pass by an insensible transition into spirituality, or that his moral nature of it- self may flash into the flame of regenerate Life, he has to be reminded that in spite of the ap- parent connection of these things from one standpoint, from another there is none at all, •or none discoverable by us. On the one hand, there being no such thing as Spontaneous Generation, his moral nature, however it may encourage it, cannot generate Life ; while, on the other, his high organization can never in
364 CLASSIFICATION.
itself result in Life, Life being always the cause of organization and never the effect of it.
The practical question may now be asked, is this distinction palpable ? Is it a mere conceit of Science, or what human interests attach to it ? If it cannot be proved that the resulting moral or spiritual beauty is higher in the one case than in the other, the biological distinc- tion is useless. And if the objection is pressed that the spiritual man has nothing further to effect in the direction of morality, seeing that the natural man can successfully compete with him, the questions thus raised become of serious significance. That objection would cer- tainly be fatal which could show that the spiritual world was riot as high in its demand for a lofty morality as the natural ; and that biology would be equally false and dangerous which should in the least encourage the view that " without holiness " a man could " see the Lord." These questions accordingly we must briefly consider. It is necessary to premise however, that the difficulty is not peculiar to the present position. This is simply the old difficulty of distinguishing spirituality and morality.
In seeking whatever light Science may have to offer as to the difference between the natural and the spiritual man, we first submit the question to Embryology. And if its actual contribution is small, we shall at least be in- debted to it for an important reason why the difficulty should exist at all. That there is grave difficulty in deciding between two given
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characters, the one natural, the other spiritual, is conceded. But if we can find a sufficient justification for so perplexing a circumstance, the fact loses weight as an objection, and the whole problem is placed on a different foot- ing.
The difference on the score of beauty be- tween the crystal and the shell, let us say once more, is imperceptible. But fix attention for a moment, not upon their appearance, but upon their possibilities, upon their relation to the future, and upon their place in evolution. The crystal has reached its ultimate stage of devel- opment. It can never be more beautiful than it is now. Take it to pieces and give it the opportunity to beautify itself afresh, and it will just do the same thing over again. It will form itself into a six-sided pyramid, and go on repeating this same form ad infinitum as often as it is dissolved, and without ever improving by a hair's-breadth. Its law of crystallization allows it to reach this limit, and nothing else within its kingdom can do any more for it. In dealing with the crystal, in short, we are deal- ing with the maximum beauty of the inorganic world. But in dealing with the shell, we are not dealing with the maximum achievement of the organic world. ' In itself it is one of the humblest forms of the invertebrate sub-king- dom of the organic world ; and there are other forms within this kingdom so different from the shell in a hundred respects that to mistake them would simply be impossible.
In dealing with a man of fine moral char-
366 CLASSIFICATION.
acter, again, we are dealing with the highest achievement of the organic kingdom. But in dealing with a spiritual man we are dealing with the lowest form of life in the spiritual icorld. To contrast the two, ther fore, and. marvel that the one is apparently so little better than the other, is unscientific and un- just. The spiritual man is a mere unformed embryo, hidden as yet in his earthly chrysalis- case, while the natural man has the breeding and evolution of ages represented in his char- acter. But what are the possibilities of this spiritual organism ? What is yet to emerge from this chrysalis-case ? The natural char- acter finds its limits within the organic sphere. But who is to define the limits of the spiritual ? Even now it is very beautiful. Even as an embryo it contains some prophecy of its future glory. But the point to mark is, that it doth not yet appear what it shall be.
The want of organization, thus, does not sur- prise us. All life begins at the Amoeboid stage. Evolution is from the simple to the complex ; and in every case it is some time before organ- ization is advanced enough to admit of exact classification. A naturalist's only serious difficulty in classification is when he comes to deal with low or embryonic forms. It is impossible, for instance, to mistake an oak for an elephant ; but at the bottom of the vege- table series, and at the bottom of the animal series, there are organisms of so doubtful a character that it is equally impossible to dis- tinguish them. So formidable, indeed, has
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been this difficulty that Hasckel has had to propose an intermediate regnum protisticiim to contain those forms the rudimentary character of which makes it impossible to apply the de- termining tests.
