BR SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE SAMUEL H.FORRER : J LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT Class _: Book u t GopyiigM^ JO COPYRIGHT DEPOSHi Some Cognitive Elements of Religious Experience By SAMUEL H. FORRER BOSTON: THE GORHAM PRESS TORONTO : THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED Copyright 1917 by Samuel H. Forrer All Rights Reserved SEP 26 1317 4*1 Made in the United States of America The Gorham PressVBoston, U.S.A. ©GI.A478675 ^o TO THE OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF PARK CHURCH, ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA whose wise consideration affords their pastor ample time for work in the il study 1 \ bat deprives him of all excuse for inadequate pulpit preparation, this book is affectionately dedicated. PREFACE In the preparation of this thesis I have received assistance from Pres. Ormond's "Lectures on an Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion", and his "Basal Concepts of Philosophy", Dr. John Watson's "Interpretation of Religious Experience", the late Prof. James' "Varieties of Religious Experience", Prof. Royce's "Problem of Christianity", and his "Sources of Religious Insight", Dinsmore's "Atone- ment in Literature and Life", Fairbairn's "Phil- osophy of the Christian Religion", the late Princi- pal Caird's "Evolution of Religion", the late Prof. Bowne's "Theism", and Prof. Hocking's "Meaning of God in Human Experience". Samuel H. Forrer, Erie, Pennsylvania. SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE BY "experience" we mean whatever is real or sig- nificant to human consciousness. Experience is distinguished as religious by its object. The ob- ject of religious experience is some super-human power apprehended as Divine. Religious experi- ence is, therefore, some sort of conscious response of the spirit of man to such a divine object. Hence religion developes with experience. It grows, evolves, attains. In the course of its evolu- tion the nature of man's response to the Divine is so varied as to sweep the whole gamut of the mind's possibilities from the terror of the lowest superstition to the concrete satisfaction of the highest ration- ality. Religion, therefore, must be estimated not by its origin but by its successful completion. The science of astronomy must not be judged today by the conception of primitive astrology, nor chemistry by the childish operations of ancient alchemy. We cannot go back to the childhood of the race for our standards of truth. The true nature of the acorn is fully discernible only in the oak; so the essen- tial character and worth of religion is discernible not in its germinative principle but in its loftiest reaches. IO SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS In all religious experience certain cognitive elements are essential. These cognitive elements are concretely cognitive. The God consciousness is a demand of man's entire nature — intellectual, moral, emotional. It has the warrant of the entire soul. Many of these cognitive elements are of course only embryonic or merely implicit in the lower forms of religion. Yet in these earliest stages religion is a process which involves concrete cognition — at first, no doubt, a sort of unreflective con- sciousness which, in the course of its development, becomes reflective and therefore, more and more able to give a reason for its existence. All human knowledge is of necessity partial. Every truth runs backward and forward into infin- ity. Man has no organs adequate to the full com- prehension of such truth. "The margin of knowl- edge fades forever and forever as we move." "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the cranny ; — Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. ,, Limited as we are by the conditions of our sensible experience we cannot completely comprehend the depths and riches of the divine Mind. "We know in part." But as Prof. Hocking says, "It is not a true account of knowledge to say that it proceeds (always) from the part to the whole. The progress OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1 1 of knowledge has rather more in common with the development of a germ cell than with the building of a brick wall — something of the whole present and active in that cell from the beginning. . . . We do not learn to see space little by little. The child's space is as great as the man's, namely, whole space. He who comes into the world at all comes at once into the presence of the whole world. I am introduced to a person not by piece-meal but all at once, with a positive impression and judgment contained in my idea; not denying that there is much to learn and cor- rect through long growing acquaintance. So of my introduction to reality: in its full infinity and wholeness it is now before me and has been so from my conscious beginning, the same from birth to death. ..... What grows in knowledge is the understanding of all this, the internal complexity and detail What grows in knowledge is growth of connection, growth of treaty-making between ideas. " Such growth is incomplete. Hence our knowl- edge is incomplete. But human knowledge while partial in the sense of not embracing infinity is complete in the sense of embracing reality to the fullness of its finite grasp. An old German proverb says, "It is provided that the trees shall not grow into the sky". To which Prof. Caird adds, "It is equally provided that they shall always grow towards it." It is a fundamental presupposition of all knowledge that the universe is intelligible and all intelligences are identical in their essential nature. 12 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS Reality is not mere being, which is mere nothing — reached by a complete abstraction from all par- ticulars. Reality is the perfect unity which dif- ferentiates itself through particulars in various de- grees of self-manifestation. Hence to know is to include the particular under the universal and this universalized particular under a higher universal until the highest universal is reached through which all things ultimately must be known. Thus we have various stages of knowledge, but each in its own way embracing reality. The common sense stage of knowledge embraces isolated particulars under the universals of space and time. The scientific stage discovers that there are no iso- lated particulars in the universe, but certain inviol- able laws are the identities that bind all particulars into various unified spheres of knowledge. The religious stage, finally, rising to the highest universal, "sees all things in God" as the unity manifest in nature and human nature. Thus to know the natural law of the external world or the moral law of the self is to that extent to know the one Infinite Reality which is manifest at different levels in both. Perhaps no student of Shakespeare to-day grasps the entire range of his master's mind; yet to the extent that he does grasp it, to that extent he knows Shakespeare. So everything we can learn of the finite is a step in the knowledge of the infinite. The mind of man does not mistake cave shadows for fundamental actualities; it grasps reality with in- creasing capacity and certitude. OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 13 There is a certain analogy between the life of the individual and that of the race. The former is a sort of an epitome of the history of the latter. But in the individual that history is so abbreviated that its various stages of development are confused. The religious experience of the race is the exper- ience of the individual writ large, and as Plato observed, it is by reading the large letters that we learn to interpret the small. Thus we are led to consider some cognitive elements in the development of the religious experience of the race, in the hope that such an examination of the macrocosm will serve to clarify our misunderstanding of the microcosm. What then are the cognitive elements in the re- ligious experience of the race which may be con- sidered fundamentals? I THE first and most fundamental is the conscious presence of some super-human object. All religion presupposes a psychical subject, a supersensible object, and a point of linkage between the two. This is religion at its irreducible minimum. This is the common element essential to the very nature of religion. The central problem of moral- ity is man's agency. The central problem of reli- gion is man's consiousness of God. The savage with his taboo, totem or fetich, recognizes the supersensible. His world is full of ghosts and gods. His rabbit's foot or bead or stick or stone has its hidden deity. From lowest savag- ery to highest civilization man's life moves under the influence of ideas that root in a recognized spiritual realm above him. "There are powers, we think, beyond seeing and hearing, on whom we depend, to whom we owe various duties, and who take note of our life and con- duct; and our relation to these powers is the deepest and highest and most solemn element in our