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God and the
Struggle for Existence

THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN
LILY DOUGAU,

AND

CANON B. H. STREETEB

(editor)

ASSOCIATION PRESS

N.W Yo... 34; M*D„ON AV.NU.

1919

Coraicirr, wis, „

Tm IKTIMaiionaL COMMlTIll OF

Yowio MiM't CuMTux AnocuTiom

- ^

FOREWORD

"God is dead," says Nietzsche's Zara-
thustra; and there are many who, in face
of the evil of the world, ure afraid he may
be right, yet sf "faintly trust the laiger
hope." This book is written to suggest to
such that there are solid grov 'ds in reason
for the contrary conviction- •' od is alive,
and from Him we may get power ourselves
to really live.

Cdtti Ekd,
CoMHoa, Aufuit, Itlt.

CONTENTS

I. iNTBODnCTOKY ....

By B. HILLMAN STREETER, M.A., Hon. D.D. Edin.

Fellow of Queeu's College, Oiford, Canon Residentiary

of Hereford

Editor of "Foundations"; "Concerning Prayer";

"Immortality"; "The Spirit"

Author of "Restatement and Reunion"

PAOI

II. Love and Omnipotence

By the Most Rev. CHARLES F. D'ARCY, D.D.

Archbishop of Dublin

Author of "A Short Study of Ethics"; "Idealism and

Theology"; "God and Freedom in Human

Experience," etc.

III. The Survival of the Fittest . 65

By LILY DOUGALL
Author of "Pro Chxisto et Ecclesia"; "The PracUce
of Christianity," etc. Joint Author of "Concern-
ing Prayer"; "Immortality"; "The Spirit"

IV. Power— Human and Divine . log

By LILY DOUGALL

V. The Defeat of Pain .

By B. HILLMAN STREETER

154

INTRODUCTORY

Bt B. HILLMAN STREBTER, M.A.,
Hon. D.D. Edln.

Felloio 0/ Queen'* College, Oxford; Canon Reiiden-
tiary of Hereford

"If the gods," said Socrates, "do not
prefer the good man to the evil, then it
is better to die than to live." Unless we
are convinced that in the last resort the
power behind the Universe is on the
side of righteousness, the mainspring of
endeavour is broken, the lamp of hope is
almost quenched. But during the last
hundred years or so there have been not
a few to whom it has appeared that the
discoveries of modern science have made
the existence of God "an unnecessary
hypothesis." There are many more to
whom the experience of the war has made
it an incredible one.

The problem of evil, the question
whether life has any meaning, the doubt

The

Xziitene*
of Ck)d.

INTRODUCTORY

frortdtmea

and

Prognti.

To the last generation Providence and
iigious, the L.iiverse seemed ]uminoii<i

Struggle Ce'S S Sf™! °' «»

S lilt, °' 1"'.' ■*"' -•J'f''
": comiortable eonclus ens. The reli.

Sr ■TJ'^ .'^y' "«°«^'« in his Heaven
"^ did appear not altogether right.

INTRODUCTORY 9

stiU they were God's will, and He must
know best. The non-religious were even

^ \°^u '^^^ ^"^^"""^ °f progress
through the survival of the fittest gave a
biological justification for doing one's own
sweet will The religious might feel the
difficulty of reconciling the claims of God
and Mammon, but these others could claim
the authority of science for the view that
mdividual selfishness is the high-road to
corporate salvation. In Economics it was
aid down as a law of Nature that un-
limited competition between individuals,
each seeking solely his own profit, inevi-
tably redounded to the benefit of aU In
international politics the conclusion could
be drawn that war was a "biological neces-
sity and that the nation which could crush
ail others was the greatest benefactor of
humanity since the hope of civilisation
Jay m the domination of the world by the
strongest power.

To-day the dogma that unlimited com- i. h™.
petition mevitably leads to the greatest *«»*"'«o3t
happ.ness of the greatest number has
fewer adherents: the doctrine that war
stilf '^^''^^^'^ ^°'' P'-'^gress has fewer
Facts have refuted them.

INTRODUCTORY

The Hop* of
tiMl^tura.

But If facts have refuted the doctrine
that Progress is a mechanical necessity
and mternecine struggle the path towards
It. have they not equally refuted the belief
m a Providence that orders all things for
tte best? On all sides we hear thf cry.
What kind of a God is it who, having the
power to overrule the destinies of man,
could look on unmoved at the events of
the last five years? Surely if ever in his-
tory there was a time clamant for some
special intervention, it has been that wliich
we have Lved through.

Modern civilisation, nominally Chris-
tian, has in practice lived by the ethics of
the struggle for existence; and by the logic
of that same ethic it seems like to perish-
through war or the clcss-war. This is the
conclusion which thinking men and women
everywhere are drawing. The only hope
for the future would seem to be a new
. ocial and international morality— a mo-
rahty based not on competition but on co-
operation. But if the goodness, the power,
or the existence of God be in doubt,
neither the intellectual justification nor
the emotional dynamic of such an ethic
are particularly obvious. And, if the last
century read the lesson of Biology aright

INTRODUCTORY 11

is not that ethic necessarily a frail and
artificial thing, since it is built on prin-
ciples which the fundamental nature of
reality denies?

With these and like problems in their PurpoM a
minds the authors of this volume have S^?
endeavoured to re-examine the facts. '°''™*-
Cross-questioning the Universe in the
light of modern science and human his-
tory, they ask what conclusions a clear-
eyed and impartial investigation will war-
rant—both as regard the nature and
character of the Power behind phenomena,
and the fate, the value, and the hope of the
individual in the scheme of things.

In the foUowmg Chapter some prelim- An»iyris of
mary questions are raised: Do the facts "ontwiti.
justify the inference that there is a God
at all, that there is any kind of inteUigent
direction behind the world process ? If so
is this Intelligence beneficent— either in
the sense of broadly "making for right-
eousness" or of caring for the fate of the
mdividual man? Or do the facts suggest
rather a limited God, beneficent, indeed,
but cabmed, cribbed, confined, bound in"
by some fate or force or nature of things
of which He, like us, is to some extent the
victim? Or, again, is there reasonable

12 INTRODUCTORY

ground for the belief that in Him Love
and Supreme Power can coexist? In
Chapter III. the prima facie view is
accepted, that Nature's apparent aim is
the producmg of beings perfectly corre-
sponding with their whole environment,
but that man, though so far Nature's mas-
terpiece, at present very imperfectly so
corresponds. It is then asked, what does
the study of the evolutionary process as a
whole show to be needed to perfect that
correspondence; and, if that process has
a meaning at all, what inference, if any
niust we draw as t j the ethical quality and
character of the Power of which ultimately
It IS the expression. Chapter IV. is an
enquiry into the nature of Power It
suggests that in the past power of a low
degree of effectiveness has often been mis-
taken for supreme power, and it questions
how far this error may have vitiated
traditional theology and ethics. The final
Chapter endeavours to face tl i question
ot the suffering and failure of the indi-
vidual. Can we say to the man or woman
weighed down by sorrow, disappointment
or remorse that there is a "way out"? Is
the ultimate nature of things" such i.s to
justify anything like that belief in "Provi-

INTRODUCTOUY

dence" and 'Salvation" which was the
very centre of the old religion <

The thought and labours of not a few of Bttthodtnd
the keenest intellects of our age have been '*^*x»'n*-
concentrated on the problems we attack —
and that thought and labour has not been
spent in vain. Some of the questions are
as old as philosophy itself, others are of
comparatively modern origin ; but even on
the oldest, new light has been thrown in
recent years. The authors of this volume
have tried t" unify and bring into a small
compass various strands in a widespread
movement in the thought of the day; and
in working at this task they believe that
on some points they have found something
new to offer and have some things to say
which either have not been said before,
or have been said, but not with the
same balance of emphasis or in the same
connection But if this is so, it is because
they have made it throughout their first
endeavour to interrogate facts, not to look
for answers which would square with tra-
ditional theology. Some of the answers
suggested are to all intents and purposes
those given by traditional Christianity,
only stated in modern language and re-
lated to modern thought. Others, it should

INTRODUCTORY

frankly be adinitted. are different. But

t.s remarkable that in every case where

the facts have seemed to point to a con-

ttT T^^ ^^'" ''•°'" ^J"** gi^en by

o h! ^ ^I'^^^gy' th«t conclusion appears

to be m effect a return to the religion and

philosophy of Christ.

Reculer pour mieux tauter. Chris-

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Bt tbe Most Kuv. CHARLES P. D'ARCY, D.D.
ArchbUHop 0/ Dublin

The doubts characteristic of the present m*
time set these two Divine attributes, g^ffjg"
Love and Omnipotence, in the sharpest
antagonism. If God be good, it is said
every day. He cannot be omnipotent, the
world being what it is. If He be om-
nipotent. He cannot be good, for the
same reason. He would surely exert His
almighty power and put things right. It
is an old puzzle; the difference in its posi-
tion is that more people are thinking about
it now. People who before the war were
never troubled with the malady of thought
have caught the fever of enquiry, and
stand aghast at the discovery of this
ancient problem.

Why do we believe in God? Apart TwoWaji
from traditional belief, and putting aside ck)d!*"°*
the more academic -^'-oussions of the

10 LOVE AND OMNII'OTEXCK

schools, there are two contrasting ways in
which men have been able to attain to
faith in n Supreme Being worthy of being
called by the great name, God. The first
looks out upon the vast world of creation,
an \ finds there convincing proof of the
work of mind. The second looks into the
inner experience of the soul, and recog-
nises God by spiritual apprehension. In
modern times, opinion has swung very
remarkably from the former to the latter.
In the eighteenth century, in spite of
shrewd criticism, the conviction prevailed
that the argument from creation to the
Creator was inevitable. "The heavens
declare the glory of God; the "■ lament
showeth His handywork," > .g the
Psalmist; and never were the ^ rds so
appreciated as when the discovei.es of
astronomy were the most notable achieve-
ments of science. The universe was re-
vealed as a huge mechanism, a vast clock-
work, moving with perfect regularity.
The inference from the watch to the
watchmaker was so striking and simple
that the apologist enjoyed a popular
triumph. Its fruits lasted far into the
nineteenth century.

The Darwinian revolutioji changed &\

LOVE AND OMXIPOTEXCE 17

tlmt. And with the growth of philosophi-
tul and psychological study came gradu-
ally to light a new world— the world of
inner experience. During the last half-
century, and especially the last genera-
tion, men have been learning to find God
withm, rather than without.

^becoming of this change can be traced AN«r
in lennyson and Browning. We find it STiS""
fully developed in the profound study of
the mystics which has marked the last
twenty years. Now we have reached a
position in which this inner experience
regarded as a revelation of God, has be-
come the inspiration of a fresh and poi)u-
lar creed. It gives us, we are told, a new
and vivid faith in God as the r, nresenta-
ive of our race, the captain of our souls,
leading us m the conflict with evil, sharing
our pains, sympathising with our striv-
ings, using our powers of mind and body
in the struggle against material forces,
and helping us to overcome the difficulties
which beset us.- This God is a finite
l>emg. He is indeed born of man's spirit-
ual experience. He is a synthesis of the
best that IS m us all. From man He
sprang, and with man He will perish. For

'H. a. Wells. Got the InviMle King.

18 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Him, as for us, the great encircling uni-
verse is an alien, intractable and terribly
mysterious power. From this mysterious
power we had our origin. There dawned,
in the course of natural evolution, by some
inexplicable process, that fitful light
which we call the mind or soul of man:
strong enough to adapt some portion of
its material environment to its needs, it
was yet not able to gain any true knowl-
edge of iis position or secure footing for
its existence. But from our imited
thoughts and efforts arose a higher soul,
uniting and representing us aU, sharing
our pains and helping us ; but confronted,
as we are, by the same insoluble problems.
This stiange but very interesting doc-
trine shows what must happen if we give
up the revelation of God in Nature. And
it is well worthy of note how directly it
leads to polytheistic ways of thought.
Why should this soul of our souls be One
Deity for the whole human race? Why
should not every nation, every distinct
community, have its own deity? On this
theory, the "Old German God" may actu-
ally exist. The genius of ancient Athens
may actually have hved as the divine
Athena. If the League of Nations se-

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 19

cures peace on earth it may also create
harmony on Olympus. We are back
among the Homeric gods ; and can breathe
once more the freshness of an early world.
It is specially curious, however, to observe
what happens when we let go our beUef
in Nature as a revelation of God. We
find ourselves on a descending slope, sUd-
ing down into paganism. This is espe-
cially true in our day. The unity of Na-
ture implies the unity of God. When
Nature was regarded as the scene in which
a multitude of diverse and often opposing
spiritual powers operated and competed
with one another, polytheistic modes of
thought were inevitably suggested. But
modern science has been teaching more
and more clearly the unity of Nature.
Though that anity is not yet fully demon-
strated, every advance is a step towards
its demonstration. The instructed mind
of the modern man cannot look out upon
the world and believe that he is witnessing
a conflict of capricious finite deities. He
knows that the varied scene is the outcome
of one vast evolutionary process, and
therefore, if he holds it necessary to be-
heve at all in a spiritual life in or behind
or around the whole, he must beUeve in

20 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE
that Jife as possessing a world-embracin/j
T^:n^^'.^ ^^^""-^ has no messagf
about God if He be but a synthesis ?
p ychical elements, a group-soul, arising
out of human society, and perishing when
the group ,s dissipated, there is no reason
why we should believe in His unity. It is

Sher^ ^"^°"^"^ "" '^^^'-^ - ^
g^ It is surely somewhat surprising that

aeyeaictod? we so .eidom endeavour, in these days, to
gather, by a simple observation of Nature
and m as undogmatic a manner as possi-
ble some ideas concerning the character
of the Supreme Power, if such there be.
I'erhaps we are influenced still by the im-
pressive argument of Herbert Spencer's
First Pnnciples. in which, after an elabo-
rate demonstration of the contradictions
which may be found in the terms used to
describe the being and attributes of God
he concluded that the "Power which the
Universe manifests to us is utterly in-
scrutable." This he affirms to be the
deepest, widest, and most certain of all
tac s. Admitting that behind the mani-
fold phenomena of Nature there must be
some Supreme Power, he yet holds as a
positive creed, and as the most indubitable

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 21
of all assertions, the doctrine that this
Fower IS unknowable. Spencer's Agnos-
tic creed, thus presented as the result of
an irresistible philosophical criticism of
the effort to ascend from Nature to God.
has had an enormous influence. It puts*
in a formal shape the conclusion which so
many minds have gathered hastily from
the difficulties and perplexities which beset
them as they try to adjust their traditional
creed to the new ideas of science and to
the painful problems of life. The ques-
tion with which we are now dealing is an
instance^ The omnipotence of God is not
only difficult to reconcile with His good-
ness, m view of the facts of human experi-
ence. It IS itself a conception which involves
contradiction. The fact must be admitted.
Every effort to think out the idea of
omnipotence will be found to end in con-
tradiction. We need not pursue the in-
vestigation: it ,uld lead into mazes of
dialectical discuo^ion. which would but ob-
scure the issue and afford no satisfaction.
Jiut Herbert Spencer fails to note that the
very statement in which he presents his
creed is itself contradictory. The "Power
which the Universe manifests to us is ut-
terly inscrutable." We may well ask If

22 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Difflcultr
not Pe-
culiar to
Theology.

the Power is manifested, how is it inscrut-
able? It is surely clear that so far as the
Power is manifested, it is not inscrutable.

The truth is that an acute criticism can
always find contradictions in the terms
which express the underlying principles
of all branches of knowledge. This fact
has been amply proved in recent years.
There is no department of scienc-
whether physical or moral, which cannot
be thus undermined. Theology is not in
any worse case, in this respect, than other
branches of enquiry. But all sciences have
to be continually adjusting their concep-
tions to advancing experience and the
more searching criticism which it brings.
Nor does any science let go its old prin-
ciples, principles which it has found to
work well in the past, until it can success-
fully adjust itself to the altered conditions
in which it finds itself.

We are not, then, to cease to seek God
in Nature, because science has given us
new views of Nature, or because some of
our old conceptions prove difficult. The-
ology, like science, must ever be prepared
to take up its burden anew, undeterred by
the greatness or difficulty of the task which
lies before it.

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 23

Suppose then, assuming, like Herbert character
Spencer, that there is some great power po5<S"°"
which works in the universe, and keeping
in mind the modern view of creation,
we ask the question. Is it possible to
gather from experience and observation
any clear ideas as to the character of
that Power? As we know a man from
his deeds, we ought surely to be able to
attain to some estimate of the character
of the Supreme Power by considering
the imiverse, which is the expression of
its activity.

Approaching this question with a reso-
lute determination to escape the influence
of customary opinion, and above all keep-
ing clear of traditional dogma, and sur-
veying creation as a whole and without
emphasis on those aspects of it which are
specially attractive to our desires and
needs, it would appear that the Supreme
Power is much more concerned with the
production of beauty, especially beauty
of form and colour, than with goodness.
Natiu-e produces the beautiful with a
lavishness which fi-ids no parallel in the
works of man; and the beauty of Nature
is not, as in human art, a form added to a
material, which is diverted from its proper

Natural
B«autr.

24 L0\ ^ AND OMNIPOTENCE

use to serve the artistic purpose. The
beauty of Nature is intrinsic, universal,
penetrating. It springs into being
through the inevitable working of natural
forces. It is as perfect in the little as m
the great, in the snowflake and the struc-
ture of tlie minutest organism as in the
Alpme peak or the sunset sky. It is
found m the most irregular heaping to-
gether of fragments, a mountain slope or
a torrent as in the perfect symmetry of
the b ue dome of the sky. If it be urged
that the beauty of Nature is not in the
thmgs themselves but in the cultivated
mmd which has learned to appreciate it.
there is the ready answer that here is the
very point of the argument. The fact that
high cultivation of the esthetic faculties
enabes us to see ever more and more
beauty in Nature, is the very reason why
we feel bound to discern in the Power
behind Nature a Being to whom the
beautiful is an end. So far as this part of
our spiritual being is concerned, we dis-
cern that we are akin to the Supreme
Power. We conclude that the beauty of
Nature points to a certain character in the
Supreme. He, shall we say, produces
beauty because He delights in it, and

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 25

seemingly prizes it far more than He
prizes goodness.'

This inference appears much more in-
evitable when we consider that most of
this beauty is, from the material point of
view, a waste product. It is useless. It
does not help individuals to live or races
to survive. Yet this unnecessary beauty
is poured out with infinite prodigality on
a careless, unseeing creation. In Nature
it is hard to find anything which is truly
ugly. For the ugly, one has to turn to the
works of man.

On the other hand, goodness, in the Goodness
moral sense of the term, makes its appear- *° *"*'"••
ance only after immense ages. It appears
fitfully, is maintained with difficulty, and
IS nearly always very imperfect. Yet
goodness is useful as beauty is not. It is
the cement of societies, enabling men to
unite, and so become far more effective in
their struggle with material forces. If
human society were uniformly good in a
very high degree, there is no doubt that
eugenic principles would prevail, disease
would be very largely eliminated, indus-

■ On the argument from the beauty of Nature and for
a convincing criticism of Knnfs objection, sec J H
Kennedy, Xalural Theology and Modern Thought.

26 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

trial conditions would be wholly trans-
formed, war would be impossible — ^the
world would be a very happy place, as we
commonly count happiness. Morality is
therefore a very useful thing, and the won-
der is that an evolutionary process, which
is supposed to depend upon the produc-
tion of the useful, has not brought forth
more goodness.

Now, regarding this problem from the
point of view of those who believe that the
universe is the life-work of a great Su-
preme Spirit, we can see a reason fr- this
difference. God makes the world beauti-
ful because He loves the beautiful, and
can produce it without the intervention of
finite wills. He has not made the world
good, because goodness can only come
about through the co-operation of finite
wills with one another and with Him.
First, the finite wills have to be produced,
and there can be no goodness in creation
until they arise. Secondly, when they are
produced, they have to come into harmony
with one another and with Him. And this
harmony is impossible without a willing
denial of selfish inclinations on the part of
the individual. When this fact is grasped,
the enormous difficulty of the production

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 27

otPkin.

of a good world is evident. It takes man
— every man — as well as C , to pro-
duce it.

Regarding the problem from the side of Problem
experience, we learn that only by educa-
tion and discipline can men be brought to
overcome their selfish inclinations for the
good of the whole. And this education
and discipline involve pain. Here, surely,
is the place of pain in the moral history of
mankind.

But this does not take in the whole
problem of pain. The animal creation,
in all its myriad races, is subject to pain.
Yet even here we can see that pain has
its place, and a very important place, in
evolution. The pain of hunger drives the
living creature to seek its food. The pain
of torn flesh and the fear of such pain
impel the hunted creature to seek safety.
Through the ministry of pain have come
about some of the most perfect and most
beautiful of living forms. The pursuing
wulf-pack gave to the horse his swiftness
and his strength. The leopard's claw gave
to the antelope its surpassing grace and
agility.

If this use of pain to secure progress,
and its service in providing moral disci-

LOVJO

AXI) OMXIPOTKXCE

Pain and
■Progregs.

pline for ninn, were nil n,„ i .

of ■.nany is Lp ' '"^?'"g "" the part
""Provement. spiritual atWnm;n ' ''

LOVE AXD OMNIPOTENCE 29
about as the results of processes which
involve much suffering. Ves, and arise
out of conditions which are painful. For
It IS the pain of need, material or spiritua'
which drives man ever onward on the path
01 attainment.

This is the truth which lends plausibility
to the pessimism of the East. But that
pessimism goes too far in its argument
that since all effort springs out of the pain
of desire, and since the satisfaction of
desire is momentary, all life is essentially
painful. It omits to consider that the
exercise of the completed faculty-that is,
healthy living m its normal functioning—
IS essentially pleasurable; and that, there-
fore, however painful the process may be,
the result is happiness. That is, pain
exists m order to produce happiness It
IS happiness in the making. That is the
true lesson of the psychology of the will.

When we have reached this point we r^ u,
can understand the teaching of the New S^N^w
Testament. It is a very remarkable fact ^•"»«»«t-

n ;., AnP^**^''*' P°"*' ^"d prophet

VfO'^J Testament are confinually

troubled by the problem of suffering, ever

T^'T^^r '*' ""'^ "^^«- «^"">pletely satis-
fied, the New Testament sliows, for the

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

be revealed. . ! For5hee,S'''T '"'"■^'^ *''»"
of the creation waiethT;?.'^^^^^^
of the sons of God For ?h "-^""""^
subjected to vanS^ n . *'i^"«««on was
but by reason of W^' u °^ "' °^n will,
hope ^hat the cre^t'nt" H^'t''' '*' '"
delivered tromZl^ '^'^ '*">" ^e

intothelib^i^ofh^S^'^^'l.'^'"'"^
of God." That ;, f\^ L°^ ^'^^ children
t'on is a temnorl'ri !.-"^'""«°f "ea-

preparation S?»r •*'""^' P*""* "^ the
-"' w t; b^Cly ^^^^«- -hen

source of liirhf'l •/P'*'"^^-" '* is a

Jove. Th t ;:nT;h"'t°° °' ^--

tude is simple and I • '• *"«^ °^ *«'"

"npie and obvious: it is the fact of

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE
the Cross of Christ. The

^t r< J -— . ^..x. suffering Son

of God reveals the greatness of the love
of God. God's sharing of man's pain
brought home the supreme truth with sav-
ing power to the soul.

