Part 1 (2/2)
CHAPTER II
G.o.d AND THE UNIVERSE
+What religion is.+--All religion begins in cosmic emotion. It is the recognition of an essential relations.h.i.+p between the human soul and the great whole of things of which it is the outcome and expression. The mysterious universe is always calling, and, in some form or other, we are always answering. The artist answers by trying to express his feeling of its beauty; the scientist answers by recognising its laws and unfolding its wonders; the social reformer answers by his self-denying labours for the common good. In each and every case there is in the background of experience a conviction that the unit is the instrument of the All; religion is implied in these as in all other activities in which man aims at a higher-than-self. But religion, properly so-called, begins when the soul consciously enters upon communion with this higher-than-self as with an all-comprehending intelligence; it is the soul instinctively turning toward its source and goal. Religion may a.s.sume a great many different and even repellent forms, but at bottom this is what it always is: it is the soul reaching forth to the great mysterious whole of things, the higher-than-self, and seeking for closer and ever closer communion therewith. The savage with his totem and the Christian saint before the altar have this in common: they are reaching through the things that are seen to the reality beyond.
+What the word ”G.o.d” means.+--But what name are we to give to this higher-than-self whose presence is so unescapable? The name matters comparatively little, but it includes all that the ordinary Christian means by G.o.d. The word ”G.o.d” stands for many things, but to present-day thought it must stand for the un-caused Cause of all existence, the unitary principle implied in all multiplicity. Everyone of necessity believes in this. It is impossible to define the term completely, for to define is necessarily to limit, and we are thinking of the illimitable. But we ought to understand clearly that to disbelieve in G.o.d is an impossibility; everyone believes in G.o.d if he believes in his own existence. The blankest materialist that ever lived, whoever he may have been, must have affirmed G.o.d even in the act of denying Him. Professor Haeckel declares his belief in G.o.d on every page of his ”Riddle of the Universe,” the famous book in which he says that G.o.d, Freedom, and Immortality are the three great b.u.t.tresses of superst.i.tion, which science must make it her business to destroy. So far science has only succeeded in giving us a vaster, grander conception of G.o.d by giving us a vaster, grander conception of the universe in which we live. When I say G.o.d, I mean the mysterious Power which is finding expression in the universe, and which is present in every tiniest atom of the wondrous whole. I find that this Power is the one reality I cannot get away from, for, whatever else it may be, it is myself. Theologians will tell me that I have taken a prodigious leap in saying this, but I cannot help it. How can there be anything in the universe outside of G.o.d? Whatever distinctions of being there may be within the universe it is surely clear that they must all be transcended and comprehended within infinity. There cannot be two infinities, nor can there be an infinite and also a finite beyond it.
What infinity may be we have no means of knowing. Here the most devout Christian is just as much of an agnostic as Professor Huxley; we can predicate nothing with confidence concerning the all-comprehending unity wherein we live and move and have our being, save and except as we see it manifested in that part of our universe which lies open to us. One would think that this were so obvious as to need no demonstration. But how do ordinary church-going Christians talk about G.o.d? They talk as though He were (practically) a finite being stationed somewhere above and beyond the universe, watching and worrying over other and lesser finite beings, to wit, ourselves.
