een ray MR ees sere vee ies Fe at fee Vacs 2 fe fara: Ly ; paceieiee Bie tr. it} +h f onset aS os Bet ae Sept epe Te, : by evan oi isis Eien tat, ie : Hpeneleet ered pr erenry eee bs Pacd Site 0s St ny ckgt Hasse rae . A - * see Seto : : sphere Ses fi rear r ‘ ; = ri pinata sa) : Pea Fee Fate) Gita ky: Reeaie Ror Fe nett, 53 7 pe preteee ce yiete: eesitie betes pele: raeryaen : ie chy ag deeres ee ot eo te ea esr tgeasaes Pr Retehe at oie rar oe Uriert yesehea ty PESADOS eb St eaeaaae aa é Siva reeneaeel Pyo SSS Sede F ne ae ie Fay a5) att 3% sus ita asters sctae rhrgen 2) Pe eeT haa aie reser st he t on ry Soe ee me Silat —_ ee a a ap aa ae o es oF "4 f 5 7» 7 ae ds Lr mek ie CHRIST THE TRUTH THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK + BOSTON -: CHICAGO + DALLAS ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limrrzp LONDON * BOMBAY * CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lap. TORONTO CHRISTY DHE Tl RUN¢&H PONG SOY, BY. WILLIAM “TEMPLE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER Nem York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1924 All rights reserved CopyricHt, 1924, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1924. Printed in the United States of America TO MY WIFE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/christtruthessayOOtemp PREFACE THis book is a sequel, or rather a companion, to Mens Creatrix, which was published in 1917. The , earlier book was mainly philosophical in its aim; this | is mainly theological. That is to say, I tried in Mens | Creatrix first to set out a philosophic view, without any _ deliberate reference to Christian revelation or experi- ence, and then to show that the Incarnation in fact supplied the one great need of philosophy. But I knew that I was moving away from philosophy and that Mens Creatrix would be my only serious attempt at the statement of a philosophical position in the usually accepted sense of the word. I always hoped, however, to follow this with a theological book which should begin where Mens Creatrix left off and work backwards from there. The thought in this book follows that course. It is written with the Christian revelation full in view from the outset. But for purposes of exposition I | have found it better to work in from the circumference to the heart of the Christian position, and then out again. I want to make it clear that this method is adopted for purposes of exposition only. I make no attempt to outline a philosophic approach to belief in God. That was done, as far as I can do it, in the for- mer volume. Here I am trying to set out a whole view of the world and life as it appears to one mind at least from an avowedly Christian standpoint. The vill PREFACE order employed was adopted because it was necessary to fix the meaning of certain terms before the central theme could be discussed. It has been my aim to set forth a complete outline, but 1t is worth while, perhaps, to point out that the greater part of the argument is independent of the particular doctrine of Value developed at the outset. My desire to write a companion volume to Mens Creairix was fostered by a suggestion from Bishop Gore that I should expand a footnote in that work into a treatise. The footnote in question is on page 360 and runs as follows: ‘When the human mind tries to conceive the Eter- nal and Omniscient God, it always pictures Him as knowing all Time at a moment of Time,—as, for ex- ample, knowing now all the past and future. But the whole point of the argument is that while all Time is the object of the Eternal comprehension, the comprehending Mind is extra-temporal and _ there- fore does not grasp it now or at any other Time, but precisely Eternally. Thus we turn the flank of Berg- son’s argument that Finalism is ‘only inverted mech- anism,’ and that by means of a treatment of Time which is based on his own.” This footnote was connected in my own mind with another, which is on page 318: “Tt is to be remembered that we have not the World-History without the Incarnation as one expres- sion of the Divine Will and the Life of the Incarnate as another; for that Life is a part of History, though PREFACE ix it reveals the principle of the whole, and it is through its occurrence in the midst of History that History is fashioned into an exposition of the principle there revealed. We have here a series which is part of an- other series and is yet perfectly representative of it. (Cf. the Supplementary Essay in Royce’s The World and the Individual.) But here the series which is contained (the Life, Death, Resurrection of Christ) only becomes representative of the series which con- tains it (the entire history of the world) in virtue of the influence which by occurring within the latter it is able to exercise upon it. Therefore, though Transcend- ence and Immanence are fused into one, the Tran- | scendent aspect is always dominant.” Those two footnotes are a summary of what I have tried to set forth here in some detail. I am convinced that one reason why comparatively few men of the highest ability and education are at present offering themselves for ordination is that the intellectual atmosphere is dominated by a philosophy’ which leaves no room for a specific Incarnation. This philosophy is not materialist or atheist; it is both spiritual and theistic; but the idea of God which it reaches is such as to preclude His ever doing anything in particular in any other sense than that in which He does everything in general. I believe that a very slight touch to the intellectual balance may make the scales incline the other way. Part of the trouble is that theologians have left the field of most general inquiry too largely to non-theological philosophers; they have tended to write either history or detailed x PREFACE discussion of particular doctrines. What is needed is the exposition of the Christian idea of God, life and the world, or, in other words, a Christo-centric — metaphysics. "a | The building of such a scheme of thought out of the over-abundant intellectual material available in our generation must be the work of many minds, not of one—especially if that one is primarily occupied with administration, policy, and practical movements. My contribution must be a small one; I hope it may lead, even by the process of its own refutation if need be, to more substantial contributions from better qualified minds. Most of my reading and a great part of my writing for three years past has been planned with a view to this volume. The first draft of Chapter I. was written as a paper to be read at a meeting of the British Philo- sophical Societies in Manchester in the summer of 1922, and afterwards appeared in Mind, N. S. 124. Chapter VII. and most of Chapter XIV. were first written as lectures delivered in Manchester Cathedral, and the former was published with others of the same series by Messrs. Palmer & Sons under the title Funda- mentals of the Faith. Part of Chapter III. appeared in The Pilgrim for April 1921. To all who are con- cerned I offer my thanks for permission to republish. My thanks are also due in a special degree to Mrs. Duff, whose delightful hospitality in the Isle of Wight during successive summer holidays provided the peace of mind and body without which the book could never have been either planned or written; to the Rev. L. W. Grensted, who has read the whole in ”= PREFACE xi typescript and made many valuable suggestions; to Canon Raven for searching comments on the first draft of Chapter VIII.; and to Canon Quick, who has read the proofs, and to whom I owe many improve- ments both in the argument itself and in its expression. W. MANCHESTER. BISHOPSCOURT, MANCHESTER, June 1924. re Ly ENE seh ‘eat A RIL A gh at Sova i “up } ce rey aed F COTA ERY t ew ey es COT ar ea bene aa u WA’ ‘ord f ti iy 9 N deal Hoedtvle iat eae eA hey , eae atk | . SCM OS YS CUR) SA RR ; oF a dais iad beat, A a ‘ Ay he Wats |] tet } yen Ts Nera by se oe CONTENTS PART I OUTER CIRCLE PAGE CHAPTER I LAE OLRUCTURE OF) IRBATATY Oe Weel. st. Sepang ass 3 CHAPTER II Tue APPREHENSION OF VALUE. ..........00ccceeeeeeee 27 CHAPTER III IRELIGIOUS ECXPERIENCH 8 Pus Pero ee ec cla bletele weet 42 PART II INNER CIRCLE CHAPTER IV ABE NATURE OF MAND Dope ti a OLGA e os oS 59 CHAPTER’ V xiv CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER VI THE SNATURE. OF GFOD 20 05.0 24. ition othe eis hl elves errs IIO PART III THE CORE OF THE ARGUMENT CHAPTER VII HE GODHEAD OF JESUSI(CHRIST coca a eee Oe ete 125 CHAPTER VIII (LHECERSON, OF CHRIST. On). Sa ane nuptial sea some 147 CHAPTER IX THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH............eeecees 184 PART IV INNER CIRCLE CHAPTER X GOD IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION............... 207 CONTENTS XV PAGE CHAPTER XI ROTERNITYTAND ELISTORY eres Baa hs see lc elite ne nat onions 223 CHAPTER XII MAN IN THE LIGHT OF THE INCARNATION............05. 253 PART V OUTER CIRCLE CHAPTER XIII IWORSHIP’AND SACRAMENTS «0072s ape auteis fis tie ore we ore ones 273 CHAPTER XIV SPEER ATONE MENT ef yan son fetes aioe eee wile aon Maree 302 CHAPTER XV LOVE DIVINE: THE BLESSED TRINITY... . 1.0.0. csceoes 327 ray ae nf a ey ae en ae ‘GAR Acs ROR Ba Per ee mehdit toh (ihe iv ttc’ ¥ ie ana Men y a sie be un a4 ‘ 4 wi Figh diee av es FON Vea SA fey ine et bag PI Ay, u Py PART! OUTER CIRCLE as 8, eh OA Soul | LF ab? iY A AT he ia fo Pe Bp: id ¢ 4 a As ie ae ' ? + Me £ be! \iean iat Ver 3 algal y ae AT », ' 4 + ‘ rq GHiRIST bribe Geir CHAPTER I THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY "06 € 4 MA Lo ¢€ \ ie X / i ca) € 6 KOO MOS OUTW, CHov OpaTOV TA OPATA TEPLEXOV, ELKOV TOV A Q PY e, a \ »~ v4 4 Ms vontov beds aicytos, meywrtos Kat adpuiatos KaAdioTOS TE Kal , / ® > \ ¢ ¥ +” TeXewTartos yéyovev els ovpavds dde povoyevns @V.—PLATO. “The world of reality, we may say in a word, is the world of values.” —F.H. BRADLEY. It is abundantly clear that one of the chief char- acteristics of contemporary philosophy is the place which it gives to the concept.of Value. There is noth-— of ing unprecedented in this. Indeed it is not possible to give a higher place to Value than Plato did when he made the Good the supreme principle in Reality, or required of Anaxagoras that, in order to illustrate the supremacy of Reason, he should prove the earth to be either round or flat by showing which it is better that it should be. Aristotle, whom no one has yet censured for sentimentalism, similarly clinches his argument for the Unity of God or the governing principle with the maxim and the quotation: ra 6é dvra ov BotXerar modtTevecOat, KaKOs. “otk dyabdv ToAvuKotpavin’ ets Kolpavos éoTw.”? But though not un- precedented, the prominence of Value in the thought of our time is characteristic. To the religious thinker, 1 Metaphysics, A ad fin. 4 CHRIST THE TRUTH it is welcome. And yet there is a remarkable indefi- niteness in the current use of the term, and the re- lation of Value to Reality or Substance is by most writers either not discussed or is very sketchily out- lined. The structure of Reality, as it presents itself to us, seems to be as follows: It consists of many grades, of which each presupposes those lower than itself, and of which each finds its own completion or perfect development only in so far as it is possessed or in- dwelt by that which is above it. This seems to involve an infinite regress, and suggests an infinite progress. Whether there is in fact a lowest and a highest term in this scale of finite existences I do not know, and I do not greatly care. In a former book! I have tried to show that the infinite series is not necessarily meaningless in logic or futile in ethics. At present I am not concerned with the problem of lowest and highest terms, but with the facts before us, which may fall midway between such terms. Moreover, I am rather tabulating impressions than constructing a system, though the tabulation is of interest because it suggests the principle of a system. To make my present meaning clear it will be enough to take the broad divisions: Matter, Life, Mind, Spirit. These grades may be for our present purpose indifferently regarded as various entities or as different modes of action and reaction. Matter is itself a term covering many grades; so is Life. But each has sufficient identity in itself and sufficient distinctness from the others for the requirements of the argument. 