exis- tence." Bowne. Herodotus said that in his travels he had found cities without walls, without schools, without temples of justice, but never a city without an altar of worship. Hence Prof. James, after a careful scientific investigation of the "Varieties of Religious Exper- 14 OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1 5 ience", concludes that man everywhere has discov- ered that he lives in the presence of the Divine. There are certain supposed exceptions among the religions of the earth to this reign of the reli- gious consciousness, viz : f etichism, which is regarded as pure idolatry; Buddhism, Humanism, Naturalism, which are denominated atheistic; and Confucianism, which is called a mere system of ethics. In refutation, however, of these suggested ex- ceptions, it need only be observed, as to the first exception, that the fetich is not a mere stick or stone, but a symbol of a supersensible presence related to the savage either for good or evil. Of course the immaturity of the savage state renders a clear idea of the nature of that super- natural Presence impossible. The savage may con- ceive his god as the magic w T hich dwells in a rabbit's foot, or as the mysterous power which resides in some beast — cat or bull; or in some person — medi- cine-man or wizard; but however he conceives the supernatural, it is as real a deity to him as was Jeho- vah to Israel. Buddhism was originally based on atheism. But the atheism was the recoil of the soul of man from a God regarded as purely objective to the op- posite extreme wherein He was regarded as purely subjective. Such extreme movements of the pendu- lum of faith mark the progress of human thought from stage to stage. Thus the different religions emphasize different factors of religious experience at different periods of its development. But though Buddhism swung from a purely objective God to the 1 6 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS 5 recognition of no God at all, yet this situation was of temporary endurance. The religious conscious- ness soon asserted its rights and the Buddha was idealized and deified to occupy a position in Bud- dhism similar to that occupied by the Christ in Christianity. Thus he becomes the supersensible presence in the Buddhistic consciousness. Confucianism was originally a pure system of morality based on human relations. As such it was not a religion at all. But this system of mere ethics soon became the religion of China. How was this elevation attained? The central object of the Con- fucian ethics was the family ancestor. When the Chinese mind discovered the inadequacy of a system of morality which separated man from the divine presence and help, it proceeded to deify the family ancestor. Thus Confucianism became a religion of ancestor worship. From the days of Democritus Naturalism has attempted to explain the order of the universe by efficient causation. It eliminates the supernatural. But Naturalism remains powerless to evoke religious emotion until it deifies its world. Thus it substi- tutes the universe for God. Auguste Comte founded a school of thought based on "positive" scientific knowledge of facts. It was to supplant theology and metaphysics. The supersensible was to be eliminated. "Comte led God to the confines of the universe and bowed Him out." Comtek religion was to be a pure "Human- ism;" but his deeper nature rebelled, and before his death he had established a church of his own with OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1 7 its calendar of saints, its sacred days, its catechism, its Sabbath and its God. Humanity was deified and worshipped under the symbol of Comte's wife. Thus in the hour of revolt individual men may break with religion and deny the divine Pre- sence. But such revolt is merely the "Soul's tem- porary aberration from the normal of its true orbit". The religious consciousness will reassert its rights and man will recognize God or find some substitute to do business in His stead. What is the origin of man's faith in the super- natural? How is the divine object linked to the psychical subject? In other words, what is the origin of religion? Superficial students, hostilely inclined toward religion, have regarded it as an imposition upon human credulity by the art and device of king or priest. But until human ingenuity can contrive some process whereby to insert the persistent love and practice of art into an inartistic temparament, or to instill rationality into an irrational creature the the- ory of an external imposition of religion upon an irreligious being remains unworthy of serious con- sideration. The origin of religion is not external but in- ternal to the mind itself. A mind without consti- tutional need or tendency has no point of contact with anything without. Nothing can be imported into the mind from without. The source of religion must, therefore, be sought within the mind. Many internal origins of religion have been suggested, such as the fear of timid and helpless 1 8 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS souls, the dreams of hungry or gorged savages, the hallucinations of diseased minds, the weird tricks of magic and sorcery, and so on ad infinitum. From such sources the world is peopled with mysterious presences — projections of the mind's own states of consciousness. The objection to all such suggested origins of religion is that they confuse the religious conscious- ness with its historical expressions. They lay the axe not at the root but at the fruit of the tree. To sketch certain characteristic features of religion at the time of its earliest historic expression is very different from a study of religion as a living thing, growing in its native soil, influenced by all the forces that play upon it and manifesting character- istic features at the various stages of development. The source of religion is deeper than the earli- est expression of religion. Man is fundamentally religious. He did not wander into the religious realm but grew into it and it grew in him and with him. He is a creature of the most high God and in his primary consciousness the creature meets and greets the Creator. The human spirit in its awak- ing consciousness salutes the Divine. Hence man is as truly a religious animal as he is a rational animal. He does not get reason from without; he is constitutionally rational. But he can no more choose to be religious than he can choose to be rational; he is both by the same necessity of nature. By the very constitution of his mind man lives at once in three worlds ; the world without, the world OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1 9 within, and the world above. His linkage to the world without we may call, in the language of Hegel, his sensuous consciousness; to the world within his self consciousness; to the world above, his religious consciousness. These three are one fundamentally and in the normal life develope together — a sort of trinity in unity. They are all necessarily present even though only implicit, in the earliest or lowest forms of human consciousness. A being whose nature is exhausted in sense objects can never transcend them. The stone or shell to him must be a stone or shell, never a fetich. Without the religious instinct man could no more rise above the sense object to the religious object than can the dog or the horse. Hence we say it is not something without but the primary conscious- ness within the man and behind his creed and ritual to which the origin of religion must be ascribed. The religious consciousness links man to the divine Being who is the source of all existence and knowl- edge and in whom all finite subjects and finite objects "live and move and have their being". We have no organ by which to know the ex- istence of other spiritual realities. How then do we know that other beings with minds like our own exist? The reality of our social world is the last thing we should doubt. There is nothing more cer- tain to us than the existence of other spirits like ourselves; yet we have no organ of knowledge by which to determine such existence. "In the nature of the case," says Prof. Hocking, "It could hardly be otherwise; the other mind must be beyond my 20 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS powers of direct experience. It can be no object of sensation; because it is not a physical thing. It must be such as I am, a thinker of its objects, not an object among objects; and as such thinker, or subject, it can only be thought not sensed". We cannot see or handle existence but must feel it by some general sense which has no organ. Thus the ultimate test of reality becomes what the psychologists call the "reality feeling". It is an im- mediate contact and insight. Such is the inarticulate character of all our deep- est sources of religious knowledge. Down in the depths of the soul whence rises the primary con- sciousness of self, spring simultaneously the social consciousness and the religious. Thus man is born a potentially social and religious being quite as