Part 36 (1/2)

They tell me here that He was the _first_ to attain to the full stature of the _Divine Man_ as he existed in the thought of the Absolute.

Spiritual evolution is the process, apparently the only process, whereby a Son of G.o.d in this sense can appear. And aeons of time have been necessary to produce this fine Flower of Humanity. Your own band are helping me to understand this. _Having attained, being the anointed One_, it is given to Him to bring the whole race after Him.

This is quite a different conception from my former one, and the one held by most of those whom in old days we called Unitarians.

_You_ have had to _unlearn_, or rather to drop, some of the husks of old tradition which have been guarding the truth for you, whereas I have still _to come up to the truth_; but the point reached will be the same, whether the approach to it is from north or south--do you see?

In Christ Jesus, they tell me, we are _all_ new creatures, as a matter of fact; because, consciously or unconsciously, we are working together with Him to realise and manifest ourselves, as made after the Image of G.o.d.

He is the example and the pledge for us. St Paul saw this, of course, and your present position illuminates his teaching for me enormously. So I have much to thank you for, Kate. It is easier to learn from those we know and trust, than from strangers.

And, moreover, when we can learn from the loved ones on earth _as well as through the loved ones here_, it makes the links in the golden chain complete, and helps us to realise the unity and solidarity of our common existence, _in the Father--with the Son_. H. D.

II

Another morning I had told H. D. that I had been reading an article in _The Nineteenth Century--and After_, I think, ent.i.tled ”An Agnostic's Progress,” and asked if he had sensed it through me at all.

H. D.--Yes. We will begin with that this morning. I am very glad you read it, for it is curiously like my own experiences in the same line.

Since coming over here, and thereby coming into such direct touch with you, I have been able to grasp the key to much that puzzled me on the other side.

As my views became more spiritualised I saw there _must_ be more truth in the Christian religion than outsiders supposed, and yet I knew it could not be absolutely true _in the form in which it has been handed down_.

_That_ was for me unthinkable, because I saw it would be a sudden and catastrophic incursion upon a cosmos of Law and Order.

It would mean G.o.d working in the highest departments of His Creation, as He is never seen to work in the lower ones. And my faith in Him prevented my entertaining such an idea! Schemes and plans of salvation belong to the comparative childhood of the race, not to the full-grown spiritual man. They are still in the fairy-tale stage, holding a truth, but acting only as the husk of the truth.

The unity of the race; the necessity for self-sacrifice in realising that unity: that by giving our life for our brothers we save our _Life_, which is that unity in which the brethren are included--all this I could accept in Christ's teaching or the teaching of the Apostles; but the rest: the detail, the carefully arranged _scheme_ of the Atonement, etc., as dogmatic doctrines--all these seemed to me so obviously the desperate attempts of man at a certain stage of development to fit in spiritual facts with the most probable theories; and to say that men who wrote of these things were inspired, and _therefore infallible_, was absurd.

Even in my short life, I had seen the world pa.s.s through several stages of belief and a.s.similate them in turn.

As a child, I was told that G.o.d was angry with people for sinning and breaking His commandments, and so Jesus Christ offered to come and die on the cross to appease His just wrath.

That seemed a great puzzle to me, because, although it might account for what happened _before_ Christ came and _until_ He came, I could not understand why G.o.d _should go on letting people come into the world_ who would break His laws, and make Him still more angry for centuries and centuries. That seemed to me, as a child, so unnecessary.

Later I was told it was not G.o.d's anger but His sense of justice that had to be appeased and satisfied, which was a distinct step in advance.

A little later, however, I read that this was not the hidden truth of the doctrine. The religious world (the thoughtful section of it) now arrived at the idea that it was not G.o.d who needed to be satisfied or appeased in any of His attributes, but MAN, and that G.o.d--in the person of his Son--came into the world to reconcile the world to Him, and not Himself to the world.

This was a complete _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_ of the whole situation, though it came so gradually that few appreciated that fact.

The last suggestion appeared to me by far the most luminous. In human life it is invariably the _lower_ nature that needs to be reconciled and conciliated; whilst the higher nature, in proportion to its development, is forgiving and tolerant and wide-minded, and does not prate about its own high sense of justice requiring to be appeased. The best type of _man_ punishes a wrong-doer in order that he may learn to do better and leave off tormenting and wronging his fellow-creatures; not to appease any instinct in his own breast, for that would be egotism, no matter how we might try to disguise the fact.

Now if it would be a blot upon the best conceivable _man_ to be egotistical, _a fortiori_ must it be upon G.o.d.

To conceive otherwise is to make G.o.d in the likeness of the lower and not the higher humanity. I thought all that out very clearly.