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 Denison, John Henry, 1841 
 
 1924. 
 Christ's idea of the 
 
CHRISrS IDEA OF THE 
 SUPERNATURAL 
 
 JOHN H. DENISON 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1895 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 By JOHN H. DENISON. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riversuie Press, Cavibridf^e, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Electrotyped and Priuted by H. O. Houghton & Ca 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Relation of God to Nature . . i 
 
 II, Our Nearest Relative , . . 31 
 
 III. The Stem of Righteousness . . 43 
 
 IV. The Gospel of the Body . . 58 
 V. The Gospel of the Kingdom . . 73 
 
 VI. The Knowledge of God ... 85 
 
 VII. The Laws of Perception . . .105 
 
 VIII. The Law of Purity . . . . 127 
 
 IX. Light 143 
 
 X. Evidence 157 
 
 XL The Law of the Word . . .170 
 
 XII. Revelation 193 
 
 XIII. The Specific Organism OF Revelation 210 
 
 XIV. Ceremonialism 237 
 
 XV. Miracles 254 
 
 XVI. The Fulfiller 297 
 
 XVII. The Resurrection .... 327 
 
 XVIII. The Christ Universe . . . 342 
 
 XIX. The Foundation of Belief . . 386 
 
CHRIST'S IDEA OF THE SUPER- 
 NATURAL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 I. Heaven and Earth a Natural Unity. 
 
 When a man approaches Christianity 
 from the standpoint of modern thought, 
 he encounters an apparent unreasonable- 
 ness. Christianity insists on men beHev- 
 ing its revelation, as the condition of 
 eternal life, but when it is appealed to 
 to prove its revelation, so that a man can 
 believe it, it presents a series of evidences 
 more or less satisfactory, it is true, but not 
 amounting to any absolute demonstration, 
 and, to many honest minds, quite incon- 
 clusive. It is thus thrown into the absurd 
 attitude of holding men responsible, under 
 pain of eternal condemnation, when no 
 conclusive evidence is furnished to the 
 mind. 
 
2 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 Now, at this point much depends on the 
 man ; if he be fair-minded he Vv^ill, after 
 viewing the situation, say. There must 
 be some mistake here ; however much or 
 little one may accept of the details in the 
 New Testament it is clear that there was 
 a person named Jesus, — Caesar's existence 
 is not more certain. It is clear, too, that 
 he must have been a singularly original, 
 fair-minded and powerful character. This 
 is shown by his impact on humanity ; by 
 the powerful and practical current that he 
 made in religious thought and life. Now, 
 no thoughtful or original character would 
 have been likely to found his own religious 
 claims upon so absurd a basis ; for we 
 must remember that the claims of Chris- 
 tianity represent Christ's own intellectual 
 and moral position. We must remember, 
 too, that the Jewish lawyers of Christ's 
 day were shrewd reasoners. If his intel- 
 lectual position was so very weak they 
 mieht have been saved the trouble of 
 crucifying him, for he would have fallen 
 an easy prey to their logic. The inference 
 therefore is fair that the same thing has 
 occurred with regard to Jesus which has 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 3 
 
 SO often occurred in regard to religious 
 teachers : some great central truth of his 
 system, to which his life and person gave 
 peculiar emphasis, in the minds of his 
 original hearers, has become obscured, or 
 fallen into the background, and so, for lack 
 of its proportioning effect, all related truths 
 have been thrown into confusion or distor- 
 tion. As a matter of fact, this is just what 
 has occurred. There was a central truth 
 of Christ's teaching which his life, his per- 
 sonality, his every action, and the very at- 
 mosphere that he carried with him, forced 
 continually upon men with predominant 
 emphasis. This was the truth which the- 
 ology has somewhat vaguely striven to 
 preserve to the world in the doctrine of 
 the Incarnation. It was the unity between 
 the natural and spiritual worlds. 
 
 The common idea of the spiritual world 
 is indicated by the word " supernatural," 
 which means, to the popular mind, some- 
 thing above and therefore beyond nature's 
 realm, something wholly out of the category 
 of natural forces, so that the tie between 
 it and us is an arbitrary one. If there be 
 a God, then from this standpoint nature 
 
4 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 belongs to Him, not because of any affinity, 
 but because He made it, as a watchmaker 
 makes a watch. Taking this view, it is 
 clear what a divine revelation would have 
 to be. It must necessarily be non-natural, 
 and as the contents of the revelation would 
 relate to facts of which we have no experi- 
 ence, and for which we have no structural 
 adaptation, the whole testimony of nature 
 would be against it. Before men could 
 reasonably believe it, it would have to be 
 proved by a suspension of a natural law. 
 This suspension would show that nature 
 was in the hands of a being foreign to itself. 
 The miracle would be valuable in propor- 
 tion as the law was interfered with. Then, 
 of course, the man would accept the mes- 
 sage as extra-natural ; he would believe it, 
 though it told him that he must enter a 
 second time into his mother's womb and 
 be born. He would say. That is not natu- 
 ral, but I have evidence that there is a 
 God outside of nature, and that He has 
 decided, for reasons outside of nature, to 
 employ me to do things that are outside 
 of nature. Such a revelation would require 
 either that its outward miracle should be 
 
RELA TION OF GOD TO NA TURE. 5 
 
 repeated from age to age, or that there 
 should be an unbroken chain of historic 
 testimony, consisting of persons who were 
 themselves obeying this revelation, and 
 doing things entirely above nature, or else 
 there would have to be an inward miracle 
 constantly repeated, by which God com- 
 municated, by means of some subjective 
 prodigy, the certainty of this past revelation. 
 Again, we see that, with such a view of 
 the supernatural, it could have no relation- 
 ship to human life; being out of the cate- 
 gory of natural forces, what could it have 
 to do with a bundle of natural forces like 
 man ? Alien to natural vitalities, what could 
 it have to do with our vitality ? Outside of 
 nature, what bearing could it have on our 
 moral nature? — for surely there are only 
 two positions. If the supernatural is, 
 strictly speaking, above nature, then it is 
 outside of nature and everything belonging 
 to it. If, on the other hand, it is related to 
 any part of nature, then it belongs to the 
 whole, for nature is a unity. Assuming 
 that it is above and outside of nature, then 
 of course it is wholly beyond natural experi- 
 ence, nay, natural experience is all against 
 
6 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 it, its very existence is unlikely and calls 
 for a proof that can outweigh nature's testi- 
 mony. 
 
 It is clear what religion becomes, start- 
 ing from such premises ; it is a thing 
 wholly non-natural, an experience to which 
 nature is opposed. Thus, to the religious 
 man, nature becomes a violent antagonist. 
 God's will is, as the Calvinist said, wholly 
 arbitrary ; all nature cries out against it ; 
 the bodily constitution is opposed to it ; in 
 fact, from this standpoint the flesh is an 
 unmitigated evil, and asceticism is the tri- 
 umph of faith. So again, prayer, praise, 
 and religious duties in general, are entirely 
 arbitrary proceedings. The world is no 
 better, mankind not one whit advanced for 
 them, because they have no relationship to 
 anything upon earth ; it is true they may 
 be done to please God, but the pleasure 
 He takes in them is of a purely self-grati- 
 fying sort. 
 
 If we take the opposite view, propounded 
 by some philosophers, that which we have 
 called the supernatural becomes simply the 
 most inclusive natural, or the unknowable 
 force, of which all nature is the product. 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. / 
 
 It is plain to see with that view what a su- 
 pernatural revelation becomes. It is sim- 
 ply the imperative mood of nature voiced 
 in any man, a command that says one 
 thing upon the pages of St. Paul, a vio- 
 lently opposite thing on the pages of 
 Byron. It speaks alike in the noble sacri- 
 fice of the Christ, and in the unrestrained 
 life of Shelley. With it a religion becomes 
 impossible ; it is a compass without any 
 north star to point to. 
 
 It should be carefully noted that neither 
 of these views is due to any school of 
 thought, either ancient or modern. They 
 have prevailed at all times, more or less ; 
 they are not due so much to logic as to 
 a state of the feelings. The first view, 
 particularly that of extreme supernatu- 
 ralism, has marked a mechanical and 
 thoughtless tendency. It is a view that 
 frequently characterizes religious people 
 who are maintaining the forms of religion, 
 but whose feelings are as a matter of fact 
 absorbed with earth. It is the logical re- 
 sult of the atrophy of spiritual intuition in 
 a man who still clings to spiritual forms. 
 In the case of religious leaders the misery 
 
8 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 of It is, that in their hands this weird and 
 arbitrary supernaturalism becomes a dread- 
 ful engine for the mangling and crushing 
 of the religious nature itself. True, this 
 kind of authority has been wielded by 
 priests in the apparent interests of moral- 
 ity, nay, it has proved the bulwark of a 
 certain dogmatic faith, of a governmental 
 justice, a conventional righteousness. It 
 is doubtless better than anarchy. It may 
 be, at times, the only bulwark possible to 
 certain forms of civilization, which have a 
 transient value, but if we are to take the 
 word of Christ, it is to the heart of God 
 well-nigh intolerable, for it is a cruelty to 
 the human soul. It rarely fails to kill the 
 tender fibres of living faith, or to extin- 
 pfuish the love of God. This was what 
 Jesus saw going on about him, under the 
 priests and rabbis, and it awoke his fiery 
 protest. To his eye they were destroying 
 men, for to him outward institutions were 
 relatively a small thing. Religion and mo- 
 rality were the living fibres of living souls; 
 therefore against this heartless and tyran- 
 nous supernaturalism Jesus never ceased 
 to oppose the whole testimony of his spir- 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 9 
 
 itual consciousness. It was the vital issue 
 between him and the hierarchy. In a com- 
 ing Messiah they looked for a certain kind 
 of supernaturalism. Jesus presented a dia- 
 metrically opposite kind. They looked for 
 a prodigy to support their claims; in its 
 stead Jesus presented the life of the Fa- 
 ther, embodied in the humble guise of a 
 Galilean peasant. To this he felt himself 
 imperatively called by the divine love. 
 God pressed upon him. God would be 
 humanized. 
 
 But this presentation of supernaturalism 
 was not what the hierarchy wanted ; to 
 have waited long years for a reinforce- 
 ment of prodigies, with which to restore 
 the old theocracy, and then to have to put 
 up with Jesus ! it broke their hopes, was 
 fatal to their pride, and, as Jesus said, they 
 both saw and hated both him and his 
 Father. It was therefore against implac- 
 able antagonism and hostile criticism that 
 Jesus advanced his view of the supernat- 
 ural. The very sharpness of the conflict 
 threw this idea ever into the foreground. 
 It was hardly necessary that he should an- 
 nounce or define his view; it announced 
 
10 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 and defined itself. It is next to impossible 
 for us at this distance, reading the Gos- 
 pels in a coolly intellectual way, to realize 
 the tremendous proportion that the super- 
 naturalism of Jesus assumed to the men 
 of his day. It put him at once in the 
 forefront ; expectation hung on him ; the 
 whole national hope stood breathless be- 
 fore him. As he went in and out of syn- 
 agogues, the representatives of Judaism 
 watched him with closest scrutiny. Nor 
 did they watch in vain ; ^hey had not to 
 wait for words ; his supernaturalism sat 
 upon his brow ; it held out its quiet but 
 unyielding claim in his very mien ; it came 
 heavily weighted with every act. What- 
 ever he said or did issued from it, — con- 
 veyed it. It was self-defining, aggressive, 
 irresistible ; had he been content with 
 words, had he merely lectured about it, the 
 offense would have been small ; had he only 
 stood in the synagogue and said with calm 
 assurance, " Son, be of good cheer, thy 
 sins be forgiven thee," he might have been 
 censured and forgiven, but when he said, 
 " Take up thy bed and walk," and even 
 disease obeyed him, then according to the 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. II 
 
 account their fury rose. From that point 
 on, the struggle was desperate, and as when 
 they declared, " He blasphemeth," because 
 he said he was the Son of God, or when 
 he persisted in healing on the Sabbath 
 day, or again when he refused to withdraw 
 his statement that he was the real bread 
 from heaven, the bitterness of the con- 
 flict ever centred about the same point. 
 It was his presentation of the supernatu- 
 ral ; so desperate were they that they even 
 declared it to be diabolic. Both sides 
 knew that it was a struggle for life. To 
 Jesus it was clear from the first how it 
 must end ; they would be driven to cru- 
 cify him, but from the cross itself he ex- 
 pected to give the crowning truth of his 
 supernaturalism. Toward that he ad- 
 vanced with a step that none could put 
 aside. 
 
 Thus must it ever be with the original 
 conveyance of spiritual or moral truth. 
 These truths cannot be originally ex- 
 plained or presented by lecture - room 
 methods. Nor can they at the outset be 
 proved, for they cannot be philosophically 
 stated ; they require a free hand and a ere- 
 
12 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 ative power; they are, as Jesus declared 
 them to be, inseparable from the flesh 
 and blood of the teacher ; at the outset, 
 analysis is a deathblow to them. It is so, 
 too, with aesthetic truth. The soul of the 
 artist must be in touch with life and under 
 her immediate inspirations. His teach- 
 ing must consist in living forms, evoked 
 by living forms. It must start to life at 
 life's touch. First Giotto paints, then fol- 
 lows the art critic ; so, too, with the whole 
 range of truth related to man's higher sen- 
 sibility; original teaching here must al- 
 ways be life. The truth must first be 
 created in the form of manhood, then com- 
 prehended, intellectualized, and applied. 
 Garibaldi's deeds shine upon Italy and 
 the Italians see that they have a patria. 
 Cavour, the astute politician, applies the 
 principle scientifically and the new Italy 
 appears. 
 
 The original form of these truths is life, 
 always life ; the man of action, the crea- 
 tor, must come first. To attempt to an- 
 ticipate his work is, as Jesus expressed it, 
 to be a thief and a robber ; but after him, 
 the thinker is invaluable ; it becomes his 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 13 
 
 business to analyze this living truth, and 
 to teach its elements as well as their appli- 
 cation. Jesus clearly understood his work 
 as truth maker, therefore he did not theo- 
 rize or philosophize or take subjects into 
 isolation from life. He taught in the 
 crowd, under the pressure of humanity, 
 face to face with the devil and his angels, 
 but above all he lived ; his life was a crea- 
 tion, a tragedy, and an interpretation ; it 
 shone upon the teeming world about him 
 and irradiated it, till its archaic forms were 
 transfused with light and turned into a 
 gospel. In no other way could he have 
 been the great original teacher, as he said 
 to Pilate, — the king of the truth. But it 
 is for us who would possess this truth to 
 analyze its intellectual contents and so 
 possess ourselves of it. 
 
 As has been said, the issue of all this 
 life-teaching was a certain unmistakable, 
 aggressive view concerning supernatural- 
 ism. This view we find distinctly asserted 
 in his teaching concerning the Kingdom 
 of God, which occupies a large part of the 
 first three Gospels. Beyond question the 
 coming of the Kingdom of God signified 
 
14 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 to the Jewish mind the entrance of super- 
 natural power into the natural world, and 
 their notion of such an entrance was that 
 it w^ould be essentially unlike the entrance 
 of a natural force. This was the ground, 
 as has been said, of their opposition to the 
 Messiahship of Jesus. He had entered 
 the world in too humble and naturalistic 
 a way. Indeed, Jesus found the Jewish 
 mind so hostile that he partially disguised 
 the truth in parables, thus giving to it a 
 germinative rather than an immediate dis- 
 closure. This broke the violence of the 
 collision, and gave him an opportunity for 
 his preparatory work. He, however, in- 
 terpreted these parables to his disciples, 
 and what was their theme ? The entrance 
 of this expected supernaturalism which he 
 illustrated in the parable of the sower. To 
 begin with, there is the supernatural force 
 of the kingdom, and what is it ? his own 
 word, the word of a man, a Nazarene, born 
 of a woman, as natural as it was supernat- 
 ural. But what was its method of en- 
 trance and operation upon the world } 
 Like that of a seed in the field. Now, if 
 one were to select from the whole uni- 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 1 5 
 
 verse, it would be impossible to pick out 
 a more typical instance of the way in 
 which a natural force enters on its work. 
 Whether we view the transmissiveness of 
 the seed itself, or the affiliation of the earth 
 for it, or the strange affinity of the invisi- 
 ble life force for matter, we have a per- 
 fect illustration of what we call Nature's 
 method, by which all her forces do their 
 work. They all operate along the line of 
 undeveloped unities. They are all, as we 
 express it, correlated with one another. 
 There is between them a kind of recipro- 
 city. That reciprocity is not now wholly 
 realized, but it can be. It is potential. 
 The method by which it is to be realized 
 is that of the living organism. By living 
 organisms reciprocity is established be- 
 tween the facts and forces of the natural 
 world. The higher the organism the 
 wider is the circle of these reciprocities, 
 for organic life is the great coordinator. 
 
 When I say it is the coordinator, I mean 
 that it coordinates or harnesses together 
 things that are adapted to each other. 
 Here, for example, is tjie dark mould be- 
 neath the surface of a wheat field ; there 
 
1 6 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 is the sunlit air above ; there are chemical 
 elements, some of them in the soil, some 
 in the atmosphere ; all these are correlated 
 with each other ; there is a potential re- 
 ciprocity between them, but it is not es- 
 tablished. Now, there drops into the soil 
 a kernel of corn ; by its vitality it estab- 
 lishes the reciprocity between the clods 
 of earth that lie around it, and also be- 
 tween the chemical elements they contain. 
 Then, as it rises and pushes its head 
 above ground, it establishes a yet farther 
 reciprocity ; it coordinates earth and sky, 
 and, taking the chemical elements of both, 
 elaborates them into food, thus coordinat- 
 ing them with the human stomach, with 
 human life, and with its far-reaching ac- 
 tivities. 
 
 Now nothing could at first sight appear 
 more absolutely alien than a force like 
 human will and such an inert thing as a 
 lump of earth ; yet we see that they have 
 a potential reciprocity ; they are corre- 
 lated, and may actually be coordinated by 
 a kernel of corn. A loaf of bread is a 
 product of such coordination between veg- 
 etable life and lumps of earth, and for 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE, 17 
 
 want of a loaf of bread, the energy of the 
 human will has been known to collapse. 
 Now the question is, how far this correla- 
 tion of forces extends. One thing is cer- 
 tain, it extends beyond what men used 
 to call the sky. It takes in all the stars of 
 light, and what men once called God's 
 throne. Does it actually take in God's 
 throne .f^ Undoubtedly, if God's throne be 
 a glorious star; but what if it be a force — 
 does it take in that force 1 or does it climb 
 all the way up the ladder of forces till 
 it reaches God, and there stop, shutting 
 us out of the same category with God.f^ 
 Those that have studied nature pro- 
 foundly, reverently, scientifically, have had 
 a growing conviction that her unity did 
 somehow take in God ; that God is with 
 us in this universe. " Natural Law in the 
 Spiritual World " is the title of a book that 
 has aroused unusual interest. It appeals 
 to the growing sense of unity, to the feel- 
 ing that the supernatural must be some- 
 how natural. The aim of the book is to 
 show that natural law does take in the 
 spiritual world. To many minds this 
 view seems to involve a fundamental error. 
 
l8 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 Spirit, they say, is free ; it is not necessi- 
 tated, it does not come under the sway of 
 natural force. It is a free will. Un- 
 doubtedly this is true. Man's spirit is free ; 
 no force of nature necessitates its choice. 
 You may refuse a man bread if he con- 
 fesses Christ ; but that does not necessitate 
 his denying Christ. On the other hand, 
 however, the man's spirit is a force, an or- 
 ganic force ; the taking away of the bread 
 interferes with its power as an organic 
 force ; the spirit itself is free, but it is hin- 
 dered in its range of activity, and it suffers. 
 Thus, while in one sense it, is free from the 
 sweep of organic law, it is nevertheless 
 affected by it. It has, as has been said, a 
 potential reciprocity. It may choose to 
 let that reciprocity go. It may choose to 
 die, that is, to pass out of the range of 
 reciprocity, out of the field of organic 
 coordination, but the pang of death attests 
 the profound constitutionality of this reci- 
 procity. The human spirit does not will- 
 ingly cease to be coordinated with matter. 
 Now, it is because the human spirit is not 
 only a free will but an organic force that 
 it belongs to nature, and if natural law 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 1 9 
 
 actually extends throughout the supernat-' 
 ural world, then we must conceive of God 
 as being himself the Supreme Organic 
 Force. Nor is this position necessarily in- 
 consistent with God's Infinity or Absolute- 
 ness. It is conceivable that there is in 
 him a potential correlation with the mate- 
 rial world, a correlation which he is free 
 to abandon ; which is in fact of his own 
 making, but which, while it lasts, brings 
 him into the same category with us, and 
 so necessitates his suffering with us. It 
 is a fair hypothesis that there is thus not 
 only a divine Will, but a divine Nature, a 
 department of the divine Being, correlated 
 with nature and immanent in it, as the 
 vegetative life is immanent in the wheat 
 stem. If God has such a nature thus 
 reciprocal with ours, thus coordinated 
 with earth by every living organism, then 
 indeed there is * a Lamb slain from the 
 foundation of the world, for in all our afflic- 
 tion he is afflicted, and in all our neces- 
 sity he is necessitated ; yet with all he is 
 free ; his sovereiQ:n decree lies at the foun- 
 dation of it all. He is not only immanent 
 but supra-manent. " He inhabiteth eter- 
 
20 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 nity." With this Kmitation, there is cer- 
 tainly no difficulty about this conception 
 of natural law, as taking in the spiritual 
 world, though in all probability the better 
 statement would be that spiritual law 
 takes in the natural world. 
 
 11. Morality founded 07i Relationship. 
 
 But what has this question of the rela- 
 tion between nature and the supernatural 
 to do with that practical righteousness 
 which was the aim of Christ's life ? It has 
 everything to do with it, for Christ con- 
 ceived of the moral law as based on an 
 organic relationship which extended to the 
 heart of God himself, and he held that all 
 moral power is generated by a recognition 
 of those relations on which morality itself 
 is based. 
 
 This is instanced in his reply to a 
 certain lawyer, a representative of the 
 hostile hierarchy, who endeavors to draw 
 this uneducated peasant into the meshes 
 of learned casuistry. Which is the great 
 commandment in the law, asks the subtle 
 logician. There is a contradiction as to 
 detail in the recollection of the different 
 
., RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 21 
 
 disciples, some asserting that Jesus replied 
 by repeating the two well-known summa- 
 ries in Deuteronomy. Another account 
 represents him as returning the question 
 in a form that pinned the lawyer to his 
 book, while it put him on his mettle to 
 give the matter an intelligent construc- 
 tion. "What is written in the law.^^ how 
 readest thou ? " said Jesus. When the^ 
 man stated the law, in accordance with 
 the most intelligent construction of the 
 day, Jesus simply returned him his an- 
 swer, adding somewhat dryly, "This do, 
 and thou shalt live." This latter part of 
 the reply pointed out the real difficulty 
 which underlay all the attempts of these 
 learned men to find the truth. It was the 
 unnaturalness of their religion. Even 
 when they had the intellectual clue to the 
 law, they could not unravel it ; it remained 
 a riddle to them ; they could indeed com- 
 prehend its formal statement, concerning 
 the supremacy of love ; but love itself 
 they did not comprehend. They had not 
 experienced it, nor was it disclosed to 
 them as an organic force. They could 
 not therefore discern its relation to life. 
 
22 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 Claiming to be an authority upon the 
 subject of the moral law, and to be ade- 
 quate critics of Christ's moral position, they 
 themselves knew not how to apply the 
 law. It was not to them a practical or a 
 livable thing. It did not adjust them to 
 Nature, nor to her higher spiritual vital- 
 ities. There was therefore a keen though 
 mournful sarcasm in the reply of Jesus : 
 " This do, and thou shalt live." But ac- 
 cording to all accounts Jesus indorsed 
 the position held by the ablest jurists of 
 his nation ; he planted himself like them 
 upon the two great summaries of Deute- 
 ronomy. " ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God, with all thy heart and with all thy 
 soul and with all thy mind ; ' this," he said, 
 "is the first and great commandment; and 
 the second is like unto it : ' Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these 
 two commandments hang all the law and 
 the prophets." But when the lawyer re- 
 treats once more into the labyrinths of 
 casuistry, and lawyer-like asks, " Who is 
 my neighbor 1 " Jesus, who always kept 
 control of a conversation, does not allow 
 himself to be drawn into this fruitless 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 23 
 
 discussion of terminology, but he gives 
 an instance of a certain man who fell 
 among thieves ; and so faithful is this 
 touch of nature that when Jesus con- 
 cludes with the question, " Who was 
 neighbor to him that fell among thieves ? " 
 the lawyer, taken by surprise, is con- 
 strained by the logic of his heart to say, 
 " He that showed mercy on him." Whereat 
 Jesus answers again dryly and pointedly, 
 " Go thou and do likewise." This story of 
 the good Samaritan is one of the master 
 strokes of Jesus ; it defines neighborliness, 
 artist-like, not by terminology but by por- 
 trayal. 
 
 The portrayal is so lifelike, one is 
 obliged to say. Yes, that is it ; while at the 
 same time all its facts stand out in such 
 clear proportion that there is no mistak- 
 ing its philosophy. 
 
 To the Jew or any one else in Christ's 
 time, "neighbor "was a rather undefined as 
 well as undefinable term ; it could, in fact, 
 only be defined by throwing clear light on 
 the unity which it represented. To com- 
 prehend the unity is to comprehend the 
 word " neighbor." Even to their minds it 
 
24 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 had, however, some boundaries that ap- 
 peared to be established ; it did not 
 include a barbarian nor a slave, nor to a 
 Jewish mind did it include a Samaritan. 
 These distinctions were certainly not phi- 
 losophic, they were not founded upon 
 nature or reality. In fact, the word " neigh- 
 bor" represented an arbitrary and conven- 
 tional unity. Of course the love founded 
 on it had a capricious and formal quality ; 
 like anything not rooted in nature's unity, 
 it had little of nature's force ; it was a 
 conventional, sickly kind of product : but 
 here was a Samaritan who was a neighbor. 
 His neighborliness w^as of a healthy kind, 
 too. There was in it something of 
 Nature's grand vitality. It had the force 
 and spontaneity of her great currents ; it 
 did not stop for trifles ; it burst through 
 the wall of Judaism: and here were a priest 
 and a Levite, ministers of the Jewish reli- 
 gion, keepers of its moral law, who were 
 not neighbors to their own religious con- 
 frere. Why were they not? The answer 
 is clear; the neighbor is he that showed 
 mercy on him. But what is mercy ? A 
 natural potency of the human heart; a feel- 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 25 
 
 ing that requires voluntary cultivation, no 
 doubt, and therefore we call it moral ; but 
 who will say that it is not native to the 
 heart of the good Samaritan ? Clearly, 
 this Samaritan has a natural faculty within 
 him, by which he can feel the heart of the 
 Jew; can feel his misery, his want; can 
 feel what would do him good ; can feel 
 that oil and wine would be comforting to 
 him ; can show this feeling by practical 
 embodiments of it : and the Jew in his 
 turn can, through these embodiments, feel 
 the merciful heart of the Samaritan. 
 
 This is an extraordinary thing, you no- 
 tice, a great discovery, greater than that 
 of gas or electricity or America, for here 
 was supposed to be the boundary of neigh- 
 borhood, and now the boundary is crossed. 
 Once crossed, it will be crossed again and 
 again. Indeed, the followers of Jesus have 
 been crossing it ever since, and have been 
 proving not only that the Jew and the 
 Samaritan are neighbors, but likewise the 
 Jew and the Greek, the Anglo-Saxon and 
 the Chinaman ; in short, that all men are 
 neio:hbors or near-dwellers, that there is 
 between them all a potential reciprocity. 
 
26 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 And the law is that this should be estab- 
 lished like all other natural correlations, 
 just as the good Samaritan established it, 
 by organic coordination. This potency of 
 mercy shall not lie dormant and stifled in 
 the heart ; the life organs shall take it up ; 
 the brain shall throb with its problem, 
 and the heart pulsate with its emotion, 
 and the eye kindle with its light, and the 
 hand and foot make haste to do its bid- 
 ding. Then, when reciprocal feeling be- 
 comes an organic embodiment, nature's 
 unity is completed, — Jew and Samaritan 
 become neis^hbors or near-dwellers indeed. 
 Now, as Jesus said, upon this organic law 
 of love hang all the law and the prophets, 
 for organic love is like the full corn in the 
 ear ; it is reproductive ; the whole field of 
 nature belongs to it, and it is an all-em- 
 bracing force. It coordinates all recipro- 
 cal facts and forces ; it establishes all cor- 
 relations ; it awakens all natural potencies ; 
 it begets everywhere its own image and 
 likeness ; it seizes the ground with its 
 roots ; it extirpates every evil and hateful 
 growth. Thus one true neighbor, carry- 
 ing neighborhood in look and voice and 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 2/ 
 
 hand, — one neighbor who cannot be over- 
 come by evil treatment, or frozen by indif- 
 ference, — begets at last a community of 
 neighbors, for, Hke a true kernel of corn, 
 he breaks up the clods and establishes the 
 reciprocities. This is the natural law of 
 love. A natural law is the method in 
 which a natural force acts. The natural 
 force of love is feeling. When a man is 
 touched by the living organism of love, 
 when he comes in contact with a true 
 neighbor, the feeling of love is awakened. 
 
 This is a perfectly natural process ; it is 
 as natural as is the feeling of pain at a 
 pin's prick, or gratification at the taste of 
 food. But at that point natural law stops; 
 it stops because the natural force of love 
 can go no further. It has come to the 
 boundary line of personal freedom. Within 
 that line nothing can be necessitated. The 
 natural force here takes on a new function; 
 it no longer necessitates, it appeals. Here, 
 in this realm of liberty, sits enthroned the 
 will. Love may constrain the feelings, 
 may shake the nerve centres with emo- 
 tion, may draw unwilling tears, but it can- 
 not force the will. The will can resist 
 
2S RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 love, can harden the feelings to it, can 
 string the nerves against it, can refuse to 
 let it get possession of the organism. A 
 man can by the effort of his will preoc- 
 cupy his organic sensibilities with animal 
 passion and selfish absorption, so as at last 
 to make them impervious to the force of 
 love. Like the priest and the Levite, he 
 can pass by on the other side. This is what 
 is called in the Scripture " the hardening 
 of the heart." It seems probable that such 
 a hardened and insensitive organism may 
 also be passed along by heredity. Such 
 is the scope of the free will. 
 
 It may, on the other hand, respond to 
 the appeal of love and cultivate its organic 
 forms, until the entire organism becomes 
 filled with a joyous sensitiveness and with 
 all the vitality of love. Love is therefore, 
 in all its forms, the result of intelligent 
 cultivation by the will. This is its glory 
 and its value, that it is the product of a 
 free choice. It is in this respect unlike 
 passion and appetite. Passion and appe- 
 tite are natural forces proceeding from the 
 animal sensibilities. They at first only 
 appeal to the will, but if over cultivated 
 
RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 29 
 
 they have a tendency to necessitate and 
 enslave it. This, however, is not the case 
 with moral love. When it approaches 
 the will it stops with its mute appeal. It 
 stands with its touch of life, offering to 
 give life, but it does not offer to enchain. 
 It addresses itself, however, to the intel- 
 lectual powers, to the reason and the con- 
 science, for these are regulative ; they assist 
 freedom. To them, therefore, love appeals. 
 It takes the form of moral law. It holds 
 up rewards and penalties. It speaks with 
 supreme authority, as being recognizably 
 the noblest element of our being. It com- 
 mands : Thou shalt love. 
 
 But who is the original neighbor^ the 
 eternal nigh-dweller, whose sympathy with 
 mankind is not merely a potency, but a 
 tide of feeling, ever fresh and vast and 
 buoyant, ever putting itself forth in newer 
 organism, in deeper tone of love, in gen- 
 tler ways, in larger gifts, — that nigh- 
 dweller whose sympathy cannot be over- 
 come by hate or quenched by neglect, 
 whose love begets all other loves, whose 
 living embodiments awaken all potencies, 
 establish all reciprocities and build up all 
 
30 RELATION OF GOD TO NATURE. 
 
 unities? Beyond all doubt there is such 
 a neighbor, one who is with us in nature, 
 who belongs to the same category. The 
 infinite tide of his feeling is the natural 
 force of love. It is the force on which 
 all others hang, with which all are coordi- 
 nated. This declaration, the glad tidings 
 of this Eternal Nigh-dweller, is the heart 
 of Christ's gospel. But, for Him, the word 
 " neighbor " is not enough ; he is the be- 
 getter of all neighborly feeling, the one 
 from whom all near -dwelling proceeds: 
 therefore Jesus calls Him the Father. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 
 
 I. The Supreme Law of Righteonsness. 
 
 In the previous chapter we saw that the 
 great central truth of Christ's teaching was 
 the unity between the natural and super- 
 natural. Doubtless some people will ob- 
 ject to this statement ; they will say that 
 the great central truth of Christ's teaching 
 was the personal disclosure of God. It is 
 quite true that it was a personal disclo- 
 sure rather than an abstract idea. The 
 personal disclosure is the larger element — 
 it is the one on which religion feeds. But 
 Christ's personal disclosure of God was 
 the disclosure of his fatherhood ; and that 
 idea of divine fatherhood, viewed in the 
 light of modern science, stands for organic 
 unity between God and man, and, as we 
 have seen, to the mind of Jesus it stood 
 for the same thing. But if there be an 
 organic unity between God and man, 
 
32 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 
 
 surely it is impossible to stop at that 
 point, for man is a unity with the nature 
 about him. Unity between God and man 
 necessarily includes a unity between God's 
 world and man's world. Furthermore, it' 
 so happens at this time that the particular 
 difficulty with which Christianity has to 
 deal in men's minds grows out of the way 
 in which God's relation to Nature is pre- 
 sented, or, in other words, out of a false 
 supernaturalism. It is therefore of the 
 utmost consequence that we should grasp 
 with a clear and strong hold the abstract 
 idea of the supernatural contained in 
 Christ's disclosure of God, particularly its 
 moral significance. 
 
 It would be impossible out of the whole 
 vocabulary of language to select a term 
 more expressive of nature's correlations 
 than the word " Father." Yet theology 
 has largely emptied it of its meaning. 
 The father is bound to the son by the tie 
 of organic feeling ; he cannot help suffering 
 with and for his child, unless by the hard- 
 ening power of the will he steels himself 
 against nature. In David's lament over Ab- 
 salom, the Jews had a correct and accepted 
 
OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 33 
 
 portrayal of fatherhood drawn to the life. 
 The true father's heart is there seen, neces- 
 sitated by nature's law, to suffer under the 
 sins of the child. We may criticise his 
 indulgence of the feeling, but its exist- 
 ence was normal. It was the law of or- 
 ganic unity that wrung from David's heart 
 that cry, " Would God I had died for thee, 
 O Absalom, my son." Let a man read that 
 story and weigh well the meaning which 
 the word " Father " had in the teaching of 
 the Old Testament. And when Christ 
 used the word he used it for all it was 
 worth ; it carried this organic unity to the 
 very heart of God. It branded as a lie 
 that conception of God which puts Him 
 beyond the realm of natural emotion. 
 
 Just precisely as an earthly child's moral 
 relationship to his father has its tap-root 
 deep in the natural relationship, so is it 
 between man and God. In this potential 
 unity of God with man lies the foundation 
 of moral law. In the heart of the Infinite 
 Father and Near-dweller is the fount of 
 goodness and the ground of authority, be- 
 cause He can but feel for us, can but be 
 pierced with our sins and suffer under 
 
34 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 
 
 our pain. Yea, because no neglect extin- 
 guishes his love, and no offense over- 
 comes it, because the tokens of his grace 
 are new every morning and fresh every 
 evening, because in his love lies all our 
 higher vitality, because it can coordinate 
 us with all that is good and deliver us 
 from all that is evil, because, in short, all 
 neighborhood hangs upon it ; therefore the 
 first and greatest demand of our moral 
 nature is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, 
 with all thy mind, with all thy strength.'' 
 Thou shalt respond with every reciprocity 
 of thy being to the love of God, for in 
 this response to God's love lies the or- 
 ganic vitality of all other love. To deny 
 it is to deny one's own highest nature. 
 Upon these two commandments hung all 
 the law and the prophets. All merely 
 conventional righteousness was to Jesus a 
 corpse. It did not have the vitality of the 
 divine love. It was not a real doer in the 
 world, but a hypocrite, playing a theatrical 
 part upon the stage ; so when Jesus strove 
 against sin, he unmasked this hypocrisy, 
 showed what a whited sepulchre it was, 
 
OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 35 
 
 and held up over against it the true right- 
 eousness, based on these great organic uni- 
 ties. So, too, when Jesus taught morality, 
 he did it by teaching unity; he held up 
 the words of unity and extended them. 
 
 Thus he rescued morality, by taking 
 its questions out of the field of abstract 
 thought into the realm of natural feeling. 
 Instead of arguing with men, he reached 
 out after their hearts with allegories, 
 and revived their human sympathies by 
 touches of nature that led them to feel 
 their kinship with one another and with 
 God. Thus, also, he extended the term 
 " neighbor," till it took in all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men. Coordinating men with 
 God, as children of one Father, he coordi- 
 nated them with one another as brethren, 
 and thus carried them up into a higher 
 unity, while he deepened love by opening 
 up its scope and source and natural law. 
 Seeking to uplift and purify man's motive 
 of action, he presents God as a watchful 
 parent whose sympathetic eye is never off 
 his child, who shares that child's darkest 
 obscurity, his utmost desolation, and the 
 innermost life of his soul. He urges men 
 
36 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE, 
 
 to winnow their conduct from all super- 
 ficial conventional motives, to take heed 
 that their good acts are indeed embodi- 
 ments of this divine reciprocity, — that they 
 are done for this Father who seeth in 
 secret, — and to seek the pure reward of 
 his fatherly love. 
 
 In the same way he rescues prayer from 
 the dreary fog into which theology had car- 
 ried it. He recognizes it as a duty. God 
 will reward it as such, but it is a filial duty. 
 It has its tap-root in a natural relation, that 
 of sonship. It is the dutiful cultivation of 
 a natural tie, and its reward is a father's re- 
 ward, bestowed not upon a mere perform- 
 ance, but upon the organism of a filial, 
 spirit. It is this unfolding organism of unity 
 which is outwardly blessed by the Father 
 who seeth in secret. So, too, Jesus urges 
 men to prayer by sketching in a vivid way 
 God's sensibility. He lays down a broad 
 principle. Every one that asketh receiveth, 
 he says ; that is a fact of the natural world. 
 Why? Because of human unity; all men 
 have some degree of sensibility, therefore 
 they are moved by an appeal ; if they are 
 ungenerous, still this organic law reaches 
 
OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 37 
 
 them. Take even the worst possible case, 
 an unjust judge, who fears not God, neither 
 regards man ; even he yields to an appeal 
 made by a poor widow. She is weak, 
 insignificant, but she worries him. He 
 grants her request, because it is hard to 
 resist this law of unity, or lest, as he ex- 
 presses it, by her continual coming she 
 wear me away. Or take the case of a man 
 who has gone to bed, and whose friend 
 asks him to rise and give him three loaves. 
 He gets his request, not because he is a 
 friend, but because of his importunity, 
 which importunity is a persistent appeal 
 to unity. Even a man in bed cannot 
 escape this law. Then Jesus takes the 
 case of a father. What one of you hav- 
 ing a son, if he ask bread, will give him 
 a stone ? That would be impossible, he 
 argues ; even you, though you are evil, 
 he adds unflatteringly, even you have too 
 much sensibility, even you know too well 
 the unity between you and your children; 
 you are not so stupid as to hurt your own 
 flesh and blood ; and is not your heavenly 
 Father amenable to this same organic law.f* 
 Does not He, from whom all fatherhood 
 
38 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 
 
 proceeds, whose heart is neither hardened 
 nor blinded by evil, does not He feel and 
 know enough to give good things to those 
 that ask Him ? He may indeed refuse 
 that for which the child clamors ; He may 
 perceive it to be a stone, or a scorpion ; 
 but will He not give real good to those 
 that ask Him? — for prayer is itself the 
 establishment of a filial reciprocity, and 
 those that pray are already beginning to 
 be children. 
 
 II. TJie Gospel of the Father. 
 
 But words fail in telling how Jesus 
 awakened both religion and morality in 
 men, by picturing the sympathy of God. 
 This is his gospel of the Father. It is 
 filled with the endearing terms and illus- 
 trations of unity, yet the terms would be 
 empty, comparatively, and would be fruit- 
 less, except for the life with which Jesus 
 has surcharged them. It is a great thing 
 doubtless to be taught that we are thus 
 correlated with the mysterious source of 
 our being, that God has an eternal feeling 
 for us, and that we have a potency for 
 feeling God. To know that when this 
 
OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 39 
 
 Spark of sonship is wholly undeveloped or 
 quenched by sin He would fain leave the 
 glory of his heavenly estate to rescue this 
 fallen child; to know that God's moral law 
 itself and even its penalties have their root 
 in his natural affection for us ; to see the 
 veil drawn part way back and to get a 
 glimpse of God's natural heart in the para- 
 ble of the prodigal son ; to know that there 
 is joy in the presence of the angels of God 
 over one sinner that repenteth, ■ — these 
 ideas are indeed like life from the dead. 
 Even though they were but a philosophy, 
 one is compelled to admit that they alone 
 solve the problem of righteousness. But as 
 we look at Jesus we are startled and awe- 
 struck by the perception that they are not 
 a product of his ratiocination, but a reality 
 of his consciousness. This divine feeling 
 for man, this infinite sympathy, this hunger- 
 ing of God after man's heart, this tenderness 
 that clings to man, despite sin and indiffer- 
 ence, this recognition of possible sonship 
 in the vilest; all these supernatural ele- 
 ments we see stirring tumultuously in the 
 human breast of Jesus, contending with 
 the natural instinct of self-preservation; 
 
40 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 
 
 for Jesus is not the cold, one-sided, intel- 
 lectual type of man ; he is the complete, im- 
 passioned, royal type. His intelligence is 
 vast and clear, but his feeling is vaster still 
 and clearer. It is an exalted conscious- 
 ness ; by it he touches God, he knows 
 God's heart, he kindles with sympathy for 
 that heart, he can but give himself up to 
 it. He loses himself thus ; he comes to 
 seek and to save that which is lost, to be 
 the human organism and embodiment of 
 this divine feeling for man. It makes him a 
 man of sorrows ; it turns his life into a trag- 
 edy ; surely " he hath carried our griefs." 
 One is ready to kneel down when he 
 hears Jesus say, out of this pent-up inner 
 consciousness, " The Father hath sent me." 
 Agony and joy struggle together in that 
 phrase. It voices the same truth that we 
 hear wrung from his lips in his great ex- 
 tremity, — the truth that this supernatural- 
 ism was not the creation of his own brain, 
 nor could he alone endure to embody it. 
 He was in far mightier hands, — hands 
 that could not be turned back from sacri- 
 fice however great: hands that w^ere able 
 to carry him through. For there comes a 
 
OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 41 
 
 moment when even Jesus recoils. " Father, 
 he cries, if it be possible, let this cup pass 
 from me." But in an instant it is over. 
 He has felt the everlastins: arms. " Not 
 as I will, but as thou wilt. Father, into 
 thy hands I commend my spirit." To the 
 mind of Jesus it was not he himself who 
 made the great sacrifice. It was the Fa- 
 ther who so loved the world as to give 
 his only begotten son. 
 
 That Jesus was genuine in his testi- 
 mony to his own consciousness there can 
 be no doubt. He had no motive for being 
 otherwise. As to the facts of that con- 
 sciousness, the New Testament is flooded 
 with them ; they are not confined to any 
 one Gospel ; they are present on every 
 page. However mutilated, fragmentary, or 
 interspersed with myths, however destitute 
 of miracles the Gospels may turn out to 
 be, one thing is certain : there was a man, 
 no further off than Galilee, who felt God 
 with his flesh and blood, all the way from 
 his peasant's workshop to Calvary. Nor 
 did his clear intellect for one moment fail 
 to see the bearing of this. It was for no 
 small thing that this divine feeling made 
 
42 OUR NEAREST RELATIVE. 
 
 him the burden-bearer of his race. He 
 was the supreme Organ of unity, the divine 
 At-one-ment. The oneness which had be- 
 fore been potential, in him became organic. 
 In him God and man were coordinated. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 We have seen with what moral earnest- 
 ness Jesus took up this question of super- 
 naturalism, how clear was his conviction 
 that all moral issues had their solution in 
 this organic kingdom of God, that moral 
 force came as truly under the operation of 
 natural law as the vegetative, that God's 
 word was the source of it, and that the 
 righteous man was a man coordinated with 
 God. We have seen, too, that these facts 
 are the great theme of the first three Gos- 
 pels. But it was impossible for Jesus to 
 stop here. As has been said, his own 
 consciousness of the Fatherhood, and his 
 comprehension of the Father's purpose, 
 compelled him to recognize in himself the 
 great organ of the Word for that coordi- 
 nation. No one could be less egotistic 
 than Jesus. He was above all men real- 
 istic, profoundly sensitive to the wants and 
 
44 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 sufferings of men, painfully alive to their 
 moral necessities. Above all, in him did 
 the stupendous consciousness of the Fa- 
 ther dwarf the consciousness of self. Yet 
 by the very stress of this consciousness 
 did he know his isolation. There was no 
 one to share his burden. The Gospels 
 all represent him as beginning his minis- 
 try by preaching that the kingdom of 
 Heaven was at hand. And this preach- 
 ing of the kingdom very clearly implied 
 his own sovereignty and responsibility. 
 Nor did he hesitate, when disciples gath- 
 ered about him, to take his place as the 
 supreme spiritual organ of the Word.^ 
 He took the throne at the outset. From 
 the first his attitude had a, peculiar maj- 
 esty. He stood alone, He consulted no 
 one. Nothing surprised him. He was an 
 enigma to all, but clear to himself. He 
 shared his joys, but never his plans. His 
 one word to all men was, Follow me. 
 
 Coordination with God through himself 
 
 '&' 
 
 ^ All things have been delivered to me of my Father, 
 neither doth any know the Father save the Son and he 
 to whom the Son willeth to reveal him. — Matt. xi. 27. 
 
 One is your Master, even the Christ. — Matt, xxiii. 10. 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 45 
 
 he declared to be essential to moral salva- 
 tion. A noticeable instance of this is the 
 case of the young ruler who came to him 
 asking, What good thing shall I do to in- 
 herit eternal life ? With a profound phi- 
 losophy, which reminds one of the fourth 
 Gospel, Jesus repudiates the notion of 
 goodness having any independent exist- 
 ence apart from God, but as was his usual 
 custom with the educated classes refers 
 him to the law. The young man declares 
 that he has kept all the commandments 
 from his youth. It is a strange case, a 
 pathetic case ; here is a man who has kept 
 the laws of life, and yet he is unconscious 
 of the life, but is an anxious and troubled 
 seeker after it. " What lack I yet ? " he 
 says. There is something very curious 
 about this. The moral law, then, is not 
 like other laws. It is neither natural nor 
 vital. Jesus discloses the trouble in a word. 
 " One thing thou lackest," he says. " Sell 
 whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, 
 and thou shalt have treasure in heaven," 
 or, in other words, divine capacity ; " and 
 come, take up the cross, and follow me." ^ 
 
 1 Mark x. 21. 
 
46 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 One may pick a lily and put it in a vase ; 
 water it, yes, and put its native earth about 
 it; give it air and sunlight, keep the bugs 
 off from it, treat it according to law, keep 
 the law for it ; what will it all avail if one 
 neglects the one great law by which the 
 lily lives, the law of organic coordination ? 
 You have plucked it from its stem, its 
 mediator. Plough your wheat field as 
 much as you will, keep it harrowed and 
 untrodden, what will it avail toward life 
 till there drops into it the kernel of wheat, 
 nature's mediator that is to coordinate it 
 with life ? " Follow me," says the organ of 
 nature. " Cling to me, give yourself up 
 to me. Become my instruments, charged 
 with my life," says the tree trunk to the 
 branches ; " become my life organs, and 
 God will give you life." So in effect did 
 Jesus say to the young ruler : " Eternal 
 life, — it is the true eternal humanity com- 
 ing from the bosom of God. He has 
 surcharged me with it, that I might give it 
 to the world. Help me, share my struggle, 
 become the organ of my large disburse- 
 ments, and as you are organized by life, 
 you will have life." 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 47 
 
 There is not to be found in all Christ's 
 sayings a single place where he exalts him- 
 self as an arbitrary mediator or formal 
 vicegerent. He does not uphold his own 
 supremacy or the recognition of it as hav- 
 ing any value per se. In fact, he takes 
 pains to declare the contrary. He sol- 
 emnly avows to his disciples that the mere 
 recognition of his rank amounts to no- 
 thing ; that the exaltation of him as Lord, 
 and even the accomplishment of wonders 
 in his name and for his glorification can- 
 not avail them anything in the day of 
 judgment. His headship and his media- 
 torship were organic, not formal. Faith 
 in him had, indeed, a supreme moral value 
 because it enabled a man to enter into 
 reciprocity with the spiritual world, to be- 
 come a partaker of its moral force, and to 
 bring forth the fruits of its spiritual right- 
 eousness. It was superior to the common 
 w^orldly conventional righteousness, just as 
 anything that is natural is superior to what 
 is unnatural, superficial, and conventional. 
 It was the only righteousness that saved, 
 precisely as it is only nature that saves, 
 while going contrary to nature is destruc- 
 
48 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 tive. To follow natural law is to walk in 
 a pathway of salvation ; to go against 
 natural law is to cast one's self into a bot- 
 tomless abyss of misery and self-destruc- 
 tion. But the fundamental law of all 
 others is this law of organic coordination. 
 According to Jesus, it extends likewise to 
 the moral nature. In fact the insistence 
 of Jesus upon his messiahship as he viewed 
 the messiahship was simply his insistence 
 on the universality of a certain natural law 
 and of certain specific functions. Man's 
 world had a natural reciprocity with God's 
 world. That reciprocity was to be estab- 
 lished by the development of certain or- 
 ganic functions in manhood. Those 
 functions had been imperfectly developed 
 before. In him they were fulfilled. 
 
 It may be objected that this is reading 
 modern thought into the conception of 
 Jesus. I answer, No. It is simply giving 
 his thought its modern equivalent. It is 
 a great mistake to suppose that a realistic 
 conception of nature depends on our mod- 
 ern forms of thought. Human concep- 
 tions of truth are not so dependent ; they 
 may exist even without language. There 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 49 
 
 have been lately brought to light several 
 cases of deaf mutes, who, without written 
 or spoken language to assist them, prior 
 to all education had formed conceptions 
 on all the great phenomena of nature, and 
 apprehended certain well-known principles, 
 such as causation and moral obligation. 
 Nature supplied them with thought-stuff 
 in her own forms and symbols. The fact 
 is, nature — yes, even subjective nature — 
 has herself a language ; she tells her own 
 story, she herself furnishes to the human 
 mind the original norms of thought. Given 
 an original mind, the greatest teacher a 
 man can have is an inspired and sym- 
 pathetic consciousness, such as Words- 
 worth describes as characteristic of his 
 childhood. An original genius will often 
 thus penetrate immeasurably beyond the 
 ideas of his age, reading nature like an 
 open book. Because the mind of Jesus 
 grew like any other mind under the envi- 
 ronment of his age, because he often ex- 
 pressed his thought in Jewish modes, be- 
 cause he even passed through Jewish 
 phases of development, we are not to infer 
 that his mature conceptions were thus 
 
50 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 limited to the horizon of his time. To 
 infer this is to ignore altogether the power 
 possessed by a vast and sympathetic con- 
 sciousness to choose its own environment, 
 penetrating far and wide into the infini- 
 ties. 
 
 Why should not such a vast and origi- 
 nal nature have read nature at first hand, 
 and spelled out her unities in the original 
 terms of the Creator and Father? Un- 
 questionably this is what the author of the 
 fourth Gospel understood him to do, for 
 he represents him as defining his head- 
 ship and mediatorship by an illustration 
 taken from nature. " I am the vine," he 
 says, " and ye are the branches. Abide in 
 me and I in you. Without me you can 
 do nothing. He that abideth in me, the 
 same bringeth forth much fruit. If a 
 man abide not in me, he is cast forth as 
 a branch and is withered." We have thus 
 put in nature's own parable and in the 
 creator's original language the very prin- 
 ciple that we have been discussing. And 
 it is put here in a form so specific as to 
 define the whole situation. The branches 
 and the vine are what we call organs. 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 5 I 
 
 An organ is an instrument by which life 
 is coordinated with the material universe. 
 The branches are organs. They estab- 
 lish reciprocities between that mysterious 
 invisible thing called life and the material 
 forces of the world. But they can do no- 
 thing without a central organ, the vine, 
 which has a grand specific function of its 
 own for all the branches, mediating be- 
 tween them and the earth. The vine 
 does not get between the branches and 
 the earth. It does not interfere in any 
 formal way between the branches and the 
 earth. It does not obstruct the recipro- 
 city ; it makes it more complete. It is in 
 fact a branch extension. To abide in the 
 vine is to be coordinated with it in so 
 vital a way that the two are a natural 
 unity. One vital force pervades them 
 both. For the branch not to abide in the 
 vine is to obstruct coordination with the 
 vine. Thus the branch becomes an iso- 
 lated fact in nature. It is cut off from 
 her great vital currents, dropped out of her 
 circle of unity. It is then in a position 
 opposed to natural law. It can no longer 
 be an organ of vitality, for it does not fulfill 
 
52 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 the law of vitality. It is withered, and 
 this withering process takes place despite 
 the fact that the vine has already done its 
 work for the branch, has already made it 
 to be a branch, has imparted to it specific 
 functions, has already put it in direct co- 
 ordination with heaven's light and life and 
 sunshine. Still deep in the structure of 
 things there remains a necessity for coor- 
 dination with the vine. Certain organic 
 necessities are supplied by the vine, with- 
 out which the branches cannot have direct 
 reciprocities with the skies. 
 
 In short, there is no such thing as abso- 
 lute individualism. Nature's life is a 
 shared life, in w^hich certain lesser organs 
 constitute a unity with larger and mightier 
 organs. Nor is there any such thing 
 as an organ having an isolated life, or 
 holding independent reciprocity with God. 
 This fact is sufficiently clear in the natu- 
 ral world. It was just as clear in Christ's 
 day as in our day, for a man that had eyes 
 to see it. His not possessing the word 
 " organ," or the other word, " coordination," 
 could not keep a stupendous and original 
 mind from seeing the fact or the law, nor 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 53 
 
 could it keep him from seeing that it ex- 
 tended to the moral world, — that the 
 moral world called for such an organ of 
 unification, that his consciousness of God 
 constituted him that organ, that it meant 
 for him an awful burden and an awful joy. 
 He saw the bearings of the moral law, he 
 saw the dread necessity of the mora] 
 world, he saw no eye to pity and no arm 
 to save. Therefore his own eye pitied 
 and he saw that his own arm was ap- 
 pointed to bring salvation. With the im- 
 periousness of a divine love, he called on 
 men to share eternal life, to follow him 
 and be put in touch with God, even as 
 they put other men in touch with God ; as 
 they shared the sonship they themselves 
 should become sons. 
 