Out of this arose the great Christian
Idea of man as a sharer in the Divine suf-
fering. St Paul delights in the thought
that he can know, not only the power of
Christ s resurrection, but also "the feUow-
«hip of His sufferings, becoming con-
formed unto His death." And. for some
centuries, suffering was regarded as the
surest mark of holiness, so that a confessor
or a martyr attracted the deepest rever-

large this cor-ption and think of the 5«>«°P-
agony of the world as we have witnessed
It. as a great work of redemption, or at

east uplifting, bringing about a higher
iife for future generations of men and re-
sults greater than we can now realise in
the heavenly sphere: surely we must be-
lieve that the end is worth the sacrifice.
The main difficulty is that, in so many
ca^s, so far as we can see, the individual
suffers horribly without any manifest
good result to himself or to others; and is

J'OVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

S.:^^.:S!r:^77an or innocent
that can he sa d ' i '' °'" "'"^^^^y- AH
«'""W seem, th^ ;".!'r'' 'r'^'^ '^' ''
edge of tJ,e universe to H^^'*" ''"°"'^-
enable us to measure tl. "''7''^ '=°"W
such sacrifice, m" ^ ^Z''"" ?^ ^^"••^•
the "flower in thecrLil' 'T^^' *''«»
conscious indivf/u'S -f " - ^^•->'
universal scheme of ^l-^^ *f the whole
the future Hie, Vso f] O"'" belief in
measure the fiell !^f enlarges without
difficulty of „ron °^P°^^'bihties and the
--th of anj^Sw^ J"dg'»ent on the
ing. ^ particular instance of suffer-

r?:3;?e„°tLrr^'-"-^-^"-

dence to bear out the n . "' ■' '™P'«= ^vi-
"»ture of man VdLTlTv *''^*' ^'^^
seiousness, desire, and tilTJ'* '' f-^°»-
«--pain is the netrsarvT"';^"''^^

jorkmg of natural fjv!" "^ ,*^ "«™«J
d"ee a ^oorf universe but T^S "°* ^ '•°-
«entality of sufFer^g I. Hh ^ '"^*™-
mean that He ,,r,Vpf ' , ""^ '^°es not
He prices beaut R A "''^ ^''^ ^^an
"tJ. -Rather, It means that

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

I^prfceciirnore. He is willing to make

I Zi ^ °' ^''^ ^'''"^ ^h'ch God sets

j upon goodness. "

i _ It enhances all values. For, when thu<.

interpreted, it means that God sTdelights
m perfectmg His creation, with all its
asTf; 'ir^'J, ^' - complete n^oralt
sacHfil ''^"^'' ^^^^ He thinks any

SeTon^H"'''" ^°" tremendous!
Whether on His own part or on the par

If we have reason to believe thnt r^^ . ..
shares in every human grief ,'S ^ LSy ^o^'
sufferer endures his agony apart from the
sympathy and fellowship o^f God tha?
every sacrifice made is a sacrifice on Go A*

termg, God is calhng on us to join Him
m his age-long struggle against evil i™
have a v,ew of the world and of humln

Whether pleasurable or painful an in
nn^jc worth which canno't be :ttimat 3:

krZLlT^Y' ^' P:'"'"^' *h^t there
« reason to believe in this co-operation of

God with us in the struggle !{ uZ\^

i#3>

34 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Tnut-
worthlness
of the
Unlvene.

Revealed in
History of
Religion.

there is a simple consideration which pro-
vides a basis for confidence, and which we
must first make clear.

All our experiences of the worla,
whether gained through our ordinary
practical activities, or through advancing
scientific research, conspire to prove that
the Supreme Power which works in the
universe is trustworthy.

We carry on all our work and make all
our plans for the future on the supposition
that there is a fundamental order in things.
We know that we can depend on that
order, and tliat we shall not be put to con-
fusion. We are quite certain that the
whole of things is a cosmos and not a
chaos: we deal with the world on the un-
derstanding that what is true to-day will
be true to-morrow, that things do not
appear and disappear, combine or dis-
integrate, in an utterly aimless, unmean-
ing fashion; and we find that, though we
are often puzzled, and often reach the
limits of our knowledge and power, on the
whole we are not disappointed.

It is also to be observed that there has
been a steadily progressive advance in
the banishing of the expectation of the
capricious from our thoughts about the

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 35

world around us. Among primitive peo-
ples the world is imagined as full of spirit-
ual powers, whose influence may be de-
tected in every unaccountable event, and
whose actions fill human life with uncer-
tainty. As civilisation increases, this ani-
mistic belief gives place to Polytheism — a
change which greatly adds to the sense of
security and of elevation, but which still
finds a large space for the capricious and
discordant. When Monotheism super-
venes, life attains a unification, and there-
fore a trustworthiness, before impossible.

The truth which we thus gather from Revealed in
our ordinary experience and from the his- •°'""
tory of religions has found a magnificent
justification in the great career of r.odern
science. The work of science has been,
especially, a progressive reduction to order
of the seeming confusion of the physical
world. The discovery of the laws of Na-
ture, as they have been called, is really the
discovery of a fundamental trustworthi-
ness in the Universe. It is shown that
there is an underlying order in the succes-
sion of natural events, when that succes-
sion is understood, on which we can abso-
lutely depend. The essential point is, that
man can understand — that is, that he can

"'I

■SI

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Buman
Control of
Natural
ForcM.

find in his own mind a measure which he
can adjust to the ways in which the things
in the natural world act and react upon
one another. Science is indeed man find-
ing^ himself at home in the Universe, and
linding that, within certain limits, he is
sate. Thus science may be regarded as a
vast demonstration that the Supreme
Power which works in the Universe is not
only trustworthy, but is not so alien in
character from man as to be utterly in-
scrutable. If man can by research and
experiment make himself so much at home
m the Universe, he must surely, to some
degree, be able to adjust his thoughts to
the Power which works in the Universe.
Complete Agnosticism is therefore not
justified by the teaching of science.

It is because of this trustworthiness in
things that man has been able, in so mar-
vellous a manner, especially in recent
times, to subordinate the material world
to his own purposes. When he has dis-
covered the ways in which natural forces
operate, he can count upon those forces
to produce their proper effect, and can use
them to modify one another, quite certain
that they will not fail him All the won-
derful processes of engineering and of

■»

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 37

the various applications of the physical
sciences, depend on this principle. They
show the power which man gains when he
finds that things are not incoherent and
capricious, but coherent and therefore
trustworthy. It is the very fact of un-
varying sequence in natural events which
gives to human mind and will their power
over natural forces. Man is free and
mighty in the world, because the Supreme
Power which works in the world is trust-
worthy. This is indeed the very charter
of human liberty.

It is also true that our modern delight commun-
m Nature, and the rest and peace which ^^
come to the soul through communion with
Nature, are closely related to our sense of
an underlying trustworthiness in the Uni-
verse. Why do we turn from the worries
and sorrows of human life, and from its
puzzles and problems, to the beauty and
greatness of Nature, and find there a
source of consolation and strength? It is,
surely, because we have found there a
revelation of some power or principle on
which we feel we can rely. It is because,
in some way or other, we discern in Na-
ture an immanent life which is not alien
from ourselves, and on whose strength we

SumxnaiT-

38 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

can lay hold. Apart from such a convic-
tion, there is no source of peace to be
found in Nature. "Red in tooth and
claw," Nature presents the problem of
continual pain in the most obtrusive man-
ner. To the primitive animistic mind it
io also filled with lurking terrors, even
more awful than the tiger or the snake.
Wordsworth is right when he traces the
joy in Nature to the apprehension of the
"presence which disturbs us with the joy
of elevated thought, a sense sublime of
something far more deeply interfused."
The reflective mind traces out the source
of its joy and finds God.

In che light of these thoughts, let us now
turn back on our brief examination of the
evidence which Nature and experience
afford as to the character of the Supreme
Power of the Universe.

We must think of that Power as one
which expresses itself in producing the
infinite variety of creation, and also in
giving to the forms of creation an extra-
ordinary abundance— a superabundance
—of beauty. In addition, it seems quite
clear that the Power which the Universe
manifests to us is essentially trustworthy
there is a fundamental certainty on

LOVE AND OMNirOTEXCE

which both thought and hfe can rest witli
confidence. These indications of character
seem to point to a certain degree of kin-
ship between the soul of man and the Su-
preme Power, for man enjoys the exercise
of creative power in all the arts which he
has learned to practise, and he can endow
the products of art with some degree of
beauty, and by this experience attain to
such an appreciation of the beautiful that
at last he awakens to the overwhehiiing
beauty of the world about him. Man has
also in his experience gained the idea of
goodness, and though his own attainment
of goodness is very imperfect, he has been
able to rise to the belief that goodness is a
quality of the Supreme Power. But he
finds himself perplexed and dismayed by
the monstrous evils which exist in the
world, and the doubt intrudes — Can the
Power which gives being to the world be
indeed good? Or, if He be good, is He in
the position of an engineer who has lost
control of some great machine which he
has made? We have seen that here there
enters another consideration. The Su-
preme Power cannot n:dke the world good
without the co-operation of the intelligent
human beings whom He has endowed with

Steta-
ment of
Problem.

40 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

moral spontaneity. Only by a harmony
ot all wills can a good Universe be pro-
duced.

May it not be possible that this element
mtroduces a final uncertainty into things
and leaves the end open to doubt? Per-
haps, too, the trustworthiness of the Su-
preme ceases with the physical order. We
can depend upon the laws of Nature: we
cannot depend on human will 'Why
should we hold that the limit which thus
applies to ourselves does not also apply to
God? Experience seems to show that here
Crod is just as much limited as we are We
have seen the evil wills of ambitious men
plunge the world into a whirlpool of crime
and misery. Would not God have pre-
vented this if He could? And if He could
not prevent it in our time, why should we
think that He will be able to prevent
similar, or even worse, evils in the future?
We have also considered the Christian be-
lief that, through suffering, God is work-
mg out a great redemption. But, even if
we grant this, what security have we that
the effort will be successful finally and on
the scale of the Universe? It is quite
possible that suffering may be the means
through which certain limited goods, such

LOVE AND OMNIPOTEXCE 41

as we have considered, may be attained;
and yet it may be vain to look for any
final and complete victory over evil in this
way. Our common experience seems to
point to such a conclusion. We see many
cases in which, after a brave struggle, by
which much good is accomplished, the life
seems to sink down to death in unhappi-
ness or utter misery. Such a life seems a
broken thing. We think there must be
another half. But, even granting another
half, what reason have we to believe that
things will be better in a future life than
in this?

"\Vhat we need to save us from the de-
spair to which such questions lead is a
principle which will carry the Divine
trustworthiness beyond our limited ex-
perience, and give us reason to believe
that, no matter what happens, the evil
must be overcome in the end, the good
must ultimately triumph.

We have seen that, however we ap- rui.d»-
proach the problem, we are confronted by g|!?*»'
the same great difficulty— the disorder in- ™*""'"
troduced into the world by the diverse and
discordant wills of men. There cannot be
goodness at all in the world but by the
operation of will. Goodness is essentially

' '-31
lis-

42 LOVK AND OMNIPOTENCE

a quality of will. Tiieiefoie, in order to
produce a good world, if that indeed was
the purpose of the Supreme Power, it was
necessary that He should call into exist-
ence a multitude of beings endowed with
moral faculty— aide, that is, to choose be-
tween good and evil. This made possible
a good world, but it also made possible tlie
existence of evil; and, so far as we can see,
there is nothing impossible in the supposi-
tion that it also opened the way for the
ulti ' .ite triumph ot evil. We can im-
agiii„ the terrible force of will let loose in
the world, growing in its self-assertion of
hostile principles, setting man against
man, community against community, na-
tion against nation. We can pursue in
thought the consequences of such a condi-
tion of things and see how directly it
would lead to the overthrow of all civilisa-
tion and the end of all that makes human
lile worth living. We can feel indeed that
we have been very near to such a catas-
trophe in recent years, and that in the
unsettlement of all the accustomed ar-
rangements of ordered existence which
marks the present time there lurk possi-
bilities of social chaos that might easily
undo all that has been accomplished

Problem.

LOVE AND OMMPOTEXCE 43

by the painfui struggles of thousands
of years. The condition of Russia to-
day stands as an awful example of such
a chaos.

The centre of the problem with which Centre of
we have to deal is now presented to us. If "'"'''
evil is to be overcome and the world saved
from the unimaginable horror we have
just indicated, there must supervene some
power which can prevail over the antago-
nisms of contending wills and so produce
harmony. There are many principles
which can do this in a partial way. Rea-
son can persuade the intellect and induce
those who are in opposition to come to
some better understanding. The appeal
to Interest will often make men sink other
differences and unite in practical co-opera-
tion. The bonds arising from that mutual
interdependence in the common social
order which is created by the fundamental
conditions of our life are very strong,
p-amily ties, friendships, associations in
work and in pleasure, kc-p men from
pushing oppositions to an extremity. All
these influences work for good against the
disruptive power of self-asserting will.
But there is a principle which is deeply
engaged in all these, and which is yet

Powtr of
Lot*.

44 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

purer and more powerful than them all
when once it is put forth.

Love can overcome the opposition of
wills, and, m doing so, bring about a
higher harmony than any which can result
from agreement on the basis of reasonable
understanding, common interest, or asso-
ciation. All these persuade, Love con-
quers. It is like Force in this. But while
force conquers and destroys, Love con-
quers and fulfils.

It is very important to observe that it is
only in a world in which there are wills
possessed of the power of choice, and in
which there is therefore the possibility of
evil, that Love can find full scope. For
Love must be freely given or it is not
l^ove; and, further, it is in overcoming the
oppositions which it encounters, and by
sacrifice winning its way to victory, that
Love enters into full possession of its
kingdom. Love finds its true sphere in a
world m which are sin and sorrow, loss as
well as gain. The possibility of evil is a
necessary condition, as we have seen, of
all real goodness. It is, we now see,
necessary especially for the full exercise
of that great spiritual faculty which we
call Love.

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 45

What is Love ? The question is not easy wh.t „
to answer. Many partial answers miaht ^^•^
be given Love may be described as an
emotion, but it is something more. It is
more even than the will to bless. We shall
come nearer to its true nature if we define
It as the giving of self. Love is self find-
ing Itself in another. It is self resting in
the other as its end. Love makes complete
sacrifice for the other. Thus it annihilates
the opposition between self and self It
attains a unity which intellect can never
attain, for. though reason may demand
such a unity, intellect has never been able
to think It out. Love, therefore, h a bond
of union among souls in a manner which
som^ow passes beyond the grasp of

Christianity has ventured to affirm that Ood u
J-ove IS the essential nature of God, and **"•
'. erefore the ultimate truth of the Uni-
verse. ''God is love, and he that abideth in

t" itS^^"^ «nd God abideth in
ftim. If this be true, we have reason to
believe that, no matter how gigantic the
evils of the world may become, there is a
power which will finally overcome them
an. 1- or here is a principle which exactly
meets the great need of the world. The

loneepti
(Ood.

46 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

world is not as good as it is beautiful, be-
cause goodness requires the willing co-
operation of human wills, as well as the
will of God, to produce it; and so far
human wills have not united wholly with
the will of God. But if we believe that
God is Love, and that He has all eternity
at His disposal, we cannot despair. We
must believe that He will finally prevail
over all oppositions and bring about a uni-
versal harmony, so making His universe
as good as it is beautiful. If, further,
we learn the lesson of the life and death
of Christ, and believe that the Love of
God shrinks from no sacrifice in order
to prevail over evil, we must feel that
the resources of the Divine Love are
bound to secure at last overwhelming
victory.

In taking refuge in this solution of the
difl[iculty, we have boldly assumed the
truth of the fundamental faith of Chris-
tianity. Can we. in any way, link this
faith with the thoughts about the Universe
and the Supreme Power manifested in it,
which we ventured to derive from observa-
tion of Nature and of life, and from the
discoveries of science? We have now
come to the most difficult point of all.

LOVE AX n OMNU>OTENCE 47

At one time it was held, almost univer- T»n
sally that God may be compared lo a ^^^^.
great engineer The world is a vast ma-
chme the work of His design and will,
i?/ "?i° this view, the Creator
Jands outside and apart from His work.
The doctrine is therefore described as a
doctrine of Transcendence. Crudely pre-
sented. It involves endless difficulties It
seems to make God the author of evil
or, m the endeavour to escape from that
consequence, it describes Him as so im-
perfect a contriver that He is forced to
intervene from time to time to put things
r.ght. In the eighteenth century the diV
covery of the mechanism of the heavens
seemed to give a magnificent picture of
a world designed by a great mechan-
ician and so dazzled the minds of most
thinkers that these difficulties were not
fully appreciated. But the reflection of

llt""'^^^"* ^^"^"'•y brought them to
light, and a crude form of Atheism

itri^ K^' 7'''''' ■^*'" ^^'^*^' ^^^ find™
IJT^ n '" ^^'' transcendent

Smverse '''" ' '''^'^*"" *° ''''

nuiM.

48 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

The nineteenth century saw also the
growth of a great scientific doctrine of
Creation as a gradual process. Herbert
Spencer taught Evolution as a philosophy
of the Universe, and Darwin applied the
principle, in the shape of a specific doc-
trine, to the whole world of organic life.
When interpreted by philosophic theolo-
gians these ideas yielded a fresh concep-
tion of the relation of the Creator to the
■world. It was indeed an old theory come
back again. According to it, God is im-
manent in the Universe. He is the Crea-
tive Life, or Will, which, working in the
vast process, is the source of it all. This
grand idea was soon discerned to be in
harmony with aspects of Christian teach-
ing which had come down from the earliest
days. It threw light on much that had
been puzzling or obscure t it allowed the
religious mind to move freely in the new
worlds opened by science.

It cannot be pretended, however, that
the doctrine of the Immanence of God in
Creation solves the problem with which
we are now dealing. Whether the world
be the work of a transcendent Deity, or
of an all-pervading Spirit immanent in
the universal process, it remains that the

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Faith.

Supreme Power has brought forth a Uni-
verse in which the great problem of evil
presses with terrific force on every genera-
tion, and concerning which there is no

ItnTf r7'^'*^> °"^ ^'''^"t'fi« examina-
tion of Nature, for beheving that evil will
be ultimately eliminated. ''^ ^^" ^»"

The faith which holds on to God in
unshaken optimism, and trusts in His
power and love in spite rf r-ery S-
couragement. will here assert itself. This
fn'Z '^*'^^!"?Pi"ng soul of the highest
deX nf *'°"- • ^* ^P"'^^^ °"t of the

?ts^ fustffi^r ' '^'"* u"^ ^^'°^' «"d finds
Its justification m that mystical com-

mumon with God which, in some form or

other, may be found in all that is"esE

m man s spiritual experience. But we

fhour?*"" °"f "«""^°* °n this faith,
though we must recognise it as a su-
premely important fact.

a ^hir "' *° *''°'^ °^ *^^ U--- - JS^ni-

sysS*;/*"'^ be a perfectly articulated ^A»i
system of cause and effect. Every element c*"«»»

as to form a complete natural order. In
this system there is a perfect connexion
throughout, so that every event takes

III

DiTine

Prodaati-

natton.

50 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

place as a necessary result of what has
gone before. A mind which grasped the
Universe with sufficient fullness and ac-
curacy at any moment could foretell all
the future. Those who hold this view
must believe that the will of man is but
one among the many causes which direct
the course of events, and that, like other
causes, the will is strictly determined by
preceding events. It is not spontaneous
— ^ree. It is but a link in the chain of
necessary causes, producing effects with
as much inevitableness as any lump of
matter when it is moved on being struck
by another: only, in the case of mind, some
of the causes are accompanied by psychi-
cal concomitants. There are feelings at-
tached to certain movements of the brain
which give us the pleasing illusion of free-
dom.

Stated in this way, the view of the Uni-
verse as a whole which we are now con-
sidering may be described as an effort to
apply the methods of physical science
universally. Those who hold this view
exclude, as a rule, all supposition of crea-
tive will. They regard the mechanism of
cause and effect as the final truth. But
there long prevailed among Christian

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

theologians a doctrine of the Universe
which was essentially the same, though it
was expressed in theological languVg
God ,t was held, fore-ordained every
SLdT *'' 'T""'"«- Some, who
S if °,.^^r'° ^^' "^ **>'«• h^Jd that
God though He did not fore-ordain al

aut this latter view was but a weak vield-
mg of the head to the heart. The old ple-

they nsisted on the strictest view of the
doctrine. ,f held at all. Starting with one
sole omnipotent Will and regarding all
creation as the outcome of its decJefs i

I'uSZttL ^'T"*- ^^«° the human
V^U and .> • "^^.*'""™e°t of the Divine
VViIl. and It IS vam to try to relieve the
Ahmghty of responsibility for every hu!

eTellT"' ^'^ T «°°'^- Everything is
executed m perfect accord with the
original design. The evil man as well a

S:r4^^;—-v Which L»d

r'^^s"i-s;i^tafr»-

I? ia

In Imper-
fect Con-
ception
of the
Univene.

52 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE
foundation on which it is built; because

n° 'i.r^.''^'" ^^^ supremacy of the
Divne W.11, it denies the reality of the
human w.U. Gaining our whole idea of
wiiJ from our experience of the faculty as
It exists in man. we have no right to at-
tribute ,t to God in a way which deprives
man of it altogether. The theory breaks
down philosophically as well as morally.
Ihe real problem is, how to combine in
one scheme of thought a whole in which
the human will retains its freedom of
choice between good an^ evil, and at the
same time the Divine Will secures the
Universe from moral catastrophe, and
realises the great purpose for which crea-
tion exists. Here is the difficulty which
has always confounded the speculative
theologian If he affirms the sovereignty
of the Divine Will, he annihilates the hu-
man will: if he secures human freedom,
fte denies the omnipotence of God. This
dilemma takes us to the very heart of the
great problem before us.

Before proceeding to another mode of
thinkmg about the Universe, we must
consider an imperfection in the modem
scientific conception of it as a system of
necessarily connected causes and effects

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 53

" the n.„e,»ry „„,™ot fll STl"'

own purposes .,=;„ xJ "^^ ^°'' his

to man as the Tsu/ofT^^^
certain laws of Nature ''^^'^^^'y of
that there is an nr^» • ^'^'^ ''^ ^"^8
which he can SenenH '\°«*"'-«»l events
We ,nd iSuH^Sdt^"^^^^^^ - very
natural forces for h,/ " " directing
ordinary experiences ofT tT^^" • ^" '^^

;ore no in^nsSy^^'twtrtr'""
formity of natural i„„ T " *"^ "»"-

formity of Nature ^r,^-. ' *he uni-

power L alt the eTut^fTr*' ^ ^"*
his design. It ;, Z? ^.**"'"^ ^o suit

^etermin^edlti^dVSrihtL?

54 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

ment we turn from our abstractions to the
concrete facts of our experience, we find
natural forces plastic in our hands. So
true is this that a recent development of
philosophy is able to show very strong
reasons for believing that the laws of Na-
ture, as we call them, are relative to our
mode of grasping our experience of the
physical world with a view to the satisfac-
tion of our needs. They have, that is,
been shaped by the practical aims of hu-
man life.' Thus the whole conception of
the Universe as a necessitated order of
things, in which every event is rigidly fixed
from the beginning, breaks down com-
pletely. And, it may be added, the ma-
terialistic conception of man as an ani-
mated automaton, whose movements are
accompanied by a series of delusive
psychical concomitants, has been dis-
credited by all recent investigations into
the relation between the mind and the
brain.'

Having thus cleared the ground we are
in a position to survey our problem with
more unobstructed vision.

'Bergson. Creative Evolution. Engr. trans., ch. ii.
•MDougall, Body and Mind; Bergson, Matter and
Memory, Ecg. trans.

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 55

It is possible to think of the wholeness a i*r«r
01 the Universe in another way. Startins c<»«»ptfc)a
with the postulate that there is a genuine ' '
spontaneity in every finite will, and
gathering from our experience that this
freedom of the will is not contravened, but
rather subserved, by the uniformity of the
physical world, we gain the conception of
the Umverse as a spiritual order in which
the end is not wholly determined from the
begmnmg. According to this view God
does not necessitate the activities of His
finite spiritual children. The mechanical
necessity of the material world belongs to
that world when regarded in abstraction
from the whole of reality, as in theoretical
science. We know in our own experience
that, so far as human power extends, the
course of Nature is not fixed, because man
IS able, within the limits which belong to
his finite constitution, to alter it. The
whole Universe therefore, including the
material world, is subject to change in
correspondence with the interplay of the
whole multitude of conscious, voluntary
agents. And as it is impossible to know
beforehand how this interplay of free
agencies will work out, we are bound to
conclude that there is a real contingency

i: 1

ATtiud
Vaifloation.

