Part 3 (1/2)
As a man's desire is so is he. If our desire is entirely towards fleshly things and joys and comforts, we are sensualists. If our desire is all towards sport and horses, we are not above horses but rather below them, for the human animal is full of guile and the horse of obedience and generosity. Nevertheless he is no goal for the human to aim at. If we desire the beautiful, we become beautified and refined. If we desire G.o.d, we become G.o.dly.
It is characteristic of spiritual progress that each step is gained through suffering, through penetrating faithful endeavours, through grievous incomprehensible turmoils and discords of the spirit, worked frequently by means of the everyday commonplace happenings and responsibilities of our daily life; and finally as each new step is gained we are by Grace carried to it in a flood of divine happiness to crown our woes. Grace is G.o.d's magnetic power acting directly and immediately upon us and is altogether independent of place, time, services, sacraments, or ceremonies. We limit G.o.d's communication with us in this way--that He is communicable to us only in so far as we ourselves respond and are able, apt, and willing to receive Him.
Is the condition of blessed nearness to G.o.d permanent? No, not as a condition but as a capacity only. We have need to perpetually renew this condition by a positive active enthusiasm toward G.o.d. We can in laziness no more retain and use this condition as a permanency than we can sleep one night and eat one meal and have these suffice for our lifetime. But slowly, with work and with pain, we learn perpetually to regain this condition by that form of prayer which is the spiritual breathing-in of the Spirit of Christ.
All G.o.d's help, all G.o.d's comfortings are to be had by us by Grace.
This Grace will constantly be withdrawn so that we may learn that we arrive at nothing by our own power but by gift of G.o.d, who is ever willing to give to us provided we whole-heartedly respond.
This Response to G.o.d is surely amongst the most difficult of our achievements; unaided by Grace it is an impossibility, but we know that every man born into the world is invited by Christ to ask for and to receive this Grace. The effect of Response to G.o.d is a unity of our tiny force to the Might-Presence and company of G.o.d as much as we are able to bear it, producing in us while with us such wealth of living; and such happiness as pa.s.ses all description. As we have capacity to respond to G.o.d so we shall know that of G.o.d which is not known by those as yet unlearned in response. For G.o.d, we know, is neither This nor That, but so infinitely more than any particularisation that we are able to know Him only and solely according to our own capacity to receive Him. To one He is a Personal Power that ravishes with might, whose awful magnetism draws the very heart and soul in longing anguish from the body. To another He is the dimly known silent Manipulator of the Universe, the secret Ruler to whose mighty Will creation bows--because needs must. To another He is yet even more remote, being the unresponsive, impersonal, incomprehensible, immovable Instigator of all law.
What is it in our religion that we need for a full happiness? Not the G.o.d of our mere faith, nor the G.o.d of the theologian veiled behind great mysteries of book-learning. It is the Responsive G.o.d that we long for, and how shall we reach Him? There is one way only--through the taking of Jesus Christ firmly and faithfully into our own heart and life.
It is not what we now are, or where we now stand that matters, but what He has the power to bring us to.
How is G.o.d-consciousness to be achieved--shall we do it by study, by reading? No--for the study or reading of it will do no more than whet the appet.i.te for spiritual things--this is its work,--but can do no more in giving us the actual possession of this joy than the study of a menu can satisfy hunger.
Individual, personal and inward possession is in all things our necessity. If our friend has slept well it is no rest to us if we have slept ill. Up to a given point in all things each for himself. It is the law. Of where this law ends or is superseded by the law of all for all only the Holy Spirit can instruct us, and that inwardly and again each to himself. This state of G.o.d-consciousness is a gift, and our work is to qualify for this gift by persistent ardent desire towards G.o.d continued through every adversity, through every lack of sensible response on His part--a naked will and heart insisting upon G.o.d. This state of G.o.d-consciousness once received and in full vigour of life, there is without doubt about this condition a principle of active contagion, very noticeable, very remarkable.
That ”something” which would appear frequently to be needed by persons anxious to come to G.o.d and unable to discover the manner of achieving it, would seem to be supplied by this contagion, as though a human spark were often wanted to ignite the spark in another, which done, the Divine Fire springs up and rapidly grows without further human a.s.sistance.
We see this contagion as used in its full perfection by Jesus, for with all His selected followers He had but to come in momentary contact with them, using a word or a look, and, instantly forsaking everything, they followed Him. Was this selection of His favouritism? No, they were prepared to receive this contagion, and not one of them but had been secretly seeking for G.o.d; and this perhaps for long years.