According to the received phraseology this G.o.d is greatly bothered and thwarted by what men have been doing throughout the few millenniums of human existence. He takes the whole thing very seriously, and thinks about little else than getting wayward humanity into line again. To this end He has adopted various expedients, the chief of which was the sending of His only begotten Son to suffer and die in order that He might be free to forgive the trouble we had caused Him. I hope no reader of these words will think I am making light of a sacred subject; I never was more serious in my life. What I am trying to show is that, reduced to its simplest terms, the accepted theology of the churches to-day is pitiably inadequate as an explanation of our relations.h.i.+p to this great and mysterious universe. There is a beautiful spiritual truth underneath every venerable article of the Christian faith, but as popularly presented this truth has become so distorted as to be falsehood. It narrows religion and belittles G.o.d. It is dishonouring to human nature, and is absolutely ludicrous as an interpretation of the cosmic process. Of course, the dogmatic theologian will maintain that this is a caricature of the way in which the relations.h.i.+p of G.o.d to the world is set forth in religious treatises and from the Christian pulpit. But is it? I think I can appeal with confidence to the thoughtful man who has given up going to church as to whether it is or not. The G.o.d of the ordinary church-goer, and of the man who is supposed to teach him from study and pulpit, is an antiquated Theologian who made His universe so badly that it went wrong in spite of Him and has remained wrong ever since. Why He should ever have created it is not clear. Why He should be the injured party in all the miseries that have ensued is still less clear. The poor crippled child who has been maimed by a falling rock, and the white-faced match-box maker who works eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to keep body and soul together have surely some sort of a claim upon G.o.d apart from being miserable sinners who must account themselves fortunate to be forgiven for Christ's sake. Faugh! it is all so unreal and so stupid.
This kind of G.o.d is no G.o.d at all. The theologian may call Him infinite, but in practice He is finite. He may call Him a G.o.d of love, but in practice He is spiteful and silly. I shall have something to say presently about the twin problems of pain and evil; but what so-called orthodoxy has to say is not only no solution of them, it is demonstrably false to the religion of Jesus.
+Every man believes in G.o.d.+--For the moment what I want to make clear is this. No man should refuse to a.s.sert his belief in G.o.d because he cannot bring himself to believe in the G.o.d of the typical theologian.
Remember that the real G.o.d is the G.o.d expressed in the universe and in yourself. The question is not whether you _shall_ believe in G.o.d, but how much you _can_ believe about Him. You may think with Haeckel that the universe is the outcome of the fortuitous interaction of material forces without consciousness and definite purpose behind them, or you may believe that the cosmos is the product of intelligence and ”means intensely and means good,” but you cannot help believing in G.o.d, the Power revealed in it. As I write these words I am seated before a window overlooking the heaving waste of waters on a rock-bound Cornish coast. It is a stormy day. The sky is overcast toward the western horizon; on the east shafts of blue and saffron have pierced the pall of darkness and flung their radiance over the spreading sea. The total effect is strangely solemnising. The suggestion of t.i.tanic forces conveyed in the rush of wind and wave upon the unyielding cliffs, conjoined to the majestic march of the storm-clouds across the heaven from the west, is somehow elevated and composed by the mystic light that streams from the east. I have never seen anything quite like it before. It tells me of a beneficent stillness, an eternal strength, far above and beyond these finite tossings. It whispers the word impossible to utter, the word that explains everything, the deep that calleth unto deep. So my G.o.d calls always to my deeper soul, and tells me I must read Him by mine own highest and best, and by the highest and best that the universe has yet produced. Thus the last word about G.o.d becomes the last word about man: it is Jesus. Materialists may tell me that the universe does not know what it is doing, that it goes on clanking and banging, age after age, without end or aim, but I shall continue to feel compelled to believe that the Power which produced Jesus must at least be equal to Jesus. So Jesus becomes my gateway to the innermost of G.o.d. When I look at Him I say to myself, G.o.d is _that_, and, if I can only get down to the truth about myself, I shall find I am that too.
+What does the universe mean?+--But why is there a universe at all?
Why has the unlimited become limited? What was the need for the long cosmic struggle, the ignorance and pain, the apparently prodigal waste of life and beauty? Why does a perfect form appear only to be shattered and superseded by another? What can it all mean, if indeed it has a meaning? This is what thinkers have been asking themselves since thought began, and I have really nothing new to say about it.
What I have to say leads back through Hegelianism to the old Greek thinkers, and beyond them again to the wise men who lived and taught in the East ages before Jesus was born. It is that this finite universe of ours is one means to the self-realisation of the infinite.
