MIEDITATIONS
ON THE
ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANIT
BY
R. LARD C()LLIER,: ID.
BOS T ON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1876




Copy)right,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS,
1876.
Cambridge:
Press of John Wilson &' Son.




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"Pain's furnace-heat within me quivers;
God's breath upon the flame doth blow;
And all my heart in anguish shivers
And trembles at the fiery glow:
And yet I whisper:'As God will!'
And in his hottest fire stand still.
He comes, and lays my heart all heated
On the hard anvil, minded so,
Into his own fair shape to beat it
With his great hammer, blow on blow:
And yet I whisper:'As God will!'
And at his heaviest blows hold still.
He takes my softened heart and beats it;
The sparks fly off at every blow;
He turns it o'er and o'er and heats it,
And lets it cool, and makes it glow:
And yet I whisper:'As God will!'
And in his mighty hand hold still.
Why should I murmur? for the sorrow
Thus only longer-lived would be;
Its end may come - and will to-morrow,
When God has done his work in me:
So I say trusting:'As God will!'
And, trusting to the end, hold still.
He kindles for my profit purely,
Affliction's glowing, fiery brand;
And all his heaviest blows are surely
Inflicted by a Father's hand:
So I say praising:'As God will!'
And hope in him and suffer still."








TO
DEDICATE this little book to Thee;
not to thy Memory, but to thy Presence.
Whilst yet the Heavenly Glory was filling and
flooding the chamber of death, and thy Spirit, quite
upon the confines of the Eternal World, held the
credential of prophecy, thou didst foretell my utter
loneliness and dreariness without thy bodily presence, and didst promise that thy Real Presence
should abide with me.
Thy dying words have been fulfilled. No day
has come without the loneliness and the dreariness,
but I have gone to duty when it has been oh, so




8                 Dedication.
hard, and oh, so dark, because of the assurance of
thy Presence even in these hard and dark places.
We have had sweet communion upon  the
"things of the Spirit," and thou dost well know
the thoughts, and art familiar with the sentences
of these " Meditations."
Whatever in this book is untrue, or uncertain,
or incomplete, is mine; whatever is true, or noble
or helpful, is thine.
R. LAIRD COLLIER.
London, February 24, 1876.




CONTENTS








PAGE
INTRODUCTION.....13
I.
THE ONLY GOD....23
II.
THE REAL CHRIST.......41
III.
THE KNOWN SPIRIT....              61
IV.
THE RIGHT RELIGION......                81
V.
THE SURE HELL........101
VI.
THE TRUE HEAVEN....... 121








INTRODUCTION








"Teach how, yet, what here we know,
To the unknown leads the way,
As the light that, faint and low,
Prophesies consummate day:
How the little arc before us
Proves the perfect circle o'er us: -
How the marr'd unequal scheme
That on all sides here we meet,
Either is a lawless dream,
Or must somewhere be complete; -
Where or when, if near or distant,
Known but to the One Existent.
- He is. We meanwhile repair
From the noise of human things
To the fields of larger air,
To the shadow of his wings:
Listening for his message only
In the wild with Nature lonely."








~  FTER   reading  Feuerbach's  Essence  of
Cliristianity,a Bichner's Force and HMatter,4 and other books of like tendencies,
I was led to look into my own heart to see if my
faith in Christ and Christianity had been either
destroyed or disturbed. I meant to make honest
work of it.  The forms in which I had held the
"Old Faith" had in many cases been modified
and in some wholly given up.  But the "things
essential," "the things which remain," became
more real and more dear to me as I disencumbered them  of their traditional and conventional
a. Das Wesen des Christenthums, von Ludwig Feuerbach.
Leipzig, 1850.
3. Kraft und Stoff, von Ludwig Biichner. Leipzig, 1874.
2




18                Introduction.
phraseology, and consented to conform their outward expression with modern consciousness, and
the original and permanent spirit of Christianity
itself. Christianity is real; it has permanent contents; these are the most absolute ideas of spirit,
life, duty, and aspiration, of which we know.
Learning does not wage warfare on these sweet
and sacred intuitions and sentiments of the soul,
but it does, and must urge ceaseless and successful
opposition  to  the  superstitious  and  incredible
forms in which they have frequently been held.
These " Meditations," then, grew  out of my
readings and inquiries, and were originally intended to meet, in. some measure, many objections
to Christianity, half formed if not wholly accepted,
by serious and devout minds.  However, I have
deemed it best to shorten and simplify as much as
I well could, these chapters, and thereby to seek
for this little book a much wider reading and usefulness.
It does not assume, therefore, to be a critique
upon such works as The Essence of Christianity




Introduction.               19
and Force and Matter, although in many instances
I use the thoughts and occasionally the language
of these books, sometimes to show how they fall in
with the truth of Christ, and sometimes to expose
their fallacies and sophistries.
I have tried to find in my own heart the reason
of my faith-to make it plain to myself that there
was reality in religion, and enduring significance
and saving grace in Christianity; and I here attempt
to state the grounds of my faith rather as I feel
them, than as I can put them into consecutive arguments. Logic, in its outward forms, is the vehicle
of conviction and truth to comparatively few minds,
whilst most are led to their deepest and enduring
sentiments through their spiritual perceptions.
We cannot hold longer, against the New Light,
the Old Faith in its old form. The Old Faith




20                Introduction.
cannot perish, because it is real and true and good.
But it will and must take its own form, and in the
providence of God that form  will be adequate,
reasonable, and after the fashion of the times.
Heretofore, many have taken alarm  when the
perishable has perished and when the symbol has
been proven to be superstitious, as though religion
and worship would cease in the earth. But religion
and worship have survived these changes in the
outward dogmas and methods, and Christianity is
more real and helpful by reason of the pulling down
of these obstructions and the crumbling away of all
authoritative and ecclesiastical interpretations.
Logic and reason must be met and satisfied.
Christianity cannot survive-no form of religion
can survive —which ignores their functions and
claims. But religion is not based in these and does
not make its first, certainly not its final appeal to
them.




Introduction.               21
There is some knowledge  greater than  any
speech, too subtle for any definitions.  These
"things of the spirit" we must "feel after" if
haply we may find them.
If the spirit of man find God and can catch
foregleams of immortality, this spirit will readily
and sweetly make friends of reason and the logical
understanding. Superstition has confused reason
and confounded logic, and when these have found
place and courage, they have entered vigorous
protest.
Christianity is sufficient to itself.  When its
temporary and casual forms become an offence to
fine sentiment and common sense, they must give
way-die out.  Leave it free, spiritually free, free
as Christ himself was free, and each age and each
civilization will give Christianity eyes and voice,
hands and feet, as it shall please God.








I








THE ONLY GOD








"But neither passion nor sorrow I hear in this rhythmic
steady course,
Only the movement resistless and strong of some all-pervading force;
The one universal life which moves the whole of the outward
plan,
WVhich throbs in winds, and waters, and flowers, in insect,
and bird, and man.
0, would that the unknown finer touch which makes us other
than those,
Did not hold us so far asunder in soul, from their harmony
and repose!
The self-same fountain doth life and growth to us and to
them impart,
But only at moments we taste and know the peace which is
Nature's heart.
And yet it may be that long, long hence, when aeons of
effort have pass'd,
We shall come, not blindly impelled, but free, to the orbit of
order at last,
And a finer peace shall be wrought out of pain than the stars
in their courses know! -
Ah me! but my soul is in sorrow till then, and the feet of
the years are slow! "








OD is Spirit.  This much we can say of
God with great assurance of faith, only
because we can say it through our spirits.
Because our spirits affirm there is a God we believe
in God. Not because there is a tradition of God;
not for the reason that the Bible, and the catechism, and the Church have all taught God and
about God; nor yet for the reason that it is conventional to believe in God; nor yet for the reason
that, upon the whole, it gives us less anxiety of
mind and less perplexity of logic to accept the
doctrine of God, do we give our credence to it.
But we believe in God because our spirits affirm
Spirit. He offers some measure of insult to the integrity of his own spirit, who attempts to make the
existence of God the subject of intellectual proof.