50 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

in things. The history of the Universe is
the history of a Great Adventure.

Here is a thought to stir us to hope and
effort. But there is also the difficulty that
the great adventure may end in failure.
What reason have we to think that success
IS assured? When the outlook on earth
IS as black as it has been in recent years,
why should we believe that things are
going better, or will ever go better, in the
whole vast domain of being?

The only answer we can give, on philo-
sophical grounds, is that we cannot believe
in a fundamental contradiction in the ulti-
mate nature of things. There must be a
final unity. If there is such a thing as
meaning, if the indications whit point
to an inherent trustworthiness '"., things
are not utterly misleading, there must be
some great overruling truth which recon-
ciles, from the highest point of view, the
elements which stand in antagonism to one
another from our point of view. This is
the faith on which rest all life, all thought,
all s uty. It means that the Universe is
a whole — a cosmos, not a chaos.

Granting this, let us see how it works
out m relation to the statement of our
problem which we have now reached.

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Every effort at solution based on the

prS o? ""' ]""' ^"'^"- '' "e x!
HZlZvL" ""?'' °""ipoten: will ends,
as we have seen, m complete failure. How
are we hen to make any p.oirresi? Bv

r'So^ t'"""^ '^ ^-" --

tt ! fu . ^ ""*''' *" enquiry will show

hat the term Will is not adequate to thT

Su7on1hat"t?' ."""^'"^ '''"-d «* t'e
conclusion that the Supreme Power of the

Universe ,s no mere unthinking 7orc^ but
a Being who expresses Himself in Crta
S° ""d ">]he overwhelming beauty of
Creation, and who is also revealed T ». •
our study of the natural world as fundi"

tTtrLri?^"^^ -^ - competd
to tmnk of Him m terms of personahtv

pLA h'™'"^"''"- WetheS

WeThinkSw*' ^t'' ^'^^'y- ^^■
vye rnink of His work as the outcome of

conscious, intelligent Will. In th.^^ are
certamly correct. But the difficultrs we
have so recently encountered in the aoDh
cation of the idea of Will tnJTi! K^
^"st warn us that.^'^tS truVtts^

of"rwSe^:Se^^3sij;s; IS.

58 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Lot* the
Unlllar.

of framing any statement which is not
open to dialectical criticism, we must
become aware that we. in our life in this
world, do not stand on any mountain-
peak of vision from which we can survey
the whole ;! .;2iuin of being. There must
be a Reality higher than we are. There
must be a Unification beyond the grasp
of our thought. We use the best language
we have got and find it insufficient.

Now when we speak of God as Omnip-
otent, we are thinking of Him definitely
in terms of Will: we are assuming that
the language of Will is able to express
with exactness the fullness of Ilis Nature.
Is it any wonder that we find ourselves
in difficulties? This consideration not only
shows why the problem is bound to arise;
it also warns us against supposing that
by any skilful definition of the word
Omnipotence, or by any limitation of its
sphere, we can escape trouble.

Let us now turn from our philosophical
argument to the vision of Love conquer-
ing evil which has been given us by our
Christian faith. We have seen that Love
in its great work of overcoming the
antagonism of opposing wills passes be-
yond the limits of exact definition. It

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE RO

can bring about a unification of sou: .i'.ii
soul whi-h nothing else in our experi-
ence can accomplish. It can annihilate
the opposition between self and self, so
that each finds its end in the other. If
Love be indeed the best expression we
can find of the ultimate nature of God,
we have reason to believe that, however
powerful evil may be, it cannot finally
prevail. Love, supreme and all-embrac-
ing, and with all eternity before it, will
surely find out a way to overcome every
opposition. If we believe that God is
Love, we must believe that He cannot fail
,in bringing about a universal reconcilia-
tion, and so creating that Kingdom of
Love which is the summum bonum of all
creation. Love as it is in God is, if this
be true, that which brings into unity the
multitude of wills. It is the great bond
of union in the spiritual world.

Here we have an indication of the char-
acter of the final truth for which we are
seeking. When we keep strictly to the
language of personality we are unable to
get beyond the antagonism of personal
wills : we can find no means of overcoming
It. But, we have seen, there must be a
Higher Reality in God. What is its

60 LOVE AN1> OMNIPOTENCE

of Omn^

tence,

ipo-

nature? Surely it is now clear that it
must be a capacity to gather up into one,
in a higher form of life, all the discon-
nected warring elements of the spiritual
world. The great problem which con-
founds us can be, and will be, solved in
God. It must be, if there is to be coher-
ence, or meaning, anywhere. For every-
thing in heaven and earth depends upon
its solution. There must be an all-inclu-
sive Life in which we and all created
things live and move and have our being.
We cannot think this out in the form of a
consistent philosophy, because we do not
stand high enough in the scale of being;
but we can feel it in all the experiences
of love and sacrifice, we can find it flash-
ing on the consciousness of the mystic as
he loses himself in the beatific vision, we
can hear it in the song of the poet as he
discerns the presence which disturbs him
with the joy of elevated thought.

We can now understand the true mean-
ing of the terms Omnipotent and Omnis-
cient. They are ways of indicating the all-
inclusiveness of the life of God. They use
a very imperfect language, the language
expressive of personality as it exists in
man. They think of God as One who

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 61

knows and wills, and are so far correct,
but they omit that higher side of God's
nature which passes beyond all defini-
tion in terms of knowledge and will. As
applied to God these terms are poetic
rather than scientific. And all oxn-
troubles with them arise from the fact
that we insist on using them as if they
were scientific.

One important consequence of their
ir^perfection is that they separate the life
of man from the life of God, and give
the impression that God is a remote, all-
knowing, Ahnighty Sovereign, reigning
in solitary glory and vmtroubled happi-
•ness in some far-off heaven, while man is
toiling and groaning in the labours and
sorrows of his hfe on earth. Here is a
very great mischief which has, for many,
iindone a large part of the good of Chris-
tianity. God is not remote from us. We
share His life and He shares ours. Truly
He is above us, but it is in the order of
being, not by reason of any sovereign
aloofness. He is Life of our hfe, and
Home of our spirits. In all our afilictions,
He is a£9icted; and in all our joys. He
takes part. His love encircles us, and will
never let us go, even though our wilful

62 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

Tha AU-
IneluiiTe
LUeofCkid.

hearts may often rebel. That Love will
finally prevail over all rebellions.

It would seem, therefore, that the terms
Love and Omnipotence point to precisely
the same truth, but Love is a higher, more
perfect, expression of this truth than
Omnipotence. Love is not capable of
exact scientific definition for the very same
reason that leads us to believe that our
thought cannot fully comprehend God.
Love is that which overcomes the isolation
of souls. It creates a bond of union
among selves. It possesses always, in
gotne degree, the same kind of inclusive-
ness that God possesses in the highest
degree. Therefore Love expresses the
nature of God as nothing else can ex-
press it.

How, then, are we to think of the
whole — the Universe, included in the all-
encircUng life of God? It is not a me-
chanical system in which every event is
settled beforehand. There is no such
thing as fate. It is a multitude of spirits
sharing a common life. On the lower side
this common life is presented to us as the
vast world of Nature. From a higher
point of view it is the all-embracing life of
God. And God is the All-inclusive, not

LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE 63

by virtue of a mere selfhood standing in
perpetual antithesis to the natural world,
as some idealist theories represent; but
because He is higher (properly the High-
est) in the Order of Reality, and there-
fore more than Personal.^ Possessing all
the attributes which constitute person-
ality. He yet, as the Supreme All-inclu-
sive, passes beyond personality. Within
his super-personal life the Universe
moves forward to an end which is deter-
mined by the Divine Freedom co-operat-
ing with the innumerable freedoms of all
spiritual beings. The end is not settled
beforehand, because it depends on an in-
numerable multitude of free decisions.
The life of the Universe is a vast adven-
ture. All that we can really know about
the end is that it will be the triumph of
Love. It must be, because God is all-
inclusive.

Thus we realise the meaning of the
term Omnipotence. It means that God's
Nature is such that things cannot go
finally wrong. It means that all oppos-
ing wills must and shall be subjugated by
the power of Supreme Love.

' On this cnnoeptinn see the writer's Qod and Freedom
in Human Experience.

64 LOVE AND OMNIPOTENCE

But to reach the triumph of love in the
great final consummation, measureless
sufferings may have to be endured, meas-
ureless evils overcome. Only by the awful
path of sacrifice can the Eternal Love
move to victory over the oppositions of
perverse wills. Here is the eternal signifi-
cance of the Cross of Christ.

But for such an end no sacrifice is
too great. It is all worth while. Life is
worth Lving, and death is worth dying,
and every pain is worth enduring; for
Love is supreme in the Universe, and the
end for which Love is working will surely
be attained.

Ill

THE SURVIVAL OF THE
FITTEST

bt lily douoall

(Author of "Pro Chrlsto et Ecdesla")

In the last few years we have all met
men and women not without claim to be
regarded as thmkers, who asserted that
the war, with its unreasoning passions
recrudescent superstitions and tyranL^es
Its harnessing of so much applied scieice

that the evolutionary process is aimless
and chaotic and that there is no such S

of flX" ^'/^'''''. "'■ '^^^ t^« «°ndition
of further advance is frankly to repudiate
our present moral values in favLr 5
class- and race-selfishness and the will to
dominate our fellow-man.

The present paper is an enquiry as to
whether a steady tendency tolard any-
thing that may be called good can be
discovered in the processes of biological
development as a whole; and, if so! to

tut

66 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

What lithe
a«n«r»l

COUTM ot

H«tunl
iTolutton?

what further human development that
line of tendency points.

Whether or no there is any breach in
the continuity of development between
"star-dust" and the beginning of life it
is not my purpose to enquire. For such
a breach we have only negative evidence,
and it is only romantic persons who build
much on negative evidence. Personally I
see no more difficulty in expecting to
discover the development of life from
what we call "the inanimate" than in ac-
cepting the fact of some of the subsequent
changes within the sphere of animate
existence which we know have been
brought about by biological development.
Be that as it may, we know, at any rate,
that there is no real breach of continuity
between the most primitive forms of life
and humanity. We know, too, that man
as an animal, since he reached the human
stage, has done far more to alter other
forms of life on this earth than has the oak
or the rose, the horse or the bee ; indeed, he
has even done something to modify the
weather conditions of "the great globe it-
self and all that it inhabit." We are justi-
fied, then, in taking man as Nature's
masterpiece, and, having accepted within

SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST 67

limits the story science tells of the road he
has so far travelled, we shall proceed to
enquire whither natural evolution would
appear to be taking him.

Perfect correspondence with environ-
ment ts the aim of Nature for every or-
ganism. This is a biological common-
place. Adopting this principle as our
startmg-point, we may reasonably ask
what we may conceive the tendency of
human development to be. And if we
conceive some powerful intelligence be-
hmd Nature, we are still more impelled
to ask what, in view of past evolution,
should we reasonably assume to be the
further purpose of that intelligence with
regard to man. Humanity at present
corresponds very imperfectly with its en-
vironment. From this imperfection arise
all those calamities in which humanity
hghts a losing battle with the forces of
destruction, and succumbs. But if there
can be said to be any ascertainable aim in
natural evolution, it must be the attain-
ment of a more perfect correspondence of
man with his whole terrestrial environ-
ment.

It is of first importance, then, that we
should enquire what such correspondence

WhstbtiM
Goal of
Huznui
KrolutlonT

WhfttOoM
luchCom-
spondene*

(1) Bodily
Fitnen.

(U) Mental
ntiwu.

68 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

would involve. What type of man does
our present degree of intelligence tell us
the race must produce if humanity is to
correspond perfectly with its environ-
ment?

We shall agree that the most funda-
mental requisite is physical health and
strength. Any race of plants or animals
which succumbs easily to blight or disease
fails to persist. By some system of
eugenics and hygienic environment it
might be possible, in the course of a very
few generations, to produce a type larger,
stronger, more beautiful and more prolific
than man now is — a type also more im-
mune from disease. Such a type would
mark a fresh stage in development.

But physical fitness is not enough.
Herd animals roaming fertile plains in
the past have exceeded anything that
man has attained in health and strength,
beauty, fecundity, and immunity from
disease, and were yet at the mercy of cold
and famine, and, above all, of man ond his
weapons. Mere physical fitness m t be
developed without increasing inteh. tual
power. As it was by reasoning from
observation that men learned to overcome
difficulties of climate by means of gar-

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 69

ments, huts and fire, to use tools and
weapons, and to make the simplest rules
of social organisation, it is obvious that the
ascendency of the human race on the earth
has been due to the development of intel-
lect. Man's further correspondence with
his physical environment must be by
means of applied science — of which it may
be here observed that eugenics itself is one
of the youngest and crudest branches.
We must, as a race, learn not only to com-
bat but to prevent disease, not only to
reap the fruits of the earth, but to im-
prove those fruits and increase their yield.
We must learn either so to adapt our
industries to the weather, or so to control
the weather, that droughts and floods
shall no longer bring us destruction. We
must learn to make the ocean not only a
highway, but a safe highway; and the
same must be done for the highway of the
air; and many other discoveries we must
make.

Now all this will mean a high degree of
reasoning power and scientific imagina-
tion. Therefor J the type of man to which
the lines of tendency in Nature point must
be not only physically but intellectually
superior. If we conceive of such a superior

(UDAbflllv
toOttBid
of Inf trior

70 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

class developed in all countries which have
now a high civilisation, we shall perceive
that they would be markedly different
from the majority who either had not
been selected for improving, or from vari-
ous motives had refused to improve, them-
selves. Perhaps most of us would need
to think of ourselves as remaining in the
inferior grade.

Again, before the higher grade of men
can be free from peril of disease, false
ideas and social ferment, the problem of
the more weak, more ignorant and back-
ward members of the himian race must be
grappled with and solved. The militarist
has always a very simple answer to the
problem of inferior races — subjugate or
else destroy. He is, indeed, a simple per-
son, and can give no other sort of answer.
But as long as multitudes of the lower
type exist anywhere upon the earth they
will be a constant source of physical dis-
ease and false ideas, which might attack
the children of the higher type unless they
could be completely segregated from
them. Would such segregation be pos-
sible?

As a matter of fact the strictest barrier
the world has been able to set up has been

SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST 71

caste. This may prevent intermarriage
and social companionship; it cannot pre-
vent infection of physical disease or of
passions and ideas. When rage or panic
seize a populace no caste within it will
remain unmoved. Of two classes, either
may be the object of the other's rage, but
the rage will be infectious. Either may
be the object of the other's fear, but the
fear will become common to both. Each
may express its emotions in its own way,
but the emotion, if it be passionate, will
surge from class to class. Ideas in the
same way leap the barrier of caste.

Intellect, which is the eye of the
mind, may originate evil as well as good.
The unintellectual herd animal is never
tempted to take up with either the better
or the worse habits of those of another
herd. He cannot form attractive pictures
of novelty within his mind and brood upon
them until they obsess him. But man,
the more mentally developed he is, the
more is he open, through a lively imagina-
tion, to the forces of suggestion, imitation
and sympathy.

It follows, therefore, that if we had
upon the earth a race of beings physically
so much superior, and mentally so much

nSutarr

Heanf.

72 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

more active, than we now are, that they
were able to dominate the forces of Na-
ture, their children would be quick to
observe and keen to interest themselves in
all humanity. They would discover n
thousand reasons for companionship with
the rest of us. Through compassion, mere
love of novelty, affection, or through lust,
contamination with the notions of such
civilisations as we now have would take
place. The sons of the gods would take
to themselves wives of the daughters of
men: the daughters of the gods, "divinely
tall and most divinely fair," would develop
most unaccountable attraction for inferior
men. The dream of the eugenist, or in-
deed of any other scientist, can never be
fully realised until the stupid, weak or un-
wholesome human beings harboured by
our present civilisation have left the earth.
But even supposing a class of supermen
could effectively solve this problem of a
subjugated race, it appears to be a pure
assumption that the quality that enables a
man to subjugate and domineer will al-
ways be the quality supremely necessary
for persistence and development. Even
the conquering races of history have, as a
matter of fact, passed away. Does his-

SURVIVAL OF TUL FITTEST 73
tory show that any people who have so
estabh.hed heir dominions by conquest as
to have no fear of invasi ,„ ^ revolution,
have thereupon settled down to agree
among themselves? We all remember
toihng m our chil-l(„H,d over the complex
conditions that nKuked the internal S
ntegration of military states. In the his-
tory of Rome., fo.. instance, it was com-
para ively easy to render some account of

armies; bufw,,:;ir<:^.ot.;::j3

of factions m the vi.tonous State, we re
member what a sense came over us of a
warrmg world of which we could form nJ
satisfymg imaginative picture. If^e
look at the matter psychologically we are
t "*l*" "^'"it that any fet of peojk
trained m habits of warfare will natural^
tend to continue to settle thoir differences
by that method. They will ivmam Tnhed
S/^r* "'' "*''" '■" '•^"''♦y °^ '" their
foe. rake away the foe and you will not
give peace to the belligerent. BelliBcr-
ence , habit of mind; it is more than
that. It IS the outcome of the deep, funda-
mental animal instinct of combativeness,

74 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

which, if turned against mankind and
trained into the active habit of killing men,
will not subside into quiescence simply
because external enemies are vanquished.

The soldier who is so trained that skill
in arms and strategy are both the game
and the purpose of his life has naturally
small faith in other methods of dealing
with an obstinate opponent. The super-
man, if he is to conquer the world by arms,
must be such a soldier ; and if he is such a
soldier, when he has conquered the world
he will not agree with all his fellows as to
the best form of government, nor settle
down in loyalty and obedience to a gov-
ernment he dislikes. Such supermen
would inevitably pn- 'lie the noble art of
war upon one another. They will indeed
have been trained to believe war to be
necessary for a man's right correspond-
ence with his environment ; it could not be
otherwise.

But should war once break out betweeu
the supermen of the scientist's dream,
their end is near. War and eugenics can-
not be practised together at any stage of
development, for warfare eliminates the
most fit, and that usually before they be-
come parents. It contributes to the popu-

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 75

lation not only the maimed, the halt, the
blind, but the neurasthenic. If the ever
fresh discoveries of science are to render
men's engines of war more and more de-
structive, if the higher vitality and intelli-
gence produced by the eugenist are to
be exercised in fiercer and fiercer conflict,
the race of supermen must soon destroy
itself. '

It thus becomes evident that if man is (b) SoeUl
to correspond more and more perfectly "•««>»■
with his environment he must outgrow
the use of such weapons as will finally be
turned upon himself, and learn to get rid
of backward humanity by some other
method than subjugation or destruction.
We have seen that the race which is to
mherit the earth must develop superior
physique and superior mind. And this is
not enough; it must also develop superior
social talent. The leaders ol the human
family must have social faculties and
social skill which will enable them to get
rid of the inferior races by getting rid of
racial inferiority. To discover what social
faculties and what skill would be required
to raise the whole human race, let us make
a brief survey of the past progress of
civihsation.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Th* Story
of BoeUl
Progress.

Lei us trace this general progress as
seen in the case of an apple-grower— a
man who devotes a certain bit of ground
to apples in order to eat them, barter them,
or distribute them over the community in
exchange for an income. Historically we
first meet this gentleman building his rude
hut under a wild apple tree; in fact, he is
perhaps at this stage a woman (as an
Irishman might say) ; for men are migra-
tory and husbands are various. She builds
her hut because she must shelter and rear
her children; and she throws stones at
other women from adjacent huts if they
try to take the apples. Perhaps she in-
vents the first rude bow or sling. In later
generations we find one man settled down
with one woman under the tree. He
defends the property now from other
couples in the same group. These tree
people are slow in forming common laws,
but by degrees it is found convenient that
a number of men with apple trees should
agree not ,0 steal from one anotfew, and
to join together to defend their property
against external foes. At this stage they
flie beginning to improve the culture of
grams and fruits; but let us talk only of
our typical apple. Obvioialy here," for

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTK8T 77

the first time, there is a little leisure and

Z nn? 'r.'"' '^^""'"g °f bark ana

the pruning of branches and the sowing
of p.ps. By degrees, as the community
becomes more consolidated, and there are
onger periods without invasion, the sys-
tem of grafting is invented. Tie apples
become sweeter and larger, and are o?
more value to the community. No grea
advance, however, will be made as loL as
the owner has to spend a part of his tfme
m warlike exercises and a%art in JZ
war, and while he still knows that he and
his rights of possession are liabL any

enemy When, with the next advance in

crvihsation, It is decided to set apart ;
certain number of men for war, and allow

the bit of land becomes more prolific and
the owner richer. Ah. richer! Compara

^vx wealth brings in a new set of thfeves.
Th. poorer men of his own communitv
have now to be guarded against, as well as
hostile armies. If he began with a friendf;
alhance of men who all had equal wealth,
t IS different now. Some have failed- he
has prospered: and he .sets up a wall a
gun. and a man-trap to defend his goods

78 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

against the vicious poor. This, again,
takes part of his time. His cultural
operations are not purely scientific luitil
another lot of men are set apart to defend
the orchards of the rich from the thieving
class of their own nation. This gives a
security never known before, and what
may be called the real science of pomi-
culture begins. Science is the accumula-
tion and classification of the world's
knowledge upon any subject, with fresh
observation and experiment on the basis
of this tabulated knowledge. Science can
only progress when a community has ar-
rived at a large degree of security, and
when living is no longer a fight for the
necessities of life.

Perhaps we are inclined to think we
have now brought the apple-grower to
such a degree of success that nothing fur-
ther is to be desired or looked for. Let us
consider. He is paying a large tax now
for army, navy and police, money which,
from the point of view of apple-growing,
could be better spent upon scientific appli-
ances of all sorts, and investigation into
the nature and cure of apple diseases and
apple pests. But that is not all. The
police, however active, do i.Jt exterminate

flSfitVBKmi

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 79

the vicious or careless poor, and to these
belong lU-kept apple trees, which are a
fruitful source of disease germs and pests,
travelling Lghtly on the highway of the
air and ever making fresh havoc with the
rich man's trees. Much of his time and
money is spent upon the war of defence
against these invisible marauders. Again
a man s mind does its best work when his
spirits are tranquil or exhilarated, and
this man's spirits are constantly worried
not only by these same pests, but by the
tact that there is always a certain amount
of thieving in his community which the
police, however efficient and well paid
cannot prevent. The spirit of the thief is
infectious. It gets into trade; it gets into
labour; and as long as detection and coer-
cion are the methods rehed upon for fight-
ing It. it will be there to defy them by
invisible means-the over-reaching and
deception of buyer and seller, thr laziness
of the labourer. The man who is really
keen to get at .Nature's best secrets con-
cerning apples, and to produce the best
and he most from any bit of ground, can-
not long be either jolly or serene with
pests and dishonesty bred at home. We
had almost forgotten the national enemies,

.48gBas-impwiiiig»i

80 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

but they are still a menace. What is the
condition to-day of the apple-orchards of
Belgium, of Northern France, of Serbia,
of Roumania, of Poland, of south-emst
Russia? And yet in all these countries
security was supposed to be bought by
setting apart a large number of men to
defend the national boundaries from hos-
tile armies and the orchards from thieves.
We are to-day living in the stage of civili-
sation to which we have brought our apple-
grower. Clearly his plight is not satisfac-
tory. If we consider how he could learn
to correspond better and better with his
environment, it is obvious that without the
financial tax on his resources and the men-
tal worry caused by the dishonesty of his
community he could, even in times of
peace, produce a better apple and a better
orchard, while in war areas, under present
conditions, he and his apples are wholly
destroyed.