We mention this merely to show the diffi- culty of classification and not for analogy ; for the proper analogy is not between vege- table and animal forms, whether high or low, but between the living and the dead. And hei-e the difficulty is certainly not so great. By suitable tests it is generally possible to dis- tinguish the organic from the inorganic. The •ordinary eye may fail to detect the difference, and innumerable forms are assigned by the popular judgment to the inorganic world whicli are nevertheless undoubtedly alive. And it is the same in the spiritual world. To a cursory glance these rudimentary spiritual forms may not seem to exhibit the phenomena of Life, and therefore the living and the dead may be often classed as one. But let the appropriate scien- tific tests be applied. In the almost amor- phous organism, the physiologist ought already to be able to detect the symptoms of a dawning life. And further research might even bring to light some faint indication of the lines along which the future development was to proceed. Now it is not impossible that among the tests for Life there may be some which may fitly be applied to the spiritual organism. We may therefore at this point hand over the problem to Physiology.
The tests for Life are of two kinds. It is re-
868 CLA SS1FICA TION.
markable that one of them was proposed, in the spiritual sphere, by Christ. Foreseeing the lifficulty of determining the characters and functions of rudimentary organisms, He sug- gested that the point be decided by a further evolution. Time for development was to be allowed, during which the marks of Life, if any, would become more pronounced, while in the meantime judgment was to be suspended. "Let both grow together," he said, "until the harvest." This is a thoroughly scientific test. Obviously, however, it cannot assist us for the present — except in the way of enforcing ex- treme caution in attempting anv classification at all.
The second test is at least not so manifestly impracticable. It is to apply the ordinary meth- ods by which biology attempts to distinguish the organic from the inorganic. The charac- teristics of Life, according to Physiology, are four in number — Assimilation, Waste, Repro- duction, and Spontaneous Action. If an or- ganism is found to exercise these functions, it is said to be alive. Now these tests, in a spiritual sense, might fairly be applied to the spiritual man. The experiment would be a delicate one. It might not be open to every one to attempt it. This is a scientific ques- tion ; and the experiment would have to be conducted under proper conditions and by competent persons. But even on the first statement it will be plain to all who are famil- iar with spiritual diagnosis that the experi- ment could be made, and especially on oneself,
CL A SSIFICA TION. 369
with some hope of success. Biological con- siderations, however, would warn us not to expect too much. Whatever be the inadequacy ixl apart from it; and the investigation of function merely as function is a task of extreme difficulty. Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, " We have next to no power of tracing up the gen- esis of a function considered purely as a func- tion— no opportunity of observing the pro- gressively-increasing quantities of a given action that have arisen in any order of organ- isms. In nearly all cases we are able only to establish the greater growth of the part which we have found performs the action, and to infer that greater action of the part has accom- panied greater growth of it." 1 Such being the case, it would serve no purpose to indicate the details of a barely possible experiment. We are merely showing, at the moment, that the question " How do I know that I am alive " is not, in the spiritual sphere, incapable of solution. One might, nevertheless, single out some distinctively spiritual function and ask himself if he consciously discharged it. The discharging of that function is, upon biological principles, equivalent to being alive, and there- fore the subject of the experiment could cer- tainly corne to some conclusion as to his place on a biological scale. The real significance of his actions on the moral scale might be less easy to determine, but he could at least tell
1 "Principles of Biology," vol. iL pp. 222, 223. 24
370 CLASSIFICA TION.
where he stood as tested by the standard of life — he would know whether he was living or dead. After all, the best test of Life is just living. And living consists, as we have for- merly seen, in corresponding with Environ- ments. Those therefore who find within them- selves, and regularly exercise, the faculties for corresponding with the Divine Environment, anay be said to live the Spiritual Life.