30              The Only God.
To try to prove some things is to demonstrate
unbelief in them. My inquiry is in the interest
of faith, so I have no formal arguments to offer to
bolster up that which the only tendency of such
arguments is to destroy.
When a man's spirit is crying out for the living
God, to offer him a logical demonstration of God's
existence, is like kindling a fire of straw to warm
a man shivering in a Siberian frost.
The only logic of God is on this wise, - God is
God; because we cannot prove him to be, we must
acknowledge what we cannot deny, accept what
we cannot refuse. Not to believe in some God is
insanity, every sane man's soul refers itself to that
which is eternal and infinite, as time and space are
the symbols of something more real than time and
space.
Disquisitions upon God are usually apologies for
the God defined. Theodicy is a science by which
glory is ascribed to a being who, brought into the
plane of humanity, would be called unfair and
cruel; that is, if any man should do what church




The Only God.               31
theology says God has done and is doing, he would
be justly called a human monster. Most sermons
to which we have listened upon the goodness of
God go to show that it is a great wonder that God
is no worse, and that herein is ground for rejoicing,
that, whilst God has made it probable - the most
likely of all things-that most of the beings
whom he has made and put into a disadvantageous
set of circumstances will go into final and irrevocable perdition, it is a great mercy that there is
any chance for the likeliest of us to escape it.
When a man is satiated he may not inquire
whether there is food in the larder; when a child
is content with his toys, he may not notice the
presence or absence of his mother from the house.
When a man is hungry, then he wants to know
that there is " a haddock in the press," as the Scotch
would say. When the child has notched his finger
the bleeding frightens him, and he rushes to his
mother.
Our hearts are not always on the watch for the
coming and going of God, nor need our lips be like




32             The Only God.
the dial in a gold-broker's room, telling the exact
state of the spiritual market; but when we get very
hungry, or our hearts get full of grief, so that we
are clean undone, we cry out for our God. We
may have been taught to call Him Jove or Jesus,
or even Mary; still he' or she is our only refuge in
distress, the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land.
I cannot hold controversy with an Atheist; he
has me wholly at a disadvantage, he has the first
affirmation that- "there is no God."
I cannot prove to him the second on my part,
that there is. I-e can deride my superstition; I
dare not sneer at him.  The infidel can sneer, the
believer would undo his faith by the same tactics.
When a man says he does not believe in God, I
am sure he is either very fortunate or very unfortunate. He has never been hungry for God, never
thirsted for living waters, never known the bleedings of a vicarious and grief-stricken soul, so he
has been fortunate in this. Dare I say so?  He
counts it fortune. I say in reality, he has been




The Only God.                   33
most unfortunate -he has not yet breathed the
breath of life.
The ocean sighs, it never sings: the winter winds,
when they come, moan, never clap their hands in
joy. All winds, too, come from heaven, so we cannot mistake the key to which its music is all set.
3Men will make glad music on a harp, but put it in
one's window and let nature play upon its strings
and the music is all minor, sombre, sad, sighing,
wailing.
But this is the highest life.  The multitude rejoice together, the saints dwell in solitary places.
All nature is in the agony of redemption,-it is
agony, -man redeems himself by agony; but there
are bright clouds, and glory unspeakable, all about
the grief of struggleo
So this man who says there is no God is a poor
unfortunate brother, who has never felt the need
of God; and, it is strange to say, these people are
the product of civilization —the savages all have
gods; the props of what we call civilization take
the place now and then of God, only for a time
3




34                 The Only  God.
however; they rot in the earth and the spirit falls,
only to get upon surer foundation.  God will claim
the heart, and only comes when man has no other
resource or help. So He magnifies himself into
God.  If one could dispose of Him like a problem
of mathematics, or make a telescopic examination
of Him, then He would not be God at all.  He
is God, because He is unsearchable, and His ways
past finding out.   God is not only a fact, but a
light; not only a truth, but a life.
"Come in the glory of Thine excellence,
Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light,
And let the shimmer of Thy chariot wheels
Burn through the cracks of night - so slowly, Lord,
To lift myself to Thee with hands of toil,
Cl'mbing the slippery cliff of unheard prayer.
Lift up a hand among my idle days -
One beckoning finger, —I will cast aside
The clogs of earthly circumstance, and run
Up the broad highways where the countless worlds
Sit ripening in the summer of Thy love."
The history of the God-idea helps us but little
towards a definition, for this is a history of gods.
The gods of the peoples are as dissimilar as the
races and nations themselves. Not only has each




lThe Only God.                35
nation had its God, but each century, I may add,
each individual. In tracing the development of
this idea in the old scriptures of the world, we
trace simply the dominant characteristics of the
times and peoples themselves. As we approximate
the beginning of history, and get back into the
times when the aspect of nature was terrible, the
being presumed to be the author of nature, or
the master of nature, is terrible, - the awful, the
sublime, and majestic.
When the habits of the people became pastoral
and peaceful, God became a good shepherd; and
when friendship became the bond of the social,
structure, and the home became a sanctity, God
became a friend, a father, and a brother.
An exception must be made in the interest
of history, which I cannot stop to make in the
interest of dogmatism. Christianity, in its essence,
unifies and fixes, as I believe, the one fundamental
sentiment that makes God of any, and therefore
so much, value to men-his imminence, only this
makes God real at all; that he is not afar off, but




36              The Only God.
here and now; not so much a creator of worlds as
a re-creator of men; not a spirit, but the Spirit of
all, in all, and through all. Language, when unperverted and left to tell its own story, tells the
truth. The catechisms and theologic treatises result
in the unity of conception, by what they call attributes. Men attribute certain things to God, and the
highest of all these conceptions is God.
The most we know about God in a technical
way is what the most god-like men have told us;
and here we beg all claims to definition, in the
use of the term "god-like," for if we disclaim all
original idea of God, we cannot know what is like
God. But the highest, purest, noblest ideal of
being we call God, and the men who approach that
in their lives, we call divine men. Then it is
no great wonder that a superstitious age should
have called such an exceptional symbol of that
conception as Jesus was - God, and that a superstitious church should perpetuate the claim. There
is no little human vanity in this; to see God and
make God human is to make humanity God, and




The Only God.                37
this is a great exaltation of men, for you and I are
humanity.
The idea of humanity is incomplete without the
idea of God; humanity refers itself to something
to which it is responsible, and so has always worshipped -always will.
And to this end definite ideas have never been
essential, because men  have worshipped where
ideas of God have not been the same. God lights
up the prayer-book of the Jew and of the Christian, he escapes confusing phrases, and answers to
the call of the needy heart. The primitive man of
the primitive forests beats out a dolorous strain
upon the rudest instrument  it is worship; the
Christian gives up his spirit to the gorgeous ritualism of organ, trained musicians, incense, and
ceremonial by priest and attendants- that is also
worship.  The thing essential is a hungry and
thirsty soul. When we have put together unity,
eternity, intelligence, beneficence, power, and imminence, we have affirmed of God the highest ideal
that the most lucid and elevated spirits of the race




38                The Only God.
have believed and felt. These qualities of being,
when finite, constitute the highest man, when projected into the infinite, are God.
Then that worship which lifts man towards this
ideal and brings him  into communion, reverence,
awe, and love, is the one best helpfulness. To
break away from this is death and despair, before
it becomes death and hell.  To breathe this air of
worship is to turn the spirit of the sick to the
open window where perfumes and invigoration are
wafted in.
Then I conclude that only that doubt damns
which has in it no element of devoutness and
aspiration.  When a man says in his intellect
"There is no God," I still trust his heart will
batter away at his intellect day and night, until
the heart makes the intellect see visions,- for
really there is a higher nature in every man which
enfolds the intellect, and takes it captive. There
comes a time, I trust, in every man's life, when no
intervention of cold speculation can shut out the
need of God from  the heart; and if it occur that




The Only God.                 39
man in the dreary winter days is a pessimist, we
will believe that when the first spring cays come
back he will be an optimist, the doubt will succumb
to faith, and this highest and truest nature will
affirm there is a God, who will answer the man
that cries unto Him: there is no deaf heaven, and
no vain prayer.  The hearing God will answer
"not always according to the haste of the praying
child, but surely according to the calm course of
His own infinite law of love."
^^Ba^*








II








THE REAL CHRIST








Like a cradle rocking, rocking,
Silent, peaceful, to and fro,
Like a mother's sweet looks dropping
On the little face below,
Hangs the green earth, swinging, turning,
Jarless, noiseless, safe and slow;
Falls the light of God's face bending
Down and watching us below.
And as feeble babes that suffer,
Toss and cry, and will not rest,
Are the ones the tender mother
Holds the closest, loves the best, 
So when we are weak and wretched,
By our sins weighed down, distressed,
Then it is that God's great patience
Holds us closest, loves us best.
O great heart of God! whose loving
Cannot hindered be nor crossed;
Will not weary, will not even
In our death itself be lost
Love divine! of such great loving,
Only mothers know the cost -
Cost of love, which all love passing,
Gave a Son to save the lost.
Saxe Holm.








HAVE little hope of disposing aly mind
to greater faith in Christ: indeed, this
is not my aim.  The wavelets of rose
odours are not fit subject for intellectual speculation
and discussion. The philosophy of one's love for
one's mother, or the magic power of a memento,
cannot very well be defined: to attempt definition
is to unsanctify; here assertion is vulgarity, sometimes hypocrisy.
Then, if my words seem without logical connection, I beg to attribute this to the subject I treat,
and ask to be followed -not so much in thought
as in heart - from the verbal form to the spiritual
import, where I promise some degree of sequence.
1 have a strong persuasion that I may be led to




48              The Real Christ.
say somewhat to strengthen faith in the faith of
Christ.  To have faith in Christ is something,
though very little: to have the faith of Christ is
every thing,- this is to have heaven and God.
Here is a life whose passion was truth, whose
pleasure was purity, whose product was peace.
We partake of these holy delights in some measure
when we partake of the faith of his life.  Christ
had great faculty for leading men to these,-to religion, to God, and so was a mediator between man
and God. Not a mediator between man and himself,
for he came not to show us himself, but to show us
the Father. So faith in God is the faith of Christ;
the very mission of the Master is hindered and
defeated when faith stands still in him. This is
obstruction, not mediation. If this spiritual instrument stops the vision by the murkiness of its own
lenses, this obscurity is simply the dust that ages
of false and scholastic speculation have accumulated.  This brushed away, and the spiritual eye
is unhindered, ay, helped to see that which, without it, it could see not at all, or at least as afar off,