If we go back we shall find that the
first security of the primitive apple-
grower was procured by his so'ial talent
rather than by his belligerence. As long
as he defended his apple tree single-
handed he had no security, and i*: ])roducetl
only small, sour fruit; it was only as his

SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST 81
social alliance with a larger and larger
number of human beings was secured that
the peaceful periods of successful apple-
growing became longer and longer It
may be urged that this was because the
larger community, and then the larger
nation, had stronger armies and finally a
stronger police force. That is true, but
rt IS not the whole truth, because the
strength of the large army and the larfje
police force depended quite as much upon
the development of social virtues in those
men u upon their warlike training and
equipment If as large an army or police
force culd have been got together out of
savage tribes, no amount of training in
war or of equipment would have kept
them trom quarrelling with one another.
It IS therefore only by the development of
a reasonable temper and a regard for the
«>mnir.n interest within the area of the
oation that a large measure of security
lias been realised. Is it not, then, strictly
scientific to assume, as a working hvpoth-
e.s.s, that it is by the further develop-
ment ot these social virtues, in himself and
"1 all other men, that the apple-grower
w. ] attain the higher ideal which he is now
able to conceive, and that, with perfect

Duigwf
of 8up-
prawton.

82 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

security and a greater vital energy, he and
his fellows may at last succeed so well that
there may not be a little child anywhere
on this earth's surface that will not have
the pleasure of eating a large, juicy apple
every day?

The upshot of this iiurvey is that if man
is to correspond to his environment he
must learn io correspond entirely to its
chief factor, his fellow-man; and to do
tiat he must learn to deal with hostility
and dishonesty by some social means more
effective than the anti-social way of de-
struction or suppression.

Psychology has taught us that instinc-
tive impulses which are driven imder
through fear — i.e. suppressed against the
will and emotional tendencies of the sub-
ject — produce evil consequences in the
subject, and hence in the community.
This is equally true whether the impulse
be for what the apple-grower, or modern
moralist, would call good or evil. The
instincts themselves are non-moral, for
they grew lusty in the race before those
social values we call moral were formed.
They are all capable of wholesome {i.e. of
social) or unwholesome {i.e. of anti-
social) satisfaction. If anti-social satis-

SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST 83

faction is sought, it is necessary for the
salvation of society either to kill off the
seeker or to educate him to find a social
satisfaction for his instinctive impulses.
Merely to suppress his impulses and save
him alive is to keep a plague spot of moral,
mental and physical evil in active ferment.
We must ultimately find some other way
of dealing with objectionable habits and
propensities than the way of the sword
and the prison.

Our only course is so to develop, by
education and political arrangements, the
social virtues of ourselves and all our
neighbours that our natural instincts will
find wholesome expression, and the im-
pulses arising from them be trained to
serve social ends; and this must be done,
not by any external authority, bn'. by these
persons themselves. We must find some
way of persuading and helping every man
to reform himself from within.

And what is true within the nation will
obviously be equally true in international
affairs. The impulse to be a criminal
nation must be so dealt with by education
and example that the nation feeling th«
impulse will control and supersede it.
In such persuasion of criminal neigh-

Han ft
nghtlDC

84 SURVIVAL OF TIIK FITTEST

hours or criminal nations what part can
the sword, the gun and the man-trap play?
Or even if all swords are beaten into
policemen's batons, what part is the baton
to play? We are not here considering
ethical values, still less making moral or
religious assumptions; we are simply
enquiring how the apple-grower may cor-
respond with his environment of domestic
thieves and hostile nations. If our psy-
chological premises be correct, it is evident
that the area of the sword and the baton
must be gradually reduced until the crimi-
nal maniac, among individuals and among
nations, is regarded as the only fit subject
for their exercise.

Many will say, "That might be all very
well if it were possible, but it is not. Man
has always been a fighting animal and
always will be. Without the outlet for
his fighting instinct he would never de-
velop his other powers." There is both
truth and folly in this retort; and first let
us consider the element of truth.

We have seen that man's combative
instinct is one of the deepest in his nature,
and that it must always have play. It
does not follow that he need always be
fighting with his fellow-man. It is man's

SURVIVAL OF THE I-'ITTEHT

In -iP^ !^ circumstances of any sort.
In all adventure, in all enterprise the
™mbat,ve instinct comes into play; or
•t .s the desire to overcome rather than

possible. If man had more ambition to do

and the other sciences, he would get Ml
exercise for the combative instinct withou

Sfrt^StStter^S

t»«k. they .re ,,„, i„ ,„ j^, , J^^''

ti.rp. Jk / ^ ^ "^^" talfen by crea- »»Jopm.nt

Ateyty 7tiT^ *° ^''f ^ *° circumLn". "^ ^-•
^t every stage in evolution Nature has

"Wante?" ^"* T "" "''-rti^ment :'
prepared for adventure at all costs." She
W this when all the little life germs in

or wait tor it, and those who answered th^

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86 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

advertised for adventurers, some of the
water lizards who responded took to the
dry land, some, later, to the air, and be-
came the parents of the manmial and the
bird. Each advance was made at the risk
of life, and was always a great adventure,
a great achievement. The first mother who
went hungry to linger over the care of her
child a day longer than necessary had
answered the same advertisement ; and the
first ape who risked his standing in his
tribe for a new idea became the father of
men.* Nature is still hanging out a
placard with the old advertisement —
"Who will make the new adventure? who
will risk all for an idea?" When people
venture their all for a new ideal, the result
is the development of new powers.

We have much to do if the use of force
upon human beings is to be pushed
steadily backward until it is only required
for the temporary restraint of the maniac;
and if such diplomacy as may be described
as the art of getting the better of your

* In diMussins man's relation to allied vertebrates and
mammalia, Professors J. A. Thomson and P. Geddes,
Evolution (Home University Library), p. 09, remark,
"The real distinctiveness of man from his nearest allies
depends on his power of buildin; up general ideas, and of
controlling his conduct in relation to ideals."

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 87

neighbour by veiling some part of the
truth is to be considered a disgraceful ex-
pedient, except as a last resort in dealing
with lunatics. To attain such an end men
must learn, by taking the utmost pains
and by enduring persecution and mishaps
with the greatest hardihood, to acquire
new insight into justice, to see with an
opponent's eyes as well as with their own,
and to believe in the opponent's virtues
as well as in their own. It is necessary to
convince the leading spirits among the
youth of every nation that the welfare of
their race depends upon theh- bringing
all their powers of reason, humour and
endurance to ;he reconciliation of man
with man and class with class and nation
with nation, and that the sanctions of war
and criminal law are, at the best, a tem-
porary expedient. It will require all the
enthusiasm, the ingenuity, the courage
and endurance of the young and the in-
telligent to master the problem and be-
come eflScient in any branch of conciliatory
and remedial work. Here indeed is work
enough, risk enough, for all the best facul-
ties of anyone who would give his life for
the good of his country or of the world.
By devotion to such work a new and

88 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

higher faculty of human tact would de-
velop. Tact is the power to conduct com-
bats of mind with mind on the higher
plane of goodwill. Possibly with right
eugenic conditions and proper environ-
ment, in two or three generations a race
might arise who, while approving only
right conduct in their neighbours, acid act-
ing with entire frankness and sincerity,
would yet be able to live on sympa-
thetic terms with the unthankful and the
evil.

If ultimately no such race arise, we shall
be pushed off the board by some other and
different race. Unless our sun should
enter the Milky Way and crash into some
other star, astronomers now predict that
our earth may turn for some hundreds of
millions of years under its genial rays.
That would give plenty of time for
humanity to decline and for some new
kind of monkey to develop a greater social
intelligence than ours. If we failed, the
push of life would be in that direction,
for, as we have seen, the tendency of
biological development is toward the pro-
duction of some animal who will perfectly
correspond with the whole of terrestrial
conditions. But the younger and more

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 89
hopeful among us will think twice before
abandoning man's claim to inherit the

cAITUt

We proceed now to consider the falsity
involved m the sentimental cry that man
has always been a fighting animal and
must always fight.' The only reasonable
ground for the idea that man's com-
bative instinct can only find expression
in quarrelling with his fellows lies in
the implied assumption that man cannot
change his ways. Such an assumption
can now only be made by those who
think m terms of a past generation, that
supposed human history to have begun
only four thousand years before Christ
and to be nearin .ts end in the nine-
teenth century.

Since the Eolithic Age is there any c«. th.
department oi life in which man has not ^%Si
changed his habits? Men did not, in the gS5f "*
beginning, wear clothes, yet the habit
of wearing clothes is now tolerably well
established. Again, man's anatomy
proves that he was originally a vegetarian
like the apes; yet he became a parasite
upon his herds, first drinking their milk
and then eating their superfluous young;

' See page 84.

90 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

in fact, whether for good or evil, he has
become carnivorous; and if we reflect on
the apparent impossibility of the horse,
the cow or the monkey eating flesh,
we may realise what an extraordinary
power man has of changing his habits.
Again, there was a time when man was
a migratory creature, changing his abode
with the seasons, acquiring no property
or sitting lightly to his booth-- and crude
plantings. Or, again, there was a time
when the idea of each man or woman
having only one mate seems scarcely to
have been conceived; whereas now it has
become quite a prevailing habit. And
these changes have involved the regula-
tion and training of instincts quite as
fundamental as that o' combat.

What are we to think about the Palaeo-
lithic men who developed the high art of
painting animals and of carving in stone
and ivory? Where did their civilisation
disappear to, with all that their art
implies? The men who occupied their
place in the Neolithic ages knew nothing
of art; their attempts at it were of the
crudest. Here was change, but this time
for the worse, and that may happen again.
And these Neolithic men, whose blood

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 91

may still persist in our veins, what of their
habits?

We know that between the time when
hmnan beings first began to use iron in-
struments and to make pottery, and the
time, let us say, of written historj', they
had in many ways completely changed
their social habits. It is mere ignorance
of the dawn of history, of folk-lore, and
even of the Old Testament, that makes
any one say that "history repeats itself,"
or that man cannot change.

And in historic times we can see that,
although changes sometimes come so
slowly as to be scarcely perceptible in the
course of ages, they sometimes proceed
with great rapidity. There is the'case of
modern Japan; while in China and India
we find ideas and customs clearly de-
scribed in literature dating before the
Christian era, and that have remained
unchanged until some twenty years
ago, are now in some parts rapidly disap-
pearing. Or, again, examine the case of
the Negro transplanted from savagery
into Christian civilisation. I have seen,
in the mountains of North Carolina,
small holders of pure African breed living
in all respects in a more refined and

92 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

intellectual way than the poor whites
beside them. We have changed our
habits before, for better or worse, and
shall again.

At this hour — whether we consider the
peace settlement satisfactory or not — the
most enthusiastic militarist may well
stand appalled at the havoc of war. The
following is a conservative estimate of
loss, given by one of our most reliable
newspapers, and based only on the death
returns admitted by the various armies: —

"The total losses of the Powers opposed
to Germany and Austria during the whole
or part of the war were about 5,500,000,
excluding the very large number of deaths
of French civilians, of which we have no
trustworthy estimate at hand.

"On the other side, Germany has re-
ported 1,611,104 dead; Bulgaria has
201,224; and those of Austria-Hungary
and of Turkej' respectively are cautiously
estimated at 800,000 and 300,000, giving
a total of a little over 2,900,000. Added
to the Allies' total this gives some 8,400,-
000. The American Committee for
Armenian and Syrian Relief estimates at
4,000,000 the number c' Armenians,
Syrians, Jews, and Greeks massacred by

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 93

the Turks during the war, and it is be-
lieved that over 1,000,000 Serbian civilians
died through massacre, hunger, or disease
caused by the war. Medical experts have
more roughly estimated at 4,000,000 the
additional mortality from influenza and
pneiunonia attributable to war conditions.
With the addition of some 7500 neutrals
(mostly Norwegians) killed by German
submarines, the grand total approaches
seventeen millions and a half. But of
course it is impossible to calculate the
enormous number of other deaths to which
the war has contributed.'"

And for each one slain we may surely
count another who lives on hopelessly
maimed or wrecked.

Since these facts were pubhshed the
medical estimate of human losses by
influenza has arisen to more than twice
4,000,000. This pestilence is but one of
the diseases that are the camp followers
of war; but it is the most notable, not
only for the tale of its victims, but because
it seems to reflect the very temper of the
God of War in choosing for destruction
the young and the strong, who ought to
be the parents of the coming age. If the

'ManoluMtcr Ouardian, February 27, 1919.

M SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

human race is to survive we must some-
what change our habits.
SluUHan Al" the facts of biological evolution
bJS^d«- '^^"'y *''** history repeats itself, or that
fuunUT the future shall be like the past. The ages
of the process of development axe many
and long, but nothing remains the same,
not even the hills that we call eternal.
Since the time when man was merely a
pack animal he has developed individual
self-consciousness, which has brought the
need for more frequent adji'st^cents of
social life. The change going on in hu-
manity, as in everything else, must be
either toward social development or social
degeneration.

The Victorian" by the mouth of Tenny-
son, ask^d a pertinent question:

A monstroua eft was of old the Lord and Mastei of
Earth,

For him did his high aun flame, and his river billowing
ran.

And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crown-
ing race.

As nine months gs to the shaping an infant ripe for
his birth,

So many a million of ages have gone to the making of
man:

He now is first, but is he the last ? is he not too

base?'

•U<Md.

8UKVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 95

The more recent Georgians put the
same mLgiving in another way:

"The plasticity of the organic type is
the ono thing which gives us hope for the
future. Was there i.ot some prophetic
significance of this k:nd in the words
spoken by Ophelia in her madness; 'They
say the owl was a baker's laughter. Lord I
we know what we are, but we know not
what we may be'?

"But Rome was not built in a day, and
the change which can be effected in a
single generation will be infinitesimally
small. And though we cannot hold the
extreme form of belief iu this plasticity
which was entertained by Ophelia, who
quotes witlout comment but, as the con-
text shows, with approval the statement
tliat the owl was a baker's daughter, we
may effect some alleviation in the suffer-
ing caused by the knowledge of what we
are from the fact, now established, that we
know not what ve may be."^

What has all this to do with Chris- TluOUier-
tianit"? Nothing at all, many people J'^jS?'"
woula say; for Christianity, they hold, is tUnlty."
a system of religion designed solely to

' An Introduction <o a Biology, by A. D. Darbiihirc,
pp. 112-113.

96 8UUVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

educate the huniuii spirit to correspond-
ence with a spiritual world quite different
from this earth, and failure to desire and
correspond with this present material life
is the best preparation for the Christian
heaven. They tell us that many of the
greatest Christian saints have exemplified
their entire incapacity to correspond to
the things of earth, and that their Divine
Master was in this respect their prototype,
that the most characteristic of His sayings
exhort His followers to the renunciation
of all earthly ambitions and cares, and
demand that they should follow Him in
disregarding the things of earth in order
to attain an immortal heaven.

Now, of course, the religion Christ
taught is centred in the unseen in two
ways. First, the life of the individual is
conceived as only having its beginning in
the animal body of sense, and to the indi-
vidual a future is offered that will redress
the injustice of the present ; and, secondly,
the life of the individual is conceived as
sustained here and now by the strength
of God, and enlightened by the vision of
God. But to suppose that the duty and
privilege of the individual is not concerned
chiefly with the welfare of the future race

SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST 97

on earth is, I venture to believe, a mis-
taken interpretation -^f Christ's teaching.

My reason for thinicing so is twofold, nm
In the first place, man's advent involved totSnSl-
the success of the adventurers among the "UUonmi
protozoa, among the lizards, among the " '
early mamai-.'s, among the monkeys. If,
then, 'Jod made man in order that his
eterna? ^food should involve failure to
correspond with his terrestrial environ-
ment, it is certainly odd that His way of
making this animal— whose glory was to
be his failure— as the evolutionary
method, which ir )lves a series of pre-
paratory terrestrial successes extending
over some hundred million years. If we
uring God into the matter at U— as the
Christian is bound to do— certainly
looks as if the push of life toward the
terrestrial masterpiece must be some mani-
festation of God's mind. Secondly, a Saeond
closer study of the Gospel records sug- OWwUoa
gests that the "world" which the Christian
IS urged to give up is not the terrestrial
environment of the Christian Society.
Such phrases as declare that God's King-
dom ought to come and His will be done
on earth, or that Christ must return to
earth to reign, may indeed admit of

The

Principle of
Adventure.

98 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

diverse interpretation; one thing they
cannot mean — whether they be taken
literally or as poetic allegories — they can-
not mean that the Christian Society ought
to fail from off the earth in order that
some fitter community may survive.

If, on the other hand, wa regard Chris-
tianity as par excellence the religion of
adventure for social ends, we see through
the whole course of evolution that the
mainspring of progress is the principle of
hazardous adventure for racial ends.*
This was dimly manifested in the earlier,
more clearly in the later, stages, but first
made completely explicit in the life of
Christ.

Many of the more recent works on
biology dwell upon the element of adven-
ture, even within the sphere of subcon-
scious life, at the turning of the ways in
biological destiny.

'The scientific aclinowledgmciit of the disinterested
element in evolution is seen in the following passage:
"That increase of parental care, that frequent appearance
of sociability and co-operation, need far other prominence
than they can possibly receive even by some mildewing
attenuation of the classic economic hypothesis of the
progress of the species essentially through the internecine
struggle among its individuals." — Thomson and Geddes,
op. cit., pp. 246-247.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 99

"Far and away the most interesting
question which can confront the student
of life (is) whether evolution is a process
of which a simple mechanistic explanation
has been discovered, or whether it is not a
mysterious process which we are scarcely
able to understand at all yet, but which
may, perhaps, be due to deliberate striv-
ing (the italics are mine) on the part of
the animals and plants which have taken
part and are taking part in it. And many
will lean to the latter interpretation, be-
cause they find it inconceivable that we
should know as much about so vast and
complex and close a thing as evolution
as we should do if the mechanistic ex-
planation of it by natural selection were
true.'"

Professor Bateson, a leading exponent
of the Mendelian School, remarks: "The
conception of evolution as proceeding
through the gradual transformation of
masses of individuals by the accumulation
of impalpable changes is one that the
study of genetics shows immediately to
be false. ... For the facts of heredity
and variation unite to prove that genetic
variation is a phenomenon of individuals.

* Darblahire, op. dt, p. H3,

I !

100 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Each new character is formed in some
germ-cell of some particular individual,
at some point of time." *

At any rate, whatever may be the
explanation in these early stages, later
evolutionary changes have always come
about through conscious adventure, when
the adventurer is called upon to give up
the familiar "world," i.e. to set forth upon
some vmknown path — and that always
at the risk of loss; for where the herd
or flock or pack or tribe is concerned,
the adventurer nms the risk of being
done to death by his fellows before he
can suffer much of the loneliness and
difficulty which, if he survive, he is cer-
tain to incur.

"It is certain that man did not arise
from any of the known anthropoid apes
(gorilla, chimpanzee, orang and gibbon),
but from a stock common to them and to
him; therefore it is likely that the human
stock had diverged before the time when
the anthropoid apes are known to have
been established as a distinct family,
namely, in the Miocene. It is possible
that a man arose as a mutation, as an
anthropoid genius in short, but the fac-

' ItendeVi Principle* of Hereiity, W. Bateson, p. 289.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 101

turs that led to his emergence are all
unknown." '

Well, suppose an anthropoid ape genius
was the first man. Is it not Ukely that
he was stoned to death by his tribe for
violating some of their taboo? That is
the way apes treat a freak. We may
imagine that his daughter, finding herself
an outcast, cradled her baby, who so far
had hung round her neck, and built a little
shelter to keep off missiles. Inheriting her
father's genius, she would be bound to run
the gauntlet, and if she survived she might
thus laimch the hiunan race. Social habit
or custom is the law because it is the only
security of the animal herd and the human
tribe; but without deviation from it there
can be no progress; though, on the other
hand, if such deviation were not punished
there would be no safety. Between this
Scylla and Charybdis the human race has
had to steer its way.

"We are apt to think of the savage as
a freakish creature, all moods — at one
moment a friend, at the next moment a
fiend. So he might be, if it were not for
the social drill imposed by his customs.
So he is, if you destroy his customs, and

*Thoiiuon «nd Qeddei, op. oi(., p. 101.

"TlM

Cake of

Ciutom."

102 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

expect him nevertheless to behave as an
educated and reasonable being. Given,
then, a primitive society in a healthy and
uncontaminated condition, its members
will invariably be found to be on the
average more law-abiding, as judged from
the standpoint of their own law, than is
the case in any civilised state. . . . Mean-
ingless injunctions abound, since the value
of a traditional practice does not depend
on its cjnsequences, but simply on the
fact that it is the practice. . . . How to
break through the 'cake' of cuflom,' as
Bagehot called it, is the hardest lesson
that humanity has ever had to learn. . . .
To break through custom by the sheer
force of reflection, and so to make rational
progress possible, was the intellectual feat
of one people, the ancient Greeks; and it
is at least highly doubtful if, without their
leadership, a progressive civilisation would
have existed to-day. . . . Just as a bov
at school who happens to offend against
the unwritten code has his life made a
burden by the rest of his mates, so in the
primitive community the fear of a rough
handling causes 'I must not' to wait
upon 'I dare not.' One has only to read
Mr. Andrew Lang's instructive story of

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 103

the fate of 'Why Why, the first Radical,'
to realise how among savages— and is it
so very different among ourselves? — it
pays much better to be respectable than
to play the moral hero." '

Every fresh stage in human evolution The
has come through the genius who sees that function
it is necessary to break through the "cake P^et.
of custom," and the hero who responds to
the call. We have various words to denote
such seers; we call them discoverers, phil-
osophers, or prophets. A prophet is one
who sees into the inner truth of things,
sees what is necessary and eternal in con-
trast to what is provisional and passing,
with which other men are absorbed. If
the race to which the prophet belongs
listen to his word, the future accords with
his vision and he is said to have foreseen;
but if his fellows do not attend to him the
future does not accord with his vision.
Insight, not foresight, is his characteristic.

At every stage of man's evolution his The '
progress has depended upon men who 5^'
would walk by insight or faith in an idea Peneiuied.
rather than by what was obvious in their
environment. Such men were persecuted.

^Anthropology (Borne University Library)
Merett, pp. 183-187.

R. R.

104 SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST

but, bringing salvation to their race, they
might well rejoice. They might well say
of their fellows, all following one another
and approving one another, "Woe unto
you when all men speak well of you." In
an evolutionary sense these things have
been true in every crisis, small or great, of
our racial history.

Hence it follows that whoever would be
the apostle of an essential idea which the
world around him has not yet assimilated,
must, if that idea is to generate new cus-
toms, be first and foremost an adventurer,
a crusader. He must always be willing,
nay, eager, to break with the traditional
world around him, to "hate" his kindred
who have no ideas but those common to
that world in comparistn with the love
he has for the new idea, the new custom,
or the great personality that embodies
these. He can only do this at the risk
of all that he has formerly held dear, and
at many times and places at the risk of
life itself. In a word, he must know the
meaning of Christ's injunction, "Follow
me." And in so far as Christ's teaching
is "other-worldly," in so far as He re-
affirms the most ancient of human beliefs,
that life does not end with the dissolution

SURVIVAL OP THE FITTEST 105

of the body, He does so whilst declaring
that it is not the respecter of the taboo or
the conventionally moral person, but the
adventurer, "he that will lose his life,"
who will gain the next life. If so, we may
divine that the next life will be a life of
further adventure in which the conven-
tional would not feel much at home; per-
haps also that the adventurer will con-
tinue to be cognisant of the beneficent
earthly results of his adventure. In fact,
Jesus Christ affirms that even on selfish
grounds the pioneer of a better day may
rejoice even though he be miserably done
to death in this world, and not even canon-
ised afterward.

We come to another point of connection Th« in-
between Christianity and man's fitness far 5?aS°**
survival. We have seen that when human w«ndly.
evolution had reached the stage at which
man had so far developed individual self-
consciousness and reason as to be able to
direct his natmral instincts into social
rather than anti-social channels, his fur-
ther advance depended upon his power of
friendship, that just in so far as his ca-
pacity for reasonable friendship exceeded
his quarrelsome tendencies, he corre-
sponded with his terrestrial environment,

106 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

and just in so far as he remained quarrel-
some he has failed so to correspond; and
we have come to a crisis in the world's
history when his failure is perhaps almost
more apparent than his success, and many
are questioning whether he is going back-
wards or forwards, whether degeneracy
or a new impulse of life is going to set in.
Do we not find that Christianity and
Evolution teach the self-same lesson as to
what must be the way of progress for
humanity?