1 Mens Creatrix (Macmillan, 1917). THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 5 The term Matter is here taken to cover the sub- stances, or the modes of action and reaction, which are studied in the sciences of Physics and Chemistry. It is at once quite clear that those sciences give no account of the self-movement which is one characteris- tic of Life, or of the comprehension of spaces and times which is one characteristic of Mind. The lower cannot explain the higher. But that is not all. The living organism has in its material constitution a unity of differences, a subtlety of codrdination, a spon- taneity of adaptation, that no knowledge of Physics and Chemistry would enable the observer to antic- ipate. The material only reveals its full potentialities when Life possesses and indwells it. The later devel- opment reveals what had all along been potential in the earlier; but no knowledge of the earlier apart from that development would have made possible a predic- tion of the development. Matter only reveals what it really is when Life supervenes upon it. Similarly Life only reveals what it really is when Mind supervenes upon it. No study of zodlogy and biology will enable the student to predict the occur- rence among living things of the mathematician or the financier. The use of faculties, which at first are used for mere survival, in the interest of ends that have nothing at all to do with survival, must occur in fact before it can be anticipated in theory. So, too, Mind as intellect only shows what it can be and do when it is guided by Mind as Spirit. I should find the differentia of Spirit in the sense of Absolute Value and therefore of obligation; this, at its height, is Love or personal union. Because Spirit is, or has, the sense 6 CHRIST THE TRUTH of absolute value it also is, or has, the capacity for fellowship with God. The claim made upon Life by Art and Science cannot be accounted for in terms of calculation; still less can the self-sacrifice of the hero or the martyr. And, if Religion is to be trusted, even Spirit (as known in our experience) only reveals what it can be and do when it is possessed by that Highest Being, whom we call Spirit because Spirit is the highest grade of Reality known to us. It is to be admitted, and indeed emphasized, that these “‘grades”’ taken singly are abstractions. Reality is a continuous whole within which the mind of each individual finds itself. The mind draws for itself the distinctions which it makes in this continuous whole— the distinction of Self and Not-self being one of the most fundamental. To treat either the Self or the Not-self in isolation, or to speak of any of the dis- tinguishable elements in Reality without reference to their setting, is to ignore some part of the truth con- cerning them, and will become a falsification unless we remember what we are doing. But abstraction is an inevitable phase of thought, and we need not shrink from it. Also we have to remember that Reality is either supra-temporal and supra-spatial, or else is continuous in time as truly as it is continuous in space. Consequently, in whatever sense we may consider the Past in abstraction from the Present and Future, in just that same sense we may consider Mat- ter in abstraction from Life. Geology may legit- imately aspire to the apprehension of truth concern- ing the world as it was before Life appeared. We begin, then, with the conception of Reality as THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 7 existing in many grades, each of which finds its own completion or perfect development only in so far as it is possessed or indwelt by that which is above it. But we then notice that each depends for its actuality upon those which are below it. Matter itself as experienced by us can be reduced to what is simpler than itself, whether to a, B, and y particles! or still more ultimately to Space-Time.? Life is unknown apart from living organisms, which are Matter in- formed by Life. Mind is unknown except in reason- ing, living organisms. Spirit is unknown except in conscientious, reasoning, living organisms. Whether the higher grades can exist apart, there seems to be no means of deciding; in our experience they never do. Thus we see each grade dependent for its existence on the grades below, and dependent for its own full actualization on the grade or grades above. Such seems, apart from any theory of its origin or raison d’étre, to be in fact the structure of Reality. Now, if we ask for an explanation of the Universe as a whole we are bound to formulate the answer in terms of Will. This is a dogmatic statement of a controversial position; its justification will be more apparent as we proceed. Here I would only submit that there is in our experience one, and only one, self-explanatory principle—namely, Purpose or Will. No doubt, if any one can believe in a purpose with no will behind it, we should have to say ‘‘Purpose”’ only, leaving “Will” as a precarious inference; but 1 Or “emanations,” if ‘‘particles” be regarded as an incorrect term. 2J must not be understood to accept this modern amalgam as really the ultimate constituent of the material universe. 8 CHRIST THE TRUTH as it appears that Purpose and Will are terms that mutually imply each other, we may speak of either indifferently. There is a “‘problem of evil,” but there is not in the same sense any problem of good. When we find as the cause of any phenomenon an intelligent will which chose to cause that phenomenon to occur, we raise no further questions, unless we fail to see how that will came to seek this occurrence as good. We may be puzzled by the way a man exer- cises choice; but our problem here is not, as a rule, a problem of efficient causation. When we sym- pathize, we are not puzzled. If I say of any one “I cannot understand acting like that,’ I do not mean that I cannot give a psychological analysis of the motives of the action; I mean that I cannot imagine myself doing it. When in the causal regress we arrive at a will, the regress is at an end, and to under- stand means, not to give a causal explanation, but to sympathize. We have reached an ultimate term. And when we do sympathize, our mind raises no more questions. The only explanation of the Universe that would really explain it, in the sense of providing to the question why it exists an answer that raises no further question, would be the demonstration that it is the creation of a Will which in the creative act seeks an intelligible good. But that is Theism. Theism of some kind is the only theory of the universe which could really explain it. Theism may be un- tenable; if it is, the universe is ultimately inexplicable. Merely to show how it fits together as a rational system does not fully explain it, for we are left still asking—why does it exist at all? When once that THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 9 question is asked the answer must be found in Theism or nowhere. I need hardly say that I do not advance this outline argument either as the only defence of Theism or as a sufficient intellectual basis for it. The whole body of argument that is articulated by Professor Pringle- Pattison and Professor Sorley in their Gifford Lectures, or by Dr. Matthews in his Boyle Lectures, is here presupposed.! But the point which I have just mentioned, and which deserves more attention in my judgment than it generally receives, is the one most germane to the group of considerations with which we are now specially concerned. Other arguments seem to establish the principle that the universe must be interpreted by spiritual rather than by mechanical or other materialistic categories. Other arguments tend to establish the ethical character of the spiritual power or powers that govern the world. Philosoph- ically everything is ready for Theism. But actual belief in a living God rests primarily, as I think, on religious experience, and finds its intellectual support in the reflection that this belief is capable in principle of supplying an explanation of the very existence of the Universe, which no other hypothesis available to us affords any hope of doing. That is no proof. It cannot be laid down as an axiom that there must be some explanation of the existence of the Universe. If the existing scheme of things be internally coherent, 1 Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God; Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God; Matthews, Studies in Christian Philosophy. I have attempted to state my own philosophical approach to Theism in Mens Creatrix; in the present essay Theism is assumed. IO CHRIST THE TRUTH it cannot be said that the intellect imperiously demands more than this for its satisfaction.! It is true that we have to choose between postulating a rational universe and accepting complete skepticism. It is not true that we have to choose between theism and skepticism. I should be very sorry to have to believe that Reality is what Mr. Bradley describes or even what Professor Pringle-Pattison describes. But I could not reject their accounts of it only on the ground that they do not explain its existence as a whole. For while it is an additional advantage in any theory if it can do this, it is not fatal to any theory that it should fail to do this, or even refuse to attempt it. It may be that there is no explanation of Reality itself, and that it is not self-explanatory except in the sense that all its parts support each other in constituting the whole. Or, again, it may be that there is an explanation of Reality, but that it is something wholly inaccessible to the mind of man. There seems no reason to sup- pose that mind, in its human manifestation, either includes, or itself is, the last term in cosmic evolution, and if there is more to follow, then, though human mind would comprehend the lower forms, it would not know at all what constituted the higher forms, and it would be in these, not in human mind, that the explanation of Reality might be found. None the less, if there is an available hypothesis 1 Such a Universe would not be valueless; it would have intellectual value, but no moral value; and if Reason manifests itself (as I should maintain) in the apprehension of ultimate value whereby all other values are either found or brought to cohere with one another and with existence, then such a Universe would not be rational. (I owe this point to Canon Quick.) THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY II which is capable in its own nature of supplying the explanation of Reality, it is thoroughly scientific to experiment with it and see if it can make good its claim. Now, Purpose, as the expression of a Will, is such a principle. But to seek the explanation of the Uni- verse in a Purpose grounded in a Will is Theism; it is the acceptance, provisionally at least, of the doctrine of God as Creator. From religion there comes abun- dant support for this doctrine. To some religions, and notably to the Jewish and Christian religions, it is essential and fundamental. Now, if we assume the structure of Reality to be such as I have outlined, and if we accept (at least for purposes of inquiry) the explanation of it which Theism offers, certain consequences follow, which it is our main purpose at present to trace out. Will acts always for the sake of value, or good, to be created or enjoyed as a result of the action. It is precisely as so acting