The Real Christ.               49
minified, a speck clothed in haziness. There is a
sense in which, therefore, faith in Christ hinders
and annuls the faith of Christ.
The view which makes of the Christ a substitute
is therefore only a false and vicious view, whether
it regards the action of his life in either direction
toward man or God.  He is a substitute for neither; he is a mediator of both.
The eye of the Deity needs no medium, his heart
none. There is in the loving Father no antithetical
disposition toward his children. He was as near
to Adam as to a Kempis, only a Kempis knew his
nearness as Adam could not.  The Christ became
a mediator of the knowledge, not of the fact.
One form of Christian speculation has made the
sufferings of Christ have reference to God. That
in some way Christ made it possible for God to
relieve Himself of a moral difficulty; that Christ
made it possible for God to be just in Himself, and
merciful toward His children.  We, on our part,
cannot see in this speculation any element of
reality; to us, it is false and harmful, -false to
4




50              The Real Christ.
theodicy, and harmful to morality. It calls something justice in God which we should call injustice
in man. Then this speculation is wholly a needless
one. If the sufferings of Christ in any wise modified either the disposition or enactment of God,
this is not our part or share in the matter.
We know that the holy life of Christ, its absolute purity and beauty, the holy death of Christ,
the seeds of which were planted in the voluntariness with which he took upon his heart the suffering
and sin of the whole world, are an atonement; they
bring a moral power into the world- a new kind
of power - a new current of life which moves men
to pity and mercy.
The real Christ is the law of the conscience made
flesh; this law is the ideal God, and His will; then
" God manifest in the flesh " is Christ.
Whether any human being in actuality ever
realized this law in himself has no essential relevancy to our discussion; the effort to get rid of
this conjecture and belief imposes a tedious mental
and greater moral task upon him who attempts it.




The Real Christ.                 51
It is much easier to accept Christ as the demonstration of God, than to deny it: this latter brings
great perplexity in every way, for the universal
Christian consciousness has invested Christ with
this ideal, if in himself he is not such; and so far
criticism has made sad work of separating between
the intrinsic and extraneous reality, -both  are
real.
Christianity has succeeded in giving to its votaries a visible, living, personal law, in the Christ of
its Gospels. If in himself he was not this realization, the Christian thought has invested him with
it. There is in humanity a need of this personification of the law  of the conscience.  Plato, the
intellectual Messiah, said of God, " I have sought
Him, but He cannot be found; though every ray
of the sun became my torch, darkness has fallen
around me."
Christ, the spiritual Messiah, said, "Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
This ideal in Christ is not less lofty after all
these centuries of partial appreciation and follow



52             The Real Christ.
ing. Just as the Christian world moves up in the
scale towards human perfection, this ideal Christ
moves up in the scale of being. If, then, men have
invested Christ with a quality of divinity which,
in fact, he did not possess, we probably shall never
know where to draw the line between that with
which God endowed him, and that with which
loving disciples have invested him.
There is a beautiful and spiritual sense, if withal
somewhat mystical, in which the mediative Christ
is a God manifested as man, and a man manifested
as God.
Any abstract truth is difficult of comprehension:
symbols and figures of speech frequently make the
illustration of a truth plain, which otherwise would
be obscure or unthinkable; we know what life is,
because we know what a man is, or a flower is.
When the abstract word " life" is used, we know
what is meant, because we think of life in man,
or life in a flower, or the life of something; we
think of eye or limb in activity, we think of root
or branch.




The Real Christ.             53
God is spirit or God is life; we think of spirit
and life as active in Christ. So in this way Christ
is God, known personally.
We may know a person by hearsay, or we may
know an author by his writings; but if he be such
an one as we long to know, there is an unfilled and
aching void until we have seen him face to face,
until we have known him personally.
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of
the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and
truth."
The Word has been spoken. Christ is God speaking or personally communicating himself to man.
Christ is the blessed certainty that God is what we
wish Him to be. Indeed, I am ready to say that
the idea of a personal God, dissociated from the idea
of a corporeal God, is unthinkable. History confirms this view. Only those religions which hold
to the possibility of the divine incarnation hold to
the belief of the divine personality. Christ is God
made flesh; that is, Christ is God become a person.




54               The Real Christ.
God, to be of any conscious helpfulness to man,
must have a human expression; that is, to sympathize with suffering, must be the subject of it.
So it is beautifully said of Christ: "He is touched
with a feeling of our infirmity." " He also suffered
being tempted, wherefore he is able to succour them
that are tempted."
It is not only superficial but very mistaken to
say that Christianity reveals three divine personalities. It is exactly the meaning of Christianity to
deny this, and to illustrate that there is one personal God, revealed in the one man Jesus, who so
is the real Christ.
The Holy Ghost is a term of purely arbitrary use
in the Scriptures, as the gift of the Father, or of
the Son, or of both, but usually signifying simply
the Spirit of God.
The Olympian gods fulfilled the wants of the
imagination by the element of splendour. Christianity fulfils the wants of the heart by the element
of sympathy.  The life of Jove was that of the
mighty; the life of Jesus was that of the lowly.




The Real Christ.              55
The love of any thing noble and beautiful is the
gate to heaven.  So a child, a woman, a man, may
be in some sense a mediator. To love Christ -in
himself child, woman, and man -is to dispart the
clouds, and let us into the inner glory. Only think
of the dreariness of that child's soul who said he
had no recollection of ever having been kissed.
This spirit through which had swept only the
chilling winds of the world's neglect could have no
sense of heaven's love and watchfulness.  What a
revelation the life of Christ is to such an one!
Where such an one loves Christ what a divine
transfiguration 
If, now, I should pass away from these, to me,
most holy and delightful reflections to formal definitions and dogmas, it would only be to repeat
the sorry way the world has had of substituting
stubble for the food of angels. It would be to give
up certainty for uncertainty, knowledge for ignorance, faith for doubt.
I know nothing of Christ's pre-existence, or his
eternal sonship. I cannot understand any trinity




56             The Real Christ.
in God, or any need in God of appeasing Himself,
or satisfying any demands of His law. I shrink
from these poor frightful unrealities, as one who having known the communion of angels, would shrink
from the fellowship of demons. I know nothing
whatever of the supernatural. We find Christ just
where our devotion and our faith should consent
to leave him, in the plane of nature and humanity.
I cannot understand any thing about his miraculous birth, or his miraculous death; it is enough
for me to hold the beautiful thought, that he was
begotten of God, and that when he had fulfilled his
days, he went home to his Father. To express this
elevated conception, his loving biographers have
thrown strange language about it, and so clothed
it in purity and glory, that some have lost sight of
the spiritual thought in the poetical imagery.
Though his mother was never so chaste and holy,
her dear son never dishonoured her. She gave him
a body; but his spiritual features were those of his
Father. He came into the world not to show us
his mother, but God.




The Real Christ.              57
He is, so far as we know, the finest flower of
humanity; its son- its best son, and its best beloved son. Best and best beloved because so much
like his Father; so much like Him that we know of
no other son of whom we can say, "he is just like
his Father, the very image of Him, he reminds us of
his Father."  Yes, this is the one wonderful fact
about Jesus, he reminds the world of God. To
manifest God, the spirit of God must be in him.
The Father's life has gone out into the life of
His son, as blood passes from father to son, to give
its own quality of temperament and physique. So
Christ does something more than manifest Godche demonstrates God.
The real Christ may not answer exactly to the
portraiture as painted severally by the four inspired artists of the Gospels. They did so well,
that the debt of gratitude which we owe them we
can never pay. Especially the loving John, who
caught a glimpse of his Master's inner life and
glory, and so reflected it that the strength of his
colours have lost nothing with age.




58              The Real Christ.
The image of the Christ we have is so like God,
and yet so like man, it serves well the divine and
needful purpose of mediator between the two.
Indeed, we never knew how very alike human and
divine nature were, until the race saw Christ; so
that having seen him we dare conclude that nature
itself is a unit, - not two, but one; one in Christ
Jesus. He fuifils the idea of both. We have no
higher idea of man than Christ is, and no higher
idea of God than Christ has revealed. He was the
revelation himself, finitely: the essence of this is
in him, the expanse of this is God.
Indeed, Christ seemed " empty of all save God."
He was of God, according to his measure, which,
nevertheless, had the limitations of humanity and
finiteness. He was all that a perfect man could be.
In his perfection he was like God, in his limitation
he was like man.
The world has never been left without mediums
and mediators of approach to God. The highest
spirits of the East have got very near to the heart
of God, by getting very near to the hearts of their




The Real Christ.              59
own prophets.  Those who have stood close to
Buddha have stood close to God. Himself high
up in the heavens, he has lifted many to his side,
and to God's.
But his image has fallen upon the world obliquely. He gives light to a nation. Rising in the
East, this sun stands still. Christ is the light of
the world. Rising in the East, this sun has girdled
the earth, and lighted up all zones with its own
splendours. As the world has not yet conceived a
more perfect pattern, it has not asked for one, and
will not whilst it remains true as now that man
knows no holy desire unsatisfied, no spiritual want
unmet, no immortal aspiration unfulfilled in Christ
our Lord.