Christ taught that a time would come
when man should 'ive in a blessed con-
dition of perfect correspondence with his
environment— that is, not only with God
the Creator of all, but with men and with
all the conditions of life. This state of
things He expressed in the phrase "the
kingdom of heaven," "the kingdom of
God." Now, the type of man that should
thus make a success of life is described in
various ways. He is to be complete in
goodness as God is complete, i.e. he is
not only to be negatively inoffensive, but
positively and triumphantly generous to
the unthankful and the evil, to those who
do right and to those who do wrong. He
is to love, not only his friends but his

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 107

enemies. Hi is to endeavour to under-
stand rather than to condemn, by clear-
ing away from his own vision all that
impedes it.

In fact, if we want to find out what is
the relation between the teaching of Jesus
and man's correspondence with his en-
vironment we had better disco"er what
the word Tpdof means. We shall find that
it does not mean poor-spirited. The
Tpp(5f etfu of Matt. xi. 29 is spoken by
Jesus the lion-hearted, who stood alone
against the whole world. Of the poor in
spirit Jesus had something else to say;
but of those who triumph by the dignity
of gentleness He said, iidKoptoi oi np^ei^—
"Blessed are those who proceed with sweet
reasonableness, for they shall inherit the
earth."

IV
POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

'OHM

■ndlU
DlrMtiOil.

bt lilt DOUOALL

These are few words the significance of

which is more vaguely conceived than the

word "power." There is physi-ial force

directed to no definite end or purpose —

the power of the storm or the earthquake.

There is physical force harnessed to some

useful end — as when we speak of horse

power and water power. Wild horses

course the plains; the waves of the sea

swell and break; electricity flows over the

earth's surface and visibly cracks and

sparkles in the clouds; but we only call

these power when they can be used as the

tools of purpose. So, too, with persons.

A strong man had an invalid wife; he was

able to lift and carry her, and people

spoke of his physical power. All the

neighbours knew, however, that she, being

a fretful woman, could make him do just

what she liked. One of them, who had
tot

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 109

just referred to him as a "powerful man,"
remarked, with unconscious repetition of
the word, "She is the power in that house."
The essence of power is thus seen to lie
less in force than in direction of force.

We may often see two children trying lawn Con-
to play together with toy bricks. The ^J"*'"*
elder, having reached the constructive age, Sj!?"'*'
is endeavouring to build a castle, church
or '.ower. The younger only desires to
see the erection big enough for him to
knock down with a clatter. Here we get
two sorts of power pitted one against the
other — construction against destruction.
The elder child is quite strong enough to
injure the little one in such a W6.y as to
prevent his constant mischievous onset;
but, being civilised by more years in the
nursery, he controls his temper and perse-
veringly circumvents the mischief-maker.
If we were asked which child showed the
greater power, we should say that the
power of mischievous destruction was
negligible compared with the power shown
in the ability to construct and in self-
control. In the household nursery no one
would question this judgment. We are
not as ready, however, to say in the larger
nursery of souls yfhifh we call the world

110 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

Oninipo-

tonMtnd

Cboletot

that the ability to construct is power in
comparison with which the ability to de-
stroy is negligible; or that the ability to
bear with a mischief-maker and circum-
vent him is power compared to which the
ability to injure him is not worth calling
power. At the root of our respect for
injurious and destructive power in the
world is the time-honoured belief that
God wields such power. Yet it is possible
that by further investigation we may
come to question this belief.

What is involved in saying of any
person that, in his sphere of life, he has
supreme power? Our ideas are not clear.
A factory manager may be able to us.
horse power or steam power or electricity
to run his machines, but he must choose
between them; whichever he instals pre-
vents the use of the others on the same
machines. Clearly supreme power, or
omnipotence, in the factory does not
mean the power to use them all.

What would supreme power mean in
the elder of the two children trying to
play with the toy oricks? The baby
knocks down his brother's tower before
it is half finished. The elder has the
power to construct his tower and to knock

POWER— UUMAN AXD DIVINE 111

down his little brother; but the thing that
he set out to do was to build the tower
with the little one's help, to show the little
one how to build. His real purpose being
to play with his brother, he cannot accom-
plish this by the use of physical strength.
He is obliged to apply the constructive
ability with which he is manipulating the
bricks to the little one's character, and
contrive by peaceable methods to make
him desire to see the tower properly built.
He cannot both coerce the little one
physically and also have a happy hour
with him. He must choose between the
exercise of one form of power and the
other. And if he is looking tc^ the future
he must choose peaceable methods if he is
to have any enjoyment in nu; .ery com-
panionship. The ordinary child will, of
course, choose neither one course nor the
other, but vary between the two, some-
times trying physical coercion, sometimes
amiable management. But we all recog-
nise that the more intelligent the bigger
child is, the less he will knock about his
little brother.

Let us revert to the case of the man
with the invalid wife. For this man to
be omnipotent in his household he must

112 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

be able, not only to carry his wife as he
choose, but to direct her thoughts and her
will instead of being directed by her sick
fancies. Let us suppose this the fact, and
the man's will dominant. If she remained
miserably ailing he would require the
power to heal and strengHien her. But if
he succeeded in getting her on her feet he
obviously couid not both use his power to
carry her about and at the same time use
his power in getting her to walk of herself.
The physical power he had exercised
would fall into disuse because incom-
patible with the power to teach her to
walk unsupported. He could not both
habitually pick up the woman and carry
her to the shade of an apple tree, and also
exercise his higher power to enable and
incite her to take herself there. He must
habitually cease to do the one thing before
he can habitually succeed in doing the
other. This is evident.

Further, if he wanted a friend and a
helpful companion in his wife, she must
cease to be the mere mental automaton
controlled by his ideas and wishes. If
he were a normal man he would want her
to bring her own contribution of ideas
and purposes to enrich their common life.

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 113

But if he desired that, he would need to
cease his mental control over her thought
and will. He could not both cause her to
go from the house to the shade of the apple
tree and also cause her to choose what she
will do — whether remain in the house or
sit under that or some other tree. He
cannot both control her mental life and
have an intelligent and responsive com-
panion. His power to control her mind
must fall into disuse if his power to evoke
a responsive friendship in her is to be
exercised. The power to do the thing
he most wants to do, and the thing best
worth doing, requires for its exercise the
abrogation, not only of physical force, but
of any form of mental influence which
even approximates to compulsion.

In the light of this conception of the
highest kind of power, let us review the
religious hypothesis of the Divine govern-
ment of the Universe, and in particular
the belief that the material and spiritual
environment in which humanity developed
was the expression of the power of a
beneficent Creator. In so doing we must
realise that God cannot use incompatible
powers to attain an end. We must set
before us all the facts of development as

Tha

Sanction of
ConM-
quenee.

114 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

we know them, and then ask ourselves to
what sort of spiritual power they bear
witness.

The historic teacher of mankind has
been experience — experience which teaches
what are the consequences, good or evil,
which follow from certain acts. When we
think of human life in its first beginnings,
when the mother carried about her babe —
as do the apes still— chnging round her
neck till a year old, when clothes and huts
were not yet invented, the sanction for
any action evidently was the advantage
to be gained or the disadvantage to be
avoided by doing it. He or she who could
best foresee the results of any action and
act accordingly, would thrive. The dog
who picks quarrels with dogs he cannot
master is soon finished in the fight, or if
he rashly wriggle too far into a fox-hole
he is entombed, or if he try to swim too
swift a river he is drowned. It is thus
by the sanction of consequences that dogs
have learned to be wary of catastrophe.
In their case we do not enquire whether
such catastrophe be the punishment of a
moral governor; the system of calculable
results is the government under which
they live. In the same way man, at his

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 115

first emergence must, we should all admit,
have been educated by natural conse-
quence. Every other form of education
is more rapid, though less effective, than
the education of experience ; but possibly
man had time to learn by the education of
experience, for geologists tell us that it
may be some 2o0,000 years since man
began to use stone implements. We may
well believe that the Divine Mind con-
trived the school of experience, and that
the Divine Spirit quickened man's mental
powers in that school to discover the good
and to avoid the bad; but his discoveries
were made, as far as we know, by observa-
tion and trial.

And the human mind, g' ping for an Htotoric»l
mterpretation of its material and spiritual 5^^
environment, made childish guesses at the Power:
truth. Eve where we find primitiv man
firmly beheving in unseen deities who
demand that he shall do things on other
than experimental grounds. Everywhere
we find man living under the supposed
sanctions of Divine rewards and punish-
ments other than those of natural conse- (o) The
quence. He thought of God's power as aSH
chiefly shown in arbitrary punishments.
In every primitive religion man attributed

VlndictiTe

116 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

his customs or morals (mores) to revela-
tion, and assumed Divine punishments as
their sanction. Thus Mr. Marett tells us
that "almost insensibly we are led on to
the subject of religion from the study of
the legal sanction; this very term 'sanc-
tion,' which is derived from Roman law,
pointing in the same direction, since it
originally stood for the curse which was
appended in order to secure the inviola-
bility of a legal enactment." *

The schoolboy who remarked that in
ancient times God liked a great deal of
cursing was unconsciously criticising the
early notion of revelation. Human im-
agination, playing about the unseen and
unknown, invented what it called revela-
tion, and the proof of this is the childish
and often vicious nature of the so-called
revelation.

"There is no end to the curious and
absurd customs, generally supported by
supernatural sanctions, by which the ac-
tions of savages and barbarians are com-
(W The monly surrounaed and hemmed in. We
Divine wm have to remember that, in the case of exist-
FantMtio. .^^ ^^^^^^ communities, the growth and
multiplication of customs may have been

' R. E. Marct., op. «(., p. 203.

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 117

proceeding through all the ages during
which the few progressive peoples have
been evolving their civilisation. But
enough is now known of the primitive age
of ancient Greece and Rome to show that
the great civilisations of these States took
their rise among peoples bound hand and
foot by religious customs and law as
rigidly as any savages, and to show also
that the dominant religious emotion was
fear." '

We are not on this account driven to
deny that man has been the subject of
such revelation as comes by the quicken-
ing of his own judgments of beauty and
truth and social value. The progress that
on the whole and in the long run has been
made in these affords a strong presump-
tion that the fetch of human genius is the
prompting of some greater Spiritual
Reality.

But my point here is that the chief
exercise of power attributed in primitive
times to God was destruction, and the
chief sentiment attributed to the Divine
mind was legal it moral indignation. We
can easily understand how this came
about. Among gregarious animaL we

' Socio; PtycKology, Profeasor MUuugall, p. 308.

118 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

know that if one animal transgresses tlie
habits of the herd, even when circum-
stances compel it, the herd will turn upon
it and put it to death. This action is part
of the instinct of self-preservation; for
what binds the herd together and makes
it strong in the face of solitary beasts of
prey is that all its members act together,
in fight or in flight, under one impulse.
Humanity, gathered in tribes, had the
same instinct. It was entirely necessary
for the preservation of primitive groups,
and as reason developed a reasonable ex-
planation was sought and ostensibly
found.

Professor M'Dougall thus explains the
process. Primitive man, like ourselves,
was apt to let pass the genial and regular
processes of Nature by which he con-
stantly profited, while disastrous events
struck upon his nervous system and
aroused his fear and indignation. Death,
pestilence, famine, storm, flood, required
explanation. Standing out, as they did
for him, with no background of natural
causes, these were attributed to whatever
god or gods he could conceive.^

' Pace the enrlier archeoliigists, the normal Bnod cheor
and happiness of primitive man appears to me clearly

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE liO

"The cause of every calamity befalling
either the ind-vidual or the community
would be sought in some offence given to
the beings thus vaguely conceived; and
primitive man would be apt to regard as
the source of offence any action at all
unusual, at all out of the ordinary, whether
of individuals or of the community. Batulton
Hence the conceptions of these awe- £S«on.
inspiring beings would lead to increased
severity of social discipline in two ways:
firstly, by causing society to enforce its
customary laws more rigidly; . . . sec-
ondly, by producing a very great increase
in the number and kinds of customary
prohibitions and enforced observances.
. . . Although many of the modes of con-
duct prescribed by primitive and savage
custom and enforced by supernatural
sanctions are not such as we regard as
moral, ... yet we must class the observ-
ance of such custom as moral conduct.
For the essence of moral conduct is the
performance of the duty prescribed by
society, as opposed to the mere following
of the promptings of egoistic impulses.

suggested by the fact that he was shocked and impressed
by misfortuDes, which must therefore have been the
exception, not the rule.

The

Genesis of
Moral In-
dignation.

120 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

. . . No matter how grotesque and, from
our point of view, how immoral the pre-
scribed codes of conduct of other societies
may appear to be, we must admit con-
formity to the code to be moral conduct;
and we must admit that religion from its
first crude beginnings was bound up with
morality." '

"If my next-door neighbour breaks a
taboo, and brings down a visitation on
himself, depend upon it some of its un-
pleasant consequences will be passed on
to me and mine. Hence, if some one '»j.s
committed an act that is not merely a
crime but a sin, it is every one's concern
to wipe out that sin, which is usually done
by wiping out the sinner."'

This anger on account of a breach of
custom or law is moral indignation. We
all remember the story of Achan and
the "wedge of gold" and the "goodly
Babylonish garment." It was the thought
of the moral indignation of Jahveh against
Achan's disobedience that caused the chil-
dren of Israel to slay him. Samuel ex-
pressed what he believed to be the moral
indignation of Jahveh against Saul be-

• Prof. M'Dougall, op. cit., pp. 306-7, 313.
■ E. K. Marett, op. cit., p. 201.

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 121

cause he had not slain the caltle of the
Amalekites. In such time ,ere was no
distinction drawn between ihe impulse of
indignation or moral anger and the im-
pulse of retribution. Anger and the will
to punish were regarded as one thing. The
punishment followed the crime not as a
natural consequence but because it roused
God's indignation. It was necessary to
change the indignant feeling in God's
mind if the punishment was to be stayed.
No doubt many primitive guesses at the
interpretation of life were less melancholy.
Prosperity of all sorts very soon came to
be attributed to the favour of the unseen
Power— just as disaster was attributed to
God's anger at breach of custom or law,
or, as we should say, his moral anger—
and joy in this favour gave rise to the
gentler religious sentiments of gratitude
and reverence. What I would here
emphasize is that over untold ages and
over all parts of the earth man has re-
garded Divine power first and chiefly as
destructive, and has attributed to God
such moral indignation and such vindic-
tive punishments as we, at our present
stage of development, cannot possibly be-
lieve to have been Divine. Let us also

122 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

notice that whenever moral indignation
OodUMM and punitive action was attributed to God,
o?Srity. the members of the human group took
upon themselves to mediate the Divme
punishment by themselves evincing the
same moral anger and by devoting the
offender or offenders to death or outlawry,
and the power of the State rested on the
right and the will to injure the wicked.
Thus we see that from untold generations
we have inherited an aptitude for moral
anger, a disposition to regard this moral
anger as the first essential of a religious
character in individual or nation. In the
past it has undoubtedly been one chief
factor in binding together human groups,
but it has hindered the development of an
aptitude for charity and social forgiveness.
We may undoubtedly observe a large
difference between the more primitive and
the more advanced morality: the first
is, in the main, a slavish imitation of out-
v/ard acts; the second becomes more and
more an effort to adapt principles of con-
duct held in common by a group to ends
approved by the group. It still remams
true that the sentiment of outraged pro-
priety at any action which defies a com-
monly accepted rule of right, and the

POWEK— HUMAN AND DIVINE 123

determination that it shall be punished,
are the same in the Red Indian of the
Saskatchewan and in an Oxford don, was
the same in ancient Israel or in ancient
Babylon or Rome as it is in a modern
Wesleyan preacher, and by each and all
has always been attributed to the God or
gods in whom they trusted.

It is therefore important to notice Summur.
that, whether from the beginning man's
development might have followed a higher
line or not, in the line it actually followed
his conception of God as vindictive, with
its accompaniment of human "righteous
indignation," has in the past been both the
cement which held together human groups
until they were strong enough for expan-
sion, and the prison which bound them so
that they could not expand into higher
social developments.

Thus we have reason to suppose that in
this historic conception of Divine power,
and its consequent conception of human
duty or righteous sentiment, there was
something right and something wrong; Wanted, a
and if we are going to survive by improv- S^Sity.
ing on the past, this is the most important
matter for analysis and revision. Most
of the human groups of the early world

124 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

failed to emerge into nations because they
were hide-bound by the fear of Divine
anger and the strength of their own moral
angers ; by their consequent lack of charity
and failure to exalt the kindliness which
seeks to understand rather than condemn.
But some groups which had attained large
development seem to have foUen to pieces
because they lost vivid belief in Divine
government and ceased to have passionate
moral sentiments. We must not avoid
Scylla by casting our ship into Charybdis.
We must stop and think. Vindictive and
punitive passion is destructive, «nd in the
past God has been thought of as destruc-
tive. One curious witness to this is the
phrase, "act of God," still used in all our
bills of lading, meaning, "unforeseeable
disaster." But we have seen that the vital
principle is always constructive; life is
alwoys evolving higher and higher organ-
isms. Man's mind is predominantly con-
structive. God's mind must be wholly so,
and the Power of God will express itself
only in ways that are constructive.

Education by religious experience has
been, and must still be, a constructive force.
At first sight many have been inclined to
say that neither in the process of natural

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 125

or of religious evolution can we trace any
evidence whatever of Divine action. But
we have agreed there is reason to believe
God's mind is seen in the trend of natural
evolution, and, a fortiori, we may see God
in the educative power of experience by
which man's spiritual life has developed.
Further, we have direct evidence of the
sense of God in that we find humanity
busy, from first to last, seeking to corre-
spond with an unseen spiritual reality. It
is true that men have, for the most part,
attributed false notions and false disposi-
tions to God, and so misinterpreted their
own daily duty. But this very fact must
lead us to mistrust our own preconceived
notions of the Divine will and the divinely
appointed moral sanctions, it does not
justify the assumption that we are living
in no environment of Divine government
closely concerned with the detail of our
lives. It must eventually lead us to
cast about for a conception of Divine
government as it concerns daily duty
which will more closely fit the facts of
human development.

God is not God unless He is powei. ^•owctm
Omnipotence belongs to our conception ^V?*'*"
of God. Unless He govern our Universe

126 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

He is not really God, but only a minor
deity. But we have seen that an omnipo-
tent being cannot use all sorts of forces
indiscriminately to one end. If God has
brought our world into being in order that
life may develop under the training of
experience into free intelligence, able to
have communion with Himself, it must be
a world bound by the law of inevitable
consequence, it must be a natural system
of calculable effects. Physical disasters
must follow ignorance or neglect of physi-
cal law; mental degeneration must follow
the lower spiritual choice. God cannot,
while teaching by experience, be acting as
a deus ex machina, by direct fiat of His
will adjusting physical disasters to those
who fail in such virtues as justice, mercy
and probity, adjusting such psychic effects
as hard-heartedness and self-deception to
those who fail in appUed science. The
lack of domestic virtues could not, in the
nature of things, have brought on the
Flood or a plague of poisonous serpents,
nor could failure in religious ritual have
brought a pestilence or the invasion of a
foreign army. The causes of such dis-
asters are lack of precautionary measv^s
or of cleanliness or of diplomacy. We

POWEj -HUMAN AND DIVINE 127

have or Ihe mc.l part reached a stage
where v'!' its all ■ eady to accept this. We
reahse that if, as Christians are bound to
beUeve, the Divine Spirit is brooding over
humanity to bring forth a people which
will freely choose the good, the natural
results, both physical and spiritual, of all
actions must be allowed to have full sway.
The Divine power must be sustaining a
system of cause and effect. Kind action
and clever action will each have different
sorts of beneficial results on the soul of
the doer and on the community. Both
sorts will be necessary to make the good
life — the good man or the good civilisa-
tion. The stupid and cruel actions will
have their results; both will be necessary
to bring about degeneration.

The sustaining of this calculable Uni-
verse is one manifestation of the power of
God, and it is a manifestation without
which this could not be a training ground
for souls. Yet other, and in a sense more Power u
characteristic, manifestation of His power ^^
may be seen in that inspiration of souls
by virtue of which they can learn wis-
dom, transmute suffering into joy by the
alchemy of purpose, and evil into good by
forgiveness; and these powers are fully

128 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

compatible with that dependabihty of God
which we call in the reign of law.

First, with regard to inspiratioi. of the
intellect, it must be, as all would admit,
of the nature of tutoring. Our own earlier
and cruder method of teaching was by
imparting accumulated scraps of knowl-
edge, and beating the pupil who did not
acquire them by rote, under which method
only those with some great aptitude ac-
quired much knowledge. Now we have
learned by long experience that the best
tutor is he who helps the pupil to discover
the needed knowledge for himself, and to
reflect fruitfully upon his discoveries.
Under this new method a much larger
proportion of pupils become able to
make their own contribution to the
world's wisdom. We cannot attribute
to the Divine educator the cruder method.
But the bestowal of spiritual help to
discover and to reflect is quite compatible
with the exercise of the spiritual power
that sustains the sequence of cause and

effect. „ « t.

This is also true of the gift of such
inspiration as would show man how to
conceive a purpose and end that would
convert his suffering into joy. We know

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINK 129

that hardship, even most painful and long
hardship, is counted all joy for the sake
of winning a race, or gaining a game, or
discovering a "pole," or making a fortune
or a reputation. The parent who would
restrain a youth from such enterprise
would be, not kind, but tyrannical. The
inspiration, then, that enables man to
conceive a glorious goal for the race and
for each individual, could cause him to
count it all joy to fall into divers dis-
tresses without any abrogation of the sanc-
tion of consequence involved in the reign
of law.

An even more signal exercise of Divine Pow«r aa
power would surely be to transmute the "eaWon?"
evil of wrong choice into good without
interfering with the psychological law
of cause and effect. Is this possible?
Nowadays we hold no brief for the theory
of man's total depravity. We are ready
to believe that from the first to the pres-
ent time the natural good and evil in him
have been pretty equal; but it would seem
inevitable that his evil acts and disposi-
tions should estrange him from his Divine
spiritual environment. But, mark this,
when man has done what could repel a
spiritual being, he has done a spiritual

130 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

act, and thereby entered into a realm of
be'ng higher than the animal or non-
spiritual hfe. And what if God will not
be estranged? Then surely the whole
spiritual Universe, instead of being an-
tagonised, has its antagonism transmuted
into a greater opportunity for the erring
soul.

Let us try, for just one moment, to for-
get all theological definitions of sin or
expiation, all definitions of Jew and Gen-
tile and Christian, and think only of the
agelong drama of human development, of
the men and women and chUdren o^ the
old Stone epochs and the new Stone
epochs and of the three Bronze ages, of
the cave dwellers and the lake dwellers,
the forest dwellers and the tribes of the
grass lands and the corn growers of the
river valleys, all products of a greater
antiquity, all gone before our histories
begin, and each one— if the Christian faith
is worth anything— dear to the heart of
God. If we mean anything by "the
fatherhood of God" we mean that in sym-
pathy God must have been with them m
this world system of cause and effect, and
that through all the school of experience
He must by sympathy have rejoiced m

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 131

their joys and suffered in their pains.
There must have been a sufficient end, an
end worth this Divine suffering; and that
end, as far as we can see, seems to have
been the making of souls or spirits capa-
ble of uniting in a perfect social environ-
ment or whole. In these souls there were
three elements of what we should call »vil
action. There were the hereditary charac-
teristics of the ape or the tiger or— as we
may also say— of the donkey, which would
often overmaster the newer impulses of
mtelligence and rational values. There
would also be what we now call neuras-
thenic reactions. Just as animals that
have been cruelly treated or greatly
frightened become, as we say, "vicious,"
so man must often have become abnormal
through disaster. Evil done through
these causes God could only pity and con-
done, for the ir.dividual man or genera-
tion was not responsible. There is a third
element of deliberate wrong choice, when
an opportunity of doing something good
is seen and rejected. However small this
element of free choice between good and
evil may have been in the life of primitive
man, it is by this element that he becomes
a free spirit, a reasonable soul. It is only

HerCTand
Wnth.