that it is self-explanatory and intrinsically intelligible. ‘This would lead us to ex- pect that whatever Will creates is either itself good or is a means to good. Moreover, if what is created is good not (or not only) as a means but in itself, this means that its very being or substance is good. I do not go so far as to say that good is the being or substance of all that exists, but we are entitled and even bound by the hypothesis adopted to say that whatever exists must either be a means to something which is substantially good or else be itself substan- tially good. We seem therefore to be led up to a new inquiry into the relations of value and reality. Now, if I may take Professor Pringle-Pattison as 12 CHRIST THE TRUTH an illustrious example of contemporary philosophy, and discuss, not the details of his argument, nor its claims taken as a whole, but the general impression created by it on my own mind, and also (as I find) on many other minds, I would venture to suggest that many of the anxieties with regard to it which that gen- eral impression arouses would vanish if he saw his way to a more thoroughgoing conception of God in terms of Will. For the general impression left on my mind by his great book on the [dea of God, and strengthened by his essay in the volume entitled The Spirit, is that he accepts the Universe as somehow existing, and then finds that it reveals values, which are regarded all the while as being adjectival to it. That they appear at all is a determinant consideration for the philosopher, and yet they appear rather as appendices of an other- wise existing universe than as themselves its con- stitutive elements; and when we reach the Being in whom all values are realized, He hovers uncertainly between two positions, being at one time the Ground of all existence and at another a characteristic of a universe which would apparently continue to exist (though shorn of its values) if He were to cease. And it is the latter position to which He seems to be ulti- mately relegated. I have no doubt that this summary is unjust to Professor Pringle-Pattison. Almost any summary of a theory elaborated with so delicate a balance and an argument so closely knit would be unjust. But at the end of The Idea of God I was left with a sense that this book makes God ad- jectival to the Universe, and the essay in The Spirit removed all doubt on the question. And yet I was THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 13 sure that in the main the Professor was dealing with the matter on right lines and had rendered a great service to philosophy, and especially the philosophy of religion, by following the method which he had chosen. The question with which I am now concerned is this: should we conceive of things as existing inde- pendently, and possessing value as an attribute? or should we think of value as itself the true reality which realizes its various forms through embodying itself in things—or through the creation of things for this purpose by the Divine Will? Now, I believe that our difficulty arises from the fact that Philosophy being an intellectual activity, always tends to depend more upon that search for an ultimate value which is conducted in science than upon the two kindred efforts of ethics and of art. In sci- ence the intellect is not only supreme but sole; it is natural for the intellect to take the methods and op- erations of science not only as its method but also as determining the subject-matter of its Inquiry. That I take to be the essential feature of the heresy of intellectualism. Philosophy must be intellectual or it ceases to be itself. But the intellect always gets its subject-matter from outside itself; it is ready enough to accept it from the physical world, and from its own procedure and results in dealing with the physical world. Itis less ready to accept as the material of its, operations the procedure and results of human activi- 1T should add that in an article in Mind (N.S. 109) the Professor shows that he does not actually regard God as adjectival to the Uni- verse, and does not desire his argument to suggest such a conclusion. But if it does suggest it, that only makes it clearer than ever that the foundations of the argument are incomplete. 14 CHRIST THE TRUTH ties which are either not purely or not at all intellec- tual. Yet for a satisfactory metaphysic it must in- clude these, and indeed (as I think) must give them a determining influence. The goal of Science is on the objective side Reality, on the subjective side Knowl- edge: the goal of Art is on the objective side Beauty, on the subjective side Creation and Appreciation; the goal of Ethics is on the objective side Society, on the subjective side enlightened Conscience and dutiful Action. No doubt both Art and Ethics presuppose Science or Knowledge, and the spirit of Beauty and of Mortality is the same as the spirit of Truth. ‘Love is the mainspring of Logic.” ! But while Art and Ethics include the intellectual element, they contain also emotional and volitional elements, which Science omits with the single exception of the will to know. But these processes, while containing elements not intel- lectual in origin, are susceptible of intellectual treat- ment. Our plea is not that philosophy should cease to be intellectual, but that the material of its intellec- tual inquiry should be drawn as much from Ethics and Art as from Logic or Epistemology. It is apparent that whereas Science ends in Knowledge, which leaves the objective world as it finds it, Art and Ethics aim both at a comprehension of the object and at action which modifies the object. Now, if the intellect is led by its own process to the affirmation, or at least to the supposition, that the explanation of the Universe is to be found in the activity of a Crea- tive Will, it must go on to accept those human ac- tivities which include some creative energy as surer 1 Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 341. THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 15 guides to the constitution of Reality than its own special activity of science, which leaves its object as it finds it. Starting with the general outlook appropriate to science, philosophers have generally made Existence their substantive notion, while Value has become adjectival. It is quite true that Plato spoke of the Idea of Good as éréxerva tis ovotas—which the con- text proves to mean ‘‘above and beyond objective being.” (Republic, vi. 509 B); but he does not follow this up by including ethics and politics in his pro- peedeutic studies; he remains under the predominant influence of geometry. Having apprehended the Ideas of Good, the philosopher is to return to practical affairs and rule his city in the light of this supreme principle. But the study of Ethics and Politics is not called in to help in the apprehension of the Good. So St. Thomas Aquinas is quite thorough in the delib- erate and reiterated identification of Good with Be- ing—‘‘Bonum et ens sunt idem secundum rem: sed differunt secundum rationem tantum” (Sum. Theol. Pt. I., Q. v., A. 1)—yet he goes on to treat Being as prior because it is the first object of the intellect, and thereafter the whole concept of Value almost disap- pears. Consequently his definition of Substance as that which exists of itseli—‘‘substantiae nomen .. . significat essentiam cui competit sic esse, id est per se esse” (Sum. Theol. Pt. I., Q. iii., A. 5)—never leads him even to consider whether this is not the same as to say that Substance and Good (or Value) are synony- mous terms.! 1 Hence the chief difficulties of his sacramental theories. 16 CHRIST THE TRUTH But the identity of substance (so defined) with Value follows inevitably from a thoroughgoing accept- ance of the Theistic hypothesis. The Universe is to be conceived as deriving its origin and unity from a Creative Will. But the correlative of Will is Good or Value; therefore the most fundamental element in things is their Value. This is not a property which they have incidentally; it is the constitutive principle, the true self, of every existent. Aquinas says that a thing is perfect in so far as it exists: “In tantum est autem perfectum unumquodque in quantum est in actu”? (Sum Theol. Pt. I., Q. v., A. 1.)—and that everything is good so far as it exists: ‘‘Omne ens, in quantum est ens, est bonum” (Sum Theol. Pt. I., Q. v., A. 3). The inversion of this is the fertile truth; every- thing exists so far as it is good.” The ultimate Reality and the primary ground of existence for all else is the Creative God, in whom all value is eternally real. Value, being the immediate object of the Creative Will, is itself the secondary ground of existence for all created things. Value is thus, in the order of be- ing, prior to existence. But Value is not existence, and must receive (or come into) existence in order to ECT De, 343 2 Hocking argues strongly and (I think) convincingly that “the value of any object of attention is nothing other than the entering of the reality-idea into the thought of the object,” so that “the use of the God-idea . . . will be the chief determinant of the value level in any consciousness” (The Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 130 and 136). Edward Caird used to urge his pupils to avoid the common phrase ‘“‘too good to be true.” “If anything is not true,” he would say, “it is because it is not good enough to be true.” THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 17 be a part of Reality; on the other hand nothing is brought into existence except as a means to, or as a vehicle of, Value. This view of Value as prior to Existence and as the ground of existence is not easy to express in terms adapted to the opposite conception. It is not indeed a novel view, for, as has been said, it dominates the thought of Plato. But language has not been fash- ioned to accord with it, and even those thinkers who have wished to give a primary place to Value have often failed to escape the entangling suggestions of the language which they had to use. This Ritschlianism is (on our view) right in so far as it contends that all religious doctrines are Value-judgments, but is wrong, and even hopelessly wrong, in so far as it regards these as other than metaphysical and ontologi- cal judgments. Perhaps we may help ourselves to avoid a similar entanglement by considering some senses of the term ‘‘Substance,” already referred to, which on our view it is specially important to dis- tinguish. If it were possible to ignore all former use, I should urge that Substance be used for Real Thing;! in that case Substance=Value+Existence. But we cannot ignore the fact that according to one familiar 1So Bishop Gore writes: ‘Let us proclaim to all the winds of heaven that by ‘substance’ the Church means no more and no less than ‘real thing,’ so that when we speak of the Son and of the Spirit as ‘of one substance’ with the Father, we mean that they belong to that one real being which we call God; and when we speak of Christ as ‘of one substance’ with us, we mean that He took the real being of man, and is that real thing, in all respects that a man is” (The Holy Spirit and the Church, pp. 233, 234). 