III








THE KNOWN SPIRIT








Good tidings every day,
God's messengers ride fast,
We do not hear one half they say,
There is such noise on the highway,
Where we must wait while they ride past.
Their banners blaze and shine
With Jesus Christ's dear name,
And story, how by God's design
He saves us, in His love divine,
And lifts us from our sin and shame.
Their music fills the air,
Their songs sing all of Heaven;
Their ringing trumpet peals declare
What crowns to souls who fight and dare,
And win, shall presently be given.
Their hands throw treasures round
Among the multitude.
No pause, no choice, no count, no bound,
No questioning how men are found,
If they be evil or be good.
But all the banners bear
Some words we cannot read;
And mystic echoes in the air,
Which borrow from the songs no share,
In sweetness all the songs exceed.
5




And of the multitude,
No man but in his hand
Holds some great gift misunderstood,
Some treasure, for whose use or good
His ignorance sees no demand.
These are the tokens lent
By immortality;
Birth-marks of our divine descent,
Sureties of ultimate intent,
God's Gospel of Eternity.
Good tidings every day,
The messengers ride fast;
Thanks be to God for all they say;
There is such noise on the highway,
Let us keep still while they ride past.
Saxe Holm.




HIERE is some one holy thing between the
heart of every man and God -the death
of a mother, or the birth of a child, or
some experience more occult than either of these,
that serves as a point of confluence between the
infinite Spirit and the finite spirit. This fact, whatever it may be, is the Secret Place of the Most
High, and the Holy of Holies for the human spirit.
It is that point in the life of each when life itself
ceases to flow in, and begins to ebb out, —that
is, when life is no longer sacred to the individual
for the purposes of the individual, but sacred for
the universal life of the world. In Jesus Christ
this point was just that at which he became the
Medium  of contact between God and man expressed in the phrase, "I in them, and Thou in
me."




68              The Known Spirit.
That which is intellectually unknown in God, is
intellectually unknown to man. The Spirit of God
witnesses to the spirit of man, and it is the most
singular felicity in the relation of the infinite Spirit
to men, that He never leaves Himself without this
witness.  The consciousness of it is seldom  continuous.  It is compared to the wind which comes
and goes, we cannot always tell whence or whither.
We hear its music, as of the "still small voice," as
it touches sweetly the chords of life, deepest life, in
us, and then passes on its way.  The memory of
its music it consents to leave with us, and this is
the blessed surety and earnest of the Spirit.
I have already said this has some association in
the life of every man, and I cannot believe that
there can be an exception to this custom of the
Spirit's operation.  Man having come out from
God, seeks to go back to God: had he been born
of material nature, the grave would satisfy all his
aspirations, he would be content to go to that from
which he came; and when the mother earth threw
around him her secure and strong arms, this couch




The Known Spirit.               69
would be the final peace and rest.  Indeed man
would know  of nothing, and dream  of nothing
higher than his own origin: born of earth, being of
the quality of the earth, he would be of the earth,
earthy.  But no man has been wholly left without
the reminiseence of his original nature, so his heart
and his flesh cry out for the living God.
The world itself, and its treatment of him, may
seldom give hints of his origin, but now and then
he will meet a man and receive a kindness which
will remind him  of God.
The Spirit of God works greatly and incessantly
until it finds a lodgement in each heart - some soil
is fertile, and some is sterile.  The fruit of the
Spirit is early seen in some lives, and will ultimately be seen in all lives.  "The latest fruit will
ripen at last."
The man may not always know when he enters
this "whispering gallery" of the Spirit, and just
at what point he first stood within this "holy of
holies." He knows a new element has entered into
his life, when or how he cannot determine some



70             The Known Spirit.
times even for himself -there are some things so
solemnly sacred, that they cannot be made matter
of even mental record.  Indeed, the Spirit will not
tarry for the slow movements of chronology. With
God a thousand years are but as one day, and
sometimes one cay is as a thousand years; it is the
nature of the thing that gives it significance, not
the time required in doing it.  Time is like space;
there is so much of it, that for only a little section
can we find names, such as day, week, month, year,
century, and so on; as we say earth, moon, sun;
and when we get through our list, already so long
for the memory, the rest is nameless.
Few men abandon themselves to this call of the
Spirit, but most men know of it; I do not mean to
say that there are not some who are so open-eyed
and free-hearted that they know the exact instant
when this angel enters in, and when it folds its
wings in peace and gives rest.
It is usually the way of the Spirit to make his
presence felt most when it is most needed. When
the children of integrity were in the fiery furnace,




The Known Spirit.                71
the form  of the Fourth was seen.  This was just
when they needed God; it was their extremity.
It is a psychical fact, physicians tell us, that it
is the rarest thing to find a patient afraid of death
when just at its door. When one gets so far out of
this world as to catch glimpses of the other, that
other is revealed as very beautiful and full of
welcomes.
The last impress which the spirit gives to the
flesh is very lovely. We often remark a spiritual
expression, -an expression of peace and tranquillity, - upon the face of a corpse which the subject
of it seldom wore in life.
God is very good to permit the spirit to see what
He has in reserve for it, and then to give it time
to write this upon the face of death, so that the
memory of death is pleasant, when the fear of it is
gone.
When man is sufficient of himself, then he cannot believe his sufficiency is of God; when man is
a god to himself, he wants no other, that is, he feels
the need of no other.  But when a great grief




72              The Known Spirit.
comes to him, he cannot see through it, or his
way out of it, until God's Spirit so fills it, that it
becomes translucent, and then a great grief is an
ineffable peace.
There are some souls so sensitive and responsive
to the spiritual, that whilst the memory of a lost
friend is very vivid and precious to them, they are
conscious of the presence of the same influence
which this friend exerted over them  before death.
This is the soul of that which has been universal
in the most mystical phases of religion-prayerfor
the dead, and prayer to the dead. And this defeats
the philosophy of modern spiritualism, which interposes the voice of a stranger between the communion of two loving and affianced souls.  This
spiritualism is the most unspiritual of all conceivable
things-so hard, so cold, so chilling, that it usually
ultimates in the denial of Spirit, or atheism.
It is the way of the Spirit further never to give
pain to the pain-bearer.  The pain may actually
remain, but the peace superinduced relieves from
the sense of it.




The Known Spirit.              73
Rubens understood this divine philosophy when
he painted the crucifixion of St. Peter. The apostle
is nailed to a cross, head downward, attitude and
torture doing all they can to bring out the physical
suffering and agony of the holy man in every limb
and feature; and yet there is this infilling peace,
this expression of triumph, and "the glory which
excelleth," surmounting the whole man, and so
dominating the suffering and agony that it does
seem the cross cannot longer fix him to earth, he
must be off to God.
The instant the Son of man came to man in the
furnace the fire lost its power-its very quality of
burning was gone.
And how little we know of the joys of suffering!
Sometimes we think that people find pleasure, as
we say, in being miserable. There are persons so
situated in life that there is nothing in their outward circumstances to suggest unhappiness, and yet
these persons are not happy; they know the Spirit
teaches them it will not do to be happy in the
outward conditions; so they are usually the most




74            The Known Spirit.
miserable, for they have not found out how to be
happy in God. The knowledge of the Spirit, then,
comes not by intellection, but by revelation. This
I have already striven to make plain, not by the
words of argument, but by the phrases of spiritual
suggestion.
When the man has had the revelation, he has
the knowledge, so that there is no Spirit but the
Known Spirit.
The Spirit, as a distinction in the Godhead 
something having official relations with us, in
virtue of the official relations of the Son  is a
figure of speech-in fact, a figment. There is no
such thing, and if there were, we could know
nothing of it. We can only know the Spirit as the
subjective activity of God. We can know nothing
of that polytheism of which the Spirit is one of the
Gods. Such a Spirit is a phantom. Such a conception demands that a man should think the opposite of what he can think   that is, that he
should think a phantom a reality.
The most plausible way of stating the doctrine




The Known Spirit.               75
of the Trinity is this: "God is a personal being,
consisting of three persons." And this statement
in its last analysis is this: Three are one: the
plural is singular. This is not thinkable; no intellect can comprehend this - only superstition can
accept it.  When the superstitious mind holds this
at all, it is- it must be - with such subjective
modifications as make it capable of believing it,
which is equal to not holding it at all.
I conclude, then, that the Known Spirit is not
"God the Spirit," of Church theology, but the
Spirit-God of Christian consciousness.  And the
knowledge of this Spirit no man is left wholly
without, for Spirit answers to spirit. There is no
knowledge so real as this: what the spirit of man
perceives of the Spirit of God, that a man knows
as he knows nothing else. This is not the rock of
certitude, but the very ground in which the rock
itself finds foundation for the whole superstructure
of the religious life.
The man who professes not to believe in the
Spirit ought not to profess to believe in morality




76              The Known Spirit.
itself, for morality is nothing other than the Spirit
speaking.  Moral distinctions are the distinctions
which the Spirit defines. The Spirit says what is
right and what is wrong-what we ought and
what we ought not to do.  The universal conscience of man is the Spirit of God; or rather,
conversely stated, the Spirit of God is the universal
conscience of man. In this the religious Quietists
have always held the substance of truth; if duty is
to be discovered by any process, it is by heeding
the inner voice; familiarity with the tones and
speech of the Spirit is the essence of religion.
This essence of religion each man must know for
himself; the fruits of it we can see in each other,
like autumn days, whose tints we can describe,
whose spirit we cannot define.
The Spirit of God, in reality, dwells everywhere.
This can be known, however, only under certain
conditions.  We must bring peace, resignation,
acquiescence, purity to Gocl —all the products of
the Spirit- if we would have the communion and
fellowship of the Spirit.