132 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

as an intelligence freely chooses to em-
brace or neglect an opportunity that it
proves itself free, that it becomes free m
the choosing. And whether the choice be
right or wrong, it is a spiritual act. Such
acts when right would naturally bring
man into better understanding of God and
make him open to Divine inspiration.
Only by such free acts when wrong could
man antagonise a just God. But what
if God refused to be antagonised? If
through His pain of disappointment He
transmuted what tended toward estrange-
ment into a closer bond of continued in-
spirPtion, that would be an act of personal
power of a higher sort than any other we
can conceive.

Now this is just what the religious mind

of the past, groping in many directions

after truth, has often grasped as "mercy

and seen as a correlative of God's reputed

tendency to wrath and destruction. God's

mercy has often been apprehended by

spiritual souls and expressed in visions of

surpassing beauty, but uviortunately it

has always been swiftly hedged about by

doctrines which conditioned the Divine

mercy while declaring the Divine wrath

to be unconditioned. At best, it has been

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 133

held, God only forgives when man lirst
repents.

Let us, for the timf, forget these doc- ForgiTeneu
trines and ask ourselves how, when primi- ^^X
tive man first began to make free choices «»<*•
between good and evil, God's forgiveness
might have waited for his repentance.
Nothing is more perfectly obvious in
studying early rehgions than that man's
notion of good and evil did not represent
the realities. In this the repeated cry of
Hebrew prophets corroborates anthropo-
logical research. Justice and mercy were
overlaid in primitive minds by ritual
exactions. For example, cannibals might
repent and offer propitiation for a breach
of fantastic taboo, but they did not repent
that attitude of heart which caused them
to devour their enemies. Yet these same
tribes are found to have such glimmerings
of real mercy toward child and beast as
could only be won by possibility of de-
liberate choice between good and evil.
Opportunities of pity seen for a moment
and, when rejected, as swiftly forgotten,
could not be repented of. And yet such
rejection of better L-npulses would be the
real sins of the savage against God. Can
we suppose that God's forgiveness here

Trueuid
FklMfor-

giTVOMi.

134 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

waited on human repentance? If, on the
contrary, God's love transcended the
offence, that means that God took some
other way of dealing with and overcoming
the evil. The true alternative to punitive
anger is not, as our doctrinaires often
assume, laisser faire, nor is it indifference
or good-natured tolerance. These disposi-
tions are good on their right occasion, but
very evil on an occasion that requires
either punitive anger or that tremendous
achievement of love which transforms the
evil into a higher good by the self -giving
of the injured spirit. Whatever else for-
giveness be, it is not, and never can be,
indifference to the repetition of the sin.
The pious voices which resound from half
the pulpits in Christendom to v^arn us
against supposing that God forgives too
easily are the voices of men who never
themselves really forgave. The experi-
ence of true forgiveness would bring home
to them its essential cost. It is as intelli-
gent to talk of easy suffering or easy
agony as of easy forgiveness. Forgive-
ness, in the heart of a child or an arch-
angel, in the heart of man or of God, is
in essence the struggle between the uni-
versal spiritual evil and universal spiritual

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 135

good, a conflict in which good triumphs
only through the voluntary suffering of
the injured. Each being who forgives
enc'ures to the extent of his capacity the
whole spiritual conflict. No one who has
suffered agony desires to suffer again.
Suffering is not suffering unless it create
the desire to get rid of its cause. To for-
give indicates the most eager desire that
the offender shall not repeat the offence.
It involves such self-giving as may be
possible to the end that the offender may
reform himself till offensive actions be-
come impossible to him. In the atmos-
phere of reahsed forgiveness offence by
a responsible agent gradually becomes
impossible. Even in human society it is
easy to see that the supreme power is
forgiveness in that it accomplishes the
highest possible achievements in reforma-
tion of the highest natures.

We can see, too, that, for the attainment ForgtveiMn
of this particular end, forgiveness and *''"^-
moral wrath are not compatible methods,
nor is habitual forgiveness and habitual
wrath possible in the same character. If,
then, it be God's will that in an atmos-
phere of more and more clearly recognized
forgiveness offences should become im-

136 roWER-IlUMAN AND DIVINE

possible to responsible spirits. He is
exercising supreme power if. while sus-
taining this whole universe of cause and
effect. He is forgivinir every offence of
each sentient creature that develops moral
responsibility by the education of expen-

*"we live amid much confusion of
thought about forgiveness. One says,
"I forgave the poor devil because I felt
su ' he could not htlp what he did. An-
otnc-r sajs, "I forgave because he k>ew
no better." A third will cabnly tell us
that he forgives easily "because it is not
worth while to worry over offences.
Nothing of all this is forgiveness It is
quite true, as has been said, that it is well
to overlook most of our neighbours an-
noying ways on these grounds Just as
we cannot forgive a storm or a fire for the
iniury it does us, so we cannot forgive a
hiunan agent unless we believe him to be
responsible. Nor do we forgive if we are
passing over offences for the sake of our
own peace. We can only forgive when
we suffer acutely under an injury and
know that the agent was fully responsible.
We can only forgive by settmg the we -
fare of the offender before our own wel-

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 137

fare. Forgiveness is the greatest achieve-
ment of human love, and accomplishes
more than anger can to elevate both the
soul that forgives, the soul forgiven, and
the community.

If that be so with men, in transferring How Ood
the figure of forgiveness to God we must J" j,,
believe that His forgiveness is infinitely '

more— more costly, more efficacious.

But in our thought of God's forgiveness
there is the same confusion, inverted as it
were. One says, "I do not see what God
has to forgive in human conduct. Man's
evil deeds are mostly due to heredity and
environment; ignorance, unmanageable
passions and ill-balanced nerves account
for most of them. Men do not ask to be
born; God is responsible for the mess they
make of things." Here, again, we suffer
from our own armchair or cloistered doc-
trinaires, we who in the past have too often
talked as if every man carried a rule of
ideal conduct and could, if he would, con-
form all his conduct to It, so that he must
always think of God as displeased with all
his shortcomings. Such absurd teaching
naturally causes men to blaspheme. We
cannot believe that God can forgive the
lion for tearing its prey, or the ape for its

138 POWER-HUMAN AND DIVINE

chattering mischief, or the don^«=y ^^J '**
most distressing lamentations. Whether
Sese creatures have or have no developed
Song the line of God's ideal, the mdj-
Ss are in no way to blame for the.r
habits And so with man. The successive
'g^SSatiL bring with them s^upul.t.es
and irritabilities innumerable. They per
orm millions of horrid actions, for wh^ch
no individual is responsible. God, who
sustains the fabric of the ages, must look
upon all such evils with indulgence and
Jfndly excuse, must see an educational
nurpose so great that they are related to
ras'2sery%tsarerelatedtot^^^^
life But it remains true that just m so
Jar as each human person has a reasonabk
sL. is in any sense a free «P-f • ^^^^f J^^.
•rlimiises of a h gher possibility, his mo
S or °t may be hours, of higher oppor-
Siv whicK if he would, he could em-
b"; e n we consider that God is m sym-
pathy with all the pain, as well as a the
?oy, of the long creative proc«s, ^f ^^
have set aside the old, impossible doctrine
thit aU is predetermined, we can under-
bid somewhat of the disappomtment
fi^d must suffer when man rejects his
Sio^V^tisthispainofdisappomt-

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 139

ment inflicted by man that must evoke
either punitive anger or forgiveness.

And that it has evoiced forgiveness Proof thu
follows from this consideration: forgive- rSlhJS.
ness refused would have meant inspiration
withheld. And if God had withdrawn
His inspiration from unrepentant man be-
cause of his free rejection of opportunity,
mankind could not have gone on to de-
velop more and more freedom of choice.
For by our hypothesis— which is that God
helps man by indwelling him in so far
as man will accept that indwelling— we
are driven to believe that all progress in
the attainment of truth and beauty and
brotherly love comes by the inspiration of
God constantly proffered to the develop-
ing mind. We must believe that whenever
man sees his opportunity and makes the
higher choice, he opens, as it were, the
doors of his soul to this inspiration, and
the result is not only a tendency to develop
a good habit, but clearer vision. And if
he make the wrong choice, his power to
make it involves at least a momentary
glimpse of a higher good. He must have
perceived the opportunity that he has re-
jected. He is therefore on a higher plane
of being than if he had not perceived; and

Ood'i
ChuMter
and Han't
Conduct.

140 POWER-HUMAN AND DIVINE

this advantage must in some way be
utilised by God if His purpose is the ele-
vation of man's soul. If man's rejection
of the good caused this advantage to be
entirely lost, by causing the withdrawal
of God's friendly environment and in-
spiration, there would be no human prog-
rLs. If. however, God. by His forgive-
ness, transmutes the evil of rejection mto
further opportunity, we can understand
the progress which has taken place.

It would thus seem that the mert^fact
of human progress tends to establish the
presumption that the true God, so far
from being, as man has supposed, m a
condition of ahnost incessant anger and
constantly engaged in launchmg thunder-
bolts, has surrounded His developing
creation from first to last with a spiritual
atmosphere of gracious friendhness and
free forgiveness. _

If we thus conceive of Divme omnip-
otence-if we believe that God's character
is truly love, and not the amalgani of
hostility and love which has so long been
accepted-it will naturally have a great
effect upon our conception of duty. From
the earliest days until now go^hness has
always been the attempt to be Godhke.

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 141

All human justice has been the mediation
of what was supposed to be God's will
and God's action. If God's attitude
towards men is one of constant helpful-
ness in their increasing realisation of
truth and beauty and love, then of course
that must also be our attitude and our
business. If, in this helpfukiess, God
excuses men for all the evil-doing they
are pushed into by heredity and environ-
ment, then we also must find means to
excuse them. If He freely forgives them
their actual sins, then we also must freely
forgive them.

What is commonly called man's for- in For-
giveness of an offence presupposes felt gj^°»"
pain, and hostility to the offender, and SjJ^!,
consists in a change of mind involving in- **

stead an outflow of generous sentiment
toward him. But when we try to apply
the conception to God our difficulty is that
though we conceive God as meeting our
offences with personal forgiveness, we
cannot beUeve in any change of His mind.
With God, as with man, forgiveness must
imply pain caused by the wrong done, but
instead of the hostility felt towards the
offender there is, we may humbly believe,
a combative determination to overcome the

142 POWER-HUMAN AND DIVINE
evil with good-which involves no change
of mind, but is compatible with that gen-
7rl outgoing of heart to the offender
that we believe to be eternal m God, and
which we call His forgiveness. As far as
we in our limited way can understand, this
is the Godlike reaction to all evil, which
we should seek to share, and which, when
attained, does not involve in man, any
more than in God, that unfixity of pur-
pose which is confusing to our sense of
right, blinding us to the true righteous-

ness of God. . . .i- ■ ™

^ Now, two objections against this view

oblMUoni: of human duty are constantly urged— tne
one, that it is contrary to the revelation
of God in Christ; the other, that it is
subversive of all law .nd order, and con-
sequently militates against correspond-
ence with environment and fitness to

survive •

We must all admit that if we have in
Christ a final revelation of God, tnat
revelation must be patient of Progressive
interpretation. Life is never static, and
even by the time the Fourth Gospel was
Sen it was clearly realised that there
was large room for the Spirit to take of
the things of Christ and interpret them

Suppowd
TeMhinC
o( Christ.

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 143

to the men of that age. If we regard our
Lord as the supreme religious genius; if
we believe that His spiritual nature was
such that, while living under our condi-
tions He was aware of Realitj' and saw
the actual truth of God's attitude to man
and what it involved in man's duty, we
must perceive that in mediating this to
men he must have been hcjnpered, not
only by their preconceived and obstinate
notions of God and duty, but by the lan-
guage, and still more by the mental pic-
tures, which these religious behefs had
created. We must therefore expect that
in any account of His life we shall find
the teaching which was subversive of the
religious notions of His time would be
that which was most original to Him, and
that into the first report of His words and
actions, and into all subsequent editings
of that report, the shadows of ancestral
tendencies of belief and traditional ideas
would be sure to press. Such a clue to the
interpretation of the Gospels is not sub-
jective. It is a legitimate method of criti-
cism applicable to any ancient teaching.

We know that all down the ages the liiooii«at-
conception of God which is set forth in S'tto'Sd
the vindictive Psahns— the conception of TertMnent.

144 POWER-HUMAN AND DIVINE

the Divine heart as in a constant ferment
of righteous indignation— had descendec'
from untold generations of primitive men,
while such glimpses of Divine love as we
find in the 23rd and 103rd Psahns are
rare, auu were at the Christian era com-
paratively recent. The whole world,
therefore, into which Christianity was
introduced tended to beheve m the efficacy
of Divine wrath and human punishments
to bring about the ideal state at which all
nations aimed. And as human nature in-
variably attempts to produce a «f onable
basis for the sentiments it inherits, most
rational argument ran on the same hnes.
It is, however, also true that spiritual in-
sight manifest in a thread of nobler rea-
soninK had come down the ages. As
he hfavens are high above the earth, so
are my thoughts higher than your
SougS, saith fhe Lord." "As far as the
east is from the west, so far hath he re-
moved our transgressions from us.
^Like as a father pitieth his children so
the Lord pitieth them that fear him. The
supreme religious genius of Jesus Christ
toSc up this theme, and by teaching and
living He showed that not to the God^
fearkig alone but to all men was God

l«aft-.

POWER— HUMAN AND D'VINE 145

gracious. By living and dying, and by
giving proof of His continued existence
and triumph beyond the grave, He set the
Divine seal upon this interpretation of
God's ways with men. Such interpreta-
tion of God made irresistible appeal to
human insight. For the most part, as
soon as men have understood it they have
accepted it. When "lifted up" before
human minds in any intelligible represen-
tation. His light has been seen to be light.
But the difficulty has been that it has been
easier for man to hold two contradictories,
to try to live by two incompatible beliefs,
than, violating recognised custom, to face
the persecution that must come with the
breaking of taboo, or to make the adven-
ture into unknown seas that is necessary
for the discovery of new worlds. God
and Nature called for adventurers, and in
the Christian Church the adventurers only
set out in cockle-shells and hugged the
shore.

We are very busy yet with the effort to -»nd In
interpret the good news of the Kingdom ^^^
so that it will harmonise with the terrors tUmitj.
of Mount Sinai. During the war there
has been, even on the part of some of our
younger and more progressive theologians.

Anotbw
Intwpre-

146 POW^B-HtMAii AKD Din^t

a good deal of writing in praise of the
rig1,teous anger which Jesus expressed
alainst the scribes and Pharisees of the
blaze of manly wrath with which He is
supposed to have violently turned the
crowds from the Temple courts. All of
which is held to sanctify and consecrate
our vindictive anger toward our enemies.
But. after aU. it is well to recognise that
fhis view of Christ makes His character
inconsistent with His own tf aching. In
Seological circles we caU mconsistency
paradox, which sounds -vf -d w^-
Serful but does not alter the * act- Or else^
if we desire consistency, we whittle away
our Lord's teaching m order to make
^oom for the wrath that we so senti-

" bSc w-ds and actions of our Lord
are susceptible of quite a different^-*-
pretation. Take, for instance, the Temple
incident. Anyone who wil patiently woA
out the size of the court of the money
chlngers and observe from contemporary
Ss that it must have been thronged
with men of all nations. ^J^ perceive
that the physical violence of one man
^c^uldtt 'poLibly have d-ed tje «.iu^^
Again, the reproaches addressed to the

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 147

Pharisees, even if not exaggerated and
altered by indignant editors, could all
have been said in exactly that temper in
which He wept over Jerusalem or prayed
that His torturers might be forgiven be-
cause of their ignorance. A mother whose
whole heart's aflFection was centred in a
reprobate son, who cherished in her heart
nothing but forgiveness toward him, once
stood up and with strong emotion told
him exactly what she thought was the
cause of his evil deeds, exactly what she
beheved would be the natural result if
they were continued. Her language was
modern and not so poetic as that of the
Jl-ast two thousand years ago; but it came
m substance to very much what our Lord
said to the Pharisees. It was the verbal
expression of her moral vision when ap-
plied to her son's life; it came out of a
whu-lwmd of moral aspiration that broke
down all reserve, but had in it nothing of
the emotion that we caU anger. What she
saw was the natural consequences of sin;
the expression of her vision was the warn-
mg of love, exactly the same sort of love
as would have made her fly to his aid had
he been walking blindfold over a precipice
or mto a furnace. According to our in-

(U) The
Claims
of L»w
and Order.

148 POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE

herited sentiments we do not think that
sort of thing sufficiently manly for a man.
It is all right in a mother, but had it been
father or brother we should thmk him
"eeble if incapable of rage. Still, it is
quite possible that what we yet call manly
we shall learn to call brutal. And. that
being so, we have no right to lay it down
as an established fact that the conception
of God as never angry, as always kind to
the unthankful and the evil and always
forgiving to seventy times seven, is not in
harmony with the revelation of Him
through Jesus Christ.

It is further objected that the concep-
tion of Gtd's character and our corre-
sponding duty which I am urging, is sub-
versive of law and order. The late war
has ah-eady proved very nearly subversive
of all law and order in Europe. It that
order is to be saved from complete col-
lapse it cannot be by more militarism and
repression, but by those compromises and
friendly overtures between class and class
and nation and nation which are prompted
by forgiveness and brotherhood. But the
lite wfr itself is the measure of the failure
of centuries of Christian teaching which
had been one long effort to harmomse the

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 149

cruelties of the God of primitive Israel
with the character and teaching of Jesus
Christ. The time has come when we must
halt no longer between two opinions about
God.

One chief reason why men suppose that
extinction of moral anger would cause the
disruption of society is that they have
never really grasped the fact that we live
in a world in which psychic or spiritual
cause and effect is just as calculable and
acts just as inevitably as do the laws
which govern matter. Even if men do,
by loving and forgiving their neighbours,
abolish all human punishment, deterrent
or disciplinary, they cannot possibly alter
the fact that consequences discipline and
consequences deter. The system of Na-
ture which we believe God by His power
upholds is an order majestic and invari-
able. This splendid characteristic of Na-
ture cannot be abolished by any human
effort. Every sin brings its own measure
of psychic disturbance and incapacity for
pleasure, and psychic disturbance means
ultimately physical degeneration, and de-
generation in the individual means degen-
eration in the community. The only pos-
sible way to mitigate "this unfortunate

PrioclplM
and

PTMStlM.

150 POWER-HUMAN AND DIVINE

result is by the practice of a virtue that
will bring about a greater good. In only
one way can God or m^n save sinners, and
that is by persuading them to practise
virtues that will bring about a greater
corresponding good. If that be so and
if the forgiveness that means the continu-
ance of friendly help and brotherly affec-
tion is in reaUty the quickest and best way
of making men good, it cannot be sub-
versive of law and order. We have seen
that social goodness is necessary for hu-
man survival; it is correspondence with
human environment.

But, of course, to see the truth of this
principle and to arrive at the^vplica^"
of it are two things separab m time.
We learn to walk by fallin.. we solve
our problems as we go along, and we on y
discover new worlds by setting forth
bravely upon uncharted seas. It is im-
possible to hold the conception of Gods
?ower. and therefore glory, which we have
C Considering, impossible to conceive
thus of God's action in the world, without
being out of harmony with very much that
is of the fabric of our present c.vihsation
Possessing such convictions, ;^e «^"'^°t
live without contributing something to its

POWER— HUMAN AND DIVINE 151

disintegration by initiating the growth
of a better. We cannot live well without
working consciously to that end. But it
is very easy to live very ill indeed if, in
order to uphold God's constructive
power, we take destructive short cuts. If
we believe, as we must, that the progress
of life is the manifestation of God's power,
we must remember that the method of
life is construction, that even when it
brings about alterations or terminates
other lives, it does so in supplanting what
is by calling into existence something
fresh. In deciding upon a practical course
of action it is necessary also to think much
of the nature of life as exhibited in the
long biological process — the distinction
between evolution and revolution, the long
patience of supersession of higher by
lower. We have so much to do that we
cannot afford to do it other than in a
Godlike way, for only thus shall we avoid
the imdoing of our own work and toilsome
repetition.

Just as certain ideas are fruitful in the
construction of, let us say, a dwelling or
a political constitution, producing what
bears the storm and stress of life, so cer-
tain ideas are fruitful in bringing eleva-

Cnatin

mmam

132 POWER— UUMAN AND DIVINE

tion and enlargement to the inner life, and
consequent harmony between the soul and
what is most desirable in domestic and
public activity. The study of comparative
religion has made it appear that man's
spiritual life has developed by trial and
observation. By these we have learned
that hostility to the evil-doer is not God's
method nor a Godlike method — that hos-
tile passions do not develop our fullest
powers.
SrrtMiinc By experience we must also learn how
' >• "•"• to bring this light to the world. We need
a true religious science of missionary
work. We are only at the very beginning
of this; but at least one law of the soul's
development in this direction has already
been established. We must regard every
moral problem as subsumed under the
splendour of the whole, and see it set in
relation to all the lavish beauty of the
Universe, all the gaiety and humour, all
the serene joy, all the natural goodness
and kindliness of life, as well as in relation
to wrong, ugliness and pain. Only by
such sweep of thought can we realise the
importance of each bit of reformatory
work; for the fineness of the whole lends
importance to each detail. Only by such

POWEK-HUMAN AND DIVINE 153

sweep of thought can we obtain patience
and a sufficient sense of power to d' th
work magnanimously and magniflct .'iy,
with the Divine generosity that God in-
spires.

It is not true that if God be with us
man cannot prevail against us. Those
who break with tradition are always con-
demned, stoned and often crucified; but
It IS true that if God be with us, not only
m our aim but in our method, nothing
can prevail against the cause for which
we work; and if we believe in immortality
we must believe that in the triumph of
the cause we shall also triumph immor-
tally.

Tbalndi-

tiM

FtMtioal
Aim of This
Chapter.

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

By B. HILLMAN STRBBTER

The facts and considerations which have
been adduced in the earUer chapters of
this volume go a long way towards
establishing the conclusion that viewed as
a whole the tendency which has expressed
itself in the course of biological evolution
is one "that makes for righteousness
It is much to have found grounds for the
conviction that a glorious consummation
awaits the long struggle «« humamty-but
there still remains the problem of the fate
of the individual man meanwhile. It is
a great thing to know that the column will
Jefch its destination-hut what of the
many who drop out on the march«

In this chapter I approach the problem
cf the pain and moral failure of the mdi-
vidual. and I do so with an -ter-t not^^o
much theoretical as practical. I attempt
no explanation of its origin or purpose
Pain (whatever its explanation) is part ot

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 155

the environment in which we have to live.
I ask how we can adapt ourselves to that
environment, or rather how we can adapt
the environment to oiu-selves— for to do
that is the unique biological distinction of
man. Can we, instead of being crushed
by the difficulties we have to face, use
them rather as a stimulus along the route
to individual as well as social progress? I
ask whether, in regard to the moral failure
«nd the suffering— past, present and to
come — which falls within the experience
of any ind vidual, we can say, "There is is there",
a way out." I suggest that, along lines '^•y <>"»"»
indicated in the New Testament and con-
firmed by the teaching of modern science,
each one of us may find a way in which
to cope successfully with that particular
share of the world's evil with which he or
she personally is brought in contact. In
the first part of the chapter I shall
treat of pain as such, without any at-
tempt to discriminate between pain which,
like remorse, is connected with the con-
sciousness of moral failure and the pain
which is not so caused. Pain can be
discussed scientifically as a purely psycho-
logical phenomenon; it can also be con-
sidered in its bearing on moral values. I

156 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

begin with the simpler, and proceed later
to the more complex, problem.

Pain
Phyileal
and
Mantil.