 As is seen in this parable of the branch 
 and the vine, Christ used the preposition 
 " in " to express this idea of organic coor- 
 dination with another organ, or with 
 another life. And this same mode of 
 expression passed into the current phrase- 
 ology of the apostles, particularly of the 
 ap'ostle Paul, who, more than any other 
 of the apostles, grasped hold of and 
 
54 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 expanded this organic view of Jesus. To 
 be in Christ was to be in organic coordina- 
 tion with Christ. To have Christ in one 
 was to have Christ's moral vitahty thor- 
 oughly coordinated with one's life and 
 conduct, so that both were actually per- 
 vaded by the divine influence. So, 
 likewise, to be " in the flesh " signified 
 sometimes, but not always, a state of vol- 
 untary coordination with the hereditary 
 passions of the race, so that one became a 
 natural type or organ of the race's ani- 
 malism. 
 
 Salvation, or righteousness, from this 
 standpoint consisted in being delivered 
 from this lower organic unity, and being 
 brought into the higher unity of God. 
 This occurs in the last prayer of Jesus on 
 the eve of crucifixion. Here the whole 
 tide of his life purpose wells forth. He 
 prays for unity, first of all for the unity of 
 his disciples. Keep them, he says, that 
 they may be one, even as we are. While 
 I was with them, he says, I kept them. 
 He likewise states the instrument through 
 which he kept them, namely, " thy word." 
 This medium of unity is also the medium 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 55 
 
 of sanctification. In fact, the sanctifica- 
 tion itself is, as we see at the end of the 
 prayer, simply the perfected unity. The 
 holiness is simply the wholeness of a man, 
 through his establishment in that organic 
 unity to which he belongs. Till he enters 
 that unity he is not a whole man. He is 
 not whole without Christ, any more than a 
 branch is whole without the vine. Jesus 
 goes on to pray for those who, as he ex- 
 presses it, " shall believe on me through 
 their word," that they all may enter this 
 unity, " as thou, Father, art in me, and I 
 in thee, that they also may be one in us." 
 The oneness for which he prays here is 
 not oneness of substance with God. It is 
 the same kind of oneness with God that 
 he had himself, as a human organ, — the 
 unity of reciprocal vitalities. The branch 
 is not the same thing as the vine, it does 
 not occupy the same position, it does not 
 have the same function, it never will. The 
 vine is not of the same substance with the 
 earth. There is an essential difference be- 
 tween it and the earth, and always will be. 
 Yet the branch may be one with the vine, 
 as the vine is one with the earth. 
 
56 THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 There is a oneness of life and recipro- 
 city, not a oneness of identity ; and it is 
 this oneness of perfect moral reciprocity 
 with the Father and himself to which 
 Christ calls men. Christ as a human 
 being was a perfect organ of God's moral 
 vitality for mankind. Men are capable 
 of coordination with him. The question 
 whether Jesus had another and a higher 
 form of unity with God is an entirely dif- 
 ferent affair, nor do I propose to take it 
 up in this place. An eternal unity of sub- 
 stance with the Father is an entirely dif- 
 ferent thing from the unity of organic 
 coordination with him. The unity that 
 Christ urges men to share with him is the 
 latter. It is a natural as well as a practi- 
 cal thing, and if once secured constitutes 
 the only solid standpoint from which the 
 higher and subtler question can be dis- 
 cussed. Jesus himself declares that this 
 organic unity of his disciples constitutes 
 the real evidence for the truth of Christian- 
 ity, and of his having been sent from the 
 Father, whatever that latter expression 
 may mean. In fact, the real difficulty that 
 men have found with Christ's mediatorial 
 
THE STEM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 5/ 
 
 headship lies in the formal and non-natural 
 way in which it has been presented, and 
 also in the tendency to view the individual 
 man as constituting a whole by himself, 
 whereas there is no such thing in God's 
 organic universe as individualistic whole- 
 ness or vitality. It is strange indeed that 
 men should reject Christ's idea, w^hich is 
 the truly scientific one, in religion, and 
 should cling to the individualistic notion 
 in morals, when it has long ago been ex- 
 ploded everywhere else. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 It may be said that it is an easy thing 
 to read a certain philosophy of nature into 
 the teaching of one who, Hke Jesus, left 
 no direct philosophic statements to trip 
 up one's theory. There is, however, a test 
 that ought to be conclusive ; that test lies 
 in the position which Christ gave in his 
 system to the human body. I say, his sys- 
 tem, because there was a system in his 
 teaching, as there is in the movement of 
 the stars or the growth of the forest. If 
 you find the underlying principle, all his 
 revelations are consistent with one an- 
 other. Now the question is, did he give 
 the human body the position in his teach- 
 ings and life that must belong to it in 
 such an organic scheme of the two worlds .f* 
 Undoubtedly he held that he himself, in 
 his personal entirety, was the stem through 
 which God's word operated on the world. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 59 
 
 Furthermore, he must have held that this 
 operation was to continue not only through 
 his earthly life, but through his death, re- 
 surrection, his coming to judgment, and 
 final reign over men. These different ex- 
 tensions of his staminate function he fre- 
 quently dwelt upon, and indeed upon 
 oath, before the High Priest, declared not 
 only that he was the Messiah, but that 
 he should come in the clouds of heaven. 
 But in all these conceptions, the body or 
 physical nature of the Christ is put promi- 
 nently forward by him, as the organism 
 through whose progressive development 
 the world was to be coordinated with the 
 word of God. But this idea involved a 
 similar notion for the human body in 
 general. " The servant must be as his 
 master ; " the disciple must correspond to 
 his Lord ; what was true of the stem must 
 be true of the branches. If his own body 
 was an organ of spiritual coordination 
 with all men, then surely all men's bodies 
 must be capable of taking on such a unity. 
 This put the body into the category of 
 the supernatural, and made of it a divine 
 organ. 
 
6o THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 Some of the world religions have had a 
 glimmering of this truth, and have deified 
 the body ; they have even gone so far as 
 to worship the reproductive powers, but in 
 doing this they have destroyed the moral 
 nature, sinking it deep in the mire of 
 natural passion. Others, like the Essenes 
 in Christ's time, have found refuge only 
 by reacting from naturalism altogether. 
 Nature has seemed to them an evil, the 
 body a thing to be trampled under foot, or 
 wasted away, in order to give place to the 
 spirit. In short, the material world must 
 be reduced to nonentity in order that the 
 spiritual world might take its true place. 
 We still have among us the apostles of 
 this view in a class of people who think 
 that the way to be spiritual is to deny 
 and abjure the material. It is safe to say 
 that no one but Jesus ever successfully 
 solved the problem of the body. He 
 solved it by treating the body exactly as it 
 should be treated, if it be indeed the nat- 
 ural organ of the spiritual world. If that 
 be the case, then the evil of it is not to be 
 conquered by such a vain process as deny- 
 ing its real existence, or reducing its valua- 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 6 1 
 
 tion to zero point, still less by crushing it 
 or wasting it away, but by putting it to its 
 normal use, by determinedly wresting it 
 from false and base coordinations, by mak- 
 ing it the organ of God's spirit, and so 
 bringing it into the unity of the spiritual 
 world. And it was precisely this position 
 that Jesus took. This was the way in 
 which he dealt with his own body. He 
 acted as though it had an eternal recipro- 
 city with the spiritual world. He used it 
 not as the mean instrument of pleasure or 
 of earthly gain, but as the instrument by 
 which to radiate forth the glory of God. 
 He developed it to the uttermost in this 
 direction ; he made it a medium for the 
 mightiest spiritual and salvatory forces. 
 Thus the body of Jesus was to him a 
 means of the highest joy. He was not 
 ascetic ; he did not abjure the dinner table 
 or the wedding feast; he practised no 
 austerities or penance. He was tortured 
 with no perplexities as to the amount 
 of his bodily indulgence. It was a small 
 question to him whether he ate at the 
 table of a wealthy man or sat unfed by the 
 well of Samaria. His physical organism 
 
62 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 was strung to higher ends ; it vibrated to 
 grander joys. He proved beyond cavil 
 that the body is not so mean a thing as 
 we have thought it. It had meat to eat 
 that we knew not of till Jesus found it and 
 shared it with us. 
 
 It is true that Jesus did at times have 
 mighty conflicts with the body, but they 
 were practical struggles. They did not 
 aim at the absurd and hopeless end of 
 crushing the organism that God had 
 given. Therefore his struggles were fol- 
 lowed by no reactions ; they succeeded in 
 their purpose, because their purpose was 
 in a line with nature. Thus he fasted in 
 the wilderness forty days, but it did not 
 end in fasting. It did not issue in a 
 physical organization crushed and bound 
 with the fetters of austere living. It 
 issued in a physical nature singularly 
 large and free. It was the greatest char- 
 acteristic of Jesus that he was alive. So 
 large was Christ's way of living, so full 
 was his pulse, so free was his step, that 
 narrow critics called him a glutton and 
 winebibber, a frequenter of low places, a 
 keeper of bad company. His fasting in 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 63 
 
 the wilderness was aimed to subdue all 
 abnormal relations, and to bring his body 
 to its normal function. When he came 
 out he was full of the Holy Ghost; the 
 powers of the heavenly world were upon 
 him, because his vitalities were perfectly 
 developed, perfectly subordinated, and per- 
 fectly coordinated with the spiritual world. 
 He was ready for his work, and his body 
 enjoyed the w^ork. It was the pivotal 
 thing in the work, for the characteristic 
 feature of Christ's work was the power he 
 exerted through bodily contact ; the glance 
 of his eye, the tone of his voice, the tourh 
 of his hand, were magnetic. They vi- 
 brated with life, they started men to life, 
 they awoke bodily response, they thrilled 
 men's nerves, they bound their throbbing 
 hearts to him, they healed, they sanctified ; 
 his flesh and blood seemed surcharged 
 with spiritual force. His bodily presence 
 carried health, it radiated love and light 
 and purity. He sought contact, always 
 contact, even with the lowest. It was for 
 this that he sat down to eat with outcasts, 
 for this he dined with the Pharisee that 
 scorned him. Even the leper felt upon 
 
64 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 his loathsome flesh that comforting touch. 
 In fact, Christ's hope rested mainly on his 
 bodily contact with humanity. Truth of 
 the kind he taught was non-vital, except as 
 it was embodied. This feeling of God for 
 man w^as a truth that had no unifying 
 force, except as it became organic. It 
 was inseparable from flesh and blood. 
 The animal man must realize it through 
 animal sight and touch. It must be coor- 
 dinated with the fleshly sensibilities. It 
 must be felt at the nerve centres.' More- 
 over, with his amazing insight into cause 
 and effect, he saw how this was to be 
 brought about. As he surveyed the 
 malignant faces that ofttimes scowled on 
 him, he knew that his soul was among 
 lions. He foresaw the issue of this 
 bodily contact with a wicked hierarchy, a 
 fickle mob, and a politic Roman governor. 
 He saw himself hanging like any common 
 criminal on the Roman Cross, his body 
 broken, his blood shed. He looked up- 
 ward, but he saw no deliverance there ; no 
 old-time miracle could break the path of 
 natural causation which he trod, he, the 
 real unifier, and therefore Redeemer. He 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 65 
 
 must be delivered into the hands of sinful 
 men, but through that very real and ter- 
 rible contact with flesh and blood, he saw 
 that the Father would effect a unity with 
 mankind, and he rejoiced. He took the 
 cup and gave thanks. 
 
 His mind dwelt on God's method in 
 nature. He surveyed the unvarying plan 
 by which God develops unities there. 
 His imagination fastened on the corn of 
 wheat, God's organ of physical mediation 
 between vegetative life and the inert 
 atoms of the soil. God gives life, he 
 thought, only by contact with an organ of 
 life, by contact even unto death. Except 
 the corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
 die, it abideth alone, an isolated helpless 
 thing in the midst of nature ; but if by 
 contact with the destroying earth it dies, 
 then it brings forth much fruit. It be- 
 comes the unifying and vivifying centre of 
 new vitalities. So it is in the moral 
 world, he reasoned. Spiritual love can 
 only be made to tell upon the universe 
 through the sacrifice of the body, which is 
 its organ. When men have slain my body, 
 then they will know the love wherewith 
 
^(y THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 God has loved them. Then will it awake 
 in them organic love; then will they have 
 a true humanity, an organism in which 
 the Father's spirit can dwell, as the sun- 
 shine dwells in the grape. Then shall I 
 drink with them the new wine in my 
 Father's kingdom. His mind dwelt on 
 this until he felt first calmness, and then 
 exaltation. What had seemed a terrible 
 evil ceased to be an evil at all. As the 
 earth by organic contact devours the seed, 
 and so gets the vitality out of it, thus must 
 these men devour my flesh and blood, that 
 they may find the vitality of God's spirit. 
 For the sake of the future he asserted this 
 truth, saying prophetically to the wolf-like 
 mob about him, " Except ye eat the flesh 
 and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye 
 have no life in you." ^ Their unspiritualized 
 and literal minds rebelled at this gospel of 
 the body. That a man's flesh should be 
 given them to eat, seemed monstrous ; that 
 it should be called bread from heaven, 
 appeared profane. So little did they read 
 nature's wondrous symbolism. He tried 
 to make them understand that it was this 
 
 1 John vi. 53. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY, 67 
 
 coordination of his body with God's spirit 
 that made it Hfegiving. " It is the spirit 
 that does the quickening," he said. " Do 
 you not see, the words that I speak to you 
 are not mere sound; they are the vehicle 
 of a subtle element, they are spirit, and 
 they are life." 
 
 It was in vain. P/Lany of his disciples 
 forsook him for that prophecy. From 
 that day to this, an absurd construction 
 has been put upon it by many religious 
 thinkers. But the doctrine of Jesus was 
 the doctrine of nature, the doctrine that 
 we universally recognize in the cultiva- 
 tion of our fields, that lifeless material 
 must be coordinated with life, by the sac- 
 rifice of a life organ. That is the law of 
 biogenesis. It is the truth which we are 
 more and more coming to discern, as the 
 foundation of all higher unities, the prin- 
 ciple on which the mother gives moral life 
 to her child, by which the hero vitalizes 
 his country, and the martyr his church ; 
 and to the last, Jesus adhered to his doc- 
 trine. He exalted the body. He taught 
 men not to destroy it, not to needlessly 
 exhaust its energies, but to make the most 
 
6S THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 of it, as the organ both of man's own 
 spirit and of God's spirit, and the organ 
 for spiritual unity for mankind. And 
 from the very first, he called upon his dis- 
 ciples to take up their cross, viz., to 
 share in that noble devotion of the body 
 to the ends of spiritual life. That is the 
 true and reasonable doctrine of the cross, 
 and wherever it is held up, if it be rightly 
 understood, it signifies the religion of 
 organic nature, as against the forms of 
 religion that are hopeless and non-natural. 
 Christ's gospel of the body produced 
 two results. In the first place, it awak- 
 ened in those about him a kind of faith 
 such as is rare in our day, if it exists at 
 all. It sprung from immediate bodily con- 
 tact with himself. It might properly be 
 called physical, for it came not from the 
 intellect or moral nature alone. These 
 elements indeed existed and were domi- 
 nant in it, but with them was intertwined 
 another strand. It was the physical sense 
 of God's presence, felt by the body as it 
 feels sunshine or electricity. Thus, as the 
 apostles expressed it, the body became the 
 temple of the Holy Ghost. The nervous 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 69 
 
 system itself felt the tone of God's love. 
 It is true that with the death of the apos- 
 tles who had bodily contact with Christ 
 this physical faith did almost entirely pass 
 away; but the portrait of it, the gospel 
 of it, remains, and slowly but surely men 
 are grasping its significance. Man is not, 
 as dreamers have conceived him to be, a 
 mere passing guest of the material uni- 
 verse ; neither is he its prisoner. Matter 
 is not fleeting ; neither is it evil. It is the 
 lasting correlative of mind. Even as ani- 
 mal magnetism and nervous energy are 
 coordinated with the divine Love of the 
 Christ, so are all spiritual and physical 
 forces correlatable. Heaven and earth 
 may pass away, but there will be a new 
 heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness. And the new earth, — it is 
 genetically connected with the old earth. 
 The new Jerusalem comes down out of 
 heaven, but it also ascends from beneath. 
 Man is its founder, Christ is its light, and 
 on its walls are the names of the twelve 
 apostles and of the Lamb, who by his 
 bodily sacrifice brought men into this 
 higher unity. Man is the great coordi- 
 
70 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 nator. As he, through the help of Christ, 
 the stem of righteousness, gains power 
 rightly to coordinate the spiritual with the 
 material world, greater miracles than those 
 that Christ accomplished will be wrought.-^ 
 Peter and John standing at the gate of the 
 Temple, filled with physical faith, saying 
 to the lame man, " Silver and gold have 
 we none, but such as we have, give we 
 thee ; " saying, " Look on us," laying hold 
 of him by the hand, are a true ideal of 
 spiritual manhood, in which not only the 
 immaterial mind, but the nervous centres 
 themselves, should be surcharged with the 
 uplifting energy of love ; and the lame 
 man, whose ankle -bones immediately re- 
 ceived strength and who leaped and walked, 
 praising God, is a fair picture of the poten- 
 tiality that lies dormant in our stricken 
 humanity, and of what it will do, when the 
 organic love of God lays hold of it. 
 
 A second result is, that under Christ's 
 gospel we have set before us the prospect 
 of a glorified body. If faith is physical, 
 if the body is a supernatural organ, then 
 its glorification follows as a matter of 
 
 ^ John xiv. 12. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 7 1 
 
 course. There is to a certain extent in 
 Christianity a sympathy with the Greek 
 idea, — the body is a glorious thing, is wor- 
 thy of the highest culture. But here Chris- 
 tianity comes to the rescue of the Greek 
 idea. The finest and highest culture is 
 not that which make the body an end. It 
 is that culture which makes it an organ 
 of spiritual force and heavenly coordina- 
 tions. Such a development will sometimes 
 carry the body far away from the Greek 
 ideal. It will leave it perhaps mangled 
 and bleeding upon the cross, though radi- 
 ant with a spiritual glory that no Hermes 
 of Praxiteles ever contained. But if it 
 be an undeveloped organ of the spiritual 
 world, then it is an undeveloped organ of 
 eternity ; if it can transmit and radiate the 
 divine sacrificial life of Christ, then it can 
 share the spiritual evolution of that life; 
 it can accompany the soul in its upward 
 march. Like the plant emerging from the 
 earth, it can reach a new centre of vitality. 
 It can clothe itself with new forces, it can 
 draw its vitality from above. We are then 
 not to pass into an eternal ghosthood. 
 Elysium is not the home of gibbering 
 
72 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 
 
 shades. Man's last stage is that of phys- 
 ical completion. He is to rise again, to 
 take his place in the organic universe as 
 its dominant organism, as the image and 
 glory of God, coordinating all things with 
 God, stamping God's impress on all around 
 him, finding the universe everywhere plas- 
 tic to his energy, — a son of God full of cre- 
 ative fiats, everywhere reproducing God, — 
 a joint heir with Jesus Christ. How greatly 
 does this view enhance, not merely the 
 value of man's spirit, but the worth of his 
 organism ! How vastly does it emphasize 
 the respect that is to be given to the 
 nervous system, particularly as being not 
 merely an instrument for carrying forward 
 the functions of this life, but a moral and 
 spiritual instrument of the most subtle 
 kind and of the vastest potentiality, — an 
 instrument that is to be developed with 
 the most tender care, both as to the moral 
 and as to the physical laws of its develop- 
 ment ! 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 The direct teaching of Jesus concern- 
 ing the supernatural world constitutes the 
 largest part of his discourses. He was 
 incessantly occupied with it. With it he 
 began and ended. It is the one theme of 
 the first three Gospels, and he committed 
 it to his disciples as their supreme moral 
 interest. He called it the gospel or glad 
 tidings of the kingdom. For the spirit- 
 ual world itself he employed the popular 
 word, " heaven." But it is noticeable that 
 the word on his lips, like the words " neigh- 
 bor," " father," " brother," took on a larger 
 meaning. He used it at its full valuation. 
 In fact, it was characteristic of Jesus that 
 he thus expanded every important word 
 which he employed. He not only poured 
 into it a new vitality, but he made the 
 word itself to grow like a cedar of Leba- 
 non into its perfected type of stature and 
 
74 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 of beauty. This word " heaven," for in- 
 stance, did, to be sure, signify the abode 
 of the gods, but it also had a more natu- 
 rahstic meaning. It was not only the ce- 
 lestial region above the sky, but that whole 
 upper realm of light and gladness, the 
 home of the clouds, the winds, the birds ; 
 what we call the atmosphere, that sweet 
 breath of the divine life that God breathes 
 into man continually, and at whose in- 
 breathing man becomes a living soul. 
 This heaven of the atmosphere is indeed 
 itself a majestic symbol of God, a won- 
 drous type of God's infinity, all-pervading- 
 ness, aboveness, and withinness. More- 
 over, nothing that we possess so adequately 
 typifies God's purity. Mysterious, invisi- 
 ble, life-giving is this heaven of the atmos- 
 phere. " Its breath bloweth where it listeth, 
 and one cannot tell whence it cometh and 
 whither it goeth," said Jesus. " Like that 
 is any one born of the spiritual world." 
 This heaven of the atmosphere is pure, 
 yet it penetrates every loathsome thing 
 and cleanses it. There is heaven far 
 above us, remote, inaccessible; yet that 
 same heaven penetrates to our innermost 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 75 
 
 parts. In it the whole world lives and 
 moves and has its being ; it enters the 
 damp mould beneath our feet, it vitalizes 
 the buried germs, it mounts up with the 
 tree trunk, and crowns the loftiest boughs 
 of the forest with its glory. It makes the 
 blood of man to leap with life, it dwells 
 within his brain cells, it flashes from his 
 eye and paints his cheek with color. This 
 heaven, not the mere chemical combina- 
 tion of oxygen and nitrogen, but the sun- 
 lit atmosphere pervaded by all its causa- 
 tive energies, is forever coordinating itself 
 with physical life, forever coming upon 
 earth. In the beauty of the lily, in the 
 toughness of the oak fibre, in the bloom 
 and sweetness of the peach, in the tod- 
 dling step of the child, in the stride of 
 the man, in the nerve of the race-horse, it 
 comes. It rises before us in living forms, 
 blessing us, feeding us, healing us. No- 
 where else surely can we find so perfect a 
 symbol of Him who is both personality and 
 force, who pervades everything, yet tran- 
 scends everything, who reigns by giving 
 life, who binds the universe together by an 
 invisible tie, and whose kingdom of life is 
 
^(j THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 forever coming while he himself remains 
 unchanged. 
 
 To all great natures this heaven of the 
 atmosphere has been a mighty word of 
 God, through which God spoke on lonely 
 mountain-top or desert sand, but especially 
 to Jesus was it a symbol of God, and of 
 the eternity that He inhabiteth. It was 
 not the spiritual world, but it was its ma- 
 terial symbol and expression. That world 
 itself was indeed to him a high and holy 
 height, infinitely remote from sin. Yet it 
 was also close at hand. It was potentially 
 present within all men. " The kingdom 
 of God is within you." The altitude of 
 spiritual force is not physical but moral, 
 not in the scale of inches but of causation. 
 Heaven is reached not by ascending the 
 clouds, but by penetrating deeper within 
 the heart, by extending man's conscious- 
 ness far into the recesses of his own being. 
 It was in such a sense as this doubtless 
 that he said of himself, the lowly born 
 peasant, that he had come down out of 
 heaven, for in the same connection he de- 
 clared that no man can come down from 
 heaven save he that hath ascended into 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 77 
 
 heaven. In his own mysterious being he 
 had climbed the steps of God-conscious- 
 ness, till he had reached the Fatherland, 
 and knew the mystery of his own preexist- 
 ence. He knew what was within him, for 
 he had penetrated to it and held commu- 
 nion with it. He adds also in the same 
 discourse this expression : " The Son of 
 man is in heaven." The rose that is per- 
 fectly coordinated with the atmosphere 
 becomes an organ of the heaven. Heav- 
 en's kingdom has come in it. It is in 
 heaven, though it be upon earth. So the 
 man that is a perfect organ of the spiritual 
 world is forever in the spiritual heaven, 
 though he be upon earth. Heaven may 
 take new forms for him, it may blossom 
 out into new glories, it may form new co- 
 ordinations, it may rear visible structures, 
 it may build a new and fair earth out of the 
 old elements, it may raise up battlements 
 of gold and open gates of pearl, but its 
 inward quality will remain eternally the 
 same. 
 
 With this conception of the word 
 " heaven," it is plain to see what Jesus 
 meant by "the kingdom of heaven " or " the 
 
7^ THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 kinordom of God," which was to come. He 
 meant the organic coordination of the spir- 
 itual with the material world. It was a 
 gradual coordination, an evolution, if you 
 please. It included, therefore, the develop- 
 ment of a vast variety of organs and func- 
 tions. Naturally, it was the kingdom of 
 righteousness, for to his mind righteous- 
 ness was reciprocity with God. The king- 
 dom of heaven was at hand when he 
 himself, the spiritual vine, the human stem 
 of spiritual vitality, appeared in Galilee, 
 clothed with the powers of the spiritual 
 world. When his disciples, as his spiritu- 
 alized organs, carrying his gospel, entered 
 a village they were to say to men that the 
 kingdom of God had come nigh to them, 
 for its organic vitalities were then within 
 their grasp. During his lifetime the king- 
 dom was still in a germinant form ; the 
 seed was his word, full of his human per- 
 sonality, charged with organic love for 
 humanity ; and his word or gospel in- 
 cluded also the record of his own life, 
 interpreted as to its divine and human reci- 
 procities by parables and miracles, state- 
 ments of principles and their application, 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 79 
 
 and much direct outshining of the Father- 
 hood. But after his crucifixion, then in a 
 peculiar sense the kingdom of God came. 
 It came as the kino;dom of nature comes 
 when the corn of wheat has fallen into the 
 Q^round and died. It came in his own 
 new, organic manhood ; his own resurrec- 
 tion body, capable of wider physical coor- 
 dinations ; it came with power, as he pre- 
 dicted it, on the day of Pentecost, in the 
 form of a new religion, a new body of men 
 with new powers, new vision, a new broth- 
 erhood. It has been coming through the 
 ages in an endless variety of coordinations 
 and spiritual embodiments. For wherever 
 the spirit of Christ produces a new organ 
 or unity, there the kingdom comes. But 
 eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither 
 hath it entered into the heart of man to 
 conceive how the kingdom of heaven shall 
 come, with what mighty embodiments of 
 the living God; with what wide-ranging 
 physical coordinations, what literal ascent 
 of man into the heavens ; what new man- 
 sions of the soul ; what cosmopolitan 
 powers over the stellar universe ; what 
 god-like majesty of the human form itself ; 
 
8o THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 what city of God, having her light like 
 unto that of the sun. For if we are to 
 take the testimony of Jesus, the kingdom 
 of heaven, eternally the same in its spir- 
 itual force, yet stretches throughout the 
 universe and is everywhere, even as here, 
 a coordination with matter ; yea, it already 
 has in some distant parts of the universe 
 attained its consummation ; yea, already it 
 holds for us, afar off among its organic de- 
 velopments, a literal paradise and a throne 
 of God, to which he has ascended in our 
 behalf, and where he is preparing a place 
 for us. 
 
 Now in view of this, it becomes possible 
 to reconcile those apparently contradic- 
 tory statements of Jesus, in which he 
 speaks of the spiritual realm sometimes as 
 near, sometimes as remote, and often as 
 coming while still it lingers. Sometimes 
 in his parables he represents himself as 
 thousfh after his death he were to become 
 a kind of absentee landlord. Yet in other 
 passages he speaks of the coming of the 
 Son of Man, not of his final coming, 
 but of many intermediate comings. As 
 though, in fact, his coming were to be a 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 8 1 
 
 constant feature of history. Again, he 
 speaks in other places of being with his 
 followers, even unto the end of the world. 
 So, too, in regard to God : he sometimes 
 represents God as though he were a great 
 way off, even from his own people the 
 Jews; like a king who has built a tower in 
 some border province, and let it out to 
 husbandmen, he holds communication at 
 first only through servants, then as a last 
 resort through his son, but he himself 
 remains afar. Not only through the Old 
 Testament, but through the New, this 
 chill effect of distance is at times thrown 
 about our relation to God. " He is in hea- 
 ven, thou upon earth." Yet, as has been 
 seen, the main current of Christ's teaching 
 with regard to God is in the direction of 
 God's nearness and indwelling. This, in 
 fact, is the more vital side of the truth ; it 
 is the side on which all depends, and 
 which, under the progress of the gospel, 
 gradually absorbs the other. We see the 
 harmony between these two sides, how- 
 ever, when we take in Christ's position as 
 to the unity of the two worlds : when we 
 see, moreover, that man is organic, and 
 
S2 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 that God deals with him as organic, and 
 as being in part responsible for the condi- 
 tion of his organism. God is ever with 
 man, as the atmosphere is ever with him, 
 but man can only hold reciprocity with 
 God, as with the atmosphere, through cer- 
 tain organs. The development of those 
 spiritual organs is therefore not only 
 man's highest privilege, but it is his most 
 imperative duty. He is solemnly respon- 
 sible for their atrophy. " Ye are God's 
 husbandry." If the spiritual organs are 
 not properly developed, then to all practi- 
 cal purposes God is indeed at a distance, 
 his relationship becomes hard and me- 
 chanical, his realm a foreign realm, his 
 commands antagonistic and alien. 
 
 The man is of the earth, earthy. More- 
 over, his earth has been disunited from 
 heaven by his own will. God may still 
 claim such a man as his own, for there is 
 a potential reciprocity. He may seek to 
 bridge the distance, he may visit the man 
 as the sunlit heaven visits the earth, not 
 only by its direct shining, and by the 
 pure breath of its winds, but by its or- 
 ganic forms of fruit and flower and tree. 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 83 
 
 So God may seek to reach man, both per- 
 vasively and by organic contact. It is 
 such seeking which Jesus interprets to us 
 in the parable of the shepherd seeking the 
 lost sheep. The coming of God, the pre- 
 sence of God, and the kingdom of God 
 refer in every case to God's manifestation 
 of himself in an organic world, through 
 organic forms; and the distance of God 
 from the world, wherever it occurs, is 
 always due to one of two causes, — either 
 the incomplete development of the or- 
 ganic form, or man's failure to cultivate the 
 organ for its reception. We can under- 
 stand, too, from this view-point the moral 
 earnestness of Christ in pointing out the 
 relation of the spiritual realm to man's 
 moral nature. " Repent, for the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand." It could only 
 come through coordination with moral 
 purpose. In the sermon on the mount he 
 shows how it is coordinated with the 
 spiritual organism, and how the spiritual 
 organism is really the development of the 
 moral organism into larger function and 
 consciousness. He shows, too, distinctly, 
 the fact that right and wrong are ques- 
 
84 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. 
 
 tions, not of mere conduct alone, but of 
 organic coordination with two kingdoms. 
 There is, on the one hand, the true, nor- 
 mal, constitutional unity of man with God. 
 On the other hand, there is man's debas- 
 ing unity with a de-spiritualized earth, a 
 kingdom of evil. The organisms that 
 connect us with that kingdom must be 
 cut off, plucked forth, cast from us, or we 
 shall be brought to its worm and fire, for 
 it is essentially a kingdom of death. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 It is easy to see that this idea of Jesus 
 concerning the kingdom of God lay at the 
 very root of all that he said about the 
 knowledge of God. We talk about God 
 drawing near to men. Too often when 
 we use that language it signifies to us a 
 wholly invisible and intangible fact, so 
 subtle as only to be appreciated, if at all, 
 by the most delicate and sensitive nature. 
 On the contrary, to the mind of Jesus the 
 approach of God was identical with the 
 coming of his kingdom with the En- 
 trance of the Word. It was the develop- 
 ment of those organic forms by which the 
 spiritual and material world were coordi- 
 nated; and the presence of God was an 
 objective organic manifestation of him. 
 Undoubtedly, in the grander and more 
 eternal sense of the word the presence of 
 God does signify his purely spiritual ex- 
 
S6 THE KxYOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 istence and self-disclosure. Such may be 
 the presence of God to a being capable of 
 apprehending it. But the foundation idea 
 of such terms as " nearness " and " presence " 
 is that of relationship to our own faculties. 
 A thing is present when it comes within 
 the range of our faculties. It draws near 
 in proportion as it subjects itself to their 
 scrutiny. Now, as man is an organic be- 
 ing whose field of knowledge is the mate- 
 rial world, and whose faculties exert their 
 activity through the five senses, the pres- 
 ence of a being, so far as man is concerned, 
 signifies the presentation of him within 
 the field of material objects and within the 
 range of the five senses. And this was 
 what the divine presence signified to Jesus 
 as the helper of men. This, too, was what 
 it signified to Moses. When Moses be- 
 sought God for his presence he was not 
 asking for a purely spiritual propinquity ; 
 this he already possessed for himself. He 
 meant a phenomenal manifestation such 
 as would support the heart and flesh of 
 God's people. And when God declared 
 that his presence would be perilous to the 
 Israelites, He meant that any honest em- 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 8/ 
 
 bodiment of his personality in the field of 
 natural phenomena would take the shape 
 of devouring fire toward such a people as 
 the Israelites had shown themselves to be. 
 For such an embodiment as the crucified 
 Jesus was, in that stage of development, 
 impracticable and incomprehensible. 
 
 We have reached then this point. To 
 the mind of Jesus the presence of God sig- 
 nified an objective organic embodiment of 
 his person and character. God drew near 
 to men in proportion as his character was 
 embodied, and in proportion as the em- 
 bodiment was within the range of man's 
 perceptive faculties. This shuts out of 
 the question altogether a great deal of the 
 thought associated in men's minds with 
 the knowledge of God. The knowledge 
 of God commonly conceived of by men is 
 of two sorts. First there is a vague, subtle, 
 emotional experience peculiar to highly 
 wrought organizations that is fairly de- 
 scribed in its various forms by the term 
 " transcendentalism." It is wholly excep- 
 tional and sporadic. It could never be- 
 come a popular possession, and it is 
 questionable how far it can ever be dis- 
 
88 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 tinguished from mere subjectivity. At all 
 events it has thus far deservedly failed to 
 commend itself to the practical sense of 
 mankind. Doubtless much of what has 
 been thought to be the " new birth," or 
 " the work of the Spirit," deserves to be 
 classed under this head of transcendental 
 knowledge. How much of a reality it con- 
 tains may be questioned. But taken by it- 
 self it certainly presents no practical field 
 of knowledge to miankind. 
 
 On the other hand, to philosophers gen- 
 erally the term "knowledge of God " sig- 
 nifies the intellectual comprehension of 
 Him, or the logical proof of Him, which 
 comes to pretty much the same thing. 
 Takino: this notion of the word " know- 
 ledge," some of our philosophic thinkers 
 have declared that God was unknowable. 
 And in a sense this is true. To know 
 God intellectually would be to know his 
 mode of existence, and that a finite be- 
 ing can understand an Infinite mode of 
 existence seems indeed absurd. It is a 
 case of the less containing the greater. It 
 is true that we can form for ourselves a 
 certain notion of the Infinite. But that 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 89 
 
 notion is rather imaginative than intellec- 
 tual. It is gained, for instance, in one way 
 by presenting to our imagination an ever- 
 widening area of space. This affords us, 
 however, only a symbol of Infinity, and as 
 a matter of fact we have no clear notion 
 of space itself. Or, if we ascribe a more 
 limited meaning to the term and under- 
 stand the intellectual knowledge of God to 
 mean the logical knowledge of Him, or the 
 proof of his existence, we are confronted 
 with a similar difficulty. Since it is im- 
 possible for us to state what God is, we 
 are unable to construct the proposition we 
 are called upon to prove. 
 
 To be sure, at first sight it seems as 
 though the moral problem would be suffi- 
 ciently met by proving the existence of an 
 all-wise and all-loving Creator. But the 
 moment we attempt the task we are con- 
 fronted with endless argumentation as well 
 as mystification, growing out of the fact 
 that we have not settled definitely what 
 creation is, nor what personality is. Nei- 
 ther have we settled the question what an 
 absolute wisdom and love are in their es- 
 sence or manifestation ; while, on the other 
 
90 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 hand, we are arrested by the fact that our 
 knowledge of the phenomena of this world, 
 and particularly their origin and outcome, 
 is far too limited to furnish us with sat- 
 isfactory proof of such qualities. Even 
 when we give up the idea of an infinite 
 wisdom and goodness, and attempt to 
 prove simply the proposition of a good 
 and wise Creator, we disagree at once over 
 two questions : First, what are goodness 
 and wisdom ; and, secondly, what would be 
 their manifestation in the development 
 and training of such beings as ourselves. 
 Without an agreement on these questions 
 we have no starting-point from which to rea- 
 son. Indeed, as we turn to ourselves, we 
 encounter the most radical difficulty of all. 
 Here, in fact, is where the shoe pinches, 
 for we speedily discover that we have no 
 adequate intellectual knowledge of our- 
 selves. It may truly be said that we have 
 not experienced our own selves. We do 
 not know our own mode of existence. The 
 distinction between mind and matter, if 
 there be such a distinction, the genesis of 
 moral obli2:ation, the value of Reason in 
 its present stage, — all these involve prob- 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 9 1 
 
 lems whose solution is beyond our reach. 
 Really, so far as our intellectual knowledge 
 is concerned, it may be said that while it 
 is very essential to us, and practical when 
 combined with other kinds of knowledge, 
 it is nevertheless wholly relative and super- 
 ficial. It does not penetrate anywhere to 
 the mystery of existence. We do not even 
 know the mode of existence of the mate- 
 rial world. The molecules of matter are 
 to us a mere hypothesis. Nor have we 
 any absolutely intellectual proof of the ex- 
 istence of matter. We accept it on the 
 testimony of feeling rather than of reason. 
 If, then, the limitation of our intellectual 
 faculties is such that we cannot furnish 
 any strictly logical proof of the very arm- 
 chair in which we sit, if we cannot know 
 its mode of existence nor its essence, then 
 how can we expect to possess intellectual 
 knowledge of God ? 
 
 Religious people have often been 
 alarmed by the assertion that God was 
 unknowable. But if we take it in the 
 only sense in which it is true, the purely 
 intellectual sense, it applies also to every- 
 thing else. You are unknowable, so am 
 
92 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 I, SO is this table on which I write, so is 
 the violet whose fragrance you inhale, so 
 is the water that you drink, and the bread 
 that you eat, and the child that you hold 
 in your arms. In the purely intellectual 
 sense, each one of these is unknowable. 
 You cannot form a complete logical proof 
 for the existence of any of them. You 
 can prove it, doubtless, to satisfy yourself, 
 or, as you would express it, " to satisfy any 
 reasonable man," but you cannot prove it 
 to the absolute satisfaction of logic itself, 
 nor to the mind of a man who insists on 
 being bound by logic alone. To such a 
 man the external universe will still remain 
 unproved. And it is quite possible for 
 any human being to bring about in him- 
 self such an abnormal preponderance of 
 the logical faculty, and such a shrinkage 
 of the perceptive power, that he shall be 
 capable of doubting the existence of the 
 external world. It remains, therefore, that, 
 in the intellectual sense, not only is God 
 unknowable, but everything else is un- 
 knowable. And the only reason why we 
 attach peculiar importance to God's un- 
 knowability is because we are too much 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 93 
 
 accustomed to think of him as knowable 
 only in the intellectual way, particularly 
 in the way of proof. As a matter of fact, 
 however, it is not by the pure reason that 
 we o-ain what we call a realization of 
 things. On the contrary, the very attempt 
 to rationalize knowledge is apt to minimize 
 realization. Indeed, as we apply the purely 
 logical method only to objects that are 
 not within the range of a more direct kind 
 of knowledge, the very attempt to prove 
 them makes them seem more unreal, not 
 only because it classifies them with things 
 that cannot be seen, and therefore makes 
 them hang upon proof rather than sight, 
 but also because the concentration of one's 
 whole attention on the process of logic 
 shrinks up the perceptive powers them- 
 selves, and throws their field into shadow. 
 Now, a man may have sufficient logical 
 proof of a friend's existence to satisfy his 
 reason, but if, through failure of eyesight, 
 he cannot see his friend's face, he is truly 
 in darkness, for if darkness means any- 
 thing, it means the obscuration of the per- 
 ceptive powers; they alone give us that 
 o-ladsome consciousness which we call 
 
94 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 vision. They, too, give us realization, nor 
 does any amount of proof make up for 
 their absence. 
 
 It is plain, therefore, what Jesus meant 
 when he spoke of the Pharisees, those cul- 
 tivated religious men of his day, as being in 
 darkness ; he did not mean that they were 
 ignorant of scriptural facts, nor entirely 
 destitute of theistic proof; he meant that 
 their perceptive faculties were so obscured 
 that they could not realize God's personal 
 presence ; and when he said that they knew 
 not the Father, his language corroborated 
 this position, for it implied that the know- 
 ledge which they lacked was that sort of 
 personal acquaintanceship which is based 
 upon perception, just as the term " Fa- 
 ther," itself, implies a closeness of relation- 
 ship with human faculties. Now, if, as 
 Jesus taught, there is such a thing as an 
 earthly embodying of God's presence 
 within the range of our perceptive facul- 
 ties ; if, in short, God is knowable through 
 our perceptive powers, then, of course, that 
 is the only practical and reasonable way to 
 attempt the knowledge of Him ; and any 
 other kind of knowledge must be, as com- 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 95 
 
 pared to this, mere blindness and dark- 
 ness. The utmost that we can obtain by 
 the logical method is, as has been seen, a 
 strong probability, and that will always 
 vary with the individual mind. If, there- 
 fore, such a thing be possible as the 
 actual perception of God, carrying with it 
 that certitude and joyful realization that 
 characterizes perception generally, it is 
 indeed glad tidings, as Jesus called it, glad 
 tidings of the kingdom, and is of the 
 highest import to man's religious nature. 
 More than that ; in basing itself upon spir- 
 itual perception, Christianity radically dif- 
 ferentiates itself from all other religions. 
 But there can be no doubt that this was 
 the position of Jesus. At the very outset, 
 in describing the blessedness of the king- 
 dom, he declared, " Blessed are the pure in 
 heart, for they shall see God," a perfectly 
 logical sequence from his description of 
 the kingdom itself. Furthermore, although 
 he came, as he declared, above all things 
 else to give men the knowledge of God, 
 yet he never presented any proof of the 
 divine existence ; indeed he surprised his 
 followers by the minor importance that he 
 
96 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 attached to proof, even concerning his own 
 authority. The condition of that kind of 
 knowledge which he came to give, he 
 plainly stated. It was light, not proof. 
 Light is the condition of perception, and 
 it was this which he considered himself as 
 in a peculiar sense emxpowered to give. 
 Moreover, the fact that he did give it con- 
 stituted his authority. According to the 
 fourth Gospel, he declared, " I am the light 
 of the world." Light is its own authority. 
 In the Sermon on the Mount, he says prac- 
 tically the same thing, for he tells his dis- 
 ciples that they, illuminated by his teach- 
 ing, are the light of the world. And his 
 procedure entirely agrees with these two 
 statements. Throughout the first three 
 Gospels he adopts a definite method of 
 imparting spiritual knowledge. Whether 
 it be the immanence of the Father, or his 
 own sonship to God, he does not at first 
 assert it, nor ever prove it, but he endeavors 
 to train, to elevate, and to purify the percep- 
 tions of his disciples. That is the object 
 of discipleship. Many of the things that 
 he tauofht have been said more or less 
 perfectly by others, nor would they all 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 97 
 
 together have taken anything like three 
 years to utter them. It was to the train- 
 ing of the perceptive powers of his disci- 
 ples, to the impartation of light, to the 
 radiation of a certain luminous personal 
 atmosphere, so that things before darkly 
 held now stood forth like midday realities, 
 — it was to these things rather than to 
 logical proof that Jesus gave himself dur- 
 ing those three years. The process of 
 unfolding intuition, the uniting and focal- 
 izing of all .the perceptive energies upon 
 spiritual manifestations, — this it was that 
 he watched with the keenest solicitude, as 
 when he took them apart at Philippi and 
 said, " Whom do ye say that I am } " His 
 whole heart waited for the culmination of 
 that perceptive development. It harmo- 
 nizes with the statement in the fourth 
 Gospel, " He that hath seen me hath seen 
 the Father, and how sayest thou then, 
 show us the Father." What possible 
 other way is there of showing or demon- 
 strating God's existence, He being the 
 Father, but that He should be seen like 
 any other father, through an embodiment 
 of Him .f* As to the disciples themselves, 
 
98 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 when the process was completed, the 
 notion they themselves give us of it is 
 that it was a kind of joyful perception. It 
 was " walking in the Light." It was see- 
 ing God in the face of Jesus Christ. It 
 was certitude, realization ; not proof, but 
 sight. Their whole attitude and conduct 
 were those of men who are actuated by the 
 warm reality of vision, rather than by the 
 cold and purely intellectual effect of 
 proof. 
 
 This brings us squarely to the question, 
 What is perception, and what are the laws 
 on which it is conditioned.^ for just here it 
 is that the whole issue lies between Jesus 
 and the skeptic or agnostic. The essen- 
 tial position has not altered one particle. 
 As regards the position of Jesus, the skep- 
 tic and agnostic of to-day occupy pre- 
 cisely the ground held by the Pharisees 
 in Christ's time. The situation could not 
 be better sketched than it is in the third 
 chapter of John. Nicodemus was what 
 one might call an honest agnostic ; he 
 was better than his party, though unfor- 
 tunately timid; he came to Jesus by night, 
 and put the case as honestly as he knew 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 99 
 
 how. Rabbi, he said, we understand your 
 position ; we know you are a teacher come 
 from God ; your miracles indicate that, but 
 you go farther than they warrant you in 
 going ; you preach the kingdom of the 
 Messiah ; your disciples baptize in your 
 name. That implies that you are the 
 Messiah ; but for this latter fact you give 
 us no adequate evidence ; your miracles 
 are no greater than those of the other 
 prophets, — not so great as some of them. 
 We are therefore left without proof. We 
 understand the limits of reliofious know- 
 ledge. You ought to understand them. 
 Without proof our responsibility ends. 
 That was the agnostic position squarely 
 put. Agnosticism seems innocent, as when 
 the Pharisees replied to Christ's question 
 whether John's baptism was from heaven 
 or of men, "We cannot tell." Such an 
 attitude creates a false impression of help- 
 lessness ; it appears to throw the respon- 
 sibility on God or his prophet, but in 
 reality this position is always the arrogant 
 " we know " of the Pharisaic school. 
 
 Instead of being a confession of weak- 
 ness, it is the assumption of intellectual 
 
lOO THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 authority; it defines the nature and limi- 
 tations of evidence, and asserts the entire 
 adequacy of the reason and external per- 
 ception as criteria of knowledge ; nay, 
 more, it dares to estimate what is beyond 
 its experience, to take up the sceptre of 
 the spiritual universe, to tell men the limit 
 of their moral obligation and assign to jesus 
 his place. Jesus understood the situation 
 perfectly. His reply was in effect, Not 
 proof, Nicodemus, but sight is what you 
 want, in order to judge of a Messiah; and 
 he then proceeds to state the law for the 
 evolution of spiritual perception, which 
 law he implies the Pharisees had neglected 
 when they refused to come to the baptism 
 of John. " Except a man be born again 
 he cannot see the kingdom of God." The 
 explanation of this passage I shall take up 
 in its proper place, and shall then show 
 that the new birth is simply the organic 
 culmination under Christ of an embryonic 
 spiritual process, an earthly fact that had 
 been developing from the first under the 
 Hebrew prophets, and particularly under 
 the baptism of John. Multitudes of the 
 Jewish people had flocked to him and had 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 1 01 
 
 submitted themselves to his purifying min- 
 istry. Thus their spiritual vision was both 
 cleansed and broadened, and from their 
 ranks came the men who first hailed Jesus 
 as the Messiah. The Pharisees, however, 
 would not thus discredit their culture, 
 which was the ground of their authority ; 
 they stood aloof in a critical attitude, 
 resenting the idea that unlearned men 
 could of themselves furnish any criterion 
 of knowledge. 
 
 The reply of Jesus, therefore, was a re- 
 buke to their attitude, and an assertion of 
 the ultimate source of authority that exists 
 in the perceptive heart of humanity when 
 it is personally coordinated with God. 
 And this brings us to the universality of 
 perceptive knowledge ; it is of the heart, 
 and therefore distinctively human ; other 
 forms of knowledge belong to peculiar 
 classes, but perception belongs to the race ; 
 by it the child knows his father, though he 
 cannot comprehend one thing concerning 
 that father's existence, nor prove that exist- 
 ence to his own logical faculty. Yet he 
 knows his father, for he feels him, or, in 
 other words, feels his personality through 
 
I02 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 the senses. Life feels life, wherever that 
 life is embodied before it.- Thus, though 
 we do not know what personality is and 
 cannot agree about its definition, yet we 
 all know persons, for we all feel them, and 
 there can be no greater reality to us than 
 what we thus feel. If a man's best friend 
 is not real to him, nothing is. It is this 
 kind of direct knowledge, the kind most 
 certifying and most satisfying, that we can 
 have concerning God. By it the feeblest 
 may know the greatest, the finite may 
 know the Infinite, the earthly child may 
 know his Heavenly Father. 
 
 This was certainly the position of Jesus. 
 It was not a theory merely, but a fact of 
 his consciousness to which he bore testi- 
 mony, not by words alone, but by a life of 
 suffering, and by a death on the cross. 
 He rejoiced, however, in this testimony, 
 for his inner consciousness told him that 
 God always felt men, their joys, sorrows, 
 and needs, and that men had in them a 
 potentiality for feeling God. This was 
 to his mind the foundation of all right- 
 eousness; to develop it into perception was 
 therefore, naturally enough, the road to 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 103 
 
 the knowledge of God, and this personal 
 knowledge was of vital significance mor- 
 ally, for it was itself the root of all holy 
 love. While therefore Jesus undoubtedly 
 sought to teach men and to set an ex- 
 ample of righteousness, that side of his 
 mission appeared to him relatively insig- 
 nificant. It could not secure our moral 
 salvation. Neither ethical culture, nor the 
 intellectual knowledge of God, can bring 
 men into living reciprocity with Him ; the 
 kingdom of righteousness is a kingdom 
 of God-consciousness. The Christ must 
 therefore of necessity be the supreme per- 
 sonal revelation of God to man. But a 
 being, capable of making such a revela- 
 tion, must be in himself an unfathomable 
 mystery. Child-like souls may through 
 him find the Father, but no human reason 
 can comprehend him ; a divine manifesta- 
 tion must be above the reach of human 
 reason. Thus he comforted himself when 
 great men and great cities rejected him. 
 Another man would have been cast down 
 at his own apparent insignificance ; but 
 Jesus rejoiced at a fact which overthrew 
 the tyranny of intellect and exalted the 
 
104 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 simple heart of humanity to its rightful 
 heritage in the knowledge of the Father. 
 " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
 and earth, that thou didst hide these things 
 in this humble guise of my Galilean man- 
 hood from the wise and intellectual, and 
 hast revealed them unto babes." No one 
 knoweth the Son save the Father, neither 
 doth any one know the Father, save the 
 Son and he to whom the Son willeth to 
 reveal Him. " Come unto me, all ye that 
 labor and are heavy laden, and I wdll give 
 you rest." So at the historic point called 
 Calvary the mystery of the universe em- 
 bodies itself; the life of the world draws 
 near ; there may life feel life. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 Perceptive knowledge being the foun- 
 dation of Christ's righteousness, it was rea- 
 sonable that he should lay great stress 
 upon our use of the perceptive faculties. 
 Like all the organs, he regarded them as 
 governed by certain laws, and there was 
 nothing in regard to which he uttered 
 more solemn or more frequent warnings 
 than concerning this very matter of obedi- 
 ence to the laws of perception. These 
 laws, as stated by him, are three in num- 
 ber : they are Simplicity, Purity, and Spir- 
 ituality. 
 
 In saying that Jesus laid down three 
 great laws of perception, I do not of course 
 mean that he did it in precise terms, for he 
 never used scientific language, or taught 
 after the scientific manner; but the things 
 he insisted upon in his popular teaching 
 as the conditions of perception are reduci- 
 
I06 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ble to what we call laws, and of those laws 
 there are the three which I have just stated. 
 First, let us take the law of Simplicity. 
 "If thine eye be single," said Jesus, "thy 
 whole body shall be full of light." The 
 word translated "single" is, in the origi- 
 nal, " simple ; " but, whichever we use, it 
 comes to the same thing; for, if it is to 
 make any sense at all, it must be taken as 
 referring to the focus of the eye. Jesus was 
 a close observer of nature ; he never meant 
 to say that the less complex an eye was, 
 the better it was ; that a man with a single 
 eye could see better than a man wdth two 
 eyes, and a man with only a pupil could 
 see better than one with the eyeball and 
 retina besides, or that in the higher process 
 of perception a man with nothing but a 
 conscience could detect moral truth better 
 than a man who had also reason, affection, 
 and imagination. If, however, we take his 
 language as applying to the focus of the 
 eye, it becomes clear, and does indeed 
 enunciate for us, in a singularly vivid and 
 concise way, the first condition of all per- 
 ception, for it is the focusing of the eye 
 that makes it a perceptive organ, and of 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. lOJ 
 
 course everything depends on the focus 
 being single or simple. But what is the 
 focusing of an eye ? Obviously it is the 
 perfect coordination as well as subordina- 
 tion of all the parts wath reference to a 
 single centre. Thus in each eye of a man 
 all the parts are so perfectly coordinated 
 about the optic axis, and so perfectly sub- 
 ordinated in structure and density to the 
 business in hand, that a single image is 
 made in front of the retina. Likewise the 
 nerves of both eyes are so coordinated 
 with a single nerve centre, and so sub- 
 ordinated to that centre, as to produce 
 a single impression upon it. The nerve 
 centre is the vital focus for the perceptive 
 process ; all the other functions and forces 
 are subordinated to that. Not absolute 
 simplicity or singleness then, but that kind 
 of simplicity which we observe in the phys- 
 ical eye and in other organs of nature, — ■ 
 a simplicity which consists in the perfect 
 and coordinate subordination of all the 
 parts to a single vital centre, — that is 
 the first law of perception. 
 