cer- tainly as a potentially self-conscious being. Man's religious instinct may embody itself in grotesque and gruesome forms. He may "worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator." He may obscure by sin the divine image upon his soul. But he cannot take even the wings of the morning and fly away from his religious intuition. It is as utterly impossible for one to rid himself of his religious consciousness as it would be to rid himself of his social or his self-consciousness and yet remain normal. Atheism in the form of eliminating from human consciousness the sense of the transcendent is a mental impossibility. Athe- ism is possible only as a protest against some accept- ed conception of the Divine in favor of what the atheist feels to be a more satisfying conception. OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 21 However the religious consciousness survives as long as the normal mind survives. "There is no unbelief; Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod And waits to see it push away the clod, He trusts in God. "Whoever says, 'The clouds are in the sky, Be patient, heart, light breaketh by and by,' Trusts the Most High. "Whoever sees, 'neath winters wealth of snow The silent harvest of the future grow, God's power must know. "Whoever says, 'Tomorrow, the Unknown, The Future, trusts the power alone He dares disown." Thus man clings to the existence of other spiritual beings like himself and to the existence of the divine Being not because he can prove such existence by logical processes, but even if he cannot prove it. Religion does not rest on proof, but underlies and antedates all rational attempts at proof. A being without the religious instinct could never be made religious by any multiplicity of ra- tional proofs of the existence of God. Extract from man the primary religious consciousness that links him to the Divine in the immediacy of fellowship and the rational proofs may prop up above the soil an imaginary religious twig, but they can never trans- from it into a vital organism that sends its roots 2 2 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS downward into the subsoil of the soul and its branch- es upward toward God. But with the that of the di- vine existence firmly established in the primary con- sciousness of man, then reason as it awakens and developes expresses itself in more and more elabor- ate systems of rationality, not only as to the that but especially as to the what of the existence of God. Thus reason is not asked to do the impossible, but to do what it can, and in this realm its work is recog- nized to be indispensible. In the wake of a developing rationality man rises from the fear of the purely transcendent object symbolized in the fetich of savages to the love and worship of God the Father Almighty as revealed in the Christian religion. So from the lowest sav- agery up to the highest civilization man in his reli- gious consciousness recognizes the presence of some supernatural power. The late Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of the law of Evolution, sums up the work of his life in a great book which he calls, "The World of Life". The thought of this great scien- tist is that the whole Universe is out upon an upward march under the directive influence of an infinite Intelligence. The most wonderful chapter in the book is that on the u Mystery of the Cell". This little cell, the earliest form of life, with its central nucleus, suddenly moves and there is a mechanical movement, a chemical movement and a vital move- ment. "Under the microscope it seems perfectly clear that the cell is moving under a directive Power. So wonderful are the movements of the cell that one OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 23 is smitten with awe and adoration as was Moses when he uncovered in the presence of the burning bush." Whence has this cell the power to embroider the hillsides with violets, the valley with corn and the mountains with pine and hemlock? Whence its power to build the birds of the air, the cattle upon a thousand hills, and the brains of a Socrates and an Aristotle? There is a power in the world, not itself, that makes one cell to become a thousand and two cells to become ten thousand, until plant and animal life rises rank above rank, class by class, family by family, till man stands forth under the stars, answering with song and prayer and worship the overtures of the infinite God! The essential conclusion drawn by Prof. Wallace from his study of the "World of Life" is the presence throughout the universe of "A Creative Power, a Directive Mind and an Ultimate Purpose". So also Mr. Herbert Spencer says, "There will remain one absolute certainty, that man is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." Fisk says that Spencer's Eternal Energy must be thought of as self-conscious, self active spirit. All experience certifies that spirit and not matter is creative. The mind cannot stop short of that. So he reminds us of Goethe's words put into the mouth of Faust when walking in the garden with Marguerite who asked him if he believes in God. Faust replies, in substance, so long as the tranquil dome of heaven is raised above our heads, and the 24 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS blossom-set earth is spread forth beneath our feet, while the everlasting stars course in their mighty orbits, and the lover gazes with delight into the eyes of her who loves him, so long must our hearts go out to Him who made the heavens and the earth. Thus man's consciousness of the presence of the Divine appears to be a fundamental cognitive ele- ment in his religious experience in all stages of his development. II ANOTHER such element in man's religious ex- perience is his conscious spiritual disharmony in relation to the divine Being. Doubtless this sense of disharmony is much more pronounced in some types of religion than in others. The late Prof. William James separates religion into two great types: the religion of "healthy-mindedness" and the religion of "soul-sick- ii ness. The religion of the healthy-minded is optimistic. It responds to the appeal of the divine goodness. Its God is the impersonation of kindness and beauty. It reads His character, not in the disordered world of man, but in the romantic and harmonious world of nature. This is the religion of the one-story life, the once-born, the single-self. Such a soul has no ex- alted sense of divine holiness; therefore, no deep sense of sin in his own life or in that of the race. He does not deny evil absolutely, but minimizes it, and his atonement for sin is as mild as his conception of the disease. Such religion does not recognize a Redeemer so much as a Revealer of God and an Ideal. While this type of religion must be considered genuine, it must at the same time be considered superficial. It borders very close upon that irreligi- ous realm of self assertion which so exalts man that if he sees God at all he must look downwards. 25 2 6 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS But even healthy-mindedness, so long as it remains religious, recognizes, however slightly, its dishar- mony with the divine perfection. Over against this optimistic religious type stands that of the sick-soul. It is pessimistic. It res- ponds to the thought of the divine holiness and per- fection. "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and must not look upon iniquity". "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come". "The very heavens are unclean in thy sight". This type of religion magnifies the f ragmentari- ness and failure of human life. The soul is sick. "The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the feet even unto the head there is no soundness in it." There is need of a physician. In this religious type we find the most exalted conception of the divine holiness, the most profound conviction of sin and the deepest sense of the need of salvation. A terrible disease demands heroic treatment. Hence in the religious experience of sick-souls, divided-selves, are to be found the cases of sudden conversion. This is the religion of the twice born. The religious consciousness in both these types rests upon the idea of God as the absolutely perfect Being. In such a presence man necessarily becomes more or less aware of his own immaturity, weakness and sinfulness. The presence of perfection reveals imperfection. The line looks straight until the straight edge is placed against it. The angle looks OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 27 perfect until the square is applied. The wall ap- pears true until the plumb line is hung. So John the Baptist in the presence of the Scribes and Pharisees could say, "Ye generation of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" But when he stood in the presence of the Master of men he saw himself in the presence of such perfection that he said, "I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose the latchet of thy shoes". Simon Peter disputed with other disciples as to his being the greatest man in the kingdom of his Lord. He had "left all" to follow Jesus and as a re- ward desired to be secretary of State in his earthly kingdom. To the Master he said, u Tho all others forsook thee, yet will not I". Peter had an ex- alted sense of his own self importance. But when in a great moment of revelation he caught a glimpse of the real character in whose presence he stood, he fell upon his facce at the Master's feet, crying, "De- part from me Lord, I am a sinful man". Isaiah was court-preacher to king Uzziah. One morning he found crepe upon the palace door, the guards moving softly about, and the whole king- dom in mourning. Death had entered the palace and laid his icy fingers on the king's wrist and said, "Come with me." The great monarch bowed his head and departed. In that hour Isaiah saw the weakness of human strength. But he saw some- thing else. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up." King Uzziah is dead but the King of Kings lives and reigns. "Above him stood the seraphim.... 28 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS and one cried unto another and said, "Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts." In the light of that perfect holiness Isaiah saw himself and cried, u Woe is me! because I am a man of unclean lips for mine eyes have seen the king, Jehovah of hosts." Such a vision of God is always followed by an abasement of self. Job was remarkably conceited in behalf of his own personal righteousness. But when he caught the vision of the purity and perfection of God, seeing himself in the light of that vision, he cried, "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee ; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." This religious consciousness, though in an un- developed form, is found in even the lowest races of mankind, and indeed is inseparable from the con- sciousness of self. Over against the divine ideal stands the human real. The conscious disharmony between what man's life is and what in his luminous moments he sees that it ought to be gives existence to humanity's universal sense of need, and conse- quent cry for salvation. Man has missed the mark, the true end of his life. Knowing the better he has willed the worse. Hence he has "sinned and come short of the glory of God." In many cases, in the higher stages of religious experience, this sense of guilt assumes the attitude of an overmastering assurance of God's condemna- tion. "Your sins have separated between you and vour God and vour iniquities have hid His face from you that He will not hear you." Adam was OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 29 not so much an individual as a type when, having sin- ned, he slunk away to hide himself among the trees of the garden when he felt that God was drawing nigh. Goodness loves the light. Innocence fol- lows the sun. But guilt hies away into the dark- ness. When the child fears the parent either he is an unlovely parent or else the child is guilty. In the latter case the object of dread is not the loving parent but the creature of the child's own guilty imagina- tion. Guilt has separated the child from a true vision of the parent. When I detect God's glory in the world and trace His handiwork in field and flower; when I recognize His voice in conscience and feel the power of His love in my heart, there is "society where none intrudes." But sin's work is to separate from God, and if in the sea and sky, if in conscience and heart, if in the Cross of the Christ — if in all these, I see and hear no God, then sin's separations from God are in me complete. My eyes have been blinded and like another prodigal I am separated from my Father's house to feed my life on husks. In other cases when man's guilt involves social alliances his consciousness emphasizes his condition, not so much as a sinner against God but rather as an enemy of all nature and a social outcast. "Cur- sed art thou from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth." Such was the guilty consciousness of the murderer Cain. The very ground curses him. 30 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS Nature is against him. There is a power at the very heart of the universe that makes for righteousness. "From the heavens fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera." All the forces of the universe are arrayed against him who lives unworthily. When Israel forsakes Jehovah and turns to idols. " "Carmel languishes and Lebanon mourns. " "The whole creation groans and languishes together in pain." Nature grows duller and poorer as we grow worse. We impress ourselves upon the uni- verse and read into nature the story of our hearts. When Lorenzo and Jessica make love every star in heaven sings like an angel. When Julius Caesar is about to be assassinated the night is full of wild alarm and portent. When Lear's agony reaches its climax and he is sightless and outcast and goaded to madness, nature is in agony and there are thunder- ings and lightenings and turmoil and uproar in the elements. Nature echoes the emotions of the human heart. Hence the guilty conscience casts a baleful shadow over the face of nature. Before Queen Guinevere came and sinned, the land was alive with spiritual presences. Their songs were heard and their lights were seen "far into the rich heart of the west." In every cavern dwelt some little elf making music like that of a distant horn. As the knight, pure and true, rode through the forest on his way to Camelot, "Himself beheld three spirits, mad with joy, come dashing down on a tall wayside flower." All nature pulsated with spiritual life. Then came Guinevere and sinned and OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 3 I fell. Now the light and the joy and the music are withdrawn. Beacons disappear, caves are deserted. The forests are cheerless and desolate. Such is the essential connection between nature and human na- ture. Tennyson, the poet-philosopher, sees that life is less abundant, and the forest less fragrant, and music less sweet, because of the discord intro- duced by the guilt of Guinevere. The great reinforc- ing powers of the spiritual world are excluded and exiled from nature and human life by wrong doing. But man's consciousness of guilt may lay great- est stress upon his separation from his fellowmen. "A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth. " The physically unclean and diseased were separated from the congregation of Israel. "All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled, he is unclean, he shall dwell alone, with- out the camp shall his habitation be". But moral leprosy separates more unerringly between the clean and the unclean. "What communion hath Christ with Belial?" Men talk about "social vices". All vice is anti-social. It separates man from man. It drives Judas from the society of Jesus into the night. But does not Judas find in the darkness a comradeship that suits him better? He seems to do so for a little while. But soon he is seen standing on the cliff that overlooks the field of Aceldama. He is the picture of completed despair. Where now is his comradeship of darkness? Where now those friends of the night who bargained with him amid flattery and frolic to betray his ideal? That comradeship 32 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS has perished already. Any friendship founded on crime is as unsubstantial and as unenduring as the ladder in Jacob's dream — it vanishes when the cat- nap ends. Sooner or later vice will grind society to dust. Secular historians like Gibbons trace the downfall of nations to the disintegrations wrought by sin. Thus Egypt perished, and Babylon decayed and Greece rotted at the heart, and Rome was guilty of spiritual suicide, and Spain lost the sense of rev- erence and forgot God and her glory departed. u Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." Hell is the harvest of an evil life. There is no chasm so deep and no barrier so high between man and man as that which is caused by sin. It separated Cain from Abel by the chasm of death. Then it separated Cain from the society of his fellows to be "a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth." Thus the record of sin from the beginning of the race is that of the sundering of the bonds of brotherhood be- tween man and man. This truth Coleridge developes dramatically in his "Ancient Mariner". The seas were calm and the voyage prosperous until the mariner slew with his cross-bow the innocent and beautiful Albatross. Thus he disturbs through wanton cruelty the har- mony of the universe. Sin enters his Eden, des- troying its beauty through the introduction of death. Now the mariner awakens to the consciousness that all nature is against him. OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 33 "Down dropped the breeze, The sails dropped down; Day after day, day after day We stuck, nor breath, nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water everywhere And all the boards did shrink, Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." But