That this Life also, even in the embryonic organism, ought already to betray itself to others, is certainly what one would expect. Every organism has its own reaction upon Kature, and the reaction of the spiritual or- ganism upon the community must be looked for. In the absence of any such reaction, in the absence of any token that it lived for a higher purpose, or that its real interests were those of the Kingdom to which it professed to belong, we should be entitled to question its being in that Kingdom. It is obvious that •each Kingdom has its own ends and interests, its own functions to discharge in Xature. It is also a law that every organism lives for its Kingdom. And man's place in Xature, or his position among the kingdoms, is to be decided by the characteristic functions habitually discharged by him. Now when the habits of certain individuals are closely observed, when the total effect of their life and work, with regard to the community, is gauged — as care- iully observed and gauged as the influence of certain individuals in a colony of ants might be observed and gauged by Sir John Lubbock
CLA SS1FICA TION. b V 1
—there ought to be no difficulty in deciding whether they are living for the Organic or for the Spiritual ; in plainer language, for thfr world or for God. The question of Kingdoms, at least, would be settled without mistake The place of a..y given individual in his own Kingdom is a different matter. That is a question possibly for ethics. But from the biological standpoint, if a man is living for the world it is immaterial how well he lives for it. He ought \ live well for it. However im- portant it is for his own Kingdom, it does not affect his biological relation to the other King- dom whether his character is perfect or imper- fect. He may even to some extent assume the outward form of organism belonging to the higher Kingdom ; but so long as his reaction upon the world is the reaction of his species, he is to be classed with his species, so long as the bent of his life is in the direction of the world, he remains a worldling.
Recent botanical and entomological researches have made Science familiar with what is termed Mimicry. Certain organisms in on& Kingdom assume, for purposes of their own, the outward form of organisms belonging to another. This curious hypocrisy is practised both by plants and animals, the object being to- secure some personal advantage, usually safety,, which would be denied were the organism, always to play its part in Xature in propria persona. Thus the Ceroxylus laceratus of Bor- neo has assumed so perfectly the disguise of a moss-covered branch as to evade the attack of
872 CLASSIFICATION.
insectivorous birds ; and others of the walking, stick insects and leaf-butterflies practise similar deceptions with great effrontery and success, It is a striking result of the indirect influence of Christianity, or of a spurious Christianity, that the religious world has come to be popu- lated— how largely one can scarce venture to think — with mimetic species. In few cases, probably, is this a conscious deception. In many doubtless it is induced, as in Ceroxylus, by the desire for safety. But in a majority of instances it is the natural effect of the prestige of a great system upon those who, coveting its benedictions, yet fail to understand its true nature, or decline to bear its profouncler re- sponsibilities. It is here that the test of Life becomes of supreme importance. No classifi- cation on the ground of form can exclude mimetic species, or discover them to them- selves. But if man's place among the King- doms is determined by his functions, a careful estimate of his life in itself and in its reaction upon surrounding lives, ought at once to betray his real position. Xo matter what may be the moral uprightness of his life, the hon- orableness of his career, or the orthodoxy of his creed, if he exercises the function of loving the world, that defines his world — he belongs to the Organic Kingdom. He cannot in that case belong to the higher Kingdom. " If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." After all, it is by the general bent of a man's life, by his heart-impulses and secret desires, his spontaneous actions and
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abiding motives, that his generation is de- clared.
The exclusiveness of Christianity, separation from the world, uncompromising allegiance to the Kingdom of God, entire surrender of body, soul, and spirit to Christ — these are truths which rise into prominence from time to time, become the watchword of insignificant parties, rouse the church to attention and the world to opposition, and die down ultimately for want of lives to live them. The few enthusiasts who distinguish in these requirements the essential conditions of entrance into the King- dom of Christ are overpowered by the weight of numbers, who see nothing more in Christi- anity than a mild religiousness, and who de- mand nothing more in themselves or in their fellow-Christians than the participation in a conventional worship, the acceptance of tradi- tional beliefs, and the living of an honest life. Yet nothing is more certain than that the enthusiasts are right. Any impartial survey — such as the unique analysis in " Ecce Homo" — of the claims of Christ and of the nature of His society, will convince any one who cares to make the inquiry of the outstanding differ- ence between the system of Christianity in the original contemplation and its represent- ations in modern life. Christianity marks the advent of what is simply a new Kingdom. Its distinctions from the Kingdom below it are fundamental. It demands from its members activities and responses of an altogether novel order. It is, in the conception of its Founder,
374 CLASSIFICATION.
a Kingdom ftfr which all its adherents must henceforth exclusively live and work, and which opens its gates alone upon those who, having counted the cost, are prepared to follow it if need be to the death. The surrender -Christ demanded was absolute. Every aspi- rant for membership must seek^rs^ the King- dom of God. And in order to enforce the demand of allegiance, or rather with an uncon- sciousness which contains the finest evidence for its justice, He even assumed the title of King — a claim which in other circumstances, and were these not the symbols of a higher royalty, seems so strangely foreign to one who is meek and lowly in heart.