The Known Spirit.               77
In other words, the soul must be responsive to
the voice of God, willing and wanting to hear, and
to heed its words, before we can feel that we are
the friends of God.  " The Spirit itself must bear
witness with our spirit that we are the children of
God."
These terms, "communion" and "fellowship,"
are the singularly felicitous phrases by which the
soul's recognition of God and God's recognition of
the soul are set forth.
Precious words! They stand illumined and full
of illumination, telling of the child's privilege in
the presence of his Father.
We cannot see this communion and fellowship,
but they give us eyes to see even " the excellent
glory of God."  He who knows this, then, can see
the footprints of the Deity, not only where His
gracious prodigality has flooded loftier natures with
genius and faculty, but in the most barren and
waste places of humanity; even here eyes are opened
to see heaven upon the very confines of hell.
There is one especial direction where it is always




78              The Known Spirit.
profitable to meditate upon the fruit of the Spirit.
We are very accustomed  to the sounds of the
world's conflicts, and this is the more strange when
we remember the concords of God's own universe
-how  sweetly the machinery of the universe
works, and this because it works with God, for
God, and in God.  The world we inhabit moves
on its axis and round its centre as quietly, as peacefully, as a new-born infant sleeps; and God holds
it in his heart, just as the mother does her child.
But the world that inhabits us   how full of discordances and inharmonies! Nations war for classification as first or second or third-rate powers, or
for this or that enlargement of boundaries by this
or that acquisition of territory. Sects of religion
are not forges, wherein the spirits of men are
welded in love together, but rather arsenals, where
weapons of warfare are in process of making —
weapons of words-cold, deathful words of theologic creeds, which divide brothers into armies, not
to fight all enemies of humanity, but each other.
It is sacrilege -oh! so heinous -when this war



The Known Spirit.              79
fare is carried on in the name of that Spirit whose
fruit is peace. The'Spirit leads to unities, not
divergences. It gathers, not to scatter abroad. It
gives liberty to think; for "where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty." But of this sense
of liberty is born peace. There is, too, a higher,
truer peace of the Spirit than mere outward agreement; it is the repose of the spirit of man in the
Spirit of God —the very peace Jesus had, and
which, without assumption or the seeming of it, he
had to give to men.  The peace of God, which
passeth all understanding, was the peace the Master gave to his disciples- gives to his disciples.
And what though it pass the understanding of
it! What though the intellect is ever lagging
behind the realization, and only catches glimpses
of partial outlines fading away in the infinite! To
unfold the highest mystery of life to the spirit of
man, Jesus justified faith in it by suffering and
pain, and by the beauty of his life, born of the
suffering, and the pain, and the mystery.




80                The Known Spirit.
"One heart beats in all nature, differing,
But in the work it works; its doubts and clamors
Are but the waste and brunt of instruments,
Wherewith a work is done."
The Spirit that cradles the universe in its heart,
and whose smiles, as over an infant, are the streaming tints of purple and azure and gold which play
over the features of the heavens as the sun goes to
rest, will hold us as dearly while we live, speak to
us when we ask, and, when our mortal lips can no
longer ask, will give us in death infinitely more
than we could think in life.




IV








THE RIGHT RELIGION








Like a blind spinner, in the sun
I tread my days;
I know that all the threads will run
Appointed ways;
I know each day will bring its task,
And, being blind, no more I ask.
I do not know the use or name
Of that I spin;
I only know that some one came
And laid within
My hand the thread, and said, "Since you
Are blind, but one thing you can do."
Sometimes the threads, so rough and fast
And tangled, fly;
I know wild storms are sweeping past,
And fear that I
Shall fall; but dare not try to find
A safer place, since I am blind.
I know not why, but I am sure
That tint and place,
In some great fabric to endure
Past time and race,
My threads will have; so from the first,
Though blind, I never felt accursed.




I think perhaps this trust hath sprung
From one short word
Said over me when I was young, -
So young I heard
It, knowing not that God's name signed
My brow and sealed me his though blind.
But whether this be seal or sign
Within, without,
It matters not; the Lord divine
I never doubt.
I know he set me here, and still,
And glad, and blind, I wait his will.
But listen, listen, day by day,
To hear their tread
Who bear the finished web away,
And cut the thread,
And bring God's message in the sun,'Thou poor, blind spinner, work is done."
H..




ELIGION  is essentially one, and in its
substance cannot be two or three, any
more than light can be two or three, or
truth can be two or three; the light may be modified by its mediums, " for there is one glory of the
sun, and another glory of the moon, and another
glory of the stars; for one star differeth from
another star in glory: " but withal, the light is
one.
The prism reveals the elements of light, its constituents of colour, or light seen in its separations;
but light is one: one in sun, moon, star, or the
translucent precious stone.
Facts frequently modify our human apprehensions
of truth; there is Greek truth, Roman truth, and




88            The Right Religion.
Anglican truth, yet these are after all not the truth
but modifications of the truth: truth is apprehended through the eyes of climates, educations,
and traditions.
An old Hebrew begins to read his Scriptures, in
an outward way, where the Christian leaves off.
To the Christian the Hebrew begins at the end of
his Bible to read through it; to the Hebrew the
Christian does the same thing. The right way to
the Hebrew is his way; the right way to the
Christian is his way.
The savage man has one conception of beauty;
the civilized man has another; each is right to
each. When man was in a mere state of nature
his god was a nature-god, a personification of
natural forces.
When man began to inhabit houses, then he
began to build temples for his God.
Man has always felt and said, that which is fitting
for man is fitting for God.
The Homeric gods eat and drink, because, in the
times of Homer, eating and drinking were divine




The Right Religion.              89
pleasures. Zeus is the strongest of the gods, because strength was glorious and divine.
The ancient Germans were the most warlike
people, so their supreme god was Odin the god of
war. The Greeks and Romans came finally to deify
accidents, passions, virtues.
Man's highest conception of himself is God.
Man, however, feels his limitations; he projects
himself into objectivity, and predicates of this
objective self-infinitude the absence of all restrictions and limitations, and this is God.  This is the
best man can do   this is all he can do.
The Western nations have westernized Christianity: some believe to its betterment, some think
to its detriment.
But of this transformation we cannot predicate
right or wrong, better or worse, for religion must
be not only in harmony with man's nature, but it
must comport with zone and climate —with the
rigid north or the genial south —with perpetual
winter or perennial summer: with the dominance of
the materialistic or the dominance of the spiritual



90             The Right Religion.
istic. Christianity is universal, and yet the history
of Christianity proves that wherever it has planted
its foot it has been modified by the earth it touched.
Some forms of life die when transplanted to uncongenial soils; some trees and flowers lose their
identity by the new conditions of earth and moisture and temperature. The wide-leafed tree of the
tropics - each leaf so full of the abundance of sunshine-huddles itself together to keep warm  in
our colder climate.
Religion, so self-adequate in the East, becomes
organized in the West; that which is self-supporting in the one becomes mutually supporting in the
other.  Man becomes the measure of all things to
himself.
A Brahmin knows the first half of the great
commandment, and but little of the second.  An
Englishman knows the last half better than the
first.  A Brahmin can love God without loving his
neighbour; an Englishman can love his neighbour
without loving God.
The first, self-supporting, cannot enter into all




The Right Religion.             91
the organized forms of mutual helpfulness; the
second, mutually supporting, cannot reach up to
God without the love and help of his neighbour.
The Western mind makes sad havoc of the most
spiritual sayings of Jesus. The beautiful words of
the Master, " I and the Father are one," have been
a strong proof-text of a physical, corporeal trinity.
Put upon the plane of the material, it has got
into the mathematical absurdity, that one thing is
another thing —that Jesus meant to say that he
was God and that God was himself; but once when
a Christian missionary read these precious words
to an old devoted Brahmin, he said, " Why, Jesus
was a good Brahmin."  He intuitively caught the
spiritual import of the inspiring and encouraging
words.
So, then, I conclude that truth is a term  of
metaphysics, and that right is a term of ethics.
In the abstract, there is but one true religion and
many right religions; in the concrete, there is but
one right religion and many true religions.
The truth of religion is the harmony between the




92              The Right Religion.
conception of the man and the reality of the fact;
the right of religion is the agreement between the
conception of the man and the conduct of his life;
so that, whilst the truth of religion may be a subject of proper and profitable speculation, the right
of religion demands conscientious enceavour and
practice.  The one is a matter of the intellect's
pleasure, the other is a matter of the man's practice;
the one has its seat in the reason, the other has its
seat in the conscience.  We have to do properly
enough with both.  We are morally accountable to
God only for the last- the right of religion. A
vital mistake at this point has been the foundation
of all religious bigotry, exclusiveness, intolerance,
and iniquities.
No one historic religion can claim  to be the
true religion; each may claim to be the right religion. He is the real atheist who denies love,
justice, mercy, not he who denies that there is a
God of love, justice, mercy. A man who believes
in these believes in God, whether he will or not:
he who denies these, though he assert faith in