 But what, according to Christ, consti- 
 tutes the organism of perception .f* Evi- 
 
I08 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 dently all the powers, whether external or 
 internal, by which facts are grasped in 
 our consciousness. In Matthew xiii. 14, 
 15, Jesus complains that the people saw, or, 
 in other words, used their external vision, 
 without attaining to real perception, be- 
 cause their heart had become gross. This 
 imperceptive condition of the heart shut 
 up the exterior organs from any fair use. 
 In other words, the heart was the interior 
 organ of perception, and the coordination 
 of the exterior organs with it was neces- 
 sary to the complete function. But what 
 did Jesus mean by the " heart " } To the 
 modern mind it is rather a vague term. 
 Quite commonly it signifies the seat of the 
 more unreliable emotions, and is therefore 
 the last centre of consciousness to be se- 
 lected as the organ of perception. This, 
 however, was not the meaning of the w^ord 
 to the Jews or to Jesus. In this very pas- 
 sage he declares the function of the heart 
 to be understanding, — at least that is the 
 translation ; but the Greek word signifies 
 a putting together, like that which the in- 
 terior nerve-centre accomplishes for both 
 the eyes, so as to form a single image. It 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 109 
 
 meant, in fact, the focusing by the heart of 
 the various objective impressions that en- 
 ter through the external organs into a dis- 
 tinct mental and moral impression. This 
 comes as near as we can get to the Greek 
 suniemi. And this, doubtless, was the 
 meaning of Jesus. To understand was to 
 perceive intelligently an external object, so 
 that all its facts, mental, moral, emotional, 
 stood together in a perfect, proportional 
 effect. As has been already intimated, this 
 kind of perception is better described by 
 our word " insight " than by " understand- 
 ing," which we have relegated to the logical 
 faculty. Now the Jewish sacred writers 
 used the word " heart " in a large and seri- 
 ous sense ; they included under it the intel- 
 lect, imagination, will, and conscience, as 
 well as the feelings. " As a man thmketh 
 in his heart, so is he." "As each man 
 purposeth in his heart, so let him do." 
 " And when they heard this, they were 
 pricked in their hearts," evidently refer- 
 ring to their conscience. In fact, to the 
 Jewish conception, the heart was not sepa- 
 rate from any of the interior faculties or 
 sensibilities. It was all of them, acting 
 
no THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 coordinately in a process of choice and 
 issuing in conduct. It was really the soul 
 viewed interiorly. 
 
 To be sure, some say there is no soul ; 
 that is, however, a question of words. 
 There is such a thing as a dead body ; it 
 is, as we say, inanimate ; what animated 
 it ? Life. Life is the sphinx whose 
 mystery no scientist can solve. Some say 
 it is simply a material force ; but what dif- 
 ference does it make whether you call it 
 material or spiritual, so long as the same 
 things can be predicated of it ? One 
 thing is clear: the life feels and knows. 
 We have then only to deal with the ques- 
 tion of how much it can feel and know. 
 That is, of course, to be settled by expe- 
 rience. The point to be guarded is that 
 it is really the life which sees. But the 
 moment we examine this process of see- 
 ing, we find that it is in the last analysis 
 feeling. Through the optic nerve the life 
 feels the image focalized upon the retina. 
 Through our various organs the life with- 
 in us feels the external world. " Feeling " 
 is the general word by which we describe 
 the varied forms of vivid consciousness 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. HI 
 
 possessed by the life. That is the first 
 essential, decided characteristic of life: it 
 is sensitive, that is, it feels. By this sensi- 
 tiveness or feeling, it knows the external 
 world, it knows the warmth and glory of 
 the sunlight, the fragrance of the violet, 
 the satisfaction of bread, the refreshing- 
 ness of cold water, the sharpness of fire, 
 and the strength of iron. Thus the life in 
 us knows directly the quality of things 
 about it. This is its ultimate form of 
 knowledge, — it knows the quality of the 
 universe as related to itself. It knows in 
 the sense of enjoying and suffering. It 
 is the life itself that knows, not because 
 some faculty reports to it, but because it 
 experiences. Enjoyment and suffering 
 are knowledQ:e. 
 
 True, it may be objected that feeling is 
 often illusory ; that in any case, it gives us 
 only the secondary qualities of matter; and 
 that as regards the ultimate reality of the 
 external world, we have nothing to trust 
 but our feeling that it exists. We have, 
 for instance, no logical demonstration that 
 there is any actual existence corresponding 
 to the vision. of the locomotive which we 
 
112 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 see approaching us, as we walk upon the 
 track ; but the struggle for existence, which 
 is nature's logic, forces us irresistibly in 
 two directions, namely, to discipline our 
 feelings and to trust them. 
 
 However irrational it may be to trust 
 our undisciplined feelings, it is still more 
 irrational not to trust feeling at all. The 
 man who does not get off the track when 
 he sees the locomotive coming, because he 
 believes himself conscious only of the sec- 
 ondary qualities of matter, demonstrates 
 the unreasonableness of philosophy. Feel- 
 ing and doing must stand together some- 
 how in a logical unity ; we may not know 
 what we know, for the contents of our 
 knowledge may be obscure. The vision 
 of the locomotive may be only on the 
 retina, — it may be caused in part by solar 
 radiation, partly by changes in our own 
 nervous tissue; but the testimony of our 
 feeling that there is something coming, 
 with which we have to do, something that 
 calls for the putting forth of external force, 
 is surely the logic of life. Faith in that 
 logic of life is sane and rational, precisely 
 as the action that issues from distrust of 
 it is insane and irrational. 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. II3 
 
 Not only does the life feel the material 
 universe, but it feels itself, it feels its own 
 existence and enjoys it, — is moreover loth 
 to part with it. " I feel, therefore I am," is 
 sound logic, more satisfactory perhaps 
 than the other proposition, " I think, there- 
 fore I am." A healthy man has a vivid 
 sense of his own existence ; that is the most 
 logical ground for believing in it. And 
 not only does a man feel his own life, but 
 he feels other lives. This is the case 
 even with the lower animals. The mo- 
 ther bird feels the life of her fledsrelino^s ; 
 she cannot prove their existence logically, 
 but she knows it, for she is keenly sensi- 
 tive to it. If the life be taken from her 
 little brood, the dead fledgelings will not 
 comfort her ; she knows the difference, she 
 feels the absence of life. Much more is 
 this the case with human beings. The 
 life within the babe feels the mother life 
 brooding over it, and nestles close to it 
 with sweet content. The little child can- 
 not prove the existence of his father's 
 life, but it is a joyful certitude to him. 
 When the father dies, he misses it, for 
 life feels life. And not only does it feel 
 
114 ^HE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 life, but it has what we call " sympathy ; " it 
 can feel for life, — can feel the sufferings, 
 joys and needs of other lives. This, too, 
 is the case with lower animals. A 
 wounded animal is often assisted by other 
 animals, sometimes even at their own risk. 
 The mother partridge will venture her 
 own life to save her young. Sacrifice for 
 others is not an infrequent thing in the 
 brute creation. Life feels for life at times 
 with a great and yearning sensitiveness; 
 and this feeling of hfe for life in ourselves 
 is what we call " humanity." It is unques- 
 tionably a form of perception ; it is the life 
 within us, feeling the quality of things, 
 feeling the lives about us, and feeling for 
 those lives. 
 
 Feeling is a vital force, and like all other 
 vital forces is dependent for its strength 
 and vividness and clearness, not only on 
 the fullness of one's general vitality, but on 
 specific use and training. A man whose 
 vitality is in any way exhausted or dull, a 
 man who has treated his sensibility as an 
 untrustworthy force, substituting in its 
 stead the logical faculty, or a man who has 
 allowed the sensibility within him to re- 
 
THE LA WS OF PERCEPTION. 1 1 5 
 
 main undisciplined, cannot expect to have 
 much of that kind of definite realization 
 which a vigorous life and a disciplined 
 sensibility afford. To the neglected or un- 
 disciplined heart, life must always appear 
 half real and out of proportion, as it would 
 to a feeble and untrained eye. To sum 
 up matters, it is the life itself, by virtue 
 of its sensitiveness, that sees, or, in other 
 words, feels, and thus becomes directly 
 conscious of things; for sensitiveness or 
 consciousness is the intrinsic quality of 
 life. It is true that we do feel with our 
 bodily organs, but the bodily organ has 
 neither sensitiveness or existence without 
 the life ; when the life departs it ceases to 
 be an organ. It may therefore justly be 
 said that it is the life which feels ; it cer- 
 tainly is the causative force in the process, 
 the material part of the organ simply sup- 
 plying the conditions under which the 
 feeling is exercised. Exactly what those 
 conditions are, or how far they are essential, 
 we do not know, but we do know that the 
 conditions are somewhat elastic. Some- 
 times the life exhibits a singular power to 
 act independently of the conditions, and 
 
Il6 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 this power of the Hfe to act independently 
 of the conditions and organs we call by 
 various names, such as animal magnetism, 
 clairvoyance, and hypnotism. But what- 
 ever we call it, it is simply a power, pos- 
 sessed by this altogether mysterious life- 
 principle, to act independently of the 
 organs through which it usually works. 
 
 Of course it makes little difference what 
 we call the life ; the Romans called it the 
 " anima," from which we get the words 
 " animal " and " animation." The Greeks 
 called it the " psyche," from which comes 
 our word "psychical." The Anglo-Saxons 
 called it " soul." More lately this latter 
 word has acquired a metaphysical and the- 
 ological meaning that has destroyed its 
 simplicity. In the New Testament the 
 word put into the mouth of Jesus, by 
 the writers of the gospel, is this Greek 
 " psyche." It is sometimes translated " life " 
 and sometimes " soul." " Soul " is a good 
 word, if we keep clear of the later meta- 
 physical and theological meanings, and 
 hold it to the good old Saxon sense. Tak- 
 ing it then in the sense of " life," it may be 
 said that the soul itself directly perceives 
 when it feels. 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. II/ 
 
 But there is another element that enters 
 into this process of perception ; there is a 
 power that we call " reason." Reason does 
 not give us external facts ; it cannot feel 
 the quality of things, but by means of it 
 we see the relation between things. For 
 instance, a man feels a sharp pain in his 
 hand ; he looks down and sees he has 
 rested his hand on the point of a tack. 
 Reason shows him the relation between 
 those two things. In the lowest animals 
 we see reason, or, rather, intelligence, which 
 is really the dawn of the same thing acting 
 just as it does with us. By it the fish per- 
 ceives the relation between the feeling of 
 hunger and the worm that floats in the 
 water, and if there be a fish-hook con- 
 cealed within the worm, intelligence en- 
 ables him to perceive the relation between 
 it and the prick which he receives. By 
 putting together feeling and intelligence 
 he becomes a clearer-sighted and a wa- 
 rier fish. By thus showing us the rela- 
 tion between different feelings and sensa- 
 tions, reason enables us to group facts, 
 and so to reach not only distinct ideas, 
 but unities or wholes. For example, the 
 
Il8 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 dawning intelligence in the babe enables 
 it to see the relation between the mother's 
 face that smiles down upon it, and the 
 motherly arms that are stretched out to it, 
 and the motherly word that says " Come." 
 Reason shows that they are all the mani- 
 festations of that one loving, sympathizing 
 life, which the child feels with its life. 
 Thus, by the coordination of feeling with 
 reason the child distinctly perceives the 
 mother. As the crystalline lens gathers the 
 rays of light into a focus, and thus causes 
 them to make no vague impression, but a 
 distinct image, so reason defines and con- 
 verges the impressions of our conscious- 
 ness into clearly related facts. It may 
 therefore fairly be said that the soul or 
 life-principle, whether in animals or man, 
 directly perceives the external world by 
 the coordinate action of sensibility and 
 reason. Of course philosophers may easily 
 raise the question whether perception can 
 be trusted, but there can be no doubt as to 
 what perception is. 
 
 Between the brute and the man, how- 
 ever, there is a wide difference. Take a 
 highly intelligent horse and put him be- 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 1 19 
 
 fore Michael Angelo's Last Judgment; he 
 can see the canvas, but neither the truth 
 nor the beauty portrayed upon it. A man, 
 however, can perceive both, for in him the 
 elements both of reason and sensibility 
 are much more highly developed. In 
 man, reason has reached a more complex 
 form. Sensibility also has developed and 
 differentiated itself into a class of powers 
 called " aesthetic," in which the strands of 
 sensibility and intelligence are so closely 
 woven that it is impossible to distinguish 
 feeling from thought, or thought from feel- 
 ing. For example, the true artistic sense 
 gives us not only the enjoyment of a work 
 of art, but its relative value. When a 
 genuine artist looks at the Venus de Milo, 
 he feels not only its exquisite beauty, but 
 its transcendent position in the scale of 
 beauty. Thus, by what appears to be a 
 pure sensibility, we have conveyed to us 
 two aspects of an external fact, namely, 
 quality and relationship. 
 
 The same is true in regard to what w^e 
 call " conscience." By conscience we feel 
 the moral quality of motives, actions, and 
 choices, but by the same power we also 
 
120 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 feel moral values and relationships. A 
 soldier, wounded and athirst, hesitates to 
 drain the small cup of water, with which 
 he is about to slake his thirst, when he 
 sees a suffering comrade by his side. On 
 the one hand is an intense sensibility to 
 his own want ; on the other, a noble sensi- 
 bility to that of his neighbor. To which 
 shall he yield } Reason points plainly out 
 the superficial relationship of either act, 
 without going to the bottom of the ques- 
 tion of relationships ; but if the man yields 
 to the more selfish motive and proceeds 
 to drain what he should have shared, con- 
 science gives a painful throb, precisely as 
 the ear of the musician does when a dis- 
 cord is made. The ear of a musician is 
 sensitive to the musical scale; it is aesthetic, 
 or, in other words, wholly perceptive; it 
 combines both sensibility and intelligence ; 
 it gives both quality and relationship. It 
 feels not only the sweetness but the value 
 of every note ; it feels discords, harmonies, 
 musical sequences, correlations, — in short, 
 the whole universe of music. In like man- 
 ner conscience is sensitive, not only to the 
 goodness or badness of deeds, but to the 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 121 
 
 relative value of impulses ; it feels which is 
 the higher note of conduct, and which the 
 lower; you can write out the whole moral 
 scale by observing and taking down its 
 throbs. Of course I am speaking now of 
 a finely developed and properly cultivated 
 conscience, just as I was speaking a mo- 
 ment ago of a properly developed and cul- 
 tivated ear for music. Consciences vary 
 just as musical or artistic taste does ; they 
 exist in all stages of development, culture, 
 and neglect. Nevertheless it is true of con- 
 sciences, as of artistic taste or musical ears, 
 that their testimony verges toward a unity 
 in proportion as they are developed and 
 properly cultivated, for conscience is a per- 
 ceptive organ, not a pure, a priori principle 
 of reason. It does not predict ; it cannot 
 tell us save of what it has experienced. The 
 conscience of the savage does not inform 
 him beforehand that the forgiveness of 
 injuries is a higher impulse than revenge; 
 but when he feels that forgiveness ex- 
 tended toward himself, so that its qual- 
 ity comes fairly within the range of his 
 experience, then conscience, if it acts 
 normally, throbs with recognition of the 
 
122 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 higher motive. Not only so, but by that 
 same throb of conscience we feel the high- 
 est when it touches us, and likewise sol- 
 emnly feel it to be the highest, nothing 
 less than the throne of glory and the fount 
 of authority. 
 
 Furthermore, conscience does, by this 
 same vivid sense of values, feel the iden- 
 tity of the highest with all divinity, power, 
 and eternity, as when the Roman centu- 
 rion, beholding the motives that animated 
 Christ, called out, " Truly this is the Son 
 of God." Moreover, by that same vivid 
 instinct or prescience does conscience feel 
 the discord and the horror of departure 
 from the highest. It is sensitive to the 
 law of our being involved in the moral 
 scale, and to that majestic eternal law in- 
 volved in our having within us the highest ; 
 for conscience catches, as it were, the thun- 
 derings that come from beneath the throne 
 of eternal righteousness ; it feels the holi- 
 ness of the moral law, its awful authority, 
 its inevitable coordination with the issues 
 of life and the facts of the hereafter, and 
 therefore shudders at its violation, as at 
 the pulling down of the pillars of the sky, 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 1 23 
 
 for like the musical ear it is sensitive to all 
 harmonies and possible correlations, — it 
 feels the unity between the moral and the 
 physical. It has a dread intuition of that 
 correspondence between moral conduct 
 and external consequence, which we call 
 desert. Thus that throb of conscience has 
 given us, not only the sense of right and 
 wrong, but the moral universe. 
 
 Clearly, therefore, conscience is the true 
 perceptive centre, since it is, of all the per- 
 ceptive elements, the highest, and it is by 
 moral perception alone that we are en- 
 abled to put together all things that we see 
 in their complete whole ; for, of course, it is 
 impossible that we should completely see 
 any group of facts until we see them in 
 this highest relationship to ourselves. It 
 is when we view them as related to the 
 heart, or, in other words, as motives to 
 choice and action, that their significance is 
 complete, for all things must stand to- 
 gether finally in this highest relationship. 
 Conscience is therefore not only the organ 
 of moral perception, but the true centre of 
 all perception. Based on its perceptive 
 powers, we have the knowledge of the 
 
124 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 highest good ; of the divine sovereignty ; 
 of fundamental law, eternal righteousness, 
 and of character in general ; and based 
 on this feeling of character, we have those 
 sensibilities toward righteous character 
 which we call " moral affections," that ha- 
 tred of evil character which we call " con- 
 demnation," and that pitying disposition to 
 redeem it which we call " grace." Now it 
 needs little argument to show the reason- 
 ableness of Christ's demand. 
 
 These are all elements of perception, and 
 a complete perceptive act involves the co- 
 ordination of them all and their subordina- 
 tion to conscience as the perceptive centre, 
 and this coordination or putting together 
 is the Greek suniesis, or understanding of 
 the heart, to which Jesus referred. If in 
 this suniesis, or putting together, any ele- 
 ment of perception is eliminated, perverted, 
 or exaggerated, then by just so much the 
 perception is obscured, the understanding 
 of the heart is impaired. The first great 
 law of perception, then, is simplicity, or, 
 in other words, the perfect coordination of 
 all the perceptive elements, exterior and 
 interior, in subordination to the perceptive 
 
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 1 25 
 
 centre, namely, conscience. Here, then, is 
 the second point of divergence between 
 Jesus and his critics. The position has 
 not changed since the time of the Phari- 
 sees. The first point of divergence was, 
 that the critics insisted primarily upon 
 proof of the divine majesty, whereas Jesus 
 insisted that the majesty was a thing to be 
 lived, not proved, — that, like other facts of 
 nature, it belonged to the department of 
 perceptive knowledge. With facts of that 
 class, proof is always a subsidiary affair. 
 The true method of presentation is to 
 quicken the intuition by more and more 
 vital embodiments of the truth. Thus, 
 when Nicodemus expressed the blind crit- 
 icism of his party and the necessity of 
 some great miracle to awaken their faith, 
 Jesus did not promise a greater miracle or 
 a more intellectual proof, but he said the 
 Son of man must be lifted up. The truth 
 must have a more profound and tragical 
 symbolism, an embodiment that will sink 
 deeper into the hearts of men. The sec- 
 ond point of divergence is as has just been 
 stated ; Jesus insists on a complete coor- 
 dination of all the elements of perception. 
 
126 THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 upon the focalization of the eye, upon the 
 understanding of the heart. The divine 
 majesty which he reveals is a moral fact ; it 
 is a divine character ; it is nothing less than 
 the highest; it is potentially within every 
 man, a thing which every man's conscience 
 is adapted to perceive, provided it be pro- 
 perly developed, disciplined, and coordi- 
 nated with the other powers; therefore 
 Jesus insists on that self-adjustment which 
 we call " moral discipline." To his disci- 
 ples he said, " Unto you, w^ho receive my 
 discipline, it is given to see the things of 
 the kingdom of God, but to them that are 
 without it is not given, for seeing they see 
 and do not perceive." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 In the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus, 
 responding to the religious longings of his 
 people after a supernatural deliverance, 
 announces the presence of that supernat- 
 uralism, and declares how great and what 
 kind of a deliverance it is. No language 
 of prophet or psalmist, no angelic hymn 
 of the nativity, has pictured too vividly the 
 blessings that are to flow from it. But, 
 Jesus reminds them, it is like all nature's 
 blessings, it operates through organic law, 
 and is for those only who have organs 
 fitted to take it in. A spirit so surfeited 
 with the world, so gross, as to be uncon- 
 scious of spiritual want; sensibilities so 
 occupied with fleshly gratification as to 
 have no appetite for righteousness ; or an 
 egotistic mind, — surely such organs as 
 these can get nothing out of this pure and 
 holy manifestation of the Father. Happy 
 
128 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 are those, he says, in whom the divine hand 
 has shaped through poverty, sorrow, or 
 moral struggle a better organism, for theirs 
 is the kingdom of heaven. Particularly is 
 this the case with those whose perception 
 has been purified. To them the new 
 supernaturalism will indeed bring a bea- 
 tific vision, things that prophets and kings 
 have longed to see, nay, that angels have 
 desired to look into. " Blessed are the 
 pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
 
 The law of simplicity merges into the 
 law of purity, and explains it. In its light 
 we see exactly what the peril is that besets 
 all true insight. Without the proper devel- 
 opment and discipline of the sensibility, 
 insight comes to nothing. There is no 
 element of realization. The life is thrown 
 out of actual touch with the external world ; 
 it becomes devitalized, and dimly realizes 
 even its own existence. Indeed, all exist- 
 ence is to it a shadow. Everything must 
 be proved, yet proof is unsatisfying, for it 
 was designed to corroborate insight, not to 
 supplant it. On the other hand, the mo- 
 ment we attempt to discipline the heart 
 into clear perception we encounter a super- 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 1 29 
 
 human task, arising from the fact that the 
 organ of insight is also the organ of pleas- 
 ure. By it, also, we feel pain, particularly 
 the pain of weary endeavor, of resistance 
 to temptation. The heart was made to see 
 God, but the heart tastes and sees at the 
 same time, and its gaze is riveted upon 
 objects of lust, or sources of pride. Man 
 has but so much sensibility. The soul can- 
 not feel everything at the same time; still 
 less can it feel strongly in opposite direc- 
 tions, nor can it endure to feel that which 
 carries with it a strong rebuke. As Jesus 
 expressed it, where the treasure is, there 
 will the heart be also. The soul tends to 
 fix upon some one object as the source of 
 joy. It concentrates its feeling upon that 
 object, goes out toward it, and so possesses 
 it. Gradually it loses the power of exer- 
 cising feeling in other directions. The 
 psychic eye is formed, the focus of sensi- 
 bility is determined ; the result is that a 
 man's feeling can only act perceptively in 
 coordination with certain reasonings, im- 
 aginings, and choices. The instant he is 
 called upon to see anything opposed to his 
 heart's treasure, he is blind as regards sen- 
 sibility. 
 
130 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 Of course there is but one solution to 
 this problem. The impurity is due to a 
 wrong choice. It does not necessarily de- 
 file the eye to look upon an object of lust, 
 but the will that decides to remain looking, 
 that does indeed defile the eye, and, as the 
 will itself becomes enslaved, it plunges the 
 heart into deeper defilement, and makes 
 its vision more distorted. We must not, 
 however, think of the will as a separate 
 faculty. It is the soul itself that defiles 
 the feeling by deciding to use it as an ave- 
 nue of base enjoyment. It is the soul 
 alone that can purify the will by repenting, 
 by taking another and a purer treasure, by 
 plucking out the eye that offends, by fas- 
 tening the sensibility upon a new and holy 
 object, and so forming a new eye. As has 
 been said, conscience points out the re- 
 lation between the feelings, and it shows 
 us which should be subordinate, which is 
 sovereign and authoritative. It is when 
 we thus coordinate feeling with conscience, 
 subordinating it as conscience indicates, 
 that we have what we call " moral percep- 
 tion," just as when we coordinate reason 
 with feeling we have rational perception. 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 131 
 
 Now one of the first things we note in 
 the life of Jesus is his persistent attempt 
 to lay hold of men's enslaved wills, and 
 turn them from this false treasure. He 
 labors hard to secure moral perception. 
 The kingdom of God, the manifestation of 
 the supernatural, will be nothing to them, 
 unless the soul or life can be led to take a 
 true moral attitude. Repent, he says, for 
 the kingdom of heaven is within reach; 
 possession of that kingdom is a process of 
 the heart ; man sees, enjoys, possesses with 
 the heart. Jesus dwells upon God's method 
 of purification by stripping us of the ob- 
 jects of passion and pride. Happy, he 
 says, are the poor, the mourners ; those 
 that have moral wants, that hunger and 
 thirst for righteousness ; the poor in 
 spirit, those that are freed from egotism. 
 In fact, Jesus dwells much, throughout the 
 Gospels, on freedom from pride, self-glori- 
 fication, and egoism of all kinds, declaring 
 to his disciples that unless they become as 
 little children, they cannot enter into — 
 that is, experience — the kingdom of hea- 
 ven. But the purification of feeling with 
 Jesus meant a good deal more than the 
 
132 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 withdrawal of the heart from evil. It 
 meant the progressive yielding up of the 
 sensibility to the highest good. As he 
 expressed it in a parable, the kingdom of 
 heaven is like a man, who, having found 
 the pearl of great price, sells all he had for 
 it. In other words, a man must put his 
 perception to its noblest use, and then fol- 
 low it up, for all he is worth. He must, as 
 Jesus expressed it elsewhere, walk in the 
 light, until he becomes a child oi the light. 
 Only the constant laying hold by the 
 soul of that which is noblest and highest 
 in its environment, at the sacrifice of every- 
 thing else, can possibly give it either real 
 possession or steady vision of the spiritual 
 world. On this positive principle alone is 
 insight purified. Purity is, in fact, an ele- 
 ment of simplicity. The feelings can only 
 be refined by breaking up their coordination 
 with all that is evil, and coordinating the 
 life itself with absolute goodness ; but this 
 is not the whole of it. In fact, evil itself 
 is not a positive external thing from which 
 a man can separate himself. It is the ab- 
 sorption of feeling by something that is 
 low and transitory, and therefore unworthy, 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 133 
 
 that constitutes the evil. There is no evil 
 in the desire for food and clothing ; there 
 is evil in feeling so strong a desire for 
 them, or taking so much satisfaction in 
 them, as to be anxious about them. There 
 is no evil in loving father and mother, only 
 in loving them more than one who em- 
 bodies to us a yet higher love. " He that 
 loveth father and mother more than me, 
 says Jesus, is not worthy of me ; " a love 
 that does not yield to the growth of a 
 higher love is unfit. The purification of 
 feeling therefore requires not only the 
 coordination of the life with the highest 
 embodiments in its environment, but the 
 subordination of all other feelings to this 
 process. This is, in fact, evolution ; and if 
 we strip the doctrine of evolution, as it is 
 now taught, of all that is dubious and un- 
 proved,^ we shall find the residuum to be, 
 that the universe has been and is being 
 developed by a progressive process of 
 
 1 For a view of what science has not proved, see Lord 
 Salisbury's address, as President of the British Scientific 
 Association. For a statement of " the only doctrine of 
 evolution that is indisputably true," see article on Chris- 
 tian Socialism {Nineteenth Century, November) by the 
 Duke of Argyll. 
 
134 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 organic coordination and subordination. 
 This is the way in which the anima or 
 life is shaped both in the lower orders and 
 in man. By this process organs are devel- 
 oped and differentiated ; one of the great 
 facts of evolution is that the history of the 
 individual corresponds to the history of 
 the species. 
 
 If we take the life of a child we see that 
 feeling first develops itself powerfully in 
 the sensuous direction. Those sensibili- 
 ties by which we enjoy the material uni- 
 verse first awake to consciousness. The 
 child-life is keenly sensitive to physical 
 pleasure or pain ; it is plunged into mis- 
 ery by the prick of a pin, or a bruise on 
 the head ; it goes into ecstasies over a 
 box of candy. Soon there comes a sharp 
 struggle between what we call " animalism " 
 and character, that is, between the primal 
 sensibility of the anima and the dawn of a 
 higher consciousness. This takes at first 
 the form of sensibility toward the mother- 
 life. This the child feels ; feels its sym- 
 pathy, its loving care ; feels itself impelled 
 to give itself up to that loving care. Par- 
 allel with this comes the sense of belong- 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 135 
 
 ingness and consequent obligation, ^Yhlch 
 is the germ of conscience and also of 
 moral faith. Still further on, if develop- 
 ment progresses, the child comes to feel 
 for the mother; feels her weariness and 
 sacrifice, her pain and anxiety on its own 
 behalf. 
 
 It strives to embody this higher sensi- 
 bility in acts of faith, such as a more will- 
 ing obedience, till at last, with purified and 
 enlarged sensibilities, conjoined with grow- 
 ing intelligence, it perceives the mother- 
 life in its wholeness, its righteousness, and 
 its tender glory. It now for the first time 
 has a purely invisible, intangible, supersen- 
 suous object, which it feels and enjoys, 
 with which it is identified, for which it 
 lives, and to which it subordinates all lower 
 feelings. Having become coordinated with 
 the mother's life, it is coordinated with all 
 similar kinds of life; it belongs to that 
 species, that type, that world of existences. 
 In other words, it has developed into a 
 spirit, not that it has ceased to be an 
 anima or life, but the anima, or psyche, or 
 soul, as the ancients called it, has assumed 
 a higher type, and all its properties have 
 been newly centred and vitalized. 
 
136 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 This higher type of life we call " spirit." 
 The word is a growing one ; it has come 
 dow^n from the ancients ; it meant at first 
 the breath, possibly the divine breath, but 
 at all events something supersensuous, 
 both in its consciousness and vis^or. We 
 still cling to the same meaning. A man 
 of spirit is a man who rises above certain 
 forms of sensuousness, above the fear and 
 the power of material things ; he is to 
 some extent freed from the slavish and 
 childish domination of matter, — is not 
 easily mastered by either physical pleas- 
 ure or physical pain. So, too, our concep- 
 tion of a pure spirit is that of a soul or 
 life, not chained to the body, dominating 
 material things instead of being dominated 
 by them. 
 
 We call such a being " supernatural," 
 The Scripture calls him " spiritual." When 
 Jesus said, " God is a Spirit," he was not 
 attempting to tell us anything about God's 
 mode of existence, but to convey to us the 
 idea that God was morally raised above the 
 sensuous plane of feeling and motive. In 
 fact we need to be careful lest the words 
 carry us too far, giving us the impression 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 13/ 
 
 that God has no Hfe, or psychic existence 
 such as would correlate Him with the uni- 
 verse and enable Him to be felt by us, 
 and that his spirituality has in it no moral 
 virtue. But, at any rate, so far as man is 
 concerned, the spirit is the developed and 
 purified psyche, or life, or soul, or anima. 
 As St. Paul expresses it, first comes 
 that which is psychical, afterwards that 
 which is spiritual. The King James' ver- 
 sion has mystified us, by translating the 
 Greek word " psychical " into our word 
 " natural ; " had they then translated the 
 word " spiritual " into our word " super- 
 natural," it would have been all of a piece. 
 The word " natural " is, however, a very 
 poor translation, for there is in reality no 
 such distinction. The spiritual is just as 
 natural as the psychical, and our relation 
 to God as natural as that to our own 
 mother. The point of what I have been 
 saying is this, that purification is insepa- 
 rable from evolution. As has been said 
 in a former chapter, the law of righteous- 
 ness is the law of love, and is the develop- 
 ment of man's reciprocity with God and 
 his fellow-man into a complete spiritual em- 
 
138 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 bodiment. This is accomplished through 
 the man's identifying himself with the em- 
 bodiment of divine love wherever, in his 
 environment, he finds it. This is the law, 
 not only of righteousness but of insight; 
 it is the law for the evolution of the 
 prophet, the seer, and the apostle. Nay, 
 it is not only the law by which one sees 
 the heavenly world, but the law by which 
 alone one can possess and enjoy it. It 
 might therefore almost be called the law 
 of salvation itself. In fact, Jesus insisted 
 upon it with great earnestness. Not only 
 did he have his disciples baptize all ad- 
 herents in his name, thus solemnly identi- 
 fying them with himself and his ideal of 
 purification, but he declared that the more 
 crucial was the identification the greater 
 would be the power to see and enjoy spir- 
 itual things. " Blessed are ye when men 
 shall revile you, and persecute you, and 
 say all manner of evil against you for my 
 name's sake. Great is your reward ; for so 
 persecuted they the prophets that w^ere 
 before you." Such is the course of the 
 prophet's life, such the law of his devel- 
 opment. No insight can be gained except 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 1 39 
 
 by a struggle with the sensuous element in 
 us and about us. Evolution means strug- 
 gle, conflict, subordination of the lower to 
 the higher, coordination with the supreme. 
 " Except a man bear his cross and come 
 after me, he cannot be my disciple." The 
 man who will enter the spiritual world 
 must move with its organ onward and 
 upward. 
 
 Concerning those who did not thus be- 
 come his disciples, identifying themselves 
 with his movement, he says, " In them is 
 fulfilled the words of Isaiah the prophet. 
 Seeing they see and do not perceive, their 
 heart is waxed gross, their eyes have they 
 closed, lest at any time they should see 
 with their eyes, and comprehend with their 
 heart, and should turn, and I should heal 
 them." So delicately, yet forcibly, does 
 he picture that half conscious shrinking 
 from the truth of the soul that anticipates 
 its crucial import, and has determined to 
 remain identified with the sensuous world. 
 But it is in the fourth Gospel that the law 
 of evolution is most plainly stated, in the 
 talk with Nicodemus, to which I have 
 already referred. Having stated that what 
 
140 THE LAW OF PURITY. 
 
 the Pharisees wanted was not proof but 
 sight, he then proceeds to say that what 
 is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born 
 of the spirit is spirit, and forthwith enun- 
 ciates the law of spiritual development in 
 the expression, " Except a man be born of 
 water and the spirit he cannot enter the 
 kingdom of God." Here he plainly refers 
 to the purification of insight, for water was 
 the great Jewish symbol of purification, 
 and to the Jewish mind it was quite natural 
 that the spirit of God should act in coor- 
 dination with a symbolic embodiment like 
 baptism. Furthermore, Nicodemus' own 
 conscience could tell him what baptism it 
 was that Jesus meant. The baptism of 
 John was the one notable moral fact at 
 that time ; it was more than a fact ; it was 
 the sharpest kind of a moral issue. The 
 vital question of the time then was, whether 
 a man should identify himself with John 
 or not, for all recognized John as a pro- 
 phet, so that the question practically was, 
 whether or not one would identify himself 
 with God. The Pharisees recognized 
 John's prophetic illumination, and his ap- 
 peals touched their consciences; but to 
 
THE LAW OF PURITY. 14 1 
 
 submit to his baptism would be to give up 
 their position of headship ; it would be 
 yielding the authority of culture and social 
 position to the authority of a plain and 
 somewhat uncouth but spiritual manhood. 
 It was, in short, the old crucial struggle 
 between flesh and spirit. The Pharisees 
 would not give up their egotism ; therefore 
 they stood off and pretended that by virtue 
 of their scholarship, their knowledge of 
 the law, in short, their education, they pos- 
 sessed an independent criterion of religious 
 knowledge. They criticised first John, 
 then Jesus. 
 
 By this process they shut out their sen- 
 sibilities from the spiritual forces and 
 vitalities of their day, and shut their per- 
 ceptive powers up to the withering effects 
 of egotism. Isolated from God's great 
 natural unities, they were perishing, like 
 any isolated thing in nature, and of this 
 Jesus warned them. In stating to Nico- 
 demus the law of spiritual perception and 
 evolution, which they had violated, he 
 shows it to be no new thing, but a prin- 
 ciple which Nicodemus, as a master of 
 Israel, ought to have known ; an earthly 
 
142 THE LA W OF PURITY. 
 
 phenomenon of religious life that came 
 quite within his observation. By water 
 and the spirit, — that is, by baptism, or, in 
 general, by identifying themselves with 
 purifying and God-given spiritual embodi- 
 ments, — men had always developed more 
 or less spiritual vitality. If Christ brought 
 in a new birth, it was simply because identi- 
 fication with so perfect an embodiment as 
 himself completed the embryonic process 
 of development and ushered the soul into 
 complete organic coordination with the 
 spiritual world. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LIGHT. 
 
 The Co7idition of P erception. 
 
 The general term employed by Jesus to 
 describe his revelation of the supernatural 
 was " light." This word stands in nature 
 for the condition of all perception. True, 
 it may be used in a vague sense ; but Jesus 
 did not so use it. His teaching was invari- 
 ably consistent with its precise and natural- 
 istic significance. Light does not take 
 the place of the perceptive organs ; it 
 arouses, develops, and stimulates them ; 
 indeed, it is the original environment under 
 which they are evolved. 
 
 Furthermore, it coordinates them with 
 the external universe. It is by this coor- 
 dination that light imparts knowledge ; and 
 in this respect it is a correct type of the 
 whole revelatory process. Two men are 
 groping about in the night ; naturally they 
 argue about their surroundings ; day 
 
144 LIGHT. 
 
 breaks; light is poured in; discussion is 
 at an end ; argument and proof have lost 
 their raison d'etre; for these latter me- 
 thods of knowledge belong to an impercep- 
 tive state. Besides, proof has small relation 
 to the evolution of perception, — on the 
 contrary, light is progressively creative ; 
 therefore, nature being as it is, we should 
 expect that God would give his revelation 
 by the element of light rather than of 
 proof ; and this was the precise position of 
 Jesus. He was continually curbing the 
 clamor of men for proof. Men demanded, 
 Are you the Christ? His answer was in 
 effect. Follow and see. The Christ must 
 be lived, not proved. To live is to trans- 
 mit. Thus, to live the life of God is to 
 transmit God. This is what light stands 
 for in general, — the process of transmis- 
 sion ; it transmits the quality of the exter- 
 nal world to our eye. It is not, however, 
 the only transmitting agent. Transmission 
 is a common function in nature ; it is the 
 ordinary method of coordination between 
 our organs and external facts. The atmos- 
 phere, for instance, transmits light. In a 
 London fog one can hardly see across the 
 
LIGHT. 145 
 
 street ; but let a fresh breeze sweep in, and 
 he can see the dome of St. Paul's looming 
 overhead. 
 
 Revelation is often the coming in of a 
 better transmissive element or substance. 
 A convex lens so transmits light as to 
 assist the imperfect eye. A pair of specta- 
 cles redeems a man's youthful vision. We 
 have constructed the microscope, and lo, 
 the bacteria are with us ; they were not 
 the creation of our brain, though the micro- 
 scope was. So, too, with the telescope ; 
 man has not made the stars larger ; he has 
 simply found a better transmitting agent. 
 So God has grown greater because man's 
 soul is the object-glass, and under God's 
 hand it has gradually gotten into better 
 shape. Sometimes the oculist furnishes 
 for us a temporary lens just to develop 
 vision ; as soon as the organ is perfect the 
 lens is taken away. This must always be 
 the case with a true revelatory process. It 
 is adapted to the development of the organ. 
 When the perfect organ is developed the 
 imperfect method of refraction is done 
 away. Knowledge then becomes direct. 
 At first " one sees through a glass darkly," 
 
146 LIGHT. 
 
 afterward " face to face." Now we are sur- 
 rounded by transmitting agencies, and if 
 there be a God, they are surely in his 
 hands. There are, in fact, transmitting 
 agencies for every organ, — the hght for the 
 eye, atmosphere for the ear and nose, water 
 for the palate, and subtler elements still for 
 subtler organs. In fact, all elements and 
 substances are transmissive. Iron trans- 
 mits heat; copper, electricity. Often, in- 
 deed, one element transmits another, as the 
 air, the light. To sum it up, the so-called 
 realities of life are transmitted, not demon- 
 strated. 
 
 Now Christ's position was this, — he 
 maintained that this process of transmis- 
 sion extends into the spiritual world. Mat- 
 ter transmits mind ; material energy trans- 
 mits personal energy. It certainly was true 
 in his case. One can but be struck with the 
 divine magnetism of that man ; surely his 
 spiritual forces radiated through his physi- 
 cal energies ; his body was like a harp of 
 God. The light that played about his 
 face was a medium for the light that 
 played about his soul ; the vibrations of 
 the external air transmitted with thrilling 
 
LIGHT. 147 
 
 power the vibrations of his spirit. All 
 these external elements were good con- 
 ductors of the spiritual forces that dwelt 
 within his bosom ; and this may be said to 
 be true in general. Not more surely does 
 copper wire conduct electricity than do the 
 forces of the body conduct those of the 
 mind. A shock of personality is as dis- 
 tinct as that of galvanism; the sunshine 
 of a great heart penetrates outward as 
 surely as the sunshine of June. In gen- 
 eral it may be said that matter is a per- 
 fectly natural medium for the transmission 
 of life ; the two have constitutional correla- 
 tions. Doubtless this has led to the mate- 
 rialistic view of life. Life is, in one aspect, a 
 material force, penetrating matter, organ- 
 izing it, and radiating through it. Every- 
 where in nature matter appears as the 
 medium of life. A kernel of corn trans- 
 mits the life force, just as Jesus described, 
 so as to lay hold of the earth and produce 
 in it a chemical change. Yet so entirely 
 does the transmitting process extend into 
 the realm of invisible life that all animal 
 reproduction is accomplished by the invisi- 
 ble life force of sexual love. Without this 
 
148 LIGHT. 
 
 invisible psychic energy of passion there 
 would be no animal forms. But this is not 
 all the fact ; the material world is not only 
 a medium for the spiritual, but it actually 
 represents it, for it corresponds to it 
 throughout. 
 
 To return, for instance, to the element 
 of light ; it is not only a good conductor of 
 spiritual force, but it furnishes us with a 
 type of it, for there is a resemblance be- 
 tween the two. The sunshine of heaven 
 is like that of a human spirit. The soul 
 that experiences both finds a likeness be- 
 tween them. So, too, with cool water and 
 spiritual comfort; wide apart as are the 
 material and spiritual, the soul that tests 
 them both finds a similarity. So it is with 
 height and depth, or physical exaltation 
 and depression ; they are in experience like 
 their spiritual counterparts. The body is 
 a wondrous symbol of the soul ; its upright- 
 ness of posture resembles and gives name 
 to the uprightness of life. The strength 
 of Christ's supporting arm, when it laid 
 hold of Peter, resembled his supporting 
 love. The warmth of his hand was like 
 the warmth of his heart. His face imaged 
 
LIGHT. 149 
 
 the soul within. Thus the physical is, so 
 far as we know it, a reproduction of the 
 spiritual, not only as regards force, but also 
 idea, for there is neither height, nor depth, 
 nor sky, nor cloud, nor mountain-top, nor 
 barren waste, nor coal of fire, nor scorpion's 
 sting, nor poison dart, nor gold, nor pearl, 
 nor precious stone, nor pit of darkness, nor 
 any new discovery of force, nor gunpowder, 
 nor dynamite, nor electric motor, that has 
 not its resemblance in the world of spirit 
 and the soul of man. 
 
 We have just as good ground for be- 
 lieving in the universal correspondence 
 of matter to life, as we have for accepting 
 the uniformity of nature or the correlation 
 of forces. 
 
 It is no fancy, no mere theory; it is the 
 experience of a man's own life that testifies 
 to the parallelism, and so cries out of expe- 
 rience, " How sharper than a serpent's 
 tooth it is to have a thankless child," or 
 how " The quality of mercy is not strained, 
 but droppeth as the gentle dew from hea- 
 ven." So far as human experience goes 
 every visible object is the type of some in- 
 visible reality ; not only is it a type, but 
 
1 50 LIGHT. 
 
 also it is a prophecy and a promise, for the 
 two are parts of one whole, and that whole 
 is in process of development ; first that 
 which is physical ; afterward that which is 
 spiritual. Indeed, this correspondence be- 
 tween the visible and invisible is the foun- 
 dation both of poetry and prophecy; for 
 while, on the one hand, the universe is a 
 series of mechanical facts, to be treated in a 
 mechanical w^ay, it is to the higher sensi- 
 bility a language of God, being no less than 
 a vast series of intelligible symbols, ever 
 speaking to the ear of man, ever prophesy- 
 ing to him concerning the invisible reali- 
 ties by which he is surrounded. Each 
 humblest thing tells of its unseen like- 
 ness : — 
 
 " Not a natural flower can grow on earth 
 Without a flower upon the spiritual side 
 Substantial, archetypal." 
 
 Thus a child does not know the mother- 
 life by logical proof ; the mother-look sug- 
 gests the mother's heart ; such suggestion 
 is not only soul-transference, but thought- 
 transference. 
 
 And this leads us to a fact that lies at 
 the bottom of revelation. Revelation is 
 
LIGHT. 151 
 
 not transmission alone, but personal radia- 
 tion. In this respect, also, Christ's term 
 holds good. Light not only transmits, but 
 it radiates. It is, in fact, a type of all 
 radiation ; having first radiated, it becomes 
 then transmissive, and this same character- 
 istic belongs to persons. Personal life 
 radiates ; there is such a thing as a radi- 
 ant life, in the fullest sense of the word. 
 Moreover, it is a peculiarity of personal life 
 that its radiation is largely determined by 
 character and will. This differentiates the 
 field of revelation widely from the field of 
 science ; the revealing personality is not 
 passive like a stone or a plant, nor are its 
 depths approachable at the will of the 
 observer. 
 
 No matter what the transmitting agen- 
 cies, a great personality does not radiate its 
 innermost life save by its own will and 
 activity ; therefore, whatever our instrumen- 
 tality for investigation, we stand help- 
 less before such a personality. Voluntary 
 radiation is the foundation factor in the 
 process. The New Testament may be a 
 perfect transmitting agency, but it is not 
 every one who can find God in it, — nay, 
 
152 LIGHT. 
 
 but he to whom God wills to disclose him- 
 self. Revelation is a personal matter be- 
 tween a man and his Maker ; the child does 
 not first seek the father, but the father the 
 child. When the child begins to seek, the 
 father's method is already provided for him, 
 nor is the method arbitrary, but based on 
 personal laws. There are personal laws 
 even between man and man whose viola- 
 tion shuts up reciprocity, and makes the 
 radiation of one's inner self not only unfit, 
 but impossible. Christ could not disclose 
 his heart to the people of Nazareth ; he 
 could only disclose himself to those who 
 were willing to conform to the truth. The 
 Pharisees shut him up to himself. He 
 that willeth to do a son's part in the reci- 
 procity shall know of the Fatherhood. But 
 the will must meet the practical test of 
 identifying itself with the outward embodi- 
 ment. " He that followeth me, said Jesus, 
 shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
 the light of life." It is by radiation, in an 
 ever onward movement, that a life makes 
 itself felt; for those who accompany it. 
 Having been radiated, it then becomes 
 transmissive and interpretative; it is a 
 
LIGHT. 153 
 
 luminous personal atmosphere. The man 
 who follows the radiant life of Christ is 
 pervaded by it ; he sees the whole universe 
 differently ; he is enveloped by clearer air. 
 We are always surrounded by lives. 
 Their personal atmosphere varies in its 
 transmissive power. Sometimes it is lumi- 
 nous ; sometimes obscure. There is the 
 life of the community, the nation, the 
 race ; these all constitute atmospheres. In 
 our egotism, we think our views are due to 
 our own insight or reason. Little do we 
 realize to how vast an extent they are dis- 
 torted or clarified by the transmissive effect 
 of other minds, other imaginations, other 
 lives. The atmosphere of savagery shuts 
 in the savage. The atmosphere of dog- 
 matic thought shuts in the zealot. The 
 light of science is the atmospheric effect 
 of a few strong intellectual lives such as 
 Spencer and Huxley. Sometimes it trans- 
 mits ; sometimes it obscures. Lives full 
 of unholy egotism are radiated about us ; 
 they come between us and the New Testa- 
 ment ; they are shadowy as the fog. There 
 is in them no purified sensibility, no child- 
 like intuition of God. The radiation of a 
 
154 LIGHT. 
 
 pure spiritual life is like the coming in of 
 a fresh sunlit breeze. A personality in 
 which self is, however unconsciously, the 
 supreme object invariably casts a heavy 
 shadow. Egoism always shuts out God. 
 Such is the world's life that surrounds us, 
 transmitting the sunlight of God through 
 mists and vapors. This false transmissive- 
 ness distorts the glory of God, as it does 
 the goodness of man. Man has but one 
 way to overcome it ; he must live it down. 
 This is also God's way; this was what 
 Christ did. He lived in the world until 
 he had radiated the pure life of God, so 
 that he was able to say to his disciples, 
 " Be of good cheer. I have overcome 
 the world." Revelation therefore involves 
 struggle, — the warfare of personal light 
 with personal darkness. The spiritual 
 personality is positively antagonistic to the 
 unspiritual, for it discloses its lack ; it illu- 
 mines the path of duty and development ; 
 it reveals the cross of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Thus revelation is inseparable from the 
 radiation of God's personal quality. This 
 makes it unpleasant to any one who does 
 not wish to be made better, for it troubles 
 
LIGHT. 155 
 
 the conscience. Jesus called it a judg- 
 ment. " This is the judgment, that light 
 is come into the world, and men have loved 
 darkness rather than light." From the 
 standpoint of Christ this must necessarily 
 be the case, for divine revelation is not a 
 communication brought from an unnatural 
 world ; it is a direct radiation from the 
 heart of that God who lives among us, 
 whom all our acts concern. That such a 
 radiation should be not only painfully illu- 
 minative, but an absolute shock to our im- 
 morality and egoism, might naturally be 
 expected. When St. John summed up his 
 experience of Christ's disclosure, he said, 
 " God is light, and in Him is no darkness at 
 all." The radiation of such a life, without 
 a shadow of egoism, did indeed call forth 
 from the world a cry of rage and hatred. 
 It has never been pleasant to the selfish- 
 ness of man, and can only be endured by 
 one who is willing to be chastened by it. 
 To put it squarely, a divine revelation can 
 be seen only by one who permits it to be 
 felt ; it must work its way by finding the 
 highest sensibility in every man, and over- 
 coming the antagonism of his lower feel- 
 
156 LIGHT. 
 
 ings, till the heart becomes an organ of 
 insight ; but unless the man's will coope- 
 rates, there can be no light of life for him, 
 nor will he ever find a satisfactory proof 
 of God's existence. God does not prove 
 himself. God lives. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 EVIDENCE. 
 
 It may be objected that the foregoing 
 discussion does not answer the question, 
 " What is Perception ? " But surely a 
 statement of the laws, involving as it does 
 the method and practical characteristics, 
 comes about as near knowledge as we can 
 get, with our present faculties. Clearly it 
 is the only knowledge we possess of either 
 matter or spirit. Obviously the character- 
 istic thing in Christ's view of perception 
 is, that feeling is made coordinate with 
 reason as a source and criterion of know- 
 ledge, instead of being placed on an infe- 
 rior level. It is the life that knows, and 
 the knowledge is acquired and possessed 
 by the sensibility, acting coordinately with 
 the reason, which latter power simply gives 
 the relation of things. One can but be 
 struck with the approximation of our mod- 
 ern naturalism to this view of Jesus. As 
 
158 EVIDENCE. 
 
 our observation of nature becomes closer, 
 we have left behind us the old metaphys- 
 ical notion that there is a separate know- 
 ing power to which the feelings report, 
 and that when knowledge has once been 
 seized by this intellectual organism, we 
 then first possess it. It is true, we have 
 not yet recovered practically from the ef- 
 fect which this view has produced upon 
 our imagination. To the popular mind, 
 feeling still stands discredited, and the 
 notion still prevails that in the reason 
 we possess the only certain and ultimate 
 source of knowledge. It is only by de- 
 grees, through books like those of Mr. 
 Kidd and Mr. Balfour, that the waves of 
 this sounder modern philosophy begin to 
 reach us, and people begin to realize that 
 feeling is, equally with reason, a criterion ; 
 nay, more, since reason cannot of itself 
 make us acquainted with any actual fact 
 or quality, not even any fact or quality of 
 our own selves, that there must therefore 
 be in all our knowledge what is called an 
 overtone of feeling. In short, the whole 
 trend of naturalistic thought is toward this 
 law of Christ. It is really bringing out 
 
EVWENCE. 159 
 
 the necessity for the purification and de- 
 velopment of feeling as one of the essential 
 criteria of knowledge. 
 
 I have applied the word " reason " to 
 animals as well as men. This is quite out 
 of accord" with the older view, but it agrees 
 with the evolutionary conception. Accord- 
 ing to this, reason is but the larger and 
 higher development of the power by which 
 the robin discerns the relation between 
 the cherry and his own stomach, and the 
 whole evolution of the power, both in the 
 brute and in man, is due to the same cau- 
 sation, — the pressure of environment and 
 the struggle for survival. So far as I can 
 see, the evolution of the power in man in- 
 troduces no new element ; it is still simply 
 the power to discern relations. Out of this 
 we get what we call " unities," or wholes 
 and parts ; from this in turn we derive 
 analysis and synthesis. By this also we 
 see that certain things constantly stand to- 
 gether in the relation of sequence. Thus 
 we get the idea of uniformity and causal- 
 ity. As sensibility in man has developed 
 in complexity and quality, the perception 
 of relations has also become complex. 
 
l6o EVIDENCE. 
 
 Necessitous situations have demanded the 
 keenest exercise of the sensibility and a 
 continuous application of it to new cases. 
 Thus reason has given us what we call 
 " principles of action." Especially has the 
 struggle for existence forced us in the two 
 directions previously mentioned, namely, 
 to trust our feedings and to discipline 
 them by a sharper coordination with rea- 
 son. This latter process we call "proof." 
 Proof consists in determining whether 
 things stand together in those relations 
 which we have observed to be uniform. 
 The uniform relation in which things 
 stand together, we call " rational." Things 
 thus standing together constitute rational 
 unities; if an object of perception stands 
 together with other objects in such a 
 rational unity, our sensibility is corrobo- 
 rated, or, in other words, the fact is proved; 
 but if we should see the form of a friend 
 poised in mid air, without any support, we 
 should judge it an irrational vision, be- 
 cause it did not stand together with the 
 other facts of nature in that uniform rela- 
 tion which we have observed. It is just 
 at this point, however, that we find the 
 
EVIDENCE. l6l 
 
 limitation of reason. Confined strictly to 
 the department of relations, it is unerring; 
 but it is always dependent on the sensi- 
 bility for its facts, and facts are essential 
 to our knowledge of uniformity. It is im- 
 possible, for instance, to know absolutely 
 all the relations in which material objects 
 may stand to one another, until we have 
 actually observed by the sensibility all the 
 facts and forces that govern matter. 
 