Supposing G.o.d to be the infinite consciousness, there are still possibilities to that consciousness which it can only know as it becomes limited. Any of my readers to whom this thought is unfamiliar have only to look at their own experience in order to see how reasonable it is. You may know yourself to be a brave man, but you will know it in a higher way if you are a soldier facing the cannon's mouth; you will know it in a still different way if you have to face the hostility and prejudice of a whole community for standing by something which you believe to be right. Perhaps you have a manly little son; he, like you, may believe in his sterling good qualities.
But wait till he has gone out to fight his way in life; then you will realise what he is worth, and so will he. It is one thing to know that you are a lover of truth; it is another thing to realise it when your immediate interest and your immediate safety would bid you hedge and lie. Do not these facts of human nature and experience tell us something about G.o.d? To all eternity G.o.d is what He is and never can be other, but it will take Him to all eternity to live out all that He is. In order to manifest even to Himself the possibilities of His being G.o.d must limit that being. There is no other way in which the fullest self-realisation can be attained. Thus we get two modes of G.o.d,--the infinite, perfect, unconditioned, primordial being; and the finite, imperfect, conditioned, and limited being of which we are ourselves expressions. And yet these two are one, and the former is the guarantee that the latter shall not fail in the purpose for which it became limited. Thus to the question, Why a finite universe? I should answer, Because G.o.d wants to express what He is. His achievement here is only one of an infinite number of possibilities.
”G.o.d is the perfect poet Who in creation acts His own conceptions.”
This is an end worthy alike of G.o.d and man. The act of creation is eternal, although the cosmos is changing every moment, for G.o.d is ceaselessly uttering Himself through higher and ever higher forms of existence. We are helping Him to do it when we are true to ourselves; or rather, which is the same thing, He is doing it in us: ”The Father abiding in me doeth His works.” No part of the universe has value in and for itself alone; it has value only as it expresses G.o.d. To see one form break up and another take its place is no calamity, however terrible it may seem, for it only means that the life contained in that form has gone back to the universal life, and will express itself again in some higher and better form. To think of G.o.d in this way is an inspiration and a help in the doing of the humblest tasks. It redeems life from the dominion of the sordid and commonplace. It supplies an incentive to endeavour, and fills the heart with hope and confidence.
To put it in homely, everyday phraseology, G.o.d is getting at something and we must help Him. We must be His eyes and hands and feet; we must be labourers together with Him. This fits in with what science has to say about the very const.i.tution of the universe; it is all of a piece; there are no gaps anywhere. It is a divine experiment without risk of failure, and we must interpret it in terms of our own highest.
CHAPTER III
MAN IN RELATION TO G.o.d
+What is man?+--So far we have seen that the universe, including ourselves, is one instrument or vehicle of the self-expression of G.o.d.
G.o.d is All; He is the universe and infinitely more, but it is only as we read Him in the universe that we can know anything about Him. We have seen, too, that it is by means of the universe and His self-limitation therein that He expresses Himself to Himself. Now what is our relation to this process? What are we to think about ourselves?
Who or what are we?
A witty Frenchman once sardonically remarked, ”In the beginning G.o.d created man in His own image, and man has ever since been returning the compliment by creating G.o.d in his.” But what else can we do? It follows from what has already been said that we know nothing and can know nothing of G.o.d except as we read Him in the universe, and we can only interpret the universe in terms of our own consciousness. In other words, man is a microcosm of the universe. What the universe may be in reality we do not know,--though I am not so sure as some people seem to be that appearance and reality do not correspond,--we can only know it in so far as it produces sense images on our brain and enters into our individual consciousness. The limits of my subject forbid that I should enter into a discussion of philosophic idealism, but I think I ought to confess at once that I can only think of existence in terms of consciousness: nothing exists except in and for mind. The mind that thinks the universe must be immeasurably greater than my own, but in so far as I too am able to think the universe, mine is one with it. All thinking starts with a paradox, even the famous saying of Descartes, ”I think, therefore I am”; and my paradox seems at least as reasonable as any other, and has fewer difficulties to encounter than most. I start then with the a.s.sumption that the universe is G.o.d's thought about Himself, and that in so far as I am able to think it along with Him, ”I and my Father (even metaphysically speaking) are one.” It cannot be demonstrated beyond dispute that any two human beings think the same universe. Strictly speaking, it is certain that they do not in every detail. But the common dominator of our experience, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, is the a.s.sumption that in the main the universe is pretty much the same for one man as it is for another. When I speak of the rolling sea, my neighbour does not understand me to mean the waving trees, but I cannot prove that he does not. If he is consistent in seeing water as trees and trees as water, his mind must be const.i.tuted differently from mine and yet I may never know it. So, by an almost unperceived act of faith, we have to take for granted that our separate individualities meet and become one to some extent in our common experience of this great universe, which is at that same time the expression of G.o.d. The real universe must be infinitely greater and more complex than the one which is apparent to our physical senses. This becomes probable, even on material grounds, the moment we begin to examine into the nature of sense perception.