worse than the enmity of nature is the curse of his fellows. He had wrought their ruin; and "they leave him alone with the nightmare life and death of utter solitude". The lifeless bodies of his crew lay all about him. "The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand, thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I." The slain albatross, symbol of his sin, hangs about his neck. He tries to pray. His heart is as dry as dust. The prayer fails. The curse of his guilt is to be "alone on a wide, wide sea", separated from God and his fellows. Thus man's awaking consciousness soon dis- covers that there is something wrong within himself, and that his salvation hinges upon his making proper adjustments to the higher Power. Along with the 34 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS wrong part man is aware of a better part within him, even though this is but a mere germ. In seek- ing deliverance from the wrong u he becomes con- scious that the higher part is conterminous and con- tinuous with a more of the same quality, which is op- erative in the universe outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion, get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck." Hence the uni- versal prevalence of altars and sacrifices, prayers and propitiations, by which man seeks to pass from a condition of wrongness into one of rightness in relation to the "more". In some lower forms of religion this end is sought through magic and witch- craft as well as propitiation. The attempt is even made to reduce the gods to servitude, as the genii of the Arabian Nights were subject to the possessor of some magic lamp or ring. But however this end is sought, man everywhere discovers at a very early stage of his social and religious development that there is in human life a disharmony called Sin, and that for the life it is a "pestilence that walketh in darkness and a destruction that wasteth at noon* day". The religious need of such a creature is not merely spiritual development and communion with God; he needs redemption and atonement and regen- eration and reconcilation. Ill HENCE another cognitive element emerges in man's higher religious experience, namely, the conviction that by the voluntary evil of his life the equilibrium of the spiritual universe has been dis- turbed and must be restored to avoid moral chaos. Sin is primarily an individual matter. There is a "true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." It does not light the same path of duty for all men. Abel must offer a bloody sacri- fice, Abram must migrate, Moses must legislate, Isaiah must prophesy, Paul must evangelize. But it does light some path of duty for every man. No life, savage or civilized, is without its gleam of light and truth. God has not left himself without a wit- ness in any human breast. Every rational being knows something that to him is truth and which if lived will make his life nobler and richer. An Apostle speaking of the basest men of his day, said "They hold the truth in unrighteousness." That is to say, they have something that to them is truth but they are not true to their truth, not loyal to their light. Some vision of some virtue floats be- fore every life. Some ideal beckons every heart to heights not yet attained. Religious duty requires of every life obedience to that "heavenly vision". Fidelity to the truth as one sees it is the divine standard for human life. The individual must walk in the light as he sees it, must live true to the truth 35 $6 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS as he knows it. When he falls below this divine ideal he misses his mark — he u sins and comes short of the glory of God". Such a man is what Prof. Royce calls the u ideal traitor". He has had an ideal which he loved with all his heart and soul and mind and strength but to which in some voluntary act of his life he has been deliberately false. His ideal is betrayed. His trea- son is commited. His false deed is done and can never be undone. The equilibrium of his moral world has been disturbed. Can it be restored? From this individualistic point of view the ques- tion of human redemption — involving atonement, regeneration, reconciliation and so forth — is gener- ally considered. What can redemption or salvation mean to the sinner in his individual relation to God? It cannot mean the annulment of his sin. That is forever impossible. It cannot mean any purely external service per- formed by God in behalf of the sinner. That is forever inadequate. It cannot mean mere escape from the penalty of sin. One man sentenced to prison as a penalty for crimes secures a pardon through political influ- ence, and escapes the penalty. Another man sen- tenced for a similar crime, serves his term but through the religious influence in the prison, comes out a "new man" — changed in heart to live a new life. One convict escapes the penalty but continues in sin; the other suffers the penalty but is redeemed from sin. Which man is saved? OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 37 Salvation from sin means freedom from sin itself— from its power and practice. It involves repentance and regeneration, and without such a total change of heart the divine absolution from guilt is impossible in any case. But this change of heart does not destroy the guilt of the individual's past disloyalty to his light. No good deeds of his present or future can ever abolish that deed of disloyalty. His deliberate act of treason is part of himself. For that deed he can- not forgive himself. It introduces disharmony into his spiritual world and separates between him and his God. His need of salvation, therefore, is his need of atonement that shall somehow reconcile him to himself, to his past disloyalty to his light and to his God. All this is essentially involved in any adequate conception of individualistic atonement. The subject is the more complex if we suppose the individual's sin to have assumed a social aspect — becoming crime, involving his fellows in the conse- quences, severing human ties, destroying brotherly love, and wounding the community to its heart. Can any atonement restore the equilibrium to such a disturbed spiritual universe? Nothing short of this can ever satisfy the enlightened ethical sense of man, to say nothing of the perfect holiness of God. In his "Idylls of the King" Tennyson pictures Arthur beginning his reign with a noble ideal and a just and prosperous kingdom. All goes well until the queen falls a victim to her guilty love for Laun- celot. The result is "Red ruin and breaking up of 38 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS laws". Arthurs ideal is shattered. His kingdom is rent by civil war and overrun by barbarians. The queen flees to a convent. There the king visits her before his last fateful battle of the West.When Guinevere hears the sound of his mailed feet along the halls she falls in deep repentance upon the floor. The king in noblest manhood and deepest love says, "Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God Forgives; do then for thine own soul the rest. I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine. * * * I cannot take thy hand ; that too is flesh And in the flesh thou has sinned ; and mine own flesh Here looking down on thine polluted, cries *I loathe thee' ; yet not less, O Guinevere, For I was ever virgin save for thee, My love through flesh hath wrought into my life So far that my doom is, I love thee still. The king loves Guinevere. He forgives her in the sense in which Royce defines forgiveness — "An af- fectionate remission of penalty." Yet he cannot take her to his heart in one last embrace before his death, even tho' she is repentant and delivered from the power of sin. Why not? Because holy love cannot ignore moral consequences. "An af- fectionate remission of penalty" does not atone for the irrevocable crime and its attendant ills. OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 39 "The forgiveness of sins" considered in its broad social and ethical bearings is thus seen to involve tremendous issues. Absolution from guilt is not the easy sentimental nod of the head or wink of the eye it is too often supposed to be. Dr. Leidham Green in his word on u The Steril- ization of the Hands" shows the extreme difficulty, yea, the utter impossibility of cleansing the hands of bacteria. Washing with hot water and soap — using sand or marble dust — does not avail. Turpen- tine, benzoline, alcoholic disinfection and various antiseptics equally fail to render the hands surgically clean. In fact the more the rubbing, the larger the swarm of bacteria aroused. This quest for physi- cal purity is a vivid metaphor of the impossibility of cleansing the hands from the stain of sin by any facile absolution. Pilate "took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man." But guilt will not thus easily wash off. Macbeth says, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash his blood clean from my hands? No; this my hand will rather the mulutitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." So Lady Mecbeth rises in her sleep and stands rubbing her hands, seeming thus to wash them for a quarter of an hour at a time. "Yet," says she, "here's a spot Here's the smell of the blood still : all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." The forgiveness of sins" (used here as synon- ymous with salvation or reconciliation) must include 40 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS not only the sinner's cure of his sin — his spiritual transformation, embracing repentance and regener- ation as we saw above: but must provide atonement to reconcile him to the memory of his sin and its consequence. Macbeth instinctively feels that his treason-crammed memory presents a tremendous obstacle to his peace. So he cries to his physician, "Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ?" Consider this question in the light of George Eliot's portrayal of Adam Bede. Bede, a strong, noble-minded carpenter, loves Hetty Sorrel, and pro- poses to make her his wife. Arthur Donnithorne, heir to the estate of Hayslope, conceives a passing fancy for Hetty and works her ruin. Hetty's suf- ferings, the birth of her child, her wanderings, her attempt to abandon the baby, her sentence to death for child-murder, are vividly portrayed. Arthur's remorse is intense when he hears of Hetty's plight. He sets himself to do what he can to repair the wrong and succeeds in having Hetty's sentence commuted to exile. Then Arthur and Adam meet. Adam's wrath is just and righteous. Adam has been deeply in- jured. Poor Hetty, his promised bride, has been cast body and soul into an unlighted abyss of woe. The equilibrium of the moral universe has been dis- OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 41 turbed. Any facile absolution of Arthur's guilt, so far from being commendable, would throw the whole ethical order of the world into utter chaos. The very thought of such possibilty outrages the deepest instinct of the human soul. A gospel which tells the sinner how to escape from the rapids, where the victims of his sins are still struggling hopelessly, and promises him celestial joy with no smoking Sinai in his memory is a gospel of deception. But when Adam sees the marks of suffering in Arthur's face and learns of his determination to make every satis- faction within his power, even exiling himself from Hayslope rather than have Adam and his friends forsake the place, the heart of the carpenter is touch- ed, and he extends his hand in forgiveness. That forgiveness is the "affectionate remission of penalty". Without such unmistakable evidence of repentance, even such forgiveness would not have been possible. And though Adam gives his heart with his hand in forgiveness, yet he says to Arthur, "There's a sort of damage done, Sir, that cannot be made up for." No human efforts can atone for it. That is the havoc wrought in the lives and hopes of others. So in "Paradise Lost" Milton represents Adam as repenting when he sees his sin in the light of its destructive effects on his descendants. His sorrow is not so much for his personal loss as for the far- reaching misery entailed upon others. Man must have an atonement not merely for sin in himself, but for its memory and its conse- quences. Anything less than this is an incomplete 42 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS reconciliation of man to his spiritual universe. Is such atonement possible? Prof. Royce says, "Could any possible new deed, done by, or on behalf of the community and done by some one who is not stained by the traitor's deed, introduce into this human world an element which as far as it went could be, in whatever mea- sure, genuinely reconciling?" His answer is that a triumph over treason can be accomplished on behalf of the community by some faithful and suffering servant of the community thus: "first, by a deed or various deeds for which only just this treason furnishes the opportunity; and secondly, the world as transformed by this creative deed, is better than It would have been had all else remained the same, but had that deed of treason not been done at all. That is, the new creative deed has made the new world better than it was before the blow of treason fell." Thus Milton's Adam must be assured not only of his own pardon, but "from his eyes the film is removed by three drops from the well of life instill- ed" and he beholds the unfolding grace of God in redemption until "He who comes thy Saviour, shall recure Not by destroying Satan, but his works In thee and in thy seed." In the rapturous vision of Christ's perfect vic- tory over sin in Paradise Regained, Adam descended "greatly in peace of thought". OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 43 Christ on the Cross in a picture of divine love suffering for sin. But the vision of Christ on the cross must be supplemented by the furthur vision of Christ on the throne. Not only the suffering of love but the victory of love is essential to our sense of reconciliation. Evil must be overcome of good. The wounds caused by our sins must be healed. The scales of justice must be balanced. The equili- brium of the moral order must be restored. Antag- onistic forces must be reconciled in the complete triumph of the goodness of God. The discord in- troduced by treason into the music of the earth must become to our ear a great minor chord serving only to enrich the harmony of the universal oratorio. All this is involved in the reconciliation of the "traitor" to the spiritual universe. "No baseness or cruelty of treason so deep or so tragic shall enter our human world but that loyal love shall be able in due time to oppose to just that deed of treason its fitting deed of atonement." Even so, in the poetry of the Millenium, "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fading to- gether; and a little child shall lead them — And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain — for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Out of what has been said above emerges logi- cally the last element we shall consider. IV RECONCILIATION to God— true articulation with one's spiritual universe — carries with it satisfaction to one's total concrete religious con- sciousness. The concrete religious consciousness represents more than the intellectual element in the conscious life of man. It includes the whole energy of man as a rational spirit. It is emotional as well as intel- lectual and ethical as well as emotional. There can be no religion without thought. Only as man conceives an object can he have any relation to it. Not to be related to some object recognized as divine is to have no religion. There can be no religion without emotion. Thought and feeling are inseparable. Man can have no feeling of dependence without a conception of something or someone on whom he depends. There can be no religion without conscience. Conscience is a combination of thought and feeling — of the knowledge of good from evil and the sense of obligation to choose the one and eschew the other. Thus religious faith involves the combined ac- tivity of thought, emotion, and conscience. Elim- inate thought and nothing remains but mechanical action. Remove emotion and thought arouses no response. Take away conscience and thought is not translated into life. The concrete religious con- sciousness, therefore, is a function of the entire man. 44 OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 45 So long as any of the fundamental interests of man's nature are overlooked there can be no last- ing satisfaction for his religious consciousness. These fundamental interests are outlined and com- bined by Jesus in a single sentence. "If you know these things happy are ye if ye do them." "If ye know" — that is the head. "Happy are ye" — that is the heart, "If ye do them" — that is the hand, the will, the conscience. Head, Hand, Heart, know, do, enjoy. To the head the universe must be con- stitutionally rational. To the heart it must be be- nevolent. To the will it must insure the triumph of eternal goodness. Sometimes in the historic development of reli- gious faith the head gains a temporary ascendency. Religion then becomes intellectual and the great creeds are born. At other times the heart occupies the throne. Religion then becomes emotional and great revivals ensue. Again the hand holds the reins and religion runs out into great sacrifices and benevolences. When the intellect denies full re- ligious rights to the heart, it is soon compelled to do its work over again. When no sufficient place is left in religion for the intellect, it soon begins a crusade for recognition. While no theological sys- tem is secure whose conception of God the moral nature cannot approve. Thus religion always reflects the stage of men- tal and moral development attained by an individual or a community. The consciousness of God is bound up with man's very life and that consciousness he is compelled to express in some way even in his 46 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS most childish stage. From the lips of Philipps Brooks, Hellen Keller received her first clear mes- sage concerning God. "O I knew all that", she said, "but I did not know what to call Him." He whom in her physical blindness, deafness, and dumbness she had worshipped in comparative ignorance, was then made known unto her as God the Father Al- mighty. The divine Being has been conceived in most different ways — as many and as one, as natural and as spiritual, as particular and as universal. In re- ligion as in other things, such as chemistry and as- tronomy and architecture and music and painting the primitive were the rudest and crudest forms. Yet rude and crude as they were they were the expres- sion of what was then highest and most rational in man reaching out towards what was highest and most rational in the universe. An English trader landed in Africa and tra- veled at great expense far into the country to buy cattle from 1 a native chief. The chief drove the cat- tle a hundred miles to meet the trader. Just when they met the chief discovered that he had forgotten his fetich. No plea of haste, no promise of reward, no threat to depart, nothing could induce the chief to bargain in stock without his fetich. So the Eng- lishman waited for days until the runner returned with the charm. Shall our Christian missionaries laugh to redicule the ignorant African's religion? No. His principle is right. He needs larger truth for his intellect and a worthier object for his devo- tion. When he gets that, when he leaves his ma- OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 47 terial fetich and finds his spiritual God, the presence of the divine Spirit will be his charm and he will not trade cattle without God. The awakened spirit of man in its struggle from the lowest to the highest religious consciousness cannot remain satisfied with its ruder conceptions of the divine Being. The thought of God outgrows the possibility of being confined to any object what- ever; and man rises on stepping stones of his dead conceptions of God and His relations to the universe to higher conceptions, until he attains satisfaction to his concrete religious consciousness in its high- est development. The only Deity the religious faith of the twen- tieth century can accept is the one universal Spirit who is manifested at different levels in nature and humanity. Mr. Herbert Spencer says in his Ec- clesiastical Institutes, "The power manifest through- out the world distinguished as material is the same power which in ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness — This gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic interpretation to the universe. " How then is God's relation to the universe to be conceived? The Jewish religion emphasized the thought of God as entirely transcending the world. The stoic philosophy emphasized the immanence of God in the world and in human life. The Christian re- ligion in its symbolism of the "Trinity" combines in its conception of God's relation to the universe the ideas of His transcendence and His immanence. 48 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS By the transcendence of God is meant that he exceeds, excels, transcends the universe. He is over all things, blessed forevermore. "In the be- ginning He created the heavens and the earth." "Before the mountains were brought forth or ever the earth and sea were formed, even from everlast- ing to everlasting Thou art God." The danger in the doctrine of the divine transcend- ence is that of isolating God from his world. So the deist represents God as creating the world and winding it up as a clock and going off to the peri- phery to watch it spin. The weights and springs and wheels and cogs and face and hands constitute the clock and determine its operations. In the uni- verse the laws of nature constitute the weights and springs and cogs and wheels. As there is no place in the operation of the clock for the clock maker, so there is no place in the course of nature for God. God becomes an Absentee from His world, exiled by His own creatures. Divine providence becomes an impossibility and prayer an absurdity. Under the power of deistic thought men speak of God as the source of all reality, yet attribute independent existence to all modes of being. They call God infinite, yet over against Him they set a sep- arate and finite world. As Spinoza says, "At one time they affirm the reality of the finite, and at another time the reality of the infinite, but rarely bring the two together and face the problem, how there can be a finite which is independent of the in- finite or an infinite which is independent of the finite." OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 49 Such an opposition of independent existences ren- ders the conception of both essentially finite. In the recoil of thought from deism the rela- tion of God to the universe is defined by the term immanence. By the immanence of God is meant that he is not beyond the world but rather the all- pervasive soul of the world. He is in all things, blessed forever. When the universe was conceived as small it was easy to localize God in a dwelling place some- where beyond the limits. But to-day we can ima- gine nothing beyond the limits of the universe. To localize God beyond such limits has, therefore, be- come an impossible thought. If we are to think of God as anywhere we must think of Him as everywhere. Thus certain hilltop men, like the Psalmists, caught glimpses of the divine omnipresence in an age whose thought localized God in some distant heaven: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there ; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there; If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there shall Thy hand lead me, And Thy right hand shall hold me." Once men thought of God as separated from His world, governing it from without. But now it has become apparent to all students of the subject that the universe is operated from within. The 50 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS forces that are found at work are resident forces, existing and acting within the system. If God is the operant force of the universe and it is operated from within, then He is within with His operative will and energy. So we no longer think of God as building up the universe as the engineer builds an engine, but rather as the engineer builds up his own body — a construction from within from the cen- tral germ of life in the tiniest cell of protoplasm to the full grown body with the pervasive and dominat- ing soul. Thus "Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush alive with God." God is not an Absentee. He is not the Great First Cause. He is not a celestial Mechanic who built the universe, equipped it with natural laws, hurled it out into motion in space and now and then interferes with its movements just to reveal His con- tinued oversight. God is the One Great Eternal Underlying Ground of all existence in Heaven and in earth. The great musician is as much the cause of the last note in the rendition of the symphony as he is of the first. The first note struck does not cause the second, nor the second the third. The soul of the musician is the underlying ground of the entire production. So He who in the first spring of creation caused the earth to bring forth "herbs bearing fruit after their kind," has been the cause of every a- wakening of life in creation since. If in the begin- OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 5 I ning He separated the "waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament" every falling raindrop bears upon its face the evidence that the same separating Power still operates. If in the beginning He "formed man's body from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life till man became a living soul," bearing the image and likeness of God, even so has every babe since Adam owed its life to the same creative Power. "We are in the presence of an infinite and Eter- nal Energy from which all things proceed." "From Him and through Him and unto Him are all things." "He upholds all things by the word of His power." God is not only immanent in nature but also in human nature. Because he manifests Himself in the life of humanity, we see the human race develop- ing from its infantile beginning toward a future of unspeakable glory — to the "manifestations of the sons of God." "One thing history makes sure," says Matthew Arnold, "that there is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." That power "works within man both to will and to do His good pleasure." The ultimate triumph of the good, therefore, is not assured of attainment regard- less of man's desire and cooperation. But the fact of man's spirituality and his inalienable divine in- heritance renders him forever incapable of perma- nent satisfaction with anything less than the univer- sal triumph of righteousness. 