 A few centuries ago nothing could have 
 been plainer than that iron must invariably 
 sink in water. If iron was seen to float, it 
 was fair to regard it as an irrational vision. 
 But a laro^er use of sis^ht and touch has 
 shown us that enormous masses of iron 
 can float ; so that by gradual experience 
 we have discerned a wider relation and a 
 new law of specific gravity. Indeed, the 
 progress of reason is always inevitably 
 limited by the development of the sen- 
 sibility. Its most assured verdicts must 
 always be based on some previous devel- 
 opment of the sensibility. This is par- 
 ticularly noticeable in what is called legal 
 evidence ; here w^e have what many regard 
 as a purely logical chain of proof. No- 
 
1 62 EVIDENCE. 
 
 thing, however, can be farther from the 
 fact ; ahnost every link of reason is joined 
 to a Hnk of sensibihty. Each witness tes- 
 tifies what he has seen, or, in other words, 
 what his feeHngs have tested ; the value of 
 his perception depends in a large degree 
 upon the fine development of his sensi- 
 bility, and the credibility of every witness 
 is dependent on his being known by per- 
 sonal acquaintances to be a man of truth, 
 while this personal acquaintanceship, which 
 is the ultimate foundation of all legal evi- 
 dence, is more than anything else a mat- 
 ter of intuitive perception. There is no 
 greater mistake than to suppose that legal 
 evidence is the highest order of proof ; it 
 is really an inferior kind. Not infrequently 
 in the case of a criminal trial, there is a 
 person who knows beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt the guilt or innocence of 
 an accused party. There are in certain 
 men qualities of character that preclude 
 the commission of certain crimes. Such 
 crimes for such men would be a logical 
 impossibility; they do not stand together 
 in a unity with that kind of character. 
 Reason is just as positive in its verdict on 
 
EVIDENCE. 163 
 
 this point as it is on the question whether 
 a normal human stomach could have a 
 craving for filth. This is what we call 
 internal evidence. Reason shows us the 
 relation in which spiritual facts stand to- 
 gether; it discloses to us moral and spirit- 
 ual unities, and this kind of evidence is, to 
 those who possess it, the most convincing 
 of all, for it is just as logical as any kind 
 of evidence can be. The part that reason 
 plays in it is quite as unimpeachable, and 
 the discernment of spiritual facts them- 
 selves is accomplished through the con- 
 science, wdiich is, when properly trained, 
 the most trustworthy sensibility we pos- 
 sess. 
 
 Most of us have a friend, whose name 
 is sacred to us, because with our highest 
 feelino^s we discern in him the noblest 
 qualities. If such a man should be con- 
 victed by overwhelming evidence of de- 
 grading crime, w^e should still have a per- 
 fectly rational faith in his innocence, on 
 the basis of this internal evidence. We 
 should say, logically enough, that it re- 
 quired stronger evidence than a court of 
 law could produce to overcome the inter- 
 
1 64 EVIDENCE. 
 
 nal evidence which we possessed ; yet this 
 would be comparatively unavailing in a 
 judicial trial, because of its being based 
 on our own insight. This is a thing that 
 is not transferable. It is from lack of this 
 untransferable element that legal evidence 
 is notoriously imperfect, and, therefore, hu- 
 man justice is so often lame in its conclu- 
 sions. Even a perfectly honest man would 
 dread the chances of a trial for murder, so 
 easy is it to manufacture false evidence, 
 and so difficult to bring to bear the only 
 kind of evidence that can establish certi- 
 tude, namely, internal evidence. Really, 
 the value of legal evidence does not lie in 
 its superior certainty, but in the fact that, 
 like filthy lucre, it passes with everybody, 
 and is therefore the only common stand- 
 ard between man and man. The criterion 
 for judgment between all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, most of them in a rudi- 
 mentary state of development, must be 
 something that can be appreciated by the 
 lowest. It must, therefore, necessarily be 
 winnowed from untransferable elements, 
 even though they would give the highest 
 degree of conviction. Thus the elements 
 
EVIDENCE. 165 
 
 rejected by legal evidence are often the 
 strongest of all ; they are untransferable, 
 and can be possessed only by the develop- 
 ment of perception. 
 
 Moreover, Jesus came for the express 
 purpose of putting these verities within 
 the reach of man. It was, therefore, 
 strictly logical in him not to adapt his 
 presentation of truth to the legal method, 
 or to the scientific, which is based on the 
 same principle, but to elicit the higher 
 perception. For this reason, too, the su- 
 preme evidence of Christianity must al- 
 w^ays be internal, and, in justice to Christ, 
 it is at this point that the discussion of 
 Christian evidence should begin. It is 
 unjust and unreasonable to start the dis- 
 cussion with the inquiry. Who wTote these 
 Gospels ? in what age } were they eye- 
 witnesses } All this has its place, but it 
 is the little end of the question. If, in 
 the process of centuries, we could solve 
 those points satisfactorily there would 
 still remain the fundamental question, Do 
 these Gospels present a divine character.'^ 
 As a matter of fact, this is what they do 
 present. Thousands of human souls have 
 
1 66 EVIDENCE. 
 
 been so touched by these Gospels, particu- 
 larly that of St. John, that the conscience 
 has been brought into a marvelous and 
 joyful vitality. The spiritual affections 
 have been evolved from it, and the spirit- 
 ualized soul, looking upon the New Testa- 
 ment, has then seen in Jesus Christ a life 
 so majestic, so infinitely differentiated from 
 all other lives, that it has been compelled 
 to cry out, " My Lord and my God ! " Not 
 only that, but seeing clearly that these ac- 
 counts of the sayings and doings of Jesus, 
 miracles included, stand together in a per- 
 fect rational unity, constituting one spir- 
 itual character, perceiving also that this 
 character stands together with the neces- 
 sities of the human heart and the noblest 
 type of life, that same soul has been driven 
 logically to say, " Reason compels me to 
 believe this story, miracles included, on 
 the internal • evidence. If the miracles 
 are differentiated from the ordinary hu- 
 man experience, the life of Jesus is still 
 more so. There is no other life like this, 
 either in its facts or in its spiritual effects. 
 It is the embodiment of the divine law. 
 It is a supernatural organ, for it coordi- 
 
EVIDENCE. 167 
 
 nates my soul with God ; the life and the 
 miracles stand together. On internal evi- 
 dence so overwhelming, based on such a 
 harmonious and transcendent experience 
 of life, I must in reason believe the Gos- 
 pels, unless some overvveighing internal 
 evidence can be brought against them." 
 This argument that a miracle is opposed 
 to natural law is trifling. How does any 
 one know what a natural law is ? How 
 can any man tell what are the ultimate 
 relations of matter and spirit? Is it pos- 
 sible to make an induction that shall be 
 exhaustive, till we have experienced all the 
 facts of heaven and earth? The law may 
 be, for aught I know, that matter and 
 spirit are interpenetrable. Am I to take a 
 kind of external evidence that has neither 
 sure foundation nor clear philosophy un- 
 derlying it, and accept it against an inter- 
 nal evidence, perfectly logical throughout, 
 presented to me by this joyful spiritual 
 perception to which the Gospels have 
 brought me ? A belief like this, founded 
 on evidence in which the sense of rela- 
 tions is perfectly clear, and harmonizing 
 with the development of life, surely, such 
 
1 68 EVIDENCE. 
 
 a belief should be called neither irrational 
 nor ultra-rational. It is sane ; it agrees 
 with the logic of nature, with the law of 
 social evolution, and there is just as large 
 a preponderance of reason in it as there 
 is in any belief that man exercises. 
 
 It is the weakness of most modern at- 
 tacks on the Scripture and also of the 
 " higher criticism," that it is too often ab- 
 solutely destitute of this sense of spiritual 
 values. Unable itself to perceive anything 
 in the Scriptures to excite peculiar rever- 
 ence, it cannot understand why others 
 should have such a feeling. It is almost 
 as imperceptive as were the Roman sol- 
 diers when they made sport of Jesus, nor 
 can it perceive why such an action can 
 pain any one. Oblivious of the whole 
 realm of internal evidence, it has the ut- 
 most contempt for the reason of those 
 who discern this side, and thus it comes 
 to pass that there is a long-drawn-out and 
 hopeless contest between two classes of 
 people who have no common ground. 
 The fact remains that in a very large 
 class of minds the gospel still continues 
 to elicit this sense of values, precisely as 
 
EVIDENCE. 169 
 
 Mendelssohn, or Beethoven, or Raphael 
 elicits the sense of aesthetic values. For 
 a person who has no sense of musical 
 value to accuse an enthusiastic musician 
 of unreason or disingenuousness is obvi- 
 ously absurd. Is it not equally so for a 
 man with no sense of spiritual values to 
 accuse him who has them of beinof un- 
 able to comprehend the laws of evidence ? 
 After all, the fundamental criterion in all 
 such cases is the sensibility. Divinity, 
 like beauty or majesty, is a quality, and 
 must be discerned by the feelings. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 The clearest form of personal radiation 
 is speech, but, as a matter of fact, all ex- 
 pressive action is a kind of language. 
 Jesus included his deeds with his utter- 
 ances in what he called " the gospel." In 
 the parable of the sower he grouped them 
 together under the head of a single vital 
 force, which he called " the word of the 
 kingdom." 
 
 The very choice of this term indicates 
 the correspondence of God's revelation to 
 man's. The law of man's word is the law 
 of the divine word also. What is that 
 law.? What is the starting-point of reve- 
 lation in man ? Obviously it is a man's 
 innermost self ; here it is that he finds the 
 subject-matter for revelation; here, too, 
 originates the revealing purpose. This in- 
 nermost self is also the highest in a man, 
 the latest stage in his development; it is 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. I /I 
 
 in fact what we have elsewhere called " the 
 spirit." As will be remembered, the word 
 primarily signifies " a breath," and, indeed, 
 the breath of heaven that vitalizes a man 
 and inspires him is a good symbol of this 
 highest and innermost self, invisible, subtle, 
 yet charged with mightiest forces. It be- 
 longs to the supernatural. Its field of 
 activity is the invisible; its general char- 
 acteristic is a power to discern and set be- 
 fore itself a final end; it thus elects its 
 own supreme good and shapes its life with 
 reference to it. A life thus shaped, with 
 definite reference to a final end, constitutes 
 what we call " character." In fact, the spirit 
 is the character forming part of us, and 
 possesses all the faculties essential to this 
 process : as, for instance, the conscience, by 
 which the scale of valuation is formed; 
 the moral affections, by which one enjoys 
 the supreme blessedness ; imagination, by 
 which to construct an ideal ; and moral sym- 
 pathy, or power to understand that life to 
 which it is akin. These are all essential to 
 the complete formation of the spirit, but 
 many of them are not present in the pri- 
 mal stages of spiritual development, and, 
 
1/2 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 indeed, some of them never appear at all, 
 for the spirit is really the developed char- 
 acter; its powers are essentially moral, 
 their complete development depends on 
 the question whether the will operates in 
 accordance with spiritual law. In other 
 words, the spirit is self-developing. It may 
 elect the natural end of spiritual life, and 
 so under God's creative environment reach 
 a complete stage of spiritual existence, the 
 entrance into which will be, as Jesus called 
 it, a new birth ; or it may elect a simulation 
 of the highest good (such a likeness of it, 
 for instance, as is to be found in the ma- 
 terial world, the outward image without 
 the reality). By thus choosing a false and 
 unspiritual end of life, it will develop into 
 an abortive spirit, never attaining to the 
 new birth or goal of its evolution. 
 
 A wicked spirit is one that has thus de- 
 parted from the natural pathway of spir- 
 itual development. It may be powerful, 
 but it is an abortion. On the other hand, 
 an undeveloped spirit, that has not yet 
 passed through what Jesus called the new 
 birth, is in an embryonic stage. Too often 
 the embryo is astray from the path of 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 1 73 
 
 development, and has degenerated from its 
 normal type. (This is, in fact, the case 
 generahy with regard to the human spirit. 
 This condition Jesus undertook to reheve ; 
 through him, through the environment 
 of his kingdom, and through the Pente- 
 costal radiation of his spirit, his disciples 
 advanced beyond the degenerated and 
 embryonic condition.) But this much is 
 always true of the spirit, even when it is 
 abnormal and astray : it is the transcend- 
 ent self, it gives us a supersensuous field 
 of activity and enjoyment, so that a manr 
 may, like Epictetus, retire into it and say 
 to his slave-master, " You cannot hurt me, 
 I am beyond your reach." This transcend- 
 ent and spiritual self is, in fact, the citadel 
 of the Stoics, it is the city of refuge to 
 which the ascetic flies ; he dares not leave 
 his vitalities outside of it, but drives them 
 within its gates, or slays them without its 
 walls. 
 
 In the great revelators this transcendent 
 nature has always been powerfully devel- 
 oped. They have thus stood head and 
 shoulders above the clouds, have explored 
 the realm of ideals and higher relation- 
 
174 '^^^fl''^ LAW ()/'' ///A" WON I). 
 
 sliij)s, and thus liavc liad sonicwliat to tell 
 us of that realm to which vvc arc akin. 
 But in Jesus alone do we discern the ])er- 
 fect spiritual nature ; in him we sec the 
 spirit with its crowning, ci-eativc jKJwers, a 
 perfect organ ol divinity, ahle to discern 
 the divine sj)irit, face to face, even as all 
 life feels the life to which it is akin.' Now, 
 as has been said, the spirit is the source of 
 revelation, for it is in that centre of per- 
 sonal consciousness that revelation begins. 
 Froni that |X)int the light of life is radiated. 
 To that highest type of life all matter cor- 
 responds. Yet, at hrst sight, no two exist- 
 ences appear wider apart tiian s])irit and 
 matter. Indeed, to a vast number of think- 
 ers, they have appeared not only foreign 
 but absolutely hostile to one another; yet 
 in the human life they are united, so that 
 they can be thrilled by a common grief or 
 joy. What then is the "eirenicon," the 
 coordinating force that bridges the chasm 
 between the two? i>et us take a case. 
 Demosthenes is thinking, at Athens ; his 
 
 ' Cor. XV. 45: The first ni:in Adam dcvcloijcd into a 
 livinj^ soul, the hist Achim into a lifc-^ivin<j^ spirit. ((Ircck 
 Test.) 'E76V6T0 6is can he rendered into good Juighsh only 
 by the phrase "developed into." 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 1/5 
 
 spirit is roused to excitement; it is, how- 
 ever, a purely spiritual force. But lo ! he 
 speaks, and the next moment the spiritual 
 force is transmuted into a physical. It 
 becomes a thunderous wave of sound, 
 charged with spiritual electricity, its ca- 
 dences vibrating with spiritual impulse. 
 Speech, then, is the conversion of spiritual 
 into physical force ; a word is a material- 
 ized thought. This is the miracle continu- 
 ally wrought by life. It is not confined to 
 the tongue. Every gesture, every play of 
 the feature, every act is speech, — anima- 
 tion itself is the materialization of the in- 
 tangible life. In short, this transmutation 
 of the immaterial into the material is not 
 accomplished by a single organ, but by the 
 life which animates every organ ; nay, an 
 organ is a complex thing. It is life and 
 matter conjoined; the life holding the mat- 
 ter together, resisting its natural tendencies, 
 and organizing it for vital purposes. 
 
 But the life that thus constructs, vital- 
 izes, and utilizes the organisms of the body 
 is radically different in kind from the spirit. 
 It is not only a lower centre of vitality, 
 but an altogether variant form of personal 
 
176 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 consciousness and activity. It is so closely 
 associated with matter that it is impossible 
 to draw the line between the two. In fact, 
 it is itself a kind of physical force. Dia- 
 metrically opposite to the spirit is its field 
 of activity. The home of the spirit is the 
 immaterial realm ; the home of this organic 
 vitality is, primarily, in the physical uni- 
 verse. It really is our immanent self, for 
 it dwells in matter ; at the outset its pleas- 
 ures and pains are those derived from the 
 material world. To that world it is ex- 
 quisitely sensitive. It tests the qualities 
 of the material realm ; its sensibilities are 
 emotional, they are centred in the organ- 
 isms, and are inseparable from the agita- 
 tions of the nerve ganglia. Its will is 
 dynamic, acting directly on the muscles 
 through the nervous system, and so pro- 
 ducing mechanical force. It appears, then, 
 that the human personality unites in itself, 
 under one consciousness, two distinct cen- 
 tres or foci of personal life and sensibility. 
 I say " personal," because concerning each 
 of them a man may use the word " I." 
 When the Stoic has withdrawn himself 
 by the abstracting power of will into his 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 177 
 
 own spirit, he may, like Epictetus, say to 
 his tormentor, " I am beyond your reach." 
 If he does not thus abstract himself, he 
 is sometimes obliged to cry out piteously 
 to his tormentor, "You are hurting me." 
 Sometimes the natural antagonism be- 
 tween these two centres of consciousness 
 assumes the form of a savage battle, — the 
 flesh against the spirit, the spirit against 
 the flesh ; and the consciousness of a 
 double personality becomes painfully real- 
 istic. It is the lower centre of vitality 
 which is the first to be developed. It is, 
 in fact, identical with the Psyche — Anima, 
 or Soul. The man in whom this centre 
 of vitality predominates is called, by St. 
 Paul, the psychical or animal man,^ even 
 though he may possess strong intellect- 
 ual and spiritual elements. Indeed, this 
 centre of consciousness is fairly identified 
 in the Scripture also, with the Psyche, or 
 Soul ; but it is preeminently the word- 
 self, or logos, for by it the spirit is ex- 
 pressed. It is this revealing self whose 
 
 1 I Cor. ii. 14: The psychical man receives not the 
 things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to 
 him, and he cannot know them because they demand 
 spiritual judgment. 
 
178 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 development marks what we call the ar- 
 tistic temperament. True, the creative 
 power of the artist comes from the ideal 
 and spiritual realm, but that subtlety and 
 precision of touch, together with the ex- 
 quisite fineness of sensuous perception 
 that characterizes the best artistic work, 
 come from an exceedingly sensitive animal 
 oro^anization. The artist is seldom a Stoic; 
 he cannot say to the harassing, tempting 
 world, " I am beyond your reach." To 
 him it is given rather to interpret the 
 tragedies of life, for the Psyche is not only 
 the revealing but the sympathetic or re- 
 ceptive self. It is the avenue through 
 which we know outside facts and other 
 lives. It is, therefore, in a peculiar sense 
 the organ of humanity, for though nothing 
 can be more heartless than this animal 
 personality when it is taken up with itself, 
 yet if it be employed as an organ of the 
 spiritual love it becomes a wondrous me- 
 dium of sympathetic force. 
 
 To take an instance : Jesus is being 
 nailed to the cross by the brutal soldiery. 
 As they drive the nails through his hands 
 the immanent life is thrilled with pain, but 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 179 
 
 this same immanent life had been trained 
 by him, not after the fashion of the Stoics 
 to retire within the spirit, but to become 
 the absorbed organ of a spiritual affection ; 
 it was therefore instinct with fatherhood; it 
 had become more sensitive to the pains of 
 others than to its own ; it conveyed to him 
 therefore, with vivid touches, the sunken 
 condition of the soldiery, and from his in- 
 nermost spirit there came the cry, " Father, 
 forgive them." It was surely a feeble phys- 
 ical force into which the spirit of Jesus was 
 transmuted ; the cry of an agonized man, 
 rising half distinguished in the roar of the 
 mob, but through that feeble materializa- 
 tion there radiated another kind of force 
 that we call " spiritual influence." Among 
 the energies of the world it appears weak, 
 but it is in reality supreme. Slowly but 
 surely everything gives way before it. 
 What is it? All we know is, that it is 
 the radiated spiritual life. It is undoubt- 
 edly an emanation, it has the higher ele- 
 ments of the spirit, but it carries also with 
 it the passional vehemence and the sym- 
 pathetic touch of the psychic personality. 
 The most ethereal and the most human 
 
l8o THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 elements of Christ's nature were united in 
 that cry; they hover about those words 
 spoken from the cross, an eternal magnetic 
 projection of the man's life. Not inappro- 
 priately, therefore, we often call a man's in- 
 fluence his "spirit," for his very personahty 
 is somehow present in it, — it is a projec- 
 tion of himself. Jesus called it sometimes 
 " light," sometimes " living water ; " but 
 more specifically he styled it " the Spirit " 
 and the " Holy Spirit." This, however, was 
 particularly when he wished to make clear 
 the divinity of the influence, which was 
 none the less his, because he traced it 
 back to God. This spirit that emanated 
 from Christ appeared in its after operation 
 to be detached from him, but in the case 
 of God it surely cannot be detached from 
 Him, for He is omnipresent. The Spirit 
 of God, or Holy Spirit, must therefore be 
 a third centre of divine personal conscious- 
 ness, the life of God radiated, yet not de- 
 tached. 
 
 The radiated human personality always 
 convero^es or focuses itself about the man's 
 embodiment. As that embodiment passes 
 into history, and as the man's various 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. i8l 
 
 deeds and works are grouped together so 
 
 as to form one concept with the name of 
 
 the man himself, then the radiated life 
 
 naturally focuses itself about the name; 
 
 it becomes the power of the name. As it 
 
 touches men's hearts they rally round it, 
 
 identify themselves with it, are penetrated 
 
 by it, and it thus becomes a corporate 
 
 power, organizing men into one body. 
 
 Bein^ detached from local and temporary 
 
 • • • 1 
 circumstances it takes on a flexibility that 
 
 a man's formal life cannot possess ; the 
 formal literal life of a man cannot be fol- 
 lowed in a different age and under vary- 
 ing circumstances. To attempt it would 
 be absurd, but one may follow the spirit of 
 a hero, though all one's circumstances be 
 different from his. 
 
 The principles on which he acted have 
 still their application, though a thousand 
 years have passed. His lofty devotion has 
 still its impelling force; his unflinching 
 purpose retains its moving energy. Thus 
 the spirit of a departed hero becomes an 
 eternal power to lay hold of and stir the 
 souls of men ; our hope is in yielding to 
 such impulses, not rashly but thoughtfully; 
 
1 82 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 working out their application, and thus 
 permitting them to carry us to a rational 
 and practical goal. It may be said, in gen- 
 eral, that the higher impulses to life come 
 from spiritual sources. They are impulses 
 given by radiated lives ; their force is as 
 invisible as the ether, and as incalculable. 
 Now, the success of any great revelator 
 must depend on his power to generate 
 this kind of post-mortem vitality, and the 
 power to generate it depends not only on 
 the magnitude of both spirit and Psyche, 
 but on the strict subordination of the 
 Psyche to the spirit. True, one may not 
 think this out in philosophic terms, but he 
 cannot fail to distinguish in some loose 
 and general way the function of the psy- 
 chic nature, and its relation both to his 
 higher self and to his influence. This is, 
 in fact, the so-called law of sacrifice, which 
 Jesus illustrated in so many ways. It is 
 the bearing of the cross, the losing of the 
 life. Indeed, a powerful personality, setting 
 itself to the highest spiritual ends, cannot 
 escape these facts. The violent struggle 
 between these two different centres of 
 vitality must disclose their existence and 
 relationship. 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 1 83 
 
 In Jesus, it is evident that the psychic 
 element was mightily developed, and pas- 
 sional, though pure. The struggle by 
 which he obtained the mastery and sub- 
 dued the flesh to his high purpose was 
 awful. The disciples who witnessed it 
 were appalled. They tell us that his sweat 
 was, as it were, drops of blood. He, above 
 all men, sought to leave behind him, for the 
 help of humanity, a name and the power 
 of a name. He knew that his earthly ex- 
 istence must end in obloquy ; it was the 
 necessary result of that great revelatory 
 law to which he adhered so unflinchingly ; 
 therefore his hopes were wholly posthu- 
 mous. It was this projected personality 
 through which he expected to save man- 
 kind. It was the Father's spirit, radiated 
 throuQ-h his death even more than throuo^h 
 his life, which would organize men into a 
 new kingdom. This was his legacy, the 
 Testament in his blood, w^hich he trusted 
 the Father would take care of as the prop- 
 erty of the race, and utilize as a factor in 
 his divine government, — nay, rather as the 
 central orgaiiism of that government, " the 
 sceptre of David." Now it was impossible 
 
1 84 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 that SO great a soul, so clear a mind, should 
 not have searched to the very depth of 
 those relationships on which the law of 
 revelation depends, for it was his maxim 
 to count all the costs. Spiritually his con- 
 sciousness brought him face to face with 
 God. In that clear vision all spiritual 
 principles must have stood forth. 
 
 We must remember that Jesus was 
 severely critical, penetrating and sifting the 
 religious ideas of his age, rejecting vehe- 
 mently some of those most firmly estab- 
 lished, accepting others where one would 
 least have expected it. He was also power- 
 fully constructive, building upon ultimate 
 causation, bringing disclosures out of the 
 heart of nature and of God. From boyhood, 
 too, he had been characterized by his in- 
 tense application to the original Scriptures. 
 What, then, did nature and the Scriptures 
 report to him ? Evidently this fundamental 
 truth, that man was the image of God. 
 In fact, man's correspondence to God was, 
 as has been seen, the basis of his moral 
 system. But in the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis, which bears every appearance of being 
 a vision, spiritual processes being there 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 1 85 
 
 described under visual terms, he read the 
 story of what we call spontaneous genera- 
 tion ; how God said, " Let the earth bring 
 forth, and it brought forth." This is human 
 terminology ; it carries the correspondence 
 between God and man into the field of 
 creation. We know what man's speech is. 
 It is a miracle, a creative power, transmut- 
 ing spiritual into material force. What, 
 then, is the creative speech of God that 
 coordinated his transcendent spirit with 
 the forces of material development } What 
 was this word of God that not only created 
 or developed and animated, but revealed } 
 What was this spirit of God that moved 
 upon the face of the waters 1 Why should 
 such language be used, if not to show that 
 the operation of God's word and spirit cor- 
 responded to that of man's .^ Such surely 
 would be the inquiry of so vast and origi- 
 nal and naturalistic a mind. 
 
 Furthermore, the Old Testament was 
 flooded with this idea. It was this word 
 of the Lord that caused nature to put 
 forth her powers continually; it upheld 
 the heavens ; it caused the hinds to calve ; 
 it came to a man at the sound of a harp, — 
 
1 86 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 threw him into trances and ecstasies. It 
 wrought strange powers that exhibited its 
 indwelling capacity and unison with mat- 
 ter. This it was that thrilled the armies 
 of Israel ; that strung the nerves of Sam- 
 son, and drew forth the passional worship 
 of David ; that broke out in superhuman 
 pathos for the sufferings of Israel, — this 
 divine centre of superhuman feeling ; this 
 throbbing heart of God, vibrating with 
 sympathy for the sensuous world, pitiful 
 toward the orphan and the widow, caring 
 even for the dumb beast and the birds of 
 the air, and hearing the young ravens when 
 they cry. How manifest it is in the Old 
 Testament, — this psychic disclosure of 
 God; this divine nature, clearly not the 
 highest, not the transcendent spirit by 
 which he inhabited eternity, but that 
 which said, "When thou walkest through 
 the waters I will be with thee, and when 
 thou passest through the fire thou shalt 
 not be burned ; " this immanent life of 
 God. It had, indeed, disappeared from 
 theology before the time of Jesus. 
 
 To the Scribes and Pharisees God had 
 become the transcendent one, the absentee 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 187 
 
 Lord, the anti-natural deity, resident far 
 above the clouds ; but, with the coming of 
 Jesus, God became once more immanent. 
 Again he was the life of nature ; again his 
 word animated and controlled it. " The 
 living Father hath life'' — meaning phys- 
 ical life — was the testimony of Jesus, and 
 to it nature bore solemn witness at the 
 grave of Lazarus. " He dwelleth in me," 
 said Jesus. " He hath given to the Son 
 to have life in himself." All through the 
 pages of the New Testament we see that 
 Jesus made the impression upon the dis- 
 ciples that he was the man of the word, and 
 that the word was God's almighty physical 
 force. If he did not really work miracles, 
 he certainly made the impression of doing 
 so. Matthew, Mark, and Luke carry us 
 into an exceptional realm of experience ; so 
 exceptional is it that it is argued to be 
 false. But what if Jesus was, as his very 
 claim and intellectual position implied, a 
 complete organ of The Word ; what if 
 God's word be, like man's word, psychic, — 
 then the whole meaning of things becomes 
 clear. Well might God disclose himself 
 in Galilee as never before or since, because 
 
1 88 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 in Galilee developed the preeminent man 
 of the word, whose soul rested upon God's 
 soul, whose exceptional physical life was 
 given up to the radiation of God's spirit 
 and to the humanization of God's name. 
 
 Organs always cause stupendous excep- 
 tions in nature ; they create all the differ- 
 ence between the desert and the garden. 
 When a new organ comes, then come new 
 manifestations of force, and they are con- 
 fined to the radius of the organ. As we 
 read the gospels we are awestruck at the 
 decisive manner in which this last fact ap- 
 pears. Where Christ, the organ, was re- 
 ceived, there loomed up the supernatural 
 glories of the word. Outside that radius 
 there lay no supernatural help. In fact, 
 Jesus made himself, as no other being ever 
 did, both the interpreter and the vehicle of 
 God's physical life ; yet all this disclosure 
 of God's immanent and psychic force he 
 sternly subordinated to the revelation of 
 God's spirit. It is the Father's spiritual 
 traits more than the psychic that charac- 
 terize Him. God has a soul, but He is a 
 spirit, even as He has wrath, but He is 
 love. Those only know a person who 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 1 89 
 
 know His supreme characteristic. Those 
 only worship God who find Him in his 
 transcendent Ufe. That is the source of 
 his Fatherhood; thence radiates his infi- 
 nite spiritual affection, his unselfish pur- 
 pose, his divine humility (which ever hides 
 his power), and his great creative ideal for 
 his children. Here, too, is to be found 
 the key to all his acts. " God is a spirit," 
 said Jesus, "and they that worship Him 
 must worship Him in spirit and in truth." 
 Only the genuine adoration that comes 
 from spiritual perception is worship, in 
 truth. 
 
 It is impossible truly to know, or wholly 
 to give one's self up to Him, till a man's own 
 spirit is sufficiently developed to discern 
 this transcendent Fatherhood. But even 
 as the babe in its mother's arms catches 
 the mother's spirit through the mother life 
 that holds and cares for it, so must men 
 learn to feel the transcendent love of God 
 through the sympathizing and encircling 
 soul of God ; and as man's spiritual percep- 
 tion can only be developed through moral 
 activity, he must begin by following the 
 Holy Spirit or radiated life of God, as it 
 
1 90 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 comes through some great embodiment of 
 Him, and as it is focahzed about the name 
 of God's great reproduction of Himself, — 
 the Son of the Father. This had been 
 the principle of spiritual progress ; it had 
 been an invisible law, working more and 
 more to the surface in the history of Israel. 
 The failure of a Jewish leader like Nico- 
 demus to recognize it as a plain earthly 
 experience had surprised Jesus. It seemed 
 difficult for him to teach a man with such 
 dull spiritual perception, regarding those 
 more transcendent spiritual realities. If 
 he did not feel the psychic relationship, 
 how^ could he feel the spiritual ? " If you 
 believe not the earthly things relating to 
 God, how can you believe if I tell you of 
 the heavenly things 1 " 
 
 Naturally it was a great concern of Jesus 
 that men should see this correspondence. 
 This alone can bring God near to us. The 
 proof of God's existence, united to the 
 description of his character, may indeed 
 awaken our conscience and dominate our 
 conduct, but such an external and legal 
 pressure must always be weak, because it 
 does not appeal' to the flesh or immanent 
 
THE LAW OF THE WORD. 19I 
 
 life. The exuberant passional psychic 
 vitality will remain inwardly and fiercely re- 
 bellious. It is with the psychic or natural 
 man as with the child. The child frets at 
 the father's will, because it cannot see the 
 value of so transcendent a good. It feels 
 only the antagonism of the father's ideal 
 to its own animal desires. It is won over 
 to an obedient trust only when it sees the 
 father's will thrown into the stronor lig-ht 
 of the father's psychic affection ; then it 
 feels that the will must be love : so, in order 
 to reconcile us to the will of God, Jesus 
 sought to manifest Him in the flesh or im- 
 manent life. Thus doing, he disclosed to 
 us how completely God's nature touches 
 ours at all points. As in the parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, he threw the warm sunshine 
 of God's psychic relationship upon his 
 moral relationship to us, and so gave 
 God's spiritual call the vibrant passional 
 note of God's natural fatherhood. More- 
 over, knowing that spiritual truth is ap- 
 prehended through spiritual development 
 and moral activity, he sought to put us at 
 once on the track of possession by iden- 
 tifying every potency of faith with those 
 
192 THE LAW OF THE WORD. 
 
 divine points of correspondence. He not 
 only directed his disciples to identify men 
 with himself personally and by name, but 
 in the beautiful symbol of purification 
 called baptism, they were to identify men, 
 also, with the Father and with the Holy 
 Ghost, or with the radiated life of God, 
 which centres about the name of the Son. 
 Baptism is a symbol both of purification 
 and of identification, and if this baptism of 
 Jesus be followed up by action in any de- 
 gree corresponding to the symbol, it does 
 unquestionably result in a baptismal regen- 
 eration, a joyous culminating experience 
 of God's transcendent Fatherhood, of God's 
 immanent and sympathetic life, and of his 
 Holy Spirit recreating our own souls, and 
 lifting them heavenward by mightiest influ- 
 ences. Thus we see that, to the mind of 
 Jesus, the Revelation of God was the pro- 
 gressive matrix of the soul, or life in its 
 development toward moral and spiritual 
 reciprocity with God. Detached from that 
 matrix, there could be to the soul no true 
 moral vitality. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 If we put the teachings and acts of 
 Jesus together, his idea of a revelation 
 becomes clear. Any material fact was to 
 him a revelation, provided it was coordi- 
 nated with spiritual life, for it then became 
 a medium for radiating and suggesting the 
 spirit. Thus, the little child whom he took 
 in his arms, and the bread he blessed, be- 
 came revelations. 
 
 Indeed, to the mind of Jesus the whole 
 universe was constructed on a revelatory 
 principle ; its development was a revelation. 
 " There is nothing hidden," he taught, 
 "that shall not be revealed." The sim- 
 plest things in nature corresponded to the 
 ^vord, — became its analogies, types, and 
 prophecies. So, too, the smallest things 
 were significant of God's character. All 
 that was needed was spiritual perception. 
 He himself saw God s tender care in the 
 
194 REVELATION. 
 
 clothino: of the lilies and in the feedino: 
 of the birds. He saw God's presence and 
 grace in those atmospheric coordinations 
 that bring rain and sunshine upon the evil 
 and the good ; while in the events of his 
 own life, such as his enforced departure 
 from his ancestral home, his peasant's lot, 
 his despised Galilean breeding, his rejec- 
 tion and crucifixion, he saw again the dis- 
 tinct utterance and coherent development 
 of the word. Every feature of his life, 
 even the anointing of his feet by a woman 
 whose presence was considered vile, was a 
 gospel of God. He offered no evidence 
 of this, but he trained his disciples to see 
 it; and the final illumination of their souls, 
 transforming them into prophets and poets, 
 certainly proved the value of his method 
 and the soundness of his view. 
 
 It is actually after this fashion that men 
 do ever obtain the realization of God. 
 Nature, doubtless, contains the elements 
 of proof, and to a complete perception 
 things stand together in that rational 
 unity which is itself the best proof of the 
 soundness of our vision. Indeed, the best 
 proof is always the normal increase and 
 
REVELATION. 195 
 
 widenins: out of the vision itself, and this 
 is a revelatory process. To this nature is 
 adapted; for we find her ever deepening 
 and widening, ever becoming more spirit- 
 ual and more rational to the view of the 
 disciplined soul. To the eye of Christ, no 
 fact failed to be significant of God. How- 
 ever the fact originated, in whatever line 
 of causation the movement began, it had 
 an ultimate coordination with God that 
 made it revelatory. "Are not five spar- 
 rows sold for two farthings .? Yet not one 
 of them can fall to the ground without 
 your Father." Jesus nowhere claimed that 
 nature proved God, in our present stage 
 of development. Neither was nature iden- 
 tical with God, but its facts were so corre- 
 spondent to Him and so coordinated with 
 Him as to suggest Him, psychically, ratio- 
 nally, and spiritually. The dome of St. 
 Peter's expresses the soul of Michael An- 
 gelo ; so does the dome of the sky express 
 the soul of its Creator. "The heavens 
 declare the glory of God." It is an ut- 
 terance rather than an argument ; " their 
 harp string (by its vibrant note) has 
 gone out through all the earth," says the 
 
1 96 RE VELA TION. 
 
 Psalmist. The invisible things of Him 
 are plainly seen, says St. Paul, being per- 
 ceived by the things that are made. Not 
 only so, but, as was said a moment ago, 
 the movement is toward larger, completer 
 coordination, toward the more perfect 
 mediumship and spiritualization of matter. 
 Nor is this movement confined to the 
 visible agencies about us; it takes in the 
 whole universe of the Logos. This ex- 
 plains what otherwise appears inexplica- 
 ble. When Jesus was asked on oath, by 
 the High Priest, if he were the Christ, he 
 replied that he was, and he added, " Here- 
 after thou shalt see the Son of man sitting 
 in the right hand of power and coming 
 in the clouds of heaven." At first glance 
 these words seem to indicate a startling 
 departure from the ordinary sane and prac- 
 tical naturalism of Jesus. Besides, there 
 is an apparent absurdity in the very state- 
 ment. He clings to his term. Son of man, 
 which stands for his entirely naturalistic 
 view of the messiahship, and yet couples 
 it with the most anti-natural kind of su- 
 pernaturalism. But a careful study of his 
 previously uttered words to his disciples 
 
REVELATION. 1 9/ 
 
 shows that this coming of the Son of man 
 in the clouds of heaven was to his mind a 
 perfectly natural development ; in fact, it 
 stood together with his being the Son of 
 man, or, in other words, the final type and 
 stem of humanity. 
 
 There is in the kingdom of nature 
 such a coordination of different systems 
 that they all meet in certain climacterics. 
 When the ground is soft and ready for the 
 seed, then from the upper world of the 
 tree-top there drops an acorn. When in 
 the springtime the buds are properly de- 
 veloped for it, there comes up from the 
 distant south a warm wave of air, and in a 
 few hours nature is transformed. In the 
 harvest time, when the grain has silently 
 and imperceptibly reached its organic com- 
 pletion, out from that higher realm of man- 
 hood come the reapers, and in a day the 
 field is harvested. Thus do the different 
 worlds and systems move together in un- 
 seen correlation, while in organic crises 
 their coordination is developed with over- 
 whelming power. This is the gist of many 
 of Christ's parables concerning the God- 
 realm. Nature imperceptibly moves with 
 
198 REVELATION. 
 
 the organisms of the spiritual kingdom, 
 he taught, until the natural shall become 
 supernaturalized, and nature shall break 
 forth in one vast theophany. The sud- 
 denness of this final coordination he often 
 dwelt upon. " Behold," said he, " the fig- 
 tree and all the trees, when they now 
 shoot forth, ye see it and know of your 
 own selves that the summer is nigh." So 
 Jesus declared it was to be with the God- 
 realm ; it, too, was to have its grand cli- 
 macteric, its sudden issuance into summer 
 tide, its quick precipitation of supernatu- 
 ral powers and glories, its sudden reckon- 
 ins: with unseen environment. Sudden, 
 too, and unforeseen, save by those who 
 walk in the light of the revelatory process, 
 was to be the clothing of humanity's stem 
 with the majesty of God. But for him 
 who understands spiritual law and who 
 reads the daily prophecy of the unfold- 
 ing organs, there is a perfect genetic con- 
 tinuity, an unbroken chain of causation, 
 such as underlies all of nature's surprises. 
 
 It is but natural that when the earth is 
 ripe, heaven should descend upon her. It 
 is but natural that the manifestation of the 
 
REVELATION. 1 99 
 
 Logos should suddenly take on the divine 
 majesty and appear to be, what it really is 
 in the grander sense, a coming down out 
 of heaven, a descent from the highest field 
 of causation. The first manifestation was 
 a supernatural embryo, the babe Christ 
 Jesus ; the second must naturally be a 
 spiritualized human form, the Son of man 
 coming in the glory of the Father with 
 the messengers of the word. Natural, also, 
 is it that he shall usher in judgment, for it 
 will be the great crisis both of evolution 
 and of revelation. The cosmos is continu- 
 ally experiencing crises; these occur either 
 at the birth or maturity of any organ, 
 wherever there is a new, grand coordina- 
 tion to be made, as when the stem rises 
 above ground, or the corn is ready for the 
 sickle ; there is a crisis and a revelation ; 
 that which is fitted for the new coordina- 
 tion then goes forward into a larger life ; 
 that which is not prepared is cast away. 
 So, when at last this present cosmos, this 
 system of life and death and decay, is ripe 
 for the last great coordination with God, it 
 it is but natural that there should be a 
 World-Vision of the kingdom when Christ, 
 
200 REVELATION. 
 
 the stem, shall appear to all men ; when the 
 glory of the Father, which has been hid 
 within him, shall break forth ; when he, 
 who is the natural organ of unity between 
 heaven and earth shall stand visibly be- 
 tween the two. Coordination is never on 
 one side alone ; if earth has been prepar- 
 ing for heaven, so, too, has heaven for 
 earth. It is but natural, therefore, that 
 w^ien earth's harvest is ripe, that Determi- 
 native Personality, which is back of all 
 law, and all force, and all judgments, and 
 all crises, and all revelations, should then 
 appear, shining through nature like the 
 sun in his strength, and above all glorify- 
 ing him who is the Type of manhood and 
 the Likeness of Deity. Nor shall Nature 
 herself, transmissive though she be, find 
 herself able to bear so great a glory. Nay, 
 but there shall be " a great white throne, 
 and one sitting on it, from whose face the 
 earth and the heaven flee away." For 
 evolution means not only consummation 
 upward, but also the manifestation of that 
 which is within, aye, and the descent also 
 of the highest into the lowest; it means, 
 moreover, a sudden final coordination, and 
 
REVELATION, 201 
 
 the disclosure and separation of all that is 
 unfit to survive, and the manifestation of 
 all causes and the secrets of all hearts, 
 and the setting of all things in the light 
 of life, which is the light of God. Thus, 
 nature is not only in its structure and cor- 
 respondence, but in its developments and 
 issues, revelatory and prophetic, for the 
 material corresponds to the psychic and 
 the psychic to the spiritual, and the lower 
 development of the organ is a prophecy of 
 the higher development. 
 
 This, probably, was what Lord Bacon 
 saw, when he declared that "prophecy 
 had a springing and germinant fulfillment 
 throughout all time," and this undoubtedly 
 is the key to all sound prophetic inter- 
 pretation, particularly of Christ's eschato- 
 logical teachings. He is suddenly asked 
 by his disciples when Jerusalem will be 
 destroyed, and what shall be the sign of 
 his coming and of the end of the world. 
 It was a question concerning a fact of 
 infinite complexity. His answer shows 
 clearly a purpose not to convey to them, 
 even if he knew it, the day or hour of 
 the final climacteric, but to plant in their 
 
202 RE VELA TION. 
 
 minds the seeds of a larger idea, namely, 
 how this process of spiritual evolution, 
 revelation, and judgment, with himself as 
 its stem, must repeat itself in every age 
 and in every life, as well as in the larger 
 cycle of the cosmos. So while he declares 
 that " the times of the nations must first 
 be fulfilled," thus clearly pointing out a 
 vast diameter, he likewise adds, " iJiis gen- 
 eration shall not pass till all these things 
 be fulfilled," so indicating the narrower 
 cycle of fulfillment with its diameter of a 
 single human life, and its practical lesson, 
 " Be ye also ready." Both cycles are un- 
 questionably a fact ; both assertions are 
 true, though apparently contradictory, for 
 each organism corresponds in development 
 to the cosmic organism. 
 
 But while the universe is revelatory both 
 as a whole and in its parts, it does not fol- 
 low that any man, simply because he has a 
 keen intellect, may pick out any section of 
 it, and expect to find there a satisfactory 
 revelation of God. As has been already 
 seen, revelation is a complex thing; exter- 
 nal facts have many correspondences. The 
 question of what a thing reveals depends on 
 
REVELATION. 203 
 
 what it is actually coordinated with at the 
 time, and also on the perceptive develop- 
 ment. The short-siohted vision of Peter 
 
 o 
 
 coordinated the cross with evil only, and 
 shrank from it, Christ's vision traversed 
 the great arc of God's providence, and saw 
 in the cross His glory. 
 
 It is ih^/ifzal fact with which things are 
 coordinated to our vision, that determines 
 our revelation. It is this that empties the 
 cosmos of God, or fills it with a divine 
 radiance. It is so in our secular revelations. 
 The laborer plods stolidly along after the 
 plow; the warm earth opens up lovingly 
 at his feet; the bluebird's note of praise 
 falls on his ear; the breath of spring ca- 
 resses him ; all about him are revelations of 
 nature's life, its gladsomeness, its hope, its 
 benediction, but none of these revelations 
 move him, for all these things are seen in 
 the light of one sordid fact, the necessity 
 of work. We are all much like that; in 
 our dullness we fail to catch our revela- 
 tions; in our sordidness we coordinate 
 them with some uncomfortable, dark, or 
 evil embodiment of life, and thus they are 
 distorted or obscured. Did not God bring 
 
204 RE VELA TION. 
 
 into the world those poetic souls, who are 
 not only the interpreters of nature, but 
 the crowning embodiments of her sensitive 
 life, and thus put us in touch with life, 
 we should miss its nobler language alto- 
 gether. Such souls, taken in unison with 
 their life history, are the stems of the rev- 
 elatory process, and it is in proportion as 
 facts stand together with them, that the 
 facts themselves become revelatory. In- 
 deed, such men are themselves revelations 
 par eminence ; they are the final and de- 
 finitive factor in the process, just as the 
 object glass is with the telescope ; and as 
 we study the teachings of Jesus, we see 
 that this was precisely his view of a divine 
 revelation. Revelatory as nature was to 
 him, earnestly as he taught his disciples 
 to listen to its teachings, clearly as he 
 traced the .utterance of the word in daily 
 events, it is perfectly evident that he 
 always conceived of nature as standing 
 over against the fact of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures; he never thought of interpreting 
 one without the aid of the other. Both 
 belonged to God, but the Scriptures were 
 the stem and norm of all revelations, the 
 
REVELATION. 205 
 
 specific embodiment of the divine spirit, 
 the revelation par eminence, the final au- 
 thority and type, with which all things were 
 to be coordinated. To them he gave the 
 most diligent study. They were his law 
 of holiness, his support in temptation, his 
 resource in agony. Obviously, too, he re- 
 garded himself as their outcome. He him- 
 self, with his gospel — that is, the facts of 
 his life — was to constitute the crowning 
 organism of revelation. The facts of the 
 universe were revelations to men in pro- 
 portion as they were coordinated with him. 
 " No man knoweth the Father save the 
 Son and He to whom the Son willeth to 
 reveal him." This saying evidently made 
 a deep impression. It is given both by 
 Matthew and Luke, and must have formed 
 a part of the earliest gospel. 
 
 And it is matter of fact that all the 
 events of the gospel are luminous and sug- 
 gestive of God, because of their coordina- 
 tion with the person of Jesus. Wrested 
 from that coordination and associated 
 with some evil object, those same facts be- 
 come as dark and malignant as they did to 
 the Pharisees. This surely corroborates 
 
206 RE VELA TION. 
 
 Christ's point, that revelation had its stem 
 or interpretative organism, namely, first, 
 the Law and the Prophets which were until 
 John, and then the Christ, and that the 
 revelatoriness of nature to us depends on 
 its being coordinated with this interpre- 
 tative organism. I have already said that 
 this is true in secular things. Indeed, this 
 fact of a central organism or stem in which 
 the revelatory life is specialized both for 
 an interpretative and a reproductive pur- 
 pose extends into every department of the 
 world's development. The universe cer- 
 tainly reveals beauty at every point, but 
 there is everywhere the possibility of dis- 
 tortion through incongruous coordination, 
 and we should never have been sufficiently 
 rescued from such effects, or quickened 
 into ^esthetic vitality, if it had not been for 
 such a specific organism of the beautiful as 
 has been furnished us by the Greek race 
 and by Greek skies. So, too, although 
 common human nature unquestionably 
 contains the elements both of law and civil 
 liberty, yet this general revelation would 
 not have been sufficient to reveal the idea 
 of free crovernment, had it not been for 
 
RE VELA TION. 20/ 
 
 such a series of selected and specially vital- 
 ized types as has been furnished to the 
 race by the history of the Anglo-Saxon 
 people. 
 
 We can therefore understand the signi- 
 ficance of Christ's saying to the Samaritan 
 woman, " You worship, you know not what. 
 We know what we worship, for salvation 
 is of the Jews." The Samaritans had only 
 the Pentateuch, and even this, cut off from 
 the organism to which it belonged, was 
 coordinated with a nucleus of half idola- 
 trous institutions that destroyed whatever 
 of clearness there was in it. Salvation was 
 of the Jews, because our development in 
 correspondence to God depends on our 
 revelation of Him, and our revelation of 
 Him depends on our being able to coor- 
 dinate our vision with that which is the 
 crowning organism of revelation. For this 
 crowning organism must of course be not 
 only interpretative, but creative of spiritual 
 vision. It is not only the organism of light, 
 but of life, since perception is a form of 
 vitality. To come then to the Old Tes- 
 tament, we have by this position cleared 
 away many of its difficulties. We have 
 
208 REVELATION. 
 
 found that it is not an anti-natural or ideal 
 communication sent down from heaven. 
 It is a part of nature, a section of nature's 
 history, a series of types, persons, events 
 selected from nature, and segregated into 
 a specific organism by a process gradual 
 and perfectly natural, yet at the same time 
 supernatural. We have learned that its 
 purpose is not to give us extra -natural 
 facts, but to interpret natural facts, — that 
 one great object is to illustrate the law 
 by which man, the child of God, the super- 
 natural embryo, develops in correspond- 
 ence to God ; but particularly we have 
 learned that its purpose as regards God is 
 to present Him, not in an infinite and 
 transcendent apartness from nature, but in 
 his relationship to it, and particularly in 
 those limitations to w^hich he is subjected 
 by his living with his children in the same 
 house. Thus the Law and the Prophets 
 are really the law of the cosmos, as it 
 is upbuilt by spiritual coordination with 
 God. 
 
 The criticism, therefore, so constantly 
 bestowed upon the Bible for the evils it 
 reveals, must fall to the ground, or at least 
 
REVELATION. 209 
 
 it must give way to the question whether 
 they are not the very things we are to 
 expect, seeing it is not an ideal revelation 
 of a perfect society, or of any complete 
 statutes of a heavenly realm, but the dis- 
 closure of the process by which evil and 
 falsehood and sin are overcome by gradual 
 coordination with the divine word. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE SPECIFIC ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 A GENERAL glance at the Old Testament 
 confirms Christ's view, for it shows us 
 that it is a genuine section of human his- 
 tory, following the ordinary laws of human 
 development from the tribal period to the 
 national, and from a climax of monarchical 
 splendor, through various stages of decay, 
 toward a new climax of spiritual vitality 
 and glory. 
 
 The organism begins with an event 
 common in history. Out from the midst 
 of a great empire, in which literature, civil- 
 ization, and religion have reached a high 
 pitch, there come various Semitic migra- 
 tions ; one of these is the Hebrew. It 
 enters Palestine, bringing with it, like the 
 soil about the roots of a transplanted tree, 
 some of the life, literature, traditions, and 
 even the household gods of the old coun- 
 try from which it came. Yet the move- 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 211 
 
 ment has in it a distinctive and separative 
 aim, imparted to it by the determined 
 spirit of Abraham, its leader ; it is a protest 
 against the spiritual tyrannies and distor- 
 tions of the day. It is more than that ; it is 
 a positive and vivid faith in the Almighty 
 as a sovereign and friend. The distinct 
 idea of a Transcendent God stamped upon 
 Abraham's mind, borne in upon it from the 
 starry universe to which he lifts up his eyes, 
 is the organic force of Hebraism. Admit- 
 ting large reciprocity with other peoples, 
 it nevertheless lays inevitable bounds to 
 such reciprocity. Like every great organic 
 force, it tends to segregate into a fixed type. 
 This it accomplishes by reproducing from 
 time to time a s^reat stem man, in whom 
 this idea of the living Creator and Saviour 
 is supreme. Thus, when the tribe, like 
 any other small migration of that day, is 
 obliged to fly for refuge from famine to the 
 great empire of Egypt, and there natu- 
 rally falls into bondage, there rises the 
 preeminent stem of the organism, Moses, 
 possessed of an Egyptian education, but 
 intensely imbued with the Abrahamic idea 
 of God. With Moses as its stem and head, 
 
212 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 the creator of its literature and institutions, 
 the Hebrew people are formed into a nation. 
 Returning to Canaan, they carry with them 
 many of the Egyptian ideas, much of its 
 culture, and, it would appear, some of its 
 institutions and ceremonies ; but these are 
 so winnowed and sanctified by the master- 
 ful spirituality of Moses that they may be 
 said to be born anew, and to be fairly in- 
 corporated into the Hebrew type. 
 
 That is the human side of it ; it is the 
 coordination that strikes one as divine ; but 
 this coordination occurs in ordinary human 
 affairs. An old optician is at work, repair- 
 ing spectacles. His little grandchild is 
 amusing herself by picking up the lenses, 
 lying loose upon the table, and looking 
 through them. She finds a curious effect 
 from putting one in front of the other, and 
 suddenly exclaims, " I can see the figures 
 on the town clock yonder." That was the 
 discovery of the telescope. Can any man 
 who believes in God say that this coor- 
 dination, upon which the whole structure 
 of modern astronomy has risen, was made 
 by those childish hands alone ? Shall we 
 not rather say that those hands were un- 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 213 
 
 consciously directed by the same power 
 that leads the planets in their courses, and 
 the lonely waterfowl through the wide sky ? 
 Unquestionably Moses believed that his 
 hands were directed, and his thoughts sug- 
 gested, by the living God, so tliat the frame- 
 work of government which he established, 
 notwithstanding its secular and Egyptian 
 elements, was in its combination the law 
 and revelation of Jehovah ; and in fact it 
 is characteristic of the Hebrew organism 
 that the process is quite as natural as 
 divine. We recognize it as the same cos- 
 mos with which we are familiar, but the 
 coordinations are so salient, and the crown- 
 ing facts so suggestive of God, that the 
 whole thing appears to be transfigured into 
 a supernatural history. This appears more 
 fully if we consider its three great features, 
 namely. Legality, Ceremonialism, and Mira- 
 cles. First, its Legality : there was in the 
 Mosaic plan of government neither reli- 
 gious nor secular liberty, no free play of 
 moral or industrial forces. It was a hard 
 and fast union of church and state. No 
 man could choose his own object or form 
 of worship. Neither could he initiate his 
 
214 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 own generic mode of spiritual thought. 
 That was already formed for him. 
 