To find this new life we need then not the reading of profound books of learning, not the wisdom of the scholar, but an inward persistence of the heart and will G.o.d-wards. This time of insistent waiting is to be endured with all the more courage in that we do not know at what blessed moment we may pierce the veil and the gift come in all its glorious immensity. Ten years, twenty, thirty--what are such in comparison with the blisses that shall afterwards be ours for all eternity?
To look up by day or night into the vastness of the sky with its endless depths, and as we do it burn with the consciousness of G.o.d, this is to truly live. No distance is too great, no s.p.a.ce too wide. All is our home. Without this burning consciousness of G.o.d, s.p.a.ce is a thing of fear and Eternity not to be thought of.
Of the many experiences and conditions of the soul returning to G.o.d there is a condition all too easily entered--that of an enervating, pulseless, seductive inertia. In this condition of inert but marvellous contentment the soul would love to stay. This is spiritual sensuality, a spiritual back-water. The true life and energy of the soul are lulled to idleness: basking in happiness, the soul ceases to give and becomes merely receptive.
This condition is entered from many levels: we can rise to it (for it is very high) from ordinary levels, branch sideways to it from high contemplation; drop to it from the greatest contacts with G.o.d. This condition seems strangely familiar to the soul. So much so that she questions herself. Was it from this I started on my wanderings from G.o.d? The true health of the soul when in the blisses of G.o.d is to be in a state of intense living or activity. She is then in perfect connection with the Divine Energy. She is then in a state of an immense and boundless radiantly joyful Life.
To find G.o.d is to have the scope of all our senses increased, but it is easily to be understood that our power of suffering increases also, because we are, as it were, flayed and laid bare to everything alike.
But it increases our joys to so great a degree that for the first time in life joy is greater than pain, happiness is greater than sorrow, knowledge is greater than fear, and Good suddenly becomes to us so much greater than Evil that Evil becomes negligible. This increase, this wonderful addition to our former condition, might be partly conveyed by comparison to a man who from birth has never been able to appreciate music: for him it has been meaningless, a noise without suggestion, without delight, without wings, and suddenly by no powers of his own the immense charms and pleasures and capacities of it are laid open to him! These increases of every sense and faculty G.o.d will give to His lovers, so that without effort and by what has now become to us our own nature we are continually able to _enter the Sublime._
_Of the Two Wills_
We have in us two wills. The Will to live, and the Will to love G.o.d and to find Him. The first will we see being used continually and without ceasing, not only by every man, woman, and child, but by every beast of the field and the whole of creation.
The Will to live is the will by which all alike seek the best for themselves, here gaining for themselves all that they can of comfort and well-being out of the circ.u.mstances and opportunities of life.
This is our natural Will. But it is not the will which gains for us Eternal Life, nor does it even gain for us peace and happiness during this life. It is this Will to live which in Christ's Process we are taught to break and bruise till it finally dies, and the Will to love, and gladly and joyously to please G.o.d is the only Will by which we live.
Our great difficulty is that we try at one and the same time to hang to G.o.d with the soul and to the world with our heart. What is required is not that we go and live in rags in a desert place, but that in the exact circ.u.mstances of life in which we find ourselves we learn in _everything to place G.o.d first._ He requires of us a certain subtle and inward fidelity--a fidelity of the heart, the will, the mind.
The natural state of heart and mind in which we all normally find ourselves is to have temporary vague longings for something which, though indefinable, we yet know to be better and more satisfying than anything we can find in the world. This is the soul, trying to overrule the frivolity of the heart and mind and to re-find G.o.d. Our difficulties are not made of great things, but of the infinitely small our own caprices. Though we can often do great things, acts of surprising heroism, we are held in chains--at once elastic and iron--of small capricious vanities, so that in one and the same hour we may have wonderful, far-reaching aspirations towards the Sublime, and G.o.d; and yet there comes a pretty frock, a pleasant companion, and behold G.o.d is forgotten! The mighty and marvellous Maker of the Universe, Lord of everything, is placed upon one side for a piece of chiffon, a flattering word from a pa.s.sing lover.
So be it. He uses no force. We are still in the Garden of Free-Will.
And when the Garden closes down for us, what then? Will chiffon help us? Will the smiles of a long-since faithless lover be our strength? Now is the time to decide; but our decision is made in the world, and by means of the world and not apart from it, and in the exact circ.u.mstances in which we find ourselves.