18 CHRIST THE TRUTH use of the word, the Substance of a thing is something other than the whole real thing, being distinguished from some elements in the whole real thing, as, for example, from the Accidents. Now I submit that if the word is used on this way at all, Substance is and can be nothing but Value. Value is the element in real things which both causes them to be, and makes them what they are, and is thus fitly called Sub- stance, in so far as this is other or less than their to- tality. But in this sense Substance is to be dis- tinguished from actuality. Eternally all Values are realized in God; but in the process of time not all Values are actual here and now. It is certainly true that Value is only actual in the various things that are valuable; and it is only fully actual (though the discussion of this point belongs to a later stage of the argument) so far as it is appreciated by some conscious being. It is tempting to separate the Good from the good thing, and to demand either some account of it in such separation or else a method of apprehending it in separation. But to do this is to repeat the mistake made by the Hedonists in Ethics. When I am hungry, I want food and not (except incidentally) the pleasure of eating. Desire is not of some one general thing, such as pleasure. And yet it is true that when Iam hungry what I want is the value or the good of food; but this is not separable from the food, and is not even properly distinguishable from it, though it is distinguishable from other as- pects of any particular food which are irrelevant to my hunger. So Will aims at Good in all its forms: and as God THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 19 makes the world, He beholds it as very good. There is the problem of Evil, of course, and it may be that it will wreck this whole fashion of philosophy; but we cannot embark upon the discussion of it here.! Our concern just now is with the method which philos- ophy must pursue if it adopts this principle that only Value has substantial being. It is clear at once that Ethics and Politics and fésthetics will be exalted alongside of Mathemat- ics, aS the typical activities of Mind, and that on the whole they will be the more normative for Metaphysic. The Universe will be approached less as a problem (or theorem) in Geometry, more as a Drama or Symphony, and as a Society in process of formation. Now if the structure of Reality is such as we de- scribed, and if the problem of Metaphysics is to be approached along the lines now indicated, we begin to see a great unification take place. The lower grades, we said, only attain to the fullness of their own being so far as they are indwelt and dominated by those above them. They. exist then, ultimately, to embody or symbolize what is more than themselves. The universe is sacramental. Everything except the Creative Will exists to be the expression of that Will, the actualization of its values, and the communication of those values to spirits created for the special value actualized through fellowship in creation and apprecia- tion of values. Men can do some of this work them- selves. Speech is a manipulation of sounds for just such communication and fellowship. By this doctrine 1T made an attempt to deal with it in Mens Creatrix. 20 CHRIST THE TRUTH the reality of the objects in the world is not divorced from our sense of their significance. A friend gave me during the war an illustration to show how familiar a fact is the transvaluation, which on this theory is the only true transubstantiation: Suppose a man comes to see me, finds some strips of colored calico on the floor, and amuses himself by dancing on them to show his contempt for what he takes to be my interests; I may think him a tiresome fellow, but that will be all: now suppose those bits of calico have been sewn together to make my national flag, and he dances contemptuously on it; I shall kick him out of the house. That is comparatively a trifling instance. In any case the symbolism of a flag is purely conventional. Yet even here it seems absurd to say that the reality of the flag is the same as the reality of the strips of calico. The accidents (as the schoolmen would say) are the same; the substance is changed. Beginning with such a conventional symbol we may go on to fuller symbolism such as that of great Art. Here the principle emerges that to be a true or (as I have named it elsewhere) an essential symbol, a thing must be itself an individual instance of that it symbolizes. So Macbeth can symbolize ambition because he is a very individual ambitious man. In great art, at least, the symbol is unique, and there is no other way of saying what the artist has said. In Emerson’s great phrase ‘‘The word is one with that it tells of.” If after reading King Lear or hearing the Fifth Symphony a man asks what either means, we can only tell him that each means itself; but that THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 21 is the extreme opposite of saying that either is mean- ingless.? In that highest sphere of creative art which we call human conduct, the good or value sought is that of Personality (or Character) in Fellowship, with all the varieties that this implies. Actions have their value as symbolizing and as producing this. Of course symbolism and value involve a subjective element. For symbolism this may be a limitation, for the subjective element is specially concerned with interpretation, and if the symbol is to be really ex- pressive, or, in other words, if it is to be a real symbol, it must be such as can be understood by those minds for whom it is created. But into value the subjective element enters not asa limitation, but asa constituent. Value exists in order to be appreciated; and though the appreciating mind finds rather than creates the value, yet the value is dormant or potential until appreciation awakes it to energy and actuality.” 1 For a full discussion of the symbolism of Art, I must refer to the chapter on “‘The Nature and Significance of Art” in Mens Creatrix. This is one of the points where language becomes a source of great difficulty. A symbol is (properly) something which means or signifies . something else. But the perfect symbol zs (in a focal manifestation) what is symbolizes. Thus words are sounds in the air or marks on paper; they symbolize a meaning which is not on paper or in the air. But a poem can itself be the very embodiment and vehicle of a value which is found zm (not only on occasion of) the apprehension of the words. See further Chapter XIII. 2 Value is found by the appreciating mind, not imported into the valuable object. Yet the object is actually valuable, in the sense of contributing to the sum of good, only when it is appreciated. Dr. G. E. Moore holds it “better” that a beautiful world should exist than an ugly one, even if no one ever appreciated it (Principia 22 CHRIST) THE’ TRUTH Value, in short, is actual in experience. And it is one of the advantages of a philosophy which makes Value its central principle that it thus in its central principle holds objective and subjective together. If a philos- ophy can be constructed on this basis at all, it will at least be free from the divisive claims of the objective and the subjective. Whatever may be true of knowl- edge and fact, there is no doubt that in actualized Value subject and object are united on equal terms. Moreover, it brings them together at the point where they ought to meet. For it is in man that the first manifestation is found both of conscious apprecia- tion of value and of clear distinction between subject and object. ‘The division beteen subject and object is therefore, on this view, bridged in the very moment of its appearance. As we rise to the grade or level of Mind, where appreciation first becomes possible, that is, of Man (though animals show the beginnings both of thought and of appreciation), the problem and its solution appear together. For, if our whole theory is sound, value determines existence, but value is only actual when it is appreciated; therefore Man’s appreciation of the world is the first installment, so to speak, within the Time process, of the realization of that for which the world was made, though in the eternal Mind which comprehends all Time this is actual eternally. It 1s Man who first rises to the question why is there a world at all. It is in Man’s Ethica, p. 84). I can attach no meaning to this. But if value is not purely objective, no more is it purely subjective. It arises in a sub- ject-object system when subject and object are perfectly co-related to each other. THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY a2 appreciation of its value that the answer begins to appear; for the solution of the problem of existence is found in the experience of what is good. Thus the whole universe is created to reflect the manifold goodness of the Creator, and to produce within itself beings who may share with the Creator His joys in the goodness of the created thing. Symbolism is thus the supreme philosophic principle. The universe exists to reveal the goodness of God so far as it evolves intelligences capable of receiving the revelation. It is clear that as we advance from the purely con- ventional symbolism, represented by the flag, to the essential symbol of great art or of ethical conduct, the subjective element is reduced in Importance, at least so far as it is variable. The Union Jack has value only for those who are familiar with a particular convention; and to those who do know this it may have very different values—for Lord Carson and Mr. de Valera, for example. Yet even here the value is constitutive in so far as the flag is only made for the sake of the value. But in the symbolism of Art and Conduct there is no such variability. Men may still react in varying degrees of intensity to the different embodiments of value, some are more stirred by color; some more by line; some are more stirred by heroic energy, some more by patient humility. But at this level there is no doubt what is the value expressed in the work of art or the moral action. Tf we start with this principle of symbolism as our basis, we shall not, I think, be led to any system very different in the greater part of its structure from such as is set out, for example, by Professor Pringle-Pattison. 24 CHRIST THE TRUTH The difference will be mainly one of emphasis and of detailed expression; but the difference of this kind will be all-pervasive. In ways innumerable the state- ment will be (as I think) more luminous in detail, more sympathetic. ‘There will be more understanding of the different phases of Reality from the inside. For it is the characteristic of esthetic and moral appreci- ation that in them we become absorbed in the object itself, as a single whole, and understand it by letting it take possession of us, whereas in science we under- stand partly by setting the object in an ever widening context and learning what forces mold it from with- out, and partly by breaking it up analytically into its own constituent elements. Of course our method will not dispense with the processes and results of science; but it will depend quite equally, or rather more, on those of art and morality. We shall not dispense with the psychologist or sociologist; but we shall expect to learn still more’ of philosophic value from the dramatist and the statesman. We shall still seek rational coherence, but shall interpret it more as realized in the Czvitas Dez than as represented by the solution of logical contradiction.? We said earlier that contemporary philosophy manifests a high degree of tension between Value and Existence. Perhaps no writer has expressed this with so great vehemence as Miguel da Unamuno in The Tragedy of Life. It will be among the advantages of 1 This essay does not profess or attempt to supply, even in outline, the system of philosophy here desiderated; it deals with a small part of the field—the part which I believe to be of central and pivotal importance. THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY 25 a Value-philosophy that, if it can make good its posi- tion at all, it will remove this tension. But it must rest on real values and not on any general theory of Value. It is here that the intellectualist tradition has most damaged philosophy. Discussions of Good in general carry us but a little way. Light comes from the study of the actual good things. This involves an element of unwelcome dogmatism, for our estimate of the various good things cannot claim universal acceptance. It is partly for this reason that philos- ophers have