 Every spiritual idea, relationship, or ne- 
 cessity, every coordination between the 
 natural and supernatural, was expressed by 
 an external law, and with the law was asso- 
 ciated judgment and penal t}^ This was 
 not due to any arbitrariness; it was the 
 only way these ideas could be expressed at 
 the outset, for the eye of man was as yet 
 rudimentary ; it could only perceive spirit- 
 ual things in their external aspects, nor 
 did it penetrate far into the form. The 
 only environment, therefore, that could 
 develop spiritual vision was a vast series 
 of types. Through them the spiritual real- 
 ity was dimly but increasingly transmitted. 
 Thus the idea of divine power could only 
 be disclosed under the symbol of physical 
 force ; spiritual authority must needs ap- 
 pear in the form of a Visible Head ; God's 
 sovereignty, as an absolute monarchy ; spir- 
 itual law, as earthly statute. Again, the 
 effect of obedience to spiritual law must 
 be manifested under the type of earthly 
 rewards, while those retroactive effects and 
 malcreations that result from disobedience 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 21$ 
 
 to spiritual law, or indeed to organic law 
 of any kind, must be represented by earthly 
 penalties and curses. Furthermore, that 
 living reciprocity between God and men, 
 which is the foundation of Righteousness, 
 must be conveyed by a house of God, in 
 which God manifested himself formally, to 
 which, also, men brought offerings, and 
 from which they took away blessings. In- 
 deed, the coordination of earthly with hea- 
 venly things must be shown throughout 
 by a series of statutes and observances that 
 connected every human interest with the 
 temple. Not a child could be born, not a 
 field cultivated, not a herd raised, not 
 a disease incurred nor a recovery expe- 
 rienced, not a war undertaken, but its 
 relation to the spiritual world must be 
 expressed in some solemn rite, associating 
 it with the house of God and the gate of 
 heaven. 
 
 Thus the organic unity between God 
 and man, between the spiritual and the 
 secular worlds, necessarily assumed the 
 form of a mechanical theocracy. In no 
 other way could the conception of spirit- 
 ual unity have been presented or enforced. 
 
2l6 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 To our modern view, the whole theocratic 
 notion is wrong and absurd ; the use of 
 temporal power in the spiritual realm is 
 to us the worst of all tyrannies ; insistence 
 on a single type of religion is bigotry ; the 
 punishment of non-conformity is wicked 
 persecution. All this is quite true at the 
 present day, because the spiritual organs 
 are in a very different stage of develop- 
 ment. To force any mature organ into an 
 environment adapted to infancy would be 
 cruel indeed, but at the time the Hebrew 
 revelation began, the method was adapted 
 to the organ, for the organ was infantile. 
 It was impossible to construct an inter- 
 pretative environment in any other way. 
 All the great religions were theocracies ; 
 ALL spiritual conceptions were formal; all 
 unities were external ; all notions of law 
 legal. There is no greater distinction be- 
 tween the ancient world and our own than 
 in this conception of law. Under the in- 
 fluence of Christianity and education, law, 
 whether moral, religious, social, or indus- 
 trial, has grown to appear what it really is, 
 not an artificial decree, but the order of 
 nature ; law is natural law, it is the law of 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 21/ 
 
 our own organism ; obedience brings a 
 reward, because it harmonizes with the 
 structure of things. For the same reason, 
 disobedience involves perpetual misery. 
 As St. Paul said, to the spiritualized and 
 educated man no legal enactment is nec- 
 essary, the law is written in his heart, he 
 understands the principles and necessities 
 of the spiritual organism, and may be 
 trusted to apply them as he sees fit. If 
 legal statutes exist in an enlightened spir- 
 itual community, they are reduced to the 
 minimum necessary as an education to the 
 weak and a restraint to those who are still 
 gross and uneducated. But they have no 
 place in the completed kingdom of God, 
 the perfect human society. On the other 
 hand, in ancient times the masses of the 
 people had not the faintest conception of 
 law as natural ; they had no perception of 
 the organism, national or spiritual, simply 
 because they had as yet no eye for the 
 spiritual forces that build up society, or of 
 those underlying correlations that lie at 
 the basis of all social unities. The mod- 
 ern citizen is, at least, a living cell of the 
 national structure. The Hebrews were 
 
2l8 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 mostly inorganic masses, in whom the cell- 
 life had not yet been formed ; hence legal- 
 ity was a necessity, and a theocracy is the 
 natural evolution of legality. It was the 
 only possible issue out of the situation. 
 Even within our own century, religious 
 leaders, such as Newman and Manning, 
 have fled for defense against rationalism 
 to a papal power and an external author- 
 ity, because they felt they had no spiritual 
 organism adequate to the control of the 
 masses. Their feeling seems to most of 
 us false, but having it there was for them 
 no alternative. 
 
 Even at the present day, millions of our 
 fellow Christians have so feeble a concep- 
 tion of spiritual law and of purely spiritual 
 forces that they dare not attempt to get 
 along without a formal unity and a me- 
 chanical theocracy; and if this is true 
 when Christ is only hid, how much more 
 was it true before Christ came. There 
 was then no spiritualizing force like the 
 gospel, whose potency might be brought 
 out by a leader who understood it. As we 
 read the history of Israel, we see plainly 
 the tendencies to disintegration, and the 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 219 
 
 impossibility of maintaining any nucleus 
 for a national revelation, or, indeed, any 
 national unity at all, without the stern- 
 est constraint. Men needed to be held 
 to an outward manifestation. The only 
 notion of divine glory possible to them was 
 that of a glittering effulgence ; the only 
 aspect of authority which prevailed with 
 them in their ebullitions of animalism was 
 that of terror. The only conception of law 
 which they could appreciate was that of a 
 statute enforced by rewards and penalties. 
 It is true that the nobler spirits were 
 susceptible to the spiritual law of faith; 
 but even in their case the element of tem- 
 poral reward was a necessity, and as for 
 the masses, their extreme animalism made 
 it impossible for them to keep their eye 
 patiently upon such a future hope. It 
 was the negative side of law, the terrible 
 " Thou shalt nots," which alone could lay 
 hold upon them. Thus, by sheer neces- 
 sity, even the Decalogue, that great law of 
 love, based upon the divine goodness of 
 Jehovah, must needs take the negative 
 form which is characteristic of all legality; 
 for legality is always the formal and rudi- 
 
220 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 mentary presentation of law, while law is 
 in itself natural, afifirmative, and organic. 
 Another feature of this rudimentary stage 
 of revelation was the extreme preponder- 
 ance of punishment as a revelatory force. 
 Precisely as legal enactment must needs 
 constitute the original revelation of or- 
 ganic law, and the negative side of the 
 statute must necessarily be the prominent 
 one, so for the same reason, in the primi- 
 tive revelation, penalty must play the prin- 
 cipal part. Thus, even in the original 
 Mosaic covenant, that terrible " eye for an 
 eye " code appears founded on the justice 
 of God, and rightly, too, for justice is re- 
 gard due to the organism. The animal 
 sense that cannot be attracted by the 
 beneficence of law, or steadily fixed upon 
 the hope of reward, must be caught and 
 riveted by some stern symbol of the law's 
 necessity and of the curse that follows 
 disobedience. This necessity underlies all 
 forms and stages of government. It has 
 been held by many that government and 
 law are educative. This is in a certain 
 sense profoundly true, but not exactly in 
 the sense conceived ; they are educative, 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 221 
 
 because they are revelatory, and their edu- 
 cative value depends upon their following 
 the law of revelation. So long as they are 
 the outward and comprehensible types of 
 spiritual facts and laws, they do indeed 
 educate man ; when they are too far in 
 advance of the age, when they cease to be 
 transmissive of spiritual facts and forces, 
 or when they distort those ideal realities, 
 then they carry man backward rather than 
 forward. In our own time, so great has 
 been the spiritual revelation of Christ, 
 that consciously or unconsciously we have 
 come to depend upon it in connection 
 with education. 
 
 It is questionable whether any one thinks 
 now of the educative or revelatory value of 
 penalty. We conceive of it not as a sym- 
 bol of the crime, or the injury done to law, 
 but mainly as a protection to society. But 
 this is a dangerous error. In the nature 
 of things penalty must always possess the 
 revelatory function, and in a primitive, an 
 animalized, or a degenerated condition of 
 things it must inevitably come to the front. 
 Thus, it always looms up as a last judg- 
 ment for a wicked society. It must be, as 
 
222 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 it was in the Old Testament, the principal 
 matrix for the development of the rudi- 
 mentary moral nature, and, if the moral 
 sense of the nation is degenerate, then its 
 necessities must be considered rather than 
 those of the individual criminal ; better 
 he should be turned into an awful symbol 
 of law to touch the nation's conscience 
 than that the nation itself should morally 
 perish. 
 
 This same necessity for expressing spir- 
 itual conditions, under the form of pro- 
 hibitory laws and suggestive penalties, is 
 illustrated in another aspect of the primi- 
 tive revelation. The class of things to be 
 prohibited is vastly enlarged. This, also, 
 corresponds to nature. In the primitive 
 organism, prohibition, or, what is the same 
 thing, protection, is at the maximum ; the 
 vitality of the organism is too low to ad- 
 mit of an extensive reciprocity. It can 
 incorporate but a few facts. The babe 
 can take only milk ; meat would be vio- 
 lently injurious, not because it is intrin- 
 sically opposed to the human system, but 
 because the babe is not able to subordi- 
 nate it to the vital purposes of the organ- 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION, 223 
 
 ism. That which cannot be subordinated 
 naturally becomes poisonous to the sys- 
 tem ; so it is with human society, and this 
 irreversible law appears illustrated in the 
 Old Testament revelation. The spiritual 
 organism was in a low state of vitality. It 
 was a babe, it could subordinate but a nar- 
 row range of facts, and that which could 
 not be subordinated to its vital necessities 
 must be treated as a poison, or, if it were 
 personal, it must be treated as an enemy. 
 If it assumed a volitional shape, then it was 
 rebellion against spiritual law, and as such 
 must be punished and destroyed. In a 
 Christian nation, possessed of a strong 
 spiritual vitality and a vivid perception 
 of spiritual perils, there is no necessity 
 for inflicting penalties upon an advocate 
 of infidelity, upon a profane swearer, or 
 upon a maker of graven images, not even 
 though he should proceed to the length of 
 worshiping them ; the whole statuary of 
 the Vatican gallery contains for our re- 
 ligion not one particle of danger. So, too, 
 with witchcraft, necromancy, spiritualism, 
 and other modern forms of dabbling with 
 the occult ; despite their evil tendencies, 
 
224 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 both to soul and body, it is better that, so 
 far as possible, they should be left to the 
 operation of spiritual forces. It is in the 
 interest of spirituality itself that it should 
 be utilized to the utmost. 
 
 So, too, it would be absurd to object to 
 social intercourse with any people, how- 
 ever degraded, except in the case of the 
 young or the feeble-minded. The organ- 
 ism of an educated Christianity is quite 
 capable of taking care of itself, and if de- 
 veloped, as it should be, may well be 
 trusted to exercise the widest reciprocity 
 and to subdue all things to itself. Not 
 so with Hebraism. General Armstrong, 
 who as an educator had made a profound 
 practical study of the Indian, negro, and 
 Polynesian under his tuition, prohibited 
 dancing at Hampton Institute. In his terse 
 phrase, it took a good deal of civilization 
 to STAND dancing. It was not unitable 
 with morality in the primitive or degen- 
 erate stages of moral development. So, in 
 the Hebrew revelation, we find expressed 
 in various forms this great spiritual law, 
 that facts which cannot be subordinated 
 to the spiritual organism are hostile to it. 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 225 
 
 To bring in an ununitable or an insub- 
 ordinate element is a crime against God 
 and the nation. Filth, personal unclean- 
 ness, traces of passional indulgence, foul 
 diseases, all these could not be tolerated 
 in the camp of God's people. They were 
 not forbidden on sanitary grounds, as some 
 have supposed (at least there is small evi- 
 dence of such fine ideas of sanitation in 
 that day); they were forbidden on spiritual 
 grounds, because they were not unitable 
 with the outward symbols of holiness, or 
 with the anthropomorphic conception of 
 God's presence. So, too, a complete mili- 
 tary organization could not, to the primi- 
 tive Israelitish mind, be harmonized with 
 the conception of entire faith in God, any 
 more than a large regular army is at pres- 
 ent unitable with our republican liberty. 
 It involves a perilous temptation. We 
 are not yet strong enough for it. The 
 same principle was occasionally applied 
 with regard to the employment of a phy- 
 sician. There was no law against it, but 
 the procedure seemed antagonistic to that 
 perfect trust which, in the mind of the 
 Israelitish leaders, was the absolute neces- 
 
226 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 sity of soul and body. An external unity 
 cannot tolerate great complexity. The 
 same unwritten but formal necessity ap- 
 pears in the account of the taking of the 
 census by David. We see in Joab's re- 
 monstrance against the decree his convic- 
 tion that it was an evil thing. It could 
 not be coordinated with the spiritual 
 organism ; it would strike a blow at faith ; 
 it would generate in the Israelites that 
 animal pride which had so often, in Joab's 
 experience, brought with it a curse. It 
 was better to trust God for the increase. 
 Human nature could not resist such a 
 temptation ; and Joab was right, supersti- 
 tious though it would be at the present day 
 to give ear to such considerations. There 
 being then no science, the devil filled the 
 vacuum. To take a census in David's time 
 was to introduce among the people, not a 
 useful, popular education, but a ground of 
 pride, that could not be united with that 
 faith which was the nation's vitality; nor 
 could the natural sequence of such an act 
 be revealed to him, or his people, in any 
 other way than by a heavy affliction falling 
 upon the people themselves, and so cut- 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 22/ 
 
 ting at the very root of this self-trust, while 
 it pierced the king to the quick and threw 
 a new light on kingly responsibility. To 
 have taken his life would have been to cut 
 the stem from the branches. This spon- 
 taneous legality, radiating as it does an 
 eternal principle of spirituality, shows how 
 flimsy is the argument that the law was 
 non-Mosaic, and was foisted on the struc- 
 ture afterward. How much of the system 
 Moses may have literally communicated is 
 indeed uncertain and little to the point, 
 for the whole thing is included in the 
 Mosaic germ contained in the twentieth 
 chapter of Exodus, and in the very concep- 
 tion of an interpretative organism. It is 
 the legitimate development of the Sinaitic 
 anthropomorphism ; and that, including, of 
 course, in its evolution all the relations 
 between God and man, was the natural 
 form for a primitive revelation to take, 
 since it corresponded to the spiritual eye 
 of the age. Besides, it was absolutely es- 
 sential that the interpretative organism 
 should correspond to the religious devel- 
 opment around it. To do any good, it 
 had to be a section of the history of the 
 
228 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 time, a series of selected types belonging 
 to the age. 
 
 In fact, the spiritual value of the Old 
 Testament revelation lies in almost exactly 
 the opposite direction from what has been 
 supposed, — not in its pure separateness, 
 but in its affinity for the religious and 
 governmental forms about it. This makes 
 it, indeed, an interpretation of that broader 
 revelation presented by the development of 
 history under God's hand. The isolation 
 of the organism was only carried as far as 
 was necessary for the sake of selection and 
 purification ; indeed, after its immersion in 
 Egypt at the outset, the nation was planted 
 in the very centre of the great empires 
 and on their warpath, where it was forced 
 into reciprocity. Its whole civilization was 
 mainly an incorporation of outside ele- 
 ments, as in the case of the seed in the 
 soil ; nor were the elements which it 
 brought from Mesopotamia eradicated; 
 they continued a part of its structure. 
 True, the grossest and most cruel forms 
 were expurgated, but cruel forms still sur- 
 vived : polygamy lingered ; so did that 
 savage court of justice, the vendetta ; 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 229 
 
 likewise the brutal system of maintaining 
 the army by the spoils of the vanquished 
 and the sack of towns. 
 
 These survivals of savagery would, of 
 course, have been extirpated if the object 
 had been a final manifestation of God's ideal, 
 but in an interpretative organism their re- 
 tention was of the utmost value, because it 
 corresponded to national development uni- 
 versally. We see the savage forms in Is- 
 raelitish history perishing, precisely as the 
 spoils system is dying out with us at the 
 present day, through the coordination of 
 society with spiritual organisms. We see 
 them at their worst mitigated by such 
 coordinations, as in the case where the 
 vendetta is associated with the city of 
 refuge. But, above all, do we see a type 
 of the way in which God universally util- 
 izes evil by his employment of such savage 
 forms for the purposes of his own spiritual 
 government. To our more spiritualized 
 mind it is shocking to see God represented 
 as directing a barbarous raid, the sack of 
 a town, the division of the spoil, or as send- 
 ing upon his creatures a horrible leprosy, 
 or a wicked spirit from the Lord. Un- 
 
230 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 questionably this is a false effect, as false 
 as that produced when a child puts on his 
 grandfather's spectacles ; the refraction is 
 not suited to us. There is a vital ray of 
 truth which it fails to focalize upon our 
 retina. We have developed beyond that 
 revelation. True, we see, or ought to see, 
 that in some sense everything is coordi- 
 nated with God ; we see that the most 
 cruel crimes, such as the crucifixion of 
 Jesus, do come in some way from his 
 ordering, so that the victim can say, " The 
 cup that my Father hath given me, shall I 
 not drink it? " But we also see that God's 
 orderings are not mechanical, and that 
 many of them express his will only by 
 indirection. We see that the condition 
 under which everything goes forward is 
 that of liberty ; that God's method of act- 
 ing on men is psychic. It is the still, small 
 voice of suesfestion. His laws are the laws 
 of our own structure ; his penalties the 
 retroactive effect of these laws. When, 
 for example, men violate the law of that 
 corporate organism, the nation, then the 
 organism becomes the matrix of sin and 
 misery. It brings forth misshapen person- 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 23 1 
 
 alities, distorted ideas, cruel institutions, 
 plagues, and curses of humanity. It is a 
 bottomless pit, this organism, out of which 
 issue locusts and wild beasts. Thus a sin- 
 ful human society carries in its womb a 
 brutal civilization, and this evil progeny, 
 caught up into the current of a divine pro- 
 vidence, commanded by a divine will, and 
 tempered by a divine mercy, constitutes 
 God's punitive instrumentality. In the 
 ordinary course of nature the development 
 of the organism of divine punishment is so 
 slow, and the span of the divine coordina- 
 tion so vast, that to the ancient mind it 
 became a question whether God did take 
 notice of sin. We see these doubts taking 
 root in the mind of the Psalmist, till he 
 went into the sanctuary of God ; and in 
 Plutarch's treatise on the divine punish- 
 ment, in which he undertakes to answer 
 the question of why the gods are so slow 
 in visiting crime, we find the same ques- 
 tion raised. But, as a matter of fact, every 
 human civilization taken in grand reaches 
 illustrates the truth that man himself is a 
 co-worker with God in this business. The 
 human organism is not only to a large 
 
232 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 degree self-constructive, but self-rewarding 
 and self-punitive. Thus the particular form 
 that the divine penalty assumes is largely- 
 determined by the organism itself acting 
 under God's laws ; yet once being deter- 
 mined, it cannot escape coordination with 
 God's providential plan, and must become, 
 as the apostle puts it, " an organ of the 
 divine wrath fitted unto destruction." In- 
 deed, in this retroactive sense every dark- 
 est brutahty is ruled and utilized by God. 
 Nor was the Israelitish development an 
 exception to this general rule. The natu- 
 ral history of civilization is in one of its 
 large aspects a natural history of sin. The 
 Hebrew nation was a section selected from 
 this developing natural history of sin ; it 
 was designed to illustrate God's uniform 
 method of commanding and utilizing or- 
 ganisms of sin for his own purposes of 
 salvation. 
 
 The fact exists in nature ; therefore we 
 find this same fact in the interpretative 
 organism, the only difference being that 
 the coordination is there refracted for the 
 eye by a mechanical type. If the fact 
 were left out, then the organism would not 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 233 
 
 correspond to the cosmos which it was 
 designed to interpret; but, because it is 
 represented by a mechanical symbol, the 
 critics of to-day too often misread it, de- 
 claring that it represents God as the cause 
 of evil, and this effect the critics aver to be 
 due to the crude spiritual intelligence of 
 the Hebrews. Thus, for instance, in those 
 cases where God is represented as sending 
 a lying spirit to Ahab, or an evil spirit 
 from the Lord is represented as possessing 
 Saul, or when certain military brutalities 
 and hardnesses of the heart are recognized, 
 permitted, and regulated, and even utilized 
 as a divine chastisement, we are told that 
 this plainly proves the admixture of error 
 with the revelation. A juster view shows 
 it to be not absolute error, but refraction, 
 caused by the mechanical coordination of 
 an evil thing with the divine symbol. But 
 the truth which was thus radiated from the 
 eternal word, and which then became cre- 
 ative of human perception, because power- 
 fully refracted, remains for us, namely, that 
 all evil, whether personal or material, is, 
 notwithstanding its undivine origin, so per- 
 fectly coordinated with God s providence, 
 
234 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 and so commanded by God's resources, 
 that when it reaches us it is from the 
 Lord. It is the only view unitable with 
 Christ's idea of righteousness. On any 
 other hypothesis a man's environment 
 often becomes positively bereft of God, so 
 that reciprocity with Him through the body 
 is impossible. From this point of view, 
 however, the darkest situation becomes the 
 matrix of the Holy Spirit, and the worst 
 opportunity becomes a strait and narrow 
 way that leadeth unto life. Nor can the 
 fact be too strongly emphasized, that by 
 this very refracting process the more spir- 
 itual truth has been conveyed to us. For 
 after ages of perceptive development under 
 Christ's tuition, and particularly after long 
 comparison between the interpretative or- 
 ganism and nature, we have at last got rid 
 of the mechanical effect of the Hebrew 
 organism by first getting rid of the mechan- 
 ical cast in our own perception. We now 
 see the spiritual nature of God's coordina- 
 tions, their relation to human liberty — the 
 self-punitive power of the organism. In- 
 deed, so plain has this latter fact become to 
 us that we too often miss altogether God's 
 
ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 235 
 
 grasp on his universe, and think of it — the 
 organism — as punishing and rewarding it- 
 self. We thus fashion for ourselves a cos- 
 mic idol which often seems cruel, meaning- 
 less, malignant. Like the ancient idolaters, 
 we sometimes worship, sometimes defy our 
 God, while, on the whole, we conceive of 
 human life as a battle between the micro- 
 cosmos who has become civilized and pious, 
 and the macrocosmos which remains blind 
 and hateful. Better were it to see God 
 through a glass darkly, under the heavy 
 refractive effect of the Hebrew theocracy. 
 It would be at least formative of a purer 
 vision. The coordination of the cosmic 
 evil with God, the acceptance of it by Him 
 as a part of his plan, is certainly a fact of 
 nature. It is the mystery in nature which 
 the eye of man, unilluminated by God's 
 word, has not been able to read aright. 
 Still is it true that the Lord does call 
 forth serpents and fiery scorpions, ay, and 
 locusts of the human kind. Still does He 
 turn rivers into blood. Still does He hiss 
 for the fly that is in the uttermost part of 
 the river of Egypt. Still does He call 
 for the loathsome frogs, the darkness, and 
 
236 ORGANISM OF REVELATION. 
 
 the noisome plague, and still out of the 
 evil organism of a corrupt civilization do 
 they come, even all hideous and noisome 
 and quick-breeding evils, at the divine word 
 to chasten the nation that has consciously 
 departed from Him, or rejected the word 
 of his prophets. Still is it true that lep- 
 rosv of a moral and social kind follows on 
 spiritual presumption ; that moral death 
 and, ultimately, physical destruction follow 
 hypocrisy and profanity. Death also fol- 
 lows the neglect to obey God's sexual law, 
 which was typified by the covenant of cir- 
 cumcision. The terrible retroactive law of 
 the organism still exists. The sole differ- 
 ence between our time and the Jewish is 
 that the coordination of retroactive law 
 with God's personality was then mechan- 
 ical, symbolic, and, of course, immediate. 
 Now the law is quite as sure, the coordi- 
 nation as perfect, and the punishment as 
 certain, but the process is slow, the coordi- 
 nation invisible, and the punishment often 
 fails of recognition for want of spiritual 
 insight. We see the " Reign of Terror," 
 but do not trace out its spiritual causa- 
 tion. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 A SECOND feature of the Hebrew reve- 
 lation is ceremonialism. This is in reality 
 neither more nor less than a kind of sym- 
 bolism. It is a universal method of spir- 
 itual interpretation for the psychic man. 
 It is based on the fact, already elucidated, 
 that the material corresponds to the spirit- 
 ual so as to be its type, prophecy, and 
 medium of transmission. Ceremonialism 
 is, therefore, simply the endeavor of men 
 who feel this fact to select and utilize the 
 symbolism of nature, and thus to con- 
 struct a spiritualizing environment for the 
 masses, — a matrix of spiritual vitality. It 
 is, in fact, an allegory or drama of the spir- 
 itual life. Our modern Salvation Army is 
 a form of ceremonialism ; its object is to 
 surround the masses with a vivid drama of 
 the spiritual world, more particularly its 
 heroic warfare, strategy, and leadership. 
 
238 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 The priest with his robes, altar, candles, 
 and holy water constitutes a drama of the 
 same genus, though not of the same 
 species. No doubt, ceremonialism has its 
 limits, just as legalism does, beyond which 
 it becomes unspiritual and even immoral : 
 it may be substituted for a higher and bet- 
 ter force ; it may be obstinately adhered 
 to, when in the process of development it 
 should give way to a better organ ; in this 
 case, of course, it becomes a stumbling- 
 block in the path of life. Indeed, its law 
 is the same as that of the artistic nature, — 
 strict subordination to the advancing needs 
 of the spiritual life. When it becomes an 
 object of satisfaction in itself, it is a worth- 
 less idol. Indeed, wherever it is conducted 
 to the neglect of the spiritual powers them- 
 selves, it is a positive injury, and may well 
 be treated as Josiah treated the brazen ser- 
 pent of Moses. 
 
 Modern critics assert that the ceremo- 
 nial system of Israel belongs to a later 
 date than Moses. Probably this is true, 
 so far as the elaboration of it is concerned. 
 On the other hand there is evidence that 
 Abraham strictly enjoined on his descend- 
 
CEREMONIALISM, 239 
 
 ants the rite of circumcision. It was not 
 original with Abraham ; it had been prac- 
 ticed by other nations ; other men had 
 sought by it to express the consecration 
 of the reproductive energy to God : but in 
 the case of a man, out of whose loins was 
 to spring the interpretative organism of 
 the race, it certainly had a peculiar sig- 
 nificance, and he believed it to have been 
 commanded by God in a vision. So, at 
 least, we are told in one of the accounts ; 
 but, whatever may be the truth respecting 
 this or the other record, of Abraham's 
 bringing with him into Canaan the rite of 
 sacrifice and the burnt-offering, one thing 
 is clear, — Moses did incorporate circum- 
 cision into his structure, together with 
 the beautiful Passover rite that signified 
 so much to Jesus, and, also, the institution 
 of the Sabbath, and in doing so he im- 
 planted the germ of the entire system ; for 
 ceremonialism is not a mere series of arti- 
 ficial rites, — it is a living spiritualizing force 
 which has a natural rootage in the soul of 
 man. A ritual may be dead in a given 
 case, I admit ; so may a tree or flower, but 
 it is usually a product of life. If it is dead, 
 
240 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 it is because something has killed it. The 
 religious ceremonial of a people is like its 
 literature. It has its specific germ and 
 law of development; like a plant, it may- 
 appropriate foreign elements, but if it be 
 vital it will always subdue them to its 
 own distinct and expanding type. Now, 
 there is no question that Moses did graft 
 upon Israel a specific germ of symbolism 
 or ceremonialism. Its vitality is shown in 
 its selective force. But the most remark- 
 able thing about it was its spiritual coher- 
 ence ; this appears in the institution of the 
 Sabbath. The setting apart of one day 
 from secular to purely spiritual forms is 
 a striking symbol of that spiritualization 
 of labor which constitutes its rest, its sanc- 
 tification, and its final end. In a perfected 
 spiritual life all labor must be spiritualized, 
 for it can but be seen and pursued in refer- 
 ence to its final end ; but for people in an 
 unspiritual stage of development such a 
 ceremonial as the setting apart of a day 
 for a typical Sabbath is of the utmost 
 moral value. The spiritual fact must be 
 presented in extenso, under a ceremonial 
 form, before it can be grasped. Thus the 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 241 
 
 holy day at the end of the week stands as 
 an emblem of a final end and divine rest 
 for man's creative secular processes. It is 
 noteworthy, too, that this positive com- 
 mand to a ceremonial observance stands 
 in the midst of the Decalogue, along with 
 those great moral and spiritual command- 
 ments that regulate the reciprocity be- 
 tween man and man, and between man 
 and God. 
 
 In other words, we have a ceremonial 
 observance implanted in the very heart of 
 the fundamental law of the theocracy. 
 But reflection shows us that it could not 
 be otherwise, for, as has been already said, 
 the fundamental law itself is cast in a ru- 
 dimentary and legal form and is closely 
 coordinated with the eye-for-an-eye code. 
 The Mosaic law is a uniform structure of 
 legality, and legality is the rudimentary 
 symbolic form of law ; it is, itself, the 
 product of a symbolizing force. Ceremo- 
 nialism is but the next step, and a neces- 
 sary step, too ; for, as you carry legality 
 upward to its final and spiritual end, that 
 end must be presented under the form 
 of an emblem, and its practical relations 
 
242 CEREMONIALISM.^ 
 
 under the form of typical observances. The 
 legalizing principle in man is, in the em- 
 bryonic stage, perfectly normal, provided 
 it works in a spiritual direction. It then 
 becomes a spiritualizing process, and as 
 it feels its way God ward it must inevi- 
 tably supplement itself with symbolism. 
 Ceremonialism will appear at the centre, 
 like the nucleus in an ^^^, Thus, as the 
 Mosaic code attempts to coordinate human 
 life and conduct with the idea of God, it 
 must have something formal, something- 
 corresponding with its own structure, to 
 represent that idea ; nay, more, if the 
 process is to be educative and introspec- 
 tive, as it should be in order to spirit- 
 ualize, then there must be at the centre 
 not only an emblem, but an expansive 
 one, — a type capable of deep rootage in 
 man's soul, of large unfoldings and rich 
 fruitage. Furthermore, the emblem must 
 illuminate the points of correspondence 
 between God and man. The human soul 
 is feeling after God, if haply it may find 
 Him. The interpretative organism should, 
 therefore, lead the human soul by suggest- 
 ing the points of correspondence which are 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 243 
 
 dimly felt by the soul itself. The imma- 
 nence of God must needs be represented 
 by a house of God among human habita- 
 tions, bringing out the fact that God is 
 resident with us. His spiritual transcend- 
 ence must be figured by a remote and in- 
 violable shrine; the differentiation between 
 soul and spirit, — especially where the soul 
 is defiled through sin, — by a ceremonial 
 division between the holy and the profane. 
 That which is fit for coordination with the 
 spiritual must appear under the symbol 
 of cleanness ; that which is unfit, as un- 
 cleanness. But the main feature in a cere- 
 monial system, provided its tendency be 
 spiritual, must of course consist in bring- 
 ing out the eirenicon^ or mediating agent 
 between matter and spirit, namely, the con- 
 secrated word, or immanent personality. 
 
 Here we have the great law of revela- 
 tion and spiritual genesis. If the world is 
 at any point coordinated with God, it is 
 because some exceptional personality, tak- 
 ing fast hold on men and facts in the full- 
 ness of his psychic life, has drawn them 
 Godward and spiritward by the stern sub- 
 jection of his own soul and body to the 
 
244 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 offices of the divine spirit. Thus he has 
 become a mediator, through whom the di- 
 vine life radiates and touches men, beget- 
 ting in them the divine hkeness. Every 
 such mediator stands, as it were, in the 
 divine sanctuary. Thither, also, even to 
 the altar of God does he lead with stern 
 though joyful constraint his own body, 
 that, sacrificing his animal life to God, yea, 
 pouring it out as it w^re before God, he 
 may be freely and entirely used by the di- 
 vine spirit for the purposes of reconcilia- 
 tion; and always the reconciliation is the 
 entire process by which man, under lib- 
 erty, is brought into correspondence to 
 God, and into absolute harmony with the 
 divine will. Now, as I say, there can be 
 no kind of question that Moses planted 
 the germ of this tendency to feel after 
 God and find Him through symbolism. 
 Without such a process his legal structure 
 would have had no core; it would have 
 been impotent and valueless as an inter- 
 pretative organism, for it would have been 
 coordinated with nothing. 
 
 There is fair evidence, too, that the ac- 
 count is correct which represents the 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 245 
 
 germ as having been given to a special 
 body of men, Aaron and his descendants, 
 for protection and cultivation. It is, in- 
 deed, tolerably clear that Moses left a liv- 
 ing stem of ceremonialism (at all events 
 he implanted a prolific germ of it in the 
 Decalogue) ; but the elements of that sym- 
 bolism were not original with him. The 
 temple, the ark of the covenant, the veil, 
 the priesthood, the sacrifices, and even the 
 Sabbath itself, were forms that already ex- 
 isted in other nations; other souls than the 
 Hebrew had felt after God with them. 
 The characteristic of the Hebrew ceremo- 
 nial is, not the originality of its forms, but 
 the extraordinary spiritual vitality by which 
 those forms were seized, selected out of the 
 ceremonial of other peoples, purified from 
 their filth and distortions, and built into 
 the distinct type of Hebrew spirituality. 
 In short, their authority does not rest 
 upon their Mosaic origin, or upon any ex- 
 traneous proof of their supernaturalism, 
 but on the intrinsic spirituality and revela- 
 tory power imparted to them by the He- 
 brew organism itself ; and this leads us to 
 the point, that the Hebrew law was not a 
 
246 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 mere mechanical scaffolding handed down 
 by external authority : it was a living struc- 
 ture, closely connected at all times with a 
 highly organized centre of vitality. Thus, 
 like the teeth or bones of the human body, 
 it was constantly acted upon, built up and 
 modified, by the life. That life was vested 
 in the prophets, and their position with 
 reference to the law has been greatly mis- 
 conceived. It has been held that they 
 antagonized the priests and their code. 
 The study of the life of Samuel, who 
 founded the schools of the prophets, 
 shows how false is this position. Samuel 
 was brought up in the Lord's house, was 
 from a child attached to its ceremonial, 
 and united in himself the two offices. The 
 antagonism referred to appears in his case, 
 it is true, but it is not antagonism to the 
 ceremonial, which he defended against 
 Saul with extreme severity, but against 
 the insubordination of it, and particularly 
 its substitution for obedience and faith.-^ 
 
 It was this very warfare of the prophets 
 — a warfare like that of the true poet or 
 artist against the mechanical and sensual 
 
 ^ I Sam. xiii. 9-15 ; also xv. 22, 23. 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 247 
 
 tendency of art or literature — that did the 
 most for the ceremonial code ; it kept the 
 ceremonial subordinated to spiritual life, 
 and undoubtedly tended to expand it, for 
 the prophetic utterances are full of par- 
 allelisms and illustrations drawn from the 
 priests' code : they are poems written 
 upon the same theme, and must have con- 
 tributed not only to purify but also to en- 
 rich it by keeping it face to face with its 
 spiritual ideals and applications. There 
 has been much investigation as to the 
 original meaning of the various rites, but 
 nothing is more evident than that their 
 incorporation into the Hebrew type both 
 purified them from many distortions and 
 developed in them a new spiritual signifi- 
 cance. They were the thoughts of men 
 regarding God ; in the Hebrew economy 
 they were expanded into larger intelligi- 
 bility, just as the w^ord of a primitive lan- 
 guage takes on a richer and more precise 
 meaning when it is incorporated into a 
 highly civilized tongue. 
 
 So it was in regard to animal sacrifices ; 
 it is impossible to tell precisely what they 
 meant at the beginning. Doubtless their 
 
248 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 significance was too vague for definition. 
 Men dimly perceived the Psyche or soul 
 of the beast : this thing called life struck 
 them with awe as related to the gods ; 
 therefore the taking of it, even from an 
 animal, was a sacred act, a divine sacrifice. 
 There was no such thing as secular butch- 
 ery ; an animal was killed before the gods, 
 and eaten on shares with God as a divine 
 communion. Gradually there developed, 
 as we see in Homier, the idea of an atone- 
 ment. This, too, was a vague idea; the 
 human soul was reaching after something, 
 it knew not what. A sacrificial relation- 
 ship of the animal life was dimly seen ; 
 particularly the pouring out of the blood, 
 in which the life was immanent, was felt 
 to be significant of a relation between man 
 and God. It was but natural, therefore, 
 that in the Hebrew organism, where the 
 points of man's correspondence to God 
 were specially brought out, and where the 
 sacrificial word or life of God was a matter 
 of daily consciousness, where the man of 
 the word felt himself called upon to strug- 
 gle with God, to weep and suffer with God 
 over the sins of the people, — it is not won- 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 249 
 
 derful, I say, that in such an organism 
 animal sacrifices should have a new sig- 
 nificance ; nor, if the story of Moses be at 
 all correct, and he himself was the first 
 o-reat fellow-sufferer with God under the 
 
 o . . . ~ 
 
 sin of Israel, is it strange that this signifi- 
 cance should have been revealed to him, 
 and entered profoundly into his idea of the 
 ceremonial. It is but natural, surely, that 
 he who founded the law and literature 
 should have conceived of the great motif 
 of the sacrificial drama. 
 
 Certain it is that this motif soon be- 
 came apparent to the greater souls among 
 the Hebrews. Thus one of their prophets 
 cries out, "Sacrifice and burnt -offering 
 thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou 
 prepared me. Lo, I come to do thy will, O 
 my God." David has a growing concep- 
 tion of himself as reaching true kingship 
 through suffering. He is God's sacrificial 
 victim ; yet this process does not seem to 
 be completed with himself, — it is to be at- 
 tained only by his posterity. Carried into 
 ecstasy, he discerns the fruit of his loins 
 as the Lord's Anointed, triumphant, attain- 
 ing to an immortal kingship through suf- 
 
250 CEREMONIALISM, 
 
 fering, and so cries out in his vision, 
 " Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, 
 neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to 
 see corruption." So, too, another great 
 prophet, discerning through this ceremo- 
 nial typology the significance of sacrifice, 
 — seeing how plainly history corresponded 
 to it, how the spiritualizing head of the 
 race must needs suffer for the race, and 
 how his sufferings must be the matrix of a 
 new conscience, — cries out concerning the 
 coming nian of God, " He is led as a lamb 
 to the slaughter, for the transgression of 
 my people was he stricken." Indeed, the 
 Hebrew ceremonial was continually to the 
 prophets a spiritual lens, a medium of sug- 
 gestion. Nor is anything more wonderful 
 than the final form that the Hebrew cere- 
 monial assumed. It became, indeed, as 
 Jesus declared, a prophecy of what the 
 Christ, the ideal Head, must be. It was 
 a moral miracle; the shockingly distorted 
 forms of the pagan ritual, selected, puri- 
 fied, combined, and vitalized by the priest- 
 hood of Israel under the influence of 
 the prophets, became a holy temple of 
 the Lord, a " pattern of things in the 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 25 1 
 
 heavens," — a revelation, not of the iso- 
 lated divine personality, but of humanity, 
 developing into correspondence with God 
 and inhabited by the eternal spirit. It is 
 impossible to conceive of a more beautiful 
 or touching representation. There was the 
 outer court, in which priests and people 
 met, a type of that organic collectivism 
 through which God spiritualizes men by 
 coordinating them as branches about spir- 
 itual stems ; a type, also, of that meeting- 
 place between the religious and the secu- 
 lar by which the latter is made whole. 
 For what, after all, are these mediating 
 priests but shadows of that heavenly man- 
 hood, that stronger, holier brotherhood, 
 which God stores up for us from age to 
 age in those sacred souls who support us 
 in our trials and lift us Godward, as the 
 oak-tree does the branches ? and what is 
 that slain sacrifice but a type of that 
 bodily life ever and anon given up into 
 God s hands by some saviour of the race 
 to meet our spiritual necessities ? and what 
 is this shrine, with golden candlestick, 
 table of shewbread, and altar of frankin- 
 cense, but the soul or psyche of man, 
 
252 CEREMONIALISM. 
 
 lighted up to itself by some priest or hero 
 of divine love, awakened also to its need 
 of God's bread, and by that same self-illu- 
 mination discovering that bread already 
 provided? nothing less, in fact, than the 
 Lord's own human love, freely offered, as 
 counterpart to which comes that other 
 great self -discovery, namely, an inward 
 altar of joy and praise, whose odors of 
 frankincense may well be called costly, 
 since the humble thanksgiving of the man 
 is kindled by the infinite sacrifice of the 
 heavenly Father. Thus is the human 
 soul, as it enters into correspondence with 
 God, renewed, purified, opened up to it- 
 self, filled with sweetness, satisfaction, and 
 light. Furthermore, this Holy of Holies, 
 what is it but the spirit, that innermost 
 and most sacred chamber of our being, 
 seldom visited, veiled to the masses, dis- 
 covered only to the heroes, turned by some 
 into a citadel of pride, by others into a 
 shrine of self, but silently purified and set 
 in order by the effect of divine revelation 
 on the true worshiper, and unveiled at last 
 to mankind by the greatest of all sacri- 
 ficial heroes and revelators, who by his 
 
CEREMONIALISM. 253 
 
 life and death made the innermost and 
 heavenliest to stand forth clear in flesh 
 and blood, and so led us tenderly into the 
 sanctuary of his spirit, showing us at the 
 same time what our own innermost nature 
 shall become when the shrine is unveiled, 
 stripped of self, transformed into the treas- 
 ure-house of God's law, a throne of his 
 merciful presence, a dwelling-place of his 
 ineffable light ? 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MIRACLES. 
 
 Obviously the paramount feature of the 
 Hebrew revelation is its peculiar super- 
 naturalism. I call it peculiar because it is 
 not the kind with which the modern world 
 has been familiar ; indeed, it is because they 
 are contrary to modern experience that 
 we have been inclined to reject the mira- 
 cles of the Old Testament, and with them 
 supernaturalism in general, on the ground 
 that the two are identical ; but there is a 
 sharp distinction to be drawn between the 
 supernatural and the miraculous. Accord- 
 ing to some of our ablest philosophers, the 
 spiritual is the supernatural. This is un- 
 doubtedly the position of Jesus and of the 
 New Testament writers. In Christ's teach- 
 ing, matter and spirit correspond to one 
 another; the material forces are correlated 
 with the spiritual; the two are interpen- 
 etrable. Any coordination, therefore, of 
 
MIRACLES. 255 
 
 material forces with spiritual, in such a 
 manner as to exhibit the power of mind, is 
 supernatural ; in fact Jesus was continu- 
 ally endeavoring to point out that faith in 
 God was supernatural, — more particularly 
 the triumph of faith over matter — as in 
 the bearing of one's cross. Paul declared 
 that love was the highest supernatural 
 gift of the Spirit. Again, as to the 
 divine supernaturalism, Jesus testified that 
 it was everywhere present. Nothing oc- 
 curred, not even the fall of a sparrow, 
 that was not taken up by God, and 
 so coordinated with his spirit as to be 
 significant of his mind and productive 
 of his will. Jesus also taught that man 
 was the coordinating agent of God upon 
 earth, and that through him, develop- 
 ing into correspondence with God, and 
 so working more and more with God, 
 there was to be an ever -increasing co- 
 ordination of earthly forms with God, — an 
 advancing spiritualization or supernatural- 
 ization of the material world. And if we 
 study carefully his discourses to his dis- 
 ciples in regard to this process, which he 
 styled the coming of the kingdom, we are 
 
256 MIRACLES. 
 
 compelled to infer that he looked upon 
 it as certain to be, until its climacteric, 
 very unlike a miracle, but rather like the 
 growth of the seed in the field, or the 
 leaven in the lump, an exceedingly grad- 
 ual and comprehensible process, — man's 
 soul slowly discovering the spiritual po- 
 tencies and completing the coordinations 
 that were involved in the kingdom of God, 
 and thus advancing to complete super- 
 naturalization, along the pathway of natu- 
 ral law, by so gentle a grade that the 
 supernatural should not seem at all alien 
 to our earthly nature. 
 
 Undoubtedly it is this kind of super- 
 naturalism, — that of the sunshine, the dew, 
 and the lilies, that of the still small voice, 
 and that of Christ's influence (for we rec- 
 ognize these as all standing together in 
 one group), — it is this divinely human su- 
 pernaturalism, I say, with which every 
 Christian is familiar, not because it has 
 been proved to him, but because Christ 
 has given him eyes to see it. It is this 
 which lies back of all evolution, making 
 evolution itself even more wonderfully su- 
 pernatural than the old conception of crea- 
 
MIRACLES. 257 
 
 tion. If we were to select a word by which 
 to designate this as a whole, it would be the 
 word "organic," since it is its character- 
 istic that it is manifested only in connec- 
 tion with organs. True, it may be poured 
 out with sudden fullness, as the life is 
 poured out upon the trees with the sun- 
 shine of the spring tide, but that is be- 
 cause the organism is ready for it. In 
 short, it may be called organic because, 
 like all life, it corresponds to the develop- 
 ment of the organism and has no mani- 
 festation without it. 
 
 On the other hand, a miracle is a mani- 
 festation of the supernatural that does not 
 perceptibly correspond to the organism ; 
 for instance, the sudden turning of the 
 Nile into blood. That phenomenon, as 
 recorded in the Bible, professed to be the 
 immediate effect of the divine spirit on 
 nature ; but as we are not familiar in our 
 own experience with any such causative 
 mental force, or any such degree of cor- 
 relation between mind and matter, it is to us 
 a miracle. This is undoubtedly what men 
 mean when they say a miracle is contrary 
 to natural law, or to evolution. We know 
 
258 MIRACLES. 
 
 very little about natural law and very little 
 about evolution ; we have only just begun 
 to study these subjects : but we know well 
 enough when a reputed supernatural event 
 does not correspond to the organism of 
 nature, so far as it falls within our observa- 
 tion. If a fact narrated in the Hebrew 
 Scripture corresponds to nature as it de- 
 velops before our eyes, then nature is a 
 witness to the credibility of the story; 
 otherwise the testimony must be strong 
 enough to overcome this apparent want of 
 correspondence with nature, and as nature 
 now to most scientists means evolution, 
 anything that does not correspond to that 
 must necessarily to their minds require a 
 compensating degree of testimony. This 
 is reasonable. When Lobenguela was told 
 by his envoys, on their return from Eng- 
 land, that they had crossed the water in 
 an iron ship, he did not believe it, on their 
 unsupported testimony, because it did not 
 correspond to the organism of nature, as 
 he had observed it, that iron should float ; 
 and his position is exactly that of those 
 who object to the miracles of the Old 
 Testament. The position is entirely logi- 
 
MIRACLES. 259 
 
 cal up to a certain point. Nature, cer- 
 tainly, whether we view her from the stand- 
 point of naturaHsm or supernaturalism, is 
 uniform. God's method, as pointed out 
 by Christ or by the evolutionist, is slow 
 and educative ; even the most amazing 
 results are brought about by gradually de- 
 veloping correspondences. Unfortunately, 
 however, for the practical operation of Lo- 
 benguela's logic, the greatest philosopher 
 is liable, like him, to be limited in his 
 range of observation; correspondences may 
 exist of which he has not taken note, and, 
 while the great correlations of the uni- 
 verse remain the same, their actual coordi- 
 nations may vary so greatly as to change 
 the outward aspect of the organism alto- 
 gether, so that what in one age or locality 
 seems miraculous should in another, or in 
 a different stage of apprehension, seem no 
 more so than an ordinary event. In other 
 words, the miraculous is wholly relative to 
 our perception. It is a miracle simply 
 because we do not see the organism to 
 which it corresponds. 
 
 Indeed, it is a curious fact that at the 
 present day our more extended observa- 
 
26o MIRACLES. 
 
 tion of occult phenomena has brought out 
 exactly the opposite objection to the mira- 
 cles of the Bible. The gist of this posi- 
 tion is that the miracles amount to nothing 
 as divine manifestations, because they cor- 
 respond to the phenomena of hypnotism, 
 and so really turn out to be simply a 
 phase of evolution. This is undoubtedly 
 the side to which the whole argument 
 against miracles will ultimately shift, and, 
 though there is an element of error in it, 
 it is not altogether wide of the mark. As 
 to the main point, that the miracles are 
 not a defiance of nature, but have a basis 
 in the structure of things, there can, I 
 think, be no doubt. Indeed, it is a curi- 
 ous fact that the Scriptures, studied in the 
 light of the latest modern investigations, 
 do unquestionably present this idea. It is 
 now established as firmly as almost any 
 scientific fact that there is a wonder-work- 
 ing power in the human sou] by which it 
 is able to see visions, to project phantasms, 
 to induce a state of ecstasy or vision in 
 other persons, and even to cause physical 
 chanQ:es, such as cures, or scars like the 
 stigmata of St. Francis. There have doubt- 
 
MIRACLES. 261 
 
 less been many illusions and impostures, 
 but there is a residuum of scientifically 
 observed facts sufficient to establish the 
 wonders of hypnotism. This term has dis- 
 agreeable associations, and in reality it ex- 
 plains nothing ; but, coming from the word 
 "sleep," it suggests much, as, for instance, 
 that this peculiar human supernaturalism, 
 as Coleridge would call it, may be devel- 
 oped by throwing the practical faculties 
 into repose or passivity. 
 
 In a scientific book, entitled " The Law 
 of Psychic Phenomena," the author clas- 
 sifies the miracles of Scripture with hyp- 
 notic phenomena, and after an exhaustive 
 discussion of present theories he advances 
 a hypothesis. There are, according to him, 
 a subjective and an objective mind. The 
 objective mind conveys a suggestion to 
 the subjective, which is the eternal tran- 
 scendent self. By this process the sub- 
 jective mind is brought into a state of 
 exaltation, which radiates outward through 
 the brain and nervous system, and thus 
 the hypnotic effect is produced. The 
 phantasm is a real entity, inasmuch as it 
 is a projection or subtle materialization 
 
262 MIRA CLES. 
 
 of the entire exalted organism. Of course 
 it is not necessary to assume that this 
 formulation of the hypnotic law is final, 
 but it is probably correct as far as it 
 goes; and, in general outline, this divi- 
 sion of the mind into subjective and ob- 
 jective corresponds to the soul and spirit 
 of Scripture, So, also, this hypnotic law 
 corresponds to Christ's great law of reve- 
 lation through the subordination of the 
 Logos to the Spirit ; while the idea of the 
 ghost or phantasm, being an actual projec- 
 tion or radiation of the personality, uniting 
 in Itself the transcendent element of the 
 spirit and the material element of the 
 Psyche, is singularly correspondent to 
 Christ's idea of the radiated spirit, which 
 did to the disciples assume the phantasmal 
 form of fiery tongues, and to Jesus himself 
 the semblance of a dove. Nor does there 
 seem to be any question that the state of 
 ecstasy has followed this law ; for if we 
 study the notable instances of it, from the 
 visions of the apostles down to that of the 
 maiden of Lourdes, including the cases of 
 Joan of Arc and Savonarola, George Fox 
 and Whitfield, the process is always the 
 
MIRACLES. 263 
 
 same. Such things come not to a man 
 while his objective mind is absorbed with 
 practical ways and means. They do not 
 come to those people who have nothing 
 but the objective or practical mind. They 
 come to the man of large or high sensi- 
 bility at some moment when his objective 
 mind is forced back in helplessness, or 
 withdrawn in voluntary contemplation, so 
 as to become the channel of the unseen. 
 Then first the spirit, if it be strong and 
 rational, catches the blessed light of eter- 
 nity, and is exalted by it into fearless joy. 
 Following that vision, the brain and nerv- 
 ous centres are carried to a state of exalta- 
 tion, the heart beats high, the lungs breathe 
 more deeply, the circulation quickens, the 
 whole physical man is an electric battery, 
 every nervous ganglion charged to the ut- 
 most with magnetic force. Thus the body 
 is turned into a perfect medium, and the 
 spirit materializes itself. 
 
 But, setting Mr. Hudson's book one side, 
 if we put together the Old Testament docu- 
 ments, accordinof to the best evidence, we 
 find that they contain the story of the de- 
 velopment of a vast organism for the gen- 
 
264 MIR A CLES. 
 
 eration of psychic phenomena. The whole 
 process is genetic. There is no violent 
 leap. Consider, in the first place, the start- 
 ing-point of the Hebrew revelations, — the 
 Accadian empire, the twentieth century 
 before Christ. Human thought was but 
 little occupied with the mechanical or 
 philosophical structure of nature. It was 
 her symbolism, her mystical language, with 
 which men's souls were taken up. In Urof 
 the Chaldees, a great theocratic cosmic re- 
 ligion prevailed. There was little religious 
 liberty : men's minds were moulded by a 
 gigantic symbolism ; all their actions were 
 governed by oracles, seers, and priestly 
 interpretations of that shadowy life that 
 hovered within the veil of nature. The 
 psychic sensibility was at the flood -tide. 
 The spiritual was, indeed, but feebly de- 
 veloped ; yet the animal man possessed so 
 much of vague, undeveloped spiritual in- 
 stinct that he nestled toward the brooding 
 divine life as the fledgeling creeps under 
 the wing of the mother bird. Doubtless 
 this feeling after God was largely for self- 
 ish ends, such as protection and individual 
 guidance ; none the less, however, was it 
 
MIRACLES. 265 
 
 urgent, as we see in the old Accadian 
 hymns ; and, in the absence of something 
 better, it had naturally resulted in the 
 development of this hypnotic power, of 
 trances and ecstasies. But the visions of 
 God were distorted, for the eye of man 
 was evil. We see this as we contemplate 
 the fragments of Accadian literature that 
 have come down to us. The sensibility of 
 the heart was fixed upon animal pleasure : 
 it shrank from a spiritual deity ; it felt the 
 antagonism of the spirit to the flesh; it 
 drew back from the law of spiritual evolu- 
 tion ; it dreaded the power that formed 
 conscience ; it did not like to retain such 
 a God in its mind. Yet it clung to the 
 psychic relation with God; it yearned 
 after a passional animal deity akin to it- 
 self. By a false refraction, through its 
 own perverted perception, it changed the 
 o-lory of the incorruptible God into an 
 image or conception of its own. It found 
 what it was looking for; then it divided 
 the brooding divine life, which it could 
 but feel, into cosmic gods and into tute- 
 lary passional local deities, each having its 
 shrine, its coterie of priests and rhapso- 
 
266 MIRACLES. 
 
 dists, clairvoyants, wonder-workers, who 
 overdid their work and turned vision into 
 frenzy. Thus, along with the natural de- 
 velopment of seership, there came to be 
 a disease of the soul called demoniac pos- 
 session, an epidemic of occultism, in which 
 the faculties were helpless under the influ- 
 ence of an evil psychism, and were swayed 
 by a bestial exaltation. 
 