Pain

We are apt to underestimate the extent
to which pain is of mental origin. Anxiety
and disappointment, fear and regret,
humiliation and remorse, the sense of
desolation and despair, constitute the main
burden of civilised man; and all these are
of the mind. In normal times the amourit
of suffering due to causes entirely physi-
cal—wounds, accident or disease — ^would,
for the majority of men, be a relatively
small proportion of the whole; for the
present generation the war has vastly
altered the proportion. But even the pain
caused by physical injury is determined
by mental conditions more than is com-
monly supposed. There are stories from
the front of men in the excitement of
battle or retreat being for a long while
actually unconscious of wounds received.
Experiments in hypnosis, by which sensi-
bility to pain can be either enhanced, so
that the touch of a finger feels like a hot
iron, or reduced, so that the patient feels
i?othing under the surgeon's knife, point

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 157

in the same direction. Quite apart from
these exceptional conditions, every doctor
or nurse knows that the extent and acute-
ness with which pain is felt varies enor-
mously with the mental attitude of the
sufferer. That patient feels pain most
who most dreads it and who concentrates
his or her attention on it most. Again,
still more important is the fact that the
actual quality of pain and its mental and
physical effects differ according as it is
borne with cheerfulness or despair, with
acceptance or resentment.

If, then, most suffering is predomi-
nantly mental in origin, and if the mental
element so conditions both the amount and
the quality of suffering purely physical in
origin, it is not enough to attack the
problem of the world's suffering from the
physical side alone. It must be attacked
from that side, but it is far more essential
to approach it from the side of mind.
And precisely for this reason the indi-
vidual may have hope. He may J5nd him-
self—he often does find himself— up
against hard facts which he cannot alter,
or burdened with a physical disability
which cannot be cured. But where cir-
cumstances cannot be altered it may still

Han and
Cireum-
stanoM.

The

SufierliK
of tlM Put.

Th* Spirit
and the
Letter In
the New
Tattament.

158 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

be possible to alter one's reaction towards

* Especially is this true in regard to the
past: this cannot be undone but my re-
action to it can be fundamentally changed.
I cannot unmake the sins, sorrows and dis-
appointments of the past, but may It not
b^ possible so to change my attitude
towards them as completely to transform
their consequences in the hvmg present
and thereby, so to speak, to remake the
past? Christ taught that this is possible,
that the broken-hearted can be healed
and that sins can be forgiven. In the
foUowing pages I shaU attempt to show
that both the experience of everyday hte
and the conclusions of modern psychology
prove that Christ was right.

Parts of the New Testament are umn-
tellieible to those who have no special
knowledge of the literature of the age m
which it was written. Parts, agam, show
obscurities and inconsistencies which we
must attribute to the fact that its authors
were trying to express new conceptions
and new intuitions by means of language
and modes of thought originaUy adapted
to a very different religious outlook— and
that one from which they themselves were

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

159

M
I

only partially emancipated. If we would
get at the great ideas which are its essen-
tial contrihution to human thought and
progress, we must turn aside from that
exaggerated respect for the exact exegesis
of single texts which still hampers many
even of those who think they have out-
grown the theory of verbal inspiration;
otherwise we shall get an impression dis-
tracted and confused. But leave on one
side exegetical and archaeological detail,
concentrate only on central ideas, and
there stands out from its pages a philoso-
phy of God and man, and in particular a
way of approach to the problem of suffer-
ing, as clear as it is simple, adequate and
inspiring.

In the New Testament, then, so inter- Ooduid
preted, I find no attempt to produce a *••• ''<»"•
theory of why evil is permitted to exist.
Certainly there is no suggestion that this
is "the best of all possible worlds." On
the contrary, so far from being the best
of all possible worlds, it is a world that
God meant to be a great deal better than
it is. It is a world that has gone awry,
and that mainly through the ignorance,
the folly, the malice, the greed, and the
passions of men. But though the world

CreatlTe

160 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

is not now what it should be, God intends
to make it so. In fact, He is actually
engaged in making it so; for God does
not stand outside the world serenely con-
templating the misery and the strife. He
is no doubt in a sense outside and beyond
the world, but He is also inside it, im-
manent in it, as the philosophers say; and
by the fact of His immanence He takes
His share in the suffering; and Gods
share is, if I may use the phrase, the lion s

cViaT*p

But this suffering is not just mere
suffering with no end or result beyond
itself. It is a means to an end, the means
by which the ignorance, folly, malice,
greed and evil passions may be overcome,
the e\ii wills remade, and the results of
evil action transmuted and undone. But
it is not all suffering which has this virtue.
The suffering which has power is suffer-
ing like Christ's— suffering, that is, faced
for the sake of causes and ideals like those
for which He worked and died, or borne
in the spirit in which He bore His. Christ,
however, is not merely our leader and our
pattern. He is also, as St Paul Put^'t,
"The portrait of the invisible God. His
attitude both to suffering and to evil is

THE DEFEAT OP PAIN 161

ako God's. God shares in the suffering
and captains in the fight. And God sum-
mons us to assist Him in the task, to enter
into partnership with Him— and that not
only in the suffering but also in the vic-
tory which it brings.

This view of the power and possibilities Suffaring
of suffering requires analysis. Much cant ToSLoat
is talked about the ennobling and purify-
ing effect of suffering. To an animal pain
may be useful as a warning of danger or a
spur to activity, but beyond the limited
amount required for that purpose it de-
bilitates and depresses. So too with man,
the most natiu*al effect of suffering is not
to ennoble but to embitter, not to purify
but to weaken. Joy is a necessity of life,
of the highest life as well as of the lowest.
The natural and normal reactions of
the organism to suffering are vindictive-
ness, degradation, peevishness and de-
spair. Where the contrary result is found
it is because there is something in man, or
in some men, which can counteract these
"natural" reactions. And this something
does exist.

That is the secret, dimly grasped by
heroic men and women throughout all
the ages, which Christianity first publicly

The "Con-
venlon" of
SuSerinf.

162 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN
proclaimed: the natural consequences of
suffering can, by the spirit and manner m
which it is borne, be not only avoided but
actually reversed. Look upon suffermg
as a necessary condition of labour for any
cause worth working for— whether it be
the learning of a lesson, the production
of a work of art, the bringmg up of a
family or the steering of a ship to Port—
and its character is changed. Reahse that
the stupidity, the indifference, the mahce,
and the selfishness of man have always
been such an obstacle to progress that
every forward step must be paid for in
blood and tears; that, because casualties
are the price of victory, sacrifice, pushed
at times to the point of martyrdom,
though not in itself desirable, is necessary
and worth while-and things are seen in
a new light. I." it is in this way and in
this spirit that the Divinity immanent m
the world is suffering, striving ■ -ercom-
ing, then to take one's share in = work
is to be allowed, as St Pau put. it, to
pay part of "the unpaid balance of the
sufferings of Christ."' Then, mdeed not
perhaps every day and always, but at
least in our moments of deeper vision.

' Col. i. 24.

THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

163

such pain becomes no longer a burden but
a privilege.

No great cause has ever lacked its Suflarinc
martyrs, and it is not hard to see how SSwUtei.
suffering of this kind — suffering volun-
tarily risked, or even actually challenged,
by the sufferer for the sake of a great
work or a great ideal — may ennoble and
inspire. But a kind of suffering harder
to be borne is that which, whether it comes
from accident, disease, or from the negli-
gence or malevolence of man, is in no
sense connected with, or the direct result
of, our efforts for a good work or a great
cause. Such suffering, so far from being
a price which we pay, and pay willingly,
for the sake of the work, is often the
greatest of all impediments to it, a knock-
out blow which, humanly speaking, makes
nugatory all our hopes and our achieve-
ments.

The old theology said, "Calamity is the CaUmitr
will of God: submit." But is calamity wurf'
the will of God? The subject is one upon °<^
which there is much confusion of thought.
No doubt, since God created and sustains
the Universe, He is ultima+^ly respon-
sible for everything in it; whatever hap-
pens is the result of something He has

Ch*not«r
•ndOoc-
fliet.

104 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

willed. But in that sense sin, quite as
much as suffering, is the will of God— yet
the very meaning of sin is that it is some-
thing contrary to His wiU. But a reason-
able solution is not far to seek. God u
responsible for making a world which is
a connected system— a system m which
causes always produce their appropriate
eflPects, where good produces good, and
evil, evil, and where suffering is one of the
effects produced by ignorance and sin.
But God is not responsible for the extent
to which, by the voluntary choice of
created spirits, that system has got out of
gear— though, if the conception of His
work and character implicit m fhris-
tianity be correct. He has made Himself
responsible, at bitter cost to Himself, for
setting it right again.

It is often argued that without some
element of strain and conflict the highest
type of character could not be produced;
and again, that unless the consequences
of folly, ignorance or evil choice were
reaUy bad, life would be only a game in
which, in the last resort, nothing really
mattered. But granting this, granted
that a world in which suffering and sin
are possible is better than one where

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 165

everything were necessarily smooth and
easy, and therefore a world better worth
while creating, what follows? We may
readily admit that this actual world can
be a nursery of noble souls while Lotus
land could not be, yet it does not follow,
either that the total amount of evil in the
world or the proportion of suffering which
falls to the lot of each particular indi-
vidual is an exact expression of God's will.

To refuse to accept the view that what- PnmdMiet.
ever happens is in accordance with the
will of God, does not mean the denial
either of God's prescience or of His provi-
dence. An Intelligence which itself up-
holds the great interconnected system of
cause and effect that we call Nature, and
to which the secrets of all hearts are open,
cannot but know the trend and tendencies
of things, cannot but possess an actual
foresight of the future which, tho-igh
falling short of that absolute forekiiowl-
edge which is only compatible with pre-
destination, may yet, in comparison with
our human foresight, be styled omnis-
cience. Again, the experience of all reli-
gious men points to the conclusion that
"there's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will." Whether

Baarinc
otTblion
Our AbUity
to "ton
Ood."

160 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

it be individuals or groups, evidence does
suggest that those who "wait upon the
Lord," who endeavour, that is, to concen-
trate their minds upon the Highest in
quiet meditation, and act in response to
the inspiration which they get, are enabled
to overcome difficulty, to escape danger,
and, in spite of loss and failure, to achieve
high ends. The facts point to a Provi-
dence watching over us, guiding us to
wise and salutary choice, leading us to the
help of others and others to our help; but
they also suggest that by reason of deaf-
ness and unresponsiveness on our part or
on theirs God's plan may temporarily
miscarry. The experience of religious
people is that they do often, to an extent
quite unexpected, actually avoid disaster,
they can "tread upon the lion and adder" ;
but also, where disaster does come, a way
of recovery equally unexpected is in the
long run provided. Where God does not
prevent. He cures.

The conclusion that we ought not to
regard the accidents and calamities that
come to us as directly sent by God is one
of the first importance for practical reli-
gion. It is almost if not quite impossible
to look upon the loss or the disease which

THE DEFEAT OP PAIN 167

crushes or debilitates as a direct expres-
sion of the will of God and still whole-
heartedly regard Him as our heavenly
Father. In the jiisl, and even in the
present, there seen^ to be some who have
succeeded in this a^jparently impossible
endeavour; bul artainly from ordinary
human nature it is too mu'h to i,sk for a
real and true lovt (,l' God if they are
taught to regard dl tie evils that fall
upon them as visitations kliberatcly sent
by Him as chastisement or discijiline. Of
course, if such a doctrine were true we
must teach it and take th. consequences,
but if, as we have seen reason to btlieve.
It IS not true, then to decline fraiikly and
emphatically to repudiate it is to take
away the key to the kingdom of heaven
and hinder those from entering in who
otherwise might do so.

The explanation of the old theology Th.
that sickness or calamity is to be regarded *'»™*"t o*
as the will of God we discard; but the Md*
practical moral which the old religion "•*•
drew from it was, up to a point— though
only up to a point— quite sound.

To repine or to give way to resentment "Bubmli.
in the face of undeserved calamity is fatal ?f?°" ff

III

unfortunately either repining or rcsent-

•noa.'

Tha

Positlm

Attituda

towards

Pain.

168 THE DKFEAT OF PAIN

ment is the natural instinctive attitude to
take up; and in so far as "submit to the
will of God" meant "put such feelings
right away," it was good advice. But the
right attitude to adopt is, to my mind,
far better described if instead of "submis-
sion" we say "acceptance." Mere sub-
mission to the will of an external power
is negative, it is a dull, drab thing; but
acceptance of a share, still more the will-
ing acceptance of more than our full
share, in the tragedy of life— a tragedy
in which God as weH as man is an actor —
is positive, it ha, about it something
vitalising.

Pain, like other elemental forces in
Nature, can be turned to use, but only if
the laws of its operation are first under-
stood and then conformed to. Natum
parendo imperatur, but the "obedience"
by which Nature can be mastered is no
mere passive submission but an activity
which may be called obedience only be-
cause it functions always in conformity
to laws and principles clearly understood.
So it is with pain. Those who meet it
clear-eyed and with a positive and active
acceptance, who "face the music," as the
slang phrase has it, those who are ready

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 169

not only to "do their bit" in the world's
war but to "bear their bit" in the world's
sorrow, make a strange discovery. They
find, not only that they are enabled to
bear their sorrow in a way which hurts
less— for what hurts most in the bearing
is that which is most resented, what is
most freely accepted hurts least— but that
they achieve an enrichment and a growth
of personality which makes them centres
of influence and light in ways of which
they never suspected the possibility.

Few things can so inspire and re-create Heroic
the human heart as can the spectacle of ■"*•*«•
crushing misfortune cheerfully and
heroically borne; and the unconscious
influence which those who do this exert
is far greater than they or others compre-
hend. Here is the element of truth in the
common talk about the ennobling and
purifying power of suffering; though it
is not the suffering but the way it is borne
that ennobles. Pain, not just submitted
to but willingly accepted, makes the suf-
ferer socially creative. A man counts in
this world to the extent that he has
thought and to the extent that he has felt,
provided always that he has thought and
felt in the right way. Suffering rightly

Whan

W«B»n

raUad.

Battlatal
of Put
trron.

170 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

borne is constructive work. He wl.o has
"borne his bit" has also "done his bit,
and pain conquered is power.

A few are able to bear their sufferings
in this way. Most of us have failed to do
so, or have succeeded very partially. We
have allowed resentment and depression—
which, I must repeat, are after aU the
natural consequences, physical and psy-
chological, of a severe blow-to enter
into, if not to predominate in, our out-
look The suffering which, if we had
accepted it as a privilege or utilised it as
an opportunity (which is Christ s way),
would have enriched, ennobled and forti-
fied our personalities, we have faced in a
way which has had the contrarv- effect.
We have let it depress our enthusiasms,
dim our ideals, sap our vitality. Is there
a remedy for this? ^. , , ^. ,

There is: but it is one which h*s rather
fallen out of sight in Christian teaching.
W.' are familiar with the idea— later on
I shall attempt to justify it-that sms
can be fni^iven. that if we look back upon
past errors in the r.ght spirit they can be
retrieved. We have all teen taught that
the degeneration which is the natural in-
evitable consequence of sin can be trans-

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 171

formed, that it need not remain as a
standing source of dehility in the soul,
and that the repentance following after
wrongdoing may actually bring about an
enrichment and deepening of the per-
sonality — "to whom little is forgiven, the
same loveth httle." But in ordinary Chris-
tian teaching this idea has only been
applied to breaches of certain fundamental
moral laws. It is not ordinarily applied
to the failure to meet suffering in the
right way, though this failure is a moral
one as much as any other; it differs from
other moral failures only in being less
commonly recognised as such. But if it
be true that sins of one kind can be, as we
say, "forgiven"— that is, if their naturally
evil consequences upon oui personalities
can be transmuted by a subsequent change
in our attitude towards them and God,
so that what once was sheer loss may in
another way become a form of gain — the
same must surely be true of this kind of
moral failure also.

And experience shows that we can Th«
transform the past in this regard. We Sep^"*
can bring up clearly into memory the "*'

times when we have suffered and have let
that suffering fill us with resentment and

Lmoi
or 8a
Mon

172 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

despair. We can realise our error and
deplore it, we can say to ourselves: "No;
all said and done, I am glad that in the
great tragedy of humanity I have borne
my part; I am glad that I have tasted of
the cup which is the heritage of man."
And in proportion as we can say this, and
mean it, our whole outlook on life, our
attitude to God and man, is changed. We
are filled with a new joy— richer by rea-
son of what we have endured; we are in-
spired with a sense of vitality and inner
strength more deeply rooted because of
the experience we have passed through.
The draught which when first drunk was
poison is transformed into w.ne. The
past cannot be undone, but the bitterness
and weakness which are its living conse-
quences in the present are not only can-
celled but reversed.

Suffering is not man's only teacher,
as some have seemed to urge — ^there are
things, for instance, which can only be
learnt through joy— and it is the teacher
whose Icisons are the most difficult of all
to learn. If at first we decline to learn
them, we suffer more; for then we must
endure, not only the original pain, but the
growing resentment or the life-draining

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 173

mekncholy which it entails. From this
further suffering, consequent on our re-
fusal to learn the lesson first offered to
us, another and a different lesson can be
learnt. But the actual learning of it
awaits a fundamental change of attitude
and outlook on our part, a litrdvoia, which,
like any other form of "conversion," may
come to one man by stages slow and im-
perceptible, to another with a sudden
flash, and to others not at all.

There remains the most difficult prob-
lem of all. How are we to take the suf-
fering of others, especially of those we
love, which we are eompel'led to witness
but are unable to alleviate, and which in
many cases we can see is not being borne
—and under the circumstances can hardly
be expected to be borne— in a way which
can be otherwise than degrading "and de-
pressing? What of this? There are times
when, though we cannot alleviate, we can
h.dp them to bear their suffering in the
right way; could we completely succeed
in this we might perhaps, though with an
effort, be content. But there are also
times when, called upon to be spectators
of physical agony, crushing calamity, or
desolating bereavement, all our theories

ThsPaln
of Those
We Love.

p*:;^'^

i^f^'^

Co-opera-
tion with
Ood.

174 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

about suffering and its uses simply shrivel
up, and, if we try and put them into
words, we seem to ourselves to be as those
that mock.

Conquer by accepting. The principle
that pain is to be met in this spirit, and
not with resentment or despair, needs
special reassertion when we thus contem-
plate the pain of others. For it may be
given to us by an act of penetrating
sympathy to enter into their suffering
and, so to speak, accept it for them, and
there! -y, either at the time or later on, help
them to a right acceptance. Still more
necessary is it to remind ourselves that
God feels this pain as much as we do, in-
deed much more, by reason of His more
perfect sympathy. This fact points to
the solution: "Cast thy burden upon the
Lord, he shall sustain thee." God, too, is
bearing the suffering, but He is bearing
it in the right way; and in so far as we
can open up o'.ir souls to Him, and
through "ommunion and meditation enter
into His mind, we also begin to bear it in
the right way. God's way of bearing suf-
feri.ig. like -ven.-'^hiiig else He docs, is
creative and constructive: in so far as we
bear it in His \v»\-, the negative attitude

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 175

of repining and resentment will drop
away, and we too shall become construc-
tive and creative. The right act or the
right forbearance, the right word or the
right silence, will be given us; and when
these are impossible or inappropriate, the
right thought, the right feeling and the
right prayer. And often these may be
the most effective things of all. Men are
all bound together by unseen telepathic
ties of mutual influence. Each of us, by
merely being what he is, contributes, for
better or for worse, more than he knows
to the mental and moral outlook of these
at lives with, and probably of others to
ium unknown. He who is trying to bear
the suffering of those he loves, with God,
for God and in God's way, cannot fail
to he^ them, and to help others also,
tliwugh he may sometimes have to wait a
long while for visible results.

And in one respect we can afford to tIi.
wait, for what we have found to be true 'w""*
in a«r own case must hold good in theirs " ^'^ *""
also. Pain, we have seen, even though
wrongly borne at the time, may yet be
transformed in retrospect, and "defeat
turned into victory in later days. If, then,
we believe that the growth of souls con-

Burden of
th« WoTld'i
HL

176 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

tinues after this life, we can in a measure
understand how that suffering which,
because it was not rightly borne, has been
wholly unprofitable and demoralising in
this life may one day be changed in quality
and made the condition of a richer, deeper,
nobler life in the Beyond.

Upon many souls the dead-weight bur-
den of the world's suflferings acts as a
paralysis to thought and eifort. Con-
siderations like those just urged may help
such to turn from passive desolation to
active energy. In the lives of most highly
sensitive natures there are moments when
the individual feels as if he were an Atlas
bearing up alone the burden of the world's
ill. It is not so. In the last resort it is
borne up by God, and there are always
"seven thousand in Israel," unsuspected
and unknown, who are helping us and
Him to do it.

Moral Failure and Its Rethievax

In a chapter which is primarily a dis-
cussion of pain, it would be out of place
to attempt a comprehensive discussion
either of the nature of sin or of the mean-
ing of forgiveness. So much pain, how-

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 177

ever, is directly the result of sin that it
seems necessary, however briefly, at least
to indicate some of the main grounds for
regarding the forgiveness of sin as a pos-
sible and a reasonable idea. And I would
ask that what I have written be consid-
ered as a contribution merely to this
hmited department of the problem.

Nothing is more remarkable in human
nature than the varying degree to which
m diflFerent individuals the moral con-
sciousness is awake. You will find men
and women who are perfectly unconscious
that their lives are one long expression of
envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitable-
ness. who yet feel paroxysms of contri-
tion because they are haunted by impure
dreams. You will find others quite easy
m their minds about a long course of
sexual depravity but burdened with re-
morse for an unkind word. We do not
see ourselves as others see us," much less
as God sees us. Few of us know where
our moral weakness really «es. Sin and
the consciousness of sin are quite a differ-
ent matter.

There is a second no less remarkable
tact-one, mdeed, which largely explains
the former. The guilt of an action is

Ml Mid
thaCon-

•OiOUHlMf

of It.

Th«

MramlSlx-
nUIcaiiea
otBHrst.

178 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

directly proportionate to the extent to
which the doer knows that it is wrong.
Its injurious effect, however, upon his
moral character is invericly proportionate
to the extent that he regrets it. This
point is so important that it requires
expansion. Every act is the expression
of a previous tendency or disposition in
the character; the doing of the act stimu-
lates that tendency; repeated acts of the
same kind rapidly create a habit, which
becomes a chain by which we are tied and
bound. Not only that; conscience defied
becomes less sensitive. An act which on
the first occasion was done with shrinking,
after constant repetition is performed
with equanimity. The "natural" conse-
quence of the commission of wrong is not
the awakening but the dulling of the sense
of sin. But, if this be so, a conclusion of
immense importance follows. To feel
constant and growing pain at the contem-
plation of one's own past guilt is abeady
to have begun to reverse its natural conse-
quences within the self. The conscious-
ness of moral failure— I mean, of course,
only when it rises to the height of acute
discomfort— is a sign that the old self of
whose character the act deplored was a

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 179

natural expression is already dead or
dying, and a new self coming to the birth.
Repentance is itself an evidence of moral
advance already actually achieved. Its
smart is the smart of "growing pains."

But in order to bring the new self to Ood
the birth the individual must firstly gain a ^^
clear perception of the nature and mean-
ing of that pain, and secondly, must bring
it into relation with the thought of his own
value, actual and potential— his actual
value being in the last resort what God,
in spite of all his failure, thinks of him;
his potential value being what God, in
spite of all his weakness, can yet make of
him. At bottom this is what the tradi-
tional Christian doctrine of the forgive-
ness of sins was really driving at, though
obscured by language derived from the
Jewish sacrificial system and by an obso-
lete psycholog>'. Christianity has proved
to be a "Gospel" just in proportion as it
has stressed the idea (shown in the previ-
ous chapter to be Christ's most character-
istic contribution to our conception of
God) that the creative power of the all-
pervading Divine stands there ever "de-
clining to be estranged," that is, still con-
tinuing to regard the offender as a being

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1653 East Moin 5tfe

180

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

The Sinner
and Ood.

of priceless value for whom, in spite of
all, He feels affection undiminished and
hope unlimited.