But this imperious claim of a Kingdom upon its members is not peculiar to Christianity. It is the law in all departments of Xature that •every organism must live for its Kingdom. And in defining living 'for the higher King- dom as the condition of living in it, Christ enunciates a principle which all Nature has prepared us to expect. Every province has its peculiar exactions, every Kingdom levies upon its subjects the tax of an exclusive obedience, •and punishes disloyalty always with death. It was the neglect of this principle — that every organism must live for its Kingdom if it is to live in it — which first slowly depopulated the •spiritual world. The example of its Founder •ceased to find imitators, and the consecration of His early followers came to be regarded as a superfluous enthusiasm. And it is this same misconception of the fundamental principle
CLASSIFICATION. 375
of all Kingdoms that has deprived modern Christianity of its vitality. The failure to re- gard the exclusive claims of Christ as m.>re- than accidental, rhetorical, or ideal ; the fail- ure to discern the essential difference between his Kingdom and all other systems based on the lines of natural religion, and therefore merely Organic ; in a word, the general neglect of the claims of Christ as the Founder of a new and higher Kingdom — these have taken the very heart from the religion of Christ and left its evangel without power to impress or bless the world. Until even religious men see the uniqueness of Christ's society, until they acknowledge to the full extent its claim to be nothing less than a new Kingdom, they will continue the hopeless attempt to live for two Kingdoms at once. And hence the value of a more explicit Classification. For probably the most of the difficulties of trying to live the Christian life arise from attempting to half- live it.
As a merely verbal matter, this identification of the Spiritual World with what are known to Science as Kingdoms, necessitates an ex- planation. The suggested relation of the Kingdom of Christ to the Mineral and Animal Kingdom does not, of course, depend upon the accident that the Spiritual World is named in the sacred writings by the same word. This certainly lends an appearance of fancy to the generalization : and one feels tempted at first to dismiss it with a smile. But, in truth, it is no mere play on the word Kingdom*
376 CLASSIFICATION.
Science demands the classification of every organism. And here is an organism of a unique kind, a living energetic spirit, a new creature which, by an act of generation, has been begotten of God. Starting from the point that the spiritual life is to be studied bio- logically, we must at once proceed, as the first step in the scientific examination of this organ, ism, to enter it in its appropriate class. Xow two Kingdoms, at the present time, are known to Science — the Inorganic and the Organic. It does not belong to the Inorganic Kingdom, because it lives. It does not belong to the Organic Kingdom, because it is endowed with a kind of Life infinitely removed from either the vegetal or animal. Where then shall it be classed? "We are left without an alternative. There being no Kingdom known to Science which can contain it, we must construct one. Or rather we must include in the programme of Science a Kingdom already constructed but the place of which in science has not yet been recognized. That Kingdom is the Kingdom of God.
Taking now this larger view of the content of science, we may leave the case of the individ- ual and pass on to outline the scheme of Nature as a whole. The general conception will be as follows : —
First, we find at the bottom of everything the Mineral or Inorganic Kingdom. Its charac- teristics are, first, that so far as the sphere above it is concerned it is dead ; second, that although dead it furnishes the physical basis of
CLASSIFICATION. 37 1
life to the Kingdom next in order. It is thus absolutely essential to the Kingdom above it. And the more minutely the detailed structure and ordering of the whole fabric are invest- igated it becomes increasingly apparent that the Inorganic Kingdom is the preparation for, and the prophecy of, the Organic.
Second, we come to the world next in order, the world containing plant, and animal, and man, the Organic Kingdom. Its characteristics are, first, that so far as the sphere above it is concerned it is dead; and, second, although dead it supplies in turn the basis of life to the Kingdom next in order. And the more mi- nutely the detailed structure and ordering of the whole fabric are investigated, it is obvious, in turn, that the Organic Kingdom is the prep- aration for, and the prophecy of, the Spirit- ual.
Third, and highest, we reach the Spiritual Kingdom, or the Kingdom of Heaven. What its characteristics are, relatively to any hypo- thetical higher Kingdom, necessarily remain unknown. That the Spiritual, in turn, may be the preparation for, and the prophecy of, something still higher is not impossible. But the very conception of a Fourth Kingdom tran- scends us, and if it exist, the Spiritual organism, by the analogy, must remain at present wholly dead to it.