52 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS So the Christian religion "recognizes that God is neither beyond the world nor simply the all-perva- sive soul of the world; but is essentially self-mani- festing, while remaining eternally self-identical in this self-manifestation." The fullness of God is not exhausted in His manifestations. He exceeds, excels, transcends them all. On the other hand He is not a Being separated from the world in which He is self-revealed, but the spirit operative in every part of the world. He is self-revealed in all that exists but most clearly and fully revealed in the self-conscious life of man. As we know more of the mind and heart of Tennyson through his "In Me- moriam" than through his construction of a kite, so we have a higher manifestation of God in the moral nature of man than in the material order of the world. We bear His "image and likeness." Hence we come to conceive of God as self-conscious Be- ing. "God is spirit." He is the Universal Spirit manifesting Himself on different levels in the na- tural law of the material world and in the moral law of the spiritual world. Thus the world and man are "Everywhere bound by gold chains about the feet of God." No device is needed to bring together God and His world. They have never been sep- arated. "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." We have seen that the danger in the doctrine of the divine transcendence is that of isolating God from His world. On the other hand the danger in the doctrine of the divine immanence is that of identifying God with His word. As the one may OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 53 be deceived into deism, so the other may be seduc- ed into pantheism. It is one thing to say that God is in the world; it is a very different thing to say that God is the world or the world is God. It is true that the highest life of man cannot be realized when sever- ed from the life of God, but it is not true that union with the life of God negates man's distinction from God or destroys his consciousness of himself. In our thought of the divine being and His re- lation to the universe we must preserve and com- bine the transcendence of deism and the im- manence of pantheism. This can only be done through the conception of God as the universal self- conscious Spirit who manifests Himself on different levels in the world and in man. He is the "Infi- nite and Eternal Energy" that thinks and feels and purposes and executes. He is the "power not our- selves that works for righteousness." "By Him were all things made." "By Him all things subsist." "We are also his offspring. He is not far from any one of us; in Him we live and move and have our being." And so we can "Speak to Him for He hears, And Spirit with spirit can meet; Closer is He than breathing, And nearer than hands or feet." Such a union with the living God satisfies not mere- ly the intellectual and ethical but also the emotional nature of man. 54 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS Man needs God as a "Present Help in time of trouble." "Blessed is the n^an whose strength is in Thee: In whose heart are the highways of Zion." The birds hide themselves from the thunder clouds. When the light above the clouds begins to appear along their edges it calls out the birds again. What if there were no light above the cloud? Then the cloud of sorrow has no golden edge and there are no joyous birds to sing. But since "God reigns let the earth rejoice." Man needs God in the joy of life. In buoyant health you rise early some morning and go out to sniff the fragrance, see the beauty and hear the har- monies of nature. You are in jubilant spirits. Your heart overflows with gratitude. In such moments of joy your entire being cries out for the living God. Love demands expression. You need someone to thank for all this manifestation of good- ness. The completion of your happiness requires that you give thanks to the Giver of such gifts. Some time ago in a disaster in the Pennsyl- vania mines several men were buried alive. Res- cuers worked eighteen days and nights to open the subterranean prison before giving up all hope. Just when they were ready to throw down their tools in despair someone discovered what seemed to be foot prints. Could those men be alive still? They took up pick and spade and soon reached the open- ing where the men were imprisoned. A shout of joy ascended. The men were alive. The glad tid- OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 55 ings were made known to the friends above. The news spread and the entire community, thrilled with gladness, gathered at the mine to welcome the lost back to life. Three thousand people stood waiting, all swayed by the same emotion. When the res- cued men were brought to the surface that vast crowd with one impulse began singing "Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow." Professed in- fidels were there. Scoffers w T ere there. The non- religious were there. But in every heart was grat- itude and to express that emotion they needed a praise-hearing God and a Christian hymn! "Love to that w T hich is eternal and infinite, " says Spinoza, "Feeds the soul with unmingled joy, a joy untainted with any sorrow. This we ought to desire and seek after with all our powers." Only in union with God can the total concrete religious consciousness of man be satisfied. Such union is the open secret of life's conscious unity and peace and power. Men who find temporary satisfaction in sen- sible and social conditions are those w r ho live in such a healthy surface activity as prevents reflec- tion. They are children w T ho know neither the w r orld nor themselves. If once their spirit opens its eyes and catches but a gleam of light that streams through the rift in the clouds of its sensible firma- ment, they can never again be engrossed by the sen- suous. In his religious consciousness man becomes explicitly aware of w T hat he has always been impli- citly conscious, namely, that his true life is to be realized only in union with the Divine. This is the 56 SOME COGNITIVE ELEMENTS thought of Augustine's classic utterance in the first book of his Confessions: — "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee." Whoever thus walks with God feels at home in his Father's house though like Enoch he dwell in the forest primeval. Of such an one Job said "Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." All the great reinforcing powers of the spiritual world are in league with him who is in league with God. Thus Browning pictures David with his harp arousing Saul from sinful despair. He lifts a soul into union with God. Now he sees a new face on all nature, gets a new view of life, observes the operation of a new law. Old things pass away and behold all things are made new. So David says: "I know not too well how I found my way home in the night. There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive." David walks on air in the midst of the spiritual universe that is all about him. "E'en the serpent that slid away silent, — he felt the new Law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers ; The same worked in the heart of the cedar, and moved the vine bowers. And the little brooks witnessing, murmured persistent and low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices, "E'en so! it is so." OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 57 "All nations know that it is the religious con- sciousness in which they possess the truth; and they have therefore regarded their religion as that which gives dignity and peace to their lives. All that awakes doubt and perplexity, all sorrow and care, are limited interests of finitude we leave behind on the 'bark and shoal of time.' And, as on the sum- mit of a mountain, removed from all hard distinc- tion of detail, we calmly overlook the limitations of the landscape and the world, so by religion we are lifted above all the obstructions of finitude. In re- ligion, therefore, man beholds his own existence in a transfigured reflection, in which all the divisions, all the crude lights and shadows of the world, are softened into eternal peace under the beams of a spiritual sun. It is in this native land of the spirit that the waters of oblivion flow, from which it is given to Psyche to drink and forget all her sorrows; for here the darkness of life becomes a transparent dream-image, through which the light of eternity shines in upon us." — Hegel. Thus man's concrete rational satisfaction grows out of his true articulation with the Univer- sal Spirit. "As the marsh-hen builds in the watery sod, Behold, I will build me a nest in the greatness of God. I will fly in the greatness of God, as the marsh-hen flies, In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies, By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends into the watery sod, I will heartily lay me ahold of the greatness of God." Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: April 2005 PreservationTechnoIogies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVAT.ON 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 919 647 8