The Right Religion.               93
God with all the vocabulary of the Creeds, is an
atheist.
He is not an infidel, who does not believe in sympathy, denial, and vicariousness; but who in his life
fails to practise them.  He is a Christian who has
faith in these, though he deny the person Christ;
for to have faith in these, is to have the faith of
Christ.  A  man may not know  where the fruit
grows which he eats, and the substance of which
gives him  sustenance and joy; but he knows his
food who gives his strength to the God who nourished the fruit-tree, and to his brother who is also
the offspring of God.
Then  it concerns us particularly to  inquire
whether our religion be right rather than whether
it be true.  Indeed I am not prepared to say that
in this world we shall ever arrive at a definition
of true religion.   Metaphysics is an expanding
science; ethics an exacting one.  The growth of
intellect and its culture will probably take away
from our speculations all of its so-called solid bases,
and that which to our reasoning is true to-day may




94             The Right Religion.
be false to-morrow.  " Take away from the Greek
the quality of being Greek, and you take away his
existence."  Just as involuntarily and necessarily
as a Greek is a Greek, so involuntarily and necessarily his gods are Greek.
There was a time when Jupiter was as true to
the Heathen, as Jesus is real to the Christian. He
took no offence at the nature of Jupiter. It was
his nature.  " To every religion the gods of other
religions are only notions concerning God, but its
own conception of God is to it God Himself; the
true God    such as He is in Himself."
The truth in religion is movable, the right of
religion is stationary; what yesterday was true in
religion to-day is sensualism; what is atheism today will be true in religion to-morrow. I do not
affirm that we know no more of the truth of religion
and in religion to-day than yesterday.  I believe
we shall know more to-morrow than to-day.
Things in religion were true once which are
qualitatively untrue now. Many dogmas which
were current coin half a century ago are counted




The Right Religion.             95
spurious to-day.  Indeed few of the views of religion prevalent then have any hold whatever upon
the popular consciousness now, certainly none upon
the culture and thinking of our time.
There is an antithesis between history and reason.
Mankind was capable of receiving a statement of
religion at one time which it is intellectually incapable of holding at another and an advanced
time.
The Bible itself has the valuable merit of containing whatever the interpreter wishes to say. This
is true of the scriptures of all religions, and it is
most likely that it is this universal and indefinite
element in the religious books of all nations that
makes them Sacred Scriptures. Science had hard
work to make the world believe that the form of
the earth is spherical, because man in honesty
supposed the Bible revealed its surface to be flat.
Even theology now compels the Bible to be on good
terms with the results of scientific inquiry.
In our youth we had no other idea of the processes and time of creation than that the whole was




96             The Right Religion.
finished in six cays; but now the veracity of the
Bible is made to hold on its way, although we may
be convinced that to bring the world to its present
form and structure, may have required six million
years.
The old theologians said, that the essential attributes of God were made manifest by the light of
the natural reason, but the Trinity could only be
known by revelation.  This they had to say, because the theological Trinity contradicts the natural reason.
But, in reality when it is said an idea comes to
us by revelation, it is simply meant it comes to us
by tradition. The tradition of one age is the revelation of another.
The revelations of the Bible are as changeful,
therefore, as human opinions and prejudices. And
it is a wonderful book in this, that it throws illumination both ways, backwards and forwards.  It
is so universal in its spirit, its very language suits
the thoughts of all ages.
But when we pass from the metaphysical specula



The Right Religion.               97
tions about truths of religion, to contemplate and
consider the ethical duties of religion, we are left
to no such doubts, dealings, and uncertainties.
Here we are compelled to allow  each man to
settle for himself the value of scriptures, revelations,
traditions, sacraments, rites, and forms of worship.
His religion is right whose religion rights itself
with his own soul and God.
If a man be a Brahmin by the law of his conscience, he must be a Brahmin by the course of
his conduct, if he would have the right religion,
although Christianity may be a truer religion than
Brahminism.
To be the votary of one sect in conscience, and of
another by affiliation, involves a form of dishonesty
and insincerity, detrimental to, if not destructive of,
the highest, truest, sweetest, religious life.
Only that religion, furthermore, is right, which
by its contents satisfies the subject of it, answers
to his conscience, his ideals, his wants. It may be
less true or more true than another, but if it consciously and well serves these ends, it is essentially
7




98             The Right Religion.
right. A man knows when he is clothed and fed,
though he may be ignorant of the texture of his
garments and the constituents of his food.
Any religion which stretches out its helping
hands, and says, "Come unto Me all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and
fulfils to the heart the promise to the ear, is the
right religion.
Being a law unto himself, one should be careful
how he insists upon being a law to other people.
WTe find the secret of life in the law of Jesus
Christ, but each man must be left free to interplet
this law for himself.
Happy he who finds in his own soul the rest of
Christ's soul. He may come to this through cathedral ceremonials, or in the caverns of the earth.
The Spirit of God has an easy way of finding men
out and rising up like a great mountain to keep off
the wintry blasts from their souls.
There is a rest at the very heart of the universe,
which distils itself as morning dew upon the thirsty
heart of humanity.  It quickens in this soil, and




The Right Religion.                99
the fruit is of the seed after its own kind and
fashion.  They who eat of this fruit find the promised rest.
Justice, mercy, humility, these are religion. Justice puts us on an equal footing with all.  Mercy
lifts the lowliest to an equal footing with ourselves.
Humility teaches us there is no condescension in
God, when He chooses man for a companion.
Religion, which is the avowal of the heart, to
itself, of its re-allegiance to its God, is right when
it tests its loyalty by patriotism to humanity.








A








THE SURE HELL








"In a valley, centuries ago,
Grew a little fern leaf, green and slender 
Veining delicate, and fibres tender 
Waving, when the wind crept down so low;
Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it,
Playful sunbeams darted in and found it,
Drops of dew stole in, by night, and crowned it,
But no foot of man e'er trod that way;
Earth was young, and keeping holiday.
Monster fishes swam the silent main,
Stately forests waved their giant branches,
Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches,
Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain:
Nature revelled in grand mysteries,
But the little fern was not of these,
Did not number with the hills and trees;
Only grew and waved, its sweet wild way,
No one came to note it, day by day.
Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood,
Heaved the rocks, and changed the mighty motion
Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean,
Moved the plain, and shook the haughty wood,
Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay,
Covered it, and hid it safe away;
Oh, the long, long centuries since that day!
Oh, the agony! Oh, life's bitter cost,
Since that useless little fern was lost!




Useless?  Lost?  There came a thoughtful man,
Searching Nature's secrets, far and deep;
From a fissure in a rocky steep
He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran
Fairy pencillings, a quaint design,
Veinings, leafage, fibres clear and fine,
And the fern's life lay in every line!
So, I think, God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us, the last day."




HERE  is one point of agreement in all
systems of religion; namely, that suffering is the sequence of sin.  All wrongdoing does not bring pain and remorse, however;
for the moral quality of an act takes its character
sometimes from a century, sometimes from climate,
sometimes from conventionalism; yet there is in all
centuries, climates, conventionalisms - that is in
all civilizations —  a standard of ethics, a law of
right and wrong.  This law  may be a supposed
revelation from God, or the edict of some vicegerent of God, or the monition of the conscience.
Each man possessed of the sanity of accountability
has a law of morality; to live in accordance with
its approvals is to live righteously, to be brought
under the voice of its condemnations is to live
sinfully.




108               The Sure Hell.
The same act may have an unlike moral character to different minds, the result of dissimilar educations. Notwithstanding this, it is always and
everywhere right to do right, and wrong to do
wrong; so every volitional act refers itself to a
standard which determines it to be right or wrong.
The wrong act brings pain, the right act brings
peace.
There is no relief to the transgressor in the
persuasion that there are no abstract and absolute
moral distinctions, or that these are only the yokes
of kingcraft and priestcraft; for if morality is resolved into utilitarianism, then that is right which
is best, which is only exchanging one ground for
another, the ought of the conscience for the ought
of the conventionalism.
Society must determine what is best for itself,
and the individual must conform  to its dictates.
Although we may persuade ourselves that moral
distinctions are not abstract and absolute, we cannot persuade ourselves that they are unreal. For
morality is as real as the consciousness of God;




The Sure Hell.              109
indeed, it is the creature of this belief in God. The
two are identical in conception; when the mind
refers itself to God, it refers itself to an ideal standard of morality. The need of the soul that brings
God into it is the same that craves the approval
and peace of God, and shuns his condemnation and
displeasure. There is then no process by which the
reality of the ethical idea can be abrogated and
annulled.  That philosophy which says, "Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," counts eating
and drinking its chief good, and so right: it accepts
all the consequences of this course of life, as preferable to the consequences of an opposite course.
But even this philosophy does not hope to escape
consequences.  When man'accepts one theory of
life, and comports his conduct with another, morality is a law of bondage to him, it limits him,
walls him in, and involves him in a web of entanglement; he breaks one chain to find he is bound
by another; he is the subject of conscious spiritual
anarchy, and he wears himself out in reproaches
and remorses which take the sweetness out of all




110               The Sure Hell.
life's roses, and turn to bitterness on his tongue
every delight.  This man is unreconciled to himself. He begins the effort to get rid of the ideal
standard, but this is now utterly impossible, for if
it no longer reminds him, it never ceases to haunt
him.  It may be too indefinite to be called an.
image, but it is certainly real enough to be called a
spectre. If it does not work conformity, or contrition, then condemnation.  When we have found
and affirmed the antithesis between the standard
of the conscience and the rule of conduct, we have
indicated the first element of the hell-idea.  God
is in harmony with himself; man to be like God
must be in harmony not only with God, but with
himself, in accordance with his circumstances and
his nature. The free issue of his soul must be seen
in free action; that is, his delight must be in the
law of his own being. In looking upon the course
of a beautiful river, it never occurs to us that the
waters are offended and rebellious because it is
their nature so ceaselessly to flow on and flow on
ceaselessly in one path.