 Out of the midst of this spiritual tyranny, 
 distortion, and disease emerges Abraham, 
 a man of unusual vitality. He, too, is a 
 seer, but his vision is that of one living 
 and true God. His first vision has in it 
 a distinctly spiritual conception, namely, 
 that through sacrifice, by separation from 
 kindred, by pilgrimage in an unknown 
 land, he is to become God's instrument 
 of blessing to the race. He goes out, not 
 knowing whither, depending upon the sug- 
 gestion of his God. The new spiritual 
 organ in him seeks an environment suit- 
 able to it. His strong practical facul- 
 ties are subordinated to this necessity. 
 He depends for the initiation of his ac- 
 tion upon visions and divine providences, 
 which are in themselves suggestive coordi- 
 
MIRACLES. 267 
 
 nations; he is led into Canaan by this 
 process. Here he wanders about in a 
 nomadic Hfe ; each place of his habitation 
 turned into a symbol of the divine pres- 
 ence by some striking vision, and by a 
 group of events associated with that vision, 
 these successive groups constituting a 
 progressive revelation of his God. Thus 
 the spiritual organ survives and develops 
 into correspondence to its environment. 
 During all this time he is sustained by 
 the promise of a child ; it is not fulfilled 
 till he is a hundred years old, but in the 
 mean time his subjective mind has been 
 led by visions, and fed and moulded by 
 divine providences, until it has become the 
 mighty overshadowing force of his person- 
 ality, and the son born to him in his old 
 age is the heir of this specific develop- 
 ment. Faith, with Isaac, is an instinct of 
 self-preservation. He clings to God like 
 a gray moth to a gray tree. Now, this 
 process goes on with that Hebrew stock 
 for four or five hundred years, increas- 
 ing all the time in Abraham's line, this 
 peculiar function of the soul, or Pysche, 
 making it more and more the passive in- 
 
268 MIR A CLES. 
 
 strument of suggestion, raising the spirit 
 to higher capacities for vision, and filling 
 Palestine with suggestive experiences, un- 
 til the land of Israel is enough, simply by 
 its associations, to throw a sensitive soul 
 into ecstasy. Meantime the great law of 
 heredity is at work, producing its varia- 
 tions, while it concentrates and develops 
 the psychic gift in certain individuals, — 
 like Joseph, for example, — in each case 
 the specific quality of the gift being deter- 
 mined by environment. 
 
 Thus, under the pressure of Egyptian 
 slavery, when the whole nation is blindly 
 but intensely drawing near to its tradi- 
 tional God for help, Moses arises. In him 
 seership is at the full ; yet Egyptian culture 
 gives it a peculiar cast, and unites it to a 
 high degree of intellect. His wonderful 
 gift is yet further developed and special- 
 ized by his sufferings for his countrymen 
 and by his lonely exile. At eighty years 
 the vision and the call come to him with 
 overwhelming power. The organism is 
 ripe for it then ; the brooding desert fin- 
 ishes the work. He sees a burning bush 
 with an angel in it, hears from it a call 
 
MIRACLES. 269 
 
 to deliver his enslaved countrymen. The 
 vision is a perfect allegory of Jehovah, the 
 self-existent Personality, the divine imma- 
 nent life ; in the world, supplying the fire 
 of life to it, yet not consuming it. Yield- 
 ing himself up to this vision, he was for- 
 ever vision-led. So far as the records go, 
 we find no trace of any great strategic 
 power or statesmanship in Moses ; indeed, 
 the modern idea of him is a misconception. 
 He was a tremendous personality, but his 
 genius was neither military nor political. 
 His laws, like his marches, were the result 
 of visions, and it was by the power of 
 those visions, their spirituality, their prac- 
 ticality, their coherence, by the profound 
 hold they had on himself, and by their 
 extraordinary correspondence with God's 
 world and God's providences, that he suc- 
 ceeded in deliverino: Israel from the Pha- 
 raohs, and in bringing them back to their 
 old Patria, the land of spiritual suggestion. 
 This, however, was but the beginning of 
 his work ; his post-mortem leadership is 
 the amazing fact. For fourteen hundred 
 years he continued to guide and shape the 
 minds of the Hebrew people. His pro- 
 
270 MIRACLES. 
 
 jected personality was the national spirit. 
 Standing together with the natural features 
 and spiritual associations of Canaan, it con- 
 stituted a living stem of which the prophets 
 and heroes were the branches. 
 
 It is difficult for us to conceive of the 
 effect produced by planting a whole peo- 
 ple in the midst of such associations, and 
 attaching them, both by law and also by 
 religious and patriotic feeling, to such a 
 transcendently psychic type of faith. Add 
 to this the inculcation, both by precept and 
 penalty, for hundreds of years, of the idea 
 that the divine vision was paramount, and 
 that no man could initiate anything with- 
 out it, and we have the spectacle of a whole 
 nation placed by every possible attraction 
 and constraint under the conditions of 
 spiritual suggestion. Not only that, but 
 the conditions excluded, under heavy pen- 
 alty, any other kind of suggestion but the 
 Mosaic. 
 
 Now it is dif^cult not to perceive in all 
 this a kind of natural evolution. Fur- 
 thermore, the Hebrew records recognize a 
 sporadic occultism existing side by side 
 with theirs. There were the magicians of 
 
MIRACLES. 271 
 
 Egypt, who up to a certain point imitated 
 the miracles of Moses. There was the 
 false prophet Balaam, a snatch of whose 
 clairvoyant psalmody has been handed 
 down to us. There w^as the witch of En- 
 dor with her phantasm of Samuel. 
 
 Moreover we have here and there a hint 
 of the method by which the Hebrew seers 
 brought about the state of ecstasy : some- 
 times, notably in the schools of the pro- 
 phets, it was through the use of music ; 
 again by gazing fixedly at the precious 
 stones in the high priest's ephod. In the 
 case of David, the king's hand was sur- 
 rendered to a mystical guidance, which 
 formed the plans of the temjDle. 
 
 In brief, we have abundant evidence of 
 the best sort, because inadvertent, that the 
 Hebrew visions developed under the same 
 conditions with other occult phenomena, 
 the difference being that the Hebrew oc- 
 cultism was far mightier, far more signifi- 
 cant, and that it was devoted to the one 
 God and his righteousness, — a difference 
 that we might naturally expect w^hen we 
 consider the colossal nature of the Hebrew 
 organism, the singular coherence of its 
 
272 MIRACLES. 
 
 system, and the spirituality of its origin. 
 There can be little doubt, therefore, that in 
 the near future the Hebrew narrative, in- 
 clusive of the visions, will be accepted as 
 giving us an entirely truthful and natural- 
 istic history of the development of religion 
 in that age. 
 
 While we exercise our judgment criti- 
 cally on the question of authenticity, we 
 shall find no reason for rejecting the clair- 
 voyant element. Its stories will not be 
 regarded as myths, for a myth does not cor- 
 respond to the organism; "omne vivum ex 
 ovo," and the Hebrew history clearly gives 
 us a sufficient ovum. Some of the stories 
 may be poems, but the poems will be felt to 
 be true to the life of the time. There is a 
 manifest advantage in this view, because we 
 are not obliged to do violence to one great 
 principle of the higher criticism by deny- 
 ing a certain genuine, self-evidencing spir- 
 itual element that runs through the Old 
 Testament. Indeed, by classifying the vis- 
 ions of Israel with the same sort of occult- 
 ism that appears to have followed in every 
 age certain exalted souls, like Joan of Arc, 
 St. Francis, Savonarola, George Fox, Martin 
 
MIRACLES. 273 
 
 Luther, and even lesser personalities when 
 thrown into a state of exaltation, we can 
 retain the whole portraiture of these Old 
 Testament heroes, precisely as Keim pre- 
 serves the whole of St. Paul's biography, 
 including his estatic vision of the risen 
 Christ, without sacrificing either intuition 
 or logic. It corresponds to the structure 
 of the cosmos that under certain conditions 
 there should be occult phenomena. Mag- 
 nify the conditions by a thousand years of 
 peculiar environment, natural selection, and 
 specialization, and you may expect a tran- 
 scendent kind of occultism compared with 
 which everything else of the kind will be 
 a mere dwarf or abortion. 
 
 That human experience on such a 
 subject should differ widely is no more 
 extraordinary than that there should be 
 ice in New England and dates in Africa. 
 Evolution is a broad process. A man on 
 one side of the organism may have no 
 experience of what is going on on the 
 other. So far, therefore, as the reality of 
 the visions is concerned, it seems inevi- 
 table that we should all come together on 
 the ground of their entire naturalism ; and, 
 
274 MIRACLES. 
 
 after all, devout students of the Bible need 
 find nothing to regret in this. 
 
 Surely if God caused his revelation in 
 Christ to take the organic form that is com- 
 mon to the visible world, He meant that it 
 should be considered an organism and 
 studied as such ; and, if it makes the su- 
 pernatural akin to us, it also makes us akin 
 to the supernatural. It strikes a blow 
 at our darkest doubt, the doubt of our 
 own inherent spirituality. If it natural- 
 izes heaven, it supernaturalizes earth. Be- 
 sides, we have worked in the interest of 
 truth when we have classified anything. 
 Havins: found the class to which it be- 
 longs, we are on the unmistakable road to 
 genus and species. 
 
 We have recognized the fact that the 
 visions belong to the class of occult phe- 
 nomena, also that the occultism consists 
 merely in our ignorance of the law. We 
 have seen that they correspond to the 
 organism and to its evolution ; we have 
 grasped in part the law; we have found 
 that it is possible, proceeding on the basis 
 of this law, for a man to induce these 
 phenomena in himself or in others. Now 
 
MIRACLES. 275 
 
 comes the vital question, Was this merely 
 human supernaturalism, or was it divine? 
 Is it unreasonable to suppose that these 
 Hebrew prophets spoke the truth when 
 they solemnly declared that their visions 
 were induced by the Almighty God ? 
 They were not without an opportunity 
 for distinguishing between different kinds 
 of occultism. Such phenomena abounded. 
 They were of all sorts, morally speaking, 
 — witchcraft, demonism, false prophetism, 
 commercial clairvoyance. With all these 
 varieties the prophets of Israel were forced 
 into contact. They had an unceasing 
 struggle with these vagrant types, for they 
 recognized in them a distinctly hostile aim. 
 Is there, then, anything unreasonable in 
 believing their testimony that they were 
 acted upon by a power morally different 
 from that which wrought the other phe- 
 nomena, — a power above themselves that 
 made for righteousness ? If, as Jesus 
 taught, man corresponds to God, then God 
 must correspond to man. If man can 
 induce a vision, shall we say that the in- 
 finite God cannot ? If man can form con- 
 ditions favorable to such a process, so as 
 
276 MIRACLES. 
 
 to develop the state of vision by a series 
 of natural steps, giving little shock because 
 of their gradation, cannot the Eternal do 
 the same ? If the feeble life centred within 
 a human being is able under certain con- 
 ditions to affect matter without the me- 
 chanical intervention of the organs, may 
 not the divine life also act psychically ? If 
 matter is everywhere correlated with life, 
 why not with the Divme life ? 
 
 Then, if we look back and consider how 
 this psychic organism was formed, what 
 ages it required, what vast coordinations 
 it involved, transcending all human con- 
 trivance or execution, — such as the bring- 
 ing of the Hebrews from Ur to Canaan, 
 their slavery in Egypt, the birth of Moses, 
 the Babylonish captivity, the Restoration, 
 the Roman conquest, the crucifixion of 
 Christ, — it is difficult to escape the con- 
 viction that over all these coordinations, 
 which issued in a spiritual theocracy, pre- 
 sided the Eternal Life. If evolution and 
 history anywhere give evidence of a power 
 that makes for righteousness, certainly 
 there is evidence of it in these Hebrew 
 annals. 
 
MIRACLES. 277 
 
 If, again, we consider the condition of 
 mankind at the beginning of the Hebrew 
 movement, — if we recognize the fact, re- 
 ferred to under symboHsm and legaUsm, 
 that man's spiritual nature was in an 
 embryonic stage, that it could only be 
 reached and developed through symbols 
 and visions; if we take in the fact that 
 man's higher sensibility had at first to be 
 drawn out, like his intellectual nature, by a 
 kindergarten process, by object-lessons, by 
 mechanical and outward representations 
 of divine values, in brief, by what is now 
 called "anthropomorphism," — is it unrea- 
 sonable to suppose that "the power not 
 ourselves which makes for righteousness " 
 should lay hold of that perceptive ele- 
 ment in man which was the most sensi- 
 tive, nearest to the surface, and most akin 
 to symbolism, and should develop this grad- 
 ually into a vast organism, through which 
 He could communicate, without shock 
 and in a coherent manner, a gigantic and 
 gradually developing revelation of himself ? 
 Every life has its organism. Why should 
 there not be an organism of the Logos, 
 that eternal life that was with God ? In 
 
2/8 MIRACLES. 
 
 a primeval age there was a certain type of 
 fishes who were the progenitors of the 
 birds. They possessed anticipatory organs, 
 such as a rudimentary lung by which they 
 could breathe out of water, and a membra- 
 nous wing by which they could fly up and 
 browse upon the shrubs that overhung the 
 stream. 
 
 This prehistoric organism was not only 
 divinely prophetic, a word of God to be 
 fulfilled, but it was also formative; by it 
 the primitive constitution was enabled to 
 stock itself with better food, and thus 
 bring its nervous centres to the higher 
 vitalization requisite for new organs. Is 
 it unreasonable to believe that in the spir- 
 //?/<^/ development of the race, there should 
 be an anticipatory organism, not only for 
 supplying the spiritual vitality of that day 
 with the bread of God which it could not 
 otherwise obtain, but for the purpose of 
 storing up a stock of spiritual energy, out 
 of which there might be evolved a new 
 spiritual centre of life and perception } 
 
 This agrees with the genius of the Old 
 Testament. It is pathetic to see the sense 
 of incompleteness with which the Hebrew 
 
MIRACLES. 279 
 
 prophets were filled ; psalmody and vision 
 alike looked eagerly forward to that which 
 was to come. The word "prophetic" char- 
 acterizes the whole. 
 
 There was throughout a sense of par- 
 turition, a faith not so much in the organ- 
 ism itself as in that which, under the 
 brooding Spirit of God, it was about to 
 bring forth. In accepting this view, there- 
 fore, we come close to the standpoint of 
 the writers themselves ; but if this was 
 a divine spiritualizing organism, if the 
 divine visions were a fact, then it seems 
 reasonable that there should have been 
 miracles — or, in other words, outward 
 spiritual effects — on a large scale. They 
 do not occur now, true, but we have no 
 such organism. They do not occur, or at 
 least occur only in a sporadic way and on 
 a small scale, in other histories. True, but 
 no historic people save the Jews had any 
 such vast and coherent psychic organ- 
 ism. Why should not the environment 
 correspond to the organism } That is the 
 law of development. Wherever there have 
 been psychic visions, there have been out- 
 ward experiences which simulated the 
 
280 MIRACLES. 
 
 Hebraic ; these wandering and imperfect 
 types point to a perfected type, and it may 
 well be asked whether such an organism 
 could be developed at all without miracles. 
 A monk shut up in a cell might perhaps 
 be led by visions without coming into vio- 
 lent collision with facts, but a nation can- 
 not move without constant interaction with 
 the world. There 7nust be outward cor- 
 respondence. A race of slaves could not 
 throw off their bondage, and march under 
 the guidance of visions out from the most 
 powerful empire of the day, through a 
 foodless and waterless desert, in the midst of 
 warlike tribes, wrest a whole country from 
 an exceedingly valiant people dwelling 
 in fortified towns, and build up an empire 
 of their own, they themselves being all the 
 time passively led by visions, unless out- 
 ward circumstances and hard facts were 
 somehow made to correspond to the 
 visions. Yet this is the problem of the 
 Israelites. In the light of our modern 
 knowledo^e, the o:reatest miracle of all is 
 the simple historic fact of the Exodus, — 
 the march to and conquest of Canaan by 
 a race of slaves. 
 
MIRACLES. 281 
 
 We know the perfect military equipment 
 of Egypt. We know the desert ; we have 
 the archives of Lachish ; we know the civi- 
 Hzation, the Hterature, and the mihtary 
 power of the Canaanites. We know the 
 IsraeHtes had nothing competent to all 
 this. Had Moses been a great general, 
 had there been any strategy or adequate 
 preparation, they would appear in the ac- 
 count ; we should have an echo of them, at 
 least, in some of the very ancient historic 
 fragments that the Jewish historians have 
 pieced together for us. The history of the 
 Greeks pictures the Greek mind. We see 
 what it depended upon. In the Hebrew 
 history we see the Mosaic mind. We see 
 that it depended absohUely on visions and 
 miracles. It clung to its faith for self- 
 preservation ; it looked upward rather than 
 around ; its stronghold was Jehovah. Each 
 record tells the same story. Safety was in 
 faith. The man who had it survived. He 
 who had the most unquestioning trust in 
 the divine vision escaped and conquered, for 
 faith was the quality that adapted him to 
 his environment. What, then, was that 
 environment? Was there no gray tree to 
 
282 MIRACLES. 
 
 which the gray moth clung? Surely such 
 a view of things must have rested on some 
 basis of fact. We cannot accuse the Is- 
 raelites of imagining a spiritual environ- 
 ment for two thousand years. That were 
 a long stretch of fancy. They were not 
 spiritual enough ; besides, imagination does 
 not account for the Egyptians, nor for the 
 march through the desert, nor for the dis- 
 appearance of the Canaanites. 
 
 We are forced back upon the funda- 
 mental principle — organism and environ- 
 ment correspond to one another. This is 
 rational. As we have already seen, matter 
 corresponds to life. The highest form of 
 life is mental and spiritual. Matter there- 
 fore must be correlated with the spiritual 
 life. If we believe the teaching of Jesus, 
 we are bound to receive this. According 
 to Jesus also, man corresponds to God. 
 When, in human experience, the psychic 
 life is wholly given up to its supreme office 
 of suggestion and radiation, it not only 
 feeds the spirit with visions, but, exalted in 
 turn by the spirit and surcharged with 
 spirit force, it acts upon matter in a direct 
 and causative way, independently of the 
 
MIRACLES. 283 
 
 organs ; it radiates the creative, causative 
 spirit. The Hebrew writers tell us plainly 
 that these wonders were not their work ; 
 they were caused by God's Word and 
 Spirit. This agrees with the law of hu- 
 man revelation, with the individual human 
 organism: why should it not have been 
 the case with that vast Hebrew organism? 
 A tremendous corporate psychism stored 
 up for five hundred years reaches a crisis. 
 Why should it not break forth first into 
 phantasms of transcendent spiritual glory, 
 and then put forth corresponding power 
 over matter? Why not surely, if it was 
 the organism of Almighty God, which had 
 been more and more deeply penetrated 
 by his life and surcharged by his Spirit ? 
 Consider that this was the sole interpreta- 
 tive organism selected and designed to 
 radiate, both the spirit and idea of God 
 in his relations to the world, and the laws 
 growing out of that relationship. These 
 laws control matter ; all progress is condi- 
 tioned on them. Why should not God 
 and these laws be focused, as it were, 
 through a miracle and sign ? It is the 
 only way they could be refracted to the 
 
284 MIRACLES. 
 
 spiritual eye of that age. A lens that 
 does not correspond to the eye cannot 
 develop it. The legality, the symbolism, 
 the visions, all stood together; they consti- 
 tuted a moving drama of God in his world. 
 It is inconceivable that the drama came by 
 chance. Man could not have constructed 
 it, not even Moses comprehended it. It 
 must have been developed by Him who is 
 the innermost cause of all evolution, the 
 life of every organism ; and if He con- 
 structed it and led it on its path, why 
 should He not have done precisely what 
 the Hebrew writers represent? — why not 
 have caused the environment to complete 
 the drama? It certainly could not have 
 been developed without some such envi- 
 ronment. It would have been a lame kind 
 of drama without it, — only half the truth, 
 and the smaller half at that. And this 
 brinofs me to the value of the miracle as 
 presented by the sacred writers. It was 
 never an isolated prodigy, or a mere proof 
 of God's power : it was always an essential, 
 coherent part of the spiritual drama ; nay, 
 it was the act by which the drama touched 
 God's throne. 
 
MIRACLES. 285 
 
 It is impossible to read the Hebrew 
 Scriptures sympathetically and not per- 
 ceive that, to the minds of the writers, the 
 servitude under the Pharaohs was some- 
 thing more than a literality. That groan- 
 ing under the yoke, that cry to God against 
 the oppressor, that struggle of the human 
 spirit against a crushing materialism, the 
 fact that the enslaved people were them- 
 selves the objects of God's choice, and that 
 it was by this very experience that He was 
 shaping them for his purpose, certainly 
 stood for a universal law. No human 
 soul can awake to the realm of ideality 
 without realizing the tyranny of the mate- 
 rial world ; yet it is under the very pressure 
 of that tyranny that aspiration is devel- 
 oped, and the choicest spirits prepared for 
 their work ; the march " out of the land 
 of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," 
 stands forever, as it stood to the Hebrew 
 prophets, an allegory of all spiritual pro- 
 o-ress: every human spirit has its Pha- 
 raoh, and the day of the departure out of 
 Egypt was All-Souls' day. The plagues 
 of Egypt were, undeniably, fit symbols 
 of those direful portents, those loathsome 
 
286 MIRACLES. 
 
 parasites, those foul corruptions and fatal 
 judgments, that everywhere attend a neg- 
 lect to heed the cry of the human soul 
 against the oppressive materialism that is 
 destroying it. They are but the retroac- 
 tions of a wide-sweeping social law. But 
 it needs the miracle of Israel to teach the 
 fact that social law takes in God ; they 
 reckon ill who count Him outside of their 
 social evolution. The Passover, too, was 
 a solemn shadow of a spiritual law that 
 runs through history. The Israelites, di- 
 vided from the Egyptians by their sym- 
 bolic attitude, sitting in the dead of the 
 nisfht within closed doors with staves in 
 their hands, spurning that luxury of wdiich 
 the leaven was a type, ready to take dis- 
 tasteful bread and bitter herbs if only they 
 might be free, sharing their sacrificial feast 
 with God as though they would share 
 their Father's livelihood with Him (the 
 blood of their victim for a sign upon the 
 door-post), stood for that type of man in 
 whose favor God ever discriminates and 
 whom God ever leads ; for the great prin- 
 ciple of judgment in God's providence is 
 this : those men whose consciences can be 
 
MIRACLES. 287 
 
 awakened only by the dreadful effects of 
 retroactive law must have their revelations 
 of God in such sort ; but those that can be 
 touched by the sacrificial souls whom God 
 sends to suffer for them, — to them the 
 Father's own sacrifice becomes a sufficient 
 revelation for the conscience, and they are 
 graciously led out of all bondage. 
 
 The cloud, also, and the pillar of fire, by 
 which Israel were guided, are surely both 
 type and prophecy of that divine manifes- 
 tation experienced by Jesus and promised 
 to his disciples, — a manifestation which 
 means not only guidance but companion- 
 ship ; nay, more than this, the type has its 
 fulfillment in that brooding Providence, 
 that shadow of God's wing, which enables 
 the disciplined follower of Christ to cry 
 out with peculiar exultation, " He leadeth 
 me." The bringing of Israel into that 
 place of trial, the Red Sea before them, the 
 army of Pharaoh at their backs, is a touch 
 of spiritual experience drawn to the life : 
 it is a touch of the true Hebraism also ; 
 the whole national history lies in it as in 
 a germ. 
 
 For, in the Hebrew account, faith was 
 
288 MIRACLES. 
 
 the one great vital principle which coordi- 
 nated the organism with God's character 
 and purpose. I do not mean that sort of 
 passive, indifferent faith that the subject 
 of hypnotism has in the operator: I mean 
 the turning of the better nature to God, 
 the voluntary response of the conscience, 
 the moral affections, and the will to God's 
 moral commands and spiritual character. 
 The faith referred to is like that of the 
 child when it responds to the spiritual 
 care, love, and direction of the parent. It 
 is the beginning of moral reciprocity, of 
 a mutual holy affection ; it is the first step 
 in the evolution of the animal toward the 
 spiritual life. This actual moral recipro- 
 city of the individual Israelite with his 
 God was, so to speak, the spinal cord of 
 the whole organism ; here its permanent 
 results were stored up ; here began the 
 formation of the true spiritual perception, 
 which was, as has been already pointed 
 out, inclusive of the whole soul. It was 
 by the development of faith in the individ- 
 ual man that the entire life of Israel was 
 to be purified and spiritualized, the eye 
 made single and the vision clear. All this 
 
MIRACLES. 289 
 
 was, of course, as inseparable from the 
 revelatory process as the making of better 
 object-glasses is from the revelations of 
 astronomy. The object-glass is the final 
 coordinating fact in the astronomical reve- 
 lation ; so likewise it was this eye of faith 
 which was the final fact in the coordina- 
 tion of the Hebrew organism with God's 
 Spirit. The Scripture admits that there 
 were psychic wonders produced by psychic 
 organisms, subjective wonders produced 
 by human witchery, demoniac wonders 
 produced by organisms surrendered to evil 
 powers ; but the wonderful works of God 
 required not only psychic but moral faith, 
 a mind actively and passively surrendered 
 to the Holy Ghost, for the miracle itself 
 was a token of the mind of the Spirit. By 
 faith they passed through the Red Sea as 
 on dry land. Whenever faith failed, the 
 organism was wrecked, it was no longer 
 in the pathway of the divine mind ; there- 
 fore whatever path led to faith was, for the 
 Hebrew, good strategy. As I have said, 
 nothing could be more true to the Hebrew 
 thought than this. Of course I am speak- 
 ing of the old Hebrew thought, not of the 
 
290 MIR A CLES. 
 
 modern Judaism which is its corpse. God 
 leads men according to their structure: 
 the path of development for an organism 
 must correspond to the organism ; the 
 leading, therefore, of the Israelites by the 
 fiery pillar into this position of acute trial 
 for their faith, where there was no chance 
 whatever for material help, where every 
 energy must be turned in upon faith and 
 the divine must be brought to the front, 
 is a perfect carrying out of the spiritual 
 drama. 
 
 By just such processes spirituality is 
 developed universally. And when Moses, 
 himself a wondrous personal symbol of 
 the divine sacrifice, stood before the sea 
 and lifted up his shepherd's staff, — the 
 memento of his suffering for Israel, the 
 sceptre of his divine leadership, the sym- 
 bol of God's own Headship, — then, from 
 that unseen environment that compasses 
 us all about, there came the answer, 
 swift, awful, majestic, which completed 
 the drama, which flashed forth the mind 
 of God, and showed the interpretation 
 of life to be His. It is time there was 
 an end to that talk about the silliness 
 
MIRACLES. 291 
 
 and ignorance of those who beHeve in the 
 miracles : there is no soUd ground for such 
 abuse ; the miracles are not unreasonable. 
 There is surely nothing unreasonable in 
 the position of Christ, that nature and the 
 supernatural are correlated with one an- 
 other, and that God's Word is the supreme 
 natural force with which all other forces 
 stand together or are coordinated; as a 
 mere hypothesis it is quite as reasonable as 
 any. And, if this is not unreasonable, why 
 should any of its applications be unrea- 
 sonable ? 
 
 Moreover, such a miraculous organism 
 agrees with God's method of specialization; 
 the human race is like a body having 
 different members, each of which con- 
 tributes to the upbuilding of the whole. 
 Thus in each race there is developed a 
 specific value. It was an essential thing 
 that psychism should be lifted out of the 
 mire, selected, sanctified, and erected into 
 an organ for divine illumination through 
 an environment that nutrified it to the 
 utmost ; but it takes only a glance to see 
 that this could not be a common human 
 experience. There are other organs, quite 
 
292 MIRACLES. 
 
 as important to manhood as the psychic, 
 that must needs be developed at its ex- 
 pense. To bring out the physical powers 
 and the economic faculties, there is needed 
 the pressure of a strictly mechanical en- 
 vironment : put the crumbs persistently 
 close to the nest of the bird and he will 
 have neither wing nor brain worth speak- 
 ing of. Man being as he is, it is necessary 
 that he should have to struggle for exist- 
 ence ; that he should be surrounded by a 
 coercive environment not too suggestive 
 of divine gentleness; that nature should 
 present itself to him as an inflexible series 
 of forces driving him out from his vision 
 of paradise, and compelling him to till the 
 ground from which he was taken, which 
 ground, also, stimulates his will and in- 
 ventiveness by its bringing forth of weeds 
 and thistles. Indeed, taking men as a 
 whole, there is never a time when they do 
 not need this compulsory aspect of nature. 
 Lead a man by visions wholly and it will 
 stunt his intellect; feed him on miracles 
 and he becomes lazy and egotistic. It 
 is good for the moral nature, too, that a 
 man should feel his weakness and depend- 
 
MIRACLES. 293 
 
 ence, and learn the great lesson of pa- 
 tience by this mechanical aspect of things. 
 So will he creep closer to that Infinite Life 
 who alone creates and controls. But while 
 this is vastly important for his secular and 
 moral faculties, it is essential to his spir- 
 itual affections, and to the growth of his 
 moral character as a whole, that he should 
 have significant providences suggesting 
 the presence and care of the Creator, — 
 answers of God to the cry of the soul. 
 
 Still more is it needful for the race that 
 this kind of special providence should 
 be carried up into a series of vast and 
 overwhelmingly suggestive coordinations, 
 standing together with some colossal or- 
 ganism of faith, so that the interior and 
 spiritual relations of life should be pro- 
 jected upon the field of human history. 
 An economy of the dramatic is essential 
 to the fair development of the race. This 
 is peculiarly true of the terrible miraculous 
 judgments. Like the legal and ceremo- 
 nial punishments, they are dramatic an- 
 thropomorphic representations of retroac- 
 tive spiritual law. If universally extended, 
 they would terrorize mankind. On the 
 
294 MIRA CLES. 
 
 other hand, their manifestation in connec- 
 tion with an interpretative organism is ten- 
 derly merciful ; it interprets to us the laws 
 of life : God does not universally and liter- 
 ally smite the Sabbath-breaker with death, 
 but whoever breaks the great law for the 
 spiritualization of work is destroyed by 
 the retroactive effect of that law. Hence 
 the tender mercy of a drama of retroac- 
 tive law. The God of the Old Testa- 
 ment miracles was no more severe than 
 the God of Jesus Christ. Severity is jus- 
 tice to the organism. That same severity 
 exists in nature. It is the legality, the 
 symbolism, the dramatization, that cause 
 the appearance of greater severity. In 
 reality all that was going on then is going 
 on to-day. If we were to sum up the 
 effect of the Divine Drama fairly, it would 
 come to this, that God is a Conditioned 
 Personality. 
 
 There is no such thing as an isolated 
 revelation of God; there is no isolated God, 
 He is self-limited ; He does not live apart ; 
 his acts are necessarily modified by other 
 lives ; his life is the manifestation of his 
 character as affected by the field of mov- 
 
MIRACLES. 295 
 
 ing events and personalities in which it 
 appears. So it is with a human revelation. 
 Mr. Lincoln was a man of great humanity, 
 devoted to his country, its peace, its citi- 
 zens of every section ; above all else, merci- 
 ful in disposition. Nor did his character 
 ever change in these respects ; yet, through 
 the retroactive effects of constitutional law, 
 and through the mal-organization of forces 
 brought about by the Rebellion, he became 
 to the people of the South a cruel devas- 
 tator ; nay, through his armies and gen- 
 erals, he became a man of blood, a de- 
 ceiver, a waster of homes, a destroyer of 
 thousands of husbands, brothers, fathers, 
 and the cause of untold misery to millions 
 both North and South, and this char- 
 acter he maintained to the bitter end. 
 There could be no greater contrast than 
 between Lincoln the humanitarian and 
 Lincoln the destroyer of the South. The 
 explanation is simple : the ruler who lives 
 in an organism must live according to 
 its laws. If those laws are inverted, the 
 ruler's life will take on an inverted aspect. 
 If his subjects turn the organism into 
 hell, then he, however sick at heart, must 
 
296 MIRACLES. 
 
 needs be hell's ruler, wielding hell's in- 
 strumentality with heaven's energy for 
 heaven's purpose. 
 
 So, too, with God. In man God is self- 
 limited, for man is creative; he is God's 
 chief agent for evolution, which is pro- 
 gressive organic coordination. The divine 
 and human are, therefore, two foci in all 
 development. If man so coordinates facts 
 as to make a system of sin and penalty, 
 then God must use that system of sin and 
 penalty with almighty power for the train- 
 ing of man. His action must correspond 
 to the organism. That is God's justice. 
 Behind it is God's love. So the Jehovah 
 of the Old Testament is throughout a God 
 self-limited by man's creative power, a God 
 whose sorrow can no more be fathomed 
 than his love, his patience, or his hope. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 In the celebrated discussion between Dr. 
 Wace and Mr. Huxley, on the claims of 
 Christianity, Dr. Wace appeals to the life of 
 Christ, to which Mr. Huxley repHes, What 
 is the life of Christ ? For himself he con- 
 fesses that he gives up the question in de- 
 spair. The attempt to construct, out of the 
 fragments and myths that have come down 
 to us, a rational life, seems to him like the 
 attempt to put together the vast remains 
 of some unknown prehistoric animal. 
 
 No illustration could be happier ; it for- 
 cibly characterizes all the rationalistic at- 
 tempts at a life of Jesus, from Strauss 
 down. They are learned, but they are all, 
 like Mr. Eber's Rameses, anachronisms. 
 In each case the critics have absolutely 
 discarded the position in which they found 
 things. They have rejected the Gospels 
 as utterly untrustworthy, because of the 
 
298 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 miraculous element that runs throuorh 
 them. In fact, at the bottom of all their 
 trouble lies an entire failure to understand 
 the organism and environment out of 
 which Jesus was developed. They are 
 acute, but their circle of observation has 
 been too narrow. 
 
 Their premise is that the social organ- 
 ism has always been alike, as regards the 
 miraculous ; but this premise can never be 
 proved. Indeed, the opposite fact is more 
 and more coming to light. These critics 
 have therefore been like a body of scien- 
 tists who, discovering in Siberia the re- 
 mains of an animal evidently belonging 
 to the tropics, have refused to accept the 
 evidence of juxtaposition, articulation and 
 general correspondence, simply because 
 such a structure could not exist in a cold 
 climate. Should it turn out that Siberia 
 had at one time presented a tropical en- 
 vironment, their whole position would be 
 undermined. The same thing holds true 
 of Christ's life. Environment is the clue 
 to construction here. Once admit the 
 facts just presented in regard to the He- 
 brew organism, and the problem of con- 
 
THE FULFILLER. 299 
 
 struction is finished for us ; the life of Jesus 
 becomes perfectly rational : it corresponds 
 throughout to nature and to God, and is 
 coherent in all its parts. And this is a 
 great relief simply from an intellectual 
 point of view, for it saves us from being 
 obliged to swallow the statement that the 
 resurrection and all the other miracles, 
 characterized as they are by the most pro- 
 found spiritual significance, were actually 
 created by a few fishermen between a. d. 
 33 and A. D. 44, which is what the mythical 
 theory amounts to in a nutshell. 
 
 But if we accept the fact of the Hebrew 
 nation being not only an interpretative but 
 a formative spiritual organism for the 
 race, then the Gospels are just what we 
 should expect: their peculiar supernat- 
 uralism corresponds perfectly to nature. 
 There is no gulf between the Old Testa- 
 ment and the New. As we read its 
 pages, we are still looking into the great 
 organism of occult force which, along 
 with its upward evolution, has here and 
 there degenerated and gone to seed in 
 witchcraft, demonism, and resulting forms 
 of nervous disease. The heads of the 
 
300 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 nation have departed from the pathway of 
 faith, and have led the people into lifeless 
 dogmas and traditions, vi^hile at the same 
 time they have clung to their hypnotic 
 phenomena. The threatened judgment of 
 Jehovah has come upon them, — they are 
 heavily chastened. Chastening has driven 
 the better part of the people back upon 
 God. Furthermore, the mightiest of all 
 the prophets has arisen in this hour of 
 extremity and profoundly touched the con- 
 science of the nation. The true pyschic 
 element in the Hebrew stock has mean- 
 while not lost ground. It has been refined 
 and purified for a nobler work. We see it 
 flashing forth here and there in visions like 
 those of Simeon, Anna, and John the 
 Baptist, or welling up into prophetic psalm- 
 ody as in the case of Zachariah and Eliza- 
 beth, and in the so-called Magnificat of 
 Mary the mother of Jesus. These psalms 
 and visions have in them the same quality 
 of inspiration. The soul is evidently en- 
 tranced ; the people who utter them are 
 simple ; they have in them no permanent 
 gift of genius ; their words are plainly the 
 effect of sudden religious ecstasy. Yet 
 
THE FULFILLER. 301 
 
 not only is their language sublime and the 
 sensibility singularly pure, but the hope 
 which they express is logical, — it corre- 
 sponds to the facts. There is in it an in- 
 describably pathetic intuition. The hour 
 of Israel's redemption has come. Jehovah 
 is about to appear; his way must be pre- 
 pared, his paths made straight. It is more- 
 over the hour of parturition ; the outcome 
 of a national life is at hand, — miracle and 
 prophecy and sign are to be fulfilled. The 
 king of Israel, the son of David, is to be 
 born, and at this point the vision of Joseph 
 so often rejected by modern critics is the 
 most coherent of all : " Thou shalt call 
 his name Joshua, for he shall save his peo- 
 ple from their sins." Here is a step for- 
 ward. The salvation which the first Joshua 
 brought to Israel was external, it was a 
 symbol or drama ; the new Joshua was to 
 bring about the thing dramatized, deliver- 
 ance from sin, or, in other words, from those 
 violations of spiritual law which, in their 
 outward effect, are ever turning society 
 back into Egyptian darkness and bondage. 
 Thus Joseph's vision completes the pro- 
 phecies and brings us to the real hope 
 
302 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 of Israel, the final office of a divine revela- 
 tor. It corresponds to the evolution of the 
 organism. So, too, with the vision of the 
 shepherds at Bethlehem. We have still 
 before us the divine drama, but how won- 
 derfully has it developed ! It has followed 
 the law of revelation. Sternly, through 
 ages, has the flesh been chastened and sub- 
 ordinated to the spirit, the Psyche to the 
 Pneuma. The outward symbol has been 
 more and more tempered to the inward 
 truth ; miracles have been blending with 
 special providences, and they in turn have 
 been disclosing more of natural causation ; 
 the lens of revelation is becoming more 
 transparent, less refractive, and, despite 
 the hypocrisy of their leaders, the soul of 
 the true Israel has become more spiritual- 
 ized, more single of eye and pure of heart 
 and simple of faith, more humble, too, be- 
 fore the Divine Word, more entirely plastic 
 under the influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 We have a wonderful expression of this, 
 in that vision of the pure virgin, oppressed 
 by the suffering of her people, to whom 
 there comes an angel, saying, " Fear not, 
 Mary: thou shalt conceive and bring forth 
 
THE FULFILLER. 303 
 
 a son, and call his name Joshua. He shall 
 be great, and shall be called the Son of the 
 Most High, and the Lord God shall give 
 unto him the throne of his father David, 
 and of his kingdom there shall be no end." 
 Nothing, I say, could more entirely cor- 
 respond to development of the Hebrew- 
 organism than such a vision. It has in- 
 deed been simulated. So the ideal reality 
 is always simulated by the myth, the per- 
 fect type by the imperfect. Other pure 
 virgins, whose souls were taken up with 
 their country and their God, have fallen 
 into ecstasies, which have proved in their 
 smaller way prophetic. It is reasonable, 
 it coincides with nature, that the grand- 
 est spiritual organism the world has 
 ever seen, that of the Divine Logos itself, 
 should, as it comes to its great birth-hour, 
 have its pure virgin with her vision of de- 
 liverance. The Hebrew organism had ever 
 two foci, two centres of vitality, the divine 
 and human, these two becoming more and 
 more interpenetrative. It corresponds to 
 this fact that they should at last meet in one 
 human being, and that to her who in the 
 zenith of her holy faith says, " Behold the 
 
304 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 handmaid of Jehovah : be it unto me 
 according to thy word," it should be an- 
 swered, " The Holy Ghost shall come upon 
 thee, and the power of the Highest shall 
 overshadow thee: therefore the progeny 
 shall be called Holy, the Son of God." 
 Mary's vision, like that of Joseph, is true 
 to the revelatory law. 
 
 In the Hebrew history we see that God 
 is revealed by conditioning himself. Nay, 
 more, in every human life God's own life is 
 conditioned, the Logos is present, — it is the 
 innermost centre of vitality. So it is with 
 a man, so with a nation. When the human 
 soul becomes conscious of its coordination 
 with the Divine Soul, that is revelation. In 
 the whole development of Israel we have 
 the spectacle of the Divine Soul drawing 
 closer to the soul of Israel, more and more 
 deeply penetrating it, and awakening it to 
 consciousness. The coordination is more 
 and more complete and subtle. Now at 
 last there comes a specific and crowning 
 organ of The Life. Earth is ready to be 
 fructified from above, and so heaven comes 
 to earth. Yes, that final revelation comes 
 in which the two foci are united under one 
 
THE FULFILLER. 305 
 
 conscious personality. The man is now 
 conscious of the God that is conditioned 
 in his own existence. It is the final in- 
 terpretative step. The true Joshua, who 
 leads man into the spiritual world, must 
 have in himself the distinct consciousness 
 both of the human and divine. For us he 
 spans the chasm of Infinity. Thus at the 
 birth of Jesus the drama reaches the shore 
 of eternity. The organ of eternity ap- 
 pears in the world in that form best fitted 
 to radiate forth reality, and to deliver us 
 from the spell of worldly lives, a little babe 
 lying in a manger. It is all a drama of the 
 conditioned God. We have had in the Old 
 Testament the drama of authority, law, re- 
 bellion, punishment. We come now to the 
 drama of the Divine Personal Life. The 
 first was the conditioned Lawgiver ; now 
 it is the conditioned Father. That is the 
 vision of Mary and Joseph, as we analyze 
 it ; and it corresponds to such a vision that 
 the heavens should open, and that upon 
 the humble laboring -man there should 
 break forth the glory and the psalmody of 
 heaven, " Unto you is born this day, in the 
 city of David, a Saviour, which is the Mes- 
 
306 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 siah, the Lord." Nor could anything be 
 more significant than the angels' song, " On 
 earth peace in the men of his goodwill." 
 This thought, too, is organic. Peace is 
 not a thing that can be poured on men 
 like water; it goes with a certain type of 
 manhood, of which type Jesus is the stem. 
 It is impossible not to feel the profound 
 significance of these stories relating to the 
 man of the Logos. The birth of Jesus is 
 not the mere coming into the world of an 
 individual human being ; it is a revelation, 
 — the climacteric of a revelatory and for- 
 mative organism in which both the divine 
 and human psychism had been stored up 
 age after age for the purposes of the Holy 
 Ghost ; it is the liftinorof the divine drama 
 into its final and personal form ; it is the 
 beginning of the last revelation of God 
 to man, and this the heart of humanity 
 has vaguely but powerfully felt. 
 
 Detach the birth of Jesus from the dra- 
 matic organism to which it belongs, and 
 you can do nothing with the life of Christ. 
 You cannot explain it in isolation ; you 
 cannot coordinate it with any other envi- 
 ronment. 
 
THE FULFILLER. 307 
 
 This brings us to the question, Did 
 Jesus himself understand this to be the 
 position of affairs ? His own language 
 shows that he did, and it is at this very 
 point that Strauss, Renan, and their fol- 
 lowers have entirely failed to portray the 
 real Jesus. Indeed, they did not grasp 
 the situation themselves, for they were not 
 true disciples of Jesus. They did not fol- 
 low his teaching in regard to perception. 
 The spirit of Christ is the clue to the 
 mind of Christ. Nothing is clearer than 
 that Jesus regarded himself as the child 
 of the organism, Amenable to its laws and 
 institutions. The temple was his Father's 
 house. He obeyed the laws, he conformed 
 to the symbolism and to the whole insti- 
 tution ; he directed his disciples to do the 
 same. " The scribes and the Pharisees 
 sit in Moses' seat," he said : " all things 
 therefore, whatsoever they command you, 
 do." He directed the leper, whom he 
 healed, to present himself to the priest, and 
 offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded. 
 He accepted the Hebrew Scriptures ; they 
 were his guide in the sorest temptation. 
 He preached from them ; he based his own 
 
308 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 gospel on them ; his life and death were in 
 obedience to them, as he understood them. 
 
 Very soon, however, there developed in 
 his life and teaching an element that ap- 
 peared antagonistic to the Mosaic system. 
 His attitude was not merely sympathetic, 
 it was also critical. Speedily it penetrated 
 and rejected a mass of tradition and the- 
 ology which, in the thought of the Jewish 
 leaders, was inseparable from the sacred 
 institution. This, to a certain class of 
 minds, seemed a menace to the whole 
 structure ; as to that structure itself, how- 
 ever, He was throughout profoundly rev- 
 erent. This is instanced in his solemn 
 keeping of the Passover, as a preparation 
 for his death. 
 
 But here also, where he recognized di- 
 vine authority, he distinguished sharply 
 between form and principle, penetrating 
 everywhere behind forms to their elemen- 
 tal ideas and forward to universal applica- 
 tions. Thus, even when he was obeying 
 the form, his bearing, language, and per- 
 sonality were so full of this larger idea, so 
 charged with the spirit of the thing, that 
 the letter itself seemed to sink into relative 
 
THE FULFILLER. 309 
 
 insio^nificance. The institution seemed to 
 dwindle before the man. The living forces, 
 relationships, principles of the spiritual 
 world stood forth in relief. A mighty 
 spirit is a great interpreter. It puts men 
 in touch with its own inner meaning. 
 . There is no crucible like love, and so, 
 for the first time in the world, men began 
 to feel the process of spiritual analysis go- 
 ing on spontaneously in their minds. The 
 bondage of legality began to disappear, 
 and that separation of organic principles 
 from outward forms, which is one great 
 characteristic of Christ's religion, was fast 
 taking place. Nor did Christ interfere with 
 it. Nay, he welcomed it. I am speaking of 
 the process as we see it to-day in the story 
 of the Gospels. It is this which constitutes 
 the gospel. At every step we see this tak- 
 ing place. The mind and heart of Christ 
 radiate forth the reality of things. We see 
 that he has penetrated in every direction to 
 the vitalities of the religion ; behind that 
 institution of legality, symbolism, sacrifice, 
 he has perceived the true spiritual world. 
 Behind the external law he has detected 
 the law of the developing organism, and 
 
310 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 that law of revelation by which the human 
 spirit is brought into full reciprocity with 
 God. He has pierced to the fundamental 
 element of law and perceived it to be love. 
 He has looked steadily at Mount Sinai, and 
 through it to the eternal Fatherhood. He 
 has seen that the fire was a symbol of the 
 hot anger of love at that which destroys its 
 own beloved, the child of its heart. He 
 has seen the meaning of the Hebrew the- 
 ocracy, and with it of all theocracies or 
 kingdoms ; has recognized that they are a 
 temporary phase in the evolution of so- 
 ciety, — that their final outcome must be 
 brotherhood ; the final king, a revelation 
 of the Father, disclosing the law of the 
 organism, which is the law of love, to the 
 disciplined and developed human percep- 
 tion ; so that the law is no longer the 
 yoke of an outward statute, but the recog- 
 nized necessity of the soul itself. He sees, 
 also, that the final constraint of a God- 
 kingdom must be, not force, but the know- 
 ledge and love of God. This is the ultimate 
 authority ; toward that sceptre all creation 
 moves. 
 
 These ideas, and their corresponding 
 
THE FULFILLER. 311 
 
 emotions, shine through every step of 
 Christ's obedience to the Jewish law; they 
 irradiate his Jewish visions, prophecies, and 
 even his Jewish way of putting things, for 
 the whole language of Jesus was Hebraic. 
 He talked like a Hebrew prophet or rabbi. 
 The Hebrew never analyzed things, he pic- 
 tured them. Subordination he expressed 
 by negation. If he wished to convey the 
 idea that money-getting must be strictly 
 subordinated to culture, he said, " Seek in- 
 struction and not silver." If he wished to 
 express the supremacy of devotion in a 
 man's life, he pictured him as meditating 
 on God's word day and night; in other 
 words, the truth of supremacy was pre- 
 sented by a picture drawn at the contrast- 
 ive moment when the subordinated thino: 
 is cast aside, and that instantaneous photo- 
 graph stands for the principle, the fixed 
 choice, by which one thing is subordinated 
 to another. This method of presentation 
 is common to-day among relatively primi- 
 tive peoples. The Jews always employed 
 it. Sometimes it blinded them, as did 
 the rest of their symbolism. But it was 
 a way of showing the truth necessary to 
 
312 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 a rudimentary nature, and Christ always 
 taught thus in public. To the men who 
 followed him because of the loaves and 
 fishes he said, " Labor not for the meat 
 that perisheth." True, he had just been 
 giving them that meat, and certainly he did 
 not wish them to give up their industrial 
 habits. But it was the flashing forth of 
 the great idea of a supreme industry, and 
 the subordination of all other industries to 
 it. So, also, to his disciples he said, " Re- 
 sist not evil." He never meant for a mo- 
 ment to abrogate the right or duty of self- 
 defense. On the contrary, at one time, 
 when they were approaching an hour of 
 peril, he said to his disciples, " He that 
 hath no sword, let him sell his garment and 
 buy one." Nor did he mean that a man 
 was tamely to bear evil when it menaced 
 the institutions of church or state, for with 
 a whip of cords, and by that far more 
 terrible constraint, the menace of his own 
 spirit, he drove out the polluters of the 
 temple and overturned the tables of the 
 money-changers. Even his illustration, 
 " If a man smite thee on one cheek, turn 
 to him the other also," he did not literally 
 
THE FULFILLER. 313 
 
 conform to, but, when he was illegally 
 smitten, replied by a calm appeal to the 
 sense of right in his adversary. Such say- 
 ings were, in short, a part of the Hebrew 
 pictorialism ; it was the natural develop- 
 ment of a teaching that had its root in vis- 
 ions and symbols. The " resist not evil " 
 was the flashing forth of the truth that 
 there was a higher, a supreme way of over- 
 coming evil, namely, with good, and that 
 this was always to be put foremost, while 
 the harsher and more violent methods were 
 to be subordinated to it. This pictorial 
 method often landed him, as it did other 
 prophets and rabbis, in paradoxes, such as, 
 " He that loseth his life shall find it." But 
 through all this Jewish method the life of 
 Jesus himself shone with so clear a radi- 
 ance of thought, feeling, and purpose that 
 his flashes of truth did not mislead his 
 disciples as one might have supposed 
 they would : here, too, the outward forms 
 seemed to melt before the clear and steady 
 outshining of a spiritual principle. 
 
 So, also, with regard to miracles. As a 
 Hebrew prophet and revelator he wrought 
 them. He conformed to the type in this 
 
314 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 respect. Nor did he disparage miracles 
 as signs of the Father's love and care. As 
 •symbols of the unseen coordination be- 
 tween God and his world, he gladly per- 
 formed them. But as prodigies, standing 
 apart from the eye of faith and from the 
 revelatory law, he rejected them, and he 
 sternly rebuked the tendency to crave 
 them as a logical proof of God's power or 
 presence. Upon spiritual souls seeking to 
 find God, but deficient in spiritual feeling, 
 he urged attention to his wonderful works 
 as a means of awakening the soul to the 
 power and love of God. " Is your heart 
 yet hardened } " he said to his disciples who 
 gave a hard interpretation to his teaching ; 
 " have you forgotten the miracle of the 
 loaves } " 
 
 Yet there is no question that his w^hole 
 attitude and teaching conveyed the idea 
 that the sign was nothing to the thing sig- 
 nified, and that the attitude of the Jewish 
 leaders had been perverse in refusing to 
 receive the light, and warmth, and strength 
 of God that shone through his mighty 
 deeds. Having their own hearts with- 
 drawn from God, they detached the lens 
 
THE FULFILLER. 315 
 
 from the light, making much of it as a 
 thing by itself, and analyzing its intellec- 
 tual value as a proof. 
 
 This led them to lose absolutely the in- 
 terpretative value of the miracle, and also 
 its evolution. They clamored for a sign 
 as a proof of his Messiahship, but they 
 could not discern the signs of the times, 
 namely, the development of their own 
 organism and of its revelations to a 
 less refractive, less psychic, and more 
 spiritual type. The naturalism of the 
 supernatural was becoming more and 
 more apparent. So, also, was its causa- 
 tion, the power of the human life, when 
 coordinated with God's life. Failing to 
 penetrate the sign, the whole Pharisaic 
 theology became false ; it not only threw 
 the aspect of anti-naturalism and arbi- 
 trariness about the entire Hebrew struc- 
 ture, but it absolutely failed to grasp the 
 fact that the organism was a develop- 
 ment, that God's personal love for man 
 was really at the core of it, and that the 
 revelation must progress from law to love. 
 But this, to the mind of the new Joshua, 
 was clear. The drama that began with 
 
3l6 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 miracles of God's judgments must end 
 with miracles of divine relief. Sinai, with 
 its dramatization of God's fiery soul and 
 of the awful distance between it and 
 the animalized human life, must give 
 place to a drama of reconciliation through 
 the conditioned and sacrificed life of 
 God. Of all this they had not the 
 faintest inkling, any more than Nicode- 
 mus had of the law of spiritual percep- 
 tion by which one enters the God-realm. 
 This made them reject the theocracy of 
 Jesus with the utmost scorn ; it filled them 
 with supremest contempt for his simple 
 spiritual authority, and also for the mira- 
 cles of divine comfort, support, and heal- 
 ing by which he authenticated it. The 
 idea of the conditioned, humanized, sac- 
 rificial life of God, descended from its 
 throne over nature to suffer for and min- 
 ister to them, did not penetrate their 
 minds. Christ's spiritual view of the in- 
 stitution antagonized their material con- 
 ception of it. His very name, Joshua, was 
 a mockery to their false national hope. 
 Theirs was not, in fact, the true Hebrew 
 institution ; it was a mechanical travesty of 
 
THE FULFILLER. 317 
 
 it, which the hierarchy had built in their 
 half-conscious political ambition. In this 
 false structure form was uppermost ; spirit 
 was of small account. The inevitable result 
 was spiritual stupidity and bondage. Natu- 
 rally, every step of this true Joshua, in his 
 large, free, significant, spiritual observance 
 of the law, had a tendency to topple over 
 the false system. He was, indeed, leading 
 Israel out of the wilderness. Before such 
 a life the spirit of the Jewish institution 
 came irresistibly to the top. Hebraism, in 
 the hands of Jesus, was like a burning- 
 glass, — the sun shone through it and 
 started a flame of love ; righteousness be- 
 gan to be spontaneous ; obedience became 
 free ; unselfishness was the highest self- 
 interest ; men gladly left all to follow 
 Jesus, though he led them through a 
 strait gate, for w^hile he walked in the 
 childish footprints of the Jewish law, the 
 pathway was transfigured by his feet. Yet 
 so identified in men's minds w^as the He- 
 brew institution with the theology and 
 ecclesiasticism of the Pharisees that they 
 failed to grasp the actual situation. When 
 ecclesiasticism tottered, they thought it 
 
3l8 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 was divine revelation which was about to 
 fall ; when forms relaxed their grasp, they 
 thought it was the moral law which was 
 weakening ; when love came to the front, 
 they imagined that justice and punishment 
 were passing by. The rise of liberty sig- 
 nified to them the end of accountability. 
 This led Jesus to define his position. He 
 was not so concerned for his enemies as 
 for his own disciples, lest their consciences 
 should be blunted by this conception of 
 things. Therefore he took pains at an 
 early period, when his popularity was at 
 its height, to call his disciples apart and 
 make them a formal address, in which he 
 sketched, after his pictorial fashion, the 
 spiritual form that the theocracy was to 
 assume under his reign ; he pictured its 
 happiness as springing from a penitent, 
 purified, and spiritualized moral nature. 
 " Think not," said he, " that I am come to 
 destroy the law or the prophets. I am not 
 come to destroy, but to fulfill." Now, from 
 his illustrations and his position in regard 
 to the supernatural, already considered, it 
 is plain that he meant such a fulfillment 
 as we see constantly going on in nature. 
 
