Part 1 (1/2)
The Romance of the Soul.
by Lilian Staveley.
What am I? In my flesh I am but equal to the beasts of the field. In my heart and mind I am corrupt Humanity. In my soul I know not what I am or may be, and therein lies my hope.
O wonderful and mysterious soul, more fragile than gossamer and yet so strong that she may stand in the Presence of G.o.d and not peris.h.!.+
”Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a _dove.”--Psalm lxviii. 13._
By what means shall the ordinary man and woman, living the usual everyday life, whether of work or of leisure, find G.o.d? And this without withdrawing themselves into a life apart--a ”religious” life, and without outward and conspicuous piety always running to public wors.h.i.+p (though often very cross and impatient at home); without leaving undone any of the duties necessary to the welfare of those dependent on them; without making themselves in any way peculiar;--how shall these same people go up into the secret places of G.o.d, how shall they find the marvellous peace of G.o.d, how satisfy those vague persistent longings for a happiness more complete than any they have so far known, yet a happiness which is whispered of between the heart and the soul as something which is to be possessed if we but knew how to get it? How shall ordinary mortals whilst still in the flesh re-enter Eden even for an hour? for Eden is not dead and gone, but we are dead to Eden--Eden, the secret garden of enchantment where the soul and the mind and the heart live in the presence of G.o.d and hear once more ”the voice of G.o.d walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. iii.).
It is possible for these things to come to us or we to them, and in quite a few years if we set our hearts on them. First we must desire; and after the desire, steady and persistent, G.o.d will give. And we say, ”But I have desired and I do desire, and G.o.d does not give.
Why is this?” There are two reasons for it. For one--are these marvellous things to be given because of one cry; for one petulant demand; for a few tears, mostly of self-pity, shed in an hour when the world fails to satisfy us, when a friend has disappointed us, when our plans are spoiled, when we are sick or lonely? These are the occasions on which we mostly find time to think of what we call a better world, and of the consolations of G.o.d.
But let anyone have all that he can fancy, be carried high upon the flood-tide of prosperity, ambition, and success, and how much time will he or she give to Almighty G.o.d?--not two moments during the day. Yet the Maker of all things is to bestow His unspeakable riches upon us in return for two moments of our thought or love! Does a man acquire great worldly wealth, or fame, in return for two moments of endeavour?
”Ah,” some of us may cry, ”but it is more than two moments that I give Him; I give Him hours, and yet I cannot find Him.” If that is really so, then the second reason is the one which would explain why He has not been found. A great wall divides us from the consciousness of the Presence of G.o.d. In this wall there is one Door, and one only, Jesus Christ. We have not found G.o.d because we have not found Him first as Jesus Christ in our own heart. Now whether we take our heart to church, whether we take it to our daily work, or whether we take it to our amus.e.m.e.nts, we shall not find Jesus in any one place more than another if He is not already in our hearts to begin with. How shall I commence to love a Being whom I have never seen? By thinking about Him; by thinking about Him very persistently; by comparing the world and its friends.h.i.+ps and its loves and its deceits and its secret enviousnesses with all that we know of the lovely ways of gentle Jesus. If we do this consistently, it is impossible not to find Him more lovable than any other person that we know. The more lovable we find Him the more we think about Him, by so much the more we find ourselves beginning to love Him, and once we have learnt to hold Him very warmly and tenderly in our heart, then we are well in the way to find the Christ and afterwards that divine garden of the soul in which G.o.d seems to slip His hand under our restless anxious heart and lift it high into a place of safety and repose.
When for some time we have learnt to go in and out of this garden, with G.o.d's tender help we make ourself a dear place--a nest under G.o.d's wing, and yet mysteriously even nearer than this, it is so near to G.o.d. To this place we learn to fly to and fro in a second of time: so that, sitting weary and hara.s.sed in the counting-house, in an instant a man can be away in his soul's nest; and so very great is the refreshment of it and the strength of it that he comes back to his work a new man, and so silently and quickly done that no one else in the room would ever know he had been there: it is a secret between his Lord and himself.
But the person who learns to do this does not remain the same raw uncivilised creature that once he or she was: but slowly must become quite changed; all tastes must alter, (all capacities will increase in an extraordinary manner), and all thoughts of heart and mind must become acceptable and pleasant to G.o.d.
The man who has not yet begun to seek G.o.d--that is to say, has not even commenced to try and learn how to live spiritually, but lives absorbed entirely in the things of the flesh--is a spiritual savage. To watch such a man and his ways and his tastes is to the spiritual man the same thing as when a European watches an African in his native haunts, notes his beads, his frightful tastes in decorations, foods, amus.e.m.e.nts, habits, and habitations, and, comparing them with his own ways, says instantly that man is a savage. This proud European does not pause to consider that he himself may be inwardly what the savage is--quite dark; that to G.o.d's eyes his own ways and tastes are as frightful as those of the African are to himself. What raises a man above a savage is not the size of his dining-room, the cut of his coat, the luxuries of his house, the learned books that adorn his bookshelves, but that he should have begun to learn how to live spiritually: this is the only true civilising of the human animal. Until it is commenced, his manners and his ways are nothing but a veneer covering the raw instincts of the natural man--instincts satisfied more carefully, more hiddenly, than those of the African, but always the same. There is little variety in the l.u.s.ts of the flesh; they are all after one pattern, each of its kind, follow one another in a circle, and are very limited.