shrunk from taking their stand firmly on certain traditional scales of Value, such, for ex- ample, as that of Christianity. But when we find a philosopher who does this we are at once aware of a greater solidity and richness in his treatment of his problem; it is enough to cite in illustration Solovyof’s great book The Justification of Good. ‘The philosopher who makes value his central principle must take the risk of dogmatism and base himself on some selected actual values, vindicating his selection as fully as he can; he will gain in concrete fullness enough to justify the risk. Above all he will avoid two difficulties that are inherent in the more traditional method of philosophy. We shall not try to treat the merely physical as self- subsistent, leaving values to attach themselves to it in a rather vague manner, while still declaring that the explanation of the lower is in the higher; but making this declaration, we shall insist that the higher are the more nearly self-subsisting, while only the Highest is altogether so. And we shall not leave God to hover uncertainly between His function as the universal 26 CHRIST THE TRUTH ground of existence and His adjectival attachment to the universe as the sum or realization of its values, but we shall confidently affirm Him as the sole self-sub- sistent Being, existing in absolute independence of all else, for whose pleasure and whose creative activity all things are and were created. CHAPTER II THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE “ \ NEP XN y x \ YA 4 "A , O 57) OLWKEL BEV aTaca Wuxy KQtL TOUTOUV EVEKA j TAaVTa , PY s @ * TPatTet, ATOMOAVT EVOMEVY) EC €lval,— PLATO. It is in Man that the sense of Value seems first to become distinct. Other animals have appreciation, and even a rudimentary sense of duty. But it seems certain that only in Man is there a distinct awareness of good and evil as principles, and not only of particu- Jar good and evil things. If our whole position is sound, then all things exist either for their own value or else for the sake of something else that has value. Whether that is so or not, certainly human conduct is all directed to the attainment of value. Many of men’s activities have indeed no value in themselves, but these are undertaken for the sake of value which it is hoped to realize by means of them. The distinction of means and ends in this connection must be employed with some caution. It appears to suggest that what is classified as ‘‘means”’ is irrelevant to the good desired, except as a completely external condition. So it sometimes is. Thus a man may take up an occupation which he dislikes, and which he believes to do no good to any one, in order to make money which he may spend either on his pleasure or on work which he does believe to benefit mankind. Such an occupation is for that man a mere means, 28 CHRIST THE TRUTH having no value in itself, and not affecting the value of the end. More commonly, however, there is some value inherent in the means; and even when this is not so, the value of the end is affected by the process of its attainment. It is commonly said that men do not value what costs them nothing; and though many applications of this principle are rather ludicrous, it is a sound principle. It may be true that many people enjoy a concert more if they have paid for their seats than if they have not; if so, this is only because the fact of payment has suggested an expectation of enjoy- ment and has thus stimulated sensitiveness. But where the cost is not a mere payment as a condition of the experience, but an effort or sacrifice directly undertaken for the sake of the desired end, it is found to affect very intimately the experience in which the desired end consists. Perhaps a part of the secret of maternal love is to be found here. But the principle is certainly true. No one can really see the view from a mountain top who has not actually climbed the mountain; the man who goes up in a mountain-railway may enjoy the view in his own way, but it is a different way. To this group of considerations we must return when we come to discuss the relation of the Time- process to our apprehension of Value. At present it is enough to make clear the danger of separating means and ends in our estimate of the value of ends. The means may have no value in itself, and yet may in- crease the value of the end which is reached through it. It is, of course, in ends alone that value actually resides. Many activities or experiences which are THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 29 chosen as means to others also have value in them- selves; but to this extent they become ends. To ask, then, what are the various kinds of Value and to ask what are the possible ends of life is to ask the same question in different words. To that question we now turn. Value is recognized by a sense of kinship or ‘‘at- homeness”’ which we may call satisfaction. Where a man claims to find this, his claim cannot be disputed. To every man his own sense of value is final. This does not involve anarchy or chaos as will become plain shortly; even if it did, the fact would stand. But though value is recognized by a sense of sat- isfaction it does not consist in this satisfaction. Satis- faction is an indispensable element in the experi- ence of value, but its prominence is very variable, and the amount of our nature affected by the satisfaction is also very variable. In Pleasure (as ordinarily under- stood—that is in isolated moments or periods of satis- faction) the subjective element is extremely promi- nent, and the area of satisfaction is comparatively small; if it is Pleasure pure and simple, the good expe- rienced zs the feeling, and the satisfaction is of feeling only. No doubt most pleasures are also something more than pleasure pure and simple, and all forms of value are pleasurable when appreciated. But there are some forms of good, deliberately adjudged to be good and deliberately chosen, in which the element of pleasure is almost nonexistent, while pain is very prominent. Of such a good we may say what George Eliot’s Romola says of the highest happiness, “‘We only know it from pain by its being what we would 30 CHRIST THE TRUTH choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good.” Pleasures of sense afford the minimum of satis- faction though they may occasion the maximum of excitement. Very different are the pleasures of Pride. Here the subjective element counts for less and the objective for more; but the subjective is still con- spicuous. ‘The objective element is here dependent on a comparison ora contrast. ‘The value in pleasures of sense is absolute in the sense that it is wholly in- dependent of other experiences; it is made comparative by circumstances, when we have to choose between such a pleasure and some other end in comparison with which the value of the pleasure may be great or small. But the value of a bodily pleasure in itself is what it is. The value of the pleasures of Pride is comparative essentially; or rather, the occasion of such pleasure is a comparison. A man enjoys being richer than some one else, or cleverer, or better skilled in some game or art; or not being one of these he aims at it, knowing that to achieve it will bring him pleas- ure. Here again, the good or value is the subjective state, or feeling; but it is (or may be) the self as a whole that is satisfied. Ambition is, as a rule, very largely the desire to reach this kind of good. People who, when they play games, care very much whether they win or lose, show that in their games at least they are seeking a comparative value. These values are in their influence antisocial, because the success of one must involve the failure of others. Of the values of Pleasure or Pride it cannot be said that they represent the end for which the world THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 31 was made; nor can it be supposed that the Creator finds satisfaction in the attainment of them by His creatures. Pleasure indeed may find a subordinate place in a perfect life, adding to it a certain flavor; the pleasures of Pride may stimulate a sluggish soul to ac- tivity, but are really the product of that perverted use of self-consciousness which is called the Fall of Man. We have not yet reached the type of Value of which we could say in the first chapter that it is the real cause of the world’s existence. This is Absolute Value, which is known to us in the three forms of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness (of character).? If a man says that he does not see why he should want to know the Truth, or to appreciate Beauty, no argument can persuade him; if a man says he does not see why he ought to be good, no argument can per- suade him. ‘“‘Good” and “ought” are correlative terms: good is what a man ought to be, and a man’s obligation is to be good. And “good” in man includes at least some adjustment towards Truth and Beauty. Value includes more than the characters of good men, so that these other two must be named side by side with Good. But they are not three Absolute Values; they are three forms of the One Absolute Value, which is Love; this uses each of the three as its channel to reveal and communicate itself. ‘‘The effort of the soul to attain unity with other souls, and supremely 1T keep the familiar trio of terms, but Truth is here a confusing word, as Canon Quick has pointed out to me. ‘Truth is the perfect correlation of mind to reality, and is not itself, therefore, apprehended as an object in the same way as (e. g.) Beauty. What is really intended is that there are three forms of absolute value—intellectual, esthetic, and moral, ae CHRIST THE TRUTH -with God, is the final value or reality possible to that soul.” ? Truth is the end of the intellect; man does think, and he may think right or wrong; to think right is to attain truth so far as his thought has gone. Men always desire to reach some truth, for their plans will break down if they are calculated on a basis of error; but this is to desire truth as a means, not as an end. To desire truth as an end is to desire the perfect corre- lation of the mind to Reality. And this is a good in itself, so clearly a good as to impose upon all who have understood its nature an obligation to seek it. The end is not to acquire masses of information, though that may be a means to the end and must be included in it, it if is perfectly attained; the end is perfect intellectual correlation with Reality. The general nature of Beauty I have discussed elsewhere and can only give here a dogmatic restate- ment of the position there reached.” Beauty is the perfect (7. e. truly adequate) expression of the value of any truth or fact. Thus it is closely related to Truth and has the same logical structure. It appeals, as Truth does not, to feeling; and this appeal may be so predominant that there is no intellectual element traceable at all at first sight. But in fact this element is always there in the shape of proportion, or rhythm, or grouping, or some other kind of diversity in unity. To make Beauty the end of any activity is to seek a perfect correlation of feeling with the various values 1T owe this sentence to my friend the Rev. L. W. Grensted. 