The warrant for adding this Third Kingdom consists, as just stated, in the fact that there are organisms which from their peculiar origin, nature, and destiny cannot be fitly entered in
378 CLASSIFICATION.
either of the two Kingdoms now known to science. The Second Kingdom is proclaimed by the advent upon the stage of the First, of once-born organisms. The Third is ushered in by the appearance, among these once-born, organisms, of forms of life which have been born again — twice-born organisms. The classi- fication, therefore, is based, from the scientific side on certain facts of embryology and on the Law of Biogenesis ; and from the theological side on certain facts of experience and on the doctrine of Regeneration. To those who hold either to Biogenesis or to Regeneration, there is no escape from a Third Kingdom.1
There is, in this conception of a high and spiritual organism rising out of the highest point of the Organic Kingdom, in the hypoth- esis of the Spiritual Kingdom itself, a Third Kingdom following the Second in sequence as
Philosophical classifications in this direction (see for instance Godet's "Old Testament Studies," pp. 2-40), owing to their neglect of the facts of Biogenesis can never satisfy the biologist — any more than the above will wholly satisfy the philosopher. Both are needed. Kothe in his " Aphorisms, strikingly notes one point : " Es ist beach tens werth, wie in der Schopfung immer aus der Auflosung der nachst niederen Stuf e die nachst hohere hervorgeht, so dass jene immer das Substrat zur Erzeu- gung dieser Kraft der schopferischen Einwirkung bildet. (Wie es denn nicht anders sein kann bei einer Entwick- lung der Kreatur aus sich selbst.) Aus den zersetzten Elementen erheben sich das Mineral, aus dem verwitter- ten Material die Pflanze, aus der verwesten Pflanze das Thier. So erhebt sich auch aus dem in die Elemente zuriicksinkenden Materiellen Menschen der Geist, das geistige Geschopf."— "Stille Stunden," p. 64
CL A SSIFICA TION. 379
orderly as the Second follows the First, a King- dom utilizing the materials of both the King- doms beneath it, continuing their laws, and, above all, accounting for these lower Kingdoms in a legitimate way and complementing them in the only known way — there is in all this a suggestion of the greatest of modern scientific doctrines, the Evolution hypothesis, too im- pressive to pass unnoticed. The strength of the doctrine of Evolution, at least in its broader out- lines, is now such that its verdict on any biologi- cal question is a consideration of moment. And if any further defence is needed for the idea of a Third Kingdom it may be found in the singular harmony of the whole conception with this great modern truth. It might even be asked whether a complete and consistent theory of Evolution does not really demand such a conception? Why should Evolution stop with the Organic ? It is surely obvious that the complement of Evolution is Advolu- tion, and the inquiry, Whence has all this system of things come, is, after all, of minor importance compared with the question, Whither does all this tend? Science, as such, may have little to say on such a question. And it is perhaps impossible, with such facul- ties as we now possess, to imagine an Evolution with a future as great as its past. So stupend- ous is the development from the atom to the man that no point can be fixed in the future as distant from what man is now as he is from the atom. But it has been given to Christianity to disclose the lines of a further Evolution. And
380 CLA SSIFICA TION.
if Science also professes to offer a further Evolu- tion, not the most sanguine evolutionist will venture to contrast it, either as regards the dig- nity of its methods, the magnificence of its aims, or the certainty of its hopes, with the pros- pects of the Spiritual Kingdom. That Science has a prospect of some sort to hold out to man is not denied. But its limits are already marked. Mr. Herbert Spencer, after investigating its possibilities fully, tells us, " Evolution has an impassable limit." l It is the distinct claim of the third Kingdom that this limit is not final. Christianity opens a way to a further develop- ment— a development apart from which the magnificent past of Nature has been in vain, and without which Organic Evolution, in spite of the elaborateness of its processes and the vastness of its achievements, is simply a stupendous cid de sac. Far as Nature carries on the task, vast as is the distance between the atom and the man, she has to lay down her tools when the work is just begun. Man, her most rich and finished product, marvellous in his complexity, all but Divine in sensibility, is to the Third Kingdom not even a shapeless embryo. The old chain of processes must begin again on the higher plane if there is t o be a further Evolution. The highest organism of the Second Kingdom — simple, immobile, dead as the inorganic crystal, towards the sphere above — must be vitalized afresh. Then from a mass of all but homogeneous "pro-
i "First Principles," p. 440,
CLA SSIF1CA TION. 381
toplasm " the organism must pass through all the stages of differentiation and integration, growing in perfectness and beauty under the unfolding of the higher Evolution, until it reaches the Infinite Complexity, the Infinite Sensibility, God. So the spiritual carries on the marvellous process to which all lower Nature ministers, and perfects it when the ministry of lower Nature fails.
