Part 9 (1/2)
Now the value of prayer is not that G.o.d will change or order any laws or forces to suit the numerous and necessarily the diverse pet.i.tions of any. All things are through law, and law is fixed and inexorable. The value of prayer, of true prayer, is that through it one can so harmonise his life with the Divine order that intuitive perceptions of truth and a greater perception and knowledge of law becomes his possession. As has been said by an able contemporary thinker and writer: ”We cannot form a pa.s.sably thorough notion of man without saturating it through and through with the idea of a cosmic inflow from outside his world life--the inflow of G.o.d. Without a large consciousness of the universe beyond our knowledge, few men, if any, have done great things.[C]
I shall always remember with great pleasure and profit a call a few days ago from Dr. Edward Emerson of Concord, Emerson's eldest son. Happily I asked him in regard to his father's methods of work--if he had any regular methods. He replied in substance: ”It was my father's custom to go daily to the woods--_to listen_. He would remain there an hour or more in order to get whatever there might be for him that day. He would then come home and write into a little book--his 'day-book'--what he had gotten. Later on when it came time to write a book, he would transcribe from this, in their proper sequence and with their proper connections, these entrances of the preceding weeks or months. The completed book became virtually a ledger formed or posted from his day-books.”
The prophet is he who so orders his life that he can adequately listen to the voice, the revelations of the over soul, and who truthfully transcribes what he hears or senses. He is not a follower of custom or of tradition. He can never become and can never be made the subservient tool of an organisation. His aim and his mission is rather to free men from ignorance, superst.i.tion, credulity, from half truths, by leading them into a continually larger understanding of truth, of law--and therefore of righteousness.
It was more than a mere poetic idea that Lowell gave utterance to when he said:
The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
To establish this connection, to actualise this G.o.d-consciousness, that it may not be for one transcendent moment, but that it may become constant and habitual, so that every thought arises, and so that every act goes forth from this centre, is the greatest good that can come into the possession of man. There is nothing greater. It is none other than the realisation of Jesus' injunction--”Seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” It is then that he said--Do not worry about your life. Your mind and your will are under the guidance of the Divine mind; your every act goes out under this direction and all things pertaining to your life will fall into their proper places. Therefore do not worry about your life.
When a man finds his centre, when he becomes centred in the Infinite, then redemption takes place. He is redeemed from the bondage of the senses. He lives thereafter under the guidance of the spirit, and this is salvation. It is a new life that he has entered into. He lives in a new world, because his outlook is entirely new. He is living now in the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven means harmony. He has brought his own personal mind and life into harmony with the Divine mind and life. He becomes a coworker with G.o.d.
It is through such men and women that G.o.d's plans and purposes are carried out. They not only hear but they interpret for others G.o.d's voice. They are the prophets of our time and the prophets of all time.
They are doing G.o.d's work in the world, and in so doing they are finding their own supreme satisfaction and happiness. They are not looking forward to the Eternal life. They realise that they are now in the Eternal life, and that there is no such thing as eternal life if this life that we are now in is not it. When the time comes for them to stop their labours here, they look forward without fear and with antic.i.p.ation to the change, the transition to the other form of life--but not to any other life. The words of Whitman embody a spirit of antic.i.p.ation and of adventure for them:
Joy, s.h.i.+pmate, joy!
(Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry) One life is closed, one life begun, The long, long anchorage we leave, The s.h.i.+p is clear at last, she leaps.
Joy, s.h.i.+pmate, joy!
They have an abiding faith that they will take up the other form of life exactly where they left it off here. Being in heaven now they will be in heaven when they awake to the continuing beauties of the life subsequent to their transition. Such we might also say is the teaching of Jesus regarding the highest there is in life here and the best there is in the life hereafter.