It is not the clay of our bodies fas.h.i.+oned by G.o.d which makes some common and some not. It is the independent and un-G.o.dlike thoughts of our hearts and minds which can make of us common, and even savage, persons. The changing of these thoughts, the harmonising of them, and, finally, the total alteration of them, is the work in us of the Holy Spirit. By taking Christ into our hearts and making for Him there a living nest, we set that mighty force in motion which shall eventually make for us a nest in the Living G.o.d.
For Jesus Christ is able (but only with our own entire _willingness)_ to make us not only acceptable to G.o.d, but delightful to Him, so much so that even while we remain in the flesh He would seem not to be willing to endure having us always away from Him, but visits us and dwells with us after His own marvellous fas.h.i.+on and catches us up to Himself.
To begin with, we must have a set purpose and _will_ towards G.o.d.
In the whole spiritual advance it is first we who must make the effort, which G.o.d will then stabilise, and finally on our continuing to maintain this effort He will bring it to complete fruition. Thus step by step the spirit rises--first the effort, then the gift. First the will to do--and then the grace to do it with. Without the willing will G.o.d gives no grace: without G.o.d's grace no will of Man can reach attainment. G.o.d's will and Man's will, G.o.d's love and Man's love--these working and joining harmoniously together raise Man up into Eternal Life.
G.o.d is desirous of communicating Himself to us in a Personal manner. In the Scriptures we have the foundation, the basis, the cause and reason of our Faith laid out before us; but He wills that we go beyond this basis, this reasoning of Faith into experience of Himself. For this end, then, He fills us with the aching desire to find and know Him, to be filled with Him, to be comforted and consoled by Him, to discover His joys. He fills us with these desires in order that He may gratify us.
By being willing to receive and understand as only through the medium of the _written_ word we limit G.o.d in His communications with us. For by the Holy Ghost He will communicate not by written word but by personal touching of love brought about for us by the taking and enclosing of Jesus Christ within the heart not only as the Written Word, the Promise and Hope of Scripture, but as the Living G.o.d.
For this end inward meditation and pondering are a necessity.
How is it that we so often find great virtue, remarkable charity and patience amongst persons who are yet not conscious of any direct contact with G.o.d? They have never known the pains of repentance, neither have they known the sublime joys of G.o.d. Are these the ninety-and-nine just persons needing no repentance? Instinctively, and almost unconsciously, they hold to, and draw upon, the Universal Christ--or Spirit of Righteousness; but they have not laid hold of nor taken into themselves that Spirit of the Personal Christ, whom Christians receive and know through Jesus. He is the Door into the unspeakable joys of G.o.d. What are these joys of G.o.d? They are varying degrees of the manifestation and experience of _reciprocal_ Divine Love.
What is the true aim of spiritual endeavour--an attempt at personal and individual salvation? Yes, to commence with, but beyond that, and more fully, it is the attempt to comply with the exquisite Will of G.o.d; and the general and universal improving and raising of the consciousness of the whole world. Yet this universal improvement must take place in each individual spirit in an individual manner.
There are those who would deny to individuality its rights, claiming that the highest spirituality is the total cessation of all individuality; yet this would not appear to be G.o.d's view of the matter, for in the most supreme contacts of the soul with Himself He does not wipe out the consciousness of the soul's individual joy, but, on the contrary, to an untenable extent He _increases_ it. And Jesus teaches us that life here is both the means and the process of the gradual conformation of the will of Man to the will of G.o.d, and our true ”work” is the individual learning of this process. But this cultivation of our individuality must not be subverted to the purpose of the mere gain of personal advantage, but because of the heartfelt wish to conform to the glorious will of G.o.d. The failure of the human will to run in conjunction with the Divine will is the cause, as we know, of all sin. In the friction of these opposing wills, forces baneful to Man are generated.
From its very earliest commencement in childhood our system of education is based upon wrong ideas. With little or no regard to G.o.d's plans Man lays out his own puny laws and ambitions and teaches them to his young. We are not taught that what we are here for is above all and before all to arrive at a sense of personal connection with G.o.d, to identify ourselves with the spiritual while still in the flesh. On the contrary, we are taught to grow shy, even ashamed, of the spiritual! and to regard the world as a place princ.i.p.ally or even solely in which to enjoy ourselves or make a ”successful career.”
Children are taught to look eagerly and mainly for holidays and ”parties”; grown men and women the same upon a larger and more foolish scale, and always under the terribly mistaken belief that in spiritual things no great happiness is to be found, but only in materialism: yet very often we find the greatest unhappiness amongst the wealthiest people.
Happiness! happiness! We see the great pursuit of it on every side, and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but he fails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, a Finding-place for G.o.d. Whoever will obey the law of finding G.o.d from this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he, and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitive mysterious unseen Something which--not knowing what it is, yet feeling that it exists--we have named Happiness.
But how commence this formidable, this seemingly impossible task of finding G.o.d in a world in which He is totally invisible? To the ”natural” or animal Man G.o.d is as totally hidden and inaccessible as He is to the beasts of the field; yet encased within his bosom lies the soul which can be the means of drawing Man and G.o.d together in a glorious union. ”I have known all this from my childhood,” we cry, ”and the knowledge of it has not helped me one step upon my way.”