The ear is const.i.tuted to hear just so many sounds; beyond that limit at either end of the scale we can hear nothing, but that does not prove that there are no more sounds to hear. Similarly the eye can distinguish five or seven primary colours and their various combinations; beyond that limit we are colour-blind. But suppose we were endowed to hear and see sounds and colours a million times greater in number than those of which we have at present any cognizance! What kind of a universe would it be then? But that universe exists now; it is around and within us; it is G.o.d's thought about Himself, infinite and eternal. It is only finite to a finite mind, and it is more than probable that spiritual beings exist with a range of consciousness far greater than our own, to whom the universe of which we form a part must seem far more beautiful and fuller of meaning than it seems to us.
Imagine a man who could only see grey hues and could only hear the note A on the keyboard. His experience would be quite as real as ours, and indeed the same up to a point, but how little he would know of the world as we know it. The glory of the sunset sky would be hidden from him; for him the melting power of the human voice, or of a grand cathedral organ, would not exist. So, no doubt, it is in a different degree with us all. The so-called material world is our consciousness of reality exercising itself along a strictly limited plane. We can know just as much as we are const.i.tuted to know, and no more. But it is all a question of consciousness. The larger and fuller a consciousness becomes, the more it can grasp and hold of the consciousness of G.o.d, the fundamental reality of our being as of everything else.
+The subconscious mind.+--Of late years the comparatively new science of psychology has begun to throw an amount of valuable light upon the mystery of human personality. As the result of numerous experiments and investigations into the normal and abnormal working of the human mind, psychologists have discovered that a great deal of our ordinary mental action goes on without our being aware of it. This unconscious cerebration, as it is called, can hardly be seriously disputed, for every new addition to our psychological knowledge goes to confirm it.
Hence we are hearing a great deal about the subconscious mind, or subliminal consciousness as some prefer to call it. Now that our attention has been directed to it, we are coming to see, as is usual with every new discovery, that after a fas.h.i.+on we knew it all along.
The subconscious mind seems to be the seat of inspiration and intuition. Genius, according to the late F. W. H. Myers, is ”an up-rush of subliminal faculty.” We have all heard of the distinguished lady novelist who declares that when she has chosen her theme she is in the habit of committing it to her subconscious mind and letting it alone for a while. She is not aware of any mental process which goes on, but sooner or later she finds that the theme is ripe for treatment; she knows what she thinks about it, and the work of stating it can profitably begin. Poets, preachers, and musicians can bear testimony of a somewhat similar kind. The thoughts which are most valuable are those which come unbidden, rising to the surface of consciousness from unknown depths. The best scientific discoveries are made in much the same way; the investigator has an intuition and forthwith sets to work to justify it. Reason, by which we ordinarily mean the conscious exercise of the mental faculties, plods along as if on four feet; intuition soars on wings. Truly astonis.h.i.+ng things are frequently done by the subconscious mind superseding and controlling the conscious mind in exceptional states of emotion, especially in the case of people who are not quite normal; but there is no one, however stolid and commonplace, who does not owe far more to his subliminal consciousness than he does to what he calls his reason; indeed reason has comparatively little to do with the way in which people ordinarily conduct themselves, although we may like to think otherwise.
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