The dawning consciousness of morel
failure and of its true nature is itself, as
we have seen, the beginning of a new
birth, and contains and implies the possi-
biUty of further growth. But whether
that possibility will be realised or not de-
pends largely on the extent to which the
individual recognises this attitude of the
Divine, and thereby gives God, so to
speak, the opportunity of fanning into
flame the spark of higher aspiration. This
is the profound truth underlying the old
evangelical exhortation to "lay hold of
the salvation freely offered," or to "rest
in the finished work"— phrases which un-
fortunately disguise from our generation
the truth which to our fathers they made
luminous. Let the repentant soul realise
that, in spite of all, he still has an infinite
value for God, that there is still a work
he can do for man, and that because of
and by reason of his repentance he has
abeady begun to establish a personal con-
tact with a Higher Power— then at once
the consciousness, and therefore the m-
tensity and effectiveness, of that contact

IHE DEFEAT OF PAIN 181

is indefinitely enhanced. A stimulation
of vitality and moral invigoration begins
which cannot but lift him right out of that
past which already, by the mere fact that
he condemns it and deplores, he has
partially outgrown.

The forgiveness of sins does not mean The Conw-
that either a past act itself or its inevitable «"•'«*«
consequences to other people can be im- St4™i«.
done. A repentant murderer cannot call
his victim to life again; he may be fortu-
nate enough to have an opportunity to
make some amends, as, for instance, by
providing for the orphaned children; but
that does not undo the past. Yet, follow-
ing upon genuine repentance, a moral
re-creation is possible which can reverse
the otherwise inevitable consequences
upon a man's own life and character, and
so make his sum total contribution to
mankind beneficent— even if he cannot
overtake and make substantial amends to
the actual victims he has wronged or
rescind the consequences of his folly on
his fortunes or his health. More than
that, a character so re-created can effect
certain things which seem to be outside
the range of those who have never fallen
and risen again. St Paul's conversion

Ofcllx
culpa?

182 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

will serve to illustrate both these points.
It could not bring Stephen to life again,
but it turned the harsh fanatic energy
which had found expression in that act of
persecution into the passion which made
him "labour more abundantly than they
all." In addition it gave him an insight
into the human heart, .nto the nature of
the moral struggle and into the meaning
of Christ's life and teaching, which made
him, next to his Master, that one who has
made the deepest mark on the heart and
mind of Europe. And, on a lesser scale,
we all know men whose power for good
seems to be directly conditioned by the
fact that they have known evil and over-
come it. Plato says that a physician
should not be one who has always enjoyed
the best health; and one who has himself
failed may sometimes be the better physi-
cian to the souls of others.

Then, is it better to have sinned and
been forgiven than never to have sinned
at all? In St Paul's time, too, there were
some who drew the same conclusion:
"Shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound?" We may leave the answer
where St Paul left it. Logically it may
be "Yes"; practically that answer could

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 183

be given only by one who has never
felt the experience from the inside. Such
know that in all moral failure there is real
loss. Some good thing which they might
have done will, by reason of their failure,
remain eternally undone. And yet they
know that but for the power and insight
which they derived from the fact that they
had failed and been restored, some other
good thing would have rema.'ned un-
done. It would seem that the task of
bringing about the Kingdom of God re-
quires the co-operation of very different
types. There is one work for Mary Mag-
dalene, another for Mary the mother of
Christ. We cannot question which of the
two wiU <•■ id higher in that Kingdom;
but the oti ..-r may still stand high.

In current religious teaching there is an a cuirwit
Idea directly contrary, as it seems to me, ^^oxu
to the teaching of Christ about God, and
no less contrary to the lessons of modern
psychology. I mean the idea that we
should continually contemplate and brood
upon our sins and work ourselves up into
agonies of contrition about them.

If God is just He will estimate a man's HMithy
responsibility for his offences, not by the ContriUon,
standard of an ideal man, but by the

184 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

UnhMiIthy
Contrition.

standard which he individually had
reached at the time when he committed
them.' If he has come to realise that the
offence is much worse than he supposed,
that is a sign of growth in him; it is there-
fore a reason for thankfulness. The con-
trition which is the natural consequence
of fairly facing up to his responsibility,
the recognition of the fact that he not
only "ought to iiave known better" but
that he did know better, is healthy.

It is quite otherwise if he tries to exag-
gerate his responsibility, and therefore his
contrition, beyond what the facts war-
rant. The tendency to do this is partly
the result of conceiving God as an
offended potentate who is likely to be
propitiated by an apology in propoi-tion
as the nature of the offence is exaggerated
— the precise conception of God which
Christ did His best to unteach — it is
partly the reflection of wounded self-
respect. The humiliation which a man
feels at discovering that he was and is a

* Particularly in regard to the burden of remembered
offences, committed in early youth, often the best advice
one can give is to minimise their seriousness — to make the
person see the offence as something which, though in a
grown man an enormity, in a boy deserved "a flogging and
have done with it,"

THE DEFEAT OF PAIK 185

Sp-eater "rotter" than he had dreamed, is
the measure of the Pharisee in him. In so

!f/- «*"'* " "^^ *'**«' tl^e endeavour

artificially to stimulate contrition is really

to stimulate spiritual prid.;. Once a man

knows he is a "worm" and cheerfully

accepts the fact, he can begin to rise above

the worm. So long as he grovels and

broods on his "wormanity" he retards the

process— for the secret of moral advance

IS to transform interest in oneself into

interest in the Kingdom of God. Christ

taught that God freely forgives but that

It IS the publican who most easily avails

himself of the fact. To the worm that

knows It IS only a worm, God gives wings.

But whatever view we take on the reli- a WnUn.
gious issue, from the psychological point frprnP^
of view this emphasis on the duty of "'

broodmg over the enormity of the past
is bound to be disastrous. Indeed, it is
largely responsible for the most depress-
ing of all facts in the experience of reli-
gious people— the incapacity to overcome
habitually recurrent sin. So many spend
their time bitterly repenting of, and after
a brief interval exactly repeating, the
same act. Their failure has a simple
psychological explanation. To concen-

186 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

trate attention on the enormity of an
offence, and upon the blackness of heart
and the weakness of will which can con-
stantly repeat it, is really to submit one-
self to a form of auto-suggestion which
can only make the repetition of the act
inevitable. The advice given by con-
fessors in these cases is often the worst
possible. So far from being told to
deplore the past and dread its repetition
in the future, the penitent should be ad-
vised to turn away his attention from the
thought of his own weakness and sin, to
concentrate on the power and the desire
of God to help him, to think no more of
past failure but of the possibility of doing
useful constructive work in the world. It
may take some time to undo the work of
long-continued auto-suggestion, and to
free the mind completely from the influ-
ence of bad advice and wrong conceptions
— meanwhile let him cease to bother about
this particular weakness.' Psychology

' Bad habits, physical and mental, \<hether the result
of youthful misconduct, accident, or the lack of good
advice, often get betond the control of the conscious will.
If and when this *tage is reached, or all but reached,
they should he regarded not as sin, but as disease. In
which case the patient is only morally to blame if he
declioes forthwith to take the necessary steps, and if need

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 187

confirms the teaching of St Paul-leave
behind the Law. with its associations of
failure and of fear, throw yourself on the
power and love of God as seen in Christ,
and sin shall have no more dominion over
you.

Christianity and Recent Psychology

The shell-shock hospitals have provided
an unprecedented opportunity for the
study of the nature and origin of mental
disease. Theories and methods evolved
by the great specialists before the war
have been tested and developed, and new
ones have been invented. The result is a
great advance in the understanding of the
psychology of the human soul.

As yet there has not been time for the som. Pm
materials collected to be completely di- ^^'
gested. and there is still a plentiful dis- *""**'•
agreement among practitioners of differ-
ent schools even in regard to points of

be to s«k the beat medical advice, to cure the disease.
louM^r ^'^'^-'io" tbat a bad habit or an „b.e™i„„
should be trausferred fr„n, the category o( siu to that
of d.,ease. to be treated .ua,i-medic«lly, a» one would a

Z?»."^'«'°°"""'' "' "•"'• ""« ''"^'> """ co.-
eeu rated reflection ou the idea, effects a cure. If not a
doctor or a aerve apecialist should be consulted.

188 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

■'Th»

RipraiMd

Complo."

fundamental importance. There are, how-
ever, certain conclusions as to which there
is sufficient agreement among those com-
petent to pronounce m opinion to justify
an outsider in accepting them as at least
provisionally established — and among
these are some which, once recognised as
established, cannot be ignored in any
treatment of the subject of this chapter.

One point in particular is peculiarly
relevant. Man has r, natural instinct to
try to hide away from himself and from
others, experiences Wi'iich have deeply
wounded — in particular acute humilia-
tion, undetected moral lapses, occasions
of acute terror or long-drawn-out appre-
hension. Supposing we succeed in half
smothering or even completely obliterat-
.'ng the memory of these, so much the
worse for us. To suppress all recollection
or expression of such inddents is like
applying a plaster to a boil. The emotion
associated with the original occasion re-
mains as a suppressed poison in the mind.
It is always seeking to find expression by
investing the circumstances of a man's
subsequent life with an atmosphere of
unnecessary apprehension, difficulty, or
pain, thus burdening the personality in

THE DEFEAT OP 1'AI.V ly.)

the present with the shame, the fear and
the agony of the past. The result is de-
pression, neurasthenia and. in some cases,
physical paralysis, mord breakdown, or
loss of reason.

If. however, the patient can be induced
to remember clearly and to speak about
the buried mem, ry-the "repressed com-
plex as It IS technically caUed— relief at
once begins. It is as if the I>oiI were
opened and the poisonous matter let out
It becomes possible for the patient, either
for himself or with the help of the ^sy 'lo-
therapeutist, to begin a process of re-
adjustment or "reassociation." i.e. of asso-
dating tiie event in his mind with an
en>otion of an opposite kind. He can, for
instance, see for himself, or be taught by
another to see, what was once a legitimate
cause of acute terror or anxiety, either as
a trifle which he can now look back on
with a smi e. or as a real disaster, but yet
,W "^/".f f /? "'"template with a feel-
ing of thankfuhiess in that he has some-
how won through; or. again, for the de-
pression of a vaguely realised disgrace he
can substitute the satisfaction of faUure
retrieved or of guilt atoned for. Once
this is d ne, especially if the patient can

"Bmmo-
eUUon."

Pkiotul
KwnoiiM*

190 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

be made to see a clear relation between
tlie emotion associated with the past shock
or act and that which he experiences in
connection with some present anxiety,
mental health begins rapidly to accrue.'

This lesson of psychology has a very im-
portant bearing on everyday life. Aniong
men who have served in the fighting line,
I notice, on the one hand, an instinctive
indisposition to talk about the war. On
the other, when speaking among intimates,
and especially among men who themselves
have seen service, there is a constant tend-
ency to recur to it. But in each man's
experience there are some things of which
he never speaks even to his most intimate
friends — things which, when they start
up in memory, he strives, sometimes suc-
cessfully, more often not, to exorcise from
consciousness. And what is true of men
who have fought in the trenches is true,

' Is acute caaea of nerroua breakdown it ia aometimea
found that hypnotic auggeation is required to complete the
neceaaary "reaaaociation." But in many oases even of
acute neurasthenia, the mere fact that the "repressed
ooDiplex" baa lieen brought into consciousness, and that
till' patient can spenic about it clearly and fully, enable!
him to put l>ehind him both the memory and the emotiona
associated with it, and, as it were, permanently to detach
himself from this incident in hia past ; which, until he

- 1^

TUE DKt^EAT OF I'AIxX m
though to a '^sser extent, of most men and

from the past which stab and burn,
memorus of things seen, things suP ed
th'ngs done, things left undone; m, hk, ies'

we trt f "P^°'"*"'^"t. humiliation, .vhieh
we try, but try m vain, to bury'

The habitual reserve that is character- >
.st.e of the English and the Scotch t so »«-

ones heart upon one's sleeve for daws
to peck • or is unwilling to be for ever
wearj-mf one's friends with the recTtal
of mmor troubles or petty peccadilK
to be commended; in so far as it is he
exjress.on of a high ourage which dis!
f.r ., ^^ffpate seem to shirk its
full share of the burden and the suffering
ot the race ,t is to be admired. But
psychologj^ bears out the ancient proverb
A sorrow shared is a sorrow haVed "
And though to be always seeking confi-
dants for one's troubles or rne's sins
mevitably leads either to morbid int"
speetion or to shallowness of character
an occwnonal unburdening of the soul is

clean, remembered and frankly ,„„k<, ,b«ut it .„ .

The

TroublM
of Youth.

192 The defeat op pain

good for most of us. But it must be an
"unloading" of fears, worries, sorrows and
disappointments, and not only a confes-
sion of sins.

Accordingly anyone who is haunted by
the memory of some fright, some fault,
some snub in early life, which he has never
confided to a single person, should do so —
not to all the world, but to some judicious
friend who will listen sym;.athetically to
the recital of these things. Once they are
expressed in words one can for ever
detach oneself from that self of long ago
which did, thought and felt these painful
things. One can view that old self with
the eyes of an outsider and join one's
confidant in a smile of sympathy for the
misfortunes, or of pardon for sins, of the
"poor little devil," upon the stepping-
stone of whose dead self the present man
has risen to higher things. But — and this
is the essential lesson of psychology — ^until
the failures of the dead past have been
so expressed its putrefying corpse may,
though we know it not, be still poisoning
the present.

It is harder to find the right person to
Hatuiity. whom to confide painful incidents of ma-
turer years — the moral failures, the slights

nia

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 193

of which the most humiliating thing is
that we feel them as humiliations at all,
the moments of panic, the unworthy fore-
bodings and apprehension, the disappoint-
ments in love or in ambition, the haunting
fear of loss, failure, or detection which
hangs above the head like a sword of
Damocles; the follies, lapses, agonies of
those we love. It is not only more diffi-
cult to find the right person to whom to
speak of things like these; when found
it IS more difficult to bring oneself to use
him or her at the critical moment. We
are so often withheld from speech by the
reflection that even when the cupboard
door is opened the skeleton will still re-
mam a skeleton. But this reflection is the
excuse, partly of our ignorance, partly of
our desire to escape the humiliation of
confession. The skeleton, it is true, will
still remain a skeleton, but once the fresh
air IS let in it will— »/ our confidant be
one who can give wise advice— become a
specimen in the museum instead of the
festering remains of a dead self.
^^ Many would do well to avail themselves
of some discreet and learned minister of
God's Word." and were clergy and minis-
ters trained to be "soul doctors" one might

The

Phyiielan
of th« Soul.

1S4 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

universalise this advice. Unfortunately
they are rarely so trained, and what train-
ing they do receive is based on an obsolete
psychology. Spiritual advice will do more
harm than good imless it is based on a
clear recognition of the distinction be-
tween sin and disease, that is, between
what is entirely, and what is not entirely,
under the control of the conscious wiU.
But to ascertain, in any given case, the
exact degree to which the individual is
responsible is a far more difficult and
delicate process than most people seem
to think. At least an elementary knowl-
edge of pathological psychology is re-
quired, and more than an elementary
knowledge of human nature. Precisely
because his advice is likely to be taken
more seriously, an unwise priest, like an
ignorant doctor, can do more harm than
other men; and whatever else may result
from the laying on of hands, it does not
in itself convey a knowledge of the human
heart. Still, given sympathy, experience
and common sense, the pastor, next to the
doctor, has unique opportunities of quali-
fying in that subject. Again, the ordi-
nary man always approaches a minister
of religion with the subconscious expecta-

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 195

tion that he is a man easily to be
shocked — especiaUy if the burdened
soul be unorthodox in his beliefs. And
smce it is hard not to live up to what every
one expects of one. it may often cost the
mmister an effort to free himself from this
conventional role. But let him make that
effort; the minister of Christ is called upon
to be not the Judge but the Physician of
the soul.

i,Su^^rJ'°^^^^'"' "^ **»o«^ ^J»o from Th.
cluldhood have been habituated to cast ■•wu'o.
their burden upon the Lord, to give free. '^'"^•
frank, and natural expression in confident
and spontaneous prayer to contrition, sor-
row, fear, on each occasion, great or smaU,
M It arises, realising God as the unseen
*nend— ready to forgive sins, able and
anxious to bind up wounds, a tower of
defence m danger. Such find their prayer
IS answered by a courage enhanced and
an insight sharpened, which enables them
to look trouble and failure in the face, and
before the bitterness has time to sink into
the soul, to effect for themselves whatever
reassociation" is required.

It is an interesting reflection that the m,,
teaching of Christ and His apostles has '•JS?^
in some respects anticipated, in others ^^

196 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

gone beyond, not, of course, the actual
discoveries of recent psychology, but their
practical lesson for everyday life. Psy-
chology teaches that the first condition of
healing is to bring up into the daylight of
clear recognition the exact nature and
quality of the wound to be healed; the
New Testament bids us look suffering in
the face, recognise and confess our sins.
The next step, says the psychologist, is to
reassociate the remembered episode, to
re-educate the mind and heart, to change
our attitude towards the past; Christ says
the same: "Thy sins are forgiven";
"Sorrow shall be turned into joy." Both
say, "First face up to the past; then turn
your back upon it"; "Believe that power
is yours and according to your faith it
will be done unto you." So far they seem
to say the same thing. But there is this
great difference — Christ has behind Him
a religion, a reasonably grounded phil-
osophy of life.' Hence the reassociation
made by Him is more revolutionary and
more profound; for He says of the

' In practice successful psychotherapists largely ac-
complish their cures by suggesting ideas of hope, con-
fidence, and consolation, which is in effect providing the
patient with at least the practical deduction of a Chris-

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 197

wounds of the past, not only that they
can be healed, but that out of them and
by reason of them can be won an actual
enrichment of the present; and He gives
as the ground of this confidence the love
and the power of God. Indeed, one
might ahnost say that the essence of
Christianity is its peculiar "reassociation"
of the idea of suffering. In the New
Testament, as has been pointed out in
a previous chapter,' suffering is no longer
a problem but a source of light, no longer
a thing to be avoided, but a privilege
to be claimed; and that because it is some-
thing shared by God Himself and the
means of His accomplishing the sublimest
of all ends.

The Way and the Powee

I have tried to show that, whatever oui-
view of the origin and purpose of the
suffering and evil in the world, f- is
a way out— a way which, for the „idi-

tian philosophy of life. Owing, however, to the tragic
feud between Science and Eeligi„n-a feud which, it may
be hoped, our generation will see hea!ed-few eminent
scientific men are in a position conscientiously to make
full use of this source of power.
' Cf. pp. 29 ff.

Ballsicm
M Power.

198 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

vidua!, is at once the most perfect adapta-
tion to environment and the line of moral
progress. "Granted," some will say, "but
'straight is the gate and narrow is the
way.' When the bitterness, the ^gony,
and the desolation is on us, or when it
comes back to us in vivid memories of the
past, it is not enough to be told there is
a way out, we lack the power to tread it."

Precisely at this point religion is seen
to be vital to everyday life. For, in
exact proportion to its truth and our
sincerity, religion is power. Conceive of
God as Christ conceived Him, make a
genuine effort to trust Him and to follow
Christ, and experience shows that prayer,
communion, meditation, will prove to be
the road to power. "Salvation" — ^that
is, inspiration and deliverance in one — is
within our grasp. "Ask, and it shall be
given you; seek, and ye shall find."

But, if this be said, in the same breath
a warning must be added against an un-
questioning submission to the guidance,
not only of popular manuals of devotion,
but even of the great classics. Even in
the best of them, language is occasionally
used which cannot but suggest the idea
that God is a jealous Potentate needing

THE DEFEAT OP PAIN 199

and liking to be placated by ostentatious
grovelling. But to the precise extent in
which any surviving elements of this pre-
Christian conception affect our attitude
towards Him, our prayer is hkely to be
a source of weakness not of power. A
parent or a teacher can do very little for
a child who is simply abject, and it is hard
for God to speak to us unless we first
obey the order, "Son of man, stand upon
thy feet." ^

There is another avenue to spiritual
power, less important but, because less
familiar, needing special emphasis.

Modern psychology has shown that TheSub-
what I can or cannot do depends not only j^'"'"
on the desires and the effort of my con-
scious self, but on the hopes, fears and
convictions which have sunk deep into my
subconscious mind.' If my c, scious
mind believes in God but I am lor ever
anxious for the morrow, it is because my
subconscious mind does not believe. The

'1 uae the term "subconacious mind" for its obvious
conveaience to describe tliat part of the mind which
happens to be for the time being outside the field of full
consciouaneaa. Anything, however, or practically any-
thing, in the aubconacious area of the mind can on occa-
sion come into the field of consciousness, and anything in
the conscioua mind may be withdrawn from consciousness.

Its
Diraetion.

200 THE DEFEAT OF PAIN

subconscious mind is always learning from
the conscious, but it both leams and for-
gets more slowly. And the lessons it takes
to heart most deeply are not the purely
intellectual notions of the conscious mind,
but the values and emotions associated
with them. A man, for instance, may
believe with his conscious mind that God
is good and men are brothers, but only
if he plans and acts towards the I "^niverse
and man as if these things were true will
his subconscious mind believe it also. If
his conscious mind affirms the princij-le of
love but he schemes injurj- to the brother
whom he hath seen, it is the attitude of
hate that the subconscious mind v II learn.
It is, therefore, not enough to assent
with the mind to a philosophy that proves
that the Power behind the Universe is one
that works for righteousness; it is not
enough to recognise with the intellect that
for the individual suflferer there is a way
out; we must so realise the meaning and
the implications of these beliefs for feel-
mg, thought and conduct, that they be-
come part of our inmost being. But for
this to happen, the values and emotions
dominant in our conscious mind must
dominate the subconscious also. Con-

Ceitlon."

THE DEFEAT OF PAIN 201

scijus and subconscious act and react on
one another; but the conscious, if it knows
and wills, can in the long run direct the
whole by selecting the ideas and values
upon which to ponder deepest in moments
of quiet meditation.

You may call this "auto-suggestion" if "Auto-iu«.
you like, auto-suggestion is only a ba' '"""""
thing if the idea suggested is evil or un-
true, and it is often of the utmost value.
But in any case a certain amount of it is
a psychological necessity. Do what we
will, we cannot keep our minds a vacancy.
The conscious mind is ever brooding, ever
dwelling on thoughts, hopes and fears
which mevitably act as "suggestions" to
the subconscious. We cannot avoid some
form of auto-suggestion; we can choose
the form. Let us, then, select what our
intellect at its keenest sees to be most true,
what our insight at its acutest sees to be
Liost beautiful or best, and meditate on
t>-ts. "Whatsoever things are true, what-
soever things are honourable, whatsoever
things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, what-
soever things are of a<^nA report; if there
be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
thmk on these things." Above all, as we

Bmoob
Lifht.

202 THE DEFEAT OP PAIN

compose ourselves to rest at night, let us
remember to govern mind and thought.
We cannot but "suggest" to ourselves
$ome thoughts, the effect of which will
follow us next day. We have got to make
a choice between thoughts of confidence
or despair, of power or weaknes»i, of love
or hate. One way or the other, we cannot
but decide whether our attitude to life and
to the Universe — and that means to (Jod
— is one of doubt or trust, and in regard
to pain, one of acceptance or resentment.
Then let the choice made reflect, not the
mood of the moment, but the conviction
of a life.

In the perplexities, the anxieties, the
smarting pains of life, such self-control,
such government and direction of our
thoughts is hard. We need some focal
point round which to centre our philoso-
phy of power and help; we seek some
beacon light upon the cliflf — visible how-
ever dark the night.

And this we have.

Direction, inspiration, strength can all
be had from one source. Only let the
needle of life's compass be magnetised
and free to move, so that it points always
towards the Pole. Steer boldly straight

THE DEFEAT OP PAIN 203

ahead, "looking Jinto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, who for the joy
that was set before Him endured the
Cross" — courage victorious and love
triumphant. Let prayer and meditation
centre always round the thought of the
Love and Power of that infinite and all-
pervading Spirit of whom Christ is the
portrait, and it will be possible to rise
above the natural consequences of evil
happenings, to make of suffering an
opportunity, of loss a si 'pping-stone to
gain, and to find in failure retrieved and
pain conquered the secret of power.