THE FULFILLER. 319 
 
 Nature's method of fulfillment is the 
 organic. The law and the prophets con- 
 stituted, as we have already seen, a natural 
 organism of God. It was interpretative. 
 It was the crowning revelatory organ- 
 ism of the world, the last step in the 
 coordinating process by which God re- 
 vealed himself. But this revelatory func- 
 tion was inseparable from the process 
 of purification and spiritualization, since 
 the human soul itself was both eye and 
 object-glass, and the human conscience 
 was, so to speak, the optic focus ; there- 
 fore the Hebrew organism was the matrix 
 for a spiritual type of conscience, a holy 
 manhood corresponding to God. So, 
 when Jesus said that he came to fulfill, he 
 meant that he was to be the new and final 
 organ of revelation and righteousness, — a 
 stem coming out of the Hebrew plant to 
 take up into itself and complete the spir- 
 itualizing process, bringing it ultimate 
 fruition in his own life. This is the only 
 intelligible view of his meaning, the only 
 one that agrees with all his utterances and 
 with the facts in the case. The old theo- 
 los;ical notion, that he fulfilled the law for 
 
320 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 US as a substitute, is positively antago- 
 nistic, not only to the moral nature, but to 
 the general tenor of Christ's teaching, and 
 particularly to such expressions as imme- 
 diately follow his statement. But the con- 
 ception of an organic fulfillment fits the 
 exact situation ; the apparent antagonism 
 of Jesus to the law and the prophets was 
 precisely of the kind that appears to take 
 place in nature at the beginning of any 
 new stage of development. The new 
 organ is, at first, a continuation of the 
 old; the stem is, at first, hardly differen- 
 tiated from the root. Moreover, it has in 
 it precisely the same forces, and it is sub- 
 ordinated to the root and dependent upon 
 it for sustenance ; but very soon it appears 
 that the forces are being newly centred, 
 and the whole structure materially modi- 
 fied and irresistibly carried upward to a 
 new method of coordination with the air 
 and sunlight, while at the same time there 
 remains a reciprocity with the old struc- 
 ture. It was in this sense, unquestion- 
 ably, that we must understand that saying, 
 " Truly, I say, not one jot or tittle of the 
 law shall pass till all be fulfilled." 
 
THE FULFILLER. 32 1 
 
 Here we have Nature's own inflexible 
 position, — reasonable and beneficent, too, 
 as Nature herself. Not one cotyledon of 
 the tiny beech can be permitted to fall away, 
 without Nature's penalty, until the above- 
 ground stem and leaves have formed. So 
 with that ancient organism by which the 
 human conscience was coordinated with 
 God ; there is no section of it but repre- 
 sents some spiritual force or necessity. 
 Not one tittle, therefore, could be dis- 
 carded until the new organism had been 
 formed, and even then only by those moral 
 natures that had been lifted up and coor- 
 dinated with the new organism. Theo- 
 cracies, legalities, ceremonials, harsh penal- 
 ties, terrible judgments must still remain 
 a necessary matrix of the moral nature 
 for individuals or communities who have 
 not attained to coordination with the final 
 stem of revelation and righteousness. All 
 church history bears witness to this ; nay, 
 the history of the individual soul reveals 
 the same law. 
 
 Indeed, Jesus proceeds to describe one 
 of the great effects of Christianity in its 
 retroactive aspect. This higher revelatory 
 
322 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 organism, he declares, is going to bring 
 out the real significance of law. As the 
 organic force develops in Christ's king- 
 dom, it will illuminate the structure, it will 
 define relationships ; where Christ is felt 
 God's law must appear to be, what it really 
 is, no arbitrary or mechanical bondage im- 
 posed on man, but the law of our own 
 nature : its demands are those of the spir- 
 itual forces and correspondences inherent 
 in our structure ; its penalties are the in- 
 evitable results of their violation. The 
 structure is abused, and thus turned into 
 an instrument of pain. The judgments 
 of the law are these same pains which 
 follow its violation, and, as always in 
 nature, the demands, warnings, and pen- 
 alties extend to the innermost part 
 of the structure. Furthermore, viewing 
 the life of Jesus, we perceive the or- 
 ganic force to be love, which is natu- 
 ral reciprocity of spiritual affection. It 
 means genuine sonship to God and 
 brotherhood to man. The demands of the 
 law, therefore, correspond to the organic 
 force, and, as it is always with natural law, 
 even a minute departure must bring upon 
 
THE FULFILLER. 323 
 
 US both judgment and penalty. We are 
 no longer in a semi-organized molluscous 
 condition. Those who know Christ are 
 sensibly coordinated with the spiritual 
 world and penetrated by its life. The 
 higher the organism, the more exact is 
 the law ; the more a body is penetrated by 
 vitality, so much the more searching is 
 the organic demand, so much the quicker 
 and more frequently does the struc- 
 ture have to settle its account with law. 
 There is a tribunal and a penalty for 
 the smallest transgression ; and this result, 
 which everywhere attends organic pro- 
 gress, will, so Jesus declared, attend his 
 fulfillment of the law. " Ye have heard 
 that it was said to them of old time^ 
 Ye shall not kill, and whosoever shall 
 kill shall be in danger of the lower cri- 
 minal court ; but I say unto you. That 
 every one who is angry with his brother 
 shall be accountable to the lower court ; 
 and whosoever shall say to his brother, 
 Raca, shall be accountable to the Sanhe- 
 drim ; and whosoever shall say. Thou 
 fool, shall be in danger of the extreme 
 sentence of the law, having his body cast 
 
324 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 into the burning valley of Hinnom with 
 the worst malefactors. If, therefore, thou 
 art offering thy gift at the altar, and 
 there rememberest that thy brother hath 
 aught against thee, leave there thy gift 
 before the altar, and go thy way. First 
 be reconciled with thy brother, and then 
 come and offer thy gift." Reconciliation 
 is the path of righteousness. Fatherhood, 
 sonship, brotherhood, these are the organic 
 laws, and the least infraction of them is 
 a crime for which no external service can 
 atone. The Hebrew police court, the San- 
 hedrim, the execution of the criminal, and 
 the burning of his body in the valley of 
 Hinnom, are but outward expressions of 
 that irreversible law of the moral organism 
 which Jesus himself, by his very fulfillment 
 of the law, must necessarily illuminate. 
 
 Indeed, Jesus always declared that, as 
 the final organism of law, he had the re- 
 troactive work of law to fulfill ; that he 
 who was the stem of righteousness, of love, 
 of brotherhood, must also be the stem of 
 judgment. To sum up matters, he ful- 
 filled the law by becoming himself the 
 perfect outcome of the Hebrew organism. 
 
THE FULFILLER. 325 
 
 In him there was a perfect conservation 
 of forces; by him all those forces and 
 vitalities were carried up into an embodi- 
 ment that gave them universal correspond- 
 ence and coordination with all men. So 
 that in his gospel there is not only a perfect, 
 complete, and spiritual revelation of God, 
 but a potential coordination of the sinful, 
 undeveloped human life with God ; a new 
 matrix of the human conscience ; a new 
 lens for the spiritual eye, taking the place 
 of legality, of the ceremonial'yoke, of the 
 dramatic judgments. And the essential 
 force in this new organism is the condi- 
 tioned life of God, suffering under the sin 
 of humanity, and so revealing upon the 
 cross in human form the love of the Eter- 
 nal Father, which is the real cause of all 
 the laws he lays upon us, and of all the 
 penalties he inflicts. This phase of ful- 
 fillment, in which the revelation of divine 
 sacrifice takes the place of penalty and 
 legality as a matrix for the conscience, ap- 
 pears in the last supper of Jesus with his 
 disciples. There he significantly holds up 
 the Passover, which represented the whole 
 system of legality, symbolism, and organic 
 
326 THE FULFILLER. 
 
 mediation, as corresponding to himself. 
 His broken body and shed blood are to 
 be its fulfillment. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 The only natural immortality for man. 
 
 God and the human soul are the two 
 foci of the Scripture revelation. It could 
 not be otherwise, for God is know^able to 
 us only in his relation to our own facul- 
 ties. Every step in the knowledge of God 
 presupposes a step in the knowledge of 
 ourselves. Necessarily, therefore, the hu- 
 man soul occupies the foreground of the 
 Bible. Beginning with that ancient vision 
 wherein we are told that the first man de- 
 veloped into a living soul by sharing the 
 breath of God's life, there is a continuous 
 series of visions and revelatory institutions 
 by which an ever-increasing light is thrown 
 upon this same living soul. But this it is 
 which is the theme of all great revelators, 
 poets, prophets, and oracles; for all the 
 questions of divinity, of soul-culture, of 
 morals, of social development, hang upon 
 
328 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 it. If an organism is related only to the 
 soil beneath the sod, then it requires only 
 subterranean culture ; if, like the kernel of 
 corn, it is related to the upper air, then its 
 culture should be regulated largely with 
 reference to this fact. So, if the soul of 
 man has correspondences to the supernat- 
 ural world, it must be cultivated with refer- 
 ence to those correspondences. 
 
 It is absurd to talk of the uselessness of 
 theology. Theology is simply an investi- 
 gation into our higher relationships, and 
 the laws that grow out of them ; and in all 
 ages men have been unable to rid them- 
 selves of the impression that they had a 
 kinship with the supernatural. This is not 
 due to superstition, but to sensibility. The 
 profoundest natures have intuitively felt 
 certain supernatural elements within them. 
 These elements have stood together in a 
 kind of rational unity, furnishing an in- 
 ternal evidence. By the highest and most 
 trustworthy sensibilities within them, men 
 have felt the divine life in nature brood- 
 ing over them. By those same sensibili- 
 ties they have felt their relation to the 
 divine. Hence have sprung theology, 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 329 
 
 and religion; visions of God, and of 
 the soul-culture necessitated by our re- 
 lation to Him. The visions have been 
 distorted, because the sensibility was im- 
 pure, sporadic, undeveloped ; hence the in- 
 ductions were imperfect. This result was 
 increased by the fact that the reasoning 
 powers were untrained ; hence came super- 
 stitions. The light was feeble; it had a 
 short radius ; and superstitions are the 
 shadows that hang about the penumbra of 
 our light : but in the midst of all these 
 vagaries certain distinct features stand 
 forth, such as our kinship with the divine, 
 the immortality of the soul, also the neces- 
 sity and glory of sacrifice. The life that 
 sacrificed itself to the gods or the father- 
 land was heroic, divine. 
 
 To the Hebrews, and also to the Greeks, 
 the soul or Psyche was, as has been 
 pointed out, the sensuous animating life, 
 but their notion of it was rather vaeue : 
 they never sharply differentiated it from 
 the spirit ; nor had they ever, like our 
 modern scientists, discerned its precise re- 
 lation to nature as the organic force. 
 They did not therefore perceive its in- 
 
330 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 herent relationship to matter, even al- 
 though they saw it to be physical life ; 
 nor did they seize the correlative fact 
 that matter is organized by life, and that 
 by consequence the two constitute a natu- 
 ral unity: they saw that the body per- 
 ished, that the life had in itself eternal 
 spiritual qualities and relationships ; fur- 
 thermore, they could not draw the line 
 between life and .spirit. They therefore 
 conceived of the life, with its spiritual 
 attributes, as surviving after death. At 
 first their conception of the surviving 
 soul was not that of a purely immaterial 
 existence ; it was rather gaseous than im- 
 material, — a subtle element like a breath. 
 They were unable to disassociate it in their 
 mind from bodily organs, but those organs 
 were phantasms, without weight, force, 
 or indeed any of the qualities of matter ; 
 they could not embrace nor be embraced. 
 That organic quality of the soul which en- 
 ables it to enjoy and act upon the material 
 universe was forever gone. Therefore the 
 life itself was gone ; the dear one who 
 died had practically perished ; for him the 
 sweetness, the melody, and the glory of the 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 33 1 
 
 physical universe were ended. Not only 
 that, but he was forever lost to his friends ; 
 for, granted that the mind is the highest 
 and noblest part of us, still it is through 
 the warm, vivid, forceful physical life that 
 the mind is radiated to us. That is the 
 logos, the medium of contact. Take 
 away that vital element, and the noblest 
 personality has small effect upon us. For 
 it must be remembered that this physical 
 life, this organic element, is also the sen- 
 suous and the psychic, the seat of the 
 natural affections. It is by this that hu- 
 man beings are put in touch with one 
 another. It is the foundation of social 
 life and of social, evolution. It is the root 
 of all fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood, 
 brotherhood, — of all filial feeling and hu- 
 man sympathy. Take this away, and the 
 mother, the child, the friend, are ours no 
 longer, for we can no longer feel them ; 
 the coordinating element is lost. Such 
 an immortality is not real, and this fact 
 the ancients themselves fully recognized. 
 They conceived of the gods as possessing 
 bodies, and as rejoicing in eternal physical 
 force ; and the hero who was especially 
 
332 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 dear to the gods was himself translated 
 into a god, and shared that physical im- 
 mortality. But such an august experience 
 was not for the common mortal; hence the 
 despair of the ancients at the death of a 
 beloved one. We see it portrayed in the 
 pages of Virgil and Homer, and on the in- 
 scriptions of their tombs. 
 
 The Egyptians, it is true, conceived of 
 an ultimate restoration of the body ; but as 
 the process was liable to all kinds of petty 
 accidents, the consolation was dubious. 
 The Jews caught glimpses in their Scrip- 
 tures which led them to believe in a 
 bodily resurrection, but their notion of 
 it was so mechanical as to be absurd. 
 Indeed, the intellectual Sadducees re- 
 jected it. As the Greeks advanced in in- 
 tellectuality, the transcendent qualities of 
 the human mind became so apparent to 
 them that their great philosophers fancied 
 it to be a distinct entity, wholly separable 
 from the sensuous life. They conceived 
 of mind as a purely immaterial element, 
 capable of existing by itself, and even 
 antagonistic to matter. However, for 
 this position they had small evidence : 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 333 
 
 it was based upon a deductive philo- 
 sophy which we to-day regard as un- 
 sound ; nevertheless their greatest phi- 
 losophers believed in it, and fancied that 
 they could enjoy such an existence even 
 better than the present, and nothing can 
 be more pathetic than the attempt of 
 Socrates to remove the fears of his dis- 
 ciples by convincing their minds in regard 
 to the reality and sufficiency of a thing 
 against which their innate organic life 
 protested. There is no question that 
 Socrates was right as regards the testi- 
 mony of man's soul to its own divine rela- 
 tionship, and also to the transcendent value 
 of the mind or spirit. But the testimony 
 of the soul is equally strong as regards 
 the inseparability of the spirit from the 
 psychical or organic life, nor has there 
 ever been one particle of evidence for such 
 a separation. Between these two testi- 
 monies, therefore, we are driven to a hypo- 
 thesis that includes both. 
 
 Now the most glorious fact about Christ 
 is that he fulfilled all revelations, oracles, 
 myths, and expectations concerning the 
 human soul. He brought out the truth of 
 
334 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 which they were all shadows ; as Paul ex- 
 pressed it, " he brought life and immortality 
 to light." This he did by actual experi- 
 ment. He took the human soul, the sensu- 
 ous life, the psychic organic element, and 
 bore it about in his own person. He lifted 
 it out of the mire of sensuality, and showed 
 by his own life what it really was, — a word 
 of the living God, a seed-vessel of the 
 supernatural world, a radiating medium 
 for the eternal life. Its suffering and sac- 
 rifice even unto blood he showed to be the 
 mediatorial element, for by it he put men 
 in touch with God, and made them feel 
 their natural relationship to God. Having 
 thus shown that the Psyche was the 
 element of mediation or coordination be- 
 tween heaven and earth, and between men 
 themselves ; having shown that it was the 
 foundation of moral law, and of social as well 
 as spiritual evolution, — he then proceeded 
 to lay down the principle for its develop- 
 ment: he that loseth his Psyche shall 
 find it, or in other words, discover its 
 divine relationships and hidden potencies. 
 And this principle he demonstrated, for 
 he presented his psychic nature, with all 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 335 
 
 its energies conserved, to the Divine Spirit. 
 So great was his conquest over the Psy- 
 che that it was said " he offered himself 
 without spot to God," and " he poured out 
 his soul even unto death." As a result, all 
 the vast occult potencies of the Psyche 
 were unlocked, and divine wonders oc- 
 curred, such as the darkened occultism of 
 all ages has but dimly hinted at; for the 
 occultism of Jesus was possessed by the 
 Holy Ghost. All its wonders stand to- 
 gether in a rational unity, constituting a 
 drama of the soul's relationship to the 
 Father. Nor was this all. Standing in 
 the light of God as revealed through 
 nature, Jesus perceived what the soul 
 really was, — not a thing, even in its most 
 transcendent development, to be separated 
 from physical existence, but an eternal 
 organic force. He saw that if a man died 
 his Psyche w^as like a corn of wheat 
 falling into the ground. In the very pro- 
 cess of death, provided that death was a 
 surrender to the Divine Spirit, the Psyche 
 would be gathering new organic energies, 
 and would soon, like the corn of wheat, 
 clothe itself with a new body. Thus, in- 
 
336 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 stead of turning into a separate immate- 
 rial existence, and becoming, what it never 
 had been, a thing isolated from the physi- 
 cal universe, it would develop onward, by 
 a natural metamorphosis, toward a higher 
 form of organic life in a perfect unity with 
 nature. As it had originally risen from 
 the ground, like all other forms of life, so 
 it would again rise from the tomb. This 
 is the Christian doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 It is curious to see how nearly modern 
 science has approached its underlying 
 principle, for to-day the whole tendency of 
 scientific thought is not toward Aristotle's 
 position that the soul is absolutely imma- 
 terial and separable from matter, but that 
 it is a kind of life developed through 
 lower organisms and never disassociated 
 from matter, and that its sensibility is the 
 beginning of social and moral evolution. 
 Indeed, it is an amazing thing that many 
 intellectual people scoff at the idea of a 
 physical resurrection, as being a miracle 
 contrary to the uniformity of nature ; while 
 they avow their belief in an immaterial 
 immortality, a thing to which the whole 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 33/ 
 
 testimony of nature and modern science is 
 opposed, and for which there is not a shred 
 of external evidence. The story of the 
 resurrection of Jesus, as told by the evan- 
 gelists, is somewhat confused in its details, 
 as one might expect under such over- 
 whelming circumstances. The witnesses 
 were bewildered, and they did not see how 
 things stood together ; but, taking the point 
 of view maintained from the beginning 
 in this book, everything becomes clear. 
 Jesus was the outcome of the specific 
 organism of revelation. He was the man 
 of the Logos. There was in him an age- 
 long conservation of psychic energy. He 
 was, moreover, by his own will a spotless 
 and perfect organ of the Divine Spirit, and 
 the organ of spiritual vitality, life and res- 
 urrection for us all. " I am the Resurrec- 
 tion and the Life," he said. He predicted 
 that his body would not remain in the 
 tomb. Had it remained there the authori- 
 ties would have confronted the Christians 
 with it. The life returned to it, reanimated 
 it, working at the very first only slight 
 changes in it, so that his disciples were, 
 after a little, able to recognize it. Thus 
 
338 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 his physical organism continued a per- 
 fect medium for the radiation of his 
 spirit. It put his friends in touch with 
 him to the last, but was gradually meta- 
 morphosed by the great psychic law of 
 subordination to the spirit, until it as- 
 cended into the heavens. Metamorphosis 
 is one of the great facts of physical life by 
 which progress is made from lower to 
 higher forms of vitality. Spiritual meta- 
 morphosis is the teaching of the resurrec- 
 tion. This was the light of joy that burst 
 upon the heathen world with the gospel. 
 The human life itself was to rise again 
 through Christ. The lost dear ones were 
 to be restored to sense and touch as Jesus 
 was. There is in this an inherent proba- 
 bility. It is in accordance with the uni- 
 formity of nature and the law of evolution. 
 An immaterial immortality is actually 
 more opposed to evolution and to the uni- 
 formity of nature than a miracle would be, 
 and, as has been said, there is not one shred 
 of external evidence in its favor. Even 
 the philosophy on which it rests is hope- 
 lessly confused, and opposed to modern 
 psychology. Yet it will be a herculean 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 339 
 
 task to make men see the thought of 
 Jesus, so entirely have the older theolo- 
 gians covered it up with the philosophy of 
 the Greeks and schoolmen. 
 
 Paul, however, understood it; his con- 
 ception was naturalistic. In his first letter 
 to the Corinthian church he defines the 
 doctrine of the resurrection as he had 
 been in the habit of presenting it. He 
 takes up the current objection of his day 
 to a bodily resurrection. " How are the 
 dead raised, and with what body do they 
 come } " " Thou fool," he says, " this thing 
 is transpiring before you in nature ; it is 
 analogous to the sowing of a seed." Here 
 the apostle is singularly true to life, for the 
 sowinsf of a seed is the cultivation of an 
 underground organ with reference to its 
 resurrection as an aerial organ. But he 
 goes on : " Thou sowest not the body that 
 shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of 
 wheat, or of some other grain," yet each 
 kind has its own resurrection body organ- 
 ized by its own life. Organized matter is 
 not all of the same type ; even here in this 
 world there is more than one kind of flesh, 
 more than one variety of matter, arranged 
 
340 THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 by life. So likewise in God's universe 
 there is a psychic body organized by the 
 animal life, and there is also a celestial 
 body, a subtler organic product, organized 
 by the spiritualized life. 
 
 This accords, he avers, with the Scrip- 
 ture. " The first type-man developed into 
 a living Psyche ; the last type-man devel- 
 oped into a life-giving spirit." The ordi- 
 nary corruptible flesh and blood, tainted by 
 the degeneracies of the Psyche, is not able 
 to inherit the kingdom of God. Man's 
 body, like his soul, must be developed and 
 reorganized by the spiritual vitality of the 
 Christ. This must be effected by the 
 coordination of the life with Christ's life, 
 and the subjection of it to Christ's law. 
 If our culture in this world corresponds to 
 Christ's, we shall be like him. " If we be 
 planted in the likeness of his death, we 
 shall be also in the likeness of his resur- 
 rection." If our life, which is the organic 
 .principle of our bodies, takes on the sem- 
 blance and type of Christ's sacrificial life, 
 then by the universal law of nature our 
 bodies must undergo a spiritual metamor- 
 phosis after death. We shall bear the 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 341 
 
 image of the heavenly. Death will be 
 swallowed up in victory. Nothing could 
 be more naturalistic than this conception ; 
 but, unless we grasp Paul's evolutionary 
 idea of a human life developing from 
 the Psyche to the organic or life-giving 
 Pneuma, we are entirely at sea in regard 
 to his views of the resurrection. On no 
 other interpretation can his language be 
 explained ; but while he conceives of the 
 resurrection after this naturalistic fashion, 
 it is nevertheless to his mind a super- 
 natural event, an act of God's sovereign 
 will more majestic than any miracle. 
 This, however, is because Paul, like Jesus, 
 regarded nature itself as supernatural. 
 Thus, to his mind, all nature's resurrec- 
 tions are the work of God. Even when 
 the seed puts forth its new body, it is a 
 divine act. " God giveth it a body," he 
 says, " and to every seed its own body." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE CHRIST UNIVERSEo 
 
 We have considered Christ's teachings 
 with regard to the law, source, stem, and 
 kingdom of righteousness ; also in regard 
 to the knowledge of God, the laws of per- 
 ception and revelation, and finally the spe- 
 cific organism of revelation. 
 
 As we have progressed, it has become 
 more and more evident that all Christ's 
 teachings on these points stand together 
 in one consistent idea of the supernatural. 
 Futhermore, this conception of the super- 
 natural is that of a power correlated 
 throughout with the material world, and 
 more and more perfectly to be revealed in 
 it by a progressive series of organic coor- 
 dinations. In other words, Christ's life and 
 teaching point to a certain definite struc- 
 ture of the universe. In his celebrated 
 Romanes address, Mr. Huxley speaks of 
 this problem of the universe as yet un- 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 343 
 
 solved. He mentions the attempts that 
 have been made at its solution, including 
 Buddha's, whose theory seems to him the 
 cleverest, but he entirely ignores Jesus. 
 Probably this is due to the fact that Jesus 
 did not solve the problem as a scientist 
 or philosopher would. His immediate ob- 
 ject was not to give men a theory or a 
 dogma, or even to exploit the facts of che 
 universe, but to develop perception. This 
 he did by laying hold of the human life, 
 focalizing it, purifying it, and bringing 
 out its inherent correspondences with the 
 spiritual world. This last he accomplished 
 by extending the divine visions, and fulfill- 
 ing the drama of the Old Testament or- 
 ganism. Thus, by clear, practical interpre- 
 tative visions of heaven, he awoke the 
 latent kinship with heaven. But his vis- 
 ions were not panoramic ; they were sub- 
 ordinated to the end in view. They shone 
 directly upon the path of spiritual pro- 
 gress, they illuminated the next step. Thus, 
 too, by vivid glimpses of a false supernat- 
 uraiism, he drew men back from following 
 it. But it was impossible to advance in the 
 life of Christ without gaining steadily in co- 
 
344 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 herent perception. Impossible also was it 
 to contemplate such suggestive visions or 
 teachings as his, without recognizing their 
 innate coherence and application ; and so 
 it came to pass that, face to face with the 
 advancing life of Christianity, there loomed 
 up before the minds of its leaders, like 
 John and Paul, the gigantic outlines of a 
 Christ universe, — a universe that must con- 
 tinue to grow as the Christian life grows, 
 for life is itself perceptive. 
 
 It is, moreover, quite practicable to con- 
 struct this Christ universe in its great 
 outlines ; for it is all contained in Christ's 
 idea that man is the son of God, or the 
 supernatural in embryo. 
 
 This is the germ from which the whole 
 of Christianity is developed. The instant 
 we take our position outside of it, we are 
 outside of Christianity, and are in fact 
 anti-Christian. It is the one intellectual 
 point in regard to which Christianity can 
 make no concession. In all his teaching 
 Jesus was strictly consistent with it, nor 
 did he shrink from applying its utter- 
 most lo2:ical conclusions to nature and the 
 Scriptures. For instance, when the Phar- 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE, 345 
 
 isees accused him of blaspheming because 
 he said he was the Son of God, he quoted 
 that passage in the Old Testament, " I 
 have said ye are gods." " If," said Jesus, 
 "He called them gods to whom the Word 
 of God came, and the Scripture cannot be 
 broken, say ye of him whom the Father 
 hath sanctified and sent into the world, 
 Thou blasphemest, because he said, I am 
 the Son of God ? " In other words, Jesus 
 accepts it as an immutable principle of the 
 Scripture and of nature, that those to 
 whom the word of God came belonged to 
 the same category with God ; this applied 
 even to such crude kind of manhood as 
 the ancient Israel ; therefore, a fortiori, it 
 applied to the Divine Organ specifically 
 selected. Then, again, when the Saddu- 
 cees challenged him to furnish proof of 
 the resurrection from the Old Testament, 
 Jesus simply quoted that passage, " I am 
 the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Ja- 
 cob." " God is not the God of the dead," 
 he added, " but of the livino^." In other 
 words, to be a man's God is to be in living 
 reciprocity with him. The two must stand 
 together in one vital element, or they could 
 
346 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 not exercise such a reciprocity. If after a 
 man's death Jehovah could still say, I am 
 his God, that certified that the man was 
 sharing God's eternity. Death must there- 
 fore mean the progress, not the cessation, 
 of human life : it is one of those metamor- 
 phoses by which an embryo advances to- 
 ward its completer stage, — this, in man's 
 case, being a stage of more perfect corre- 
 spondence to God. 
 
 In fact, Jesus proceeds to assert this ; for, 
 the Sadducees having brought up a resur- 
 rection problem in the case of a man with 
 seven wives, and challenged him to show 
 how that status could be made to harmo- 
 nize with the heavenly world, Jesus de- 
 clares that the resurrection state is not a 
 physical repetition of this, but an emer- 
 gence from embryonic conditions, such as 
 sex, into complete life. They shall be 
 equal with the angels, he declares. The 
 word " angel " was somewhat vague, but it 
 certainly stood for a perfected spiritual ex- 
 istence, and as a matter of fact it did to 
 some extent define that existence ; for it 
 meant literally " a messenger," and is ap- 
 plied in the gospels to any personal agent 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 347 
 
 of communication. For example, it is said 
 that John the Baptist sent angels to Jesus. 
 The holy angels, or messengers of God, 
 were always the personal organs of the Di- 
 vine Word. The saying of Jesus, there- 
 fore, that man in his complete estate is to 
 be equal to the messengers of the Word, 
 implies necessarily that man is now an un- 
 developed organ of that same Word, an 
 embryo spirit. By fixing our eye, then, like 
 Jesus, upon these two centres of the uni- 
 verse, ujDon God the Infinite Spirit and 
 upon man the embryo spirit, we can best 
 understand its structure and movement. 
 Plainly, God and man correspond to one 
 another, and all the cosmic movements 
 and facts must relate to the spiritual de- 
 velopment of the embryo, and particularly 
 to the increase of its correspondence to 
 God. 
 
 This is the case in the material world ; 
 everything is coordinated with, moves with 
 the embryo, carrying it forward into corre- 
 spondence with its type and central organ, 
 whether it be the germ of a planet or of an 
 orange. It is true that not all oranges are 
 in the germinating stage at once, but the 
 
348 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 germinating movement represents nature 
 as a whole. Nature is everywhere germi- 
 nating, advancing to complete stages, and 
 then perishing, only to be reproduced 
 through death, and to complete the same 
 circle again. In man, however, we find, 
 according to Christ, a permanent issue of 
 this cosmic movement, an embryo of spirit- 
 ual life, an heir of eternity, a true finality. 
 It was with perfect reason, therefore, that 
 Jesus pictured the cosmic process as corre- 
 sponding to him, and a glance at the Gos- 
 pels shows that this is always the position 
 of Jesus. The world, according to him, 
 moves with man's moral progress ; devel- 
 ops in divine significance as man develops 
 in divine likeness ; shares man's spiritual 
 crises, his judgment, and his metamorpho- 
 sis, — not because of any partiality for 
 man, but because man is a spiritual embryo 
 and the law of the cosmos is the develop- 
 ment of spiritual life. It is reasonable, 
 therefore, that we should, like Jesus, argue 
 from the embryo to the laws and facts of 
 the cosmos. I do not mean that one is to 
 build up the cosmos deductively by such a 
 process alone, but that it furnishes us a 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 349 
 
 standard by which to test spiritual vis- 
 ions. We decide the question, for exam- 
 ple, whether we have seen a reality, or en- 
 countered an optical illusion, by putting 
 to ourselves that other question. Does it 
 stand together with known facts ? In de- 
 claring the law of the universe to be spirit- 
 ual law, and that law to be the develop- 
 ment of the embryo spirit, Jesus has given 
 us a solid basis, because it stands together 
 with what we already know, and the inevi- 
 table deductions from it stand together 
 with the facts of his spiritual vision which 
 are disclosed in the New Testament. 
 
 Let us then, for a moment, study the 
 embryo, with the idea of getting a firmer 
 grasp on two things: ist. What is the 
 supernatural ? 2d. What are the condi- 
 tions of development for the embryo ? 
 
 ist. What is the supernatural .f* Obvi- 
 ously we must give it a broader mean- 
 ing than it has had hitherto. We must 
 make it include certain powers that are 
 germinant in man ; we must recognize 
 more practically the fact presented by 
 Jesus and his disciples, that the supernat- 
 ural and spiritual are the same thing ; we 
 
350 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 must acknowledge, as Jesus did, that the 
 divine in man is not a figure of speech, 
 but an actuality. At the same time we 
 must distinguish sharply between God the 
 Father and man the child, — between the 
 self-existent Fount of supernatural life and 
 an embryo supernatural whose spiritual 
 life and development depend on constant 
 coordination with God's life (even as the 
 branch can bring forth fruit only as it 
 abides in the vine). Then we must recog- 
 nize another fact, — that a spirit is not solely 
 an immaterial force ; quite the contrary. 
 The first thing that strikes us, as we study 
 man's life, is its organic quality. Human 
 life is immanent in matter : it resides in 
 organs and exercises its vitalities through 
 them ; it is constitutionally adapted to this 
 mode of existence. Indeed, the perfect 
 correspondence between matter and life — 
 the naturalness, for instance, with which 
 life lays hold of matter, blends with it, 
 builds it up into organic structures, vital- 
 izes it, and radiates through it — is the 
 wonder of the universe. True, it may be 
 said that it is the lower and psychic life 
 which has this constitutional relationship 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 35 1 
 
 to the material world, and that the more 
 transcendental spirit is antagonistic to 
 matter, and pants to be free from it. But 
 no human spirit, not even the greatest and 
 holiest, ever developed or existed, save as 
 an organic life. 
 
 Doubtless it is the spirit that constitutes 
 the supernatural in us, but it is impossible 
 to separate the spirit from that class of 
 powers, inherent in the Logos or Psyche, 
 through which the spirit develops, be- 
 comes creative and exercises dominion 
 over the physical realm. Indeed, it is this 
 power of the Word, this power to create 
 and rule, which, according to the book of 
 Genesis and human consciousness gen- 
 erally, makes man the image of God. 
 Strip God of the Logos and he is no 
 longer the Creator, the Upholder and the 
 Sovereign of the world ; he is not the Liv- 
 ino^ God ; he has nothino; to do with 
 practical life ; he dwells apart in a per- 
 petual Nirvana. It is the Logos that 
 makes him our God. It is the subordina- 
 tion of the Psyche to the spirit that makes 
 him the fount of virtue. In short, the pa- 
 rental and the embryo life correspond. 
 
352 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 The embryo also is both spirit and logos, 
 and has always this constitutional relation- 
 ship to matter. 
 
 It is true we must draw a distinction 
 here ; it is not necessary to our concep- 
 tion of a spirit that it should be embodied, 
 as man is, in the sense of being bound to 
 a certain set of vital organs. Certainly 
 this is not the case with God. The much- 
 talked-of divine immanence does not mean 
 that God is so limited to his universe as 
 to be necessitated by it, or to necessitate 
 it, any further than he chooses. There is 
 in God's vitality no subliminal or necessi- 
 tated region. His relation to matter i? free 
 throughout ; at least such is the teaching 
 of Christ. He is not compelled, Christ 
 tells us, to proceed according to law. 
 With him all things are possible. His 
 limitations correspond to man's, but tney 
 are by his own choice. He is able out of 
 these stones to raise up children unto 
 Abraham. He is able anywhere to em- 
 body himself or not, as he will, — to organ- 
 ize and vitalize matter as he will. Matter 
 is, in fact, the natural outcome, creation, 
 expression of the Logos. It is quite con- 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 353 
 
 ceivable, therefore, that, in the progress of 
 the embryo supernatural, it should so far 
 reach correspondence with God as to be 
 perfectly free ; having a natural relation to 
 matter, and a natural power for organizing 
 it and inhabiting it, without being its pris- 
 oner. There may be, in fact, as Jesus 
 certainly seemed to imply, an order of 
 spirits that are able to enter into and 
 possess other bodies than their own ; there 
 may be, as the visions of Jesus and of the 
 prophets represent, angels that are able to 
 effect mighty changes in matter, to bring 
 about vast coordinations, and to embody 
 themselves in human form. For instance, 
 it is not unreasonable that a spirit, in a 
 more advanced stage of development than 
 man, should have appeared to Jesus in the 
 wilderness and ministered to his physical 
 necessities ; or that an angel should have 
 rolled away the door of the sepulchre, or, 
 for that matter, that the angel of the Lord 
 should have done any of those wonders 
 recorded in the Old Testament. It is sim- 
 ply a question of what constitutes the su- 
 pernatural. If we accept Christ's teaching 
 that man is the embryo supernatural, and 
 
354 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 if development means development in or- 
 ganic power, and in correspondence to 
 God, and in pov/er to be God's messenger 
 then it is clear that the supernatural is a 
 personal organic Force, perfectly related 
 to nature, adapted to organizing it, resid- 
 ing in it, penetrating it, and coordinating 
 its forces ad infinihim for the purposes of 
 spiritual manifestation. 
 
 It is perfectly natural, that is, perfectly 
 in accordance with the structure of such a 
 universe, that God should work a mira- 
 cle if there were occasion for it; if, in 
 other words, it were important to the spir- 
 itual manifestation of himself, or to the 
 increased correspondence of man to God. 
 And it is entirely in accord with the struc- 
 ture of the universe that there should be 
 free spirits or organic powers, completely 
 developed organs of God's Logos, capable 
 of such large coordinations and free em- 
 bodiments as are some day to be within 
 our own power, when we shall be " equal 
 with the angels." Much misconception of 
 the supernatural has been caused by our 
 failure clearly to identify it with the spirit, 
 and to see that the spirit necessarily in- 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 355 
 
 eluded the Logos or Psyehe, and that 
 through this latter power it is eternally 
 related to matter ; in fact, that matter it- 
 self is not that crude thing that we have 
 conceived it to be, but something infinitely 
 subtle, infinitely plastic, progressive, and 
 capable of spiritualization, or transfusion 
 with spiritual force, and, in many myri- 
 ads of its qualities and aspects, invisible 
 and intangible to us. In fact we look out 
 upon matter through the narrow loop-holes 
 of a few organs, and catch but an exceed- 
 ing few of its infinite vibrations. Myriads 
 of spirits clothed in celestial bodies might 
 crowd round about us, and even touch us, 
 without our once perceiving their pres- 
 ence ; they might wield the mightiest of 
 material forces in our behalf, and yet we 
 not know it, so little of this infinitely 
 varied and subtle thing called matter are 
 we able to detect with our present organs. 
 Could those organs for one moment be 
 supplemented, the world of matter would 
 be vastly changed to us ; perchance " the 
 whole mount w^ould be full of horses and 
 chariots of fire round about." 
 
 Again, taking this relationship of the 
 
356 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 supernatural to matter, and the perfect cor- 
 respondence of matter to it, it is not diffi- 
 cult to see why Christ should say, " In my 
 Father's house are many mansions ; " nor 
 why he should speak of Paradise, or of the 
 presence of God and of the holy angels, or 
 of ascending to heaven. While it is true 
 that, in the strictest sense of the word, the 
 supernatural or heavenly world is simply 
 the spiritual life, it is just as true, accord- 
 ing to Christ, that the progress of the 
 material universe corresponds to the de- 
 velopment of the spiritual embryo. The 
 world of the mastodon corresponded to 
 the mastodon. Man's world corresponds 
 to man. The planet Mars corresponds 
 to whatever existence may be on it. Al- 
 though this is one universe developing in 
 unity, there are yet, even in this world, 
 different stages of development, with differ- 
 ent environments corresponding to them. 
 Why should there not be in God's world 
 a heaven of heavens, corresponding in its 
 environment to those glorified and per- 
 fected spirits who have trod faithfully the 
 pathway of spiritual development until 
 they have become godlike? And if the 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 357 
 
 pathway of spiritual development be a 
 matter of choice, and degenerate evolution 
 a possibility, why should there not be, such 
 as Christ implied, fallen and wicked spirits, 
 who kept not even " their first estate," the 
 conditions to which' they had already at- 
 tained, who preferred the coarser psychic, 
 passional uses of matter, the immanent to 
 the transcendent joys, and who, thus de- 
 grading themselves, have sunk into pas- 
 sional organic powers, — gods of this world, 
 radiating a subde animalism, generating a 
 magnetic field in which not only wicked 
 spirits but wicked men and women, and 
 brutes, yea, even swine, stand together 
 and are coordinated? May it not be? 
 Certainly it is quite in accordance with 
 the nature of things that there should be 
 a supernatural kingdom of darkness, as 
 Christ taught, a kingdom of Satan, or of 
 the Evil One. For, as has already been 
 seen, one of the most striking character- 
 istics of the human spirit is its power to 
 radiate through the logos or Psyche a 
 life-force or Pneuma that combines in it- 
 self the subtle elements of the transcend- 
 ent spirit and the magnetic word. Thus 
 
358 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 the human spirit has what we call a sphere 
 of influence. We see grand passional per- 
 sonalities who hold within the radius of 
 their projected life multitudes of human 
 satellites, — nay, imperial spirits there are 
 who thus create and rule empires. Multi- 
 tudes sit together in the magnetic sphere 
 of one man's Pneuma ; for example, all the 
 individualities, facts, and forces of France 
 for a generation were thus coordinated, 
 erected into a dominion, and carried for- 
 ward by the Pneuma of Napoleon. 
 
 This is what Christ calls " being in a 
 person." It applies to all personality. He 
 declares himself to be in the Father, that 
 is, in the sphere of the Father's spirit, in 
 the current of his personal influence. He 
 commands his disciples, " Abide in me," 
 with the same significance. Those who 
 abide in him are a unity, a kingdom ; the 
 members are organs of Christ. As the 
 apostle says, they all drink of his spirit, 
 they share his vitalities. This is what the 
 apostles mean by " being in Christ." The 
 spirit of a person constituted, to their 
 minds, not merely a radiated force, but a 
 vital element, like air or light, a super- 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 359 
 
 natural heaven in which a sovereign per- 
 sonaHty reigned. Thus the apostle speaks 
 of the Prince of the power of the ether, 
 or lower atmosphere, taking the Greek 
 word for the coarser element as the type 
 of a coarser personal atmosphere. So, too, 
 the apostle speaks of the whole world as 
 lying in the wicked one, that is, human 
 society in his day was passively given over 
 to the influence, and so lay helplessly in 
 the sphere, of a wicked spiritual force. 
 The radiated spirit of man is aggressive, 
 it is charged not only with active germs 
 of thought, but also with sensibility, — 
 often with passion, whose vibrations pass 
 through other souls like shocks of elec- 
 tricity. Some personalities are conta- 
 gious ; one can scarce escape being car- 
 ried into their magnetic field. Some are 
 coarsely yet powerfully attractive, like hu- 
 man loadstones ; they drag one as with 
 chains of darkness against the force of 
 conscience and will ; they cast about the 
 soul unholy shadows ; they shut out the 
 all-environing light of God, the pure and 
 all-embracing atmosphere of his Spirit. 
 To be attacked by such a force, em- 
 
36o THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 bodying itself through a human form, 
 through some symbol of nature, some en- 
 vironment, significant of animal passion, — 
 that is temptation. Its external form may 
 be physical, its spell is supernatural and 
 spiritual. To enter into temptation is to 
 advance within that terrible sphere. We 
 wrong the creation of God, we do injus- 
 tice to the animal world, nay, we are ab- 
 solutely unphilosophic, when we attribute 
 our sins altogether to the body, our per- 
 versities to matter, and our lust to the 
 brute that preceded us. Animals have 
 strong, healthy appetites, but they are 
 more subservient than we are to the law 
 of their structure. They are free from ex- 
 cessive lust, avarice, or designing malice. 
 These characteristics demand the creative 
 imagination of the Spirit. Temptation is a 
 spiritual, not a material, product. And this 
 is the real significance of Christ's teach- 
 ing concerning evil spirits. To sum up 
 matters, we see that the visions and teach- 
 ings of Jesus concerning the supernatural 
 world are perfectly coherent. They stand 
 together with his entirely reasonable posi- 
 tion that man is the supernatural embryo. 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 361 
 
 We come now to the second point, the 
 conditions for the evolution of the embryo ; 
 and here we see the meaning: of the other- 
 wise inexplicable cycle of the cosrhos, a 
 cycle which is well represented, as Mr. 
 Huxley has said, by the bean-stalk, which 
 develops out of the earth from its seed, 
 only to drop another seed which shall 
 in its turn develop another bean-stalk. 
 Through vast ages a globe of matter is 
 evolved, which, after other long ages, gives 
 birth to vegetative life, which issues into 
 animal life, which issues into human life, 
 which in its turn, after untold suffering 
 and struggle, reproduces itself and then 
 turns to dust ; an interminable cycle of de- 
 velopment, of survival through a battle for 
 existence, and of death. But if we take 
 man to be what Christ out of his own 
 consciousness testified him to be, the em- 
 bryo supernatural, then at this point the 
 cosmic process issues in something. Here 
 we have an end worth interminable cycles, 
 whatever their sufferings, struggles, or 
 cataclysms ; for in each member of the hu- 
 man race we have a seed of glory and im- 
 mortality, which may be so fructified from 
 
362 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 above as to become both a son and heir 
 of God. Then, as already indicated, mat- 
 ter, instead of being that coarse and anti- 
 spiritual substance that v/e have conceived 
 it to be, is the matrix of the developing 
 spirit, penetrable in its every atom by the 
 Divine Logos. Ground up by ocean and 
 by glacier, worked over by the earth-worm, 
 elaborated by plant-life, it is carried up 
 thus into subtler forms, until it is adapted 
 to the organic force of the human spirit; 
 then we give it the name of " food." A 
 wonderful, subtle thing it is, as we see it 
 thus filled with vital adaptations, hanging 
 upon a peach or apple bough, or swaying 
 on the end of a wheat-stalk. Taken by 
 man into his body, it furnishes a matrix 
 first of all for his organic force, then for 
 his mechanical. It accompanies the hu- 
 man spirit in its upward progress, taking 
 on finer and subtler forms, the tissue of 
 the thinking brain, the nerve and pupil of 
 the sparkling eye. It generates nerve 
 force, becomes the subtle vehicle of emo- 
 tion and of speech. 
 
 Then, as it accompanies the organic life 
 upward from the earth-worm to the man, 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 363 
 
 it becomes not only the matrix of organic 
 but of spiritual life, — bread of heaven, 
 Jesus called it, for it is the vehicle of 
 heavenly vitalities. 
 
 Thus a great soul, a true revelator, not 
 only furnishes in his own personal embodi- 
 ment bread that comes down from heaven, 
 but he creates a heavenly world, full of 
 spiritual sustenance and stimulus to other 
 men, — a city of God full of divine glory 
 and everlasting joy, an extension of Para- 
 dise. Thus we have in the process of evo- 
 lution tw^o great movements. First, the 
 cosmic, of which scientists tell us, devel- 
 oping in long cycles, only to perish. Yet 
 in all this bean-stalk cosmic cycle there is 
 one permanent, progressive movement. 
 There is a better matrix beins: formed for 
 the embryo spirit ; more soil worked over 
 by earth-worms and by vegetative life ; bet- 
 ter methods of cultivation, better human 
 bodies, better organic force in those bodies, 
 better human stock every way ; wider and 
 better unities, social and civic; better 
 knowledge by the human race of itself, 
 better possession of itself and its own great 
 race organs through historic science, closer 
 
364 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 material coordination by railroads and 
 electricity; more stock out of which to 
 make mind and spirit food, so that the 
 individual human life finds itself continu- 
 ally with a better outfit at the start in the 
 direction of spiritual development. And 
 particularly has the individual life of to- 
 day a much wider chance to become an 
 organ of humanity. Matter has become 
 more and more a medium of reciprocity; 
 it tends more and more toward the soli- 
 darity of one embryo with another. 
 
 Furthermore, as we look back, we see at 
 the first stage in human development, 
 when the thing was fairly feasible, when 
 there was a sufficient matrix and sufficient 
 coordination of the race to make it prac- 
 tical, we see the Christ life, the spiritual 
 man, the perfect revelator, the complete 
 embodiment of the Divine Fatherhood, of 
 human brotherhood, and of man's sonship ; 
 son of God, therefore, and son of man, 
 representing in himself the root, stem, and 
 terminal bud of our corporate spiritual 
 life. Moving steadfastly in accordance 
 with the law of spiritual evolution, he be- 
 comes, as Paul calls him, a life-giving 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 365 
 
 spirit ; he conquers in himself the ten- 
 dency of the animal man to selfish indi- 
 vidualism ; vanquishes the animal prefer- 
 ence for the sensual cosmos, or present 
 world ; conquers the prince of this world, 
 that is, the spiritual tempter through whose 
 suggestions and coordinations the perish- 
 able cosmos allures or terrorizes us ; over- 
 comes our antagonism to the divine will 
 by the superhuman revelation of the divine 
 love in his sufferings and death ; attains 
 to the perfected spiritual body of human- 
 ity, and so through the power of that su- 
 pernatural organism ascends to the throne 
 of God, to the higher realm of spiritual- 
 ized matter, there to prepare a place for 
 us, while at the same time he holds subtle 
 contact with us through his organic vital- 
 
 We find, in brief, that the first condi- 
 tion for the development of the spiritual 
 embryo is a progressive physical matrix 
 penetrable by spiritual forces. 
 
 The second condition is a stem or series 
 of stems for specific coordination with the 
 spiritual world ; and as we take in this fact 
 we see what is meant by " mediation," and 
 
366 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 also by " the fall of man." The latter con- 
 ception is thought to be antagonistic to 
 evolution. That depends on what is meant 
 by it. If by it is meant an evolution of the 
 race altogether downward, then it certainly 
 is antagonistic, not only to evolution but to 
 fact. If, on the other hand, it means that 
 there has been a loss of coordination with 
 God at a certain point in the race de- 
 velopment, that is entirely consistent with 
 evolution. It is a possibility, peculiarly 
 inherent in man's organization. Man the 
 embryo is, like his divine parent, creative. 
 He can not only to a considerable degree 
 choose between environments, but he can 
 change his environment ; he can destroy 
 the effects of its divine transmissiveness 
 by filling it with his own creations ; he can 
 put out his own spiritual eye by devoting 
 his sensibilities to the sensual aspects of 
 matter; he can pervert the organism of 
 sonship within himself by devoting it to 
 his own aofo^randizement. Thus, while he 
 continues to have many of the faculties 
 that belong to the Divine nature, he can 
 w^hoUy destroy his power to hold recipro- 
 city with God. He may go on and develop 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 367 
 
 certain spiritual faculties, but he cannot 
 develop in the divine character ; his evolu- 
 tion will cease to be that of a divine logos, 
 or organ of the spiritual world. He will 
 become instead an organ of the perishable 
 cosmos, turning that cosmos from a reve- 
 latory environment, a creation of God, a 
 paradise of divine communings, into his 
 own creation, a seductive realm, that ap- 
 peals on every side to selfishness, that 
 holds out on every tree of its garden 
 the fruits of lust and greed and ego- 
 tism. Having formed about himself such 
 an environment, the development of the 
 man within it will be forward as reQ:ards 
 intellect, will-power, passion, and artistic 
 creation ; forward, too, as regards law, so- 
 cial structure, and a certain kind of self- 
 righteous moral nature ; but downward as 
 regards correspondence to God ; — down- 
 ward out of that love of God w^hich is his 
 eternal element into self-interest, which 
 should be his transitory element ; down- 
 ward from the transcendent life which is 
 his heaven to the immanent life which is 
 sure to become his hell : for that immanent 
 life, that psychic, organic force with its vast 
 
368 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 affinities, its hungerings and thirstings, its 
 exquisite sensitiveness, its burning pas- 
 sions, is a bottomless abyss for the spirit 
 seeking after self-gratification, — an abyss 
 full of flames and self-torture, of self- 
 created fiends also. Nor is this Gehenna 
 a solitary cell. No spirit falls alone, — he 
 carries others with him, whose sufferings 
 add to his own remorse and misery. He 
 finds himself preyed upon as well as 
 preying. The serpent's fang that he has 
 formed in his own nature he soon discovers 
 in his fallen comrades. 
 
 Such a fall of man is not only possible 
 consistently with evolution, but it is un- 
 mistakably a fact of history. Not without 
 Q:reat struo-ofle does either a nation or a 
 man avoid this abyss. Neither is there 
 anything inconsistent with evolution in St. 
 Paul's idea that "in Adam all died." Jt is 
 simply an emphasis of the truth of the 
 solidarity of the race, and of the fact that 
 wherever there is a failure of spiritual life 
 it is due, largely, to the failure of a grand 
 moral organism, or stem of humanity. 
 Caligula at first held out moral hopes for 
 Rome. There was a potency in him for 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 369 
 
 the Empire. But when the son of Ger- 
 manicus fell into the abyss of sensuality, 
 Rome fell with him. The term " Adam " 
 simply stands for the first man who had 
 heavenly communings, in whom there was 
 developed the pyschic organism for divine 
 reciprocity. His failure to follow the law 
 of that organism, and thus to develop into a 
 spiritual leader, meant not only the blight 
 of his own life, but the loss of him as a 
 great organ of moral victory, a stem of 
 righteousness and supernaturalism for the 
 race. The first great organ of revelation 
 took the downward path. The second 
 Adam, that is, the second man capable of 
 becoming a universal revelation, took the 
 upward path, — he followed the law of rev- 
 elation ; he triumphed over the passional 
 immanent life, and sacrificed it to spiritual 
 ends. He carried up into the spiritual 
 organism, for its use, his whole vitality. 
 There was an absolute conservation and 
 subjection of force to the supernatural. 
 As a natural result, he conquered death, 
 and attained to the resurrection body. 
 There was nothing arbitrary about this, — 
 nothing anti-natural, or contrary to natural 
 
370 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 law. If it seems a miracle, it is simply be- 
 cause it transcends our acquaintance with 
 natural organisms. "As in Adam all died, 
 so in Christ shall all be made alive," says 
 the apostle. It is not necessary to con- 
 ceive of Adam as a progenitor of the 
 whole race ; the idea of sinning in Adam 
 does not imply this necessarily, any more 
 than the idea of our living in Christ makes 
 us out the natural progeny of Christ. All 
 that the expression " in " signifies is coor- 
 dination. The race is a solidarity. Spirit- 
 ual biogenesis, and indeed intellectual bio- 
 genesis, are just as organic as the sexual. 
 Washington was in truth the father of his 
 country. In a civic sense he begat us. 
 Had he failed, we should all have failed in 
 him, and should have lived under a system 
 of failure and civic death till God raised 
 up for us some organ great enough to lift 
 us into free institutions. The great man 
 of the race is the type and intellectual 
 begetter of smaller men. So, also, in the 
 expression, " in Adam all died," we have 
 simply an emphasis of the eternal coor- 
 dination between the natural and moral 
 worlds ; the two are inseparable. 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 3/1 
 
 Throughout the Hebrew revelation, sin 
 is conceived of, not merely as a moral 
 act, but as a vast degenerate development ; 
 a wrong act results in the failure of a 
 moral organism. As a result, the whole 
 environment — nay, the whole system of 
 organisms and divine government — is 
 necessarily deformed for a time. This 
 constitutes a natural history of sin. God 
 gives a man a beneficent organism, full of 
 divine potencies, whose fruition depends on 
 a certain law of evolution. The man vio- 
 lates that law, turns the organism to his 
 own sensual uses, makes it an instrument 
 of the psychic, rather than the eternal life. 
 Naturally, the organism evolves into a 
 plague, the fire and worm of corruption ap- 
 pear in it. There is a fine instrument, you 
 say, for a loving God in the midst of his 
 universe holding reciprocity with all its 
 forces, breeding spiritual death everywhere. 
 Yet the loving God does use it, takes it up 
 into those large coordinations that we call 
 his Providence, and turns it from a selfish 
 individualistic plague into that awful yet 
 holy and delivering thing, a divine punish- 
 ment. Thus sin becomes a kind of nat- 
 
372 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 ural order, a progressive system of divine 
 government, a purgatorium, out of which a 
 man shall not come, perchance, till he has 
 paid his uttermost farthing, — in other 
 words, tasted enough of his plague to make 
 him sick of it ; nay, more, to make of him 
 a lesson in the world's education, a per- 
 sonal object-lesson sent by God to hu- 
 manity. Happy is the man who can early 
 accept this lesson, for God's punishments 
 have three stages, — the reformatory, in 
 which a man is made to taste his plague 
 that he may be sick of it, for when sin 
 tastes bad in the mouth virtue comes to 
 light; secondly, the educational stage, in 
 which the man is made an object-lesson, it 
 being the only thing that God for the time 
 can do with him ; and, thirdly, the stage 
 of perdition, in which he, having ceased to 
 be a possible organ of divine humanity, 
 can only be separated like a rotten mem- 
 ber, and given over to the destructive 
 power which he himself has unloosed. 
 There is in the Scriptural conception of 
 God's punishment nothing arbitrary or 
 non-natural ; it is simply the natural sys- 
 tem of sin, whose development the apostle 
 
777^ CHRIST UNIVERSE, 3/3 
 
 struggled to express as follows : Lust, 
 when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin, 
 and sin when full-grown bringeth forth 
 death. God's government simply con- 
 sists in taking up into its divine coordina- 
 tions whatever organism there is, and 
 using it, as the invested property of the 
 race, for that race's eternal benefit. 
 