2See the chapter on “The Nature and Significance of Art” in Mens Creatrix. THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 33 of what is apprehended by consciousness. The Value may be in the thought rather than in the expression as such, as it is In great poetry; but apart from the expression there is no beauty—indeed the thought only becomes fully actual in the expression. Hence Beauty, strictly speaking, concerns what is appre- hended by means of the senses, though what is so ap- prehended may be far more than sensuous. Goodness (of character) is the perfect correlation of all the elements of personality into one whole, and of that whole with its environment, especially its personal environment. ‘This also I have discussed at length elsewhere, and must handle again repeatedly in later chapters. The mere statement of what Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are as ends of action is enough to show that their Value is both inherent and absolute. It is in- herent inasmuch as they are plainly good in them- selves, it is absolute inasmuch as it depends on no comparison. Also it is social, for its attainment by one does not hinder but greatly helps in its attainment by others. Self is here a mere receptivity; any em- phasis on it or concern about it will assuredly prevent a full apprehension of Truth or Beauty or Goodness. But this does not mean that the self is merely passive. On the contrary, it is intensely active; but its activity is mainly receptive, at least in its apprehensions of Truth and of Beauty, and its attention is concentrated 1See Mens Creatrix, Part III. But there I based duty far too ex- clusively (as I now think) on social relationships. I should now con- tend that obligation is the correlate of value—absolute obligation of absolute value. 34 CHRIST THE .TRUTH utterly on the object, not at all on itself. But the satisfaction is of the whole self, entire and complete. Thus we reach a principle of great practical and theoretical importance; the self is capable of complete satisfaction in proportion as it is left outside the field of its own attention.’ Value exists for subjects; but the subject finds the value only when completely absorbed in the object. — It may seem that although ideal Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are absolute values, yet they can never be actually experienced as such by us. ‘To some ex- tent this is so with Truth, but it is not so with Beauty. To see this we have only to consider the methods of Science and of Art. Science is discursive and analyt- ical. It seeks to understand the object of its study either by breaking it up into its component parts and showing how these fit together, or by setting it in an ever-wider context, asking Why? and of the answer asking Why? again. But no limit can be set to either of these sical and therefore completeness is never reached. If all Reality is one, this means that no knowledge of any department can be absolute.” An 1Tn other words, joy is the fruit of humility. But I use the word “joy” in its Christian sense, which is not always that associated with it in psychological works. 2In Mens Creatrix I pressed this to the paradoxical extremity of allowing no finality to any knowledge at all, short of omniscience; this I should not repudiate. But it remains true that the search for Truth leads to the apprehension of an ever-widening context, so that it never affords the finite mind any such repose of satisfaction as may be reached in the search for Beauty. I should like to take this oppor- tunity of recommending readers of Mens Creatrix to consider the searching criticism of some of its positions contained in Professor A. THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 35 apparent exception is Mathematics, but Mathematics reaches its perfect cogency by an abstraction so com- plete that it may be said to have turned its back on Reality and to be a science of notions only. The internal angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; that is absolute truth, but only because the meaning of ‘‘triangle” and ‘‘right angle” is fixed by definition. ‘To know this does not give us any abso- lute knowledge of any object existing in space, it gives us absolute knowledge only of the implications of our definitions. Only in this sphere of abstractions is ab- solute knowledge attainable. Truth claims our alle- giance but always eludes our grasp; but the intellectual correlation with Reality can be perfect in the sense that the mind is always ready to apprehend rightly even though there is much which is in fact not yet apprehended. The apprehension of Beauty proceeds by another method. Here attention is narrowly concentrated upon some one object; the understanding of it that is sought consists in intimacy of acquaintance, not in completeness of analysis. For this reason the artist must select. We cannot achieve an intimate acquaint- ance with a vast range of facts. Selection must go to the point where apprehension is possible in one act— however prolonged—of concentrated attention. We must be able to see the whole picture at once, and not have to piece it together by a deliberate mental con- struction. ‘This limits the scope of apprehensible E. Taylor’s review of the book in Mind, N.S. 106. Some of his ob- jections are due to misapprehension of my meaning: some now seem to me to be valid. 36 CHRIST THE TRUTH Beauty, but it also means that an absolute apprehen- sion of absolute Beauty is possible for us. For though there may be a richer Beauty apprehensible to beings with a wider range of faculties, yet because concentra- tion and not discursiveness is the essence of esthetic method, there can be an experience of Beauty which is perfect in its own kind. Homer’s material is less rich and varied than Shakespeare’s, but Shakespeare has not made Homer out of date; that simple material will only exhibit its value to him who concentrates his attention on it alone. There is, therefore, possible to us an absolute apprehension of absolute Beauty such as is not possible of absolute Truth. The same is true of Goodness; but here our task is not so much to admire Goodness elsewhere as to create it in ourselves. Man’s obligation is not chiefly to admire goodness but to be good. And this con- sists, as has been said and as will be set forth at more length shortly, in the achievement of internal and external unity. Jf a man’s whole being is organized to the fulfillment of one purpose, and that purpose is the fulfillment of his contribution to the universal good, he has reached perfect goodness. He has no need to be omniscient for this. If he can regard his life not from the standpoint of self-interest, but from that of God who looks upon the whole society of men from without, so that he is perfectly just not only in con- science, but even in desire, and can perfectly con- trol his impulses to live according to such a view of his place in the scheme of things, he is a perfectly good man. Thus the whole Truth of God could not find ex- THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 37 pression in a human life, but the perfection of intel- lectual virtue ' can do so; the whole of apprehensible Beauty could not be concentrated in one human con- sciousness, though perfect Beauty of many kinds and grades can be realized there; the whole Goodness of God can in its completeness be expressed in a human life. We do not now discuss what conditions are req- uisite for this to happen; we are only concerned at present to assert its possibility in principle. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are all absolute Values; they are good in themselves, apart from all consequences. But they may in experience become rivals through force of circumstance; there may be in- sufficient time for the fulfillment of some apparent so- cial duty as well as for complete dedication to Science orto Art. Where such a choice has to be made, no man may judge his brother. But in principle Goodness has a priority over the other two because it is the distinctively human type of value and we are human. Indeed when we follow after Truth and Beauty with an absolute devotion, if we are not neglecting some other and yet stronger claim, we are manifesting Goodness. But itis possible to pursue these selfishly, not for their absolute value but for our own pleasure alike in the pursuit and the attainment; and then our conduct is wrong; for we are not responding to any absolute obligation but to our own desire for our own enjoyment. Goodness cannot be so pursued. We may do the acts of goodness from selfish motives— desire for admiration or fear of censure. But good- 17. e. the readiness of the mind to apprehend rightly whatever it may have the opportunity to apprehend. 38 CHRIST THE TRUTH ness of character itself must be sought for itself or it is not sought at all. Truth and Beauty are absolute values, and it is good that we should seek them; but they are not distinctively human; Truth we appre- hend but do not create; Beauty we both appreciate and create, but appreciation predominates, for much of the Beauty of the world exists apart from our pro- duction of it, and so far as our activity creates Beauty, it is largely imitative. It is true, indeed, that appreci- ation is a very real activity, and I believe that it is in fact an activity of discovering in Art or in Nature the kindred spirit of the Artist (Divine or human) there self-expressed; and the essential moment in creation and appreciation of Beauty is this expression and recognition of spirit.1 It remains true, however, that appreciation is not creation. But Goodness, in the whole world, so far as we know it, isa human creation; here, too, we appreciate and imitate. But each man must live his own life; imitation should never predom- inate; and moral goodness is an achievement of man- kind, so that if we take mankind as a unit we find here an original contribution to the scheme of things, where no imitation is possible except of God himself. We have now considered various types of Values, and must proceed to ask what is the nature of Value itself. If our whole position is sound, no definition is possible; you cannot state the Genus and Differentia of your highest principle. But characteristics can be stated. We find, then, that for any actual Value or Good there must be two factors in a certain relation- ship—the “valuable” object and the apprehending 1Cf. Balfour, Theism and Humanism, pp. 55-04, specially 77-81. THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE 39 and appreciating subject; and these must meet in an experience which “‘satisfies” or is fit for perma- nence. We shall see later that only the ‘‘good”’ char- acter affords the inner condition of permanence on the subjective side, so that the apparent actualization of Value represented by base pleasures is illusory. We shall further see that the “‘good”’ character is one which has achieved inner and outer totality or com- prehensive unity; the objects which such a character accounts ‘‘valuable” are found to have this same quality; they’re all marked by totality. Science seeks a totality of perpetually wider extension; Art seeks a totality of perfected inner unity; Goodness is the achievement of inner unity in the individual and ex- tended unity in the society—totality in both. Value in short is a system of experience in which a subject free from inner causes of change finds satisfaction in an object which (therefore) it does not seek to change. Its type is God’s eternal contemplation of His perfect work. It is not a relation of subject and object or of object and object; it is a unitary system of experience in which such relations have their place. Because it is a subject-object system, perfectly co-related, the ob- ject must reveal the characteristics of Mind and the subject must be absorbed in the object. Hence springs the demand for intellectual or logical structure in works of Art. Mind discovers itself in the Real, and in the discovery becomes its full self: that is Value or Good. But Mind will only perfectly discover itself in other minds; therefore Fellowship is the true norm of Value, and Love its perfect realization. One other consideration claims attention—the re- 40 CHRIST THE TRUTH lation of Value to the Time-process. Many of the highest values are found in activities or experiences lasting through considerable periods of time—pre- sumably the highest of all is in the experience which comprehends the whole range of Time and Space. When we study the experiences in which our finite minds can apprehend Value and which require a process of time for their actualization—such as a drama or a man’s life or a nation’s history—we find that the value of the whole is by no means the same as the total or the average of all its stages. Thus we may consider two plays in three acts: in one the ‘first act is cheerful, the second neutral, the third depressing; here the total effect is depressing. In the other the first act is full of gloom, the second shows a dawn of hope, and the third is joyful: here the whole effect is triumphant. The Value of an experience lasting through a period of time depends on its tendency and conclusion, not upon the stages in isolation. This carries with it the supremely important princi- — ple that, though past facts cannot be altered, their value can, so that the presence of evil in the world at any monent or through any period of time is not in principle any argument against the perfect good- ness of the Whole. That is a consideration of supreme importance, because of the close relationship that exists between Value and Totality. In all Value, as we saw just now, Totality is the distinguishing feature. Totality is the very form of the Good; this is the ‘‘ perfection” of which St. Thomas speaks in the words quoted THE APPREHENSION OF VALUE AI above.t But the Whole, for us, is the Will of God and what it has created; therefore every apprehen- sion of Value is in principle a religious experience. Hocking ? argues that in our sense perception of Na- ture there is already an apprehension of God. I think this is true. Certainly there is no apprehension of Value which is not an inchoate apprehension of God —and no human experience is utterly without value. NCH Dp: 14. 