This conception of a further Evolution carries with it the final answer to the charge that, as regards morality, the Spiritual world has noth- ing to offer man that is not already within his reach. Will it be contended that a perfect morality is already within the reach of the natural man? What product of the organic creation has ever attained to the fulness of the stature of Him who is the Founder and Type of the Spiritual Kingdom? What do men know of the qualities enjoined in His Beati- tudes, or at what value do they even estimate them ? Proved by results, it is surely already decided that on merely natural lines moral perfection is unattainable. And even Science is beginning to waken to the momentous truth that Man, the highest product of the Organic Kingdom, is a disappointment. But even were it otherwise, if even in prospect the hopes of the Organic Kingdom could be justified, its standard of beauty is not so high, nor, in spite of the dreams of Evolution, is its guarantee so certain. The goal of the organisms of the Spiritual World is nothing less than this — to be " holy as He is holy, and pure as He is pure."
382 CLASSIFICATION.
And by the Law of Conformity to Type, their final perfection is secured. The inward nature must develop out according to its Type, until the consummation of oneness with God is reached.
These proposals of the Spiritual Kingdom in the direction of Evolution are at least entitled to be carefully considered by Science. Christ- ianity defines the highest conceivable future for mankind. It satisfies the Law of Continuity. It guarantees the necessary conditions for carrying on the organism successfully, from stage to stage. It provides against the ten- dency to Degeneration. And finally, instead of limiting the yearning hope of final perfection to the organisms of a future age, — an age so remote that the hope for thousands of years must still be hopeless, — instead of inflicting this cruelty on intelligences mature enough to know perfection and earnest enough to wish it, Christianity puts the prize within immediate reach of man.
This attempt to incorporate the Spiritual Kingdom in the scheme of Evolution, may be met by what seems at first sight a fatal ob- jection. So far from the idea of a Spiritual Kingdom being in harmony with the doctrine of Evolution, it may be said that it is violently opposed to it. It announces a new Kingdom starting off suddenly on a different plane and in direct violation of the primary principle of development. Instead of carrying the organic evolution further on its own lines, theology at a given point interposes a sudden and hope-
CLASSIFICATION. 383
less barrier — the barrier between the natural and the spiritual — and insists that the evolu- tionary process must begin again at the begin- ning. At this point, in fact, Nature acts per *altum. This is no Evolution, but a Catas- trophe— such a Catastrophe as must be fatal to any consistent development hypothesis.
On the surface this objection seems final — but it is only on the surface. It arises from taking a too narrow view of what Evolution is. It takes evolution in zoology for Evolu- tion as a whole. Evolution began, let us say, "with some primeval nebulous mass in which lay potentially all future worlds. Under the evolutionary hand, the amorphous cloud broke up, condensed, took definite shape, and in the line of true development assumed a gradually increasing complexity. Finally there emerged the cooled and finished earth, highly differ- entiated, so to speak, complete and fully equipped. And what followed? Let it be well observed — a Catastrophe. Instead of carrying the process further, the Evolution, if this is Evolution, here also abruptly stops. A sudden and hopeless barrier — the barrier be- tween the Inorganic and the Organic — inter- poses, and the process has to begin again at the beginning with the creation of Life. Here then is a barrier placed by Science at the close of the Inorganic similar to the barrier placed by Theology at the close of the Organic. Science has used every effort to abolish thig first barrier, but there it still stands challeng- ing the attention of the modern world, and
384 CLASSIFICATION.
no consistent theory of Evolution can fail to reckon with it. Any objection, then, to the Catastrophe introduced by Christianity be- tween the Natural and the Spiritual Kingdoms applies with equal force against the barrier which Science places between the Inorganic and the Organic. The reserve of Life in either case is a fact, and a fact of exceptional significance.