 Thus the natural system of sin becomes 
 under God's hand a matrix of life for the 
 perishing conscience ; but wherever there 
 is such a natural system of sin, such as 
 plainly exists in this world, the only escape 
 from it, from its retroactive operation and 
 its painful method of preserving the con- 
 science, is through redemption, that is, 
 through an organism sufficiently great and 
 vital, and reciprocal with the cosmos, to 
 overcome its evil with good. It is not 
 worth while to dispute about terms. We 
 may call such action vicarious, or drop the 
 term if we like it ; it is, of course, true in a 
 sense. Whenever one organ of a body is 
 made to do the work of other injured, 
 diseased or abortive organs, in such a 
 way as to carry off the effects of broken 
 law, that action is in a sense vicarious. 
 
374 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 And, in a certain sense, the work of every 
 orean is vicarious. The work of the stem 
 for the bough is vicarious ; so is the work 
 of the roots. The death of the seed in 
 the ofround is vicarious. But, as has been 
 said, the word applies more particularly to 
 that action of an organ which is redemp- 
 tive in the sense of overcoming an ab- 
 normal state of things brought about by 
 dependent organs. Every organ is, how- 
 ever, mediatorial in its work, and particu- 
 larly is it true of all great central organs. 
 They are mediators of life in the grandest 
 sense, and when they are called upon to 
 overcome disease, or abnormality in any 
 form, they are redeemers. The truth that 
 they are redeemers is not antagonistic to 
 evolution ; nor does it show that evolution 
 has ceased to go forward : it only implies 
 that the evolution has been abnormal, that 
 it has not been in the direction of the na- 
 tive element of the organism or its noblest 
 correspondences ; and the redemption con- 
 sists in overcoming this abnormal evolu- 
 tion, and in bringing every organ, and 
 particularly the most vital organs, into co- 
 ordination with their vital element, and 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 3/5 
 
 making them the organs of the kingdom 
 to which they supremely belong. 
 
 Another condition essential to the spir- 
 itual embryo is law. As we study the hu- 
 man child, we note first of all that it is a 
 germinating organic force. As has been 
 previously said, its first necessity is food, 
 or, in other words, such forms of matter 
 as it can readily penetrate and organize. 
 These are at first few. A babe must 
 have milk, and even a full-grown man 
 must have some form of matter that has 
 been previously organized. In short, the 
 word "food" stands for the narrowness of 
 the field of man's organic power. All 
 forms of matter that are covered by the 
 word " food " he can take up and organ- 
 ize psychically, assimilating them to his 
 own organs, and so fashioning them into 
 a little world — a microcosm — in which 
 his soul is immanent, and on every part 
 of which he acts psychically. Outside the 
 microcosm or body he can only act me- 
 chanically, that is, through the mechanical 
 leverage of his bones and muscles ; yet 
 through this mechanical action he brings 
 about the most wonderful coordinations 
 
376 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 of material forces. These coordinations 
 result in new products, some of them me- 
 chanical, such as the electric motor ; others 
 vital, such as the fruits, flowers, grains, and 
 domestic animals. Most wonderful of all 
 these products, however, is human society, 
 or the civilized world, which includes all 
 the others, and into which the individual 
 man is built and builds himself as an organ 
 of a vast body. 
 
 In all this process man is under law. 
 He is compelled to work with God ; he 
 can make no coordinations that are not 
 rendered possible by the Divine Logos. 
 In Him, as St. Paul said, all things stand 
 together, or are correlated. In these reci- 
 procities, caused by the Divine Logos, exist 
 all the potencies that are open to man. 
 By these, which disclose themselves to 
 man's advancing intelligence, the mind of 
 the Logos touches and arouses his mind, 
 vitalizing it and awakening it to the sig- 
 nificance of nature. Thus God communes 
 with man, — educates and develops him 
 through his environment, which is every- 
 where penetrated and adapted to certain 
 coordinations. Certain of these coordina- 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 377 
 
 tions are possible, others impossible. For 
 instance, a man can command bread by 
 cultivating wheat, grinding and baking it. 
 He cannot make bread without heat, nor 
 can he command it from stones. These 
 fixed adaptations, which limit the coordi- 
 nating power of man, we call the laws 
 of nature. It is evident, however, that 
 they are relative to our powers. Within 
 these limits there is a vast field of liberty. 
 Nay, within them man can, so to speak, 
 make his own world. Nature is to him a 
 God-given property, to have and to hold 
 for his own creative purposes ; for it is by 
 work, particularly by creative work, that he 
 grows to be a spirit, an artist, a revelator, 
 a perfected organ of the Logos. There- 
 fore his cosmic environment is so adapted 
 to him by God, as to develop first organic 
 force by means of food, then will - power 
 through the struggle for food, — a struggle 
 sometimes so stern and terrible that many 
 an individual perishes ; yet through it there 
 is built up a stronger will-power in the 
 surviving race, and therefore a stronger 
 will-power in the individuals. Then, as 
 will-power is developed, as man becomes 
 
378 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 a strong, toiling animal, one stronger will 
 becomes the stem of society; the strong 
 will develops too far, and society is built 
 up into a despotism. Still, through that 
 man-made tyrannous world, God's primal 
 law presses, till men in their desperation 
 for bread and for life become first ingen- 
 ious, then intellectual, then instinct with 
 high courage, and at last free, each man 
 being no longer a helpless unit, but a liv- 
 ing organ of the government, having his 
 vote, his property, and his ability to stamp 
 his own ideals upon a little world of his 
 own, a home, or habitation of his spirit. 
 
 Thus, if men make false coordinations, 
 if they produce a malignant or abortive 
 creation, being in God's universe, it works 
 its own cure, becoming God's plague, 
 curse, chastisement, pressing hard on man's 
 great primal organic necessities, and so 
 forcing him at last to fight against his own 
 evil product, and to put it down in God's 
 name, and to put himself under the lead 
 of God's Spirit. But in no case does 
 God's cosmos shut out liberty : on the con- 
 trary, by the grim pressure of necessity, by 
 the beckonings and unfoldings of its vast 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 379 
 
 potencies, by its insistence on action and 
 creative action, it develops liberty, for man 
 is an embryo spirit, and a spirit is a free, 
 organic, creative power; and what is true 
 of man is true of all spirits. All the mate- 
 rial facts and forces are correlated with 
 free organic powers. The material forces 
 do not stand alone, — everywhere they de- 
 pend upon the supernatural. This is a 
 universe of lives, of spirits, of sons of 
 God. God is immanent in it, penetrating 
 it ; but, with the exception of those certain 
 fixed adaptations called laws, he does not 
 necessitate it. If he did, it would be no 
 moral universe, for freedom is the very 
 foundation of character, and the spirit is 
 essentially a self-developing power, requir- 
 ing liberty and property as well as Divine 
 guidance. Here, then, we find the supreme 
 condition of development for the embryo : 
 LIBERTY. God's kingdom, therefore, can- 
 not be compulsory. He does not over- 
 awe us by assuming some vast symbol of 
 himself corresponding to the human body, 
 thus bringing to bear upon us the awe of 
 his tremendous aspect, or the terrors of his 
 mechanical force. He seeks to control us 
 
380 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 rather by his spirit, through suggestion, for 
 the dependent spirit is his child. Him, 
 therefore, God does not overshadow, nor 
 rule by force, nor chain to himself by 
 psychic magnetism, nor prove the Divine 
 existence to him by some irrefutable argu- 
 ment, thus vanquishing his intellect and 
 holding him a spiritual captive; but dwells 
 within him in his subliminal conscious- 
 ness, upholding all his vitalities, constantly 
 feeling him, feeling for him, suffering with 
 him, hungering when he hungers, pierced 
 by his calamities, — above all, by his evil 
 use of liberty, — awakening in him the 
 ethical feeling by radiations of his Holy 
 Spirit through progressive environments, 
 often pricking him in the heart by the 
 pressure of a divine sensibility on his con- 
 science, but ever aiming at freedom, ever 
 leading or driving him forward into larger 
 organic force and fuller liberty. 
 
 Thus in the human spirit there is al- 
 ways the power to refuse progressive coor- 
 dination with God ; to resist the Holy 
 Ghost; to reject the Christ, the organ of 
 his spiritual kingdom ; to put away the 
 divine suggestions, and destroy the image 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 38 1 
 
 of God, which his work would naturally 
 produce upon the mind ; yes, even to ruin 
 the soul, for, by suffering the life to be- 
 come absorbed with what Christ calls this 
 present cosmos, the power of spiritual fo- 
 calization is destroyed. Not only is this 
 true, but the spirit possesses the power 
 to make sensuous coordinations, and so 
 create worlds, environments, cosmic pro- 
 cesses, that are opposed to God, that shut 
 out God's light, that quench his Spirit. 
 Thus it is possible for a single soul, if it 
 be great, creative, and magnetic, to darken 
 a large part of this world for other souls, 
 sending forth the miasmatic gloom of its 
 own spirit and filling nature with embod- 
 iments of lust or ambition that shut up 
 the windows of heaven and eclipse the 
 Sun of Righteousness, so that the present 
 cosmos becomes, as it were, non-transmis- 
 sive and devilish. 
 
 Such, for the most part, is this present 
 world to-day, though the light of Christ is 
 illuminating it more and more. Still more 
 was it in his day an evil world, a world 
 that " hated both him and his Father." 
 Nor is there anything irrational in his tes- 
 
382 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 timony that much of the cosmic darkness 
 and evil was due to the bhghting power of 
 evil spirits. It is unphilosophic to say that 
 such spirits have no relation to us. This 
 is a universe of reciprocal forces ; its whole 
 movement is toward unity and reciprocity. 
 The goal of the individual spirit is not in- 
 dividualistic but social. Spiritual power is 
 not the power to stand alone, an isolated 
 moral force, but to take one's place as an 
 organ in a vast spiritual body. Spiritual 
 manhood means the comprehension of so- 
 cial law, the practical mastery of one's own 
 sphere of influence, and the power to take 
 and to hold it reciprocally with other 
 spheres of influence. 
 
 This is the case with every organic force. 
 It must learn to hold its own in the field 
 of forces to which it belongs. The tree 
 that is to face the north wind must grow 
 in the north wind. Eternal life, like any 
 other kind of life, is a survival ; its func- 
 tions are developed by antagonism. The 
 idea of a heaven where there is nothing 
 to resist is absurd. Peace is the result of 
 conquest over a complex cosmos, whose 
 powerful forces cease to harass us because 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 3^3 
 
 we understand them, and have acquired 
 the faculty by which they are to be con- 
 trolled. An undisciplined heart would 
 make a hell of heaven. It could not main- 
 tain its proper sphere of influence, or keep 
 in unity with God. The secret of spiritual 
 power is not so much to gain faculties for 
 one's self as to become a sound organ of 
 the whole. The child who is to become an 
 instrument of deliverance to his country 
 must needs feel his oppressor's tyranny 
 even from the cradle. Man, the immortal, 
 must needs contend with the, immortal. It 
 stands together with the development of a 
 supernatural universe that there should be 
 a free interplay of all its forces, personal 
 and impersonal, and that man, a miniature 
 logos and angel of God, should wrestle, 
 not with flesh and blood, but with princi- 
 palities and powers, with the rulers of the 
 darkness of this cosmos, with spiritual 
 wickedness in high places. Ex pede Her- 
 culem, says the old proverb. A single organ 
 reveals the structure of the whole giant. 
 Either we ought to give up believing the 
 testimony of Jesus, that man is the son of 
 God, or else accept the kind of universe 
 
384 THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 
 
 that corresponds to such an embryo and 
 its development. A midway course is irra- 
 tional. If man be a son of God, and Jesus 
 the Christ the Son of man, the final issue 
 of this perishing cosmos and the stem of 
 God's spiritual kingdom, then are we re- 
 lated to all spiritual existences, and our 
 spiritual life must be shaped by a struggle 
 with spiritual influences ; then it is true also 
 that the darkness and evil of this cosmos 
 are due, not to its original badness or gross- 
 ness or opaqueness, for it is actually trans- 
 missive and ti'emulous with divine light, 
 but to the fact of its plasticity under the 
 creative power of free spirits. 
 
 The evil world, therefore, — that is, the 
 cosmos in its evil aspect, — is not God's cre- 
 ation, but the creation of evil spirits, both 
 human and superhuman ; while, in dealing 
 with this world, God, notwithstanding his 
 immanence and transcendence, being actu- 
 ated by love and caring for his children, — 
 not for one child alone but for the whole 
 universe of lives, that they may become di- 
 vine characters, pure and holy spirits, chil- 
 dren and heirs of his glory, — God is there- 
 fore, I say, shut up to the spiritual process 
 
THE CHRIST UNIVERSE. 385 
 
 of suggestion, touching the sensibility of 
 individual souls, and moving upon them 
 gently by the radiation of his own spiritual 
 life. Thus he leads them forward in the 
 pathway of a spiritual obedience ; while 
 they themselves, gaining strength by re- 
 sistance against evil, whether coming from 
 their own passional psychic nature or from 
 external suggestion, overcome evil with 
 good, and create new environments that 
 reveal God's personality ; not, however, 
 without great struggle and suffering in 
 which God himself suffers, even as when 
 He who so loved the world gave his only 
 begotten Son. Thus, as St. Paul puts it, 
 the whole creation is made subject to van- 
 ity, not because vanity — or, what is the 
 same thing, evil — represents God's will, 
 but because of God's hope that through 
 this cosmic process of liberty the universe 
 of lives shall be delivered from the bond- 
 age of passion, not into the iron rule of 
 external authority, but into " the glorious 
 liberty of the sons of God ; " for the whole 
 issue of the cosmic process, and its earnest 
 expectation, is " the manifestation of the 
 sons of God." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 I. Darwinism and Christianity. 
 
 It may be objected to this Christ uni- 
 verse that it does not conform to the Dar- 
 winian conception of evolution, but it 
 must be remembered that the Christ view 
 is taken from an altogether different stand- 
 point. It is a more inclusive view, — a 
 glimpse of things in their final relations. 
 Then it certainly does not antagonize Dar- 
 winism ; and as to the latter, can any one 
 imagine that it is a final view of the cos- 
 
 mos ? 
 
 How is it possible that man, whose rea- 
 son is in process of development, should 
 by it construct a final philosophy? Be- 
 sides, the Darwinian — or, as it is in its 
 complete form, the Spencerian — theory is 
 founded upon observations into which the 
 element of spiritual perception has not 
 entered at all. It is reasonable to sup- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 387 
 
 pose that the perfect spiritual perception 
 of the Christ should see things on a larger 
 scale ; but the general harmony- is, to say 
 the least, remarkable. Both agree in the 
 conception of an organic evolution taking 
 place under environment, and in both there 
 appears also the idea of a survival of the 
 fittest. The radical difference between the 
 two views is, that the Spencerian does not 
 go to the bottom of things; it leaves us 
 confronted by a vast series of forces which 
 for some reason act uniformly, but the 
 ground for uniformity does not appear. It 
 is therefore in reality no philosophy of the 
 cosmos. We are told that things stand 
 together, but we are not told what the 
 mediating element is in which they stand 
 together ; we do not see the entire process ; 
 we are left confronted by facts that cannot 
 be brought into unity; nor indeed have 
 we any proof of nature's uniformity. We 
 accept it, as Mr. Huxley has admitted, by 
 an act of faith. Evolution is not therefore 
 a completely rational view. At bottom of 
 it we are obliged to accept a premise with- 
 out proof ; we have no certainty as to the 
 ultimate relation of things ; indeed, many 
 
388 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 evolutionists hold that the final relation 
 of things is fortuitous. This amounts to 
 pretty much the same thing as saying that 
 there is no final relation. This is not a 
 mere theoretical question, it is one of infi- 
 nite practicality ; for this very notion that 
 the forces of the universe do not finally 
 stand together in any intelligent plan, but 
 are drifting toward a future without ulti- 
 mate coherence, has to many minds taken 
 away all sanction from the moral powers. 
 Moreover, it takes away the validity of the 
 reason itself. If reason and conscience are 
 simply powers that have been developed 
 in a fortuitous struggle for survival, then, 
 as Mr. Balfour intimates, neither of them 
 can be considered an ultimate authority. 
 
 True, their authority rests upon the logic 
 of nature, but if nature herself is adrift, this 
 last fact reduces all our thought to stulti- 
 fication. But at this point Christ comes 
 to the rescue of the evolutionary view. 
 His spiritual perception supplies the miss- 
 ing element ; it makes nature rational and 
 spiritual. If all things do indeed stand to- 
 gether in one personal life which is both 
 spirit and psyche, then the logic of nature 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 389 
 
 becomes the logic of God ; and, however 
 imperfect reason or conscience may be in 
 their present stage, or when detached from 
 God's guidance, they have infinite worth 
 and sanction as the organs of his natural 
 revelation. Standing in relation to him, 
 they become sources of divine illumination. 
 Nature thus becomes God's voice, saying, 
 in the words of the old Hebrew prophet, 
 " I will guide thee with mine eye." 
 
 II. AtitJiority and Reason. 
 
 The foregoing chapters seem to me a 
 fair rendering of Christ's view into the 
 thought of our own times. If this is cor- 
 rect, then two points of frequent debate 
 are settled : First, as to the foundation of 
 belief. Only one conception is possible if 
 we accept this idea of the supernatural, — 
 belief must be founded on perception. If 
 the supernatural is, as Christ taught, the 
 natural environment of the human soul ; 
 if man has in him a potentiality for feeling 
 God ; if man be the embryo supernatural 
 and God the parental, — then faith in God 
 must correspond to the faith of a child in 
 his parent, and that is certainly founded 
 
390 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 on perception. As the perception broad- 
 ens, the child's faith becomes rational ; as 
 it extends upward, the faith becomes moral 
 and spiritual. It is true that the parental 
 teachings are beyond the perception of 
 the child, but the child accepts them be- 
 cause he perceives the parental character. 
 Conscience shows him the quality of the 
 parental life ; reason shows him the rela- 
 tion between the parental acts. Thus he 
 perceives his father's life as a whole, and 
 he perceives that it is not unitable with 
 unkindness or deceit. 
 
 So, while he accepts the parental teach- 
 ings on trust, his trust is entirely rational. 
 It is founded on a perfectly coherent 
 perception ; nor does the world afford 
 us any more solid basis for knowledge 
 than this. If revelation be what Jesus 
 called it, light ; if the disciple be, as Jesus 
 declared, a man who walks in the light ; if 
 the truth of God be, as such language im- 
 plies, the transmission of God's thought and 
 feelinQT, the actual coordination of God's 
 life with ours, — then assuredly it is a 
 misnomer to call anything a revelation of 
 God unless it does actually awaken percep- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 391 
 
 tion. Revelation, on the divine side, is 
 transmission ; on the human side, sight. 
 We are told by certain wiseacres that 
 there are just two foundations for faith : 
 one is reason, the other authority ; and if a 
 man puts his faith in authority, he must 
 be consistent and give up reason. Such 
 talk leads to confusion. A medical ex- 
 pert is an authority. When an invalid 
 puts his case in the hands of a medical 
 expert, does he throw away reason ? Not 
 unless he is an uncommonly stupid man. 
 If he has any rational perception, he uses 
 it to find out just how valuable an author- 
 ity that physician is. He does not reason 
 about the treatment. That he takes on 
 faith ; it is beyond his reasoning faculties, 
 because it is beyond his experience. Au- 
 thority settles the medical questions, but 
 the authority itself he does not accept save 
 on the basis of a thoroughly rational per- 
 ception. The same is true in regard to a 
 witness in a judicial trial. The testimony 
 of a witness is accepted with regard to 
 what he has seen, for the facts of his 
 testimony are beyond the observation of 
 the court, but it is not accepted unless he 
 
392' THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 is a credible witness, and a credible witness 
 is one in whom we perceive honesty and 
 intelligence. Thus, while we accept his 
 authority on faith, we found that faith 
 itself on our own rational perception of his 
 qualities, and in this process the whole 
 perceptive organism is essential. Reason 
 and feeling are coordinated. 
 
 Nothino: could be more absurd therefore 
 than the general statement, that, in accept- 
 ing authority, we must renounce reason. I 
 am aware that this claim is made by certain 
 so-called ecclesiastical authorities, and that 
 drives us to the question. What is an au- 
 thority? A genuine authority is a per- 
 sonality w^ho transcends our own faculties 
 in some direction, so that we are com- 
 pelled to supplement our knowledge by 
 his. The ultimate basis of authority is 
 the fact already referred to, that nature's 
 method is organic : she creates no separate 
 units ; all things are interdependent. Evo- 
 lution brings about constant specialization ; 
 each individual is stocked with his peculiar 
 set of capacities and adaptations for the 
 common good. This specialization leads 
 to arrangement in groups and about or- 
 ganic centres. 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 393 
 
 It is with men as with plants or with 
 the human body : some are stems, others 
 branches ; some are heads, others mem- 
 bers. There are also parents and children, 
 leaders and followers. Each man is an 
 organ ; each organ has its function ; each 
 function has its authority based on social 
 necessity. The organ exists, not for itself, 
 but in order to promote the highest devel- 
 opment of the whole. When one organ 
 interferes with the development of another, 
 that is tyranny. Every organ has the 
 authority to resist tyranny. Liberty is the 
 right to perform one's organic function. 
 Every organ is bound to justify itself by 
 promoting the development of its depend- 
 ent organs. Authority is, therefore, the 
 right of an organ to perform its function 
 in supplementing the lives that are depend- 
 ent on it. There is an element of coer- 
 cion in all authority, for the structure of 
 things makes its function a necessity. An 
 authority may not be able to assert its 
 own right, but nature will assert it. The 
 Athenians may banish Aristides, but they 
 will have to take their punishment. The 
 Jews may reject their Messiah ; but if he 
 
394 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 be truly the natural head of the organ- 
 ism, then the natural law of the structure 
 will bring in a judgment day. We all have 
 to settle our accounts with authority ; still 
 a person who is a natural leader may base 
 his authority on various footings, accord- 
 ing to his choice. Caesar based his upon 
 force; that was autocracy. It was necessary 
 at the time, because the other organs of 
 the Roman state were unfit to perform their 
 function. The same was true under the 
 Mosaic theocracy : autocratic or aristocratic 
 authority was a necessity, because the sub- 
 jects of the authority had not yet reached 
 the possibilities of self-government. Self- 
 government begins with the power to per- 
 ceive a true authority, and to choose a true 
 leader in rational faith. As soon as that 
 becomes possible, authority must base it- 
 self upon perception ; nay, it must antici- 
 pate that crisis by attempting to form per- 
 ception. When an authority bases itself 
 upon rational perception, then it is rational 
 authority. When it bases its claim to faith 
 not only upon rational perception, but on 
 the development and purification of the 
 sensibility, then it is spiritual authority. 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 395 
 
 The characteristic of rational authority 
 is, that although it is conscious of natural 
 headship, it does not put its claim before 
 men at the point of the bayonet, but en- 
 deavors to gain its position by developing 
 rational perception. 
 
 The characteristic of spiritual author- 
 ity is, that, while it rejects force and ap- 
 peals to reason, it also depends on purify- 
 ing and spiritualizing the life. Now, there 
 is no question as to the position which 
 Jesus took in regard to his authority. It 
 is clear that he believed himself to be the 
 supreme authority, the Messiah, the Son 
 of God, for he declared so on oath. His 
 relation to revelation in general has been 
 already defined. He was the fulfiUer, the 
 crowning organ for interpretation, trans- 
 mission, and formation of spiritual life. It 
 was his function not only to radiate God, 
 but so to form and purify and develop the 
 life of man that it should be perceptive. 
 " I am come," said he, " that the blind may 
 receive siofht." His entire attitude was con- 
 sistent with this position. He spoke with 
 supreme authority to those who followed 
 him, but he rejected physical force. He 
 
396 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 pointed out by parables the organic neces- 
 sity of his authority. He showed its rai- 
 son d'etre in the nature of things; nay, 
 he pointed back of the nature of things to 
 the will of God. He showed how " the 
 powers that be are ordained of God." He 
 pointed out the coercive element in his own 
 authority, — the certainty that those that 
 rejected him must recko'n with nature and 
 with God. He declared that it would be 
 " more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah 
 in the day of judgment " than for those that 
 neglected his gospel. But all this was back- 
 ground ; the foreground of his claim upon 
 men's faith, the gospel itself, was his radia- 
 tion of the divine character. This was the 
 formative light: "the lame walked, the 
 lepers were cleansed, to the poor the gospel 
 was preached," — these were his creden- 
 tials. See Luke vii. 22. Note also that 
 the psychic element plays an important 
 part in this evidential work of Jesus. The 
 cures would have been impossible save for 
 it. It is an eternal element of the divine 
 light. But the passage universally accepted 
 as a statement both of Christ's authority 
 and the foundation of faith is Matt. xvi. 18. 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 397 
 
 Strangely enough, this very passage has 
 been twisted wholly away from its historic 
 significance and construed into a bestowal 
 of arbitrary and dogmatic authority upon 
 a bishop. The fact of the case was, that 
 Jesus had actually refrained from stating, 
 even to the twelve, that he was the 
 Christ, or the Son of God. Until they 
 had been following him a very consider- 
 able length of time, the statement would 
 have been to them purely dogmatic, and, 
 therefore, valueless; so he waited for their 
 perception to develop. Then, in the quiet 
 at Cesarea Philippi, having drawn out 
 from them the varying drift of public 
 opinion concerning himself, he suddenly 
 threw the whole vexed question of his 
 authoi'ity upon their reason : " But whom 
 say ye that I am t " When Peter an- 
 swered, " Thou art the Christ, the Son 
 of the living God," he replied, " Happy 
 art thou, Simon; for flesh and blood 
 hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
 Father who is in heaven." In other 
 words, the human organ of revelation, the 
 flesh and blood of Jesus, had accomplished 
 its divine function for Simon. It had not 
 
39S THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 spoken of itself. It had been a faithful 
 transmitting agent ; the Father had spoken 
 through it. And the corresponding fact 
 was also true. The rational and spiritual 
 perception of Simon had begun to form. 
 It had penetrated beyond the human agency 
 to the invisible facts and relationships that 
 lay behind it; the soul of Simon was rest- 
 ing upon ultimate verities. " And I tell 
 thee," said Jesus, " thou art a rock, and 
 upon this ledge I will build my church, and 
 the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
 it." 
 
 Then it was that to Simon and to the 
 twelve Jesus committed, not an authority 
 differing from his own, but a dependent 
 extension of the same organic function, 
 declaring that to them, as exercising that 
 function, he would give the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven, the very keys of revela- 
 tion and perception by which he had al- 
 ready unlocked the kingdom for them. 
 Unfortunately the ecclesiastics have, to a 
 large extent, misunderstood the nature of 
 this authority, and have gone about en- 
 deavoring to make proselytes to a dogma, 
 giving promise of heaven to all who re- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 399 
 
 ceived it and of hell to those who refused. 
 Nothing could be more foreign to the idea 
 or spirit of Christ. Nor could there be 
 any greater wickedness than has been 
 manifested in the name of Christ's au- 
 thority by men who believed the teach- 
 ings of Christ as mere dogmas, without 
 a particle of insight into their spiritual 
 meaning. Such men are not coordinated 
 with God. They have not the righteous- 
 ness of Christ nor do they belong to his 
 church, if his idea of the church is to 
 be accepted. The church, according to 
 Christ, is an extension of the revelatory 
 organism ; the true disciple is an organ 
 of revelation, acting under Christ. His 
 authority over men is simply an extension, 
 according to his measure, of Christ's author- 
 ity. He should, like Christ, bear witness 
 to the revelation that he has perceived, but 
 he has no right to bind dogma upon men 
 in advance of their spiritual perception. 
 
 The first business of the church is to 
 follow her Master, in forming a matrix of 
 spiritual life, where perception may be 
 formed and developed under liberty. A 
 church is a home for God's children. Its 
 
400 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 method of spiritualization must be that of 
 the home. Its authorities must be of the 
 most revelatory and parental type. If they 
 cannot form spiritual perception, they are 
 worthless. There cannot be a doubt on 
 this point, for it is corroborated by Christ's 
 own expression, "Except ye become as 
 little children ye shall in no case enter the 
 kingdom of heaven." It is true the little 
 child can be made to submit to the harsh- 
 est kind of parental dogmatism, but the 
 child that does so submit is a case of cruel 
 malformation in which the natural ten- 
 dency of childhood has been brutally extin- 
 guished, and it is an insult to call such 
 stupid cruelty parental authority. The 
 mind of a little child has naturally an 
 inquiring tendency, and the peculiar char- 
 acteristic of every embryo life is a ten- 
 der sensitiveness to the radiation of the 
 parental life. The child nestles to the 
 parental bosom; it feels after the father- 
 hood and motherhood. The child soul is 
 full of sensibility and of a desire to under- 
 stand ; the eye is clear, but unformed; the 
 soul has not yet been centred on a selfish 
 passion, nor the reason taught to play 
 tricks for its satisfaction. 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 401 
 
 Now the normal coordination of parent 
 with child depends on the proper develop- 
 ment of that perceptive organism : this is 
 the parent's hope ; it is for this his author- 
 ity exists; this is the potency of faith; and 
 when the faith of childhood is thus based 
 on the normal development of the child's 
 perception, without undue restraint of 
 either feeling or inquiry, then that faith 
 rests upon a rock, — it strikes deep into 
 unchanging realities ; it rests on eternal 
 values. Nothing less than such a faith 
 can satisfy God, but the method for devel- 
 oping it involves much sacrifice. This 
 Christ clearly understood. 
 
 It often happens that, as the child grows, 
 the development of physical energy and 
 the stimuli of external pleasure waken in 
 him a far greater consciousness of his 
 own vitalities than of the parental love. 
 The boy's eye begins to be evil, for it is 
 turned upon himself. There is too much 
 ego in his cosmos; his reason, too, plays 
 him a trick. Perfectly clear within its nar- 
 row range, it seems to him adequate to any 
 task ; whatever cannot satisfy it he scorn- 
 fully rejects. He is, at that age, off the 
 
402 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 track of normal development, and in danger 
 of becoming morally detached from the 
 home which is the matrix of ethical life for 
 him. He is neither child nor man, but a 
 kind of priggish animal. If he continues 
 to develop on that line he will soon become 
 a disorganized boy and a possible criminal. 
 When a lad gets into that state, neither 
 arguments nor explanations can do him 
 much good. He can overmatch you with 
 arguments which you find it impossible to 
 answer, simply because you cannot show 
 him the larger aspect of things. Proof lies 
 in broader reasoning, but broader reasoning 
 requires broader perception, and broader 
 perception requires a larger and more com- 
 plex sensibility. For the attainment of 
 this larger sensibility there is but one 
 method, that of revelation. But to this he 
 has become insensitive ; therefore he must, 
 as we say, have his heart touched. The 
 parental spirit must in some way manage 
 to make itself felt. This is the problem 
 of parental government; often it is only 
 through a tragedy that the parental spirit 
 succeeds in making itself felt, and so re- 
 stores the intellectual little brute to the 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 403 
 
 path of normal evolution. Then, for the 
 first time, the potential spiritual sensibility 
 of the youth is awakened. He experiences 
 genuine reverence, namely, the conscious- 
 ness of what is really great in the parental 
 authority, for it is the spiritual love that is 
 the true majesty. Then, too, comes that 
 new sense of obligation — the consciousness 
 of the boy that he belongs to the larger life, 
 not merely because of external authority, 
 but because of the unity between that life 
 and his own. He belongs to his father, 
 because no one loves him like his father. 
 Even his own self-love is a poor and feeble 
 thing compared with the father's spiritual 
 affection for him. With this new con- 
 sciousness of the fatherhood, there comes 
 a new and tender sense of sin as an injury 
 done against love, while, at the same time, 
 with the sense of sin comes the assurance 
 of a flood-tide of forgiveness. Thus there 
 is born in him a new spiritual conscience. 
 These are, I believe, always the elements 
 of character developed in the lad when he 
 is profoundly touched by parental sacrifice, 
 and with these begin the purification and 
 development of perception. Now, to the 
 
404 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 mind of Christ, the position of man with 
 reference to God was like that of the child 
 who has passed through the infantile stage 
 of childhood and has reached that of youth. 
 He is a child still, but it is the crisis of child- 
 hood. Kindergarten pedagogy, rewards and 
 penalties, the authority of force and dogma, 
 all the old theocratic methods, had done 
 their work and must be laid aside ; a new 
 authority must take their place, — a larger, 
 tenderer, more personal revelation. The 
 heart must be touched by the divine trag- 
 edy. No explanation, nor philosophy, nor 
 proof, could meet the case. The Christ 
 was the person who represented God's 
 spiritual authority, but that authority was 
 organic, not arbitrary. It must, therefore, 
 now manifest itself by disclosing its vital 
 force in the heart of God; man must see 
 that he belonged to God, because God 
 loved him even unto death. There was 
 something awful in the fixed determina- 
 tion of Jesus that the cross should be 
 his only answer to those who challenged 
 him. This thought of Jesus was clearly 
 grasped by St. Paul, who declared that 
 his preaching did not consist in phi- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 405 
 
 losophy or rhetoric, lest he should make 
 the cross of Christ of none effect. In 
 other words, he did not dare to come, with 
 his human explanations or fine speeches, 
 between the dying Redeemer and the hearts 
 of men. There are some facts that can 
 best speak for themselves. The simplest 
 telling of the story is the best. What is 
 desired in the witness is, that he should 
 himself be profoundly in touch with the fact. 
 That makes him transmissive. Skeptics 
 have complained that preachers were emo- 
 tional, and that emotion was opposed to 
 clear perception. That depends on the 
 kind of perception required. 
 
 When there is already sufficient reason- 
 ing power, and the main thing demanded 
 is a larger and purer sensibility, then it is 
 impossible to get along without emotion, 
 but it must be of the highest and purest 
 kind. The human flesh and blood must 
 become, as in Christ's case, a self-abnega- 
 ting medium for the Divine love. 
 
 III. The Authority of the New Testament. 
 
 Christ's view is evidently the one taken 
 by the evangelists. His basis of authority 
 
406 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 is that on which the New Testament 
 claims our belief. What is true of Christ's 
 authority must be true concerning the au- 
 thority of the New Testament. By its 
 own assertion it is a history of facts that 
 are coordinate with us ; it is a revelation 
 or nothing, and it is a revelation of our 
 own spiritual environment. True, it is 
 about a historic Jesus, but it tells us that 
 Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the 
 conditioned divine personality, that he has 
 ascended into God's omnipresence. He 
 must therefore be near, as God is near, 
 " closer than breathing, nearer than hands 
 and feet." " I am with you always," he 
 said ; " where two or three are gathered 
 together in my name, there am I in the 
 midst of them." (Matthew xviii. 20.) The 
 New Testament does not state facts dog- 
 matically ; it is a book surcharged with life, 
 tremulous with divine love. It is a por- 
 trait rather than an historic account, — a 
 portrait through which the living Christ 
 breathes and looks upon the soul of man. 
 The thoughts and feelings of Christ radi- 
 ate from every page ; they invite the soul to 
 follow. Following, one finds both the heart 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 407 
 
 and mind of Christ ; the supernatural envi- 
 ronment is disclosed to him. The author- 
 ity of the New Testament is therefore that 
 of an organ. It justifies itself to an ever- 
 widening perception. I do not mean for 
 a moment that there is a lack of external 
 evidence ; but it would take a separate 
 book to speak of that. My subject is the 
 relation of Chrisfs idea to evidence. If 
 Christ's idea be correct, and the New Tes- 
 tament be a divine revelation, then the 
 principal evidence must be internal. It 
 consists in a spiritual perception grasping 
 the eternal realities themselves. What 
 other criterion could there be for a revela- 
 tion } Could a chain of external evidence 
 take the place of this.? Could historic 
 testimony constitute the ultimate guar- 
 antee of a revelatory organ } Could any- 
 thing do this but the development in us 
 of God-consciousness ? Doubtless, on the 
 basis of Christ's view, the best external 
 evidence for the New Testament is the 
 historic part which it has played in the 
 spiritual development of the race. The 
 great fact of human history is the struggle 
 for spiritual survival, flesh against spirit. 
 
408 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 You see it everywhere, in the old Accadian 
 hymns, in the Vedas, in the Egyptian 
 Book of the Dead. Now, in this struggle 
 the New Testament has, despite the blood- 
 iest opposition, come to the front ; it has 
 taken the lead. For it has fortified the 
 spiritual life, satisfied its hungerings, re- 
 lieved its guilt, harmonized it with its 
 ideals, adjusted it to its supernatural envi- 
 ronment, supplied it with the greatest of 
 all moral and spiritual forces in the love of 
 God, developed its valuation of the human 
 soul. It has called the individual to the 
 most sublime sacrifices, yet has harmo- 
 nized the sacrifice of the individual life with 
 its eternal welfare. It has reconciled self- 
 abnegation and self-interest, and so taught 
 men the only reasonable altruism. It has 
 developed the perception of those who 
 have identified themselves with it, till they 
 have had not only the idea of God, but 
 a perfectly rational consciousness of his 
 presence. To call the belief of these men 
 irrational is absurd. It is backed up by 
 the Iconic of life. The necessities of the 
 spiritual struggle are part of our evolu- 
 tion ; the authority of the New Testament 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 409 
 
 is therefore based upon the law of evolu- 
 tion itself. The disciples of Jesus may 
 well say, with Peter when asked if he 
 would forsake Christ, " Lord, to whom 
 shall we go? Thou hast the words of 
 eternal life." 
 
 Eternal life is spiritual life, the final 
 stage of man's evolution. It stands in a 
 logical unity with the previous stages. 
 The man who has attained to it discerns 
 his own life as a rational continuity. He 
 also discerns it as standing together with 
 the facts of the universe. As the Duke 
 of Argyle has asserted, the spiritual life of 
 the Christian is the real unit and core of 
 all social evolution, for social evolution de- 
 mands a vital altruism. It is impossible 
 for altruism to continue as a persistent 
 force in social evolution unless it is thor- 
 oughly vital, and a spirit from which rea- 
 son, hope, and individual satisfaction have 
 departed is not vital. Altruism is essen- 
 tially spiritual in its nature ; it needs to be 
 fed upon eternal realities, like the father- 
 hood of God, the brotherhood of man, and 
 a joyful immortality. It draws its vitality 
 from the words of eternal life, for the 
 
410 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 words are transmissive. They are not 
 dogmas, but vehicles of immortality. The 
 struggle for spiritual survival is therefore 
 the spinal cord of social evolution. The 
 victory of Christian faith is the hope of 
 the world. This fact the intelligent Chris- 
 tian sees. His faith in the New Testa- 
 ment is therefore based on an exceedingly 
 broad and coherent perception, embracing 
 both internal and external evidence. For 
 this relation of the New Testament to 
 spiritual and social evolution is a colossal 
 external evidence, compared with which 
 the external evidences commonly adduced 
 are insignificant. Therefore there can be 
 no greater misrepresentation than the oft- 
 repeated statement that the Christian faith 
 is supra-rational. Such a notion is radi- 
 cally false and confusing. It is true that 
 the Christian refuses to base his belief on 
 reason and external sensation alone ; he 
 has rational ground for such a refusal. 
 Reason and external sensation do not con- 
 stitute the whole of the perceptive organ- 
 ism, and the Christian is perfectly logical 
 in demanding that perception shall take in 
 all the elements of vision ; that it shall in- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 411 
 
 elude the highest feehngs ; that it shall be 
 pure and rational and spiritual. He is 
 also logical in insisting with Christ that a 
 man shall become as a little child.^ If the 
 perceptive organism includes the whole life, 
 then surely nothing but the turning of the 
 whole life, with all its sensitive elements, 
 toward the organ of revelation, can pos- 
 sibly fit a man to judge of that revelation : 
 he must be touched by the larger life be- 
 fore he can be fitted to reason about it. It 
 is not the use of reason that the Christian 
 objects to : it is the divorce of reason from 
 the rest of the perceptive organism, and 
 the exaltation of it with external sensation, 
 as though the two together constituted a 
 complete criterion. Above all does he 
 object to the absurd claim that belief 
 can be founded on logic. The Christian 
 knows that logic is a machine exceed- 
 ingly liable to tricks and accident. One 
 of its premises, at least, must rest upon 
 what is called a known fact ; but the 
 known fact always contains an unknown 
 element, which if expanded might make a 
 
 ^ " Except ye be converted," means simply, " Except ye 
 turn." 
 
412 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 new universe and break up the whole syl- 
 logism. Therefore he does not think that 
 our faith in any objective reality can rest 
 upon logic. Indeed, the thoughtful Chris- 
 tian is inclined to ask whether this is not 
 the real difHculty with the naturalistic 
 position as exposed by Mr. Balfour. No- 
 thing could be more suggestive of this 
 than Mr. Spenser's reply: he complains 
 that Mr. Balfour has not fairly represented 
 naturalism. Probably he is correct. The 
 average reader of Mr. Balfour's book will 
 most likely feel that the argument proves 
 too much, but this is exactly what the com- 
 mon mind also feels about naturalism it- 
 self. Any logic that ends, as Mr. Spenser 
 confesses his does, in a dark outlook, cer- 
 tainly does, to the healthy human intellect, 
 prove too much. Besides, it must be re- 
 membered that the shaky position in which 
 Mr. Balfour leaves naturalism is the result 
 of pushing to its legitimate consequences 
 the chosen position of Mr. Huxley and 
 Mr. Spenser. They have been always as- 
 serting that their position rested upon 
 strict logic. 
 
 Mr. Huxley's latest book was an insist- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 413 
 
 ence that Christianity should justify itself 
 by strict logic, precisely as the naturalistic 
 philosophers justify their view. Now, the 
 curious fact is, that, while the naturalistic 
 philosophy does, on the whole, commend 
 itself to the coherent perception of man- 
 kind, yet the moment it is subjected to a 
 strict and universal test of logic it begins 
 to look dubious. Furthermore, as has been 
 said, Mr. Huxley himself confesses that 
 the scientist is obliged to accept his funda- 
 mental postulate, the uniformity of nature, 
 by an act of faith (which is certainly true, 
 unless his perception can penetrate to an 
 ultimate cause of uniformity) ; while his 
 logic regarding the primary qualities of 
 matter compels him to depend absolutely 
 on faith for his certitude in regard to the 
 external world. It would appear, therefore, 
 that Mr. Balfour has fairly made his prin- 
 cipal point, which is, that those who can- 
 not stand the strict application of logic to 
 their own poition cannot with a very good 
 grace insist on such a process for others. 
 It is true, there is sound sense in Mr. 
 Spenser's objection that Mr. Balfour's book 
 undermines reason, and that to do that 
 
414 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 is to commit mental suicide. But this is 
 rather a droll objection for Mr. Spenser to 
 urge, since it is the pushing of his own 
 logical position that actually does the un- 
 dermining. Does the difficulty, then, really 
 lie in that logical position? This isunde- 
 niably the question to which the plain, 
 common-sense thinker is driven. The nat- 
 uralistic philosophers have done a great and 
 excellent work. It seems certain that the 
 intelliQ:ence of mankind will bear out that 
 statement. They have done an immense 
 deal to develop the human reason : why, 
 then, should their system, which has done 
 so much to develop reason, appear to 
 undermine its force ? To the common 
 mind, such a fact irresistibly suggests the 
 idea that they have not clearly analyzed 
 their own processes, and that, in represent- 
 ing their system as being based on absolute 
 logic, they have put it in a false and dam- 
 aging light. It also suggests the question 
 whether their whole system does not in 
 reality rest, like any other objective know- 
 ledge, on perception ; and whether its ac- 
 tual merit does not lie in the strictness 
 with which they have insisted on the cohe- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 415 
 
 rence of perception. It further suggests 
 the query whether proof of an objective 
 fact can ever be anything more than the 
 strict coordination of reason with a wider 
 apphcation of the sensibihty; or, in other 
 words, the extension of the coherence of 
 perception. It seems to indicate that per- 
 ception is proved, or, in other words, cor- 
 roborated, first, by making sure of the 
 perceptive organism itself, by determining 
 experimentally that it is complete in its 
 elements, that impurities are eliminated, 
 and accurate focalization secured ; then, 
 secondly, by exercising it from different 
 points of view. Thus, as, from different 
 view-points, things are seen to stand to- 
 gether in a rational unity, the vision is 
 proved to our reasonable satisfaction. Its 
 coherence with nature is established ; we 
 discern a principle of unity, or, in other 
 words, what we call a unifying force. On 
 this ground of coherent perception, taken 
 from different standpoints, we accept the 
 uniformity of nature ; we cannot prove it, 
 but a widely coherent perception irresist- 
 ibly suggests it. 
 
 I put this simply as an hypothesis sug- 
 
41 6 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 gested by the exigencies of the case. If it 
 be correct, it certainly throws light upon 
 the situation, for, taking this view, the work 
 which the naturalistic philosophers have 
 accomplished for us cannot be shaken. 
 True, they have not given us a final phi- 
 losophy of things, — who could expect it of 
 them ? — but they have greatly developed 
 and disciplined the perceptive organism, so 
 that its visions have become rational ob- 
 servations. Thus we see, or, what is the 
 same thing, we feel the universe to-day in a 
 larger, truer, and more coherent unity. We 
 see things standing together in wider rela- 
 tions, and it is the verdict of our coherent 
 perceptive organism which gives to natu- 
 ralism its actual strength. We believe it 
 to be true because it looks coherent to us, 
 because we are finely sensitive to new as- 
 pects of things, and discern relations before 
 hidden from the unobserving human eye. 
 But, however broad may be the unity in 
 which we see things, it cannot be perfect ; 
 we can never see all around. As Mr. Bal- 
 four has pointed out, there are many strik- 
 ing facts that cannot as yet be brought into 
 this scientific unity. Such must always be 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 417 
 
 the case. To see all around would be to 
 see every aspect of everything, and that, to 
 a finite mind, is impossible. Human per- 
 ception must be content with imperfect 
 unities; it must get along without abso- 
 lute coherence. It must supplement itself 
 with God's guidance. Nor does the value 
 of philosophy lie in what it proves, but in 
 its contribution to a more coherent percep- 
 tion. Despite our best philosophizing, 
 there will frequently be two unities, — a 
 spiritual and a material, for instance ; we 
 cannot reduce them to one. We need not 
 worry ; it is perfectly rational to hold both, 
 while we wait for more light. Sometimes 
 we can reduce things mainly to a single 
 unity, but there will still remain outstand- 
 ing facts. Such outstanding facts, how- 
 ever, are not to be regarded as disprov- 
 ing a widely coherent vision. If the 
 perceptive organism works coherently, we 
 may logically follow it. Particularly is this 
 the case if our reason coheres with the 
 logic of life : therefore no position can be 
 more rational than that of the believer in 
 the New Testament. Coherent percep- 
 tion growing, day by day, broader, reveals 
 
41 8 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 to him the fact that the New Testament is 
 an organ of spiritual vitality corresponding 
 to the Jesus whom it portrays. It is more- 
 over a spiritual authority. Behind it is 
 the coercion of spiritual necessity, and 
 standing together with it the fact of spirit- 
 ual evolution. The more he uses his 
 spiritual perception the wider becomes the 
 unity, the fewer become the outstanding 
 facts. Thus the New Testament author- 
 ity is backed by the logic of life. He is 
 therefore strictly rational when he insists 
 on adhering to it despite the outstanding 
 facts. Particularly is he reasonable in in- 
 sisting that the New Testament is not to 
 be brought before the bar of those facts 
 and compelled to adjust itself to them; 
 reason would require that the outstand- 
 ing facts should adjust themselves to the 
 larger and more vital unity. We do not 
 suddenly take the father of a family, who 
 has been a good citizen for forty years, 
 and demand that he shall prove himself 
 innocent of a criminal charge or be con- 
 demned. That is opposed to the logic of 
 life. We insist that the burden of proof 
 shall lie with the accusers. The New 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 419 
 
 Testament has been for eighteen centuries 
 a parent life, — a begetter and feeder of 
 spiritual vitalities. It has supported mil- 
 lions of souls in the struggle for spiritual 
 existence. Millions are still clinging to it 
 for what spiritual life they have. Its au- 
 thority is the only guide for its children, 
 in matters that transcend their experience. 
 It is not just nor reasonable to demand 
 that it shall now instantly prove its cohe- 
 rence with all outstanding facts or be dis- 
 credited. As has been already said, no 
 system could stand that test. Naturalism 
 appears ridiculous under it. The burden 
 of proof lies with the critics. They must 
 first prove conclusively their outstanding 
 facts, but this is not enough. The believer 
 in the New Testament is not logically 
 bound to reduce everything to unity with 
 his view. No reasonable man undertakes 
 such a task. The critic must show, not 
 only that his adverse facts are really out- 
 standing, but that they interfere with the 
 coherence of the believer's view in such a 
 way as to discredit his perceptive organ- 
 ism. This same principle applies to the 
 higher criticism. It shows what should be 
 
420 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 our attitude toward it. We ought to wel- 
 come it, but not because it can absolutely 
 prove anything, or furnish us with any 
 final certitude as regards the New Tes- 
 tament. No one who has followed the 
 process of the Tiibingen school can have 
 failed to note the precariousness of its evi- 
 dence as a foundation for absolute faith. 
 
 The final guaranty of a revelation must 
 be spiritual perception; the advantage of 
 the higher criticism lies not in what it is 
 going to prove, but in the element of dis- 
 cipline to our perception. This is so great 
 an advantage that we ought heartily to wel- 
 come it, while, at the same time, we resist 
 the unreasonable assertions of some of 
 its followers. Its function is really much 
 more limited than they suppose, and reason 
 requires that it should have a broader 
 working hypothesis which will include the 
 spiritual facts already referred to. 
 
 But, it may be urged, all things should 
 be open to reason ; we should allow the 
 Bible to be criticised, like any other book, 
 or it is not open to reason. Certainly, but 
 how would you criticise any other book.? 
 Would you not require as a condition that 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 421 
 
 the critic should possess the elements of 
 perception necessary to detect the qualities 
 contained in the book? Is it not reason- 
 able to insist that a man who discusses an 
 authority should know the practical his- 
 tory and relations of that authority ? 
 
 Shall the genuineness of a Scripture be 
 judged by a man who has neither the in- 
 sight or spiritual experience to judge what 
 it actually is, what it has done or is doing 
 for human souls, even though he be as 
 lofty an intelligence as Martineau ? Shall 
 we not demand of him that he possess 
 sufificient sympathy with psychic humanity 
 to understand practically the pedagogics 
 of the Hebrew system? Reason without 
 adequate feeling or experience is a crip- 
 pled organ. The critical faculty demands 
 as one of its elements the broadest and 
 highest sensibility. But, it may be urged, 
 if you base the Christian faith on percep- 
 tion, you are on the same footing with such 
 visionaries as the Christian scientists. I 
 answer, we do not base Christianity on a 
 supra-sensuous intuition. We maintain 
 its foundation to be the complete purified 
 and spiritualized organ of perception in 
 
422 THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 
 
 which all the elements of vision are co- 
 ordinated. If we insist on a supra-sensu- 
 ous element, we insist that it should be a 
 genuine evolution: we insist, also, that it 
 should not be isolated; that it should be 
 compelled to justify itself by its coherence 
 with all the elements that can enter into 
 the process of vision. When the Chris- 
 tian scientist gives us a vision that stands 
 together in perfect harmony with a vast 
 spiritual organism as perfect as our spe- 
 cific revelation, we shall be ready to ac- 
 cept it. When a Roman Catholic miracle 
 turns out to be no sporadic case of reli- 
 gious hypnotism, but a true symbol and 
 prophecy of spiritual experience standing 
 together with such a drama as that of. the 
 Hebrew nation and the Christ, we shall 
 be prepared to accept it as an authority ; 
 and if it justifies itself by bringing us into 
 a coherent perception of the divine relation- 
 ship, and thus coordinates our souls with 
 the Divine Spirit, we shall be sure that 
 our faith is founded upon a rock. The ul- 
 timate ration^ verity is the final guaranty 
 of faith, and he who possesses that ultimate 
 verity with any permanent grasp will dis- 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF BELIEF. 423 
 
 cover that it is somethinor beside a fleetinof 
 emotion. It is not only love, but reason ; 
 it is a coherent thought which pervades the 
 whole New Testament. 
 
 Nay, it is an Intellect, of which the 
 broadest human mind is but a shadow, 
 an Intellect ageless and infinite. It is the 
 mind of Christ, and it stands together with 
 the love of Christ in an indivisible unity. 
 For him who finds it, it is indeed " The 
 Rock of Ages." 
 

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