2 Op. Cit. pp. 268-300, specially pp. 297, 298. CHAPTER HI RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised. WORDSWORTH. To be conscious of absolute value and the absolute obligation which it imposes is plainly a direct aware- ness of something ultimate in the universe; and if the position already taken up with regard to Value is correct, then it is a direct awareness of what in all creation is most fundamental. It is a consciousness of the very object of the Creative Will; it is thus of itself a knowledge of God. But for a vast multitude of people it not only is, but is directly experienced as being, a knowledge of God. All men have conscience; that is, all men to some extent judge their actual character and conduct by comparison with an ideal formed from their sense of absolute goodness. Many men experience this ideal as God’s will for them; and so conscience becomes the channel of religious experience. It is so that re- ligious experience comes to most men, at any rate to most men born and brought up in a Christian civili- RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 43 zation. Among primitive peoples, perhaps, it is the sense of vastness rather than the sense of value that chiefly leads to a sense of the divine power; man finds himself very small and helpless in face of a world vast and unaccountable, and he imagines spirits, mostly hostile, who must be endlessly placated. He is not utterly wrong; he is applying very crudely the conviction that only Will adequately accounts for anything. And the influence of his mental attitude still persists; in face of great manifestations of natural forces, especially in face of great calamities, men begin to speak of the Hand of God, who never use such phrases about small events or trace His Hand in the movement of the tides or the phases of the moon. But when once the influence of that ethical monothe- ism, which came to the world through Israel, has taken possession of men’s minds, the normal channel for religious experience is conscience.! It is necessary to insist on this, for some psychol- ogists have tended to confine the phrase ‘‘religious experience ”’ to moments of personal awareness of the 1 Conscience, at its fullest development, passes into Love, but stages below that level of supreme attainment must be included here. This book was already in proof before I read Rudolf Otto’s im- portant study of The Idea of the Holy (Das Heilige). I think he makes good his contention that there is something ultimate in religious experience, of which the nature may be expressed in the phrase “Mysterium Tremendum.” Deity presents itself as in one aspect “wholly other” and thus utterly unintelligible; and the human re- sponse is “‘awe” or “dread.” But my own experience of this, which Otto calls the Numinous, is chiefly occasioned (apart from the Gospel story) by the Vastness of the Universe and the Authority of the Moral Law. So it was, of course, for Kant; and so it is, I believe, for most persons in a reflective age. 44 CHRIST THE TRUTH presence of God. Of course they are perfectly at liberty to study such momentary experiences in isola- tion; but they must not suppose or suggest that these moments constitute the whole or even the chief part of the “religious experience” on which religious men rely as part of the confirmatory evidence for their be- liefs. William James, in his celebrated Varieties of Religious Experience, is a conspicuous offender in this matter. Philosophers have encouraged the same bad tendency, for they have often drawn their illustrations of religious experience exclusively from the mystics. Mysticism is indeed the extreme development of religion pure and simple; but just because it is religion pure and simple, it is on one side unrepresentative of religion. For religion is not departmental; it takes life as a whole for its sphere; and “religious experi- ence”’ is not an affair of isolated moments, it is a whole experience of life and the world, permeated through and through with religion. In certain moments, no doubt, the whole significance of this is gathered up; but those moments derive the greater part of their importance from the fact that they neither are, nor are thought ‘to be, isolated or unique in kind; they are important precisely because they bring to clear and vivid consciousness what is permanently present as a background to all experience. To the religious man every activity is religious. He eats and drinks religiously, of which “grace” at meals is the symbol; he works religiously, for his work is his life-service to God; he plays religiously, for his recreation is with thanksgiving; but above all he sins religiously. To do wrong is for an irreligious RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE A5 man to abandon his ideal and perhaps to lower his self-respect. For the religious man to do wrong is to defy his King; for the Christian, it is to wound his. Brend4e Lt isuhere that4for many people the dis- tinctively religious experience is most acute. But the validity of this experience is challenged as the validity of other experience is not challenged. The validity of sight is not challenged, though we do not always believe that a man actually saw what he seemed to himself to see. Here, however, it appears that the whole validity is challenged; we are told by some that the religious experience is purely subjective and has no counterpart in the objective world at all, while others, who stop short of that, would say that, though the experience has an objective counterpart, this is not in the least what religious people have supposed it to be. It is not possible here to discuss the psychology of religious experience; but it is necessary to describe the attitude adopted towards it in this argument. First, then, I would say that in all perceptive experience there is an apprehension of a given somewhat; we do not have experiences and infer the object which occasions them; the experience 7s the apprehension of the object. But this does not tell us beyond all question what the object is; that is a matter for a \ reflective and critical process, which always goes beyond what can be said to be immediately given in perception. But though it goes beyond what is im-. mediately given, it does not go away from it; on the contrary it interprets what it truly is. Moreover, all our experience contains this element of interpre- 46 CHRIST THE TRUTH tation from the outset. We never experience a mere ‘““This.”’ The reflective process may be very elabor- ate, as it is in a fully developed science; but it is not a process of theorizing about a given and unchanging fact at an ever-greater distance from it; it is the ever- fuller articulation of what the fact has been from the first. In these respects there is no difference in prin- ciple between religious experience and any other experience which claims by its nature to be an appre- hension of reality. Secondly, however, we have to admit that this experience has to vindicate itself against the charge of illusion, which is brought here and is not brought against the experience of sight and hearing. Psychol- ogists are ready to provide a variety of accounts of the process whereby the religious experience is generated in the soul. And if the weight of the general philo- sophic argument were plainly adverse to the theistic interpretation of the world, I should, for myself, con- sider that a case for 1t could hardly be made out from the data of specifically religious experience alone. But in fact the weight of the general philosophic ar- gument tells, in my judgment, decisively the other way; I should say this even if the specific religious experience were excluded from consideration in the formulation of this general philosophic argument, though to exclude it is plainly unscientific. When we find that the general argument points to the exist- ence of God, we are naturally more ready to pay a specially serious attention to such experience as seems to those, to whom it comes, to be a direct appre- hension of the divine. The true case for Theism does RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 47 not rest upon general philosophy alone nor upon re- ligious experience alone, but upon the coincidence or convergence of these two. Our general position, then, with regard to religious experience will be that it must, indeed, be examined and tested like any other experience for which the claim is made that in it we apprehend reality, but that there is no objection in principle to this claim when made for this type of experience. The objection is usually based on the supposition that some men have no religious experience at all. But this is very doubtful and seems even to be false. There are many men who pay little attention to their religious experience, and in whom (often for that rea- son) it is rudimentary; there are many who do not recognize it for what it is. But it is doubtful if any man can go through life without ever feeling rever- ence for something which is morally so high above him as to be out of his reach, or awe before the great Reality on which he is utterly dependent. And it may safely be said that no one escapes, though he may to his own satisfaction explain away, the sense of ab- solute obligation. All of these are in their true nature religious experiences—the recognition of an Abso- lute. To understand them fully will of itself carry ‘ a man far into theology. If his reverence and his awe are justified, they imply a Reality fit to be their occa- sion. If he is genuinely subject to the obligation, that implies a universe in which obligation has a place. Of all the various forms of undeveloped or unsophisti- cated religious experience, this sense of absolute obli- gation is the most certainly universal and the most 48 CHRIST THE TRUTH commonly recognized. It is on this, therefore, that our argument will chiefly rest. The absolute obligation due to the absolute Value of Truth and Beauty is a command of God and a means of access to Him; but it is in the claim of Good- ness that this command is most universally found and the access to God most fully effected. Truth has its necessary place, for all religious life involves