What then becomes of Evolution? Do these two great barriers destroy it ? By no means. But they make it necessary to frame a larger doctrine. And the doctrine gains im- measurably by such an enlargement. For now the case stands thus : Evolution, in harmony with its own law that progress is from the simple to the complex, begins itself to pass towards the complex. The materialistic Evo- lution, so to speak, is a straight line. Making all else complex, it alone remains simple — un- scientifically simple. But as Evolution unfolds everything else, it is now seen to be itself slowly unfolding. The straight line is coming out gradually in curves. At a given point a new force appears deflecting it ; and at another given point a new force appears deflecting that. These points are not unrelated points ; these forces are not unrelated forces. The arrange- ment is still harmonious, and the development throughout obeys the evolutionary law in be- ing from the general to the special, from the lower to the higher. What we are reaching, in short, is nothing less than the evolution ojf Evolution.
CLA SSIFICA TION. 385
Now to both Science and Christianity, and especially to Science, this enrichment of Evo- lution is important. And, on the part of Christianity, the contribution to the system of Nature of a second barrier is of real scientific value. At first it may seem merely to increase the difficulty. But in reality it abolishes it. However paradoxical it seems, it is neverthe- less the case that two barriers are more easy to understand than one, — two mysteries are less mysterious than a single mystery. For it requires two to constitute a harmony. One by itself is a Catastrophe. But, just as the recurrence of an eclipse at different periods makes an eclipse no breach of Continuity ; just as the fact that the astronomical conditions necessary to cause a Glacial Period will in the remote future again be fulfilled constitutes the Great Ice Age a normal phenomenon ; so the recurrence of two periods associated with special phenomena of Life, the second higher, and by the law necessarily higher, is no viola- tion of the principle of Evolution. Thus even in the matter of adding a second to the one barrier of Nature, the Third Kingdom may al- ready claim to complement the Science of the Second. The overthrow of Spontaneous Gen- eration has left a break in Continuity which continues to put Science to confusion. Alone, it is as abnormal and perplexing to the intellect as the first eclipse. But if the Spiritual King- dom can supply Science with a companion-phe- nomenon, the most exceptional thing in the scientific sphere falls within the domain of 25
386 CLASSIFICATION.
Law. This, however, is no more than might be expected from a Third Kingdom. True to its place as the highest of the Kingdoms, it ought to embrace all that lies beneath and give to the First and Second their final ex- planation.
How much more in the under-Kingdoms might be explained or illuminated upon this principle, however tempting might be the in- quiry, we cannot turn aside to ask. But the rank of the Third Kingdom in the order of Evolution implies that it holds the key to much that is obscure in the world around — much that, apart from it, must always remain obscure. A single obvious instance will serve to illustrate the fertility of the method. What has this Kingdom to con- tribute to Science with regard to the problem of the origin of Life itself ? Taking this as an isolated phenomenon, neither the Second King- dom, nor the Third, apart from revelation, has any thing to pronounce. But when we observe the companion-phenomenon hi the higher Kingdom, the question is simplified. It will be disputed by none that the source of Life in the Spiritual World is God. And as the same Law of Biogenesis prevails in both spheres, we may reason from the higher to the lower and affirm it to be at least likely that the origin of life there has been the same.
There remains yet one other objection of a aomewhat different order, and which is only referred to because it is certain to be raised by those who fail to appreciate the distinctions of
CLASSIFICATION. 387
Biology. Those whose sympathies are rather with Philosophy than with Science may incline to dispute the allocation of so high an organism as man to the merely vegetal and animal King- dom. Recognizing the immense moral and intellectual distinctions between him and even the highest animal, they would introduce a third barrier between man and animal — a bar- rier even greater than that between the Inor- ganic and the Organic. Now, no science can be blind to these distinctions. The only ques- tion is whether they are of such a kind as to make it necessary to classify man in a separate Kingdom. And to this the answer of Science is in the negative. Modern Science knows only two Kingdoms — the Inorganic and the Organic. A barrier between man and animal there may be, but it is a different barrier from that which separates Inorganic from Organic. But even were this to be denied, and in spite of all science it will be denied, it would make no difference as regards the general question. It would merely interpose another Kingdom between the Organic and the Spiritual, the other relations remaining as before. Any one, therefore, with a theory to support as to the exceptional creation of the Human Race will find the present classification elastic enough for his purpose. Philosophy, of course, may propose another arrangement of the Kingdoms- if it chooses. It is only contended that this is the order demanded by Biology. To add another Kingdom mid-way between the Or- ganic and the Spiritual, could that be justified
388 CLASSIFICATION.
at any future time on scientific grounds, would be a mere question of further detail.