The Sure Hell.              111
The exceeding glory of the river is that it is in
harmony with its own nature and God's nature,
and so completely in accord with its own impelling
power and destiny.
The violet comes up, not repining that it came
no sooner, or was not allowed to continue folded
so warmly in the love of the earth, but feeds upon
the sunshine and moisture as its appointed way
of getting and giving life. The pious little flower
rejoices in its own law, and so delights itself in the
law of the Lord.
When man breaks this order of being, feels the
inherent law of harmony at variance with the law
of his own desires and appetites, -wills one way
and acts another, - he separates himself from the
universal law, is thrown off from his own harmony;
the harmony of law and God, and so is in the outer
darkness of rebellion and discord.
The impassable gulf, however, between heaven
and hell is not the distance between purity and sin,
but between penitence and impenitence.
Heaven is that estate of the man where purity is




112               The Sure Hell.
loved and sin detested: hell is that condition of the
soul where purity is detested, and sin is loved.
The fact that the universal conscience approves of
the right, and disapproves of the wrong, is the
pledge of the normality of virtue; that purity is the
natural condition of man, that man is best off, and
only well off, when in spiritual accord with his own
nature,- to know this, to feel this, until it begets
serious strivings and earnest endeavours, is heaven;
to know this, and feel this, and rebel against it,
hate the right, revel in the impure, is hell.
Man, then, in the state of nature -I mean, of
course, man when most natural, most like himself
-most like, not this individual or that individual,
but most like the ideal humanity -is in the state of
grace nearest to God, most surrounded by heaven.
The last born infant, just from God, is the newest revelation from God, the new testament of his
love and favour, the renewed testimony of his imminence.
The further removed from  the centre and concord, the more conscious of a law of the flesh war



The Sure Hell.               113
ring against the law of the Spirit. To be content in
the warfare is hell. This is simply preferring spiritual chaos to spiritual cosmos, with no sighings and
seekings for the conforming Spirit of God. No
penitence or contrition because of the darkness
which hides God from the spirit, no regret at the
presence of the demon of discord —this is hell.
Hell, then, is not that state of intellectual confusion
which calls good evil, and evil good, but that state
of moral obtuseness which loves evil rather than
good, and darkness rather than light.  The regret
is not for the sin, but because of the law which
makes it sin.  The sorrow works toward God, not
toward the man.
The sense of God's presence in the soul is not
only heaven then, but it is also hell.
This presence man both seeks and shuns: when
the sense of God is in the heart through the seeking, it is heaven; when there through the shunning,
it is hell. There are images and memories which
remain in the mind by the very effort of the mind
to get rid of them. The mind knows, probably, no
8




114             The Sure Hell.
such torture as this. The man may not always be
cognizant of God's presence, but the very fact of
the effort to get rid of it demonstrates the consciousness of'it. And God is not the obedient
slave of man's will; He will not be drawn out of
His own temple.  Man may ruthlessly, with iconoclastic intent, break every symbol and image of the
living God in his own heart, but the vestal lamp
still burns so brightly that hidden sin is discovered,
and the excellent glory of God is revealed. To
behold sin in juxtaposition with God, to choose sin
and refuse God, to love the deformity, and hate
the perfection,-this is hell. When the demons
of the soul cry out, " Thou Son of the living God,
leave us alone," then hell has entered in and taken
possession of the man.
Now, if itf could be, if it were spiritually possible, for the soul to realize that this estate, selfchosen, could become normal and natural, that God
would go out and stay out, and leave him to his
own moral affinities and delights in this world or
in eternity, - then the sinner would have gained his




The Sure Hell.               115
end, and the mastery over the laws of the moral
universe and God. Then, for him, hell would be
heaven. But this conception, so prevalent, is monstrously absurd. Hell is hell because in it there is
an open way to heaven.  Because God's Spirit is
even there! - there to accuse of shame, and to entreat - there to renew offers of mercy, forgiveness,
and saving help. Not to impose these, but to proffer
them.  Hell is where something better may be attained —where effort is possible.  We have been
taught to believe that hell is a refuge for the willless, whereas such a refuge would be their heaven.
No, the constraining love of God gives the rebellious child no refuge from the torturing conscience,
though he make his bed in hell. This is the " worm
that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched."
Hell is just that juncture, whether in time or in
eternity, that confluence of certainty and realization,
in this world or in the next, where the soul has settled it that it must repent, and yet hates the tears
and sobbings of contrition.  Postponement is hell;
something must be done, yet the doing is deferred.




116              The Sure Hell.
There is in this association of ideas one that
contravenes the pompous dogmatism so prevalent
in theologic speculation, namely, that hell is vindictive punishment; for it illumines the truth of
spiritual sequence so unmistakably and grandly
that God no longer is covered in hideous darkness,
the righteousness of his moral government is no
longer called into question when it is made so
palpably plain, that only an unvindictive hell is, in
reality, hell at all.
A vindictive hell is a fancied vision of vindictive
priestcraft.  The subject of such a hell would then
be guiltless. He could no longer feel that he is
the wrong-doer, but God is the wrong-doer.  He
may still have the recollection of his wrong-doings,
but he only did in his lifetime what God is doing
in eternity.
There can be nothing revengeful in God, or in
nature, or in morals. These hell-spectres are only
the phantoms of bad men's brains, and I am persuaded they are only the endeavours of men to get
rid of the inevitable hell, which pursues and enfolds




The Sure Hell.               117
the wrong-doer until he consents to turn to God
and live.
If the Scriptures of our religion should contain
never so many separate and isolated passages, stating in the most unmistakable language that man is
liable to endless punishment for his misconduct in
this life, then I frankly confess the sincere and
reverential believer would be morally bound to accept one of two alternatives: either to insist that
these texts of the Scriptures must be interpreted to
harmonize with the revelation of God's infinite love
and man's original sense of justice, which would
virtually be taking all meaning out of them; or,
secondly, to deny unequivocally the truth of their
statement, which would be nothing more than the
reason of one man set up in candour and reverence
against the opinion of other men.
If I am now told I do not believe in the Bible, I
answer, the first tenet of my creed, as I learn it from
all Bibles, is not "I believe in hell," but "I believe
in God; " and hell must be explained by my faith
in God, and not God explained by my faith in hell.




118               The Sure Hell.
It is incredible that a man, both devout towards
God and sincere towards himself, should even accept the possibility of man's continuing eternally a
sinner, and in the hell of sin, or hold to the preposterous theory that eternity is, in the Divine
economy, only a vindication of time.
The moral structure of the human mind makes
it impossible to contemplate any such issue of life.
To accept it is possible, to conceive it impossible.
Men who do right because they fear to do wrong,
fear not hell, but exposure; they acknowledge to
themselves, not accountability to God, but to society.  Man, indeed, cannot do right because he
fears to do wrong, for in this attempt the quality
of hypocrisy enters in to destroy absolutely all
quality of virtue.
Nowhere in God's limitless space or infinite time
is suffering the dreadful thing, but sinning. It is
only the exceeding sinfulness of sin which is seen
in suffering; suffering tells the tale of sinning.
It is horrible to believe that, for the sake of the
suffering, the sinning is eternal!




The Sure Hell.              119
No; the last soul must repent at last, and repent
that he did not repent before.
One holy, helpful man said he lived upon the
confines of hell to be near heaven.
This is the very heart of our philosophy-the
highest heaven adjoins the deepest hell.  He who
toils amongst the lowest is himself the highest.
He who has greatest faith in the most depraved has
greatest faith in the most divine.
Dear God! how sweet heaven will be to Thee
when all Thy children get home!
God will not for ever carry the pains and griefs
that pierce and burden the hearts of his little ones.
To this release He works with them, and for them,
and in them; and this shall be an effectual working
unto life.  God's universe is His New Jerusalem,
and its streets shall be searched until the last lost
jewel is found. The Father knows the names of all
His children, and when the feast of the First-born
is celebrated, all shall have heard the call and come
home.








VI








THE TIRUE HEAVEN








I cannot think but God must know
About the thing I long for so;
I know He is so good, so kind,
I cannot think but He will find
Some way to help, some way to show
Me to the thing I long for so.
I stretch my hand - it lies so near;
It looks so sweet, it looks so dear.
" Dear Lord," I pray, " Oh, let me know
If it is wrong to want it so? "
He only smiles -He does not speak:
My heart grows weaker and more weak,
With looking at the thing so dear,
Which lies so far, and yet so near.
Now, Lord, I leave at thy loved feet
This thing which looks so near, so sweet;
I will not seek, I will not longI almost fear I have been wrong.
I'll go, and work the harder, Lord,
And wait till by some loud, clear word
Thou callest me to thy loved feet,
To take this thing so dear, so sweet.
Saxe Holm.