some belief, and that belief is a theology and philosophy. Beauty has its place, for there must be expression of our faith and adoration; and what adequately expresses these must be beautiful. But Goodness comes first because we are men, and Goodness is the value which is actualized by men alone, and is therefore the specific human value; thus it is the Truth or Reality of man, and may be described as Truth expressed, and so made beautiful, in human life. That does not mean that religion can rightly be- come an affair of well-doing only. If aman has found God as his King and Father, or rather has been found of Him, God becomes the chief factor in his environ- ment, and there must be activities directly expressive of relationship to Him. Worship comes first, then service inspired by worship; prayer first, then con- duct. It will help to make clear the nature of religious experience and its relation to some kindred forms of experience if we set out this point more fully, though in doing so we must draw on forms of religious ex- perience which imply theological or metaphysical beliefs which have still to be justified. Prayer is often regarded, even by genuinely reli- gious people, as chiefly a means to various ends; it is RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AQ a way of getting things done. That is true, so far as it goes; but, like so many half-truths, it is in practice as misleading as a complete falsehood. Prayer which is mainly occupied with a result to be obtained is comparatively powerless to obtain results. The real significance of prayer lies in the fact that it is the effort and attitude of the soul which makes possible the unity of the human spirit with God; it is therefore itself the supreme aim of human existence. Only when it is experienced and valued as itself the goal of life is its secondary quality, as producing results beyond itself, fully operative. For it is only then that the human spirit reaches the maturity of its powers; it is only then that the infinite resources of omnipotence can play upon the world through human instrumen- tality. The essence of prayer is intercourse with God; and that is the goal of human evolution. By means of prayer we may sometimes obtain for ourselves or for others temporal benefits; we may lift ourselves or others above the range of some perilous temptation; we may help forward deserving causes; we may in- crease the volume of goodwill. But all of these, even the last, are secondary in nature and in importance. The primary and fundamental matter in every real prayer is that a human soul is once again, or perhaps for the first time, holding intercourse with its Father. Religion thus comes into close contact with much that is seldom called religious. Science in its greatest phases is an intercourse of the mind of man with the © Mind expressed in the universe. In philosophy a deliberate effort is undertaken to reach some degree of 50 CHRIST THE TRUTH communion with the Absolute Mind or Spirit. A pupil of Edward Caird can confidently testify that the philosophic life may have in it more of real prayer than is to be found in very many devotional exercises. The artists and the poets perpetually rise to heights of spiritual achievement which supply a model to the religious aspirant. ! Communion with the Eternal is probably not quite unknown to any human being. Whenever a man feels the constraint of moral obligation, he is in touch with the Eternal; for the maxim “because right is right to follow right” is no creature of Time. But to most men the sphere in which, outside religion, this highest experience is most often reached is the sphere of art. As one looks upon the picture, held fast in concentrated peace by its compelling beauty, he enters eternity; the whole period of his contemplation is, in Browning’s phrase, a ‘““moment eternal’: a moment, because there is no sense of duration; eternal, because the meaning of such an experience is a completed whole, which asks for no explanations from past origins or future destiny. As we surrender ourselves to the surge of a great symphony, floating upon oceans of sound wherein the intertwined melodies and rhythms vanish in the mighty mass they constitute, the same experience is ours. Not in spite of the storm and tumult but even because of it, we are at peace in our unity with the inner reality of all things. In the climax of artistic endeavor—tragedy—this is most abundantly true. The vast conflict rages, the over- powering emotions topple and sway, the catastrophe crashes down and crushes out the hero with both his RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 51 ambitions and his agonies; but terror is redeemed by beauty, and the reader or spectator is established in a final peace which is not only untroubled but knows that nothing now can trouble it, because it has faced the worst and found therein occasion for its solemn joy. In such an experience man shares in his tiny measure the august pastime of the Eternal. In prayer that fulfills its function the religious man by his own methods scales those self-same heights. But there is a difference which makes the work of prayer more difficult, but also, when it is perfect, nobler. The ‘‘cosmic consciousness,” as it is sometimes called, may be induced by art in such a way as to omit all ethical or social content, and even so as to make us forgetful of. moral obligations. The man who is entranced by music does not find himself brought by his rapture into charity with all men; rather he finds their vulgarity and obtuseness at such a time pecul- iarly repellant. And though the esthetic ecstasy is not self-centered or selfish (for the initiate is far too absorbed in what he contemplates through eyes or ears to attend even to his own joy in contemplation), it is not social; it is subpersonal. The qualities which make fellowship a possibility are not exercised. There is no need for human companionship in those mo- ments; for comedy we need companionship, but not for tragedy; the heights to. which we are called are austere in loneliness. And on these we find no one waiting for us. Beethoven, perhaps, composed the symphony that carries us into the sublimities; but we do not meet him there and hold intercourse with him. 52 CHRIST THE TRUTH Nothing at all occurs to call our social qualities into play, nor is there any place for the action of our wills. In prayer the exact contrary is the fact. Not as mere appreciative intelligences do we pray, but as children who want to be with their Father, as friends who must mark off certain times to enjoy the com- pany of their Friend. This Father is the composer of the music of the spheres; this Friend is the author of the tremendous drama of history. To enter into His mind is to be on the high places to which art aspires; but it is to be there in company. This method only leads us to its goal as we become one in moral charac- ter with God; for this is partly the meaning and partly the result of being in the company of God. Only the pure in heart can see Him; only by longing for Him do men become pure in heart; only by His own im- pulse do men begin to long for Him. Prayer is a cor- respondence with the impulse of God to draw us to Himself. If God were merely the Mind which grasps the universe as a single intelligible whole, prayer and philosophy would be indistinguishable. But even philosophy knows that He must be more than that. If He is to supply the principle whereby the universe is an intelligible whole at all, He must be the source of righteousness no less than of truth and of beauty. Correspondence with His impulse therefore involves righteousness of will. This is one reason why prayer is a harder way of ascent to the spiritual heights than philosophy or art; it is also one reason why the achieve- ment, if attained, is nobler. A completer humanity is carried to the lofty regions. By this method there RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 53 can be no ecstasy that is devoid of charity. For God is Love; and only by love do men draw near to Him. None can come into that Presence for his own benefit — alone. The key that unlocks the door of the presence- chamber is love, without which all vitality of under- standing and sensibility is accounted death. From this two conclusions follow. A self-centered devotion, or a religious life which has self-perfection as its goal, can never reach the innermost shrine of divine communion. Rather there is required of us a love so intense that it will not let us enter that shrine and dwell there until all others are won to enter also. Here is one of the divine paradoxes. To be in heaven is to be with God; and God is Love; so that whoever loves most is most in heaven. Yet love, which admits to heaven, will not let us dwell in heaven while there are still men on earth who have no desire for heaven. In the crucial instance we know that this is true. God is never so much God as in the moment when, accept- ing the world’s load of evil, He feels Himself to be deserted by God. And secondly, because there is work to do in bring- ing others to desire the Life Divine, true prayer is always accompanied by appropriate conduct. Indeed if prayer and conduct are both perfect, no distinction can be drawn between them. But those who live at various levels of imperfection know from their own experience the difference between the times when their whole attention is concentrated on God Himself and the times when their attention is concentrated on some task which is believed to be appointed them by Him. 54 CHRIST THE TRUTH The Western mind sets great store by doing; and it is right. But it is not so wholly right that it can afford to ignore the witness of the East to the primacy of Being. We tend to test all energies by their re- sults in conduct. If prayer makes men lead better lives—by which most people mean, do better deeds— then it is justified; if not, it is a harmless occupation, provided that the time allowed to it is not excessive. So men often think, and sometimes say. But in simple truth, prayer—the corresponding of men with God’s impulse to draw them to Himself—is the highest occupation in which a man can be engaged. That is not to say that endlessly ‘“‘saying prayers” or joining in forms of worship is of this dignity. It may be so; and where the spirit of true prayer breathes through the words and ritual acts it is so; but there are many who in their worship are not opening their souls to the divine influence, and are rather indulging a re- ligious sentiment than conforming their wills to God. Such worshipers correspond to the sensualists who make their artistic skill play pander to the baser pas- sions. ‘‘By their fruits ye shall know them.” Does their religious emotion leave them in charity with all men? A man or woman who has merely been in- dulging a religious sentiment will be censorious towards what clashes with that sentiment—coarse- ness, vulgarity, blatancy. A man or woman who has been in communion with perfect Love is filled with love—at least in greater measure than before—towards all to whom the Love Divine goes forth. So the proper relation in thought between prayer and conduct is not that conduct is supremely impor- RELIGIOUS EXPERENCE 55 tant and prayer may help it, but that prayer is su- premely important and conduct tests it. If the prayer is real, the conduct inevitably follows. Indeed, in many cases the very reality of prayer will shorten the time allotted to prayer, so strong will be the impulse of love to act for the well-being of others. But let any man who finds it thus with him take heed. The life with God is the supreme concern, and the source of all power to serve. It is only the man who loves God with all his being who will be able to love his neighbor as himself. mA Py his ve eh : A WR ie Hy a BY b A _ AD cy’) b AT ry > ‘ AW nine } 4 Ni ‘ i wat swat eee hone BAW itt INNER CIRCLE —, _