Studies in Classification, beginning with considerations of quality, usually end with a reference to quantity. And though one would willingly terminate the inquiry on the threshold of such a subject, the example of Revelation not less than the analogies of Nature press for at least a general statement.
The broad impression gathered from the ut- terances of the Founder of the Spiritual King- dom is that the number of organisms to be in- cluded in it is to be comparatively small. The outstanding characteristic of the new So- ciety is to be its selectness. " Many are called," said Christ, " but few are chosen." And when one recalls, on the one hand, the conditions of membership, and, on the other, observes the lives and aspirations of average men, the force of the verdict becomes apparent. In its bear- ing upon the general question, such a conclu- sion is not without suggestiveness. Here again is another evidence of the radical nature of Christianity. That " few are chosen " indi- cates a deeper view of the relation of Christ's Kingdom to the world, and stricter qualifica- tions of membership, than lie on the surface or are allowed for in the ordinary practice of religion.
The analogy of Nature upon this point is not less striking — it may be added, not less solemn. It is an open secret, to be read in a hundred analogies from the world around, that of the millions of possible entrants for advance-
CLASSIFICATION. 389
ment in any department of Nature the number ultimately selected for preferment is small. Here also "many are called and few are chosen." The analogies from the waste of seed, of pollen, of human lives, are too familiar to be quoted. In certain details, possibly, these comparisons are inappropriate. But there are other analogies, wider and more just, which strike deeper into the system of Nature. A comprehensive view of the whole field of Nature discloses the fact that the circle of the chosen slowly contracts as we rise in the scale of being. Some mineral, but not all, becomes vegetable ; some vegetable, but not all, becomes animal; some animal, but not all, becomes human, some human, but not all, becomes Divine. Thus the area narrows. At the base is the mineral, most broad and simple ; the spiritual at the apex, smallest, but most highly differentiated. So form rises above form, King- dom above Kingdom. Quantity decreases as quality increases.
The gravitation of the whole system of Nature towards quality is surely a phenomenon of commanding interest. And if among the more recent revelations of Nature there is one thing more significant for Religion than an- other, it is the majestic spectacle of the rise of Kingdoms towards scarcer yet nobler forms, and simpler yet diviner ends. Of the early stage, the first development of the earth from the nebulous matrix of space, Science speaks with reserve. The second, the evolution of each individual from the simple protoplasmic
390 CLASSIFICATION.
cell to the formed adult, is proved. The still wider evolution, not of solitary individuals, but of all the individuals within each province — in the vegetal world from the unicellular cryptogam to the highest phanerogam, in the animal world from the amorphous amoeba to Man — is at least suspected, the gradual rise of types being at all events a fact. But now, at last, we see the Kingdoms themselves evolving. And that supreme law which has guarded the development from simple to complex in matter, in individual, in sub-Kingdom, and in Kingdom, until only two or three great Kingdoms re- main, now begin at the beginning again, direct- ing the evolution of these million-peopled worlds as if they were * simple cells or organisms. Thus, what applies to the individual applies to the family, what applies to the family applies to the Kingdom, what applies to the Kingdom applies to the Kingdoms. And so, out of the infinite complexity there rises an infinite sim- plicity, the foreshadowing of a final unity, of that
" One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves." l
This is the final triumph of Continuity, the beart secret of Creation, the unspoken pro- phecy of Christianity. To Science, defining it as a working principle, this mighty process of amelioration is simply Involution. To Christi- anity, discerning the end through the means,
i**In Memoriam."
CLA SSIFICA TION. 391
it is Redemption. These silent and patient processes, elaborating, eliminating, developing all from the first of time, conducting the evolu- tion from millennium to millennium with un- altering purpose and unfaltering power, are the early stages in the redemptive work — the un- seen approach of that Kingdom whose strange mark is that it " cometh without observation." And these Kingdoms rising tier above tier in ever increasing sublimity and beauty, their foundations visibly fixed in the past, their pro- gress, and the direction of their progress, being facts in Nature still, are the signs which, since the Magi saw His star in the East, have never been wanting from the firmament of truth, and which in every age with growing clearness to the wise, and with ever-gathering mystery to the uninitiated, proclaim that "the Kingdom of God is at hand."
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