HAT which was personal to himself Jesus
made universal to humanity. He saw the
race in himself, rather than himself in
the race. He became in himself the standard of
humanity, not humanity the standard of himself.
This is all the meaning there is in the miraculous
birth of Christ. All men spiritually have been
born into humanity, humanity spiritually was born
into Christ.
He felt that humanity should be what he was,
whereas all other men have felt they should strive
for the ideal humanity.
He was, then, the realization of the desire of
nations. This is miraculous in this, that it has
occurred but once; not that it may not occur again,
not that it is contrary to the laws of Nature and




128            The True Heaven.
life that it should occur a thousand times in the
future. For aught we know, this may be the truest
and deepest law of God and Nature, and, because
so profound, it has enacted itself, so far as we know,
only once in the history of humanity.
When the time comes that this shall be the custom, and not the exception, this term miraculous
will have lost its import, for this is all the meaning it has. Nature is one, and cannot be divided;
we get one aspect of Nature in one century, another
aspect in another century; but her essence cannot
be two. She stretches out her hand in one century
and creates man. She reveals her face in another
to bless man.
Christ fulfilled in himself his own conception of
himself, and it was this harmony of the ideal and
actual that made him the revelation of God to man,
and the revelation of man to God. He brought
God and futurity into humanity and time: into our
homes, workshops, and experiences.  He affirmed
the immortality of all men, upon the basis of the
Spirit's affirmation of immortality in himself.




The True Heaven.             129
This became the essentiality of his life, which he
referred to all lives. He made universal a consciousness which was personal to himself.
He said all men are immortal, because he felt he
was immortal.
His affirmation, then, was based upon an assumption. He applied to all men that which he knew
of himself. He affirmed of the genus humanity
what he knew of the personal man. This man was
the best and most perfect of the species, and it is
the very genius of spiritual faith to affirm of all
that which we can affirm of the highest type.
Personal immortality was fundamental to no
ancient system of philosophy; among the heathen
it had only the significance of a subjective conception, and this conception was vague, confused, and
contradictory.
Plato unmistakably taught the immortality of the
race —on this wise, and in these words: " The
human race, then, is interlinked with all time,
which follows and will follow it to the end, being in
this way immortal; inasmuch as leaving children's
9




130             The True Heaven.
children, and being one and the same by generation,
it partakes of immortality."
It is foreign to my purpose to appreciate Jesus,
by depreciating Plato, or to rest in the testimony of
either, when reporting upon matters which pertain
to Spirit and futurity. I simply quote the Greek
as adding confirmation to the Hebrew.  He believed what the other knew.
A landscape is the more beautiful that we have
seen it in its two aspects, when in dimness and uncertainty, by the haziness about it; and when in
full revelation that all mist is dispelled. Plato
was the morning of faith, Jesus its noon-day.  Immortality was the obvious inference of Christ's own
consciousness. We believe in goodness by believing
in men. Christ begets faith in purity, and to get
very near to Christ is to make very clear immor* tality to the spirit's comprehension. For the consciousness of God in the soul is the pledge of
heaven.  That nature which responds to God is
that which is peculiarly certain that it is unsuited to
attain its highest development in this life. Through




The True Heaven.               131
this, man is akin to God, and in this nature of man
is lodged the assurance of immortality; in most
men it may not assume the strength of demonstration, rather only a glimmer of futurity thrown back
from God into the soul of his child, and strengthened as the child lays hold on it, and works with it
and by it.  The light of eternity lies in the heart;
by it man sees a little way, if not far into the future.
When this light becomes the soul's illumination,
and through it the soul becomes translucent, the
future is now and now is the future. The wall of
partition is broken down, and there is no such
thing as a distinction in time -none in immortality.
This is eternity, this is heaven; eternity is all time,
heaven is everywhere.
The Brahmin confuses two conceptions which
the Christian keeps separate, the God-life and the
immortal life —that the spirit, having emanated
from God, never finds its equilibrium and poise, its
content and rest, until restored back to God: not
in the Christian sense of spiritual affiance, but the
philosophic sense of spiritual identity, so that




132             The True Heaven.
immortality becomes the essence of God, or rather
God is immortality.  Personal immortality is the
endless maintenance of the personal identity. And
we are instructed in this by the very need of it;
without this friendship is a dream, and love a
delusion.
A little grave is often heaven's open way to a
mother's heart, and the spirit-life of her child is as
real and unquestioned as was the earth-life.  Once
her heart was the home of the child. Now  her
child is the home of her heart.  Distance - no;
separation - no, not even that; but dimmed vision
has not broken love, but cemented it, as the loss
of one faculty sharpens another.
Friendships begin to grow here which must have
eternity in which to mature.
fMen begin to redeem  themselves here, giving
promise and pledge to themselves of something
better than they have been; the tendrils of their
souls begin to cling up to the invisible presence of
God, turn from the dampness and darkness of sin to
the warmth and sunshine of God. And fate shall




The True Heaven.              133
not mock the very springs of this new life, but shall
fulfil in the reality the promise to the heart. Man is
immortal, because man believes it best he should be.
Nothing that has ever been said about heaven
can greatly help man to faith in it.
This is the unfolding of man's own life —it
flowers into immortality. By day and by night, by
visions and by dreams, by joys and by sorrows,
through all these by the unfolding of his own nature, his own immortality becomes an assurance to
himself.
AMan emphasizes eternity, just as eternity emphasizes man; he dwells in the future just as the
future dwells in him.  "He that loveth not God
knoweth not God."
The logic and order are reversed; knowledge
comes of love, not love of knowledge.  Tears of
penitence give sight of purity. The pure in heart
see God. When there is struggle between intellect
and feeling to gain this, he who keeps possession
of the field wins.  The demands of intellection,
when they are exacting, surrender finally to the




134            The True Heaven.
behests of aspiration; what the spirit sees, it sees
with greater certainty and precision than the in
tellect. Reason may doubt the report of the spirit,
but must not deny, for in time the lagging critical
faculty will see what the diviner and primal consciousness affirms.
There is no contradiction between music and
language. It is the function of the one to express
sentiment, of the other to express thought.
These frequently cross paths, and usurp each the
other's calling and faculty; but language must not
envy music, nor music envy language -we must
accept the testimony of both.  The purposes of
language are the more ordinary, of music the more
exceptional.
The intellect can say what it cannot sing, the
spirit can sing what it cannot say.  Whether is the
diviner, the speech or the song, must probably
depend upon the responsiveness of the listener,
and " to him that hath shall be given."  Most of
usfeel that the requiem has a higher meaning than
the oration.




The True Heaven.              135
Speculation has deferred the reappearing of the
Lord; indeed has transposed the very words of the
Spirit, which are that we are to tarry for his coming
again, into, he is to tarry for our appearing.
The vision of the New Jerusalem was not that of
an ascending city, but a descending city. The voice
out of heaven said, " Behold, the tabernacle of God
is with men, and He will dwell with them."
The apocalypse closes with heaven upon earth,
not earth transported to heaven.  The holy city,
clothed with the glory of God, is descending in
answer to the universal prayer men have been
offering up all these ages, mistaking its words and
knowing not its answer, " Thy kingdom come, Thy
will be clone on earth."
Heaven is not locality, except that every point of
space is heaven, where God's will is the law of life.
Everywhere in the universe, a willing child in
the arms of the loving Father is heaven.  And
where else can the child find rest?
The securities of Church and  sacrament are
worthless.  The idle vagaries of psalm-singing and




136            The True Heaven.
star-gazing around the throne of God are delusions;
-nursery tales suited to the imaginations of children, and the superstitions of credulity.
Heaven, as a place of aimless idleness and intolerable vanity, accepted as a reward and held as a
bounty, happy in the sense of escape while gazing
into a hell of misery —is the device of the same
bigotry which has not learned that respectable selfishness is worse than ignorant indulgence.
The redeemed spirit could find no heaven whilst
a brother spirit was in hell, save the heaven which
would fill and glorify his soul in the endeavour to
rescue the wanderer.
He who would enter such a theologic heaven as
these conspirators against humanity have surveyed,
and to which only they themselves have the deed,
is himself far from the Kingdom. He has broken
faith with the Mystic Brotherhood.  The signet of
the Divine Knighthood is sacrifice.  Its chivalry
would bear it to the gates of hell, and there demand
admittance to rescue a comrade. Heaven cannot
be satisfied till hell has surrendered up its last lost




The True Heaver.              137
child.  He who seeks heaven may find it.  Every
childless mother who hears the cough of a motherless child and takes its sickness upon her own heart,
and presses her heart against the little cough until
it is gone, as if by magic, has entered in and is at
rest.  The man who teaches the ragged class in
Sunday School only once, and sees they are clothed
and warmed for the next time, has entered the open
way to life.  The heart of God is the universal
heart of humanity; get near to one, and we get
near to the other.  The only angels of which we
know any thing are the angels of living children.
" Take heed that ye despise not one of these little
ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their
angels do always behold the face of my Father
which is in heaven."
How near we are to heaven in the faith that
heaven is so near to us!
The odours of the orange-grove are wafted to us
before we enter it.  We cannot mistake the proximity of heaven, the air is so heavenly.
And the volume of the Book of Life shall have




138            The True Heaven.
no seal upon it - all may know that the names of
all are written therein.
The gates of the descending city shall not be
shut at all - open until the last and farthest away
has come in.
And then not shut; even the sign of exclusion
shall not be about it.