XI
SOME METHODS OF EXPRESSION
The life of the Spirit, or, in other words, the true religious life, is not a life of mere contemplation or a life of inactivity. As Fichte, in ”The Way Toward the Blessed Life,” has said: ”True religion, notwithstanding that it raises the view of those who are inspired by it to its own region, nevertheless, retains their Life firmly in the domain of action, and of right moral action.... Religion is not a business by and for itself which a man may practise apart from his other occupations, perhaps on certain fixed days and hours; but it is the inmost spirit that penetrates, inspires, and pervades all our Thought and Action, which in other respects pursue their appointed course without change or interruption. That the Divine Life and Energy actually lives in us is inseparable from Religion.”
How thoroughly this is in keeping with the thought of the highly illumined seer, Swedenborg, is indicated when he says: ”The Lord's Kingdom is a Kingdom of ends and uses.” And again: ”Forsaking the world means loving G.o.d and the neighbour; and G.o.d is loved when a man lives according to His commandments, and the neighbour is loved when a man performs uses.” And still again: ”To be of use means to desire the welfare of others for the sake of the common good; and not to be of use means to desire the welfare of others not for the sake of the common good but for one's own sake.... In order that man may receive heavenly life he must live in the world and engage in its business and occupations, and thus by a moral and civil life acquire spiritual life.
In no other way can spiritual life be generated in man, or his spirit be prepared for heaven.”
We hear much today both in various writings and in public utterances of ”the spiritual” and ”the spiritual life.” I am sure that to the great majority of men and women the term spiritual, or better, the spiritual life, means something, but something by no means fully tangible or clear-cut. I shall be glad indeed if I am able to suggest a more comprehensible concept of it, or putting it in another form and better perhaps, to present a more clear-cut portraiture of the spiritual life in expression--in action.
And first let us note that in the mind and in the teachings of Jesus there is no such thing as the secular life and the religious life. His ministry pertained to every phase of life. The truth that he taught was a truth that was to permeate every thought and every act of life.
We make our arbitrary divisions. We are too apt to deny the fact that the Lord is the Lord of the week-day, the same as He is the Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus refused to be bound by any such consideration. He taught that every act that is a good act, every act that is of service to mankind is not only a legitimate act to be done on the Sabbath day, but an act that _should_ be performed on the Sabbath day. And any act that is not right and legitimate for the Sabbath day is neither right nor legitimate for the week-day. In other words, it is the spirit of righteousness that must permeate and must govern every act of life and every moment of life.
In seeking to define the spiritual life, it were better to regard the world as the expression of the Divine mind. The spirit is the life; the world and all things in it, the material to be moulded, raised, and trans.m.u.ted from the lower to the higher. This is indeed the law of evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work.
It is the G.o.d-Power that is at work and every form of useful activity that helps on with this process of lifting and bettering is a form of Divine activity. If therefore we recognise the one Divine life working in and through all, the animating force, therefore the Life of all, and if we are consciously helping in this process we are spiritual men.
No man of intelligence can fail to recognise the fact that life is more important than things. Life is the chief thing, and material things are the elements that minister to, that serve the purposes of the life.
Whoever does anything in the world to preserve life, to better its conditions, who, recognising the Divine force at work lifting life up always to better, finer conditions, is doing G.o.d's work in the world--because cooperating with the great Cosmic world plan.
The ideal, then, is men and women of the spirit, open and responsive always to its guidance, recognising the Divine plan and the Divine ideal, working cooperatively in the world to make all conditions of life fairer, finer, more happy. He who lives and works not as an individual, that is not for his good alone, but who recognises the essential oneness of life--is carrying out his share of the Divine plan.
A man may be unusually gifted; he may have unusual ability in business, in administration; he may be a giant in finance, in administration, but if for self alone, if lack of vision blinds him to the great Divine plan, if he does not recognise his relative place and value; if he gains his purposes by selfishness, by climbing over others, by indifference to human pain or suffering--oblivious to human welfare--his ways are the ways of the jungle. His mind and his life are purely sordid, grossly and blindly self-centred--wholly material. He gains his object, but by Divine law not happiness, not satisfaction, not peace. He is outside the Kingdom of Heaven--the kingdom of harmony. He is living and working out of harmony with the Divine mind that is evolving a higher order of life in the world. He is blind too, he is working against the Divine plan.